Uber makes JFK airport helicopter taxis available to all users - <AUTHOR> https://in.reuters.com/article/uber-copter/uber-makes-jfk-airport-helicopter-taxis-available-to-all-users-idINKBN1WI15X <comment><USER2> New York Airways used to have a helicopter service from JFK to Manhattan, it was cheap and frequent.

Wikipedia: 'New York Airways flew Vertol 107 helicopters from the rooftop helipad to Pan Am's terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport from December 21, 1965, to February 18, 1968, when the service ceased due to inadequate passenger loads. For a short part of that time, they also offered service to Teterboro Airport.

Service to JFK resumed in early 1977 using Sikorsky S-61s. On May 16, 1977, about one minute after an S-61L landed and its 20 passengers disembarked, the right front landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to topple onto its side with the rotors still turning. One of the five 20-foot (6.1 m) blades broke off and flew into a crowd of passengers waiting to board. Three men were killed instantly and another died later in a hospital. The blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a female pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured. Helicopter service was quickly suspended, and never resumed'.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetLife_Building#Helicopter_se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetLife_Building#Helicopter_service)

<comment><USER3> > it was cheap and frequent.

Do you know what the price was?

<comment><USER4> $5 according to the YouTube documentary posted in your sibling comment.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that is extremely cheap!

<comment><USER5> I haven't had time to watch the documentary yet, but my first thought about a $5 price tag is that it can't possibly be accounting for inflation.

$5 in 1977 is about $21.15 give or take a few cents according to most of the website i checked the numbers on.

So while it might be $5, that was definitely not as cheap as it might otherwise seem.

Regardless of the inflation adjustments, ~$20 is surprisingly inexpensive for a commuter helicopter ride, I wonder if the economies of scale really do bring it down or if they were still eating their losses trying to grow business at that price.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for doing the math. $20 is still so cheap as to warrent a "Wow, that is incredibly cheap" IMHO.

Taxi flat rate from Manhatten to JFK is over $50. How the price for a helicopter ride could be on the same order of magnitude as a taxi is beyond me.

<comment><USER6> The flat rate has only been in effect for several years. I would assume it would be a lot more expensive to take a taxi from midtown directly to JFK before the flat rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This just shows the poor state of NYC's public transport. With decent public transport there should be approximately zero demand for this service.

It's about 1h20m from Penn Station to JFK taking first the LIRR to Jamaica and then changing to the AirTrain. Sometimes you'll get lucky and get an express train and you can do it in about 40 minutes. The distance is about 15 miles or 25 kms.

It's normally longer (and a lot more expensive) to take a taxi.

It would take about 1h30m to cycle to JFK from Penn Station, which is comparable to public transport (though obviously impractical for most people taking a flight).

With well designed public transport the trip should be no more than 30 mins. That's an average of 30 mph, easily achievable by light rail. There should be a direct train connection to JFK instead of the slow AirTrain. Why isn't there? Basically because NYC can't get it's act together when it comes to building public transport. The Wikipedia page has more: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK)

<comment><USER8> Manhattan is huge, so context of where you are starting is very important. For me, I'm a 2 minute walk to the E train, where I can be already through security in the terminal in 45 minutes. What matters is not the speed but the _consistency_. I've never had it deviate from that number by any meaningful amount.

We do have well designed public transportation, but you can't make every point on the island take equal time.

It's similar with the Paddington Express in London. It's one of the nicest airport train experiences, period. But then you're in Paddington Station and you need to get to wherever you need to go in the city and that makes it take as long as the JFK trip for most people.

If you actually look on a map there's basically no way anyone could have built a LIRR style train to JFK in modern times without the entire length being a tunnel. The AirTrain is fast and very good at what it does — get you to the subway or LIRR.

<comment><USER7> The relevant time is from whatever the transport hub is to the destination. The people who live a few stops from Heathrow on the Piccadilly line can get there pretty quickly but that is not a useful measure. I chose Penn Station because that's where the LIRR currently leaves from. The Wikipedia article talks about how a direct train line was planned but didn't eventuate.

I can't agree that NYC has well designed public transportation. Metro North, the other train line I have experience with, is also dreadfully slow. The subway is old, dirty, and has poor signage.

<comment><USER9> > The relevant time is from whatever the transport hub is to the destination

It seems like the Heathrow Express comparison is fair then; Paddington's a transport hub (surface trains and several tube lines pass through it), and it takes 15 mins to Heathrow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is just rebranded service. I was curious on launch day and it quoted me $222. Going direct to Blade is $195.

<comment><USER10> Factor in an Uber to and fro (included from what I can tell) and you're probably coming out ahead with Uber.

<comment><USER11> I'd be interested to see some data on the entire trip duration including the uber X rides on both ends. Does Uber copter only make sense if you aren't stuck in traffic on th way to the helipad?

<comment><USER12> Average time savings e2e is usually at least 30m during rush hour (we are servicing Manhattan below Houston for now to the downtown Heliport) but up to an hour of time saved for some

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's the CO2 footprint for using such a service vs taking a cab and sitting in traffic?

<comment><USER14> It's substantial. Helicopters produce roughly 43 times more CO2 per hour than cars. From a 2016 NYT article:

> The Airbus AS350 series of helicopters, one of the most popular among tour > operators, produces approximately 950 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per > hour; the average car produces 22 pounds per hour.

> There are often eight helicopters motoring on the downtown heliport at any > time. For those living and working nearby, that's like 340 cars idling > outside your window. Conservatively estimated, the 56,000 annual tourist > flights have a carbon footprint greater than 6,000 metric tons.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/a-plague-o...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/a-plague- of-helicopters-is-ruining-new-york.html)

<comment><USER15> Shouldn't you calculate it by passenger-time? The car seats 1-3 people, sits in traffic, etc. A passenger BUS probably does a lot more CO2 than a car too...

<comment><USER16> I'm more confused how a helicopter that's 2500 lbs empty can somehow spit out over 900 lbs of emissions every hour for its four hour flight endurance. They've got to be doing some tricky calculations to get there. I'm guessing it looks more like consideration of infrastructure and production than it does passenger-time.

<comment><USER17> One pound of carbon becomes 3.7 pounds of CO2 "emissions" when it combines with atmospheric oxygen: [https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/contentIncludes/co2_inc.htm](https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/contentIncludes/co2_inc.htm)

<comment><USER18> One gallon of carbon petroleum fuel weighing 7 pounds becomes 22 pounds of carbon dioxide. Essentially in burning fuel you replace carbon plus two hydrogen atoms- atomic weight 14- with a carbon plus two oxygen atoms- atomic weight 44. That is an increase of 3.14x.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The negative externalities for this type of transport must be massive. Even the noise pollution on its own should probably disqualify this beyond public emergency services.

<comment><USER20> This is a spot that's been a commercial helicopter landing/ launch pad for decades. It's between the FDR Highway and the Hudson River. It's not adding a lot of noise to anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I took an Uber helicopter at EDC Las Vegas. It was partnered out with a local company that did the usual tours. It was pretty convenient and a cool add-on by Uber.

</comment><comment><USER22> > Uber says the service is intended to reduce travel times, but when Reuters > tried Copter on Wednesday, a trip from its Midtown office to the airport > took 70 minutes, including a subway ride downtown and two Uber rides to and > from the heliport. That's about the same time it would have taken by regular > taxi in moderate traffic.

Helicopters are the beasts - mechanically, operationally and humanly. We need to invest in quad/hexcopter style autonomous point-to-point person-carrying flying vehicles. That could enable ability to fly out from nearly every building roof top with fraction of a cost. The 10-minute flight is also easily achievable with electrical UAVs.

<comment><USER23> Uber Copter is just the beginning.. I'm on the Uber Elevate team developing this. Our primary mission is Electric VTOLs.

<comment><USER19> Do you ever take pause at the probable environmental hellhole you are helping creating working on this?

<comment><USER24> I, for one, cannot wait for mid-air collisions and parts falling down on residential areas, which is of course just the tip of the iceberg.

Seriously, I doubt they care. They probably know about these negative impacts, the risks, etc. but money is money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The additional revenue from this stream is a drop in the bucket to Uber. I could be off here, but this seems like they will likely use these type of things just as advertisements and branding.

