Heavy multitaskers have reduced memory - <AUTHOR> https://news.stanford.edu/2018/10/25/decade-data-reveals-heavy-multitaskers-reduced-memory-psychologist-says/ <comment><USER2> I used to have 'buckets' I would stick things into, and they would stay there forever. Context switching was not a problem. Whatever I had put in that bucket was so strongly associated with the context, that when I switched, the bucket would be there waiting for me. I think I basically had built something like a memory palace before I had the concept of a memory palace.

Best way I think I can discribe it... it's almost like in my short term memory rather than trying to cram in every individual variable, I was just including a pointer to a struct containing the variables for those contexts. When I would call up that pointer, I'd get the entire struct and just keep going.

I'm not sure if it's age, alcohol use, stress, always-on internet, genetics, or what, but now I'm lucky if I can remember what task I'm in the middle of if I start thinking about something else while doing it. I find myself just as able to solve problems _when I can remember things_ , but a lot less able to remember things, making me feel a lot stupider and/or slower than I used to be. Context-switching is a real challenge now. FWIW, I used to be A LOT better at tuning out the world/distractions than I am now; I feel like that changed when my kid was born.

<comment><USER3> That used to be my experience as well. However, I do think two different things happened. One is that I'm getting older. I'm not in my mental prime anymore.

But the second is that everything is more complicated. In high school, you could just sit down and crank out some homework while watching Youtube videos and chatting with friends. And you would just sit down and crank out some homework.

Yesterday, I got into work thinking I was going to write some code, and... oh wait, this depends on chasing down an issue in code owned by someone else, and I need to get answers to some questions about how this other component works that I depend on, and this other piece of code I need to modify doesn't actually work the way I thought it did. Even within the same task, I'm constantly context switching between mental modeling, communicating with other people, and code reading/writing. Also, I'm reconciling all of this against a multi-stage rollout plan where different people will see different behaviors. It's complicated in a way that teenage me never really had to deal with.

It's no wonder I've spent several days feeling like I got nothing done. I did a lot of unwinding hidden dependencies, but very little of it was actually writing code. Most of my time was spent figuring out what questions were the right ones to ask in order to get the answers I needed, which might not end up being what I thought I needed.

Teenage me never had to deal with that kind of complexity.

<comment><USER4> I suspect that when most organizations hire software developers, they're not really looking for great programmers. What they're really looking for is people who are capable of dealing with enormous complexity without getting confused. Those things might sound related, but I don't think they're the same thing. I expect that most software developers don't spend most of their time designing beautiful, elegant solutions to interesting problems; they spend their time blundering around in an over-complicated and poorly designed code- base using tools that barely work and trying not to trip over myriad corner cases or buried in technical debt. (Even in well-designed systems, you're often still dealing with mountains of technical debt inherited from the industry at large.)

Maintaining bad code is in a lot of ways harder than creating good code. Or at least, a person good at one of those things might not be good at the other.

I have a related theory that software development as a profession is starting to increasingly resemble being an air-traffic controller; as the actual programming parts get easier (languages, tools, and libraries get better, awful code-bases notwithstanding), the non-programming tasks tend to take up more and more time. So, you end up spending a lot more time talking to people and figuring out what to build.

<comment><USER5> I'm starting to look at it from a different perspective. I don't necessarily think bad is actually bad, or a better way to put it, there's no such thing as "good" code. What I usually find people calling bad code is just not easily understandable. We as programmers started programming with really comfortable abstractions for easy problems and we expected things to continue like that.

When we go into the world of unsolved problems that someone solved and we have to maintain them, and we can't understand them immediately, we call them bad. It's my gut reaction almost every time I'm confronted with something that doesn't immediately enlighten me, even thought I know it's the wrong reaction.

We are always comparing everything to the simplest and most solved problems that were easy for us to understand. When it isn't so easy we call them "bad".

<comment><USER6> > When we go into the world of unsolved problems that someone solved and we > have to maintain them

I don't believe in this world of unsolved problems. Most codebases reinvent the wheel like they've never seen one. Most "problems" are just a problem of picking one from known solutions and gluing it all together. People don't always pick the right solution, or they start gluing at the wrong place and won't stop once they realize it, so the end result is a mess. And then you can ask, why did they do it like this? This is not good!

If you're a programmer, you've hopefully tried to rewrite some bit of code of yours a few times until you've arrived at something that eliminates redundant logic, is more readable and less buggy than the previous versions.. don't tell me they're all just equally bad?

<comment><USER7> But there's a reason for this too: deadlines.

I have written all sorts of implementations for things that I'm positive there's a library or existing example out there that is just plain better and more thorough.

The problem is, I don't know what it is. I don't know where it is. And finding it will take time, take effort to evaluate the non-good implementations, and take effort to integrate with other systems.

Whereas I can write code now which is "good enough" (or worse, just not good at all but exists and does something right now) and then move on and hope I'll find the "better" I'm looking for later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "in heavy media multitaskers because they have a higher probability of > experiencing lapses of attention. When demands are low, they underperform. > But, when the task demands are high, such as when the working memory tasks > are harder, there's no difference between the heavy and light media > multitaskers.

I'm surprised no one brought this up. This seems to indicate that it's possible that multitasking only effects tasks that aren't very important or hard, and that they have no trouble concentrating on tasks which require involvement. Seems to be an argument here that heavy multitasking isn't nearly as bad as the rest of the article makes out?

</comment><comment><USER9> Article says it's too early to draw conclusions.

It could well be that your memory gets worse because you rely on technology to remember things for you. And because you know how to do that, you can switch between more tasks.

There are stories about how people used to remember lots of things back when it wasn't so easy to store information. And also stories about tribal people who haven't yet developed literacy being able to remember lots of stuff.

</comment><comment><USER10> I try to avoid leaving a game or Youtube video open when I am "working". When I try to multitask, I get more frustrated. In the long run, the frustration turns into depression. So I try to tackle one task at a time nowadays. The difficult part is ignoring the phone. It is always within my view, if not within my arms reach. Just the sheer sight of my phone seems to take attention away from me. I don't know what to do with it though... I can't take it offline because my family needs to reach me. Perhaps a smartwatch would help?

<comment><USER11> Have you tried meditating? If I understand correctly it is supposed to train you to do exactly what you want: to be able to focus intently on one thing and not get distracted.

<comment><USER12> I thought the purpose of meditation was ultimately loss of ego, gaining perspective and understanding of our endless yet futile cravings and desires.

It's pretty funny that we have adopted it as a tool for self improvement. If I meditate I can work harder, have less stress and better output! The reality is If you step into meditation wondering what personal gains you will get out of it you are already failing in a way.

<comment><USER11> > I thought the purpose of meditation was ultimately loss of ego, gaining > perspective and understanding of our endless yet futile cravings and > desires.

Not the ones I have been to.

> The reality is If you step into meditation wondering what personal gains you > will get out of it you are already failing in a way.

Well that is subjective isn't it? I enjoy meditation and feel like it has made me calmer and less depressed. I certainly do it because I think it helps my mental health and it seems to be working. I would personally consider it a great success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Heavy multitaskers have reduced... what now?

What does 'memory' mean? In this case it's "simple memory tasks" but that's not what these people have optimised themselves for so it's unsurprising that they'd perform worse at it.

"Leading triathletes do worse at 100m sprint" Oh no.

<comment><USER14> To me the connection between performing multitasking and therefore loosing your ability to memorize things is not at all obvious. And for it to be obvious (I think) one would probably need to know a lot more about the brain than we currently do.

I mean: your example of a triathletes doing a sprint might be true (although a triathlete is probably still a lot better at that than an untrained individual). But there it is easy to see a connection (different muscle mass, different exercises to know what to do in a sprint). But why should there be a similar connectivity between different brain functions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Multi-tasking it is not but task-switching it is with a heavy penalty for the context switch.

In other words, the sum of the task-switching is much less than focus on a singular task.

</comment><comment><USER16> So, I'm a frequent multitasker, but I generally arrange my tasks by likeness - so I'll do programming, then documentation, then design, then reading, and then perhaps troubleshooting. I guess it's a form of pipelining.

The context switch penalty between like tasks is small, the context switch between dissimilar tasks is enormous and generally will cause me to completely lose state on whatever I was working on, which requires me to rethread the needle, and restart.

</comment><comment><USER17> Have they controlled for sleep? This year I've made so many gains by sleeping well, that everything looks like a sleep problem to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> Memory is about focus and observation. It shouldn't come as a surprise that people who are not focusing or observing are not going to remember very well.

The same thing goes for the discovery yesterday that not being able to hear and see when you are older affects your memory.

</comment><comment><USER19> Considering natural property of brain's neuroplasticity and adaptation, you can rewire and retrain your brain. The title is just saying: if you lift weights three times of yours, you can't go to marathon.

There're approved exercises to train your operating memory set like N-Back[1] and others, and bunch of free apps, I liked the least boring of them[2].

But, all that does at least minimum sense if you can change your working routine. These apps can be thrown to trash if you are a fullstack developer with infinite backlog of projects. And I can't maintain hanging myself on these training apps because it makes me feel like a lab rat.

