Using Deep Learning to model personal visual aesthetics - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/personalized-aesthetics-machine-learning/ <comment><USER2> Woah, figures 7 and 8 blew my mind. This reminds me of the various Pinterest boards I've curated in the past. I would set a theme and try to collect visual items in that theme.

Sometimes I could not describe the theme in mind clearly, for example "foresty-earthy suburban adolescent feelings with little-to-no ruggedness but with a bit of a punk edge". Of course, no single image could fulfill the entirety of that theme (probably), so it's fascinating to wonder how aesthetic preferences emerge in the mind, though it's possible that with a description like that another person could filter images to match that description.

Are we combining various specific preferences (the color green, for example), or are we driven by the emotional flavor of a whole aesthetic object (a haze- covered mountain range evoking nostalgia for childhood hikes with siblings leading to the specific preference for pine trees leading to the specific preference for the color green, etc), basically top-down, bottom-up or a combo? Just some thoughts...

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is applicable to huge swathes of Internet culture. Tons of Pinterest boards, tumblrs, and subreddits are just collections of images that fit a particular aesthetic. What will the web look like when almost all curation can be automated?

<comment><USER4> > _What will the web look like when almost all curation can be automated?_

Better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Man, this is crazy awesome stuff. I wonder if you could use a deep dream type thing to make an image more like your own style - that'd be next level.

</comment><comment><USER6> Total side note, did anyone check out the EyeEm website (the apparent authors of the article)?

Their curation algorithms are doing a pretty good job! Their "selected" Galaxy photos look amazing. [https://www.eyeem.com/en/pictures/galaxy](https://www.eyeem.com/en/pictures/galaxy)

</comment><comment><USER7> Summary of approach: they embed the photos (convert photo->vector of numbers using T-SNE or CNNs [the details are actually here [https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/understanding- aes...](https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/understanding-aesthetics- deep-learning/\])) and then train a small-ish classifier (three fully connected layers) on top of it to capture a user's preference. A pretty obvious approach, basic version should be doable in a hackathon, but cool result nonetheless.

"We chose a three-layer multilayer perceptron (MLP) network as a good ranker, since it is able to capture the inherent non-linear shift in distribution between the user's choices and the original training set. Notably, an MLP can be trained rapidly by leveraging GPU computation to obtain near-real-time results. This is important because it enables us to build interactive interface, as we'll explain. We typically precompute a set of negative features (about 40,000 negative samples) and extract the positive features from the user-provided input."</comment>


File Sharing with an iPad: Ugh - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/file_sharing_with_an_ipad_ugh/

<comment><USER2> Hopefully a version of Dropbox designed for the iPad will solve this problem, and they're already working on it: <http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=18663>

</comment><comment><USER3> try printing, too. i opened an email on my ipad and looked around for a print button before having a "duh" moment and realizing that there is no print support.

there are some clunky 3rd party apps to print, but most require a utility installed on your mac or pc to proxy the print requests, and since no other app can access your email database, they all have to reimplement an email app inside of them, in which you have to duplicate all of your email settings. ugh indeed.

<comment><USER4> With Apple things are either easy or nearly impossible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There may be significant changes to this is OS4.0

<comment><USER6> Or there may not. Apple likes control. iTunes gives them this and I don't think that will change soon.

The way it _ought_ to work is the devices should be sharable via Bonjour, just like any laptop or other smartphone, and you should be able to drag things between them.

Note that due to multiple uses of the 'should' word the above is about as likely to happen as me getting hit in the head by a lemon peel wrapped around a gold brick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The reliance on the ever increasing bloat that is Itunes is one of the single biggest drawbacks.</comment>


3.5 years of open development for a procedurally-generated adventure game - <AUTHOR> http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=21997.0

<comment><USER2> I love the visual progress from the first art to the latest one (on the Kickstarter campaign). I'm sure the backend side of things probably had even more progress than what we can see visually.

Congrats on getting fully funded!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx Bending, yep the backend went through quite a few major changes, and is now about 70k LOC of C++. I had to do a few big rewrites but it's pretty solid now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The Moonman devlog has been a great read so far. Good insight into how much work it takes to make a polished game. Looking forward to playing it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you enjoyed it! When finished the devlog will span the full five years of development, including releasing on steam later this year and then hopefully consoles next year.</comment></comment>


Toilets in a Medieval Castle (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ancient.eu/article/1239/toilets-in-a-medieval-castle/ <comment><USER2> -No history of medieval toilets is complete without reference to Erasmus von Lueg, 15th-century robber baron and lord of the Slovene Predjama castle.

He allegedly met his maker while relieving himself - having made a nuisance of himself to the Habsburgs, they laid siege to the castle to no avail -as there was a hidden passageway which let the besieged come and go more or less as they pleased.

The solution? Bribe a servant into lighting a lamp in a window when Erasmus went to the latrine prior to bed - a latrine the Habsburgs had aimed their cannon at in the daytime.

The rest, as they say, is (apocryphal) history.

<comment><USER3> This probably is just a urban legend type story. Or do you have evidence to point at?

Even the Wikipedia page on Erasmus of Lueg states there is no evidence to back this up.

<comment><USER4> That's why the they said it's apocryphal

<comment><USER4> Dammit. Too late to edit now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do you remember the show Modern Marvels on the History channel? Back when it was about actual history and not reality tv...

My favorite episode was on bathrooms. Did you know that during large gatherings at the Palace of Versailles people would relieve themselves in hallways, stairways, and even in the gardens? Or that dining room seats in medieval Germany had holes with chamber pots underneath so that people could go while they ate?

I miss Modern Marvels.

<comment><USER6> What's _even_ about relieving themselves in the gardens, as compared to inside the palace?

Do I miss some knowledge about French palace customs?

<comment><USER7> Yeah, if I was visiting Versailles today, I might discreetly relieve myself in the gardens, but I'd stop short of soiling the great halls.

<comment><USER8> why not fertilize the flowers while youre at it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In the article:

>Walls were sometimes whitewashed with a coating of lime-plaster which maximised the light coming from the small window and because lime kills off bacteria. //

Surely not. Bacteria weren't part of the mindset of UK castle builders!?

I'd expect there right about making it lighter in the garderobe, and possibly over time it was noticed it made the room less smelly?

<comment><USER10> You don't have to know the _why_ to appreciate lime plasters stay clean/grow less mold in dank environments through experience.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't "because" say they knew why. If it just said "which" instead of because then I'd agree with you.

Perhaps there was some mediaeval theory relating lime and pestilence?

<comment><USER10> I don't see a problem with the author using a more modern terminology for "cause" than would have existed at the time, to describe what anyone working with lime plasters appreciates on a basic level; the stuff stays exceptionally white and clean.

Personally I don't like their saying just that it kills off bacteria. It's an antimicrobial/fungicide in general because of its elevated Ph.

I'd prefer the article take the opportunity to educate me about the practical value of lime plaster than restrict itself to the limited education of medeivil minds.

<comment><USER11> You might not see the problem, but it's _factually inaccurate_ because there is an attribution error.

Oddly in this case where the author could have made a correct attribution he used the word "which" which does not ascribe a cause. If he had simply switched "which" and "because" we probably wouldn't be having this conversation, because the sentence wouldn't have been false. It makes me wonder if the author swapped around the rest of the sentence after writing it originally.

I don't think anyone is suggesting reducing the information content. Even wanting more is just fine and dandy, but the proper way to do that would be to correctly attribute the reasoning of the time, and then add something along the lines of "which we know today does $x."

<comment><USER12> Either way, I'm glad we can agree that it's important to be precise with words. Thanks for making my day a little brighter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of the story of the dwarf toilet Ninja, who put the ass into assassination: [https://jpninfo.com/47201](https://jpninfo.com/47201)

</comment><comment><USER14> If anyone is interested in medieval-y topics the _Shadiversity_ channel run by Shad M. Brooks is pretty good:

* [https://www.youtube.com/user/shadmbrooks/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/shadmbrooks/videos)

He's done a few videos on castles specifically.

<comment><USER15> Everyone should give Shad a follow. Dude is planning on building a medieval experience park on land he've recently purchased and it's going to be fun to follow his journey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > besiegers used just such a latrine shaft in 1203-4 CE to gain entry to > Chateau Gaillard

Wonder who got picked for that job

<comment> beeper-beeps The Wikipedia article mentions that a solider named Ralph found the shaft, no word on whether he did the climbing though.

> Following this, Philip ordered a group of his men to look for a weak point > in the castle. They gained access to the next ward when a soldier named > Ralph found a latrine chute in use through which the French could clamber > into the chapel.

<comment><USER16> correct term is that Ralph "got the shaft"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The word "garderobe" (Old French "garder", to watch/guard + "robe", clothing) is interesting, because it's the modern word for a wardrobe in many European languages. According to Merriam-Webster, the word came into English in the 15th century and was primarily used to "provide English speakers with a word for a room or closet in which to store clothing". From there, it was then used for private bedrooms/bathrooms, until the word went out of fashion in the 19th century and today is only seen to refer to exactly what this article is about, historical bathrooms/toilets in castles.

</comment><comment><USER18> me (sitting in the toilet): let's read something interesting on hackernews. Hackernews: What about an article on ancient toilets?

</comment><comment><USER19> > then called a privy

Such things were still called a privy in my childhood.

</comment><comment><USER20> A picture or two would have been helpful to spice up the story.

<comment><USER21> There are pictures in the article?

<comment><USER22> They don't load on iPhone.

<comment><USER23> Also not on iPad, but they do load, on a stand-alone page, if you click on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find it shocking the toilet hasn't been reinvented.

<comment><USER25> That's because the digestive systems of humans haven't been, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> So that's what the weird shaped Lego was for!

</comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me that I should be at Burning Man right now.

</comment><comment><USER28> Just last night I dreamed of my wife and I jumping through the garderobe's hole and into the water below to escape pursuers. The simulation is breaking down!

synchronicities</comment>


On Practical Qt Security - <AUTHOR> https://daniel.molkentin.net/2014/01/04/on-practical-qt-security/

<comment><USER2> Note this is relevant to the "X Protocol Security" talk given a few days ago that was mentioned here and at /r/programming.

<comment><USER3> Link?

<comment><USER4> Here you go: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l7ixRE3OCw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2l7ixRE3OCw)

<comment><AUTHOR> Or [http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5499_-_en_-_...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5499_-_en_- _saal_1_-_201312291830_-_x_security_-_ilja_van_sprundel.html) (incl download option in mp4 hq and lq and webm).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Building a BitTorrent client from scratch in C# - <AUTHOR> http://www.seanjoflynn.com/research/bittorrent.html <comment><USER2> Woah - I didn't expect it to be this in-depth. Awesome job.</comment>


JPEG XL is coming to store our photos at 1/3 size - <AUTHOR> https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> "The JPEG XL Image Coding System (ISO/IEC 18181) has a richer feature set than existing codecs and can deliver images with similar quality at a third of the size of widely used alternatives."

Its lossy part is being developed by Google PIK team ( [https://github.com/google/pik](https://github.com/google/pik) ) + Jon Sneyers (author of FLIF) – some details: [https://encode.ru/threads/3108-Google-s- compression-proje%D1...](https://encode.ru/threads/3108-Google-s-compression- proje%D1%81ts?p=60072&viewfull=1#post60072) [https://encode.ru/threads/2793-PIK-image- format](https://encode.ru/threads/2793-PIK-image-format)

</comment><comment><USER2> Lossless conversion from JPEG to JPEG XL and back is a killer feature!</comment>


Selling proprietary software the Top Gear way - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2649&blogid=17 <comment><USER2> Regarding a similar problem with benchmarks in the scientific sphere:

<http://www.bannedbygaussian.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it interesting that the organisation most likely to have the information does not list Microsoft as a supplier in the categories "operating systems" and "office productivity...". See [http://www.buyingsolutions.gov.uk/services/Misc/ITGoods/Soft...](http://www.buyingsolutions.gov.uk/services/Misc/ITGoods/Software)</comment>


Ask HN: How do I land a good remote developer job? - <AUTHOR> I consider myself an average to good web developer with a couple of year's experience behind me in variety of languages/frameworks. I am in process to find an unconventional route to working(geared towards becoming a digital nomad to certain extent). I have come across some opportunities but do not feel confident to apply for those positions despite them being similar to my current work profile. How do I get my knowledge and confidence to a level that I can easily get such a position? More importantly, how do I find such opportunities that also pay well and have reasonable amount of freedom? <comment> core-questions Don't be so afraid to apply to jobs even if you think you're not 100% up to speed. Job descriptions are a wish list, like what some folks write on their online dating profiles - they'll settle for "less", especially if "less" means a keen, interested person who is personable and will work hard but doesn't have every exact skill they asked for.

Honestly, you don't want to work somewhere that isn't okay with a bit of on- the-job training anyhow. So be brave, and apply, and learn to enjoy quick rejection because it moves you closer to your goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Any guidance on how to find such remote opportunities?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Aline Lerner did a study on this one... most people hired for positions only have 50% of the requirements posted. So yea... just apply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. There's also an issue of finding such opportunities. Any pointers on that?</comment></comment>


Orion Flight Test Live Launch - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/#.VIGQsGTF9d0 <comment><USER2> This is _awesome_. Two thoughts spring to mind:

1\. This is the equivalent of the Apollo 4 mission in that it also flew without a crew, and was used to prove, validate and verify that Saturn V and associated systems were fully mission-capable.

2\. Events like this represent our future. Events like this are the catalysts for our future generation. The children around the world (perhaps one or more of your own) that are viewing this event are the ones that will be galvanized to dream, to explore, to go into astrophysics, computer science, mathematics, etc. Just imagine the seeds that are being planted with every event, be it brought to us by ESA, ISRO, NASA, SpaceX, etc. Our 5 year old is asking questions: what makes a rocket launch? Why is the explosion so big? I mean, we're already having conversations that start to tear me up a little, partly because that connection brings me back in touch with my own passion for technology, and partly because it is a small glimpse that represents _Our_ collective future.

 _I 'm stoked._

<comment><USER3> Sure, and 2 years after Apollo 4 we landed on the moon. We did a few missions and haven't been back to the moon in 40 years.

A Mars mission is 20 years out. You'll be an "old man" by then. It'll take another decade or two to build a permanent Mars base.

What we really need is a lot less enthusiasm and a better plan.

<comment><USER4> A better plan needs more money. To secure the money the US has to be filled with enthusiasm.

<comment><USER3> Not thinking outside the box. Thankfully Elon is. Hopefully, a few other engineers/businessmen will.

NASA has a $20 billion budget. WhatsApp cost almost NASA's budget. Uber is already valued at $41 billion. Apple earned $181 billion in fiscal 2014. Perhaps a half dozen companies will create a business around space and we'll have a trillion dollar space industry to augment NASA's puny budget.

<comment><USER4> My hopes are aligned with this.

I suspect that some of those companies will be run by people who got enthused by what NASA is doing now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those who missed it because of the sudden stream interruption: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCanbuiSywg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCanbuiSywg)

<comment><USER5> I should point out that "it" is still going on, the mission is rather hectic four hour mission concluding in atmospheric re-entry, splashdown and recovery. There should be plenty of fantastic footage coming up in the next few hours, it's worth staying tuned.

Now to grab some lunch to be back in time for the second stage burn to 3200 nm apogee orbit (3640 mi = 5760 km).

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair and true enough! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I will cheer every launch but I must admit, after watching so many SpaceX launches, I twiched when I heard "feet per second" and all the other imperial units :p

<comment><USER7> Outer space is a volume of infinite freedom, therefore it uses the standardized freedom units we in the US hold so dear

<comment><USER8> I thought a standardized freedom unit was your allotted standing area in one of those free-speech-zones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately the feed died for me ~20s before launch (in S. America, and also for several people I was online chatting with [US, Ukraine]). After a bit, the audio briefly came back and I heard the sound of the rocket engine and the announcer say "exploration", which I take to mean the rocket launched. NASA's twitter account also says the rocket lauched[0] and 17 min to orbit[1].

EDIT: Looks like the feed is now revived (12:11 UTC).

[0] [https://twitter.com/NASA/status/540839581374246912](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/540839581374246912)

[1] [https://twitter.com/NASA/status/540840206862389248](https://twitter.com/NASA/status/540840206862389248)

<comment><USER10> It went down for a lot of people, looking at the twitter feed on the side of [http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv](http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv) a lot of people are complaining. I was at T-9 seconds and it died.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Watching a live space launch via phone while eating breakfast is quite inspiring.

<comment><USER12> it would have been even better in a flying car i suppose.

<comment><USER13> Self-flying car...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apparently reliably streaming video is harder than rocket science.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, there were a ton of international mirrors in popular streaming services (livestream.com, ustream.tv) as well as international news agencies (bbc.co.uk for example) which worked flawlessly.

I was watching livestream.com using VLC + livestreamer script and it worked without any issues.

The problem is that these mirrors should have been listed clearly at the nasatv site as well as in www.nasa.gov/orion.

<comment><USER15> I found it funny how people were posting ustream mirrors. All of ustream was struggling, so all the re-streams were buffering too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 11 parachutes in 3 stages? Now that is some serious engineering.

[http://news.discovery.com/space/private-spaceflight/final- co...](http://news.discovery.com/space/private-spaceflight/final-countdown- orion-spacecraft-by-the-numbers-141204.htm)

This looks so complex BUT it is coming in so fast (20,000 MPH) into the atmosphere BUT there are so many points for failure. Surprised there wasn't a simpler and safer solution.

<comment><USER17> IIRC Space X is going with small rockets to slow decent instead of parachutes. Or in addition to parachutes? I wonder if that would be applicable for the required dV. Or if that is even safer.

<comment><USER18> The goal is an eventual "soft landing" on a rocket, which isn't feasible with parachutes. Such a rocket could be landed in a specific location, refilled with fuel, and be available for relaunch fairly quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really enjoyed the part when they streamed from the camera attached to Orion and the audio gradually silenced, since the rocket was leaving the atmosphere and no air could be used for a sound wave medium.

<comment><USER20> The audio from all the different camera views was the same, I noticed. Notably, the sound obviously came from a microphone on the ground, fairly close to the rocket. This can be deduced by the fact that there is very little delay between the light up and the start of the noise, and the fact that the character of the sound changes when the rocket is a couple of rocket-lengths above the launch platform.

While I personally would prefer to have the authentic sound, I can understand why they did it this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stream mirrors:

        http://www.livestream.com/spaceflightnow
        http://www.ustream.tv/nasahdtv

Can be opened using VLC + Livestreamer script.

<comment><USER21> The ustream feed has been the most reliable for me; NASA TV site stream always seems to stutter or go offline at all the most exciting parts of any event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> They just stated that the force experienced by crew on reentry would be 8g, while the force on a Soyuz capsule is just 4g. 8g is more than enough for a person to black out, this seems like a major disadvantage.

<comment><USER20> They don't have an option on that one. The acceleration experienced on re- entry depends on the speed of approach. Re-entry from low earth orbit is no big deal, hence being able to slow down with just 4G. Re-entry from a bit further away is more serious, as there is more velocity to shed. Remember that the module has been falling from more than 3600 miles up, which is a lot of energy to get rid of.

