Learn you an Agda (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://learnyouanagda.liamoc.net/pages/introduction.html <comment><USER2> While this starts strong, a heads up: it peters out quick. There's only about an hour of material here, and the last of the three parts is unfinished, in the sense that there are gaps, not just an abrupt ending.

After finishing this I jumped over to wadler/kokke's programming language theory in AGDA:

[https://wenkokke.github.io/sf/](https://wenkokke.github.io/sf/)

Which is also unfinished, but generally more comprehensive and better motivated. It also stands a much greater probability of being continued.

</comment><comment><USER3> Verified Functional Programming in Agda is the best Agda resource available, but studying Idris via Type-driven Development with Idris will net you very transferable insights. These are research languages, so the ideas are extremely interesting but not production ready. What I like about working in Agda is: proofs are verified by the compiler (so I know when I've proved enough), dependent types blurs the lines between types and values in a way that makes expressing complex typing relations no bother at all, and that mixfix operators let you create some really neat syntax. (Aspiring) computer scientists will be well of taking a look.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why always Peano numbers? If it's doable, I'd love to see something like a web server with provable safety guarantees (e.g. eliminating any SQL injection risk), or a concurrent system with the compiler proving there are no races, even though the code is sharing memory. Or just proving that some simple business rules hold. Is stuff like that doable in a dependently typed language?

<comment><USER5> We start with Paeno numbers because they are probably the simplest inductive data type that set the scene for how we tend to proves things in dependently typed programming (inductive reasoning). Proving the things you want are probably doable (I can't say for certain, they are vaguely specified which does not fit with formal methods), but significantly more involved. Trying to take the reader from nothing to that in a single blog post or talk is beyond anyone's ability. Generally, this is because dependent types aren't quite ready for mainstream in terms of convenience.

That said, I'd read some of Edwin Brady's research, as he is actively trying to find the intersection of "business programming" and dependent types: [https://edwinb.wordpress.com/publications/](https://edwinb.wordpress.com/publications/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Conor McBride's lecture series CS410 at Strathclyde is freely available on Youtube, and my team is watching that at lunchtimes - excellent gentle introduction to proofs-as-types and so forth, and it has turned me onto Agda as a theorem proving environment.</comment>


Visualize your Linkedin, Facebook and Readyforce connections together (beta) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.readyforce.com/visualize-linkedin-facebook-readyforce-connections-together/

<comment><USER2> Technologies behind it are d3.js and Neo4j.</comment>


Quick Tutorial: (MRC) an easy and efficient way to compress your pdf files - <AUTHOR> http://madmed88.tumblr.com/post/6652663870/quick-tutorial-mrc-an-easy-and-efficient-way-to If you need to send PDF documents as email attachments but your files are very big, you probably tried to compress them. But classic compression methods are not efficient on PDF files.<p>In fact, there is a technique called Mixed raster content (that I will explain in detail at a later date) that proved to be very efficient in compressing PDF files. <comment><USER2> The title of the blog post is unfortunately misleading. The tutorial shows how to convert PDF to DejaVu but doesn't explain how to compress a PDF file by itself.</comment>


Africa Is Becoming the New China and India - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/233501

<comment><USER2> I lived in Nairobi for a few months in 2004, staying with host families. What amazed me was how resilient the people are. The obstacles they have to overcome on a regular basis are things we take for granted in the "West." Yet the people don't complain and keep going forward. I thought that if ever the infrastructure could be advanced to reduce those obstacles, we would see places just take off.

At that time, there were lots of Internet cafes popping up all around the city and cell phones were becoming quite common.

Since then, I know many Kenyans are now using their cell phones for mobile banking and sending payments across the country to relatives and friends. Technology is playing a big role in circumventing slow bureaucracies. Many of my friends are now on Facebook when some of them didn't even have email in 2004.

I'm pretty confident we'll see some economically strong countries in Africa in my lifetime.

</comment><comment><USER3> The real revolution in Africa happenned when it opened up to the world. Africa has always been completely isolated from the rest of the world till very recently. Recently, cellphones arrived, internet arrived, equal access to the information on par with the Western countries arrived.

And the results are impressive: most of the wars have ended, the age of coups is over, african professionals are going back, business is now being done with countries from everywhere.

Africa is not yet a good investment opportunity, but it is the best market for physical goods at the moment.

<comment><USER4> "most of the wars have ended, the age of coups is over"

Really? There may be fewer wars, but there are still a lot (look at the list of ongoing conflicts on Wikipedia). There was a coup in Niger a week or two ago. Things may be getting better, but they are not good.

<comment><USER3> Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only 2 are in Africa. And of those two the sudanese war, which has only resulted in ~2,500 deaths I'm not sure can be called a war.

Compare those with the wars of the 70s and 80s, I think this is a remarkable period of stability.

The coup in niger was for an actual breach of democracy - the democratically elected president tried to overstay his term, and he was stopped by the military. Which is at it should be. They have also appointed a civilian prime minister.

So things are a LOT better than before.

<comment><USER5> > Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only > 2 are in Africa.

Can you give a citation?

As an example, South Africa is basically engaged in a civil war with itself (22,000+ people die violent deaths).

Zimbabwean life expectancy fell by more than 20 years - more people die there. Zim is basically a civil war (which nobody would acknowledge). Eastern DRC - easily more than a thousand, the same with Sudan.

Also note that sub-Sahara Africa only has a population of 700 million. Asia has a population that is two to three times larger.

> The coup in niger was for an actual breach of democracy - the democratically > elected president tried to overstay his term, and he was stopped by the > military.

You are ignoring a few things - the ruling parties is becoming incredibly intertwined with government (i.e. it is not democratic anymore, even if they hold elections). Sure, it is a bit more stable - but I doubt that it is better.

There were also recent coups in Mauritania, Madagascar.

<comment><USER3> Citation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_conflicts>

For people like you who want to believe that Africa is in a war, no citation will do most likely.

The Asian wars are killing a hell of a lot more people than the African wars also.

If you _want_ to believe that nothing is getting better, then let's not continue the conversation. If you are willing to actually look at the facts and compare the 80s to now, then we can talk.

<comment><USER5> > For people like you who want to believe that Africa is in a war,

I happen to live in Africa. You ignored all of the examples I gave you. Zimbabwe has probably one of the largest displaced populations in the word – yet you do not view this as a "war".

> Citation: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_conflicts>

Yeah, it doesn't include Zimbabwe. It doesn't include the eastern DRC. So you use unfinished or badly written WP articles as your source? Or do you use an extremely strange definition of conflict?

> The Asian wars are killing a hell of a lot more people than the African wars > also.

Again, you are wrong. Firstly, of the Asian countries you mentioned, only India counts as a 1000+ deaths per year (with a population of 1.5 times that of sub-Sahara Africa).

> If you want to believe that nothing is getting better, then let's not > continue the conversation.

You seem to base your argument on ignorance and self-delusion that is typical of the African renaissance movement. So I doubt that this conversation would be informative from your side.

> If you are willing to actually look at the facts and compare the 80s to now, > then we can talk.

You made the statement "Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only 2 are in Africa." which is blatantly false (by your own citation). Sure the place stabilised since the 80ies – only because the USSR fell (a major sponsor of conflict).

Then again, the 90ies an early 00ies were not particularly rosy (Rwanda, DRC war).

<comment><USER3> My citation says that there are 6 in asian and 2 in Africa. How is this false? And Iraq has way more than 1000+ deaths a year.

Living in Africa does not make you an authority. Point to some proof for your statements.

<comment><USER5> > My citation says that there are 6 in asian and 2 in Africa. How is this > false?

You use an extremely broad "definition" of Asia (i.e. instead of the Africa, Middle-East, Asia) you group everything that is remotely in Asia as Asia. If we take your definition into account, the population of Asia is 5.7 times that of sub-Sahara Africa. You also conveniently leave out civil wars from that list (e.g. Eastern DRC, Zimbabwe, etc…).

Why is Zimbabwe left out? Do you know that thousands of people either die through state famine or killed by Zanu thugs?

> And Iraq has way more than 1000+ deaths a year.

Ahh… yeah an American war in the Middle East. Let's group that with "Asia" and compare a land-mass of 4 billion people to a continent of less than 1.

> Living in Africa does not make you an authority. Point to some proof for > your statements.

I have shown you numerous shortcomings in your Wikipedia article. Yet you persist to compare apples and oranges (sub-Sahara Africa is small compared to Asia).

Maybe living in Africa (and having lived in various African countries) does not make me an expert. But neither is someone who never even visited the continent and relies on half-baked WP articles. You are in denial about Africa and the violence in Africa.

