YouTube now defaults to HTML5 video - <AUTHOR> http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html <comment><USER2> What joy it is to finally uninstall Flash. The last time I was this happy to uninstall crappy software was when I realized that I no longer needed RealPlayer.

For those that don't know it, RealPlayer was a very popular proprietary media player (with its own proprietary formats) circa 2000. The company's stock was worth $380 a share in 2000; it's now worth $6.

The only explanation for RealPlayer's popularity was its DRM I think; lots of commercial users wanted the DRM.

But it got more bloated with every release, and I had to go through its countless option settings every time I updated it to disable all the sneaky ways they came up with to violate user privacy. I'm relieved that we no longer need either Flash or RealPlayer.

<comment><USER3> RealPlayer was the coolest thing I'd ever seen when it came out in the mid 90s. It was the first streaming music player, as far as I know. Of course they later became corrupted by the advertising dark side, like every other internet company. But they were cool for a time. This was also before everyone decided that the browser would be the only internet platform.

<comment><USER4> Not only was it an awesome streaming client, I found it to be pretty sweet client for ripping/burning CDs at that time. It was sad to see it fall, but once Winamp got a bit more polished I never looked back.

<comment><USER5> I remember at one point Real Player had a redesign, it was sleek, well integrated and could stream all kinds of content very appropriately.

<comment><USER6> It also supported SMIL with real-time buffering of content from independent sources. You could create a small XML file that dynamically and seamlessly streamed video excerpts from multiple servers, appearing as one stream.

<comment><USER5> Hehe, SMIL, the early days of web defined standards. Our university tried to enforce its usage but it never caught up. Multimedia streaming at that time was still an oddity. Never be too early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I especially like about the HTML5 player is the ability to change the playback speed. It is extremely useful for watching lectures & talks.

<comment><USER8> I use this constantly when I'm watching tutorials and how-tos. It makes picking up the info you need so much faster.

I also recently discovered that the Crocodile Hunter at 1/2 speed is freaking _hilarious_. e.g.,

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIMgXv89VU&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLIMgXv89VU&feature=youtu.be&t=39m55s)

<comment><USER9> The Crocodile Hunter at 1/2 speed is amazing. I would love it if there was a listing of all videos that are hilarious at 1/2 speed.

<comment><USER10> NDT sounds completely smashed when at half speed -

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > we can support multiple content protection technologies on different > platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster and > smoother.

Man this line is hilarious. Your DRM to block users from keeping the videos you are sending them is not making the experience faster _or_ smoother. Don't try to pass off user-hostile proprietary blobs restricting the data on their computer as anything but a terrible blow to a free and open Internet.

You can say, "yay drm", but say "yay drm", not "yay drm, bullshit about faster and smoother". At least own up to the fact you are crippling UX for personal gain.

<comment><USER12> He's not being misleading. It's clear from the context of what Richard Leider was saying that "faster" in this scenario means "faster than the old YouTube + Adobe Flash" approach. His point of comparison isn't a totally DRM free scenario.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Excellent. It's always been weird having a mobile device run YouTube more responsively than an GBP1500 laptop because the latter had to run the Flash plugin.

<comment><USER14> Now only if Amazon/Netflix would drop Silverlight all would be right with the world.

<comment><USER15> Netflix has HTML5 support for Safari and iirc IE.

<comment><USER16> The "HTML5" support requires proprietary binary blob that has no standard API (besides an API to launch it with opaque data from a proprietary server) and is licensed only to selected companies.

Basically it's as much HTML5 as <object data="swf"> was HTML4.

It's supported only by DRM vendors: Google (WideVine), Safari (FairPlay) and Microsoft (PlayReady) and doesn't work in open-source browsers (not even in Chromium or custom WebKit builds).

<comment><USER17> Netflix works fine in Chrome on Linux. What do you mean by "licensed only to selected companies?"

<comment><USER16> Works, because Google is a DRM vendor (WideVine).

You can't make a web browser that plays Netflix without signing contract with one of the DRM vendors that Netflix supports, or rolling your own DRM and convincing Netflix (and distributors that pull their strings) to adopt it.

For example if you compile Chromium from source it won't work (at best Netflix will send you encrypted blobs that you won't know how to decrypt and there is no public spec for it anywhere).

From video publisher's perspective it's locked-up as well. To have your own video DRM-protected with the same tech as Netflix you'd have to get a license from Google (for Chrome WideVine DRM support), Apple (for Safari FairPlay) and Microsoft (for IE PlayReady DRM).

Netflix's playback without "without plugins" is achieved not by removing plugins and having open standards, but merely by convincing browser vendors to bundle closed DRM code with their browsers. Technically it's more like Chrome shipping bundled Flash, but fortunately nobody calls that a "HTML5 native Flash without plugins!"

<comment><USER18> Where do you cut the line? It's a plugin because it uses the plugin api? And were it integrated in the main binary, would you call it a "plugin-less proprietary HTML extension"? I think the main differentiation point is that it's made by the browser authors, shipped with the browser, updated with the browser. That, to me, means that it's not a "plugin", even though it uses the plugin interface; it's an implementation detail.

<comment><USER16> "Plug-in" in the web browser context also had a wider meaning of "3rd party proprietary binary blob, that has limited portability, and adds functionality and APIs that are not part of Web standards."

You're right, technically EME's integration and distribution are different, so it's not a plug-in in that sense. However, the other downsides that were associated with plug-ins have remained the same in the built-in ex-plugins.

Browser plug-ins get so much hate not only because they're pain to install/upgrade, but also because they're usually not as open and portable as the rest of the platform.

(a bit meta, but term for this conflation of meanings is _disguised query_ : [http://lesswrong.com/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_insid...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_inside) )

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hooray! I delete all cookies on session end and I don't have flash installed. Having to remember to go to youtube.com/html5 every time I start a new session has been frustrating.

Also, the HTML5 player has a nice feature to change the rate at which the video plays, which makes watching long talks a lot easier.

<comment><USER20> I much prefer to have the option exposed in the UI, but you can do this with any HTML5 video element by setting the video element's playbackRate. Often, it's as easy as 'document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].playbackRate = 1.5'. I have a bookmarklet that does exactly this, so I love to see HTML5 video being the default more and more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The HTML5 player is fantastic and I have been using it for as long as I can remember (since it became an option). My favourite feature is the playback speed controls, when trying to learn a song on guitar, I can follow along with the live performance or tutorial to learn how to play, absolutely invaluable.

Every day the number of reasons to keep Flash installed gets lower and lower. I still keep it installed on my machine for the occasional site that still uses it, but Flash's days are definitely numbered. When a site as big as Youtube stops using it, that is when you know there isn't long left. Fortunately Adobe realised HTML5 is the future a while ago and have been creating some great tools.

<comment><USER22> Since you are using youtube to learn songs on guitar, you might try this out (I made it):

[http://tunetranscriber.com](http://tunetranscriber.com)

Let's you do marks and loops as well as using the playback controls.

<comment><USER23> That's cool. What did you use to slow the music/vid?

<comment><USER22> The YouTube slowdown is just using the YouTube API. For mp3, it is using the html5 file and audio Apis, and a JavaScript port of the sound touch library. Everything is done in client side javascript, there is currently no application server, just a static site.

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the info. I was thinking of building something doing somewhat similar stuff but I think it'd have to be sever side in my case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Wait - so youtube is behind the porn industry by only 4.5 years?

[http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_takes_a_blow_as...](http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/flash_takes_a_blow_as_porn_industry_backs_html_5)

<comment><USER25> This actually makes sense; the porn industry has much higher earnings per user and hence a much greater loss due to lower conversion for those who don't have Flash installed. So for them, it's a "my hair is on fire" kind of thing. Whereas for Youtube et al., it's a nice-to-have.

<comment><USER24> But won't it be same if you look at percentages?

Unless you hypothise that porn users not having flash installed is somehow a larger percentage compared to average web user not having flash installed?!

<comment><USER26> Don't forget Flash doesn't work on mobile ;)

<comment><USER27> This is by far the largest reason for the delay. If you watch some youtube videos on your work computer, no big deal. But if you need to jack off at work, you had better use your own phone if you care about keeping your job at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've kept Flash around for the oddball site here and there that still requires it, but this week I decided to uninstall rather than patch it[1].

[1] - [https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash- player/apsa1...](https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash- player/apsa15-01.html)

<comment><USER29> I like to unwind occasionally with browser based flash games so this is not an option for me.

<comment><USER30> Glad I'm not the only one. The most relaxing way I know of to open up strange, frequent security vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER31> haha : )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> HTML 5 videos on youtube take forever to start for me and would just stay at a buffering screen when I use the seekbar. This is in Chrome. I haven't tried another browser but it has made my youtube experience terrible compared to what is use to be with Flash.

<comment><USER5> The only regular issue I have with html5 player is buffering with seeking, some times things get stuck. I often resort to youtube-dl `xsel` | dmenu | mpv to help both cpu usage and streaming quality.

<comment><USER33> That seems to be a problem with youtube in general. I see that behavior all the time. Several local friend of mine also have these seeking problems, too, so it may depend on the particular cache servers you end up seeing.

I think the problems started when they changed to the "adaptive" rate stuff; the players don't don't download the entire video file anymore, and instead they buffer in segments. Not only does this remove the ability to pre-buffer the entire video, the client seems to get out of sync with the server. The client ends up waiting forever, but the server isn't sending anything.

