Ask HN: How do you "get" Lisp? - <AUTHOR> Over the years I've read countless articles and comments praising Lisp. Yet, there's something that keeps pushing me away from it every time I try to give it a chance. Maybe it's the nested prefix syntax, all those parentheses, something else?
I read most of SICP, and believe me I like the concepts the book puts forward. But I still don't get Lisp. I understand some of the merits: code as data, functional, minimal uniform syntax (s-expressions), macros (meta-programming), etc. But I fail to _appreciate_ those features in the same way I appreciate features in other languages. For example, I can instantly appreciate Elixir's pattern matching capability because it makes control flow fades into the background (in addition to simultaneously destructuring variables), removing a lot of noise; I can appreciate its pipe operator because it makes data flow fades into the background as well, letting me focus on logic composition.
What's the best way to develop an appreciation of Lisp, given that I learn best through examples that clearly demonstrate somethings's value, not by reading a laundry list of features? <comment><USER2> Lisp/Scheme have almost the same number of parenthesis+curly brackets than C. The difference is than in C the closing curly bracket has it's own line, but in Lisp/Scheme they are put all together. (If you hate parenthesis, try Python.)

The main advantage of Lisp/Scheme are the macros. The s-expressions are good because they make writing macros much easier. You don't have to mentally translate from the real language to the internal representation while writing macros.

I made a quick search and Elixir has macros. Do you write macros in Elixir?

The short answer is that Lisp/Scheme had real macros before it was cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The main advantage of Lisp/Scheme are the macros.

Where can I find a practical example/tutorial/guide that demonstrates this in the context of building an actual application? I'm sincerely curious.

> I made a quick search and Elixir has macros. Do you write macros in Elixir?

Not much. It's something not encouraged by the language designer and community (since it can result in a lot of "magic" that is hard to understand), and I rarely found myself needing them.

<comment><USER2> The idea is that some repeated patterns can be encoded in a functions, but other repeated patters need more abstraction. Try to find some repeated pattern.

Some real example from a internal site for 500 users in the university:

The idea is that I have a parameter with the data of the current user, a parameter is like a global variable but each tread has it's own copy so it's "thread safe". Sometimes I want to iterate over all the users inside one of the administrations form. So I have to write in racket something like:

      (for ([u (in-list all-users)])
        (parameterize ([current-user u])
          (do-something-interesting-here)
        )
      )

(The last three parenthesis should be in the same line, but if you like c-like formatting, let's put them in their own line.)

I had to repeat this pattern a few times. It is boring and error prone. Perhaps I have to add a lock for the user profile. Perhaps I need an special case if the user in the iteration is the administrator. But let's keep the example simple.

Now I can use a macro to define the pattern:

      (define-syntax-rule (for/users body ...)
        (for ([u (in-list all-users)])
          (parameterize ([current-user u])
            body ...
          )
        )
      )

This is the simplest way to define a macro in scheme and racket. It has no error checks. It has no room for variants. There are more advanced methods to write good macros. One important point is that there is some magic to ensure that the variable `u` used inside the macro don't mess with a variable `u` defined outside the macro.

The nice part is that the macro looks almost like the code I want to repeat. I only need to use `body ...` in the definition in the first line and then replace the interesting part with `body ...`. Here is the magic! In the easy case, the macros look almost like normal code!

Now I can use it as any normal thing in the language, for example

      (for/users
        (writeln (user->name (current-user))
      )

      (define count 0)
      (define sum 0)
      (for/users
        (set! count (+ count 1))
        (set! sum (+ sum (user->age (current-user))))
      )
      (define average (/ sum count))
      (writeln average)

I hope the examples are self descriptive.

The idea inside the lispy word is that users should write macros when it is necessary to write macros. Try to use them sparsely. Try to make them blend with the language. Try to make them intuitive to use.

A bad example of a macro is:

      (define-syntax-rule (show x y)
        (writeln (list y x y))
      )

It's a bad macro because it looks like a normal function but the expressions are evaluated out of order and one of them is evaluated twice. So

      (define n 7)
      (show n (set! n (+ n 1))
      (writeln n)

will show

      (#void 8 #void)
      9

but the user probably expect

      (7 #void)
      8

So write macros, but write them sparsely and wisely.

My recommendation is to enjoy Elixir, try to find repeated patters, try to enclose the patters in functions. When that fails try to write good macros. When you understand why you want more macros and more macros try racket (or scheme/lisp/clojure/...).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Those things you like in Elixir? Make them in Lisp. Think of Lisp as the language you use to build the language you need to implement your solution. See Paul Graham's essay _Programming Bottom-Up_ ([http://www.paulgraham.com/progbot.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/progbot.html)).

<comment><AUTHOR> But the thing is, I'm willing to take an opinionated language that gets most things right over a "god language" that is malleable enough to bend to your will. I'm pretty sure others will disagree, but I don't feel like writing my own language using Lisp.

<comment><USER4> But no language, no matter however opinionated, does get most things right, does it? People complain about C, C++, Java, Go, you name it.

I know many people are averse to the idea of macros that makes Lisp so malleable (you can add syntactic abstractions like in-fix expressions etc.) but the same people are not averse to adding new types with classes or new "operators" with functions. I find it curious that many are comfortable at stopping the level of abstraction at just that (types and operations). For some reason, the idea of abstracting away syntax itself or dynamic function definitions (macros) is unpalatable. Why should the comfort for abstraction stop just there? Just like one can make a mess with types and functions, one can make a mess with macros. Just like one can write beautiful and elegant types and functions, one can write beautiful and elegant macros. Does the aversion to macros come due to the traumatic experience people relate to when they think of C/C++ macros?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _For example, I can instantly appreciate Elixir 's pattern matching > capability because it makes control flow fades into the background (in > addition to simultaneously destructuring variables), removing a lot of noise > ..._

But where does that stuff come from? Structural pattern matching appeared in Lisp.

See papers like:

 _Format-directed List Processing in LISP_ [1966]

[https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/633242.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/633242.pdf)

 _METEOR: A LISP Interpreter for String Transformations_ [1963]

[https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6106](https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6106)

I'm pretty sure that the word "destructuring" comes from the Lisp culture. Fifteen, twenty years ago, if someone used "destructuring", it had to be a Lisp programmer.

</comment><comment><USER6> To me, SICP is not really a book about Lisp. Scheme makes the underlying concepts easier to explain. Pedagogical power was one of the motivations for developing Scheme.

The Lisp that's more like Erlang(Elixir). The one that was developed for commercial applications programming is Common Lisp. For me, the book that shows the power of Lisp for applications programming is Norvig's _Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence: Case Studies in Common Lisp_ [https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp](https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp)

Common Lisp is the result of consensus among industry stakeholders. There is meaningful consistency but no commitment to purity or theory or dogma. More about what people are (were) doing than what "people should do".

YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip about that book. I'm collecting a number of resources from the answers here and I'll try to go through them. Right now Paul Graham's "On Lisp" seems promising.

<comment><USER6> It's been a few years since I read _On Lisp_. I kind of walked away with the impression that the main characters are macros and the star is anaphoric macros. There are nuggets in the buildup to their introduction and anaphoric macros are interesting. But my brain doesn't wrap very far around macros and my sense of understanding dissipated pretty quickly each time I stopped reading. For me, Graham's _On Lisp_ was fun to read but less applicable than his _ANSI Common Lisp_. _On Lisp_ was a rabbit hole for me. A fun rabbit hole. But still a rabbit hole.

\---

Changing gears back to your original question, Racket has pattern matching. [1] [2]

[1]: Racket Guide: [https://docs.racket- lang.org/guide/match.html](https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/match.html)

[2]: Racket Reference: [https://docs.racket- lang.org/reference/match.html](https://docs.racket- lang.org/reference/match.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The ability to abstract everything in the language, is what I got from learning Lisp. You can just keep abstracting and abstracting until you're working on an entirely different kind of plane where you're now measuring programs themselves in their entirety and assigning a type to their 'behavior'. Anyway, that's what I got from it.

As for pattern matching, try something like this [https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~plragde/flaneries/FDS/index.html](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~plragde/flaneries/FDS/index.html) you'll see how patterns you find by yourself can just be specified and matched, making it much easier to take apart things like suffix trees.

</comment><comment><USER8> Initially I avoided macros and simply learnt to write "flow-oriented" small programs in Scheme. It took a while to get used to not using many intermediate variables and simply feeding the output of one function into the next. Once I started seeing patterns I found myself writing small general purpose functions from which I could assemble larger more complex functions.

BTW it is important realise that Common Lisp and Scheme have significant differences. Personally I prefer gnuScheme. I hear that many business applications prefer to use SBCL.

</comment><comment><USER9> The greatest feature of Lisp is that everything is an expression. Almost everything else is secondary as it's already present in other modern languages.

If you ever encountered a syntactic limitation in any language, you could go to Lisp and work your way around it either with macros or even simple control flow.

I would recommend to skim through Peter Norvig's PAIP to get a taste of it. Then, as another user suggested, writing your own pattern matching library would be a great exercise.

</comment><comment><USER10> I would recommend implementing a pattern-matching capability in Lisp. With Lisp you don't need to wait for a language designer to invent a new language with better pattern matching; you can add pattern matching to the language any time you want it.