<comment><USER23> The g-load experienced during the re-entry is more a function of the entry trajectory that is flown than the speed of entry.

For example, the crews of several Soyuz missions experienced 8+ G's when the so-called "ballistic" re-entry mode occurred due to various systems problems.

Apollo crews returning from the moon commonly experienced 6 - 7 g loads during re-entry

The US space shuttle's entry profile was designed to limit decelerations to 3 g's (as was the ascent profile).

It isn't the speed, it's how you fly the ascent/descent profile. And yes, the conical Apollo capsule form (largely re-used by Orion) is a lifting body that is actually flown through the atmosphere.

[http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/U-S- astronaut...](http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/U-S-astronaut- recalls-terrifying-Soyuz-descent-1759455.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have to give NASA a little credit for launching to 3,604 miles. No "manned" mission has gone anywhere near that far since the 70s.

I would have expected them to start an infinite series of baby steps, "We went suborbital!" "We went almost as high as the ISS!"

</comment><comment><USER25> Congratulations to the ULA and Lockheed teams that put this together. It is always a big milestone when you have hardware flying! Let's keep the momentum going!

</comment><comment><USER26> This is really the most amazing day for humankind.

Today we took the first step to be a multi-planitary species.

Today we took the step to go further.

Today we started the countdown clock to step foot on Mars.

Today we took only small step in a very long process, but many small steps got us to where we are today, to be able to send a rocket into space (a rocket!!! into space!!!) and many small steps lay before us to take a small step onto the Martian surface.

I am inspired!

</comment><comment><USER27> Successful splashdown! Everything appears to have gone as expected.

</comment><comment><USER28> Damn that was amazing! What a perfect launch!!

How specialized was the heavy lift configuration for the Orion payload?

<comment><USER29> The ULA guy in the pre-flight news conference[1] said the rocket is not modified for this flight but they had to do analysis because the payload is not inside the payload fairing.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Since Kerbal Space Program I have a strangely changed attitude towards space flights like this.

</comment><comment><USER31> The stream went down for me too. Anyone have a link for a video?

<comment><USER32> The BBC is also streaming it: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-30327137](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30327137)

Edit: they've stopped now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is there a place we can get live NASA Orion Telemetry data?

</comment><comment><USER34> Go Go GO!</comment>


Ask HN: Would you consider using a decentralized cloud storage for your apps? - <AUTHOR> I'm Working on a decentralized cloud built on EOS Blockchain. Wanted to ask the HN community, would you consider using one over AWS S3/google cloud? What would make you move? Security, Privacy, Price, Transparency, speed, or none? <comment><USER2> I would not be interested -- but I'm equally uninterested in the other cloud providers as well.

The one use for the likes of AWS that does appeal to me is the ability to test on a larger scale than I could otherwise. For that purpose, centralization isn't an important consideration. The ability to spin up thousands of VMs with a minimum amount of fuss, and to have them be performant, is more important.</comment>


Using eBPF to Log Keystrokes - <AUTHOR> https://arighi.blogspot.com/2018/12/linux-easy-keylogger-with-ebpf.html <comment><USER2> I think this is specific to PS/2 keyboards, and needs a little modification to make it work with USB keyboards.</comment>


Having trouble with scheme - <AUTHOR>

The scheme executable file is giving a lot of trouble on windows.  I've downloaded and attempted to install it 10 times, but every time I click the executable file, it gets deleted.  I think this may be a problem with my Webroot, but I have no idea how to disable this. <comment><USER2> I am willing to help but your question is very vague.

<http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Downloading [http://download.racket- lang.org/installers/5.2.1/racket/rack...](http://download.racket- lang.org/installers/5.2.1/racket/racket-5.2.1-bin-i386-win32.exe) from [http://download.racket- lang.org/racket-5-2-1-bin-i386-win32-...](http://download.racket- lang.org/racket-5-2-1-bin-i386-win32-exe.html), anything else you'd need to know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try again disabling your antivirus temporary, probably you will also want to disconnect your computer from the internet during the installation if you disable the antivirus.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is, the new Webroot interface sucks and I have no idea what to disable.

<comment><USER3> So, as I suspected, your antivirus deletes the installer when you try to install Racket.

Have you tried to right click and install as an administrator ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, same results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Gave up, got it from <http://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What Scheme executable are you trying to use?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://download.racket- lang.org/installers/5.2.1/racket/rack...](http://download.racket- lang.org/installers/5.2.1/racket/racket-5.2.1-bin-i386-win32.exe) from [http://download.racket- lang.org/racket-5-2-1-bin-i386-win32-...](http://download.racket- lang.org/racket-5-2-1-bin-i386-win32-exe.html)</comment></comment>


Anyone Interested in Collaboration on Wireflow.co? [Open Source] - <AUTHOR> https://forums.meteor.com/t/anyone-interested-in-collaboration-on-wireflow-co-open-source-project/40716 <comment><USER2> I love to do so. I have already joined vanila community.</comment>


Rejection is for losers - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/03/17/rejection-is-for-losers/

<comment><USER2> The last sentence seems to negate the point.

> Even better: don't give anybody the opportunity to reject you.

That kind of sounds like saying "Don't even try".

<comment><USER3> Sigh. It only sounds like that if you are suffering from ultra short-term memory loss and forgot all the lines you read before that last line.</comment></comment>


California poised to implement first electronic license plates - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/california-poised-to-implement-nations-first-electronic-license-plate-program/ <comment><USER2> Let's play a game called "Interesting Startup Opportunity in Article"...

"Large fleet owners do not have any more efficient process for renewing their registration than you and I do for one or two cars," Lites noted. "The talk has been that the efficiency is to be gained in the fleets and let's start there.

What market do you target? Enterprise market probably has the most cash on hand to spend for this kind of service, so go where the money is. But, enterprise also has a notoriously long and expensive sales cycle. SG&A is likely to be 60%+ if you go enterprise route.

But is there even a product to sell to the lower-to-mid tier? Is there even a consumer play in this? Disrupt: Car Registration!

Find the pain, and provide a way to kill it. It's a proven sales technique, all you need is the _value proposition_.

In the end every idea comes down to answering one question -- will I save you cost, or will I increase your revenue. The best startups, I have found, drive revenue.

Everything is a revenue driver to someone, you just have to follow the money. In this case, you could be a revenue driver to the state if you could actually prove you increased payments. But now we're creating a startup which is milking every last dollar and cent in car registration fees from hard working Americans. WTF, right?

All things considered, it's all about the startup angle. I think the privacy angle here is just linkbait. Right? right?

<comment><USER3> _Is there even a consumer play in this? Disrupt: Car Registration! Find the pain, and provide a way to kill it._

The real value play here (for citizens) would be for government to simply eliminate the need for registration stickers completely. Nowadays the cops all know if you are up to date on registration or not because they've got real- time access to the database on the back-end. There is simply no need for stickers at all - nobody else cares or needs to know if your registration is up to date.

Unfortunately, dismantling an obsolete system is not an opportunity for any one organization to profit.

<comment><USER4> The stickers aren't mandatory to keep on the vehicle, I leave mine in the glove box because people in the area have a habit of peeling them off...

I was stopped without registration earlier this year and it wasn't an issue at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has to be insanely more expensive than metal plates, and in the event of a hit and run the plate won't be left behind to ID the driver.

I'm guessing the 20 million they'll save on postage can be put toward the billions it'll cost to outfit every car in California (there are 33 million registered) with a display, mobile network connection (that hardware isn't cheap). So even in fantasy land where these are cheap, lets say $25 a unit it would cost the state $825,000,000. I'd guess the actual price is closer to $100 a unit, so almost 4 BILLION DOLLARS.

What a waste of resources. How anyone can think this is a good and cost effective idea blows my mind.

</comment><comment><USER6> License plates go right into the middle of the strike zone for inter-vehicle collisions. Current license plates will survive more compression than the cars they're attached to, so this currently isn't a problem.

Will these plates survive a 25MPH fender-bender?

</comment><comment><USER7> > In an example shown by a South Carolina vendor, messages such as "STOLEN," > "EXPIRED," or something similar could also be displayed on a license plate.

Letting the government label you in public (someday maybe even whenever they want and how they want).

What does that concept make you think of?

<comment><USER8> Just wait until the sex offender's registry promotors see a practice like this legitimized.</comment></comment>


WhatsApp Was Valued At ~$1.5B In Final Round Before Sale - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2014/02/21/whatsapp/

<comment><USER2> Remember, most of the deal was in FB stock. Maybe the WhatsApp people felt that FB stock is overinflated, and therefore isn't really worth $12B.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yea and that's a helluva lot closer to what FB should have paid for it.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do differently if you could go back to college again? - <AUTHOR> If you could go back in time and say started college all over again. What would be a few things that you would do different from what you had done before? Do you repent you did not do something in particular? Would you instead:<p>* take more classes related to your program?<p>* take more classes outside your program, say in art, design, literature etc. (assuming you had money/scholarship/or you could sneak into the class)<p>* make lot more contacts<p>* sleep less<p>* or you wish you had slept more?<p>Thanks HN! <comment><USER2> I would spend a lot more time deciding what classes to take, and take those I'd learn the most from. The experience of the preceding 14 or so years had made me passive, because (a) classes didn't vary much and (b) I had little choice about which to take. That changed completely in college but I didn't adapt quickly enough.

I used to pick classes based on nothing more than the descriptions in the course catalog. Which is crazy considering the extent to which the classes you take define your life for that whole semester. Only about 1/4 to 1/3 of the classes I took were worthwhile. I'm sure I could have picked better if I did some actual research about them.

