A million-dollar brownstone that no one owned - <AUTHOR> https://theoutline.com/post/5807/the-million-dollar-brownstone-that-no-one-owned <comment><USER2> If you ever bought real estate in the U.S. you probably paid title insurance. This is insurance that covers the value of the loan in the case faulty or fradulent documents are found making the chain of ownership invalid.

It costs like 1/2 of a percent of the property value.

That is how YOU pay because of shenanigans like in this article.

<comment><USER3> Why don't we have a proof of custody (chain of ownership) instead of insurance against fraud? Wouldn't that be stronger & cheaper?

<comment><USER4> _> Why don't we have a proof of custody (chain of ownership) _

In the USA and most developed countries, we already do have a "proof of a chain of ownership". And, we've had it for hundreds of years. For example, the title deeds and transfer of title documents saved at the county courthouse.

The issue is whether the so-called "proof" is : authentic or forged, and/or conflicting with other prior claims. (E.g, is the title transfer document faked? Are the signatures from the real owners? Was the previous person who transferred the title the actual rightful owner?)

Ultimately, "proof" of ownership is a social consensus that sorts out the claims and converges on agreement of who owns what. (I made a previous comment about this.[1])

You might notice that "proof" is recursive: if we "prove" that the "proof" was valid, how do we know _that_ proof is valid? Well, things like "title insurance" and/or a court case with a judge/jury to render a final judgement is the process to break that infinite cycle of "proof of proofs".

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14553867](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14553867)

<comment><USER5> In the UK the banks and property agencies are moving away from title deeds in a process called 'dematerialisation'

My deeds, dating back to 1949, no longer exist. They were shredded by Nationwide. I have a certified copy but they are considered of academic interest and 'proof of ownership' is now recorded by a database row. Which is terrifying, as a simple clerical error or a system failure could ruin so many lives.

<comment><USER6> I mean, before a simple fire could have ruined those same lives. Also, paper isn't proof against clerical errors.

<comment><USER7> Paper, if recognised legally means you have the responsibility to hold and present it as proof. You could keep the paper in a safety deposit. You can make certified copies.

If proof is electronic, you have no recourse if computer error causes a dispute, since you do not hold any proof yourself to present as evidence!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I live in a town that's a haven for hiding illicit funds in luxury homes (cryptocurrency fraud). There is a vacancy rate of about 5% - housing costs are up greater than 5% as the vacant homes' impact has a compounding effect.

I bring this up because it highlights an underlying trend shared between the article and my anecdote: fraud conducted in supply/demand markets hurts buyers and generally legal participants.

Even if your deal is 100% legal and proper, the supply/demand dynamics have been altered by those committing the fraud and you're getting screwed.

<comment><USER9> A vacancy rate of 5% is not abnormally high. [https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf](https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Understatement! 5% vacancy is a signal of "housing crisis" as currently experienced in many American cities. People carping about tiny vacancy rates has become some kind of NIMBY meme: we don't need to build new homes because look at the minute fraction of existing homes that are vacant!

<comment><USER11> I live in a city that is in crazy high demand. Prices climb 10% a year. Demand is huge. There are two vacant homes on my block. (And another one two blocks away) But not because no one wants to live there. But because of stupid practices by the banks that have left these homes in a limbo state where someone left, and it's not on the market at all. It's just vacant. This is so stupid. People need housing. I wish the city would just take over the homes and let people live in them. And that's just the three homes I'm aware of. There's probably tons more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well this could be a fun data science project. How much real estate fraud can you find in ACRIS?

<comment><USER13> Fun story; when the financial disclosures came out for the new administration, I wrote a quick script to compare Trump's LLCs to property records in NYC's ACRIS and then looked over the results by hand to see outliers. It took literally 30 minutes of my time and I found the Trumps trying to evade like $500k in taxes.

Eric Trump had used two anonymous LLCs to buy properties from his father's LLC for far below market rate. He was going to combine the units with another he already owned which actually made them more valuable than simple comps suggested. There were several opportunities to disclose the related party / family transaction but they both affirmed that it was at arm's length in the paperwork that they signed.

Propublica & The WaPo both published articles but I wasn't sure at the time so I remained anonymous publicly. Turns out that corruption doesn't matter and nobody cares that our president constantly commits financial crimes, so meh?

The propublica article: [https://www.propublica.org/article/heres-how-trump- transferr...](https://www.propublica.org/article/heres-how-trump-transferred- wealth-to-his-son-while-avoiding-usual-taxes)

<comment><USER14> No, people care - but they are usually busy dealing with other news they are currently being overwhelmed by.

<comment><USER13> It's just amusing that if I had found something similar about the president 3 years ago instead of 1 year ago, it would've been front page news and would've likely resulted in impeachment hearings. Instead.. crickets and a couple lightly read articles.

I always regarded moral relativism as a lens to judge modern culture against historical cultures and norms. It turns out that it's much, much worse to be a 'good' person committing a moderately bad act as compared to a 'bad' person who regularly commits much worse acts. That's a bit depressing.

 _Edit to clarify my point:_

It was a major scandal when Tim Geithner had to pay $20k in back taxes that he owed from his time at the IMF, similarly when one of Clinton's nominees for the AJ position withdrew when it turned out that she owed taxes on the salary she was paying her housekeeper, similarly again Spiro Agnew _resigned from the office of the Vice President of the US_ over something like $8k in taxes on income he didn't report (as well as some other corruption involving bribes and kickbacks). But millions of dollars of illegally shielded income depriving the treasury of hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue during the campaign merits a shrug because there are so many other scandals.

<comment><USER15> Trump's voter base would champion those actions, it's not like it's unknown that he's a scumbag developer that takes every effort to cheat everyone he deals with. But the important thing is that they believe he's on their team or one of their tribe, which allows him a lot of leeway in his behavior compared to someone on the other team or tribe, for whom even a minor indiscretion is unacceptable.

Similar mechanisms are at work when a popular athlete is caught doing something, or priests, etc. Once someone's ego becomes invested in you, you can more easily take advantage of them and that's an important thing to learn (and wield for yourself).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apologies, but I can't let this go: "Adrian sold another property around this time, a big house in Flatbush with a driveway and a copula for $100,000 to another LLC."

Pretty sure that house had a cupola[0], not a copula[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupola) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula)

<comment><USER17> Maybe he backed a security with the house and sold that instead...

</comment></comment><comment> jim-jim-jim Off topic, but can anybody explain why mobile scrolling is so weird on Outline articles? It's like there's way less friction when I swipe up and down.

I have javascript completely turned off. Is there something else that governs this behavior? Because I want to block it too.

<comment><USER18> I dug into the source code and I believe it's caused by this:

ui-path-scroll .post__article{-webkit-transition:height 1s;transition:height 1s}

They set a transition length in the css so your browser is just obeying the style sheet. Doubt there is any way to override this without a browser extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You'd think after 10 years they could claim the property through adverse possession and clear up any "cloud" over the ownership.

<comment><USER20> Some states allow a civil suit against all known creditors, lien-holders, or anyone else that may have an interest in the property, forcing them to show proof of their interest, then the judge makes a declarative judgment stating who owns the property, and the obligations the owner may have to the other parties.

Statutes enabling such suits are custom-tailored for removing clouds. If the lenders don't have their paperwork in order, the judge can sever the mortgage from the note, turning it into an unsecured debt.

<comment><USER21> For anyone curious this is typically called an action to "quiet title"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I love stuff like this, I always assumed everyone lived normal lives and played by the rules but there is so much that is the wild west still.

In my friends building the largest penthouse's tenants were paying $6k/mo then the Chinese (mainland) owner disappeared - hasn't been seen for a few years now. Someone bought the tax lien so I guess they will get a huge condo for some token amount. (No mortgage)

</comment><comment><USER23> The UK is about to deploy a measure against this kind of thing: [https://www.fladgate.com/2017/06/register-of-beneficial- owne...](https://www.fladgate.com/2017/06/register-of-beneficial-ownership/)

(Article says "UK" but the UK has two separate property law regimes and title registries, so they may not include Scotland)

<comment><USER24> This builds on the Persons with Significant Control rules for UK companies. In theory the rules for companies registered with Companies House require that they disclose human individuals who ultimately exercise significant control. For a public company there won't be anybody like that (individual shareholders aren't allowed to own enough of a public company to trigger "significant control"), but for private companies there's often just one or two real humans behind it, even if they own or control it via a trust fund with shares in an off-shore corporation that has special rights in a different off-shore corporation.

In practice Persons with Significant Control is not adequately enforced. Lawyers routinely write in things that aren't people in the PSCs field (e.g foreign company names) for a company and there haven't been any negative consequences for that.

I believe a willing government can and should enforce these rules by concluding that if, in fact, this company has assets but it's controlled by non-human entities, well then the government will seize its assets and add them to the treasury. No humans will be deprived of any assets by doing this so that's fine. When invariably an actual human squawks that their stuff is being taken we've found the actual Persons with Significant Control, they're welcome to pay some token fee, say, £100 000 for the wasted time and effort, and fix their records or we'll keep their stuff.

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately it's usually rich and powerful people who go to great lengths to obfuscate their ownership of assets, so this is politically unviable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why is half of this article a summary of the Big Short?

</comment><comment><USER27> The outline.com is almost a very readable site. But then I zoomed in slightly to make the text actually legible, and it fell apart. I could no longer scroll, and eventually some random ads appeared and blocked all access.

