Tcl: Everything Is a String - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/everything+is+a+string <comment><USER2> Heart for Tcl.

Tcl wasn't my first language, but it's near and dear to my heart. It's a little oddball for sure.

I can't decide whether it's Python trying to be Bash, or Bash trying to be Python. But it's surprisingly expressive.

Everything is strange about the syntax - from "everything is a string" to "expr" to the weird variable-assignment syntax.

It's also really tiny, and has a great async event-loop framework. It has built-in support for sockets and non-blocking I/O. It has a GUI toolkit that's pretty useful for making quick-and-dirty tools. It's incredibly easy to use interactively with a REPL. And it's still the scripting language of choice for the FPGA industry, which is where I got my start as a software engineer.

The Tcl community is small and stable. And the language just keeps soldiering onwards, in a gradual way. It feels like it's been stable and fully-realized for the last 20 years. No breaking API changes, no syntax changes. It just keeps on keeping on, providing automation to tools that need it. Tcl has outlived a bunch of newer languages, and I hope it sticks around for another 20 years.

<comment><USER3> Tcl/Tk was a _tremendous_ rapid GUI prototyping tool. I remember cobbling together a Verilog schematic viewer in a couple of weeks using that combination, for the Series A funding round of the startup I was working at in the early 2000s.

<comment><USER4> This was my reason for foraying into Tcl too. Till then I had used Java's AWT and Swing; but prototyping with Tcl/Tk was _way_ faster and intuitive. Mid-2000s. I ended up liking the language - idiosyncratic as it was. Partly the reason I am curious about and planning to read Ousterhout's (creator of Tcl) book "A Philosophy of software Design" soon.

<comment><USER5> It's a great book (only one reference to Tcl that I recall though). Also Perl/Tk was the first GUI toolkit I used (followed by Glade).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My favorite thing in the Tcl ecosystem was "Expect". It's a tool you can use to automate ssh/telnet/serial connections to other machines.

It has a really mature and elegant way of handling the automation of command/response scenarios in connections to other machines.

I do similar stuff with .net now, but it's not as pretty. I wish there were a modern equivalent of Expect that as as nice.

<comment><USER7> Expect is an amazing tool for dealing with old hardware that _insists_ on interactive prompts instead of CLI flags.

<comment><USER8> And modern software that does the same. Cisco AnyConnect VPN thing, for example. You can feed it a command file, but that doesn't give you any error handling or logic to handle dynamic responses. Expect to the rescue!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A nice article to quickly understand Tcl defining features is "Tcl the Misunderstood": [http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html](http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html)

And some previous HN discussion on the article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7069642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7069642)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4920831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4920831)

Edit: grammar

</comment><comment><USER10> Redis was originally in Tcl!

[https://gist.github.com/antirez/6ca04dd191bdb82aad9fb241013e...](https://gist.github.com/antirez/6ca04dd191bdb82aad9fb241013e88a8)

<comment><USER11> And SQLite was originally a TCL extension!

From [https://www.sqlite.org/tclsqlite.html](https://www.sqlite.org/tclsqlite.html):

> The SQLite library is designed to be very easy to use from a Tcl or Tcl/Tk > script. SQLite began as a Tcl extension and the primary test suite for > SQLite is written in TCL. SQLite can be used with any programming language, > but its connections to TCL run deep.

Given both of these, it kind of feels like something about the Tcl philosophy leads people to build (or draws in the sort of person who builds) simple/elegant data storage layers. Makes me more curious about it.

<comment><USER12> Ousterhout's book on Tcl has a chapter one that is essentially "How to do small reusable things in unix and win" \- it's absolutely brilliant and explains how to think in unix and why composable entities with simple interfaces have done so well. SQLite and TCL are the best of unix philosophy made concrete. I just read in this thread that he expanded it to an entire book - I'll be reading that as soon as I finish binging The Family Man on Prime Video. Extending TCL with a new C command is exactly as hard as a CS 101 C program (which at the time was the lower limit on easy for CS folk).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This paper by John Ousterhout (creator of Tcl) is a good read if you think Tcl is a weird language plagued by bad design decisions. If that describes you, it's probably the case that you don't understand the problem Tcl was designed to solve.

[https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/tcl- usenix.p...](https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/papers/tcl-usenix.pdf)

<comment><USER14> >Almost all Tcl ''programs'' will be short, many only one line long.

I weep silently over the 50kloc tcl codebase I help maintain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Tcl is an alien technology I wish I embraced when I was first exposed to it. I didn't quite get it, I was confused, so I gravitated towards Perl because it reminded me of C somewhat. I wasn't aware of my cognitive blind spots. In many ways Tcl is more powerful than most implementations of Lisp. Like a Lisp crossed with a Forth with the ability to turn spheres inside out with no tearing during execution. Magic.

<comment><USER16> _" In many ways Tcl is more powerful than most implementations of Lisp."_

Could you elaborate on this? In what ways is it more powerful?

Also, I don't get what connection TCL has with Forth. They seem uttery different from each other to me.

<comment><USER17> One thing those three languages have in common is that they are almost syntax- less. Each, in its own particular way, allows user defined code to process tokens of the program source before it gets to the core interpreter, allowing users to implement custom control structures and DSLs.

<comment><USER18> I've seen a lot of people compare it to Forth for DSL implementation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the article doesn't make enough mention of the fact that internally, most things are not actually strings for much of their lifetime. They must be able to be represented that way, but that's different than everything being a string all the time. It does create a few problems, but they're a bit more subtle than "OMG, the integers are strings all the time!"

<comment><USER20> This is an old wiki entry that dates from the pre-8.0 days of Tcl (The history is truncated). For the past 20 years everything has been _representable_ as a string.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is old, but continuously updated. Last update, last Friday.

<comment><USER20> That is irrelevant when the main thrust of the article is outdated and reflects the worldview from before Tcl_Obj was added.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Actually since Tcl 8 that is no longer true, yet it keeps being repeated as such.

[http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.0.html](http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.0.html)

TclTk was great, but it also teached me never again to rely on languages without JIT or AOT available on their toolchains.

Rewriting Tcl functions into C code was a routine task.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, but that just changed internally, in the language everything is still a string.

<comment><USER23> A better way to phrase it (..even before tcl 8) is that everything can be TREATED like a string.

Numbers arent being converted to and from strings, things like sockets/files arent strings (their handles are though!)

<comment><USER24> Right. I think the one great feature it shapes with Lisp is, that everything has a textual representation. That means, all types of values can be presented as text and can be recreated from a textual representation. For Lisp, it is S-Expressions, which can be printed and read, for TCL it is the syntax which can be printed as strings and interpreting strings as data.

<comment><USER25> >I think the one great feature it shapes with Lisp is, that everything has a textual representation.

Is this true even for procedures? I was recently playing around with Scheme and was disappointed that once a procedure is defined, it got internalized and didn't have a textual representation other than #<proc> or the like.

In TCL, procedure signatures and bodies are stored within the runtime. You could essentially dump the entire state to a TCL file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For me Tcl's killer app has been Expect: [https://core.tcl- lang.org/expect/index](https://core.tcl-lang.org/expect/index) there is nothing quite like it if you have to manage 1000's of devices and cli's are the only thing you have to do it!

<comment><USER18> have you used pexpect?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My first job was in Tcl. I grew to really like the language, though when I had to leave the company I was at a pretty strong disadvantage due to how uncommon it is.

Everything is a string is a great way to reduce the mental load about typing.

<comment><USER28> One of my earlier jobs was porting Travelocity.com from TCL to Java - the TCL programmers loved the old site and absolutely hated the "new" one. I don't think I've ever managed to make more enemies in my professional life than I did in those couple of years.

<comment><USER27> Tcl to Java is a huge change. Totally different syntax / syntactic style. I can imagine the annoyance of the Tcl programmers having to deal with the inherant verbose-ness of java.

<comment><USER28> Yeah, and this was in the relatively early days of Java, too, so the front-end was all JSP. Oh, did I mention they originally gave us a three-month deadline to port the ENTIRE site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The SQLite author is a big Tcl user. I believe the codebase is primarily Tcl when you include the test suite, though the core implementation is obviously a C library.

D Richard Hipp is his name and he has some nice talks online. He uses his own text editor and chat app he wrote in Tcl to maintain the project and communicate with other developers.

<comment><USER30> From what I understand, D Richard Hipp's appreciation of Tcl is the reason SQLite has dynamic typing. (I believe I heard this in one of his talks that's on youtube, which are excellent.)

