Live coverage of Juno's Jupiter Orbit Insertion [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html#public <comment><USER2> You can view a live simulation using a Mac/PC app downloadable from:

[http://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/eyes-on-juno.html](http://eyes.jpl.nasa.gov/eyes-on- juno.html)

From the description on the page: In this interactive visualization, you can ride along with the Juno spacecraft in real-time at any time during the entire mission. For example, watch the arrival at Jupiter on the 4th of July, 2016, or see Juno use Earth's gravity as a slingshot to pick up speed, or just learn about the science of Jupiter and about the spacecraft itself. You can even turn on and off the magnetic field, aurorae, and the radiation belt, all in 3D! All of this and more is waiting to be explored.

</comment><comment><USER3> I previously submitted this earlier today. Here's the link for YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdmHHpAsMVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdmHHpAsMVw) It's been really great being able to stream in HD on my Chromecast :)

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I really didn't want to go enable flash

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This cracks me up! Jupiter's moons were named after Jupiter's mistresses. Juno was his wife..

<comment><USER6> > Juno was his wife..

Was...? Now that's some dedicated faith, still practising Ancient Roman religions!

<comment><USER7> So if I say, "Darth Vader was Luke's father," do you have to remind me that Star Wars isn't real?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And it began successfully its first orbit. Now that it has completed its 1.8-billion-mile journey, the solar-powered craft is set to cruise around Jupiter 37 times over a period of 20 months. Juno will collect information about the planet's magnetic field, composition and internal structure.

</comment><comment><USER9> "A plugin is needed to display this content". Flash again?

Here's a recording [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfIqnpqPFbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfIqnpqPFbI) Applauses at 1:23:30

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool!

I did note that everybody in their control room is wearing identical grey polos... guess somebody really doesn't want a repeat of the shirt incident.

<comment><USER11> Let me save everyone else a google query: [http://nypost.com/2014/11/17/the- outrage-machine-insande-ado...](http://nypost.com/2014/11/17/the-outrage- machine-insande-ado-about-sexist-shirt/)

That shirt is 80s AF \m/ I can see how it might not fly at work though, at least not on a big PR day.

<comment><USER12> "Over the last few days, we have learned that mankind can chase down a comet speeding through space at 34,000 mph, but resisting the outrage machine, kicked into high gear over a trifle, is completely beyond its powers."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> News story: [http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-36710768](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36710768)

Juno Approach Movie of Jupiter and the Galilean Moons: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpsQimYhNkA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpsQimYhNkA)

</comment><comment><USER14> Arg I hate being at work at this time. My lunch breaks about to finish, so at least I can catch up in a few hours.

The burn has started according to the tweets though! Good luck Juno and NASA team!

</comment><comment><USER15> I had no idea. I was listening to this on the radio this morning. I was not sure if they were narrating a science fiction work like a movie or if it was real news.

</comment><comment><USER16> Stupid question in general. Given how long it takes for a spacecraft's signal to reach earth, I suppose we can use the time difference to calculate the distance from a spacecraft such as New Horizon to earth. But how do we know its exact location at any given moment? What are the equivalence of GPS and cell towers in space?

<comment><USER17> Don't have all the answers, but last night, on the webcast, they were explaining that the spacecraft uses the stars for navigation [1].

In addition, instead of wasting valuable power for radio transmission, they send a simple tone back to Earth [2]. With that, they can determine if various events were successful (tones are sent at specific event times), also calculate the changes in speed/rotation using doppler shifts from the "tones" [3] (validating the engine fired, current spin, etc)

[1] [https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf13-1.php](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf13-1.php)

[2] [https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/30/juno-switched-to- autop...](https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/06/30/juno-switched-to-autopilot- mode-for-jupiter-final-approach/)

[3] [https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-4.php](https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/basics/bsf6-4.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is an optical camera on board, did it send any close up jupiter pictures this first go-around?

<comment><USER19> Right now, all the instruments are off during this first orbital insertion. The next close pass (Perijove 1), where the closest pictures will be taken, is around late August.

View lots more details here: [http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily- lakdawalla/2016/0609060...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily- lakdawalla/2016/06090600-what-to-expect-from-junocam.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> NASA is definitely hitting its stride on the PR side, considering the date. Good for them.

</comment><comment><USER21> I didn't realize Juno would have such a large capture orbit. 54 days and change to complete one pass. Makes sense though. They way they are skirting the Ionian radiation torus is pretty slick.

<comment><USER22> Remember that they are choosing an orbit that allows Juno to keep facing the sun as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Watched The Martian in the morning and then closed off the day watching NASA insert a spacecraft into Jupiter orbit. I'm on a NASA/JPL high right now!

</comment><comment><USER24> Thought all these posts were about classic Roland polyphonic synthesizers for a second...</comment>


How I Hacked 40 Websites in 7 minutes - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-i-hacked-40-websites-in-7-minutes-5b4c28bc8824 <comment><USER2> Morale question: is just uploading the PHP file in the first place wrong? Should you have stopped there and contacted them straight away?</comment>


Screenshots f*cking destroy your desktop – here's the quick fix (takes 1 min) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MKaroumi/youll-never-be-sad-when-you-see-your-desktop-from-now-on-1dbbd3d81941#.v3u3koolo <comment><USER2> Alternative non-sensational title: "How to set the screencapture path on MacOS".

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol yeah. That may appeal to everyone who directly understand what screencapture path means. But a "clickbait" title like this focuses directly on the feeling that many people get when they see their cluttery desktop. That was the intention of the title :)</comment></comment>


World Bank Is Opening Its Treasure Chest of Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/business/global/03world.html

<comment><USER2> > People outside the World Bank are eager for its information. Its newly > released data — from economic stats to numbers on landmines — has attracted > more than 4.5 million unique views. Indeed, more people come to its Web site > looking for data than anything else.