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the most striking things about Lisp for me is how concise it is. The excellent Lisp Tutor Jr [0] will give you several interactive examples that make you think in terms of shorter and simpler functions, which are the heart of Lisp programming. As PG has said, if you find that your function is more than a handful of lines long, you're probably not doing it right. The tutor app is a good training ground for thinking in Lisp this way and it might be the breakthrough you need...

[0] [https://alarm.cti.depaul.edu/lisptutor/login](https://alarm.cti.depaul.edu/lisptutor/login)

</comment><comment><USER12> What worked for me was writing business logic for a customer-facing app. The amount of unavoidable boilerplate made me understand what Paul Graham had been on about.

</comment><comment><USER13> The answer for how to find out whether Lisp has practical benefits for you rather than only theoretical benefits is to... force yourself to write some practical projects (non-toy)!

[...and additionally maybe expend the effort to absorb a sizeable practical codebase that others have written]

Maybe the answer to the question will ultimately be "It's not for me", but an experiential approach is the only way to reach an answer that is satisfying.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is generally a good way to learn things, as I learn best by doing. But, when approaching a new language or framework, I need some practical guidance on building applications using that language/framework.

Ideally I'm looking for the equivalent of Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial. I'm not a ruby/rails developer, but I did follow his tutorial and it was one of the best guides I've followed (pedagogically speaking).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The first step to learning LISP the right way is to understand what LISP stands for: Lets Insert Some Parentheses :-)

I would be curios if there are a set of guided lessons in Lisp with guided projects. I would like to revisit this language as it is truly an elegant language.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I would be curios if there are a set of guided lessons in Lisp with guided > projects.

That is exactly what I'm looking for. Practical guidance for building real world applications. If the answer is "Lisp is not for business applications", then fine, at least I have my answer.</comment></comment>


Mocking for the win in Python (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://fgimian.github.io/blog/2014/04/10/using-the-python-mock-library-to-fake-regular-functions-during-tests/ <comment><AUTHOR> Mock is pretty darn useful, but sometimes the docs aren't. I found this to be a good summary of moving around with `mock` ... the official Python mocking tool, included in Python3 standard libraries and ported to Python2 (`pip install mock`)</comment>


Mozilla: first impressions from China - <AUTHOR> http://blog.johnath.com/2010/11/22/first-impressions-from-china/

<comment><USER2> There is also no one, single China. Thinking about my time here and what I've observed, let me share what I've found a Firefox user in China is probably like.

Firefox users have much in common with GMail users. They're often involved in IT related industries, or at least higher technology industries. They choose Firefox as they value a higher quality browser, like they choose GMail for a more trusted email solution with a greater feature set. They often speak English at work. They don't run Linux, that's far more niche. They're probably post-25 - not that Firefox/GMail is an older thing, but it is a self- discovered/word-of-mouth thing. They're technology influencers and are probably interesting in owning an iPhone for the feature set rather than the fashion statement. Many would probably also be interested in Android opposed to the bulk of China which may not have not heard of it (yet - wait for the Baidu edition). They're white-collar professionals. They might wear dockers and shirts to work, maybe a jersey in colder weather, maybe jeans. They probably don't primarily consume English/Western media but they might not be wholesale consumers of mainstream Chinese media; a critical eye would be thrown on some discussions, especially post-Sichuan earthquake and revelations, and Sanlu and other food crises. They might not use QQ (a popular MSN/ICQ like IM program), which really is saying something in China. They might have once used Twitter, but don't seek to 'jump the wall'.

In short, they're savvy, sophisticated consumers. But as mentioned in the article, the 'Internet experience' in China is quite different from the West, and convergence shouldn't be assumed. I look forward to the next post.

<comment><USER3> > Android opposed to the bulk of China which may not have not heard of it (yet > - wait for the Baidu edition).

No waiting needed. Chinese Android ROM, complete overhall of UI, far more iPhone like, installable on any Android device.

Unofficial English site: <http://miui-dev.com/>

Chinese: <http://www.miui.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am super talkative today, but anyway:

The insight 2 about how low the expectation is in software stability is interesting because it implies a high expectation in the raw responsiveness of software. And thus why Google Chrome picks up so fast in China. When Firefox slows down, even if it didn't response in a few seconds, people will try to nuke their browser process because they think that the software is dead or malfunctioned.

</comment><comment><USER5> The other day I was in my advisor's office and he said "let me show you something you've probably never seen before: a fully legal version of Chinese Windows!".

<comment><USER6> I don't understand other cultures... Why pirate Windows when you can have Ubuntu for free?

<comment><USER7> A number of reasons: Everyone else is using windows, you're familiar with windows, all your software runs on windows, and installing Ubuntu requires a lot of downloading when a version of Windows is a cheap disk from a local store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting read. One of the most important reason I use open source software as opposed to proprietary ones is the confidence that open source software will not try to do anything evil. I believe that message can reach China also.

<comment><USER9> Though open source software in China is always considered as having the most permissive license possible. GPL and such have no substance here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> China's struggle for a free and better web is more of a political issue than a technological issue. I praise the good intent of people at Mozilla, but fear the task is much more complex than it seems to be.</comment>


Increasing Variety on Pluto's Close Approach Hemisphere and a Dark Pole on Charon - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-from-nasas-new-horizons-increasing-variety-on-plutos-close-approach-hemisphere-and-a/ <comment><USER2> This was linked in the article, but should anyone pass over it/not click through, here is a regularly updated list of new pictures from the probe as it gets closer: [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto- Encounter/index.php](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto-Encounter/index.php)

I've been checking in every few weeks and it's been fun to see it slowly getting clearer and larger. I recall watching shows about it on the Science Channel when I was in high school and thinking 9.5 years would be so far away. Feels odd that we're now only a few weeks away from it finally reaching Pluto.

<comment><USER3> Wow -- the increase in resolution is wild.

1/25: [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto- Encounter/data/pluto/level...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto- Encounter/data/pluto/level2/lor/jpeg/028445/lor_0284457178_0x630_sci_1.jpg)

6/25: [http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto- Encounter/data/pluto/level...](http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/Pluto- Encounter/data/pluto/level2/lor/jpeg/029751/lor_0297516568_0x630_sci_1.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is so damn cool. It's humbling to realize the scale of the universe we exist in, and how small a part of it we really are. And we're flinging probes around the solar system, millions of miles away, to learn more about our universe.

These are machines that still work, decades after they're launched on top of the most powerful (and most violent) form of transportation we've created, and after they travel millions of miles through the extremes that space provides. It's awe inspiring that we can accomplish things like that, and it's incredibly disappointing that more people don't realize the scale of what is being accomplished.

<comment><USER5> Speaking of scale, Pluto is more than 2.6 billion miles from Earth at closest approach :).

<comment><USER6> To put it into context, the closest distance between Earth and Mars is 33.9 million miles, and distance between Earth and Moon is only 238,900 miles.

<comment><USER7> This checks out. Closest theoretical approaches:

        >>> "%e" % (Pluto.orbit.periapsis - Earth.orbit.apoapsis)
        '4.272109e+12'
        >>> "%e" % (Mars.orbit.periapsis - Earth.orbit.apoapsis)
        '5.455552e+10'
        >>> "%e" % (Moon.orbit.periapsis)
        '3.631042e+08'
        >>> "%e" % Earth.radius
        '6.371000e+06'

Earth-Pluto: 4.27 Tm = 4.27e9 km = 2.65e9 miles

Earth-Mars: 54.6 Gm = 54.6e6 km = 33.9e6 miles

Earth-Moon: 363 Mm = 363e3 km = 226e3 miles

Earth radius: 6.37 Mm = 6.37e3 km = 3.96e3 miles

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like many here find these space probes endlessly fascinating, for several reasons. Of course there's the discovery aspect but what really intrigues me are the engineering challenges and discovering things are huge problems that I never thought of as being problems.

It's an incredible feat to have something like this operate for _decades_ (in the case of Voyager and Pioneer) from both a hardware and software perspective.

But as for eye-opening problems, two examples spring to mind.

Firstly, they don't know exactly where Pluto _is_. It was only discovered in 1930 and given it has an orbital period of 248 years, we haven't observed it complete even half an orbit yet.

So it's visible to New Horizons but one thing they're not sure of is exactly how far away it is. This is important because in the next week they need to do a final course correction. More:

[http://www.nature.com/news/pluto-bound-probe-faces-its- tough...](http://www.nature.com/news/pluto-bound-probe-faces-its-toughest- task-finding-pluto-1.17811)

The second applies to the mission in planning phase to head back to Europa. I knew Jupiter had a strong magnetic field but I didn't realize quite how destructive it's radiation belts were and the source of them is actually Jupiter's magnetic field capturing radiation from the Sun. This is why the mission plans to do flybys rather than orbit Europa.

I think those of us who are software engineers can appreciate this on typically a much smaller scale. Things often look much easier than they actually are until you delve into the details. It's amusing to me to see this apply on much grander scales too.

So it's going to be exciting to images from the flyby of both Pluto and Charon. It's a shame the encounter will be so brief and the resolution of Pluto not super-high (IIRC down to 20km or so) but it'll be a lot more than we have now.

It makes me wonder how complicated an intercept course would've or could be to really study Pluto.

Given our missions to Jupiter and Saturn in the last 20 years I wonder if we'll see a return trip to Uranus or Neptune. I sure hope so.

<comment><USER9> Even if we don't know exactly where Pluto is, we do know enough about orbital mechanics to have a very good idea of where it will be. Plus, they would run simulations of the solar system to take into account the fluctuations due to gravitational forces of the other planets.

