Abacus tournaments in Japan - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/21/world/asia/japan-abacus.html <comment><USER2> I very rarely suggest edits to HN titles but I feel like adding "for two hours" makes the title a lot truer than the New York Times' one, and that after you have the true title with the "Wow, Japan, how charmingly inscrutable" removed from it, there is very little reason to read the rest of it.

Abacuses are a niche hobby in Japanese schools, in the same fashion that e.g. competitive poetry recital is a niche hobby in American schools, and _are factually not_ taught in the fashion that e.g. poetry is taught in American schools.

<comment><USER3> Friend had a Japanese style abacus: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soroban#/media/File:Soroban.JP...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soroban#/media/File:Soroban.JPG)

I played around with it a bit, it was great fun but no match for Excel.

<comment><USER3> And there are abacuses very similar in usage in Roman times.

The Japanese ones, conforming to stereotype, seem to be the most elegant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A friend of mine's father did mental (abacus) math competitions when he was younger. We were chatting about it, and he suggested I test him.

I started off with some easy ones, and he nailed them. I went up to 5 and six digit numbers (different operations, no less), and he still nailed them. He mocked me for speaking so slowly, but my Japanese was pretty fast, especially for something as easy as numbers (not auctioneer fast, but still...).

All I can say is that I was thoroughly impressed. He had the correct answer within a fraction of a second of me finishing my last number every time.

To make it "tougher", he suggested we do it in English. His spoken English was not very good, but his listening may have been ok.

He nailed the simple stuff, but I was able to break him a few times by going over 10,000. Japanese counting uses base 10k, while English counting uses base 1k, so it throw him off a bit — he didn't slow down enough to process exactly what I was saying. That said, I'm sure he could have nailed the English version just as well as the Japanese with just a little bit of practice.

If you ever get a chance to meet these mental soroban folks, I encourage you to ask them about their experiences.

</comment><comment><USER5> [citation needed]

If you read the article, it specifies that advanced soroban is taught in some private school, and that it was phased out in the 1970s. Currently elementary students get a total of 4 hours of instruction spread over grade 3 and 4 (which is probably just enough that, a couple years later, they would still know what it is). So while the title is grammatically correct, it is also misleading.

<comment><USER6> I'm very confused... I don't have access to the article because I don't want to make an account... But is it implying that soroban is not taught in schools? Because that is incorrect. It totally depends on the school, but the high school I taught in had an elective class in advanced soroban. Part of the class was passing a certain kentei level (I can't remember which one). We even had a soroban _club_ and it was quite popular (about 25 people). In the countryside soroban are still used by some businesses so it is considered a reasonable skill to have. Anyway, the school I taught at was not an academic school, so most people didn't go to university. It had a business section for students intending to take over their parent's shop, etc. Most of the students in the business section took the soroban class (it might have even been all of them). In addition to soroban, they had classes in Excel and even SQL -- though no other programming language.

<comment><USER7> You don't have to make an account to access the article.

If you have reached your max number of articles, try clearing all cookies or using a private window or a different browser.

Firefox has 'containers' which have isolated cookies, you can open news sites like these in a separate container. If you want to take it 1 step further, you can install Firefox's 'Multi-Account Containers' add-on and tell it to open certain websites in a container by default. When you run into the limit, just clear the cookies of that container.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I started my kids with abacus as soon as they could count.

It gave them great intuitive understanding of arithmetic later.

Highly recommend.

<comment><USER9> As an alternative, let me recommend teaching kids to use a free-form counting- board type abacus. All you need is a pile of pennies (or pebbles, buttons, plastic tokens, ...) and some lines drawn on a surface (e.g. drawn in the dirt with a stick, or drawn on paper).

These counting boards were still the standard tool in Europe until a few centuries ago, but their use has been completely wiped out and nearly forgotten in a short time, since the popularization of Indo-Arabic numerals and cheap access to paper.

The way it works is that parallel lines are drawn on the surface, and counters on the line represent 1, 10, 100, etc., while counters in between the lines represent 5, 50, 500, etc. In normalized form you only ever have up to 4 counters on a line. But there is no hard requirement that numbers be normalized, and you can pile as many counters as you like on one line and still have a meaningful state of the board.

Using the counting board then consists of first plonking down counters in the easiest representation of your result (e.g. to add 22 + 34 put 2 + 4 counters on the ones line and 2 + 3 counters on the tens line), and then undertaking a series of transformations which preserve the value of the whole board but move between equivalent representations (e.g. trade 5 ones for 1 five and trade 5 tens for 1 fifty), until you get to a representation which is convenient as output.

This is closer to most types of mathematical/computational activity in later mathematics, where various manipulation is done which at each step preserves some invariants. It is also good preparation for thinking about the relation between data structures and algorithms.

The big problem with the beads-on-rods version is that there is only one possible representation of each number. So the act of trading different magnitudes of counters is always left implicit. This makes it both harder to learn and less flexible as a tool, with the advantage that in the hands of a serious expert it's probably marginally faster. If the goal were to train a 19th century accountant or shopkeeper this might be a fair trade-off, but for promoting understanding I think it's not worth it.

* * *

If you want to save some tokens and make the system still more powerful, add a perpendicular line down the middle of the parallel lines. On one side tokens represent positive counts and on the other side they represent negative counts. Now in addition to the rules about trading 5 ones for 1 five or 2 fives for 1 ten, there is an additional rule that the same number of counters on opposite sides of the line represent 0 in combination (so any number of counters can be added or removed from both sides equally without changing the meaning of the configuration).

This adds is an additional convenient way to normalize numbers: try to maximally reduce the number of tokens used, allowing some negative "digits". We represent 3 as 5 – 2, 8 as 10 – 2, etc. Pick whatever convention you like for whether to round 5 up or down. In this representation, rounding a number is particularly easy: just truncate.

This is something which cannot be done on a beads-on-rods soroban, but is very helpful for understanding the meaning of negative numbers, the relation of addition and subtraction, etc.

<comment><USER10> The tokens used on such a counting-board are called jettons. I'll second your recommendation, and add my own next step: moving on to using a slide rule. Seriously, seeing how real numbers move on a slide rule really helped give me a feeling for how they 'dance' in calculations.

I _think_ [http://www.mernick.org.uk/lnc/jetton/jetton.htm](http://www.mernick.org.uk/lnc/jetton/jetton.htm) was a good reference I found when I first used jettons, but it's been so many years now that I can't say for sure. [http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/projects/PiN/juh.html](http://www.chicagocoinclub.org/projects/PiN/juh.html) has some information too.

<comment><USER9> Here's a book about the subject, but it focuses as much on specific counters in museums and collections as it does on their usage, [https://amzn.com/0907498000](https://amzn.com/0907498000)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Somewhere, there is a Japanese news website with the headline "Marksmanship taught in American schools".

Yes, this is true in a sense but it is definitely hyping up the "mysterious Japan" angle.

</comment><comment><USER12> My son did after school classes in abacus and learned how to use do the maths without the abacus, using his hands or just mentally. Even now almost a decade later her can still do some pretty impressive maths in his head using those skills. Or even more impressive is his ability tally quickly. Just today we were talking about how most animals have a common, short name and a longer scientific one. As an example we used a spider near us, it's scientific name is eriophora transmarina and he commented in about two seconds that it had 8 syllables in its name, the same as its full common name. I don't know about others but I had to count three times before I was sure it was 8.

