When Code Is Hot - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/07/when-code-is-hot/

<comment><USER2> Jon sounds similar to a spoiled child when someone else brings the same toy to 1st grade show and tell. Jon, you're not unique and there are millions of future programmers that will start learning to code in the next few months, curriculum just has to adapt and change to make it easier for newcomers to grok. It really grinds my gears when he basically said anyone doing programming grunt work shouldn't be programming. Everyone has to start somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the author of the post is completely underestimating how many different fields require some proficiency in managing data. I work in biology (genomics and proteomics) and I teach a summer course to biomed PhD students where I try to convince them that it is essential to learn some aspects of data mining, including a scripting language (Python/Perl) and/or R/Matlab. To be successful in bio-medical research these days you need to be able to reach out to available datasets that relate to your work and combine them with your own observations.Each experiment is also producing a lot more observations than in the past so you need to be able to handle larger datasets as well. My impression is that anyone who does not have some proficiency in programming will not be able to compete in these areas of research. This does not mean that we have to be able to do great code and build great software, a small increase in programming skills really goes a long way. My impression is that this is not just true in biology but it is happening everywhere (ex. business intelligence, social sciences, marketing, etc).

</comment><comment><USER4> "Learning how to program for its own sake is like learning French purely on the off chance that you one day find yourself in Paris".

And I don't think, it's bad or wrong in fact - you may learn anything you want just as a hobby - just for exercising your brain. And it will be great if a business guy, for example, will understand a programmer way of thinking.

I can tell my story - guess, it'll be somehow interesting. I was a "business guy" not long ago and I think, I am still. But when I started to work on Travelatus with my partner, I decided to learn to code - just to be helpful someday and to understand the product better. It was in November 2011 when I started to learn Django and Python, then in 2012 I started Codeacademy courses.

It was interesting to find out that here (in Moscow) there was no strong Django community that could be useful for developers networking. So, as business guy trying to learn I cooperated with 2 partners to build such community. That's how "business thinking" helped me and other developers, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER5> We don't treat any other profession this way. Do civil engineers have a specific bridge they'd like to build before they become engineers? Or do accountants have a specific balance sheet they'd like to create before they get their degree?

<comment><USER6> We do treat _creative_ professions this way. But reasonable people can disagree about whether programming is creative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "I am skeptical of the notion that many people who start learning to code in their 30s or even 20s will ever really grok the fundamental abstract notions of software architecture and design."

This is an incredibly silly sentence.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just don't get that memories of bubbles are so short. This everyone-learn- to-code is just like 1997 or so, a few years before the big IT death.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't by itself mean that the fact that everybody's learning to code will bring to some catastrophe.

<comment><USER8> I compare with the heuristic, that when even mainstream newspapers start writing about investments in the stock market, it is time to leave. Just like 1999.

Computer programming is, in my experience, a cyclical job market. And not always in phase with the general economy.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon Kindle Asks Me to Unpublish My Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.cthreepo.com/blog/2012/06/amazon-asks-me-to-unpublish-my-books.shtml Because my Kindle books are based on things I published on the internet, they assume that I don't own the rights. They are telling to prove that I own the words that I wrote, or the books will be removed from Amazon. They want links to everywhere my content has appeared. <comment><USER2> I actually see this as a good thing. Occasionally people will publish e-books using content that doesn't belong them, such as a compilation of someone else's articles, etc. This action proves that Amazon is trying to crack down on that sort of thing, which helps protect both customers and other authors.

I also think Amazon chose a decent method to verify the material by not simply pulling the plug on it and giving the authors a chance to respond.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would be easier to read if not for the yellow font on bright brown background... But hey, I know how to remove background images from web pages now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ugly web pages are memorable web pages. I instantly forget the pretty sites. In the words of Evan Llewellyn Evans: Irritate!</comment></comment>


Building the Largest Ship in the World - <AUTHOR> http://alastairphilipwiper.com/blog/building-largest-ship-world-south-korea/ <comment><USER3> 20, they ordered 20 of them.

I'm just in awe of such a thing, who even gets to make that phone call "Yep, well take 20". I imagine the amount of people involved in such an undertaking dwarfs a few entire industries.

<comment><USER4> When I was contracting for some undisclosed financial company in Ireland I was doing some work around the building and one evening I was said there will be Director coming from a meeting, so I should be around to open doors for him (I was only in the whole office atm) - the guy was pretty happy about deal so he started talking that he just made a deal for delivery of fleet of lease planes to some airline in EU. When I said the team must be really happy, he answered it is his own project, only few people in office knew about it.

This illustrated to me that directors of finance companies can make multi billion deals and yet only few people knew about it... There was no teams working on it, bunch of risk management people trying to figure if this is worth it. Just one guy encouraged by few of his employees...

<comment><USER5> One of the major reasons why the finance industry works such ridiculously long hours is that small, arguably-understaffed teams are better at keeping secrets and maintaining client relationships and more easily held accountable for their errors.

Aircraft leasing is a well-defined, finite market with most of the commonly- leased aircraft types having well-understood risk characteristics, and the lessors can and invariably do buy reputable independent opinions on market lease rates, residual values and empirical data on market activity (they can buy them by contacting me, actually :-) ) In many respects it's more risky to throw a large team at building a model to come up with a contrarian view.

Needless to say, the airline will throw far more people at trying to ensure they can keep up with the lease repayments and bills from actually operating the aircraft and there are quite a few lawyers and technical consultants involved in the final signoff and aircraft redelivery. Similarly, some teams involved in supply chain management and business development at Maersk must have spent a vast amount of time figuring out the logistics of filling larger ships in future, which based on how little time the last generation of "biggest ships ever" stayed in service is a much bigger gamble than most airlines will ever make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a massive project. The images remind me of Shell's construction of the Prelude FLNG at Korea's Samsung shipyards a couple years ago.[1][2] Regarding the Prelude, it's interesting to see the ways in which the industry values operations and processing performed on-site rather than on land.

[1]: [http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/major- projects-2/prel...](http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/major- projects-2/prelude-flng.html)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660isW3W95g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=660isW3W95g)

<comment><USER7> It only remotely reminds of FLNG, FPSO & al. because they all float - <USER2> container ship is orders of magnitude simpler those pipe dreams !

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand why the article calls this the largest ship ever built, since (going by Wikipedia, [1]) it is not the largest ship in _any_ metric (gross tonnage, deadwight tonnage, or length).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_longest_ships](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_longest_ships)

<comment><USER9> Using the metric "number of containers it can carry at once", which is the metric that formed the basis of the purchase and the key metric for a container vessel, it is the largest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a South Korean and quite amazed by this article, and the fact that this is the most popular link in HN. Visited a shipyard several years ago but I didn't think it's interesting place. Now I realize it is and even can be a great tourist attraction.

<comment><USER11> I would certainly visit a giant ship yard given an opportunity!

<comment><USER12> Same. I love these giant ships, there's something just incredibly interesting about the technical challenge they solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When finished, [http://www.deltamarin.com/reference/pieter- schelte/6](http://www.deltamarin.com/reference/pieter-schelte/6) will be slightly shorter, but about twice as wide, so I think it will be larger in the sense that it will have a larger maximal displacement (surprisingly, I could not find that number for the triple E class), at 932.000 tons. There are several different 'tons' used in shipping, but I think all would make it larger than the Seawise Giant was.

</comment><comment><USER11> In related news Maersk, the company ordering ships, is responsible for 15% of Denmark's GDP. [1]

Talk about huge!

[1] [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/f...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/features/2010/all_at_sea/a_dangerous_isolating_and_essential_job.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> That seems like a comically small steering wheel for such a large ship.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Near a harbor, ships with azipods or other similar rotating propulsion units are steered by joysticks instead of wheels. I've seen a reasonably large ship like that being steered with a mass-market gaming joystick. It plugged in through usb.

 _Feeling_ a mountain of metal the size of an apartment block move under you to the tune of a plastic consumer toy that looks like a cheap replica of a fighter jet stick is surprisingly disturbing. I asked them why they used it -- they wanted a mobile wired stick so the guy steering the ship can move to a good position where he can see whatever he's approaching, and for that kind of thing, apparently consumer toys are more reliable than specialist marine equipment. Go figure.

<comment><USER15> And spares are easy and cheap to obtain and keep a few on hand.

Though the idea of losing my steering on account of a joystick or USB fault ... is a bit terrifying.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, wouldn't this violate tons of labor laws? Perhaps not on the high seas?

<comment><USER17> I can't imagine what kind of law you have in mind.

<comment><USER16> Using equipment that was designed under the assumption that the worst fail state is a frustrated gamer, to operate a leviathan cargo ship, seems like a huge liability.

If a ship were to crash, can you imagine the headlines or accusations in court?

"Video game controller was used to operate billion-dollar crashed cargo ship"

<comment><USER18> It doesn't matter if it's a video game controller or a high-grade steering wheel, as long as it works.

Knowing that they've built the ship to operate using these devices tells me that they have trust in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazing we have the tech to build that now.

I saw a segment on TV with wind turbines from 30 years ago compared to today and they were practically toys compared to the current behemoths.

