I Know the Salaries of Thousands of Tech Employees - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/s/powertrip/i-know-the-salaries-of-thousands-of-tech-employees-4841bc26d753 <comment><USER3> I post this now and then when this topic comes up. I work for a public university, and all salaries are public record. There's even a web app where you can look things up.

The negative impact of this has been nearly zero, as far as I can tell. Just hasn't done any harm at all. Now, state run universities are different from private companies - compensation tends to be flatter, more predictable, and has a heavier emphasis on seniority. Those traits might put a university at a big disadvantage if it were a private company.

Though now that I think of it, top law firms tend to post salaries for first year, second year, nth year associates. Again, it's all pretty predictable. Is tech much less predictable than law firm associates?

I do think far too much in tech is done in secret. It's not just salaries - I've interviewed at google, and supposedly there are scores in a database about me somewhere, along with notes, but I'm not allowed to see them. In a field plagued by accusations of bias, double secret interview tests seem like a bad idea, as do double secret salary negotiations. Or maybe they're doing exactly what they're meant to. Did Google discriminate against "over 40" applicants, as claimed by a large class action lawsuit? How would I know, the process is far too opaque for me to have any idea at all.

I have an idea - any company that uses the H1B visa must make all compensation information public (not just the H1B applications, but name, title, and compensation for all employees, the way state institutions are required to). I think this is reasonable to ask of companies making decisions bout who is and isn't allowed to work and live in the US, especially if they're claiming that they can't recruit and retain adequate talent from the existing workforce in spite of high salaries and excellent benefits.

<comment><USER4> > Is tech much less predictable than law firm associates?

Yes, significantly so. In tech compensation numbers are all over the board. Someone making $50k might be working alongside someone with the same title making $150k.

Both government and law are very bad examples. Government because compensation tiers are quite strict; law because the labor market heavily favors employers, compounded by a culture that expects you to work for peanuts early in your career and tirelessly climb the ladder to partner.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't say first year associates at big firms work for peanuts. In New York, at elite firms, starting salaries for 1st year associates is closing in on 200k. It's competitive, of course, they do work long hours under stressful conditions for that pay, and NY is an expensive city.

But the question remains - how are tech workers well served by the secrecy around salary? Why should we protect a company from the consequences of informing its workers that one developer makes half of what another makes? Especially if this company is lobbying government to do something about the critical shortage of software developers (and that something, surprise surprise, involves handing massive amount of government sponsored power - <USER2> right to decide who is allowed to live and work in the us - over to that company's HR department).

First things first, let's get transparency.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Visiting NYC --- Meeting you? - <AUTHOR>

A lot of Hacker News readers seem to concentrate in New York.  Next week I will fly over from the UK to New York for a job interview with a high frequency trading company.  (They do functional programming.)  Perhaps we can use the occasion for some geeking?
I do not want to burden the company with additional nights at a hotel, and I am too poor a student to afford them on my own.  So if somebody can volunteer a couch or the floor or or another place to sleep for a few days, that would be extra nice.  I can cook [1], do your laundry or debug your Haskell programs in return.
Please feel free to drop me a line at firstname.lastname@example.com
Thanks!
[1] I am not originally from the UK, so I can cook. :o)  Or bake some delicious German cakes. <comment><USER2> I haven't gotten an invite yet, so I'm not sure if it's 100% on, but generally the fourth thursday of every month is the Hacker News meet in NYC. Are you coming after thursday? If not, check out the website <http://groups.google.com/group/nyyc>

<comment><USER3> Invites usually go out a day or two before (they really should go out sooner). But the last Thu of every month is the hackers and founders meetup and it will be on for this month. I will have the organizers get the invite link out...

<comment><USER4> <http://anyvite.com/events/home/cmyqg0gwxx>

Just got it. Prayers answered!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I say ask for extra nights. If they are flying you from the UK, and they are a finance firm, they can afford it. And you deserve the opportunity to look around the city a bit, if you are perhaps relocating here.

<comment><AUTHOR> I told them that I want to stay longer, but that I am also prepared to organize/pay for the extra nights on my own. If they offer to pay for it, that's good. But I do not want to come of as exploiting the interview by asking for them to pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jane Street? (Or can you not answer that?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. (I don't think it's a secret.)</comment></comment>


Web Performance Case study: For wooga, social games are serious business. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newrelic.com/2011/02/17/case-study-for-wooga-social-games-are-serious-business/ <comment><USER2> Wooga Social Game Stats:

Monster World, with more than 1.1 million daily active users (DAU), is a Ruby on Rails application with a MySQL/Redis backend that's hosted on Amazon EC2. Brain Buddies (200,000+ DAU) and Bubble Island (another 1 million DAU) are both run on PHP with MySQL at Slicehost. Its newest game, Happy Hospital (already over 200,000 DAU), is a RoR app with a Redis backend hosted on dedicated machines at Hetzner.</comment>


Migrating from Mongo to Riak at Shareaholic - <AUTHOR> http://basho.com/blog/technical/2012/09/11/Riak-at-Shareaholic/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting. I wonder if they tried running MongoDB on SSD. I would think that might mitigate having to have their working set in memory and potentially make the cold start problem a bit better. It'd certainly seem easier than migrating datastores.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for watching. We didn't try running Mongo off of SSDs. We're on AWS, and we were using Mongo long before SSD storage was available. I suspect SSDs would help quite a bit with cold starts, albeit at a significant additional cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If anybody would like a copy of the slides (sans video), I've made them available here: <http://rob.by/2012/migrating-to-riak-at-shareaholic>

</comment><comment><USER4> Overall a great talk by @freerobby. One little nit... The Riak search feature is not built on lucene but modeled after it in terms of api. The search itself is not as robust as lucene but useful for most applications.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the clarification. I got confirmation on this from Ryan Zezeski as well. Riak-search used to be built on Lucene, but now it's all built by Basho, using Lucene's query syntax.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: good at programming, but seem to have lost interest - <AUTHOR>

I currently have a job with a big company with a decent income. I do my job pretty well, but it is clear that I lack initiative and could be more proactive. I can implement and build things fast, solve complex bugs and problems, but all I want is to get it done - I don't do anything extra to make it better, or find out if what I am asked to do makes any real difference, or find new things I could work on to make an impact.
Over the years I have sort of lost interest in technology. I know enough to do my job well, read hn and news and stuff, but that's about it. I don't try out new things. I have an attitude that it is mostly just the same 1s and 0s that I can figure out if I really want to.
I am actually going to join a startup for a lot less pay soon, but I am just joining for the experience, hoping a change of environment might help with my general apathy. I am not sure though.
Anyone else has this feeling, and how did you resolve it? <comment><USER2> I had this feeling a while ago, and I found that I got a lot more excited about the technology by using it to work on something I chose. Being employed by a big company, you're either working on what someone else decided was important, or you're just doing busy work - it's very easy for either one of those to not excite you.

I think joining a start up would help you if it was just the corporate environment that was choking the enthusiasm out of you, but I think working on anything that you're personally motivated to do will make you enjoy your day- to-day life a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER3> How did you find a startup to join? I wonder if that's good general advice for others with this problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend contacted me.

I read there are plenty of opportunities in silicon valley. YCombinator startups are always looking for engineers.</comment></comment>


Lights, camera, cloud: How film is spreading its wings - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37636099 <comment><USER2> Atomic fiction Are a nice bunch of guys.

I worked with them a number of times in my previous life.

They are very proud of not having a permanent render farm, as for them the upfront cost would be too much.

I heard somewhere that at one point them (or a similar company) were using 100k machines, which required google to switch out some youtube transcoders. Obviously 100k machines is way out of range for even pixar, only weta have something close.

However I still remain sceptical on actual total cost of ownership. Yes Atomic Fiction now have no capex budget, But its been replaced by OpEx.

I suspect the cost per hour of CPU is quite a bit higher than a traditional render farm (including power and running expenses.)

<comment><USER3> 100k _machines_ doesn't sound right - cores _possibly_ but not machines.

Even the big effects houses like MPC (with farms in London, Montreal, Vancouver and works on on average 18-20 films at once - some entire exclusives) don't need that many cores.

Atomic Fiction don't have that big a film/sequence/shot count - if they are using that much core time it doesn't sound like they're being that efficient.

Surely they must be using artists workstations at night to render some stuff - they can't be sending _all_ their stuff to the cloud.

<comment><USER2> yes, sorry cores.

However you have to remember that they are paying only for the time that the machines are used.

so 100 hours on one node is the same cost as 1 hour on a 100 nodes.

One of the nice things about zync is that each shot has a cost, which is really nice.

