MatterPort Demo of Taliesin West - <AUTHOR> https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=iWvNCvUJxvg <comment><USER2> For anyone else that's curious Taliesin West is the winter home and architectural school of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

I just love how his buildings lay comfortably and organically on the landscape and Matterport's 3D rendering does a great job of showing this.

<comment><USER3> Off-topic: I'm not an architecture buff and still found the (not-too-cheap) tour of Taliesin West well worth the time and money. Worth considering if you're ever in Scottsdale AZ.

<comment><USER4> Also worth visiting in Scottsdale (not far away, and historically related) is Cosanti, which is free.

Paolo Soleri is a really interesting character

<comment><USER3> Yes, Cosanti's definitely interesting. As is Arcosanti itself, if you can spare the time to drive out there (on the way from Phoenix to points north).

[https://arcosanti.org/](https://arcosanti.org/)

[https://arcosanti.org/visit/cosanti/](https://arcosanti.org/visit/cosanti/)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is kinda cool, and better than nothing, especially for their target markets like real estate, but I cannot for a second believe that this is the best UX for browsing the 3D space. It's slow, it's clunky, the transitions look poor, and I struggle to get a "feel" for the 3D space in any useful way. It seems to be a straight clone of the Google Street View interface, and that was one with many more restrictions on the data at a scale far larger. There must be improvements possible here!

<comment><USER6> It's interesting about the 3D space part. I totally agree. Having visited Taliesin West in person, there's one unique part you would notice right away if you were there but can't with the 3D model: the height of the ceilings. The ceilings there were very low, and it was kind of strange being in there as a fairly tall person (~6ft). Kind of like being in a hobbit hole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sucker ate 3GB RAM in Firefox, and hung at 75%.

What's it supposed to do?

Edit: Oh, [https://matterport.com/](https://matterport.com/). Not the thing to load in a wimpy VM, using a high-latency uplink.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's like Quicktime VR.</comment>


New Type of Dementia Identified - open-source-ux https://www.nhs.uk/news/neurology/new-type-dementia-identified/ <comment><AUTHOR> TDP-43 abnormal bodies are present in cytoplasm in almost all CNS diseases. Other proteins bodies are present as well. Some publications tell TDP-43 bodies are not the cause of the diseases, but some consequence, in a similar way to amyloid bodies.

One thought I read recently told that the aging people (from who I belong) have multiple conditions and it is difficult to heal one condition independently of the others.

<comment><USER2> Medicine is _hard_. Diseases have typically been defined based on symptoms, plus available diagnostic tests. But with no reliable tests, you're left with basically "collections of symptoms". So this is progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > Researchers say it may explain why some recent trials of treatments for > Alzheimer's disease have been unsuccessful.

> They say treatments may have effectively treated the proteins that cause > damage in Alzheimer's disease, but LATE may have continued, masking any > improvements to Alzheimer's symptoms.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of all of the possible ailments, I hope that this class of issues is resolved by the time I'm older.

<comment><USER5> Surely heart disease and cancer are higher priority[0].

0: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate)

<comment><USER6> For some, I imagine death is preferable to dementia.

<comment><USER7> To be frank dementia is death but fuzzier and more drawn out. I know fron experience with Alzheimer'd in family - it is a loss of self such that by the end they were effectively dead for years - just confused remnants of personality and inability to interact meaningfully - it is horrifying. At least when someone in your family gets hit by a truck you know when you lost them.

<comment><USER8> Yeah. I don't think people who haven't experienced it know how bad it is. My grandmother had dementia and by the end she didn't know who my mother (her daughter) was.

I just can't think of a worse fate not just for the suffer, but for those that love them. It is a constant painful and sad reminder for loved ones to interact with them.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

<comment><USER9> You can't imagine how much joy it gives you when your father suddenly screams out your name when you visit him after years of not calling your name. He had Alzheimer's too</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Digital Geometry Processing with Discrete Exterior Calculus - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~keenan/Projects/DGPDEC/

<comment> Ruud-v-A This is very interesting, I did not know that the theory of differential geometry can be discretised so nicely. I admire how they build from nothing but elementary linear algebra and calculus, and end up at quite advanced topics like De Rham cohomology, of which I never imagined it had any application in computer science at all. That said, definitions are mathematically very informal, and it skips handwavily over topics like topology. But these details are arguably less important for doing computations.

<comment><USER2> There are other more rigorous versions of this material. Grady and Polimeni's "Discrete Calculus" is where I learned most of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My favorite curves, geodesics, aren't included in this revision of the notes (he says it'll be added to future revisions).

But you can download his paper on them at [http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~keenan/Projects/GeodesicsInHeat/...](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~keenan/Projects/GeodesicsInHeat/paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat related: [http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html](http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/notes.html)

(and somewhat more high-brow, but still with a discrete flavour.)

</comment><comment><USER5> hackernews seems like the perfect place for this course. How many of us need GIS data? Or need to compute the rate of change...

Can't use the (x^n)' = n x^(n-1) on real data! I need to take a derivative of some GIS numbers have to compute a discrete gradient. In fact that's what I did to draw this figure of Puerto Rico

[http://s11.postimg.org/s8ph73t8z/birth_rate.png](http://s11.postimg.org/s8ph73t8z/birth_rate.png)

<comment><USER6> Cool discrete 1-forms!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish I could find an open source 3D Delaunay triangulation library. Maybe some of this theory could be used to derive the code in a straightforward way.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very nice. Anyone know how the graphics are drawn? I had a scan and didn't see it.

<comment><USER9> It's mentioned in the faq:

[http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~keenan/faq.html](http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~keenan/faq.html)

modo and tracing (perhaps by hand)

[https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/](https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks; I love the figures but for me that's too expensive (and requiring too much ability, I would guess). Back to Asymptote, I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


Gene Therapy Restores Sight - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/gene-therapy-bl.html

<comment><USER2> Great news. Reminds me of the story of Mike May, who regained sight with a stem cell therapy. His account of the transition from the dark to the light is perhaps the only inspirational thing I have ever read.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20040401192741/www.senderogroup.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20040401192741/www.senderogroup.com/mikejournal.htm)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use Firebug or Chrome developer tools? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious on what the HN community prefers and why. <comment><USER2> Chrome dev tools because I don't have to install anything.

(Though I am using firefox 4 beta for browsing now)

</comment><comment><USER3> Firebug - I'm used to it, it works. Inspector doesn't have as many features as Firebug, either. Nor is it extensible.

All that aside, I'm not convinced that Google won't just forget that they have a browser.

</comment><comment><USER4> Both, because I have to test both browsers. Fortunately, I don't have to support IE at all in my job.

I wish I could get the browsers I do have to worry about down to just WebKit, though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Chrome devtools. Because for me chrome is far better browser.

</comment><comment><USER6> WebKit Inspector, mainly in Safari.

</comment><comment><USER7> Firebug does the job for me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Dragonfly (Opera)

</comment><comment><USER9> all three: Firebug (my main one), then Chrome tools, then IE dev tools (really). This helps me support all three browsers accurately.

<comment><USER10> How is the IE dev tool? I never knew it existed. Is almost as good as firebug?