How do the sides of the ship not collapse before they assemble it in this photo:

[http://alastairphilipwiper.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2014/...](http://alastairphilipwiper.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/Maersk-Triple-E-c-Alastair-Philip-Wiper-1-3.jpg)

or is that what the pylons on the side are there for?

</comment><comment><USER20> Cached: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Aalastairphilipwiper.com%2Fblog%2Fbuilding- largest-ship-world-south-korea%2F)

(I couldn't get to the original; I suppose the site is attracting an entirely deserved flood of attention.)

</comment><comment><USER21> Discovery also produced a documentary on the building: [http://www.worldslargestship.com/triple-e- stories/](http://www.worldslargestship.com/triple-e-stories/)

</comment><comment><USER22> [http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container- shipping/](http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/)

</comment><comment><USER23> If ever you were going to make another nuclear powered civilian vessel, this would probably be the one.

<comment><USER24> The only reason these ships exist is they are cheap per ton per mile. Fossil fuel would need to get a _lot_ more expensive before a nuke would make sense here.

<comment><USER25> Really? Afaik, the main cost for nuclear isn't fuel. A ship like that would run for so long that the initial cost seems quite amortized. Also, simply not having to carry those huge amounts of fuel for weeks/months seems like a big structural design bonus (and compound fuel economy). Care to ellaborate why nuclear doesn't make sense?

<comment><USER26> Nuclear doesn't make sense at all for this. The expense for anything nuclear is astronomical. Every single component is build out of higher grade material, has fewer suppliers, needs more inspection, has higher maintenance, etc etc. The crew needs to be 10x better trained. The system itself is massively more complicated. I couldn't imagine it ever being more economical. Fuel costs have absolutely nothing to do why you switch to nuclear.

Note that the US Navy has stopped making nuclear powered cruisers, and only makes nuclear powered submarines & aircraft carriers. They cost massively more than other ships of their size, and only 2 ship yards in the USA can build them.

<comment><USER27> To be fair, the Navy hasn't built _any_ cruisers in 20 years and is doing everything it can to retire the ones still in service - which, as you say, are non-nuclear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone know what the license is for these photos? They're pretty nice...

</comment><comment><USER29> A comment I recently made about the shipyard

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8406975)

</comment><comment><USER30> This is hard engineering. Wowzers.

</comment><comment><USER31> hookers is a pretty strong word for Doumi girls who are not prostitutes but just girls who party with you in Karaoke bars. Sure some might spend the night but for the most part there's no sex involved. Their job is to sell you as much alcohol as your body will tolerate and get a nice comission off it. Even if it means dressing like a hooker to get more business.</comment>


Can you give me feedback on the?th iteration of my website? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to make a minimalist e-commerce website at www.tradespring.net. It may take up to 30 seconds to load as it is hosted on heroku and I am only using 1 dyno. Let me know if you can't even tell what it does/what you are supposed to do. <comment><USER2> It's an interesting concept and I like where you're headed w/ the design. This could be interesting if you could build it out in a highly concentrated area such as NYC. Can you add Google Maps and make it location based?

Another thing you can work on is pictures. If someone is "Selling a Wacom Bamboo usb tablet for 40 bucks", I'd like to see what it looks like beforehand. Once you have traction, maybe you could create a partnership w/ Bit.ly. How about seller ratings and history?

Interesting concept and with the right execution, I think you can make it work.

</comment><comment><USER3> The reason why heroku is so slow when you have only 1 dyno is that it idles after a couple of minutes of inactivity on your site. The trick is to use new relic on heroku. New relic shows your performance of your site (for free) and pings your server every minute ... that should prevent it to idle

More info here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5480337/easy-way-to- preve...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5480337/easy-way-to-prevent- heroku-idling)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks thats a great solution

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm, it's not an attractive site - if you need/want to go minimal and not show pictures of the items I'd look at a more elegant black and white layout like <http://www.net-a-porter.com/> or <http://www.thegridsystem.org/> even. The most compelling point of difference to me is the 'make an offer' so i'd include that more prominently.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was trying to accent the difference between purchases and sales with both the left/right division and the blue/green color difference. Do you think that this is clear enough without the color difference?</comment></comment>


Show HN: SpotifyTelevision – easily watch music videos for Spotify playlists - <AUTHOR> https://immannino.github.io/SpotifyTelevision <comment><USER2> Wish this could filter to videos that actually are music videos instead of just audio track + album cover. Perhaps it would be possible to make an educated guess by looking at the video file size. As it stands, less than 10% of my tracks actually end up displaying a proper video.

<comment><AUTHOR> So I've actually been trying to brainstorm this for awhile. It's really tough because I can't programmatically validate the videos. Right now I was thinking of some kind of caching to keep a fire base of the correct music videos, and then having a pop up for the user to give feedback on whether or not the video I displayed for them is a music video or just music+album cover, and then have them be able to link the correct music video or submit a ticket and I could manually update that video in a database. Not 100% sure yet but I'm working on it

<comment><USER3> I had a similar problem previously and considered automating it by comparing frames. It's not easy and would have obvious false positives/negatives, but YouTube does help by publishing key frames and it could at least be used to help rank results.

Take this example music video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vopR3ys8Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vopR3ys8Kw)

Frames:

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/0.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/0.jpg)

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/1.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/1.jpg)

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/2.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/2.jpg)

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/3.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6vopR3ys8Kw/3.jpg)

And this lyrics video version (more interesting because it's SOMEWHAT changing):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoAqHxm5dpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoAqHxm5dpo)

Frames:

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/0.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/0.jpg)

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/1.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/1.jpg)

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/2.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/2.jpg)

[https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/3.jpg](https://img.youtube.com/vi/FoAqHxm5dpo/3.jpg)

Simply finding the differences between frames would give the first video a higher score than the second.

<comment><USER4> I commented on your parent post before reading this...

Nice catch on the thumbnails that YouTube already captures. A histogram comparison between the second and third auto-generated thumbnails from the lyrics video was mostly equivalent when I ran one. That would be a good sign that it's not the actual music video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really cool! I've been wondering why Spotify hasn't been showing music videos themselves on their app

<comment><USER6> They have started to. Some curated playlists even have exclusive music videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool! I've been working on something very similar: [https://www.laidbackvj.com/](https://www.laidbackvj.com/) and it's open source: [https://github.com/khaliqgant/laid-back- vj](https://github.com/khaliqgant/laid-back-vj). Interesting to see a different interpretation of something I've been working on for a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that's pretty sick! I just checked it out on my phone, I'll look at it when I get home on my computer. Checkout the source code for mine too, maybe we could collaborate on something bigger!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Minor nitpicking: Text inside your buttons isn't vertically centered... kind of annoying ---to me, anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha I appreciate the feedback! I'll look into it when I get home and create an issue and fix it

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can I see how it works before signing in?

<comment><USER10> Yes, please. There's not even a written description of what this does.

<comment><USER11> Does it get the videos from YouTube?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! I'm using the YouTube search api!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anyone have a video of what this does? I don't want to register, I want to just use it.</comment>


Tiny Instruments – Small opensource time waster - <AUTHOR> https://tinyinstruments.petrovicstefan.rs <comment><AUTHOR> I was teaching a co-worker who is a graphic designer to code and together we created a small fun time-waster website. It will either make you happy or make you mad (I hope its the later :P) Tell me which one is the case for you!</comment>


Powered by OpenBSD httpd - <AUTHOR> http://www.cambus.net/powered-by-openbsd-httpd/ <comment><USER2> Example httpd(8) configuration for anyone interested.

[http://pastebin.com/u5q9g8K6](http://pastebin.com/u5q9g8K6)</comment>


Letters and Symbols: How I designed the Keen IO logo - <AUTHOR> https://keen.io/blog/43496487388/letters-and-symbols-how-i-designed-the-keen-io-logo

<comment><USER2> The more I hear from designers, the more I realize how much more thought I should be putting into design choices.

<comment><USER3> no kidding. The branding process was much longer than any of us expected (fellow Keen IO employee here). So much to think about, from Tshirts to favicon.</comment></comment>


Tesla workers say they pay the price for Elon Musk's big promises - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/13/tesla-workers-pay-price-elon-musk-failed-promises <comment><USER2> There's no surprise there. Every leader stands in front of a team who is mostly (80/20) responsible for doing the work to fulfil big promises. Nothing new.</comment>


A Stroke Turned a 63-Year-Old into a Rap Legend - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/01/doctor-rapp/579634/ <comment><USER2> > He was tall and lean, ran six miles a day, and was a strict vegetarian. "I > believe a physician should provide exemplary motivation to patients," he > once wrote. "I don't smoke and have cut out all alcohol."

> "Sometimes I worked from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m.," he recalled, adding that the > pressures had cost him his first marriage.

I don't understand how a medical doctor can fail to consider sleep deprivation and overworking not to be a health threat. There is just so much evidence out there that sleep deprivation has similar health effects as alcohol consumption, both in terms of impaired cognitive abilities and long term health effects.

