Tenure in a Nutshell - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/07/tenure-in-a-nutshell/60453/

<comment><USER2> It's not quite the case that there's no pressure or evaluation post-tenure, at least at big research universities. It's common for a proportion of a professor's salary to be "soft money" that they have to pay themselves out of grants--- at the very least summer salary (i.e. 25% of full-year pay) is almost always paid out of grants, and increasingly a portion of 9-month salary is as well. So a professor is constantly selling their work not to tenure committees, but to grant agencies, and if they stop doing so, their pay gets a huge chop. They might also end up with more teaching load, depending on the university, since some universities assign more courses per semester to professors deemed "not research-active" (and if they really want them out, will start doing things like giving them shitty committee assignments, withholding annual cost-of-living pay adjustments, moving them to bad offices, etc.).

More to the point, if we were to abolish tenure, I think we'd also have to reform how academics are evaluated. The current methods focus almost exclusively on some combination of publication count and citation count, driving a strong "publish or perish" CV-line-counting culture. A main advantage of tenure is that it opens up some breathing space for more senior academics to take risks on longer-term projects that may or may not pan out, and won't be producing the usual flurry of papers in the early stages.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They obviously didn't intend it that way, but the _pro-tenure_ arguments in the comments are among the best evidence _against_ tenure around.</comment>


The Triumph of Stupidity (1933) - <AUTHOR> http://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM <comment><USER2> In "How to Make Wealth", pg points out that the emergence of the rule of law made the modern economy as we know it possible. It did - social progress has made institutions like democracy and ideas like liberty and rationalism more popular than it has ever been in history.

This used to give me a dangerously false sense of optimism - that the modern society is a stable scientific one, where good intelligent people are in charge, and that the state of affairs are always improving. This notion partly came from the privilege of never having lived in a war-zone. The life of chaos of those who are unfortunate to be in one is even now beyond my understanding.

I think that the idea that humanity is always marching forward to better days is something implicit among people who live in peaceful affluent societies. But if you look at history, the world has always gone through cycles. No matter how much we improve socially, a regression seems almost inevitable. The Roman Empire did fall, and was followed by the Dark Ages.

Even in the most democratic countries of the world, fascism is only just around the corner. There is a large chunk of society who're easily swayed by purely emotional rhetoric based on in-groups and out-groups, and likes to follow leaders who make a show of macho masculinity. The status-quo is pretty fragile. The nerds aren't safe. Those with warrior tendencies always have upper-hand over those with nation-building tendencies, and that reads like a tautology.

<comment><USER3> > _There is a large chunk of society who 're easily swayed by purely emotional > rhetoric based on in-groups and out-groups_

I think this sentence is the biggest indicator of the problem. The Problem being not that there are large parts of society swayed by emotional rhetoric, but that to most people, the emotional swaying happens to _others_. It's never me who's swayed by emotions, it's always less rational people, and if only those people could get their shit together, _like me_ , we'd be in a much better place.

You're just as swayed by emotion as those non nerds, you're just swayed on different values. Pretending like you're above it gets us nowhere, because it perpetuates an unhelpful me vs everyone else mentality. It's very satisfying to the ego but it just serves to further drive a wedge between you and everyone else.

<comment><USER4> That's what struck me most about the article, as well. Russell's essay is very flattering, until you realize the _we_ that he terms "the best men of the present day" are probably not the _we_ of Hacker News.

In particular, when Russell writes about "the philosophical radicals ... who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are[, who] dominated politics and ... advanced [the world] rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being," he is very likely writing about people who would definitely be a Hacker News _they_ , given what I know about his politics and given statements like "if at any future time there should be danger of a Labour Government that meant business, [the British Fascists] would win the support of most of the governing classes."

So, if this essay leaves you with a warm and fuzzy feeling about your "wider and truer outlook" and the feeling that you are being oppressed because of your "skepticism and intellectual individualism", well, congratulations! You've discovered the power of emotional rhetoric.

<comment><USER5> Great point.

It's why the Elon Musk's, Larry Page's and Bill Gates of the tech world retreat into their own private dreamlands as far away from the politics of the real world as possible, cause they know they don't stand a chance against the rhetorical snake charmers that are Bush, Obama, Clinton and now Trump.

I'll leave here, Matt Taibbi's more modern take on this that blames the media or what I like to call the rhetoric amplification industry. [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-is-too- dum...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/america-is-too-dumb-for-tv- news-20151125)

The solutions are complex but eventually we'll have to start looking at China. Cause no one else seems to be working on alternatives to what the media has become today.

<comment><USER6> Wow. Democracy can be ugly, but to look to an oligarchy for the solution? I think this is the antithesis of Russell's thrust.

<comment><USER7> Well, the democracy can't build nuclear power plants and fast trains, an an oligarchy can. So there's that.

But still, if you want to look for an alternative to western media, you'll need to look elsewhere - China is turning more and more free, and is becoming increasingly like the rest of the West - good and bad, the whole package.

<comment><USER8> _the democracy can 't build nuclear power plants and fast trains, an an oligarchy can. So there's that_

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 _Maybe_ the case for fast trains stacks up (in some places), but Nuclear power just doesn't. I know some people assume that because some of the safety problems are overstated it makes it a good option, but that chain of reasoning doesn't hold.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)

This book does a pretty decent and math-based argument that the chain of reasoning for nuclear energy holds up pretty well. Have there been some new developments that suddenly made it not so?

<comment><USER8> Considering it doesn't address the _cost of building the plants_ I'd say it isn't very compelling at all.

Heres a good article on the costs: [http://theconversation.com/what-does- nuclear-power-cost-old-...](http://theconversation.com/what-does-nuclear- power-cost-old-plants-dispel-easy-answers-41379)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are
      cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

This seems to be the Dunning-Kruger effect in action. Knowing more means having greater awareness that what you know is only a small part of what you _could_ know.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

      "A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent
      men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are"

If true, I wonder what caused this. Could anyone suggest cultural, social or technological reasons that may have temporarily united the intellectuals of the age?

<comment><USER10> > the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men

Does anyone know _who_ these men were?

<comment><USER11> Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, Epictetus etc..

<comment><USER10> Maybe I didn't quote enough :)

> A _hundred years ago_ the philosophical radicals formed a school of > intelligent men

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing the ones during the Enlightenment? Rousseau, Kant, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "In this gloomy state of affairs, the brightest spot is America. In America democracy still appears well established, and the men in power deal with what is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and wholesale imprisonment."

Oh.

<comment><USER14> How the mighty have fallen.

<comment><USER15> Hm? I feel like this still applies reasonably well to America.

For all of the radical lunacy in our politics, our government's actual actions remain fairly moderate. (Of course maybe that's because political gridlock prevents us from having time to enact radical policy.) And we still are leading the world in all sorts of things, like scientific progress and technological progress.

<comment><USER16> Moderate? Hardly.

\- The war on drugs is utterly radical, as well ineffective and brutally oppressive.

\- Assassinating people (including Americans) by Drone strikes, based on "meta data". No due process or oversight.

\- Disregard for the Geneva Conventions (Bombings of hospitals and other civilian targets)

\- Torture. Including public defense of torture.

\- NSA. Privacy used to be an inalienable right.

\- Military bases in 200+ countries.

The list goes on, but I think I've made my point. The US is only "moderate" for the most creative definitions of "moderate".

<comment><USER17> 74 countries according to this article:

[http://qz.com/374138/these-are-all-the-countries-where- the-u...](http://qz.com/374138/these-are-all-the-countries-where-the-us-has-a- military-presence/)

Point stands, nonetheless. That's a lot.

<comment><USER16> I appreciate the correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's an incredibly prescient piece of writing, to see that clearly what would happen in the next 14 years and to write it down so un-ambiguously and tersely. Who is our present day Bertrand Russell?

<comment><USER19> Chris Hedges writes alot about this nowadays. His background as a war reporter for nyt gives him a bit of a radical perspective, but like much of modern social commentary, it makes me depressed reading too much of it.

Joe Bageant (RIP) is really good too, and he can be funny aswell. Hedges is never humorous.

We should add Chomsky to the list, although I can't stand reading his stuff. I'm sure it's good what he writes, but he is just too high-brow for me.

