Show HN: A Bruteforcer in Go for WarpWallet's 10BTC Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nachowski/warpwallet_cracker <comment><AUTHOR> I built this while learning Go to try and crack WarpWallet's brain wallet protocol that uses key stretching using pbkdf2 and scrypt: [https://keybase.io/warp](https://keybase.io/warp) (see The WarpWallet Challenge 2 at the bottom)

It looks like this isn't currently feasible, but it was a nice learning experience and it's cheaper than playing the lottery! Any feedback is appreciated.</comment>


Ask HN: How expensive is living in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> I thinking on moving there next year. I really want to jump in the tech action right away.
Where is the best place to move? How expensive could cost every month of living on average?
Thanks <comment><USER2> In the spirit of openness...

Rent: I live on Nob Hill in SF. I pay $1950 for a big, nice one bedroom with a little office and a small private yard. (100sq feet.) When I signed the lease I was making good money so it didn't seem expensive. Since then I've decided to focus on my start-up full time, so now it does seem slightly pricey. (I only pay 50% though -- I'm coupled.) I've lived in New York and Seattle, and SF is nowhere near as expensive as New York and nowhere near as affordable as Seattle (in terms of renting, not buying).

Beyond rent, things are very affordable.

Transportation: cheap, cars are optional (I don't need one; I hate mechanics and oil changes and parking...). I get my groceries delivered and use ZipCar when I have to drive. This is a huge savings and a good reason to live in the heart of the city. Instead of a gym, I just walk up the hill everyday.

Healthcare: I'm on Cobra right now, but will qualify for SF City HealthCare for free soon, as I'll be making little money. This is a big reason to live in SF and not the peninsula. <http://www.healthysanfrancisco.org>

Entertainment: The most expensive thing I do is eat out with friends semi- regularly. However, I've found that for geeks, there are a ton of meet ups and other social events that are 100% free -- and they're usually the best way to have fun.

Other threads are noting the cost of rent in SF, but for me, the city health care coverage and not needing a car (or insurance, or gas, or parking) more than makes up for it.

<comment><USER3> (just a stupid question: 1950$ per month or per year?)

<comment><USER4> per month, for sure

<comment><USER3> thank you. It's a bit less than I pay for a small room in Saint-Petersburg per year

<comment><USER5> St Pete is FL or St Pete in Russia? I would be amazed if you got a single room for 2000$ a year in St Pete FL.

<comment><USER6> I am about 15 miles from St. Pete, FL, 75 yards from the Gulf of Mexico, in a nice sized one bedroom apartment with parking and small fenced yard: $700/mo. Gorgeous sunsets through the big west facing front windows, and 20 miles of sandy beach to get AFK and clear my head, throw a disc, walk, swim, or fish.

But I could trade it for a couch and a subway pass in a city with good subways and international impact. (SF, NYC, CHI, BOS ;)

<comment><USER7> You can definitely get a decent room in a 2-3 person apartment in Astoria (Queens) for $700/month. It's not Chelsea but it's not quite the middle of nowhere either.

<comment><USER8> I think many people outside of New York wouldn't ever consider an apartment share, but it's pretty common here. I live near Times Square in Manhattan and I'm paying $900 for a room in a (small) two bedroom apartment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Check it out for yourself on the awesome padmapper: [http://www.padmapper.com/?lat=37.69897768523249&lng=-122...](http://www.padmapper.com/?lat=37.69897768523249&lng=-122.43988037109376&minRent=0&maxRent=6000&searchTerms=&maxPricePerBedroom=6000&minBR=0&maxBR=10&minBA=1&maxAge=7&imagesOnly=false&cats=false&dogs=false&noFee=false&showSubs=true&showNonSubs=true&userId=-1&cl=true&apts=true&ood=true&forrent=true&zoom=12&favsOnly=false&workplaceLat=0&workplaceLong=0&maxTime=0)

<comment><USER10> Damn... awesome is right. I'd be curious how they crawl all this data (especially the craigslist listings).

<comment><USER11> Craigslist has RSS feeds that respect categories/search terms: <http://www.craigslist.org/about/rss> :) You're technically not supposed to use them for search engines specific to housing, but Craigslist doesn't seem very serious about enforcement.

<comment><USER10> I wonder if landlords will go after this like the hotel industry went after AirBnB. Any accurate information a potential renter has about other apartments in the area can only hurt the landlord.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since most responses focus on SF or the peninsula, I want to add my 2c. Living in East Bay (Oakland or Berkeley) is also a good option. Rent in Emeryville/South Berkeley/North Oakland is cheaper than SF, but it's still easy to get to SF/Peninsula by BART.

We were renting a 1400sq ft 3 bedroom house in Emeryville for $1750/mo a couple years back, and a 700sq ft 1 bedroom apartment in South Berkeley for $750/mo before that. An 1800 sq ft house in Oakland rents for about $2200.

There's a lot of students in Berkeley, so it's also easier to find rooms/sublets than in SF, possibly. As far as public transit goes, it's a bit more painful than SF, but not too bad. My morning commute from Oakland to work in SOMA takes about 30 minutes - 10 minute walk, 15 minutes (2 stops) on BART, another 5 minute walk. No stress, no driving, no tolls, no parking fees ($3 dollars one way, versus $5 bridge toll, $20 for a day's parking downtown, and a couple bucks in gas you'd spend driving).

<http://housingmaps.com/> (craigslist frontend) can give you a good idea about the price ranges around different locations in the Bay Area.

<comment><USER13> If you work in SF, I agree the commute is easy, but if you work on the peninsula, it's not very fun trying to get from Berkeley to Palo Alto daily.

<comment><USER12> That's true, but the OP said he's only planning to move here; hence, I imagine he's not tied to a particular job location yet. Also, I know plenty of people commuting to SF from Dublin/Pleasanton/Walnut Creek, which is comparable to getting from Berkeley to Palo Alto. But you're right, having to switch to Caltrain to go anywhere further south than Millbrae is a pain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've lived in Portland Oregon, Seattle Washington, Dallas Texas, and San Francisco as well as Silicon Valley and I can honestly say living in SF or Silicon Valley is way more expensive. Rent probably averages about $1700-$2300 for a decent one bedroom apartment and more for two bedroom per month.

Utilities are about the same everywhere you live. Public transportation is a bit spendier than every other city I've lived in (Caltrain and BART costs). Unsure about the Bus, it's probably comparable.

Sales Tax is ridiculously higher here than anywhere I've been. If you live in the city and eat out, expect an addition 3-4% health tax charged at most restaurants.

Parking sucks in the city. Street cleaning tickets of $53 to $103 dollars are VERY common. Expect to bankroll a ton of parking meters whether you live downtown or not or pay a lot in parking garages if you plan on using your car to get around the city.

Entertainment costs are also higher than most other places I've lived. A standard movie ticket here is like $11 or so up to $17 with IMAX per ticket per showing. That should give you a rough idea of cost.

Groceries and Household Shopping. I've compared cost of stuff like shampoo and what not to cost I use to pay outside of California and noticed that for the same size bottle or smaller, I am paying possible a couple dollars more even from the same store. So cost of goods is slightly more expensive here base on a few comparisons I've done.

That should give you a ROUGH estimate on how much things cost around here and what it would be like.

<comment><USER15> This all looks pretty cheap from my London-oriented eyes. Coming from Ireland, I'm used to the equivalent of sales tax being 21%; the UK having 17.5 seems low. A reserved seat (so you don't have to show up early) in my local cinema (Islington Vue) runs to 17.31 USD according to today's rates, and that's just an ordinary cinema, not IMAX. And of course the other side of the equation is the increased salaries (outside of banks etc. in London, anyhow).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Garry Tan from Posterous made this a while back:

[http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0...](http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=111291639665197066699.00048b3c0d910bf1a232a)

<comment><USER17> Thats really useful, especially for someone like me who has no idea of the parts of San Fransisco.

<comment><USER18> Also see: [http://seldo.com/weblog/2010/09/04/san_francisco_city_guide_...](http://seldo.com/weblog/2010/09/04/san_francisco_city_guide_map_for_the_prospective_resident)

<comment><USER17> I think the first one is slightingly less opinionated, more rational then this one. However, that makes this one much more fun to read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pretty cheap in mountain view. I pay around $600 for rent (2 bedroom with roommate). Food prices are actually comparable/cheaper than other places in the US. If you shop at those asian grocery stores, you can get similar produce at about half the cost that Safeway/Kroger would normally sell at. Price for a normal cheap dinner on Castro St is around $8-12.

If you're renting, Silicon Valley is actually comparable to the rest of the USA. When I lived in Atlanta, I paid around $500 for rent, but I had to drive a lot further to access public transportation.

<comment><USER20> This isn't credible at all. Two-bedroom in Mountain View for $1200? Please name the apartment complex you are living in. A one-bedroom in Mountain View is already on the extremely ghetto side. Decent places start at about $1400 for a one-bedroom.

<comment><USER21> Anyone who thinks there is a ghetto part of mountain view is, uh, way more wealthy and has much higher standards than I do. I mean, there are "less good" parts of mountain view, but there isn't anything even close to ghetto.

<comment><USER22> I agree California st is sketchy, but i would never call it ghetto,I think someone needs a ride to EPA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Food is also a lot more expensive. You can mitigate this a lot by cooking all your own food and not eating out. Shopping from low cost markets like The Milk Pail <http://www.milkpail.com/> will help a lot.

My recommendation for eating cheaply is to make sure to have good collection of spices. It costs a lot upfront (~$40-60) but it will allow you to subsist on really cheap food without going crazy. Living off rice and beans is a lot more fun and tasty when you can make masala rice.

