France approves 720MW of solar as price falls another 5% - <AUTHOR> https://www.pv-tech.org/news/france-approves-720mw-of-solar-as-price-falls-another-5 <comment><USER3> I wonder if it could ever make sense to have ultra-high voltage or superconductive power transmission lines wrapping around the planet so that we could take advantage of the fact that it's always daytime somewhere to forgo much grid-scale storage and instead just get electricity from wherever it's daylight. Aside from the geopolitical/national security issues, I wonder if such a thing is feasible or it's ultimately going to be more efficient to store energy than transmit it half-way around the world.

<comment><USER4> Why use wires when we could possibly concentrate and beam the light across the ponds?

<comment><USER5> 1) You can't beam round a curved surface and the atmosphere isn't refractive enough in the visible spectrum (only works for shortwave radio)

2) The death ray is an environmental and safety hazard

3) Atmospheric attenuation would probably be more than electrical attenuation at that distance

<comment><USER6> I know HN is not for humor, but i really got a laugh out of "the death ray is an environmental and safety hazard", listed with such seriousness.

<comment><USER5> Thankyou - that was entirely deliberate, you can only get humour past the HN voting system if either it's totally deadpan or you explain the joke in the same comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I keep wondering about the Solar Sinter project by Markus Kayser *

What if instead of manufacturing artwork, it manufactured a mechanical energy storage, large enough to store either daily variations or even yearly insolation?

Perhaps glass blocks (filled with sand) as weights for storing as potential energy (how deep would a shaft have to be to store daily or yearly insolation, assuming the weight is ideally half as tall as the shaft?)

Perhaps storing compressed (even liquified?) air? How airtight is the resulting sintered glass?

Perhaps making 1 upper reservoir and somehow digging a narrow shaft (making the walls glass while digging/blowing up the sand through the already vitrified upper part of the shaft? Then somehow building the lower underground reservoir from the inside out, and store potential energy in the closed system containing water (condensed from air?)

Solar panels, wiring, cheap plastic Fresnel lenses, control electronics would need to keep getting supplied to attach to newly built energy storages. But as much as possible, especially things that wear out should be renewably built from glass onsite (for example scoops to move and redistribute sand)

In example consider an NxN square of already completed storage, sites then there is ~ 4 _N adjacent sites under construction so the project either could speed up by actually building ~N /4 circumference layers at a time, or start delivering ~(N-4)_N of renewable on-demand energy (since the storage site height was chosen to have enough capacity to store daily, weekly or yearly insolation)

* [https://kayserworks.com/](https://kayserworks.com/)

<comment><USER7> ok I calculated the height/depth for a shaft housing a glass weight half the size (which is the optimal height for the weight in any shaft of fixed height, I assume you understand this is optimum, if you want a derivation I can provide it upon request)

For clear skies (typical of deserts), we can use the daily insolation at sea level: 21,6 MJ/m^2

(I will ignore inefficiency of solar panel, the less efficient, the less deep or tall we need to store the energy generated, and one time construction of the storage is preferable over reconstructing the weights and shafts once more efficient panels become available)

So if we want to store it as potential energy of a glass weight under the solar panel that generated the energy we have for each square meter of panel:

a glass weight with cross section one scquare meter, and height l = L/2 where L is the height of the shaft.

glass weights 2500 kg/m^3, so we have mass of the weight: m = l * 1 m^2 * 2500 kg/m^3 = l * 2500 kg/m = L/2 * 2500 kg/m

We want the weight to be at all times contained in the shaft so it can be closed and sand can not blow under the weight or into the mechanisms.

the height difference for the glass weigh at the top -but still completely inside the shaft- to the bottom -but also still completely inside the shaft- is h = L - l/2 - l/2 = L -l = L - L/2 = L/2

The potential energy difference for a weight of mass m and vertical travel distance h is E = m * g * h

Plugging everything together:

E = ( L/2 * 2500 kg/m * 9.81 N/kg * L/2 )

Solving for L = 2 * sqrt ( E / (2500 * 9,81 N/m))

Since the assumed insolation is 21.6 MJ/m^2 then one square meter of (ideal futuristic) solar panel will simply generate 21.6 MJ = 21,6 MNm

Plugging into the equation for L we get L = 59,35 m

I seeriously underestimated potential energy I guess, I thought it would have been larger.

If your panels are less efficient (say 10%) or you have a large unused area you can of course make the structure less tall/deep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please forgive me if this is a stupid question - but is heavily investing in solar electricity a good idea in Europe considering the variation in climate throughout the year?

Energy demand is highest in the Winter, when mean monthly sunshine hours are at the lowest.

Even in Nice (the very south of France) where I assume this difference would be smaller, there's still a big gap between 347.5 mean hours in July and 139.3 mean hours in December ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice#Climate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice#Climate)).

Surely we'd need to heavily invest in backup generation capacity that would be dormant for the vast majority of the summer then heavily in use over the winter?

Admittedly I have a very limited amount of knowledge in this area - <USER2> wouldn't wind or tidal power generation be a better bet here (well, Europe anyway)?

<comment><USER9> One use case would be Air conditioning, most needed when it's sunny/hot.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure about France, but it's rare to have air con in the UK because the summers aren't hot enough :) I think a lot of Europe is similar in this regard (with the exception being the south).

Even if France does have a reasonable number of air con units installed, I would expect energy consumption to be higher in the winter due to shorter days etc. It would be good to see statistics though.

<comment><USER10> Air con is a bit more common, but nothing like the US.

Consumption is much higher in winter than summer (summer is actually the period of the year with the lowest consumption).

[https://goo.gl/images/mdRj1r](https://goo.gl/images/mdRj1r)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Capital must be raises to pay for these projects. Is there a way for Europeans to invest in that?

Or is this out of reach for the small "retail investors"...

<comment><USER12> There are lots of green energy funds. If you ask at most European banks, they will put you touch with their "wealth" team where you can pick a managed portfolio or fund to invest in. It may also be a checkbox you can tick on your pension scheme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could you store renewable energy via electrolysis, and instead of having storage tanks of dangerous hydrogen at home, pump the gas back into a grid? Most houses have natural gas lines and those are relatively safe. Would it be viable to have "hydrogen lines" that just ran in reverse when excess renewable energy is produced? Then draw off it to a home fuel cell during peak demand?

<comment><USER5> Why on earth would you do this at home rather than at a central facility where it's cheaper and easier to handle bulk gases?

You _can_ incorporate hydrogen into the grid but only up to a point: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/06/hydrogen/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/06/hydrogen/) and it has issues [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/51995.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/51995.pdf)

<comment><USER13> You would do this at home because that is where residential PV is located. Of course it's more obvious to send the power back down the wire and, as you said, convert to hydrogen centrally.

My question looks silly now in contrast, but it was thought up considering that grid buyback isn't going so well in the us, and focusing on a safe way to store and use hydrogen as a battery competing with flywheels or lithium battery cells, or centralized pumped hydro, etc. Just a hypothetical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Countries are building lots of solar and wind. However, these techs only operate/run during the daytime or when the wind is blowing... which is not 100% of the time.

If they continue to build out solar/wind and thereby drive FF-production "out of business" what happens when solar/wind cannot meet demand? Are they building stored energy reserves as well? What happens then?

<comment><USER15> My guess is that energy will be so cheap, we produce much much more than we consume in the future. There will be an abundance of energy some decades down.

Also electric cars will create very large storage capcities for energy in the next decade.

On top of that we get intelligent meters, with machines like my washing machine pulling power at the best time, my battery chargers using the right time etc, so (non-industry) demand will flatten out over time with intelligent metering.

I would have feared about this issue 20y ago, but I think this is no longer of any importance for the development of solar power.

What is relevant with the ongoing centralization of solar power is power transmission.

<comment><USER16> >Also electric cars will create very large storage capcities for energy in the next decade.

Chem engineer here, battery technology doesnt seem to be a guarantee to improve.

Batteries are limited by the physics of our universe. The chemistry between two chemicals will not change, and it feels like we have exhausted every option.

This is a non trivial problem and I am unsure if I expect a solution.

<comment><USER17> I'm no electrical engineer, but I think we can do some napkin math.

80khw battery in an average model s * 300000000 million cars / (3,911,000,000,000 kwh energy use in the in all of 2015 [2] / 365 days per year) = 2.239 times as much storage in cars on the road versus energy usage which seems pretty doable. Also, it also gets better because as car batteries age and their storage / weight goes down, you can replace them with new ones and put the old ones in grid storage locations where weight / storage does not matter and run them till they are literally dead.

[1]: about a little less than 1 per person (just rough estimating here)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption)

<comment><USER17> 2 big variables I forgot about.

1\. We need to eventually switch our winter gas heaters to electric which while helping balance summer vs winter electric usage, electric heating isn't as efficient and we have to increase the outside air a lot more in the winter than we have to cool it in the summer (for most people at least).

2\. I forgot to add in the extra electric demand needed to power the cars which is currently powered by oil.

<comment><USER18> Electric heat pumps are quite efficient, AFAIK.

<comment><USER19> For swimming pools, which are admittedly a special case, heat pumps are already cheaper to operate than gas heaters in most of the country.

