Which programming language is more readable? - <AUTHOR> I am coming from ASP Classic background and I am planning to learn a new programming language. So, I chose PHP. But, things like ->, ::, make me confused. I mean how can I easily pronounced it? In, ASP conditions are like,
if conditions then
  //Code end if
You see pretty much easy to read and pronounced the code.
So, my question is which language is more readable and also I can switch to it and my consider my future redirection. <comment><USER2> If "pronouncability" is a good proxy for readability for you, then Python might not be a bad place to look.

That said, this is intensely personal, and you'll find a fair few people who find symbol-heavy languages more, rather than less, readable.

I'd argue that there's also a trade off where relatively low density code is more readable line by line, but denser code can be quicker to grasp _as a whole_.

</comment><comment><USER3> You will always find symbols in programming languages, at least periods (.) that would mean property access (although as you mentioned in PHP is ->) and code delimitators that could be any of the following in most cases ({[]}). This means that in the end you will always have to learn to pronounce a given language.

For languages "as is" I share dasmoth view (upvoted) and I'd add that if you learn to read functional expressions the same as in math's lambda calculus, Scala is very easy to read.

On top of that, if you choose an object oriented language, think not only on the language readability but also on the readability of the patterns that you can build with such language. For example and for further read, the Builder Pattern is much more readable than other patterns like the factory pattern:

FishPlatter myMeal = new BoiledFishBuilder().boilWater().addFish().pourSalt().setTimerInMinutes(6).build();

That is, it's not always the language rather than the way we code.</comment>


How to Join a Startup Right Out of School - <AUTHOR> http://www.jeanhsu.com/2011/04/24/how-to-join-a-startup-right-out-of-school/

<comment><USER2> Having great personal projects is key. We're really fortunate to be in an industry where you can so easily showcase your skills & talents.

Through my interviews with startups (I'm a college Junior), they were _much much_ more interested in my side-projects than anything school-related. I highlight Projects at the very top of resume, then past Internships, then school-related activities.

<comment><USER3> This goes for non-students too. We are very interested in people that have pet projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm hoping this thread will be a good place to get some advice. I'm about to finish undergrad. I was thinking about going to grad school but I really wanted to take a break from academia to see if I would prefer working at a startup. I've found that it is a lot harder than I expected to get hired.

I have an extremely good academic record but I can't say I blame companies for not taking that too seriously. I only have one big non-class coding project to my name and it was for research. Sadly, I focused too much on school in the past 4 years and not enough on personal projects. I obviously can't just tell people I'm a good fucking programmer. There is no reason to believe me. Is the best solution to forget job applications for now and start working on a project of my own?

<comment><USER5> _"I have an extremely good academic record but I can't say I blame companies for not taking that too seriously."_

Nonsense. Despite the conventional wisdom on HN, most companies highly value students with good grades. We just also want people who can code. If you can do both, you'll be fine. But...it takes a while to land the first gig. That's _totally normal_ , and has very little to do with the status of your github account. Do not believe people who tell you otherwise, because they have serious problems with perspective.

The fact is, if you've just started hunting, you're looking for work late in the recruiting cycle. Most larger companies recruit at the beginning of the school year (autumn), with a smaller effort sometime after the holidays. So if you're starting now, you're going against the tide, and it will be tougher to get attention.

If you can code, and your grades are as good as you say they are, send me your resume (my HN user at yelp.com), and I'll put your application in at Yelp. We're always hiring smart people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I applied to a few startups for positions that asked for ~5 years experience right out of school.

My email usually consisted of asking if they would consider someone of lesser experience (perhaps as a half-year trial) with pay of course commensurate with experience. Some companies seemed very receptive to the concept.

Also: EVERYONE I interviewed for was far more impressed with personal projects than academic credentials

I got very far with one Boston startup, where they debated internally whether taking me or holding out for someone older would be a better idea, but I eventually took a different offer instead (from a small-company, but not a startup)

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm really lucky, but I'm still in school and I've worked for several startups. Being in a start-up city (Austin) definitely helps. And I would go to tech events and ask if anyone is looking for an intern. That's probably the best (i.e. easiest) way. And know the technologies they use (hardly any students know rails), because startups don't have time to train you.</comment>


Ask HN: Designing a Parenscript alternative - <AUTHOR> Several projects already exist which compile established dialects of Lisp into JavaScript, including Parenscript [1], Scriptjure [2], Scheme2Js [3] and ArcScript [4]. I'm trying to determine if there'd be value in creating a new little Lisp dialect specifically designed for compiling into JavaScript. The goal would be to end up with something like CoffeeScript [5], only s-expression based so that Lisp-style macros could be supported.
I've started designing the language following this general process:
1. Imagine what JavaScript would look like if it were composed of s-expressions rather than C-style syntax
2. Permit irregularities where it would be a convenience boon to everyday JavaScript coding
I will post example code in the comment thread, and feedback is very welcome. Do you think this project has potential, and would you consider using it? Do you have any advice about writing or hosting the compiler?
---
[1] http://common-lisp.net/project/parenscript/
[2] https://github.com/arohner/scriptjure
[3] http://www-sop.inria.fr/indes/scheme2js/
[4] http://evanrmurphy.com:8080/arc2js
[5] http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/ <comment><USER3> I'm quite curious about the examples. Maybe you should prefix the title with "Ask HN:". Write it in something lispy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sibilant (<http://sibilantjs.info/>) and lisp.js (<http://lisp- js.posterous.com/lispjs-a-lisp-for-nodejs-0>) are two related projects.

</comment><comment><USER3> (function() { var x; x = 5; return ++x; }).call(this);

This won't loop but just return 6.

<comment><AUTHOR> do is intended to be like do in Arc or Clojure or progn in Common Lisp. It is not supposed to be a loop. Does this clarify or have I misunderstood your comment?

<comment><USER3> Ah, O.K. Mea culpa! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a bit puzzled now as I don't see a real benefit comparing this to the existing "compilers". Even worse: there's no code base.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for all your feedback so far. Is there anything about the existing lisp-to-js compilers that you wish was different?

I've just added a piece about the dot operator to the examples. I don't think any of the existing compilers have tried this approach.

<comment><USER3> AFAIR some ppl already have played around with that dot-notation. But I must admit that I just tried Parenscript some three years ago and was completely pissed off because it didn't have return values for everything. I want my code to be portable. Didn't touch any of those other translators.

<comment><USER4> "But I must admit that I just tried Parenscript some three years ago and was completely pissed off because it didn't have return values for everything."

Yeah, we're still working on that (mostly because I'm stupid). The expression/statement dichotomy is a wily satan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Infix and unary operators are pretty straightforward, since they're just prefix versions of their JavaScript counterparts:

      (&& x y)    => x && y
      (|| x y)    => x || y
      (+ x y)     => x + y
      (- x y)     => x - <USER2>
      (* x y)     => x * y
      (/ x y)     => x / y
      (% x y)     => x % y
      (+= x y)    => x += y
      (-= x y)    => x -= y
      (*= x y)    => x *= y
      (/= x y)    => x /= y
      (%= x y)    => x %= y
      (= x y)     => x = y
      (== x y)    => x == y
      (=== x y)   => x === y
      (!= x y)    => x != y
      (!== x y)   => x !== y
      (! x)       => !x
      (++ x)      => ++x
      (-- x)      => --x
      (. x y)     => x.y

While the dot operator's base form should be a prefixed s-expression like all the others, it may be awkward to use in practice:

      (. (. ($ "body") (addClass "hidden")) (hide))

      => $("body").addClass("hidden").hide();

Since the dot operator is so common in idiomatic JavaScript, I propose allowing it to be infixed as a special case:

      ; expands to the above prefixed version

      ($ "body").(addClass "hidden").(hide)

For blocks we use a wrapper function rather than the curly brace block so that lexical scoping for variables can be ensured:

      (do (= x 5)   => (function() {
          (++ x))        var x;
                         x = 5;
                         return ++x;
                       }).call(this);

The ternary operator:

      (?: x y z)   => (x ? y : z)

Perhaps we can create a useful distinction between the ternary operator and if-statements by giving if implicit do (just as cond has implicit progn in Common Lisp), but I'm not sure what the most elegant solution is. Thoughts?

Functions:

      (function)              => (function() {});
      (function ())           => (function() {});
      (function ()            => function() {
        (+ 1 1))                   return 1 + 1;
                                 };
      (= foo (function ()     => var foo;
               (+ 1 1)))         foo = function() {
                                   return 1 + 1;
                                 }

We could build a simple unhygienic macro system using the traditional quote ('), quasiquote (`), unquote (,) and unquote-splicing (,@) operators, as well as rest parameters (&). Here's how you might define a macro called unless:

      ; macro definition

      (mac unless (x & args)
        `(if (! ,x) ,@args))

      ; example usage

      (unless true
        (alert "Won't be executed"))

      ; expands to:

      (if (! true)
        (alert "Won't be executed"))

      => if (!true) {
           alert("Won't be executed");
         }

More coming...