From your posts I cannot determine if you are just extremely ignorant or if you are a troll. For your part I hope that you are a troll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Africa's most robust economies, such as those in Ghana, Botswana, and South > Africa

South Africa is not nearly seeing a "brain gain". We lose qualified professionals to first world countries, yet only get semi-qualified people from other African countries (a nett loss for Africa). Along with the little qualified people that we get from other African countries, we also get 4 million+ illegal immigrants.

At almost all research institutions, the average age is high. South African universities (the best in the continent) are dropping spectacularly off international rankings (e.g. Shanghai Jiao Tong world ranking). All research indicates that South African research is declining in both quality and quantity (e.g. this article: [http://www.up.ac.za/academic/iti/SA_Research_publication_rec...](http://www.up.ac.za/academic/iti/SA_Research_publication_record.pdf) and other articles by the same author).

By and far, the industries in many African countries are driven by mining, with the state creating an artificial middle class of useless civil servants.

The apparent growth that Africa experienced in the past 5 years is just an extension of the commodity boom – the same structural problems remain. Corruption is still there, education is still shit, etc… It can be said that the countries are more stable – but that is all.

They leave out the Angolan example – the majority of investment in that country is done by Chinese companies in exchange of oil.

> Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest black entrepreneur, has also cashed in on > this consumer culture, with a net worth of $2.5 billion, according to > Forbes.

They also leave out the part that he is heavily connected with the ruling party of Nigeria. There are many entrepreneurs such as this – basically African Oligarchy (other examples are Tokyo Sexwale, Patrice Motsepe, etc…).

\---

I may sound negative, but I really have doubts in the past year about the future of South Africa in particular. It seems that corruption is now completely untamed and the ruling party are infighting on who gets the spoils of the government tenders (so called "tenderpreneurs"). The Mbeki government at least had the decency to try and hide the corruption.

Secondary education is basically on the verge of death (in spite of ever increasing allocation of budgets) and the government is doing its best to destroy the last functional universities.

People on all sides of the spectrum in SA are starting to get sick of the system. White people are sick of crime and taxation, poor black people are sick of living in squalor (with nothing changing in the past 20 years). There have recently been quite a few flair-ups of "service delivery" protests (black people that protest because nothing is done to their plight – e.g. in Balfour, Baberton, Khutsong etc..).</comment>


What career path to choose? - <AUTHOR>

A bit of backstory,
due to generally bad financial situation in Serbia, I started working as a fulltime remote programmer when I was 20 years old for one startup in EU, so I could support myself through the college. Startup didnt work out and eventually ceased after ~2 years. Shortly before that I started working short-time freelance jobs over Freelancer/Elance. This worked out very well (as much as it possible over those types of sites) and I opened my own IT consultancy company few months after.
Few months ago, since I was fully working remotely, I decided to start traveling. I dropped out from college with one class left, which I've been dragging for few last years, and I'm currently located in Thailand. I am 25 years old now. I have several clients that I charge 50-100$/hour, however this can change overnight and I can drop to zero income. I have enough money buffered up to support myself for the next few years.
Now the main reason why am I seeking for advice from HN crowd - I do my work in Delphi. I'm currently limited with the tech that has 0.01% market share and I've realized that I would never progress further in a professional sense if I don't change this and would get stuck forever with mediocre job opportunities. Also I want to get off the freelancer/elance type of sites. There are dozens of different techs that I can choose to learn and all of them are viable. Most appealing to me is to either get proficient in C++ and eventually in C# and work as a developer, or jump into web sphere (node/angular/whatever) and do some contracting or give it a shot to make some lifestyle business which can generate me some passive income.
I am honestly kinda lost and scared by all of this, and probably overthinking a bit, but I'm not really sure where to head at. I've been stuck with Delphi for years, and now I need to change that.
Have you guys been there, and do you have any advices? <comment><USER2> Personally, I'd hold on to your Delphi skills for now. Those Fortran guys who stuck with the language when everyone else left, are now earning fat paychecks maintaining legacy stuff that nobody else can even touch.

Master another skill in parallel.

I am into web development, but personally, web work runs on "flavour-of-the- month". There was the PHP boom in the 90s-early2000s, the Rails boom from 05ish-11 and now there is a Node boom since then.

How accurate these booms are in terms of actual work/jobs, I'm not sure. However, there is a lot of noise around it.

If you've got the patience and acumen, learn C/C++ and stick with it. These languages won't go away, no matter how many Rusts/Gos pop-up (there's about +30 years of code invested in both by thousands of people).

As far as freelancing goes, you're one lucky guy. 98% of the cubicle Joomla/WordPress hackers would gladly switch places with you for your $75 p.h job. I'd stick with freelancing if I were you (you must've seen plenty of places by now).

Also, about your degree ... You don't really need it anymore, but finish it, for your own sake (peace of mind).

Lastly, keep milking your Delphi cow. The grass isn't greener at all in an office job. You will not have the freedom to stop work at 2pm cause you feel like it. If you really want to secure your cow, keep going with your long-term clients and when the time comes for them to move to another tech, you should have some knowledge (C/C++ or even Java) to move with them and keep your long- term contracts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Two years is a pretty good runway . . .

Listen to StartupsForTheRestOfUs.com lots of good advice there for building SaaS/Products/Lifestyle business.

This will give you some ideas of what options are out there.

As far as remote consulting it seems Rails is the best language for remote positions that pay well.

I would recommend learning Rails . . .

I usually recommend HTML->CSS->js->jquery->Rails(ruby) or Laravel(php)->angular (or other js frameworks)

That will give you a good foundation of full stack web development if that's the type of company you want to work for or build your own.

To build up two years of runway you're doing well . . . so I would keep up what you're doing, choose and new skill to learn and start on your product/SaaS idea.

Here are some other people you should check out: Brennan Dunn (double your freelance rate) Patio11 Nathan Barry Amy Hoy Rob Walling (Start Ups for the rest of us podcast)

<comment><USER4> I want to add Django as a great alternative to rails, and Ember as a great alternative to Angular. Just for OP to consider.

Python is a very universal language, and the main benefit is that you can apply it in almost any area of programming.

<comment><USER5> While I agree that Django is great too, by some reasons Rails community have very positive attitude towards remote work. And yes, I don't know Django/Python community much, but that's what I noticed in Rails community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> forget about C#, it's dying.

<comment><USER7> Not sure if you're joking or just trolling (or both), given the recent massive announcements surrounding the platform/IDE/etc...

<comment><USER6> i hope u r joking or just trolling, instead of being ignorant. What Microsoft does w/ C#/.Net doesn't matter; what industry chooses matters. Nearly all big data jobs require Java/JavaScript/Scala/Python.</comment></comment></comment>


37Signals' "Rework" in action - <AUTHOR> http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2808-how-makalu-interactive-created-the-international-iphone-hit-racesplitter#comment_form

<comment><USER2> It's great to see that a book that inspires me in the world of business really does work. The guys at 37Signals aren't just all talk, they provide ideas that actually work as we can see. Thanks for the post!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Accidentally linked to the comment form. Sorry about that. If anyone knows how to get the URL updated, let me know. It's a great read.

<comment><USER3> :) I just spent 30 seconds looking at the comment form, thinking maybe some tip from the book guided the implementation of the form!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What book is more worth reading, "Rework" or "Getting Real"?

<comment><USER5> You should read both, "Getting Real" is more focus on starting the project and getting the project done, Rework has some of that but it's more about efficiently running your business and marketing it. These book and the one by <http://www.softwarebyrob.com/> are the best business books for startups, after that just get to work on code and design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry, congratulations to the team and all, but did they actually release a timer app for $25? How did they manage to get people to buy it?

<comment><USER7> $25 is not that much; the secret is in making customers believe it's worth it, i.e. good marketing.

People pay a minimum of 1000 USD for an Apple laptop. I work on a 500 USD laptop from Asus, which I believe is just as good. But it's not as cool and people don't envy me :)

<comment><USER8> I say someone with no exposure to Apple marketing would still have a big smile on their face if sat down to use a MacBook Pro/Air.

<comment><USER9> Even if they type on the keyboard and the hard, sharp edge on the Pro digs into the wrists?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Principles ARE important (& useful) - <AUTHOR> https://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/principles-are-important-and-useful/ <comment><USER2> Good article, I like this.</comment>


In Finland, Kids Learn Computer Science Without Computers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/02/teaching-computer-science-without-computers/517548/ <comment><USER2> The title seem.. clickbaity

Finland is doing the right thing, and they're not teaching coding completely without computers.

there's a logical model for programming - how to divide and conquer, this is not just related to algorithms but to every programming task.

