Your Own Indoor, Hydroponic Grove - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3035102/your-very-own-indoor-hydroponic-grove?utm_content=buffer07698&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

<comment><USER3> The problem with this is that the grove will not be able to grow enough to sustain (or come close to sustaining) even a single person. By the very, very most optimistic calculations (best recorded growth in tropical greenhouses) you need at a minimum 300 sq ft of space. But more realistically a 1000 sq ft or more are required to sustain a person.

Then there's actually a ton of labor that goes into growing, picking and correcting the plants. Just ask someone who has worked in a garden, tried aquaponics or grown something hydroponically (weed or otherwise). Automation can still only do so much, especially when it isn't at scale.

This relegates their grove to growing single types of plants very well. Growing fruits requires more light than vegetables, but either way you're looking at at least 40 watts per sq ft of space, usually much more (especially since the light needs to penetrate down through the leaves). For even a small setup of 8 sq ft you're looking at something that pulls 4 kwh of electricity a day at minimum (around a half a dollar). Taking between 3 and 6 months to grow some fruits you're look at a minimum of $75 a yield but probably closer to $400-$500 or even more after you calculate the costs of HVAC (big), water pumping and heating/cooling costs and chemicals (which are on the order of a dollar-per-day expensive). And then a lot of the equipment needs to be replaced and is very expensive, especially if you are running lights. Most of those have a shelf life of around a half year, unless you do LEDs which are extremely expensive investments. Of course this needs to be compared to the yield but generally economies of scale, even organic ones, can produce goods much cheaper. And hydro isn't organic...

The reason hydroponics is associated with weed is because you need to grow something that costs more than your inputs.

<comment><USER4> Having had experience with hydroponic horticulture, I believe you are correct. Successful hydroponic farming is much harder than it seems it would be.

The amount of light energy required to grow plants properly is very large and hard to supply with artificial light sources. Fruiting plants, like tomatoes, have much higher requirements than leafy crops, like lettuce. Lamps are rather inefficient converting electricity into light.

A 1000 Watt metal halide or high-pressure Na lamp is barely adequate to cover a square meter (if the only light source). Calculate the energy cost of running it 16hr/day for a month and it gives new respect for Mother Nature.

Another headache is plant nutrition. Vegetables grow fast and suck nutrients out of their environment at an alarming rate. There are many systems but the short version is reusing nutrient fluids requires constant chemical monitoring to assure proper pH, mineral content. Automated equipment is out of the question, and a home farmer very likely won't have the knowledge and lab equipment to do it optimally by hand.

There are a whole bunch of other constraints, but the above is enough said. Doing experiments is fun, but apartment-scale production of edibles is definitely no more than a pipe dream.

<comment><USER5> > A 1000 Watt metal halide or high-pressure Na lamp is barely adequate to > cover a square meter (if the only light source).

1000 Watts of metal halide or HPNa? Per square meter? That's huge! You don't need anywhere near that kind of figures for growing salad in your kitchen. If you're working in a commercial gardening operation, then it's a different deal. But then you're either growing weed and/or have a huge area so the W/m^2 figure goes down.

A single fluorescent tube in addition to natural light and your usual kitchen lighting goes a long way.

Most plants are not very sensitive to pH figures nor do they suck up nutrients like crazy. Automated pH and EC measurement would be nice, though. Even better if this garden could automatically add in nutrients and acid if necessary.

Lessons from growing weed are not necessarily valid for food production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To be economically feasible, I think that light tubes, which capture sunlight and route the light indoors, would be necessary.

I grow food in two ways.

I use "earth boxes" (very water efficient) to grow veggies on our deck - <USER2> the wild pigs and other wild animals can't eat the plants.

I have about a 25x30 square foot area in a community garden. In return for doing a lot of volunteer work keeping a 1 mile irrigation ditch free and running (that supplies water to both the garden and a park) I get free water and use of the land, for non-commercial use. In other words, I can just grow food for my family and friends. Really hard physical work, but fun!

<comment><USER7> Considering the water, fuel and labour required in normal food production and delivery, growing under LEDs at home could easily be economically feasible. Especially since you don't have to beat the cost of production, but only match the store price.

Also, I don't think these people would be expanding their operations if growing under artificial lights was uneconomic. - [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140717-japan...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/07/140717-japan- largest-indoor-plant-factory-food/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think we will be seeing a lot more hydro stuff in the coming years and hopefully it'll shed it's image as being used for growing pot. It's a much more efficient way of growing than soil, often yielding 3x as much.

There's quite an active group over on reddit who discuss hydro issues /r/hydro.

You can actually build a pretty decent home brew set up with minimal cost with some careful planning.

<comment><USER9> I've seen folks using the Space Buckets ([http://www.spacebuckets.com/](http://www.spacebuckets.com/)) technique to grow tomatoes and other edibles - I think that the pot growing industry definitely innovates and pushes the curve forward for these sorts of techniques, so I hope the derogatory nature of associating with that crowd doesn't prejudice someone against looking into the techniques. I could imagine a lot of good things coming from homegrow/DIY hydro gardening - although I have a huge normal garden which provides a family of 4 with more than enough high-grade food, I'd still like to set things up for the non-growing season every year. There's nothing quite like consuming food one produced oneself.

<comment><USER4> By "non-growing season" I'm assuming you mean winter. If you don't live in the Arctic Circle, or have temperatures to match, it's quite possible (I've seen it done anyway) to grow some vegetables under glass even in pretty unfavorable climates. Modern greenhouse materials are amazing.

With short days or chronically overcast skies, daylight still gives adequate blue light such that supplementary high-pressure Na (reddish spectrum) lighting can provide good enough conditions at low-moderate cost.

It wouldn't duplicate the lovely garden you describe, but might be better than nothing at all.

<comment><USER5> > If you don't live in the Arctic Circle, or have temperatures to match, it's > quite possible (I've seen it done anyway) to grow some vegetables under > glass even in pretty unfavorable climates.

I live 60 degrees northern latitude (still 1000 km to arctic circle). It is not possible to grow vegetables in gardens like this (indoors, in warm, with artificial light next to a floor to ceiling window wall). It is barely possible to grow herbs and greens, as long as they have been germinated earlier in the fall. Trying to start a seedling or a cloned cutting no longer works when the length of day goes around six hours or so.

Of course, you can put in a huge amount of grow lights but that's no longer practical to do in your kitchen.

<comment><USER4> I was referring to an outdoor greenhouse, set up on a plot of land where a large garden was mentioned. Oriented in a north-south direction natural light is still plentiful even in winter, and supplementing with artificial light can be effective.

You are right though, even a large south-facing window doesn't provide as much illumination as a proper greenhouse, sharply limiting what can be grown.

BTW if you get 6 hours of daylight at 60 deg latitude, that's impressive. My location is ~46 deg, but because of surrounding hills, and frequent thick cloud cover, we effectively get barely 6 hours of daylight at the start of winter, maybe less.

In the off season, we're relegated to getting what produce we can from the grocery store, taste-free as it may be...

<comment><USER5> > BTW if you get 6 hours of daylight at 60 deg latitude

6 hours was a guesstimate figure for when plants stop growing. That's for the actual lit period, not sunrise-sunset times.

At the darkest period of the year, the sunrise is after 9am and sunset is somewhere around 3 pm. Looking at the exact figures, it's 5 hours 49 minutes on the shortest day of the year. If you work a regular day job, you'll never see the sun for several months.

But effectively, that's pretty much perpetual darkness. During the midday, there's a brief period of "daylight", but most of the time is just twilight because the sun doesn't rise very high. The weather tends to be cloudy for the whole period, last year there was 20 minutes of unoccluded sunlight in December and one or two clear nights.

You learn to manage with the darkness in the winter and the light in the summer but coping with the rapid change in spring/fall is the worst. Humans are photosensitive animals, it really fucks up your mind.

