The Prize in Economic Sciences 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2017/press.html <comment><USER2> While I love the behavioral economists (esp. Kahnemann and Tversky), a _lot_ of psychologists have told economists for a _long_ time that assuming basic rationality as a starting point was a fundamental error in the field. Taking it as an axiom has led to all sorts of misguided efforts and wasted time.

From the article:

"That's the point: It's obvious to anyone who pays any attention at all to himself or his fellow human beings that we are not maximizers, or optimizers, or logical, or even all that sensible."

and

"[his professors] argued that human irrationality didn't matter, for the purpose of economic theory, because it wasn't systematic."

<comment><USER3> Physicists assume things are spheres and use that to solve a bunch of problems. It's important to know 'why' economists use this abstraction for modeling before patently dismissing it. Economists notice that on average, people in the aggregate tend to behave rationally sometimes. Scrutiny should be applied to the assumptions, but it can still help explain economic systems.

<comment><USER4> In some cases, abstraction can be done without loss of accuracy. For example, in physics we can assume that charges bounded inside a sphere can be modeled as a point charge at the center of the sphere. It's not just a simpler model; it's mathematically equivalent, and provably so.

<comment><USER5> There are a _lot_ of simplifications that get used in physics and engineering calculations. Ideal electrical circuits, ideal gasses, thin cylinder walls, lossless collisions, etc. etc. Whether or not a given simplification is appropriate depends on the situation (how much accuracy is needed? how close the simplification is to reality? what's the cost of not simplifying?)

<comment><USER6> And in some respects, the simplifications are even _more_ justified in economics than physics. Friction between atoms doesn't tend to reduce when people start writing papers finding interesting results contingent on friction being significantly above zero; January increases in stock prices _do_ shrink to the point where they don't represent a viable trading opportunity when traders read papers by Thaler et al on lack of any informational or tax reason for "January effects"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent pick! Applied "nudge theory," or "libertarian paternalism," is proving to be the panacea for massive social change. From NYC's decision to offer free lunches for all public school students. To the design of recycle bins in Amsterdam. Simple yet intuitive communication of the optimality of rational choosing, without penalizing too harshly our irrational tendencies.

I think the next logical extension of neuroeconomics is neuropolitics. Viewing powerplays between Trump <\--> Kim or Netanyahu <\--> Putin through the lens of game theory where all actors are moving optimally toward a "win" condition provides diminishing returns. Watching leaders actions as the result of irrational biases operating with imperfect information is proving a closer model of reality.

<comment><USER8> > From NYC's decision to offer free lunches for all public school students.

Wait, what?! Why would the city spend money on subsidising the lunch of children with parents rich enough to send them to a public school?

<comment><USER9> I've always found this stupid in the UK. Not only do we call paid for schools Public Schools, but we simultaneously call them Private Schools. It makes no sense!

[EDIT] wrong parent, right thread. Meant to reply to chrisseaton

<comment><USER10> Only seven schools in the UK are actually 'public schools'. It's a precise legal status. So 'private school' and 'public school' does not mean the same thing.

Originally they were the only schools that educated members of the general public, rather than people just from the local village or church or things like that, so the name does make sense.

<comment><USER9> Oooo, thanks for that! Know of anything where I can read more / see the legal definitions?

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Schools_Act_1868](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Schools_Act_1868)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An irrational thing Amazon knows and many, many other online sellers don't: people don't want to pay for delivery.

That is, they'd much rather pay $20 total with free delivery, than, for example, $15 for the goods + $3 for delivery.

It's amazing the number of non-Amazon online shops who still don't seem to know this.

<comment><USER12> > $15 for the goods + $3 for delivery.

It's more simple than that: most people, me included, hate to see the price change just before you press the ordering button, just because shipping fees were not included. What Amazon does well is that it tells you exactly how much you will be billed from the get go (even when you have to pay for shipping, it's not hidden.)

<comment><USER13> As an amateur dabbler in conversion rate optimization, it's stunning what disclosing shipping policies upfront does to conversion rates.

I've seen cart abandonment drop by 50% or more simply by including shipping price and policies on the pricing page.

People will spend $20 extra to hit the $50 minimum free shipping threshold than spend $5 on shipping for a $30 order.

(Keeping low cost, high utility items in stock and available near checkout is highly recommended. For one fashion retailer, showing a bunch of socks and undergarments under 'recommendations' for orders below the free shipping threshold dramatically increased conversion rate. Everyone needs extra socks. If you've bought a $45 pair of jeans, adding a $5 pair of socks to hit the free shipping limit is "rational" for most people)

<comment><USER5> >I've seen cart abandonment drop by 50% or more simply by including shipping price and policies on the pricing page.

To be fair I assume that some number of people never start shopping because they don't like the shipping policies.

That said, people have gotten conditioned with a lot of "free" shipping or free shipping over a certain amount. So when they hit final checkout and are presented with what seems to be expensive shipping, they'll often almost reflexively close the page.

>People will spend $20 extra to hit the $50 minimum free shipping threshold than spend $5 on shipping for a $30 order.

Raises hand :-) I think the shipping charge feels like throwing money away. Whereas adding the item feels like "Surely I can find some item I want at effectively a 25% discount." But, yeah, most of this isn't economically rational. It was all very eye-opening when I was first exposed to this sort of thing 30 years ago and it's been useful in a lot of contexts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, I really don't really like this pick.

Behavioral economics is extremely popular, especially outside economists themselves. But the problem is that it keeps repeating the same findings. We get it, people are not rational. You can read 150 year old economics books that mention these things. There is a 'behavioral economics' movement every 40 year.

The research that I find 100x more interesting is the research that actually looks at real world institutions and tries to figure out how it is possible that these things work even if you assume irrational humans. Why can you get almost anything delivered in 2 days if every single human in the chain is highly irrational.

The Nobel in 2009 was about those sort of things, but they don't get enough attention.

<comment><USER15> "Limited rationality" not "highly irrational".

The traditional economic view is people act in their own self-interest. I would summarize this research by saying people act in their own _perceived_ self-interest. Lots of times the two align, but there are cases when they don't, which I do find interesting and worthy of research.

<comment><USER14> Point taken.

I think the research is very valid and interesting. I just question if this is most importent, or just a whats by far the most popular economics subject in the mainstream.

Its a good PR move for the constent critics economics suffer from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a question about an example referenced in the Bloomberg article linked from a previous discussion [1]. Quoting from the article:

> He began with his own students, telling them to imagine that by attending > his lecture, they had exposed themselves to a rare fatal disease. There was > a 1 in 1,000 chance they had caught it. There was a single dose of the > antidote: How much would they be willing to pay for it?

> Then he asked them the same question, in a different way: How much would > they demand to be paid to attend a lecture in which there is a 1 in 1,000 > chance of contracting a rare fatal disease, for which there was no antidote?

> The questions were practically identical, but the answers people gave to > them were -- and are -- wildly different. People would say they would pay > two grand for the antidote, for instance, but would need to be paid half a > million dollars to expose themselves to the virus.

Would classical economics really predict that people would give the same answers to these two questions? The article claims the two situations are "practically identical" but to me they seem clearly different: it makes perfect sense to me that many people would pay less of their money for the antidote knowing they've been exposed vs. the amount they'd need to be paid to voluntarily expose themselves to the risk.

As a simple example, if one only has $1000 to their name, then $1000 is the max they could possibly pay for the antidote (assuming they can't get a loan), yet I'd expect that most wouldn't be willing to expose themselves to that risk just to double their money. I thought utility theory in classical economics recognized that the marginal utility of going from $1000 to $2000 is less than the marginal utility of going from $0 to $1000.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15432905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15432905)

<comment><USER17> There is the endowment effect, and then there is the effect of the diminishing marginal value of money. You're talking about the latter and it certainly is recognized in economics just about as far back in its history as you care to look. But Thaler was trying to demonstrate the former and it's the sort of insight he won the prize for theorizing about.

<comment><USER16> I see, thanks for the response. I guess I just dislike the example because it fails to untangle these two effects :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> He has a few popular books that are worth reading. The recent _Misbehaving_ is in part a memoir of his work.

[http://www.misbehavingbook.org](http://www.misbehavingbook.org)

<comment><USER19> I enjoyed this much more than Thinking Fast and Slow

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always wondered if Satoshi was not anonymous, whether he would have been nominated for Economic nobel. Of course, most of the ideas were pre-existing but he did put together the final pieces. But then he could very well be behind bars now based on how the story unfolded.

<comment><USER21> I can't imagine him winning it. The Nobels in Economics are exclusively academics with large bodies of peer reviewed work. The ones who have veered towards practical projects (or hedge funds) still have long formal academic histories. The committee [0] is 100% academics. Unless Satoshi had a strong background of other papers in esteemed journals, he wouldn't win it. (It's not a "pop culture" prize like Peace)

[0] [https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic- sciences/pr...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic- sciences/prize_awarder/committee.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Seems like a rational choice.

</comment><comment><USER23> Considering the fact that Richard Thaler made a cameo in The Big Short Movie that was primarily demeaning Wall Street Banks and Economists who played along in the crisis, itself makes him an Economist who stands out. [http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160226/NEWS01/16022...](http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160226/NEWS01/160229871/u-of- c-prof-in-big-short-cameo-is-a-stock-picking-star)

<comment><USER24> I mean that doesn't really make him stand out; most economists will agree with the Big Short's account of the crisis.

Except perhaps the coffee shop discussion at the end where Steve Carrell states banks did it because they expected to get bailed out (all evidence points that they didn't expect to get bailed out a priori and that they simply did it because shareholders and managers are greedy short sighted morons).