<comment><USER3> I swear, a surgeon killed my dad. My dad's surgery was scheduled immediately after the surgeon returned from Australia -- he drove straight from a 30-hour flight to the surgery ward. His scalpel slipped and nicked a chyle duct, which took another half-dozen surgeries to correct. Sure, the cancer was gonna kill him, but spending 3 months in ICU probably took years away from us. I can't imagine the surgeon's hubris in that -- the medical profession seems to know so much, but individual practitioners think they're immune to sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and other simple well-understood aspects of the human condition. It's appalling and tragic

<comment><USER4> I suspect in some professions hubris is so important that people who tend to be humble simply don't make it in them. For example, Chuck Yeager complained about the arrogance of test pilots and I've heard a couple of times surgeons comparing themselves to fighter pilots. The difference, of course, is pilots kill themselves while surgeons kill their patients.

I'm so sorry about your dad.

<comment><USER5> A _drunk, alcoholic_ US Navy surgeon gave my grandmother a radical hysterectomy instead of an appendectomy, involuntarily sterilizing her. She had my father first, at least.

It's also pertinent to recall that surgeons evolved with and into the medical field from surgeon-barbers... yes, the people who give shaves and cut hair also used to cut into people.

<comment><USER6> How could that have ever happened!? Did she sue? Did she ever get the appendectomy?

That's horrific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting legend, tried to search for him on youtube and other places but nothing showed up. I'm not saying this man can't rap, but how can you call that being a legend if there isn't a single recording?

Nowhere in the article is there a link or an embed to an example of his legendary rap.

<comment><USER8> > Like a true underground star, he shunned mainstream success. He did appear > in a documentary about Leimert Park, not as a novelty act, but as a regular > member of the crew.

I believe this is the documentary the article refers to: [http://www.leimertparkmovie.com](http://www.leimertparkmovie.com)

There's a preview clip on that website that I believe shows him rapping as Dr. Flow: [http://www.leimertparkmovie.com/media/06RonCarringtononThurs...](http://www.leimertparkmovie.com/media/06RonCarringtononThursEvenings.mov)

<comment><USER7> My browser can't even play that and whats me to download a .mov file. No ty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was a breaker all throughout highschool, and I loved it. I felt a strong sense of community I hadn't felt anywhere. Someone new could come in, willing to learn, and pretty much just get accepted to the group. My group of friends from that time were by far the most diverse (Chinese, Phillipino, Black, Australian, Native American, Mexican). And I'm from Utah-- Not a place known for diversity.

We all knew each other's skills, but we still respected each other. It was a pretty interesting dynamic. I love hip-hop culture, and, like the Dr., think violence has no place in it. Ahhh, the good ol' days.

<comment><USER10> Makes me happy there is a bboy/bgirl on here. The good ol days for sure!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For all the people saying it is fake unless there is a video on Youtube, pay attention to the dates in the article. Though clearly there were camcorders in 2000, not many people just carried them around. Some people did art, rap, music, sports, etc. just to do it, they didn't need to record it to satisfy their vanity for likes and comments.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, all these comments about Youtube videos, etc. are people that have either forgotten or are too young to remember a time before ubiquitous smartphones. It sounds like he was never signed to a label or recorded in a music studio so its completely reasonable that he was never recorded rapping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's an article from 2005 with most of the same information

[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/going-with-dr- flow/arti...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/going-with-dr- flow/article991014/)

</comment><comment><USER14> I wished we could actually hear him in action but no... this is just words claiming he's a god of rhymes with nothing to show.

<comment><USER15> Why are there multiple comments claiming the article calls him good at rhyming?

<comment><USER16> Rap legend means what?

<comment><USER15> > an extremely famous or notorious person, especially in a particular field.

Is probably the most useful definition here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "There was a famous guy in Italy who had what they called 'Pinocchio > syndrome,'" said Alice Flaherty, a joint associate professor of neurology > and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "When he told a lie, he would have > a seizure. He was crippled as a businessman."

</comment><comment><USER18> Such a nice title. Some rare YouTUBE video would have been perfect.

</comment><comment><USER19> Just for the young ones who might be tempted to believe the trolls -

Pre internet we still had the AP (Associated Press), if this was real we would have heard about it and seen it (Which we didn't)

There's more to it than "it's not on Youtube because camcorder footage is pre- Youtube".

And the point is the "Rap Legend" bit.

Stokes will cause people to do strange things, maybe he might have chosen rap when he never would have before.

But the concept it gives you superpowers it wrong and dangerous, it does not ever happen. A 62 who suddenly raps will not be good.... but might be having fun.</comment>


Ask HN: Programmers with kids, how are you teaching your kids programming? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I've bought my kids (4 and 6):

1\. Learning Resources Code & Go Robot Mouse Activity Set 2\. The Official ScratchJr Book: Help Your Kids Learn to Code

They really like playing that. They are at the age that nothing lasts long though. Both are lot of fun and laugh - especially when mouse gets out of board and can't find the cheese (dummy mouse! hahaha!). And in application you can do crazy stuff, including your kids' funny voices etc.

Play, have fun (and the kids will not be aware of learning of logical thinking).

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01A5YMCH4/ref=oh_aui_de...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01A5YMCH4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

[2] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1593276710/ref=oh_aui_de...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1593276710/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have only briefly started with my kids, but I have tried two methods so far.

The first method was with my 12yr old. She wanted to learn programming so I got her signed up on Exercism.IO in the Python track. She did pretty well but then lost steam (actually we both kind of did) within a few weeks.

The second method I used was with my 14yr old. She had a science fair project that required a VOC sensor. We planned the project, ordered the pieces and then coded an Arduino sketch together.

I personally feel like method two had the best results. Project based learning, in general, seems to hold the attention of both the student and the teacher far more effectively. Further, I think we often forget that programming is a tool; a means to some end. If that end is something we strongly desire to achieve we will be more willing to trudge through the somewhat dry and boring aspects of introductory programming.

</2cents>

</comment><comment><USER4> I tried a few times to start teaching my son coding, since he was 3 maybe - and at first the problem was with math, then with reading, and later on, once he could read and do math, it turned out that motivation is a big problem. Having such an easy access to games on his iPad and MacBook (even within the screen time limits), never made sense to him why he should need to code himself. It just looked boring.

This year, however, when he was still 10, something changed, and he got pretty interested to go through the coding course in Khan Academy ([https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer- programming](https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-programming)). He has been doing math there for a couple of years, so it was a natural additional course. I was amazed at how well the coding course is built there, with good explanation videos and a sandbox coding editor, which prompts on errors in real-time and displays results immediately in adjacent window.

His other interest came from Roblox, where he likes to play with friends, and that has a Roblox studio to build your own game. You can build your own world in this studio just like in Minecraft, but to add game logic to it, you need to add scripts. The problem there however is that it uses Lua for scripting language, which is not as easy for me to help him with, and the API to access different parts/objects of the game requires lots of Googling and understanding of the Roblox architecture. So far, I've been writing some short code for him (with lots of googling), and he was modifying it to fit his game needs. But hopefully he gets it eventually to it himself.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't. Who says they want to program? If they express such interest then sure, but until then, expose them to as many experiences as possible. There's more to life than programming, just because I enjoy it doesn't mean that other's do or need to.</comment>


The Ideal Startup Career Path  - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdixon.org/?p=1652 <comment><USER2> Some info based on my experience in startup land:

It's pretty standard for (non-executive) startup employees to receive about 0.25% equity in the company. That equity usually vests over 4 years. This is true even for very early employees. So, if your startup is acquired by Google for $20MM, which is a pretty favorable outcome, you get $50k. Considering the vesting, that's less than $13k per year. If you instead went to work for a Big Company, heaven forbid, the difference in your salary and bonus would probably more than make up for that equity.

The far more common outcome, of course, is that your equity is worth nothing. The incredibly uncommon outcome is that your 0.25% is worth a million dollars or more.

In almost all cases (these days, at least), the only people to win big in the startup lottery are the founders and the VCs.

That said, founding a company is very risky and difficult, and there's a high probability of failure. Previous startup experience can go _a long way_ to increase your odds of success if you ever do decide to found your own. It's much easier to learn all the hard lessons while building someone else's company. Then you can take that knowledge and swing for the fences yourself.

<comment><USER3> To expand on your last point there: if you do work for a startup, pay attention to everything, and learn from all the things that get done well and all the things that don't. There's a lot to learn and a lot to screw up. For example: Did you hire well? Did you grow the team too slowly or too quickly? Did your development process work well? Did it adapt as your product and team matured? Was the management transparent in the right ways? If the company grew, how did it handle the addition of new employees, new customers to support, and new or larger product offerings? How was your employee retention and burnout? And so on . . .

There are invaluable lessons that you can really only learn by going through those things, and you can still learn them (and perhaps even be more objective about it) when you're not a founder.

And if your startup isn't transparent enough that you can learn those sorts of lessons, you should consider that a major strike against it.

<comment><USER4> > you can still learn them (and perhaps even be more objective about it) when > you're not a founder.

I wonder, sometimes, how true that is.

