Storage 'not fundamentally needed' for future power grid, scientists say - <AUTHOR> http://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/storage-not-fundamentally-needed-for-future-power-grid-scientists-say/?utm_content=bufferda0ba&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Take a look at the major power consumers in your house.

You have HVAC. Refrigeration. Your washer. Your dryer. And your dishwasher.

Each one of those things is inherently a form of energy storage, because you don't need any of those to start up or stop at the same milisecond where you flip the switch.

What's left?

Lighting. Entertainment. Communication.

All of these you do expect to consumer power on demand without any time slack. But the major loads I listed above can defer to the minor loads that demand that kind of priority.

So with a little TCP/IP to coordinate activities around your house, your need for power storage declines considerably.

<comment><USER3> Your house!?

I think this misses the elephant in the room. Large industrial machinery. Data centers. Manufacturing. Electrified transportation. At the place I work, we use more electricity in a single, 19 inch high density server rack than your entire neighborhood. We have rooms full of batteries like the Tesla Powerwall and would be lucky if they could operate for 10 minutes.

<comment><USER4> Huge loads like Aluminium smelters are already "smart" and cooperate with the electricity providers, so there is not as much left to gain there.

<comment><USER5> Yes and no; you can't just switch off an aluminium smelter with destroying it; it takes quite a bit of time to ramp it down. I think that for forecast high demand they shut down production in a planned way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article doesn't mention a fundamental point. Change the price of electricity from moment to moment based on the supply. This will obviate much of the need for storage, since a lot of electricity usage is elastic (car battery charging, HVAC, etc.) and can be time-shifted.

<comment><USER7> This assumes automatic adjustment of consumption on the consumer end. I doubt individual residential consumers will look at the time and the consumption and plug their appliances according to the network for a few cents. I do not know if industrial usage is enough to move the needle here. Maybe someone can chime in with some data?

<comment><USER8> If I had a smart dishwasher or a smart washing machine that could turn on or prep hot water when the demand is low, it could work.

<comment><USER9> If every smart dishwasher does the same thing, the price will surge across a time period shorter than the minimum run time of your dishwasher. That stratagy only works if you're the only one doing it.

<comment><USER10> I think you are simplifying the model a bit too far. Peak load is very likely not driven by dishwashers...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _" The one question we will have to deal with as policymakers is do we want a subsidy regime for storage, or can it can be delivered by market forces alone."_

Right. That's the policy issue. Government subsidies for batteries would be a huge giveaway to battery manufacturers. California [1] and Sweden [2] have already offered subsidies. That may not be a good thing.

[1] [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Will- California...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Will-Californias- New-Bigger-SGIP-Subsidy-Accelerate-Energy-Storage) [2] [https://cleantechnica.com/2016/11/22/sweden-will- offer-60-su...](https://cleantechnica.com/2016/11/22/sweden-will- offer-60-subsidy-residential-battery-storage-costs/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree storage is required if we continue to have flat rate power charges for users, but implementing variable power pricing for consumers it reduces the need for storage and is really over due. IE power should be cheaper on windier days with moderate temperatures. Expensive if it suddenly gets hot and cloudy. And users should know what the rates are.

Users smart enough to change their electricity consumption eg night rates - they need more information to improve even more. Smart appliances will soon follow.

<comment><USER13> FPL has started doing this based on the biggest load signal (time of day). We're charged peak rates and non-peak rates, and the peak rate is about 2x the non-peak.

Unfortunately, many consumers live in older apartments and/or are more transient than most, so there's less incentive to invest in energy efficiency. The landlord is responsible for appliances/AC, but not the power, so there's no incentive to do anything except buy the minimally sufficient hardware for the occupant.

I think if we start to change some of the perverse incentives in the lessor/lessee relationship this will also have some significant effect on power consumption.

<comment><USER14> What would something like this look like? There's no incentive on the part of the inhabitant to conserve if the landlord covers electricity, so clearly it's not as simple on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Title of the article is misleading. The article title seems to imply that we just don't need storage. Really it is about needing to worry about on-demand output as we convert to more renewable (wind/solar) power generation. The only brief mention of what can take the place of storage in a renewable world is thermal and hydro generation.

<comment><USER16> The whole article is misleading. Hydro and geothermal are the only mentioned "flexible" substitutes for storage because this is a hit piece written by the old guard. "Flexible" is code for coal and gas plants that are currently fired up on demand already. C'mon now, use a little critical thinking and some follow the money. There isn't enough hydro and geothermal installed base to handle the load of the night time / non-windy day use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They are saying that storage is not needed in the grid because

a) Households will have storage in the form of batteries b) We will replace the existing grid with a grid that advises devices of he cost of electricity. c) We will replace existing electricity using devices and systems and devices smart enough to turn themselves off when the cost of electiricity gets too high.

So, storage is actually needed and all we need to do is spend massive amounts on updating the grid and replacing devices to make this possible.

It annoys me that there are a lot of hand-waving articles like this but I have a lot of trouble finding solid analysis of the practicality of a renewables based energy system.

I am not convinced it will work at all, let alone at a reasonable cost.

<comment><USER18> Are you suggesting the grid will turn into an interconnected graph of power supply lines with a routers and a routing protocol to supply power dynamically based on usage? Sounds a lot like our favorite graph.

There are obvious political problems with rate advertisement. Some are actually beneficial, such as being able to guarantee critical power supply on a more granular level. But what about ending up with a handful of backbone power providers with shady preferential practices and lackluster competitive spirit?

Self-regulating devices that turn themselves off during peak usage (back off packet sending...quiet broadcast radios...) seems extremely susceptible to bad actors. Perhaps I underestimate how bad current power infrastructure consistency is.

<comment><USER17> Yes what I am saying is that this is a big project that requires a huge and coordinated investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In daydreaming what this article was about I thought it was going to be a transglobal power distribution where the folks receiving the sun were powering the folks in the evening the other hemisphere away. Pretty interesting thought but I'd doubt it would work uniformly. Probably a couple of pairs of partners like US and Japan or Australia or something could benefit from such an arrangement.

</comment><comment><USER20> I only see this route going if the power companies themselves are responsible enough to make the transition to renewable energy (I'm not sure they are, at least in any relatively quick timeframe). So if the case comes that fossil fuels become more and more expensive, then and only then will they really make an effort to transition to mostly renewable energy. And it'll happen at a slow and crippling pace for all us tree-huggers out there.

So storage still makes a lot of sense, because if I want to do anything about renewable energy, _I unfortunately have to do it myself_. Putting some sort of solar system on my house will cost ME money; either outright, leased, or through a home-improvement loan plan. Which is sad, but it is what it is (and kudos to what the government HAS done to bring down these costs). Since it's all on me to reduce my carbon footprint, that energy produced must be stored, and these home battery systems (Tesla or not, there's about 2 other choices though, it seems in my research with companies locally) are not all that expensive considering the cost and installation of a solar array, especially Tesla's pricier solar roof option. And that's giving you complete independence from the electric company.

I talked to a rep about a solar solution and he understood my concern for wanting to go "net zero" since it feels like locally, the power company is devaluing what you put back into the sub-system more and more. He explained that more and more people exploring their alternative energy solutions are interested in these battery/storage systems for the exact same reasons. With a minimum investment of about 30k or 40k for a whole-home solution, a lot of people don't trust that their power fed back into the grid won't be devalued over time (at least a rate higher than the natural decay of battery technology).

<comment><USER21> I would expect power companies to be extremely responsive to costs.

Power company cooperatives run the largest storage systems on the planet already, they built pumped storage because it was win-win for their cost structures (they use them to more efficiently operate baseload generators).

They also do things like run around buying old appliances to get green credits (a response to a negative cost imposed by regulators).

As far as selling power to the grid, the price should be fair for everyone, not just a big reward for having the upfront capital to install solar. Especially as the need to spur investment in solar tech goes away (because in more and more areas it is already cost competitive and an easy choice).

<comment><USER20> Yes, I'm definitely not blaming them, I can see somewhere on my bill where my energy is coming from; but it's still mostly fossil (because obviously). They are making great strides in alternative and renewable energy. I would think their cost to go mostly with renewables are much more expensive to them than my cost to go mostly renewable. They're going to move slow on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22>
      Now, new consumer products like Tesla's grid-connected
      home battery [...] are becoming more popular

I'm sure some people have home batteries - but isn't this a rather niche thing?