Fortunately, I was able to switch many of my friends over to youtbe-dl, and that fixed everything. Unfortunately, the article mentions the idiotic "encrypted medfia extensions" a one of the reasons for the changes to youtube; I wonder what additional useless hoops youtube-dl will end up having to have to jump through.

<comment><USER5> No I meant another kind of issue. The "smart" adaptive buffering was a problem, but 90% of the time you could force seek youtube flash player and wait for the stream to accumulate enough for the video to continue.

With HTML5 (under firefox nightly) sometimes it's really stuck and no acceptable amount of seek and/or wait had any effect on it, so I believe it's another kind of bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Click to play now doesn't work in Chrome, anyone have a workaround or a known- working extensions for click-to-play for html5 youtube?

<comment><USER35> If you're fine with downloading YouTube videos for playing locally, I've found 4K Video Downloader works well, at least under OS X. You'll wind up with plain H.264/AAC MPEG-4 files.

[https://www.4kdownload.com/download](https://www.4kdownload.com/download)

<comment><USER36> How does that solve the problem of videos autoplaying when you access the page?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Now I have to figure out how to fix HTML5 audio. For some reason it always uses the wrong alsa sound device, even though Flash and all my other apps use the right one. This is how I fixed it for all the other media:

      ~$ cat .asoundrc
     pcm.!default {
         type hw
         card 1
     }
     ctl.!default {
         type hw
         card 1
     }

Also, I just checked the site and it's still using Flash for me in Firefox 35.0 (???) _edit_ Ah, they do it for Beta versions of Firefox.

<comment><USER38> Almost all YouTube videos work in HTML5 mode on Firefox and have for a while, it just wasn't HTML5 by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Make that HTML with DRM and non standard & non-portable extensions.

I think I actually prefer a working, portable Flash-based solution to that.

In not sure which are worst: Netflix and Google for pushing this bullshit into the browser & standard or uneducated users for swallowing it whole.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sorry dudes. This is not killing Flash. Last time I checked, porn sites were still using it.

<comment><USER41> Pornhub has switched to HTML5

<comment><USER40> I stand corrected, then. Should watch more porn it seems :P

<comment><USER42> I tried it and they are still using flash, as is every other site I know of. Perhaps they mean there is an html5 option somewhere, but I don't see it.

<comment><USER41> Works for me (just tried it, was fun)

Try disabling adblock, it seems to break their html5 streaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> That's great. Now for HTML5 support in all the streaming platforms for live streams. That's going to be another nail in the flash coffin. And it will do wonders for integrating the delivery to both web and mobile clients from the same sources.

<comment><USER44> As soon as there's an alternative for games, flash will finally be dead.

<comment><USER43> That alternative is already here, javascript. I think that flash is being kept alive now for two reasons only: live video and flash components used for corporate bits & pieces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Am I the only one that noticed: "<h2> Moving to <iframe> embeds</h2>" I'm not entirely sure if it's a little joke or genuine mistake?

Regardless, this is absolutely great. I haven't had flash for a while now and so it makes me happy to feel that HTML5 really is a valid replacement for most things.

<comment><USER46> I noticed it, I thought it might have been a mistake but all of the other paragraph headers are <a> tags and not <h2> so I think it's a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Now if only Facebook did the same, I could finally use Safari without switching to iPad mode!

</comment><comment><USER48> Uninstalled Flash Player with an evil laugh on my home iMac only to reinstall it when my kid's games needed it. What is the alternative to flash for games that run on PBS Kids, etc. ?

<comment><USER49> Google Chrome comes packaged with a Flash player (at least on OS X), so here is what I do, very simple: no Flash, use Safari most of the time, use Chrome as a fall back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is really interesting news and I think signals what will be a really large change in digital video in the next few years.

Moving from flash to HTML5 adaptive bitrate is not trivial task and if you are familiar with MSE/EME, it shows how powerful the browser has become in delivering rich video content, either pre-recorded or live streaming.

With this, it seems to me there is a big gap now for encoding to new adaptive codecs, like MPEG-DASH and tooling to make something like livestreaming easy to do without flash.

<comment><USER51> EME is really garbage (it's all about DRM), while MSE is actually useful. They shouldn't be mixed together.

Do you know by the way, is MPEG-DASH patent encumbered or not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Well, now I can delete Chrome.

<comment><USER53> I fail to see the relation between the OP and your message.

<comment><USER52> The only reason I kept Chrome around is because I occasionally wanted to watch Youtube videos that were Flash only. I wasn't going to install Flash system- wide, so I was grateful for Google's approach of maintaining a private Flash instance. Now, that usecase is become less of a problem, so I can ditch Chrome, which I never used otherwise.

<comment><USER54> >I occasionally wanted to watch Youtube videos that were Flash only

Are there any examples of flash only video? I used to use a 3rd party extension that would show videos in html5 and i never came accross any video that required me to load it in flash. I'm curious how Youtube tries to deliver those videos now.

<comment><USER52> There used to be many. I haven't encountered one in a while, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> > Encrypted Media Extensions and Common Encryption - In the past, the choice > of delivery platform (Flash, Silverlight, etc) and content protection > technology (Access, PlayReady) were tightly linked, as content protection > was deeply integrated into the delivery platform and even the file format. > Encrypted Media Extensions separate the work of content protection from > delivery, enabling content providers like YouTube to use a single HTML5 > video player across a wide range of platforms. Combined with Common > Encryption, we can support multiple content protection technologies on > different platforms with a single set of assets, making YouTube play faster > and smoother.

Has any streaming platform actually rolled out an implementation of this? And has anyone found a way to break it?

<comment><USER56> _Has any streaming platform actually rolled out an implementation of this? And has anyone found a way to break it?_

Note EME isn't "DRM" per-se. Its an interface to enable custom DRM implementations. There's not "one thing" to break. I'd assume Youtube would use Widevine (another google company) which supports EME.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Next up (I hope): Twitch.

Then I think I'm done with that extension.

<comment><USER58> Twitch streams in HTML5 for me on Safari, if Flash isn't installed. No comments, though.

<comment><USER57> That's so weird, why would the comments of all things require flash!?

<comment><USER58> Probably because it's easier than long polling and more widely supported than web sockets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I've disabled Flash since the beginning of this year, an idea inspired by someone else [1]. So far it's been working out great and I was pleasantly surprised I've had very little need to turn it back on.

Some notable issues I've run into:

\- play.spotify.com, I used to use the web player on my computer, it requires flash sadly. I've started using their OS X app.

\- twitch.tv if I occasionally watch a stream, also needs flash. I tend to turn it on for the duration.

It's pretty great and I'm enjoying better battery life, more efficient use of cpu.

[1] [https://twitter.com/shurcool/status/550804694793060354](https://twitter.com/shurcool/status/550804694793060354)

</comment><comment><USER60> Now if they only defaulted to theatre mode. I don't care about the related videos as much as they think I do, and there's still room for a few once they get shifted underneath the larger player.

<comment><USER61> There's browser extensions to do this

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Steve Jobs predicted this in 2010 - [https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts- on-flash/](https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/)

<comment><USER63> Steve may have been a tad unrepresentative that "open video" issue.

Remember, this is the guy that controlled QuickTime and never opened it up. That was a bit of problem for open video supporters.

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

<comment><USER63> From Apple itself ...

"proprietary acceleration techniques"

[http://web.archive.org/web/20010605082836/www.pa.msu.edu/~ha...](http://web.archive.org/web/20010605082836/www.pa.msu.edu/~hamlin/facts/1stltr.html)

<comment><USER63> [https://lists.apple.com/archives/QuickTime- VR/2004/Jul/msg00...](https://lists.apple.com/archives/QuickTime- VR/2004/Jul/msg00113.html)

<i>More than 250 million copies of QuickTime 6 have been downloaded in > less than two years since its release. According to Frost & Sullivans > 2004 Global Media Streaming Platform Report, between 2002 and 2003 > Microsofts and Real Networks worldwide market share percentages were > either stable or declining while QuickTimes market share increased to > 36.8 percent, a close second to Microsoft. Real Networks came in third > place with less than 25 percent of the worldwide streaming market > share.</i>

Apple was never an "open source/open technology" white knight in video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have flash set to "click to play" so flash videos only load when I click on them. I dislike the HTML5 because it means videos always autoplay. I hate autoplaying video.

<comment><USER64> It might be a step backwards at the moment, but it's pretty much a sure thing that browsers (or at least extensions) will have support for HTML5 click to play.

A whitelist + click for sound would be pretty much exactly what I want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Hah, the player is the least of my issues with the service. And I hope this means they won't get rid of the Flash option altogether.

</comment><comment><USER66> People are pointing out how every site will now (optionally) need its own DRM module. So how is this not a worse situation for users than Flash? Now there will be several popular modules that will all have their own vulnerabilities, and need patching, with the added disadvantage that they don't all have the same set of eyes watching them, as Flash does now.

</comment><comment><USER51> By the way, is MPEG-DASH* patent encumbered or not? I didn't find clear answer on that. Youtube is using DASH (on the server side) to implement adaptive streaming.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_ove...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Adaptive_Streaming_over_HTTP)

<comment><USER67> MPEG-DASH is completely royality free. Find also more info on www.dash- player.com

<comment><USER51> Thanks. Do you know if this is documented anywhere?