<comment><USER4> All of that sounds very familiar. Astronomical sunrise/sunset times aren't an accurate guide to actual perceieved day length. Topological obstructions, like nearby hills, and in our climate, overcast skies block or decrease sunlight penetration.

Near my office, I've measured daytime illumination. At the least obstructed spot, midday it was 40K lux in the sunny summer, but late fall 9K was as good as it got when moderately cloudy.

In late fall it's identifiably daylight (if barely) at 9:00 and getting dark by 15:00 even though sunrise/sunset times promise 8.75 daytime hours in early December.

A couple of notable consequences are a high rate of seasonal depression, and widespread vitamin D insufficiency. Light is a cue for circadian rhythm, and people sensitive to fall/winter darkness often benefit with phototherapy. I'd make sure to take vitamin D supplements too, usually 2K IU is a standard recommendation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We have a similar but smaller flood'n'drain type hydroponic garden at our office (it's a brand called Zengrow, but that particular model is discontinued). It's rather nice but not really a viable source of food.

Similar indoor garden products are very popular here in northern Europe because the price of salad and veggies is outrageous during the winter months. And also it's a nice aesthetic element when there's very little light or green in the winter.

This garden looks nice but it's way too big and probably too expensive. It will never be able to pay back its price in the food it produces.

So if the guys of this startup are listening, you should go smaller, at least initially.

Apart from that, this kind of gardens are very nice and low maintenance. But it's just a nice supplement, not something that feeds your family.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why not make this aeroponic? Even more yield in faster time, also the fishtank suggests that this is an aquaponic system, very nice :)

</comment><comment><USER11> see prev hacker news item - [http://miter.mit.edu/the-unexotic- underclass/](http://miter.mit.edu/the-unexotic-underclass/)

lets solve some real problems?

<comment><USER12> "How to feed yourself" is kind of the king of all real problems.

Currently this is being marketed at people with money, but research into indoor / vertical farming is definitely attacking a real problem.

<comment><USER11> straw man..

<comment><USER7> I had an idea for a Wicker Man parody where people who worship fallacies burnt people alive in a giant straw man.

Do you think there might be funding available?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hydroponics, a great way to grow weed!</comment>


The NSA Review Panel Is An Even Bigger Joke Than We Previously Thought - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/22/the-nsa-review-panel-is-an-even-bigger-joke-than-we-previously-thought/ <comment><USER2> In which AOL add nothing but their advertisements to the AP's article at [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/close-ties-between-white- hous...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/close-ties-between-white-house-nsa- spying-review).</comment>


ITorChat for iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itorchat/id579614516

<comment><AUTHOR> I just bought and downloaded this. It seems like it was put together rather well. I think it still needs a nice intro of how it works when you first start it for those who aren't familiar with tor. Other than that, it's very easy to use.

Note: I'm not affiliated with the author.

<comment><USER2> Just got it too, works nicely, waited a while for TorChat on the iPhone.</comment></comment>


TimL – Clojure like language which compiles down to VimL - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tpope/timl

<comment><USER2> This is beyond my wildest wishes. Meaning I have wished, as a formerly active Vim plugin author now fully switched over to Emacs/evil, exactly for Clojure compiling down to VimL so that I could maintain my plugins as Clojure/Lisp code, compiling it to actual VimL for public consumption, as a preprocessor. I'd think that would mostly do away with runtime performance worries, and not require the plugin user to actually have TimL installed as a plugin. Which means it could ease the transition of plugin authors to TimL, until eventually it's ok (and perhaps performant) to have it as a runtime.

Needless to say, I love the fact that Tim Pope has hopped on the Clojure bandwagon, that the community can enjoy well thought out tooling such as he did/does for Rails.

That said, tpope is one of only a few driving forces over on the Vim side of Clojure, whereas most seem to flock to Emacs. So I see this as potentially a great opportunity to eventually have Clojure-ish compiling/running on both Vim and Emacs, so that plugin authors can literally write and keep a single codebase that maps into the respective editor APIs. Well, least common denominator I guess, with extras specific for each editor. And maybe, speaking from my experience developing Vim plugins and looking into Elisp code, we will need 'clojureditor' packages providing higher level functionality painstakingly implemented for both editors, since it would be plenty non- trivial code that probably doesn't belong in a core like TimL neither in a Clojure+elisp equivalent.

Then you could see this actually taking off big time since the more voluminous Clojure+Emacs community would be writing a good deal of plugins which would also work on Vim for free (imagine that!), so that they could support both platforms because it wouldn't be much extra effort. Hats off to the Pope for actually taking on the arguably tougher half, since Elisp should hopefully be an easier target for a lisp like Clojure.

<comment><USER3> On the performance front, I would not expect TimL compiled down to VimL to be as performant as native VimL, even when done as a preprocessor instead of at runtime. One reason is because, as stated in the README:

> TimL functions are actually VimL dictionaries (objects) containing a > dictionary function (method) and a reference to the enclosing scope.

So calling TimL functions have overhead that calling VimL functions don't. I don't know if there are other performance quirks too, but I would not expect this to produce the most optimal VimL code.

That said, code that exists always performs better than code that was never written in the first place, so if this causes plugins to be written that otherwise would not, then that's a net win. It's also entirely possible that the performance concerns end up not being an issue.

Personally, I've never written a VimL plugin, and I've never had a reason to use Clojure, but now I'm tempted to try both.

<comment><USER4> So, the overhead I'm referring to isn't so much stuff like function dispatch (which is almost immeasurable with the heavy lifting happening in C), but idiomatic overhead. Creating an anonymous function to map across a lazy sequence wrapping a persistent data structure doesn't have a chance in hell against a native for loop on a native vim list. I actually did quite a bit of optimization in this area (that's where chunked seqs came from), and it's quite usable for many tasks, but it's still potentially bottlenecking so I never really found myself "trusting" it for anything significant.

Of course, I am in a rather unique position of being able to bang out well optimized VimL in my sleep, so paradoxically that biases me against my own creation.

<comment><USER5> > Creating an anonymous function to map across a lazy sequence wrapping a > persistent data structure doesn't have a chance in hell against a native for > loop on a native vim list

... until this thing actually gets traction and one decides to integrate a native TimL interpreter into vim alongside VimL (making this implementation a shim for older versions). Of course this would create two competing standards (until vim 8?) but the more than reasonable out of the box interop and readily available usefulness and unleashed power (you mentioned macros to alleviate pain points) makes it a honestly very reasonable scenario compared to python/ruby/lua bindings, which are honestly foreign and require an external dependency.

All of this is a sign of a brilliant hack: immediately useful despite having to bear with some caveats, with a clear path towards the future. Thank you sir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Is this a joke? > > If you mean the 6,000 lines of working code, then no, I > poured hundreds upon hundreds of very serious hours into that. But if you're > referring to the fact it's woefully underdocumented, adds considerable > overhead to an already slow host platform, and ultimately unlikely to gain > any traction, then yeah, probably.

This is the best sort of April 1 announcement - something ridiculously ironic and playful, yet incredibly useful long term. Thanks so much for creating this, along with all of your plugins.

</comment><comment><USER7> In the never-ending Emacs vs. Vim debate, as a long-time Vim user (with no intent on switching), I've always envied Elisp. tpope has once again delivered and maybe now I can stop shamefully eyeing up Emacs from a distance.

I haven't given this a try yet, but I can expect that, if it works well, it will be worth even a modest performance hit.

<comment><USER8> Rather than transpiling into VimL it might be more productive in the long term to hack on Vim's MzScheme scripting interface...

<comment><USER9> Oh man, that would be pretty cool. I would like it more if we could pull it up to Racket, since I've use that and it feels really good as a language. It's what was mzscheme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> pi-rat A lisp for vim - with months of commit history.. released on 1st of April.. awesome!

