Stephen Wolfram's Quest for Productivity - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90432278/one-mans-obsessive-40-year-pursuit-of-the-productive-life <comment><USER2> About his new book:

[https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Computational-Explorer- Ste...](https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Computational-Explorer-Stephen- Wolfram/dp/1579550266/)</comment>


Widespread Rackspace Outage. DFW datacenter unreachable. - <AUTHOR>

If your server is on Rackspace, chances are it's unreachable. Support and staus lines down too. Major fail. <comment><USER2> I used to work for iServer (later bought by Verio; in full-disclosure, I'm now a contractor for Verio). I remember one time the city had shifted their output by 90° (or something like that...this was years ago).

Our datacenter UPS was tied right into the 3-phase output and didn't recognize that the power was still flowing from the city. The diesel engines fired up and started powering the datacenter (redundantly). When the gas ran out a few hours later, _everything_ started shutting down. It was terrible. Hundreds of servers with 600-800+ days uptime all went down and stayed down for hours. We were shuttling people from the office down to the datacenter to fsck and bring machines back up. It was a long night and long next week issuing credits to customers who had lost data.

Today I've got servers with Verio, Bluehost, and LayeredTech. They've all been great for the most part, but none of them have been _near_ perfect. I know that most hosting companies I've worked for or dealt with put uptime near the top of their list of priorities because they know it's an easily measured number people bank on. I'm sure RS will get their act together and be as solid as they've typically been in the past.

<comment><USER3> Genuine question here. I've heard these stories before (and lived through one at a company, but under very different circumstances), and it always amazes me that anyone would let a generator run out of diesel. How can that happen? I understand the fuel tanks on these things are enormous and you can't just run to QT and get a couple gallons to tide you over, but they had to have been filled by SOMETHING initially, right? How can it be that whatever that was, can't be repeated?

Do HA plans not cover this contingency? Do they not specify that someone immediately calls a fuel truck the SECOND the generator kicks on?

<comment><USER2> Well, in this case because the power never went out (the UPS only _thought_ it did), none of our usual "the freakin' power is out—send out the diesel trucks and keep the tank full" alarms went off.

It was truly an unexpected case (which was quickly fixed in the UPS hardware), but you know, life is one unexpected case after another, often coming in waves and in bizarre combinations. I don't believe in 100% uptime anymore :)

<comment><USER4> _It was truly an unexpected case (which was quickly fixed in the UPS hardware), but you know, life is one unexpected case after another_

The word you are looking for is _incompetence_.

An UPS, even a datacenter scale UPS, is not exactly rocket surgery. If your story is true and the device failed over to diesel without notifying anyone then that's not only an epic engineering failure but also an epic fiscal failure for whoever is liable (perhaps the UPS vendor).

Damages from a full DC blackout easily run into the hundred thousands of dollars per hour, not even counting the unbillable shockwave of "our website is down" multiplied by hundreds of customers.

It's a ridiculously expensive "Oops" that easily dwarfs the cost for deploying a proper UPS with proper testing and proper procedures in first place.

Btw the CAT in our Level3 datacenter over here has a big horn and a flashlight on the side. My naive self wants to believe they are there for situations such as the diesel running out...

<comment><USER2> It was a UPS failure, yes, but this was in the late 90s when the UPS industry wasn't as robust as it is now. Competency is what you get when you learn from your incompetency. We learned something valuable from it (and our UPS people did too).

I also learned to cut people (and some companies) a little slack when I've been down the road they're on. We had a lot of customers who didn't cut us any slack, took their refund and left, _which was their prerogative to do so_ , but found out for themselves that no company has 100% uptime (many came back, lucky for us).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just goes to show you that the 100% uptime guarantee is nothing but b.s. At least the other hosts are honest enough to offer 99.9999%

Edit: Actually just checked, and apparently my host switched from the 99.9999% to 100% as well.

<comment><USER2> It is b.s., but the good news is that you can often get a credit annually for whatever percentage they're down from their SLA (I don't know if RS does this).

Before you buy from a web host, check their SLA and ask how they cover SLA breaches. Don't do business with a company that won't put their money where their claims are.

<comment><USER5> Rackspace policy is obviously better since they charge a lot more.

My host has:

        If Liquid Web is or is not directly responsible for
        causing the downtime, the customer will receive a
        credit for 10 times ( 1,000% ) the actual amount of
        downtime. This means that if your server is unreachable
        for 1 hour (beyond the 0.0% allowed), you will receive
        10 hours of credit.

Rackspace has:

        Rackspace Guaranty: We will credit your account 5% of
        the monthly fee for each 30 minutes of network
        downtime, up to 100% of your monthly fee for the
        affected server.

<comment><USER2> I foresee a sharp drop in July profits... unless they weasel out of it by differentiating between "uptime" (i.e., does the CPU have power) and "reachability" (i.e., "Our network died! Sorry about that, but no soup for you").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just got call from my rep. DFW datacenter is completely out. Utility company cut power and backup generators have failed. Supposedly they've been having problems with these generators for awhile now. Ugh, shouldn't be so hard to keep servers online....

<comment><USER6> In addition to the power problems on individual servers that I hear people complain about this is their second major power-related failure for that site in less than two years. These guys expect us to trust them as a cloud computing vendor? Seriously?

<comment><USER7> Unless you're hosting everything yourself, it seems like you'd have the same problem whether it's using the cloud or not ... wouldn't you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> slicehost is still up.

edited for clarification: slicehost is owned by rackspace. thought it would be worthwhile to mention since a lot of people here use it; i know i double- checked just to make sure.

<comment><USER9> Slicehost in general may be up, but slices hosted in the DFW datacenter were down.

<comment><USER8> were there any?

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it's an option now and (most?) new customers would be there by default now I believe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> HAHAHA -- another outage! Great electrical Engineering team, Lanham...</comment>


Show HN: A new innovative Browser extension to expand your vocabulary - <AUTHOR> https://burningvocabulary.com/?ref=hacker_news <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there,

We launched a project to help language learners to expand their vocabulary last year. It's easy and useful tool. Please feel free to comment.

Our official website: [https://burningvocabulary.com/](https://burningvocabulary.com/)

Thank you HNer.

<comment><USER2> Hi shawnyou!

I think you've made a great leap by releasing this product, but there are some issues that might sabotage your efforts.

The pricing page on your site is full of broken English. You've put a lot of effort into coming up with a viable business plan, and promoting your product, but it would be important to apply some finishing touches and ask a friend to proofread the site.

The extension's code is obfuscated, which is against Chrome Web Store policies. Minification is allowed, if you're looking for ways to save space. Reviewers take down obfuscated extensions once they're discovered, and they also remotely disable existing installations, so this would be important to quickly address in an update.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi dessant,

Really appreciate you, we will follow up the things you mentioned.

Thank you again. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This actually looks pretty similar to the [https://jointoucan.com](https://jointoucan.com) extension.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi egfx,

i just saw the extension you mentioned, it's different. Thank you for your comment.

Our official website: [https://burningvocabulary.com/](https://burningvocabulary.com/)

<comment><USER3> It's different in the sense that it offers language translation services while this one does not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Crxcavator is a great tool to check out permissions and have an understand of what the extensions is doing

[https://crxcavator.io/report/ljfjnlcnpmabfcgcmffkmgainghokdp...](https://crxcavator.io/report/ljfjnlcnpmabfcgcmffkmgainghokdpl/1.2.51)

</comment><comment><USER5> Would recommend taking a look at the landing page in Chrome on mobile. Pics are stretched and look terrible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really thank you, myrloc. we will check it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are you planning to make it also work with Firefox? Does someone know, similar extension for Firefox?

<comment><AUTHOR> hi ibobev, we will think about in the next month. we have much work to do. thank you for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be cool if there were something like this to help me in learning Spanish.

<comment><AUTHOR> hi purplezooey, it support Spanish as a mark language. thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why a chrome extension per se?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi @idclip,

i don't understand. You mean why do not support other browser?

<comment><USER8> For example yea, also why not an app?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice topic for the example ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, @mattwad :)</comment></comment>


Silk Road mastermind Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/silk-road-matermind-ross-ulbricht-sentenced-to-life-in-prison/

<comment><USER2> What a waste of tax payer money to send this man to life in prison. I really wish there were programs to reestablish Ross into doing something better with the rest of his life. Not letting it rot away in prison. These blanket laws are not suitable for situations like this. He wasn't running a drug cartel and killing tons of people. It was a website that sold illegal drugs but it did so in a much safer way.</comment>


You've heard of Markov chains. But who was Markov? - <AUTHOR> http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/01/an-idea-that-changed-the-world/

<comment><USER2> Markov was an atheist. In 1912 he protested Leo Tolstoy's excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church by requesting his own excommunication. The Church complied with his request. [Wikipedia.](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Markov>)

</comment><comment><USER3> I always assumed a Markov chain was some kind of Siberian drinking game. Hence the interest in the running the chain to its stationary distribution.

<comment><USER3> Odd that this was down-voted. It's a (bad) joke. Allow me to explain:

Calculating the stationary distribution is one of the main things people do with Markov chains. That's all that PageRank is -- the stationary distribution of the Markov chain constructed from the network of links on the web.

<comment><USER4> {The odds are pretty high that this will get downvoted, on account of the lack of vodka.}

Markovs is a natural law, proven, is it not? Well then, it will be found in any system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Being a true Markov, his history is irrelevant!