The other thing to note is that workstation make terrible render nodes. They always are in a weird state, and usually have something changed from the stock image. Plus Atomic fiction are only ~30-100 people, so not really worth the effort to bring workstations online.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminds me of when my consulting company was looking for cheap servers back in 2004 to host client projects. We found an eBay listing for about 80 machines (if memory serves) that were being sold off at a pretty good price and had really good specs. They had been used to do the rendering for the SFX on The Chronicles of Riddick. We spent a few days trying to figure out how we could manage to buy the cluster and perhaps sell them to friends, etc and it just didn't work out. But that combined with talking about servers with a friend who had been a sysadmin on the VegieTales crew (then Pixar then Dreamworks) and the challenges they faced scaling up for projects meant it sparked the thought at the time that there's probably a nice market for running a rendering utility. And that's where the thought ended! Interesting to see if up and running now and benefiting smaller studios!

</comment><comment><USER5> Is cloud computing another name for a render farm that's available for rent.</comment>


Microsoft Songsmith a Youtube Hit Machine - <AUTHOR> http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/01/29/microsofts-songsmith-a-youtube-hit-machine/ <comment><USER2> Roxanne was great, but their other two absolutely weren't among the best. Oasis' Wonderwall became an excellent non-emo techno song:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1e_h1OJfS4>

The program changes minor chords in the song to major, so suddenly the chorus seems peppy and bouncy. And its version of Crazy Train fits _far too well_ and will have you laughing out loud if you're a fan of the original:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFZvLprEIpw>

I like how some people are decrying this online as the death of music, like Songsmith is going to change how music is made. (Oasis writing music with Garage Band to the contrary, most people still write their music by getting some musicians together and figuring out how stuff sounds.) I think it's really neat that it can do this! The program's working very well - I'm installing the beta today and we'll see how well it handles real-people voices - and people expecting it to magically create the memorable hooks and snares from the original are people who still miss that a machine _can't_ generate truly great music, because the best music comes not from formula but from the human mind.

<comment><USER3> Real guy using it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaUQ4_kJBHw>

The chord progressions are painfully boring but that guy seems pleased.

<comment><USER4> Only listened to the first part, but I think he might have a hit on his hands. Brilliant lyrics!

The last hit I witnessed in Germany (I rarely check) was something along the line "I count to three and take you home, come along we'll make a threesome" - people love that kind of lyrics...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN9pGgg8YlQ&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN9pGgg8YlQ&feature=related)

Interesting... so part of Obama's rhetorical skill is to start his sentences on a beat.

Songsmith looks like a mostly useless piece of software from a musical point of view... I can't imagine any real musicians using it. But from a content- creation-for-the-masses point of view, it's clearly a hit. I look forward to seeing more crazy shit put together with this software.

<comment><USER6> meter is an important aspect of public speaking. if you vary your meter at inappropriate times your speech doesn't come off as natural and flowing. OTOH if you maintain a rigid meter the whole time you sound robotic.

<comment><USER7> One of the secrets of public speaking is to pause. If you don't pause, you're not highlighting what should be construed as important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In it's current state songsmith could not kill modern music. It does not sound organic enough. It has no soul. If music created by humans using music sequencers has its quirks. Songsmith music sounds very formulaic and unimaginative and becomes boring after the first verse or so even if the tune is catchy.

<comment><USER8> To heck with _soul_ \-- now that I've listened to several of the tracks in the original article, the problem with Songsmith is that it's hard to reverse- engineer a rhythm that you're singing _against_. [1] It mangles the rhythms in _Roxanne_ , in which Sting's vocals are designed to play around and against the timing of the rhythm section, and its treatment of the first few seconds of _Intergalactic_ are comedy gold, as it desperately tries to figure out the beat. It makes the Beasties' syncopation feel wickedly subversive. ("Wait", says the computer, "you're allowed to sing off the beat? _You utter bastards._ ")

It's a hilarious simulation of the more painful aspects of the amateur music experience, [2] but it doesn't have the rhythmic chops to out-rap a five year old.

Maybe it would do better if we gave it a metronome.

\---

[1] "hard" in the sense of "actually, I think it's logically impossible".

[2] If only metronomes were issued at birth. Though, actually, that's happening now: I have hope that _Rock Band_ and _DDR_ will help to raise an entire generation that _has a sense of rhythm_.

<comment><USER3> We have already established that Songsmith does not break any new musical ground...but the more I think about it this is hardly an impressive technological feat either. I have a Casio keyboard from the early nineties that has about 100 tunes from different genres. You can change the key of these songs as they are being played and it makes them sound like an entirely new creation. We have also been able to analyze vocals and determine the tone for a while. Songsmith basically slaps the two ideas together. This could have been in beta by 1995.

<comment><USER8> _This could have been in beta by 1995._

Sure, but the key innovation here is YouTube. Cats have played piano for as long as there have been cats and pianos [1], but only now do the folks sitting around at home have the opportunity to turn their piano-playing cat into an international video superstar with ten minutes of work.

As a subject for academic papers in music or electronics, Songsmith doesn't rate. But as an amusing social media hack, it's just great. I can't wait for the advent of the next new genre: "pieces that were supposedly written by Songsmith, but have secretly been painstakingly assembled by actual musicians". Will that cause a Milli-Vanilli-style scandal, only in reverse? [2]

\---

[1] Trivia fact of the day: Did you know that the novelty piano tune _Kitten on the Keys_ was copyrighted in 1921? <http://www.perfbill.com/covers/kitten.htm?a>

[2] I published this, then suddenly realized that Milli Vanilli is nearly twenty years old, and some of you might not have been born yet. Thank god for Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli>

<comment><USER3> Isn't it kind of sad though that MSFT invested x dollars in this and it only has value as (potentially) the next i-meme?

On an unrelated note, I am going to to start using that footnote technique of yours because I often have several tangential points, which makes my comments messy.

<comment><USER8> _I am going to to start using that footnote technique of yours..._

Hooray, I'm an innovator! ;)

[1]

\----

[1] Though technically I think I stole the amusing footnote idea from Terry Pratchett, and from the Steve Meretzky/Douglas Adams team that wrote the _HHGTG_ game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's not forget the second half of most modern songwriting - lyrics. Music certainly has MANY mathematical elements to it. There is no doubt that computers can do a lot of lifting in orchestrating and making arrangements just using basic music theory. Some of it may even be creative and useful. Most of it will be elevator arrangement trash.

Still, you're not going to be able to have computers write meaningful lyrics. A lot of "human" factors go into writting lyrics and the lyrical melody.

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5nTFKSTAxo>

</comment><comment><USER11> I love the product ad, lindked from the article. Sucks so much that I love it :D. And also: Is than an apple notebook??

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's the best one:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM1GUk1SBmY>

<comment><USER13> Van Halen's Runnin' with the Devil:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kxqMpGAL3I>

1:45 in and 2:45 in are some highlights... Money back guaranteed if you're not crying after watching it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone else think that Eye of the Tiger actually sounded pretty good? >_> _awaits criticism of musical taste_

</comment><comment><USER14> MSFT, welcome to the interwebs!!!

Even Linus loves it :)

<comment><USER15> Here is a post by Linus:

<http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/01/fantastic.html>

Billy Idol's "White Wedding" he mentions is indeed hilarious:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCWo1qdTdE>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess this is a good place to mention Britney Spear's toxic.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9S4O974qQo>

I find it hilarious because of the total mismatch between the music and video.</comment>


Fake2db – Generate fake but valid data-filled databases - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/emirozer/fake2db <comment><USER2> Some time ago, I wrote a simple tool (command line and C++ library) for generating random data for the same purpose. You basically specify a regular expression and the random strings on output match that regexp. Link: [https://github.com/vrok/randodo](https://github.com/vrok/randodo)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi! Looks interesting. I usually use faker for this ([https://github.com/joke2k/faker](https://github.com/joke2k/faker)). How does fake2db compare to it?

<comment><USER4> Faker is python-specific, and not really about creating databases, but of course you can tack that on easily. It also gives you specific values instead of a set schema and supports different languages. I use faker too, and my favourite is to tack it on to factory_boy ([http://factoryboy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](http://factoryboy.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)) for unit testing data with random but reasonable values.

Maybe a cool idea is to merge these two projects or use faker to do the value generation part here, but add more stuff in this project that's about generating a consistent _schema_ of related values - fake users that post fake posts from fake locations in a consistent manner.

edit: Actually it looks like this does use faker!

<comment><USER5> Btw, they have counterparts in the Ruby world: [https://github.com/stympy/faker](https://github.com/stympy/faker) (which states to be a port from Perl) and [https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_girl](https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_girl) I use them in a Rails db/seed.rb file to create a new dev db every time I need new data to play with, especially after changes to the schema.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I am a rather newcomer to OSS projects and development. Any criticism is highly appreciated. Have a beautiful day !

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice utility. I submitted a pull request for FoundationDB SQL Layer [https://github.com/emirozer/fake2db/pull/4](https://github.com/emirozer/fake2db/pull/4)

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands I'm starting to learn and use MongoDB quite a bit and this one thing I tend to struggle with is getting enough data into a DB to test and run queries on. I'll be happy to give this a go.

</comment><comment><USER7> emirozer (the author), you're marked as [dead], which means that your comments are hidden by default and nobody can reply to you. Try emailing firstname.lastname@example.com and see if a moderator can sort that out.