<comment><USER4> "While the dot operator's base form should be a prefixed s-expression like all the others, it may be awkward to use in practice"

The solution isn't special syntax, it's macros. Check out Parenscript's _chain_ :

[http://common- lisp.net/project/parenscript/reference.html#ch...](http://common- lisp.net/project/parenscript/reference.html#chain)

"For blocks we use a wrapper function rather than the curly brace block so that lexical scoping for variables can be ensured."

In most cases you can generate more efficient code by doing rudimentary control flow analysis. Look at how RETURN-FROM is implemented in the current Parenscript repository version.

Also, speaking of lexical scoping don't forget that in JS loop variables only get a single binding. Scheme2JS uses a neat trick with _with_ to implement the proper (per-iteration) binding (see this paper: <http://www- sop.inria.fr/indes/scheme2js/files/icfp2006.pdf>). It's the only useful use of _with_ I've ever encountered.

"The ternary operator"

Don't. The #1 goal of any new Lisp to JS translator should be to eliminate the statement/expression dichotomy.

"We could build a simple unhygienic macro system using the traditional quote ('), quasiquote (`), unquote (,) and unquote-splicing (,@) operators, as well as rest parameters (&)."

Take it one step further and make quasiquoting be able to build arrays at runtime. This is something that Daniel Gackle (gruseom) suggested for Parenscript and I need to implement. I actually want to take it a step further still and have a matching system like fare-matcher (<http://www.cliki.net/fare-matcher>) based around quasi-quoting. If you write all your code this way, you can go a long way towards eliminating dependence on the specific data structures you use for representing s-expressions. Right now I suspect you can go _all_ the way, and that it's a viable strategy for making Parenscript self-hosting without adding runtime support for car/cdr to JavaScript.

Speaking of runtime libraries, I think it's an implicit assumption you made already, but if you want to be like Coffeescript or Parenscript, you obviously need to avoid those.</comment></comment>


Network of 75 Million Neurons of the Mouse Brain Mapped for the First Time - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2014/04/14/network-of-75-million-neurons-of-the-mouse-brain-mapped-for-the-first-time/ <comment><USER2> Like its artificial neural net cousins, I feel like black-box approaches are generally weak for studying intelligence. Programming a complex model is relatively simple, given decades of neurobiological research. But running this brain, absent a physical embodiment or model simplifications, offers few lessons about the nature, structure, and form of intelligence.

The purpose of a brain is to control homeostasis, motor, and perception functionality. Without a rich world simulation, the brain is just an isolated processor. By modelling at the neuron level, the only inputs can be at the neuron level. That means you have to physically model the entire mouse's body to connect all the inputs.

Even if you had a realistic body simulation, you also need to run the system for an extended period of time. Intelligence is an emergent behavior, and it needs time to work and learn. Since you have to model every single neuron firing at the same time, the speed at which you can run this model is unreasonably slow.

I feel like approaches which slowly build a system of models, each of which simplifies the function of a particular neural region to something computationally tractable is the more realistic approach. In doing so, you develop models which reveal the structure of intelligence.

<comment><USER3> That's a very cool way to think about it. Kind of like aliens finding my Core i7 CPU and announcing they had replicated its transistor network ... except for all they can do is run power to it and they have no idea how the RAM, GPU, or any I/O works.

You have to start somewhere though.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree with this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excuse the plug, but I'm Tim Ragan the CEO of TissueVision. We're the MIT startup who developed the microscope technology responsible for all the mouse brain images in the Allen Connectivity map that you see here.

We're thrilled to have been a part of this groundbreaking project. If you're excited about this sort of science too, drop me a line. We're hiring talented developers who can push not just the microscope technology but also the super cool bioinformatics just waiting to be mined from these and other projects.

Tim

<comment><USER6> Wow just wanted to say thank you for developing this technology. From your white paper [1] I can see how serial two-photon tomography is a huge leap in imaging and a crucial platform tool for the kind of ambitious large-scale surveys we badly need.

I can see too how your main challenge is going to be registration/segmentation on such huge datasets but there's plenty of ML/computer vision work and talent next door in Cambridge. Maybe pair-up or present a poster during the incoming New England Machine Learning day at Microsoft Research this May 13th? (Poster deadline April 25) [2]. Good luck with your recruiting!

[1] [http://www.tissuevision.com/nihms344616.pdf](http://www.tissuevision.com/nihms344616.pdf)

[2] [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/events/neml2014/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/neml2014/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It says the data's available at [http://mouse.brain- map.org/](http://mouse.brain-map.org/)

Is there a torrent available?

And what is the probability my ISP will cut me off for downloading 1.8 PB?

For that matter...I guess I'd need to buy ~600 3 TB hard drives to store it...that would cost $60,000. Plus networking and servers...eep...

Why is it so big?

Suppose you have 75M neurons where each neuron has on average 1000 weighted connections with other neurons. Then you would need 4 bytes per connection to store the address and 4 more bytes to store the weight, for a total of

        (4 + 4 bytes) * 1,000 * 75,000,000 ~ 600 GB

This back-of-the-envelope computation is off by over three orders of magnitude. What gives?

<comment><USER8> The data they're talking about isn't anything like that at all, it's actually micron-resolution 3D scans. Here's the abstract of the paper:

>Comprehensive knowledge of the brain's wiring diagram is fundamental for understanding how the nervous system processes information at both local and global scales. However, with the singular exception of the C. elegans microscale connectome, there are no complete connectivity data sets in other species. Here we report a brain-wide, cellular-level, mesoscale connectome for the mouse. The Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas uses enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP)-expressing adeno-associated viral vectors to trace axonal projections from defined regions and cell types, and high-throughput serial two-photon tomography to image the EGFP-labelled axons throughout the brain. This systematic and standardized approach allows spatial registration of individual experiments into a common three dimensional (3D) reference space, resulting in a whole-brain connectivity matrix. A computational model yields insights into connectional strength distribution, symmetry and other network properties. Virtual tractography illustrates 3D topography among interconnected regions. Cortico-thalamic pathway analysis demonstrates segregation and integration of parallel pathways. The Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas is a freely available, foundational resource for structural and functional investigations into the neural circuits that support behavioural and cognitive processes in health and disease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> They seem to be coming up with great work there. Unfortunately, thousands of neuroscientists who have been sharing huge funds the past decade couldn't come up with a big project like this one, it had to take private initiative to map a mouse. To me this shows how badly allocated funding sets the bar too low for most neuroscience teams.

And for those who say that this is not a big deal, it actually is a very big deal. Not only for the connection map of the brain, which may or may not lead to simulating a brain (we are far from that yet), but because we can analyze the distributions of connections and their weights to infer possible functional roles.

</comment><comment><USER10> All of the data is available through a well-documented API: [http://www.brain- map.org/api/index.html](http://www.brain-map.org/api/index.html)

Fully documented with plenty of examples and relevant white papers.

</comment><comment><USER11> _" It's hard to comprehend how, in this age of advanced science, experts don't know more about how the brain works. But it has a vastly complex structure."_

Yes, we have a map of 75 million thingies and how they interact in some ways ... but we don't really know _what_ even the interactions of just two neurons "really mean," which parts of their many interactions are the important ones, how they change over time and so-forth.

It does we humans a lot time to figure what an artifact from an alien human civilization does, even a fairly simple one - and that figuring generally involves something like figuring out the "blue print", the "purpose", the "programming" and so-forth of such an artifact. These are all analogies with our own intentional processes.

"Figuring out" the brain even as if it was a human-created artifact seems immensely hard. Yet like DNA, the brain isn't human-created or created at least-all. _It just happened,_ in ways whose understanding will clearly take a lot of unraveling to really understand.

Not sure where I'm going with this aside from awe of the challenge.

<comment><USER12> Pretty much _all_ human brains, that I know of, were created by humans.

<comment><USER13> I guess they meant to say design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those of you with institutional access: [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v508/n7495/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v508/n7495/full/nature13186.html)

</comment><comment> s-macke What is your guess about the amount of memory needed to save a human brain. I mean all necessary information to save the personality. The article mentions 98,000 petabytes. But does this contain everything?

In Wolfram alpha and Wikipedia you can read, that the storage capacity of the human brain is around 2-2.5PB.

When I estimate it assuming 10^14 synapses and 24 bytes (weight, connection info, etc.) for each synapse, I come close to 2PB.

<comment><USER15> The article lists 1.8P for a brain with 75 million neurons. Unless I've misplaced my zeroes, that's over ~20M per neuron, which seems much higher than I'd expect.

<comment><USER16> A neuron is a lot more complicated than you would expect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wish I'll be able to understand how the brain really work before dying. I have the feeling that a deep understand of the brain will open scary and amazing opportunities in AI.