<comment><USER10> I'm still not convinced its not an elaborate april fools joke but I want it to be real so bad!

<comment><USER11> I wonder if someone has a VimL port to elisp in the works, waiting to be released today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe the april fools' joke is that this is not a joke

<comment><USER13> Then I wish everybody's april fools' jokes would be like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's so cool that I would be skeptic (real programming language that compiles into VimL? God, that must be buggy!) already if not the fact that it's written by tpope. That's totally awesome.

</comment><comment><USER14> Even though I like clojure and think it's cool, I don't think VimL needs another layer that slows it down. I'm putting my money on the VimL to Lua translator that's currently being worked on by ZyX-l ([https://github.com/ZyX-I/neovim/tree/luaviml](https://github.com/ZyX-I/neovim/tree/luaviml)) for neovim. With that, we can run VimL as Lua code in LuaJIT, which will transform VimL from one of the slowest scripting languages to among the fastest.

Note that I said among the fastest, because VimL uses native integers which Lua doesn't have. LuaJIT does have them but their conversion rules are different so there has to be some shim code ([https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/392](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/392)). There's also many other VimL -> Lua incompatibilities that will incur some slowdown but it should be wicked fast still.

Of course, I expect that many people will start writing native lua plugins after a while, it is a far more pleasant language, after all.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh, this is neat. (keeps reading...) HOLY SHIT TIM POPE

</comment><comment><USER16> At first I started reading and I was skeptical, there are so many abandoned/unused lisp dialects out there nowadays.. Then I checked the size of the project and at the first mention of actual clojure datatypes I was pleasantly surprised.

Kudos tpope, this is freaking awesome!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's an example of TimL in action! [https://github.com/sjl/tslime2.vim/blob/master/plugin/tslime...](https://github.com/sjl/tslime2.vim/blob/master/plugin/tslime.tim)

<comment><USER17> Literally came here to post that!

The comment for send-line-to-tmux... I've felt that pain before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone who develops some plugins this looks freaking awesome. Think I'm past thinking this is a April fools joke, knowing his sense of humor, the number of lines of code and the commit history.

</comment><comment><USER19> This could be totally awesome. Maybe with neovim's planned LuaJIT implementation of VimL this can actually run quick.

<comment><USER20> You could just code it in Clojure if you were using neovim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can this be used to develop plugins for vim? I would love to see someone come up with a plugin in TimL or port one to it!

<comment><USER22> Steve Losh has rewritten his 'tslime' port in TimL: [https://github.com/sjl/tslime2.vim/](https://github.com/sjl/tslime2.vim/)

<comment><USER21> awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> UGH! SO MONEY!!! <3 <3 <3</comment>


Women in (Software) Engineering: Part I - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Tracy-Chou/Women-in-Software-Engineering-Part-I

<comment><USER2> I completely disagree with her and I am tired of hearing this same complaining all the time. I am a woman, I am a software engineer and I've never experienced any sort of special treatment or being looked down upon or what have you. As I replied to her on Quora, it must come down to what you are focused on. If you are focused on finding proof of certain behaviour, you sure will find it, no matter what reality is.

</comment><comment><USER3> there's no excuse! The concept of a compiling language was invented by a woman.</comment>


Roman Verostko, the grandfather of computer art - <AUTHOR> http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/262452601.html

<comment><USER2> If you are interested in the long history of computer art, check the work of Manfred Mohr and Vera Molnar: they both started around the mid 60s, using science computers and plotters. Nice pictures here: [http://dam.org/artists/phase-one/vera-molnar/artworks- bodies...](http://dam.org/artists/phase-one/vera-molnar/artworks-bodies-of- work/works-from-the-1960s-70s)

</comment><comment><USER3> Heck, I've been doing computer art longer than this guy. In 76 we had a graphics display with a printer at the UofIowa; we made all sorts of interesting spirograph-style plots.

<comment><USER4> In "art culture" only those who succeed commercially are artists.

<comment><USER5> I think that's a bit of a strawman--though I agree with your sentiment-- because to be a "grandfather" of something assumes you've had an influence on the next generations. And in this case, yes, you gotta stand out (not necessarily commercially, as many works of art, records etc were a flop but highly influential in the decades after.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Verostko is represented by DAM Gallery in Berlin. I had the pleasure to see some of his works in real life in the exhibition Frieder Nake a & Friends at the same place. If you're in Berlin, check out the gallery. Right now Vera Molnar is exhibited. (Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the gallery.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Ben F. Laposky was doing electronic art with oscilloscopes and electric circuits back in 1953. Some have commented he was the first computer artist, but not sure if his equipment would classify as a computer: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_F._Laposky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_F._Laposky)</comment>


'Mulan' is coming to Disney+ on September 4, for an additional price of $29.99 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/04/mulan-is-coming-to-disney-on-september-4-for-an-additional-price-of-29-99/ <comment><USER2> I don't really like paying extra on a streaming service I'm already paying for. However, I'll be really, really upset if this is a easy-click-to-purchase system that my kids can select. I have profiles for the kids set up but who knows if that'll save me.

I have no interest in paying for this and certainly don't want to deal with this being splashed all over just baiting me (or the young ones) to click.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else think that that price seems steep?

<comment><USER4> Ya it's outrageous, if I went to see this with a friend in a theater we'd pay about $10ea. Now I have to assume the majority of those $20 are going to the theater to cover their employees and rent, so at most, Disney is maybe making $4 a ticket, so they priced this as if it were 7.5 tickets and yet their overhead for distribution approaches $0 when streaming compared with film.

<comment><USER5> Studios make between 75% and 90% of the value of ticket sales in the first week a big-budget movie is in theaters. (The shares are different for indie films.)

Depending on the negotiating power of the studio, that may even extend to the second week for a major blockbuster film, like for example a Fast and Furious or Marvel film.

Generally, the studio's share of ticket sales drops below 50% after about a month. By the end of the second month, if the theater is still showing a movie, it is getting almost all of the ticket sales revenue.

This is why movie studios really push the concessions: that's where they make the most money. By the time they're making the lion's share of a movie ticket sale, there generally aren't many people still interested in watching the movie in a theater, so it's only worth it to keep long-tail movies in theaters for more than a few weeks.

<comment><USER4> I didn't know it was that bad, that's quite an extreme business model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What you think of the price is up to you but know that the lead actress came out in support of the Hong Kong police[0][1]

[0][https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia- china-49373276](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49373276) [1][https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/mulan-actress-hk- prote...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/mulan-actress-hk- protests-1.5249675)

</comment><comment><USER7> So sad to see this blatant money-grabbing behavior. It's not even a new story. It's so calculated and transparent, the way they toyed with the release date and now have pulled this from nowhere.

Those of us who have been paying monthly to stream Star Wars surely deserve a break here, Disney? Aren't we gotten already?

</comment><comment><USER8> It'll be interest to see if the $30 gets you unlimited views or if it's like pay per view rentals where once you start it you have 48 hours to finish and then you can't watch it any more

</comment><comment><USER9> See with blood and real eyes of Hong Kong young Kids, if anyone want to pay. #boycottMuLan

The original cartoon is so much better. Go to see that. Would have a good and happy day.</comment>


Admitting Defeat on K&R in LCTHW - <AUTHOR> http://zedshaw.com/2015/01/04/admitting-defeat-on-kr-in-lcthw/

<comment><USER2> Too bad. While I'm not a large fan of his style in general, I think the chapter in question shows important things.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I cannot help old programmers. They are all doomed." tad bit arrogant, I think.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. I think I fit into that category, first used UNIX(TM) in 1978, first programmed in C in 1980-1 ... and I've never thought K&R was a good book. It was _Lions ' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code_ ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code)) that was the key, and since its first edition, I've used _C: A Reference Manual_ by Harbison and Steele (as in Guy Steele), initially written for a CMU spinoff compiler company because K&R was an insufficient reference for implementing a compiler.