<comment><USER13> Isn't eriophora transmarina 9 syllables? (Btw, I'm in awe of people who can do mental abacus calculations.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Find it weird? How about this: Hand writing is still the primary writing tool being taught at school. And not just in Japan.

I wont deny that handwriting is useful, but having it taught as the primary writing skill, the first and main one, while the keyboard, the device that will probably be used 95% of the time people have to write something in their lives, is still seen as a niche skill is shocking to me.

<comment><USER9> Training young humans in basic manual dexterity seems pretty reasonable to me. It would be good to require more manual training than just minimal and mediocre handwriting practice, and get young people folding origami, sewing, drawing, sculpting clay, cutting food with a knife, using chopsticks, playing musical instruments, tying knots, ...

Paper furthermore remains a much more flexible and fluent tool than computer interfaces for a wide variety of tasks.

<comment><USER14> We do far more than train them with "mediocre handwriting". We introduce letters by showing script (which is a confusing style almost never used anywhere in the real world) and insist for years on the correct shape to use on this totally obsolete style.

Any of the activity you mention would be a better way to train manual dexterity.

<comment><USER9> This varies a lot from place to place. My school mostly focused on print letters, and didn't provide much useful guidance to students. I agree the typical American "cursive" letters are quite terrible, and that in many places pedagogy is not very effective.

Personally I think students should learn some type of simplified italic-type script, using a pen with ink that flows well enough that they don't need to use much pressure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I got really interested in the soroban at one point, and taught myself how to do basic arithmetic on it, with the ultimate goal of being able to do quick mental math. Unfortunately, I got bored after a while and never did achieve my ultimate objective and now don't really remember how to do it. It's one of those "use it or lose it" skills.

However, I do still have links to some of my favorite videos showing some really amazing soroban or flash anazn feats:

Soroban - All in the mind[1], Flash Anzan at the All-Japan National Soroban Championship 2012[2], and Mental Arithmetic World Champion - Flash Anzan[3]

There's an excellent, free book on it: Abaucs: Mystery of the Bead[4]

r/soroban and r/mentalmath are worth peeking in to.

I also really enjoyed reading a blog called Going Gaijin, written by a woman who took formal soroban classes in Japan.[5]

There are a lot of cheap, decent sorobans on amazon and ebay, if you want a physical device. I also found the "Simple Soroban" Android app to be useful for practice.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_hvzYS3_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px_hvzYS3_Y)

[2] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ktpme4xcoQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ktpme4xcoQ)

[3] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JawF0cv50Lk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JawF0cv50Lk)

[4] - [http://totton.idirect.com/abacus/](http://totton.idirect.com/abacus/)

[5] - [http://goinggaijin.com/2014/04/28/392/](http://goinggaijin.com/2014/04/28/392/)

</comment><comment><USER7> When my daughter was born she was gifted an abacus by my brother. She loves to play with it because of the colours of the beads and the sound they make.

I was looking at it at some point and realised that when you use the beads as numbers, rather than counting them, you can go incredibly high. I must have known this earlier in life, but I completely forgot about it. After this I heard a lot about the benefits to learning maths with an abacus versus learning how to do math with a calculator. One of the claimed benefits is that, when you learn maths with an abacus, you get better at doing calculations mentally, whereas if you learn math with a calculator you don't become better at that.

Does anyone know of a good resource to learn how to do math with an abacus? I know I can just duckduckgo it, but maybe there is some exceptionally good source somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER16> As others have rightly pointed out, it's not really taught in the schools here (in Japan). All three of my kids went (and are still going through) public schooling. I think they took a soroban to school for just a couple days and that was about it. They still can't use one.

However, many parents want to send their kids to soroban classes after school, especially when they're around ages 7-11 or so. There's a feeling that it makes you much faster with arithmetic. My wife (Japanese) is very quick at doing sums in her head.

<comment><USER17> Should doing arithmetic quickly in ones head be considered a virtue? I wish math classes would focus more on the abstraction aspect and less on calculation.

<comment><USER18> Not that I disagree about wanting more of the abstraction taught, but absolutely, 100% yes. Accurate, rapid mental math is a core life skill, and the lack of it causes people real problems.

<comment><USER17> There are many people who are bad/slow at calculation and amazing at math; many of them have math PhDs even. Ya, they might use a calculator in their daily life, but those are cheap anyways.

It would be nice to get an ALU implanted in my brain, it would be much more efficient for calculation than using a neural network.

<comment><USER18> Mental math skills are for prosaic daily-life problems, and have almost nothing to do with mathematics as a discipline. (Being good at spelling on its own does not make one a good writer.) Not needing a calculator at the grocery store to figure out which of some competing products are cheaper per unit mass, or figure out change + tip at a restaurant is useful knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My mom was in a high school abacus club back then. When she told me a story that she went to a tournament as a part of the school team, my response was "what the heck is an abacus competition!?" Competitive abacus is already quaint enough to most Japanese people, but I imagine it was a bit like today's e-sports. She said it really trains your mental arithmetic skill, and indeed she's been extremely good at adding up 6 or 7-digit numbers in her 70s. She passed away last year.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have a soroban and it's amazing how fast one can compute without electronics and I am no expert at it. On top of that, it exposes a certain way of working with numbers that is very helpful for mental computations.

On top of everything you get a nice tactile feeling with it. Will it replace my desk calculator, probably not, but it could.

</comment><comment><USER21> When I was in grade school, I got a book about how to use the abacus and taught myself. I got really good at it, too. It's too bad I didn't stay in practice, really, maybe I should pick it up again.

If my school had offered this, I would have found it useful.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am an Indonesian, and we also learned Abacus in the first and second grade. At my time anyway

It is quite useful for quick mental addition and subtraction. How do you multiply and divide using an abacus though?

</comment><comment><USER23> In typical Indian fashion, we have expensive private tuitions for nearly everything - [http://ucmas.in/](http://ucmas.in/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I use the Trachtenberg speed system of mathematics to do mental math. I can reliably do any 2 digit by 2 digit number and most of the time do 3 by 3 digit numbers. Does anyone know if it's possible for an adult (I'm 26) to do better with soroban training? The book I had as a kid (translated from japanese) said I would never get good at it after the age of 12.. but that sounds kind of defeatist to me.

<comment><USER25> I think they just write that so kids feel more compelled to put in an effort. It may be a bit harder as an adult, but by no means impossible (especially if your goal is 3 or 4 digit numbers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The new generation probably would rather use an 'Abacus app' , than use an actual Abacus.</comment>


Korean Competition Shows Weather Still a Challenge for Autonomous Cars - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/japan-competition-shows-weather-still-a-challenge-for-autonomous-cars <comment><USER2> On HN I frequently see comments to the effect that self-driving cars will be commercially available in a decade or two, and that they will be safer than human-driven cars. Personally, I question whether either is true, and I strongly doubt that both can be true at once.

Humans have a lot of shortcomings--emotions, sleepiness, distraction, the effects of drugs and alcohol--but humans have some amazing strengths too. We've got cognitive abilities in recognizing patterns and making decisions that were honed by millions of years of evolution, and directly trained by, on average, decades of actually driving cars. I think it's easy for technology- minded folks to overestimate the impact of the weaknesses, and underestimate the deep complexity of the strengths.

We barely have fully-autonomous self-flying planes today, and I don't know of any research showing that they are safer than human-piloted planes. And flying is a far less complicated domain to automate than driving.

<comment><USER3> There are some cases where we want amazing drivers, for example ambulances. But for an ordinary day to day commute, people shouldn't have to be at the top of their game. I think your point boils down to variance. Human drivers have a high variance, we all can be very good or very bad somewhat randomly.

