Have Liberal Arts Degree, Will Code - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2014/03/13/have-liberal-arts-degree-will-code/?mod=trending_now_1 <comment><USER2> > If a 10-year-old can become an ace web programmer, why can't a liberal arts > graduate?

Most 10-year-olds can't become ace web programmers (well, given an infinite time horizon, maybe they can, but then they aren't 10-year-olds anymore.)

For, largely completely different reasons, most liberal arts graduates probably can't either.

Of course, some can (I think I'm a pretty decent programmer, and my degree is a BA in Political Science. Then again, I was a programming long before I got that degree -- I might have even been a 10-year-old web programmer, if not necessarily an ace one, if the web existed when I was 10.)

<comment><USER3> _I think I 'm a pretty decent programmer, and my degree is a BA in Political Science. Then again, I was a programming long before I got that degree_

I have a BA in English, but I've been programming since I was 7, starting with BASIC, then on my TI-82 in junior high, C in high school, Perl, PHP and Javascript in college. I work full time as a software engineer now, and I make a good living doing it.

<comment><USER4> On the same token, you could build cars your whole life... get a liberal arts degree... then say all LA's can easily become mechanics.

After all, what's easy for you is easy for everyone right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The biggest issue with the article is

"Last March, he enrolled in App Academy, a 12-week web development program with locations in San Francisco and New York, and found a job coding within three weeks of interviewing. In his new position as a web application engineer at Yola, a San Francisco-based website building company, Morrison says he earns considerably more than what he had made doing administrative work."

Same thing was happening before the crash of 2000, people would take a month long course and then get jobs based on that course. I ask everyone what is driving up the valuations, and to look critically into the future. As soon as the companies that have the large valuations (Twitter,Facebook,etc.) start to post negative growth you will see an exodus.

</comment><comment><USER6> I did this. My undergraduate degrees are in the humanities. I started programming in my late twenties. I also have kids. For anyone in the same spot -- it's not impossible, you'll just have to consistently put in hours to learn, and be open to criticism when you make the inevitable mistakes. That's probably true for most career paths.

</comment><comment><USER7> A more accurate title would be "Studied Humanities, Will Code". I have a liberal arts degree from Middlebury College where I studied Computer Science, so it shouldn't be too surprising that I will code (and do code full-time professionally).

<comment><USER8> Similarly, all the CS grads from Berkeley have BA's with lots of general education breadth requirements (EECS students have BS's).

<comment><USER9> If I could afford to continue and get a 4 year CS degree, I'd prefer myself to get a BA, or get a CS degree at a non engineering school.

<comment><USER10> At most LACs, you can't get a BS degree. With that being side, my experience with liberal arts CS education (at Wesleyan) is ironically that it was too much CS because "liberal arts is suppose to be self-enrichment and theory". We went into a lot of theory and math (e.g., functional language, language design, automata, algorithm proof of correctness) and even the "practicum" courses was fairly academic (information theory analysis on genomic data, cryptography) and not "web development" or "J2EE".

<comment><USER9> That goes back to the perpetual debate between applied and theory classes. I'm not sure if it has to do with LACs vs research universities or whatnot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a real pet peeve of mine, but "Liberal Arts" is not synonymous with "Humanities": [http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/liberal%20arts](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/liberal%20arts)

> College or university curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and > developing general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, > vocational, or technical curriculum. ... In modern colleges and > universities, the liberal arts include the study of literature, languages, > philosophy, history, mathematics, and science.

Computer science (as distinct from "programming" or "software engineering") _is_ a liberal art! As are pure mathematics, and natural sciences like physics, chemistry, or biology.

<comment><USER2> > Computer science (as distinct from "programming" or "software engineering") > is a liberal art!

Arguably, but a BS in Computer Science isn't a Liberal Arts degree, its a science degree that is named that to distinguish it from a Liberal Arts degree (BA, the "Arts" refers to Liberal Arts.)

Of course, if you have a BA in Computer Science, that _is_ a Liberal Arts degree.

<comment><USER11> I would argue that in most cases, the BA/BS distinction is a meaningless artifact of what credential your university happens to offer.

For example, MIT only awards BS degrees to undergrads, so you could major in French Studies or history and get a BS: [http://mitadmissions.org/discover/majors](http://mitadmissions.org/discover/majors)

In contrast, a school like Amherst only awards BA degrees, so you'd wind up with a BA in physics, chem or computer science: [https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments](https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments)

<comment><USER2> I think in most cases BA vs. BS is meaningful -- schools that offer only BS degrees have different kinds of core programs than schools that offer only BA degrees, and there are plenty of schools that offer both kinds of degrees, sometimes _in the same major field of study_.

<comment><USER11> I guess if a single school offers both degrees in the same field, with different requirements, that would be a meaningful distinction.

However, in my experience, it will still be a distinction without a difference, since very few employers would understand or care about it.

<comment><USER2> > However, in my experience, it will still be a distinction without a > difference, since very few employers would understand or care about it.

This presumes that the _only_ meaningful effect of a college education is a vocational certification that is presented to employers.

<comment><USER11> If we assume the primary goal of a college education is developing the ability to think abstractly and reason meaningfully about the subject at hand, then the BA/BS distinction becomes even less consequential.

If we presume the BA student has taken a few more electives in outside areas, and the BS student has taken a few more major-focus classes and perhaps more quantitative classes, it's hard for me to see that choice having a serious impact on a student's intellectual development.

At most, it's a signal about the type of person that student was when they choose their degree.

<comment><USER2> > If we assume the primary goal of a college education is developing the > ability to think abstractly and reason meaningfully about the subject at > hand, then the BA/BS distinction becomes even less consequential.

What if we assume that the primary goal of a _liberal arts_ undergraduate degree (BA) is that, and the primary goal of other types of undergraduate degrees (BS, BFA, BSL, etc.) differs for each?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do we really have 10-year-old "ace web programmers" running around?

<comment><USER13> Not 10 year old ace web programmers, but I have a friend who started coding PHP at age 10 and was doing serious freelance work (making as much as any other seasoned PHP dev) in high school.

Definitely not the same, but getting started at 10 and being proficient at 14 isn't unheard of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hum majors who take up coding are more than welcome to try,but they should be warned: programming is hard. It's easier than multivariable calculus, but there there ARE right and wrong answers, and you WILL come a point when you'll hit a wall and be frustrated, and you need to have the perseverance to get through those points. If this is to be your career you need to commit to a virtual lifetime of learning and growing.

Also, start with Python. I know some of you think it's neat to jump right in with JavaScript and make cool animations and dynamic web pages, but -- I'm from the future. You should start with Python.

<comment><USER15> I cam from History to IT. I can agree with this and still struggle with it at times.

<comment><USER14> Well, really, the only difference between people like me, who have been doing this for most of our natural lives, and people like you is that we've run into a bunch more walls and now act like it's no big d. But the initial frustration as a n00b can be killer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > If a 10-year-old can become an ace web programmer, why can't a liberal arts > graduate?

Brain plasticity. Next.

<comment><USER17> I've never found these "brain plasticity" arguments very compelling. I had no motivation or context for learning when I was young (0-20) and while I might have done well in school tests and read a lot of books, I don't think I really absorbed anything in any depth, or thought in any particularly interesting or challenging ways - I certainly never achieved anything which would have required so much willpower and focus as learning to program modern computers.

And now that I am older (mid-20s) and my brain is supposedly less plastic, but I have motivation, context and determination in abundance, I feel like I am really learning and developing for the first time in my life.

<comment><USER2> The fact that it is possible for a motivated 25-year-old to be better at learning something than the same person as an unmotivated 10-year-old does not refute the fact that human brain development is such that certain forms of learning are _much_ easier at 10 than at 25.

<comment><USER17> Neuroplasticity primarily relates to the evolved ability of young children to rapidly, _effortlessly_ acquire basic, evolutionarily critical behaviours - language systems and other core social behaviour necessary for tight social integration (and later various more complex but still critical secondary social behaviours) in a small hunter gatherer pack essentially - all picked up subconsciously from the social environment.

The important difference is that all of this acquisition is a result of tens of thousands of years of consistent natural selection. It's hard-wired because humans have needed these things, and children have needed them as fast as possible, for a long long time.

The things humans attempt to learn in modern times however (non-native languages, formal systems of logic, the ability to argue and reason in complex fashions, the ability to program complex systems) are completely evolutionarily unprecedented, and the result is clear: children are not able to acquire these behaviours effortlessly. They don't just rub off. Instead they (generally) require focussed, extensive supervision and tuition from humans that have already put in the hard work of mastering them.

So the relevance of neuroplasticity still seems small to me.