<comment><USER18> Chomsky is obviously strongly influenced by Russell, he's usually on the mark but takes 25,000 words where Russell takes 500 or so to make the same point and much stronger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Replace Germany with Russia in article and you would be describing the sad state of things in modern Russia, the most brutal and stupid are running the show there now.

Aside here is an interesting article regarding this > [https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/russia-great- for...](https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/russia-great-forgetting/)

<comment><USER10> Hm.. as opposed to Germany, Turkey, UK and the US?

<comment><USER21> Don't forget France. A politician noticed a PS4 console in a terrorist's room and concluded that that's what they used as a super-secret communication channel. Turns out they used good ol' SMS. Already intercepted. They announced that from now on they'll also intercept the PS4 messaging traffic anyway.

Then there's the plan to put ankle bracelets on "known extremists"...

<comment><USER10> I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but (disregarding the risk that I might get as well) I agree. Especially how quickly Hollande seized the opportunity of the tragedy-shocked nation to start attacking Syria...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "civilised world" is kept together by midddle- and working class people. What people need is hope and predictable outcomes from their personal efforts.

The Great Depression of 1929 struck America hard but Weimar Germany much harder. Incremental changes and hard work did not produce improvements. Life was uncertain and critical amount of people felt that life was unfair to them. They were ready to try stupid and unorthodox.

I find it unlikely that radical and stupid ideas alone can rock liberal democracies. They are always present. What is needed is personal uncertainty and fear of the future that resonates with the society.

<comment><USER23> > "civilised world" is kept together by midddle- and working class people.

Well, sort of. I think first you need technological innovation, and then the middle- and working class fill the labor to maintain that technology, but they for the most part didn't create it. They are users of it. Companies do investments and allocation of capital to produce that technology. Without a central source of capital, it would be hard to get the investments needed to research and produce it. I think technology (in all its forms from basic to advanced) is what enables the motion of society and individuals and the freedoms.

And also civilized society is just as much about daily life and consumption of information and perceived oppression or unfairness as it is pure work. It feels like a lot of modern arguments are about these perceived unfair situations, but on a personal level rather than systematic level. This leads to systematic "macro" chaos but predictable individual "micro" movement in the system (based on emotion and current view of the world). As long as the technology and resources can be maintained, there will be some order in the basics in society, since everyone needs food, shelter, clothing, security and so forth, so I would say, the whole system is what keeps the civilized world going and then some day, something fundamental breaks in some way, due to the accumulated macro momentum of micro scale movement, and then the macro breaks, or something like that.

Edit: also as an addon, these micro movements are decided today, by so called "thought leaders", and so these thought leaders are also responsible for the civilized world in that sense. An idea or representation of something has a huge effect I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > In America democracy still appears well established, and the men in power > deal with what is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and > wholesale imprisonment.

Well all was not perfect even there - just a couple of years later all Japanese were "wholesale imprisoned".

<comment><USER25> Thereafter black americans since the 1970s

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Thanks for sharing. We could spend hours drawing from this essay.

Let's consider this part:

"A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being."

Another example of this is neo-liberal capitalism: from Hayek [1] and his disciple, Friedman [2], to myriad think tanks, Reagan and Thatcher, SCOTUS (eg Powell [3]), etc. We're still living with the outcome of a generation of intelligent, organized, ambitious people united by a [flawed] ideology.

[1] Hayek - "The Road to Serfdom" [http://amzn.to/1PRWyDj](http://amzn.to/1PRWyDj) [2] Friedman - "Free to Choose" [http://amzn.to/1QKIewt](http://amzn.to/1QKIewt) [3] Powell - "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" [http://bit.ly/1Q2bHR7](http://bit.ly/1Q2bHR7)

<comment><USER27> Just a nitpick but Hayek and Friedman were both _classical_ liberals.

<comment><USER28> Strictly speaking Hayek was the first Hayekian liberal - but did self-describe as a classical liberal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand this essay. It seems to be a romanticism of intelligent individuals, but he refers to Nazi Germany as the triumph of the stupid. However, isn't Nazi Germany the product of a small group of highly intelligent individuals?

<comment><USER30> > _[...] isn 't Nazi Germany the product of a small group of highly > intelligent individuals?_

Yes, a small group of intelligent individuals, who succeeded in rallying the "stupid" masses behind them.

<comment><USER31> Wouldn't any successful political movement need the support of the "stupid masses"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Haunting and frighteningly timely short essay. This particular part jumped out (not least because the first sentence is highlighted):

 _The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points._

Around the same time (1930), Sigmund Freud articulated the concept of "the narcissism of small differences" in his book _Civilization and its Discontents_ , a concept that is endlessly useful in understanding how otherwise like-minded people tend to tear themselves apart. A related concept in software development is "bikeshedding".

<comment><USER33> However in "bikeshedding", like-minded people tearing themselves apart over small things is a byproduct of the underlying problem: they're procrastinating the bigger issue.

<comment><USER34> Maybe that's the point. I feel sometimes like the world today is so complex, that it's hard to be sure of any politics whether it will work, or produce more misery than good. So, perhaps on a subconscious level, it's easier to bicker about details and never actually do anything.

Moral high ground is the privilege of those that don't do anything...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think it is a potentially dangerous mistake to put the "stupid" label on all those that support anti-democratic tendencies.

Among other things, such as having a false impression of what else is possibly going on, one might be inclined to dismiss the problem too easily.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's a classic, but I do think there's more to it than stupidity versus intelligence. It's also about conviction versus cowardice.

In my experience bullying and persecution are very often more about fear and insecurity. If you're persecuting and blaming someone else, you're not being persecuted and blamed yourself. It's a way to deflect hostility and responsibility away from yourself and on to other people. It seems to me most of the people Russel was writing about may not even have been going along with the mainstream because they genuinely thought Jews, Communists etc were a real threat, but because if everyone is having a go at them they're not having a go at me. If I join in then I become one of the team and can buy safety and security for myself that way. In the uncertain and dangerous times Germany had been through, any route to personal security and safety must have looked very attractive.

How is this relevant today? Clearly Putin is using this sort of response to great effect by using conflict and rivalry with foreigners to deflect criticism away from his abysmal record at actually achieving anything of value for the Russian people. Even having a Russian jet shot down by Turkey plays to his advantage in that respect.

For us the question is, how to treat Muslim minorities in the West, and what to do about the Syrian refugee crisis. The refugees didn't create this crisis and are the primary victims. The vast majority of Muslims in the west are against ISIS and deplore it's tactics. But blaming 'The Muslims' for all of this and using excuses such as that terrorists will infiltrate the west disguised as refugees are blinkered and cowardly. What are we going to do? Drive millions of refugees back into the Mediterranean sea?

It's going to take determination and perseverance to do the right thing. Take as many refugees as we can. Build bridges with Muslim communities in the West. Confront IS and it's backers militarily and economically. There will be further attacks. Integrating so many refugees is going to be expensive, hard work and there are going to be negative consequences and mistakes made. It's not going o go smoothly. But we still have to do it not because we are 'Intelligent' but because we have courage.

</comment><comment><USER37> _Throughout the last hundred and fifty years, individual Germans have done more to further civilisation than the individuals of any other country; during the latter half of this period, Germans, collectively, have been equally effective in degrading civilisation._

Russell here is making the same mistake as most people today. It wasn't the "Germans collectively", it was the German government, tolerated by a mostly ignorant population with a few "hawks" to show support for the government action.

Contrary to the top post here right now, this is the same thing happening in the US right now. The government bombs another country every 1-2 years and people let it happen. We're still in appeasement times but the state already gradually disrespects individual liberties and soon America will become a collective much like the one described in the article.

<comment><USER38> "The government bombs another country every 1-2 years"

This is dumbing down history. The world would as we know it would not exist without all the US army involvement around the world in the last 100 years: notably WWI,WWII, the cold war, & many more.Some less glorious, indeed. But it's not "bombing every 1-2 years" but a mixture of defending freedom, sometimes financial interests, mistakes and more. But overall, there would not be a "free world" without the US power and the will to use it

<comment><USER39> If only US military involvement was only in WW1 & 2\. The US was one of the good guys then, sure. Most of the other conflicts US army has taken part sound like a powertrip from an arrogant white man. Indian wars and the resulting genocide, Vietnam war where the french wanted the US to spank their unruly colony into submission... I'm sorry to say, the parties who like to smear US have quite enough fact based material.