</comment><comment><USER18> Summarizing previous points, a big criticism of studies like these is that they don't have a huge potential to unearth real understanding of real neural networks. The suggestion is to figure out the 302 neurons in [this little worm]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans)) before attacking problems orders of magitude more difficult, like mouse and human brains.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is it just me or people actually think it'd be even cooler to have a visualization like the first image?

How do they actually know they have mapped everything right? How do they test that?

</comment><comment><USER20> For once I find the use of the "Singularity Hub" domain for mirroring a news article entirely acceptable. Whole Brain Emulation for mice would be a big step towards hyperintelligent lobster-ems, and from there it's only a short step to killing all humans and spawning a Matrioshka Brain of capitalistic rational agents that have optimized their consciousness, subjectivity, and humanity away as market inefficiencies!

</Accelerando references>

</comment><comment><USER21> two questions for someone more familiar with this area:

1\. what are the immediate applications of having such a dataset? either for the mouse or the brain?

2\. once we have the map, will we also have the technology to identify precisely what neurons are lighting up and how information is travelling during certain actions / responses? in short how far are we from a green / yellow / red Google Maps style traffic map for the brain?

<comment><USER9> 1\. There are some people who claim to make whole-brain simulations based on earlier anatomical data [1,2]. I don't expect that anyone can make meaningful predictions by simulating the new map, because the neuronal models used are either rudimentary, or do not capture neuronal variability (also non-neuron cells may be involved). However, the analysis of the connectivity between various regions as well as intra-region may lead to accurate predictions about what many circuits "do".

2\. Functional imaging is advancing, but it's still very hard to capture large-scale neuronal activity. The current state of the art, calcium imaging can visualize activity from one focal plane, not too many neurons at a time, with slow time resolution, and only at the surface. I 'd say we are pretty far from that as it would require some amazing imaging technology.

1\. [http://www.izhikevich.org/publications/large- scale_model_of_...](http://www.izhikevich.org/publications/large- scale_model_of_human_brain.htm)

2\. [http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/](http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If the human brain was simple enough to be understood it would be too simple to understand.

We will glean bits and pieces but a detailed functional understanding of an emergent system as large, containing as much feedback (within feedback), and with as enormous a connectivity as any large (or probably even small) mammalian brain is far beyond any reasonable expectation ever.

</comment><comment><USER23> While this is a great first step, it is an amalgamation of images from over 1000 mice. Each mouse is going to have different connectome, though hopefully we can distinguish major features more clearly now.</comment>


Does the SunChips bag really break down in a Compost Heap? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cockeyed.com/science/compost_chips/sunchips.php <comment><USER2> I tried a similar experiment this summer. I put an empty SunChips bag on top of my compost heap for 3 weeks and didn't notice any degradation.</comment>


Implementing Function Spreadsheets (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ab87/31cd70495b715acd33ba683c94c47e88ea14.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm the co-founder of Calcapp, an app designer for the spreadsheet crowd which uses Excel-like formulas. I've had hundreds of conversations with potential users and I have a radically different view of what people find problematic with spreadsheets than I did at the outset. I thought that people would be clamoring for version control, unit tests, the ability to define custom functions and to prevent users from tampering with the formulas and data. Instead, people are mostly looking to craft better user interfaces with great usability on mobile and to get into app stores.

I've spent years building calculator apps for healthcare use, where the certification process essentially requires apps to come with unit tests, so I'm definitely biased by my past experience. I'm still somewhat surprised that more people aren't frustrated that spreadsheets make it so hard to build robust software.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see their point, but this is exactly what I'm trying every day to prevent at work (at least to a certain degree). Way too many people use complex spreadsheets for business critical tasks where other tools are better suited.

If the concept of shareable libraries of function sheets become a reality, we're likely to end up in a scenario where corporate IT maintains one software suite, while the end-users supposed to use that suite ends up using a bunch of spreadsheets instead, but with no quality control and a backup/VCS resembling <filename>.backup.xlsx, <filename>.working.xlsx, <filename> (copy).xlsx, etc....

<comment><USER4> And I have seen even more often IT systems that take years to build, are narrowy designed for a very specific purpose, and if anything changes, users end up reverting to spreadsheets to make up for the shortcomings of a system that would take many months, lobbying to management (who will always say it's not the right time to spend money on IT), inexplicably high budgets, etc.

Even very large corporations would grind to a halt if users had to solely rely on corporate IT.

I have yet to see a system that gives the power and fexibility to the users like Excel does, but allows for safe and efficient automation.</comment></comment>


Siemens electric air plane engine, how does it stack up to Tesla engines? - <AUTHOR> http://andreas.heiberg.io/blog/siemens-electric-air-plane-engine-how-does-it-stack-up-to-tesla-engines/ <comment><USER2> Why is this article posted? None of the numbers make sense. Tesla weight 32kg, Tesla Roster [sic] 1235 kg.

Well then...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah my bad, had that thought at 6 in the morning. I've updated it. My central question still stands though. Tesla seems to outperform the Siemens engine by quite a lot, why are did they make such a big splash?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The "BMW 7 Series" motor weights 2.3t? Or if it's not the motor weight but the car weight, a Tesla weights 32kg?

<comment><USER4> I think the table mixed motors and cars (first motors then cars), so you have a comparison car power/weight and motor power/weight

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do the 32kg include the inverter and reduction gear? I highly doubt they do. My guess is that with those included it weighs AT LEAST 100kg, probably closer to 200kg. I can't find any details on what Siemens includes in their weight figure. Even if all the numbers are comparable (I'm pretty sure they are not), the Siemens motor (apart from being flight rated) is able to continuously output 260kw, the Tesla motor isn't even close to that. I've personally tried it a few times on the Autobahn and the Tesla limits the output to about 100kw (displayed) after less than a minute of full throttle.

<comment><AUTHOR> +9001 this!

> My guess is that with those included it weighs AT LEAST 100kg, probably > closer to 200kg.

Interesting, that would put the power to weight ratio down to combustion engine levels.

I found this [http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s- weight/](http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-weight/) that supports your thought by putting it at 150 kg.

> I can't find any details on what Siemens includes in their weight figure

Well they don't have a transmission so that shouldn't be a concern.

> is able to continuously output 260kw, the Tesla motor isn't even close to > that. I've personally tried it a few times on the Autobahn and the Tesla > limits the output to about 100kw (displayed) after less than a minute of > full throttle.

In did try to correct for this sort of thing by picking one of the lower kW ratings for the Tesla. I was not aware it was that drastic. If we account for this the Tesla is almost in Honda accord territory. That's rather disconcerting given Musk citing figures like the ones I outlined. [https://youtu.be/PULkWGHeIQQ?t=41m30s](https://youtu.be/PULkWGHeIQQ?t=41m30s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why are we comparing motors to whole vehicles?

Plus the tesla motor isn't flight rated

<comment><AUTHOR> See other comments I had it mixed up for sec there.

What's the difference between a flight rated motor and a no flight rated one mechanically? Why is the comparison between Tesla and Siemens engines unfair?

<comment><USER4> > What's the difference between a flight rated motor and a no flight rated one > mechanically?

\- A crapton of certification

\- Increased reliability

\- Some materials may be different for weight purposes

\- They also have different power/torque characteristics, also depend on the type of propeller used (is it a constant speed propeller?)

<comment><AUTHOR> [This]([https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/motor- rpm-155-mp...](https://forums.teslamotors.com/forum/forums/motor-rpm-155-mph)) does suggest that the RPM of 18.000 is quie different than the 2.500 mentioned for the Siemens.

I do think the figure of 32 kg for the Tesla motor includes the fixed gear though. So I don't so why that would be of any concern.

idk I still don't understand where the unique ability of the Siemens engine is. Obviously not the power to weight ratio. Not certification as it's still in development.

As for materials and power/torque I have no clue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Surely the problem is not the engine weight but the battery weight.

<comment><USER8> Saving weight anywhere on an airplane is a win. The new engine claims to have more power output than other engines of the same weight.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah exactly, but given the numbers, it doesn't seem to outperform Tesla's engines? Perhaps they're also taking in to account the power usage as battery weight is more significant in planes... idk would love if it someone could help me understand it better though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> don't forget that the power available to the Tesla motors decreases as the battery is used up. Seems odd, but as usable stored power decreases you are not able to pull as much from the battery anymore.

then there is that whole bugaboo of battery weight.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is this different in the Siemens engine though? Is that why they say "delivers a __continuous __output of about 260 kilowatts " emphasis added. I guess all that means is that they're really able to deliver more power than advertised on a full charge?</comment></comment>


Masaya Nakamura, Japanese arcade pioneer, has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-30/japanese-arcade-pioneer-father-of-pac-man-has-died <comment><USER2> I still loved the fact that I was a kid who played in a bowling league and the arcade was always mind blowing. First mind blowing games were Asteroids and Space Invaders for me. Those games were a ton better then the other games. Then Pac Man and Donky Kong took it to a whole new level. It was a magical time and nothing at home could match it. Personally I liked Mrs. Pac-Man more.