<comment><USER2> If you have the space for it, grow an herb garden. Seriously. :) I never thought I would enjoy taking care of plants, but it's actually quite interesting. My latest addition is arugula, which so far seems super easy to grow and can provide an infinite amount of salads with little upkeep.

<comment><USER24> Second this. Some basil and sage go a long way for pasta and other things. Rosemary and some parsley next. Then oregano.

Salad greens are super easy, climate is good for it most of the year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I pay 800$ for a single bed apt(~600-700 sq.ft) in Sunnyvale. Apartments which don't have gated community,pools,gym etc are cheaper. I realized I never used those anyway, so I moved to an apt which have none of these(but has covered parking). Usually these are smaller blocks of ~6 apts and older. There are plenty of those in south bay when I looked.

</comment><comment><USER26> I live in the Mission and have a ~400 sq foot studio in a not-vintage building (~1970s) for $1600/month (includes $250/month parking spot). I'm 4 blocks from Safeway, Muni rail, Bart, my gym, 2 blocks from other Muni buses.

</comment><comment><USER27> We rent at $2,200.00/mo for a 4/2 in south sj. That would be 3-3.5k in mountain view or cupertino, when we looked in August. If you time it right, you can find cheaper places. The absolute worse time to move (highest rents) is right before school starts.

Gas is $3.15/gal right now.

Food is ranges from 0%-15% more than the midwest (our comparison point). Shopping at local markets and farmers markets for produce will save you quite a bit.

Other chain stores and casual restaurants seem to cost slightly more than we were used to paying.

Any service that requires direct labor (gardening, cleaning etc) is going to be significantly more expensive than other metros, because the base cost of living is so much higher.

<comment><USER28> _Food is ranges from 0%-15% more than the midwest (our comparison point)._

Where in the Midwest did you use for this comparison? As far as I can tell from visiting, most grocery items cost my parents (near Chicago) 50-150% more than I pay for them (in Michigan).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Paul Stamatiou made a great post a while back on moving to SF: [http://paulstamatiou.com/atlanta-to-san-francisco-moving- cro...](http://paulstamatiou.com/atlanta-to-san-francisco-moving-cross- country)

</comment><comment><USER21> silicon valley is _way_ cheaper than SF, but it's much less friendly to people who don't have cars. If you live near a caltrain and you work for a major corporation, you can probably get away with not having a car (most major companies have company shuttles that go to the caltrain) but it will put a crimp in your social activities.

Silicon Valley is essentially suburb. You can pay as much as you want on the high end... on the low end, a room in a house or shared appartment in the "poor" parts of Santa Clara or Sunnyvale might be $650/month.

the upside, here, is that things near the train stops are generally cheaper. I rented a 2bed 1bath apartment right over the Lawrence express way caltrain in santa clara for $1250/month total ($625 per person.)

If you want to live alone, the low end is $800-$1000.

The interesting thing about the valley is that I don't know of any neighbourhoods south of east palo alto and north of San Jose that I'd feel uncomfortable walking around in at night. And most of San Jose is pretty okay, too, so don't be afraid of the low end.

Food? in the grocery store, as far as I can tell, it costs about the same as anywhere. If you go out to eat, well, fast food is about as cheap as it is elsewhere. If you want to eat at local non-chains, you are looking at $8-$15 per meal, which is a bit more, I think, than most places.

If I were moving here for the social scene, personally, I'd get a cheap shared room close to the hacker dojo in mountain view.

</comment><comment><USER30> $300/month at palo alto hacker house if you don't mind roommates (who happen to be interested in startups too). i think i was paying ~$700/month at the mountain view hacker house.

<comment><USER4> $300 for your own room?

<comment><USER31> No, a single room at the Hacker House is ~$600. Still a hell of a good deal.

<comment><USER4> I agree. $600 in Palo Alto is practically free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Someone should make a mini site for "Entrepreneurs/Roomate dating"!

Like: Name, age, nationality, startup name, coding language, smoke? pets? girl/boyfriend?.

Same for people looking to share their officespace

<comment><USER32> Agree to the first idea. Second one - this is a recent launch outta Rails Rumble: <http://desksnear.me/>

<comment><USER33> Currently desksnear.me is focused on casual, short-term coworking/office sharing, but we're definitely interested in finding a way to connect startups who are looking to share a space on a longer-term basis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Definitely depends on where you'll be working and commuting from/to. Commuting is a big deal in my book.

My guide would be: if you work in the City, anywhere between SF and San Carlos is a good bet. You can avoid the morning commute by taking BART.

If you work on the Peninsula, there's Caltrain for getting around. And you can take BART as far as Millbrae. Some companies (notably Genentech) have shuttles that take people from the big transit stations to work, but YMMV.

Beware "The Oracle Mile". It's 1 mile North and South of Ralston Ave. on US-101. It is a parking lot every weekday between 8am and 9:30am. Evening commute also. I know some people have different experiences, but that's been what I run into most often.

Generally, in the Bay Area (at least West Bay), either get to work before 8 or after 10. Otherwise you'll be spending a lot of time with all your other happy morning commuters. :P

Places to live? If you can take the rent, the Peninsula is nice. Half Moon Bay is on the coast and works well if your work is close to the 92 freeway.

I wasn't a fan of living in Pacifica, but some people are. Not much to do there as it's mainly a commuter town.

Just my 2c.

</comment><comment><USER35> I live in the mission and pay $1850/month for rent. One nice thing about living in the city is that utilities are pretty cheap. I pay about $100/month for everything. In Texas, electricity was at least twice that. Plus food isn't terribly expensive nor is transportation. In short, rent is terrible, but if you can make that, SF isn't too bad a place to live.

<comment><USER28> _Plus food isn't terribly expensive nor is transportation._

About how expensive are groceries? Most of the posts here only really mention rent, which isn't enough to fully describe cost of living.

<comment><USER36> When I lived in SF last (2 - 3 years ago), groceries were inexpensive in comparison to rent and eating out. I think my girlfriend and I spent around $200 per month on groceries (shopping at a Safeway in the financial district) vs $2.1k for rent and $50 - 100$ every time we went out for a decent meal. If you want to be in the city and save money by cooking it does make a big difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just to ad a different perspective from a lot of the people on the list, family housing in Silicon Valley is MUCH more expensive than probably anywhere else in the country.

I just moved out here in August, from Boston. We left behind a decent house in a nice suburb with good schools, for which we paid a little under $600,000. When I bought that home a few years ago, it seemed incredibly expensive. Out here, a comparable property in the heart of Silicon Valley will run you at least $1 million, if not $1.3.

<comment><USER38> LOL how depressing. Guess I'll just have to live vicariously through the other posters. Lesson to the rest of you, get SV living out of your system before you settle down and have kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'd try and avoid San Francisco. Yes,it's beautiful, and if you know the muni public transportation system you can get around easily without a car, but rents can be high (like $1300 for a studio apartment that isn't scummy). I'd look in Mountain View or Sunnyvale. If keeping costs low is very important, the northern part of San Jose probably has the lowest rents ($800-900 for a large studio / one bedroom appt) for an area near Silicon Valley. Palo Alto and areas north can be quite pricey.

<comment><USER40> Depends on whether or not you have a car. You won't be able to survive out in the suburbs, but you'll be fine in SF proper. If you have a car for free, then go for the suburbs, but if you have to buy one then the "savings" you get from living in the middle of nowhere might not be very high.

I visited Mountain View yesterday, and it was one of the most depressing places I have ever seen. It's the suburbs, but as expensive as a big city.

<comment><USER41> Google Headquarters.

Diverse list of excellent restaurants (Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Mexican, etc.)

No heavy traffic

Low crime rate

Lots of startups especially on Castro st.

Warmer by a few degrees than SF

Hacker Dojo

Sunday Farmers Market

Yeah, it's depressing.

<comment><USER42> It isn't the 70s or 80s anymore. There aren't that many places in the US where the crime rate deters people from living.

<comment><USER43> How many of your friends live in the Tenderloin?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It all depends where you live. If you would like to live in the city (San Francisco), one bedroom or studio can go up as much as $2000 per month. If you are considering to move around Palo Alto/Mountain View, the rent becomes around 12-1500s. If you are considering Sunnyvale/San Jose, the rent becomes 1000ish.

If you are going to work at Mountain View/Palo Alto area, I highly recommend to live in Sunnyvale, because the rent isn't as expensive and it's not too far (5-15min drive on 101).

<comment><AUTHOR> If I move there. Let's say, Palo Alto/ Mo. View I would be probably working on my startup all day long. Maybe for a walk/gym for an hour or so.

The only time I would need to move from there would be, maybe to attend to a meetup, meeting, etc.

The question would be.

How do I move from side to side. Public transportation? Is it safe to walk at night (Past 10/11/12pm).

THanks

<comment><USER41> I live in Mt View and go to the city about once a week.

I take Caltrain ($6 each way) to the city but you can't stay too late. The last train from SF leaves at around midnight. It would suck if you miss it because a taxi would probably cost you $100.

There is an excellent coworking space in Mt View - Hacker Dojo which is $100 a month. I used to live in SF but I prefer being in Mt View since it's cheaper and for me, safer. Also, you don't have to deal with parking.

Not having a car might be a pain though. Get a bike at least.

By the way, hit me up (danny -at- launchset.com). My cofounder and I are in Buenos Aires for the next 3 weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I used to live in Solano County, which is the cheap seats of the SF Bay Area. It is still the most expensive place I have ever lived but was a good bit cheaper than most of the rest of the Bay Area. There are more than 100 cities in the SFBA, so there is some flexibility on how expensive it is. You might try checking out bestplaces.net and city-data.com to get a better idea.