That said, I'm not claiming US is _evil_ but it's not a force of good either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yeats's _The Second Coming_ , written in 1919 and following the cataclysm of the First World War, conveyed the same horrific and accurate vision of the future:

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

</comment><comment><USER41> Reminds me of Yeats' The Second Coming ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_\(poem\))):

      Turning and turning in the widening gyre
      The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
      Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
      Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
      The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
      The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
      The best lack all conviction, while the worst
      Are full of passionate intensity.

      Surely some revelation is at hand;
      Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
      The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
      When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
      Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
      A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
      A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
      Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
      Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
      The darkness drops again; but now I know
      That twenty centuries of stony sleep
      Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
      And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
      Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

</comment><comment><USER42> Is there a way forward? A way to avoid the same mistakes and perhaps save humanity from the triumph of stupidity?

<comment><USER43> I believe there is, but for me the skepticism comes from my belief that there are a lot of 'well-read' people today thanks to the internet, Google and Wikipedia, although not many critical readers and thinkers. The best illustration of this for me is in the movie "Good Will Hunting", where the main character overhears a cocky college student, and puts him in his place [1]. That scene epitomizes a large portion of talk I hear about me, but with no real substance, or a Will Hunting to put them in their intellectual place. I think we don't teach basic critical thinking any more except in special classes or programs when it should be part of every class - common sense.

       [1] http://theartofspokenwords.blogspot.co.id/2011/04/good-will-hunting-bar-scene-quote.html

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think it's not stupidity (nor the Dunning Kruger Effect) that leads mankind astray; it's groupthink, in any shape or form. When you blind yourself to whether you and your allies do more harm than good, in service of some abstract ideal or philosophy, you fail.

</comment><comment><USER41> Fukuyama presents an interesting counterpoint in The End of History ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man)):

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

</comment><comment><USER45> Today, Americans shouldn't take this as luck, but as a cautionary tale.

</comment><comment><USER46> Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Göring, and the other leaders of the National Socialist party were horribly brutal, but they were not stupid. They were some of the brightest in the most well-educated country in the world. The same goes with French influenced Marxists such as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Bertrand Russell is right on many points, but he's terribly wrong to think the enemies of civilization are stupid. Read Machiavelli.

</comment><comment><USER47> Russell wrote this piece in 1933, just one year before US government confiscated gold from its citizens ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)). "Brightest spot" didn't last long.

</comment><comment><USER48> > The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid > are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

It was Hume and Kant who injected skepticism back into Western thought and are responsible for empowering the stupid, including the Nazis. If you know the cause of your plight then you can fix the effect.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think it's simpler than that. Politics attract assholes and intelligent people avoid assholes.

</comment><comment><USER50> For me it was present day US in place of Germany.

It would be interesting if people reading this would say here which country they associated Germany to. I suppose almost all the countries will be on the list.

So an interesting question would be which country you associated the US in the essay to?

</comment><comment><USER51> Opportunist here, riding on the popularity of this post. See my recent post which is partly along the lines of thoughts expressed by Bertrand Russel: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10611416) Summary - readers who think that vast majority of individuals are 'stupid' \- please contact me. One of the failings of 'sane' intelligent people is that we do not band together.

</comment><comment><USER52> Written in 1933. In the same year, Heidegger joined the Nazi party.

Now go figure who was the most prescient of the two.

</comment><comment><USER53> aka the raging cretinisation of the world or overfitting, from data science jargon; second time in a row I'm forced to write this here on HN, I'm probably overfitted too. :(

</comment><comment><USER54> >>> By murder, by torture, by imprisonment, by the terrorism of armed forces, they have subjected the intelligent and humane parts of the nation and seized power with the view of furthering the glory of the Fatherland.

reminds of current US foreign policy.

</comment><comment> d--b This does not belong here.

<comment><USER55> Why not?

<comment> d--b Oh, and because it invariably leads to comments which are in breach of HN guidelines. See these comments about Donald Trump?

<comment><USER55> This is a good point and it's a shame you got downvoted for it.

(I up voted it, but it's still grey.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> _By murder, by torture, by imprisonment, by the terrorism of armed forces, they have subjected the intelligent and humane parts of the nation and seized power with the view of furthering the glory of the Fatherland._

^ The terrorism of armed forces part is particularly important. We tend to think that terrorism is something crazy non-state actors do in religious or delusional fervor, but it is really just the use of violence to achieve certain political ends. This is precisely what the American army started doing around the world after World War II. If you include psychological manipulation with it as well, as recently evidence by the disclosure that the DOD was paying NFL to propagandize during games, we get a very concerning picture of the role of the US military in today's world and in the US itself.

 _In this gloomy state of affairs, the brightest spot is America. In America democracy still appears well established, and the men in power deal with what is amiss by constructive measures, not by pogroms and wholesale imprisonment._

^ How dated that sounds. Wonder what Russell would say about the America of today, with the oligarchy entrenching itself to replace a democracy, a wide- scale militarization of the police, a pogrom against Muslims in some southern states, the wholesale imprisonment of African Americans, and the popularity of near-fascist leaders like Donald Trump.

<comment><USER57> "a pogrom against Muslims in some southern states"

That's just untrue. A pogrom is an organized massacre of an ethnic group - it's not happening, in southern states or anywhere else in the US.

<comment><USER58> littletimmy, how about citing sources for these extraordinary claims ("a pogrom against Muslims in some southern states")? I can't believe it wouldn't be widely known in the current "politically correct" environment.

Even if you are now aware that "pogrom" wasn't the right word to describe something "against Muslims" that is worrying you, please do write what that is.

<comment><USER59> your reply was not to littletimmy so he may not answer you. However it is possible he was talking about things like this:

[http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/11/armed- protesters-...](http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2015/11/armed-protesters- set-up-outside-islamic-center-of-irving.html/)

Whilst not a pogrom it certainly does lay the ground for some future issues. All you have to is consider the reaction if Muslim Americans decided to use their 2nd ammendment rights to protest christian or jewish churches, whilst covering their forces and armed with semi automatic weapons.

<comment><USER58> Was it a protest "against Muslims" as persons of the religion as whole, or just against the goals or actions of just some militant or extremist Muslims?

The messages of the protest were "solution to islamic terrorism -> ted cruz" (obviously a call to the solution of the assumed problem through voting, that is, politically, they refer to: [https://www.tedcruz.org/](https://www.tedcruz.org/) ) and "stop the islamization of america" according to the picture from the same site:

[http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/files/2015/11/pan.jpg](http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/files/2015/11/pan.jpg)

Isn't even filing such event as something "against Muslims" (implying "in general") a big misinterpretation? Who benefits from such misinterpretations?

And did the protesters break any law?

<comment><USER60> How is a protest against "islam the religion as a whole" where people protest by wielding guns is acceptable?

The main theme is pretty clear here: "Against the islamization of America" And they're standing outside a mosque holding rifles.

The precise reason is written in the article: "he was convinced that Irving's mosque had established the country's first Islamic court earlier in the year—a false rumor that started online but grew in popularity after Mayor Beth Van Duyne made it the focus of speeches to Tea Party groups.

"They shut the illegal court down," Wright said, incorrectly. "And then, they threatened to kill the mayor.""

A bunch of gun-wielding lunatics that think mosques are setting up secret courts.

<comment><USER58> > How is a protest against "islam the religion as a whole" where people > protest by wielding guns is acceptable?

