How Did That Make It Through Peer Review? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.plos.org/paleocomm/2016/02/03/how-did-that-make-it-through-peer-review/ <comment><USER3> Journal of Cardiology maintains a full-time statistics editor who reviews every single paper before publication. They routinely catch basic stats errors and send the papers back with a number of repairs required for the paper to be published.

That Nature and Science and other prominent journals continue to publish statistically invalid papers without verifying them (and this isn't even peer review, it's just technical validation) amazes me.

</comment><comment><USER4> The author tries to make a case that this is not about incompetence.

One of the primary examples given is the case where shoddy analyses sail through peer review, because none of the reviewers know enough about those analyses to comment.

It's hard for me not to see this as incompetent. Are the reviewers incompetent for not knowing this particular analysis well enough to review it? Often! Most scientists in my experience (graduate student) have a pretty bad understanding of statistics and perform those analyses that will "pass peer review" rather than those which come from a comprehensive knowledge of the topic. And even if the analysis is new or uncommon, giving the paper a pass without mentioning that the analysis is beyond them is pretty problematic but is sadly also the norm (usually they could learn enough to review it in a few hours if they really wanted to!).

Then there's the more general fact that no one reviewing the paper is qualified to comment on what is arguably the most critical part - <USER2> analyses actually show what the authors think they do! If no one involved knows how to do the analyses in question then the team is not competent to perform or review this work.

That's the result of sometimes an incompetent editor and usually a horribly broken system. The fact that checking the numbers isn't of primary importance in reviewing a lot of scientific work is a travesty.

</comment><comment><USER5> Makes you wonder whether peer review is working if a true subject matter expert doesn't do the review. Sounds like pointless rubber stamping and checkbox ticking.</comment>


Why is C# suddenly so popular? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/575513/why-is-c-sharp-suddenly-so-popular

<comment><USER2> Offtopic: is there a karma level for downvoting a topic, not just a comment?

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that this question and the corresponding answers are several years old.

<comment><USER4> It often puzzled my mind how a story like this can jump on HN first page. The world has changed a lot in the last 3 years.

[http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)

<http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/>

P.S. I know that TIOBE isn't a reliable source of informations but it's somewhat interesting to take a look that the statistics</comment></comment>


Why we don't need phone numbers - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2009/09/04/why-we-dont-need-phone-numbers/ <comment><USER2> The correct syntax is: sip:email@example.com

This is already a solved problem.

SIP and DNS SRV/NAPTR records are the relevant (IETF) standards. The "sip:" part above is actually optional. Using NAPTR records, I can simply request email@example.com, and your DNS will tell me how I can contact you (via email, via Jabber/XMPP, via SIP, /dev/null, etc.) in order of preference.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, the article shows a complete ignorance of the real world. Who is going to type "phone://www.your_company's_domain.com/customer_service" into a phone? How could you even remember that? SIP does this correctly by using email addresses, but traditional phone numbers are still preferable since all existing phones have numerical keypads. What the author really wants is for his phone to use NAPTR, and for the people he is calling to include SIP or POTS entries for their email addresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The benefit of the current system is the network effect: Any phone, no matter if it's 50 years old or an iPhone 3GS, can dial _any_ other such phone. In the entire _world_. Of course new technology can make that work in a smarter way (not that I'll take advice on "smart" from someone who thinks not capitalising sentences serves a purpose), but not without breaking backwards compatibility, which would severely limit the utility of such a switch.

Anyway, it's done. It's in SIP, it's in Skype, any cellphone has a phonebook build in, and most smartphones can dial directly from a Facebook friend- listing. I can dial 411 and be connected to anyone by name in a matter of seconds.

</comment><comment><USER5> i'm not convinced... i kind of like the anonymity a telephone number affords.

<comment><USER6> Moreover, people who want to change how phone addressing works rarely consider the fact that the people who can email me are not the same people who I want to call me on voice. Or the fact that sometimes I change my number with the intent of denying that ability to people who knew the old number. Or the fact that the region-locality of numbers often yields useful information about the person on the other end.

<comment><USER7> These are social problems with simple technical solutions. Making it default to going to voicemail, with only a whitelist of callers ringing through, is one possible solution. Having it respond with a message that suggests using email instead is probably the one I would use, since I hate phone calls from just about everybody, except family.

<comment><USER8> > These are social problems with simple technical solutions.

that don't work.

I'd much rather change phone numbers than screw around with a whitelist and the other solution is worse than whitelists because it connects my phone number to my e-mail, which I don't give out. (Thanks to various directory services, phone numbers provide location information. Why would I want my e-mail to get geo-targetted spam?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heck, this is just replacing a numeric unique-identifier with a textual unique-identifier. Many companies have already gone this route by getting phone numbers that spell clever things according to the letters on the phone keypad.

Technology has completely obviated the need to remember phone numbers anyway, so overhauling the whole system at this point would be a complete waste.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wouldn't it be much better to keep phone numbers, but leave them in the "backstage"?

In a few years (let's say, 10 years) most (not to say, ALL) phones will have internet access, and also access to DNS servers.

Why don't create a DNS entry that points to our real number? We can give people an unique entry in our domain that they can remember, old-skool people will be able to still use numbers (even if we have to add a few more digits if we run out of number ranges). And change provider without worrying about our numbers (I always take a new number when switching provider, but having some kind of DNS entry wouldn't be a bad idea).

And, technically, implementing a DNS entry type for numbers should be dead easy.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've heard from a few family members that ever since they've started using their cell phones, they can't remember anyone's numbers, and they felt this was making them stupider. As if memorizing sequences of 7 digits is desirable and conducive to being intelligent. I tried explaining that they shouldn't have to memorize phone numbers - they don't represent anything real, they aren't convenient, and there's no advantage to using them. It's much easier to put a number in your Contacts list and reach someone using their name instead, at which point the technology is strictly empowering, and like TFA says, the number is just for backwards compatibility.

<comment><USER12> Remembering numbers is a form of mental exercise that we used to engage in regularly, and as exercise it was good for the brain, just like stretching.

You seem to have the implicit model where the less we burden the brain with mundane tasks, the better, as if we had a fixed daily capacity for thought, or that mundane tasks are somehow wasteful.

I'm not sure this is the case--neither that mundane applications of brainpower is burdensome, nor that capacity is fixed.

I suspect that someday, after more and more mundane mental tasks are replaced by more automation and better design, a market will emerge for mental fitness clubs to help thin the "fog" that will come to characterize our mental lives..

<comment><USER13> The brain does have a fixed daily capacity, but it is far higher than what we use in average. My prick with phone numbers is not that remembering them on itself is wasteful, but simply that people seem to change phone numbers so often (due to lost, broken, change of company, etc) that I stopped bothering to remember them. Also, I play Sudoku and Dual N-Back in a daily basis to keep my mind sharp.

<comment><USER12> [Unfortunate double post there...]

Point taken, though I do suspect there is a qualitative difference between solving Sudoku puzzles and practicing one's capacity for direct recall. Sudoku is algorithmic--you're focused on _how_ to solve, rather than building up an index of solutions which you would then access by key.

eg, 6x7 is a key, the lookup yields 42, and you _could_ work it out algorithmically, and that might include methods like "type expression into Google", but imagine if that was _all_ you knew. No index of multiplication tables in your head. When you skimmed a text, your eyes would gloss "6x7" as "multiplication product--undetermined". There might be a pointer to a method to get the answer, but the _answer_ itself wouldn't be directly available. It could be quite crippling.

Similarly with language: our facility of direct recall, our capacity for internalization, makes communication possible. If you are consciously working through the grammar that gives meaning to a phase, you have lost the discussion.

In programming, we get so much mileage out of the "how" that the "what" becomes incidental. Our mental map is a map of methods, where return values only persist long enough to call the next method. We know how we got there, but hardly remember any landmarks along the way.

So with phone numbers, we have lost one more opportunity to train and practice our capacity to create mental indexes to actual data. Why remember _one_ number when you can remember _how_ to get _all_ numbers with less effort? Why store multiple keys when a single function will do?

