The Fallacy of Seeing Patterns - <AUTHOR> https://blog.clevertap.com/the-fallacy-of-seeing-patterns/ <comment><USER2> The article starts with, "Human beings try to find patterns to explain the reason behind almost every phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that there is a pattern to rely on." The second part of the sentence is true, on further observation some patterns prove not to be patterns. However the first half, the attempt to explain _why_ we "find patterns" isn't convincing.

Instead, replace that phrase with this: "based on brain construction, we humans are predisposed to find patterns in data we encounter". This idea holds up to evolutionary scrutiny, organisms have mechanisms biased for self- protection and finding food and other resources through various forms of pattern recognition. IOW we find patterns we're neurologically capable of finding, particularly in regard to survival and reproduction.

Perhaps it's more accurate to assert we "find patterns" useful in making predictions about our present and future state within the environments we occupy. The fact that patterns may not turn out to be authentic is simply part of a process of refinement of pattern-seeking and improving value as predictors of future states. We may call a pattern an "explanation" but nothing is actually "explained" as shown by the fact we reserve the right to enhance or revise the "pattern", or what we insist it predicts, at any given time.

Edits: grammar and clarity

<comment><USER3> Our brains are basically built to do pattern matching. Though, truthfully, I find that is too abstract of a way of putting it, and in fact, people tend to associate "meaning" with "pattern" and thus you end up with statements like that one.

What I would say the brain is good at is finding patterns in terms of _identifying what is appropriate_ , with a particularly general understanding of "appropriate." There's a huge evolutionary drive for this. It's a bit disjointed to say wolves howl with each other because "brains detect patterns" and somehow find them useful. It's much clearer when we say that "brains encode patterns in terms of appropriateness", and thus wolves howl with each other because their brains know it is appropriate to do so. Just like germ's biology encodes that it's appropriate to wiggle harder in salty water, or how a person knows that certain words are correct in specific situations.

So our brains are more like engines for mapping patterned associations to feelings of appropriateness in context.

<comment><USER2> Appreciate your interesting thoughts on the subject. It certainly does appear that brain circuits are evolved to respond to patterns in data, for example, visual neurobiology has been studied extensively re: how visual systems can identify patterns in visual data.

Not exactly sure how you define "appropriate" in this context. Like an astronomically complex "neural net", the brain integrates "input" into pattern recognition, so it's a form of classification filtering that allows recognition of phenomena. On the basis of experiences, the classified patterns are bound to probabilistic prediction estimates, in turn informing choice of actions.

Though I know much less about wolf vs. human behavior, if analogous to human speech, howling is an action taken in response to evaluation of current environment, e.g., pattern of other wolf activity, presence of prey, etc. We might infer howling is "appropriate" under some condition, but really it's tautology, because it's equivalent to stating we observe howling under some condition. IOW the latter is a description that's complete and sufficient regarding what we "know".

It might be clearer to rephrase "appropriate" to "what is and what works", though "what works" is probably superfluous to understanding the process. IOW an attempt to "explain" the pattern recognition and response phenomena adds nothing to our knowledge, and in fact adds a level of indirection that tends to obscure the nature of process.

I should let it go at that because it's late and I'm tired. Saying more leads to multi-dimensional consideration of the nature of brain/body operations. If you are really interested in arcane and slippery meta-level or higher-order viewpoints I'm happy to say more, but better when it's earlier in the day and my head is clearer.

<comment><USER3> You're right in that it doesn't seem to add any information. It's possible that there's nothing more to learn, but it's also possible that the distinction would manifest in a subtle way that your current formalized understanding doesn't employ sufficient granularity to capture.

I guess I prefer the term appropriate because it more cleanly handles the case when the patterns "don't" match: by indicating that such situations don't exist. There's always a pattern to match, just as there's always some action that's learned (or instinctually) appropriate to any given situation.

If you're trying to see appropriate as "what works", then you're probably more strongly aligning the meaning with a rational process than what I intended, but I don't think you're wrong. Either way, it bears keeping in mind that our day-to-day language isn't really optimized for discussing these kinds of things, so there's bound to be multiple layers of confusion.

<comment><USER2> > Either way, it bears keeping in mind that our day-to-day language isn't > really optimized for discussing these kinds of things, so there's bound to > be multiple layers of confusion.

After decades-long study of human behavioral phenomena, I'm striving to articulate what I've learned in coherent written form. It's proving difficult to transform a non-linear multi-dimensional model into ordinary English prose that readers can comprehend. So I absolutely agree with your comment about limitations of ability to reduce mental models to common language.

The issues you bring up concerning formalized models that allow mapping behavior to determining factors are indeed of central importance. A model must permit sufficient granularity of analysis, at the same time covering sufficient generality without contradiction of the granular level. The hard part is describing the interactivity of this whole range of "levels", because the immediate and the distant elements are in fact occurring simultaneously and affecting the system under observation in real time. It gets convoluted when we realize the observation itself has effects on the observed behavior.

The problem I have with "appropriate" is the term's ambiguity. OTOH "pattern" implies there's a "match" or there isn't. (I know, patterns can be iffy, but then they're not quite a pattern.) Encountering a situation that's unclear, where no "matched" pattern is evident, immediately arouses alarm. Then we proceed with caution until observing enough that something "familiar" is gleaned, or observe/interact enough to establish a new pattern.

This state of "I don't know" is constantly implicit, patterns never match perfectly, details always vary. Most of the time that's overlooked because we accept a "close enough fit" to established patterns, that is, categorical classification is an abstraction that works adequately most of the time.

For example, often it's good enough to say "that's a tree" without saying what kind of tree. But other times it's important to distinguish a fir from a pine from a hemlock. Patterns are infinitely divisible, ultimately no two trees are identical, at some level of refinement abstractions break down and no longer apply. A thing is no more or less than its actual attributes. Though indispensable for human existence, abstraction is just a tool, pattern recognition is a built-in mechanism of abstraction, best to remember all tools have their limits.