I went into the startup world for exactly that reason: I wanted to start my own company eventually, knew that I didn't have the knowledge or experience to do it immediately, so I figured I'd learn the ropes on somebody else's dime. I picked companies that would give me a lot of responsibility, and ones where I could directly observe what the founders did and why they did it. And I took careful mental notes whenever something worked well or didn't work well, and resolved to do the same thing (or not do it) when I started my own company.

And then I actually did start my own company, and found that I made nearly every mistake that my old bosses had made, I just made them in new ways, and stopped making them a little quicker.

I found there're three main problems with the "learn how to start your own company by working at someone else's company" school of thought:

1.) There are many more ways to fail than there are to succeed. Therefore, if you pick any random strategy out of a random company, and you don't yet know whether the company is failing or succeeding, it's probably a failing strategy. Orson Scott Card once said, "There are a million wrong ways to tell a story, and a thousand right ways." That's probably true of entrepreneurship too, just multiply the numbers by a few orders of magnitude.

2.) If you haven't yet worked at a successful company, you probably don't know how to tell the difference between a successful strategy and a failing one. A lot of the things I respected most about my past employers turned out to be mistakes. For example, one of them was big on code ownership, and seeing how hard coders worked at getting their code running, I thought it was a great way to encourage people to take pride in the code they produce. Another was building a platform for financial apps, and I thought they were geniuses for their strategic insight - after all, they get recurring revenue and their customers can't easily switch away. It was only after I tried building a platform myself that this reached the top of the list for "things startups should never do" - and given the number of YC startups that get funded with their own webapp platforms, I guess lots of other founders haven't yet learned that either.

3.) Many times mistakes don't look like mistakes, because the circumstances that surround them are different. Very occasionally, they _aren't_ mistakes, because the circumstances that surround them are different. For example, while I was building my platform to create casual games, I thought I'd sidestep all the complexity & adoption problems my financial employer had faced, because I was purposely limiting the scope of my platform to _games_ and wasn't trying to have it do everything. I found that no, the platform part really was the problem, and no matter how much I polished it up, that approach just didn't work.

<comment><USER5> >Another was building a platform for financial apps...It was only after I tried building a platform myself that this reached the top of the list for "things startups should never do"...I guess lots of other founders haven't yet learned that either.

You're saying that startups should never create platforms, should never create webapp platforms, or what?

Personally, I would say that startups should never start off by building a platform. They should build a _service_ , which can be expanded / redesigned into a platform later, as more services are discovered that work well with it. But at all stages, you must have income paying the way and / or customer feedback justifying it.

<comment><USER4> I think they should never create platforms. But your phrasing is fine too: it's fine (good, even) to _evolve_ into a platform, but you should start out by solving a specific problem and only expand to a general problem once you master that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _For most people I know who join or start companies, the primary goal is not to get rich – it is to work on something they love_

i began my first startup with the sole motive of getting rich. yes i enjoyed the challenge of a startup and believed the product had potential but the overwhelming motivation was getting rich.

it was only after actually doing a startup and realizing how hard it is to get rich through that path, i realized i still wanted to do another startup but that my motivations had changed. the get rich motivation isn't enough 'fuel' to make me go through the stress of another startup. the only motivation that will work now is working on something i'm truly passionate about and enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER7> What's missing here is the idea that you want to be able to grow with your startup over time.

Being solely involved in startups -- especially since most fail -- only lets you see how an organization is run _up to the size of the startup_. It's the organizational equivalent of the Peter Principle.

A larger organization is going to let you see more sizes (since they are typically organized as subunits) and the issues that arise in each size.

As examples:

1\. Do you know how to manage a team of 3? 10? 50?

2\. Do you know how to hire 10 engineers (ie, after you've asked all of your friends)?

3\. Do you know how to budget/spend $100k? $1M? $5M?

If not, then investors may be less willing to put money into your venture. Gaining those skills, especially the first two, has you situated to more successfully manage growth.

I believe that spending some time at a large, successful company can be very beneficial.

Disclosure: I recently joined TripAdvisor for just this reason. And I'm hiring into my team, thereby gaining experience in 1, 2 and 3!

</comment><comment><USER8> I work at a big corporation now, but have recently considered the idea of founding/working for a startup. The more I read into articles like this, the more I lean towards the startup world.

I have job security right now (I've made myself valuable as the software guy in a hardware testing department) but my job leaves me unfulfilled. The startup world seems much more exciting and the opportunities for growth seem endless.

I thought they way I would get into startups would be by founding my own, but this article highlights the benefits of working for a startup before potentially starting one

<comment><USER9> I was working for a big corporate when I had a start up idea. The route I took was to jump ship to a smallish start up for as long as it would take to feel comfortable (I figured around two years, it actually took a bit longer than a year).

There were several good things about doing it that way:

\- I got a lot closer to customers and the sales/marketing process and saw product development cycles much more akin to the kind of thing I would be doing on my own.

\- I met a lot of people and made some great connections.

\- I picked up some related skills and qualifications and contacts (on my own time) which have cut ~£1k+ off my business admin costs and made me more competent technically.

\- I saved up a nice healthy seed fund at the same time as moving (myself) to a city that's better for start ups.

There were some negatives to go with it as well.

\- I burned out a little bit on the really long days, which made it hard to work in the evenings. Oddly enough that's no longer the case now I'm doing my own thing - it's too much fun.

\- I couldn't carry on with product development for contract reasons. It did give me time give the product a serious review and to pick up some other skills I would need though.

\- I lost a year's first mover advantage. It's a big market though, and a year hasn't radically changed the competitive picture. The niche I want to steal is still under-served and stuffed full of people with money.

On the whole it was a good idea for me, but everyone's circumstances vary.</comment></comment>


Nuclear fusion on brink of being realised, say MIT scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/09/nuclear-fusion-on-brink-of-being-realised-say-mit-scientists <comment><USER2> [https://encrypted- tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQV2HAS...](https://encrypted- tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQV2HASTArytCtxnJ5ML9iSeroJBGzgxNSPBB_CcVO56Ex0Lch14bXbJJE7)

I enjoy the joke about the perpetually shifting fusion acquisition time frame, but it would be fair to add that in terms of actual funding, we have been under the "fusion never" level. I feel like the context for the saying has always been that the proper financing assumption holds.

<comment><USER2> That said, the material sciences advances required, especially high temperature superconducting magnets, simply were not there in the 70s. So a moonshot project to achieve it may have been a failure at massive costs, discouraging humanity from fusion research for a long time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> First time I heard that fusion was 15 years away was around 35 years ago, in an already old book belonging to my eldest brother. They were talking about ZETA (late 50s).

Wake me when the first power station is being built.

<comment><USER4> To quote my Physics of Electrical Power Generation lecturer from a few years ago: "Fusion is 15 years away, I think it will always be 15 years away."

<comment><USER5> It's a good quote, but you should know you're really quoting the zeigeist there, as was your professor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Article talks about YBCO as if it was new, but it's almost as old as I am. If it was the only thing holding back fusion, the reactors would've had software updates for the Millennium Bug.

Perhaps this time I won't fall for the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect…

<comment><USER7> YBCO is not new, but the production of it in the amounts and quality necessary for large superconducting magnets is still difficult. You need to produce long stretches of the material to create large magnets efficiently, and that isn't trivial.

The old superconductors typically used in this kind of magnets have been pushed to the limit already in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, ~23 Tesla is the strongest existing commercial one and this seems to be a limit for that technology. The first NMR magnets that use YBCO are expected in the next years as far as I remember, I don't think any exist yet.

<comment><USER6> Now that is interesting. I had thought YBCO was easy to fabricate given I saw some amateur do it on YouTube, but I do accept they had quality control issues — important on large scale production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm no expert, but 15 years seem like an awfully small timeframe to produce a commercial reactor with a still unproven technology.

<comment><USER9> The argument is that they can make it small - room sized, with the new magnates. This reduces the every one of the subsidiary technical challenges to doable, basically you don't need big machines to dig big holes, you don't need 30000m^3 of concrete here, there and everywhere, you don't need a supply chain that involves 20000 people in 40 countries... so the co-ordination costs go away as well.

It's pretty like the idea with data analytics or software ; if you can do an iteration / update by yourself in 10 minutes you will be able to solve the problem (for reasonable problems) in a few weeks for sure. If you need to spend a month assembling the data and compiling the code before you can commit a change you are simply not going to ever be able to make progress.

<comment><USER10> I think the "for reasonable problems" is the question for fusion.

<comment><USER9> I have no idea of the value of my impression of the work - I saw the MIT PI present on this a year ago and have read up since, but well - that's it. However, I think that they think that the main challenges are solved as per ITER and that they are on a mission to resolve the engineering; and this is the way to do that. They don't think that there is anything left which is a show stopper apart from the need to trouser $50m++ to build the proof of concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If we were to work with an assumption that fusion happens soon (<20 years) and power is now cheap, what would we now be able to achieve that was previously prohibitively difficult / expensive?

<comment><USER12> If energy is basically free, how will it impact crypto prices?

<comment><USER13> Will the concept of money still mater as much if at all if all energy is free?

<comment><USER14> Let me rephrase - "will anything be scarce if electrity is free?"

The answer to that is obvious: yes. So why wouldn't we need money?