<comment><USER2> > The things humans attempt to learn in modern times however (non-native > languages, formal systems of logic, the ability to argue and reason in > complex fashions, the ability to program complex systems) are completely > evolutionarily unprecedented, and the result is clear: children are not able > to acquire these behaviours effortlessly.

At least in the case of non-native languages, while it may not be "effortless", every study I've seen has indicated that it is _much_ easier for children to learn them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find the alternate methods people use to become programmers fascinating (alternate as in "didn't graduate with a CS degree from a 4 year school when 21). I did something different than this article suggested-I used the Post 9/11 GI Bill to take almost every single CS course at my local community college.

<comment><USER18> Sounds like you made good use of the GI Bill. But were the classes necessary in helping you land the first programming gig?

<comment><USER9> I think so. I went to a rather large community college, and was able to get a wide diversity of coursework. Having all that exposure certainly helped, as well as a lot of programming on my own-having a repository of (what are now rather embarrassing to look at!) code samples I worked on in my spare time also helped. Having a paper credential (in this case an AA) also helps a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wrote a short essay on my experience with transitioning from the humanities to web design and development. In short, I think it can be done... and that there are even certain advantages and unique skills that a liberal arts degree provides... but ultimately it comes down to some innate skills combined with lots of hard work. Here is my full essay for anyone interested: [https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/d609c1770dd4](https://medium.com/this- happened-to-me/d609c1770dd4)

</comment><comment><USER20> Went with a BA in politics since young arrogant me got tired of the CS curriculum (why do I need to learn java? I can already make anything in PHP!) and politics was more interesting (and better demographics honestly).

So I've brushed up on my CS via online courses and enjoy a more educated/enlightened apathy toward modern politics.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Friedman says she doesn't regret majoring in English. She says her > communication skills help her explain work to less technical colleagues.

I wouldn't really agree with that, but whatever you need to justify your student debts.

<comment><USER22> You wouldn't really agree with what? That her English degree helps her communicate better, or that English degrees in general help people communicate better?

Oh, wait. You don't have an English degree, do you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As an additional data point, I was into systems/programming as a kid and so when I went to college I studied English hoping it would make me a more rounded person.

I currently do sysops professionally.

</comment><comment><USER24> The problem with this title is that in the reference, "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel", the character actually has something that's relevant to his travels.

<comment><USER25> Programming is writing.

<comment><USER26> Despite the flurry of Stunk&White analogies, I actually found the two activities to be quite distinct. I think in part because language is much more general (you could say "lose") and because programming exhibit concepts that are nowhere to be found in language (even at the "language" level, programming idioms have little to do with actual idioms).

<comment><USER27> Good developers also tend to have good communication skills (such as writing). There isn't a 1-to-1 mapping, but things like Strunk&White can give a lot of insight applicable to developers. One example is Strunk&White's idea of a style guide, a concept that all multi-developer software projects should implement to some degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm interested to see, as better systems for teaching coding develop, popularity and awareness of its accessibility builds, it begins to go mainstream, and the marketplace becomes more competitive and wages decline, is, will the oldguard agitate for economic protection?

Edit: From the sounds of things, it's going to be very interesting:

 _Dan Melton, deputy chief technology officer at Granicus, a San Francisco- based startup that puts government data in the cloud, has hired two students with humanities backgrounds from App Academy. He said he looks for those students because they're able to work better with other programmers and clients and understand the larger meaning of the work.

"We already have a lot of software whiz kids," Melton said. "We like to hire people who are interested in public affairs and civic engagement."_

Sounds like it's going to be quite the culture change.</comment>


Mattermark (YC S12) raises a $6.5M Series A to keep VCs in the know - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2014/12/16/got-startup-data-mattermark-raises-a-6-5m-series-a-to-keep-vcs-in-the-know/ <comment><USER2> @dmor:

First - congratulations to you and your team on the raise.

Second - a question: your last post on the topic from June 28th announcing your 2M second seed funding said that after 27 consecutive months spent pursuing some kind of funding, it was time for you to take a break from fundraising mode.

Given that was less than 6 months ago, it doesn't seem like you took much of a break after all :) Would you be willing to provide more insight and details re: what exactly changed?

[https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/mattermark-has- raised-2m...](https://medium.com/mattermark-daily/mattermark-has-raised-2m-in- our-second-seed-round-e93b20dc59b0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

After we announced the 2nd seed round the interest in us increased and we ended up raising more, and then when Brad Feld (at Foundry Group) offered to do the FG Angels syndicate on AngelList I figured "why not?" and I was curious to see the internal mechanics of doing one of those. So basically we raised because we've always be fans of "take money when you can".

By this point we had a ton of momentum in sales, had clarified our vision a ton in our month-long company retreat in August, and were not in a position of desperation for once. I felt like I should take heed of the old advice that "the best time to raise is when you don't need the money" so we did some analysis, had some coffees, and picked 6 firms to pitch. We committed to testing the market again.

This time, it worked.

This stuff is just messy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So is this just an aggregator of crunchbase/angellist/linkedin or some combination of scrapers and other sources?

<comment><USER4> yes basically.

i worked at a firm that used mattermark, datafox, etc. the amount of inaccurate, duplicate, and missing data was very high. all of these services are like a mashup of data sources that are not very good.

there's a reason bloomberg, thomson, etc. focus on public companies.

<comment><USER5> It is comical how often sources like crunchbase (and even the press) are wrong. Though it makes sense, private companies basically have no incentive to release any sort of data unless it plays to some narrative they are trying to create.

For example, the date the company was founded is often wrong in Crunchbase (it is reported as more recent than it actually was). Many companies raise money and don't disclose it for months (staying under the radar). Many acquisitions never publicly release the price (so the founders can claim it was a "success" regardless of whether it was).

It is just a tough space to be in to try to make something of the data that is available. Public companies are of course _much_ easier.

<comment><USER6> Data accuracy is important but sometimes the bigger problems to solve are discovery, advanced filtering, and readability. I've played around with Mattermark a little bit and I think it does a fantastic job in solving the later problems.

From a hacker's perspective you can do curl/wget, awk, etc to aggregate and filter data from various sources yourself. But to make the same tooling available to a wider audience is what gets you to the market. Dropbox is a solid example, for instance, that made rsync super simple to use for anyone.

<comment><USER7> > Data accuracy is important but sometimes the bigger problems to solve are > discovery, advanced filtering, and readability.

Discovery, advanced filtering and visualization are increasingly solved problems. Open source solutions like Elasticsearch Kibana[1] make it incredibly easy to analyze and visualize large amounts of data, and to do it better than many paid services.

For high-value commercial use cases, like those in financial services, data accuracy and completeness is all-important because your ability to identify the best opportunities and make good decisions is almost always proportional to your knowledge of the market.

Take a seemingly simple venture capital use case: I want to identify pre- Series A fintech companies in California and New York founded in the past 3 years that have raised between $100,000 and $1 million and last raised funds 4-8 months ago. If funding data and corporate information is incomplete or inaccurate, and/or funding events have not been properly categorized, the list of companies surfaced will likely exclude companies that meet the criteria, and include companies that don't meet the criteria.

For many use cases, it doesn't take many false positives or false negatives to render a data set effectively useless.

[1] [http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana](http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The VC industry seems like a tiny niche. But I feel like I've heard them talk about being a more general lead identification tool which has far more upside (ie, "show me all the companies in Seattle with at least 5 salespeople and at least $5m in funds raised").

<comment><USER3> A lot of the advice I have seen though is too take a niche industry and own it, then generalize. Its much easier to grab traction when you really know you exact sales targets.

<comment><USER9> The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money (tech-savvy, relatively easy-to- reach B2B market, decent margin on an individual sale, small total market size but acquirer-friendly and can organically grow into other areas of finance intel driven by customer development).

Raising $11.5M in total commits them to generalising though, and there's no shortage of competent competition in the market-data aggregation space.

<comment><USER10> "The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money"

At what scale and how long would that take? The VC/angel money allows you to move faster, take more chances and perhaps hire better and faster. And lose money. Important point.

Look at their pricing:

[http://mattermark.com/#pricing](http://mattermark.com/#pricing)

Then this:

"Today, Morrill's curiosity and her 27-person team's"

Imagine the payroll for those 27 people and how many subscriptions they have to sell with what is (for now) a niche product.

What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team?

<comment><USER11> > What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team?

Probably somewhere around $2mn - $4mn/year. That's a pretty big team for the amount of money raised to this point, they must be doing ok subscription-wise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations Danielle and team, really enjoy following along with your adventures via twitter and enjoy the daily newsletter from Mattermark. You're openness and candor is refreshing as well.