I wouldn't have taken so many philosophy classes (<http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html>). What instead? More history. That's a good subject to learn from professors. More math. I would have learned Latin or Greek instead of Arabic.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious: why Latin or Greek instead of Arabic? Is it that you think they'd be more useful (for understanding etymology/reading original texts)? Is it something about how the languages function? Simple personal bias?

<comment><USER4> As a Latin major in college (one thing I would have changed), I think it's a far more useful skill than people let on. Latin in particular forces you to think about grammar in a more rigorous way than English does, and in doing so, it helps you ensure that you say exactly what you mean. Latin is a highly inflected language, meaning that individual words carry almost all of the grammatical information necessary to parse a sentence. Large classes of ambiguity that exist in English are simply impossible in Latin because of this. I've compared Latin to statically typed languages in the past, and I think it's an apt comparison.

You have to think through what you say before you begin, because otherwise it's nearly impossible to make a grammatically correct sentence if you need to switch your phrasing. This practice has the side benefit of making sure that what you're trying to say actually makes sense. Put another way, clarity of grammar leads to clarity of thought. Near fluency in Latin has changed the way I speak English for the better, primarily for this reason.

I do not know Arabic, but as I said, I think that knowing Latin has helped me tremendously even though I can no longer speak it or actively use it.

<comment><USER5> I studied Latin for 2 years in high school, and I found it tremendously helpful, not only in helping me do well on the verbal section of the SAT (760 to match my 760 math), but also when dissecting the meanings as an English major in college. Latin also came in handy when I learned Spanish (and later Italian and a little Catalan). I can see where PG is coming from, as I also studied Japanese, which has nothing in common with the other languages I've studied, and I'm convinced that it lives in a separate area of my brain.

<comment><USER3> This is a derail from my initial question, but I'm curious: would you say that studying Japanese, which is so different from the other things you know, has had an impact on how you think or how you look at the world? Or does it feel like learning Japanese was overall less useful than studying Latin?

<comment><USER5> If I had it to do over again, I would still have studied Japanese, because speaking a language is the only true way to connect with a country's culture. Having been to Japan twice and being able to speak the language gave me a perspective that the typical gaijin doesn't get. Even though studying Japanese didn't help me learn other languages in the same way Latin lead to Spanish and Italian, it helped me understand Japanese culture better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Take minimum requirements for my major.

Take more interesting classes (Evil & Decadence in Literature), less classes that I thought would help my career (Management in Engineering).

Hang out with more people who are interesting. Spend less time with people who are just fun w/o much substance. Don't waste effort on being friends with assholes because they seem cool.

Don't fall behind coursework.

Waste less time with stuff I cannot really remember: watching sports, TV, lectures by professors who cannot teach, video games, ...

Take more road trips.

Talk to more girls.

Enjoy the experience with a good attitude.

</comment><comment><USER7> Be more social. Meet more people. Join clubs. Go to some parties. Not study so much. Be less serious. Take more risks. Join some intramural activities.

Basically everything I didn't do during college that I probably should have.

</comment><comment><USER8> Make more use of free equipment such as: making films with free film, computer animation, and editing equipment.

Have more sex with random strangers.

Drop acid.

</comment><comment><USER9> I probably would not go to college again and would just study on my own or take shorter programs (ie. 2-year degree)

If I did go again, this is what I would change:

While in college, after the first year, I spent more of my time working on extracurricular activities than on classwork. The classwork was mostly boring and not very practical while I learned much more on the extracurricular stuff. I would still do that.

I did take some classes not related to Comp Sci and don't think they really helped and were just a waste of money.

I left college with $35k in student loan debt and would try to avoid debt or take on much less.

I would have gotten part-time/summer work related to programming instead of irrelevant part-time jobs.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would have worked on being less shy earlier and cultivating more groups of more diverse friends.

I would have studied Computer Science instead of Physics & Philosophy, which I don't really apply to anything I'm doing today.

I would have taken more advantage of the resources available to students: art programs, recording studios, the school radio station.

I already took the bare minimum classes -- and I would again.

</comment><comment><USER4> I turned down a spot at an Ivy league school to go to another top-25 ranked school because they offered a lot of scholarship money. I would not have done that.

I would not have majored in Latin, or at least I would have considered majoring in something else. I majored in Latin because it was an extremely short major because I had taken 4 college courses in high school. I figured that would leave me with plenty of time to find something else worth studying, but I hadn't made it to CS before graduation time came. That decision forced roughly 4 years of extra work to "catch up" to where I would have been had I majored in CS originally.

I spent far too much time and energy trying to answer ?'s of religion that ultimately didn't get me anywhere. I wasted time oscillating between atheism and various flavors of Christianity, and in doing so ate up a lot of energy that ultimately could have been used for more fruitful pursuits.

EDIT - I see people are listing things they would have done identically as well. I figured I'd add this.

Assuming I went to the same college, I would not have changed my circles of friends significantly. I was in a dry fraternity (Lambda Chi Alpha at Wake Forest if anyone cares to know), and we were the top academic fraternity by a long shot for my entire tenure there. The people I met there were, by and large, the most fascinating people I've ever met. From this group, I know a Marshall scholar, a professional rapper, three priests of wildly differing viewpoints, several doctors and a professional poker player who netted 6 figures a year for 3 years. They were all people who weren't interested in the typical fraternity scene and who were intensely interested in the world around them and trying to make the most out of it, whereas the typical fraternity student isn't looking beyond their next chance to get laid. They ALMOST make up for my poor choice to take a scholarship instead of going to a school someone might have heard of.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do whatever it takes to get out sooner. Every year in school costs not just tuition, etc. but lost potential income.

Live on as little as possible and avoid student loans as much as possible. I avoided loans until I was married and in grad school, but then I started living like I was already working, rather than living like a starving student.

Travel more - I had a great nearly free outdoor recreation program and only went on one adventure trip.

Stay in touch with people after graduation. I've finally reconnected to a lot thanks to Facebook and LinkedIn but there were a lot of years where I lost track of a lot of people.

When I was in school, it wasn't too realistic to start a side business but today there's no reason a CS student couldn't build a web or mobile app or do affiliate blogging for cash.

</comment><comment><USER12> major in math (vs. cs), take less classes (so i could work on my ideas), intern at start ups, study abroad (semester or 2) at a place I'd never even consider living in (because once you graduate, it probably ain't happening, for various reasons. In college, you still have a support system)

what i'd do the same: hang out almost exclusively with people outside my major. My college friends are writers, traders, architects, etc, and I've learned immensely from them during college, and afterwards.

<comment><USER13> As someone who considered that, I wonder what your reasoning is? Math not CS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would have double majored or at least minored in computer science to go along with my analytic philosophy degree

</comment><comment><USER15> Drink more, code more, go to class less.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would have lived in quiet hall, despite the supposed social hindrance or (for some people) stigma. I need peace and quiet to concentrate, at which point I'm MUCH more efficient. One can always walk to another venue, when one is in the mood for louder socialization or a party.

I would have paid zero attention to "expert" opinions about what one "should" do. 'We don't have a geology program; just take chemistry and go into geology in grad school.' [1]

Not nice people aren't nice. Trust your intuition.

Related to all this, something that came up last night: When something isn't working, walk away (as soon as you reasonably can). Don't continue to support it (e.g. that nasty person) by virtue of your continued efforts.

Some of this is pretty general. But if you aren't applying it by the time you're in college, it's high time to learn it (and make your college experience a lot better).

1\. P.S. I have a friend who was/is one of the smartest people I know. Yet in college his grades were lackluster and he was always getting involved in crazy personal projects, some illegal (but basically non-harmful).

He now in an engineer at CERN. He was smart, and he followed his passions.

</comment><comment><USER17> There is quite a bit I would love to change about college including:

 _Not attending right out of HS, and instead working at a customer-service intensive job to increase my social skills and learn the value of money. There are too many students living off of loans, and believing that college is a 4 year vacation.

_ Not wasting so much time in college. 4-5 years is a humungous time investment. Some places you can get a BA/MS in almost the same time.

 _I would have completed an AS in math or physics first, and then tried to get into berkley/caltech/ivy.

_ Spending too much time talking about politics/religion/philosophy with the liberal arts kids.

 _Majoring in molecular biology rather than math/physics & minor in molecular biology. I have learned programming on my own time.

_Trying to do a start-up the summer before I started the hardest classes.

*Not joining a (relatively sane) fraternity.

Now I am attempting to go from Life Sciences -> mathematical biology vs physics/math -> mathematical biology.</comment>


Finland adds the demoscene as a UNESCO intangible world cultural heritage - <AUTHOR> http://demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net/2020/04/15/breakthrough-finland-accepts-demoscene-on-their-national-list-of-intangible-cultural-heritage-of-humanity/ <comment><USER2> This is fantastic in so many ways. As a demoscener going back to the early 90s, I know myself and other people in the scene enjoy the extraordinary value the scene provides us. I think just as important is that among other intangible assets around the world, the demoscene is particularly vibrant -- with tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of people participating, enjoying, or at least knowing about the scene.

It's a big source of innovation, an amazing social activity, and has quietly just _done_ things for years that were thought to not be possible, or to be very very hard. It definitely has it's own culture, way of doing things, ideas, ethos, philosophy, and most importantly, is constantly evolving. It's amazingly aware of what's to come as well as effortlessly incorporating its own heritage.

Believe it or not it's around half a century old and going strong!

<comment><USER3> Old scener here. But those are days past, and I prefer it that way. Did learn C64 and Amiga inside out. Was there at Assembly to see Second Reality when it won the compo. Good times. :-)

<comment><USER4> Demo scene parties are ongoing globally. They are not past.