People once developed algorithms to _create_ vast mental indexes, eg. method of loci. One could commit incredible volumes of information to memory with such techniques.

Now compare that to the modern person w/ lazy evaluation in place of memorization. In memorization, lookup costs are zero. Consciousness stays focused on the matter at hand. Supporting data is pulled up as needed. Without memorization, consciousness must make repeated detours to supply the supporting data, or gloss over it all together.

I'd suggest that mastery of a subject occurs when consciousness can stop making these detours. When you know the behavior of various programming constructs by heart, you can stop checking the reference documentation at every turn.

So in aggregate, if you no longer know any phone numbers by heart, you may indeed be getting dumber.

<comment><USER13> That's why I play Dual-N Back as well. It is an exercise meant to train direct recall, very short-time and short-time memory.

<comment><USER12> Ah, I missed that. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would be happy to see the end of (human-readable) URLs too. I think they're holding the net back the same way telephone numbers are becoming a drag on, er, telephony.

<comment><USER15> I fully agree, and it's already happening!

Average users have long-since stopped telling each other their phone numbers or keying them in more than once -- you search for the person on Facebook and their number is in their profile -- then you put it in your cell phone's contacts and never think about it again. With Facebook apps on some phones, you never have to see the number at all!

URLs are headed the same direction -- users don't type in domain names much less URLs, and DNS is not trustworthy, _but Google is_. Chrome's OmniBar already makes interpretation as a URL not the default when it is confident enough in its search results.

As an added bonus, the disappearance of meaningful domain names and URLs will hasten the death of "False REST" -- Hypermedia will finally be The Engine Of Application State!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> These URLs are hilariously and unnecessarily geeky.

I'd prefer picking up a phone and dialing "dcurtis" or "edw519." That should ring all associated phones until the person is reached. If I want to only ring a certain phone, I'd dial "dcurtis.mobile" or "dcurtis.work".

There's no reason the device should be attached to the dialing system. When I pick up a phone, I intend to speak to someone. The network should facilitate that.

</comment><comment><USER17> I dunno, I prefer

867-5309

over

phone://saw.your.name.and.number.of.the.wall.voice/jenny_jenny_who_can_i_turn_to

<comment><USER2> Maybe you would like phone://j.mp/jenae better.

<comment><USER3> Man, _thats_ going to scale well. More like (p:)j.mp/jen38js09</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why Is There No Development Karma On The Internet? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> What is "development karma"?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do we need one anyway?

</comment><comment><USER4> What would it achieve?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Like, a developer built some code or app or contributed to open source across the internet and ppl can upvote etc

</comment><comment><USER5> huh?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> can be used for things like developerauction</comment>


The Coronation – Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention - <AUTHOR> https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-coronation/ <comment><USER2> It's too bad this didn't catch on. It turns into a beautiful essay about half- way through.</comment>


Coming Soon: the Drone Arms Race - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/sunday-review/coming-soon-the-drone-arms-race.html

<comment><USER3> >"The problem is that we're creating an international norm" — asserting the right to strike preemptively against those we suspect of planning attacks, argues Dennis M. Gormley, a senior research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh and author of "Missile Contagion," who has called for tougher export controls on American drone technology. "The copycatting is what I worry about most."

How about the fact that we're doing it, period?

[http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_i...](http://www.ted.com/talks/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_in_empathy.html)

<comment> Anti-Ratfish And no less scary, 15-40% of the time a civilian is hit instead of the correct target. <http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker> And given the dubious right of the CIA to hit there intended target in the first place, the acceptance of UAV strikes is disturbing to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Imagine when drones the size of dragonflies carry needles containing poison to assassination targets. Today's drones are very crude in comparison.

Once it becomes plausible that any squirrel, mouse, dragon fly, etc. could be an assassination weapon, it will become necessary for heads of state to travel surrounded by swarms of friendly robots, in all sorts of form factors.

<comment><USER5> I'll let you in on a little secret: Heads of states are generally not assassination targets by other country states.

Why? If you were a country, would you like to deal with a decentralized/unofficial government that has no control over its citizens?

<comment><USER6> You're obviously not related to Hugo Chavez ;)

Travel does not have to mean 'travel outside the country', so even if most attempts to decapitate a country are home-grown that doesn't mean that heads of state don't travel with a security entourage when they are within their own borders.

On top of that I do believe that heads of state already travel with a security entourage when traveling abroad.

It is not necessarily the other nations they're afraid of but their lunatics. And a small robot drone will be within the financial means of anybody with an axe to grind in the fairly near future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everything we do that duhumanizes war comes with good ethical concerns (less loss of human life) but this doesn't make war any better.

Drones - save our lives. Cruise missiles - save our lives. An A-bomb saved our lives.

Not getting into as many wars would save the most lives. (Note: Some wars - like WW II are I admit unavoidable, but very few fall under this heading)

<comment><AUTHOR> World War II wasn't unavoidable. If the West, particularly France, had pursued a less vindictive peace with Germany after the first world war, the circumstances that brought Hitler to power would not have existed. Specifically, the unsustainable reparations on Germany, and the French decision to occupy the German coal regions in the 1920s, destabilized the German economy and destroyed the Weimar Republic.

<comment><USER8> > If the West, particularly France, had pursued a less vindictive peace with > Germany after the first world war, the circumstances that brought Hitler to > power would not have existed.

And if it wasn't for Appeasement, if the western powers made good on their promises (especially the Anglo-Polish military alliance), Hitler could have been defeated before Germans managed to set the whole continent on fire; and if the French didn't put so much trust in the Maginot Line...

<comment><USER9> The French were outclassed in all ways, their techniques were completely outdated. For instance using motorcycle messengers to transfer orders instead of telephone/radio communications, they could not respond fast enough to German Blitzkrieg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always thought it would be cool if a company built a big bird's nest tower in cities that would host a bunch of flying drones. Then, consumers could rent the video-capture drones online to fly over approved areas, upon which the drones would return to nest for re-fueling. Think maybe you could subsidize the cost (possibly even make a profit) with the video data, or by streaming some feeds for the population to watch. Though have no idea of feasibility (FAA, equipment, real estate), I do like the idea of eyes in the sky for consumer benefit. Maybe something like this could be used for defense - <USER2> population more awareness of airspace.

<comment><USER11> UAVs are currently not allowed to be flown by commercial entities in US airspace. If/when that changes it will be fascinating to watch the variety of startups that crop up to take advantage of it.

<comment><USER12> However individuals can fly RC planes. What about companies making RC planes? Are they allowed to test fly them? Set one of those planes up with a deadly payload (use your imagination here) and you have a UAV...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Obama's job as president was to temper the fantasies of the generals and the CIA. He failed. The future lawless robot wars will be scary.

<comment> brown9-2 I think that future was coming regardless of anything he could do as commander in chief. There is no putting that toothpaste back in the tube.

<comment><USER13> Obama didn't have to authorize targeted assassinations far away from any battlefield.

<comment><USER14> In this war, there is no battlefield.

<comment><USER13> That's the problem with these robots. The USA has now set the precedent that the robots can go anywhere in the world and blow anyone up that we label a terrorist. This is dangerous and stupid. Of course it was Bush that invented the endless war (how do we win this war? are we supposed to to kill every young muslim that hates us?), but Bush preferred kidnapping people and sticking them in secret prisons, Obama prefers using robots to assassinate from afar, no messy legal challenges that way.

We have a monopoly on the robots now but they are only going to get cheaper in the future and everybody will have them, they will present a threat to all establishments. It is stupid for the USA to be going off on our "might makes right" arrogance destroying all international laws and norms. And for what? Do these dirt poor guys in Afghanistan and Pakistan really pose a threat to us? No they don't.

The only solution in the future will be for everyone to come together to ban these machines, similar to the treaties against land mines and chemical weapons, but the U.S. will have no moral authority to do so.

This future is not very far away.

<comment><USER15> Once drones become prolific, they will start killing drones instead of people and maybe we can have a bloodless war the same way we have paperless offices.