<comment><USER13> Congrats Danielle!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations! Y'all have had a wild ride so far, for being among the coolest and most practical companies in the data space

</comment><comment><USER15> Danielle seems like a great founder.

</comment><comment><USER16> congrats Danielle and Kevin (and team!), you guys are awesome :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats!</comment>


Single File, Editable Python Scripts with Dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://www.franzoni.eu/single-file-editable-python-scripts-with-dependencies/ <comment><USER2> It's virtually equivalent to virtualenv. Virtualenv creation, installation and activation can be scripted. Why shouldn't we use the real thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to use what you feel is good for you. But this makes a lot of sense (to me!) for simpler scripts. Imagine cron jobs or other "internal" scripts, maybe things that you launch on a cluster via ansible or other tools for periodic or one shot tasks... things like that.

Virtualenv is "stateful" \- you need a) to have it installed on the target system b) to deliver both your script AND the requirements.txt file c) to launch virtualenv d) execute your script via virtualenv.

Far more complex than just "run this script and you're done", right? If an "embedded virtualenv" functionality existed, something like

        import virtualenv
        virtualenv.install_requirements("asd==1.2.3")
        # from there, the software goes on with the requirements actually available

Then my snippet would make no sense.

Of course (but I don't know whether this was the real suggestion) I could evaluate using virtualenv (if available) instead of manually setting the sys.path. But I found that to be a bit more complex (virtualenv could actually be installed with a different Python interpreter since it allows the -p parameter, while pip is generally bound to each specific interpreter).</comment></comment>


Doing Business in..Sydney - <AUTHOR> http://www.sternopportunity.com/doing-business-in-sydney-1.1950429 <comment><USER2> I moved to Sydney from Darwin (a much, much smaller capital city) for 2 years to attend university. It was a profound culture shock. Sydney is a beautiful city to live in ... if you're rich. Otherwise, welcome to Western Sydney: mile after mile of drab, depressing suburbia.

The overcooked pretentiousness got up my nostrils too. Sydneysiders spend a lot of time congratulating themselves on how jolly marvellous Sydneysiders are.</comment>


Apple's Mistake - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder how much karma a bot could generate just by repost pg's articles periodically.

</comment><comment><USER3> whoops!</comment>


The Unfixable Bug - <AUTHOR> http://www.ilikebigbits.com/blog/2016/11/22/the-unfixable-bug <comment><USER2> Often when you can't find a bug it's because you've assumed something that is not, in fact, true. This is an excellent example. The author assumed he could see a red car on a green terrain. This is one reason pair programming, code reviews, or even just leaving and coming back to your own work can do wonders. People don't always make the same assumptions. In this case, another programmer who wasn't colorblind would have been able to point straight at the box.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's much more common than one might suspect. "Red-green color blindness affects up to 8% of males of Northern European descent." [wikipedia]

</comment><comment><USER4> This seems like a stupid mistake to make for someone who has colorblindness, especially after all the troubleshooting.

I do realize that's the point of the story, but I think it's a pretty pointless post. Just like this one I suppose...

TLDR instead of reading the post: code isn't always the problem, people can be stupid.</comment>


Show HN: Dedesign the Web 2 – Guess the website based on its wireframe - <AUTHOR> http://dedesigntheweb.com <comment><USER2> The placeholder hints at a name.something format so why is facebook.com incorrect? Also, after guessing Medium correctly, it seemed as though the image was out of sync with the input as it flashed the incorrect banner, telling me that it was something else.

<comment><USER3> I didn't recognize Medium as I never even knew it had a front page. I've always clicked through on article links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a bit promotional given the last answer (being the company who made the quiz). Any mods agree?

<comment><USER5> Indeed, it's one of many posts talking about some characteristic about well known sites where i can advertise some other sites because they share that characteristic (usually top 10 websites to do X).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I answer a question correctly (Chrome 37, OS10.9) both the "try again" and "correct" options show with the "try again" message covering the "correct" message, so it appears as though I answered incorrectly.

</comment><comment><USER7> This site displays that I'm incorrect when I'm correct. I started over several times trying to guess the url format they'd accept.

<comment><USER8> It was buggy but my score remained correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey guys, it's wikipedia.org, not wikipedia.com.

</comment><comment><USER10> How did you build the wireframes? Automatically? If so, that's impressive!

<comment><USER11> Sqetch [1] is listed in the credits, so I'm guessing done manually in Illustrator.

[1] [http://w3.eleqtriq.com/2010/08/sqetch-wireframe- toolkit/](http://w3.eleqtriq.com/2010/08/sqetch-wireframe-toolkit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It took me a while to figure out how to submit my guess at first as my brain automatically registered the header as a navbar and skipped over it.

</comment><comment><USER12> I guessed youtube.com for one of them, and the screenshot of the answer is youtube.com, but it told me that facebook.com was the correct answer.

<comment><USER13> Yea, this happened to me on all of them. I missed the first answer which was facebook (I know...), then all of the subsequent ones I answered correctly told me I was wrong and the answer was facebook. Though I still got the points. I'm thinking it has something to do with me allowing javascript after answering the first question, I'm not sure though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The site is super buggy; it's difficult to know what sort of input it's expecting, and banners were out of sync.

</comment><comment><USER8> This was tough. I'm ambivalently surprised and unsurprised at how the color scheme provides so much to the design.

</comment><comment><USER15> I guessed facebook and facebook.com and it said incorrect? Cool idea, but that execution tho...

</comment><comment><USER16> Ugh, speaking of UIs, this UI has a pest problem. Dedesign this site before promoting it.</comment>


Elon Musk: Predictions for Tesla - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurologyloaded.com/2015/10/elon-musk-teslas-will-travel-1000-km-on.html <comment><USER2> There was already a thread about this last week:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298727](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298727)

The video that thread links to is gone but the info is the same.

</comment><comment><USER3> When Musk says 2 years - that actually means 4 or 5 .. ugh freaking Martians and their language.</comment>


IPv6 Support Required for All IP-Capable Nodes - <AUTHOR> http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6540.txt

<comment><USER2> Maybe this will light a fire under the registrars and DNS hosting companies, because some of them still don't support IPv6 glue records (for registrars) or AAAA records (for DNS hosters).

<http://www.sixxs.net/faq/dns/?faq=ipv6glue>

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a lot to see here — basically everyone is exhorted to treat IPv6 _and_ v4 compatibility as mandatory.

Interestingly, however, they basically said it sucks to see consumer devices being sold without IPv6, and that there is little market pressure to change the situation because obviously consumers don't know or care or see it as their responsibility.

</comment><comment><USER4> In other words: IP implies IPv6. Don't say it speaks IP if what it supports is just IPv4.

</comment><comment><USER5> The support for IP6 is now mandatory vs the previous optional IETF RFC and has now also the status of a best practice.

Talk to your ISP if they still don't support it.

<comment><USER6> Unless IPv6 will make consumer ISPs once again willing to give static addresses, there's no point waiting for them.

# apt-get install miredo

(Alternatively, if you already have a static IPv4 address and want a static IPv6 address, setup 6to4. This however is about ten times as hard, and will thus take about half an hour.)

<comment><USER7> What the hell? It worked! How did it work?

<comment><USER6> Hahaha. Public tunnel servers at major interconnection points. Having a packet stop off at a translation server isn't so terrible when it'd be traveling a similar path regardless. Play with ip6 a bit, and you'll gain a _much_ different perspective of what is and is not important about it (sixxs.net will even give you a static ip6 address if you don't have a static ip4 address, but their tunnel servers can be quite out of the way).

<comment><USER8> he.net deserves a mention too. rumor has that it is bit less sucky than sixxs.

<comment><USER9> Working fell for me for a year or so. Just chose it as they have local connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hyperlinked HTML version: <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6540>

</comment><comment><USER8> Does IETF have any way of enforcing such policy?

<comment><USER11> No.

(Yes. Peer pressure. But an RFC which turns out to be infeasible to implement or wildly speculative or what-have-you doesn't matter, because there won't be any peers pointing out that you ought to do it this way...)</comment></comment>


LinkedIn sues anonymous data scrapers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/15/linkedin-sues-scrapers/ <comment><USER2> If it is visible, it is recordable. Scraping should fall under fair use policy: recording a TV program is OK, repackaging it and reselling to competing channel is not.

Scraping for research and/or personal use should always be legal.