<comment><USER3> Didn't suggest so. Although I have to say I prefered how it was back then. No gaming apart from floppy throwing compo. :-)

<comment> Digit-Al I can see how your statement could be misinterpreted, it was slightly ambiguous. I did, upon careful reading, realise you probably meant that it was in your past and you were happy not to go back, but saying "in the past" rather than "in my past" made it sound a little as if you were dismissing the scene in general as being in the past - and possibly irrelevant.

Hope that helps clear up the misunderstanding between yourself and previous poster :-)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, you're right. I do still occasionally follow 8-bit and 68k Amiga & Atari demoscene. [https://pouet.net](https://pouet.net) FTW!

Sadly I no longer own genuine hardware. Maybe I'll buy C64 and Amiga once again one day...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hilarious. I wouldn't have expected that ever to happen.

So much talent in the Finish scene and they were so good at advertizing their accomplishments in a way that was energizing to fellow nerds.

It was the biggest reason I ended up getting so deep into computer graphics -- I wanted to be as "cool" as they were. How else could you be "cool" by sitting at your computer BBS chatting all night doing math and algorithms? Such an awesome time.

I know that mrdoob of three.js also got into coding via the demoscene.

(My old 1990's era demo scene stuff: [https://benhouston3d.com/#High_School- Era_and_Earlier_Projec...](https://benhouston3d.com/#High_School- Era_and_Earlier_Projects) [https://hornet.scene.org/cgi-bin/scene- search.cgi?search=Azu...](https://hornet.scene.org/cgi-bin/scene- search.cgi?search=Azure) )

<comment><USER6> I always had a man crush on mr doob as I spent years on three.js hoping he would notice my stuff but I never got around to publishing any of it I even spent 5 years on a three.js game Im still hoping to release

<comment><USER7> Care to share any if your progress?

<comment><USER8> Yeah! I want to see! :D

<comment><USER9> Awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This makes me so happy. The demoscene is what made me want to learn to program in the first place. The first demo I saw was Heartquake by Iguana (Asm 1994) - [http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=364](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=364) . I can still hear the credits music in my head. Jare and team, if you read this -- thank you!

Never did get around to making my own demo, but I owe finding my career path early in life to the demoscene. So many fond memories (esp early 90s through 00s).

I have and will spend countless hours coding to demoscene music (good and bad). To me, the unique thing somewhat lost in my avg day to day development life is that this is a fundamentally self driven challenge that can cross many CS disciplines combined with the art of practice. A demo pushes one in many directions at once: art, math, graphics, data structures, optimization, mechanical sympathy, sound, etc. (There's a reason there is a lot of game dev <-> scene crossover.). You can work in isolation, or as a group. However, a group is more common since most people can't do it all.

Digression aside -- Could we use the demoscene as a gateway for future engineers? A STEM + demo style toolkit?

<comment><USER2> Oh man, the ending credits to that demo blew me away. This was only 3 years after Michael Jackson's Black & White, and a couple after Terminator 2 and here was basically kids doing the same special effect on commodity PCs in real-time. (not to mention commercial game quality 3d terrain)

As for your question: coding used to be really viewed as a creative activity, akin to any other art form. Now it's just data plumbing and CRUD apps. For the people who really still view coding as an art, the demoscene can absolutely be a gateway.

I think the most important thing being in the scene taught me was how to do teamwork on a complex technical project with vague and ambiguous requirements. I didn't encounter another environment like that until maybe grad school and professional development work. It prepared me in ways I still rely on, decades later.

The competitive nature of the scene also prepares people well to work in non- academic/commercial places where the only proof of success is winning. Academia has nothing quite like this.

<comment><USER10> That's a really good point about preparing for industry. So many people don't get much experience starting from a blank slate.

I think for me, the question is how to make it a more obvious gateway. As a child we had things like the spartan C64 or logo. There are some modern equivalents but most are simple. Hard to inspire kids with that compared to what they see (vs an 80s kid). Perhaps on online repl (like shadertoy) plus a demo 101 lib with pre baked effect routines and simple graphics primitives?

<comment><USER11> I think the two places I'm seeing this right now are in the Processing/P5 community ([https://editor.p5js.org](https://editor.p5js.org)), and interesting things built on top of Glitch.

Hydra is fascinating -- I sat down with it for a couple hours and was having lots of fun layering transformations on top of webcam input. [https://github.com/ojack/hydra](https://github.com/ojack/hydra)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome. A great way to bring attention to and protect humanity's cultural heritage - especially in these times of self isolation.

I thought this list of other Living Heritage items - referenced in one of the article links [1] - was pretty cool:

      Playing and building the kantele
      Playing and building the jouhikantele (bowed lyre)
      Playing the musical saw
      National Culture Days of the Deaf
      Ryijy tradition
      Making of Tommi knives
      Puppetry
      Bedtime story tradition
      Demoscene
      Living Christmas Calendar of Käpylä
      Horsemanship of the Roma
      Kalevala bone setting

[1] [https://www.museovirasto.fi/en/articles/demoskene- sahansoitt...](https://www.museovirasto.fi/en/articles/demoskene-sahansoitto- ja-romanien-hevostaidot-elavan-perinnon-kansalliseen-luetteloon-12-uutta- kohdetta)

<comment><USER13> Impressive list. Isn't it up to future civilizations which parts of our culture become heritage? What is the benefit of defining it as such? Protecting the culture? At what cost?

I don't mean to downplay the importance, I'm just wondering if it is up to us, and if it is worth it. Heck, can we even reasonably decide if such is worth it? Does it matter? I don't know.

<comment><USER14> Well, all the items in the list are already "heritage" (you can include the demoscene too, which at >20 years old can also be considered "heritage" in our fast-moving field). Generally things which get on these UNESCO lists are those which a country considers to be particularly important/unique/characteristic of the country, and the benefit is attracting attention to them and thus contributing to their continued existence/protection.

One random example: there are lots of Roman ruins, but if the 4th-century palace of a Roman emperor is almost continually inhabited and turned into a medieval city, that's pretty unique and worthy of the UNESCO list ([https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/97/](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/97/)).

<comment><USER15> > 20? More like > 30...

For comparison, it's as "heritage" now as WWII-related items were in 1980 - i.e. quite a bit for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was introduced to the demoscene via Future Crew's (Finnish) Second Reality. It made my computer do things I didn't know it could do.

That also coincided with my introduction to the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS), a sound card with (patch-based) MIDI capabilities vastly superior to Sound Blaster 16's tinny FM synthesis output at the time, and which was extremely popular among demo programmers.

Growing up, I had this notion that all the best (close-to-the-metal) programmers in the world were either Danes, Russians or Finns. Every Linux boot screen back in the day displayed the name "Hannu Savolainen". And SSH I've always associated with "Tatu Ylönen".

<comment><USER17> I always thought of Ylönen as being pronounced something like /jʌ'loʊnɛn/, but then when I went to Finland I learned that it's something like /'ylønen/. (The stress is on the first syllable and the y is purely a vowel, not a consonant.)

<comment><USER18> Protip: In Finnish the stress is almost always on the first syllable.

Only exceptions being some expressive words "juma'lattoman" "päin'vastoin" (' for where the stress is).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is nice, I guess, but I'm still not sure how this has any benefit for anybody except that demoscene now shares a list on Wikipedia with some folk dances and knitting patterns.

I think it's much more newsworthy that the Revision Demoparty happened last weekend despite the corona pandemic. It was fully online but still a 72-hour non stop event. Many of the releases are mind-blowing, check [https://pouet.net](https://pouet.net)

<comment><USER20> Looked up the winner in the 64k competition and it seems to be this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tirAdWbceak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tirAdWbceak)

To be honest, it looks like a techno video from the 90s to me.

<comment><USER21> The 64k compo was particularly weak this year. I'd recommend checking out the 4k intro and 4k executable graphics compos for some stellar work.

<comment><USER22> I think Assembly eliminated 64k years ago, because 4k for all practical purposes had become the new 64k, and 64k entries had been scarce and not super impressive for a while.

<comment> GuB-42 Things come and go.

At Revision 2015 to 2017, the PC 64k compo was absolutely insane, with production values exceeding pretty much every other category, including unconstrained PC demos. If 4k is the new 64k, 64k at that time became the new PC demo.

256 bytes is the big (hum...) thing now. With one ridiculous entry that managed to pack 8 different effects, with music and transitions [https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85227](https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85227)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wish I had grown up in Finland! The demoscene was a faraway oasis of pure geek fun I never reached as a younger and thristy programmer.

<comment><USER2> The good news is that it's a global activity. If you live anywhere in Europe, there's like to be a party you can attend. Australia and North America has a few, and some great competition has come out of Japan in the last few years.

More importantly, anybody can host a competition and have a party. The local party scene is really the heart and soul of the scene. Get 20-30 people together, hang out in somebody's basement for a weekend, and at the end have a competition with whatever people have had lying around on their computers.

1 - [https://www.demoparty.net/](https://www.demoparty.net/)

<comment><USER24> The parties might be not happening for a while now, but it is true that Demos are a very democratic activity and caters to a great breadth of programmers.

Yes, there are hyper-specialized groups that can cram a full 3D-shooter in 64k but you don't need to do that. You can play with something simpler.

<comment><USER2> Right! There was actually a pretty great Java demo at Revision this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think many European countries could do the same, Denmark also had its fair share of the demo scene back in the day.

I still remember names such as Kefrens and Dexion and it's a bit amazing to find a detailed account of a demo event that took place in 1990, [http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/party.php?id=92](http://janeway.exotica.org.uk/party.php?id=92)

Link to Megademo 8 by Kefrens with a runtime of almost an hour: [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megademo%208+Ami...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Megademo%208+Amiga)

<comment><USER26> Are campus party events similar to demoscene? In Mexico (Guadalajara) they were renamed to talent land, but still have the same vibe as campus party.

