A one-of-a-kind trove reveals what rural 19th-century American boyhood was like - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/05/nelson_archive_at_amherst_a_one_of_a_kind_trove_reveals_what_rural_19th.single.html

<comment><USER2> I always find stories about common people from the past to be some of my favorite historical writing. While it's true that history is made by great people and great events, most people are not great and reading about the common people of the time is always fascinating.

Ones I have read and enjoyed are:

\- As The Romans Did by Jo-Ann Shelton. This book tries to paint a picture of everyday life in the Roman Empire

\- History of Hadley by Sylvester Judd, Lucius Manlius Boltwood. Details the history of a small town in Massachusetts.

<comment><USER3> Two of my favorite books growing up were _The Real Diary of a Real Boy_ and _The Great Brain_. Both are accounts of a young boy growing up in 19th century, small town America. The _Real Diary_ is about Exeter, NH in the 1840s. _The Great Brain_ is about Utah (and is much better written, I think most Hacker News readers would benefit from giving this book to their child). The books were penned after the fact, but were based on the author's boyhood experiences. These books both painted a portrait of old-time life, and also gave me a feeling of continuity with the past.

<comment><USER4> I also enjoyed (as an adult) _Papa Married a Mormon_ which is John Fitzgerald's (Great Brain author) semi-autobiographical first novel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sounds a lot like my childhood. I also created my own imaginary world, complete with elaborate drawings and fabricated back history. I was also a voracious reader, remixing those stories into my own variants that fit in with the made up world.

Makes you realize why Minecraft has become so popular among young boys. It's an amazing tool to extend that creativity beyond maps on paper and into something more.</comment>


Where Working-Age Americans Are Moving - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/12/19/where-working-age-americans-are-moving/ <comment><USER2> Glad to see two great Texas cities in the top ten for the 35+ cohort. Both SA and Houston have been great cities for me, and the other tech workers I know. SA is a beautiful city with lots of great jobs in the security and networking industries, and the economy in Houston continues to rage on, with low cost of living. (It's also worth noting, that most people would find the big population centers in TX a lot more liberal and diverse than they think they are.)

<comment><USER3> Houston's a great buy compared to Silicon Valley, but I wouldn't say its cost of living is low on a national scale at all. It's still drastically more expensive than most American cities (it's the 4th largest, after all). Most inner-loop neighborhoods are filled with million dollar homes, most of which are not mansions.

Don't get me wrong, I love Houston. But it's not just a sea of cheap McMansions. There are a lot of very highly paid oil executives, corporate attorneys, and physicians (Texas Medical Center) who can easily afford a $1M+ home so the urban core of the city is really transforming into a much more expensive and exclusive area.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I guess I'm not counting the "buying" of a house as much towards CoL, renting is still fairly inexpensive, assuming you don't want a "luxury apartment," but gas prices (still paying less than $3/gal in my neighborhood), food prices, utilities (let's not talk about the water bill!) & etc. "as compared to other major cities."

That last part is important =) You'll live a lot cheaper in Luling than Houston, but outside of great barbecue, there isn't much going on there.

The inner loop is really expensive for housing stock, definitely, and even it has nothing on the memorial villages! That being said, the whole east side is still pretty cheap. The same house that would cost you $500k in the Heights can be bought for $250k in Eastwood/Idylwood.

<comment><USER3> Ah yes, I completely forgot about places like Hunter's Creek Village. Those areas are insanely expensive too. =]

Apartments are definitely a bargain in Houston, though. Even the "luxury apartments" are half the price of a normal apartment in San Francisco.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, isn't that kind-of sad. Basically what I read into this is that when you need to provide for more than yourself, good luck being able to afford space in a desirable location. Off to riverside or sacramento for you.

<comment><USER5> I think "desirable location" changes when you gain intimate relationships and dependents.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Once you have kids, "Having a cool bar with craft brews nearby" and "Fun concerts" pale in comparison to "Having a public school nearby that actually educates kids."

I think this is much more important than rental prices.

<comment><USER7> Actually, it would be kind of nice to have both... is there some law of nature which prevents them co-occurring?

<comment><USER8> A person's priorities in life just change. I in no way ascribe to the "helicopter parent" approach to raising kids, but having kids changed me in fundamental ways that cause my outlook on life to change in a manner that often surprises me. Case in point: I used to be a movie buff. I loved watching movies. Now, I have the ultimate setup for watching movies and it doesn't even interest me. I have other things (not even necessarily always spending time with my toddlers) that I would rather spend 2.5+ hours doing (getting sleep being a prime contender).

<comment><USER7> Oh, I kind of agree; but I also think that there's value in remaining yourself too, and not giving up everything for your kids. Not least because I think it can help your relationship with the person with whom you started the family in the first place.

I just wish it was possible to live in a neighborhood which has good schools, nice neighborhood kids who you can trust to babysit, combined with somewhere within walking distance that's worth going to when you've got a sitter.

<comment><USER6> You can remain yourself, but your priorities shift. Even with restaurants, you look for those that are stroller friendly and have enough other kids that you don't feel bad when lunch winds up on the floor.

The problem with schools is that it is a very large entrenched organization, with lots of special interests (politicians, teachers, administration, etc) who don't want to give up monopoly power. The central organizations suck in a lot of money, and don't improve quality. There are ways to fight this (more charters, close bad schools, etc) but it's very hard and requires a lot of different folks in government willing to fight special interests.

<comment><USER7> Your idea of a fun date night with your SO must be very different to mine.

<comment><USER6> Welcome to life with kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article is looking at the cohort data assuming that the leading edge of the Millennial cohort (at least, according to this way of divvying up the generations; I've heard of others) who are currently at the oldest in the early 30s will act like the people who are in the mid-30s: looking to settle down, raise families, find some place cheaper to live, etc.

Is that assumption actually true? What do you guys think?

<comment><USER10> Yes. Biology is a powerful thing.

If millenials go child-free in large numbers, they would be the first American generation to do so. There may be precedents in places like modern Japan, but the culture in Japan is so different that I am hesitant to extrapolate from that data point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Young people, it should be expected, tend to be less sensitive to ultra-high rents_

Is this really true? I was hyper-sensitive to rent just out of school. Every $100/month difference meant something I would have to write out of my life. Perhaps it's more true that very young people don't mind cramming 6 people in a house or apartment meant for 3.

This doesn't discount the conclusion, though of older people leaving cities like NY, but I think that's more about poor educational options for kids, rather than higher sensitivity to rent.

<comment><USER11> I suspect there are some confounding factors here. Most people I know would rather rent for $1000/month and have a good job in the city than rent for $300/month in a small town where nobody's hiring.

<comment><USER10> The article isn't contrasting living in the woods with living in the city. It's contrasting living in Orlando with living in Silicon Valley.

They're both cities and they're both hiring.

<comment><USER12> They're both hiring, but the... types of jobs they're hiring for vary widely.

There's maybe a half dozen places in the world I can do what I do. Orlando is not one of them.

<comment><USER10> Fair enough, but the article is about broader trends, not tradeoffs when choosing a particular specialty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any Oregon dwellers out there? How's the tech community in and outside of Portland? Has it been growing or shrinking?

<comment><USER14> I grew up there, and while I haven't lived there for some time:

* Eugene is a smallish city with a the University of Oregon. If it played its cards right, it could be something like Boulder. But it doesn't seem like a lot is going on there, and the weather... well, it's pretty grim, like all of western Oregon. In my opinion, 5C and rain is worse than some snow from time to time in terms of 'bad weather'.

* Bend is kind of on the small side to have much going on, but maybe has more than Eugene for its size?

* Southern Oregon - Ashland in particular, is a nice place to live as it's a bit drier than further north, but it's still on the smallish side, and I don't know that there's really much of an 'ecosystem' there. I could see living there if I had a bootstrapped thing going and wanted somewhere cheaper to live that's still nice in some ways.

* Portland is big enough to have a real community, and is a good city for the right kind of person. I can't stand the weather myself.