> "I'm astonished by the number of people apparently just waiting for our data > to become free," says Shaida Badiee, director of the bank's economic > development data group. "I had no idea how big a deal this was going to be."

Free is different. Personally, I'm always surprised when some person or group radically lowers barriers to participation and then express shock when they get run over by a herd of contributors. And this from economists, too! You would think they would be especially sensitive to transaction costs and dead- weight loss! (Even tech types like Eliezer Yudkowsky make this mistake.)

<comment><USER3> [Citation needed]

<comment><USER2> Seriously? I know I'm not one of the leading LW lights or something, but I thought I could make such references without needing to cite everything. But since you asked...

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/f1/beware_trivial_inconveniences/bj6>

<comment><USER3> Citation provided. Thank you, it's just that I had no idea what you were talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> To find more about the data bank use <http://data.worldbank.org/>

<comment><USER5> Great work by the awesome folks at Development Seed!

For more about the tech behind the site, see [http://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/apr/20/world-bank- open-...](http://developmentseed.org/blog/2010/apr/20/world-bank-open-data- initiative-launched-on-drupal)

<comment><USER4> Great work and is all build on open source stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally. Even for people working there, or with a paid subscription, using their "treasure chest" was a PITA.

On the other hand, it was the WB's incompetence that motivated me to learn Python and write my first script, to scrape their website and get their data to a more useful and less slow format (mind that I did had a paid subscription at that time)

<comment><USER7> WorldBank prides itself on carrying almost no internal IT staff, and outsource the bulk of their rather large IT infrastructure.

In my opinion, this leads to a disconnect in that the people who would be exposing the data via APIs likely don't have the understanding of how the data might be processed as it isn't a part of their business function.

Long-term IT contracts typically bridge that gap eventually, which I am only guessing is how they're able to expose the data effectively now, if in fact they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe this is a response to the IMF hack attacks. If you can't beat 'em, give them what they want to avoid collateral damage to your other resources.</comment>


Anybody looking for jobs... - <AUTHOR>

who are only considering places near public transportation or within walking/biking distance? <comment><USER2> Ask you asking because you have an idea for startup which involves other people being near public transport? Ask you asking because you are considering re-location?

<comment><AUTHOR> just trying to get a feel of the general consensus

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's very vague. For example, my answer is yes, but I live in Manhattan, where that's the default.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes. But the only such jobs available are in retail. %$@&! suburbia!

</comment><comment><USER5> yes.</comment>


Show HN: Cdefs, extract function prototypes in C files to JSON - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mateogianolio/cproto <comment><USER2> I would expect a more detailed breakdown of the individual parameters. The type, name, is it a pointer to type, etc. should all be in separate fields

<comment><AUTHOR> Suggestion noted! I put this together today so there is definitely room for improvement.

<comment><USER3> Breaking up parameter name, and parameter type into two separate fields will be a good update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would there be something that goes the other way? Given a JSON input generates C structs and efficient serialization/deserialization for given input? It could be useful for C++ too but generate classes instead. I'm aware of gsoap which did this for wsdl and generated code for use by SOAP xml clients and servers but not sure if anyone has done this for json

<comment><USER5> While it's not quite what you want (as the specification language is not JSON ---it's more like C declarations), "protobufs" allow you to generate serializers and de-serializers in a number of languages.

[http://github.com/google/protobuf](http://github.com/google/protobuf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've used gcc-xml (apparently has been superseded by another tool now) when I've needed this sort of thing in the past. It has the advantage of being a real C parser rather than a jumble of regexes.

<comment><USER7> libclang is pretty amazing for that

<comment><USER8> Python libclang bindings make this kind of task quick work: [https://github.com/llvm- mirror/clang/tree/master/bindings/py...](https://github.com/llvm- mirror/clang/tree/master/bindings/python)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Came to see if this used LLVM for parsing, found node...

<comment><USER10> LLVM is not for parsing.

<comment><USER11> But clang can be.

<comment><USER12> clang is not a library.

<comment><USER13> [http://clang.llvm.org/docs/Tooling.html](http://clang.llvm.org/docs/Tooling.html) libclang is though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's the use case for this?

<comment><USER15> Seems like it must be to facilitate usage of whatever node's foreign function interface scheme is.

<comment><AUTHOR> The name is node-ffi and yes, you are correct. Can also be used for automated documentation purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A mess of regexes and splits... yeah, no. You should probably get introduced to the wonderful world of parsers (and compilers):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compilers:_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools)

<comment><USER17> Please don't be rudely dismissive of new work, even when it seems that someone doesn't know much. The Show HN guidelines specifically emphasize this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html).

<comment><USER16> Alright. Sorry, that might have sounded a bit rude, but the intention was pointing OP the right way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a bad name, another cproto library has been in use for over 20 years:

[http://invisible-island.net/cproto/cproto.html](http://invisible- island.net/cproto/cproto.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, that's kind of why I named the bash command 'proto' instead of 'cproto', but maybe that's not enough. Any suggestions? I'll change it later today.

<comment><USER15> I should step back some from it being a bad name... It's actually a great name, it just conflicts with an in-use library that does substantially the same thing for another platform.

Is there a convention where the 'node-' prefix is off-limits for any reason? I don't know if it's really any better but if this were 'node-cproto' I wouldn't have commented.

The other option would be to do some word-play name like 'domesticator'.

<comment><USER18> What happened to descriptive names like 'c2json'?

