Ask HN: How to get started developing with FPGA? - <AUTHOR> I've been doing a lot of GPU programming these last few years. Now, FPGAs are being used to accelerate tasks (algo trading, etc, etc).<p>Recommendations on how to get started with FPGA development? What cards are good? Do they make external cards to plug into a laptop like eGPUs? Popular SDKs? <comment><USER2> 1) FPGAs are used for low-level stuff (high-speed digital logic) and high- level stuff (accelerating algorithms). It sounds like you're only interested in the latter. You can ignore any tutorials that go into Verilog/VHDL or low- level logic design.

2) The two major FPGA manufacturers are Intel and Xilinx. Each has their own tools. The tools are very different. You should pick one (flip a coin) and stick with it, at least starting out.

3) FPGA manufacturers typically have a free tier of their tools, and a paid tier. The paid tier is usually thousands of dollars. You'll only need the paid tier if you're using a high-end FPGA (those are usually also very expensive - thousands of dollars for an evaluation board).

4) Buy a popular FPGA board in the $100-$1000 range. I recommend something from Terasic (Intel FPGA boards) or Digilent (Xilinx FPGA boards).

5) Accept that you won't have a high-speed connection to a PC. Inexpensive FPGA boards normally only have gigabit ethernet, at best. You can get a PCIe FPGA board, or connect a USB 3.0 PHY via FMC connector, but you're looking at more money invested, and you'd have to learn a lot more about the inner workings of the FPGA.

6) The tools you're looking for are Intel Quartus II HLS, or Xilinx Vivado HLS.

7) Look into OpenCL for Intel and Xilinx FPGAs. This is the ultimate goal you're trying to attain - getting arbitrary algorithms optimized for FPGA fabric. Good luck!

<comment><USER3> FWIW: The latency gains that usually benefit HFT or algorithim design, aren't, for the most part, realized using off-the-shelf tool kits.

Unfortunately, the tooling and hardware isn't currently quite at the point where HLS languages, or openCL for that matter, have had substantial impact for real-world problems, especially if you're targeting a low tier FPGA. This is especially true when implementing interfaces to PHYs or other IP.

I think part of the problem is that successful HDL design requires a fundamentally different approach to program architecture - especially when it comes to closing timing - and there's a fairly steep learning curve to getting everything set up.

I appreciate the idea of skipping verilog or low level logic introductions, but it seems to me like that's asking for substantial problems later on when you actually want to do something practical.

Then again, I can't really think of any better (ie; easier) learning pathway than what you mentioned.

<comment><USER4> It might be true that latency can't be improved much by using an off-the-shelf FPGA but performance in parallel processing tasks can. For instance an FPGA might be cheaper than a GPU (in relative performance/$) in machine learning implementations because the FPGA architecture can allow for higher throughputs/less bottlenecks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi, professional FPGA developer here. A couple of things I would advise:

Firstly, development kits are great - they provide the hardware you need and all of the IP to drive that hardware. Grab a dev kit - there are lot's of other posts advising you which one. The IP that actually interacts with the real world is by far the most difficult bit.

Secondly, 99% of hardware design is simply know what actually maps to hardware. It's important to understand that hardware languages fit: FPGAs, ASICs, simulators. So what _can_ be coherently written in VHDL/Verilog can't necessarily _work_ if it doesn't map to the hardware platform you're writing for. So you need to actually understand the structures of an FPGA - LUTs, Registers, DSPs and Memories. Once you know what you're writing you're 90% of the way there. Real FPGA devs spend months in simulators before they get to actually hardware test. The simulator will allow you to do things that the compiler will warn you about and the hardware will simply do wrong. Each compiler (modelsim, Vivado, Quartus, VCS etc.) will have a unique interpretation of the language you're using.

Finally, in terms of tools, use whatever comes with your dev kit, but in terms of simulators Modelsim is industry standard and Intel (Altera) ships a free version.

I don't really have advise for learning material- I learnt at Uni.

<comment><USER6> It's so surreal that people in the FPGA industry refer to libraries/components as "Intellectual Property".

<comment><USER7> I think it's because so many of them are sold/licensed that way. You buy an Arm core, an Ethernet, USB or BT interface, etc. Often you do it from your EDA (electronic design automation) vendor so that it fits into your design/test/layout flow. Even the ones you don't pay for often can't be redistributed. Lots of them are literally black box or "hard" IPs that you can't change or test except through defined interfaces... but they often have been validated much more than anything you can write and may be much smaller or lower power than you would naively write.

<comment><USER6> I would attribute the weird FPGA dev attitudes to Stockholm syndrome. I always get the most mind boggling replies in defense of the evil vendors when I criticize FPGA's embarrassingly small amount of freedom.

> [black box components] often have been validated much more than anything you > can write and may be much smaller or lower power than you would naively > write.

Sure but if an entire community was validating and improving these common components, they'd be way better still. (See gcc/llvm, linux, git, etc).

<comment><USER8> Hardware validation is like hardware startups, much harder to do. With software, all you need is a computer, time, and will. With hardware, your toolchains have a material cost, a calibration cost, shipping cost, shipping schedules, in addition to a computer, time, and will. If you screw up your equipment or prototype, thats at least another week or month of waiting for replacement parts.

Software is like music, as long as the instrument is works, all you need is time and will to develop/create.

<comment><USER6> This is ignoring the major part of hardware development that is actually just non-free software tooling.

<comment><USER9> This whole thread is frankly, so dumb. One of my best friends is a SoC designer at Apple and we talk about this stuff all the time.

First thing people need to understand: this whole world operates at _scale_. You don't bother making an ASIC unless you _really_ need one -- you're either making millions/hundreds of millions of them, or the individual application is so high-value that the hassle, complexity, and expense of moving off a general-purpose CPU onto something _completely_ custom is worth it.

Second, 4K is chump change. You need an entire team of people to do anything meaningful with FPGAs/ASICs. Less than that, just buy a $100 CPU that will do more, be immediately available, and have an entire software stack (OS, user- space programs, compilers, etc) for it. And teams that know how to build this stuff well cost MONEY. A lot of it. Not $100K/year. More like $250-300K minimum per person at Silicon Valley rates.

I get that the OP wants to do this as a sort of hobbyist undertaking, just realize, he's cutting against the grain of the entire ecosystem. Everything about this stuff is made for huge companies to do massive projects that will ship at gargantuan scale. Not hobbyists in a garage.

The major part of hardware development is NOT tooling. It is manufacturing the hardware.

<comment><USER10> > this whole world operates at scale. You don't bother making an ASIC unless > you really need one

You are the first person in this thread about FPGAs to mention making an ASIC.

<comment><USER11> His point still stands as all the tooling and IPs are the same for FPGA and ASIC and ASIC drives developement of new IPs and tools. FPGA are still the minor market here by far

<comment><USER12> > * all the tooling and IPs are the same for FPGA and ASIC*

They're really, _really_ not.

<comment><USER11> Place and route tool is different and IPs might use different memory and multiplier macros depending on technology. Serdes transceives will also be different. Ideally this is all hidden from the integrator by parameter selecting technology.

Linting tools, simulation tools, formal verification and synthesis tools are all the same. Verification methodology is also the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd highly recommend starting with the TinyFpga BX and Project Icestorm:

[https://tinyfpga.com/bx/guide.html](https://tinyfpga.com/bx/guide.html)

I used the lattice icestick (20 dollar board) and IceStorm (quick to install, open source toolchain) to get started a few years back and the community around the toolchain has really come a long way since (new boards and great documentation), check it out : )

</comment><comment><USER14> Not quite the response you wanted but I just wanted to mention project Oberon ([http://www.projectoberon.com](http://www.projectoberon.com)) by Niklaus Wirth. In 300 some pages, starting with an FPGA, you implement a CPU, a compiler for said CPU, a language targeting the CPU and an OS which includes a GUI and a networking stack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for mention this, it looks very interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the board I used for two courses in college and I thought it was pretty good. I wasn't limited at all, but my designs weren't anything too complicated.

[https://store.digilentinc.com/nexys-4-artix-7-fpga- trainer-b...](https://store.digilentinc.com/nexys-4-artix-7-fpga-trainer- board-limited-time-see-nexys4-ddr/)

In my reconfigurable computing course we used the Xilinx Zybo board which has a SoC on it which includes two Arm processors and an fpga (I think the new xilinx boards also have a gpu). This was really cool but I wouldn't recommend starting with it since the dynamic reconfiguring has a big learning curve in itself.

I actually don't know what a good way to learn is since I just followed my professors notes which was helpful, but I'm sure there are sources online to help. What I can say is that fpga development isn't the same as software development. You have to think differently when implementing designs since you're literally describing the circuitry instead of designing code that runs on pre-determined hardware. I used Xilinx Vivado Webpack (it's free) throughout my fpga usage.

</comment><comment><USER16> The books by Pong Chu are really good. You can choose either VHDL or Verilog and then the FPGA you are getting started with. I went through 'FPGA Prototyping by Verilog Examples' as my first starting point with Verilog and it was very easy to follow. This will give you a basic level of understanding of FPGA development, from there you can study more specific topics.

There was a good article yesterday on HN that went through the process of taking the Cordic algorithm and implementing it in Verilog, it's a good example of using FPGAs to implement a specific algorithm.

[http://zipcpu.com/dsp/2017/08/30/cordic.html](http://zipcpu.com/dsp/2017/08/30/cordic.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Start by getting a simulator. Download Vivado Webpack from Xilinx: [https://www.xilinx.com/products/design- tools/vivado/vivado-w...](https://www.xilinx.com/products/design- tools/vivado/vivado-webpack.html) . It's free (but phones home). It comes with Vivado simulator that will let you play around with coding before buying any hardware.