My argument was, it wasn't "against Muslims" as a whole but just against "islamization" by supporting the candidate of protesters, that makes a big difference. For example, Ataturk was effectively against islamization of Turkey, as its top political leader, and made it much more modern and more secular state, ending sharia courts in 1924. Which was a worthy goal for anybody who wasn't an islamist.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thirty-three Miniatures: Applications of Linear Algebra (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://kam.mff.cuni.cz/~matousek/stml-53-matousek-1.pdf <comment><USER2> Prof. Matoušek [1] was arguably one of Europe's best dual scientists/textbook writers of his time. If you are a math/CS theory persond and you are interested in picking up a book of his, I recommend "Mathematics++: Selected Topics Beyond the Basic Courses" [2].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Matou%C5%A1ek_(...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_Matou%C5%A1ek_\(mathematician\))

[2]: [https://bookstore.ams.org/stml-75](https://bookstore.ams.org/stml-75)

\---

Also, can't help myself but mention (in good spirits) that this is a repost:

> 33 Miniatures: Mathematical and Algorithmic Applications of Linear Algebra > [pdf] (cuni.cz)

> 2 points by NotOscarWilde on Dec 27, 2013 | past | web

<comment><USER3> According to his Wikipedia article, he held a professor position without a PhD. Is that usual in parts of Europe? That seems unthinkable in the US.

<comment><USER4> His full titles were prof. RNDr. Jiří Matoušek, DrSc; where the "DrSc" part was more than what is now recognized as a PhD. Scientific titles used to work differently in Eastern Europe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yay! I had a course with Prof. Matoušek: Topological methods in combinatorics and geometry. It a was mostly about using Borsuk Ulam theorem to prove other theorems in different areas. Can't remember a whole lot, except it was fascinating and beautiful.

<comment><USER5> Ah yeah and of course at least a bit of Borsuk Ulam. In my own words: "for every continuous function from the n-sphere to R^n, there exists a pair of antipodal points on that sphere that will map to the same point in R^n". Example in 1-D: in a heated a metal-ring with some heat-distribution on it, there are to points exactly opposite from each other which have the same temperature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A thread from 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14129306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14129306)

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for kindly sharing this.

The _Perfect Matchings and Determinants_ section which relates the perfect matchings of a graph with a determinant is interesting.</comment>


Reinforcement Learning: From Zero to State of the Art with Pytorch 4 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/higgsfield/RL-Adventure-2 <comment><USER2> The title is "click-baity" but I've used this repo in the past to verify parts of my code and it is highly recommended. The code is amazingly clean!

Once you've verified that the implementations are correct, it is easier to start the journey to reproduce SOTA on harder problems by playing around with the side-tricks that are often employed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pytorch 4?

Pytorch 1 is not available yet.

I suppose it means Pytorch 0.4. but it doesn't sounds so good. We should leave marketing outside technical explanations.

What will happen in the future when there is a Pytorch 4 and somebody find this repo?

<comment><USER4> As far as I can tell it's only the Hacker News title that mentions PyTorch 4 (in fact the repo description says "PyTorch0.4 tutorial ..."), and I think it's far more likely that that was just a typo/misunderstanding that some sort of insidious marketing technique.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I just dreamed it, but I think the description in GitHub said "Pytorch 4". Not anymore.

Well, if it was changed because of my comment, I'm happy to be useful. If it was not changed and I dreamed it, my excuses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I did a great deal of reading on Q-learning around the time of the original AlphaGo, it looks like that was covered in a previous repo (RL-Adventures-1).

This new one seems to not mention Q-learning, is that because all these examples are based implicitly on Q-learning, or are these totally new alternatives?

<comment><USER6> In Deep Q Network (DQN), the Q network itself is the policy. You have one output for each possible action, and the the neural network estimates the Q value for each action in the current state. You act by selecting the action with the highest Q output. This doesn't work if the action space is continuous, e.g. motor torques for a robot.

You might think you can fix this by making the action an input to the Q network and keeping only one output; then you could find the action with the highest output. But due to the nonlinearity in the neural network, this is an intractable nonconvex optimization problem.

So instead, you train a neural network to output the action given the state. The algorithms are harder to understand, because Q learning is kind of like supervised learning but policy gradients really aren't. A lot of algorithms (A2C, DDPG, TRPO, etc.) still use one-output Q network (as described in the previous paragraph), but this is just a part of the learning algorithm * . Once training is done, you throw away this Q network. The learned behavior is entirely contained in the policy network. These methods are usually called policy gradient methods.

This article covers policy gradient methods only.

* it's possible to do "pure" policy gradients using only the empirical return, but the Q network helps reduce the variance of the gradient estimate and stabilize the learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Anyone got anything similar to this for deep learning?

<comment><USER8> [https://github.com/fastai/fastai/tree/master/courses/](https://github.com/fastai/fastai/tree/master/courses/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hate to be that person, but -

If you can go from zero to SOTA from a web tutorial in anything less than, I don't know, a year, then the field is severely underdeveloped.

But let that be an opportunity: what it really means is that the field is quickly growing and there aren't well-established experts or leaders.

<comment><USER10> Looking at the material here, I think you may be under estimating what is meant by "zero" here. To fully follow these notes you would need to have significant research-level knowledge of general machine learning techniques, with a good deal of specific experience working with neural networks (both in theory and application).

I think someone with a general graduate-level background in most fields of ML or computer science could acquire a working knowledge of the SOTA in a particular associated sub-topic after reading through a half dozen or so research papers and code. That doesn't seem unreasonable or surprising.

<comment><USER11> He's also under estimating what it means to be a hero. Most of the experiments here are on Cartpole which is a very basic environment (not even MNIST level of complexity). Most papers in RL use Atari, which requires some amount of engineering that this repo does not have.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ideas on Unusual Inflation Hedges - <AUTHOR>

For a variety of reasons I've decided to put some money into an inflation hedge.
Gold looks way oversold.
Here are the criteria: it must be easy to purchase, something I can physically own, and easy to translate back into cash when needed.
I figure we hackers have probably already analyzed this problem and come up with multiple solutions. Anybody care to share? I'm  leaning towards collectibles (guns maybe?) but interested in other options. <comment><USER2> Here's a bit from Barton Biggs' Hedgehogging that might be insightful:

Gerson Bleichroder was a nineteen-century German Jew who had a life filled with immense financial triumph, persecution, and personal sadness. Otto Von Bismarck represented the Old Prussia – aristocratic, agrarian, hierarchic – and it was his ambition and vision that welded the First Reich into an empire. In 1859, when he was 37, Bleichroder became the banker and investment adviser for the rising Junker diplomat, and for 30 years the two leveraged their insights and power to achieve great wealth and prominence…

Bismarck, the Prince, worked hard at projecting a magnificent exterior and omnipotence….His primary obsession, other than ruling Germany, was with making money in the stock market so he could buy more and more timberland. He treated everyone around him abominably.

However, both men must have had that mystical "seeing eye," which enabled them to perceive the future chain of events that would be triggered by an action in the present. This is what successful investing still is all about. While suspended in the midst of times that were full of mystery, uncertainty, and doubts, they had the capacity to maintain their pose and world view and never to impatiently or irritably reach for a fact or conclusion.

Bleichroder exploited the insights that Bismarck provided to make both his patron and himself very rich. But he also had what Bismarck once referred to as "a certain timidity in investing." He told his clients he would attempt to get them over the long run a real return (after inflation) of 4% per annum, which would mean that the purchasing power of their wealth would double every 17 or 18 years. His timidity kept him from becoming engulfed in the new-issues market of the 1870s or in the mania for colonial investing that later wiped out so many men and German banking houses. Bismarck was perfectly satisfied with this return, but always withdrew his profits and invested them in land and trees.

Bismarck's appetite for timberland was insatiable. His theory was that the price of land would gradually appreciate in line with population growth, or about two percentage points annually. His studies had convinced him that German forests would grow 2.75% a year, so that his real return for timberland would be around 4.75% per annum, because inflation at the time was virtually zero. If there was inflation, he was sure timberland and log prices would appreciate in line with the inflation. He thought that with very little risk, this was a spectacular compounding of wealth. As it turned out, Bismarck was absolutely right.

Over the next half century in Germany of war, inflation, surrender, and depression, timberland held value far better than anything else.

<comment><USER3> Bismark was in a position to influence the value of his investments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't oversold imply gold is a good buy right now?