Neptune has only completed one complete orbit since discovery. It was discovered in September 1846 and has an orbital period of 164.8 years. So, it would have completed an orbit in 2011.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to see a simulation of particles moving around the Pluto Charon system. I've always wondered how they behave near the barycenter.

Here's some clues about what could cause the variety:

[https://blogs.nasa.gov/mission-ames/2013/07/25/playing- marbl...](https://blogs.nasa.gov/mission-ames/2013/07/25/playing-marbles-at- pluto-looking-at-the-dynamic-dust-environment-generators-sweepers-and-sweet- spots/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been firmly in the PLUTO IS A PLANET camp my whole life, and the 2006 decision to demote our distant neighbor to planetoid or worse I did not take lightly.

But I have to admit, seeing how tiny the malformed rock is, smaller than the United States, smaller than our own Moon, I have to revise my thinking.

But then . . . Pluto has its own moons! Impossible, but there they are. Five known ones!

This is science at its best. Can't wait for the flyby.

<comment><USER12> The center of mass of the Pluto / Charon system lies _outside_ of Pluto. So Pluto is more like the larger body in a binary system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems hard to say what they're really seeing there - deconvolution to the extent they're doing can be incredibly fickle. You need to know your camera nearly perfectly and have lots of SNR, to start. So it might be more likely that the highly unusual dark region not previously observed is actually a processing artifact.

Very interesting images nevertheless - we'll see how it bears out.

<comment><USER14> > deconvolution to the extent they're doing

Do you have a link to share for more info on what exactly they're doing? (or even some raw images next to some deconvolved ones?)

Regarding SNR, I believe these images are being sent lossless (whereas the preliminary high-res images we're getting in a few weeks will be lossy for now). Presumably they have a good profile of their camera from before launch too, knowing that they'd have to do this. So I wouldn't be surprised if this analysis does turn out to be accurate. Let's hope!

<comment><USER13> The 3rd image in the original article compares the original and the deconvolved result.

The main idea is you want to invert a linear transformation (a matrix) which is given by the operation of your imaging system, i.e. a blurring operation. This linear transform often has a poor condition number, however - this means that you can't really invert it, or if you try to you end up with certain components of your signal that need huge amplification, which makes noise sensitivity a major issue.

One solution to this is to introduce a "prior" on your signal that represents your expectations about what the signal looks like, i.e. is it smooth, or does it have a few edges etc. Then you can better tolerate the inherent sensitivities. I'm not sure what priors they're using for this situation or if they're using any at all, so in the absence of such a description I'm taking the results with a grain of salt.

See for example: [http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~schan/deconvtv_folder/deconv...](http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~schan/deconvtv_folder/deconvtv_image.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is such an exiting period! New Horizons about to reach pluto, Dawn about to reach Ceres, and Rosetta orbiting a comet approaching the sun.

<comment><USER16> Dawn has been orbiting Ceres since March!

<comment><USER15> Yes, that's right. I was under the impression that it's still getting closer. Exciting nonetheless ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anybody know any dummies guide to astrophysics that explains how scientists plan out the journey of the spacecraft with incredible precision?

<comment><USER17> If you'd like to try learning by doing, sort of, the 2009 ICFP Contest had you write code to control a spacecraft performing several tasks: [http://www.ittc.ku.edu/icfp-contest/](http://www.ittc.ku.edu/icfp-contest/)

I enjoyed it, though I don't think I got past the first couple of missions. Can anyone recommend another game? There's Kerbal Space Program, which I haven't tried but was said to stick to Kepler orbits, not like the numerically-integrated gravity of the above simulation.

<comment><USER18> KSP is really good for exploring gravity assists, actually – they work just the same way in the Keplerian 'patched conics' approximation as in real life. For Newtonian physics, there's Orbiter, which is much more of a simulation than a game; it puts you in our own Solar System, for one thing.

[http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/](http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/)

<comment><USER17> Neat, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So NASA can send a probe to Pluto, but can not show pictures and text without resorting to Java Script. I believe this conclusively proves that HTML is not rocket science.

<comment><USER20> Wow, the most amazing space venture in a very long time, over 9 years in waiting, and you complain about JavaScript? I'm sorry, but I just don't understand. I wouldn't care if the images were delivered to my house as a deck of punched cards!

<comment><USER21> I don't think it's possible for a thread to exist on hacker news without somebody complaining about how the web page renders.</comment></comment></comment>


Sudden savant syndrome, in which exceptional abilities emerge after brain injury - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180116-the-mystery-of-why-some-people-become-sudden-geniuses <comment><USER2> The "math genius" Jason Padgett mentioned in the article has drawn a bunch of pretty pictures, but has authored zero research papers. Unless you define genius by how capable you are of impressing non-experts outside the field, how does he in any way apply to the definition?

<comment><USER3> Spot on. The article focuses a lot on 'artistic genius'. Actually it jumps a lot between a great deal of things. There's a leap between the photographer who invented new technology, to Jason Padgett who began seeing the world in a weird way, to dementia-patients who begin drawing as parts of their brains decay.

There's not much mentioned of geniuses in the meaning of people who further scientific theories like Einstein or whatever example one might give. They only hint that such people might often have autism, and try to explain that with left/right brain development.

Which if I recall correctly has been highly disputed since the 1960 Nobel Prize. If nothing else the explanation of autism and savant autism in the article are gross oversimplifications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a horrible article.

>When you're bashed on the head, the effects are similar to a dose of LSD

Again, this is a horrible article.

But I guess the target audience are members of the "i fucking love science" Facebook page.

<comment><USER5> in what way could getting bashed in the head have anything to do with LSD?

<comment><USER4> If you're unprepared, you can end up in ER for both of them.

<comment><USER5> whats ER ? I did LSD twice, first time was a 100 ug dose, it was pleasant experience. 10 days later i did a 250 ug dose. first 2 hours was the best hallucinations of my life :), then there was an electricity shortage for a few minutes where i live, that darkness scared the hell out of me i panicked and had a strong shortness of breath. needless to say it was a shocking experience. had random panic attacks that persisted for 2 month. LSD is very powerful and surly is no joke.

<comment><USER6> ER - emergency room. It's, of course, a misnomer, it's not just one room. ER is common in the US, outside of the US it's also called emergency department (ED), accident & emergency department (A&E), emergency ward (EW)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Nobel Prize-winning research from the 1960s shows that the two halves of > the brain specialise in different tasks; in general, the right side is home > to creativity and the left is the centre of logic and language._

This is terrible.

<comment><USER8> Could you give an improved version of the sentence, if able? Thanks.

edit: Could the downvoter explain why? Thanks.

<comment><USER3> The left right hypothesis is wrong. The brain specialization is much more fine grained and much more adaptible to circumstances than described.

Yes there are some specialized loci that happen to (most often) be in the left or right hemisphere, but the original hypothesis that logic is in the left hemisphere for example is utterly wrong.

An example would be language, researchers started finding language loci in the brain (by showing that if a specific area was damaged, language was damaged) and so on. Based on such evidence the left right hypothesis was formed. What was not taken into account (in my somewhat accurate example) was that there are several other areas one could injure to get language-affecting brain damage.

The thing is, such broad things as language, or logic, or art, are not located anywhere in particular in the brain, it is the interaction or many different areas and not necessarily the same areas in every person. There are however several areas that are specialized but on a much lower level than "language" search for Wernicke's area for example.

Also note that Wernicke's area is statistically in different hemisphere more probably depending on which is your predominant hand.

So no, just no.

<comment><USER9> Isn't the key point that brain functions can rely on specific localised areas, that when those areas connections to other areas are disrupted then behaviours can be altered.

It's wrong like Newtonian mechanics, rather than like Flat Earth Theory?

<comment><USER3> There is degree to the wrongness yes. But yes I am not saying the original hypothesis was not progress at the time (unlike Freud's non contributions) the left right hypothesis did contribute at the time as it actually looked at the brain and tried to map some things.

What I'm against is referencing this idea in a context (the article) where it makes no sense, and rather lies to the reader by telling a great story based on old facts that have since been disproven.

Left right brain is wrong, not really in the same way Newtonian physics is wrong today, at least not in the form it was cited about logic being in one hemisphere. I would compare it to say, Greek anatomy. They had the idea of that things in you could be wrong. But they didn't really know what was wrong in different diseases, they came up with lots of ideas of different bodily fluids having too much or too little of one , connected to certain organs.

Now we know most of their explanations were bullshit where we can explain things a lot better. Regarding Newtonian physics my impression is that they still explain the same phenomena they explained from the beginning, but we have refined things, and realized it can not explain all things one might have thought it could explain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "He became obsessed with maths and is now renowned for his drawings of _formulas such as Pi._ "

Ouch, that hurt.

</comment><comment><USER11> Brain injuries are nasty, strange things.

I used to work for a charity that ran a programme helping people back into work after getting a brain injury. Each person was affected differently, but as far as I know no-one got a superpower.

In general the injury took away any behavioural filters people usually had. So the filters that might stop you from smashing up a room when angry, or taking all your clothes off when stressed, or making everyone you meet sign an NDA in case they stole your ideas (real examples) were just gone.

This led to some entertaining stories, but without exception the results of a brain injury were devastating.

Don't get a brain injury if you can possibly help it.