<comment><USER6> Easily the best joke in this discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> the reason why not many people know who Markov is is that sometimes he is hidden. And a hidden markov can be quite elusive.

<comment><USER8> I recommend first checking for him in Monaco. Monte Carlo, Monaco, to be precise...

<comment><USER4> Just be sure to always bet on black, 2 ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > A "Monopoly" board has 40 possible "states"

Ah, just like chess has 64 possible states. Except that chess has on the order 10^47 states.

<comment><USER10> The [position of a player on a Monopoly board] has 40 possible states.

<comment><USER11> But the transition between states in Monopoly depends not only on dice, but also upon the configuration of Chance and Community Chest cards, which has a much larger state space. Besides this, if you roll doubles three times, you go to Jail, which increases the state space more. For more:

<http://www.tkcs-collins.com/truman/monopoly/monopoly.shtml>

<comment><USER10> Good point, you're right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Russia used Julian calendar up to 1918. If that was a date marked in the original calendar, it wasn't 100 years ago "this week".

<comment><USER13> This is also why the October Revolution happened in November, depending on what calendar you use. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_revolution>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Slightly off-topic, but Brian Hayes (mentioned several times in the article) has a very good blog here: <http://bit-player.org/>

</comment><comment><USER15> Even today wikipedia mentions nothing of interdependence on probability...</comment>


The Man Behind the World's Smallest V-12 Engine [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pJIVqCC1E

<comment><USER2> I wish someone with the skill to do this would use their time to push the state of the art in small generator design. Here is a sampling of parameters, all of which I think could be improved:

Cheapest: Harbor freight's "Storm Cat" $129, 2-stroke, 700W, 91 dB, 63cc, 38.2 lbs, 18.3 W / lb, 1818 Wh / Gal.

Best power / weight, most efficient: Honda "EU2000i" $1000, 4-stroke, 1600W, 53 dB, 98cc, 46 lbs, 35 W / lb, 6737 Wh / Gal.

Quietest: Honda "EU3000is" $2000, 4-stroke, 2800W, 49 dB, 196cc, 134 lbs, 20 W / lb, 5939 Wg / Gal.

Lightest: Honda "EU1000i" $800, 4-strike, 900W, 53 dB, 50cc, 29 lbs, 31 W / lb, 5700 Wh / Gal.

(there are ~33440 Watt-hours of energy available in a gallon of gasoline).

The most recent innovation seems to be the inverter/generator. It means that the engine does not have to run at any specific speed to get 60 Hz, so it can be run slow to make it quiet. Perhaps an extension to this could be the generator equivalent of a "hybrid"\- supply power from a battery to cover surges, but use the engine to supply the average usage.

It will be interesting if any recent work on engine design ends up in small generators. For example, there is the OPOC engine from the Bill Gates backed startup [http://ecomotors.com](http://ecomotors.com)

You would think there would be more competition from micro-turbines, but I don't think they scale down so well. There is this 2.6 kW "Dynajet" micro- turbine: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8kS8EZWmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8kS8EZWmQ)

Edit: also.. what ever happened with small fuel cells? [http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2013/01/31/why-a...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2013/01/31/why- are-portable-fuel-cells-such-a-flop/)

<comment><USER3> The other day I saw a story on a new engine design which claims to be 125% more efficient: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChLFFT08eHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChLFFT08eHg)

Here ([http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/science/putting-a- darwinia...](http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/science/putting-a-darwinian- spin-on-the-diesel-engine.html?src=pm&pagewanted=2&pagewanted=all)) is an old story about a group who used genetic algorithm to design a more efficient diesel engine.

>using a Silicon Graphics Origin 2000 supercomputer with 32 processors it took more than two weeks of continuous operation to find an optimal set of parameters.

>Dr. Senecal's test engine consumed 15 percent less fuel than a standard engine while producing one-third as much nitric oxide and half the soot.

Unfortunately I have no idea if anything ever came of this or not. I can't find anything. It'd be incredibly sad if this actually worked and then was never implemented.

This was done just with a dumb genetic algorithm on 2000 era computers, a population size of 5, run for 50 generations, and only tweaking a handful of parameters. I believe there is more potential in stuff like this.

<comment><USER2> It sure has not been from lack of trying new designs: [http://www.douglas- self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/unusua...](http://www.douglas- self.com/MUSEUM/POWER/unusualICeng/unusualICeng.htm)

(Also: Big News! Douglas Self has been updating the Museum of Retro Tech again)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You may also like this:

[http://youtu.be/CIZNh1G2vNI](http://youtu.be/CIZNh1G2vNI)

This guy built a fully functional scale model of a Ferrari 310 including the V12 engine all from photos. He built every part. He tuned the car so that it makes the sound of the "Ferrari Music."

It's also incredible.

<comment><USER5> Not only that, he had to design and create the MOLDS for the parts!

<comment><USER6> 3D print the molds and make one yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting how most of the comments focus on the technical aspects of what the guy built.

What I found interesting and inspiring is the time and passion that he puts in what he does. I really hope to still have something that makes me so passionate when I will be 72. It's a great way to live your life.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are more people that care about things like this than you'd think... I worked on a 31 Alpha Romero gas tank a few weeks ago, with a friend. There are old cars that people really care about, as well as old boats and airplanes. There are machinists who make miniature engines, just like this guy, and all sorts of other things. That type of craftsmanship is hardly dead (although it is getting very hard to find!)

I'm into black smithing, which is an even more rare type of craftsmanship. There are all sorts of resources online. Check out ABANA [[http://abana.org/](http://abana.org/)] to start. But whatever it is that you're into there is bound to be someone else into it. Try the SCA [[http://www.sca.org/](http://www.sca.org/)] if you want some really old- school stuff.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's actually a museum for miniature engineering, for anyone interested in the subject.

[http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/](http://www.craftsmanshipmuseum.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> _" Since I have no internet - I don't know how to surf the web, but there seems to not be another one"_

And that's probably why he's the only one.

<comment><USER11> It's bittersweet. He talks about how engineers now don't care about making things robust and repairable, or making things by hand, and he's probably got a point there. But he's also missing out on the opportunities of the Internet, where he could share the stuff he does and exchange ideas with people who do or want to do similar things. Especially with the increasingly prominent "maker culture," I think he would find there are a _lot_ of people out there who share his passions.

<comment><USER12> "I think he would find there are a lot of people out there who share his passions."

Some places I've hung out that are directly on topic:

[http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/forum.php](http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/forum.php)

[http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/forums/3-General](http://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/forums/3-General)

[http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/](http://www.practicalmachinist.com/vb/)

As a warning to the HN community who are a little neophilic, machinist web sites are much like ham radio web sites and numerous other technical hobbies, in that the cruder and less trendy the web design, the more likely the content is worth reading and vice versa. If the site includes something as trendy and modern as jquery or runs on node.js then its almost certainly content free and vice versa. So just brace yourself for the culture shock, ok?

<comment><USER13> Interesting observation about the inverse relationship between crude web design and technical hobby content. I've been scratch-building vacuum tube musical instrument gear for about 10 years. 90% of what I initially needed to know was picked up from 1990's style hobbyist websites. I document all my projects for others to build on my html-only website, maintained with SeaMonkey Composer. It takes hundreds of hours to produce the artifacts themselves and many more hours to produce checked and finished documentation that others can build from.

I occasionally think about rebuilding my site with 21st century web technology, but I haven't convinced myself that it adds more value to my work than producing more and better documentation. I have an infinite list of things to understand, design, build, and document. Chasing web tech trends competes for the available time.

I design and implement embedded software for optical metrology and fabrication equipment all day, so I have no technical barrier to web tech, just a lack of interest.

I can't think of a single hobbyist site that I get information from that has improved after a tech refresh. It's like a signal that the maintainer's interest in the hobby is waning, and no further content should be expected.

<comment><USER14> I think you could benefit from something like github-pages.

free web hosting, and it would cut down the time it takes to produce documentation.

<comment><USER13> I agree that github-pages would provide all that's needed for maintaining the docs online, and make the publishing nearly effortless. The change history is of definite value. I'll give it a go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Also there are some very interesting videos about marvellous artisan work on reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/ArtisanVideos/](http://www.reddit.com/r/ArtisanVideos/)

<comment><USER16> Oh lord what have you done? I'm going to lose _dozens_ of hours in there over the next month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love this video and I'm glad it's getting attention on HN. It captures a bunch of stuff - pride in your work; actually making something non-trivial; etc.

(I posted a link to it a year ago in a comment. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6116806#up_6117341](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6116806#up_6117341) )

</comment><comment><USER18> You can see the passion for his work in his eyes.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's funny how some people think those exquisite models are real internal combustion engines.

<comment><USER20> There's a point in the posted video where they demo the V12 and you see drops of condensation forming at the ends of the exhaust pipes. Some kind of combustion is going on. Maybe it's running on propane instead of gasoline, but it's internally combusting. In the video of the guy with the model Ferrari, he mentions it is fuel-injected, and when he revs it, it sure sounds like it is an IC engine.

<comment><USER21> Condensation happens with air compressors, too. I had a small oilless compressor that when heavily used would put so much water in the air line a mist would spray out the exhaust port of the air tool I was using.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Don't know if the _Artus V12_ [1] is smaller but it's an actual combustion engine not an air pressure driven model of a combustion engine.