Then, take a look at [http://www.fpga4fun.com](http://www.fpga4fun.com) which has lots of tutorials to help you get started.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great thread with lots of good answers and perfect timing too. As an HW(board level) guy pivoting into this space just recently here is my algorithm so to speak to get into this space. Please keep in my mind that I have always "worked with " FPGAs, just "Not worked on FPGAs". 1\. Purcahsed Zynqberry FPGA from Trenz. Why? For the price you get the best documented FPGA dev kit on the planet. Thye have a great Wiki with good documentation. Do your own research but this is based on my own research. If you want to develope anything with FPGAs, then your options are down to the "X" and "A" companies. Solid toolchain and documentation and communities(Both official and SO). 2\. work your way through the Vivado tutorials on the Xilinx wesite. They will walk you through creating a project from scratch all the way upto creating a variety of RTL projects integrting IPs(Xilinx or your custom that you created). It includes its own flavor of simulator where you learn to simulate your designs and perform timing analysis. 3\. If you don't have the necessary Digital logic background either get a decent book or enroll in the Nand2tetris(someone else suggested that).

</comment><comment><USER19> I am only half way through it, but you get a lattice icestick for less than $30 and open source tools. I've started the hackaday.io bootcamps which so far have been really good.

[https://hackaday.io/list/160076-fpga- tutorials](https://hackaday.io/list/160076-fpga-tutorials)

They had a chat with the guy who wrote them a few weeks ago and there are more coming. Very accessible and you don't have to use the icestick very much -- most of it is done with free tools.

</comment><comment><USER20> You should start by learning VHDL or Verilog and the best environment to do that in is simulation, not FPGAs. FPGAs are hard and annoying to debug, so you'll be spending a lot of your time writing test benches that run in simulation anyway.

A nice free one for Verilog is Icarus Verilog. The FPGA vendors have toolchains that include simulation, so you could also download Xilinx or Altera's free tools and start there.

<comment><USER21> Icarus is great, but I'd still recommend the free to use simulators from the fpga vendors (e.g. xilinx xsim) as they support more of the modern system verilog and VHDL language. Restricting yourself to the older subset of verilog icarus supports is going to be frustrating in the long run.

<comment><USER20> Is modern Verilog not frustrating? I don't know much about it, but you're certainly right that the older stuff can be.

<comment><USER21> It's different for sure. It has a lot of very nice features that make it less easy to shoot yourself in the foot for design. It is more expressive, especially woth multidimensional types and real number modelling, plus a whole host of verification features like constrained random verification, classes, coverpoints, assertions, etc.

I have to say I like it, but the learning curve is steeper and you can still code 'foot shooting solutions as it is backward compatible - so better to learn the new, more correct way than to start with the old verilog and then learn the new features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Programming FPGAs by Simon Monk and the Mojo v3 have been what I've been getting started with. It might be a little basic if you've been working in- depth with GPUs already, but the Mojo v3 is a great board to learn on - connects directly to your laptop via USB. It takes a lot of the magic out and makes it more like you're just programming an Arduino.

<comment><AUTHOR> Are these types of boards suitable for developers, writing code that eventually will run in a production financial environment?

<comment><USER22> It teaches the same first principles in a smaller format with less room for error, but this particular board won't be able to scale up to a prod environment.

Agree with another commenter that an AWS EC2 F1 instance might be closer to prod for your purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Since nobody mentioned it yet, I think AWS's f1 instances starting at $1.65/hr are worth considering. The underlying board is fairly expensive, but given that you mentioned algorithmic trading, I assume you're intending to do this professionally (in which case production will look more like the f1 instance than a small dev kit).

<comment><USER24> Maybe if you're already familiar with FPGA development and have a specific application in mind. The size and complexity of the F1 accelerator (and, in particular, the way it's interfaced to the computer) will be a major obstacle if you're still learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I highly recommend getting the Mojo v3 and the O'reilly book titled "Learning FPGAs". Both are great low barrier to entry for beginners, yet powerful enough hardware wise to do much of what you'll need for quite a while until you need to productionize it.

<comment><USER26> This is really cool. The GPU project they are currently featuring is amazing. I didn't realize that was possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Alchitry has the Mojo board. They're going to release their Gold and Copper boards soon, along with expansion boards.

[https://alchitry.com/collections/all](https://alchitry.com/collections/all)

There's also the Arduino MKR Vidor board which combines an Arduino programmable processor with an FPGA.

[https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino- vidor-4000](https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-vidor-4000)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd like to share my two cents about jumping the gap from writing code to writing code to infer hardware (having done it myself).

As some others mentioned, the most important distinction is knowing what the logic synthesizer and place/route tools (could be looked at as compiler passes) can do to infer circuits from you code.

Fundamentally you're designing digital logic circuits and subsequently describing them in code. So go get an introductory digital logic text book and read it. (I.e. Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals, Mano & Kime) You'll need to understand the basics of "timing" of data propagating through logic circuits. Further into the book you'll get some ideas of basic digital logic patterns.

Here's one nifty trick; if you can make sure that the function to compute the next value of a bit can fit into one lookup table (LUT) you can be pretty sure that your circuit will run fast. For the uninitiated, a typical lut has about 4 to 6 inputs connected to a single bit memory (flip flop) on the output.

You can try to hack it with OpenCL, and you may have some success. But do not expect GPU-like ndrange kernel duplication to get you very far. Instead use single work item kernels and make a systolic array. Look up systolic array matrix multiplier.

Also, FPGA tools suuuuck compared to software tools! So expect bizarre pains in the but.

Good luck! It is doable.

</comment><comment><USER29> Can you really benefit from this new skill? Because it is very different from GPU programming. In fact, it is mostly describing hardware in some very low level language. You must develop everything by yourself to make that eGPU functionality. All cards are good, you just need to pick right one for your application. Terasic has a nice range boards starting with cheap ones for beginning to advanced ones with high end FPGAs.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure how programming FPGAs compares to GPU programming, but it's a completely different way of thinking compared to traditional software.

The last time I really did FPGAs was over 10 years ago, but unless the tools have gotten orders of magnitudes better, in addition to the other concepts mentioned you need to understand clock domains, metastability, pipelining, etc.

I preferred VHDL to Verilog because you shouldn't need a lint checker for your HDL. But unless it's changed, Verilog is a lot more popular.

Training is available, for example [https://www.xilinx.com/training/atp.html](https://www.xilinx.com/training/atp.html) . It probably costs more than you're interested in paying, and you should have the basics covered first.

<comment><USER31> Are these trainings worth the cost? Has anybody reading this done them / would be able to provide feedback?

Also seconding the need to understand clock domains and metastability, timing constraints, etc.

<comment><USER9> This is the core of a computer engineering degree.

You're looking for (1) probably a first course in the basics of circuits, (2/3) a first- and second-course in "digital design" or "logic design", (4) an operating systems course (emphasizes how this stuff all works with "The real world"), a basic programming class if you don't have one, and some domain- specific stuff such as digital signal processing, graphics, statistics, finance, or whatever else you're trying to do with this thing.

Probably 5-6 good university classes in total. If you could do these classes a la carte, it's probably the fastest way to learn this stuff (skip the gen eds and all other non-degree requirements). Frankly, it's a lot if you have no prior experience, but I'm not sure that's true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "When choosing a development board, consider what you get with it and what you want to use it for. FPGAs are ideal for use with high speed peripherals, and in general it is much easier to buy a board that contains the part you want, rather than trying to add one on later (and inevitably giving up and upgrading to a more capable board). Examples of things you might want, and are quite difficult to add yourself:

Gigabit Ethernet HDMI/DVI PCI/PCI Express External non-serial memory (DDR/Flash etc.) Things that are relatively easy to add, and are not so much of a big deal to wire up yourself.

MMC/SD cards Character (e.g. 16x2) LCDs Anything I2C/SPI and relatively low speed VGA (with low colour depth) I like having a board with many (at least 8) SPST switches and LEDs, and momentary buttons. Unlike a microcontroller where it's relatively easy to spit debug information out of a serial port or to an LCD with a single C function call, debugging FPGA designs is a bit harder. LEDs provide a zero fuss way to break out internal signals for visualisation - if you're tracking the progress of a complex state machine, you can light up an LED when it gets to a certain point without adding any extra logic. While these are easy enough to add yourself, I find that it's better to get a board that has them so that you don't waste valuable user IOs or waste time investigating failures caused by your terrible soldering skills."

Found here: [https://joelw.id.au/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards](https://joelw.id.au/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards)

</comment><comment><USER33> Like, 8 years ago I got a Spartan 3E board and a book on VHDL programming that didn't exactly use the exact board I had. And that seemed to work -- you'd plug in via USB. I ran some Xilinx software on an EeePC. The act of learning was more about I/O to peripherals than just implementing algorithms on an FPGA.

So that's how my experience went. I don't know whether modern resources are more or less computation-heavy.

</comment><comment><USER34> Are there any fpga development workflows that use all FOSS (software) components?

<comment><USER35> Yes, for the Lattice iCE40 and ECP5 families: [https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr](https://github.com/YosysHQ/nextpnr)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> you can try the (~$15) upduino 2.0[0]. it's supported out of the box by the free (OSS) icestorm toolchain[1]. The upduino board itself is also OSS.

[0]: [http://www.gnarlygrey.com](http://www.gnarlygrey.com)

[1]: [http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/](http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/)

<comment><USER37> Quick glance reveals these run at around 12MHz, which may be a bit on the slow end for algo trading (?)

<comment><USER38> I mean, Algo traders I know are working on teams of 10-20 people with deep knowledge of $5k boards over a half-decade, so I think for "getting started" those might be pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Digilent has been making affordable FPGA Development kits using chips from multiple vendors for a long time.

