Work on unimportant problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.yosefk.com/blog/work-on-unimportant-problems.html <comment><USER2> The work we now consider 'important' is the work that has, according to our best guess, the highest likelihood of solving important problems in future.

Our best guess may be wrong, as the future is hard to predict. But the future is not so unpredictable that we should stop thinking about where best to direct our efforts.

Maybe someone working on Farmville will cause an important advance, as an unpredictable side effect. We can't rule that out. Even a job that seems 'unimportant' can have beneficial and unpredictable windfalls, and that's wonderful.

But we should still try and direct our efforts as best we can, and work on problems that we think are important.

That seemingly trivial pursuits sometimes bear fruit, doesn't mean that all pursuits are equally worthwhile.

<comment><USER3> But if important is hard and unimportant easy, than there might be better reward/work by working on unimportant stuff.

<comment><USER4> Difficulty can be a decent heuristic for novelty, though. There are obviously a great number of simple things that have never been tried (or even thought of), but certainly difficult things are less likely to be tested, all other things being equal. That said, small ideas and small changes can be surprisingly impactful.

I rather like the idea of small changes that result in cognitive shifts. An article I read a while ago said that Lisp programmers are often unimpressed with language features other people have because Lisp can easily emulate and subsume them, essentially dismissing the idea for its technical simplicity and not an actual lack of merit.

I'm not a big web guy, but a lot of web tools seem to work that way - easy to think up, easy to code up, but once they're actually available they change the game in subtle ways. There's a mindset where people (myself included) say "Well, that's easy enough to hack up using cron and ssh and..." and we fail to recognise that actually having it makes us use it, and actually using it improves our lives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a doc, teaching myself python specifically because it's painfully obvious that we (docs) need more and more programming skill to do real medical research. My current project is shaping up to be a multi-year effort to hunt cancer (tissue micro-arrays to assess novel antigens). So this article threw me for a loop in the first sentence.

The article is still relevant though, in my mind. There's no external motivation to write a parser. But how else could one reasonably build a research database? I suppose someone could manually go through the clinical database and transfer info into a research database for 500 patients. But what about the next 10 studies of 500 patients? It seems unimportant in the near term, but in the long-term having someone on the project who can talk to the computer is going to make or break it.

</comment><comment><USER6> The author wonders what important came out of, say, Farmville, and I think the answer is something along the lines of the importance of business intelligence - the attention paid to user telemetry, A/B testing, and product iteration has grown based on this has grown by an order of magnitude since Zynga started bragging that they could determine the ideal size of e.g. a call-to-action button.

This makes it obvious there's an unstated assumption at work here, though, i.e. that the unimportant work plays a significant part in developing this technology. I don't think this is necessarily true: the opposite premise, that "it's GPUs time when it's GPUs time", seems equally plausible.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a deadly and incurable medical condition. A big part of getting myself well involved eating at restaurants and tipping the wait staff well in preference to spending time in doctor's offices. People react to the "news" that I got well with either treating me like some hugely inspiring figure or calling me a liar and charlatan to my face. It is very clear to me I know something of value to the world and have made a real difference in the lives of some people. Yet I cannot figure out how to monetize it and I have spent some years trying to figure out how to just talk about it without flame wars breaking out.

In my experience, the big problems need "small" solutions. I got well by gradually walking away from the hard hitting drugs whose overwhelming strength hit my body just as hard as it hit my medical problems. The pursuit of the hard hitting solutions strikes me as rooted in fear and reflective of inelegant mental models.

"I love Lucy" was the "Star Wars" of its day in terms of revolutionizing an industry. I suspect it also helped combat racism in this country. Lucille Ball was originally told they would not cast her Cuban husband in the role, that no one would believe that. I think they took the show on the road to build their case that audiences would accept it and she did eventually get her way.

Did she set out to change an industry or combat racism? No. She wanted her husband on the show to try to save her marriage and finally have kids. This industry changing TV show was a lifestyle business. They did finally have kids but ultimately divorced.

Having "cured CF" (so to speak) and mostly gotten spat on by the world for trying to share such info, my hope is that I can eventually do a web comic. I think humor is a far more palatable means to share wisdom than trying to "help" people. Solving serious problems that run deep tends to be too threatening to people. Entertaining them, making them laugh and incidentally causing them to think seems to be a more powerful and effective means to really change minds.

I continue to wrestle with such questions. But I think the most elegant solutions make light of problems. I only hope I can resolve my problems well enough so I only need worry about "unimportant" problems. That would be a truly amazing accomplishment given my history (and genetic disorder).

<comment><USER8> I don't know who you are, and have never read anything you have written before.

I thought I'd take the opportunity to reply to my initial opinion of your message. Your problem is that your message reads a lot like "I cured a horrible disease (I don't know what you had), which modern medicine failed to cure, by eating at good restaurants".

Your problem is that this message sounds very close to the anti-modern medicine claims of groups like homeopaths. I do not know what your cure is, but trying to work with, rather than (apparently) against modern science-based medicine might help.

Apologises if this message just ends up telling you nothing, or something you have heard too many time before.

<comment><USER7> Thank you for replying.

I struggle with how to talk about what I have done. There is a substantial difference between my framing of the problem and the way others frame it. I did mention my condition but only in shorthand. I have CF -- cystic fibrosis -- a deadly genetic disorder which accounts for around a third of all adult lung transplants and half of all pediatric lung transplants in the US.

What I found is that life is chemistry. Everything we eat, drink, breathe or touch impacts our biochemistry and what germs we are exposed to and so on. Making many small choices throughout the day has a cumulative impact on body chemistry. I was able to reverse the pathology of my condition and make my body work closer to normal. Dietary changes were a big part of that but far from "everything".

Getting myself well took everything I had. I ended up deeply in debt because of it. I am currently homeless, trying to declare bankruptcy and trying to figure how to make money online so I can stay well. Having a desk job in an industrial park was part of what was keeping me ill.

Anyway, I hope that is a little clearer for you. My real message was intended to be that taking care of problems while they are small is more effective at really fixing things than hunting for big, dramatic ego boosting solutions. Doctors pay little attention to nutrition for people like me, though it makes a big difference in outcomes. Lung transplants grab more headlines and glory than trying to help people keep their own lungs functional and healthy.

Peace.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for your reply, I agree with, and am interested in, what you say. Just want comment:

"Doctors pay little attention to nutrition for people like me, though it makes a big difference in outcomes. Lung transplants grab more headlines and glory than trying to help people keep their own lungs functional and healthy.".

While I realise you might have had bad experiences, I know lots of medical researchers who are dedicating their lives to trying to cure disease, in any way possible. Many doctors would be very interested in proving how diet can help disease, and doing so.

<comment><USER9> > While I realise you might have had bad experiences,

Chiming in on bad experience: Thankfully, I don't have CF or anything of the sort; I just appear to be statistically improbable. On way too many medical diagnostics, I'm in the 1% of the scale -- though everything about me seems normal.

Except weight; I used to be 100kg (220 lbs) on a 5'11" (1.78m) frame. Full, but not overly obese or really fat. But I was on a 800-100 calorie diet for years at that point. (Not because of trying to lose weight; I just didn't have the appetite, and would go days, and in a few cases, weeks, without eating anything).

I had responses similar to those described by Mz from practitioners - I've paid good money to consult with many, supposedly expert and the best around -- disbelief and general disinterest.

And then I became (mostly) normal by cutting out wheat. This was met by "oh, that's interesting" and "oh, that's psychosomatic" (Because the standard wheat allergy test came up negative), and general disinterest. I'm eating a lot more now (wheat excluded), and am down to 80-85kg range.

There's still a lot about me that is statistically improbable, including body temperature. I'm sure it's all related, but I can't find a medical researcher who cares, so I have to do my own "research".

> Many doctors would be very interested in proving how diet can help disease, > and doing so.

I would be happy to meet those doctors. In my experience, however, they turn into your standard everyday doctor somewhere between the 3rd year of med school and the end of their internship.

<comment><USER7> Stupidly tossing out a couple of thoughts, in spite of long experience telling me it will most likely not be appreciated. But I am having one of those days and bad habits die hard. Apologies in advance.

Celiac causes wheat and dairy intolerance. People with my disorder are at higher than normal risk for also having Celiac. An alternative med group I know of suggests that Celiac has a genetic component but is triggered by metal poisoning -- I mean having active symptoms is triggered by metal poisoning. Chelation makes some sufferers of Celiac asymptomatic. I have not done a formal chelation protocol but I have reason to believe I have reduced the metal load on my system. I tolerate wheat and dairy better than I used to, have improved appetite, and have shrunk dramatically. My hypothesis is that my genetic disorder involves misprocessing metals and thus involves increased vulnerability to metal poisoning.

FWIW: People with CF tend to run warm. I do not. I have a long history of being cold natured (including an abnormally low temp when not feverish), something which has improved somewhat with getting healthier. Given that CF is a salt wasting condition and salt changes the boiling and freezing points of water, it kind of makes sense to me that it appears to typically alter normal body temperature. If you wanted my advice, which you most likely don't, I would suggest you get tested for Atypical CF if you haven't been previously and look into the possibility of metal poisoning as a factor.