<comment><USER3> > _Scraping should fall under fair use policy_

Even if the burden put on the scraped website is far from "fair"? At my last job we had half the server capacity used by scraping bots most of the time, despite blocking Tor (since it was used exclusively for scraping most of the time). Such use translates into real operating costs just for being scraped, depending on your way of monetizing with 0 (no ad views) or negative income from those "users" on top (sometimes it's the competition or agencies selling your data so people don't have to use your website).

<comment><USER4> Maybe your business model has an intrinsic flaw.

For instance on LinkedIn, how many of the 400M strivers do I really want to network with? Yet I (or my bot) can see them all.

<comment><USER5> Those are both stupid arguments.

> Maybe your business model has an intrinsic flaw.

Maybe business are free to decide on their business model and not forced to comply with anybody else hobby project.

> how many of the 400M strivers do I really want to network with?

Are you suggesting that linked should block your access to everything except what their ml algorithm decides will interest you?

<comment><USER6> > not forced to comply with anybody else hobby project

How is LI being forced to comply? It's the opposite, hobby project is legally forced to desist.

<comment><USER5> They are not, and they shouldn't be.

The argument I was against was that LinkedIn should bear the cost of scrapers, and if they can't they _must_ change their monetisation strategy to something that can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LinkedIn is holding your resume data for random, selling access to the recruiters you don't want to hear from because they have deep pockets.

Imagine a world where you don't have to re-enter your education and work history for every job you apply to! Imagine not having to create a new resume every time you decide to switch jobs! Imagine just sharing a semi-private URL instead.

This sounds like a market prime for disruption.

<comment><USER8> We're doing exactly that in the UK. No recruiters, direct jobseekers-employer network using chosen location, structured data and faceted search.

<comment><USER9> URL please? I've tried untapt, and been unimpressed. I'm going to need a new contract at some point, so I'm open to a new route to market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember reading that facebook had done something similar to a social media aggregation for scraping content from its website. This whole opening up of law suits for getting information that companies put out publicly for all to see seems like a dangerous new precedent.

</comment><comment><USER11> This should be interesting. In my opinion, this is the 21st century equivalent of people going into libraries and making photocopies of books and articles. But it has interesting precedents with Craigslist suits. I wonder if there will be a suit that tries to pierce the protections of user contributed content liability by using the fact that the company considers that content their proprietary property. Thus it is no longer UCC and they should be liable for any infringing or malicious use of that data.

<comment><USER12> Your analogy is better if the books or articles are written by the same users, like eg research papers and the editors (like Springer) dont allow the writers to even share their articles on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The company who built their business on scraping people's data is suing people for scraping data. I hope they fight this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Funny how the headline is "LinkedIn sues" when it's obviously Microsoft behind it.

<comment><USER15> LinkedIn itself is almost certainly behind it and have done it before. See their suit against SimplyHired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, what if I will just scrape Google caches of LinkedIN profiles? I will never touch precious resumes at LinkedIN servers that way, and LinkedIN will never sue Google, since how else people will get to LinkedIN if not through Google? If only LinkedIN will not invest into some behavioural science to alter human habit of navigational search.

Scrapebox does exactly that [http://www.scrapebox.com/google-cache- extractor](http://www.scrapebox.com/google-cache-extractor)</comment>


MongoDB 1.4.2 (stable) Released - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/mongodb-user/browse_thread/thread/d54767e79597965c

<comment><AUTHOR> To sum up for those too lazy to click:

      This just contains bug fixes from 1.4.1
      [10Gen] recommend[s] all users of 1.4.0 and 1.4.1 upgrade to 1.4.2.
      Changes:
        - $ positional operator and $set replication issue [0]
        - invalid extent size and inefficiency [1]
        - maxDistance fix for geo search
        - extraneous file descriptor for log no longer left open

      Downloads:  http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Downloads
      Change Log:  http://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER/fixforversion/10155

</comment><comment><USER2> MongoDB is great. I use it and often vote up stories pertaining to it, but this doesn't seem to be newsworthy to me.

It doesn't provide any use to people who don't use MongoDB — even if they are curious about it or interested in using it — and those who do are likely to find out about the release through avenues other than Hacker News.</comment>


Some Brutally Honest iPhone App Sales Numbers: $32k Spent vs $535 Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post-aka-brutal-honesty/ <comment><USER2> The note at the end about the lack of advertising, the lack of a free "lite" version and the $4.99 price point are, IMO, the red flags (aside from the whole "not everyone is going to get rich off of the app store" thing). Honestly, the advertising could probably be skimped on if there was a free version and a lower price point. I'll drop $2 on an app if it seems decent, but I probably wont' spend $5+ unless there is I think it will be exceptional.

<comment><USER3> What makes that extra $3 more important then the initial $2? Its still less then how much you spend on a coffee or a lunch during a single morning/afternoon.

//edit: Real question here. Especially since I'm (and I'm assuming others are) looking at doing iPhone dev at some point in the future.

<comment><USER4> There isn't much of a reason. It's a purely psychological barrier, but it exists, and you have to account for it. Prices are getting lower and lower for mobile apps, and that's just what the market accepts now.

<comment><USER5> And if your app is $5 and it's not selling, it's time to rethink things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, it's not a first-month slam-dunk instant-payback project.

What if a trickle of further reviews, word-of-mouth, and incremental low-cost marketing (minor updates, free 'lite' version, half-off promos, light SEO) results in ~$500/month revenue for many months or years with very little cost in time?

What if some of the code or lessons learned mean the next similar app only takes $10K investment to make, and makes more than $500/month from the get-go?

The only problem here -- if any -- is sky-high expectations for the first step up to the plate.

<comment><USER7> Yup. What I'm seeing again and again is that developers under-estimate what consumers are willing to pay for (i.e. devs do too much, too soon).

My first app did about 340 sales in the first month, for a development cost of $0 + 6 hours of time. I haven't had a day of 0 sales yet, and I'm not nearly played out in terms of updates and improvements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The (easiest) path to riches on the App Store seems to be lots of quick little apps that may or may not be hits, rather than spending 6 months and $32k on one app and assuming it will be a success.

Unfortunately this leads to a lot of crappy applications.

Ironically (?) this guy will probably have a huge spike in sales of the app due the attention he's receiving (and people feeling sorry for him)

<comment><USER9> Yeah, a whole 4x ( [http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the- slashdot-...](http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/11/the-slashdot- effect/) ), up to 17 from 4!

I would have bought it myself if it was <2USD, considered it for <3USD. At 5USD, I would need to be in some kind of pain of boredom to consider buying it.

<comment><USER8> True. I suspect if he temporarily lowered the price to $2-3 while he was getting all this attention he could have gotten a _lot_ more sales. I have very similar price thresholds to yours.

He missed out, and perhaps that says something about why his product isn't doing too well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Flagged for blogspam (the original link is [http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the- numbers-p...](http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/03/09/the-numbers-post- aka-brutal-honesty/) and I don't see much value added by the Mobile Orchard post), yet it has 11 points. Something is not working here.

<comment><USER11> I'm an editor at Mobile Orchard. I didn't post this here or encourage anyone else to post it. It is not spam (come on, the #53 ranked user submitted it!). Get your facts straight before _slandering_ others in future.

Mobile Orchard's value is that it provides iPhone developers with summaries of the latest news relevant to them _as well_ as editorial content. This post is a summary. It still has value to _our_ audience (2000+ iPhone developers).

And, clearly our headline _was_ of value.. except it's now being used without credit to link directly to the poorly titled original. Ethics? What were they again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I once made an argument for a standardised disclosure of platform performance. My argument was targeted at game portals such as RealArcade, Big fish and the like. The same thing would apply for iPhone app sales.

The publisher (in this case apple) should state the median (and possibly percentile points for 75% and 25%) return for developers on the platform.

People didn't think much of the idea when I proposed it for portals, but I still think it's a fair thing to ask. It lets you know how much you can expect to make if you do better than average. If the numbers are good then publishers should be proud to state those numbers. Refusing to disclose such information in the face of requests should be seen as a warning sign to all developers.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get some very interesting data.

$5 isn't much for an app, but you have to remember that this is a _game_ \- a very special kind of app that's not actually useful. It's perfectly possible that your sales will increase enough by decreasing the price so that you'll find yourself profitable. Of course, there's no guarantee of that.

<comment><USER7> > Can you adjust the price and test whether the sales respond to changes of > price? If you can do one-week experiments at different prices, you might get > some very interesting data.

Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You can't justify $4.99 unless you are touchgrind or you have a really awesome game. No one is going to know your game is the shit unless they can try it, and $4.99 is past the compulsive threshold.

