Processing.js: How to create  links with Custom fonts - <AUTHOR> http://processingjs.org/source/canvas-text-links/canvas-text-link.html

<comment><USER2> You can't select the text, it doesn't behave like text (Can't resize it in browser), so what's the advantage over just using images?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was not meant to behave like text as such. It was a quick before-breakfast response to someone's "how-to" request. Processing.js is a visualization language, not a replacement for browser technology, apologies to those who were expecting some kind of all-singing miracle-link.

<comment><USER2> It's cool for what it is, I was just wondering if it had some advantage over images that I couldn't yet see.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well someone requested it as a demo because they are creating an interactive canvas program in which the text being displayed will change every time the script is run. Obviously that makes using images impossible. With regards to using images for the glyphs, it's slower and requires more KBs across the board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good for Processing.js, but those desiring a replacement for sIFR or @font- face will be disappointed. Every browser that supports the Canvas does or is expected to support @font-face as well, so there is no advantage there, and the required conversion to SVG only shifts the embedding rights problem one step away from the browser.

<comment><USER4> Well, true, IE doesn't support <canvas> out of the box, but you can make it support it with something like excanvas.

<http://excanvas.sourceforge.net/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These tricks don't work in all browsers. For example, I was completely unable to trigger it on iPhone. As 'alternate' browsers become more prevalant these tricks become more risky.

<comment><AUTHOR> Easy enough to make it work for iPhone though, if that's what you are trying to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Should have used mouseClicked() instead of mousePressed() (latter takes you to the href location before the mouse is released). Should also have used the mouseButton variable to determine if it's a left mouse click. As it stands now a right click also takes you to the target page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Changed the example (and updated processing.js) to include mouseClicked().

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or does the verbosity of the processingjs code for custom fonts bother anyone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you getting at exactly? The code in the demo script or the code in the library?

<comment><USER7> The demo script. Any of the demos as a matter of fact.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it really is designed as a low-barrier language. It doesn't have all the shortcuts you'd see in a low-level language. Even though you can use JavaScript in Processing.js, I usually try to make sure my examples run in the Native Java application also, which requires greater verbosity of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Updated this.

</comment><comment><USER8> Never click on a link you don't see where it takes you. You can get goatseed.

Is it possible to show the url in the browser's status bar?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ironically showing the url in the browsers status bar is automatically disabled in Firefox because for goatseed reasons.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A simple free tool to continously retrain NLP models for chatbots - <AUTHOR> https://ozz.ai <comment><USER2> Ah, looks like an online-only tool, right?

I'm still waiting for decent NLP/Intent recognition offline in any lang, with training/etc. Can't send all my messages to some site though, regardless of cost.

<comment><USER3> I'm working on that - intent parsing as both an open source library and hosted API. A not quite yet usable model is sitting here [https://github.com/spro/intense](https://github.com/spro/intense)</comment></comment>


Ask YC: what desktop software do you want? - <AUTHOR>

After following the web sphere for a while I've grown a little bored of web sites: seriously, how many slightly different ways of "discover and share from anywhere!" can there be? Perhaps I'm not a typical Internet user: I have no issues with "finding relevant content", my email is not "overloaded" and I find it trivially easy to stay in touch with people I care about. Even downloading free music isn't that hard. I open about one or two accounts on various web sites every week but never use anything except for google services and a couple of forums (including this one). When I forget my password, or even feel lazy to deal with a login form, I usually move on.
But I do have computer-related problems that need solutions and web sites won't help. For instance I do a lot of photo/imaging work and RAW converters along with Adobe's monopoly in image processing is frustrating. I also haven't found a backup program that my friends could use without my help. Online "equivalents" of these two problems only make me think "are you serious?" I also always wanted to have a magical CD, that can, with a click of a button, convert a brand new Dell or HP computer into NORMAL tool, not infected by intrusive shitware beyond recognition.
Look at a typical non-technical user running Windows: the bastard is ALWAYS in some kind of pain: I get phone calls regarding some kind of computer problem all the time. People at large fight with their computers on a regular basis, isn't that a problem worth solving?
What I am seeing is that a whole class of real, everyday problems is being completely ignored and most of the development moved on to building online time wasters in pursuit of a piece of advertisement money. But what is happening around me is this: after wasting half day on reddits, youtubes and diggs, people just moan and get back to work - muscling their way through current crop of desktop software. This is why Apple kicks so much ass if you can afford it. But even Apple software often feels like a bare minimum they had to provide in order to avoid being just a browser launcher.
Am I the only one who feels that innovators got chased off desktop by Microsoft a long time ago and they never went back?
Is there some kind of software that you want? <comment><USER2> I'm not just trying to sound contrary here, but I feel like the battle to make the Windows OS usable is all but lost. As long as people have been trying, it hasn't and probably won't happen. You just can't build a palace on quick sand.

MS will come to a point in the next 5 years where it will either have to completely revise the core of its OS or eventually be diminished by Mac and Linux. Windows itself is one of the root causes of the SaaS boom...

</comment><comment><USER3> I share your concerns. However, i moved to a GNU/Linux distribution over 2 years ago and never looked back.

I have always said that the Microsoft environment is a hostile one for developers. And that is without saying anything about the quality of their platform.

There are still a lot of problems to be solved on the desktop side for which online equivalents probably won't work right now. Its just a matter of who steps up and solves them... __hint __

</comment><comment><USER4> _This is why Apple kicks so much ass if you can afford it._

I'm no MSFT apologist nor have I worked with them but if you think that MSFT is ignoring the recent gains by Apple in the OS market, that would be a mistake IMO (and when I say "you", I mean the collective you and not you personally). MSFT is all about recognizing what they are good at, fixing it, and taking the next step to rebrand as some new name lol.

Anyway, the software I want is a better email client. Outlook does 50% of what I want and while it does some things well there is a big opportunity for a competitor in that arena.

<comment><USER5> What more do you want an email client to do? What does Outlook do well?

<comment><USER4> I need to be to do better printing, better contact management, better searching, better handling of large files, and better spam filtering. I like Outlook's interface but it needs help in those areas. Outlook 2007 was a big disappointment to me since there were no real improvements in those areas.</comment></comment></comment>


HTC unveils revamped HTC One flagship Android smartphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21504008 <comment><USER3>
      It hopes that new software features will help to
      make its new handset stand out.

Bzzt. Thank you very much. I'm in the market for a new phone, you are not targeting me. Sense? No way. And no, 'Software' on top of Android is not going to make your phone nice to buy for this particular guy here.

Searching on for a decent 'stock' device..

<comment><USER4> For what it's worth, some of the manufacturer UIs are better than AOSP now. TouchWiz is actually quite nice now, shockingly enough.

<comment><USER5> TouchWiz is _horrid_.

Also, even if it some day would become decent it would still be inferior just because it's tied to one manufacturer.

<comment><USER6> I have to chime in on the opposite spectrum. I had an evo and use a note 2 as the primary phone. I rooted the evo and put on Cynogen because I got more from the phone by doing so. Removing touchwiz and putting on cynogen or other aosp on the note would net me _less_ functionality this time around. Unless google adds a stylus to their spec I don't see the (absolute) inferiority of forking the aosp trunk.

call it redhat vs debian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Happy to see a company willing to stop the constant march of increasing megapixel count at the cost of smaller photon sites and worse signal-to-noise. (The HTC One has a 4MP camera, with physical pixels twice as large as competing sensors.)

<comment><USER8> It will be interesting to see how well they can market the benefits of a 4 MP camera over 8+ MP cameras on other smartphones.

I know that more pixels does not always make for a better camera, but I think the perception from the general public would be that higher = better.

Quite a bold move on their part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the most important features on a phone (to me) is the camera. I love that they're willing to try a new take and make a better camera. But _why_ are they not releasing sample images? If you're going to push a new technology... back it up with some examples!

</comment><comment><USER10> I really wanted to love HTC. I bought and still enjoy my HTC One X for AT&T ... but their complete lack of support for the mod community, and in fact stonewalling them, has completely turned me off to the company.

I will never buy another HTC phone again.

<comment><USER8> I have the HTC One X (International Version) apart for the horrible thing that is HTC Sense 4 (apart from the camera improvements and certain dialer improvements), I've been able to root and load custom ROMS on my phone without any issues.

HTC even set up a site to make it easy to unlock the bootloader here: <http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not seeing the most important info in a product announcement. Is it available yet, and if not, when will it be available? How much will it cost?