</comment><comment><USER8> it would have been better if you can predefine DDLs.

<comment><USER9> It seems like this project is basically just fake-factory applied to a few different databases. It doesn't look that useful on its own, but it's a nice demo of those packages.

<comment><USER10> I think it's very handy, saves me from writing seeders for my projects

<comment><USER11> Using Faker with Fabrication is pretty swell as well. You'd already have Fabricators defined for your tests, so you just call the Fabricator however many time you need in your seed file and you're done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hellyeah gonna try this out!

</comment><comment><USER10> +1</comment>


The Erlang Stack - <AUTHOR> http://thewebdev.de/the-erlang-stack/

<comment><USER2> Good collection of erlang links. Thanks.

I guess is good addition links is: Erland VM based language Elixir - <http://elixir-lang.org/> and newest Elixir presentation <http://vimeo.com/53221562>

</comment><comment><USER3> Sweet, just in time. I always wanted to learn Erlang.

<comment><USER4> <http://learnyousomeerlang.com/> is a really good resource for that, much better than a random collection of links.

<comment><USER5> The book is nice for sure, but I found it way too long. It's written for beginners and that's a good thing (for them) and a pity (in my case): I might have known next to nothing about Erlang, but I was already a seasoned programmer with experience with functional programming, so the whole chapter about recursion (or three about basic types...) was a bit too much for me[1].

I was learning Erlang primarily from it's documentation, beginning from syntax and then reading through library reference[2] and some examples here and there. I'm sure that this list would be quite helpful for me then and I find it useful even now.

[1] I returned to LYSE later when I knew better which parts I can safely skip and which to read. Also, I think the book was not completed back then.

[2] The worst web-based docs I ever read. Due to ability to see only one level of a tree at once I was missing massive chunks of functionality. Then I realized I have the same docs on disk as they came with Erlang (not on windows though). Basic find and grep were so much better than even google+erlang www docs! Really, just don't do it. Read the docs from your hard drive.

<comment><USER4> > seasoned programmer with experience with functional programming

Then you aren't his target market, are you?

The ratio of people with experience doing FP to people who are neither seasoned programmers, nor have experience with FP is pretty low.

<comment><USER5> True.

I just reacted to your statement that LYSE is "much better than a random collection of links". It's not always better is what I wanted to say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is handy if you every find yourself hacking together a parallel map for a escript:

<https://github.com/rprimus/plists>

</comment><comment><USER7> thanks for thinks they look like good resources :)

With the title though I was kind of hoping for a full stack of tools for developing apps, like a gui lib, or web framework, etc. Anyone have some of those links?</comment>


2014 Pwnie Award Nominations - <AUTHOR> http://pwnies.com/nominations/?year=2014

<comment><AUTHOR> They're a joke (literally), of course, but the list of vulnerabilities here is pretty interesting.

Predictions:

* Serverside: Heartbleed

* Clientside: Geohot

* Privilege Escalation: evasi0n

* Most innovative: RPW's hardware memory corruption

* Epic fail: ISC2

* Epic ownage: MtGox

<comment><USER2> You missed "Lamest Vendor Response". That's a though category. I want OpenCart to "win", but as General Motors' is the only one that required a Congressional inquiry, it's though to beat.

<comment><USER3> I also want OpenCart to "win": [https://github.com/opencart/opencart/pull/1594](https://github.com/opencart/opencart/pull/1594)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also love the 2014 Pwnie #aww [https://twitter.com/PwnieAwards/status/496327563388928000](https://twitter.com/PwnieAwards/status/496327563388928000)</comment>


Aphex Twin unearths massive free music vault - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/07/electronic-music-superhero-aphex-twin-unearths-massive-free-music-vault <comment><USER2> That's funny.. read an interview where AT's friend is saying "hey I saw a CD in china today.. all of your tracks, it's $1." and AT was in shock.

Looks like he embraced the philosophy of spreading his information now.

On that note, the satire in his Window Licker video cracks me up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBS4Gi1y_nc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBS4Gi1y_nc)

</comment><comment><USER3> Aphex Twin seems to inspire indifference or obsession, so this seems very well targeted.

Tool is kind of similar, no one seems to be "a little into Aphex Twin"

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry for my ignorance but am I the only one that can't actually see an obvious download link on the archive?

<comment><USER5> Me neither, but I found it here:

[https://aphextwin.warp.net](https://aphextwin.warp.net)</comment></comment>


The Art of the Sign Up Page - <AUTHOR> http://www.turtleinteractive.com/article/the-art-of-the-sign-up-page <comment><USER2> I tend to be wary of design advice from people that clearly have no sense of it.

<comment><USER3> Wow no kidding, disco! Small, easy registration, just like reddit and ynews for instance are the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> All too much. Make people engage, then engage them again, maybe one more time for the late comers, they'll find the signup.

VCs like registered users, but if you do things right, and make it easy for users to register when they want to, they're an inevitable result of page views.

</comment><comment><USER5> My favorite sign up page is the news.ycombinator.com one. There isn't even a password verification box.

Also, it hurts to look at Turtle Interactive's website.

<comment><USER6> >> There isn't even a password verification box

And what if you type an incorrect password (to what you thought you typed)?

<comment><USER5> Well, on news.ycombinator, you're screwed.

But I was being slightly sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "I selected these sites because I thought they were well done and were > subscription based, productivity applications. "

Well if _you_ say they're well done...

How about conversion/abandonment rates?

</comment><comment><USER8> Good information, but wow. My eyes...

</comment><comment><USER9> i think we should kill the signup process for most websites anyways. few need it. we are soon launching an email startup and we will not require registration, username or passowrd, and we are still expecting users to login/out securely.

<comment><USER10> How?

<comment><USER9> i ll tell you when we launch.

<comment><USER10> Somehow I knew that an NDA would be required.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is there a Social-Media Fueled Protest Style? - <AUTHOR> http://technosociology.org/?p=1255

<comment><USER2> As a Turkish person, this is the best and most accurate analysis of the situation I've read.

Also, I would like to express my sympathy for the mentioned journalist Serdar and outrage at the media institution that fired him. It is truly frightening what the leading party can do now that it has such a strong grip on the media, police force, and legislative branches.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Excellent analysis! Penetration of Facebook and Twitter in Turkey among the highest in the world. Due to autocensoring in main Turkish media channels about the protests, these channels, as well as media sites such as eksisozluk.com has become the shaping factors for the protests.</comment>


Electrical jolts to brain restored memory of elderly to that of 20-year-old - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/brain-jolts-revive-memory-in-elderly-turning-clock-back-four-decades/ <comment><USER2> > In a subsequent experiment, the researchers tried to reverse the finding: > they used brain stimulation designed to desynchronize waves in young > participants, which caused the subjects to do worse on the memory test

Now that's how you do mad science.

<comment><USER3> Who wants to co-found a new 'electric coffee' product?

<comment><USER4> Simply called "Jolt!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Huh, wow. I was expecting this to be about deep-brain stimulation, but it looks like they used a non-invasive technique. And it sounds fascinating.

It looks like they analyzed peoples' theta and gamma waves in different regions of their brain, and tried to 'nudge' them towards staying in sync.

Theta/gamma/whatever waves are defined by the frequency at which the signal occurs, sort of like radio bands, and it sounds like this study presents the brain as a bunch of analog circuits which eventually develop stuff like noise and clock drift.

>Here we show that a core feature of cognitive decline may emerge from the temporal decoupling of neural codes theorized to constitute a flexible frontotemporal circuit for the monitoring and storage of memory contents of real-world information. The work supports theories of neurocognitive aging that propose cortical disconnection underlies age related cognitive decline...

Neat. Sounds like we need thicker wires.

</comment><comment><USER6> If there's no side effects of long-term usage, I wonder how much power this needs - could you make a hat of some sort to just constantly provide the jolts to offset the limited duration of the benefits?

Perhaps the 90s dream of "space helmets" will come to fruition.

<comment><USER7> Stimulation doesn't need a lot of power, transcranial has been a topic of research for a long time. If you do it incorrectly, however your nervous system will build up an immunity by learning to ignore the external signals.

<comment><USER8> _If you do it incorrectly, however your nervous system will build up an immunity by learning to ignore the external signals._

That sounds interesting. Where can I learn more?

<comment><USER7> Sorry this is such a late reply. The best publications I've found on this topic came from St. Jude Medical Research (The private medical device manufacturer not to be confused with the Hospital Chain) and it related to their line of neuro-stimulation devices back when they were still in development. I'm having trouble finding it right now or I would link some specific papers. The jist of it is that you need to use a psuedo-random modulation or the nervous system will eventually learn to ignore the external signals. Is applied at pretty much all levels of the nervous system from pain receptors to the brain but not at the same rate of developing immunity.

The Army Human Factors group has published a lot of material specific to various types of electrical/magnetic cranial stimulation. You can find some excellent stuff on DTIC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That messy ribbon cable in the picture suggests that signal integrity or power isn't a big concern in this experiment. How hard would it be to replicate a system like this?