<comment><USER12> Hey there, we actually launched this as a precursor to our Uber Air service with all electric VTOLs -- Uber.com/air

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Helicopter Taxis are much cheaper than I thought they would be. What distance do they travel for that amount of money? Not familiar with New York.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, at least it's true to their name. You are literally above/over.

</comment><comment><USER28> I worry about crazy people easily flying on a helicopter and crashing it.

Crashing a taxi isn't such a big deal, but crashing an airplane or helicopter is.

<comment><USER29> There are already helicopter tours and other companies offering this same air- taxi service. Is your worry new upon hearing this news, or is Uber somehow more dangerous?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Helicopter is a sucker's trap. Safety is nearly non-existing comparing to modern planes. Wait until the first accident and closure.

</comment><comment><USER31> Can you feel the "disruption"?

</comment><comment><USER32> All these ride sharing / ride hailing things are more trouble than their price (see note) if you're anywhere near a cab line or major avenue or cross street.

All NYC cabs now let you use an app like Curb to just key in their number and have the ride paid like magic with no card payment interaction at all.

Only use case left for ride hailing would be if you're all dressed up and don't want to walk from your front door to hail a cab, but the ride hailing drivers seem completely confused when expected to show up at an actual address instead of a pin on a corner, so the brands squander that advantage.

 _Note: I'm not price conscious, it's literally just more hassle to use something other than a cab if you're in Manhattan. If Uber, Lyft, or Juno saved me time or hassle, I'd spend an arbitrary price. They don't, they take longer, and are completely unpredictable as to whether they'll ever stop circling the block and actually come get you. Can add 15+ minutes just messing around getting to you in midtown. Cabs are less volatility, now just as easy to pay for (there's an app for that), and incidentally, also less cost._

<comment><USER33> Chicago has a very heavy cab presence and yet you'll get a lot of strange looks if you're standing on your residential street with your arm out expecting to get a cab. They'll drive by when dropping people off, but you'd be standing there awkwardly for a very long time.

I can have an Uber at my door in < 3 minutes with two clicks on my phone.

<comment><USER34> My highrise building apparently has a cab light that can be requested to be turned on. I saw someone use it once, it didn't seem like they waited very long for a cab to pull up to the front door.

<comment><USER35> Not everyone lives in luxury buildings.

<comment><USER36> Is a switchable light really a luxury?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Farmer's Supreme Court fight to limit Monsanto seed patents looks bleak - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/farmers-supreme-court-fight-to-limit-monsanto-seed-patents-looks-bleak/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion on a New York Times piece about the case: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5240514></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a good introduction to algorithms? - <AUTHOR>

As I try to learn new things every day, I was asking myself, why not build and sharpen my understanding of algorithms, as they clearly have the power to shape our understanding of the world.
And as I am acutally using a lot of these everyday, from smart checklists to google, I would love to learn more about them, their structures and creation.
Can you recommend me some good literature/websites, et al.? <comment><USER2> Yes, search amazon.

\- Art of Computer Programming is good but hard

\- Algorithms by Cormen et al. is good, more accessible, but not as practical

Start with Algorithms and then advance.

If neither of those work for you, try an intro to programming book.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks an awe full lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Algorithmic thinking is something i did by solving a lot of ACM ICPC-style problems.

I recommend TopCoder, it is a site with about 3 algorithmic competitions by month (<http://www.topcoder.com/tc>), but there are also many online judges like SPOJ(<http://www.spoj.pl/>) or Project Euler(<http://projecteuler.net/>), where you can practice at any time.

If you solve a lot of these kind of problems, you will learn more about algorithms than by merely reading books.

</comment><comment><USER4> i highly enjoyed 'introduction to algorithms' [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/)

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.algo-class.org/></comment>


Samsung Odyssey Windows Mixed Reality Headset with Motion Controllers - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/samsung-odyssey-windows-mixed-reality-headset-with-motion-controllers/8W91R774PDKK <comment><USER2> Product page no longer available so [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LwgPCb...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LwgPCb3R96IJ:https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/store/d/samsung-odyssey-windows-mixed-reality-headset-with-motion- controllers/8W91R774PDKK+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

This might've been accidentally published prematurely possibly in preparation for the Oct 3 mixed reality Microsoft event mentioned here [https://uploadvr.com/google-oculus-facebook- standalones/](https://uploadvr.com/google-oculus-facebook-standalones/)

Also, specs from the original site:

* Resolution: 2880 x 1600

* Display: OLED

* Refresh rate: Up to 90Hz

* Field of view: Up to 110˚

* Headphones and dual array mics</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone got startup school 2010 confirmation? - <AUTHOR>

Wondering if anyone got the confirmation email? Are those rejected also get an email? <comment><USER2> Everyone gets an email. We send them tonight.

<comment><USER3> This years line up and the fact I am now close enough to attend have me feverishly checking email all day. Thanks for the update!</comment></comment>


Detroit DIYer cooks up stronger, lighter steel, shames scientists - <AUTHOR> http://m.engadget.com/default/article.do?artUrl=http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/11/detroit-diyer-cooks-up-stronger-lighter-steel-shames-scientist/&category=classic&postPage=1 <comment><USER3> In spite of our understanding of chemistry, metallurgy still has quite a few mysteries in store for us. Some of them go back thousands of years. For instance we still have not been able to come up with a convincing reproduction of Damascus steel, the prized material that middle eastern swords were built of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel>. Another supposedly related and "lost" steel is wootz steel. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel> Perhaps a good term to describe the study of these materials would be forensic metallurgy. My closest brush with metallurgy was in a high-school chemistry text-book, which to be honest bored me to death. But at a different level it instills respect for the ingenuity and persistence of humans. Those methods are by no means simple and the bronze-age and iron-age men figured it out.

Among other things that make recreating these materials hard, is that in cooking them you not only need to get the ingredients right, but also get the sequence correct, sometimes to the minutest detail. Impurities in parts per million or the lack of can have significant effects in determining the properties of the material. Same goes for the process of making it.

We understand properties of individual components well enough but the physics that dictates the properties of alloys is different, difficult, non-smooth and very non-linear. Statistical physics have played a huge role in trying to model these behavior.

Another historical-metallurgical curiosity is the surprisingly corrosion resistant iron pillar in Delhi. It has been out there, in the open, facing the corroding elements of tropical weather for 25 centuries, but with little or no corrosion damage.

Edit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_pillar_of_Delhi>

<comment><USER4> The interesting thing about steel is that the tiny grains that make it up are immensely strong, far stronger than any other material we have.

But we have no known method of making steel out of just those grains, it's always mixed with other weaker parts.

That's why spider silk is so incredibly strong - it's manufactured (essentially) one atom at a time.

If we could manufacture steel in the same way it would be far stronger than spider silk.

Here's a list of some of the various grains in steel:

Pearlite, Cementite, Bainite, Austenite (there are many more).

The steel making process is all about encouraging a specific type (and especially, mixture) of these grains to form. But we can do so only at low efficiency and in a random fashion.

<comment><USER5> > _The interesting thing about steel is that the tiny grains that make it up > are immensely strong, far stronger than any other material we have._

That's not true, there are many materials stronger than steel:

1) Graphene

2) Titanium

3) Spider silk

4) Carbon nanotubes (buckypaper for instance)

5) IsoTruss carbon fiber

6) Metallic (palladium) glass

7) Transparent aluminum

<comment><USER6> > 7) Transparent aluminum

Just joking?

<comment><USER4> He might not be, transparent aluminum is also called:

      Alumina
      Aluminium oxide
      Corundum
      Sapphire
      Ruby

Lots of names for the same thing. It's an incredibly hard material, but it's not really strong, if you define strong as tough.

It forms immediately on the surface of all aluminium that is exposed to air, and prevents the aluminium from corroding any further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I might have to disappoint you all...

An Australian company, BHP (my employer at the time), was working on this method of steel production in the early 1990's. They had big hopes and put a lot of R&D investment in it, but were unable to commercialize it as the sheets of metal produced did not have consistent ductility and were prone to cracking.

So - the idea is not new, and the challenges of going from a concept to commercialization are serious, and were beyond the capabilities of one of the world's largest steel producers. The Bainsteel website indicates that they are still in the R&D phase. Best of luck to them, hope it works, but it is vaporware until it is on sale.