<comment><USER15> Nothing, that is also a great name.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux Cousins Part 1: Reviewing AROS, the Amiga-Like OS - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2995585/opensource-subnet/linux-review-aros-os-amiga.html <comment><USER2> AROS is basically so much like an Amiga that one doesn't need to buy an Expensive Amiga One system to have the Amiga GUI.

For hackers who are into crosscompiling programs there is a bounty system for people to port code to AROS. [http://www.power2people.org/projects/overview/](http://www.power2people.org/projects/overview/)

I should add they already made a Kickstart ROM replacement for the Amiga series of computers so they can run AROS and use the Kickstart replacement in emulators for the Amiga as it should also run AmigaOS/AmigaDOS as well. Giving new life to 68K based Amiga systems and the PowerPC upgrades as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> The big caveats with AROS are basically:

\- Lack of SMP

\- Lack of memory protection

Both are very tricky to do while retaining any kind of reasonable compatibility with AmigaOS.

This + lack of a decent pthreads implementation makes porting of a lot of useful software hard (the amount of Linux/Unix software that depends on fork() alone is massive)

I like AROS, but it badly needs more developers to resolve the issues above if it's to get beyond the "fun to tinker with" stage for most people.

</comment><comment><USER4> Word-processing: A bit of googling suggests that a texlive distribution may exist for AROS. Not wysiwyg but can produce professional results. PDF reading looks like xpdf or one of the dvi based viewers or gv.

OA could perhaps have mentioned bit more detail about the apps supplied. Perhaps a typical workflow for small task?

</comment><comment><USER5> I liked the cheery tone of this piece! It came without the unnecessary editorializing and fluff found in typical review articles. +1 to Networkworld.com</comment>


Ask HN: What's today's version of __why's guide to ruby, but for WebGL? - <AUTHOR> Pretty experienced software engineer but I've found diving into WebGL a bit daunting. What are the better options for intros in the mindset of __why's writings today? <comment><USER2> While I don't know of any resources in the style of __why's writings, open.gl, learnopengl.com, and others are preferred reading these days. WebGL is really just standardized bindings to OpenGL interfaces, and most people working with WebGL in any meaningful sense have C background understanding of the API.

Those sites are fantastic in making OpenGL approachable in my experience, and I write graphics software for hobbyists, so I also have to actively create consumable APIs that are easy to understand.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the service that provides the customer support chat popup? - <AUTHOR> I noticed this on Udacity, Cloudbric and many smaller sites.<p>A chat box pops up in the bottom right corner of the screen where you can chat with a customer service rep. <comment><USER3> There are hundreds of companies that provide this ranging from free to very expensive. This product category is called: Live Chat software.

Here's a list of many providers: [https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best- live-chat-solutions-...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-live-chat- solutions-for-websites) . And here is the Quora topic: [https://www.quora.com/topic/Live-Chat- Software-1](https://www.quora.com/topic/Live-Chat-Software-1) .

</comment><comment><USER4> Probably Intercom: [https://www.intercom.com/](https://www.intercom.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Crisp does that, and is able to integrate with Slack to reply to visitors - <USER2> addition to its Web dashboard.

Website: [https://crisp.im/](https://crisp.im/)

Disclosure: I am the co-founder.

</comment><comment><USER6> Intercom.io - very popular, no free plan

Drift.com - similar to intercom, has a free plan

Tawk.to - never used it, but my carrier does

</comment><comment><USER7> Tawk.to is free and good. Also does pretty solid analytics.

</comment><comment><USER8> tawk.to does the job nicely..and probably the most widely used, and you can't been the price.. 100% free! :)</comment>


Ask HN: Does a Canadian online retailer have to pay US taxes on US sales? - <AUTHOR> I just started working with a small Canadian online retailer that has always done the majority of their business in Canada.
US sales have been considered sales and included in income on the Canadian taxes and a US tax return has never been filed.
As we grow the business in the States, do we have US tax liability even if we don't have a physical presence?  Do we have to collect US sales tax? Pay US income taxes?  Does this change if we open a warehouse in the states? I would hate to invest my effort in this and find out that we owe a bunch of back taxes.
Any information is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> _As we grow the business in the States, do we have US tax liability even if we don 't have a physical presence?_

Possible but unlikely; talk to an accountant. It will depend on a variety of facts which are difficult to assess from your post.

 _Do we have to collect US sales tax?_

If you have a nexus (physical connection) in a US state, you may be required to collect and remit sales tax. Historically, it would be pretty easy to judge that you don't have a nexus. However, states are starting to become more expansive in their definition of what would create one. You may need to talk to an accountant.

Opening a warehouse in the US will almost certainly result in you having a nexus in the US state in which you open the warehouse, which will result in an obligation to collect and remit taxes for that state.

<comment><AUTHOR> If there is a warehouse in the states do you have to pay income taxes of just collect sales taxes? I know I need to find a good accountant...thanks for the recommendation.

<comment><USER2> You need to talk to an accountant and say the words "tax treaty" and "permanent establishment" then listen very carefully to what they say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> no, that's not how that works. If the US intends to tax your goods, they will assess a duty when they are imported into the US.

Edit: I should clarify: I am assuming that you operate entirely in Canada (and Canadian owned), and ship the goods into the US via postal service/ups/fedex/etc.</comment>


YouTube videos capture huge Syrian protests - <AUTHOR> http://dock-of-bay.blogspot.com/2011/06/youtube-videos-capture-huge-syrian.html <comment><USER2> The video is a black rectangle for me. Can someone post a YouTube link?