<comment><USER29> That makes sense. I heard him say that the pain points of dynamic typing are mostly just people using it for web apps that eventually have to migrate to Postgres and the like, causing some headaches because client server DB's are much more rigid, causing errors.

I agree that his talks are great! He's such an enthusiastic guy.

I hope SQLite will adopt default foreign keys and WAL sometime soon, but I understand that he needs to keep it as backwards compatible as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Don't forget the amazing AOLserver, which was a very elegant web applications server with Tcl as the native template language. This was a great environment.

<comment><USER32> I was tech lead for it for a couple years. Glad someone remembers it :)

<comment><USER12> Hey! I wrote flap in TCL module for it! Loved using AOLserver but writing the extension taught me to fear threads - now loving Golang :) but I miss AOL, AOLserver, SAPI and TCL in the evenings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have about 5 years of heavy experience with TCL, split in half by 15 years away from it. I got a lot done with it, and it is an interesting language, but I have never, ever said, "I wish I was using TCL" in any situation. It is a unique journey down an alternate path for computer languages, that really ends up nowhere compelling, but the path itself is not arduous, although the bugs can be.

<comment><USER34> I had 1 year of full-time experience with TCL, and I can basically summarize it in the same way as you: got a lot done with it, wasn't horrible, but don't miss it.

In retrospect, I am kind of happy that somebody actually went and built TCL. "Everything is a string" is not really a sound PL paradigm, but someone needed to get stuff done, and it worked quite fine for that. It's super simple and super powerful, and beginners can be productive with it really quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > This simple and unified perspective on type is fundamental to the design of > Tcl, and puts it in an exclusive category programming languages that do not > have at least two data types that can be distinguished. The other languages > in this category are forth, BCPL, and assembly language.

What about TRAC? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAC_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRAC_\(programming_language\))

</comment><comment><USER36> It's nice to guarantee that every value has a string representation. The not- so-nice part is that you have no static types and therefore no easy way to guard against mixing up safe and unsafe strings, so security reviewers will have a hard time. This is a design from before when the dangers of handling untrusted input as bare strings and doing escape handling all over the codebase were understood.

</comment><comment><USER37> Everything is a string in CMake, too. Even lists. Be very afraid of strings containing the separator character ';'...

</comment><comment><USER38> The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information. -- Alan Perlis

<comment><USER39> I think Tcl strings aren't exactly what Perlis was talking about. First, the language knows how they're used, so there's a JIT (or whatever) behind the scenes eliminating the literal deserialize-process-serialize pattern you see in shell scripts. Second, a lot of Tcl data types (hash tables, sockets, etc) can be represented by strings but the string is just a simple reference to a rich internal structure. It's almost more like a pointer than a string in other languages.

<comment><USER12> I know this item is old but surely no shell script should be limited by string copying of the language? Maybe string shuffling thru pipes, but that's the reason the CPU briefly spikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I had a bit of trouble knowing which "escape level" I'm in while debugging. You have strings that wrap strings that wrap strings, etc.

Maybe with more experience I'd learn to manage string nesting levels better, but there does seem to be a non-trivial learning curve, at least for us mortals.

</comment><comment><USER41> Everything being a string at a language level is similar to the paradigm as 'everything is an object' in java. Outside of select use-cases (scripts/text proc), the language generally fights against both conciseness and performance.

I worked with UCLA where a few teams needed to use Tcl to maintain existing web servers, and virtually every developer highly complained about using it (aside from one or two career Tcl-ers). To be honest, I don't personally have much experience with Tcl, but from what I've seen/heard, I wouldn't ever think of building web servers upon it.

<comment><USER42> One of my first jobs after college involved creating websites using Vignette StoryServer. At the time Tcl was the only language you could use with it. I was happy when a new version was released that supported Java and ASP. Tcl looked like voodoo magic to me but I'm sure for those who really got it, they were pretty productive with it.

<comment><USER43> You've brought back some painful memories for me. I'm permanently allergic to the words "lindex" and "upvar", and cringe whenever I see a "," character in a URL...

Vignette's only redeeming qualities were that: (1) the page templates permitted the execution of arbitrary Tcl code, not just the small subset that was documented by Vignette; and (2) much of the Vignette functionality was itself actually implemented in Tcl.

This led to the glorious discovery that one could simply _bypass_ the entire crazy Vignette system and use it like a very expensive (and somewhat slower) AOLserver. I sometimes feel sorry for the poor souls who inherited my terrifying and entirely undocumented creation, but that's what happens when management _forces_ developers to use the entirely wrong tool for the task at hand. ("We spent $100k USD on this software so we're damn well going to use it!")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think it is worth mentioning that I learned TCL through the Pure Data audio language, which was designed with the idea of continuously supporting at least 20 years of hardware IIRC.

It is such a useful language.

</comment><comment><USER45> I have never used Tcl but this headline truly intrigued me. It sounds like the antithesis of JavaScript's "everything is an object". An object is very abstract whereas a string is very ... literal? I know many generic operations I can already do with a string but then inspecting its contents (which would be a generic operation) may reveal other capabilities, restrictions, what have you. Hmm ...

</comment><comment><USER46> TCL. That brings me down the memory lane to IRC and all those Eggdrop bot scripts I've written. :)

</comment><comment><USER47> If you're not familiar with TCL this introduction from redis-author Antirez is worth a read:

[http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html](http://antirez.com/articoli/tclmisunderstood.html)

</comment><comment><USER48> For most of the past 38 years I have earned my living as a computer programmer/developer using the Mumps programming language. It, too, views most everything as a string (or an array), and sometimes that string can also function as a number.

</comment><comment><USER49> That's really weird. I didn't know this was a thing but I had a dream a couple days ago that I was using a language in which everything was a string (like Lisp but with strings instead of lists). Guess I'll have to give it a whirl.

</comment><comment><USER50> Tcl: one of the slowest languages

[https://github.com/trizen/language- benchmarks](https://github.com/trizen/language-benchmarks)

<comment><USER51> wtf luajit is a monster

<comment><USER52> Probably why it's so popular in games as a scripting engine (going back to 2003).

<comment><USER53> > in games as a scripting engine (going back to 2003)

you are think of lua, luajit is a different beast.

[http://luajit.org/changes.html](http://luajit.org/changes.html)

LuaJIT 1.0.3 — 2005-09-08

This is the first public release of LuaJIT.

<comment><USER52> Didn't realize they had the Python/PyPy thing going on. Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> About a decade ago now, I was writing a group chat system of the Slack/Discord variety, and I was pondering how I'd like to support markup. I wanted to do something more powerful than just the regular "bold/emphasis/strikeout/links/etc." set, as the users of this group-chat were the type who would enjoy adding animations and other "effects" to their text, especially on top of their custom emoticons/stickers. (Don't fret, this wasn't team-productivity software ;)

What I ended up doing was extending the backend with support for parsing messages using a "command language"—essentially Tcl. The "everything is a string" feature of Tcl-like languages was essential, because I wanted these "commands" to be arbitrarily composable, and both the input and output were required to be strings (i.e. HTML), so commands couldn't pass data-structures to one-another; they had to accept strings, and emit strings.

The user was not allowed to enter arbitrary HTML in their message (this was filtered out as a pre-filtering step), but any Tcl command was allowed to take HTML-strings as input and emit HTML-strings as output, and the string that was eventually generated, HTML and all, was treated as the user's actual message. Many of the implemented commands would parse the input HTML-string into an AST, tweak it somehow, and then re-emit it as a string.

An example of such a command would be something like:

        And then [spoiler the protagonist died [rotate 5 [big :ohno:]]]

...where 'rotate' and 'big' layer together CSS effects (combining CSS classes with a bit of custom element style to parameterize it, with each rewriting the HTML AST structure of the previous to ensure the CSS effects "stack" correctly); and 'spoiler' is just a CSS class with pseudo-selector behaviors.

Another example would be:

       [type oh nooo[sfx fall]oooooooo]

...which would use a CSS class+JS trigger to display the message one character at a time the first time it became viewport-visible... and embed a hidden <audio> element at the top of the message body, that would get triggered as the typing progressed to it. Sort of like the dialogue event-scripting in a video game.

And, of course, just like an IRC bot, you could rely on the backend being Turing complete, in ways like:

       # generate random numbers
       [roll 1d6]

       # set a countdown timer on a user,
       # resetting it whenever the user talks
       [deadmanswitch 5mins I'm slacking off again!]