I certainly would never say there's no more to learn, just that defining terms is only a tool for communication, not to be confused with the information we attempt to share. We get confused when we think we are "explaining" phenomena that we observe. In reality, it's less confusing and more informative to simply describe what we observe. Curiously, thoroughly observed phenomena are the things we tend to call self-evident or self-explaining, which suggests an explanation is only an expression of uncertainty about patterns yet to be adequately elucidated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >As an analyst, one needs to keep in mind that the Journey is more important than reaching the Destination.

I'm really not sure what to make of the last line. The goal of analysis should be to produce results that are actionable. In the end it should matter very little how they are obtained as long as they are accurate.

<comment><USER5> Accurate results are not necessarily actionable.

<comment><USER4> correct, but inaccurate results are never actionable.

<comment><USER6> If only that were true in practice. The stories I could tell about mistakes I've found...

At the end of the day, your point is 100% correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish the article was on Apophenia, it would be more fun.

Instead it's not clear to me who the target audience is. The phrasing makes it appear to be targeted at analysts and not their business partners. Assuming that to be the case, senior analysts are substantially beyond the level this article is written at (or should be).

Entry level analysts need close supervision to prevent them from making these, and other, mistakes. The examples the author draws (specifically cheese vs. infant mortality and the google flu approximations) don't do a good job at identifying when this issue arises. For the cheese example it's unclear if the phenomenon is real or not (the magnitude of the variation in infant death may actually be significant, if the cheese consumption variation was small then there would be a different story). The author does nothing to help the reader resolve this.

In the Google flu example it's only through hindsight (and colossal failure) that the author identifies the lack of validity in Google's model.

I agree 100% with his point but I don't think the article is providing much value because essentially the author is simply saying: "be aware, this type of problem exists out there..." without providing information necessary to navigate/resolve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> Can anybody reading this comment please enlighten me on good algorithms for optimum bin sizes for histograms? I have tried DW Scott's (1979) method. But are there any new better kid in the block?

<comment><USER8> I'm by no means an expert in the area, but i know that the Freedman-Diaconis rule ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedman%E2%80%93Diaconis_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedman%E2%80%93Diaconis_rule)) is used by the seaborn Python plotting library ([https://web.stanford.edu/~mwaskom/software/seaborn/index.htm...](https://web.stanford.edu/~mwaskom/software/seaborn/index.html)) which seems to consistently produce good results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our brains are wired to believe a plausible story easier than the one told by the base rate or stats... We need to be aware of the gaps our brain fills by itself. Definitely not easy, though...

</comment><comment><USER10> I really thought this was going to be a rant harping on object-oriented programming.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ctrl-F "apophenia"

 _0 matches on this page_

Welp, that's pretty sad.

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

<comment><USER11> Excellent link, but no need to poopoo a post because the author's vocab didn't include a word you expected.

<comment><USER5> Words and concepts exist for a reason. The author of the post could have turned up the (well researched and imho fascinating) antecedent work very quickly simply by googling his piece's title. That he did not makes me sad. Very smart people have previously studied most interesting problems. Ignoring their work is both arrogant and foolish.

Put differently, you don't learn much by talking, but you learn a lot by listening. You learn a little by writing, but you and your readers learn much more if you read up first. (I am not assuming you wrote this. The themes are general.)

If I wrote a piece that ignored a decades-old, well-known, fundamental result, not only would editors and colleagues slam me for it, I'd be ashamed of it myself. I went back and skimmed a few more of this author's posts and I have to say, they're not of a quality I would suggest to students. If they happen to read this, I hope they'll talk with someone who has a little formal training and revise their work.

<comment><USER12> Does joining the Nazi party qualify you as being very smart?

Wikipedia references work [0] that indicates Konrad's theory could not be validated empirically.

Do you have any references that validate what you are claiming as a well- known, fundamental result?

Can you give a definition of the theory?

[0] [https://www.thieme- connect.com/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-2007-999113](https://www.thieme- connect.com/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-2007-999113)

<comment><USER5> I'm tempted to point out that you went from zero to Godwin in record time. To assume that Konrad's party affiliation (likely a pragmatic choice at the time) either validates or invalidates his work is a bit absurd. The issue as I see it is one of the modern meaning, which is to say, a tendency to see patterns where none exist.

Nonetheless, let us see whether Konrad's work has been dismantled in more recent studies. A quick trip to PubMed suggests otherwise:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2800156/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2800156/)

Note that I did not claim Konrad's result was fundamental. I stated that if I ignored a fundamental result in my writing, I would be pilloried. Konrad's theory of prodromal schizophrenic ideation beginning with this tendency to see patterns where none exist is perhaps of interests to psychiatric historians, but it is not what I would call fundamental. I would claim that if the perfect term for a concept exists and is established, one should use it.

Apophenia, in its now accepted colloquial meaning, is an exceptionally handy shorthand for what the writer describes. Like other swell ideas (Gaussian processes, natural selection) it is so useful that it has accumulated several names (as a parallel, kriging and clonal evolution are alternate). Either would work fine here.

<comment><USER12> I didn't say his party affiliation validates or invalidates his theory. I said that a published paper was not able to validate it empirically.

The big issue I have is that it seems impossible to define a general concept of "pattern", such that one could claim it doesn't exist. If such a concept cannot be defined, then it is unclear what the concept actually means. The only thing I can imagine that could possibly fit would be if it meant that a person generates a theory and testable hypothesis that is able to invalidate the theory, and fails to find any supporting evidence when the hypothesis is tested, but still claims that the theory was validated in a way that is demonstrably false. Personally, I don't think psychiatrists are so invested in their patients that they would actually carry out such tests.

The article that you linked primarily recounts a single anecdote where Konrad seems to assume very much about his patient (also, it was unclear about the circumstances; do you know if the anecdote occurred during Nazi rule?). No mention is made of Konrad attempting to verify any if the patient's claims.

What result are you claiming as fundamental? The entire theory seems to be self defeating, as a pattern was suggested that has not been able to be verified.