<comment><USER9> No it is horrible but it is something better than nothing to help me with issues with IE</comment></comment></comment>


New research on the cost of colonization to India - <AUTHOR> https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851.html <comment><USER3> This is mostly nonsense.

1) The 5% return that produced the $45T figure is significantly higher than the expected return on capital for the vast majority of that period(which includes risk and is not comparable to modern returns). Furthermore, there would be no place to put that money to try to extract that return. The notion that the 18th century even had a safe positive return on capital for large periods of time for proto-investors is dubious to say the least.

2) The timeline doesn't fit for claiming that colonial India dramatically benefited the imperial center or periphery. The UK was industrializing and ahead of the rest of Europe before revenues from India are supposed to have made a difference yet fell behind countries like Germany(which lacked any colonies until the late 19th century) even as revenues from India were supposedly diverted. The periphery is no better, Canada and Australia fell behind the US even with the supposed surplus from India.

3) I'm skeptical that diverted taxes from a mostly agricultural society like India could have produced the bonanza suggested in this article. Existing Per capita taxes would have been onerous enough and not much more could have been meaningfully extracted from the peasantry. A pre-modern society has enough problems with basic economic management and political stability; sustaining a massive bureaucracy necessary to collect taxes without rents diverted to local elites doesn't make a lot of sense.

4) As an addendum to (3) the early East India Company lacked the ability to even administer the country without the cooperation of elites(which required the dispersal of rents). The later imperial bureaucracy necessary to administer India was by all accounts quite expensive. There just isn't the gigantic return form skimming off taxes that is suggested in the article.

<comment><USER4> A simple statistic: Before the British showed up, Indian GDP was 15 to 20% of world GDP. When they left its was 1.5 to 3% of world GDP. Something tells me the colonial experience might have something to do with it.

<comment><USER5> No this is nonsense. That relative decline was because the pie grew... and grew spectacularly, for the first time in history, for reasons that had next to nothing to do with some colonial adventure.

<comment><USER6> The pie grew and india was intentionally prevented from partaking in the pie by the british. Ignoring the mass famines and the humanitarian destruction caused by the british empire in india, the greatest damage inflicted on india was its lack of industrialization. Britain simply prevented india from industrializing until they were kicked out in 1947.

Britain and the US really industrialized in the mid 1800s ( although britain loves to pretend it did in the 1700s ). Parts of europe followed soon after. Japan industrialized in the late 1800s. India ( and china ) industrialized after ww2 - india much more slowly than china due to its democratic and bureaucratic baggage. For more than 100 years, india was prevented from industrializing by britain. You can't ignore that significant opportunity cost.

Also, you are wrong when you say colonial "adventure" had nothing to do with industrialization. Excess capital and excess resources are the prerequisites for national industrialization. British industrialization was funded by opium money from china and resources from india. The need for resources is why japan and germany sought to create empires for themselves. It was a necessity to industrialize.

Having said that, I don't think you can honestly calculate the costs of colonization because there are so many factors involved. Would india have been able to follow meiji japan's or even mao's china's example and industrialize? We can say that india lost a lot due to british imperialism, but I doubt we'll ever know exactly how much. At best, it's just a guess.

<comment><USER7> How does this argument apply to European countries that had no colonies, such as Switzerland?

Japan is a bit of an aberration. It was the only non-western country to industrialize early.

Now, India might have done so also, had it somehow avoided industrialization yet maintained contact with industrializing countries. But, a counterpoint to this is that India basically didn't industrialize _after_ independence either. Only when the "License Raj" was done away with several decades later did India start to grow quickly. (In other words, mere absensce of colonization was not sufficient for growth)

<comment><USER8> Don't forget to also take into account population difference between India and Japan and the difference in land area. Also, don't forget that one of the gravest sins committed by British was to Partition India into two halves on the basis of Religion which caused millions to be displaced and millions more to die in communal clashes. By partitioning India on the basis of Religion resources were distributed unevenly. Even to this day, both halves of the once Undivided India are fighting over water resources. Many in India believe it was a deliberate ploy to keep always keep disharmony in India even after Independence. India never achieved true Independence for a really long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thank goodness for this research. I've seen many commenters in this forum argue that colonialism was somehow good for India, this seems to comprehensively refute that ridiculous notion.

I used to wonder what good it did by musing over past losses this way. As someone born and raised in India, I felt very acutely the feeling of loss, not just in economy but perhaps the well being and scientific progress that just didn't happen because of this. I'm still not sure how to deal with it, but research such as this at least helps in ensuring that the truth is spelt out and hopefully something that we learn from and not repeat in the future.

<comment><USER10> I never read any account from travellers (from Europe/China) describing India as poor before colonialism. So, i think this article does have some validity.

<comment><USER5> If you mean ordinary people, then everywhere was poor, so travel authors would not have seen a shocking contrast.

We actually have numbers on all this stuff, e.g. you can track a slow decline in day-labor wages, and IIRC (around Delhi maybe?) they decline slowly from about 1600 to 1800. There are comparable-sized rises and falls in other parts of the world, too. But all very low by modern standards.

Only with industrialisation did this change, and it lagged a bit -- the first gains typically allowed a population boom, without dragging down income as would previously have occurred.

<comment><USER9> Nope, this is typical of the crap that you see quite frequently.

We're not comparing 1600's wages to today, we're comparing them to wages in that era. Of course this was a pre-industrialized society, but it wasn't a society mired in poverty as most people imagine it to be.

<comment><USER5> I don't know why you're insulting me when it sounds like you agree with me. You can compare different regions at the same time, and in the pre-industrial world, per-capita incomes didn't vary a whole lot -- maybe over a factor of 2. Whether you want to call this "mired in poverty" or not depends on your taste in adjectives, but India was not exceptional.

The huge differences (factors of 10, even 100) arose only later, because of some pulling ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> To add to that: India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952.[1]

And, India got partitioned into 3 countries, all of which have spend insane amounts of resources fighting each other when that same could have been spent on economic development and other hostile neighbors of the unified India would have been smaller in size to be a threat.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_economy_of_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_economy_of_the_Indian_subcontinent#Colonial_period)

<comment><USER12> > India got partitioned into 3 countries ...

This is a huge simplification of the history of the Indian subcontinent. The British are the architects of the new boundary lines, but they are also the architects of what is now a unified country, India. Indian subcontinent as a unified entity prior to the arrival of the British as a major colonizing force in India is a lie. India was quite divided before that, which made it easy for them to play their little game of "divide and rule".

None of this absolves them of responsibility, but this over-simplified statement irks me, as it is a gross misrepresentation of the politics of the Indian subcontinent prior to the British.

<comment><USER13> > India was quite divided before that, which made it easy for them to play > their little game of "divide and rule".

The fact that entire region was called Bharat escapes you I think. Just before British India was centrally organized and ruled by Mughals and Marathas so your argument does not stand.

As far as "divide and rule" is concerned, due to the vastness of India regional leadership was always delegated. British utilized this structure to their advantage.

<comment><USER14> > The fact that entire region was called Bharat...

I don't think that important fact inherently implies a unity that was never there. The(roughly defined) region called "Europe" has never been under the control of a unitary state or empire, even in the times of the Romans.