I mean, I'm sure it's nice for people in the boonies where mains power is unreliable. Or if you're a survivalist/hippy that wants to be off-the- grid/completely-renewable and doesn't mind paying a big premium for it.

But what would a home battery offer me that I can't get from the grid already?

<comment><USER16> The other thing it gets you is the full value of your rooftop solar generation. Many localities have protectionist regulations where the local utility doesn't have to pay for your electricity when your generation exceeds your consumption. The City of Los Angeles, for example, has that regulation. There's no "meter runs backward" after your bill for the grid drops to $0. And your generation credits are calculated month-to-month, so if you generate excess in the summer but not in the winter, you don't get credit for the summertime surplus when you need it.

<comment><USER23> > And your generation credits are calculated month-to-month, so if you > generate excess in the summer but not in the winter, you don't get credit > for the summertime surplus when you need it.

At least in the northern California PG&E service area, the credits are calculated month to month but trued up once a year, so your summer surplus generation does give you credit for your winter use. It's called net-metering [1]

[1] [https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and- vehicles/gre...](https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/solar-and- vehicles/green-energy-incentives/solar-and-renewable-metering-and-billing/net- energy-metering-program-tracking/understand-net-energy-metering.page)

<comment><USER16> That's pretty cool. But it varies from location to location.

LA sees any competition to their utilities to be an existential threat. For a while, they forced me (and tens of thousands of others) to pay for trash pick up from a multi-family dwelling even though our landlord had hired a private service and had all of our city receptacles returned. They were recently smacked down in court, I received a class action settlement notification a few months back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How far in the "future" are we talking? Let's go all the way:

Let's assume an extraterrestrial colony being established on the Moon, or Mars, or another planet.

Do you really want to spend time, effort and resources on building a traditional power grid in a hostile, unstable environment (or a planet whose natural terrain you want to affect as little as possible), or just provide each facility its own independent power supply?

</comment><comment><USER25> I hope this doesn't become an Every House thing. Right now the price variations act somewhat as a subsidy for heavy industry.

Though I'm sure some analyst somewhere had similar words about air conditioners.

</comment><comment><USER26> of course theres a clear winner - distributed power. the revolution will absolutely be consumer driven.

</comment><comment><USER27> Let's run a fat HVDC line coast to coast and pump that sunny goodness

</comment><comment><USER28> So having failed to solve it, scientists say it never needed solving in the first place? Well it makes a change from "in conclusion, we need more funding" I guess...

<comment><USER29> This sort of biased cynicism is really uncalled for.

From the science side, it is solved. What's needed is implementation from industry to make it cost effective and have large enough scale.

This is already happening. Grid-scale lithium ion storage is cost effective enough to replace California peaker plants that run on natural gas.

In Arizona, the latest paired solar + storage project is selling electricity for $45/MWh.

And the cost curve is continuing to fall for lithium ion at a fast and steady rate. The market for storage has developed so quickly that there hasn't even been time to set up subsidies for storage, before it was economical to start using it in practice. Some states are now implementing storage subsidies, however, which will extend storage into more applications where it's not yet economical, and give the industry a further kickstart.

The question will be if demand response will be cheaper than storage, and if customers will put up with the hassle of demand response. As far as costs, not using electricity is hard to beat, investing in reducing consumption for identical work output, with efficiency measures, pay great dividends. Of course, for the common home owner, convincing them to spend $500 now, in order to save $1000 over the next 5 years, is a hard sell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Also, (large) batteries are not fundamentally needed in cars. With the upcoming self-driving technology, cars could feed themselves from power-lines embedded in roads.

<comment><USER4> What do power lines in the road have to do with self-driving? They could be used for existing cars as well. They aren't used because they are ridiculously expensive to build and maintain compared to normal roads.

<comment><USER31> Perhaps the poster is envisioning a world where after drop off, the car drives itself to a very high speed charging station off the beaten path.

<comment><USER32> He may well be, in which case he's demonstrating that he doesn't understand that those self-driving cars are only making money for their owner when the meter is running, and so the owner will be interested in whatever model needs as few recharges as possible.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: FinanceLinx – Curated Directory of 400 Startup Grants and Gov Loans - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/financelinx <comment><AUTHOR> FinanceLinx is a curated directory of resources to help you find grants and government loans for your startup. It includes an overview of more than 400 programs, divided among 32 countries. This allows you to raise capital without having to give away equity, or expand an existing business with low or no interest government backed loans. This project is 100% community supported, to preserve impartiality.

I thought it would be good to build a simple and useful site that can help find the right resources to fund your startup. Hopefully FundingLinx will become one of the first sites you look at when you are trying to find startup funding, as we'll add other private capital funding options in the future .

It would be great to hear your thoughts!</comment>


Icefish Study Adds Another Color to the Story of Blood - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/icefish-study-adds-another-color-to-the-story-of-blood-20190422/ <comment><USER2> """ Much of evolution depends on historical contingency, too. The earliest organisms had many oxygen-controlling pigments at their disposal. But once lineages of organisms committed to using certain ones for certain jobs, it may have been difficult if not impossible for them to drastically revise that choice. """ Makes me feel better about all the technical debt I've contributed to over the years.</comment>


Three Ways to Hack a Printed Circuit Board - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/three-ways-to-hack-a-printed-circuit-board <comment><USER2> Bunnie Huang gave an excellent talk on this subject at BlueHat IL 2019 that goes very deep, including showing technical details of how attacks like this can be pulled off. Well worth the 45 minutes - [https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5519](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5519)

</comment><comment><USER3> That started off accurate, but then it got painful. Of course files can be modified. This has nothing to do with being "ASCII" plain text. By the way the article meanders, it seems the author is a pure EE who thinks there could be some software pixie dust that could assure integrity without doing the full work of either trusting the fab house or checking their output. Sorry, there isn't.

Based on the title, I had thought this was going to be about ways to create a trojan by modifying only the unpopulated PCB. Once you're playing with components, you can just stick a second chip on the SPI bus that eg corrupts a few firmware instructions to avoid setting critical processor feature flags. The footprint likely already exists for supplier diversity. Although by now attackers have probably made integrated chips that contain the flash and the implant in a single package.

</comment><comment><USER4> Authors propose to mess with circuit board runs by adding components and modifying connections. There is no security on the design files, so they are trivially modified, though it is annoying to do so if you don't have the original design files. The outputs - Gerbers or ODB++ databases - can be imported into a design tool and modified.

They also propose to detect such changes by looking for missing refdes. That's farcical. Duplicate refdes are much harder to identify, or a new one could be added. But the true way to hide a "hack" in a PCB is to replace an IC with a counterfeit part.

A combination of a modern APT - even some of the things published around the same time as Stuxnet - could be used to activate a hidden feature in a counterfeit IC, and would be undetectable by almost any method short of high- resolution xray comparison to a golden board.

Fun stuff to think about though.

<comment><USER5> APT?

<comment><USER6> APT is an Advanced Persistent Threat, or more casually known as a good hacking group. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One way this could be remediated a little bit would be if vendors for these devices were not so bent on not giving away any details and to prevent repairability.

If there were schematics available and devices were made to be disassembled and looked at there would be more people "auditing" devices in the field to give an alert when something is out of norm.

\---

A bit unrelated:

The hardware attacks, I have seen one over a decade ago when working on software for credit card terminals. We started getting shipments of terminals with nefarious hardware injected. These terminals had built in fuse that could be checked to see if device was tampered with (opened). These small boards had to be added in the assembly somewhere in China and it was a problem to detect them because opening the device meant it became useless as ones with tamper flag are not allowed in production. The attackers learned to scrape some plastic from the device to make the weight match exactly.

This was rather primitive attack (there was separate board of questionable quality glued inside enclosure and visibly wired to the main board) but it was rather problematic for us. I shudder to think if attackers had better hang of technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems insufficient that the conclusion is just to check the received board against the schematic and BOM.

<comment><USER7> It is not, but having access to schematics, bom and description of how it works would mean more people looking at it and probing it. This would be helpful in preventing large scale attacks to go for a long time but would not prevent directed attacks (like infecting a single shipment to a single customer).