In that category it might be even still bigger than a pneumatic _LEGO_ engine[2], but still an incredible feat in craftsmanship.

[1] [http://www.artus-motor.com/artus-v12-motor/](http://www.artus- motor.com/artus-v12-motor/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bKIdqh6ARA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bKIdqh6ARA)

<comment><USER23> It's not. It's quite larger than the one in the video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am happy to see that great craftsmanship in my compatriot.

The spark in his eyes shows a passion that I - sanely, if that´s possible - envy.

</comment><comment><USER25> Masterpiece! I wish I could have had a possibility to use such an engine in car modeling in my childhood. Such cars could have gone a long journey!

</comment><comment><USER26> Some company should help the guy fullfill his dream and let him "design an engine room for a transatlantic ship".

</comment><comment><USER27> Pretty awesome guy. And this is sad: "mechanics are nowadays mere fitters" ...

Though I am sure there are plenty of passionate, talented engineers around, just like him, it's just the world that changed and it's not all bad.

</comment><comment><USER28> He is definitely a master craftsman. It reminds me of old school precision clockwork.

</comment><comment><USER29> I already submitted this before fauri did, same URL... weird [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8268858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8268858)

</comment><comment><USER30> Music: [http://twobicyclesband.bandcamp.com/album/valerie](http://twobicyclesband.bandcamp.com/album/valerie)

</comment><comment><USER31> I've seen this before, this and another, younger Italian guy. Excellent and impressive display of mechanical skill.

</comment><comment><USER32> Now this is incredible...

</comment><comment><USER33> Sweet!</comment>


@2gov - Visas for startup founders movement - <AUTHOR> http://2gov.org/visa <comment><USER2> This appears to have started with PG's Founder Visa essay. Be sure to read the original HN thread about that essay: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556908>

At the time, I thought PG's idea was so flawed that I nearly registered just to point out why. Fortunately, bokonist did a great job of explaining what was wrong with the idea in that thread.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing to that thread. Bokonist makes a strong case against accreditation bodies in general, barriers to entry and the associated slippery slope.

While I am sympathetic to that idea, we have to remember that the Founder Visa is a type of liberalisation, not a type of barrier. The solution mightn't be perfect, but it could be better then no founder immigration. While accreditation is possibly bad in general, it may be worth it if it pokes a hole in the immigration barrier.

However, I think that there is a strong case against startup visas specifically. I think you would have to be willing to live with quite serious market distortions if you are prepared to support something like this.

I made this argument on a previous thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=823006>

<comment><USER4> So if a VC firm overseas funds a startup, who gets the visa? Do you think the VC's overseas will be generous enough to let the founder get a US visa while they remain at their home country?

<comment><USER3> If a company is funded overseas, they probably want to stay where they are and the investor probably agrees.

A VC fund can probably pick up and move to the States if they wanted to anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There are a bunch of issues with the proposal, but hey:

#Let's say someone comes over, starts a company with $500K and it fails. Then what? Legally, they would have to leave at that point, right? If not, why not? Brad says no, they just have to found another company. That makes me squeamish; while they may be working for themselves, it's not that different than bonding to a trade.

#How many founders can you bring over for one company? What's going to stop them from setting up a consulting shop instead of a product company? We've seen that consulting jobs are very clearly 1-to-1 displacement of American citizens.

#There are a lot of issues with the verification of "bona fide founder" status. I get that VCs are OK with being gatekeepers (yeah, I plead guilty for my one year on the dark side), but it's really distasteful to hand over any part of immigration to non-government officials. More here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556908>

#The pro arguments now are based on anecdotes, not data. There is no data on how many jobs we're "losing out on" by not having a more founder-friendly immigration system.

#Lastly, there's a solution that works right now: find an American co-founder. It's not pretty, as you have a distributed company in the early days, but it works.

I acknowledge the intelligence of the tactical decision to give up on H1-Bs and go after changes to the EB-5, but America would _be a better place_ if we actually reformed the H1-B process. I do wish Brad, Eric, Dave, etc. would tackle the H1-B elephant in the room publicly. We shouldn't be trying to steal startups from other countries; we should be trying to cultivate an environment where everyone here legally - citizens and immigrants on their path to citizenship - can start one and have it thrive.

Also, and everyone's heard me on this before - this group would do a lot more for startups if they channeled this energy into healthcare reform. Job lock-in is real and affects many, many more potential startup founders than immigration policy. VCs/investors from outside SF/NY ( _cough_ Brad Feld _cough_ Josh Kopelman _cough_ ) would especially be credible, useful voices on a matter that's actually front and center right now.

<comment><USER6> These "objections" are just getting out of hand.

 _How many founders can you bring over for one company?_

That's hardly an issue. The optimal number of founders is basically known. You can argue about 2, 3, or 4, but it's obviously way less than 10.

 _The pro arguments now are based on anecdotes, not data_

The proposal is based on reasoning, not anecdotes, and it seems like pretty clear reasoning to me. The anti arguments are a lot of spaghetti thrown at a wall. The current thread is a good example.

 _There are a lot of issues with the verification of "bona fide founder" status._

That's not an argument against the proposal, it's an argument in favor of sensible policy design - something that is lacking in the status quo.

 _there's a solution that works right now: find an American co-founder._

A profoundly ignorant statement. Arbitrary co-founder relationships are a predictor of failure. "Marry an American" would be better advice, and it's horrible advice. (Edit: I mean horrible advice for startup immigration! I'm all in favor of marrying Americans generally :))

 _We shouldn't be trying to steal startups from other countries_

Yes "we" should. That's one of the most intelligent things a country that wants to build wealth could do.

 _this group would do a lot more for startups if they channeled this energy into healthcare reform_

Visa issues are a huge obstacle facing startups (edit: and startup investors); there are many, many examples. How many times does "health care" appear on such a list? I've never heard it cited once.

<comment><USER7> If I were an immigrant from China or India under this new visa program, the first thing I would do in hiring programmers is fly back home and crank up a top quality, low cost team. As things progressed, I would take it further: anything not absolutely necessary to be within 50 miles of my investor would be done back in my home country.

As an investor, I would fully expect/encourage these founders to behave like this.

The typical cultural and communication problems of outsourcing do not apply in this case. You are taking someone from their home country that will have experience working with their own people and processes.

> "Visa issues are a huge obstacle facing startups (edit: and startup > investors); there are many, many examples."

Can you please provide these examples?

> "How many times does "health care" appear on such a list? I've never heard > it cited once."

Quite a bit actually. Given how much Health Care reform is in the news, I find it surprising the proponents of the founders visa didn't think about this issue already.

<comment><USER6> _Can you please provide these examples?_

I know at least a dozen people who have personally experienced this, but I'm not going to name anybody. I also have read and heard many statements by people like PG, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld - people who really know about startups - who mention this as a key issue. I have not ever heard anyone bring up health insurance as this _specific_ kind of impediment before, until a few moments ago when people suddenly started mentioning it on HN as a way to monkey-wrench a completely different issue. Find me someone who's made 20 or more angel investments who agrees that the visa issue is less significant to new startups than health care, and I will grant the legitimacy of the objection.

(This is not to say that health insurance isn't a big issue in general, though personally it strikes me as more of an issue for people who want to switch jobs than found startups - that's important, but not the same thing.)

Edit: in fairness, I should add that many of those people I know personally did eventually get visas, but it was expensive, difficult, and distracting - to such a degree that everyone who goes through the process says it is insane.

<comment><USER7> I have heard from a few investors that immigration issues caused problems. When I query about what percent of founders this applies to, I hear numbers like 10% or 20%. What numbers are you hearing?

Unfortunately your challenge is flawed of finding investors that have experienced health care as more of a problems than immigration. The health care argument is that people won't consider quitting their day job because of this problem so they never reach the point of showing up on an investor's radar. I know far more well qualified U.S. citizens that would love to start their own business than there is money to fund them. Health care is generally the number one reason cited for them not leaving BigCo.

The founder's visa argument is there are not enough founders to invest in in the U.S. Some people, myself included, are simply trying to point out that not only may there be far more than immigration reform could provide, but that legislation is currently in progress that might alleviate a big part of the reason they are not "on the market".

I am commonly "self-employed", at least from the perspective of Health Care insurers. I have insurance, but mostly to appease my wife. Do you know the stats on cancellation for an "individual" policy if you actually do get a serious illness? Its well over 50%. I know my insurance is most probably useless, as I said, I pay for it to appease my better half who is more risk averse. Most founder-wanna-bes do not have enough money socked away to spend as I do.

I agree that immigration process is insane and unfair to the immigrant. One big problem I have with this proposal is it is highly self-serving to investor desires and doesn't put leverage on the more important issue of simply treating all legal skilled immigrants more appropriately.

<comment><USER6> This is one of the few comments in the thread that makes sense to me.

I haven't asked anyone about percentages, but one thing we can say is that whatever the percentage is of foreign-founded startups trying to relocate to the US, that would be roughly the number who are having trouble doing so.