I am sure you will find something suitable there.

[https://store.digilentinc.com/fpga-development-boards- kits-f...](https://store.digilentinc.com/fpga-development-boards-kits-from- digilent/)

</comment><comment><USER40> For developers with Software background, Xilinx provides Software Defined Flows of developement. It includes features of Xilinx Vivado HLS and goodies that help rookie dev to deploy their algorithm on machine.

You can write your algorithm in C/C++/OpenCL and let SDX tools do their job for creating RTL and creating system. SDX supports X86 flow for functional verification which saves great time over RTL verification. Then you can move to hardware emulation which can verify timing related issue with your algorithm. Finally you can have hardware flow from same tool. SDX supports eclipse based debug perspective in all flows.

As for Hardware, Amazon AWS instance F1 is easiest thing to start with. For people with GPU background, SDAccel will nice way to go.

Xilinx recently announced Versal product which is GPU like card that can be connected with machine having PCIE support.

Happy Programming Hardware! Cheers

<comment><USER40> FYI [https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/software- zone.h...](https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/software-zone.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I found the Free Range VHDL [1] book a nice starting point, it is open source, you can download it or buy a copy, it is especially useful if you have a strong background in software development, as maybe you case. I also found out VHDL easier to use at the beginning, it may me somehow overwhelming at the beginning, but its rigor also helps during the learning process. Perhaps the most difficult to understand is that when you are programming an FPGA you are really describing hardware and you have to learn to think in parallel. It also took me sometime to understand that not everything can be synthetized and downloaded into real hardware. Anyway, hope it helps and good luck!

[1] Free Range VHDL. The no-frills guide to writing powerful code for your digital implementations by by Fabrizio Tappero (Author), Bryan Mealy (Author), www.freerangefactory.org

</comment><comment><USER38> I <3 TinyFPGA and also it's open source DO IT

</comment><comment><USER42> Since you mention using FPGAs for algorithmic trading I can only guess that you wish to employ FPGAs as some sort of signal processor. I would suggest investing in an FPGA driven Software Defined Radio (SDR) You'll get the best of many worlds as an SDR does something that is immediately useful, and demonstrates how the FPGA fits into the larger picture as a part of a signal processing chain. Once you understand the complete signal flow from beginning to end mastered, building the signal processor you have in mind will be far easier. You will need to brace yourself to learning at least 6 different languages, including VHDL, Verilog, C, Python, Javascript, and Go.

</comment><comment><USER43> You could start by buying an FPGA board, but it will probably sit around for a few weeks while you develop some code to run on it. Instead, you can do an awful lot without having a development board and I suggest getting familiar with the development tools first, with zero $$$ upfront.

Text Editor: There's a very nice article choosing a text editor, here: [https://www.fpgarelated.com/showarticle/37.php](https://www.fpgarelated.com/showarticle/37.php)

Simulation: ModelSim is the industry-standard simulator and (as someone has already mentioned here), there is a free version on the Intel (was Altera) web site. You will need to sign up to get the download. This version of ModelSim will let you run any design up to a certain number of lines of code, but it's plenty to get started with.

Xilinx Vivado has a built-in simulator, but I have spent most of my career using ModelSim, and I haven't had the need to switch. You also need to sign up to download Vivado; the free version is called Vivado HL WebPACK (Device Limited).

Synthesis and Place/Route: Synthesis turns your HDL code into a netlist which uses the primitive logic blocks of the FPGA that you're targeting and defines how they are logically connected to each other. Place and Route takes those blocks, finds a place for them to go in the FPGA and tries to connect them up so that the logic delay from one flip-flop (through combinatorial logic + wire delays) to the next flip-flop will meet your target clock speed.

When it comes to seeing what your HDL code will turn into once it's been put into an FPGA, I find that Xilinx have the most advanced FPGA toolchain (Vivado) with some excellent visualisation features for learners. Stay away from Vivado HLS for now; if you want to learn HDL code, the HLS tool is a distraction that won't teach you core HDL design concepts. Vivado does not support Spartan-6 parts; only 7-series and newer.

Using Vivado, take a sample piece of code and try running it through synthesis (don't place/route yet). Look at the result in the schematic viewer. Look at the hierarchy viewer, too. Try to trace a line in the source code to its synthesised result. Once you're happy that you can do this, try running place/route (Run Implementation). You can cross-probe from the schematic view to the chip view and highlight wires and blocks with your choice of bright colours. Take a look at how the schematic primitive blocks end up getting placed and routed in the chip.

Note: If you don't care about connecting up I/O pins in Vivado and you just want to see what a small bit of logic looks like, you can specify "-mode out_of_context" under "Project Manager -> Settings -> Project Settings -> Synthesis -> Options -> More options".

Advanced Stuff: Anyone can make an FPGA design work at 10MHz or 20MHz, so try something harder. Start off by setting a slow clock speed constraint (50MHz), then try increasing the speed in 50 or 100MHz increments until you hit 300MHz (400MHz or 500MHz if you're adventurous). When does your timing fail? What do you need to do to your logic to make it meet timing?

</comment><comment><USER44> Slightly off-topic, but does it worth learning FPGA development for existing CS devs when considering future career?

I don't mean FPGA is worthless. I mean, as a former EE student, a FPGA career requires pretty high expertise which are quite far from the CS topic, such as HDL, signal processing, and low-level logic design. I hardly ever have seen job openings for FPGA devs that requires lower than a master degree in that specific field.

<comment><USER45> It's probably worth dabbling in. I have only used them to understand how to do threaded programming better and how core CS concepts work in practice as it helps to have different perspectives on how to tackle a task.

For material career help it depends. Having some experience with it will give you more flexibility, though it might be hard to get resume worthy experience with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm just starting to learn about this field as well, so thanks for posting! This video seems like it's a pretty good introduction: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zrqYy369NQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zrqYy369NQ)

Another specific question that comes to my mind -- does anyone have anything to say on languages? VHDL vs Verilog? Others? Which is best for beginners?

<comment><USER18> I see that as being a religious war with both factions sticking to their resp guns. Its a means to an end. VHDL is more popular across the Atlantic Ocean than its here. In the US more regulated companies(Medical, Mil- Aero,Automotive) prefer VHDL while the consumer(FAANG) prefers verilog. Syntactically, VHDL is more verbose owing to its ADA origins while Verilog attributes its orignis to C. So read through some sample code on github and see which one piques your iterest. If you choose verilog(FPGA4Fun) has you covered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Hi there, first HN post. It seems to me that FPGA can be simpler to use in conjuction with CPU i. E. Run main program on cpu and complex algorithms on FPGA. Arduino released a small board with Arm and FPGA, might be a good place to start. [https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/MKRVidor4000](https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/MKRVidor4000)

</comment><comment><USER48> I recommend the pynq from digilent, it'll help ease your way into hardware design.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'd actually recommend learning digital design first. Go through a course like nand2tetris. If you are writing HDL without a solid idea of what RTL logic you expect to get back you're in for a hard time.

</comment><comment><USER50> Not an FPGA expert by any means, but I saw that make magazine published a booklet about FPGA development for beginners. Maybe you could use it as a very short intro.

</comment><comment><USER51> Do you like Haskell? [http://www.clash-lang.org/](http://www.clash-lang.org/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Altera has the cyclone iv & v chips sold by terasic. Id start with one of those boards.

</comment><comment><USER53> Just use InAccel :)

</comment><comment><USER54> I learn best fiddling first and theory later. Check out the DE0 Nano. Cyclone IV with ram, buttons, leds, eeprom, accelerometer, adc, header breakouts, under $100.

Any fpga dev kit in that class will work. I was able to jump right into it with the basic examples and had my own hardware uart up in a couple weeks.

The only downside is when I was using it the software was only for windows and very bloated.</comment>


LeapIN – Start and run your micro business (incorporate in Estonia) - <AUTHOR> https://www.leapin.eu/ <comment><AUTHOR> Had to think of this company seeing the posts about incorporating through Stripe Atlas: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16799949)

To me it seems like the structure of a C-corporation would make sense for an YC-style startup that goes on to raise funds, but for a single person company an LLC-like structure might be a better fit.</comment>


Ask HN: How to stay motivated through a long term project - <AUTHOR> I want to know what are some methods you guys use to stay motivated and disciplined through a long term (>2-3 months) solo programming project. I know the most obvious method would be to break down project in small tasks and target those but in my case that does not help. After a while the feeling of it going nowhere starts sinking and also the feeling of the enormous amount of work still left starts bringing the morale down. Thanks for your tips in advance <comment><USER2> I'm also in the "breaking things down doesn't really help" camp, so while I recognise that it works for some people, I do think it's possible that "just break things down even further" isn't necessarily the right approach for everyone. A possible explanation for this is that when tasks are truly bite- sized, the regret of "I could have finished X this morning" just gets more intense. And actually, having some slack time and some time spent standing back and reflecting turns out to be really important to me in itself.

The thing I find most helpful is to make sure that there are always _several_ parts of the system that I'm actually working on. This means I've got a choice of what to work on today (autonomy!) and can somewhat context-switch my way around the awkward bits (which sometimes get less awkward after a few days on the back burner). Don't get carried away with this (spending all your mental cycles deciding what to do next won't help, either), but it's worth a try. It's one of the things that makes me love largish solo projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> During the end of the project (almost always a slog) I'll set deadlines for myself each week with a set list of features I need to accomplish for that week. Hopefully it's obvious what's left to be done and you can make lists at this point. But when I've accomplished those goals for the week I'll take a break and do something fun.

