Ask HN: 6 Months Later – Do you miss Apple's headphone jack? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious what the real world fall out is now that consumers have experience life with the option to exclude a headphone jack. I know many people who will 'never upgrade' and others who don't care at all. What have you seen and heard, and what are your personal opinions and experiences now that we have had time to digest? <comment><USER3> It sucks.

I have beats from apple and AirPods and it still sucks. I'm constantly having to swap headphones and they are always running out of batteries. Older houses I visit - which was super common on a trip to the Far East recently - <USER2> have headphone jacks available. Hotels are the same over most of the world.

The problem I really have is that there is utterly no benefit to removing the technology. Like, what is the upside? Nope. I can't find one. It's incredibly stupid that I can't charge and talk on the phone at the same time without a freekin' adapter - still sucks all these months later, and yes, it happens frequently.

I really feel like Apple f'd up. I am seriously considering finally moving to another platform after a decade on Apple.

It's the same problem with my new MacBook Pro with the bar - there is no material benefit to the change. It's not making my life better and is actually generally making my technology life more of a hassle.

I miss Steve.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a 7+. For the most part I've stopped using headphones (wired or wireless) with my phone. If I want to listen to music I revert to an ancient iPod or my iPad. While the 7+ fits in various pockets, the stupid lightning dongle juts out just enough that I can't use it with the phone in my jacket pocket.

I have a collection of Beats headsets, and thought that by now Apple would have introduced a "native" lightning-to-beats cable.

I'm not an audio nut, but I find the audio quality over Bluetooth to be subpar with the 7+ compared with previous iPhones & iPods. Initially I could only keep a BT connection for 10-15 minutes before the phone would drop it and I'd have to power cycle the headset. Same headsets with a ~3-4 year old iPod work fine, and the audio quality is ok.

I have odd ears, so the Apple earbuds and Airpods don't work for me, they constantly fall out.

Kind of ambivalent whether dropping the jack was the right idea or not. Feels like Apple put all of their money on Airpods + bluetooth being the only correct answer and that that's the problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have an iPhone 7. I also have a hearing aid that is Made for iPhone, meaning that it connects to the iPhone using Bluetooth. Audio streams directly to my ear. It's pretty sweet. It's taken me from being terrified of speaking on the phone to having a job where I spend at least 2 hours a day on phone calls for business.

Unfortunately, three days ago, my hearing aid's BT antenna stopped working or something, and now it won't connect to my phone. Holding the phone up to my ear works fine, but I miss a LOT because the sound quality is much less. (Your microphone -> my phone speaker -> my hearing aid microphone -> my hearing aid speaker -> my ear.) And super unfortunately, because the iPhone 7 doesn't have a headphone jack, I can't just plug in my headphones. I have to go buy an adapter. I don't want to do this, because I don't normally need an adapter and don't want to spend $40 on one when I'd only need it for a few days until this is fixed.

Also, since I'm profoundly deaf, Air Pods are completely useless to me. It sucks. It really, really sucks. I met with my audiologist on Monday, and they're sending me a new hearing aid that should work, but in the meantime, I'm stuck holding the phone to my ear and being unable to follow conference calls in any meaningful way.

I feel like Apple could have sold Air Pods while keeping the jack. :(

<comment><USER6> "I have to go buy an adapter."

A lightning to 3.5mm adapter is included in the iPhone 7 box.

<comment><USER5> Ah, I no longer have the box. Guess I missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We came to to summer house today.

Needless to say, the equipment here is not the latest.

My wife wanted to put on some music - right, she can't connect her phone to the stereo because the missing jack.

I have to connect my Nexus and will be in charge of music all weekend.

No, i don't miss the jack on the iPhones...

<comment><USER8> Assuming she has the iPhone 7, Apple makes a little Lightning to 3.5 mm cable [1] for that use case. There's also a dock that does the same [2].

[1]: [https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning- to-35...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMX62AM/A/lightning-to-35-mm- headphone-jack-adapter)

[2]: [https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNN62AM/A/iphone- lightnin...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNN62AM/A/iphone-lightning- dock-black)

<comment><USER9> Dongles seem to be the answer for everything in Cupertino these days. This is barely acceptable for laptops, which are usually carried around in bags, but for i-devices this solution simply doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER8> I think it depends on how much one uses each port. Personally since AirPods, I haven't used the headphone jack but I would be willing to bet Apple reverts the headphone jack or makes a more integrated adapter with the next iPhone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes. My headphones (Bose QuietComfort 25) are not wireless. While the extra adapter is only a minor annoyance, I am mostly frustrated by the fact that I can not charge my phone and use my headphones at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER11> My girlfriend lives in another country, so we spend a lot of time on the phone. My wireless headset shorted out (they said it'd be fine for running, but a particularly hot day and a lot of sweat seemed to fry it). I picked up a battery case, or the battery simply wouldn't last all day for the amount of time we end up spending on it some days without needing an extra charge during the day.

Otherwise, it functions well enough, but I wish they'd bring back the 3.5mm jack. It's also a non-standard headset that I'm carrying around, which means when I want to plug a headset into my laptop or desktop (such as at work), I have to have a separate one for those systems.

</comment><comment><USER12> Frankly, Bluetooth audio sucks. It works almost good enough most of the time, but when you really need it then it flakes out on you.

I'm not sure if the problem is my headset or my phone, but I really hate, loathe, and despise Bluetooth.

I understand the desire to make the phone more waterproof, but there are other phones out there that are equally waterproof and still have the headphone jack.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been using AirPods for a few weeks now. Here's my experience.

I'm using a 6s still, so the option for wired is there. There are definitely small glitches in audio playback wireless vs wired. Using AirPods for phone calls, I've been told people can hear me more clearly than the built-in iPhone mic. Between AirPods on the go and being able to play Spotify on my Echo, I haven't used my wired headphones since.

One thing to note is AirPods don't work for me at the gym or any movement beyond walking. Apparently the shapes of my ears are a little different and the left one falls out frequently. There are some aftermarket rubber things you can put on them to give them better staying power like the Bose earbuds, _but_ I haven't seen any that you can use with the AirPod charging case. The charging case is such a core feature that having to put on / take off rubber covers with every use is unrealistic. I'll probably end up getting a second set of wireless earbuds exclusively for the gym. Tried all of the models that Bose makes but didn't love any of them. Overall, the AirPods are a 3.5/5 for me, but I've definitely accepted wireless audio at this point.

</comment><comment><USER13> When Apple announced the removal of the headphone jack, my initial guess was that it wouldn't really affect me all that much. There are only 3 times that I use the headphone jack on my phone: while driving (I use a cassette player adapter), while exercising, and on the airplane. Obviously, I'm not going to be charging my phone while exercising, so that use case doesn't really matter.

As for when I'm driving, I ended up buying a small bluetooth receiver to plug my cassette player adapter into, so now I can just connect to that wirelessly, and continue to charge my phone (if needed). I'm fortunate enough to live less than 5 miles from work, so charging while driving during the week isn't really necessary for me. However, it's definitely nice being able to charge on weekends if I'm driving farther distances.

On the plane, I think there are enough entertainment options (in-seat entertainment, iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Switch, etc.) that I don't foresee running into a situation where I haven't been able to charge my phone because I've been listening to it non-stop. I just traveled from LA to Milan and back last week, and I think the lowest my phone's charge got to on the plane was ~50%.

So, for me, I don't miss the headphone jack. BUT, with that said, I think it definitely helps that I have a 7 Plus, just because of the larger battery. Before this, I had a 6 (not Plus), and near the end of it's life, the battery was absolutely atrocious. I think that's now my largest concern (although maybe not as much with the Plus) with the lack of headphone jack.

</comment><comment><USER14> A musician-friend, who owns several pairs of headphones (and obsesses over them), said he misses being able to try out new headphones, or friends' headphones.

</comment><comment><USER15> I miss it.

Planes are also getting rid of their screens. Yeah, I should have known when we went on our last family vacation.

So my wife and I watched movies are on our phones over the wifi system. Know what sucks? Can't charge and use headphones at the same time without an adapter.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, not being able to listen to music and charge the phone at the same time (or connect it to my laptop) simply sucks.

Apple's answer to this of course is: Use AirPods! So far I'm not willing to pay €200+ for Bluetooth headphones that might even have worse audio quality, though

</comment><comment><USER17> It's moderately annoying. I'm particularly miffed that there's no actual way, even with accessories, to use my Apogee Jam or to debug apps while using headphones.

<comment><USER8> Can you do a Lighting splitter with one going to the USB cable to debug and the other going to a Lightning to 3.5 mm?

<comment><USER17> No, because every adaptor I've seen so far (except for the official Apple dock, which is super awkward) only allows power, not data, through the second Lightning port. This includes the Belkin one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I own several pairs of headphones and surprisingly I don't miss the jack.

My daily Bose Quietcomfort 35's have excellent bluetooth and switching between my iphone 7+ and my computer is quick and easy.

I keep an adapter on my home stereo aux cable. For the rest of my wired headphones, I usually use them with my computer, not my phone.

I use my wired earbuds far less now, but they're great to have as backup.

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't miss the jack. Do miss the freedom of using any headphone.</comment>


STGi: Visual STG implementation to help understand Haskell's execution model - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/quchen/stgi <comment><USER2> That's what I like about Haskell. Brilliant people writing really cool stuff. I'm constantly amazed by Haskell libraries!