</comment><comment><USER46> Not sure why this data fact is absent in every single comment but: How much for a pint of beer? Six pack? (kind?)

<comment><USER47> ...because real software startups involve a bit less drinking-while-coding than you might think from watching The Social Network?

<comment><USER46> Was it a good movie? I don't think I'll ever see it... but I like to gauge prices based on beer because it seems to give an overall perspective on value.

<comment><USER47> It was a good movie, highly recommended overall, but the idea long coding sessions are strongly associated with beer-drinking was one of the few false notes.

FYI, a pint in The City (SF itself) can range you from $2.50 to $6 depending on place and time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> For pure rent, in Sunnyvale, I had a 3 bedroom house with $1900/month rent. I had the smallest room - and with 4 guys there - my rent hovered around $400. Utilities were pretty trivial ($20 month avg per person). I had a car, but could have lived with just a bike if money was an issue.

</comment><comment><USER49> I lived for about a year in Palo Alto near El Camino and Page Mill. I had a 2-bedroom apartment (1050 sq ft) for which the rent was $1800. I split it with a roommate to bring the cost down to $900 for each of us. Utilities were another $100 per month or so, total.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't recommend San Jose, It took me a hour to get to Mountain View by car and longer by public transportation.I recommend Santa Clara.

</comment><comment><USER50> Don't forget to look in East Palo Alto, which isn't nearly as scary as people make it out to be.

<comment><USER22> I don't recommend EPA for anyone, most of the people who live there are trying to get out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> are thier a lot of english(uk) people in silcon valley?

<comment><USER52> There are a fair few, but I don't run into other Brits that frequently in either the startup or work scenes. If I had to put a number on it, about 2/100 of the people I've met are British like me, 3-4/100 Aussie, 2-3/100 Singapore, and 10-20/100 "other european".</comment></comment>


Conjectures vs. Hypotheses - <AUTHOR> http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52249.html <comment><USER2> This might be idiosyncratic, but I tend to use 'hypothesis' for conjectures whose truth is an empirical question, and 'conjecture' for those where that isn't the case. So I'd 'hypothesize' that rigorous testing would show the FreeBSD kernel to have good SMP scalability properties up to 32 cores but perhaps not above that, while I'd 'conjecture' that a particular problem can't be solved in better than O(n log n) in the general case. The first hypothesis is one you could confirm or refute empirically, while the second conjecture is one you could prove or disprove analytically.

In some parts of science 'conjecture' can also be used to give the connotation of a weaker, less grounded 'hypothesis'. This seems to be particularly used in astrophysics, where 'conjecture' sometimes means 'very speculative hypothesis'.

I don't find the distinction _that_ important, though; it's pretty rare that flipping these two terms causes a real misunderstanding.

<comment><USER3> I'd say using them interchangeably or incorrectly contributes to people's misunderstanding of the word hypothesis, which fuels more than a few baseless arguments against scientific theory in general.

<comment><USER2> Even correct use of 'hypothesis' doesn't require any particular level of evidence, though. It's somewhat discipline-specific, but a hypothesis _could_ be a complete guess with no real backing. It's just whatever the experiment is setting out to confirm or refute. Especially true in fields where it's cheap to run experiments, in which case the bar for a 'hypothesis' is nearly zero, amounting to just anything testable that you find interesting to design a test for.

Perhaps you're thinking of the debate with creationists and similar people over the term 'theory'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Marcus du Sautoy has a different approach on the issue, which goes along the lines:

Conjecture: some evidence there

Hypothesis: strong evidence or very strong evidence, such that sciences would have accepted the hypothesis as a theorem. The Riemann Hypothesis mentioned, is the prominent example: Everyone beliefs it's true for more than 100 years, none has provided a full-featured proof BUT even huge clusters failed to find a stretch of evidence that might NOT be correct.

<comment><USER5> I agree with that distinction. Another notable class of mathematical "hypotheses" are those, like the continuum hypothesis [0], whose truth is formally undecideable but that many mathematicians nevertheless believe to be true in some sense. If this class of statements has any analogue in the empirical sciences, I guess it must be "unscientific" (untestable) hypotheses, about which philosophers (or theoretical physicists) might still find interesting things to say.

Mathematicians also use the word "hypothesis" to refer to a whole implication in the phrase "inductive hypothesis". But it most often simply means the left side of an implication: the phrase "A is true by hypothesis" means that A was assumed to be true—that is, it was the starting point of a proof.

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_hypothesis)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> there is a bit of irony that mathematicians are not really rigorous in the naming of things :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wasn't Taniyawa-Shimura proven true?

</comment><comment><USER8> A conjecture has a propositional attitude while a hypothesis does not. A conjecture may depend on a system, but it may be true outside of the scope of that system — think "true but unproved". (Not ___unprovable_ __like a Gödel sentence!) Once its proof is discovered (made), it becomes a valid hypothesis of the system by its proof which augments that system 's domain of truth.

A conjecture is _someone 's conjecture_ while a hypothesis is derived from a system itself ("my system has a valid hypothesis"). We don't "derive conjectures" from brains, they're made by persons.

When someone says "my hypothesis is", there is an implicit system they are strictly speaking from (channeling the system? Either way, they're not saying _what the believe_ but rather placing confidence in their understanding of the system strictly spoken from) — they're saying that this is provable within the system we know, but personally they do not have the proof on hand and it may require a little work. ("I don't know _all_ the rules off hand!")

A conjecture has an implicit system, but the speaker has a purpose to say that the system _as we know it_ may have a derived rule we have not discovered. There is "intuition" with conjecture, and "mention" with hypothesis".</comment>


The Life of a FaunaDB Query - <AUTHOR> https://blog.fauna.com/the-life-of-a-faunadb-query <comment><USER2> Good to hear from Fauna again.

I didn't know that the serialization format was JSON is that a long-term decision? Would a binary format be faster?</comment>


Insider's details about the Amazon Phone - <AUTHOR>

Here's all I know about the Amazon Phone.
1- There are 2 versions, a cheap one that's being released by the end of the year with a basic software similar to the Kindle Fire software. The other version will be more expensive and feature a 3D UI but won't be released until at least next year. The screen itself is not 3D, but the front of the phone has 4 cameras placed on each corner of the phone, this is to track the user's eyes/head and move the UI to give the impression of 3D. Similar to what iOS 7 is achieving simply by using the phone's accelerometer. The advantage being that it's not based on how the phone moves, but how the head moves.
2- They wanted to have it launched already but had difficulties with both software and hardware, and then lots of key players left the company - a common problem at Amazon is retention, having the lowest record of any tech company.
3- As a result, several engineers from other products have moved to the phone team, making other products severely short staffed.
4- They have done testing so the software ignores other faces next to you, this is to prevent the illusion from breaking if there are many people looking at the phone.
5- The phone might have image recognition so users can take a picture of any object and search the Amazon.com database for similar products. This is not the barcode scan that's available already, but actual object recognition. This might allow them to sell the phone for cheaper since they'd make money off extra sales.
6- Current code-name for the product is "Smith". <comment><USER2> Running four cameras just for a 3d UI? Isn't that going to be a huge battery drain with little benefit?

<comment><USER3> That should also give it depth perception for recognizing objects that it photographs. That appears to support the subsidized revenue model of the device.</comment></comment>


Ask YC: What is considered high level of ability ? - <AUTHOR>

IQ ? SAT ? Experience ? Creative answer :) ?
<comment><USER3> I considered putting down my IQ, but decided that would be a bit tacky so I just listed some of the areas of technology that interest me or that I feel I'm good in.

IQ and SAT stats do not strongly correlate with performance anyway.

<comment><USER4> SAT scores correlate highly with academic performance. This should come as no surprise, since their whole purpose was to democratize college admissions by allowing those students who would do best at college to be accepted, regardless of their religion or social connections.

The fact that SAT scores correlate poorly with workplace success is a red herring -- SAT scores were never supposed to predict workplace success.

<comment><USER5> "SAT scores correlate highly with academic performance."

Incorrect.

<comment><USER6> SAT scores are actually pretty decently correlated with freshman year grades. Colleges wouldn't use it if it weren't predictive, and so the College Board has put a lot of work into ensuring the test means something. Then again, freshman year grades don't really mean much in the grand scheme of life, but they do mean something, definitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IQ and SAT might provide benchmarks for intelligence, but they have no correlation with the desire and ability to complete a large task. Everyone knows that smart kid in high school/college who sat around playing WOW and drinking Mt Dew all day. Y Combinator does not want him.

In addition, sometimes the not-as-smart kid who has a good idea and a lot of motivation can accomplish something great.

If you did not spend months working on something, possibly crying at times with frustration and jumping around euphorically when you hit a new milestone, you have not done something with a high level of ability.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a feeling cperciva wins.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079>

<comment><USER4> Any time someone mentions "ability", you should ask "... to do what?"

If you're looking for ability to find new algorithms and prove their correctness, I probably win. If you're looking for ability to build a robust application (which is a key point to me -- I'm working on online backups, and the central point of backups is that they do NOT lose data, even if hardware failure occurs) I might win. If you're looking for ability to create an engaging Web 2.0 site, I definitely lose.

I'd assume that what YC means by "ability" is "ability to create whatever you've said on the application form that you intend to create" -- which in my case was an efficient, robust, and secure online backup system, but for most applications would be an engaging Web 2.0 site.