I don't know how you work but usually the first couple months are a frenzy of work non stop but if I pace out the end a little better it becomes a lot more palatable. Also it's not the end of the world to take a couple days off if you come back with a clear mind ready to work, in fact it's usually more effective.

One more thing that really helps with overcoming the blues at the "almost finish line" is to get it in front of a few people and let them pick it apart. It gets me motivated before showing it to him/her/them to polish up any loose ends, and then after I have a new list of stuff that I feel motivated to resolve. Hope that helps! Goodluck w/ the project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I can relate to this so much. It is the end which seems difficult. Showing the project to a few people before it is "finished" sounds very helpful and now that I think of it, I have done that in the past as well. Will keep that in mind for future work. Thanks again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like you may not have chopped up the larger goal into smaller achievable goals.

Like the old saying goes... "How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time."

Make sure you have sub goals nested at least __three levels deep __from your main end goal. Keep track of that stuff, gamify it for yourself. Keep a schedule, but keep it flexible and be understanding with yourself.

Discipline is a very difficult thing (the personality aspect of conscientiousness, look into it). The very definition of non-trivial and has plagued humans since time immemorial.

</comment><comment><USER5> Exactly this part of the project gives it it's value! The fun part everbody does in the beginning is over.

Knowing this gives me the motivation to push through.

</comment><comment><USER6> If anything greater than 2-3 months is long term and challenging your motivation and discipline then programming might not be the right path for you.

</comment><comment><USER7> Achievements and Rewards: I try to setup some sub-goals over 2-3 weeks, which i'll try to achieve. If I'm successfully, I reward myself with something nice.</comment>


Take a dose of Snowcrash - <AUTHOR> http://www.random.org/cgi-bin/randbitmap?format=png&width=500&height=320&zoom=2

<comment><AUTHOR> The effect wasn't as strong as in the novel (luckily), but it was strangely relaxing to look at it while knowing it came from true randomness.</comment>


Ask HN: Types of Communities? Open Source, Walled Garden, Blockchain, others? - <AUTHOR> I feel like all of these communities have their pros and cons.
Open source: free rider problem, devalues creators.
Walled garden: concentrated power.
Blockchain: experimental, doesn't fix concentration of power. <comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about some kind of digital asset co-op.

Decision were distributed

you could dervive/fork from existing work as well.

No one person had complete access to all of the code, but enough people had access to keep things useful and competitive.

\- needs some kind of demand , new feature function.

\- needs some kind of way to determine contribution formula.

\- minimize rework and redundancy across co-op.

\- leave enough value on the table for continued investment(time and resources)

\- contracts(privacy,TOS etc) changes need to be voted on by users to change or forked with maintenance costs distributed accordingly.

\- some way to manage issues of resource abuse.</comment>


Volkswagen will kill the Beetle, squashes plans for a successor - <AUTHOR> https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1115668_volkswagen-will-kill-the-beetle-squashes-plans-for-a-successor <comment><USER2> The is a very personal opinion and subject to taste rather anything quantifiable. It's also possible for VW to cater to more than one type of customer so take the following with a pinch of salt.

To me there's something intellectually dishonest about these retro models.

In the original Beetle and Transporter they started with function and then gave it form. Doing it the other way round will not produce a truely desirable classic only something momentarily fashionable.

The same goes for their T-Rock model, mentioned in the article.

Instead of designing for offroad performance they've taken a road car and just added enough shoulder pads, fake pockets and redundant zips to puff it up to look like a small off-roader.

It's for people who think they need to go off road but really know they never will. Its size is just large enough that they won't feel intimidated by other vehicles when sitting traffic jams. That extra size of course come as a compromise to the vehicle real purpose as a road car.

Personally I'd much rather have a new and improved Golf or Transporter/California.

<comment><USER3> >Instead of designing for offroad performance they've taken a road car and just added enough shoulder pads, fake pockets and redundant zips to puff it up to look like a small off-roader.

This is actually an extremely popular segment these days (see Audi Q1/Q3, Mercedes GLA, BMW X1, Mazda CX-3, Škoda Karoq, Peugeot 1008, Kia Stonic, etc. etc.) which apparently outsells the previously most popular "Golf" class of cars. By a lot.

People seem to like the higher sitting position and feel safer with more puffed up form of these cars. Even if they have significantly less space inside.

<comment><USER4> IMHO the looks play the most important role in the popularity of the "fake SUVs". They look sexy and robust and higher class...

<comment><USER5> Don't discount sitting position as a major benefit for many consumers. When everyone else is driving them, you feel at a disadvantage in a normal car when it comes to seeing the road in traffic. An arms race so to speak.

I find the Q3, X1, GLA as well as the MDX and so on absolutely gaudey in appearance. They don't look nice at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of Nokia's demise. Before they were sold to Microsoft, everyone was saying how they'd all buy Nokias if they would just adopt Android. We all know how that went.

It's clear to everyone at the moment that a moderately priced electric beetle would sell like hotcakes. But just like Nokia made the wrong call, it looks like VW will do the same.

<comment><USER7> Nokia not doing android was a political decission by M$ to push Windows phone. It was not an economical decission.

<comment><USER8> And Android was not a ticket to success. Approximately one company outside of China actually made money with Android.

<comment><USER9> Funnily enough, Nokia is #3 in sales among Android vendors. They literally outsell everyone (Google included) except LG, Samsung and Apple, quite impressive: [https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007498/nokia-hmd- phones...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007498/nokia-hmd-phones-sales- google-htc-oneplus-report)

Turns out there is a market for a well built phone that gets security and Android updates in a rapid manner!

<comment><USER8> The actual sales numbers put them way in the back of the pack. And are they actually making any money? Because LG moves 5 times more units and cannot make any kind of profit.

<comment><USER9> 4.4 million phones is a good clip, esp. with how few devices Nokia has. LG has hundreds of models on sale (which is part of what bleeds their profits) while Nokia has a bit over a dozen. Much lower R&D cost, plus a smaller maintenance burden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the orig beetle lived on in overseas plants --Brazil, for example. But with today's global manufacturing, I guess when they say they will kill this model, they mean it will disappear everywhere.

And, I suppose it must. It had mustered all the nostalgia it could, but in the end, the well ran dry and the model had become a dead end. For a revival model, it actually remained longer than most.

<comment><USER11> It lived on because it was small, cheap and simple. The new model was neither. Like the new Mini, it was just another premium hatchback living off the name of a classic.

<comment><USER2> This is exactly the point I wanted to make.

I add that the original Beetle also lived on because VW were able to extend the life of the original tooling, which they'd replaced when they moved to the Golf in Germany.

<comment><USER11> Fiat had the right idea with the new 500, which is small, cheap, fun and stylish. An electric Beetle the size and price of a Renault Zoe would have been something interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As an former owner of a 1972 1602S Beetle, these travesties were never "Beetles", they were just glorified Golfs. So no love lost here.

<comment><USER13> More like a Golf minus the pesky body roll. We have a 99 Turbo Beetle, I can corner 15-20 MPH faster than my '03 GTI VR6. It stays flat where the GTI would have the inner rear wheel 6" off the ground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I owned an old Beetje and the experience is all about the smell of petrol, the noise, the lack of power steering and breaking, and ofcourse the most important: the design.

The first versions of the new Beatle didn't match that design more that most Porsches imho.

Maybe nostalgia should not be used as a sellout.

I mean, the new 'mini' is bigger than my car and a familie can fit inside the new Fiat 500...

</comment><comment><USER15> Missed an opportunity for a juicy pun there

</comment><comment><USER16> Build the BUS. They did the beatle. Now they need to bring back the bus!!

<comment><USER17> The article has drawings of a proposed new Microbus. They will have to make it more crashworthy than the original. The original had the driver so far forward it had near-zero crush depth.

<comment><USER18> The blind spots on that proposed design are crazy bad. I can't see that surviving productization.

<comment><USER5> So blind spots matter so much these days when cameras and sensors to mitigate them are cheap?

<comment><USER19> Well yeah. If the cameras and sensors fail, then you'll probably want to replace them with your own eyes. That's kinda hard to do when there's a bunch of car body in the way.

<comment><USER5> Do they actually fail in practice? Seems very unusual for what is most likely a pretty discrete component. Also, does failure have to be so graceful? For example, if my windshield wipers fail during a heavy rain, I have no choice but to pick t my hazard lights on and move off the road. If my car tells me my sensors are broken, I can see doing the same for that.

Driving with technology is so much safer anyways, it's like constant awareness without needing to look backwards (and consequently not look forward).

<comment><USER19> "Do they actually fail in practice?"

There's not enough data for cars specifically to know if they do _anything_ in practice, let alone fail. With other things, though, cables come loose and voltages get spiked/sagged and so on - yeah, not common failures, but common enough to be forseeable.

My point, though, is more that if these sensors do indeed fail, I'd much prefer to be able to have at least enough ability to sense my environment to still safely navigate, even if I have to do so with much greater caution. That is: losing my sensors shouldn't be as catastrophic as losing my windshield wipers in a heavy downpour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> meh, it's a nazi holdover anyway. good riddance</comment>


Airflow UI: How to trigger a DAG with custom parameters? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.manugarri.com/how-to-trigger-a-dag-with-custom-parameters-on-airflow-ui/ <comment><USER2> Pretty cool, keep in mind this is the experimental API and they are changing it. The OpenAPI spec is in the code base afaik, and the implementation is tbd</comment>


Show HN: An electron app to help you get selectors for web data - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dosyago-corp/pa-os-desktopclient <comment><AUTHOR> This is still very early prototype and there's a lot more to do. It's about more than getting selectors, they're just the basis. But I'm just putting it out here in case anyone finds it useful even at this early stage.

