Secret US Spy Plane May Be Too Mysterious - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/secret-spaceplane-eludes-observers-spooks-governments/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

<comment><USER2> ?

The fact that you and I can talk about it (with pictures to boot!) means this isn't very secret.

Given the retirement of the SR-71, the knowledge that the F-117 went into service in 1983 and stayed unknown for almost a decade, the rumours of pulse- engines, contrails and specific aircraft like the tr-3 and Aurora, it is almost certain that the US (and likely other nations) have aircraft or spacecraft that are flying right now that the public doesn't know about.

It would be hard to gather intelligence if they didn't.

<comment><USER3> Read past headlines. The issue author raises is clearly with it's dual use. Secrecy in the title comes from that.

Satellites and UAEs have long replaced planes, no matter how fast or stealthy, for intelligence gathering. One thing this thing will do good is deliver a some payload to any place on Earth REALLY fast.

Anyway, since 2007-8 there's brand new hangar at Area 51, the biggest so far: <http://dreamlandresort.com/area51/2007_new.html>

<comment><USER2> Satellites will never replace aircraft until they can be "on demand". Orbits have been able to be tracked for years... changing orbits demands fuel that can't easily be replaced.

A fast aircraft with stealth is best for "cuban missle crisis" type issues. A slow one for less urgent requests for tactical concerns.

As of current public knowledge, UAVs do not have the type of speed or range that we're talking about here as being required... as far as we know...

<comment><USER3> Just wanted to amend my previous statement a bit:

 _One thing this thing will do good is deliver a some payload_ (including satellite or UAV) _to any place on Earth REALLY fast._

This thing is simply not very good platform for intelligence gathering in itself. Not very easy to gather intelligence at speed of Mach 20+.

<comment><USER2> Um, the ISS is moving at around Mach 24 right now, so I'd imagine most satellites used for spying are already doing a similar speed, and they have no issues snapping pretty high resolution pics.

I don't think this would be a concern for an aircraft doing a similar (or much more practical, slower) speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why should the US make this plane more transparent? What makes this author think that if the US takes the high road, that China, Russia and other countries will follow? Sure this plane could be use for weapons, but intelligence is one area of our expenditures that actually makes more sense.

<comment><USER5> It's not likely China and Russia would. But it allows the US to take the moral high ground, which you cannot at the moment. The risk would be that other countries would know of your capabilities, but it's fairly likely that they know that anyway: since there's amateurs on the ground in the US tracking it, it's a fair bet there are agencies in China doing the same, and I bet the Chinese have spies in one of the many organizations tasked to build this thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like an interesting alternative to the spaceshuttle program. A cargo bay big enough to fit any payload, but fully robotic, doesn't need to lug an atmosphere up into space with it. Sounds efficient.

I wounder if it would be possible to fit the cargo bay with an atmospheric module, in order to send astronauts up to work on things that only humans can still do, like manually repairing the Hubble. They don't have to actually fly it, just go along for the ride, do the mission, then ride back to Earth.

IANASE (space expert), but it really seems that robotic space exploration is the way to go these days, be it earth orbit, interplanetary, or other. Cheaper, more efficient, faster turnaround/iteration times, equally effective for most missions, and less political risk.

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing I find highly interesting, is that the article seems to imply that only the US can track other people's space vehicles.

 _Washington could get away with this sort of space espionage because no other government has the technology to comprehensively track the activities of other nations' space vehicles._

I guess the word "comprehensively" is key here. Is there really such a huge gap in other nation's capabilities? The Russians have a _space program_. What are the facts the author is alluding to? How big or small are other nation's space tracking capabilities? (I can just see the "Moon Hoax" nuts jumping all over this!)

<comment><USER8> The US has bases all over the world that are used to communicate with manned flights and deep space probes, and presumably these bases also have equipment for tracking everything in orbit. Russia can cover a lot of sky from within their own territory, and they've got ships that are floating tracking stations, but probably not enough to cover the entire sky all of the time. Other countries probably don't either; they most likely share the US bases and don't get the 'track everything' data.

An interesting thought: anything that is orbiting is predictable. You don't have to watch it constantly to know where it is at any given time, you just have to watch it while it passes by and calculate the orbit. So the comprehensive tracking is only necessary for tracking things which are not following consistent orbits: either they've got the ability to shift their orbit, or they're not really orbiting at all but are in powered flight. Manned flights typically shift around until they get where they are going, and I guess if they're secret they may never settle into a stable orbit. Military satellites probably do the same thing, but they'd have a limited fuel capacity to keep moving around, and a satellite is an expensive device to fly for a few days/weeks and let burn up (now that we're not using shuttles to recover them.)

<comment><USER9> If you combine your two points together, you realize that to track anything with a non-changing orbit, you just have to have to detect it once. And since everything is strictly line of sight, if you've been overflown by a satellite (spied on), then you've also had an opportunity to track the satellite and now know when the next fly-over / where will be.

What the US has the potential ability to real-time track every satellite around the entire world. In fact, we're pretty sure that that capability exists because they've also tracked everything in orbit larger than a screw.

While the X-37 has the capability to make some countries nervous, honestly space does have its own (weaker) version of MAD. I mean, if anyone does something stupid, then the rest can ruin it for everyone. I mean, do you think the US would go about laying mines in space when Russia/China probably have (will have) the capability to knock down GPS satellites? I mean, everyone knows where they are, everyone has the capability to insert into the same orbit.

The US would be beyond stupid to use the X37 for anything other than recon (spying!), or grabbing it's own satellites/payloads. Anything else would been as dumb as co-locating satellite launch sites with ICBM silos.

Also, despite the lack of public information given out by the Air Force and government, it's entirely likely that the Chinese and Russians know a lot more about the hardware and its capabilities than Wired and the public. Spy agencies exist for a reason. Even amongst 'friends'.

<comment><USER3> Anyone can track anything (*that remains in it's orbit) from the comfort of their home:

<http://www.heavens-above.com> <http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author needs to get past the fantasy that the US government is the big bad guy in a room full of innocent school children. Russia, while weakened over the past few years, is a global military power. China (and India) are starting to flex their muscles. North Korea is still ruled by a cantankerous despot. The technology advantage the US has held since WWII is waning, and with it goes the luxury of military complacency. I'd rather the skirmishes happen behind the scenes than with more large-scale conventional warfare.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Wired article says the "X-37 periodically changes orbits". However, the linked article from the CS Monitor ([http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0824/Secret-Air- Force-...](http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0824/Secret-Air- Force-X-37B-space-plane-changes-its-orbit)) only indicated one orbit change.

<comment><USER12> The wired article was all-around poorly conceived and written. The author advocates open information sharing - but it's a fucking spy plane! Does he have no idea how the spy industry works? Not like the US and USSR shared data on the SR-71 or equivalents.

<comment><USER13> This isn't a spy plane - it's a potential space minelayer.

The nice thing about the SR71 was that it wasn't that secret, you knew from the speed and altitude that it was an SR71.

But suppose your spyplane flew at the same height and speed as a B52 and was the same size as a B52 - the other guys might be a little more nervous, and more likely to react, when it flew over their territory.

<comment><USER12> This is smaller than the space shuttle so you should also be able to uniquely identify it as it passes overhead. Might not be in the same spot each time, but it is a spy (multi-purpose) plane afterall.

<comment><USER13> But you don't know what it is doing. The problem with space - and the reason we have avoided militarizing it - is that it's difficult to stay out of other people's territory.

You wouldn't allow an anonymous N. Korean/ Chinese/ Russian/ Fredonian warship to wander around US waters unchallenged but you have to allow a satellite to pass overhead - thats orbital mechanics.

Now if you start doing things with your space plane, the other side decides it's going to have to defend itself by shotting down anything that passes over it's territory, and 20 minutes later you shoot down their stuff when it passes over your head.

Pretty soon nobody has any satellites. We realized this didn't really work on the high seas several hundred years ago and came up with the idea of laws and flags.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Justin.TV Teams With Qik For Live Mobile Streaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/justintv-teams-with-qik-for-live-mobile-streaming/

<comment><USER2> This is going to lead to a whole new type of addict.. I can see it now: "Social Porn Addicts Anonymous"</comment>


Ask HN: Where can I download Amazon reviews as a dataset? - <AUTHOR> Are there any datasets where I can download product reviews, product descriptions on Amazon or on Walmart? Looking to do some NLP for specific categories like cameras. <comment><USER2> Cant you just create a web scraper?

