Battling Silicon Valley Wage Suppression - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mightyspring.com/post/74827679281/battling-outside-forces-in-employment#

<comment><USER2> If you suppress prices, you reduce supply. Demand remains high, supply is now artificially low.

One unspoken benefit of this history of wage suppression is the dearth of engineering talent today. Rather than high prices signaling an opportunity to invest in an engineering education, labor market participants should have rationally chosen different skills and disciplines given the relatively low perceived market pay.

It stands to reason that engineers are getting paid more now than they otherwise would be thanks to temporal lags and education costs. If an unrigged market had been signaling prices that conformed to job market participant's real demands, the students of yesterday could have recognized better job opportunities today.

<comment><USER3> The wage suppression and agitation for imported labor has cultural impacts more serious than supply and demand. The message sinks in that the occupations are low prestige, regardless of earnings. High prestige occupations don't get kicked around like that.

<comment><USER4> Isn't the same thing happening with doctors? I see a lot of doctors from outside the US. I'm not sure what would be a higher prestige profession. I think the message is that just about everybody gets kicked around.

<comment><USER5> Those Doctors are eager to come here as the wages for Doctors here is very high. Also there is a much larger bar to entry for being a Doctor then an Engineer so there has been a shortage in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That started off as a moderately interesting blog post, and...

"Conclusion

Use Mighty Spring! ..."

ended as a thinly disguised advertisement. I think I would have preferred some indication at the top of the page that the company was offering services related to the blog post.

<comment><USER7> Noted. I work for Mighty Spring and will be done in future.

<comment><USER8> How about in the present (A little thing called editing).

<comment><USER7> Updated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No more wage suppression cartel? No problem, on to the next schtick; cries for more H1B's because of a "STEM worker shortage".

Don't fall for it folks, the STEM worker shortage is a myth.

<comment> daniel-cussen Absolutely. Basic economics: you suppress the price of a good, and there'll be a shortage.

I could see STEM immigration issues being debated on different merits, but not on the topic of a shortage. It really takes a lot of gall and dishonesty for certain Silicon Valley CEO's to, on the one hand, suppress wages, and on the other, _say that the resulting shortage is because of immigration problems, when they themselves know the they 're to blame._

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, what would have happened had Apple and Google ruthlessly poached from each other and from every other smaller tech company like Adobe? A few engineers would have been better for it, but would the companies have attained the success that they did?

<comment><USER11> It depends on how you define success. If success is producing better products that please more customers, I would hazard a guess that they actually suppressed their success. If success means minimizing short-term labor costs, then these companies were definitely successful. Minimizing short-term labor costs is an obvious win for executives, it makes them look good. For shareholders, its hard to say if they won or lost, due to longer term potential for harm. For the consumer market, it's probably a loss, because there could have been better products if companies were willing to poach the right people to get better products. And for the labor itself, a definite loss. It's also a loss for the startup community, because there's fewer people with financial independence to start their own company. And since that's where a good chunk of innovation happens, I think we all lose out quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very Enlightening post!

<comment><USER13> I must agree. Some definite things to consider in today's world! Great post - keep them coming!</comment></comment>


Sherlock Holmes Debugging - <AUTHOR> http://blog.seancassidy.me/sherlock-holmes-debugging.html

<comment><USER2> I feel like this developer is trying to present a false dichotomy between his "Sherlock" method of debugging and the scientific debugging method. To be more specific, it seems as though the example he gave exactly fit the definition of the scientific debug method.

1\. The author identified a problem he wanted to fix

2\. He tried to guess the cause of the problem

3\. He tested that guess

4\. He analyzed the results of multiple trials.

5\. When he was done with analysis, he worked out a fix and then tested again.

The only thing of note to the "Sherlock" method is that the author explicitly decided to spend a great deal of time in the guessing phase. What is my point here? Unless you already have experienced a bug and/or know exactly what is causing it right off the bat, the scientific method is still the most effective tool in your debugging arsenal.

<comment><USER3> This was my thought as well. Sherlock's method can be seen as a special case of the scientific method that focuses on gathering all the facts before making your HYPOTHESIS. (You can't call it a theory until you've tested it, and even then, the theory explains the facts, not the other way around.)

Also, completely missing from this story is how deductions are made and the difference between deductions, hypothesis, and facts.

For example, fact: The message isn't sent. Deduction: cURL works, so the problem isn't the system. Hypothesis: The problem is in the API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _I use the Sherlock Holmes method of debugging software._

Everyone does, surprise! Finding a cause by effect is exactly what the debugging is :)

That said, does anyone else remember the "Undo Step Forward" command in TurboPascal 5.5 IDE? You could un-step through the program being debugged, essentially moving back in time. That was an incredible feature, a true engineering curiosity.

<comment><USER5> Reverse execution has been available in GDB for five years now:

[https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Reverse- Ex...](https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/gdb/Reverse- Execution.html)

<comment><USER4> ... and I actually knew that, but forgot. Thanks. To TP's credit it had this feature back in the early 90s, over 20 years ago. Though I suspect it wasn't the first to have it either.

<comment><USER6> There's also Mozilla's rr [https://github.com/mozilla/rr](https://github.com/mozilla/rr).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was a nice story about thorough debugging, but I can't see how the discovery method is anything different than what most people use.

</comment><comment><USER8> Differential Diagnosis is an excellent approach to debugging. Seeing debugging in the wild before, I've seen two, maybe three different approaches to debugging:

1) Magical thinking: This is the fear that the computer system has suddenly changed its mind and decided to stop working. The approach here is typically to try some cargo-cult knowledge on how to fix the system without knowing what's wrong, and then just start hitting random things, and see if they come back.

2) Panic / Fixation: These kinds of developers usually get into a state where they are in a panic over what's wrong and fixate on one component of the system where they believe the failure to be. This is slightly more productive than the earlier, but not changing your assessment based on the new information gained is also counterproductive.

3) DDX: This is very much the Sherlock / House type of debugging. It tends to require a lot of wide-shallow knowledge, as opposed to in depth knowledge of the system. Typically, you work backwards from the symptoms, and essentially do a binary search based on the widest type of problem sets to the narrowest.

DDX in-fact is very difficult for most people to do under stress. Nelson from Stripe wrote a post on keeping a notebook to store wide information, and enable caching b-tree searches. This is a very good approach.

</comment><comment><USER9> And if you want to program like Holmes as well...

[http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Learning-Program- Computer-S...](http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Learning-Program-Computer- Sherlock/dp/B002T6VZJI)

This was the first programming book I read, back in the eighties. Lately I got a copy for nostalgia's sake, and it's all still spot on good practice today - problem definition, algorithm design, avoiding global state etc - although the language (both the Pascal syntax and the Conan-Doyle-style prose) probably wouldn't suit today's "Dummy's Guide" market.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes I have tried to use the scientific method to resolve hard to reproduce bugs.

Write a hypothesis or series of them. Consider what implications this hypothesis would mean about the behaviour of the bug or code. Design an experiment to test the hypothesis, continue with more experiments. List methodology in bug report so others can repeat the experiments. Finally a proof of the cause of the bug is found.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand what makes this "Sherlock Holmes" debugging. Don't we all do this kind of stuff every day?

Cool story though.

<comment><USER12> Yeah. Eliminate possible causes until you've found the real one. There aren't many other reasonable approaches to debugging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also known as the "Five-Whys" elsewhere.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys)

</comment><comment><USER14> Well "Sherlock Holmes Debugging" may be redundant, since this is really just "debugging" (though who would have clicked on that link?), I was most excited by this line:

> There is no sin in software engineering more serious than thinking some > behavior of a computer system is magical or beyond our understanding.