I don't understand the mindset behind launching a device that you aren't selling. By the time it's actually on the market, your faster moving competitors (Apple, Samsung, etc) have already matched your improvements. You also get a huge amount of buzz when first unveiling a product, and you need to capitalize on that by letting people give you money for it. Microsoft fails at this every single time, and it looks like HTC is joining them?

This is coming from someone who saw this phone and decided 'ok, sold, where do I buy one?' - and could not find any of this out. Terrible marketing failure. By tomorrow I will have forgotten completely, and I'll probably end up just getting a Samsung.

<comment><USER12> HTC isn't selling their phones to you, they're selling them to carriers. World wide. The price and time will vary by geography and carrier. It's pretty terrible that they can't sort this out before announcing it, but seems to be par for the course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm very surprised by the negative comments about HTC/TouchWiz. I got the DNA and I'm totally in love with it (except for a few minor quirks). It has a 5" screen but overall size is about the same as S3 due to DNA's near edge to edge display. It is ultra thin and lightweight too. It seems like this is going to be even a better device than the DNA due to it being more a "normal" size phone but with the 4.7" screen but same 1080p display.

</comment><comment><USER4> Non-removable battery and no microSD slot. Those are kind of necessary for me, sadly; the phone does look quite nice otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER14> I won't purchase another HTC after they screwed thunderbolt owners by delivering ICS 6+ months late.

<comment><USER15> HTC Desire Z (AKA HTC Vision) user here. No ICS firmware. Stuck on Android 2.3.3, so this is my first and last HTC phone - I won't support vendors that don't provide timely updates. 512 MB RAM, but typically only 100-150 MB free, so it constantly reloads/restarts any apps and the HTC Sense UI itself. Google Play in-app purchases don't work.

My next phone will be whatever Google's next flagship phone will be, assuming they fix USB OTG, LTE and microsd-slot. Or some other vendor that is smart enough to use vanilla Android without any "product differentiation". I don't want any custom UIs like HTC Sense or Touchwiz, non-uninstallable bloatware (looking at you Samsung: Kies, ChatON, etc.) and app-breaking UI 'enhancements'.

<comment><USER16> Don't hold your breath for "fixing" LTE and microsd in Nexuses.

LTE is currently a negotiation point in hands of carriers. The price of supporting LTE would be no timely updates (see also Verizon and Sprint Galaxy Nexus). This is something that Google will not compromise about.

MicroSD is a slightly different story, it has several problems:

UX ones:

\- most users are confused by two separate storage pools (see the confusion: "I have XY gigabites free on the phone, why can't I install this app?") \- the SD card has to be unmounted, when the phone is attached to the computer - <USER2> means killing everything, that was launched from the card.

Technical:

\- The MicroSD performance is inferior to eMMC.

Legal:

\- You have to license FAT32 and exFAT (for SDXC) from Microsoft. (Yes, I know that it is technically possible to use different filesystems with SD cards - but that is a decision that would not go very well with mainstream users who just want to connect the phone to their Windows or Apple computer).

<comment><USER17> I'm still interested by the fate of LTE in the Nexus 4- it has the hardware for it, but it's manually disabled. When T-Mobile launch their LTE network it'll be interesting to see if any hacks will re-enable it. It could end up being one of the first technically unlicensed LTE devices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure if the launch event is over but did they mention the price?

</comment><comment><USER19> 4.7" screen? unless its >= my Galaxy Note screen, I cannot be interested.

<comment> iso-8859-1 comparing a phablet to a phone is like ... well, it doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER20> They're both large pocketable handheld phones, regardless of your phablet nomenclature. Comparing them is entirely sensible.</comment></comment></comment>


Light cone analogy for git-bisect (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/git_bisect.html

<comment><USER2> I think it says something about understanding git when a simplifying analogy by its author is ... special relativity.

<comment> vezzy-fnord "Git gets easier once you get the basic idea that branches are homeomorphic endofunctors mapping submanifolds of a Hilbert space." [1]

That said, Git was tailored to the specific circumstances of the Linux kernel. I wonder if Linus ever expected it to become the dominant general purpose VCS. Though I suppose Junio Hamano deserves most of the credit for that.

[1] [https://twitter.com/tabqwerty/status/45611899953491968](https://twitter.com/tabqwerty/status/45611899953491968)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tangetially, this website, Norman Yarvin's archive, is chock full of gems. I highly recommend browsing it, especially its computer section: [http://yarchive.net/comp/index.html](http://yarchive.net/comp/index.html)</comment>


Nationwide Voting Data in SQL - oscar-batori https://www.dolthub.com/repositories/open-elections/voting-data <comment> oscar-batori We created Dolt and DoltHub to distribute data more seamlessly, so users can acquire data with a query interface, not a bunch of CSVs. Open Elections is an amazing project for gathering voting data nationwide. We took that data, and created a nationwide SQL database. It's work in progress!</comment>


Musk testified he worried Thai cave rescuer might be 'another Jeffrey Epstein' - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/16/elon-musk-once-worried-unsworth-may-be-another-jeffrey-epstein.html <comment><USER2> does this mean he similarily hired private investigators to check Jeffrey Epstein?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like he found the PI on craigslist</comment></comment>


SpaceIL Use of Gravity to Get Free Moon Fuel - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_R4zk448oPs <comment><AUTHOR> I think it amazing almost SciFi story. Only its real</comment>


Unexpected electric current that could stabilize fusion reactions discovered - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-09-unexpected-electrical-current-stabilize-fusion.html <comment><USER2> A big problem with fusion systems has always been stabilizing the plasma. Stars do it with gravity, which pulls inward only. Doing it with magnetic fields requires fancy geometry to try to get the effect of a uniform inward push. None of the approaches are all that great.

A few groups have tried active stabilization of plasma. It's being planned for China's new tokomak.[1] The instabilities are on the order of milliseconds, not too fast for active control. This new development may advance that work. Maybe. Possibly.

[1] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09203...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0920379619306994)

<comment><USER3> What is interesting is that one can use current in the plasma itself (which creates a magnetic field) to confine the plasma, if one can control the current well enough. This design [1] does that. Unfortunately DOE funding for new fusion concepts has been almost zero for many decades and ITER has further depleted the DOE research fusion. On the bright side there has been some recent VC funding in the space and CTFusion is working on this design concept[2].

[1] [https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/inside-the- dynomak-...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/inside-the-dynomak-a- fusion-technology-cheaper-than-coal) [2][https://ctfusion.net/technology/](https://ctfusion.net/technology/)

<comment><USER4> Yes, confinement by running a current through the plasma is well known. First use was by the ZETA experiment in 1957. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-pinch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-pinch)

The eternal problem in science journalism: a scientist will explain how their machine works, and the journalist will get the impression that they have independently invented each part of the apparatus, with no prior art. The incentives encourage it: the scientist wants to take credit for everything possible, and the journalist wants to report on a maximally new and exciting machine.

<comment><USER3> I agree, a journalists description of such new fusion concept is unlikely to be useful to people trying to understand what is new about the concept. I am not a fusion scientist, but my dad is the "Tom Jarboe" in the article. From my limited understanding from talking to him, the main reason that they think the dynomak design has a chance of working is because they solved the problem of adding energy to a stable plasma without disrupting it by using a new type of helicity injector. Not sure if it would really work, but hopefully they can get enough funds to try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The title is terrible, but what is interesting to me is whether this could allow the _direct_ draw of power from a nuclear reactor, instead of just through heat.

<comment><USER6> How much more power would you get from a direct draw vs just through heat?

<comment><USER7> Thermal efficiency in the Rankine cycle (which powerplants apparently leverage) is around 30%.

So it sounds like there's a lot of potential improvement. Of course, given we're talking fusion and not fission any power plants are purely hypothetical at the moment as all publicly known fusion facilities are for research.

<comment><USER8> >publicly known

Do you feel that this is an important qualifier?

<comment><USER7> Energy generation is a national security concern. While all signs point to engineering issues preventing creation of a successful fusion plant, the reality is there are only a small handful of issues left that prevent energy generation from fusion.

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird first flew in 1964, the titanium used for its construction was purchased in secret via front operations by the CIA from the USSR. The Soviet Union was the only country that had enough titanium to build the SR-71.

The reason I reference this is because with enough money and resources anything is possible to do in secret. The SR-71 included some revolutionary technological innovations to solve the problems created by super-sonic flight. Energy viable controlled fusion is a little farther than the SR-71 was but not so much so that it is impossible.