Congrats on your improved health. Best of luck. Apologies for my compulsive helpful streak. I am working on it. I'm just extremely stressed out today.

Peace. And thanks for contributing to the conversation.

<comment><USER9> > in spite of long experience telling me it will most likely not be > appreciated.

Much appreciated. My approach to conversations is "hurt me with the truth, never comfort me with lies; tell me all you can, I'll filter it myself".

> I have a long history of being cold natured (including an abnormally low > temp when not feverish),

I do too, actually - that's another thing no "expert" I consulted had anything to comment on (or has even shown interest in), even though this is surely an important marker.

> If you wanted my advice, which you most likely don't, I would suggest you > get tested for Atypical CF if you haven't been previously and look into the > possibility of metal poisoning as a factor.

I do want your advice. A quick google, however, did not find a reasonable reference for atypical CF, and since I don't have a sufficiently open minded doctor, I don't think that would work -- could you give more references about the definitions, what tests are involved, and if one can do them privately?

> Peace. And thanks for contributing to the conversation.

Thank you. And good luck!

<comment><USER7> You might try searching for the term "variant cystic fibrosis" as well. There is no hard and firm definition. It is a newish diagnosis which basically recognizes that some people suffer the same issues as classical CF but to a less severe degree, kind of like Asperger's and several other forms of "autism spectrum disorder" get recognized as a milder form of the problem known as classic Kanner's Syndrome (aka severe autism).

The most common test is a sweat chloride, which basically measures the saltiness of your sweat. Historically, a result below 40 was considered normal, above 80 was CF and the range in between was an undefined grey zone which is now recognized as a milder form of CF. My son and I both tested consistently at 41. Though I have heard some different number ranges discussed on some lists, so there may be some variables I am unaware of.

I am not sure how you can get one. Mine required referral but my ex was career military and the referral was necessary so insurance would pay a civilian facility for the services. It simply isn't done just anywhere. There are several techniques, all noninvasive.

Some nonscientific "tests" or indicators: Does your skin/sweat taste saltier than average? Do you get worse aquagenic wrinkling than most people (in other words, do you prune up badly in the bath)? Do you seem more prone than average to suffer shocks from static electricity? Those are all typical for CF.

Best of luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article didn't say what I thought it would.

I thought it would be that most people have preconceived notions of what problems are important. But these notions don't necessarily correspond to reality. By definition, when you are trying to break new ground, you don't know what's important because no one has thought about it before.

In academia, and big companies, you see this a lot. The difficulty or impressiveness of a problem gets mistaken for its importance.

His example is that games like Doom led to higher power computing. I guess that's true, but I don't think we should have to justify things like making video games in terms of the benefit they'll bring to "noble pursuits" like curing cancer. Sometimes people just want to have fun and waste time.

But all in all I agree that people shouldn't prejudge what is important or not. This is often driven by fads. Doing random things is important because they lead you to unexpected places.

</comment><comment><USER11> The importance of problems I work on, is an issue that hits over and over again while I work. I can't help but thinking of cures for cancer and heart diseases, while the product I work relates to entertainment. All the energy I invest could have been used for extending human life-time. I really like to imagine I can indirectly cure cancer with some nice methodology I invented, or a productivity tool I made. But its just seem to be better if humanity stop worrying about user experience, wearing ties and talking professional jargon; and start focusing on curing cancer and heart diseases.

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry, but I really find this detail particularly intriguing: "extending human life-time". Indeed. But what for, exactly?

I can't help but look at elder people and think it's a disservice to wire them to those machines, fix their hearts with what I'd call batteries and generally go to any extent as long as it "extends" life at any cost.

Perhaps it's simply related to the way I lead my life and the choices I make but I'd rather live 50 freaking years than a freaking 100.

<comment><USER13> Well, but isn't it hardwired in the nature of each living organism to survive at any cost and live as long as possible? Each creature, even the tiniest bug has some sort of defense mechanism built in, not to welcome others to kill it or eat it, but specifically to defend against such a behavior.

The difference between us and any other animals is that we use our brains in extremely wise way. We colonized the world and technically are standing on the top of animal tree. It would be only logical to use that brain to solve human's nature biggest issue: how to live longer, or forever.

I want me and my family to live forever, because that's how much I love them and love my life. I am not certain whats after death. If you don't believe in existence of any nonphysical creations like spirits, soul, hell or heaven, then nothing exist after death, nothing. Your brain falls apart into dust and since your brain is you and your world, your world ends.

Another reason to keep people living longer is because medicine is constantly pushing the envelope. There are TEDs videos of scientists literally printing human liver and other elements of body. Truly science-fiction stuff, yet real.

I think in 100 years from now, we will be immortal. Of course that causes the biggest challenges ever, like how to feed everyone, how to accommodate people, etc, but there is tremendous improvement in those sectors happening as well, so most likely we will be ready.

<comment><USER12> I understand your reasoning yet it doesn't make any sense to me. I hope I can live correctly and die before your hopes come true. Good luck though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article is built on the distinction between unimporant and important problems and yet it goes out of its way to avoid stating his opinion on what makes a problem important. He keeps putting the words important and unimportant in quotes.

Something may be important to someone but completely unimportant to someone else. Importance is subjective, so there's no such thing as important and unimportant problems. This may seem like a run-of-the-mill "everything is relative" statement (which are usually not very constructive) but I think that this is pertinent here, because nothing is important on its own, but it may be important to a person or a group of people, so talking about the importance of things without taking into account who they're important to doesn't make much sense.

<comment><USER15> He means important in the cultural sense. Someone defending, say anything in the bill of rights is likely doing something culturally important. Killing prostitutes was important to Jack the Ripper, but it's detrimental to civilization.

<comment><USER14> Is there anything in the article that leads you to believe he meant important in that sense? Cause I don't see it. He constantly puts important in quotation marks and really doesn't specify what he means by important. Take this paragraph:

 _For instance, GPU hardware was developed to run first-person shooters with increasingly fancier graphics. Today, it powers some of the largest high- performance computing clusters where "important" science is done._

Would you say that science aided by high-performance computing is automatically important in a cultural sense? What if that science is actually military research? Because I see developing weapons and other means of violence to be detrimental to civilization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It worked for me. I've been blogging since 1999 (when it wasn't even called blogging) and even in the mid 2000s people asked me why I bothered. I wasn't really sure why at the time either..

.. but blogging led to me being discovered by an editor at Apress who asked me to write a book about Ruby (which I'd been blogging about). That led to a blog I created to promote the book that then became the most popular Ruby blog and was my main source of income for several years. I won't give the rest of the life story but it went on to getting funding for a startup, selling that startup, being invited to chair an O'Reilly conference, and more. All from that "unimportant" personal blog. So I totally buy into this idea!

</comment><comment><USER17> Work on problems that are problems. Picking important problems misses the trees for the forest; picking unimportant problems misses the forest for the trees. Some people are more effective tackling larger issues like racism. Some people are more effective tackling interesting questions like, "How do we scale a microtransaction payment system for a social game?" Some people are more effective at what they enjoy doing. Some people are more effective when doing something that feels meaningful.

Work on a problem that (1) you feel you can solve, (2) you think is worth solving, and (3) will challenge you. That's important enough.

</comment><comment><USER18> Working on unimportant things often leads to overlooked things, and that's gold. "the future" is more or less defined by its disagreements with the past about what is and is not important.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hrmf. The second half is complaining about FAA regulations of avionics, which annoys me.

About a decade ago, I remember reading a fiction book about a pilot, who, among other things was unhappy that TCAS (radar system on a plane to keep it from flying into other planes) didn't communicate with the GPWS (radar system on a plane to keep it from flying into the ground) when telling the pilot how to avoid a mid-air collision.

The consequence is that TCAS could possibly tell a pilot to run right into a mountain, while trying to not run into another plane. This is, of course, bad.

The book harped on this at great length, and one of the many bad things it had to say about the FAA is that suffocatingly heavy regulation prevented manufacturers from making changes that could save lives.

I finish the book, all fired up, get on the internet, and discover that, hey, TCAS II does exactly what it should, and doesn't tell the pilot to fly into the ground. The problem was fixed, by the FAA, without needing to _abolish_ the FAA. There was never any controlled flight into terrain crashes as a result of bad TCAS directives. I got needlessly angry for no reason at all.

</comment><comment><USER20> Surely, you'll be more likely to solve big problems if you come in with the intent/desire to solve them, no? such as building the Atom Bomb, or sending a man to the Moon. We did those things deliberately.

</comment><comment><USER21> This advice could be analogous to applying randomization to optimization problems.

Randomization can get you unstuck from the locally optimal trough you've found yourself in.

</comment><comment><USER22> Every problem is important, if you care about it. Too often we make a distinction between "important" work like curing diseases and "unimportant" work like making games.

But people like games, both making them and playing them. You might not enjoy solving "important" problems, you might just want to make games and have fun. Focus on what interests you, not what society deems "important," and you'll be much happier.