<comment><USER28> Try outline.com instead: [https://outline.com/jFDKt7](https://outline.com/jFDKt7) ;-)

It even features keyboard scrolling (in Safari on macOS) which theoutline.com doesn't do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So he stayed for years in a below market house then received a nice wad of cash for the key. All courtesy of the US taxpayer who ended up on the hook for the massive Wall Street bankruptcies that made walking away from a $1 million dollar property a thing.

It reads like he was quite ready to undercut Rosa and Adrian and take up payments with the original lender, only that he was unable to untangle the mess, and Adrian beat him to the punch by essentially forging some documents.

</comment><comment><USER30> Are deeds in the US still physical documents? They used to be in the UK, but not for a few decades (they are now electronic records held by the Land Registry).

<comment><USER31> The US doesn't have deeds. Instead, there are 51 different state policies. And many of those states don't have a state-wide policy, but instead operate county-by-county. So SOME of those support electronic records while others don't.

<comment><USER32> > Instead, there are 51 different state policies.

That would be truly remarkable, given that there are only 50 states (the District of Columbia is _not_ a state). I don't know if each U.S. federal polity is governed by different title rules, but it wouldn't surprise me, since areas such as American Samoa, Puerto Rico & Washington, D.C. have radically different histories: American Samoa was ceded by her native rulers; Puerto Rico was conquered from Spain & the District of Columbia was ceded by Maryland, ultimately from land granted by a royal English charter.

I think it's important to note because the United States are more complex than commonly understood.

<comment><USER33> > there are only 50 states

Many people refer to Australia as "the 52nd state".

<comment><USER31> As far as I know, only people from Australia say that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A sad, amusing, enlightening article.

<comment><USER35> I didn't find it all that sad. Some people got to live in a house paying below market rate for a long time. Some dude pulled one over on some dumb banks and managed to extract a lot of money from their shareholders. Some fraudulent documents got filed, but the victims of the fraud are the owners of those failed financial institutions. I guess, if any part of it is sad, that is, since ultimately that's people's pensions and retirement funds. But that's a kind of faceless and diffuse group of entities to really feel sorry for.

I agree it was fascinating, though.

<comment><USER8> You're lacking in creativity.

It shouldn't be too hard to put a face to the victims: take a look around you. This kind of disparate fraud impacts all of the non-beneficiaries. That includes me, you, your aunt and uncle, etc. etc.

<comment><USER35> In fact, I pointed out the exact effect you mentioned: that this fraud caused diffuse losses. It's well documented that most humans have trouble feeling empathy in the face of statistical harms, so in that sense I'm just a normal person. It has nothing to do with creativity or understanding. I am comfortable with my emotional stance on this article.

Also worth noting that, broadly speaking, the same general class of folks harmed by this practice were also helped by other "bank errors" in their favor. (By that, I mean the wealthy. People who can afford to be shareholders in banks.) So it's doubly hard to feel bad, since, by and large, the wealthy have never been doing better.

<comment><USER14> Man, when people get inured to out and out corruption in _America_ , and not some third world country, you know its bad.

The most likely answer though is not a lack of creativity - because its very hard to imagine the harm caused by these, relatively, arcane legal instruments.

There is a harpers article linked in the story, it should be illustrative of the clear harm being done to normal people, and how corporations made a calamitous end run around legal procedure - the same issue which is happening today (the "two-fer" paragraph).

If you need faces, realize that people were foreclosed on when they should not have been, those deeds were NEVER legally owned by the banks because the banks and their intermediaries didn't follow up on the paper work.

Yet those people got evicted, and banks claimed ownership.

An economy is largely predicated on working systems of assessment and legal redressal, more so for First World economies.

And this happens because, as you said, its hard to imagine the harm being caused.

<comment><USER36> > people were foreclosed on when they should not have been

That's not what happened here, though; the homeowner managed to avoid foreclosure despite not servicing the mortgage, precisely because the banks messed up the paperwork.

There are victims in the overall saga: people who were missold mortgages that they were never going to be able to service, at rates higher than they were entitled to, who lost their savings as a result. But they don't feature in this story.

<comment><USER14> Right, this is NOT that story, and I am not saying it is.

But that story has been written, as have pages upon pages of what happened.

Reading through it all and being well informed will likely be the realm of a few people, the best we can hope for is to be directed to other resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> After reading this, I'm glad to be living in a country which uses Torrens title.

<comment><USER38> A few states in the US use Torrens...

<comment><USER37> And it's such an eminently sensible idea that I wonder why it's only a few.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Help me understand, were the blank fields on the mortgage and the separated note a part of the fraud? Or just enabling factors?

</comment><comment><USER40> My take on this is that it has nothing to do with the housing market collapse of 2008. It smells of money laundering.

</comment><comment><USER41> Author paid by the word, I guess

</comment><comment><USER42> If ever there was a perfect moment for a TL;DR...

</comment><comment><USER43> We really should have locked up every single banker on Wall Street after 2007. The meme of private property has caused so much harm in the world. We have messes like this house sitting, rotting, festering, on society. We should excise the cancer of capitalism before it has fully matastisized and killed us all.

<comment><USER44> Replaced by what exactly? A free market is the natural way to allocate scarce resources. It is easy to say "allocate to those in need first" but who decides? Yes there are other possible systems but I don't think any of them have been remotely as sucessful overall as capitalism.

There is a natural equilibrium found in a free market. Those who can produce cheaper and better quality make money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was worth the read.

In stark contrast, one should walk into an econ forum, and see how people discuss the economy.

Its about jobs, or labor figures, and compliance and regulation are things which just "work", or are to be avoided due to additional costs.

I've come to the conclusion that

1) Economics is currently only as usfeul as the soundbite it generates

2) Economists are people with excellent working compasses, when people are looking for where they lost their keys

</comment><comment><USER45> Do people in general understand how incredibly rotten, rigged, and broken everything is?

Imagine buying your dream house (a figurative one only coincidentally related to the article), turning the doorknob and it comes off in your hand. You flick the light switch but no lights, and it collapses into the panel. Touch the wall, and your finger pokes through. Completely broken, disintegrated, nested with termites and other creepy crawlers. The "inspectors" told you everything was fine.

That is our world, and this life.

<comment><USER46> Your part of the world, maybe. But there's remedy to everything you described in most of the modern world.

<comment><USER47> Exactly. Notice how no one in the story has clean hands, even the reporter who knew that paying below market rent in cash without a lease meant that something funny was going on. It's not that hard to avoid shady business (though in fact, I laud the reporter, and maybe even Eddie and Rosa, for squeezing a bit of blood from a stone).</comment></comment></comment>


NPR's interactive guide to the running gags from Arrested Development - <AUTHOR> http://apps.npr.org/arrested-development/

<comment><USER2> This is amazing.</comment>


Lessons Learned from My First Founder Flop - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Jolijt/don-t-take-advice-and-more-startup-advice-2723e7a169d3

<comment><USER2> What an unbelievably honest and open confession! Sadly, we won't be seeing anything like this from a Silicon Valley startup.</comment>


Ask HN: Cost of running reddit servers? - <AUTHOR>

Leaving out the employees, just in terms of server and hardware costs, how much would you expect to have to pay to keep reddit up and running?
Just curious. <comment><USER2> Not to be the "take this to reddit" guy, but isn't _this_ question perfect for ask.reddit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. I didn't know there was an ask.reddit section. I'll try this query there.

Maybe I can get an interesting comparison between the answers here on HN and those on ask.reddit.</comment></comment>


The first woman PhD in computer science was a nun (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53178/first-woman-earn-phd-computer-science-was-nun <comment><USER2> According to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenneth_Keller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kenneth_Keller) and [https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/](https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/), she is also tied for being the first American to receive a PhD in computer science (one other person received his PhD on the same exact day). They are also potentially (it seems there's some debate) the first CS PhDs ([https://studylib.net/doc/8193211/who-earned-first- computer-s...](https://studylib.net/doc/8193211/who-earned-first-computer- science-phd%3F)).

Great line from that last link: "Prior to 1965 ... there were none, and after 1965 there was a nun."

<comment><USER3> The first PhD in computing was David Wheeler in 1951 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wheeler_(computer_scient...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wheeler_\(computer_scientist\))

<comment><USER4> His PhD was in Mathematics AFAIR. Also note that the Wikipedia article is missing a citation on that point and further discussion on the talk page.

<comment><USER3> The title of his PhD dissertation was "Automatic computing with the EDSAC"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Women got PhDs in computing earlier outside the USA, for instance Beatrice Worsley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley)

</comment><comment><USER5> Erm, no.

The first woman to get a PhD in computer science was a Wren, not a nun: Beatrice Worsley. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Worsley) of note

> When World War II ended, Worsley was the only Wren at the NRE to choose to > remain in service.

She is tragically forgotten despite she wrote the first program to run on a Von Neumann architecture computer (that being the EDSAC) which you could simplify to say she wrote the first computer program as we today understand such.

Also, she got the first PhD in CS when CS wasn't even a thing yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> To be more precise, she was a sister. A nun would be a woman consecrated to religious life who lives cloistered. While "nun" is used colloquially to refer to all women religious, the technical meaning is narrower.

As many other commenters have noted, there is a culture of many women religious receiving advanced degrees. One of my college friends who got his PhD in political science at MIT was surprised to discover that there were two women religious in his grad school cohort.

In parallel terms, "monk" and "brother" are often used interchangeably, but like with nun, a monk lives cloistered. A brother is a non-ordained man consecrated to religious life. While many brothers are monks, many monks are priests, and some brothers live non-cloistered lives, in the sciences, perhaps the best known would be Brother Guy Consolmagno who is a Jesuit brother and the Vatican astronomer.