And I've seen enough people who don't have this mindset trying to code to know that despite sounding extremely simple, it is a vital subject to enable more people to start coding. Kudos to Finland for focusing on the logical aspect of programming, which are much more transferable than knowledge of certain language APIs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickbait. This is not quite the same as teaching Apple II LOGO turtlegraphics, which was taught to me in private elementary (primary) school around grade 2 (7-8 years old). It teaches sequences and repetition, but neither paradigm nor pair of concepts are Turing complete so I wouldn't call them "programming." Perhaps if they built on foundation concepts in subsequent grades, then that would be respectable. Btw, here's a SpaceWars game in Apple II LOGO using the full language. [0]

PS: Once upon a time, Finland turned around their education system from being one of the worst to being one of the best, by among many other changes, eliminating many multiple choice tests and homework that weren't adding value to overall education quality. Michael Moore showcased this in one of his documentaries, _Where to Invade Next?_

0\. [https://paleotronic.com/2018/09/27/ancient-tongues-logo- spac...](https://paleotronic.com/2018/09/27/ancient-tongues-logo-spacewar/)

</comment><comment><USER4> computers are really full of distractions</comment>


World's Biggest Indoor Vertical Farm Near NYC to Use 95% Less Water - <AUTHOR> http://weburbanist.com/2016/06/05/worlds-biggest-indoor-vertical-farm-near-nyc-to-use-95-less-water/ <comment><USER3> [Warning metric not used]

I was reading this and trying to parse the economics. I mean 70k square feet is about two acres [@ 43560/acre] and at 75x efficiency per square foot it works out to about 150 acres of farmland. Lets call it a quarter section [160 acres]. Now a quarter section is the size farm my boy's Great Grandpa Fred farmed with his German speaking father and a mule in Kussuth County, Iowa the better part of 100 years ago. Enough land in a year with no major misfortune to support a family farm as a business but that today would perhaps need subscribed city folk and organic certification and a used tractor to be a gentleman's break even hobby.

At this point in the rant I was going to write, I was going to write about how little food two million pounds is and how it would never make a dent in the logistics of feeding people. And as I composed that part in my head, "two million pounds" seemed a queer [with no sexual connotation] way of marketing the output. And the whole thing made little sense economically...I mean even at Whole Foods, two million pounds of tomatoes might barely keep the lights on and the employee parking lot full.

I thought "What are they smoking?" And it looks to me like this is an effort to get out in front of marijuana legalization. Two million pounds at even a piddly $1000/per does make sense with the big bucks of the Big Apple's stoners spitting distance away. And since that is consistent with my heuristic that when someone looks like an idiot and they're not a teenager, then I'm probably the idiot if I assume that they are, so I figure that getting ready for growing weed is about the best sense of the venture I'm going to make.

<comment><USER4> The volume weight ratio of leafy greens, is much higher compared to tomatoes. Second the shelf life of leafy greens is lower compared to fruit crops.

In respect to transportation costs, shelf life and transportation distance, it makes sense growing these crops near their distribution points.

Second not to forget the benefit of CO2 reduction in urban area's, as there is less and less space for nature in urban areas.

The only downside is the energy usage, this has been reduced using LED lighting, but is still compared to traditional greenhouse or open-field growing.

<comment><USER5> Transportation accounts for a minuscule amount of the total resources used to grow food on an industrial scale.

<comment><USER6> > Transportation accounts for a minuscule amount of the total resources used > to grow food on an industrial scale

Interesting.

Is that still the case if the true costs of greenhouse gasses emitted by transportation and refrigeration are accounted for?

Does that mean the 'buy locally' idea has little climate impact?

Also, to save my lazy, busy fingers from doing it myself, do you happen to know a good link to research on this subject?

<comment><USER7> > Does that mean the 'buy locally' idea has little climate impact?

No, buy locally has a large climate impact - only not in the direction you think. Local uses much more energy than non-local.

Local has no environmental benefits whatsoever - only negatives.

The only thing it has going for it is some nebulous social benefits of knowing your farmer.

I avoid local because it means the produce was grown not in the climate where it grows best, but rather forced (i.e. lots of extra resources) to grow near me.

<comment><USER8> But isn't part of the "buying local" movement also buying produce that's in season for your climate?

If you're buying local pineapples in Duluth, I can see it would defeat the purpose.

<comment><USER7> Even if it's in season doesn't mean your climate is the best place to grow it.

If it was the best place, then it would be competitive on the open market, and produce from your area would be the primary produce on the market - <USER2> any hokey social movements.

<comment><USER9> That's only true if you want to claim that the "best" place to grow $randomFruit cannot be more profitably used doing $randomThing. Downtown San Francisco could be the world best microclimate for tomatoes but it still probably wouldn't be worth using the land for that instead of an apartment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's something neat going on here.

Projects like this take growing that happens in the rural areas to the city. We've always had a strife between country and city life, and country life is where food is grown. With this change, we're seeing food done in the city as well.

Of course this could be seen as potentially bad for farmers, as they lose a bit more control...

But there's some awesome upsides:

Potentially completely robotic. I was looking into with a friend about an automated greenhouse. It fell through due to medical disasters, but we had the nuts and bolts figured out. The gist is hydroponics with tilapia serving as protein and fertilizer for the plants. It would take around 10 mins/day for up to 100sq. ft. (it's considered that 25 sq ft is enough to feed a human indefinitely.)

Provides food for a city. Now, instead of having to rely on 'elsewhere', we can point to the building where our food comes from. The gist here is that there's now food security.

Lower transportation costs. Now, instead of food coming from 'elsewhere', it comes from the building over there. Distribution costs are cheaper, storage is onsite and local.

Is not subject to the growing season. With this system in place, the growing season is now 24/7/365.

Is also not subject to a host of pests or other environmental damaging effects. Everything is controlled: light, rain, drainage, nutrients. So yields will be much higher than on land.

Organic can be much easier. Since there's few/no pests, neonitonoids and similar aren't needed, nor are other nasty insecticides and herbicides.

Yes, it does cost more, due to using electricity. However solar is getting cheaper. These buildings could also be used in conjunction with spillover from power plants: There's no reason why the day/night cycle can't be switched, so that the grow building is using power at night, when power is usually not consumed (and is cheaper).

Edit: Seriously, modded down already? How about whoever did that _also_ leave a comment why this is not good content?

<comment><USER5> This is not going replace farming anymore than me growing a spinach plant in a pot at home.

It's actually a little disappointing to see just how out of touch the people in this thread are with farming. Growing food outside, in the ground is always going to be cheaper than building a building.

<comment><USER10> >This is not going replace farming anymore than me growing a spinach plant in a pot at home.

Well, I've got 200 sq ft my wife and I are growing by hand. We have manual tools, compost, dirt, and muscles. And your spinach example is a pretty bad one. Why? Spinach grows better when its cold out and earlier in the season. If you plant a week or 2 later, it doesn't really grow and then when the heat hits, it bolts. Bolted spinach and lettuce tastes bitter and bad. It'd sure be nice to be able to grow spinach in ideal conditions... but I can't do that in the ground.

>It's actually a little disappointing to see just how out of touch the people in this thread are with farming. Growing food outside, in the ground is always going to be cheaper than building a building.

"always going to be cheaper" is a really long time. Sure you mean to put it that way?

I'm no farmer, but I grow quite a bit of my food. I guess amateur farmer is probably more accurate. Right now, the economic equation is on the side of "grow in dirt, on property". But 1 acre only gets you an acre of stuff at ideal yield. Add 10 more stories on that same plot of land, and you get 10 acre yield (ideal).

And, you're also not counting having a self sufficient city as an intangible. Something like that is the start of an arcology. That technology stack also seems rather important to grow for a spacefaring culture.

<comment><USER11> _> I guess amateur farmer is probably more accurate._

Gardner is the usual term. And there is a huge chasm between gardening and farming, which is what I expect the parent is trying to get at.

Myself, I grow food on hundreds of acres. Yet I wouldn't know the first thing about growing spinach on a 200 sq ft plot. It's just a completely different skill set. To try and draw an analogy that fits HN, the difference is kind of like knowing how to use your Windows PC at home and knowing how to manage a huge data centre full of 1,000s of Linux systems at work.

It will be interesting to see what the future brings, but considering that we traditional farmers get a lot of things for for free (solar energy, rain, etc.), it will be difficult to beat that on cost. Depends on what you are growing, I suppose.

<comment><USER12> I'm curious - do you have any ballpark numbers on the impact that weather has on your profitability? Not just for growing conditions (cloudy/sunny, rain/drought) but also for extreme weather events if and when they occur?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ... and how much energy by comparison with conventional outdoor farming?

<comment><USER14> Anything under an existing farm + 95% the energy it takes to treat/move the water is a win I would have thought.

<comment><USER15> You're forgetting the vast energy provided free to a regular farm by sunlight. Average daily solar energy falling on each square meter of the Earth is 6 kWh [1].