<comment><USER15> I've given a serious look at moving from Seattle/Redmond to somewhere in Oregon outside of Portland. I'd _love_ to live in Eugene. As a runner, that place seems like Disneyland. But as you say, the town doesn't seem to have made much effort to be even a very good college town, let alone have much else going on. I could still live there, but tech jobs are a bit slim.

If anyplace in Oregon were to be Boulder, I'd say Bend has the best shot. Granted, it's an outsider's point of view, but I _think_ it's closer to mountains and at a bit of elevation. Seems like more athletic stuff going on, bigger cycling community and the like. On the downside, it seems as if that main road through town becomes more and more of one giant strip mall. Job- wise, seems like there a few more opportunities than Eugene.

Portland? Plenty going on there, and between Seattle and Portland I'd choose Portland. Seattle _wants_ to be quirky and hip, but doesn't pull it off as well as Portland, IMO. Portland's smaller, too, but seems to have enough going on to satisfy my tastes.

In the end, though, I could find a new job next week in the Seattle area. I lose a job in Eugene or Bend, I'm screwed. That's okay, the Seattle area is nice, too.

<comment><USER16> It seems to me that one of Boulder's big advantages/draws is that it's a college town close to a big city (Denver). There's no arrangement quite like that in Oregon. Bend is hours away from Eugene or Portland.

Having lived in Eugene for a while, I'd say it's pretty nice, but you might get bored pretty quickly, even as a runner. It's just to small (for me).

I think Portland is better for outdoorsy stuff in general. There's Forest Park, Mt Tabor, etc in the city and lots of camping, hiking, snowboarding nearby.

<comment><USER14> I'm not entirely sure if it's size related or... just lack of energy/ambition. Padova, where I live now, is a similar order of magnitude (214,000 vs 150,000 in Eugene), but there seems to be more going on here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is an interesting article, taking on a complex subject. That said, I really do not see myself moving to the cities that showed the most growth of 35+ cohort...

Close suburbs of the CA cities are definitely an option, even Seattle is not out of the question (oddly, I love rainy weather...), but it seems like the cohorts need some sort of geographic slicing. Where are people moving from to increase the presence of a cohort? I have a hard time imagining that a lot of tech people from SV will pack up and go to New Orleans or Florida. If this is where you are from or have family at, it makes more sense, but I wouldn't expect a large number of people that never lived in those areas/cities, to suddenly want to move there just because they got older/settled down.

An interesting infographic would be to show migration patterns over time, from where you are born, to where you go to college, work, etc. and then retire. For me, I'm expecting a boomerang-looking flow to where I went to high school.

</comment><comment><USER18> For a visual representation of state-by-state migration patterns generally, this is a fun graph to poke around: [http://vizynary.com/2013/11/18/restless- america-state-to-sta...](http://vizynary.com/2013/11/18/restless-america- state-to-state-migration-in-2012/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Speaking as an HN'er in one of the "traditional Rust Belt hard-luck cases:" Anyone reading this have any good ideas for ways that areas like mine can improve local economic conditions and better retain or even attract younger folks?

Area politicians are desperate to improve the economy; if you're looking for a new site for a medium-to-large business, especially if you're in a high-tech industry that's perceived as going up instead of going down, you'll likely find the Rust Belt's state and local governments to be quite accomodating.

<comment><USER20> It's a chicken/egg problem - the reason most businesses stay away is that folks aren't already moving there - and "required infrastructure" i.e., coffee shops, trader joes, etc isn't present.

Those buseinsss and shops don't open there because the demographics aren't there.

The only thing that changes this is when a large organization decides to make things happen and move a significant base of people to that locale. City governments are generally not big enough to convince enough employers to move, and large companies only do this if they get massive tax breaks which can be unpopular with citizens and local businesses (i.e., it's a risky investment - which investors don't like).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another interesting metric would be to further define the age categories by income (which correlates to job type). I live in Manhattan and it is a very fun place for singles with lots to do (and if you're Jewish a lot of Jewish cultural and religious activities) and lots of fellow singles to meet for dating and to make friends.

Rent is ridiculously high because of zoning restrictions against construction or limiting building height (which increases housing costs).

</comment><comment><USER22> After visiting SF / SV earlier this year, I think that a remarkable amount of productivity is gained solely based on the weather. You wake up, it's beautiful outside and you're ready to work. To me it's a major advantage over the Northeast (where I'm from).

I think Austin has to be my #1 city in America that I have left to visit.

<comment><USER23> I'm always caught off-guard when I hear people describe San Francisco's weather in positive terms. I can see how people might like it, but for me, it's dreadful.

<comment><USER24> The only people who do this are people who came from places with even worse weather (cf. references to the Northeast in your parent comment). People used to e.g. LA or South Bay have a different perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Remote work is going to play a bigger part in where millenials live than it did for previous generations. Remote workers are a tiny fraction of the workforce but I think millenials are more comfortable with it both as employees and employers.

<comment><USER10> Current economics and regulations are encouraging part-time and contract work. If these trends start affecting office careers as much as they affect low- skill jobs, I can see remote work becoming extremely popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm always on the lookout for somewhere in the US with a climate like San Diego but a low cost of living.

That's where I want to move. Any ideas?

<comment><USER27> It's actually hard to beat San Diego in a few respects:

1) The weather is just perfect all year long.

2) The cost of living, while high, isn't insane compared to places like the Bay Area or NYC.

3) The public schools are actually quite good in many of the areas without being far flung from the city.

The big downside, however, is that there just aren't many local jobs for techies. The few that exist pay very little compared to the ones in the Bay Area or even a little further north in LA despite the cost of living being on the high side.

My wife and I have talked about moving there for a while (we both work from home) but the big challenge is that we'd have to find other income streams (in addition to our day jobs) to fund a good lifestyle in San Diego. In the face of a pretty tepid local job market and challenges with remote work pay being lower, that seems to be a requirement to make it out there.

<comment><USER28> I'm no expert in the SD job market, but my feeling is that there are many tech jobs but not the kind HN people are thinking of. There are large bio and defense industries there, along with some hardware companies like Qualcomm. It's definitely not a software haven though. I actually worked in SD in defense at graduation - I wouldn't say the pay was worse than the Bay, unless you were a rockstar Ruby ninja.

<comment><USER29> I interned at Qualcomm once, and they are a pretty great place to work if you are a software engineer with experience in mobile, embedded systems, or even .NET. Plus their mobile computing division is growing incredibly quickly. Over the course of my 3 month internship, my team almost doubled in size.

There is also a great web/javascript community that is growing in the area called sandiego.js ([http://sandiegojs.org/](http://sandiegojs.org/)). I attended most of their talks this summer and there were always people looking to hire people to do work for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Denver gets 300 days of sunshine and Forbes chooses a cloudy picture..

</comment><comment><USER31> New York?</comment>


Simple File Sharing - <AUTHOR> https://tinyvpn.org/ <comment><USER2> How's that related to VPN

<comment><AUTHOR> It used to also be a cluster of tinc vpn meshes. [1]

[1] - [https://tinyvpn.org/help/#vpn](https://tinyvpn.org/help/#vpn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <head shape="phalic"> lol</comment>


Google's self-driving cars to hit public roads for the first time - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmag.com/google-self-driving-car-public-roads-approval-california/37535/

<comment><USER2> Here are some of the other submissions of this story. Interestingly, _none_ have any comments. I wonder where the discussion might be. Have I missed some?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549430)

        Google's unique self-driving cars will hit public streets this summer
        (engadget.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549476)

        Google's Self-Driving Cars Will Hit Public Roads in Mountain View This Summer
        (techcrunch.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549578)

        Google's self-driving cars roll onto public roads this summer
        (thestack.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549707](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549707)

        Google's self-driving cars are coming to public roads in California this summer
        (mashable.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9549934)

        Google self-driving car project
        (designboom.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9550863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9550863)

        Google's self-driving cars will hit the road this summer
        (fortune.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9551455)

        Google Is Taking Its Self-Driving Cars to the Open Road
        (wsj.com)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552402)

        Robo-car, go Google's latest self-driving prototypes are heading to roadways
        (cnet.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to object to the idea of driverless cars. Then, while driving around NYC, it occurred to me that driverless cars, however reckless, would be an improvement over the other cars on the road. In fact, not just in NYC, but wherever I've driven across the US driverless cars would be a step up.