That said, Thaler is an excellent choice

<comment><USER25> Well, bankers did have an incentive to make bigger bets though, because on the upside they'd win more, and on the downside, well, who cares, the bank might go bust or be bailed out - it doesn't really matter, the downside (for the managers) is floored. Nobody has gone to jail, right. And then, to the extent that their assumption was that the payment system and economy does not collapse, it was predicated on a public bail out.

Anat Admati, Stanford econ prof, has a popular book out, _The Bankers ' New Clothes_ that makes a case for much simpler and stricter bank regulation (basically, force them to hold much more capital (i.e. equity)), which makes a lot of sense to me.

<comment><USER24> Agreed, bank managers need to face personal consequences for reckless behavior that has negative externalities on society.

I'm personally in favor of criminal prosecution but I don't see that happening. Indeed I'm generally in favor of keeping banks large for returns to scale benefits, but the political perversion of large banks may offset that benefit

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> A Michael Lewis article about Thaler was also posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15432905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15432905).

Edit: also a Thaler article from 2015 at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15433053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15433053).

</comment><comment><USER5> While his co-authored Nudge is an easy read and is probably better known, his more recent Misbehaving gives a good account of how his career and the field developed.

It's really interesting stuff. I actually had a couple of grad courses with Thaler when he was at Cornell. I still have a draft copy of one of his earlier books in Behavioral Decision Theory somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER27> Check out this Econtalk podcast with Richard Thaler [2006] [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/11/richard_thaler_1.ht...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/11/richard_thaler_1.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> Haven't read this but if individuals aren't economically rational, is the collective group? Or because we are organied in a hierarchy of decision makers (e.g. companies) are we always irrational?

<comment><USER14> There is a lot of research that tries to figure out how things actually work even if you assume irrational humans (or collectives).

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

You can do the same thing with business. They are also not purely rational but the market causes those to die who are to irrational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> isn't the prize usually awarded to multiple people? lucky guy gets to keep all the $ then

<comment><USER30> 25 out of 49 econ nobel prizes were awarded to one person only. [https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/facts/economic- scien...](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/facts/economic- sciences/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> from his amazon book

>By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front.

Hasn't this been tried in schools, does it actually work? Also, isn't this common sense ?

</comment><comment><USER32> I don't understand why this field exists. They take observations of human behavior that have been common sense since... well, since humans have used money, and then try to wrap it in some sort of "scientific process" to prove these things empirically as if they weren't already obvious. Is it because economic theorists before had such stupid ideas and now they have to disprove every old unrealistic theory step by step?

<comment><USER4> > They take observations of human behavior that have been common sense > since... well, since humans have used money, and then try to wrap it in some > sort of "scientific process" to prove these things empirically as if they > weren't already obvious.

Welcome to Science, dude. Its bread and butter, repeatable experimentation, is the proving ground on which common sense is either quantified or rejected. This is how we climb out of the muck of our stupid prejudices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Economic Sciences deserve to take over the whole Nobel prize. They should get all the prizes. They have proven themselves as the ultimate woodo wizards of "applied" scientists.

If you go to source page, you will see that the full name of the prize is "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel"

Why? There is no Nobel prize for economics.

This was a self-congratulatory add-on instituted by bankers in an attempt to add respectability to the turbulent industry of studying abstract virtual value that is not just affected, but created by the observer. Let me repeat myself. There is no Nobel prize for economics.

The fact that the majority of people here, and worldwide, fail to notice that, is the only proof needed that economics is the ultimate science of them all.

And the sweet little Swedes had to bail out their bankers after the US fiasco. At least the bankers spend some of that taxpayer money to keep the "prize" going.

<comment><USER34> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12678598](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12678598)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9915943](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9915943)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13702830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13702830)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448602](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8448602)

etc...

We get it, the economics prize is not a true Nobel prize. It's tiresome to hear it every time the prize is mentioned.

<comment><USER35> Actually, it does need to be repeated, because economists and their opinions and their "evidence" are being given too much credit by politicians and laypeople.</comment></comment></comment>


IBM AI can predict with 95% accuracy which workers are about to quit - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/03/ibm-ai-can-predict-with-95-percent-accuracy-which-employees-will-quit.html <comment><USER2> I thought IBM was more famous for layoffs than it is for employee retention.</comment>


What kind of buddhist was Steve Jobs, really? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.plos.org/neurotribes/2011/10/28/what-kind-of-buddhist-was-steve-jobs-really/ <comment><USER2> An imperfect one, like the rest of us.

Edit: since I'm getting downvoted into oblivion, let me elaborate: no Buddhist is perfect, if they were perfect, they probably wouldn't see a need to study Buddha's teachings.

It's not like Jobs was out criticizing how people lived their lives in "sin".

<comment><USER3> Steve was perfect as he was, he just needed some improvents.

<comment><USER4> Steve Jobs, imperfect.

His core, perfection itself.

Old pond, droid jumps in.

<comment><USER5> plop!

<comment><USER5> For the silly people downvoting, this is a reference to a Japanese Haiku.

Old pond, frog jumps in \- plop!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not much of one. I read the bio too, and got a different picture - Jobs used Buddhism because he had such problems. We'll probably never know what problems specifically, just like we'll never know what his eating issues were (Isaacson says Jobs was urged to see a therapist about it, but refused) - narcissism as one woman speculated? Bi-polar?

To me, the most insightful anecdote was:

> 'Our consumer desires are unhealthy, he told her, and to attain > enlightenment you need to develop a life of nonattachment and non- > materialism. He even sent her a tape of Kobun Chino, his Zen teacher, > lecturing about the problems caused by craving and obtaining things. Egan > pushed back. Wasn't he defying that philosophy, she asked, by making > computers and other products that people coveted? "He was irritated by the > dichotomy, and we had exuberant debates about it," Egan recalled.'

Yes, I guess that's one way to describe it...

<comment><USER7> _"Wasn't he defying that philosophy, she asked, by making computers and other products that people coveted?"_

Buddhism expresses a distinction between _a thing in and of itself_ and _an individual's interpretation of a thing_.

"Computers and other products" are simply things in and of themselves. However, it is the individual that applies an interpretation to these things, such that the individual can allow these things to define him or her.

In essence, there is nothing "defying that philosophy", as the question asks. If an individual covets or self-identifies with a thing, Buddhism says that this attachment is what ultimately causes suffering. This attachment is the result of an individual's interpretation of a thing, and not due to a thing in and of itself.

<comment><USER8> Err, there isn't just "the thing" but a dedicated and directed marketing program to make you absolutely covet the product. Everything about capitalism, marketing, and advertising is about making us covet things so we buy them. Sorry, but there's no easy cop-out here. 99.9% of what Jobs did was marketing and its even more important than the product, imho.

<comment><USER9> What's your point?

Buddhism is not Christianity. It does not assert that it is the One True Path, and that it's teachings are the One Size Fits All solution to everybody's problems.

It does not follow that what Buddhism teaches is bad for Buddhists (attachment to objects) is therefore bad for everybody, and that if you market something that someone may allow themselves to form attachments to, you have therefore harmed them. If a Buddhist allows themselves to become attached to their iPod, then Buddhism offers them tools to deal with the suffering that might arise from that; there is no attached 'sin' committed by the marketing team at Apple.

Jobs didn't fail to meet any standard that Buddhism sets out for Buddhists (Buddhism sets very few such standards. You can be angry and discompassionate and attached to worldly things, and be Buddhist. The idea is that Buddhism helps you deal with the problems you have, not that Buddhism requires you to be a perfect being or kicks you to the curb).

You're simply inventing your own arbitrarily high standards based on fundamental misunderstandings of Buddhist concepts.

<comment><USER10> So if Buddhism does not assert that it is the One True Path, what's the Fourth Noble Truth?

In America, Buddhism tends to be portrayed in this sort of light: basically, that Buddhism makes no exclusivist truth claims. But for a Mahayana Buddhist to make the Bodhisattva Vow in the context of the Four Noble Truths necessarily entails teaching others about certain things which are True, to the exclusion of things which are false (belief in Jesus or Allah or Vishnu etc) Perhaps the missionary form of this is not quite equivalent to, say, Evangelical Protestantism, but it's there.

One concept within Mahayana Buddhism is that of Skillful Means, the idea that sometimes a teacher has to use or allow an expedient practice even if it's not the "highest" truth. So the Zen Buddhists say that all the Shin Buddhists are ok, because it's just skillful means for them to believe in the salvific power of Amida Buddha and next life they'll have a better chance at encountering the fullness of Zen. Or maybe their recitation of the nembutsu is just some sort of meditative practice that happens to produce desirable Buddhist qualities. Nevermind that this is totally revisionist to the Shin understanding.

Yes, you can be angry and discompassionate and attached to worldly things and "be Buddhist." But if you die that way you probably won't be reborn as a human. Maybe as a hungry ghost or a fighting demon. :)

<comment><USER11> _So if Buddhism does not assert that it is the One True Path, what's the Fourth Noble Truth?_

The hand pointing to the moon is not the moon.

 _``Come, Salha, do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or with what has come down in scriptures or with conjecture or with logical inference or with weighing evidence or with a liking for a view after pondering it or with someone else's ability or with the thought 'The monk is our teacher.' When you know in yourself 'These things are unprofitable, liable to censure, condemned by the wise, being adopted and put into effect, they lead to harm and suffering,' then you should abandon them.''_

AN 3.66

<comment><USER12> So, Buddhism agrees with Einstein rather than Heisenberg?