<comment><USER16> Eventually we won't have to go to the expense of building weapons at all, and computers will decide who lives and dies: [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/A_Taste_of_Ar...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to take an optimistic stance on this topic and say that war technology evolves; we shouldn't be scared of it just because it was sci-fi 10 years ago. I think the development of the nuclear bomb was more scary than some line-manufactured drones.

Yes, Obama has been awfully militant lately. He may have thought that it was the best thing he could do in an attempt to get positive approval ratings from the general public. Killing an American citizen w/o trial may have gone too far, even for middle America.

The drone arms race is going to be an economical one. And, given the state of the world economy, no country is going to spend billions of dollars on a drone war anytime soon.

<comment><USER17> Drones are far cheaper then other options.

I'm taking a pessimistic view. When the costs of war are externalized (as they are now and will be even more so with drones and robots) we no lose the incentives to not have war.

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

<comment><USER18> "It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it." - Robert E. Lee

Fighting war with robots resembles video games. Everyone associates video games with fun. Therefore, we do run the risk of making war _seem_ less terrible and, thus, becoming more fond of it.

One of the reasons why the co-op portion of _Portal 2_ uses robots as player characters is that the designers knew that these characters would die frequently. In order to keep the E10+ rating and in order to quell any outrage, the designers used robots that are not even vaguely human in shape aside from the fact that they are bipedal. TVtropes calls the effect "Slapstick Sociopathy."

<comment><USER19> > Therefore, we do run the risk of making war seem less terrible and, thus, > becoming more fond of it.

I think you only have to modernize and mechanize warfare to the point that wars are fought and the horrors experienced by a sufficiently small minority of the populace. That is I think if there is some threshold, in America we've already surpassed it and war has become no longer terrible to us; future technological advances aren't required.

There are teenagers today who can only remember living in the america of this abstract war narrative, yet who have lived in a world _completely_ untouched by it: no death, no fear, no butter rations, no wrapping bandages for the troops, no shared purpose, no end in site. Perpetual war is reality, and as this financial crisis seems to be illustrating, is also the priority.

<comment><USER20> >lived in a world completely untouched by it

War has certainly touched the U.S. youth as we've seen massive internal shifts on personal liberty (e.g. TSA, security guards in school, signs in public transport that ask you to monitor your fellow citizens). The youth is also clearly able to see that the U.S. spends a disproportionate amount on the military rather than enriching it's own culture and people's lives. Much like the Occupy Wallstreet movement I would expect to see a call, by the upcoming generation, to demand that their birthright is not continued to be sucked dry by the military.

Spike Jonze's short film "Scenes from the suburbs" is an insightful example of how we might imagine a further deepening militarization of the U.S. Sadly it does not seem so far fetched to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just like we have a moratorium on the use of chemical weapons we ought to have one on drones. Not that it would ever be ratified.

There is something seriously wrong with the level of detachment drones afford the actors on any battlefield.

Taking a life should be something done with a large level of reluctance and with the 'taker' risking his own through physical presence. Once that balance is lost it becomes all too easy to resort to violence at a much earlier stage of a conflict.

This is all about reducing the barrier to entry for war and that's a very dangerous thing.

<comment><USER12> Drone + neurotoxic chemicals = a deadly & cheap weapon?

<comment><USER6> Remind me to stay on your good side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "If China, for instance, sends killer drones into Kazakhstan to hunt minority Uighur Muslims it accuses of plotting terrorism, what will the United States say?"

What difference does it make if they used a drone or did it the traditional way?

An attack is an attack it makes no difference how you do it.

<comment><USER22> When there are more and more nations with drones, it will be harder to trace them back to some nation-state. And with technology-only attacks there is no longer necessarily a nation-state with army behind it at all. Just an organization with a lot of capital. China could deny being involved. Or maybe the drones were infected with a computer virus (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3085004>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the scariest part of this drone trend is the opportunity to wage war without losing human life. This shift in risk will dramatically reduce the barrier to starting a war and will further reinforce the power of those already on top.

<comment><USER23> The problem is that lives will still be lost, just not by our side. If we could have war without losing _any_ lives, that sounds cool—stick in some cameras and we'd happily pay to watch.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, the horror of war without lost life is something I think the survivors of, oh, say, the Hundred Years War, would call (in the modern parlance) a First World Problem.

<comment> Anti-Ratfish War is becoming much safer. The world is too. Fascinating article on it here. <http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker> However I'd love to see any evidence showing drones keep deaths down in war. Maybe in the future, but right now they make life very unsafe in places like Pakistan, which given it's allied to America is bizarre. Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to Boltcode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> An area this article does not go into is how the increased use of robotics in the military could cause the military to classify large swaths of it as controlled weapons research. This would limit the ability of researchers and companies to publish or even work in that area.

<comment><USER26> People like the GRASP[1] guys: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvRTALJp8DM> are probably somewhere pretty high on that list.

They still need to solve the location sensing issues though - having high- precision calibrated wall mounted sensors aren't really practical for ad-hoc use.

I don't doubt that someone will solve this problem in the not-too-distant future though, and heavily autonomous quadrotor aerostats will be in heavy use.

[1] <https://www.grasp.upenn.edu/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I'm waiting for is this technology to be open to business and consumer solutions. I dream of a world where Amazon implements drone technology into their SOA fulfillment centers and makes it possible for orders to be delivered in hours or minutes instead of days.

Imagine being a high school kid and having a job targeting drop zones for Amazon packages as drones make their final approaches. It'd be a heck of a lot cooler then driving a brown UPS truck.

</comment><comment><USER28> I was tweeting the other day that we now live in a world where the president of the United States can, without judicial review, assassinate with robots an American Citizen living abroad because of their speech and influence on terrorists.

Sounded crazy -- "death by robots" -- but that's about where we are (I don't differentiate between remote-operated vehicles and fully autonomous vehicles because it's not germane) We can't and won't torture a guy we pick up with a rocket launcher in his hand getting ready to kill us, but we can push a button and whack somebody who hangs out with really bad people. Don't forget collateral damage. And we call this morality.

Telemetry and robotics are going to change the world in wildly dramatic ways over the next 50 years. Places like HN are where somewhat knowledgeable people can kick around these ideas now, before everybody and his NGO have their own killer robots.

<comment><USER29> "Hangs out with really bad people"? Please. You make it sound like Anwar al- Awlaki had a beer with al Qaeda so we decided to whack him.

When someone is active on the battlefield, and there's no way to physically capture him, what do you expect?

<comment><USER30> > You make it sound like Anwar al-Awlaki had a beer with al Qaeda so we > decided to whack him.

Well, that's practically all that we know-- he was killed for propagandizing on behalf of some terrible ideas. But it isn't illegal to propagandize on behalf of terrible ideas, whereas it is illegal to execute US citizens because you find them loathsome and geo-strategically inconvenient.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could learn publicly what Anwar al-Awlaki actually did, and whether his actions were criminal? As far as I can tell, it's unclear whether anything al-Awlaki did would actually satisfy the "imminent lawless action" test in a civilian criminal court. I suspect the senior officials responsible for his assassination understand this too, which is why they would prefer to dispense with the niceties of extradition and trial.

So here's where we find ourselves: in a world in which the US government openly assassinates US citizens who have not been convicted of any crime, and no one bats an eyelash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There was a Star Trek TV episode where two cities fought each other using computers. No spoilers on how it ended.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm more interested in the day when there are so many drones, they spend more time fighting each other and forget about the humans all together. We may never even see them, dogfighting above the clouds, save for a the perpetual flutter of broken parts falling from the heavens.

Another possibility.. cities protected by phalanxes of model rocket sized guided missiles scanning perpetually for enemy drones.

<comment><USER33> That's nonsensical. The chances of drone armies being so perfectly matched they always fight to a stalemate are basically zero. Ultimately one side will win, and then it will have a free hand. It's no different than a conventional air war in that regard.

<comment><USER34> It will have a free hand but then the other side will immediately surrender. Hopefully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> And the race to make a working emp generator begins.