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I've never felt an "in-over-my-head" feeling as strongly as when I first stumbled upon the Lens package docs on Hackage.

<comment><USER4> The idea behind lenses is simple, but I haven't used it yet. What's the complexity?

<comment><USER5> The lens library is more like a dialect of Haskell than a library.

<comment><USER4> Not trying to sound snarky, serious question: Is it due to Edward's (over)use of the type system, making it fit (however complex) into the Haskell system? Could a more expressive system like Idris have avoided the complexity?

If so, I'm certain there is a simple implementation of the lens idea that's much easier to understand and apply.

<comment><USER6> No. It's more the sheer breadth and scope of the vocabulary lens develops. It has a ton of operations and abstractions, all written in a distinctly "lensy" style with their own idioms. They fit together beautifully, but are distinct enough from normal Haskell style that learning them takes additional effort.

If you just had a small subset of the library that only exposed, say, Lens, Traversal and Prism, it would be much more approachable—but would also miss out on much of what makes lens so universally useful. It wouldn't hit all the edge cases lens does and it wouldn't be "batteries included". You'd find yourself ultimately reinventing part of the other abstractions that lens has but, since you're doing it independently and _ad-hoc_ , the result would be uglier.

<comment><USER7> > learning them takes additional effort.

Do you have any recommendations on what might be a good read or project for learning Lens? I played around with it a couple times, but I could never find an introduction or anything that really let me get a grasp on their core concepts and use. I'm not looking so much for the mechanics of how to use them, but more of an overview of _when_ and _why_ I might want to use them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


51 Most Popular Programming Languages on GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://githubpop.blogspot.com/

<comment><USER2> I always assumed it was Ruby. All of the Ruby people I know use GitHub.</comment>


Elephant 2000, John McCarthy new programming language. - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/mccarthy-elephant-2000

<comment><USER2> I don't know what InfoQ is thinking putting an article in 2 text boxes with clickboxes to expand the sections.

Here's the text of the article in a much easier to read format: <http://jottit.com/u9hf6>

</comment><comment><USER3> I must admit I don't understand the benefits of embedding some form of temporal reasoning in a language or library. Anyone care to explain?

<comment><USER4> I don't either at the moment, but I bet many didn't see the significance of Lisp (then or now) either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like the concepts he is describing are more appropriate for a DSL within an existing language than in a completely new language.

</comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately that was rather difficult to watch and follow. I'd rather read it, so thanks bayareaguy.</comment>


Income Loss Persists Long After Layoffs - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/us/04layoffs.html <comment><USER2> "The largest wage losses are typically for workers who had long tenures at their previous companies."

A small justification maybe for my tendency to always be switching companies, especially in the boom times. One, people are more likely to hire you when employed. Two, you force yourself to get a broader experience that makes you more valuable when times are tough.

Quit before you get fired

<comment><USER3> > Quit before you get fired

That very much depends on your local laws. Getting fired can be very lucrative in some locales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Mr. Dettman, who was a business analyst and earned just over $50,000 after nearly 20 years with Pratt_

Ouch.

I mean, I realize that Pratt & Whitney is not exactly a high-growth company, but if after 20 years with one company you haven't managed to move up, either in position or salary, maybe it's not surprising if it takes you four years to find a new job.

<comment><USER5> Many people never want to move up. They just want a good job, period. 50-60 year old people are like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article:

 _About a year-and-a-half after being laid off, she found herself doing almost exactly what she had done before, only this time for a Pratt contractor. She now earns $80,000 a year.

Ms. Carron said she was not familiar with other programming languages that are more broadly used, so she was lucky to have found a job working on the same project._

This begs the question of what she was doing in those 18 months. Even after 18 months of not using Ada (I assume) she'd be pretty rusty. Surely of all the professions mentioned, programmers have it easiest to update their skills.

<comment><USER5> Seriously ? Dementia takes over after only 18 months ? She works in freaking avionics. Ruby on Rails, .NET and Java developers should not comment on this issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am not sure that this is always correct. In my view, it really has to do with the industry involved and the state of the economy.

I've been layed off twice and both years are my two highest income years. Both lay offs occurred during a strong economy ('99 and '07) when tech jobs were not too hard to get.

Once the economy gets better again (which looks like it's happening), the tech market will come back and in my view, it should be stronger than ever. The big kick off will probably be the Facebook IPO.

</comment><comment><USER8> The computer programmers mentioned did all right though. Thank heaven.</comment>


Welcome to the Private Party - <AUTHOR> https://party.lol/ <comment><USER2> This might be interesting and valuable, but the ridiculous home page doesn't instill me with any confidence. Certainly not going to install anything from these people.</comment>


Why I am excited about micro-packages - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@peterjuras/why-i-am-excited-about-micro-packages-58e66e81f1ea#.hwtyaf1xt <comment><USER2> > 6\. What if someone comes up with a better way to solve the problem? > I > want to focus on the last question, because I think it raises the biggest > issue. The moment we paste the code into our solution, we create an isolated > fork of it. Whenever someone comes up with a better idea, or JavaScript > evolves and our solution gets deprecated, we have broken code at our hands > and someone needs to fix it.

It must be really weird to program in a language where one must defensively overuse libraries out of fear that somebody will come up with a better run- time predicate to recognize arrays.</comment>


Ask HN: What's lacking in Rails education? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a Rails developer with plans to put together a free educational resource. I already have a few ideas in mind, but before I pollute my potential for wide-open feedback, I want to ask:
Has there ever been a point for you where you've found yourself "fed up" because of a lack of tutorials or guidance?
Is there a comparable resource available for a different technology that you feel would address the problems you faced/are facing while learning Rails? <comment><USER2> yeah, I feel your pain. want to work together on this? I'm jrgifford on github and twitter, hit me up.</comment>


ASM 4.0 a Java bytecode engineering library [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://download.forge.objectweb.org/asm/asm4-guide.pdf <comment><USER2> Project home: [http://asm.ow2.org/](http://asm.ow2.org/)</comment>


Federated Learning - <AUTHOR> https://federated.withgoogle.com/ <comment><USER2> First, I've loved that Google open sourced Tensor Flow Federated as a way to encourage the rest of the world to adopt this method of decentralized machine learning.

Second, I was a bit disheartened that this concept had to be explained with a comic strip to make it accessible because I hoped the benefits were clear to everyone.

Third, I read the comic strip, learned new things (secure aggregation protocol, wtf, amazing!), kicked myself for being smug and appreciated the huge amount of effort that someone invested to communicate this.

<comment><USER3> Popular culture is a tool for the education of the masses. Even for people who may be technically inclined, its not always evident what certain technologies _really_ do.

I am a software engineer but mostly work on DevOps-y stuff. This was a very accessible, low-investment way for me to understand exactly what "Federated Learning" really meant.

Some of the best teachers at Univ had a way of explaining things in simple terms. This comic strip has captured that experience in a more permanent form a lot better than a textbook would.

<comment><USER4> Universities have a captive audience, they can take the time to walk you through incrementally.

Most websites and online communication don't have that luxury. It's interesting how the comic works well in these situations, while still pushing a long-read format. Google did the long-form comic thing with Chrome too and I remember reading it page-to-page back then.

But at the same time, is it a good idea as your primary website homepage as it is here? Which would be unusual if there was anything more to it like documentation, code, etc. Right now this website is clearly in an educate-the- public mode only which is how they can get away with this being the primary content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google mentioned at I/O that speech recognition will soon (this summer?) be performed locally on Android devices, with no voice data being sent to Google, because they have been able to reduce the size of the model dramatically. Is that related to federated learning?

Paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.06621](https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.06621)

<comment><USER6> No, federated learning is about training on the device not running prediction on the device. Training a speech model on the device would be hard, because there is no labeled data. We don't know what the user said.

<comment><USER7> I can imagine the world relying more and more on unsupervised pre-training approaches, such as BERT and GPT-2. Then we'll just need a few labeled data to generalize.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All right, I'm cynical as all heck about ad companies and privacy, but this has me optimistic. Somebody disillusion me, why shouldn't I be optimistic?

<comment><USER9> Well the cynical view would be.

1) This still lets you have personalized models, just trained on more than 1 user, thats fine at google's scale anyway

2) Their competitors (FB, AMZN) dont have the edge compute (Android) to do this, and to a lesser degree don't have the ML stack (however Android implements this at the API level will be very Tensorflow focused)

3) Now google can push for privacy regulations that prevent FB and AMZN from storing your raw data

4) Profit

That said theres nothing stopping FB doing federated learning within their app on mobile, I just don't think they have the privacy background to bother.

<comment><USER10> > Their competitors (FB, AMZN) dont have the edge compute (Android) to do this

It's not Android scale but Amazon has sold 100 million Alexas.

<comment><USER11> Doubt Alexas have enough juice to do on device training...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is very interesting for many reasons. First we have the privacy stance, which is a tremendous step for big G. Whoever managed to push this through in the "machine" of internal office politics deserves applause. The very fact of acknowledging that users might want to control their data locally rather than rsync everything all the time is a big step—it takes us off the "give me all your data" train that we have been on for some time.