<comment><USER13> Agreed, hence "as much". My thoughts were that the main cost of 'stuff' is the energy used in mining or preparing it. If you have free (cheaper) electricity, you don't need oil, metal production has it's biggest cost removed, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What will be realized first: affordable graphene production, nuclear fusion, or general artificial intelligence?

<comment><USER13> I'll go one step further - humans might sort their species out and stop with all the pointless tribalism and unite for the common good.

<comment><USER15> "stop with all the pointless tribalism "

I'll challenge that, because I think tribalism (living in small groups) is the way more akin to our genes. And much from the rising mental problems of humans today comes from living on your own in a big anonymous pool of strangers.

But those small groups could then indeed work (more) together for the common good.

<comment><USER13> If we are looking at what's in are basic genes as a marker on what we should be doing, I don't think we should be messing about with fusion. Or fission come to think of it. I agree loneliness and mental health are big problems today however don't think the answer is having an adversary to motivate yourself.

<comment><USER15> "If we are looking at what's in are basic genes as a marker on what we should be doing, I don't think we should be messing about with fusion. "

Why?

I didn't say we should live stone age style. And using technology is very akin to our genes, afaik. So I don't see any problems with that. What matters more than the tools are the social interactions I believe. And there we could do better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> According to the 2014 arxiv.org paper on the ARC reactor

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1409.3540.pdf)

the concept (which would produce 190MW(e)) uses 90 tonnes of beryllium.

According to the USGS, the current total world annual production of Be is 220 tonnes, and total global resource is estimated at 100,000 tonnes.

The world uses ~20 TW of primary energy, so roughly 100,000 ARC reactors would be needed to supply the world, using about 100x as much Be as the estimated amount available for mining.

Unless Be supplies can be drastically increased, this concept is at best a niche player.

</comment><comment><USER17> For comparison, Olkiluoto 3 fission plant has been under construction for 13 years already. It's currently estimated to enter energy production a bit over one year from now.

<comment><USER18> The delays there have been the usual big project problems - big builds, corporate drama, quality control. none of those apply to the MIT plan (they did apply to ITER, which was one of the arguments against it, but at the time it was the best option because the small strong magnets didn't exist).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Fusion always 15 years from being realized. Always will be.

<comment><USER20> Sadly, that joke is at least 30 years old too.

There are lots of companies in the game now.

Tri Alpha Energy, General Fusion, Lockheed Martin and there are quite a few more.

There is the Wendelstein 7X stellarator and ITER.

The increase in fusion magnetic energy has actually been faster than Moore's law.

See this video at 18:30 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4&t=3990s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4&t=3990s)

The massive improvements in superconductive magnets are really making a huge impact. Check out ARC and SPARC from MIT.

Humanity is going to get usable energy generated from fusion.

<comment><USER21> _Sadly, that joke is at least 30 years old too._

When I was in high school, 45 years ago, I visited prospective colleges. Some grad students were discussing the fusion work they were doing, in a big building, with lots of shiny hardware. They probably told me that practical fusion was 15 years away.

 _Humanity is going to get usable energy generated from fusion._

Yeah I heard that in high school. I'm now retired and am still hearing it. Still, stranger things have happened. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series a few years ago!

<comment><USER20> Ha.

Wonder when the first company that was targeting fusion was started.

It seems there weren't any until the 2000s sometime. Now there are lots. People with the money to sink 10s of millions into the idea think that it's close.

Danny Hillis will bet you that someone will do this by 2020:

[http://longbets.org/605/](http://longbets.org/605/)

They have lots of skin in the game.

<comment><USER22> Hi. Fusion company founder from 1995 here (Fiat Lux Research, funded by DFJ). We were probably the first in the internet age, but didn't have a website (stealth mode engaged!). We definitely weren't the first. Companies which were earlier than us that I am aware of include Bogdan Maglich's Migma company (1974), Paul Koloc's Prometheus 2 (1976) and Bussard's EMC2 (1985). You could also include companies with divisions targeting fusion like General Atomics (1974) and ITT (1964).

<comment><USER20> Wow.

Thanks heaps for that. I had no idea.

What do you think of the new wave of fusion companies? Do you think they will get somewhere?

There is a subreddit for fusion. reddit/r/fusion.

Would you be interested in answering questions, doing a sort of AMA there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I first heard about fusion maybe 30 years ago. At the time I was told that the cliche of fusion energy is that it's always just around the corner.

And this article seems to say, well it's.......

<comment><USER24> Ever wonder why that is?

I'd suggest the optimistic estimates are both for scientists and investors. Optimism is used as a fuel to keep scientists going when the future is uncertain, and any breakthrough, however small, is a chance to recharge that fuel. On the other side, (in our society) scientific research requires funding. It's easier to acquire funding if you suggest the research may take 20 years rather than suggesting it'll take 100 years. This also encourages scientists to be optimistic in their predictions, as if they aren't optimistic they risk losing their funding, which greatly reduces the chance of rapid progress.

For those reasons, I'd suggest these long estimates (as a definition of 'long', let's say in this case anything over 5 years) are just tools that help to get the work done, rather than being something with a high probability of being true.

<comment><USER25> Well, we're mostly software developers - I'm sure we all understand being an hour away from completing a project for the past several days of development.

Scale that up, and...

<comment><USER24> Sure, but there's a difference between setting short term targets and long term targets.

Setting short term targets is only realistic when you're doing something that either has been done before or where it's a variation on something that has been done before. Perhaps you underestimate the time it takes to do something by being unaware of the underlying complexity of a task (or by telling people what they want to hear, if they can't handle pessimistic estimates), but they still have a reasonable chance of being completed on time.

Long term targets work differently. If you want the time taken to be as short as possible, and you still give an estimate within a window of time which you have little to no hope to predict, you're basically saying "I don't know".

To put it another way, I could have a reasonable guess at what I'd be doing one week from now. On the other hand, I don't really know what I'll be doing 20 years from now. Any estimates I put within a range that is outside my ability to predict would basically boil down to me implying I haven't got a clue. With that said, I'd still put a timescale on an baseless estimate if it served a purpose. It's the purpose behind pulling the number out of thin air which is the point I was trying to highlight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I hope we crack the concept of fusion soon, it would solve a lot of our problems (atleast most of the energy related ones, ie safety, pollution, availability of fuel)

</comment><comment><USER27> isn't it meaned to always be 50 years away?

The 10s runtime is surprisingly close to a continuum runtime btw.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm sure it would be useful to have that technology around and I'm quite excited by the prospect of it, especially as the volume seems to be drastically reduced compared to ITER.

But I'm wondering how relevant fusion is to reverse climate change. It seems like renewables and storage are already fitting the bill, at a much lower cost.

Edit: happy to hear any arguments

<comment><USER29> Renewables are cheap when backed up by natural gas plants, but wouldn't be especially cheap if you built enough storage to run civilization on them.

I certainly think we should build renewables as fast as we can, because they're available now and a long way from the market share that requires a lot of expensive storage. But down the road, it's entirely possible that advanced nuclear power sources, whether fusion or advanced fission like MSRs, will be more economical than building enormous amounts of battery storage. (We do have cheap hydro storage but that's geographically limited.)</comment></comment>


Anatomy of a great invoice - <AUTHOR> https://blog.transifex.net/2012/03/anatomy-of-a-great-invoice/ <comment><USER2> all important points. Especially "Be Nice".</comment>


First Volt owner has driven 12K miles in 2 years, burned 26 gallons of gas - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/cars/first-chevy-volt-owner-usa-has-driven-12000-miles-2-years-burned-26-gallons-gasoline.html

<comment><USER2> Very cool. It would be nice to see a breakdown of where the energy he received while plugged-in at home came from. I think it's great that we are reducing our dependence on fossil fuel, but at the end of the day if the energy to power that car is being generated by dirtier or more costly ways... it doesn't really matter.

<comment><USER3> It does because instead of directly burning said fossil fuel, you are indirectly burning it. This abstraction if you will allows change or improvement to the source of the electricity in a way that you cannot do with gasoline.

<comment><USER4> Can you further explain? Maybe I misunderstood you but if the power plant generating the electricity is equal to the automobiles burning the fuel, in the end, isn't it a wash?

Similar to hybrid cars. They are better for the environment but that isn't that offset by the production of the batteries needed for the hybrid engine?

<comment><USER5> >Similar to hybrid cars. They are better for the environment but that isn't that offset by the production of the batteries needed for the hybrid engine?

No. The oft-cited "Dust to Dust" report has been thoroughly debunked: <http://grist.org/article/dust-to-dumb/> For just one example, they assume (with no real justification) that a Hummer will last 300k miles and a Prius just 100k. Invalidating that single assumption flips the result, and it's not the only one.

There's a false equivocacy going on in our heads when we fall victim to this kind of misinformation. "One advantage vs. one disadvantage. They must cancel out!" This is why it's important to do quantitative analysis. In reality, the addition of a battery and motor only adds about 10% to the embodied energy and disposal impact of a car, which itself is dwarfed by the fuel burned in its lifetime (by about 3:1).

The interesting question for me is: why do people worry about the Nickel in their car's battery but not in their car's steel-alloy frame?

