Why Kotlin is my next programming language (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-kotlin-is-my-next-programming-language-c25c001e26e3 <comment><USER2> I am a bit in a hurry, so I acknowledge I only quickly scanned the article. But it struck me as damning by faint praise.

Like a waiter advising, "Choose the chicken parm. It doesn't have any bones, all the salmonella has been cooked out, and it doesn't have any bad flavor."

If I'm going to be successfully pitched a programming language, I will need to see its power of expression or be shown how it solves some problems that other languages don't address well. Some "special sauce."

No offense intended ... that's just my quick take.

<comment><USER3> I think that might be what's needed for a really good programming language. If you want a general-purpose language, you probably don't want something unique and envelope-pushing - you just want a language that avoids all the mistakes that are so common, that learns from what's gone before. Like buying a table - you usually don't want a radical table that can do something other tables can't, you just want a good solid table.

(I don't think Kotlin is such a language - I think Ceylon might be. I work in Scala at the moment)

<comment> a-saleh It is interesting that when I considered next language to write a side-project in, I was choosing between Ceylon and Kotlin.

In the end I did choose Kotlin. My reasons included:

* support in IDEA

* focus on java interoperability

* nice interop with android

but the main thing probably was, that I trust JetBrains that they will support Kotlin in the long term, while I don't think RedHat has any projects depending on the language.

So, why would you choose Ceylon?

<comment><USER3> Well in reality I choose Scala, largely because it has a level of maturity and ecosystem support (both libraries and other tools) that neither Ceylon nor Kotlin can match. But I'd use Ceylon rather than Kotlin because I think it's a much better designed actual language (see cousin post for examples). I personally dislike IDEA (prefer Eclipse), and I don't think Kotlin actually has any better Java or android interop than Ceylon (or Scala), they just make more of a fuss about it in their marketing.

<comment> premium-concern > they just make more of a fuss about it in their marketing

This succinctly describes many aspects of Kotlin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, so much negativity here O.o

Kotlin is getting rapid adoption in the Android community and is quickly getting the same status as Swift has in the iOS world.

The main reasons for the rapid adoption are:

\- It's designed to easily integrate into existing Java codebases. This means that starting to use Kotlin is pretty much a case of adding two Gradle dependencies and source files into `src/kotlin`. Interop with Java is painless and doesn't require any special boxing as opposed to some other languages.

\- It's standard library is small (~700KB), which is a stark contrast to Scala and some other JVM languages, which pretty much demand usage of ProGuard while developing due to large method count.

\- It's performance characteristics are close to Java and doesn't cause catastrophic GC collection issues like some Clojure code does.

\- It has pretty much all the features expected from a modern language (nullability, const values, concise syntax) while still keeping code very readable for people who already know Java. The adoption in our Java codebase has thus been rather painless, since code doesn't do any additional magic you wouldn't expect.

\- It compiles code to Java bytecode which runs on Java 6 JVM, which is critical for Android.

\- It has first-party support in IntelliJ IDEs, which includes Android Studio itself. The IDE experience is significantly better than Scala or Clojure one and almost on par with Java.

So in short, we got a modern language, which is easy to transition to from Java 6, gives seamless interoperability with existing Java code (you can just start writing Kotlin classes in your Java code base), doesn't add overhead to your Android application and doesn't behave strangely performance-wise. There are still some warts to fix (mostly related to static checkers), but Kotlin has been a huge win for Android world.

<comment><USER5> > quickly getting the same status as Swift has in the iOS world.

What's keeping Swift itself from eventually becoming the preferred language for Android as well?

<comment><USER6> It's a non starter as the main language since it's not JVM based.

As a C/C++ alternative for native development on Android... possibly.

This will be in great part decided by

1) How frustrated native Android developers currently are with C/C++ (I don't have the feeling they are much) and

2) How much resources Apple will dedicate to make Swift viable on Android (hard to imagine they would be that interested helping out the #1 player in that space while their #2 spot is shrinking on a daily basis).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I tried Kotlin during the Surprise Language round of Codeforces, a programming competition.

I found it to be more verbose than a typical modern scripting language. Maybe it's the result of choosing the least of the evils for what it's trying to accomplish.

The other drawback: the documentation. Kotlin's reference documentation (looking up how to properly use a call) does not have any examples. I'm not even talking about full compilable examples - although that would be nice, it doesn't even have one-liner examples. FWIW, I was trying to look up how to use a comparator to sort a MutableArray<Int,Int>.

<comment><USER8> Personally I don't much mind the added verbosity, coming from Ruby/Python/JS, so long as I don't have to write so many damn tests. Speaking from minimal experience, Kotlin still _seems_ like a big net win here. Same is true of other languages with lightweight, static type systems like TypeScript/Flow, Swift, and Go.

I agree about the documentation – I think it's one of the biggest reasons the language has seen such little adoption given its benefits.

I couldn't even find how to integrate Kotlin files into a Java project without using IntelliJ. Kotlin is developed by Jetbrains, so of course they're used to IDE-driven-development, and have a financial stake in people using their products for development. But coming from scripting languages, this sort of documentation gap was a real turn-off for me.

<comment><USER9> What is it that makes you not having to write so many tests?

<comment><USER10> Static typing.

<comment><USER9> Is the reasoning that you then don't have to test what happens if you pass a parameter of the wrong type to a function?

<comment><USER11> The compiler guarantees it won't happen. Such a test would be a test of the compiler and in my opinion unnecessary. And in Haskell at least... impossible. You can't write the the test because IT won't compile!

<comment><USER9> I understand that. My question is if that is the kind of tests that people have in mind when they say that static typing requires fewer tests.

<comment><USER11> I can't speak for anyone else but I believe so yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me Kotlin is almost a perfect replacement for Java. It has very few drawbacks, but generally it's much better and it's a pleasure to use it. Not to mention solid IDE support. I've used Kotlin in two small projects. One project was completed year ago and now I'm improving it. Kotlin is just awesome when it comes to refactoring or generalising. Much better than Java.

I don't want to compare it to Scala, they target different auditories, IMO. I tried Scala, it's a lovely language, but it's too complex. I had to spend a month before I was able to write a quality code using Scala and I still had a lot of problems reading scala collections source code or even understand scalaz. On the other side I spent one evening reading about Kotlin (awesome and very complete, yet small documentation definitely helps) and I knew the language, could read its standard library and write production-quality code. For me that's a deal breaker.

<comment><USER13> Yes scala is complex, but your scala code doesnt have to be. The reason that std collection lib and scalaz code is hard to read is their inclination to push the limit of utilizing the advanced scala features to make their usage really easy.

That being said scala is not for one who wants to plateau quickly. It takes years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> With the exception of compiling to JVM, _Dart_ is worth looking at if you liked this. Most of the article applies to it as well: [https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and- running/ch02.html](https://www.dartlang.org/docs/dart-up-and- running/ch02.html)

With dart news in the past 4 years, the knee-jerk reaction has been that Google will abandon it, which unfortunately means that not much discussion ever went to its merits. Adopting the language has provided a huge productivity boost for me and many other developers, in or outside Google.

</comment><comment><USER15> Features: </comment><comment>=== * compiles to Java and Javascript * null safety (optionality) * Lean syntax * Exceptions are unchecked. * Extension functions let you add methods to classes without modifying their source code. * Operator overloading * No macros * Markdown instead of HTML for your API docs * Better Java generics. * Delegation (forwarding methods) * String interpolation

Seriously underwhelming....

<comment><USER16> I initially used Kotlin for a project at work, and I would agree that it is underwhelming. Pivotal had announced official support for Kotlin with Spring Boot, which is what motivated me to give it a try. However, there was no support for the @Transactional annotation in Kotlin at the time, so I ended up writing a decent amount of Java anyways. Then there was a compatibility issue with one of our internal libraries, and I had to rewrite all of the controllers in Java. By the time the project was finished, the majority of the code was in Java, and I hadn't really gotten any benefit out of the Kotlin, so I decided to just use Lombok and replace all of the Kotlin code with Java. My builds got about 3 times faster after that because Kotlin seems to have performance issues with Gradle.

The 1.1 release is promising many features that make me want to revisit it, though: [https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2016/04/kotlin- post-1-0-ro...](https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2016/04/kotlin- post-1-0-roadmap/)

<comment><USER12> As of 1.0 Kotlin has solid Java compatibility, @Transactional definitely shouldn't be an issue. What features are compelling for you in 1.1? They are nice, but generally just a nice sugar. I don't really miss any of those. I suggest you to try it now, if you have a chance.

<comment><USER16> The @Transactional problem was fixed, I shouldn't have left that out. I had first tried to do this pretty much immediately after the 1.0 release. Async/await is cool, but it's really the idea of adding channels and coroutines that I'm a fan of. We've also generally stopped using that library that didn't work with Kotlin controllers for any new projects, so Kotlin is definitely something I look forward to using again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've switched from Scala to Kotlin after 8y of Scala. There are some things I miss (e.g. Options and Futures) but Kotlin feels much more focused on real world problems.