EDIT: Incidentally, it didn't even occur to me to mention the Putnam on the YC application form. For the "high level of ability" question I pointed towards my BSDCan'05 paper concerning stealing RSA keys on Intel CPUs with HyperThreading via an architectural side channel.

<comment><USER9> Dude, if I won the Putnam I would invent some letters that signified that fact and put them after my name. Heck, maybe in front of my name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think they want to know if you have achieved a high-level of ability in any field. This would indicate a certain discipline and application.

</comment><comment><USER11> Using IQ scores to measure people is extremely efficient. A 15 minute test can give you a good, rough idea of what sort of work a person is capable of. Someone who gets an 85 on an IQ test isn't going to MIT (no matter the effort), whereas a person with a 145 probably could (with effort).

This is mainly useful in situations optimized for efficiency--think mass inductions, as into the army or college, where individually judging people isn't possible. The army can't send everyone to officer school, and Harvard can't give everyone a one-semester tryout.

This isn't the situation faced by investors, who can devote more time to distinquishing people.

</comment><comment><USER12> This question is all about showing that you have achieved a level of excellence in a particular field. This could be academically (having won awards) or entrepreneurially (having set up stuff or had a large impact on people) or creatively (being incredibly awesome at jazz piano).

Think of a situation where you show above average ability relatove to someone. The truth is high achievers will continue to do so irespective of field - <USER2> if you want to be the best in the startup world try and extrapolate back to comsthing you have achieved.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think this is a useful metric for evaluating a startup team, but I do think the metric is subjective!

I am sure a lot of us (not so fortunate ones) realize our best abilities while working on something we really love.

So the best bet would be to describe your abilities relative to the problem you are trying to solve. How are your abilities helping your startup make significant forward progress?

<comment><USER14> >I am sure a lot of us (not so fortunate ones) realize our best abilities while working on something we really love.

Why is that unfortunate?

<comment><USER13> i meant to say, earlier we find something we love the better, so that we could start realizing our abilities sooner.. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Perhaps you could describe accomplishments that require a high level of ability. Perhaps you could include your academic papers, patents, contributions to open source projects, extracurricular engineering projects, or business adventures.

If you can't talk about something like that, I don't think you can demonstrate a high level of ability. Otherwise, do something great or work for someone who can.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe people should see how much others improved at their extra-curricular activities since they took them. You are not forced to do those (as you are forced to study for some exams or go to work), you do them because you have fun with them. Then, what you would really be measuring is how determined the person in question is to be better. That's an ability too.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen IQ? SATs? How dare you! Everyone knows those are not correlated with intelligence.

<comment><USER17> No, but is startup-success correlated with intelligence? (I hope not!)

<comment><USER18> If Icanhazcheezburger, yhou can haz cheezburger thoo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can code, design, play guitar, dance Salsa, surf, speak Spanish, English and a little Portuguese. :P

<comment><USER14> Do you also enjoy candlelit dinners and moonlight walks on the beach? If so, we might be a perfect match!

<comment><USER19> hehehe, sorry, I'm not looking for a serious relationship right now ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Demodulating v32.bis with your ears.

</comment><comment><USER21> Id say it means higher than most other people you know or have met.

<comment><USER22> in that case, there's a penalty for surrounding yourself with intelligent people . . . probably not a good thing</comment></comment>


What happens when you are under constant surveillance? - <AUTHOR> https://newsletters.iafrikan.com/issues/what-happens-when-you-are-under-constant-surveillance-196491 <comment><USER2> For an interesting perspective on what happens when surveillance is taken to an extreme see The Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter, synopsis by Arthur C. Clarke. In this story many people decide that as they will be watched anyway then they need not hide anything from anyone.

<comment><USER3> That's not the extreme we seem to be taking it towards though, which is centers of power that remain opaque, and heap disinformation on people that are transparent to them, but have their view of each other, of the the social landscape if you will, distorted by said disinformation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do these fashion discount sites operate (Gilt, etc)? - <AUTHOR>

See more and more of them popping up in the US and abroad, where do they get their merchandise? <comment><USER2> Many don't employ bulk purchasing in the traditional sense.

RueLaLa for example is actually run by GSI Commerce, the largest end to end ecommerce provider. They have existing distribution contracts with hundreds of companies.

When a product reaches its end of life period, GSI Commerce either buys it from the retailer and adds it to RueLaLa or the product goes into "overflow" where it is moved to RueLaLa but GSICommerce now takes a more significant percentage of the income.

The reason it is so profitable is because no additional infrastructure nor purchases are needed. GSICommerce keeps the old inventory in the same warehouse, reclassifies it as RueLaLa material, and removes it from the client website.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bulk purchasing. It's a similar model to Groupon - if you can drive enough volume for a single product you can get it significantly cheaper. Walmart works the same way.

<comment><USER4> I get that... but I am interested in some of the intricacies that go on here.. For instance, I know someone who made an attempt at starting a site like this and quickly ran into problems like only being able to purchase odd-sizes, etc for cheap re-sale. Presumably sites like Gilt lean on their wholesalers and set up rules to make sure they can provide enough product, and good enough product to maintain an interested user-base.

I'd definitely be curious as to how complicated those arrangements get.

<comment><USER3> It evolves over time as the retailer (Gilt) gains more volume and hence more power. If you look at Gilt, Groupon, etc. you are looking at companies that have spent a while gaining a very large channel for selling discount goods. This means they can pick and choose between wholesalers and products.

When starting out they will typically have to guarantee a certain volume to get the pricing they need and eat the product they can't sell. So it does require a fair bit of capital to get started which is why they typically start out with clearance inventory where the wholesale price is so reduced.

<comment><USER5> The initial rounds of Gilt were very limited on offerings (unlike the 6 or 12 designers they now carry daily) it was still high end though, so that initial entry point was indeed there for the early "designer" items, but as momentum gained on revenue/capital they snowballed to the current state.

To further pad this shortcoming in the early stages Gilt was invitation only, and had a lot of control of the influx of new customers to the site, which helped two-fold: promote the air of exclusivity and buffer for the smaller initial supplies/vendors from being out of stock too quickly. This also promotes traffic to the site as items, as they do today, sell out in popular sizes/prices fast, your users are logging in sooner/more frequently to grab a "deal".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a great interview with the founder of JackThreads - <http://mixergy.com/jason-ross-jackthreads-interview/>

He goes into sourcing product etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Long answer here on Quora <http://www.quora.com/How-does-Gilts-business-model- work></comment>


Why robots and smart technology aren't revolutionizing your house - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11683718/roomba-irobot-robots-disappointment <comment><USER2> I think the key to home robotics is services. No, I wouldn't want to pay 10k for a robot to do my cleaning or mow my lawn or do my laundry but I might pay a service with a robot. if it was ~$50-$100</comment>


Snapchat Discloses $650M Private Placement - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/snapchat-discloses-650-million-private-placement-1432913945?mod=WSJ_TechWSJD_NeedToKnow <comment><USER2> Snapchat is doing well. I sometimes get on the bus around the same time when the local high school is dismissed, and watch in amazement all the kids pull out their phones and work through their accumulated snaps for the day. Some have hundreds. It's a 45-minute ride to my stop and they're still watching when I get off.

Few months back I got jealous and installed Snapschat myself. It conveniently scanned my contacts, and found that none of my friends are on it. (I'm late 30s.) To this day, the only snap I received is the default welcome message they send to everyone.

They're doing a good job of confining their appeal to their target age group. The minute I and my peers appear on Snapchat, it's time to get worried.

And then there's snapchat.com, which is another enigma. I consider myself a reasonably competent technologist but Snapchat makes me feel like an ape trying to figure out a mysterious monolith.

<comment><USER3> This is why I think their valuation is less absurd than it seems. Their rate of adoption among college age and younger demographics is astounding. Way faster than facebook, or twitter, or any other social network was adopted.

I think a lot of people are skeptical because the concept seems really dumb. But I've just kind of accepted that social networks get popular for very subtle reasons, some of which are non-technical.

Building a social network seems to be more of an art than a science.

<comment><USER4> Most people are sceptical for the simple reason that the social networks that shed most of their user base long before ever threatening to make a reasonable profit actually had far more lock-in. If Snapchat's user base - a demographic not exactly noted for their long attention spans - gets bored or sick of ads once Snapchat actually manage to sell them in significant numbers, they're not leaving anything behind when they download the next flavour of the month.

The terms attached to this probably make their chance of selling out to Facebook for ~$20bn slim too.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't you have said the same thing about early Facebook?

<comment><USER4> Early Facebook had the facility to get in touch (or stalk!) people I had no contact details for provided I knew their name, and check out upcoming party details, not mention a photographic record of my university life complete with comments and status boosting likes. Facebook didn't need to remain cool to be relevant and _useful_ , and I logged in far more often than someone sent me an actual message from the service - still do a decade on.

Snapchat is a messaging app which distinguishes itself from the other messaging apps users also have installed on their phones by the fact it _doesn 't_ preserve any past interactions. Much like when I stopped bothering to log into MSN Messenger because people sent me messages in other ways, it dies in the eyes of its users once the daily updates stop, or even more quickly if the daily updates become near-exclusively advertising of the unwanted kind

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious given these kinds of deals, what the point of an IPO is anymore? For some of these companies the valuations are so high, and private capital so available that it seems incredibly unlikely that they'd get a better deal on the public markets. Who wants to abide by public market standards if you can avoid it?

I wonder if there's a new model, kind of like large privately held companies such as Mars or Cargill, but with multiple investors. Granted, many of the tech companies getting these valuations have unclear economics, but what if they had real revenues, profits and paid a dividend?