<comment><USER7> I'd argue the best known monk in the sciences is Gregor Mendel , who was an Augustinian friar and genetics research pioneer.

As an aside, it always rubs me the wrong way when people insinuate the (Catholic) church is anti-science when the long list of contributions to science says otherwise.

<comment><USER6> True that. I was thinking the best-known _living_ brother in the sciences.

Plus, I've met Brother Guy. He's really cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My great aunt who is a nun got a masters in Chemistry in the 1950s. She said that the only other women in her program were nuns.

<comment><USER9> It's not really surprising, is it? In a society that demands of women to get married and raise kids instead of work, it's mostly women who aren't allowed to marry and have kids who get to do things like follow a higher education.

<comment><USER10> Nobody is demanding that. It could just be that they want to.

<comment><USER3> Steve Shirley [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Shirley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Shirley) was able to found a computing consultancy business in the 1960s staffed entirely by women that had been fired when they got married, as was the usual practise at the time.

<comment><USER10> Ok, fair enough I never knew this was a common practice. I was thinking more about today when I made my comment

<comment><USER11> > _Ok, fair enough I never knew this was a common practice._

What makes you think it was common practice? Exceptions are a thing…

<comment><USER3> For an example of it being not just common but in some cases required to dismiss women when they married, see "The Marriage Bar" at [https://civilservant.org.uk/women- history.html](https://civilservant.org.uk/women-history.html)

<comment><USER11> I'm talking about forming all-married women businesses. I'd be shocked if that was common, but if you have data showing otherwise, I'm happy to be corrected...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Okay. Now, where are the details about her religious life? What did she believe in and care about? It was obviously very important to her, to the extent that she made serious monastic vows. When a movie actor is a life-long alcoholic, we happily include that in the biography; but when we are speaking about Catholic sisters, we whitewash it away from their lives? Pretty disappointing considering that the headline is "[she] was a nun".

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

</comment><comment><USER13> "Dartmouth relaxed the rule barring women from its computer center..."

Just wow.

<comment><USER14> According to Wikipedia Dartmouth College was a male only college until 1972.

Woman did work as employees at the computer center, and bringing dates from nearby schools and colleges to the computing center was apparently a thing as students liked to show off their computer skills.

Also of note: unlike other colleges, students at Dartmouth didn't need to pay for computer time, creating both opportunity but potentially also the need to 'guard' against outsiders.

<comment><USER15> Haha, I love the idea of impressing women by showing them your computer skills.

<comment><USER16> Dunno what to say, green-on-black terminals, clean code and fast typing do always manage to turn me on ;)

<comment><USER14> Given the era I think we are talking key punches, card readers and line printers here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's also Sister Catherine Wybourne, AKA The Digital Nun.

She's a web and app developer and new media pioneer - and her monastery's primary income comes through development and consulting services.

I went to a talk of hers on social media years ago and it was excellent.

"Being cloistered doesn't mean that you have to have an enclosed mind, or an enclosed approach to things."

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- life/11511596/Meet-...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens- life/11511596/Meet-digital-nun-the-Sister-funding-her-monastery-through-her- apps.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Not just first "woman" PhD, but tied for first Computer Science PhD (in the U.S.).

</comment><comment><USER18> Better article explaining she is actually first PhD in the U.S. for Computer Science. Not just first woman. [https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/](https://www.cs.wisc.edu/2019/03/18/2759/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I hereby rename NaN to Nun in her honour

</comment><comment><USER20> The first woman PhD in Computer Science was Sister Mary Kenneth Keller

</comment><comment><USER21> Just going to leave this here: [https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when- women-stopped-coding)

</comment><comment><USER22> Making a lifetime vow does not mean you turn your brain off. The Belgian priest, Georges Lemaître, first proposed the theory that is now known as the Big Bang and made other discoveries in astronomy and physics, and still served as a priest as well.

<comment><USER23> Blaise Pascal is another example. Heard he did something with all kinds of triangles.

He was quite invasive with his faith though.

<comment><USER24> And Reverend Bayes, too.

<comment><USER25> Yes, REVEREND Bayes was clergy, too, and what would we do in machine learning without Bayes' theorem? (His grave is in London.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem)

<comment><USER26> It seems Bayes never actually wrote down what is now called Bayes Theorem. (Perhaps he knew of it). I think it was Laplace that recognized the full generality of the relationship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've reading this news at least for the third time here on HW in this week.

Nice achievement but keep it DRY

<comment><USER28> What were those other posts? I only found one from 7 years ago: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=nun%20phd&sort=byDate&type=story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> No wonder we start counting at zero, it all started with a nun.

</comment><comment><USER30> Nikola Tesla and Isaac Newton were virgins as well. It might be argued that a certain level of unresolved frustration can be a driving force in technical pursuits...

<comment><USER31> I would argue that if you are not hampered by sexual pursuits, it frees your brain up for technical ones. [https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheAbstinence.htm](https://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheAbstinence.htm)

<comment><USER30> I would argue it's probably a bit of both. Fulfilling sexual relationships are one way to feel a sense of satisfaction in life, and having kids is one way to achieve a kind of legacy. Solving hard technical problems and moving science forward is another way to achieve the same goals. One _could_ pursue both, but if you already have one you might be less likely to feel a strong visceral need for the other.</comment></comment></comment>


Why diagnosing Alzheimer's today is so difficult, and how we can do better - <AUTHOR> https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/A-better-way-of-diagnosing-Alzheimers <comment><USER2> I didn't realize Bill Gate's dad has Alzheimer's.

I'm not sure why this disease gets relatively little funding. If Gates' funding leads to early detection, say 10-15 year early, maybe it'll raise awareness so it gets more government funding.

<comment><USER3> Alzheimer's actually gets a lot of funding, but mostly for therapeutics, not diagnostics: it gets a lot of funding from NIH, and neurodegenerative disease treatments get the third or fourth most VC and big pharma funding (after cancer, rare disease and maybe infectious disease)

However none of the drugs really work, and ppl think one reason is bc patients are diagnosed too late

Diagnostics get very little funding in general, not just in Alzheimer's. Calling yourself a "diagnostics" company is a good way to get ignored by VCs. You have to do a lot of expensive studies to prove that they work, the bar is quite high to getting insurers to pay for them, and pricing power is low. Most insurers will only pay for a novel diagnostic if it saves them money. So you have high development cost and low profit potential

<comment><USER4> >Calling yourself a "diagnostics" company is a good way to get ignored by VCs. [...] So you have high development cost and low profit potential

What can regulatory agencies do to alleviate this?

<comment><USER3> The regulation for many diagnostics is actually fairly light. There's a class of diagnostics called "lab developed tests" that essentially aren't regulated by FDA

The development cost is high because you need good data to convince doctors that tests work, and also to convince payers. Payers have proven to be the real gatekeepers for many diagnostics rather than FDA

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What if you could diagnose with an eye scan? [http://optinadx.com](http://optinadx.com)

Disclaimer: I'm an investor in Optina Diagnostics

<comment><USER6> interesting ! could you describe the key technology behind optinadx to a layman, in some more detail ?

<comment><USER7> I'm not affiliated with Optina and I don't know specifically what they're doing, but the classic symptom of Alzheimer's is the formation in the brain of amyloid plaques - and it appears to be the case that they also form on the retina, and can thus be detected by appropriate optical scans.</comment></comment></comment>


Embracing the Weirdness of Waterless Waterways - <AUTHOR> http://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-long/embracing-weirdness-waterless-waterways <comment><USER2> The impression modern peoples have of waterways as if they were drawn on a map and their path approved by a bureaucrat like a modern paved roadway is all kinds of wrong.

The Salton Sea was created when the Colorado River diverged from its path one year. It is in a place where local native populations have stories from their ancestors of previous lakes. The Salton Sea was expected to dry up and go away, but run off from farms and other sources has kept it alive and it is expected to stay for the foreseeable future.

The Colorado River was named that because it ran red with heavy silt. These days, it runs blue. We have tamed it, and thereby in some sense killed it. It no longer carries the life-giving fertility it once carried. It also no longer meanders. We have confined it to a particular path. This is not the natural state of any waterway. The natural state is to meander.

During the California Gold Rush, the Colorado River overflowed its banks and made a series of pools out in the desert of the South West. This provided fresh water and fresh grazing for pack animals that was life giving for some of the people heading to California in search of gold. This overflow and the bounty of the land it caused was not something that happened every year, but it happened often enough that taking advantage of the extra food it provided was part of local native culture.

In the High Desert of California, there are many dry lakes. If it rains hard enough, the lakes flood for some weeks. In some of them, shrimp hatch out.

The concept so many of us have of waterways is fundamentally broken. Water is a universal solvent and, barring human intervention, it flows where it will and not in accordance with some designated pathway.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Colorado River empties into the Gulf of California in Mexico. Or, well, it did. These days, it rarely makes it there (once since the late 90s).

>People who drive into or out of the town of San Luis Río Colorado, in the Mexican state of Sonora, sometimes complain about having to pay a six-peso toll to cross a bridge that spans only sand.

Story in the New Yorker: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the- disappearin...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-disappearing- river)</comment>


Forget the CEO, the Entrepreneur, the Lawyer and everyone else. Ask the mice. - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2010/10/14/forget-the-ceo-the-entrepreneur-the-lawyer-and-everyone-else-ask-the-mice/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a clever story that's on the funny side but has an insightful moral. Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to see the quick, simple solution is right in front of you.