I've been trying to find a good test case to get my junior engineers to step out of their code and see more of the layers. This is a pretty good mantra for improving your debugging skills.

</comment><comment><USER15> Only loosely related but for lovers of weird programming texts, there's a bizarre gem called "Elementary Basic - Learning To Program Your Computer In Basic With Sherlock Holmes" by Henry Ledgard and Andrew Singer.

[http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Chronicled-Learning- Compute...](http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Chronicled-Learning-Computer- Sherlock/dp/0394524233)

</comment><comment><USER16> What the article says: Go down the stack in a linear format and check everything

What a Sherlock Holmes story is: Seemingly-unrelated characters could be responsible for the crime

How the story would've been if it was really similar to Sherlock Holmes:

\- Check your own software (Already done)

\- Go down the stack and check all dependency, platform issues (Already done)

\- Check if your clipboard works properly (New)

\- Check if the monitor outputs pixels properly (New)

\- Check if your eyes see clearly (New)

That would be Sherlock Holmes debugging!

On a serious note, I like the story. I also like the way things are done but I assumed that's how every developer works. I looked at the link to the Scientific approach and IMO, that shouldn't be considered as the de-facto Scientific approach. This should be the Scientific approach.

</comment><comment><USER17> MTU problems are not unheard of, it's one of the things you always check for whem you have this type of network problems. Especially when you're running jumbo frames, which used to be quite troublesome when the technology was new.

Another thing to check for is funny-looking TCP flags. Some firewalls tend to drop such traffic, and it may not end up in the logs you usually check.

That's why the _first_ thing you do when one connection works and one doesn't is to tcpdump them and compare. Just last week I had one application which ran ssl directly and in another environment it did a starttls-type thing just because of the underlying libraries.

It was immediately obvious from looking at it, but it would have been terribly difficult to guess. Don't start with Sherlockian reasoning, start by getting all the data.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's always bugs like this that end up eating all of your time. That's why I find making small client websites or apps (as opposed to larger software projects) to be so hard to profit on.

</comment><comment><USER19> this is a nice story, but i think something much more important is missed here... application of the scientific method.

all of this logical deduction is worthless unless you verify it with experiments. this is very much not what Sherlock Holmes does... but it is exactly what enabled the deduction in the story to be cemented into a reliable conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER20> Debugging is detective work.

</comment><comment><USER21> What a terrible title/premise

</comment><comment><USER22> No shit.</comment>


Show HN: Our first Android app, made in 1 week - <AUTHOR> http://bubbleomatic.com/ Hey guys,<p>Would really appreciate your feedback on our APP. <comment><USER2> Interesting.. Are you guys available for hire? do you do iOS as well?

<comment><AUTHOR> iOS is coming up soon. As for hire, it depends. Drop me an email to dazoot.at.gmail.com with details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I imagine that the one week is development time. If you add the time it takes to submit into Google App market etc, how long did it take?

<comment><USER4> In my experience submitting an app to Google Play takes 30 minutes, at most, including creation of promotional images and text. And it typically appears within an hour or two (although it used to be immediate).

<comment><AUTHOR> Publishing the app to Google Play was straight forward. Quick and clean. No delay there :)</comment></comment></comment>


The OpenBSD Ada Library - <AUTHOR> http://verisimilitudes.net/2019-07-27 <comment><USER2> Ada is my favorite 'almost' language. I'm writing a Kalman filter example in it right now. Just about every programming error from some large C/C++ codebase wouldn't happen in Ada. It's got manual and automatic memory management, separate storage pools, packed arrays, arbitrary precision floating point types, fixed point types, checked integers, generic packages and functions, tasking, real-time support (how many other languages have a Delay_Until function in the standard library?)... It's like graphene - it does everything except get used in the real world (outside of specialized applications like Aerospace).

A fun thing to do is look for Ada tutorials from after the year 2000. There aren't many.

<comment><USER3> Ada is hindered by the compiler situation.

The GCC frontend has always been second-tier at best, and AdaCore is very expensive (it's technically GPL, but you will never get a copy, except directly from AdaCore with further contractual restrictions).

They finally released a "Community Edition", but you may only develop Open Source software with it.

It's a shame. Ada is really nice.

<comment><USER2> I thought the GNU version that comes with most distros was under the same license as the rest of GCC?

<comment><USER3> Yes, but the GCC frontend is always a few steps behind, big parts of the test suite are proprietary, the Annexes aren't implemented (AFAIK), and – (hyperbolically) everybody who gained proficiency with gnat-gcc was hired by AdaCore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OpenBSD pledge(2) and unveil(2) are relatively easy to create high level language bindings for, and users have already contributed several in the community, like this latest one for Ada. In base, OpenBSD only supports C/C++, however a Perl interface is also included.

[https://man.openbsd.org/man3p/OpenBSD::Pledge.3p](https://man.openbsd.org/man3p/OpenBSD::Pledge.3p)

[https://man.openbsd.org/man3p/OpenBSD::Unveil.3p](https://man.openbsd.org/man3p/OpenBSD::Unveil.3p)

A few bindings are also maintained in ports, for example GHC/Haskell (unix package) & Node.js (node-pledge) include them out of the box.

For an unofficial list of highlevel language bindings: [https://gist.github.com/ligurio/f6114bd1df371047dd80ea9b8a55...](https://gist.github.com/ligurio/f6114bd1df371047dd80ea9b8a55c104)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes; this was good to ''cut my teeth on'', as it's a rather simple package and, being so self-contained, I'm actually entirely pleased with its specification.

>In base, OpenBSD only supports C/C++, however a Perl interface is also included.

I'm soon going to drop by the OpenBSD mailing list and see if they're interested in including this in their prepackaged GNAT. It won't harm to ask.

Related to this, I intend to write a binding for Common Lisp, at some point, although that will be far more arduous, all things considered.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation for accounting firm or CPA for Silicon Valley startup? - <AUTHOR>

We're a self-funded startup in Silicon Valley.  We're big enough to need help with accounting but small enough to not need to hire a CFO yet.<p>Do any of you have any recommendations for a good accounting firm or CPA in Silicon Valley that has experience working with startups? <comment><USER3> Having worked with a good number of Valley firms, my best experiences have been with the so-called regional firms (i.e., not "Big Four" but not little 1 or 2 person operations either).

A couple of suggestions:

Mohler, Nixon & Williams - I have worked for years with Kent Williams, who is superb in tax, very personable, and my personal CPA as well (<http://www.mohlernixon.com/kent_williams.htm>) - they have worked over the past couple of decades with a slew of startups, including many early-stage ones.

Burr, Pilger & Mayer - Roy Maynard ([http://www.bpmllp.com/display.asp?catid=8,16&pageid=44](http://www.bpmllp.com/display.asp?catid=8,16&pageid=44)) is a good guy to work with here - ditto for their startup experience.

Frank Rimerman & Company - they are highly experienced at working especially with VC-funded startups - my main contact there recently left the firm but I am sure many excellent CPAs would be more than eager to help you there.