Honest question, why go public at all these days?

<comment><USER7> 3 major reasons:

1 - After a certain point in time (based on # of shareholders) it becomes more onerous to be private, and you wind up with all the reporting responsibilities of being public.

2 - It's easier for a public company to engage on both sides of M&A. There's less quibbling about theoretical valuations since the company has a price. (When one private firm buys another with stock, there's 2 theoretical prices that need to be negotiated)

3 - For enterprise deals (not Snapchat) some customers prefer the stability of public ownership.

<comment><USER6> Cool, thanks!

That said I wonder if 1 will always be that big an issue. What if you structure it so that you have a small number of large shareholders that represent larger groups? For example, in the case of stock options, a sort of labor union owns the stock, sits on the board and is responsible for distributing dividends to employees following a schedule of percentages.

2 is clearly troublesome, but perhaps more in the M than the A. If you acquire small companies, you may be able to do it in cash or again as some sort of contract entitling people to percentages of dividends. After all, that's kind of what a stock certificate used to be in practice, not just theory (yes oversimplification, but it seems people care far more about stock price than dividend these days).

I wonder whether these issues will always be as troublesome. As these kinds of mega deals become more common, it seems quite possible that a sort of parallel private market could emerge. Anyway, thanks for the reasoning!

<comment><USER7> The trend is against all three of these, but it's a slow trend.

On #1 - the issue is individual employees each have shares tied to their hire date. It's possible that someone could do some kind of financial engineering to make it look like 1, but this hasn't been done yet. This is the issue that forced Facebook to go public.

On #2 - If it's a cash purchase, the problem is less an issue. It gets tricky when the acquirer is significantly away from a funding event. The values of many high tech firms can be +500% or -80% just 6 months after a prior event. This has a massive impact on share-based acquisitions. Less of an issue with more mature companies.

All this said, it's fairly easy to see a world 20 years from now where there are much fewer public firms.

<comment><USER6> My guess is for these things to change (if they ever do) there would have to be a crisis event. Maybe after the next crash employees will be more reticent to take pure stock and will go for an alternate arrangement. Maybe the structures built for those arrangements will allow contracts for acquisitions to be structured differently.

It's going to be interesting to see how long this private valuation explosion will last and what the fallout will be after it pops.

<comment><USER7> A fully private market isn't great either. There's a lot of value for the investment community in general to know what the daily value of a given stock is. If you try to get this transparency via off-market transactions, aren't you just recreating the public market?

<comment><USER6> Oh totally. I think it would be a bad thing overall, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. If you have enough capital in a relatively small number of private entities, perhaps they will find it to their advantage to compromise a little on clarity, in exchange for more control or less regulation.

Overall, I suspect a shadow market would be a bad thing, but it's hard to argue that for the moment there isn't something like a shadow market in silicon valley. I don't think it's a sustainable one, and it certainly is opaque (what's in those term sheets?), I'm just thinking of whether something similar could exist in a more permanent form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A year or two ago I saw my little brother and sister on Snapchat (16 and 15 respectively). I didn't understand it at all. Soon enough I was on it and let me tell you, it is used far more than Instagram and if not more, the same as Whatsapp. It is because you can share real moment of your normal everyday life. They mentioned how on Instagram most of the pictures they see there are uploaded celebrities/funny accounts/etc. Normal people don't have amazing moments to share everyday. Plus, they would be embarrassed to share what they share on Snapchat in any other network (i.e. funny faces, what you cooked, the funny kid on the school bus, your boredom).

I believe they are in unchartered territory thus comparing it to anything else is just a shot in the dark. If you could wave a magic wand and ask for the best way to share moments of your life you would probably get a hologram of your friends to show them that instant of you life that you wanted to share. Snapchat gets closest to this. Moments come and go, not all moments should be forever saved, moments should be only for those you intend to share with, moments should be feel lively (video/images) not text, etc.

Also: Discovery feature - I give Snapchat so much credit for this. They got the younger demographic watching 'TV' again. Snapchat accommodated the channel these kids are using (mobile) to connect with the big media outlets in a way that they actually consume content. That is, by short clips of < 5-10 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER9> Bloomberg: Snapchat Said to Be Valued at $16 Billion in New Fundraising

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/snapchat-s...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-29/snapchat- said-to-be-valued-at-16-billion-in-new-fundraising)

Any bets on what market cap this will get to at IPO time?

<comment><USER10> > Investors in the latest round include Access Industries, York Capital > Management, Glade Brook Capital Partners and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

Besides Alibaba I have never hear of any of these funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am 29 and a lot of my friends and I use SnapChat. I don't love it, but it is useful enough that I post pretty regularly to it.

<comment><USER12> What do you use it for?

<comment><USER13> I ask the same question. What can snapchat do that mms cant?

Edit: So they took a service that was as simple and flexible as could be, put arbitrary restrictions on it, and wrapped it in pretty UI. Kids are dumb man. (I'm 26)

<comment><USER14> Do it's best to guarantee that a post will be removed.

In a world where everything you do is recorded and stored long term the promise of something fleeting is a beautiful promise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> unbelievable :) $32B at IPO

</comment><comment><USER16> When it comes to a new article being behind a paywall, I would rather not know the news than have to make an account to view it. Can we ban wsj.com from HN?

<comment><USER17> You could save a bookmarklet that allows you to bypass the header: [https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/9a4d9e648eb11aab394e](https://gist.github.com/jashkenas/9a4d9e648eb11aab394e)

Or you could just skip the article when you see it. I don't see why we'd ban wsj.com just because you have trouble reading it.

<comment><USER18> > just because you have trouble reading it

Please don't make comments needlessly personal.</comment></comment></comment>


An Introduction to Petname Systems (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html <comment><USER2> This is a always a fun thought experiment.

For those who administer qmail, postfix, etc. (e.g., I run qmail at home), consider the example of an email alias for the administrator, where the primary address is chosen by the administrator, and the alias functions as a key/id.

If the application interface shows the primary email address, then does the primary email address qualify as a petname.

For those who use the links browser, place the following entry in /etc/hosts

      18.104.22.168 edgecastcdn.net test123

"edgecastcdn.net" is the key/id. "test123" is an alias.

Then

      links http://test123/index.html

Then press the equal sign ("=") key to display "document info", i.e., the links equivalent of the "address bar".

The application displays the name "[http://test123/index.html"](http://test123/index.html")

Does "test123" qualify as a petname?

<comment><USER3> The real address must be an unguessable identifier in order for this to qualify as a petname system. So change the IP/host in your example to a UUID/GUID and then "test123" would qualify as a petname local to the system (but not the user).

Think of petnames as a local DNS/namespace system that maps user-friendly names to user-unfriendly unguessable designators.

<comment><USER2> In practice, ICANN DNS caters to guessable DNS names. Theoretically does anything stop anyone from providing globally visible "unguessable" DNS names, e.g., DNS names that contain unique keys.

For example, the names for ianix.com's nameservers

uz5lr233zjlv6w9p0q43tygrps3mnc0ccy675sgvn19y3cf1u4hs5z.ianix.com

uz5cjwzs6zndm3gtcgzt1j74d0jrjnkm15wv681w6np9t1wy8s91g3.ianix.com

<comment><USER3> You could, and a server-side restriction to only respond to that host name would qualify as an unguessable designator, but it's kind of backwards. The unguessable tokens are supposed to be cheap and ubiquitous, where DNS names typically aren't.

<comment><USER2> "The unguessable tokens are supposed to be cheap and ubiquitous, where DNS names typically aren't."

Just to clarify, you are referring to the commercialisation of domain names, _the DNS run by ICANN_ , not an inherent property of DNS per se.

I run authoritative nameservers at home, including a custom root.zone. I create names whenever I neeed them, so I still think of domain names as "free", in theory. Only _ICANN_ domain names carry a fee. (In the very beginning they _were_ free.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Issues Cease & Desist to Open Source Android Developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7544 <comment><USER2> Its worth noting that Cyanogen has changed his work to comply with Google: [http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/29/cyanogen-android-rom- modd...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/29/cyanogen-android-rom-modder-bends- to-googles-will-but-does-not/)

<comment><USER3> Of course he did. He did roughly the moral equivalent of redistributing MP3s, Google told him to knock it off, he did.

<comment><USER4> Not even close. This is the moral equivalent of putting a new muffler on your Honda. He is tweaking apps he purchased (all android phone owners have such a license) and distributing those tweaks to people who also have licenses for those apps. You have clearly drunk the kool-aid.

<comment><USER5> There are devices that do not ship with Android but can run it, like the OpenMoko Freerunner and numerous netbooks. So even if you assume that the license somehow trumps copyright, he could easily have been giving away the apps to people who are not licensed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The more I think about this, the more frustrated I get.

Google is completely in the right, legally, but the licensing issue means that I have no way to legally exploit the open source nature of Android while _also_ retaining crucially important applications, like the Android Market, Google Maps, or GMail.

Which, for me, means that I can never truly use my Dev Phone for both development, and as a phone. I have to choose between openness and proprietary software that makes the phone usable as a general device.

Commercial developers, however, through their license agreements with Google, are able to work with both of these components -- the open foundation and the closed applications -- to produce a complete package. I can only provide half of that.

Oh how I wish Google would make their applications otherwise available, as they do for S60 and other platforms. I don't mind being prohibited from redistribution, but give me a way to install those applications on my own.