(They're special for several reasons. A big one is that they have _huge_ thermal mass, so your heat pump can operate at whatever time of day you want. This means you can optimize for electric rates vs outdoor temperature. Heat pumps, unlike gas boilers, are considerably more efficient when it's warm out.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco (SOMA) Weekly Startup Lunches - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Is anyone interested in having a weekly startup lunch in SF? Our office has a large conference room where we could host the meetings (Bring your own lunch). We're at 240 2nd street on the 2nd floor directly across the street from cnet.com.</comment>


Did My Zodiac Change? - <AUTHOR> http://www.didmyzodiacchange.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Another viral app I built. Just made it in one hour -- already ranked #5 for "Zodiac Change" on google.</comment>


Ask HN: How to stop "demo" abuses - <AUTHOR> I've been keeping efforts to implement the internet's "basic+free" SEO tips into the product, which worked. Ours is now at the top.
This is the first time, I ever concentrated on SEO for any of the projects, certainly happy about the result. I want to understand the risks and precautions I should take, especially when you have a "Demo" for the trial but users are constantly abusing it with their skills.
I've the very basic usage check (with a counter stored in the localStorage) limitation implemented already which is not enough. Will be helpful if someone chip-in with leads on the ways to limit the users after certain number of trails per day.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Can you change the title of the question? I think you're asking about users abusing your trial/demo service, not anything about Google search results.

> the very basic usage check limitation implemented already

What are those limitations? It's hard to answer a question when basic information is missing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Changed the title. Also, added the info.

I'm looking for help in limiting the users after certain number of trails per day. Currently, I'm relying on a counter that is referred from the "localStorage" of the page</comment></comment>


Show HN: My weekend project - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN! I had some extra time this weekend and I built a prototype of a concept I had for a social network.
The idea is based around a concept I call "microevents". Basically I want to be able to quickly generate an event like "I want to grab a coffee". This event will be posted in a stream where others can say "Hey! I wanna join in!" and be listed in that event. The original poster can then proceed to create a "meetup" where he/she describes where and when to meet.
This is just the web app but a mobile version will definitely come if I feel that I am getting positive feedback for the site.
On the tech side its some pretty jQuery, basic PHP  and storage is on MySQL. The authentication is through Twitter's @anywhere. Not the greatest but really easy to deploy. I plan on constructing my own authentication system in the future where the user can populate his/her social graph by connecting to Facebook and Twitter. That is a future plan though.
Tell me what you think! It is kind of empty right now but if you will all join me in the Ann Arbor, MI we can populate that local list some.
Ah! I forgot to mention that I am only supporting a few cities. I will be featuring a full set of cities in the future. Sorry about that.
http://www.torehansharman.com/gathr <comment><USER2> This is very similar (identical?) to one of my projects - <http://shoutfast.com> \- how will you beat the "chicken and egg" problem?

</comment><comment><USER3> So, it lets me do something I can already do with Twitter, and I log in using Twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont think you can do the same on Twitter.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure I can if what you said here is all there is to it. Not the bit about creating stuff, but the process is more usable with fewer steps anyway. The "hey anyone want to get coffee" and "sure let's get coffee at 5th & main" is pure Twitter.

I didn't see more than that on the site, but the layout is a bit noisy so maybe I missed something?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couple of startups in this space: plancast.com and kliqed.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! These are actually great. I tried googling what I was building but I didnt get anything. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Windows expand to full screen – how to turn off - <AUTHOR> http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-desktop/windows-expand-to-full-screen-how-to-turn-off/78f164ad-94ff-456d-9077-2470538091cb

<comment><USER2> From what I recall of Windows Support, you're going to have to reinstall it.</comment>


.XXX goes live - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/17/xxx_goes_live/

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct me, but no reports of it being blocked yet. Iran? Saudi? probably in days.

(and as usual, to get to porn.xxx directly in chrome, you must type <http://> on the front. they know about this featurebug)

<comment><USER2> [http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/03/24/india-to-block-xxx- top...](http://thenextweb.com/asia/2011/03/24/india-to-block-xxx-top-level- domain/)</comment></comment>


Did Our Ancestors Become Bipedal So They Could Throw? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/did-our-ancestors-become-bipedal-so-they-could-throw <comment><USER2> I live in a world where 90% of my friends and family believe that they came from the sins of a woman who decided to eat an apple. I recently read a book called Sapiens, this book really drilled into my mind that we homo-sapiens are a derivative of a single great ape that had two daughters, one that became the ancestor of all chimpanzees and the other all humans.

If human origin interests you there is a great 10 minute video from the Youtube Kurzgesagt channel that lead me to read Sapiens.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGiQaabX3_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGiQaabX3_o)

[https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah- Harari/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah- Harari/dp/0062316095/)

<comment><USER3> Minor derailing: it's not necessarily accurate or useful to think about speciation as "one parent with two divergent children". It's usually more about populations with fuzzy boundaries.

Speciation events tend to look more like, imagine you take a town of two thousand people and send half of them to the moon for a million years. The moon men and the earth men would evolve into two different species; if you looked really hard, you could find a single common ancestor from whom everyone in that town descended, but it's not like one of his children went to the moon and one stayed on earth; some of his great-great-*-grandchildren went to the moon and some stayed on earth. The common ancestor was hundreds or thousands of years before the population split in two.

Moreover, breaks don't always happen cleanly. Imagine for the first ten or hundred thousand years someone from earth would occasionally migrate to the moon or a moon man would return to earth. The same thing would have happened with proto-humans and proto-chimpanzees: long after the two species had begun to diverge they would still be interfertile, and some mating (or "gene transfer", if you prefer) would still happen long past the point you'd begin calling them two different species. Eventually the two species would stop being mutually fertile or even attractive and the rift would be complete, but look at how many big cat and horse-like species can still occasionally pull it off.

Evolution is messy, and the bush of life is complicated.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but it's still interesting that there exists an "Eve" connecting any two entirely different organisms.

<comment><USER5> Not really. There's a hundred of them. A whole bunch of candidates that are at the borderline and are ancestors of every member of the species.

<comment><USER4> Nope. Any two organisms have a unique MCRA of either gender. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve)

<comment><USER5> That is a very specific thing.

It only applies to mitochondria, not the genes in the nucleus or anything constructed from those genes.

It's only unique because the "MR" in MRCA stands for "most recent".

You could have a species that's a million years old with an MRCA that's only 500 years old. You could also have a species with no MRCA. (As in, the only way to find an MRCA is to trace back into ancestor species.) Picture two islands where only males travel between them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I as told in Jr. High School that we ended bipedal in order to stand in the bush so we could see further what was coming up and then, with our hands now free, we could start building tools and use them. I don't know what this explanation is worth but I find it makes a lot of sense.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe the reasoning is backwards? Given 4 limbs, how else would you layout an upright walking creature?

The same across-the-chest muscle setup that makes us good at throwing also allows us to throw an effective punch.

"push against the ground with your feet to exert significant force using your hand" must have many, many uses.

</comment><comment><USER8> Isn't the answer most likely "no"

From both the editorial title law, as well as the flawed logic of causation to draw a conclusion on evolution?

<comment><USER9> I am sure you are being downvoted for mentioning Betteridge. I upvoted you because using causation to describe evolution _is_ inherently flawed. Discussing it in that framework only confuses the nature of evolution. Our ancestors didn't become bipedal "because" of any one thing in particular. None of our ancestors were sitting around saying "Hm. I wonder how we can influence our future evolution." "Well, it would be nice if we could throw." There were likely a _lot of benefits_ to bipedal motion in early humans and that's why they out survived those on all fours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps the fault is with the English language itself that the article and this post's title both imply that humans became bipedal in order to throw. I use the word 'fault' because of course that is not how evolution works.

</comment><comment><USER11> While the origins and order from millions of years ago may remain unclear what is clear is that by the time individuals had achieved the pathetic defensive and offensive weapons of the modern human body something else had to be going on.

A single modern human on the plans of Africa would almost instantly succumb to the carnivorous interests of any number of hungry beasts. Modern humans in their modern bodies alone have just nothing to inspire fear in anything bigger than a koala bear.

One aspect is clear, humans living in groups are more viable, but that gets you only so far. A whole group of humans facing the local lion with just their bodies alone would just be chomped down one by one.

While throwing is not bad for hunting it's particularly devastating when combined with stones and a group of humans for defence. Humans with a bit of practise are stunningly accurate with throwing stones at speed. Imagine a group of lions (or any other predator really) facing 20 or more humans throwing stones with deadly intent. Humans in this circumstance are instantly transformed from the neighbour weakling to a defensive force of undeniable leathality and terror.

The real beauty of it is that the human doesn't have to be near the target to impart the stinging blow. Other natural weapons red in tooth and claw require the aggressor to make contact with the prey and possibly suffer injury. Thrownn rocks avoid this danger entirely.

Hunting requires many different strategies of which stone throwing may be one. Defence in the dark of night from a closing dread predator would be best effected with a hail of well placed stones every few seconds. Very few predators would be willing to risk it for very long.

Luckily for humans, herds of elephants only eat vegetation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Generally living organisms become bipedal when they have another use for their legs other than walking. See birds. In our case it was the usage of tools.

<comment><USER13> Is there an evolutionary story for why T. Rex ended up bipedal with mostly- vestigial forelimbs? It works fine for their ecological niche, but I can't picture the evolutionary intermediates between them and a quadrupedal ancestor.

<comment><USER14> The current thinking is that T. rex used its stubby arms to grasp prey when it went in for the kill. A similar line of thinking applies to the flapping wings of birds: earlier theropods flapped their forelimbs in order to help hoist themselves on top of their prey to make the killing bite.

Their common ancestors may have evolved bipedalism because forelimbs proved cumbersome when taking down large prey.