And Gradle is so much easier than the monster that is SBT.

<comment><USER18> Gradle 3.0, due out soon, will provide Kotlin as an alternative language for writing build scripts, so you'll be able to use a single language for development, as you did when you used Scala with SBT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I tried Kotlin some time ago on a side project I wasn't very impressed. To me the problems Kotlin is addressing are not that huge. It feels like having to switch to another language (albeit very similar to Java) just to fix some annoyances is just not worth it.

Maybe prior to Java 8 this would've been more interesting. I also wonder how much time it will take Kotlin to start benefiting from Java 9 features when that gets released.

<comment><USER20> Keep in mind that "Prior to java 8" is a time that belongs to the distant future for the android world

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really liked Scala when I played around with it (bare with me here), but when deciding on what to use on a project I'm starting, targeting the JVM is a downside. Can I depend on the JVM being on the target machine? If not, I'll have to deal with the dependency. However, if I choose a compiled language like Rust, I don't have to worry about that.

<comment><USER22> Under what circumstances are you writing software for deployment in places you don't have administration access on (i.e., your servers, which should be deployed with CM as-is and make adding dependencies trivial) where you cannot package OpenJDK (this is trivial on Windows, OS X, and Linux), cannot expect a system administrator to install the JVM, _and_ can expect Rust to run?

There is a slice of the universe where this exists, but it's not really Kotlin's target in the first place (and I think that's basically self-evident from everything around it) so I'm not sure why you'd try to jam that square peg in the round hole to begin with.

<comment><USER21> I'm thinking of client machines. People balk at installing Java these days. Is there a way to get the JVM without Java?

Is Kotlin not capable of being a client application?

<comment><USER23> You just package the JVM with the application itself. Create a .bat/.exe/.sh/binary file that calls the JVM with your program as the argument. It's simple, but it will increase the download size of your program significantly (unless your program is huge - then it doesn't matter)

<comment><USER24> No installer needed? Just copy the files somewehre? That would be nice.

<comment><USER22> Sure. Plenty of Java-based games do this.

<comment><USER25> This may come off a bit snarky but is there really plenty of Java games out there? If so, anything anybody might have heard off?

<comment><USER26> Minecraft was somewhat popular a few years ago. :P

Runescape also used to be a pretty big one, even if it's been shrinking lately AFAIK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I know they don't have the 'production-ready' stamp, but if I were to jump back into the JVM world it would be Frege at this point. It is basically a Haskell on the JVM. It compiles to Java source code, so you can work it in slowly to your real project [1]. You can call Java from Frege, or Frege functions from Java.

ABCL - Armed Bear Common Lisp is another, but Lisp on the JVM instead of Haskell. It's been around for a while, and has become fast for a Lisp on the JVM, though it's not SBCL in speed. It does however support full 32 bit integers on 32 bits sytems compared with SBCL's 29 bits on 32 bit systems due to boxing. Again, not used much in production, although, there are some great testimonials of some cool implementations [2]. I particularly like the Keck telescope code written in Lisp in 1994, ported to ABCL and using Java for some image work and display.

[1] [https://github.com/frege/frege](https://github.com/frege/frege)

[2] [https://common- lisp.net/project/armedbear/testimonials.shtml](https://common- lisp.net/project/armedbear/testimonials.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER28> Hmm, this does seem like a pretty tasteful design in many ways.

The declaration-site variance for generics is a pretty good idea, but is still inadequate to deal with _functional_ collections. (I use the term "functional" as opposed to simply "immutable": an immutable collection has no update operations at all, while a functional collection has functional update operations: for example, given a set S and an element X, to compute a new set whose elements are those of S together with X (S ∪ {X}). This usage is certainly not universal, but the distinction needs to be drawn somehow.)

Anyway, the point is this. Kotlin has in its collections API

      interface Set<out E> ...

where the use of 'out' says that given types A and B where B is a subtype of A, 'Set<B>' is a subtype of 'Set<A>'. But then if you wanted to add a 'with' operation as described above:

      interface FunctionalSet<out E> : Set<E> {
        fun with(E elt)
      }

you can't do it, because type parameters marked with 'out' can't be used for method parameters.

<comment><USER3> The correct signature for that method is something like (don't know whether this is the syntax)

        fun with<F super E>(F elt)

<comment><USER28> I guess you mean (note the return type)

      fun with<F super E>(elt: F): FunctionalSet<F>

That's an interesting suggestion, but I don't see any indication that Kotlin provides for type _lower_ bounds in generic function constraints. (It does have type upper bounds; see the bottom of this page: [http://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/generics.html](http://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/generics.html)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I see the biggest market for Kotlin being Android. It manages to provide features that Java will likely never have while still having a fairly small impact on run time, deploy, and APK size. The conversion tool is really great too. It makes it much easier to migrate a project to kotlin, especially when trying to figure out more complex stuff like annotations. I see Kotlin being Android's Swift in the future.

<comment><USER30> I would love to see that happen (or something similar, like Swift).

I fear that it will be hard to move in that direction as long as Google does not push in that direction though.

The official word is that we don't need their support in order to write Android apps in Kotlin, which is true and that the gap between objC and Swift was large enough to justify the change but that Java is not that old, which is debatable.

In all cases, it is hard to argument the move to a new language in an existing codebase when there is no official push in that direction.

If I have to create a new app in the near future, I will strongly consider Kotlin, but for the 8 eight old codebase I have to deal with + the 15 engineers working on it, my hands are tied.

<comment><USER4> > In all cases, it is hard to argument the move to a new language in an > existing codebase when there is no official push in that direction.

I don't understand the logic behind this sentence? Why do you need Google to push you somewhere instead of you youself choosing a more productive option?

Kotlin is designed to be easy to integrate into existing Java codebase and our introduction to a largeish Android codebase has been a great success.

<comment><USER30> For a personal project or for creating a new app from scratch where I am lead engineer, sure Kotlin would be an easy choice.

However, right now I am a senior engineer working on a 8 years old android app alongside 15 other Android devs.

The switch to another language is not even something that the current lead or the CTO are willing to consider.

In their defense, we would have to train the whole team, this would be a major task and build times are already a big issue so anything degrading them is hard to push for.

A push from Google would help a lot, it would remove a lot of objections like "this is hipster shit" or "I am not going to learn the language of the month" (coming from people who have not learned any language in years) and force them to take it seriously.

Even the iOS team barely use Swift though, so I don't see it in a near future. I guess I just have to search for another company.

> our introduction to a largeish Android codebase has been a great success. Do > you mind sharing some details ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Should probably be renamed "Why Kotlin is my current programming language".

</comment><comment><USER31> Are there any decent languages that compile to readable Java? I think such a language would have a place in conservative Java shops, where management insists "we only use plain old Java around here". You could program in a "cleaner Java" translate it to vanilla Java, then commit, and nobody would know the difference.

<comment><USER32> If you ever tried to push some Java-generated code in the repository I will never _ever_ approve your pull request. It's simply one of the most wrong thing that you can do on so many levels that I really don't know from where to start. You will need to keep track separately of the kotlin code and Java code and keep them in synch. You cannot use the repository because, per your admission, you are doing this in secret, so if your machine dies then you lose all the original kotlin code. Even if you didn't lose the original kotlin source future iterations of the language may change the generated code, so even if you simply remove a comment your pull request will have changes in pretty much all the generated files. A simple refactoring can have similar effects. Generated Java code in my experience can be spotted immediately given that usually is _very_ verbose. I simply can't imagine what huge amount of code that thing will generate for a simple one liner using streams, given that it's targeting Java 6. Probably there are many more other reasons that I cannot think of early in the morning. Last but not least, I'd rather never work with someone that tries to deceive all his colleagues and pushes in the repository awful code. If you don't want to use Java then find another job, nobody is forcing you to work there.

<comment><USER31> Have I ever committed auto generated Java?

Yes. At one job my predecessor had done significant work in Java and somehow the only the compiled files were left behind. We reverse compiled them and that was my starting point for the project. As you can imaging the generated code was perfectly formated, with a very consistent style, and generic variable names. It wasn't terrible to work with.

The language I'm proposing probably couldn't be too different than Java. But one trivial example would be to make all variables final by default unless they were marked "notfinal". This would be different than Java, and thus would be a new language. And it would be trivial to translate back and forth between this language and Java. Nobody could ever tell the difference. Granted all you would really be changing is syntax, which may or may not be worth while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> How important is a name for uptake? I think this one might actually have an impact. Not sure why. It just looks and sounds weird.

I would love to learn more about languages and marketing. Off to Google!

</comment><comment><USER34> A few people mentioned problems with Kotlin documentation (presumably with a connection to the Surprise Language round of Codeforces).

Could you describe in detail the problems you had? What was unclear or misleading? Were those problems with the JVM setup or Kotlin itself?

</comment><comment><USER35> >Kotlin costs nothing to adopt! It's open source, but that's not what I mean here. What I mean is there's a high quality, one-click Java to Kotlin converter tool, and a strong focus on Java binary compatibility.

