Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides for 80 Years (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years <comment><USER3> What I don't fully understand is, usually when scientists try to preserve rare species, there is a critical mass under which there isn't enough genetic diversity to preserve the species (I've seen ~30 quoted for some rare mammals). But in this case, just two individuals were able to start a viable population. Why are these insects different? I can only think of a couple reasons...

\- since these insects have a r-selection curve, it's ok if 90% of the offspring are genetic defects, you can always produce another 1,000 eggs

\- the insects had maintained such a small population for so long that any critical defects had been bred out

But I'd be interested to hear from a real biologist.

Edit: oops, meant r-selection, not k-selection

<comment><USER4> IANARB, but-

Minimum viable genetic diversity is not a particularly well-established or even objectively knowable metric. I think the relevant number is often vastly overstated, or at least stated without mentioning the strong and arbitrary assumptions that need to be made in determining it.

Wikipedia says: "The cheetah has unusually low genetic variability. This is accompanied by a very low sperm count, motility, and deformed flagella.[14] Skin grafts between unrelated cheetahs illustrate the former point, in that there is no rejection of the donor skin. It is thought that the species went through a prolonged period of inbreeding following a genetic bottleneck during the last ice age. This suggests that genetic monomorphism did not prevent the cheetah from flourishing across two continents for thousands of years.[15]"

Now - cheetahs are objectively less fit than they would have been without these population bottlenecks, but they're fit enough that they have not been outcompeted. They are probably highly vulnerable to contagion, though - <USER2> it's only a matter of time before something figures out how to wipe them out... but maybe not. Science isn't gonna be able to predict that one for you.

Anything we can figure out how to breed in captivity, in a controlled environment without predators and with an abundant food supply, has very low pressure on it - these bugs could all have the insect equivalent of mental retardation and missing limbs and at least some of them could probably make it to successfully reproduce.

<comment><USER5> what is the RB in your "I am not a..." ?

<comment><USER6> 'Real Biologist', as requested by the parent.

<comment><USER7> Or possibly 'Research Biologist'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What I find interesting about the paper[1], regarding housing:

> "[include] a jar of water. There is no need to cover the top of the jar, as > LHISIs generally do not drown themselves as other insects do, except for > very small nymphs on very rare occasions."

So I guess being stuck on a rock surrounded by water taught them to avoid falling into the water, unlike apparently other (land-based) insects.

[1] [http://www.aszk.org.au/docs/lhisi.pdf](http://www.aszk.org.au/docs/lhisi.pdf)

<comment><USER9> They are also much much larger than most insects, that's helps too.

And strong enough to defeat surface tension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Where, they wondered, did that poop come from?

The question that drives scientists to do what they do.

<comment><USER10> As well as parents and dog owners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Alberta is rat free, and is kept that way. Its been rat free for over 50 years now. The border is patrolled to keep the rats out, and there is a hefty $5000 fine for keeping rats.

<comment><USER12> Questionable. Rat populations have been found at the Medicine Hat landfill, first in 2012 and again in 2014[1]. I guess it's a good sign that it makes national news when a population is found, but they're almost certainly present elsewhere.

[1] [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/several-rats- spotted-a...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/several-rats-spotted-at- medicine-hat-landfill-1.2602916)

<comment><USER13> Perhaps, it is better to say "largely rat free." I grew up in eastern Alberta, and I certainly never saw a rat until I moved out of province as an adult.

<comment><USER14> I mean, I grew up in California, not even remotely rat free, and I think I've seen... three-ish... rats in my nearly 40 years? Besides pets or lab animals.

Rats hide. Doesn't mean there aren't a fairly large number of them around.

<comment><USER13> OK. I grew up on a farm where I saw plenty of mice and other wildlife that is known for hiding. I never saw a rat nor any evidence of a rat.

EDITED to add: We had cats which killed mice and gophers and birds and voles and all sorts of creatures. I NEVER saw a rat. I know it is hard to believe, but Alberta really is (at least mostly) rat free.

<comment><USER15> Rats are the one pest that are almost unafraid of humans. Once upon a time, I lived in a wooden cabin that rats had found a way into, via holes cut in the floor for pipes by the kitchen sink.

Late in the evening, one would pop up. I could get up to chase it away, but it wouldn't flee until I got close, and it would pop out again a few seconds later. It knew it could out-wait me and there was little I could do to stop it that night. Trying to block the hole merely meant they ate away the wood around the hole, until they could get back in again.

Mice aren't a problem at all. You don't want rats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm all for preserving endangered species and all, but frankly these insects scare the hell out of me and if I was anywhere close to one of them I may run away, screaming like a little girl.

I believe I'm not very exceptional a person thus I suspect they'll have difficulties convincing people to have this species reintroduced on any inhabited island.

<comment><USER17> 'screaming like a small child" perhaps is better.

<comment><USER9> > screaming like a small child" perhaps is better.

Why is that better?

Have you never heard a little girl scream? It's not the same as the sound of a little boy.

Let's not let political correctness wash away every difference that makes individuals special.

<comment><USER18> Since voices don't change until puberty -- any kid screaming sounds the same.

And in the vein of special individuals, there are little girls who love and hate insects, and little boys who love and hate insects. Perhaps a more original phrase or analogy would be better: I would scream like a Dryococelus australis being attacked by rats.

<comment><USER9> > Since voices don't change until puberty -- any kid screaming sounds the > same.

Apparently you have not met any. They don't sound anything alike, except maybe as newborns.

> there are little girls who love and hate insects

He just said scream like a little girl, there was no connotation of girls hating or loving insects. Just a sound.

<comment><USER19> _there was no connotation of girls hating or loving insects. Just a sound._

There was, however, the connotation that girls are prissy and easily scared.

<comment><USER20> Where? How? There is no such thing said anywhere - if you made such connection in your brain then well, it's your problem. It's a description of a sound, nothing more, nothing less.

<comment><USER19> You strike me as the kind of person who literally believes in everything a politician says, and is unaware of subtexts. If you think that all that people say is only the pure literal surface meaning of their words, than that is very much _your_ problem, not mine.

Also, the trope is "run away, screaming like a little girl", not just "screaming like a little girl".

<comment><USER20> I think this is a general problem with us programmers - we read everything incredibly literally. If you want to read into subtext then please do, but I don't see it. Fortunately I am not interested in politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are there any updates to this story? How is the de-ratification going? A few searches did not turn up anything that seemed like a useful update.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's a slightly more recent article from August 2012: [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running- ponies/2012/08/2...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running- ponies/2012/08/22/lord-howe-island-stick-insects-are-going-home/)

It says that they've established a captive population of giant stick insects on Lord Howe, and they were planning to start eradicating rodents this year:

"The plan is to eradicate the rats and mice from conservation areas on Lord Howe Island in 2015, and then reintroduce the captive-bred stick insects, and their natural predators – a sub-species of boobook owl. This AU$9 million project has just been approved last month, as announced by Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke and NSW Environment Minister Robyn Parker. According to the government press release, they hope to wipe out more than 130,000 rodents using poison baits, some dropped by air, in allocated conservation areas. Special 'arks' will be used to protect native, endangered species until the rodents are gone."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure why, but this brought a tear to my eye. Those insects are beautiful in their own way.

<comment><USER23> Same for me, it's mostly the romantic element of the lone survivors hidden on that unreal island.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This has been here already a couple times... But it's amazing nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER25> The idea is not to change disgusting black rats by disgusting black huge insects, in fact is more complex.

If we could wipe rats and restore the unique ecosystem some other species could re-flourish again.