Also, I always thought bypass capacitors an excellent way to inject malicious hardware. Everybody is practically trained to ignore them and does not expect them to do anything. Yet they have access to almost all signal lines and technically possibility to inject or disrupt signal.

<comment><USER9> >Also, I always thought bypass capacitors an excellent way to inject malicious hardware. Everybody is practically trained to ignore them and does not expect them to do anything. Yet they have access to almost all signal lines and technically possibility to inject or disrupt signal.

Call me jaded but the fact that Bloomberg essentially made a fake report about this type of attack made me completely disinterested in this type of attack. It's just some sensationalist crap that is meant to destroy the reputation of a company. It was never about the practicality of the attack. Just replace an entire IC and be done with it.

It's easy to image an Amazon seller replacing a microcontroller with one that contains ransomware. If you try to do the same thing with a bypass capacitor then you massively increase the amount of effort needed to execute the attack. The microcontroller attack could be as simple as emulating a keyboard and opening a virus site in internet explorer.

I don't know how many people actually pay the ransom but lets say 5% of the buyers end up paying a $500 ransom. That would be $25 extra profit per mainboard. If your mainboard is $10 cheaper than the competition customers will flock to your products and you can easily scale out your operation.

<comment><USER7> Well... this doesn't have to be as overt as you described.

For example, bypass cap could monitor the line and detect when a security feature to prevent tampering with the device turns on and just disrupt that feature. Or maybe it could prevent the phone from turning off when it should to keep that pesky covert monitoring software running even after you think you have switched your phone off. Or maybe it will cause camera light to be turned off when a particular radio signal is detected so that you don't know you are watched. Dunno.

Just because Bloomberg report turned out to be fake doesn't necessarily mean the attack vector is fake or pointless.

There are millions of engineers/hackers smarter than me and I can imagine somebody will put together a working and useful attack, eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Guess the Psychlos should have read this when designing their teleportation technology.</comment>


It's not possible to make bootable backups of macOS Big Sur - <AUTHOR> https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/under_construction/ <comment><USER2> From Carbon Copy Cloner 5.1.22-b1 release notes[0]:

"This build continues our beta testing cycle for macOS 'Big Sur' 11\. In the current macOS beta, CCC will create Data Volume backups of any Big Sur startup volumes. Apple's APFS replication utility is not currently capable of replicating a Big Sur System volume (as of Big Sur Beta 6). We're working with Apple to develop the functionality within macOS that will allow third-party backup applications to continue making backups of macOS System volumes. In the meantime, we're making complete backups of your data, and those backups can be seamlessly used alongside the macOS Installer or Migration Assistant to produce a bootable backup or to facilitate a restore."

[0] [https://bombich.com/software/updates/ccc5_rn_beta.html](https://bombich.com/software/updates/ccc5_rn_beta.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> "At present."

The submitted headline misrepresents this post.

From the post:

"At present, it's not possible to make bootable copies of Big Sur, even with asr, Apple's own built-in replication utility. As such, we haven't released a Beta, or even an internal Alpha, because it wouldn't meet our own requirements.

So, for the moment, we're holding back, hoping that Apple will fix the issues [...]"

<comment> j-pb I had senior support agents from Apple support tell me that they do not advice doing bootable APFS backups, since it interferes with the ids the T2 chip somehow burns into the file system for "security" reasons.

At our company we try to buy refurbished T2 free hardware only for this reason.

We'll probably jump ship if a great surface studio 3 comes out.

After almost 40 years of being a Mac Design shop...

We're just sad and want 2005 back.

<comment><USER4> What are your main issues with T2?

<comment><USER5> Only apple can repair your machine. You no longer own your machine, they do.

<comment><USER6> Was it worth the extra protection from governments or malicious entities trying to extract your data?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This would be a _huge_ problem for me, and I will not consider upgrading to Big Sur until it's fixed. I currently create bootable backups of my Mac, the idea being that if the internal drive goes, I can switch to the backup while the machine is being repaired. I've had to resort to that on several occasions.

I'd honestly be pretty surprised if Apple eliminated bootable backups. It's just too important. The fact that it's a power-user feature should not be a disqualifier. Lots of Apple users fall into that category, and I think Apple already has some work ahead of it to restore good faith with those folks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Apple does it again lmao

</comment><comment><USER9> Likely won't be. I doubt booting from removable media will be supported much longer in post-T2 Apple-land. If Apple Silicon devices support it I will be quite surprised.

<comment><USER10> I think they already confirmed at WWDC that external device booting is supported. Lots of use cases become impossible without it: reinstalling older OSes, reinstalling without internet access, bootable backups, installing a beta on an external drive, etc etc.

<comment><USER9> As it is I have been unable to reinstall my iMac Pro without internet access from a bootable USB drive; it seems to insist on internet recovery. Also, I think they explicitly want to disable booting of older OS versions as that is an attack vector for boot security.

<comment><USER10> On T2 Macs those are both disabled by default, but can be enabled with the Startup Security Utility in recovery mode.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Top U.S. Cities for Women Entrepreneurs  - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226559

<comment><USER2> Finally we're #1 at something good! I'm tired of being the worst run city in the nation, and a few other horrible things.</comment>


Visual Demonstration of Approximating Arbitrary Functions with Sigmoids - <AUTHOR> https://www.desmos.com/calculator/qwwawaovjs <comment><USER2> This fits in well with Bret Victor's ideas. You learn by playing with systems. Tweak a little bit here, see what it does to the output.</comment>


SpaceX Developing Micro Satellites - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/531994668608024576 <comment><USER2> I assume this is to do with the recent news regarding SpaceX and Google getting together to make internet access available to all...

<comment><USER3> This WSJ article points to the deal being with a former Google exec. Not sure if he is bringing in Google as part of it.

[http://online.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission- inter...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-next-mission-internet- satellites-1415390062)

<comment><USER4> This article seems to say Google isn't a part of it.

[http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-working- satellit...](http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-working-satellite- scheme-elon-musk-says-n244106)</comment></comment></comment>


Canadian citizen held for months after border agents dismiss papers as fake - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/14/canadian-citizen-sues-government-detention <comment><USER2> Democratic governments seem to using border security as a loophole in civil rights. It happens in the U.S. and U.K. - and also Canada? - where immigration cases are not heard in judicial courts, where rights are protected and the burden of proof is on the government (i.e., innocent until proven guilty) but in 'administrative courts', which are not courts at all but an agency of the same immigration department (or at least the same executive branch) that is prosecuting the defendant, and where the burden of proof is often on the defendant to 'prove' they are not guilty of immigration crimes by proving their citizenship.

The abuse goes further. Both the U.K. (where it's explicit) and U.S. actively try to terrorize immigrants and create "hostile" environments for them. Terror cannot be a tool used by law enforcement for any reason (for one thing, it is "cruel", as in "cruel and unusual"), and it's also punishment without conviction.

Finally, these agencies' power is expanding. The DHS surveillance of all citizens was in HN recently, and I read another article where they claimed jurisdiction over all 'movement of goods' in the U.S. Note also that the expansion of DHS power coincides with the denigration the FBI, an agency rooted in the judicial process and rule of law (for example, they are part of and overseen by the Department of Justice).

The use of these agencies fits both the nationalism (hatred of immigrants) and authoritarianism of the right-wing parties.

<comment><USER3> Actually, us right-wing party people hate the _illegal_ type of immigrants. The legal ones are cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Putting aside the US, I'm surprised that the Canadian government didn't notice or discuss one of their citizens disappearing.

<comment><USER2> What did the U.S. have to do with it?

<comment><USER5> Pretty much nothing besides being a good target for anti-immigration news.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to take notes when reading a programming book? - <AUTHOR> I've been reading a thick programming book on C++, trying to dig deeper into the language. I've been taking notes, using a Evernote like program with syntax highlights. I have lots of different notes, titling each one with the name of programming syntax/technique of using the language, but it's really hard to go through it all and figure out exactly what I need when figuring out a programming problem. I want to master the language.<p>What is the best way to take notes reading a programming book that you spend months reading off and on? <comment><USER2> There's a fairly simple annotation technique we teach all of our high school students.