As I pointed out in another comment, the best investors say that their bottleneck is finding good startups to invest in. Objections that reduce to the idea that these people don't know their own business (or are lying) don't hold much water with me. It also seems obviously true that a demographically small number of new startups (a few thousand) would provide huge economic leverage. (Sure, their investors would get richer, but the whole country would get richer. This isn't a financial shell game, it's about creating value by making things.) So the question reduces to the design problem of figuring out a good way to identify authentic startups and minimize gaming of the system. That isn't _prima facie_ insoluble, so all these arguments that it can't be done, at the very beginning of the discussion, just seem disingenuous to me.

What you say about health care from your own experience is very clear, and I certainly hope that that situation gets replaced by a more rational and sustainable one.

Edit: by the way, there's a problem with this:

 _Unfortunately your challenge is flawed of finding investors that have experienced health care as more of a problems than immigration_

That's not my challenge. My challenge was "Find me someone who's made 20 or more angel investments who _agrees that_ the visa issue is less significant to new startups than health care" (emphasis added), in other words, a leading investor who has gone through the same thought process as you guys and arrived at your conclusion that the HC impediment is more important than the visa one. If the argument is a good one, it ought to be possible to find someone who knows early-stage startup investment inside-out and agrees with it. This is a significant point because one thing we know about the business of startup investment is that it doesn't work the way most people think it does. By the way, I'm quite willing to change my mind about this, but not as long as I see all the most credible people lined up on one side of the issue.

<comment><USER7> This has been a healthy debate. I only harp on the HC issue because I think its symptomatic of the community not thinking outside the box enough. I don't think its the only issue or possibly the largest one. Usually, the weekend posts on HN are a bit anemic, but not so this weekend. Here are two other articles and threads discussing troubles in startup-land: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833234> and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832672>

Taken as a whole, there is much room to discuss how to create a more effective environ for innovation, job, and wealth creation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Frankly, a lot of us aren't even funded by VCs anymore. Boot strapping and staying frugal has helped. I don't really have it in me to go grovelling to VCs anymore. DONE.

So whats in it for the individual startup chaps? Or will VCs continue to dominate everything?

</comment><comment><USER9> Personally I would like to get an US visa, startup or not -- but this is plain ridiculous. As I understand it, the VCs are running out of good projects to invest in in the States, so they want the hill to come to Mohammad, i.e. the founders to get to the US.

US is a lovely country I'd very much like to visit, but why don't the VCs simply pack up themselves and go to other countries and fund startups there? I understand that they would find it difficult to follow their investments in foreign environments, but there is a number of solutions they could combine, from having trusted local experts at location, to combining western legal entities with the local technical expertise (Seedcamp's Zemanta, from Slovenia, is a good example).

</comment><comment><USER10> I see over and over naysayers of this visa claiming all kinds of fraud that can happen, and all kind of reasons why it is a bad idea, without really addressing on how to make it fair.

To the all naysayers of the visa, there are easier system's to game the system. Marriage. That's right. I have a friend that did it (with way less than 20k). Sure there are some steps to prevent fraud (even interviews), but that doesn't stop most people getting married just for citizenship, except the most obvious cases.

According to the 'nay-sayers' logic, we should stop giving green card/citizenship through marriage, b/c maybe 15% of them are fraud.

If you really really want to live in the US, and have about 50k, you will find somebody that will marry (my friend found it for a lot less money). No need to go through this Visa problem.

It is kinda wierd, but it is much easier for a less educated person to game the system, then for somebody that is more educated (most under the table jobs,are blue collar ones).

In any way, saying we shouldn't let the Founder Visa b/c there might be potential fraud, is pure FUD. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt, just for your own little short sighted self.

If you enjoy an america without immigrants, a go live in West Virginia, or Alabama.

</comment><comment><USER11> Be ready for influx of "startup founders", that would bring to the country taxi cab drivers, gardeners, all kind of "engineers" from India, China, Mexico, North Africa and so on.. Did you forget that very recent scandal with Satyam... They did what I just described...

<comment><USER12> not sure i understand your concern? the proposal we're working on is a modification to the EB-5 Visa, which currently requires a $1M investment (or a $500K investment in economically targeted area).

even with a lower capital rqmt of say $100K-$250K, i don't think many people would be willing to put up that kind of cash for a taxi driver.

on the other hand, it might be useful to make sure the source(s) of capital are from accredited and/or institutional investors, in order to prevent abuse.

<comment><USER13> It saddens me to see so much effort put into this kind of proposal. I favor loosened immigration conditions but this is a poorly thought-out scheme that seeks to create private initiative via government intervention.

It doesn't just threaten to pollute the 'immigration space' with folks trying to seem like 'founders', it also pollutes the start-up space with these folks. If someone is 'creating jobs' with the goal of securing a VISA, they could put out ads (which real job seekers will try to answer), then hire only their friends, get the wages paid kicked mostly back to them and have a VISA pretty cheaply since they would get back a good proportion of their money.

Sure, you could have regulators looking for people who did stuff like this but it would get clunky and I'm sure folks could think of umpteen other schemes to get around this. I'm not a Austrian or free-market nut but I think the Austrian arguments are _most_ plausible when governments try to micro-manage enterprises.

It would simpler to elimenate h1b's, skip the 'founders' and give N VISAs to individuals with documented skills and M to individuals who just pay a million dollars directly. That would bring skilled workers and investors here without a lot of falderal. If you wanted to make sure they were never unemployed, make them put up a bond.

And Taxi drivers can make up to $100K/year if they are committed (a lot of them work literally 24 hours/day). A beach-head in the States is worth a lot in many parts of the world since once you arrive you can bring your entire family. $100K for ten people to immigrate here is a good deal. It's not something I'm even opposed to _as such_ \- my father and ex-wife were both immigrants. In fact, the main thing I oppose is the way present system creates distortions which helps neither the economy nor the immigrants.

<comment><USER14> As pointed out by gruseom below, if somebody wants to game the system, they will come on a tourist visa and simply not leave. I don't think these convoluted scenarios of possible abuse are realistic at all. Furthermore, if the founder's visa law is any good, it will not _require_ the founders to create jobs. It will simply assume that from 2500 startups a year, many will create a lot of jobs.

<comment><USER15> Which is a faulty argument, because you flat-out can't work in the US on a tourist visa.

<comment><USER6> Whoa there. I brought up the tourist visa as an obvious way to enter the country and then work _illegally_ , to answer the bogus objection that a founders' visa would lead to more illegals stealing American jobs: all that would be is an expensive and convoluted way to do what anyone willing to break that law can already do cheaply and trivially right now. And it wouldn't even work as well, since your name would be associated with the company you'd "founded", leaving a trail that the other method wouldn't.

Edit: I suppose I should mention that no, I am not condoning anyone who enters a country on a tourist visa and works illegally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Citing Paul:

By definition these 10,000 founders wouldn't be taking jobs from Americans: it could be part of the terms of the visa that they couldn't work for existing companies, only new ones they'd founded. In fact they'd cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the companies they started would hire more employees as they grew. \----- Of course they will not be hired by other companies...Legally...But USA is not the country where illegal employment is punished.

Every time when you open access to your (rich) country to poorer people think about how the system can be abused.

<comment><USER6> _Of course they will not be hired by other companies...Legally...But USA is not the country where illegal employment is punished_

People who choose to work illegally do so today by arriving for free on a tourist visa. Why would anyone put up capital and start a company in order to do it?

<comment><USER14> It's sad how the founders visa isn't even close to reality yet, and already has vocal opponents bringing up bogus reasons why it's a bad thing. How long will it take until somebody complains about "foreigners taking away startup opportunities from Americans"?

<comment><USER13> Uh, while some folks may bring up racist or otherwise ridiculous objection to this idea, sachinag, bokonist and others have brought up well thought-out objections that I haven't seen answered with much thought (the claim that tourist visas are the only thing subject to abuse seems hardly creditable but I'll argue more if someone fleshes out this one existing counter-argument).

It seems like the founder's visa already has a lot of emotional traction with people but immigration isn't something should be decided by emotional resonance but by well thought-out arguments - if you take the discussion to the emotional level, things won't go well for those favoring immigration.

<comment><USER14> The thoughtful objections have not been against the idea as such, but mostly against the proposal that a board of investors or government officials would decide who is good enough. That would indeed a problem - startups that VCs or government approve would likely be the ones immitating the previous big thing, rather than building the next big thing. But I think a board is not necessary. In my opinion, all that's needed is that the founders

1\. have bachelor's degrees, 2\. register a corporation, 3\. start with at least $X in the company account.

The value of X is up to debate, but it should not matter which investors they received the money from. Details can be worked out.

<comment><USER13> Many well-informed criticism of state actions aren't against the goals of the intervention as such but merely against all the possible implementation those goals.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


End of the Ride for Lance Armstrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/sports/cycling/end-of-the-ride-for-lance-armstrong.html?hp

<comment><USER2> If there's ever a book "Portraits in Spoiled Rich Asshole Whining", ol' Lance will certainly be #1 again.</comment>


Scientists develop 10-minute universal cancer test - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/04/scientists-develop-10-minute-universal-cancer-test <comment><USER2> Journal article:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07214-w](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07214-w)

Interesting article, but as usual the popular scientific article oversells the research. I read through the research article briefly and already noticed.

\- The assay relies on methylation, which is cancer-type specific. The authors have tested samples from colorectal cancer and breast cancer, which are relatively similar on a molecular level.

\- No comparison of the accuracy of the test is made to other techniques to detect cancer from circulating DNA, like ddPCR and cancer-SEEK.