<comment><USER15> Mountain lions use front paws broader than rear to grasp large prey as they bite the neck. As large as elk and deer.

<comment><USER14> We're dealing with larger than mountain lion scale beasties here. Fun fact about hippos: they can't jump. Like at all, unless they're submerged and can use the buoyancy of the water. The same is true of just about any modern tetrapod within that size range. If you're a tetrapod the size of a mountain lion or even a bengal tiger, you can still have speed, agility, and the ability to spring, pounce, and grapple with the forepaws. At T. rex scales, the square-cube law has something to say about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Given that humans are otherwise well adapted as pursuit hunters, able to select a single prey animal and run it to heat exhaustion - it makes sense that bipedalism is another adaption for endurance running.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> I really like the idea put forward here:

[http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human- evolution/](http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human-evolution/)

And the research into the evolution of shoulders doesn't really contradict this.

</comment><comment><USER18> Throwing, specifically? I would have thought the advantage being selected was the ability to use two limbs for fine motor tasks: building, throwing, grasping, pulling, knapping, etc...

<comment><USER13> Ah, but other apes can already do many of those things (and some of them _better_ , given that they basically have four "hands" instead of two hands and two feet.)

The question is what forced humans into this particular, odd body-shape that no other ape has. Long-distance running (for "endurance" hunting, where you just tire out the thing you're chasing) has been the hypothesis I've heard the longest, but running and throwing works too.

<comment><USER18> Fair point, but I was considering the fact that being bipedal allows you to _constantly_ be doing one of those things. Simply being able to carry things around over long distances seems like a bigger advantage than throwing.

Of course this is all speculative, and I suspect that the point of the Nautilus article was to entertain the thought, so in that respect it's a great article.

>Long-distance running (for "endurance" hunting, where you just tire out the thing you're chasing)

I've recently read claims (though I forget where -- primary sources, if memory serves) that directly contradict this point (which I'd also heard). From memory:

\- foot structure is ill-adapted to continuous running (stress fractures, I believe)

\- knees are also problematic

\- some physiology / metabolitic arguments

I must also admit that this hypothesis seems fishy if only because I can't think of many tasty animals that man can actually keep up with...

<comment><USER13> > I can't think of many tasty animals that man can actually keep up with

"Long-distance" doesn't have to imply "in a straight line", keep in mind. If we can herd prey in arbitrary directions, we can have other members of our tribe stationed where we're herding them, turning the marathon into either a pincer trap or a relay race.

<comment><USER18> I don't mean to imply that the theory has no merit -- what you've just cited is, I think, the more convincing part of the argument.

I'll try to dig up the refs tonight, because it makes for interesting reading.

<comment><USER13> Cool, would love to read through that. I feel like I got a solid understanding of this sort of topic based on the position that was popular a decade or so ago, and then haven't really kept up with the debate since then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> seems quite plausible, also in the light of (disclaimer: this is not coming from an anthropologist) a notion that the performance of 300 000 year old spares were to rival that of today's high-performance carbon spears (translated in meaning). The latter appears to be quite irritating and would fit the argument of the bipedal suggestion from the linked Nautilus article.

The 300k years coming from the newspaper article below:

Filser, Hubert, 300 000 Jahre alte Speere können mit modernem Olympia-Gerät mithalten (newspaper article) [http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/archaeologie- jahre-alte-sp...](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/archaeologie-jahre-alte- speere-koennen-mit-modernem-olympia-geraet-mithalten-1.3100120)

which in turn seems to refer to:

Conard et al., Excavations at Schöningen and paradigm shifts in human evolution and Schoch et al., New insights on the wooden weapons from the Paleolithic site of Schoeningen

</comment><comment><USER20> William H Calvin makes a similar argument in _The Throwing Madonna_ (and less succinctly, but more entertainingly, in _The River That Flows Uphill_). He's got a lot to say about the evolution of hand-eye coordination and throwing as well.</comment>


Plagiarism Haunts Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/18962349

<comment><AUTHOR> I was a student representative on a disciplinary committee at tertiary level, and was left a bit disbelieving at how bad plagiarism was, and how weak the penalties were. I pushed hard for a system whereby the first offense required the work to be resubmitted, and the second offense would require resisting the whole paper (the next year). I was the only voice calling for harsher penalties though, and nothing changed.

</comment><comment><USER2> Does this make an American degree more valuable?

<comment><USER3> Short answer: Hard sciences: absolutely not. Social sciences: depends.

Long answer: First you have to distinguish between the different European higher education systems which are merging only slowly and thus can't be considered uniform. Everything I write is based on the situation in Germany, which may or may not be similar to other northern European countries.

The _average_ PhD given out in Germany can't compete with a PhD degree from Stanford. However, the _average_ PhD given out in Germany leaves the _average_ PhD given out in the US in the dust. The reasons are as follows: In Germany, you can't just open a bunch of universities, accredit each other and start giving out degrees. Every University has to be accredited by the state and most universities (including all of the top tier universities) are run by the state. In addition to that, it is illegal to call yourself a PhD in Germany if you are not really a PhD (ATTENTION REST OF THE WORLDERS: If you come to Germany be sure that your degree is recognized or you might run into this.). Degrees are taken very seriously throughout German society, so "the people" demand quality control.

Also, at least in the hard sciences, plagiarism will make you a pariah. Once you are found out to have plagiarized something, people won't want to touch you with a ten foot (approx 3m) stick. Every physicist knows the name Jan Hendrick Schön.

What you actually see when you look at the case of Guttenberg and others is a bunch of people (quite possible mainly hard science folk) banding togehter in a wiki and dissecting some controversial cases from the soft sciences. The big plagiarism cases in Germany of the last years took place primarily in the realm of 300-page text only PhD theses in social fields or law.

Looking at it from the other side, you should consider wether or not plagiarisms are easier to be found out in Europe or the US. I really appreciate the no-nonsense attitude that Americans generally have and I don't doubt that a media shitstorm would ensue, should a big name politician be caught at something like this in the US, but the American system has a bunch of things against it. To list a few: Everybody needs a degree, no one has the time/interest to check PhD theses after the fact (would you start a guttenplag wiki?), more money is involved, translation plagiarism is very unlikely to be found out.

<comment><USER4> You are right in that the US does not accredit universities. Instead, "the Secretary of Education is required by law to publish a list of nationally recognized accrediting agencies that the Secretary determines to be reliable authorities as to the quality of education or training provided by the institutions of higher education and the higher education programs they accredit."

Which means that while you can start a bunch of fake universities and have them start an accrediting agency, it isn't the case that that agency is considered equivalent to, say, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (which accredits Stanford, among many).

You wrote: "In addition to that, it is illegal to call yourself a PhD in Germany if you are not really a PhD." My understanding is that the rule is a bit broader than that. For example, <http://chronicle.com/article/What-s-Up- Doc-German-Law/40636> highlights an example where the "director of a prestigious research institute in Jena, Germany", with a PhD from Cornell, was charged with Missbrauchs von Titeln because the law did not then allow him, in Germany, to call himself a "Doctor" - Cornell being outside of the EU. The "state education ministers met last week and decided to allow holders of degrees from designated American universities to call themselves "Doctor."", so this is probably not a problem now.

However, it does seems to mean that Germany has to 'accredit' that a given US PhD program is good enough for a recipient to deserve the title "Doctor" in Germany.</comment></comment></comment>


At Rapleaf, your personals are public - <AUTHOR> http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-162371.html

<comment><USER3> A seemingly good analysis. I remember when Rapleaf launched as the public alternative to the closed (and therefore limited) eBay rating system - <USER2> bookmarked it as a potentially beneficial tool in the future. Now it would appear it has crossed several of my personal ethical lines, but when it comes to putting information out on the net we can't say we haven't been warned.

<comment><USER4> Interesting that you would say they cross your _ethical_ lines. Their tagline used to be "It is more profitable to be ethical." See: [http://web.archive.org/web/20070102022215/http://www.rapleaf...](http://web.archive.org/web/20070102022215/http://www.rapleaf.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's another article from a marketer's perspective giving more detail on how they're using Rapleaf for payday loan leads, amongst other things:

[http://www.leadconfidential.com/rapleaf-social-media-data- le...](http://www.leadconfidential.com/rapleaf-social-media-data-lead- generators.html)

I've found Rapleaf to be a bit spotty in its coverage, often not discovering accounts on services like Facebook and Twitter that deny API access for the email lookup. I won't pimp my test page for it again (it's on the blog in my profile), but you can also go to their site to see what they have on you.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article is over 2 years old. Clearly outdated. You may like to check out their site...they're not doing a lot of this anymore.</comment>


America's Last Top Model - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/americas-last-top-model/ <comment><USER2> On a related note, there is a model of the Bay Area by the US Army Corp of Engineers located in Sausalito:

[http://www.spn.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/Bay- Model-...](http://www.spn.usace.army.mil/Missions/Recreation/Bay-Model- Visitor-Center/)

<comment><USER3> Ah, I remember this model from the episode of Mythbusters where they escape from Alcatraz. They used the model to test potential routes across the bay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have a source, but someone said that we don't crash cars for crashworthiness, we crash cars to validate the computer models we have for crashworthiness.

I don't completely agree with that statement, but I do think it's interesting.

<comment><USER5> That's a classic example of Goodhart's law. Regulations call for extremely specific tests to measure crashworthiness, so vehicles are engineered to pass those tests (front-end impact with a specific wall shape at a specific velocity and angle, etc), so they get a "five star crash rating" but at the expense of real-world crash performance.