</comment><comment><USER11> By the way, thanks to whichever moderator thought it was cool to steal our headline but change the link. Finally, a headline of mine that wasn't changed because it sucked, just the URL ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> So he's on the the low end of the long tail. Where the vast majority of iPhone apps dwell....</comment>


Ask HN: How do you perform Usability testing? - <AUTHOR> How you perform usability testing for your web application mobile/desktop. Any online tool ? Process ? <comment><USER2> In production. With paying clients.

It's the only way to be sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any process @ pre-delivery stage ?

<comment><USER3> The only 100% way to be sure is with customers. That said, UX/UI design patterns are pretty well understood, your best bet is to hire out to a firm if you have no UX people on staff. [https://www.usertesting.com/plans](https://www.usertesting.com/plans)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find a newbie, stand behind them, and watch them struggle to use your program. Don't help them at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> dunno

<comment><AUTHOR> :P</comment></comment>


Face recognition used for home security devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/361114850/buddyguard-intelligent-and-discreet-home-security

<comment><USER2> Where is the Telescreen integration? Do you also have a work out program? It would be nice if the camera had a soft red glow around it.

If you get high enough penetration not only could you get a great FoF graph but also physical location tracking of people w/o cell phones. I think a better name for the project would be "Papers Please"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is George from BuddyGuard - for any questions on how we manage the artificial intelligence algorithms, or how we make everything a seamless experience, I'm here to answer! :-)</comment>


The Too-Much-Talent Effect - <AUTHOR> http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/8/1581

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not read the full article (pay wall), but I have definitely experienced this in professional settings. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this, especially with startup's desire to build "killer teams"!

<comment><USER2> I see it's not in Google Scholar ([http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=The+Too- Much...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=The+Too-Much- Talent+Effect&hl=en&as_sdt=0,21)) but you can get the paper from Libgen: [http://libgen.org/scimag/index.php?s=The+Too-Much- Talent+Eff...](http://libgen.org/scimag/index.php?s=The+Too-Much- Talent+Effect&journalid=&v=&i=&p=&redirect=1) \- I've reuploaded to [https://pdf.yt/d/AzOTKVBwmqKla6V6](https://pdf.yt/d/AzOTKVBwmqKla6V6) / [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/243666993/2014-swaab.pdf](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/243666993/2014-swaab.pdf) \- but if Libgen didn't work, you could always have tried [http://scholar.reddit.com/](http://scholar.reddit.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I hope none of you think the linked article's thesis is anything more than the uncorroborated opinion of the study's authors. Notwithstanding the journal title, it's not science. It doesn't even resemble science.

If you doubt this, ask yourself how the article's thesis could possibly be falsified. Falsifiability is a requirement for science.

Now ... let the anonymous downvotes begin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair point,

Nonetheless, I felt the topic was worth discussing. In my experience "teams of very talented people" can often turn into "teams of very competitive people".

<comment><USER3> > Nonetheless, I felt the topic was worth discussing.

Oh, I agree. But its source is troubling -- it's put forth as though it has academic depth and evidence, when in fact, it's just another pop-psychology tract.

For some reason, in modern times things like this, things that can never be more than opinion, are dressed up as though they're backed by science. Among uneducated people this gives them an unearned weight.

It's not as though an idea like this is false or unworthy of discussion. It's that it can never be either established as true, or falsified. This means its discussions tend to be endless and inconclusive.</comment></comment></comment>


Frontend developers, compile this in your JVM to get hired by Mashape - <AUTHOR>

The serious one: http://blog.mashape.com/become-a-mashaper-were-looking-for-a-frontend

  // FIXME: Fix statement at line 2, too many submissions we can't handle all that
  if (me.girlfriends > 2)) System.out.println("Submit one to Mashape, Inc.");

  List<Language> languages = me.getLanguages();
  Iterator<Language> iterator = languages.iterator();

  List<PlusType> plus = new ArrayList<PlusType>();

  if (me.learnFast) plus.add(PlusType.CAN_LEARN_FAST);

  boolean knowsLanguages = true;
  while (iterator.hasNext()) { 	Language language = iterator.next(); 	switch (language) { 		case ProgrammingLanguage.JAVA: 			knowsLanguages = knowsLanguages && (language.getLevel() == LanguageLevel.MONSTER); 			break; 		case ProgrammingLanguage.JAVASCRIPT: 			knowsLanguages = knowsLanguages && (language.getLevel() == LanguageLevel.OBI_WAN_KENOBI); 			break; 		case ProgrammingLanguage.SCALA: 			plus.add(PlusType.SCALA); 			break; 		case ProgrammingLanguage.GROOVY: 			plus.add(PlusType.GROOVY); 			break; 		default: 	        	plus.add(PlusType.CAN_SWITCH_TO_OTHER_LANGUAGES); 	}
  }

  return (knowsLanguages && me.getPassions() == Passion.HTML5 + Passion.CSS3 + Passion.JQUERY
                       && plus.size() > 1 && me.existLove(Love.CONTINUOUS_DEPLOYMENT)
                       && me.existLove(Love.FAST)
                       && me.existLove(Love.PASSION_BREAKING_RULES);
 http://www.mashape.com <comment><USER2> Are we just supposed to spend 20min coming up with random classes to make the function return 'true'?

This seems to be more busy work than something that requires a lot of thinking.

Maybe I'm missing something...

<comment><AUTHOR> nope, before compiling, you can just read the code and guess what's trying to say. It's a joke, I'm not really asking people to compile random code.</comment></comment>


The 'Dyson Sphere' mystery deepens: Star keeps dimming - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/article/dyson-megastructure-mystery-deepens <comment><USER2> Here's a better explanation in a long (but readable) series of posts from an actual astronomer, Jason Wright: [http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2016/08/30/what-could-be- go...](http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2016/08/30/what-could-be-going-on- with-boyajians-star-part-i/)

In this series he details several hypotheses and ranks them.

<comment><USER3> This is a series of posts with the summary and index here:

[http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2016/09/03/what-could-be- go...](http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2016/09/03/what-could-be-going-on- with-boyajians-star-part-x-wrapup-and-gaias-promise/)

Initial guide here:

[http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/tabbys-star- posts/](http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/tabbys-star-posts/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Blackhole starlifting makes more sense to me than Dyson spheres (see section on star lifting): [https://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4362](https://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4362)

> Importantly, researchers have concluded that a thin accretion disk around a > rotating black hole is the most efficient power source in the universe , a > process up to ~50 times more efficient than nuclear fusion occurring in > stars (e.g. Thorne 1974; Narayan and Quataert 2005). If any civilization is > to climb the Kardashev scale, it would certainly at some point want to > master that energetic source. We call such an endeavor black hole star > lifting

Instead of a Dyson sphere, you're using a black hole (and apparent mastery of gravity) to leech energy directly from the sun.

<comment><USER5> One can't get to the most efficient energy source without bootstrapping. And dyson swarms may be one of the easier ways to get there. I like this video [1] that explains this pretty well, from dyson swarms to kugelblitz. I do not understand enough from the paper to know the difference between kugelblitz and black hole star lifting though.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW55cViXu6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jW55cViXu6s)

<comment><USER6> PBS Space Time FTW! I'm waiting for their take on this star.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a really crazy thought, is it be possible that networks of Dyson Spheres throughout the universe would explain the lower level of visible matter vs the gravity we observe? That is, Dyson Spheres obfuscating their contained stars as an explanation for dark matter?

Similarly, the heat would still escape from them. Could that explain the CMB?

(I expect that I'm way off the mark, but if nothing else it could make for an interesting premise for some sci-fi.)

<comment><USER8> > Dyson Spheres obfuscating their contained stars as an explanation for dark > matter

No - MACHOs have been pretty well ruled out by now. "Several groups have searched for MACHOs by searching for the microlensing amplification of light. These groups have ruled out dark matter being explained by MACHOs with mass in the range 1×10−8 solar masses (0.3 lunar masses) to 100 solar masses" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_compact_halo_object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_compact_halo_object))

> Similarly, the heat would still escape from them. Could that explain the > CMB?

The CMB comes from _everywhere_ at once, uniformly, all the dark spaces in between stars is glowing. Dyson spheres radiating heat would just look like a bunch of dots glowing in the infrared. I don't see how any number of Dyson spheres radiating heat could produce a continuous, uniform field.

<comment><USER7> Ya know, gravitational lensing and the relative uniformity of the CMB are such succinct and (in retrospect) obvious debunking of those ideas that I almost feel embarrassed to have suggested them. :P

Thanks for the awesome response.

<comment><USER8> Don't feel bad, there is a name for "MACHOs" because so many scientists have had similar hypotheses about dark massive objects :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If "By far most of the solar system's mass is in the Sun itself: somewhere between 99.8 and 99.9 percent", then I can't help but wonder if there is enough matter to cover the sun's surface area to create a real Dyson sphere. Where would this matter come from? Is there enough matter in left in the 0.1% (shared by the rest of the solar system) to completely engulf the sun?