<comment><USER6> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compres...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator)</comment></comment>


What 95% of Bosses Don't Realize - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/sep/09/change-life-small-victories-burkeman

<comment><USER2> My "done" list is the list of commits in my version control system. It actually is a big motivator, as the article said.</comment>


Mom Hacks Into School Computer, Changes Her Kids' Grades - <AUTHOR> http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/22/mom-hacks-into-school-computer-system-changes-her-kids-grades/#ixzz21SsLzUZa

<comment><USER2> I had a Marine come into my clinic over the weekend, complaining of a head cold that had lasted for two weeks. His mom came with him. He had a sniffle. The physical exam screamed viral. The rapid strep test was negative. I advised my standard care for viral upper respiratory infections. He was fine with that but looked at me like a whipped puppy while his mom berated me for not prescribing an antibiotic.

Later, a 35 yo woman with chronic supperative otitis media comes in, she's had chunks of her skull removed and can't hear out of her right ear because her eardrum doesn't exist any more, comes in with her dad because she can't drive due to chronic vestibular dysfunction (she's been dizzy since she was 5). She is a portrait of misery, holding back tears during the exam, profusely apologetic for coming in, this is her first infection in 2 years and she's just in absolute despair because she doesn't want more surgery, and begs for the antibiotic only because the antibiotic-steroid combo, in her experience, hurts more and promises she will got to the ER if she gets a headache. Dad says bip the entire time and thanks me for seeing her on short notice on the way out the door.

Has this dichotomy always been present in society and I'm just now at the level where I see it?

<comment><USER3> Related anecdote:

For a time, I volunteered for a charity that provided general advice and support, mainly on issues of welfare, money and debt.

The longer I was there, the more obvious it became that most of the people I saw were simply fuck-ups. Although a minority simply had bad luck, most of them were simply unable and unwilling to responsibly manage even the most basic aspects of their lives. In hindsight, this is completely obvious - responsible, resourceful people rarely have need to seek help in running their lives.

Likewise, medics see a completely distorted picture of human health. They see a grossly disproportionate number of people from the minority of the population who are hypochondriacs, or have some form of somatoform disorder, or who chronically abuse their body. Conversely, they only infrequently come into contact with people who don't like to cause a fuss, or people with medical phobias.

There is data to suggest that police officers believe that they are much better than the general population at spotting lies, but are in fact much worse. The best explanation for this is that police officers habitually deal with people who are simply very bad at deceit - skilled criminals are rarely caught, whilst the most incompetent of petty thieves may be arrested several times a week. Officers believe that they know what a lie looks like because they are constantly dealing with people who lie, but in fact the only know what a very bad lie looks like.

<comment><USER4> Very interesting stuff about police. Do you have citations?

<comment><USER5> Many studies have been done about this sort of thing, and I've seen some that put teachers near the top. Most paint police as average.

Example: [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6249749/ns/technology_and_scienc...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6249749/ns/technology_and_science- science/t/wizards-can-spot-signs-liar/#.UA392itYs08)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Hacks" is quite an exaggeration. She worked at the school district as a secretary and had access to the grading software.

<comment><USER7> This seems to be the new definition of "hack", just like when somebody "hacks" into your Facebook account and posts rude messages when they visit your home and find your phone or computer unlocked.

<comment><USER6> I agree, but I would also say that the title was trying to evoke the traditional meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Venusto was arraigned this week on three counts of unlawful use of a computer and three counts of computer trespassing and altering data._

Are there laws like these for filing cabinets if she changed grades recorded on paper?

<comment><USER9> I suppose the analogs would be breaking&entering and fraud? I can't imagine this crime in the physical world would land someone with six felony charges though. That's pretty intense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      February, 2012, she was accused of changing her son's 98
      to a 99

That's like robbing a bank for a single dollar.

<comment><USER11> At least robbing a bank for a dollar can have a rational backing [1].

[1]: [http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nc-man-allegedly- robs-...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/nc-man-allegedly-robs-bank- health-care-jail/story?id=13887040)

<comment><USER12> I would say that is closer to hacking the justice system then robbing a bank. Still, any civilized government should offer all of its citizens at least the same rights and benefits as that countries criminals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not hacking. Not even on the same level as _Wargames_.

</comment><comment><USER14> >State police said she admitted to changing the grades, but thought her actions were merely unethical— not illegal.

Riiight. I suppose that if 5% of people could possibly believe that, then .95^12 = .5403... could be worse.

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing people who believe something that dumb will be less likely to get out of jury duty or be excused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 42 years? That must be more than manslaughter.

<comment><USER16> The reporter just added up the maximum possible sentence for 6 class-3 felonies. This is SOP in reporting on crimes even though there's no way she'll get that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> >>According to District Attorney's office spokeswoman Debbie Garlicki, Venusto could face up to 42 years in prison or a $90,000 fine if convicted.

Something about that statement just seems absurdly wrong. Maybe it's the 42 years of prison or $90,000 for changing her child's grade.

</comment><comment><USER18> It reminds me of this xkcd <http://xkcd.com/327/>

<comment><USER19> This one is a bit relevant too. <http://xkcd.com/341/>

<comment><USER20> Funny story: Same mom in both comics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The mom is a douche, but the prison sentence possible is nuts. I doubt she'd be up for such a sentence if she'd rammed a stolen truck into the buildings and changed paper records.

</comment><comment><USER21> hacks or reactivates old account?</comment>


Ask HN: Does this software exist? - <AUTHOR>

As a musician on the side, I've come across a "problem" that I'm hoping someone can help me solve. Here's the "problem":
* I have a group of songs that I play (let's say 50) that is a fairly static list
* I want to be able to plan out set lists based on those songs for various gigs and then print out the set lists in advance
Right now, I'm using a kludgey combination of Excel and Word (Windows guy, but I do have a MBP). It sucks - I make the list of songs in Excel, then I create a separate document for each night (and copy/paste the songs in).
Ideally there's a piece of software that lets me drag and drop the song onto a "view" (or whatever) that I can save/retrieve/print. I'm just trying to simplify the process of creating a set list. Sure, I could create it but it seems like this should exist already (but I can't find it).
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Maybe some of the software used for "setlists" for worship songs in Church services would help? You can do things like print lyrics with chords, "song books" and such; a basic feature is preparing a list of songs for the expected running order.

Only ones I know of (from research a few years ago on FOSS apps for this) <http://opensong.org/d/about>, <http://www.easyslides.com/index.php/features>, <http://openlp.org/en/features>, <http://www.lyricue.org/>.

There are very mature paid apps for this sort of thing too.

HTH.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could use TeX or LaTeX. Create an individual file for each song, containing whatever information you want to print for it. Presumably there are music-oriented LaTeX extensions that can pretty-print the lines and clefs or whatever (not a musician, so I don't know what, exactly, a set list should look like).

Then your play list for each night consists of a sequence of songs you want to play:

      \input songs/stairway-to-heaven.tex
      \input songs/take-me-out-to-the-ballgame.tex
      \input songs/venus-in-furs.tex

As you get more sophisticated, or as your needs grow, you can define macros that control what gets printed, or how.

<comment><USER4> How is this better than doing it in Excel with copy/paste as he does now?

What benefit does LaTeX bring, so that he has to install some hundreds of mbs of a TeX distro and learn the basics to work in it? Does he need elaborate math symbols or fine grained typography for a set list?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I just found an iOS app called "Set List Keeper" that works 100% and is free.

[http://itunes.apple.com/mo/app/set-list- keeper/id514144626?m...](http://itunes.apple.com/mo/app/set-list- keeper/id514144626?mt=8)

There are things I wish it had but they are minor things.

Thanks everyone for the help!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The iTunes playlist thing makes me think of another option: creating a "Contact" for each song title in a contact mgmt app, and then creating a "Group"/"Category" for each set and adding that contact to that group. It's the same thing - just a different twist on how to think about it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lets say you have all of these songs on your iPod, you can create a 'playlist' and then print that out in iTunes. I used to do that with MusicMatch when I made a CD for the road, burn the playlist to the CD and print the playlist for the label.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, Playlist is exactly what I'm talking about. I didn't know you could print a playlist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could create an iTunes playlist with your songs.