<comment><AUTHOR> Seeing if someone has already done that. Web scraping costs money, amazon may rate limit/block me etc

<comment><USER2> You could use a VPN. The reviews are constantly being added so im not sure if there is much use for someone to collect snapshots when they could just view the entire current log on amazon.</comment></comment></comment>


Outsourcing: Most common mistakes IT departments make - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/technology/business-intelligence/analytics/news/index.cfm?newsid=18459

<comment><USER2> Is it just me, or does that linked item have nothing to do with outsourcing? The ttle on the page is:

        IBM Lotus upgrades set for
        Notes, Domino, other products

Intended article here:

[http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers- hr/people-...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers-hr/people- management/in-depth/index.cfm?articleId=2920)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops. Apologies. Very red faced at the moment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well there is an article with this title on the site so I'll put it down to a simple error. Heres the link

[http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers- hr/people-...](http://www.computerworlduk.com/management/careers-hr/people- management/in-depth/index.cfm?articleId=2920)

Perhaps we can follow this up with 'Most common mistakes HN posters make' :P</comment>


How to Read an RFC - <AUTHOR> https://www.mnot.net/blog/2018/07/31/read_rfc <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17652131) (two days ago).

<comment><USER3> Whoops. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Inspired by this topic I asked the question on how to read documentation [1] (I searched for it, it didn't seem to be there). I really could improve my documentation reading skills but don't know where to effectively search for it (I normally search on HN for quality content on technical topics).

[1] Ask HN: How to read documentation? -- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670431)

<comment><USER5> Problem is that everyone has their own style.

I assume the [] in the jquety children case would mean optional parameter but won't in other documentation. It tends to depend on the language and the library authors, often you have to figure it out yourself.

<comment><USER4> Hmm... interesting. I wonder how one would figure it out. Can I copy/paste it in the topic or do you want to post it as a reply in th thread?</comment></comment></comment>


Tapulous Cofounder Mike Lee Ejected From Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/26/tapulous-cofounder-mike-lee-ejected-from-company/

<comment><USER2> This story makes me really sad because not only do I know one of the Tapulous employees, but also Tapulous really showed a lot of promise with twinkle and tap tap revenge.

I personally can't wait to see what Mike and the employees at Tapulous close to him are going to do next..the rest of the company not so much. I didn't really like some of them when I met them at WWDC.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Lee says he was brought on as an ex-Delicious Monster employee, and was planning to create the type of full featured and well designed app that Delicious is associated with. Conversely, he says that CEO Bart Decrem is trying to steer the company's apps into the same vein as Slide or RockYou, with a large number of flashy and fun apps that aren't particularly useful."_

That's ironic, as much as I love Delicious Library I would have described Delicious Monster as a company that creates a small number (one, to be exact) of flashy and fun apps that aren't particularly useful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am wondering if there are any companies that have a CEO that was brought in from the outside not actually kill the company they are running.

There seems to be a theme:

1\. Outside CEO comes in, clashes with founding members

2\. Founding members start leaving

3\. CEO doesn't bring in any "rockstar" developers, works with who is left.

4\. Company starts running out of money

5\. New outside CEO comes in

6\. Company sold for pennies on the dollar to large tech company, praised as big success.

<comment><USER5> _if there are any companies that have a CEO that was brought in from the outside not actually kill the company_

Here's another example:

Big U.S. automaker going down the tank fast. This company hires former president from rival automaker, who was fired by the rival's chairman. Big U.S. automaker comes back from the brink of bankruptcy to be a market leader.

<comment><USER6> "Big, established, but failing company hires outsider CEO to turn company around" seems to be a different pattern (and one with a better track record - Lou Gerstner at IBM also comes to mind) compared to "young company takes large investment, has outsider CEO installed as adult supervision by investors", which pattern seems to often lead to trouble.

Google comes to mind as a company that's well known for beating the curse of the investor-installed CEO; they did so by having the founders carefully vet the potential outsiders. Unfortunately this takes time so if you are running out of runway and need that investment in order to reach V2_min, you perhaps don't have that luxury.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh man, this sucks. I've been reading Mike's blog for a while now. He seems like a super smart and insightful guy, and his passion and attention to detail really rubs off in his writing.

I'm sure he'll be kicking ass again soon. :)</comment>


Sporth: A small stack-based audio programming language - <AUTHOR> https://paulbatchelor.github.io/proj/sporth <comment><USER2> If you're thinking of compiling this to webassembly and making an online Sporth playground... It's already done! Works pretty well, too. You can browse a bunch of Sporth scripts and play with them here: [https://audiomasher.org/browse](https://audiomasher.org/browse)

I found the stack-based, Forth style syntax works like _magic_ for a lot of creative audio DSP tasks. Blocks of code are like little signal chains, but denser and easier to manage than traditional spaghetti graphs (like in Reaktor, PureData, etc.) though I believe spaghetti graphs are more approachable at first.

<comment><USER3> The thing I think the spaghetti visual graphs get wrong is a lack of adherence to the structured programming theorem. Most data flows are mostly linear/sequential, and DAGs - which also can be expressed linearly as "send/jump ahead but not backwards", cover most of the rest. Complex structures that need to describe comprehensive fanin/fanout/feedback functionality are exceptions, and as with uses of "goto" in structured languages, most can be reduced to an implementation detail of a single node. So presenting all the options on every node, every time, with cable wiring going everywhere, is a very cluttered syntax for something that could usually be a "Lego brick" expression.

The beauty of stack languages is shared with that of RPN calculators and their postfix syntax model: You can enter the expression very quickly and precisely. Parens and operators don't "get in the way". Names aren't needed for temporary values. Small modifications don't require a rewrite. They feel mostly linear when "in their wheelhouse."

Where postfix starts losing to prefix and infix is when you have something that requires a lot of scanning back and forth to determine state. Function arguments lack clarity. Stack underflow becomes a real failure case. The scaling in terms of readability isn't very good, so "don't write large words" becomes an imperative when it's a generalized programming syntax as in Forth.

The language I'm working on right now currently uses RPN for single-line, compile-time expressions, while runtime evaluation is vertical and operates entirely in terms of keyword prefix + memory addresses, like an assembler. This constrains the scope in two ways, giving it a "twice linear" feel since left-to-right is the compile-time world while top-to-bottom is the runtime world, and those worlds only really cross over in terms of referring to compile-time identifiers(e.g. label and variable declarations, type evaluation). Since left to right is all compile-time, the meaning of an expression can vary a lot depending on the keyword, and so to expand the language I also have the option of adding original single-line DSLs to target specific runtime expressions, if I can't get what I want by adding more types to the RPN system. This is intended for small inline programs called from scripting so the at-scale view of composability isn't the main priority. It's still early, though, so I'll see how that all works out in practice.

<comment><USER4> Very well said. I've come to similar conclusions working with the postfix syntax of Sporth.

Is your language public at all?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The AudioKit project uses Soundpipe/Sporth under the hood if you'd like to see another example of it in use. [https://audiokitpro.com](https://audiokitpro.com)

<comment><USER6> oh that's a nice fact, The Audio Kit project is great!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In a similar vein I present: [http://nexuist.github.io/brainsynth/](http://nexuist.github.io/brainsynth/)

I want to eventually rewrite it in Svelte because React is too slow (probably my own fault) to play notes and update the UI at the same time. I think I should have used PureComponents or something.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing. It's always fun to see the ways BF can be used to make music.

I really like the way the editor visually shows where you are. It would be really neat to get it controlling some synths in an Ableton live session or something. You'll get the notation system AND the great sounds that way.

At one point, I wrote a little BF sequencer for Sporth [0]. The nice thing about it was it just output a signal which could be mapped to literally any sound parameter at audio-rate. If the project still builds [1], there's a single demo that I made of it.

0: [http://paulbatchelor.github.io/proj/spigot/](http://paulbatchelor.github.io/proj/spigot/)

1: [https://github.com/paulbatchelor/spigot](https://github.com/paulbatchelor/spigot)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds really cool, but could use better docs. As someone who is new to programmatic music composition, I'm not sure what the value proposition here is.

<comment><USER4> > This sounds really cool, but could use better docs.

I agree. As the creator, it can be hard to write documentation for a beginner audience, so I'd be great to hear your input. What would you suggest?