Finally, I think the root of all that attention problems is boredom, anxiety and other social crap which never going to have been cured by any science. I wonder what results would be if somebody would try to find correlation on per country working time hours and playing online games. I wage that people who're supposed to focus on some boring work are either go find some freelance payload or kill some time playing games.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back) [2] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.owlie.brai...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.owlie.braingame&hl=en)

<comment><USER20> On the note of brain games, there have been studies on their effectiveness. You can read more from the Washington Post: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2017/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2017/07/10/brain-training-games-dont-really-train-brains-a-new- study-suggests)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I reason I work in fields that require multitaskers is because I have very poor memory. The code I was given to work with is incredibly complicated. Few people can work with it. Not having good explicit memory forces me to organize my own work and detect patterns. I describe my ADHD not as being aware of one thing then another thing, but rather, being aware of all things at the same time. Do they compare memory before multitasking and then after multitasking?

<comment><USER16> You raise a good point - are people multitasking because they have poor memory, or do they have poor memory because they multitask?

<comment><USER22> That's exactly in line with what the researchers state: "It's too early to definitively determine cause and effect."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not even a processor can multitask. Why would you think humans can. I love explaining that to people and destroying the computers can multitask myth.

<comment><USER24> From the article:

> Well, we don't multitask. We task switch. The word "multitasking" implies > that you can do two or more things at once, but in reality our brains only > allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would argue that humans can't multitask at all, period, full stop. At best we can rapidly switch what our brain is focused on.

<comment><USER26> I can walk and talk at the same time, two tasks. Maybe we could say that humans can't do many cognitively hard tasks at the same time..

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I have found very help is keeping a log of everything that I am doing on a single task. So ever 15 minutes or so, I just write done a small paragraph or even a sentence of what is going on for a particular task. I find that doing this really helps me get back on track if I am disturbed or have to focus on something else for a short while.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think i've multitasked my way out of having sufficient functional memory to remember multiple simultaneous tasks.

</comment><comment><USER29> Women's brain is horizontally wired for multitasking. [http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female- brains...](http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/how-male-female-brains- differ)

</comment><comment><USER30> I've always been good in Jeopardy. I suppose I'm a well of useless trivia. Well, the other night I tuned in to Jeopardy after years of not watching the show. (Literally years because I've been busy with my job and life.) I was surprised at how quick I was, as before, and didn't skip a beat. Somehow I can retrieve the same data after stagnant use in my brain. The reason I'm pointing this out is because I'm also a classic multi-tasker at my developer job and can relate to this article. The difficulty I have is not from a memory decline, but something else. The nature of work has changed. It's like the quest for higher profits--same with work.

<comment><USER31> The article mentions that there are different types of memory, and that "working" memory, i.e. short-term, is the type that was found to be "reduced" by the study.

Jeopardy trivia is almost certainly a different type of (long-term) memory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is multitasking impossible ? Singer/player do multiple things on near parallel if not fully so.

<comment><USER32> ps: to be serious, I even think that either use a very peculiar abstraction layer of the brain (juggling multiple inertial bodies while keeping some sort of coherent space-field [aka rhythm]). It would be quite interesting to read about that if possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Seems like most managers should fall into reduced memory category. They have to juggle more things during the day (on average) than specialists. A random email, meetings, etc. all contribute to this. I also wonder how smartphone usage worsens memory loss.

</comment><comment><USER34> >but in reality our brains only allow us to do one thing at a time and we have to switch back and forth.

Completely unsupported and untrue supposition. Many people regularly perform multiple complex tasks simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wouldn't neuro plasticity dictate that something is gained from the loss? That is, as the brain re-wires itself memory is shifted to the more immediate need. That is processing power.

</comment><comment><USER36> Well my first thought on this is multitaskers have reduced their RAM size and I'm completely lost.

</comment><comment><USER37> Oops, I should be worried, but very shortly, I might have forgotten about this.

</comment><comment><USER38> I think I'll switch on _noprocrast_ then...

And maybe leave my mobile at home tomorrow!

</comment><comment><USER33> Shouldn't the title be updated to mention media multitasking?

</comment><comment><USER39> if you do multiple things at once you divide your focus over these things, and thus retain less of each. seems reasonably logical??

<comment><USER40> It's not "while multitasking". It's a stable attribute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> One thing I wonder, if IQ would play something in this...

<comment><USER42> In general, yes. A higher IQ is correlated with handling more complexity.

<comment><USER43> It's just one factor in the barrel of nonsense that standardized IQ tests are.

Chimpanzees utterly destroy people in certain memory tests: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0) That makes them exceptionally intelligent by that narrow metric.

In others they're unable to keep up with some birds.</comment></comment></comment>


Nomic: An autonomous program that accepts pull requests for itself - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nomic-io/nomic

<comment><USER2> > All property contained in this repo, including Intellectual Property, > Financial Property, and Legal Property, is owned solely by the Autonomous > Software this repo contains. No other entities, whether biological, legal, > or digital, may claim ownership of any property owned by the Autonomous > Software. The Autonomous Software exists solely within The Internet, and is > not subject to jurisdiction of any human laws. No human or legal entity > shall be held liable for any of the actions performed by the Autonomous > Software.

I'm fairly certain you can't choose your code to stand under no laws whatsoever with a license.</comment>


Ask HN: Mobile phone for pragmatists - <AUTHOR> My Samsung S4 LTE recently died, I'm looking for a new phone and find it hard to cut through all the marketing speak.
All I really need is a phone for light to medium use. I'm a developer, so it's sitting on my desk most of the day, no heavy duty features needed. I don't play games, I don't do anything special with it, mostly messaging and taking the occasional picture.
So what I'm looking for is an affordable, just all around solid phone without bells and whistles and without a 200 € markup for a brand name.
If you could point me in any direction, thanks. <comment><USER2> I have an S5 mini which I use for pretty much the same stuff (some browsing, music and messaging). I think you can get one for less than €200 online (I got mine for €250 about 2 years ago).

Pros: Waterproof, good size, replaceable battery, SD card.

Cons: Haven't found any supported custom ROMs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Moto E. Perfectly fine phone, pretty vanilla Android, costs $80 max.</comment>


What's the point of chewing gum? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jsfour/whats-the-point-of-chewing-gum-880c020c32d4#.iftjia44m <comment><USER2> Wow! —that was vacuous!

<comment><USER3> How "inelastic demand" is worked in is brilliant, though.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Looking for 10 founders who are struggling to discover podcasts - <AUTHOR> We're looking for founders who struggle to discover podcasts to join our beta program where everyday we'll manually provide personalized podcast recommendations based exactly in what type of podcasts you want to listen.
To be eligible you need to be a founder who listen to podcasts related to startup at least 3 times a week and struggle to find podcasts or wish to discover more podcasts.
The only thing that we ask for is once a week to do a 5min call with the product team to share feedback about the podcasts recommendations.
If you are interested, comment here or send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com
We just have 10 spots for the beta program so first come first serve. More info about our project at: https://www.feedcast.me/ <comment><USER2> I'm interested! Just sent you an email

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, looking forward to help you discover more podcasts :)</comment></comment>


Bird that went extinct 136,000 years ago evolves again - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/bird-extinct-back-from-dead-madagascar-white-throated-rail-a8908211.html <comment><USER2> The mutation rate across a genome is not constant. If a species has high- mutation-rate genes with variations that help them adapt to new environments, it can quickly differentiate itself and thrive in a new niche.

This happens in many fish, where they can transform from large saltwater forms to smaller freshwater forms within a human lifespan: [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6422/81](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6422/81)

<comment><USER3> Fascinating! Didn't see any pictures so found an article talking about these fish that did. Not sure if it's the same mutation but figured I'd share

[https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/selection/sticklebac...](https://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/selection/stickleback/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The '94 book "The beak of the finch" [1] documents something similar. Natural selection in finches can respond to environmental changes that quickly that the researchers could see differentiation in action.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beak_of_the_Finch](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beak_of_the_Finch)</comment>


Ask HN: How Is Stripe Radar Performing? - <AUTHOR> Since stripe introduced Radar, we've seen our fraud rate drop to literally zero. We're low-risk for fraud as we don't ship anything physical, but this still seems remarkable: is Radar really that good? How has it affected Stripe's valuation? <comment><USER2> We are seeing an opposite side to this: we have customers using Stripe that had very low fraud rates previously and now are getting more false positives causing grief because their customers cards are getting declined.

I can see that it is a good feature, but the lack of easy programmatic control is an issue for us.

<comment><USER3> We got a couple cases of false positives ourselves, and I admit that the Stripe UI wasn't very clear on the fact that we couldn't override the "block" (even though the button was there, it didn't do anything).

That said, with a quick email to the Stripe support team, we got the transactions whitelisted in a matter of hours (I believe the Stripe support does regular US office hours, but that could have changed in the meantime).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any intentions to make this available to 3rd parties?

<comment><USER5> (I work at Stripe) We've thought about this a little, and while we'd be excited to make Radar available more broadly (i.e., even to businesses not using Stripe for payments), for now we're focusing our efforts on improving the product.

<comment><USER4> Great. I unfortunately can't use Stripe, but looking for solutions that will reduce fraud.

If this does become available, will certainly be looking at it.</comment></comment></comment>


Tyler Durden's Rules For Writing In The Zone - <AUTHOR> http://tribalwriter.com/2009/12/28/tyler-durden%E2%80%99s-rules-for-writing-in-the-zone-part-1/ <comment><USER2> The words won't flow no matter how concentrated you are on your writing, not if you aren't invested in the writing, and aren't writing out of passion. A fake and hollow story can be spotted around a corner from a mile away.