The costs of adopting a new language are greatly more significant than implied here. The time it takes to learn it. The time it turns to learn the tools that are specific to it. And if you put it into production, the technical debt you've created by adding another language to the codebase, etc.

If the OP had said that you don't have to start a green-field project to use it, that would be more accurate.

<comment><USER36> My experience has been that the learning curve for Kotlin is extremely shallow if you're an experienced Java developer. This is not just my experience but also the experience of building a team that's working with Kotlin all day.

One reason the cost is low, is that there aren't really many tools specific to Kotlin (or any, really). You can use the same IDEs, the same build toolchains, the same libraries, even the same standard library as regular Java.

<comment><USER22> Upvoted you, but adding on: a competent Java developer can pick up Kotlin in, literally, three hours. The mappings to Java concepts are trivial, but the language's niceties quickly bear themselves out as you go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Kotlin reminds me of coffescript to JavaScript.

<comment><USER38> As far as I know, all CoffeeScript did was add bunch of syntactic sugar on top of JavaScript.

I believe Kotlin actually adds programming paradigm that's not in Java on top of terse syntax, i.e. real closure, operator overloading, pure object orientation, and more.

<comment><USER3> Java already has real closures and pure object orientation. Operator overloading is just sugar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's the least sexy name for a programming language this century

<comment><USER39> Groovy won that 10 years ago.

<comment><USER18> Groovy was named by its creator, James Strachan, in 2003. By 2006 (i.e. 10 years ago), he had been managed out and a business sort without technical knowledge had taken over. He's since slowly wrecked Groovy's sexy brand and placed it firmly in the Java camp. I tried reversing the trend with stuff like "grOOvy", and the Groovy grrrrrrowl, Ooooooooo, and Vy (for "victory") but that business person running Groovy skuttled the effort, appearing far more interested in retaining his centralized control over Groovy branding. Groovy's since been handed over to Apache, being run by a 10-member "Project Management Committee", only 4 of which actually do any technical work on Groovy's code base. The other 6, including the "PMC Chair", just do administrative fuss.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What happened to Scala? Wasn't that the #1 language for JVM?

<comment><USER3> Scala is still there, still growing, and a much better language. Kotlin is founded on this anti-intellectual rejection of Scala's advanced features... only to then add them back in piecemeal. So rather than a single powerful general feature like implicits or higher-kinded types you have language-level special cases like extension methods and specific nullness operators.

(Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things Scala would do differently if it were made today - there's space for a language like Ceylon that makes a genuine effort to simplify on what's in Scala)

<comment><USER41> > Scala is still there, still growing, and a much better language. Kotlin is > founded on this anti-intellectual rejection of Scala's advanced features...

Each time someone brings up Scala there comes this weird "people who don't like it are anti-intellectual" \- well no, people don't like it because it looks weird, had for the longest time abyssimal IDE support, tries to do things which have been solved in production by itself (see SBT vs Maven) and is a mishmash of more or less every idea that was floating around mixed into one language.

Kotlin has a very specific focus: Being usable for a working Java programmer, who doesn't have three years to learn every weird idea Scala tries to shove down your throat. It uses existing tools, existing Java collections and enhances them instead of saying "well, we do everything new, because we know how to do it 'better' and we don't care for your existing code."

<comment><USER26> Ultimately, you don't need to learn every single Scala feature to get started using it. As a Java developer you only need to learn a few differences before you can start using it as a "Java with better syntax" (var/val/def, static/object, Object/AnyRef, void/Unit, interface/trait, <>/[], []/()), learning the Scalaisms later on as you go.

You don't need Scalaz to write Scala code. You can even ignore most of the standard library while you're starting out, and use the Java equivalents.

SBT might seem pointless at first, but the same thing applies there. You don't need to use it, plugins for Maven and Gradle are available. But once you do switch, you'll see how much nicer it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The author talks a bit about how he ended up back in JVM world when they started on Android dev. I just want to note that Android does not use the JVM but Dalvik (I think it's actually called ART now). Maybe they just meant Android put them back in the world of Java.

</comment><comment><USER30> Kotlin is unquestionably a very large improvement over plain old Java.

I fear it might be very hard to make the Android community adopt it massively though, unless Google pitches in and supports it officially.

<comment><USER6> The Android community has already adopted it pretty significantly (join the #android Kotlin slack and see for yourself).

And this was done without any official support for Google because... it's not necessary: Kotlin works out of the box. Which is one of Kotlin's strengths.

<comment><USER30> I am in that slack channel.

Do you have any adoption numbers though ? From what I see in the local companies, kotlin is still very rare, except for a couple of startups (which makes them very attractive tbh). That anecdotal evidence of course and I would love to see a tide change but hard numbers would be an huge help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Kotlin comes from industry, not academia. It solves problems faced by > working programmers today. As an example, the type system helps you avoid > null pointer exceptions.

I'm sorry but you just undercut your own anti-intellectualism better than I could right there.

(There exist languages which have guarded against this without loss of expressive power since _before Java_ and, oh, are from academia.)

<comment><USER44> A better example of 'engineering not academy' would be explicit vectorization, memory layout support and a good FFI. (all the stuff that in theory is better managed by compilers, in practice it either doesn't matter at all or else should be left to humans).

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Kotlin doesn't improve on Java in these areas.

<comment> premium-concern Have a look at Scala Native.

Despite its young age it creates really fast, tight code (they have issues benchmarking things because Dotty Linker + LLVM gets rid of too much stuff).

<comment><USER44> Thanks. It is too early to say if it would be of any use, however, since they don't talk about freeing these native data structures.

<comment> premium-concern You can have both managed (T) and unmanaged pointers (Ptr[T]).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> We're in 2016 and Swift is the new rage. In no time it will be the new multiplatform mobile default option.

<comment><USER46> Android I don't think so... There are tons of Java code in the Android ecosystem and their developers hate anything that comes from Apple.

So it will end as iOS only.</comment></comment>


The First Investor Meeting - <AUTHOR> http://troggerpath.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/the-first-investor-meeting/

<comment><USER2> _We are working with (list companies they may have missed out on funding) already, and I know we can get even stronger people with the right funds._

I would be wary of bending the truth, investors talk...

<comment><USER3> No, I wouldnt bend the truth either. Dont say something you can't back up. I merely that you should be sure to mention any big name companies you do have relationships with.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. The takeaway from our post is simple: if you're working with people from successful companies, mention them. If your lead engineer was a high-ranking team lead at Google, that carries more weight than if his latest work was, let's say, managing the database for a potato factory in Ohio.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey, just to make sure credit goes where credit is due, this post was written by my awesome co-founder, Cassie :)</comment>


Some disasters caused by numerical errors - <AUTHOR> http://ta.twi.tudelft.nl/users/vuik/wi211/disasters.html

<comment><USER2> Doolittle Raid is probably the biggest disaster caused by wrong date calculation. But it is practically unknown in hacker community.

It was first bombing of Japan in 1942. Bombers were supposed to be refueled in China. But they crossed international date line and arrived day earlier. In result airports were not ready and bombers crashed.

15 bombers crashed, 3+8 crew man died. Soviets got American airplane technology.

> _Planners in Washington, DC, also had made a ridiculous blunder, forgetting > that the ships would lose a day (April 14) crossing the International Date > Line, putting the planes in China a day earlier than anyone expected. > Because of this mix-up, when some of the bombers flew over Chuchow Field, > which was supposed to have been their main refueling base, an air raid alarm > sounded and the lights turned out._

[https://books.google.com/books?id=FkEeVAf-U7gC&lpg=PA43&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=FkEeVAf-U7gC&lpg=PA43&ots=EJc_GC0u3S&dq=date%20line&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q=date%20line&f=false)

[http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/the-impossible- raid/](http://www.americainwwii.com/articles/the-impossible-raid/)

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

<comment><USER3> The wikipedia article doesn't mention a date miscalculation. Probably the main cause of their fuel difficulties was having to launch 10 hours and 170 nautical miles before originally planned due to being spotted by a Japanese patrol boat. All but one of the planes crashed, but only three men KIA, 8 men captured, and one crew interned in Russia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> During the first Iraq war, the partiot missiles was presented as a great success that prevented Israel and Saudi Arabia to be hit by Scud missiles. The facts was very different.

Not a single Patriot missile manage to hit a Scud during that war, partly because of the bug mentioned in the article and because anti missile defence is really hard.

The reason the Scud missiles did not do more damage, was that Iraq had modified them to extend their range, and this modification made them unstable, and thus their accuracy really poor, so that they would almost certainly miss the target. On the other hand, as mentioned on the web page, one of the Patriot missiles that missed a Scud did hit something else, while the Scud itself missed.

All in all, the missile defence caused more damage than if no defence had been installed at all. This fact was only revealed several years later, and did not reach the headlines.