<comment><USER13> Europe is a continent and not a country and Romans did rule almost entire continent.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire#/media/File:Roman...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire#/media/File:Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hang on a minute... is this guy saying the country that

* had the largest supply of slaves[1],

* tried to levy taxes on American tea,

* broke China and forced them to buy their own Opium

* invented concentration camps to defeat the Dutch Boers[2]

* used Gibraltar as a control point for the entire Mediterranean

* erased most Tasmanian Aboriginals [3]

did something dodgy in India ??

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_slavery/2015/06/animated_interactive_of_the_history_of_the_atlantic_slave_trade.html)

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

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

<comment><USER16> Please do not take HN threads into ideological and national flamewar. The tell-tale signs of this being a bad comment for HN are: (a) the snark, and (b) the list of talking points. Combined with the flammatory topic, it amounts to vandalism, so please don't.

<comment><USER17> Is the comment really that inflammatory? I think it's good to point that a lot of the "civilized" nations did a lot very bad things at the same time they were talking about freedom and humanity.

<comment><USER16> The topic is inflammatory, which means flamebait guarantees flamewars. The comment was flamebaity in the ways I described. It's possible to write about these things in a less flamebaity way—that's just not the style people reach for by default on the internet. I agree with your second sentence btw.

<comment><USER15> as i said it was more lighthearted.

i wrote it at a bus stop after work in London, nothing snarky intended.

ive used bullet points A LOT in many comments over the years.

it used to be "citation needed" back in the day, so i still supply them.

<comment><USER16> It sounds like I misread you - sorry about that! Moderation is pattern matching and that means making mistakes when the pattern doesn't really match.

Unfortunately, there's a sense in which it still makes no difference because the comment fits the flamewar-starting pattern whether you were posting in that spirit or not. But I would have phrased my reply differently if I'd read you more precisely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Never forget that Winston Churchill let millions in Bengal starve to death because they were not civilized people according to him.

Modern day Indians do acknowledge that history is complex, nuanced and there were many factors that led to the colonization of India.

However the sheer ignorance of a lot of Western folks to British and other colonial atrocities is alarming. For them the history starts and ends with their own lens and seldom beyond the same Greek/ Roman/ Judeo mythology and/or history.

It is funny for example when so many call the modern no system the Arabic no system when in fact the Arabians merely took it from India and exported it westwards (an important feat)

There is a reason why Western civilization became so powerful - <USER2> large territories (Aus, Ca, NZ etc.) , resources, imposing their culture.

I really commend the self respect Chinese have in this regard. They consider this century as the one where China regains its lost glory. I hope India can manage to become economically better although i doubt it would ever come even close to China.

</comment><comment><USER19> >Here's how it worked. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, "buying" from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them.

> It was a scam - theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of > what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same > as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person, > they surely would have smelled a rat.

This sounds needlessly circuitous. Money is fungible, so how is this different from saying the British overtaxing them?

The actual book this article refers to doesn't seem to push such a weird argument ([https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dispossession-deprivation- and-...](https://cup.columbia.edu/book/dispossession-deprivation-and- development/9788193732915)).

<comment><USER20> Ya, sound far worse than it was. I'd phrase it more along the lines of saying "one third of collected taxes were re-spent in the country". A government buying services from local people, rather than importing it from abroad, is not a bad thing.

I think the other two thirds, the part not spent within India, was a far greater problem. That was the 'stolen' money, the money removed from the country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> My government uses my taxes to buy goods and services in the local market. Is that defrauding or just the nature of providing government? This article is on somewhat loose economic grounds, I fear. People paid taxes, albeit to the coloniser, some people could sell their goods at market prices. Things we still find pretty reasonable. On top of that compounding at 5% for 250 yrs is not a good way to create current dollars. That's a compound factor of 200k. Five dollars of taxes in the early periods equals one million dollars in their narrative.

<comment><USER22> When the government buys things with tax money, the things are supposed to be used for the benefit of people who paid the taxes. It doesn't seem like the Company even pretended that this was the case.

<comment><USER23> Most tax dollars in most countries are not spent on goods and services for the benefit of the people who paid them.

<comment><USER22> But there's at least a pretense that it (goods purchased with tax money) will be, right? Forget about what actually happens for a moment and consider that the tax-collecting colonists didn't even seem to bother with such a pretense. The way I understand it, they just bought the goods, turned around, and sold them again (which does not align with any notion of "providing government"). Of course, I know very little about economics or history, but I just wanted to point out what I thought was a logical inconsistency in the root comment.

<comment><USER23> I disagree. The pretense makes it worse. I think there's something far more comforting about the honesty of a government just stealing my money and owning up to it. Don't waste time and distort my perception of the world with that bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is an interesting article. I do understand why pieces like this get flagged, but I also wonder whether we need to embrace these discussions rather than suppress them.

To my point, I'm not supporting Empire, but in the time of the Raj, the East India Company was tightly held by British aristocrats and was not Britain. In turn Britain as controlled by the state was not the British people. As well as using Indian profits to wreak havoc globally, it was used to maintain dominance in Britain by the state.

[Edited for clarity]

</comment><comment><USER25> British rule being a net positive for India is an even bigger joke than David Cameron being the best British prime minister of all time. My history teacher showed us the famous trade triangle involving China->Britan-India. Chinese tea to Britain, Indian opium to China, and British Raj(rule) to India.

</comment><comment><USER14> From the article, "If India had been able to invest its own tax revenues and foreign exchange earnings in development - as Japan did - there's no telling how history might have turned out differently. "

I love this sentence but it implies a huge leap that I am not sure could have happened. Japan was a unitary state for a very long period -- millennia -- thanks in part to its island nature. Sure, there were civil wars, smaller, (non-sovereign!) regional powers and the like but for the majority of the past couple of millennia Japan was independent and unitary.

What would an independent India have been over the same period? The evidence is: fractious. Part of the reason the Persians and the British were able to build huge empires there was that each arrived when previous empires had become weak and where they could exploit differences between smaller states, taking control piecemeal. Note that Alexander the Great was unable to get a significant foothold in the subcontinent, in part because of the size of opposition he faced.

It's better to think of a large region like the subcontinent as being more akin to Europe, where various tiny states amalgamated to form medium-sized countries. Which is something that I think _could_ have happened, and would have been much better for India than the British Raj. But the much tinier Japan is probably not an appropriate model.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Britain used the windfall from this fraudulent system to fuel the engines of > imperial violence - funding the invasion of China in the 1840s and the > suppression of the Indian Rebellion in 1857.

And to win World War I & II.

</comment><comment><USER27> Shashi Tharoor an Indian politician has written a book about this as well. There is this narrative within India (among many hindus and advocated by hindu nationalist political parties such as the bjp) that the muslim empire of the Mughals harmed India and robbed it of some kind of growth. But people like Tharoor are trying to create this new narrative that the British were much more harmful for India than the 'muslim' rulers of the Mughal empire. here is a talk by Tharoor who has demanded that the British apologize for many of the events that took place during that period: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4)

<comment><USER14> I second this excellent book, "Inglorious Empire -- What the British did to India".