       # get the backend to (use a job queue to)
       # fetch a resource, plop it into its own download folder,
       # and then post a link to the retrieved copy
       [dl http://example.com]

       # same, but also create a BitTorrent torrent for
       # the file, register it with a BT tracker on
       # the backend, and then emit the URL of the torrent file
       [torrent [dl http://example.com]]

\---

At this point, I don't really think there's much room for a new group chat system; but this one feature was really cool to me, and I always wish I had seen it implemented in some bigger product.

</comment><comment><USER54> Everything is a string including the comments -- commenting code actually degrades performance!

<comment><USER55> This business falls into the "well that's handy" followed by the "who in the world thought honoring continuation characters in comments was a good idea?!"

        #! /bin/sh
        # the next line restarts using tclsh \
        exec tclsh "$0" ${1+"$@"}

This page is just filled with _wow_ :

[https://wiki.tcl-lang.org/page/comment](https://wiki.tcl- lang.org/page/comment)

with an especial nod toward:

        set two [1 + 1] ;# line comment needs a statement terminator

<comment><USER56> One of the world's largest hardware companies uses the line continuation feature to help make stuff you've almost certainly used today.

Whether that is the best way to solve their problem is another story, but that feature does get used.

<comment><USER12> And the nice thing about TCL as a language is there's just like 3 or 4 rules to remember and then you can embed the parser in your head. # is a command that discards all its arguments. So it's in the normal flow of syntax, so line continuation works. It's odd to see but easy to reason about after you are used to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> ha! i 'member this. hmmmmm

Stringly Typed. yes. yes.

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming- jargon/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/)

now that you put a duck in news. i call to remove it. thankyou.

</comment><comment><USER58> They fixed it later, but in the beginning, everything was a C string. Meaning you couldn't output a NULL char. Pretty frustrating when I discovered this while trying to write a length encoded protocol :)

</comment><comment><USER59> gitk !!!

also Linux kernel config

</comment><comment><USER60> > This is one of the central features of Tcl.

One of the biggest missing features surely? "Everything is a string" is a terrible design.

<comment><USER61> Yet UNIX pipes are strings and amazingly popular. Its amazing how we don't see a movement to get typed streams so we can give up the reparse culture of UNIX. I guess PowerShell does typing.

<comment><USER3> The problem with typed streams is that couples the implementations together on both ends and tends to de-genericise them. You get a "grep" that would _only_ work on strings when actually you'd be quite happy grepping numbers 99% of the time. Also in order to serialise them you'd need fully typed _files_. Notice that you can't serialise a Powershell stream.

The world tried "everything is XML" and more recently "everything is JSON" as a solution to this. The latter is almost there.

<comment><USER62> " _Notice that you can 't serialise a Powershell stream._"

Not sure what you mean by this. This code works fine:

        $credential = Get-Credential -Message "Enter Credential"
        $credential | Export-Clixml "credential.xml"
        $credential = Import-Clixml "credential.xml"

You can also

        $variable | Out-File ./file.txt

if you just want to save the text output.

<comment><USER63> Yea, but Powershell is nearly unusable in many use cases. It is soooo slow for some things. I really like bits and pieces of it though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> There is an object-oriented extension to Tcl which is along the lines of CLOS.

[http://media.wu-wien.ac.at/whatIsXOTcl.html](http://media.wu- wien.ac.at/whatIsXOTcl.html)

Lispers need to stop thinking that they are the only ones who can do "macros" and "DSLs". The evidence is clearly on the contrarian side. You can have syntax and macros and be practical.

If the failure of Tcl has taught us anything its that performance is important.

<comment><USER65> >Lispers need to stop thinking that they are the only ones who can do "macros" and "DSLs". The evidence is clearly on the contrarian side.

We know that one can do "macros" in many other languages including of course TCL. The question is how difficult is to do them and how easy is to have control over there. Lisps, due to code being s-expressions, make macro creation extremely easy, and Common Lisp has useful tools to ease working with macros, for example macroexpand, which is integrated into most Lisp IDEs to easily visualize, in-place within the code, how a macro will expand into, step by step.

In comparison to that, most languages that do allow macros, make it a cumbersome, buggy task.

<comment><USER64> XML, Julia, Rust, Crystal, Forth? support macros too. I was just pointing out that it can be done without sexp. Yes, the tooling sucks. Grammatical implementation is less powerful but that seems better than implementing a grammar ontop of sexps. You get some lexical freedom ontop of pure text that you don't get implementing grammars on top of sexps, respecting lisps tokenisation rules.

I wonder how far Lisp would have come if people had taken the source-source translator approach of js and just implemented an Algol frontend to lisp. There's plenty of things that Lisp had that are far more useful than just macros.

I think Tcl is the Unix answer to Lisp. Worse is better somehow evolved into a Lisp.

<comment><USER66> > _I wonder how far Lisp would have come if people had taken the source-source > translator approach of js and just implemented an Algol frontend to lisp._

People did that a number of times over Lisp's history, so Lisp would have come exactly where it has come.

The first Algol-like front end to Lisp was supposed to be the direct descendant of Lisp 1, namely Lisp 2. This branch went nowhere. The descendants of Lisp trace back to Lisp 1.5.

In the early 70's there was something called CGOL. It still exists.

There have been various more recent things in that direction.

And of course, certain contemporary languages are basically sort of Lisp-like things with Algol bolted on.

Lisp 2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISP_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISP_2)

Manual with code examples: [http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp2/Abra...](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/lisp2/AbrahamsEtAl- LISP2.pdf)

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> It still powers some companies with an annual rev ~1B.

</comment><comment><USER68> In AWK every value is Integer/String</comment>


Michael Scott Explanation of Bitcoins please? - <AUTHOR>

http://vimeo.com/27060669
Can someone explain bitcoins to me and how to exchange the for read money like I'm a little kid?
Thanks!!! <comment><USER2> This is a great overview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo#t=11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo#t=11)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is helpful, although where are the actual exchanges?

<comment><USER2> I think bitstamp.net is good. Also, check out coinbase.com and of course, [https://localbitcoins.com](https://localbitcoins.com)</comment></comment></comment>


Ofuscacion de codigo - <AUTHOR> http://hackingeeks.com/blog/2010/09/20/ofuscacion-de-codigo/ <comment><USER2> Interesting blog, but unlike me, most people here don't understand Spanish. This looks like auto-submitting link-farming spam.</comment>


Propfan - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propfan <comment><AUTHOR> So with renewed interest on aircraft emissions (due to Greta Thunberg et al.), I thought of drawing attention to this promising concept from the 80s. It's still being worked on by Safran: [https://www.avweb.com/recent- updates/business-military/safra...](https://www.avweb.com/recent- updates/business-military/safran-starts-open-rotor-ground-testing/) with apparently the noise problems addressed. The basic idea is it generates similar amounts of thrust as a turbofan while consuming 35% less fuel. It was a great idea, but fuel prices were low and aeroacoustics wasn't at a state to handle geometry this complex. I wouldn't be surprised to see us flying on these in 50 years though.

<comment><USER2> Interesting! By from the 80ies you mean [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_7J7](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_7J7) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Propfans are great in theory; extra efficiency! More power! Less weight! However in practice, things are not so rosy. The biggest downsides to propfans are Noise and Safety. Propfans are LOUD! Much louder than the current generation of turbofans. The lack of a fan-case means the tips of the blades are whirling right next to the passenger compartment. Which leads to safety; there's no fan-case to protect the passengers if one of the blades were to detach from the engine. Turbofans all have very stout fan-cases (they're the single heaviest part of all turbofan engines) and the certification processes include a blade-off test to make sure that the case can contain it. A blade puncturing the fuselage would be a big problem.

<comment><USER4> How does the blade detach scenarios differ from turboprops in this case?

<comment><USER5> Props are way slower moving and more resistant to breaking up than fans.

<comment><USER6> They also have far fewer blades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All one has to do is look at the issues plaguing the current crop of geared turbo-fans to see where this really struggles in the real world. Attaching an ultra high RPM gas turbine to a relatively slow moving fan, whether a prop or ducted fan, is not an easy engineering exercise. The amount of heat generated in the gear box, the expensive materials that heat requires, and the operational needs of many start/stop cycles are making these engine styles difficult. That's not to say its not a worthy goal. It just seems that we're just on the cusp of making these things a reality and I think the geared turbofan will end up being the winner vs the propfan.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is the idea with this design that it would allow for planes as fast as jet aircraft, but with turboprop efficiency? Is the implication that this might be a way to preserve air travel with a lower carbon footprint?

</comment><comment><USER9> I am guessing the "Tic Tac" ufos are drones with prop fans.