You're right that irrigation is a significant energy cost: for example [2], irrigating 135 acres in Nebraska will use 50,000 kWh over the course of one season.

But an acre has 4046 square meters. Based on the global average, that same 135 acres will collect 3,277,260 kWh of solar energy over the course of a _single day_. That's the energy an indoor farm has to consume from power stations, just for lighting.

Optimizing spectrum can cut the lighting energy in half, and other measures like packing plants more tightly can help, but even if you reduce it by 90% it still dwarfs the energy expense of regular farms.

It may be a reasonable expense for particular crops that don't want full sun anyway, but energy usage isn't likely to ever be an advantage for indoor farms. An acceptable disadvantage in certain cases, maybe.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Earth)

[2] [http://www.loup.com/docs/energysvc/energywise/EW-Tip- Irrigat...](http://www.loup.com/docs/energysvc/energywise/EW-Tip- Irrigation.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Why can't a farm capture natural sunlight and redistribute it?

Even a low-tech method like mirrors ought to do it. As long as all the wavelengths that the plants need are reflected by the mirror. Why not?

<comment><USER15> To collect as much sunlight as the regular farm, you'll have to spread mirrors over the same area. So why not save all that money and plant the crops directly on the ground? If you want them indoors, to save water and chemicals, use greenhouses; you can use cheap plastic sheeting instead of expensive mirrors.

<comment><USER16> The sunlight of a regular farm is largely wasted. The plants are spread apart because of their moisture and soil needs and most of ths sunlight hits dirt.

Now, there may be bacteria in the regolith which we don't know about, and we'll find out why they are neededin certain proportions... but even so, we can be collecting dirt from all over the place for the next crop...

It seems that sunlight hitting plants that are "closer together" and stacked vertically will be far more efficient. Besides, some plants don't even need the full sunlight to grow!

<comment><USER12> Actually on most farms there's probably not a bit of dirt to be seen under the crop being raised, at least not for bulk crops like corn and soybeans and once the growing season is well under way. Any dirt not covered in the desired crop isn't bare and absorbing sunlight, it's space that's probably growing weeds or other undesirable plants (e.g. soybeans during a corn year for places that rotate their crops).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like NYC is a poor place to house this. Ideally, if you wanted it to be viable and not just a proof-of-concept, you'd find somewhere with cheap electricity, cheaper land/rent than NYC[1], and expensive fresh produce. My guess is Iceland would be a good spot, and I'd be a little surprised if they didn't have something like this already in the works. Iceland also has another side benefit for traditional greenhouses: the ground can naturally heat the houses. [http://www.nea.is/geothermal/direct- utilization/greenhouses/](http://www.nea.is/geothermal/direct- utilization/greenhouses/)

[1] It's actually in Newark, not sure what property prices are like there.

<comment><USER18> More factors com into play then just energy costs. Warmth, distance-to-market, water, real estate just to name a few.

<comment><USER17> That's why I listed other factors, too, including real estate and, in an unusual manner, warmth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For folks in the Northeast US, the Backyard Farms brand of tomatoes has a similarly fascinating growing process[1]. They're grown in greenhouse in Maine that's the size of 20 football fields[2]. There are no pests and therefore no pesticides; no dirt, so no washing.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/dining/31tomato.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/dining/31tomato.html) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_Farms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_Farms)

<comment><USER20> It's a crazy building in the middle of nowhere, central Maine, about file miles away from where I grew up. I bike by it when visiting home and it's wonderfully strange.

There have been pests, though: [http://www.pressherald.com/2013/07/10/whiteflies-force- backy...](http://www.pressherald.com/2013/07/10/whiteflies-force-backyard- farms-to-destroy-crop_2013-07-10/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Near NYC" :(

C'mon - throw Newark a bone already!

<comment><USER22> I know how it feels. I've just taken to aying that I go to college next to NYC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wouldn't issues with weeds and pests also be way better? You just don't let them in?

If they could sell crops with zero herbicides or pesticides you'd think they could clean up.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Not really, once they've gotten in the only intervention is aggressive quarantining and drenching everything with pesticides. Outside, there's much better access to things that eat pests, e.g. wasps/spiders/viruses, and infestations are less likely to be catastrophic.

Of course, this might be different in inner-city environments and there are people that supply some types of pests' pests for use in greenhouses.

<comment><USER24> Couldn't you compartmentalise the food so that you'd only need to throw away a single "block" of food if it gets contaminated?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Food isn't supposed to grow without soil, minerials, fungus, and sunlight. It's going to be empty of nutrition and flavor. A shell of an idea of what constitutes lettuce or a carrot, tomato or potatoe.

These data center clean rooms for factory food is just riddled with issues, abstracted layers of nonsense tech that wirks worse then the natural systems already working and present in nature.

<comment><USER26> That's not necessarily true. It depends mostly on the quality of nutritional supplements used. I have my own experimental indoor garden under LEDs (though I still use substrate, not hydroponics yet) and their taste is by no means inferior to that brought in the organic outdoor gardens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Man this stuff gets me pumped up. I've always wanted to be a farmer, but it never made economical sense to pursue. I've been dabbling (more than just dabbling...) with hydroponics, LEDs and automation for grows. Within the next 3-5 years I'll probably be able to finally pursue this dream with all these advancements. Love it! Can't wait!

<comment><USER28> It makes even less economic sense to farm indoors.

<comment><USER27> Except for when it's winter time and nothing can grow outside. :) But even then, only if the infrastructure is already in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you're interested in indoor farming, you'd probably be interested in aquaponics[1] -- the successful integration of hydroponics & aquaculture.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYR9s6chrI0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYR9s6chrI0)

</comment><comment><USER30> Not really on the same scale but there's a farm in a former air raid shelter beneath London.

[http://growing-underground.com/](http://growing-underground.com/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Damn. I was going to say we need this in Japan, but it does mention a Japanese one. I wonder what the costs are like though? Worker hours and electrical).

<comment><USER32> You might enjoy reading this: [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese- firm-to-open-worlds-first-robot-run-farm) :)

<comment><USER31> Nice, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> related post I made 12 days ago, but reported by IEEE [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11766006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11766006)

</comment><comment><USER34> OT: A good way to explore more about vertical indoor farming is playing the game Minecraft on a public server (the reddit server (nerd.nu) is good). You will see many working examples that will simply blow your mind away.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish I'd seen this and had a chance to reply earlier. I think a lot of commenters are missing some key points. First, this is still pretty early- stage stuff, and it's quite likely that almost everyone working in this field right now is not going to get rich any more than most of the people working on gasoline-powered horseless carriages got rich.

My personal prediction is that this kind of thing is going to be a lot more common in 40 years regardless of whether the current stuff is going to be used for growing pot - and pot itself will become a much less profitable crop with legalization, though the security advantages of this kind of indoor volume growing (fields and fences? why bother?) may prolong that.

What's going to be a bigger factor over time is climate change - not in the form of "zomg we're all going to cook and the plants will all die!" but in the form of increased atmospheric water and energy and extreme weather events. How many monsoon-style torrential rains per decade does it take to have a significant impact on farming? Growing up in the Midwest I used to regularly hear "farm reports" on the radio about crop damage due to hailstorms and heavy thunderstorms; for a lot of farmers it won't take a lot of damage to make their farms economically unviable. Some of this may disproportionately impact areas where a lot of food is grown[1], but it's not going to be isolated to those areas [2]. The water carrying capacity of air increases by more than 38% between 25 and 30 degrees Celsius (20g/kg to 27.7g/kg), and while a 5 degree change might be extreme, we're certainly going to blow right past a 2 degree change. That extra water (and the heat energy it holds) are going to be seen in weather.

There may also be some significant changes in building - for example, an all- glass skyscraper (if unobstructed) might well have an outer "shell" 5 feet from interior windows, with vertical plantings of some sort within that space - plants/greenery either for or just visible to the occupants, and if you go more extreme you might see exteriors covered with transparent photovoltaics [3] that pass through frequencies of light that are used by plants while simultaneously powering LEDs that convert the other frequencies into something the plants can use.

Remember, the folks working on this stuff right now are the Apple Newton developers of their industry. What are the iPads of the industry going to look like?