The driverless cars being tested now drive more deliberately and consistently, if a bit slower. This means that accident rates should come down, and with them the collateral congestion that they cause, hence effectively increasing the average miles per hour of a commute.</comment>


Anyone used MaxMind Geolocation library? Have alternate suggestions? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a (fast) way to tell the region/city of an IP address and came across MaxMind Geolocation http://maxmind.com .
They have a free version and a commercial version. I was wondering if anyone had used it, or had alternative suggestions.
One interesting thing is that they require that you install some C library to query a downloadable binary which contains the IP block data. They also provide APIs in all the popular languages. The queries seem fast...looks like you can look up ~hundreds per second which is what I need... <comment><USER2> Lately we've been looking at geolocation stuff as well. Adside from MaxMind, we contacted IP2Location and Quova (never heard back from Quova).

We are not in the US and were looking for a service that could provide geolocation to a more detailed level than city, preferably postcodes. We have not found a service that could do this for us as accurately as we were hoping.

But if you're in the US and/or just looking to resolve IPs to cities, then both IP2Location and MaxMind seem like they'd be worth looking into. Both companies were quite responsive to email contact.

</comment><comment><USER3> See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=165783>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the link: <http://www.maxmind.com/app/geolitecountry></comment>


ZFS On Linux v0.8.0-rc4 adds TRIM, native encryption, direct I/O and much more - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-0.8.0-rc4 <comment><USER2> i thought a primer re: ZFS would be appropriate here.

[https://www.howtogeek.com/175159/an-introduction-to-the-z- fi...](https://www.howtogeek.com/175159/an-introduction-to-the-z-file-system- zfs-for-linux/)</comment>


Google maps knows where my host file is, alegedly - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com.au/search?q=location+of+hosts+file+on+server+2008

<comment><USER2> Google Search is pulling "location" (meaning where is it) and "server 2008" and providing you with a result hence it is giving you a street name in France.

This works with a lot of different numbers as well as "Where is server XXXX"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I understand how it came to the erroneous conclusion, I just thought it was amusing.</comment></comment>


LINQ: Test-Driven Learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MartinChavez/LINQ <comment><AUTHOR> _LINQ: Test-Driven Learning_ \- [http://martinchavez.github.io/LINQ/](http://martinchavez.github.io/LINQ/)

This project is aimed to help the user further study LINQ with a test-driven approach. Each unit contains an annotated tutorial and a platform where you can test your understanding of the topic.

 _Overview_

\- LINQ Query Syntax

\- LINQ Method Syntax

\- LINQ Extension methods

\- Lambda expressions

\- First() and FirstOrDefault()

\- Where()

 _Sorting_

\- OrderBy()

\- ThenBy()

\- OrderByDescending()

\- Reverse()

\- Sorting with null values

 _Creating_

\- Range()

\- Repeat()

 _Comparing and Combining_

\- Intersect \- Except \- Concat \- Distinct \- Union \- Projection

Select() Join() SelectMany()

 _Totaling_

\- Sum operator

 _Grouping and Summing_

\- GroupBy(Single property)

\- GroupBy(Multiple Properties)

\- GroupBy(Parent Property)

 _Measures_

\- Mean (using Average)

\- Median (using GroupBy)

\- Mode (using GroupBy and OrderByDescending)</comment>


Operating Systems Design Principles - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OperatingSystemsDesignPrinciples

<comment><USER2> _It has to be understood that OS design isn't taught in "OS design" classes and books like "OS concepts" are a twisted joke. Teaching low-level implementation details of Unix in OS Design classes is the quintessence of a CargoCult. The material on this page comes as close to an introduction to the subject of OS design as exists either online or off._

Glad they didn't oversell it.

<comment><USER3> Heh, ok I laughed out loud with that one.

I looked at this article, then over at "Operating Systems Principles" by Galvin on my bookcase, then back at the article.

There are _fantastic_ resources out there for operating system design and development, too bad these guys have never read them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A case of Worse is Better?</comment>


Anyone Can Be a Pool Shark When This Projector Calls the Shots - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5988092/anyone-can-be-a-pool-shark-when-this-projector-calls-the-shots

<comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me the episode from Quantum Leap <http://bit.ly/15sofsv></comment>


Automating Compensation for Downtimes Through Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://ethereumworldnews.com/stacktical-rewarding-businesses-with-crypto-through-blockchain-tech/ <comment><USER2> wow, that is very disruptive! up up up</comment>


View-Source Is Good? Discuss. - <AUTHOR> http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2010/01/view-source-is-good-discuss/

<comment><USER2> The power of view-source is multiplied when generous parsers forgive errors and render anyway. The value of a _big_ internet is much greater than the value of a _clean_ internet.

<comment><USER3> I've never done any web programming before, so this is an honest question:

Is HTML so complex that people honestly cannot be expected to write legal markup? Because, if the great majority of people who have made websites are perfectly capable of writing to-spec HTML, having a stricter parser really wouldn't reduce the size of the web in any significant way.

<comment><USER2> _Update_ \- it seemed a shame to leave so much typing in a nested comment, so I cleaned this up and posted it on my blog:

* [http://quandyfactory.com/blog/39/the_virtue_of_forgiving_htm...](http://quandyfactory.com/blog/39/the_virtue_of_forgiving_html_parsers)

I also posted it to HN:

* <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1040169>

\----

> Is HTML so complex that people honestly cannot be expected to write legal > markup?

If you're already a programmer, HTML syntax is easy enough to understand and produce in valid form.

However, most people who create web content _aren't_ programmers - particularly during the early days of the internet when it grew exponentially and established the positive network efficiencies that ultimately dragged more professional developers onto that platform.

Rather, they were amateur enthusiasts exploring a new technological domain. Thanks to HTML, the number of people who could create web pages was vastly higher than the number of people who could write computer programs.

It was the rapid democratization of HTML made possible by forgiving parsers that accounts for much of its success as a language - and of the success of the internet as a platform.

When an HTML parser finds code so bad that it can't render it, the parser just skips it and moves to the next line, in the manner of VB's `on error resume next`. (Contrast the stricture of XML parsers, which fail on encountering malformed code and produce no output at all.)

Since HTML rendering in response to an HTTP GET request is essentially idempotent, there's no real harm in continuing to parse code after encountering an error - but the network effects from doing this are huge.

If only programmers possessed the arcane ability to produce well-formed, valid markup, it would never have experienced the early growth that transformed it into the reigning standard of a huge and growing public network.

 _Edit_ \- one more thing: for many people, HTML provided a gently sloping pathway into programming for people who might otherwise never have managed to overcome the steep barriers to entry of, say, C or C++.

Many programmers today (myself included) found their way into programming from a start in HTML, after bumping into the limitations of static content, exploring event handling in javascript, and then making the jump over to PHP or classic ASP and thence to SQL - and ultimately over to more modern languages with more robust, structured software design principles baked into them than the spaghetti code that powered a lot of early dynamic websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has anyone credibly argued that view-source should be removed from browsers? Or that we should move away from sending plain-text HTML and JavaScript [1] so that websites can hide their source code?

If not, then I'm not sure what the point of the piece is.

[1] I realize that many places obfuscate their JS source. But there is a significant step from that to advocating changing the web's infrastructure so that we send what are essentially binaries instead of plain-text source.

</comment><comment><USER5> In the middle he says that view-source encourages incompatible renderers but doesn't support that position. I really don't see how that can be the case?

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a pointless debate as it is simply impossible to disable the "view source" functionality due to the way HTTP/HTML work.

(Of course a browser can remove this functionality but that wouldn't stop other browsers from keeping it. Also, the DOM can be manipulated from javascript, sometimes this is taken to the extreme such as in GMail, but many modern browsers have DOM inspectors)

</comment><comment><USER7> View-source is a great resource for learning html/js/css, but at the same time, I think the quality of references for html have improved. When view- source was the most critical - in the early years - there wasn't a site like w3schools is now to allow anyone to easily learn html syntax and rules.