<comment><USER10> No... these engines would still produce a very visible infrared signature from the exhaust gases. The Tic Tac ufo from what we understand had essentially zero IR signature.

<comment><USER9> Super interesting. Thanks for the info!</comment></comment></comment>


Don't panic, but that public Wi-Fi comes from ... inside your house - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydemocrat.com/business/ci_25059667/dont-panic-but-that-public-wi-fi-comes? <comment><USER2> Interesting, would not have guessed a company like comcast would go down this mesh networking route. Bad news for competitors in the area, but good news for subscribers, at least in urban areas.</comment>


Replacing My Kid's College Fund with a "Start Something" Fund - <AUTHOR> https://unsupervisedmethods.com/replacing-my-kids-college-fund-with-a-start-something-fund-3b51c8c96501#4t3qgaf <comment><USER2> Sounds like a horrible idea full of assumptions and pressure, as opposed to offering an exploratory period of life that is college (socially and intellectually), a nice option for those who can afford it.

Not everyone has to be coaxed into entrepreneurship, it's an evil of our consumerist age. Your kid would probably rather participate in society at large than in your suicidal runway idea of a romanticized youth of modern times. "Starting something" with no experience at all is almost guaranteed to mean burned cash, family resentment and a bunch of hard lessons. Why not send them to military school and spare cash and suffering?

<comment><USER3> > offering an exploratory period of life that is college (socially and > intellectually)

That is exactly what college is, and is supposed to be.

Many people make the mistake of thinking that college is a jobs training program, or a career readiness program - it's not. It was never intended to be. College is supposed to give someone a broader perspective, a more complex worldview, exposure to a vast array of topics and ideas, and to develop habits that are generally beneficial to any life or intellectual pursuit. That's it.

Entrepreneurship is great, and it will teach you many different things and some hard lessons as well, but it's not going to even remotely offer the same sort of experience or exposure. It's not college, you're not reading classical literature as part of a startup grind.

Also, society needs to accept that for some people, neither college, nor "starting something", is well suited or an appropriate expectation. Some people just aren't cut out for either, and there is nothing wrong with that. Some people would be better off learning a trade, or going through an apprenticeship, or being self taught, or any number of other means of learning and developing skills.

<comment><USER4> Sorry for being edgy, but please tell me where I can get jobs training for being a doctor, lawyer, etc. that isn't college. Regardless of what you think college is, college currently is primarily jobs training.

<comment><USER5> That is a small percentage of the population.

Most people who went to college are not now working in an industry where a degree is literally required by law.

<comment><USER6> It is also not the most efficient way to achieve the required training for those jobs. We could have future doctors and lawyers go straight to trade schools focused solely on those professions, and likely shave a couple years off their total education. But most people in our society agree that we like our doctors and lawyers to have the breadth that an undergraduate degree is intended to provide.

<comment><USER7> I don't really care if my thoracic surgeon has a strong grasp of microeconomics or 19th Century British Lit. I only care that s/he has good medical training and experience.

Note: I'm a doctor.

<comment><USER8> You don't care if your surgeon has been exposed to the idea of opportunity costs and given a framework for thinking about them structurally?

That's pretty weird, Doc.

<comment><USER9> I sure don't. First-line health care is way too expensive, and everyone suffers from it, both patients and prospective caregivers. I don't really believe exposure to gen-ed requirements makes my internal medicine doctor any more effective at diagnosing and treating illness.

<comment><USER8> First-line health care is too expensive for reasons entirely separate from "the doctor had the basics of a humanities education," though. TBH, most of the doctors I know (and I used to work in healthcare) are hyper-specialized cargo-cultists in a lot of ways and that worries me a lot; a basic framework of how-to-think-about-things seems _kind of important_ to me (and that's what the humanities are).

<comment><USER9> I think I'm going to push back on this. First-line health care is expensive in large part because the educational process of taking an 18 year old and turning them into a caregiver who can prescribe drugs and perform basic procedures is nosebleed expensive. (I'm staring down the barrel of it right now with my first kid going off to school this fall).

I'm aware that a lot of that expense is in stuff like organic chemistry, which we probably don't want to cut back on. But the gen-ed stuff matters too, especially because it matters where you go for undergrad and how well you do in those gen-ed classes in order to get into a selective med school, which is how you get a selective residency.

I don't think those gen-ed requirements are really paying for themselves in how health care is delivered.

<comment><USER8> Is it nosebleed expensive because of this class or that class, or because demand is high and supply of positions in medical schools is strictly controlled to provide scarcity to the consumer market on the other end?

I kinda feel like you're pulling an XY problem here.

(Grats on your oldest, though. Condolences on the bill.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know.

Basically this means more or less that on the day your son (or daughter) becomes 18 you put on the table 2,000x100 US$ bills in a few neat stacks and ask him/her whether he/she likes it better to:

1) Study (hard) for the next 5 years (possibly in a remote city), living with one or more co-students in a tiny apartment and receive - say - some 500-600 bucks each month for petty expenses

OR:

2) get - here and now - all the 200,000 US$ as long as they are used ONLY in expenses related to the building of a new company, but of course with no particular form of control on expenses, as I trust you and you are big enough to make your own decisions.

With rigorously invented numbers (i.e. pure speculation or guessing), I would expect that out of 100 choosing option #1 70 would get after 5 or 6 years studying and a degree (without student debt to hunt them for the rest of their life) a decent, qualified job (and income), 20 a somewhat underpaid job, 5 no stable job/income and 5 (for one reason or the other) something else.

Of those that chose option #2, I would expect that 5 manage to build a "successful" company, 15 a more or less good company (anyway providing enough income to have bills paid and raise a family) and 80 either building a company soon going to Chapter 11/bankrupcy or building no company at all.

The good question would be how many of 18 years old would choose option #1 over #2?

<comment><USER11> > Study (hard) for the next 5 years

I don't think colleges in US can be as hard as universities in some european counties. Especially where universities are free.

I would be curious to hear if there are some exceptions.

<comment><USER12> In my country (Finland), government actually pays for studying and universities are free. My experience studying abroad is that actually the curriculum and studying is mostly the same all over the world. I think there might some outliers in the TOP10 universities in the world, but the major differences are in the student population, connections and reputation. I think only maybe 10-20% study really hard anyways. At that point in life most people would have more than 100 usable hours easily, but most of the students do minimal work necessary and do something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love this idea, but you need to nurture the entrepreneur in your child before giving them the money. Like a lot of people here, I have a decent degree from a good university; I can confirm that it hasn't given me much more than a foot in the door for my next interview. Most of the academic knowledge I gained, I could have learnt by myself (in fact that's what I did, even at university), and a lot of it is now redundant. In some ways, I feel a university education was a fairly bad use of my time and money. After uni, I got a "good" job, was hugely unsatisfied, saved some money and then started my own company. I cannot stress enough how difficult it can be to find direction when doing your own thing. As a kid you're used to living within a fairly bounded, directed framework. When you have to define your own direction, it can unsettle you. Make sure your kids are comfortable with finding their own way - it's not just about making them independent, but also about developing an intelligent work ethic (which I believe is the key characteristic of a good entrepreneur), and being comfortable in the midst of uncertainty.

<comment><USER14> "you need to nurture the entrepreneur in your child before giving them the money."

This is key imo. Even if it means starting small little business type things like selling candy at school. Teach them how to keep track of profit/losses/expenses, how to recognize opportunities and how to test the waters before jumping fully in. I do this with my 13 year old son. His most successful business so far has brought him $4500 in revenue.

I don't call it entrepreneur training or even training at all. He doesn't even really realize he is learning. It is something fun we do together and he has tasted what it feels like to make his own money. It has allowed him to save and buy his own things.

When he graduates from high school, I won't push him one way or another (college vs entrepreneurship). I will leave that up to him but I hope at least I will have given him a little taste of entrepreneurship so he can make his own choice when the time comes. I will also heavily encourage him to work a few jobs at other companies first. That in itself is a huge learning experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I went the build your business route, if I had my time again I'd get the degree first, compared to the time, effort and risk of building a business taking 5 years to get a degree seems like time well spent. Getting a degree does not preclude you from starting a business, the reverse is not so universally true as youth is on your side when funding education in most countries. Few of my peers work in fields related to their degree, yet few would have their current standing were it not for holding a degree.

<comment><USER16> There's a certain cultural or community hypocrisy in these discussions. Not at the level of individuals necessarily, but it seems in reading through HN and other sites, there's two opposite messages I see:

The first is "degree doesn't matter! You need to go out and build something, and you don't need a degree to do it!"