In terms of your requirements, the precious metals seem to be the best item. If you think gold is too high then silver might be a good choice too. It also depends on how much inflation you think needs hedging. If you are talking hyperinflation then John Williams over at Shadow Stats is recommending cases of whisky. You could stock pile some incandescent light bulbs since the average American does not know that they have been outlawed (effective in 2012?) and there is sure to be a run on those when people finally learn about that (but that's more speculation than inflation hedge). Oddly enough the best inflation hedge is to go into debt on the longest period possible. When inflation hits you pay it back in deflated dollars. Buy a new car on a 5yr 0% interest loan, sell the old one and put the money in gold (bullionvault.com) or buy inflation adjusted bonds (TIPS). Pretty low risk as long as you can make the payments. Even better is a house (30yr loan at 5-6% interest) will almost certainly be a bargain when high inflation hits.

<comment><USER5> I think "oversold" here hit a conflict between finance-analyst usage and outside-of-finance usage. In finance, overselling means that too many people have sold something (i.e. dumped their holdings), which depresses the price. But outside of finance, overselling most often means that the benefits of something have been sold too well (i.e. overhyped).

See, e.g.: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/benefits-of- na...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/benefits-of-national- identity-cards-were-oversold-admits-minister-501394.html) / <http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3096>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Good inflation hedge (and not gold) 2\. Physical ownership 3\. Easy to buy & sell

Pick two.

<comment><USER7> What would your answer be if I picked 1 & 2?

<comment><USER6> Timber (the actual land).

Blue-chip art. For example, photography by big-name artists with established markets. But art has huge transaction costs, so I wouldn't include it in the easy-to-buy-and-sell category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Proven hedge: In 03 i bought a <5 yr old boat at a great price - a Marina repossession. Had 5 summers of fun on the water with friends/family returning to work after each weekend fully refreshed and ill bet more productive. I sold my boat in 08 for 90% purchase price. Technically depreciation, second hand values and rising demand matched my initial purchase discount but for me it wasn't about real cash gains, it was the best life investment I made. In summary id advise invest in your life, buy something that makes you smile, make your dough through your work, and leave hedging to dull finance guys.

</comment><comment><USER9> Buy tax notes from your local municipality guaranteed 7% and you get the property if the taxes are not paid. If you are a benevolent person, you can offer to sell the properties that default back to the owner at the tax amount + 7%. If not you can sell it at open market for more. It is the safest investment that I know of. Enforced by the government and backed by a hard asset.

</comment><comment><USER10> Platinum, silver, Swiss Franc notes

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't understand the reason to want to "physically own" something, unless you think the banking/financial system is going to go under. If it does, inflation will be the last thing you'll have to worry about.

<comment><USER6> The whole banking system may not go under, but there's always a risk that an individual firm may go bust, like Lehman. If you happen to have financial assets held in custody by that firm, it might take a while to get them back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> John T. Reed is a pretty smart guy, you might look into buying his book. <http://johntreed.com/hyperinflationdepression.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> Collectible guns? Or just guns who's value you expect to hold up?

Something a lot more liquid would be common types of ammunition.

<comment><AUTHOR> Guns. I've heard through old wives' tales that you can sell a gun for at least as much as you bought it for. Not sure if that is true; I am just now beginning my research.

Coins come to mind -- easy to own and store. Presumably easy to sell? Not sure of transaction costs

<comment><USER12> If you're careful in what you buy and in getting a good price, guns tend to hold up their value.

However the election of Obama caused a spike in the purchase of "black rifles" and hanguns (also the latter have been doing very well as more and more states got shall issue concealed carry license regimes, plus many people are buying them as they get old(er)) and the last time I checked the value of hunting guns weren't holding up well due to the Great Recession, but that's perhaps bottomed out.

Be careful of historical price patterns, with CNC machining and other general advances it's gotten less expensive to make them and the barriers to entry to new firms has dropped.</comment></comment></comment>


Zanran – Search the web for data and statistics - <AUTHOR> http://www.zanran.com/

<comment><USER2> I searched for - "top selling ecommerce products in india"

Not great results. May be I don't know how to use your site.

P.S. I like the idea of your site. Good luck</comment>


Facebook Messenger for Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/about/messenger-for-firefox

<comment><AUTHOR> What surprises me the most about this is that it seems like it involved Facebook and Mozilla working together, which seems like a curious relationship given their differing stances on privacy.</comment>


Arduino Goes Pro at CES 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.arduino.cc/2020/01/07/arduino-goes-pro-at-ces-2020/ <comment><USER2> <rant> In my opinion Arduino and "pro" does not belong in the same sentence.

I work as an embedded software engineer who's tasked with ripping all the terrible arduino code out of a fairly large codebase where I work and the arduino core libraries are the lowest quality code I've ever had the displeasure of working with.

It's full of awful decisions everywhere in the arduino core libraries such as defining min and max macros when they're writing C++ code which in turn results in STL includes blowing up if you attempt to use something simple and safe as std::array.

I could go on for days about all the terrible decisions that reeks to high heavens of always taking the path of least resistance... </rant>

<comment><USER3> And yet Arduino has created an ecosystem of libraries, tutorials, blogs and communities that changed the industry. Now you can program dozens of chips with Arduino core, such as ESP8266/32, etc.

If it wasn't for arduino, many project would never take off.

At university I was taught to program microchip pic16 and oh boy was it painfull. Their software was low quality, errors were incomprehensible, etc.

I think Arduino is Javascript of embedded development: many people use it because it's easier, there is a library for everything and half of them don't work right.

Their i2C has had the same issue for like 8 years and last time i checked it still isn't fixed.

<comment><USER4> > And yet Arduino has created an ecosystem of libraries, tutorials, blogs and > communities that changed the industry.

Has it, really? I have difficulty finding projects that went from Arduino to major success.

The only thing which (I think) has an Arduino that actually became a "success" is the Formlabs 3D SLS resin printer.

<comment><USER5> Few directly to market. How they've changed the industry is by empowering non- EEs to prototype products that they can then take to engineers to DFM. I know of, or have built, countless products that started as Arduino prototypes, even if it was just to mock up the user experience.

<comment><USER6> _raises hand_ I worked on a product (a $150000 medical device) where I started out using an Arduino, but eventually replaced it with a ATmega.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have pretty much given up on Arduino. They had me almost interested again when they announced the Pro IDE, but several months later they still haven't put the source code on Github: [https://github.com/arduino/arduino-pro- ide](https://github.com/arduino/arduino-pro-ide)

I am not interested in the Electron-based IDE, but they seem to be using the Clang language server, which is perfect for integrating with Emacs. I have been sitting here for months ready to hack on this stuff and make it work perfectly, but all I have to work with is the raw source files contained in the Electron bundle with no license, so I've basically given up. Once again, the Arduino team is doing Weird Stuff with software, and this whole Pro thing feels like "the joys of working with Broadcom, but we stick random Open Source logos on thing without actually being Open Source".

I have a lot of microcontroller projects I want to do, but without modern development tools, it's not worth it. They are so close... just let me hack on your source code, please. I'll do it for free and you can do whatever you want with the code. But they don't seem to want to play ball.

(Recently I have been playing with Tinygo, but I am still not motivated because "go doc", my favorite go tool, and gopls don't work... and I'm not quite sure that it's worth the effort to make work yet. My toy tinygo projects have gone pretty well, though, so maybe it is worth making their IDE support work, and forgetting Arduino ever existed. I feel like Circuit Python / Micropython is the path of least resistance right now.)

<comment><USER8> You have lots of microcontroller projects you want to do, but can't because you can't get up to date source on the arduino IDE? wat? Just use a different editor.

<comment><USER7> I have other stuff to do, and the prerequisite to any microcontroller project is to spend a week fighting with tools. So I just don't care enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like they're finally using a top-of-the-line MCU, the STM32H7. Very nice.

Unfortunately I don't see how this is a significant improvement otherwise for industrial uses, where the biggest barrier for custom components is certifications (FCC, UL, CE, ATEX, etc).

<comment><USER10> javascript and python support seem like huge improvements

<comment><USER11> On one hand I think it's ridiculous to mention these languages for industrial applications.

But I've also just spent the past year programming an automated mobile restaurant. We use a traditional PLC for everything safety or time-sensitive, but everything else is JavaScript.

We're planning to use even more JS on the next-gen system. Details are in my profile if you want to help, or if you want to convince me otherwise.