<comment><USER8> Could you share more information? A description of the process perhaps? Is there any difference between what BHP was working on and his process? (I realize that you may not have information now that you aren't working there.)

There is something about the parent article that doesn't sit entirely well with me. It might just be my inner skeptic, though.

<comment><USER7> The process was conceptually identical, AFAICT. Actual implementation differed insofar as coolant was sprayed onto the hot strip rather than being contained in a bath as shown in the linked graphic.

BHP's steelmaking research in the early 90's was IMO pretty leading edge - google "BHP Project M" for example. Unfortunately, the accountants decided that there was little future in steelmaking in Australia, and spun off BHP's steelmaking arm as a separate company (OneSteel) in yr 2000. The R&D focus died off around the same time.

Back to Flash Bainite - I am not totally dissing it, since some particular combination of steel composition and time-temperature path through the alloy phase diagram might produce an especially good result. What I am saying is that analogous heat treatments have been extensively studied in the past - <USER2> not implemented commercially due to problems the researchers were unable to overcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The linked article was pretty small, so I went and tried to get a bit more information:

* <http://www.bainitesteel.com/> \- the company making the product

* <http://www.gizmag.com/stronger-steel-in-a-flash/18882/> \- a longer and better writeup

* [http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/flash-bainite-is-strongest-...](http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/06/flash-bainite-is-strongest-most-ductile.html) \- another writeup

Looks cool! Though not sure about the flamebait title from the original article. :)

<comment><USER10> The gizmag article points out a great potential in marketing of this steel too. I had assumed as I read it, that the process would be more energy intensive, but it is actually less, which could mean a reduction in at least comparable cost to current steel solutions.

'Cola also says his process is also environmentally friendly as it consumes less energy per kilogram of steel processed compared to traditional methods and uses water instead of oils or molten salt.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can we remove the "shames scientists" bit from the headline? This guy is a scientist by definition if he has any experimental validation, and I didn't see a citation for anyone being shamed.

<comment><USER12> Second this. Don't understand why a sensationalist headline should translate as is to HN.

<comment><USER13> Because it feels like there's a strong distaste for amateur scientists (those without degrees, not those who don't know the scientific method) coming from both professional engineers and PhDs, anyone that has academic accreditation.

The sensationalist title appeals to the autodidact that learned how to earn 100k+ without college through programming.

<comment><USER14> As one of these non college educated $100k+ autodidacts I feel no particular attraction to the title, in fact it is faintly annoying. Yes, I do vaguely dislike people who value academic success over any other. However, as a (also self-directed) student of history I know how much real science has been done by the hobbyist and so the "tweaking the nose of the establishment" angle doesn't really work for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At least this write-up

[http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-lighter-stronger- steel-....](http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-lighter-stronger-steel-.html)

based on a press release mentions a journal article (as does one of the write- ups linked in the reply by djcapelis).

A quick search on Google Scholar

<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=bainite>

didn't immediately turn up the new journal article, but shows that bainite has been the subject of prior literature on heat treatment of steel for a long time. What is unclear so far, based on any of the write-ups linked to from this thread, is what trade-offs in mechanical and thermal characteristics and price the variety of steel mentioned in the current press releases will have in comparison with the hundreds of existing specialized varieties of steel. What industry response there may be depends greatly on what steel characteristics particular users of steel are most interested in.

</comment><comment><USER16> My dad had a PhD in metallurgical engineering from a Big 10 university. I heard more about steel growing up up, than... well. you know. Anyway, I got curious about steel in samurai swords one time, and I asked him about that.

He said there's lots of legends about this material or that could be remade at the research lab my dad worked at that were not feasible to be mass produced. Process too costly, or too toxic, or maybe too dangerous when you have to make several thousand tons of it.

If my Dad had been given two weeks to just go and play at his company's lab, he could have walked out the door with Excalibur.

<comment><USER17> I would imagine there would be a limited market for this, by necessity it would be a high-end / high-cost / high-value market, much like exclusive furniture for the rather well-off.

Any idea whether there are actual Excalibur smelters around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it's fair to point out that /this/ is an acceptable process to patent. I'm sure that's obvious, but HN does spend a lot of time denouncing software patents (rightly so).

EDIT: Not really sure why I got down-voted; nevertheless, I do think it's important to point out cases where patents can be applied as originally intended.

<comment><USER19> Downvoted because there is no reason to start a patents discussion in a materials science article.

<comment><USER20> When is the time then? This is a very good specific example.

<comment><USER21> Maybe on an article which mentions patents?

Patent law does seem to be one of those "classic flamewar topics" which I doubt anybody has anything especially new to say about. And the fact that somebody invented a new metal doesn't change the terms of the debate or provide anyone with new information, people have been inventing new metals (and things analogous to new metals) for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow amateur metallurgist sounds like a hardcore hobby.

<comment><USER23> People have the weirdest hobbies. Have a look at this guy: [http://www.themysteryworld.com/2011/02/tatara-project-guy- ma...](http://www.themysteryworld.com/2011/02/tatara-project-guy-makes-blade- out-of.html)

Making knives starting from the very scratch (that is, making their own steel to start with)

<comment><USER6> And actually, if hacking with computers wasn't so common, it would be perceived as quite awesome, too.

<comment><USER21> I'm sure you'd like to think so, but unless you have a blast furnace in your garage you're not as cool as this guy, sorry.

<comment><USER24> How about a CNC mill, laser cutter or reprap? :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Same story appeared before on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2642780>

</comment><comment><USER25> Rearden Metal, anyone?

<comment><USER26> First thing that came to mind. That's it, I'm starting a new railroad.

<comment><USER6> You should ask Mr Buffett about some pointers. He recently bought one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> [http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/11/detroit-diyer-cooks-up- st...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/11/detroit-diyer-cooks-up-stronger- lighter-steel-shames-scientist)

The title links to the mobile page of engadget for some unapparent reason.

</comment><comment><USER28> This what I love about human ingenuity: we constantly strive to improve upon something even if other people say it can't be done.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Now, who has the number for the Nobel Prize committee?_

Easy: [http://www.kva.se/en/contact/Committees/Nobel-Committee- for-...](http://www.kva.se/en/contact/Committees/Nobel-Committee-for- Physics/). :)

</comment><comment><USER30> That brings up another question: How much will it cost and how can I buy some?

<comment><USER6> Why would you buy a lump of steel?

<comment><USER31> Metallurgists do this. I've held lumps of the steel used in power plants (which doesn't burn when the coal does), and even a pop can sized cylinder of Beryllium. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So is it going to be called Rearden Metal?

</comment><comment><USER33> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bainite>

</comment><comment><USER34> that's just awesome.

</comment><comment><USER35> I didn't know there was much steel in laptops.

</comment><comment><USER36> Just in case anyone is leaping to wrong conclusions: This is neat, but it's not a miracle material. Tensile strength of 1900MPa is quite high for a steel, but it's half as strong as glass fiber. The big advantage here is that it's tougher, and cheaper to make, than fiberglass composite.

<comment><USER37> Er, what conclusion is there to jump to other than an accurate one? It's 7% stronger than traditional steel and 30% lighter, with a greatly decreased manufacturing cost. Ok, fine, it's not a "miracle" material since it's not curing the sick or raising the dead. But as long as testing continues to support the conclusion of both the manufacturer and researchers at tOSU (and elsewhere), this seems like an impressive engineering feat.

<comment><USER38> The title is ridiculous though, didn't they use science to make stronger steel or did they make them out of magic?

<comment><USER39> I'm sure the title meant professional, established scientists, not that he didn't use the scientific method.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Need a marketing person to take 30% stake - Advice - <AUTHOR>

I am a developer and built a ad network but not good at marketing the product. How do i get a marketing person to take a stake in the profits and get customers. HN members advice pls <comment><USER2> I work in digital marketing as well as media buying, so from the perspective of 'somebody who you're looking for', I'd definitely recommend that you put together a good list of features that your ad network has, the functionality it offers, any USP's that other ad networks don't have, the (vaguely if need be) type of networks you'd want to operate in.

Also, are you looking for a sales guy to actually get agencies or brands to buy ads on your network, or are you looking for a person with a deep understanding of online marketing that would be doing business development and acquiring publishing channels for your network for advertisers to advertise on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. I am looking for a sales guy who would help acquire publishers to the network..