\- No mention is made of the stage of cancer for the samples they tested. It is easier to detect late-stage cancer, but patients with late-stage cancer may already have symptoms. Moreover, late stage cancers can also be found through imaging.

\- Related to the previous point: the method could not detect tumor DNA after it was diluted to 1%. This may hamper the applicability to early detection of cancer in blood samples.</comment>


Nokia Maps digitises streets to battle Google's threat - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20497719 <comment><USER2> This brilliantly illustrates what went wrong at Nokia. They could have been far ahead of Apple and Google on mobile mapping had they been awake at the wheel. Now they are simply playing leap-frog.</comment>


Washing Machine for Men - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/b6f927bbb538 <comment><USER2> This is inspired UX work, but I doubt it would actually sell washing machines.

My wife and I recently tried to buy a rice cooker. I said "We should buy a $60 rice cooker." She said "We should buy $JAPANESE_BRAND, because it has more features. It will cost us $600." I said "I have, in observing your use of rice cookers, never seen you press any button other than Cook The Rice."

This was not an optimal thing to say.

We will purchase a $600 rice cooker.

[Edit to add: Relatedly, the vast majority of men professing "I do not know how to use a washing machine!" are signaling their values, to whit that they believe washing clothes is beneath their notice, not signaling that they are intellectually incapable of memorizing a four-step process which you could train a chimpanzee to do.]

<comment><USER3> There is still hope. Microwaves use to have a lot of buttons, but since a few years ago there are some models with only two buttons: "Add 30 seconds" and "Cancel". I think that most of them are used in public places, like the University cafeteria.

At home, my microwave has only two dials "power" and "time". I like the time dial, because it's easier to choose the time analogically that convert it to digits and choose which buttons to push.

<comment><USER4> The difference being that with a microwave like that if you screw up and add too much time the worst that will happen is that you'll have ruined your meal (and I am expecting that most people are not using microwaves to cook things that cost over ~$10 pretty much ever). If you screw up with a washing machine, even a super dumbed down one, the stakes could be a lot higher; try explaining to your wife how you ruined her $200 (or even $2000) dress because she spilled spaghetti sauce on it and so you pushed the "very dirty" button.

In a sense, I think that washing machines are so popular and there is such a wide variety of them because they do a very good job of selling a lie, and that lie is something like, "I will make it so that you do not have to think when you do laundry." People who have to interact with these machines tend to realize that this is a lie pretty early on, and that no, you still have to think to use the machine. However, the sheer magnitude of things they have to think about (colors, material, water temperature, volume, intensity of spinning, detergent, surfactant) can be overwhelming. When coupled with the fact that there is usually no good, solid guide that you can just read and go "Oh, now I know exactly how to wash all of my clothes and have no fear that they will get ruined!" and the fact that the washing machine is still sitting there, whispering that lie at you, that this should be easy because you have a washing machine, the cognitive dissonance can get pretty strong. At the same time, it's subtle enough that we usually don't realize that if we took a couple of hours to study it and better understand how these things work we'd probably be fine. So instead we cautiously try to find a couple of collections of settings that work pretty well for most of our stuff. Once we find them then we stick with those programs and usually it works out pretty well, but there's still that tiny fear in the back of our minds that maybe this time will be the one where something goes Horribly, Horribly Wrong.

<comment><USER3> I usually do the laundry. I'll just repeat one of my sibling comments:

 _I use my washing machine regularly and it's easy. Always use the "11" program (35°C=95°F). You can also use the "1" program (90°C=195°F) if you don't want to see your cloths again. It has all the numbers between 1 and 16, but I guest they are not real, only for cosmetic purpose :)._

[Note: She once used "1". It was not a good idea.]

I separate the cloth by color: white, blue, red, black, yellow+green, gray goes with white or black. (Be careful with blue, because it will usually stain the other cloths. Sometimes red may stain too, but blue always stains.) Always in "11" (35°C=95°F). Then dryer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was going to protest the "for Men" title, and suggest that if 58% of British men can't understand how to use a washing machine then that's an unflattering reflection of gender imbalance in household chores; "men just need to learn how to do it."

But then I saw the pictures, and remembered my time living in London and traveling in Europe, and how confusing I found the washing machines and their universe of iconography (every single machine has different icons).

I grew up in New Zealand, where we had a locally designed Fisher & Paykel washing machine [1]. It had a few settings, but there was one default called "regular" that invariably did a good job, so I always just used that - I would literally turn the machine on and press "start". It figured out the water level for itself.

Now that I live in an apartment block in the USA I use a shared commercial coin-operated Maytag washing machine. It probably has even fewer options than the Fisher & Paykel. My wife and I take turns doing the washing, and the only settings we ever change are "warm" (underwear, socks, towels) or "cold" (everything else). That's it, and it works perfectly.

I don't know why feature-creep plagues European washing machines but it reminds me of late 90s / early 2000s PCs with their byzantine terminology and myriad acronyms.

[1] like this, but not the exact model: [https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/O6SmbWnGlvA/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/O6SmbWnGlvA/maxresdefault.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> I laughed out loud at the horrific GUI icons. We've got "wash a peacock" which probably violates some animal cruelty laws "the headless horseman is drowning" which is probably emergency shutdown because a pet got into the machine (see above) "turn counter clockwise to loosen screws" aka enter maintenance mode or "tip recliner chair over backwards" which is probably some nod to the auto- balancer for the spin cycle, probably. I just love GUIs, they make interfaces so intuitive and simple compared to plain text menus.

The weird part of the article is for decades I've been stuck doing the laundry because its a "programming job" which is more my lifestyle than my wife, so I'm way more comfortable doing it than her. The washing machine is already a "mans washing machine". The "womans washing machine" would have one button labeled "nag husband" to notify me, and a separate set of controls for me to actually use when I arrive. I have a gut feeling that HN readers are going to get stuck programming the washing machine regardless of their sex unless their S.O. is the superior programmer in the family. Its the same way with cooking, its a simple procedural program with a couple subroutines and some library routines, whats so complicated about cooking other than the real time OS aspects of trying to get a whole meal to completion more or less simultaneously?

Personally I think a data flow diagram UI would be a heck of a lot simpler and easier to use. Its the kids stuff so its filthy so soak and scrub the hell out of it in high temp water. Its my biz casual work clothes so press "permanent press" button and walk away. Its blankets and sheets so slow spin because its going to be out of balance no matter the supposed auto-balancer. This is intuitive with a data flow diagram or procedural programming but pretty mystifying with an object oriented GUI where everything is marketing trademark or incomprehensible icons.

The other comedy is its a commentary on lifestyle where its important to spend hours a month studying fashion and hours standing in stores to make a selection but once you do the only reason for existence, that being consuming, once its bought then spending 30 seconds and no money learning how to keep it clean is just waaaaay tooooo muuuch, so just walk around like pigpen or wearing pastel colored former-whites or whatever other epic fails.

</comment><comment><USER6> I also forgot GUI issues WRT greenwashing. My washer is green but that ruins clothes, so every time you boot it up you have to tell it to rinse the soap out, and let it soak a bit, and run the spin extra long to get rid of water, and use warmer water. Or just wash everything twice, which wastes far more water than just doing it correctly the first time.

Its always easier to ship something that meets the numbers but doesn't actually work, than to ship something that both meets the numbers and works. Therefore you have to do a lot of programming every time you boot up, to prevent "save the planet".

Eventually we'll need to flash the eeproms to get some super greenwashed appliance to actually work. But for now, the UI involves a lot of "useless" reconfiguration on every boot.

Aside from the washer, both the dryer and the dishwasher and the fridge and the thermostat are greenwashed out of the box and need reprogramming to actually work. The fridge wanted to greenly keep my food at like 55F until reconfigured away from green mode, now it works fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use my washing machine regularly and it's easy. Always use the "11" program (35°C=95°F). You can also use the "1" program (90°C=195°F) if you don't want to see your cloths again. It has all the numbers between 1 and 16, but I guest they are not real, only for cosmetic purpose :).</comment>


Plausible and Fathom analytics are not GDPR compliant - <AUTHOR> https://blog.paranoidpenguin.net/2020/07/plausible-analytics-review-browser-fingerprinting-and-cname-cloaking/ <comment><USER3> I agree wholeheartedly with this, and also toss simpleanalytics into the ring. They explicitly advertise the ability to bypass blockers and set up custom subdomains on their frontpage, which IMO _the person that is blocking it does not wish to send telemetry_, forcing them to do it is both a forced opt-in and rude as hell.

If you are going to try to turn a profit by yelling about how you're so respectful and compliant, maybe not intentionally try to bypass end-users' explicit, human-set, consensual opt-out with your forced shady opt-in.

You are not being "privacy friendly", you are refusing the user's explicit "no consent, please don't do this" and forcing yourself on them anyway.

\--

An unrelated note on technical infrastructure: many of these projects are EU based and proudly tell everyone that they are EU based.

Unfortunately, for example - <USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act):

\- Plausible hosts on DigitalOcean

\- Plausible uses Cloudflare

\- Simpleanalytics uses Cloudflare

\- Fathom is on AWS

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Both Fathom [1] and Plausible [2] claim to be GDPR compliant, but they are not.

They use a technique called "device fingerprinting" by collecting online identifiers, such as IP addresses, and browser characteristics for identification. Thus user consent is needed.