<comment><USER5> The fundamental result behind the gambler's ruin is the human tendency to perceive patterns in genuine randomness. Rorschach blots, lotteries, slot machines, most betting endeavors all work because some humans will always find patterns in randomness. The result is easy enough as are the experiments (generate random noise from Uniform(0,1), project it onto a suitable manifold, hire some undergrads or local homeless people to look at them). That's not at all what I claimed Konrad originated. If you want an origin for this type of thing, de Finetti or Laplace or Descartes might be some candidates.

Konrad did give the phenomenon a catchy name and proposed that an increase in this tendency is an initial step in developing schizophrenia. If someone could actually establish this at a neurogenetic level that would be impressive and fundamental; I'm not aware of anyone doing so. I'd expect it to show up in a CNS journal and NIMH or WT to make a big deal if someone did.

The contrast between epiphany and apopheny is so striking, though, and so relevant to this topic, that it annoys me to no end when it is ignored. At the base of all of statistics is a desire to quantify how much of each is present in an observation, experiment, or cyclic series.

As you probably guessed, I am an applied statistician, not a neuroscientist. (I have serious issues with the way statistics are misused in neuroscience, for whatever that's worth). I do not, and cannot, claim that Konrad's theory is fundamental to that field. I do claim that anyone attempting to explain statistical reasoning to a lay public ought to internalize the contrast he proposed. Its setting as a proposed turn towards insanity is just a happy historical note.

<comment><USER12> >The fundamental result behind the gambler's ruin is the human tendency to perceive patterns in genuine randomness.

I don't think pattern recognition drives most gamblers. There are all kinds of other benefits, perceived or real, that are not accounted for in a purely monetary payoff grid.

I don't know how you can generate _random_ noise. I assume you are using a standard, pixelated display to read this message. Even if a random process was choosing what to display on that screen, there are only a finite number of configurations. Exactly what you are viewing now could be recreated by such a random process.

The problem that hasn't been addressed yet is that "pattern" is not well- defined. If a random display shows a horizontal line pattern, it is still a pattern by some definition (and you would have no way to distinguish it from a "intentionally patterned" display that has the same configuration).

<comment><USER5> Of course you could have an intersection between recognizable images and random noise. The odds of this occurring with any regularity are infinitesimal, hence the design of experiments. (Recall that there is nothing like a mathematical proof in the physical world -- at a molecular level, some water molecules are moving upstream at any given moment, but by reaching into a stream or tossing some objects into the flow you are taking a large enough sample to determine where most of them are going).

Since you're not going to get proof one way or another, all a well designed and experiment can do is give you evidence. This happens to be more valuable than just about anything else that science has come up with, but it isn't proof.

Which is why the gold standard for a result is replication in a large sample. I could have this very page generated by convolving couple of high entropy random streams. Is it likely to happen repeatedly? Not if the generator is any good. Same principle for randomized trials. You can end up with unbalanced arms (I'm proofing a manuscript where we had exactly this problem). But it's unlikely that they'll be consistently unbalanced across trials with sufficient sample sizes.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lyft Is Going To Be The Biggest Company This Year - <AUTHOR> http://alexstechthoughts.com/post/56872400922/lyft-is-going-to-be-the-biggest-company-this-year

<comment><USER2> Is there no car insurance question when the driver starts charging passengers for rides?</comment>


Why I think HTTP is Overrated - <AUTHOR>

(Note: this food for thought based on an internal dicussion)
Overall, I think we (web developers) are often trying to cram functionality that belongs to the Application Layer (actions, events, data flows, etc.) into Transport Layers like the "holy" HTTP Protocol. This forces us to model our logic into HTTP ways of thinking like CRUD, REST and passive states.
Take for example, HTTP status codes. When "My App" cannot perform an action because it couldn't connect to an external API, or it couldn't perform some Magic Sauce on an object, the error that results should belong to the Application Layer, and should not be any of the Transport Layer's business. Trying to figure out status codes for these kind of failures I think is wrong.
With new practices like SocketIO, HTTP becomes nothing more than a Transport Layer. SocketIO is responsible for making your browser-side communicate with the server-side (or any other node) as real-time as possible. It does so using whatever is available in the environment (XHR-polling, JSONP polling, Websockets, Sockets in Flash, etc.). Transports like JSONP cannot even cope with HTTP status codes, JSONP is an entire new transport on top of HTTP.
With applications becoming more complex, more real-time and more event-driven, I think we have to move away from HTTP thinking.
HTTP has been great, but let's not get sentimental. The web has moved on. <comment><USER2> HTTP is an application layer protocol and not a transport layer protocol. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the transportation work that networking entails - those jobs rightly belong lower in the stack.

If its error handling doesn't work for you, either write your own application protocol or use an existing one that fits your needs better.

</comment><comment><USER3> If HTTP is no longer relevant, what alternative do you suggest we build the web on?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying it's no longer relevant. I'm saying HTTP has become like other lower-level transport layers like TCP or Ethernet and that we should no longer build apps in an HTTP-centric way

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HTTP 418: You're a teapot.</comment>


Going Vegan Won't Save the Planet - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-10/climate-change-meatless-diets-alone-won-t-reverse-damage <comment><USER2> > farms growing crops have been just as destructive as those raising animals

This comparison does not make sense. What this reporter and the public, in general, fail to realize still in 2019, is that most of the farms producing crops are doing so to produce cattle feed.

The majority of agricultural fields are planted to feed livestock, not humans. Only a relatively small amount of crops goes directly to humans.

This is why eating plants directly is much less wasteful and more resource- efficient. If more people eat plant-based, much less land will be needed for crops, that's the point.

<comment><USER3> Farms grow crops that you can't eat, to feed to animals that you can.

Name the protein and fat sources that will replace meat. Tofu? We already grow soy for animal feed as a cash crop and it's pesticide and fertilizer intensive, and if people eat it directly instead of as an animal feed additive its production will grow at the expense of forests and soil health.

Nuts? I'm all for perennial woody agriculture, but the calorie/acre ratio is not great, and they are labour intensive for picking, netting, processing. I say this as a person who has an orchard of my own with hazelnuts and chestnuts in it.

The reality is that should meat be gone, we'd have to replace it with other foods, grown on a mass scale on agricultural lands. Animals can graze on products (grass, hay, soy, dent corn) that are marginal or useless for human consumption, and turn it into high protein, high fat calorie rich food.