<comment><USER12> BASIC was a common industrial automation language at one time. If the platform has the resources, use them.

<comment><USER13> You've just reminded me of the BASIC Stamp, which lead me to find this interesting website comparing that to the Arduino head-to-head. The BASIC Stamp was weirdly expensive for what it was, but that's probably my post- Arduino post-Raspberry Pi bias:

[https://todbot.com/blog/2006/09/25/arduino-the-basic- stamp-k...](https://todbot.com/blog/2006/09/25/arduino-the-basic-stamp- killer/)

> Getting to the "Hello World" of microcontroller projects, the blinking LED, > on Arduino costs $32 compared to the $119 for a Basic Stamp. This is perhaps > a little unfair because the Basic Stamp board contains a full bread-boarding > space. A similar setup for Arduino would cost about $60, still a 2x savings > (and can made cheaper if you want).

[snip]

> The standard Atmel AVR ATmega8 chip used on the Arduino board can be > obtained for less than $4. The Basic Stamp must be obtained from Parallax > and costs $50.

<comment><USER14> As a kid who once got a BASIC Stamp microcontroller and project kit, one super important thing to understand was that it came before Arduino brought the prices way down. It was reasonable for what it was at the time, ie a tool used for teachers that also happened to be sold to the public. I don't know how popular it was in industry

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ~$100

ARM M7 at 480MHz and ARM M4 at 240MHz

2MB SDRAM

16MB Flash

USB, host and device

WiFi

Bluetooth

10/100 Ethernet

MIPI DSI lcd panel

DisplayPort over USB-C (graphics out)

Integrated Li-Po charger

3x ADC 16 bit

2x DAC 12 bit, 1MHz

4x UART

22x Timers

2.95µA in standby mode

That's obviously way too much to come out of the Arduino style pins. There are two 80 pin high density connectors on the back which have everything on them.

<comment><USER16> The price seems very high for the category.

<comment><USER17> Arduino's have always been a little pricy for the hardware you get. I think a lot of what you pay for (at least for a regular, non pro, Arduino) is the ease of use and the eco system.

That being said, do you have any examples of other entries in this category that are suitable for industrial / automotive use?

<comment><USER18> Yeah you pay for the hobby convenience of flashing over USB on the regular board which is a nice convenience when you're just noodling around with a project not intended to become a product. (Or doing rough PoC prototypes where iteration speed is important).

<comment><USER17> Definitely, looks like others are taking note. All of TIs newish launchpads seem to have a built in usb debugger/programmer. Pretty sure that was a direct response to the popularity of Arduino.

<comment><USER14> Eh, TI has been doing the in circuit programming route on their BASIC Stamp boards since before USB was popular. I don't think they had anything special for debugging though

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not trying to troll - just don't know.

Why would anybody use an Arduino versus a five dollar Raspberry Pi Zero?

<comment><USER20> >Why would anybody use an Arduino versus a five dollar Raspberry Pi Zero?

1\. The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero isn't really $5.

2\. The fact that the $5 advertised price isn't the real price, and the inventory games they play raises ethical problems for some people.

3\. You can get an Arduino clone for less than $2 (for real, and in bulk).

4\. The Pi and other SBCs have higher power requirements, so they can't reliably run off AA batteries.

5\. The Pi also requires an SD card, increasing the cost.

6\. The Arduino comes in many form factors which are considerably smaller than SBCs.

7\. The two aren't drop in replacements, the Pi runs a "real" opperating system that does a lot of things in the background. So communicating with other devices which have specific timing requirements is significantly more difficult on the Pi.

8\. The market for Arduino "shields" is much more competitive than the Pi "hats".

9\. There are just a lot more shields and sensors available designed to interface with the Arduino

10\. The Pi's IO pins are 3.3v, where the Arduino's are (on most boards) 5v. So using sensors/boards designed for the Arduino requires a level shifter

<comment><USER21> But $5 is the real price of the Zero. Perhaps you're thinking of the Zero W, which is $10? Or do you mean the $5 doesn't include the power? If that's what you mean, it should be noted that power doesn't come with Arduinos either, and they both can be powered via USB.

And to what unethical inventory games are you referring? That seems like a pretty serious accusation you're making.

<comment><USER20> When you actually try to buy one from the very few distributors permitted to sell them, you'll either end up paying $5-$7 in shipping, when it could be shipped for closer to $1 USPS. And you're only allowed to buy one. Or, if you walk in to a MicroCenter, the only distributor with a physical location you can walk in to and buy one, they're either out of stock, or again you're limited to just one, but you can buy more at a higher price.

<comment><USER22> I ran into this problem the other week. I was trying to buy 5 pi zeros for a few projects I have in mind and a couple of backups to have lying around. Couldn't do it. Very frustrating.

<comment><USER20> Anyone needing to buy several Pi W's should look into the Orange Pi Zero. They also play some games with the shipping cost, but at least the shipping cost per unit goes down the more you buy. Buying 5 would run you $10.60 each, and 10 would cost $10.30. (All US shipping prices from AliExpress)

The main thing to look out for is that it doesn't have HDMI out, only two headers for composite out. I imagine most people plan to run them headless anyway, but unless you have something that can display composite video, it can be a pain to set up at first.

Another option is that when you buy from Adafruit, you can buy one of each version. One Zero, one Zero W, and one Zero WH, for $29 plus shipping. You can then buy a USB WiFi adapter off E-Bay for about $1 shipped, and as many USB OTG adapters as you need for less than $1 each. Depending on shipping, that puts you in the $11-$12 per board range.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The nice thing here is that they appear to be using automotive grade components (it says -40 to 85°C operating range). I've previously designed electronics for extreme temperatures (up to 150C in our case) and building hardware that works at those temperatures is very tricky. It's nice that you can buy something off the shelf like this, my life about 10 years ago would have been so much easier had this existed.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why wouldn't you move to the existing STM32 ecosystem instead of sticking with Arduino for pro/industrial applications?

<comment><USER25> Most of Arduino's value proposition is easy programmability by non- professionals, with a vast library of examples. Cheap and powerful STM32 boards have been around for years about as long as arduino, supported by a number of free toolchains. But the care and feeding of said toolchains and libraries requires a lot more technical knowledge than Arduino's ecosystem.

<comment><USER26> I agree with this statement, and really praise what Arduino have done in this space (I started on one years ago). However, I think if you really want to work with embedded systems, you have to understand the technical details.

Understanding how communication protocols are supposed to work, knowing how to read a data sheet, and using those skills to set registers on an IC directly should be in everyone's toolbox. Otherwise, you're limited to whatever chips someone's wrote an Arduino library for.

Plus, debugging is much more difficult if you can't analyze a stream of data with a scope or logic analyzer, and actually understand what you're looking at.

<comment><USER25> To be a professional developer of embedded software, of course you need to be capable of dealing with things starting from the bare metal. Arduino is a recognition that many embedded software problems can be usefully solved above the register level. The deeper levels will always be there for those so inclined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This has been a major gap for Arduino for a while, and it's cool to see them take a crack at solving it.

Beyond the hardware, I'd love to get some more details on the software tool chain and their plans to sell/support turning the prototypes into production modules.

<comment><USER28> _production modules_

If there's no second source of boards, I can't consider that production ready for anything. It was and still is a COTS module that can be modified for a single purpose application but there's no way I would resell this as a commercial unit.

Same for RPi and all the others. Spin it yourself or take your chances.

<comment><USER29> The beauty of Chinese capitalism is such that if these become popular, clones will proliferate. I sell an industrial product that uses an Arduino Nano as a module on a PC board because I can buy them cheaper than I can build them.

Now, if you really care about supply chain security, that might be a problem, but for everyone else...

<comment><USER30> also if you care about your product actually working. There are so.many Chinese clones that are badly made or outright dangerous..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if this will finally bring HD video encoding to arduino platforms?! I'll have to check what kind of VPU IPU the STM32H7 has, at least I don't see how they can break out the IO for a camera interface, but this would be amazing.

Looks like the STM32H7 supports one MIPI CSI-2 peripheral (and/or one MIPI DSI).

Another comment on this thread mentioned on the back of this module are two long flat board-to-board style connectors.