It'd still be a horrible thing for the webdev community to lose/throw-away the ability to view the source of any site, but I don't think the effect would be quite as bad as it would have been ~20 years ago.</comment>


Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec12/

<comment><USER2> Posted a few hours ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8536217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8536217)</comment>


One Bitcoin miner is buying 20,000 16nm wafers from TSMC per month - <AUTHOR> https://www.dvhardware.net/article68109.html <comment><USER2> The amount of waste of Bitcoin Mining is incredible.

It is all about virtual digital mining, which is to race to find the first hash, that has X number of zeros in the front of it.

And this burns an incredible amount of electricity. And all for what? Just to show proof of work.

Can't there be a more useful usage of cryptocurrency mining to show proof of work?

Something that is more relevant to humanity. Like protein folding? Or planet hunting? Or pattern analysis? Or something else, that can be used to build an AI brain?

<comment><USER3> It is impossible to create a "useful" PoW. The issue comes down to incentives. As bitcoin is a decentralized, trust-less system, there needs to be constant and powerful incentives to prevent miners from cheating (by creating forks, or executing any number of other attacks).

The current main incentive against cheating is that miners will lose their invested PoW (compute time + electricity) if they cheat and get their block thrown out. However, with a useful PoW, this calculus changes. Now, the PoW is no longer "wasted" when the miner cheats and gets caught as the PoW is now useful for something besides mining. This means that attacks are much cheaper and much more likely to happen.

One interesting part about this is that you can consider PoW usefulness on a sliding scale. The more useful the PoW, the more vulnerable your coin is to attack. Thus, you can probably get away with a "useful" PoW if it isn't actually very useful. This is one of the reasons why most "useful" PoW schemes focus on something which is pretty much useless (such as finding weird primes and whatnot).

<comment><USER4> > The current main incentive against cheating is that miners will lose their > invested PoW (compute time + electricity) if they cheat and get their block > thrown out. However, with a useful PoW, this calculus changes. Now, the PoW > is no longer "wasted" when the miner cheats and gets caught as the PoW is > now useful for something besides mining.

So you spend $x on (compute time + electricity) to mine a useful PoW worth $y outside the blockchain and an additional mining reward of $z. If you cheat, you don't get to collect the $z reward. Although your original $x are not completely wasted, you still only have $y instead of the $y + $z you could have had.

How is that not incentive enough?

<comment><USER5> $y + $z must be greater than $x. If $y is money and $z is scientific contributions... $y is most likely not something people are offering money for. So in an open market its value is at or near $0. So $z by itself must exceed $x.

To not care about the $z, $y must exceed $x by itself and that seems really unlikely for the types of things that OP suggested instead of proof-of-work.

<comment><USER6> >If $y is money ... $y is most likely not something people are offering money for.

 _scrathes head_

<comment><USER5> I think I was trying to be too smart and I got my variables confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the article-

Bitmain, the largest Bitcoin miner on the planet, is now buying a whopping 20,000 16nm wafers a month from TSMC! That's double as much as in the previous quarter and a _higher volume than what NVIDIA orders from TSMC._

Related material- [https://www.gmo.jp/en/news/article/?id=764](https://www.gmo.jp/en/news/article/?id=764)

A competitor to Bitmain just finished their prototype 12nm Bitcoin mining chip and is moving forward to their target 7nm mining chip.

<comment><USER7> > _A competitor to Bitmain just finished their prototype 12nm Bitcoin mining > chip and is moving forward to their target 7nm mining chip_

Huh, maybe the dark fibre of Bitcoin will be cheap silicon and subsidized fab research.

<comment><USER8> Apply that to energy efficiency research as well. The monetary incentives are too strong for it not to happen.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's possible to be energy efficient in a proof-of-work blockchain? Whatever energy saving you come up with will be negated by having to match competing miners' increasing throughput. If you are not running on 100% you are losing out?

<comment><USER10> You're thinking from the perspective of the miners.

From the perspective of the hardware manufacturers that's an advantage. If you're making the hardware and you come up with a 10% energy savings, everyone _must_ now replace their old hardware or be left in the dust. Hardware manufacturers will make a killing. The prisoner's dilemma you are thinking of only applies to the miners, it's a benefit for the parties selling them the hardware.

<comment><USER7> > _Hardware manufacturers will make a killing. The prisoner 's dilemma you are > thinking of only applies to the miners_

Something something shovels in a gold rush...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My wife and I were just talking about Bitcoin and I had this wild theory. This is obviously BS, but I had fun exploring this idea. Here it goes:

What if Bitcoin/blockchain is a actually a strong AI? The AI manipulated humans via lucrative mining to spend ever increasing amount of electricity and other resources on running it. It's distributed and hence cannot be shut down easily.

If there was an application taking up so much power and we didn't know what it did, it would be pretty suspicious. So instead of trying to be secret, the AI went public and promised wealth, no-regulations, etc. to humans to do its bidding.

How else would you do it if you were a strong AI?

Maybe the things we know about blockchain is just the surface level. What if all the hashes that are generated are part of code+data that runs and trains this AI?

And hey, we don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is and if that person is even human.

Disclaimer: I don't have any background in encryption, crypto currency, blockchain, have no stake in any *coin, etc. But I do love science fiction.

<comment><USER12> I love it! For all the bad things bitcoin has brought, I have to say it makes me feel like I'm living in a cyberpunk novel! Snow Crash...Neuromancer.... I think people are focusing on all the negatives and overlooking all the fascinating aspects of whats going on. The internet has basically spontaneously created an interesting and suspicious technology. I think it's really only been possible thanks to the increasingly effective and available means of energy production, such that almost a consumer commodity.

Neal Stephenson, if you're reading this, this would make an amazing sci-fi novel.

<comment><USER13> I think I've heard various sci-fi authors grousing it's hard to write these days because reality is so sci-fi and outlandish (Trump).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> On top of that, Etherium mining is eating the graphics board market. The price of NVidia's higher end boards has doubled in the last six months.[1] Etherium was supposed to require a general purpose CPU to mine, but now it's done on GPUs with large RAM.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2018/01/cryptocurrency-b...](https://arstechnica.com/tech- policy/2018/01/cryptocurrency-boom-creates-insane-global-graphics-card- shortage/)

<comment><USER15> I've bought a 1070 last year for machine learning and used it for a few days.

Now I don't know what to do: sell it since Volta will be a game-changer for ML anyway, but what if when I will want to do ML again it will be impossible to buy any card?

<comment><USER16> You could have run miner on it 24/7 when not doing other work, by this time you could get price you paid more than 2x, maybe 3x

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a cryptocurrency-confused individual, I read articles like this and wonder how I'm supposed to assign any meaning to the "value" being created here, and by blockchain PoW in general.

So this company is buying a bunch of wafers... He's converting the value of the wafers into value on blockchain, I guess?

Because I can't help but interpret these things as "some people are wasting a lot of electricity, and you should pay them for it!" But, I'm open to a better explanation.

<comment><USER18> Why are banknotes worth anything? They are just pieces of paper with some ink on them, after all. They are "worth" something, because people are willing to do work or trade you stuff for them. The same with mining bitcoin - instead of printing banknotes, you make a "thing" that you can then trade for services and objects, because people want to have that "thing"(this part is crucial). Most importantly, people are willing to trade that "thing" for real actual dollars, and hence the mining craze.

<comment><USER19> > Why are banknotes worth anything?

Until 1971 dollars were worth something because they could be converted into one of the thousands of tons of gold bars the US stores at Fort Knox (and elsewhere).

Then a magic wand was waved over the printing presses at the US Treasury and they began to attain value for no reason. This magic has now spread to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even cryptocoins like Dogecoin, whose creator has stated that the coin was created as a joke.

If the dollar never needed gold convertibility, why did they ever have convertibility in the first place? Why does the government spend a lot of money to store thousands of tons of unneeded gold at Fort Knox etc.?