\- Underline big ideas you come across.

\- Circle important words or phrases.

\- Write any questions you have in the margins, as you read.

The goal is to have a "conversation with the text" in your head. If you do this well, the process of annotating fades into the background, and just becomes part of how you read. When you go back to that book or section later on, you can quickly get a sense of what stood out to you the first time you read the text.

The long-term goal is that people develop their own coding system for reading. It doesn't matter if you underline or highlight, circle or box, etc. What matters is that you develop a system that works for you, that lets you think about the text in different, specific ways as you read.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree this works fairly well with most literature, but I have a hard time imagining how it will work with code and organizing an entire programming language as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find it hard to learn programming that way (though for other stuff I use post-its). My approach is first to skim the whole book, making a mental note of interesting features or ideas I haven't encountered yet, but not really learning them deeply. Then I take a small project and make sure to use all of those features, even if I have to shoehorn them in a bit just for an excuse to use the feature. I will use a programming book more as a reference. Most of these are throwaway projects and don't really end up as useful code, and I don't do this all in one sitting, maybe over the course of two or three weeks here and there.

<comment><USER4> I also follow this approach. I learn enough to know what I don't know (skimming books, only learning basic syntax). Then I pick a project and learn the rest by Googling for solutions to problems when I get stuck.

I find that things don't really sink in until I've actually done the coding - 10 hours of reading books is less valuable than 2 hours of reading books + 8 hours of coding (at least in my experience).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly. Pencil.

Every single programming book I own, that I've actually read, is covered in hand written notes.

I also tape post-it notes onto important pages with more notes as bookmarks.

It's free. Easy. Random access. Read/write friendly. "No sign-up required".

</comment><comment><USER6> Post-it bookmarks - lots of em, when I'm coding I just pop through the bookmarks

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious to know what's the program you use to take note?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://lifehacker.com/quiver-is-a-notebook-built-for- program...](http://lifehacker.com/quiver-is-a-notebook-built-for- programmers-1666752657)</comment></comment>


Microsoft Gives You a FREE Laptop,If Its Unable to Upgrade Your PC to Windows10 - <AUTHOR> http://sci-fo.com/microsoft-is-giving-away-free-laptops-if-its-unable-to-upgrade-your-pc-to-windows-10/ <comment><USER2> Accurate information from Microsoft: [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/store/locations/windows-10-u...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/store/locations/windows-10-upgrade-challenge)</comment>


Breaking the 4-channel Barrier: The PC Tracker War and More - <AUTHOR> http://inversephase.tumblr.com/post/95539946966/breaking-the-4-channel-barrier-the-pc-tracker-war-and <comment><USER2> I wonder if the source code of FastTracker 2 will be available.

Of course, I am aware of the open-source trackers (like MilkyTracker, etc), but I believe that the FT2 played a huge part of the demoscene and it should be preserved (the original source code).

<comment><USER3> Fun fact is that the creators of FastTracker (Triton) started Starbreeze, the highly successful game studio.

<comment><USER4> Also mentioned in the article is Thomas Pytel (Tran), who went on to be a lead engineer at PayPal.

Fond memories digging through the assembler code of PMODE, his free DOS extender. Learned a lot. Thanks, Thomas!

<comment><USER5> I didn't know Tran's real name until just now. I used to make everyone watch Timeless circa 1995. Now I want to call out of work and play kings quest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ModEdit, Trackblaster, that brings me back. Raise your hand if that was you in your dad's garage soldering together a DAC to go on your parallel port ;)

<comment><USER7> There was an info-file with some release that described how to make your own Covox Speech Thing [1], but I do not remember what it was. I thought it was The Space Pigs Megademo, but the release at Pouet does not have any text files.

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

<comment><USER6> Wasn't it also included in FastTracker II?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> About 20 years ago I wrote a MOD player for PC, using only info found in the PC Game Programmer's Encyclopedia. ( [http://bespin.org/~qz/pc- gpe/](http://bespin.org/~qz/pc-gpe/) ). It had some subtle bugs which meant everything was out of pitch. I should dig it up, stick it on github, and see if I can trivially fix it.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone interested in beta testing SQL Server source control? - <AUTHOR>

I've always felt that most database source control systems interfere with the workflow many people use when developing for SQL Server. So, I've created a source control system for SQL Server that automatically commits your DDL changes to SVN or TFS so that we can concentrate on the code, not the process.
I'd like to get more beta testers; anyone interested in trying it out?
http://sqlhistorian.com
If anyone had any feedback about the web page or idea, I'd appreciate that as well. Or, if you're not interested, I'd like to know why (and if it's something I can add in the future). Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable: <http://sqlhistorian.com></comment>


What's new in PostgreSQL 9.0 - a User's Perspective  - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Illustrated_9_0

<comment><USER2> This is a wonderful upgrade that might finally convince some users to leave the mess that is MySQL behind.

It's been a long wait but replication is now finally as easy as it gets. And, by design, it can not silently lose or corrupt data. Unlike a certain other popular RDBMS.

<comment><USER3> I honestly can't imagine why folks continue to use MySQL over PostreSQL. All technical benefits of PostgreSQL aside, I can't help but wonder if it really comes down to something silly, like MySQL being much easier to pronounce properly.

For my part, I'm stoked about 9.0. It can't get here soon enough.

<comment><USER4> Very simple: a _lot_ of pre-packaged software doesn't use except for MySQL.

Well, to clarify, a lot of popular pre-packaged software is out there in PHP. And PHP never had a good db abstraction layer + the entire style of the PHP language lent itself to the direct use of queries in the code, and the direct usage of the MySQL connectors.

When users want a forum, a wiki, a helpdesk, a blog, etc. and it's in PHP, chances are it doesn't have a PostgreSQL backend. And if you have to have MySQL, and MySQL works for everything (for some definition of the word "works") while PostgreSQL doesn't... there's your answer.

The real reason is: PostgreSQL doesn't have any must-have apps that _only_ run PGSQL (which is a good thing), and MySQL does (which is a bad thing) so MySQL wins.

<comment><USER5> This is exactly why there are two DB's at my work.

\- Postgres for Django and custom Perl system.

\- MySql for all the 3rd party crap WP, forums, Redmine, couple craptistically old Perl help ticket and project management systems.

<comment><USER6> Just want to note that Redmine runs just fine with PostgreSQL.

We do the same at my work too, but we have less third party apps that require MySQL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> another year, another release.

Thank you, everyone behind the development of PostgreSQL. I wouldn't be in my life where I am now if it wasn't for the work you are constantly putting into this wonderful project.

And when one thinks "now. this is it. it can't get any better now", you come out with another high-quality release.

Thank you ever so much.

</comment><comment><USER8> I keep hoping that PostgreSQL will support an embedded version. SQLite only gets you so far, and it'd be nice to be able to ship PostgreSQL statically linked into your applications with zero-configuration at the user's end.

MySQL's working on this (<http://mysql.com/oem/>), but I've read that PostgreSQL is way too tied to their multi-process network architecture for this to be feasible. But I'd love to be shown to wrong on that.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it'd be terribly infeasible from an architectural standpoint because of the multi-process network architecture, but there are other things to consider. The multi-process architecture is really in it's favor, as it already uses IPC primitives (shared memory, semaphores) to share cache and control access to shared resources. The biggest barrier (I think) would be the file format. SQLite stores all of it's data in a single file (plus one temporary file for the journal). PostgreSQL's on-disk format would have to be heavily redesigned to support this, which I think is a huge advantage for SQLite.

<comment><USER8> Then again, there's no reason why an embedded database can't launch multiple subprocesses, or talk to itself via a socket for that matter. The same goes for the storage SQLite uses one file, but an embedded PostgreSQL allocating one opaque directory would be fine.

The important part is that you'd be able to easily statically link to it and handle permissions on a by-file basis, instead of PostgreSQL's current permission model. For all intents and purposes it'd be a larger SQLite replacement then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is it. The final release that will put PostgreSQL ahead of MySQL in the performance and scalability realm. They've already exceeded or are at par with MySQL in single-box OLTP performance, now PostgreSQL can scale-out with read slaves. Other than entrenchment, there's very little justifiability in using any other RDBMS system (proprietary or open source) after 9.0 rolls out.