The other is "we won't hire anyone except those with X STEM degree, possibly even not anyone unless they have a master's degree or higher."

As someone considering a career change (with an advanced degree) it's maddening. The message seems to be that if you don't have a core STEM degree, or haven't started a self-sustaining mega-profitable business, you have no ability to do anything.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, other than that societal perceptions of skill and ability seem seriously pathological.

I don't think everyone needs an undergrad degree, but it sure doesn't hurt. But by the same token, a degree isn't everything, and I think people need to take this position seriously if they're going to take it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A fully qualified engineer will be in a much better position to provide valuable products and services than an 18 year old noob.

I guess it's better than a gender studies degree, but believe it or not, undergraduate education is not completely useless. I learned a hell of a lot.

<comment><USER14> "A fully qualified engineer will be in a much better position to provide valuable products and services than an 18 year old noob."

Not sure I totally agree with this. I have meet a ton of very smart fully qualified engineers who have no business sense whatsoever.

That does not mean I am discounting the engineering degree. Not at all. At least an engineering degree will generally give you a very nice return. What makes a good engineer though is not often the same as what makes a good entrepreneur.

<comment><USER18> Guess the point is: All else being equal, someone with a relevant degree will have an easier time being a successful entrepreneur (and, not less important: a reasonable backup plan) than someone fresh out of high school. Likely they will have a better network too. And this is all assuming that entrepreneurship is really the goal, which, lets face it, for most people is an unreasonable trade-off of safety, personal time, health and comfort for nebulous "freedom" and a very unlikely chance at striking gold.

<comment><USER14> "All else being equal, someone with a relevant degree will have an easier time being a successful entrepreneur"

I think that is where we may disagree.

Plenty of Entrepreneurs who made it big without a degree. Some of the top of our time actually. [http://www.businessinsider.com/top-100-entrepreneurs-who- mad...](http://www.businessinsider.com/top-100-entrepreneurs-who-made- millions-without-a-college-degree-2011-1)

"for most people is an unreasonable trade-off of safety, personal time, health and comfort for nebulous "freedom" and a very unlikely chance at striking gold."

This I somewhat agree with but I oftentimes wonder if a lot of the "very unlikely chance" part of it has to do with the inaccurate and unrealistic image the start-up scene places along with the lack of good education on starting a business. You can build a very comfortable life running your own business without being a unicorn but seems as though most are shooting for unicorn level. That I believe is where most of the failure comes from.

It really isn't all that difficult to build a $200k to $500k+ year small business. Easier today than ever. But that's not sexy so people shoot for the stars and miss more often than not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have an "after highschool" fund. My parents called this a university fund. But I'm communicating it as money to use to figure out what you want to do with your life. My kids can use it to do whatever, so long as they can make a rational case for how they intend on spending it. They'll also have to endure lots of dad talks and dad advice to make use of this resource.

If I've done my job as a parent well, I won't have to worry about policing the "proper" use of this money.

<comment><USER20> "If I've done my job as a parent well, I won't have to worry about policing the "proper" use of this money."

Except they still have to come up with a rational case, and endure lots of dad talks, and dad advice before they can use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Serious question: what do your kids know about running a company?

<comment><USER22> Serious answer: it's not about his kids, it's about him living vicariously through them.

Oh, and building his twitter/thinkfluencer brand

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This seems like a problem that could be solved by simply having business development classes in high school. Much like all other skills, there is a need to understand what it takes to run a business; manage budgets, invoice and some rudimentary things. You don't have to create some crazy big start-up, but these are skills that seem necessarily to understand before college. My sister started a therapy business after she was in college and there are basic skills that could of been taught in high school that would of better prepared things. I didn't come across business plan proposals and contingency plans until college but these are pretty straightforward things that could of been taught far earlier IMHO.

Once you have that in place, if not in the education system, then through parenting and after-school programs, then by the time college comes around the "decision to start a business" won't come with the unnecessary risk of not knowing how to run one.

</comment><comment><USER24> I agree with the sentiment that college is not the only choice after high school and may not be the best place to cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit. However, I was surprised that after all the words used to describe how school was lacking in this particular direction, taking the kids out of school was not considered.

As some of the other commenters are suggesting, it may be too much of a jump to offer such a choice to the child at 18 if the child was not preparing for such an opportunity.

Homeschooling has its own critics and supporters and we don't need to get into that here. But my question is this: If he's going to trust his child to make a choice at 18, why not even earlier? How about 14? Or, in other words, why not have their education focus on learning how to make their own decisions as early as possible? And if school doesn't provide this for his children, should they be there?

Granted, the author doesn't outline what he plans on doing between now and the end of high school for his kids so maybe he is, in fact, preparing them for this decision. I just think that the decision would be too drastic to spring on an 18 year old who has had no preparation for it.

<comment><USER25> You may be interested in a concept called "unschooling."

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

<comment><USER24> Yes. Also, the discussions on John Taylor Gatto's work

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2381608](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2381608)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a third option. Self educate. Take 200,000. Buy all the tools and equipment you need to do what you love. Do what you love for 5 to 10 years and you'll have more than enough experience to be successful in your industry.

<comment><USER27> Almost no 18 year olds are self disciplined enough to do that without structure. That's the point of college.

If you spend 5 years only playing your favorite parts of your favorite songs on a guitar, you're not going to be a good musician.

Just like if you spend five years doing the fun parts of programming or engineering or history, you won't be a good programmer, engineer, or historian.

College (or an apprenticeship, or trade school) isn't required to learn the hard/boring parts, but very few people are capable of doing so on their own at that age.

<comment><USER24> I would argue that "few people are capable of so on their own at that age" because they were never given the opportunity to learn and practice self- discipline at an earlier age. After all, the typical American schooling experience allows very little room for deviation from the same thing everyone else is doing.

If you started to self-direct at 13 (or earlier), you'd probably be pretty self-disciplined at 18.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I always knew kids that wanted to start their own business - at least in high school and college. I grew up poor-to-middle class, nothing special, living in Indiana. I'm about 39 now. Some folks just don't consider it so young, just like changing professions in one's late 20's. It usually goes along with the dream of not having to answer to a boss and/or working hours one wants to work, but not always.

But I _do_ think more folks would try if they could take the college money and invest it in things like starting a business, no matter what the business is, and wish more folks had this option.

<comment><USER29> It would help a lot in making this a viable option if more companies gave credit/valued the experience a young person gains by trying to start their own company. Outside of the Bay Area, this is a rare occurance.

<comment><USER30> How valuable would that experience really be? "Hired some friends and had a good time playing pretend-company until we ran out of daddy-money" is a likely outcome and that sounds way to much like the kind of college years that is spent completely ignoring all education opportunities before eventually dropping out.

When the company turns out to be viable the person would not be looking for a job. But when it falls despite all the free runway the experience is likely much lesser than that of someone who failed by a tiny main bootstrapping or convincing real investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The problem I see is that this option is about finantial success, not education.

Why not a third option of a fund to pay for 4 years of living/travelling expenses, courses/books/workshops on a chosen field of knowledge?

</comment><comment><USER32> Why not do both? You have so much time in college you can strt a side business in those 4 years. Yes college is a lot of assignments but looking back, you realize you could have still graduated doing 50% less work.

<comment><USER31> Well, in the article he does say that college is still an option after the company if it fails

<comment><USER10> Yep, but it is not like there is infinite supply of (assumed earlier by me) US$ 200,000 packets.

There is just one, and if your kid burned it, there is no more for the college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I find the title a little manufactured to be honest. He openly admits that if his kids decide they want to go to college then the fund will cover 4 years tuition, but if they decide to do something else then he'll fund that pursuit too. I think his open-mindedness is great as college isn't for everyone, but neither is entrepreneurialism. At the end of the day though, he's not really replacing anything but rather he's doing exactly what he was previously just with a different label.

</comment><comment><USER34> If I were the parent I'd provide my kid with both options simultaneously: Money for college and additionally money to take two years off after college to do a startup.

</comment><comment><USER35> Matching the return on a quality education is going to be tough.

</comment><comment><USER36> whenever i see "my kid's college fund", im reminded how grateful i am to live in a more social country than the US.

(Norway here btw)

<comment><USER37> Now, download your government's budget, check the expenses in higher education and compare the taxes that all working Norwegians have to pay to support the education system (whether they go to school or not, have children or not) vs taxes in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Silly if you think they are mutually exclusive</comment>


Kickstarting a hackerspace in Iraq - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2012/09/07/kickstarting-a-hackerspace-in.html

<comment><USER2> Iraq apparently has a thriving market for folks who hack IEDs (looking at the creativity in their design is a testament to that). I probably get one or two inquiries a month from folks who are looking to make a "garage door opener that is hard to interfere with" from folks with IPs in that area (Libyia/Iran/Iraq/Saudi Arabia). I'm sure there is a huge garage door opening problem but I cannot in good conscience respond as effectively as I might like to someone who is really curious about wireless controls.