Hence the qualifier.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the interesting historical example!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The writing is really horrible.

Interactions of waves in plasma "conspire" to produce effects.

Electrons ride waves like "surfers".

Interesting findings, extremely badly presented.

<comment><USER10> Phys.org is the Applebee's of science journalism -- they warm over some canned press release topped with a thin sauce of quotes from the co-authors (they can't be bothered to get someone independent to comment).

In fact, this wasn't even written by phys.org staff -- it was from the Princeton PR department.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is a low and what is a high frequency. It would be nice if there would be some kind of numbers in such texts.

<comment><USER7> It's probably in the original paper if you have access

[https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0011516](https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0011516)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do we understand how the magnetic fields in stars work?

<comment><USER13> Depends on which stars. We recently discovered through relativistic ray tracing of x-rays that neutron stars may have more than two magentic poles and as such two poles may even be located quite close to one another in the same hemisphere. There really is much left to discover about them!

[https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019ApJ...887L..21R/abstra...](https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019ApJ...887L..21R/abstract)</comment></comment>


Please review my web app: Bookflavor - <AUTHOR> http://bookflavor.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this web app in a couple weeks after seeing Google Hotpot. Bookflavor is essentially Hotpot for books.

The main screen can be used to find books, rate, and review them in an easy to use interface. Clicking on a book's cover will take you to a detail page that shows a stream of reviews from multiple sources.

Please let me know your thoughts on Bookflavor and tell me if you experience any problems or anything that doesn't work like you expect it to.

Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER2> What a cool website! Congrats!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you like it. Out of curiosity, did you happen to rate or review any books during your visit? I'm interested in whether or not the interface motivates visitors to rate and review.

<comment><USER2> I rated a couple I've read recently. I didn't review, though I might later. :)

I liked the interface the most. It's very easy to use to browse.</comment></comment></comment>


Need a Cab? New Analysis Shows Where to Find One - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/nyregion/03icab.html?hp

<comment><USER2> That doesn't actually tell you how easy it is it to hail a cab. Sure, there are lots of cabs at Grand Central at 9am, but that doesn't mean it's easy to hail one because there's tons of other people trying to hail them too.

Also, even if few cab trips originate from a certain point, that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of cabs passing by there that will be happy to pick you up. For example, I bet if you were 2 blocks away from Grand Central during the morning rush, it would be pretty easy to pick one off on its way to Grand Central, even if few trips originate from that spot because few people find themselves there at that time.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.metablake.com/m/home.html> is the home of Blake Shaw who did this analysis; good papers on how to analyze spatiotemporal data... like this taxicab data.</comment>


Doing Science On The Web: A way to launch experimental features - <AUTHOR> https://infrequently.org/2015/08/doing-science-on-the-web/

<comment><USER2> TL;DR (if I understood correctly): don't use prefixes, use non-deterministic ways to raise the entry barrier.

Like:

1\. Developer registration & usage keys. 2\. Global usage caps. 3\. Feature auto-self-destruct.

To me it seems just a way to use early adopters as A/B testers, and yet make it impossible to them to rely on a experimental feature. I doubt this can work at a scale without extreme sufferance or effectively wiping out the usefulness of experimental features.</comment>


Trump suggests he will end birthright citizenship with executive order - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/30/trump-birthright-citizenship-executive-order-14th-amendment <comment><USER2> I don't really think he can do that. If he does, it'll be precedent to limit executive powers. Which honestly I'm down for

<comment><USER3> Its actually legitimate. Stefan Molyneux explains:

[https://youtu.be/UZyqQn2Uoo8](https://youtu.be/UZyqQn2Uoo8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Trump hints all kinds of stuff. He has no more power to do this than he has to extend senate terms.</comment>


Grand Plans: Le Corbusier in the USSR - <AUTHOR> http://calvertjournal.com/articles/show/4868/le-corbusier-in-ussr-corbu-moscow-tsentrosoyuz <comment><USER2> Man I'm really glad he didn't get his way for Paris

There seems to be a similar sort of thinking between grand designs in urban planning and waterfall style development (because of course everything is like software development if you try hard enough). A lot of compartmentalizing into giant subsystems (let's put all the commerce here , all the houses there! In giant buildings!). And the results seem just as mediocre

Its kind of funny, despite having a lot of the same zoning vocabulary as this grand plan, playig Sim City for an hour will make you realise how foolish giant zoning areas are. And it's all because of the simple fact that people need to live close to various parts of the city.

+1 for first principles. A city is a bunch of people first, a zoning map second( or ideally, almost dead last)

<comment><USER3> "A lot of compartmentalizing into giant subsystems (let's put all the commerce here , all the houses there! In giant buildings!)."

I'm not familiar with architecture nor city planning, but did these guys ever stop and look at how city centers work (in Europe at least.) Living spaces, parks and commerce places are all mixed, an arrangement that's the result organic growth and restructuration over time, converging towards a (at least local) optimum for people living there.

<comment><USER4> Part of their motivation was scale: how do you house 10x as many people? Or 50x? As countries were rapidly urbanizing, it looked clear that the traditional European city center design couldn't handle the population influx, leading to a proliferation of ramshackle slums, lengthy commutes from the suburbs, etc. The modernist housing-block was one proposed solution, to provide housing at large scale while still letting light in, having high standards of cleanliness, etc.

What actually happened in most places was the long-commute option, though. A European city center like Stockholm looks nice and quaint as a historical piece, but as a livable city it doesn't work very well, because it doesn't have sufficient living space for most of Stockholm's population. Instead, most Stockholmers live in modernist housing blocks out in the suburbs, and commute in. So you still have the modernist housing blocks, they're just placed in a more out of the way location. Is that better or worse? Better for the scenic Stockholm city center, but probably worse for livability.

<comment><USER5> Uhm. I'm not sure that is entirely correct. The city proper of Stockholm is very dense, often comparable to Paris. While not as uniformly dense there is higher building often six to eight floors, compared to the usual five in Paris [0, 1].

The modernist housing blocks in Stockholm were to some degree supposed to be self-supported in what was called an ABC-area. ABC (Arbete, Bostad, Centrum) is an acronym in Swedish for work, housing and service (or center). That's why they are as disconnected from the city as they are.

The problem with Stockholm is that the city stops very abruptly once you go outside the main islands. You essentially have suburbs just a couple of kilometers from the city center. While Paris just goes on and on. This becomes quite clear if you look west on a satellite maps of Stockholm [2] or compare panoramas [3, 4].

[0] [http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=e532796...](http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=e53279637d3640c58edd542d50d99e89&extent=17.545,59.1193,18.5592,59.4706) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrondissements_of_Paris) [2] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bromma,+Stockholm,+Sweden/...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bromma,+Stockholm,+email@example.com,17.9835409,9633m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x465f9e1e43cac981:0x79938dc7521d624b!6m1!1e1) [3] [http://www.tyreso.com/ovrigt/flygfoto/city/DSC01246Large.JPG](http://www.tyreso.com/ovrigt/flygfoto/city/DSC01246Large.JPG) [4] [http://caliban.lbl.gov/panoramas/paris/paris_panorama5.jpg](http://caliban.lbl.gov/panoramas/paris/paris_panorama5.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Brasilia, the capital of Brazil (mentioned in the article) was built by disciples of Le Corbusier. It is a horrible place, a totalitarian technocracy modeled as a city, a place that forgot that humans exist. But it is also a very interesting failed experiment.

<comment><USER7> Le Corbusier and followers are responsible for quite some ghettos in France and Belgium, and still he's seen as a hero by many architects.

As a consequence, instead of starting over, money is being poured into preservation and restoration of these monstrosities .

An example from Leuven: [http://www.cvaa.be/en/project/social-housing- project](http://www.cvaa.be/en/project/social-housing-project) or Antwerp: [http://www.standaard.be/cnt/tp2cvh63](http://www.standaard.be/cnt/tp2cvh63)

you can find many more

<comment><USER8> These aren't even monstruosities. Compared to actual social-architectural catastrophies they're cute.