<comment><USER67> There was an email at the MPEG-DASH mailing list where the key companies (Qualcomm, Microsoft, etc.) declared that. maybe you ask the question again on this mailing list: [https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/dash](https://lists.aau.at/mailman/listinfo/dash)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> This leaves the BBC as one of the few major sites still dependent on flash for desktop users. Ironic considering you'd expect it to be at the forefront of video delivery technology. I use IE's Developer Tools to request the site as an iPad, a much better experience.

</comment><comment><USER69> Now if only Twitter would eliminate the Flash dependency to show animated GIFs on Firefox...

</comment><comment><USER70> Wow, I almost forgot that I was using HTML5 version of youtube as a preview. I am using HTML5 preview since day 1 and I don't remember any glitches or bugs. I wonder why this switch has taken so long given many upsides and no known downside.

</comment><comment><USER71> I love the trend of "Let's fix technology. With more technology!" The constant one-up-manship and the preposterous amount of options of all these tech companies makes me yearn for the days of DOS.

<comment><USER72> You're sure that's not a reflection of growing user diversity and mainstream technology adoption rather than over-engineering?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> HTML 5, Flash or Silverlight?

[http://www.xul.fr/en/html5/html5-flash- silverlight.php](http://www.xul.fr/en/html5/html5-flash-silverlight.php)

</comment><comment><USER74> I just hope they don't remove flash support anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER75> How does this affect the mobile experience? Is viewing on an iPad / iPhone HTML5 by default? The article only really mentions the main desktop browsers.

</comment><comment><USER76> Seems like it isn't perfect yet. At least on Firefox I don't get to watch videos in 1080p anymore on Youtube with the HTML5 player.

<comment><USER77> I watched a 1080p video using HTML5 on Opera yesterday.

As a test, I just popped open the first interesting looking video on my signed-in YouTube front page (my account has been set to HTML5 for a while).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRI3Ew4BvA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRI3Ew4BvA)

I'm not a fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but the video does have Lily Cole is in 1080p. Opera 27.0.1689.54 on Win 8.1 x64.

<comment><USER76> I think it might be an issue with codecs which is why it works with some browsers and doesn't with others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> The smoother way for me to watch (at least some) youtube videos is youtube-dl and mplayer; otherwise I get a lot of "buffering".

</comment><comment><USER79> That's fine and well, but maybe Google can tell now why they very quietly cancelled YouTube Feather. It was the best way to avoid comments. It stopped working some day, and Google was supposedly working on a fix. A few weeks later, it was removed completely. Since then, radio silence.

[http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/youtube/Eae53c5AI5U](http://productforums.google.com/d/topic/youtube/Eae53c5AI5U)

</comment><comment><USER80> I still see its asking for flash if plugin is available, with firefox flash plugin on ask to activate mode.

</comment><comment><USER81> Been using html5 youtube for a while now, it's still pretty damn slow on my french ISP.

</comment><comment><USER82> from the same post,what about this I found in the comments? [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=234779)

</comment><comment><USER83> I just went to YouTube but I get the Flash version.

</comment><comment><USER84> Zoom in Safari is still kinda broken: [http://imgur.com/8pBmWpm](http://imgur.com/8pBmWpm)

Also Google Maps seriously lags on Safari. Do not like it.

</comment><comment><USER85> Took you long enough. One less Firefox addon, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER86> That's a good news!

</comment><comment><USER87> Good.

</comment><comment><USER88> Finally.

</comment><comment><USER89> About damn time.

</comment><comment><USER90> Numerous observers have shown that H.265 is better than VP9 on the quality/efficiency curve. But Google does not like to pay for real research and prefer to found alternative "free" copy-pasta codecs it controls.

[http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X26...](http://iphome.hhi.de/marpe/download/Performance_HEVC_VP9_X264_PCS_2013_preprint.pdf)

[http://fr.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/spie2014-hev- cvsvp...](http://fr.slideshare.net/touradj_ebrahimi/spie2014-hev-cvsvp9)

edit: facts will get you downvoted on HN. Nice.</comment>


Replica Ferraris Raise Ire of Auto Maker - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304617404579304421511930880 <comment><USER2> Maybe Ferrari should throw a little more money at their F1 team and not at some small Spanish mechanic making kit cars in his garage if they're worried about protecting the brand.

I really hope he can prove that he didn't affix the labels; I'd love to see Ferrari and Audi (if actually involved with the Lambo side) eat shit on this one.

The sad truth is that this poor guy will drown in legal fees even if he wins.

edit: to clarify: VW/Audi (owns Lamborghini) wasn't mentioned in the article as being involved with Ferrari's suit, however they mentioned the guy made Lambo replicas as well.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's a matter of money at Ferrari not being thrown at their F1 team. It's more a matter of not having Adrian Newey at the dawn of the newest formula of F1 cars (2009).

Kimi supposedly got an apology from Montezemolo [0] for the way he was treated/forced out of the team AFTER winning the championship for Ferrari, which I think is one of the biggest signs that they're doing ALL they can to win.

[0] [http://kimiraikkonenspace.com/2013/09/13/an-apology-from- fer...](http://kimiraikkonenspace.com/2013/09/13/an-apology-from-ferrari-boss- to-kimi/)

<comment><USER2> Not really what I meant, but I certainly agree, although that apology came as a contractual obligation for getting Kimi to sign for 2014.

I was more implying that the money spent on the lawsuit would be better spent on the brand itself, whose pedigree is driven almost entirely by racing in F1 and GT.

I don't suppose I'd find you poking around /r/formula1?

<comment><USER3> Ah sorry. I get so excited whenever someone mentions anything about F1 that I jump directly talking about it

You definitely would find me on /r/formula1! I'm oh84s

jk same username on reddit as here - cmsimike. Keeps me honest :)

<comment><USER2> > You definitely would find me on /r/formula1! I'm oh84s

I was so excited for a split second there!

same un on reddit as well :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a friend with a Ferrari. He actually tells a lot of people it's just a bodykit on a Toyota. It keeps people from thinking he's rich and/or a good robbery target.

<comment><USER5> If you don't want to appear rich or a good robbery target, why buy a Ferrari in the first place? Plenty of other rich people somehow manage to get by without such extravagant displays of wealth.

<comment><USER6> Ferraris are fun to drive.

<comment><USER7> So are go carts.

<comment><USER8> They are actually a bit more dangerous to drive on public roads though....

<comment><USER9> I'd imagine the fun parts of driving a ferrari aren't really legal on public roads in the first place

<comment><USER6> It's a grey area. You can have a great deal of fun between 0 and the posted speed limit. Acceleration, breaking and handling matter at any speed.

However a cop may judge that you are driving recklessly regardless of whether you obey specific traffic laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hasn't this been a "thing" for decades? When I was a little kid we'd get supercar magazines and they'd be full of advertisements for Ferrari and Lamborghini "kits".

<comment><USER2> The Pontiac Fiero is one of the most (in)famous cheap cars with Ferarri kits. Hell, GM knocked off the Testarossa (or Berlinetta Boxer, depending on who is arguing) for the vanilla body design.

<comment><USER11> I had a Fiero back in 1987 when I was 16. It was really a crummy car, reliability-wise, but so fun.

<comment><USER2> Well yeah, you can't goose an iron duke and expect it to run fine. You know the engine was running a quart lower because of a smaller oil pan? I had an 87 Celebrity with the same engine. That 2.5L 4 banger was great but slow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think Mr. Aguilar was being entirely truthful when he said "We don't like it [pretending the cars are Ferraris], and we think it actually devalues our product, which is something else."

This is the title for the SRC Kit Cars website: "SRC-KIT CARS ferrari lamborghini clasico hot rod piezas replica"

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't understand how people are willing to pay 40K EUR for a fake Ferrari when you can have a real F430 for 70K EUR or a very nice 308 GTS for 40K (and 355 and 360 between these prices).

Sure, maintenance may be a bit lower but I can't even begin to imagine the "resale value" of a fake one.

Due to the high volume of production of new Ferrari (compared to before), prices are now free-falling and there are models losing 15K EUR per year. So "fetching" a nice one, with low mileage, for a "reasonable price" (say between 60K and 80K) is not as far-fetched as most people think.

<comment><USER14> Because you can't _drive_ a 308. It's 30 years old, and its engine is constantly about to blow up (at least it feels that way)

And when it does, your 40k goes \ _poof\_ with it.

Source: been around somebody who owned one of these, he was much happier when he sold it and bought a corvette.

<comment><USER15> Maybe Mr. Calero should be putting new Toyota engines in legit Ferrari bodies!

<comment><USER16> He'd have better luck with Nissan engines :-) (but really, Toyota's sport engines are quite good)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would the design of a car body count as a type of intellectual property? I understand that clothing designs cannot be copyrighted or patented. Also I think house plans can be copyrighted but the look of the house itself cannot. Adding a trademarked logo to the car would be clearly wrong but what kind action could a manufacturer take against a kit vendor?

<comment><USER18> I think there are "industrial design" rights, but not sure whether they apply to car designs. There would be an obvious problem of "how similar is too similar" given that car types (sedan, wagon, coupe etc.) are broadly similar across brands.

In this case the action was based on badges (a trademark violation)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Ferraris used in Miami Vice were originally replicas, as Ferrari originally declined a request from the show for cars. After a couple seasons, Ferrari sued the folks making the replicas and offered two cars to the show as long as the replicas be destroyed.