Your point about research is really interesting. I think a large majority of cars actually following the speed limit, looking before changing lanes, and using turn signals will have a positive effect on overall safety, even if they aren't anywhere near as good at dealing with extraordinary situations. It would be nice to know what % of "good drivers" is required to minimize those extraordinary situations, if any at all.

We've all seen that one car weaving in and out of traffic. Perhaps they do indeed make us safer because they force us to pay attention. But they do seem to create a whole bunch of extraordinary situations for dozens or hundreds of drivers to deal with. It only takes the one weak driver (i'm assuming weaker than self driving here) to panic and then the freeway is a parking lot for an hour. That research would be interesting.

<comment><USER4> Ambulances may kill more people than they save by driving at high speed [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/03/21/usat-a...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002/03/21/usat- ambulance%28acov%29.htm)

<comment><USER3> It seems like you'd still want to hire for the best drivers, rather than trying to automate away ambulance driving. Coping with snow, rain and ice is something we want emergency services to deal with. A school bus on the other hand, meh, just don't run them in scary weather.

<comment><USER5> For a school bus you still want an adult on the bus to be responsible for the kids not killing and eating each other. So you aren't going to have any real savings there.

<comment><USER6> Well, it might be better to have an adult that can actively prevent the kids from "killing and eating each other" instead of the current state where one person has to contend with traffic, possibly inclement weather, and dozens of loud, obnoxious (and possibly cannibalistic) children.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the worst combination of weather related road conditions I've been in -- fog and ice, at night, in the mountains.

A self driving car wouldn't have to work very hard here to do better than me.

* Check for weather conditions at altitude (not just start and destination points).

* Refuse to leave the house using that route if weather conditions are bad.

Oh well, lesson learned. On that topic does anyone know of maps software that does that for you -- i.e. check weather not just traffic?

<comment><USER2> Ha, yes, maybe self-driving cars would be safer if they also functioned as safety monitors.

\--

"Take me to the ski resort, HAL."

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't allow you to do that. It's snowing along the way."

"Yeah, I know--that's the idea. I want to make some fresh tracks."

"Driving through the snow would be more dangerous than driving on dry pavement. In addition, I calculate that skiing is 4.76 times more likely to result in injury than reading a book. Please return to your couch; I will download a new book to your Kindle."

\--

Incidentally, this was a major theme of Asimov's Robots/Foundation series-- that intelligent robots programmed to prevent humans from coming to harm would become nannies of humanity in order to execute that command.

<comment><USER8> I would be more worried about insurance companies. They will get way more data and ways to sneak out of paying damages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just drove about 8 hours and experienced heavy fog along the way. Visibility was reduced to maybe a hundred yards. The entire time I wasn't thinking "self- driving cars would fail here" but rather that a self driving car with it's multitude of sensors would probably do much better considering what it could "see" and also the reduction in "eye fatigue" as driving in heavy fog can wreak havoc on your eyes and perception of movement (not a problem for a computer).

<comment><USER10> Funny. I just had my Uber driver take me on a 50 minute trip from the Kennedy Center to Union Station, a trip that usually takes 15 minutes, because he blindly followed the GPS straight through downtown. The entire time I was thinking: "it's 2014 and we still haven't gotten basic route-finding right; self-driving cars are a long way off."

<comment><USER11> I think a network of self-driving cars might actually help with that. All the cars can communicate where they are going and could agree to take paths that reduce traffic and get everyone to their destination faster.

EDIT: Also, these features should be coming soon thanks to devices like Automatic and apps like Waze.

<comment><USER10> So one of the things I used to work on is software for cognitive radios: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_radio). One of potential features of cognitive radio networks is that each node can share information about its local RF environment, to allow the network to make frequency-selection decisions based on global information. It's easy to describe, very hard to implement. Very, very, hard to implement in a way that works every time, like anything that goes in a car must.

Heck, we have so far to go even within the scope of the technology we have today. One of the things I've noticed as a heavy Uber user is that drivers tend to get confused when they're first hailed, and again when they pick you up. GPS systems tend not to give you a good fix on your orientation until you're moving,[1] and when you get a hail on the other side of town, they're really not very useful for giving you the optimal "first turn." This is a really simple thing, that's probably worth a lot of money to a company like Uber, that's really hard to get right with existing technology. With distributed decision-making of autonomous vehicles, you're talking about something orders of magnitude more complicated.

[1] My wife and I get a kick every time Siri says "proceed to the route." Which is a lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was thinking about this when driving in the recent rain here in California. A lot of data 'goes away' and sometimes I relied on memory of what was there rather than actively see what was there to navigate. I haven't seen any discussion on whether or not auto-cars would have some sort of equivalent to a 'muscle memory' of where they have been driving to help them over the rough patches.

In the test case, if the car recognized "oh this is the course from yesterday, even though it doesn't quite look like it, its in the same GPS coordinates" and then try to match larger easier to spot landmarks with its previous experience. That would certainly help it out.

<comment><USER13> And then you get a case where something is added or removed unexpectedly and the detection is marginal, and the car makes the wrong decision because "it was/wasn't there last time".

<comment><USER14> Sure, but the goal isn't "perfect", it's merely to do better than human drivers. Human drivers make that mistake constantly, so the case you're describing is one where the cars will do MUCH BETTER than people because cars are better at sharing information over time. So we go from a world in which every driver independently has to update their own personal worldview and is thus _individually_ surprised by the addition of a new sign to one in which a few cars are surprised and have to slow down and update but within a few days every subsequent car through the intersection automatically knows the new data.

<comment><USER12> I really think this is key. Cars letting other cars learn from their experience. Although that too has limits, for example if my car detects a cat in the road that wasn't there before it probably doesn't need to propagate that information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Which companies had cars here? I've been impressed with some European car makers and their self-driving cars, especially Volvo. They seem to make cars that handles true driving conditions, while American makers have idealized conditions, especially the Google car.

<comment><USER16> Once you live in California you start to forget that there are weather conditions other than sunshine and warm. It happened to me!

<comment><USER17> The lack of skill, experience, and equipment conspire to make it much more dangerous than the objective risk. That's why there are so many hydro-planing wrecks out after heavy rain. And why californians need chains to drive in conditions that are normal on the east coast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> a guy in our group did clear path detection for vehicles using only vision - his biggest hurdles were shadows and rain

his thesis was awesome though, he created shadow and rain drop removal while also mitigating the effects of 'smeared headlights' from a wet road at night

<comment><USER19> Then the same software could produce an enhanced image of the road to a human driver, too, right?

<comment><USER13> Probably.

I always thought that an interesting intermediate for cars would be to have a HUD displaying wireframes around detected objects. The motivation being that it can help, but doesn't have nearly the potential for harm as a full self- driving vehicle.

Of course, then you end up with the same problem that we have with aircraft - people become reliant on fallible assists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've seen the Google self driving car on the roads on Mountain View and Los Altos since the current storms started. Clearly they are taking advantage of the weather conditions for data.

<comment><USER21> This article mentioned cameras, not the laser scanners used by the Google cars ([http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/28/google- sel...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/28/google-self-driving- car-how-does-it-work))

<comment><USER22> Google uses both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Living in a cold, snowy climate, it seems like self driving cars will never be possible here.