Pricing is always a factor for a self-funded startup and I don't think any of the above firms are the cheapest (at least in relation to smaller shops) - <USER2> would put at least MNW and BPM in the "moderate" range given Valley standards. I have worked as well with many small CPA firms, some quite good, but these may or may not fit your needs in terms of range and depth of expertise, depending on where your company is at.</comment>


Ask HN: How long have Google / Facebook etc. been trying to kill the web? - <AUTHOR> I'm a game dev. I have zero interest in the web. But I recently had to make a landing page for one of my games. I was able to throw together a perfectly serviceable page (with html and css that I remember from college) in a few hours. I hosted it on Netlify which worked perfectly and was very easy for me to use.
The problem is my page seems to be considered dangerous..
https://image.ibb.co/dq3WGz/image.png
I've seen articles / comments here complaining that the olden days of peoples weird personal sites are gone... But it further seems that the big players (facebook et al) are actively trying to squash anything akin to this 'old' web by making it not compatible with their system.. Did I get this right? + How long has it been going on? <comment><USER2> The deeper question is where will this go? The web has been capitalized by the ethical breach of abusing the lacking of general technological knowledge by most people and new breed developers aren't paying attention. I feel your pain but cannot offer a reasonable solution but one _may_ exist with the required ethos. After posting, moments later I saw a post of the following. It holds promise from the inventor of the web:

[https://www.inrupt.com/blog/one-small-step-for-the- web](https://www.inrupt.com/blog/one-small-step-for-the-web)</comment>


Tim Ferriss practices low information diet by subscribing Hacker Monthly - <AUTHOR> http://hackermonthly.posterous.com/the-3-periodicals-tim-ferriss-subscribes <comment><USER2> I'm a HN addict, of course, but I can give a big thumbs up to Hacker Monthly. It's a great piece of work and well worth subscribing to if you want a digest of the best of HN.

(I just realized I conflated two things in my initial response. Hacker Monthly is great, of course, but I was also thinking of Hacker Newsletter - <http://www.hackernewsletter.com/> \- which is an e-mail digest of the best links from HN :-) Perhaps Hacker Monthly + Hacker Newsletter are the perfect pairing to get as much from Hacker News as possible without actually visiting it daily ;-))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Peter. I'm a HN addict too. But now, I can say it's part of my job :)</comment></comment>


How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-cheese-wheat-and-alcohol-shaped-human-evolution-180968455/?no-ist <comment><USER2> And coffee. Much later, of course, but coffee took us out of our drunken state into a hightened sense of mental acuity.

<comment><USER3> And beer helps one get back to sleep at the end of it all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are interested in the link between human evolution and food, I highly recommend the documentary 'Cooked', by Michael Pollan: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5347906/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5347906/)

<comment><USER5> One of the things that bothers me most about modern food culture is the lack of reverence for the animal that was slaughtered for you to enjoy. With that said, I actually think he did a good job showing gratitude for the animal in that docu-series. Its the least meat eaters can do for themselves.

(I follow the plant-based diet)

<comment><USER6> How should I properly revere the plant that was killed for me to enjoy, if I followed the plant-based diet?

<comment><USER5> I'll respond to your tu quoque with some very relevant quotes.

Charles Darwin: "There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties . . . The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery."

Leo Tolstoy: "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."

Carl Sagan: "Humans–who enslave, castrate, experiment on, and fillet other animals–have had an understandable penchant for pretending animals do not feel pain. A sharp distinction between humans and "animals" is essential if we are to bend them to our will, make them work for us, wear them, eat them–without any disquieting tinges of guilt or regret. It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer. The behavior of other animals renders such pretensions specious. They are just too much like us."

<comment><USER7> Me "I like the taste of meat."

<comment><USER5> so does everyone. That's what makes it a noble cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm still feeling guilty about how they shaped my weekend.

</comment><comment><USER9> _A History of the World in Six Glasses_ [https://smile.amazon.com/History- World-6-Glasses-ebook/dp/B0...](https://smile.amazon.com/History- World-6-Glasses-ebook/dp/B002STNBRK/ref=carldonath)

<comment><USER10> Putting Amazon affiliate links in forum posts is against their terms of service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Props to the fungi making it happen.

<comment><USER12> ha yea the fungi really dont get enough credit. they did a lot to make the planet habitable back in the day before much else existed on land and then much later on you have mushrooms entering the early human's diet causing all sorts of eh, "trouble"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can't wait for browsers to start blocking overlays

<comment><USER14> I'd like them to start blocking those pointless notification prompts too

<comment><USER15> just did this in chrome, settings, search notifications, toggle ask so it says 'Blocked'

I don't get why every site out there thinks I want notifications.

<comment><USER16> Looks like it can't be disabled for any of googles own products.

<comment><USER17> What did you expect from a browser made by an advertisement company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's not like people suffering from celiac's disease and eating gluten fail to thrive in our society. They still reproduce and raise families, most people do. How is evolution going to improve that situation?

<comment><USER19> Seeing as we're the only species on this planet that keeps the sick/weak/disabled alive to reproduce. It doesn't fair well in the long term.

<comment><USER20> In the long term we can correct all genetic faults with technology. Natural selection is a very crude tool.

What we have more of an issue is smart people are not having children, or not having as many as they can. The only resource in short supply on the planet is smart people.

<comment><USER21> But is intelligence a lethal mutation? Big picture perspective, nuclear arms and environmental degradation...

<comment><USER22> The Kurt Vonnegut novel "Galapagos" is about how natural selection selected against intelligence, and the resulting evolution of humans.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_\(novel\))</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Small iPhone 4 holder raises 100k at Kickstarter and counting - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/glif-iphone-4-tripod-mount-and-stand?ref=category

<comment><USER2> I contributed a week or so ago. It wasn't charity, though, I simply thought $20 was a fair price to pay for the item and was willing to wait a couple months for it.

I want this to exist...

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain what "THIS PROJECT WILL BE FUNDED ON TUESDAY NOV 2, 9:45PM EDT." means? Is it when, if funds keep accruing at the current rate, they'll have made their goal? Or is that when they'll get the money they've raised from Kickstarter?

I didn't see anything on the page explaining that bit of information.

<comment><USER4> It's when the funding period ends. At that point the money will actually change hands. They've already done basically 10x their goal ($10k).

Note: Kickstarter is not a forum for _investment_. You don't get equity in return. In this case you are really just pre-ordering one of those stands.

<comment><USER5> What's bizarre about the Kickstarter model is that for the most successful projects they end up acting as a blocker — if you reach your goal in a few days and you set your deadline to a month away, there's no way for you to get the funds until it passes — even afterwards it'll take a while for Amazon to let you cash out.

There's no way for the creator to say 'we passed the goal, that's enough money, lets get to work' — something that set Diaspora up for a far more epic failure.

<comment><USER6> _"something that set Diaspora up for a far more epic failure"_

Is Diaspora a failure? How did the Kickstarter model set them up for this failure in your opinion?

<comment><USER5> It was clear from the beginning that Diaspora would have problems — they were a handful of NYU students just learning to program who'd never shipped anything before, starting from scratch on a white-elephant project that several other groups had been working for years on. When they were forced by their schedule to release something a month ago it had more fundamental security vulnerabilities than features!

Had they not taken donations none of would have cared that they'd released a totally unviable social network Rails app licensed under the AGPL. Kickstarter did them a great disservice by raising $200,000 instead of their goal of $10,000 and swamping them with the publicity to match. The expectations were far higher than they could possibly meet.

Kickstarter sure got a lot of marketing out of it though (and a $10,000 fee)

<comment><USER7> I don't think this is a problem with kickstarter, I actually think this shows the power of kickstarter! The problem is with diaspora itself, you touched on it there: "they were a handful of NYU students just learning to program who'd never shipped anything before" and it's _they_ who chose kickstarter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the times I wish I had a 3D printer. To make one RIGHT NOW.