Part of the hacking ethic for me, and granted mine arose more from curiosity than some external motive of profit or 'lulz', is something along the Hippocratic oath of not doing harm. I would hope such a hackerspace in Iraq would have that as a pre-requisite for using the facilities, but I realize that one person's terrorism is another person's overthrow of oppression. I try to step out when it gets to debating the greater good.

</comment><comment><USER3> Link to the actual kickstarter page. [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/baghdad- community-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/baghdad-community- hackerspace-workshops)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you take a step back, "kickstarting a hackerspace" sounds like a phrase people might make up ten years from now to make fun of our time's silly jargon. Tubular to the max!

<comment><USER5> Sounds like some awful bit of technobabble from a Cory Doctorow novel... oh, no, wait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glad to see this finally getting some press. I submitted it to tc, but got no response back. This is definitely a situation for those of you who believe technology is a means of self-improvement, to put your money where your mouth is.

Make me pay my pledge. I dare you.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the KS is going to end soon and needs some luvin to make it happen. Spread on your networks. I just donated and posted around.

</comment><comment><USER8> I know Bilal. He is a really great guy and has done so much for the community here in Ann Arbor. I am sure this will be a great success if it gets funded. I have backed the project and you should too.

<comment><USER9> Likewise - Bilal is an awesome person who deeply feels his cause, and has a great passion for building community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Such an incredible way to make a difference! Being a part of a hacker space in Los Angeles has changed the course of my life. This is good work!

<comment><USER11> Which hackerspace? I've had a hard time finding one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seems like this guy has a good track record and has several successful projects under his belt. Backed it!

</comment><comment><USER13> Would've been better to link to the actual kick starter page -[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/baghdad- community-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bilal/baghdad-community- hackerspace-workshops) where people can take action. Instead of boingboing blogspam version.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing that instantly got to me looking at this, is not seeing a single female. Knowing that the gender equality situation in many middle eastern countries is less than ideal, I wonder what their policy on women coming to, and using the space is. Then again, they seem to only be trying to use a space for a day or two and want the community to make one from there, and I imagine it would be difficult to push for a more progressive idea when it's out of your hands like that.

<comment><USER15> We are already thinking about those ideas and trying to tackle them in the ways we can (more ideas are welcome)... In the Beirut Hackerspace (where Bilal, the guy from the kickstarter is also helping get the project up and running) on the first few workshops we had a clay workshop and a silk screen printing workshop where the ratios were 50-50 which hopefully will help close the gap in the gender ratio in such geek oriented initiatives.

Here are some pics from those workshops [http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=401814289872014&s...](http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=401814289872014&set=a.401814123205364.93946.401076153279161&type=1&relevant_count=6)

[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=401814389872004&s...](http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=401814389872004&set=a.401814123205364.93946.401076153279161&type=1&relevant_count=2)

[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=402180926502017&s...](http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=402180926502017&set=a.402180823168694.94054.401076153279161&type=1&relevant_count=3)</comment></comment>


Dell drops Ubuntu PCs from website... for now - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/359740/dell-drops-ubuntu-pcs-from-website-for-now

<comment><USER2> I would see myself ordering a bunch of Ubuntu systems from someone like Dell if I were a large business issuing them to my employees. Since I'm small, I always roll my own. I see the reasoning behind their decision, though I don't have to like it.

IMO the best way to get Linux in the hands of the masses is through devices that almost replace PCs, but aren't PCs themselves, like phones, tablets, home media servers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem: As an "enthusiast/advanced user", why would I buy a Dell laptop pre-installed with Ubuntu when I can get a Windows license _and_ install Ubuntu whenever I want?

<comment><USER4> You'd buy one with Ubuntu if you didn't need Windows and didn't want to pay for a Windows license.</comment></comment>


Germany Orders Daimler to Recall 774,000 Diesels in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-11/germany-orders-daimler-to-recall-774-000-diesel-cars-in-europe <comment><USER3> > _Germany's automotive regulator KBA found five unapproved software functions > in Daimler's Euro 6 diesel engines, affecting as many as 1 million vehicles > in Germany, Bild am Sonntag reported Sunday._

And then,

> _"We don't see any evidence that Daimler was designing software to > deliberately cheat on emission testing," said Arndt Ellinghorst, an analyst > with Evercore ISI in London._

If it's not a defeat device like the VW scandal, then what specifically is the prohibited function causing the recall? The article doesn't really explain what the device or function in question is.

<comment><USER4> One way to reconcile these seemingly contradictory statements is the following.

The actual programmer & designer of the software is the supplier of the engine control units (ECUs), in most cases Bosch. The software that they supply actually already contains these cheating routines. These routines are delivered as a part of the software packages, and can be turned on/off with some flags.

It is up to the auto company how to set these flags.

Source: Close relatives working in the car industry.

<comment><USER5> So is the issue that those routines are supported regardless of the configuration, or that they were delivered in a way that the routines can still be used?

<comment><USER6> Exactly.

This very ambiguity makes it easy for both sides to just shift the blame to the other side in case this whole collusion gets discovered – which you can now nicely see in the wild. In the best case scenario for both companies, both just get away with it this way.

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

Obviously, no parts supplier would integrate these functions in the first place if nobody asked for it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm really surprised the Europe big car manufacturers spent so much effort on small Diesel engines instead of Turbo gasoline engines. My theory is the fact that having a majority of Diesel vehicles in Europe lowers their oil consumption vs Gasoline engines, hence, lowers their CO2 production but with the extremely negative fact of increased local smog.

<comment><USER8> Small turbodiesels were way ahead of small gasoline engines for decades in fuel economy, power, and so forth. Diesel, which uses direct injection and compression ignition, has always been a natural fit with turbocharging, which makes them intrinsically suited to the paradigm of a small engine for efficiency with a turbo for power. They also intrinsically have great low-end torque, which complements the top-end power of turbos.

Turbo gasoline engines were hard to make well, I gather mostly due to predetonation. Gasoline engines historically use manifold injection and spark ignition, which limits compression ratios. However, with advances in technology, particularly in engine computers & sensors, small turbo gas engines have recently become far more competitive.

So, basically, from the vantage point of 2018 turbodiesels might seem like a questionable choice- but ten or twenty years ago, good small turbocharged gasoline engines mostly didn't exist.

<comment><USER9> This is my understanding as well. Highly advanced knock and temperature sensors, high pressure gasoline direct injection, turbochargers, and high compression ratios in gasoline engines are a relatively new combination. Gasoline engines have seen huge leaps in efficiency in the past decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The most vexing part of this is how long it took for others to notice. Did no competitor try to legitimately meet emissions requirements, fail, and immediately turn to Dalimer/VW to see how they "met" those requirements?

If the answer is collusion, then that only raises more questions on what else they could all be working to sweep under the rug.

<comment><USER11> Well, if you look at the third-party emissions tests from normal city driving, emissions of basically _all brands_ are many times above the limit. They were just smart enough not to sell in the US.

But really the bigger question is: surely if this was somehow fixable by a software ECU update, they would have done so? Defeat devices are an old game in the car industry. But as long as those recalls consist of merely software updates, it's clear they are just preparing the next, even bigger con while apologizing for the current one, and EU governments are happy to look the other way.

<comment><USER12> It's relatively simple. If you have AdBlue, you pretty much eliminate NOx. PM2.5 should be fix-able with either filters or driving the engine iirc more lean, to incentivize full combustion. That might increase the use of AdBlue required, but I am not sure.

If I were driving, I'd look for a car that, based on my own testing (e.g., during a test drive at the dealer), measures sane emissions and drinks AdBlue. But for all I know, such a car does not exist. I really wish they make them take all the dirty cars from the streets, mandating a retrofit AdBlue system to allow them back onto the street. With an allowance for those that have an AdBlue system already to measure at a test drive, i.e., with a probe shoved up the tailpipe, and the mechanic/owner driving a loop around the block or so, maybe with some mandatory measuring for the first 100km after installation or so, and if the car at any point during this fails the standards, don't allow it back on the road. The effect from this would be that teaching the car to cheat would be next to impossible, especially if you could mandate another test e.g. at any point between 10000 and 15000km, as best fits the owner schedule. While it should be possible to engineer a cheat for this, it would be hard to conceal as an accidental bug, which would be what they'd have to make it look like to avoid potential criminal liability (they could certainly create suitable criminal statutes along with the testing requirements, and make sure these hit those that actually do it, along with everyone up the chain. Make it conspiracy or so, and catch all at once. Some prosecutor would have a lot of fun.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Diesel engines should be banned entirely. The collective effects on human health are catastrophic, even when compared to gasoline.