Winter snow removal equipment scrapes the lines off the roads requiring re- application every summer in my area, and a common sight in the cities is the "re-positioning" of lanes during the winter. Drivers carve out their own lanes in the snow, so a 4 lane road might have only 3 lanes in the winter. I find this challenging to negotiate in the winter as no one seems sure whether they should follow the carved out path or be in the actual lane, assuming they know where it is under the packed snow. How could a self-driving car deal with that?

Not to mention inconsistent, icy road surfaces with unpredictable traction and the springtime muck of snow/gravel/salt that makes keeping the windshield clean, much less exterior sensors and cameras.

<comment><USER24> Electronic stability control is already required equipment on new vehicles in the U.S. (and around the world: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#Re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#Regulation)), because computers using sensors are better at measuring traction than humans are at estimating it.

<comment><USER25> It's also the first thing I disable when driving in the snow in a RWD car, since the last thing I want when trying to make it up a snowy mountain road is for the computer to cut all power to the driving wheels.

<comment><USER26> My understanding with ESP (My Nissan has it as Electronic Stability Program) was that it uses small amounts of single-wheel breaking to cause the vehicle to keep the expected line during extreme manoeuvring (eg swerving around a child running into the road, or swerving around the car in front suddenly anchoring on).

I would have thought your issue with power being removed to the drive wheels is actually the Traction Control system kicking in not the ESP, but then it's possible you have one button that disables both.

<comment><USER25> My only experience is with Mazda's DSC (dynamic stability control) which I had in a previous car (Mazda RX-8). I had a couple of cases where I forgot to turn off DSC, because in that car you have to switch it off EVERY time you start the car, and the power would be completely cut to both wheels going up steep snowy inclines.

For most conditions like rain it's great for the average driver.

DSC caught me off guard a couple of times in dry/rain and one time almost caused me to lose control. But in all cases it was because I accidentally left it on while driving "enthusiastically" and wasn't expecting the DSC to yank the car abruptly and unnaturally in its attempt to straighten the car out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> To be fair, wet roads confuse human-driven cars, too.

<comment><USER28> One of the interesting things we're finding as we start to coax machines to do human jobs is that humans tend to not accept a machine unless it's much better at the job than a human. For example, on many computer vision or NLP tasks, the current state of the art is about as good as most humans.

The problem is that when they're wrong, they're wrong in ways that humans wouldn't be, and the wrongness appears to be "broken" to us and we overweigh these incorrect responses because they're both wrong _and_ not human in their wrongness.

<comment><USER29> Are computers able to recognize a cat in a picture and tell it apart from dog?

<comment><USER24> Yes. I'm not sure it is the best article, but this talks about recent advances:

[http://www.technologyreview.com/view/530561/the- revolutionar...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/530561/the- revolutionary-technique-that-quietly-changed-machine-vision-forever/)

(discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8290441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8290441))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> And my earliest iPhone's were pretty poor at getting a GPS signal and drained my battery like a madman. Within 3 years that had all changed dramatically. So I'm not sure how much weight I place on current results in an area advancing so rapidly.

<comment><USER31> Yes, but your iPhone wasn't exactly the first mobile device with GPS; having a smartphone with GPS, Wifi, etc and decent battery life was a solved problem, even if Apple couldn't do it at the time.

<comment><USER30> I guess my point is very smart technology companies focused on solving problems usually experience rapid improvement in the first few years in key areas of performance. So I expect with all of the attention/investment and competition around self driving cars the advancements over the next few years will be dramatic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'd imagine it's more challenging when the road is covered in snow and the snowplows haven't gotten to it yet.

<comment><USER33> That's hard for _humans_ to navigate, let alone self-driving cars. Besides driving very slowly, drivers will often estimate the lane position based on the shape of the snow and the quantity/size of lanes and shoulder they expect. If the snow is not too deep, rumble strips [1] can be very helpful.

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

<comment><USER13> In our area, there are a couple roads where they have ~2.5m thin poles with reflectors on top sticking out of the ground at the edge of the road shoulders.

Very helpful, especially for snowplough drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Won't infrared sensors work well here?

<comment><USER35> Water in the air has a large heatmass. So rain leaves a "shadow" in the infrared. Worse: it can make things invisible in infrared sometimes too.

Rain/fog distorts an image because there's droplets in the air that function as random lenses. This will affect infrared images just like it affects visible spectrum images. Only things with wavelengths larger than the droplets will be able to see through fog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What will snow do?...

</comment><comment><USER37> One of the most important things I learned very early in my CS schooling was that data (or problem) representation is, by far, the most important step to solving a problem computationally. Your computing platform, compiler, language, editor, memory size, speed, etc. cannot compensate for bad representation.

While I recognize the amount of work and smarts that has gone into self driving cars it is my humble opinion that the typical approach being taken is fundamentally flawed.

The right approach, again, in my humble opinion, is to change the representation of the problem: Roads have to be smart. Cars smarter, yes, but roads need to be modified for robots. Change the problem you are trying to solve and the solution might just become massively simpler.

Embedding technology into roads in order to facilitate robotic navigation would solve tons of problems. Private enterprise can take care of parking lots and private garages, and they will, when enough self-driving cars are around to make it worth their while to install the technology.

When my kids were younger they had huge problems opening doors around the house that were equipped with spherical handles. If their hands were wet after washing them, even worst. So, we changed the problem: We installed lever type door handles and even the youngest kid with hands full of soap could open the door now.

But, hey, what do I know.

<comment><USER38> > Embedding technology into roads in order to facilitate robotic navigation > would solve tons of problems. Private enterprise can take care of parking > lots and private garages, and they will, when enough self-driving cars are > around to make it worth their while to install the technology.

It is easier to have some brainiacs work very hard on making very smart cars than it is to change local government and infrastructure everywhere.

If you ever make a plan which begins, 'let's convince every county, state, and federal agency in the USA to change their road construction methods to add this novel expensive feature...' you can probably drop it then and there as a stinker.</comment></comment>


Smart contracts don't "simplify contracts" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/951163120008835072 <comment><USER2> The premise of the initial tweet is spot-on (though I think she gets lost in the weeds a bit after that). People who think smart contracts are going to simplify any substantial percentage of contract use cases need to the understand the pain points of dumb contracts. The main reason dumb contracts are litigated is ambiguity, which is not a problem smart contracts are designed to solve.

Imagine that you have a contract to build a website for somebody. 50% up front and 50% when the site is done. So the key word there is "done" right? (and "done", here, can be a proxy for more specific terms, the principle is the same) A smart contract is designed to complete the transaction once the bit is flipped, but there's still the decision behind who gets to flip the bit. I.E. who decides when the thing is "done". The smart contract is not designed to deal with the ambiguity of the word "done".

So the types of problems a smart contract can deal with are those for which it is feasible to reduce the terms to binary states. Escrow is a good example. I can verify that x dollars moved into account A, so I will move y dollars from account B to account C. But the number of use cases like this are a small percentage of reasons you might want to contract in the first place.

There maybe some sort of smart contract framework that comes along to deal with the ambiguity issues, but for now, smart contract use cases are quite limited in scope.

</comment><comment><USER3> Saying you hate BTC because of smart contracts doesn't make much sense because smart contracts are not a primary feature of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Also the main argument that most Crypto haters have is "bitcoin is only good for illegal stuff". There are many many other blockchain and Decentralized applications not just bitcoin, bitocoin was the pioneer. And if I take law for example like the writer we all know these centralized systems are ripe with fraud, corruption and illegal activities. Lastly there is no need to hate Blockchain at all, it's an innovative technology that can benefit everyone on the planet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Smart contract is a misnomer. Neither the author nor those she is criticizing understand what a smart contract is.