<comment><USER3> The most amazing thing from that time for me was the first time I heard Defender, let alone saw it. The sound of those Williams games is as memorable as the visuals and gameplay.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. There was definitely a characteristic "Williams sound collection" that was common across many of their video games (Joust, Defender, Robotron 2048, etc.), and pinball machines, too (e.g. Gorgar). You didn't even have to turn around - you knew a Williams game as soon as you heard it. Personal favourite = Joust respawning sound.

<comment><USER5> Robotron's sound on the actual machine is overwhelming even today. And the amazing color splash between every level is absolutely entrancing/mesmerizing.

<comment><USER6> Want to know the best part? Nearly all of those signature sounds were generated _algorithmically_ by the processor on the sound board.

The main program would feed some values into a series of feedback loops and shifts to generate the waves before pushing them out the DAC. Game programmers would just play around with various vectors until they found something that sounded interesting.

The whole shebang ran in 2KiB of ROM firmware and 128 _bytes_ of RAM. At 894 kilohertz.

This dude reverse engineered the 6802 code and translated it to C#. Pretty amazing:

[http://www.lomont.org/Software/Misc/Robotron/](http://www.lomont.org/Software/Misc/Robotron/)

Next time on our show we'll talk about the magic of palette cycling. Jarvis still uses this on his games to this very day. Kind of his signature now, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Toru Iwatani made make pac-man. Masaya Nakamura is the founder of namco. Why am I seeing a blatant wrong headline all over the news?

<comment><USER8> If they used the correct headline, normal people wouldn't click. Normal people don't know what Namco is.

<comment><USER9> If they do not know what Namco is, I'm not sure they would be interested in him. Now everybody in the comments is talking about PacMan. Namco made/makes a lot of other great games worth talking about.

<comment><USER10> Absolutely. Particularly the early 80s. Many of those games filled too many childhood hours to count. Ironically, I didn't like Pac Man so much (back then or today), though I recognize it as being a great game and understand why it would appeal to many.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Please note that this is not Toru Iwatani, who designed Pac Man.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is the golden age of arcade gaming over? I can't remember going into an arcade psyched about playing any game. It's all dance pads, racing games and FPS. Frogger, Pac-man, Gauntlet, Tetris, Mortal Kombat, Warlock, those were exciting games. Maybe it's just the gramps in me yelling about the kids on my lawn.

<comment><USER13> It's been over for a very long time. You can still find the 'classics' but you really have to hunt for them. To find them all in one place is truly unusual these days, as they are referred to as 'retro arcades' and most cities don't even have one. My son thinks of them as old-fashioned.

Hard to wrap my head around that sometimes, but it is what it is.

<comment><USER14> If you're in NY region/Philly look for Barcarde - its a chain - they have all the classics. eg [http://barcadebrooklyn.com/games/](http://barcadebrooklyn.com/games/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember the local Team Electronics used the Pac-Man on the Atari 8-bit computers (400/800) to show how much better it was than the Atari 2600.

I will remember Pac-Man as a game I put way too much time into. I will remember it fondly along side Wizard of Wor, Time Pilot, Mr. Do, and Sinistar.

<comment><USER16> Amazing really that the 2600 port was a total mess while the 400/800 port was widely regarded as one of the best arcade conversions of the day. It always surprises me that the 2600 is remembered so fondly in popular culture while the fantastic Atari 8-bit home computers have faded into obscurity vs. contemporaries like the C64, Apple II, Spectrum et al.

<comment><USER17> True. The commercially available Atari 2600 Pac-Man was not a visual treat. And that is an understatement. The lead developer for Pac-Man at Atari considered it a rushed effort.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac- Man_(1982_video_game)#Rece...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac- Man_\(1982_video_game\)#Reception)

Since then, however, some hobby developers have taken another swing at Pac-Man on the 2600. The 400/800 port still holds the crown but the following is an impressive difference in my opinion:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3mIWzwrZk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA3mIWzwrZk)

<comment><USER18> Wow, that is an incredible effort at reproducing Pac Man on the 2600. Kudos to the person who did it, DINTAR816, I wish they were around back in the 80's.

[http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/07/pac-man-on- atari-2...](http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/07/pac-man-on- atari-2600-receives-much-improved-version-by-homebrew-developer/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There is definitely something to be said for the time when video games were created by small teams of people instead of being huge blockbuster efforts.

<comment><USER20> Just like indie games today. The barrier to entry is lower than ever, with lots of high-quality engines available for free (or free to try), and big asset marketplaces.

<comment><USER19> Seeking recommendations!

<comment><USER21> Though still in early access, I kind of adore Catacomb Kids, and I'm even more of a fan after I looked up one of the GDC talks [1] of the creator he mentioned in his blog [2].

[1] [http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021877/Constructing-the- Cataco...](http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021877/Constructing-the-Catacombs- Procedural-Architecture)

[2] [http://catakids.tumblr.com/](http://catakids.tumblr.com/)

I'm not affiliated, and I'm not saying there aren't others that may be worth your money more, but I am absolutely convinced that he has the heart and mind in the right place when doing this, and it really shows. I'm hopeful to see where it will go and what he'll come up with after it's finished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> He can finally realize his dream of being a ghost chasing Pac-Man.

</comment><comment><USER23> I understand the Inuit have many words that translate into English as 'snow', same for Aramaic languages and 'sand'. So it stands to some reason that those cultures have a deeper understanding of those things even if they just simply assigned shorter symbols to things that can be described in any other language "soft snow", "sand that drifts and collects behind bigger stones", and so on. But because these symbols exist they can be natively manipulated and reasoned about.

Hayao Miyazaki's work could not be replicated by an American and the same for Masaya Nakamura. Maybe another from the same culture that comes with it's unique cognitive patterns and world views. We should value our differences, it benefits us all in curious and unexpected ways.

<comment><USER24> You understand incorrectly: [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000405.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember getting a little handbook that had all the "patterns" you could learn to evade the ghosts. One of the top days of my youth was when I "turned over" Pac-Man by topping 1,000,000 points, I think I was on the seventh key (the little symbols that you could eat would progress through a series, ending with the key symbol which would then repeat ad infinitum).

People would gather around the game console if you were really on a roll, craning their necks to get a look...good times, good times.

</comment><comment><USER26> [https://soundcloud.com/user-12404636/pac-mans- death](https://soundcloud.com/user-12404636/pac-mans-death)

<comment><USER27> Would you provide a description along with the link?

<comment><USER26> Description: :(

<comment><USER27> Please don't be snarky about it. Leaving lone URLs as comments is not helpful to other members.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Game over <wa-wa-wa-wa-waaaaaa>

<comment><USER26> lol, "You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." is new for me...

[https://youtu.be/dScq4P5gn4A?t=3m30s](https://youtu.be/dScq4P5gn4A?t=3m30s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I played it a lot as a kid, and only recently learned how complex the ghost behaviours were (compared to what I beleived about them):

[http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding- pac-m...](http://gameinternals.com/post/2072558330/understanding-pac-man- ghost-behavior)

<comment><USER30> When I read that, I was impressed how _simplistic_ they were.

canonical article: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossie...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3938/the_pacman_dossier.php)

<comment><USER29> > compared to what I _beleived_

I thought they were moving mostly randomly, when I was a kid starting to learn programming.

<comment><USER25> I remember them moving randomly at first, then when they "caught sight" of you they would start tracking you. Except for the orange one, who would always go the "wrong" direction.

<comment><USER31> yeah, basically they have two modes. in chase mode they try to chase you in their own algorithms and in scatter mode they go to their own corners.

orange one is special, even in chase mode, it stops chasing you when it is close enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California Meteor Broke Speed Record for Atmospheric Entry - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/12/20/california-meteor-broke-speed-record-for-atmospheric-entry/

<comment><USER2> The title is misleading; as the actual article states, it was the highest entry velocity recorded for _recovered meteorites_. It's not atypical that your run-of-the-mill shooting stars enter at relative velocities of over 50 km/s; for example, the entry velocity of the objects in the well-known Leonid swarm is circa 72 km/s.

</comment><comment><USER3> End of world attempt gone wrong :)

<comment><USER4> The Klendathu will try again, but we will fight them...and we will win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How much warning did we have for this Nuclear sized explosion to happen over California? Why am I just now hearing about this after the event? Are these asteroids that unpredictable to track?

<comment><USER2> It's currently not feasible to track such small objects. Fortunately, there's no real need to - a kiloton-scale explosion high in the atmosphere is pretty much a non-event. Asteroids circa 10m in diameter impact the atmosphere approximately once per year - no casualties have ever been recorded from such events (actually, there are no human casualties from _any_ impact event in the recorded history.)