</comment><comment><USER12> My favorite example of an 'ordinary' person who gained an extraordinary mental ability is Daniel Tammet. He learned Icelandic in a week. Spent 2 weeks and memorized pi to 22,000+ digits.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss)

<comment><USER13> I don't think it is correct to say that he memorized pi, more that he recited pi because his brain simply produced it for him he did not have to look it up.

<comment><USER14> Except that he wasn't actively calculating more digits of pi, some part of his brain had remembered the digits and was playing them back. Maybe some sub- conscious part memorized it, but it was still memorization.

<comment><USER13> So just to put my neuroscientist hat on for a moment, memorization is almost always used to mean the use of some mnemonic in order to enable later recall. I'm saying that he never looked at the 137,493rd digit of pi, and that could very well be wrong based on what actually happened, but I think of this more like the other savant in the video who just has the day of the week for a date pop into his head even for dates that have not occurred yet. In those cases 'memorization' is not the word to use.

<comment><USER15> Are you a neuroscientist, or do you just have a hat?

<comment><USER13> Yes a neuroscientist, sadly no hat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Might be unrelated but after the doctors extracted a brain tumor from my brain when I was 14 I experienced a sudden burst in creativity that is still here. It was like an explosion.

<comment><USER17> Would you say that your creativity was repressed beforehand, and removing the tumor brought it to normal levels? Or was it normal beforehand, and now it's even better? If the latter, care to share more details or examples?

<comment><USER18> How the eff would he know that? If you've spent your entire life in one state, and it changes, how can you possibly know what was the normal state?

<comment><USER17> Normal isn't defined by yourself alone. Rather, it's the average of other people. If you are significantly more creative than the average person, it should be fairly simple to demonstrate that that's the case.

<comment><USER19> It's still somewhat like asking a bornd-blind person what it's like to be blind. To them it _is_ normal, they haven't ever experienced anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Except, none of the abilities mentioned are really extreme. More like, you have a personality change, and now spend the time to become as good as other experts.

<comment><USER21> That is the most likely explanation. It doesn't produce as many page views though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Now folks please don't start smashing your head right wise into the wall, ok?!

<comment><USER23> Some folks already doing "it": [https://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/](https://www.reddit.com/r/tDCS/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct- current_st...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct- current_stimulation)

This is the same method as one of the research that's linked in the article has used to "Facilitate Insight by Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation": [http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016655)

<comment><USER21> It's probably not a good idea. See "Popular electric brain stimulation method used to boost brainpower is detrimental to IQ scores".

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150505152140.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150505152140.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Like when Stan Laurel gets hit on the head in "A Chump At Oxford"

</comment><comment><USER25> The topic of emergent genius was also covered in a short video about a year ago: [https://youtu.be/7H6doOmS-eM](https://youtu.be/7H6doOmS-eM)

</comment><comment><USER26> A great book that touches on the subject is "Musicophilia" by the late Oliver Sacks. It goes deep into the neurology of conditions like acquired savant syndrome, though the core of the book is on music-related neurological anomlaies [https://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Revised- Expa...](https://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Revised- Expanded/dp/1400033535)

</comment><comment><USER27> My dad knew someone who had a reinforcing steel bar stuck into the middle of his head; The bar entered is mouth and exited in the middle of the top of his skill. After that, the guy was noticeably smarter but also more irascible. My dad theory was that the healing of the brain raised the number of synapses and ridges[1] in the damaged part of the brain (which in this case was right between the two cerebral hemispheres). Albert Einstein's brain had four ridges instead of three.

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

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain#Newl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain#Newly_recovered_photographs)

<comment><USER28> Wait, there's a modern-day Phineas Gage, and your dad knew him personally?

<comment><USER29> If Dad has a lot of stories like this, you should check out this link. [https://al-anon.org/](https://al-anon.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The kind of genius associated with autistic syndrome appears to me that it could be a result of reduced functionality in certain brain regions related to social functions and boredom control. Most people do not enjoy focusing on a single activity for most of their waking hours. Someone who consistently practices a craft for 8 hours a day would accumulate >10,000 hours in just 4 years, sufficient to become an expert in most non-professional activites. Within 15 years, such focus would yield >40,000 hours which is more than the actual practice time most professionals have under their belt. (Most normal professionals do not really get to practice their craft 8 hours a day and they probably take more vacations than these 'geniuses' do.)

A further boost might come from less distraction and inhibition since their brains might not be influenced as much by the presence and potential judgements of other people. Genius-level work tends to be out of norm and most adults are conditioned to avoid standing out too much. If a potential Einstein were highly sensitive to established scientific worldview at the time, they probably would be discouraged from persisting for 10 years to solve the mystery in their imagination, or at least miss the path that veers off too much from the standard theory.

From the article: "Muybridge was no exception. After the bet, he moved to Philadelphia and continued with his passion for capturing motion on film, photographing all kinds of activities such as walking up and down the stairs and, oddly, himself swinging a pickaxe in the nude. Between 1883 and 1886, he took more than 100,000 pictures."

<comment><USER31> > Someone who consistently practices a craft for 8 hours a day will accumulate > >10,000 hours in just 4 years, sufficient to become an expert in most non- > professional activites.

That assumes that all those hours result in skill impfovemeonts. They do not. Commuters don't become expert drivers just because they get stuck in traffic for hours a day.

<comment><USER32> You say that, but my clutch control jumped leaps and bounds (back when I drove a manual for commuting), to the point that I could keep distance with the car in front while half a sleep and without needing to tap the break peddle.

Some of the other skills I learned were less admirable. Eg learning to use a touch screen phone while keeping an eye on the car in front (I'd only do this if traffic was stationary though). And learning how to accelerate quickly because I needed to steal a small gap at a busy junction.

<comment><USER33> Indeed, I would imagine that thousands of hours of commuting would make one an expert at those specific skills. That said, I imagine the skill ceiling is quite low and likely reached long before 10,000 hours, and the skill set is certainly different from what most people mean by "expert driver."

<comment><USER34> > That said, I imagine the skill ceiling is quite low and likely reached long > before 10,000 hours, and the skill set is certainly different from what most > people mean by "expert driver."

It doesnt take much practice to become a marginally-skilled driver. But that doesn't mean there's little difference between marginal drivers and people who spend their entire day behind the steering wheel...

I once guesstimated that I spent maybe 7,500 hours (over 3.5 years) driving around in taxis. Towards the end of that period I started to notice things that the other cars on the road would likely do, and point this out to my passengers. "See that car? it's going to change lanes and that other guy is going to have to slam on his brakes..."

After I 'retired', I was driving with my mother. Our light turned green, but I saw that the car in the cross traffic couldn't see that his light had turned red (on account of the sunset). I waited, and watched as he slammed on his brakes.

There's something to putting in time on any activity. I think the relevant saying is not "practice makes perfect", but "perfect practice makes perfect". If you spend 10,000 hours practicing something wrong it won't be as helpful as 1,000 hours practicing it right.

Bruce Lee said, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."

<comment><USER35> I really wonder how all this unspoken communication is going to change with self-driving cars.

On the German Autobahn, the amount of observing and consideration is very high, and if people are new it can be very stressful. You basically have to keep in mind everyone around you, their respective speeds, potential moves and how a move from you will change their options and responses.

One common situation is when you come up behind a slow car on your lane, but the lane to the left (where you need to go to keep your current speed and overtake) has somebody coming up fast from the back. If you move there, you might force that person to brake. Now, they obviously see your situation and might slow down a little or speed up, so you can adjust your speed (speed up and pull into the left lane or lay off the gas and delay switching just long enough to let them pass). If there is another left lane they might move over to that too if possible. In this case, the communication is mostly in those small changes in speed that tell you their intention.

Now how should I read an automatic car? It's going to be very chaotic before we figure it out.

<comment><USER36> I worry about the transition as well.

Hopefully it won't be as bad as you are thinking if all the car AI's make the same choices in every situation. That way you can get a much better feel for how those cars operate.

In reality I think your concern, shared by others will result in cars that act a lot more like buses. Almost always in the slow lane. Going a very safe speed. Leaving the faster/passing lanes to more dangerous humans.

The autonomous cars may soon be required to have visible markings so that they are easy to tell apart as well. Perhaps the color yellow could be reserved for them?

These changes will still be an adjustment, but hopefully one that doesn't result in a major number of accidents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> There's a lot of anecdotal evidence that similar things can happen occasionally and to some people after psychedelic drug exposure. Could the mechanism be similar?

Maybe certain drugs and traumas can kick the neural network into another state and maybe that occasionally turns out to be an interesting one.

Of course sometimes the neural network lands somewhere less favorable too. Traumatic brain injuries rarely result in savant abilities, and some people "never come back" from too much LSD or other drugs.

</comment><comment><USER38> Reminds me of the Ted Chiang short story "Understand" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understand_(story)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understand_\(story\))

</comment><comment><USER39> We all have greatness within us, but most of us have "too good" of brains. See, the brain is designed to detect risk and avoid it at all costs. It often makes things up.

You see a folded up rug in an alley-way, you think "Oh no, is that a person, am I being robbed?"

You never see a person and think, "Is that a folded up rug?"

The brain always jumps to the worst possibility. It calls Math.ceil() on risky situations.

Perhaps these traumatic injuries have changed their thresholds in terms of "what is a risky situation?"

Relative to trauma, perhaps things like creativity ( which is risky to your social status ), doesn't seem risky.