There are populations that eat primarily vegetarian, but mostly they are also heavy on the dairy. But the moment you bring dairy into the equation you're also bringing in non-productive male calves -- in other words, veal. Similar story for eggs.

What we need to be doing -- along with reducing meat consumption some -- is coming up with more ecological ways to raise meats, and diversifying our meat products. Raising insects as feed stock for chickens, for example. Increasing perennial woody agriculture instead of cash crops, with small scale grazing of meat and dairy animals inbetween rows.

Cutting animals out entirely actually leads to a nutrient deficiency. The classic pre-green revolution family farm forms a kind of nutritive circle with manure, grazing, and rooting being an important part of soil health and maintenance. That didn't scale out in the last 100 years, but it's a model we need to look at.

EDIT: wow, the downvotes. Go vegans go!

<comment><USER4> How much protein do you think a normal person needs? Valter Longo recommends _".31 to 0.36 grams per pound of body weight). That comes to 40 to 47 grams of proteins per day for a person weighing 130 pounds, and 60 to 70 grams of protein per day for someone weighing 200 to 220 pounds."_ Why would you really _need_ meat at all if those numbers are correct?

[https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet-for- adults/](https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet-for-adults/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Normal person?

What about abnormal athletes, or people who do weight training?

How many peas are required if you want both a calorie surplus and 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per lb of body weight?

<comment><USER5> Seems to be 4g of protein per 85g (1/2cup) of peas. I weight ~72 kg (~160lb); recommendation is 1.5-2g of protein per kg, so I'd need 142g of protein per day on the high end, which equates to roughly 3017.5g, 71 cups, of peas daily.

Frozen walmart sweet peas are .84c per bag, each bag contain 4 servings, roughly $7.45 in peas per day.

For comparison, chicken breast @ 100g (3.5oz or .45 lb) is 31g of protein. I'd need 458g of chicken breast, around 2.25lbs. I can get it for $1.99/lb, but the better quality stuff is $6.99/lb, so $4.48 to $15.72/day. When I'm eating to put on muscle I buy the cheap crap and slow cook it and toss hot sauce on it.

Lentils are a better choice than peas, you'd probably need half as much. I'd rather eat chicken than copious amounts of a plant alternative, but I have started eating more lentils b/c they're not at all as bad as I thought they'd be. I hate peas though.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure how realistic eating 3kg of peas per day is. People would just get bored real fast, if they even manage to ingest that volume of food.

<comment><USER5> it would be awful. carbs are 11g per serving, I can't imagine how crappy you'd feel eating 71 cups of peas in a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Undoing this damage [...] includes less meat, less intensive and more > intelligent farming, and the application of new technologies, including ways > to produce high volumes of food for cities.

So "going vegan won't save the planet" by itself, but it plays a major role in doing so. Makes sense, especially if one considers that the production of meat presupposes the production of plant-based fodder worth about 10 times the energy.

The title is misleading, or simply clickbait. Then again, it helps tricking your meat-loving friends into clicking on it...

<comment><USER8> > The title is misleading, or simply clickbait. Then again, it helps tricking > your meat-loving friends into clicking on it...

I'd rephrase the latter part as "it helps tricking your meat-loving friends into sharing it without reading or analyzing what's true". Most other places on the web don't get into value or fact based arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Okay article, terrible headline.

No single action in isolation will save the world from climate collapse. The problem stems from countless actions taking place today that do not pay for the external cost of emitting carbon into the atmosphere. The defeatist attitude that something should not be done because it doesn't solve the entire problem need to stop in order for us to begin to make progress.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm going to say something very unpopular:

If your plan to save the world includes requiring all 9 billion people to fundamentally change their lives (especially if its perceived as a degradation of their current quality of life), it's never going to work.

Now I'll speak for myself. I will not go vegan, given the current offering of vegan foodstuffs. It just doesn't taste as good. I know it may be better for me than my current diet, and I know it could help decrease my overall carbon footprint. I still have no plans to do it.

Perhaps it makes me greedy. Perhaps it makes me an asshole in the eyes of the next 20 or so generations. But I look at it in the larger context - the ship has sailed, our course towards permanent (on a human scale) climate change was set by the industrial revolution and the speed set to flank by global increases to our quality of life.

So yeah, I frankly refuse to permanently sacrifice my quality of life to have no effect on the future.

<comment><USER11> Current generation here (I'm 20). There's a lot of steps you can take without decreasing your quality of life - is that cut of steak _really_ that important to your quality of life?

If, aware of the problem of climate change AND of the solutions, you choose to do nothing then you won't just be an asshole in the eyes of the next 20 generations, you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.

<comment><USER10> It's not just steak. It's tacos, hamburgers, roasted (or friend) turkey, pork chops, ham, BLTs, chicken tenders, milk, cheese, lattes, milk chocolate, white bread, clam chowder (any chowder for that matter), sushi... The list of non- vegan foods is quite long.

> you're an asshole in the eyes of my generation too.

I'm willing to accept that. The hate of a group of anonymous people is something I have no problems with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >Undoing this damage, while also managing to feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to populate the earth by 2050, is going to require lots of ideas integrated together.

Back of the envelope calculation: The global cattle population is around 1.5 billion. A cow eats between 8 and 16 Mcals per day, which is roughly 4-8 times what is recommended for an average adult (2 Mcals). If we diverted all those calories to humans we could feed 6-12 billion of them (neglecting protein, vitamin and mineral content).

<comment><USER13> Those calories are the way the world handles crop failures.

Let's assume that normally 2/3 of the grain calories are fed to livestock. Then we get a massive crop failure and global yields are 1/3 of expected. Price of grain goes up, farmers can't afford to feed their cattle so slaughter their breeding stock and the price of meat goes down. In the short term meat consumption goes up to counter-act the loss of grain calories due to the failure. In the medium term the smaller amount of livestock eating grain means humans eat a higher percentage of the grain grown. In the long term it's a new harvest and cycles repeat...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am wondering if there will really be a clever technical solution to climate change. Maybe we just need to come to terms with the fact that we have been living drastically above our means and we need to adjust our standard of living accordingly.