</comment><comment><USER32> Interesting, there has always been a large chasm between "Hobby" grade MCU boards like Arduino and "Industrial" grade systems. Hopefully this shift can get more people through that chasm into productive applications.

</comment><comment><USER33> So Arduino Pro is an "IoT Platform". What is that? Can I say that it's a Cloud, like AWS/Google Cloud, but specifically tailored for IoT so we don't have to do it ourselves? (Or, a PaaS)

<comment><USER30> it's a combination of hardware Dev tools and iot cloud to build AIoT projects / products

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A little out of topic question, but I'm curious is it possible to program Raspberry Pi on low level without OS, just like Arduino and if not, why?

<comment><USER35> You can and people do but it's important to note that that the raspberry pi CPU is a tiny part of the SOC and the Broadcom proprietary part that bootstraps it is completely closed.

<comment><USER34> What exactly is the "Broadcom proprietary part"?

<comment><USER36> Wouldn't that be the GPU (VideoCore IV/VI)?

<comment><USER34> It seems that it would. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VideoCore)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Sorry, couldn't read the post because of the GDPR cookies pop up that simulate a looooong time to opt out just to force you to click cancel and accept cookies.

Gave up after a minute. What a shame using those dark patterns (and sad because I wanted to read it)

</comment><comment><USER38> >The Portenta H7 is capable of running Arduino code, Python and JavaScript, making it accessible to an even broader audience of developers.

"Here, now you can buy hardware that enables you to hire bootcamp-level devs to do your professional industrial work. That way you can pay non-professional wages for professional-level work!"

Stop normalizing putting bloated, heavy languages on embedded platforms.

<comment><USER39> > Stop normalizing putting bloated, heavy languages on embedded platforms.

Last time I checked, PICBasic was a thing, and spawned a generation of programmers.

Comodore 64 Basic, and TI-83 Basic were also simplified programming environments. (TI-83 implemented jumps as a O(n) lookup throughout your code... jumping to later functions was more costly than jumping to earlier functions...).

Its the simple programming environments that spawn new generations of programmers. Today, "Basic" is no longer the starting point, today's beginner programmers use Javascript or Python.

But there always were "beginner" languages, no matter how slow computers were in the past.

<comment><USER38> If the choice of language is because it's beginner-friendly, and the use-case is industrial hardware, then the choice is only being made so the company doesn't have to pay professional-level salaries.

<comment><USER39> Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings?

Some of the biggest successes are because beginner-friendly kits were delivered to universities. Linux and Unix are a great example of this: students taught in Linux / Unix environments (even using "toy" languages like Python) end up growing into professionals who... still use Linux.

One of the most important business moves for a "platform" is to figure out how to get beginner-level students comfortable with your platform. Linux somewhat did this accidentally, but today we need to purposefully create that environment.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>--

Besides, even on the same project... not everyone needs to be an expert embedded engineer. By allowing Javascript onto the platform, you can hire a Web GUI-developer who probably knows a lot more about UI-design than you.

The Web GUI master can work their Javascript into your application, and run code side-by-side with your tightly optimized C code. No, it won't be efficient. But that's what a 480MHz processor is for, to help you run less efficient code at speeds that are acceptable.

This isn't even hypothetical: with WiFi 802.11 n support, this Arduino could very well be running Web-applications served from some centralized location (distributed wirelessly over standard LAMP / HTTP stacks). It will be up to the C System programmers to ensure that a locked-up GUI thread won't wreak the system (or break realtime promises)... but there would be major benefits to distributing applications over standard internet mechanisms.

<comment><USER38> >Can the same hardware not be used for both industrial, and beginner-friendly settings?

Sorry but, if you have to ask this question, it's pretty clear that you have no idea what many industrial settings require.

There are ruggedness requirements, stability requirements, longevity requirements...

I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. There's no way that anything even remotely marketed as "beginner friendly" could begin to work for anything we do.

You can't just throw more hardware at a problem and use that as an excuse for shitty software, come on. This incredibly flawed logic is why the minimum requirements for a chat program include 32GB of RAM.

<comment><USER39> > I work in an industry where our products are used for LITERAL decades. > There's no way that anything even remotely marketed as "beginner friendly" > could begin to work for anything we do.

Beginner friendly doesn't mean that the other requirements disappear.

The Arduino can run Javascript. Sure, you don't have to make it use Javascript, but it can be done. Just because Arduino runs Javascript doesn't change its -40C to +85C operating temperature.

Arduino can be BOTH beginner friendly, AND rugged enough to operate at sub- zero temperatures indefinitely. And if you really want to "remove Javascript" from your stack, then you're 100% welcome to do that.

Universities on the other hand, have other requirements. Beginner friendly is absolutely a necessity for students. You have to hook students with something easy if you want the students to be interested in projects. Having a __SINGLE __platform scale from beginner usage, all the way up to professional usage, is extremely important for the general ecosystem.

And I still argue that opening up Javascript developers onto the platform is a good thing. UI design is complicated, and someone who fully focuses on the user-experience, culture, and presentation is useful. (Even if a GUI designer is ignorant of embedded issues, they can remain helpful in other ways).

<comment><USER38> >Beginner friendly doesn't mean that the other requirements disappear.

Beginner friendly includes price. If you have the other requirements, it's going to cost much more. Doesn't matter if it's beginner friendly if a development board costs $5k.

<comment><USER39> The development board literally costs $100 and the STM32H747XI costs $17 from Digikey. Yes, that's with -40°C ~ 85°C operating temperature and a pretty wide operating voltage of 1.62V ~ 3.6V.

The actual device here looks quite rugged, comes with a variety of useful specs. The Arduino Pro __IS __the beginner friendly development board, the beginner-friendly introduction to STM32.

A "real" product would strip off all the unnecessary parts and only use the $17 STM32H7 chip alone.

<comment><USER30> the basic model is $49 Qt 1. you can also order boards with just the parts you need (minimum quantity applies) the price comes down a lot of you want</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Humanitarian Hackathon at CERN - <AUTHOR> http://theport.ch/ <comment><AUTHOR> I thought Hacker News community might be interested in this event happening at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland on 6-8th of October. The applications are open until 4th of June. Here is a preliminary list of topics (subjected to change):

-Age assessment for migrant children

-Wearable to monitor Parkinson patients

-Renewable energies in the developing world

-Improving life conditions in refugee camps

-Medical waste disposal to fight counterfeit drugs

-Job searching platform for refugees

-Online interpreters in crisis situations

Disclosure: I just got a chance to help in organising this event. If you have any questions about the event then feel free to let me know, I'll do my best to help!</comment>


Voice Activated Popcorn Cannon Blasts Kernels Directly Into Your Mouth - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5943893/voice-activated-popcorn-cannon-blasts-kernels-directly-into-your-mouth

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if this thing is real or not. If it's not, it's an impressive amount of effort to make it look real. If it is, it's an insane amount of effort to make something that fires a single peice of popcorn. Either way, props to them.</comment>


Engineering in the Midwest, Particularly Indiana - <AUTHOR> any engineers care to weigh in how they find the midwest tech/startup scene? i've got a funded startup in palo alto, but looking to create a team in or around south bend, indiana since part of my team is there, along with one of our key investors and fortune 500 clients. i was also thinking about st. louis... <comment><USER2> I go to UIUC (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). The engineering startup scene is very active in Champaign and Chicago. ACM@UIUC hosts the largest student-ran tech convention in the Midwest (Reflections Projections), and it is a very nice place to recruit for talent. Having grown up near STL, I don't think the startup scene there is nearly as large. I'd recommend basing yourself around Chicago and recruiting from UIUC if you are looking for new employees.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for sharing! a few of the folks i know well here in silicon valley studied engineering at UIUC and grew up in Clayton, MO. they say a lot of positive things about UIUC too. maybe i'll take a look at their network and see if i can spread the word about the position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah I'm familiar with the area (about to move from South Bend to Chicago). There's a lot of effort going into building a startup scene in South Bend, both around the Innovation and Ignition Park developments and at Notre Dame. At least a few of the companies that I'm familiar with (Vennli, Carextech) have gotten traction; the existing economy there is pretty manufacturing- heavy, especially around auto, appliances (Whirlpool) and medical devices (J&J has pretty big presence in Warsaw).