There's a few stuff that went very very bad in this era of urban growth, and Le Corbusier was only part of it. If you look at his first big 'bar' in Marseille, cite radieuse, it was an acceptable concept, spacious hallways, carefully designed flats, with good lighting, good thermal thinking. Then you have national projects that took the idea of 1000s of people in a small land surface and removed all the actual individual value and beauty. It was all cramped and low-cost. Industrialization of social structures, that went sour pretty fast. Even though, based on the ads of the day, they truly believed in doing good and being correct in their proposal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find it interesting how people love tearing everything down and starting again from scratch, whether it's developers doing a complete rewrite, a new government scrapping the previous government's entire plans, or an architect suggesting to demolish an entire city to be replaced with their own design. I'm just as guilty as anybody else, so it's not a judgement. It just seems to be something innate in many successful people.

</comment><comment><USER10> FWIW Le Corbusier is responsible for perhaps the most livable city in India. Chandigarh. It is perhaps one of the few orderly cities in India.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love Alexei Sayle's take on Corbusier, linked from this blog article:

       http://blog.jasonbrackins.com/2012/12/brutalism.html

<comment><USER12> A good summary of why I dislike brutalism so much:

We were experiencing one of the defining characteristics of Brutalism. The atmosphere of totalitarianism. The brutalists were masters of putting you in your place, which was in submission to the state (and the architect). The huge, blocky forms immediately create a dichotomy of scale. You are minuscule next to these things. The walls are flat. No decoration. Even the texture is on a small scale (no feature larger than a brick) and uniform. This lack of features reinforces the dichotomy. There is nothing human size in this place. The very structure of the building screams out "You are small. We who built this, we are large. You are small! We are in control!"

<comment><USER13> Brutalism is anti-totalitarian. It was a utopian movement using the latest technologies to rebuild accommodation and social environments with incredibly constrained postwar budgets after the devastation of the air war in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Le Corbusier was a monster, the purest of anti-humanist modernists, and he would have destroyed Paris in the name of ideology.

The office park and faceless, isolated and dehumanized tower are his legacies. The fact that he is still taken seriously, let alone respected, is a testament to the gnosticism, anti-humanism, puritanism and anti-historical rancor that has characterized the building (and broader artistic) community since 1900.

But that's none of my business...

<comment><USER15> LC was the culmination of a barbaric trend, yes. But isn't it important to take the purest exponent of anti-human modernism seriously, since he's influenced our lives so much?

<comment><USER14> I can see the argument, like one should read 'Mein Kampf' or 'The Communist Manifesto' for historical reference.

On the other hand, I think its important to recognize that the mainstream of academic architecture does _not_ reject his work, and continues to reject, in the main, the works of people like Jacobs and Alexander.

So, yes, perhaps we should still read some of his stuff (a lot of it is pretentious nonsense, in my opinion) but only with a proper understanding of what his aesthetic lead to.</comment></comment></comment>


UI designer looking for full-time in BayArea - <AUTHOR> http://www.karimartin.cz UI/UX designer based in Europe looking for full-time gig in BayArea. Skilled in UI for mobile and web.<p>www.karimartin.cz <comment><USER2> I'm running flicsy.com, and based in new york. willing to move or work remotely?

Also run a series of UI, UX, and Design days in nyc, and we love bringing people with experience like yours together with startups that are hiring. . .

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey - Iam looking for job with relocation from Europe to US.</comment></comment>


Still Too Pricey - <AUTHOR> http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904706204578002652028814658.html

<comment><USER2> I am tiring of these articles.

I like how some firms decide to throw in P/E comparisons to Apple and Google (Two seasoned juggernaut companies.) . Yet LinkedIn is also a social network, has an absurd P/E ratio over 100, but that's okay.

"Anyone who owns Facebook should be exceptionally troubled that they're still trying to 'figure out' mobile monetization and had to lay out $1 billion for Instagram because some start-up had figured out mobile pictures better than Facebook," says one institutional investor.

These are what the experts have to say? He hardly sounds like an expert to me. Tell me a company who excels at mobile monetization.

I wonder if Wallstreet fully grasps what Facebook is all about and how it fits into the grand scheme of things. Perhaps looking at traditional markers for evaluating a company like Facebook isn't working?

They fail to realize that Facebook is the most traffic'd website in the world. (According to Alexa: <http://www.alexa.com/topsites>).

Somehow $15 doesn't sound right.

<comment><USER3> _I wonder if Wallstreet fully grasps what Facebook is all about and how it fits into the grand scheme of things. Perhaps looking at traditional markers for evaluating a company like Facebook isn't working? They fail to realize that Facebook is the most traffic'd website in the world. (According to Alexa:<http://www.alexa.com/topsites>). Somehow $15 doesn't sound right._

Too young to remember the dotcom boom? If I gave everyone in the world a $1 every time they visited my site I could also have the most traffic'd site in the world, but that wouldn't make my site worth any money.

Of course FB isn't like that, but the point is that traffic is worthless until you can monetize it. IMHO, their biggest problem is monetizing their users without running them away.

<comment><USER4> > _If I gave everyone in the world a $1 every time they visited my site I > could also have the most traffic'd site in the world, but that wouldn't make > my site worth any money._

Sorry to quibble, but no you couldn't. If you had 7B dollars and you literally made this offer to every person in the world, you still would not get Facebook's traffic.

And in any case, Facebook has a lot more than traffic. Just because their monetization is lackluster so far doesn't mean they don't have a ton of interesting directions to go in. All this hand-wringing and analysts attempting to project a realistic valuation for Facebook is just anguish and sour grapes over being hoodwinked by the hype generated by a bunch of greedy investment bankers.

However if you take all the IPO hoopla out of the equation, and you see that Facebook is still growing, still evolving, and has a lot of unique assets that could propel in the company in new directions. I wouldn't bet against Facebook just because some cranky financial experts want me to believe they know where Facebook is headed. They don't know. Nobody knows.

<comment><USER5> >I wouldn't bet against Facebook just because some cranky financial experts want me to believe they know where Facebook is headed. They don't know. Nobody knows.

The last two sentences are precisely why analysts are "cranky" and institutional ownership of this stock is so faint.

A reasonable investor makes an investment decision based on the info they have and the prospect of discounted future cash flows. At this point it is clear not even Facebook management really knows where they're headed. Just where the money is. How does a reasonable investor value that? I wouldn't bet on facebook at any price just because they have critical mass on a free social network today.

Edit: What I meant by the last statement was that valuation matters. Obviously there is a price at which Facebook stock is fair or even undervalued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $15 / share is a fair valuation given Facebook's cash flow profile and top- line decelerating growth.

Said back on 19th May (the day after FB's IPO):

 _"asset managers [do is] look at Free Cash Flow to Equity, not Net Income. On a FCF to Equity valuation, FB IPOed at +220x. Even at a generous P/E or FCF/E ratio of 25x, Facebook's Free Cash Flow needs to go from $450m to $4,000m in the next 24-36 months. Do you think that is possible? After looking at their infrastructure needs I think not."_ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002988>

</comment><comment><USER7> Instead of writing an opinion piece that will likely influence a few people, why doesn't this guy use his exemplary knowledge of Facebook and the stock market for profit? Why not keep this information to himself and short $fb or sell the information to an institutional investor?

My guess is that his "knowledge" is worth more as an article that he got paid $25 for writing than it is in actual practice.

<comment><USER8> You can divide "Wall Street" into two camps, buy-side and sell-side. Sell-side makes its money on commissions on trades. They publish a lot of analysis as a loss-leader to attract new trading business. The buy-side makes its money by owning stuff that appreciates in value. When you hear any sort of stock advice, first figure out which side it's coming from, then you can put it in context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They don't even make a firm stance in saying that it's worth $15/share. With decelerating growth and the fact they can't figure out how to monetize mobile I have no idea where they figure FB is worth that much. A 47x multiple on these guys is a joke.

This recent rally is akin to a dead cat bounce. Nothing in the market goes straight up or straight down. We'll be seeing sub-$15 soon.. Consider it a x-mas present.

Actually while we're on the topic.. the Dow is getting close to 14,000 again; our high from 2008. Don't be surprised to see a double top on the markets and then a sharp retrace afterward.

<comment><USER10> Actually I think their recent approach to monetizing the mobile market is quite clever.

<http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/18/facebook-mobile-ad-network/>

<comment><USER11> It would be awesome if mobile developers could put targeted ads in their apps. I've tried Admob and Apple's iAds and there's literally no targeting. Two apps, one that focuses exclusively on pizza and another app that focuses exclusively on beer will show the same totally irrelevant ad for, say, some game app or "free text messages!".