<comment><USER2> I agree with that the 'taking a step back' but I am not liking that they took on consultant/lawyer etc versus geniuses. Are they saying that everyone else except those who worked on the ENIAC would have thought of going straight to the mouse trap ? Why the bias in that ? I am still young so maybe there is some underlying meaning I am not seeing. I really thought consultants at least were some of the best people (at least those who came from engineering). Then again that is my bias; consultants (that come from engineering) are geniuses.

<comment><USER3> The problem with consultants is that their expertise is usually in a higher layer of abstraction, compared to the ones that work on the place on a daily- basis.

The stereotypical consultant can only think about applying the same processes (mental- and business-) that s/he applied at all other gigs. Instead of adapting the process to the company culture, they want to _change the company culture so that it can fit into the process_.

Moreover, they usually have the wrong incentives. Someone who is used to charge by the hour has no reason to look for the most effective solution to the problem. If they got a six-month contract to build a better mouse-trap (or a faster horse), they will take that time to build, instead of trying to solve the problem from a different angle. And that's in the case they are actually good!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My immediate reaction was to run out and buy mousetrapster.com... not sure why, just seems like there's _something_ fun one ought to be able to do with it.

...anyone got any ideas?</comment>


Should I work at Tesla/SpaceX or Microsoft/Google? - <AUTHOR> I'm a new grad who some experience with both low level software and some backend systems. I have to choose between Tesla/SpaceX and Microsoft/Google (one of each) and I'm really torn. I lack the wisdom to understand the long term implications of my choice, and both seem really great.
On one hand, Tesla/SpaceX are growing rapidly and changing the world. Meanwhile, Microsoft/Google have talented engineers and great culture with excellent pay, perks, and benefits as well as a strong learning environment and a manageable workload. Additionally, Microsoft/Google translate well into other job opportunities down the road, as their brands are very strong and their engineers are known to be very capable.
I feel that Tesla/SpaceX aren't as software focused (Google basically wrote the book on modern day distributed computing), so I'm worried that, while I'll have more responsibility and impactful work here, I may not be as strong technically in the future.
However, I feel that I'm underestimating the benefits of the growth that Tesla/SpaceX are experiencing. I'm afraid of missing out on great opportunities that these companies can offer.
What does HN think about this choice? What would you do? <comment><USER2> I think these are all great choices, and you really cannot go wrong with any one of these choices.

Some things to help you decide:

\- Look at the team you will be working with. "Tesla" sounds exciting. "Writing device drivers for USB components for cars" does not. The team matters. Which team is most exciting?

\- Look at your immediate manager. Does he/she seem like a person you would enjoy working with?

\- Look at the other members of the team. People you can learn from? People you can get along with?

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> At Tesla/SpaceX, I would be working on an extremely exciting project.

I haven't been matched with a team at Google yet, but Google offers a lot of flexibility in location and project, so there are plenty of possibilities. I am an undergraduate though, so research heavy projects are unlikely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is no wrong answer. They're both good companies that'll help your career immensely. Pick the one you want to work for most.

</comment><comment><USER4> Haha, please don't be naive.

In both cases you will be in excel spreadsheet under column 'resource'.

Open you eyes!</comment>


Functional Programming in JavaScript: A Collection of Hands-on Exercises - <AUTHOR> http://jhusain.github.io/learnrx/ <comment><USER2> Former Netflix employee here; I think I can give some context (and I'll ping @jhusain to let him know this is here if he wants to chime in). These tutorials were created initially to share functional programming concepts with Netflix engineers who were unfamiliar with FP. Jafar created these exercises and taught classes using the material here as the primary source material for the courses. This was all back in 2012 into early 2013 when Netflix was going big with Reactive Extensions.

What good is Rx when a huge number of your team don't really get FP--let alone FRP.

I know a lot of folks have found these exercises useful. I think the odd format of not showing further material until an exercise is complete was more tailored to the structure of the class that these accompanied rather than something meant for standalone presentation online. That said, the exercises are still quite valuable.

<comment><USER3> I know this is pedantic, but are we still calling Rx as FRP? It doesn't even work well to Rx's advantage (simplicity): grokking Rx can be much easier than grokking FRP, which is much more pure and restricted (though also more powerful).

<comment><USER4> RxJS author here. We on the RxJS team have never called RxJS FRP as we do not have a continuous notion of time, instead we have a notion of virtual time. That and we do not distinguish between events and behaviors as they all are Observable objects.

<comment><USER3> Virtual time as in Jefferson's Time Warp system?

<comment><USER4> As in you can specify the time at which things execute and swap out the concurrency model at any time. This makes it perfect for testing: [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/blob/master/doc/...](https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/blob/master/doc/gettingstarted/schedulers.md)

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem to be very related. Virtual time as defined in jefferson's seminal paper is a variation of Lamport's virtual clocks used in distributed discrete simulations; it is the analog of virtual memory.

The name clash wouldn't be such a big deal (systems is far away from webdev), but time warp is also very related to transactions and FRP in providing abstractions to deal with change in reactive programs.

<comment><USER4> It's not. Virtual time can mean anything in this case as in not real time and it can be swapped out at any point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 2 very good "donationware" books about javascript functional programming,for those who want to study it in depth :

[https://leanpub.com/javascript-spessore/read](https://leanpub.com/javascript- spessore/read)

[https://leanpub.com/javascript-allonge/read](https://leanpub.com/javascript- allonge/read)

please check it out and tip Reg,frankly his work is outstanding.

<comment><USER6> From what I can see functional programming is significant but not only part of javascript allonge and javascript spessore contains references to fp but it doesn't seem to be focus of this book

<comment><USER5> Sorry but these books are in my opinion the best one can find about FP in JS,and I read a lot of them,especially allongé,which goes in detail in a lot of advanced FP concepts.You should actually read these books.

<comment><USER6> I did not deny that FP is leading theme in javascript allonge quite the opposite but it does not apply to javascript spessore I am afraid

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To just _see_ the content on the page, paste this into the console:

        $('body').append('<style>.lesson,.post{visibility:visible;}</style>');

(I enjoyed reading the content, but found it infuriating to skim.)

</comment><comment><USER8> I just consistently get the following on Firefox

        TypeError: verifier is not a function

<comment><USER9> Same here. More and more websites seem to target only Chrome (or Webkit), it's the IE6 situation all over again.

<comment><USER10> Sorry! I wanted to upvote. I'm also trying to find out how the the downvote got registered.

Edit: I've found it, it's curiously related to the "which browser" discussion(!): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8475210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8475210) (Posted from the Firefox this time!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Original Author here. I fixed the Firefox bug and merged a pull request to allow answers to be transferred to other browsers. I will add a Show All Answers button soon for folks who just want to browse.

rcfox: These exercises teach functional programming concepts, and that includes composition as it applies to the Observer pattern. I use RX but you could also use bacon JS or build your own lightweight Observable library. You should check out rx.lite.js which is a minimal subset of the library. As for your concerns about including a library, I urge you to reconsider if you can afford the extra download size. The Observer pattern is ubiquitous in software and you'll be amazed how versatile Rx is. At Netflix we use it on the server and client for a wide variety of different tasks. Rx has more than paid for itself 10 times over.

<comment><USER4> @jhusain not only that but we did introduce a CLI which allows you to bring in only what you need: [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/releases/tag/v2....](https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/releases/tag/v2.3.12)

Still in its early days but is very promising for making RxJS as small as you wish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://underscorejs.org/](http://underscorejs.org/)

For those not already familiar with it, Underscore is a wonderful functional programming library that lets you code in a functional style while insulating you from many of Javascript's quirks.

<comment><USER13> I think Lo-Dash is a better alternative.

<comment><USER14> Not trying to start a flamewar, but are there instances where you would use underscore instead of lodash?

<comment><USER15> yes, for example, [https://github.com/documentcloud/underscore- contrib](https://github.com/documentcloud/underscore-contrib)

<comment><USER16> You could theoretically use this on top of lodash though, correct?

<comment><USER17> There's lodash-contrib too – [https://github.com/TheNodeILs/lodash- contrib](https://github.com/TheNodeILs/lodash-contrib)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow, it's terrible UI to hide most of your content until I complete a challenge when all you're making is an educational piece.

I wanted to read it, then noticed most of the page as blank space, shrugged, and moved on.

<comment><USER4> RxJS author here and creator of some of those exercises. This was meant as a hands on lab where we proctor the event. We've given this at a number of conferences including QCon, CodeMesh, among others to great success. If you have suggestions, please do file an issue and I'll make sure we get them addressed: [https://github.com/jhusain/learnrx](https://github.com/jhusain/learnrx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Type error: verifier is not a function. is what I got for the first exercise..

Btw, keep it real and solve in CS like so:

console.log name for name in ["Ben", "Jafar", "Matt", "Priya", "Brian"]

<comment><USER20> I'm pretty sure the exercises are called "Functional Programming in JavaScript", not "Functional Programming in CoffeeScript".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't know if this was obvious to anyone else, but based on the comments here, the tutorial seems to be discussing RxJS[0]. The tutorial itself makes no mention of using any libraries.

It's a little disappointing because the Observable object sounds like a neat way of solving some complexity that I've run into recently, but I'm not sure that I want to pull in a whole library for it.

[0] [http://reactive-extensions.github.io/RxJS/index.html](http://reactive- extensions.github.io/RxJS/index.html)

<comment><USER4> The RxJS author here. This was meant to be training for Netflix team members to become familiar with RxJS as they use Rx for pretty much all of their systems, whether front end or back end.