The real blind spot currently lies in the 100m scale - these could cause massive local damage on impact (cf. Tunguska) and there are no comprehensive tracking programs in place at the time. Such events are predicted to occur every 100 to 1000 years (but the probability of hitting a densely inhabited area is still extremely low.)</comment></comment>


Crypto Wars Part II – The Empires Strike Back [video] - <AUTHOR> https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7386-crypto_wars_part_ii#video <comment><USER2> Good talk! Kurt Opsahl's a great speaker. Here's YT for those who want faster loading: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BweBCNBxJxM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BweBCNBxJxM)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! I like YouTube for the simplicity of having a single watch later playlist I can queue it on and forget about it until later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great talk. During the talk Kurt mentions that Google was compromised at some stage by the Chinese government through their law enforcement access endpoint. Does anyone have any further details regarding this incident? Was it related to Operation Aurora? or another hacking incident? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora)</comment>


Just launched my new site: webmapp.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.webmapp.com social news with a local focus <comment><USER2> I can't find any content in my area (Toronto).

The site also feels too slow to use regularly.

But first and foremost, a simple sentence explaining the purpose of the website would do wonders for usability.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats on launching your site! Now my thoughts...

1\. You have no content and presumably just launched, but yet the browsing experience was obnoxiously slow. Why?

And

2\. I don't get it. Why are you using user submitted news for geographical locations? What value does this offer over going to the website for a local paper? Why would you rely on user submitted news for something that could seemingly easily be aggregated?

I'd like to strongly echo what the other two posters said - why do I want to use this site? I clicked around, and really couldn't get much of a feel for where you're adding value.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> it's a social news site with a very local focus.

alex_c - all the content is user submitted and it's only been up a few hours so check back later... ?

<comment><USER2> That's cool - that's why I said a short sentence describing the site would be great. I didn't know whether the content was supposed to be user-submitted, or aggregated, or local to the UK, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is it?</comment>


Tail Call Elimination - <AUTHOR> http://notes.eatonphil.com/tail-call-elimination.html <comment><USER2> Anyone able to reccommend a good graphical exploration of the lifecycle of a tail call recursive function? I understand it but I can't really grok what's going on throughout the whole lifecycle.</comment>


Veteran submariner on how sonar crews tirelessly hunt enemies they can't see - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/35603/veteran-submariner-on-how-sonar-crews-tirelessly-hunt-enemies-they-cant-even-see <comment><USER2> I'm not normally one to promote Hollywood but the film Greyhound (2020) with Tom Hanks does an _excellent_ portrayal of this technology (albeit slightly more primitive) in fighting German U-Boats in WW2. Well worth a watch if this interests you.

<comment><USER3> I was just going to say exactly this.

It's amazing to see them doing this with such incredibly basic technology.

\- Having to draw their ship and the submarine and constantly update its movement.

\- sonar guy is just looking at a screen that blips every now and then.

\- all communication by morse code - must be horrendously slow in the heat of battle

\- even communication within the ship is passed between multiple people so big chance of Chinese whisper type errors.

I don't know how realistic it is to real life but it gives you an appreciation for how smart and situationally aware the captain of the ship needs to be.

<comment><USER4> The book by C.S. Forester that the movie is based on is even more realistic, though the movie is pretty good.

To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job talking through the development of both the technology and organization of naval operations.

Not all communication was by morse code. We did use ship to ship voice radio, but it was a tradeoff. RDF allowed the enemy to triangular the position of the broadcasting ship, and (often) the enemy could overhear messages and infer some tactical details.

Sensor systems changed wildly throughout the war. Sonar improved markedly, and radar went from non-existent to able to identify altitude and distance to individual planes. The weight of the additional sensor systems and controls systems made some ships unstable, so we removed weapon systems from them.

Being a captain (or, heaven forbid) and admiral, was very demanding. Sleep was hard to come by, and the fog of war was intense. We had meaningful problems with friendly fire in night engagements even _with_ radar and radio communications.

<comment><USER5> _To really dig into it, Samuel Eliot Morison 's magisterial History of Naval Operations in World War II does a good job talking through the development of both the technology and organization of naval operations._

Man, that looks like a hard series of books to actually get a hold of. Either spending multiple hundreds of dollars for a used set, or struggle to find individual copies for $15+ each (a quick google search seems to show Vol 2 unavailable anywhere I looked).

<comment><USER4> I think there's a new paperback printing under way. Happily, it's not the end of the world acquiring them piecemeal, as each volume tells a coherent story and takes some time to read through!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh man, I worked on the software for these systems for 6 years :)

specifically the ones from this image [https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/message- editor%2F15972209...](https://www.thedrive.com/content-b/message- editor%2F1597220969469-lrh1k4rb4sv41.jpg?quality=60)

During the holidays we'd pump Christmas music through the sensors. We could do this since that's what the raw data is anyway -- sound. Made for interesting sonar displays as well as background music.

<comment><USER7> If you can say, what does the dev version look like, physically? I assume you don't have a dev ship? So same HW, just in an office? Or remote access to HW in a server room? Or is there a more desktop friendly form factor? Or all virtualized?

<comment><USER8> It would be fun to be that guy saying but dev/QA/prod should all look the same.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My father used to help design and build sonar of varying types for the Australian Navy (RANRL) when I was a kid. I used to love hanging with them all and even got to go on a submarine a few times. He had to be fully qualified for sea trials. I assume a lot of his work was adapted from other countries, but he still will not really get into details about what he did for them (70s and 80s). One little nugget he told me a few years ago: their entire UI/UX team were psychologists, engineers played almost zero role in that aspect.

</comment><comment><USER10> This[0] youtube channel is quite good at explaining how subs work

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew](https://www.youtube.com/c/JiveTurkeyCrew)

<comment> evil-olive The author of this article (Aaron Amick) is Jive Turkey, the same as the host of that YouTube channel [0].

His other articles for The Drive [1] are all worth reading.

0: [https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24638/retired- submarin...](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/24638/retired-submariner- turned-gamer-gives-amazing-video-explainers-on-sub-tactics-and-tech)

1: [https://www.thedrive.com/author/aaron- amick](https://www.thedrive.com/author/aaron-amick)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > The second step in classification requires analysis. It takes 30 to 45 > seconds to get a look at a new detection and discover what kind of engine > she's running, what kind of hydraulic pumps are online, and what screw blade > configuration she is using.

One can imagine ML making this job somewhat obsolete in the not-too-distant future.

<comment><USER12> That's if they aren't already.

Without having the data I can't try but I'd guess that Fourier analysis (or something a bit more clever to deal with noise e.g. Welch) would get you a lot of the way there even without invoking AI

<comment><USER13> This is not based on any classified information and sonar signal processing is not something i know much about, but cyclostationarity (and other higher-order statistical signal processing) does tend to be useful when processing signals that are generated by processes where there's multiple periodicities at work: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclostationary_process#Angle-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclostationary_process#Angle- time_cyclostationarity_of_mechanical_signals)

<comment><USER14> Signal separation techniques for characterizing cyclostationary signals are also more robust to noise. For example, analysis of the second order FFT can resolve the signals of incipient faults in rolling bearings because it can resolve the signals of the bearing components rotating (at a much lower frequency than the shaft) whereas simple FFT analysis would generally only measure the magnitude of the structural resonance of the machine, with spikes at the mains, rotational, and slip frequency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat related. I went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland last fall and did a tour of their submarine, the USS Blueback. Our tour guide was a retired Cold War-era submariner and he was _fantastic_. He gave us tons and tons of details about what life and working on an active sub was actually like. It felt like being there, and you could tell he delighted in being able to share his past with people.

<comment><USER16> I've been meaning to check it out, it's like right there too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This[0] is an interesting account of an accident with a submarine and how sonar played a role in the event.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision)

</comment><comment><USER18> Obviously, being a skilled sonarman would seem require a good physical sense of hearing (frequency range, etc.), but as as the article mentions, the ability to recognize patterns is also important.

Have there been any studies or analyses to see if there's also a correlation between skill at, say, music (relative pitch, etc.) or language (detecting subtle differences in accents, etc.) and sonar skill?

<comment><USER19> The best sonar operators have perfect pitch, except instead of saying "that is an A-flat but there is a ghost harmonic because the slot in the bridge for that string is too wide" they would say "that is a 415 Hz sound with up doppler. sounds like a 3 bladed prop with a notch on the second blade". It was pretty amazing to watch the really good ones in action.

<comment><USER19> They would go to a bar and comment that the ceiling fan was spinning at 23 rpm, and the compressor motor on the cooler had a bad bearing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to be a part of this when the tracking party was manned and I was engine room sup.

Using the computer tools For fusion was definitely interesting (90's X11 gore), with a large palette of modeling tools, but the coolest experience was being taught to time/range plot on paper by the mustang weps.

</comment><comment><USER20> Articles like this leave a bad taste in my mouth. They venerate the subject and participants involved and leave out the vast amount of detrimental effects they cause.

Whales, other marine mammals, and other wildlife are affected by these systems, and they are never considered. The Navy is currently still trying to increase its weapons testing off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, bringing further harm to the already decimated and declining southern resident orcas.