<comment><USER2> Can you put an email address in your profile?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have done that!! thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Moon, an universal code-interchange format - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maiavictor/moon-lang <comment><USER2> Despite the Ethereum thing, I liked this because it is a simple safe language that runs in the browser.

Something like [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14752850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14752850), for example, could use this to run in the browser.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Curious as to why you say "despite the ethereum thing". It sounds like the "ethereum thing" is an immediate turn off, but the project's ideas and goals saved it.

I'm quite openly a fan of the ethereum project for the reasons of applications like this, and more -- but I'm curious as to why you'd consider it an immediate detriment when it very well serves the purpose of the project.

I mean, ultimately the author could design his own blockchain or network, but why? The protocol exists, why not try and employ it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lots of things called "moon" these days.

</comment><comment><USER4> What are the primary use cases you imagine?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was designed to allow a client to run code submitted by other clients safely on the browser without isolated environments. It is an important building block for a decentralized-application browser I'm developing. In the soon future, you will be able to publish a decentralized application with an one-line command. It will be stored on Swarm (decentralized Store), will use Ethereum as the back-end, and anyone will be able to access it using a decentralized browser such as Mist.

So, in short, remember the Pirate Bay idea of putting drones around the world to host their sites, allowing it to stay up forever without censure? Moon does exactly that, without the drones of course.

<comment><USER4> Why did you choose Swarm/Ethereum as opposed to IPFS?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no competition to Ethereum in terms of back-end decentralized computer, AFAIK. I picked Swarm because of familiarity and being closer to the devs. I don't know the IPFS devs. I do find both projects awesome.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why are there still libraries? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.8bitlibrary.com/2011/02/21/advocacy-maybe/

<comment><USER2> I'm kind of ashamed that people even have to ask this question.

I live a block from my library. Parents take dozens of books home to read to their kids. They don't have to buy them. It would be VERY expensive to buy hundreds of kids books per year. A well informed society benefits everyone.

If you already pay for internet, have a computer, have a college degree, buy books on amazon, live in a big city around well-educated individuals, you might not need a library, but you didn't get any of that for free. It cost a lot of money to get you to that point. Not everyone has that.

The costs of self-educating without a library would be very high for someone without means. If you just factor cost of computer, internet fees and time it would to search for and acquire low cost/free materials (books are cheaper to carry, require no electricity) it's easy to see that it's not a close comparison.

Our problem is that many people can't visualize the benefits of a library until they are in economic turmoil (library use increased during the recession). We don't need fewer libraries, we need more people reading.

<comment><USER3> I find it too expensive(!) to use a library. Getting there, getting back, paying late fees (almost every time). Then, getting library books confused with my own (I have thousands).

No, much cheaper and less stress to just buy the dang things.

And another thing. I can't believe its not cheaper to just buy people books, than to build a large edifice, staff it with dozens of people, heat it and maintain it. Just sell it, and put up a website: kids books free.

<comment><USER2> You can renew books at most libraries online and avoid late fees.

It's cheaper to buy a book than to borrow a free one?

Most individuals with money find it more convenient to spend money (e.g. - cooking, transportation, etc...). One building can serve many thousands over a year. Borrowing scales better than buying.

<comment><USER3> Look at the stats on your local library. Maybe they used to serve the public, now they serve a loyal following of library nuts.

Look at the stats on your police station, or fire station, or post office (oops - maybe not so good). They pay their way.

Carnegie had it right, in the 1910's. But the world has changed, and the library model is (fast becoming) obsolete.

<comment><USER3> And here's some stats on Alaska public libraries: [http://library.state.ak.us/dev/plstats/plstats.html#annual_s...](http://library.state.ak.us/dev/plstats/plstats.html#annual_spreadsheets)

What does it show? That Internet access accounts for 1/3 of visits. Do you think that is going up, or going down?

Let's cut to the chase: replace the library with public access Internet stations, and stop pretending.

Ok, look at it this way. Does your kid go down to the library to research a school report? Or just Google it? Do they even know how to use the index to periodicals? Why?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Libraries are a master-stroke of egalitarianism. They're paid for mostly by the rich, benefit the poor most of all, and when used as intended can't help but better the individuals who use them. They are about as free from corruption as any government program ever has been, are not strongly influenced by commercial interests, and seem to have almost supernaturally resisted the huge, ridiculous, parasitic bureaucracies that have latched on to other similar government programs.

They're worth having around just to be able to step back once in a while and say "Son of a sheepdog! It is possible!"</comment>


Hey, Democrats. We need you to get your act together. - <AUTHOR> http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=7268 <comment><USER2> > Only 4 of 50 states have both a Democratic-controlled legislature and a > Democratic governor. In 2018 that regionalization is going to get worse, not > better; you will be defending 25 seats in areas where Trump took the popular > vote

Thats one thing that has bothered me about the collective denial I've been hearing for a couple of years now. (I get a disproportionate dose of sentiment from the currently losing ideological line because of my age demographic coupled with areas I've chosen to live.)

The Republican party had at least 3 ways to win the national election (popular+electoral / electoral / congress-in-event-of-tie), while the Democratic party organization was overvaluing support for their ideologies enough to play games with the functions of their own organization to promote one candidate. I had perceived this was undervalued by all of the data science services, and news organizations, mostly because their bi-coastal locations that are unrepresentative of sentiment in the rest of the United States.

What I hear now is that 2018 is going to be this huge landslide of seats back in the blue direction, and I never saw anything supporting that. The idea is contingent on the President annoying enough people, but it also limits the outcomes to a mass switch towards a different party, when again that isn't the only outcome and no odds are in favor of that.

Anybody have other thoughts on it?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you decorate your software department office space - <AUTHOR> We are moving to a new office and the software team (only me right now) are getting our own room - closed from the open office where the rest of the team is. I am fine with an enclosed space but we are getting new software team members and interns in the summer and I do not want them coming in a complete white room. Any ideas or inspiration from your office plans? Plants? Artwork? DIY cool lights?<p>Specs: 171 sq ft^2 (enough for 3-4 engineers) the entire office space is 1600 sq feet No windows <comment><USER2> TV for dashboards or maybe showing an HD camera feed of a cool direction outside your office, since there aren't any windows

Fathead wall clings (Star Wars?).

Custom wall clings relating to your company and/or stack/tech.

Paint areas on a couple walls with white board paint.

A plant or two that can live with just office lights would be a plus.

If your company has sales closes big deals have some lights or even a ding when one comes in.

LED lights inside crown molding installed a couple inches below the ceiling.

A startup here has some cool movie props (back to the future, pixar), star wars helmets, lego sets/sculptures, could be a nice addition on some shelves maybe.

</comment><comment><USER3> A train track is always cool.

I think a fish tank, 29 G show w tropical fish (salt are too much work)

Spider plants - there are 3 varieties -hang them up.

Horde flag :-)

Monitor showing nature scenes</comment>


UX Copywriting in Product Design - <AUTHOR> https://uxplanet.org/why-is-ux-copywriting-so-important-in-product-design-85826b42d1b4 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure "We couldn't open your camera" is any better than "Camera error". How does a normal person "open" a camera? It's just as stuck in technical abstractions.

And "Oops something went wrong! Try again later!" is more cutesy but gives nothing substantial above "Request failed. Retry.". I would hope that a UX designer doing their job properly would think about the user, how they interact with the message, and come to the conclusion that "later" is uselessly vague. "Try again now" or "try again tomorrow" are useful and actionable.

There seems to be a lot more appreciation that UX is important and a proportional increase in UX fluff. Not much of it seems to be very thoughtful.

I think there's a parallel in UI design. There's decades of HCI research, but redesigns seem to be more concentrating on making things look pretty, not easier to use.

<comment><USER3> To hell with actionability, affability, etc. I would much rather know that "Request failed. Error code 0xa34cc9." than "Oops, that's embarrassing! Tacocat is all out of tacos. Please try again later."

<comment><USER4> Which is completely valid feedback, assmuming the target user is also a tech savvy Person such as yourself.

The average consumer on a non-tech related site tends to give up pretty quickly when they see arcane error messages. "Oh I'm not technical enough to use that product".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I vehemently disagree that the goal of UX writing should be to make users click on a "call to action" button. That is marketing, not UX.