</comment><comment><USER10> Postgres just keeps getting better. 8.4 was a fantastic release, too.

I don't know how they manage it, but every release adds features and becomes _more_ stable. Pretty awesome job.

<comment><USER11> And they also get faster with every release.

A very high quality product, indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been wanting to use PostgreSQL. Does anyone know any good GUI tools for MacOS X for it?

<comment><USER13> pgAdmin3 + SQLEditor (<http://www.malcolmhardie.com/sqleditor/>)

<comment><USER12> Ah, it looks like pgAdmin3 is what I was after. It's a bit fugly but it will probably do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just once I'd like to have a discussion on HN about either MySQL or PostgreSQL without having a long thread about why one is more popular/better than the other. Not going to happen.

</comment><comment><USER15> I know that cost and cross platform capabilities are big issues but for someone using MS SQL server express (free if database size < 10 GB) in windows, are there any advantages that PostgreSQL has?

</comment><comment><USER13> datapoint: I've been using PostgreSQL (and it's GIS extension PostGIS) with Rails for over a year now. Some minor issues along the way, but never ever going back to MySQL.

</comment><comment><USER16> Does this release add any features that would keep you from going for a NoSQL solution? How does it for instance compare to MongoDB in terms of raw performance and scalability? (Not mentioning of course the difference in schema-less and relational design)

<comment><USER17> I have found Apples to Apples (fsync off in PgSQL) and doing key/value store in PgSQL, PgSQL performed on par with, or slightly faster than MongoDB, using my admittedly not fully baked KVPBench app - <http://github.com/gmr/kvpbench>.

<comment><USER18> FUN FACT: (and you probably already know this but many do not): "fsync = off" is postgresql-ese for "please destroy all my data". Don't do it. Ever. The 9.0 docs are finally improving the language here to indicate that _you must not set fsync off if you value your job_.

Setting "synchronous_commit = off" nets you 99.9% of the performance improvement without the possibility of corrupting your entire database.

<comment><USER17> You might enjoy my fsync related photo:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinmroy/4638958958/>

And the presentation it came from:

<http://www.scribd.com/doc/31669670/PostgreSQL-and-NoSQL>

<comment><USER11> Very cool presentation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tools for Better Thinking - <AUTHOR> https://untools.co <comment><USER2> I've found that the most underrated problem solving tool is simply typing out my thought process.

I used to be the type who asked a lot of questions until I realized that formulating the question was often more important than getting the answer.

<comment><USER3> It's amazing how much a technique like rubber ducking[1] helps to work through issues. The number of times I've felt like I have no idea how to solve a problem until the moment after I ask someone else is incredible. I think the act of thinking how to explain the problem to someone else really helps trigger the problem solving side of the brain. That and the number of times taking a 10 minute walk has been more productive than hours of debugging time is frankly mind boggling.

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

<comment><USER4> I've heard this concept called the cardboard colleague - you explain the problem to a cardboard cutout representing a colleague instead of an actual person. Of course it remains a concept, I don't think anyone would go so far as make one :-)

<comment><USER5> You can use an actual colleague.

Many years ago when I was designing and programming embedded controllers (early '80s) I worked alongside, but not with, another engineer who was building devices using the same fundamental components (6520, PIA, etc.) In our tea breaks we would explain our problems to each other. Neither of us suggested any solutions to the other or responded with anything other than simple platitudes and sympathy for each other's troubles. It was remarkable how many problems had simply vanished by the end of the tea break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a really nice presentation of these ideas.

However, I think that the Decision Matrix idea is too complicated: specifically the part where he advocates adding a weighting to each factor being considered to arrive at a numerical score.

At Microsoft, some of us use a system that I like to call the "Abolade decision making framework." It's the same idea, but instead of assigning weights to factors, we simply rank them. Additionally, the factors are expressed as positive attributes and an option either has that factor or it doesn't. A factor could be "Has vibrant colors" or it could be "Less than $10" for example. The type of a factor is Boolean :)

The goal is to generate a table with the options presented as columns and the factors presented as rows. You spend a lot of time as a group figuring out what the factors are, and then you spend a lot of time ranking them. Once you have agreement, you start working on the options. The winning option is one where you have the longest continuous line of check marks for each factor starting from the top.

Smart people, of course will try to game this system to choose their preferred outcome ... you need to be vigilant about this :)

<comment><USER7> Is there somewhere I could read further about the Abolade framework? I can't seem to find any good resources from a quick web search.

<comment><USER6> I don't think there's anything public about this. Not that there is anything particularly secret about this at all. It's very straightforward and I've described its salient points above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a book titled "Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques". The last edition was published in 2006, so it's fairly dated by now. I found it very interesting back then, but it wouldn't have much about more recent tools or ideas.

There is a summary of the book here [https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys- a-handbook-of-creat...](https://www.ethos3.com/books/thinkertoys-a-handbook- of-creative-thinking-techniques-book-summary/)

<comment><USER9> This is a good one to - "The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving" by Morgan D. Jones, ( techniques as used by the CIA no less! :-) ).

[https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful- Techniques-...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinkers-Toolkit-Powerful-Techniques- Problem-dp-0812928083/dp/0812928083)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> TRIZ ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ)) "theory of the resolution of invention-related tasks". It was invented in Soviet Union. TRIZ is basically a toolset to analyse and solve engineering problems; it can help with "inventing" tasks.

The system is well developed and quite sophisticated with a variety of techniques and approaches. I found this book to be a good introduction: [https://www.wiley.com/en- us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+I...](https://www.wiley.com/en- us/TRIZ+for+Engineers%3A+Enabling+Inventive+Problem+Solving-p-9780470741887)

<comment><USER11> Have you found it useful to non-mechanical problems?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lovely idea and presentation! Will come very handy at times.

Something I feel like is missing: Statecharts. Very powerful to be able to reason about state changes without having to deal with the explosion of states that state machines often ends up with. Sometimes also called hierarchical state machines.

<comment><USER13> I just started digging deep into this for a project this week and I am already in love.

Highly recommend this book: [https://www.state- machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf](https://www.state- machine.com/doc/PSiCC2_Excerpts.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Neat! Thanks for sharing that!

I made another comment about statecharts a while ago, listing some more resources and other comment threads on HN containing bunch of useful experience, resources and general information, starts here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22747409)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do any of these tool actually help people in everyday life?

Self-help is good but sometimes I wonder if people who yap about all these tools all the time even get anything substantial out of it.

<comment><USER15> The Inversion Methode:

 _Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was a German mathematician famous for his maxim "Invert, always invert". He believed that the solution of many hard problems can be clarified by re-expressing them in inverse form. Inversion forces new ways of thinking and helps uncover hidden solutions._

[https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/114459774698642227...](https://twitter.com/fermatslibrary/status/1144597746986422272)

[https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/](https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Outliners are definitely missing, such as [https://github.com/rochus- keller/crossline/](https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/). You can structure your thoughts while you type, even while you're talking to other people. And you can make cross-references and make appear thoughts (or action items and such) in other places using translucent active links. Or copy/paste structured text from the web or aggregate links with notes, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> Fantastic toolset. I found the posts by Leyla Acaroglu [1] an excellent introduction to systems thinking and many of these concepts

[1]: [https://medium.com/disruptive- design/search?q=tools%20for%20...](https://medium.com/disruptive- design/search?q=tools%20for%20systems%20thinkers)

</comment><comment><USER18> "An important aspect of learning about strategies is the conditional knowledge of when and why to use them appropriately" (Krathwohl et al.)

I wanted to compile a similar list of strategies myself, however I couldn't quite understand when to apply them. After some research, my view is that to understand when to apply these general thinking/problem-solving strategies, one needs to know the goal of the task and the cognitive processes involved i.e. it requires conditional knowledge which is part of metacognition.

Wonderful list though!

</comment><comment><USER19> Reading autobiography of Benjamin Franklin makes me feel we don't need tools but willingness within. He had a notebook and pen with him.

<comment><USER20> Just because some people can multiply large numbers in their head, that doesn't mean that other people won't benefit from a pocket calculator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> No direct relation but reminds me of [https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html](https://datavizcatalogue.com/search.html) (which is great btw!)