We have absolutely got to start understanding how our technology affects the world _and_ making changes.

<comment><USER19> The systems described in this article are "passive". They are simply listening to the sounds around them. This is much more common for submarines than "active" sonar - which ensonifies the water around you and then you listen for echos. It is those loud pings which can threaten or frighten wildlife. However they are also like holding up a big lit sign that says "there is a submarine here!" \- and the whole point of submarines is stealth. They say that if you hear a ping from a submarine, it is too late - there is already a torpedo heading your way.

source - used to be a sonar tech

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've heard the sonar ping from a submarine is so powerful that it will kill you if your a diver near the sonar dome.

<comment><USER22> 235db! Apparently also kills wales and dolphins.

[https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/93222/could- subm...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/93222/could-submarine- sonar-kill-a-diver)

<comment><USER23> Keep in mind that's likely not related to the dB sound pressure level in air that we're all familiar with. dB is a logarithmic ratio to pressure to a reference. In air, that reference is 20µPa, acoustic pressure in water typically uses a different reference (1µPa). There is also an adjustment of 36 dB to account for the higher impedance of water. So 235 dB in water is roughly 173 dB SPL -- still loud, but many orders of magnitude lower.

[0] [https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/acoustics.htm](https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/acoustics.htm)

<comment><USER24> This is what you can expect [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmyZYYR7_s&t=90s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCmyZYYR7_s&t=90s)

This diver was near a sub base for training.

<comment><USER22> Comments say this was very likely not a sub's sonar.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's tax strategy aims at low-tax states and nations - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0#h[]

<comment><USER2> The article does not contain the word "hedge", and contains "fund" only in the phrase "moved funds from one part of the company to a subsidiary overseas". It does not contain the word "biggest", and contains "largest" only in contexts that have nothing to do with any sort of fund.

The article does not say anything even slightly like "The world's biggest hedge fund is managed by Apple Inc.", the current title here on HN. It is about how Apple allegedly avoids paying taxes.

<comment><USER3> That one doesn't. This one does:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-owns-the-worlds- largest...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-owns-the-worlds-largest- hedge-fund-2012-10)

<comment><USER4> That title is sensational. The author cleary doesn't know what the difference between a hedge fund, asset manager and cash management is.

It is likely that Apple's Braeburn Capital does "hedge" some risk, but it is unlikely that if they were a stand alone entity which was investing other people's money that anyone would call them a "hedge fund".

It is more likely that they are mainly long "buying assets, not shorting them" and that they invest with various asset managers who also reduce risk.

They also probably have a private equity arm (venture capital) and invest in other securities.

At the end of the day, they are not a pure hedge fund no matter what, and are likely not even a small part hedge fund.

(Keep in mind, I don't have any problem with hedge funds, they play an integral part in finance, but that is a discussion for a different post)</comment></comment></comment>


The Billing Customer Portal - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/billing-customer-portal <comment><AUTHOR> I'm thankful to Stripe who's here doing more than we expect them to provide, but which will prevent so many SMBs to avoid spending engineering or support time on that.</comment>


The Risks of Homeschooling - <AUTHOR> https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/05/right-now-risks-homeschooling <comment><USER2> Can kids be abused at home? Yes, they can, and they sometimes are. Can they fail to get a good education there? Yes, they can, and they sometimes do.

Can kids be abused in public school? Yes, they can, and they sometimes are. Can they fail to get a good education there? Yes, they can, and they sometimes do. At higher rates than at home? Plausibly, but I have no data.

But all the outrage (at least in this article) is toward the possibility of abuse at home, and inadequate education at home. Where is the outrage for the possibilities of the same issues at school?

But sure, prohibit homeschooling, because that will fix all of these problems. (This is the land of the free, and prohibitions are how we roll.) But you know, maybe we ought to prohibit public school while we're at it. Same logic, after all.

<comment><USER3> That was my first thought too.

So kids have to go to school to be saved from abuse but then they get to go home after school?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was wondering when the long knives would come out for homeschooling now that so many people are giving it a try, even if by force.

Who, having been a product of public schools, defends our current system and it's incumbency?

I love how the graphic shows a homeschooled kid locked up. The reality is you could spend 2 hours homeschooling a day and accomplish more than 8 hours at a public school, and your child can go out and be free. The ones stuck in regimented school hours are truly the ones behind bars.

Public education is extremely important, but that doesn't mean public schools aren't cruel babysitting centers where teachers spend time focusing on the 10% of the troubled students which consume 90% of the resources. It's a challenge to even suspend disruptive and violent students these days[1].

The idea that it's important and it needs serious reform can and do coexist.

1\. [https://edsource.org/2019/california-to-ban-pushing- students...](https://edsource.org/2019/california-to-ban-pushing-students-out- of-school-for-disruptive-behavior/617326)

<comment><USER5> > I love how the graphic shows a homeschooled kid locked up.

And not just locked up, but locked up in a house made of books while the other children play outside. And the books are Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Bible. With Arithmetic misspelled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Something ought to be done" sure is a sinister "we're coming for you" warning as any. As other commenters have pointed out, this is a shill article, on par with "Hairdresser with PHD wants cutting your hair at home to be regulated or banned".

</comment><comment><USER3> > But it's also important that children grow up exposed to community values, > social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and > tolerance of other people's viewpoints," she says, noting that European > countries such as Germany ban homeschooling entirely and that countries such > as France require home visits and annual tests.

Can't imagine nothing more invasive than the state preventing parents from educating their own kids.

Annual tests just make it so you teach to the test and standardize

<comment><USER7> French here, having homeschooled my kids some years ago.

In France education is mandatory until 16yo. But you can choose to do it at home as long as you tell it to the city and Education nationale (which is state school administration)

Never heard of a year exam (apart from the mandatory ones around 11 and 17 yo) but you (in theory, sometimes they don't) get a yearly visit from an Education nationale inspector to check if you are doing right and the kids are not left too behind the cursus.

They have the power to force your kids back to school, but I've never heard it happens to anyone in our (close) community

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how advances in online teaching will affect homeschooling.

One thing I'm not sure about is the perspective that public education prevents child abuse. There are probably other more cost-effective ways to do that than with the current school system.

</comment><comment><USER9> This reads like it's out of an Ayn Rand novel. I was unschooled for all but five boring years of my childhood. Maybe they are pissed that homeschoolers are much more likely to get into Ivy Leagues than mediocre legacy candidates. Few modern systems are more teleological, evidence lacking and abusive than the education system. The only thing that matters are engaged mentors and low student ratios. That applies to everyone, school, homeschooling or otherwise. If we can't find a way to have more engaged mentors and lower ratios, school will continue to destroy value and waste everyone's most impactful years.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, all of the comments on HN so far and all of the comments on the article's website say more or less that the article is terrible. Is there any merit to the article's claim that homeschooling should be more regulated?

<comment><USER4> Ask yourself "Do I want homeschooling to look more like public school, or do I want public schools to look more like home schooling?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wish Bartholet had written TFA, rather than subjecting us to this ham-handed repetitive "Bartholet argues" formulation. If this were an essay written by an academic, we could hold its reason and argumentation to some sort of standard. Like this, the reader is just supposed to assume that the sole source for TFA is just correct about everything.

It seems unsurprising that a professor of child protective servicing would be in favor of increased interference by child protective services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the referenced paper by Bartholet [0] and its abstract [1]

FWIW, I find the premise to be rather outrageous. However I submitted it to HN in the hopes of a lively discussion. She does actually make some valid points, although her suggestions seem to be a prime example of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

[0] [https://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/62-1/62arizlrev1.pdf](https://arizonalawreview.org/pdf/62-1/62arizlrev1.pdf)

[1] [https://arizonalawreview.org/homeschooling-parent-rights- abs...](https://arizonalawreview.org/homeschooling-parent-rights-absolutism- vs-child-rights-to-education-protection/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If parents can provide a better education to their child why would they ever want to settle for the standard?

</comment><comment><USER12> Abuse? Authoritarian? That's always possible. School can be just as toxic, and useless. Schools obviously don't prepare children for participation in democratic society, because schools are designed to instill respect for authority, conformity, and to crush independent thinking. Schools prepare children for capitalism and consumerism.

Read "The Six Lesson Schoolteacher" by John Taylor Gatto. Or any of John Holt's books. Or "Deschooling Society" by Ivan Ilich. Then decide.

[https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html](https://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html)</comment>


Show HN: Learn about a Watsi patient every time you open up a tab - <AUTHOR> http://www.donatetab.co/ <comment><USER2> This way I'll get emotional each time I open a new tab. I also didn't know about Watsi before coming across your plugin, seems like a really interesting idea!

I also noticed that the "%" symbol is on the wrong side of the numbers.

Anyway, good luck with the addon. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for checking it out! And nice catch on the % symbol -- fixed that. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great, I'm sure Watsi would love it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love Watsi. I added the extension.