<comment><USER3> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FByfSsvKVzc></comment></comment>


What goes on in our minds when we see someone naked?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/what-our-minds-do-when-we-see-someones-body/

<comment><USER2> An interesting read, some actually novel empirical data, although the title is a bit link-baity.

I can't help but wonder if this is a learned response in most cultures, i.e. where clothes play a significant social role. One doesn't see many scantly clad university professors vs. working without too much clothes is usually reserved for jobs not requiring particular intelligence or education, so we come to extrapolate from that experience. It would be interesting to see if this effect manifests in societies where people usually go naked or without much clothes. It would also be interesting to see whether this is just about the nakedness or does it apply to other imaginable forms of "embodiment" (from this article I somehow get the intuition that it would).</comment>


Jq: a lightweight and flexible command-line JSON processor - <AUTHOR> https://stedolan.github.io/jq/

<comment><USER2> I fail to see how jq is even close to the functions of App::RecordStream.</comment>


Photos hacked? No worries if you're using this new app - <AUTHOR> http://www.cloaksapp.com

<comment><USER2> So all the photos on iCloud are masked as well? If not, nothing to really stop an attacker breaching that like the fappening.</comment>


Sick of fake web hosting review sites misusing my data - <AUTHOR> http://reviewsignal.com/blog/2017/02/16/hostingadvice-com-steals-review-signals-content-and-uses-it-to-mislead-visitors/ <comment><USER2> There are a lot of examples available of how it is done. Hosting companies must pledge of tightly administering customer's data and must close down all the leaks, re-centralize the locus of control and choke off collaboration to use our data for marketing purpose.</comment>


Daily Mail manipulates graph to suggest stagnant global warming - <AUTHOR> http://sargasso.nl/daily-mail-manipulates-graph-to-suggest-stopped-global-warming/

<comment><USER2> For readers outside the UK, it is worth knowing a little context about the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail is a newspaper in the loosest sense of the word. It is essentially a propaganda rag, flattering its readership by provoking their emotions on topics such as women in the workplace (which is a bad thing and gives them cancer), women not in the workplace (which is a bad thing and gives them cancer), the causes of cancer [1], immigrants, taxes and house prices. Bizarrely, for a publication with such a high female readership, it's remarkably misogynistic.

Typical readers are middle-aged to the elderly, who do not like having their assumptions challenged and find catharsis in the simplicity of the world as presented by the Daily Mail. The phrase "Daily Mail reader" has become shorthand for someone demonstrating characteristics such as ignorance, extremely simple viewpoints on complex situations, and bigotry poorly veiled under spurious numerical data or contextless "factoids".

[1] <http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/>

<comment><USER3> And context for the comment above: It is very common to sneer at Daily Mail readers as a way of demonstrating your own right-on, progressive credentials.

Daily Mail readers are largely right-wing, but that doesn't by definition make them wrong.

<comment><USER4> I don't know if it's as simple as a left vs right wing thing. The telegraph for example is relatively right wing and does not seem to attract the same sort of ire.

<comment><USER3> That is true, but then the Daily Mirror is a left-wing tabloid and doesn't get so much opprobrium, even though (as the news today tells us) they were also guilty of phone-hacking.

<comment><USER5> But nobody reads it (relative to the Daily Mail and The Sun) and it just doesn't seem to matter in terms of the political debate. That is why it doesn't get so much opprobrium - it just doesn't matter.

The Daily Mail and The Sun can mount massive campaigns, ruin careers of politicians and swing large amounts of votes (or at least that is the perception). All the Mirror readers vote Labour whatever they say (not necessarily true but perception amongst politicians).

August readership - Daily Mirror 1.1M, Daily Mail 1.9M, Sun 2.5M Source: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2012/sep/20/abcs- natio...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/table/2012/sep/20/abcs-national- newspapers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Um, the real graph looks just as stagnant as the Daily Mail one.

The difference between them is barely even there.

Is anyone actually looking at the graphs on the blog, or are you just reading the title?

<comment><USER7> This. Very odd.

The real problem is that they are showing a tiny period of time. Global warming levels out a bit now and then and then keeps on going. e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly_1880-2010_\(Fig.A\).gif) around 1965-1975 it didn't really go up much. And a graph of 1935-1945 might make you think we'd conquered global warming forever and that we could all get on with building the global socialist utopia or whatever. Sadly long term trends in complex systems aren't nearly that easy to form conclusions about.

<comment><USER8> Yes. Although it wouldn't surprise me that the _Daily Mail_ altered the figures, it doesn't change much of anything to the overall shape of the graph. Therefore it's probably safe to attribute to stupidity rather than malice.

The article is absolutely missing the point.

<comment><USER9> Did you read the first couple of links in the article? On the day the original publication from DM came, we already debunked it, pointing to the longer time period: <http://sargasso.nl/tweespalt-opwarming-plateau-of-niet/> (in Dutch sorry).

And we refer to others who did similar things.

But this specific article is about adjusting the data before presenting it. The first point (missing 8 months) is "understandable". The second point, changing the data at the beginning and end of the graph, is lying on purpose. That's unacceptable. Even though these are small adjustments (about 0,03 degrees), they are done in purpose and to reach a goal (make more people doubt).

<comment><USER8> I must confess I did not (especially as I don't read Dutch). But I still fail to see how a change of 0.03 degree should be a deliberate attempt at misleading people. I assume that the _Daily Mail_ staff, while not necessarily embarassed by ethics, have at least a modicum of common sense.

<comment><USER9> It's done at both side of the graph, so it makes 0.06 :-) But that's not the point. It's the principle. If you present a graph based on actual data (verified by many scientist) and you change the data however slightly to fit your point of view, that's malice. Why do it otherwise?