<comment><USER25> As i recall a demo scene event could be called a copyparty (source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene)), but that was before there was a focus on stopping pirated software.

Those demo scene events i attended was a mix of creating demos, but also LAN gaming as we know it today.

I do not remember campus party events that well, but i think the focus was more on gaming and hacking and not so much on presenting demos and having prizes for the best ones.

Talent land sounds like you want to reach out to a less nerdy audience, but for me the nerdiness is the charm of these events :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The demoscene was one of the things that got me into programming in the mid 90's. I think it is awesome that it is being recognized in this way... youtube link to Future Crew Tribute for pure nostalgia:) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yzzg19MvHA&list=PLE_ArT5Ajr...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Yzzg19MvHA&list=PLE_ArT5AjrvOD1LjZW6xOWTeM9GHqEgmM&index=20&t=0s)

</comment><comment><USER28> This is wonderful. Reading a WIRED magazine article on the demo scene when I was a early teen was what got me into programming in the first place.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for reminding me about this Wired article from 1995:

[https://www.wired.com/1995/07/democoders/](https://www.wired.com/1995/07/democoders/)

Web version is missing all the screenshots and crazy '90s print design, unfortunately.

<comment><USER30> Here's the full original print version too:

[https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1995-07_OCR/page/n145/m...](https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1995-07_OCR/page/n145/mode/2up)

Wired Magazine during the years 1995, 1996 and 1997 had something a bit magical about it, the way I remember it. You could sort of feel, while reading it, that it was a harbinger of great, great things to come, both from technology in general, and the fusion of personal computing and the internet in particular. It generally was a pleasure to read the magazine in those days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> this recognition gives me lots of warm feels. The number of aspects that the demoscene brought together: programming, art, music, an online world of connection, and community - was incredible and had a huge impact on me when I discovered and learned more about it as a young kid in the early 90s.

All I can think of to commend this occasion is Future Crew 'Second Reality' :) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes)

</comment><comment><USER32> Yeah, good. "A Mind is Born" is an intangible world cultural heritage IMO: [https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is- born/](https://linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Bravo Finland. I remember attending Assembly'94 in Helsinki. So many good things came from the demoscene, including Tran's PMODE...

</comment><comment><USER34> What is a "national UNESCO list"? I can't tell if it's a bad translation or just a misappropriation of UNESCO.

<comment><USER17> I think that UNESCO members maintain their own lists of cultural heritage, and then they can also nominate some of those to be on the UNESCO international lists.

The linked article from the linked article says

> The Ministry of Education and Culture has inscribed 12 new elements on the > National Inventory of Living Heritage. The National Inventory, which adheres > to UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural > Heritage, currently comprises a total of 64 elements. The Finnish Heritage > Agency is responsible for the implementation of the Convention in Finland.

So I think the idea is that under this treaty, each country does have its own lists, which are maintained following rules and principles created by UNESCO, but where the content doesn't have to be approved by other member states.

What I saw elsewhere in this thread is that Finland is currently nominating sauna culture to be added to the international list at the December UNESCO meeting. But I think that requires a consensus of other countries, where these twelve additions (including the demoscene) don't -- the Finnish government concluded on its own that they meet UNESCO's criteria for being significant enough _in Finland_ to be publicly recognized and protected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> From the country whose anthem is Darude - Sandstorm. This vid is fucking AWESOME [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5f-A- vSyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db5f-A-vSyw)

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if this means one can now obtain a grant from Ministry of Culture to cultivate this officially recognised tradition/heritage activity. Imagine a career not stemming from what one learned creating demoes, but in actual creating demoes. Even if it was lousy money, just the concept is mind boggling.

Plus, there would be no shortage of potential donors, from broadly speaking the same field, that would be happy to sponsor this culturally important organisation (aka demo group).

Never would have crossed my mind typing my hands off on good old C64...

</comment><comment><USER37> I love the demoscene. I've been trying to get into it for some time now but it's actually hard in terms of that are _very_ little if any resources aimed at beginners and demo examples _and_ tutorials.

The resources I've found are either incomplete or assume one is already familiar with the domain.

I understand graphics to the extent I've written a raytacer and a "semi- caster", but can't find my foot in demos, especially translating my existing graphics knowledge to ASM.

Anyone have any resources or information I may have missed?

<comment><USER38> Praise the Lord, I found [https://in4k.github.io/wiki/win32](https://in4k.github.io/wiki/win32) to have useful links. Particularly Compofiller studio is quite easy to get started with and rather well done. To make a final compressed executable takes a couple of steps, where you have to switch the mode and minify the shader code which is on the Compofiller UI before creating the executable. If you can do some coding on shadertoy.com it is rather easy to transfer to a production here.

For the music, a suggestion would be to download the free version of renoise.com which is full featured and works fine for making demos. It is a good piece of software and worth the amount they ask for the full version if you can do it too i think. And then download the [http://4klang.untergrund.net/](http://4klang.untergrund.net/) 4klang vst and use it with Renoise. You set up multiple instruments that link to the same instance of the VST instead of multiple instances of the VST and use different channels for each instrument (basically use the version that shows up top after you create one instance) and you can start by loading one of the preset patches included with 4klang. You record the songs in the 4klang vst and then put the generated files in the compofiller studio project directory and once it recompiles it has your new song.

I played around with this for the release i helped make for revision 2020 ( [https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85364](https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=85364) glsl source included ) Glory to Jesus, After this you can go lower level with the other 4k tutorials learning how to integrate with other assemblers or perhaps C++ compilers including Visual Studio community edition. It is possible to make even 4ks in C. If you want to get started in assembler i would recommend starting with the 256byte intros in a freedos installation. While I included source code in a 256byte that was presented at revision, i would start out with other tutorials.

Start out by researching some basic instructions to be able to set memory in a loop to a pointer in es:di. The basic instructions to set memory and registers, increment, compare, jump. Look a little bit into interrupts to be able to detect a keypress, or set graphics mode with 256 colors.

So for a freedos program you can do this with "mov ax, 13h; int 10h;" at the beginning of the program, set a label for the frame_loop_aleluya, then a label for the pixel_loop_aleluya (praising God in my code makes it more enjoyable) write to 0xA0000 for 320*200 bytes in the pixel_loop then detecting if a keypress has been made with "mov ah, 1;int 16h;jz frame_loop_aleluya" and then back to text mode "mov ax, 3h; int 10h" at the end of your program with ret. You can play around with that to make your first own little asm intro. Compile it with nasm to a .com. This is included in freedos.There is a little more boilerplate that goes into a .com as well, put "BITS 16; org 100h; section .text;" and a start: label . This works if you have no memory variables of your own, which is fine for a first step.

Sorry, this is my first hacker news comment so i will see how this looks and make corrections if needed, and post a small full sample program as a reply. God guide us and bless you in Jesus name

<comment><USER38> Praise the Lord! [https://gist.github.com/loveJesus/29b85c3d8d6f4fa5cc85d4f33c...](https://gist.github.com/loveJesus/29b85c3d8d6f4fa5cc85d4f33cf446c0) is a verbosely commented simple intro that compiles to 44 bytes. The source is just over the length where I think it would be better to visit the link than post it directly. If someone else could tell me their thoughts on proper protocol here i appreciate it. God guide us and bless you in Jesus Holy name

<comment><USER25> Perhaps you could also make a YouTube video showing what the intro does, installing Freedos and nasm is not that simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I feel like the inevitable outcome of this is that in a few years we will start seeing some seriously next-level Finnish demos dominating the competitions, all of which give thanks to one government art grant program or another in the middle of their ending shout-outs to other scene groups.

Which sounds _totally awesome_ IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER40> Yeah, I knew I wasn't wasting my time. I have made two (maybe more) projects that involves generative art:

[https://victorribeiro.com/radio/](https://victorribeiro.com/radio/)

[https://victorribeiro.com/showFractal/](https://victorribeiro.com/showFractal/)

the first one I'm thiking about adding more stations. It used to have a few more, but chrome wont allow a page served over https to link content that is not served as https, so I had to remove a lot of radios. =(

<comment><USER41> Couldn't you just have proxied them over your own host Don't know what gear you're on but with e.g. Hetzner you get 20 TB for 3€/month

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I used to be a demoscener, and watching other do amazing things is what inspired me to learn computer graphics and write my own demos. It was not only that, it was the amazing people that took the time to teach me and encouraged me to do better. Still nowadays that same spirit of being amazed by tech and willing to replicate what I find fascinating is still burning in me, I hope I will stay this way for many years. Thanks Demosceners!

</comment><comment><USER43> The demoscene did motivate me in the '90s to start to create real-time video effects that I could synchronize to the music.

It led me to create my own company and it's still there 25 years later.

While I was never part of it because I had an Apple II and then a Macintosh that was never used by the scene, the demos were for me a technological demo of where we can go with a tool to be used by artists or musicians.

</comment><comment><USER44> Anybody still miss the Atari vs Amiga war? I think it's probably still raging somewhere. Good times! Thank you for all the great demos! :D

<comment><USER3> Not ever since Amiga won. ;-)

Kidding aside, I do love to see new Atari ST(e) demos. Don't care much for Falcon or accelerated Amiga demos, just about great 68000 demos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Asymptotically, much like every San Francisco laundromat will be historical, every Earth location will be a world cultural heritage .

</comment><comment><USER46> Lovely. Enjoying scenedemos is the main thing I do with all my Amigas, Atari ST, C64, A8, and even Apple Lisa. Great to see this!

</comment><comment><USER47> Future Crew demos got me into programming. Scream Tracker set me on a life long love of making music. The demoscene significantly altered the trajectory of my life.