<comment><USER23> Yep. So I think the more general advice is also simpler: work on problems you find interesting.

Sometimes the ones that seem small lead to big things (I got an IPO out of one such). Often - ouch! - the ones that initially seem like they will be Important turn out to be ho-hum. But regardless of ultimate Importance (however you choose to measure that), it is a RUSH every time you find an elegant solution.

That's why even as an 'old guy' I still love developing so much... even a relatively modest app provides daily doses of interesting sub-problems to crack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is the main point of this article, to work on unimportant problems as you can never know how important they may actually become, essentially the same as that of Steve Jobs in the Stanford commencement speech? E.g. at the time of of taking calligraphy classes, he could not know that this would majorly impact OS font handling? [www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA]

</comment><comment><USER25> It seems the relevant quantity is whether

P(important outcome | work on unimportant project) > P(important outcome | work on important project)

I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER26> To prove his point the OP says:

"Office software arguably solves no important problem: as Berglas convincingly argues, office automation results not in increased productivity, but in increased complexity of rules and regulations."

(at which point a link is given to "Berglas" writing.

Unfortunately I can find nothing on Dr. Anthony Berglas either on the site linked to or on his apparent page at the university other than "research"

<http://itee.uq.edu.au/~csmweb/personnel/berglas.html>

So we have a claim that office software solves no important problem because some person who I've never heard of and can't find anything about says so.

</comment><comment><USER27> i wanna add to this: most startups that work are iterative. revolutionary ideas take too much to be accepted by consumers, only through iterative steps, could startups like dropbox, facebook, esp google, be where they are today. by being the next step up, and more. i'm working on this myself, on the failures that foursquare and other location based startups have failed. i hope this to be true :)

</comment><comment><USER28> All those problems were considered important by somebody.

</comment><comment><USER29> Good motivator.

</comment><comment><USER30> The way you work is more important that what you work on. One can work on either important or unimportant problems and end up in the same place, if the motives and methods are good.

Richard Feynman explains:

"In his eccentric collection of autobiographical stories (see reference), Richard Feynman recounts: "I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling. I had nothing to do, so I start figuring out the motion of the rotating plate. I discovered that when the angle is very slight, the medallion rotates twice as fast as the wobble rate—two to one. It came out of a complicated equation! I went on to work out equations for wobbles. Then I thought about how the electron orbits start to move in relativity. Then there's the Dirac equation in electrodynamics. And then quantum electrodynamics. And before I knew it… the whole business that I got the Nobel prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate." A replica of the Cornell plate is now part of an exhibit marking the centennial of the Nobel Prize."

Feynman didn't have a policy "work on unimportant problems" or "work on important problems." Rather, he worked on problems that interested him.

<comment><USER31> And if I recall, Feynman at this point was burnt out on the important problems. Thinking about unimportant problems, where he was essentially playing, is what finally led to the breakthrough. It's like me going for a walk to clear my head, except with him it's complex motion equations.

<comment><USER32> Surely here the issue is not "importance" but "interesting"?

<comment><USER5> I think the issue is not confusing importnant and interesting: it's hacking the relationship between your rain and your world. Important in this sense involves timelines, budgets, and the needs of others. Unimportant is whatever other people don't are about right now. It's a bit like the advice to grad students to work on what's unfashionable, unattractive, forgotten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The author really hasn't thought this through.

Here's an example of something unimportant: maybe Microsoft C, version 7, which was released in 1992, has a typo in a menu item that was never fixed. (The next version of the software was Microsoft Visual C++ version 1.0). True, nobody has used Microsoft C version 7 to compile a program in many years now, but - there you go. An unimportant problem.

That would be an example of an unimportant problem. Releasing a patch to fix the menu typo right in the binary would be an unimportant solution to an unimportant problem. Maybe if you take the time to release it, literally 0 people ever apply that patch from now until the end of time.

If you want to work on an "unimportant problem" fix bugs in software versions that were discontinued and which nobody used because of a quick migration to the next branch. Work on fixing Windows 2, maybe.

No, what the author really means is work on something very important, that doesn't evaluate as such to everyone, (or to the people you normally pay attention to). That, I can agree with.

<comment><USER34> You are arguing semantics. You say exactly the same thing as the author, but define "unimportant" differently. While it is important to be on the same page regarding to what we mean by the words we use if we want to have meaningful discussion, I think it's pretty obvious what the author meant by "unimportant". And it clearly isn't "absolutely meaningless", as you seem to imply.

<comment><USER17> He isn't implying "absolutely meaningless". That would be something like rewriting the entirety of Windows 7 in Brainfuck.

Which someone should totally do, just so that I can laugh once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> there's an argument to be made that if one does not have FU money in the bank, then one should work on whatever is most likely to end up with you reaching FU money, whether it's working on an important problem or an unimportant one. then, once you have FU money, and/or are otherwise financially "secure" (as you define it personaly), then, go take the big risks or tackle the harder things.</comment>


Ask HN: You're a Internet millionaire. Why aren't you supporting life extension? - <AUTHOR>

This question is directed to all the exited founders who I know haunt this place. I would have thought that, having achieved immense financial success from your tech efforts, why you're not now interested in supporting research to extend your existence?
There are a number of organisations out there doing what I consider to be credible, useful research. SENS Foundation obviously springs to mind. As does Imminst.org. But these institutions are always strapped for funds, desperately seeking new donations even in the 4 or 5 figures. It always struck me that HN readers of means alone could easily meet those needs.
So - why aren't you donating? Is it a credibility issue? Do you doubt the science? Do you doubt the institutions? Do you not see sufficient ROI? I'm genuinely curious. Thanks. <comment><USER2> First off I am not a millionaire (yet). However, the concept of living on and on is something I view as scary, for reasons I do not wish to elaborate. I also believe that eighty years is more than sufficient time to live a life and accomplish all that I want to.

Also, rather than donate to a research which could possibly extend my lifetime, I would donate to organisations which are already enabling people to live better lives than they could otherwise. Personally, when I rise to a position where I can afford it, I would start sponsoring a kid's education every year. That gives me the satisfaction of knowing I am improving someone's life in some way.

</comment><comment><USER3> +1 for research improving quality of our current lifetime, especially in areas of great need.

Also, aren't you the least bit curious what happens after your expiration? Not that I think I'll be joining past friends up in the clouds playing a harp but absolute nothing is about impossible for me to imagine. In that sense it seems silly to pursue the goal of extending life when you could use that time/energy enjoying it and anticipating what comes next.</comment>


In Saturn's Rings – Film for Giant Screen, IMAX, Fulldome Planetariums - <AUTHOR> https://www.insaturnsrings.com/trailer <comment><AUTHOR> This looks genuinely awesome - a tour through space / solar system using genuine footage.</comment>


Ask HN: Which supplements do you take? - <AUTHOR> Most of us are programmers or business geek. Some hardly get anytime to have a diet packed in all nutrients. So what are you doing? <comment><USER2> MealSquares. Zero prep, solid, not filled with soy, has everything except omega-3s. If you don't care about "meal time as an experience", it's the most time-efficient thing I've found.

</comment><comment><USER3> Soylent (or its local alternative called MANA)

</comment><comment><USER4> Buying prepared meals packed with nutrients.</comment>


Minetest – Open source voxel game engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.minetest.net <comment><AUTHOR> A far underrated engine/game in my opinion:

* Educational use: [https://wiki.minetest.net/MinetestEDU](https://wiki.minetest.net/MinetestEDU)

* Contributed mods: [https://www.minetest.net/customize/](https://www.minetest.net/customize/)

* Servers (all nonprofit): [http://servers.minetest.net/](http://servers.minetest.net/)</comment>


C++ String Toolkit Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ArashPartow/strtk The C++ String Toolkit Library (StrTk) consists of robust, optimized and portable string processing algorithms for the C++ language. StrTk is designed to be easy to use and integrate within existing code bases. Furthermore the library has a rich set of features that makes light work of any kind of string processing task.<p>A simple tutorial describing some of the uses of StrTk can be found: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/Tokenizer.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> The C++ String Toolkit Library (StrTk) consists of robust, optimized and portable string processing algorithms for the C++ language. StrTk is designed to be easy to use and integrate within existing code bases. Furthermore the library has a rich set of features that makes light work of any kind of string processing task.

A simple tutorial describing some of the uses of StrTk can be found: <http://www.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/Tokenizer.aspx></comment>


WWDC live blog: iCloud, iOS 5, OSX Lion and possibly others - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/wwdc-2011-liveblog-steve-jobs-talks-ios-5-os-x-lion-icloud-an/

<comment><USER2> Kind of sad to see several startup products copied in Lion and iOS 5.

For example:

       Dropbox - Air Drop in Lion

       Readability - Safari Reader

       Read it Later / Instapaper - the Safari Reading list

Also interesting to note how blatantly they copied the notification system in Android. Almost as blatantly as android copied almost everything from iOS.