</comment><comment><USER5> Smart contracts formalize contracts.

<comment><USER6> What does this even mean? Contracts are already formalized agreements. Indeed, that's their entire purpose, to formalize and memorialize an agreement between parties. The post in the OP is right: contract issues arise from human interpretation and performance issues, not any of the simplistic automatic elements "smart contracts" might be able to help with.

<comment><USER3> Yea your right maybe law isn't the best use case still doesn't make a valid point. You can take the weakest use case for anything and rant about how that thing is useless. Also sounds like OP takes the phrase "smart contract" literally as in a replacement for normal "contracts" as if they were designed specifically for law</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Git client for large dozen branch repos - <AUTHOR> The log view of git gui tools I've used are unusable for large git repos with many dozen branches. This is how `nixpkgs` repo looks in tig: https://gist.github.com/fctorial/9cf4b4569dc8c085059dd7cb8cf1ef59<p>What git gui client you use on large git repos if you want to find, say, how two branches are related? <comment><USER2> Not a git gui client but you can do this via the command line with: git merge- base <branch1> <branch2>. This will give you their common ancestor.

You can also get something similar to the tig output but for specific branches via the command line using a command like: git log --graph --oneline <branch1> <branch2>.</comment>


How to get free single-user Google Apps accounts - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/google-appengine/pVZfdeky-ow/TO1SmipM2Y0J

<comment><USER2> I'm glad I signed up early. I have 11 users now, for $0, and I still think my limit is 25.

That said, $50 a year is not really that much considering the service provided.

<comment><USER3> $50 per user per year (or $5/user/month) _is_ a lot of money when you're just starting a business, and especially if you weren't planning on having to spend that money. Just in time for Christmas...

Now I have to contact all of the people I've sent proposals to, telling them that the "free email service through Google Apps" I promised them is no longer free. Google should have told us Apps Resellers, or, at the least, they should give us an opportunity to create a few more free Apps accounts for clients we've been pitching their product to. Not every business starts out with a need for >10 users. Google has been telling their Apps Resellers to get people 'hooked' on the free version of Apps, then migrate them to the paid offering. Now what?

<comment><USER4> Sorry. If your business is built on marking up and reselling free things, I can't feel sorry for you. That was one of those reflex apologies. Not a real apology.

If your clients have waited until 2 weeks before Christmas to sign, then they are actually the bad guys and they deserve to pay more. When exactly are you supposed to do your gift shopping?

<comment><USER5> Heavens forbid that someone try to make a living providing cost-efficient technical solutions like a website and email to non-tech-saavy small businesses!

<comment><USER4> Cry me a river! Cost-efficient != free electricity and high-availability networking. I'm sure it was great while it lasted. Google have not actively shut anybody down.

If you want efficiency, buy low power machines and cobble together what services you need with free software. You can have RoundCube up and running in a matter of a few hours. I don't know any other webmail providers that provide SMTP, POP3, and IMAP for free. Those are all value-adds.

How much do you think that's worth? Would you include free support and maintenance if they were your machines and the setup charge did not fully pay for them? Do you think that it would be sustainable to do that?

Have you heard that it takes money to make money? If these businesses wanted to grow past 25 employees, they had to be prepared to move to a paying plan anyway. Those of us who were grandfathered in have obviously dodged a bullet. I can tell you that I've run mail servers on small machines for groups of users ~=25 before, and it's not very hard, but today I have free hosted Google Apps and therefore I want no part in it anymore.

Thanks, Google!

<comment><USER4> (For the record, I am running my own mail server, but I'm not currently accepting applications for new accounts. I will be sad when I want to grow past 25 users if it means I need to start paying $5/mo for each of them, because I never learned to scale on my own.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is good news, because I feel that Google has always ignored a very legitimate use case of Google Apps -- wanting your own personal Google Account with your own email address.

Many people, myself included, want to use all of the personal services that Google provides backed by their own domain, not Gmail. You used to be able to do this sans hosted email, but that feature got removed a year or two back. If you wanted to use your own domain, you had to sign up for an entire Apps account, when it really should have been the same as before + some MX records for hosted email.

Perhaps using your own domain for a Google Account should be a paid service anyway, and $50/year isn't incredibly pricey. But a 99.9% uptime SLA and phone support aren't necessary for what can really be just a vanity. (That said, phone support in Google's ecosystem is kind of nice...)

<comment><USER7> Being a Google Apps user so that I could have it all at my own domain really made me feel like a forgotten stepchild. When the G1 came out I couldn't properly use it as you couldn't make purchases using a GAFYD account. I forget all of the things I ran into where Google wasn't compatible with itself due to me being a GAFYD user.

<comment><USER6> Oh absolutely. I had a laundry list of the things that were supported on Apps months after everybody else. We've always been second-class citizens, and now everybody new is required to pay. I hope the trend doesn't continue.

There was App Engine, there was Google+, there was Android, there was Voice, and a long host of others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> g-garron Matt Jaggard said on that Google discussion:

        - "I think you're missing the point. Some startups are getting going with zero capital because an individual with some skills and some time can produce and sell a product using free cloud services and then once they've made a few bob can upgrade.

        - Google WERE supporting this model very well - shame on you for stopping."

Maybe, Google may continue to offer this services to start ups. They can ask for 0.05 or less share per startup using their services for free. That will not be free anymore, but is a viable model. I think.

<comment><USER8> > \- Google WERE supporting this model very well - shame on you for stopping."

This is ridiculous, besides the absurd sense of entitlement, it's only $50/year. People who build startups spend more on their lattes or phone subscription in a month. Come on.

<comment><USER9> Not that I disagree with you in general, but there are a lot of entrepreneurs for whom $50/year is a major impediment.

When App Engine had its major round of price increases a year or two ago, a number of small developers in Africa and India complained on the mailing list. Apparently the nearly-free service of GAE was supporting a number of entrepreneurs who live a _very_ different life from the typical bay area startup groupie.

<comment><USER8> I lived in Peru for 5 years, everyone who has the skills to write GAE or rails apps there all have very well paid outsourced jobs working for companies from the US or Spain. $50 is absolutely no problems for them, it's not a problem either for the local growing middle class in Peru or even India and Africa. Most people who had enough education to be able to write GAE apps are from the middle class or already have well paid jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> More details in Google's blog post: [http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/changes-to- goog...](http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/changes-to-google-apps- for-businesses.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Again, people are missing this: Google apps 'free' & even regular gmail have never been truly free. Anything you put in there is sold off to the ad partners. It has never been a charity.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's too soon IMHO.

I've set up Google Apps for Business / Domains for so many SMEs and this thing is definitely cutting the Office grass under a certain competitor's feet. I'm not saying said competitor is not enjoying amazing revenues: all I'm saying is Google _is_ hurting other office suites sales with Google Apps for Domains.

People are delighted with this "free" solution. Now I'm going to have to bill them at least $50 / user per year and they'll start thinking about buying Office from another competitor again.

I understand Google needing to make money with this, but IMHO it's way too soon. They should have waited to "bait" way more SMEs into their net before doing such a move.

<comment><USER13> This is a really important point. Google owned the default position for me in setting up domain email for people. Their service is great and using it for a business was a pretty easy call. Most of these folks wouldn't have ever even tried google docs without their domain being tied to it. It is win win for google.