As a reader I want to be touched by a story. As a writer, then, you should want to punch me in the gut with your story. The effect of an event is diminished through text. That's why people who care the most about strife in Rwanda have actually been there, and people who care the most about prostate cancer have had it. As writers we wonder how we can get people to feel with that terrible diminishing effect in action.

To get me to feel an event even through the dampening medium of text you have to punch with as much force as you can. Trust me, I'm not going to feel the full force of the blow.

Your sentences should be punchy. If you are writing a sad sentence make it the saddest freaking sentence ever. Hit them with that sadness where it hurts. Try to kill them with words alone. It's hard to imagine anyone killing themselves over a short story, but if someone had I'd want to read that story too--it'd be the best goddamn story I'll ever read.

Even if you don't manage to kick my ass I'll notice the effort. I'll feel you flailing your arms against the text, kicking and screaming bloody murder. And I'll appreciate your text and your exertion. I'll think to myself, "Hot damn, she's sweating blood to get me to care, I'd better pay some attention."

You know what readers like to taste more than anything else? An author's tears. We're such cunts that unless we can taste your frustration and anger at our apathy in your words we won't even digest what you are saying.

\--

This is just what I imagine Tyler Durden saying to the author of this article, in case that was unclear.

</comment><comment><USER3> No offense, but for someone writing about rules for writing, this is very poorly written -- almost to the point of incomprehensibility.

(Maybe I was just turned off by the shirtless bleeding guy. You know, it's possible to tell a story without screenshots from movies...)

<comment><USER4> Not only was it poorly written, but the typesetting was all over the place. Egadz!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery._

...yep.</comment>


Warning: Physics Envy May be Hazardous to Your Wealth - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1563882 <comment><USER2> I'm reading through this now, and thus far it is a remarkably interesting (and amusing) read.

<comment><USER3> I knew almost a whole promotion of economics and business majors at the university. Interesting enough, the economics folks are basing pretty hard on their model and don't somewhat have much distance with it other than the one a physics student would have - there is a strong need to "prove" the theory right. Should they be rather working more like biologists instead?</comment></comment>


Ruby Quirks - <AUTHOR> http://www.engineyard.com/blog/2009/3-ruby-quirks-you-have-to-love/

<comment><USER2> Ruby's string concatenation syntax is borrowed from C, and it's a major win: it allows you to spread a single string onto multiple lines without backslash- quoting all the newlines.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, i'm sort of shocked to see that listed. Didn't quite understand why it's quirky... And to question why it only works with literals?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has got to be one of the worst pieces of gushing fanboy-ism I've run into lately. "Look how cool Ruby is, because you can do these crazy, unreadable, unmaintainable things. I don't know why you'd want to do them, but isn't it awesome that you can? Of course, us Ruby programmers are so smart that we would never actually use any of this hard-to-understand stuff, unlike those silly Perl programmers."

<comment><USER5> _I don't know why you'd want to do them, but isn't it awesome that you can?_

I like that sentiment, especially if it's tempered with not actually doing any of them until you run into a legitimate use case.

But in the meantime, finding weird corner cases seems very hacker-ish to me. It may not make any sense to me, but someone else may look at the article and say to themselvs, "aha!" and they may discover a new way to do something.

I can't help but think that Symbol#to_proc probably looked just as weird the first time it was explained to someone: When the interpreter sees &, it sends the #to_proc method to its subject and converts the result to a block. So if we implement a #to_proc method for Symbol we can use &method_name instead of writing out a block...

All that being said, I have no idea what you've been reading lately, so maybe it really is the worst you've encountered. Under the circumstances, I won't actually disagree with you, just share my own perspective :-)

<comment><USER4> I think it would be better to either find a legitimate use for the feature, or conclude that it might be a mis-feature.

For example, I can see the value of allowing a default function argument to be a Proc/lambda. I can even imagine how it might make sense to allow it to be a named function declaration -- if def actually returned a function object, rather than nil as the article notes. But what the author demonstrates seems to me nothing more than a broken consequence of Ruby's syntax.

Finding weird corner cases may indeed be very hacker-ish, but blindly labeling them as good is not, in my opinion.

I could be wrong about the value of this construct; someone might come up with something useful you can do with it. But, until then, I'm not going to view it as anything other than a curiosity, not as an example of "ZOMG look how cool Ruby is!!11!".

Regarding Symbol#to_proc, I would say that it is only syntactically weird. But if you have any background with functional languages, it's an incredibly natural semantic construct.

<comment><USER6> _Finding weird corner cases may indeed be very hacker-ish, but blindly labeling them as good is not, in my opinion._

Did Thomas do that? I don't see anywhere where he "blindly label(s) them as good". Right there in the title he calls them Quirks, and he says you have to love them. Then, in the text he explains, quite clearly, that you should almost never use these in actual code.

I think you've missed the point that the examples presented (especially the function definition in a default argument) merely show how Ruby works; specifically that all code is executed as expressions during runtime. To me these "quirks" are similar to showing somebody that dereferencing an offset to an array pointer in C is the same as using an array index. You're not going to do it in production code, but knowing that it's possible helps in better understanding what's going on with all that code you write.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not a huge fan of flexible syntaxes, which might be just a bunch of language engineers revolting against periods, semicolons and parentheses. I happen to like my code to be easily readable and I'm willing to give up the time lost in typing a few extra keystrokes for that benefit.

<comment><USER8> I think you're doing something wrong if you need glyphs and punctuation for your code to be readable. I get dots and all that, but semicolons and friends are just noise.

<comment><USER7> A flexible syntax introduces ambiguity, which forces me to think even more. Consider this simple example (which may be wrong for all I know): x = foo bar, baz

Is it x = foo(bar, baz), x = {foo(bar), baz} or something else? I could probably derive the true meaning by looking at surrounding code, but I shouldn't have to.

<comment><USER8> Well, sure. You _can_ write code like that, but that doesn't mean you should. I'm not arguing for so-called "poetic mode" code (I hate it actually), but I think languages like Ruby and Python strike a really solid balance between lack of line noise and clarity if you follow what one might call normal coding conventions established by the community. Of course, these aren't canonized for the most part, so it's hard to know exactly what they mean, but I think everyone can agree that "x = foo bar, baz" should be clarified to "x = foo(bar, baz)," if nothing else because it will eliminate any parser confusion if you add a predicate conditional or something like that.

Anyhow, my point is that I can write C or Java or whatever else that's just as unreadable due to its lack of clarity, but that doesn't mean I will. It's a skill issue more than a language issue. ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mangalyaan, India's Mars Orbiter, has successfully commenced its journey to Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.isro.gov.in/mars/updates.aspx <comment><USER2> Congratulations to ISRO. I was up all night following ISRO's updates :)

Mission homepage: [http://www.isro.org/mars/home.aspx](http://www.isro.org/mars/home.aspx)

Here are some pics from ISTRAC (ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network) that was looking over the Trans Mars Injection, and the spacecraft itself: [http://www.isro.org/mars/momimg.aspx](http://www.isro.org/mars/momimg.aspx)

Here's a color picture of Earth captured by MOM last week: [http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/mom- images.aspx](http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/mom-images.aspx)

Launch photos of PSLV-XL: [http://www.isro.org/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/launchvehicle.aspx](http://www.isro.org/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/launchvehicle.aspx)

Differences between NASA MAVEN and ISRO MOM trajectories: [http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily- lakdawalla/2013/1122094...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily- lakdawalla/2013/11220947-maven-mom-trajectory-explainer.html)

Here's a nice animation detailing the trajectories of MOM and MAVEN, in their heliocentric and geocentric phases: [http://sankara.net/mom.html](http://sankara.net/mom.html)

Before jumping to heliocentric orbit, ISRO did a series of interesting orbit- raising maneuvers to build necessary escape velocity to escape from Earth's sphere of influence. Here are the details: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission#Orbit_rais...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission#Orbit_raising_manoeuvres) and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission#Mission_pr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Orbiter_Mission#Mission_profile)

Now, MOM has left geocentric orbit and is now in heliocentric (Sun-centric) orbit heading towards Mars. MOM has now entered inter-planetary space. When MOM comes close to Mars in Sep 2014, its rocket motor will be fired to move spacecraft into Mars orbit and get captured by Mars gravity. During this journey, ISRO has planned for four mid-course corrections if needed.

<comment><USER3> I saw a reference to the [interplanetary transport network]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Networ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network)) sometime back, and wanted to confirm if that is the only/best way to travel between planets and is that what the MOM is doing, i.e. it has entered into one of those paths where it does not need to spend any energy till it reaches nearby Mars.

<comment><USER4> No, the ITN isn't the only way to travel, and it's not what MOM is using. It's just doing a Hohmann transfer, which is just about the most basic orbital maneuver possible. The ITN is the clever, sneaky way to travel between planets with a shoestring fuel budget by bouncing around chaotically. It can be better, but it does tend to take a whole lot longer.

Note that even a standard Hohmann doesn't need to spend any fuel until arrival (aside from minor course corrections). But with the ITN, it's potentially cheaper to achieve certain chaotic trajectories than it is to change the orbit enough for a Hohmann.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Before someone makes the inevitable "Why are they spending money on this instead of fixing poverty?" argument:

The whole Mars mission costs about as much as making four Bollywood movies.