</comment><comment><USER7> What is the relationship between copyright infringement and Open Source???</comment>


Buying a laptop for work and travel – choose the OS/software first - <AUTHOR> https://lifesimply.rocks/buying-a-laptop-for-work-and-travel/ <comment><AUTHOR> Reading guides how to choose a laptop for work and travel always seems to contain a few things:

1\. it has to be sturdy

2\. it should have a good keyboard & trackpad

But what about the software? I've come across a lot of people that bought MacBooks only to realise that they actually needed Windows (to run specific software). I don't think installing Windows on a Mac is a bad idea but why not think about the software first and buy the hardware according to your needs?

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER2> Thinkpad. Good keyboard. Good battery. Good everything

Edit:// The article claims that aluminium is somehow more sturdy than any plastic. How comes they aint even MIL certified then? I throw mz thinkpad on the ground regularly and it barely has scratches where every macbook would be broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the top model Thinkpads are very durable and are tested under extreme conditions. But those aren't made from plastic alone as far as I know but use polycarbonate, magnesium, carbon fibre, metal hinges and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> My mid 2015 15" pro boots osx windows and linux. I spend most of my time in solus os. It has fantastic support for MacBooks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't heard of Solus before. I will check it out.</comment></comment>


The Expression Problem and its solutions - <AUTHOR> http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2016/the-expression-problem-and-its-solutions/ <comment><USER2> I consider expression problem pretty much solved. There are two composable solutions: (1) multi-methods (described in this article), suitable mainly for dynamic languages (LISP, Clojure, Julia), and (2) type classes/extension methods, suitable for static languages (Haskell, C#, Scala, Rust, Go (?)).

Having solved the _expressivity_ , the only remaining problem seems to be performance; single-inheritance dispatch just seems much more efficient than multi-methods (time-wise) and quite a bit more efficient than type classes (space-wise and time-wise).

<comment><USER3> I looked into type classes in Haskell, but my understanding was they they provide static, not dynamic dispatch. Is that wrong?

FWIW I've also been wondering about Go. On one hand in Go you don't have to pre-declare which interfaces your type is implementing. OTOH you can't just extend an existing type from a different package with new methods, AFAIU

<comment><USER4> Nope, type classes use dynamic dispatch (I might be wrong, but I think higher kinded types are impossible with pure static dispatch.).

<comment><USER5> They can be implemented via method dictionaries but, sans type system extensions, polymorphic recursion and separate compilation, all uses of a type variable constrained by a type class could, in principle, be monomorphised and the dictionaries eliminated. This is not true of dynamic dispatch.

<comment><USER6> That's true, but I believe less relevant than most would think. Most of the "dynamic dispatching" people talk about could be similarly monomoprhized. The only real dynamic dispatch occurring in most programs is due to dynamic code loading (separate compilation from your post).

<comment><USER5> I disagree, and since we are talking about the expression problem, we should not be conflating dynamic dispatching code which could be statically resolved from dynamic dispatching code which is necessarily dynamic.

A standard use-case of dynamic dispatch is for representing different types of term in a parse tree, where we want to dispatch on nodes according to type. This sort of dispatch cannot be monomorphised, since the the exact callee depends on the shape of the trees being traversed and this almost certainly cannot be figured out statically.

In Haskell, you do not do this sort of dispatch with typeclasses, but instead use ADTs.

When it comes to the expression problem, the tradeoff is that ADTs allow you to easily write new sorts of traversal but do not allow you to extend the tree type in a modular way. By contrast, single dispatch OO allows you to easily extend the tree type by providing new classes to implement the traversal methods, at the cost that you cannot easily define new traversals.

<comment><USER6> > we should not be conflating dynamic dispatching code which could be > statically resolved from dynamic dispatching code which is necessarily > dynamic.

This is exactly what I said: most of what people call "dynamic dispatching" is not truly dynamic, and the use of dispatching code is merely an implementation detail.

> In Haskell, you do not do this sort of dispatch with typeclasses, but > instead use ADTs.

Except you can, and this is one way to solve the expression problem in Haskell, ie. by lifting constructors to their own types with pattern matching functions lifted to type classes. At which point we come full circle: most uses of ADTs can also be monomorphized and so are not dynamically dispatched either.

Dynamic dispatches then occur only on input at runtime to select the type being instantiated (and so the type class being dispatched into).

<comment><USER5> Please explain how to lift the constructors of Maybe to typeclass instances where its use can be monomorphised.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand what's unclear, lifting values to the type-level and pattern matching on those values to type classes is a standard construction [1].

I only claimed that operations on Maybe can be lifted to type classes, you claimed that all uses of type classes can be monomorphized (barring "fancy types", of which Maybe is presumably not one).

Since all pattern matching functions on simple sums like Maybe can be lifted to type classes using the above translation, and given you said all such type classes can be monomorphized, therefore all uses of Maybe can be monomorphized. Alternately, your original claim could be wrong, or you can provide a counter-example to my claim that pattern matching on Maybe can be translated to type class dispatch.

[1] [http://koerbitz.me/posts/Solving-the-Expression-Problem- in-H...](http://koerbitz.me/posts/Solving-the-Expression-Problem-in-Haskell- and-Java.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Object Algebras are a nice solution to the expression problem for OO languages: [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2012/ecoop2012.pdf](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2012/ecoop2012.pdf) (LtU discussion: [http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4572](http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/4572) )

Operations are implemented in a class with a method for each data type. Data is created via factories. Adding data types is done by adding new factory methods, possibly by extending another factory. Adding new operations is done by adding operation methods, possibly by extending existing operation classes.

The paper is quite accessible and the patterns are simple and familiar. The paper goes into type safety and composing algebras.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, no OO languages save Scala implement the higher kinded types needed to truly exploit object algebras.

<comment><USER8> I don't know what you mean by "fully exploit", and maybe there are other, nicer, solutions, but object algebras were specifically designed for Java/C# type systems. The entire idea is predicated on that:

 _This paper presents a new solution to the expression problem that works in OO languages with simple generics (including Java or C#). A key novelty of this solution is that advanced typing features, including F-bounded quantification, wildcards and variance annotations, are not needed._

<comment><USER6> > I don't know what you mean by "fully exploit",

If the return type of one of your overloads is itself a generic type, you can't represent that in the type of the method. Consider the IntBoolFactory from the paper, and then add two operations for lambda abstraction and function application:

        public Exp lambda(Exp=>Exp body);
        public Exp apply(Exp lambda, Exp arg);

Where Exp=>Exp represents a Java lambda taking an Exp and returnin an Exp. Notice how the type of the lambda and its argument must now be dynamically type checked to ensure that 'arg' has the same type as the parameter for the lambda. With higher kinded types, you could write something like this instead:

        public <T0, T1> Exp lambda(Exp<T0>=>Exp<T1> body);
        public <T0, T1> Exp<T1> apply(Exp<T0,T1> lambda, Exp<T0> arg);

And now everything is statically type checked by the Java compiler. Without higher kinded types, you gain extensibility in every direction using object algebras, but you lose some type checking.

<comment><USER6> That actually should read:

        public <T0, T1> Exp<T0, T1> lambda(Exp<T0>=>Exp<T1> body)

But you get the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_problem)

> The goal is to define a datatype by cases, where one can add new cases to > the datatype and new functions over the datatype, without recompiling > existing code, and while retaining / _static type safety_ /

So, while there's an easy way to write something with lispy multiple dispatch, it is not a solution, sorry.

</comment><comment><USER10> This was an interesting read for me, but I'm struggling to understand, from a design/organizational perspective, why solving the expression problem is a _good_ thing.

If I don't try to solve the expression problem, I'm left with two common [OOP] implementation approaches:

1\. A file for each type, within which all operations are also defined for that type.

2\. A file for each type (POD), and a file for each operation which contains implementations for all types.

With either implementation, I achieve a good deal of consistency. The questions of "where should I put this new code", "what is the responsibility of this file", or "where could I find the implementation of operator <x> on type <y> within the code repository" are easily answered.

Solutions to the expression problem appear to mix these two approaches. The result seems to be much more loosely structured code. If I want to find the definition of ToString for type Constant, where do I look? It could either be in `src/types/Constant.code` or `src/operations/ToString.code` within my code repository. And as a result, it's no longer obvious what the full responsibilities of any file are within a structured repository without skimming the source.

I've heard some brief discussion of extending libraries with both types and operators - for example, adding a new image format to an image processing library and also adding a new operation. But at that point, doesn't your new code belong in the library (where you can implement it using approach 1 or 2), rather than in application code?

<comment><USER11> The Expression Problem is a non-problem, if you can modify all your codebase. Just change the image processing library. You probably want to static type system so you quickly find all places, where you have to change something.

The Expression Problem is ugly, if you cannot change the image processing library for some reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The thing that's really undesirable about the clojure code is an unfortunate consequence of dynamic typing.

Note that the bottom right corner of the expression problem matrix isn't filled in. This means that newOp(newType) will fail _at run time_ \- you've simply replaced the difficult task of filling in the matrix with the easier task of partially filling it in and hoping for the best. Hope you've got a great test suite!

I must say that I strongly prefer the Haskell/Scala/etc approach where that missing square is an explicit compile time warning/error.

<comment><USER13> In my experience, if you write tests to see whether the function returns what it should (or just an integration test for a few use cases), you got types covered.

YMMV

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is well known that in the untyped (or dynamically typed if you prefer that language) case then the expression problem trivializes. In fact, if we sacrifice type-safety then the problem trivializes in a typed language too.

</comment><comment><USER15> In OCaml polymorphic variants solve the expression problem.

Solutions to the expression problem in Haskell feel heavyweight. I've personally never encountered the problem in serious or production code. I cannot say whether that's because it isn't that important in practice or because its difficulty causes me to avoid designs that run into it.