Talking about specific applications of your users' data makes a lot more sense: "If you share X with us, you're helping to build a better model Y that helps you with Z." Then the prompt "Do you want to share X?" makes a lot more sense than the current generic prompts "App V wants to access all your data W?" which doesn't tell you anything.

The anonymisation-by-aggregation aspect is interesting on it's own since it provides a practical approach we can use today and not have to wait for homomorphic encryption. There will probably still be "data leakage" but I can see how aggregation can be fundamentally better than trying to shared anonymized data by fuzzing identifiers, randomization, and binning, which are notoriously hard to pull off and suffer from de-anonymisation attacks by cross linking with other datasets.

Research-wise this could be a whole new field. Let's revisit all the ML algorithms and look at the ones that lend themselves to federated updates. Perhaps certain ML algorithms have been overlooked historically because they are not "cutting edge" but lend themselves better to distributed model updates? (I bet this is already a thing...)

The communication complexity aspects are also very interesting since it forces us to think about bandwidth needed to communicate model updates and training batching. For high-bandwidth settings we could consider training a model from scratch, for medium bandwidth you can send model updates regularly, but what would be particularly interesting to see async and VERY low bandwidth updates—like just a few MB every, exchanged once in a while when connectivity is available.

<comment><USER3> > "If you share X with us, you're helping to build a better model Y that helps > you with Z." Then the prompt "Do you want to share X?" makes a lot more > sense than the current generic prompts "App V wants to access all your data > W?" which doesn't tell you anything.

That would lead to wayy too much notifications. Just like ToS, people would say yes or no blindly.

<comment><USER13> Well, I really would like to say "no" to all of them, but somehow I don't expect to be given an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, correct me if I'm wrong, but this basically only works when you've already done your data exploration phase, you've committed to a particular topology, and now you just want to optimize your weights?

It seems that this won't work so great if you don't have any initial data to bootstrap yourself with. So, perhaps the idea is you bootstrap with a few people, do your explorations, and then scale it out with federation?

</comment><comment><USER15> Linked paper on using this for Google Keyboard ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.10635.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.10635.pdf)) highlights that there are nevertheless still privacy issues with this approach:

While Federated Learning removes the need to upload raw user material — here OOV words — to the server, the privacy risk of unintended memorization still exists (as demonstrated in (Carlini et al., 2018)). Such risk can be mitigated, usually with some accuracy cost, using techniques including differential privacy (McMahan et al., 2018). Exploring these trade-offs is beyond the scope of this paper.

<comment><USER16> You're not wrong, but it does say those privacy risks can be mitigated with differential privacy. That McMahan et al. paper (which is also Google) makes the accuracy cost seem low.

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.06963](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.06963)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> How do they assure you that the training algorithm isn't just exfiltrating your data?

Edit: By that I mean... What's stopping the model from being as simple as "learn my personal information"?

<comment><USER18> It looks from the comic like they aggregate data with linear structure (probably derivatives on the model parameters.) Each device adds a mask to their part of the data, and somehow the masks are coordinated across devices so that when the data are summed on the central training server, the masks cancel out.

It's unclear from the comic how the masks are coordinated, or how they compensate for the risk that a participating device drops out (which will make all the other data from that iteration useless, if you set the masks up in a naive way.)

<comment><USER17> > It looks from the comic like they aggregate data with linear structure > (probably derivatives on the model parameters.)

Thanks, that's the part I must have glossed over. It looks like they're using secret sharing to distribute as shares that all need to be together to reassemble [1].

[1] [https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public- publication-...](https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication- data/pdf/ae87385258d90b9e48377ed49d83d467b45d5776.pdf)

<comment><USER18> Thanks, just came back to share that link. :)

From the introduction, it looks like they group participants into smaller clusters, coordinate between those via the centralized server in a star topology, use Diffie-Helman to share secrets between the participants in a cluster, and construct the canceling noise within that cluster.

The Shamir secret sharing squicks me a bit. It looks like if the adversary can control cluster membership (and Google is the adversary, here), they can recover the gradients.

> _To prevent the server from simulating an arbitrary number of clients (in > the active-adversary model), we require the support of a public key > infrastructure that allows clients to register identities, and sign messages > using their identity, such that other clients can verify this signature, but > cannot impersonate them. In this model, each party u will register to a > public bulletin board during the setup phase. The bulletin board will only > allow parties to register keys for themselves, so it will not be possible > for the attacking parties to impersonate honest parties._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What happens with the zero-sum cancelling out phase if one device disappears during the process?

<comment><USER20> From the paper: [https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public- publication-...](https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication- data/pdf/ae87385258d90b9e48377ed49d83d467b45d5776.pdf)

> We rely on Shamir's t-out-of-n Secret Sharing [50], which allows a user to > split a secret s into n shares, such that any t shares can be used to > reconstruct s, but any set of at most t − 1 shares gives no information > about s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Federated learning is a potentially really great idea, but it's important to be upfront about its limitations. Just because I can't prove that a piece of data came from your device doesn't mean that a machine learned model trained on that data isn't violating your privacy.

For example, say we deployed federated learning to train a predictive language model, and allowed it to learn from emails, say, inside Google. Looking at what the model predicts when you type "Here at Google our next secret project is..." could very likely reveal something they wouldn't want widely revealed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm genuinely still unsure if this is a parody or not. The first half of the comic just describes Google's business model and the second seems to be trying to outsource the cost of G/TPUs to the end user. Then at the end they go bankrupt and (presumably) sell their control over the data to a vulture fund.

None of this addresses the fundamental problem of advertising companies, once people learn what they're doing they just want them to feck off and leave them alone, without any regard for future promises.

<comment><USER18> It's no joke. [https://federated.withgoogle.com/#learn](https://federated.withgoogle.com/#learn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My gut feeling tells me not to believe their promises that it's impossible to deduce the data from the model updates. That there should be attacks.

My stylistic criticism is that they portray white men in a demeaning way that they would never dare do to any other group.

edited to make a weaker claim

<comment><USER16> Do you have a specific technical criticism of the secure aggregation protocol? That's what's supposed to make it impossible to deduce the data from model updates. Or is your concern something else?

<comment><USER23> I hadn't really read it at that point. It more seemed like a too big achievement for me to believe that anyone could solve.

One issue with their approach I found while causally browsing is

"for the proof against active adversaries, we assume that there exists a public-key infras-tructure (PKI), which guarantees to users that messages they receive came from other users (and not the server). Without this assumption, the server can perform a Sybil attack on the users in RoundShareKeys"

Basically assume there is some trustworthy entity that solves Sybil attacks. I don't think such an entity exists. So question is how they solve that in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How can the data be sent in an encrypted manner that can then be useful without the server having a copy of the private keys used to encrypt the data itself?

<comment><USER25> Homomorphic Encryption

<comment><USER24> Does this actually work today? I was tangentially involved in some 'zero protocol'/zcash-related projects a few years back and the lack of ability to communicate and transfer information while being able to perform computation on it was a major drawback to most of the interesting ideas in the space.

Are they actually using this in this intended federated learning plan? If so that's a truly major innovation.

<comment><USER16> Fully homomorphic encryption, in which you can do arbitrary computation on encrypted data, is still quite slow. But partially homomorphic decryption, in which you can add encrypted values together but not multiply (or vice versa), is quite efficient. And since the secure aggregation protocol only needs to add together encrypted values to get an average, it only needs partially homomorphic encryption properties.

<comment><USER25> I believe there is also a proof that says any partially homomorphic system can be reworked into a FHE.

<comment><USER16> You're thinking of "somewhat homomorphic encryption", which is homomorphic encryption that can support both addition/OR and multiplication/AND, but only in circuits of a limited depth. The original FHE paper did indeed prove that you can rework any "somewhat homomorphic" system into a fully homomorphic one.

Partially homomorphic encryption is different because it really only enables one of those two types of operations. For example, Pallier encryption has the property that Enc(A) + Enc(B) = Enc(A+B), but there's no way to go from Enc(A) and Enc(B) to Enc(A×B).

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Renting my phone out to process data gives me a bad feeling. The airplane mode guy is now just straight up turning off the phone and battery.

<comment><USER27> This is reminiscent of bitcoin mining, except the thing being mined here is an AI's "intelligence", and consumer's data is the key to it. The benefit is that the consumer doesn't have to give up their data, just their compute power. Obviously, this should be an opt-in service and people should be getting paid for the compute time they loan out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> call me jaded but:

If you're paying for PR firms to produce cartoons about how good you are for privacy, you're probably terrible for privacy.

This feels like Google's Joe Camel moment.

<comment><USER29> Google Chrome launched with a comic by Scott McCloud in 2008. It looks like Scott McCloud helped on this Federated Learning comic as well.

[https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html](https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So instead of sending the data to Google encrypted for them to analyze, it analyzes the data on your device and sends that data to Google encrypted for them to combine the results.

But your data still gets sent to Google. I don't see the difference. It's just another layer on top.

<comment><USER31> Well no, if you read the part about Secure Aggregation, Google has no way of knowing which piece of training results comes from which device, they can only see the aggregated results of a batch.