Right now, here is the documentation that exists now:

Some intro tutorials can be found in the Sporth cookbook:

[http://paulbatchelor.github.io/proj/cook/](http://paulbatchelor.github.io/proj/cook/)

An interactive version can be found here:

[https://audiomasher.org/learn](https://audiomasher.org/learn)

Once you understand the syntax fundamentals, most of the work is just remembering all the ugens and the argument order. For this, there's a reference guide:

[https://github.com/PaulBatchelor/Sporth/blob/master/ugen_ref...](https://github.com/PaulBatchelor/Sporth/blob/master/ugen_reference.txt)

There's a command line utility that comes with sporth called "ugen_lookup" that allows you to look up entries from here:

[https://github.com/PaulBatchelor/Sporth/blob/master/util/uge...](https://github.com/PaulBatchelor/Sporth/blob/master/util/ugen_lookup)

Most Sporth ugens are wrappers around Soundpipe modules, for which there is also a reference manual for. It also provides more information about what the module does:

[http://paulbatchelor.github.io/res/soundpipe/docs/](http://paulbatchelor.github.io/res/soundpipe/docs/)

<comment><USER9> I am a programmer and a musician. For me, syntax is easy, and understanding stack languages is easy as well (for instance I authored a long tutorial on Factor).

What is difficult for me is to understand:

* what kind of objects are available (generators and filters, I guess, anything more?)

* what generators are available, and what is their effect

* what are triggers. This sentence doesn't explain much "A single trigger is exactly one sample that is a non-zero value (typically, this value is just a '1')"

and so on. In general, much of the terminology is alien, for instance "Since everything in Sporth is sample accurate, triggers are sample accurate and can work at audio rate." or "This creates a gate signal which is then fed into the portamento filter, whose half time value is 10ms. The portamento filter (a simple one pole smoothing filter), creates the ideal exponential curves for envelope, with a convex exponential slope on the attack, and a concave exponential slope on the release."

I just do not understand half of the words in the above sentences.

What does it mean to be sample accurate? What is a portamento filter? Why there should be a convex exponential slope on the attack? By the way, what is the attack? (I know, but it wasn't explained earlier).

This looks like a tutorial written for people who are already programming audio, and only need to understand Sporth. What is missing is a tutorial for people that are programmers and musicians, but are using Sporth to start programming audio.

<comment><USER4> Good questions. My background is in computer music, and I do use a lot of jargon. A good chunk of them probably come from Csound (and, by extension, the MUSIC N family of languages). Sporth also expects a certain familiarity with modular synthesis, and digital audio systems in general.

> what kind of objects are available (generators and filters, I guess, > anything more?)

In Sporth, "objects" are referred to as things called unit generators, or "ugens" for short. These things can take in signals as input, and write signals as output. Signals are all audio rate. Even a constant value is an audio-rate signal.

As you mentioned, effects and signal generators are two kinds of unit generators. Another important one are control-signal generator, which include things like low-frequency oscillators (LFOs), or envelopes. These things generally produce signals designed control parameters of other things.

There are also things called ftables (short for function tables I think? another term borrowed from Csound). These things are more or less floating point arrays. Usually they are used for sequences, storing wavetables for table-lookup oscillators, or loading audio samples. An ftable is an ftable, so if you wanted to take a loaded snare sample and use it inside of a sequencer ugen, there's nothing stopping you from that.

> what generators are available, and what is their effect

Hard to answer that one concisely. There are approximately 220 unit generators in Sporth right now. Some of them do simple things like addition and multiplication. Others do more complicated things. Some make sound, some process sound, some do a combination of both. The art of composing with Sporth is building an intuition for how these modules will sound together. Admittedly, there is no documentation for all of this in Sporth. There's no time for that. BUT! If you study highly modular computer music systems like Csound or Supercollider, you'll learn concepts that can be applicable to Sporth.

> what are triggers. This sentence doesn't explain much "A single trigger is > exactly one sample that is a non-zero value (typically, this value is just a > '1')"

Ah yes, this is modular synthesizer terminology. If you don't have experience using modular synthesizers, I can see why this is confusing.

Triggers can be thought of as a sort of message, encoded in an audio signal. When a trigger signal occurs, it means "do something". What that something is, depends entirely on the ugen reading the signal. When a trigger signal gets fed into an envelope generator, it tells the envelope to re-trigger the envelope. When a trigger signal gets fed into a sequencer, it means go to the next note in the sequence. Stuff like that.

> I just do not understand half of the words in the above sentences.

That was me and the music-dsp mailing list for many years. I've now got around 70-80 percent comprehension there, but yeah jargon. The thing is, once you start memorizing jargon words, you forget what is jargon and what isn't.

I can totally see where you are coming from. It would be great to see Sporth tutorials written for different audiences than mine own. But I need help for that. It's just not a responsibility I am ready to take on. If you do not have the prerequisite background in computer music, there is just _so_ much you need to unpack, and it will never be enough. I'm only one person, and I need what little time I have to try to compose my own music with the tools I write for myself. Selfish by definition, but true.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for the explanations, I will try to read more and figure out stuff.

By the way, I was not complaining, I was just responding to

> I agree. As the creator, it can be hard to write documentation for a > beginner audience, so I'd be great to hear your input. What would you > suggest?

<comment><USER4> They were great suggestions! Thank you for putting in the time. I hope my responses were helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good

</comment><comment><USER11> Things like this seem to me to be putting a language where what you really want is just a focused IDE.

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

<comment><USER11> I don't think there is anything that a different language here is going to accomplish that a library couldn't, it seems like the main advantage is the environment that allows for more fluid iteration combined with functions for audio.

<comment><USER4> > it seems like the main advantage is the environment that allows for more > fluid iteration combined with functions for audio.

That's _exactly_ right. Having a terse and precise notation for expressing a patch was originally why it was created. There are indeed lower level libraries in other languages powering this (Soundpipe), but I found working in C to be too slow for creative working. Sporth eliminated some of those keystrokes and enabled me to compose music I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise [0].

0: [http://paulbatchelor.github.io/sporthlings/](http://paulbatchelor.github.io/sporthlings/)

<comment><USER12> What about a dedicated high-performance audio/DSP langauge like csound?

<comment><USER4> They are great as well! Especially Csound. That's where I started. In fact, Sporth uses a lot of DSP code adapted from Csound.

From a language/syntax standpoint, you're still typing way more keystrokes with Csound to do equivalent things in Sporth.

Design philosophies are different as well. Csound is divided up into an orchestra/score, where the orchestra defines the signal flow of an instrument, and the score has instructions on when to play the instruments. Sporth can only define a sound in terms of signal flow, similar to a modular synthesizer. In Csound terms, it's the equivalent of having a single Csound instrument that is always on.

Performance-wise, I've found that Csound has a slight edge, but not by that much. Both are mainly written in C, and both perform quite well in real-time. I use low-end hardware, and I almost never have any issues myself. I wouldn't recommend sporth for embedded systems at all, and to be careful when using it on a raspberry pi 1 (but I said the same thing about Csound too).

From a code infrastructure standpoint, Sporth is way cleaner. And this is mainly what motivated me to write Soundpipe + Sporth, and the biggest strength. It's a very tiny language... the core of it is only a few thousand lines of reasonably C code, with the rest of it being ugen code, which is repetitive and easy to understand. It is built inside of a POSIX environment using simple Makefiles. Sporth code is pretty portable, and can be trivially dropped into a project (AudioKit does exactly this). Csound, on the other hand, is a massive code base full of very cryptic legacy C code, with bits of C++ thrown in for good measure, and uses CMake.

Csound has an amazing collection of opcodes for creating sounds. It's an amazing ecosystem to explore. Sporth has 224 unit generators, which is a lot, but a fraction of what Csound has to offer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What distro do you use as a container host? - <AUTHOR> I need to rebuild my 2 clustered VPS (which run an old 32-bit CentOS), and I now want to run all my services in containers. This will let me easily upgrade/downgrade services when required, will take take of auto-restarting any failed services, and should make it really simple to spin everything up from scratch in future.
Fedora CoreOS and Flatcar Container Linux both look interesting, as does RancherOS, but there will be a learning curve from "traditional" distros, and I want something that's going to be around long-term. It should also be simple to upgrade.
I'm curious what others are using to purely host containers? <comment><USER2> That depends on what kind of containers you are going to run, I guess. Personally, I use LXD for containers, so my hosts run a minimalist image of Ubuntu Server — as in, without anything that is not required to function.