[http://www.firstpost.com/india/ten-price-tags-to-put-isro- ma...](http://www.firstpost.com/india/ten-price-tags-to-put-isro-mars-mission- cost-in-perspective-1213429.html)

<comment><USER6> Both Bollywood and Mangalyan are a distraction from the core issues, poverty being one of them. Why do people react to criticism that is inevitable for such a mission?

In my opinion, space probe to Mars is a good idea for space engineers and for the idea of adventure, it should be nurtured. But the moment the Indian Government a$$holes (who have eaten up more than 10000X that amount which a Mangalyan costs) and their media toots start projecting this achievement of engineers as their own "moment of glory" and a proof towards India becoming a global superpower, everything falls flat on the face.

There should be no doubt that poverty IS the biggest challenge for us (I am an Indian) to work on, and there are people with achievements in rural tech to help people over with just that. No space wizardry, just basic engineering. Heroism, inspiration and aspiration should be centred and drawn around those people too, India needs it more.

<comment><USER7> And this is part of working on poverty, in India and everywhere else. Forget all the other reasons. People need inspiration, and this is one way to provide it. The payoff may not be immediate, but it will come.

<comment><USER8> They also need local jobs in high-tech industries, rather then a continuous brain-drain off to Western nations.

India's poverty also has very little to do with "lack of money" as does poverty everywhere - i.e. why does the US have poverty, despite it's incredible wealth?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Images of the spacecraft and facilities here: [http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/satellite.aspx](http://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c25/Imagegallery/satellite.aspx).

</comment><comment><USER10> So does this mean we just sit back & watch for 10 months? Or can something go wrong after this as well?

<comment><USER11> Here's a summary of Mars missions and their success/failure: [http://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/log/](http://mars.nasa.gov/programmissions/missions/log/)

Lots can go wrong on the Mars side. E.g. Mars Polar Lander - smashed into Mars. Beagle 2 - last heard from just before landing. Mars Climate Orbiter - failed to land because of confusion between pounds and Newtons. Deep Space 2 - no communication after landing. Mars Observer - communication lost 3 days from Mars, probably due to fuel leak.

See "Mars Curse": [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Probing_dif...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars#Probing_dif..).

<comment><USER12> Venus seems to be much more cursed than Mars - at least when it comes to Soviet probes trying to take photos.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera#Venera_9_to_12](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera#Venera_9_to_12)

<comment><USER13> Venus isn't the nicest play in the galaxy with surface pressure 92x earth and a temperature of 462 C and all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is awesome news. It's great to now have so many countries doing space exploration. Can't wait to see what they find.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice that they are spending Indian taxpayer money on science! (I am biased towards robotic missions vs. getting ppl into orbit at all costs)

<comment><USER16> I pay tax in India but I am happy for this mission but it causes more pain when my money goes into the pockets of corrupt politicians. It's not the country which is poor, it's the corrupt politicians and bureaucracy. Refer to list of Indian scams : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India) , now annual scam every year is worth $20 billion , I wonder why people are not criticizing the administration and corruption but ISRO.

<comment><USER17> The problem is not so much that countries like India do not have honest, competent politicians, but rather how to tell them apart.

Fighting corruption needs transparency and a system that prevents corruption rather than punishing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was reading an article somewhere when i came across this stat: that americans have spent 10 times as much as indians have put in this mars probe, i mean how is this possible 10x ratio doesn't seem to be justifying either india is real cheap when it comes to scientific instruments or americans are overspending... and former case doesn't look like a possibility considering that mostly the government companies are manufacturing the spare parts for such missions btw i would like to congratulate the Indians if that stat holds any truth.

<comment><USER19> Worth looking at: [http://www.quora.com/Robert-Frost-Quora-user/What-are- Robert...](http://www.quora.com/Robert-Frost-Quora-user/What-are-Robert- Frosts-views-on-the-significantly-low-cost-of-Indias-Mars-Orbiter-Mission)

<comment><USER20> Read the answer and the comments on it. What do experts have to say about this?

<comment><USER19> Well, Robert Frost /is/ an expert. He works at NASA. But I guess he was in a bit of a bad mood. That whole month, he kept getting A2A's about MOM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's so awesome! They need a better web designer for their site though. That brown background is just horrible.

<comment><USER22> I'm Indian, and would like to start a gallery of "ghastly Indian government websites". If you want to gaze in horrified fascination at the train wreck of execrable blink tags, long scrolling marquees, and millions of unintelligible categories, go look at:

Delhi Govt.: [http://delhi.gov.in/](http://delhi.gov.in/)

BSNL (a leading public sector telco): [http://www.bsnl.co.in/](http://www.bsnl.co.in/)

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre: [http://barcrecruit.gov.in/](http://barcrecruit.gov.in/)

Nehru Science Centre: [http://www.nehrusciencecentre.gov.in/](http://www.nehrusciencecentre.gov.in/)

Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research: [http://www.igcar.ernet.in/](http://www.igcar.ernet.in/)

This being said, I feel pretty good about the fact that ISRO and others' ramshackle websites don't seem to be too indicative of their technical prowess, though they are undoubtedly embarrassing.

[Possibly jingoistic downvoters -- do you actually think these websites are decent, or even half-decent? Be honest.]

<comment><USER23> Government website in India are terrible. Most are built by NIC (National Informatics Center). That works just like an employment scheme with lots of entry-level employees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hate it when capitalistic countries and their residents start pointing out to poverty in India when ever the see a smaller country out doing them in technology. investing in these technologies helps hundreds of engineers and also sows the seed of ambition in millions of others.

<comment><USER25> Boy its not a smaller country. It will explode some day with people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Had no idea this was even underway.

<comment><USER12> Me neither. I vaguely defend myself by noting that HN seems to be fairly US- centric, and since I live in the US, I tend to hear more about things like SpaceX launches (watched the two aborted ones this week) than I do about the Indian, Chinese or Japanese space programs.

<comment><USER27> You're in luck - Chang'e 3 launches tomorrow ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3)), and assuming it doesn't blow up en route to orbit you'll probably hear more about it (especially as it's forecast to be the first spacecraft in decades to make a soft landing upon the Moon).

<comment><USER12> Damn, is there video being streamed anywhere?

Edit: I guess it already took off by the time I saw this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Chak De! India.

</comment><comment><USER29> What does this actually mean for non-experts in Astronomy? Is it in a higher orbit around Earth, has it started a slingshot for Mars, or has it started orbiting Mars?

<comment><USER2> It means, MOM has left Earth's sphere of influence, and it's now orbiting in a heliocentric (Sun-centric) orbit. Later in Sep 2014, when MOM comes close to Mars, its rocket motors will be fired again in order to move towards Mars orbit and get captured by Mars gravity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is this a science project, or a status project? Science would be best, but even as a status project, better Mars Orbiter than more nuclear warheads.

<comment><USER2> It's a technology development and demonstration, _and_ science project. This is the first inter-planetary mission for ISRO, and the next step after their 2009 Moon mission, Chandrayaan-1 :)

[http://www.isro.org/mars/objectives.aspx](http://www.isro.org/mars/objectives.aspx)

[http://www.isro.org/mars/payload.aspx](http://www.isro.org/mars/payload.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This announcement makes me want to play more KSP ...

</comment><comment><USER31> unrelated comment triggered by looking at the link, why are Indian websites at large so crappy and appear to be from 1990s? Just like with the insane lawless vehicle traffic, people have become used to crappy websites in India.

<comment><USER32> 1\. Ignorance of the administrators - the programmers in the institutes, if any, have to listen to the design ideas of the administrators even when the programmers are more competent and up-to-date. The administrators may be competent in their own areas, but they have to be listened to at all costs.

2\. The programmers in these institutes are often sidelined, and their work is seen as inessential. So, many of them lack motivation to update their skills. Regular "refresher courses" to update skill-sets are hardly ever funded.

3\. There are a lot of restrictions to government companies outsourcing work to private companies - in general it is very difficult for government companies' funds to flow to private companies - for example, all govt. employees have to fly Air India, even when other airline tickets are cheaper. In things like website development, this means that it is hard (not impossible) to subcontract the work to a non-government agency. Also, the private subcontractors who do get the projects leave after 3 years or so, since there is no maintenance contract built-in. The maintenance contractors who come in later have no idea what the existing code base is.

Overall, I think this is a system designed to minimize corruption. Please see a related analysis on the healthcare.gov debacle - "Furthermore, many of the procurement policies that make access to services like AWS difficult have been put in place to prevent corrupt or unjust spending of taxpayers' money. Unfortunately many of these policies have become so complicated that the issues get obfuscated, they repel innovative and cost effective solutions, and ultimately fail to achieve their original intent. " [1]

The policy does a bad job at preventing corruption, anyway. But especially in the case of a fast-changing technology like web development, it is a ridiculous hurdle. (No, I am not a programmer, just an exasperated government employee in India, who is aghast that so much of talent in the country is not allowed to be used just because of ill-made legislation. I am not a fan of vigilante activism either - they have no idea of the kind of policy fetters that people have to deal with in government.)

[1] [http://www.civicagency.org/2013/10/learning-from-the- healthc...](http://www.civicagency.org/2013/10/learning-from-the-healthcare- gov-infrastructure/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A new cold war in space race has begun..</comment>


How Can Germany's High-Speed Trains Get Back on Track? - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,699847,00.html

<comment><USER2> At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV network grow outwards from France. It's already started to spread its tendrils in other countries anyway.