So sure, technically the training results based on your data are still sent to Google, but that's not really the concern they're addressing. They're addressing Google having a record in a database of every shop you visited in the last week and such and that data getting in the wrong hands (or being used wrong by them). What if they could benefit from training on that sort of data, without ever actually storing it themselves?</comment></comment>


Show HN: My Greg's Pulse. Get text message updates when stuff online changes - <AUTHOR> http://gregspulse.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on this app for the last couple of weeks. This is a first actual "product" that I've launched, so I'm a bit shaken up by how people will, or will not, react to it. Any feedback and recommendations are highly appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER2> It might be a good idea to let users know where the service is available?

(I entered a UK number complete with country code and the site claimed to have sent me a verification text, but nothing has shown up after five minutes)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for trying this out!

I use Twilio (<http://twilio.com>) for sending text messages, and rely on them to provide somewhat global support. UK should be supported, but their logging does show that they couldn't deliver your text message. I filed the issue with their support system, so hopefully they'll resolve this.

I will add list of countries that are supported though!

<comment><USER3> John from Twilio here. We do deliver to a huge number of countries, but there's issues with some non-US carriers that prevent us from guaranteeing delivery to non-US numbers. It's unfortunate, and we try very hard to deliver as many messages as we can but there are some restrictions that are outside of our control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations!

It looks like you have a nice MVP there. Good work.

I found the "Pricing" page to be needlessly confusing. There's a lot of room for optimization there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I completely agree with Pricing page being confusing... It felt fine when I initially created it, but hours after launching I want to remake it completely. There are only two main options to tell people about, and two different prices - seems like all that text isn't really required.

Also, pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by MVP in this context?

<comment><USER4> Minimum Viable Product.

In terms of the Pricing page, there are two possible ways to deal with the problem. One, of course, is to fix the page. The other is to fix the pricing model.

I assume you've already given your pricing a good deal of thought, and have some reasons for having priced things the way you did, but off the top of my head, if it were me, I'd be offering pre-pay options, with steeper discounts for larger purchases.

In other words: something like 20 messages for $5, 50 for $10, 150 for $20-- and forget about the "monthly" plan altogether.

But, as I said-- that's just a gut feeling, without any real analysis. I imagine you know what you're doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've given it some thought. I'm still trying to decide which way to go (keep current model, or go in a direction that you suggested).

However, your suggestion about dropping monthly plan is interesting. I thought it would be a matter of convenience for people? Given that they'll be using the service monthly, of course. Steep discounts does sound like a step in the right direction.

Thanks a lot for your comments!

<comment><USER4> Are they really going to be using the product "monthly", or just continuously, on an ongoing basis?

I was thinking, I suppose, of Google AdWords, which has a pre-pay model-- you pay a chunk of money (as much as you want, with a set minimum), and they let your pre-paid funds are getting close to running out, so you can add more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, this depends on how people will use the system. Say, you're just tracking down a used car with best possible price. So you sign up for text notifications so that you're the first one - and once you bought the car, you no longer need these notifications.

Other usage patterns might assume regular, monthly usage.

Since I just launched this and have only a handful of users, I'm yet to see how it'll be used.

Edit: I misread your comment. They will be using this, in the best case scenario, regularly on ongoing basis - so not "monthly" in a sense of regular subscription services.

<comment><USER4> The problem with the "monthly" concept is that it forces me to estimate how many notifications I am going to get each month, and then choose an appropriate plan. For me, that was pure friction. In addition, I try to avoid recurring charges on principle.

So, from my point of view as a potential user, I'd be much more likely to just pre-pay a fixed amount.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right. For that purpose, the system tells you (when you add links), on average, how many messages you will get per day. I know it is quite rudimentary for now, but I will be adding friendlier analyses tools soon, maybe even on the Pricing page - e.g., tell us what you want to monitor and we'll estimate which price plan you might want.

Also, I just got my first paid monthly subscription users this morning (1st day of launch, woot!), so I might be keeping this payment option for now.

However, I try to avoid recurring charges as much as I can myself, so great pre-paid options are a must.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Backbone.js: Hacker's Guide Part 2 (Backbone.Collection) - <AUTHOR> http://dailyjs.com/2012/07/26/mvstar-3

<comment><USER2> For relational data, would a Model represent a row and a Collection represent a result set? I usually think of an MVC app as having a single model representing a schema. It sounds like Backbone is different.

<comment><USER3> Yep -- the key bit here is that on the server you have access to the entire table of rows, so it makes some sense to conflate the, say, Book class with the entire set of all possible books.

On the client side, you very rarely have access to the entire table -- often you have different slices of it based on different search queries, or associations -- every Book has its own collection of Notes, for example. So just mimicking the Rails-style 1:1 mapping can be a bit of a fallacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, for those debugging, see:

[https://twitter.com/illuminations4d/status/22728017176024268...](https://twitter.com/illuminations4d/status/227280171760242688/photo/1/large)

</comment><comment><USER5> Can the JavaScript elite please get together and make a decision on Backbone.Events vs. EventEmitter vs. EventTarget?

Also, I recommend everyone read TJ Holowaychuck's latest blog post[1] and lets start distributing these types of things as components instead of "frameworks".

[1]<http://tjholowaychuk.com/post/27984551477/components>

<comment><USER6> What is the decision to be made? could you explain a little?

<comment><USER5> These are 3 implementations of the same thing. I can imagine there are people using Backbone, YUI, and EventEmitter. Oh, and they might be using some other library which shims the EventTarget interface and uses CustomEvent objects.

Read the Holowaychuk article. We need to stop working with frameworks and start working with components. How great would it be of I could use Backbone without Events (not picking on Backbone.Events here, just an example), or use a JQuery function that one of my libraries requires without including all 32k of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That void 0 trick was new to me.</comment>


Ask HN: Good CSS to reset styles for typography - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a good CSS file that will reset all the styles on a page to something with high readability.  I know Eric Meyers' reset.css, but that basically removes all style.  I would like something that applies good styles to all elements that uses better typographic principles than the browsers' built in styles.
Using this as a base, I could then add styles to my own custom classes.  But I could be sure that the basic styles are decent.
Does something like this exist?  Where should I look?
Thanks <comment><USER2> Try , blueprint css framework. It has nice typography, forms, reset and grid css.

<comment><USER3> Note that Blueprint is broken out so you can use the reset and typography stylesheets without using the grid system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This will inform you, rather than provide a reset or framework: <http://webtypography.net/> (and of course, reading The Elements of Typographic Style is worthwhile [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Sty...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Typographic_Style))

This series of blog posts by Mark Boulton are a good read: [http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple- st...](http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-steps-to- better-typography) If you like that, maybe you should get his book: [http://fivesimplesteps.com/books/practical-guide- designing-f...](http://fivesimplesteps.com/books/practical-guide-designing- for-the-web)

I haven't used Baseline, but it looks like fairly good framework that has type in mind: <http://baselinecss.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> SensCSs: "It supplies sensible styling for all repetitive parts of your CSS, and doesn't force a lay-out system on you."

<http://sencss.kilianvalkhof.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> I asked this same question a few months ago and got all of the same answers.

It's frustrating. When everything else we work with has modules and plugins, you would think CSS would be no exception.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1341274>

I would love to take part in a project like this if I had a few partners.

<comment><USER7> If you use Compass to manage all of your CSS stuff it _is_ all modules and plugins. Write your CSS using SCSS or SASS. A large variety of really good quality premade mixins, frameworks and snippets are available, and the rest you can build yourself and create reusable libraries of code. Solve a CSS problem _once_. It's a joy to work with and makes CSS fun again. I get really grumpy when I have to handcode CSS now, it seems rather quaint and primitive.

<comment><USER6> I've played with Compass/Less/Sass before and got turned off by the preprocessors. They all just gave me a bit more than I bargained for. But I hadn't realized that the plugin/mixin support had grown so much.

I'll keep this in mind while working on my next few projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> YUI Base might work: <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/base/>

<comment><USER9> <http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/3/cssbase/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Have a look at the Susy plugin <http://susy.oddbird.net/> for Compass <http://compass-style.org/docs/>. It is geared towards typography and has a decent reset and typography defaults.

</comment><comment><USER10> Look at the CSS files for the 960 grids system.

<http://960.gs/>

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://html5boilerplate.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> I've never been able to find something similar. I tend to start off with a good font stack and then calculate vertical rhythm. I also tend to start with a larger base font and work toward a style with narrower line lengths.

</comment><comment><USER13> optimizeLegibility</comment>


Quora: "How does a penniless entrepreneur attract gold diggers?" - <AUTHOR> http://sulemanali.com/blog/2010/6/4/quora-how-does-a-penniless-entrepreneur-attract-gold-diggers.html <comment><USER2> I just celebrated my twelfth wedding anniversary and here's some advice: what you want to look for in a mate is a _loyal friend for life_.

Things change. People change: your city, your religion, your personality, your income, your health. Through each change it's nice to have someone to make the change with you. A long, successful marriage requires that the relationship be reinvented as things change. At first you are lovers discovering each other, at another time you are collaborating parents, at another time you are supporting your spouse's dreams, and at yet another time it's your turn to have your dreams supported.

If you're looking for something specific like wealth or beauty, that's fine but it would never work as a _foundation_ for a satisfying marriage relationship. I've found the best foundation to be nurturing an unconditional love for all people, because when your spouse changes into another person you will still be able to love them.

<comment><USER3> The flip side to that, as a person currently dissolving his marriage of 10 years, is that it's a LOT harder to find a 'loyal friend for life' than it is with some other quality you prefer. It's also easy to rationalize how _easy_ it would be to love someone _forever_ when you're in the throes of new love, and just as easy to chalk up blame when that passion dies.