Like this fligthless bird, the Lord Howe Island Woodhen, only 15 of those birds remained in 1980 in the world, about 300 birds currently:

[http://m2.i.pbase.com/o6/21/489821/1/146964222.sYTnvRRL.DSC_...](http://m2.i.pbase.com/o6/21/489821/1/146964222.sYTnvRRL.DSC_9444.jpg)

Or this beautiful endemic stag bettle

[http://blog-imgs-46-origin.fc2.com/a/r/c/arc6464/20111120214...](http://blog- imgs-46-origin.fc2.com/a/r/c/arc6464/20111120214347443.jpg)

this exclusive snail:

[http://www.lordhowe- tours.com.au/images/snail_survey.jpg](http://www.lordhowe- tours.com.au/images/snail_survey.jpg)

some birds will benefit also

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Lord_Howe...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Lord_Howe_Silvereye.jpg)

[http://www.barraimaging.com.au/Birds-By- Country/BirdsOfAustr...](http://www.barraimaging.com.au/Birds-By- Country/BirdsOfAustralia-1/Passerines/Whistlers-and-Allies/Australian-Golden- Whistler/i-dLTbqQX/0/L/Australian%20Golden%20Whistler%20Male%20%28%20Pachycephala%20pectoralis%20%29%20Ssp%20contempta%20Lord%20Howe%20NSW%20May%202011%20AU- AUGW-11-L.jpg)

[http://www.avesphoto.com/website/pictures/TLTGRY-2.jpg](http://www.avesphoto.com/website/pictures/TLTGRY-2.jpg)

and also this big bush cockroach:

[http://lordhowe-tours.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/Cock...](http://lordhowe-tours.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2014/06/Cockroach_small.jpg)

And also other 950 endemic species

</comment><comment><USER26> There's a very nice animation short on Vimeo about the story: [https://vimeo.com/76647062](https://vimeo.com/76647062)

</comment><comment><USER27> i'm in two minds about this.

on the one hand, this is evolution in action, the habitat for this animal was decreased by the presence of a successful predator.

on the other, rats have no sympathy from me, and we have plenty of them around, so why not wipe them out to allow insects to flourish?

somehow killing a bunch of rats to allow a failed species to reclaim its territory seems wrong. so i lean towards letting this insect take its chances in its tiny little habitat.

if we were talking about exterminating people to make room for any of the species we have destroyed it would be a no-brainer...

<comment><USER28> But it wasn't natural competition, we brought the rats there. I guess you can argue that the actions of humans are just as "natural" as any others. However, I think this is a very foolish way of looking at the situation because we act based on intelligence, not instinct.

Competition only "works" when everyone is playing by the same rules. This means that we throw off the equilibrium for the rest of the planet because we play by different rules. In fact, our intelligence is such that I don't even think we're playing the same game any more.

<comment><USER27> its not just that we brought the rats there, its that rats are so well adapted to being transported by people that they spread with us and succeed in diverse habitats.

keeping that island rat free is going to be a constant battle, because rats are so good at spreading by using our transportation as a vector.

like i say, i'm in two minds... i do think its incredibly sad to wipe out a species by introducing another like this. we lose something really special and unique. i just can't give equal weight to the argument because its so flooby dooby and driven by emotion rather than sensiblity.

also, i don't think we play by different rules... we classically out compete every other species in almost every habitat. we are the pinnacle of evolution today. the fallout of our actions are nature in action, despite the temptation to treat humans with some special place of privilege in the natural order of things... that being said, our alturism is part of that success, and is ultimately the source for the feeling argument.

<comment><USER29> We are special though. How many species can simply alter an environment so that it can live somewhere that would otherwise be uninhabitable by it?

Now seeing that we're already altering our environment however we want, why not alter it back? Especially if you consider humans to be playing by the same rules. In that light, who cares about the rats? We out competed them, we'll alter things in ways that please us.

<comment><USER27> some of the very first and most basic life, algae, completely transformed the atmosphere of the entire planet and continue to have the dominant effect on it, in ways that dwarf the human impact on it in recent times, we do not consider them special for the scale of their effect...

but yes, you are right about altering it back. this is why our altruism and the 'feeling' argument has more merit than logically it should. (for me)

<comment><USER28> But the algae didn't _intend_ to alter it. That's the difference. We don't respond to environmental pressure, we just apply equal and opposite pressure (for the most part, obviously everything has a cost). It's like a psychology experiment. If one of the subjects figures out the parameters of the experiment the experiment is ruined because that individual will likely mess up the whole system by acting intelligently instead of naturally.

We are the only ones that significantly alter our environment. If there was a continuum of intelligence, with a fairly smooth and not-to-concave curve, I would be inclined to agree with you. But there isn't, it's a bunch of animals that have no appreciable ability to alter their environments purposefully, and then us. Therefore anything we do falls in the "contaminated experiment" category.

<comment><USER27> define intent and intelligence?

i'm yet to see evidence of free will, i'm not convinced i am not just a machine doing its thing like everything else is... also, this feels like a religious argument from both sides.

<comment><USER28> I agree that this borders on philosophy. The reason I hold the opinion I hold is that I feel it results in greater sustainability. The Earth regulates itself pretty effectively and did so for a long time before we got smart. Therefore, I think we're better off messing around with it as little as possible and allowing that self-regulation to continue to the greatest extent possible since we don't actually know if we can do better, or even as well, (and if we bet that we can and can't, we're in trouble).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How do you get rats off an island? My grandmother showed me…

<comment><USER31> For anyone who is confused, compto35 is referencing this chilling monologue from the James Bond film "Skyfall"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0dFsAtAlEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0dFsAtAlEo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Its always great to hear a positive story in conservation

</comment><comment><USER33> The title of this article is base clickbait...

<comment><USER34> I can't exactly describe how, but it doesn't feel like clickbait. Maybe because it wasn't misleading, obviously it wasn't going to be about real six- legged giant, so I assumed it was an animal or something.

<comment><USER35> Right. It turned out that it was /actually a good title for the article/.</comment></comment></comment>


Travel - <AUTHOR> https://www.touranb.com <comment><AUTHOR> Touranb offers a single point Travel hub and search engine that enables Travelers to search, choose and book Africa tours</comment>


Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again - <AUTHOR> http://coinmarketcap.com/ <comment><USER2> As someone actively working in this space for the past 3 years, I have a few observations on Bitcoin's price movements:

* The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional.

* The only real world application of Bitcoin that I have seen so far has been 1) Black markets; 2) International money transfer (it's faster to do Bank-Exchange-Bitcoin-Exchange-Bank in most cases than direct bank to bank transfers. That should tell you something about the current state of banking.

* Using market caps for a commodity is ridiculous. The only meaningful parameters to track is nr of transactions, depth of order books globally, nr of exchanges in countries.

Side note: I don't hold any crypto currencies anymore. I don't invest in things which I can't have direction over.

<comment><USER3> The reason for slower bank-to-bank over international borders is probably more related to managing liability than it is to inefficiency.

<comment><USER4> Long settlement times are a feature, not a bug. It reduces externality costs (drugs and terror) and reduces insurance costs. (reverseability)

<comment><USER5> Plus the bank gets to charge interest while they hold it, a week at my bank and a week at the receiving bank, for multiple transactions is a nice little earner.

<comment><USER6> Wow, what bank takes a week to do an international wire? For me it always seems to arrive the next business day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Chinese second-class investors are doing another pump-and-dump scheme now using the #HalvingHype.

Bitcoin has gained no consumer adoption, most new development is happening with Ethereum, and Bitcoin got replaced in headlines with Blockchain.

I see this final pump-and-dump as a desperation move. Imagine this applied to stocks as "Let's pump AMZN, because if we don't, it will go out of business."

This time, the pump is done by miners predominantly and the volumes are small as people moved to more profitable investments long ago

<comment><USER8> > Bitcoin has gained no consumer adoption

[https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins](https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins)

How do you explain away the increased adoption in nearly every country listed there?

And Bitcoin ATMs are growing at a steady clip:

[https://coinatmradar.com/charts/](https://coinatmradar.com/charts/)

These are two metrics of real growth that goes against what you're describing.

<comment><USER7> All local ATMs I know closed down...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I want to see what happens after 28 days: [http://www.thehalvening.com/](http://www.thehalvening.com/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3o89yz/the_halveni...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3o89yz/the_halvening/)

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of this has to do with unease within the Chinese economy. Gold is also being bought around the same clip, and long term bonds have yields that are plummeting despite a possible rate hike.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's kind of a pity that three years have passed since it arguably went mainstream (among the tech literate at least) and the most prevalent use case is still by and large speculation. Making money is cool and all but the technology had a lot more promise than this.

<comment><USER4> Up until this month - most of the speculation has been dead. That's why coinbase is pivoting. The majority of bitcoin is being used by people who need it in order to run their businesses.

<comment><USER12> Pivoting? Adding Ethereum as another asset on their exchange is not pivoting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is inevitable as everyone saw what happened at the litecoin halving last summer (if you don't pay attention to such things, it was a massive spike then dump).

<comment><USER14> So I take it you bought loads of bitcoin a few weeks ago?

<comment><USER13> I wish.. I just spent 5 years of minimum wage grad school so my pockets are not that deep.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is question as to whether this is even real, or just Willybotted up. This article is from March, but it hasn't stopped: [http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/reminder- chi...](http://www.bitcoinfuturesguide.com/bitcoin-blog/reminder-chinese- bitcoin-spot-exchanges-okcoin-and-huobi-are-faking-a-majority-of-their- trading-volume)

What happens if you try to cash in at these prices? There's no actual demand, so the price flash-crashes: [http://qntra.net/2016/06/mere-265-bitcoin-sell- causes-flashc...](http://qntra.net/2016/06/mere-265-bitcoin-sell-causes- flashcrash-at-coinbase-chronically-thin-orderbook-to-blame/)

<comment><USER16> OKcoin is not the only exchange... Yes, you can't trust many of the Chinese exchanges. But there are 10s of thousands of bitcoins being traded daily on many different (non-Chinese) exchanges that don't fake their volume.

Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken, three of the more reputable USD exchanges, have had a combined volume of over 30k BTC alone in the past 24 hours. [http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=USD&span=24h](http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list?currency=USD&span=24h).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if Chinese price manipulation has anything to do with the upcoming Australian Bitcoin auction in late June.

<comment><USER4> there is no such thing as price manipulation.

<comment><USER18> Only volume manipulation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, look at dogecoin, still fighting, much determination. Never give up dogecoin.

</comment><comment><USER20> Scam at its best.

</comment><comment><USER21> $10B down, a few trillion to go.

<comment><USER22> Should be a matter of weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> New wave of cryptocurrency scam started in May. How long it will last this time?

<comment><USER24> As long as there is criminal activity, there will be cryptocurrencies.

<comment><USER25> ...and fiat currencies

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Also bigger than Twitter.

Bitcoin has maybe 3 million users (maybe). Twitter has 300 million. I'm investing in both, and I wonder how much Bitcoin would be worth at 300 million users. The network effects are going to be fun to watch

<comment><USER26> Lol HN really doesn't like Bitcoin. Sour grapes I guess

<comment><USER18> No, I think HN realizes Bitcoin price isn't correlated to number of users. After all, the number of "users" hasn't grown that much over the past 30 days, even though the price is up 50%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Surpassing Western Union's market cap.

<comment><USER28> I've seen this comparison a lot but I have no idea what the significance is. Why does this matter?

<comment><USER29> Probably because WU is a money transmission network, so somewhat comparable to what Bitcoin does.

<comment><USER28> But doesn't market cap mean two entirely different things for a company and a currency?

<comment><USER30> Bitcoin transaction volume in USD for the last 24 hours was $ 224 million. Not sure how much WU turnover in transaction value a day...

<comment><USER28> The best data I could find on this is in their 2015 annual report, which says they've had $81.6 billion in consumer-to-consumer transfers[0], which made up 79.21% of their revenue[1], so I guess we can estimate an annual turnover of $103 billion, which comes out to $282 million per day over the year of 2015.

[0]: [http://s1.q4cdn.com/568883301/files/doc_financials/2015Annua...](http://s1.q4cdn.com/568883301/files/doc_financials/2015Annual/2015-Annual- Report.pdf) \- page 66

[1]: [http://s1.q4cdn.com/568883301/files/doc_financials/2015Annua...](http://s1.q4cdn.com/568883301/files/doc_financials/2015Annual/2015-Annual- Report.pdf) \- pages 59 & 64

<comment><USER31> Most of their revenue = Most of their volume is questionable. Do you have any sense for whether revenue and vole are roughly correlated here?

<comment><USER28> Nope, I'd assume that B2B has lower fees/margins, so the actual daily volume should be higher than my calculation said above. Still, it should be enough to establish that WU is still a fair bit ahead of BTC.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


React Native Monthly #1 - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/2017/06/21/react-native-monthly-1.html <comment><USER2> The UI/UX app from GeekyAnts sounds neat

<comment><USER3> Good to hear that. Follow us on Twitter. We will have an alpha release in the coming weeks.

<comment><USER2> Followed</comment></comment></comment>


Fool me twice? Zerigo claims free plan "here to stay". Really - <AUTHOR>

According to an email I got a few minutes ago, as Zerigo approaches the 1-year anniversary of abruptly reneging on their free and paid DNS plans with scant notice, and without letting current contracts continue en force, they are now promoting "new simplified pricing".
Zerigo is also promising, and I quote: "Return of the free plan! Enjoy, its here to stay."
I do not recall ever enjoying hitting the 'unsubscribe' button on an email more than just now. Very happy with Route 53 - and appreciate Zerigo nudging me in that direction 11 months ago. <comment><USER2> wow $5/month? that's almost double what dnsmadeeasy charges (lowest tier) for giving you arguably the fastest global DNS times

zerigo's times are 4-5 times slower</comment>


Easy Install of a Local Web Server on Mac OS X - <AUTHOR> http://www.lullabot.com/videocast/install_local_web_server_mac_osx XAMPP still has some issues when using it on a Mac. I found this website which describes an easy way to set up a test server right on your Mac. <comment><AUTHOR> I have never set up Apache, PHP, and MySQL on a computer before and managed to get it to run correctly. This solution offered a service that I found to be of use. That is why I posted the link to the video that explains the process of downloading MAMP and the initial steps to get it up and running.

</comment><comment><USER2> And why is MAMP better than the Apache installation built into _every_ copy of Mac OS X?

1) Download and install MySQL

2) Enable PHP in the Apache config file

3) Enable Web Sharing in System Prefs</comment>


An app to make Chicago safer for wheelchair users - <AUTHOR> https://chihacknight.org/blog/2016/06/03/chi-safe-path.html <comment><USER2> Wow, very cool, I work with the Blind in Vancouver, WA and they have very similar challenges with varying and unpredictable sidewalk conditions. And as a bike rider we have similar issues with poor street conditions like pot- holes, drop-offs, and dangerously narrow lanes. Seems like your app could benefit many users and scale well for any geo. With some creative marketing we could generate an army of crowd-sourced input for it - Bravo!</comment>


Fast Python loops - <AUTHOR> https://www.python.org/doc/essays/list2str/ <comment><USER2> Or you could just use PyPy and see these numbers:

        ('f1',)
        0.328
        ('f2',)
        0.525
        ('f3',)
        0.269
        ('f4',)
        0.297
        ('f5',)
        0.041
        ('f6',)
        0.188
        ('f7',)
        0.103

Turn into these

        ('f1',)
        0.06
        ('f2',)
        0.08
        ('f3',)
        0.115
        ('f4',)
        0.063
        ('f5',)
        0.027
        ('f6',)
        0.065
        ('f7',)
        0.024

</comment><comment><USER3> According to archive.org this essay is from _at most_ June 2006, which would put it at Python 2.4 or earlier. The specific performance characteristics of Python will have changed greatly in the intervening period.

<comment><USER4> The last sentence (grep for "since this essay was written") suggests that the article was written before the 'B' typecode was added to the array module.

This typecode was added in Python 1.5.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if bytearray([97,98,99]).decode('latin-1') is faster still.

Edit: Yup, it is. 3x faster. [https://gist.github.com/anonymous/18e372e8d0173e77b5c405920d...](https://gist.github.com/anonymous/18e372e8d0173e77b5c405920d4d3080)

<comment><USER6> Was thinking exactly the same. Plus you save an import. And no need to wrap it in a function since it's a short method call on a built-in. Would bytearray([97,98,99]).decode('ascii') be even faster ?

<comment><USER5> It would fail when you pass it 128. He's passing in values from 0-255. "Ascii" is sort of a misnomer in his post.

<comment><USER7> It's better to fail than to convert something that probably isn't latin1!

<comment> mark-r The latin1 codec doesn't fail for any values in the 0-255 range. It probably _should_ , since there are values that don't map to a valid character. I don't know if this is deliberate and guaranteed or just an artifact of the current implementation. There should have been a 'byte' encoding that was explicitly made for 1:1 conversions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A big problem here, though, is that

> array.array('B', list).tostring()

is not terribly readable or beautiful.

In fact, I think I'd need a comment to explain that it's typecasting elements of a list strings to ints.

Optimizations like this are an identity crisis for Python (and have been for a long time, as evinced by the age of this essay): Is it focused on being human- readable and otherwise compliant with the Zen of Python?

Or is it focused on exposing high-performance variants for every way of doing something?

...and while it may be tempting to say that the answer is "both," this removes "one obvious way" as a lingual basis for Python.

Ultimately, there needs to be a reconciliation wherein these high-performance variants are folded back in (even if it means cheating in the implementation) to the idiomatic expressions.

Type hints and the evolving async syntax are additional considerations in this arena.

I know that this has been a topic of conversation at the language summit in the past; I surmise it will be very much so next month.

<comment><USER9> The people complaining about performance are always going to be louder.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but what I'm saying is that, if the underlying philosophy of Python holds water, then we need to find ways of to overcome this tug-of-war and ensure that the most beautiful ways are also the most (or among the most) performant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > if you're considering different versions of an algorithm, test it in a tight > loop using the time.clock() function.