My American girlfriend was shocked when she picked this up and glanced through it -- she had had no idea. Her understanding, such as it was, was entirely from British TV.

</comment></comment><comment> c-smile In fact colonies were the engine that created Western Democracies. At ancient Greece time, where democracy as a term was coined, "demos kratos" meant power of voting citizens. Where the citizen is a "respectful person" \- wealthy guy - slave owner at least.

Nothing have changed in principle since then, it just slave ownership became "remote".

How many African, South American, Indian gold coins lie under each stone of those beautiful European plazas?

Yes, without that cache flow the humanity might had no Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution as they were so all this is not that black and white. We just need to understand that.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Centuries of poverty and suffering could have been prevented.

</comment><comment><USER29> This makes me appreciate the American Revolution all the more.

</comment><comment><USER23> 2018 morality applied to 1800's people.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, the population growth rate in India was significantly lower during the colonial period (1750 to 1950). This was primarily due to increased mortality from the famines created by the British. Over a 200 year period, the British colonialists performed the largest instance of genocide known to humanity.

</comment><comment><USER30> I was in India last month after being away for over 2 decades. Visited Calcutta for the very first time. Our Driver and Tour Guide at the Taj took us around the city and told us about a lot of history about the City. At one point he said that over 1 million people live on the sidewalks (called footpaths) in Calcutta. I have seen abject poverty in India while growing up there, but not to this level. There are generations of Indians living on the sidewalks next to each other, from Grandpa to Grandson. They eat, cook, shower and sleep all in a 4 or 5 Sq Foot area.

Towards the end of our trip, we visited Queen Victoria's Memorial Hall. There was a small Museum in 1 corner of that Palace, which had photos and newspaper stories about Calcutta from the time the East India Company arrived to the time they left.

There, I learned that Calcutta was the Capital of the British Raj in India for a very long time. One of the plaques in that museum gave the reasoning for the British Raj for choosing Calcutta as the Capital. Apparently Calcutta was the richest city in India when the East India company arrived. It was flush with natural resources, grains and wealth accumulated by the Rajas and Indian Kings who ruled before. By the time moved their Capital from Calcutta to Delhi and then left India few years later, they'd plunders everything from that City.

Ask any Indian about Calcutta and the first thing they'll say is how dirty and piss-broke it is. But most don't know why it is so. I attribute the state of this once great city directly to the British Raj robbing it blind over a century or two.

<comment><USER5> This is not correct, Calcutta was some villages where it happened to be convenient for the east india company to set up shop: "The area where the city is now located was originally inhabited by the people of three villages: Kalikata, Sutanuti and Gobindapur." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kolkata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Kolkata)

Delhi on the other hand was a great city, many times over (and sacked, and re- built, by rules of many tongues).

But it's also important to know that when we say an ancient place was rich, we mean that the kings were rich & built big palaces etc. Peasants were poor everywhere in the pre-industrial world, with variations but not enormous ones, like the difference between 500 and 1000 USD/year.

When we say that a modern place is rich, we mean the average guy instead. And, sometimes, that their city is well-run and finds money to spend on public services etc. Which, in my understanding, Calcutta has not been in the last 50 years, compared to other Indian cities. However I would still bet that the median income has increased monotonically.

<comment><USER31> Nope, op is correct. One rule of the thumb in India is that closer the area is to British rule, the more poor and plundered it is.

Auroville in South was plundered and the colonists burnt the forests around it leaving it completely barren. It was recently rebuilt and is still work in progress to return it back to the original state

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why Britain Doesn't Owe India Reparations [http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/07/29/the- countervie...](http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2015/07/29/the-counterview- why-britain-doesnt-owe-india-reparations/)

And [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Caste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Caste) owe Reparations to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_Backward_Class) in India since [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is- no...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-not- past.html) and [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shashi-tharoor/caste-wont- disa...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shashi-tharoor/caste-wont-disappear- india_b_6257354.html)

And check which Caste is looting India? [https://www.quora.com/Which-caste-is- looting-India/answer/Ad...](https://www.quora.com/Which-caste-is-looting- India/answer/Adarsh-Sapoota)

</comment><comment><USER33> Any idea why this article is flagged? It isn't a bad article

<comment><USER16> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683542).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> An excellent speech by Dr Shashi Tharoor - "Britain Does Owe Reparations to India"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7CW7S0zxv4)

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

</comment><comment><USER32> Except India, Afghanistan - Australia - Bahrain - Barbados - Canada - Cyprus - Egypt - Fiji - Israel - Iraq - Jamaica - Jordan - Kenya - Kuwait - Libya - Malaysia - Nigeria - NZ - Pakistan - Sri Lanka - South Africa - Sudan - Tanzania - UAE - USA - Zimbabwe are not accusing Britain of plunder.

[https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/955470121232994304](https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/955470121232994304)

</comment><comment><USER9> This article must not be flagged

</comment><comment><USER35> The interesting thing is that as far as colonists go, I think the Brits were the best there were. Better be colonized by them than by the Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc in terms of your subsequent national success.

<comment><USER36> > The interesting thing is that as far as colonists go, I think the Brits were > the best there were. Better be colonized by them than by the Portuguese, > French, Spanish, etc in terms of your subsequent national success.

Outside of India and a couple other examples, though, the "subsequent national success" is of the ex-British colonists, not the colonized people, who are destroyed or marginalized inside what was once their land.

<comment><USER35> I'm thinking more of Africa, where you had the colonies side by side. On average, the British colonies did better. And, probably because they were already hardened to disease, the natives tended to stick around and keep their land more.

<comment><USER36> > I'm thinking more of Africa, where you had the colonies side by side.

They were side by side in the Americas, too. And while, yeah, disease was a problem for the indigenous people everywhere in the Americas, not all the colonial powers carried out genocidal displacement campaigns starting in the colonial period and lasting well beyond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 1 hr + 44 points + no comments = upvote manipulation

<comment><USER16> No, that happens fairly often without upvote manipulation, and as far as I can tell this post wasn't affected by such manipulation.

<comment><USER9> It seems that this article has been flagged. Dang, I have noticed this quite frequently now: criticisms of Facebook and articles critical of colonialism get flagged off of the front page. As a regular member of this community, this really undermines my trust in the objectivity of this forum

<comment><USER34> A sizable chunk of users awake at this time of the day are descendants of the very same colonialists. What did you expect ?

<comment><USER38> People should be able to look at their past without knee jerk dismissal.

Let's face it. The British haven't always treated others nicely.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Server-side tracking: surprisingly easy - <AUTHOR> https://insights.project-a.com/server-side-tracking-surprisingly-easy-83d1450cc08f?source=friends_link&sk=7f226a52e374ced3e341f6a0fa6c98f3 <comment><USER2> Great read! Curios to learn if you have you considered TCO of such a hosted solution vs. a tool like Apache Pulsar? Has async requests, combines Firehose, Lambda functions on events and (if Presto is an option) even SQL all in one [1]. I am not affiliated with the Pulsar project, generally curious if a comparison was made by OP or others and how it might look like.