I agree with the sentiment, I really do, and my (soon to be ex-) wife and I are still really good friends, but not only is 'find your best friend' not _necessarily_ a magic bullet, but it's also a lot harder to ferret out than, say, 'large breasted' or 'wealthy'.

Though, it could just be my bitterness talking. :'(

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've come to the conclusion that if you strip things down to basic principles, a woman that is looking for a man with a nice income, is really no different than us looking for a girl with big tits or with an interest in a special that.

It's just some trait that she prefers in a partner. Every since I made this connection, I hold it less and less against women who want a man that makes a decent salary.

My gf in college broke up with me after a couple of years, and while she'll never admit it, I know it was because I wasn't on the the investment banker track or the like.

I used to have a chip on my shoulder about it, until I realized that she wanting that quality in me, was no different than the reasons I was madly in love with her.

<comment><USER5> we are driven by evolutionary forces.

<comment><USER6> While this is true, we should never forget that we are the one animal with the capability to move beyond this. Through conscious effort, you can overcome many of the artifacts of evolution that run contrary to your happiness in the world in which we live in now. It's not easy, and it's never complete, but you can continuously improve yourself.

<comment><USER7> How long until the Matt Maroon's Overcome Evolution DVD set is released? :-)

<comment><USER8> It will come out precisely 1 month after he gets 100 people to sign up on the hypothetical teaser page committing to buy it for $20, sight unseen. Once enough signups, he can design and produce the DVD, etc. That would be the smart/lazy approach. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I read the comments I can't help but feel that Hacker News is 99% male because all the comments are written from a male perspective. Not just that, they also address the community as though the entire community is male. E.g. "is really no different than _us_ looking for a girl with big tits," "Don't think of _her_ as a potential mate."

Does anyone know the gender ratio of HN members? I'd be curious to know if it weren't overwhelmingly male. I think we'd all be better off if we got to see both male and female perspectives.

<comment><USER10> What you are describing is the concept of "Male gaze" in feminist theory. As common as this phenomenon is in general, it's especially rife in tech/geek circles in my experience.

<comment><USER11> Aren't theories supposed to be falsifiable, or does that only apply to scientific theories?

<comment><USER12> In the social sciences, the word "theory" mainly refers to philosophical discussion and political activism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Contrast:

"There was one surprise founders mentioned that I'd forgotten about: that outside the startup world, startup founders get no respect.

...

Unfortunately this extends even to dating:

      It surprised me that being a startup founder
      does not get you more admiration from women.

I did know about that, but I'd forgotten."

<http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html>

<comment><USER14> It might serve as a filter to keep away all that gold-diggers.

<comment><USER15> Or it might just be the truth that there are no "gold-diggers" targeting startup founders. Certainly I've never seen it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't think of her as a potential mate, think of her as a potential 50% investor in your venture. She certainly does.

<comment><USER15> Then you'd better make sure her stock vests like everyone else's.

<comment><USER17> Reminds me of this: <http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/sex/a/gold_digger.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This made me feel slightly nauseated, and I'm not sure why.

<comment><USER19> Because it's incredibly misogynistic.

<comment><USER20> No it's not. It's describing a very specific situation.

 _She looks---really looks---at her husband and realizes that outside of his consumer marketing instincts and technical wizardry and (increasingly infrequent) write-ups in TechCrunch and VentureBeat and his nouveau confidence, he's quite boring. He was one of the guys she scrunched her nose at in high school._

She married someone she wasn't particularly interested in for what his money could buy her, and came to realize he is boring.

The story doesn't make generalizations about all women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I consider the narrative improbable.

</comment><comment><USER22> this answer on Quora was specifically marked as "not for reproduction" so that it wouldn't be reproduced on other sites. i guess we'll see how Quora handles such cases.

<comment><USER23> Curiously, "not for reproduction" is also one (partial) answer to the original question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Stock options

</comment><comment><USER25> "TL;DR: Women need emotional stimulation"

Bingo.</comment>


Ask YC: Where to find coders for non-profits? - <AUTHOR>

I am trying to get a non-profit off the ground, with the aim of raising money for starving people in less developed countries. I need a few tech. people willing to work a few hours a week to help me get it off the ground.
Anyone here interested in helping or have any ideas on where I might find suitable volunteers?
Ping my email in my profile if you'd prefer to get in touch direct.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I can't tell you how much I wish there existed a site that allowed for programmers to work for non-profits easily. There are often times when I have downtime but I am too burnt out to work on my own projects and I just want a change of pace. I feel like most non-profits could greatly benefit from developers and designers helping them either with their web presence or to help with efficiency.

Recently I helped a national Fraternity, not my own, with tracking and recording tweets using a certain hashtag over the span of 40 days. Their method prior to me was copy + pasting the tweets that they liked from twitter (Using twitter search) in a word document. Using open source tools like phirehose I was able to help them record and track 5K+ tweets and export the data into something they could use. Helping out with this was very rewarding and I had a ton of fun. I wish their were more opportunities like this. The problem was I had to contact them, they had no idea that there were people even out their that could do that let alone do it for free.

I hope that in a few days I see a "Show HN: Weekend project- NonProfitCoding.com" (The domain is open, I just don't have the time to work on something like that right now) on the front page because I would defiantly join.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe try to make it happen yourself first.

Technical people will probably think most of what you are trying to do is easy: "That's just wordpress with some ecommerce plugins and a customized wootheme."

If you can get to the point where technical people realize that you need technical people to make your project happen, instead of "Why is this guy so dumb he can't even install wordpress", then you will have a much better chance of attracting help.

Worse comes to worse, you figure out your idea isn't that special or complicated yet and that you don't actually need any outside help to make it happen yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try a startup weekend event. Pitch your idea with passion. Random Hacks of Kindness was held recently. <http://rhok.org>

All the rules for attracting talent to a VC-funded startup apply. If you are not technical, become the Pied Piper. If you are technical, learn to lead, to take charge.

The short answer is your potential team members are out there. And it is your job to find them. Talk about this with everyone you meet, the idea. Make it less broad, more targeted.

</comment><comment><USER5> So that said, what specifically is your idea? Imagine it's up and running right now. How does it work? How do you raise money? How are you getting it to the starving people? How are you ensuring it is being used effectively? Congrats for wanting to take this on. I tip my cap in your general direction!

<comment><AUTHOR> In the UK we have a few major financial comparison sites - gocompare, comparethemarkets, moneysupermarket, confused.com to name a few. So, I would like to establish a similar entity, who's profits are directed to charities focussed on feeding hungry kids!

<comment><USER6> Interesting idea. Seperate from the code and design, have you thought about the financial logistical details (getting and distributing money) as well as the 'deal making' requirements of getting such a project up and running?</comment></comment></comment>


Superman invented 3D printing 50 years ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.3ders.org/articles/20130704-superman-invented-3d-printing-50-years-ago.html

<comment><USER2> I'd say "conceived of" would be better. "invented" should be saved for the people who figure out how to actually do it.</comment>


Towards Natural Language Semantic Code Search at GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://githubengineering.com/towards-natural-language-semantic-code-search/ <comment><USER2> It is a real cultural problem how engineers get more excited about machine learning than basic usability.

GitHub search can't even search for a literal string, let alone a regex. It can't search a subdirectory. Ranking is indistinguishable from random. It's been this way for years. How about building an actual, usable, basic code search and then getting all fancy with your machine learning?

I almost built my own "online git grep for GitHub" last year.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. Luckily, we as a community have tools like Sourcegraph which are based on battle-tested pragmatic systems from places like Google.

Disclaimer: no affiliation, just love the team and product.

<comment><USER4> Damn, Sourcegraph is very close to something I've been thinking of building.

<comment><USER5> Join us! We are hiring and growing quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This might just be me, but does anyone else feel that GitHub's code search has other points that could be improved first?

My biggest gripe is that the other results show in seems to be totally random. For example, if I have a Java class called A and I search "class A" in code search, the actual A.java doesn't tend to show up anywhere near the front. I just tried this in a repo and the actual A.java file was on the last page of results when I searched "class A". The vast majority of the results before it didn't even have the words "class" and "A" next to each other, which A.java does...

Maybe I'm doing something wrong (I'd welcome any input on how to use code search correctly!), but it just feels like they're jumping the gun on trying to make their code search more advanced when the basic functionality doesn't work that well.

<comment><USER7> We are very aware of the problem. I think you are going to really love what we are working on.

<comment><USER8> I really hope you are right and have your priorities straight when it comes to search. I'd love for a way to search for usages of a class::method, or for strings that contain the text "hello" or for variables named foo. And if you integrate that into the code itself, Ctrl+click a class method to find all usages, maybe even usages in other repositories, so I can see how other people use a certain library.

And of course good old regex search.

<comment><USER9> Sourcegraph does this quite well if you need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would settle for the ability to use logical OR when searching issues/pull requests, or to combine multiple negated searches.