Now its all changed. $50 per user isn't a huge amount but it is more then zero. Google has taken the default choice for many people and made us rethink it. It can only work poorly for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Until they disable them again? Save yourself some time and aggravation. Either pony up or find a more reliable provider.

<comment><USER15> At $50/year, ponying up is an absolute no-brainer. ~$4/month? That's effectively free.

<comment><USER16> Its $50/user/year.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but we're talking about single-user accounts.

<comment><USER16> If just single-user account then well its better to use the workaround and get it till it works for free.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Given Tablets, No Teachers: Ethiopian Children Teach Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/ <comment> void-star Good to hear news from OLPC. This is an interesting piece, if a little 'fluff'y.</comment>


DNS: The Good Parts - <AUTHOR> http://www.petekeen.net/dns-the-good-parts <comment><USER2> > Almost always you'll want to redirect a bare domain like > iskettlemanstillopen.com to www.iskettlemanstillopen.com. Registrars like > Namecheap and DNSimple call this a URL Redirect. In Namecheap you would set > up a URL Redirect like this:

Coincidentally yesterday I snapped and decided that no longer was I happy using a URL forwarding service that requires configuration or running a web server that redirects old domains, so I built [http://cnamer.com/](http://cnamer.com/).

        subdomain.source.com. CNAME google.com.cnamer.com.

That will redirect source.com to google.com.

        cnamer.samryan.co.uk. CNAME minotar.net-opts-query.true-querystring.avatar-querystring.citricsquid.cnamer.com.

That redirects [http://cnamer.samryan.co.uk](http://cnamer.samryan.co.uk) to minotar.net/avatar/citricsquid

The code powering it sucks at the moment and I intend on adding the ability to use TXT records to set the redirect but it /works/ for now.

<comment><USER3> That looks like an extremely useful service (good work!), but your examples (source.com.) don't work, since the zone apex can't be a CNAME (this is addressed in the article under "Why CNAME is Messed Up"). So this can be used with www.source.com. but not source.com.

<comment><USER2> Fixed! Not sure how I missed that, thanks! :-)

<comment><USER4> great idea :-) i m curious how many queries per day could the linode server handle, even if they are non mission critical...

<comment><USER2> The version live right now is just a proof of concept more than anything, once I've got a few hours spare (hopefully sometime this week) I'm going to rebuild it to operate in a sane manner and will benchmark the load it can support, the Linode itself shouldn't have problems supporting millions of requests a day, it'll be cnamer itself that causes a bottleneck if there is one. Worst case if it turns out there's too much usage for the Linode to support (unlikely...) I'll upgrade the server / move it elsewhere. I was hoping to rebuild + benchmark it before mentioning it anywhere but this blog post seem super relevant heh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Minor error in this post: 'IN' doesn't refer to the answer's inclusion in the given DNS type -- it's a short form of Internet, and is meant to denote the address family being returned (the field is called 'CLASS' in DNS-speak). Other options include Hesiod and Chaos (as well as a number of reserved / private values)

[https://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/dns- paramete...](https://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/dns- parameters.xhtml#dns-parameters-2)

<comment><USER6> Another very forgivable error is a mis-understanding about how recursive queries work. The article says

"dig randomly picked one of the root server responses, in this case f.root- servers.net., and asked it for the next part of the domain name in question, info. The info section of the hierarchy is run by a company that operates their own set of servers. dig asks one of these servers for the NS records for bugsplat.info and then finally asks one of those servers for the A record for empoknor.bugsplat.info.."

but in actuality every server in the hierarchy is queried for the full name; "empoknor.bugsplat.info". Technically even the root servers may be authoritative for that name, there's no way to know in advance where the zone- cuts are.

<comment><USER7> Correct, and very common misconception. While I applaud the author's attempts to simplify DNS, it's somewhat evident they've not looked at the very clearly written RFCs which cover both mistakes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed both errors. Thanks guys!

<comment><USER7> Sorry if I came off as condescending, it looked that way when I read it again. The rfcs are 1034 and 35 and are very interesting reads. 5321 is good too. For example, did you know that you don't need an mx record for email? If none is present, it will default to the a record. DNSSEC is in 4034, among others. Also, I think maybe more explanation about the main benefit of CNAMES, a virtual host based setup where many domains point to the same IP.

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries, you were right on the money. I've linked those RFCs as further reading in the wrap-up section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8>
        Almost always you'll want to redirect a bare domain like iskettlemanstillopen.com
        to www.iskettlemanstillopen.com. Registrars like Namecheap and DNSimple
        call this a URL Redirect.

I won't redirect a root domain using a URL redirect because DNSimple's URL redirects can't redirect over SSL.[1] I use an ALIAS record[2] to point the root domain to the subdomain and I use Rack Canonical Host[3] for redirects.

[1] [http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/url-redirect- ssl](http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/url-redirect-ssl)

[2] [http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/alias- record](http://support.dnsimple.com/articles/alias-record)

[3] [https://github.com/tylerhunt/rack-canonical- host](https://github.com/tylerhunt/rack-canonical-host)

</comment><comment><USER9> The architecture of DNS is pretty solid, but the encodings are unnecessarily complex. That complexity has a huge, hidden opportunity cost.

If anyone wants to help, I'm pretty confident a Space based encoding would greatly improve DNS:

[https://github.com/nudgepad/space/issues/54](https://github.com/nudgepad/space/issues/54)

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure you actually understand what's going on here. The zone file that you're looking at is only used internally by the DNS server - it is never sent across the wire, so the verbosity of the format is largely irrelevant.

<comment><USER9> You're right, I don't have a complete working knowledge of DNS, BIND, Zone, et cetera. Hence, the details of my DSL are going to be off.

But I'm very confident in my hypothesis that the status quo is unnecessarily complex, all encodings could be reduced to Space DSLs, and doing so would lead to drastic unforeseen benefits.

All it takes is someone with knowledge of the details to implement it. I'd do it myself, but am currently doing the same in other domains (right now on HTML, HTTP, CSS).

<comment><USER11> Zone files is a side show. Many other DNS servers use entirely different formats, including formats that are more space efficient than what you suggest on your Github page, and some of which are not serialized to text files at all (all data stored in databases). These formats are not standardized at all.

Note that your Bind zone file example is also quite verbose compared to what it needs to be. E.g. here's a more compact version:

        $ORIGIN brekyunits.com.
        $TTL 3600
        @ IN SOA NS53.DOMAINCONTROL.com. dns.jomax.net. (2013041502 28800 7200 604800 3600 )
        @ A 126.96.36.199
        @ MX 0 smtp.secureserver.net.
        @ MX 10 mailstore1.secureserver.net.
        @ NS NS53.DOMAINCONTROL.com.
        @ NS ns54.DOMAINCONTROL.com.

In comparison to that, yours doesn't seem to provide any real benefits that I can see.

When it comes to the over the wire format, the over the wire format is designed to be much more compact, because if the request and response fits in a single UDP datagram, the request will be handled much faster - if the reply is too long, then the server might have to tell the client to retry over TCP, for example, which means two wasted packets to establish that, then about half a dozen packets or more for the request/reply over TCP. Your format would not help there.

If you want to improve DNS, _read_ the RFC's first.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the comments. I actually have read a lot of the RFCs.

A Space DSL to replace all this stuff won't materialize out of thin air, someone will have to take the time to think it through and iterate a couple times. But I've been in the lucky position over the past while to see Space in action, and at this point I'm pretty confident that it will disrupt many areas, including DNS.

I haven't done a good job of making my case. Talk is cheap, more Space code is coming.