<comment><USER16> Slight digression but - PLT-Scheme (or Racket or whatever it's called now) : CL :: Haskell : OCaml

Exploration of new ideas in Scheme and Haskell 'feel' more versatile. The representation of concepts are often more succinct and almost always have more of that that je ne sais quoi one gets from an elegant[1] math proof. In day- today coding with a team, I've used more of the CL/OCaml than the latter though for reasons I'm not entirely sure about. OCaml's modules are strictly more powerful than Hask98's type classes.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty) Didn't know this existed until just now, but glad Russell and Erdos are both mentioned in the first paragraph, and even more amused, considering their histories with formalism/ordered logic haha. Where's the Frege tragedy and the Wiggenstein Viennese fanboys?!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not a C++ expert but can you solve this using something more like the functional approach in C++, by defining a templated function and then specializing it in the extension modules for the various classes? (I guess the specialized declarations would need to be #included somehow, but that's not too big of a hurdle.)

<comment><USER3> I'm having a hard time deciphering your idea - do you have a minimal snippet/gist to show what you mean?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not sure if I interpreted the problem correctly, but in C# composing interfaces and using generic extension methods with type predicates:

interface IFooAble { ... }

interface IBarAble : IFooAble { ... }

static class FooProcessor {

        static T ProcessFoo<T>(T fooInst)

            where T: IFooAble { ... }

}

This gives us something that as long as the object implements IFooAble, we can use this extension for free. I.E: IBarAble can use ProcessFoo just fine. This works really well for writing fluent interfaces as demoed above.

<comment><USER19> The question is can you do this to sealed/final classes like String? Say you wanted a Canadian String that appended ",eh" ever time it saw a question mark, could you do this? Could you make Money do the same?

<comment><USER18> Yeah, AFAIK, extension methods just have to work on POCOs, which string and money (or decimal) are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been thinking about this problem lately, and I thought the article gave it a good treatment. However, the problem I saw is that unless someone has already used the right provided language primitives for their data, you suffer the expression problem again anyway.

A pattern that I believe can help solve even this level of expression problem is the facade pattern ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facade_pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facade_pattern)). In other words, to expand upon what has existed before, one writes a layer on top of the third-party package that belongs to the current project. That layer implements, by default, everything in the external package, and it gives you the ability to extend it as you see fit. In addition, you get all the other benefits of the facade, like being able to swap out, fix, or extend specific implementation details without having to alter many places in code where you relied upon some external package's API decisions directly.

For me, it's still a thought experiment. I do not have a lot of personal experience trying this methodology out in the extreme in production. Has anyone else tried it and can comment?

<comment><USER3> The facade approach is discussed in the article, along with some of its issues. I call it "extending the visitor pattern" following the paper the article refers to several times.

<comment><USER20> I think I am misunderstanding what I am reading; I do not see the Facade pattern addressed in the paper or in the article. My understanding is...

Unlike the Visitor pattern, the Facade pattern does not require any help on the side of the thing being extended -- no interface required. That is the primary contributor to the problems described in the article, right? that someone must explicitly provide a backdoor? And in some cases, multiple things must be modified to support extension due to the nature of the backdoors?

With a Facade, one writes a new, additive layer, sometimes directly mimicking the API they are wrapping. To extend Expr, I make MyExpr, and I call upon Expr within MyExpr. The tradeoff is API repetition/delegation, which can be mitigated with compile-time or run-time code generation, depending on the language.

Generally, this approach is used to coerce external APIs into an API that is more appropriate for the domain. For example, suppose I have a choice of three different XML packages: one package has great features for parsing and validating XML but has no interface for building XML; another lets me build it but not read it; a third provides some obscure namespace feature that I wish the builder had, but it is otherwise the slow performer in the set. I can unify these three packages under one package that delegates to the three appropriately.

I would also use this approach for extending existing functionality. For example, suppose I am depending on some foo(V) in an ML-style language that dispatches on V of type X and Y; usually, adding dispatch for something of type Z would require modifying the original code, right? But I can instead write a my_foo(V) that handles Z and defers all other dispatching to foo(V). I may introduce whatever complexity I need for my specific problem without needing the original source code of the thing I am extending. Acknowledged tradeoff: complex dispatch order may require reinventing the wheel to some extent.

My intuition suggests that this approach works well for most languages without requiring language-enforced extensibility on all the things.

Again, great article! It really does cover a lot of ground and comparisons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Martin Odersky illustrates this very same problem in his scala course very well:

[https://class.coursera.org/progfun-002](https://class.coursera.org/progfun-002)

Lecture 4.5 Decomposition

Lecture 4.6 Pattern matching

(ps. I am not associated with Coursera or Martin in any way, just found his particular explanations very easy to understand)

Edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the seminal StrangeLoop 2010 talk by Chris Houser on this[0] (whoa, it's been a while..)

Stuart Sierra from around the same vintage[1]. (Again, whoa, time flies.)

[0] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Clojure-Expression- Proble...](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Clojure-Expression-Problem) [1] [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-clojure- pro...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-clojure-protocols/)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm still bitter, that undergrad school didn't tell about this before starting the functional programming course(s).

<comment><USER23> Why the downvotes? Most curricula I'm aware of only teach FP at the beginner level and thus one hardly sees the benefits.

Or it's an tiny mid-/upper-level chorus taken by those already hooked.</comment></comment>


Rocket engine with electric pumps - <AUTHOR> http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/73571-rocket-engine-with-electric-pumps/

<comment><USER2> [http://aviationweek.com/space/rocket-lab-unveils-battery- pow...](http://aviationweek.com/space/rocket-lab-unveils-battery-powered- turbomachinery) I guess related to this?

<comment><USER3> That is a more interesting link than the parent :-).</comment></comment>


Why does neuroscience cause people to question the roots of human behaviour? - <AUTHOR> http://www.brockferguson.com/blog/why_is_neuroscience_so_effective_in_causing_people_to_question_the_roots_of_human_behaviour

<comment><USER2> The key scientific finding by cognition research is the timing of the conscious and non-conscious decision making process. As you have rightly pointed out fMRI is yet another tool in neuroscience, yet in addition it provides profound insight in the sequence of events that happen during any decision making process, be that buying candy or criminal behaviour. The decision to take any action seems to be made many hundreds of milliseconds before we consciously "think" we reach the conclusion and act on it. Thereby fMRI based neuroscience has moved the "root" of human behaviour from the conscious part of our selfs into the unknown depth of our subconscious mind. Indeed we are as far from the rational decision making machine that the free will paradigm suggests, and you don't need to look far before you see the impact that suggestive advertising and negotiation tactics have on us. This conclusion is hard to marry with the philosophical concept of free will and the economic concept of the rational agent and does cause some unease amongst legal scholars.</comment>


Source: Top Five Theater Circuits Drop 'The Interview' After Sony Hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/source-top-five-theater-circuits-758843 <comment><USER2> It would be really cool if this film goes straight to direct-sales / netflix / dvd and remains successful due to all the marketing it has received from the hack debacle.

It would be even cooler if its high-profile, straight to market launch success was a turning point in reducing theater dominance for major label releases.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the typical workflow for a front end designer? - <AUTHOR> I am beginning my first seriuos project in react-native. We are using github and several other tools. What is your workflow for eg.
* sit down * git pull * start enviroments * write feature * test? * git push <comment><USER2> I always find its hard to start when you are stuck only looking for the best solution - just get everything on the screen and start, don't worry about the end product till you know all of what you have to deal with.

Overload your test pages with sample data (max pictures, lots of "results", full detail forms, etc.).

Now that you really have your problem defined. Time for fun! - refine HTML and CSS, keep it simple, If you are doing responsive stuff start with the smallest display mode possible. Shift-control-m in Firefox gives you a small screen simulation to start but also test on an actual phone/tablet browser to see how it works in the real world.

As you hit snags, check out what other sites do to handle such situations, note what you think works and what you could do better then implement your spin on such things.

Don't be afraid to switch approaches, make an archive/backup and re-factor as needed. The more experience you get doing it the better.

</comment><comment><USER3> Broad strokes need conversation. Can you be more specific here?</comment>


Geocities pages going down one by one - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=geocities.com&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images

<comment><AUTHOR> Some sites are still up, many are going down.</comment>


Show HN: Preprocessor for XML and JSON. People-Friendly Syntax,code Reuse+editor - <AUTHOR> https://www.syntactik.com/ <comment><USER2> A comparison against YAML would be nice as well. YAML allows reusing section [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#Advanced_components](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML#Advanced_components) for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I will mention YAML in the language description. Code reuse in YAML is limited to just simple reference. In Syntactik, you can define parameters inside an alias. It makes code reuse in Syntactik much more useful.</comment></comment>


Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can't Protect Us Anymore - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-mat-honan-password-hacker/

<comment><USER2> Moral of the story:

1) Use 2-factor authentication (even twitter supports this, what was this author thinking??) 2) Don't rely on 'cloud' services to keep all of your important pictures or documents safe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Then again, it seems to me that if someone really wants to hack you, they can, no?</comment></comment>


There's a rootkit in the closet - <AUTHOR> http://www.void.gr/kargig/blog/2009/08/21/theres-a-rootkit-in-the-closet/ <comment><USER2> There's something that puzzles me. The author found a rootkit and saw that it was integrated very deeply in the system. Yet he tried to fix the system _from within_!

Only after some failed attempts to download and install a new kernel, he finally did the Right Thing and shut down the server to analyze the hard disk from outside.