</comment><comment><USER5> For anyone interested in such matters (actually, every engineer should be to some degree), a seemingly neverending (yet tenderly curated) stream of similar interesting observations and stories is posted to:

"The RISKS Digest, [or] Forum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related Systems":

[http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/](http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/)

A summary from Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISKS_Digest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISKS_Digest):

 _" It is a moderated forum concerned with the security and safety of computers, software, and technological systems. Security, and risk, here are taken broadly; RISKS is concerned not merely with so-called security holes in software, but with unintended consequences and hazards stemming from the design (or lack thereof) of automated systems. Other recurring subjects include cryptography and the effects of technically ill-considered public policies. RISKS also publishes announcements and Calls for Papers from various technical conferences, and technical book reviews"_

</comment><comment><USER6> To pre-empt someone bringing up THERAC-25: although it is a very famous case of software disaster, none of the root causes were numerical errors.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can sympathise with the Patriot Missile floating point issue. A bug like that would be next to impossible to track down and address, especially when dealing with specialised embedded hardware.

The Ariane 5 issue however is pants-on-head retarded. Converting a 64-bit floating point number to a 16-bit int is something a first year computer science student would be embarrassed about.

<comment><USER4> It is more subtle than that. The original code ran on the Ariane 4 rocket, and there the engineers had proved that the error could never happen with the first 80 seconds of the trajectory of that rocket, which was the period this code ran. The management of the Ariane program decided that the unit was going to be used in Ariane 5 as well, without certifying it for the new rocket. The Ariane 5 rocket is much more powerful, and will get much further in the trajectory than Ariane 4 in that time, so an angle big enough to get overflow will happen. This was never discovered, because the trajectory of the Ariane 5 was never tested with the code. Thus it can also be considered a management failure.

The code was also for stabilizing the rocket on the launchpad, and made no sense after that, but it was not shut down before after 80 seconds.

<comment><USER8> yes, since it was an overflow checker that caused the problem, it's a philosophical issue too.

Let's take a hypothetical: You're flying a rocket on a one-time mission. The rocket is not reusable and there are no redundant engines or any way to abort the mission in an intact way. You then detect an overflow in your control algorithm.

In practice, it almost never makes sense to do anything to these errors. If the error was spurious, the best course was to not do anything. If it was for real, the mission will be lost anyway so it doesn't make sense to spend effort to pay attention to the error.

Your only abort criteria might be if your rocket starts venturing to a path that will cause it to fly out of its designated safety zones.

However, if you have redundancy, then doing stuff like shutting down engines starts making sense (Like on Saturn V or the Space Shuttle).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are other examples provided by the delightfully named European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group on their "Spreadsheet Horror Stories" page: [http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm](http://www.eusprig.org/horror- stories.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> _The number was larger than 32,768, the largest integer storeable in a 16 bit signed integer, and thus the conversion failed._

The largest 16-bit signed integer is actually 32767... although it probably would not have mattered in that case, it's a little ironic to find an off-by- one error on a page about numerical errors.

One event that comes to mind, not really a disaster, but a rather costly mistake caused by units confusion, is this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider)

<comment><USER11> They may have used Excess-K representation... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_number_representations#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signed_number_representations#Excess-K)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nuclear weapons and forgetting parens (in Perl)

[http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol2_1/tpj0201-0004.html](http://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol2_1/tpj0201-0004.html)

Also, Castle Bravo was ~3x bigger than predicted because of a failure to correctly model the tritium production from lithium-7.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo#Cause_of_high_yie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo#Cause_of_high_yield)

<comment><USER13> This can't be real.. 'PERL itself stood for "Precision Entry and Reentry Launchings"'

<comment><USER14> No, it's not real: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822593)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The system design failure in the A5 is interesting to read, the full report is at

[http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane5rep.html](http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane5rep.html)

Basically they tried to re-use software from the A4 in the A5. The laser gyros have firmware that can get funky and the onboard computer would kind of "trust but verify" the laser gyros on the A4. Obviously the programmers of the laser gyros and the programmers of the nav system are not the same people and had conflicting views on what makes a decent variable type for horizontal velocity. The A5 doesn't technically need to verify the lasers alignment and its of no use after liftoff anyway (so whaddya intend to do if it gets misaligned anyway, land, fix it, and take off again?) The A4 guys saw that pointlessness of it and stopped monitoring after 40 or so seconds (by then either its working great or you've already crashed...)

So the A4 being somewhat anemic never hit the limits of that size int for horiz velocity. But the A5 which was kind of like the A4 after extensive steroids use was able to max out or roll over the conversion routine.

The nav computer wasn't very well designed at yet another level and instead of going all RTOS and recovering in a few milliseconds it helpfully kernel panic'd. And the kernel panic error message (probably something like "Oh oh" in French) was helpfully interpreted by the engine computer as if it were commands and slammed the engine nozzles over full hard one direction, which the airframe couldn't survive (real big rockets can't pinwheel in flight, at least not in one piece)

So the list of software design failures is epic and huge

1) Not every minor math exception NaN should kernel panic and fail the whole system (shouldn't have to crash because one temp sensor got unplugged, etc)

2) Never do stuff you don't have to. If you don't need to align your lasers due to technological advances, then stop doing it, because you can't crash the whole system trying to do it if you never try to do it. Or, if, 50 seconds into flight, you're commanded to slam your engine nozzles to 90 degrees perpendicular to flight and you know the hardware can't bend that far anyway, I think you can safely assume the nav computer has crashed and ignore it for awhile (maybe the watchdog timer would have eventually saved them?), or rephrased if you're commanded to do something that'll certainly blow the ship up, unless you're a destruct charge, maybe you should ignore it and just keep on chugging along till you hear something saner.

3) Most epic system failures are at the border of subsystems. Like where one machine talks 16 bit ints and the other 64 bit floats. So minimize your borders.

4) Simulation could have saved half a billion bucks. I'm actually kinda surprised nobody ever tried this. I guess test driven development wasn't so cool back then.

One way to look at the design failure is numerous times they failed when when handling protocol failures. I've seen this in big bureaucracies time and time again, who cares if the overall mission fails as long as our little group did right by our own code and someone else can be blamed. The nav guys never should have asked us laser gyro guys our horiz speed if it was over 15 bits signed so its all their fault for asking. The nav guys never should have asked us engine computer guys to point my engine nozzle sideways thus snapping off the back of the rocket so its all their fault. The OS guys never should have asked us math coprocessor guys to convert -40000.123 m/s into a 16 bit int so its all their fault. The math guys should never have thrown a kernel panic on a mere numerical conversion crashing the OS so its all their fault not ours in OS land. The OS guys should never have run our nav routines on a survivable recoverable non-RTOS system so its all their fault. Management never let us software devs run a ground test to save money so its all their fault. The blamestorming could go on for pages.</comment>


The banker who can't get out of Qatar - <AUTHOR> http://www.ericellis.com/khaliji.htm

<comment><USER2> Hopefully more stories like this get out, and people will refuse to do business in Qatar, without exceptional compensation for the perceived risk involved. When they see they're losing money they'll have to decide whether they want to stay in their old ways, or adapt and show respect for the fellow human beings.

</comment><comment><USER3> From camel to Cadillac in a single generation....there is still a long ways to go in terms of human rights in that part of the world.

<comment><USER4> And certain other parts of the world only think they got it: <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/802>

"More than 60 foreign citizens representing 22 nationalities are under sentence of death in the United States of America (USA). In virtually every case, the arresting authorities failed to notify detained foreigners of their right to communicate with their consular representatives."

<comment><USER5> Are you comparing the Qatari legal/punitive system against the US system ? If so, you're either being incredibly naive, incredibly stupid, or just trolling. Anyone with half a brain would rather be arrested for a (percieved) crime in the US rather than a country such as Qatar. Read the orginal article carefully and see the kind of limbo that Proctor is in. One could argue that the link you posted is not even on topic.

<comment><USER6> Bahrain may have similar legal foundations as Qatar, but those are definitely two different countries. Someone standing up on a pedestal should probably know that.

<comment><USER5> Noted and corrected. Funny I made that mistake since I've lived close by in Dubai for a while and have relatives living and working in both Bahrain and Qatar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't understand why he can't just go to the British Embassy and have them take him out of the country. Or is that not how it works?

<comment><USER8> I think that issue is that the government claims there are legal cases against him, and the British government is wiping their hands of it claiming that they can't interfere until the legal issues are tied up. Though I think it's possible for him to stay at the embassy if he runs out of money and has no place to stay.

These are diplomatic issues. I don't think that the British government really has much leverage to apply pressure to Qatar. It's also possible that they don't do much in the way of action/applying pressure unless it becomes a major media event.

There was a media event a couple of years ago around a Canadian citizen that was detained in Mexico because her boss was a crook. Apparently they couldn't get/punish him so they grabbed her and claimed that she was implicit in the crime because her salary (~$30K IIRC) came out of the money that he cheated people out of (she was his secretary, IIRC).

The Canadian government was able to convince the Mexicans to allow her to serve her sentence in a Canadian prison. When she was in Canada I believe they waived her sentence, gave her community service instead, or something similar. This brought a lot of other people with similar issues to the forefront. Some of which had been trying to get the Canadian government to intervene for years, but they didn't get enough media coverage to warrant decisive action. I think that the number the CBC trotted out was ~120 similar cases of Canadian citizens detained in foreign countries for dubious crimes (or no claims of crime whatsoever).