...but if you are anyway experimenting with your code in a Jupyter notebook, then you could just use %timeit [1] or %time [2] magics to measure execution times and benchmarks without writing any additional code.

[1] [https://ipython.org/ipython- doc/3/interactive/magics.html#ma...](https://ipython.org/ipython- doc/3/interactive/magics.html#magic-timeit)

[2] [https://ipython.org/ipython- doc/3/interactive/magics.html#ma...](https://ipython.org/ipython- doc/3/interactive/magics.html#magic-time)

</comment><comment><USER11> Virtually every discussion of Python and performance should mention PyPy. If for no other reason than to disqualify it "doesn't work with deployment feature x or customer requirement y."

It's often a "free" speedup and generally Just Works.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish the Python community smoked its own shit: "There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it." I have never observed either "one" or "obvious" in my dealings with the language.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this is the most idiomatic way of doing it in modern python:

> "".join(chr(x) for x in list_of_ints)

This article is really really really out of date

<comment><USER14> The article is about performant python, not idiomatic python.

<comment><USER15> Sure, but I have to say I felt very distracted by his not even _mentioning_ the idiomatic approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author states:

"There's a general technique to avoid quadratic behavior in algorithms like this. I coded it as follows for strings of exactly 256 items:"

      def f5(list):
          string = ""
          for i in range(0, 256, 16): # 0, 16, 32, 48, 64, ...
            s = ""
            for character in map(chr, list[i:i+16]):
              s = s + character
              string = string + s
          return string

I am not understanding what the technique is or why using a step size of 16 in the range function is significant. Can anyone enlighten me about this and what the technique is? Does this technique have a name?

<comment><USER17> The idea is to reduce the amount of redundant copying of characters: you end up doing a few more concatenations in the outer loop, but the concatenations in the inner loop are of short strings.

Importantly, if you remove the restriction of the input list being "exactly 256 items", then the method is still quadratic.

A linear-time algorithm for this would copy each input character exactly once, which is effectively what the method based on array.tostring() does.

The chunk size of 16 is not as significant as the technique of constructing+concatenating chunks, although it is optimal for input length 256. In general I think you'd want a chunk size about the square-root of the expected input length, to minimise the number of copied characters.

EDIT: maths

Concatenating strings of length M and N is linear in O(M+N), because that's how many characters you're copying.

Number of characters copied if you construct a string of length N by concatenating one character at a time

      = (0+1) + (1+1) + (2+1) + (3+1) + ... + ((N-1)+1) + (N+1)
      = (N +1)*N / 2

Number of characters copied if you construct a string of length N by concatenating a chunk of length 16 each time

      = (0+16) + (16+16) + (32+16) + ... + ((N-16)+16)
      = 16*(0+1) + 16*(1+1) + 16*(2+1) + ...
      = 16 * (N/16 +1)*(N/16) / 2
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This is where the "technique" comes in: although the algorithm is still quadratic you're effectively moving a constant factor out the front.

Note that you also have the cost of constructing the chunks each time, which becomes the dominant cost if you have too many chunks.

In general, if you have a length kM string which you construct from k chunks of length M, the number of characters copied

      = M * (k+1)*k / 2  +  k * (M+1)*M / 2

... which (rounding and integer constraints aside) is minimised for M = k, i.e. when the chunk size is the square root of the input length. Hence, for input length 256 we take chunk size 16.

<comment><USER16> I see, that makes sense about reducing the constant. Interesting. Thanks for the great explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No list comprehension?

I thought list comprehension were faster than loops?

<comment><USER19> List comprehensions didn't exist when this post was written.

<comment><USER20> Python 2.0, back in 2000, had them.

<comment><USER4> The last sentence (grep for "since this essay was written") suggests that the article was written before the 'B' typecode was added to the array module.

This typecode was added in Python 1.5.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the time frame spent to test these hacks I would have written a perfect C module that runs circles around it.

<comment><USER5> Then realized it barfed on nulls, and started over with a more perfect implementation that took a bit longer.

<comment><USER21> Likely not, managed code tends to avoid nulls. They are problem in the return path though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting read! I'm still missing what "B" in the Python code referring to as well.

<comment><USER5> array.array isn't a normal python array. It's an optimized type/object where all the elements of the array are of the same type. The 'B' is a format string that indicates what type you want the elements to be. B == unsigned char

He's using it because it converts the int 65 to the string 'A', then toString() to join all the array elements together.

[https://docs.python.org/2/library/array.html](https://docs.python.org/2/library/array.html)

See my other post though, it's not the fastest way to do this in python.

<comment><USER22> Great thanks! I have assume array.array is similar to 2-dimensional array.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> doesn't 'b' in array.array('b'... and 'B' denote unsigned and signed conversion, thus the 0-256 as desired? or am i missing something?

<comment><USER4> > _Note: since this essay was written, the 'B' typecode was added to the array > module, which stores unsigned bytes, so there's no reason to prefer g1() any > more._

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I didn't know about the array library, but

        "".join(map(chr, list))

would have been my first choice, partly for style and partly for avoiding string concatenation (recent speedups aside).

<comment><USER25> or `"".join([chr(ch) for ch in s])`. It's only 2-3x slower than the array solution, but a lot more rubust.

The main issue IIUC is the original suggestion was O(N^2).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you been given a job offer without going through interviews? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone gotten an offer from a tech company without going through the interview process only because company wanted you so badly? <comment><USER2> Twice. One time it was because I previously worked with the hiring manager. That was an awesome gig.

The other time, I was hired after two phone calls. I talked about my previous work. I sent them a code sample I had laying around. That was it. I didn't stay there long. The company had high turnover because they liked to micromanage their developers. That fact never came up in those phone calls.

There's been a lot of discussion on HN about the ineffectiveness of interviews for assessing a candidate's work performance. What gets talked about less is that it's also ineffective for potential employees to assess their future employer. When I took the above job, it sounded great. The work was interesting. The people were fun to talk to and to work with. It was 100% remote, so no open office plan. It was everything I wanted in a job. A month later, the micromanagement started. Two months later, I was updating my resume again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it has happened to me. Usually it some niche field or something no one understands. Sometimes they just need good people that can work effectively. I happily accepted the job and had a great time there.

You can't determine much from a technical interview. It's best just to ask what they worked on before and explain the new job to them. If people are serious about the job and find it challenging they will stay.

Just think about it. Who would want to lie and get into a job where technical challenges are beyond them? Sure you get a nice salary for a while but then it becomes obvious you are not doing much, you are bored, or can't get up to speed.

The flipside is any firm that can't fire people fast probably has many more issues than just technical interviews/hiring people.

Hiring fast is good sign. Letting go of the appropriate people in a timely manner is also a good sign. Being stuck interviewing people over a span of 3-6 months for the perfect candidate shows indecisiveness or lack of leadership/teamwork. It also means they will spend 3-6 months to let go of that really horrible employee.

Having the team meet candidates means the boss needs signalling from his team to get some type of approval. This is usually a bad sign. I get the whole "cultural fit" concept but it begs the question, besides technical requirements what are you really trying to filter out...

I understand getting buy-in from the team but if your team doesn't respect your choices why are you in charge? Just leave everything to a group vote... There should be some mutual understanding that the current team will respect and work alongside the new employee. The new employee should also understand they need to get involved... If this is not happening you have a leadership problem...

</comment><comment><USER4> Previous Two. 2004, 2013. In both cases I chanced to meet the person who could make that decision well before starting. Had plenty of discourse around the subject matter for a few months. Then it was basically "please work here".

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes. Big Four. The new manager, who was not even employed at the time, had a coffee with me, told me he's assembling a new team. I did not meet with anyone from the recruiting staff, not even my future boss, I just brought my paperwork and I was in within a month.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, multiple times. I would not say it's a reflection of my skills, but rather the desperation of the employer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sure, but it's not because they "wanted me so badly", it's usually because someone I previously worked with is at the company and vouched for my skills & experience.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just wondering what size companies you guys work at. I don't think even the Hiring manager can hire at our company without multiple interviews

</comment><comment><USER9> Yes, my last two jobs. I'd still rather go through the interview process. I like the challenge.

</comment><comment><USER10> Never. If only L.O.L.</comment>


Immigrants and Guns: Different Issues, the Same Bad Arguments - <AUTHOR> https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/immigrants-guns-different-issues-same-bad-arguments <comment><USER2> Except I believe in laws for both.

Should anyone be allowed in the country without some kind of process?

Should someone be allowed to own a gun without some kind of process?

Then we're really arguing about what laws are both practical and reasonable.