With Ubuntu 20.04 around the corner, it is time to think about upgrading my hosts, so I am thinking about taking a look at Ubuntu Core and using that as a host server for containers. As it is tiny, has a read-only root filesystem, and LXD already run using Snap, it seems to be the perfect candidate.

In the end, go with what you know, but keep an eye on what you don't, I guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> Containers will include Nginx, MySQL and Mail-in-a-box or docker-mailserver.

I've never used LXD or containerd, so I want to stick with Docker Swarm. I hadn't considered Ubuntu Core, as I saw it more as for IoT devices - I'll take another look!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Flash Card App Idea... - <AUTHOR>

So recently I started college and began to memorize various mathematics and equations. Problem is my memory is horrible and just reading doesn't work for me so I turned to my Android and found a flash card app. Ankidroid and G+Flashcards left me off worse then when I started. There is no organization for the cards,no way to get a hold of the set of card creator, or a decent description of the card set I am downloading. So with that being said I plan on developing my own flash card app but I need input and was hoping to get some ideas of what I should make my app like from the people of hacker news, thanks in advance for any answers. <comment><USER2> I do like Anki and am currently using it for a couple of different learning activities.

I would suggest you create your own decks with images you find or create yourself rather than downloading existing decks. Memorization is generally improved by this approach (see Higbee, Your Memory : How It Works and How to Improve It).

I also like how Anki has spaced repetition built in nicely.

<comment><USER3> I am also a frequent user of Anki. The only problem I see is that its preferences (intervals, set length, etc) are at the first glance not that easy to figure out. Besides simplifying it a bit more, I see very little options to improve the standard Flashcard system.

Plus what makes Anki awesome is the ability to use the cards on every OS, making it a ideal collaborative tool. But as mentioned by tom_b you need to create your own decks. There is very little use for most public decks unless you have the extreme lucky moment having to learn exactly the same as the author of the deck did.

In fact this might be a more interesting place for innovation - the management of Anki cards. Not sure how the market situation looks but you could be offering cards for popular textbooks or create a marketplace for these in order to rise the quality. Not sure how the copyright situation looks like, but you could be entering also a more mainstream market - for example by offering a card deck for each issue of Mental Floss in order to learn at least a few interesting things each month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know you're looking for advice on your app idea but I just want to throw this in. I'm concerned that you're memorizing math. In my experience flash cards only reduce your ability to learn (and apply) math. You need to understand the reasons behind the operations you're performing and understand why they applied for a particular problem. This builds intuition which is much more long-term than memorization. Memorizing equations for an exam helps you for that exam only (typically). Being able to quickly derive the equation any time you need will help you forever. This is harder but only at first. You'll thank yourself.

As for the app, go for it! Just don't use it for math and preferably don't pitch it as a aid for math students. You'll only be hurting them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for the advice...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I made something like this for my girlfriend. She uses it for school. It's not very polished, but it may work for your needs or give you some ideas.

notecard.herokuapp.com

You can create an account (no email verification necessary). Your first step is to create a semester, then a section, then you create notecards. The notecards flip front to back with a single click. You can also put your notecards in a "Known" or "Unknown" pile so you know what you have to study.

edit: The notecards also support HTML

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much =D and does it support HTML5?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My first impressions:

Provide people a way of creating the flash cards online. Let them use a simple editor or type html directly. Make sure they can do it quickly.

Have the app connect to your web service and pull down the card groups and cards. Of course, they should be able to edit the cards on the device as well.

Swipe left/right to cycle through full screen cards, tap to flip them over.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you please elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Take a look at memrise, they combined flashcard theory with gamification.

</comment><comment><USER8> Look at Evernote's Peek. It's not exactly flash cards but could well be used for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Explain to me how this is any better than ankidroid if you don't mind...</comment></comment>


Why are geeks often atheist? - <AUTHOR> http://m4th.com/Articles/Why-are-geeks-often-atheists.php <comment><USER2> I would never forget the moment I became an atheist - it was somewhere in the middle of the 7th grade, and we had a lesson about the emerging empires in Mesopotamia ( The first time history touches organized religion, at least in my school). I was cautiously believing in christ then. Anyway we were discussing the merits of their religion (sovereign chosen by god, underworld or something like that), and it was all clear that their notion of religion was silly and could never be true, yet they passionately believed it. On top of that it was obvious that the ruling class had invented it to serve it's needs (the sovereign was entitled to his position, so was his family and hairs). And then it struck me, what will be different in say 3-4 thousand years into the future, when in some class a child will be learning about christianity, and discussing it's merits. In that exact moment the whole pillar of belief (which my parents were relentlessly building) crumbled like the WTC.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

<comment><USER3> In rejecting _an_ organized religion, why make a leap to rejecting the entire inquiry? We're already well-into that technological future you imagine. Indeed, we're communicating across the globe at sometimes the speed of light. But the most difficult questions of our humanity still have yet to be answered. I can't see that ever changing save for God incarnate descending (again?). :)

A very influential book for me: A Common Faith by John Dewey - a pragmatic philosopher with a realistic approach and hope.

The real problem, to me, is one of literalism vs. metaphor. I read the Old and New Testaments for insight but not history or science. Some would find that appalling. Others appealing. The choice is mine and ours to believe what we want.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, if god exists, all is hopeless, because everything is arbitrary (at the whim of said god). Only without a god is there any hope for us humans to make sense of things.

I think in a way the existence of god would be very depressing, because it would make everything meaningless.

<comment><USER5> There is a caveat to this assertion; If said god is entirely internally consistent, then his whim is no more arbitrary than the laws of nature.

Perhaps this is contained in the definition "God", perhaps this is why religious types are always on about "holiness" (which I have gathered mostly means "internally consistent") .

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't "internally consistent" be equivalent to "god doesn't exist"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It might make sense to think that many such geeks simply find something as > simple as a creator an overly simplistic explanation for something so > elegant.

"Overly simplistic" is nearly the opposite of the problem. We _want_ our first principles to be simple -- the fewer axioms, the better. By contrast, a god is something mind-bogglingly complex, far more complex than the universe itself. That makes it a thoroughly unsatisfactory explanation.

<comment><USER3> But see it's up to you (if you accept the challenge) to come up with a satisfactory answer. I know I have - for myself. And my wife and I mostly agree. That's enough. We won't teach our (eventual) kids dogmatically but we will teach them a healthy appreciation of the power and pitfalls of religious thought. To us, it's a part of what it means to be human. An atheist, to me, is simply saying "No, _that_ definition is wrong and I don't believe in it!". To me, that's a weird perspective for folks who come up with definitions day after day.

On topic, I do wish folks down-voting me throughout this thread would explain why. I started posting because I'm very interested in the question but lack an answer. Down-voting me only proves the point and necessitating the very question!

<comment><USER7> We could argue with you, but it would accomplish little.

1\. I'm not looking for a satisfactory answer. I'm looking for the answer that is most plausible. I go where evidence leads me. In this case, there is as much evidence for god as there is for unicorns. This is not sufficient to dismiss the concept of god entirely, but it should at least give you pause.

2\. I have debated religious people for hours and hours. I don't know any atheist who hasn't seriously evaluated his beliefs. My position is very close to the one of Richard Dawkins. Read his books (especially Selfish Gene and The God Delusion). The last book is not as confrontational as the title suggests. Dawkins has done a few programmes for the BBC, you can easily find them online.

3\. There doesn't -need- to be an answer. When a problem is very complex, it is always better to honestly admit you don't know than to make something up that sounds nice or gives comfort.

4\. You can't expect people to explain their position again and again on forums like these. Reading books is a far more efficient way to understand alternative points of view. Only when you have -specific- questions does it make sense to challenge people online.

<comment><USER8> All models are false but some models are useful. <http://is.gd/MnP>

Usefulness of the _God_ model depends on the context. Therefore it does not make sense to discuss such things without a context.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. That's why I proposed Dawkins' model as a frame of reference. Without some common ground communication breaks down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Geeks aren't religious? I think Emacs would be a good OS if it came with a halfway-decent text editor.

<comment><USER10> Hehe, so true. Geeks usually place their religion all over licenses, languages, editors, operating systems, methodologies, etc.

Some people choose ideologies. There must be an evolutionary explanation for religion somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have to say that this thread shows why I'm so impressed with the YC community. Ordinarily this sort of discussion is _very_ thorny; and almost always ends up as a flame fest within the first 10 posts.