But my point in general is that all of these formats can be described as premature optimization. Or perhaps, no longer necessary optimization.

The example you provided clearly illustrates that. Dollar signs, at signs, periods, parentheses and abbreviations galore. In my mind, the current state of things is ugly code. I can make sense of that. But someone off the street can't make sense of that. In my mind, that is a problem. That is a _huge_ problem. The common reaction is to "teach people DNS". I'm off the opinion, "No, these formats suck! No need for all that complexity. The world has changed. Let's start looking ahead."

To use a word mentioned earlier, I believe code should be trivial, as trivial as reading a road sign. I believe the Internet is due for a big refactor. I believe the unreadability of these formats is causing us a __ton __in lost innovation. Why should only l33t hackers be able to understand the full stack? There 's no reason in my estimation, other than that the stack is permeated by ugly, unnecessary complexity. So many things people do nowadays over the Internet are done on top of 10 levels of abstraction when they could be done at 2 or 3.

I think there is a real opportunity here for someone to improve upon DNS.

<comment><USER11> It isn't a problem that someone off the street can't make sense of that, since it's a format that is an internal detail of a complicated tool. Someone off the street isn't expected to understand that: There's a plethora of tools that lets them enter stuff in other formats, and a plethora of web frontends.

What they _do_ need to understand, though, to do anything beyond the extremely trivial, is the DNS data model, and the Bind style zone files reflects that data model extremely directly, so almost whatever they end up with doing, they will sooner or later come across something that may _remind them_ of the zone files. And I get that is a lot of what causes people to be concerned about Bind zone files.

As I pointed out, there are lots of DNS servers where you won't see a Bind style zone file _ever_ , and you don't need to require configuration to be done via a file at all. Djbdns is one of the former. ldapdns is one of the latter - that exposes DNS entries pulled out of an LDAP server. But both will be similar in structure because they map to the same data model.

The only thing you will achieve by devising a format like what you describe on top of DNS is drive people crazy, because they now need to learn a format that does not map easily directly to the DNS data model (if it does, it will appear very similar to zone files and will be pointless).

I've written a DNS server, that was used for a registrar platform (I co- founded the company that ran ".name"), and I didn't use zone files, but the data was still mostly the same.

If you want to change that, beyond the extremely superficial (e.g. renaming "MX" to "mailserver" or similar) that will only confuse people communicating with those using the original names, you'd need to start lower:

With the DNS data model and wire format. Good luck with that - there are trillions of dollars hinging on DNS working these days, and a _lot_ of design decisions in DNS follows directly from real-life constraints that are not going to change.

They are simple: The data must be small - if records are too large for a single UDP datagram, it slows things down instantly. A DNS record consists of a label, an address family (can usually be omitted, as almost everyone just uses "IN"), a resource type (A,CNAME,MX etc. - you could rename those in your format), a TTL (which can usually be left out to use the default), and a resource type specific data field which is usually a string, label or IPv4 or v6 address (obvious exceptions: MX, which includes the priorty, and SOA).

You could possibly drop the address family, but as I pointed out, "everyone" just uses IN anyway, and most software will default to that if you leave it out. You can rename the record types to something "friendly", but you don't need to change internals of the software for that - just add a mapping to the UI of various tools - these query types are mapping to byte values internally in DNS servers anyway.

So what do you think you'd achieve? What can make DNS more understandable without breaking functionality people depend on?

> To use a word mentioned earlier, I believe code should be trivial, as > trivial as reading a road sign.

Not going to happen, because code implements real world requirements, and many real world requirements are far more complicated than reading a road sign.

You can write a DNS server that is simple to understand for a programmer, though - DNS is not all that complicated. But then you don't need to mess with the DNS data model - it takes little effort to learn enough of it that zone files is not the problem. It took me less than a week to write my first fully functional DNS server without ever having looked at the RFC's before.

If you want to tackle unnecessary complexity, look somewhere else, like IMAP (or get people to stop using SOAP...) - now there is ridiculous complexity for no good reason (there are _reasons_ , they just aren't good)

> Why should only l33t hackers be able to understand the full stack?

Sometimes because it often takes a huge amount of basic knowledge about the domain to even understand what people are talking about.

But you don't need that to understand DNS. Seriously.

Read RFC 1034 and 1035. Equip yourself with "tcpdump", "dig" and or "nslookup". Write some DNS encoding and decoding routines based on the data in RFC 1034. Run tcpdump and do capture some queries that you carry out via dig or nslookup. Test your encoding and decoding routines to see that they match based on the dig input/output and captured packets until you have them working.

Then write a simple authoritative resolver based on the rules in the RFC's (authoritative resolvers are simplest because you are only answering based on "I know this, it's in my local data set", as opposed to recursive resolvers that have to know when it is right to cache, when it is right to forward requests, who it should allow recursion for, and [these days] how to avoid being part of a DNS amplification attack unwittingly). That isn't much more complex than: Wait for incoming query; parse query; extract name it is asking for; if it is a name your server should serve, return the data you have for that name, otherwise return an error (handling corner cases will make it a bit more complex, such as handling fallback to TCP).

If you have _any_ prior network programming experience, this should be no more than a week of coding if you keep things simple. If you're experienced, you might even have something basic working (the "first 80%") within the day. At least if you pick something higher level than C to write it in.

There are many areas to improve upon in DNS, but data model complexity is pretty much bottom of the list. I'd have agreed with your second to last paragraph if it was better targeted than against DNS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _This is why you can 't have a CNAME on a root domain like petekeen.net, because you generally have to have other records for that domain like MX._

The issue isn't with an MX record which is optional, it's with the SOA record which is required. BIND also requires at least one NS record.

</comment><comment><USER13> Does the "+trace" example work for other people? For me, after it lists the 13 root servers, it pauses for a while and says ";; connection timed out; no servers could be reached".

So is someone between me and these servers blocking tracing, or is DNS more unpredictable and weird than the author claims, or both?

</comment><comment><USER14> > Almost always you'll want to redirect a bare domain like > iskettlemanstillopen.com to www.iskettlemanstillopen.com.

I've always read the opposite. That using the www. subdomain was bad form. That it was an anachronism and meant people would need to remember extra chars that had nothing to do with your branding.

<comment><AUTHOR> It almost certainly doesn't matter for branding. Normal people look past the www because it's so common. Putting your site on a subdomain gives you the distinct advantage of being able to CNAME to whatever you want, since CNAMEs don't work well on a bare domain. Putting a redirect in place means that your branding and marketing can just have "example.com" and it'll just automatically work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> newbie question: I understand that by delegating dns resolution for domains (and subdomains) to their zones, dns scales well. However, isn't there a huge load on the global top level domains. I imagine most sites use .com and all dns requests for www.xxx.com , the queries for . and .com may be heavily cached, but if xxx isn't very popular , would that not put a huge number of requests against the .com nameservers to resolve to the xxx.com domain?If we had a huge number of low popularity xxx domains in the com domain, won't all dns queries have to hit the top level .com nameservers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. There are currently 13 virtual nodes that handle .com and, just like for the root servers, each one of those virtual nodes is actually a group of machines all bound to the same IP address via Anycast. There are hundreds of physical machines spread around the world handling the TLDs. The NS records that these servers return are readily cached with long lifetimes, though, so if you use any relatively popular DNS server, either your ISPs or Google's public server, the resolution process will be really short even for uncommon names.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can someone tell me who operates the root servers? Organizations? Companies? Governments?