[1] [https://corp.narvar.com/blog/why-we-moved-to-apache- pulsar](https://corp.narvar.com/blog/why-we-moved-to-apache-pulsar)

<comment><USER3> (Original author here) That setup is of course an option. The point of the article is to not have javascript pixels in the website for tracking, and it's easy to have server side-tracking. So anything that's not based on web browser based tracking is fine.</comment></comment>


The Option Pool Shuffle: Beat the game and raise your valuation - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle <comment><USER2> As my company is dealing with this stuff right now, this is def. good to know!</comment>


24 days of Rust – conclusion - <AUTHOR> https://siciarz.net/24-days-rust-conclusion-2016/ <comment><USER2> Yep, I both enjoyed it and found inspiration for a project. Thank you for your awesome blog!</comment>


Google Drive for Linux is here (3rd party app) - <AUTHOR> https://www.insynchq.com/linux

<comment><USER2> This isn't _Google Drive for Linux,_ it's third-party sync software.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, it is also worth mentioning that it is only free during the beta. Something which was not obvious from the download page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Been using Insync for a couple of weeks from AUR, works better than nowt, though the flat hierarchy of Google Drive is annoying.

Encryption would be a really nice feature. Anyone got recommendations for related solutions?

* other backup systems; [https://wiki.thingsandstuff.org/Cloud#Storage](https://wiki.thingsandstuff.org/Cloud#Storage)</comment>


The Department of Small Details - <AUTHOR> http://adamldavis.com/post/880589058/the-department-of-small-details

<comment><USER2> _You just need to allow and encourage everyone to submit ideas, and if they don't cost anything, but they're good ideas, implement them!_

There are two sides of this. One, indeed per OP, having no resources forces you to be more inventive and having too many resources causes bloat. I believe this does apply to software - I have seen it.

But when I look around me, I see only a loose correlation between lack of money and inventiveness; so I am forced to assume that having no resources forces you to be more inventive _if you are driven to innovate in the first place_.

To continue the OP's example, lots of people didn't have resources, but only the Wright Brothers built a plane.</comment>


Tim Bray in the Garden of Good and Evil - <AUTHOR> http://chipotle.tumblr.com/post/453496695/tim-bray-in-the-garden-of-good-and-evil <comment><USER2> This is not the first time I've heard this bait and switch tactic. The critical point that is muddled is that the web is not the Internet. Furthermore, an iPhone is a general purpose computing device and not limited to web applications. I don't believe for a minute that HTML5 solves this. For example, a major selling point of the iPhone is its iPod multimedia functionality which is an application.

Because you may want to do more with the Internet than access HTTP and because you have a device that does much more than access web pages, control over the applications on that device is a freedom issue. The partial freedom of web access is not the same as actual freedom. If I give the author the benefit of the doubt and believe he isn't clueless, then his spin on reality must be considered deceptive. It's misdirection. To alter a line in the article, when he refuses to distinguish between the Internet and the web and web access freedom and software freedom, he knows what he's doing.

I understand you may freely choose to not buy an iPhone, but Apple has gained a certain leverage in the market that can't simply be ignored. As an individual I can ignore it. As a company with competitive interest in mobile applications, you could not easily ignore it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mine is not a popular opinion and I'll probably lose comment karma for stating it. But Apple wants HTML5 to succeed precisely because it is an absolutely terrible platform on which to develop apps and games. Therefore, it gives them the illusion of supporting openness while being safe from actually competing against their own dev tools.

A lot of geeks love JavaScript and I've never figured out why, having developed in it. (Yes I've read Crockford.) The logic seems to go like this: sure it has problems but functions are first class objects! This means it's like Lisp and everyone knows Lisp is the best! As far as I can tell, arguments for JavaScript being usable don't tend to go much farther than this.

<comment><USER4> Some applications work best on the web. Some applications work best natively. I don't really see this is an either/or thing.

I've been doing Cocoa programming and heavy amounts of JavaScript for some time now. Anything bad one camp says about the other is pure FUD. Objective-J is but one example of proof in the pudding. I myself work on a codebase that's nearly 25,0000 lines of JavaScript with a design heavily lifted from my experience with Cocoa. JavaScript's expressive power makes this possible, even trivial.

Yet, JavaScripts tooling support is just subpar compared to Apple's. While people complain about XCode, it makes FireBug look like a toy.

Also pretty much everything for building interfaces is just Precambrian compared to Apple's. Code generation for UI must die.

I could go on and on.

As far as the article is concerned: Android, Windows 7 Mobile, and iPhone are all lockins if you develop native apps for them. You have non portable code (unless you're writing a game) who cares how "open" the platform is.

It's too early to see how all of this will play out but I guess that doesn't stop everyone from hand-waving every chance they get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Either the author is pretty obtuse, or he's deliberately misrepresenting Bray's comparisons between the web and the iPhone app ecosystem. I thought it was pretty clear in Bray's original post that he wasn't try to say that Apple was censoring the internet, but was using the internet as an example of the virtues of uncensored, unrestricted innovation as compared to the highly restricted environment in the App store.

And of course, as others have already pointed out, saying the mobile Safari's HTML5 support is an acceptable alternative for apps that aren't allowed into the App store is as completely stupid now as it was when Apple released the original iPhone without a local app SDK: [http://gizmodo.com/267899/no-iphone- sdk-means-no-killer-ipho...](http://gizmodo.com/267899/no-iphone-sdk-means-no- killer-iphone-apps)

<comment><USER6> _> Either the author is pretty obtuse, or he's deliberately misrepresenting Bray's comparisons between the web and the iPhone app ecosystem. I thought it was pretty clear in Bray's original post that he wasn't try to say that Apple was censoring the internet, [...]_

Bray _was_ trying to say that, I assume, but not exactly clearly. These quotes easily cause confusion about what he is describing:

 _"The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what."_

 _"Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other."_

[http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining- Go...](http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/03/15/Joining-Google)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a disingenuous, deliberate misinterpretation of what Bray said.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would like to remind fellow readers that the original iPhone was shipped without the iPhone SDK with Steve Jobs pushing for web-based applications, yet Apple was roundly criticized for it.

<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iphone.html>

</comment><comment><USER9> Obnoxious drivel like this is perhaps one of the most powerful arguments for having downvote arrows available.

<comment><USER10> If your overall score reaches a certain level, you get downvote arrows.

<comment><USER11> Not for articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Side note: I got curious about this bit

 _Have you seen Ibis Reader [<http://ibisreader.com/>] ? This thing installs from the web, sure, but it installs. You don't need to be online to use it read your books._

I thought it might be similar to the FireFox EPub reader plug-in ( <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/45281> ), but for KHTML/Webkit based browsers, and dug a bit on the website.

It may well be, but I found no way to download the plug-in (with Firefox). Apparently the makers want to channel the book finding (in Feedbooks, etc.) through a login in their own site. I suppose that _then_ the plugin gets loaded, but didn't test that.</comment>


Norvig's Python programs to practice or demonstrate skills - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/norvig/pytudes <comment><USER2> Norvig is a beast. For those that don't know, he is high up in Google Research (AI director I believe) and also wrote the #1 AI textbook. He has the #1 AI course on coursera or edx too (can't remember which one). He's a big lisp advocate (look at his review of SICP on amazon), but also has the programs for his books in Java, and Python.