<comment><USER6> IIRC, what worries some people is the REEs that go into the mfg of electric batteries. REE mining tends to be dirty and tends to be, for now, in counties with little in the way of enviro regulation monitoring mining methods, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> for those who don't live in USA

        12k miles -> 19312.1 kms
        26 gallons -> 98.4207 liters

<comment><USER8> Also compared to a 2012 Honda Civic which has 39 miles/gallon.

The volt had 459 miles/gallon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How many tons of coal did they burn?

<comment><USER10> Assuming 2460 kwh/ton of coal, and 36kwh per 100 miles of driving this driver burned 1.7561 tons of coal.

Assuming he drove a gas powered Honda civic instead he would have burned 375 gallons of gasoline (12000 / 32 combined MPG).

One ton of coal releases 2.86 tons of C02. One gallon of gasoline releases 19.64 pounds of C02.

Driving the electric vechile released 5.022 tons of C02.

Driving the gas civic would have released 3.68 tons of C02.

All numbers shamelessly cribbed from whatever google result seemed nice.

<comment><USER11> > All numbers shamelessly cribbed from whatever google result supported my > thesis.

FTFY

<comment><USER12> Snark like this is annoying and doesn't contribute in any way to the conversation. If you don't agree with someone's numbers, then take a few minutes and critique their data or do a little of your own research and post your findings. It's a lot more interesting and a more successful way to get your point across.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> He must not live in a location where he needs to drive that much. I'm sure I'm a bit of an outlier, but I've driven 30k miles in the last 11 months... 12k in 2 years is practically unfathomable to me.

<comment><USER14> According to the DOT, a male 55-64 averages 15,859 miles per year. The average for the US, all ages, both sexes, is 13,476. I can't find a distribution for those numbers to say how much of an outlier you are.

Anyway, if you had read the article you would see that he also drive his wife's car for long distances and as a retired airline pilot he gets free air travel. He was picked not for being representative but because he was the first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Twelve thousand soul suckingly boring miles. I know hybrids are the future, but I'm happy for the future to wait until I die.

<comment><USER16> A Volt is not a Prius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now how much does a tesla burn after 12k miles...?

</comment><comment><USER18> is there some way to make sure the gas doesn't go bad? Or a way to drain the tank?

<comment><USER19> Eh, people worry about this but in my experience with storing vehicles is that it's really not that much of a problem. I put a motorcycle away for 1 year with zero prep. Next year, fired it up, ran the gas through (it seemed a little sluggish but nothing that can't be attributed to placebo), and filled it up fresh. And that's on a carburetor motorcycle with transistorized ignition, which is going to be much more finicky than a modern fuel-injected car with computer-controlled ignition.

<comment><USER20> Try that with an E15 fuel blend.

<comment><USER21> There's also the issue of temperature. I'd be a little concerned about keeping a tankful of some summer gasoline blend (I'm sorry I don't know what any of the antigelling chemical additives are called) over the winter someplace really cold.

On the other hand, I really believe that engineers working in Detroit of all places would have considered this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Fax Over Voip - <AUTHOR>

I want to setup a web app for sending Fax over Voip.  What would be the best way to go about it?  I know I need to obtain a SIP trunk and an asterisk server.  Where can I get one at a good price?  What are the biggest hurdles to doing this? I really appreciate any advice you can give. <comment><USER2> The biggest hurdle is that it doesn't work. Ok - it does in general, but 1) you need a T.38-compatible termination (to get past ~90% reliability) 2) Whatever you do, you're unlikely to ever reach 99%. Unless you peer directly to the SIP termination network, standard packet drops and jitter will give you enough random connection errors to annoy at least one customer.

Other notes: 1) Please don't assume "voip == asterisk". Have a look at FreeSwitch or Yate too. 2) If you don't feel like reading and understanding most of RFCs 3261, 4566 and some texts about T.38 renegotiation -- start looking for some experienced VoIP person to set you up with the basic gateway. VoIP is unfortunately far away from the "make install && forget" types of services - it needs a maintainer who knows the stuff inside out.

So the best way to go about it? Unless you've got some VoIP / telecom. experience, I'd recommend finding someone who can do it for you either on the *-biz mailing lists, or on typical freelancer portals.</comment>


US to give up control of DNS root zone - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/in-sudden-announcement-us-to-give-up-control-of-dns-root-zone/

<comment><USER2> God dammit!</comment>


Show HN: DCPM – Docker Compose Package Manager - <AUTHOR> Hey y'all,
I've been using docker compose a lot in my local network, and managing setup between machines is a bit of a pain in the ass for me. I wanted an easy way to share complex configurations. At the moment most docker compose package management is done by adding a docker-compose.yml to your repo, adding a bunch of setup instructions, and hoping they are well followed. This didn't feel like a smart way to go about it to me.
I wanted to create a way to create a complex package, say a series of related or linked services, and provide some meaningful way to have users install it. That's why I built DCPM. It provides a few things for you:

  1. A nice CLI to interact with
  2. A place to store these files and configuration
  3. A way to setup new projects that's not just reading a readme
 To achieve these goals I built the @dcpm/cli and blobs.dcpm.dev. The cli allows you to upload and download blobs, and the back end allows you to have a persistent storage to use. I've also built a really simple front end for searching packages.
This is a very early alpha. There is a lot left to improve, but I feel enough of the core concepts are here to get some early feedback and improve the tool. Any and all feedback are super welcome. Here are some links for you:
Docs: https://docs.dcpm.dev
Search: https://app.dcpm.dev
CLI: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@dcpm/cli
GitHub: https://github.com/hweeks/dcpm
fyi: there's a nonzero chance that the DB will be wiped once we exit alpha and enter beta
- hamsolo/hweeks <comment><USER2> Docker-compose has always been a great little tool to spin up a collection of integrated services (like a LAMP stack). It has just the right level of complexity for many projects.

Packaging these collections up as reusable apps is smart, but isn't this what kubernetes helm charts are?

From first glance the "Search" domain is very unintuitive. I typed in "web" and "app" with no results. Your better off showing a list of most downloaded or something similar to npm's search.

> _" fyi: there's a nonzero chance that the DB will be wiped once we exit > alpha and enter beta"_

This is honest, but it's not a good look to lose data. If it's possible, simply backup the data between updates... I wouldn't trust something that wipes my data.

Anyway great little project, hope it continues and grows.

</comment><comment><USER3> FYI you have a ref to 0.0.0.0:8000 as your homepage from the docs.dcpm.dev link

edit: looks like a cool project though! congrats on shipping!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I'll push a fix

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there a cleaner way to drop a user into a shell of a docker container with ports exposed instead of doing:

      services:
        web:
          entrypoint: /bin/bash

And then:

      docker-compose run --service-ports web

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h docker-compose exec?

<comment><USER4> So would just be:

docker-compose exec web /bin/bash

Saves having to add --service-ports

<comment><USER5> exec only works on specific running containers so you'll need the container id for this

        exec -ti f635776c2d08 /bin/bash

i do this often enough that i keep this in a makefile so i can do it by image name

        docker exec -ti `docker ps | grep 'container-name' | awk '{print $$1}'` /bin/bash

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h You only need to specify the container by ID if you're using docker directly; if you use docker-compose then you can use the service name and you don't need the `-ti`

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would be nice to see some example. When I open search there are no results.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's my base package

[https://app.dcpm.dev/package/home-media](https://app.dcpm.dev/package/home- media)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hexadecimal – No-Nonsense Website Monitoring and Status Page Service - <AUTHOR> https://tryhexadecimal.com <comment><AUTHOR> Howdy HN!

I _quietly_ launched Hexadecimal several months ago.

The idea is simple: monitoring websites & APIs for uptime, and having a decent looking status page to display status (duh!) of said websites/APIs. On top of that, Hexadecimal also monitors TLS certificates for expiry.

Built on the vanilla Rails stack: Ruby, Rails, Postgres, Redis, Sidekiq, and Caddy. For the curious, I share my costs & tools publicly: [https://tryhexadecimal.com/running-costs](https://tryhexadecimal.com/running- costs)

I also write a behind-the-scenes blog ([https://tryhexadecimal.com/journal/](https://tryhexadecimal.com/journal/)).

Feedback is welcome!</comment>


Show HN: Covid-9 Growth Charts by Country and Region - <AUTHOR> https://fitnessai.tryretool.com/embedded/public/464cee3a-6d56-4b68-b934-6af12c014a54 <comment><USER2> Wow, this is super informative. How often is the data updated?

Is this the only site of this kind? If so, how can this only have 3 upvotes?

<comment><USER3> Similar: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22168451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22168451)

Also see: [https://coronavirus.app](https://coronavirus.app)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice but it s Covid-19</comment>


User Experience And The Poison On The Tip Of The Arrow - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/15/user-experience-and-the-poison-on-the-tip-of-the-arrow/

<comment><USER2> User Experience (and to some extent User Interface) design are, I think, the two most misunderstood things in the valley and startup world.