<comment><USER5> Since you already agree with him on K&R you don't need his "help" and are logically not covered by his statement. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would like to read what he removed. I think that always we can learn something new.

<comment><USER7> [http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/krcritique.html](http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/krcritique.html)

<comment><USER8> It's been replaced with the text of the above blog post. Old version: [https://web.archive.org/web/20140816220513/http://c.learncod...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140816220513/http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/krcritique.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Storm in a teacup.

</comment><comment><USER10> This:[http://arsalanbashir.com/rude- programmers/](http://arsalanbashir.com/rude-programmers/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Definitely come to Go and Rust, Zed.</comment>


Microsoft's Lauren ad faked say bloggers - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/03/microsofts_lauren_ad_faked_say_bloggers.html

<comment><USER2> The way these Apple Insider guys take the commercial like a personal insult is hilarious. Very tribal. It's an effective ad- the real point is too simple for these guys to get. "Apple doesn't sell 17" laptops under $1000 (Just like Mercedes doesn't sell 4dr sedans under $30000.)"</comment>


Ugly Email – Gmail Extension to Check If Email Is Being Tracked - <AUTHOR> http://uglyemail.com/

<comment><USER2> aleem from streak here, this is cool. i'd love to share some stuff we're working on that should make it much easier to do what you're working on. mind emailing me at aleem at streak?</comment>


The Montreux Jazz Festival archive is now online - <AUTHOR> http://actu.epfl.ch/news/the-treasured-montreux-jazz-festival-archive-is-no/ <comment><USER2> I'll be on site at EPFL in a few weeks (and later Montreux) to install some object storage systems related to this project, so getting a kick out of this posting!

</comment><comment><USER3> From two years ago London Grammar [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENUOG86xG-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENUOG86xG-o)

</comment><comment><USER4> The actual archive is at [http://www.montreuxjazz.com](http://www.montreuxjazz.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmmm. The performance of Nina Simone is outstanding: [http://montreuxjazz.com/ladies-jazz](http://montreuxjazz.com/ladies-jazz)

But I totally do not understand how the website is structured. Is there a full performance of that gig? If yes, where? I find a lot of meta sites evolving around how great the archiving is. But I can't find a good way to search the now publicized concerts and find background info for the video playing.

Maybe site is just overload? [http://imgur.com/fciOOpQ](http://imgur.com/fciOOpQ)

<comment><USER5> Sidenote: displaying the player controls not in the video but at the very bottom of the page is interesting, but will likely lead to more confusion for many users. I think it would be better to display them in the video window as the major video websites do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> NoScript users, this is one of those rare sites that is never going to work even after temporarily whitelisting everything. Try youtube-dl, it works perfectly once you get to the individual video pages and have a URL. [https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/](https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/)

I can't complain about the lack of functionality since I'm using a very restrictive add-on, but I hope that helps other NoScript users.

<comment><USER7> How could that be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could not find either of Stevie Ray Vaughn's appearances. '82 and '84\. A glitch, or just embarrassed to air the crowd booing him?

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't dislike or object to blues, indie rock, reggae, heavy metal, hip hop, etc... but it would be great if a jazz festival website prominently featured jazz music. It was surprisingly hard to navigate this site and find any jazz music.

<comment><USER10> The majority of the landing page is jazz on my end, so not sure about your difficulty.

The site is, however, very slow to respond and a bit buggy. Maybe HN effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was lucky enough to go in '92 and Les VRP killed it, can't wait to see how the HD (from '91) video holds up to my memories.

edit: or maybe they just have the main stage artists; oh well still a great resource :)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is great! Current jazz artists are going to love this.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very awesome. Has anybody figured out a way to embed the videos? Would like to share a few of these off-site.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it a full archive though? I can only find a few videos and the search returns only a list, maybe it's just that the site is overloaded right now.

</comment><comment><USER15> Does the website takes forever to load or it's just on my computer?

<comment><USER16> I can imagine that they're getting a bit of a traffic spike today.</comment></comment>


Jux is Closing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jux.com/1290549?utm_source=details&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=details

<comment><USER2> No one is talking about it because the site design is horrible...

Clicked 3 links and I still don't know what they do or did.

<comment><USER3> That's true. but I believe the website could be useful if you know what it is....

a lesson we can learn from its failure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> so sad that no one is even talking about it, not on HN, not on Quora.

<comment><USER4> I had never even heard of it before. Perhaps that is the problem they ran into? (Not that _I_ hadn't heard about it, but maybe nobody had outside of whatever bubble they grew in).

<comment><USER3> I start to wonder why everyone's heard of Tumblr but not Jux. Marketing problem?</comment></comment></comment>


I'm starting to use duckduckgo after seeing their terminal theme. - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/YLcJQXT.png <comment><AUTHOR> Themes : [https://duckduckgo.com/settings](https://duckduckgo.com/settings) Themes tab

looks just awesome [http://i.imgur.com/0QUmcVa.png](http://i.imgur.com/0QUmcVa.png)

</comment><comment><USER2> Duckduckgo is actually an awesome search engine. So much of what Google gives you is over-SEO-optimized garbage, I find Duckduckgo often gives more relevant results.</comment>


Johns Hopkins surgeons perform world's first male genital transplant - <AUTHOR> https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/04/23/penis-transplant-surgery-johns-hopkins/ <comment><USER2> _The surgeons and Johns Hopkins volunteered their services, which would otherwise have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and wouldn 't have been covered by veterans benefits or insurance, they say._ (because it's still experimental)

Hats off to the team of 11 surgeons involved in this (no doubt grueling) 14-hour surgery without being paid. Wow.

Sources:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2018/04/23/6050544...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2018/04/23/605054470/veteran-receives-penis-transplant-to-repair-war- wound)

[http://time.com/5250397/penis-transplant-johns-hopkins- unive...](http://time.com/5250397/penis-transplant-johns-hopkins-university/)

<comment><USER3> It's not like they aren't paid in reputation though. Because it's a novel surgery, they're now the world's leading experts on applying this surgery successfully, and that makes them the first phone call for anybody with deep pockets who wants to make it happen. Not to mention being published, talking about the surgery in conferences, etc.

The patient may not have paid in money, but they did pay in taking a very significant risk of unforeseeable complications. It's not so clear cut.

<comment><USER4> This is really true. There was an interesting documentary about the docs who did the first hand transplant. The docs were really pushing to do it since they could be "first". The patient was so-so about the idea, but went ahead anyways.

Fast forward a year and the hand is slowly disintegrating since they couldn't get his immune system to accept it. The patient eventually stopped taking his drugs.

The hand was then amputated and he got a prosthetic. Patient was much more functional.

<comment><USER5> As an aside: the abandonment rate for 'normal' prosthetics is about 35% to 45% :

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17979010](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17979010)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a vet who knows a couple of guys who've suffered injuries to their genitals I'm really happy to hear this news. There's a huge stigma around not having a dick anymore and I can acutely remember thinking, before stepping out on patrol, that I'd rather die than have that happen to me.

Hopefully this is just one step in a larger journey toward being able to replace damaged/destroyed genitalia with functioning replacements (ie re- growing new appendages using stem cells and patient DNA, etc).

<comment><USER7> I've read the suicide rate among vets with genital injuries is over 25%.

Tragic.

<comment><USER8> Not to downplay the vast significance of such an injury, but seems to me the far greater tragedy is that our society/culture places so much emphasis on sexual function that a 25% rate of suicide in such cases 'makes sense'.

There's a lot more to life than sex - this is basically saying that 1 in 4 males don't think the rest of it is worthwhile otherwise..

<comment><USER9> Is it society and culture or the single most important biological imperative our DNA can express, something hardwired into the parts of our brains older than life on land?