<comment><USER6> What else could regulations call for than a defined set of tests? You need comparability between tests or the tests are worthless when it comes to informing customers. Real world crashes differ wildly, so it's impossible to use those as a measure. There are also many different crash tests carried out around the globe and a car performing well in many of those will perform well in the real world.

<comment><USER4> Use a defined set of tests _along with_ real world metrics. [1]

Ensure your tests match reality as close as possible.

Ensure you test for the most important events found in the real world. In the case of crash tests, make sure you test for crashes that often cause death or serious injury.

Real world metrics get really tricky and expensive, but when speaking about life and safety, it's probably important enough to measure.

It's also very important to be smart about measurement and reporting of events, statistics, and trends.

1\. [http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/)

<comment><USER6> But that's exactly what happens: crash tests get validated against real world accidents and refined all the time.

<comment><USER4> Is that a problem? That sounds like a solution... but it's a continuous solution, not a solution that you apply once and forget about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surpising that these physical models can outperform computers! I would have thought surface tension and gravity would mess up the scaling in the physical model. Is the problem in computer simulations that we don't have the equations, or that we don't have the computing power?

<comment><USER8> We have the equations, its the computing power that is the limiting factor. You can do a full DNS (direct numerical simulation) of fluids on the order of a few cubic meters. That will simulate flow to the particle, and fully turbulent, with Reynolds numbers (Re) on the order of 10^6 (IIRC). Re goes up proportional to length scale, so if you want to do a km or so, multiply this by 10^2.

This is way ocean models parameterize turbulence (large eddy simulations (LES), and Reynolds Averaged Numerical Simulation (RANS) for example). It's also why observational oceanography is still done.

<comment><USER9> I was recently at an applied maths seminar. The speaker had been working on the main "over the horizon" radar in Australia for over 40 years. It was amazing to me that he could map ocean currents with radar!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Be awesome to see someone buy up the derelict Mississippi one and turn it into a mini golf course or something. Sad to see so much work going to waste.

Absolutely fascinating in any case. I had heard about the one New York used previously, didn't know there was ever a model of that scale.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've wondered for a while about how good computer models can be when modelling complex systems. We can't model water flow well, what fundamentally differentiates this from modelling climate?

</comment><comment><USER12> Another comparable flood was the 2008 Kosi flood in india[1]. It must be as hard, if not harder, to simulate a river like that because of factors like gradient shifts as the river merges into Ganga and tectonic forces.

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

</comment><comment><USER13> > "The physical model will stimulate the processes on its own," says Gibson.

Probably a typo, s/stimulate/simulate

</comment><comment><USER14> The is the most egregiously clickbait title I've ever run across.

<comment><USER15> This is not what clickbait is. For those unfamiliar with 99PI, this is a thing they do with all of their episode titles. They're often a pun of some sort, and make the subject of the episode a fun surprise which is made apparent at the start.

One of my favorite titles is "Reefer Madness", which is about refrigerated shipping containers – a.k.a. reefers.

<comment><USER16> Yet, wouldn't you agree that it's a bit deceptive? I'd bet I wasn't the only one to click expecting something completely different.

<comment><USER17> And that's a problem … because?

I get that clarity can be a goal, but it's not the only goal worth achieving. Clear and unambiguous titles aren't some self-evidently true virtue, especially not in a medium like podcasts, especially not with a podcast like 99PI that's very much about storytelling.

I do agree that for the medium of Hacker News ambiguous titles aren't optimal, but 99PI has not special obligation to optimize its titles for Hacker News. Here I would rather have Hacker News adapt the title than wanting 99PI to change it.

I dislike the "clickbait" accusation very much. It's so lazy. "Clickbait" is really not the only reason that can lead to ambiguous titles, far from it.

Also, I enjoy ambiguous and creative titles, especially from someone I already trust to put out great content (like 99PI). Under those circumstances I honestly fail to see the problem and if there is a problem then it's that the title isn't optimal in circumstances where clarity is a virtue, but under those circumstances it seems better to just manually adjust the title or to add a little abstract instead of wanting 99PI to change.

<comment><USER14> > I dislike the "clickbait" accusation very much. It's so lazy. "Clickbait" is > really not the only reason that can lead to ambiguous titles, far from it.

But it leads to more clicks, doesn't it? You're saying that they don't have that intention?

<comment><USER18> Isn't that the intention of every article title? Is everything clickbait?

<comment><USER14> Only the deceptive ones.

<comment><USER17> Aka a creative subversion of expectations.

There are more than one ways to view this. Also, to me something is not clickbait if the actual content might be different from what I expected, but just as interesting or maybe even more interesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why I'm not going near Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/07/why_im_not_going_near_spotify.html

<comment><USER2> Appreciate the perspective on Spotify. Hadn't thought about it like this before - it's just another DRM music service!

</comment><comment><USER3> ditto. something to think about before investing all your music in it</comment>


Why Won't Developers Listen to Your Game Idea? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=783

<comment><USER2> This is good information, but there's something else that probably needs to be said: nobody wants to get sued.

I've worked only tangentially in the games industry, but I worked for many years in TV development. And people often asked why we (NBC or FOX, in my case) wouldn't accept unsolicited submissions of show ideas. The primary reason we didn't is that it was a legal minefield. If you read someone's submission, and you rejected it, and years later you developed a show with even the slightest _hint_ of an element from that concept, the person who submitted it could sue you. And, even if he wouldn't prevail 9 times out of 10, he'd still eat up a lot of time and work and money in the process.

The problem is that there's really nothing new under the sun. Every basic plot imaginable has been conceived. Every core concept shy of the truly insane or inane has already been pitched (and even those have been pitched, trust me). The chances that your unsolicited submission will bear more than passing similarities to a concept already pitched, or already in development, are quite high.

Aggravating this problem is the fact that people have sued over the most facepalmingly generic bits of supposed intellectual property: character names(!), broad-stroke concepts (i.e., "I sent NBC an idea about superheroes; NBC made a show about superheroes!!!11!1"), and so forth.

At the end of the day, opening an unsolicited envelope is more hassle than it's worth. I can't say if this is a motivating factor for game developers or publishers, but I imagine it would be.

<comment><USER3> Can't they just put disclaimer, "If you insist on submitting your idea, oh well, thanks. We might agree to realize your idea or part of it, but you must know that we can't compensate you in any way."?

<comment><USER2> The problem is that there's not a central hub or gate through which all concepts and submissions must pass. It's not like a website, where you simply post a disclaimer or agreement that everyone must encounter before submitting something. People can theoretically try to submit to TV networks in any number of normal to bizarre ways: email, snail mail, stalking a development exec and accosting him at Starbucks, throwing a package over his fence at home, etc. You name it, and it's happened.

It's nearly impossible to retroactively disclaim things submitted through such varied means. So the safest course of action is just to send things back, or disregard them altogether. If someone's really written a brilliant masterpiece, then he should get an agent and go in through that door.

It's an imperfect system, but it's a system born of necessity. Even big networks typically have scripted development staffs of no more than 10 to 15 people (sometimes considerably fewer), all of whom are spending 100% of their time working on existing projects, or hearing pitches from agencies and producers. These people don't have time to read everything that comes their way through the mail, even if they wanted to, and even assuming that more than 1% of what comes in unsolicited is actually worth reading. And none of them wants to bear any legal liability. (Imagine greenlighting a show about superheroes, then opening a random envelope and finding a pitch that's very similar; talk about a potential "Awww, fuck" headache moment).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ideas for games are not at all scarse. They are not at all hard to come up with. They are not at all unique. In fact, ideas for games are much more trouble than they are worth. Game developers don't need any more ideas. The only way to ship a game on time is to brutally throw away as many ideas as you can, until you have the smallest design that will actually work and be fun, and then EXECUTE on that.

Execution is what matters, not ideas. Everybody wants to be the "idea guy," because they think that's the easy part, and the glorious part, where they just sit there and tell other people what to do, and get all the credit. But there are very few positions in the industry for "idea guy", and the only people who get them have a proven track record.

I work for Will Wright, who is an idea guy. It's my job to execute on his ideas, come up with prototypes that let him play around with the ideas, and then throw them away and start from scratch when he gets different ideas, or rewrite, iterate and polish the good ones until they're production quality. The designs he gives me are high level enough that there's lots of room for creativity, filling in the gaps between the design and the implementation. But the only reason I get the privilege to exercise any creativity is because I'm also executing on the hard part: implementing the code.

If you don't want to actually do the heavy lifting and grunt work of writing code, and if you aren't willing to throw it all away and start from scratch when the designers decide they want something else, or work on the complex, tedious plumbing that nobody will notice, then it's going to be very hard for you to find a job in the games industry.

The best thing to do is to write your own game, all by yourself. Then you will have something to show. But nobody in the industry wants to hear your idea, if you don't have something to show that works and is fun, because it's just a distraction from executing on their own ideas.

But now days it's entirely possible for one person or a small team to actually execute on their own idea and produce a good game, like Minecraft for example, as long as they're willing to do the hard work, and not just into it just because they think it will be an easy, glorious job to be the "idea guy" who tells other people what to do and takes all the credit.

And for god's sake, if you have no intention of doing any programming or other hard work, and you are just looking for a programmer to do all the "easy" work for you for equity instead of salary, now that you've done the "hard part" of coming up with the idea for the world's greatest game or iPhone app, then please fuck off and die. There are already enough narcissists polluting the games industry, thank you: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_Games>

<comment><USER5> That's pretty amazing that you get to work with someone like Will Wright at such an early point in the creative process! Has it given you ideas for your own games?