We've made great strides recently making Rx more accessible including making it easier to pull in only the things you want/need: [https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/releases/tag/v2....](https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS/releases/tag/v2.3.12)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you want a version that works in firefox:

        git clone https://github.com/M0ns1gn0r/learnrx.git

And you can keep it forever!

</comment><comment><USER23> I went through this tutorial a few weeks back. It's very well laid out and by the end of it you really want more lessons.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is very helpful! Thanks to OP for sharing. :)

</comment><comment><USER25> Oh I love this Thanks! Gotta try some of them out!</comment>


Why some houses on Google Street View are blurred out - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/Google-Street-View-blurred-houses-14096605.php <comment><AUTHOR> I'm wondering if any HN readers have submitted anything through this form already, and if so what was your experience?

What was the timeline from submission to Google taking action? Was everything you submitted approved as requested? Did Google ask for clarification or even deny any requests?</comment>


Racket is 25 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.racket-lang.org/2020/05/racket-is-25.html <comment><USER2> Taking an SICP-like class in Racket and playing with recursive constructs for the first time was one of the highlights of my CS education. This language gave more unalloyed joy than anything else I've done as a programmer, though I've yet to build anything practically useful in it.

<comment><USER3> I thought similarly too, until I spent some time with Prolog. Lisp seems wonderful and clever, but Prolog feels even more magical.

Even a simple thing like concatenation of two lists, that in Prolog it could be done purely declaratively, without expressing how it needs to be performed, seems levels more magical than how it is done in lisps.

<comment><USER4> Something I would like to see is Prolog/logic programming embedded in a general purpose programming language, rather than as a standalone system.

Racket and Perl 6 are the only small userbase languages in the last 8-10 years to amaze me with their feature sets and to make me want to learn them just for the sake of experiencing them.

<comment><USER5> Probably doesn't fit what you mean by mainstream, but even so: [https://github.com/clojure/core.logic](https://github.com/clojure/core.logic)

> A logic programming library for Clojure & ClojureScript. core.logic offers > Prolog-like relational programming, constraint logic programming, and > nominal logic programming for Clojure.

<comment><USER4> This is cool but less what I'm looking for, which is to actually write Prolog inside my Clojure source, or be able to include a Prolog file.

Minikanren seems to be closer to the mark, and I thank the commenters who pointed it out!

<comment><USER6> I think you oversaw that core.logic is basically a minikanren (plus c-kanren, plus alpha-kanren) implementation in clojure instead of scheme; it even points to the papers and to The Reasoned Schemer for documentation and reference.

That is, saying that minikanren seems to be closer to the mark than core.logic is a little bit nonsensical (please read that in a good sense!)

<comment><USER4> You're right, although I think what I was actually wrong about was what minikanren is (probably by looking at examples in languages I was less familiar with).

I don't want to do logic programming in clojure (or whatever other language), I want to do logic programming in Prolog and drop it into my clojure project and have to do as little plumbing as possible.

The nearest analogy I can come up with is LINQ. In the examples in [1] the experience of the developer is closer to writing SQL in the middle of a C# or VB file, rather than having a good C# database query library.

[1] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/csharp/programming-g...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/concepts/linq/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used Racket a lot about 2 months ago. I was prototyping an application [1] in three different languages: Racket, LispWorks Common Lisp, and Swift.

Racket produces standalone applications that can be codesigned using Apple's tools, in preparation for their App Store.

Best regards to the Racket team.

[1] [http://www.knowledgegraphnavigator.com/](http://www.knowledgegraphnavigator.com/)

<comment><USER8> > Racket produces standalone applications that can be codesigned using Apple's > tools

Can you elaborate on how this works? I've been wanting to try something similar.

<comment><USER7> My codesigning notes for Racket

Build an application, unpack the .dmg file, add my own data files, create a new subdirectory with same name and move all files into it, discard the dmg, use Disk Utility to build a new .dmg and sign it:

codesign --force --deep --options runtime -s firstname.lastname@example.com -v New.dmg

Note: my app had required data files, which complicated the process.

<comment><USER9> I've figured out a somewhat automatic way to do the dmg bundling which may be of interest:

[https://github.com/cjdev/aws- access/blob/master/Makefile#L26](https://github.com/cjdev/aws- access/blob/master/Makefile#L26)

The manifest file used is here:

[https://github.com/cjdev/aws- access/blob/master/dmg.json](https://github.com/cjdev/aws- access/blob/master/dmg.json)

It's a bit annoying because it requires having a working node installation, but I found the whole process of building and configuring a dmg much too manual and undocumented to not use some kind of utility for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've picked up Racket recently after a long while and I'm enjoying it.

Does anyone have recommendations of how to learn to _think recursively_? Sure, using the language more and more does it, but what about a more general recursion as a problem solving paradigm pattern? I'm enjoying doing recursive code exercises and got into Backtracking problems. Creating things like Sudoku solvers, Knight's Tour grid etc was quite fun. I still can't develop recurrences easily though.

Any books/exercises that people here found helpful?

<comment><USER11> One way to learn some of using recursion while using Racket (or any other Scheme) is to:

* avoid the iteration constructs that Racket added to Scheme,

* avoid mutating operations, such as `set!` and those that operate on mutable data types,

* embrace named-`let` for iteration/recursion (using `let` with a name, like `(let loop-for-foo (` rather than `(let (`, which effectively makes it like an embedded function that can be called from within its own definition), and

* embrace immutable data for collections, like immutable pairs and immutable hashes.

You can do that for real-world development, or for interview-oriented Leetcode-type exercises. Whichever motivates one more; with the above suggestions, both will present many opportunities to practice recursion this way, without exercises that are selected or contrived to need recursion.

<comment><USER12> if Racket was built on top of immutable data structures, recursion, and the likes - why were imperative-like features such as mutation added to the language?

<comment><USER11> Scheme was defined as an algorithmic language, not a strictly pure-functional one, though it also included some functional features and permitted other functional abstractions to be implemented.

Racket slowly added some immutable data types to Scheme, which was a nice fit for some other Scheme features that had been there from the start, and better for software engineering (e.g., enforce that a user of a module couldn't go and mutate data you were sharing with them).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "If functional programming is that good, why is nobody using it?"

In the past 25 years, I think we've seen quite clearly that programming language popularity depends on many different factors, and "quality of he underlying paradigm" is way down on that list -- if it's even a factor at all.

Just a quick glance at any list of most-used-languages will tell you that 50% of popularity is "is it being pushed by a big company?", and 25% is "is it the primary interface for a popular platform?"

Take away those two factors and there's maybe only about 3 languages left in the top 25 (Python, Ruby, PHP?).

Where quality shines is in being able to stay a viable niche for a long period of time. That's Scheme.

<comment><USER14> Oh, lots of people are using functional programming. They just don't use the paradigm exclusively nor do they use a purely functional programming language. Let's see,

\- Supporting higher order functions in programming languages. Check.

\- Usual operations on higher-order functions like currying? Check.

\- Functional reactive programming. Check. Rx was a big thing a few years ago.

\- Purely functional data structures. Check. Even Java has a few reasonably popular libraries that support such data structures.

\- Using referential transparency whenever we can. Check.

\- Using CPS (continuation-passing style) in daily programming. Check.

\- Using recursion in production. This is not functional programming per se, but given that so many people mention recursion whenever they mention functional programming, it's worth listing recursion here. And mutual recursion and tail recursion, two of the hallmarks of entry-level functional programming techniques? Check and check. For instance, RxJava implements trampoline just to support tail-recursion, as it is necessary to implement cleanly some of RxJava's operators.

\- Common techniques seen in functional programming, particularly the ones that involve map, reduce, scan, left-fold and right-fold. Check.

This is just the items that are on top of my mind. I'm sure I missed plenty. The gist is that people have been adopting functional programming. They just don't necessarily move to a purely functional programming language for practical reasons: platform, support, community, ecosystems, or even marketing. Programming paradigm is just one factor among many when people choose their programming languages.

<comment><USER15> Who uses CPS in daily programming? Or do you mean using a compiler that uses it?

<comment><USER16> The Visitor pattern is not much more than a CPS-style transform that lets you represent sum types in a language without them.

A CPS transform for a computation of type `X` gives a computation of type `forall A. (X -> A) -> A`. That is, instead of evaluating to ("returning") a value of type `X`, you take a function that you deliver a valid of type `X` to, and return whatever it returns.

CPS-transforming a sum type `X + Y` gives `forall A. (X + Y -> A) -> A`, and if you distribute over the sum you get `forall A. ((X -> A) * (Y -> A)) -> A`. The visitor is the pair of functions you pass in, `(X -> A) * (Y -> A)`, and the value decides which method to call. In either event, it returns whatever the chosen visitor method returns.

(Dropping into Java syntax, this is the type of the `visit` method: `<A> A visit(Visitor<A> visitor)` -- and the Visitor is `interface Visitor<A> { A onX(X x); A onY(Y y); }`.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've used Racket for many prototype languages and tools and love its facilities and philosophy. The thing that always gives me pause when considering it for a new project is that it has no robust mobile or client- side web story.

If the tool lives on beyond prototype then I have to rewrite it in a native language or restrict it to the subset of Scheme that can run in Gambit on iOS.

I really hope that Racket can evolve and adapt to a world where more computing and even development is going to happen on mobile and web.

<comment><USER18> I keep looking at Gerbil Scheme as another "modern feeling" scheme with some opinions and creature comforts. And it's built on Gambit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish the team did away with Dr Racket... It does have some unique features but I feel like it adds megabytes to the whole package and is not really very usable for anything other than learning (imho). I've seen this acknowledged by the Racket docs I think (the fact that it is supposed to be a learning environment).