<comment><USER12> how much of that may be due to not having enough relevant inventory? there's definitely a chicken/egg problem involved in targeted ad serving, but you'd have thought someone (apple?) might have been able to crack that nut by now.

<comment><USER11> In my particular case I don't think there was an inventory limitation issue. Reason is websites with Adsense addressing the same niche were serving extremely relevant and targeted ads while my Android app with Admob just gets junk. The obvious question is how does the Admob banner know about the app's contents? On the Admob site there's a note saying that the app's description will be used to target ads. However this doesn't seem to work or I'm misunderstanding. Either way my ads still suck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Somehow this link got renamed (not by me). The _cover_ of Barron's says "Facebook is Worth $15".

See for yourself: [http://barrons.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ON- AY643_cove...](http://barrons.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ON- AY643_cover0_KS_20120922014840.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER13> Facebook could expand or replace their customer base.

Currently their major (only?) customers are companies paying Facebook to place ads in front of people who don't want to see them and may in fact try hard not to see them.

Although ads has worked for radio and television, it seems shaky to me. It reminds me of the early days of television and radio, where shows on TV were largely plays adopted to TV, because that's what people did with the preceding medium, and news programming was an announcer reading the newspaper, because the newspaper was where news came from prior to radio and TV.

Ads worked for the preceding media, but that's no reason not to innovate monetization on the web.

Facebook could, instead or in addition, charge money to its users for access to Facebook. They could sell their mobile app. They could ... well, they're smarter than me, they can do their own innovation. :)

If your uses don't commit to use by spending money, then they're essentially transient, waiting for the next free thing. Make Facebook a service that people don't complain about at every changed policy and implementation, make it so good that people will pay to use it, and I'll be impressed. (Not to take away at all from the accomplishment so far.)

<comment><USER14> If Facebook charged for basic use, their user base would plummet quickly, which would make that use not very valuable.

If Facebook was smart enough to think of effective new ways to make money that we haven't thought of, they'd be doing them now.

<comment><USER15> Is Ask.com still doing private-label corporate stuff?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> P/E ratio is never irrelevant. I said soon after the IPO that FB will go down to $10 and I have not seen anything yet to change my mind.

<comment><USER17> $10 is the price point I've been expecting as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're into this sort of thing, Aswath Damodaran teaches a valuation class at NYU which is online now, and he arrived at an FB valuation of $24.

[http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/New_Home_Page/webcasteq...](http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/New_Home_Page/webcasteqfall12.htm)

[http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2012/08/facebook-face- pl...](http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2012/08/facebook-face-plant-time- to-friend.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> It will also be incredibly difficult for Facebook to monetize its games, which still represent a sizable portion of their .com revenue. No game company will be willing to give them a cut of their mobile revenue when Apple is already taking a 30% take. That should be especially concerning to investors.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am tiring of people struggling to try to monetize all web traffic. It seems like some people just cannot accept that there may be noncommercial elements of the web and that those elements might be extremely popular. They might even be the most popular elements of the entire web. Imagine that.

</comment><comment><USER21> If someone knew it is overpriced and it will go down further they could make millions by shorting. I'm happy for the author's future riches.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just a stock I have no interest of owning.</comment>


Futurama Canceled Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/04/22/futurama_canceled_bad_news_everyone.html <comment><USER2> I'm as big a fan as anyone, having watched Futurama since day 1. I was lucky enough to randomly bump into Billy West at Comicon 2010 and nervously muttered how much I loved Futurama, and he was especially gracious, saying fans like me were the ones who brought it back.

That being said, I felt that the new episodes never captured the quality of the original run. They tried too hard at tugging at our heart strings and never really felt legitimate, unlike the episodes like "Luck of the Fryish", "Jurassic Bark", etc. I thought the last season was actually bad, and the plots never made any sense, so I guess it was about time for it to end its run.

<comment> T-hawk I'll give a dissenting opinion. I've loved the Comedy Central reboot. The material is quick and snappy in a way that the earlier seasons weren't, packing in rapid-fire jokes. And it still consistently throws in bits of real science and mathematics, like the famous brain-swapping problem and solution. The movies were uneven, but season six hit a new and sustained peak starting with the fourth episode.

I often felt like the earlier seasons got too caught up in their own worldbuilding and forgot the funny. "The Why of Fry" was my personal least favorite, retconning the entire premise of the show and Nibbler's nature, and straining on a single joke of Fry's stupidity for the entire episode. Other low points included the forced Amy-Kif relationship that had little comedy content and less meaning, Leela's retconned family, and any time filled by Zapp Brannigan's one-note attempts at jokes. Futurama can't credibly do gross- out or shock humor in a world where Family Guy cranks it up to eleven every week.

Futurama is best as a joke turbine playing off the future setting, and IMO strains for misguided impact whenever it brings up how Fry's family lost a son. I never bought in to the heartstring-tugging. The characters are too broadly drawn and fantastical to care about, unlike the Simpsons. The Comedy Central seasons seem to have figured this out, realizing that it's too late in the game for any more meaningful character material. Instead, the show has seriously stressed the pacing and density of the comedy, which for me really shines now.

<comment><USER3> _retconning the entire premise of the show and Nibbler's nature_

Opinions on humor are subjective, but I'd like to point out that this was set up from the beginning and not at all a retcon. For example we can see Nibbler's shadow in the first episode: <http://theinfosphere.org/Nibbler%27s_shadow>

Edit: link corrected thanks to meandthebean

<comment><USER4> Corrected link: <http://theinfosphere.org/Nibbler%27s_shadow>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To be technically correct - the best kind of correct - the show has only been cancelled twice. In fact, to be even _more_ technically correct, it hasn't actually been cancelled, just not renewed.

People tend to confuse the times after the films where there were no new episodes to show and none in production with a cancellation, because the films themselves did not bring the show back to television. That's like saying Arrested Development is cancelled after the film is released, because no new film or television episodes has been ordered.

<comment><USER6> Yeah I've been reading the wikipedia section to see how many times it was cancelled because the title makes it seem like it was three times.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama#Cancellation_and_revi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurama#Cancellation_and_revival)

<comment><USER7> I did the same. Whoever submitted this need to learn what "again" means.

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this, and as far as I can tell I have a pretty reasonable idea of what "again" means. If you actually click the link, you'll see that it's the title of the original article, by Phil Plait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Same story, submitted hours before (by me), is the actual primary source (follow the slate links to vulture then to my story), flagged

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5592733>

[http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/04/22/futurama-not-renewed- comed...](http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/04/22/futurama-not-renewed-comedy- central/)

 _edit_ I'm not complaining, but it _is_ a little bit frustrating to have it flagged then see a 3rd-level derived article show up. How can I prevent it in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm the submitter (not the author) on this story. I searched for "futurama" before submitting, and didn't find anything related to this cancellation (or "not renovation", as some threads here would prefer).

I haven't flagged your submission (I've never flagged anything, around here). FWIW, though, I still find the article I linked to much more interesting that the EW one, because it focuses on the science and geeky aspects of futurama. I don't see it as "a 3rd-level derived article", but as "a scientist's take on the show and its cancellation".

Under that light, then, I'm not sure it _should_ be prevented.

Edit: By "not sure it should be prevented", I don't mean that I think your submission should have been flagged. I mean that I think the same fact can allow for multiple submissions, and a derived article may be more interesting than the original source.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely no disagreement from me on anything you wrote here and sorry if I came across as diminishing the article you submitted. I was not, I was merely evoking a common thread in many thousands of HN articles where a great story is posted that is based off of a primary source, but somebody always asks for the link to the primary source. I think derived articles are not always "blog spam", and can usually offer interesting and unique commentary and insights above and beyond what's more or less a press release. Your submission definitely rises to that level. But it's irritating that the actual source of the news got killed (regardless of who submitted it).

In this case the opposite happened, but the primary source was killed. I know this is all a bit meta for HN, but even more meta, I'm finding it more and more frustrating to submit things as so many sites are now set to auto-kill.

Sorry if such and such news site is considered too biased, but it may be the only or primary source for a story. The autokill is also surprisingly biased in and of itself. For example, an article posted from Android Police will get killed, while an article MacRumors won't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, I agree that this (subconscious?) auto-kill is silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > But if I had to pick one that idea laser-focused itself directly into my > brain, it would be from "The Late Philip J. Fry".

This is the first episode I watched start to finish. I never really got into Futurama from just passively watching it but this episode also stuck in my mind, it was fantastic. Although the author's book may have been used, the influence of the episode was Poul Andreson's Flight to Forever[1].