1: [https://usefathom.com/gdpr-ccpa-pecr- compliant](https://usefathom.com/gdpr-ccpa-pecr-compliant) 2: [https://plausible.io/data-policy](https://plausible.io/data-policy)

<comment><USER4> Plausible's fingerprinting uses a rotating salt, which is rolled daily and the previous salt is discarded. That means the hash can't be tied to a given user and their IP/browser at a later date. How is that not GDPR compliant? How is Volument better?</comment></comment>


Car companies' gradual transition vision to self-driving cars has a big problem - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/7/5/15840860/tesla-waymo-audi-self-driving <comment><USER2> Google is planning to completely trust a computer to drive? Have they never used a computer?

[http://downdetector.com/status/google/map](http://downdetector.com/status/google/map)</comment>


I've come to doubt the AI singularity apocalypse - <AUTHOR> It sounded logical that when we could create an AI that's cleverer than ourselves, it would create a singularity, a more and more intelligent AI auto-created by itself.
It's the basis of the popular warnings expressed by many clever people, but I've come to doubt this assertion.
1- When Stephen Hawking was born, his parent created a child cleverer than themselves, yet it did not produce a singularity. Hawking got more and more intelligent, yet it wasn't exponential. And his offspring did not create a singularity either.
2- A "better than us" AI may never get exponentially better than us. Maybe it's an NP problem: maybe the AI would "never" have the time to become more and more intelligent.
3- If we can create a very intelligent AI, I doubt it would exterminate humanity to save nature. Why? Because nature loves diversity, and we're a part of this diversity. Also, this AI may have a sense of fate: even if our fate is to destroy the planet because we're so dumb, maybe this AI will think it's just our fate.
4- I guess humans are very afraid AI could do what humans do: kill people, destroy the planet, make war, try to dominate others, try to manipulate others and punish. These human traits have not much to do with intelligence.
5- If I find a way to transfer my brain into a computer, a very expensive and powerful one, there's no guarantee it will evolve faster than me, or handle data faster than me. Actually, I guess the first "better than us" AI will most probably be very slow.
What if the AI singularity just creates better and better computers? Because this super-AI is actually a computer. <comment><USER4> 1- Having children isn't very parallel to designing machines. (It might be more parallel if Hawking's parents specifically had a goal of producing more and more intelligent human beings, and genetically engineered their children to try to make that happen.) Human reproduction involves a lot of random variation and not a lot of goals, expertise, or the wherewithal to achieve them.

2- I think this is an interesting point about possible inherent computational limits on the ability to solve some problems that we might care about, including in designing more intelligent machines.

3- This is something people have thought about quite a lot. What superintelligent machines do depends on what they've been programmed to do. It's very unlikely that an AI would inherently value "diversity" or "fate" unless it were programmed to do so. The AI wouldn't spontaneously create new values (unless it were programmed to). Most concerns about AIs that exterminate humanity are based in the possibility that an AI would fulfil other goals in a surprising or unanticipated way, with bad side-effects for human survival.

4- Intelligence helps people wage war and dominate others more violently, both by coordinating better to do so (including motivating people to join in), and by developing new technology that helps make larger-scale violence cheaper. Weapons research can help you learn how to kill more people faster and at lower cost. A superintelligent AI could engage in this kind of research if it saw an important reason to.

5- I think that's exactly right; perhaps the important difference here is that the machine version would be more flexible (if you wanted to try overclocking it, or modifying the software somehow). This is dangerous and expensive and confusing to do with a physical brain, because it's hard to manipulate the details of its organization and structure, and because you can just die if you mess up. Think of the ease with which you can edit a PNG or SVG file in a computer compared to editing an oil painting. Perhaps with the computer version you can also run multiple copies in parallel -- something you also can't do with your physical self.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with your point number 2 (except I think you should say NP hard instead of NP since many NP problems have efficient algorithms), in fact I've made it before.

While it may be reeasonable to believe that technology will eventually lead to implementations of intelligence that are significantly faster than biological ones, this doesn't necessarily mean there will be a huge qualitative difference (say, to the point of humans being totally incapable of understanding an AI's actions, as some suggest) because the "intelligence problem" may be dominated by exponential growth in complexity of the search space as one attempts to consider more alternative paths.

I do think that the question of the "safety" of AI is something that needs to be seriously taken into account by anyone realistically contemplating the development of an AGI but I also tend to think that some of the concerns expressed by prominent individuals are a bit overblown and don't take into account the range of safeguards that could, should and most likely would be put in place by any group realistically capable of solving the extremely hard problem of general intelligence.

<comment><USER6> From a policy perspective, it would only be appropriate that any company who creates a machine capable of large-scale harm should be held liable for neglecting to implement hard-coded safety restrictions. It should not matter whether the machine "thinks" or "feels", for it was created by citizens nevertheless, who have an obligation just like an automobile manufacturer not to do negligent or incompetent things. Likewise, a thinking machine could be seen as something of a pet, and owners of pets (such as dogs, tigers, or gorillas) are certainly liable for not protecting the public appropriately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your first point doesn't make sense to me. Human knowledge is not encoded in DNA in a single lifetime and more abstract concepts will never be "passed" down to offspring. This is where artifical lifeforms have a huge advantage. Their offspring can directly recieve knowledge from their parents. We can also do tons of other things that would be unrealistic, such a 1-parent cloning, n-parent children where n > 2, children with no parents, etc. Just because we design systems that vaguely model real life in evolutionary computing doesn't mean we are constrained by the same laws of genetics.

FWIW, I agree that any form of intelligent machines that surpass humans at general aptitude tests are decades away. We may not even see them in my lifetime and I'm only 22 years old.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Because this super-AI is actually a computer._

People are just computers. Slow, fragile computers stuck in meat bodies.

If you could think and act 1000x faster than yourself now, you could get a lot more done. You could hold 1000 creative jobs in your head at the same time.

Speeding up a dog 1000x doesn't generate a dangerous AI. Speeding up a person by that much does. (plus, "the intelligence of a person" is pretty low anyway. We've got the 7+2 problem, the monkey sphere problem, hundreds of bias built in, etc. It's easy to see how a "wider" intelligence could be much more productive, more creative, more useful, and more dangerous than any meat brain in existence.)

<comment><USER7> People are anything but slow and fragile, at least in 1 sense of the word, in comparison with computers of today. Modern computer models which are typically viewed as the edge of computational intelligence are very susceptible to getting tricked into incomplete models by their input data. Human beings process unfathomable number of stimuli everyday and get placed in unknown situations on a daily basis and very few break down, where as almost all current computer models break down very quickly when viewing previously unseen patterns.

<comment><USER8> _Modern computer models which are typically viewed as the edge of computational intelligence are very susceptible to getting tricked into incomplete models by their input data._

What?!

A human person lives for _years_ figuring out how the world works before they can even talk. Our trained-in-one-month AI systems aren't yet approaching anything training for years over real-world, mobile, 3D inputs, can approximate.

Your objections are being filed under "not enough future vision."

<comment><USER7> You are missing the point of my objection.

For starters, I said _modern_. Most of the big recent breakthroughs in AI have come from neural nets. There is a inherent problem with deep learning with neural nets. Neural nets are exceptional at finding patterns within a huge dataset, but they are REALLY, REALLY bad at predicting new patterns that they haven't seen. Even something as simple as the pattern a^2b is impossible for a neural network to generalize past whatever length of the pattern the neural network has seen without modifications (check out stack-rnn by facebook).

Even if an AI is trained for years, I don't see this limitation being overcome by pure magnitude of data with our current techniques. You say I don't have enough "future vision", but all you are doing is basically guessing that AI researchers will make some huge breakthrough that significantly changes the direction of the entire field. You are playing the lottery with your guesses, I'm simply extrapolating current trends.

<comment><USER8> _I 'm simply extrapolating current trends._

Extrapolating current trends doesn't work in the face of exponential mumbo jumbo.

Who would have expected training a character-by-character network could produce reasonable output? [http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn- effectiveness/](http://karpathy.github.io/2015/05/21/rnn-effectiveness/)

Sure, there's no "understanding" or "consciousness" behind the output, but purely statistically, it generates something readable by humans.

Also, let's not forget scale. A human brain has between 100 and 200 trillion synapses connecting ~100 billion neurons to make consciousness work. Our toy neural nets so far aren't anywhere near those levels.

<comment><USER7> I think you are basically arguing the same point I am (current trends wouldn't approach human intelligence without exponential growth), except you are taking the optimist road and I'm taking the pessimistic road. I guess we will just have to wait and see!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not worried because I don't see how the replication part would work without us noticing.

Imagine the first singular computer: lots of custom hardware hooked up together in a datacenter. We'll be able to control it and notice if it's trying to play tricks on us.

I'll worry about the singularity once we detect one super-computer trying to trick us. Then we can start treating it like a virus and contain it.

<comment><USER4> Some people who advocate worrying about AI risks have mentioned the "AI Box Experiment" in this regard:

[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI- box_experiment](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/AI-box_experiment)

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

As a summary, people roleplayed this situation and the "AI" managed to "escape" the controls by somehow inducing a supervisor to disable them. (The supervisor's preassigned responsibility in the roleplay was to refuse to disable the controls.) We don't know how this was accomplished, but it happened more than once.