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

</comment><comment><USER20> "Ferrari executives ... had never heard of the Spanish car mechanic and didn't know until recently what he was up to... Ferrari alerted Spanish police, who raided ... and shut him down in July, seizing 17 replica Ferraris and two replica Aston Martins."

... sounds like a measured response. Kind of like suing a person for tens of thousands of dollars for downloading a few MP3s.

<comment><USER21> > Kind of like suing a person for tens of thousands of dollars for downloading > a few MP3s.

With 13 employees and 19 cars in waiting, this doesn't sound such a small- scale operation as you seem to imply. How many Ferraris were sold in his area of operation at the time?

<comment><USER2> I don't know of a single prospective Ferrari buyer that would even give the thought of buying a Toyota kit car instead a microsecond of time. They are totally different demographics, in fact I'd say there a high chance of a real Ferrari owner to purchase one of these as a novelty.

People that buy a Ferrari are in it only for the pedigree, otherwise they'd actually buy a good supercar like a Noble or McClaren.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Judge Ronald S.W. Lew asserted that Gotham Garage can't simply manufacture Batmobiles as depicted in Batman movies, without the consent of Warner Bros., the producer of the Batman franchise."

If Warner Bros. had no intention of producing their own Batmobiles, then they were really unfair to fans. Why wouldn't they just ask for royalties from the cars and let him be?

<comment><USER23> They don't want "FAMILY KILLED IN BATMOBILE" headlines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> the problem with these kit cars are the wheelbase dimensions are all wrong, so they look like little scrunched-up midget versions of the real thing. real sports cars are long, and wide, and low.

<comment><USER25> Oh THAT"S the problem ;)

<comment><USER24> well, yeah. they would look fine and fool quite a few car enthusiasts (from the outside, anyway) if the dimensions were right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The reaction to this article is interesting. Compare it to the reaction of "copied" icons, which sometimes only look vaguely similar and are not being sold to the public but are used to dress a website.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh man, 3D printing is gonna piss off auto makers so badly in the near future!

</comment><comment><USER26> looks nothing like a ferrari</comment>


How money restricts life's pleasures - <AUTHOR> http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/07/how-money-restricts-lifes-pleasures.php <comment><USER2> So if you think about money, you enjoy chocolate less and you eat it faster, or at least so the second study mentioned says.

An alternative theory: people, when confronted with money, realize that they will not be able to enjoy more chocolate, due to the cost, and therefor rate it as being less enjoyable as a defense mechanism, to avoid the fact that they want more. They also eat it faster because they're worried that the researchers will make them pay for it.

On a slightly more logical note ... all this shows is that thinking about money reduces enjoyment of things. Presumably, richer people are able to get things without thinking about the cost, and hence money.

It would be interesting to do the same study on the rich and privileged, and see both if their average enjoyment of chocolate is lower, and if it gets even lower when they're thinking about money. Until that's done, it seems a bit extreme to say that this proves anything (except, perhaps, that worrying about money reduces enjoyment of chocolate, but I don't know if any of the subjects considered themselves rich, and how their results differed, if at all, so I can't even conclude that).

<comment><USER3> I would love to see that study that contrasts the effect of money attitudes.

In my personal experience, at least, there's a huge difference between people's attitudes - even at equivalent means. By most people's standards, I'm rich. I don't think I'm rich, but I'm not attached to the money I have, or afraid of losing it, because I know that I can lose everything tomorrow and work my way back to my position in a year. (Because I've done it!)

On the other hand, I have friends who have as much money as me, or more, but who agonize over every little thing.

I would love to see if there's a scientifically provable difference between us, or if it's just my perception.

That would lead to the question of, can healthier attitudes about money be taught? Which is something of personal interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remain a fan of Sam Walton and Ron Howard's family.

Sam Walton was a multi-billionaire. Drove around in an old pickup truck and bought his clothes at Wal-Mart. When he realized he needed some kind of plane to get to all his stores more effectively, he bought a used Piper. Treated it like a big station wagon (not an advisable thing to do). He used to fly slow and low to wherever he was going, looking for Wal-Marts along the way. If he saw one that didn't have a lot of cars in the parking lot? He would land at the nearest airport or grass strip and go over to see what was up. He had lots of money yet the money didn't have him.

Ron Howard was one of the most famous child actors from the 60s. Did his parents get him his own sitcom, tutors, and trips overseas? Nope. The Howards lived in a suburb in a modest home. Ron was expected to go to regular school like everyone else. Shooting on the Andy Griffith show was adjusted to make sure that the kid had a normal life. Sometimes his dad found work on the set doing odds and ends. All of his money was put in the bank until he got out of college.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I went homeless living on the campus (in the CS building), I discovered two things.

1) the time to get all my work done which enabled me to actually enjoy the gardens and the park benches on campus

2) I was happy

The key to being happy isn't money, but having more time. After all, time is all we really have.

<comment><USER6> and to be able to have plenty of time you need to make some millions so you do not have to work.

<comment><USER5> Or learn to live with a lot less.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asceticism>

<comment><USER7> That's really tough to sell to your kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am by no means rich, but the thing that nags me with all of this is that they seem to assume that getting rich is so you can buy expensive automobiles, huge houses (granted, I would properly buy a good car and a large house if I could) and that this alone will bring you happiness, but this seems an awfully shallow look at things.

I can't stop to wonder if one wouldn't be happier if you had a large house and a nice car but used them as a means to an end (eg a large house so that you always had space for guests, maid service so you didn't have to waste time cleaning up, etc).

All of these studies seem to find nothing more than the fact that people who have no direction in life won't get it from money - which is both true and very obvious.

</comment><comment><USER9> it's amazing how you never hear anybody who grew up poor talking about how money doesn't buy you happiness.

<comment><USER10> Don't you? [http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/10/money-cant-buy- happiness...](http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/10/money-cant-buy-happiness-so- man-gives-away-every-penny-of-his-3-million-fortune/)

<comment><USER11> "The idea that money doesn't make you happy is a lie spread by rich people so that the poor people don't kill them."

-Michael Caine

<comment><USER12> And the idea that money does make you happy is a lie spread by rich people so that the rich people don't kill themselves?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As I grew up and discovered our society (third world country, somewhere in Africa), I found out that money plays a critical part of our ecosystem.

People here like to show to other people that they have a lot of money and the best life they can ever get: Luxurious car, fancy mobile phone, expensive clothes...

Many people are spending for the exterior, more than the interior. It means that their life, is kinda fuc*ing, but they have a great car, mobile phone and they are prestigious in the society. The only thing they care about is their position and prestige in the society. They sacrifice money and comfort for it.

Since money is power and can bring prestige, and prestige is what people are looking for and think is "the best life" or "the life of superior", then money means happiness.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a nice trope, but the "money can't buy happiness" myth has been well debunked. Here's just one source, there are many more: <http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet>

<comment><USER15> It's not so much that money buys happiness, than lack of money that makes you miserable. When you have enough (60000$/year apparently), having more doesn't enhance your happiness. See this interesting TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html)

<comment><USER16> This completely gels with my experience. I like having enough money to live on comfortably: have a place that's just big enough, have money to eat out (not too expensively) when I feel like it, have enough to do something special occasionally, have enough to buy the sorts of foods I like (slightly more expensive locally produced foods, I'm a big fan of local production), have enough to buy some gadget or other if I save up for a bit. For me it's partly the saving up and appreciation of the expensive things that gives me happiness :)

I make about 55k a year, and it's enough for me. Any more and I'd stop appreciating what now takes a bit of time to save up for. :) (though I wouldn't say no to a one off cash injection for a really nice sporty weekender car ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >Money restricts us from enjoying simple pleasures in life

We can easily _choose_ to ignore money and enjoy the simple pleasures.

</comment><comment><USER18> I hate money, but it'd be nice to have more of it.

<comment><USER19> > I hate money

Money is means of exchange, you get in return for doing things. There's dishonest ways to get it (violence, fraud) - but outside of those, money is just a ticket that says "you contributed this value, as measured by the person who gave the ticket to you" - contribute immensely more value than you receive and you'll love money and be happy with it.

My wealthiest friends are honest wealthy people, who got their money as architects, doing shipping, surveying, building mines, coding, entrepreneurship, development, etc - creating value. They all contribute immensely more value than they receive in return - my best friend made $800,000 in his best year, but he facilitated about $100,000,000 of business while over-delivering across the board. When you're receiving .8% of the value you're helping build, you can be proud that you did so much and received such a small amount of it - while getting rich at the same time. Contribute much more than you receive in return, contribute a lot, receive a lot. Money isn't perfect, but it's a positive thing overall and not worth hating if you get it honestly.</comment></comment>


Confirmed: Apple and Adobe Collaborating on iPhone Flash - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/confirmed_apple_and_adobe_coll.php

<comment><USER2> So, not any more confirmed than the last five times an Adobe goon talked to the press on the subject!

<comment><USER3> well atleast you didnt get rick-rolled this time. Clicked on the comments first just to be safe!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> i don't believe it.

my guess is that adobe thinks that if they can convince everybody that flash on the iphone is a fait accompli, then apple will be forced to allow it.

reading between the lines, i think apple's objection to flash is more philosophical than technical. it's going to take more than this sort of PR stunt to make it happen.

<comment><USER5> Not technical? Flash is a piece of junk that leaks memory, crashes and causes your cpu to spike (less battery life). How is this a good thing on a iPhone?