<comment><USER22> That link is incredibly helpful! Only slightly non-sequitur...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ohh...I _love_ this. I have a handful of these internal tools that I picked up over these years, but I never knew where to find more (or really, consciously thought to look for more). Now I have a bit of a roadmap.

The ones I do have are so valuable that even if I get one more effective one off this list, it will be one of the best things I do this year.

<comment><USER24> You might enjoy this then

[https://fs.blog/mental-models/](https://fs.blog/mental-models/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> One important aspect of human thinking is the need to form narratives to make sense of the world.

We don't live or think in abstract algebra or abstract heuristics. We live and think in a world-view in which problems arise and for each problem, we have a set of potential solutions, often unconscious.

This website has good information - it just doesn't do a good job of organizing them into a coherent narrative.

It's not enough to _know_ what probability is, if you never think to use it to ask the question _what are the chances one religion out of thousands that all claim they are the only true religion, is actually the true religion?_

One of the big issues of modern society is people being taught/given disconnected bits of information, without a guide on how to fit them into a coherent narrative. This isn't done by accident and a lot of people have given it a great deal of thought - some call it post-modernism.

</comment><comment><USER26> I like the concept, I see many sites like these. However, who actually uses these in a day to day situation? It feels like these thinking models need to be internalized in more than just a superficial way to get any real use out of them, and I wonder if a book or course wouldn't integrate better with one's mind.

</comment><comment><USER27> Side note: Also, nice minimal site. Refreshing to see well-designed, clean sites this days.

<comment><USER28> You should get into the habit of actually checking the network requests. The site looks minimal but it's 1.1MB w/o Google analytics. It's what Maciej Cegłowski([https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm](https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm)) would call Chickenshit Minimalism.

<comment><USER27> You're right - spoiled by the internet connection. I guess I was referring more to the UI.

<comment><USER29> I'm just happy that the homepage mostly zooms the way it should.

Nothing in the modern web pisses me off more than a developer trying to decide how my zoom behavior should work for me. Zoom is a very basic concept, I want to make the whole page larger or smaller. For some reason people insist on messing with that to make some menu, banner, or image popup appear the way they think I (or they) want it to when I try and zoom in or out, rather than just let me zoom as I please.

This site still manages to fuck it up when I click on one of the images though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> does anyone know a simple app that allows hyperlinking within notes? I want to create a roam-style knowledge base, but most tools are too heavy for my purposes. I prefer to keep things cross-compatible and future proof with .txt or .rtf, but to my knowledge, neither allow hyperlinking to documents

<comment><USER31> Yesterday there was a Show HN about Obsidian[0] which you might be interested in.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324598)

<comment><USER30> you need an account for it though, right? meaning they have access to your stuff. and because they use unique formatting such as `![[filename]]`, it may not be easily cross-compatible

<comment><USER32> I believe in yesterdays thread there was mention of the app storing all files locally in a portable Markdown format

<comment><USER30> Have you heard anything about Joplin? I believe it behaves similarly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I love reading about and visualizing about mental models. This site is great for quickly and concisely internalizing them! Thank you for making it!

Another great resource for folks who like reading about these: [https://fs.blog/mental-models/](https://fs.blog/mental-models/)

I've actually read the mental models series of books put out by the above author, and I also highly recommend those for a deeper dive.

</comment><comment><USER34> The tree-like mind maps from these are made in MindNode [1].

[1]: [https://mindnode.com/](https://mindnode.com/)

<comment><USER35> Oh wow. Mac/iOS only. When was this a thing?

<comment><USER36> For as long as Mac's have existed? Some developers prefer to focus on one ecosystem, Omni Group for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sometimes it's been useful for me to use the tool used to state the problem as a guidance framework during the thought process.

So you could try to state the problem in a very structured way (say, a spreadsheet) and at the same time in a visual way (say, a presentation slide deck). Of course some people are better using one type than the other but that's where the trick relies: forcing yourself to think in a way that is not your "natural" way of thinking.

</comment><comment><USER38> If this sort of thing appeals to you, you might enjoy Poor Charlie's Almanack, which can be found on archive.org right now for the low, low price of free:

[https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%2...](https://archive.org/search.php?query=poor%20%20charlie%27s%20almanack)

</comment><comment><USER39> So an "iceberg model" is about trends and patterns over time? That's adding a dimension to the iceberg's ocean and I think the analogy breaks. Usually icebergs are to describe partial occlusion.

Also alarming is that in the example for that model QA is something that happens post-release. If so, I expect quality to be a looming iceberg.

</comment><comment><USER40> Very cool idea but I was disappointed that Socratic Questioning wasn't included.

Here's an example of how that can be applied to tech decisions: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker- tod...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/would-socrates-use-docker-today)

<comment><USER41> It is mentioned in "First principles": [https://untools.co/first- principles](https://untools.co/first-principles)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I use markdown.

VSCode has a nice plugin for it. And so does a few other editors.

It's simple, and easy to use. Pure text, and allows you to do some formatting. Especially, the code preview.

This allows me to brainstorm, and just type out random things at will. And I can reorganize it later.

And when I want to read it, then I switch on the viewer, and all my text is nicely presented.

<comment><USER43> Did you even look at the link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Just meditate, please do not load more pain to head. The article shares some good techniques, use the same techniques using pen and paper and it is healthier.

P.S. Its a personal preference, I'm not trying to put down the tool, its great and can be used as a training material for better thinking.

</comment><comment><USER45> Here is a trove of similar thinking tools to generate ideas, for those interested: [http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm](http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm)

</comment><comment><USER46> Similar website that was posted a few months ago, for those interested: [https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/](https://www.mentalmodelsbox.com/)

I don't reckon it gets updated much, though.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is great. I find I often do these things at work (such as second order thinking) but have never attempted to encapsulate it or differentiate from other ways of looking at things. Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Good list. You might also like this one focused on thinking about systems: [https://unintendedconsequenc.es/](https://unintendedconsequenc.es/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Whenever I see something like this or other "mental model" tools, I just think: soon this will be obsolete, as the human who used to make decisions in a given job is replaced by AI.

</comment><comment><USER50> Looks fantastic! I like the Iceberg model.

</comment><comment><USER51> the scientific method</comment>


Show HN: liblb - A Study and Library of Load Balancing Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://liblb.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi I'm the author of this site. If you have any questions let me know.</comment>


Coyotes Conquered North America. Now They're Heading South - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/science/coyotes-americas-spread.html <comment><USER2> Coyotes come through and rip up our plastic irrigation feed lines every year (Bay Area, Peninsula hills). No mystery, they need water.

I've had "replace plastic with steel lines" on my to-do list since 2014, but haven't had the heart to cut off their water supply. That, and laziness.

They've been around my home far longer than I have, so I guess I'm the invasive species. I'm grateful they've traded access to water for snacking on my dog.

<comment><USER3> Do you know how they discovered that it was water that was inside the pipes?

<comment><USER2> I don't know.

It's possible, as another poster mentioned, that they can hear water flowing through the lines. The surroundings are utterly quiet, and I run the irrigation at night. I can hear turbulence noise in the lines before the water emerges from the local applicators.

On the other hand, coyotes are canids. Their sensory skills are optimized for olfaction. Maybe they can smell the minuscule amount of water vapor that leaks through the push-to-connect couplings. Plus they seem to be pretty smart. It might take only one coyote Einstein to discover "plastic lines here = water" and pass it on to the pack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Used to love playing with the coyotes in the Rural northeast as a bored teenager. MY brother and I would crouch in the long grass in a 300 acre hilly field and see how close we could get to the coyotes. I don't think We were sneaking up on them, they just didn't see us as a threat. Once there were 4 rather than the usual one or two and they started circling us which was both amazing and nerve-wracking. Eventually we stood up and waved our arms and they loped off at a very unconcerned pace.

<comment><USER5> Some of them just do not see humans as a threat. This one in unincorporated Cupertino walked at me for a quarter of a mile and then walked past me. [https://www.flickr.com/photos/swoo/8590438705](https://www.flickr.com/photos/swoo/8590438705) There's one in La Honda for at least a few years that does not move when I go past on the road, it just sits in the road and makes people move around it.