Maybe not enough for this though: [http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=Nzg5Nw=...](http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=Nzg5Nw==)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> But the UK Met Office agrees with the Mail article author.

'We agree with Mr Rose that there has been only a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century. As stated in our response, this is 0.05 degrees Celsius since 1997 equivalent to 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.'

And they correctly note -

'However, we do suggest that measurements over the longer-term are more representative of the trend in climate due to the influence of natural variability over shorter timescales.'

[http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office- in-...](http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the- media-14-october-2012/)

<comment><USER11> Man made global warming is a PR invention carefully engineered to create more taxation, trading profits in 'indulgences', and to revive the public support for the nuclear industry.

Even if they persuaded you, you got to admit that these three things are the main tangible results and that they are happening.

The support for the nuclear industry was seriously flagging exactly at the time when the 'global warming' suddenly started getting pushed by certain prominent VIPs and the main stream media. Now many new nuclear reactors are planned, despite Fukushima. This would never have been accepted before 'global warming'.

If you are not convinced, look for example into the background of Sir John Bebbington (made into the UK's chief scientific advisor) and his pronouncements on Fukushima: 'No question, absolutely no danger whatsoever. No comparison with Chernobyl.... etc.'. Made at the time when the reactors were exploding and melting, one after another.

0.03 C per decade means that this trend would have to continue unbroken for a thousand years to achieve a noticeable warming of 3C. Use your common sense, please?

<comment><USER12> Yes, I mean the global scientific consensus and the historical data showing a constant climb is in reality a matter of using common sense correctly, and has nothing to do with the underlying matter being far too complex for a PHD thesis or 1 line correlations between single individuals.

Its tiring to have to go through old posts and historical data to tease apart the points and show why scientists in the field of weather and climate have reached a consensus that climate change is real.

As for you particular assertion that its a PR push - please realize that flagging support for the nuclear industry amongst the public at large remains and is largely independent of global warming fears.

I mean, we are pushing solar, wind and renewable power around the world more than we ever have, and a LOT more than nuclear.

Heck just look at the boom/bust in silicon prices a while back, the constant efforts to reach grid parity through silicon, and the massive solar farms that are being put up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't think it's any surprise that the Daily Mail has used its agenda to mislead its readers.

<comment><USER14> Not at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I sometimes feel that papers or news/media outlets that do this should end up getting fined huge amounts and made to run public apologies (full page or TV) because its such a dangerous topic to mislead people on. That said, its no surprise its coming from the Daily mail.

<comment><USER16> It depresses me that Apple have to do something like that over the Samsung lawsuit, but the newspapers can lie to our faces every day and get away with it. That said, I don't read newspapers anymore for this exact reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote a program to plot temperature data a while ago, although it's from the GHCN rather than the HadCRUT4 data set.

<https://code.google.com/p/tempgraph/>

The square gridding method which they appear to have used in HadCRUT4 introduces problems with singularities, but even with a better gridding method the anomaly results are broadly in line with the conventional view about global warming.

</comment><comment><USER18> It seems that there is not much difference between the gossip magazines and the newspapers any more.</comment>


Ask HN: Why did three HN stories jump 100 ranking points in 5 mins? - <AUTHOR>

http://hnrankings.info/8311860,8312295,8312249,8312411/

  #162 -> #25   Server Migration with Zero Downtime
  #135 -> #11   Show HN: Pup – A command line HTML parser
  #127 -> #23   The Impossible Star
 <comment><USER2> We've been experimenting for the last few months with systems to prevent good stories from falling through the cracks. Your left column is the cracks.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+cracks#!/comment/for...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Adang+cracks#!/comment/forever/0/author%3Adang%20cracks)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157880)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8134682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8134682)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8122403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8122403)

<comment><USER3> How do you define "good"? What checks and balances are there to prevent abuse?

This all sounds rather worrying.

<comment><USER2> That's a bit vague so I may not be addressing your concern exactly, but it sounds like you're worried about the front page not being a simple ranking by community upvotes. HN has never been a simple ranking by community upvotes; it has always been a blend of upvotes and curation. Why? Because, unfortunately, upvotes alone would produce a front page of controversy, gossip, and fashion. Upvotes go disproportionately for 'hot' stories. If we want quieter, more reflective material on HN—which we certainly do—there needs to be a countervailing factor.

Re abuse, you'd have to be more specific about what you mean, but I suppose the general answer is you needn't be more worried about it now than you've been for the previous seven years, since there hasn't been any major change at that level. The major change has been greater transparency, because users asked for it.</comment></comment></comment>


Lobbyists rewrote Washington state's privacy law - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.eu/article/how-lobbyists-rewrote-washington-state-privacy-law-microsoft-amazon-regulation/ <comment><USER2> "In the final draft circulated among local lawmakers last week, which was obtained by POLITICO, Ryan Harkins, a senior public policy director at Microsoft, also wrote notes in the margins, often chiding lawmakers for their legislative approach and deleting sections of the bill that he viewed as unsatisfactory."

Lobbying is pure corruption. No individual citizens or even organizations have such power to strike paragraphs from a draft law. Even assuming that those edits would be ignored, they bias the legislators against public interests.

<comment><USER3> That's a perverted view of the "public interest" as being diametrically opposed to corporate interests. Microsoft is a major employer in Washington. Not to mention, it's one of the nation's major innovators, making products everyone uses. It's views on proposed legislation are extremely relevant and helpful and it's in the "public interest" for legislators to consider them.

Note that some of the provisions in question would have been a huge boon to plaintiffs' attorneys:

> While the state's attorney general had called for the inclusion of a right > for individuals to sue companies for potential wrongdoing, such a provision > was eventually not included in the final proposals. Financial penalties — > much-needed teeth to ensure compliance — were capped at just $7,500 for each > intentional violation and $2,500 for any unintended infractions.