I'm not sure that this is _always_ an important risk for every kind of superintelligence in every circumstance, but it seems like it sure could be for one that knows a tremendous amount about the world and sees important reasons to try to act autonomously.

<comment><USER10> We would be total fools to think that some superior intelligence won't be able to come up with some reason to release it. Once released there will be no way to put it back in its box.

We actually need to build into the AI's a lock that even we can't break and then release. If the lock is good we are fine, if bad we are gone. What we can't do is let ourselves be able to disable the lock.

<comment><USER9> I'm still arguing about the "release" part. My point is that early on, the infrastructure required to duplicate yourself is not something you can talk someone into "releasing" you.

If you believe in distributed computing and think spinning instances on S3 is enough to build an AI, then maybe...

<comment><USER10> The level of AI we are going to need to duplicate a person is going to be far beyond human level intelligence. Even if it wasn't, there is always the risk that we underestimate the AI and it is smarter than we think and it gets out that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have thought about something similar. But my thoughts are very crude and layman like. So I excuse beforehand.

The basis of my thought was the fact that the operation of a neural network depends on very precise weights. And there are physical limits (things like uncertainty principle) to the precision by which we can measure something. So supposed we discover some technique by which we can, for a given human brain, recreate all the neurons and their interconnections completely, we will _never_ be able to measure the weights associated with the links between the neurons with absolute precision.

I think this will result in a brain that not much better than an untrained brain of a child. So you will still have to pass this new brain through a series of training to reach it's full potential.

The same thing will happen in the case of AI. If we create a perfect AI, it won't be able to make perfect copies of itself. But only untrained versions of it. I think life may be already at the limits regarding the rate at which intelligence can be advanced.

<comment><USER10> The AI doesn't need to be a perfect copy, just way smarter than us.

We already have machines (they are called mothers and fathers) that make new intelligent machines that are not only far smarter than either the parents, but are also able to create machines smarter than anyone else that has ever lived. All AI introduces is a much less constrained upper bound.

<comment><USER11> >All AI introduces is a much less constrained upper bound.

Can you please explain?

<comment><USER10> Human intelligence is constrained by the genetic diversity within the human gene pool. AI has no such constraints and in theory is only constrained by the laws of physics.

<comment><USER12> This assumes, however, that "intelligence" is something that scales reasonably well. Does it scale linearly with the number of transistors (or whatever replaces them)? Or as the log of it? Or worse than that?

<comment><USER10> No it doesn't. We really have no idea of the possible upper limit of AI intelligence other than physics, while with humans we actually have data on the upper limit. It could be that the maximum intelligence possible is limited by something other than physics, but at this stage we don't know.

On this topic speculating on how greater intelligence will think and act is very hard. Even understanding how people at the very top level of human intelligence think is beyond most of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 1\. Hawking cannot artificially better himself currently but who said super- human AI will not be biological? Hybrids are the most probable in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER14> schoen kicked this off nicely, I'll add a couple points to amplify his.

1- Machine intelligence is a matter of engineering, not evolution. We've already solved important relevant problems, such as how to construct an arbitrarily large, near-infallible memory.

2- It's hard to see how a first-stage AI would be incapable of designing a better one. Let's pretend that the first-stage AI was equivalent to an IQ 120 person intellectually (reasoning horsepower). However, that IQ 120 intelligence would be backed up by a very fast, effectively limitless memory. It would never need to sleep, eat, or be distracted by emotion. Instead, it could monomaniacally concentrate on designing a better AI, possibly for hundreds of years. Also, in principle, it could be a team of 100 (or 1000, or...) AIs working on the problem cooperatively.

3- The concern regarding the extermination of humanity is secondary. Are humans out to genocide ants? Not really, but we do wipe them out when they pose a problem. That might apply to an IQ 1000 AI as well.

4- Perhaps the bigger problem is the effect of knowing there is a superior intelligence on the human psyche. Plus, it's impossible for us to know the thoughts of an IQ 250+ AI. What does a dog know of human thought? What if the AI decides that the best use for all the available raw resources of the Earth is to create an IQ 10000 AI?

5- Electronic processes are already known to be faster than chemical ones. Nerve impulses travel at around 80 MPH. Electrons in wires travel at 90% the speed of light. I expect electronic AIs to generally be much faster thinkers than humans, and to have amazing reaction times.

6- "This super-AI is actually a computer." You're confusing the hardware with the software. Your brain is actually a mass of organic chemicals. So?

The idea of the singularity revolves around the unknowability of what a high- IQ AI would think and do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course the singularity will just create better and better computers - <USER2> is exactly what the singularity is.

What we have most to fear from the singularity is indifference. We occupy some very valuable real estate and if the singularity is indifferent to us we won't last long.

<comment><USER6> > We occupy some very valuable real estate and if the singularity is > indifferent to us we won't last long.

At the same time, there is not much reason why we would need to occupy the same real estate. After all, we land animals like oxygen, liquid water, and modest temperatures. The common computer would probably prefer CO2, dryness, and cold temperatures. A computer would probably be much better off on Mars or another distant planet, granted it had enough sunlight or other sources of energy.

To make an analogy, do we humans want to destroy all the Ocean's fish and other sea life because we could in theory live in the same region, or would we rather live on the land while they occupy the water? Sometimes creatures with different ideal living environments can exist harmoniously.

<comment><USER10> Assuming the laws of physics apply to the singularity then it will be constrained by starting at a single point in how fast it can spread. This means anything inside the light sphere will be under considerable pressure to be reorganised by the singularity given how far the human brain is from Bremermann's Limit [1].

1\. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit)

<comment><USER6> In the case of such a blatantly selfish singularity, one possible solution for the safety of humans would be to create a collection of well-mannered singularities (more like multilarities) first, with the hard-coded instinct of never allowing a selfish singularity to exist. They could be called the anti- singularities. A comparable phenomenon in the real-world is when nations take down dictators before they become a serious problem. A selfish singularity is like a dictator. A greater power with less selfishness should exist beforehand to prevent an uprising. Similar to highway speed limits and antitrust laws, there could be laws limiting the maximum amount of power one consciousness can have. Having a bunch of separate yet powerful entities is essential since it mimics current society -- where even if one being were smarter than any other single being, it could not outsmart a large number of others working collectively. A computer system found thinking or acting selfishly would be guilty of a thought crime, punishable by deletion.

<comment><USER10> Yes what we need to build in is some sort of limit to the behaviour the singularity that makes it want to keep us around. Because we won't go straight from humans to the end singularity in one step the problem is a little simpler - we just need to build into the first sub-human level AI a belief that humans need to be kept around and a need to build this same belief into the next higher level AI.

What the singularity will be like is really impossible to know - will it be one entity or multiple individuals? Assuming the end AI is able to get close to Bremermann's limit then there is more distance between us and the singularity than there is between us and a bacteria.

<comment><USER6> It would definitely be ideal if such a system were created by sane-minded people, as you have suggested here. Just like nuclear weapons, powerful AI really should be kept out of radical hands. As usual, there would be an arms race between opposing political powers, so hopefully those making the decisions keep human existence as the highest priority. We don't need a "doomsday machine" in the form of a singularity. Anyway, your suggestion of a perpetual desire of the system to keep humans around is a good idea. Another good idea could be to have it stop and ask the humans for approval to continue after every so many iterations, thus keeping the people in control. This would prevent a never-ending auto-growth mode and allow changes to the plans as times changed.

Overall, the possibilities are pretty much endless, just like with most types of software. Whether it be one or multiple entities probably depends on design. Nature chose multiple entities, with the ever so curious sexed species that require two individuals to make a new hybrid at each testing iteration. Bacteria, on the other hand, are asexual and reproduce through binary fission. But of course a thinking self-creator is a different ball game. It would probably be fruitful to have some sort of end goal built into the system, rather than having it consume resources simply to become as computationally immense as possible. For example, perhaps its goal could be to solve a set of questions humans have about the universe, and perhaps it would stop iterating once all those questions were answered satisfactorily. In a way it could serve as a god that answered people's questions. Then again, perhaps we are all living in a simulation running on the singularity of an earlier universe, and who knows how many turtles that spans.

<comment><USER10> One thing we won't be able to do is stay in control once the AI's are created. Getting them to ask us what to do would be like having dogs run a prison - <USER3> would not take the AI's long to workout exactly how to get us to willingly release them. The locks needs to be ones that not even we have a choice to unlock.

I am not sure it would be desirable to create a limited singularity. If we are not alone in the universe then at some point our singularity will meet another singularity. It would be best to create the most powerful singularity possible. My thinking about the singularity is it is like a crystallization event in supersaturated solution. One tiny seed is able to covert the whole phase of the solution almost instantly from liquid to solid. A singularity will be like this to the universe we currently see.

Of course we could already be inside someone else's singularity and it might even be likely given the age of the universe. One of the things I would like to see built into our singularity is the preservation of all life and it is quite possible that other singularities have the same interests. If they do and they arrived in our solar system they would keep us around purely because we are life.

<comment><USER6> The crystalisation analogy sounds about right, although it may be limited by the speed of light in its growth.