<comment><USER6> In Chicago I had a particularly fat one saunter right past me, a few feet away, before dashing across a busy four lane street into a cemetery. He was clearly not fazed by me, or traffic, at all.

(It was across Western, for anyone wondering)

There was also this famous incident of a coyote who casually walked into a Quiznos in Lincoln Park and cooled off in the drink cooler: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWTttvImgnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWTttvImgnQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "flexible" mating habits of the coyote, leading to the Coywolf, have led some to call them a new species appearing right before our eyes.

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coywolves-are- taki...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/coywolves-are-taking-over- eastern-north-america-180957141/)

</comment><comment><USER8> The explosion in the coyote population (like deer and elk) is driven by the lack of their natural predator, the wolf.

I am a big fan of both coyotes and wolves but we wouldn't have much of a coyote situation in North America had the populations of wolves not been so drastically reduced.

That's likely what's allowing the coyote the freedom to travel to South America.

<comment><USER9> A century ago, both coyotes and wolves were kept in check by humans. Humans lived mostly on farms, not in cities. People carried guns. It was normal and expected that a person would shoot a dangerous predator.

As things stand now, we're going to have coyotes and wolves everywhere. They will be in city parks, eating the garbage and pigeons and raccoons. City dwellers don't normally shoot predators; it would be weird and would likely result in an arrest. Small and frail people (children included) won't be safe alone, as they had been for a couple centuries.

<comment><USER10> >A century ago, both coyotes and wolves were kept in check by humans

Annihilated the population, FTFY.

>As things stand now, we're going to have coyotes and wolves everywhere. They will be in city parks, eating the garbage and pigeons and raccoons. City dwellers don't normally shoot predators; it would be weird and would likely result in an arrest. Small and frail people (children included) won't be safe alone, as they had been for a couple centuries.

Not likely. You forget about Animal Control? And if populations ever were to become a problem you think city dwellers are too helpless and stupid to do anything about it? Like increase the animal control budget...

Your lack of imagination doesn't project onto reality very well I'mm sorry to say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the question posed at the end of the article: should humans interpret this as a natural expansion or an invasive species. It's hard to tell, that's for sure.

<comment><USER12> >should humans interpret this as a natural expansion or an invasive species.

well, for starters, how would humans interpret themselves?

>They thrived, in part, because of increasing forest fragmentation and agricultural lands along with the annihilation of predators like wolves, cougars and jaguars.

sounds like an invasive species [of humans] cleared path for natural expansion of coyotes.

<comment><USER13> Please, let's not start another immigration debate here.

<comment><USER14> Labster, what's going on, big guy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wait, they're crossing the Darien gap? o_O

</comment><comment><USER16> I live in a metropolitan area that has creeks feeding a river that flows through the city. I see coyotes regularly. Its an interesting thing seeing wild life in urban areas.

<comment><USER17> Indeed. In one of my podcasts a biologist described studying a female coyote that lived in downtown Chicago traveling between several parks in the wee hours. IIRC he tracked her for a couple years until the tracking collar fell off. For several years after that some folks who knew he was watching them sent him surveillance video of her passing by. She even raised a litter one year.

We're in the far western 'burbs (DuPage county) and regularly see them on our morning runs. One morning a large one crossed the street about 50' in front of us just as we turned from our drive into the street. It never looked our way but _had_ to know we were there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some of my favorite people are coyotes. They get a little rowdy, but they're good conversationalists otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER19> According to the Road Runner cartoon shorts on Looney Tunes, at least one coyote has taken over the southwest American desert.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_the_Road_Ru...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wile_E._Coyote_and_the_Road_Runner)

<comment><USER20> And even before "Looney Tunes", coyotes (including wily ones) were part of the folklore of many Native American cultures in the Southwest US and Mexico.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_(mythology)#By_culture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote_\(mythology\)#By_culture)</comment></comment>


Does Apple have the next iPhone-level hit on deck? Some would say yes… - <AUTHOR> http://www.eno8.com/blog/does-apple-have-the-next-iphone-level-hit-on-deck-some-would-say-yes/ <comment><USER2> I 100% believe that AR is the next big thing. We have the technology today to make it happen.

Imagine Facebook and twitter feeds in your peripheral. Little arrows showing you which direction to walk in the subway. Live subtitles whenever a person speaks. Pop-up advertisements everywhere. Heads up displays and notifications of dangerous objects in the road and such when you are driving. CNN breaking news instantly. All cell phone / browser notifications are AR.

Sounds terrible doesn't it? That means it is likely to happen :-|</comment>


I Don't Care About My Linux Window Manager - <AUTHOR> https://octetz.com/docs/2020/2020-08-30-window-manager/ <comment><USER2> I'm using fluxbox since... can't remember... 200x. It just works for me. Does not get in the way.

No CPU issues, no ram issues, no effects issues. And has notifications.

The customizable menu, which allows includes, which also I can update via scripts/cron, is pretty useful.

A very custom fluxkeys helps for all my needs.

Regarding stacked layouts, I only use: 2 windows horizontally or 2 windows vertically (independently on each screen). Related snippet from my .fluxbox/keys:

        Mod4 o :ArrangeWindows
        Mod4 i :ArrangeWindowsVertical
        Mod4 p :ArrangeWindowsHorizontal

The thing I have spent more time doing for fluxbox, was my custom theme, I did it using Gimp + vim, and all themes I did try had little details I didn't like. It's just another folder in my dotfiles since then, like 6 years ago.

Totally resonate with the title.

I use the computer to do stuff... and fluxbox is one of my stack choices. Don't like to constantly do stuff just to be able to do stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> What percentage of Linux users similarly don't care about their window manager? I know Linux users split off to their own distro/tribe for all sorts of technical and aesthetic reasons. I kinda wish there would be a consolidation of effort behind one stack if for no other reason than to give macOS and Windows a proper challenge. Perhaps with the Evil IBM acquiring Red Hat the "last free distro standing" behind which everyone can rally could be Debian/Ubuntu? I'm fine with that.</comment>


50 Stunning National Parks Outside the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.fodors.com/trip-ideas/national-parks/news/photos/50-stunning-national-parks-outside-the-us <comment><USER2> Slideshow does not proceed when viewed with Chrome with ad blocking.</comment>


Startup Lessons Learned from Playing Dota - <AUTHOR> https://rasterize.io/blog/startup-lessons-learned-from-playing-dota.html <comment><USER2> Nice. I'm a (former) 1950-2k HoN player and I totally agree that communication/hero-picks/playing to the strength of team composition is how to win 95% of the time, with the 5% losing coming when (because of fatigue or w/e) mechanical skills and communication breakdown.</comment>


How Facebook is like Ikea - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2182149/nav/tap3/

<comment><USER2> This article was well worth my time simply for: "a business that has placed itself at the center of a web of economic actors".</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have voicemail turned on? - <AUTHOR> Inspired by: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14477017
How many of you have your voicemail setup so people can leave messages? I have mine set to a 'disabled' message so anyone that calls and misses me is encouraged to SMS or email me - which is much easier for me to check than listening to an audio message.
Do any of you use voicemail-to-text services so you can read voicemails? <comment><USER2> Voicemail is just another tool for communication. It allows for one way communication towards you, which might be useless in most cases but indispensable in some.

If you are someone who conducts a lot of business over the phone, voicemail is a must. If someone "important" is trying to call you / get hold of you and you are unavailable, your default goal should be to "reduce friction" for the other person to get the message to you! ("important" usually means they are really busy and they value their time a lot, and you should too.... Clients, Board, Investors, Counsel, Accountant, your managers, doctor, etc... ). Having voicemail disabled and requiring people to text you or email you after having tried to call you (which usually means it's time sensitive / important-ish) is adding more friction/resistance in the communications line. It also comes off as very unprofessional. What if you don't have their number saved on your phone or they call from an unknown number and you don't know who the miss call is from...adds a lot of lag in the communication pipeline.

Voicemail also allows you to take your time in getting back to someone if you don't want to / can't have a conversation right away, but you want to know what they might want to talk about. You can then prepare for the topic and call back.

My iPhone does a decent job at converting voicemail-to-text (at&t visual voicemail). I can quickly scroll through my voicemails, delete stuff from marketers/advertisements and call back important ones after reading/listening to the message. Voicemail has definitely help me prepare for important call- back more than a few times (especially while dealing with general counsel).