Instead, we're drinking tea in the middle of the brier patch.

<comment><USER12> "this thread shows why I'm so impressed with the YC community"

I was actually thinking the opposite. I come here for news and articles relating to technology start ups, and this thread shows how far off track hacker news has gotten.

<comment><USER13> I was thinking the same thing. I thought about posting a "please stop" thread to this but decided against it. I figured that if I ignored it then it might go away.

It's not that I don't appreciate this sort of discussion. I like the openness of asking these questions. It's just that I can go to any corner of the internet with a forum and see most of the same.

They say you're not supposed to discuss religion and politics, I'd personally prefer to keep to this guide, and we don't see much of politics here.

<comment><USER14> " _They say you're not supposed to discuss religion and politics_ "

That advice is for situations where you need to "just get along", but it's an actively harmful stance if you're trying to seek truth, understand reality, fight regressive politics, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Simple. Geeks respect and understand the scientific method. Anything that cannot be observed and tested is considered speculation and not fact.

Being an atheist in no mean requires that you remain an atheist forever. Scientists have believed, at many times, in things that we now know are not strictly correct. Once evidence arrives and experiments are performed, scientific consensus changes.

<comment><USER11> Frankly, I believe that a lot of people who call themselves Athiests are in fact Agnostics; and don't really stop to think about the difference.

I would venture to guess that most scientists especially are agnostic because it fits the scientific method better - we can not presume to know what we cannot measure, and all that.

Atheism is the idea that we _know_ that there is know higher power. Any scientist has to know that it is impossible to have that absolute knowledge because we have no tests to prove or disprove the hypothesis.

<comment><USER16> No, it's worse than that. I think we know well enough that we're agnostic. It's just that agnostics have even worse PR than atheists.

Look at the digg survey this article links to: there's no option for "agnostic". Did the agnostics choose "atheist" or "other"? Either way, they're hidden.

Look at the photo spread: it lists "Famous Agnostics/Atheists", as if they're the same thing, but at least half are arguably agnostic:

\- Darwin: self-described agnostic; claimed he had "never been an athiest"

\- Einstein: "My position concerning God is that of an agnostic."

\- Edison: apparently a lifelong agnostic

\- Gates: can't find a clear statement, but said in an interview "I don't know if there's a god or not"

Look at the article itself: there's no mention of agnosticism at all. They're simply using a photo of a famous agnostic to bolster an argument about atheism.

I believe that a lot of us who are (and rightfully claim to be) agnostic are being labeled "atheist" by people who don't know or care.

<comment><USER7> Even atheists don't -know- whether there's a god or not. So the statement Gates made sounds like the statement from a politically correct atheist. Einstein also considered the idea of a personal god very implausible.

I think an agnostic is somebody who doesn't know whether god exists, but considers it a 50/50 situation. Both sides are equally plausible. A fence- sitter, if you will. An atheist thinks extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that the evidence for god doesn't stack up. Therefore atheists are forced to conclude there probably is no god. Or simply said: there is no god. Even though we all admit we may be wrong.

<comment><USER11> I disagree with you on this point. Atheists make the claim that there is definitively no god, just as theists make the claim that there is one definitively.

<comment><USER7> All people I know who label themself atheist accept they might be wrong. I don't think atheists exist that claim to know with absolute certainty that no god could possibly exist.

In fact, I'm pretty sure not a single person reading HN is an atheist by your definition. Even Richard Dawkins is an agnostic by your definition. I can only conclude that your definition does't make sense.

Challenge: find me an atheist who fits your definition.

You'll find none.

<comment><USER11> I'm not saying that they reject the possibility that they might be wrong; they couldn't do that any more than they could reject the possibility that they're wrong about anything immeasurable (to themselves).

The very definition of Athiesm is to deny the existence of a god or a higher power.

As soon as you admit there is a real possibility that there may be a god or a higher power; bam, you're an agnostic.

Which is the crux of my point - the definition of Atheist is often misused, as in this article. There are far more Agnostics than Atheists, it's just that Atheism gets used more frequently.

This page discussing the differences far more eloquently than I ever could:

<http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Spluh, it's because they're smart.

<comment><USER3> Or lazy.

Coming late to this game, I'm still surprised by this attitude in CS circles. To me, an atheist has refused to see the problem in defining one simple term: "God". Rejecting one definition (after a half-hearted explication) doesn't solve anything except by ignoring further inquiry.

As a neuroscientist, I know that finite matter gives rise to visions of the infinite. To me, that itself is an awe-inspiring moment for which I have no rational basis. Call it what you will (even delusion) but the challenge is to explain it away when no explanation seems adequate.

Of course, solving for "God" need not be tied to a particular faith. On it's own, it's a personal undertaking where rejecting an understanding in being atheist is certainly one's right. But replace the loaded term "God" with something else, say "Nature" or "Infinite" or "Universe" or even "Matter", and I can't see how one doesn't tumble back to a more humble position.

<comment><USER18> _Or lazy._

No, the lazy choice is to have the visions of the infinite you mention and instead of trying to understand them, simply to describe them in terms of whatever traditional concepts are floating around in your culture-- which in this case are at best 99% anthropomorphizing fable, and often consciously designed to enslave you.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps some of us have grown out of our traditional concepts designed to enslave us and have managed not to have visions of the infinite (study of infinities is a fairly mature science, btw) but still understand the need for a taxonomy of the unknowable?

The lazy is on you, it seems, for making all kinds of straw man arguments here. Surely 99% of belief in God is based on culture and anthropology, but 99% is not 100%. You do the topic a disservice to say that it is.

Personally? I find it funny when people say they're an atheist. "How do you know what not to believe in?" is my first question, and usually that shuts them down. You see, atheism is a response to those traditional cultural ideas of religion (and the history of how they have evolved), not to the real concept of a God. To the atheist, God, santa clause, the christian church, the easter bunny, etc -- it's all the same thing. Stuff you can't prove. They haven't grown to understand where the definitional fault lines are.

That's lazy.

<comment><USER20> '"How do you know what not to believe in?" is my first question, and usually that shuts them down. '

It usually goes something like this:

T; Do you believe in god?

A: Define 'god'

T: <some description involving unverifiable supernatural beings>

A: No. I do not believe that.

No one gets shut down.

"They haven't grown to understand where the definitional fault lines are."

Nice ad hominem there. Talk about lazy.

<comment><USER19> How about we actually ask the poster (me) how that goes? I know this is a lot more fun when you get to make up both parts, but gee -- give a guy a break.

T: Do you believe in God? A: I believe through inductive reasoning that there are things we do not understand. I believe it is critically important to know this. I also believe this always to be the case. You can call this continuing lack of knowledge "a hole", part of the implications of Godel's theorem -- whatever. I find no problem with those who choose the word "God"

See how much more fun this is with two players?

<comment><USER20> "How about we actually ask the poster (me) how that goes? "

Well, you were the one saying _you_ ask that question of others, and then you gave a fairly dismissive account of how others answer. Basically, you played both parts.

I simply offered an alternative to how those sorts of conversations go when I'm the one being asked. You know, giving you an actual person so you don't have to play both parts. It's more fun that way.

If you want to use a very particular definition of "god" to frame the discussion in your favor, that's great. But we both know that when most people are talking about god and atheism and belief they are not obliquely referring to Godel anything.

<comment><USER19> So you got it, good.

I understand that you and others confuse God, religion, and social justice. I'll posit that they are all related in some fashion outside the scope of this discussion. But that common confusion is a colloquial discussion (What is commonly meant when one says something) not a semantic and epistemological one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill Troll-bait. Digg does not represent geeks at large, and we have no idea if the poll was spammed or not.

Second, there are many geeks (like one client I have who is finishing up his studies at Cambridge this year) who are of one faith or another.

The guy who wrote the first silicon compiler (lets you lay out chip designs without having to do it manually) - fundamentalist Christian. Many Apple geeks - Buddhist. etc.

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe some of us geeks just need to get outside more. Go hiking like Francis Collins did.

From (<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article673663.ece>) Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute, claims there is a rational basis for a creator and that scientific discoveries bring man "closer to God".

For Collins, unravelling the human genome did not create a conflict in his mind. Instead, it allowed him to "glimpse at the workings of God".

"When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can't survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can't help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God's mind."

"I see God's hand at work through the mechanism of evolution. If God chose to create human beings in his image and decided that the mechanism of evolution was an elegant way to accomplish that goal, who are we to say that is not the way," he says.