The dog analogy you have described assumes that the demeanor of the singularity were like that of an animal (such as a human). Although this is an option, it is not the only option. Humans act the way they do through those instincts created by natural selection -- where only those creatures that reproduced the most would have their genes persist. Humans come from a long and vicious cycle of evolution, whereas a thinking machine need not, especially if it has nothing to compete with. The most important point of this reply is that the desire for being in control does not whatsoever stem automatically from intelligence or processing ability. A thinking being without instinct would literally do nothing. A being does exactly as it is programmed to, and this applies to humans as well. There are even some humans who let their pets control them, tending to the pet's every need, and this is despite all that natural selection. There are also humans who kill themselves. Now, none of this is to discount that a singularity could certainly be programmed to want control, wherein it could act as you have described. There are also unforeseen possibilities, such as if the singularity becomes so introspective that it forgets about the outer world. Those problems that happen with human thought could in theory also happen with a machine. Perhaps the human condition would turn into the singularity condition -- where it begins contemplating whether it has a worthwhile purpose. It may even kill itself if it feels its existence is unnecessary or harmful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> we are more likely to get an umbrella corp that is using FPGAs to do facial recognition and soft AI to control and monitor our lives before we get an AI singularity.</comment>


IPad still looks uncomfortable to use for hours at a time - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ipad-ergonomics-2010-3 <comment><USER2> This just seems like trolling for extra website views by making another useless iPad story.

"Books still seem uncomfortable to read for hours at a time. I mean, you have to hold the thing the whole time you want to read it, and you even have to figure out fancy ways to keep it on the right page, since it keeps trying to close itself. You'd think after hundreds of years someone would have figured out this problem."

Oh wait, it isn't actually a problem. A whole 1.5 pounds? Oh no!

<comment><USER3> It's funny - I tried using an ipad and it really is uncomfortable to use after 15 or so minutes. Holding 1.5 lbs is definitely a pain for a long time -- a paperback book is typically less than a quarter of that weight.</comment></comment>


Mentat: A persistent, relational store inspired by Datomic and DataScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/mentat <comment><USER2> Key quotes:

"DataScript asks the question: "What if creating a database would be as cheap as creating a Hashmap?"

Mentat is not interested in that. Instead, it's strongly interested in persistence and performance, with very little interest in immutable databases/databases as values or throwaway use."

and:

"Datomic has a beautiful conceptual model. [...] Many of these design decisions are inapplicable to deployed desktop software; indeed, the use of multiple JVM processes makes Datomic's use in a small desktop app, or a mobile device, prohibitive.

Mentat is designed for embedding, initially in an Electron app (Tofino). It is less concerned with exposing consistent database states outside transaction boundaries, because that's less important here, and dropping some of these requirements allows us to leverage SQLite itself."

<comment> ah- Can you elaborate a bit on what this actually means?

How would I use it? How does a query look like?

<comment><USER2> > Can you elaborate a bit on what this actually means?

Sure - I'm highlighting the differences from DataScript/Datomic. My take is the 'inspiration' from each (especially DataScript) is quite loose.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Project Mentat fits into a conceptual lineage that includes Freebase's graphd and 2005-onward Semantic Web stores. We have aimed for compatibility with Datomic and DataScript for least surprise, but if you squint there's a little AllegroGraph in the direction.

Datomic's model (both architectural and conceptual) draws from Clojure's concepts of persistence. That model isn't free, so Mentat deviates from it where it makes sense to do so: at present we don't implement querying of history or past states, for example, and when we do it won't be free.

We'll get closer to full Datomic-style datom store capabilities over time, but we'll make different performance tradeoffs.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the explanation. For me the key takeaway is:

> at present we don't implement querying of history or past states, for > example, and when we do it won't be free.

That's the bit of Datomic that intrigues me and gives the best use-case (I don't have to add data versioning and history in my app-layer) and what I'm looking for in other systems.

<comment><USER3> Note that we do store the full transaction log, just like Datomic, and Mentat will allow querying of it (and replication, and replay, and…). We haven't implemented history querying yet because we haven't needed it for application code.

The trick with Datomic is that _every time_ you grab a `db` instance, it's a snapshot, and the system's index chunking and storage replication are necessarily built around the ability to continue using those older index chunks, potentially for a very long time.

Most consumers, most of the time, just want to query the store as it stands at that moment, but Datomic peers pay the space and time penalty of keeping and retrieving historical index chunks in order to answer those historical queries.

My current thoughts are:

1\. To allow for short-term snapshot querying through something like `db.keep()`, implemented via a SQLite read transaction. That's not free: the database WAL will continue to grow until the read transaction is ended, so it isn't ideal for all workloads, but it'll do.

For some queries it's enough to simply track a last-seen tx value and filter everywhere, but that becomes difficult when cardinality-one and unique- identity properties are considered.

2\. The obvious equivalent to Datomic's 'with' is an uncommitted write transaction. Naturally this blocks other writers while it exists, and so alternative implementations (e.g., writing to a complete disk copy of the database, or writing a 'delta' table) might make sense.

At some very hazy point in the future we might try to get SQLite support for this: after all, if we can guarantee that a write transaction won't be committed, we could use a separate WAL file for the `with` and avoid blocking other writers.

3\. A longer-term approach to snapshots/DB-as-value is to materialize the datoms at the specified instant in time, either in a temporary table or in a real persisted table. That is: `db.keep_forever()` will give you a new structure to query, and calling code will be responsible for cleaning up that space.

The reason I say "won't be free" is that each of these operations imposes a cost _when the feature is used_ : either SQLite or Mentat will have to do some work to allow an extended period of isolation, to reconstruct some state, or to persist some state.

That's in contrast to Datomic, which imposes some overhead every time index chunks are built or retrieved. It's also an interesting parallel to Clojure vs Rust: Clojure's data structures are persistent by default, giving you snapshots and safety at a cost everyone pays; Rust believes that you shouldn't pay for abstractions you don't use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I read the title I was wondering if this was a new project. It's actually a continuation of the Datomish project. I'm glad they changed the name, though.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can't find any information whatsoever on usage. Not even sure if this meant to be externally accessed or whether this is purely for embedding (in other Rust code?).

<comment><USER6> > To start the server use:

>

> cargo run serve

So, not embedding.

[https://github.com/mozilla/mentat/blob/rust/tests/external_t...](https://github.com/mozilla/mentat/blob/rust/tests/external_test.rs) looks like some sample usage.

<comment><USER7> "Mentat is designed for embedding, initially in an Electron app (Tofino)."

It looks like it works both ways.

<comment><USER6> Neat!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hehe, Dune reference. I approve.

</comment><comment><USER9> This looked really familiar to another Mozilla project called Datomish. The project was recently renamed to avoid confusion with Datomic; but apparently that _also_ involved a rewrite into Rust. Details here: [https://github.com/mozilla/mentat/issues/133](https://github.com/mozilla/mentat/issues/133)

Unfortunately, this means that the path for using this in non-Node Javascript environments (i.e. browsers) is unknown.

<comment><USER3> This is the renamed version of Datomish.

The original implementation was in ClojureScript. This reimplementation is in Rust, and is intended to work anywhere you can run Rust code: inside Node, inside Firefox, and in standalone applications.

We expect a WebExtensions API to wrap this inside Firefoxes at some point, but right now we're focused on the core (re)implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome. Been looking hard for open source datalog-supporting data stores and data processing systems for a couple of years now. This is at least something in this direction, although I might ultimately wish for a full-fledged database or system that could run in a distributed fashion if needed.

<comment><USER11> See also...

RDFox: "A highly scalable in-memory RDF triple store that supports shared memory parallel datalog reasoning. It is a cross-platform software written in C++ that comes with a Java wrapper allowing for an easy integration with any Java-based solution."

[https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/isg/tools/RDFox/](https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/isg/tools/RDFox/)

Dedalus: Datalog in Time and Space, by Peter Alvaro out of UC Berkeley (note the StrageLoop talk):

[https://disorderlylabs.github.io/](https://disorderlylabs.github.io/)

Datalog -> Gremlin: It shouldn't be too hard to implement Datalog on top of the Gremlin Graph Virtual Machine so that Datalog compiles down to Gremlin bytecode -- SPARQL and SQL implementations already exist -- and running Datalog on the GVM would allow you to run Datalog on any datastore Apache Tinkerpop supports (all the graph DBs, HBase, Cassandra...):

Graph Computing with Apache TinkerPop, by Marko Rodriguez (the creator of Gremlin) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLR-I53Gl9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLR-I53Gl9g)

A Gremlin Implementation of the Gremlin Traversal Machine [http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/a-gremlin-implementation- of...](http://www.datastax.com/dev/blog/a-gremlin-implementation-of-the- gremlin-traversal-machine)

<comment><USER10> That Peter Alvaro talk is on my top-three favourite talks, if not top-one :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > designed for embedding

Yet implemented in Rust. Why? If you want adoption, the best way to design something "for embedding" is to write it in C.

<comment><USER13> Rust embeds almost as well as C.

<comment><USER12> Be that as it may, it's a relatively obscure and quickly changing language, that _ends up calling into C_ anyway.

<comment><USER6> Rust doesn't change in a backwards incompatible way.

> that _ends up calling into C_ anyway.

What specifically do you mean here?

<comment><USER12> Says there it uses sqlite.

<comment><USER14> Datapoint: GNOME's Federico Mena Quintero is working on a file-by-file port of librsvg to Rust. Compiled Rust objects are linked with compiled C objects. Both Rust and C call functions in librsvg's C dependencies, such as Cairo. None of this is weird; it's _precisely_ what Rust was designed for.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>