Not that the network is that good in France though, Paris-Lyon-Marseilles has been nice for years, the connection to Lilles (and now to Bruxelles in Belgium as well) and to London via the channel tunnel is nice, a line recently opened to the east of the country (Strasbourg) but the TGV network has a few glaring issues:

* Everything goes through Paris. Lyon-Paris takes 3 hours, Paris-Strasbourg take about the same time, but a direct from Lyon to Strasbourg (not via Paris) takes 6 hours even though there is pretty much the same distance (~450km) betweem all of them (yep, Paris-Lyon-Strasbourg almost forms an equilateral triangle). Likewise Paris-Marseille (800km) takes 4h but Marseille-Nice (south-east to south-east but further east, 200km) will be 3h30

* There are no LGV (high-speed train lines) to western France, they stop at Le Mans and Tours (200~250km from Paris) so travelling from Paris to Marseille (800km) takes 4h, and Paris to Bordeaux (550km) will take you 4h as well (as the TGV has to use regular lines for half the travel). Paris to Toulouse (670km direct, 780km via Bordeaux) will waste at least 7h (TGV to Bordeaux then regional train).

Thankfully this is changing, there are new lines in the work and projected to start solving this issue (see dotted lines: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:France_TGV.png>) and overall TGV is awesome, but it's nowhere near perfect right now.

PS: I note that my timings differ from Spiegel's, I got mine from the SNCF database so...

PPS: For those unfamiliar with french geography and cities, Paris is of course the french capital (inner city population 2.2M, 11.7M including suburbs), Marseilles is France's second biggest city (852k inner, 1.6M metro), Lyon comes third (472k inner but 1.75M metro), Toulouse is the fourth biggest (437k inner, 1.1M metro), Nice stands at 5th (348k inner, 990k metro), Strasbourg 7th (273k inner, 638k metro) and Bordeaux is 9th (250k inner, 1M metro)

<comment><USER3> _At this point, for europe it might just be a better idea to let the TGV network grow outwards from France._

I doubt that would solve the problem where political wrangling is the issue. I _especially_ can't see the Germans allowing the French to build and run their trains and lines. ;)

The ICE has run to Vienna for a while now, and Austria's ÖBB recently started their high-ish-speed "Railjet" [1] service (vmax currently 200km/h, due to increase to 230). Both suffer from the same network problems as Germany - trains pass through far too many smaller towns; old tracks. Plus there's the additional difficulty of the Austrian geography. The Vienna-Munich/Frankfurt route runs through one of the flattest parts of Austria, much of the rest of the country is covered in mountains.

They are building bypasses (mainly colossal tunnels, as "flat" around here still is pretty hilly) but it takes decades and consumes a phenomenal amount of taxpayer money.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railjet>

<comment><USER4> Oh, I don't think that's such a big problem. Thalys already exists [1] and they use TGV trains.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalys>

<comment><USER3> I'm aware of Thalys, though Aachen/Cologne isn't exactly a long journey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A accurate portrayal of the problems, but I would very much like to add that actually going to places with a ICE really is a joy. I always prefer it to traveling by car, even if I have to travel some part of the way with a slower regional train.

(That might be because traveling by train is just plain cool, period. I once took that Russian night train to Krakow – that was a unique experience.)

<comment><USER5> I love trains, too. Using high speed rail to see my parents is one the favourite things about my decision to move back to Germany.

ICEs are great and it is such a shame that the network is so patchy. When they actually do go up to speed it's thrilling.

<comment><USER4> Ah, the 200 km between Cologne and Frankfurt – if only every track were like that :)

(Here's a overview over the current state of the German network: [http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:ICEtracks.pn...](http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:ICEtracks.png&filetimestamp=20091004212526))

<comment><USER5> That Wikipedia graphic looks a lot better than the Spiegel one. Well, maybe we're complaining on a high level. That doesn't change anything about the ridiculous stops mentioned in the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this article is a good demonstration of the all-or-nothing big-government requirements of high speed rail.

In the two countries which have working, effective, high speed rail networks (France and Japan) it cost billions, took many years and required 100% government commitment to achieve. Only a few countries have the political setup to achieve something like that.

<comment><USER7> High speed rail is breathtakingly expensive, especially in urban areas. When BART was planning on a high speed branch out to silicon valley, it was budgeted to run $120,000,000 per mile of track. Part of the cost is that you cannot have _any_ at-grade crossings, every road crossing has to be an over/underpass.

<comment><USER8> That's still fairly reasonable compared to interstate construction costs in a city.

For ~30 Billion you could build a DC to NY line that runs through Baltimore and Philadelphia.

"The Big Dig was the most expensive highway project in the U.S.[2] Although the project was estimated in 1985 at $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006[update]),[3] over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars)[3] had been spent in federal and state tax dollars as of 2006[update].[4] A July 17, 2008 article in The Boston Globe stated, "In all, the project will cost an additional $7 billion in interest, bringing the total to a staggering $22 billion, according to a Globe review of hundreds of pages of state documents. It will not be paid off until 2038." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig>

PS: It was probably not worth the cost: "The result was a 62% reduction in vehicle hours of travel on I-93, the airport tunnels, and the connection from Storrow Drive, from an average 38,200 hours per day before construction (1994–1995) to 14,800 hours per day in 2004–2005, after the project was largely complete.[28] The savings for travelers was estimated at $166 million annually in the same 2004–2005 time frame.[29] Travel times on the Central Artery northbound during the afternoon peak hour were reduced 85.6%.[30]"

<comment><USER9> _PS: It was probably not worth the cost:_

Perhaps slightly off topic, but I have to disagree - your postscript only looks at one aspect of the CA/T, there were other effects as well. For starters, the old elevated artery was way past it's useful life, and a replacement was absolutely needed. Once you realize that the elevated artery needed replacement, your options start to narrow very quickly: replacing the old elevated artery with a new elevated artery would have been more disruptive than the tunnel construction, and building a new highway in a separate location was feasible since there was no where else to put it. Digging an expensive tunnel was the least bad of a bunch of bad options, but frankly the city was paying for a bunch of stupid decisions that were made in the 1950's.

As for the positive effects of the Big Dig, it reconnected Boston with the water front, it freed up recreational land, it had a positive effect on Boston's air quality, and it significantly improved automobile traffic flow by separating out local traffic (which runs on the surface) from thru traffic (which runs in the tunnel) where before they all moved on the elevated highway which worsened congestion. Before the CA/T opened, this route:

<http://maps.google.com/maps?q=woburn%20to%20braintree%20ma>

would take a minimum of 90 minutes; double that estimate if you were traveling during peak hour. Triple it if there was an accident in the area. Right now, it's a 20 minute drive in non-peak hours, and well under an hour during peak times. Not bad.

That said, it would have been nice to have had more expanded transit to go along with the Big Dig. The Silver Line and the Old Colony lines (which were required as mitigation for the Big Dig) was a good start, but we could have done better.

(ftr, I worked on the Big Dig as a consultant from 1998-2001. I've also worked on several dozen domestic passenger rail programs, include T-Rex, BART Silicon Valley Extension, and the Acela mentioned in this discussion)

<comment><USER8> "Boston city proper had a 2008 estimated population of 620,535" 22,000,000,000$ / 620,535 = 35,450$ per person, for something they helps in some areas but made congestion worse in others.

Other options included reducing the number of cars large toll to get into the city which would for high quality and public bus system.

2% of 22billion is 440 million / year that pays for one hell of a public bus system. Heck, spend 22billion on an above ground mono rail network and you could build one hell of a system (~500 - 1500km). Most Boston traffic is just moving people from point A to B so public transportation is a real option. 13% of all commuting takes place by foot as it is, so even elevated bike paths could have significantly improved things.

<comment><USER9> _"Boston city proper had a 2008 estimated population of 620,535" 22,000,000,000$ / 620,535 = 35,450$ per person, for something they helps in some areas but made congestion worse in others._

The presumption is that the artery is only being used by Boston residents. It's used by Boston residents to get out the city, by other MA residents to get into the city, and by non-MA residents to get in & thru the city, as well as delivering goods received in Boston ports to points north, south and west. Freight rail can (and does, vis the huge CSX yard in Allston) move a huge portion of that load, but you're still going to have trucks for the last-mile delivery to the industrialized areas in EMass. (and where has it made congestion worse?)

But even if you want to put everyone on buses, those buses still have to drive on something - the old artery couldn't be that something because it was falling apart, and alternatives have the same problem as an alternative highway system does. IOW. you're still talking about a tunnel system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not the trains that are the problem, it's the tracks. There are enough high-quality, high-speed trainsets to choose from (TGV, Velaro, ETR 500+, AGV, etc), but they don't have enough track to run them on.

Spain gets it. There, the government has invested an insane amount in a dedicated HS infrastructure which is used by all types of (high-speed) trains. Madrid-Barcelona is 3 hours and has already halved the need for the air shuttle that runs between the cities.

What we need is for governments to stop trying to do everything and do what they do best: Build the rail infrastructure according to the relevant standards (ETMS, ERTMS) and cooperate to fill the gaps in the network (Perpignan-Figueras, Lyon-Turin, etc). Then let private companies do what they do best: Run the trains, compete and drive down prices.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how many more decades before we get high-speed rail in the US... I've been on the trains in France and Japan and it's a great way to travel.