<comment><USER10> I was curious about your idea, so I whipped up some numbers in Python. A 1-meter thick spherical shell at 1 AU from our sun would be 0.02% of the volume of the Sun, or 260x the volume of the Earth. If you go down to 1-mm thick, you only need 0.26 Earths. :)

<comment><USER11> You could be a lot closer too. No reason to do one au.

<comment> david-given Heat, actually.

All the energy the star produces has to escape into space somehow. The way it does this is by heating up the sphere until it radiates out into space at the same rate at which the star irradiates the sphere. The bigger the sphere, the cooler it is, because it has more surface area to radiate away heat.

So if your sphere is too small, it may end up glowing at red heat, which might make it difficult to live on.

Calculating the temperature is straightforward:

[http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html](http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html)

<comment><USER12> You can't assume that they can build a Dyson sphere while their technology is as limited as us earthlings.

If you can imagine some alien species building a mega structure in such a short time, you should be able to imagine that they have a way to transfer and store that amount of energy.

The laws of thermodynamics, as we know it, prevents 100% efficiency in doing that, but if they have a directional heat dissipation device, and their generator is highly efficient, we will hardly have any chance to detect that.

I can imagine they could have some version of our power plant, only orders of magnitude more advanced. Instead of moving electrons, they could be generating and moving matter anti-matter stuffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Occam's razor: If you see mysterious dimming in a star, it's definitely aliens.

<comment><USER14> The implication seems to be that construction is ongoing, and the pieces of the sphere are being moved into place.

<comment><USER15> Or rather, since all stars are multiple light-years away from us, construction _was_ ongoing.

<comment><USER16> A suitable definition of "now" is our past and future light cones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So interestingly, hiding you star in a Dyson sphere, turns it into the loudest beacon in the galaxy, for a while.

If we wanted to be 'found' by aliens, we should do this to our sun.

<comment><USER18> Also we can use this as a trap. Just choose a star, make it darker and wait.

<comment><USER19> A trap for what exactly? By the time your society can do this to a star, you're not exactly fighting others for resources. You're very much into post- scarcity territory and the traditional motivations for conflict are long gone. I never understood the scarcity mentality we apply to hypothetical super- advanced civilizations. This is like expecting Jesus to take your wallet or the Buddha to kick you down the stairs.

If there are other advanced societies out there I seriously doubt war is their main motivator in space exploration, the same way Voyager and Curiosity are unarmed. Sure, that makes for fun sci-fi stories, but real life is governed by fairly simplistic game theory rules, at least from a high-level perspective. The motivators we have been given through evolution will be the motivators they have as well. Unless we're dismissing evolution as only a local phenomenon, we should expect similar beings to ourselves. I think the 'hostile alien' scenario shouldn't be our default. Sadly, that approach sells ad impressions and schlocky futurist books and influences a lot of people to believe things that are pretty questionable.

If we discovered a primitive species in the European seas we'd be tripping over ourselves to preserve them and study them and to make sure they never, ever get hurt by us (or a stray asteroid or anything we could prevent). We wouldn't be conquering them with robot subs for their pretty coral jewellery or sub-surface oil or whatever. We have enough pretty things and energy here on Earth and in unihabited places if need be. Life is rare enough that we don't need to attack other life for resources, assuming we ever find any.

<comment><USER20> You might enjoy reading John C. Wright's "Count to a Trillion" series, which does some thinking about how starfaring alien races, governed by game theory, might actually operate.

I don't think there's ever going to be a point when a race has "enough" and doesn't want to explore or build any more. Our ambition should grow with our capabilities. Once you can control a star, why not work on a galaxy?

<comment><USER21> The big reason is that you'd need a brand new physics to project power over interstellar distances.

Every outpost of the empire will essentially have unlimited manufacturing capability and it will take decades to project force, decades the outpost can spend making sure the amount of matter they have devoted to war exceeds the tiny amount of war matter the central empire threw out into space.

<comment><USER20> The series of novels specifically deals with time frames much longer than "decades". The first book spans a few centuries, the second and third span millenia, the fourth spans tens of millennia, and the fifth and sixth (not out yet) are supposed to reach much farther.

The big idea of the book is that Einstein isn't wrong about C being the speed limit. Therefore, to be a starfaring race requires the ability to make commitments and hold to them over extremely long timespans. The connection to game theory is that, as in the Prisoner's Dilemma, the only way you can really make predictably right decisions in cooperation with other entities is if your decision-making formulas are spelled out mathematically in advance; so all can predict how you will act. The first book begins with mankind discovering the galaxy's "rules" on a kind of signpost at a nearby star.

Read the books!

<comment><USER21> Maybe I will, I'm kind of burnt out on scifi.

My point is that the very concept of an interstellar resource war, and thus the concept of interstellar control, is incoherent given our present physics. You can take over a system that isn't technologically enabled, but that's it, the resources available to a technologically enabled system are greater than the resources that can be sent into the system.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure that's really true. What would it take to wipe out all the denizens of a star system? Maybe a few million atomic bombs? Certainly less than the mass of a small moon. And if that then gave you control of a whole star system's worth of matter and energy, it should be more than enough to fuel the conquest of the next star, and so on.

So it's certainly feasible for an advanced race to build a star empire; the question is why they'd want to do it. If we're talking about humans you might say ambition or imagination. If Vulcans, maybe they'd think it logical to pre- emptively become stronger than any potential aggressors.

<comment><USER21> That would work against a system incapable of similar production, but given roughly equal capacity, the target system could devote a small planets worth of material to defensive missiles.

You could slam a bunch of mass into a system at extreme speeds, but then they just have to hop into life boats until the storm ends (if they have the capacity to ponder traveling the stars, they have the capacity to spend a decade on a space station).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's Morning Light Mountain

<comment><USER23> He.. She.. It.. They? Didn't create the sphere though!

To anyone not getting the reference, read Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton[1]. It's a lovely read.

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

<comment><USER24> Good timing because I just started this last week after finishing Vinge's "Zones of Thought" series. I guess I'm on something of a space opera kick lately.

<comment><USER3> Are the sequels/prequels worth reading? I read the first one last year and enjoyed it, but the follow up reviews made it seem like the others novels might spoil it.

<comment><USER25> The first two are great. Deepness is the best one, IMO. As for anything beyond that, I'll just say it's so sad he stopped at two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If I was building a Dyson sphere I would launch multiple modular solar panels into orbit around the star. This is the cheapest scalable way to do it while I collect resources and send more as my energy needs increase.

The problem then is getting that energy out. I'd use lasers from my panels to my planet. That means my solar panel collective in orbit around the star will have to always point to my planet for maximum efficiency so I don't have useless panels since there's no way i'm building a battery at star energy scale on each panel.

The dimming you see would then be based on the orbit time of my planet around the star, since the panel half halo will always be pointing at my planet. Essentially geostationary around the star.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why not just a binary dwarf sucking material (somewhat chaotically) out of its more luminous twin?

<comment><USER28> We'd see bits of time where the dwarf was in front of the twin and burning much much brighter, the accretion disk on the dwarf would be larger than the dwarf and giving off high energy photons as it consumes the incoming matter. We haven't seen any spikes in the light level, only dips. It's possible it's behind the other star still but I don't think we've seen anything else to indicate that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So if you make a Dyson sphere, your planet is either inside or outside of it.

If it's outside, you might get complaints about the shutting off of the day/night cycle.

If it's inside, you get all the sun's light reflected off the inside of the sphere. Kinda blinding.

<comment><USER30> your planet (and most of the solar system) has been dismantled to build the Dyson sphere, the system is now ruled by DAO-like AI agents running on computronium. You upload yourself and a few other survivors on a small can- sized spaceship and flee the system in search of a new home.

<comment><USER31> /endsynopsis "Accelerando", Charlie Stross (2005)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For anyone who has some spare time, here's an enormous time sink:

[http://www.orionsarm.com](http://www.orionsarm.com)

Don't click on that if you have stuff to do today.

</comment><comment><USER14> My wager: It's a fleet of mega-spaceships passing across the star, probably much closer to us than to the remote star. Hence irregular dimming that doesn't seem to repeat predictably.

<comment><USER18> Keeping in mind that the star is 1480 light-years avay, the fleet passed across the star about thousand years ago. Or they're still flying toward us...

<comment><USER20> They don't have to be right there by the star. They could be small ships just a few million miles away, maybe.

<comment><USER33> Space is, technically speaking, "really big".