Risking social status is the mark of any success. Being willing to fail publicly(at least risking it) is required! After trauma, it's probably easier.

<comment><USER40> > perhaps things like creativity ( which is risky to your social status )

This is absurd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's most likely that there was a new impairment in the brain that made them change their behavior and they didn't know that they would be better at the new task.

</comment><comment><USER21> That isn't a good article. Sudden/acquired savant syndrome isn't a recognized condition, and it probably doesn't exist. The abilities of sudden savants are no higher than what can be achieved by "non-savants" and the abilities can often be explained by other things.

I think that it's possible that accidents can give people interests and/or repetitive behaviors that allow them to develop skills, but probably don't give them the skills directly.

I am cautious about Treffert's claims in general. I have one of his books where he appears to attribute a few cases of savantism to psychic powers and reincarnation. If you want to see how unscientific some of the claims are, read the article below, including the sidebar.

[https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/mind-reading- sharjah-g...](https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/mind-reading-sharjah-girl- exceedingly-rare-savant)

<comment><USER42> I know someone on Treffert's registry who hit their head in an unfortunate workplace accident, and subsequently emailed him claiming to be a genius. No vetting or testing at all. He now proclaims that he is a sudden savant because he is on Treffert's list.

<comment><USER21> I'm not surprised.

I recommend being extremely skeptical of all _acquired_ savant claims, and mostly skeptical about other savant claims in general. At least keep in mind that there isn't much real evidence for those claims.

Practice and technique can explain just about every case. Even well-known "experts" have many incorrect ideas. The popular media then amplify the incorrect ideas.

"The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Reading these comments is a fascinating look into the ontology assumed by militant scientific materialists.</comment>


So What Is PCI Really About? - <AUTHOR> http://www.csoonline.com/article/527813/So_What_Is_PCI_Really_About_

<comment><USER2> PCI is a half-baked "solution" to protecting cardholders, and in the end it's just an excuse to charge merchants more fees.

The card brands (Visa, Mastercard, etc..) work closely with acquiring banks, merchant service providers, security vendors, and everyone else thats getting a piece of the action. Every time one of these companies speaks to a merchant the PCI boogie man is brought up, and it results in higher costs for merchants.

In the end its about shifting blame, and of course making more money. That being said it's a good thing there are security standards for cardholder data to prevent and lessen the impact of a breach. I just wish an independent group was overseeing it.

</comment><comment><USER3> He's correct: PCI is about Visa, MasterCard, Discover and Amex covering themselves, and shifting the blame (and penalties) to merchants.

Sure, PCI is written in a way that when you read it you think "random collection of best practices from places that got hacked and learned something from it", but the definition of "compliance" is such that a merchant just can't stay in "compliance". It's impossible.

So, this leads us to two inescapable conclusions: 1\. "Best practices" are just CYA. 2\. Any time someone in power says "compliance" keep your hand on your wallet and start edging towards the door.

<comment><USER4> Speaking as someone who deals with this on a daily basis, I say not true. PCI is common sense written down into an "industry standard". You don't have to do it, it's not a law. But if you want to continue to accept CCs, then you should comply. Compliance is as easy as redirecting all of your CC work to a processor that is PCI compliant. So long as _you_ _yourself_ do not store, transmit or process the card data, you can worry about your business and forget about PCI and it won't cost any more money.

<comment><USER5> > But if you want to continue to accept CCs, then you should comply. > Compliance is as easy as redirecting all of your CC work to a processor that > is PCI compliant. So long as you yourself do not store, transmit or process > the card data, you can worry about your business and forget about PCI and it > won't cost any more money.

Hmm. Is it that the PCI doesn't cost the processor anything or that the processor eats the costs?

<comment><USER4> If the processors are responsible, then they were doing it right before the acronym PCI ever existed. To become compliant costs money (audits, quarterly scans, self-assessments, etc.) but it's not that expensive _and_ it's what they are in business to do. If the processor is not compliant, no one will do business with them ("Hey, look, we store your clients' CC numbers in an unencrypted DB... come do business with us!"). The cost, you as a merchant pays, is based on risk and volume. Online (non person to person) transactions are the most risky, so percentage-wise they'll always cost more... PCI or no PCI.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


OpenIO: object storage and grid for apps - <AUTHOR> http://openio.io/ <comment><USER2> Here's my feedback as a person being marketed to:

After trying for a while to scroll through your landing page despite the extremely annoying custom scroll thing, I have no idea what your thing actually does.

I know you have offices in France and the U.S., that you sell something involving the storage of objects, and that there is a "storage revolution" going on.

When I click "learn more", I get instructions for installing VirtualBox and Vagrant...

Even if I click further and read your PDF, the introductory paragraph tells me that you are using "the groundbreaking concept of 'Conscience'" which I have no idea what it is.

After reading a bit more, I still don't understand what your thing actually does.

It sounds kind of cool from all the cool words and stuff, but I'm never going to install it or recommend it because I can't get a concrete and tangible idea of what it is.

My suggestion: on the first page, you should have a terse description of the steps a user or company would go through and what they would gain from it. Something like... and I'm just making this up:

1\. You're storing lots of objects but your hard drives are overflowing and breaking all the time.

2\. You install our product, which is a server that runs on Linux computers.

3\. You configure it to use a variety of storage engines, for example plugging in your S3 credentials and some other things.

4\. Now you can use a REST API to store content-addressed objects, and the product takes care of datacenter distribution, backups, and stuff.

5\. Benefits cascade upon you like you could never imagine, for reasons X, Y, and Z.

<comment><USER3> I noticed the annoying scroller and just closed the tab. It's just really annoying.

From the title, I don't know what they mean when they say "grid". When I think grid, I'm usually thinking about layouts.

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As people have pointed out, this is similar to S3, GCS, etc. and apparently they've been running it for a bit:

> The first production ready version was built in 2008 and the first massive > production of a large scale email system started the year after. Since then, > the solution has been used to store 10+ Petabytes, 10+ billions of objects, > at 20 Gbps of bandwidth at the peak hour, with low-latency SLAs enforced > 24/7.

That's not a bad scale for such a project, but an individual large customer can easily consume that much bandwidth and storage like the guys at Descartes Labs ([http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/11/startup- spot...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/11/startup-spotlight- Descartes-Labs-monitors-planet-Earths-resources-with-Google-Compute- Engine.html)).

It seems like they need a lighthouse customer to really push it. Best of luck gdelaporte and team!

</comment><comment><USER6> For those looking for a bit more detail: [http://openio.io/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/OpenIO-CoreSolut...](http://openio.io/wp- content/uploads/2015/07/OpenIO-CoreSolutionDescription-June2015.pdf).

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for your feedbacks, we appreciate it. Work is ongoing for a website v2, we'll take them into account.

<comment><USER8> How is your product different than the many many competitors?

<comment><USER7> Hi hemancuso,

Maybe you will find this useful:

1/ Pure software for any mixed hardware optimized by dynamic data placement 2/ No rebalance and no perf impact on production when scaling 3/ Grid For Apps: distribute & run any apps on same nodes

If you want to go further we will be at the OpenStack Summit, feel free to visit us. We have a booth. Don't forget to vote for our presentations: [http://openio.io/events/openio-will-be-a-sponsor-at- openstac...](http://openio.io/events/openio-will-be-a-sponsor-at-openstack- summit-in-austin) See you there!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is this trying to _be_ OpenStack Swift or _leverage_ OpenStack Swift?

<comment><USER10> They are a swift competitor with a swift compatible frontend

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's an unusual way to pronounce "data"

<comment><USER12> Yeah sounded like they got a non-english speaker to do their intro. That or someone on the autism spectrum.

I wouldn't trust my data to a vendor that can't even pronounce data correctly...

<comment><USER13> Both pronounciations are correct:

[https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-pronounce-the-word-data- cor...](https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-pronounce-the-word-data-correctly-Is- it-DAY-ta-or-DA-ta)

<comment><USER12> Its not dahta or dayta that is the issue. Its the slow irreconcilable way the speaker voices the two syllables with an emphasis on TUH. Its a soft word, not Dat Tuh with a hard tuh. Literally sounds mentally challenged and unless the team behind this product is one person who has a throne, I can't think of a reason why no one would voice opposition to the anti social pronunciation. Laughable error.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook-Linked Marketer Acxiom Plunges After Policy Shift - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-29/facebook-linked-marketer-plunges-as-policy-shift-may-sap-profit <comment><USER2> As an Arkansas resident, I can say that Acxiom is a one of the big tech companies for the state. Their company culture seems pretty great; they also do a lot for the community too.

<comment><USER3> They are just yet another data mining/privacy invading marketing company

That type of company should be shunned, not touted as big tech

<comment><USER4> Any thoughts on why OP is getting downvotes? It's insightful and shares a perspective that only a local would have.

It _is_ possible for a company to have a nice work culture even while doing exploitive work. Doing good by the local community seems even easier to believe

<comment><USER3> That is nice that a company that does objectively bad things has a nice culture.

While I definitely disagree with the op, I personally didn't downvote, but honestly who gives a shit about downvotes?

<comment><USER4> Down votes silence unique perspectives creating echo chambers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Acxiom used to be a sizable vendor in the Skiptracing arena.[0] That's what debt collection companies would use when they wanted to get ahold of someone. If you couldn't get ahold of the debtor in question, you'd find out who he's related to or where he lives and call his brother, call his roommate, call his neighbor, etc.--all in an attempt to "contact" (read: harass) the debtor.