</comment><comment><USER48> For those that didn't know what this is (like me):

> Demoskene is an international community focused on demos, programming, > graphics and sound creatively real-time audiovisual performances.

</comment><comment><USER49> Just registered to say this: That's awesome!! <3

Now that I am here: do you know of any resources (books, tutorials, repos) that explain the techniques used in the demoscene?

<comment><USER50> Denthor of Asphyxia's tutorials taught me quite a bit years ago [http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?c...](http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?categoryid=130)

Dave Brackeen's VGA Programming in C tutorials also show off graphics modes and optimizations for things like primitive drawing, bitmaps, etc. I used this to create a game years ago [http://www.brackeen.com/vga/index.html](http://www.brackeen.com/vga/index.html)

There also used to be a site called ProgrammersHaven (later renamed ProgrammersHeaven that seems to have dumped all of its original content). This site had a collection of random programs and source files, many of which showed off demoscene techniques (parallax, plasma, 3D, bumpmapping, etc)

<comment><USER49> Thx!

That reminds me the nehe tutorials: [https://nehe.gamedev.net/](https://nehe.gamedev.net/)

<comment><USER51> Now there's a name I've not heard in a long long time...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Oh this is such a good move! I love the demo scene, and it is cultural heritage for sure. Long live the scene, and we all really should participate at least once.

</comment><comment><USER53> Love this thing, well done Finland. If a guy plugging a banana in a wall is a form of art... why not the demoscene? Of course it is.

</comment><comment><USER54> Makes me wonder at what point will they put the entirety of YouTube under the protection of their cultural heritage umbrella?

</comment><comment><USER55> "Demoscene" is like "informatics", an ostensibly English word but used primarily by non-native speakers.

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't think this is going to be a popular opinion, but what is the use of designating something as UNESCO world heritage? Doesn't the protection it would require keep budget away from other things, like COVID? I understand that its nice to get recognized though.

<comment><USER57> Whatever helps keep people at home is a good investment right now.

Problem with generalizations is that they generally don't hold up to concrete examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> hopefully this will help w/ things like this:

[https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11891&page=1](https://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=11891&page=1)

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm curious to what degree Codepen^1 is considered to be part of the "demoscene".

1\. [https://codepen.io/popular/pens](https://codepen.io/popular/pens)

</comment><comment><USER60> I used to own an Amiga ... good times.

</comment><comment><USER52> Someone has to do it:

Aaaaaaameeeeega!

</comment><comment><USER58> yeah, i am happy about this as well!</comment>


Show HN: What rapper are you? (my first NLP project in Python/Bottle) - <AUTHOR> http://www.whatrapperareyou.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Just finished this website a few days ago and looking for some feedback.

The program has analysed 300 east and 300 west coast lyrics and looked at the words used in those to train a Naive Bayesian Classifier using the Natural Language Processing Toolkit for Python. It then lets you put in a twitter name and loads its latest 174 tweets and classifies that bag of words to the classifier to let you know if you tweet like west coast or east coast rappers rapped in the nineties.

I finally got NLTK to work online after trying different hosting companies. Decided to learn Bottle to build the web version of the program and it was a breeze, which was awesome as I am really a beginner in programming.

Loved to getting my first real project done and working without quitting before it was finished. Extended my knowledge in jQuery and css a bit and overall had a lot of fun.

I wanted to ask you guys what you think of it and if you have any suggestions both content and design wise.

I found that after getting it to work I was kinda lost in the design. It's funny: when the code works it works, but designing seems to be a never ending job of improving and not being satisfied.

</comment><comment><USER2> thanks for sharing, i think this is a fun, light-hearted application! i would be interested in seeing a percentage of how east coast rapper i am (60% east coast / 40% west coast) just to see the break out. also, it would be cool to show some of my tweets that feature some of those keywords, to remind me (as i couldn't recall any tweets that had those words).

aside from that, great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the comment, means a lot! Good suggestion as well, the percentage one might be too hard as I'm using some basic NLTK libraries, but the one showing tweets I'll definitely look into!

Furthermore, the words listed are certainly not necessarily words you used, but just the 50 most differentiating words between east and west coast. 'compton' is used way more in west coast lyrics than east for example. It's just there to see some fun differences not related to your personal twitter stream. At last, in total the classifier looks for not 50, but 1000 words in classifying your tweets. Hope this explained it a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's telling me "That ain't no real twitter user bro!" which is false (and kind of lame).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry to hear that. When Tweepy gives an error I let it output that sentence as almost every time it was a Twitteruser does not exist error. I checked your twitter and its working with me so it might be because of some exceeded twitter daily call limit or something on your network. I noticed that when I was developing it -- after a day of refreshing and reiterating it would give that error too.

Thanks for pointing out the flaw, I'll try to implement some more descriptive error messages for different errors.</comment></comment>


Building a noise level dashboard for your office with a Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/homeday/building-a-noise-level-dashboard-for-your-office-with-a-raspberry-pi-71360ee1ff46 <comment><USER2> I threatened to build something like this for my step-sons room but connected to the router which would shut of network connection to all his devices by mac address if the noise was over a certain level.

Only so many times you can tell someone to keep it down when playing fortnite before technical solutins occur.

It was mostly a joke threat but since corona virus has everyone stuck at home that mostly is increasing...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I can relate to that :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why can I not reach HN from my home network? - <AUTHOR> I've been experiencing errors connecting to HN, and can only reach it via mobile. At first I thought I was banned due to a satirical string of comments or possibly posting an html code and emoji in the AMP thread yesterday.
However, after a quick exchange with dang, he assured me I wasn't banned, the issue had nothing to do with them, and even restored my previosly lost handle "vonklaus'.
Symptoms
> Can not reach HN.
> traceroute returns * for every entry. Also the case for other sites even local ips.
> over 4g i can reach HN and login.
> sometimes i reach cloudflare with unknown errors.
> login redirects immeadiately to "Mozilla firefox cant find file: https://news.ycombinator.com/login?goto=news "
> affects safari and all browsers. Also, my phone when connected to the network, but not when disconnected.
Using a mac book pro 13" retina using el capitan and my dns servers are 184.108.40.206, 126.96.36.199, and openDNS. I think my router/network is possibly compromised. I did a hard reset of my router, renewed the lease, and cleared arp to no effect.
I think it is possible that I am somehow ip banned, have a bad cache sonewhere, or someone is doing something maliscious on my network and HN security features are serving as a canary, and breaking the unsecure connection.
Not really sure how to proceed but would love advice. I could believe a bad config if not for now 3 computers failing to login. Just tried on chrome on PC. Loads fine, then login is err connection refused.
Happened ~2 yesterday. No obvious changes were made. <comment><USER2>
      $ dig news.ycombinator.com</comment>


Embedded Mining: Turning Your Electricity Bill into a Piggy Bank - <AUTHOR> http://aakilfernandes.github.io/the-frightening-future-of-embedded-mining/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reddit discussion here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3mi4pl/21_inc_the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3mi4pl/21_inc_the_frightening_future_of_embedded_mining/)</comment>


A flawed metaphor by a racist ecologist defined environmental thinking - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mmildenberger/status/1102604887223750657 <comment><USER2> Twitter rants are basically unreadable to me. I don't understand why people don't just link to a normal blogging place if they're going to blog.

I don't see what's wrong with Hardin's model. The metaphor behind it may be wonkey, I wouldn't know, I haven't looked into it, but the math works out.

Furthermore, I don't really know why his views matter so much here.

<comment><USER3> I think there are some practical consequences to his line of thought that bear scrutiny. For Hardin, the base consumptive unit is racial or national; the world can be understood as races (and, within races, differing social classes) competing to devour scarce resources by outbreeding each other. In other words, for Hardin the mathematical model is a springboard into a racial- supremacist and social-Darwinian worldview.

Practically, this means that Hardin's prescriptions tend towards what can be called without irony "eco-fascism;" _of course_ we need government intervention into "breeding," to prevent the lower classes from breeding us into imbicility! _Of course_ we need to be vigilant lest the Muslims/Africans/Latinos outbreed us! Hardin's worldview is a bleak, intolerant vision of race wars over shrinking resource bases, eternally.

Contrast with a more (clasically) liberal view of the TotC as a market failure based on insufficient information and incorrect pricing. In this view, the problem is simply that the regulative norms of the market need to be adjusted (through carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, etc), and we can collaboratively (and democratically) work to ensure ecological sustainability (I'll leave aside caveats regarding the current state of global and national political polarization).

So, practically speaking, Hardin's analysis needs to be heavily caveated at a minimum, or exhaustively analyzed to better understand the political and social dynamics of environmentalist theory and practice. Certainly, it helps explain why, though environmentalists are not themselves attracted to fascism, why some fascists are attracted to their own form of environmentalism.

<comment><USER2> Hardin's work didn't just influence race/class based policies though. It's the (part of) reason we have stuff like fishing quota. Dismissing his entire work because in a fraction of the use cases it could be used wrongly seems absurd to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this weird Twitter rant throws into stark relief a difference between the humanities and sciences.

A political scientist is claiming that the metaphor of the tragedy of the commons isn't useful because its creator was racist. It is certainly clear to me now that Hardin was a racist and not a subtle one.

... but just because some guy on Twitter decided to go on a rant doesn't change the fact that the tragedy of the commons is a situation whose preconditions, causes, and effects actual scientists have rigorously defined.

Just because the human ecologist who popularized it (and I love the irony of the political scientist tweeter implying that his opinion is invalid because he was _gasp_ actually just a human ecology professor) was a bad person doesn't change the state of science.</comment>


A Reddit Postmortem - How to Get to the Front Page of Reddit, and Explode - <AUTHOR> http://hackthesystem.com/blog/a-reddit-postmortem-how-to-get-to-the-front-page-of-reddit-and-how-to-make-it-explode-once-youre-there-using-the-seneca-solution/

<comment><USER2> And so now the idea is to maximize the attention you get by writing about how you got attention?