<comment><USER2> But, who's interested in well thought out arguments and counter arguments when their are slogans and sounds bytes to sell.</comment></comment>


Charisma / Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/pow.html <comment><USER3> So lets analyze this for a moment.

We have defined a "Builder Type" CEO who is not charismatic yet is defined by being able to build and ship things. Like Mark Zuckerberg minus his team of PR people.

Then we have a "Charismatic Type" CEO who people like but who can't get anything done.

By this definition, Obama would be the useless yet charismatic CEO. Hillary, who has never built anything (that I can identify), would be a "Builder" type (apparently?). And Donald Trump...who _indisputably_ has built things despite being both charismatic and hated would blend both of these together?

I don't agree with this analysis. It isn't that easy to slice this one.

<comment><USER4> >Hillary, who has never built anything (that I can identify), would be a "Builder" type (apparently?).

Well what do you define as building? She was a successful legislator and built up a charity and public speaking business for herself out of almost nothing.

<comment><USER5> I don't believe the Clinton Foundation or public speaking business (which Bill also pursued) was built up out of nothing. What greater head-start could you get to begin building a public speaking business or foundation than to be either the former President or married to the world famous former President of the only superpower? The connections, the access to money and favors, the uber rich people (eg Wall Street) that want to buy your ear, it's beyond immense.

<comment><USER4> Uh, Trump was given tons of money by his dad and inherited tons more, and there's no conclusive evidence that he's had net gains on that money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think PG makes a few assumptions in this musing that deserve more though and criticism. Power and charisma together often brew megalomania, and I don't see charisma itself as a powerful person's antidote to being hated. Without diving into politics, I think there are a few good arguments out there for "lack of charisma" being the least of HRC's problems.

I'd be more interested to hear PG explore his own relationship to charisma and power on a personal and professional level than read this oddly deflecting set of statements.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a false dichotomy. How does one "build things" without deploying the charisma necessary to change processes and people? How does one "build things" without schmoozing nay-sayers into agreement and finding acceptable modifications to the original plan.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there any data that 'builder' type presidents are better than charismatic ones? In our hyper-media age you need charisma or you'll fail to effect change. This may or may not be a good thing as the change charismatic leaders want may or may not be ultimately good for the nation but it seems to be a necessary (but not solely sufficient) ingredient for greatness.

</comment><comment><USER9> The builder type focuses on building product. The charismatic type focuses on building social value, to build the product

Naturally they both excel at each, ultimately 2 different means to the same end

</comment><comment><USER10> Donald Trump is both a powerful builder and very charismatic. He builds buildings and has loads of charisma.

The dichotomy between Trump and Hillary is false in this case on dimensions other than simply having charisma.

Trump had more charisma than Hillary as well as the 16 or whatever ridiculous number of GOP candidates there were at one point.

Bernie Sanders was the only candidate in this cycle with a similar level of charisma and Democrats did the thing that the GOP did the previous 2 elections - and it cost them.

<comment><USER11> Trump is many things, and charismatic may be one of them, although personally I don't see it, but "a powerful builder" is not one of them.

Trump doesn't build buildings - he licenses his name to buildings other people build. He doesn't even own most of the properties that bear his name. The only thing he can feasibly claim to have built is his own celebrity, and prior to his recent status, his celebrity might generously be described as b-list - <USER2> was a reality show star who was once a professional wrestling celebrity heel and sometimes guest starred as himself on various tv shows.

The distinction is important, I believe, because to me, "builder" implies someone with a passion and a deep understanding of the art of whatever they make their living at. I don't see a passion about architecture or design from Trump, nor do I get a sense that he understands how they work, or that he cares.

<comment><USER5> Most of the mega developers do not own all of what they build or buy into. The richest real estate billionaires of the last 50 years, most of them develop large projects in investment groups. You're presenting a hollow argument against Trump, judging by the investment style of his billionaire real estate peers.

<comment><USER11> >The richest real estate billionaires of the last 50 years, most of them develop large projects in investment groups.

They don't deserve to be considered "builders" either. Certainly not "builders of buildings."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So that's the problem, "we" virtually never recognize that the builder is the right one for the job. The charismatic person always gets the job/money/fame/whatever.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hillary Clinton as a Builder? Building for whom? Have we already forgotten her disastrous State Dep. run? Has she built or destroyed in the Middle East?

Whitewashing comes early.

</comment><comment><USER14> Who embodies both(builder + schmoozer)? Surely they exist right?

<comment><USER10> Donald Trump.

He is literally off the charts both. He builds very large, impressive buildings for a living.

He is enough of a charismatic individual that through force of personality won the presidency.

<comment><USER15> My understanding is that he's generated less returns off his inheritance than he would have done by investing in index funds. If true, isn't he just a rich kid spending his inheritance?

<comment><USER5> He didn't inherit any large sum, that was a fraudulent story pushed by the left to attack Trump. It's not an exaggeration to say that there was zero evidence presented to support that claim.

Trump has said he received a million dollar loan to get started (circa early 1970s?). The return he generated, to say the least, was extraordinary.

Further, even going by that bogus story, not all sectors of the economy generate the same returns. A person is not to be shamed for making less money in retail or dog food than in tech or oil. One has to consider the results they generated in the field they chose to focus in. It's disingenuous, and then some, to hold all business people up to the standard of: well if you had just put all your money, at some arbitrary high point, into an index fund for N years, you'd be richer - that would discredit nearly all successful business people.

Hey Sam Walton, if you had just liquidated all of your Walmart shares in 1992 before you died and put the wealth into an index fund, your family would be richer. That's mathematically correct and ridiculous. Off the top of my head I can list dozens of examples like this among the Forbes 400 past or present.

<comment><USER15> I was reasonably sure there were well cited stories in the NYT showing his effective inheritance was huge, and that he'd massively underperformed compared to other NY property developers. Are those fake news because they're from NYT?

edit: also I'm not entirely sure Marco Rubio counts as "liberal media", but I'm not up to date with the latest lingo. Politifact seems to think $1m is fairly unlikely though: [http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2016/mar/07/did- do...](http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2016/mar/07/did-donald-trump- inherit-100-million/)

<comment><USER5> No, there was never any evidence provided to support the claim. Trump publicly stated over, and over, and over again that it wasn't correct. The liberal media never gave evidence post any of those statements by Trump about the million dollar loan, to refute him. Then they entirely dropped the attack as a vector, obviously because they couldn't support it.

edit: I never said Marco Rubio was part of the liberal media. You're inventing that false setup. I said the liberal media, that doesn't mean Marco Rubio must belong to the liberal media if he also said x y z about Trump. Given how very heated the race was, why would it be surprising for any of the Republican competitors to latch on to the same attacks?

So in other words, there's zero evidence to support Trump inheriting a vast fortune, exactly as I said.

<comment><USER15> According to this article, Trump said in a deposition that he borrowed $9m against future inheritance, making claims it was only worth $1m suspect. Seems hard to get decent figures, other than those that show he consistently lies about the situation:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/fact- checker/wp/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/fact- checker/wp/2016/03/03/trumps-false-claim-he-built-his-empire-with-a-small- loan-from-his-father/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: BoldCanvas – a DIY Website Builder my parents can use - <AUTHOR> http://boldcanvas.com/projects/?user=auto

<comment><USER2> This looks good.

BTW -- I really liked the initial 7 steps -- convention over configuration of various things. But my heat sank once I selected a template and I found a fully configurable page. There's no way my mom would be able to use that (she would have gotten past the initial 7 steps).

Perhaps you want to add more steps, and ask for details lile: top level pages, would you like a contact form included someplace?, a map/location?, etc. You really could get more milage from the initial wizard, and automagically setup a site.

Good work so far!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Appreciate the feedback.

Getting more mileage out of the initial wizard is definitely a really interesting idea. We've thought about that a lot and it's potentially the direction we might go.

Part of what worries us is whether users would feel overwhelmed by too many steps upfront without seeing their progress. Another idea that is similar that we are playing around with is replacing the current sidebar (that has instructional videos) with a sidebar that acts like a wizard, but with many more steps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On multipurpose-template-one, the hover-over text color change for the first row of content is not quite right.

Also I'm sure it's just in the works but the homepage doesn't seem to quite have received the design love that the templates have. Looking good!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Really appreciate it.

You are right. I posted a temporary demo homepage I created 10 minutes before the post - this way people wouldn't have to create an account to try it out. The real home page is [http://boldcanvas.com/](http://boldcanvas.com/).

Regarding the hover over text color - we'll experiment with some options. Would you suggest using something with a stronger contrast?

<comment><USER3> The color is fine, it's just the way it only highlights each line instead of the entire header.