If you want to look at it you also need to clone [https://github.com/dosyago- corp/pa-os-server](https://github.com/dosyago-corp/pa-os-server)

To run you need to run both projects at the same time.</comment>


Schools should not "teach the controversy".  But why does Google get a pass? - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/aqs26/why_do_you_support_google_if_you_dont_support/

<comment><USER2> What's wrong with the existence of misinformation? I don't think there's anything wrong with being able to find silly lies on google. There's something more ominous about children being forced to learn this misinformation, as would be the case in a school.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Try this query on Google:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=age+of+earth>

Some of the highly ranked results mention the possibility of a young earth.

Why is this acceptable?

Note that saying "google is a search engine" is not an answer. With enough complaints, Google may be forced to push down scientifically false information (at least for the most popular queries) down the rankings.

<comment><USER3> _Note that saying "google is a search engine" is not an answer._

Why not? If I type "mickey mouse" in to Google should I get no results from Disney because that isn't scientifically accurate about mice. Google isn't the halls of science, it represents and returns what is currently available on the internet about the query terms entered. The second Google starts deciding scientific truth is the second I stop using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Common sense can be used here.

The issue is whether highly ranked search results can mislead the public into believing things that are not true scientifically.

Google can fix up its rankings for the most popular scientific queries.

<comment><USER3> _Common sense can be used here._ Yours or Galileo's? Science has been known to be wrong from time to time. Censoring ideas just because you believe them to be incorrect is wrong. Even if the ideas in question are crackpot, stupid wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids - <AUTHOR> http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/reports/2017/health-effects-of-cannabis-and-cannabinoids.aspx <comment><USER3> TLDR: conclusive research on Schedule I substances is practically impossible even when it's one of the most used drugs on the planet.

<comment><USER4> I have no idea how hard it is really but if it's true it is impossible, it is infuriating. People do research on substances that can kill a person with an invisible amount, blow up buildings, poison vast areas, all kinds of deadly things. But take a drug that any smart high-schooler can (and frequently does) access it - and it's impossible to research it! This is so infuriatingly insane.

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of pharmaceutical drugs out in the wild that have known side- effects. Chemotherapy completely nukes a person's body but is legal because the harm it induces is deemed worth the problem it solves (cancer).

Despite this, marijuana which is in easy circulation on the streets in dubious forms of dosage/strength, has such a political air over it that most countries still won't even look into the medical applications of it!

As a scientist, the double standards are incredibly frustrating!

<comment><USER4> In US I think it's even worse - it is known there _are_ medical applications of it but the federal government just pretends they do not exist and still qualifies cannabis as "drug that has no known medical use". They don't refuse to look - they look, see, know it exists and still say "no, it doesn't exist".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Speaking of alternative facts, this report basically demonstrates the the DEA and NIDA have been promoting "alternative facts" about marijuana and cannabinoids for some time (even self-contradicting themselves by paying UMiss to grow marijuana for glaucoma patients).

</comment><comment><USER7> Highlights PDF : [http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20File...](http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2017/Cannabis- Health-Effects/Cannabis-chapter-highlights.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> Yikes @ the mental health conclusions

<comment><USER9> Hmm, they state this in "Injury and Death": > In states where cannabis use is legal, there is increased risk of unintentional cannabis overdose injuries among children.

But then there's no LD50 determined for cannabis. So how could one overdose on cannabis?

<comment><USER10> Read a funny statement in a study the other day. The lethal dose of cannabis for dogs is 3g/kg. Don't know if it translates to humans but if the order of magnitude is about the same then it takes on the order of 300 grams _ingested_ to kill a human.

<comment><USER11> It's true. Marijuana is actually one of the very few substances with no known LD50. Technically there is hypothesized to be one, but it is so high that it would be literally impossible to ingest that much (you'd suffocate from lack of oxygen first, and that's assuming you somehow weren't incapacitated from being so high that you were able to keep smoking. So medically, that's considered equivalent to "no lethal dose exists".

[http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/03/25/how-safe-is- mari...](http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2013/03/25/how-safe-is-marijuana-a- toxicological-perspective/)

<comment><USER10> If you eat it you can ingest the dosage confirmed to kill dogs.

<comment><USER12> It starts to get really complicated once you involve edibles, though - <USER2> can't just straight up eat plant matter and have it take effect as if you'd eaten a brownie, even though the dosage would technically be much, much higher if you straight up ate a bud.

I'm no scientist nor a baker so I don't know the details behind it, but as far as I know the THC needs something to bind to before it's digestible, usually a fat - probably why cannabutter is the most common way of getting it into edibles.

And that doesn't even account for the CBD which I have zero idea about with regards to edibles.

<comment><USER13> THC is far from the only compound in cannabis. There are hundreds of them, with virtually all of them having had far less study done on them than THC has.

If a human were to die of cannabis inhalation or ingestion, it's not clear which of the hundreds of compounds in cannabis would be the one most responsible for the fatality. It's quite possible that it wouldn't be THC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the most surprising findings in this report for me was:

 _" There is moderate evidence of no statistical association between cannabis use and: • Incidence of lung cancer (cannabis smoking)"_

I thought it was pretty well established that inhaling any burning plant matter increased the chance of lung cancer. But I guess not.

Not surprising was:

 _" There is moderate evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and: • The impairment in the cognitive domains of learning, memory, and attention (acute cannabis use)"_

and most worrisome was:

 _" There is substantial evidence of a statistical association between cannabis use and: • The development of schizophrenia or other psychoses, with the highest risk among the most frequent users"_</comment>


Code Guppy – Learn JavaScript Through Tutorials - <AUTHOR> https://codeguppy.com/ <comment><USER2> With codeguppy.com you learn coding by remixing and reskinning mini games and other fun activities.

Platform comes with friendly API and game building assets.</comment>


Python in the Scientific World - <AUTHOR> http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/11/python-in-scientific-world.html <comment><USER2> I would be incredibly happy if we were taught in Python or anything other than the hideous monster that is Matlab on my MSc course. After using Ruby and Python it's rather painful to use such a clunky environment.

<comment><USER3> I am curious as to why you would hate matlab so much other than the clunkyness. EDIT: And of course cost/openness

Matlab works very well for many disciplines and the shear amount of documentation make it very easy to use for people who aren't really programmers. My main peeve with matlab is that to write a function it is required to make a separate file however most problems that are solved with matlab don't really need functions in the first place.

SciPy/NumPy and matplotlib can be nice to use but if I need to get an engineering problem done quickly I can find functions that I need much quicker in matlab and the matrix as the central object is very helpful.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the closed system is a big thing. Anything interesting I may create will have to be re-written in another language if I want to extend/share with others. While it's not reasonable to use something like c to test out (computer vision in this case) algorithms in practical classes, Python is both simple and open.

The problem of having many possible combinations as mentioned by lliiffee doesn't seem like much of a big deal. Surely a faculty could just specify their recommended setup?

<comment><USER4> Sure, you can _specify_ it. Specifying is no problem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's really amazing to see how _something_ is finally starting to supplant ancient Fortran code in sci-comp.

I think one of the major reasons for Python being that choice is that its syntax and "Python way of doing things" is really geared at making it difficult to obfuscate the code into meaninglessness. Clarity is always important in research.

<comment><USER6> sorta kinda, but not really, python isn't supplanting fortran, it's supplanting Matlab/IDL for prototyping and visualization, and half-baked command languages for interfacing with packages of data reduction routines. Which is still nice, especially things like (to take astronomy) AIPS/IRAF, specialized packages of routines that are controlled by the worst command language possible.

<comment><USER7> Also note that the code at the core of packages like numpy is often still written in Fortran or C. For example, I'm pretty sure all the linear algebra processing in numpy is handled by the popular LAPACK written in Fortran. Note that software like Matlab and IDL _also_ generally uses these well-understood packages.

Fortran isn't going anywhere, we're just hiding it in the background.

<comment><USER8> Everyone uses LAPACK. If you came along with your own versions of those routines, no-one would would trust them. LAPACK et al are the most optimized, most debugged code on the planet. Hardware vendors design around LAPACK. It's incredibly important.

Also check out Sage: <http://www.sagemath.org/>

<comment><USER9> Yep. The Intel F9x compiler smokes everything - at least in part because its versions of LAPACK/BLAS/ATLAS are so aggressively optimized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My guess is that scientific computation is a lot of fun. Plenty of clean mathematics. Probably not too much dingy boiler room stuff. I can see how one would be attracted to using languages like Python (and maybe Scheme too) for such tasks.

<comment><USER11> There is lots and lots of "dingy boiler room stuff" in scientific computing. What the math is doing is clean. Doing that as efficiently as possible in a computer is generally not.

<comment><USER12> And there is all the data handling/mangling that needs to be done.</comment></comment></comment>


8% of Internet Users Account for 85% of all Ad Clicks - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=115210&lfe=1

<comment><USER2> What is of interest is does that 8% comprise of the same people? Or does it change?

When Michael Dell was young and selling newspaper subscription, he found that only 2 kinds of people bought newspaper subscriptions. Those who just got married. Or those who just shifted homes. Out of the total population, maybe 5% fit this criteria. But the people who form this 5% change constantly. (I don't know if its 5% or 7% or 10% - pulled it out of thin air to make a point.)

So if the % of clickers fluctuates or even goes down, but the people who form the clickers group keep on changing, then online advertising makes a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER3> I never click on any ads. Didn't install Ad blocker because that's how sites make money. I seriously believe ads' can't make someone buy a product right away, they essentially serve as a billboard that we see on the highway. At least that how i look at it as of now.