<comment><USER9> Some Styrofoam and an Exacto knife could probably replicate a close approximation. Might not be very durable though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> They will have to 3D print 360 (for those who pledged $50 or more). I don't know how fast their 3D printer is but that seems like quite the task.

<comment><USER11> According to The Economist the 3D printing is outsourced to Shapeways so the load shouldn't be a problem.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/10/small- scale_p...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/10/small- scale_production)

Shapeways is apparently already doing north of 10k prints a month:

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/shapeways-and- its-3...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/shapeways-and- its-3-d-printing-comes-to-new-york/?src=me)

<comment><USER10> That's a great article, thanks for that! The two guys behind the project really seem to be very thoughtful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Their pitch video is great in explaining the product with all the alternative use cases. I'm inspired.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there a Kickstarter in europe and if not shouldn't there be?

</comment><comment><USER14> Why are so many people willing to pay $20 for a product, that if it _already existed and was available_ at a checkout counter would probably cost less than $5 or $10?

</comment><comment><USER15> EDIT 2:

Hey there, it's early in the morning, and it's pretty clear that 3,000 * 30,000 != 100,000... But go ahead, downvote me some more.

I think I need another few cups of tea.

<comment><USER16> $25 per person? [I think Diaspora did it with much less people] I will be looking at you from now on with suspicious eyes. EDIT: Feel free to delete it

<comment><USER15> I'd rather publicly admit I made a mistake than just make it disappear. I rarely think deleting posts is appropriate.

<comment><USER16> Well you already deleted the first half of it, so why not the rest?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf, my programming language - <AUTHOR> https://mortoray.com/2018/08/07/sadly-i-must-say-goodbye-to-leaf-my-programming-language/ <comment><USER2> I had a similar thought process (but luckily without spending time implementing something). I want to write a game. I thought, "None of the current languages works quite the way I want. I know! I'll write a language specifically for my game and just keep implementing the bits I need".

Then I thought, "Wait. If I do that, I'll spend 90% of my time writing a language and 10% of my time writing a game".

So I was saved. Except I still haven't even started writing the game, so I suppose it's completely moot :-D

<comment><USER3> Games are still in need of a better language. I have some skepticism and hope for Jai. I really wish D as better C worked better in that realm, but it's missing a few crucial things. Rust asserts too much control over memory. I'm all ears for anything that's somewhere between C and C++ as an alternative to write games in.

Most new languages just don't get the things right that C++ did, which is why despite it having a ton of deficiencies when it comes to game development, it's still what everyone in AAA is using. Companies in AAA spend so much money on software to even just somewhat improve places where C++ has gaping flaws. A better language should have been developed by now and I don't even want to think about how much money C++ has cost the industry as a whole, even just purely on iteration speed.

<comment><USER4> I was almost like OP for a while. Working on game, fed up with existing languages (even C), wanted a better C. I was excited about Jai, but as time goes on I'm finding it looks less and less what I want from a language. Seriously considered making my own.

Then I started working with Zig[0]. It's about 90% the language I want and even though it's still immature and the syntax, std lib, and semantics are in flux, I still find the quality of life improvement so huge that all my current projects are in Zig.

Zig is a better C to Jai's better C++, I think. It's a small language, it favors simplicity and explicitness, it has entirely manual memory management to the point that there isn't even a default allocator (we pass one in to anything that requires one). It even lets you import C headers directly to interface with C libraries.

[0] [https://ziglang.org/](https://ziglang.org/)

(skip the "stable" 2.0 download, it's way out of date from master)

<comment><USER5> Zig is Linux-first, though. I don't think they have any dev who runs Windows. For games especially, you don't want Windows to be an afterthought. Maybe they'll get to it eventually, but it doesn't seem a priority.

<comment><USER4> I pretty much exclusively dev on Windows, and the only thing that's a problem for me is the lack of error and assert traces. Someone started implementing the support for it, but never finished it. It is complicated by the fact that Microsoft does not distribute DIA with Windows and Zig can't include it in its own distribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some people seem to be objecting to this as a fluff piece, but it speaks to me on a deep level.

I develop free software because I like to learn and create; because good tools make work a joy; because I like to make useful things.

And I've parted ways with several projects, some of them mine and some of them from others. It's painful each time I leave a useful project unmaintained. And yet, I don't find long term project maintenance sustainable as a hobby when my personal use declines.

I suppose the best outcome is handing useful things off to a new caring maintainer. How do other people deal with this?

<comment><USER7> I think handing it off to a maintainer when your own usage declines is a very good idea. One of the problems with maintaining something that you don't use a lot is that you get out of touch with how it is being used and the direction of the community. If you are at the head of the community, it is helpful to be an active participant; so appointing another maintainer who has an active usage, passion, and is "in-touch" with what is going on could be very fruitful. Eat your own dog-food

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I want to do D, and it'll be easier to do A, B, C first.

A turned out harder than expected; B had challenges, some seemly insurmountable, some merely incredibly tedious. C looks even worse.

I'm exhausted, lost interest in D. But I "should" continue. I give up... a failure.

All because A, B, C make D "easy".

<comment><USER9> Interestingly, the author of D is on this comments page ... he did do D :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is sad, and I feel for you. Your experiences I think mirror in the macro what many of us have in the micro - a side project becomes a love affair becomes something that has to be left aside as the rest of life takes over.

I hope it is merely a hiatus - and I hope too find your next great passion. Keep writing about it - we will follow ...

</comment><comment><USER11> It's a depressing feeling but the key point is that it's not motivating you any longer and motivation was the driving force of the project. When I face situations like that I usually raise the requirement bar up until it feels hard and fun again. So I suggest that instead of just doing what needs to be done with your project, invent a novel solution to the problem that is useful enough but most importantly - motivating you to do it

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if Rust could become used as a standard library for other languages in the future. It seems well fitted for this role due to it's safety, relatively easy ffi, and speed next to languages with similarly large standard libraries.

<comment><USER13> I believe rust can compile down to a shared object and thus trivially used via any CFFI. Sure you lose the expressivness of the rust language APIs but that's a nightmare for interop anyways.

<comment><USER14> Only because rust has an unstable ABI. I feel like it'd be nice to have rust provide an explicit "rust-stable" ABI for those kind of things.

<comment><USER13> Really curious, is there much of a usecase for a stable rust ABI? There is no ecosystem of "rusty shared objects" to support and cargo tends to build things fine without it.

As an outside observer it looks like an unnecessary complication.

<comment><USER14> Plugin systems and distributing dynamic libraries are the two big use-cases.

For the second use-case, distributions can handle that somewhat okay by simply enforcing that all packages are compiled with the same rustc version. That works okay, but it means that, as an external user, you can't really depend on those libraries for your own executables, as you'll need to recompile when the distribution updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is possible though to build your own stack from the ground up (hard part is to be smart about what exactly "the ground" is). Look at Knuth and TeX. And today we have even better tools to write programs, and much better turn around times in terms of compiling etc. Obviously, there is some added complexity for there are API's like Apple Metal you will need to learn, but I think that more than evens out in total.

I think it is important to have a big goal though (like TeX) to keep you motivated and moving forward.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _" And would I want to work on yet another language, knowing I've already > solved the interesting problems?"_

Sometimes this happens to me too, where I want to scratch an itch, and I try to do it by writing real software and using it. In general I have found that to be a bad idea. For those I prefer writing throw-away software, and only writing real software when it's "boring" but useful work.