All's fair in love and war, I guess.</comment>


Cougars almost never attack humans. But here are possible reasons this one did - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/22/us/cougar-attack-reasons-why-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> False title. Cougars almost never attack _adult_ humans. They are known to target, and kill human children, where I live. The reporter misunderstood why the attack was said to be unusual. Or more likely someone else wrote the headline, and took ten seconds to do it. Yet this distortion of fact, multiplied by millions of readers, might result in a few children's deaths that could have been avoided by a headline that didn't go beyond what the author knew.</comment>


KS addict reflects on backing $16k worth of board games, regrets everything - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/09/14/kickstarter-board-games/ <comment><USER2> It would be nice if KS could be expanded to Kickstarter in the title. I had no idea what the article's topic would be.

<comment><USER3> This. The addicts in Kansas don't have any regrets.</comment></comment>


How active shooters are changing school security in the US - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/15/health/active-shooters-school-security/index.html <comment><USER2> Wonder which kill more students, poisonous insects, allergic reactions, or "active shooters"?

My daughter went to an elementary school surrounded by a 10 foot fence limiting access to only through the front office. While I was waiting in lobby, grandfather of one of the children started berating office staff because "anyone with an AK47 could walk right into the school". I laughed out loud at him cause anyone with an AK47 can walk anywhere they damn want.

And this school was even better target because victims had no escape routes.</comment>


OpenAI Gym - <AUTHOR> https://openai.com/blog/openai-gym-beta/ <comment><USER2> Previously on HackerNews: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11582345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11582345)

</comment><comment><USER3> Two repos to get started building reinforcement learning agents with Gym and Keras:

[https://github.com/sherjilozair/dqn](https://github.com/sherjilozair/dqn)

[https://github.com/osh/kerlym](https://github.com/osh/kerlym)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome. All that's missing is a self driving car environment ;)

</comment><comment><USER5> The focus on improving reinforcement learning is really exciting. It's the area of machine learning that seems to have the most untapped potential.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those more familiar in this scape - would something like this be possible for NLP? Specifically sentence classification (ie, to produce an intent with metadata)?

<comment><USER7> OpenAI Gym is for Reinforcement Learning - a different kind of learning, where you don't have ground truth, but the agent gets a positive reward when it makes good guesses. Is this what you are looking for with NLP?

<comment><USER6> What i'm looking for from NLP is the classic holy grail i guess _(Ie, i know i'm asking a lot)_. To be able to translate english to and from actionable data.

A lot of companies like wit.ai are harnessing the power of machine learning, and having customers/users contribute heavily to this.

I'd love to see a service like OpenAI provide open source offerings to help the community grow language understanding together. Think of wit.ai, but fully open source and with the machine learned result downloadable - usable offline, licensed freely, etc.

Machine Learning for NLP has so many powerful private offerings, but i'm not aware of a single open source one. Especially one that you could run offline on your own servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> kudos for citing Searn, it's one of the greatest joint prediction and learning algorithms that started a whole range of useful learning to search approaches.

LOLS is even better. all approaches inspired by the reinforcement learning but use the information from already present data to imitate the constructed policy.

training neural networks with the approach of LOLS could make so many tasks reachable.

one could probably even imitate a komodo 9 algorithm with it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Would be great to have Unity3D or Unreal Engine integration for games/simulations

<comment><USER10> Yes, that'd be great. Gym is open-source — would love if someone built an integration!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there any existing projects based on this, just looking for some examples

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone else think the title/url is misleading ?

Looking at 'Open AI', I expected a generic AI related open source project.

This project seems to be specifically related to "developing and comparing reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms" .... which looks like a more specific subset.

<comment><USER7> It is not misleading at all, that is the project.</comment></comment>


What We Learned Upgrading To Rails 3 at Harvest - <AUTHOR> http://www.getharvest.com/blog/2011/01/harvest-is-running-rails-3/

<comment><USER2> _Harvest also has 32 plugins, 82 gem dependencies_

yikes

<comment><USER3> It happens. Check out Shopify: <http://blog.shopify.com/2010/11/16/our- upgrade-to-rails-3>

        $ bundle show | wc  -l
          95

<comment><USER4> Did you find that you needed fewer after the upgrade? I'm in the middle of moving my 2.3.5 app to 3.0.3 and am finding that there are fewer plugins as some are now part of rails or made redundant; jrails and subdomain-fu come to mind.

<comment><USER5> I don't think we dropped a drastic number of plugins or gems. Probably a few, but then again we added a few as well to keep old features active as we transition out some deprecated Rails patterns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did not know that git had a grep command -- super handy.

</comment><comment><USER7> I mentioned this in your Blog Comments but I thought I'd bring it up here. I mentioned that it would be interesting to see a portion of your QA spreadsheet you mentioned in your article.

<comment><USER7> Did I mention that I like the word mention?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Did you guys try to move to haml/sass from the existing view templates/stylesheets? Would like to know if you guys had good success rate moving to haml on a big existing project...

<comment><USER5> We use Sass, but not Haml. We have been on Sass for a couple years, so it wasn't much of an impact to the upgrade in that regard.

<comment><USER8> Great. How long did the move take? I'm assuming u started during the beta days of rails 3 and eventually made it to 3.0.1?

<comment><USER5> Unlike Shopify, we did not start during the beta days. Certainly we were aware of what was going on and experimented, but our Rails3 branch didn't exist since the spring or anything.

Looking through our git logs, I believe early September is when we really started to look at Rails 3 in earnest. We landed the branch in the second week of November. The code work was a solid month plus, and we spent nearly as much calendar time, and probably more actual person-hours, in testing and fixing thereafter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Perl and Undecidability (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeffreykegler.com/Home/perl-and-undecidability <comment><USER2> C++ is also undecidable, by the way: [http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/08/parsing-c-is- literally-u...](http://blog.reverberate.org/2013/08/parsing-c-is-literally- undecidable.html)

Perl was a great language design lab experiment. They gave people 20 ways to do any simple thing, and then Matz and Guido looked to see which ways became popular and designed great languages that allow only those ways and maybe 1-2 more that are highly frowned upon. I'm almost as glad Perl exists as I am that I never needed to learn it.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the language design influence of Perl on Python was as strong as you imply. (Not that there's no influence.)

Certainly the influence on Ruby was larger.

Also, I seem to recall the Perl5 object model was influenced by Python.

<comment><USER4> _I don 't think the language design influence of Perl on Python was as strong as you imply._

I think the influence was mainly in Guido looking at Perl and realizing he wanted a language that didn't look like that.

I'm pretty sure the Guido has said that ALGOL 68 and Pascal was probably the biggest positive outside influences (together with some in-house language called ABC that he was using at the time)

<comment><USER3> When you say "that didn't look like that", are you presenting a conjecture? There was only a few years between the first release of Perl and the start of Python.

van Rossum's 1993 paper at [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=51C...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=51C37EEE34FBBA583C3615F4BF3A9CB4?doi=10.1.1.38.2023&rep=rep1&type=pdf) explicitly lists C, ABC, Modula-3, Icon, C++, and Smalltalk as influences.

The section "competitors or precursors" also includes Perl and Tcl. It does not appear these languages are influences.

<comment><USER4> The statement about Perl came from an interview with him I read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the people out there that's not so into CS, and does not understands it's implications. It basically means you could write a perl program that could cause an infinite loop in the interpreter (or compiler). This I would presume independant of the actual implementation of the compiler and intrepreter as that would only mean this is a bug report for the specific implementation, and not a problem with the language design.

<comment><USER6> perl works fine, and you aren't going to unexpected trigger an infinite loop due to some bug in the language definition.

What you can't do is tell how to parse a piece of perl without running the program.

[http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=663393](http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=663393)

These are an expounding upon this link. In most languages, you can at least tell what things are. This is a function. That's a variable. In perl, there are constructs whose parsing depend on what a given bit of code was defined as previously, and that definition can be predicated on code execution. This leaves you in a situation where you cannot tell if something is a division and comment or a regex without knowing whether a function takes arguments. ( see link )

<comment><USER5> If you can't in general parse a piece of perl without "running the program" as you yourself mentioned then I'm pretty sure that parsing it can definitely trigger infinite loops as perl language is definitely turing complete during run time. So your statement is a contradiction.

<comment><USER7> The comment said you won't cause an infinite loop during parsing due to a bug in the language definition, not that you can't do so at all. Perl lets you run arbitrary code during parsing, so of course it's possible to run an infinite loop while parsing. But you can only do that by actually writing an infinite loop in your code, not by writing something that confuses the parser into looping forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perl is awesome. I bring in 90k+ a year making a living on perl while only working remotely ( and living in a small city where the avg household income is <$50k year).

Honestly, the only reason python "won" was because google picked it up for internal use (and that was only because of the perl5/6 debacle since why pick perl5 since 6 would be coming out by next Christmas?)

As far as "undecidable", its a feature and one of the reasons why it still remains faster than most other dynamic scripting languages.

<comment><USER9> IMHO, Perl was hurt more by its sigils than the protracted P6 development. There was a lot of revulsion to sprinkling your code liberally with $, @, and %. Many many comments about writing unreadable line noise when programming Perl.