I think that, in general, governments don't want to play the diplomacy game for these 'small gains' if they don't have to since diplomacy can be give-take in many cases. They are only forced to act to avoid losing face with the general public when a specific case becomes a media-storm.

[UPDATE] I guess I should mention that in the case of the woman in Mexico, her ex-boss even came forward to say that she had no knowledge of his crimes (for whatever that's worth, seeing-as the guy was a conman for all intents and purposes). Also, I can't remember of the money was her salary or a 'bonus' that he paid to her, but I'm pretty sure the amount of around $27K and she wasn't a rich woman, so I think it was her salary.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Are You Fiction Book Recommendations? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Children of time[1] is a remarkable piece of writing. I wish I could unread it just so I could read it for the first time again

1\. [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.amazon.com/Turing-Evolved-David-Kitson- ebook/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Turing-Evolved-David-Kitson- ebook/dp/B00IHYV2LM)

</comment><comment><USER4> \- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

\- Through the Looking Glass

\- Lord of the Flies

\- 1984

\- Animal Farm

\- The Little Prince

\- Siddhartha

\- Narcissus and Goldmund

\- Crime and Punishment

\- Frankenstein

\- Dracula

\- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

\- The Lord of the Rings

\- Gulliver's Travels

\- Discworld "series"

\- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

These come to my mind immediately. I'll edit and add more later if something else comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Really got me thinking about what is in front of us.

The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig. Beautiful novella, a pleasure to read.</comment>


Top Green Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/ss/2009-inc-500-top-green-companies#7

<comment><AUTHOR> The Fruit Guys is a wonderful concept because fruit is a substitute for artificial stimulant and will lead to increased energy for a more productive day...</comment>


Opening a new chapter of my work in AI - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewng/opening-a-new-chapter-of-my-work-in-ai-c6a4d1595d7b#.t635fvblk <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13928365).

<comment><USER3> You moved comments from the 81 point post to the 36 point post?

Was that one first and unpopular?

<comment><USER2> Yes, you can tell by the IDs that the other one was first. Also, it followed the HN guidelines by not rewriting the title.</comment></comment></comment>


The Music Tax: Details Of The Plan They Don't Want You To Know - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/28/the-music-tax-details-of-the-plan-they-dont-want-you-to-know/ <comment><USER2> Is it just me or is every one else as tired of stories about the RIAA and "big music" as I am? They've now become (and have been) completely irrelevant to me. I don't like/buy/care about their product. The threat of a lawsuit even though I don't download music has faded into the background threat matrix of my life like an unfair IRS audit or eminent domain taking my house.

IF they do succeed in this tax, its just one more tax by a quasi-government agency for stuff I don't use, for people I don't know. There's already 5 others just like it on my Sprint bill as it is now. They're gonna do what they're gonna do and I have little influence in any of it. Unjust? Probably but I have more pressing things to worry about.

I know there are likely some people in this group who care deeply about fighting the injustice behind this, but I for one would rather RIAA nonsense be left to the Diggs and Slashdots of the world and focus on startups and hacking with this group.

<comment><USER3> First off, this affects us. This proposed tax is voluntary for ISPs, not consumers. The ISPs are paying this money as protection to the RIAA, so they won't sue. This fee is then handed down to the ever growing list of fees to subscribers. This additional charge for bandwidth and the implications for music-based start-ups is very real and relevant.

That being said, I too am tired of the RIAA. So, apparently, are their artists: [http://consumerist.com/368663/riaa-pockets-filesharing- settl...](http://consumerist.com/368663/riaa-pockets-filesharing-settlement- money-doesnt-pay-artists-whose-copyrights-were-infringed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Didn't the DMCA already exempt ISPs from liability?

The music tax could be a double whammy for ISPs, because not only would they have to pay the tax but their bandwidth costs would likely increase due to increased usage of P2P.

</comment><comment><USER5> If the money actually went to the artists I'd be happy to pay a $5 a month tax. But somehow I don't think this is how that scheme would work out.

</comment><comment><USER6> The big-label music industry is truly unbelievable. Just when you think their bad ideas can't be topped, they come up with this.

They need to take a cue from what the Nine Inch Nails did (and the success they witnessed) with the release Ghosts I-IV: <http://tinyurl.com/2u9wzk></comment>


Show HN: Blockchain Certification Protocol - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fyquah95/blockchain-certificate

<comment><USER2> _" Blockchain Certification Protocol (BCP)"_ Fu Yong Quah, email@example.com [http://www.fyquah.me](http://www.fyquah.me) ~ [https://s3-eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/equitybits/white_paper.pd...](https://s3-eu- west-1.amazonaws.com/equitybits/white_paper.pdf)

 _" ECDSA Public Key?"_

Have to look this up, Elliptical Curve Digital Signature Algorithm ~ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Digital_Signatu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Digital_Signature_Algorithm)

Has this paper been peer-reviewed or read?

<comment><AUTHOR> The more correct term should be a Elliptic Curve Public Key ?

No it hasn't been reviewed.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A very simple mechanism to do digital signature verification for documents leveraging the blockchain.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I can figure out what this does based on past knowledge, but where the hell is the technical explanation? I hate it when projects leave that out. Please to anyone who uploads a somewhat complex to github, describe in your README how your program works.

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/fyquah95/blockchain- certificate/blob/mast...](https://github.com/fyquah95/blockchain- certificate/blob/master/protocol.md)</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Employees Are the Happiest - <AUTHOR> https://www.statista.com/chart/20223/employees-happy-us-world/ <comment><USER2> There is no link to the original study. There are two links within the text, but neither of them link to the study. In fact, one of those two links is misleadingly presented as the link to the study, but is not actually the link to the study.

Challenge question for stats and math nerds: if 93% of a sample of 1000 Americans claim they enjoy their job, and if 91% of a sample of ~650 Netherlanders claim that they love their job, then what are the odds that this is a statistical fluke and that a greater portion of Netherlanders enjoy their jobs than Americans?

<comment><USER3> You're looking to test the difference in proportions. I entered 0.93 / 1000 / 0.91 / 650 into this online calculator [1] and got a p-value of 0.14 which means that the difference is not statistically significant. Technically you would want to do some correction for multiple comparisons since your actual question is "are Americans more happy than workers in every other country?" not "are Americans more happy than Netherlanders specifically?" but it's a moot point since the difference already isn't significant.

A more important question is probably how the sampling was conducted. How did they guarantee a representative sample in each country? How did they account for the gig economy, small businesses, part-time employees, and employees paid under the table? So many ways a survey like this could be wrong.

[1] [https://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/ztest/default2.aspx](https://www.socscistatistics.com/tests/ztest/default2.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about our lack of vacation days and holidays?

<comment><USER5> Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days each year. Work guilt may play a role:

"Americans left 768 million days of paid time off unused last year, according to research released by the U.S. Travel Association. The study found that 55 percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time."

"More than half of U.S. workers ― 54 percent — reported feeling guilty about taking vacation time either sometimes, often or always, according to a survey of more than 2,000 full-time workers in the United States by TurnKey Vacation Rentals."

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/08/28/what- does-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/08/28/what-does-america- have-against-vacation/)

<comment><USER6> > Americans intentionally don't utilize a large number of paid vacation days > each year. Work guilt may play a role

That is a plausible but pessimistic view of the situation. The more optimistic reading is that american workers derive personal pleasure and fulfillment from the work itself. If you are happier working in a fulfilling job than sitting idly on a beach, then it would make sense you wouldn't use all of your vacation days.

Work guilt probably does play a role, as does corporate policies that subtly punish vacation, but I would also bet that some percentage of workers actually enjoy what they do.

<comment><USER7> > than sitting idly on a beach

Or spending time with family, learning a new skill, going on an adventure.

"Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true.

<comment><USER6> > "Off-time" is not an adversary to great work life, productivity and > innovation. Some would even claim the opposite was true.

I don't disagree, we're not talking about absolutes here. But it's reasonable to consider that, all other things being equal, someone who loves their job may be less inclined to take as many vacation days compared to someone who hates their job.

Advocating for longer vacations, leisure time, and simply being disconnected so folks can develop their interests outside of work are important. However, most people spend most of their non-sleeping life at work. Accordingly, making work itself more fulfilling can often have a far greater impact than simply requiring less of it.

<comment><USER7> As a manager I do not accept that team members skip PTO. We're not paying for it to be nice, we expect ROI. Happy, healthy people are generally productive, highly cooperative and inventive.

<comment><USER6> > As a manager I do not accept that team members skip PTO.

Sure, but as a manager, you should probably know that giving people engaging work, with meaningful impact, and significant personal growth opportunities is often a greater motivator than providing additional days off.

<comment><USER7> You misunderstand. Off-time provides benefits that are almost impossible to achieve in even the best work environment.