[1] [http://www.water.ca.gov/climatechange/docs/dwr_extremes_wksh...](http://www.water.ca.gov/climatechange/docs/dwr_extremes_wkshop_jan2012-MikeDettinger131.pdf)

[2] [http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Water/page3.ph...](http://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Water/page3.php)

[3] [http://mitei.mit.edu/news/transparent-solar- cells](http://mitei.mit.edu/news/transparent-solar-cells)</comment>


Google reduces prices for it's Preemptible GPUs (~40%) - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/06/Introducing-improved-pricing-for-Preemptible-GPUs.html <comment><USER2> I can believe it. Spot instances have been such a great deal for hardcore model training on AWS.</comment>


A trick to visualizing higher dimensions [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwAD6dRSVyI <comment><USER2> A Mathematician and an Engineer attend a lecture by a Physicist. The topic concerns Kulza-Klein theories involving physical processes that occur in spaces with dimensions of 9, 12 and even higher. The Mathematician is sitting, clearly enjoying the lecture, while the Engineer is frowning and looking generally confused and puzzled. By the end the Engineer has a terrible headache. At the end, the Mathematician comments about the wonderful lecture. The Engineer says "How do you understand this stuff?" Mathematician: "I just visualize the process" Engineer: "How can you POSSIBLY visualize something that occurs in 9-dimensional space?" Mathematician: "Easy, first visualize it in N-dimensional space, then let N go to 9"

[1] [http://www.math.psu.edu/tseng/mathjoke1.html](http://www.math.psu.edu/tseng/mathjoke1.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I really like 1blue3brown, but this one didn't quite resonate with me. To me, it felt like a long winded way to make it intuitive that the point (1, 1 ... 1) has distance sqrt(n) from the origin, where n is the number of dimensions. I think there'd be move value in explaining things like 'most volume is near the edge' and 'most points are far apart'. Granted, that is less about building intuition, and more about specifically dispelling heuristics from 2 and 3 dimensions.

I'd still wholeheartedly recommend his other videos though. Especially [1] where he gives a very nice topological result regarding inscribed rectangles in closed loops. In the same vein is [2] proving the borsuk-ulam theorem.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmgkSdhK4K8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmgkSdhK4K8)

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

<comment><USER4> I think a major qualifier to all the 3+ D vis. schemes is that, no matter how elaborate or clever the trick is, you can never experience such a space the way you experience 2D or 3D space. (all the tricks are only approximate visualizations).

<comment><USER5> The levels in Braid that have time moving forward and backwards as you move left and right are the closest thing I've seen to "experiencing" space-time where time is a dimension. As you think hard enough about the puzzles, you can imagine moving in time the way you move in space, treating it as just another dimension.

<comment><USER4> I knew someone would invoke time. I'm aware of 4D space-time as a possible visualization scheme for 4 dimensions.

By '2D or 3D space', I specifically meant being able to experience 3+ dimensions the way we experience 2 or 3 spatial dimensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I totally applaud 1blue3brown's videos but for some reason, his approach leaves me more confused than ever. Long winded unnecessary visualizations, especially when animated, annoys me for a reason that I cannot explain.

Don't get me wrong, visualizations are powerful but I think I prefer static visualizations. Animations overload the visual system with "visual bloat", if you will.

Also, this video did not help me visualize higher dimensions. I prefer a simpler approach - just project down to 3 dimensions (or 4 if you add time at the risk of animating).

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you project a 10D sphere into 3 dimensions? Worse, the projection tricks you into believing you've gleaned some insight.

The animation was critical for understanding the relationship between the values as they change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have found with 1blue3brown that I sometimes have to wait a while and ponder things and go back and watch the video again some time later. So this particular video was working for me up to a point and then I maybe just missed some important point that hopefully I'll catch on a re-watch next week or so.

</comment><comment><USER8> Beautifully animated as always, but it didn't help me visualize higher dimensions at all.</comment>


Breast-cancer death rate drops almost 40 percent - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/10/03/breast-cancer-death-rate-drops-almost-40-percent-saving-32200-lives-study-says <comment><USER2> Great! Now can the people interested in helping fewer women (and men) die of cancer please turn their attention to lung cancer, where there is far better "bang for the buck" on research investment?

[https://www.cancer.org/cancer/non-small-cell-lung- cancer/abo...](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/non-small-cell-lung- cancer/about/key-statistics.html)

Most people who get and die from lung cancer are not smokers. Like my mom.

<comment><USER3> So i've become super interested in lung cancer, and recently found that radon gas is the most common cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.

If you want bang for your buck, buy a radon detector and mitigate [slab vacuum treatment or regular ventilation] where you find levels > 100bq/m^3 [probably your basement]

<comment><USER4> i see they are like 200 bucks on amazon- are those what i need to get?

<comment><USER5> I have the AirThings one. I like it. The biggest drawback is that there is no easy way to automatically record readings, so I do it manually.

I move it from room to room every few days. I was surprised that the upstairs bedroom read as high as the basement (but none are high).

Also, as every website points out, the readings vary quite a bit through the day, and from day to day.

I also noticed that the readings increase when it rains (my current theory is that the low pressure that precedes rain pulls more radon from the ground).

Opening windows helps a lot.

<comment><USER6> Upgrading our ventilation moved us from ~200-250 Bq (with windows being open as much as possible) down to ~50-70 Bq

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know much about statistics - can someone tell me why five year survival rates are always used for cancer? This seems kind of off, that instead one should be using the average or median age to which one is expected to live versus how long a cancer survivor lives. Five years seems most misleading when applied to children that get cancer.

<comment><USER8> 5-yrs mortality rates are a questionable statistic, especially when comparing death rates in time. Critics would argue that the lead time (i.e. the time between diagnosis and clinical symptoms) has changed in time due to earlier diagnosis but the effective time of death has not. It's a long winded debate.

Breast cancer mostly affects women 45+ -- or younger women with a genetic disposition.

<comment><USER9> But otherwise you'd get a lot of age related deaths? If you use a 15 year window, many people with cancer treatment at the age of 70 won't survive the 15 year period. That makes cancers 'deadlier' where they affect older people. A 5 year horizon is probably more suitable to reduce unrelated deaths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is controversial, because the study everybody was talking about last year[1] concluded that there hasn't been a decrease in the breast cancer death rate over that same period.

[1] [http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullart...](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2363025)

<comment><USER11> That study looks at something else entirely: The relation between screening and mortality. It doesn't say anything about survival rates over time.

> _Conclusions and Relevance_ When analyzed at the county level, the clearest > result of mammography screening is the diagnosis of additional small > cancers. Furthermore, there is no concomitant decline in the detection of > larger cancers, which might explain the absence of any significant > difference in the overall rate of death from the disease. Together, these > findings suggest widespread overdiagnosis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know when we decreased the age for recommended mammograms to 40? My assumption is that it's in the time range of the article.

I can only find references to us raising the recommended age to 45 in 2015, controversy over raising it to 50 in 2009 and how there are diverging opinions on when they should be done.

<comment><USER13> I think brca status matters more as that classified high risk.

<comment><USER14> The GP is asking about recommendations for routine screening in asymptomatic women at average risk of breast cancer.

Screening and/or prophylactic treatment for high risk women is a different topic entirely and probably highly individualized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about the base rate of getting breast cancer? Am I to understand women still get diagnosed at the same rate but the treatment has gotten better? What happened in the 70s that made it so much more common?

<comment><USER16> I bet in the 70s it became easier to detect .

<comment><USER17> Deaths from cancer are not subtitle. This is measuring the number of deaths not the rate of early detection.

<comment><USER18> "Deaths within 5 years" are strongly affected by when you start the 5 year clock. The earlier you detect cancer, the better your 5-year survival rate will be.

<comment><USER17> Without treatment they don't change much. It's detection followed by treatment that changes anything. And discounting early detection as a part of treatment is horribly misleading.

<comment><USER18> I'm finding it difficult to imagine how you think this could possibly work.

Cancers start small and develop into larger problems over time. Consider a hypothetical patient who develops cancer at the age of 70 and dies of it, untreated, at the age of 78.

If the cancer is detected at the age of 75, detection will lower the 5-year survival rate, since the patient dies after three years of "having cancer". If it is detected at 72, detection increases the 5-year survival rate, since the patient now dies after 6 years. Without treatment, early detection has a _very strong impact_ on 5-year survival rates.

<comment><USER17> Untreated cancer kills people very quickly effectively by definition. Basically if you have a lump that's not going to kill you quickly it's not cancer.

This is why Mammograms are every 1 or 2 years. If you could wait 4 years without treatment early detection would be less of an issue.

PS: People generally assume a lump becomes cancer as soon as it starts to form. But the general case is you get a lot of little growths from pre- cancerous cells which are predisposed to cancer. Then one or more of those cells become cancer and then you die fairly quickly after that transition.

<comment><USER18> Cancer is defined based on the growth rate of the tumor (some other characteristics contribute, like propensity to spread from one area of the body to another), not based on how long you can live with it. Even the xkcd comic will tell you that no matter how bad your cancer currently is, you might end up living for a long time to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The study referenced in the article : [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21412/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.3322/caac.21412/full)

</comment><comment><USER20> Wondering if there is any global stats outside of US.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder why iodine is not mentioned in the article, and how much its use has contributed to the rate drop.