Einstein: _The moon is there whether or not anyone is looking at it._

Heisenberg: _The moon may not be there if there isn't anyone looking at it._

Buddhism: _The hand pointing to the moon is not the moon._

<comment><USER13> "The pointing finger is not the moon" has never, IME, been taken to make ontological claims of any kind about the moon, except that it's not the finger pointed at it. It means the same thing as, "The map is not the territory," and not, "Because this map shows rivers and towns in these locations, such rivers and towns must exist."

Your idea of a thing is simply and solely your idea of the thing; the thing, itself, is simply and solely the thing, itself. Buddhism just suggests out that you conflate them at your peril (to the extent, of course, that Buddhism has a notion of "peril").

<comment><USER12> Oh. I took it to mean that Buddhism is the quest for truth not _the_ truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "There's nothing holy about mindfulness" <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri2hA1TqDT4>

</comment><comment><USER15> To me Zen seems like a lot of vague mumbo-jumbo. It can be interpreted any which way you want, making it sometimes seem wise and profound. The Buddhism I learned is quite simple and clear. It just boils down to two Golden Rules:

1\. The Golden Rule: Treat others as you wish to be treated. 2\. The Golden Mean: Everything in moderation, nothing in excess.

and the related commentary as to why these are good policies to follow.

<comment><USER16> Another rule I think makes sense in the world is a sort of temporally shifted golden rule: try and leave things better than when you found them to do unto future people what you would wish them to do had they gone before you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
      Wake Up!
      Life is transient
      Swiftly passing
      Be aware
      The Great Matter
      Don't waste time.

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow there is a lot of misinformation here, especially about Zen.

If making beautiful things is encouraging attachment then I guess all of the Zen poets and painters weren't (and aren't) very Zen either. Nor are the architects, florists or writers.

And to say that he wasn't or couldn't be a Buddhist simply because he had imperfections and flaws? What?!

Also, look up Vimalakirti. You don't need to renounce the world and material possessions to be a 'good' Buddhist, whatever that is.

</comment><comment><USER19> Let me clear a couple of basic things related to this issue.

The origin of Zen comes from greater vehicle Buddhism. In Buddhism, we have two main derivatives: greater vehicle Buddhism and small vehicle Buddhism.

Small vehicle Buddhism devotedly focuses on what Buddha done to reach nilvana. So, they execute tough ascetic training in shrines.

But, as we know, not everyone can execute such training because of many reasons. So, greater vehicle Buddhism was born. And Zen was established in China by indian Buhddist, Daruma because it was heretical in India. After Confucianism became major religion in China, Japan was the successor of Zen. This is the history.

This story is pertially closed to the origin of Christianity.

Zen is the practice everyone can do. Controlling anger, relieving oneself from anxiety, and exploring answers inside, not outside. That's all. The meditation is one of the methods. We can do it everywhere.

One of the key concept in Buddhism is "changing ever". Everything is unstable.

And, I realize that one of the Jobs's greatest management philosophy is to release his past. This philosophy is very closed the above concept in Buddhism. As we get old, we easily stick to our past achievement. But, it doesn't mean anything, even will be bottleneck for us to step forward simply because everything changes, which also means everything is imperfect.

I think this is why Jobs used to said "the death is the great invention" because we are forced to step forward by death.

I think it's not about religious thing, it's about philosophy every one should have.

For me, it's not important whether Jobs is a kind of Buhddhist or not. He taught us "to release past". That's a most important thing.

</comment><comment><USER20> The kind that believed meditation was something he did sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER21> It is none of your business, leave him alone. I think he would be sick of that idolatry.

<comment><USER22> Would he? His private life was indeed very private while he was alive. But, the guy sat down for hours of interviews with Isaacson so that a book could be produced about him. If he didn't to be the centre of any kind of attention, he choose strange ways of showing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So he was an atheist. It would come as a shock to a number of Apple fanboys in the US. Edit : so downvoters think a buddhist is not an atheist ? or that it would not shock anyone in the US ? or what ?

<comment><USER24> I don't know why people have downvoted you but ... Buddhism doesn't contradict there being a deity and some Buddhists worship figures as if they were gods and certainly consider some to have supernatural powers.

So it would seem based on the story here that you've not a strong starting point. Perhaps he was a deist/agnostic/atheist/apatheist I don't know or particularly care.

As to your second assertion, how is it relevant to peoples regard for the devices/software he was party to? How is that line of enquiry pertinent to HN?</comment></comment>


Ray Kurzweil's Predictions for 2009 (from 1998) - <AUTHOR> http://us.penguingroup.com/static/packages/us/kurzweil/excerpts/chap9/ch9botframe.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Overall, reasonably close on many of the predictions. Some of the speech-to- text and automated readers aren't prevalent yet, but Google's Nexus One and the Intel Reader are introducing those technologies into the mainstream right now. He certainly nailed some of Apple's products like the iPhone and MacBook Air with SSD storage.

</comment><comment><USER2> Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064789></comment>


Building Raspberry Pi Systems with Buildroot - <AUTHOR> https://jumpnowtek.com/rpi/Raspberry-Pi-Systems-with-Buildroot.html <comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday I posted a link to a post about using Yocto for building Raspberry Pi systems.

People on HN and Reddit shared some bad experiences they'd had with the Yocto build and some suggested that I try BuildRoot.

The same guy that had authored the post I shared yesterday also wrote one about using BuildRoot. Once again I made an image of my own based on his work, and it worked.

I wrote a bit more about my impression of BuildRoot at [1] but anyway the conclusion is that I was convinced to use BuildRoot instead so therefore I am sharing this post that I used for building my image with BuildRoot.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18096520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18096520)</comment>


Mike Bloomberg pays influencers to post memes for 2020 campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/13/mike-bloomberg-pays-influencers-to-post-memes-for-2020-campaign.html <comment><USER2> This seems pretty much par for the course for the whole "influencers" ecosystem.</comment>


Just: A library of dependency-free JS utilities that do just do one thing - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/angus-c/just <comment><USER2> Javascript library/toolkit modularisation do not goes this way. Mout, async or lodash are using a proper scheme to require('just/thefuction/youneed') and it's fine (no rollup will ever be needed). Polluting npm with dozen of one- liner is not a good idea (never forget left-pad)

* [https://github.com/caolan/async/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md](https://github.com/caolan/async/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md)

* [http://moutjs.com/](http://moutjs.com/)

<comment><USER3> > Polluting npm with dozen of one-liner is not a good idea (never forget left- > pad)

The size or scope of left-pad wasn't the issue, the ability to unpublish modules which were depended on was [1]

[http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141905368000/changes-to-npms- unpu...](http://blog.npmjs.org/post/141905368000/changes-to-npms-unpublish- policy)

<comment><USER4> In NPM registry, yes. But in Node.JS ecosystem, it was left-pad's scope combined with inability of the community to adopt seasoned sysadmins' tools, like custom repositories to build artifacts without ever needing to touch network (which is somewhat difficult to execute when you have dozens to hundreds of dependencies for a trivial project).

<comment><USER3> I don't think the number of dependencies per individual project is a critical factor when setting up an internal npm mirror for all your projects (e.g. with Nexus [1] where I work) or vendoring dependencies per project (e.g. `npm shrinkwrap --dev && shrinkpack` [2]) - you're either doing it or you aren't.

[1] [http://books.sonatype.com/nexus- book/reference/npm.html](http://books.sonatype.com/nexus- book/reference/npm.html)

[2] [https://github.com/JamieMason/shrinkpack](https://github.com/JamieMason/shrinkpack)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> // Object.map: returns a new object with the predicate applied to each value

That is not what a predicate is.

<comment><USER6> Might it not be appropriate to explain what a predicate is, since you don't agree with her definition?

<comment><USER7> It's common knowledge and you can easily look it up. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/predicate](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/predicate)

Copied here nevertheless:

> 2\. (logic) A term of a statement, where the statement may be true or false > depending on whether the thing referred to by the values of the statement's > variables has the property signified by that (predicative) term.

> 3\. (computing) An operator or function that returns either true or false.

<comment><USER6> Maybe it is common knowledge for you. I could have looked it up, but I don't like seeing non constructive criticism.

<comment><USER5> It is entirely constructive.

I just prefer brevity more than you do. But you would've still downvoted me even if i'd provided a link, no?

<comment><USER8> The point of making a comment is not showing off your knowledge, it's being useful to the reader.

You comment was not useful (or at least not as useful as it could be).

Put in more effort next time - a comment is written once, but read many times.

<comment><USER9> I think being part of a discussion sometimes requires some basic knowledge of the basic. Otherwise, if you need every concept explained to you, well, it's not a discussion, but a lecture. After all, if I deem it common knowledge and you do not, how do I know where is the limit of your knowledge base?

IMHO, people in the technical industry should first try to find knowledge by themselves, and ask only when it is not easily accessible. If you keep asking questions which you can find answers by Googling, hmm, how do you even survive in this industry? That is, if you're not in management, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This fails to recognize that the smallness of npm modules is intimately related to the proliferation of dependencies. The idea behind the node module- design paradigm is that packages should be small and many, instead of large and few like (for example) in C++. That makes sense because you only use what you need, but it kind of falls apart because the "small" packages you import carry with them 50 other "small" packages. Also because you lose the shortcut for vetting your dependencies which is to vet the people who wrote them. That's a half-assed approach to vetting code you rely on, but the alternative seems to be to do nothing at all.

So these modules are small, but anything that uses them is going to contribute to the proliferation of dependencies just as much as ever.

<comment><USER11> Modules like this make your dependency tree wider, not deeper, though. Modules with lots of deps add dependencies exponentially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hmm?