* PTO is not about motivation - it's about quality of work output.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Ward, a modern Python 3 test framework - <AUTHOR> https://wardpy.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I made a Python 3.6+ testing framework called Ward ([https://wardpy.com/](https://wardpy.com/)) that I hope can be a compelling alternative to pytest!

Quick overview of features:

* Describe your tests using strings instead of function names

* Fixtures that use the Python import system instead of name matching

* ~50% of the framework overhead of pytest

* Highly readable, colourful output including coloured diffs

* Support for parameterised testing

* Configurable with pyproject.toml, but has sensible defaults

* Ability to search for tests based on descriptions and test bodies

* Supports Linux, MacOS, and Windows

* Uses type hints!

* Hypothesis works out of the box, and soon fixtures will regenerate on each example

I'd love to hear any constructive feedback :)

If you're interested in this project, I'd love to see more contributions from the community. The codebase is relatively small at the moment!

Check out the site linked above or GitHub at [https://github.com/darrenburns/ward](https://github.com/darrenburns/ward) \- and feel free to ping me a message!</comment>


Simplicity - Why and how - <AUTHOR> http://pmn.org/2010/06/14/simplicity-why-and-how.html <comment><USER2> I agree with the article, but it's not a general rule ... Facebook is a clusterfuck of features, and it beats Twitter in popularity.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I don't know many systems where I can genuinely say "these guys failed because they provided too many features". It's more of a case that making it _without_ a myriad of features _is_ possible.

What attracted my attention was this:

 _If any of your users have to stop and ask for help, you've done something wrong. Nobody ever wants to have to contact support._

I have found it a great advantage to work at a small shop, where developing and support is shared amongst the same people. The Nth time a user has the same query or hits the same problem, you know this is something you really have to sort out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I could build hackernews tonight, after work, if I wanted to

</comment><comment><USER5> Important to remember - "Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler" A. Einstein</comment>


Uber protest gridlocks London - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-27799938 <comment><USER3> The Streisand effect at work. I can see all those people thinking: these cabs are blocking me, I must find that one company that still drives, what was it called again?

Uber will be picking up a ton of business in London because of this. I imagine some bottles are being uncorked at Uber HQ because of this spectacularly stupid response. It's never clever to try to resolve your commercial disputes by punishing your paying customers.

And technically it's not an 'Uber protest' but an 'Anti-Uber protest'.

<comment><USER4> I don't think their goal is to influence the _people_ ; rather, it's to influence the _government_. I mean, it looks like the protests have _some_ power - after 3 tube strikes, the 4th was cancelled, I assume they made some kind of a deal.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but there is no viable alternative for the tube, for taxis there is. It's a nice illustration of cutting of the nose to spite the face.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cabbies here in Boston did a similar thing last month - circled the block Uber's office was in honking and making a racket. The two foremost reactions I got from it were, "It was impossible to get a cab in Boston that day", and "Why would acting like disruptive children make me sympathize with you?"

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm interested to see how Uber will be regulated by the UK government.

Taxi companies are regulated for extremely good reasons. I know people sing Uber's praises but regulations exist for good reasons. Some exist for bad reasons too but they are largely there to protect people.

Would you get in a stranger's car?

And to preempt the downvoters: I'm not saying I don't want competition. I want competition _and safety_ for the general public.

<comment><USER7> > Would you get in a stranger's car?

Yes. And I do that when I get into any cab.

This is one argument I never understood. People providing taxi-like services for other people need additional licenses for street safety - sure. But what can be safer apart from that? The person inside could just as well have just stolen the car. They are complete strangers.

<comment><USER8> > This is one argument I never understood.

As I understand it, regulation of private hire vehicles is motivated by regular rapes of attractive, young, drunk women on the way home from nights out.

With that said, as long as Uber verifies that all drivers have the correct vehicle and driver license and background checks [1] I don't see how they're any different to Addison Lee and those.

[1] www.tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/become-a-private-hire- licensee

<comment><USER7> Should've added more context probably - I don't understand it in case of Uber specifically, since it provides more information automatically than is available in a standard cab. Specifically both you and the driver get GPS tracked by the application and you get more info about the car/driver than in case of a usual cab.

I'm assuming Uber does at least the standard background checks for new employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _" Despite the protest Uber said it had seen the number of people downloading its app increase by 850% compared to last Wednesday."_

Uber gets some free publicity it seems.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think this is another sign that we need to start thinking about basic income _now_. The cabbies are understandably pissed because they've invested a lot of money into playing along with the cab companies and regulators. Additionally, I have a feeling that a lot of these people are poor drivers with poor language skills who wouldn't be able to compete with better people on Uber.

So what choice do they have but to protest and engage in rent seeking? If Uber succeeds, they'll be jobless. At the same time, Uber is preferred by consumers and as a society, we do want it to succeed and remove the need for taxi drivers to exist.

I think the only answer is basic income, and I think that over the next decade, more money will be spent on rent seeking to keep people in redundant jobs than if we eliminated those jobs and used the same money to fund their basic income.

<comment><USER11> I don't get why Uber is better than taxi drivers - aren't they a taxi, as well ?

In London, they're cheaper than black cabs because they aren't regulated. If they're taxi, they should be regulated - same regulation, or lack of, for all.

I don't get why you think Uber is not a taxi ?

<comment><USER10> I don't think it's better, but the signs are that the typical consumer does. If Uber wasn't perceived as better by consumers, it wouldn't be experiencing the tremendous growth it is and it wouldn't be a threat to the cab industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >>>> Black cab driver Bernie Doyle, 68, said: "<..> I've been driving 42 years and I'm not about to see my trade go down the pan."

And that is the problem, Mr Doyle. The world has changed a lot in 42 years. But the cabs business didn't.

Haven't tried Uber in Manchester yet, but regular cabs are between "I just want to get out" and "bearable". Driver is usually on the phone talking foreign language, or if you are less lucky, always running on red lights, especially when the demand is high. I don't want a royal treatment, no, but at least some basic things. What I heard from friends about Uber, it doesn't have those problems.

</comment><comment><USER13> With public transport there is this concept of service, the service exists to get people from A to B in a timely, affordable fashion. There are wider benefits to society and the economy for doing this.

With this Uber protest and the way this battle is working out there has been remarkably little discussion on how technology and tradition can be aligned to move people from A to B more efficiently. It should be possible to have people have a step change in service thanks to modern technology with cab drivers able to profit more than they used to by being able to take more passengers. We could also cut down on the amount of cabs rolling around looking for rides.

We actually need some strong leadership in London to cut a deal. A deal where getting a cab is easier and cheaper for normal people, where taxi drivers make more money than previously (and still get respect for doing the knowledge), where the air quality is better and where tax revenue for London increases too. This is a problem that can be solved. If government had any technical competency then they would have seen this off a long time ago with their own 'uber' app, one where the 5% (or whatever it is that Uber get) goes straight into government coffers as taxation. Such a public sector app - had it been written - could have been shared with cities all over the world that are having problems with Uber.

</comment><comment><USER14> So I checked out uber for the first time this week to see what all the fuss is about, and it actually seems more expensive than a cab. Can anyone explain why it's so popular?

Bonus points: why is it so expensive? It seems like most non-professional drivers would be happy charging a lot list than a cab charges, especially if it's somewhere you're going anyway.

<comment><USER15> Which Uber service did you use? They have several you can select from though some cities only have the original Uber, UberBlack. There is UberPOP, UberX, UberBlack, UberSUV, UberVan, and UberLux.

UberX is the service that competes with cabs on price. Uber Black, SUV, VAN, and Lux are comparable to calling a limo service. Uber Pop is a low cost service offered outside of the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> All the old monopolies are being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Most of the problems they were needed for no longer even _exist_ in a world with technology.

Whether they can warp the original regulations meant to protect consumers into a superfluous protection racket to prop up their outdated, inefficient business models is still up in the air.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why on earth wouldn't normal taxi regulations apply to Uber? Surely it should be counted as essentially a cab company with a fancy app, and this would solve all of these issues?

There seems to be a distinct lack of compassion for drivers who are basically just trying to make enough money to feed their family - my dad was a cabbie for a stint. The drivers themselves are not greedy fat-cats that are using the regulations to hoard money.

The problem is, large companies have less overheads and thus can crush local competition. Perhaps this is more efficient, but not necessarily ethical or good in the long run - for instance take Tescos or Sainsburys. They've crushed local competition which cannot compete on price (because of various unethical tactics used in their supply chain which they can do due to being utterly massive), so local competition has to raise prices or go bust, and residents stop being able to afford their produce.

In fact, this is a great example of why capitalism isn't always great - <USER2> makes the biggest, baddest kid in the playground able to do what they want and tread on the little guys, and then everyone becomes stuck with them, resulting in poorer produce, less consumer choice, and the destruction of family businesses and trades.

It favours efficiency and ruthlessness, which aren't necessarily qualities that are good for anyone except shareholders.

The counter-argument would be that if people cared enough about local businesses, they'd support them, but when people are getting squeezed as they are (and remember, large companies push wages down as much as possible because they simply do not care about their workers), this becomes difficult or even impossible - and remember, capitalism incentivises the most efficient, cheapest option.