You hint at one of the other issues that arises. So much of what a piece of software becomes (game or otherwise) is formed as it's being written. Something sounds great, you implement it, it doesn't look so good but leads you to something else, etc. In the end the game might end up being 50% of the original and 50% from prototyping.

One of the things that gets me is the person who says "Implement my idea. I don't have any money to pay you but you can have a percentage of the profits". Is there a single word that means naivete + ignorance + hubris? This is especially true for those who say they have a great idea for a game, but don't want to tell you because they don't want you stealing it.

<comment><USER4> I fell in love with SimCity when I first saw it in the 80's, and I got a chance to port it to Unix as a third party contractor. Although it didn't make a lot of money, it did show I could make something work while respecting the original design, so he later hired me to work on The Sims.

His approach to game design is very exploratory, which involves making a lot of prototypes, playing around with them to evaluate the game play terrain, and then climbing the fun gradient towards the high points, and looking around for new ideas from that perspective. He purposefully designs for emergent behavior, but nobody has any way of telling what that behavior will be without actually playing around with a working prototype. It's the kind of stuff you can't just imagine, that you have to experience. So I would say the end product is more like 5% of the original idea, and 95% from prototyping!

The kind of person who wants to do the fun part for glory and have other people do all the hard work is very common, and I've run across many of them. It's a form of narcissism: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism> . Will is not at all like that: he's very humble and willing to listen to anything anyone has to say, and very good at explaining his ideas, and that's why he's been so successful, because people enjoy working with him, and enjoy playing his games. Though I don't know him personally, I get the impression Notch is a lot like that too. (Although I'm sure his lawyers wish he wouldn't shoot his mouth off all the time! ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Because everyone has ideas.

Your ideas aren't worth anything. Execution is worth something. Game designers are doing the execution themselves, so you're not worth listening to.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think the reasons depend on the company, too. Large companies have different reasons than indie devs and amateurs.

As an amateur game programmer, I have a -ton- of ideas. I don't need anyone else's because I've got too many of my own.

As an indie dev, I imagine that the above applies, plus they already have a game or 2 released in a certain genre, and changing genres can be problematic with the fans.

As a major developer, you can break the 1-genre rule, but you become a target for lawsuits, as jonnathanson noted in another comment here.

</comment><comment><USER8> The people making the decisions probably spent a long time wanting to realise their ideas too. If an idea isn't good enough to convince you to work on it day & night, it will be a hard to convince someone else to do so.

The authors advice is right: _"If you want to get your game made, make it yourself"_. If your idea is good & you can show it in action you have a much better chance of getting noticed than if you just post a wish-list on a forum.

[Edit: Is it just me timing out? Google cache: <http://goo.gl/ez5e4>]

</comment><comment><USER9> About ten years ago there was a kid named Imari Stevenson. He had a gigantic site dedicated to his game ideas which he hoped he would sell to Sega, Nintendo, and Square. I won't get into the content in much detail. It suffices to say that flaming breast milk was usable as a weapon in one of the game proposals.

I told him the same thing that was written here, though I'm nowhere near a pro game developer. I said, if you're so dedicated to these game ideas you will probably have to write them yourself, and oh by the way, it isn't all that hard to do. He basically ignored me and insisted that his skill was in concept generation, not programming or art.

Some people just don't want to download GCC or the JDK and get cracking. They have a GREAT idea, they want it NOW, and they think it's up to a triple-A studio to make it happen. Yeah, only if you have brain cancer and can cajole the Make-A-Wish foundation into helping.

These days the name "Imari" can still elicit fits of giggles from some of my friends in the game industry. He's an "indie filmmaker" of sorts now, creating low-budget CG films about women who can shoot flaming breast milk or something.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree with this author completely. To his point George R.R. Martin thinks that fan-fiction is a bad exercise that doesn't force you enough out of your element.

People write your own games and change them enough not get sued(hey, at least you get to be creative)

</comment><comment><USER11> Idea guys are great when they bring lots of money.</comment>


PERSONAL REVIEW: Gigabyte Aero 15X Laptop • Laptops Park - <AUTHOR> https://www.laptopspark.com/gallery/personal-review-gigabyte-aero-15x-laptop/ <comment><USER2> From the guidelines [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

> _In Submissions_

> _Please don 't do things to make titles stand out, like using uppercase or > exclamation points, or adding a parenthetical remark saying how great an > article is. It's implicit in submitting something that you think it's > important._</comment>


VersionPress WordPress Version Control Plugin Looks Amazing - <AUTHOR> http://www.besthostnews.com/versionpress-wordpress-version-control-plugin-looks-amazing/

<comment><USER2> Now we are talking! GIT based version control via WordPress plugin. Finally, someone knows what they are doing!</comment>


Elegant tests with Truth Tables - <AUTHOR> http://brewhouse.io/blog/2015/04/13/elegant-tests-with-truth-tables.html

<comment><USER2> The name "Truth Tables" in already firmly established in logic to refer to enumerations of all combinations of boolean inputs and outputs.

I think a better name for these testing constructs would be Expectation Tables.

<comment><AUTHOR> Naming is hard! Thanks for suggesting "Expectation Tables".

<comment><USER2> True, naming is hard.

But coming from an EE/CE digital logic background, if it doesn't have 1's and 0's (or T's and F's) in it, it just ain't a Truth Table to me.

Of course I could just as easily be criticized for "Expectation Tables" by someone in obstetrics, so what's fair is fair.

I do like your design. Nice job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Seems more appropriate to call these Table Driven Tests: [https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/TableDrivenTests](https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/TableDrivenTests)

As they are not truth tables: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a common practice and more often than not the data is reused, so it is provided by a "data provider", a method living in the test code, which returns a structure with inputs and expected results.

For example, in PHPUnit: [https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/writing-tests- for-phpun...](https://phpunit.de/manual/current/en/writing-tests-for- phpunit.html#writing-tests-for-phpunit.data-providers)

It would actually be even more elegant if the data where extracted out of the test methods in my opinion. Though it would effectively double the number of methods, it cleans things up significantly within the test methods, provides an outlet for extension and the only expense is the addition of declaration & closing lines.

</comment><comment><USER5> I love the concept of table driven tests. I created a gem so that you could put that data into tables -- called ATV for Ascii Table Values.

Just more of the same idea and I think the resulting tests are easier to understand. Good writeup.

Please take a look at my article: [http://technology.indiegogo.com/2015/01/ascii-tables-for- cle...](http://technology.indiegogo.com/2015/01/ascii-tables-for-clearer- testing/)

And the gem: [https://github.com/IndieGoGo/atv](https://github.com/IndieGoGo/atv)

+</comment><comment>+</comment><comment>-+ | name | Kelly | +</comment><comment>+</comment><comment>-+

</comment><comment><USER6> A more advanced version of this can be seen in the some of the tests for CloudFoundry's new Diego runtime: [https://github.com/cloudfoundry- incubator/runtime-schema/blo...](https://github.com/cloudfoundry- incubator/runtime-schema/blob/master/bbs/lrp_bbs/evacuation_test.go#L17)

The 'table' consists of an array of calls to constructors of structs that contain fields which are used to set up the context for each test, set value expectations specific to that test, and whether certain tests in shared examples apply to that context.

There is a certain level of cognitive overhead involved in understanding this method of writing tests, to be sure, but the benefits (concise expression of a huge matrix of variations) outweigh the costs (massive duplication, and therefore comprehension of thousands of more lines of test code).

It's important to note that this style of test is really best for the situation where there is a large matrix of things you'd like to test.

The example I linked included ~70 different contexts, each of which is being run through the large Test() function at the bottom: [https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/runtime- schema/blo...](https://github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/runtime- schema/blob/master/bbs/lrp_bbs/evacuation_test.go#L784)

</comment><comment><USER7> This type of functionality is built into cljs.test, for example:

[https://github.com/r0man/cljs- http/blob/master/test/cljs_htt...](https://github.com/r0man/cljs- http/blob/master/test/cljs_http/test/util.cljs#L25-L73)

</comment><comment><USER8> I remember Gherkin (Cucumber for Ruby) had this! It does beat having a ton of assertions.

<comment><USER9> You have that backwards. Gherkin is a spec language for writing tests, Cucumber is a library for Ruby and Java that interprets Gherkin specifications.

<comment><USER8> How is that backwards, that is essentially what I said :-/ ?</comment></comment></comment>


Rumprun and Nginx unikernel working on KVM, Xen and bare metal - <AUTHOR> https://www.freelists.org/post/rumpkernel-users/rumprun-nginx-unikernel-working-on-KVM-Xen-and-bare-metal

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion yesterday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9591795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9591795)

<comment><USER3> Different discussion</comment></comment>


How to Survive Doomsday - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/how-to-survive-doomsday <comment><USER2> If we're still stuck on Earth in the time frames discussed, then we deserve to die.

<comment><USER3> Or to put it another way, it's extremely unlikely that anything we could recognize as human will be living here in 500M years, give that is 5000 times as long as our species has existed so far (and we're changing ourselves and environment faster and faster).

<comment><USER4> 66 years between first flight and the moon, 500 million years between first rocket landing and ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Human civilization's purpose is to survive long enough to finish preparing the machine civilization to take over.