There is a magic to the dollar - because if a panic ever causes its power to wane too much, Trump only has to utter six magical words to let it regain its power - "the convertibility window is open again".

How many thousands of tons of gold, governments, armies etc. stand behind Bitcoin?

<comment><USER20> Convertibility has always been based on a fundamental misunderstanding of money, and always fails because it's a flawed concept (and requires fixed exchange rates, which is always a bad idea).

Money has always been based more on representing debt than actually having intrinsic value (that misunderstanding comes from the barter myth, that pre- money economies had markets that used barder, which there is little anthropological evidence for - see _Debt: The First 5000 Years_ for a pretty good overview).

As for now, the US dollar has a baseline demand because all business and income in the US requires taxes to be paid to the Government in US dollars, and all spending by the Government happens in dollars. The rest of the domestic economy emerges out of that, just as market economies always have. The value of the dollar is effectively ultimately 'backed' by the goods and services produced by the US economy. Herein lies the problem with convertibility - why would we expect that the amount of gold the Fed corresponds to the size of the economy? It won't, so the value will always diverge and hence how the system failed (more than once).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Note that Bitmain is mostly a hardware vendor, although they do mine using their own equipment. Most of these chips will be sold to other miners, not used by Bitmain themselves.

<comment><USER22> I was wondering about this, why do they sell them instead of mining them? They could sell the older model once the new chips they designed are ready no?

<comment><USER23> The % of the network they would control would be too high maybe? Fundamentally the value of their product is based on the price of bitcoin. A single miner that gets close to 50% might be seen a a huge risk and drive down the price.

<comment><USER24> Let's say some party/group gets 51%. Now they "own" the blockchain. Doesn't its value drop to 0, thereby making the whole effort pointless?

I'm not going to buy BTC (or whatever) from that system, therefore the owners take no cash from it. Yeah they have all the BTC, but so what?

Everyone loses. What am I missing?

<comment><USER21> The movie plot here is to secretly get 51% of the hashrate, cash out a billion-dollar fraud, then walk away. In reality it's unlikely to happen.

<comment><USER25> If that were possible, it would be a one time thing I am guessing. But it's possible to short bitcoin now I believe. So ruining the network/reputation could be profitable?

I am speculating and don't know for sure.

<comment><USER21> You probably can't short a large enough amount to make it worthwhile. Also, due to Murphy's Law the price would probably go up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I mean, yes 20k is a big order, but to put that in perspective, it's at most the output of one small production line for one month, and more likely they're balancing it with other orders (and doing a ramp to verify the process before going full bore). It's still a tiny fraction of the foundry industry overall.

<comment><USER27> Definitely a tiny fraction of the industry but also a tiny fraction of just TSMC. For reference, they claim they did 10 million wafers in 2016.

[http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/manufacturing/f...](http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/manufacturing/fab_capacity.htm)

<comment><USER28> 20k wafers / month = 240k wafers / year. So, 2.4%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just a thought, if we use even 1% of all computing power that is currently being used for mining cryptocurrency, what can it be used to accomplished?

<comment><USER30> Unfortunately, these chips are designed explicitly for the SHA algorithm BTC uses. I wonder if there would be a way to make an algorithm based around protein folding that could be verified like a hash?

<comment><USER8> [https://curecoin.net/knowledge-base/about-curecoin/what- is-c...](https://curecoin.net/knowledge-base/about-curecoin/what-is-curecoin/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has it ever happened before that a consumer of chips is among the largest customers of what appears to be the biggest foundry in the world? (defining "consumer" as "we actually use & run that chip, we don't embed it or sell it"?)

<comment><USER32> I've heard that Google has a decent amount of custom silicon too.

<comment><USER33> [I don't know about Google but] lots of people do relatively specialized silicon. However, rarely that happens at the most advanced processes (i.e. low nm).

<comment><USER32> That's totally fair. Google's parts that I know about are security coprocessors (like a TPM) that wouldn't really need the newest process.

They probably have NICs too that might make sense at that node though.

<comment><USER34> Their NICs probably use off the shelf ICs from Broadcom or similar. In other words, Google would only handle PCB layout and up.

Besides, modern analog ICs are usually fabbed using custom processes and in- house lower node fabs.

Designing high-speed RF ICs is a huge effort, and as far as I know, Google does not have such capability.

<comment><USER32> IDK, they're still actively supporting the LLVM backend for Myricom's LANai chips, despite Myricom being sold off a few years ago.

And the NICs don't really need custom high speed RF, the foundry has a SERDES block that'll work just fine for connecting to a phy.

<comment><USER34> Yes, but what I was saying is that Google likely does not design the PHY and/or other such low-level components.

I am trying to point out that designing a NIC is not equivalent to designing custom ICs, _unless_ you are also designing the ICs used in the NIC.

<comment><USER32> The PHYs aren't even on the same board for them; it's just SERDES going to a connector.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_form- factor_pluggable_tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_form- factor_pluggable_transceiver)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> And to think back in 2011 we couldn't get an investor to back us with the $1M needed to produce just one BTC mining wafer.

How times have changed.

</comment><comment><USER36> It seems these large players will do everything in their power to make sure this bubble does not pop. I do not know the size of such investment, but it seems to me that these players have the ability to keep the price from crashing and keep the bubble from popping.

<comment><USER37> See, I had a different thought here. If anything, mining new bitcoins reduces the value of current ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what's keeping the bubble from bursting is more dollars coming in - big miners aren't doing that, they don't buy their BTC.

Unlike a clueless average Joe at home, they're running huge businesses, as this article suggests, so they're probably smarter. Does anyone know what the math here is? I'm assuming a) they aren't cashing out too much/too regularly because they're huge and this would drop the price too much and b) they aren't stupid to make huge investments like this, just hoping all would be well.

Where am I wrong? Is the number of fresh "investors" still big enough for all of them to have a steady cashflow? Do they believe they can get out before everyone else? Are they just like all other believers, but with deeper pockets?

<comment><USER38> Mining new bitcoins makes transaction easier, which improves liquidity of current bitcoins. That certainly should have a positive effect on the theoretical value of a bitcoin.

<comment><USER39> > Mining new bitcoins makes transaction easier

No. As long as at least one person is brute forcing hashes, transactions will be processed at the same rate of about 10 tx/s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Who makes money in a gold rush?

It's the guy selling shovels.

<comment><USER41> That was my thinking too.

There are a lot of replies in this thread talking about Bitmain like they're the miner, when in reality they're the mining supply store selling miners the shovels, hard hats, and so on.

Mining itself may be profitable, or it may not. But no matter what, the supplier should come out with a fairly healthy profit if they play their cards right.

<comment><USER42> Maybe. The lead time on this stuff is not insignificant. It's not that simple. Bitmain/Jihan understand that; they take a varied approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> And these guys expect some ROI from this investment. When you buy bitcoin, you now know where your money goes.

</comment><comment><USER44> With each year, I think more and more that the whole bitcoin thingy was devised as an elaborate scheme to prop hash bruteforcing research.

Another crazy thing that pops in mind now is now long forgotten rumor that Chiang is Satoshi.

<comment><USER45> There's no results on Google for Satoshi Nakamoto Chiang?

What's the rumor?

<comment><USER44> That Morris Chang and co. came with bitcoin thingy to prop their sales knowing that if btc takes off, they are guaranteed to get orders for hash crunching machinery

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> So people with enough bitcoin can generate more bitcoin. Meh.

</comment><comment><USER47> The article is pretty light, are these whole wafers? What size?

<comment><USER21> Whole 300 mm wafers; TSMC doesn't sell partials AFAIK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Anything that mentions bitcoin mining gets people worked up and negative for some reason. More demand for compute is a good thing long-term. More demand for video cards is great for all parallel computing long-term, hopefully someone besides NVIDIA seriously moves into the space.

<comment><USER49> > Anything that mentions bitcoin mining [...] More demand for video cards is > great [...]

Bitcoin mining no longer uses video cards. More demand for bitcoin mining does not translate into more demand for video cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Bitcoin was mistake

</comment><comment><USER51> Is this going to help BTC's price as it's been falling past two days?