<comment><USER10> Re photo: the article's photo appears to be a stock photo. [https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news- photo/epileptology-u...](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news- photo/epileptology-unit-nice-france-patient-hospitalized-news- photo/1041927180)

<comment><USER11> Damn, that is _lame_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like a lobotomy experiment. Successful at the time, but 50 years later doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore.

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess as a last resort....kinda trying whatever for cancer after the doctors send you home to die. Just as you can improve it, you can also fry it (whatever is left anyway)

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a company using similar tech in a commercial product: [https://www.haloneuro.com](https://www.haloneuro.com)

</comment><comment><USER15> Don't psychedelics do the same as far as increasing plasticity goes?

</comment><comment><USER16> "You know you've got the brain of a four-year-old child, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it." \-- Groucho Marx, Horse Feathers, 1932

So which 20-year-old's memories do they get? Can they pick one with good memories? Where do I get in line?

<comment><USER17> It mentions it in the article - working (short term) memory

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article title isn't clear - is it saying that the _state_ of the person's memories was 'restored' to what it was when they were 20 years old? Intuitively, that's just about what I would expect "electrical jolts to the brain" to accomplish, at least in the best case!</comment>


Why Apple's Frightened of Female Sexuality - <AUTHOR> http://www.twinfinite.net/2014/06/08/apples-orgasms-female-sexuality-frightens-apple/ <comment><USER2> I came very close to missing the fact that there was a page 2 here, but to anyone that wants to read the whole thing: there's a page 2.

I strongly agree with much of what the author is saying here, but she may be reading too much into the fate of this particular pair of apps ("never attribute to malice...", etc.). I mean this as a nit and not the dreaded "middlebrow dismissal". :) The saving grace of the piece is that her thesis is more about attitudes towards sexuality in general; this particular incident only provides a convenient example.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article doesn't properly address the headline. Apple's rejection could be the same for a game about male masturbation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are there app's available teaching men to masturbate? If there are, then she has a complaint. If there aren't, she doesn't have much ground to stand on.

<comment><USER5> As mentioned in the article, rack stare [1] is in the app store. So masturbation bad, sexual harassment good?

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rack- stare/id385786751?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rack- stare/id385786751?mt=8)

<comment><USER6> Let's get on a more basic level, even.

Which of the two apps is more pornographic? The cutesy anthropomorphized vagina giving anatomical lessons, or the game that rewards you for staring at cleavage?

<comment><USER7> Please read the entirety of the article, including page two (which is unfortunately easy to miss). There she writes:

> I'll acknowledge that, although disgusting and possibly dangerous, Rack > Stare caters to a certain market. The real problem is there aren't many > alternatives to this construction of sexuality

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey Apple, approve the App!!! If I had a teen daughter, I would buy it for her. Everybody else: read till the second page.</comment>


Google AppEngine Datastore Dying - <AUTHOR> http://www.pubnub.com/blog/google-app-engine-datastore-dieing Performance monsters have been snacking on Googles Datastore API. Datastore slowdown has been causing abandonment of writes due to timeouts over 30 second. <comment><USER2> The Appengine team continually updates developers on their progress with an admirable degree of transparency. So, though I've suffered from the recent decrease in GAE performance, I'm confident they will resolve the issues in short order. (Still...it sucks for the time being!)

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/06/datastore- outage...](http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/06/datastore-outage-and- unapplied-writes.html)</comment>


Gap Year: The Growing Appeal of Not Going Right to College - <AUTHOR> http://moneyland.time.com/2012/10/05/gap-year-the-growing-appeal-of-not-going-right-to-college/ <comment><USER2> Stuff White People Like

#120 Taking a Year Off

 _When someone goes through a stressful experience they usually require some time off to clear their head, regain focus, and recover from the pain and suffering. Of course, in white culture these experiences are most often defined as finishing high school, making it through three years of college, or working for eleven months straight with only two weeks vacation and every statutory holiday ("they don't count because I had to spend them with family.")_

 _Though you might consider finishing school or having a good job to be "accomplishments" many white people view them as burdens. As such, they can only handle them for so long before they start talking about their need to "take a year off" to travel, volunteer, or work abroad._

[http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/01/11/120-taking-a- year...](http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/01/11/120-taking-a-year-off/)

<comment><USER3> Yes, middle class white people from affluent western societies like to do certain things that other people don't.

Why is the internet behaving like this is some new fact we were not previously aware of?

<comment><USER4> I think it has more to do with the fact that affluent people from other countries don't do the gap year thing and this is why it's seen as a 'white phenomenon'.

I'm brown (from India) and have been traveling full time for the past 1 year with my girlfriend (who is white, from Portugal) and we've rarely met any non- white travelers even though there are plenty that can afford to.

I think it's just cultural. White people have stronger wanderlust.

(Back home everyone thinks I'm crazy :P)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think gap years are an excellent idea. If you can afford to travel for part of it, do so.

I feel that I've grown the most as a person from all of the travel I've done. Your perspective changes when you see how other people live and that the world is a big and different place outside of your neighborhood and the latest US- centric cable media coverage.

If you go backpacking you'll find that it's extremely common for European/Australian/Kiwi people to do gap years, it's only unheard of in the states.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm now 3-months in to my own gap year and I'm loving it. I'm working in the bay area, not teaching in an impoverished country, but it's been a huge kick- in-the-ass to grow up. Dealing with rent, eating healthily, managing money — it's been both more difficult and more interesting than I expected. I've gained a lot of respect for my parents with regards to simply keeping a family going. Not to mention the incredible things I'm learning from working and socializing with people much older than me. If anyone else out there is considering a gap year I say: go for it.

<comment><USER7> "I've gained a lot of respect for my parents with regards to simply keeping a family going"

Adding a child (or multiple children) to the mix gives "keeping a family going" a whole new meaning. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _With over 20 years of experience researching gap years, Bull has seen students work everywhere from outdoor-education centers to Scottish castles to elephant sanctuaries._

Let's be honest about what types of job opportunities there are for an 18-year-old with just a high school diploma, especially in this economy. Working with elephants in a Scottish castle sounds great, but I think the odds are a lot higher that you'll be cleaning the bathrooms at IHOP.

To be clear, it's not just the lack of education that's an issue, it's the lack of experience doing anything. 18-year-olds are a freaking liability to work with a lot of the time. They're often have unreliable schedules, unreliable transportation, and with no real work references, it's hard to know anything about their work ethic. Add on top of that that with these gap year kids, you know they're only going to be working for you for a year, so it's hard to justify investing too much in them.

<comment><USER9> This. The kids mentioned in the article are all _doing something_ with their gap year, and that's all well and good, but far too many of the kids I went to high school with just got part time jobs at Mickey D's and grumbled about how much they wanted to move out of their parents' houses, without doing anything toward that end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I took a gap year in 1986, as did many of my friends at school. This might be a new thing in the US, but it's fairly common in the UK, and has been for decades.

<comment><USER11> Very common in Europe, yeah. I could even dare to say that it's mandatory for young men here in Switzerland, since it's impossible for conscripts to go straight from highschool to college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Avoid a huge debt burden for the sake of prestige and college can be four gap years. Do crazy things for course credit. Take professors in all sorts of your interests out to lunch and ask them questions. Experiment. Mess up. Go around the world in the summer, a semester, or for a year and have it sanctioned. Whatever. All of it can inform your technical or practical pursuits and in some cases change your path. College is Disneyland for hackers and entrepreneurs. If you arrive at this view of it early, there's no reason to delay it.

</comment><comment><USER13> Gap years are awesome - especially if you travel.

As a parent, I hope to instill the following to my two daughters:

Take a gap year or two (at most) Do not get married earlier than 25 Do not have kids earlier than 30

You really really need to enjoy a gap year and enjoy your 20s, but do so in a way that sets you up to be comfortable and happy for the rest of your life.

<comment><USER14> So there's no need for a woman to have children at all, but saying "do not have kids earlier than 30 isn't great advice. There's a measured correlation between maternal age and the incidence of Down's Syndrome and other trisomies - the longer a woman waits to have children, the higher the odds there will be a problem. Which is not to say that all women should have children as young as possible - it's just that there's no one blanket piece of advice that's universally good.

<comment><USER15> > _There's a measured correlation between maternal age and the incidence of > Down's Syndrome and other trisomies - the longer a woman waits to have > children, the higher the odds there will be a problem._

The odds of which are still insignificant.

<comment><USER16> 1/50 at age 43 is insignificant?

<http://www.pregnancy-info.net/chromosomal_downsyndrome.html>

(however, it's a gradual thing and not much different at 32 versus 28, for example)

<comment><USER15> > _1/50 at age 43 is insignificant?_

43 is quite far from 30.

> _however, it's a gradual thing and not much different at 32 versus 28, for > example_

Exactly.