1) Create a playlist with all the songs.

2) Right click on it, and click "duplicate".

3) Drag the songs to the order you want. Remove any songs you don't want in this set.

4) From the menu, go "File -> Print" and select song list.

Repeat steps 2 to 3 as many times you want. You can also rename the set playlist, to reflect the set name (e.g "2012-22-09").

Alternatively: you could also use some "todo management" style software to print lists of things (in your case, song names) that you can re-arrange.

Bento might also be an option.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great - thank you. The iTunes playlist option will be "good enough" for my purposes. It's a hacky way to do it but at least I'll have a reason to use iTunes for something other than backing up/configuring my phone haha.</comment></comment>


The Atomic Theory of Origami - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-atomic-theory-of-origami-20171031/ <comment><USER2> If you're excited about the Miura-ori mentioned in this article, check out the work Glaucio Paulino and company are doing with zipper coupled tubes: [http://paulino.ce.gatech.edu/pnas_news_zipper.html](http://paulino.ce.gatech.edu/pnas_news_zipper.html)

<comment><USER3> I'm curious about less uniform and more practical origami based things.

\- coupling blocks \- structures \- actuators

etc etc

basically using origamis as a new basis for "common" application

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Erik Demaine's lectures are a nice place to start if you are into formal geometric folding theory: [http://erikdemaine.org/classes/](http://erikdemaine.org/classes/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Screw theory! I can't wait until someone smart discovers that FACT works at ohmic scale!

\- Freedom and constraint topology -- A way of considering flexure bearing systems.

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

[https://www.flexible.seas.ucla.edu](https://www.flexible.seas.ucla.edu)

<comment><USER6> A: What's your favorite field of math?

B: Knot theory

A: Yeah, me either.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why hasn't anyone done this sort of hack for (intro) textbooks? - <AUTHOR>

(originally submitted for the $9.99 textbook thread, but it's already dead)
I've been tinkering around with the textbook/publishing problem in my head for a while (nothing concrete yet, sorry!) and am thinking of applying to one of the upcoming YC rounds. Might try to do this in the meantime as a pure hack:
Students hate being ripped off by frequent 'new' editions of textbooks, which basically just reorder the text slightly and shuffle the problems. (I'm aware quite a few people download illegal textbook copies, but I find reading on a computer screen difficult.) Why hasn't anyone hacked this system? You could just OCR the textbook editions, have the computer identify similar/identical bits, and create a database of dependencies. Then write a web app to query it.
Someone has the 7th edition and their class uses the 9th? Every time they get an assignment, they can go to the site and type in: "I need to read Chapter 8.2-8.6 and do the end of the chapter problems 7-30, odd. The class uses ____ 9th edition. I have ___ 7th edition."
Then the site shoots back, "OK, you should read pages blank through blank. Below is a list of the 9th edition problems matched to their 7th edition counterparts. It also tells you if there's anything different or new."
I'm sure the textbook industry would hate this and try to do anything to shut it down, so it's probably not a great startup idea. They've already taken rear guard action with clickers and web homework. <comment><USER2> I haven't really investigated, but I suspect that in the introductory math/phys/chem courses you'll find that variable names/values also change in various ways. So in keeping track of what's "different or new", you end up not needing just dependencies but, realistically (in terms of reader convenience, but also due to difficulty of parsing OCR'd math problems to determine which are 'isomorphic'), all the problems from the latest edition. Which might not quite be 'fair use.'

I am not sure about other courses like bio or psych.

Good luck solving the textbook problem, though ...

<comment><AUTHOR> I hadn't thought about the math OCR (nor 'fair use', obviously), since intro books tend to use very simple math. But your point with variable names seems especially difficult.. thanks!

For more verbose subjects like bio, or psych, or econ something like the software they use to check for plagiarism should work beautifully.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Other idea is to build a network around everyone using a particular book. The popular books out there have thousands of students using them at the same time. There's probably a lot of value of connecting them all together. Notes, answers, questions, etc.</comment>


History of Genius - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/oct/09/wonder-boys-genius/

<comment><USER2> "The fallible human mind participates in the beauty of an infallible abstract realm that, in the view of many mathematicians, exists independently of the mental and physical worlds." Kurt Gödel

Gödel++

<comment><USER3> _" To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing."_, Marcel Duchamp, [http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/23/the- creati...](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/08/23/the-creative-act- marcel-duchamp-1957/)

<comment><USER2> an aesthetic osmosis ! "The result of this struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not [aware] of." this i am not so sure... Duchamp's art coefficient = gap, good or bad, So is it possible art coefficient=0 but asthetic scale = ∞, or art coefficient= random and asthetic scale = 0 or ∞ depending on which view you take of Shannon's theory

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article keeps using the word [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy) in some sense I don't understand. Can anyone explain it?

About the romantic idea of genius: let's celebrate such people without mysticism. I'm glad I've gotten to meet some of my favorite thinkers and find out they don't shoot laser beams out of their eyes.

<comment><USER5> I too do not find the reference to theodicy entirely transparent, but here's my interpretation, at least.

The origin of the idea of genius is supposed to be a means of filling in a gap left by the loss of cultural belief in God and angels and so forth; that provides the theological connection. So, it seems to me it's saying that the belief in genius justifies the existence of evil because our genius-'gods' are in fact still basically human. Specifically calling it "theodicy of the human mind" feels like it's suggesting something more, but, to quote the article a bit more, it's not the traditional theodicy that tries to justify the ways of god to suffering humanity, but rather one that permits us to see ourselves, in however attenuated a sense, as the point of it all.

So, yeah. Genius == theodicy because "God is really just us" or something like that. It's a pretty big stretch from the normal meaning of the word, but that's the best I can make of it.

<comment><USER4> That does make tenuous sense of it, thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Millennium Tower is tilting, sinking - <AUTHOR> http://sf.curbed.com/2016/8/1/12341914/millennium-tower-sinking <comment><USER3> My house is on a steep hill, and Seattle has a reputation for hills sliding away under heavy rain. Before building it, I hired 3 separate geologists to evaluate the site.

After digging holes, they said the site was sitting on "glacial till", which is clay that was compacted by about a mile of ice, and said there was nothing to worry about. Paying them was worth it for the peace of mind. (Turns out the till was so hard it could not be dug with hand tools.)

I did have a scare because a spring appeared on the edge of the property, as underground water is indicative of slide risk. Fortunately, it turned out to be a leak in the water main!

I still made sure the hard surfaces all drained into the storm drain, so that the hill wouldn't become saturated with water.

I can't conceive of building a 58 story building on sand in an earthquake zone. Reminds me of that Monty Python quote:

"When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England."

<comment><USER4> I live in the Outer Richmond district of San Francisco, which was built on sand dunes. Most houses in my neighborhood were built in the 1920s and 1930s, +/\- a decade.

I was told by a contractor that it's extremely common for houses to have shifted considerably, sometimes by several feet. Mine certainly has, though not nearly that bad.

Most of the houses are built on concrete foundation walls that go about 3 feet into the sand. Despite being unreinforced and using water-permeable cement, they've seemed to hold up reasonably well. It's usually the whole house that shifts and racks. Yet looking from the street you wouldn't expect that because all the houses abut each other, with only a few inches or none of space in- between. (Perhaps this has mitigated the problem somewhat, though.)

Despite being built entirely on giant sand dunes, the Richmond district is only "moderately" prone to liquefaction. And there wasn't much notable damage during the 1989 earthquake, AFAIK. I think (though cannot confirm) that similar foundation techniques were used as far back as 1905 and earlier, in the Richmond, Sunset, and elsewhere, and judging by their survival and continued use of the foundation techniques I'm not particularly worried. (While widespread building in the western half of the city didn't begin in earnest until about 1910'ish, there are hundreds of buildings many decades older randomly distributed, especially closer to the beaches.)