I would never disable my voicemail or let my inbox get full (voicemail inboxes filling up might be a "thing of the past" very soon!)

</comment><comment><USER3> Switched it off in 2003.. enabled it again in 2005 because of a practical joke by a friend who had my new manager made it a requirement for the new job.. :D

Switched it off soon after again. Reason is mainly that 99.9% of the voicemails left were work related (I only keep one phone# for everything) ahem, "lazy bullshit". It seems most (middle) management is constantly leaving messages about non-issues, for me to deal with. Texting is a miniscule additional "hurdle" which filters this out for me.

I had several discussions proving my point.

      [Bill Lumbergh]"Yeah, could you please enable your voice mail?"
      [Me]"Well, if it is important you can text me, I'll get right back to you"
      [Bill]"but that is less convenient.."
      [Me]"I guess if there is something important, it would warrant the effort to send a three word SMS message.. 'please call me'"
      [Bill]"Eh.."

</comment><comment><USER4> Not everyone is able to use text messages. For example, if I get a call from a business that's returning my call, they're probably calling from a land line that doesn't have texting capabilities. And a non-online business (e.g., my doctor or my car repair shop) probably doesn't have my e-mail address and/or doesn't want to deal with customers via e-mail (it's an extra communication channel that someone at the business needs to monitor).

Also, if I want someone to reply to me quickly, I'm not going to put extra hurdles in their way to make it more difficult for them to do so.

On the other hand, if I'm calling a friend's cell phone and they don't answer, I usually leave a text message instead of a voice mail since it's easier for them to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, but I almost never answer the phone unless I recognize the number, and I rarely check my v/m, meaning 3/4's of the time my mailbox is full and you can't leave me a message anyway. But I've been pretty cavalier about sharing my phone number over the years, so I get a lot of robo-call crap / marketing spam, etc., and it's pretty rare that I miss anything genuinely important.

At some point I'll get a new phone number and retire this one and when I do that, I'll probably A. be more guarded about sharing the number, and B. care more about voicemail. Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER6> I hate listening to voice messages. But my provider didn't allow it to be disabled. So my greeting says "please don't leave a message. I won't check it. Send me an email or text message instead"

</comment><comment><USER7> Disabled, since my provider charges for it (around 0.12 € per message, but still..) and it requires setting and remembering a PIN code to access it.

I don't think it's that useful anymore in the era of WhatsApp voice messages.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have it enabled. If I receive an unexpected call from an unknown number, I don't bother returning it unless they consider it important enough to leave a voicemail. I don't use it much, but of course there are places like doctors offices that wouldn't communicate via sms or email.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use my land line only to place calls because of free calls to cellphones and national land numbers, but the ring is kept off 24/7\. Voice mail is enabled though I'm considering disabling it since the ratio of commercial vs non commercial calls is overwhelming.

</comment><comment> et-al On; because my dentist's office isn't going to text me (though I usually know it's an appointment reminder). And the iPhone does pretty decent job of transcribing voicemails these days.

</comment><comment><USER10> Disabled. I like having a little more time to answer my phone, and do not like incurring costs to the other party when I do not answer (voicemail counts as a connected call).

</comment><comment><USER11> Enabled. Transcript by Google Voice emailed to me.

<comment><USER6> How do you set that up?

<comment> et-al Assuming you already have a Google Voice account, go to Settings > Voicemail > Get voicemail via email

<comment><USER11> And have your mobile number forward to your Google Voice number if you don't answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never thought about it. Thanks for the tip.

</comment><comment><USER13> Same as you: turned on, message saying don't leave a message, email me.</comment>


MongoDB Performance Tuning with Dex - <AUTHOR> http://architects.dzone.com/articles/mongodb-performance-tuning-dex

<comment><USER2> "Because Dex relies on heuristics that don't take your data into account"

So if you do take your data into account and create indexes accordingly and have a solid non-changing schema, is there any benefits in using dex? Is it smart enough to tell me that my existing indexes might not be as good as the suggested indexes? or is this considered part of the data that it doesn't analyse too?

Just curious where and when this tool is a lifesaver.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dex is very cool. Mongo lends itself to adding fields and queries on the fly which has advantages in prototyping quickly, but the flip side is that many queries don't get optimized. Dex makes it much easier optimize later.</comment>


The (s|S)emantic (w|W)eb - <AUTHOR> http://nicklothian.com/blog/2008/04/30/the-ssemantic-wweb/ <comment><USER2> A useful link is to this transcript of an interview with Tim Berners-Lee:

[http://talis- podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/twt20080207_TimBL.htm...](http://talis- podcasts.s3.amazonaws.com/twt20080207_TimBL.html)

And particularly this passage:

Paul [the interviewer]: 06:05 OK, sounds good. Going a little bit broader than those questions then, back in 2001 in that Scientific American article, you and the other authors painted a very broad grand vision of where the Semantic Web could take us. Did you think we'd be closer to that seven years on?

Tim: Well, for one thing that article was, I think, too sci-fi. I think, that really what we have... the message has been... it was looking too far into the future. It imagined the Semantic Web was deployed, and then people had made all kinds of fairly AI-like systems which run on top of that.

</comment><comment><USER3> (I'm the author of the post, but I didn't post it here - thanks to whoever did)

I've got no problem with XFN and/or FOAF - I've built sites that support them. The problem I see is that advocates for those formats concentrate on the easy stuff - a data format - while ignoring the hard stuff - spam, granular privacy controls.

These problems DO need solving now, though - without them these technologies are about as useful as meta-data in webpages. Maybe they should relaunch AltaVista circa 1998 as a new "Semantic Web" search engine..

</comment><comment><USER4> The Norvig quote is very misleading. I thought he was both forthright and realistic about what SW and sw mean today, and to Google especially, during the Q&A of that talk.

<comment><USER3> I disagree quite strongly that it was misleading. That was a direct quote, and it appeared to me he was making fun of the person who got up and stated "I see myself as a Semantic Web evangalist... what is Google doing about it." Norvig went on to say that Google was always watching what was happening in the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't get spam in my feed reader because I select the feeds it's reading. Does RSS "cope with this thing we call the web"?

It would be great if I didn't have to select the feeds, if my feed reader would crawl the Web and show me things I like without forcing me to wade through heaps of crap. I don't think that's very realistic though, so it's still worth my effort to choose trusted data sources myself.

The same is true for many applications of the Semantic Web. If you want to buy a house, you won't send out a crawler looking for listings matching your criteria; you'll go to a site that aggregates real estate listings in your area. This isn't so different from how things work today.

Spam is a problem and fancy trust stuff is absolutely needed, but RDF & friends have a lot of value even without fancy trust stuff. The problem is (and has always been) convincing people with interesting data that they should publish it.

<comment><USER3> So what value does RDF give you exactly - especially compared to an easier to use format such as Atom or one of the non-DRF varieties of RSS?

<comment><USER5> Why are you comparing RDF with syndication formats? Atom and RSS are formats for data that fits a specific pattern, RDF is a generic data structure. A better comparison would be RDF and XML.

If there is some advantage to putting (e.g.) real estate data inside an Atom or RSS feed, you still need a format to represent the data itself. RDF's advantage is that it's extensible and makes it very easy to combine independent datasets.

I don't think that Atom/RSS/XML are easier to use than RDF; they're just more familiar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like the argument is that the Semantic Web (or downcase) has merit but requires coded trust relationships between data providers to work. So, the problem is that intelligent people are busy working on things that rely on the problem already being solved--which it very much isn't. That's a cogent argument.

So I've recently been dabbling in XFN and FOAF, which are like baby steps towards some kind of coded trust relationship and the problems there are: 1) they are insufficient for non-personal relationships, 2) the cost/benefit for personal users maintaining these coded relationships isn't there and 3) no one appears to be solving these problems at the moment because they don't really need to be solved right now.

Architecture Astronauts?

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice article (I like your style)... it would be better if people referred to semantic web technologies as technologies and facilitators of other applications, not as the abstract, "future" concepts. I address many of these on my blog -- you may find some of my MI topics interesting/applicable.</comment>