<comment><AUTHOR> Watsi is great -- thanks for the add!</comment></comment>


Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+ - <AUTHOR> https://joindiaspora.com/posts/12865334 <comment><USER2> For a website called JoinDiaspora, I'm surprised I can't find out how to join Diaspora from the homepage.

<comment><USER3> Diaspora has been a comedy of such errors for the decade it's existed.

<comment><USER4> _Diaspora has been a comedy of such errors for the decade it 's existed_

I think I had a Diaspora account in like 2011... Then they announced they were blowing away everyone's account to redesign the database or something... Never bothered with it again.

<comment><USER5> I wish I had been able to convince the guys to use a relational DB from the beginning instead of Mongo. Turns out a social network is full of relational data - but my buddies were too excited by new tech, and made a decision based on "cool"ness that hurt themselves in the long run.

However, it's still impressive what four guys at the end of their college careers were able to build with no professional experience whatsoever. (Though it took me a full week to convince them to use a framework, Rails, instead of hand-rolling everything around a custom EventMachine loop... The loop never even worked, but it was "cool". Give me boring and powerful any day.)

I think the biggest missed opportunity here was that an advisor of my own suggested to me that they really should leverage SMTP and build a better experience on top of that. An advanced mail client with social network-style features and presentation, and an obfuscation of the "pod" concept (do users really care which one you're on?) could have been a smash hit and could have had fallback design to allow non-network-members to still be included as leaf modes in the Diaspora social graph. I couldn't wrap my head around any of this at the time, so they never heard even a whisper of the idea. My bad!

<comment><USER6> > Though it took me a full week to convince them to use a framework, Rails, > instead of hand-rolling everything around a custom EventMachine loop... The > loop never even worked, but it was "cool". Give me boring and powerful any > day.

Funnily exactly that choice was what made me reject the request to help with development early on.

Not building on SMTP was a wise choice in hindsight, given that it turned into a pretty monopolized protocol since then - most people have a hard time to get their mails delivered from a private server nowadays.

<comment><USER5> That's too bad. Their situation was that they were working in Pivotal's office, surrounded by extremely high quality Rails devs who were happy to give free help and advice.

Like I said, the EM loop never worked, and instead of spending weeks banging their heads on it, Rails allowed them to move forward onto their actual problem, instead of having to invent everything themselves.

I guess I don't know that much about SMTP still :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most successful decentralized communication system - email as it turned out, people would concentrated to large free provider like Google. Decentralized server does not protect privacy for normal user because not most people could handle owning their server.

The most success decentralized service is BitTorrent. It is decentralized and it is decentralized in client level. Though it also caused uncontrollable piracy, since it is too easy to spread any data using Bittorrent. I think a true decentralized social network to protect privacy should be a p2p app, not server to server federation.

<comment><USER8> Playing devils advocate here, but I also kind of believe this... There is no such thing as privacy in the social network. It is foolhardy to assume it is even possible. Even a real life social network relies on trust, trust that can be broken very easily and totally outside of your control. Maybe the answer is to accept that privacy isn't a real thing and stop sharing things, even in what you assume is a protected environment, that you don't wish to be public. I don't think there is a technical solution to "people can't keep secrets"

<comment><USER9> Sure but the real-life equivalent of that would be God telling Nike what kind of shoes you and your friend were talking about in secret.

<comment><USER10> No; the real life equivalent would be the the kid in class sitting between you and your friend opening the note and telling class what you said.

You asked the kid in class to pass the note. He did so freely. You assumed he wouldn't open the note, but guess what... he totally opened that note. And now he wants to profit off the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the technical challenges of handling an influx of dozens of new users?

<comment><USER12> I'm assuming your use of the word "dozens" is a joke, but if not, Diaspora can handle it very well. Their population doubled after Cambridge Analytica hit the news - and within a month or so they lost all those new users: [https://nerdpol.ch/posts/e8532ca04b2f013617bf52540061b601](https://nerdpol.ch/posts/e8532ca04b2f013617bf52540061b601)

Let's see if they can hold on to the current batch. Diaspora is actually quite usable and stable. I haven't dealt with any issues since I began using it. The docs and non-existent API suck, though.

<comment><USER13> Have you also checked other distributed/decentralized social networks? Curious about your experiences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think product names matter, and diaspora seems misnamed to me.

<comment><USER15> It's a bit of a downer.

> A diaspora (/daɪˈæspərə/) is a scattered population whose origin lies in a > separate geographic locale. In particular, diaspora has come to refer to > involuntary mass dispersions of a population from its indigenous > territories, most notably the expulsion of Jews from Israel (known as the > Jewish diaspora) and the fleeing of Greeks after the fall of Constantinople. > Other examples are the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the southern > Chinese or Indians during the coolie trade, the Irish during and after the > Irish Famine, the Romani from India, the Italian diaspora, the exile and > deportation of Circassians, and the emigration of Anglo-Saxon warriors and > their families after the Norman Conquest of England.

<comment><USER16> I agree that is would be nice if they had a more positive sounding name. But at least for the moment it seems to be quite fitting for the G+ users...

<comment><USER17> Note - I asked there a few weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18173269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18173269)

Currently I am using MeWe which is not federated etc. but is close enough to G+ (also, most of the communities I was following on G+ are there).

As expected, "normal people" who were apathetically following me on G+ like friends etc. (I refuse to use FB) have bern less than thrilled.

I suspect that Diaspora would have not improved the situation, but maybe I am wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How does Diaspora compare to Mastodon?

My naive impression is that Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter clone and Diaspora tries to be a nonprofit Facebook. Is that correct?

<comment><USER19> Mastodon is when you can't handle any one having an alternative option than you, so you log on to a twitter clone where you are the only person using it and are always right.

<comment><USER20> Or you don't want to be harassed by someone taking your conversations out of context then doxxing you and trying to ruin your life.

<comment><USER12> As was recently demonstrated, online mob harassment is very doable on Mastodon:

[http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible- place-...](http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right- now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/)

<comment><USER20> Beyond the fact that I don't really believe Wil is entirely innocent in his complaints, he simply had to change instances.

He also used his real name. In fact, he didn't really take any steps to protect himself besides moving to mastadon. Large instances, after all, simply function like an unmonetized twitter.

<comment><USER21> > He also used his real name. In fact, he didn't really take any steps to > protect himself

I kind of think that's the point for a celebrity on Twitter or a similar site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The thing that Diaspora and Mastodon get wrong is their insistence on putting the instance in the username.

If I'm email@example.com because somebody else gets my preferred username, that's fine. I don't have to worry about the @somehost.somewhere site shutting down because the host got bored or lost their job or moved. So firstname.lastname@example.com is the last thing I want.

Whatsapp started with the idea of $1/year for an account. If I'm paying $1/year to mastodon.org so I don't have to worry about reinventing the people I follow, etc. that seems like a good deal.

Then instances can compete on features and/or price. If my friend Bob is running a server for his friends for free, maybe I use him. Or if instance A has spam-filtering while instance B accepts absolutely all federations and instance C translates everything into pirate-speak, well, I can pick from those.

If Bob's system is down a lot or he doesn't do spam-filtering or whatever, it'd be nice to have the option to pay $10/year or $25/year or whatever to be on another instance where it's a business relationship. Or maybe the instance does fund-raising twice a year because the site owner wants it less businesslike.

Running the central registry becomes a big responsibility but it also lends itself well to being replicated. And at some point 100,000 or 1 million users becomes $100,000 or $1,000,000 in actual revenue. Minus credit card processing, colo fees, etc. But still, there's a business there.

<comment><USER23> Centralized user names would also mean a single point of failure and authority which would defeat the main idea behind federation. It doesn't even solve the problem of owning you identifier as it is still externally controlled.

Censorship, surveillance even de-platforming are all back in the game then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ha, well if you can't beat em, you can just outlast em. :)

</comment><comment><USER13> Scuttlebutt, Gnu/Social and Mastodon are also worth checking out.

Comparison of many distributed (and some even decentralized) social networks: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking)

</comment><comment><USER25> It's funny because we also saw a slight increase in the pace of account creation on Movim as well [https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/), but I'm not sure if there is a real correlation.

But I'm really happy to see that more and more people are joining federated solutions better than proprietary centralized ones like Google+ :)

<comment><USER13> I was quite surprised after studying your main page that movim looks much more like a chat app than a social network. How comes you advertise it as social network? And assuming it is in fact a social network, what brought you to use the XMPP standard for that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have some former G+ friends who went to MeWe, some to Mastodon, and some to Twitter. I found Diaspora a pretty poor experience last time I was there, so I'm not really following the group that ended up there

<comment><USER27> My wife wasn't happy with the idea that friends of friends could see photos of her on Facebook and Facebook was regularly tweaking privacy settings (read: undoing my changes) so I punted and deleted my profile.