<comment><USER6> And what would be the purpose of machine civilization, then?

<comment><USER7> To become the pure energy civilization

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Extraordinarism - the ideology to think one is seperate from nature that brought the species into existence. Related to other ideologys that considered humans the crown of creation or the source of all evils. Most distinguishing feature of the ideology? A inability to watch ones own existence and the existence of ones species with a relaxed attitude. Often driven to extremes by massive consumer guilt, and by the dawning realisation that none of the stated statements contributes to problem solving.

"Humanity is so evil, even the devil is afraid we could take his soul. We eat soda cans and drink babys. We should all feel ashamed and do nothing waiting for the end to come, soon.."

</comment><comment><USER9> If this is indeed an inevitable and predictable luminosity curve, then orbital solar shades or albedo augmentation are obvious solutions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Of course, there's no solution here for human survival after the red giant stage of the Sun's evolution, when the Sun cools to become a white dwarf.

<comment><USER11> Non-biological humanity is such a solution. It makes travel to other systems much easier if we don't have to worry about generations of humans or messy biological needs.

And for whatever vestiges wish to remain, we could collect the gasses the Sun sloughs off during its red giant phase and use them for fuel, as well as moving closer in - and we wouldn't need the Earth.

<comment><USER12> Non-biological humanity or a biologically enhanced humanity? :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do you go to discuss machine learning? - <AUTHOR>

Can't seem to find a decent place for good ML discussion. /r/machinelearning is highly inactive, and the freenode IRC channel is a bit unwelcoming. <comment><USER2> [http://metaoptimize.com/qa](http://metaoptimize.com/qa)

[http://stats.stackexchange.com/](http://stats.stackexchange.com/)</comment>


As labor pool shrinks, prison time is less of a hiring hurdle - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/business/economy/labor-market-inmates.html <comment><USER2> I read this article with interest. 70MillionJobs is a for-profit recruitment platform for people with criminal records. Our goal is to match the huge pool of untapped talent (those with records) with employers that have urgent HR needs. In this capacity, my team and I engage with large, national employers, so I think we have a strong sense of where the corporate zeitgeist lies regarding hiring the formerly incarcerated.

While the Times author points to a historically low rate of unemployment and cites business conditions in Dane County, WI, this willingness to hire men and women with records does not generally exist with large, national employers. Nearly all of them have internal criteria relating to who they will or will not hire, based upon the nature of the crime(s) an applicant has committed and when it occurred. Most require at least five or six years to pass before they'd consider hiring someone guilty of a felony.

And therein lies the rub: there's nearly an 80% chance that someone released from jail or prison will be re-arrested within five years of their release. The vast majority of them will be unemployed at time of re-arrest. Contrariwise, there's very little chance of someone who has found employment being re-arrested. Employment is truly the silver bullet that short circuits this pernicious cycle of recidivism.

Recent studies have shown that those with records often emerge as an employer's best hires. Unlike others, people with records have no sense of entitlement and truly appreciate the opportunity they've been afforded. Typically, they reward employers with great loyalty, which translates to much greater retention (the true bane of HR professionals).

While attitudes are changing for the better (I, as a formerly incarcerated person, have noticed this in my own life), there still exists a great negative bias towards those with records, the NY Times notwithstanding. Racism figures mightily in this equation. But we're a country that elected a racist President, whose Atty General is eager to reinstate ineffective drug laws (including marijuana) that destroyed lives, families and communities in the 80's 90's and even today.

Anyone with a record can attest to the stigma that doesn't leave after doing one's time. In fact, for most, it's a life sentence, a sentence that even low unemployment can't expunge.

<comment><USER3> If I remember correctly, while the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world's population, we incarcerate 25% of the worlds prison population. I am thankful for work like yours that is helping to rehabilitate people in the most danger.

<comment><USER4> More people are getting arrested and going to jail for more trivial things than ever before. Last time I did jury duty it was not a stabbing or drug addict it was a woman who's home had an overhang on the roof that was 3 inches past the legal limit based on the zoning code. She was facing up to 5 years in state prison over something that 20 years ago would have gotten her maybe a $1000 fine.

<comment><USER5> Huh?

There's prison time for building code violations?

<comment><USER6> I think there may be a case of plea bargaining behind that, assuming it's true. Many prosecutors like to offer suspects the option of pleading to a minor crime with minor punishment versus going to trial for a more serious crime.

In the ideal case, if the suspect is actually guilty, they save the prosecutors office time and money in actually preparing the case for trial, and the defendant gets a lesser punishment and doesn't spend their money on a trial defense either.

In the less ideal case, say if the suspect is actually innocent but is not believed or can't prove it easily, the suspects are put in a tough position - plead guilty to something they didn't do, or a long and expensive trial with uncertain outcome. It gets particularly dubious when the prosecutors try to tilt the scales towards the plea side by threatening to go for the max punishment on the most serious crime they could possibly charge if the suspect chooses a trial. It sounds like this could be a case where this threat was carried out and the prosecutor is going for a knowingly over the top punishment to punish them for daring to not take a guilty plea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Ahu Yildirmaz, an economist who helps lead the research arm of the payroll- > processing company ADP, said her firm's data showed more people switching > jobs, and getting bigger bumps in pay for doing so._

So... if I work for a company who uses ADP for payroll, ADP is tracking if/when I change jobs and how much my salary is over time?

I wonder what else they're doing with my private information.

<comment><USER8> The ADP employment report is eagerly watched by economists and traders and goes back decades.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADP_National_Employment_Repo...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADP_National_Employment_Report)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My wife's company unknowingly hired someone with a criminal record(he used his brother identity to get the job). He attempted to rape another employee and killed the person who stopped him. The company paid rather large settlement to the victims of these crimes. Incidents like this reinforce the notion that it isn't worth the risk to hire people with a criminal record.

<comment><USER10> There's a difference between someone guilty of murder and other physical violence such as aggravated rape and other felonies like larceny, burgling, fraud, etc., where there is a good chance at rehabilitation, esp., if the crime was fueled by drug addiction.

<comment><USER11> I worked with someone who had 16 assault charges. To be totally honest I'd prefer working with someone convicted of murder than that guy.

The thing with 16 charges of _anything_ is that you know there's going to be a 17th, an 18th... and so on.

Some people can be rehabilitated, some people can't. Severity of the crime isn't necessarily indicative of that.

<comment><USER12> You'd likely be right to do so. Murder actually has an extremely low repeat rate. Murderers does have a higher chance of committing another crime on release than people not convicted of a crime, presumably in part because of higher chance of unemployment and poverty, but most murderers are extremely unlikely to ever kill again as most murders are crimes of passion in extreme circumstances that are extremely unlikely to occur again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> FWIW, when I was at Google I had at least two colleagues with felony records. It made me even more proud to work there as it showed the company was willing to look beyond mistakes made in someone's past.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's a YC app for that:

[https://www.70millionjobs.com/](https://www.70millionjobs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm really confused - when did we suddenly start having a labor shortage?

<comment><USER16> We do a shitty job at educating people, so it's hard to hire qualified people in many industries.

Try finding a master plumber or electrician. Or a mid level IT person. They don't exist.

Companies run so lean there's no pipeline of internal candidates either. Where I work, it's impossible to hire competent managers with technical skills. The normal places you'd look are full of young/inexperienced and old/stagnant.

<comment><USER17> I can't speak to plumbing and electrical work, those aren't my industries but

 _Or a mid level IT person. They don't exist._

My knee jerk reaction is to say "I absolutely refuse to believe this is true", but I will concede that the problem (here, I am defining problem not as a shortage of qualified talent, but a shortage of qualified talent that actually progresses to getting hired) exists because of symptoms you correctly highlighted "pipelines" and "competent managers". I will admit-however-to being biased as someone who's worked in IT for decades and later became a technical recruiter with an agency who wanted someone on staff that could have conversations with tech professionals on a meaningful, personal level.

Unrealistic or otherwise unsustainable hiring manager expectations and offensive constraints on salary compared with demanded skills seem to have created artificial scarcities of talent in IT hiring (pipeline). Candidates are expected to come in the door having every bullet point in a 120 bullet point job ad satisfied as to core-competencies, and when hired, they're given a workstation and sent off to the grind with just enough training and grooming to know the name of the product and the ability to rattle off a list of libraries and frameworks used. Skill gaps get resumes thrown out, even if it's some middling gap that with time and support from senior techs can be rapidly closed with a dose of on the job training. Something that seems as extinct as the pterodactyl nowadays.

Heck, just last week I had a talk with a recruiter who was looking for a DevOps Engineer (not strictly IT in the traditional sense of the phrase, but I bring this up to highlight my point) and we joked about one job spec that was looking for a senior level expert with five years experience in Kubernetes (competent managers). Let that one soak in. The hiring manager _demanded_ a five year expert in Kubernetes, which hasn't been around for a full three.

My recruiter friend told me they dropped this client after a few more job specs like this because they couldn't get a single candidate past a pre- screening due to hiring manager expecting the world-and they were preparing to do the same to a few other clients for the same reason. I asked if she were worried about what this would do to their billings "No, because we have other clients who pay us more, but have much more manageable expectations on job candidates."

I wish this were the exception versus the norm but if I have to hear one more time that there aren't qualified IT people I will probably rip what's left of my greying hair right out of my head because if this is true, it's not the fault of IT personnel, it's the fault of everyone involved in the hiring process refusing to manage their own darn expectations.