<comment><USER17> When I started Leaf it was to scratch an itch. It was really only when the motivation dropped that I tried to find ways to use it, to renew my interest in pursuing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> C is a perfect language for writing games into; C++ has some extra sauce that makes some things easier, faster to write and more correct.

There is no actual need for a new language for writing games; that's why so many, including the author, give up. C/C++ has the 90% of what is needed to write any application, and the rest 10% is simply elusive and might not even exist.

<comment><USER19> Problem with C/C++ is maintaining and writing code. I am sure you are well aware of Jonathan Blow's efforts in writing Jai programming language. If not take a look at his Youtube channel. Pretty eye opening. (I am no game dev btw)

<comment><USER18> I am a beyond-veteran C/C++ programmer, I already have studied Jai, viewed all of Blow's videos etc.

I will not recommend Jai for any development, it doesn't offer anything substantially better than the current C/C++ combo to justify the switch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For my language, instead of targeting LLVM, I targeted C. That made me take off fast, because everything in C is available from day 1. What I did is build an extra layer over C to make it behave more like a scripting language.

Used it for my website.

<comment><USER17> I chose LLVM from the start since I knew some of the challenges that interested me couldn't be done at the C level -- or rather it'd be more complicated at that level than at the LLVM level.

<comment><USER21> Which challenges? As far as I can see, LLVM is essentially C in SSA syntax; what semantic differences have you come across?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What he is experiencing is the reality of most people's lives. The boredom and drudgery of doing the hard yards every day. Most people do not have the luxury of doing what is interesting to them. It is a case of just having to knuckle down and complete what has been started.

From my personal perspective, it's nice to have side projects that are interesting and learning exercises. The reality is that if these side projects are actually worth it then they need to be completed. Otherwise they are just a fad and not really worth the effort that might be put into them.

If something is worth starting then it is worth finishing.

<comment><USER23> This post seems to be just a collection of generalities judging the way that someone else has chosen to spend his time. You seem both to be saying that he shouldn't have started and that, since he started, he shouldn't stop. Well, presumably the author once got some value out of the effort, so that it was worth starting; and found that he was now no longer getting enough value out of it, so that it was worth stopping. Do you really think that it's valid (or even important) for you to judge either of those decisions by someone else?

<comment><USER22> For a private endeavour, whether he finishes or not is completely up to him. When he puts it out for all to see, this then changes the dynamic under which he is moving forward.

If he had said he was stopping due to life commitments or family situations, etc, then these kinds of things take priority, as they should. No problems or issues should arise from that. But he has stated that he is giving up because it now involves doing the hard yards to complete the project - this does not show him in a good light.

In essence, he is saying that once something has become non-interesting in whatever way, then he will give up and move onto something else that will hold his interest. In other words, he is committed to a course of action only when it holds his focus, but that he will happily drop it when it becomes hard work.

I really don't think that he was intentionally going out to say that he is undependable. This is what he has said though.

<comment><USER24> A more charitable explanation is (in his words), "it's no longer fulfilling my goals, and it's not as fun as it once was."

When I look at it from his point of view, I feel quite sorry for him. The language's forum has 9 posts in the last calendar year. 4 of those are him solving a problem using Leaf. Then, I check out the status page and realize that, for all the work he has done, Leaf is still in a very primitive state.

I'd equate it to being like a startup. At some point, it stops making sense. Then, you can either ride the ship down into the depths, or hop out when the going is as good as it will get.

As for his dependability, I've got to tell you that, from my perspective, anyone who can pull this off is more than impressive enough.

I think he should be awfully impressed with what he did. And, I don't think it's even remotely fair to judge him as being undependable. Based on what I've seen, I think he should have pulled the plug last year, when he first wanted to quit.

<comment><USER22> Maybe it is a change of times, but when he got into the detail of why he was quitting, it was about the hard work ahead, which is rarely fun for most people.

I don't feel sorry for him at all. He found something that was of interest to him and he decided to head down a path towards that interest. Good on him. Kudos to him for giving it a go. However, the problem he has made for himself is that he went public far too soon and is now publicly saying he is quitting because there is too much hard work ahead for him.

Startups have a low rate of success and is about testing an idea that has a good likelihood of failure. Different proposition to start with. The more appropriate comparison is making some item that can be useful to you but has a lot of tedious and fiddly work to be done. In his case it was a computer language which always comes with implementation problems to do deal with. One knows this up front, or at least, should know this.

The problem is, he hasn't pulled it off - there is still a long way to go. One of my areas of interest is language design, compiler construction of virtual machine implementation. This subject matter is highly complex, tedious in many ways and requires a great deal of patience and perseverance. For each problem you solve, more arise to be solved.

For an individual, this can be daunting when you finally realise that you have undertaken a massive project. It is especially so, if the language that you have designed doesn't strike a cord in other people. But if you have a goal in mind, then continue on even through the tedium that will come.

Things will always get in the way of you completing side projects, that's life, but you can still keep chipping away as the years go on.

<comment><USER24> I'm in my forties and the times have not changed that much. We have a limited number of hours on this planet, and we don't know how limited they are until they're already mostly spent. We can slave away doing things we don't gain anything from, or we can go out and take control of our happiness.

This fellow doesn't get paid for his work on Leaf and he works on it during his already spare time. He would gain more doing creative tasks - he wants to "do graphics, write music, make some games and record some videos."

It has nothing to do with hard work and everything to do with allocating his time in the way he most wants to. He is taking control of his own happiness and that is admirable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Leaf is a good name for a language.

<comment><USER26> apparently someone else thinks so too: [https://github.com/leaf- lang/leaf](https://github.com/leaf-lang/leaf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Giving up on something is probably harder then finishing it.

</comment><comment><USER28> I work as a programmer in the games industry, as well as make games by myself on my spare time.

Like how the author describes, I really had to divorce myself from the thought of being a software designer or computer scientist to even start to make the sort of games I wanted to make. Even then I'm hardly a competent game developer, but I'm at least somewhat proud of my work so far.

</comment><comment><USER29> That's too bad. I never actually tried Leaf but I loved following the journey.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anything that is too niche is bound to be a "barren run", at least for a while ...

</comment><comment><USER15> This is funny, I was just looking (like 2 minutes ago) at an article about GC vs. ref counting from the mortoray blog!

</comment><comment><USER31> Never heard about that language.

<comment><USER32> Even this doesn't help [http://leaflang.org/faq.html](http://leaflang.org/faq.html)</comment></comment>


How I Sold My Company to Twitter, Went to Facebook, and Screwed My Co-Founders - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/tuesday-april-5-2011-6c783a5dce42#.bf4s0wasi <comment><USER2> So the screw over was that the company fetched 5 million instead of 10?

Assuming a 3-way split, 1.66 million versus 3.33 million each? He had to take a least a million dollar hit in that scenario, or did Facebook give him something else besides a job? Is a job at Facebook worth over a half a million dollars?

<comment><USER3> At level ~E5/E6 in New York or California, yes.

<comment><USER2> I messed up my comment, supposed to read "over a million and a half" I could see ~500k MAYBE but 1.5million....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" Products that cause mothers to murder their infants in order to use them more, assuming they're legal, simply cannot fail in the world."_

All this is perfectly normal. Somehow.

<comment><USER5> A better assessment might be that it is normal _ized_. We don't have to like it, but it is what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is a job at FB worth more than a ~$10M acquisition?

<comment><USER7> Talking completely out of my ass, we don't know what kind of package they were offering him. 10 mill isn't all for one person. Maybe he could make more over the coming years at FB than he would from a share of 10 mill after investors cash out.

Or maybe he was genuinely more excited about working at FB.