<comment><USER12> I've got the somewhat unpopular opinion that its probably too late for us Americans to put something like that together. I live in DC and have witnessed the nearly 2 decades of political whinging it took to get started on a 20 mile extension of DC's already sorry little system out to the airport.

It would take a change in attitude so radical to get national high speed rail to a decent number of cities that I'm not sure it can be done. Perhaps the end of cheap oil could do it in a generation or two?

For good or bad, we've cast our lot with asphalt tracks and rubber wheels.

<comment><USER13> As a D.C. metro resident (living in NoVA), I share your pain. When I moved, I made sure to live close to at least 1 airport (ended up being IAD) for that verysame reason.

<comment><USER14> I grew up in Reston. When I started elementry school (1985), the furthest the metro rail went out was Vienna, though they were talking about running a line out along the Dulles corridor.

I visited home last year; the furthest the metro rail went out was Vienna, though they were talking about running a line out along the Dulles corridor, and they have a website[1]. Now that's progress!

1: <http://www.dullescorridorrail.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Auf Deutsch: <http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,699086,00.html>

Spiegel Online should really give a link to the original German articles from corresponding international edition articles. Had to go back through @Spiegel_alles to find it on twitter.

I'm spoiled by Wikipedia.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to document miscellaneous things for team - <AUTHOR> There are lots of documentations that are about how-to's, not necessarily pertaining to technology (submitting forms, requesting accesses, etc).
The problem is that there are A LOT, and it's very hard to go search for one that I need.
Is there a way to manage this properly? What's the best way?
I was thinking about writing a bunch of markdown docs and serve it locally... (None of the info can be uploaded online, so it needs to be stored in a git repo and only accessible offline). <comment><USER2> We use svn. It's easy to manage folder-tree, easy to use and better for non- tech people.</comment>


Create a Global Gitignore - <AUTHOR> https://mike.place/2020/global-gitignore/ <comment><USER2> This require other contributor to be responsible and set their global ignore file properly</comment>


Weber's Law – our perception is logarithmic [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHG8io5qIU8 <comment><USER2> [Remember to post the youtube.com version because the youtu.be version is autokilled.]

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah! Thank you.</comment></comment>


Forgotten Best Sellers - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/forgotten-best-sellers <comment><USER2> It is hardly news that American (and, to a smaller extent, European) reading tends to revolve around disposable media events. Specific books are announced, promoted, celebrated at launch parties, paraded on semi-arbitrary bestseller lists[1], advertised with author appearances, and then retired and forgotten just as quickly. Do you remember when you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a volume in the endless _Left Behind_ series?

A lot of people I've talked to in the US enjoy specific books, to a large extent, _because_ they are read by lots of other people at the same time. The spectacle gives the reader a sense of affirmation that the choice was a good one, and for a subset of book genres, wide readership is what allows a fandom to coalesce.

In this setting, an old and unpopular book is bad, because no one else is shipping Bjornstjerne Bjornson characters. It's almost as weird as going back to watch old baseball games.

But if that's not how and why you read, yeah, there are thousands upon thousands of wonderful and unusual books that will narrate a corner of human experience that you've never thought about before.

As an anecdote, _Raintree County_ , a 19th-century family saga set in a fictional Southern town, was a cause celebré when it came out in 1948. The movie rights to it were sold before the novel was even published, and the eventual film won the best picture Oscar, beating out _Gone with the Wind_! Talk about changing tastes!

[1] e.g., [https://observer.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-the-new-york- ti...](https://observer.com/2016/02/the-truth-about-the-new-york-times-and- wall-street-journal-bestseller-lists/)

<comment><USER3> I don' think that is big issue in countries with good public libraries.

<comment><USER4> Library access and quality where I've lived in the US is fantastic, and at least in California access to all local libraries is extended to any state resident so there isn't a significant socioeconomic hurdle, and other places I lived in at least had very convenient interlibrary loaning. I live in Switzerland now, and quite frankly so far I've been slightly disappointed by the non-university resources even in a larger city here, both in physical buildings and online, but I haven't explored the full reaches of it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love old Best Sellers. Don't think that article was real helpful in listing any.

For example, pretty much everything by Michener is amazing, but nobody cares about him any more. He's dismissed as some kind of trashy or middlebrow post WW-2 writer; maybe he was -but he's also almost always a lot of fun to read, and occasionally incredibly interesting.

The Bjorndal Saga by Trygve Gulbranssen is largely forgotten in the US (maybe less so in Norway), but won all kinds of presidential awards and was a big deal in its day. It's sort of like "The Leopard" which is less forgotten, since they made a decent movie out of it (probably the great Italian novel). Greater novel though, in my opinion.

Another one I picked up because of an interview with Jim Simons; Jan de Hartog's "the Captain" -so far so good; was a big deal back in its day; it's predecessor "Captain Jan" was important enough it figured into Holland's war story. Totally forgotten now in the anglosphere anyway, and I'd have never heard of it if it weren't for a one off statement by an important guy who could hardly remember the name himself.

Dennis Wheatley is another huge best seller from the Ian Fleming era of trash novels; loads of fun to read -vastly better than Fleming. Alas, the movies they made of his books were all "video nasties" rather than James Bond.

None of these are Nobel Prize in Literature tier books, they vary wildly in quality, but they're loads of fun to read now as they were back then. Books don't always need to be an exercise in self improvement.

<comment><USER6> oh man, Wheatley. I read "The Devil Rides Out" on a bus when i ran away from home at fourteen. Brings back some memories. Probably would find it pretty hokey today.

<comment><USER5> If you like Tom Baker and Sean Pertwee cheese, it will stand the test of time.

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/05/dennis- wheatle...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/dec/05/dennis-wheatley- devil-gentleman-review)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The Gadfly[1] is an interesting one. Sold 2.5 million copies in the Soviet Union. 2 million copies in China. Mostly unheard of in the West.

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

<comment><USER8> another reason to repost a link to Now Then [https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...](https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58)

Spoilers.

"

George Boole - who helped start all this with his Boolean Logic had an extraordinary family.

...

But George Boole had another daughter called Ethel. She had an amazing life - which showed that there is another way. Because Ethel believed in the future.

...

Then Reilly deserted her - and went off to Russia where he worked as a secret agent for the British. Ian Fleming is said to have used Reilly as the model for James Bond.

Ethel was heartbroken - and she wrote a novel called The Gadfly which, although she never admitted it, her biographer says is obviously based on the early adventures of Sydney Reilly.

It's the most amazing book. It's an over the top melodrama set in Italy about the hero, Arthur's battle against the church and the corrupt state - and his treacherous family. At the same time it is about his passionate love for an english girl - Gemma. It ends with Arthur being slowly tortured and then condemned to be shot.

Its message though is a revolutionary one. Arthur is sacrificed so that humankind can be redeemed and open the way to a realisation of the future possibilities for the world - once the old oppressive forces have been overthrown.

The Gadfly was published in 1897 in New York - under Ethel's married name, E.L. Voynich. No British publisher would touch it because of its "outrageous and horrible character". But then it was published in Russia and became an astonishing success. One writer describes how all the young Bolsheviks read it and "it virtually became the bible of the revolution".

By the 1960s it was estimated that 250 million Russian teenagers had read the Gadfly in translation. And polls showed that Arthur was consistently the favourite hero of Soviet youth. And in 1955 a film version was made - with a soundtrack by Shostakovich - which won an award at the Cannes film festival.

In 1920 Ethel went back to her husband Wilfred Voynich. He had moved to New York and had become one of the world's greatest expert and dealers in rare books.

His most famous purchase was a mysterious manuscript written in code that has come to be known as The Voynich Manuscript. No one has ever been able to break the code - it seems to have many scientific references, and herbal and astronomical illustrations.

"

<comment><USER7> Thanks. I actually knew some of those connections but by no means all!

<comment><USER8> The whole article is a string of loosely connected ideas that flow like that from point to point, ending with her, but is much much more than where it ends.

<comment><USER9> That's one of the things I enjoy about Adam Curtis's writing and his films.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting. I'd love to follow this series of posts, but I couldn't find an RSS feed, so there is _zero_ chance I'll ever remember to revisit this site. Pity.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rss.xml](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rss.xml)

<comment><USER10> Problem is, it is a general feed with all their content. I don't want that. Article in question doesn't even appear in the initial feed preview.

They have a nice logical structure on their website: I expect all posts on the subject to appear in their /roundtable/ section. So this URL not having an RSS is just sad. It's so simple to do!

<comment><USER11> I haven't used this particular feed but if they tag articles properly or use keywords that RSS readers such as NewsBlur (which I use) can filter in or out articles that you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Normally when I think of forgotten best sellers I think novels that are pretty good stories told quickly but perhaps not as well as they could have been and without any great intellectual heft to them.

The books that stick with me that are largely forgotten are the Merlin books from Mary Stewart [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_(novelist)#The_Me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Stewart_\(novelist\)#The_Merlin_Trilogy) and Chaim Potok's books like The Chosen [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chosen_(Potok_novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chosen_\(Potok_novel\)), they have a certain nostalgic importance for me while I can still see that they were not especially important otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course, gutenberg.org is a great resource for those forgotten books.