That should provide some insight as to what they might be doing with your Facebook data.

For reference, they're not too big in that particular space anymore. The largest one I'm aware of LexisNexis. And yes, _that_ LexisNexis, the one you used to go to the library and search alongside JSTOR for academic articles.

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Funnily enough it turns out the FBI used Acxiom data to locate the 9/11 hijackers back in 2001[0]

[0]: [http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive...](http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/02/23/362182/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER7> The Hymn of Acxiom seems appropriate to mention here... [https://m.soundcloud.com/vienna-teng/05-the-hymn-of- acxiom](https://m.soundcloud.com/vienna-teng/05-the-hymn-of-acxiom)

<comment><USER8> I didn't know Axciom was a real company until today.

<comment><USER9> They know about you though. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's gonna hurt their "Ads Manager" alot as majority of marketers use "Audience Insight" tool for their campaigns.

</comment><comment><USER11> Facebook and many many other tech companies are built on gathering as much data they can on their users.

Should people revolt (hint: they probably won't) tech is in for a world of hurt.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good. Others should follow suit.</comment>


Fast AMF0 library written in pure TypeScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Zaseth/AMF0-TS <comment><USER2> If only somewhere on the page it explained WTF amf0 is ...

<comment><USER3> My guess is that the people a fast amf0 library is trying to reach know what amf0 is.

For the rest of us, there's always [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Message_Format](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Message_Format)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Coolest digital watches? - <AUTHOR> I was obsessed by digital watches as a kid in the late 70s & early 80s, to the extent of drawing designs for imaginary multi function timepieces in my school exercise books. Pretty nerdy, no? I owned a few as a youngster, and can remember wanting a Seiko Digital Chrono. Remember how they always read 10:08.42 in the ads? More recently I've had a Garmin GPS watch, and a Casio F91W. I guess, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. What cool old or new digitals would you recommend? <comment><USER2> You've already mentioned Casio F91W, but I will mention it again :) Casio F91W, Super Coolest digital watch Ever!</comment>


Scala Data Pipelines for Music Recommendations at Spotify - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/MrChrisJohnson/scala-data-pipelines-for-music-recommendations

<comment><USER2> Maybe it's just me, but it seems that several data engineering organizations are picking up Scala. Is there a reason for this outside of Slide 13 in the presentation that I am missing?

My team has plans of moving away from Scala and towards Python primarily because of the job market. There is a feeling that it will be significantly easier to find a good data engineer who uses Python than it will be to find the same who uses Scala.

<comment><USER3> There are certainly some cool big-data tools in Scala (personally I find Spark much more compelling than Scalding, but the fact that I'm even comparing two reasonable choices is more than you'd get with many languages), but I don't think that's what's driving adoption. My case for Scala would be that it's a great language to write and an even better one to read: even more expressive than Python but much safer to refactor, a type system powerful enough to encode most of the business-level constraints and easy enough that you'll actually use it, and it's easy to understand which parts of the code do what because the type system makes it possible to isolate and track effects in a reliable way. In all the companies I've seen adopting Scala it's been a bottom-up thing, less because it offers some particular killer feature than because developers want it and it makes them more productive.

Hiring experience with a specific language is of course easier with more popular languages. But unless you're hiring emergency consultants or something, it's more important to hire smart people who'll be able to learn whatever language comes up. And I suspect that while it'll be very easy to find someone who "knows Python", the talent level is... variable. Whereas people who know Scala, though harder to find, will be the kind of people who learn multiple languages, who enjoy learning new skills even when there's no obvious market for them - i.e. the kind of people who you want to hire.

<comment><USER4> > and an even better one to read...and it's easy to understand which parts of > the code do what

It's not always easy to understand (from Odersky himself [https://gist.github.com/odersky/6b7c0eb4731058803dfd#file- fo...](https://gist.github.com/odersky/6b7c0eb4731058803dfd#file-foldingviews- scala-L333)):

def toVector: Vector[B] = fold(Vector[B]())(_ :+ _)(_ ++ _)

To a Scala veteran, I'm sure that's easy to understand; to someone who's been learning the language (like me) it looks like gibberish.

I've also had to write code like this:

client.post(args).mapTo[Response].map(r => (r.success, r.serverException, r.unhandledException) match {

case (Some(response), None, None) => response

case (None, Some(serverEx), None) => throw serverEx

case (None, None, Some(unhandledEx)) => throw unhandledEx

})

simply because of the underlying api that other co-workers have built. When it takes you longer than 30 seconds to explain how a piece of code works to others, something is wrong.

All that being said, I do like the language; just not the compile times. It's also pretty close to ruby (with which I'm most familiar):

ruby:

numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

numbers.select { |n| n >= 4 }

# [4, 5]

Scala:

val numbers = List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

numbers.filter(n => n >= 4)

// List(4, 5)

<comment><USER3> > def toVector: Vector[B] = fold(Vector[B]())(_ :+ _)(_ ++ _)

> To a Scala veteran, I'm sure that's easy to understand; to someone who's > been learning the language (like me) it looks like gibberish.

Compare what the same code would look like in Ruby; something like (hope I get the syntax right):

        def toVector = fold(new Vector()) {|x, y| x :+ y} {|x, y| x ++ y}

Are the extra |x, y|s actually clarifying anything? Or are they just syntactic ceremony? Maybe it's just my scala experience talking, but I think the scala example is clearer; there's very little performance to get in the way, just the meat of what the function's actually doing

(You can think that's a good or bad function to have, but that's a library question, not a language question).

> simply because of the underlying api that other co-workers have built.

You can write bad APIs in any language; with a more sensible one that would look like:

        client.post(args).map{
          case Success(response) => response
          case ServerError(ex) => throw ex
          case UnhandledError(ex) => throw ex
        }

Explicitly handling the different cases is exactly the kind of debugging advantage I was talking about; it takes up-front effort to distinguish between ServerError and UnhandledError, but the result is code where you can see all the possibilities and know exactly where any given failure might be happening. (And again, the language doesn't force you to do this; you _can_ just write the happy path and allow any kind of exception to happen at any point. But you'll pay the price in debugging, as I have in Python, and as I presume you have in Ruby).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All this work with matrix factorization and alternating least squares to find undiscovered gems a user might actually enjoy, and then they torpedo it with a simplistic and utterly useless "popular in your area" algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER6> Things to worry about? -Be patient with the compiler.

This should be number one!</comment>


Google ReCaptcha targeting non-Google browsers - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9vmsyp/google_recaptchas_targeting_firefox_and_other <comment><USER3> It used to be that I never had to fill out reCAPTCHAs, but now I get prompted almost 100% of the time, even when I am logged in to my Google account. I'm not doing anything unusual, and the only other person on our home internet is my wife. (Besides, I still get prompted to fill them out on other internet connections anyway.) Some of them take up a minute or two, especially the image segmentation ones (apparently I disagree with the general population on where the dividing lines should be).

Is there anything I can do about this? I'm being held hostage for about 20 minutes a day to help train Google's AIs. I used to think CAPTCHA was excellent - we were fixing up OCR from books and allowing the library of congress to be digitized and available to all. This gradually morphed, and now (as I understand it) the benefits from this human training are kept locked behind Google's walls. If they at least released the resulting dataset it wouldn't bother me as much.

<comment><USER4> I started putting some BS answers, and they seem to be accepted. It seems you need to select at least 2 tiles, but not necessarily the right ones.

It doesn't get rid of them, but I can usually get through them a bit faster since I don't need to actually look at the image or text.

Relevant XKCD [https://xkcd.com/1897/](https://xkcd.com/1897/)

<comment><USER3> I mean, the reason this works is generally because there is some information which Google does not have, that's why they are asking you to provide it. So, for instance, in the case of words, they used to present two words which were scanned in, one which they knew was correct and one which they didn't know. As long as you enter the one they know correctly, they assume you've also answered the one they don't know correctly. (Maybe they do some variant of this, but that was the general idea.)

I assume they're doing something similar with the image segmentation tasks, so if you randomly select two tiles and click "next" there are some images where it actually doesn't know if you are correct or not, so it ends up storing your response and lets you through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is something incredibly worrying about the fact that choosing to not have a Google account means a large portion of the web is walled off from you.

Choosing to not have a Google account means you are co-opted into doing labor for free (helping their image classifiers recognize cars, shop signs, etc.) for Google. Have a browser with tracker blocking built in? Aah, too bad. Please "solve" these 5-10 pages of work for our algorithm. Don't want to? Too bad, you can't use this site.

And yet, if clients come to me looking for a good solution to determine who is a bot and who isn't, I don't know what else to recommend. Other Captcha solutions seem completely inferior.

<comment><USER3> I agree completely. The worse this gets, however, the less reCAPTCHA makes sense to me. The main reason to use it was the fact that it worked invisibly for users it deemed as not being a bot. Based on the responses here (as well as my personal experience) this seems to work less and less now - <USER2> partially because Google wants more users to train it's algorithms. Therefore there is not much to distinguish reCAPTCHA from some other CAPTCHA system, including simple ones you could make yourself. The image recognition stuff requires more work but, arguably, we are even worse at basic NLP tasks, which are even easier to make CAPTCHAs for. All you need is some private dataset, which you can create manually fairly quickly, and a corresponding task. For example:

Select which of the following are fruits:

1\. banana 2\. firetruck 3\. baseball 4\. apple

On top of that, if there were independent implementations of CAPTCHA systems the exact mechanics of interacting with the CAPTCHA would be sufficiently different that the very act of submitting responses would, itself, be a bot test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I care quite a bit about privacy on the internet. If you do things like use a VPN, delete cookies and not let your browser leak information Google will make your user experience hell.