Violations are generally construed to be "per user." So a single unintentional error could result in a huge penalty. Creating a private cause of action would have created a huge incentive to turn every unintentional error into a class action lawsuit.

<comment><USER4> It's in the public interest for legislators to consider those views alongside the views of the general public. Unfortunately the latter does not have the resources to lobby as effectively as Microsoft does…

<comment><USER3> Draft legislation in Washington is publicly available. Anyone (including privacy groups) could submit a redline markup. To the extent that the legislature might prioritize the views of Microsoft isn't corruption, it's common sense. The EU created a heavy handed data privacy law because it would be American companies that would feel most of the compliance burden. When you are Washington state and one those companies is in your own back yard, the calculus is different.

This is the exactly sort of scenario where lobbying is important. "Privacy" sounds good in the abstract. It's like "think of the children." Who could be against more privacy? But what's going to be the impact on local businesses? On the products people buy?

<comment><USER4> > Draft legislation in Washington is publicly available. Anyone (including > privacy groups) could submit a redline markup.

Yes, but that requires that people know about the legislation and care enough to be involved, and it is unlikely that they'll be more willing than Microsoft will because it will affect them significantly less.

> The EU created a heavy handed data privacy law because it would be American > companies that would feel most of the compliance burden.

It turns out that American companies are disproportionally affected because there are more large American companies, which means the law will target them more. That's like saying the U.S. should drop out of environmental agreements because they'll hurt our local industry more–it's not taking into account the fact that it's our own companies disproportionately causing the problem the legislation is trying to solve.

> "Privacy" sounds good in the abstract. It's like "think of the children."

"Think of the children" tends to lead to mass surveillance and a degradation of liberties, while calls for "privacy" lead to…Facebook earning less money? Where are you trying to take this argument?

<comment><USER3> > Yes, but that requires that people know about the legislation and care > enough to be involved, and it is unlikely that they'll be more willing than > Microsoft will because it will affect them significantly less.

Aren't those reasons to weigh the company's views more heavily?

> It turns out that American companies are disproportionally affected because > there are more large American companies, which means the law will target > them more. That's like saying the U.S. should drop out of environmental > agreements because they'll hurt our local industry more–it's not taking into > account the fact that it's our own companies disproportionately causing the > problem the legislation is trying to solve.

It certainly would be prudent for legislators to be more cautious about environmental legislation that could affect major domestic employers. The cost benefit (the potential gain from a cleaner environment versus the potential loss from reduced economic activity) is different for the US than for other countries.

> "Think of the children" tends to lead to mass surveillance and a degradation > of liberties, while calls for "privacy" lead to…Facebook earning less money? > Where are you trying to take this argument?

For both things, the benefits are widely appreciated while the costs necessarily are not. It's entirely appropriate for companies to come in and say "hey, this law sounds great but is going to put additional burdens on companies that are out of proportion to the benefits." Legislators must of course balance the resulting input, but the process of providing that input is not corruption.

As to Facebook making less money, that is a cost that must be considered. A huge fraction of the fancy coffee and avocado toast industry is bankrolled by Facebook money. If the benefits from increased privacy don't outweigh the losses to companies like Facebook, the law is a bad one.

<comment><USER4> > Aren't those reasons to weigh the company's views more heavily?

No. Coming back to the environmental (which is decent metaphor, I think), a company which dumps into the local river is going to fight tooth and nail against any regulation that stops them from doing this because it might have a significant effect on their bottom line, while for most people this will not be enough for them to care to get involved because the harm is difficult to measure individually and hard to conceptualize (but, over the entire population, has significant detrimental effects). This shouldn't mean that the government should weigh corporate concerns more heavily.

> The cost benefit (the potential gain from a cleaner environment versus the > potential loss from reduced economic activity) is different for the US than > for other countries.

Well, of course it is: it depends on which countries have business that rely on their negative externalities not catching up to them.

> Legislators must of course balance the resulting input

The problem is that the input legislators get is from a source that is strongly biased towards viewpoints that have a lot riding on the laws being put in place, which is generally not the people you want to be listening to for a fair, balanced opinion.

> If the benefits from increased privacy don't outweigh the losses to > companies like Facebook, the law is a bad one.

This is highly dependent on which group you are looking at. From Facebook's perspective, most privacy laws are bad for them, while from their user's perspective most privacy laws are probably good. The issue is that the latter group is being left out when this consideration is made, or at least is not well represented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft could have thrown their lot in with Apple, but I guess they're going to look more like the ad-tech giants than Apple and need to preserve the status quo.

Apple should assemble a separate coalition of businesses that would lean just as hard as the ad-tech coalition in favor of privacy in all these state legislatures. I'm pretty sure most enterprise SaaS companies that charge money for their product would have similar interests.

</comment><comment><USER6> The text and history of the bill is available here [0]. It does not appear to have made much progress in the House, so they may run out of time to pass it at all.

[0]: [https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5376&Year=2019](https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5376&Year=2019)

</comment><comment><USER7> Did Jay Inslee invite these people? I'm not clear on that point.</comment>


AI will replace coders by 2040, warn academics - <AUTHOR> https://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/3022589/ai-could-replace-coders-by-2040-say-academics <comment><USER2> The study cited is a 3 page PDF that has absolutely zero scientific weight.

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00676.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.00676.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I cannot believe is only 3 pages do you really need 3 authors to do that?