Frankly Google+'s circles seemed like the perfect solution by giving you explicit control over who sees what and further letting you tailor what you post to each circle.

Although I'm sorry to see it go at the end I only used G+ to keep in touch with fellow Ingress players. Between the fact that my Diaspora experience was similar to yours, slack is the go to for my tech interaction with k8s users and discord for gamers I'm not sure I really need another time waster anyway. I can't help but think some portion of the population will like me choose to replace Google+ with nothing at all.

<comment><USER28> I've taken myself off all social media (for a couple of years now) and feel better for it but do miss a bit of the social interaction with some of the groups I was a member of.

I have been tempted to start an anonymous (in as far as a made up name) Facebook profile to take part in those groups again but have resisted against it because one thing leads to another and you end up on the platform fully.

So for my tech interests, also using slack but I'd be keen to find some non- tech slack channels. They're a bit tricky to find.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've been using mewe for a year now and it has a really nice tech community. Great privacy focus too. Its nice that communities like these are able to sustain themselves lately

</comment><comment><USER30> I like it thus far, unsure if mobile is supported yet but if I can get the page on my android chrome browser than it should work

<comment><USER31> There are several Android clients, including Dandelion, found in the F-Droid repository. I think there's one in the Google Play store as well. No iOS clients, but the mobile site works quite nicely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> What's the stance of Diaspora on free speech?

Edit: I guess it's horrible, since the owner is based in Germany. Ouch.

<comment><USER33> What does it have to do with living in Germany?

I live in Berlin and we have the most vibrant community of privacy, security etc I've ever seen.

<comment><USER32> I am not happy with these new services because they are all hosted in the EU where there is no right to free speech, so to me they are not an improvement over what they are supposed to replace.

<comment><USER34> "where there is no right to free speech"

Yes, there is. At least in my experience as a happy EU citizen.

So want to cut the hyperbole and substantiate your claim?

<comment><USER35> Are you allowed to deny the Holocaust?

<comment><USER34> No, most EU countries have laws in some form that prohibit Holocaust denial. But as with any country that has the rights to freedom of speech, these rights are inevitably balanced and restricted by other laws.

This is a good thing, because while freedom of speech is important, the general wellbeing of the population and preventing people getting hurt is important as well. It is my belief for example that allowing racist remark under the banner of free speech, hurts more than it helps. It leads to an overall negative impact in the wellbeing of the population. I think the same balance was considered when prohibiting holocaust denial.

Question: why use a throwaway account?

<comment><USER35> I'm aware of this. You may think it's a good thing, and I'm inclined to agree that for a peaceful and civilized society, this balance is definitely a necessity. However, there may be many amongst us who think it's not a good thing. I don't prefer one over another anyway, but just pointing out that absolute free speech isn't a thing anywhere. I suppose the US comes as close to it as possible. This is my regular HN account.

<comment><USER36> I disagree, the US has plenty of restrictions on free speech, and the constitutional guarantees are no stronger there than in other places.

It's an image of itself that the US likes to project though.

<comment><USER37> There's very little speech that's actually illegal in the US. You can't tell outright lies about someone with the intention of hurting them professionally (although it's still a civil matter, and when I say "lies", I mean specifics, e.g. you can't claim in an article that someone dropped out of college if they didn't) and you can't say anything that has a high probability of causing immediate physical harm (e.g. you can't order somebody to shoot someone). That's basically it. When you start talking about publishing photographs or recorded audio, things get a bit more complicated because of copyright laws, and obviously CP is illegal, but strictly in terms of speech, online or off, there are almost no restrictions here.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Auto-Play Policy Changes for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/7734/auto-play-policy-changes-for-macos/ <comment><USER2> Thank god.

This has made visiting news websites—say, your local fox channel—nearly unbearable, between the auto-playing ads and content.

I can't imagine how people with small bandwidth go to sites these days without an ad blocker.

<comment><USER3> It's the `blink` tag of the 21st century.

<comment><USER4> 21st century? This has been an issue for about two decades--since browsers first gained the ability to play sound--going well back to the '90's.

<comment><USER5> Ah, auto-play MIDI files!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We're still talking about an environment that can execute practically any code. I'm sure the next thing advertisers will do is download 100 static images and animate them with scripts.

<comment><USER7> Alternately they've overlay a transparent play button over the entire pay so the moment you click it counts as a "user action" and the video plays. Seen it happen on a few sites. They combine it with something like forbes uses with a "quote of the day" interstitial.

<comment><USER8> Or an opaque overlay with ' click here to read article' that also triggers the video

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a very user-friendly feature, kudos to Apple for making the change. I hope other browsers follow in their steps.

I think every time I've encountered a website that autoplays video, it's been an annoyance. But maybe I haven't considered the topic with enough depth, what are examples of legitimate use-cases for autoplay video?

<comment><USER10> We use keyboard controls in our app (vidhub.co) to control media, looks like a Safari 11 user will no longer be able to just hit a key to start a video if Safari's "automatic inference engine" chooses to block us.

<comment><USER11> If it were up to me, they'd remove that ability altogether. Websites that screw with the keyboard are a huge pet peeve of mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Firefox has had it for a while at media.autoplay.enabled. Unfortunately, like this article notes, this arguably breaks web standards and some websites behave poorly as a result. YouTube requires you to stop the not-yet-started video and then start it again to get it to play. And Google Play Music just straight up doesn't work. Hopefully Apple publicizing this will cause website devs to support it better, and it can be presented to the user as a legitimate option instead of a hack.

</comment><comment><USER13> On one side, I can certainly understand why Apple went with this, even if it drives me nuts that Safari@iOS can't do inline play at all (because it prevents nice artistic stuff using a canvas overlaid over a video element, for example), even if the play action is user-initiated.

On the other hand it takes away a LOT of flexibility - seriously, I don't want to do 50MB GIFs for animated background or weird JS trickery when I can use a 2MB video for the same effect.

<comment><USER14> > ...it drives me nuts that Safari@iOS can't do inline play at all...

Safari on iOS can now do inline playback! Just add a "playsinline" attribute to your <video> element: [https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for- ios/](https://webkit.org/blog/6784/new-video-policies-for-ios/)

<comment><USER15> Also make sure to remove the audio track!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A shame they don't block silent view too. Motion is a distraction (which is why advertisers use it, as if being distracted was what I wanted).

This is why I mourned the death of Flash. Not installing flash made the web a much better place.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does this include animated gif?

If yes: then it's annoying.

If no: annoying ads turn into animated gifs.

<comment><USER18> If the video does not have an audio track, it seems that it will be allowed. However, as you note, animated gifs are still pretty annoying and I think it would be nice if they were click-to-play as well.

<comment><USER19> > However, as you note, animated gifs are still pretty annoying

I think that comment actually says disabling autoplay on animated gifs would be annoying.

<comment><USER20> I think the comment was saying 2 things: its bad because we loose GIF auto play facility and its bad because we will still have ads via GIFs.

So basically, its a no win move for the consumer.

However, my response would be to that would be: yes its bad if so, and if not, users can hopefully "throttle" its impact on our experience. IE. I would expect that the browser controls the parameters in which the GIF is "played" to maximize performance, or to suit user preference. E.g. Max number of frames, GIF size, looping etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How will this effect video backgrounds like Airbnb used to have?

<comment><USER22> I hope it breaks them. What a spectacular waste of bandwidth and energy.

<comment><USER15> Regarding bandwidth… what if the video is efficiently encoded to less than the file size of a high-quality PNG/JPEG (assuming the image was not optimized itself)?

Artifacts in heavily compressed video files are often more acceptable than artefacts in highly compressed still JPEGs, IMO.

<comment><USER23> Perhaps the correct answer is to have a solid color or similarly simple background. Aids in readability too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How does this affect YouTube, Twitch, Netflix?

<comment><USER25> They still have a "Play" button, no? It's possible there may be some whitelist as well.

<comment><USER26> FTA:

> Safari 11 also gives users control over which websites are allowed to auto- > play video and audio by opening Safari's new "Websites" preferences pane, or > through the "Settings for This Website…" option in the Safari menu

<comment><USER25> Right you have a way to manually whitelist sites on your own as well. But it wouldn't surprise me if that whitelist came preloaded with a number of legit video sites (netflix, youtube, etc...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any word on when this will get rolled out?</comment>


Logical Fallacy Finder - <AUTHOR> https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ <comment> tefo-mohapi Going to use this. Hilarious too.</comment>


Docker and Node Hello World Example - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/danawoodman/docker-node-hello-world <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a beginner at Docker but thought this could be useful to others looking to get started with Docker but are intimidated or unsure where to go. I distilled it down to the bare essentials. Being a beginner I'm sure I missed something so please post here or file a bug if something isn't clear or you see a better way of doing things. Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I didn't do anything drastically different than the official example so feel free to check it out instead: [https://github.com/enokd/docker-node- hello/](https://github.com/enokd/docker-node-hello/)</comment></comment>