<comment><USER4> My impression is that Flash is pretty good (technically) on Windows, it's a CPU hog on Macs, and somewhat crashy on Linux. Still, it could be worse. Think RealVideo.

But that's kind of beside the point. I'm _guessing_ that Apple's real objection to Flash on the iPhone is that they don't want Adobe to be in charge of something that important. Apple likes to be in control of their own destiny, and they're one of the few companies with the clout to get away with something like that.

iPhone is a whole new platform, in a sense. If Apple keeps Flash off of it for long enough, the developer community might make do with alternatives -- javascript, quicktime, etc -- so that Adobe's stranglehold on web media doesn't carry over to the newly burgeoning iPhone world.

I'm guessing Adobe is all too aware of this possibility, which is why they're lobbying so hard to get in there and assert their dominance.

<comment><USER6> If Adobe had bothered making a reasonable Flash player for the Mac, Apple would have a much weaker public case for not including it on the iPhone. But Adobe's long neglect of the Mac is now returning to bite them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> just one word: Standards.

Ok, a couple more: If everybody that does their very best to do the stuff they do today in flash would seriously try their hand at JavaScript the need for flash would be relegated to very few sites. And it wouldn't hurt to have browsers support H.263/H.264 natively either.

<comment><USER8> If Javascript/HTML/CSS had the cross-browser support for scripting, display, formatting, etc that Flash/Flex does, I'm sure more people would consider it a serious option.

There are many things that can be done in Flex that are impossible or extremely hard and fiddly in Javascript (and I'm not talking about animations, but about user workflow tasks like uploading a bunch of files). There are many other things that can easily be done in HTML/CSS/JS but don't _quite_ work across all major browsers. That last 1% really kills you by taking a huge chunk of time to fix.

Flex interfaces, on the other hand, work exactly the same no matter what browser you're using. Many of our clients are still stuck on IE6 because of corporate policies. Trying to reproduce our interface in Javascript would be very hard and wouldn't work properly for most of them.

To paraphrase you, if Javascript had more of the capabilities of Flash maybe Flash wouldn't be needed.

<comment><USER9> On word: typefaces. (translation: vector fonts).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If flash ever comes to the iPhone, and isn't absolutely opt-in, I will be getting rid of my iPhone. No question. Do not want.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll believe it when I actually see it - this has been said so many times before its not funny.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is only sort of good news.

On the one hand it provides Flash with a big advantage over silverlight, and Flash has _much_ better support for:

\- End users not on Windows.

\- Programmatic generation without a Windows back end.

But it also makes pure JavaScript less attractive, and that is one of the things that offers /real/ vendor politics free interoperability for rich web apps in the future.

</comment><comment><USER13> To hell with both of them. Javafx, to be open sourced...

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=javafx+open+source&...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=javafx+open+source&aq=0&oq=javafx+op)

<comment><USER14> <http://opensource.adobe.com>

<http://www.adobe.com/devnet/swf/>

<http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flv/>

Not too bad . Right?

<comment><USER13> Certainly not. I stand corrected, codeview.

Every time I read 'iPhone' I get a reflexive reaction to a closed, evil gatekeeper keeping me from doing what I want to on the plaform, and projected that onto Adobe. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fixing Flash for Mac would be even better - it's sloooow</comment>


Telegram vs. Signal vs. Status – The Secure Messaging App of the Future - <AUTHOR> https://our.status.im/the-secure-messaging-app-of-the-future/ <comment><USER2> Every time I see a decentralized app, I scan the text and sure enough it's stupid cryptocurrency again. Status appears to integrate with Ethereum.

Ethereum uses proof-of-work. Proof-of-work wastes energy intentionally as a fundamental design goal, in the middle of a climate crisis where we must use as little energy as possible. I won't say I won't use something that uses proof-of-work, e-mail often relies on proof-of-work to stop spam these days, but I will say that it makes me very skeptical and concerned about what would happen to energy expenditures if it became popular.

If you work in cryptocurrency or blockchain, please, I'm begging you, don't use proof-of-work, there has to be something better. Proof-of-stake, Filecoin's Proof-of-Replication, _anything_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most people will hear that they have to pay money to get their name and immediately close the page. Many that continue will discover they need to also use yet another cryptocurrency or will simply say "I don't know how to use bitcoin" and close the page.

I agree that Signal requiring a phone number is bad, but I have to admit they may have hit the sweet spot if what Status is proposing is the best privacy- focused alternative we can come up with. I don't care how private, how fancy your messaging app is... it's useless if you can't get the majority of your contacts on it. And frankly, I don't see anybody on my list using this.

Hell, _I_ don't even want to bother with it. I can't imagine convincing my friends.

<comment><USER4> I've barely convinced a close circle of friends to use Signal after using it for years. The latest cash injection from the former WhatsApp founder led to plenty of updates that my friends love, like the "encrypted" (iirc?) stickers made by the community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > At this point, the Telegram and Signal desktop clients are fairly basic

This is not true.

While I would never trust Telegram with sensitive data, their desktop client is by far the best IM desktop client I have ever tried. It's feature rich, native and beats Slack, Teams and any of the web/electron based clients.

<comment><USER6> The changelogs show an almost feature parity between the desktop [https://desktop.telegram.org/changelog](https://desktop.telegram.org/changelog) and the mobile [https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram- FOSS/blob/HEA...](https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram- FOSS/blob/HEAD/Changelog.md) which lead me to think that whoever wrote this article didn't make the right amount of research.

<comment><USER7> The Telegram Desktop client is definitely better than others, but it doesn't support E2EE, which is a deal breaker for many.

I (and many others) like Telegram for non-sensitive group chats accessible on mobile, laptop or desktop. But when encryption matters, those chats stay on Signal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Telegram vs Signal vs Status.... brought to you by Status

<comment><USER9> Status is the only one of the three I've never heard of. The other two are widely known. I have only used signal but I'm open to hearing why others prefer Telegram.

<comment><USER10> I think the main reason people use Telegram is network effect, lots of groups use Telegram. From a security standpoint it's atrocious, closed sourced and proprietary encryption. Which is ironic, considering there are lots of crypto- currency groups that use telegram.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's hard to take seriously any analysis that lists Telegram in a list about "secure messaging", honestly.

</comment><comment><USER6> > At this point, the Telegram and Signal desktop clients are fairly basic

This simply not true, at least for Telegram, just compare the changelogs for the desktop app [https://desktop.telegram.org/changelog](https://desktop.telegram.org/changelog) and the mobile one [https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram- FOSS/blob/HEA...](https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram- FOSS/blob/HEAD/Changelog.md) such a lie make me throw away the entire article, not to mention the author of the article.

</comment><comment><USER12> is this an advertisement?

<comment><USER13> it looks like advertisement for me

<comment><USER9> Looking at the submitter's post history it's clear they only have an account to submit links about this one product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I love that there's a "web 3.0 browser" built in Status.

Whatever this web 3.0 thing is.

</comment><comment> m-p-3 Signal tying the identity to a phone number is my main gripe about the platform, and I'll likely consider Status if the platform is as well designed as Signal

</comment><comment><USER13> what about Keybase?

<comment><USER10> Signal vs Keybase vs Status would have been a much better article, and maybe one that wasn't posted by one of the above companies.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Bit Serial CPU - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/howerj/bit-serial <comment><USER2> The PDP-8/S was a bit serial version of the popular PDP-8 minicomputer. It was introduced in 1966 and is said to be the first computer sold for under $10,000. It used discrete transistors, no integrated circuits. It was slow, with a 36 microsecond add time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8)

[http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/models/#PDP8S](http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/models/#PDP8S)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN, here is a project that I have recently finished, it is a _very_ niche CPU written in VHDL and verified to work on an [FPGA][]. It is a 16-bit [bit-serial][] CPU, which means the processor is incredibly slow taking 102 clock cycles to complete some instructions, the trade-off is that the CPU is very small, almost being free to implement in terms of floor space on the FPGA, the entire project takes just 73 slices, with the CPU itself taking 23 slices.

The cross-compiler and the cross compiled program, a [Forth][] interpreter, are available at:

<[https://github.com/howerj/bit- serial/blob/master/bit.fth](https://github.com/howerj/bit- serial/blob/master/bit.fth)>

It compiles down to an image that uses just 4802 bytes (out of 16KiB).

And a C simulator if you would like to try out the Forth interpreter but lack an FPGA to try things on is available at:

<[https://github.com/howerj/bit- serial/blob/master/bit.c](https://github.com/howerj/bit- serial/blob/master/bit.c)>

You can type:

make run

To build the C simulator and run it on a pre-compiled image. Typing 'words' and hitting return shows you a list of all defined functions.

In all likeliness the project will not have that much utility to anyone, but I have wanted to make a bit-serial CPU after completing my previous FPGA project because the architecture is quite rare nowadays and might be something of a curiosity.