I suspect Racket would be a lot more popular as a development environment if the team did away with Dr Racket and put those resources into maintaining a very solid Emacs, Vim and VS Code integration.

<comment><USER20> racket doesn't have any less of a solid integration into emacs (racket-mode) and visual studio code (magic racket) than most other languages.

<comment><USER19> I don't think this is true. I don't think racket-mode has a big community around it, and sadly doesn't come even close to slime [1] or cider [2], both very feature full dev envs for Emacs.

Magic racket is very bare bones and can't compare to integrations like Calva [3].

So I saw someone down voted me... just to be clear, I use Racket despite having to work against a poor tooling experience, when comparing to say, CL or Clojure.

I want Racket to succeed in industry, so is not like I'm complaining. I'm pointing out what I think is a weakness, maybe a blind spot by the team, since they seem to be very attached to Dr Racket!

1: [https://common-lisp.net/project/slime/](https://common- lisp.net/project/slime/)

2: [https://cider.mx/](https://cider.mx/)

3: [https://github.com/BetterThanTomorrow/calva](https://github.com/BetterThanTomorrow/calva)

<comment><USER21> Have you checked the new features recently?

[https://www.racket-mode.com/](https://www.racket-mode.com/)

<comment><USER19> So part of the problem is that racket mode has a bus factor of 1. I saw that the maintainer posted this [1] a while ago, which is a bit concerning.

My point is that would be ideal if the core Racket team also participated in polishing the IDE integrations, other than Dr Racket.

1: [https://www.greghendershott.com/2019/07/future-of- racket.htm...](https://www.greghendershott.com/2019/07/future-of-racket.html)

<comment><USER22> On the other hand, I've just spent several more-or-less full-time months taking advantage of the drracket/check-syntax library, provided by the core Racket team.

On the third hand, I spent all that time, so wrt "bus factor 1", there will be no pleasing you. :)

<comment><USER19> Just avoid buses please :-p

Thanks for all your work on the racket ecosystem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Racket has some of the best documentation I've ever seen and is a joy to use. I don't use it, but DrRacket is also a great IDE -- especially for beginners.

I wish either Racket was more widely used in industry or I had more time/energy/excuses to use it.

<comment><USER24> Scribble documentation rendered as HTML is alright, but I wish there was better support for accessing that documentation in your editor. _Racket Guide_ and _Racket Reference_ are both very well written though.

<comment><USER25> In DrRacket, when the cursor is on an identifier, you can hover over the big arrow at the top right corner of the definition window. A popup will appear showing basic usage of functions / macros without detailed explanation. However, you can click "read more..." which will open up the full documentation in a browser. Also, this documentation is installed locally and does not require the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Happy birthday!

Looking forward to Racket CS as main implementation.

The talks done by the Racket team are always interesting to watch.

<comment><USER27> Well this is a Birthday year for many languages. 1995 must be some super anomaly year Ruby, Java, Javascript, PHP, Delphi and Racket all were invented in the same year.

<comment><USER28> I don't think it's a coincidence that the mid-90s was a hot time for language design: the CGI-bin protocol of the Web suddenly made it possible to write code in any language you wanted and distribute the results, even with a loosely graphical interface, painlessly to clients (in the sense they didn't need to install anything). I call it the "Cambrian explosion of languages".

Though Racket was not created for that purpose, it's unsurprising that many others from that era were linked to the Web.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps you are right, I was just just 11 when these languages were invented so I really lack any context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> What I learned from studying Racket is that I can now only reluctantly forego functional programming languages in all contexts personal and professional.

<comment><USER28> Why forego at all? (-:

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> How does Racket compare to Clojure? Anyone knows both worlds and would like to give some infos? I know Clojure is JVM based, one of those new languages built on Java technology (the others being Scala and Groovy). So very solid tech used by the likes of Soundcloud or young startups like RoamResearch. But Racket? Mostly education?

<comment><USER31> There is very little commercial use of Racket. I've used it several times to make little GUI apps to deploy on multiple platforms, and it excels at that.

Probably the best way to think about the two of them is that Clojure is a focused language design, and the assumption is that you stay in the language and extend it with macros. Racket is an environment for generating languages. The assumption is that you will build language variants to do various tasks.

<comment><USER11> Very little commercial use of Racket is maybe an understatement. A few notes to people thinking about commercial use of Racket...

The big customer of my consulting business (public sector) did amazing "force multiplier" things with Racket and my help, even when many general-purpose libraries had to be built in-house. But there were virtually no other prospective clients in that niche after over a decade.

There are a few organizations who use Racket to great production effect. But two problems for consulting&employment for those:

* Their generally one-person teams could usually do everything that's needed, and perhaps some developers prefer that;

* When they would like additional help, they generally didn't have the money/authority to pay HCOLA developers.

I tried half-heartedly for a few years to promote the idea of doing one's startup prototype with Racket. But the browser-side and iOS&Android app stories aren't there yet. And my own startup, I self-funded too long before my co-founder and I realized we should've found a CEO to court funding months earlier.

The startup where I currently lead engineering uses (for historical reasons) Python for server backend and for device interfacing on a light embedded system, and framework-like JS on one frontend, and interfaces with a SaaS for a different frontend. All the Python bits could've been done in Racket, and Racket would've been more productive and fun to work with, but it's not worth rewriting at this time. I recently prototyped a new embedded system frontend in Kivy, and was able to get a running GUI mockup nice in a few hours, but realized afterwards it would've been better with Racket's GUI toolkit.

When I recently had to pick a method to do an iOS app that wasn't consumer- facing, I was tempted to use Gambit Scheme. But I decided on Swift and SwiftUI, to be safe, and so we'd have more experience with it for the next iOS app (consumer-facing, for a high-quality/prestige brand) that was more likely to need a more-native toolkit and APIs.

That said, if someday I have a startup that uses Racket or another Scheme (or another fringe platform), I expect the platform appeal to help me attract a larger pool of higher-powered developers than I otherwise could.

If you're considering using Racket for making money, one start is to participate in this low-traffic email list (which has some unusual conventions): [https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket- money/](https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket-money/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems functional programmers are alone in being able to take a joke. Long live Racket!

</comment><comment><USER32> What is "the infamous Felleisen-Wadler paper"?

<comment><USER33> Based on context I would assume it is:

A Call by Need Lambda Calculus.

Zena Ariola, Matthias Felleisen, John Maraist, Martin Odersky, and Philip Wadler. 22'nd Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, ACM Press, San Francisco, California, January 1995.

There is a humorous story about how the paper and collaboration came about, which Felleisen discusses in an interview [1].

[1] —> [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~popl- interviews/felleisen.html](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~popl- interviews/felleisen.html)

<comment><USER32> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Happy Birthday Racket! I've learnt a lot working with Racket and I hope that will continue: next on my list `#lang typed/racket` [https://docs.racket- lang.org/ts-guide/quick.html](https://docs.racket-lang.org/ts- guide/quick.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> I feel like this article has a rather abrupt ending. Is there another resource that covers Racket's early history?

<comment><USER36> It's really just about the initial steps of the project. One talk you might like is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEgaVMOYLEU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEgaVMOYLEU) from 9 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> welcome</comment>


A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html <comment><USER2> I like this. I like this a lot. I think far too often people take the concepts we study too seriously. Things get challenging, things get precise, but the moment the humor leaves, the creativity is gone.

Think of how easy it would be to learn something if you make a joke every 5 minutes while learning it (about the subject). In your mind, you turned this abstract concept into something else, something funny, something with pathways and connections that weren't expected. You manipulated it, changed it, saw it in a new light. When you were trying to find humor, you created pathways to other things that you thought were similar. You already connected the object in your brain before you knew where it fit, just by trying to find humor in it.

The really, really good ideas are the ones that almost sound like jokes, but there's an ever so slight hint of severity to them.

Edit: I think I missed the point I was trying to make. Give this to a freshman computer science student. They get to read a fun story. Instead of an intense debate about which language is the best for thing X, or being forced to learn language Y, they get an overview of the entire history, with some cheeky humor that they can remember when they find a bit of truth, or a bit of false, in this story. I will bet they remember this thing better than a 300 page book dedicated to all of the subtle differences between the languages. Plus, they might laugh and enjoy what they're doing.

<comment><USER3> One of the first books I encountered as I set out on a serious study of computer science was _The Hacker's Dictionary_. There are surely shortcomings and faults, and it was kind of out of date even when I read it (even more now), but it was just so much fun! It expressed a certain silliness and hackish sense of humor that I strongly resonated with, and reading the book motivated me to learn things like Lisp, Emacs, and TeX, and to read (parts of) Knuth, and to volunteer for GNU. That book inspired me to actually learn and do stuff in programming way more than any "serious" book on programming.

<comment><USER4> I first learned "programming" from my brothers copy of "a fortan coloring book". The early 80s were a wonderful time for accessible computer literature. I suppose _why's poignant guide to ruby is probably the closest I've seen since.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember having read this before, but I always get a good chuckle from it; all of the snark is incredibly well done. I always burst out laughing when reading "Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them."

</comment><comment><USER6> Most pertinent to HN: "2003 - A drunken Martin Odersky sees a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ad featuring somebody's peanut butter getting on somebody else's chocolate and has an idea. He creates Scala, a language that unifies constructs from both object oriented and functional languages. This pisses off both groups and each promptly declares jihad."

<comment><USER7> After reading that, now I want learn it.