[1]<http://theinfosphere.org/The_Late_Philip_J._Fry>

</comment><comment> SG- Great show, but I sort of lost interest for some reason after the movies came out. Regardless it's had 7 seasons which is just as much as Star Trek TNG.

<comment><USER10> You know, I somewhat think this is because fans distrust the fate of what will happen to futurama. However, if it were picked up by another party which produced smaller amounts and for quality, Futurama could continue forever. (I'm thinking mini-series 4-7 episodes a season).

I think the biggest problem tv-media is the hiatus, the blanks between seasons cause an eraser from the general public. If they good give a consist stream of content, fans would be much more in-tune with it, and less to forget about.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that is a matter of expectation. In England (AFAIK), series aren't (necessarily) expected to be as continuous, nor even to run through the whole year. So, for instance, Doctor Who could "get away" with a specials-only year, between the 4th and 5th series.

<comment><USER11> Yes, it's quite common here to have series where a season is 6-8 episodes, once a year or less frequent.

E.g. Red Dwarf have had seasons ranging from 3 (if you count "Back to Earth") to 8 episodes, with most seasons having 6, and occasional multi-year gaps between seasons.

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't just say 'quite common'. I'd say it's the norm.

<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BritishBrevity>

...usual warning about a tvtropes link, and your subsequent drop in productivity

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I hope some company will pick up the whole producing team and will continue series. Even though someone can say quality of "after movies" episodes wasn't as high as "before movies" but it's still the best western world animation there is (considering South Park decline). Also, Futurama's main theme has been my only cellphone ringtone for many years :)

<comment><USER14> > the best western world animation there is

Even restricting ourselves purely to mature comedy shows, I would argue that Archer and Venture Bros are better than the latest season. I highly recommend checking them out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't want to do this, but I am really asking myself, how could this be on the front page of Hacker News?

<comment><USER16> Because enough people upvoted it? I wish it was possible to downvote stories.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I won't try to guess why people upvoted it, I can only tell of why I submitted it: the article (which I haven't written, only come across) is not just moaning about a cancelled series. It discusses the science that permeates it, and its geek appeal. Which I thought fitting for hacker news.

<comment><USER17> Indeed: I've only watched a couple of episodes, and never got into it. But I was fascinated to read about the "Futurama theorem".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXmYnMuDxUs>

</comment><comment><USER19> Agree, Futurama's last season was quite unentertaining. Not as funny, and too focused on the emotional stuff, which was more effective being spaced out.

I think that the 'Fausto' episode, finale of the S05, was by far the best ending Futurama had.

</comment><comment><USER20> Netflix should buy the IP off of them and continue the show.

</comment><comment><USER21> Loved the "Killer App" episode of the new series. Everything else was pretty meh. Rest in peace, Futarama.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wish/hope netflix can take on the show, like they did for arrested development</comment>


Computational Complexity of Games and Puzzles - <AUTHOR> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/cgt/hard.html <comment><USER2> Several of these games can be played on my site if anyone would like to explore them further. Specifically: Amazons, Checkers, Dots and Boxes, Othello, and Phutball. I like them all (naturally), but Phutball has become one of my favorites.

<http://vying.org>

My username there is 'eki', if you'd like to get a game going with a real person instead of the bots.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tetris is Hard, even to approximate.

<http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.CC/0210020></comment>


Trademark: How Square Inc. shut down an event-finding mobile app - <AUTHOR> http://charleekelee.tumblr.com/post/60201399735/square-inc-files-12th-opposition-ends-indys-free

<comment><USER2> SquareJive was founded inside of the office that I work in. I personally knew all the founders, and even considered joining to help early on. I followed it from the idea stage to the end, and even though I was not deeply involved in it, I am very much affected by the outcome of everything. I am very upset to see the way things went at the hands of Square, Inc. It blows my mind that Square, on the surface, seems like a great service/company to work with. Yet, they go and do something like this out of public view. I wish this was getting more visibility on HN. I already started using an alternative myself and I'm going to do what I can to convince other small businesses taking mobile payments not to support Square anymore.</comment>


ESPN Can't Afford Monday Night Football Any More - <AUTHOR> https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-cant-afford-monday-night-football/ <comment><USER2> This is going to be one of many reasons there might be a lockout in 2020 when it's CBA renewal time. This is going to trickle down to the players. NFL can't continue charging exorbitant access fees which means they will have to request a serious reduction in the salary cap (the owners aren't going to be willing to eat these losses).

I think this is great thing as the economics of large sports salaries have been artificially inflated by surreptitiously charging end users for things they might not want. As the internet continues to alter the landscape around content choice, traditional providers are going to have no choice but to push back on the networks which will, in turn, push back on the leagues which will, in turn, push back on high sports salaries. I wouldn't expect any of the limited sets of providers to accept any more price hikes from the sports networks. Sports costs have to come back down to earth as consumption specializes. It already has or will happen with other forms of content too.

<comment><USER3> Those salary caps are really weird. In 'socialist' Europe, we have no cap on football players pay, and the sky doesn't come down.

<comment><USER2> Neither does the US in sports like baseball. Nobody said salary caps are the problem, so it wouldn't be the cause of the sky falling. It's about the salary amount, not whether it's capped.

Salary caps are about how your society values parity in whichever sport it is applied to. Regardless of the salary cap argument, do expect this to affect soccer as well, though further into the future. Right now many of those salaries, bumps for league promotion, etc are based on similar revenue sharing based on TV deals. And as US soccer eyeballs have grown, US TV deals have just added dollars to the already existing and new TV deals in soccer. They are on the upswing at the moment (kinda), but as fans get fed up with these draconian viewership requirements they are going to have to fight for the same in- between viewers (i.e. ones that would watch, but don't have to at all costs) that US sports are vying for across new mediums.

I should clarify that it won't affect the top teams in these situations. Man U and Barca and what not will still be fine due to ancillary sales and their brand. Rather it will affect the vast majority of other teams. Some owners are willing to take a hit, but only so much and for so long (except the super rich ones for which their team is their play thing).

<comment><USER3> > Salary caps are about how your society values parity in whichever sport it > is applied to.

It's a bit more complicated than that. In Europe you also usually have a relegation system. If I remember right, leagues are usually closed in the US?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's worth noting that this site is run by Clay Travis, who generally seems to be an outspoken ESPN critic on political grounds. It's also worth noting that ESPN currently down to 87 million subscribers from a peak of about 100 million in 2011, so they haven't lost 30% of their subscriber base since adding MNF in 2006.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it's a bad assumption to think the NFL will demand more money when ratings and subscriptions are down.

ESPN just has to be the highest bidder. Someone has got to air the games.

<comment><USER6> What happens if the highest bidder can't pay the NFL enough to make it worthwhile?

I keep seeing pictures of half-empty stands behind kneeling football players, and ultimately if the NFL destroys its value by alienating too many fans with politics, there's no reason the entire business won't or shouldn't collapse.

<comment> brian-armstrong I'm always a little shocked when people admit outrage over kneeling players but don't seem at all concerned that the sport endangers the players' wellbeing. What do you think contributes to this empathy gap?

<comment><USER7> In the case of many, many people I have met in the Midwest: the answer is racism. These people for some reason can't seem to grasp the simple fact that players are protesting the fact that black people are being shot and killed for either petty crimes or no crimes at all. You certainly don't have to agree with their protest, but not being able to empathize reflects much poorly on you than it does them.

<comment><USER8> Here we have a glaring example of the issue. You use feelings instead of data to make your point, the problem is your anecdotal assertions are not backed up by reality. 90% of those killed by police were armed.

So far this year 15 African Americans have been killed while unarmed to 21 White Americans and the numbers are similar for the previous years where data is available

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police- shoo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police- shootings-2017/)

[ Edited Below Rate Limited Reply ]

It is about Ratios WillyOnWheels except police aren't killing a bunch of people for no apparent reason, so ratios will never be one to one based on racial data alone.

More than 90% of police homicide victims were armed, the vast majority of them were during the commission of a crime.

Do we want to go over violent crime stats and how that relates to the likelihood you will be killed by police.

It is your half-assed attempt to apply normative statistics to a non-normative issue that shines a light upon your ignorance and all who parrot the same statement without ever delving into the data

Of course the numbers are irrefutable, so down vote away

<comment><USER9> It's about ratios.

There are about 220 million White Americans. Your data claims 392 White Americans have been killed police in 2017 so far.