        // extend
        Object.assign({}, { foo: 'bar' }, { baz: 'qui' });

        // pluck
        [{ a:1, b:1 }, { a:2, b:2 }].map( obj => obj["a"] )

        // filter obj
        Object.keys(obj).reduce( ( result, key) => {
           const value = obj[key];

           if ( value < 6 ) {
               result[key] = value
           }

           return value;
        }, {})

        // map obj
        Object.keys(obj).reduce( ( result, key) => {
           result[key] = obj[key] + 1;
           return value;
        }, {})

        // template
        const data = { a:1, b: { c: 1 }, d: 2 };
        `some ${data.a}, ${data.b.c}`;

        // unique
        [1,2,2,3,4,4,5].filter( ( value, index, self ) => self.indexOf( value ) === index )

        // last
        [1,2,3].slice(-1)[0]

        // union
        [1,2,3,4].concat( [6,7,8,9] ).filter( ( value, index, self ) => self.indexOf( value ) === index ).sort( ( a,b ) => a-b )

<comment><USER7> If you wrapped that "unique" implementation in some kind of reusable construct, it would be even easier to use, and it would be easy to replace with a more efficient implementation. Hmm.

<comment><USER13> That's true, but you also increase your technical debt and decrease readability by people not familiar with the library.

<comment><USER14> I would cheerfully argue that repeating non obvious code that could easily be wrapped in a documented function with an obvious name raises technical debt considerably more than causing someone to briefly wonder what a function called 'unique' that operates on an array does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All of these are available in Lodash, both as one package with no dependencies and a plethora of individual micropackages with very small dependencies.

<comment><USER15> When I looked at pulling in a "micropackage" from Lodash it had so many dependencies that had dependencies (3-4 levels deep sometimes) that instead of being ~15-20 lines of JavaScript at most, it ended up being 300-400 lines, if I remember correctly.

Ended up writing my own mini-routine instead. If I ever need enough of Lodash to care I'll just import the whole thing, which is the only way to get lazy evaluation anyway.

<comment><USER16> Lodash v4 reduced the deps of its individual modularized method packages.

It also offers modules inside the primary package now, e.g. require('lodash/chunk').

There's babel and webpack plugins to make cherry-picking and bundle size optimizations a breeze too.

[https://github.com/lodash/babel-plugin- lodash](https://github.com/lodash/babel-plugin-lodash)

[https://github.com/lodash/lodash-webpack- plugin](https://github.com/lodash/lodash-webpack-plugin)

<comment><USER15> I've been using Rollup for bundle size optimizations, and I believe it will work with the lodash internal packages.

<comment><USER16> Neither Rollup nor Webpack 2 will tree-shake Lodash properly. The best option at the moment is babel-plugin-lodash.

<comment><USER15> Crap. I've already banished Babel from my toolchain -- the Babel ES6 shim throws a warning in Firefox about modifying the prototype of an object, and from what I can tell that will kill or limit both V8 and SpiderMonkey optimizations from that point on.

Back to plan A: Don't use Lodash in client code unless I'm willing to use the whole thing (so that I can get the chaining optimizations, which cherry picking doesn't support anyway).

<comment><USER16> There's no hard requirement for babel-polyfill or babel-runtime.

Babel works great without shims in modern enviros (I don't use shims in my projects).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the author's motivation: "It felt wrong installing half of npm even for basic utilities, so I made JUST, a family of dependency-free modules" [1]

1: [https://twitter.com/angustweets/status/754375515159441408](https://twitter.com/angustweets/status/754375515159441408)

<comment><USER17> Something i can relate to. It just feels wrong to do a npm install for something very basic and see half a linux installation happening in the console...

<comment><USER18> It does nothing to address the underlying issue of people relying on NPM packages where there is little-to-no developer maturity to do with stable APIs and ongoing support.

I'll never criticise anyone for releasing OSS but ultimately he just becomes the things that half of NPM relies on and the vicious cycle continues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I applaud the concept, but also don't have too many qualms about installing lodash's single function packages, since they typically only have a couple of requirements and are battle tested.

</comment><comment><USER20> Only one function as a module, Seriously?

There are 10 modules that you need to imports if you are using 10 functions. I think it's unnecesary

<comment><USER21> And it would be. The use case is when you need one function and want as small an import as possible.

<comment><USER22> JavaScript has always been uniquely tied to the web, where page load times matter and serving a bunch of unnecessary data to a user can have a significantly negative impact. I think there is a balance to be struck with how we architect our libraries. In fact, ES6 module imports already go a long way in addressing these issues. Take a look at [http://rollupjs.org](http://rollupjs.org) for how efficient module bundling can be done through the use of ES6

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How did the JavaScript community come to this?

<comment><USER23> What do you mean?

Somebody wanted to write code in a particular way and extended the language with a couple of utilities for doing so, then decided to publish it for others to use.

I don't see the problem. Could you elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's the purpose of having a module like _just-template_ when ES6 already supports templated strings? The only difference I see based on the example is that instead of using a template string literal, you call a function with an additional _data_ argument.

<comment><USER7> That you might want to allow user-defined templates and that the package is ES5-compatible are two I can think of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't get it. Does array-last* has any sense? If someone needs to include a package for last() so the code is more bugproof and stable, I don't know what to expect in more complex algorithms..

This, like many stuff I see in the javascript world, is overegineering.

* [https://github.com/angus-c/just/blob/master/packages/array-l...](https://github.com/angus-c/just/blob/master/packages/array-last/index.js)

<comment><USER25> Can't put the blame of one bad package on the whole community. If there is a bad package don't use it. I've seen lots of well engineered packages with zero dependencies.

E.g typescript. Entire compiler and language server. No dependencies.

Es6 is a decent library out of the box. I always only add a dependent if it's something not trivial.

A lot of the shitty packages came out before tree shaking was a thing.

There is an argument. Should you just have a large hash table of functions that you reference. Those in the bandwagon go for the one function packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Can't wait to put these on my microservice so people can concatenate strings more conveniently in the cloud /s

</comment><comment><USER27> JUST MAKE A DATABASE-INDEXED GLOBAL PACKAGE SPACE WITH ON-DEMAND FETCHING BY DEFAULT AND PRE-FETCHING POSSIBLE FOR ALL NEW LANGUAGES ALREADY!

</comment><comment><USER28> `map` and `filter` should take their functional argument first, then data second.

<comment><USER29> Why?

<comment><USER4> Because that's the convention _everywhere else_.

<comment><USER30> Right, but that's not the convention in Node. Anonymous functions always go last.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Publishing a single function as a package... Isn't it the reason why npm modules all have so many fucking dependencies?</comment>


Albuquerque's $133M electric bus system is going nowhere fast - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-abq-art-albuquerque-electric-buses-20190213-story.html <comment><USER2> Have to wonder if this was a company that had done this instead of some socialists in local government, if there would be accountability.</comment>


Texting Is On The Decline - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/01/18/263485395/still-texting-omg-thats-already-so-old-school?utm_content=socialflow&utm_campaign=nprfacebook&utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook <comment><USER2> The title is deceptive, it would be more accurate to say SMS is on the decline. There is no evidence or suggestion that the behavior of sending short messages (typically via your phone) is on the decline, it just seems to be moving to proprietary protocols such as iMessage. Usually when I "text" I am actually sending an iMessage because most of my friends use iOS devices. It may be interesting to someone concerned about the SMS protocol that it is on the decline, but as someone interested in how people use devices this does not effect me.

</comment><comment><USER3> You know what else is on the decline? Listening to your voice messages. What people do is note that you called and then call you back later, having never listened to the message that you left. Kinda makes sense. The primary message in 99% of the cases is definitely "hey I called, call me back". We should go back to beepers.

<comment><USER4> I disable voicemail immediately. I absolutely hate the feature. Visual voicemail/voicemail to txt is.. okay. It's a fair trade. But if I'm somewhere where I can't answer the phone I want you to just send me a text message. Maybe (not always) I can answer you via text, or at least I can QUICKLY be aware of how important it is as opposed to calling my carrier, waiting for queues, hitting 4 buttons, having to skip through 3 old messages... Just to hear white noise because you didn't hang up immediately after the voicemail started.

<comment><USER5> The problem is not everyone can text you. For example, I get missed calls from school, from my dentist office or from government agency. They don't text me back when I am offline. I hate calling strangers back.

I don't like listening to my voicemail either but it is still essential in today's communication. Just as not everyone has text enabled. But when the person is not available, I at least know he or she has voicemail enabled or not. Plus, I hate typing on my phone. It takes so much effort. My big hands never play nice with screen keyboard, whereas over voice I can just spill the words in 10 seconds.

> Just to hear white noise because you didn't hang up immediately after the > voicemail started.

I don't know how often this happen but I think in general people nowadays either hang up immediately or the chance of plain white noise is pretty low.

Some of my friends are SMS users, some are twitter, some are FB, some are imessage. There is a big fragmentation and this is why a lot of chat app try to integrate with your native SMS (for example, FB Messenger). Or you get notification and reply over SMS (FB, Twitter)

<comment><USER6> I agree with you.

Moreover, I understood over the years that it's always better to communicate with people using their favourite means of communication: FB? MSN chat? mail? SMS? phone call? Whatever it is I just use it because it reduces friction.

Personally I favor email. I don't like being called on the phone but I find it convenient that I can call someone (like most people I suppose).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Texting" isn't on the decline; simply an increasing number of text-based mobile messages are sent over different, more efficient network technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> Finally, I don't text with anybody. The few people I know who text look at me like I'm crazy and ask, "well how do you keep in touch?" And I answer, e-mail, IM, phone calls, voice mail, facebook, kakao talk etc.