</comment><comment><USER22> How strange to see this on the day that a friend of ~20 years passed away. Breast cancer. She was 40.

<comment><USER23> Sorry for your loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Now perhaps we can start work on prostate cancer. Not as marketable a topic as prostate cancer.

Breast cancer receives half a billion dollars more funding for research than does the latter, despite the latter being more common: [http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/05/breast-cancer-receives- muc...](http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/05/breast-cancer-receives-much-more- research-funding-publicity-than-prostate-cancer-despite-similar-number-of- victims/)

I'm loathe to link to the Daily Caller, but it's a pretty neutral piece with no politics, nonetheless:

[https://prostate.org.nz/2014/01/men-die-earlier-womens- healt...](https://prostate.org.nz/2014/01/men-die-earlier-womens-health-gets- four-times-funding/)

<comment><USER25> Isn't this because prostate cancer is already far less deadly at this point? Both by rate and absolute numbers. Most men will get prostate cancer if they live long enough and we are constantly improving treatment.

<comment><USER26> Not to derail the entire discussion, but what is the current best practices regarding treatment for prostate cancer?

Is there anywhere to keep up-to-date on this specific topic, if it is indeed nearly inevitable?

<comment><USER27> A dead sibling post mentioned tomatoes. It is apparently supported by some research but seems to be not conclusive. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23883692](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23883692)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My first thought is that it didn't really save lives. 322k now die of other causes.

<comment><USER29> Sure. When you die of other causes, you don't die of cancer. This is middle school set theory.

<comment><USER30> I think you are agreeing with the parent. 300,000+ lives are saved... for now.

I've thought about this too. No life is saved, it is only prolonged.

If these people have been given an extra five years of life, that must be a pretty spectacular return on investment. Compare how much was spent developing and administering treatment to the value of 1.5 million years of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Good to see the rates dropping but it is disappointing to see that alternative treatment paradigms, like diet and fasting aren't given a serious look.

Relevant article: [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/03/05/46828554...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/03/05/468285545/fighting-cancer-by-putting-tumor-cells-on-a-diet)

<comment><USER32> You know what they call alternative treatments that work? Treatments.

<comment><USER33> Alternative medicine, the alternative to medicine.</comment></comment></comment>


Teen E-Cigarette Use Doubles Since 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/teen-e-cigarette-use-doubles-since-2017 <comment><USER2> This makes sense, unfortunately. The e-cigarette industry is $1B+ and much of their base from teens, they can claim to be innocent by not marketing to them. However, with flavors like bubble gum and cotton candy, it is easy to see why teens are attracted to e-cigarettes.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to remember a lot of anti-smoking ads on tv but no more now. You need to run ads for each new generation of teens. The same for ads against bullying, racism, drunk-driving, drugs etc.

<comment><USER2> As a late-teen, I see many ads from the FDA against e-cigarettes, but I'm not sure how effective they are. However, these are not on TV but on Facebook.</comment></comment>


What is your favorite GitHub repository? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The list of lists. Actually I have several bookmarks like that. It's a treasure chest of good links. [https://github.com/jnv/lists](https://github.com/jnv/lists)

If you look for something more specific the list pointed me to [https://github.com/bolshchikov/js-must- watch](https://github.com/bolshchikov/js-must-watch)

</comment><comment><USER3> When I want to see what good Python looks like, I browse the Django source code. I like the style, the structure, and the approach to documenation.

[https://github.com/django/django](https://github.com/django/django)

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the activity on rails. And the comments on rails :)</comment>


Introducing government.github.com - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/1657-introducing-government-github-com <comment><USER2> Great to see Philadelphia front and center with this project.

In Mayor Nutter's keynote at PennApps last month, he talked a lot about how Philly is really pushing for open data/open government. It's great to see those initiatives coming to fruition.

<comment><USER3> Philadelphia is a great city for open data/open government. There's a Chief Data Officer and a pretty active Code for America brigade.

<comment><USER4> Philly hacks every week! [http://codeforphilly.org/](http://codeforphilly.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome. I respect GitHub more and more every day. However, despite how much I love the GitHub model and think it's a great way to collaborate, it's still (mostly) inaccessible for non-developers. Shameless plug: I think there is still some room for innovation here, so I'm building a GitHub for everyone else:

[http://madebyloren.com/github-for-writers](http://madebyloren.com/github-for- writers)

<comment><USER6> As a developer myself, I know it's hard to put a timetable on these kinds of things. That said, do you have a vague idea of when this is going to be released?

I'm on a Debate team, and this would be an awesome tool to collaborate on cases. I would use Github for it, but my team is not too tech savvy.

Oh, and is this going to be open source? I'd love to help out with this project.

<comment><USER5> Open alpha up right now [1]. I'm not pushing it too hard because there are still some usability issues and bugs to work out, but its getting there.

[1] [http://penflip.com](http://penflip.com)

<comment><USER6> Awesome! I'm signed up for alpha! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems pretty US-centric. Governments outside the US are doing great things with open source too. The entire UK government website is open source, for example:

[https://github.com/alphagov](https://github.com/alphagov)

<comment><USER8> They are! You can see them listed on the homepage as well as the community page, which lists organizations by country: [http://government.github.com/community/](http://government.github.com/community/)

If you see any that are missing, please do open a pull request: [https://github.com/github/government.github.com](https://github.com/github/government.github.com)

<comment><USER7> Ah - missed that page. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I saw a TED talk about using GH as a form of collaborative democracy once. I am so shocked (in the best way) that momentum is building this quickly.

<comment><USER8> Loved that talk! It was Clay Shirky "How the Internet will (one day) transform government" [http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_one_day_transform_government.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Admitting it's totally beside the point, what is the deal with the "trademark" Campfire emoji at the end of the post? Soon(tm)? In-joke?

<comment> lost-theory [http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/23112/where-did- so...](http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/23112/where-did-soon- originate)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really cool. I sent a request to my City to join. I'd be happy to donate some time improving their website if the source were public.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here is the Changlelog episode of Civic Hacking

[http://5by5.tv/changelog/95](http://5by5.tv/changelog/95)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a pretty ironic timing considering the fact that there's no government in the US for now :)

<comment><USER14> That's a fairly imprecise _and_ inaccurate statement. Lots of governments in the US are still functioning (i.e. state and local), many of which are represented there. And even then, the administration is only partly shut down at the moment, even if it IS a pretty big part.

We've not actually descended into anarchy here at the moment.

<comment><USER15> this implies that the world delves into anarchy without government, and no I'm not an anarcho anything

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bitcoin + contracts => new governments [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts)

Quote from Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks By Nick Szabo.

"We are now entering an era of online communications and software "literacy". The "physics of cyberspace", studied by computer scientists, are radically different from the properties of paper, to an even greater degree than paper was different from string, clay, and metal. "

</comment><comment><USER17> And so, github claims this space.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish github would work on some features that help developers write better code rather then this, which looks like it was put together by some intern.

<comment><USER19> Github is a lot bigger than just helping developers now. Rendering CAD files, Visualizing CLU maps. Github isn't working just on improving the developer experience. They're working on improving the entire collaborative process. I love that now they're helping even government be collaborative.

Just because its not focused on code doesn't mean you can dismiss it as "some intern" project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does this mean we know longer need Congress because we can legislate through version control? Cuz that would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER16> amazing potential. but in the end - out of scope. If you go through the least each org has only few repos with little interest. One of the more interesting ones is: [https://github.com/opengovplatform](https://github.com/opengovplatform)

<comment><USER21> out of scope because they haven't done anything yet? Perhaps the issue is visibility and mindshare to do something civic, in which case, this would help - no?

<comment><USER16> Read Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks By Nick Szabo and couple that with Bitcoin. Think of laws as being online documents with their own git layer, public repo infrastructure.

"We are now entering an era of online communications and software "literacy". The "physics of cyberspace", studied by computer scientists, are radically different from the properties of paper, to an even greater degree than paper was different from string, clay, and metal. "

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How are all those civilian agencies using GitHub without a FISMA or FedRAMP approval (or does GitHub have one and just not advertise it)?

I see at least NASA on there (who just got in trouble with their IG for improper use of un-accredited cloud services).

Or does this include GitHub Enterprise users?

<comment><USER23> As far as I can tell the FISMA certification is done by the agency itself, in accordance with the guidelines laid out by NIST and OMB directives. As long as the confidentiality, integrity and availability requirements are all "low" I don't see why the agency CIO couldn't simply deem GitHub as an acceptable information system for the purposes of posting files that are already cleared for unlimited public release.