</comment><comment><USER4> If that 8% is anything like myself, 90% of the ads I click are because my touch pad thought I wanted to click when I wanted to move the cursor. The other 10% would be an outrageous claim and I just had to see the other side of the door.</comment>


How to knit a sports car with carbon fibre - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/04/13/how-to-knit-a-sports-car-with-carbon-fibre <comment><USER2> Braid, not knit. The first sentence gets it right:

 _Bertha (pictured above) is an automated braiding machine._

But the title and later in the article, the author uses "knit", which is an entirely different structure with different manufacturing approaches and engineering properties.

Sadly, one of the most spectacular videos of a high-end modern carbon fibre braiding machine I've ever seen ... was an incorrectly posted internal video (iirc, from Toyota), and was taken down. The big modern machines like the ones cited here inherit from, but significantly evolve, braiding machines as developed early in the Industrial Revolution. Better tension control, braid formation management, and the ability to perfectly handle ribbon-like materials are among the improvements.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fiber layup machines are really cool [1]. Hard to tell from the picture but I'm assuming they machine is one of the circular fiber layup machines rather then the newer multi-axis ones. Carbon Fiber layup is a huge market that's still relatively untouched. There are many companies racing to be the winner but not have prevailed so far. If you can manage to make one that affordable for industrial usage, you will be able to make a lot of money.

Found an "old" video demonstrating the technology that is mentioned in the article [2].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4gMDduHgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4gMDduHgA) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j19na8LMBnE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j19na8LMBnE)

<comment><USER4> This was the video I remembered too: the machine was built for the Lexus LFA, which was rumoured to cost twice to build what it eventually sold for. Hopefully they managed to recoup some of their costs through technology R&D like this one.

<comment><USER3> I can imagine, that specific technology is obsoleted mainly because of the cost to get it running and if a single feeder breaks, the whole machine will be down. Most of the industry is heading towards automated fiber layup and placement like this one [1].

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZt5PrXbr6k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZt5PrXbr6k)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Guerilla Gravity recently started using a similar process to build carbon fiber mountain bike frames. It's allowed them to build frames in the US that sell for less than comparable bikes made in Asia.

[https://m.pinkbike.com/news/guerilla-gravity-us-made- carbon-...](https://m.pinkbike.com/news/guerilla-gravity-us-made-carbon-frame- smash-trailpistol.html)

<comment><USER6> Time Sport in France have been doing this for road bikes for years (at least 10 years I think).

There's a video of them weaving forks somewhere but all I could find was this video a them weaving a tube.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJcrRpa_JWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJcrRpa_JWE)

Edit: Here you go. From 2008. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ffKebNPbs#action=share](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ffKebNPbs#action=share)

<comment><AUTHOR> How is it that this technology is so unevenly distributed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article doesn't touch on this but the machine's name, Bertha, is almost certainly a reference to the 80s UK TV show about a factory machine that could seemingly make anything. Quite apt! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_\(TV_series\))

<comment><USER8> Or it's just the biggest/heaviest machine in the immediate vicinity. Machines get named Bertha all the time though some play on "thicc" seems to be gaining a bit of market share as the younger generations enter the workforce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another interesting link that may be of interest: [https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/champion-racing- driver-b...](https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/champion-racing-driver-brad- keselowski-founds-new-hybrid-3d-printing-manufacturing-company-148067/) The combination of sophisticated space, aeronautical and mil spec 3D printing with these modern braiding techniques are transforming high performance equipment manufacture</comment>


Ask HN: Single Place for Black Friday Sales - <AUTHOR> Just wondering if there is an aggregator which collects Black Friday Deals from all major websites and all you need to do is search for something like  "Drone" and it will show the best offer irrespective of the website. once clicked it will take you to that website and you can buy from there. <comment><USER2> Well there is:

[http://dealroundup.io/black-friday-2015/](http://dealroundup.io/black- friday-2015/)</comment>


Red-light camera grace period goes from 0.1 to 0.3 seconds, Chicago to lose $17M - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/red-light-camera-grace-period-goes-from-0-1-to-0-3-seconds-chicago-to-lose-17m/ <comment><USER2> The moral hazard that comes from cities using fines for offenses to generate revenue is awful and despicable, and it causes all sorts of injustices, big and small. Red light cameras are a part of this, and they're awful.

<comment><USER3> How is it an injustice to make people pay when they make our roads unsafe?

People drive reckless, ignore speed limits, race over intersections in the last possible moment, ...

... and then it's an injustice when someone fines them?

<comment><USER2> So, that's an open question -- do the sorts of infractions that red light cameras catch make roads less safe? Does the installation of red light cameras make roads more safe? As it turns out, no. The installation of red light cameras in Chicago has actually increased rear-end collisions that result in injury by 22%.[1]

And that's what I mean by moral hazard. Revenue generation by these means changes the city's incentive. Rather than having traffic laws and enforcement designed to increase safety, you have laws and enforcement designed to turn the greatest part of your city's population into offenders as possible, in order to maximize your revenue generation, _at the expense_ of public safety.

And it's an injustice because the well-off simply pay their fines and move on, while the poor end up trapped in a neverending cycle of fines and punishments, because the inability to pay the first fine leads to a cascade of involvement with a court system pressured to produce revenue, not justice or fairness.

1) [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/major-chicago- st...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/major-chicago-study-finds- red-light-cameras-not-safer-cause-more-rear-end-injuries/)

<comment><USER4> >As it turns out, no. The installation of red light cameras in Chicago has actually increased rear-end collisions that result in injury by 22%.

You're misrepresenting the results of the study. The study recommended the continuation of the program. The rear-end collisions were less severe than types of collisions it reduced, it was a safety improvement overall.

From the findings section of the actual study (emphasis mine):

> _Quantitative studies conducted in this project demonstrate significant > safety benefits of the current RLC program. As a result, it is appropriate > to recommend continuation of the program. Most of the intersections have > experienced an improvement in safety, particularly in terms of severe angle > and turn crashes, albeit with an accompanying increase in less severe rear- > end crashes. The safety benefits extend beyond the immediate vicinity of the > RLC intersections, evidenced by a significant spillover effect._ However, > some intersections appear to experience no significant safety impact. > Recognizing that crashes are the result of complex interactions amongst many > factors, and subject to considerable randomness, these deviations should be > used as opportunities for detailed investigation and learning to design and > deploy more effective automated enforcement programs

[http://www.transportation.northwestern.edu/docs/research/RLC...](http://www.transportation.northwestern.edu/docs/research/RLC- Report-Web.pdf)

Similar benefits have been demonstrated in other cities. Doesn't mean it will work in every city, but there is evidence it works in Chicago.

<comment><USER2> If you want to accuse me of "misrepresenting" things, you should have your facts right. The study I was quoting that finding from was conducted by Texas A&M at the behest of the Chicago Tribune. The study you're quoting from was conducted by Northwestern University for the Chicago Department of Transportation.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, I incorrectly assumed you were citing the one released last week, not 3 years ago. Either way, increased collisions (or one type of collision) doesn't necessarily mean decreased safety.

<comment><USER2> I don't know if I consider "fair enough" and a backhanded insult to really be an apology for unfairly assuming maliciousness on my part, but okay.

I would perhaps phrase that as "citing the study released by an impartial third-party, not by the people who are engaging in the moral hazard and trying to justify their behavior" instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A big plus of automating tickets is that it's no longer biased. You're not more likely to get a ticket in a poorer, more high crime neighborhood, just because there happen to be more police there. This way, rich white people in the Loop are just as likely to get tickets as poor black people in Woodlawn. To me this democratization seems like a big plus.

<comment><USER6> The red light cameras are not distributed equally. You'll find more of them in minority neighborhoods.

Look at what redlining hath wrought:

[http://www.radicalcartography.net/chicagodots_race_big.jpg](http://www.radicalcartography.net/chicagodots_race_big.jpg)

[http://www.photoenforced.com/chicago.html#.WNKlsxLyufc](http://www.photoenforced.com/chicago.html#.WNKlsxLyufc)

<comment><USER7> I know it's an anecdote but in Denver they are only in the very wealthy neighborhoods. Usually here those parts have the city have much lower speed limits than a comparable street in a poorer neighborhood would have so they can generate more revenue from them.

<comment><USER8> No, they are not at all in the wealthy neighborhoods, they are out in Aurora in the poorer areas and around Buckley AFB to nab the servicemen. I drove past many of them going to work/home and they erroneously flash when a bird flies past or the wind gusts too hard. There seems to have been no correlation at all with the many people I would see running red lights, just random.

<comment><USER7> I was talking Denver not Aurora or the outlying suburbs. I guess I could of been more clear. Around here they camp outside of Cherry Creek Golf Course and in uptown around 17th. I was also speaking of the speed limit cameras.

The red light cameras here are mainly on large intersections, 6th and Speer etc. Not really poor nor rich more based upon volume of traffic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was rear ended at a stop light because I slowed down for a yellow light while the guy behind me gunned it. Now I'm extremely hesitant to slow down for yellow lights. It has nothing to do with being impatient or disregarding traffic regulations, I simply don't trust the people behind me. I feel much safer speeding up to get through lights.

</comment><comment><USER10> While I find the camera's themselves to be... undesirable..

Why is there a need for a grace period? The yellow is all the grace period you need. If you speed up for or ignore the yellow with time to stop, you're already breaking the law...

Not that I'm a fan of the system at all - just, if you're going to do it, do it ... u know?

<comment><USER11> If yellow lights all had a fixed duration I would agree with you, but unfortunately the length of yellow lights is variable. Additionally yellow lights have no legal rules behind them. They don't mean "slow down", they are simply an indication that the light will be red soon. You are within your rights to accelerate through a yellow light (assuming you're still under the speed limit).

<comment><USER12> There needs to be countdown timers on all traffic lights.