[bit-serial]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit- serial_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit-serial_architecture)

[Forth]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_\(programming_language\))

[FPGA]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field- programmable_gate_array](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field- programmable_gate_array)

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


Toilet Snorkel - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/old-weird-tech-toilet-snorkel/243596/#.TkkeRHDmHM8.hackernews <comment><USER2> Who's intellectual property is this? Surely this _valuable_ idea can be monetized by it's IP holder.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get started with mechatronics? - <AUTHOR> I'm a software dev, and I recently came across videos of this coffee robot (https://www.wsj.com/articles/robot-baristas-serve-up-the-future-of-coffee-at-cafe-x-1485781201). I'm really interested in building a small scale hobby project inspired by the coffee robot, but I'm not even sure what to search for. Can anyone suggest some resources or even tell me what search strings to Google? ("Mechatronics"? "Automation engineering"? "Robot arm control"?) I'm fascinated but at a loss. <comment><USER2> I think it would be similar to diving into electronics, and particularly robotic design in general, essentially a microcosm of electrical engineering with machine tool knowledge? I am merely a biologist by degree here, but i too want to build some hobby level skill in that direction.</comment>


U.S. Team Wins First Place at International Math Olympiad - <AUTHOR> http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/07/18/imo-2016/ <comment><USER2> Original discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12101163)

</comment><comment><USER3> The best and most interesting part of this was about how they trained:

"The six student team is then brought together prior to the IMO for a three- and-one-half-week training program at Carnegie Mellon University, which is also organized by the MAA.... This year _we also included ten international students — students on IMO teams from other countries_. We paid for their airfare, hotel, food and teaching.... _bringing in the international students gives the top US students peers_. They always tell you — if you're the smartest guy in the room, you're in the wrong room. So we bring in these peers, who are actually at the same level as these top six. Of course that increases the level."

<comment><USER4> It's like the top women's college basketball teams employing male practice squads to practice against[1][2][3].

It makes total sense. You have to compete against those that are at least as good, and ideally, better than you are, to improve.

[1] [http://www.nhregister.com/article/NH/20110129/NEWS/301299942](http://www.nhregister.com/article/NH/20110129/NEWS/301299942)

[2] [http://www.annarbor.com/sports/um-basketball/male- practice-p...](http://www.annarbor.com/sports/um-basketball/male-practice- players-vital-to-the-success-of-the-womens-basketball-team/)

[3] [http://www.knoxnews.com/sports/smithey-men-find-place- with-l...](http://www.knoxnews.com/sports/smithey-men-find-place-with-lady- vols-on-practice-court-ep-413355583-360360441.html)

<comment><USER5> Or Netflix sending additional synthetic traffic to their site so that it's overdesigned by design. (and, when something goes wrong, they can turn off the synthetic traffic and immediately get a little breathing room).

<comment><USER6> ...I don't think that's a relevant analogy at all.

<comment><USER7> It is almost comically not. It is not about humans, it is not about teams and it is not about training for a competition. Just about more of something so you have reserves. He might as well have said: "Leave space in your suitcase, so you can buy souvenirs."

<comment><USER8> > Just about more of something so you have reserves. He might as well have > said: "Leave space in your suitcase, so you can buy souvenirs."

You seem to have missed the point of the practice by a good ways. It's about making sure your site can handle X amount of load by exposing it to X amount of load, which you manufacture if necessary. That is the same concept as exposing your math students to the competition you want them to be trained against rather than the inadequate competition you happen to have on hand.

<comment><USER9> > making sure your site can handle X amount of load by exposing it to X amount > of load

That's called "testing". Most companies have dedicated people who do it every day. Testing and training is fundamentally different.

<comment><USER7> It's not even testing, because they leave it on in production - at least the parent said so.

I like this game, so I will play the next round: This would be as if you would make the contestants wear high-altitude masks and would only allow them to put them of, when you realize they cannot come up with a solution during the competition.

<comment><USER8> Ok, the next round goes: this would be as if you made the contestants train in high-altitude masks, but they performed without them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> China, 19 times (from the first participation in 1985 until 2014): in every year from 1989 to 2014 except 1991, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2003, 2007;

Soviet Union, 14 times: in 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1979, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1991;

Hungary, 6 times: in 1961, 1962, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1975; United States, 6 times: in 1977, 1981, 1986, 1994, 2015, 2016;

Romania, 5 times: in 1959, 1978, 1985, 1987, 1996;

West Germany, 2 times: in 1982 and 1983;

Russia, 2 times: in 1999 and 2007;

Bulgaria, once: in 2003;[33]

Iran, once: in 1998;

South Korea, once: in 2012.

East Germany, once: in 1968

<comment><USER11> For whatever reason, the US public education system has not put much effort into identifying and nurturing gifted and talented students. Probably the current resurgance of the US in this contest is due to the rise of math circles, summer camp programs, and the like outside of the school environment. There was a good article about this last year when the US team won the IMO : [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/the- math...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/03/the-math- revolution/426855/?single_page=true)

<comment><USER12> Almost all money flows to support the opposite tail, the lowest performing students. For example, No Child Left Behind, which every career educator I've spoken to believes set education in the US back a decade or more.

<comment><USER13> Almost all money flows to the worst performers? Not a chance.

About half of public school funding comes from local property taxes, and as a result schools in rich neighborhoods have dramatically better equipment, facilities, and staff levels/pay.

There are huge disparities in school funding from one district to another, and the folks who get screwed are in poor districts, both in remote rural areas and in predominantly minority neighborhoods in inner cities.

I found this nice map in a google search just now: [http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas- schools...](http://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have- a-money-problem)

* * *

The No Child Left Behind law was emphatically _not_ about diverting extra money to poor performing students, I don't know where you got that idea.

<comment><USER14> He's saying resources are spent on the worst performing _students_. For example, classroom time spent getting the lowest performing students to pass the (relatively low) bar set by statewide exams.

<comment><USER13> That's also nonsense, unless you're talking about extra staff time spent on imposing power/discipline on people who don't want to be there. In which case, sure... but what else would you propose the schools do? (Also, this doesn't tend to help the students being disciplined all that much, in my limited anecdotal experience as an outside observer.)

Some students get extra support because they have disabilities or need extra language instruction. This is not about poor performance, per se, but rather about giving extra support to specific groups of students who obviously need it. This usually relates to state/federal law.

But your run-of-the-mill poorly performing student is given woefully inadequate support by understaffed and underfunded schools, just like everyone else. The way to fix this problem is by improving teacher pay, giving teachers more time during the schoolday but outside the classroom for self improvement and collaboration, properly supplying schools and fixing their facilities, and giving teachers more local autonomy and less bullshit standardized tests.

The best performing students tend to get tracked into special classes ("honors", "AP", etc.), have more direct relationships with teachers, are members of school-organized extracurricular activities, and so on. They speak up more often in class, interact with other academically motivated students. Perhaps most importantly, they generally have more considerably more external support (family help from better educated parents with more free time, private tutoring, out-of-school music/art/sport/etc. training, and so on).

<comment><USER14> NCLB set minimum performance requirements for basic skills. It tied school's funding directly to the performance of its lowest achieving students. In my personal experience, teachers regularly stopped their regular curriculum and focused exclusively on test prep in the weeks leading up to the statewide exams. Even in honors classes, where you'd expect every student to demonstrate basic reading and math proficiency, we stopped our normal studies and did test prep.

Did this have an negative impact on gifted program funding? Some educators definitely believe it did.

"In particular, NCLB does not require any programs for gifted, talented, and other high-performing students. Federal funding of gifted education decreased by a third over the law's first five years ... In other states, such as Michigan, state funding for gifted and talented programs was cut by up to 90% in the year after the Act became law."

<comment><USER15> I'd be surprised that teachers in advanced programs would actually stop to focus on state exams or NCLB type tests? Back when I went through IB (over 20 years ago, granted), the state test was almost an afterthought. Most of the people in those programs if I recall breezed through those tests in no time, and had the remainder half a day or so to leisurely do what they want. (Obviously instead a lot more time was spent preparing for the IB and AP exams).

Half-baked measures like NCLB (eg, make schools "accountable" and they will somehow improve magically) does nothing to resolve the "environment gap", which in my opinion is probably one of the most critical factors in academic performance these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All perfect scores from people of Asian descent. 1 person not of Asian descent in top 20. First girl is 63rd.

<comment><USER16> If you haven't read Malcolm Gladwell on Rice Farming and math you really should give it a look: [http://gladwell.com/outliers/rice-paddies-and-math- tests/](http://gladwell.com/outliers/rice-paddies-and-math-tests/)

<comment><USER17> You could just as easily turn that around, though and say that Asians have better systems for numbers because they are _inherently_ more gifted at numerical manipulation. But either way, winning the IMO has very little to do with calculation ability anyway.

<comment><USER16> Seems like I should clarify... It may be that Asians are just better at math — "inherently" as you say. Ok, maybe.

It also seems possible that there are certain aspects of language and culture that support math achievement. Gladwell, in _Outliers_ is after this category of explanation.

Personally, I tend to like cultural explanations more than raw talent explanations because I like to think that everyone is capable of everything (eventually, if they work hard enough). I certainly like to act like everyone is capable of everything and it helps to have supporting theories.

Gladwell's theory goes something like this: First, the counting systems tend to be more consistent, less idiosyncratic. This means kids learn them better earlier and build confidence early. This early start builds on itself — a point he comes back to over and over in his book. Second, the numbers tend to be faster to say. This means you can remember more digits — quite a few more. This has the same impact on confidence. Third — and this is his main deal — rice farming yields to careful, persistent effort much like a math problem. This is less true of western farming. All the western farming sayings go something like "there's no accounting for the weather. sometimes your just eff'd!". All the Asian sayings go something like "work hard and your family will prosper for generations." He says this gives Asians a leg up in math because math yields to the same kind of persistent effort.