Collins was an atheist until the age of 27, when as a young doctor he was impressed by the strength that faith gave to some of his most critical patients.

"They had terrible diseases from which they were probably not going to escape, and yet instead of railing at God they seemed to lean on their faith as a source of great comfort and reassurance," he said. "That was interesting, puzzling and unsettling."

His epiphany came when he went hiking through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state. He said: "It was a beautiful afternoon and suddenly the remarkable beauty of creation around me was so overwhelming, I felt, 'I cannot resist this another moment'."

Collins believes that science cannot be used to refute the existence of God because it is confined to the "natural" world. In this light he believes miracles are a real possibility. "If one is willing to accept the existence of God or some supernatural force outside nature then it is not a logical problem to admit that, occasionally, a supernatural force might stage an invasion," he says.

As for me, know that I respect your opinion. My life experiences are different than your life experiences. For me, God is very real. I find when I remember to pray sincerely in the morning, I can recognize God's hand throughout the day. The things I see are usually small things but sometimes they are not small at all.

<comment><USER22> Sam Harris hikes, and this is his take on Collins:

[http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_lang...](http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060815_sam_harris_language_ignorance/)

What is your opinion on his interpretation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I suspect, atheism itself will become an organized religion several decades from now.

<comment><USER3> I think in some circles it already has.

(Don't know why you got down-voted.)

<comment><USER24> I think Unitarian Universalsm <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism> is some kind of organized atheism.

<comment><USER25> it is acceptable to be a UU and believe in God or not believe in God. That is why some people think UU is not a religion- it doesn't have dogma.

<comment><USER6> and if you don't think they're tolerant enough, there's always <http://www.themonastery.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In a hypothetical universe, if kids weren't exposed to ANY thoughts about religion AT ALL and were taught about what we know about how the universe works, would the concept of God arise? Perhaps, since there are still a lot of things which are mysterious and can't be explained. But it seems that it will take a very different form than what we have been exposed to.

<comment><USER27> I think yes, the concept would still arise. Many disconnected societies had religion.

You know this feeling when, after stumbling and falling over a chair, you punish the poor piece of furniture as if it were alive? Or see a car crash about to occur and think to yourself, oh please, let's this not happen? Imagining self-consciousness around you, a natural human trait, leads to the invention of tree spirits, thunderstorm spirits, etc., all the way up to god.

And of course the concept of god (or any other Powerful Force orthogonal to human well-being) is very beneficial to those in power, to rationalize their decisions to the masses. So yes, it would be invented, and pretty soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Let's put down the rationalist cool-aid for just a minute. While in every realm of scientific inquiry we have never discovered a man in a red suit (santa claus) by surprise, we have always discovered a greater level of complexity and uncertainty.

The question becomes whether or not we can assign names to things we cannot reason about. Human language and psychology are great things. I believe we can and I believe it is necessary. To say there is an intelligent prime mover at some level beyond our understanding is only far-out in one word: intelligent. I would argue as a baby species we're nowhere close to having a rational definition for intelligent. It's obvious there are complex levels of understanding to the universe that we do not grok.

So in 4 thousand years, when humans look back on us and laugh, so what? Were the Romans wrong in believing Zeus threw lightning bolts? I would argue they were not: some force existed that caused electrical discharges from the sky. By learning more about Zeus, humans simply took part of the meaning of "Zeus" and replaced it with various theories. (Which continue to be worked to this day, I might add)

We will never complete this exercise. There will always be holes in what we understand. And using our creativity and intellect to tell stories about what must be out there? It's the definition of human.

So yes, Virginia, there is a God. For some he is a personal, close advisor. For some he is simply a thing to be denied until time of dire stress. But he's been there, and will remain there, for millennium. Every time a scientist takes a deep-field shot from the Hubble for a picture of the "face of God", every time a MLK rises up to change society for the better, every time a child wonders where their dead parents "went to" -- God remains.

You can cling to your provisional theories as being the source of truth or you can accept the uncertainty of it all and grow up. Atheism is the ultimate negative statement "there is no such thing as I cannot define" and therefore, at the end of the day, is the most non-rational belief of all - in my opinion, of course.

<comment><USER18> _Atheism is the ultimate negative statement "there is no such thing as I cannot define"_

No, it's just concluding, as JMC puts it, "the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question."

<comment><USER19> But it's not. It's lazy (in my opinion) to have such a shallow view of the matter.

I would encourage you guys to listen to some discussion and arguments around proofs-of-God. The Teaching Company has a couple of great lecture series. Take some time and learn. The worst people to teach are those who think they have nothing to learn.

We can't make a conclusion one way or another given common terms and understanding. The question is really about how we deal with things outside of our ability to reason about them, not werewolves, santa clause, or any of that other nonsense.

I wonder how many have you studied any of this since university? I thought about it, and I got tired of hearing the same old arguments, so I reached out and kept reaching until I got it. To me this seems like one of those questions people are just happy repeating something they heard a long time ago while not looking at the subject with a fresh eye every so often.

Hey -- my opinion only. But it looks lazy to me.

<comment><USER28> _I would encourage you guys to listen to some discussion and arguments around proofs-of-God. The Teaching Company has a couple of great lecture series. Take some time and learn. The worst people to teach are those who think they have nothing to learn._

If someone accuses you of being self-righteous or condescending, don't let him or her find this.

<comment><USER19> This sub-thread was in terms of laziness. As part of that discussion, I have demonstrated my efforts to learn more, questioned others to see if they have done the same, and encouraged them to do so.

Quite frankly, I haven't heard much of a rebuttal so far. You are correct in that I should have drawn the point home sharper in the above text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Eric Raymond has similar essays for why geeks are "often" libertarians, or "often" in favor of gun rights. "Logic dictates" that they would be so. Of course, a year later you find out that he also thinks people with dark skin are genetically inferior, and that we should bomb Tehran.

For my part, and despite what the avalanche of comments on this thread says to the contrary, I'll assert that it's hard to find an argument more _boring_ and _petulant_ than this one. "Geeks" are people who like to take things apart and build them back up again, and vice versa. That is the _only_ thing they have in common. Unless you'd like me to make fun of your grimy pony tail and Star Trek ears.

</comment><comment><USER30> For me it's because I understand the argument against the existence of God.

Specifically, a God, meaning some kind of conscious all-knowing, all-powerful entity that exists somehow "beyond" time, would have to be a thing of organized complexity.

And organized complexity does not just "exist beyond time."

Somehow, this kind of organized complexity has to come in to being. No, it does not "just exist."

We do know one process for bringing organized complexity into being, and that is evolution.

So far, it's the only process we know about for creating organized complexity on the scale required for consciousness and intelligence.

We don't know of any other processes that can do this.

That doesn't prove that there aren't other ways. But.

You tell me. If God knows everything, where did he/it get that knowledge?

If God "just exists", explain: how is that possible?

Your non-explanation, to me, proves nothing.

Rather than saying "I can't prove leprechauns exist, so therefore you must accept that they might exist" I am very content to say "I do not believe that leprechauns exist." Period. End of story.

Same with God. No reason to believe. Even Pascal's wager is flawed, because you lose so much by living your life according to faith, that it is not worth it, especially considering how unlikely it is that a complete perfect all- knowing all-powerful intelligence would just spring into being beyond time.

</comment><comment><USER31> This articles is absolute b.s. Faith and reason go together; they are not diametrically opposed. Perhaps the reason why geeks tend to be atheists is because they simply don't care that much about religion- they have other subjects to consider.

<comment><USER32> Not meaning to start a theological debate here, as really, it's not the place, but how exactly do faith and reason go together?

<comment><USER33> All reasoning requires some unprovable axioms. That's Godel's incompleteness theorem. A religious person can simply take the divinity of jesus (or whatever) as an axiom and use reason from that point onward.

<comment><USER34> > All reasoning requires some unprovable axioms. That's Godel's incompleteness > theorem.

No, that's just reasoning. Godel's theorem is about the limitations of what you can build upon those axioms.

I'm not sure those limitations even matter much. What use is being able to prove "this statement is unprovable"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Steve pavlina is clearly a geek (you may think what you want of his ideas; being married to a psychic is not a good sign of good judgment if you ask me); he wrote an extensice critic of organized religion here: [http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/05/10-reasons-you- shou...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2008/05/10-reasons-you-should-never- have-a-religion/)

I agree, and I think most geeks I know fall into the category of people who question bullshit often.