<comment><USER13> If you can see the pedestrian crossing light, they usually have countdowns to yellow at least. I use these a lot to estimate the staleness of a green light.

Many traffic lights in China have countdown timers.

<comment><USER14> I've attempted this, but if the car which triggered the light change clears the intersection in a particular time (say, with a right turn), the countdown completes only to go back to a "walk" signal.

Makes for some confusing signaling; but it's better than a red light for an empty crosswalk and cross street..

<comment><USER13> On the busy intersections I'm used to, this never happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good. These should be ruled unconstitutional everywhere.

Maybe it's just where I live but it seems like law enforcement is more focused on revenue generation.

<comment><USER16> I'm curious to hear why you think it's unconstitutional. It's unobtrusive surveillance in a public setting, so there's no expectation of privacy. It's punishing people for breaking a public-safety law. In most cases they even have signs alerting you to the presence of an enforcement camera.

Now I can definitely see how automated enforcement ripe for abuse when there are revenues to be had, and it's concerning when operations like this are given to private companies with little to no transparency. But given those concerns can be resolved, what's the problem at a constitutional level?

<comment><USER15> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confrontation_Clause)

<comment><USER17> I don't get that argument. How is a red light camera different than surveillance footage that show a murder? It's not a witness, it's evidence.

<comment><USER18> A murder case would require proving that the person on camera is the accused.

A red light camera generally _can 't_ prove you're the person driving your car - they usually don't have the resolution nor the angle to show the driver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They're not losing any money. It's not like someone is going in their bank account and taking that money.

They simply won't be making that 17mm off of people.</comment>


Open Access at European Space Agency - <AUTHOR> http://open.esa.int/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, ESA is on the right track here and the data (e.g. we do image segmentation on S2 data) is great. However handling the data is non-trivial, as e.g. Sentinel-2 (an earth observation satellite for land cover mapping) generates 1TB data per day (AFAIK).

It is hosted and mirrored by different sites and companies, in particular GCE and AWS.

<comment><USER3> Where is the Sentinel-2 data hosted on GCE and AWS?

<comment><USER4> You can try [http://sentinel-pds.s3-website.eu- central-1.amazonaws.com/](http://sentinel-pds.s3-website.eu- central-1.amazonaws.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great!

I'm working on a space simulation project and I've been looking for imagery from space probes (e.g. New Horizons' Pluto and Charon imagery, Dawn's shots of Ceres and MESSENGER's new Mercury images). It is surprisingly difficult to find this data.

What I _can_ find is some textures that have already been processed to a normal 2:1 rectangular image. But this projection is suboptimal for rendering planetary images, as there is distortion around the poles.

What I would like to find is some larger data set which could be processed into cube maps that would have better area distortion characteristics. But this is difficult, either the data is not publicly available at all or it's "too raw" to be used without a lot of processing.

I know that these data sets exist - we see nice renderings from the space craft's imagery all the time - it's just not available to the general public easily.

If anyone knows where I could find good quality images from planetary probes (I'm mostly interested in visible light images and topography - ie. height maps), let me know!

<comment><USER6> For ESA missions you generally have to contact the Principal Investigator or PR team of the organisation sponsoring the instrument.

There have been examples when ESA itself wasn't granted access to the results of instrumemts on its own probes.

Theoretically they only have exclusivity for 6 to 12 months but few proactively release data after that time.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, this is what I figured. However, being a one man hobby project, I doubt I'll even get a foot between the door. Even finding the contact information for the different data sets would be next to impossible.

I have considered enrolling to a university just to get access to the library, data sets and journals as well as get in touch with professors and scientists that could help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talking about open access data: Are there good public sources of raw radio astronomy data?

<comment><USER8> There are several public archives for radio astronomy. Find your favourite telescope which allows public proposals for observations and search for archive. e.g. VLA: [https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/archive/index](https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vla/archive/index) ALMA: [https://almascience.eso.org/alma- data](https://almascience.eso.org/alma-data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13689830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13689830)</comment>


How Shipping Containers Changed the World - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/the-box-that-built-the-modern-world-rp <comment><USER2> Nice article. The other end of this equation are ubiquitous shipping pallets:

[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/transport/2012/08/pal...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/transport/2012/08/pallets_the_single_most_important_object_in_the_global_economy_.html)

Optimizing what to put on a pallet and in what order to maximize use of space is also a nice intellectual challenge for anyone wanting one. In real-world scenarios (esp Walmart-style retail), you have to factor in boxes of varying sizes at varying distances from where they must be loaded. Travel distance, fork-lift or walking, counts too. Then, it has to be fast enough and easy to follow to be used in a fast-paced, production environment.

Just remember to release it under Apache or GPL if you build a good one. You might benefit the economy in many ways. ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> 99% Invisible's episode on refrigerated containers is relevant: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/reefer- madness/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/reefer-madness/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Read "The Box" for more history and details - [http://www.amazon.com/The-Box- Shipping-Container-Smaller/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Box-Shipping- Container-Smaller/dp/0691136408)

I think this story has been on HN before, but I can't find it.

<comment><USER5> There's this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3014516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3014516)

Nautilus seems good at rehashing Hacker News favorite stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Wire (season 2) gives an excellent insight into how docks are run (Baltimore). There's even a scene where some Dutch company wants to bring Rotterdam's automation to Baltimore.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like things like this standardization I find it interesting almost insect- like how uniformity and simplifying tasks improves efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised cranes and ships aren't fully automated yet.

<comment><USER9> The dockworker union is too strong.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. At the pallet level, the equipment to stack, wrap, or receive them are way too expensive. So, humans it is on both parts.

I'll also note for shipping that it's useful to have people to deal with problems caused by port regulators, pirates, and other odd situations.</comment></comment></comment>


GCHQ captured emails of journalists from top international media - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/19/gchq-intercepted-emails-journalists-ny-times-bbc-guardian-le-monde-reuters-nbc-washington-post

<comment><USER2> So this has been going on since at least 2008... Extremely disappointing but not surprising.[0] What Americans forget is that GHCQ's policies affect us as much or more than the NSA's and that by 'backdoor-ing' crypto, as Cameron & Obama want, we forfeit our privacy to foreign governments as well.

How can democratic society continue to function if the state indulges its interest in journalists' and attorneys' confidential communications without any inhibitions?

This demonstrates that Cameron's pledge to only access laypersons' communication in the most "dire circumstances" (the case he makes for backdooring crypto) is pure rhetoric.

[0] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/06/uk- surveillanc...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/06/uk-surveillance- of-lawyers-journalists-gchq/)</comment>


Facebook IT vending machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/facebook-introduces-vending-machines-for-computer-accessories-20110711/

<comment><USER2> Interesting, I imagined most of the staff there would be more dutiful, when it comes to repairs - and not just pick what they need from a supply room without making a short note.</comment>


Show HN: Kinect Home Automation goes HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://nitrogen.posterous.com/kinect-home-automation-goes-html5

<comment><USER2> After receiving tons of feedback from my first HN post on the subject (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2303395>), I wrote some new software from scratch with the goal of creating a user-friendly product. This is the result.

This is my first web app, and unfortunately there's no live demo (yet) since it depends on specific hardware.

At any rate, thanks HN for all the feedback last time, and I look forward to more comments and criticism now.

[Posting with a throwaway account because I hit maxvisit right when I submitted the link]</comment>


I have a small dataset so what? - <AUTHOR> https://falconius.com/index.php/2020/05/11/i-have-a-small-dataset-so-what/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the creator of the article. Hope you find it interesting and happy to read your opiinions here, good or bad it all helps. And sorry for my bad english, I'm working on improving it. This is one of the ways :).</comment>


One of the greatest science fiction magazines is now available online (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/14/15970710/galaxy-science-fiction-magazine-online-free-reading-archive <comment><USER2> I love sci-fi and grew up devouring as much as I could.

But honestly, reading the older sci-fi is painful when it comes to gender portrayals. When Heinlein represents some of the better portrayals, you know you have issues. Even the more liberal representations feel ham-fisted and vapid. It's enough that I've grown very leery of anything before the 90s, which is a shame because there's a lot of important stuff before then...but reading it pokes the wounds of too many sexist/racist older relatives (plus "is this what I'll seem like by the standards of a few decades in the future?") to let me enjoy the stories.

<comment><USER3> Reading as a woman, I agree with you about the cringe however you may not be also picking up the same stereotypes and unreasonable expectations demanded of the _male_ characters. They are often required to be some kind of impossibly strong, rational, perfect male-figure which is equally impossible as the feminine roles they write about. If the story has other qualities, I can put these issues aside however often I just feel that the entire tale falls apart since I can't believe in the characters and their decisions.

Stanislav Lem, along with Asimov discussed here, has excellent women roles. Obviously as does Ursula Le Guin. Some other recommendations here: [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/50-sci- fi...](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/50-sci-fi-must- reads-by-women/)

<comment><USER4> I was going to recommend Octavia E. Butler, but I see she is already on the list. The whole _Xenogenesis_ trilogy is good, not just _Dawn_ (first in the series). _Parable of the Sower_ and _Parable of the Talents_ likewise.

And Connie Willis' _To say nothing of the dog_ is hilarious! It will brighten anyone's day.

I'll just have to starting working through that list, now.

<comment><USER5> Wild Seed, also by Octavia Butler, is one of the best books I have read this decade.

It is probably the best science fiction book I have read in many years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14994630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14994630)

From 2016, including the grandson of the founder: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11185490](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11185490)

</comment><comment><USER7> Some modern Sci-Fi subscriptions in a similar format:

[https://www.asimovs.com](https://www.asimovs.com) [http://clarkesworldmagazine.com](http://clarkesworldmagazine.com) [https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/](https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/)

I subscribe/read with kindle/iPad (if you want color illustrations must be a tablet or computer).