The bigger problem is that almost all houses in the western half of the city were built with so-called soft stories as the first floor--basically a giant open space supported almost entirely by the external walls. Interestingly, AFAIK this design came before the widespread introduction of cars. These days nearly all houses use that space as a garage, but I believe they were built as unfinished first floors intended to be finished as desired--e.g. workshop, additional family rooms, in-law apartments, etc--while keeping the initial purchase price low.

<comment><USER5> How do you plan plumbing and electricity for houses moving several feet?

<comment><USER6> If it's the earth below houses also moving, then the problems in plumbing and electricity do not appear at the house; they appear at the cross section of the moving and non-moving earth masses, and are typically the responsibility of utility provider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the article: _" To cut costs, Millennium did not drill piles to bedrock."_ I'm amazed that a building of that height would be built on a slab with friction piles in the mudflat fill zone of the SF bay. How did they get a building permit for that? 16 inches of sinkage in 8 years is huge.

Building sinkage isn't all that unusual, but not for skyscrapers. There was a time when skyscrapers were only built on competent rock, like NYC's. Now they're being built on much more iffy soils. Singapore and some other coastal Asian cities are doing a lot of this.

SF used to be smaller. The outer half mile or so on the bay side is fill. There are buried shipwrecks all through that area.[1]

[1] [https://medium.com/the-secret-history-of-america/from- starbo...](https://medium.com/the-secret-history-of-america/from-starboard-to- shot-glass-941b8a863c69#.8r2p8rewz)

<comment><USER8> Most of our big coastal cities are like that. Boston is about twice as big as it was in colonial times; all of the Back Bay is landfill. A lot of Cambridge is landfill. And yes, most of the taller buildings cluster around the more solid bedrock areas closer to downtown.

But the engineering principles needed here aren't unknown--cities like Las Vegas and New Orleans have modern buildings that are much taller than were thought possible in earlier times. If the developers didn't do it right because it was expensive, then it is on them.

<comment><USER9> To add on, Chicago and New Orleans are both built on swamps, and the outer edges of New York are filled in -- making land for cities isn't the issue with the tower.

<comment><USER7> The tallest buildings in Chicago have foundations drilled down to bedrock. The Sears Tower (now Willits Tower) is built on bedrock. The Trump Tower [1] has pilings down to bedrock. The John Hancock building has foundations down to bedrock, even though they had to go down almost 200 feet.[2]

How unusual is 83 floors in earthquake country without foundations down to bedrock?

[1] [http://faculty.arch.tamu.edu/media/cms_page_media/4433/trump...](http://faculty.arch.tamu.edu/media/cms_page_media/4433/trumptowechicago.pdf) [2] [http://khan.princeton.edu/khanHancock.html](http://khan.princeton.edu/khanHancock.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me a bit of the CitiCorp Center fiasco.

[http://failures.wikispaces.com/Citicorp+Center](http://failures.wikispaces.com/Citicorp+Center)

Not only did the architect miscalculate the worst-case wind load on the building but the builder substituted cheaper bolted steel connections for the originally-specified fully welded connections.

The problem was remediated by heavily reinforcing the connections of the diagonal steel braces in the frame of the building, but until it was done there was a very real chance of the building blowing over.

<comment><USER11> 99% Invisible has a story on that building, and how the issue was discovered: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural- integrity/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/structural-integrity/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> In contrast, the Salesforce tower under construction at 415 Mission Street is built on piles that connect to bedrock.

> In a big earthquake, the ground is actually trying to slip sideways > underneath the building. "You need something to keep you from changing > addresses," says Joseph. Those somethings are called piles, in essence > underground stilts connecting the building with the bedrock. In the lowlands > of San Francisco's Financial District, bedrock is 300 below street level. > "We have 42 piles that go all the way down and are socketed 15 to 25 foot > deep into the rock," says Tymoff.

[http://www.wired.com/2015/11/it-took-18-hours-to-pour-san- fr...](http://www.wired.com/2015/11/it-took-18-hours-to-pour-san-franciscos- biggest-ever-concrete-foundation/)

And this was part of the proposal from the very beginning.

> The Transit Tower would have a concrete slab foundation supported by driven > piles anticipated to be founded on bedrock more than 200 feet below grade. > The tower's structural system is anticipated to employ the concept of > "megacolumns," which are very large structural columns several feet in > width. The concentrated load supported by these megacolumns would be > sustained by large diameter piles approximately 10 feet in diameter, with > additional piles driven to support the building's foundation slab.

[http://sfrecpark.org/wp- content/uploads/00_FEIR_Draft-1_12-0...](http://sfrecpark.org/wp- content/uploads/00_FEIR_Draft-1_12-0629_CD_reduced.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> 16 inches over 8 years is absolutely insane. That's the Usain Bolt of a sinking building.

<comment><USER14> And the article mentions it was 10 inches in only (it's first) 2 years after completion!

<comment><USER15> Good news, the sinking is slowing!

:/

<comment><USER16> If the pilings go down 80 feet, and bedrock is at 200 feet, then worst case you'll still have 46 usable stories!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> FWIW building on sand isn't all that bad if you design the building expecting it to be on sand. The Nazis build AA defenses on sand because a concrete building that's sandwiched between the recoil of small artillery and bedrock won't be around very long. The sand acts like a damper. It's harder to break a cinder block with a hammer if the block is sitting on a pile of sand than if it's on a paved surface and you can apply the same principal at scale if you've got the resources to do all the prerequisite work.

It's not that exotic of a design when you consider that the ground under California tends to move around. Too bad it doesn't look like this building was meant to support itself atop a less than solid underlayment. Too bad for the developers.\s If they have to take corrective action they only get a crazy profit margin instead of an insane one. Should have done it right the first time.

</comment><comment><USER18> The article doesn't talk about the how this practically affects the entrances to the building. Do the doors have to be adjusted for such a drastic sinkage, or are buildings somehow designed so this isn't noticeable to the public?

<comment><USER19> Seems to imply they had to do something to the entrances, but not what. Maybe there are little ramps added every year? I'm gonna go look now.

<comment><USER20> Please take some pictures and share them with us.

Another article I read said they have needed to make adjustments to the first floor interface but didn't say what they were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A fair warning that sinking doesn't just happen to towers: [http://science.time.com/2012/05/21/soaring-to-sinking-how- bu...](http://science.time.com/2012/05/21/soaring-to-sinking-how-building-up- is-bringing-shanghai-down/)

</comment><comment><USER22> "To cut costs, Millennium did not drill piles to bedrock."

What are the implications for earthquake safety?

<comment><USER23> Because Millennium is on reclaimed land, they cannot determine whether or not they have drilled into bedrock. They drill into what's called the 'point of refusal'; a point where they can no longer drill deeper. Whether this is bedrock or even stable soil is somewhat vague.

<comment><USER24> Almost nothing in this comment is accurate:

\- You CAN determine the type of rock you are drilling through as well as it's relevant characteristics. Pieces of the material are brought to the surface with the drilling mud and instruments are put down the hole.

\- Builders DO NOT just stop drilling when their drill won't drill no further. (This made me laugh!) There is testing, design, design review, more testing during construction, more design review and perhaps modification based on conditions. If a particular drill could not drill to design depth, they would likely change the bit or drill.

\- While there will always be some uncertainty, engineers require more than a vague understanding of soil conditions to design the foundation of a building like this. Any remaining uncertainty should be taken into account in the design.

<comment><USER23> Maybe I have a poor definition of 'point of refusal', but this is the term developers use. Most developers in SF don't tell you whether they drilled down to bedrock or not.

<comment><USER25> It's a real term. This is not how the pile depth is decided but a maximum depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> to quote Stewart Lee: "as a piece of architecture, that is abysmal. But as an extremely heavy-handed satire of exactly where we're going wrong, superb."

</comment><comment><USER27> Surely the first rule of building large buildings in earthquake zones has to be solid foundations. Isn't liquefaction a concern?

</comment><comment><USER28> I heard that there is already a $100m+ compensation fund in place for owners who agree not to sue. Any other information?