<comment><USER10> Certainly it isn't hardwired in any relevant manner, and people are in fact just fine not reproducing, see vasectomy.

Don't just repeat platitudes. People are killing themselves over not being able to have sex, or rather not being able to prove they're proper functional men. It has at least as much to do with social status as with actual sex.

<comment><USER9> Knowing you aren't held in respect by your peers doesn't cause depression because of culture or society - every single living organism with some sort of higher brain function gets "depressed" when its peers hold it as less valuable.

This isn't platitudes, this is science, and shows the solution likely isn't down the path of telling people 'losing your junk" jokes are harmful. Choosing to not have kids are far different than having that choice taken from you, and the most viable solution is likely chemical intervention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So, just to clarify here; the first successful penis transplant was in 2014 in South Africa [1] (the same team again performed a successful transplant in 2017 [2]).

The article posted however is the first penis and scrotum (without testicles for perhaps obvious reasons) transplant.

[1] [http://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=232...](http://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=2328) [2] [https://www.health24.com/News/Public-Health/see-sa- doctors-p...](https://www.health24.com/News/Public-Health/see-sa-doctors- perform-second-successful-penis-transplant-20170522)

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone have an idea as to why the testicles weren't included in the transplant?

My best guess is that the testosterone produced wouldn't be "compatible" with the recipient and they would want to avoid an immune system rejection?

Additionally, I suppose that if sperm is still being produced, you could effectively impregnate a woman with someone else's DNA. That would be... strange. I can see how that might be unwanted by both parties.

<comment><USER13> The article I read earlier specifically said there were ethical concerns with him potentially being able to father children with the donor's genetic code. Which is a weird ethical concern I'd be intrigued to read more about.

<comment><USER14> That creates an interesting twist: since DNA test is legally acceptable as fatherhood proof the recipient could create a lot of trouble for the donor.

<comment><USER12> I'd assume that the donor in every case (as in this case) would be diseased, so I'm not certain how that could be an issue for the donor.

<comment><USER15> I assume you mean "donor deceased". Even if I were dead I would not necessarily want people using my DNA to father children.

I wouldn't necessarily be against it, either, but I would feel I had some interest in how sperm were used in a different way from other organs. I'd also feel differently about something physically identifying like a face, and even more so about the brain/cognition (if there were a way to do a partial brain transplant which carried memories or something but didn't transfer consciousness — seems unlikely given what we know of the brain today, but I wouldn't count it out since we don't really know all that much.)

<comment><USER2> _(if there were a way to do a partial brain transplant which carried memories_

Years ago, I saw an interview with a woman on TV. IIRC, she was the first recipient of a heart and lung transplant.

She was asked a question shortly after surgery in which her reply was something like "I'd love to have a beer!" though she did not drink. The young male donor who died in a motorcycle accident did drink. She also reported having dreams and other experiences in line with having somehow inherited some piece of his consciousness. Over time, they faded.

If anyone is curious to read more, this might be her book:

 _A Change of Heart: A Memoir_ by Claire Sylvia

<comment><USER16> That's sounds like an urban legend / exaggerated story.

<comment><USER17> I hope it is urban legend or exaggerated, because that is terrifying.

<comment><USER18> Or it's wishful thinking / placebo. The mind is very good at deceiving itself.

<comment><USER19> Or the subconscious memories could have been transferred through other methods, e.g. socialising with people who knew the donor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I like how the picture in the article almost looks like an access panel on the side of an insulated appliance, seeming to imply that it was as easy as connecting a few wires and pipes... if only[1]! The unrealistic "cleanliness" of these sorts of detailed medical illustrations continues to fascinate and slightly amuse me.

[1] [https://cdn2.tmbi.com/TFH/Step-By- Step/display/FH12JUN_WATHE...](https://cdn2.tmbi.com/TFH/Step-By- Step/display/FH12JUN_WATHEA_04.JPG)

</comment><comment><USER21> Yeah. Another reason for being an organ donor. Remember, even when you are dead, you best friend could still be working :-)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm surprised they were able to reattach the nerves as well. Isn't that something that can't be reattached after being severed.

If nerve reattachment now is possible, can't we cure quadriplegics?

</comment><comment><USER23> The first transplant was actually in South Africa, in Dec 2014.

<comment><USER24> Source?

<comment><USER11> [http://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=232...](http://www.sun.ac.za/english/Lists/news/DispForm.aspx?ID=2328)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> without the testes. he would be able to function sexually and orgasm? will it not be like castration

<comment><USER26> While sperm is produced by the testes, most of the semen is produced by the prostate gland which is inside the body - not in the testes.

<comment><USER27> Wrong. The semen is produced by the testicles. The ejaculate is produced by approximately three different glands:

1) Testes - produces the semen (1% of the total volume) 2) Prostate - Sugars, etc (30%) 3) Cowper's Gland - mucoproteins, etc...

<comment><USER28> _Sperm_ are produced by the testes, but sperm are a minority of the semen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> They've been able to put penises in women for a while, but only just now they've been able to put them in men?

What am I missing?

<comment><USER30> In construction of simulation organs the person's own tissues are used.

<comment><USER29> Got it, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't really sympathize. At least to me, the risks involved in foreign transplants, and the drug regimen with all its effects, seem to outweigh the benefits.

For others it may be different.

</comment><comment><USER32> Serious question, not wanting to be crass, but does it "work"? That would be a huge breakthrough over reconstruction options that often require an implanted device to mimic an erection. It also, I imagine, requires a great deal of accuracy regarding the surgically connected plumbing in order not cause rupture and internal bleeding as a result of blood pressure.

<comment><USER33> Did you read the article, or just the headline?

<comment><USER32> Yes I read the article. My question was not answered in it.

<comment> Harvey-Specter > "We are hopeful that this transplant will help restore near-normal urinary > and sexual functions for this young man." \- W.P. Andrew Lee Director, > plastic and reconstructive surgery

<comment><USER32> "We are hopeful" did not indicate success or failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "They transplanted from a deceased donor the entire penis"

Is there any research on the statistics of people signing up for organ donation, wealth, death rate etc. to objectively measure if people are ... left to die if the resulting organs are more profitable? A macabre thought indeed.

"It's a real mind-boggling injury to suffer; it is not an easy one to accept," the recipient says. "When I first woke up, I felt finally more normal … [with] a level of confidence as well. Confidence … like finally I'm OK now."

^ this is exactly what worries me on the subjects of sex-change, -transplantation etc. : without even any time to recover, time to repeatedly re-assess the new condition, without anonimity (or rather a pseudonym signed by say the government, so that they can prove they actually underwent such an operation, without giving up their identity) how do we know they tell the truth? how can he already be happy without trying his new dick out? or is he really just being happy about _officially having a dick again_ ? how do we prevent people who are fantasizing about a sex change from deciding something they will come to regret, especially if their only source of information is people who 1) did not provably undergo such an operation 2) are no longer anonymous to be able to speak freely how they feel about it?

<comment><USER35> There are several Internet communities where transgenders can talk pseudonimously.

<comment><USER36> Indeed, I think part of the problem is that the only interactions a lot of people have with trans people is with political advocacy, where people are too busy trying to deal with rampant misinformation to ever get into nuance. And people then assume this is the only form of discourse that trans people ever engage in.

Much as people like to deride "safe spaces" as echo chambers, actual safe space trans communities are far more open to discussing conflicting feelings, doubts, regrets etc. because they know people won't use those admissions to judge or invalidate them. Which is of course, exactly the point of a safe space.

(PS: The preferred term is "transgender people" or more commonly just "trans people".)

<comment><USER2> _I think part of the problem is that the only interactions a lot of people have with trans people is with political advocacy,_

I've personally been attacked a few times on HN as transphobic for trying to talk about women's issues and my personal problems as a woman in a man's world. My experience suggests the trans community frequently takes approaches that are openly and unnecessarily hostile.