<comment><USER3> Regarding lisp, he made a post about language choice here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815)

 _I think Lisp still has an edge for larger projects and for applications where the speed of the compiled code is important. But Python has the edge (with a large number of students) when the main goal is communication, not programming per se. In terms of programming-in-the-large, at Google and elsewhere, I think that language choice is not as important as all the other choices: if you have the right overall architecture, the right team of programmers, the right development process that allows for rapid development with continuous improvement, then many languages will work for you; if you don 't have those things you're in trouble regardless of your language choice. _

<comment><USER4> I'd like to ask him about a more ml-y python. Same syntax, same tinyness, but less mutable OO at its core.

<comment><USER5> Try [http://coconut-lang.org](http://coconut-lang.org)

Not pure, not perfect, but still great!

<comment><USER6> It's like someone has looked at Python and thought "Python is too easy to read. Let's add LOTS more syntax to it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> His Design of Computer programs course on Udacity is amazing.

[https://in.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs-- c...](https://in.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212)

<comment><USER8> The problem with this course is that it is quite boring if you're not interested in given subjects - e.g. Poker lectures make me sleepy.

<comment><USER9> Tried to go through the course a few years ago. In my case it was the regex bit. Trying to write the code is a massive chore with with very little payoff for going through it, and needing to go through the instructions several times in a row. Gave up on the course there.

<comment><USER10> Some people gave up on that section (week 5 of 10) and went on with the rest of the course. That seems to work out OK.

(I felt a little bad about these reactions because I'd helped with that code. In its defense, I've also been told by a couple of people that they gained a lot by working through it.)

<comment><USER9> At one point I a friend was mentioning the regex golf [https://xkcd.com/1313/](https://xkcd.com/1313/) comic and how some insane person on the internet solved it. I mentioned my pains with the regex bit of the Design of Computer Programs course, and how Norvig had some Chtulhu like ability to write regexes that befuddle mortal minds. Lo and behold, it had been Norvig all along solving that. Python notebook available in the pytudes above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Literate programming / ipython notebooks make me very uncomfortable.

Primarily the problem is that it's a living body of mutable state -- like an Excel spreadsheet, except it doesn't auto-update -- if I poke at some bit of it, and then re-evaluate a cell, some state will change, probably. And then maybe other cells' outputs will be invalid. Hmm, maybe I should re-evaluate the whole notebook? Oh, but some of the cells contain shell commands, for example to download a dictionary file from norvig.com. Do I want to do that? Maybe I should just undo the change I made. The ipynb is in git of course. But instead of a nice diff showing lines of code, the python code is held inside some JSON document.

Ipython notebook is beautiful technology, the front-end is really-well done. But accumulating all that mutable state goes against all my instincts as a programmer. I prefer editing .py files in my text editor, with Make when necessary. And then creating output from input with a single, transient, execution.

<comment><USER12> Yes this is a problem when the notebooks grow, but where do you draw the line, the work flow Jupyter uses is perfect for exploratory coding, but it gets complicated quickly

<comment><USER11> Yes, to be honest I do much more programming than exploratory data analysis currently. FWIW, here's how I use it when I want to use Jupyter:

\- Write all my python code in .py files as usual.

\- The Jupyter notebook contains calls to functions generating graphical/HTML/etc output, nothing else.

\- Either use one of the various `reload*` functionalities to update the state of the persistent python process, or use `ipython console --existing` to create a conventional ipython shell sharing the same kernel as Jupyter and evaluate code in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can run these notebooks for free in the cloud (on MyBinder.org provided by the Jupyter team). Just head there: [https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/norvig/pytudes/master](https://mybinder.org/v2/gh/norvig/pytudes/master) You may need to `pip install numpy`. Watch out images are ephemeral.

<comment><USER14> What the fuck is this magic, and how did I not know about this? I've been looking so long for something like this... Does it exist for scala? Java? This is amazing!!!

<comment><USER15> There's a nice Jupyter kernel for Clojure: [https://github.com/didiercrunch/lein- jupyter](https://github.com/didiercrunch/lein-jupyter).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Norvig's notebooks are my favorite resource for code reading. He has so much of them, written is such a nice, clean, clever but yet understandable and readable way, it's always a pleasure and amazing learning experience to go through them.

For example, going through his notebook for code advent (the first linked) [1].

[1] [https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Advent%2...](https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Advent%20of%20Code.ipynb)

</comment><comment><USER17> I really like his (How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (in Python)) : [http://norvig.com/lispy.html](http://norvig.com/lispy.html)

You learn to build a lisp interpreter in about 100 lines of python (you miss a few features like macros, but it's still quite complete). Very nice to learn how language interpretation works

<comment><USER18> He shows a more complete version in another essay [http://norvig.com/lispy2.html](http://norvig.com/lispy2.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> 'Etudes for Programmers' itself remains an interesting read and entertaining problem set. And not a single one is about implementing a Red-Black tree from memory.

<comment><USER20> This book looks interesting, but it's ridiculously overpriced for a book from 1978.

<comment><USER19> Yes, I'm not sure why it's never been reprinted or why used copies appreciate like they're made of pure bitcoin. There is a copy kicking around on libgen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is the adventofcode.com fun/educational/worthwhile? I see it starts again Dec 1. I like doing things like this but end up regretting it as it sucks too much time solving unnecessary problems.

<comment><USER22> Well I would consider any puzzle type problems technically "unnecessary" but I thought the adventofcode puzzles in 2016 were fun, well designed and tapped into some good CS algorithm and theory stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here is code for "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" [https://github.com/aimacode](https://github.com/aimacode)

Norvig wrote some of the Python version [https://github.com/aimacode/aima- python](https://github.com/aimacode/aima-python)

<comment><USER24> The majority of the python stuff is contributed by others

source: was a contributor

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> His regex golf seems kind of strange; he never mentions suffix trees. It seems like a fairly straightforward process to go through and mark the shortest distinguishing infix for each string in a generalized suffix tree.

</comment><comment><USER26> What would be a similar resource but for Ruby?

<comment><USER27> [http://rubyquiz.com/](http://rubyquiz.com/) is pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The algorithms I browsed make sense, but his coding style is peculiar, and somewhat un-pythonic.

For instance: [https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/py/SET.py](https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/py/SET.py)

Why the CAPS name? Why are we defining `test` if we're just running it on the next line - or rather, why are running the test in that same file as it's definition, and then running an example 100k times?

Any professional python developer will know this, but when an adventuring friend calls me to help him debug something, with code modeled on what he's seen in examples like these, I'll likely just throw my hands up.

On the flip side, this isn't bad for showing how something works, and the cognitive overload for a beginner to "get to the meat" if he'd used `argparse` or `click` might be a bit high.

<comment><USER29> `set` is a built-in. He probably didn't want to smash it.

Defining a function and immediately calling it prevents pollution of module scope. Without it, `photo` would be exported.

The tests are in the same file because it makes the example self-contained, I assume.

The experiments are run 100,000 times because they have a random component and this exercises the system.

<comment><USER28> Please re-read my comment. I understand what he did, but my points stand.