"is:pr is:open ( author:bob OR author:jim )"

The lack of this pretty basic functionality makes issue & PR search much less useful than it could be.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. It'd also be nice to see a list of issues you're subscribed to. Here's a fun issue to follow for that - [https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is awesome that they are working on this, but can I just say there are a lot of basic search features they need to add before "doing the hard thing". Here are some things that I should be able to do easily but can't (or can't very easily or well) using GitHub's search mechanism:

1\. exact or close string searches for code that involves ![]{}_-*() etc characters

2\. searches across past commits (e.g. find a line that used to be in the code)

4\. search across pull request + comments (not just issues and commit messages)

5\. advanced search operators -- there should be a full filtering UI with ands and ors etc

Because of this I often find my self grepping locally, or (more often) totally out of luck.

</comment><comment><USER13> Now that's what I call a misfeature!

GitHub is used by programmers. Surprisingly, they tend to be very good at telling computers _precisely_ what they want, in the computers' own language.

Natural language search is the exact opposite of this, invented for mom & pops who start their search phrase with "Dear Google, I'd like to search for ...".

</comment><comment><USER14> GitHub is building some amazing stuff recently, I guess now that Microsoft is going to acquire them, there's far less pressure on making Github Enterprise profitable..

</comment><comment><USER15> I saw this created in another thread and it seems to accurately sum up the comments here: [https://imgflip.com/i/2i90x2](https://imgflip.com/i/2i90x2)

<comment><USER5> What thread did you originally see that in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They should add regex search support first before this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER17> wait, they can't search through forks or collate identical results and they are going into natural language processing?

</comment><comment><USER18> Devs don't search code repositories using natural language queries, and any scenarios of searching for code examples that way are already extremely well handled by StackOverflow and Google.

This is an incredible waste of time and resources that could be spent making the existing search far better with very minor tweaks. A perfect example of big company project management where nobody seems to know what their users actually want.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd settle for github search that's case sensitive and recognizes things like dollar signs, semi-colons, commas, braces, and such.

</comment><comment><USER20> Dear GitHub,

Please build search that lets me actually find a given file by name.

You are busy building a space rocket when all we want is a bicycle. Impressive, but useless for just popping down to the shops.

Love,

The rest of the world's developers

</comment><comment><USER21> I want to work at github. They're making cool things.

<comment> brian-armstrong Do they? The main product appears to have 0 product velocity

<comment><USER22> I used to feel this way, but then I discovered [https://blog.github.com/](https://blog.github.com/) and no longer do.

Sure, they may not be addressing your/my specific concerns, but the product _is_ changing.</comment></comment></comment>


X86 Emulation in JavaScript with Windows 98 and Linux Running in a Browser - <AUTHOR> http://copy.sh/v86/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11155203).</comment>


What is beyond Hacker News? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thiagofm/what-is-beyond-hacker-news-c5ba0036875e#.ii347df31 <comment><USER2> The problem is everyone sticks to the front page. There's often really good stuff in newest that never makes it there.

</comment><comment> VuWall-Matt Any suggestions? I'm always looking for other places to read a variety of tech news!

<comment><USER3> As far as aggregators go, Skimfeed.com is the obvious choice, and for more focused stuff I've also found applying filters on newsnow.co.uk can be quite useful as well.</comment></comment>


Oxidizing Fedora: Try Rust and Its Applications Today - <AUTHOR> https://fedoramagazine.org/oxidizing-fedora-try-rust-applications-today/ <comment><USER2> Been using ripgrep for a while now, I love it. One other Rust tool people might find useful is fd ([https://github.com/sharkdp/fd](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd)) which is similar to find.

<comment><USER3> fd was left out of this article because it's in the version of Fedora after the one the article is based on, incidentally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just installed Fedora 27 in a VM out of curiosity. As far as I can tell from a quick glance, it looks like these Rust executables (ternimal, tokei) statically link their dependent Rust crates (including the Rust standard library), which is the typical approach to building Rust programs. I do wonder if someday we'll see distributions arranging a common dependency realm (as much as possible) among their Rust programs so that shared libraries can be used to reduce the total memory and storage footprint.

<comment><USER5> It's kind of funny how GNU/Linux used to intentionally have everything statically-linked that was involved in bringing up the system and needed for a rescue recovery session, so you could still administer a system even if your dynamic shared libraries were hosed.

Now I see people tout statically-linked binaries as if it's some kind of new thing brought by Golang and Rust. Though this may be a result of modern glibc being somewhat hostile towards and incompatible with static linking, so maybe the blame should fall on GNU for that one.

Netscape used to distribute statically-linked binaries for a number of *nix platforms as a way to avoid this problem all the way back in the 90s. All it needed was an X display server and stable kernel interfaces.

Eventually GNU/Linux changed to the point that everything was dynamically linked to the point that only `sln`, a statically linked `ln` was all you had to work with in lieu of a working dynamic linker to fix the system.

<comment><USER6> Statically linked binaries on the root filesystem for recovery were obsoleted by initrd/initramfs many years ago.

<comment><USER5> You're only considering the boot process.

The initrd/initramfs serves to provide a minimal userspace required by more complex root storage arrangements before we can pivot root.

Sure I can reboot a system with hosed dynamic libraries into its initrd and use that userspace to try fix things. But I can also reboot onto any other rescue medium. The moment you've introduced a reboot into the recovery process there's myriad solutions, the introduction of the initrd didn't make a significant difference in this regard.

The historically statically-linked /bin /sbin stuff (yes, once upon a time not everything was shoved under /usr like the post-systemd world) could be used to fix broken dynamic libs without even requiring a reboot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How about replacing the core utilities?

[https://github.com/uutils/coreutils](https://github.com/uutils/coreutils)

<comment><USER8> already been done: [https://github.com/redox- os/coreutils](https://github.com/redox-os/coreutils)

<comment><USER9> The `uutils/coreutils` repo is a rust re-write of the GNU coreutils. The repo you posted is a rust re-write of the BSD coreutils

<comment><USER7> Oh! Well that pleases me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> exa is a prime example of how too much color absolutely ruins an otherwise good UI.

<comment><USER11> Meh, persona choice. I really like the default color schemes.

<comment><USER12> don't mind all but the rainbow file permissions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like Fedora's missing fd [https://github.com/sharkdp/fd](https://github.com/sharkdp/fd)

<comment><USER14> It will be available in Fedora 28+: [https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=25...](https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/packageinfo?packageID=25842)

<comment><USER13> Great! I had only searched [https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages](https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Tech2Pocket – find better tech articles with Pocket - <AUTHOR> http://productchaseapp.herokuapp.com/tech2pocket <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all. I just made this demo a while ago. It helps you to find better tech articles with the Pocket Index (unofficial). By filtering out some not-so- popular-marked articles, it saved me a lot of time, and I hope it would help you as well.

</comment><comment><USER2> Great effort , do you scrap different sites for fetching articles or is there a smarter way ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's basically a filterd RSS reader. And I'm wondering if there is a better approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic! The monthly view is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I'm glad you like it.</comment></comment>


Define Your Personal Brand, Lest Others Do It For You - <AUTHOR> http://www.metamorphblog.com/2010/06/personal-branding.html

<comment><USER2> So, while I was at Intuit there was this manager dude who was very focused on climbing the ladder and was pretty sharp at office politics but didn't have any other skills.

He wanted to make his mark, and was facing pushback from his engineers for his wacky plans, and so he thought up a scheme whereby each of his subordinates would define their "personal" brand, write it down on a piece of paper, along with a graphic "embodying the brand" and stick it on the sides of their cubicles. [1]

He exerted relentless pressure on the people reporting to him ( He tried to get me to go along but I was thankfully a peer [2] and not really subject to his fancies) till they all had these ridiculous "brand statements" stuck to the sides of their cubicles. The best engineer in the group (he left the company soon after this) had a big picture of Two Face with "Either you die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain" written underneath. The manager didn't understand what that meant,(but was suitably impressed by the picture) and he showed off his "initiative" when some VP chaps came around [3] and in due time was promoted to "Director" for his "team building" skills.

The engineers all fall around laughing if you mention "personal brand" to them, but hey they are still doing the same job wrestling with ancient horror codebases [4] and the manager fellow is now earning twice what he was for half the work so who is cleverer? :)

Nothing to do with the content of the posting really. Just something that came to mind when I read "Personal Brand".

[1] All kinds of management fads swept Intuit periodically. This kind of stuff was very normal there. A lot of nice people but very very "corporate".

[2] I was supposed to do technical "architecture" work , but had a "manager" in my title and was sufficiently high in the hierarchy (and boy does Intuit believe in hierarchy!) that I was this guy's peer. The cost of being so "high" was death by meeting. When I found myself in a "meeting about a(forthcoming) meeting" I knew it was time to quit.

[3] One VP was a sharp fellow and he had a bemused expression on his face after seeing the Two Face "brand" but he didn't say anything.

[4] Example 1: The code for QuickBooksOnline is _the_ most terrible code I have seen in my life. I had no idea you could write Java like that. I still have nightmares about it and it wasn't even something I was working on.

Example 2: There was this "engineer" who built a flash application to view a database table (not a database, a _table_ ). The app wasn't "advanced" enough to order the entries by primary key (or by anything else) so the team (of which this fellow was the "lead engineer") would bring up the flash app and scroll desperately to find the right row for debugging etc. No one ever used a "Select * from ..".

The creator of this abomination was given a spot award by his manager for "building useful tools to support the company technical strategy" (which at that point of time boiled down to something like "flash frontends and cloud backends").