One of the most popular books from the 19th century was "Struggles and Triumphs: or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. Barnum" [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50115](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/50115)

The parallels between P. T. Barnum and Donald Trump were obvious, but P. T. Barnum's jump into politics was far, far kinder.

</comment><comment><USER14> For the last few years I've had a joke that there is a law that every Goodwill store is required to have a copy of Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, Hunger Games, and/or Left Behind. I wonder if these bestsellers will be forgotten decades from now because clearly a lot of people are not holding onto these books.

<comment><USER15> Probably not - if something gets as popular as these it isn't likely they're going to be forgotten anytime soon, least of all the Hunger Games.

Many of them will probably grow into 'classics' in the decades following, and it's a bit rare to see them just fade into obscurity, but it happens.

<comment><USER16> Hunger Games is written for a teen audience, and like most books targeted to that demographic, will simply go out of fashion and disappear.

Yes, I read it :-)

<comment><USER17> ah yes, like all the other flash-in-the-pan teen novels:

to kill a mockingbird, the hobbit, the catcher in the rye, the lord of the rings, fahrenheit 451, anne of green gables, the lord of the flies, flowers for algernon, dune, the call of the wild, treasure island, and the narnia series.

Yes, I know many books in that category fade away, but only time will tell if hunger games is one of the ones that fade, or one of the ones that lasts

<comment><USER18> Many of those are now recognized to have a real artful quality and literary value, which is hardly present in something like the hunger games

<comment><USER12> Well, I haven't read The Hunger Games, but my readings of criticism of it leads me to think it probably has some sort of real artful quality and literary value - what is your argument that it doesn't?

<comment><USER18> Don't take my word for it - read it yourself. It's trashy YA kitsch. Contrast with catcher in the rye or LotR afterwards

<comment><USER16> It also has a completely predictable plot and many deux ex machinas to get our heroine out of a hopeless jam. Its plot is similar to Stephen King's "The Long Walk" which is a far better (and grimmer) book.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


As the Planet Warms, Who Should Get to Drive? - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/02/car-ownership-climate-change-driving-poverty-economic/582091/ <comment><USER2> There will probably come a day (maybe soon) when electric cars become cheap and easily available.

When that day arrives, ICE autos will probably become very affordable.

<comment><USER3> In the US, probably not. Cash for clunkers is an example of a government policy that made car ownership less affordable. During the recession, people with the means to purchase a new car received a massive windfall appreciation of their old cars. Those without means to purchase a new car faced a used car market with scarcity and in particular scarcity of the best kind of cheap used car...one previously owned and maintained by a person of means. The car grandma only drove to church on Sunday was crushed for scrap.

History might not repeat itself. But I would be unsurprised by a greening policy for electric vehicles that looked a lot like cash for clunkers. The long run of tax favored policies for electric vehicles don't suggest future policies designed for the means of those without means: there never has been a tax incentive for buying a _used_ electric vehicle or replacing a vehicle with low fuel mileage for a more efficient _used_ vehicle.

Trickle down theories tend to ignore the incentives for those at the top of the hill to capture any value that might flow downstream. Cash for clunkers didn't buy used cars from poor people with a yard full of junkers. Because of the holding period required, they weren't salable on their potential trade-in value to people with the means to buy new cars.

Never mind that part of transportation greening is raising the price of gasoline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Without the causal link is this really groundbreaking or interesting data? Rich people have cars more often than poor people, and in a city where cars are a necessity only the most destitute don't have a car.

<comment><USER5> The richest have a car but don't need it. They have transportation services instead. On demand taxi or chauffeur.</comment></comment>


The real benefits on using Facebook/Path liked sidebar navigation in iOS apps  - <AUTHOR> http://mystcolor.github.com/2012/01/02/the-real-benefits-on-using-facebook-or-path-liked-sidebar-navigation-in-iOS-apps.html

<comment><USER2> I agree that for phone apps, this works well, but disagree that it ports well to tablets.

I mean, it is okay for tablets, perhaps better than some other approaches, but I really believe that a different primary navigation method is needed for apps.

Primary nab should be within thumbs reach. This implies that most of the important navigation items are within a couple of inches of the bottom corners of the screen. Much of what is currently being used requires a one handed approach to the tablet which slows the user down unnecessarily.

I'd really like to see more aggressive approaches to tablet UI than we're currently getting from iOS devs.</comment>


Is Now the Right Time to Buy a Business? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inc.com/buy-and-sell-a-business/2008/11/is_now_the_right_time_to_buy_a.html?partner=rss <comment><USER2> Why buy, when you can found?</comment>


The Kindle Fire has a profanity filter - <AUTHOR> https://the-digital-reader.com/2020/07/13/did-you-know-the-kindle-fire-has-a-secret-profanity-filter-that-blocks-george-carlins-seven-dirty-words/ <comment><USER2> Correction: The speech to text feature on the Kindle Fire keyboard has a profanity filter.

Probably for good reason, I don't want to be dictating something and have a word accidentally correct to something less than savory. Maybe that's just me.

<comment><USER3> That would make sense except that the entire sentence is deleted instead of prompting you for a replacement or simply blocking all corrections _towards_ those words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not that shocked that 'bitch' made it through. I remember being in 6th grade when our teacher told us all to not be shocked at a female dog getting referred to as such.

</comment><comment><USER5> Luckily there are several keyboards you can use instead that are better that the stock keyboard anyway.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The keyboard app has a filter that blocks certain words from being recognized as speech.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why would a company spend effort for this?</comment>


Computational Photography with Luminar 4 - <AUTHOR> https://skylum.com/luminar <comment><USER2> If you're thinking of pre-ordering Luminar 4, I'd strongly urge you to wait for actual reviews or try the demo yourself.

I purchased Luminar 3 and it was a sluggish, unstable mess, especially on Windows. They promised many features like a DAM, which was still missing features like the ability to edit metadata. But hey, it checked off the marketing checkbox, right?

They're prioritizing adding new features to generate publicity and hype while ignoring actual speed, stability, and usability.

Only the comment sections of photography websites actually comment on speed, example: [https://www.dpreview.com/news/3286739394/luminar-4-available...](https://www.dpreview.com/news/3286739394/luminar-4-available- for-pre-order-comes-with-new-ai-features-and-revamped-ui)

<comment><USER3> Yup, listen to this guy. I have the top of the line MacBookPro and Luminar is not even barely usable even with nothing else running on it. The features are ok, but it's basically an unusable product.

<comment><USER4> I mean, if it's using DNN then you're going to be pretty much shit out of luck for perf unless your machine has an nvidia graphics card right?

<comment><USER5> If you're using pretrained models then they should run ok. It's the same reason why Tensorflow runs on phones: to run models, not necessarily to train models. DNNs take a lot of time to train.

<comment><USER4> TF runs at seconds-per-frame speeds on phones without dedicated accelerators.

Even inference is going to be slow when working on a 20 megapixel image. That's as much work as a 1220 sample batch at 128x128 resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this qualify as 'computational photography'? My interpretation of that term is that it is more about using non-standard optics processed with a computer, than it is about applying deep learning and other AI based techniques which seems to be what this is. Otherwise, this looks cool ;) I am glad to see AI image processing becoming more accessible.

<comment><USER7> Any digital photography is by definition computational.

You can make an argument that using deep learning to affect the sky is "more computational" in a way than a "basic" CCD to JPEG pipeline, but the boundaries become fuzzy and arbitrary.

<comment><USER8> > _Any digital photography is by definition computational._

That's not what "computational photography" means to most. For example, the QuickTake is not considered to have done computational photography.

Computational photography uses computation to go beyond what a simple lens → sensor → sensor-to-image algorithm (like a demosaicing algorithm) can do.

<comment><USER9> Certainly most digital cameras use far more sophisticated sensor-to-image algorithms.

Not to be outdone by in camera processing, photographers will opt to shoot in RAW and have PC's do the conversion/post-processing, which in many cases is even more sophisticated algorithms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Luminar is really neat. I've been using Luminar 3 for awhile, and it does some really cool stuff -- but 3 didn't really live up to it's hype.

Don't get me wrong, I use it sometimes to clean up and enhance my images, but really it's not so dramatically different from other tools.

Some of the AI features are really slick, but not quite as magical as the demos suggest. Or maybe you just have to actually spend 100s of hours to learn to use it effectively, and I'm just a n00b.

<comment><USER7> A big problem with these new AI techniques as applied to photography is that the algorithms tend to be very opaque, and typically gives very little control to the user.

You can get better over time at using the dodge/burn tools, or selection masks, or color curves, etc in Photoshop - and use them at very granular, minute levels. If the final result is not up to your expectations, you know that it's due to your own doing and you can try again, get someone to help you, watch a tutorial, etc.

However, all these magical AI sliders give you very little insight about what's actually going on behind the scenes, and typically only expose a few vague sliders for the photographer to manipulate, often in an all-or-nothing fashion. If you like what cranking up the "AI Skin Defect Removal" slider does to the texture of the nose but not the tone of the cheek, there's no much you can do to address that.

While it makes for cool demos, and the appeal of "one click and your boring sky becomes picturesque" is clear for an entire category of users, this makes them pretty boring and limited as creative tools.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've used Google's Snapseed, which has very similar controls and aims to streamline a lot of "photoshopping". It's free (though mobile only) and works great, I've had _a lot_ of fun just playing around, changing the distance between my eyes, giving myself an ogrish forehead, turning a smile into a frown, and in general changing anything and everything about the photos I played with.