<comment><USER34> You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Measuring absolute brightness is hard. It would be good to compare the measurement error is in brightness of a reference star of about the same magnitude and distance(and even perhaps a known variable star) to the observed changes in this star.

In the lab under ideal conditions with ideal light sources, it's pretty common for there to be >2.5% error in these types of measurements. For those used to dB unit, this is a ~0.1dB change. In optics, it's very easy to introduce error at this level.

</comment><comment><USER36> so there are in the middle of building the dyson sphere?

<comment><USER37> My issue with the whole "alien civilization" idea is that we are seeing what happened around that star some 1,400 years ago, which means if they were building a Dyson sphere that long ago, it's unimaginable what tech they have today. I have a hard time accepting that an intelligent species could be _that_ far ahead of us technology wise, but I could be wrong!

<comment><USER38> The universe is billions of years old. There's no reason to think that our arrival (as an intelligent species) is uniquely tied to this particular time period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I still say it is a giant alien Aldis lamp, and we just don't understand their Morse code.

</comment><comment><USER40> My wager: The star is being eaten by a cosmic horror called Hellstar and it will be soon coming our way. Now excuse me while I take off my Junji Ito hat.

<comment><USER41> Or a space goat. My money is equally split between a Dyson sphere that is tearing itself apart (because: low bidder on the project, some things just _never_ change) or a gigantic space goat that is eating the star.

Both are equally likely :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Unicron, devourer of worlds!

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe it's Slartibartfast's workshop.

</comment><comment><USER43> Starkiller Base powering up!

<comment><USER44> exactly what i was going to say!!!!!</comment></comment>


Why did it take until the 1970s to invent Dungeons & Dragons? - <AUTHOR> https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-where-be-dragons <comment><USER2> I can't imagine playing D&D with roman numerals...

       Str XIII
       Int IIX
       ...

It would be no fun at all. Probably with limitations on manufacturing they wouldn't have the large number of different dice. Those dice look like fun from the outside but when you are playing you don't want to be looking for the 1d8 this time, looking for 3d4 (the first 2 are easy to find, the third went under the rug). Probably it would be more like a modern game (Toon, Paranoia, ...) where everything depends on one kind of dice.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a cliche trope of two old british WW I veterans resimulating battles using tin/pewter figures in much the same way a sandbox is used as a tactical tool.

the popularity of the tolkien opus gained great traction after albert hoffmans historical lab accident.

then the world was primed for D&D</comment>


On Being a Builder - <AUTHOR> http://duruk.net/on-being-a-builder/

<comment><USER2> The amount of users who wish to become developers in my line of business is absolutely amazing. The reasoning always revolves around 'you guys get to create something.' The day a person from marketing/executive says, 'I want to create to enhance experiences', I will recommend they be thrown into our department. Everyday, we are bombarded with project requests for changes to enhance user experience. Usability is measured in amount of clicks. Yet, instead of wanting to create to help their department, they wish to create to play with legos.</comment>


Harvard cracks DNA storage, crams 700 terabytes of data into a single gram - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/134672-harvard-cracks-dna-storage-crams-700-terabytes-of-data-into-a-single-gram

<comment><USER2> This is from 2012, so there is most likely newer research out there...

Previous Discussion (with 130 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396931)

Original Source (not extremetech.com blogspam):

[http://hms.harvard.edu/news/writing-book- dna-8-16-12](http://hms.harvard.edu/news/writing-book-dna-8-16-12)

Paper Abstract: "Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA"

[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6102/1628.abstract](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6102/1628.abstract)

The actual paper:

[http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf](http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf)</comment>


First set of Android apps for ChromeOS - <AUTHOR> http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-set-of-android-apps-coming-to.html <comment><USER2> It seems likely that this new runtime won't work with apps that use the NDK. Three reasons come to my mind:

1\. The NDK assumes a Linux environment, which the NaCl sanbox is not.

2\. Binaries compiled with the NDK don't meet the special requirements of the NaCl machine code verifier.

3\. A lot of NDK-based apps only build the native components for ARM. These wouldn't work on x86 Chromebooks, including the Pixel.

<comment><USER3> Since there are already x86 emulators in JavaScript, surely Google could implement an ARM emulator running Linux and the Android NDK stack in (P)NaCl? :)

<comment><USER4> They already have an ARM emulator: The Android emulator. Those who have suffered through it's excruciating performance presumably wouldn't wish that on their worst enemy..

<comment><USER5> They use qemu in system mode for full-stack emulation, which is, indeed, has performance issues. They may use it in user mode, like shown here: [http://tuxthink.blogspot.ru/2012/04/executing-arm- executable...](http://tuxthink.blogspot.ru/2012/04/executing-arm-executable- in-x86-using.html) (a first link Google gave me), and implement most of Android APIs in platform-native way not bearing the arm->x86 translation costs. Such approach may provide reasonably better performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Initial thoughts (duolingo on Acer C720): a lot of the UI design is pretty unintuitive, and although I'm sure I'd get used to using it with a non touchscreen and a physical keyboard, it just feels suboptimal. Also a weird feeling having Android-like prompts on a 'regular' computer. No fullscreen, so I'm left with a small window on an already small (11") screen. Functionality- wise, does what it should, but I'd much much rather have an offline proper chrome app. Currently, it'd be my last choice behind my android phone, iphone, ipad, and laptops I have with me right now (I realise I'm unlikely target audience).

<comment><USER7> This is exactly my experience with Evernote. Although I've used it on the C720P with the touchscreen and it was a bit better. But the fonts look really small and the fact that you can't make it full screen is annoying.

But it is still better than the Evernote web app. Now the question is: given all this, is Evernote (and Duolingo, etc.) motivated to release a proper Chrome app or not anymore? My fear is that they are not, which is bad from Chromebooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Okay, so if ChromeOS can run Android apps, and Android can run Chrome Web Apps[1], at what point does Google start to actually merge the platforms together?

1) [http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/28/google-brings-chrome- apps-t...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/28/google-brings-chrome-apps-to- android-and-ios/)

<comment><USER9> OK, so Linux can run Windows apps (Wine) and Windows can run Linux apps (Cygwin). When do Microsoft and RedHat merge their platforms?

<comment><USER8> I know that the behavior of the Chrome and Android teams hasn't always SEEMED like they were part of the same company, but they are. Microsoft and Red Hat are two different, competing organizations. If Android and ChromeOS are two different, competing organizations (and at one point, that really did seem to be the case), that's a problem for Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Well it seems that now that they have two strong platforms, google have given up the pretence of pushing the open web. The open web made sense for them in a world dominated by Microsoft, but now that they have the dominant mobile platform and the most popular browser, they no longer need it.

<comment><USER11> I've never understood what "the open web" has to do with Javascript vs. native binaries.

Right now, we write in a variety of languages (ClojureScript, CoffeeScript, etc.) to produce opaque minified+concatenated blobs of JS-targeting (or asm.js-targeting, even) object-code. Sometimes, we just take raw machine language and re-encode it with Emscripten! Nobody can read any of this without a process that exactly fits the term "decompilation."

Effectively, then, in the current model, the browser is just obeying this contract:

1\. When you encounter a <script> tag, download the specified binary (for the Javascript Abstract Machine, the world's most verbose ISA);

2\. resolve its CORS origin to calculate a default permissions set, and boot it up within a fresh VM/container/sandbox circumscribed by that permissions set;

3\. allow it to manipulate various browser APIs (e.g. the DOM, WebGL);

4\. give it the ability to request additional permissions (for e.g. storage, or location information) which you will then prompt the user for.

So what's the difference if the binary is encoded in some other way? What's wrong with Native Client, or Android, or even Java, if it's run under this same "contract"? Javascript is no more open or closed than any of these. They're all relatively opaque and require decompilation to comprehend or learn from. They all only act through browser APIs. They all talk to servers using "open web" REST requests. And--this is key--a web browser could be taught to debug them in just the same way it debugs Javascript.

<comment><USER12> You're right that's not a real distinction.

I would say there's a spectrum though, even among JavaScript apps, of standards adherence. For example you could draw your own glyphs on a HTML canvas element. That would still be "the open web" in some literal sense, but it's less of a web app in that case and more of a JavaScript app that can run in the browser.

You're right that using the browser as the runtime is a key requirement for an open web app, but I would add a bunch more criteria:

\- every user-relevant resource has a URL.

\- content is rendered with the semantic tags HTML provides when possible

\- the app is performant in common browsers

\- you use HTML and CSS in a way that things degrade gracefully on older browsers

\- you use standard interactions (hyperlinks, forms) wherever possible and implement your own widgets only when necessary.