Here's an example: [http://i.imgur.com/hQLoUwd.png](http://i.imgur.com/hQLoUwd.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it. I hadn't noticed that earlier. Will look into it - you are right that the entire header should highlight instead of one line at a time. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Co-founder here. My best friend and I quit our jobs a while back and have been working hard and bootstrapping this. This is an early version - we'll be adding more templates and features soon

</comment><comment><USER4> my recommendation, show me what's going to happen before I do it. I don't want to make a subdomain and go through the process just to look over the builder itself. Maybe show the youtube videos on the main page or some nice screenshots?

I like the page operations though, being able to edit and remove modules was quite smooth.

I would recommend on that sidebar instructional panel to put the hide button on the top right corner, not on the side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of placing the hide button at the top instead of the slide. We'll experiment with both.

Regarding the "show me what's going to happen before I do it." Absolutely agree. Our real homepage is: [http://boldcanvas.com/](http://boldcanvas.com/) \- the link in the headline is just a demo page I created so HN users wouldn't be forced to create an account just to try or product

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> looks good. nice and simple. One issue though. If I chose a subdomain that already exists I'm taken back to the start of the process. would be great if I could correct it right there Also like the collection of content blocks and SEO settings

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I agree completely. We'll implement that soon - I'll reply back here once it's fixed/deployed</comment></comment>


Show HN: Hipsterfy – see Spotify artists you and your friends both follow - <AUTHOR> https://hipsterfy.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I made this as a side project to get better at Haskell and Kubernetes.

This came out of a funny dinner conversation with some friends talking about discussing favorite musicians. Someone proposed that the musicians most likely to be spark interesting conversation were those that were unpopular enough to be "cool", but popular enough that someone else could have feasibly heard about them, and suggested that musicians with ~1M monthly listener count were the sweet spot. (Empirically, I think that's about 5-10x too high.)

Anyway, this tool should help you figure out which musicians make for interesting conversation. If you'd like to compare against me, my friend code is "uIrtZpcNPUZpikRlAVPg".

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the idea, unfortunately it doesn't appear to be working. The "Artists you follow" list never seems to populate even after multiple refreshes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, is this still happening for you? Looking at the database, it looks like your artists should be populated.

Sometimes it takes a minute or two to load artists - Spotify's API rate-limits pretty aggressively.

<comment><USER2> I totally forgot about this and just checked again today. The list is populated now, so maybe I just wasn't patient enough when I originally tried.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter is deleting stolen jokes on copyright grounds - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/25/9039127/twitter-deletes-stolen-joke-dmca-takedown

<comment><USER2> It's often thought that "fair use" covers any sufficiently short selection of another's words. But this is urban legend. There is no such principle in law. A creative joke is fully copyrighted and not subject to fair use even if it's just several words long.

Even the de minimis doctrine for music sampling has now collapsed.

More clarity about what counts as publication would be pleasant. If three friends post something they heard at a comedy club and discuss it and six others read that; but hundreds could have found it - should that count as publication? So far, Facebook seems to be saying no. And the patent office? We don't know.</comment>


The IIT Bombay English-Hindi Parallel Corpus [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.02855 <comment><USER2> Since so long, I have been waiting for Indian universities especially IITs to invest and publish in building such corpora. Being a founder of AI/ML startup, I am surprised at the appalling lack of datasets available to work on Indian problems. Contrast this with Chinese universities where they have built some world class datasets to build NLP solutions in Mandarin. Our sentiment analysis works in 8 different languages but none of it is in Indian languages despite we being in India!

<comment><USER3> The data set is released as CC-BY-NC and, thus, cannot be used in commercial applications.

<comment><USER4> And also cannot be used in open-source projects.

CC-BY-NC amounts to saying: you can play around with this in demos and academic projects that no lawyer would ever go after anyway, but you can't use it for real.

<comment><USER5> Is that entirely a bad thing? If a commercial, for profit wants to enter this field then they can pay for it or licence it?

<comment><USER4> And what if an open source project wants to enter this field?

<comment><USER6> For open source commercial, it's the same as for-profit. They'll probably get a discount.

For open source non-profit, it'd still be NC and therefore legal?

<comment><USER4> "Non-profit" is a whole different kettle of fish than "non-commercial". It doesn't mean you're not selling anything. It doesn't mean you're morally good. It just means you registered for a particular business status with particular restrictions. And it's not what CC is talking about.

A key part of the Open Source Definition is that you do not lose your permission to use and copy the code based on what you do with it. A project that you aren't allowed to use anymore if you start making money from it is not Open Source.

"Non-commercial" code restrictions are more like the thing where you're allowed to look at the Windows source code, if you're an academic and you ask nicely and you won't ever do anything with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Being it's IIT Bombay I hope for Marathi some day soon.

I know different people have different priorities :-)

<comment><USER8> Does it matter that it is in Bombay? I thought the prod/student body would be diverse due to to how the intake works.

Nothing against Marathi, I feel like Telugu, Tamil etc would also have equal chances of happening there.

<comment><USER7> Oh not really, I do agree that languages like Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and others are sort of "more deserving" in that they have more speakers than Marathi. I just don't speak them and probably never will :-( .

The "Bombayness" was only that Mumbai is in Maharashtra. There really are great folks from all over at that institution. My comment was NOT intended to make any implication about any community over another! I see someone downvoted my comment and might have understandably thought that that might have been my intention.

<comment><USER8> Actually I was saying the total opposite of what you inferred. I thought that despite being in Mumbai, IIT-B would have a very diverse spread of folks due to the methods of intake(JEE/ all India recruitment of professors). That means Marathis might not be the language of choice, because it's highly likely that the researcher is Tamil/Telugu. Unlike someplace like, say, VJTI, that's likely to have a large Marathi population.

(I didn't downvote btw.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Companies still allowing Java on the Desktop? - <AUTHOR>

I'm about to start a project that needs offline capabilities. The users will work in the field, with no data access until they return to the office. In the meantime, they will modify a local data store of documents. When they return to the office, the changes will be sync'ed into the common data store (their changes pushed out to the company; other changes come to their data store).
For the application, I was going to target the JVM. However, I'm unsure as to the viability of that move given Java's recent security issues. Are companies interested in Java-based apps (I know it has to be a desktop app)?
Thanks, JPD <comment><USER2> If the app would otherwise make sense to be web facing, one option that I've seen work quite well is to develop the "app" as a local, packaged web stack. Users point the browser at "[http://localhost:10000/"](http://localhost:10000/")

This has the advantage of removing the native UI toolkit question. This might make it easier to develop a native executable that's easy to package and distribute.

<comment><USER3> Ha, I just did this. We built a VirtualBox VM with Vagrant and Chef then distributed the .box file. I think it worked pretty well, and we got good feedback about smooth installs, although there are a few small things I'd do differently to make updates easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To be honest, if your application adds value that is obvious to a company's leadership [and that's the goal with B2B sales] then nobody will care that it uses the JVM. By which I mean both that the leadership won't care and that the nobodies in IT who might care will be given marching orders regardless of any animosity.

The bigger hang up I see with the JVM is for companies that are .NET based. As with the previous paragraph, that's a market analysis question not a technology one.

Finally, the security threats to a mostly offline application designed to communicate with a central server are relatively low in comparison to something based on constant internet connection and web technology. Of course, as always, the people designing a system for the JVM need to know what they are doing.

In a market where desktop applications make sense, selecting a language that facilitates use on both the JVM and .NET might be a consideration. That's not to rule out targeting the browser, it's all tradeoffs.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1) JRE's security issues are not recent. They've been common and severe for many years, and I don't see any reason to believe that will change.

2) Most companies are willing to use Java, but that doesn't mean it's part of their provisioning process right now. I'd say it's an uphill battle to target JRE.

3) Web apps can also work offline, but your best bet is to try to end up with a cross-platform, standalone executable. There have always been lots of options for this, but I myself haven't tried to write a desktop app in 10 years and am not the person to tell you what to use. A lot of recent apps (like PopcornTime) seem to web apps running on WebKit.

Edit: Appcelerator's Titanium product is an incredibly easy way to write simple, native mobile apps. If your users could carry tablets or Chromebooks, this might be something to consider.

</comment><comment><USER6> Crazily enough, you may be able to do all of this in an HTML 5 / Javascript app running on a server, including the offline / syncing components. This assumes you can get users running a relatively recent browser.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTML/Using_the_application_cache)

Of course, you may have other requirements not listed here that necessitate a more native environment.

</comment><comment><USER7> As an IT manager for 20+ companies, I can say any application that requires third party dependencies is a pain in the arse 3 years from now. Java is definitely the worse for me.