The goal of good UX writing should be that the users understand what happens if they click the button.

<comment><USER6> And I somewhat disagree with your vehemency ;-)

IMO the goal of good UX is to help users to fulfil the purpose of the product in as pain free way as possible. Clear to understand labels are definitely _a_ goal, but leading the user down a path towards completing _their_ goal should be _your_ ultimate goal. If that's highlighting a CTA button, so be it.

<comment><USER5> I was so vehement because the article reads like the goal is to get users to click the button. Not to help users reach their goal.

Maybe I misunderstood the article. That would be ironic, right? =)

<comment><USER7> I didn't get that impression from the article at all. It seemed like the main point was having human friendly texts to smooth the interaction and translate the experience well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I always find these kinds of articles, as this one, to have too little examples of the message they are trying to convey. It makes it feel as if the writer came up with the subject first and when they tried to find examples to back up their idea they couldn't find any. Maybe writers should then forget about their article or bench it for later, so that they can gather examples over a longer period of time. It just makes your message so much more compelling when you can show the reader what you mean than asking them to take your word on it.

<comment><USER9> Probably because "software ux design" is a new field and there are no standards for academic discourse, anyone can just start typing and write an article which gets accolades.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, it kind of reminds me of vintage food ads from the 60s/70s:

[https://i.imgur.com/618nCzl.png](https://i.imgur.com/618nCzl.png)

[https://i.imgur.com/5FeMd8t.png](https://i.imgur.com/5FeMd8t.png)

Just because someone tells you what is good for you / your users, doesn't mean it's true.

<comment><USER8> Haha oh no, these are gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> yoz-y > Oops! Something went wrong! Could you please try again later?

I like the gist of the article but this particular message has everything wrong.

\- Oops! - please don't, it makes you look like you do not know what you are doing

\- Something went wrong! - what exactly? Is this because of me or you? I'd like to at least see if there is something I can do or not. For example whether I do not have internet access or your server is down

\- try again later... when? In a minute, tomorrow?

</comment><comment><USER11> If you provide an error message, without providing some way of getting the actual details of the error that occurred easily, then that is almost a hanging offense.

Saying "Oops, an error occurred, try again later" is essentially useless. Especially after you've seen it more than a few times. Moreover, this kind of thing I have seen first-hand leads to some bizarre magical thinking on the part of users, on the order of "If I slaughter a rooster, and sprinkle the blood around, and a white goose flies overhead, the problem gets resolved." It's staggering seeing some of the "workarounds" that customers will invent if there isn't real error information present.

</comment><comment><USER12> > How writers say it

> "Let's talk", "Oops! Something went wrong..."

> ...Because writers are good at grammar and punctuation...

Struggling for relevance and failing. If that's all they can offer, they offer no value. No, it's not because I have a blind spot as a developer, but because I know my users.

That is not to say that the technical / UI writers are redundant. It's just the level of most is ridiculously low. It's like with web design: lots of providers, but only a handful of those that know what they are doing.

Heck, I'd be happy to outsource many of my content writing chores but I am yet to find a combination of functional brain, ability to analyse the tech, and sensible rates!

I know a multinational where the technical documentation department was busy copying the documentation from an internal portal (Confluence) to an external customer-facing portal. They would ask the developers to write the documentation and what parts should be copied. Amazingly, they often couldn't do even that properly. They had nice-sounding titles like "manager", "director", "analyst", etc. To the company's merit, the idiocy was eventually discontinued, but it took years.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hmmm. I don't think this article get what UX copywriting means... It's not about sounding personal or cool, but rather revealing the clear purpose of a function... There's no real UX advantage by replacing "Contact Us" with "Let's Talk"... Perhaps it increases your conversions or clicks, but it's not giving the user any added extra benefit or increased clarity.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the point made is solid but I absolutely despise cutesy lingo in utilitarian applications. "Oops! Leggo my Eggo?!" Please don't turn your app into oops and boops unless it is a game or nonserious work.

</comment><comment><USER14> Struggling to take seriously a copywriting article with the title "Why is UX Copywriting so Important in Product Design"

<comment><USER15> Well, what did you expect from a self-publishing, self-advertising Medium article? If anything, they've chosen their brand name quite appropriately I would say ( _inapptics_ ). And you also have to understand that people employed in this position have to go through all kinds of acrobatic stunts in order to justify their salaries worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The HN comments are entirely negative about this article, while the ones on the article itself are entirely positive (or supportive).

I think that means our good friend Mr Censorship has come to town!

Really, if you write about UX and don't want to engage in a decent counter- argument, you should be doing something else.</comment>


New algorithm lets photographers change the depth of images virtually - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/8/3/16088582/computational-zoom-focal-length-perspective-photo-nvidia-ucsb <comment><USER2> Paper at [http://cvc.ucsb.edu/graphics/Papers/SIGGRAPH2017_Computation...](http://cvc.ucsb.edu/graphics/Papers/SIGGRAPH2017_ComputationalZoom/PaperData/SIGGRAPH17_CompZoom.pdf)</comment>


Warren Buffett offers $1 billion for perfect March Madness bracket  - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2014/01/21/warren-buffett-offers-1-billion-for-perfect-march-madness-bracket/ <comment><USER3> From [http://messymatters.com/the-perfect- bracket/](http://messymatters.com/the-perfect-bracket/) :

"accounting for team strength, the chance that each of the 63 tournament games is won by the favored team is a mere 1 in 70 billion".

Which implies an expected payout (a billion dollars times the 1 in 70B chance) of 1.4 cents.

<comment><USER4> In other words, you could recreate Buffett's $1 billion offer by placing a 1.4 cent bet on the first game, and rolling your winnings on to each successive game. What's more, you're free to stop at any point and take some or all of your winnings home. (Which you would have to do anyway; you'll never be able to place the multi-million dollar bets near the end.)

Hopefully this will put paid to all the crazy comments about match fixing... Buffett is 'giving' you 1.4 cents, and that's inspiring people to talk about organising a massive match fixing conspiracy? Get real!

<comment><USER5> He's giving you 1.4 cents if the games are random. If they aren't random, like with match fixing, then he's giving you $1 billion. That leaves plenty of money to bribe the relevant refs and players.

<comment><USER4> You missed my point. Buffett's offer is _irrelevant_ to the subject of match fixing. If he had never made this $1 billion promotion, you could still achieve the same payout by placing a bet for just over a cent.

All this talk of match fixing is just noise; sure, it could be an interesting topic of discussion, but it is completely unrelated to Buffett's offer.

Unless you really think people out there weren't going to try and fix matches, but suddenly they change their mind now they've been given a free 1.4 cent bet.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, I did miss that. It is an excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is amazing how many people think that they can outwit Warren Buffett and his inner circle of actuarial geniuses :-) He probably has a part of his brain that runs the Kelley Criterion in his sleep, so long as there is enough Cherry Coke in his system.

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

<comment><USER7> If I were a US resident, I would just submit a random bet. A nearly-zero chance for a billion for a few minutes of my time and no cost. There is nothing to outwit here.

<comment><USER8> The expected value for this bet is $1,000,000,000/4,294,967,296 ~= $0,23.

Say, it takes 10 minutes to make the bet. That would compute to the average gain of 6*$0,23 = $1,38/hour.

This disregarded the $100,000 paid to the top 20 as well as the possible psychological effects from making such bet, such as a positive outlook on life for the duration of the bet, etc.

<comment><USER9> The $0.23 definitely doesn't properly value the effect of how few actual chances a person has in a lifetime to make a billion dollars, much less for such a trivial amount of time and effort (average American watches three hours of tv per day).

There have been four $580m+ lottery wins in the US in the last 18 months (powerball & mega millions). $2.4 billion split among eight people. The odds were beyond absurd, and yet these people still won. Granted, I like my odds better in the lottery than Buffett's wager.