<comment><USER2> Do investors get no say when negotiating an acquisition?

<comment><USER8> Could they compell you to take a position at a company as a condition of the deal? Or maybe more importantly would they even bother? A single offhand comment about not wanting to work there could torpedo the deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this a dupe? I seem to recall reading it.

<comment><USER10> It has been posted 8 times in the last 6 months

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=How%20I%20Sold%20My%20Company%...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=How%20I%20Sold%20My%20Company%20to%20Twitter,%20Went%20to%20Facebook,%20and%20Screwed%20My%20Co- Founders&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I read the book. He seems like an extremely unlikable guy, what with all his cheesy pick-up stories and his hatred of ad-blockers.

However, all-in-all, it was a great read. I liked his take on Zuckerberg thinking of himself as Alexander -- "Google delenda est" \-- or the vignette where the Facebook VP asked "What is Facebook?", and the perky-possibly-a- plant intern responded "it's not your social network, it's your personal newspaper!".

It's worth trudging through the annoying self-promoting stuff for the insider takes imo.

<comment><USER12> The "insider takes" are comical exaggerations and little else. The self- promoting isn't a "veneer" to look past - it's the substance.

<comment><USER11> > I work in an open office, and have been to Facebook's open office campus > many times. I love working in an open office, and think Facebook's campus > looks excellent.

> Facebook Messenger has all of those advantages and even more, since your > name is your identity and not something that requires exchange like a phone > number.

> These are shitty glasses that are already being billed as <$150. (On > Snapchat)

> Is there any evidence for this claim that a Tweet has more "cultural > significance" than a Facebook post with objectively higher engagement?

You seem like one of the "true believers" he talks about.

<comment><USER12> I work in the Bay Area and I have opinions on technology - a stunning indictment.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This massive Google Earth display in Paris includes 48 screens - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/12/12/this-massive-google-earth-display-in-paris-includes-48-screens/?utm_source=HackerNews&utm_medium=share%2Bbutton&utm_content=This%20massive%20Google%20Earth%20display%20in%20Paris%20includes%2048%20screens&utm_campaign=social%2Bmedia <comment><USER2> Two thoughts.

1) What is the advantage of 48 small screens over a single, huge, bright downfiring 4K projector? Probably costs about the same...

2) How do I get into working on things like this? I would love to have a lab space where there was enough hardware and know-how around to just prototype and play with this sort of thing.

<comment><USER3> 1) Resolution is much higher this way (11520x8640 instead of 4000x2000) 2) Go for a doctorate in multimedia studies and tell your prof you need 50 screens. Or - try a company that rents multimedia equipment. If you work there, they've always got lots of spare equipment laying around and interested in people that love to find new usages for them. If you're in Switzerland, try <http://www.habegger.ch/en/>

<comment><USER4> They could use 12 4K projectors for 12000x8000.

<comment><USER5> Just speculating, but maybe it's really hard to align projectors at a specific throw distance to make a visually "seamless" image. Plus, aren't 4k projectors _really_ expensive?

<comment><USER3> That problem has actually already been solved for at least 5 years. There are multiple solutions that do all the necessary calculations, among them:

\- PC Solution by Matrox [http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/m_...](http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/m_series/powerdesk/edge_overlap/)

\- Hardware Solution by RGB Spectrum <http://www.rgb.com/products/EdgeBlendUnit/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to setup something like this yourself check this out. <http://www.sagecommons.org/>

<comment><USER7> Or have a look at this Google project: <http://code.google.com/p/liquid- galaxy/></comment></comment>


'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html <comment><USER2> duplicate? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=427292></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for feedback on business concept – Startup Mentor - <AUTHOR> Hi HN
Myself and my co founder have been looking into an Idea to help startups in their early days and want to get some feedback from the community.
The concept is called Startup Mentor and is a similar concept to Codementor but for startups. It allows anyone to request either a chat or video session with other founders or industry professionals, in a range of issues for a small fee per 15 mins.
One of the best things you find in startup hubs, such as the valley, is a network of founders that have been there and can help the next wave of entrepreneurs. If however you don't live in one of these areas it can be quite hard to navigate the pitfalls.
If your a founder would you find something like this useful or would you offer service as a mentor? <comment><USER2> I'm about to enter into a relationship with a mentor in the coming weeks. I'm currently spending some time looking for the right person. I'm doing this through my contacts. Not just asking if anybody knows somebody who will mentor me, but actively looking at the right industry, and the right person.

I see a few problems with doing this on the web, and with doing this as a business.

1) I want somebody vetted who I can trust. I think in many ways this goes in line with VCs who say they want personal introductions. I don't want somebody who was randomly on the internet looking to mentor a start-up.

1) I know of a few wantrapreneurs who are 'advising/mentoring' start-ups, and I fear what the start-up is gaining from this experience. These people were presented to the start-ups/recommended as they had signed-up to be mentors through a network. I consider it a bit like some 'angel groups' that bring together start-ups to pitch, but never make any investments. These people are playing at start-up, and not serious enough to be worth a start-ups time (unless the start-up is just playing too, which also happens, I did it in the early days before I realized I wasn't being serious).

3) a fee per 15 minutes! Is this how mentoring works? I've never been mentored, but I hope not! This isn't an opportunity to nickel and dime a start-up. If a mentor is serious, they're probably wanting a piece of the action.

4) WebRTC has it's limitations (I used to work in the space) - it's great for a chat, you can share docs and annotate, etc with tools like Coviu (which I used to work on), but is there a reason to have a remote mentor?

Ok, that's a small list of reasons I wouldn't want to use a product you are describing, mostly due to my lack of trust in such a system.

On to this as a business for you.

1) How many people would need a remote mentor? Not everybody can be in the valley, but not everybody needs to be. There are successful mentors everywhere. It is doubtful that your start-up is in such a small remote location that nobody within a 100km radius could act as a mentor. I say this as a developer from a small town of 10,000 people. I've now moved to a much larger city, but even back in my home town, I could have found mentors with both knowledge and connections.

So, I'm going to say you are looking at a small market.

2) Money - as stated above. You want people to pay a small fee to discuss issues for 15 minutes - I think this is a bad business model. If I can't figure out how to get a meeting with an industry expert for advice, maybe I'm not in the right business. How can I expect to make sales in this industry if I can't get to the right people. So again, non-starter for me.

3) How do we navigate the pitfalls? We read and read and read. There is so much information online about generally getting yourself up and running that I'm not sure this is a general issue. Individual industries/verticals may have their own issues, but again, you need to be out there speaking to industry experts to figure this out.

BTW: have you looked into this already and come across [https://www.geteverwise.com/](https://www.geteverwise.com/) \- I know there are other platforms out there as well, I remember seeing another that was not nearly as successful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks you very much for your feedback. Glad to hear your just about to hook up with a mentor. I may have given the wrong impression / not been very clear in my last post. It would be more geared towards a founder starting out in an industry but looking for particular help from an industry professional.

As far as the cost concept goes, as we loosely based the concept on the way Code mentor works we were looking at their pricing model. if you have a mentor in the sense you are doing they don not charge like that!

I take your point on board especially about the 'wantraprenurs'. I have bumped into people like that alot in my time.

Thanks again for the thoughts.</comment></comment>


VampArt – Find Yourself in Historical Artworks - <AUTHOR> https://vampart.webumenia.sk/ <comment><AUTHOR> An art data hackathon project using deep neural networks for face recognition to search for similar faces matching yours in historical artworks from Slovak National Gallery and Nasjonalmuseet of Norway.</comment>


Coronavirus: A draft decree to 'quarantine 10 million people' in Lombardy - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51787238 <comment><USER2> This is only a badly embossed law proposal, which has not been approved yet. Its release to the news, is a huge mistake and it is aleeady causing havok all across the country. People are hoarding trains to go away from the supposed red zones undoubtfully spreading even further the virus.