<comment><USER29> If this is true, then it's a big tacit admission of guilt, or the expectation if being found liable, at least. Where did you hear?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Probably the residents have a lot of books, and the architect forgot to account for the weight of the books.

[http://www.snopes.com/college/halls/sinking.asp](http://www.snopes.com/college/halls/sinking.asp)

</comment><comment><USER31> ...2 inches for such a tall building is such tiny angle

If it sinks does this mean the first floor is slightly below the street level ..it probably means that the areas around the door and where the concete meets the street are cracked

<comment><USER32> I was wondering the same thing, but Google street view (taken in 2014) doesn't show any evidence of such a big dip. How is that possible?? The only thing I can think of is that it's more of a "sag," where the middle has sunk 18" but the edges haven't moved much, but I'm not really satisfied with that theory.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/Millennium+Tower+San+Franc...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.3962408,3a,90y,237.99h,64.97t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-35rB20DzRME%2FU7BvmBlYzUI%2FAAAAAAAAKgs%2FidvFTvbnBG4BG0iCULQUc1scg2DlGAkaw!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-35rB20DzRME%2FU7BvmBlYzUI%2FAAAAAAAAKgs%2FidvFTvbnBG4BG0iCULQUc1scg2DlGAkaw%2Fw203-h101-n-k- no%2F!7i11884!8i5942!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x9fe15ebd4a8300d8!8m2!3d37.7905058!4d-122.3961611!6m1!1e1)

<comment><USER33> It's extremely unlikely that the building is sinking and the surrounding area is stable. More likely the building is pulling the entire area down, so it's probably hard to detect as a pedestrian.

<comment><USER34> A commenter upstream reports seeing the sidewalk being repaired multiple times throughout the last 10 years as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > _While the Millennium Tower's sinkage into the earth is reportedly not a > safety issue for residents, it does pose a problem for investors._

This is confusing to me -- if it's not a safety issue, then why is it a problem?

<comment><USER16> The Leaning Tower of Pisa, for example, has stood without toppling for many centuries, but it's not a place you'd want to _live_ in.

I also suspect that people with the kind of money they're looking for are not going to accept "don't worry, we checked and it's definitely 100% safe!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This brings me back to a question I have frequently asked myself: What do you do with unsafe or old skyscrapers? How would you raze such a thing? What if it falls over, breaks apart or breaks in on itself (9/11 gives an idea)?

To a layman (with slight acrophobia) skyscrapers seem pretty fragile, and I'd much rather have them built into the ground than towards the sky, but obviously they're holding up in general and I'm interested to see what happens with this one: Hope that it stops tilting or sinking? Raze it before anything bad happens?

<comment><USER37> Slowly? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwf9LoS9Xt8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwf9LoS9Xt8)

<comment><USER38> Wonderful! Thanks for sharing that. I work in the steel construction industry, we put buildings up all day every day, so watching them come down always interests me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder what effect a medium to heavy earthquake would have on this building's foundation.

<comment><USER29> Probably not good. According to this and other articles, the building's concrete slab foundation sits roughly 80 ft below street level upon sand, while bedrock lies 200 ft down. That means there is 120 ft of sand, possibly susceptible to liquefaction, between the buildings foundation and solid bedrock. That sounds bad enough. But now imagine the building is tipping over slightly. The already potentially worrisome problem compounds dramatically.

<comment><USER40> How much would it have cost to dig down to bedrock, and pour a concrete foundation from the bedrock up to surface level?

Between the amount of sand to be moved and the amount of concrete to be poured, it sounds like an enormous fortune; I guess that the relevant questions are whether the market could bear it and whether it would be cheaper than the rapidly-developing lawsuits. It may be that the building didn't make economic sense in the first place, if it couldn't be built both safely and profitably -- which has unpleasant implications for the SF housing crunch...

<comment><USER3> The real problem with digging down to bedrock is destablizing the building. Though there may be enough redundancy in the pilings to do it one at a time.

<comment><USER41> I think the question was why the builders didn't do it in the first place.

<comment><USER20> You dig down 200 feet to the bedrock, pour a foundation, and then pour pilings up to the surface to put the building on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "it's not steel-framed and instead uses a concrete design"

I thought concrete buildings without steel frames came down instantly in earthquakes. What am I missing?

<comment><USER43> _I thought concrete buildings without steel frames came down instantly in earthquakes. What am I missing?_

Concrete buildings without sufficient bracing at the corners where supporting beams meet floors fail pretty much instantly in earthquakes for sure, but if you put bracing supports in at the corners then that makes them much, much stronger. You're probably thinking that concrete buildings just collapse from your experience of post-earthquake film footage from countries with poor governance where building firms can cheap out on the construction (lets save 15% of our material costs by skipping the bracing!) and their buildings inevitably collapse when the next earthquake comes along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Reminds me of this:

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

<comment><USER45> Hmm, they imploded it after discovering it had sunken 14 inches. Millennium Tower has sunken 16 inches…

<comment><USER25> I figure it was due to the cracked supports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > _" The Millennium's engineers anchored the building over a thick concrete > slab with piles driven roughly 80 feet into dense sand. "To cut costs, > Millennium did not drill piles to bedrock,"... _

They built a skyscraper, on sand, in an earthquake zone!!! What the heck were they thinking?

Consider me completely unsurprised that the building is sinking and tilting.

<comment><USER47> > They built a skyscraper, on sand, in an earthquake zone!!! What the heck > were they thinking?

My guess is that they were thinking of something that starts with "pro" and ends with "fit"

I mean, Tokyo is earthquake zone, but it's not unsupported sandy soil

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What is the risk? Does this make the building more dangerous because it's in an earthquake-prone area? Obviously this doesn't sound good, but the article mentions that there is no threat to safety of occupants. Is it merely aesthetic?

<comment><USER49> Uneven sinking is not good - doors/windows won't close, walls would crack, and so on. It does not take much to seize things, however buildings are usually designed to take a little of it. The rate at which it's sinking is the alarming part.

But i would be mostly alarmed about earthquakes - the thing sits on sand. Proverbial or not, that would make it very susceptible to soil liquification.

Imagine a stick with a weight on top of it. On solid ground it stands still. But if the ground was to turn into a liquid, the stick would tilt and sink rapidly. If the soil were to liquify for a second, it would end up at an angle half-sunk. And a building can't tolerate side loads, so it won't stay at an angle - it would collapse down.

<comment><USER50> When I read that it was built on fill, liquification was my first thought. Doesn't SF have limits to building sizes in liquification zones?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> a nearby tower under construction - Fremont 181 - has been drilled 260 feet into the ground, well reaching the bedrock.

[http://sf.curbed.com/2016/8/1/12343776/sinking-millennium- to...](http://sf.curbed.com/2016/8/1/12343776/sinking-millennium-tower)

</comment><comment><USER52> The wise man built his house upon the rock...

</comment><comment><USER53> Wouldn't 16 inches warp the surrounding pavement and street? I imagine there'd be a large dip.

</comment><comment><USER54> Makes me a little thankful (for once) that my Georgia home is built on a hill of dense, unyielding clay.

<comment><USER55> Dense clay might be unyielding, but depending on the plasticity of that clay you could be facing serious issues with heaving when the soil gets extremely moist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Would be interested to see a video of water being poured onto a flat surface inside this building

</comment><comment><USER57> Perhaps they can turn it into a tourist attraction. It has worked out well for Pisa.

</comment><comment><USER58> Surely, the tilting is the biggest worry. Anybody care to estimate how many more inches can this tall building tilt before the lateral stresses lead to its collapse?

<comment><USER59> I think you would be amazed how far it could tilt before it collapses.

For example the Tower of Pisa (55m height) is leaning much worse: almost 4 meters.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Pretty sure they need to safely dismantle this building and try again.

In non-earthquake prone areas, it might make sense to jack it up and what not, but not in SF.

<comment><USER33> There is no scenario in which a 350 million dollar skyscraper deemed "not a safety issue for residents" will be torn down so they can "try again". They'll find a way to stabilize it and that will be that. No one is going to tear down nearly half a billion dollars worth of skyscraper if there's any chance of salvaging it.