<comment><USER5> >The $0.23 definitely doesn't properly value the effect of how few actual chances a person has in a lifetime to make a billion dollars

You're right, it probably over values it due to the marginal utility[1] of money and the non-zero value of the risk premium[2]

You have as many chances at winning a billion dollars as you want. All you have to do is make lots of smaller bets strung together. It may seem impossible to string 30 winning red/black roulette bets (starting with a dollar), but actually the odds of winning a billion dollars that way are roughly the same. Technically speaking Casinos don't have the capital to support the super large bets, but you could easily transition into 50/50 bets in the equities markets. There is enough capital there to give you a shot at a trillion dollars. All you have to do is take it.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_premium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_premium)

<comment><USER9> You don't have many (zero?) opportunities to trade 10 minutes of your day for a chance at a billion dollars. Particularly without spending any meaningful amount of money or taking on any meaningful amount of risk. The substantial problem with the stock market and casino versions, is you'll have to constantly put your ever larger winnings at risk with each cycle upward. This introduces an extraordinarily massive risk factor - to real assets - to the equation, that you're not accounting for.

<comment><USER5> >This introduces an extraordinarily massive risk factor - to real assets - <USER2> the equation, that you're not accounting for.

No it doesn't. It's identical, except that rolling your bets gives you the additional option which can only be considered more valuable.

And interestingly in this case, Buffet will actually provide the same opportunity if it comes to it. If you get the first couple rounds of the bracket correct, Buffet will be right there with a check offering to buy you out of your position.

<comment><USER10> Upvoted.

If I had (only) 500m USD the chance of me letting it ride with 2x return and 50% chance of winning is precisely zero.

So, with the roulette example, I would never win 1bn USD. From what you say about Buffet's early buy-out, the same may apply in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you are the first person to write a bot to automatically submit entries, you could submit most/all of the allowed 10 million entries.

OK, maybe your IP would get banned, but what if you have access to a botnet and, therefore, lots of IP addresses?

OK, maybe they have a captcha, but what if you trick your botnet victims into filling in the captchas during their normal web browsing sessions, by pretending to be a google bot-detection page?

OK, so you win, but the address is a random address that isn't yours. How much would you have to give the person whose address it really is, to pretend you live there? Half? Still not bad.

<comment><USER11> 1 entry per household.

<comment><USER10> See the last paragraph. I am assuming you could use random, real addresses, and split the winnings 50/50 with the real resident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Buffet also insured a Billion dollar lottery created by Andrew Warner of Mixergy fame.. [http://youtu.be/j6RSaqf9NsI](http://youtu.be/j6RSaqf9NsI)

</comment><comment><USER13> How are the odds calculated as 1 in 4,294,967,296?

Completely random is 1 / 2^63 (1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 or about ten million times worse). Granted, they're not completely random, but it seems like to get the odds they're saying you can take a LOT of the game outcomes for granted. I don't follow March Madness that closely, so maybe that's the case? Just seems odd for a tournament to have so many nearly guaranteed outcomes.

<comment><USER5> The article decided the odds were: 32 teams, each with a 50% chance of winning, so the odds must be 1 in 2^32!

It's obviously wrong, of course, but journalists aren't typically known for their statistical math backgrounds. Interestingly, this article claims you can actually get the odds even lower, to about 1 in 1 billion: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buffett-basketball- bet...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buffett-basketball- bet-20140122,0,7653962.story) using some more sophisticated team/player data.

<comment><USER14> The journalist also ignored reality when calculating taxes owed too. They used the $1 billion up front but they reported it'd be $25 million per year for 40 years (or one time payout of $500 million).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is weird, besides the great odds straight up. It's extremely vulnerable to match fixing.

<comment><USER16> How many teams out of the 64 does someone realistically have to bribe in order to have a good shot at getting the $1B?

<comment><USER17> Just a few refs...

<comment><USER18> A few? There are a lot of refs involved in the tournament...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> No, odds of a perfect bracket are closer to 1 in 2^47 than 1 in 2^63. The reason is that a coinflip makes too many stupid picks, such as a #16 seed beating a #1 seed. If you use the Sagarin ratings to generate a simulated bracket, the odds of a perfect bracket are approximately 1 in 2^47.

If you're trying to win the perfect bracket challenge, you can do much better than flipping a coin for each pick. Instead, flip a biased coin, with the higher seed favored based on Sagarin rating.

[http://www.realfreemarket.org/blog/2013/03/16/what-are- the-o...](http://www.realfreemarket.org/blog/2013/03/16/what-are-the-odds-of- a-perfect-ncaa-tournament-bracket/)

[Picking mostly favorites is also a stupid strategy if you're trying to win, because, if you do win, you're likely to be tied with others and split the prize.]

</comment><comment><USER20> "It's not business income. Well, probably not. There are folks who enter games, contests and sweepstakes for a living (remember that Julianne Moore movie?) but that's some serious dedication to the cause. Assuming that you did enough research and really dedicated yourself to winning, you could possibly treat it as your business (or more likely, a hobby). If you did, you would report your winnings (of course) but could also deduct any reasonable expenses associated with winning."

Well, it's a shame 1 billion probably wouldn't be enough to buy up all the 63 teams - and leave some winnings for the effort...

</comment><comment><USER21> Given no information, the expectation of randomly guessing is around $ 0.16 USD.

But I suspect Voltaire and friends will find a way to win this. (The odds of rigged games just went up 300%.)

</comment><comment><USER22> When I first saw this, I thought "really cool" and then I thought about the time that my friends and myself would spend towards developing "the perfect" bracket.

I can't really decide if it's a good use of time bc time is not fungible (easily replaced) or whether or not I am contributing to something that values luck over hard work.

Or maybe I need to get some sleep and get off HN! :)

</comment><comment><USER23> EV = Probability X Payout = (1/(4.29 X 10^9)) X (5 X 10^8) = 0.11 cents per bet.

      Assuming equivalence of payments and probability FTA.

EV cost with 10^7 possible entries: (1/(4.29 X 10^9)) X (5 X 10^8) X (10^7) = $1.1m

      Ignoring secondary prizes and solvency costs.

I read some more details about the insurance policy here: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buffett-basketball- bet...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buffett-basketball- bet-20140122,0,7653962.story)

> _Miller, the Duke professor, came up with his 1-in-1-billion probability > through an equation that placed games into categories ranging from close > games that could go either way to near locks. Based on his finding, Buffett > would need to charge a premium of about $10 million to break even against > his expected results, Miller said._

> _" If I were Warren Buffett, anything over $10 million, I would probably do > it," Miller said. "If $1 billion were going to ruin me, I wouldn't. But it's > not going to ruin Warren Buffett."_

> _Buffett said his company is big enough to survive such a hit. "We've lost > more money in a given event before," Buffett said. "Hurricane Katrina > probably cost us $3 billion. "We will put more at risk in a given insurance > transaction than anyone in the world. But we have more capital than anyone > in the world."_

> _Berkshire Hathaway investors can take comfort in some news Buffett > disclosed Tuesday. He said he would probably strike a deal — at > significantly less than $1 billion — with anyone who gets deep into the > tournament without missing a game._

> _" If you get to the Final Four with a perfect bracket, I may buy you out of > your position," Buffett said. "I'll make you an offer you can't refuse."_

Buffett appears to be channelling Vito Corleone in that last statement right there: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeldwfOwuL8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeldwfOwuL8)

So assuming the new 1 in a 10^9 chance figure, we get:

EV cost: (1/(10^9)) X (5 X 10^8) X (10^7) = $5m

Now the previous time Buffett made this kind of a bet was here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Billion_Dollar_Sweepstake...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Billion_Dollar_Sweepstakes)

That had an EV cost of ~$1m as well ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-21/buffett-makes- milli...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-21/buffett-makes-millions- selling-500-to-1-monkey-linked-derivatives.html)), and he got paid a ~$10m premium from Pepsi for that risk.

So I'm guessing the same is true in this case. That is a 10x EV cost premium, with a range of ~$10m-$50m. I highly doubt that Quicken is willing to pay so much, so it'll be biased towards the lower end of the range. At the end of the day this is essentially a ~$10m-20m advertising project which uses free distribution through news/blogs/PR releases/forums/TV/radio/word of mouth/mind share, in addition to getting access to private consumer data when people sign up for the competition (email/address/name/age/etc).

Hopefully Quicken will have more luck and consumer buy in than Pepsi had in 2003 ([http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-decision- tree/201306...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-decision- tree/201306/the-time-pepsi-offered-billion-dollars-and-nobody-cared)). I doubt it though. The more likely outcome here is that Buffett made himself a cool ~$10m-20m in one day for doing very little work, since he doesn't pay for any of the operational costs of the competition.