Python's genius was to force programmers to indent their code, making sure it had at least a modicum of structure.

<comment><USER10> I still don't understand that revulsion. Yeah, it looks "ugly", maybe (a valid but very subjective opinion), but it also makes it obvious that something is a variable and - specifically - whether that variable is singular or plural at a given moment.

The "Perl is indistinguishable from line noise" meme came about from folks equating JAPH-style Perl Golf one-liners with all of Perl. It had very little to do with the use of sigils specifically; such "line noise" is perfectly possible in Ruby and Python.

If anything specific to Perl contributed to the "Perl is line noise" meme, it's probably the fact that a bunch of special variables have names consisting of punctuation marks. Nothing stopping the programmer from doing a "use English;", though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [not trying to hijack the discussion, but I think a meta-discussion is in order based on comments I've seen on this article]

The article is about whether or not you can actually parse Perl without running Perl to parse itself. One of the benefits/drawbacks to Perl is that it lets you run the interpreter at compile time, thus resulting in the possibility of an infinite loop preventing compilation. Which makes some people unhappy.

Oddly enough, this reminds me of the whole strongly/weakly typed discussion, with people weighing in and asserting one position or another, without really adequately comprehending the opposing position.

The meta-discussion here repeats almost every other discussion of Perl I see on HN and elsewhere. First there is a claim of death, either in the past, or present. Then there are claims that death was by sigil, line noise, etc. Further, additional claims are that other tools have taken over its space.

The data used as evidence are StackOverflow analyses, or Tiobe scores, or, insert additional popular, and often self-selected, data sets. You have to make specific assumptions about some of the data presented to be able to accept it, such that each community has about the same rate of people searching for answers on SO, or other places. Or that the searches will have relevant terms in the in each case.

This is a stretch to put it mildly. If I google for DBIx::Simple, and this search is caught by one of these filters, will it show up in Perl or not? I can't actually answer this. I have to refer to what the collectors of the data say on their own methodology [1][2]. I am not saying that there are not secular changes throughout the industry, or that various observed gross trends are "wrong". What I am saying is be careful reading into these analyses too strongly, as they may not be measuring what you think they are measuring.

In many cases, over the last 20 years or so, I've seen folks pushing Python happily talking up why they left or abhor Perl, usually saying/quoting things they've heard. From my own experience, Perl 4 and onward, much of what they complain about was Perl 4 or before. Likely before many of them started programming. That is speculation on my part, but it does appear to fit what I've observed.

If I extend this out to operating systems, I have people tell me how horrible Linux is and how much better anything-other-than-linux is than it on a very regular basis. They like to list (what they perceive to be) the faults, quote SO and other random websites as examples, and often make pronouncements not backed up by objective fact ... in many cases contradicted by objective fact.

We as a society of technologists seem to like our tools to the point where we feel that we can and should break into tribes with tags of honor around our necks, and nasty comments about alternative tools, and users of said tools. I've personally heard many an anecdote and critique of various tools from otherwise smart technologists that were, at best, badly misinformed, and at worst ... not simply disingenuous, but dishonest.

Look, it is great you like your tools, your operating system, your language. It does not mean that you are "better" or "smarter" than someone else because you use such things. And yes, I've had professional discussions as recently as last week on exactly this issue. Which is insane.

Maybe I've spent too many years on the business side, as I look at all of these things as tools to accomplish a goal, and as engineers, our jobs are to select the right combination of tools to a) minimize effort, b) maximize the possibility of success, c) enable debugging, observability, supportability.

No single tool, OS, editor (yes, I went there) has this. Moreover, if you need to bash what someone else is using simply for self gratification, then there are deeper issues afoot than simply a technological consideration.

Finally, I've been a user of Perl, and contributor to (CPAN) for more 20 years. Rumors of its demise, are greatly exaggerated. It is not my be-all/end- all language ... I am comfortable and competent in 5-6 at any one time, and can easily work in Python, C, Julia, Node, etc. w/o major issue (though with google nearby for things I don't have on the tip of my memory).

I don't use Perl for machine learning (though I could). I don't use it for numerics (though, again, I could). I don't use node for either of these. You pick the right tool for the right job. And you need to keep an open mind throughout the process on what the right tool is.

If you feel a need to bash on others choices, it might be worth reflecting why you think this course of action actually adds any light to a discussion. From what I've seen, it only adds heat.

[1] [http://blog.codeeval.com/codeevalblog/2016/2/2/most- popular-...](http://blog.codeeval.com/codeevalblog/2016/2/2/most-popular- coding-languages-of-2016)

[2] [https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/05/09/introducing-stack- over...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/05/09/introducing-stack-overflow- trends/)

[edit: fixed ref spacing]

<comment><USER12> Some tools are appropriate for particular situations. Most are better off being entirely replaced. There are thousands of programming languages out there, while the ideal toolbox would contain dozens at most; our industry badly needs some pruning. We need to have these conversations, and they're not going to be easy precisely because we're emotionally attached to our tools, but frankly if you're really so detached as you claim you shouldn't have a problem with people attacking Perl. These discussions are not as evidence- based as we'd like because the evidence simply isn't there, on either side; anecdotes are not the ideal way to learn, but they're a lot better than nothing.

> The data used as evidence are StackOverflow analyses, or Tiobe scores, or, > insert additional popular, and often self-selected, data sets. You have to > make specific assumptions about some of the data presented to be able to > accept it, such that each community has about the same rate of people > searching for answers on SO, or other places. Or that the searches will have > relevant terms in the in each case.

> This is a stretch to put it mildly. If I google for DBIx::Simple, and this > search is caught by one of these filters, will it show up in Perl or not? I > can't actually answer this. I have to refer to what the collectors of the > data say on their own methodology [1][2]. I am not saying that there are not > secular changes throughout the industry, or that various observed gross > trends are "wrong". What I am saying is be careful reading into these > analyses too strongly, as they may not be measuring what you think they are > measuring.

No measure is perfect, but we're seeing similar trends from multiple sources and they align with my own experience as well. I don't see any value in throwing shade on the measures we have. If you have specific criticisms or reasons they might systematically favour one language or another then by all means post them; otherwise this reads like rearguard sowing doubt because you don't like the results.

> In many cases, over the last 20 years or so, I've seen folks pushing Python > happily talking up why they left or abhor Perl, usually saying/quoting > things they've heard. From my own experience, Perl 4 and onward, much of > what they complain about was Perl 4 or before. Likely before many of them > started programming. That is speculation on my part, but it does appear to > fit what I've observed.

Now you're the one bashing for self gratification. Is it so hard to believe that people might genuinely have bad experiences with your preferred language?

> I am comfortable and competent in 5-6 at any one time, and can easily work > in Python, C, Julia, Node, etc. w/o major issue (though with google nearby > for things I don't have on the tip of my memory).

Those are pretty similar languages, or at least admit a similar style of programming; if you want a good toolbox you'd do better to learn a smaller number of more radically different languages. 5-6 languages is far too many to know particularly within a narrow range like this; I'd bet that you're not writing idiomatic code in many of them. I used to pride myself on knowing a large number of languages; now I've realised being able to do more in one language is much more useful.

<comment><USER13> Where did you get the phrase "throwing shade on" from?

<comment><USER12> No idea. Picked it up from general conversation.

<comment><USER13> You're not using it correctly. You don't throw shade /on something/, you throw shade /at someone/.

<comment><USER14> In British English at least to cast shade on is a perfectly common idiom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As far as undesirability is concerned, there are other languages, perl is not the only one. But it's possible to write clean perl.

</comment><comment><USER16> The same holds for every better dynamic language with compile-time evaluation. E.g. LISP with its reader macros. Even if LISP is trivially parsable, it still provides parse-time hooks which can lead to undecidability.

It's a feature, not a problem.

</comment><comment><USER17> Related: _Parsing Bash is Undecideable_

[http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2016/10/20.html](http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2016/10/20.html)

Parsing POSIX shell is not undecideable, but bash adds a construct that relies on dynamic parsing, much like Perl.

(I cite this Perl article and the C++ one in this thread. And there is another one about parsing GNU Make.)

FWIW, Larry Wall has mentioned many times that Perl 6 fixes this problem. So he very much views it as a language design flaw. I don't think you can argue that it's not.

I watched 3 or more videos on Perl 6 and he's mentioned it at least twice.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's almost 2 years since Perl 6 was released and it's still dog slow at what Perl 5 was famous for - string parsing with regular expressions. A 19Mb Apache log file on my 2010 quad core Mac takes Perl 6 21 secs. to search for lines containing 15-character words compared with Ruby: 4secs, Perl 5: 2.4 secs. and PHP7: 0.8 secs. We keeping hearing how the optimisations are coming but I haven't seen any significant improvements in string parsing since Perl 6 was released in December 2015. How can you market the advantages of a new version of a language when it can't even match its predecessor?