</comment><comment><USER36> Tied into the recent Meyer-Briggs poll I'd also posit that the prototypical geek personality, INTJ, also tends towards Things Needing To Be Right. Meaning, many people simply don't find a need to break down systems of belief and settle on a solid, well constructed belief structure. Geeks like binary stuff. Religion is true or false. The Christian geeks that I do know seem to confirm this by being rather taken with systematic theology.

<comment><USER37> "Systematic theology"? That sounds like a lot of effort to dance around the fact that Christians worship a magical Jewish zombie who is all that stands between them and hell.

<comment><USER38> After all, not all zombies can fly and that one did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Intelligent people have better things to do with their time than argue about undefined words. (edit: I just saw how many comments this thread has, never mind)

here's another one for you, why don't geeks believe in casplak?

It's the russel's teapot problem. People who talk about god are using a word with no referent.

</comment><comment><USER40> I would think that cause there is no need to be religious. I mean what's the point of believing in something which no one knows whether existed or not while life goes on as usual. I mean computers work for both who believe in something and who don't.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think this may be the simplest explanation for why geeks often have any particular quality, this one included:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=204240>

</comment><comment><USER42> Hard agnostic != atheist.

</comment><comment><USER43> Because we all know we are living in a computer simulation... <http://www.simulation-argument.com/>

</comment><comment><USER44> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity> == Atheism?

<comment><USER44> i meant that some singularitists seem more reliogious about it that scientific.

i have no real opinion whether it will happen or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> "God is dead" - Friedrich Nietzsche

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead>

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if anyone else has caught the contradiction in the article-

"This makes them the single largest religious group on Digg,..." (The author acknowledges that atheism is a 'religious group')

"Religion has no place in science." (Used as a possible reason why Geeks tend to be atheists)

Religion is the greatest science of all. All other branches of science are merely an appendage to true religion. When we understand nature, and natures God (or the rules that govern nature) we understand science.

</comment><comment><USER47> because smart scientific people are skeptics. It is tougher to resolve one's skepticism with religious beliefs than it is resolve with atheism. Interestingly, I have known several atheist who were almost "religious" in their atheism.

<comment><USER17> Isn't this roughly the same as my "spluh" comment? :)

In a religious culture, it's hard to find anyone more religious than an atheist. The reason for that, I think, is that you have to make a choice to be an atheist when it's not the default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> if(god.exists()){ return to_your_predetermined_role_in('work','play','etc'); }else{ while (true) { rage_against_the_machine(); } }

</comment><comment><USER49> anyone who can understand probability in a half-decent manner wouldn't believe in god.

</comment><comment><USER50> One note that I'll add: if we want to make "religion" palatable to hackers, there is a way in: reincarnation research. The reason I say this is that, as I mentioned in another post, hackers like to experience things directly, understand them at intimate levels, and improve them, which makes the immutable, transcendent, unprovable and irrefutable "truths" offered by religion unappealing.

500 years from now, we'll still have no scientific evidence either way regarding the existence of God, and there will be millions of people on each side of the debate. However, empirical reincarnation research (e.g. the work of Ian Stevenson) can be done, and early results are promising. It's not enough, at this very early stage, to "prove" that reincarnation occurs after death, but it could provide a lot of interesting insights into what we are as humans, using methodology that scientifically-minded hackers would approve.

</comment><comment><USER51> I would say by and large "geeks" subscribe to Occam's Razor, meaning the simplest self-consistent explanatory theory for a given explendum tends to be correct. If the explendum, is, for example, the Universe, then Occam's Razor would point to a well-defined, self-consistent theory of quantum gravity (as yet not entirely done), then positing say, the flying spaghetti monster. If "God" is defined as some sort of disembodied "macro-intelligence" then said notion becomes a casulty of Occam's Razor. If however, "God" is co-terminous with Nature, or the Universe, or the "creativity" of nature as some would have it, which I would take to mean emergent forms or fluctuations spontaneously arising from a system in thermal equlibrium in the macro-scale, then one can carry on using the word "God", without running into Occam's Razor. Personally I prefer the word "pantheist" to "atheist", meaning the former term is "glass half full" whereas the latter term is "glass half empty".

</comment><comment><USER50> Hackers like to experience things directly, and improve them. Religion of the traditional sort tends to assert that there are immutable revealed truths, which cannot be experienced except by a rare few who lived millenia ago, and which it is a crime (heresy) to "hack". So traditional religion is unappealing, and a lot of them come to the conclusion that nothing in religion is true.

</comment><comment><USER52> One would hope the reason is: geeks more often manage to understand evolution properly.

<comment><USER53> were there not atheists long before evolutionary theory?

<comment><USER52> Few, because they didn't have an answer to the problem of design.

(Plus, back then, science and industry had yet to give a stunning demonstration of the power of human reason over nature.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's because some of them are european buddhists :)

</comment><comment><USER55> because we can do math.</comment>


2016 was not the hottest year on record when including the margin of error - <AUTHOR> https://www.scedast.com/visualization/there-is-no-hottest-year-on-record/?utm_campaign=post&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> By the standard of that blog, it's possible for temperature to continuously really be rising 100 degrees over a century but for the last year to not be the hottest year on record, if the margin of error is a degree.

Hottest year on record isn't a great metric, though. It's all about the trendline. And the trend is for continuous, significant, and dangerous increases in global surface temperatures to be observed over timescales of ~5 years.

<comment><USER3> Is it?

[https://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/100-of-us-warming- is-...](https://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to- noaa-data-tampering/)

> The NOAA raw data shows no warming over the past century

> When presented with my claims of fraud, NOAA typically tries to arm wave it > away with these two complaints. > They use gridded data and I am using un- > gridded data. > They "have to" adjust the data because of Time Of > Observation Bias and station moves.

> Time of Observation Bias (TOBS) is a real problem, but is very small. TOBS > is based on the idea that if you reset a min/max thermometer too close to > the afternoon maximum, you will double count warm temperatures (and vice- > versa if thermometer is reset in the morning.) Their claim is that during > the hot 1930's most stations reset their thermometers in the afternoon.

> This is easy to test by using only the stations which did not reset their > thermometers in the afternoon during the 1930's. The pattern is almost > identical to that of all stations. No warming over the past century. Note > that the graph below tends to show too much warming due to morning TOBS.

<comment><USER4> My God, that blog is a joke

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This soundbite does not carry much useful information. Sure, it is an amusing factoid that the spreads of the data points overlap, but that does not mean anything, especially if you do not explain what that spread represents (is this a confidence interval for the true average, or is it just meant to represent the spread (due to geography) of the data over which it was averaged). It is completely nonsensical to use this margin in order to say things like "Year X was as hot as N other years".

Moreover, even if the margin of error is big, we can still easily calculate (with high precision and certainty) the presence of a slope when analyzing the whole data set.

P.S. A minor side note is that this is temperature averaged over the entire globe, so to a big extent this spread is not an "error", rather it is representative of the variance of Earth's temperature at different geographical locations and at different times throughout the year.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have a fully accurate measure of what the earth's temperature is, so scientists estimate what is it based on available data. Any temperature recording device also has an error margin. Thus the annual temperature is an estimate with a 95% confidence interval.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Look at the year 1998. See how it clearly stands above many preceding and following years?

In fact, 1998 was so abnormally hot that for a long time AGW skeptics used it as baseline to harp on the meme "global warming has stopped for N years." (It's easy to pretend the world is cooling, when you pick one of the hottest years on record as baseline.)

And now see how 1998 is unambiguously cooler than 2016.

Rest assured, I expect a decade (two if we're lucky) of listening to "Global warming has stopped since 2016" from now on.

<comment><USER7> I've always considered that type of AGW argument as analogous to watching a rubber ball bounce down a hill and saying, "See? It bounces so high! There is no trend."

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's also not _not_ the hottest year on record.

And if that chart works like I think, it's more likely than not. Maybe around 60-70% or so?

</comment><comment><USER9> Okay, it was one of the four hottest years on record. Not sure that significantly changes the argument.

</comment><comment><USER10> Grasping at straws.

</comment><comment><USER11> You only need to look at all of the other charts on this page to conclude this may not be an unbiased observer.

</comment><comment><USER12> (I implore anyone who looks at this to take a look at their other visualizations, all of them push a narrative, and at least three misrepresent information from their sources or explicitly state false information)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a bold claim. Which ones use false information?