I might try and work through the area colleges (St. Mary's, Notre Dame, IU South Bend) if you're looking to recruit there.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome. just curious, are you moving to chicago because south bend didn't offer what you wanted or just a great opportunity in chicago?

familiar with vennli and other startups/folks working in the innovation space and we're set to get a small office at innovation park actually. we're making a bit that the area will continue to grow and we're happy to test hiring more of our team there who will be in close touch with palo alto hq. we're hitting up notre dame alumni to fill a lead engineer role, but we'll take a look at surrounding schools as well.</comment></comment>


Gene change in cannibals reveals evolution in action  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18172-gene-change-in-cannibals-reveals-evolution-in-action.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

<comment><USER2> ONE amino acid! I know South Park used "Praise Science!" as a joke, but damn if I don't feel like saying it earnestly.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is what we need (well, maybe just me): Articles about genes and evolution that are informative, readable, and scandalous enough to be linkbait.<wink>

(Full disclosure/serious explanation: I have a genetic disorder and have done a lot to get myself well when doctors claim it can't be done. Yet my "science" background is sort of weak. By that I mean that in spite of the rigorous methods we use around here to effectively get well against all odds, I tend to not understand medicalese. My methodology is rigorous but I face challenges when trying to do research online. So anyone who wants to post more of this type of -- very readable -- stuff, I would be personally grateful. )

</comment><comment><USER4> Why did I read that 'in cannabis' ??</comment>


Sysdig Raises $13M and Launches Container-Native Monitoring - <AUTHOR> https://sysdig.com/monitoring-as-a-microservice

<comment><USER2> Looks cool but do I need to be running containers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually no you don't. Sysdig specializes in container visibility but we have customers that are getting plenty of value out of the product without using containers.</comment></comment>


Knuth Volume 4A: Combinatorial Algorithms Part 1, is now available - <AUTHOR> http://research.swtch.com/2011/01/knuth-volume-4a.html

<comment><USER2> Volume 4A is specifically about combinatorial search algorithms.</comment>


Indonesia plans tax overhaul to make tech firms pay VAT - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-tax-digital/indonesia-plans-tax-overhaul-to-make-tech-firms-pay-vat-finance-minister-idUSKCN1VP08Z <comment><USER2> Unless I am missing something, VAT is something paid by cunsumers and collected by companies.... companies don't pay vat. Here in Ireland, if your vat registered, you can actually claim it back (hence most stuff aimed at businesses, like cars and servers, are quoted ev vat). This is just another tax on consumers making it look like a tax on companies...</comment>


Why This Apple Fan is Getting an Android Tablet and Not Another iPad - <AUTHOR> http://danr.us/post/26471035478/why-im-getting-an-android-tablet-and-not-another-ipad

<comment><USER2> If someone had never owned a tablet before, I'm sure they would be delighted with Google's Nexus 7. Unfortunately, the author already has an original iPad, so there's a good chance he will be disappointed with it solely because 7" tablets are in many cases, too small to be useful.

I've owned a Kindle Fire, an iPad 3, and an Asus EEE Slate. What I've learned from these devices is that reading a PDF, browsing the web, or using any sort of productivity program is a rather unpleasant experience on a 7" device.

The browsing and reading experience on the 12" EEE Slate was wonderful, but the device's weight (over 2 lbs) makes it less than ideal.

While the iPad can't compete with the EEE slate in terms of productivity, the retina screen and the lower weight of the device end up making it by far the best way to read PDFs.

While IOS was nice, I'd wager that any 9"+ android tablet that's running Android 4 or higher would provide a similar experience. I just don't think that anything with a smaller screen is ever going to be sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love it when people compare stuff that's been shipping for almost a year to products that haven't shipped yet. By the time the ill-named Jelly Bean is actually shipping and in consumers' hands, Apple will be on to iOS 6. Vapor ware comparisons are so easy. The author's personal preference away from textured, simu-analog graphics is fair enough, but let's get down to what really counts: performance, security, quality. I would much rather debate those issues than silly things like simulated paper in iBooks. I haven't used ice-jelly-honey-creame-pie-sandwich or whatever it's called, but I'm also not writing about how awesome it is (or isn't.)

<comment><USER4> I've owned more Apple products and been responsible for more purchases of Apple products by other people than anyone I know, but this weekend when my friend came over with his jelly bean nexus, my immediate reaction was "Whoa! This is a legit competitor to iOS and the iPad"

I've always been super disappointed with Android and it's inconsistencies, but Matias Duarte is doing a hell of a job since taking over. Seriously, go get a new Nexus and play with it. It's not quite at iOS quality in all areas, but where it isn't quite there it is at least close and in some respects it is surpassing iOS in ways that didn't matter much before but will matter more and more in the future. I think the biggest thing that is going to hold back iOS and what will give Android and Web Apps the upper hand is Intents.

FYI: Apple's URL Schemes are the closest it has to Intents and but it isn't as embraced as Intents on Android. (ref: [http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/iPh...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/Introduction/Introduction.html) )

That all being said, I think the author's complete dismissal of affordances because of egregious skeuomorphisms committed by Apple to be a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Affordances are important for usability, especially for people who are older or getting their first serious computing device and using it for more than just email. Affordances help you learn new interfaces faster.</comment></comment>


There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/16/new-form-climate-denialism-dont-celebrate-yet-cop-21 <comment><AUTHOR> _" Even in the US, where nuclear power is generated in the private sector, it has been hugely subsidized by the federal government, which invested billions in its development in order to prove that the destructive power unleashed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be put to good use."_

Externality ~ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10762514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10762514)</comment>


Spicing Up Dart with Side Effects - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?ref=rss&id=2747873

<comment><AUTHOR> Exciting to see Erik Meijer (Haskell, C#, Hack, LINQ, Rx) as co-author of this article.

<comment><USER2> I've been addicted to Rx since I started using ReactiveCocoa in my iOS applications. I was disappointed looking at Dart initially when I saw it was heavily future based and not observable/signal based.

I haven't looked at Dart in awhile but I hope this means Rx style composability/async/error handling is in Dart's future.

<comment><USER3> Could you explain what you're missing from Rx that isn't already supported by Dart's core library. For example in Dart Iterables and Streams already have: where, skip, take, map, fold, reduce, expand (which is flatMap or mapcat), as well as a few others.

[https://api.dartlang.org/apidocs/channels/be/dartdoc- viewer/...](https://api.dartlang.org/apidocs/channels/be/dartdoc- viewer/dart:async.Stream)

[https://api.dartlang.org/apidocs/channels/be/dartdoc- viewer/...](https://api.dartlang.org/apidocs/channels/be/dartdoc- viewer/dart:core.Iterable)

[https://rx.codeplex.com/](https://rx.codeplex.com/)

<comment><USER4> Dart's Stream class is missing many of the composition, transformation and termination methods that you'd find in other FRP libraries. It's also lacking a concept of time-varying values, which to me are important for holding and responding to state changes.

Having functions like flatMapLatest, flatMap, combine, merge, scan, and takeUntil are pretty much essential to building any RX heavy application.

There are some packages out there that extend Dart's streams to add this behavior. One of which I'm the author of, Frappe. Of course, it'd be nice if Dart included this stuff out of the box.

[https://github.com/danschultz/frappe](https://github.com/danschultz/frappe)

<comment><USER3> I thought Stream.expand(f) is flatMap.

i.e. From docs: "Creates a new stream from this stream that converts each element into zero or more events."

Stream.takeWhile(f) is takeUntil with the return value of the f argument negated.

But sure, you can always add more features to a core library, the difficult decision is when to stop, and leave the rest to libraries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dart is in good hands.

</comment><comment><USER6> We are building a realtime app with Dart. So far it's silky smooth for most part.

<comment><USER7> Any chance you can share more details? You can send me a message with @sethladd or plus.google.com/+sethladd

[I'm a PM on Dart, and would love to learn more.]

Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be nice to see a followup about performance considerations.

</comment><comment><USER9> Just when people thought that we had one less useless language to deal with ...</comment>