You will find a lot of Europeans, particularly Germans, who still believe in the "efficiency" and "cleanness" of diesel engines, but this is really just a residual effect of VW's extensive marketing campaign during their turbodiesel "glory days" \- before they got caught lying about it. VW really caused crimes against humanity that we're still paying for.

There is no such thing as "clean" diesel and there never will be.

<comment><USER14> Evidence for this? They product more soot and smog, but less CO2. For certain driving characteristics they are MUCH better than gas. (E.g. heavy trucks that require larger amounts of torque)

<comment><USER15> Googling for numbers, many sources quote these EU tests which everyone's cheating on. Out in the real world it sounds like switching Petrol -> Diesel saves maybe 20-30% CO2, and emits 10-20x the NOx.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896971...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969717333296)

<comment><USER12> You can fix NOx with AdBlue. You can't fix CO2.

<comment><USER15> The paper I linked "sampled ... 56% of all passenger cars sold in Europe in 2016". So they all have this stuff, right?

Maybe next year's models will actually use it fully, and become clean. I'm not holding my breath though, it seems like a political problem. And if they do use it fully, in the real world, will they still be more CO2 efficient, and by how much? After all, the efficiency measure is the major incentive for all this cheating.

<comment><USER12> AdBlue is usually made from natural gas, so one has to figure the CO2 it takes into it. It should be able to use less diesel fuel, but I don't know if the reduction there is worth the increase in AdBlue use. The hotter the engine burns, which in this case should mean the higher the compression/inlet pressure is, the higher the efficiency, as well as the NOx levels generated. The impact of particle filters on engine efficiency is not know to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Another development: two top executives of Audi are being investigated, and the prosecution has executed search warrants on their private homes.

</comment><comment><USER17> Automotive seems so broken.

Japan hasnt innovated in 30 years.

US companies are too big/corrupt to make good decisions.

European cars are all style. Expensive, non-reliable, hard to fix.

Not sure what the solution is, everyone else is a low quality copycat(Tesla/Kia/Chinese car companies).

Not to say any cars are bad, but the companies are awful. A car is entirely dependent on the engineering team behind it, you can only hope that a company set things up to be successful.

<comment><USER18> Just as interesting as the charge that US auto companies are all corrupt - <USER2> are European cars unreliable? German cars especially are amongst, if not the most reliable in the world, no? Bear in mind I'm not a petrol head so this is my perception.

<comment><USER9> European cars are considered unreliable in the US because they're generally high-end models with newer tech (and more of it), and that kind of stuff tends to break and be expensive to fix.

From a mechanical standpoint, they're not particularly unreliable, but again, parts can be pricier (particularly in the US).

The way I view it is that Japanese cars are built with extreme precision in high volume to exactly the right tolerances. They tend to be very consistent and reliable and parts are cheap due to volume. However, if things DO fail, it's generally because they're just slightly underbuilt and built to a pricepoint. German cars tend to be overbuilt from a mechanical standpoint (heavier/sturdier parts) but that doesn't mean they're more reliable as a finished product.</comment></comment></comment>


Obama Declares Hacking a 'National Emergency' - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/obama-declares-hacking-a-national-emergency?utm_source=mbtwitter

<comment><USER2> Someone should make a chart of all the bogeymen the USG has and show how they compete with each other. With regard to fear, how effective are terrorists v. hackers? Or kiddie porn v. ISIS? Russia v. Anonymous?

If I'm Obama I need to know which bogeyman to deploy for a specific policy desire. Which one will scare the public the most?

For example, should Obama use the fear of terrorists or pedophiles to enact restrictions on encryption? I wonder if they have focus groups for this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Original source: [https://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2015/04/01/executi...](https://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2015/04/01/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-engaging- significant-m)</comment>


A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/upshot/paul-romer-burning-man-nobel-economist.html <comment><USER2> anyone have the article

<comment><USER3> [https://archive.fo/tGqgW](https://archive.fo/tGqgW)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> paywalled</comment>


Show HN: I am tired of traditional Social Networks so I created this - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys. I am tired of traditional social networks like twitter and facebook where you just read people's status instead of hanging out with them. So I created Doshmo to make hanging out with your friends easier.<p>Check it out at www.doshmo.com and let me know what you think. <comment><USER2> So far, you have an attractive background and a call to action. There is no explanation whatsoever regarding what I will get when I sign up. I'm a bit crazy, but I'm not stupid. Although, I have to say that the concept of having a virtual "hangout" could be nice if done correctly. You just need to let us know what to expect prior to asking for personal information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi NaturalDoc,

Thanks for the feedback. Just wondering did you see or click on the learn more link? I guess I want to know whether the the copy on the learn more page is not descriptive enough or no one really clicked on it. Thanks again!

<comment><USER3> The "learn how" link is a call to action but you really haven't given enough info for me to want to click it.

Also, it suffers from a bit of a design-color challenge. The shade of blue you've picked doesn't provide enough contrast against the background image. I'd suggest playing with all of your text and image there to increase the contrast between the two.

After clicking the "learn how" link you have the same contrast problem. It also doesn't offer enough details for me to understand what it really does or why I'd want to use it.

Your content seems to fall into a common marketing problem. You're highlighting features, not benefits. All I care about is benefits, not features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Kerryfalk,

Got it. Thanks for in-depth feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not going to give you my name and email when you haven't told me anything about your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Imm,

Thanks for the feedback. If you click on "learn more" on the homepage you'll learn a good bit about the website. I'm curious what you would like to see on the homepage so I can better optimize it. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Looking Glass 8K Immersive Display - <AUTHOR> https://lookingglassfactory.com/product/8k <comment><USER2> I'd like to see this in-person. looks pretty cool to me!

Does anyone know how they display 45 different angles of an 3d object without using a ton of computing power? I'm imagining you'd need a beast of a computer to use this display at a reasonable refresh rate without some really clever optimization.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure it's a lenticular display, so if it's running a standard 8K panel (~33 megapixel), your effective resolution is under 1 megapixel per angle.

Computationally, generating 33 megapixels spread across 45 views is very similar to generating 33 megapixels in one view, so if your rendering pipeline can do standard 8K, you should be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please someone code a neural net to add 3D paint depth to 2D-photo of real paintings :)

<comment><USER5> A training set for this could be created from VR paintings. We have the full spatial painting and we can create as many 2D views as we want from it.</comment></comment>


Kanban project management: What to look for in a tool - <AUTHOR> https://www.hpe.com/us/en/insights/articles/low-cost-tips-for-project-management-success-1712.html <comment><USER2> I use taiga.io self hosted.

Works really really well.</comment>


EasyJet bans peanuts on all flights - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/easyjet-nut-ban/index.html <comment><USER3> The idea that some people are extraordinarily sensitive to peanuts, to the degree that they can't be in the same room as someone eating a Snickers bar, is bunk. The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology states[0]:

> There is no evidence to support peanut vapor as a cause of reactions or that > peanut dust itself circulates and causes reactions.

I am a little surprised to see such uncritical propagation of this myth on HN.

[0] [https://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/peanut-air- travel](https://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/peanut-air-travel)

<comment><USER4> From your link:

> Investigators concluded that the risk of exposure to peanut on an airplane > stems from potentially contaminated surfaces and not from airborne levels.

I've literally had someone spill their food on me on a plane, so direct contact is certainly not out of the question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We must put real, practical safety concerns above ideals, so this makes sense.

But why isn't there more alarm—or even action—over the fact that foods that were near-universally consumed by people are now increasingly capable of quite literally killing a relatively large part of the population? For example, why is hand sanitizer still widely distributed? When will it end? When all we're capable of consuming is powdered formula?

Edit: everyone wondering about hand sanitizer, I was thinking along the lines of the hygiene hypothesis, ie [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12048610_Asthma_and...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12048610_Asthma_and_allergy_in_Russian_and_Norwegian_schoolchildren_Results_from_two_questionnaire- based_studies_in_the_Kola_Peninsula_Russia_and_northern_Norway). I believe I saw this study on here a few years ago.