<comment><USER24> Thanks for that. Ironically, I'm trying to collaborate with some folks, I'm DoD, and can't access the github site. And now, with the shutdown, I can't access NIST either (they are apparently closed for business except for a couple critical roles).

<comment><USER25> I'd recommend reaching out to @BenBalter to talk through using this for DoD. As for FISMA and compliance I believe GitHub has a government-ready ToS that could be applied - but you'd probably want to get an official go-ahead to use it to host code, and I'd still think hard about using GitHub vs. a git service behind the firewall depending on what you're building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm on a DoD network and can't even access github.

</comment><comment><USER26> Funny a while ago a friend suggested we should version law texts and publish it, this is even better.

</comment><comment><USER27> So... github wants to be wikileaks?

</comment><comment><USER28> Woo, just submitted a pull request to get openlexington of Lexington, KY on there.

</comment><comment><USER29> Now can we use it to collaboratively fix Healthcare.gov?

<comment><USER30> I have a good chunk of the frontend up at [https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov- Marketplace](https://github.com/STRML/Healthcare.gov-Marketplace). As for the APIs, we will never see that code - Healthcare.gov reuses a large number of critical government systems that will likely stay closed forever or are paid vendor systems, like Oracle Access Manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Before we go on, please have someone fix this bug. We are making a lot of suggestion, but no WhiteHouse developers are interested in this. This is not how you do an open source project.

[https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fortyfour/issues/3](https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fortyfour/issues/3)

<comment><USER32> Maybe if you weren't trolling the github issues section relevant issues could be worked on.

<comment><USER31> You should tell everyone on that issue. And caring about your government is not trolling. It's funny to see those suggestions, but they carry a freakin' point.

<comment><USER33> I think he means that the people working on the Github repo have very likely nearly zero capability to do anything about the government shutdown, therefore it's the Wrong Place to Complain. It's not helpful for that project. (It was, however, funny and well-written. :))

Some people deliberately use repos, issues, etc for tracking things like that in their own life, but in general it's pretty discourteous to the developers who maintain a repo about one thing (a theme for the WH site?) if you are complaining about things outside their locus of control.

You wouldn't complain to your congressperson if the White House website is broken, so complaining on the _issues page of the White House web theme repo_ should similarly avoided.

Call your congressman. Write letters to the president. Petition on the Whitehouse homepage. Those are all more constructive ways of complaining. Venting on someone else's repo seems rude, though.

<comment><USER31> I think at this point they know we are all angry at their inability to reboot government.

I brought this up because if you were to open source government websites and IT projects, it is also doable to create an issue tracker fills with questions and issues for congressmen, no?

We have issue tracker with issue labels. A cognressman can probably create an issue tracker like that! And update CHANGELOG.md periodically to show progress!

By the way, I wouldn't contribute to government repos myself because from my observations no one takes other people's pull request or the repo just die.

<comment><USER34> _By the way, I wouldn 't contribute to government repos myself because from my observations no one takes other people's pull request or the repo just die._

Many of these government repos are having problems because they're stuck in an old bureaucratic process. Their official process involves a static website with a list of software that has passed a review and release process. A developer will submit a bit of software for release and some other department will publish it on the website (after approval by everyone and their brother). The developer will need to perform this process for each release.

This doesn't translate well to Github. The developer will submit their software for review and another department will post it to Github. They're using Github like the static website that they used before -- there's nothing in the process that keeps the developer tied into the project once it's released. The developer may not actually have permission to their software repos because some process forces them to only release it through another department (they're definitely complaining about this, trust me). This completely breaks pull requests and may be the reason for the lack of response.

It would help the developer if they could point to Github and say: "Look at all of those pull requests we've been ignoring! Our process is broken! We must fix it!".

If external developers feel that the project is dead, or they're being ignored, pull requests will not be made. However, if there are no pull requests, it's tough for the developer to make an argument to change policy. The circle here needs to be broken.

If you've ever worked in government, you'll understand how difficult it would be to get this process updated. It will be updated eventually, but probably not in the near future -- especially for agencies that don't have a larger group of developers.

Having said that, not all government repos ignore pull requests. I manage a few "government repos" and try my best to respond/merge within 24 hours (most of my responses are under an hour -- even on weekends). It helps that we have a ton of developers who constantly push to keep things open. Even then, it was only in the past few weeks that we finally took down our static list-of- software website.

TL;DR, please don't give up on submitting pull requests. It might even help out the developer if you complain a bit to the folks responsible for "review and release" (which will probably consist of multiple departments).

<comment><USER35> As much as I disagree with the way the Republicans are leading this shutdown, I can see their point.

Government gets soo bogged down in process after process, and no amount of breaking away from that gives any sort of relief. Companies _can_ be more agile and make change much quicker than government can.

I've also heard the stories from members in government. Some say that open source is evil, or insecure, or whatever.. Or another where pallets of unused supplies sit to be thrown away. Or I've also heard stories about more money thrown at a developer working in the Army that has to buy useless equipment so his budget isn't destroyed next year (and yes, he's at our hackerspace, and during shutdown).

Then again, I side with the Dems on the PPACA issue. Our health care in the US stinks. It's something in the general right direction...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Saluton': the surprise return of Esperanto - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/06/saluton-the-surprise-return-of-esperanto <comment><USER2> In conlang (constructed language) communities, Esperanto is a type of conlang known as an auxlang (auxillary language) that tries to be easily learnable and speakable by many people. Esperanto remains very popular and has tons of high quality learning material (I myself learned it from a book in my local community college public library over a few hours in between summer classes) and translated works.

That said, there's plenty of criticism for Esperanto. In Esperanto nouns are male gendered by default, and a suffix is used to make them female. (e.g la patro means "the father", and la patrino means "the mother"). Esperanto is also much harder to learn for people without western language backgrounds.

For folks interested in the world of auxlangs, there are other prominent ones. Toki Pona is ridiculously easy to learn (the vocabulary is some odd 150-or-so words) and has a very neutral phonology (easy to pronounce regardless of language background). You can pick it up in a month or so of idle study. There are texts out there and communities on Telegram which make it fun and easy to join in. It's hard to be specific in Toki Pona, but it turns out most banter is just light conversation anyway. I've used it in a bar setting with friends and it's a fun way to have a "secret" language.

Lojban is a conlang based loosely around predicate logic, which makes it weirder than most other languages, but also easy to express complex ideas in. Lojban has unambiguous syntax, and many parsers have been written for Lojban. The "standard" camxes parser is useful when learning the language. It doesn't have as big of a following as Esperanto, but is unique and fun. Lojban has rougher learning materials than Esperanto and fewer translated works, but they are there (including "lo selfri be la .alis. bei bu'u la selmacygu'e", Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) I'm partial to Lojban myself as far as auxlangs is concerned, though I find it to sound very... harsh.

<comment><USER3> > In Esperanto nouns are male gendered by default, and a suffix is used to > make them female. (e.g la patro means "the father", and la patrino means > "the mother").

Unfortunately, that is indeed the common usage, but it would be equally consistent with the affixes and structure of the language to use patro for parent, virpatro for father, and patrino for mother.

i.e. the sexism is strictly speaking a cultural problem, not a language problem.

<comment><USER4> "Patrulo" would also work.

"Ino" and "ulo" are practically redundant, which makes it (I think) the easiest way to sneak in a masculating affix.

<comment><USER5> Like some other languages, one of the two is both specifically male in some contexts, and generic in others (which is why vir- exists, to clear up confusion in otherwise-generic contexts). English even retains some irregular words of this sort, such as dog vs. bitch, where dog is male in contexts where gender matters, but bitch is female in all contexts (at least when it comes to dogs).

Only one gender can get the shorter prefix, and there are only so many vowels (many people say that Esperanto already has _too many_ vowels). Real surviving cultures aren't so petty that they'd make all their words longer by two characters for the sake of "fairness".

As for -in* being two extra characters for explicit-feminine, it's just something you trade for regular conjugation with such restricted phonotactics.

Now, you could make the argument to ditch grammatical gender altogether, and I'd probably be on board with that. In most cases it does not shorten or clarify sentences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I blame Duolingo. Two months with their app brought me from not knowing any Esperanto to being terrible at it.

<comment><USER7> I never learned much from Duolingo. It makes learning languages incredibly boring, and my eyes would glaze over every one of the dozens of times I had to match/construct some variance of "der junge trinkt die milsch." I learned more German just reading English translations of Rammstein lyrics. Anything by Pimsleur is still not very interesting, but at least it can hold my attention.

<comment><USER8> Consider coupling Anki[0] with one of the many existing German decks out there[1].

I've been using it for Spanish[2] and I've found it to work extremely well. It has somewhat brought back my interest after Duolingo became repetitive.