Self contained .exe is the future for third party apps IMO. Whatever you choose, packaged it in a way that its either self contained, or it extracts its dependencies into the application folder and is coded to read from there.

</comment><comment><USER8> There are some important Java desktop apps I use because I don't run Windows, and Java is often the platform developers use to develop cross platform UIs.

Desktop Java apps are probably here to stay for the foreseeable future.</comment>


Foldit – A game that contributes to protein folding research - <AUTHOR> http://fold.it/portal/info/about <comment><USER2> EteRNA is a newer game along the same lines, but for RNA folding. It's a 2D, browser-based game, so some might find it easier to play.

[http://eterna.cmu.edu/web/](http://eterna.cmu.edu/web/)

<comment><USER3> Just a note to everyone: "browser-based" means "flash" here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related: this game grew out of Seth Cooper's PhD dissertation [1] "A Framework for Scientific Discovery through Video Games", which won the ACM Dissertation Award in 2011. Although a lot of the content is Foldit-centric (protein algorithms, etc.), it still has a wealth of information on game design and gamification, well worth looking at for anyone interested in game development.

[1] [http://grail.cs.washington.edu/theses/Cooper2011PhD.pdf](http://grail.cs.washington.edu/theses/Cooper2011PhD.pdf)

<comment><USER5> I was lucky enough to see him speak at the University of Michigan ([http://www.cse.umich.edu/eecs/etc/events/showevent.cgi?2665](http://www.cse.umich.edu/eecs/etc/events/showevent.cgi?2665)).

Also, I just finished reading REAMDE, and Fold.it is extremely similar to the fictional APPIS discussed in the book. It's still a fairly untapped area, looking to games in order to gain real life advantages. Although besides Fold.it, ReCaptcha, DuoLingo and the ESP game seem to be using related strategies to yield results of some degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related: You can also donate your spare CPU/GPU cycles to similar projects with [http://folding.stanford.edu/](http://folding.stanford.edu/)

Someone's even trying to make the points awarded for time spent folding into a basis for a crypto currency [http://foldingcoin.net/](http://foldingcoin.net/)

<comment><USER7> Last I heard the "folding" distributed computation projects were mostly only being used to publish papers on distributed computation; and not really to advance medical science... (In contrast to Foldit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Truly a great idea. Take human beings who would otherwise be wasting time and put their brain power to good use, converting couch potatoes of the world into research scientist. Not only does the lab produce new scientific results, but it brings thousands of strangers into the fold of protein biochemistry.

<comment><USER9> Another such, for astronomy, is Galaxy Zoo: [http://www.galaxyzoo.org/](http://www.galaxyzoo.org/) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has been around for about 6 years now. I always wondered what happened to this project. Good to know that it's still alive, though it's popularity would skyrocket if they ever released a mobile version on either iOS or Android.

</comment><comment><USER11> This got popular on reddit about a month ago. This thread has a warning about community moderation policies: [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2n97b1/to_anyone_who...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/2n97b1/to_anyone_who_seen_the_recent_popular_post_about/)

tl;dr Consider that unprofessional moderation may expose your IP address, email, or other personal information and that others may be encouraged to harass you before playing.

</comment><comment><USER12> I remember an old news about Foldit from 2011, where Foldit players were able to decipher the structure of an enzyme that is the key to the way HIV multiplies.

Source : [http://www.cnet.com/news/foldit-game-leads-to-aids- research-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/foldit-game-leads-to-aids-research- breakthrough/)

"Gamers were able to do what biochemists have been trying to do for a decade: decipher the structure of a protein called retroviral protease, an enzyme that is key to the way HIV multiplies...People have spatial reasoning skill - something computers are not yet good at."

Strange thing is, if you Google "foldit HIV" or "foldit AIDS" \- there is no follow up news. There are some new articles on 2013, but they link straight back to 2011 articles.

<comment><USER13> [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=2961090759639019608&...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=2961090759639019608&as_sdt=40000005&sciodt=0,22&hl=en)

Cited by 192

EDIT: Although looking through that link, most of the articles are about the technique rather than the actual discovery. I did find a followup paper:

[http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v30/n2/abs/nbt.2109.html](http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v30/n2/abs/nbt.2109.html)

<comment><USER12> Thank you. The Nature's paper isn't accessible for free, but some bibliographies are open for all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would be cool if there were a mobile app.

<comment><USER12> Boinc has mobile app. The current version isn't working on Android 5.x, but the developers are working on it.

Source : [http://boinc.berkeley.edu/](http://boinc.berkeley.edu/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is machine learning not good for this?

<comment><USER15> if you read up on foldit they take a hybrid strategy, for proteins that are simpler, they are using automated techniques. For proteins that are more complicated and harder to solve where folding requires satisfying a variety of conflicting constraints, Foldit is an experiment in using computer assisted human solving.</comment></comment>


Why Are Some Groceries Still So Hard to Find During Covid? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-are-some-groceries-still-so-hard-to-find-during-covid-11597069761 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/ydg08](https://archive.vn/ydg08)</comment>


FPGA Cluster Demonstrates Hardware-Accelerated DES Cracking [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.picocomputing.com/pdf/PR_Pico_DES_BH_Jan_29_2010.pdf <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1086458>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. I drilled down and found the original article.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk plans to build a Hyperloop himself - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-04/elon-musk-inspired-an-industry-of-hyperloop-startups-now-he-s-building-his-own <comment><USER3> I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring Co as viable or useful.

It's true that LA traffic sucks, but the only solution you need is good transit planning with existing technology. Throw in self-driving mini-busses (which I bet Tesla is working on) and you'd never be stuck in traffic again. Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. with just good transit planning.

The problems with US transit are political. We have political problems that makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long. Hyperloop can't solve those problems with better engineering. And if we fix those political problems, you don't need Hyperloop.

<comment><USER4> > I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring > Co as viable or useful.

This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think they've thought of something that someone who's been thinking about this stuff for a very long time, and has the money and track record to back it up, disagrees.

You seem to have a very narrow view of the technology being proposed - <USER2> announcement is about New York to Washington, USA - but presumably this is a proof of concept build with modest scope.

> Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. ..

> ... makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long.

One should be careful with throwing around orders of magnitude claims willy nilly.

Tokyo's population is is just shy of 10 million, Los Angeles about 4 million.

<comment><USER5> Thanks to good, cheap and fast public transport, people regularly commute to Tokyo from all over Japan. That is what 'manages' implies. I know that is difficult to imagine in the US, but please have an open mind.

<comment><USER4> > ... people regularly commute to Tokyo from all over Japan.

I feel like this is one of those things that sounds like it might be true, but isn't. It's four hours from Tokyo to Hokkaido by train, f.e., and not much cheaper than a flight.

> I know that is difficult to imagine in the US, but please have an open mind.

I do try to have an open mind, despite being an Australian living in Australia.

My work requires that I travel regularly - most major cities in Australia warrant air-travel, due to the distances involved, but price and (in)convenience of air travel reduce the appeal.

Sydney to Canberra is a curious exception - at around 300km it's actually slightly faster to drive than to fly, once you factor in intra-city commute (to / from airports) and usual security & check-in waits. I'd _love_ a high- speed ground-based option, as short-haul flights offend my green sensibilities, and as much as I enjoy driving, I can get more done, have a safer journey, and be more relaxed if I'm not driving. There is a train service - but it's not terribly frequent, and takes more than 4 hours (plus the intra-city commute, as for air travel). There's been _talk_ of high speed rail links along the east coast (Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne) for decades, but still no actual commitment in sight.

I'm highly envious of what's happening in other parts of the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm super skeptical about Hyperloop and I was vehemently opposed to "wasting" tax money to build it but I'm pretty happy that he's giving it a try for real, obviously he believes in the project. Hopefully he'll prove naysayers like me wrong and we'll get a kickass futuristic mode of transportation out of it.

At least it puts to rest the conspiracy theory that he came up with the Hyperloop concept only to undermine the current bullet train projects .

I only hope that if it doesn't pan out it won't hurt his other ventures too much, but I suppose he knows what he's doing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised we don't hear more about Japan's Chuo Shinkansen in discussions of Hyperloop:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen)

It's long distance maglev project that's already under construction, using proven technology, and it aims to cut travel times in half relative to the existing high speed line.

I find this project far more exciting than the vague plans and ideas surrounding Hyperloop.

<comment><USER8> How well would it work on Mars?

<comment><USER9> I would think better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love new technology especially when it comes to transportation, but as a people mover this thing seems to have unsolvable problems. You're trapped in a tin can in a vacuum tunnel 20 feet or 50 feet below the surface -- what if it stops? You can't get out.