The name `SET` conveys little. Running the exercise in the same file is OK as it's not in a module, but again - the work demonstrates algorithms well enough, but I can't see this coding style as "smart" or "clean". It's not.

<comment><USER29> Top of the file:

""" Game of Set (Peter Norvig 2010-2015) """

It's the name of the problem being solved.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, `game.py` would've been great!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Kind of OT, but... according to his CV Norvig was the Chief Designer for Harlequin?!

[http://norvig.com/resume.html](http://norvig.com/resume.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one getting 500 for this link?

<comment><USER32> It's not just this page. GitHub is apparently having issues right now.

[https://status.github.com/messages](https://status.github.com/messages)

<comment><USER31> I had checked that page when I posted my comment. Somehow the issue got fixed before that note got posted. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I get it that Peter Norvig is a very smart programmer. But can someone explain to me - like a farmer to his cow - how do these resources differ from typical programming challenges found on the web ?

How will these make me a better programmer ? Is each designed to teach a different programming concept or technique ? Are they useful in fields lower than machine learning or AI ?

What's the benefit of a program that detects palindromes ?

<comment><USER34> Peter Norvig has this unique style where he explains his design process in detail, including exploring the problem on example cases, writing multiple solutions, the thinking involved in moving from one solution to the next one, including profiling and finding bottlenecks etc., you see how he goes about problem solving and he is a master problem solver. In fact his writing provides a good opportunity to reflect on what designing programs even means: investigating and choosing trade-offs, choosing an adequate representation (data structure) for a problem etc. This illustrates on a small scale how a lot of the most serious software engineering happens, the engineering where you actually have a definite, hard problem to solve, rather than just making the program pretty by criteria on which there is no agreement etc.

He does this not only in those notebooks but for example also in his "Paradigms Of Artificial Intelligence Programming" book. I have not seen this done to any serious extent in any algorithm textbook or tutorials.

<comment><USER35> I code Python professionally (and passionately), and would consider myself quite experienced. His code in ' When Cheryl Met Eve: A Birthday Story' is the most beautifully constructed stuff in the world. That sort of stuff isn't about coding ability, it's about a reasoning process that some people have developed to such an extent that it's innately beautiful no matter how it's expressed. I'm sure his javascript solution would be nearly as beautiful.

<comment><USER36> > His code in ' When Cheryl Met Eve: A Birthday Story' is the most beautifully > constructed stuff in the world.

Where is this published? I couldn't look it up.

<comment><USER37> Isn't it right here? [https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/ipynb/Cheryl-a...](https://github.com/norvig/pytudes/blob/master/ipynb/Cheryl- and-Eve.ipynb)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What fundamental computer concepts should a beginner programmer know? - <AUTHOR> Like memory etc? <comment><USER2> I never took computer science or programming in school. So I ended up learning a lot of programming without understanding a lot of the basics and I really struggled with a few things that seem easy now. You can do a surprising amount of things without really knowing but it also depends on what you want to do.

Learning about my computers filesystem and how files are stored was pretty helpful. The way stdin,stdout,stderror and other files worked eluded me for a while so I always had trouble parsing or writing to files.

I found learning about how memory worked and understanding the difference between compile time and run time and stack and heap memory became important when I worked more with compiled languages.

And this may be counter intuitive to what you read but I found I learned a lot more about everything switching to a static typed compiled language instead of a dynamic one. That was when I really began to learn. I realized how much i'd just been doing things without really understanding what I was doing. Having to learn different types and use them when appropriate as well as building typea with structs really taught me a lot more about how my computer actually processes the code I write.

</comment><comment><USER3> Learning the computers architecture helps</comment>


The Prophylactic Extraction of Third Molars: A Public Health Hazard - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1963310/ <comment><USER2> Dentists are often crooks.

When I was younger, my parents had to change insurance plans, so I got a new dentist. In the first visit, he takes a quick look at my mouth (with no tools, mind you) and confidently says I had 8 cavities that need drilling ASAP.

My previous dentist mentioned no such thing, so my mom took me back to him for a second opinion. He used tools to check, then told us the other dentist was full of shit and that this was surprisingly common.

The new dentist would have drilled 8 healthy teeth out of greed.

<comment><USER3> This happened to my wife when we moved to a new city. We needed a new dentists, and chose one based on Angie's List reviews.

She'd never had a cavity in her life and goes in for a routine cleaning. The guy said she had SIX cavities that needed drilling immediately (wanted to do it that afternoon) and needed a root canal and crown on one of her back teeth. And of course had generous financing options for the amount that this would go over our dental coverage (which he assumed we would be blowing all at once).

She left there in tears and came home.

It sounded like a crock, so we asked at our workplaces and chose a different dentist to get a second opinion. He looks around in her mouth for a few minutes and says the the other guy is crazy, she has one area that just needs to be watched but everything else looked fine. Even said her teeth were in outstanding shape.

If something seems off with _any_ health-related diagnosis, _always_ get a second opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My dentist was just discussing this with me two weeks ago, as she's a strong believer in evidence-based medicine. Except she disagreed completely with this publication, citing numerous recent studies published in Great Britain.

Apparently, around the year 2000, the UK's health care system introduced some new rules about managing third molars called NICE (probably to try to save some money country-wide not extracting so many wisdom teeth), and now they're learning that NICE was maybe not the greatest policy. NICE recommended that dentists do not extract wisdom teeth until their is evidence of disease, and so for the most part the dentists followed suit and stopped extracting them. Now, fifteen years later, they have found the policy has had no cost-cutting effect - extractions are at the same level as before, only now people's mouths are much less healthy.

Diseased wisdom teeth often spread their bacteria on to teeth around them, in the "one bad apple spoils the bunch" way, and people often are unable to actually brush their wisdom teeth properly, especially if they're impacted. Furthermore, given that people are in general reluctant to see the dentist unless they have oral pain, they're often not discovered until the situation's already critical. When discovered, people will often have gum diseases or cavities in second molars caused by the diseased wisdom tooth nearby.

See articles from the British Dental Journal such as "NICE or not so NICE?", and "The effects of NICE guidelines on the management of third molar teeth".

Either way, I'm very sad I wasn't able to have my wisdom teeth removed as a child, and the anguish of spending ten years with these things wrecking my mouth was not worth it.

<comment><USER5> A small clarification: NICE is not the name of the guidelines. NICE is the name of the body that issues those guidelines. NICE issues guidelines for pretty much every kind of treatment throughout the NHS.

[https://www.nice.org.uk/about/who-we-are](https://www.nice.org.uk/about/who- we-are)

<comment><USER6> The NICE guidance from 2000:

[https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta1](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ta1)

You don't have to look hard to find criticism of it, but then that's true of most things. There's going to be a review, slated for publication next year:

[https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/indevelopment/gid- tag525](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/indevelopment/gid-tag525)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I still have my "wisdom teeth" and I push back on having them out every time I visit the dentist.

The conversation always goes along the lines of "ohhh, I see you still have those wisdom teeth in there" and then that they are "impacted and going to cause lots of problems." To this day, I haven't had a single problem.