Also — someone below diss'd on Gladwell calling him a "pop" psychologist. I don't think he is not a psychologist, though I guess he is pretty pop. Still, what he does, while researched, is not science, that's for sure.

I think explanations like Gladwell's are valuable even if they are not true because they at least show us how nuanced and twisty the truth might be. That keeps us looking for explanations that are maybe not so simple. That's good because as a species we're stupid enough without the crippling detriment of thinking we already understand what we do not.

EDIT: very minor for clarity.

<comment><USER18> What you "like to think" is irrelevant because reality isn't here for our benefit.

<comment><USER19> This is not a very nice way to formulate your objection, but I have to agree. Believing things because you'd like them to be true is a terrible way of trying to get at the truth, and the arguments for that position are the most contorted I've seen in a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano How much of mathematical intelligence genetic or environmental? It seems to be at least a fair amount genetic. After all, the brain is a body part like any other. Height is genetic, so why wouldn't physical brain characteristics also be?

It is remarkable the amount of asian and male students in this top echelon. It could be because of societal influence - but that really seems unlikely to me to cover this huge gap.

It may be unsavory, politically taboo, and not the way we want the world to be - but are males and people of asian-ancestry just better at math? And would knowing if that is the case help anything in any way?

<comment><USER20> I'll take a shot at this (your bait). For context have an undergrad in Math, my parents are mathematicians and theoretical computer scientist. Read quite a few biographies on famous mathematicians, and one salient inescapable conclusion is that the most prominent mathematicians tend to be European or American, and very rarely Asian (chinese, Korea or Japan). There are of course exceptions, but few. The top mathematicians are not Asian, just a fact. And yet, the majority of IMO gold winners are, not sure how to explain the discrepancy, but the most likely conclusion is that solving Olympiad math questions has very little correlation with with doing creative mathematics.

<comment><USER21> > The top mathematicians are not Asian, just a fact

Alright I'll bite as well. Though I don't think the OP's conclusion is correct, I also don't think the lack of prominent asian mathematicians is entirely indicative of ability or creativity, but rather largely caused by the availability bias of English speakers and our current vantage point in history.

First: availability bias. We're reading English books and working within an education system born out of Europe. Asian history has been full of interesting wars, rulers, artists, politics, etc for thousands of years, but few in America will ever learn anything except for where it relates to America / Europe. Much of the information about Asian history will be in another language as well.

Second: Recent history. Knowledge-creators in other countries are playing a game they are disadvantaged in, having to first learn English, then travel abroad for the best universities, etc. (Imagine if you had to learn Japanese and travel to Japan to go to get a decent higher education!)

The reason of course is that 1500s and onwards (post-renaissance), most of the knowledge generation was happening in Europe. But that wasn't always the case: if we look a thousand years prior, or 2 thousand years prior, knowledge was being generated by Greek, Arab, or Chinese mathematicians. For instance, the concept of 0 arrived to Europe pretty late: [http://www.livescience.com/27853-who-invented- zero.html](http://www.livescience.com/27853-who-invented-zero.html)

So circling back to the original question of the importance of genetics vs environment:

That the world's patches of knowledge has shifted across different cultures, peoples, and places over the last maybe 8 thousand years to me doesn't imply such a large importance on inherent genetic ability, and that time frame is too short for any evolutionary changes.

Culture seems to be a much larger factor (and this is where I will concede that asian culture can stifle creativity). Culture is the main difference between the heads down religious conviction of the 9th century in Europe and the renaissance, not genetics.

<comment><USER22> I also don't believe there is a genetic difference, however I think there is a clear cultural difference which favors westerners. Asian culture with its emphasis on harmony and respect for the elders does not IMHO foster radical innovation. A key problem for China is that it is united. This stifles competition in ideas of how to organize society. Europe has benefited tremendously from being divided. That has prevented Europe from stagnating the way China did for hundreds of years. One stupid ruler can bring down all of China. One stupid European leader can't bring down the whole of Europe.

It is also false to consider Europe being a laggard in earlier times just because it was behind in maths and higher learning. One tends to think the Roman empire was so superior due to its progress in the arts and sciences. However medieval Europe saw far more progress in e.g. machinery and labour saving devices. Windmills, waterwheels, better plows etc was developed in this period.

In the short term the unit of China reaped a lot of benefits in the form of having much more peace. Europe suffered many setbacks due to the frequency of wars. But in the long run this proved a benefit. The fierce competitive nature of westerners could not be countered by harmony focused asian cultures.

<comment><USER21> Yes, competition tends to be bad for most individuals (who lose) but good for society.

China of course started taking off recently too after capitalist reforms in the 80s. The US, arguably one of the most "pull-yourself-up-from-your- bootstraps" of nations has done pretty well, despite lack of social programs. And back to Europe, I do think it was held back due to the forced conformity to the Church (IMO Christianity held back European science for hundreds of years).

So yes, culture is a very big current as far as steering people!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting thing I heard from Po once:

The key to the American team's recent success is forgetting about the IMO and just learning math. Instead of teaching mechanics-- techniques specifically for solving olympiad problems (as they had done a lot of before, and as many countries do), the idea was to just show interesting and fun things from real math and build strong intuition for mathematical problem solving through that. If you look at lecture's he's given in the past at MOP: [http://www.math.cmu.edu/~ploh/olympiad.shtml](http://www.math.cmu.edu/~ploh/olympiad.shtml), you can see they're mostly just highlights from his area of research.

When he was being considered for coaching he told the MAA he would run training for the IMO team in a very different way from how it was done and how and that choosing him would be a gamble: there was a chance that it would go spectacularly wrong. The gamble has seemingly paid off.

It's also nice that this is a quintessentially American way of doing things :) Just pursue what you find fun and it'll pay off. Don't over-optimize for the accolades.

<comment><USER24> While Loh's approach is commendable that is not necessarily the approach the kids follow to be selected. IMO is kind of artificial in its subject matter so it is not true that the more math you know the higher your odds. These kids have trained very hard on their own (you have to be obsessive to get to the competitive level), just to be selected. My guess is that Loh's approach kind of loosen them up instead to giving them more of the same of what they already did on their own and this seems to have worked wonders for the highest performing kids.

<comment><USER23> This is probably true. Still, a nice idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reiterates the fact that the strength of America is its diversity and openness to attract and retain the brightest from around the world.

<comment><USER26> Judging from their names, most of the US team members are of Chinese or Indian descent.

Would be interesting to note if they were US born/raised (i.e. educated under the US educational system), or recent immigrants (i.e. primarily educated in those countries).

<comment><USER27> I would guess that they were born here, or came here as a very young child. You'd need to have fairly good mastery of English to correctly interpret those questions.

<comment><USER28> I came here at 26. My English tests at native levels or above (it's been ~10 years since I took the test). Most people assume I'm a native speaker until they hear my accent and even that is going away.

English really isn't that hard to learn.

<comment><USER29> Idiomatic English _is_ hard. From your HN profile[0]:

"At least 5000 people bought my books..."

Don't ask me why, but to me it should read instead:

"at least 5000 people _have bought_ my books,"

or even:

" _over_ 5000 people _have bought_ my books."

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Swizec](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Swizec)

<comment><USER30> Just "bought" implies that the sale of the books is compassed in the past. It sounds strange because no explicit compass is mentioned and the reader suspects they are still for sale. I don't see anything wrong with "at least" though. Note that "over" changes the meaning (>= vs. >) and at least some prescriptivists obelize using "over" like that (I believe the AP Stylebook used to).

<comment><USER29> _[...]and at least some prescriptivists obelize using "over" like that (I believe the AP Stylebook used to)._

Indeed they did, until very recently[0]. I had no idea.

[0] [http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/more- than...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/more-than-vs-over- a-big-change-at-the-associated-press)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Po-Shen Loh is a complete badass. You're the best in the room until Mr. Loh goes and finds a tiger for you to wrestle with.

</comment><comment><USER20> This question has come up before, but never found a suitable answer -- anyone has a list of notable alumni that have participated in IMO that have gone on to do great things in life?

<comment><USER32> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_International_Mathemat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_International_Mathematical_Olympiad_participants#Notable_participants)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm always fascinated at how common it is for people (almost universally cynics from outside the US) to try to discredit the US winning this competition by proclaiming that the participants aren't really Americans, because they're of some other ethnicity than white. It usually goes like this: 'well, they're mostly Asians, so it doesn't count.' I saw it constantly with the US winning last year's International Math Olympiad, and I'm seeing it again on various forums this year. Often it comes in stealth form, they'll ask intentionally leading questions about where the competitors were educated, or where they were born, trying to avoid being too blatant about their racism and or anti-US cynicism. Some people just can't stand for the US to do well in anything.

<comment><USER7> I think they are Americans. It is not like countries are buying children to win at maths competitions as some do with athletes for the Olympics [0]. It is just notable that they are all of Asian descent. It is also notable that they are all male. You are not instantly racist when you realize that a group that represents a country at a competition or the overall starting field of a competition has different characteristics than the general population.

[0]: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2016/07/07/seven- kenyan...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletics/2016/07/07/seven-kenyans-two- jamaicans-and-a-cuban-competing-for-turkey---t/)

<comment><USER33> The racism isn't from noting the race, it's from attempting to proclaim that the competitors are not Americans due to their race eg being Asian. As an example, that claim was made up and down the threads on Reddit about last year's US Olympiad win.