<comment><USER8> <http://www.coursera.org/course/progfun>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This honestly made my day. There's really no beating

"1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.

1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964."

</comment><comment><USER10> Brad Cox and Tom Love create Objective-C, announcing "this language has all the memory safety of C combined with all the blazing speed of Smalltalk."

<comment><USER11> Reminds me of C being described as "a language that combines all the elegance and power of assembly language with all the readability and maintainability of assembly language".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Always a good read. My favorite is Javascript, though Lisp "recursion and condescension" is good too.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm confused by the title. Which bit was wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> It took me a couple minutes too... The first comment sorts it out though. Turns out that Jacquard's loom was multi-threaded after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Made me chuckle. Especially "'look, it's all objects all the way down. Until you reach turtles.'"

Any well-versed programmer will instantly recognize the turtle joke.

<comment><USER15> Actually, "turtles all the way down" isn't a programming joke (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down>). But I suppose you're referencing Logo?

<comment><USER14> Yes, Logo was actually what I was referencing. I knew about the expression, but it was interesting that the author of the article would use that specific catchphrase, probably knowing that turtle graphics is commonly used to teach programming to newbies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Other well known languages in the ML family include OCaml, F#, and Visual > Basic.

I feel like this went over my head... is this a .NET joke? Is there more to it than just that just that Visual Basic is the antithesis of ML?

<comment><USER17> Maybe it refers to Erik Meijer?

A famous Haskell developer that went to Microsoft to work on Visual Basic team and started there the LINQ project?

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/emeijer/papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/emeijer/papers/es012-meijer.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Love the PHP one "...PHP documentation remains on that napkin to this day."

And I write PHP daily!

<comment><USER19> PHP documentation is actually pretty good, there is a joke to be had about the comments on the docs though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is enjoyable. Most "history of programming..." stuff is a snoozathon. More teachers should learn from the popularity of the "for Idiots" books. (The most-talked-about teacher in my HS acted out parts of the Civil War with costumes et. al.)

</comment><comment><USER21> > 1958 - John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP.

Lol, PG was born in 1964! He invented Lisp even before he was born :P I'd credit PG for "re-inventing" Lisp though.

</comment><comment><USER22> Haha this is great. Funny stuff, well done.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is probably more accurate history: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_language...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_programming_languages)

and this is a good book on programming languages in general: [http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Programming-Languages- Robert-...](http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Programming-Languages-Robert- Sebesta/dp/0131395319)

<comment><USER24> Woosh...</comment></comment>


The Beauty of Laplace's Equation - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/06/laplaces-equation-everywhere/ <comment><USER2> I want to read this, but it continues to cover the article with an anti- adblocker notice, even if I totally disable Adblock Plus. I know there are workarounds but why would I waste my time</comment>


Vulnerability in Vim and NeoVIM's "Modeling" Feature - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/06/if-you-havent-patched-vim-or-neovim-text-editors-you-really-really-should/ <comment><USER2> Modeline, (as in 'mode line') not 'modeling'.

And previously submitted a week or so ago when it was reported and patched, Ars a bit slow on the uptake!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, that was meant to say "modeline" but autocorrect on my phone doesn't like that. :(</comment></comment>


Tech advances should make 4-day workweek a reality for the 21st century - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/10/trades-union-congress-4-day-workweeks-should-be-reality-this-century.html <comment><USER2> At least in the United States, I see exactly 0 chance of this happening in the current cultural and regulatory system we operate under. The average American worker is just lucky that they even get 2 days off during the week at this point.

If I found a political candidate who advocated for mandatory vacation of 4 weeks or more per year, and/or less work-hours per week, I'd give them my vote in a heartbeat. A change of that magnitude for the average worker would reap incredible social benefits for all of us.

<comment> nv-vn Mandatory limits on working hours would suck for anyone who enjoys their job though.

<comment><USER3> Is your argument: "If you enjoy your job, you want to do it all the time, and less job == less enjoyment"?

If it is, may I humbly suggest that scarcity does not reduce enjoyment, and that looking forward to something can actually increase your enjoyment of it when you do get to do it.

<comment> nv-vn My "argument" is simply that people should be free to do what they want

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So thinking past the sale for a minute, which day (assuming US Monday - Friday) would you make an off day?

Friday? Give the phrase TGIF some bite? Friday, Are You In Love?

Monday? Like Bob Geldof, do you dislike Mondays? Do Rainy Days and Mondays bring you down? Making Monday an off day might wreck a huge part of pop culture.

Wednesday? Why not? 2 on, 1 off, 2 on, 2 off?

</comment><comment><USER5> Tech advances are likely to make for a zero day work week for many people. How they survive seems open for debate and unique implementation in every nation.

</comment><comment><USER6> You can make it 1-day workweek in any 1st world place right now, you only need to convince the people to lower their living standards by a factor of 5x.

<comment><USER7> Automation doesn't take days off, and is responsible for most of our productivity gains.</comment></comment>


OS/2 resurrected: Blue Lion becomes ArcaOS, details emerge for upcoming release - <AUTHOR> http://www.techrepublic.com/article/os2-resurrected-blue-lion-becomes-arcaos-details-emerge-for-upcoming-release/ <comment><USER2> For those interested, here's a nice article on history, decline, usage, and fan clubs surrounding OS/2:

[http://techland.time.com/2012/04/02/25-years-of-ibms- os2-the...](http://techland.time.com/2012/04/02/25-years-of-ibms-os2-the- birth-death-and-afterlife-of-a-legendary-operating-system/)

I tried it once a few years ago to see what fuss was about. It reminded me of a slightly-better Windows 3.1. Maybe one of those zealots in the article could show me in a live demo why it was great then or if it is now in any way. Not sure. The claimed reliability of it would be a lasting benefit if that was common vs what was achieved with a primitive, predictable application. High- security methods at code or compiler level might also be applied to it if it's relatively small.

Could be some potential but I think it's probably one of history's dead ends.

<comment><USER3> As a developer using OS/2 in its heydey and the early part of its decline I would say your assessment was spot on. Before NT the pre-emptive multi-tasking and ability to run Windows executables as well as OS/2 ones was a significant merit. Once NT came along it so clearly didn't have a future.

By the by "IBM VisualAge for C++ for OS/2" has to be a contender for world's least snappy product name.

<comment><USER4> As a former IBMer in '90s, I would like to nominate VisualAge for Java as another example of awkward naming choices. The team I was on used VAJ (as it was always referred to in electronic communications) extensively. In speech, people would often pronounce the acronym rather than say "VisualAge" or "VisualAge for Java". Of course, they pronounced it "vadge", because how else would you pronounce VAJ? Sometimes it was said by someone being mischievous, but much more often it was said by people who had no idea that it was slang for something much more exciting.

<comment><USER5> Brilliant. Thanks for this! I loved OS/2 when I used it briefly, but my computer wasn't powerful enough to run the OS let alone making any dev environment run. IBM should have shipped their Dev environment with OS/2, and then it might have caught on as it then would have had a very low barrier to entry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So OS/2 had some advantages:

1\. Desktop was far advanced to what Windows 3.1 had; full drag and drop that worked, apps/services could extend the desktop, etc.

2\. Ability to run crashy Win16 and later Win32s programs separately from each other, each in their own protected memory space.

3\. All this ran in 16-32 RAM. That is _MB_ of RAM. 128MB for OS/2, which gives you a command line Linux environment or possibly a very constrained GUI, would be huge for an OS/2 install (at that time).

2 things IBM did not fix:

1\. Cursor could be locked up for a while in certain cases (like the spinning rainbow on earlier OSX) - NT never had it because mouse ran in a seperate thread.

2\. Microsoft ran rings around them PR-wise.

<comment><USER7> Re: Linux. 16MB could run a reasonable X environment in the early 90s. I sometimes ran it in 8, but that was kind of marginal. Maybe you'd call it very constrained in not including Gnome or KDE, but it didn't feel that way.

<comment><USER8> * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuLinux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MuLinux) -> 4 MiB with X11 on a 386 and 20MiB or diskless with 16 MiB of RAM

* On 1998 I ran SuSE 5.3 with KDE and GNOME (even Gnome 1 over KDE 1.x !!) on a machine with 16 or 32 MiB of RAM and a AMD 486DX5 at 133Mhz . And was working fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I used OS/2 for some years in the 1980s and 1990s. I really liked KEdit, Rexx, and PL/I, although PL/I did need collection classes as a data structure supported by the language.

I was always frustrated at IBM's lack of vision for, and work on, OS/2\. When finally I couldn't get an OS/2 device driver for an Ethernet card, I changed over to Windows 2000, Windows ..., etc. and have never looked back at OS/2.

I still use KEdit and Rexx, love both, except now use them on Windows.

I still remember the remark by an IBM CEO, likely Gerstner, that "I'm not going to drop $1 billion in another desktop operating system for an Intel processor.". Okay, Lou. You just gave away all the billions of dollars Microsoft has made with Windows since your remark.

When you said that, Lou, OS/2 and nearly all of the rest of IBM were ahead. On OS/2, you had the Mach kernel, SMP, DB/2, SNA, token ring, TCP/IP, TCP/IP on a chip, were making the chips for both Cisco and Juniper, were able to make X86 chips, had the lead in fabs, etc. You had it all. You had V/Net, an early example of what networking could do in a company, indeed, the world, but were too dumb to sell it. You stayed with SNA long after it was clear that end to end TCP/IP was much better.