<comment><USER8> "offensive constraints on salary"

This is the entirety of it right here. There's only a shortage when your pay is below market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think unless the crime is directly linked to the job, for instance bank robbery and working in a bank, they should not be allowed to ask you about your criminal history.

<comment><USER19> I would not be comfortable working with people who have committed violent felonies.

<comment><USER20> > I would not be comfortable working with people who have committed violent > felonies.

I think that's still a very broad category. There's situations that could lead to violent acts but wouldn't mean that person was a risk in the workplace. We all know people who've been in fights and sheer bad luck can turn a brawl into homocide. (a "lucky" punch, an "unlucky" fall leading to a head injury).

Personally I've never been in a fight other than the playground shoving kind - and violence seriously freaks me out. But I know that people I know and trust could have easily crossed that line if chance had have played them a different hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> work needs to be done to allow those with records into jobs that require occupational licenses. these can be local, state, or even federal restrictions. a felon could serve to fight wild fires and find in many jurisdictions they cannot become a fire fighter or hold any public job.

Just check it out below! [https://niccc.csgjusticecenter.org/map/](https://niccc.csgjusticecenter.org/map/)

<comment><USER22> Glancing at the restrictions on firefighter, it appears that they fall under the same set of regulations as police.

One finds things like:

> Ineligible for employment with municipal fire department (mandatory for > felonies/crimes involving moral turpitude)

> Any felony; Crime of moral turpitude; Crimes involving fraud, dishonesty, > misrepresentation or money-laundering

or:

> Ineligible for employment in the police or fire department > (second/third/fourth class cities)

> Any felony; Any misdemeanor

Is that a reasonable restriction?

I am of the understanding that these restrictions are in place so that others can't can't compromise the integrity of one working in that office. Having gambling debts is something that allows people to blackmail or otherwise influence a person.

Looking through that, are there any that are particularly "why is this even there?" that you can point out that fall in the mandatory/automatic for consequence type?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Also labor pool is shrinking because more people are put in prison over nothing (while white rich people continue to get away with almost anything).

<comment><USER24> The phrasing on the latter half seems likely to cause a big mess of an argument, despite its statistical accuracy. Is there a better way to put it?

<comment><USER25> I would hope that this forum understands the importance of not censoring truths that are politically incorrect....

<comment><USER26> I may be misunderstanding you, but politically attacking rich people and white people are some of the most popular things going right now, especially among the demographic common around HN. It's almost the opposite of politically incorrect.

Not saying all complaints are unfounded, but it's far from politically incorrect in many groups.

<comment><USER25> I don't think "politically incorrect" is necessarily correlated with "unpopular" \- see, for instance, the number of news articles about how countless people are thrilled with Trump for saying out loud the "politically incorrect" things that they were just thinking.

<comment><USER26> Fair point. Still, political correctness is very much about avoiding offense or further disadvantage toward marginalized groups. It still doesn't fit to claim it's politically incorrect to go after rich white people. It's a pedantic point though, I admit.

<comment><USER25> I agree that that's how the phrase is used in practice (and yeah, language is descriptive), but I don't think the idea itself has any fundamental reason why it's about offense towards the marginalized and not offense towards the powerful--especially given that the powerful, somewhat by definition, tend to control politics and standards of decorum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Convicted felon here....it's still a massive hurdle.

</comment><comment><USER28> No shit, Sherlock.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have an engineering friend who went to prison twice a couple of years ago and he's making 200k now.

<comment><USER30> Everyone knows people like that. The problem is the amount of ex-felons who can't even land a median salary job. Not everyone, even in the non-con pool, can pull off a 6 figure tech wiz job.</comment></comment>


Y Combinator: Startup Library - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

<comment><USER2> The library linked to at the bottom of the Hacker News main page. Are you kidding me!?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it would be good if pg or some of the others at YC selected a few of the most appropriate submissions from the people at YC Hacker news and added them to the library (perhaps encouraging the authors to clean them up a bit too).</comment>


Programmers: What To Do If You Get Fired - <AUTHOR> http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/03/programmers-what-to-do-if-you-get-fired.html <comment><USER2> This was great. I'm not commenting on the message (though I liked that too, he wrote enough caveats in there to make it responsible.)

I mean the writing was great. I laughed at least 3 times, and grinned most of the rest of it.

It's a really long sales letter. True.

But it also has at least three stories in there that are so entertaining that even if you're a bored millionaire taking a break from counting the vintage restored cars in your airport hangar, and need no career advice at all, you should still probably read the post.

(no affiliation w/Giles or his enterprises)

<comment><USER3> I've studied direct mail a little bit, and one of the more counterintuitive things is that generally long sales letters perform a lot better than short ones. I believe the recommended length for letters by mail - at least in the past - was 5-6 pages.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps it's people falling prey to a time-spent version of the sunk cost fallacy?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I kept seeing the title... I knew it was coming... I kept reading and reading. Bam, "give me money." It was very clickbank-esque in a way. An almost useless story because the part that you really want is being sold. We (programmers) wanted to know what to do if we get fired, not read a story about getting fired. I mean the message is there: "improve your job searching skills," but a 12 year old could advise that as a smart career move.

Furthermore, if a person must be advised to make a top-notch resume, or that having your name in google and not being associated with child pornography sites is a good idea; maybe they shouldn't be a programmer. Labeled: common sense... no amount of money can purchase that. Sure they get over one boundary and make it to the next obstacle, but where will their advisor be when its time to work as a team or develop a project? There's a certain amount of mathematics, logic, and the ability to find information on your own required in programming.

Then again programming these days is not the glorious lines of c and inline- assembly I imagined taking over the world while reading through the quakeworld source as a teenager.

</comment><comment><USER6> It should also be noted that Giles works in Los Angeles. Having spent 5 years in LA as a developer, I can tell you companies there are absolutely desperate for talent.

Contrast this with a tech heavy area like Boston, where competition is greater. A number of my peers graduated with CS degrees and had to deliver packages for UPS to make ends meet.

<comment><USER7> Nobody in America is more mobile than recent college grads. And yet "a number" took jobs with UPS but none apparently thought to move to LA?

Seriously?

<comment><USER6> Some people don't know about the opportunities.

Some people value being near family.

Some people are just afraid of change.

The entire discussion is making me want to finish an essay I started five months ago, when I left LA. But in short, there are up sides and down sides of relocating to an area with high demand; there's usually a reason for the demand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What a long-winded ad.

<comment><USER8> Ok, yeah... but, as someone who actually writes long form sales pages, I'm impressed. He nailed the shit out of it. I bet he'll make a mint on this page.

<comment><USER5> I saw the headline bolded(old trick) two+ times and knew this guy wanted money. I almost closed the page then, but read on for the sake of procrastinating learning objective-c and getting to post this comment.

He's perfected the art of clickbank. I was waiting for the 2d photo of the woman to pop up in the corner and audio to start blaring over my speakers on why his advice would be pure ROI once I reached the first buy button.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow. I don't think even Zed Shaw has ever gotten fired in such a spectacular manner.

Abrasive personalities can sometimes be a good thing, but "I've got getting new jobs so well figured-out that not even behavior which was borderline insane ever stopped me from getting a new job." is probably a huge warning sign.

<comment><USER10> Giles Bowkett is funny, outrageous, and entertaining. His brand of humor probably isn't for everyone but to me it's a sign of someone who's imaginative enough and not afraid to think things through without being constrained by convention. I think I'd like working with him.

Also, he DID state clearly that the cream-soda-throwing incident was unacceptable. Admitting to and learning from your mistakes is almost better than not making them.

<comment><USER9> He does sound interesting, and like a fun coworker.

However, you must admit that if working with him, you must update your prior probability of "work being interrupted by a SWAT team and an not-coincidental family of rabid ferrets."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The most important thing I gleaned was that next time I'm arrested in New Mexico, I'll try to be very, very, clear, that I'm a non-smoker.

I only read 1/4 of it, but definitely enjoyed the read :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Have worked with a few fellows just like described in this post. Temper tantrums, throwing chairs, yelling and verbally hostile, etc.…

Would never hire somebody with that type of track record.

Smarts and programming chops is good and all, but one needs to "play well with others".

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't know about hiring him as a programmer, but I would _definitely_ hire him to write sales copy.

</comment><comment><USER14> The paragraph that hooked me has not been addressed in other comments. That is:

      Most programmers I know seem to respond to job searches
      by learning new programming languages. The logic there is
      pretty weak. "I can't get a job with a language I know, so
      why don't I see instead if I can get a job with a language
      I don't know." Learning new languages is a good thing, but
      there's a time and a place for everything. It's never a
      matter of your skills being stale; there are still COBOL
      jobs out there. If you're good at programming, and you
      can't get a job, the skill to improve is not your
      programming skill but your job-getting skill. If you've got
      a task that requires two skills, and you have one of those
      skills down solid, but you suck at the other skill, the
      thing to do is not spend even more time perfecting the
      skill you already have down solid.

As someone looking into programming jobs after a long period of not doing too much programming, I'm interested in what people think about this sentiment.

<comment><USER15> That paragraph kind of struck me too. I know I have thought that I need to learn new programming languages in order to get a job. Its hard not to think that when the majority of programming jobs have very very specific requirements on languages and technologies that you MUST KNOW in order to apply, despite the reality of the skills of the person hired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Giles is commenting in this thread, but his most recent account got hellbanned 2 days ago — and that's at least his 4th hellbanning. He didn't even do anything this time.