At least this kind of academia wont be replaced because their work is worthless, thus we have no interest into automating it.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't matter how many pages are there in a paper. It's the content that matters. Math papers have the best chance of standing out here due to good abstractions: [https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper- max...](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7330/which-math-paper-maximizes- the-ratio-importance-length)

If you discovered something amazing that takes one page to describe, why write a book about it? Even if it took 80 people in the team.

PS. exactly this kind of work (crappy paper) has been automated: [http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/](http://thatsmathematics.com/mathgen/) ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well then, surely academics will have been replaced by 2030, right?

<comment><USER6> "It's ok if it's true as I figure Professor of AI will be the last job title standing" (Patrick Henry Winston, MIT AI & The Future of Work Conference 2nd Nov 2017)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The final paragraph gives a clue about how serious the authors themselves seem to take their claims:

 _Machines writing code under human direction will only further improve our ability to explore the universe, enjoy life, and stream Netflix, especially if it saves us the trouble of learning how to make extremely heterogeneous systems work together._

You go ahead and stream Netflix, I think I'll write some more code.

<comment><USER8> > Machines writing code under human direction

Plus, that human direction is essentially what programmers do _now_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The academics are certain that there will therefore be a shift from human > coders to AI-driven coders by 2040.

On the ML front, little appears to be fundamentally new in the last two decades. Not sure how the ML classification craze is going to metastasize into full AI in the next two without some major new developments. 'Academic certainty' isn't going to do it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Good, we won't have to fix the time rollover bug ourselves after all.

<comment><USER11> Sadly we'll be replaced 2 years too late. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hasn't it done so already? To a first approximation, none of us spends significant time coding in machine language; rather, we write in higher-level languages which heuristics-based artificial intelligences then compile down to machine language. Why, some of us use yet more-advanced AIs which can even perform certain safety checks for us, to ensure e.g. that we aren't using kilometres per hour when we ought to be using inches per second.

I'm not just being coy: as long as there are computers generating code, there will be a need for people to tell those computers what to generate. Those people will be coders, whatever they are called at the time.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. "Software developer" > "coder", and the difference will only become more stark as machines become more advanced, giving the developers more powerful tools.

The key ability of a good developer is finding out and understanding _what needs to be done_ , the translation form the language of business to the language of technology. Technology has moved from low-level register juggling of 1950s to modern high-level, more and more declarative languages and frameworks. But the need to be able to map the informal requirements of business to it did not go away, and likely will not for quite some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good! We should be working to automate ourselves away, along with everything else. It's what we do.

</comment><comment><USER15> Before that happens the area's of code review and auditing would be most likely to happen as without that, we will just have AI that can produce buggy code much faster than before.

After all, if AI could code like a human, even the best of us make mistakes and without that avenue of teaching them to be better, by auditing and reviewing existing code, we will only create more problems than we solve.

For many others, intelligent compiler reports would be their first wish.

</comment><comment><USER16> The paper's abstract contradicts the article title. The paper argues that AI will "allow humans to cope with the difficulty of programming different devices efficiently and easily." This is much more believable than the assertion that coders will be replaced.

</comment><comment><USER17> At that point then, I imagine absolutely everything will have already been automated. Lawyers would certainly no longer be needed, nor would much of the judicial system. Music would be automated, hell maybe even animated movies. We might have celebrity neural nets that produce the best music/paintings/memes.

I definitely agree that coding will look different after AI has permeated most of our information systems, but fully automated coding by 2040? Really? I honestly only see mundane boilerplate type of coding tasks being automated -- though arguably that is probably what a large majority of software developers are currently doing.

<comment><USER18> I talk to people today who think that mechanical design is basically trivial because we have CAD. All these tools do is help us do much more than we could before. But at some point humans get to decide what we want to use our tools for.

We'll just have much more technological power in the future.

<comment><USER19> We obsoleted hand drafting decades ago. Yet it takes ever bigger and more expensive teams to make airplanes.

<comment><USER20> Surely this is because the systems are more complex that you would have no hope designing using pens and pencils, even with the largest team in the world.

As the capacity increases so does the complexity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Jokes on them, I'm about to hit my 40's.

Seriously though, if this happens, the repercussions might be far greater than coders having been replaced by (I'd assume self-improving) AI.

</comment><comment><USER22> Yeah, lets hope they make it self improving too, then nobody needs to work anymore.

<comment><USER23> One word: skynet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Doubt it. Where are my flying cars, BTW.

</comment><comment><USER25> Programming "entities" argue about golang not having generics. Initiate global thermonuclear war thanks to security bug found in Rust library. AI finds .net of no interest. World saved by humans who fired up an ancient version of Delphi and wrote a worm.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Have you guys seen this generative CAD project: [https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher](https://autodeskresearch.com/projects/dreamcatcher)

What would the software programming equivalent look like?

</comment><comment><USER26> Lone paper on arxiv without any arguments but just "predictions" from "current trends".

Get real. This is just futurology. Knowingly deceptive article trying to set what people talk about.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nothing like a good headline! As to the subject, no, AI won't replace coders by 2040. I'll meet y'all back here then to say I told you so.

</comment><comment><USER28> Time to rediscover Perlis' doctrine and stock up on lollipops ?

</comment><comment><USER29> Coders need to strike now and kill the AI threat. We should not wait for 2040!!! \- No deep learning, \- No Alpha Go Zero, \- No autonomous cars, \- No whiteboard tests, \- No open office, \- No rental increases.

</comment><comment><USER30> I guess the gen1 AIs will be coding the gen2 AIs then?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'll believe it when I see it

</comment><comment><USER32> Warn? Isn't this expected....

</comment><comment><USER33> Couldn't happen sooner! ;)

</comment><comment><USER34> Hogwash.