<comment><USER7> I haven't found a perfect solution to avoiding tracking, but I frequently look around for new ways to improve my privacy.

One interesting thing I have found was to use Firefox's container tabs with the Temporary Containers extension and a per-domain isolation configuration which will put keep Google search in an temporary isolated container but still let me use mail.google.com in a persistent container.

Combine this with 'Google search link fix' so that search result page no longer uses local stubs to track links followed. Configure Temporary Containers configuration for Google to always open links from there in a new temporary container.

Then use uBlock Origin to not load Google's analytics when you're on the remote page.

Hopefully this prevents Google from tracking search history, though it's possible they could use some IP and browser fingerprinting to establish a weaker correlation on a shadow profile.

I'd love to also have per-container proxy configuration which would use a random proxy per temporary container, but I guess that's not possible yet.

I haven't looked much into ways to randomize the browser data sent to server, but its also something I'd like to be able to do if it were automatic and random enough (eg, a per-request randomization of user-agent and reporting of things like fonts, plugins, screen resolution, etc, which are used as correlating factors in fingerprinting tools).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> On principle I don't use Chrome/chromium, unless a project requires it. It's not a bad browser but I wonder if running a google executable on your computer is like inviting a thief into your home. I still remember when chrome first launched and they would check for updates multiple times a day, every hour or something like that. And what's this virus scanner they offer?

Anyway, I run ff most of the time, and there's a site that I use daily that requires a login. Used to be I would receive a recaptcha challenge maybe one or twice a week, even though logged in. No problem, probably using recaptcha to throttle bots I think.

For the last week plus there's been a fundamental change and I'm receiving multiple recaptcha challenges in the same session, even though I'm signed in, max so far has been 4 in the same session covering maybe 30minutes or so.

Not sure if it is the site itself which is to blame for a poor implementation, or if this is google.

But co-incidentally this happens just as google announces recaptcha 3. Conspiracy nuts might say this is google leveraging their effective captcha monopoly to drive users to chrome.

<comment><USER3> I use Chrome, and I also am getting an annoyingly large number of reCAPTCHA requests.

That said, I don't think it's that much of a conspiracy. It is easy to defend, from Google's point of view - if you use Chrome they have much more information about your web traffic to therefore discern if you are a bot or not. I could absolutely see them implementing rules which, while they do not explicitly prioritize Chrome traffic, in practice end up doing exactly that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A showerthought I recently had: as long as CAPTCHAs exist in their currently inefficient form, it could be argued that we'll never have strong artificial intelligence because CAPTCHAs are basically reverse Turing tests. I haven't developed this thought thoroughly, but I thought it'd be interesting to share.

<comment><USER10> The T in CAPTCHA stands for Turing Test.

The moment we can't make them efficiently distinguish bots from humans would be the moment the test is passed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For the last 6 months its been taking 10-30 minutes to log in to certain sites due to the captchas. Its like an entire afternoon after dinner to log in. I use a VPN, which is the cause, but its gotten insane. How much bot spam are sites getting now that this became necessary?

<comment><USER12> It's even worse for Tor users, logging into Discord makes me solve about ten or twelve rounds of reCAPTCHA. It's maddening.

<comment><USER13> and they ate not even careful with their data sources.

most of my IPs run tor relays without any exit traffic, and google still flags the whole company for 30 minutes of their image classifier training every time each time a captcha shows up.

I wonder if I can start to write that time off as a donation to google image classifier program for the IRS

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are there any decent alternatives to invisible reCAPTCHA?</comment>


Ask HN: I miss Business 2.0. Is there now any other magazine like it? - <AUTHOR>

I'd really like to read a physical magazine with the quality and focus of Business 2.0. Inc and Fast Company don't really fill its place.<p>Do you guys recommend anything? <comment><USER2> It was indeed a sad, sad day _Business 2.0_ got sucked into _Fortune_ , relinquishing its fresh, independent vibe to corporate bureaucracy. There are a few webzines that are almost comparable. But in the printed sphere, I think maybe. . . _Entrepreneur_ might be a semi-comparable alternative:

<http://www.entrepreneur.com/interstitial/default.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know of anything comparable other than Entrepreneur and Inc/Fast Company.</comment>


Election Security at the Chip Level - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/how-secure-are-electronic-voting-machines/ <comment><USER2> Vote by mail like we do in Oregon. We dont have voter ID issues, or other issues like other states.

More states should be doing it, but are not. I do not understand why.</comment>


David Heinemeier Hansson's Speech about Making Money at SS2008 - <AUTHOR> http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dd8936t8_66g2ngbchb

<comment><USER2> The credo of a tycoon of old (think JPMorgan or Vanderbilt) was to build an empire. His own empire, in his lifetime.

Tycoons of today have build their own empires (Microsoft, Google, Apple, Oracle etc.), same principle, same philosophy.

When and why did it happen that flippers took over this market's mindshare? A young entrepreneur today dreams of selling out to Yahoo/Google/Microsoft as soon as possible. Quite often even before his business is profitable.

Hey, if you have a growing business that is profitable, you should keep it for yourself. Many people with money I know (so-called 'professional investors') dream of having such a business in their possession. Such business is not listed, so you cannot buy it on the market. What you can buy on the market (what is listed) normally grows slower and is over-researched and over-valued.

But of course, if you focus on building the cash flow for yourself, and keeping the option of striking it very big at some time in the future for yourself, then the whole industry of undervalued option-buyers (VCs, angels etc.) will be left without work. So the propaganda is put to work... When is my next funding round?.. A round of what? When is your next client subscribing to your app - that should be the question.

DHH thrives on being controversial, but the point he makes here is simply a well forgotten truth about entrepreneurship. Building your business slow and taking full credit for it for yourself used to be the norm before the flipper ethics kicked-in.

<comment><USER3> Times change, and America is much more corporate than it used to be. When a market becomes saturated innovative people will look elsewhere to make their mark.

I don't want to spend my life managing a business. I want to make some money and do something else. I have no doubt that I would make a fitting CEO. But the hours are long and the work is unappealing. There aren't any CEOs I want to be like. Apple's CEO, maybe, but what price does he pay to do what he does?

I really get the feeling that anyone ('anyone') could be a CEO these days. I feel like the CEO is a reward that keeps everyone else on the corporate pyramid. Maybe I'm wrong. I could be. But I haven't seen the argument that debunks that idea. (And I have seen a lot of instances of CEOs who didn't deserve what they received.)

The money is a silly motivation. What am I going to do with $6 billion that I couldn't do with $6 million? Spend conspicuously? Raise a family of layabouts?

I would much rather become financially independent and begin doing the work I want to, when and where I want to. I like to make things, and I like to talk to creative people. I like to do small things really, really well. And I don't like to spend my time dealing with red tape. I feel like I have an obligation to society, but that I don't have to fulfill it by spending my time managing a large corporation. There a lots of other less flashy positions desperate for someone to do a really great job. I want to do something small perfectly, not something huge good enough. Does that make sense?

<comment><USER4> I have created a good growing company that leaves me financially independent anyway - on a monthly basis at least - and I can continue to do other things also. I think this attitude of short-term gain misses out that success is a journey and not a destination. Your motivation still IS money - most of the successful people I know achieved the money because they loved what they are doing and the by-product was a financial reward

<comment><USER5> why waste time fiddling with a company when you have all the money you will ever need?

and not everyone's passion can make them money

<comment><USER4> Because I'm interested in startups, in commerce and not everyone can run a company. I provide employment to people and a social responsibility via my own and my companies actions. That's just for starters!

<comment><USER5> right, but those are _your_ interests. mine, for example, are completely opposite -- i want to stay home and play with theories

i agree that if you have nothing better to do, and you want to be one of those famous CEO's, then selling out early doesn't sound right. but some people do, in their definitions, have something better to do

<comment><USER6> What's your point? You asked for his opinion, got it, then shot him because of it.

<comment><USER5> it was a rhetorical question, it didn't occur to me that it would pertain directly to who i was responding to

my point is not everyone wants to accomplish the same things in life, but everyone needs money to be able to accomplish them (at minimum to pay the bills)

why would someone want to just get some money and be done with all the company stuff? because they have something better to do. maybe they want to visit every city in the world. maybe they want to raise their children full time and homeschool them. having money, they have those options

if you don't have something better to do (in your definition of 'something better',) then you are already doing what you think is best, and more power levels to you. may your hair glow yellow or gold at some point

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really, as soon as Justin TV gets the video online, people should see it. DHH's presentation really was the best of the bunch in my opinion, followed by San Altman's.

He really made a lot of sense. There is so much talk and buzz about getting funded that it was really refreshing to hear some one talk about just plain starting a business. The profit margins in the software business are very, very high. If you can offer a decent product and get people to pay for it, you can make a rather nice living for yourself without having to play the funding game.

<comment><USER8> HUGE if's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes, it was a very nice presentation.

There's too many kool-aid drinkers in the web 2.0 world these days, and its a true breath of fresh air to see somebody with some real business fundamentals talking. I hope his talk makes more people wake up and realize that by trying to build a solid business over time, you have a much much MUCH greater chance at success than people flipping dodgy startups.