I was just thinking that aren't these prime targets for hackers? I mean if one root server is compromised, that would be a royal breach.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.root-servers.org](http://www.root-servers.org)

The organizations across the top of that page run the root servers. As you can see on the map, there are quite a few physical servers for those 13 separate root domains, 359 to be exact.

The root servers don't actually replicate amongst themselves and they don't actually hold all that much data. They all serve the same set of zones, all from one text file that is updated infrequently, specifically the DNS Root Zone file on this page: [http://www.iana.org/about/popular- links](http://www.iana.org/about/popular-links)</comment></comment>


BrowserCast: A Chrome app which can help you chat in every web site url - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/browsercast/pieoblklnkicbidenoodmehmcbkopkkp <comment><AUTHOR> Don't be shy, install it and chat right now.

<comment><USER2> I am curious how the chat extension is architected.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL, you can not ask question before use it.

<comment><USER2> I don't use Chrome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I apologize that.

I just using a little bit json api and a front-end SPA to make it work.

Can you introduce it to your best friend? or try to install Chrome?

<comment><USER2> What is SPA?

<comment><AUTHOR> Single Page Application

<comment><USER2> Thanks. How does the transport between two browsers work that lest two people chat?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


AMD splits out its graphics chips into the Radeon Technology Group - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/09/09/amd-graphics-chip-split/ <comment><USER2> Not good for AMD :-/ It's sad, AMD once gave Intel a run for their money with x86_64.</comment>


Ask HN: Why did Facebook not choose Apache 2.0 License for React? - <AUTHOR> We recently discussed how Facebook chose the MOST license for React? There were some concerns that the MIT license offers less patent protection to the users than BSD + Patent grant. But it was explained away as trying to appease the community. I believe the Apache 2.0 License that comes with an explicit patent grant would have been a better way to appease the community because Apache 2.0 License is also a very trusted license and it offers patent protection to the users. Why then did Facebook not choose the Apache 2.0 License? <comment><USER2> Ask them.</comment>


Three national corporations control nearly all of San Francisco's live music - <AUTHOR> https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2018/01/31.html <comment><USER2> um, is this link correct?</comment>


The 36 Most Valuable Start-ups on Earth - <AUTHOR> http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140126150147-213114599-the-36-most-valuable-start-ups-on-earth?trk=tod-home-art-list-small_1 <comment><USER2> Services like Dropbox, Pinterest, and Square - are they really considered startups anymore? I feel like they've become staples in our tech-advanced community.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think all the companies are technically considered startups until their IPOs.</comment></comment>


Make JavaScript `arguments a real Array - <AUTHOR> http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference:Functions:arguments#Description

<comment><USER2> I was JUST looking for this sort of thing yesterday. Thanks.</comment>


Pretending to be Wise - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/02/pretending-to-be-wise.html <comment><USER2> You have to retain a certain amount of ability to suspend judgement, or other people can force you to participate in their quarrels on their schedule. They can basically throw an interrupt in you. You have to be able to ignore people who use lines like "if you're not with us, you're against us" or "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem" or even, more subtly, "do you condone x?"

(Regarding the quote, we should remember that Dante lived in a time of extreme factionalism in Italy. In fact he spent many years in exile because his faction lost.)

<comment><USER3> I agree; but there's a whole world of difference between:

(a) Passing neutral judgment;

(b) Refusing an interrupt / declining to invest marginal resources;

(c) Pretending that either of the above is a mark of deep wisdom, maturity, and a superior vantage point; and correspondingly that the original sides occupy lower vantage points that are not importantly different and not worth judging between.

<comment><USER4> That is clarifying. Is it possible that the impression of deep wisdom, maturity and superior vantage point in these cases is an artifact of perceived social status? The article is pointing out situations where effects of social status interfere with the potential responsibilities of providing arbitration.

As humans most of us rely on judgment of social status as one of the most fundamental ways to allocate resources and interact with one another. It creates an inherent bias when we grant the right of arbitration to a fellow human, because the privilege alone can elevate perceived social status, and possibly interfere with the granted responsibility.

The independence of social status from the right to arbitrate may be a measure of justness and liberty in a social group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to be that the article is confusing _neutrality or suspended judgment_ with avoiding judgment. It is not pretending to be wise, it is indifference.

A teacher who sees two children in a fight has likely seen those children fight before. After seeing the same fight occur over and over they just don't care who started it. Figuring out who started it becomes a chicken and an egg situation.

This example from the article reveals an interesting point about passing judgment in general:

 _...judges in the actual legal system can repeatedly hand down real verdicts without automatically losing their reputation for impartiality_

That is because judges rule based on a set of written laws which they interpret depending on the situation. Picking ethical or moral side of a situation has no such standard.

Perhaps the writer also missed the idea that the majority of people in this world do not like conflict. Having to pick sides creates conflict. They are not trying to be wise as much as they are trying to avoid something that makes them uncomfortable.

Arguments are not black and white. Demanding the people pass judgment over situation where they do not know all of the information, do not have a set measurement for passing judgment and most likely do not care is unwise.

<comment><USER6> It sounds easy to say but I think the author of the article needs to grow up. Sorry, but it doesn't matter who started a fight on the playground. How old is he and he still cares about such things? It actually is wisdom to realize that you should stop caring about who started fights - not always but often.

Here's idea. Being mature involves realizing there are many kind of stupidities in the world and that most conflicts involve _one_ kind of stupidity battling _another_ kind of stupidity so neither side is really worth taking.

<comment><USER7> _How old is he and he still cares about such things?_

I think it is sort of silly for somebody to have to kill himself for other people to give a shit about his physical wellbeing, but since suicide fairly reliably makes people actually care about things, I note that most authorities put the number of suicides as a result of bullying at between one and two dozen a year in the US.

This means that bullies are more effective at killing American children than terrorists, school shootings, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, sharks, and kidnappers motivated by ransom. Combined.

But who cares about such things?

<comment><USER3> Well said. I really have to wonder whether other people had such different childhoods than mine - if they were actually engaging in spontaneous random playground fights with no aggressor - or if they just have very convenient amnesia.

"How old is he and he still cares about such things" - this question is the essence of why not caring is a pretension of wisdom, and I'm glad that the illustration was so nicely provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't really follow the argument. The article states that 'Rationalists' can avoid a conversation about politics because they have limited resources which would be used for minimal impact.

The same argument applies to the 'principal' or 'Great Powers'. In both situation the parties did not ask to have to expend their resources to absorb information and pass judgment on someone else's problem (fight or war). They are not being pretentious, serene, or pretending to be wise - they are simply using their resources most efficiently to accomplish their own goals.

Its a simple matter of each party estimating that the outcome of action A (without judgment), and the outcome of action B (with judgment) will have a marginal difference.

<comment><USER8> I'd agree in cases where the 'Great Powers' are really staying out of the dispute. Often enough though, they do intercede, and want to ignore important information when doing so. Imagine if the principal suspends both the bully and the bullied - is that going to achieve the _principal's_ long term goals?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On reading this, I am reminded of the decision by the BBC not to broadcast the Gaza fundraising appeal on the grounds of it affecting its reputation for impartiality.

</comment><comment><USER10> Could anyone give me some more info on what the author is referring to when he says: "Why does ancient Egypt, which had good records on many other matters, lack any records of Jews having ever been there?"

<comment><USER11> It's referring to the Bible's claim that the Jews were once slaves living in ancient Egypt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> For some reason, I find it comforting that there will always be some sources (e.g. Wikipedia) where issues will be presented neutrally.</comment>