<comment><AUTHOR> that sounds awful. i love being an entrepreneur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Personal Branding" is one of my least favorite buzzwords. (Right up there with "synergy.")

If you replace every instance with "Reputation," you get the very same advice plus some.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! Fair enough.

<comment><USER4> True, but very good writeup nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So the moral of the story here is it's your fault if someone else mis characterizes you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pretty much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This was way better than I expected.

A few months ago, I decided to start using my real name for all of my accounts. It was for a few different reasons, but one major reason was personal branding. In a world where everything starts to become more and more public, I think it's much easier to do what this article suggests, and proactively shape your public persona, rather than let it be created when Facebook changes privacy settings.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, except when you have a painfully generic name, of which a Google search for brings up a wikipedia result for dead sculptors and dead links for defense attorneys.

<comment><USER8> I changed my name to one that had almost no Google results at the time. You could too.

<comment><USER9> Not to AbstractBill, I presume?

<comment><USER10> That's his personal brand: abstraction.

<comment><USER9> And billing, I guess. Ok.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Creating a custom Git flow visualization - <AUTHOR> http://blog.funda.nl/creating-a-custom-git-flow-visualization/ <comment><USER2> Summary: Author created a Stash-based visualization tool that takes the output of _git log --graph --oneline --decorate --all_ and renders a pretty diagram.

Quite nice, actually. Not open source, as it is a private side project of the company, but examples are available on GitHub (cf TFA).

<comment><USER3> It actually doesn't take the output of 'git log' at all. That output is visualized by many other libraries already (nicer, frankly). What I have done is create a completely different graph, inspired by the chart presented with git-flow by Vincent Driessen ([http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git- branching-model/](http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/)).

Main difference is that the develop and master branch always run all the way to the top. Take any public Github repo and compare the output of beta.gitflowchart.com/ with the git-log output. It is not the same thing.

<comment><USER2> Ah, OK, thanks. That wasn't clear to me from the article, but then, I was likely skimming and not reading in detail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny that the library is not open source, but still they do host it on a public github repo. Doesn't make much sense to me, and there should be some clarifications on what is authorized and what is not.

Github is "Free for open source projects", I have always wondered what definition they would use for "open source". Looked for it a few years ago, and didn't find it. Any clue on what's acceptable policy for them? Maybe they consider that public repo = open source, because code is accessible?

<comment><USER3> Hi, I am the author of the library on Github.

First of all, Github is not free for Open Source, it is free for public projects ([https://github.com/pricing](https://github.com/pricing)). Not just for OSS, if the repo is public, it is free.

Is Git Flow Chart Open Source? No, it is not. Choosing an OSS license would make it hard to make money on the plugin. On Atlassians marketplace, this means that if your project is OSS, you get it for free, but if you are a paying user of Stash, you also pay for the plugin. We want to follow the same lines with Github: public repos are free, so you can use the chart on them for free. If you pay for a private repo at GitHub, for now, you cannot use the chart. We may make it available, but at a cost. However, we do want to share the code and allow you to inspect, study and contribute improvements. The core code of Git Flow Chart is hosted on GitHub. It is a javascript library and comes with unit tests and a standalone HTML page that allows you to test improvements locally. Feel free to fork.

<comment><USER4> Thanks,

I'm glad to learn gitHub rephrased their offer from "free for open source" to "free for public projects", it's more straightforward.

You might want to create a LICENSE.md, or to make the following sentence stand out in your README, right now it's buried in the middle of a paragraph: "I will keep use of the plug-in free for non-commercial and personal use."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice, I've always been dissatisfied with most visualisations of real git repos using git flow. It's really hard to explain to non-devs the state of the branches, ideally the roadmap to the next release would be glanceable.

We're looking to build an AtlasBoard for our project and the ideas here are very useful. We use bitbucket, so I'm not sure how similar the APIs there are to Stash, but one would hope they are similar enough that your code points us in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks really slick. I've seen some good and not-so-good visualizations of _git log --graph --decorate --all_ (I always end up mapping this to 'git map'), and this looks nicely clean.

My biggest question though, is on the Github permissions. It requires read/write access on all user data (and public repositories), but I'd expect read access being all that's required.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the feedback on the GitHub permissions. We will evaluate the necessity of the current scopes and revise them or better explain their use in the Privacy Policy. As the domain name already suggest: this is a BETA version. We are still working out the details of our service!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [shameless plug] git-cola/git-dag[1] can do this kind of visualization[2], and you can interact with the nodes too (checkout files, diff, etc).

[1] [https://github.com/git-cola/git-cola](https://github.com/git-cola/git- cola)

[2] [https://git-cola.github.io/screenshots.html](https://git- cola.github.io/screenshots.html)

<comment><USER3> No, those are looking way nicer. But they just render the git-log output, whereas the chart presented here does a different kind of chart, specifically for git-flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're looking for something that can do this in the command line, check out `tig`. It also supports blames, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the area where I feel that Atlassian's SourceTree really shines. It is still an effective tool for manipulating git with a GUI, but the git branching display is insanely useful.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for highlighting it, just downloaded... it's even free!

[https://www.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/overview](https://www.atlassian.com/software/sourcetree/overview)</comment></comment>


How Biking Can Save Cities Billions of Dollars in Health Expenses - <AUTHOR> http://www.good.is/post/how-biking-can-save-cities-billions-of-dollars-in-health-expenses/ <comment><USER2> The study doesn't appear to look at death from collisions, looking at the abstract.

[http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?artic...](http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.1103440)

It's a net societal gain, but your personal safety goes down (even looking at health effects, which biking sadly isn't anywhere near as good as walking/running).</comment>


Apple developing Flash alternative named Gianduia - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/07/apple_developing_flash_alternative_named_gianduia.html

<comment><USER2> This is definitely one of the fluffiest pieces I've ever read. There are numerous client-side frameworks as this piece mentions, but none of them really replace flash. Sure, the general development community is now finally coming to accept that there are clearly numerous use cases that flash was unnecessary for, but that doesn't replace flash.

We've had the ability to have rich internet applications in our browsers since 2005. There are literally hundreds of client-side frameworks, but I guess since Apple is creating one, all of a sudden it warrants a mention. All of the apple applications that were mentioned could've easily been done in any of those. Why only mention Cappucinno, and Sproutcore? What do they have to with flash? It's just complete fluffery, very frustrating.

<comment><USER3> So, what's this other thing we need to have to be able to replace flash? What else is flash currently doing for everyone that's so unique?

<comment><USER4> vector animation engine? I don't know much about SVG though.

<comment><USER5> and _streamable_. I remember in the 56k modem days the main Flash's feature is streamable Web multimedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Adobe was smart they would snap up 280North or a similar company now—and offer it as part of their new html5/RIA initiative asap.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real Flash "killer" is whatever commercial product they release to compete with the Flash artist tools.

The only people who care about Flash are those with investments. Artists don't want to relearn tools, or worse; their worst fear is writing code as a replacement for an animation timeline. The businesses that employ these artists are happy with the existing pipeline, and any switch in platform looks like a huge risk.

Every unbiased developer I talk to perceives a move away from Flash as a better Internet. It seems we don't move for the same reason we're using QWERTY rather than Dvorak keyboards. Regardless of their motivation, Apple pushing Flash toward obsolescence is a net win.

The tipping point will be when someone, maybe even Adobe, releases a product identical to existing tools.

</comment><comment><USER8> Now it seems even more odd that Apple doesn't bother to include Lucida Grande on the iPhone or iPad, since that forms the cornerstone of Cocoa's interface. On the iPhone and iPad, they seem to use Helvetica instead (which is far less suited for small text).

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure I understand. As much as I love Lucida Grande, Cocoa != Lucida Grande. Rather, Mac OS X : Lucida Grande :: iPhone OS : Helvetica.

<comment><USER8> I see Helvetica on the iPhone platform as more of an aberration (and possibly merely the result of license bickering, not through serious consideration). It doesn't seem to make any sense to switch to it on the portable devices. This has been partially mocked here: <http://blog.cocoia.com/2008/swiss-interface- syndrome/>

Anyway, the screenshot of the Apple booking interface shows Lucida Grande in use. When viewed on the iPad/iPhone, it'll have to drop back to Helvetica instead of the intended font. Hopefully Apple will see sense, though, and add Lucida Grande to OS 4.0 or beyond since its absence makes little sense.

<comment><USER10> It's not an aberration, it's part of the Jobsian Bauhaus design sense. He got to force the main font choice on the phone, where he probably wasn't able to on Mac OS X.

<comment><USER8> Maybe, but I can't buy it. They've stuck to the Lucida-esque Myriad Pro For their display advertising and Web graphics, for the most part and Jobs could have easily changed that stuff. That aside, can you imagine Helvetica replacing Lucida on OS X generally? It'd look hideous :-( (And I'm a big Helvetica fan - but it sucks for clarity at small point sizes.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So apple bought sproutCore right? How is this different? or is it a next step from sproutCore?

<comment><USER12> Apple has a few frameworks floating around, internally and out. See [http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/286536824/apples-myriad- java...](http://rentzsch.tumblr.com/post/286536824/apples-myriad-javascript- frameworks)

<comment><USER13> I was playing with PastryKit for a while.