Then you threw it away. Threw it all away. Turned your back on the future of computing and walked away. Gee, you had Prodigy -- it could have been Facebook. You had a Web browser -- it could have been the dominant Web browser and had special integration with IBM Web servers, which you didn't really do. You could have had Windows Server and all of the Linux server business. You could have had all the relational database business.

At one point, you actually ran ALL of the Internet, the whole thing. You gave it up. How big of a mistake was that? You could have had all of SAP -- you were way ahead in some of the crucial work.

I know; I know: You were eager to respond to your major customers, give them what they insisted they wanted. They were all welcome to call except just don't call on a Wednesday because it ruined two weekends.

IBM after WinTel: Biggest determined extraction of miserable defeat from the jaws of magnificent victory in the history of, what, the universe?

Don't worry, Lou: Your record is safe. No one will ever make such a big mistake again!

From at least the Intel 386 chip, there has been a big need for a really good operating system for X86. From all I can see from Microsoft, there is still a big need/opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER10> Please support running in a Xen/AWS VM. The virtual machine interface will be more stable than real hardware and it will be easier for users to try OS/2.

<comment><USER2> That's a _great_ idea. I'll add VMware, Virtualbox, Xen, and KVM. Maybe HyperV. That baseline will cover about anyone that might try it in Windows and Linux camps where real experimentation will happen.

<comment><USER11> OS/2 has (had?) difficulties running in VMware - that's why Parallels was founded; source: [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating- sy...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-system-the- triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/5/).

<comment><USER2> Oh my goodness. I'd have never imagined Parallels started so a bank could run legacy OS/2 apps. Unreal lol.

<comment><USER11> I'm actually not surprised, since I know a (quite successful) software company that was founded for the reason so that corporate consulting companies could create Powerpoint presentations on an even faster rate.

<comment><USER2> What company is that?

<comment><USER11> think-cell: [https://www.think-cell.com/en/](https://www.think-cell.com/en/)

If you've never heard of them, don't worry.

<comment><USER2> Oh my. The Learn More page was the laugh I needed today. I'm going to change industries if I ever find a need to use this product.

<comment><USER12> It's actually a quite nice tool if you have the need for some advanced visualizations in MS Office. There are also lots of corporate users, for which Office is their main working tool.

<comment><USER11> > It's actually a quite nice tool if you have the need for some advanced > visualizations in MS Office.

I don't know details about their software, but I'm pretty sure that if the software weren't useful for their customers, they wouldn't make a lot of money.

> There are also lots of corporate users, for which Office is their main > working tool.

That's exactly what I think, too. I wish it were different (i.e. open source software and file formats that are easy to parse everywhere), but the reality is unluckily different. And if there are customers (say, banks or corporate consulting companies) which for some reason have to use MS Office but are willing to spend large amounts of money to ease some pain points or increase productivity, I consider it as a perfectly valid business opportunity.

This is orthogonal to the question whether you (as a hacker) consider the product to be "sexy" (especially if you live in an anti-Microsoft bubble).

<comment><USER13> They not only make a lot of money, they also give a decent chunk of it to their programmers:

"We pay very competitive salaries, and offer our developers EUR 120,000 annually following one year of employment. If necessary, we will go out of our way to help you relocate to Berlin, and will do what we can to help you acquire a work permit."

[https://www.think- cell.com/en/career/jobs/development.shtml](https://www.think- cell.com/en/career/jobs/development.shtml)

<comment><USER2> Ohhhh shiiit! I think I might put in an application! Just have this surge of interest in improving PowerPoints suddenly. Haha.

<comment><USER14> You joke, but Microsoft managed to get some of the brightest minds in programming language design to take a look at Excel, too.

"Improving the world's most popular functional language: user-defined functions in Excel" ([http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/Papers...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/simonpj/Papers/excel/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you buy a metrocard for the New York City subway you are using OS/2\. It runs the kiosks. Not resurrected there, just never went away.

<comment><USER16> Wow! That's awesome.

Where did you learn this? I'd love to read more about MTA details like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm torn, because on the one hand it's great if OS/2 junkies can get a fix, but on the other hand you want me, in the year 2016, to pay for an OS with: no USB 3 support, no wireless networking, and a 32-bit kernel with no support for > 4GB memory (and who knows what other shortcomings).

<comment><USER18> I guess the target market is those who have some existings systems built on top of OS/2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I still remember being able to download at 28k in the background while playing wolfenstein. Very cool. Windows 3.1 could never do that.

</comment><comment><USER20> Why?

<comment><USER4> Why not?

<comment><USER21> Well, as a commercial endeavor, I would really have to wonder if there's enough of a market to sustain a business. I'm sure there's the odd OS/2 system still running here and there but nobody today is interested in expanding that footprint. At best you'll sell upgrades to people who are still using it -- a customer base that will only shrink over time.

If it were an open-source project, yeah "why not" is a fine answer.

<comment><USER8> ATMs of Santander bank keeps running on OS/2

If you saw my face when I saw the OS/2 bootup screen on a ATM that just rebooted when I was in front of it...

<comment><USER22> You should have seen my face when my bank booted into Windows XP.

<comment><USER21> Honestly for an ATM, DOS would be fine.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bootrino – multi-cloud server boot via HTTPS - <AUTHOR> http://www.bootrino.com/prelaunch/index.html <comment><USER2> "multi-cloud server boot via HTTP"

HTTP? ... I know you don't mean that, but perhaps a poor choice of slogan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Updated to show HTTPS</comment></comment>


Facebook Re-designed, Re-thunked: A Weekend Thought Exercise - <AUTHOR> http://blog.subtledisruption.com/post/126095001/facebook-re-designed-re-thunked-a-weekend-thought <comment><USER2> Facebook started with a profile and the profiles of others. People put thought into those profiles. Now we are moving to mindless spur of the moment noise of which .01% is something significant. I want to see a design that doesn't just pretend to foster relationships but actualy shows you who you are connecting with, how you are connecting with. Topic based filters, easy contact lists with push to call buttons with skype support, features like that...

</comment><comment><USER3> OK read it. I'm not a fb heavy user, and I'm not on Twitter, so I missed some of the comments. Here are my thoughts:

1\. I think fb should exactly filter interactions by relevancy of friends. And more specifically by relevancy of friends crossed with information categories. I have close friends, distant friends, soccer friends, inventor friends, tech friends, etc. Facebook does some categorization but it's not granular enough and not dynamic enough for me to lever it to make my interactions more valuable.

2\. Privacy is my main issue on the cost of commenting and leaving 'likes'. I never do it b/c I only want to tell 5 ppl that I like a pic, and that blast is going to the world. You should try to define what 'privacy' actually means to people and break it down. I bet it's different for different people and you can add value by customizing the privacy product, and again, making it more dynamic.

3\. I like the economic model for social interaction. Good first step. If you're actually going to study this you may want to decision-tree map users' interactions with the site and put some costs and values to each decision...

4\. From the screen-shot I see how FB could become a social turret if designed well enough. This is very cool. Especially if you can develop a system to quantify and aggregate social interactions...the collective brain...

5\. From an 'academic paper' perspective, using terms like 'triple-whammy' signal to me that this is a stream of thought paper, which takes away from the presentation of the model.

Best, Mike

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice approach, cuts the noise, we need intelligence to be built in to SNS and this is a cool approach.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting stuff....the smart bar had me going into deep thought about how Facebook could eventually just turn into a social web browser. Anyone else see that?

<comment><USER6> Thanks Chris, the central theme of our analysis was how fb could be moving more quickly in that direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> good call on the facebook search bit; it looks like it's something they're planning to roll out shortly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting analysis - design is wild.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Was fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like it. Very Tweetdeck-esque.

<comment><USER6> Great example jayhawkbabe - part of why twitter has done so well is the easy by which awesome clients like tweetdeck multiply its power. Fb needs the same!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> what does lorem ipsum mean?

<comment><USER7> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> interesting stuff!</comment>


Why you should remove obstacles to adoption. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/orangethirty/marketing_bits/blob/master/remove_obstacles_to_adoption.md

<comment><USER2> Amen. It is so much easier to get people to do something if you make it easy. That is WAY more powerful than motivation which is what a lot of people try to maximize by providing pages and pages of content to convince your buyer to try your product. Just make it easy to try and none of that is necessary. Nice post

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Its mind blowing that an industry with so many smart people can get this simple things so wrong.</comment></comment>


What Happens When Algorithms Design a Concert Hall? The Stunning Elbphilharmonie - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2017/01/happens-algorithms-design-concert-hall-stunning-elbphilharmonie <comment><USER2> We did this for a long time already. Eg. a friend of mine designed the St. Poelten opera acoustics by using light-sound analogy and a good rendering software. We designed parts of other buildings also purely algorithmically, such as the Kunsthaus Graz and the RESOWI Graz for pure optimization purposes which led to organic forms. Frank Gehry did similar stuff also.

</comment><comment><USER3> Architecturally fascinating. This is an example of Louis Sullivan's "form follows function," except without formal minimalism. It's complex without being arbitrary.</comment>


Chicago selling nearly 4,000 vacant lots to neighbors for $1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.largelots.org/apply/ <comment><USER2> This is cool, but IMO it should be available to anyone who has been living on the block, not just those who own property on it. That way renters could get in on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> ... _only_ if you already own a lot on that block.

It sounds like a phish to get a copy of your deed, but this site _is_ linked to by the cityofchicago site.

<comment><USER4> It is real and they have done similar auctions in the past.

[http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Program-Offers- Eng...](http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Program-Offers-Englewood- Residents-Vacant-Lots-for-1-251252271.html)</comment></comment>