<comment><USER15> Having written patents and helped build a satellite now in orbit, I wondered about clever technical solutions until I finally concluded what many had long before me: the belief and hope for and implementations of clever technical solutions _cause_ our environmental problems.

Take electric cars. If their greater efficiency makes them a green solution then the Watt steam engine's greater efficiency should have made it one of the greatest sustainability solutions of all time.

On the contrary, it's the poster child of the industrial revolution. Each use used less coal, but overall coal use went up. Increasing efficiency is orthogonal to lowering total waste.

Making a polluting system more efficient pollutes more efficiently. Everyone who isn't an economist can see the results of our world: more efficient than ever and creating more total waste than ever.

Changing a system's goals, say from growth to enjoying what we have and from externalizing costs to stewardship, will change its outcomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Electricity, transportation, and manufacturing add up to about 80% of all GHG emissions. If you want your diet choice to have the biggest impact purchase locally produced and unprocessed foods.

<comment><USER17> I don't doubt this is true in the least, but do you have a source I could provide to others?

<comment><USER16> [https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas- emis...](https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions)

<comment><USER17> Hmm interesting, thanks. That is all GHG emissions though. I wonder if there are numbers around buying produce or meat at the store, how much of the GHG emissions tied to that product are agricultural vs the packaging, transportation, etc.

In other words, how big of a difference does 'buying local' have when buying food? Just wondering aloud, not necessarily asking anyone in particular.

<comment><USER16> I use to have the sources somewhere but I'm not finding them at the moment. So let's just do this as a mind exercise.

Take into consideration that while ships are tremendously more efficient, they travel significantly more miles. When comparing a single shipping container, a cargo ship burns 0.3 gallons of bunker fuel per hour and a semi truck burns 10 gallons of diesel. If you add distance into the calculation, a cargo ship from Brazil to NYC takes 122 gallons of bunker fuel while something produced locally takes 1/12 of that in diesel. Further more, bunker fuel exceptionally worse than diesel when comparing emissions.

This is just for the transport side of things too. The electricity production in many other countries produce an increased amount of green house gasses compared to the United States.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can't we just eat both? I eat vegan, vegetarian and meat dishes in moderation, and my health has never been better.

</comment><comment><USER19> Going vegan isn't the only option. Humans need to give more consideration to edible insects. (seriously)

See the history of eating lobsters for an example of how attitudes can change.

<comment><USER20> > See the history of eating lobsters[0]

Also, see lobsters themselves and ask why we are so freaked out about eating bugs.

Of course some people will refuse to eat both bugs and lobsters for the same religious reasons.[1]

[0]: [https://oceanpointinn.com/blog/?p=74](https://oceanpointinn.com/blog/?p=74)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Honest question: of all of the things people can do to make the world greener, why is it mostly (a subset) of vegans that look down their nose at other people?

You don't see people driving electric cars pulling up at red lighted and giving people shit for driving an SUV

People in middle America don't come into your city and shit on you for how far food has to drive to get to your ass.

People that grow their own food aren't protesting your grocery stores.

Chill out.

</comment><comment><USER22> IIUC, someone who flies to far away vacation destinations, drives a car and eats meat will reduce their carbon footprint the most by becoming a vegetarian. Myself I'd like to become a vegetarian because I eat too much meat and it's something I feel a little guilty about. But it's hard. And I'm lazy.

</comment><comment><USER23> Obviously one solution isn't going to solve the problem, but we'd get a lot further if the single solution people adopted was eating less/no meat instead of (say) not using plastic straws.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm very curious about lab grown meat how it'll change the balance of the arguments posed here.

Any chance, any of the readers here are researching on it actively?

</comment><comment><USER25> The article title is obviously click-bait-y.

I don't disagree with any of the technological solutions discussed: I think vertical farming seems neat, and hopefully promising, and I believe local farming with special care given to rotating crops and maintaining soil health is also important.

Given that I personally eat eggs and honey on a semi-regular basis, and am not fully vegan like my wife, I also agree with the idea of buying local eggs. But the article's actual contents do very little to support the title, since everyone knows no one thing is going to save the planet.

TL;DR Not just one change is going to magically save the planet, but let me take this technicality as a chance to call out veganism for more clicks.

</comment><comment><USER26> Going vegan is missing the point. There are too many people on this planet, period. Im not going to eat an unhealthy diet just so we can squeeze 3 billion more consumers into the economy. We need reproductive freedom and education in any countries that are above replacement rate.

<comment><USER27> Please, educate yourself before coming here to say things like that. Do yourself this favour.</comment></comment>


Boeing 737 Max: What went wrong? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47553174 <comment><AUTHOR> Boeing 737 MAX crash and the rejection of ridiculous data:

[https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/04/08/boeing-737-max-...](https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2019/04/08/boeing-737-max- crash-and-the-rejection-of-ridiculous-data/#comments)</comment>


Price is Right contestant who gave up a new car for $1,500 is a secret genius - <AUTHOR> https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2017/11/8/16623182/price-is-right-contestant-gave-up-new-car-for-1500 <comment><USER2> "Sure, there's a chance he could have flipped the Nissan Versa and made more — but this would have resulted in _further income tax hits_ , possibly pushing him to a higher bracket."

No, not unless he managed to sucker some buyer into paying _more_ than the MSRP that is his tax basis for the vehicle at that point.

What sloppy reasoning. There is no way the after-tax value of the car will be less than the $1500 (which, of course, would _itself_ have the same bracket- raising tax implications) he stuck with. He saves hassle, and perhaps some tax-agency scrutiny, but he's _not_ better off than if he won the car.

No wonder Vox didn't publish this tripe under their own masthead.</comment>


The Markdown Mark by Dustin Curtis - <AUTHOR> http://dcurt.is/the-markdown-mark <comment><USER2> Took a crack at making a CSS version:

<http://potch.me/markdown-mark.html>

<comment><USER3> Works in firefox, but it's broken in Safari and Chrome

<comment><USER2> missed a negative sign- all better!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that we could see a unified Markdown mark long before we can ever hope to see a unified Markdown specification.