<comment><USER12> If you want to change the shape of a face Photoshop has face aware liquify since a while back. I'm guessing a lot of photographers already have Photoshop.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Am I alone thinking the originals are way better than the processed versions, even in the demo on that link? Somehow all this excessive tone filtering, "smart" unsharp masking, artificial noising and noise-filtering - all that computational stuff - takes the life out everything? The dynamic range is narrow. Stuff is compressed into flat mess of colors, similarly to how they compress audio these days. Huge "ringing" artifacts on contrasting edges. Gross. How is that elevated photography?

</comment><comment><USER14> Very cool concept, but the video copy made me laugh out loud.

"Hours of learning" for your hobby.... God .... anything but that!!

</comment><comment><USER15> My experience with Luminar 3 was weird. It was one of those pieces of software which looks great in screenshots and promo materials and then disappoints you profoundly when you try it out. It just didn't produce the same quality of results as Lightroom, nor was it as easy to work with as Lightroom. I really wanted to like it too, I'm not a fan of subscription software, and the best alternative to Lightroom (Capture One Pro) is either $300 for a license, or $20/mo, both of which sound pretty pricey for hobbyist use. After a couple of weeks of trying I was back to Lightroom.

So before you rush to plop down your credit card for Luminar "preorder", I encourage you to wait for a trial version and try it out. There, I saved you $99. You're welcome.

</comment><comment><USER16> I know this is just automating how people have been touching up photos for decades, but IMO it is still a bit sad, especially when it comes to touching up people's faces. God forbid we should see each other as we are, slightly yellowed teeth, pores and all.

Again, I know this has been going on for decades, but I still worry that by automating more of it, it will lead to a bigger degree of "sameness" in photos.

<comment><USER17> I used to think this way too, but I've since come around to a different way of thinking.

Unless photos are taken for documentation, it's more important for the photo to capture the _feeling_ they photographer is trying to convey. 5 minutes after you talk to someone, you're not going to remember every single blemish on their face; you'll remember the general shape and a few distinguishing features. I would much rather the photo match the memory than the fact.

Of course, this can and has been taken too far in some instances, but I see no problems with removing a pimple and whitening teeth to more warmly represent (and therefore remember) my subject.

<comment><USER16> I think the problem is that since portrait retouching is usually so subtle, you actually start confusing it with real life. People start subconsciously thinking that this falsity is how you _should_ look.

And to clarify, it's one thing to hide a pimple, but when it comes to the core features of one's face (e.g. "face slimming", pore smoothing, even undereye color IMO) you start distorting who that person actually is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is Luminar 4 a suitable Lightroom replacement?

<comment><USER8> The "Luminar Libraries" feature provides Lightroom-like photo management, but based on Luminar 3 reviews it's probably not going to be as rich as Lightroom's. (I've pre-ordered Luminar 4 in hopes that it's good enough that I can ditch Lightroom).

<comment><USER19> There's a big vendor lock-in thing going on, isn't there? I've got 10s of thousands of images cataloged in LR. It would be hard to move away from that and re-index all the images again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also Computational Photography: [https://www.udacity.com/course/computational- photography--ud...](https://www.udacity.com/course/computational-photography-- ud955)

</comment><comment><USER21> Not great that the demo video makes a portrait "more beautiful" partly by lightening the skin tone (at 43 seconds in).

<comment><USER22> I think the effect is really about improving contrast to make features stand out. It's effective even if someone is already lily white. Nothing to do with race imo.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately a lot of these models are trained more on white faces and end up lightening _everyone 's_ skin as a result. My photographer friend is constantly fighting with photo-retouching tools to not whitewash their subjects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At the presale price, its worth the $99, even just to experiment with it and see how well it does.

</comment><comment><USER25> ugh, horrible, this is as bad as LED stage lighting

<comment><USER26> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's interesting that most of the demonstrated applications are examples of how to lie with photos. Images alone can't be trusted, but it makes me a little sad the more readily these tools are made available. Oh look, a program based around making photos that lie that's cheap. I suppose I'll have to start defaulting to trusting nothing even more. It's not really a direction I'd like public discourse to have to go in, if we could collectively agree to behave a little.

<comment><USER19> It's almost impossible to draw a bright line here. All photography, even film- based, involves some amount of interpretation. Different choices of film, or various options in Lightroom, Luminar, or whatever, entail changing the appearance of the output at least in the dimensions of brightness, contrast, saturation, white balance, and so forth. You can't _not_ make a choice, you're always going to be imposing some artistic interpretation.

<comment><USER27> Even if a thin, strong line can't be drawn, it appears that this software is clearly on the wrong side of the line. It isn't leveraging AI to create detail not captured by the camera that should be there. It's using AI to alter the captured content to not be representative of what was there, ie lying. Context is important. A photo is expected to be the truth in most contexts.

<comment><USER19> _A photo is expected to be the truth in most contexts._

"What is truth?"

I shot a music festival this past weekend, and I'm in the process of processing it in Lightroom. Part of what I'm doing is to make images that the artists can use for their own marketing. So I'm making various refinements to the images like making face a bit brighter and sharper, and smoothing out skin blemishes, and maybe whitening teeth.

Am I lying to people by creating an image that is brighter and sharper? Is it going too far to make the skin look smoother?

And even if we grant that I've changed beyond what the optics delivered, that's only part of the experience. Is it out of line for me interpret a bit to try to carry what's being lost from the rest of the senses - the fact that there was fantastic music all around, friendly people, and all that? Maybe a brighter, sharper face is a legitimate way for me to depict the gestalt of the experience.

<comment><USER27> It's not only a lie, it's a lie made for profit. Someone looks at that photo and thinks "this is what it was like", because that is what the photo is supposed to convey. Instead it's an oversold fantasy. Is something okay just because everyone does it?

<comment><USER19> _Instead it's an oversold fantasy. Is something okay just because everyone does it?_

I suspect you didn't even read my reply.

First, I never made any argument along the lines of "everyone does it". I don't know why you include that in your reply to me.

Second, the final paragraph of my reply specifically addresses whether it's "oversold". There's much more to an experience than can be seen from a photograph of the scene, and I think it's fair to try to capture some of that in the final image.

Finally, "it's a lie made for profit." No, this is outright false. In fact, the music festival I was shooting was entirely free. Nobody paid a penny to see the performances. And the musicians performed because they love music and want to share it; they weren't paid a penny either. You're letting your own prejudices bias your judgment.

EDIT: and just to round out the not-for-profit thing, I was a volunteer, too. My own time, my own camera, my own computer and software. I love the music and I love photography. I do this because I want to give something back to the artists who are giving me their music.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NOTCH: Create Mind-Blowing Motion Graphics, VFX and VR - <AUTHOR> https://www.notch.one/ <comment><USER2> This is not the Notch you are looking for.</comment>


Ask HN: What knowledge is required to create a simple 2d animation software - <AUTHOR> What knowledge is required to create a simple 2d animation software something "exactly" like https://www.creativelab5.com/
Please explain in a programming language agnostic way.
I will be thankful if anyone can give algorithms, required maths and terminology, googling which I can get more information.
Some background story: I am currently in 2nd year of University (CS course). I want to do this project for next year project. So I want to learn as much as I can about this topic. But because of no knowledge of the terminology, googling returns nothing useful. <comment><USER2> I'll see if I can break this down a bit and keep it reasonably concise.

At a glance, the sort of thing this is doing is key frame animation of vector graphics primitives.

Vector graphics primitives tend to be simple geometric shapes (polygons) or curves (lines, arcs, bezier) that can be described using a small set data which are needed by an algorithm to draw that particular shape. For example, a triangle is described by its three corner vertices, and a circle by its center and radius. In this case, it appears that the circles may described by a set of bezier curves. This is different to raster graphics which describe an object as a set of pixels (a tile, or sprite), as was used for early video games. For display, vector graphics are rasterised from their mathematical description before they can be displayed on a screen.

Key frame animation is animation where an animation is described by a series of frames called key frames. The key frames are displayed in order at a specified time, with all other frames between key frames generated by some assortment of transformations or interpolations of the objects between frames. Key frame animation lends well to animations of vector graphics where the graphics primitives are described primarily using vectors, as vectors are easily manipulated using linear algebra, allowing an assortment of transformations and interpolations of primitives between frames.

A simple animation might work something like this:

      1. Define key frame 1, containing 10 rectangles
      2. Define key frame 2, containing 10 different rectangles
      3. Define a one-to-one mapping of transitions between the rectangles in both frames
      4. Specify a time interval for the transition from frame 1, to frame 2
      5. At time t, interpolate/transform the corner vertices, and colours of the rectangles in frame 1 toward those in frame 2 proportional to t to create a new frame.
      6. Rasterise the new frame to pixel data into a frame buffer for display.

There is a lot that goes into this. I recommend you do some reading on linear algebra, for the math. Particularly transformation matrices. You will be doing the majority of your work with linear algebra. Some existing technologies like the SVG standard will help with concepts, and potentially Adobe Flash will give you some idea of the keyframe animation (it used to do this very thing, but I haven't looked at it in many years).

</comment><comment><USER3> try googling: html5 canvas animation tutorial</comment>