> _Jay Farner, Quicken 's president and marketing chief, said his company > would benefit from the contest in two ways — news coverage and access to the > email addresses of millions of potential customers. Anyone who enters the > contest will have the option of receiving email offers from Quicken, he > said._

Source: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buffett-basketball- bet...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-buffett-basketball- bet-20140122,0,7653962.story)

<comment><USER24> The payout is $500m though, plus false advertising.

<comment><USER25> The payout is $25 million over 40 years = $1 billion. If you would prefer a lump sum, then you get less, because $25 million forty years from now will not be worth as much as it is now (assuming positive inflation). This is pretty standard.

<comment><USER4> The point being, they never need $1 billion to pay out either version of the prize. Hence, the prize is NOT worth $1 billion. If you take the 40 year version and claim $25 million each year, the remainder of the cash could be invested such that it will cover all the payouts eventually. You need far less than a $1 billion investment to do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Story itself is not really interesting but a paragraph in the article got my attention;

"The $1 billion will be paid in 40 annual installments of $25 million. Or if you don't want to wait around that long, you can claim a lump sum payment of just half: $500 million."

Interesting!

Which one would be more effective if any of us would face this decision?

<comment><USER9> Take the lump sum every time.

The dollar has lost an immense amount of real value in the prior 25 years (tracked against almost anything of consequential value), and the Feds / Fed weren't being anywhere near as irresponsible as they have been lately. Taking annual payments puts you up against having to match that devaluation just to stay even. I don't like what might happen to the dollar in just 25 years, particularly in the era of massively heightened currency competition likely to put even more downward pressure on it (eg bitcoin and whatever comes next).

Also, while it's possible tax rates will be lower in the future, I'd bet against that strongly given the bills we have coming due. I'd lock in today's tolerable tax rates, versus potentially ending up with Carter era 70% rates or 79% to 94% (1930s-1950s era).

The only scenario I've seen that makes any sense, in which you shouldn't take the lump sum, is if you have some personal circumstances that go beyond the sheer math of the situation (eg you have an intense lack of personal control over spending, and think you would manage smaller annual sums better, although you can still borrow against annual payments and bury yourself; or perhaps if you have an estate that you want annual payments to go through to your kids, to prevent fighting over a larger lump sum; or if you actually think you can significantly beat inflation).

<comment><USER27> I have to disagree. In this case, the lump sum and the annuity are equivalent if you get a 4.2% return on investment. You aren't going to find a risk-free investment that gets a better return than that, so the only reason to take a lump sum is if you want to invest in riskier investments. The decision comes down to risk tolerance; there is no clear cut winner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm disappointed by the 1 per household and million entry limit. I would really like to see someone hit it.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems to be ripe for attack through ML models. It should be easy enough to create models and test it out on previous years to see its accuracy. May be some of us can do ensembles of models with bunch of best predictions (Netflix style!). Any idea where to get data sets for previous games?

<comment><USER30> Says every naive sports gambler.

<comment><USER31> "it should be easy" is always the killer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> About a 0.2% chance of anyone out of the 10 million winning it (assuming they all guess randomly which probably isn't true, meaning it's even higher than that.) That's an expected payout of $2,328,306 for Buffet.

</comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if Nate Silver is disqualified..

<comment> shawn-furyan I don't think that bracket submission interface supports the inclusion of error bars, so I'm sure Nate is welcome :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Someone needs a 64 bit calculator.

</comment><comment><USER35> My brain had a hard time processing "billion" with a "B" in the title.

Anyway, it says your odds are a 1 in 4.2 billion for correctly picking the winning 63 games. What that basically means is that we're going to find out if time traveling exists sometime in March.

<comment><USER5> Or uncaught match fixing :)

The article is very wrong about 1 in 4.3 billion being the odds though. That's just 1 in 2^32 which isn't even close to the correct math for figuring the odds.

Accounting for skilled handicapping, the consensus seems to be 1:1 billion odds. Maximum 10 million entries, so there's roughly a 1 in 1000 chance we'll have a legit winner (well, that would be assuming everyone played with near optimal strategies).</comment></comment>


BeagleCore Shrinks BeagleBone Black to Chip Size - agent-bc http://beaglecore.com/

<comment> agent-bc A German team of developers have launched a project called BeagleCore at Kickstarter which claims to have shrunk the BeagleBone Black to a 49 x 32mm fully compatible module, which is roughly one-third of the size of a BBB. Following popular Open Hardware trends, all hardware schematics, PCB layout, and BOM will be free to download, modify, and use. Along with the Kickstarter campaign comes a software-suite called BeagleSuite that claims: "create your own IoT project without programming" and comes as a reward for 7€. Early bird packages for BeagleCore start at 39€ for the module and 99€ for module plus baseboard with the goal to raise 50,000€.</comment>


OSX mouse latency problem, and how to fix it - <AUTHOR> http://d43.me/blog/1205/the-cause-for-all-your-mac-os-x-mouse-annoyances/

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: OSX has a 32 latency between mouse input and cursor display. This is why you feel the mouse doesn't react in the same way as Windows or Linux. This is the fix.

It's not a mouse curve problem (as previously thought), so ControllerMate or USBOverdrive won't fix it.</comment>


Crowd Source: Inside the company that provides fake paparazzi and protesters - <AUTHOR> https://story.californiasunday.com/crowds-on-demand <comment><USER2> Gosh, this was well written. It's a super engrossing fluff piece, much like its subject matter.</comment>


Terminal-to-HTML - <AUTHOR> http://buildkite.github.io/terminal-to-html/ <comment><USER2> the image thing is a shenanigans that will only ever be used for attacks.</comment>


Data, data everywhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15557443

<comment><USER2> This is a huge problem for the intelligence services, and is an excuse frequently made for why the CIA failed to stop 9/11 and MI5 7/7. With the sheer amount of data logged and available to the services, how can one reliably wade through such huge amounts of data?

Being perfectly honest, I wouldn't be surprised if a Google Translate-style statistics package was in use right now. You, sir, fit the profile GeekWithGuitarAndCat72.

</comment><comment><USER3> _In recent years Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and SAP between them have spent more than $15 billion on buying software firms specialising in data management and analytics._

That's huge. Does that sound right?

<comment><USER4> $15bn actually sounds conservative to me (I'm in the business intelligence space).

Yep, check out [http://www.bi- verdict.com/fileadmin/FreeAnalyses/consolidati...](http://www.bi- verdict.com/fileadmin/FreeAnalyses/consolidations.htm)

 _EDIT_ : And that table doesn't even include IBM's billion-dollar SPSS grab.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't it be smarter to use a couple million of that to create a seed fund for aspiring technologies?

<comment><USER6> Why not do both? The major disadvantage with the seed fund approach is that you have no idea what you'll get out of it or how long it will take. If you but SPSS, it might cost you more, but you know exactly what you're getting and when you'll be getting it, which is a huge advantage if you feel you're in a hurry.

<comment><USER5> By "a couple million out of that [15 billion]," I meant both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The one thing shows like 24 get perfectly right is that intelligence and warfare is now much more about computer scientists analyzing data than people on the ground.

</comment><comment><USER8> Huge data sets is the new Oil, processing this new huge data is where the big money will be in the future.

<comment><USER9> After the money made processing the oil there will be plenty more to be made with the distribution networks and gas stations themselves. While processing data is an interesting problem for geeks, the more mainstream problem will be visualizing data. I don't go down to the refinery and pull my car up to the spigot. I buy my gasoline at a pump where I can also pick up the milk and get a cup of coffee at the same time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is very true. Intelligence Agencies are always wondering how to view the data better. I know for one example, we have 150 TB's of video data coming in every day from Iraq and Afghanistan and we are trying to find ways to view it.

One number my boss says a lot is the CIA wishes they had 14,300 Analysts to view through all this information at once. These of course would be 14,300 people looking at video 24/7... Its a huge problem that doesn't have a solution at all yet.

</comment><comment><USER11> As always with data when it comes to dynamic areas such as economics.

"The map is not the territory"

</comment><comment><USER12> This has been here a few times before: <http://searchyc.com/Data%252C+data+everywhere>

(Just for the record, this seems the first time it got traction.)