(Most implementors feel Markdown could use some expansion — see MultiMarkDown, PHP Markdown Extra, Python Markdown — but Gruber is having none of it and stopped moderating the group, and no consensus has been reached about how to unify the various flavors, except that it can't be done without significant time investment and a rough consensus.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the TextMate 1 document icon for Markdown! :-) <http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/tm-icon-selection.png>

At some point several years ago, I was naming all my markdown files like foo.m↓, but after a while I decided that foo.mdown probably plays nicer w/ typical software. :-)

<comment><USER6> It's also similar to the solution I went with for the icon of my markdown editor, Macchiato:

<http://getmacchiato.com/>

<comment><USER7> I actually much prefer your logo, the arrow being part of the 'M' is (for me) more aseptically pleasing, too bad you didn't put yours forward as universal mark down symbol.

Edit: Having said that, I think Dustin's is probably easier to understand without explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome idea, but this one is better: <http://dribbble.com/shots/424152-Markdown>

<comment><USER9> It just looks like an arrow pointing down. Seems to general to me.

<comment><USER10> The top of the arrow is an M.

<comment><USER9> I get that. Doesn't change a thing: It looks just like an arrow if you are not looking for the M. It's cute, doesn't help, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It feels like an action button, like I'm going to download something. Something like <http://imgur.com/T2muH> seems simpler (forgive the crude 2 minute execution)

</comment><comment><USER12> For README's :)

          _ _
         | V | ||
         |_v_| \/
         MARKDOWN

<comment><USER13> Or maybe just: M↓

<comment><USER14> Better: Markdown.

<comment><USER15> Better: name the file README.md

<comment><USER14> Nice one. But we're I think we're talking about referring to Markdown from README (e.g. "our comments system supports Markdown"), not that the content of README is written in Markdown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's very nice. I do wonder if the downward pointing arrow might cause some confusion, since it could be misinterpreted as meaning "download".

</comment><comment><USER17> There's been some talk recently about somewhat ridiculous symbols representing attribution. Sometimes, a good icon or symbol works really well; other times less so. I think this is a nice idea and looks well-executed.

<comment><USER18> I don't think a concise symbol is needed. A Markdown area, when activated, should have some sort of sidebar hint to give basic examples of the syntax, and that takes enough space that Markdown can be used as a word. Recognition might be speedier for the spelled-out word, too. Before the user decides to input something, advertising Markdown support isn't very important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> He's very particular about how this symbol should and shouldn't be displayed. Don't think that's a bad thing, but it's interesting.

<comment><USER19> I'd say he's almost too particular for an M with a down arrow in a rounded rectangle.

However, what's the corner radius? What's the width of the stroke on the M? The depth of the point of the arrow or the width of its sweep?

It seems like he's got the spacing and sizing of line-width elements specified to a 'T' (or an 'X' as the case may be), but can we typeset the M in, say, Times? Can the down arrow be a chevron instead?

Particular, but if he's going for particular he's taking it nearly far enough. :P

<comment><USER20> Thanks, I was confused by the strange mix of very clear specs and no specs while referencing the absent specs, too.

Bullet points 1 and 2, for instance:

        1. Do not change the aspect ratio of the rounded box enclosure.
        2. Do not change the border radius of the rounded box enclosure.

Neither of these properties were defined as far as I could see. Perhaps it's one of those cases where you're expected to "see" it from the graphics; I typically don't operate well that way. :)

<comment><USER21> also there's at least two more measurements missing from the spec graphic--the distance between the M and the arrow and the distance between the arrow and the right edge. i assume those are both X, but it doesn't actually say....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's hard to get a clearer, simpler symbol than that, and it's the creation of an 'open' symbol like this that I predict will play a big role in driving adoption of the Markdown format on a wider scale than is seen today.

</comment><comment><USER23> I propose this unicode version:【M↓】(graphics aren't always appropriate)

<comment><USER24> Those brackets render fine on Mobile Safari, but not on Firefox on my desktop.

<comment><USER23> It's because your desktop system lacks an appropriate font.

The GNU Unifont, which is GPL licensed, support all the basic unicode characters (that's 65,536 characters!) and can be downloaded from here: <http://unifoundry.com/unifont.html>

If you use Debian (and possibly in other Linux distros), you can just install the ttf-unifont package.

<comment><USER25> While this may be true, people can't be expected to go tracking down and installing a font just to see the characters that don't happen to be rendering in your site / app. Another solution is required, such as normal ascii brackets.

<comment><USER23> Or you can use webfonts.

In any case, I agree, but the proper solution should be for OSs to come with fonts to cover that Unicode spectrum. It eliminates much of the utility of having Unicode in the first place if you can't safely use them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This would be really great as an addition to the icons that already ship with Twitter Bootstrap, something like that would really speed up the adoption of this as a standard.

</comment><comment><USER27> I guess design things happen on dribbble before HN.

<http://dribbble.com/shots/423934-This-Means-Markdown>

<comment><USER28> In fact, I only made this a more serious project because of the response I received on Dribbble.

<comment><USER29> Project looks really exciting, Dcurtis.

My question is on the adoption on text based interfaces, like HN input. Using html entities … ...

Html entities save a better explicit defination in web. Image rendering will get you there, building another context will definitely ease adoption. What do you think?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If anybody else had trouble finding the license, it's at <https://github.com/dcurtis/markdown-mark/blob/master/LICENSE> (as dcurtis has been kind enough to tell me on twitter).

</comment><comment><USER31> If this is an icon for Markdown, then I suppose this must be an icon for Markup: <http://cl.ly/1I0N0s2a0d3x0D1k0523>

<comment><USER32> :-D

I guess all jokes eventually come around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I saw this on Dribbble a few weeks ago:

<http://dribbble.com/shots/423934-This-Means-Markdown>

Another nice one:

<http://dribbble.com/shots/424152-Markdown>

<comment><USER34> The second one is much nicer than Dustin's

<comment><USER28> At first glance, the second one might appear to be a better mark. However, if you don't know what it stands for, or that the top part of it is an M, the graphic is just an ordinary arrow. It doesn't accomplish the primary goal of the design.