<comment><USER14> Because its faster at OO than Perl 5 and has a tonne of other builtins that make it easier to write algorithmically performant code. Not to mention its trivial to write parallel code. I dont think there have been any optimisations in the regex engine in the time you're discussing. The raw IO however has seen huge improvement, especially if you state you arent using unicode and don't want grapheme normalisation. In 2011 just my tests took 35s to execute. Now that's 1s and startup time is 2/3 of that. Something like CSV parsing or even log parsing where you split instead of regex is competitive. Last I checked faster than Ruby but slower than C. But yeah you do still have to work around the slow bits, or be explicit with what you want like ascii IO.

<comment><USER18> Faster OO but dog slow regexes? This is Perl, right? The Practical Extraction and Reporting Language where extraction is largely the work of regular expressions and, now, grammars. OO languages are a dime a dozen so how can OO be Perl 6's main priority?

<comment><USER19> To be fair Perl 6 returns structured data from regexes, whereas Perl 5 returns flat data. That has huge implications on how different the regex sub-languages gets parsed. It also has a significantly different syntax, and integrates more into the rest of the language. Basically it had to be created from scratch, so that would mean that it couldn't benefit from the already existing optimizations of the Perl 5 regex engine.

Perl 6 is also a mostly unpaid volunteer effort. So everybody gets to choose what they work on, and very few people are brave enough to work on that aspect of the compiler.

Also I would say that the main priority of Perl 6 is to integrate many ideas from many languages and bring them together in such a way that it seems as if all of these ideas always belonged together.

The reason why the object system sees more optimizations is because everything is, or can be seen as, an object. A big improvement there, can for example make regexes faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's worse than that. You can't parse Perl without running arbitrary Perl code:

[https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=663504](https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=663504)

<comment><USER21> So? It's not that uncommon for highly dynamic languages to do this. Lisp macros for example depend on being able to run arbitrary code at compile-time.

<comment><USER22> Is it? (I honestly have no idea about Lisp.) It isn't _just_ about being able to do stuff at compile time: In Perl's case, as I understand it, you can't determine if a string of text is a valid (in the sense of generating an AST!) Perl program _without_ executing it. This precludes things like reliable _syntax highlighting_.

Languages can include meta-programming/macro facilities without effecting whether or not the parser can do its job; I am fairly certain that Rust's macros are an example of this. Python, as a more dynamic language, also includes metaprogramming facilities (metaclasses, decorators) but IIRC, can still be parsed without needing to simulate a Turing machine.

<comment><USER23> > Is it? (I honestly have no idea about Lisp.)

In Lisp you can modify the read table at run time, so you can do whatever you want. The functions the reader calls when it comes across '(', ')', ' ', and every other character are all completely customisable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You know there was that recent Stackoverflow analysis that concluded that Perl was the most disliked programming language?

It got me to thinking about how Perl managed to become quite so profoundly disliked, and I remembered these papers and thought that maybe things like this are the reason.

<comment><USER25> Perl used to have fans with meetups and so on. I've not heard of these for a long time.

IMO three things killed Perl, leaving it as an unpopular legacy husk:

\- loss of ecosystem. The high points for Perl were CGI.pm and its use as a "super awk" by sysadmins. The first was obliterated by other ecosystems, better and worse: PHP, Rails, Node, Go, and so on. The second was obliterated by "servers are cattle not pets": people have moved from meticulous hand- administration to the use of containers, Ansible, etc - or away from systems administration altogether to AWS or "serverless".

\- Perl 6 transition. Second-system effect at its highest. The long wait for this to be completed absolutely destroyed incremental improvement because everyone was waiting for a big bang that came very late. Python managed to avoid this level of community damage but has still split into two languages, Python 2 and Python 3.

\- the "two Perls" of style; one was the Wall-influenced style that looked a bit like English. The other was sigil-heavy and incomprehensible. Eventually people decided that it was easier to put up with syntactic whitespace than remember all the $? and $| and so on, so a lot of the Perl audience moved to Python.

<comment><USER26> > IMO three things killed Perl, leaving it as an unpopular legacy husk [...]

I don't really think it was any of these. There's much simpler mechanics at play here: Perl's competition (Python and Ruby) has about the same expressiveness, but is much easier to learn, so for a long time very few people have chosen Perl to learn. There was simply not enough young blood to replace old timers that were retiring, dying, or migrating to other languages.

<comment><USER10> I find that interesting, since of those three, Perl was the first language that really "clicked" for me (Ruby was almost that language, but it didn't start clicking until after I had learned Perl; Python still ain't really clicking, though it's gotten a bit better lately).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How did you convince someone into being a FULL-TIME tech co-founder? - <AUTHOR>

The good leads usually have a lot of responsibilities already. These are people I've worked with before and known for 2+ years. They're not very good friends yet, but at least we've had some business relationship.<p>They're offering things like: - If I drop this, I can start at 40 hrs/ month.. - I can do 1-2 evenings / week for now.. - If you have something specific, I can help you with it... but I'm pretty busy.. - Starting from January I can dedicate 80% of my time, but I want to be able to do my own projects during the other 20% / I don't want to move <comment><USER2> It will be nearly impossible to find someone to be a full time partner starting tomorrow. People need time to tie off loose ends and to prepare family and ones self for a potentially volatile job.

You will need to outline a CLEAR business plan, they will want to know everything, and everything else, about the company; its goals, what your plan is if you fail to meet projections, they will want to see projections, conservative projections, and they will want a stake in the company.

They will need to be sold on your idea too. They need to know that working for you will be better, either by saving the world, developing super powers, etc.

If someone says i can give you 6-10 hours a week in the evenings, and then i cans tart full time in 2 months, that may be something you want to take them up on.

Also, EVERYONE will have side projects, just make sure they are doing their side projects on their time, and not sucking $ out of you to code something youll never use.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let me flip it around on you. I have a product I've worked on and is pretty close to completed. I need someone to go out door-to door to business and find customers to so we can refine it. It has the potential to become a $100m/yr revenue business. what would it take for you to drop your idea and come work on my project? Now list out your reason why not and cross off the ones that don't apply.</comment>


Hi. Please check out my site. Questions/comments/suggestions welcomed. Thanx - <AUTHOR> http://ioncurr3nt.com

<comment><USER2> Is this digg type of service where people can rate the articles? Sorry it is not very apparent from the first page. If it does have ratings then two articles I have read recently just to ensure that your rating algorithm is correct are: <http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-11-6.html> by Zed Shaw and [http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/10/alternate-sorting- orde...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/10/alternate-sorting-orders/) by Jeff Atwood.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the response and links to the articles. Votes are based on a timestamp, so a vote 1 minute ago has 120 seconds (or in this case, points) less than a vote of the same rating one minute from now. It's a rating scale of 1 to 5, and instead of multiplying an entire timestamp amount by 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5- which would make it almost impossible for articles to be ranked dynamically, if not fairly, each rating is separated by 12 hours (or 43200 seconds), so a 'four star rating' 2 hours ago equals a 'three star rating' 60 minutes ago, which is equal a 'two star rating' right now. I chose not to add negative votes, similarly to hacker news where there is only one upvote option. If a user doesn't like something, he can simply skip it and move on to another article or link he or she likes. It cuts down on trolls who downvote everything with a "Ron Paul" topic, for example.

I appreciate the feedback about the appearance or lack thereof of rating features. I'll look into it.

Alan. (firstname.lastname@example.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. The fonts and colors probably need to be changed. Right now its not easy to read

2\. Maybe you can make the logo a bit smaller, move to left corner, it will save you some space and you can bring the Popular Links section bit higher

3\. The search box should be probably somewhere on top.

Hope it helps. All the best with your venture

</comment><comment><USER4> You might want to add an 'About' page. Also your site seems to be designed for a 17 inch monitor, so the sidebar gets cut off on my 15 inch monitor.

<comment><AUTHOR> The 'about' page is a great idea. The site's 'body' has a width 1200 pixels. I'll rezise that. Thanks for the input. Alan (email@example.com)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Stop Believing in Superstitions - <AUTHOR> How do you stop yourself from believing in superstitions you have always believed? <comment><USER2> Hm helped me to realize that they don't help. For example: even if there is an Afterlife there is no point investing into it now. Even if 9/11 was a false flag operation, there is nothing I can do about it except for living my life. Etc.</comment>


Ask HN: When do you scrap a startup due to a well-entrenched player/competitor? - <AUTHOR>

So, here's the deal. I'm juggling a couple different startup ideas at the moment (Our main biz is running well, so they are all side projects right now).
One of the projects has a fairly well-entrenched (and well-funded) player. They have a big user-base and good growth. On the other hand, they're not perfect and there are some things I think we could do better. But, at what point does their size make that irrelevant?
A good analogy would be eBay. There are ways you could have an auction site that does things better/cheaper than eBay. But they are big and they've already overcome the chicken/egg issue. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see a general online auction site as a good startup idea because of this.
So, my question is ... at what point does this occur (if ever)? When do say "don't enter this space because X already owns it"?
TIA <comment><USER2> A couple of things that might be relevant:

* How many people who want to do X but haven't yet would choose your site over established-X-player?

* Would you expect people using established-X-player to switch to using your site? Why or why not?