<comment><AUTHOR> something like that :)</comment></comment>


Amazon considering online prescriptions - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/16/amazon-selling-drugs-pharamaceuticals.html <comment><USER2> This will be interesting considering that different countries have different medical schemes, I would forsee this would be aimed solely at the US market.

Even amongst countries where the costs of medication are heavily subsidised there can be a very large difference in pricing.

eg: Oxycontin on the PBS is atm $37AUD a pack of 28 at 80mg strength in Australia ($5.30 if on a concession eg: unemployed), in the US its $408.63USD a pack of 20 (via drugs.com)

<comment><USER3> The article discusses this -- they have a pilot in Japan where doctors sell drugs directly to patients. Mexico or France would be good candidates.

<comment><USER2> ok cheers. I read that as local pharmacists giving approval for Amazon to deliver, where I thought Amazon is looking at doing e-prescriptions and entering that market themselves.

Interesting as well that Japan can dispense category 1 drugs via a pharmacist okaying an online form submission of symptoms, and not a doctor. (going via the link on Japan Times)

I guess it's convoluted as they say.</comment></comment></comment>


Running Bash on Ubuntu on Windows[video] - <AUTHOR> https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2016/P488 <comment><USER2> This feature is one thing i missed in windows and now i have no reason for not working on windows 10. i use Mac OS X for work it is cool, but i miss the windows shortcuts and navigations i am used to.</comment>


Job Hunting Tips for College Seniors - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303730804579435040049720068?mod=hp_opinion&mg=reno64-wsj

<comment><USER2> pay wall, anyone got a link with the full article?</comment>


We almost failed during YC - <AUTHOR> https://www.failory.com/blog/yc-mistakes <comment><USER2> I wrote this article-- I'd appreciate any feedback. I'd love to hear other YC founder's mistakes they made have made in their early days.</comment>


Zerodha, a bootstrapped startup, becomes the no.1 broker of India - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/zerodha-replaces-icici-securities-as-indias-largest-broker <comment><USER2> Good going! I like Varsity where they explain lot of useful concepts around trading!</comment>


Ask HN: Study Roadmap - <AUTHOR> I am finishing chapter 3 of SICP, doing all the exercises in the book, and I would like to keep improving my programming and CS skills, right after I am done with it -say, by 2075 plus or minus. The following is a list of titles that I consider might help me out to that end:
* SICP
* The Little Schemer
* Essentials of Programming Languages
* The Seasoned Schemer
* Lisp In Small Pieces
* PAIP
* The Scheme Programming Language
* Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms
* CLRS
* The Art of Prolog
* The Reasoned Schemer
* Programming Language Pragmatics
* Concrete Abstractions
* Introduction to the Theory of Computation
* The New Turing Omnibus
* Beautiful Code
* The Elements of Computing Systems
* Mastering Regular Expressions
* Code
* GEB
I plan to interleave those reads with some discrete math, as to help me specifically with the toughest CS stuff. This might take years, I know!
What items would you change, add, remove? What about the order?
I'm very interested in your opinions, fellows. <comment><USER2> I don't have any recommendations, but I remember someone putting together a similar list on reddit - [http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/ch0wt/a_reading_list_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/ch0wt/a_reading_list_for_the_selftaught_computer/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really helpful. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Will Supreme Court open a 'dam burst' of legalized sports betting? - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/will-supreme-court-open-a-dam-burst-of-legalized-sports-betting/2017/11/26/9f988aaa-cf9d-11e7-a1a3-0d1e45a6de3d_story.html <comment><USER2> As an Australian, living in a society where betting is legal albeit fairly regulated: I sincerely hope not.

The reason for that hope is that gambling and gambling advertising, with the rise of online betting sites and smartphone apps, has started to become a fairly genuine social issue. With advertisements like this one ([https://twitter.com/sportsbetcomau/status/863634984682233856](https://twitter.com/sportsbetcomau/status/863634984682233856)) [note: Ben Johnson recently was found to be on PEDs], or advertisements blanketing one of the busiest train stations in the country, like the following ([https://twitter.com/Doc_Samantha/status/786665869787078656](https://twitter.com/Doc_Samantha/status/786665869787078656)). These companies are, anecdotally of course, targeting their advertisements to the youngest possible market, in the worst possible way. The pushiness of their advertisements are a 'joke' amongst my friends.

Widespread gambling is generally seen as harmful to a society. It would be nice if the USA didn't voluntarily allow its citizens to be taken advantage of for corporate profits, for once.

<comment><USER3> Speaking as an American, the choice in our society isn't between "voluntarily allow its citizens to be taken advantage of" and not that. It's between allowing gambling to be run by organized crime and creating a system that enables at least a modicum of accountability.

<comment><USER4> Disagree. This is probably true among your demographic but it's not true of the biggest whales for casinos: really old people. My grandparents wouldn't break the law to gamble but given the chance would blow hundreds of dollars on slots in a single visit to a casino. And they would go as often as possible because they liked the attention casinos gave them and they had nothing better to do.

Sure maybe legal gambling will let young people move from sketchy books to more legitimate operations, but they aren't really the ones that get abused by legalized gambling.

Casinos will find a way to exploit old folks with this, I guarantee it. Old people often have about as much going between their ears as ~11-13 year olds but have a lot more disposable income.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure if you've ever spent any time in an American casino, but the sports book is not where you find 'really old people', except perhaps the handful of older guys betting on horse races. And at the sports book area, chances are that you aren't going to encounter the sort of obvious problem gamblers that you see glued to the video poker and slots.

<comment><USER2> We're definitely just trading anecdotes here, but I assume you've never spent any time inside the local TAB in a rural Australian town; It's not exactly filled to the brim with young professional up-and-comers.

My experience in Australia doesn't generalise perfectly to the US, of course. I wonder how much it does at all. That lack of certainty doesn't stop me from worrying what things would look like if it translates well across our societies.

<comment><USER5> Sports gambling in the US is definitely quite different from what one encounters in the Commonwealths, but it also isn't that the sports books are filled with 'young professional up-and-comers'. It's a range of men, generally between 25-65, that have an interest in sports that borders on unhealthy, but take great pride in making 'smart' and generally conservative bets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes it will happen.

Sadly what I have come to learn about our society is that almost all vested interests get what they want eventually by just persisting in the long term to keep bringing it back to the government through their lobbyists.

Gambling, privacy reduction, net neutrality, mining, fracking, selling national interests overseas, property development... everything happens eventually if those with the money just keep pushing firmly over time.

It's almost a prerequisite that these things are first resisted by the people and defeated by people power a few times... the vested interests know that the 2nd and 3rd time around people will stop fighting for whatever that thing is.

</comment><comment><USER7> > The decision "could have repercussions in areas that go well beyond sports > betting: gun control, immigration, sanctuary cities..."

And this is why the SCotUS will _not_ make a landmark decision causing a "dam burst." The Justices can certainly limit their decision in many ways, and it'll be interesting reading the opinions that they produce. But I don't think they've been interested in drastic changes for quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER8> (Preface: I'm not particularly interested in the ethical debates around gambling with this comment, though I personally think it's something people should be allowed to do.).

I've been slowly getting into Machine Learning for a while now, and have been looking for projects to accelerate my focus. I also happen to like to gamble (responsibly), so I've recently started researching how to apply Machine/Deep Learning to Baseball betting, and possibly other sports.

It would be mostly a side project I would imagine, I have no dreams of becoming wealthy from this, and since it mixes scraping (which I really like to play with) with machine learning, it will probably be entertaining at least. I'm very curious if I could actually get decent success with it though.

Anyone done this before? Or know of stories/books about this?

<comment><USER9> This discussion could be of interest: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523186](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15523186)

tldr: keep it fun; if you bet professionally, you'll run into hurdles from bookies.

<comment><USER8> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is completely offtopic: But can anyone provide a name to a TV documentary/docudrama on "Point shaving" It was about some NCAA team and a guy that looked like he later in the sopranos. I think it was made by Fox.

<comment><USER11> I think you are talking about Blue Chips with Nick Nolte?

<comment><USER10> I don't think it was that. It was more focused on the college student bookie.

<comment><USER12> I think this is the one, from ESPN's 30 for 30 series.

[http://www.espn.com/30for30/film?page=playingforthemob](http://www.espn.com/30for30/film?page=playingforthemob)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gambling/lotteries basically only harm people with innumeracy; ergo why should it ever be prohibited?

<comment><USER14> On one hand, I can see this. Having worked in a casino, my gut reaction is, "If you are that dumb then you deserve to lose everything." But on the other hand, there is the societal good of not having people throw away their money and spend it on things like paying their rent/mortgage and healthcare and education and not be a burden to society.

<comment><USER15> Alcohol is factually poisonous to humans. Every day people die, become sick, lose jobs, destroy families, etc etc all due to this poison. The facts regarding alcohol are beyond question.

Will you destroy all of your personal stock of this poison for the benefit of society and forsake it forevermore? If not, why not?

<comment><USER13> Oh, it's no doubt a mind-destroyer; that alone makes it quite scary to me, no need to contemplate its other effects.

And I'll gladly forsake it quietly, and let those with excess affinity for it, use it to destroy themselves if they so desire. We didn't need such weak people anyway.

<comment><USER16> Society doesn't need such callous people as you.

<comment><USER13> Oh? And how _else_ would society figure out that providing things to every warm body that claims to need them, is wasteful?

(Oh, wait, we're still socialistic in exactly that manner. So I'd say we need _many more_ people like me. But that will have to wait 'till genetic engineering exits the drawing board...)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>