It definitely looks nice, though.

<comment><USER35> I didn't even notice that the top formed an M until you mentioned it, so there you go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Serious question - do a lot of apps still use markdown? Haven't encountered it in a while.

<comment><USER37> I've noticed quite a few Mac and iOS apps using Markdown lately. If anything it seems to be gaining adoption. Of course this isn't based on any actual data just my own observations. Perhaps a Windows user can chime in and comment about it's growth from their perspective.

I'd love to see it being used in more blog commenting systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Now imagine a fancy logo for HTM↑

</comment><comment><USER39> Perfect. What is there more to say, really? You made the world a little better today.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is the "something using Markdown" Dustin's blogging engine?

Anyways, it's great to see this come from concept (Dribble) to a detailed mark/brand. What other languages have their own mark?

</comment><comment><USER41> I am having trouble with the specification: it is defined in terms of "the M glyph", but a glyph is not a graphic. Does the specification fix a particular font?

<comment><USER28> The M icon in the Markdown Mark was created out of a modified version of the M from Gill Sans Bold (you probably should not try to recreate the mark using Gill Sans because of the modifications to the crotch on the M).

<comment><USER41> Thanks. I'd like to approximate this mark using Metapost.

<comment><USER28> That would be very cool. If you do, please add it to the repository and submit a pull request.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Interestingly, this resembles the Gmail logo to me.

</comment><comment><USER43> A slight mod from Nicola Armellini's

<http://i.imgur.com/pQzzk.png>

Thought it would look better like a button or badge.</comment>


Verified seL4 on secure RISC-V processors - <AUTHOR> https://ts.data61.csiro.au/publications/csiroabstracts/Heiser_20.abstract.pml <comment><USER2> From the abstract:

> We have been working for a number of years on _time protection_ , the > temporal equivalent of memory protection, as a systematic timing-channel > prevention. Our experience on x86 and ARM processors is that they lack the > mechanisms to do this completely. RISC-V presents an opportunity to get this > right, and I will report on my experience working with the RISC-V > Foundation's Security Standing Committee to get the required mechanisms into > the processor specification.

Last I read, for ARM and x86 they were exploring page and cache coloring techniques for memory allocation. I'm curious if the mechanisms they'll recommend for RISC-V are in this vein (i.e. cache partitioning), or something else entirely.

<comment><USER3> Their implementation of time protection is presented here: "Prevention of Microarchitectural Covert Channels on an Open-Source 64-bit RISC-V Core". [https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02193](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02193)

They use cache partitioning, but that's not the whole story. Temporal fence instruction, fence.t, is introduced.

In their first try, they cleared L1, TLB, branch history, and flushed pipeline. They discovered this is not enough, and covert timing channel persisted.

In their second try, in addition to first try, they cleared cache replacement state, cache arbitration state, and TLB replacement state. This eliminated the channel, achieving Shannon channel capacity of zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Given that hypervisors are essentially 4th generation microkernels plus some hardware emulation slow-path code to handle the cases where the OS kernel isn't paravirtualized to use upcalls, it would be interesting to see RISC-V boards that shipped that boot directly to seL4 from ROM as their firmware. All OS kernels for the platform would be paravirtualized.

L4 provides a pretty minimal and stable interface as a paravirtualization target. If a software ecosystem arose where a hypervisor was always present, you could get away with never implementing all of that attack surface/potentially buggy code in the hardware emulation portions of the hypervisor. The Alpha AXP showed that this sort of arrangement can be very high performance. Hopefully the RISC-V virtualization extensions would provide features (like shadow registers / separate register bank) for very light- weight transitions into and out of hypervisor mode.

In a sense, the Alpha AXP's firmware (PALCode) was a minimalist hypervisor that only supported a single guest OS. The PALCode always handled the lowest- level details, such as lowest-level interrupt handling, exception handling, and TLB / cache management. All OS kernels for Alphas (VMS, Windows NT, Tru64, Linux, etc.) were in a sense paravirtualized for the PALCode, although there were different versions of the PALCode for running VMS and Tru64 / other POSIX-y kernels. My guess is that Windows NT for Alpha AXP ran on the VMS PALCode, given Dave Cutler's role in both the NT and VMS kernels.

RISC-V booting directly to seL4 would look something like UNSW's L4/Alpha project. L4/Aplha was a port of L4 at least partially ran as Alpha AXP PALCode, replacing the normal firmware. Of course, you couldn't run VMS, Tru64, etc. on top of L4/Alpha, but L4Linux is a port of Linux to run on top of L4.

<comment><USER5> This would be also great secure OS for chipset microcontraller (like Intel ME running Minix OS).

<comment><USER6> Except that it would still be delivered as an opaque binary blob. The GP's suggestion isn't much different from Intel's proposal for abstracting drivers into EFI Runtime Services, and many people see those as a security risk (in a "you don't control your hardware" sense, not necessarily in a "it has bugs" sense).

<comment><USER5> Outside CPU, you have microprosessors inside the chipsets (like Intel ME), network cards, mass memory devices, etc. They all have binary blobs. Better that they don't have bugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This was presented in 2020-01, where proof was "due Q1'20". FYI, Proof got finished in 2020-06: [https://microkerneldude.wordpress.com/2020/06/09/sel4-is- ver...](https://microkerneldude.wordpress.com/2020/06/09/sel4-is-verified-on- risc-v/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Earlier post about SeL4 verification:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23464187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23464187)

Also, my previous comment linking to how SeL4 performed the verification:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23475748)

> seL4 hey used Haskell to create an model which was then their specification > to help with the formal verification process [1][2].

> [1] > [https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1159842.1159850](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1159842.1159850)

> [2] > [https://www.sigops.org/s/conferences/sosp/2009/papers/klein-...](https://www.sigops.org/s/conferences/sosp/2009/papers/klein-..).