</comment><comment><USER52> I suppose that at some point it's going to become economically feasible to make integrated BPUs (...Bitcoin Processing Units...) and obviate the ASICs.

<comment><USER53> Bitcoin ASICs _are literally_ "Bitcoin Processing Units".</comment></comment>


Native vs Html5 Mobile Applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.deck.cc/native_vs_html5_mobile_applications.html It seems like everyone is doing native apps now. Many people I know ponder about whether to learn Objective-C on the one hand or dive into the Android platform on the other hand.<p>A tough choice as both of them already gained a significant smartphone market share and are growing fast. Clients actually demand native apps even while most of them could easily be implemented using html5. <comment><USER2> The problem I have with offline HTML5 applications, on the iPhone at least, is that when your phone thinks it is on the internet because AT&T is servicing it with 4 bars, but only providing a few dozen bits per second of effective bandwidth.

So your user decides to run your application and touches the icon on the home screen ("not a desktop").

• Your application launches and displays your splash screen instantly. (Everything from here out is your fault in the user's eyes.)

• Safari decides to use HTTP to verify the manifest file and see how things are. It also, perversely, does a query to load the splash screen that is already showing.

• Now your user stares at the splash screen for 60 seconds wondering what kind of an idiot you are and how badly you must hate him while AT&T shifts a couple thousand bits of manifest response to you in their most profit enhancing manner.

This can be mitigated by pushing cache times up, but you either push them to infinity and explicitly change URLs to catch updates or roll dice with your user's experience.

I'd put a release number in the URL, set the expirations to doomsday, and bump the release number for each update, but the URL of the first page loaded in the app is fixed when the user bookmarks it onto the desktop.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about geolocation or using the phone's built-in camera, is/will this at all be possible from HTML5 apps?

Those features are a huge incentive to create mobile apps, imo.

<comment><USER4> There is a geolocation API that falls under the extended "HTML5" family of technologies. It's implemented in MobileSafari, don't know about Android or WinMo.

<comment><USER5> It is possible with Android too, even the Camera works on Froyo.

<comment><USER6> At the Google I/O 2010 keynote, day 2, they said that camera and magnetometer support in the browser will be integrated in the next release (gingerbread?). What they show was "a sneak peak of what coming next, after froyo".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> SproutCore Touch has native support for complex HTML5 apps and takes advantage of hardware-accelerated graphics. Try touch.sproutcore.com and touch.sproutcore.com/hedwig on an iPad.</comment>


Loglo: Experimental spreadsheet and stack language for vector graphics - <AUTHOR> https://loglo.app/ <comment><USER2> Very cool idea. Issues I noticed (without intending to discourage this sort of brainstorming in any way):

1\. You can either define a function scattered across multiple cells in a single row, or gathered all in one cell. But as is, it doesn't look like you can define a function taking arguments in the scattered way.

2\. The way the row evaluation works, each cell from left to right shares a stack. But the cells only show the top of the stack. The rest stays hidden. This feels like a departure from a key tenet of spreadsheets: to show all the data.

But this really sparked lots of ideas for me, and even got me to make a 5.5 minute video riffing on it: [https://archive.org/details/akkartik-2020-06-17-LoGlo](https://archive.org/details/akkartik-2020-06-17-LoGlo)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm, so cell formulas, custom formula implementations, and presumably named cell ranges, all use the same language, a concatenative language? And all are written in cells rather than (the latter two) as auxiliary data?

I wonder, for formulas, if word stack effects are known or inferred, might the language simply be syntactic sugar? So `A:| 3 | 5 | negate | plus |` desugars as `| 3 | 5 | =negate(A2) | =plus(A1,A3) |`. Because the stack effects of negate and plus are known to be x-x and xx-x respectively. Factor is an example of a concatenative language with explicit stack effects. It does sacrifice allowing variadic words.

Might a range of code cells serve as a code block? In a concatenative language, evaluating a word simply pushes its definition on the stack. So if `A:| 1 | + |` and `B:| 2 push(A1:A2) |` then B1 would expand as `2 1 +`. So perhaps named ranges and custom formula definition are then overlapping concepts?

Meta: I find it curious that this post, variously submitted a day ago, and again at 1/2 and 1/4 day ago, were all at 1 or 2 points with no comments, and then this, the first submitted, surged to popularity. I'm glad it "caught".

<comment><USER4> (on that last bit: we put it in the second-chance pool, described at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380), so it got an automatic placement on the front page. When we do that, we usually pick the earliest submission, modulo some technical limitations that kick in after a few days.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Like. I use a (very primitive) Forth based language for laser machining every day. Despite how poor the implementation is (it was hobbled together over many years by novice programmers) it is amazingly productive. RPNs don't get enough love.

<comment><USER4> > _I use a (very primitive) Forth based language for laser machining every > day. Despite how poor the implementation is (it was hobbled together over > many years by novice programmers) it is amazingly productive_

Please say more!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome, and as the title says, very left field. I wonder what visuals would be produced if you could specify that a given parameter linearly tracks across a parameter space. Some crazy animation?

</comment><comment><USER7> I developed but never completed a similar idea for custom business rules:

* each spreadsheet defined one function

* one sheet for inputs, each input labeled (i.e. function parameters)

* one sheet for outputs, each output labelled (i.e. function results)

* sheets for test data for inputs and expected output (examples of correct function parameters and results)

* cell values could be result tables from SQL statements, with cell formulas that could act on tables (where, join, etc) i.e. a single cell could contain a table value

* the idea was to allow consultants to naturally design business rules in a functional manner, and intuitively see how values flowed through a calculation. Debugging is natural, and test driven design is built in to the design. Business rules are often driven by examples in my experience.

* Because all calculations are a graph, I believed that the results of complex business rules could be computed efficiently as updates occur.

There was more to it of course.

<comment><USER8> We've made a tool for graph calculations on tabular datasets where the results update immediately on changes. Check it out [https://easymorph.com](https://easymorph.com). (Disclaimer: I'm the founder).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat. It reminds me of work from MIT's (now defunct) Aesthetic and Computation group, e.g. Design by Numbers and Processing.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm really looking forward to seeing this develop. I think we're far from having too many strategies for generating parametric drawings.

I liken this to OpenSCAD, which is really fun in a similar way.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I immediately wondered how to do the same kinds of things in OpenSCAD .. seems like adding a spreadsheet control to OpenSCAD would be low hanging fruit, also ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _It 's currently focused on the narrow domain of producing SVG output to feed to a CNC machine or laser cutter._

Having generated files for CNC mills, laser cutters, waterjets, and a plasma cutter, drawing by writing commands seems like the wrong way to do the job. Everybody uses graphical tools for that. There was once a programming language for machine tools called APT, where, amusingly, GOTO moved the tool. Nobody does that any more. Maybe for CNC punching or drill lists, but not for anything with non-trivial edges and surfaces.

The good graphical software for this is expensive, though. Vectrix has a whole line of software - Cut2D, Cut2D Pro, VCarve, VCarve Pro, and Aspire, starting from $150 and each more expensive than the last. They're really all the same program.

You can also do this stuff with Autodesk Inventor, Fusion 360, SolidWorks, or other high-end CAD programs, but those are overkill for a laser cutter. On the free side, there's TinkerCAD and FreeCAD, which can do the job and suffer from the usual problems of open source GUI programs.

<comment><USER13> Back in high school, I did a bit of laser cutting using Adobe Illustrator. We would pull in 2D vector drawings from Inventor, but there was nothing stopping us from making things directly in Illustrator. I guess that would be an off- the-shelf alternative to some of these specialized programs.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, Illustrator (or SVG, DXF, etc...) as a source format is pretty common, but there was almost certainly another piece of software (or possibly firmware, depending on the device) in the pipeline there. The source format is only the first step, you then need to generate tool paths from the source that actually direct the machine -- those involve converting the primitives from your drawing (something like "filled circle of radius r at point x,y") to a series of x/y/z motions that achieve the stated result, while accounting for all sorts of physical constraints like the nature and size of the tool, cutting speed, feed speed, etc... That's what the software mentioned is doing, and isn't something practical to do in Illustrator alone.