</comment><comment><USER35> lol

</comment><comment><USER36> Why is this flagged? Oakridge is a reputable national lab - just because their research is unpalatable, doesn't make it irrelevant. HN - denial is NOT the answer

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, that's why I submitted it as it has some credibility behind the name. @dang</comment></comment>


How emotions underlie even the coldest human calculations - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612386/how-emotions-underlie-even-the-coldest-human-calculations/ <comment><USER2> i really enjoyed this article and i think that chess players were a perfect case study for this sort of thing, i wonder though how applicable this is to other games or every day life.</comment>


The coming electric vehicle transformation - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6464/422 <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting observation:

> _To reach cost parity with personal gasoline cars, which typically travel > 12,000 to 15,000 miles /year, battery prices must decline to near $100/kWh > from the present value of $180 to $200/kWh. Projections of the year of cost > parity for electric vehicles with gasoline cars globally range from 2022 to > 2026 (5, 6). At that point, economics could well take over as the primary > impetus for electrification, and electric vehicles would then be on a path > to transportation dominance._

References:

[5] J. Romm, Plummeting battery prices to make electric cars cheaper than gas cars in 3 years (ThinkProgress, 16 April 2019); [https://thinkprogress.org/electric-vehicles-cheaper- gasoline...](https://thinkprogress.org/electric-vehicles-cheaper-gasoline- cars-e4c86bd2aebe/)

[6] M. Holland, $100/kWh Tesla Battery Cells This Year, $100/kWh Tesla Battery Packs In 2020 (Clean Technica, 9 June 2018); [https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla- battery-c...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery- cells-this-year-100-kwh-tesla-battery-packs-in-2020/)</comment>


All friends aren't created equal (why we need better relationship marking in social networks) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bladam.com/main/entry/grouping-on-social-networks/ <comment><USER2> I'm the guy who wrote this blog entry on relationship marking and grouping, and I just found this news.ycombinator.com site via my referrals.

Of course, I was familiar with ycombinator, but not this news page. Thanks for including my article here, and timg, thanks for the kind comments :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Specific and interesting suggestions. Nice ideas.</comment>


The Construct - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandonpelfrey.com/blog/the-construct/

<comment><USER2> Was the title change really necessary? No one knows what "The Construct" is, but a lot of people know what "Fluid Simulation in 9 Lines of Code, and More on Fast Simulation Prototyping" is.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, WTF is "The Construct"? The original title was much more informative. I'm not against editing headlines, but throwing away an informative one for something my teenage brother would name a band is _not_ helpful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I did something far less sophisticated many years ago for my undergraduate degree. Basically a Navier-Stokes solver using finite-differencing techniques to model gas particulates in an enclosed area. This was to support a larger framework to pinpoint things like electrical fires using sensors in something like the space shuttle. Originally written in C++ but ported to Fortran 90 as my grad student couldn't read C++ (or maybe it was my C++).

The technique here which I guess is effectively finite element was far more difficult to implement at the time and reserved for professional tools like Fluent (my company today uses Fluent for this stuff today though not me directly and I'm sure we pay quite a bit for it.)

I browsed through the code and it was far better than anything I ever wrote at university. I think its deceptive to say 9 lines of code given the volume of support libraries but I would have killed to get my hands on this 17 years ago. Boundary conditions and configuring the actual volume was actually the hard part and took a majority of my time back then and I'm guessing that probably hasn't changed. Anyway cool stuff if only a few years late for me to make use of.

<comment><USER5> The thing that stood out for me, and made me think "nice", was Brandon's idea of creating a vector field type. One can then apply operators directly to the field, without having to think in terms of lower level constructs. In that sense, I think the '9-lines' claim is fair.

Any comments from anyone (Brandon?), as to whether configuration and boundary conditions can be simply applied to the vector field type?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ARGH. STOP WITH THE RENAMING OF EXISTING STORIES ALREADY!

</comment><comment><USER7> A language like APL has made work of this kind far simpler for quite some time. I was doing basic fluid simulation work and planetary/orbital calculation with APL at least 15 years ago.

Starting from something like raw C or C++ means that the ability to express problems at this level of complexity is impossible without first writing a library to create the "words" and "verbs" you'll need. Then it's a piece of cake.

A language like APL gets you to a much more expressive level right away. Exploring more complex problems from that vantage point is far simpler (and a lot more fun in my opinion).</comment>


Ruby gem output has declined significantly in recent months - <AUTHOR> According to modulecounts.com Ruby gem output has declined significantly in the last 3 months. For the last 3 years output remained constant at 40 to 50 gems per day but in June it dropped to 33 and the trend seems to have continued with recent output at 27 which is half of its peak of 53 in 2013. <comment><USER2> I am not sure what do you expect? Ruby is clearly not popular anymore. It's all about javascript nowadays.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I think it's still worth pointing-out the evidence as some dismiss any mention of Ruby's decline. The puzzling factor is how Python seems to be on an upward trajectory given that the 2 languages are pretty similar. Maybe Ruby bet too heavily on Rails in the end.

<comment><USER3> ruby now is just about web.

python is used in more categories than just web (science, ML, AI, web, glue language, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Significantly in the statistical sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a decline of 1/3 in the last 3 months so I'd say significant in any sense of the word.</comment></comment>


Mono Success Story - <AUTHOR> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.mono.devel/35827 <comment><USER2> Writing your interface in the native language/toolkit and then interfacing it to a cross-platform backend is often a better solution than trying to shoe- horn everything into one GUI that won't fit to any OS properly. Which is especially true for Macs.

I remember that the imeem guys did something similar with their chat/social app (defunct now).</comment>