There are so many words thrown around UI, UX, IxD (interaction design), etc. So confusing! Concretely, most of the people I've met who qualify themselves as practitioners of these disciplines are really graphic/web designers. But the field of user-centered design (a term that I think encompasses well all of the former) is so much more than that!

People like Don Norman, Bill Moggridge, Bill Verplank, etc. who pretty much founded the modern field of interaction design did not make their career by pushing pixels on Dribbble or implementing fancy JQuery transitions between their website's forms.

User centered design is much deeper, fuzzy and humanistic than that— if you claim to be a UI/UX/etc. designer, please step out of {Photoshop | Firebug console} for a bit and delve into the works of the aforementioned authors, as a start. It might be harder to read than colorful blog posts, but your work will be so much deeper because of it.</comment>


Who was the first modern philosopher? - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/imaginary-spaces/ <comment><USER2> I always wondered why scholars feel it necessary to draw lines between modernity and antiquity. Surely there's no real dividing line. I can't think of any "modern" philosopher whose work was so revolutionary that it broke completely from the philosophical traditions started in ancient Greece and the near east. Does drawing an arbitrary line in the sand between ancient and modern really help us better understand philosophy?

<comment><USER3> The dividing line was of course Christianity and the decline of science with the rise of it.

The ancient nature philosophers, like Democrit were more modern than the philosophers until Russel/Wittgenstein.

Leibniz, Newton or Pascal were extremely anti-modern.

<comment><USER4> There was no decline of science with the rise of Christianity. There was arguably a decline of science in western Europe with the fall of the Western Roman empire, but science progressed throughout the Middle Ages, and in western Europe, the church and monasteries were actually the main sources of scholarship and scientific progress.

<comment><USER5> There was little science in the Western Roman empire and that continued after the fall of Rome. As far as I know, there was little science in the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire (can anyone name any important scientific contributions from there?)

Charlemagne revived Greek learning but then it died off, and didn't get going again until 1,150 AD, thanks in part to science and philosophy from the Arab world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article perpetuates some false myths about the reasons why some people were prosecuted and executed.

Giordano Bruno was not burned at the stake for believing in other worlds; he got that idea from an esteemed cardinal who suffered no ill-effects for spreading these ideas, which were not considered heretical at the time. Instead, Bruno was burned for a whole slew of heresies much more central to Christianity, like denying the divinity of Jesus. More details here: [https://www.quora.com/Is-the-representation-of-Giordano- Brun...](https://www.quora.com/Is-the-representation-of-Giordano-Bruno-as-a- martyr-for-science-in-episode-one-of-Cosmos-A-Spacetime-Odyssey-TV- Series-2014-historically-accurate)

And the Galileo story is a lot more complex too: [https://www.quora.com/What- is-the-most-misunderstood-histori...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most- misunderstood-historical-event/answer/Tim-ONeill-1)

</comment><comment><USER6> To save people time, it was Spinoza. Excellent read though.</comment>


Bad links? No way. Can it be true? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gettingmorevisitors.com/2008/07/04/is-there-such-a-thing-as-bad-links/

<comment><USER2> I wonder, does Google count links from bad sites as negative, or does it simply ignore them?

I am afraid it will be negative, but this opens the door for abuse by linking to the competition from unwanted pages? So to just ignore them would be more fair?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Indian SEO firms who will submit to 100000000 directories for $10 or whatever"

Redneck blogger.</comment>


A list of top Rails gems, suggestions? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone have resources for top downloaded Rails gems? <comment><USER2> rubygems.org ruby-toolbox.com</comment>


A bot has successfully appealed $3M worth of parking tickets in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/joshua-browder-bot-for-parking-tickets-2016-2 <comment><USER2> There used to be a few companies which did decision-tree style disposal of debts via the FDCPA and FCRA, which basically involve sending letters according to a flow chart and hoping one's counterparty is not as well- organized as oneself on the same flow chart. They worked. Very, very well.

The credit agencies, without any legal rationale for doing so as far as I am aware, started to simply ignore letters which they believed were being generated in an automatic fashion. The decision tree is still the same -- it's the law! -- but to be effective at using it you have to phrase your request in a way which doesn't suggest that you are an expert at writing that request (unless you are a lawyer).

The chief objection to decision-trees-as-a-business-model seems to be that the credit dispute industry was crooked-as-a-barrel-of-fishhooks (welcome to consumer credit, hope you enjoy your stay) and successful in getting people to accept terms like "Pay me $2,000 and I will successfully get you off the hook of $8,000 in debt. Although not particularly relevant to you, this will require writing three letters and waiting a bit."

<comment><USER3> Hang on, if it's legal for them to ignore letters if they feel like it why would they ever accept a letter which causes them to lose money?

(Or is this just "consumer protection in the US does not work", again)

<comment><USER4> I think it's more that the letter only holds sway in the first place by the implied threat behind it. If the letter is from a bot, there is nothing to back up the threat.

<comment><USER5> Can't the bot account for this by stating that if there's no response, call your local attorney and bring them this summary of facts?

<comment><USER6> Sure, but then you're paying an attorney, not a bot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone willing to get this to appeal property taxes for the poor in Detroit?

The city after the 2008 crash hasn't automatically revalued property values. It isn't unusual to be paying $8000 in property taxes on a $25,000 house. Investors are buying the houses at tax foreclosure sales, renting them back to the owners and then getting the property tax bill slashed.

<comment><USER8> 'investors'? Predators would seem to be a better term. Has there been any investigation of whether or not there are links between these 'investors' and the authorities? It seems altogether too easy a way to screw people out of their property and I can see how having a few friends in the right places to deny a reduction at one stage of the process and to expedite it in another could be of use.

<comment><USER9> The sale of the property automatically triggers an adjustment of the taxable value towards the sale price, so you don't need anybody greasing the wheels on the back end.

Detroit is in dire financial condition, so it would not be surprising if there is reluctance to aggressively adjust assessments. Which isn't meant to justify them not fairly valuing properties, but there is no need for collusion for the situation to arise.

<comment><USER10> Would it makes sense then for someone to buy the house for $1, sell it back for $1 and have the property values adjusted?

<comment><USER9> The assessment takes more than just the last sale of the property into account. It is supposed to reflect the market price of the house, so you'd only get a silly $1 assessment if that was in fact the typical price of similar homes.

(The main point of my first reply was that the sale of the home automatically triggers the change in taxable value, the buyer doesn't have to do anything)

<comment><USER10> I was talking about triggering a change in taxable value, not a house being assessed at $1

<comment><USER9> My bad. I don't know the specifics but I'd bet against that working. The values are anyway adjusted from time to time (I think each year, but that would probably be mostly formulaic), and can be appealed. Detroit publishes this:

[http://www.detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/docs/finance/Assessment/R...](http://www.detroitmi.gov/Portals/0/docs/finance/Assessment/Residential%20Assessment%20Information%20Packet%20for%20Taxpayers.pdf?ver=2015-04-27-170753-133)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We have one of these in San Francisco. I got an advertisement on my windshield along with my ticket, funny enough. Brilliant advertising. I signed up immediately.

Now I don't even need to scan my ticket in the app. It searches court records and auto-appeals for me.

<comment><USER12> I think you're referencing [https://www.fixed.com](https://www.fixed.com)

<comment><USER13> Plot twist: meter maids make extra cash advertising for Fixed.

<comment><USER14> This seems like a huge conflict of interest. The meter maids are essentially being paid "extra" for every ticket they write now. How is this not the equivalent of a meter maid not writing you a ticket if you give them some cash?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like a great idea, and the screenshot of the transcript looked very fluid. I'm interested in seeing how governments react once this goes live. I feel like parking tickets and that sort of thing are really a desire to tax driving, by not levying a real tax (unpopular!) and instead picking unlucky people to "win" the lottery and pay for the infrastructure. I don't drive so I could be wrong, though.

<comment><USER16> As an actual driver, I'd say that parking tickets are typically fair, and easy to avoid. If somebody complains about parking ticket issues, it's a red flag that this person is either honestly incapable of understanding and following simple rules, or this person is just so entitled that they believe the rules should only apply to other people.

I do get a parking ticket now and then, but every one of them was because I ran into a scheduling issue and consciously decided to risk the ticket. And in every case, I could've paid more in advance to eliminate that risk.

I live in New York, and parking tickets make up right around 1% of our city's entire budget, which doesn't seem like a terribly burdensome stealth tax.

<comment><USER17> I'm not convinced this is true in general, even if it is often true. Signage is unclear or absent. Certain departments are probably corrupt or inept.

There are also times when avoiding tickets is basically impossible. My local (and relatively large) community college brilliantly decided to do all three of these things at the same time:

1\. Close down the third largest lot on campus. 2\. Lease out half of the second largest lot on campus to local businesses. 3\. Oversell permits for the remaining parking.

As a result, students began parking on the city streets. But the local residents didn't like that, so the city made those streets permit only (and only gave permits to local residents)* . The college's response was "get here early," which at best is not a solution and at worse, exacerbated the problem by making parking even less available in the early parts of the day. Later they added a meager shuttle solution which they didn't even keep for an entire semester (the parking situation lasted for YEARS rather than months because of theft, lawsuit, and resident concerns about the job site).