<comment><USER3> Seems reasonable to implement cancelations of movies, public gatherings, weddings, funerals etc. The best we can do is slow it down until there is a vaccine.

<comment><USER4> At this point new cases in China are declining. They may have misstepped seriously at first but their heavy handed response seems to be working out now.

<comment><USER5> You mean hiding the numbers..?

If not, it's just hard to believe.

<comment><USER6> If they're hiding the numbers, they're doing it across the board: infectious disease case numbers across the board are down, not just corona. This is true in China and in South Korea.

<comment><USER5> Let's hope so!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm from North Italy. I have read news about the definitive law and it's not a quarantine. It s a limited mobility act. It tell that you cannot exit or enter designated zones with many many exceptions... (you can if are returning to your home, you are doing it for job, if there is some kind of valid reason an so on...) With all this exceptions (practically impossible to checks on the real field) the law can be seen as only a raccomandation (and a political move) to travel only for necessity and not for entertainment.

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks like a deja vu: Government doesn't seem to be alarmed by some virus/disease. People start getting sick. Government takes some light measure / trivialize the whole thing. Lots of people start getting sick / dying. Government implement a military lock-down.

Italy seems to be going on the same track of China. It's interesting that the rest of the world doesn't look very alarmed about these situations.

<comment><USER9> If you shift the curves over and account for population, Italy's actually about a week behind China in locking things down.

The sad thing is that even after locking everything down, you expect case numbers to continue to rise by ~100x (which is what happened in Hubei), as people get past the incubation period, infect the people they're living with, medical workers fall sick, and so on. So the only right time to impose a lockdown is before it looks like a problem at all, which is politically impossible to pull off.

<comment><USER10> They are very clearly trying to balance public health with economic losses.

It certainly doesn't help that Milan citizens are ignoring restrictive measures, bars are offering free drinks to "restart the normal life", and companies are attacking the government for the lack of profits because "it's just a flu". Meanwhile hospitals are getting swamped and are calling for selection of who should or should not have access to ICU.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> # of confirmed cases in Italy on 20th of February: 3

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_Italy)

<comment><USER12> > As of 7 March 2020, there have been 5,883 confirmed cases, 233 deaths, and > 589 recoveries in Italy.

Why choose February 20th?

<comment><USER5> I think he meant that just a few weeks ago there were no cases, now there are 5000

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unbelievable. Does Italian government have right to lock down a whole area? Will this happen in the US?

<comment><USER14> It would be much harder to do this in the US because of the First Amendment enshrined right to assembly.

I mean, the CDC can try, but there will be an immediate stay on the rule by some court or another, and the Supreme Court is EXTREMELY unlikely to lift that stay, unless we're in an absolute apocalyptic crisis.

* upon further research, the main support for freedom of travel is under the Privileges and Immunities Clause [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law), but doesn't really matter, it's precedent either way.

<comment><USER15> Does the US not have any emergency clause? If it is truly needed, I think even the US would be able to do it.

<comment><USER16> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_the_United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's 16 million now.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is an extreme overreaction for a disease which is only fatal to the elderly:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/feg5st/average_age_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/feg5st/average_age_of_covid19_deaths_in_italy/)

<comment><USER19> Please don't do this "only the elderly" thing here. It's already a flamewar trope.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Releasing Early Is Not Always Good? Heresy - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/11416/Releasing-Early-Is-Not-Always-Good-Heresy.aspx <comment><USER2> The apple iPod example is out of place: you can't compare software to hardware. Essentially, with hardware, you have one chance to make a good impression, so every detail counts (for example, the first Zune wasn't much of a hit, and now virtually no one likes Zunes, even the very awesome Zune HD).

These days, with software - especially web software - people tend to be more forgiving of bugs, and because its easy to provide feedback, software tends to get better and better.

<comment><USER3> The real problem with hardware is that you can't revise it. That used to be a problem with shrinkwrap software, too -- it was revisable, but only by shipping out a lot of physical disks marked "upgrade" and praying that people installed them -- which is why it used to be so much harder to embrace the "ship early and often" plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One commonly-overlooked disadvantage to releasing early is that it may hinder your ability to construct a barrier to entry. It's true that many people spend too much time worrying about competitors, but the fact is that if you build something successful, competitors _will_ arise. It's important to understand and make use of the aspects of your company that other people will have trouble emulating, as they can potentially result in a much bigger head-start than simply releasing early.

(Disclaimer: If your company is such that the best barrier to entry to can construct is a large user-base, then releasing early makes a lot of sense.)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd have to agree. Releasing early can definitely be a good thing, but it shouldn't come at the expense of quality. Release sooner by narrowing scope and focusing on those core features rather than by cutting corners.

Another important consideration is your market. If you have a revolutionary technology and are trying to create a new market, you can probably afford to release something that's a little rough. However, if you are trying to compete in a mature market with a product that only marginally improves on the competitors, it will probably need to be more polished.</comment>


No Charges to Be Filed Against Fake TSA Agent at SFO - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/charges-filed-fake-tsa-agent-25010323

<comment><USER2> This smells like a whitewash. Even if there's no law against impersonating an agent, the Feds can always always always find more things to charge someone with. I bet if the DoJ had charged this "53 year old" (wasn't he pretty wealthy in the initial reports?), a lot of bad stuff about checkpoints and groping would have come out. Lots and lots of women would come forward with stories, not about drunken fake TSA "agents", but about real TSA agents copping feels and so forth.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Wagstaffe says it's illegal to impersonate a police officer, but not to > impersonate a TSA agent.

Well that seems like a loophole that's begging to be exploited.</comment>


Show HN: The Wavefiz – Visualize the Schrödinger Equation in WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://ridiculousfish.com/wavefiz/ <comment><USER2> The pages crashes my browser (Chrome on OSX)</comment>


What does it feel like to fly over planet Earth? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74mhQyuyELQ&feature=player_embedded

<comment><AUTHOR> I really like how the thunders look like from the ISS. :)</comment>


Ancient farmers spared us from glaciers but changed Earth's climate: study - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-09-ancient-farmers-glaciers-profoundly-earth.html <comment><USER2> This new research is definitely intriguing, but at the same time I think it's fair to be skeptical of this new science. During the times of increase in global temperatures, human populations are estimated to be between 5 to 20 million for the whole planet. That is a very low density. Not to mention human farming began before the Younger Dryas (a sudden return to cold temperatures), which briefly ended agriculture for over a millennia.

Also, during more recent times the earth has swung into cold spells that had dire consequences for human populations, such as the Little Ice Age which began in the 1300s and only ended during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It's likely Earth would have continued getting colder had it not been for the mass expelling of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere at that time.

So maybe humans had an impact on the global atmosphere during the second beginning of agriculture, but it's also possible other natural phenomena lead to an increase in CO2 and Methane that just haven't been discovered yet. And as a disclaimer, I personally believe that humans have had a major impact on shaping environments for as long as we inhabited them. I'm just a little skeptical until more research can solidify these findings and explain other changes in global temps in the opposite direction when there were more people and more intensive agriculture.

<comment><USER3> There's some evidence that the Little Ice Age was caused by a sudden decrease in farm acreage cause by sudden depopulation during the Black Death.