Obviously we put up with a similar predicament in air transportation, and for that matter train derailment and automobile collisions are a real and not uncommon risk of above-ground transportation systems.

But Hyperloop has this inherent issue that doesn't have any obvious solution. For transporting goods, it sounds fantastic. Move tons of cargo from SF to LA in 30 minutes, or from D.C. to Boston in 40 minutes. If nothing else, it would be great for USPS and FedEx. If it at least partially relieves the interstates of the stress and damage caused by 18-wheelers, another point in its favor (sorry, drivers).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'll be happy with better/cheaper Amtrak service. Nothing beats working at the cafe car and watching the scenery roll by. Plain old rail travel is way too expensive in the US compared to the alternatives (bus or rental).

Heck, I'd even be excited about wifi upgrades in the NE corridor.

</comment><comment><USER12> Hyperloop appears to be a niche solution to a specific transportation situation. It may work (be profitable/useful) for a time between specific destinations. Then the population situation (density, distribution) will change and it will become less profitable or even be discarded.

Its not clear that any current pair of cities currently fit the sweet spot for hyperloop. Even if some did, its not clear a hyperloop could be built in time, before the situation changes and they exit the sweet spot.

Execution and timing will be especially critical to a successful venture.

<comment><USER6> When the first wave of criticism came after Musk presented his Hyperloop concept the argument I found the most compelling was that at those speeds if you change direction very fast or the lateral and vertical accelerations felt by the passenger quickly becomes uncomfortable or even unbearable.

That means that if you have some kind of obstacle on the way, such as a mountain, lake or even a city you can't easily swerve around to avoid it. You either have to anticipate your turn extremely early (huge turn radius) or you basically have to tunnel through it (extremely expensive).

For the same reason if you decide to pass over mountains you might have to start elevating the track well before you meet the slope because you can't brutally change your inclination from 0 to, say, 20 degrees brutally without inflicting a few gees to the passengers. So you'd basically build a ramp to smooth it up, which would also be quite expensive.

Has this been addressed?

<comment><USER13> Also, what if landscapes shift due to tectonic plate movement?

I'm scared to fly as it is, but hurtling through the air at mach 1 there is far less chance of an obstacle than hurtling through a cramped vacuum tube at mach 1.

<comment><USER14> If the seal on the hyperloop is ever broken (anywhere along the loop), the tube will fill with air and the train/pod will naturally come to a stop due to air resistance.

<comment><USER13> What if it hits something, like:

An obstacle in the pipe

A misaligned tunnel wall due to shifting Earth

Other pods ahead of it

<comment><USER14> > An obstacle in the pipe

How is an obstacle going to get into a vacuum sealed pipe? Unless there are parts literally falling off of the pods, I can't really see this happening.

> A misaligned tunnel wall due to shifting Earth

This would most likely break the vacuum seal and be detected immediately.

> Other pods ahead of it

Seems easy to avoid. We don't typically hear about trains crashing into each other, so I don't see why we'd expect that to happen with pods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's still some part of me which wonders if the "Rolling Roads" vision of Heinlein's wouldn't be a better long-term solution (even if requiring much more in terms of space and materials) over rails, the Hyperloop, etc.

The concept is effectively a series of moving sidewalk (like you see in airports) loops scaled up to run at 100+ mph, with its own ecosystem of shops, restaurants, inns, etc. They would replace the highways, and be powered by solar panels on the enclosure of the road. Getting on and off is handled by a series of parallel belts which go progressively slower at reasonable increments.

No need for "stops" where the entire system must come to a halt to disgorge passengers, no need for negative pressure systems, it could power itself (and surrounding communities)... But the impact of the roads "stopping" would be pretty major and widespread (if mitigable via multiple smaller loops).

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

</comment><comment><USER16> Can somebody clear this up; is "The Boring Company" it's own entity, or is it a division of Tesla?

<comment><USER17> It's been wholly funded by SpaceX thus far.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/6kw70z/rspacex_disc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/6kw70z/rspacex_discusses_july_2017_34/dksrrwy/)

<comment><USER16> The above helpful comments being said, my question now is, how long is he going to be able to run these companies separately without a shareholder revolt saying they should be put under one roof to create more value for the investors in Tesla? Right now it feels like I'm an unofficial investor in TeSpaceBoringLink as opposed to just the former.

I expect to get some hate for the comment as it's a Wall Street type complaint, but to my eye, it seems like these companies are becoming ever more similar.

<comment><USER18> SpaceX is an entirely separate company from Tesla, and not public. Investing in Tesla is not investing in SpaceX and Tesla shareholders have no rights to anything SpaceX does (absent contracts between Tesla and SpaceX) and the reverse. SpaceX shareholders (e.g. Google, Musk) would presumably be quite strongly against merging with Tesla. There's nothing stopping SpaceX from directly competing with Tesla if they wanted to.

On what basis do you imagine shareholders revolting? How would you imagine them doing so?

<comment><USER16> I understand the legalities of how they're separate, what I'm saying is if the "cross-fertilization" approach between the two companies proliferates to the point where they are material to each other's operations, what's to stop Starboard or some other activist investor group from launching a campaign against them?

Obviously, Elon would be against this, I'm not saying they would personally be for this decision, I'm saying if the market stops being as forgiving to Tesla as it is, could a group not gain significant voting power and push this against them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Glad to see him involved. I think he's earned enough credibility with moving forward battery and electric car technologies so that all can benefit. The current batch of hyperloop startups don't seem all that promising and a potential bunch of patent hoarders.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wish I had as much purpose in my life as Elon does.

<comment><USER20> Careful what you wish for - it also comes with terrible lows and unrelenting stress:

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/891710778205626368](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/891710778205626368)

<comment><USER21> He's also been divorced thrice, twice from the same woman!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there anyway to disable autoplay videos on bloomberg's website? They're one of the few sites I routinely click through from HN, but the disruption of the autoplay is quite disrespectful, and frankly boils my blood.

<comment><USER23> I usually end-up opening the dev-tools and deleting the html tag...

<comment><USER24> Just removing <html> does the trick?

<comment><USER25> I'm assuming they meant deleting the _< div class="video-player">_ or _< video>_ HTML element itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone has knowledge about factors other than speed ?

Cost per mile improvement, carbon footprint reduction etc. that has been scientifically estimated.

<comment><USER27> Not exactly what you asked but this might help [http://www.et3.com](http://www.et3.com)

<comment><USER26> It says 50x , but i am assuming even a 10x improvement in efficiency with the already crazy increases in speed would be great, hopefully with a way to recoup the investment in 20-30 years.

Also was wondering whether above ground system is cheaper outside cities than tunneling but i guess they feel that tunneling is cheaper if they get the purported 10x gains they want there

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very interested to see how he/they propose to expedite the boring process.</comment>


Proposed emergency preparedness rules for SMRs blasted as a 'radical departure' - <AUTHOR> https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nrc-commissioner-blasts-proposed-emergency-preparedness-rules-for-smrs-as-a/577827/ <comment><AUTHOR> In brief:

 _Nuclear facilities with small modular reactors (SMRs) and other new technologies could take advantage of an alternative emergency preparedness framework under a new Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposal and guidance._

 _Existing regulations developed for large light-water reactors require a 10-mile plume emergency planning zone (EPZ) and 50-mile ingestion EPZ to prevent food and water contamination._

 _Alternative performance-based emergency preparedness plans could set smaller EPZs for small modular reactors and other new technology such as non-light- water reactors and certain non-power production or utilization facilities. Critics, including some regulators, expressed concern about condensing the zone and the danger that may pose._</comment>


Hacking back: Bankers go undercover to catch bad guys - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21600148-bankers-go-undercover-catch-bad-guys-hacking-back

<comment><USER2> This is not "hacking back." This is setting up honeypots and lurking carding forums. I think it's important that this kind of behavior doesn't get lumped into the same bucket as a counteroffensive. The idea of hacking as retribution is one of the dumbest corporate indecent response ideas I've heard taken seriously. The most obvious and convincing arguments against it are just the arguments against vigilante justice, which it is.

<comment><USER3> "corporate indecent" \- Freudian slip?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Undercover hacking team diary, day 2: "We've discovered a ring of people hell- bent on wreaking havoc with the world economy for profit - found them by breaking into a secret server located at 127.0.0.1"

</comment><comment><USER5> > a coterie of non-existent bankers, with fake e-mail addresses and > biographies, whose details appear on bogus web pages not linked to the rest > of the bank's website.

So how do I, fraudster, find them ?

And if I do, now a little bit of link work will reveal them

</comment><comment><USER6> They need not look any further than themselves.</comment>