So go ahead, with the free market, allow ruthlessness and size to dominate, enjoy a soulless, miserable world dominated by giants.

<comment><USER12> That's just a guess, but maybe good lawyers combined with slow bureaucratic processes?

<comment><USER17> I'm sure. And I'm not saying that the taxi companies are 100% in the right, but there's a question of balance - fair competition versus the careers/families that would lose out.

There are better, more ethical ways to do something.

<comment><USER12> Yeah that's true. It's a bit like Industrial Revolution, when workers were breaking and burning machines. Progress has a cost, and it's not completely morally right in this case.

But drivers, companies and governments are picking the wrong fight. Even if they shut down Uber, there will be more similar companies which will find loopholes and etc. It's better to spend the energy, time and money on making cabs more attractive and competitive. Because like I've said in other comment, cabs haven't changed in the last decades, while everything else around us has changed a lot in the last decade alone. Less than 10 years ago, a cellphone playing MP3 was omg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Strangely enough, this just seems to be a London thing. In Southampton we have a variety of cab companies, they all use meters and a few of them have apps to order them and track where the car is right now.

</comment><comment><USER19> Actual title is 'London's anti-Uber taxi protest brings traffic to standstill' \- in one place, for about an hour. That's a long way from 'gridlock'.

</comment><comment><USER20> They should be improving their service or reducing prices. If you want to lose, protesting, blocking traffic, and eliminating service is how you do it.

<comment><USER18> They can't. They have legal restrictions on how they have to operate which Uber either don't have to obey or don't think they have to obey.

This is what the protest is about. Not just "OMG competition!"

<comment><USER21> I don't think that is what these protests are about at all. For instance, in France, the protest leaders have called on instituting required time-delays for all Uber pickups(15 minutes). They've also called for a nationalized taxi hailing application that would exclude Uber, and have called for Uber's app to be disallowed from showing driver locations.

Similarly, Britain's protesters have demanded Uber to do away with fare estimates.

Notice how these complaints aren't in the form of: Let us do what Uber is doing. Rather, they take the form: Stop letting Uber do what it's doing. The Taxi owners want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to continue to protect their business models by placing artificial limits on competition, and they seek to disallow novel technology that would make their fare structure less opaque.

<comment><USER18> The 'official' line I heard on Radio 4 this morning was that it was the uneven playing field that had got them riled up, and that minicab operators were also fuming because they had been restricted from operating in this way too,

But you're right, the individual cab drivers probably just want competition outlawed.

>> they seek to disallow novel technology that would make their fare structure less opaque.

FYI - In London the fare structure is not opaque, it's set out on a notice in every Taxi and the meter is set up and sealed by TFL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I Brazil I also spent 1h more to go to work due to an Uber Protest. They were maybe 20 cabs, enough to stop a main street. I hate you guys!

</comment><comment><USER23> Ummmmm [http://blog.uber.com/UberTAXI](http://blog.uber.com/UberTAXI)</comment>


Iambic Keying – Debunking the Myth [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://morsex.com/pubs/iambicmyth.pdf <comment><USER2> TLDR; The efficiency gains from using true iambic keying are overstated. In addition, at rates above 30 wpm it is very difficult to actually use a true iambic method, so it's better to quit trying and use a non-iambic method.

I find this to be very timely, since I'm currently studying to upgrade from General to Extra and also planning to finally master Morse code. (By "master," I mean get to the skill level my dad demonstrated.) I learned to send on a straight key and never graduated to a bug, let alone an iambic paddle. I haven't used Morse code for almost three decades now, so I will be relearning how to send it. I never got much faster than about 15 wpm previously.

My dad could send and receive Morse code at around 70 - 80 wpm. He used a two- paddle iambic keyer very skilfully, but I have no idea whether he actually "squeezed" on letters like F, and he's gone now so I can't ask. I'll have to start practicing again to figure out what works best.

Also, updated link to Chuck K7QO's article: [http://k7qo.net/sending.pdf](http://k7qo.net/sending.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Sending with iambic keying is difficult if you have a crappy set of paddles. There is a surprising number of people producing paddles, so get yourself a good set. In other words, not Bencher.

<comment><USER2> Good to know. I have inherited a couple of paddles from my dad, including (IIRC) one made by Vibroplex. I'll be digging those out of the box soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unrelated but this article is a diamond in the rough for hams. I have to applaud the fairly concise writing style and actual use of math.

I've recently gotten in to amateur radio and it has been exhausting reading the wordy and anecdotal treaties of many "expert" hams on various topics. Not only are the works filled with jargon, but most posts start out with a tenuous link to actual science/technology and then immediately dive into very specific anecdotal experience.

I'm interested in finding better sources of info so if you or your club have good technical pieces on the web please let me know.

</comment><comment><USER5> _iambic keying is clever, and fun, but of very little practical value._

True. Also, _amateur radio_ is clever, and fun, but of very little practical value. I've been a ham for almost 30 years. I like to compare it to sailing. If your goal is to get some place fast, you should choose just about any other conveyance besides a sailboat. Messing about with radios is loads of fun, but practicality is rarely a major consideration.</comment>


The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge (1939) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf <comment><USER2> Reminds me of a bit from Larry Niven's _Protector_ :

> _" We want access to Earth's records on the study of Mars. Hell, Garner, the > Phobos cameras might already show where the Outsider came down! We want > permission to search Mars from close orbit. We want permission to land."_

> _" What have you got so far?"_

> _Nick snorted. "There's only two things they can agree on. We can search all > we want to - from space. For letting us examine their silly records they > want to charge us a flat million marks!"_

> _" Pay it."_

> _" It's robbery."_

> _" A Belter says that? Why don't you have records on Mars?"_

> _" We were never interested. What for?"_

> _" What about abstract knowledge?"_

> _" Another word for useless."_

> _" Then what makes you want useless knowledge enough to pay a million marks > for it?"_

> _Slowly Nick matched his grin. "It's still robbery. How in Finagle's name > did Earth know they'd need to know about Mars?"_

> _" That's the secret of abstract knowledge. You get in the habit of finding > out everything you can about everything. Most of it gets used sooner or > later. We've spent billions exploring Mars."_

<comment><USER3> Off topic, but I found it interesting that James Corey's Expanse series also has "Belters"

<comment><USER4> It's pretty much a standard term at this point in that category of sci-fi. For example, Ben Bova also calls them belters.

<comment><USER2> Are there any works of fiction where people who live in the asteroid belt aren't called belters?

I vaguely remember Lois McMaster Bujold writing a book about genetically engineered humans named Quaddies, since they have four arms (in lieu of two arms and two legs) who work in free-fall, but I think that was an interstellar series, and they weren't just in an asteroid belt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > through-out the whole history of science most of the really great > discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been > made by men and women who were driven not by the de-sire to be useful but > merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.

Came across this yesterday with the importance of curiosity in a video about education. [0]

> "Curiosty is the of engine of achievment."

[0]: [https://youtu.be/wX78iKhInsc?t=6m21s](https://youtu.be/wX78iKhInsc?t=6m21s)

<comment><USER6> Have often wondered about this.

What does Internet do to curiosity? Or what happens when curiosity is quenched withing seconds of being aroused? Is the instant access to knowledge cutting short the thoughtful and deliberate pursuit of answers, a habit which might have been the hidden source of our great discoveries of the past...

<comment><USER7> >What does Internet do to curiosity? Or what happens when curiosity is quenched withing seconds of being aroused?

For a substantial part of the population, this happens:

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wiki- hole](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wiki-hole)

If you have ready access to information, you hunger for more, because after you understand one concept or fact, you NOTICE all the other things that depend on that, be they new things building on top or inconsistencies in other fields conflicting with your new knowledge

<comment><USER8> > _For a substantial part of the population, this happens:_

For an even more substantial part of the population, the "I'll pretend like I know things just because I can look them up in wikipedia or some such source" happens.

<comment><USER9> Which is great! The brain becomes relegated to the role of a _cache_ instead of working as the whole of an individual's knowledge.

<comment><USER10> > _The brain becomes relegated to the role of a cache instead of working as > the whole of an individual 's knowledge._

I have a pile of physics textbooks sitting nearby but that doesn't make me a qualified physicist. Availability of knowledge isn't worth a thing if it's never been integrated into your mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a more thorough study of the scientific and intellectual productivity of people studying whatever they want and fooling around? This makes me wonder about the culture I saw in graduate school where many professors seemed spend more time getting funding and publications than research. Was there a time when it was different?

<comment><USER12> > This makes me wonder about the culture I saw in graduate school where many > professors seemed spend more time getting funding and publications than > research. Was there a time when it was different?