* Does X involve substantial lock-in or network effects that established-X-player can take advantage of?

I've been seeing lots of articles (recent calacanis death spiral email, for one) saying that this economic climate will not be friendly to smaller clones (don't mean to imply that your idea is a clone).

<comment><AUTHOR> _1 I have no idea, but since they are growing fairly rapidly there's clearly a good, untapped market

_ 2 Yes, I think some people could/would switch ... especially if we offered slightly lower fees and a few missing–but key–features. Also, there's no reason a person couldn't use both services.

*3 Definitely not a substantial lock-in (see above)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> > When do you scrap a startup due to a well-entrenched player/competitor?

When you decide that you can't win.

Or, better: when your opportunity cost is such that you should really be doing THAT project and not this one.

> When do say "don't enter this space because X already owns it"?

That's a slightly different question. In the first scenario, you've already accomplished some things. In the second scenario, you're just starting. I'd saying NEVER in the second scenario. Not if you're truly going head-to-head. If you've got a niche that the big player can't go after (as, for example, my <a href="<http://SmartFlix.com>">SmartFlix not really competing per-se with Netflix.).

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't say we're just starting–mainly because we already have a platform built and we'd just be tweaking the code-base to launch it for this new purpose/industry.

So I guess we're in the middle somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you identify a structural weakness that can be exploited without huge gobs of cash, go for it. The only thing big guys can consistently do is outspend you.

Good weaknesses include new technology you can use faster than they, or a country/culture you understand better. If your competitor has good growth and features consider a fast-follow: matching them feature-for-feature but cheaper. Worst case you distract them and start a price war. Then you shift gears and start offering better features. If you don't think you can out- feature them, you are in the wrong business.

</comment><comment><USER5> In someways I think this could depend on the network effect. If you are going against a Facebook/eBay/etc., you have to consider how you can grow a significant userbase overcoming the barriers to entry (notice I strangely used Facebook instead of MySpace? - Facebook had to have had the same thoughts you had at one point).

If you are going after a google(search) or Amazon, there is very little network effect (people would argue that Amazon network is built on the reviews, but reviews are available on the web).

Just my two sense.</comment>


Android SurfaceFlinger tricks for fun and profit - <AUTHOR> http://jsharkey.org/blog/2010/07/01/android-surfaceflinger-tricks-for-fun-and-profit/

<comment><USER2> _"All measurements taken in airplane mode with GPS disabled."_

 _"…the best case overall is about 42% of the original system current, effectively doubling the battery life."_

If you don't use most of your actual phone features, that is, but still have the screen turned on. Whereas the regular scenario has those power leeches on, but the screen off. Still, nice experiment.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, looking at the battery use meters on my N1, display is usually in 2nd place at around 25-35% of total usage (with cell standby as the top battery user). So the savings wouldn't be quite as dramatic, but you could certainly get some extra time out of the battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The exciting thing for me is to choosing a flux[1]-like filter at night, to be easier on my eyes.

[1] <http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. I'd just been searching earlier to see if anyone had created a green only ereader for OLED displays. I was wondering how good green-only text displayed since there had been talk about the Nexus One pentile matrix being sub-optimal for b/w text.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's neat that it can be done, but I'd have to be pretty desperate to save some battery juice to use any of these in practice.

<comment><USER7> In practice, I charge my phone when I go to bed. So as long as the phone lasts for the day's usage, I'm all set. (I don't know how long Android phones' battery typically lasts.)

<comment><USER8> My N1 is fine for two days, the third day it becomes risky.</comment></comment></comment>


What Did Ancient Rome Look Like? (Cinematic Animation) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XxA4CX_Ip8&feature=share <comment><USER2> So many statues, not a single one painted in color.

See for examples of how statues appeared back then: [https://theancienthome.com/blogs/blog-and-news/greek- roman-s...](https://theancienthome.com/blogs/blog-and-news/greek-roman- statues-painted)

Particularly this one: [https://youtu.be/zzeJ3woacUM](https://youtu.be/zzeJ3woacUM)

Wonderful project anyways.</comment>


Bay Area Airbnb Hosts Get Less Than They Bargained for During the Big Game - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/05/bay-area-airbnb-hosts-get-less-than-they-bargained-for-during-the-big-game/ <comment><USER2> The real point is that sharing economy (horrible name, better name is "access economy") allows for car greater elasticity of supply, which means that the economy just got more efficient (in microeconomic terms).

That's great news for consumers of such services as lodging.</comment>


PunchClock: Fun With iBeacons - <AUTHOR> http://www.panic.com/blog/punchclock-fun-with-ibeacons/

<comment><USER2> I'm a little surprised that there isn't broader availability of iBeacons at this stage... I feel I should be able to walk into an Apple store and buy a 10-pack of them for some reasonable price.

<comment><USER3> I'm currently developing an app based on Gimbal: [https://gimbal.com](https://gimbal.com) (made by Qualcomm).

My experience so far has been pretty good using their SDK (which works on iOS and Android) and their admin web interface, and the Gimbal devices themselves are not that expensive.

I'd be interested to hear the experiences of others using Gimbal..

<comment><USER4> I recently (Feb 2014) had the opportunity to evaluate different iBeacon hardware for a project.

[http://roximity.com](http://roximity.com)

* "ok" price

* horrible customer communication

* in reality to want to sell you their services and not the iBeacons.

* not configurable (proximity id, major, minor)

* really long shipping time to europe (4 weeks)

[https://www.sticknfind.com](https://www.sticknfind.com)

* "ok" price

* nice form factor (small)

* not really iBeacon compatible. They say you can flash their beacons to make them compatible, but i haven't found out how since their support is not responding.

* not configurable (proximity id, major, minor)

[http://kontakt.io](http://kontakt.io)

* good price

* great support

* major, minor configurable. proximity id not

* form factor kinda bulky

* they seem to be able to deliver huge amount of beacons

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

* great price

* great support

* nice form factor (same as stickNFind)

* fully configurable (proximity id, major, minor)

* the company is relatively young

Can't say anything about the battery life yet, but the batteries were replaceable in each case.

<comment><USER5> Here's another one that combines Arduino [http://blog.onlycoin.com/posts/2013/10/3/coin-arduino-ble- de...](http://blog.onlycoin.com/posts/2013/10/3/coin-arduino-ble-dev-kit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This would be incredible to strap on to every middle-and-above management type in my company so I could get things signed off when I actually needed to

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested in using this for home automation purposes. Accurate information about what room of the house I am in allows for the home automation interface to be greatly simplified by only showing options to control nearby items.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't it make more sense if the nearby items themselves were broadcasting iBeacons? I think this is what Apple intends to do with the protocol.

<comment><USER7> It would certainly be useful but currently a lot of things don't have Bluetooth LE and are controlled via zigbee, z-wave, wifi, etc.. So knowing what room you are in is very useful in itself because it can help identify what target devices you may want to control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We built something similar as open source with regular Bluetooth and WiFi sensors a while back: [http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/smart-collaboration- space/](http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/smart-collaboration-space/)

<comment><USER10> check out this also [http://wifichat.linkstore.ru](http://wifichat.linkstore.ru)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool project.

I've always wondered what iBeacon offers, in most practical implementations, that latent wifi doesn't? If I wanted to do something similar on an Android device, for the purposes of conversation, I would register for the SCAN_RESULTS_AVAILABLE_ACTION event, and watch for the appearance or disappearance of SSID of APs that are interesting, and of course there are lots of utilities and tools that do exactly this (e.g. when I near home control these settings, etc). Ping a web service with updates, etc.

SSIDs can of course be cloned, just as iBeacons can. Neither are truths that they are what they say they are.

<comment><USER12> Walled garden answer: Apple doesn't let you write an app that wakes up when a SSID becomes visible, but you can write an iOS app that wakes up and does something when an iBeacon becomes visible.

Technological answer: iBeacons allow more selectivity and precision. You can be confident that a visible iBeacon is within 30ft or so, rather than 300+ft for WiFi, and with a little calibration you can measure the distance reasonably well. WiFi can tell you "the user is in [a section of] the building", while iBeacons can tell you "the user is standing in front of exhibit X".

<comment><USER11> >You can be confident that a visible iBeacon is within 30ft or so, rather than 300+ft for WiFi, and with a little calibration you can measure the distance reasonably well.

Doesn't BLE have a range of some 150 feet+? That doesn't differ much from the range of 802.11g. Both of them have amplitude that you can measure, from which you could guess at distance (especially if you're near the same source multiple times).

Of course a store isn't going to set up a bunch of APs to notify you when you're near a display, but aside from channel overlap and ugliness technically they could. And outside of the walled garden that you mentioned, it would be just as suitable for the role it filled in this application.

<comment><USER13> iBeacon includes the device transmitting a clabirated signal transmission strength in each packet so the phone can do a calculation against the RSSI and the power the device claims to transmit at. With this information you can be much more accurate then working with a WiFi where the goal is to be loud and get as much distance in as possible.