I also spent 9 months being very supportive of a MTF trans youth met through HN whose life was in serious crisis at the time. Several other members of HN are well aware of the support I provided her. None of them ever stepped forward in my defense during the time when I was being repeatedly randomly attacked as supposedly transphobic.

The MTF individual in question was incredibly ugly to me during the months that I was supportive. Every single personal problem I had as a divorced single mom, problems very typical of divorced single moms, was dismissed as me being incompetent, not wanting success badly enough, etc.

I got badly burned for being sympathetic and supportive. I have reason to believe this individual still has the ear of powerful people and there is evidence they are still telling lies about me and dragging my name through the mud.

If my experience is at all representative, then your description of the problem space doesn't begin to capture the issue.

<comment><USER36> >If my experience is at all representative

I don't really see any reason to think that your interactions with one trans woman would be representative?

<comment><USER2> You are glossing over large parts of my comment. This is hardly limited to interactions with one individual.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


China Installs Nearly 10 Gigawatts of Solar in First Quarter - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/24/china-installs-nearly-10-gigawatts-of-solar-in-first-quarter-up-22/ <comment><USER2> The US used about 2 million GWh of electricity in 2015[1]. There are 8760 hours in a year. So the power usage averaged over the entire year is 243GW. The amount of solar the article is talking about could supply about 5% of that average usage. And that's just what was installed in three months.

If the rate of installation stayed the same then it would take five years for all US electricity needs to be met by solar.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#Consumption)

<comment><USER3> Perhaps I'm missing something but the capacity factor for solar tends to be around 20%, meaning that 10GW of nameplate capacity generates an average of closer to 2GW in practice. I didn't see it addressed in the article, so I'm assuming the number is nameplate capacity.

<comment><USER4> It's true solar capacity factor is between 10-25%, so nameplate isn't terribly useful. With that said, the rate of solar being installed isn't slowing down, and more fabs are coming online each year.

I would be shocked if there's any fossil fuel generation online in 10 years, 15 tops.

[https://www.pv-tech.org/editors-blog/global-solar-pv- manufac...](https://www.pv-tech.org/editors-blog/global-solar-pv- manufacturing-capacity-expansion-plans-rebound-in-q1)

[https://www.pv-tech.org/editors-blog/planned-solar- manufactu...](https://www.pv-tech.org/editors-blog/planned-solar- manufacturing-capacity-expansions-bigger-than-expected-in-1h)

[https://www.power-technology.com/comment/global-pv- capacity-...](https://www.power-technology.com/comment/global-pv-capacity- expected-reach-969gw-2025/)

<comment><USER5> The odds of having enough energy storage in place in 10 years to eliminate fossil fuel energy production approach zero. Solar and wind are great production methods, and are proving more and more econoimcal every month, but neither con produce energy on demand in all conditions.

Without a huge national grid to compensate for weather patterns (problematic due to transmission losses), or a massive increase in storage capacity and technology, we just can't eliminate fossil fuel energy.

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that the high voltage transmissions have little resistance, and that the biggest problems with a national grid is not transmission loses but the cost of building thousands and thousands of miles of high voltage electrical wiring to connect existing subgrids together.

Do I have a misconception?

<comment><USER7> Adding wiring is fairly cheap per mile, connecting different electric networks via substations is the more expensive bit.

The larger issue is capacity needs to be used regularly to be cost effective. If you want to send 10GW for 24 hour a day or 15 minutes they both need the same infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, today's NASA Earth Observatory image of the day is "Smog Smothers Solar Energy in China" [https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=92054](https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=92054)

A quote from the article: _" The researchers found that in the most polluted areas, available solar energy decreased as much as 35 percent, or 1.5 kilowatt-hours per square meter per day. That is enough energy to power a vacuum cleaner for one hour, wash twelve pounds of laundry, or run a laptop for five to 10 hours."_

<comment><USER9> In some sense, it's enviable to be in a position where bringing more solar power online will increase the production of your existing solar! (by eventually reducing coal emissions and thus pollution)

<comment><USER10> Good point. Betting against your own failures is worth doing when you're fixing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone wrote this in the comment section of the article: "One of the most inspiring factoids for me is that a mere 10 years ago, 10 GW was the total accumulated installed capacity for the entire planet. And here we are with 1 single country installing that in 3 months."

If true, this is amazing !

</comment><comment><USER12> I was trying to get context on this number- 10 Gigawatts of power is enough to power 7,000,000 western homes!

China is supposed to have 455 million homes, and there is no way the average chinese household uses as much electricity as a western one, but I don't know how to make a reasonable comparison.

Also in the US, commercial and residential use accounts for 40% of energy use, so this should be a pretty substantial amount of clean energy, even for a country as big as china.

<comment><USER13> It is also enough to power 8 DeLoreans!

<comment><USER14> This should be the new official measuring units for all green, fusion and time-travel related articles

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My rule of thumb: solar power generates 10 watts per square meter.

There's a fixed maximum of 1300 watts per square meter of sunlight. For large scale technology, assume 10% efficiency. Another 10% from that survives air occlusion, clouds, night, angles, dust/snow cover, buffer battery efficiency, maintenance, breakage, etc. Round down, and we see 10W/m^2 practical output.

Professional quantification of this back-of-the-napkin calculation welcome.

<comment><USER16> > My rule of thumb: solar power generates 10 watts per square meter.

> There's a fixed maximum of 1300 watts per square meter of sunlight.

I'd suggest you qualify your numbers by noting that you're talking specifically about Solar PV.

Solar Thermal appears to offer 3x the kWh/m2 over Solar PV -- and mitigates at least one of your concerns ('night'). That ratio will doubtless change as PVC efficiency improves, but if that 3x factor is accurate now, it'll be a long time before PVCs match or exceed on square metre ratings alone.

<comment><USER15> _Solar Thermal appears to offer 3x the kWh /m2 over Solar PV_

I'm wondering at the difference between your measuring "kWh/m2" vs mine of "W/m2". Upshot: averaged over a year, what's the power output? are you including all "off" hours?

<comment><USER16> Good question. I simply did some googling for comparative efficiency per unit area between PVC and solar thermal -- the 3x factor seemed to come up regularly from different sources. The kWh/m2 was the unit most of those sources were using.

Time of day is very interesting, as PVC's are going to be useful earlier in the day, and solar thermal can still be providing good power output well after sunset. Consequently, in practice, I'd see a combination of both technologies (combined with good storage and grid capabilities, etc) as being most effective way of harnessing sunlight in the short to medium term.

Averaging over a year ... geo / climate variations (eg distance from equator, monsoon cycles, etc) are likely going to affect both technologies similarly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is this going to be a massive maintenance problem in ten years time? I thought that's the lifespan of panels.

Usually the problem with building lots of infrastructure is it gets expensive to maintain. It happens with roads and buildings. Will it happen with solar?

(I'm hoping not because efficiency is still improving and prices are still going down whereas for roads I think it went up - but I don't know why).

<comment><USER18> 80% of power at 20 years is fairly standard for solar panels. It's a slow taper too, you just lose around 1% of output each year you sweat them.

There'll be other losses due to failures, damage etc. but it's not a situation where you should factor in a strict capital replacement cycle.

<comment><USER19> You should always factor in a capital cost (replacement, repair, etc).

<comment><USER18> Doing it in the accounting manner that a typical firm would do is foolish in this instance.

A homeowner is going to sweat assets, and in the case of Solar a 1% degradation per year means that, short of some damage or failure, the time you're likely to sweat them is between 20 and 80 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Will China be the first regime to have carbon neutral high-tech mass surveillance?

With their newfound riches, imagine what futuristic, renewables-powered dystopia will flourish there.

<comment><USER21> Disapprove of their government by all means, and even apply diplomatic pressure to encourage them to change it, but I can hardly see why anyone would want to mock their development of renewable energy. If they don't, the whole world suffers.