<comment><USER61> It's not without precedent.

In Seattle a cost-cutting method was used to build a 25-story downtown apartment building in 2001.

In 2010 it was found to be flawed and unfixable, and so it was dismantled.

And now there's a new building being built on the site.

[http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/9-year-old- belltown...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/9-year-old-belltown- high-rise-too-flawed-to-fix/)

<comment><USER33> Key there is it was deemed unfixable. $350 MM can do a lot of fixing.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not denying the entire possibility. It's just _extremely_ unlikely, especially given that the tower is currently deemed safe.

<comment><USER24> Plus if it turns out to have been caused by the Trans Bay Terminal, they have very deep pockets (they supposedly spent $58 million on a buttress to protect the Millineum Tower). As does the developer, Millennium Partners and the engineering from firm's insurance companies.

This will get fixed. There will just have to be a big fight to see who has to pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lots of misinformation in this thread. Would be great to hear from a professional.

<comment><USER41> What here is misinformation?

<comment><USER24> A few examples:

\- Foundations of tall building must go to bedrock - not true.

\- Large buildings settling is unusual - not true.

\- Earthquake safety has been compromised in this case - not true.

The structural engineering of tall buildings is complex. Multiple large engineering firms were involved in the design and construction of this building.

Curbed (owned by Vox BTW) took the SF Cronicle article and cut out the more reasonable paragraphs (such as that same Stanford they quoted saying he "doesn't consider the sink or tilt a safety issue".).. And of course the Chron article already probably skewed it to make it more exciting.

I always shake my head when I read article on a subject that I happen to be be an expert. I'm sure experts in the engineering of these sorts of projects could teach us alot about this situation.

<comment><USER29> It seems that you need to read more carefully and perhaps with more generosity.

> A few examples: \- Foundations of tall building must go to bedrock - <USER2> > true.

I see few if any comments here asserting, let alone asserting without qualification, that buildings _must_ be built to bedrock. Further, heeding your own advice that expertise should be bidden, note that the apparently expert sources in the article said themselves that not building to bedrock _can_ be a problem.

I see people here noting and reflecting that expert opinion. Few if anyone going beyond it. And you're not reading the source material carefully enough if you miss the take that not building to bedrock can carry some risk.

> \- Large buildings settling is unusual - not true.

Again, I see no one or very few people here saying this. Of course buildings settle over time. And here in this thread, contrary to your blithe and dismissive assertion, we even have people pointing out that settling happens not just in towers but in buildings of most any kind.

Note as well, again, that the very experts you appeal to say that this tower's settling is both comparatively fast and that its magnitude is unexpected. These are the experts talking, so you come off as hypocritical at best here. The nature and particulars of the settling in this particular case appears noteworthy and to be a reasonable cause for concern.

> \- Earthquake safety has been compromised in this case - not true.

Ahh... so, now you are the expert and capable of refuting this possibility so entirely-- upon merely a cursory examination of second- or third-hand information, rather than a primary analysis, no less-- that it is somehow faulty for people to question whether this might have an impact on earthquake safety? My, my; odd that you called for caution in drawing conclusions until experts had weighed in, then turned around and flatly conclude that which I doubt even experts would leave completely unqualified, and certainly not universally and unanimously so.

The comments here so far are not much of the chicken-little or even rabble- rousing type. Try being more respectful toward your fellow community members.

<comment><USER62> you should instead be grateful for a curt correction to the unending stream of faux-expertise and hand-waving that HN has become

I only ever bother with the comments section anymore if only to watch the cringe-inducing attempts at "insight" by the same dozen or so users...

<comment><USER29> What "correction" was there, exactly? I replied to an over-generalization and misstatement. What exactly do you see being _actually_ corrected?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> OUch. Big write down to the yuppies who bot into this glass brogrammer tower.

</comment><comment><USER64> "the building is located on unstable mud-fill, just off the bay's original shoreline."

Nuff said.</comment>


Show HN: Uber or Drive? Compare cost of driving and car ownership vs. Uber - <AUTHOR> Https://uberordrive.com <comment><AUTHOR> I am the developer of this thing. Since I am not a full time dev I am quite proud of this. Any ideas for improvements and monetization beyond ads more than welcome!

<comment><USER2> Doesn't seem to work on iOS. I'll give it a shot on my laptop in a few minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know. I have only tried ff and chrome on desktop and chrome android so far. ios app is on the way.</comment></comment></comment>


Parallel Collectors for Java Stream API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pivovarit/parallel-collectors <comment><AUTHOR> Overcoming limitatons of Parallel Streams and allowing to provide custom thread pools and specify custom parallelism level</comment>


Linux: *Almost* Always Add Swap Space - <AUTHOR> https://haydenjames.io/linux-performance-almost-always-add-swap-space/ <comment><USER2> Counter-point, why swap is almost never required. [1] We don't have swap on over 30k servers. If you must use it, ensure it is encrypted.

[1] - [https://github.com/ohdns/sysctl_and_thp_test](https://github.com/ohdns/sysctl_and_thp_test)

<comment><USER3> I don't configure my desktop machines with swap. They have a ton of memory relative to my needs. I rarely crack 10%. I could fit all of /usr in ram with gigabytes to spare. If the OOM reaper hits, it's because I really screwed up. That's the kind of thing I want to know right away anyhow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes it's a tech advert blog post, don't bother.

My personal experience is that there are situations where you want to completely disable swap on Linux. Workstations/desktops with large RAM (16GB or more) can see awful swapping when it comes time to close/restart Chromium/Firefox after long periods of use, and I've seen more than one instance where some large-RAM server application which needed to be completely restarted every 24-hours or more.

Swap is usually good, but not always.</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone have ideas on setting up DIY home Gym? - <AUTHOR>

I have a nice big finished basement where I would love to setup a small gym for myself and wifey. Any tips ? Other than the usual treadmills etc, any tips on setting up weight machines ? What kind ? I like free weights a lot. What about benches ?<p>I will probably use about 350-400 sq. ft of area for this. <comment><USER2> I love to workout while working and have my desk next to my gym setup. Mine is a Smith cage with an olympic bench that inclines/declines with olympic dumbbells. A treadmill is nearby. For me, it is ideal - and mostly all i need. I can do a set of heavy squats after a call to let out tension, etc. I can't recommend it enough - but I'm the type who doesn't enjoy sitting down for long. I also put a small TV in for the occassional p90x-style program. For me this covers all the bases. What are you thinking about putting in?

</comment><comment><USER3> Whatever you decide to get I recommend buying used equipment. There is a huge market of equipment from people who got all excited about getting in shape, got the equipment, used it a couple of times and then moved on. Maybe even more so than pool tables.</comment>


I Don't See Any Evidence That We'll Live Hundreds Of Years - <AUTHOR> http://blog.edwardmarks.com/post/29831573387/i-dont-see-any-evidence-that-well-live-hundreds-of

<comment><USER2> This was brilliant. A really good depth of analysis and the kind of statistical forecasting that I like, but I'm not sure that it holds too much water.

Sure the analysis holds for current types of anti-aging, life prolonging techniques, but does it hold for the future?

It's like charting the average 100m run of Humans since the dawn of time, and then claiming that, as a race, we'll never break the sound barrier. But then someone invents the car.

And I think that's a good, strong analogy, because the things we're looking into now aren't just life-prolonging, they are age-defying. It's a complete shift. As Marks remarks perhaps we can't predict how it's going to happen, you can't predict everything after all, especially not new technology.

To me a better analysis would have looked at statements about what is required to stop the aging process altogether and analysed our progress in those fields. For instance does it require the accurate mapping of our DNA? A task that can be completed, and isn't an endless goal like 'living to X years' is.

There are also completely off the wall developments that don't fit in the trend lines that Marks has forecast like the role of replacing our bodies with machines. Such things deserve their own trend line, and again such a thing wouldn't progress towards infinity, cumulatively, but would have an end point in terms of allowing us to live indefinitely. There may be endless improvements we could make to a synthetic body, but making it endlessly maintainable would be a relatively early goal.</comment>