<http://michaelgrinich.com/pastrytweets>

You can grab the code here. <http://github.com/grinich/pastrytweets>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If they were, I'm pretty confident it wouldn't be called that.

<comment><USER15> Not that I disagree, but this is from the company that bought us the "Mighty Mouse".

<comment><USER14> and magic mouse (which I love)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Man, I first read this as Apple developing flash alternative named "Giardia:" [http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/Giardiasis/factsht_g...](http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/Giardiasis/factsht_giardia.htm)

<comment><USER17> That's ok. I read it through somewhat bleary eyes as 'glandular' (as in fever)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So this is going to be write once run once? Or in other words run just on Apple hardware? Or run as speedily as iTunes or QuickTime does on the PC? Good luck with that!

</comment><comment><USER19> We don't need flash alternatives, we need support for SVG and canvas. SVG is a fine alternative to flash and it is supported by all major browsers.

And browser APIs to fill the voids where flash also exceeded its animation- only competency, like sockets (we already have them) and device control (cams, mics, etc)</comment>


Do Subatomic Particles Have Free Will? - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/35391/title/Do_subatomic_particles_have_free_will%3F <comment><USER2> "John Conway and Simon Kochen, claim to have proven that if humans have even the tiniest amount of free will, then atoms themselves must also behave unpredictably."

I think there is a big equivocation here. Free-will does not mean "unpredictable" -- which as a human trait, is a consequence of free-will not its essence. More to the point, free-will is a property of human consciousness not atoms, etc. If the authors have (unwittingly) proven anything it's that QM commits the mind-projection-fallacy as specifically identified by Edwin Jaynes in "Probability Theory" or more generally a form of Ayn Rand's primacy-of- consciousness error in many of her articles.

<comment><USER3> The title of this article is stupid- and leads to the mixups you are talking about. But if you read the article, your quoted statement is not an equivocation, it is the specific paradox the scientists propose.

Free will does not mean unpredictability, but if unpredictability is a consequence of free will, and there is no unpredictability, then we can say that free will does not exist.

<comment><USER2> I hardly think FW needs an existence/non-existence proof because without it you can't have knowledge, concepts, language, morality, math, science nor HN discussions!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "he's content with the notion that free will exists only effectively (not theoretically)"

I don't understand that; how can something exist in reality but not in theory? That implies to me that the theory is wrong

<comment><USER5> _I don't understand that; how can something exist in reality but not in theory?_

That's kinda the point of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, which prove that there are definite limitations in formal (read theoretical) systems.

<comment><USER6> Axioms aren't part of a theory?

<comment><USER7> Your set of axioms will never be complete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I tend to agree with Einstein. Since the moment people started thinking, they've attributed to randomness that which they don't understand. I'll certainly admit the possibility, but to say definitively that some things are simply unpredictable just seems too arrogant.

On the other hand, that has nothing to do with free will. Even if true randomness exists, and we suppose that even the ability to act randomly would not fall under most's definition of "free will".

</comment><comment><USER9> Idiotic title, but interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER10> This question of free will only makes sense if you believe in god. If you're an atheist then the question just doesn't make sense.

Edit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will>

<comment><USER5> Huh? If anything, the existence of God threatens the concept of free will. It's kinda hard to feel free if there's some omniscient, omnipotent dude who knows and controls everything that will happen ahead of time...

<comment><USER10> Definition of "free will" is the ability to act free of the will of god. What do you mean by "free will"?

<comment><USER5> Free will is the capacity of an individual to make his/her own choices and either to act or not act on those decisions. It really has nothing to do with God outside of theology and philosophy of religion.

<comment><USER11> And how do you know if the individual is "really" free? As opposed to being controlled the environment or god or some unknown factor? Set up an experiment & you'll be far ahead of all the useless philosophizing.

<comment><USER5> _And how do you know if the individual is "really" free?_

This is a philosophical question, and as such, can't really be answered experimentally. At the risk of sounding sophistical and clintonian, it depends on what you mean by "'really' free". You can be controlled by environmental factors and still exercise free will by some definitions of that term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Even if they did, I don't think they'd have anything interesting to make decisions about.

</comment><comment><USER13> the question of free will is a foolish way of phrasing things that leads to circular logic. free will is what the process of optimizing a decision tree feels like when you are the one doing the optimizing.

</comment><comment><USER14> Isn't the basis of science built on the proposition that everything obeys a set of rules?

As such, there is no free will, there is simply responses to outside influences which are grounded on some rules.

Hence, how can he say there is no algorithm to the way that the particle responds? How can he possibly know?

Or is he conducting what could be called "pop science" you know like stuff that people are walking faster today than twenty years ago

</comment><comment><USER15> No.

<comment><USER10> Because to admit that there's free will is to admit that there's something above physical laws.

<comment><USER12> Nothing is above physical laws.

That's not an assertion, that's a definition.

<comment><USER16> You are SO wrong. The physical laws are physical laws because we observed them that way, and we defined them that way. Gravity? Time? Small c? Matter? Mass? Those are the physical laws, but they are based on our unique observation.

The truth is that we cannot know if there are things that are 'above' these laws, because we are not capable of observing outside of these laws. You are eyes are made of matter and mass, if something existed that was fundamentally different, how could you deal with it with your eyes? You can't see it or observe it.

<comment><USER17> Maxklein, I have an idea for you. After you write something, read it again and add "you idiot!" to the end. If it sounds like the tone is compatible, then rewrite what you said until it is polite.

Anyway, with respect to the topic: you're suggesting that there is the possibility of a higher level of knowledge beyond what we can observe with our physical eyeballs. This is a fallacy that goes against everything science stands for. Science is the platform upon which you build models that describe the physical world.

For example, if we witness the effects of gravity occurring over and over in many experiments, then we can create a model of what we saw: the Law of Gravity. Then we can make the assumption that whenever there is mass, there is gravity. So far, it works. If something can be physically shown to break/violate the law, then it will be reexamined and the model will be changed to satisfy the new information.

There is no evidence of anything above or beyond the physical/theoretical models of science. To suggest there is implies faith.

Are you religious, maxklein?

<comment><USER16> I'm not religious, and I have no inclination to argue a simple and obvious point.

Observation is inherently limited by our observational capabilities, and this is not a radical thought, it's a very very basic thought. So your argument is not just wrong, it's incredibly wrong, and you should not be making it.

For example: Electrons. To posit that there are electrons, but viewed strictly from a 16th century perspective is a position that cannot be observed based off the technology available to them at that time.

As a purist, I take offense when anybody tries to claim that observation and experimentation can be anything but assumptions. It is something we observe to be a certain way, but very restricted by our particular viewpoint.

You think you are a man of science, but what you actually are is one of those people who said the earth could not be round because it looks flat. I've said something that is perfectly realisitic if one has some imagination, and you immediately shoot it down because it does not conform to how you think scientists should think.

Free your mind, and learn to deal with uncertainty.

<comment><USER17> Science in its current form wasn't prevalent back when people were saying that the Earth couldn't be round. Any modern day scientist would always be open to the possibility, given physical evidence. The very best model at the time showed that the earth was flat-- hey, it looks flat when you go outside. But evidence through experimentation led to the model being updated.

Electrons are small and you can't see them with your eyeballs. But J.J. Thomson used models of how cathode rays work and how electrical conduction works, and he hypothesized and then experimentally showed that electrons exist. They may not exist, and any good scientist would be open to that possibility, given evidence. But the best models we have today show that they do exist.

Observation and experimentation are one level beyond assumption. They're assumption backed by evidence. Blind assumption is to "suppose a case is true without proof."

Imagination drives science, true. But nothing imagined is _ever_ considered science, or even possible, without some kind of evidence.

Uncertainty is fine. Is there dark matter? Is it possible to travel faster than the speed of light? Why are photons both particles and waves? Uncertainty is what makes these the interesting questions in science.

<comment><USER16> These are the easy things to be uncertain about. But what about the more difficult things? For example - is time discrete? Such a concept would require as the very first step that we must let go of our usual observational abilities, as they are unable to step outside of time. So, first we have to discover how to observe, and only then can we start to experiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Quantum Mechanics always blows my mind and I only ever end up frustrated that I don't know the answer to how it all works.

Even "basic" stuff like the Double-Slit experiment keeps me daydreaming for awhile.</comment>


We Did Nothing Wrong, and They Destroyed Our Stores - <AUTHOR> http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2015/05/we-did-nothing-wrong-and-they-destroyed.html

<comment><USER2> You basically get the FOX/right or CNN/left narrative on the news. I wish there were more options. Twitter has too much noise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Black people do nothing wrong, and they get killed everyday. You should complain about the ones that are responsible for the inequalities, not with the weakest part. You don't have more rights than others only because you own a store. So as long as people get killed only by being black I'll not care about your store. Lives > Stores

<comment><USER4> It's exactly your kind of attitude our society doesn't need.

>> So as long as people get killed only by being black I'll not care about your store.

You SHOULD care about their store. They have the same rights as you and even though someone killed someone, it doesn't give you the right or privilege to abuse someone else's rights.

<comment><USER5> > It's exactly your kind of attitude our society doesn't need.

Be very, very careful with this line of thought. One day, a large number of people might decide that your attitude is one their society doesn't need.

<comment><USER5> Use your words, people. If you disagree, then convince me I'm wrong.</comment></comment></comment></comment>