My biggest concern is the effect it will have on my airways -- I have sleep apnea so I'm worried that removing the teeth will cause the size of my already-small airways to become even smaller, causing even more of a damaging effect on the quality of my sleep.

<comment><USER8> Had mine removed because they were doing one of these[0] that was also partially erupted. (I consented because I don't think I would have been able to keep it clean)

My airway is no smaller, as best I can tell.

[http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/276916/804033....](http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/276916/804033.jpg)

<comment><USER7> That xray image you attached doesn't show any of your airway though.

When I visited Dr. Kasey Li, I had the entire cross section of my airway imaged. He was able to measure the size of my airway (I can't remember the exact mm, but as he said, "thinner than a pencil").

Perhaps you can attach xrays of your airway, before and after, so we have hard data to work with instead of unbacked assertions?

<comment><USER8> So your airway is less than 6mm? OK, had no idea you were that much of an edge case. You're literally breathing through a coffee stirrer.

<comment><USER7> And that's why I have severe obstructive sleep apnea even though I don't fit the profile for it at all (I'm 150 lbs, 26 years old, and otherwise healthy).

Anyway, I'm quoting the doctor, but I'm not ruling out the possibility either that he might have exaggerated a bit in his sales pitch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        Patients who might have avoided the surgery in the absence
        of confirmed pathology are consigned to a numb jaw or lip
        or tongue for the rest of their lives.

I found this excerpt to be the most shocking of the article.

The computer scientist in me should be more offended at the 2/3 spurious extraction rate and its subsequent drain on the economy, but that excerpt is what excited me.

<comment><USER10> > are consigned to a numb jaw or lip or tongue for the rest of their lives.

My wife suffered from this, but the nerve grew back in about a year. When the novacaine went away she was very nervous about this and called the dentist. The dentist was angry, said it wasn't possible, and to not call back. My wife just wanted to know if there was anything she should do but the dentist was obviously covering his ass.

<comment><USER11> Did you follow up with the authorities? Covering up medical malpractice is a serious misbehavior.

<comment><USER10> Yes, the covering up is bad, but I would never sue a professional doing his job.

Once I had an enhanced contrast MRI for my kidneys. To enhance it they injected a ton of iodine into my blood. They warned me that my prostrate would get hot (weird), which it did.

Later when I was back at the urologist I was explaining that I was often experiencing a hot prostate, just like I had during the MRI. He then made a point of the fact that he had never heard of that happening in a MRI. I was surprised considering that he had prescribed the MRI and the nurse had warned me.

I later read about a class-action suit against GE, who made the machine, and doctors who prescribed these tests. Now it all makes sense. He also was covering his ass.

<comment><USER12> I recently had a contrast CT with an iodine contrast agent. I would guess the doctor had never heard of the flushing happening after the initial injection, as the agent is normally out of your body quite quickly (I guess kidney issues might change that). It's a very strange sensation.

Brief searching points to lawsuits involving an agent using gadolinium instead of iodine. When I looked into the agents for my scan, the obvious literature indicated that they chose iodine compounds that were not biologically active.

<comment><USER10> I'm sorry if I get too personal, but years later I found out I have prostate cancer (so slow I will die of old age first). I have wondered if that procedure caused it. I'll never know and it doesn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had my third molars removed prophylactically and it was a complete disaster, including breaking a healthy tooth. /anecdote

Seriously, guys, the best way to have permanent damage done to your body is getting treatment while your body is healthy. Regularly let them check your teeth but be careful with stuff like that. I would never ever do anything with my teeth again unless there is pain or clear evidence that something bad is going on, like an infection.

<comment><USER14> This is the same reason I avoid doctors unless I'm sick. With doctors it's like they think (or think you will think) that they are not doing their jobs if they don't find something wrong or you don't leave with a prescription for something.

I do get routine dental cleanings every 6 months though. Luckily my dentist is an ethical guy and never pushes anything unnecessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Modern culture has somewhat weird oral hygiene rituals and poor public awareness of the causes of tooth decay. There's no inherent reason humans should need to brush their teeth multiple times per day. In many places around the world, people never brush their teeth and most adults keep healthy teeth well into old age.

Dental cavities are caused by bacteria which eat sugar/starch. If you don't eat sugar, and only eat moderate amounts of starch, you generally won't get cavities, regardless of how much teeth brushing you do. If you eat lots of sugary and starchy foods, drink sugary drinks, etc., you will be at high risk for cavities, even if you brush your teeth frequently. Applying topical fluoride paste from time to time certainly helps, but not nearly as much as cutting out the sugar.

<comment><USER7> The hacker in me cautions those who might think that not brushing is a good idea to save some time:

There are real social consequences in American culture caused by not brushing your teeth. Other people will get offended by your bad breath and yellow teeth (especially those of the opposite sex).

It might be a "weird" ritual, but it's also part of our culture and how people judge you (which actually does matter a lot in society).

Similar arguments apply to things like not bathing and drinking soylent.

<comment><USER15> You can get almost the same effect brushing your teeth a few times per week, if you're worried about it.

Most of the time if there's obvious plaque growing on your teeth, it's because you were eating something sugary immediately beforehand.

In my anecdotal experience, halitosis is also diet related, and brushing teeth has only very short term effect on it. Most of the time, bad breath is neutralized better and for longer by just eating a meal than by brushing teeth.

<comment><USER7> Yes, there are other things that can cause plaque and bad breath as well.

However, other people notice even subtle differences/inadequacies in one's hygiene.

As professional advice, I strongly caution against not brushing your teeth, or at least, telling others that you do not brush your teeth in public.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, apparently even discussing the subject will cause Hacker News readers to aggressively downvote you. :-)

<comment><USER7> I actually think that downvoting you is counterproductive to this discussion though. :)

It's a shame downvote has become an "I disagree with you" button instead of a way of signalling "low quality content." I counter-upvoted you, which also abuses the downvote button, but at least two wrongs somewhat make a right here.

Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I regret that I have only one upvote to give. I had two of my wisdom teeth out when I was younger, due to extreme pressure from my parents and dentist. Remembering the X-rays now, they would probably have grown in just fine (as did the other two). Adding injury to injury, during the procedure one of my healthy molars was broken, and the dentist (or oral surgeon — it was a long time ago) subsequently lied about it for years!

In retrospect, the idea that wisdom teeth must be extracted because modern people's mouths just can't handle them really should have seemed spurious. What — everyone who's not a relatively wealthy American is in agonising pain his entire adult life? That just doesn't compute.

</comment><comment><USER17> Heh. I remember when my dentist asked me to schedule an appointment to remove my wisdom teeth. She said they were coming in straight. I asked her why they should be removed. She said something like "because they're at the back of your mouth, and are therefore harder to clean and will decay sooner." I asked why this didn't apply to my next molars as well. She stopped bothering me, and I still have healthy, straight wisdom teeth a decade and more later.

</comment><comment><USER18> /anecdote I still have my wisdom teeth and have never had a problem and never had to get braces. Now my children are reaching the age when the dentists have started pushing to have their wisdom teeth removed "before they can cause a problem". After reading this paper I am not so sure.

</comment><comment><USER19> Note, this was published in 2007.</comment>