<comment><USER14> Except that EVERYTHING interferes with a low powered btle signal. Hold your phone with an unobstructed view of an ibeacon, then put almost anything between you and it, your rssi will drop like a stone. Especially bad when it's your body between the antenna and receiver.

'iBeacon' is great for very general and very localized location finding, but you're going to have a very hard time triangulating your location very precisely in say a department store.

<comment><USER15> You are quite correct, however Apple have very sensibly been very conservative in what accuracy of distance estimation they provide to apps. The only distance values provided are: CLProximityUnknown, CLProximityImmediate, CLProximityNear, CLProximityFar. These correlate reasonably well with the type of information that can be usefully derived from RSSI (i.e., you're next to the cash register, you're in/next to the shop, you're close to the shop).

<comment><USER14> Sure but those are also highly variable. I built a test installation in a retail environment using about 15 beacons setting up four different types of zones. One of which was an attempt to do a 'tap your phone here interaction' (CLProximityImmediate trigger). The Beacon for that interaction was behind a piece of foamcore.

Now I'm not a radio engineer, it may be that it was too many beacons for the area or the general wireless soup was high but it could sometimes take 20-30 seconds to see that beacon as immediate with your phone sitting smack dab on it. Sometimes 1sec. (iOS7.0 on both ipod touch 5thgen and iphone 5 devices) . Perhaps the filtering they use just needs to be tweaked a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Love this. We've been working on a version of this for the office at Robin ([http://getrobin.com](http://getrobin.com)). Biggest challenge so far has been getting interop across Android and iOS. Beacons are reliable if you have a binary "are they or aren't they here?" but a bit harder to map to smaller rooms when certain Android devices register a signal difference of 4X depending on physical orientation -- that was a fun one to figure out.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've done quite a bit of iBeacon stuff including emulating them with Raspberry Pi's and writing an iOS app that measures the OS behavior against iBeacons. It's pretty interesting stuff, there are a couple of my beacon's I'm using to test iOS behaviors with that are buried in a New York city park near my place.

If you find one let me know.

I suppose I could write some of my findings up but I've been a bit busy...

<comment><USER17> Hm, geocaching TNG anyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really like that design. We developed a similar idea a couple of weeks ago, when we received our Estimote beacons. Here you can find the blog post about it with the sources, albeit it's a simpler and rougher implementation: [http://andreamazz.github.io/blog/2014/07/01/fun-with- ibeacon...](http://andreamazz.github.io/blog/2014/07/01/fun-with-ibeacon/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Just like half of the other commenters, a team I was on built something similar at PennApps (a college hackathon) back in Februrary. It was a really fun project to work on.

([http://tracktimeapp.com](http://tracktimeapp.com))

<comment><USER19> The code: [https://github.com/thestranger/pennapps](https://github.com/thestranger/pennapps)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We built similar stuff with Core Bluetooth (so, any Android phone is Ok): [http://bdp.linkstore.ru](http://bdp.linkstore.ru)

</comment><comment> dav- Panic always makes such beautiful and cool things.

</comment><comment><USER20> we built an iBeacon app for a party we threw last Christmas. It was pretty cool, actually.. although Apple gave us a hassle accepting the app for whatever reason. Here's a write up.. [http://objectlab.github.io](http://objectlab.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER21> This is really awesome. I wish I had the skill to make something like this work.

</comment><comment><USER22> So is there any plan for interop with non apple devices?

<comment><USER23> Is there anything close to standardized enough for non-Apple devices to implement this sort of functionality?

<comment><USER24> Theoretically, there's no reason you couldn't write a similar app for Android devices which support BLE[1] to reimplement this functionality, but Panic have only ever written for Apple devices.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18906988/what-is-the- ibea...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18906988/what-is-the-ibeacon- bluetooth-profile)</comment></comment></comment>


Everything I Learned from One Year of AWS Consulting - <AUTHOR> https://kevinslin.com/aws/everything_i_learned_from_aws_consulting/ <comment><AUTHOR> author here. I get a lot of questions about what its like being a consultant and how to go about it. While I still don't feel qualified to answer the question, here are my consolidated learnings from 1 year of AWS consulting. happy to answer any questions people have :)</comment>


Toward a New Frontier in Human Intelligence: The Person-Centered Approach - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/toward-a-new-frontier-in-human-intelligence-the-person-centered-approach/ <comment><USER2> How long would admission tests take to incorporate these observations?</comment>


Clojure build tool Boot 2.0 RC1 out now - <AUTHOR> http://adzerk.com/blog/2014/12/boot2-rc1-out/

<comment><USER2> I was using `grunt` and `gulp` to build Node.js and AngularJS projects but I have to tell even boot 1.0 felt like a great step forward compared to them, despite of the abysmal startup times.

It allowed us to just jump into Clojure development from one day to the other while understanding what is the build system doing. I can't tell the same about the prepackaged grunt and gulp files which come with certain key-turn projects.

<comment><USER3> I've worked extensively with both grunt and gulp for the past couple of years (I've even written gulp plugins![1][2]), and I'm still shocked at how bad the tooling is compared to ruby (rails asset pipeline / sprockets) and clojure (leiningen, chestnut, etc.).

For example, here is a simple gulpfile for a livereload environment that compiles sass and coffeescript [3]. It's over 500 lines long, and it requires extensive knowledge of at least 20 plugins. And half of those plugins are there to address the shortcomings of other plugins, or of gulp itself [4].

But really the worst part is that every time some dependency of a dependency pushes a point release, it breaks the entire build. My team has resorted to passing around a stable `node_modules` dropbox folder. I'm literally terrified to run npm update!

Anyway boot looks cool, I can't wait to try it out :)

[1] [https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/gulp-rev-replace- stream](https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/gulp-rev-replace-stream)

[2] [https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/generator-gulp-of- drano](https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/generator-gulp-of-drano)

[3] [https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/generator-gulp-of- drano/b...](https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/generator-gulp-of- drano/blob/master/app/templates/_gulpfile.coffee)

[4] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/gulp- buffer](https://www.npmjs.com/package/gulp-buffer)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that all sounds like an absolute nightmare!

Have you taken a look at broccoli[1]? We ran across it after going the Fileset route, but were refreshed to see that it also does a kind of Fileset thing (they call them "trees")[2]. I don't know much more about it other than that it's what's underneath ember-cli, and the Ember people do a lot of good work in tools realm. Anyway, it could be a way for you to realize some of the niceties of the boot approach over in JS-land.

1\. [https://github.com/broccolijs/broccoli](https://github.com/broccolijs/broccoli)

2\. [http://www.solitr.com/blog/2014/02/broccoli-first- release/](http://www.solitr.com/blog/2014/02/broccoli-first-release/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the wiki for [Filesets]([https://github.com/boot- clj/boot/wiki/Filesets](https://github.com/boot-clj/boot/wiki/Filesets))

" _Build workflows necessarily involve the filesystem because it 's not practical to send file contents around in memory as function arguments, and because we want to be able to leverage existing JVM tooling that generally operates on things in the class path and not on in-memory data structures._"

so like unix pipes? What exactly is impractical about passing big values as function arguments? Isn't that how gulp works?

<comment><USER5> Well, there are two things there: the unbounded potential size of files and the ability to coexist in the current JVM ecosystem without rewriting every bit of code that looks for things on the class path.

I think that generally the files you're dealing with will fit in memory, but you still wouldn't probably want to have everything in memory all the time, you'd need to stream them (consider an uberjar that's 10M as a JAR, but might contain contents that are 10x that size uncompressed).

This brings us to the second point. No existing JVM tools are prepared to accept files via pipes. Tooling on the JVM looks for things on the class path and in JAR files. We definitely don't want to have to rewrite every tool to use some in-memory pipe system.

The fileset and pod abstractions provided by boot work together to give you the best of both worlds--an immutable representation of the filesystem and class path combined with full interop with the existing JVM ecosystem.

Another issue with Unix pipes is that they are not awesome for tree-like things. In bash you pipe lines of text from one program to another, but tree processing is very difficult. Consider xml processing by pipes, or my jsawk library for processing JSON in the shell. These suffer from memory issues because it's hard to stream trees (if you have a 2G JSON file that is a single object jsawk can't even read it in).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that a fileset concept has emerged. I would draw parallels with Ant, but this project seems to have already zoomed past ant for ease of use. Can boot be used to build pure java projects as well?

<comment><USER5> I don't see why not. There is a javac task included with the built-in tasks that ship with boot itself, but boot is designed for ease of extension so you can write tasks to implement your particular workflow. You can even write tasks that use Ant or Maven in a pod (pods are a sort of first-class implementation of isolated classloaders in which work can be done). We even have a jRuby task now that can be used as a component of a Ruby build pipeline, so yes, I think boot would be a great way to build Java projects!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does it build hoplon yet?

<comment><USER5> Not yet, the hoplon task hasn't been ported yet. But very soon, I promise :)</comment></comment>


The pre-registration experiment:an alternative publication model for ML research - <AUTHOR> http://preregister.science/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/imew49/new...](https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/imew49/news_neurips2020_the_preregistration_experiment/)</comment>