I don't think his message was controversial at all. Instead, its a shot of common sense in a world of disinformation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, this typed version destroyed the power of his talk. Please wait until you can see the video (on justin.tv?); his presence is huge.

It has been the best talk by far.

<comment><USER11> Don't be a dick. Those notes were awesome. None of my partners are going to sit through a DHH talk; I was able to cut-paste from this to start a conversation.

<comment><USER12> so its not worth watching for 25 minutes, but you're going to have a dialog based on the transcript? (Which doesn't really fully capture what he was talking about) That makes no sense.

<comment><USER11> Hey, you know what? I'm not particularly interested in having a conversation about DHH's company. His company runs fine without my input. I'm also not particularly interested in faithfully replicating all of DHH's ideas. That's why my eyes aren't glued to the screen every time he talks. I'm glad he has an audience. I like him. But I've got a pipeline to help manage. So really, and I'm asking you, Jamie, who gives a shit?

My point was, don't snipe at some guy who took the time to write up notes from the talk because his hero worship wasn't total enough to prevent him from doing me a favor. I'm sorry he folded up your favorite player's rookie card and stuck it in his BMX spokes --- that must drive you nuts --- but that writeup gave me a useful idea. I'm going to make a judgement call that says that watching some Flash video of DHH talking isn't going to be worth the billable 25 minutes.

<comment><USER12> Enough with the straw men.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Try solving your own problems. Your own company is not unique, there are probably two hundred others who have the same problems.

But if someone solves the same problem as _you_ , whine about it and have a quasi book-burning ordeal where you get it permanently removed from the internet. (Campfire)

</comment><comment><USER14> video courtesy of justin.tv: [http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/97862/DHH_Talk__Startup_School...](http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/97862/DHH_Talk__Startup_School_2008)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! Turns out this speech was in fact recorded successfully and completely by Justin.tv, but apparently some others like Arrington's were not due to technical difficulties (like I remembered last year.) I was actually very nervous because I made a decision to publish these notes to the public asap, but I was missing out on the first part of Paul Buchheit's speech to do so. Why was I nervous, when surely there would be perfect, uninterrupted video recordings , with full and clear audio after the event? Well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For new technology, it seems to me to be a land-grab. Grab the users who want X, then either figure out how to make money off them (As google did), or sell to someone who sees the value of your audience share.

So... is it:

1\. Find a problem - something's broken 2\. Find a solution - make what people want 3\. Price it 4\. Get users

Or

3\. Get users 4\. Work out how to monetize them

I think either can work, and both have disadvantages. Charging up front sort of goes against what PG said in his talk (Great talk I thought) - about being nice and helpful and giving users stuff they need. Waiting until you have the userbase before you start monetizing means you don't have cashflow, and may need funding.

</comment><comment><USER16> I liked his comment about scalability. When you have paid subscribers, you like scaling issues. Scaling issues (server capacity being utilized) means your business is doing well. With your subscription fees producing a healthy profit, you can buy another server (a kick-ass one).

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't think his speech was that great. Loud and arrogant doesn't make for a great speech. He kept stressing the ease of settling for the middle and just asking people to pay for your services. He used the analogy of us paying for cars but I think there's one huge difference. There is a huge barrier of entry into the car business which ultimately results in us having to pay what we pay, but I'm the web world, your product can be copied on the fly, look begged and be free, and that's why people want to horde the masses, something he criticized, so they can offer a free service and yet monetize using advertisements.

It happened with his product, the launch of huddlechat, but that as you know was taken down.

<comment><USER11> "His product" is Basecamp, not Campfire; a tiny fraction of their revenue comes from Campfire.

Most people would take good odds of running a multi-million dollar business over infinitessimally small odds of flipping and retiring. And he's obviously right about the odds: what percentage of YC companies have flipped?

<comment><USER18> Ok, but the point that the economics of information goods are often quite different from physical products is a valid one. That said, the idea that you should look for markets that aren't winner take all, where you could have a sustainable, mid-sized business, is a good one.

<comment><USER11> There is a difference between an entrepreneur and a speculator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It all goes back to the mentality of loving what you do...if that results in you being the next google so be it. The problem is people set their minds on being the next big thing instead of worrying about what they are doing in the present. DHH is speaking to living in the present and not compromising your ideals.

</comment><comment><USER20> Thanks for these notes. Very detailed and captured the meaning perfectly. But you just had to be there to see the frenetic energy with which he boils on stage.

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, anecdote != data:)

</comment><comment><USER21> Great presentation! I'm already building a startup predicated upon the subscription model and I'm already familiar 37 Signals, DHH, and Getting Real. I just needed this talk to give my a little extra kick in the butt. New business plan in the works today.</comment>


The cheapest way to discover if a startup will make money (using Twitter) - <AUTHOR> http://maxkle.in/the-cheapest-way-to-discover-if-a-startup-idea-will-make-money

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting approach but I wouldn't put all my eggs in that particular basket.</comment>


Sicherman Dice (and how to cheat at Craps) - <AUTHOR> http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/june12013/index.html

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in this also check out "Nontransitive Dice" - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice></comment>


Pokémon Go Is Secretly Teaching Americans the Metric System - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/pokemon-go-is-secretly-teaching-americans-the-metric-sy-1783459191 <comment><USER2> Oh, come on. I learned "the metric system" in elementary school in the United States of America nearly 50 years ago. I was in no way confused when it appeared in the movie Pulp Fiction.

It's not like Americans don't know the metric system, it's that there is no political will to change.

But it really doesn't matter. Large parts of industry in the USA are already "hard metric". Anybody in STEM certainly knows metric, because that's often what they exclusively use every day.

<comment><USER3> "Nearly 50 years ago" was the US made an effort to go metric. People thought the transition would be "soon". Highway signs were put up in both metric and miles.

I suspect that that was the high point in teaching metric in schools.

There's a difference between knowing metric and really having a feel for it. I speak as someone trained in physics, but that doesn't mean I had a real sense for what it means. What clothes should I wear for 23C weather? Is 13mm of rain in an hour heavy or light? Is a car which consumes 4.5L/100km one that is fuel efficient compared to most? How many centimeters tall are you?

Even now, living in a metric country for years, I have to think about some of these by translating into, say, 52 mpg.

<comment><USER4> It is a lot more difficult than folks think, that's for sure. I've only been living in a metric country for 3 years, and I am only beginning to get a feel for these things. Congratualations, me, you can no longer describe some bits of life and the world in relatable terms.

<comment><USER3> Here's a fun one the other way. I know what 80-100C means as sauna temperatures, and I prefer around 90C, but have to do some math to figure out that's 175F-212F, and I prefer around 195F.

(Okay, the 100C=212F is a gimme, but not the others.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unfortunately, this looks like a localization bug that will probably be fixed soon.

<comment><USER6> It won't be "fixed" soon, this isn't the first Niantic game that does this.

People were talking about this even in 2012 when playing Ingress: [https://reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/13vjcw/the_real_nianti...](https://reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/13vjcw/the_real_nianticingress_conspiracy/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's hilarious. For me, running track and cross country taught me the metric system. :)

Even as an American, it feels way more natural for me to express distances < 1km in meters, not "yards" (seriously the most wtf unit) or feet.

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, why is yards a WTF unit? It's within the realm of a meter (~10% smaller), and as far as I've seen, about the distance of a large gait. That's how my father and grandfather taught me how to estimate large distances (room/house sized distances here), via a large pace that roughly matches a yard (usually within 5%).

Now I really have no preference on feet-meter scale other than the fact that I find the need to fall back to decimal meters or tens of centimeters when I can use feet for a more round number. I'm terrible at gauging distances, so I have very little use for either without a direct measurement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if this was done on purpose. Either way, I like it.</comment>


Ask HN: Remote dev box, using vscode, who needs it? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys, I've developed a remote box using vscode live share and mosh so I can actually code on 3G, would people be interested in a product like this, it's kind of neat, I'll provide a cli to start a vscode session remotely and connect. Who would use this? <comment><USER2> What would the actual purpose of it be? Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see the use.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/devbox-hero/ansible-roles](https://github.com/devbox- hero/ansible-roles) \- so the reason I made this was:

1\. Since I work a lot from 3g, and other bad connections. I wanted to have some place I can do my work easily. You try download npm on 3g

2\. Why do we buy $3-4k macbook pros when we can rent servers for like 25 cents an hour that are as good.</comment></comment>


Move Fast and Break Things - <AUTHOR> http://blog.opbeat.com/2013/07/10/move-fast-and-break-things/

<comment><USER2> But the things you broke were my personal phone contacts !!

Back in 2012 my emails started going missing, and other friends' too[1]. Turns out FB devs decided to update my iPhone Address Book without prompting me. They messed it up and emails started going missing.

I've kept the one data point that shows they were mucking around without prompting me. Among all the other actions they added this entry:

.

Facebook: firstname.lastname@example.com

.

This forced me to uninstall the iPhone Facebook client to prevent FB ever doing something like this again.

Break your own stuff if you must. Don't break my stuff.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4158695)

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57464415-93/facebook-e- mail...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57464415-93/facebook-e-mail-mess- address-books-altered-e-mail-lost/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading this, from a purely common sense viewpoint, Facebook sounds like an extremely vulnerable and potentially insecure platform. This "throw caution to the wind" philosophy is interesting considering the information Facebook is responsible for protecting.</comment>