<comment><USER22> I don't know if he's mocking China. He is is expressing the ambivalent feeling that many have about China, and he's doing so in a bit of a comedic way.

<comment><USER23> I am all for witty sarcasm, but this one doesn't add much value to the discussion given weak correlation between mass surveillance and renewable energy.

<comment><USER24> Is there a weak connection when one literally powers the other?

<comment><USER23> You are making assumptions. How do you know what powers or will power the surveillance system in China? Also, mass surveillance will always be there regardless of forms of energy it is on, hence the weak correlation.

<comment><USER25> Not to mention running these video cameras and computer systems is fairly minor in terms of how much energy they consume compared to other activities in the country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is incredible. If only they also stopped investments in fossil fuels... Chinese banks are by far the largest investors in fossil fuel projects today.

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/71465](http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/71465)

I couldn't find it for solar but it should be similar if I remember correctly. China has created almost TWICE the number of GW of capacity for wind than the United States but USA still gets almost the same renewable energy from wind as china because US is 93% more efficient at generating wind due to a whole lot of reasons, but primarily because of capitalism and market economy driving decisions rather than the State.</comment>


High-Performance GPU Computing in the Julia Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.nvidia.com/parallelforall/gpu-computing-julia-programming-language/ <comment><USER2> > This is in part because of the work by Google on the NVPTX LLVM back-end.

I'm one of the maintainers at Google of the LLVM NVPTX backend. Happy to answer questions about it.

As background, Nvidia's CUDA ("CUDA C++?") compiler, nvcc, uses a fork of LLVM as its backend. Clang can also compile CUDA code, using regular upstream LLVM as its backend. The relevant backend in LLVM was originally contributed by nvidia, but these days the team I'm on at Google is the main contributor.

I don't know much (okay, anything) about Julia except what I read in this blog post, but the dynamic specialization looks a lot like XLA, a JIT backend for TensorFlow that I work on. So that's cool; I'm happy to see this work.

 _Full debug information is not supported by the LLVM NVPTX back-end yet, so cuda-gdb will not work yet._

We'd love help with this. :)

 _Bounds-checked arrays are not supported yet, due to a bug [1] in the NVIDIA PTX compiler._ [0]

We ran into what appears to be the same issue [2] about a year and a half ago. nvidia is well aware of the issue, but I don't expect a fix except by upgrading to Volta hardware.

[0] [https://julialang.org/blog/2017/03/cudanative](https://julialang.org/blog/2017/03/cudanative) [1] [https://github.com/JuliaGPU/CUDAnative.jl/issues/4](https://github.com/JuliaGPU/CUDAnative.jl/issues/4) [2] [https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27738](https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=27738)

<comment><USER3> Does this mean we could hook Cython up to NVPTX as the backend?

I've always thought it weird that I'm writing all my code in this language that compiles to C++, with semantics for any type declaration etc...And then I write chunks of code in strings, like an animal.

<comment><USER4> IDK about Cython, but I remember a blog post using Python's AST reflection to jit to LLVM ->NVPTX -> PTX. It's relatively simple to do, I've done it for LDC/D/DCompute[1,2,3]. It's a little tricker if you want to be able to express shared memory surfaces & textures, but it should still be doable.

[1] [https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc](https://github.com/ldc- developers/ldc) [2] dlang.org [3] [http://github.com/libmir/dcompute](http://github.com/libmir/dcompute)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my experience, CUDA / OpenCL are actually rather easy to use.

The hard part is optimization, because the GPU architecture (SIMD / SIMT) is so alien compared to normal CPUs.

Here's a step-by-step example of one guy optimizing a Matrix Multiplication scheme in OpenCL (specifically for NVidia GPUs): [https://cnugteren.github.io/tutorial/pages/page1.html](https://cnugteren.github.io/tutorial/pages/page1.html)

Just like how high-performance CPU computing requires a deep understanding of cache and stuff... high-performance GPU computing requires a deep understanding of the various memory-spaces on the GPU.

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Now granted: deep optimization of routines on CPUs is similarly challenging, and actually undergoes a very similar process in how to partition your work problem into L1-sized blocks. But high-performance GPUs not only have to consider their L1 Cache... but also "Shared" (or OpenCL __local) memory and "Register" (or OpenCL __private) memory as well. Furthermore, GPUs in my experience have way less memory than CPUs per thread/shader. IE: Intel "Sandy Bridge" CPU has 64kb L1 cache per core, which can be used as 2-threads if hyperthreading is enabled. A "Pascal" GPU has 64kb of "Shared" memory, which is extremely fast like L1 cache. But this 64kb is shared between 64 FP32 cores!!!.

Furthermore, not all algorithms run faster on GPGPUs either. For example:

[https://askeplaat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/ispa2015.pdf](https://askeplaat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/ispa2015.pdf)

This paper claims that their GPGPU implementation (Xeon Phi) was slower than the CPU implementation! Apparently, the game of "Hex" is hard to parallelize / vectorize.

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Now don't get me wrong, this is all very cool and stuff. Making various programming tasks easier is always welcome. Just be aware that GPUs are no silver bullet for performance. It takes a lot of work to get "high-performance code", regardless of your platform.

And sometimes, CPUs are faster.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. The goal with Julia is to make it easy to use whatever hardware is best suited for the problem you are solving. This work, IMO, reduces the barrier to entry for writing code for GPUs and gives Julia users more options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Julia has recently gained support for syntactic loop fusion, where chained > vector operations are fused into a single broadcast

Wow. That's very impressive.

I hope one day we get this sort of tooling with AMD GPUs.

<comment> one-more-minute Ask and ye shall receive: [https://github.com/JuliaGPU/CLArrays.jl](https://github.com/JuliaGPU/CLArrays.jl)

<comment><USER7> That's amazing. I'm very excited about the prospect of auto-magically trans- piling code into GPU code. This sort of tech will make GPUs approachable to many more scientists and programmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How does the Julia approach compare to the alternatives in performance and ease of use? Can e.g. Python or R do this in any way?

<comment><USER9> The big difference is that Julia can handle user defined structs and handle higher-level functions, e.g. you pass a Julia function to you GPU kernel and that function will get compile for the GPU without you having to declare it GPU-compatible.

<comment><USER10> The key difference here is that, while Python and R has a lot of their standard library written in other languages (C), Julia's is mostly written in Julia. Same with Julia's packages. This means that you can throw a lot of library functions and they will GPU compile just fine because the whole stack is Julia all the way down (in many cases. There are of course exceptions).

<comment><USER11> I keep hearing this, but each time I look at the links on HN, I see that the high-performance libraries being cited are those still written in C, C++, or some other low level language. For example, even in this link, the code is tying into things like cuBLAS, which is definitely not Julia code. For me, high performance linear algebra routines are important and I just checked here:

[https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/stdlib/linalg/](https://docs.julialang.org/en/latest/stdlib/linalg/)

It looks like Julia uses a combination of LAPACK and SuiteSparse. These are good choices, but it's not Julia code and these routines are callable from all sorts of other languages like Python, MATLAB, and Octave. As such, it still appears as though Julia is operating more like a glue language rather than a write all of your numerical libraries in Julia language, which is fine, but I don't feel like that's what it's being sold as.

<comment><USER6> We use BLAS, LAPACK and SuiteSparse - because they are incredibly high quality libraries. For example, if you translate LAPACK or SuiteSparse into Julia, you will get the same performance. BLAS is a different story (and while not impossible to have a Julia one, the effort to build one would be better deployed elsewhere for now).

The benefit comes from user code, which in many dynamic languages is interpreted and is much slower than built-in C libraries. For example, look at the Julia `sum`. It is written in Julia. Or that we are in the process of replacing openlibm (based on freebsd libm) with a pure julia implementation. Or any of the fused array kernels (arithmetic, indexing, etc.). Our entire sparse matrix implementation (except for the solvers) is in pure Julia.