<comment><USER13> I'm glad it finally hit the front page. It deserves some attention.</comment></comment>


IBM's Watson supercomputer to diagnose patients - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219937/IBM_s_Watson_supercomputer_to_diagnose_patients

<comment><USER2> I'd have more faith in Watson than the typical GP. Watson would have no problem remembering all the intricacies of diagnosis (if patient has symptom A, ask about symptom B and order a test for C) etc.</comment>


How Con Kolivas's BFS CPU scheduler works - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/10/16/96 <comment><USER3> One advantage of BFS is the fact that it is very _simple_ : the sheer number of heuristics that have made their way into CFS have a tendency to cause all sorts of problems in--often rather important--pathological cases.

Here's one example from a recent commit:

<http://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/47921/>

The speed loss was so huge on what should have been an extremely easy load that it probably explains quite a few "Windows is faster than Linux" benchmarks I've seen over the past few months...

</comment><comment><USER4> If the scheduler's purpose is "to make typical desktop loads feel better", how do you benchmark that? There is certainly room for improvement in making the Linux desktop feel good, but I don't know how one would get to a number. Perhaps you'd have to resort to double blind comparison tests.

(FWIW, my 1.2GHz PPC running Debian performs unacceptably as a desktop machine. There are sometimes >1000ms lags between a keypress and it being reflected on the X11 display with no background load. But I can't say this is because of the scheduler.)

<comment><USER5> > how do you benchmark that?

By getting statistics from the scheduler itself: how long did the process have to wait before it started executing. Also by looking at global effects: run N mplayers at the same time and look for dropped frames ; run an app that maps similar amount of work to N children and measure the run time ; measure the time needed for compiling [big project] with concurency == number of cpus ; ...

<comment> Tuna-Fish _run an app that maps similar amount of work to N children and measure the run time ; measure the time needed for compiling [big project] with concurency_

These are both the kind of tasks Kolivas is willing to totally throw under the bus for better worst case latency.

Remember, the single goal of the project is to get worst-case latency for all non-cpu-limited processes on the system as low as it possibly can get. Throughput, and even best- and average case latency are considered entirely expendable. This is why the BFS is hard to benchmark.

<comment><USER6> Then measure worst case latency. I don't see what the difficulty is.

If you're purporting to improve the performance of something, but you aren't always measuring the impact your changes have on the actual performance of that something, you're working blind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a scheduler API in Linux kernel already? If there isn't, it seems that developing schedulers would really benefit from the ability to have them loaded / unloaded as kernel modules, like filesystems. The system could fall back to some generic round-robin scheduler if none of the more advanced schedulers were loaded, or when switching between schedulers.

I would want to try out BFS but I'm old enough to not take the time and effort to compile and patch my own kernel anymore, so I'll probably just wait until BFS becomes the default in mainstream kernels. If ever, considering the scheduler wars in the recent years.

A single kernel module I could compile and try out pretty easily, especially with module-assistant. Or if there's a .deb of Ubuntu kernel patched with BFS, that would do too.

I'm lazy, yes. Until I hack the Linux kernel day and night myself, it's probably better this way. But I would still like to try out BFS, up to some degree.

<comment><USER8> Linus is openly opposed to the idea of scheduler modules, his argument being that schedules are core parts of a kernel, and modularizing schedulers woud encourage many different schedulers each good at a simple thing instead of a single scheduler well optimized for all workloads.

<comment><USER9> It looks like we are getting that anyway, modular schedulers or no.

<comment><USER8> Until Linus goes commando and rewrites the scheduler, like he did with git, yeah.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have to say it looks really really good. It's tuned specifically for desktop needs.

What are the chances of this getting into mainline? Yes, I read about his history. Maybe it will go in anyway. (But it really needs a new name - <USER2> suggestions for a better back-ronym?)

One thing I did not see that it has, is hyperthreading support, i.e. detecting that two cores are really the same, and not scheduling two tasks on the same core, while other are available. And also, not scheduling idle priority tasks on a core used by other tasks.

I emailed him to ask.

<comment><USER11> Do desktop workloads benefit from hyperthreading? If not, there is no need to clutter this code with support for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> New Intel desktop/laptop systems have hyperthreading on by default, so the real question is whether desktop workloads are hurt by HT. In that case BFS could improve performance by avoiding co-scheduling (which it currently doesn't appear to do).

<comment><USER11> It is disabled by default on every Intel system I own.

But anyway, if people are using unstable Linux scheduling algorithms, I bet they are OK tweaking their BIOS settings, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For Windows users, Bitsum's Process Lasso does an admirable job of maintaining desktop responsiveness.

<http://www.bitsum.com/prolasso.php>

<comment><USER13> So it's a scheduler on top of the kernels scheduler. Sounds ingenious...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This thing needs a better name. I can see the technology benefit, but commercially it needs a more technologically correct (P.C.) name.

If this is sold, the publicity people will have heart attacks and the legal documents will come up on porn searches. Not the best business strategy to peruse if the developers want to maximize the value of this asset.

<comment><USER15> What kind of product do you envision that would be named after, or whose marketing material would even mention by name, a process scheduler?

<comment><USER10> Business Purchase Order for RedHat licenses with BFS scheduler for the developers.

Just don't say what BFS stands for.

OK, it's a bit of a stretch that they'll say what the scheduler is on the PO, but it could happen.

It needs a backronym.

Bloody Fine Scheduler?

Bazinga Fast Scheduler?

BigBang Feory Scheduler? :)

<comment><USER16> Traditionally, BFx stands for "Big Fucking x".

For example the BFG 9000 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BFG_9000></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Moral Machine: human perspectives on AI's moral decisions - <AUTHOR> http://moralmachine.mit.edu/ <comment><AUTHOR> Start by questioning the premise: _should_ algorithms make moral decisions at all?</comment>


Liveblogging from Refresh Colombo July: Sri Lanka's tech meetup - <AUTHOR> http://adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=14304

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey there everyone. The article says most of it but as for why I decided to share this news with you is because I want to get maximum exposure for an effort like this. It's organised by three guys mainly who get little recognition so I thought why not get HN involved with it too. So here's my invitation to you guys to join the discussion.</comment>


Show HN: Karn – Manage multiple Git identities - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/prydonius/karn

<comment><USER2> A more generic tool for this type of function is direnv[[http://direnv.net/](http://direnv.net/)].

I use direnv for example for setting per-directory Perl installation variables to keep my development environments separate.

<comment><USER3> From my (admittedly brief) glance at the documentation, this seems like the opposite of direnv. direnv would allow you to set up configuration values on a per-directory basis, by adding a file in the directory in question. git supports this already, you can simply change the config for the repository in question. The goal of this package appears to automate this so that one doesn't need to reconfigure each individual folder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This will definitely be useful for helping switch between work and personal projects on the same laptop!

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't mean to be a fuddy-duddy, but I don't get it... How is this better/worse than doing...

            git config user.name Foobar
            git config user.email email@example.com

...which will set that config variable for the current repository only -- not global. I ended up do the a similar thing for a simple git pairing tool[1] that would let you set your name to two people, so that one could discern the pair from the commit logs

[1]:[https://github.com/32bitkid/git-working- with](https://github.com/32bitkid/git-working-with)

<comment><AUTHOR> I built karn to avoid situations where I've forgotten to update the config after cloning a new repository. With karn, any repository under `~/Work`, for example, will automatically be configured to use the correct identity. Also, since it's all in one configuration file, that makes it really easy to maintain and keep it in sync with multiple machines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this handle management of SSH keys?

<comment><USER7> I already do this with a simple shell script:

      if [ $1 == "home" ]; then
            ssh-add -D
            ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa_home
            ssh -T git@github-home
            exit;
      fi

where in ~/.ssh/config:

      Host github-home
        HostName github.com
        User git
        IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa_home
        IdentitiesOnly yes

<comment><USER8> I also have stuff like this lying around. Please don't tell Github because I seem to remember it is against their policy.

:)

<comment><USER7> Actually they're okay with it. I checked with them about how to do this and they recommended a single account instead. When I said I needed to keep my corporate and personal accounts separate for policy reasons, they were fine with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> heh. the last time i saw this implemented, it was called gas => [https://github.com/walle/gas](https://github.com/walle/gas)</comment>