Frankly, I would be impressed with anyone who didn't get a ticket over that time period and still managed to make it to classes.

Looking further, the local downtown simply has inadequate parking. The downtowns of other nearby municipalities are the same. It certainly makes political sense to keep parking prices low and just ticket the hell out of violators rather than raising prices to keep demand in line with supply and making consumers and businesses unhappy. I'd be very surprised if these municipalities hadn't worked out the math and figured out which results in more money for them.

*Those roads are still (and probably permanently) permit only, so the only ones really suffering are going to be the short-sighted locals.

<comment><USER18> Why would the locals be suffering if those roads stay permit only? Resident- only parking permits is a very common system and seems to work well (living in Cambridge, MA that has such a system).

<comment><USER17> There is no purpose to parking on these roads except to visit the local residences. The college is the closest non-residence to these neighborhoods and even that is a hike; students only parked there out of desperation and then walked a long way.

There wasn't even a parking crisis for local residents. The homes there have multicar garages and driveways. They simply didn't like people parking on "their" street. The streets are wide and the parking space is ample.

They've effectively banned visitor parking in the entire neighborhood. And for families with teenagers and multiple cars, they've got to shuffle cars or keep permits updated for no benefit of any kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My first thought: Apple should buy this company and integrate legal advice into Siri. "Hey Siri, I've just been pulled over by the police." "OK. Here are your rights:"

<comment><USER20> More like "OK, where are you exactly, what is your citizenship, what is your race?"

<comment><USER21> And depending on location, religion and gender. And obviously, how rich do you look?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Court? Parking tickets (penalty notices) in the UK have their appeals handled by the issuing organisation. Most commonly a city-, district- or county- council.

If you end up in court you've done something very wrong.

<comment><USER23> It's a little more complicated in the UK.

Street parking is managed by councils. There are legal requirements for signage and for waiting times before you get a ticket, and you can appeal on either basis.

Off-street parking is often managed by third party businesses, which are various kinds of shady. In some situations there's no legal obligation to pay a fine to the third party. They rely on drivers not knowing this.

There's a separate criminal track where you commit a parking offence, such as obstruction. You can make an informal appeal, but if you want to challenge this seriously you need a very good reason, a good idea of the law, and you may need to attend a hearing.

A bot is ideal for dealing with shady businesses and may make some headway with the council. I can't see it being much use for criminal track appeals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can self-driving cars use bots to automatically fight traffic/parking tickets?

<comment><USER25> I don't suppose self-driving cars are ever supposed to get traffic/parking tickets?

A more relevant question would be, can the owner/renter of a self-driving car fight the company who sold/rented the vehicle that got a ticket for him/her?

<comment><USER26> Well, I guess that long before truly automatic cars come to life, we will have cars that you can set to a certain speed and it will just continue driving forward(much like Tesla's Autopilot, but working on any road anywhere). You might ask "well, why don't we make the autopilot follow the speed limits then?". Mostly because in some countries it's not easy to tell when a speed limit ends and in my experience GPS maps are not always 100% accurate. Basically in most of EU the speed limit begins with a sign and ends at a nearest intersection, without any visible sign indicating so. So the car would need to recognize what is an intersection and what isn't - which is difficult even for human drivers, sometimes you have a paved road going off the main road to someone's house, but it's not an intersection so it doesn't cancel the speed limit. Again, it could be solved by having very very detailed maps, but then it doesn't help with roadworks which set up temporary speed limits.

Anyway, my point is that until we have truly, 100% automatic vehicles which take all liability for their actions, vehicles in semi-automatic modes will continue getting speeding and parking tickets.

<comment><USER27> Or you get out and set your automatic car to keep driving round and round the block when you need it again you send it a command from your phone.

Back in the 80's at my employer if the traffic wardens where seen one of the messenger boys would be told to drive the partners cars around the block until they had gone

<comment><USER28> This is an absurd waste of energy.

<comment><USER27> Yes but that is what will happen

<comment><USER26> You say it with absolute certainty, just like people 50 years ago used to say with absolute certainty that we will have flying cars. Well, flying cars are also a huge and unnecessary waste of energy and they didn't happen at all. Automatic cars will probably park themselves in huge automatic multi-story parking lots, like in Japan, why the hell would they be driving around, whoever owns them wouldn't want to put extra miles on them unnecessarily. Even if the electricity to run them was free, you are still using up tires and wearing out bearings , shocks and other elements, it makes no sense.

<comment><USER27> Human nature tells me that this will happen in crowded cities no one is going to want to pay though the nose for the limited car parking avaible.

Exactly how are dense and expensive Citys like London and SF going to build those "Huge automatic multi-story parking lots".

<comment><USER26> Tokyo is much bigger and denser than either one of those yet it has them everywhere. I hope you know that I mean those vertical car lifts which pack many more vehicles than your regular car parks, and which can be relatively easily build underground. But you only need to look at Lisbon - a city which had a monumental problem with parking, and they managed to build dozens of huge underground carparks all over the city, under city squares and such, sometimes 10-15 levels deep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Reminds me of TurboTax. Different output, but the same basic idea. Reduce legal code to software.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is super cool. And even if the parking aspect may have an coming expiration with the rise of more autonomous vehicles. I hope he and others continue to expand this out to a lot more areas quickly.

</comment><comment><USER31> "Programs such as this one do not, at least in my humble opinion, threaten the legal profession writ large" Is there someone who has opposite opinion? Where can I read about it? I believe that in ideal world programs should make court decisions and people (like coders) should just translate real cases to universal legal language so that court-bot can make decision.

<comment><USER32> Ideally, yes.

However , I don't think you can code something to solve the trolley problem.

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

<comment><USER31> Thanks for the link. Here is good article about it [http://www.nature.com/news/machine-ethics-the-robot-s- dilemm...](http://www.nature.com/news/machine-ethics-the-robot-s- dilemma-1.17881) IMHO, trolley problem is too theoretical. Firstly, these binary events are far from reality based on probabilities and context (like why could this situation occur?). Secondly, the answers to those questions highly depend on the society laws. These problems are missing crucial information what punishment should you expect in both cases. If you don't know anything how the society will treat these cases then you shouldn't do anything (for ex., Is it allowed to act like a policeman in this society?) Thirdly it depends whether you are a donor or donee in this society (can you compensate consequences of the damage of your actions?).

I found the titles that I was looking for:Universal moral grammar: theory, evidence and the future;Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if you could do this as a business venture. At what point would you have to be a certified lawyer?

<comment><USER34> In the UK, you no longer need to be a lawyer to own a law firm. You will need a lawyer somewhere in the mix, though.

<comment><USER33> That's interesting is that a new change?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It would be awesome if this kind of inventions start working here, in Latin America.</comment>


Electric Car Killed the Electric Car - <AUTHOR> http://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2017/10/how-electric-car-killed-electric-car.html <comment><USER2> (2017)</comment>


NIST-F1 Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock - <AUTHOR> https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/primary-standard-nist-f1 <comment><USER2> I don't quite understand. Which element is measuring the second. The microwave frequency or the atom ball time of travel?

<comment><USER3> F1 is a source of precise frequency and only an intermittent one. It puts a puff of cesium atoms into a state which is as controlled as is possible and then finds the microwave frequency that causes the largest number of atoms to change state. The second is currently defined as a multiple of the period of the microwave signal that, under specified conditions, induces that particular transition in cesium.

The up and down motion itself doesn't result in the time measurement.

The purpose of the 'thrown ball' in F1 is so that the atoms being measured are in freefall during their measurement which eliminates uncertanties in the measurement which would otherwise come from forces confining them and to keep them in that unperturbed state for as long as possible. By using a very long interaction (technically two interactions separated by a long time, a form of interferometery) the peak response can be made very narrow which allows for a more precise measurement.

F1's frequency is used to tune continuously running highly stable oscillators (or, really, measure their offsets so that they can be corrected in post- processing without being disturbed by frequent tuning).

The combination of a continuous stable oscillator and a counter gives you something you'd recognize as a clock. So you can think of F1 as a calibration process used to keep NIST's clocks on time.

This paper has a good technical overview of many of the considerations that go into such a device: [https://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/1404.pdf](https://tf.nist.gov/general/pdf/1404.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I also needed this explanation. The article annoyingly just ends with "And of course, the improved frequency control leads to what is one of the world's most accurate clocks."</comment></comment></comment>


An Insomniac's journey to regular sleep - <AUTHOR> https://www.sleepedy.com/articles/insomniac-to-normal-sleep <comment><USER2> I have struggled with sleep my whole life. I can't sleep, I'm a light sleeper and I almost always wake up tired. Not long ago I started making massive changes to help myself sleep. I get up early, I don't eat late and no screens a few hours before bed and I'm good. If I'm worried about things, I write out a list on paper so "I won't forget about them".

If I exercise I get better sleep, if I eat a good diet I get better sleep.

Not sure we need an app for sleep. It kinda feels like a solution looking for a problem.

<comment><USER3> I'm in the same boat. Everything I've tried has only a marginal effect but on improving quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems like not a lot more than an ad for an app (free to download then $29-$59 for the upgrade).</comment>