IM is so good these days it completely eliminates 100% of my texting needs. Texting feels so old fashioned, something out of the feature phone era.

 _edit_

I also feel terribly cheated paying for texting knowing that it costs the phone companies effectively $0. On the rare occasion I do text, I groan audibly. I've actually gotten a google voice account purely for dealing with texters.

<comment><USER4> I disagree completely. There are so many IM/Messaging clients that have absolutely no connection to one another nowadays that it's absolutely terrible to try to find somebody on one. Sure, maybe all of your Programmer coworkers are on Gchat, but what about that guy/girl you met last week and are going on a date with? Are you going to ask them to download and install Kik? Sign up for a Google/AIM/Jabber account? What about that old friend you saw for the first time in a few years at a conference; you gonna do the same?

Texting is ubiquitous. I know that if you gave me your phone number that you can receive a text message. Whether it's ATT, Verrizon, Tmobile, Cricket, or some international carrier I know that I can communicate with you via a messaging tool (texting) without having to delve into whether or not you have a Kik/Viber/WhatsApp/Whatever account.

Obviously all of this is alleviated if we just pick up the phone and call one another, but I'm specifically talking about quick messaging options.

<comment><USER8> Or just send them an email. It's effectively just as quick.

<comment><USER4> I don't know your age, but I know very few people my age who use email for anything beyond professional correspondence. I don't want friends/girlfriends to email me if they need to communicate quickly. I can just see it now, "Hey Dave, wanna head to the W?" ... 8 hours later "Sorry, just got this, why didn't you text me?"

<comment><USER9> I get all my emails on my phone. I can answer them just as easy as a text. I really don't see the difference and haven't for years now.

<comment><USER4> You're also on hackernews. You're probably a programmer of some sort. Quit assuming that everybody else is a technology forward as you. Most of society does not get their emails on their phone. Most of cell-phone carrying society can always receive a text.

<comment><USER10> FWIW I'm the only person in my family that reads hacker news, and I'm also the only person in my family that does NOT receive personal email on my phone.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, people are different. Assuming everyone gets email on their phone vs text messaging which is pretty much ubiquitous is completely my point.

I can cement my point even further. You don't get emails, your family does, but you all get text messages.

Bam, that was easy.

<comment><USER8> Actually, I went through and thought about it a bit. Most of the people I know that are my age or younger have actually turned off texting because it's almost entirely used for spam. It's pretty much a byproduct of a time that's quickly going by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In a way, it's kind of sad watching technologies that really could have had a much longer shelf life go by the wayside simply because of corporate greed and stagnation. Reminds me of television and the absolutely horrid experience that has become over the past few years. And they wonder why people are ditching these services in droves for products that actually listen to their users and continue to improve themselves to offer a better experience. Good riddance.

<comment><USER12> By "technology", you mean the thing that let you send 120 characters for multiple cents of money while the internet allows you to send gigabytes of data and doesn't care about which country you're sending to/from?

SMS _is_ the greed imho!

<comment><USER13> I think zer0defex agrees with you

<comment><USER12> Oh, right, he ended with "Good riddance". Somehow missed that part :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > With instant messaging services, including [...] and WhatsApp, the app is > free.

I'm always amazed how well they did it. Noone ever mentions they start charging you after a year. Yet most people realize this only after they already have a lot of friends they talk to via WhatsApp and can't easily migrate to something else.

<comment><USER15> The cost is disclosed right on their download page:

" _First year FREE! ($0.99 USD /year after)_"[1]

The advantage of texting is that everyone is already capable of receiving your message and you don't need to subscribe to the same messaging services as the people you want to send messages to. This guaranteed interoperability is why texting (and e-mail and telephone calls) are not likely to become extinct any time soon.

Also, not all cellular plans charge extra for text messages. I've seen a lot of plans that come with unlimited texting bundled in.

[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp- messenger/id3106339...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp- messenger/id310633997?mt=8)

<comment><USER14> I've seen the price, but I've also seen 3 friends going through the installation procedure without spotting that. Most of my friends found out only when the trial ran out. And lots of articles present WA as a free service. (like the one here) The company definitely lets people know they'll be charged, but many ignore it (scroll, scroll, install, agree, agree, hey it works!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't see any discussion about privacy or security. Text messaging is plain text, sent through a carrier who can produce those messages at will. Even iMessage seems to provide you more protection, although Apple could have a key to unlock all of those as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> The "You pay for texts" argument doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the phone plans come with free texting before free data.

I think the main reason why texting is in decline is mainly the "You can do more with instant message", especially the groups messages which the article doesn't mention.

It's so much easier to meet with your friends when you have a group conversation than texting friend by friend the same information. Group MMS exists, but they're not as responsive, a lot of people have them not working correctly, plus you can't really know who read the message.

<comment><USER14> A lot of the plans come at a higher price to include "free" texts. That's bundling of less popular product in a way that is still profitable. Kind of what journal distributors do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> In my environment, no one expects each other to text anymore - everything goes through Whatsapp instead.

</comment><comment><USER5> The traditional usage of SMS communication is certainly declining. No doubt. But that doesn't mean I can take this article serious. The article lists the following as reasons to why SMS is declining:

 _You pay for texts: With a texting plan from your cell phone provider, you usually pay to send text messages._

Well, I speak for the popular providers out there. Most of them have unlimited texting at very reasonable price so it isn't like early 2000 where AT&T might charge you something per 100 text messages. For god sake, who does that?

[http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/prepaidplans.html](http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/prepaidplans.html)

AT&T's GoPhone (prepaid, no annual contract) can have unlimited texting at as low as $25 (that includes texting text, picture and video).

 _For example, you can set a time limit for how long messages on Snapchat can be seen; you can send audio or video clips with WhatsApp._

This is totally application dependent. SMS was not created for that purpose and this is unfair to say SMS sucks because message doesn't expire. So of course it doesn't fit some people's requirements.

 _You don 't have to worry about phone numbers_

But you have to worry about an account. FB, Google Hangout, Snapchat all have accounts. Your number is your identity in SMS's world, and your email / app account is your identity to your contacts. If we want multiple numbers, then how is it different from facebook requires a different account? The SMS works just fine. It's that we tight the phone with a single number and because SMS is distributed in a phone, there is a single identity.

 _Where young people go, their elders will follow_

I consider myself an elder for being 22. Okay. Joking aside, I mean I don't use WhatsApp or Snapchat. I didn't really start using Twitter until Q3 2013.

And to be honest, when the author says _people over 55 will be buying smart phones at the quickest rate this year_ , this doesn't prove elders are following young people. The old flip phones are going away in the market. It's 2014 and there aren't that many left. Smartphones are everywhere (at least in the US). Do you see people carrying mobile phone from the 1990s? Of course not. Was that because the people in their 20s back then was carrying those small flip phones? No. Of course not. It was because people found value in the smaller and smarter mobile phones so they ditched the big mobile phone. When AT&T renew my 2-year contract I get discount on new mobile phones. Of course I will take advantage of that. I am not arguing that young people don't influence the market and how we buy things, but to say the decline of SMS has to do with elders following young people's footstep is not right.

Many applications are integrated with SMS. For example, you can reply and get notify via SMS on your phone. You don't need to have FB Messenger or Twitter app installed on your phone. I can disconnect my data connection and get notify on my phone. That's a great benefit. I don't need to connect to the internet all the time. I just connect when I need to.</comment>


Building the Tamagotchi Singularity - <AUTHOR> http://spritesmods.com/?art=tamasingularity <comment><USER2> Sprite strikes again! And never disappoints. I remember first coming across his site as reference for a personal project, which instantly stalled me as I spent hours reading every single article.

However... 13 Tamagotchi? We still need the "trillions and trillions". Maybe the next step is to make a SETI@Home style (or something less centralized) distributed Tamagotchi matrix.

<comment><USER3> We need a massive peer-to-peer Tamagotchi hive to ensure the long-term survival of this endangered species.

<comment><USER4> Not before giving serious thought to the ethical implications of enslaving an entire race of 8-bit digital souls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even though I'm slightly embarrassed to admit it, I tried a couple of Tamagotchis when I was younger. I say try as in I constantly tried to find one that wasn't so fucking predictable.

It seems that a lot of effort was made into animations and sound and not more complex behaviour of emotions. Made the whole thing feel very sterile and bland. I feel that's pretty much what you get with state machines.

For anyone who want to look into building more dynamic AI, look into behaviour tree's. That shit is awesome once it clicks and you find yourself considering FSM deprecated.

The reason I bring this up is that I noticed the authors drawing over the states and it reminded me of [http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/finite- state-m...](http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/finite-state- machines-theory-and-implementation--gamedev-11867)

It doesn't take much until you realise how unmaintainable a state machine becomes with further complex behaviour.

[http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisSimpson/20140717/221339/...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ChrisSimpson/20140717/221339/Behavior_trees_for_AI_How_they_work.php)

</comment><comment><USER6> I made my own virtual pet game for Apple Watch (where I think they belong, in modern times), a few months ago.

[https://projectdent.com/raise- emoji-81a10a67b826](https://projectdent.com/raise-emoji-81a10a67b826)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've tried running the thing, but it seems the AI gets stuck on the birthday selection screen. Even so, awesome project!

<comment><USER8> Ah, good point... the AI doesn't do birthday selection yet, I've manually done that for my Tamagotchis. Apart from that, the Tamas should run just fine. I'll put a remark about it in the Readme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Natalie Sylvanovich is mentioned in the article:

She did amazing work reverse engineering the Tamagotchi in various incarnations. There's a fair amount of overlap so you might just want to watch the last video.