<comment><USER11> To be sure, I agree and think it's the right thing to do to hook into external libraries when they provide the functionality we need. That's just an extension of the right tool for the right job philosophy.

Alright, so I write numerical codes professionally. Though it's not quite fair, I tend to bulk things into glue languages and computation languages. In a glue language, we combine all of our numerical drivers and produce an application. For example, optimization solvers don't really need to be written in a low-level language since their parallelism and computation is primarily governed by the function evaluations, derivatives, and linear system solvers. As long as these are fast, we can use something like like Python to code it and it runs about the same speed, and in parallel, as a C or C++ code. On the other hand, we have the computation languages where we code the low level and parallel routines like linear algebra solvers. Typically, this is done is C/C++/Fortran, but I'm curious to see how Rust can fit in with these language. For me, the primary focus of a computation language is one that it's fast and two that it's really, really easy to hook into glue languages. Since just about every language has a c-api, that's our pathway forward.

Alright, so now we have Julia. Is it a glue language? Is it a computation language? Maybe it's designed to be both. However, at the end of the day, most of the examples I see of Julia on HN are using Julia as a glue language. To me, we have lots of glue languages that already hook into whatever other stuff we care about be it plotting tools or database readers or whatever. If Julia is designed to be a computation language, great. However, that means we should be seeing people writing the next generation of things like parallel factorizations and then hooking them into a more popular glue language like Python or MATLAB or whatever. Maybe these examples exist and I haven't seen them. However, until this is more clear, I personally stay away from Julia and I advise my clients to as well.

And, to be clear, Julia may be wonderfully suited for these things. Mostly, I wanted to express my frustration of what I see as an ambiguity in the marketing.

<comment><USER12> I think the biggest reason that Julia might not satisfy your definition of "computation language" is just that Julia has a significant runtime, as a garbage collected language. So it's not really suited to writing something as a library and then using it from glue languages as your proposing for "computation languages", at least currently. I think that would remain true even if it had the speed and flexibility and developer resources to not need to call out to native libraries for its own purposes.

Which reminds me a bit of Java, where the speed is either there or getting there for tight loops, but it just doesn't play well with others at all when they are wanting to do the driving.

<comment><USER11> That's fair. And, certainly, there's nothing wrong with a glue language geared toward computation. Then, from my perspective, the question for me becomes whether Julia provides an good resources for the end application. Stuff like good plotting, reading from databases and diverse file formats, easy to generate GUIs, etc. Honestly, that's part of why I think Python became popular in the computation world. Personally, I dislike the language, but I support it because there's code floating around to do just about anything for the end application and that's hugely useful.

There's one other domain that, depending, Julia may fit well. At the moment, I prototype everything in MATLAB/Octave because the debugger drops us into a REPL where we can perform arbitrary computations on terms easily. Technically, this is possible in something like Python, but it's moderately hateful compared to MATLAB/Octave because factorizing, spectral analysis, and plotting can be done extremely easily in MATLAB/Octave. That said, I tend not to keep my codes there since MATLAB/Octave are not good, in my opinion, for developing large, deliverable applications. As such, in my business where I quickly develop one off prototype codes on a tight deadline, maybe it would be a reasonable choice.

Though, thinking about it, there may be licensing problems. The value in MATLAB is that they provide the appropriate commercial license for codes like FFTW and the good routines out of SuiteSparse rather than the default GPL. I'm looking now and it's not clear to me Julia provides the same kind of cover. This complicates the prototyping angle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Puzzling number of men tied to Ferguson protests have died - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/436251b8a58c470eb4f69099f43f2231 <comment><USER2> [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-murdered- witness/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-murdered-witness/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably largely random. But beyond that, they sound like the diametric opposite of upstanding and boring citizens, so not really that surprising?

<comment><USER4> What from the article suggests that they _are or aren 't_ "upstanding and boring citizens", so what is the basis for your comment?

> Deandre Joshua's body was found inside a burned car blocks from the protest. > The 20-year-old was shot in the head before the car was torched.

> Darren Seals, shown on video comforting Brown's mother that same night, met > an almost identical fate two years later. The 29-year-old's bullet-riddled > body was found inside a burning car in September 2016.

How is that "random"?</comment></comment>


Moloch – Open-Source Large Scale Indexed Packet Capture and Search System - <AUTHOR> https://yahoodevelopers.tumblr.com/post/186702933128/dash-open-10-moloch-open-source-large-scale <comment><USER2> I suppose verizon is the right entity to choose to name something this, but really: What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Can we salt the earth after they're gone, too?

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/aol/moloch](https://github.com/aol/moloch)

Comes from AOL. So indeed an ancient and powerful god. The only caveat is to get it to do anything you have to poses a magic artifact - an original AOL free trial CD.

But in all seriousness I remember trying it out years ago and it worked pretty well. It ended put a bit too complex for what we needed, but I remember being impressed by it.

<comment><USER4> Presumably, what anybody sees is passed through a firewall to Moloch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, what's up with this name? It puts me off immediately knowing of Moloch. Was everyone at Yahoo okay with this name as they worked on it? It seems so strange of a choice.

<comment><USER7> You have no sense of humor, I guess. I love it.

<comment><USER8> It's not a joke, it's just a name, so humor has nothing to do with it. The problem is that it's a weird choice of name. If someone named it "Hitler" or "Damnation" or "PoopEmoji" it would also be a bad name, but those would also not be jokes, just bad names.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, you're wrong. It's a funny name. Get over it.

<comment><USER9> What makes it funny? I'm serious, I actually don't get it.

<comment><USER8> In the Old Testament, Moloch was another tribe's god, and so was a competitor to Yahweh (the Jewish/Christian/Muslim god). The OT doesn't actually say there aren't other gods, but rather that you should only worship Yahweh. The OT describes Yahweh as one god among many others, although he does get credit for creation to make him seem stronger than those other gods. That eventually morphed into the notion that there were no other gods at all, many centuries later, and those competing gods got grandfathered in to being thought of as demons and devils within the framework of monotheistic Christianity (not sure about their role in Judaism). In a similar way, pagan gods got grandfathered in to being Christian saints in many cases, and pagan holidays turned into Christian holidays.

So: Moloch is a demon, according to Christianity. And I'm guessing the software involves a daemon process? So...yeah. Real clever. That's some really sophisticated humor there. Waka waka waka!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I currently use this at work (DoD entity) as our full packet capture solution. Love it and am super happy with the features it has. Interestingly, it's an AOL product (or was? Last I checked). Wasn't aware those guys still do stuff.

<comment><USER11> Fun fact, Moloch's initial development was funded by DARPA Cyber Fast Track! Glad to hear it's working out for people in DOD.

<comment><USER10> Very cool! I wonder if that played in to the USAF's selection of it for our defensive cyber platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just FYI, CuckooSandbox has good integration with this,which is nice when you want to find undiscovered badness in your environment that talks to similar network entities as your sandbox detonation.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wouldn't want to run this solely based on the fact that they wrote a tremendous amount of parsers in C. Even worse, it also seems they wrote them by hand and didn't use a parser generator. This is really not what you should be doing in 2012-2019.

</comment><comment><USER14> I ran this on our edge and was really impressed. It's a great product -- install and running can happen fast, results are good. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought this is about Moloch DAO, the Ethereum-based group.

<comment><USER16> I also thought this. Moloch is a very big deal in the Ethereum space.</comment></comment>


'Outlandish' encryption laws leave Australian tech industry angry and confused - <AUTHOR> https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-12-07/encryption-bill-australian-technology-industry-fuming-mad/10589962 <comment><USER2> What was the saying Comcast had with net neutrality? "Please give us these powers, we promise we won't use them."</comment>