<comment><USER17> You'd be surprised at how fast the 40's sneak up on you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As someone currently on an extended trip (1-2 years total, been travelling for 4+ months thus far) I'm not sure I'd actively encourage my kids to do this before college. My wife and I left our corporate jobs after saving for 3 years and paying off school loans.

We're able to spend a bit more and travel to more places as a result of having "real" jobs before our departure. This also gave us a taste of our day to day with our chosen professions and an excellent chance to make changes (based on real experience) if desired.

That said, I'd certainly recommend it for just about anyone who is interested. We've learned (basic) Spanish, tons of geography, and about the diversity of cultures in South America. We've also seen many amazing sites. I really wish this was more common for Americans.

<comment><USER19> Are you going to have a gap in your resume or are you working remotely? When you take a gap year before, during, or even right after College, it's not a big deal at all. Take a gap year after you start your career and you might have to start explaining it to future employers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is extremely common in Europe and the UK. It's definitely related to if you afford it. My friends that went to private Schools are mostly taking gap years and most of my friends that went to state schools are going to University or going to work, etc. Interestingly those that went through the state sector tend to know where they want to be going more, I don't want to play to stereotypes but this could be because their were fewer constraints put on them in terms of possible job paths.

It's most likely because in the UK we don't have high school, once you're 16 you finish school and can go to Sixth Form College where you choose 4 subjects to focus on, none are compulsory and get deeper knowledge in what you're interested in. Many people feel that after going through School and Sixth Form they want to take some time to explore before University.

I've personally not gone to University this year and am working on a startup, I can't call it a gap year as although I have traveled a fair amount to speak at conferences, etc I'm still spending all of my time building a company. I definitely believe whatever path people choose, it should be one that has a rationale behind it over following the crowd or what they were taught to believe. Although my Sixth Form did push the idea of University on students my teachers personally agreed with my decision based on everything I'd been doing over the last few years.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've gone seven years now without college, and I've found that my previously brazen attitude about not needing college has been tempered with a deeper understanding about what college will be able to give me, should I ever attend. Of course, the needs might well be met by the oncoming wave of MOOCs, but the idea that knowing what one _wants_ out of something (in this case, college) before executing on it is a force multiplier to its effectiveness applies to a great many other things. Why not here?

</comment><comment><USER22> This article makes me incredibly angry, and I think I've figured out why. This sort of thing masquerades as a transgressive act, but it serves to reinforce the notion that the lives of working adults are drudgery, and that, every so often, we need a break from it all. People who can afford this sort of thing are already in the highest caste in the US. And don't tell me that those programs that provide stipends aren't seriously competitive - I'm willing to bet the majority of those admitted don't need the money.

Here's a great example of such a program: Where There Be Dragons[1]. The very name is racist and archaically antipodean. I'm sure it's a great honor to be a Dragon, and the name really pops on that college application!

This is not an indictment of cultural exchange, but of hedonism and signalling pretending to be any type of worthwhile exchange. I'm sure that some people do meaningful work and somehow find themselves by switching tasks or locales. But I'm willing to bet that more than a few are disingenuous, and this article actively encourages that sort of behavior.

[1] <http://www.wheretherebedragons.com>

<comment><USER23> Playing devil's advocate for a minute here...

Does it really matter why they do it? Almost any teen would have an element of hedonism in their choice to take a gap year. In fact, I'd hope that was the case!

But does that matter? It still gets them out of their bubble. Sure, sure, they'll be in a different bubble with the Dragons stuff, but a lot of people need that safety net. But they're still out of whatever their environment was and they see a different one. It's hard for me to see that as a bad thing.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady I think a gap year, even if you don't travel is a good idea. I'd just started freelancing in my final year of high school so I deferred a place at university to see what I could make of freelancing. After the year I decided university wasn't for me (something I'd thought for years but as it was the natural path people take I was going to do it anyway) and that I would be better continuing freelancing and building a business. Three years on and it's been one of the best decisions of my life.

Taking a year out gives you a good opportunity to evaluate the pros/cons of further education. The last year or two of high school are spent being told how important further education is, taking exams, and applying to universities. Evaluating what would happen if you did something else never really enters the thought process for most people. A gap year gives you time to consider your options.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm a Swiss male. Since we all have to do 240 days military days minimum (soldier grade, sometimes they force people to do more, 21 weeks is mandatory as military academy, the rest can be split up), most of the men here take one year off anyways. Plus we start school at 7, so most men begin university at 20. It's pretty late but I have to say that I think the additional level of experience helped me tremendously to make the right choices later on. Plus I met my wife in my year 'off'.

So yeah, IMO noone should give shit to those guys choosing to take that year off. University education is the final stage before modern adulthood and it's important to do the right choices - after primary and mid school where everyone has been spoon fed it's really no surprise people need to take a bit of time to know what they want and who they want to be.

</comment><comment><USER25> I find the (almost) complete lack of gap years in the US really weird, and really unfortunate. I feel like people going on gap years is beneficial even to those people who don't go on them - it adds a different (and on the whole beneficial) dimension to first year student life.

<comment><USER17> My guess is that the gap year concept is actually unusual in most of the world. As far as I know it's very uncommon in Asia, where the closest thing is studying abroad for a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I took a gap year and joined the Americorps NCCC. I spent the year volunteering all across the Southern states and served with people ages 18-24 from across the country on construction and education projects. It was a great way to expand my limited understanding of the world and gain confidence. Had I gone straight to college I would have missed out on a lot of learning. I think gap years are a great idea but recommend doing something interesting, productive or useful for yourself or others.

</comment><comment><USER27> I did something similar. Though for me it was after college and before starting on a career. Spent a year in Syria(I'm Lebanese) doing youth-work, teaching, etc... It was definitely an extremely beneficial year for me. I would recommend it for anyone as long as they can afford putting off making a living for a year(while this may be a foregone conclusion in the west, many people here have to start making money ASAP to support their parents, not the other way around)

</comment><comment><USER28> College? or Travel?

Do both! Study Abroad!

</comment><comment><USER29> So the idea is that college is too expensive so the government will help you pay for college by letting you work for them for a year? Government solutions to government created problems. Hooray.

<comment><USER15> > _Government solutions to government created problems._

And the college being expensive is a "government created problem" because?

<comment><USER30> Because government (a) tells everyone that they need college, (b) works to make sure that huge floods of loan money are available.

<comment><USER31> How does the government tell everyone that they need college? I'm curious. Because last time I checked, there was only one group of people who tell others that college is required, and that group was People With College Degrees.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Read your E-Books inside beautiful VR Environments - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> ok, will do that :)</comment>


PostgreSQL: Linux VS Windows – part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.sqig.net/2016/01/postgresql-linux-vs-windows-part-2.html <comment><USER2> nice try... But the methodology kind of sucks... The author should at least get a real server (not a virtual one) so that he can at least control that side of the equation...

<comment><USER3> Well, that was one of the basis of my test. My client is slowly moving to the cloud and more and more apps will move to the cloud. This is not a pure perfs analysis as I don't have sufficient hardware to do it and I won't. The cloud is here to stay, we should be prepared for it. But yeah, my methodology's not perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The benchmark should be re run with proper PostgreSQL configuration parameters. PostgreSQL's default configuration is very very conservative. This benchmark is like trying to see which is faster, a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, on a single-lane road with heavy traffic.

At the very minimum, shared_buffers and checkpoint_segments need to be adjusted.

</comment><comment><USER5> On this point, I'd run a cross platform cup benchmark, to ensure that you're getting comparable instances.</comment>


Cancer Studies Are Fatally Flawed.Meet the Billionaire Who's Exposing It - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/01/john-arnold-waging-war-on-bad-science/ <comment><USER2> I tend to find some of the headlines around the 'reproducibility crisis' quite overblown, but ultimately I agree with Arnold's interpretation of the situation. Some fields have strong foundations, often based in some experimental methods that are good at providing robust results. Once set, the mores of a field are mostly unchanging, for good or ill. This is a very important, perhaps essential, part of the way that science operates in the real world.

In some cases this is very good. Part of my difficulty in understanding this issue is that my background is in molecular biology. Moreover, I studied models that had very little to do with cancer funding, and had a strong focus on 'classic' methods (protein and RNA blots and 'hardcore' genetics). From my/our view, even the new genomic methods (which are usually very good, overall) are viewed with very deep skepticism. Your quality as an investigator, in large part, depends on how skeptical of your own work you are. A good presentation often leaves you feeling beat over the head with consistent data from all manner of different methods. As a new investigator, it really feels excessive, but it's the deep suspicion that drives the field. It has real impact on who gets funded and what gets published.

Ben Goldacre's work was what first made me realize how different this was to some fields. Not just the results that he uncovered, but the response he received for very thorough and fair critique.

Reproducibility will always be difficult; even for 'true' results, you wouldn't expect all reproduction attempts to work. You need people with a lot wet-lab experience and suitable troubleshooting skill. Even the best, most robust methods will present some difficulty, but that alone does not constitute a failure to replicate. But Goldacre's epidemiological approach avoids those sorts of pitfalls.