[0] [https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)

[1] [https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/german](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/german)

[2] [https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/spanish](https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/spanish)

<comment><USER9> Anki is pretty awesome. I spent about 1000h learning Japanese with Anki so far. Together with Yomichan it's pretty much the ultimate learning tool, imho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another interesting artificial language is interlingua. Interlingua is very easy to learn for many people in Europe since interlingua words are taken from English, French, Italian and Spanish. Interlingua is a pragmatic solution for a common language across Europe. As a native spanish speaker I was able to understand about a thousand words in one or two hours studying it. Esperanto is like Haskell, interlingua is like C, one is pure with universal rules for derivation, the other is for using the language from the first day for communication.

<comment><USER11> Interlingua is the most intriguing conlang for me. It just seems incredibly practical. I'm a native English speaker with only high school french, yet I can pretty much read interlingua despite never having learned it. I imagine native romance language speakers are fluent readers right off the bat. That's huge.

<comment><USER12> Folksprak is another one like Interlingua, except based on the Germanic languages. One of the nice things about being an English speaker is you can pick up both pretty easily.

Another interesting one is Uròpi which tries to go back to the Indo-European roots of all European languages. It's not as immediately readable as Interlingua or Esperanto but not too bad either: [http://uropi.free.fr/comparaisons.html](http://uropi.free.fr/comparaisons.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used a bunch of Esperanto text sources to make a NLP program (figured it would be easier for a newbie to do since the language is so regular). The code corrected some grammatical errors in the Esperanto Wiki; I did a write-up earlier this month: [https://medium.com/@mapmeld/esperanto-nlp- part-3-correcting-...](https://medium.com/@mapmeld/esperanto-nlp- part-3-correcting-grammar-6d34f93bded1)

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's perhaps the only large-scale critique of Esperanto from a linguistic perspective, as opposed to a reactionary[1] or nationalist[2] one:

[http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/index.html](http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/index.html)

[1] ("NEW LANGUAGE? DON'T WANNA! WAAH!")

[2] ("The language I happen to know best also happens to be the easiest and best and most universal. Funny how that worked out, neh?")

This seems to be the biggest unanswerable criticism the Esperantists face:

"It looks like some sort of wind‐up‐toy Czech/Italian pidgin. And if there's one part of this world that _doesn 't_ need a local pidgin, it's Europe, which is not only the continent whose languages are best covered by online translation services, but also the home of the current de facto global lingua franca: English."

<comment><USER15> To be fair to Esperanto, when it was invented English wasn't nearly the lingua franca it is today, and the Internet didn't exist.

I don't think it's fair to critique it just because its original intent was as an auxiliary language. I would argue that intent failed. But it has native speakers, and it has communities who use it, and that itself justifies a language's existence.

<comment><USER14> Esperanto has nothing to be ashamed of as regards its history or current use, but if it's being touted as a modern auxlang which should be used more often, there are a number of problems its promoters have to come to grips with.

<comment><USER15> I don't think it's any worse than other auxiliary languages (which I think are all doomed to failure if that's really their goal as opposed to just building a community). I don't know if you can really attack the languages for "problems" if it starts being adopted to the point that it evolves like a natural language (as Esperanto has done). Anything "inefficient" or the like about the language will be changed to the point that native speakers find it suitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Learning Esperanto is my New Year's resolution. Are there any successful learners who have tips? Right now my plan is to get through duolingo then figure it out from there.

<comment><USER17> I really, really like Step By Step in Esperanto by Montagu Butler. It's the best introductory textbook of any language that I've read. It's composed of maybe ~1000 or so very short lessons (each is about a paragraph), so it makes it very easy to make a little progress every day even if you only have a couple of minutes before bed. There's a nice mix of reading, translation exercises, pronunciation exercises, and grammar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I learned about Esperanto from the novel series the Stainless Steal Rat. I was really disappointed with the audio books though, because I always pictured him a young guy, maybe a bit pompous or silly. But certainly not an old gruff grouchy guy. :(

I thought it was just awesome when 10 years later I found out Esperanto was real!

<comment><USER19> I thought it was neat that Esperanto was used in the books. I first learned of it in about 1980 from a book belonging to a friend's father, who was in the military. It was called 'Esperanto: The Aggressor Language", because it was used by the US Army in their training games.

I GM'd a game of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringeworthy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fringeworthy) where I had the UN exploration teams use Esperanto as a common language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interestingly, a project I have been tracking, called Monero, has an Esperanto-centric nomenclature for all of their projects, with Monero itself being the name for "coin"

<comment><USER21> A prominent wallet is called monerujo (ujo makes the word mean container of monero), and the plural form of monero is moneroj. Monero itself of course is mono + -ero, so something like particle of money, like breadcrumbs are to bread or a grain of sand is to the sand as a whole. I'm ashamed that I only recently discovered that was an intentional thing, though the name has caught a sliver of my interest for at least a year now.

<comment><USER20> Well noted. There is another project that I'm fond of in the Monero ecosystem called 'Kovri', which means "to cover, veil, or wrap". It is a router that is i2p compatible, used to further obfuscate personal information for those who require more anonymity than the traditional transactional security of Monero. There may be others, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Apart from entertainment, which other reasons exist to learn Esperanto or some constructed language?

<comment><USER23> Esperanto media and social gatherings are a good way to expand your cultural horizons. Esperanto speakers tend to hail from many different countries and cultures (especially non-English-speaking ones) so seeking out Esperanto media and groups is an easy way to filter for multicultural content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Esperanto is also the official second language of the Space Corps in Red Dwarf.

</comment><comment><USER25> Esperanto? Why not Klingon?

<comment><USER26> Esperanto has many many more speakers! (People joke about Klingon having more but it's not true.) Really accurate numbers are hard to come by but even based on estimates, it's no contest:

"Arika Okrent guessed in her book _In the Land of Invented Languages_ that there might be 20–30 fluent [Klingon] speakers."[1]

"In 2009 Lu Wunsch-Rolshoven used 2001 year census data from Hungary and Lithuania as a base for an estimate, resulting in approximately 160,000 to 300,000 to speak [Esperanto] actively or fluently throughout the world, with about 80,000 to 150,000 of these being in the European Union."[2]

In fact, Klingon has fewer _total_ speakers than Esperanto has _native_ speakers:

"As of 1996, there were 350 or so attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers. Estimates from associations indicate that there are currently around 1,000 Esperanto-speaking families, involving perhaps 2,000 children. In all known cases, speakers are natively bilingual, or multilingual, raised in both Esperanto and either the local national language or the native language of their parents."[3]

(Also Esperanto is much easier than Klingon, has much more material to read, and is spoken by a wider variety of people than just science fiction fans, though there are plenty of those too.)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language#Speakers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language#Speakers)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Number_of_speakers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Number_of_speakers)

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

EDIT: The "160,000 to 300,000" quote was from an older version of the Wikipedia page (I based this comment on an old comment of mine). The current version has various estimates, including Lindstedt's ballpark figures of "10,000 speak it fluently" and "100,000 can use it actively".

<comment> D-Coder Prof. Sidney Culbert of the University of Washington estimated 1 million to 2 million fluent Esperanto speakers about a decade ago. He is the only person I've heard of who has done actual research (he produced the number-of-speakers figures for some 100 languages for the World Almanac). Some methodology at [http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert- methods.html](http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html).</comment></comment></comment>


Young inventors prompt colleges to revamp rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ilfjD3zn6ImYtcZIVjuam7MztG8A?docId=1e12e21030c044938bb0f2d37e7c6130 <comment><USER2> It certainly makes for a difficult situation for students who split time between school and inventing. What would be the best way to go about finding out these boundaries? One could talk to the school lawyers of course but then you'd be on the radar. Anyone have some interesting stories regarding this issue and their own projects?</comment>


Launching a Company in Nashville with Clay Jackson of the Entrepreneur Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestartupslingshot.com/startup-slingshot/clay-jackson/ <comment><USER2> It's awesome getting onto Hacker News and saying, "Hey I know that guy!" (I interned with them last fall, amazing place! :)</comment>


Informal Python GUI toolkits overview - <AUTHOR> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2008-October/511375.html

<comment><AUTHOR> For those who don't know: Pyjamas is a working Python port of Google Web Toolkit.

To my eyes it looks like a hidden gem of open-source world, the post is from a guy who wrote Adobe AIR-alike overnight.

Of course it's not polished, ready for everybody, but for those who know Python and like to hack it could be a base for the next killer app.

</comment><comment><USER2> as for the guy's problem with the lack of HTML() in pygtk, there's pywebkitgtk: <http://code.google.com/p/pywebkitgtk/></comment>