I don't have any objective data about how much time was spent on grants as a function of time, but just from talking to faculty (in astronomy and physics) the universal feeling is that they spend more of their time on grants and proposals than they did in the past. I am not entirely sure what the dominant cause is, but it is probably partly that grant overheads can contribute significantly to a university/college operating budget. It also wouldn't surprise me if the overall cost of doing research is increasing, owing to the need to obtain cutting-edge equipment which is generally not yet able to take advantage of economies of scale. Lastly, the size of academia has increased while funding levels have not kept up (this is particularly true in the past ~decade) so the available funding per researcher has dropped, making grants much more competitive. When grant acceptance rates drop below 10% (as is true in some fields), you have to spend a lot more time on the proposal to stand a chance of winning a grant, compared to how much time you might need to spend if the acceptance rate was in the 25-40% range.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I always think of number theory when the idea of uselessly abstract knowledge comes up - it was the purest of pure math for centuries and it was absurd to suggest that things like the nature of prime numbers and the divisibility of integers would somehow be applied in industry. Then computers and cryptography came around and now there's a 2 trillion dollar ecommerce industry that depends on prime factorization being hard so people don't steal your bank information.

</comment><comment><USER14> Considering that I am currently procrastinating on HN, this is probably the last thing I need to read right now.

</comment><comment><USER15> I apply the "One man's trash is another man's treasure" to knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER16> My favourite source of useful useless knowledge:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/)</comment>


Google To Sell Chrome OS on a Subscription-Based Model? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thechromesource.com/google-to-sell-chrome-os-on-a-subscription-base-model/ <comment><USER2> This is about selling computers like phones. Little to nothing upfront and monthly payments for amortization and service. Having a Chrome netbook/tablet delivered to you for monthly payments of $10/mo. to $20/mo. for a couple years is a game-changer. I wonder if they're Google branded?

<comment><USER3> Exactly, which is why I hope it doesn't take off. The subsidy model has been lousy for mobile phone buyers; manufacturers have greatly reduced incentives to provide support after the initial sale because you're locked in for the contract. If you want a computer on an installment plan, use a credit card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This headline is a bit confusing: Chrome OS is probably "less than free"; the rumor is that the _devices_ will be subscription-based (aka rent-to-own). Next up: customers complaining about ETFs on their "free" netbooks.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not much money. $10/mo is $360 per machine if they replace the machines every three years. Plus $75 in search revenue ($25/yr) is $435. For $20/mo that total goes up to $795. That gets them up above the typical cost for a netbook, so they could start making money. But factor in maintenance costs, server overhead, etc... seems like pretty slim margins.

That said, if they can get large swaths of people using Google who previously couldn't afford a computer, they could be expanding their reach massively. So maybe it's worth it in that sense. To acquire virgin lifetime Google users.

Edit: I guess they're selling them with an upfront cost, I missed that. But it's an interesting calculation nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds great, I'd still like a "buy" option.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apple to release all iOS libraries under LGPL?

... Rumors are circulating!

<comment><USER8> Can a question mark make an unsubstantiated rumour into journalism?

<comment><USER9> Someone needs to do a Geico parody with this line.

Host: Could switching to Geico save you 15% or more on car insurance?

Host: Can a question mark make an unsubstantiated rumour into journalism?

 _Scene showing boy on the street hawking newspapers with the headline "President is an alien?"_

 _Cut to oval office, president drinking coffee. He reads the newspaper, spits coffee out_

 _Cut to host_

Host: Hm.. That wasn't a good example, was it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting approach, may have potential.</comment>


Walmart Announces Purchase of Parcel, a Same-Day and Last-Mile Delivery Company - <AUTHOR> https://corporate.walmart.com/article/walmart-announces-the-acquisition-of-parcel-a-technology-based-same-day-and-last-mile-delivery-company <comment><AUTHOR> See also: [https://blog.walmart.com/business/20171003/who-is-parcel- wha...](https://blog.walmart.com/business/20171003/who-is-parcel-what-this- delivery-company-means-to-walmart)</comment>


More than a million pro repeal net neutrality comments were likely faked - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jeffykao/more-than-a-million-pro-repeal-net-neutrality-comments-were-likely-faked-e9f0e3ed36a6 <comment><USER2> Of course they were. What else would you expect of this administration?

<comment><USER3> Impressive that you already know who is responsible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Who is posting these?</comment>


NASA to Unveil New Exoplanet Discovery Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.space.com/35779-nasa-exoplanet-findings-announcement.html <comment><USER2> We've buried this post so that we can discuss the real thing tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER3> NASA press release about the upcoming press conference: [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news- confere...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-host-news-conference- on-discovery-beyond-our-solar-system)

I find it surprising that the details are embargoed by the journal Nature until tomorrow. I haven't heard of such an embargo before - anyone know why this might be? Maybe it's related to Nature publication timing, or waiting until Nature's own press release is ready?

<comment><USER4> It's not uncommon for research to be embargoed (there is a whole wikipedia page on it), that said it's not super common either.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo_(academic_publishing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embargo_\(academic_publishing\))

<comment><USER3> Hmm, that page refers to an embargo on the entire paper, not to the publication or dissemination of crucial findings. I'm not sure it completely applies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It still blows my mind that we can detect planets orbiting an entirely different stars. And more so - that these tiny pixels that we can just barely detect, are full-fledged planets that may have atmospheres, water cycles, and who knows what else.

<comment><USER6> Yeah!!!

The way in which we detect them is so incredible: either by noticing the periodic slight decrease in light as the exoplanet orbits its star, or by noticing the periodic slight wobble of the star around it and its expolanet's joint center of mass. When you think of what a tiny difference we're measuring, of something so dim and so far away, and the fact that we're able to actually resolve those things––it's just staggering.

<comment><USER7> Imagine there's an alien civilisation (very similar to our levels of tech) on that exoplanet, looking back at us.

Would they be able to detect Earth? How about Jupiter?

<comment><USER8> If they have a 10 meter telescope in space, they may very well have the technology to see Earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could be something very interesting. There have already been big exoplanet discoveries, such as planets in the habitable zone, and those with water and oxygen, so this announcement should be beyond that. Looking forward to it.

<comment><USER10> Oxygen i think is the missing piece. If that's the announcement, that's freaking huge. Oxygen is reactive, it does not exist in any sort of quantity without something regularly replenishing it. It wouldn't be unquestionable proof, but very very strong evidence for photosynthesis, so, you know. Life.

<comment><USER9> I believe expolanets with oxygen have already been discovered:

[https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen- at...](https://phys.org/news/2016-08-venus-like-exoplanet-oxygen-atmosphere- life.html)

<comment><USER10> You're right, and they've discovered the replenishment mechanism, "the planet is flooded with ultraviolet or UV light. UV light breaks apart water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen" \- so no evidence of life.

 _edit_

Not exactly replenishment, water gets broken up into H and O, some of the H streams off into space, leaving stray Os floating around. In that case everything is just slowly boiling away into space.

<comment><USER11> My understanding of that article (and the associated preprint [1]) is that they have _not_ detected oxygen, but are setting up theoretical models and simulations to account for oxygen that might be detectable in the future.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03906](https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03906)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really cool. One day I'm going to build my own observatory and observe star light curves and survey for supernovae.

<comment><USER13> I hope that you do exactly that.

<comment><USER12> Definitely planning on it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That website brings my MBP to a crawl. I was sure I would have to do a hard reboot after Chrome stopped responding for several seconds. For some reason, they want to know my location, they have popups that don't close, and more ads than content.

Oh and there was nothing to be learned beyond the headline.

</comment><comment><USER13> They've discovered fossil fuels on another planet. Oil companies have already launched oil drilling probes.

<comment><USER15> Because oil tanker starships with crews in cold sleep passing near uninhabited planets worked out so well in fiction, we just have to try it in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> An announcement of an announcement. Do we have any examples of announcement of announcement of announcement?

<comment><USER17> The linked news story is exactly that.

<comment><USER18> And in fact, this very post is an announcement of an announcement of an announcement of an announcement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wonderful news. Probably more exoplanets being discovered, perhaps more closer to Earth or Earth-like, and some solid and innovative space science. Cue the "lame not aliens" crowd who really diminish NASA's amazing achievements for reasons I can't fathom.</comment>


Keeping Count: The TechCrunch Layoff Tracker - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/17/keeping-count-the-techcrunch-layoff-tracker/

<comment><USER2> Is this an abnormal frequency of startup layoffs, or is this sensationalism citing an unlabeled red graph? What were layoffs one year ago?

</comment><comment><USER3> this is unfortunately a part of the game.

good luck to those that have been let go.</comment>


California Labor Code Section 2870 in light of forced arbitration agreements - <AUTHOR> Would it ever be possible for an employer to use a forced arbitration agreement to resolve a dispute regarding the employee's claim on IP that would otherwise qualify as a non-assignable invention? <comment><USER2> It would be great to hear a lawyer's take on this. It seems to me like section 2872 is relevant to this, since it requires that the assignment part of the contract explicitly disclaim any protected inventions per 2870, and that contract language is presumably what would be looked at during arbitration. But I am definitely not a lawyer.

EDIT: It also seems like you'd have to be really unlucky to get an arbitrator corrupt enough to go against the language in section 2870.</comment>