There are about 35 million Black Americans. Your data claims 190 Black Americans have been killed by police in 2017 so far.

If Black Americans were killed by police hypothetically at the same rate as White Americans, 62 Black Americans would be dead.

Do you see the huge disparity there?

<comment><USER10> What you analysis fails to factor in is the number of crimes committed by each. In that regard blacks commit far more crimes then whites.

<comment><USER11> Or Blacks get charged far more than whites, or that Blacks are policed more heavily, or that it has to do with poverty more than skin color, etc.

The issue is that the data can't be conclusive unless you have an issue where you took two groups of people, gave them the same economic starting point, gave them the same systemic disadvantage, same opportunities and then could make a determination as to whether or not it has anything to do with culture.

Or you could easily look into the fact that economically there is a long history of repressing people of color and that systemic collection of repressions them still exist leading to the exact outcome expected, but still blame those people for "not picking themselves up by their bootstraps". It's as though you haven't seen Trading Places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > But can ESPN exist as a network without NFL games?

Yes. It broadcasts < 20 NFL games per year. This is not a lot of airtime for a 24h sports network. It does spend a considerable amount of time _talking_ about NFL, but that can continue whether it broadcasts their games or not. It has a 3-hour lead-in show on Sunday morning that gets sizable ratings while broadcasting zero games that day. Nobody subscribes to ESPN/cable just for MNF.

In contrast, ESPN broadcasts dozens of college football games per year and spends probably an equal amount of time - or more - discussing those. It spends about $1.4b per year in total on those TV rights which have lucrative advertising and cable subscriber value. That's in addition to all of the other sports ESPN broadcasts.

ESPN will bid less for MNF because they can't afford it any more but mostly because the ratings don't fully justify the current cost. The overall success of ESPN doesn't hinge solely on whether or not they broadcast any NFL games, it's based on how sensible the price is for the rights they own. They have plenty of other content to fill airtime that people watch and will pay a reasonable subscriber price for, even if that's not quite as much as they extract now from cable providers.

<comment><USER13> My thoughts exactly. Their problem is that cable TV as a whole has increasingly viable substitute goods. But there's no reason ESPN can't play that same game. I imagine it's only a matter of time before they put together streaming packages they sell direct to consumer. But they'll ride the value revenue till the wheels fall off first.

<comment><USER14> The problem is ESPN was able to capture an outsized amount of revenue due to cable TV providers bundling it with other channels, so you had large amounts of people paying for it but not consuming it.

Cord cutters are upending the model, requiring ESPN to swim on its own without subsidies; my personal opinion is that there aren't enough sports fans to support it except as an over the top app similar to what HBO GO is trying to do.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I agree with you that the gravy train is ending. But I think we mistake the ability for a business to exist at its peak or grow continually for its long-term viability. Look at the record companies. We're nearing two decades since the MP3 revolution, and most of the companies are still around in some form. ESPN, too, will have to adapt to a new post-bundle reality. But I see no real threat to their overall status as _The Worldwide Leader In Sports_. I'm not shedding any tears for them. They simply have to innovate.

<comment><USER14> Sears is still around too, but just barely. These companies that have been passed by innovation/disruption can exist in zombie form for a _long time_ until they finally die. See: Tower Records [+]

[+] [http://www.npr.org/2009/12/29/121975854/2006-and-the- death-o...](http://www.npr.org/2009/12/29/121975854/2006-and-the-death-of- tower-records)

<comment><USER13> My point is simply that it's ESPN's underlying business model that is drying up, but not its core asset of mindshare within the sports world, which remains extremely strong. I'd argue that Monday Night Football is more or less irrelevant from this perspective. They'll drop it to give themselves more runway to figure out what's next.

At the end of the day, I don't really care much whether ESPN stagnates like Sears or reinvents like Apple. But I think they live or die from a position of strength, present storm clouds aside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would like to see MNF go back to an over-the-air network.

MNF has a long tradition before moving to ESPN. There are lots of fans who don't have a pay tv package that have been missing out on MNF.

<comment><USER16> That's an assumption that the NFL (or any sports league for that matter) do things that are beneficial to fans as opposed to beneficial to the bottom line of owners.

I can name a hundred things leagues have done to dilute and harm their respective games in order to increase profits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Long time NFL GamePass subscriber here... no commercials, watch any game I want when I want - it's a completely superior experience to cable / OTA. I get that the NFL wants to maximize its revenue by selling rights, but they could likely provide their own real-time streaming service and every football fan on the planet would be happy to pay for it.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but nobody else would. Lots of the people paying for ESPN don't do so by choice, they do so because it comes as part of their cable package whether they watch it or not (this was me pre-cord-cutting).

<comment><USER19> Gamepass is $75 right now.

Back of the envelope, every viewer of MNF would need to pay $200 just to keep MNF and one wildcard game. More to get Sunday, Thursday, the playoffs and the Superbowl. Easily $300 - $400 per viewer a year.

That's a hard sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ESPN's downward spiral perpetuated when their talk show hosts started pushing their politic agenda and a liberal bias (Not saying a liberal bias is wrong, but many people get turned off by it). Sports should be an escape from the daily political circus and a time to relax and enjoy entertainment. FS1 is quickly becoming the destination for many sports fans and ESPN will continue to lose viewers if they don't change.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's no mystery why ESPN is going down.

They placed their emphasis on things other than sports. Sports fans will pay for sports, not politics.

</comment><comment><USER22> One option that other TV rights offerings have taken up is to split the package into tiered offerings.

That would allow the NFL to maintain ESPN as potentially the top tier while introducing new suitors with lower tiers and maintaining their revenue in aggregate.

The losers in this scenario are the fans: forced to purchase several subscriptions if they want to watch every game.

</comment><comment><USER23> Once the NFL became political, a lot of hardcore fans stopped using it as an escape from the madness ever present in the news and social media. Seeing falling revenues doesn't surprise me.

The irony of my comment is I'm making plans to watch KC vs Denver... and it's Monday.

<comment><USER24> >>Once the NFL became political

The numbers have been decreasing for the past 6 years. It has nothing to do with NFL becoming political.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers- not-r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers-not-ratings- viewers-2017-9)

<comment><USER25> You're talking about two different things. He's talking about the NFL and you're talking about ESPN. Definitely the politics has hurt the NFL, though there's a lot of disagreement over just how much, but football is only a small part of ESPN's offerings.

I'd be shocked if politics haven't hurt ESPN, too, but the effect is probably completely swamped by changes in viewing habits and a reduction in Disney's clout with cable companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Monday Night Football matchups are usually unimportant and/or lobsided.

</comment><comment><USER27> 2 Billion? That's a lot of brain injuries.</comment>


Birthday paradox - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox

<comment><USER2> I wrote about this some time ago - it takes a different tack, and is intended to be less technical, more readable, and although less comprehensive, still to give a good flavor of the topic.

I'd be interested to know if people think I succeeded:

<http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/TheBirthdayParadox.html?HN2>

There's also some discussion from when I submitted it to HN a few months ago:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4753014></comment>


Clownshoes available in sizes 2^10+1 and up | Nicholas Nethercote - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mozilla.com/nnethercote/2011/08/05/clownshoes-available-in-sizes-2101-and-up/ <comment><AUTHOR> The post is about finding bug in Firefox memory allocations, causing allocation of double the needed amount of memory. Just thought I'd clarify that due to the nice but a bit uninformative title...</comment>


Robotic firefighting team - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8172739.stm

<comment><AUTHOR> The talon robot mentioned appears to be developed by <http://www.foster- miller.com/lemming.htm>

It is nice to see military robot R&D making an impact in general public safety applications.</comment>


Stemmer – An English (Porter2) Stemming Implementation in Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fredwu/stemmer <comment><USER2> Interesting to see the Porter2 algorithm ([http://snowballstem.org/algorithms/english/stemmer.html](http://snowballstem.org/algorithms/english/stemmer.html)), having also implemented a Porter stemmer ages ago myself.

But I have to ask, why are we still using this approach, which has known inaccuracies and quirks (in English)? Its one virtue is compactness, which in the old days was more important than accuracy.

But it is fun, I'll grant you that.

<comment><USER3> I think porter2 works well enough. You don't need lexical category like lemmatisation, so it's a lot simpler than that approach.You also don't need a huge volume oftraining data.