I suppose it is somewhat troubling that a single person/couple can have so much influence over science, but I find their approach and results genuine. They are funding, as best as I can tell, very deserving investigators.</comment>


Mobilizing MySQL: Backend Integration Deep Dive - <AUTHOR> http://openmobster.blogspot.com/2013/06/mobilizing-mysql-api-based-backend.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This article focuses on showing how to use the OpenMobster Backend API to integrate a MySQL database to the Sync+Push Engine.</comment>


I analyzed my Lyft driver tips, here's what I found - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/i-analyzed-my-lyft-driver-tips-heres-what-i-found-94c890a36c0b <comment><USER2> Wait, what? Tips are a major source of income!? The absence of tipping was one of the things I especially liked about Uber and Lyft when they first came along. I noticed the tip feature when it showed up but it is such a blatant regression toward the bad old days of the taxi industry that I have ignored it on principle. Has this bad idea really taken off to such a degree that drivers actually _expect_ tips now?</comment>


4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@DaleBeran/4chan-the-skeleton-key-to-the-rise-of-trump-624e7cb798cb#.bxy4mzw2p <comment><USER2> What an idiotic hit piece. You don't have to be a big fan of 4chan to see most of not all of the "information" in this "article" is completely fabricated by the author.

Even the title reveals the ridiculous conspiracy theories the author is going to spout: in their endless search for someone to blame for Trump's election, surely none could be _less_ likely than 4chan!

</comment><comment><USER3> I truly believe I am now dumber for having read that. (I read it all just too see if it got any better, it doesn't. It gets a lot worse)

<comment><USER2> I salute your fortitude. I must admit I commented here despite not being able to make it more than halfway through the article before giving up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I missed the part where the author reveals he is a billionaire.</comment>


Erlang Patterns - <AUTHOR> http://www.erlangpatterns.org/patterns.html <comment><USER2> Thanks so much for this!

I don't write erlang but I'm really interested in the underlying principles for building really resilient systems.

This is a great way to see the individual pieces and their purposes, making it easy to learn from the erlang community without actually being in it.</comment>


Google increasingly is promoting a single answer for many questions - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-featured-answers-aim-to-distill-truthbut-often-get-it-wrong-1510847867 <comment><USER2> Halfway down that piece:

 _A study this year by Stone Temple, a prominent analyst of the industry, showed Google's search engine answered 74.3% of 5,000 questions, and on those answers it had a 97.4% accuracy rate. Both percentages are higher than services from Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp._

Alternative WSJ:

Let's bury that tidbit under the fold while we nitpick and highlight edge cases in a constantly improving system.

We should also emphasising how integral google's search is to the health of society and civilization because we are mandated by management and ownership to produce anti-google PR and provide a steady supply of ammunition to its critics.

<comment><USER3> That's absolutely the wrong way to go about looking at it. Not all facts are of equal importance. 97 correct facts about, say, gardening, and three incorrect facts about first aid is not a successful system.

If Google is presenting the tool as a canonical source of truth, it needs to be right 100% of the time. In fact, being right 97.4% of the time is worse in many ways, as it lulls people into a false sense of security about how much they can trust the system. Get 97/100 obvious answers correct, then give someone wildly inappropriate advice when they ask something more "off piste".

And let's not delude ourselves here, Google isn't doing this out of an altrustic desire to help people. They're making sure fewer people leave google.com, in the process starving the very sites they're getting information from of revenue. That should worry all of us.

> we are mandated by management and ownership to produce anti-google PR and > provide a steady supply of ammunition to its critics.

This feels like an absurd criticism. Couldn't it apply to absolutely every negative thing written about Google, ever? Why should Google be immune from criticism?

<comment><USER4> >If Google is presenting the tool as a canonical source of truth, it needs to be right 100% of the time.

Should we burn all the dictionaries and encyclopaedias because they aren't perfectly accurate? Textbooks don't have a black-box warning on the front page saying "The accuracy of this book cannot be guaranteed. Please verify any facts stated before storing them in your long-term memory or using them for any purpose"?

"Truth" is an inherently messy concept. The very best curated sources and human experts are frequently fallible. If you assume that Google (or any other source) is infallibly accurate, then the problem lies with your education, not the source.

<comment><USER5> > Textbooks don't have a black-box warning on the front page saying "The > accuracy of this book cannot be guaranteed. Please verify any facts stated > before storing them in your long-term memory or using them for any purpose"?

I just checked a 2004 medical textbok I had nearby (don't ask). YES, they do have such disclaimers, and they're worded even better than you put it.

<comment><USER6> > I just checked a medical textbok I had nearby (don't ask). YES, they do have > such disclaimers

Most textbooks do not. _Medical_ textbooks (and websites, etc.) often do because of special circumstances (legal and practical) applying to that field.

<comment><USER5> A few levels up, medical facts were the example used for needing disclaimers. The point is that Google isn't putting up disclaimers even where they should.

> ...97 correct facts about, say, gardening, and three incorrect facts about > first aid is not a successful system...

<comment><USER6> _General_ information sources that include but aren't specifically focussed on medical information don't usually have disclaimers on the medical information (e.g., encyclopedias don't have disclaimers on entries that happen to concern medical information, while medical textbooks do).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google's instant answers are generally pretty good in my opinion, but in situations where the answer really matters, it could cause dangerous situations in the cases where Google does get it wrong. A good example is how Google chose the _wrong_ picture on how to do cable crimping:

[https://imgur.com/a/H3Uhg](https://imgur.com/a/H3Uhg)

Regarding the example above, Google's answer with a picture looks clear and sounds very authoritative. No further reading seems to be necessary.

<comment><USER8> I've found it pretty unreliable. I was researching Teflon pans the other day, and all the instant answers were myths about how Teflon pans will give you cancer. And when you click no the sites, it's usually clear if their answer is at all reliable or not. Stuff like that means I always have to do more work with instant answers than if I just ignore it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My favorite example is "are lemons acidic?"

It's full of "alkaline diet" sites trying to SEO itself into convincing people that lemons are good for you because they're an alkaline. It's become a little less inaccurate over the years but is still dodgy.

Then again the answers are so consistent and I'm so used to trusting the first page of Google that I'm almost convinced that lemons alkalinize your body.

<comment><USER10> I'm not even sure Google's behaviour is wrong in this instance. The kind of person who would google something as obvious as that is probably actually more interested in the woo-answer, and I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job).

To illustrate with another example, if I ask Google where the government is hiding the aliens, I'm probably more interested in the answer "Area 51" than "the government isn't hiding any aliens".

<comment><USER11> _" 2 Balances pH: Lemons are an incredibly alkaline food, believe it or not. Yes, they are acidic on their own, but inside our bodies they're alkaline (the citric acid does not create acidity in the body once metabolized"_

That's what I get in the answer box. Wow.

I think it absolutely is Google's job to be the woo police _in the privileged answer box_. They can just choose not to display it for answers they're not confident in owning and leave you with the general search results.

It probably needs to be a whitelist. Most of the time it's wikipedia anyway (a whole other can of worms, but at least it won't tell you that lemons are alkaline or feed your conspiracy theories)

<comment><USER12> It looks like that's correct though, as supported by the first google hit [1] for that subject, which in fact is arguing the stupidity of the alkaline diet. It's also supported by the table in this paper [2]. The only catch being that your kidneys eliminate the extra alkaline products in your urine so it has no effect on most of your body.

[1] [https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/lemon-juice-acidic- or-a...](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/lemon-juice-acidic-or-alkaline) [2] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002822395...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002822395002197)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I looked at a search result today and there were ads at the top, a few answers in the middle, and more ads on the bottom of the first page. Once Google has to start paying all the ISPs their net neutrality blood money, I imagine a single result in a sea of ads will be the norm.

</comment><comment><USER14> Single answers is basically what's needed for Alex, Google Home, etc. I was surprised that Google beat Alexa. Siri was horrible.

I haven't purchased a home voice device yet because I wanted it to get a little better. However, I'm not sure if there will be much improvement in the device itself. The real work is on the server.

<comment><USER15> Surprised Google beat Alexa? I have had the Echo since late 2014 and now several Google Homes. For understanding you and answering questions Google is well ahead of Amazon.

But you find this surprising?

This is what Google does and has for almost 20 years now.

<comment><USER16> I think people who have always used iphones seriously underestimate how good google has become at this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of these answers seem to be borne of algorithmic consensus of top-ranked sites. There are probably worse ways to go about it, but in many ways Google has to take sides on ideas or concepts that are still strongly debated. Consensus does not create or prove facts, even if it's a strong signal. There are _certainly_ things that I strongly believe that you do not. Does that make my beliefs (or yours) any less valid (until we're confronted with sufficient evidence to change our views), even if one of us has to be wrong?

* Are there sea monsters? Aliens?

* Is there a God?

* Is there a multiverse?

Historically, there was so many things that were 'consensus' concepts that were just flat (oops) wrong. Google would have gotten all of these wrong..

* What happens when you sail over the edge of the earth?

* What's holding up the earth?