By these criteria many pure HTML apps are not good open web apps. The old practice of rendering text in GIFs to get typefaces and anti-aliasing was a step away from "the open web".

I don't think it's strictly a technical line people are talking about. It's a set of conventions that let us write code that is cross platform and gets many benefits for free (sharability, printability, responsive design, etc)

<comment><USER11> There are many apps that don't consist of representing and manipulating hyperlinked documents, though. For example, games. Would Angry Birds be better if it was built out of DOM nodes? Would an night-sky astronomy visualization app? Would a synthesizer?

These are the types of things people make Chrome apps for. And frankly, I don't see the advantage of those being built out of "standards-conforming semantic markup" versus just manipulating the browser's APIs directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is the source for the app runtime available anywhere?

I've done a bunch of hacking on the Android framework to do things like multitasking before, so I'm really curious to see how they "put Android in a box".

<comment><USER14> I think this is it, or at least part: [https://chromium.googlesource.com/arc/arc](https://chromium.googlesource.com/arc/arc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone know what is involved in getting an android app to run on chrome os? Is it a rewrite?

<comment><USER16> According to this [ [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/chrome-os-can-now- run...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/09/chrome-os-can-now-run-android- apps-no-porting-required) ] no porting is required.

But with that in mind, it is unclear from the posts I've seen why the list of available apps is currently so small and why working closely with Google is required to get your app up and running right now, perhaps this is just due to the runtime being very much in active development and not supporting the entire set of Android APIs yet.

<comment><USER15> Thanks. I was wondering why the few number of apps right now if it isn't a rewrite.

<comment><USER17> My guess is that some app manifests might have to set tighter compatibility restrictions, and would run, but poorly, on this environment.

Non-game, non-SDK apps that don't have required accelerated visual transitions are probably the best candidates. But that's not a situation most developers are explicitly coding and testing for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> According to Arstechnica, developers do not need to port or modify their code. Though Google is manually adding apps to ensure good user experience.

<comment><USER7> I wonder if Skype would work. I guess Microsoft has to agree with that (and I won't hold my breath on that one).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really just wish they would make a native email client & possibly native word and spreadsheet app to work with Google drive. It's confusing for me to know whats synced offline vs online, I can't imagine how the average user must feel.

</comment><comment><USER20> Google created "Chrome Apps" for the exact purpose of filling the "gap to native", i.e. making web apps offline-capable, with device APIs, etc. Now they're embracing Android apps. What does this tell us about Google's priorities (wrt open web vs Android silo)?

<comment><USER21> Considering the first released apps I don't agree the gap thing:

Duolingo - a fun and free way to learn a new language before your next trip Evernote - write, collect and find what matters to you, with a full-size keyboard and touchscreen Sight Words - a delightful way for you to help improve your child's reading skills Vine - create short, beautiful, looping videos in a simple and fun way

<comment><USER20> Could you elaborate? The gap exists - that's why Chrome Apps (and Firefox OS apps for that matter) are provided with additional API to bridge the gap. Google and Mozilla are working on standardizing these APIs but until then, Chrome Apps/Firefox OS apps should be an active effort. In that context, I don't understand the Android support in Chrome OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish the results of the form [0] for favourite apps to port was public.

[0] [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10mlIGJq2ENubhkvTJYk11ujckA8...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/10mlIGJq2ENubhkvTJYk11ujckA8t-RYx06qr61EPI_g/viewform)

</comment><comment><USER23> What would be really dope, is if there was one application interface for ChromeOS/ChromeBrowser/Android ... AND ... we could use it from some nice modern language ... like Go.

</comment><comment><USER24> Got to admit I'm relieved to see this.

I'm currently porting a large desktop Java app to the cloud, and this means I can focus on just creating an Android app instead of Android AND WebApp.

<comment><USER25> With a WebApp you had still a bigger reach with your App, for example iOS and Windows devices.

<comment><USER26> Of course, Chrome runs on both of those platforms, and this (ARC) could as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why is the size of the app so huge? I started the download until I saw it was 100mb. I'm fairly sure my Android Evernote app is half that size, and that's including data.

<comment><USER7> I read elsewhere that they bundle the runtime with the first app you download. Afterwards it should only be the Android app that's downloaded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone knows what happened to Flipboard? It was demoed in the keynote, but it's not listed here.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's a shame that Google don't just let Chromebooks boot to Android.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is a mistake. Not only does it potentially irreparably destroy ChromeOS' strong security model, by trying to force two different platforms into one, but this is going to be a S L O W process to bring Android apps on ChromeOS, making the whole idea almost useless. If you thought Android finally getting "tablet apps" was slow, this will be much worse. Just look at them here announcing a whopping number of _four apps_. That has got to be the weakest "platform" launch in recent years. Even for Honeycomb they had like 30 apps at launch.

What Google should be doing (despite the strong internal conflict _against this_ \- Android is run by the guy who invented ChromeOS after all) is fitting Android on PC's.

Now hear me out. I don't want the _current_ Android to be put on PC's. That's obviously a bad idea, and it's been tried before and it doesn't work. Why? Because it's a terrible user experience having a phone (or even tablet) UI on a laptop. Nobody really wants to use Android-x86 project on their laptops, either.

But here's what Google can do. It can turn it into another "Android Wear" or "Android TV", but for PC's. What that means is that it takes the Android core, and all the Android compatibility, and then _highly optimizes it for that usage mode_.

Doing this will be surprisingly easy for Google, and about an order of magnitude easier than putting Android apps on ChromeOS. What they need is 3 things:

1) a taskbar - don't laugh. It worked for ChromeOS. ChromeOS really started being seen as a potentially good alternative for Windows when it got a taskbar, despite it having only shortcuts to web apps. But it helps greatly with usability

2) multi-windows - another thing that ChromeOS got later on. Initially it was kind of full-screen/multi-desktop, which wasn't that great of an experience.

3) Android apps that scale nicely to 13" screens or larger. This is actually already underway since they announced the whole material design stuff together with the Polymer library for web apps (which guess what - work on 13"\+ PC's!) - so they have already "fixed" this problem for Android PCs, even if somewhat unintentionally. In fact, they are _already_ doing that with these Android apps inside ChromeOS. Look at the picture they're using in the blog post. The app could look exactly the same way on an "Android PC". So why not do the same thing _on Android_ , where those apps _came from_? This would have the advantage of getting virtually _all the apps_ on Android PC's from _day one_ of "Android PC" mode.

So the first two would solve the "OS optimization" problem, for larger screens, while the last one would solve the problem of the Android apps being optimized for larger screens. Again, this should be much easier than doing it on top of ChromeOS.

Do I expect Google to do this anytime soon? No it won't. Instead it will waste 2 years not doing this, while Apple puts iOS on a laptop, with advanced multi- tasking, a laptop that I expect to be much more successful than any Mac OS laptop, because it will be cheaper, and because an order of magnitude more people know iOS now, than Mac OS, so an iOS laptop has a much wider reach. After 2 years, they'll think "gee, maybe we _should_ do that, too", but by then they will already be behind.

Android, with its 1 billion user base and still rapidly growing is also by _far_ a bigger threat to Windows on the desktop than ChromeOS. People in many countries, especially emerging ones, are already familiar with Android, and have been using it as their "first OS". It's such a shame Google isn't going to take advantage of this, to push people to Android laptops. Oh well, they can't say I didn't try. Failing to bring Android on PCs will be on them.

<comment><USER27> Before they can implement 3), they have to actually make ChromeOS scale nicely to high-res displays. I've got a Chromebook Pixel that usually runs at slightly below 1080p (closest possible with 3:2 ratio) despite having a max of 2560 x 1700, simply because the max res is unusable in Google's own OS without a massive amount of tweaking. UI does not scale, taskbar does not scale, have to manually bump up the font size within Chrome, etc. It's embarrassing.

And I say this as someone who really likes the Pixel otherwise.

<comment><USER30> I'm posting from a ChromeBook pixel running at 2560 x 1700, and the UI looks great. The taskbar, UI, fonts, etc. are all scaled perfectly.

Have you tried running at 2560 x 1700 on the most up-to-date version of ChromeOS? Some of the issues you had may have been fixed in more recent Chrome releases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Open Office

</comment><comment><USER32> "App runtime for Chrome..."

floor->add(jaw);

Think about that for a while...

<comment><USER33> You have to stop counting the abstraction levels to maintain any sanity these days. I mean we have a computer running a web browser running a Javascript VM running an Android runtime running a JAVA VM running the app. Did I miss one? Maybe the app is Minecraft running one of those graphical calculators :) /sarcasm</comment></comment>