<comment><USER8> I also recommend daily science fiction for a new short story sent to one's email every weekday!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> An interesting character in the Galaxy fold was science columnist (1952 on) Willy Ley. He'd been a co-founder of the German amateur rocketry society in 1927. He and illustrater Chesley Bonestell created some visionary publications in that period .. like 'The Conquest of Space' (1949).

[http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/L/Ley.html](http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/L/Ley.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_Door_Spiders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_Door_Spiders)

</comment><comment><USER10> I missed out on this era of Sci-fi. Thanks for sharing! If anyone else has any other suggestions other than the ones linked in this thread, please share :)

<comment><USER8> Compelling Science Fiction is a modern take on "hard scifi" as a magazine, that also avoids grimdark. I also highly recommend The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction. It's been a long-time staple of speculative fiction.

<comment><USER11> > that also avoids grimdark

Not as interesting as it could be then.

<comment><USER8> Some people genuinely are exposed to enough darkness irl that they don't find enjoyment anymore in stories featuring nuances of misery, gore, and trauma. That's totally fine.

<comment><USER11> So it's the magazines task to 'protect' people? What the hell kind of argument is this.

<comment><USER8> Nope, it's just explaining there's a demand for non-grimdark work that Compelling Science Fiction's audience can compose of. There's no protection involved. Magazines select works to sell altogether as a product. If CSF's brand is non-grimdark, hard scifi, and they are successful at selling the product that is non-grimdark, hard scifi, then there's an audience interested in buying their work.

I'm not really sure where you get the protecting clause from, or intent. It's just market forces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm loving this paginated book like widget on Archive.org. IMO, it's not a book if the content is not paginated and the pages do not turn.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's been there for a while already. Lot's of stories by Robert Sheckley!

</comment><comment><USER14> Galaxy Magazine</comment>


Ask HN: What tools & technologies you learnt recently are worth it? - <AUTHOR>

I'm particularly interested in upcoming, not yet widespread stuff, but feel free to submit anything you think is cool and others should know about. Please provide a simple description along with the name. <comment><USER2> Seaside running on Gemstone's OODB/Smalltalk VM combo > <http://seaside.gemstone.com/>

The combination of Seaside w/ a scalable object database completely changed my view on how web development can be done.</comment>


Oops: Microsoft accidentally reveals secret social project - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/14/microsoft-social-project-tulalip/

<comment><USER2> Last month Microsoft likely acquired Social.com for $2.6 million[1], then this domain Socl.com through the same company. Suddenly this domain has a social site on it (still in Google Cache) and they claim it's just a MSR project? Not a chance.

1: [http://fusible.com/2011/07/rumor-microsoft-to-launch-its- own...](http://fusible.com/2011/07/rumor-microsoft-to-launch-its-own-social- network-company-acquires-socl-com-from-same-broker-as-social-com/)

<comment><USER3> having the header domain like social won't do anything for them. They've got live.com, and look how little they've been able to do with that.

<comment><USER4> at least live.com was a distinct brand. Having the domain social.com is like inventing a new vacuum cleaner and calling it "Vacuum".

<comment><USER5> Or creating a windowing UI and calling it Windows?

<comment><USER4> They named windows before most people knew what a windowing UI was. They're trying to come into an already mature market, they won't be able to create much awareness with a generic brand.

Think how it will be referred to on broadcast news which loves quoting what people are saying on social networking sites as it's cheap to produce (and is how most people will first hear of it).

"we've been getting lots of reports in via Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook and Social"

"there have been outpourings of grief on the social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Social"

They might call it "Microsoft Social" but that's a bit long. I don't think Google Plus is much better in that regard. Facebook and Twitter are the better brands at two syllables and not having any association outside of social networking.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if Google eventually wants Google Plus to be recognized as simply "Plus". Goes along with "Wave" and "Buzz".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have trouble believing all these "accidental leakages" are actually accidents. The new trendy marketing gimmick?

<comment><USER8> Well it does provide them with a sort of "market viability" test. Leak some information to see how the world reacts, and then decide if it's worth proceeding or not (obviously not, in this case).

<comment><USER9> They didn't do a great job at analyzing the feedback towards the courier project then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> looking at the screenshot, and actually reading the content of the small tiles, this does not look like G+/facebook/twitter, but more like a wikia/knol/stack*/quora.

I mean, there isn't anything in this single screenshot suggesting this as a new "generalistic" social network , so why are so many comments to this submission trying to frame it so?

<comment><USER11> Hmm everyone's all riled up about a product they know nothing about. And I thought logic was central to a computer science degree. Guess I was wrong.

<comment><USER12> The vast majority of HN readers do not have CS degrees. In fact a very large portion of HN readers do not even identify themselves as programmers or "hackers." That said, I don't believe people with CS degrees are particularly better commenters than people without them. Microsoft is just a touchy subject for many geeks. Much like Facebook and the meme that our privacy is in danger, or advertising -- it generates nerd rage.

<comment><USER11> In the 21st century, it is hip to claim you're being oppressed. That said, nerd-rage makes for very interesting material. Basically everyone concludes everything and the entire tech crowd explores the search space of the future of an org and the final conclusion is "time will tell".

[Disclaimer : MS intern. Opinions are mine]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Part of me wants to see this come into fruition, and I think that's the same part of me that wants to look at car accidents on the side of the road as I drive by.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds more like a Quora competitor than a social project. If it weren't for the fb and twitter logins, I'd suspect this was aimed more at the corporate user base than as a public site.

</comment><comment><USER14> It would be more surprising to me if they weren't working on something like this.

</comment><comment><USER15> Help me out, fellow pedants.

Shouldn't it be either "makes finding what you need and sharing what you know easier than ever" or "find what you need and share what you know _more easily_ than ever"?

<comment><USER16> No, why?

Also, your first example is ungrammatical, and the second is seems somewhat awkward when it begins (as theirs does) with 'With Tulalip you'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> tulalip? that had better be a codename.

<comment><USER18> It's probably codenamed after Tulalip Bay in Washington state.

<comment><USER19> Also a pretty sleazy Indian casino.

<comment><USER3> can we just call it a sleazy casino, and not let prejudice creep in because it's on native land.

<comment><USER20> Flying total OT here but how is it prejudice to describe the place that way? "sleazy Indian casino" is obviously a personal opinion of an Indian casino; why does he have to give less information simply because he dislikes the casino?

If I say "sleazy American diner" is that prejudice too?

<comment><USER21> It's "a sleazy Indian (operated) casino" vs. "sleazy American (cuisine) diner".

The first is referencing the ethnicity of the casino's operators, the second is referencing the style of the diner and doesn't infer anything about the ethnicity of the owners.

<comment><USER20> I see the sibling says "Indian" could be considered wrong.

However, again, with you post why is it wrong to say their ethnicity? Incidentally I was plugging for American as being an indicator of ethnicity; there's also a subset issue so for "sleazy American diner" read "sleazy Greek bar" (a bar in Greece, though it could be a bar run by a Greek I guess it doesn't seem to matter).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> History will look back at this decade as the age of social networks

</comment><comment><USER23> For all you social types, are you weary yet? I guess I am finally being rewarded for being somewhat introverted...one less website to sign up for.

</comment><comment><USER24> Microsoft Research projects seem to rarely turn into real projects. This will probably be the first and last we see of this.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, how long ago was I supposed to see surface tablets at my local restaurants/bars? And that was something I actually wanted...

<comment><USER25> There's a few restaurants in London which do this like <http://www.inamo- restaurant.com/> but it's never really taken off. There's not much value add for the customer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> ".. secret social project"

And THIS, THIS is why MS just doesn't "get it", yet. I won't count them out, but the time to get in is getting pretty slim.

</comment><comment><USER27> It looks as though Microsoft feels pressure to rush and start "leaking" their social presence to counter Google.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not too familiar with ASP.Net, but if you view source on socl.com that is some jacked-up output.

<comment><USER29> I thought the same, I use .net all the time and a majority of it is generated by .net itself but the rest looks like its been copied and pasted from word or something with the extra stuff in there.

It makes me wonder if this really was an internal project as would they let people loose on such a big project that are copying and pasting stuff from word?

Or again, is this part of the conspiracy??

Microsoft's lack of innovation in general recently upsets me, I used to be a massive Microsoft fan but the more Apple do recently the more I want to follow them instead. I hope they do pull something out of the bag

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Microsoft Oops" is a great product name

</comment><comment><USER31> Accident my ass, this comes just in time for the rumors, thrill, and "social need" to combat the with the release of Google+

</comment><comment><USER32> Microsoft-

</comment><comment><USER33> Balkanization ho!

<comment><USER34> For those who prefer to live in the Balkans ;-)

The rest will stay where they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'll never use it

<comment><USER36> Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> There is one social "network"/site I won't ever have an account =)

</comment><comment><USER38> I guess lime green is the new orange.

</comment><comment><USER39> Everything microsoft attempts is so desperately uncool that the very concept of Microsoft doing social is futile.

There is literally no way they could make this work. It's another Ballmer "car crash in slow motion" initiative.

/popcorn

<comment><USER40> And they're again last to the party... they desperately need a Bill Gates again, or at least someone with vision.

<comment><USER41> It's interesting to hear that. I believe it was Bill Gates' advice that led Ballmer and co. to negotiate a buyout of Skype and comments were made in the same vein then as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wonder if socl.com was available or bought for $s!!! Mostly bought, because thats too cliche a name to be left lurking.

<comment><USER43> Almost every pronounceable 4 character domain was taken by 2006 or so. This happens to be similar to 'SoCal', as well. Take a guess.</comment></comment>