* Is the earth the center of the universe?

How about:

* Is the speed of light a fixed constant?

* How much statistical error is introduced into carbon dating when extrapolating behind more than a few hundred years?

* Is cracking my knuckles bad?

How about this one, if it was listed on thousands of spammy self-help sites: "recent studies have shown that it's beneficial to drink gasoline in small quantities." (please do not drink gasoline. That's insane.)

Should Google be liable for those answers that are now coming from its site, with the authority of the world's dominant answer generator, instead of the third-party site that's spouting nonsense? (yes.)

Really, though, Google's answers are probably as good as any until we learn everything about everything and finally agree on _everything_. Even if they are self-serving to keep you on Google and not send you to a third-party site to get your answer.

<comment><USER18> "And, should Google be liable for those answers that are now coming from its site ..."

This is why Google references the source when it gives you the answer.

<comment><USER19> "what is tom cruise's age" didn't reference a source when i checked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> With my Google Home, I often ask it, "Can my dog eat X" and it'll answer usually from the single answer from Google.

While Google Home usually says the source, "According to WebMD..." or "According to <some blog post>..." it would be horrible if it gave the wrong answer - saying something was safe to eat but it really wasn't.

I hope they take extra precaution with answers related to medicine/safety.

<comment><USER21> I personally would hope that _you_ take extra precaution with answers related to medicine/safety. Why would you trust google with something like this? If you ask Google "Can my dog eat X" and blindly trust the answer then it is your fault and not google's if your dog gets sick. Google isn't responsible for your dog, you are!

<comment><USER22> Why would you trust anything? Not to go to the extreme, but we do things every day where trust is integral, and what we trust is not something we verify independently. Or maybe you are different.

<comment><USER21> Yes we do things every day where trust is integral, but I do verify independently accordingly. This is relative to the importance of the thing off course. That is just common sense.

I accept googles answer when I ask for the weather. If google is wrong on this it mostly has no effect. So it is absolutely appropriate to accept this answer blindly.

I trust my doctor when I have a minor illness, but I did select my doctor carefully and I would get a second opinion if it is something serious.

Putting the same care into both of these things would either be dangerous or obsessive. It does terrify me that people here are suggesting that there are people who put less care into answering medical or safety related questions for themselves than I do reading a weather report for the day. It's crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> After the Vox music player changed from freeware to freemium, I searched for something like "best free flac player mac 2017". It took me a moment to realize that the featured result was one vendor's self-serving comparison with competitors.

I'm prepared for half of the results to a query like that to be littered with affiliate links, but I wasn't expecting a featured result like that.

<comment><USER22> That for me is the largest downside to google (or other search engines, really). It's impossible to get objective information on products unless you know a reviewer who is objective in the given domain...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> On one hand, I see this as great way to encourage curiosity. A child can ask a simple question "why does it rain?" and get back an immediate response. No more clicking through links to try and find a simple explanation, only for them to have lost interest.

At the same time, I can't help but feel that way more people will look for an answer and just give up on their question if the immediate answer is not clear enough or not immediately available. With attention spans being as short as they are already, I can see it discouraging many people from performing the acts of reading and trying to understand what they read. And that kind of culture worries me a lot these days.

</comment><comment><USER25> If you search in German Google (does not need to be in Germany) and Google mainly for English search terms... you won't see any of those. Google is still in many ways a "US English first" company :/

<comment><USER26> In many ways, this is a US English first world :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I did some research on how to optimize for getting a site into the answer area at the top of results using schema.org's question & answer protocol.

[http://robertspeer.com/schema-org-for-busy- professionals/](http://robertspeer.com/schema-org-for-busy-professionals/)

Turns out it's a LOT easier than it sounds. Unfortunately I never got a client to bite on this so I don't have results to share.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is it possible this is the first iteration of an initiative getting more complete, nuanced answers?

As software developers, we talk about small cycles and iterations first that drive toward a working product, not a singular giant leap toward a goal. This would be consistent with that pattern.

</comment><comment><USER29> Obviously context is important in pieces like this, as others pointed out, and I can't read it because stupid paywalls, but...

There should be some real anti-trust concerns with Google providing answers to questions itself. Google gets those answers by crawling sites with content owned by others. It has avoided copyright issues by arguing that they only show a snippet of the content to aid finding the best search result, thus it is not reproduced in whole or in part, but that the searcher will still visit the page and benefit the copyright owner.

If Google just gives you the answer and there's no need to visit the page, then that is a much bigger issue I think.

</comment><comment><USER30> The real answer is: "don't go to the website we stole this info from, but click on an ad here"

</comment><comment><USER31> Paywall-free archived copy:

[https://archive.is/KLzPH](https://archive.is/KLzPH)

</comment><comment><USER32> I hate links to wsj.com because I do not have an account...

</comment><comment> jo-m Use this bookmarklet to access WJS paywalled content:

        javascript:location.href='http://facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)

<comment><USER33> Caveat: This helps Facebook track you even if you have an ad blocker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm generally very critical of Google, especially the search results page, but it's important to remember the background context to this article:

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/16/rupert- murdoch...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/16/rupert-murdoch- newspapers-struggling-digital-age)

>Rupert Murdoch say News Corp is not looking to expand its newspaper empire, conceding digital advertising "has been tremendously damaging to print" and some of his papers were struggling.

Over the next few years it will be interesting to see how successful the right wing anglosphere press is at getting governments to regulate Google. It's been building for a while now and not just from the Murdoch press. The Daily Mail in the UK has been campaigning against Google for a number of years now.

<comment><USER35> The NYTimes and Guardian have been as aggressive in attacking Google and Facebook as anyone (subjectively I would say more so) so I don't think this is just right-wing. It is more like the entire world has realized that having these monopolies control the flow of information is incredibly dangerous.

<comment><USER36> From a very crass and cynical perspective, but probably accurate, as Google and Facebook become more powerful, they can and should expect opposition from _all_ previously entrenched power centers. It would be a very, ah, Silicon Valley utopian nerd idea, for lack of a better phrase, that it could otherwise. And even if there are some ideological lines drawn, well, even people on the "same side" still jockey for position and work at cross-purposes at times. If Google and Facebook are agreed to skew left, yeah, you can probably expect a bit more vigor in the right side attacks if only because they have more operating space, but you can still expect plenty of left-wing "jockeying", and that the latter may even have a greater effect over time. (Could go either way, assuming you can even agree on a basis for measurement.)</comment></comment></comment>


IE8 will be distributed via automatic updates for IE6/IE7 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/04/10/prepare-for-automatic-update-distribution-of-ie8.aspx <comment><USER2> This doesn't solve everything, as many commenters have already pointed out. There are going to be legacy app-holdouts. There are going to be upgrade skeptics who stay with "what works". There are going to be lazy people, dumb people, and all manner of launch bugs which scare people off.

So let's say that's 50%--A HUGE PERCENTAGE--of IE6+IE7 users. That means 50% less IE6 and IE7. Like we just said: FIFTY PERCENT IS HUGE.

I'm more than happy to lump IE8 in with the Gecko and KHTML browsers as being "good enough" from a developer's perspective. This nudges the web in the right direction, and the specter of NO auto-update was the big pisser on this parade.

I think this is a giant step in the right direction. Let's imagine that IE8 keeps on the good path, with more updates rolled out in the next year. Maybe it pulls close to parity in standards sometime. Auto-update makes all this meaningful.

I'm thrilled. The world's not gonna be perfect overnight. At least now we have a reason to hope it'll get close someday.

</comment><comment><USER3> A few people in this thread (and elsewhere when the topic of IE6 comes up) bring up the problem of applications that are dependent on IE6 as a reason why many business users cannot upgrade.

I'm curious, does anyone have any actual experience with such applications? Do you use them yourself? Do you work for a company that uses them? Did you develop them? Are you aware of any statistics that cite how prevalent these applications are?

I'm beginning to wonder whether these IE6-dependent applications are widespread in reality, or whether they server more as a rhetorical rejoinder anytime someone brings up the idea of forcing people to upgrade.

It certainly feels more and more to me like progress on web applications is being highjacked by an extremely small minority of enterprise IT departments.

<comment><USER4> The company I work for uses IE 7 standards for rendering within our application. A lot of things would break if the people using our software upgraded to IE 8.

Our HTML markup is so ugly :(

<comment><USER5> Actually, there's one simple meta tag ("X-UA-Compatible") you can add to the head of your pages that will make IE8 use the IE7-compatible rendering engine:

[http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet- explorer/readiness...](http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet- explorer/readiness/developers-new.aspx#dom)

IE7 obviously isn't perfect (or even good), but it's also nowhere near as bad as IE6 in terms of supporting standards.

<comment><USER6> You can also add the HTTP header to the response for these pages so you don't even have to touch the markup, just a configuration file on the Web server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Generally I am against sneaky upgrades such as Apple's iTunes update that installed Safari, but IE8's standards compliance (though not perfect) is so much better than IE6 that this is a great move for the web as a whole.