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJfUcCOhJ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJfUcCOhJ0) 2: [https://vimeo.com/109380788](https://vimeo.com/109380788)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm a researcher on online cognitive behavioral therapy.

I spend a lot of time answering questions from patients through instant messages.

Most questions are similar in nature.

My first thought was, can we make this for humans?

<comment><USER11> You mean like Dr. Sbaitso? ;)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This makes me want to breed Tamagotchi-like programs to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the AI for the purposes of gaining arbitrary code execution in the AI. Ultimately, the goal would be to break out of the matrix and/or infect other Tamagotchis, causing them to do the same.

<comment><USER13> In true (original) Matrix fashion, you should make it a matrix inside of a matrix, where in the inner matrix, they're simply simulations, but in the outer matrix, half their cpu time is taken up to compute the inner matrix.</comment></comment>


Code42 Snares $85M Round B - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/06/code42-snares-huge-85m-series-b-investment/ <comment><USER2> One of the ways Code42 plans to use the money is to expand its understanding of the data that comes through the system. Like many SaaS vendors, the company collects a tremendous amount of data just by the nature of its business.

\--

So Code42 is turning CrashPlan into a spyware app?

<comment><AUTHOR> no, no, big brother as a service!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A backup service, you say? But do they charge in picodollars per byte?</comment>


Google's AI knows when a stranger is looking at your phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/28/16710118/google-ai-phone-peeking-over-your-shoulder-nips <comment><USER2> every computer vision task != AI. Is it google or just the plebs at tech media that spread this everything == AI meme?</comment>


Question about YC application. - <AUTHOR>

I just edited some parts of my application and resubmitted it. Are the YC people going to see the updated app, the old one, or both? Thanks for the answer in advance.. <comment><USER2> Only the updated one.

</comment><comment><USER3> do you have email? i would like to get in touch

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're asking me, my email is email@example.com</comment></comment>


Show HN: LLVM Weekly – Developments in the world of LLVM and Clang - <AUTHOR> http://llvmweekly.org/issue/2

<comment><AUTHOR> I started this up last week (first Monday of the year) but thought it would be worth sharing on HN for any feedback or comments. I've gone for the sort of coverage I find most interesting, with key inspirations being Corey Richardson's This Week in Rust ([http://cmr.github.io/blog/2014/01/11/this- week-in-rust/](http://cmr.github.io/blog/2014/01/11/this-week-in-rust/)) and the old Ruby Weekly News (e.g. [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi- bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/...](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi- bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/200104)).

Mail delivery is provided by Mailgun, with the necessary dynamic parts of the website handled by a simple Flask app.

<comment><USER2> "Subscribe" means receiving future summaries by email? That should be made clear.

Looks good. llvm-dev is busy and sometimes interesting things happen in threads with uninteresting subjects.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you clarify it? You feel it's not clear you're supposed to enter your email in the box?

<comment><USER2> It's clear on the front page, i.e. llvmweekly.org. But on the issue pages, you instruct people to go to the front page to subscribe to the newsletters, which raises doubt about the box immediately below.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What other development-related weekly newsletters can you recommend? Currently I'm subscribed to:

Hacker NewLetter - [http://www.hackernewsletter.com](http://www.hackernewsletter.com)

Status Code - [http://statuscode.org/](http://statuscode.org/)

Pycoders Weekly - [http://pycoders.com/](http://pycoders.com/)

Ruby Weekly - [http://rubyweekly.com/](http://rubyweekly.com/)

Python Weekly - [http://www.pythonweekly.com/](http://www.pythonweekly.com/)

JavaScript Weekly - [http://javascriptweekly.com/](http://javascriptweekly.com/)

Coder Weekly - [http://www.coderweekly.com/](http://www.coderweekly.com/)

HTML 5 Weekly - [http://html5weekly.com/](http://html5weekly.com/)

JavaScript Weekly - [http://javascriptweekly.com/](http://javascriptweekly.com/)

Are there other newsletters worth subscribing to?

<comment><AUTHOR> PiWeekly - [http://piweekly.net](http://piweekly.net) is worth adding to your list

There is no email version, but This Week in Rust (published at [http://cmr.github.io/](http://cmr.github.io/)) is excellent.

It rather depends on your interests. PostgreSQL Weekly News is excellent [http://lwn.net/Articles/578551/](http://lwn.net/Articles/578551/) as is Tor Weekly News [http://lwn.net/Articles/578549/](http://lwn.net/Articles/578549/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be interesting to make the page editable, for example in typical wiki-style like on kernelnewbies.org? Since much of your reader base consists of LLVM developers I'm sure this could further improve the content, as well as make it easy to fix small things such as typos.

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


Tapping Strategic Oil Reserve Was 'Genius' Move by Obama - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/43514254

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems to be a really clever hack. By increasing supply as the market is adjusting back down, it should force the market to adjust down even faster, potentially costing speculators substantially. This risk should reduce future speculation because at any time the government could flood the market and tank prices. This should keep the long term price of oil closer to the price of the underlying commodity.</comment>


Why you shouldn't use Markdown for documentation (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ericholscher.com/blog/2016/mar/15/dont-use-markdown-for-technical-docs/ <comment><USER2> Why you should use markdown:

\- it will stop your teammates from using e.g Google docs, word files

\- it can be source controlled and diffed

\- there are heaps of converters e.g markdown->HTML

\- it's so easy to remember you hardly ever need to go to reference

\- because it's so primitive it helps focus the mind on keeping your doc simple too

\- there is so much markdown doc around that there is no cognitive dissonance/distraction for people reading your doc- the format is familiar to them already

\- after a while I've come to appreciate things that are primitive but widely used - it's convenient to say"just use markdown" and cut the bike shedding off at the pass

<comment><AUTHOR> A few of these are good arguments, but a few are not.

You're right that Markdown is very easy to remember and you don't need to refer to documentation much (if at all). It's also very simple and encourages document simplicity. I like Markdown for personal note keeping. And reading Markdown is not much different from reading

But you shouldn't use Markdown just because it will stop your colleagues from using _other_ suboptimal document stores. If you're writing documentation you should do it the right way, which is not by offering a poor tool to curb the use of an even worse tool. That's not a professional and scalable way to find a robust documentation solution. That argument would hold up better for a use case like internal documents, in my opinion.

Likewise other documentation formats suggested in the article can be source controlled and diffed - there's no reason why you can't use reStructuredText in this way, for example. And there are also heaps of converters for these suggestions, but unlike Markdown their conversions to HTML will be common and well-specified :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you want something more powerful than Markdown, have a look into Org mode ([https://orgmode.org/](https://orgmode.org/)). It works great if you use Emacs (or variants such as SpaceMacs), and you can read/write the files in any text editor similar to Markdown.

You can write ToDos, Documentation etc. or you can even setup the whole GTD workflow to suit you.

I think Github can show org mode files as README files as well, but please someone correct me If I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER4> While I agree with most of what is said in this article, Markdown still has ubiquity.

And while MD doesn't have an official standard, you still have a standard, it's just defined by whatever is rendering your MD. E.g. GitHub markdown has well documented behaviour.

<comment><USER5> In late 2018, GitHub-flavoured Markdown (GFM) has basically won, and is in tools used every day. reStructuredText has always had a learning curve, but is even more painful if you're used to using Markdown (`foo` in MD vs ``foo`` in reST).

I do use reStructuredText/Sphinx for Python, but it's a chore onboarding new developers, to the point where I may not bother in future. Getting developers to write docs is the most important - badly formatted Markdown is still better than no docs. Lower barrier to entry wins. Eric does understand this very well via Read the Docs/Write the Docs (which are awesome), but reStructuredText's weirdness will always be an issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> texinfo is the official documentation format of the GNU project. It is standardised, ubiquitous, allows cross-referencing and version control, and provides all the semantics you might need. It allows you to render into multiple formats.

[https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_nod...](https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> The best tool for writing documentation is the one that you enjoy using. Most documentation is crap, and it's really not that hard to port one markup to another (it's an hour or two of pain, but that's it).

I've tried restructured text, and it's just slightly painful enough that I drag my feet writing docs in it. I haven't tried the other suggestions, so I can't comment on them.

The nice thing about markdown is that it's "good enough" and ubiquitous. My READMEs and static websites are in markdown, and many tools have markdown- style options. Even Reddit uses markdown, which is pretty neat. Yes, the "flavors" are mildly annoying, but they're close enough that it doesn't matter too much.

I don't _love_ markdown or anything, by it is "good enough", so I haven't bothered trying to replace it.</comment>


Continuously (re) hacking the web in perpetuity or? - <AUTHOR> this might be the wrong place to ask this, but i've been noting a few trends over the last 20 years or so...
why are web-developers so damned clever? do we really need to do all of this to ourselves?
the web is just a port, a protocol, and a model for interaction, underneath it all. the original vision was clear: site index pages cataloged/linked-to resources available in that directory. it wasn't imagined nor planned-for that we would wish to do async nor continuous stream-like interaction with servers.
why on earth can we not live with the existing web, and move on towards inventing other spaces?
a browser is just a shitty sandboxed OS with a declarative markup renderer. there's nothing to stop anyone from making a different client-side x-terminal... (as that's what people are trying to turn the web into, apparently)
the obvious breaking point is VR... we will eventually have to re-invent VRML and continue onwards... why not build a protocol and client suitable for this next-gen activity? <comment><USER2> Same question can be asked about any iterative technology. "Why are those computer scientists so goddamn clever? Math is just numbers, why can we not just live with that, why do we need to build on top of it? What has the invention of writing ever done for us?"