<comment><USER12> The Hilary email server one to start.

Your (I assume your, since your username matches the site) visualization shows a tree, and reads as there being 31800 wiped emails, of which 12200 were later found, and of those 2800 were work related. I'll quote FactCheck.org, one of the sources you list on your site:

>There is no evidence to date that work-related emails were intentionally deleted. ... In his July 5 press conference, Comey said "like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed."

Your visualization states that the FBI found emails that Clinton wiped. This isn't the case (or at least, the FBI doesn't believe this is the case).

The racial killing one is misleading, although I'll grant you not explicitly false, just heavily misleading. Specifically, your use of percentages is badly phrased and could be seen to push a misleading narrative.

If I hover over raw, I see "6546 blacks killed by blacks". This is a true statement. If I hover over percentages, I see "92.9% of blacks killed by blacks". This is obviously not true, since it would imply that every black person was killed this past year, and 93% of them by other, now dead, black people, a ridiculous assertion. Instead, what you should state is "Of the ~7000 black people killed last year, 92.9% were killed by other black people". That's the true statement.

I don't claim this is false though, because it was obviously just a formatting mistake, which I hope you'll amend now that I've informed you of it.

It seems to me however, that you are trying to include something percentage based to imply that you're normalizing by population. That is, according to the census bureau, there are about 39 million black Americans, and about 224 million white Americans (I rounded both to the nearest million, which was up in both cases).

That means that a black American had a 258/39,000,000 chance of being killed by police, while a white american had a 666/224,000,000 chance.

Or in other words, 6.6 in every million black Americans was killed by police, and 2.97 in every million white Americans was killed by the police.

To put it another way, you're normalizing within groups instead of across groups, and this leads to a practically useless set of numbers that you can throw at people, but don't have any practical value. So even if you do change your formatting issue, it would be better if you showed the across group normalization, instead of what you currently have, which isn't a valuable piece of data.

Edit: For someone who is quick to claim others are making mistakes "its all about the trendline" and "I'm tired of people making the current year being the hottest into something its not", I would expect better work honestly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to help improve things. I agree with some issues you raise but not others.

For the Clinton server, I never stated that work email being wiped was intentional. The fact is though that almost half of her emails were securely wiped with bleachbit, and the FBI recovered 5600 work related emails, of which at most half are duplicates of those turned over. I give the benefit of the doubt and list that half of them are new. See the WSJ source for the FBI stating that they found emails that Clinton wiped.

Homicides by race - you're right about the tooltip not being as clear as can be. I need to be terse so that the tooltip can fit on mobile, but I do mean the percentage to be detailing the size of the histogram slice.

I defend using the percentages instead of whole populations though. Looking at the total population is asking what kills people the most. Looking at a breakdown of homicides is asking who kills the most. It's a case of Simpson's paradox where the subpopulation does not conform to the aggregated whole.

I'm happy you expect good work out of the site - that's what I strive to accomplish.

<comment><USER12> >For the Clinton server, I never stated that work email being wiped was intentional.

No, but your graph shows that of the 30K emails that were deleted after the start of the investigation (with bleachbit, as you say), 2800 were work related. The FBI does not claim this, nor do your sources. It is as far as we know, a false claim.

>It's a case of Simpson's paradox where the subpopulation does not conform to the aggregated whole.

Its not, you are never combining groups. Its just a bad application of percentages (and perhaps a worse visualization).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the the trend line is still very evident even though they don't have one. A bet they'd argue the trend isn't there though.

<comment><AUTHOR> The trendline matters. Focusing on a specific year is meaningless, which is what this visualization is trying to show. It's not trying to argue against mercury but against the annual headlines that there is a hottest year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny thing is that they didn't talk about error bars after the "1998 hiatus"

</comment><comment><USER14> 2016 was also not a year where the earth was proven to be round.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2017 is the year you learned it's actually a spheroid.

<comment><USER14> There is no proof when you include this vague reassessment of the data.</comment></comment></comment>


Cheese Makers Keeping Monterey Jack's Local Legend Alive - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/where-is-monterey-jack-from <comment><USER2> Blessed are the cheese makers!

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a native english speaker here: what does "jack" mean in this context?

<comment><USER4> There are 3 contexts: the name of a cheese similar to cheddar (but made with a washed curd), the name of a device that you use to lift your car, the surname of someone associated with it. In the second case, you can imagine pressing the cheese using the "jack".

<comment><USER5> "Jack" is also used to refer to the female end of a wire connector, e.g. audio jack.

<comment><USER6> If you include slang usages there's also jack off (jerk off), car got jacked (hijacked), he got jacked (muscular), doesn't know jack (jack shit), jack in (term from megaman battle network)

<comment><USER7> also a wooden assistant for removing one's boots (aka boot jack)

<comment><USER8> also a playing card, or a small metallic object with tetrahedrally oriented spikes used in the game Jacks [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jack#English](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jack#English)

<comment><USER9> Jacks and jennies, male and female asses, jack leg, a bad tradesman, jacks a pointless kids game, jimmy jack, fiddle fart, ball the jack, go flat out

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know what the hell happened to Monterey Jack a couple years ago?

It went from very available to much less available, and I've never figured out why.

<comment><USER11> Funny, I noticed the same thing a couple years ago. (I'm in NYC.)

 _Except_ it hasn't exactly disappeared -- it's simply been replaced by Pepper Jack on all my local grocery shelves, which is of course Monterey Jack with added jalapeños, and is _always_ in stock and lots of it. (Only very rarely do I see pure Monterey anymore.)

I'm guessing since really the only thing people use Monterey Jack for is melting in/on Mexican food, or on crackers, which _always_ goes with the flavor profile of jalapeños, that it's replaced it because it just looks prettier while doing the same job?

<comment><USER12> "Pepper Jack" is also a pretty damn catchy name for cheese, I gotta admit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _"It's better greens than you're getting in New York City," Schoch tells me._

Who does this guy think he is? We have a bunch of local producers growing on rooftops and crazy stuff like that. Get your act together, man!</comment>


Show HN: web comic tracking Chrome extension - <AUTHOR> http://cosmic.mikhuang.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Before this, I used to impulsively go to comic sites and refresh around the time they updated. Now, I impulsively check the menu whenever bored. It's good enough for personal usage, I'm wondering if this'd be useful for others?</comment>


Why We're Never Satisfied – It's All in the Wiring - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@NateAndorsky/why-were-never-satisfied-it-s-all-in-the-wiring-875db06ba335 <comment><USER2> Sounds more like classical conditioning, no? I have to go with conditioning, I don't believe it is hard wired like instinct. We are bombarded from early on with a deluge of programming. We are conditioned to believe that bigger is better, more fancy, etc.. this is a formula In today's advertisers know just exactly how to trigger the need or desire for something new.

I agree that motivation can be maintained through anticipation of reward, but that is just conditioning not instinct.</comment>


Ask HN: A Publicly Funded Social Network - <AUTHOR>
 Despite the writing style, this post isn't intended to advocate one way or another. I'm just trying to frame the thought experiment for discussion.
There has been alot of discussion recently about how to fix social networks. It seems to be a point of near consensus that engagement-driven metrics are a problem, and that they are the result of the commercial nature of these services. One of the central points of debate seems to be about how an organization could run a free social network in an ethically and financially sustainable way. In contrast I haven't seen much discussion of a government run option.
Planning, providing and maintaining public spaces is already one of the key functions of government. It also seems that the cost of running a social network may not actually be that large if there isn't any tracking/targeting infrastructure to maintain. There is no fundamental reason users should have to upload their photos/video to the social network itself either, we've just become accustomed to it.
In the US, the first amendment would apply in full force, as this would not be a privately run service. Constitutionally protected speech would remain protected. A company administering a social network must inevitably make judgment calls about moderation, which inevitably creates controversy. Removing this possibility and having moderation constrained by law provides some measure of transparency and accountability, and provides a clear path forward for citizens to determine how the service is operated.
Privacy would have to be guaranteed. Protections given to physical postal mail might be a reasonable starting point. A postal worker isn't allowed to read your mail even when asked nicely by an FBI agent without a warrant. There would be legislative attacks on this kind of privacy, but then people's attention would be focused on their elected representatives, which seems like a better situation than appealing to facebook to do the right thing. <comment><USER2> Not sure how that would work politically in the US.

Republicans are against big government programs.

And Democrats are in tech's pocket.</comment>