<comment><USER8> Especially because the "upgrade" asks nicely. So instead of silently getting IE8, you get asked "Do you want IE8".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They could have just called it a security patch and made it automatically install for IE6 users ;)

<comment><USER10> There are too many places that standardized their web apps on IE6 bugs to do that.

<comment><USER11> _sigh_

Oh Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Isn't it really better at this point to spend the effort identifying and directly assisting _developers_ whose apps are totally IE-dependent? Marketing to users will probably only cause them to break apps that they may really need to do their jobs (and make them hate their IT staff more).

The big players who stand to gain significantly from removing IE6 (which at this point include Microsoft itself), should be doing everything they can to encourage _developers_ to move on, and leaving users alone. Heck, even if Microsoft offered _free_ classes or donated development resources to help de- cruftify IE6-only apps, at this point it would be well worth their investment.

<comment><USER13> I doubt it's developers making the decisions. They need to reach managers of IT departments who look at their IE6-only apps that work fine and would cost time and money to upgrade to support IE7/8 with no perceivable benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had two reactions to this:

1.) "Yes! Maybe now I won't have to support IE6."

2.) "Fuck. That means I better fix the IE8 bugs in my software ASAP."

</comment><comment><USER15> This is somewhat of a shocker. . .all of a sudden this solution will refactor two browsers out of compliance that I've been designing for, well. . ,I guess how ever old IE6 is while factoring in a browser that I have never designed for let alone used yet.

</comment><comment><USER16> Making it an autoupdate seems like a last-ditch effort by Microsoft to keep people from going to Firefox when they finally need to update, rather than a gift to web developers.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is going to suck: those corporate IT departments will set Microsoft on fire if they push the automatic upgrade to IE8 really hard ...

<comment><USER13> Which they're not doing. Any IT department reliant on IE6 has already blocked one upgrade and the same tools are available to them this time around as well. Did you read the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Organizations that wish to block the distribution of IE8 should have their blocking in place by the week of April 20th.

Fulfilling Hitlers old plan to take over the universe?

<comment><USER11> Stop downvoting this guy so much. This guy tried to make a joke and failed, but should it really cost him that much karma?

<comment><USER11> If you disagree, at least tell me why.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Dangless-malloc – Safe dangling pointer errors (master thesis) - <AUTHOR> https://dangless.gaborkozar.me/ <comment><AUTHOR> This thesis is from a friend of mine. In the following discussion [1] someone said that this warrants its own post.

I asked him permission to post this. He reads HN but is a bit shy in commenting, which is why I am posting it as show HN.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212312)

<comment><AUTHOR> Errata: I asked him permission means I asked my friend permission.

<comment><USER2> That isn't really an error, at most you need to add the word between him and permission. Most English speakers should have no trouble parsing the original though.

<comment><USER3> > at most you need to add the word between him and permission

I think you're missing the word to be added... did you mean to suggest "add the word 'for' between him and permission"?

Alternatively, "I asked his permission..." would also have worked well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I wish there was a website like lang-8.com but then for people who know English quite well, except in its finer element. The fact that I am not sharp in languages in general (even Dutch, my native language) and am not really refined in English feels like I am prone to these type of mistakes when the edit functionality of a comment is gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Front page? Front page! Seeing this was the perfect moment to ask my friend Gábor some questions that were asked in the previous thread about it [1]. Again, in my opinion he is quite shy in commenting and he told me to go have fun :D What are my credentials on this? Not much, other than that I followed two courses with him on security from Herbert Bos (VU Amsterdam) and filmed his presentation -- other than that I'm more a mobile/web app person. He did say: "Tonight I'll add a link to the HN thread to the project website."

Here is what Gábor has to say about it. I edited his answer slightly (mostly I rewrote "we" as "I" since I -- Mettamage -- know that he worked more or less alone on this, aside from getting some academic advice from time to time). I added some YouTube links for computer system memory concepts (e.g. the EPT [6] and TLB [4]) for people who are foggy on the concepts. Anyways here he is.

__About performance__

Basically, TLB misses are the main reason for performance overhead.

Regarding performance cost, there's a perf analysis here [2, 3]. The benchmarks are for SPEC 2006, with the exception of two benchmarks that crash: 400.perlbench and 447.omnetpp. It seems like the machine runs out of identity- mapped EPT, but I'm not sure exactly why that is. The hardware is smarter than I thought.

It's not exactly clear to me either why it's reasonably low. We expected the Translation Lookaside Buffer [4] to be trashed. To be fair, existing publications on big conferences, like Oscar, also skim over the question of TLB pressure. So ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Presumably, because they don't have a response either if you look at Oscar's numbers [5], they also have some extremely low overheads (and some extremely high ones as well).

__About dangling pointers themselves and potential new security threats__

Regarding fulafel: indeed, dangling pointers still exist, but because virtual memory is never re-used, any accesses through them are guaranteed to crash. So they no longer pose a security threat.

A potential new security threat is the following: because the application now runs in ring 0 (though virtualized), it has direct access to e.g. page tables. So if the application is compromised, the attacker can potentially modify the page tables, or the interrupt descriptor table, or fun stuff like that, basically gaining full control over the application. With that said, it's still all just in the virtual environment, so the threat is not significantly greater than the same thing happening in userspace (ring 3).

Not the Extended Page Table, nor the host page tables are vulnerable, of course [6].

__Other methods of achieving the same result with different performance__

The closest technology to mine that I know of is Oscar, which basically does the exact same thing as me, except without virtualization/Dune. So they have to do syscalls, which makes Dangless much, much faster generally. To respond to DenisM on this: sure, you can do that. That's what Oscar does, but that's very inefficient, due to syscall overhead.

__Questions that were unknown to me__

Intel APX: haven't heard about it, don't have time to look into it

Regarding the difference with Page Heap: I'm not familiar with the techniques referenced here, but the main novelty of this approach is that I use a light- weight virtualization to gain direct access to page tables inside the virtual environment. This allows for very efficient virtual memory management (remapping and invalidating of pages). Traditionally, this would require system calls (e.g. mremap() and mprotect() on Linux), which are expensive.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212312](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212312)

[2] [https://dl.gaborkozar.me/dangless/perf_diff_with_oscar_analy...](https://dl.gaborkozar.me/dangless/perf_diff_with_oscar_analysis.pdf)

[3] [https://dl.gaborkozar.me/dangless/perf_diff_with_oscar_analy...](https://dl.gaborkozar.me/dangless/perf_diff_with_oscar_analysis.xlsx)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95QpHJX55bM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95QpHJX55bM)

[5] [https://github.com/shdnx/dangless- malloc/blob/master/papers/...](https://github.com/shdnx/dangless- malloc/blob/master/papers/oscar.pdf)

[6] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw1B-U0Frws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw1B-U0Frws)

</comment><comment><USER4> will some long running programs that allocate / free a lot eventually run out of virtual addresses and then be either forced to terminate or forced to reuse virtual addresses thus removing the use after free protection?

like if you are using 4096 byte pages and 48 bits of virtual address space then you have 2^36 virtual pages before you run out. like it seems feasible that some programs will make > 70 billion allocations during their lifetime.

its very cool the tricks some people are doing with virtual memory aliasing.

</comment><comment><USER5> I haven't spent all that much time taking a look at this (quick feedback: the PDF on that website is a bit annoying to read, since the "viewport" is really small), but how does this compare to a solution such as zeroing weak pointers in ARC?

<comment><USER6> In a language like C and its conventional implementations, how do you intend to find all the pointers in order to zero them?

<comment><USER5> Mike Ash's article goes into more depth into how something like this is implemented in Objective-C: [https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2010-07-16-zeroing-...](https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday- qa-2010-07-16-zeroing-weak-references-in-objective-c.html). To put it short, references are kept in a big dictionary and zeroed out on deallocation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What would be the work involved to port this to Windows? Does it already have everything provided by Dune in some way?</comment>


Untouched is impossible: the story of Star Wars in film - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/05/star-wars.ars

<comment><USER2> All that talk about preserving something as well known and famous as Star Wars makes me worried for the thousands of films which don't receive one tenth of Star Wars' attention.

<comment><USER3> Thousands of films have already been preserved in digital form at a reasonably watchable resolution (DVD). The impact on future cultural history of having those films at 8X instead of 480p is probably marginal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, impossible until Lucas dies and someone else gets creative control and is willing to let the right thing happen.

<comment><USER5> The article states that the content is still available, just not the original physical film that it was created on.

<comment><USER4> However one could stitch back together "the original physical film" (as the article details, it's more complicated than that), digitally capture it and restore as needed, and produce a frame by frame accurate version of the original, which could then be delivered in proper DVD anamorphic and BlueRay formats.

" _There exist enough film copies and back-ups to re-create the film, however, so nothing is impossible in terms of a more classical high definition re- release._ "

" _'"It's certainly possible to do a new, high-quality transfer from original 35mm material. You could totally restore the original films from their original negatives for a few million dollars...'_ "</comment></comment></comment>