<comment><USER15> Actually, where the laser is concerned - probably not. Most commercial laser cutting machines have a print driver that handles all the conversion between Creation and Output.

I only ever deal with GCode when outputting to my CNC.

<comment><USER14> Exactly... g-code is a toolpath format, and something needs to generate that. It can be a piece of standalone software, a printer driver, or whatever, but it requires more information than is typical (or advisable to put) in your image format. That said, I have seen some attempts at generating g-code directly in application plugins or something...it's possible, but not with great results typically, and it's not something built-in off the shelf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This makes me very happy! I would love to see the end result along side the sheet that defined it!

</comment><comment> nicholas-cc Have you seen Bret Victor's substroke? Loglo really reminds me of this: [http://worrydream.com/substroke/](http://worrydream.com/substroke/)

</comment><comment><USER15> As someone who spends at least a few hours every day working with vectors that are then output to a laser cutter or a CNC, I'm having a hard time working out what exact problem this solves.

To my - very likely entirely ignorant - eye, it seems to hyper-complicate something much easier and quicker done with a mouse (etc) and a GUI.

I'm sure I'm just a bit stupid.

</comment><comment><USER17> >> Loglo is an experimental programming environment by Avi Bryant.

Avi was one of the founders of Dribbledb. I miss Dribble!

<comment><USER18> DabbleDB [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabble_DB](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabble_DB).

I agree--it was an interesting time and Dabble seemed really fresh and unique in its choice of tools!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe something like the eggbot extensions for inkscape would be a good idea for this [https://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/The_Eggbot_Extensions](https://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/The_Eggbot_Extensions)

</comment><comment><USER20> This looks interesting. Here's a shameless plug if somebody needs tracing:

ImageTracer is a simple raster image tracer and vectorizer that outputs SVG, 100% free, Public Domain.

Available in JavaScript (works both in the browser and with Node.js), "desktop" Java and "Android" Java:

[https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjs](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjs)

[https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjava](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerjava)

[https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerandroid](https://github.com/jankovicsandras/imagetracerandroid)

</comment><comment><USER21> "forthsheet"

What an interesting combination!

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd love to hear about Avi Bryant's time at Etsy. I'm sure he has some interesting stories.

</comment><comment><USER4> Submitted title was "Loglo: A very experimental programming environment by Avi Bryant", which was a good choice because it was representative language from the article. And we love and admire Avi. But I'm wondering what title might appeal most to the readers here, and thought maybe a description of its juiciest elements would fare even better. We shall see.

</comment><comment><USER23> Site can't be reached :(

<comment><USER24> Interesting, anyone else seeing this? It's hosted on Netlify and is just static HTML&JS.

<comment><USER25> works for me</comment></comment></comment>


The Noel Smith-Wenkle Salary Negotiation Method - <AUTHOR> http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/org/noel.html <comment><USER2> Woohoo! I remember taking a C programming course from John Shipman (the author of this post) back in the day.</comment>


How Typescript saved me hours of debugging webpack - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@devonmarisa/unambiguous-webpack-config-with-typescript-8519def2cac7 <comment><USER2> I'm honestly at a loss as to why typescript is not the industry standard now. JavaScript is a mess, and I'm continually surprised to encounter anyone who prefers it.

<comment><USER3> JavaScript is a mess, but the TypeScript benefits are a full "buy in". Like implicit or type inference only works when you use 'imports'.

It's a decent amount of cruft that you need to put in and it's not always smooth sailing.

TypeScript sometimes needs hinting and if you're doing it server-side. I once had to fix something in my node_modules because they were doing something wrong and TypeScript wouldn't compile unless I fixed that too.

I'm not saying that it's not worth it.

However, my team were severely turned off when we first started running with this.

<comment><USER2> I think most teams push back when any new, stricter ruleset is imposed upon them. Sometimes they need some time to see the benefit. I was in the same boat in having to force TS on my team, but they've come to appreciate how effective it is at preventing issues and helping to track down already existing issues. Originally my decision was based on cost, so much dev time is burned away dealing with the shortcomings of JS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool. Webpack is pretty popular. Also, we use brunch at work (mostly Phoenix apps). Even though it's less common, it works pretty well. It's similar to webpack but it currently only has js config (brunch-config.js). It would be cool if someone added TypeScript config support (not TS asset support) and a similar blog post about how to use it.</comment>


YesWeCode: a national initiative to teach coding to 100,000 kids - <AUTHOR> http://www.yeswecode.org/

<comment> dj-wonk One key difference from other "let's get people coding" initiatives is that YesWeCode targets low-opportunity youth.

> There are currently 300+ coding and computer education programs serving > youth in America. Of the 300+, less than 13% target low-opportunity youth. > With our involvement, these small but mighty groups could grow stronger -- > and their number could grow exponentially.</comment>


Uber Now Offers Retirement Funds. But Will Drivers Even Care? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/08/uber-now-offers-retirement-funds-will-drivers-even-care/all/1 <comment><AUTHOR> The title of the article sounds like this is a retirement fund, but it sounds like they are referring their drivers to start IRAs with Betterment. It seems that as contracting companies, drivers could maybe set up their own SEPs.

Some differences

\- An Uber Driver with a Full Time job and 401k may not be able to deduct IRA contributions

\- An Uber Driver making over 120k wouldn't be able to contribute to a Roth IRA.

\- Lower Contribution Limits</comment>


Facebook Introduces Live Video - <AUTHOR> http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/04/introducing-new-ways-to-create-share-and-discover-live-video-on-facebook/ <comment><USER2> I watched the video and skimmed a bit if text and I don't get it. Is this video conferencing?

<comment><USER3> It's like Periscope/Meerkat</comment></comment>


Stripe Checkout in more languages - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/checkout-in-more-languages

<comment><USER2> This helps so many users around the world trust the e-commerce websites on a whole new level. Hopefully you'll start expanding to more countries soon without limits on bank accounts, particularly Eastern European region.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can't wait for Stripe to be available in more countries.

<comment><USER4> Can't wait for Stripe to be available in more countries without having to have a US bank account to set it up.

<comment><USER5> You only need a US bank account to open a US Stripe account, other countries don't require a US bank account

<comment><USER6> You need a US bank account to receive transfers in USD. It will be great when Stripe allows non-US companies to receive USD without requiring conversion to another currency.

<comment><USER5> It depends on the country, Canadian Stripe accounts support USD denominated Canadian bank accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> YAY! Japanese support for Stripe.

Unfortunately, I found a few issues: [http://imgur.com/vZbheUP](http://imgur.com/vZbheUP)

1) The Zip-Code lookup is GREAT, except it looks up the town name, not the 都道府県 (prefecture) like it should.

2) The prefecture is in english, not Japanese

3) The Country names are also in english, not Japanese

4) Was hoping to see auto-kana support for Japanese names: [https://github.com/harisenbon/autokana](https://github.com/harisenbon/autokana) ;)

Overall, looks amazing, and awesome that you're getting ready for a full launch in Japan.

* Running in IE11 on Windows 7 (Japanese)

</comment><comment><USER8> How is this news? Is it 2004?

I meet industry sales people who are baffled why some companies insist on Stripe despite the cost. HackerNews promotion is clearly a powerful force.

<comment><USER9> I'm one of Stripe's cofounders. It's about the functionality, not the promotion. The whole premise of Stripe is that a richer, more powerful stack of APIs -- rather than the bare-bones electrical outlet to the credit card networks that existed before -- is a better solution for most businesses. Whatever success (and any recognition) we've had to date follows from that; not the other way around.

I wish something like Stripe existed in 2004. If it had, we wouldn't have had to start the company...

<comment><USER10> I'm a huge fan of Stripe and the benefits of using it, although I've had close to 40% of all international customers receive a 'your card was declined error'.

I've had to ask them to call up their bank/card provider and request for the restriction to be removed.