Edit2: I meant this study [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cea.12527](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cea.12527)

<comment><USER6> > But why isn't there more alarm—or even action—over the fact that foods that > were near-universally consumed by people are now increasingly capable of > quite literally killing a relatively large part of the population?

They appear to have always been allergens to which a certain share of the population had extreme reactions, which is what produced the advice in the US to avoid exposure at ages when children would be unlikely to communicate a reaction, which is what produced the surge in sensitivity since apparently people are more likely to develop lasting and severe allergies if they are not exposed early, which is why the advice has since been reversed to encourage early exposure with close supervision, rather than a avoiding early exposure.

> For example, why is hand sanitizer still widely distributed?

What does hand sanitizer have to do with the issue?

<comment><USER7> > What does hand sanitizer have to do with the issue?

I think dmitryminkovsky is jokingly extrapolating the idea of banning allergens to hand sanitizer, since it is poisonous if you drink too much.

<comment><USER5> :) I figured this might get some push-back and fair enough, I didn't bring any explanation. I was thinking along the lines of [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12048610_Asthma_and...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12048610_Asthma_and_allergy_in_Russian_and_Norwegian_schoolchildren_Results_from_two_questionnaire- based_studies_in_the_Kola_Peninsula_Russia_and_northern_Norway)

Erm this study [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cea.12527](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cea.12527)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there any cases where someone allergic to peanuts has died or had to go to the hospital after being in the presence of peanuts, without eating or even touching them? Is this something that has ever happened? (Even once ever?)

<comment><USER9> Science says "very likely not ever once".

[https://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/peanut-air- travel](https://www.aaaai.org/ask-the-expert/peanut-air-travel)

<comment><USER4> From the link:

> Investigators concluded that the risk of exposure to peanut on an airplane > stems from potentially contaminated surfaces and not from airborne levels.

So the issue isn't not having exposure via air, but "not having touched" the peanuts themselves, but interacting with contaminated surfaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem here is the arbitrariness of the decision - this level of care for their passengers seems almost entirely absent from EasyJet in various other regards, so why this?

And there are presumably other passenger risks that they are not responding to with outright bans, so where is the cut-off?

<comment><USER11> Because this is easy to put in a press release... actually fixing customer service/safety issues would be more difficult.

<comment><USER12> Easyjet does not have 'safety issues'. They have never had a hull loss and to my knowledge they have never had a passenger injury as the result of operations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A good move, it must be quite nerve racking travelling by air with a severe peanut allergy. I was on a flight recently from London to Chicago where they requested that no-one consume any foods they'd brought that contain peanuts. We probably should have been told this at check in as my brother had some cereal bars containing nuts in his bag. Plus they'd only asked in English so I was surprised the announcement wasn't made in other languages too.

<comment><USER14> I don't get this, how does a passenger eating peanuts affect another passenger that's allergic to them?

<comment><USER13> The air inside a plane gets continually recirculated and some people have such a severe allergy that even the smallest traces can causes a bad reaction.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't a face mask help them?

<comment><USER16> You still need to breathe air, and that has to come from somewhere.

Face masks are effectively preventing droplet infections, but probably wouldn't prevent traces of peanut from being inhaled.

<comment><USER17> Evidence of claims?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are there such patients who live daily life normally but get sick at a whiff of a cracked chocolate? Will they get as sick from walking in a food court or other places in daily life? I can't judge this policy as reasonable or draconian.

<comment><USER19> Avoiding a food court is relatively easy. There are other ways to acquire and consume food.

Avoiding airplanes pretty much means you never travel longer than a thousand km or so. That's a fairly big restriction.

(also, "a whiff of cracked chocolate" is perhaps not as much of a problem as "someone sitting next to you and chewing nuts, and accidentally throwing some of them in your face if there's some turbulence")

<comment><USER20> > Avoiding airplanes pretty much means you never travel longer than a thousand > km or so.

Trains exist, and in first-world countries they're usually pleasant to use, even if it takes longer than an airplane.

But then again, if being in an airplane cabin with a peanut eater is dangerous, then being in a train wagon with one probably is as well.

<comment><USER21> > even if it takes longer than an airplane.

A _lot_ longer. There's at least a 5x difference between typical plane and train speeds. So a 5-6 hour flight becomes a 25-30 hour train ride. That's a pretty major cost and inconvenience you so blithely dismiss as long as it only affects someone else. Also, please note that it's not that uncommon any more for people to travel over water, and there are no trains there. But I suppose you'd say those people who aren't you should just constrain their choice of job or occupation accordingly.

Nothing's a big deal when it's somebody else's problem, right?

<comment><USER20> I'm not aware of my dismissing anyone's concerns "as long as it only affects someone else". I flagged your comment since you clearly violate the guideline "Assume good faith".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems quite moderate compared to some UK primary schools banning all nuts even though several species are growing wild on the school premises.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm pretty sure I was given peanuts as the only snack on my last flight in December (iirc not EasyJet). Not saying this is in any way a bad idea, but I'm really wondering if this will be more widespread in the future or if half of the airlines will go out of their way and half of them will do the exact opposite.

</comment><comment><USER24> Talk about 1% dictating to the other 99%...

If I told EasyJet that I was gluten intolerant, would they ban glutens for me?

<comment><USER13> The thing is though is people can die if they get an allergic reaction. Is not being able to eat peanuts for 12 hours or so worth someones life?

<comment><USER25> >Is not being able to eat peanuts for 12 hours or so worth someones life?

No. But seeing decisions being made based on the lowest common denominator to the inconvenience of everyone else (able bodies people are not inconvenienced by wheelchair ramps) is annoying to everyone who is inconvenienced (edit: for small values of everyone) regardless of whether or not it's an objectively good decision. Some people want peanuts and they're pissed they can't get them because of an edge case. I'm not saying it's right but it's human nature.

<comment><USER26> > But seeing decisions being made based on the lowest common denominator is > annoying to everyone else (edit: for small values of everyone) regardless of > whether or not it's an objectively good decision.

I don't agree. Vehemently. I am not irritated by the fact that there are ramps on most sidewalks to accommodate those in wheel-chairs, or that there is seating set aside on public transit for those who need it, or that sidewalk crossings speak to those who cannot see...

Have you no love for your fellow man? Are you so disconnected from others that their lives are now just an irritation to you?

What you've said makes me sad. And angry. All life is valuable, sacred even. Assuming there is some "lowest common denominator" that must be "catered to" places a value judgement on those who have different needs and abilities. Are some people really worth less to you?

<comment><USER25> >I don't agree. Vehemently. I am not irritated by the fact that there are ramps on most sidewalks to accommodate those in wheel-chairs, or that there is seating set aside on public transit for those who need it, or that sidewalk crossings speak to those who cannot see...

You listed a bunch of accommodations that do not actually inconvenience you. The people who enjoyed peanuts as one of the few remaining "nice things" about air travel are rightfully annoyed that the airline is canning them because of an edge case. Personally I think they made the right decision but I'm not so dense as to express bewilderment as to why some people don't like it.

>Have you no love for your fellow man? Are you so disconnected from others that their lives are now just an irritation to you?

>What you've said makes me sad. And angry. All life is valuable, sacred even. Assuming there is some "lowest common denominator" that must be "catered to" places a value judgement on those who have different needs and abilities. Are some people really worth less to you?

I hope this is just virtue signaling (and I mean that in the purest dictionary definition way with none of the political charge the term seems to have taken on) and you don't actually take my previous comment to mean what your reply seems to think I mean.

In any case, I assure you the tone of your comment is not making me love my fellow man any more.

<comment><USER26> I apologize for my tone and the implications. This is a sensitive subject for me and I didn't handle my response to your comment well.

<comment><USER25> I appreciate that you did not double down. That's rare around here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Doug Benson warned about this

</comment><comment><USER28> Great, more anti- peanut hysteria [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/10/nut_allergy_hysteri...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/10/nut_allergy_hysteria/)

<comment><USER29> I'm sympathetic on this one. You can't just look at the number of deaths. The thing about nuts is they tend to be in foods small children want to otherwise eat. Reeses, pretzels filled with peanut butter [1], etc. The presence of nuts can also be non-obvious (eg a coworker had severe reaction to a curry IIRC that wasn't labelled as containing nuts.

[1] [https://fox13now.com/2013/04/26/boy-11-dies-after-severe- all...](https://fox13now.com/2013/04/26/boy-11-dies-after-severe-allergic- reaction/)

<comment><USER28> Obsessing over a single data point instead of prioritization of dangers to children based on actual risk factors - frequency and level of effects - <USER2> the very definition or irrational action.</comment></comment></comment>