<comment><USER4> You don't need any training data to do better than Porter2, just lexical data. If you're content to map the same surface form to the same stem regardless of context, as Porter2 would, what you need is a dictionary mapping words to their stems.

This used to be considered a lot of memory to use. It's not anymore.

This leaves you with some edge cases (is "axes" the plural of "axis" or "axe"?), but it's much better than mixing up the words "universe" and "university".

<comment><USER3> That's a good point, I think I overstated the need for training data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Stemmer was built to support the Simple Bayes [1] library"

[1] [https://github.com/fredwu/simple_bayes](https://github.com/fredwu/simple_bayes)

</comment><comment><USER6> For those interested in the Stemming subject in Elixir, I made a simple Elixir wrapper around snowball implementations of stemmers : [https://github.com/awetzel/stemex](https://github.com/awetzel/stemex)

snowball -> C -> NIF -> Elixir

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice to see Elixir ecosystem growing, congrats on cool release

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm sorry, but. why is this important? #therestoftheworld

<comment><USER7> Because it's Elixir :)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Made an app that summarizes the news. Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zoltapp.com <comment><USER2> I like it, but it seems you're experiencing feature creep. "Shout" reaction cards with doodles, and donating books? I can't see where that fits into anything. A good news app is streamlined, giving you exactly what you want, news, without clutter. Well done so far though, just think it needs to be more focused!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback and glad you liked it so far!

The donate a book campaign is our way of encouraging users to share our app. Instead of spending $ on facebook ads, we figured we'd donate a book every time 2 of your friends download Zolt using your referral code.

The Shout feature is meant to give users another way to express themselves (in addition to the usual share on FB, Twitter etc). It's still a work in progress, admittedly.

Thanks again though for the caution - will be careful of avoiding feature creep.

<comment><USER3> at best your customers won't care about the donations. they'll spread your app if it meets their needs, but not to give charity by proxy. at worst, they'll think you're lying. but i think your app looks very polished from the website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think most news are just gratuitous verboseness, so I upvoted you.

However I still want an app that extracts only quotations and numerical information from the news and presents it on a table with a headline.

</comment><comment><USER5> Summaries are good, to what degree is their generation automated?

I think the app is nice to use, however I think it'd need to summarize articles of my choosing to be useful to me.

I found the landing page for the mobile app to be very noisy. Scrolling was all over the place.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice work but again the same issue with all the permissions that are absolutely not necessary! I wish someone could explain this!</comment>


Show HN: Map, Reduce and Filter in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alediaferia/go-collections

<comment><USER2> Here's Pike's implementation:[https://github.com/robpike/filter](https://github.com/robpike/filter)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how well the GC could handle the constant generation of new collections.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's my concern as well.

I don't think I'll put much effort in this project since this is barely a proof of concept but there's a couple of points I would like to dig if I ever find time:

1\. How to reduce collections generations?

2\. How to take advantage of the machine cores to execute the Map/Reduce operations?</comment></comment>


Spouse of Ring exec among lawmakers trying to weaken California privacy law - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/spouse-of-ring-exec-among-lawmakers-trying-to-weaken-calif-privacy-law/ <comment><USER2> In today's "team based" politics, politicians have figured out that perceived conflicts of interest no longer matter to their chances for reelection.

Her opponent can run ads that say "She proposed laws that made her husband's company richer" and it would probably barely affect her outcomes, as long as she has the D next to her name.

Amusing side note, she is my parent's representative, and I'm sure they would not care one bit about this as long as she's a Democrat.

<comment><USER3> That's what primaries are for?

<comment><USER4> I would think that primaries would vastly favor incumbents, to a greater degree than a general.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but that's a different issue from partisanship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is using your political office to benefit your spouse's business a criminal offense in California? If not, it damned well should be. This is pretty blatant corruption.

<comment><USER6> > Is using your political office to benefit your spouse's business a criminal > offense in California? If not, it damned well should be. This is pretty > blatant corruption.

Receiving bribes and 'integrating' them into economy, through a network of relatives, is not that uncommon, unfortunately.

More sophisticated forms take 250K per hour speech fees, book+documentary 'deals', and buying expensive property much cheaper than market price (from the willing 'donors').

To find info on links between a politician and his/her bribe loundering network, you have to use non-google/non-yahoo search engine. And plugin the names of the relatives.

As examples, Pick federal Congress representatives from your district that have not changed for, say, 7-10 terms or more, and that live 4mln+ homes. And do the search.

Politicians who sit on the committees dispensing money (eg aid), or government contracts tend to be more corrupt (proportional to how much money they oversee being dispensed out).

<comment><USER7> >As examples, Pick federal Congress representatives from your district that have not changed for, say, 7-10 terms or more, and that live 4mln+ homes. And do the search.

How about an example? Your claims are extraordinary..

<comment><USER8> Dianne Feinstein is a good example; I only know about this from living in Berkeley for 20 years, and hearing about her corruption as it relates to her husband's real estate business (which impacted a lot of Berkeley landmarks).

The claims are reality. American politics is absurdly, laughably corrupt and has been for a long time. I've said this for years: everything we accuse the Russians (our evil doppelgangers) of has been true here for a long, long time.

<comment><USER9> The purple states are much better since all the politicians are on thin ice at all times.

<comment><USER8> True enough, and one of the reasons I moved to one after Berzerks. At this point, I'll probably continue my migration out of the country entirely if I can pull it off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the more interesting features announced by Apple at WWDC was HomeKit Secure Video. The basic idea is that home security footage could be stored in iCloud in encrypted form, preventing 3rd party access. Has any camera manufacturer announced support for this feature yet?

<comment><USER11> Logitech, Netatmo, Eufy, and Robin.

[https://www.imore.com/these-companies-will-support- homekit-s...](https://www.imore.com/these-companies-will-support-homekit- secure-video)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure which is worse: this being a conflict of interest, or her personally believing that we should weaken data privacy laws.

<comment><AUTHOR> The conflict of interest itself would have a far less impact on the regular person than the weakening of privacy laws. In this case I think the issues amplify each other.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not distancing herself from the action/decision that favors her husband and the company he's involved with is the very definition of a conflict of interest.

Her inner intention is less important because it is hard to provide clear evidence for or against it (absent some sort of recorded evidence). It creates a situation of uncertainty and to avoid this you are usually required to disclose any detail that could cause even the appearance of a conflict of interest (you are married to the person who benefits from your action), and remove yourself from the decision making position.

So for example using public money to buy the very best available product on the market from your spouse's company is still a conflict of interest. You are expected to withdraw and let an impartial person take over. If the product is good then the evaluation will have the same result but there will be no suspicion that you tried to influence the result in your interest.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone know what kind of ethics framework these guys adhere or commit to as part of having that public function?

</comment><comment><USER14> Primary source: [https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/15/california-tech- pr...](https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/15/california-tech-privacy- ring-1496125)

</comment><comment><USER15> Since the technology name rang a bell (pun unintended) it should be noted that the old GNU Ring softphone (now called Jami) is a privacy sensitive decentralized Skype-Like software which has absolutely nothing to do with this thing.

[https://jami.net/](https://jami.net/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Term limits make activity like this less of a problem for the perpetrator.</comment>


Ask HN: Can anyone suggest s/w tools to extract intent from huge voice clips? - <AUTHOR> Can Anyone suggest good open source software tools/languages which can extract intent from very large voice clips ?
Ex: extract intent from an hour long voice clp <comment><USER2> What do you mean by intent? If you want some sort of probabilistic lie detector, there isn't any reliable one out there, and the unreliable ones are proprietary. Also, none that I'm aware of would work on long speeches or something, voice stress analyzers work by trying to detect changes in vocalization when someone is asked a question they'd rather not answer or somesuch. Evidence for their efficacy is sketchy at best.

<comment><AUTHOR> As an example if we attend an hour long meeting -we might have many outcomes from it...say take-away items,status updates,status of something etc..These are all some actions/intent that can do something. Now,we are looking for something which can understand human language and extract these actions from a hour long meeting recording

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Intent" meaning what?

<comment><AUTHOR> As an example if we attend an hour long meeting -we might have many outcomes from it...say take-away items,status updates,status of something etc..These are all some actions/intent that can do something. Now,we are looking for something which can understand human language and extract these actions from a hour long meeting recording</comment></comment>


Anyone else submit to the Knight News Challenge? - <AUTHOR> http://newschallenge.org

<comment><USER2> No, but I'm familiar with it. What did you submit?</comment>