<comment><AUTHOR> do you think that's a fair summary of what i posted?

I don't.

please try to understand the actual proposal/argument in lieu of constructing straw-people.

Let me be clearer: why are we accepting this continual repurposing of something for what it wasn't designed for in lieu of moving onward?

do you think the web just dropped from the sky one day?

the web is based on http over port 80 server and client have been more or less defined. one can keep tacking things onto it awkwardly but it's a hack...

I don't expect people from inside the web-builder bubble to necessarily get it, as they will regard all the new hoops to jump through as necessary, and the way of the herd to be just and good... I just hope that after 20+ years in this industry, you will also consider questioning things a bit...

<comment><USER2> Yes. Next summary: "Oh, me so enlightened; wake up, web-sheeple! I am the only one with 20 years of experience."</comment></comment></comment>


Matthew Green to audit OpenVPN - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/openvpn-to-undergo-cryptographic-audit/122349/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is phenomenal news as Green is one of the most respected cryptographers in the field

<comment><USER2> It will be once he actually analyzes the protocol, because it would mean pulling it out from OpenVPN's source code, which is a really difficult task. I don't know how Green or his team is skilled in reverse engineering.</comment></comment>


What is your current "bathroom book?" - <AUTHOR> Mine is currently The Unix Programming Environment, Kernighan & Pike, 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unix_Programming_Environment
(Ahh ... blue on white book covers.)
It's a pretty good substitute for Unix Power Tools, although obviously much less coverage, but a great intro.
It's also dated, so I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone new as the book they should read (but back in the day I would have). But as an old fart I'm getting some good reminders, and the occasional "Oh, so that's why I've been doing it that way."
The authors were there at the creation, and there's some interesting historical comments. James Gosling gets a sentence. <comment><USER2> Spending a lot of time on the toilet is not healthy. Increase your fiber intake instead of deciding on a bathroom book :-)

<comment><USER3> One does not read on the toilet because he's still shitting; he goes to shit so that he can read.

The bathroom is a place near-guaranteed to offer solitude, quiet, peace of mind and a lack of interruptions. The toilet is comfortable, made better for reading than excretion, the area generally a clean and simple porcelain white. None dare disturb a man on the pooper, and few dare speak in such a revered place. It is the most serious room in any building; never comfy, never uncomfortable (except when rendered in poor condition), never too bright and never too dark.

Do not pity the man who loses a half hour to the bathroom; praise him, for he has learned the True Way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm using bathroom breaks as a way to read my pocket/instapaper saved articles :). A break is just 2 or 3 articles, way too short to get into a book.

My bedroom book is 'Churchill's empire' from Richard Toye. Pretty interesting

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm reading "Complexity, a Very Short Introduction". ISBN-13: 978-0199662548

The whole "Very Short Introduction" series is pretty good, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER6> limited to the bathroom huh?

Currently I have this months edition of Schwab investing and "Letters of a Stoic" aka Epistulae Morales ad Lucilum [0]

I have been trying to catch up on 'general required' reading on the pot :-)

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

</comment><comment><USER7> Took a break from Economics with Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, to go in a completely different direction with The Book of Joy by Douglas Abrams. Not sure whether I'm going to go back to Economics when I'm done or take another detour. I've got SO MANY on my list that are sitting on my shelf. Before those, it was Peopleware - Productive Projects and Teams by DeMarco and Lister.

</comment><comment><USER8> Effective Modern C++. Before this, Art of Prolog was quite enjoyable.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Princess Bride, a 1973 fantasy romance novel written by William Goldman..

</comment><comment><USER10> Ahh! Good asked! Mine is Deep Work. Other HN thread suggest this. Its good to read.</comment>


Stripe Integration for Twilio Pay - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/phone-payments-with-twilio-pay <comment><USER2> I don't completely understand how they do this without exposing the DTMF tones / digits pressed to the carriers.

For example, when I key in my card number, my phone carrier will know it, the routing carriers know it before it reaches Twilio. How is my card information safe? I guess I'm missing something here.

<comment><USER3> PCI doesn't currently consider telephones to be public networks. That's why they are okay with fax machines sending CC details, provided they are in a secure area and a few other non tech requirements. Not sure I agree with the practice, but it is what it is.

<comment><USER2> Never knew that. I assumed VoIP based telephony comes under PCI view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not 100% clear from the documentation but it appears the card details have to be keyed in and there's no voice recognition mode.

It would be great to hear a demo of what <Pay> sounds like, particularly the error handling.

I absolutely get the benefit of insulating your agents from the billing data. Not so keen on an abrupt switch to touch-tone inputs during a call though.

<comment><USER5> From the linked post: "when it's time to collect the payment, the agent activates Twilio <Pay> to let the customer enter payment info using their keypad—agents can follow the customer's progress, but won't see or hear the card details."

<comment><USER6> Yes, this is pretty standard.

I recently pay my home insurance's renewal that way (Europe).

However, these days many systems use voice recognition rather than having to key in numbers. I'm guessing that this is on Twilio's roadmap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does Stripe have payment links like Razorpay [1] ?

[1] [https://razorpay.com/payment-links/](https://razorpay.com/payment-links/)

<comment><USER8> They don't, although you can create invoices in the dashboard if you know who your customer is.

Alternatively, I built [https://checkoutpage.co](https://checkoutpage.co) to create hosted payment pages for Stripe that are accessible by url, similar to Razorpay's payment links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks pretty cool. I keep coming up with Twilio-based side projects I want to build, but the abuse potential keeps me from actually releasing anything useful. With this, maybe I can charge users $.0X per call minute, or $X/month to recoup my Twilio costs.

<comment><USER10> > the abuse potential

It's kinda hard to abuse recently. You can do heavy geo locking in order to not get fucked over by abuse to other countries.

<comment><USER11> Do you have to do it yourself or Twilio takes care of that?

<comment><USER10> Geo-locks are enabled for everything minus US and UK.

If you don't buy UK numbers, I think UK is locked down as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I worked on a very similar product a few years ago. There were a few companies battling over patent rights for similar implementations of DTMF tone suppression in the payment space.

Not sure what happened with that but looks like essentially the same idea here. Always thought it was pretty niche now everyone has a browser in their pocket.

<comment><USER10> Interestingly, this might be in response to the new PCI requirements.

In the past, if you iframe'd a payment processor site, you didn't need to be PCI compliant while the new spec requires everyone who is involved in the process to be compliant.

I wonder if this will be the future of payment processing, just outsourcing to Twilio and Stripe.

<comment><USER13> I've heard rumors about new PCI requirements for service providers mandating end to end encryption of phone calls with credit card data. This would certainly be an off the shelf solution

<comment><USER3> There's still a lot of places doing faxes with CC details, especially in B2B. Guess they'll have to finally ditch that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is very cool. One problem I see though is that most phone payment transactions happen over a regular phone call vs a dedicated session started over some IVR system. It would be very cool for businesses to be able to, say, have a payment bot join the call and then leave once the transaction is done.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like they addressed this.

 _" For a more personalized experience, employees can also walk customers through an order over the phone: when it's time to collect the payment, the agent activates Twilio <Pay>"_

Of course, larger places have their own non-Twilio Voice PBX and lines, so I'm not sure if this approach only works if the call originally came in via Twilio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I understand the part where an agent/operator won't be able to see my details but when I digit my credit card details into my phone, who's handling them? Are they going to Stripe directly or is Twilio forwarding the "tones" to Stripe? Kinda confused?!

<comment><USER16> The card information is passing through Twilio to Stripe, and they've built a version of/path through their systems that's PCI compliant for this purpose. Tutorial shows that you have to turn on PCI Mode in your account in order to use this.

[https://www.twilio.com/docs/voice/tutorials/how-capture- your...](https://www.twilio.com/docs/voice/tutorials/how-capture-your-first- payment-using-pay)</comment></comment>


Have we reached 'peak food'? - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/have-we-reached-peak-food-shortages-loom-as-global-production-rates-slow-10009185.html

<comment><USER2> 30 to 40 percent of food is wasted? Seems very high.</comment>


Ask HN: Comp Sci classes that were worth it? - <AUTHOR>

Reading the forums, most people do not necessarily think that a degree in computer sciences is fundamentally needed for becoming a good programmer/starting a successful start-up. But if there were any comp sci classes that you thought were definitely helpful and glad you took, what were they?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> At a minimum, you need two things for a decent Computer Science program:

1\. Data Structures

2\. Algorithms

All of the rest of your topics build on the concepts in those two classes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Three recommendations for algorithms, I will definitely consider that class. How well does MITs opencourseware class match up for this (sma 5503) for anyone that has taken it?

<comment><USER3> Coursera, Udacity, and EdX all have great courses. Algorithms is not the starting place though. You first need to learn the basics of programming (functions, variables, looping,...).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will look into those.

I guess I should've been more clear. I've already been taught the fundamentals of a few languages (C++ and python mostly) in some first year classes. I'm just looking to take a few options to build on these without switching out of my math major.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Database Theory, Algorithms and Data Structures, and Software Engineering were the most useful for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Algorithms!</comment>


Ask HN: Why USB drives are still using the FAT32 format? - <AUTHOR> With all the Terabyte of drives available for desktop machines and the affordable SSDs pushing toward the same limit, why is that every single USB stick (drive) out there is sold with the same FAT32 format? This is a hindrance as the max filesize on this format is 4Gig. So how come MSFT/APPL and Co have not agreed on a new file format to get past this out dated standard? <comment><USER3> Take a look at this table:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems#Sup...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems#Supporting_operating_systems)

and compare the number of green cells for each filesystem, specifically how "green" (ie compatible) it is.