You'll have to turn on [showdead] in your profile to see them.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why in the world would someone want to be coached by a jerk who refuses to work and assaults people who disagree with him!

</comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me of how we talk about identifying talent and how it is difficult in the software industry.

Here is a hint: You might want to ask people, "Have you been fired for any of the reasons Giles Bowkett has been fired?" If the answer is yes, you're probably better off not hiring.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ah, the long-winded ad marketing approach in action... Being highly entertaining also meant I read it even though I have no intention of obtaining, nor need of, the product at this time. Thanks, Giles.

</comment><comment><USER20> There actually is something worth reading in that long post (starting around paragraph 10).

That being said, the author's "personality" is very transparent through the whole post. Need I say more?

</comment><comment><USER21> The video linked from the post (<http://vimeo.com/9945353>) was very disappointing. It promises 'PageRank in 5 lines of Ruby', but delivers nothing more than the mathematical definition of PageRank rewritten in pseudo-code. Not helpful at all.

I'm calling it pseudo-code because it can't possibly work as written, as it would just recurse infinitely. Your time is better spent reading the actual paper:

infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

</comment><comment><USER22> It looks very similar to Timothy Ferris brainquicken product presentation : <http://brainquicken.com/main/Brain-Quick.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> good god i'm not reading all that - anyone have a summary?

<comment><USER2> Data points:

* As pointed out by others, the people hiring programmers may not be so hot at it

* As pointed out by others, the exact same skills can get you a really cool job, or a really bad job.

* _Getting a job_ it a totally different skill than _Doing a job_

* Regardless of your programming skills (which i'm not here to talk about), i may be able to help you with your _job getting skills_ .

* New Mexico: Wack

Personal anecdotes:

* i got fired for a bad reason that wasn't my fault

* i got fired for a good reason that was my fault

* i got fired once because of a combination of my own issues and the innate lameness of an environment

* One time some crazy circumstances beyond my control, combined with a mild legal infraction on my part, led to hijinx

The message:

* Being appealing isn't magic.

* Being found isn't magic

* I'm not awesome, just skilled

* I can help you get the same skills with one of three services you can pay for

* don't just believe me, here are some examples

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hmm, this is not a tongue-in-cheek poke at internet marketers?

</comment><comment><USER25> I want my time back

<comment><USER4> Sorry - take it up with the submitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> My question is this: how do you figure out _which_ assets to create?

<comment><USER27> I have picked it works like so: 1\. Is there something that annoys you, or a crazy idea that comes into your head? 2\. Actually do something about it, unlike all the people out there who don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is why the Ruby (esp. Rails) community only works for startups that pay in "equity."

Down-mod if you want, but I've been running a 20 employee company for more than six years and have recently moved contract work from PHP to Python due to the unprofessionalism in the Ruby community (I would have preferred Ruby if it had a better scene).

Our internal products are also mostly PHP or Python. Same reason.

<comment><USER29> It's the facial hair. If Matz and his followers had more facial hair, the Ruby scene would rock. I know he may be doing the best he can, but the fact remains: programming languages are awesome in proportion to the beardiness of their creators and cheerleaders. K&R? Check. Guido? Check. John McCarthy? Check. Wall? Moustache but no beard, so half-sucky but tolerable. Stroustrup? Trimmed down a lot, so good but not truly awesome. The Lua guy? Worse than Matz. Java, PHP, and JavaScript? You can see the faces! The skin!!!11! And let's not forget COBOL, the only language to develop actual estrogen poisoning.

What's the beard coverage fraction at your company?

<comment><USER10> In defense of Larry Wall's moustache, it's awesome in a way that either Sonny Bono or Thomas Magnum could be proud of.

<comment><USER29> His moustache needs no defending. It is indeed awesome. It's just not a beard.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman: "We Can Go Public Any Time We Want To" - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/02/linkedins-reid-hoffman-we-can-go-public-any-time-we-want-to/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like a very solidly-grounded CEO. I wouldn't merge with FB at gunpoint; all signs suggest they burn money like it's a fucking fossil fuel.

Side note: What was all that garbage about the accommodations at the beginning? MA needs an editor. And didn't he very publicly announce a few days ago that he was taking a month off of this stuff?</comment>


A wide-spectrum language to support program specification and development (1978) - <AUTHOR> http://sci-hub.io/10.1145/954587.954588 <comment><USER2> I'm out of context: Was this paper an impactful one? Does it have any ideas that can be applied today?

<comment><USER3> From the paper (brief read) it seems like an attempt at creating one language that could express everything from high level program specifications down to low level implementation details. It seems meant to be paired with a refinement calculus to perform the transformations from one level down to the next.

In my understanding some levels are not, strictly, executable by the machine. Though they may be used as ways of verifying their refinements?

The modes and objects remind me of more advanced type systems such as Haskell and the MLs, a bit of Ada. The ability to mix high level specs and low level implementation brings to mind design by contract (Eiffel), as well as the methods used in formal specification and verification by Frama C and Spark Ada for systems languages.</comment></comment>


Benny Peiser: Climate libel chill - <AUTHOR> http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/03/12/benny-peiser-climate-libel-chill.aspx

<comment><USER2> It has happened before.

"Piltdown man" was considered the greatest scientific hoax of all time

See PBS May 30, 2006 program

Link <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hoax/>

"For decades, a fossil skull discovered in Piltdown, England, was hailed as the missing link between apes and humans. Entire careers were built on its authenticity. Then in 1953, the awful truth came out: "Piltdown Man" was a fake! But who done it? In "The Boldest Hoax," NOVA gets to the bottom of the greatest scientific hoodwinking of all time."

</comment><comment><USER3> Regardless of where you come down on this issue, this whole incident should be a lesson for communication. Assume, especially if your work is controversial, that your private e-mails, etc aren't and make sure they are worded so that you don't look like a fraud.

<comment><USER4> More than that - be prepared to share data with "the opposition" and to question sources that provide "supporting evidence".

I was raised as an academic (have a science PhD) and, without following this issue in detail, have continued to assume that climate change is "real". However, reading that column made me deeply ashamed about the way people - scientists - have behaved.

On the other hand, I can understand how being attacked by financially powerful interests that have a vested interest in discrediting valid, difficult, scientific work, generates that a "siege mentality".

So perhaps one thing that needs to come from this is institutional support (moral guidance and counseling, for example) for people doing research that is going to be opposed by powerful people in the "real world"...

<comment><USER5> > I can understand how being attacked by financially powerful interests that > have a vested interest in discrediting valid, difficult, scientific work, > generates that a "siege mentality".

Let's not forget the group-think and career-killing around AGW.

And the money - grant money is going to folks "proving" AGW.

<comment><USER4> I think that's all part of the same problem.

Of course there's always peer pressure, but it's also true that science does progress because someone questions the current doctrine (and when you're a young, smart scientist, that's what you hope to do...). And some get the money because they are brilliant, in spite of disagreeing with everyone else.

Science does, generally, work. It's not perfect, but nor is it the kind of monster that people paint it to be.

I have worked as a researcher and the kind of defensive mentality described in that article is _not_ normal. The most obvious explanation I can think of is that they were consistently attacked by vested interests. Money talks. Always has, always will.

<comment><USER5> > I have worked as a researcher and the kind of defensive mentality described > in that article is not normal. The most obvious explanation I can think of > is that they were consistently attacked by vested interests.

You make it sound like the attacks were unprovoked and somehow unfair. Considering that they proposed massive social changes, said that "heretics" should be jailed, and so on, that's simply wrong. They acted as crusaders.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Illustrative Programming - <AUTHOR> http://martinfowler.com/bliki/IllustrativeProgramming.html <comment><USER2> The term "illustrative programming" seems a bit pretentious, plus misleadingly suggestive of visual programming.

I agree that the spreadsheet is (1) a programming environment, and therefore (2) the most widely used programming environment. Has there been any other tool that put comparable programming power into the hands of non-programmers?

One thing that distinguishes the spreadsheet, which Fowler sort of butts up against without mentioning, is that the user is never asked to formulate abstractions. Spreadsheet formulas always go hand-in-hand with concrete data, so the user can build a spreadsheet without ever having to think beyond their particular example. I think this is one of the keys to the spreadsheet's popularity. To put it another way, I think this is one of the things that makes most programming inaccessible to most people: they have a low tolerance for abstraction. If you asked a spreadsheet user to type in all the formulas before instantiating them with data (and there have been attempts to "improve" on spreadsheets which do just that), most users would recoil.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't the way to go be to have an illustrative IDE instead of an illustrative programming language? That way you would have the full power of the language, yet newbies would be able to get something done in it.

For instance the flow of the program could consist of a number of boxes stacked on top of each other, illustrating the flow. Each box would have one or more lines showing the input and output, and when clicked it would open up showing either the boxes it contains (funtions, nethods, code snippets etc.) or the raw code if you're at the lowest level. You can click the boxes-within- boxes until you reach the raw code at the bottom.

The user would be able to drag boxes into his program, from simple ones that just print something to the screen (Two lines: input text and output text) to complex methods and functions.

The whole thing could probly be coded up in emacs.

Note that this is just a wild idea, and there are probably tons of things I haven't thought of. It's pretty interesting though.

<comment><USER2> Boxes-and-lines programming has been tried many times. It's enticing because if you look at simple examples it seems like it ought to work. The problem is that when applied to programs of any complexity the visual format quickly becomes unwieldy. There's a reason why humans represent complex information textually.

<comment><USER3> You're probably right.</comment></comment></comment>