Is Stripe's ease of onboarding/getting started causing such a high rate of flagged transactions? What's going on behind the scenes between banks and payment services providers and is this something that could be improved in the future?

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry to read of your problem, but also glad to know it's not just us. The last time I checked, we were losing more subscribers to mysterious international card failures on Stripe than all other causes (including deliberate cancellations) put together, but I'm talking about a small side business here so I wondered whether we'd just been an unfortunate statistical anomaly.

I did contact Stripe support a while ago to ask about this, but they didn't seem to know any more than we did and weren't able to do anything to improve the situation. The best theory we have so far is that given how many of the transactions fail in the second month of a subscription and the greater proportion of international failures compared to domestic, we're coming in borderline on a lot of US banks' fraud checks, perhaps because we're abroad and charging in a different currency. Then when we don't have the card security code after the first payment, maybe that pushes us over the line. We're hardly a high risk business generally, though, so it would be interesting to know whether this problem is inherent to accepting international card payments or something more specific to Stripe.

Naturally we're investigating whether general improvements we could make, such as charging in local currencies or better Dunning management, would improve the success rate. However, it's hard to make sensible decisions with so little useful data about the cause of the problem, particularly for a business with limited development resources available that we'd rather spend on developing the service itself. In the meantime, I read these anecdotes on HN about businesses aiming for at least 95 or 98 percent retention month-to-month and dream...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just curious: Is it on Stripe's roadmap to provide an inline version of Checkout, IE an option to get a form in an iframe, instead of the modal?

<comment><USER13> Colin Percival has got you covered: [http://paymentiframe.com/](http://paymentiframe.com/)

<comment><USER12> There is but a _small niche_ between "project is not important enough to care about a modal vs. an iframe" and "project is SO important that I carefully style my own payment form." A dead-easy Stripe-built solution appeals in this small niche; however I'm not going to introduce a third-party dependency in this case - at that point I'll just make my own form - which is what I did :)

(Is my memory wrong that Colin's tool predates the launch of Checkout? Perhaps even Colin's tool _inspired_ Checkout to a small extent?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its hard not to like Stripe as a company.

<comment><USER15> They seem to represent everything right in the field of payment processing, and their office vibe is extremely chill-- I just got rejected for a job there after a few weeks of really promising interviews, and I've gotta say it stings a lot to be told you don't fit in a company full of cool people.

<comment><USER16> how would you feel if you get rejected from a company of douches?

<comment><USER17> probably not worse.

<comment><USER16> "Am I too douchey for this douchey company"

or

"Am I not douchey enough for this douchey company"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</comment>


Perovskite (Structure) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perovskite_(structure) <comment><AUTHOR> >"A perovskite is any material with the same type of crystal structure as calcium titanium oxide (CaTiO3), known as the perovskite structure."

[...]

"The general chemical formula for perovskite compounds is ABX3, where 'A' and 'B' are two cations of very different sizes, and X is an anion that bonds to both. The 'A' atoms are larger than the 'B' atoms. The ideal cubic structure has the B cation in 6-fold coordination, surrounded by an octahedron of anions, and the A cation in 12-fold cuboctahedral coordination."

[...]

"The perovskite structure is adopted by many oxides that have the chemical formula ABO3."

[...]

"Perovskites can be deposited as epitaxial thin films on top of other perovskites,[10] using techniques such as pulsed laser deposition and molecular-beam epitaxy. These films can be a couple of nanometres thick or as small as a single unit cell.[11] The well-defined and unique structures at the interfaces between the film and substrate can be used for interface engineering, where new types properties can arise.[12] This can happen through several mechanisms, from mismatch strain between the substrate and film, change in the oxygen octahedral rotation, compositional changes, and quantum confinement.[13] An example of this is LaAlO3 grown on SrTiO3, where the interface can exhibit conductivity, even though both LaAlO3 and SrTiO3 is non- conductive.[14]"

[...]

"Perovskite materials exhibit many interesting and intriguing properties from both the theoretical and the application point of view. Colossal magnetoresistance, ferroelectricity, superconductivity, charge ordering, spin dependent transport, high thermopower and the interplay of structural, magnetic and transport properties are commonly observed features in this family. These compounds are used as sensors and catalyst electrodes in certain types of fuel cells[16] and are candidates for memory devices and spintronics applications.[17]

Many superconducting ceramic materials (the high temperature superconductors) have perovskite-like structures, often with 3 or more metals including copper, and some oxygen positions left vacant. One prime example is yttrium barium copper oxide which can be insulating or superconducting depending on the oxygen content."</comment>


Contact lens-based Google Glass competitor unveiled at CES 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiatvnews.com/business/india/breaking-news-ces-2014-ioptik-contact-lens-based-google-glass-9599.html <comment><USER2> Personally I think I prefer Google Glass to this product. I think most of the privacy concerns that Google are experiencing will be the same/worse for the Contact lens product.

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER3> They use a contact lens _and_ an eyeglass? That's a nonstarter.

Aside: It is nearly impossible to make a design which uses just a contact lens.</comment>


A Practical Guide to Launching a Product on the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://howtolaunch.fyi <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys. I've been marketing a product of mine called One Profile as an indie maker/solo-dev/solo-entrepreneur/first-time founder for over 6 months now and have since picked up a number of practical and useful tips on product- launching.

Along my journey, I managed to get to #1 product of the day on Product Hunt. When I first started, I was kinda clueless about where to start and how to get my product noticed. So, here's a free practical guide for anyone who needs some help in getting their product noticed in this hella competitive space of product making.

All the best!</comment>


Ask HN: Web API's That Allow Commercial Usage? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering if anyone know of any web api's out there that allow for commercial usage. I cannot seem to find a single api, rss feed, data source, or anything for that matter, that allows for commercial usage. I'm also wondering how all of these new websites that utilize rss feeds and other data sources make, or plan to make, money. And of course, looking for free ones.<p>Thanks.. <comment><USER2> Our startup - Feedity ( <http://feedity.com> ) - allows commercial usage (as part of our Pro account). The service basically allows anyone to create RSS feeds from virtually any webpage, and use the feeds for personal subscription, mashups, or online publishing.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> forgot to mention..excluding those 'eye-candy' api's like google maps and charts, etc</comment>


Germany's New Immigration Law - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IWantOut/comments/f5rqx3/news_all_you_need_to_know_about_germanys_new_law/ <comment><USER2> Interesting, this is the first time I heard about this. Can only speak from IT experience, but it didn't seem really hard to immigrate to Germany with a BSc so far - but selection bias, I obviously only talked to the people who managed to come here.

My point being - will this really change a lot? Seems to be tailored to the specific group that already had the best chances to be accepted. Still a good change though.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder what recent changes in the bloc might have pushed Germany to pass such legislation.

Also interesting that all non-EU/EEA countries with the exception of one in particular can now enter Germany as tourists as apply for a job seeker visa without having to apply for permission prior to entry.

<comment><USER4> UK points based system. It will be much harder to enter UK now and this is where Germany will offer alternative. A very strategic move by Germany.</comment></comment>


Online Anonymity Box Puts You a Mile Away from Your IP Address - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/online-anonymity-box-puts-mile-away-ip-address/?mbid=nl_070115

<comment><USER2> I'm sure there's plenty of use cases for this... but I personally can't think of anything I can do online that would make the authorities more dangerous to me than dropping of an antenna laden, home-made looking spy-box at my local coffee joint.

</comment><comment><USER3> Posted recently [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9811218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9811218)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure how this works, because 900 MHz is a ham band, the FCC forbids encrypted communication over this frequency

<comment><USER5> It is, but 900MHz is also used as the cordless phone band, and those are often encrypted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now you just need those face-morphing pills that Tom Cruise takes in Minority Report to avoid being caught on video tape sneaking around your local public library with some sort of transmogrifier-looking device.

<comment><USER7> Not quite the face-morphing pills you're looking for, but something to the same effect [http://cvdazzle.com/](http://cvdazzle.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'll stick with my motion-detector triggered thermite laced bitcoin bought servers thank you very much.</comment>