<comment><USER34> The U.S. does have a long history of importing foreigners to win competitions, so it's not really an unreasonable suspicion. E.g. a large percentage of athletes at Harvard are from Canada or eastern Europe, since their grades and SATs don't get included in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.

<comment><USER4> Harvard does have good hockey teams

<comment><USER35> Rowing, too. It's substantially harder to win races when your school isn't allowed to import eastern Europeans for that purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I found his claim that "people are basically the same" pretty interesting. He came from a family of IMO medalists (himself, his brother Po-Ru Loh, and his sister Po-Ling Loh). So it's surprising that he believes in nurture over nature.

Maybe there was really some secret sauce in his upbringing that he is now passing on via coaching?

<comment><USER37> Is it surprising? Intelligence isn't 100% hereditary; maybe 50% can be attributed to genetic factors? So if you see three family members performing at world-class intelligence levels, you might actually be experiencing a nurture argument, not a nature argument. The heritability of intelligence isn't strong enough to explain that outcome through nature.

<comment><USER35> Another front page thread tonight has multiple people saying it's 0.4 hereditary at childhood, rising to 0.75 by adulthood. Height is 0.8. I take those numbers with healthy skepticism, having not read the source material, but they aren't out of thin air.

<comment><USER38> Could you link me that thread?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Po Shen Loh is one of the most inspiring math professors in the world. Pure passion for math instruction and high quality math research.

While he's in charge, expect the US to produce several medals at the IMO.

<comment><USER40> One key action he initiated is to put F-1 visa high school students to the IMO team, basically he is using top students from China to compete, a practice that the physics and chemistry Olympiad do not take.

And guess what, that's the key to win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> That many of them is of Asian descent has been mentioned a lot. Perhaps the top US universities should reconsider their soft cap of amount of Asian students admitted every year.

<comment><USER42> While I agree with the argument you're making, you can't exclusively use this as your evidence.

<comment><USER43> There must be research into this? I am from west EU and east EU always did much better in math. I had a few companies over there and my colleagues there told me that you study to make money which means you won't study music, languages, history etc. In NL where I grew up, people basically studied for fun and 'the job' comes automatically; I guess (!) Asia would be the same mostly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The US director inviting the other people from around the world is brilliant. A great way to train your team by helping others.

And the dominance of Asians is interesting. It's a very cultural thing.

I can't remember who proposed it, but the idea that East Asian languages are much easier to learn basic counting is interesting.

The idea is that Chinese, Korean and Japanese all have easier languages for counting. This gives young Asian students a small, but real advantage when first learning math that accelerates as time goes on.

I would be interested to see how many of the top math Asian-American or Asian- Anglo students know one of those three languages or not.

If a lot of them have zero knowledge of Chinese, Japanese or Korean, then clearly this idea is dead.

<comment><USER45> I first saw it discussed in either Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" or Dubner and Levitt's "Freakonomics". They sort of blend together in my head because I read them both over the span of a couple days and they touched on really similar themes (which I hadn't expected), but I suspect it was the former.

Wherever I read it, they listed it as just one of several reasons Asians tend to be good at math, with cultural factors being another important factor. Something about how, while Westerners generally had to just plant wheat and similar crops at a specific times and they would grow fine with a base amount of effort, the yield of a rice paddy was directly related to the effort put into maintaining it. According to them, this ingrained (hah, grain) into Asian societies the idea that your success is directly proportional to the effort you put into something.

I haven't studied it myself, but I thought that theory was interesting.

<comment><USER44> Yeah, I don't really by the "they planted rice and it was tedious, therefore they are good at math."

For a long time, Westerners were dominant in math.

It's only very recently that we have seen East Asians doing well. And, I don't know that it persists at the graduate/top level, it may only be at the high school and undergrad level.

I mean, East Asians have been growing rice for a really long time, so why does it mean now they are good at math.

Who knows, it's an interesting phenomena.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Since nobody has tackled this so far: what are the answers? And more interestingly, how do you get them?

<comment><USER47> For problem 3, you can start as follows:

(1) The points of the polygon are inscribed on a circle. [given]

(2) Construct a triangle on each side of the polygon with the centre of the circle from (1) as the third point.

(3) Each triangle from (2) is isosceles. [2 of the sides are radii of the circle from (1)]

(4) The area of an isosceles triangle can be given as _1 /2a^2sqrt((b^2)/(a^2)-1/4)_ where _a_ is the length base of the triangle and _b_ is the length of each of the other two sides. [proof left to the reader!]

(5) The square of each side of the polygon is divisible by _n_. [given]

(6) For each triangle from (2), double its area is divisible by the square of the side it is built on. [from (4), (6.1)]

(6.1) _sqrt((b^2) /(a^2)-1/4)_ is an integer. [proof missing]

(7) For each triangle from (2), double its area is divisible by _n_. [from (5) and (6)]

(8) The area _S_ of the polygon is equal to the sum of the triangles from (2). [by construction]

(9) If _n_ divides _a_ and _b_ then it divides _a+b_

(10) _2S_ is divisible by _n_ , QED. [from (7), (8), and (9)]

Of course, this is not complete.

For example, we also have to show that _2S_ is an integer, which really comes down to showing that _sqrt((b^2) /(a^2)-1/4)_ is an integer. I should add, this is also needed for (6) as if that statement is not an integer than (6) is false.

[edit] I've added the missing step (6.1) though it is incomplete for now.

[edit 2] Actually, the missing step is different! The sum of the (6.1) pieces from each triangle needs to be an integer, not each individually (though if you could prove individually than you would get together, obviously).

[edit 3] I'm silly! We know that _2S_ is an integer because of the general form of the area of a polygon, given vertices (x_1, y_1), (x_2, y_2) etc. That is:

 _S=1 /2(x_1y_2-x_2y_1+x_2y_3-x_3y_2+...+x_(n-1)y_n-x_ny_(n-1)+x_ny_1-x_1y_n)_

As each _x_ and _y_ are integers, then _2S_ is an integer.

There are still issues, because (6) is still not known to be true (and in fact may not be true at all)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I opened the link to the full question paper. I'm amazed at the level of complexity in the wording of the questions themselves. It looks like the real challenge is understanding the questions first. What are they asking? Applying math and logic is probably just as important but I feel that can only follow if you grok the crushing English/language.

Which begs the question: do translations into other languages confer any advantages?

</comment><comment><USER49> honestly, NK scoring 168 is very impressive, imho.

</comment><comment><USER50> So this clearly shows that boys are much better at math than girls. Period.

Or not.

Sometimes I wonder if these competitions (or the real Olympics games for that matter) lead to a more racial/social prejudice, rather than diminishing them.

<comment><USER51> Competing at the top level of any sport (athletic, mental, or otherwise) requires the right training and support almost as much as the right mindset, work ethic, and talent. The training and support requires time and money.

At present, people of different ethnicities have a disproportionate share of wealth, and thus fewer resources that they can spend on training and support. Support begins early: parents help their children find the right activity to undertake and also teach them the mentality to work hard at it in order to compete -- this is almost impossible to accomplish if those parents have to be away most of the time because of financial constraints.

As for gender, we have only recently entered an era where we recognize that girls are equally capable of doing things like math at a top level (the first Fields Medal given to a woman was given to them quite recently). In girls' formative years, parents still have some subconscious expectations of what their children are capable of -- perhaps being reluctant to expose girls to the sciences or other serious undertakings. There are some recent efforts to get girls into these things, but the fact that they are newsworthy proves that it's not the norm yet. The time that there will be equal female representation in these areas will be when an entire generation understands that women and girls are equally capable of getting into them. This will be after everyone who comes from the previous era of society have died.

<comment><USER52> Your theories would be plausible if the number of girls competing at a close- to-top level wasn't outnumbered by the number of boys who by any life- background metric would have no business being there. I'm talking about trailer park kids, poor immigrants, schizophrenics, and absolute slackers here. It will take some training and practice to get on an IMO team -- because your competition is doing so -- but at levels below that, girls are outnumbered by boys making no special effort in math that just show up and get high scores on contests.

Realize that anybody that would be at, say, top-500-high-school-students-in- USA math level will be the sort of student that coasts through all their math classes from K-12, with the typical schedule taking pre-calc in 10th grade, with no studying and no stress at all, easily the best in their class, assuming the school system just ignores their talents. There would have to be 250 girls in this situation, of which those that finish over the top 500 threshold on things like the AMC or AIME or earlier contests are outnumbered by boys with less "support" that just show up and get high scores on math contests.

Also, in my experience in middle school there were many girls that were quite competitive in 24 game, that just disappeared in more mathy contests like MathCOUNTS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Due to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_pressure#As_a_leadership_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_pressure#As_a_leadership_tool)

</comment><comment><USER54> [https://twitter.com/urbanstrata/status/753932591514787841](https://twitter.com/urbanstrata/status/753932591514787841)

<comment><USER55> I don't have a problem with the team, but how does this tweet make sense? They are all (except one apparently) Asians, in what dystopian universe is this "diversity"?

Sometimes I feel sad that we took a nice word "diversity", and perverted it to mean basically "anybody except white males".

And just to be clear, if these guys are on the team it's probably cause they are the best, so they all deserve to be there, and I wouldn't want to kick 2 of them out just to add a girl and a white guy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> That's great, but we shouldn't judge the state of education in our country based on outliers.

<comment><USER57> No one was suggesting that?</comment></comment>