To everyone who encounters such a rootkit, I strongly recommend to _skip this second step_. If you see such a deeply integrated rootkit, shut down the computer immediately! _No fiddling!_ Then, take out the hard disk and copy and analyze it as described in the article.

Otherwise, you'd enable the rootkit to hide its traces, and to maybe destroy some data. You don't learn anything from that fiddling. Satisfy your curiosity only _after perpetuating evidence_! (i.e. after copying the hard disk's data)

</comment><comment><USER3> Upvoted both for the content and expository writing style. He did a nice job not just of solving the problem but also showing how he did it.

</comment><comment><USER4> If this style of interception becomes popular, it seems to argue for a statically linked busybox or similar that uses syscalls directly.

<comment><USER5> The nice thing about this method is that you don't have to muck about in the kernel with a kernel module or anything like that. Also, you don't have to replace any binaries on the system, so everything _looks_ fine to an md5 comparison. Also, if you've setup something like tripwire to only watch specific configuration files and services, it might not catch the newly created /etc/ld.so.preload file.

Some programs (such as login), are already statically compiled to prevent this exact thing from happening.

<comment><USER6> I think that the default tripwire config (and definitely the default samhain config) includes monitoring new files in /etc, so at least there's that protection. Unfortunately not many people use those applications in real deployments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's often said that privilege escalation under Linux is very easy. Why is Linux so insecure in this aspect?

Why does OpenBSD not suffer from local root exploits?</comment>


Gurdjieff and the Women of 'The Rope' (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gurdjieff.org/rope.htm <comment><USER2> Alan Watts on Gurdjieff:

 _" Gurdjieff was a magnificent old rascal, who lived a joyous life, and most of his disciples live extremely restricted, rigid, and serious lives -- because the object of Gurdjieff's method was to weed out those who understood from those who do not, and those who understood went away and those who did not understand remained._

 _" Gurdjieff laid a trap for people who think that the purpose of life is power, that is to say, to control everything, and he beguiled them with the idea that they were all asleep and not fully in control of their own processes and their own organisms, and he assigned them the impossible task of being the Lord God Jehova each for one's self. He set them to doing this with great rigor and he added to this the discipline of dances in which you could exercise every limb working on a different rhythm to give yourself the illusion of omnipotence. But if you persevered in these exercises hard enough, you would discover they were all nonsense, at which point you would have attained Gurdjieff's stage of illumination."_

<comment><USER3> As someone who had much more to do with Gurdjieff followers when growing up than is healthy or happy, this is a very refreshing perspective on his followers at least, and absolutely hits the nail on the head as far as my experiences go!

Also, if you read his works they are not top shelf philosophy by any means. They are more an organized compilation of thoughts he came across than a true original opus. I have no idea how anybody took it seriously, beyond the observation that humans do many irrational things.

<comment><USER4> What were your experiences with Gurdjieff followers when growing up? I've not heard any stories from this point of view. Would be interested in whatever you can share.

<comment><USER3> I am not going to pull all that shit back up since it would take a lot for me to find my calm afterwards. Suffice to say its structure was fluid and never totally defined, its _fuel_ was sophistic like much of Gurdjieff's maxims (there was a lot of fuel), and its hidden goal was always unacknowledged control masquerading as wisdom. It wound up spiraling out of control. The tight clamps could not hold back the more powerful fuel and people burned themselves out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a fun interview I ran across recently with Gary Lachman (a.k.a. Gary Valentine, early bass player for Blondie!) who knows a ton about this stuff. Though he's strongly biased in favour of Ouspensky against Gurdjieff. Pretty entertaining though, for anyone who likes esoterica about esoterica.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgurBMfwQw4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgurBMfwQw4)

</comment><comment><USER5> You ever see the OA on netflix?

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

</comment><comment><USER6> An interesting review of a 2012 book with the same title as this article: [http://www.josephazize.com/2016/04/01/gurdjieff-and-the- wome...](http://www.josephazize.com/2016/04/01/gurdjieff-and-the-women-of-the- rope/)

<comment><USER4> That book appears to be the personal notes of Solita Solano, which are mentioned in the article. This bit is hilarious:

 _Gurdjieff has given them some "special liquor chocolates", and Jane Heap, thinking to flatter Gurdjieff, says to him: "Every day in your house is Christmas." Gurdjieff replies with this remarkable repartee: "Excuse! Twice a day in my house is Christmas. Look, Mees Gordon, she wish belittle me!"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From Wikipedia's article on Gurdjieff:

>> Gurdjieff taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, calling the discipline "The Work"[5] (connoting "work on oneself") or "the Method".[6] According to his principles and instructions,[7] Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus he referred to it as the "Fourth Way".[8]

So, a typical charlatan selling spiritual enlightenment.

<comment><USER8> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER7> Gurjieff was a new-age guru, a mystic, who taught a "Way" to find enlightenment with no scientific basis, or any other basis than the fact that he came up with it and managed to convince people to give him money to be taught it.

There is nothing there to engage in a "deep", rational manner. Are the guidelines supposed to protect "work" like that also? Should we spend time and energy carefully rebuffing every psychic, UFOlogist and astrologist, who is linked on HN, also? Or should we accept such articles as if they have something useful to contribute, just because someone took the time to write them?

<comment><USER8> I disagree. Articles like this do have something interesting to contribute. They're for sure of historical interest, and to some subset of readers, perennial interest. Gurdjieff was a fascinating character who attracted an astonishing circle of followers. You've heard about the obscenity trial of _Ulysses_? Jane Heap was the publisher who got tried for it [1]. A.R. Orage was T.S. Eliot's favorite editor. These people were at the heart of 20th century modernism. Before that, his Russian followers were at the heart of the Silver Age, an equally interesting period. Words like "charlatan" and "guru" don't open any of that up—they shut all of it down.

No post gratifies everyone's curiosity. When something fails to reach yours, please just find something more interesting to read. There are lots of choices on the front page and endlessly more at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/front](https://news.ycombinator.com/front). Please don't rush in with shallow dismissals when something irritates you: that _doesn 't_ gratify intellectual curiosity. Worse, it leads to poor- quality discussion—so its signal-noise-lowering impact goes beyond just a single comment.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_trial_of_Ulysses_in_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_trial_of_Ulysses_in_The_Little_Review)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for replying, dang.

Yes, Gurdjieff's pupils were famous artists and intellectuals of their time. It is striking, reading his wikipedia page, how much of it is devoted to the account of who joined his circle, who travelled with him when he moved, who left his circle, etc. There is as much focus on Gurdjieff's pupils as on Gurdjieff himself.

Still, that makes him a guru with famous pupils. In fact, he is probably still remembered today _because_ he had such famous pupils; certainly not because of his teachings or any kind of personal contribution to knowledge.

He clearly must have been a charismatic figure to gather all those people around him. Nobody becomes a cult leader by being boring and bland! But, charisma and imagination are gifts squandered if they are spent cooking up some ad-hoc "path to enlightenment" with the only purpose of seducing people into becoming your faithful followers. It is exploitative to use one's gift to inspire, only to steal your "students" time, to force them to believe your every word, follow you around and practice your silly little "system" in hopes of becoming "enlightened"\- to promise everything when you have _nothing_.

I also know well the impact that meeting such a man can have: one becomes bound to them, perhaps for life. Having once basked at the glow of the Master, you can check out but you can never leave. Like human opiates, they offer brief pleasure and take everything from you in return, holding you captive with false promises and empty dreams. It is not they who are fascinating. It's the tendency of the human mind to fall down holes, forever.

No account of Gurdjieff's life is complete if it does not put the fact of what he really was, left right and centre. Especially not if it detracts from that fact with such exhuberant praise as the article above.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Brain on Trial (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/308520/?single_page=true

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is a little old, but I especially liked how it explores issues surrounding the neurological aspects of the brain, people's behavior, and the way they experience the world.

As I gotten older and had gotten to know a wider variety of people, it has become clear to me that the brain's "wiring" accounts for much, maybe even most of people's personality

It's also clear to me that consciousness — thinking, planning, expecting, remembering — has a profound effect, too. I'm not sure how the neurology/biology/consciousness balance works out, exactly, but I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it.

</comment><comment><USER2> Previously discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2670674](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2670674).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out -- I missed it when I searched.

<comment><USER2> Since I often just post a link in order to indicate that a post is a dupe, I should have been clearer here! Reposts are fine after about a year [1], so you were quite ok to post this. I mentioned the link from 4 years ago only in case people would also enjoy that discussion.

Please don't stop posting substantive, out-of-the way articles. We need more of those and the occasional duplicate isn't a problem anyhow.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Aadhaar: Technology and Architecture [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://uidai.gov.in/images/AadhaarTechnologyArchitecture_March2014.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Aadhaar is India's national unique identity program, and has collected biometric and other personal data of over 1 billion people. These people have done an impressive work of deduplicating so many identities based on both fingerprint and iris scan data.

There is controversy around Aadhaar at the moment, the Supreme court had ruled that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for people, and the government is trying to get around it using new legislation. There had been no legislation around Aadhaar till now, and there are objections that it had been falsely claimed/advertised as mandatory while trying to enroll people.

There is no privacy legislation in India right now, and it isn't clear if privacy is a fundamental right, so this makes Aadhaar particularly problematic, as it is not clear with whom the data can be shared.

The Aadhaar people, to their credit, have generally cared about privacy, and have refused to divulge data on several requests. Whether they are technically capable of securing the data remains to be seen. This pdf goes into some detail of their high-level architecture. You can compare and contrast this with other national id systems, such as Estonia's smart card id systems.</comment>