I hesitate to call it anthropogenic because it's the opposite of that. I suppose the _delay_ of the cold period counts, though.

<comment><USER4>
      a sudden decrease in farm acreage

but.. it wouldn't happen that way (like throwing a switch). Crops would rot in the field and then be _replaced_ by native plants. Is this evidence presented in paper(s)?

<comment><USER3> Having trouble parsing your complaint.

The moment the farmer dies without an heir, his field is fallow. From that point forward, whatever germinates will grow if it can compete. So pioneer species get free reign and they can spread widely in only a few years.

The little ice age was almost 300 years. From a geologic standpoint or even a glacial one, trees sprouting up all over in a five year time frame is pretty sudden, but the sudden event I was talking about was acreage of unmanaged land.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone fascinated by this article, I highly suggest reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I just recently picked it up after seeing it recommended on a couple of threads here and it did not disappoint. Humans have been affecting ecology for a long long time.

If you are like me, you're probably wondering what you can do to mitigate some of the effects, while legislation and societal action is important. I also recommend checking out permaculture. Portland state has a great free online course [0]. I like to think of permaculture as ecosystem building, which you can do on a micro level. Enough microecosystems change the larger surrounding ecosystem.

[0] [https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/](https://open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/)

<comment><USER6> Instead of courses, I recommend to get a couple books on Permaculture and also look to see if any universities have extension courses for Permaculture or any topic related to it. Chances are, most of the teachers are now familiar with Permaculture and can speak to the "historical" methods and the "Permaculture" methods. Yes, a lot of people have been trying to make money of the cerificstion courses, which I think is a waste of money. I started with my backyard and have used Permaculture design to re-approach working with nature. My end goal is to have a diverse forest garden that has it's own ecosystem. But, that's at least 10 years of work to achieve, but well worth it. I'm almost two years into this and have zero regrets. If anyone is interested to know more, I can try to share what I've learned or answer any specific questions.

<comment><USER7> What books do you recommend do a university student without much familiarity in the subject looking for practical design advice?

<comment><USER8> Not OP, but I can recommend these two books:

"Making Small Farms Work" by Richard Perkins

and

"Restoration Agriculture: Real World Permaculture for Farmers" by Mark Shepard

Then there are the books by Bill Mollison that arguably started it all: "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual", and "Introduction to Permaculture"

<comment><USER6> These are great! Thank you, for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rises the question which temperature is the "right" one. Assuming we can control climate change at some point in the future

Like having a clima-council which votes to lower or rise the temperature. Would definetly cause conflicts between very hot and cold nations

<comment><USER10> The economic consequences would be absolutely huge. Take my native Canada for an example. There's breathtaking amounts of land that's currently of little economic value because of a shortened growing season and permafrost. A small increase in temperature would have a huge impact on the usability of that land. Conversely, other places in the world would suffer desertification and suffer greatly.

As an amusing side-note I've pondered whether colder countries could/should/will intentionally spew C02 into the atmosphere to improve their own living situation. There's not a whole lot other countries could do about it except try and capture the C02 which is much more expensive than burning it. Obviously this doesn't take in effect other averse consequences from global warming but it was still an amusing train of thought.

<comment><USER11> BTW: it is CO2 not C02... (sorry)

<comment><USER10> Sorry that was me being lazy. On my dovark keyboard. C,0,2 are all right next to each other on my right hand and since numbers are behind the shift key, my left hand just holds the shift down. The alternative is a bit of a finger juggle because my caps lock is remapped as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Geeze this conclusion seems rather counter intuitive, a much smaller human population's pre-modern agriculture had enough of an impact on climate so much as to prevent an ice age?

<comment><USER13> Mainly because of deforestation (one of the causes mentioned in the article). French Gaul in Roman times had already been largely deforested in the previous centuries, some historians even suggest that the process had been underway since Neolithic times, that's about 4,000-5,000 years ago. It's relatively unconmplicated to get rid of large swaths of forrest without having to have access to modern industrial tools, you just need to put some good old physical work into it.

As a reference, I'm doing a mapping of Southern Romania's forrests as they showed up in a 1860s Austrian map (it's a hobby project that I work on during my spare time) and it's crazy when comparing it to more modern times. As early as the 1920s (that is in less than 60 years) 60-to-80% of the forrests from the plane areas had disappeared, and that was not because of the introduction of modern technology, because most of the tree-cutting was being done with good old axes, but only because Romania had entered the international agricultural markets and that land was more economically valuable with grain or cows on it compared to trees (the same thing is now happening in Brazil).

<comment><USER14> Sure, but the study places the "pivot point" much back in time in the 7,000 to 5,000 years ago range (probably give or take a thousand years):

>"I noticed that methane concentrations started decreasing about 10,000 years ago and then reversed direction 5,000 years ago and I also noted that carbon dioxide also started decreasing around 10,000 years ago and then reversed direction about 7,000 years ago," says Ruddiman. "It alerted me that there was something strange about this interglaciation ... the only explanation I could come up with is early agriculture, which put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and that was the start of it all."

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I had noticed that, too. To give a totally unsubstantiated opinion (i.e. mine) I'd say that that only helps make the case for the massive deforestation happening as soon as the Neolithic Revolution got under way in earnest, starting about 5,000 BCE, that would explain the rise in CO2 concentration (also see the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_cul...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni%E2%80%93Trypillia_culture)). The rise in methane concentration which happened 2,000 years after that might be explained by people raising a lot more cows around 3,000 BCE (the start of "civilization" on the Nile and Euphrates, for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If indeed ancient farmers (that were like 1/100 our population) already had "profoundly changed Earth's climate", so much for the "human activity couldn't be the reason for climate change today" argument...

<comment><USER16> nobody making those arguments is making them in good faith and no amount of evidence will stop them from making it.

<comment><USER15> Bad faith means not believing what you say ("with the intention of deceiving someone or doing harm").

One could very well imagine (and some of us actually know) people that legitimately believe that the climate change we're through is not man made -- they say it cause they believe it, they don't try to knowingly deceive anyone.

It's another thing to say something because you do not trust scientists (including scientific consensus) because e.g. you believe that they extrapolate from incomplete data and not enough understanding, or to prefer this or that fringe researcher to the majority opinion, and another to be in bad faith.

<comment><USER17> I now believe, but cannot prove, that most people's professed beliefs are not rational, logical, reality-based, sensical.

Rather, beliefs appear to be more about identity, virtue signaling, and tribal acceptance.

If true, reason is impotent. To change belief systems, one must use psychology, rhetoric, propaganda, evangelism.

The lesswrong.com crowd is calling this "belief as attire". I don't know what to call "Popperian beliefs" (true until proven false) vs "aspirational beliefs" (make our own reality).

My greatest fear is that my self-image of being a Popperian is actually just aspirational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As mentioned in the article, one of the interesting things about this is that it provides support for an earlier date for the start of the anthropocene, as opposed to a date in e.g. the 50s.

</comment><comment><USER19> The end of glaciers also opened up huge swaths of land to methane producing life. Large percentages of the earths habitable land.

</comment><comment><USER20> A glaring omission in this study is the effect of farming (and human activities more generally) on land use and albedo.</comment>


Ask HN: Remove Original Email from an Email Reply Text Body - <AUTHOR> I am using Python to clean up some email database. For each reply email, I want to remove the original email. I googled and found a few related links. Basically they suggest that there is no standard format except for using some diff parser. However, those posts were from a few years ago. Any new algorithms have come up recently? Thanks, JZ <comment><AUTHOR> Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.</comment>