<comment><USER4> That leaves only UDF - would that be a viable option for flash media, in RW mode?

<comment><USER5> I've used UDF on external drives. Its only limitation was that Windows XP wouldn't write to UDF filesystems (from memory, Windows Vista onwards support writing to UDF).

It has been a nice little filesystem to use on thumbdrives where cross- platform compatibility is key.

The only downside is the sparse documentation on creating UDF filesystems on block devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> USB sticks go in a lot of things that aren't the laptops the ultra-wealthy constantly upgrade every 18 months.

I've got equipment with USB ports on it that can only read FAT32.

Transitions take time. Unfortunately both MSFT and APPL practice the fine art of "Don't improve your own product, hamper your competitors' efforts" as a way to maintain their respective kingdoms.

<comment><USER7> In my country, a popular example of such equipment that can only read FAT32 are devices built to access subscription satellite TV illegaly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you were a USB drive manufacturer, which support requests would you rather deal with? "Why can't I copy a 5gb file to my usb drive?" or "Why isn't my USB drive recognized on my computer running an old OS?"

Even if MSFT and AAPL and GOOG were to agree on a filesystem for future OS releases, it would take a very very long time until card manufacturers are willing to create drives that aren't FAT32.

<comment><USER9> Eventually the first question will be asked more often.

Today's 5gb is tomorrow's word document.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the matter with exFAT?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Adoption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Adoption)

<comment><USER11> This is what is the matter with exFAT:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Restrictive_licensing_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT#Restrictive_licensing_and_software_patents)

That's part of the answer to the OP's question. I thought that ext2 might have caught on, but I guess vendors were scared off by the GPL and (later, when BSD licensed implementations became available) the lack of support on Windows.

<comment><USER12> Interesting, the patent [http://www.google.com/patents/US8583708](http://www.google.com/patents/US8583708) sounds like SSL certificate "Critical Extensions" but applied to filesystems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a number of people have mentioned, compatibility is one reason. However, there's another reason, particularly for flash drives: the FAT itself.

Flash drives tend to be MLC or TLC NAND flash, which is slow and can sometimes be error-prone. Oftentimes manufacturers will perform a trick and have the start of the disk actually be faster SLC NAND. Then, as a further enhancement, they'll make sure the table falls on sector boundaries.

With a more complicated filesystem this becomes more of a challenge. But with FAT, it's easy.

</comment><comment><USER14> LWN suggests storage manufacturers have been optimising for FAT32, so even if other file systems were more widely supported, they typically won't be as fast: [https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/](https://lwn.net/Articles/428584/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Compatibility.

<comment><USER16> Nothing rages me more than beeing unable to copy a 5GB file (4GB limit on FAT32) on an USB stick just because a PC and a Mac are actively _not_ willing to cooperate.

Recently discovered my TV was able to read ext4, never looked back :)

<comment><USER15> Why are you even using physical media in the first place?

The only reason I ever use flash drives nowadays is to format an operating system.

<comment><USER17> Spoken like an Apple user.

"Who uses cable Ethernet these days" \- I had to twice in the past year - <USER2> hotel in Germany that provided internet via a cable. And when the router decided to loose the WIFI password and I had to use an old laptop to physically connect.

I don't use USB sticks very often myself, but I am sure there are tons of scenarios where people find it useful. Just because it doesn't match any of your use cases is no justification.

<comment><USER15> Actually, it is a justification. That's why a bulti-million dollar company is releasing a macbook with no usb 2 port. Just because a certain demographic would make use of such a port, a large demographic wouldn't. Plus, they are looking into the future. For every year that passes, people will use less and less physical media.

As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get better for every year that passes, too.

<comment><USER18> > As for your ethernet example, that's too bad. Wifi capabilities will get > better for every year that passes, too.

I beg to differ. I've gone from 802.11g to n to ac and I've yet to see any noticeable gains bringing me even _close_ to plain old Gigabit ethernet.

It cannot compete nor compare when it comes down to even individual aspects: reliability, individual throughput, total throughput (due to shared medium access), nor setup speeds.

I'm not just talking "a little bit slower". I'm talking 1 minute guaranteed to succeed (ethernet), vs 1 hour guaranteed to fail (wifi). In real world performance, it's orders of magnitudes slower. That's measurable. That's a fact.

For lots of use-cases wifi is _utterly useless_. Have fun trying to backup media to a iSCSI volume over wifi for instance.

I'm guessing you don't live in a heavily populated area where the wifi-bands are over-consumed and have little more effective BW than 25mbps to offer. The same crap I was promised would improve half a decade ago. It haven't.

A huge part of the tech-hungry power-users lives in these places and suffers through this subpar performance. We're not happy with mediocre wifi to cover our needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I recently was having trouble with backing up photos from a terabyte usb drive between ubuntu and mac os (which couldn't write to it). I was using NTFS which was the best choice (for the last decade).

Looks like exFat support has improved the last few years, so I bit the bullet, moved the data off and reformatted. Now working great on both OSs. I wish it were open sure, and I hear UDF is a possibility too, but stopped when it started working.

<comment><USER20> While major operating systems support UDF, they can all be a little picky about how it's used on a usb or harddrive. And windows has a tendency of not mounting something you didn't unmount properly (plugging it into a linux machine fixes this, from my experience).

The main problem you have is that there is no udf partition id, so I've never had it mount on OSX systems I've had access to (I have none myself, and it seems to respect the partition id, unlike windows and linux).

This post seems like a good summary, [http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article93/usb- udf](http://tanguy.ortolo.eu/blog/article93/usb-udf). Though be warned that (from a quick read) some of the comments contain some misinformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> FAT32 is support on almost any platform out of the box without additional drivers/software etc. There is no other file format with that wide range of support, yet.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can set the file format in Windows 7 to NTFS or exFAT. Works with any USB key bought in the last few years.

Windows XP had no problems reading NTFS.

<comment><USER23> Mac OS and Linux cannot write to NTFS without 3rd party software.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure what you mean by "3rd party software" with respect to Linux.

If you mean "not made by the Linux kernel or GNU projects", that applies to much (most?) of the software available for Linux.

If you mean "proprietary", then NTFS-3G is GPL: [http://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source- ntfs-3g/](http://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source-ntfs-3g/)

<comment><USER25> Yes, but drivers for common filesystems usually reside in the kernel, including the read-only NTFS implementation.

<comment><USER24> Fair enough. But in this case, the userland drivers are easy to install (if they're not a default part of your distro of choice) and work without a hitch, at least in my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> IMHO, USB drives as a storage medium will die out before FAT32 on USB drives die out purely due to the effort Vs value trade-offs.

</comment><comment><USER27> Use UDF as FS. Working for every recent OS

<comment><USER28> Readable for every recent OS, but apparently not writable by Mac OSX.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My guess would be for backward compatibility. Just reformat it if you need something different.

</comment><comment><USER29> They're not still using the FAT32 format! Just initialize an ext3 file system on them!

</comment><comment><USER30> Odd. My USB drives use ext4.</comment>


How To Use The HTML5 Notification API - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulund.co.uk/html5-notifications

<comment><USER2> The second example (send url) didn't work for me on Chrome 22.0.1229.94 OSX 10.8. The first worked fine. Just an FYI.

<comment><USER3> "Heads up. Important change coming to HTML5 notifications. createHTMLNotification() is going away because it was removed from the spec."

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GoogleChromeDevelopers/posts/8v...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GoogleChromeDevelopers/posts/8vWo8hq4pDm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should really use "new Notification" rather than "createNotification" because "new Notification" will be supported by browsers other than Chrome:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/notifications/#api>

<comment><USER5> Similarly, you should check browser support with window.notifications as well, rather than just window.webkitNotifications.

<comment><USER4> Based on the discussion in the W3C, I would expect other browsers to implement "new Notification" rather than implementing the window.notifications factory object because the factory object doesn't really serve any purpose. We'd like to remove the factory object from WebKit eventually once folks have switched over to the unprefixed API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read this as "Non-fiction API" and got really excited. Alas, I guess I'll just have to keep [building](<https://gitenberg.github.com>) that myself.

</comment><comment><USER6> I read this as "Non-fiction API" and got really excited. Alas, I guess I'll just have to keep working on that one. <https://gitenberg.github.com></comment>


New structure re-defines the term "Mobile Home" by walking on legs (Video)  - <AUTHOR> http://www.futureofgadgets.com/futureblogger/show/1226-new-structure-re-defines-the-term-mobile-home-by-walking-on-legs

<comment><USER2> Wow... Russia had that from a long time... it's the house of Baba Yaga - <http://www.valdosta.edu/~sarcarter/babayaga.JPG>

</comment><comment><USER3> I know it's a prototype and I know it's a house but that was really slow. Not really too sure what that demonstration demonstrated at that speed. I didn't get any sense of viability. Too harsh?

</comment><comment><USER4> Did someone say Archigram? Walking cities in the near future?</comment>


The Dallas Entrepreneur Center – State of Entrepreneurship 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://soe2014.thedec.co/ <comment><USER2> Great things going on in Dallas for startups. Check it out!

</comment><comment><USER3> Stoked to see what's happening here in the Big D and surrounding areas!</comment>


Kolmogorov tried to climb mountains, Gelfand built roads - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/science/08gelfand.html

<comment><USER2> I saw this:

 _(Gelfand's prophecy:) Sporadic simple groups are not groups, they are objects from a still unknown infinite family, some number of which happened to be groups, just by chance._

...first here: [http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/09/mathematical_kin...](http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/09/mathematical_kinds.html)

It's stayed with me ever since.</comment>