</comment><comment><USER8> This seems really ideal for ECs and TPMs. I think it would be lovely to see at least one device this decade with no 0day hardware rootkits during the product life.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you validate freelancer identity? - <AUTHOR> When hiring direct freelancers/development mainly. Without using something like Upwork or toptal how do you validate identity? I'd like to move away from these marketplaces but I'm curious how others reliably take on the direct risk? <comment><USER2> Same as with any business: By having a look at their website and other publicly available information (e.g. their GitHub profile).

</comment><comment><USER3> If it's not on a site that manages a profile I normal check credo360.com to see what they have done or even to go as far as to ask them to sign up there and handle the transaction there</comment>


Ask HN: How do you hack vacation planning? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to setup a vacation and after a little searching, I'm interested in seeing if anyone has an effective shortcut for planning / booking an all-in vacation, preferably online, but maybe a travel agent is the best way to go.  There's just so much between airlines, hotels, activities, meals, etc, planning has become a great big pain in the @ss.
Any tips or resources would be greatly appreciated.
And advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Hi,

Not sure this is something that can be hacked (yet) but travel has a few distinct steps: Discovery, Planning Booking. From your post it sounds like you are still in the discovery stage so you can use sites like TripAdvisor, Gogobot or Desti (there are a lot of others) to discover. Unfortunately I have found that a lot of these are complicators and not simplifiers. Once you know where you want to go and what you want to do you can use OTAs or companies like Hipmunk (flights) and AirBNB for accomodation booking. There are a few companies that offer complete trip booking including activities etc. but these are typically limited to specific locations. I know of a few around Europe. The other question is what type of trip this is? Sounds like you are looking for a vacation with multiple stops which makes the process more complicated but also fun. If you know your destination and type of trip I might be able to give better pointers. We are working on a much better solution at OlSet that will simplify the process but we will not be ready for prime-time until Q1 2013.</comment>


Cloudnumbers - running your app in the cloud in 5 minutes - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-bloggers.com/in-4-steps-your-application-including-r-is-running-on-a-cloud-computing-cluster/

<comment><USER2> love it</comment>


Ask HN: What is some timeless knowledge for programmers / software developers? - <AUTHOR>

I've been doing programming for almost 18 years and learned over a dozen languages and probably hundreds of APIs and libraries over the years. I no longer remember most of it mainly because most of it is replaced by something new. I am at a point where I feel resistance to learn a new framework or a library just because its new. Because i know where that new framework going to end up in a couple of years. I guess its a occupational hazard that our skills needs to be rewritten multiple times during our careers.
So i've been contemplating about learning things that last for decades. Something that does not go away out of fashion in few years. Math is definitely one of it. Once you learn Trigonometry, you are set for next few hundred years at least.
In terms of programming, what do you think is timeless knowledge and time spent learning it is a time well spent ? <comment><USER2> If you are starting to become more senior it's probably time to start considering programming problems from a higher/different perspective: the 0th problem in tackling a development assignment is often actually more economic than technical: learning to start asking yourself the question if the task at hand is actually worth to implement or maybe could be substituted with something else than a purely technical solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> use assertions before you use debuggers.</comment>


Bistring – Bidirectionally Transformed Strings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/microsoft/bistring <comment><USER2> I was confused about the intended use case but there's more information in the docs folder: [https://github.com/microsoft/bistring/blob/master/docs/Intro...](https://github.com/microsoft/bistring/blob/master/docs/Introduction.rst)

Apparently it's for machine learning where you want to pick out a span/substring in the original text but your model can only accept normalized text (I am guessing for stuff like transforming out-of-vocabulary words into UNK/unknown tokens). This solves that problem by keeping track of the index mapping between the original text and transformed text.

(picking out spans is very common task in NLP, for example see the SQuAD dataset: [https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD- explorer/explore/v2.0/dev/...](https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD- explorer/explore/v2.0/dev/Normans.html))

<comment><USER3> Yeah that's the idea. I'm not sure exactly how to communicate the purpose of the library in a few words. Possibly some animation that shows selecting spans of text and highlighting the corresponding one in the original text.

The formatted documentation can be viewed here btw: [https://bistring.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Introduction.html](https://bistring.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Introduction.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat related: Boomerang [https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~harmony/](https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~harmony/) Discussed here at least once: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565874](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=565874)

The title made me think of Boomerang, this looks like it has rather different use cases in mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting, but the readme doesn't say much about use cases. What is a big application that could benefit from this?

<comment><USER6> Normalizing strings for comparison, but storing the original source version of the substring that matched or was extracted from the normalized version, useful for search boxes and such. Not sure what _their specific use case_ is, but it's something I've implemented before, so I know it _has_ use cases.</comment></comment>


PyTorch adds new dev tools - <AUTHOR> https://ai.facebook.com/blog/pytorch-adds-new-dev-tools-as-it-hits-production-scale/ <comment><USER2> Despite being on the FB-naysayers' side, I think that scientific and engineering work that FB outputs is amazing and greatly adds to our (tech) community. I use several of their frameworks on a daily basis and look forward into dabbling with the new stuff.

<comment><USER3> PyTorch is the best thing which came out of FB (I love it). However, their company's core products are IMHO a cancer on today's society

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pytorch is amazing and Facebook's open source contributions to AI are great.

However, tooling for deep learning in general is not ready for industry grade technology. Many bugs could be prevented by dependent types, but compilers are not there. Also, debugging models feels like alchemy and random changes until it works. In addition, in production systems, rigorous testing is not a standard. The closest thing I have heard of is Tesla's data engine and AI system, they do have unit tests and a shadow mode. Of course big companies will have similar technologies for critical systems, but it's not as standardized as testing in software engineering.

</comment><comment><USER5> This stuff looks super cool. I'm a fan of pytorch and can't help but add a shameless plug for the ML experiment management tools I built - [https://www.wandb.com/blog/monitor-your-pytorch-models- with-...](https://www.wandb.com/blog/monitor-your-pytorch-models-with-five- extra-lines-of-code)

</comment><comment><USER6> The `nn.BatchNorm` CPU inference speedup is a Big Deal™ to us.

Thanks for the contributions everyone, and glad to have bet on PyTorch a few years back.</comment>


Decentralism Against Terrorism (2001) - <AUTHOR> http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/against-terrorism.html <comment><AUTHOR> I found this whilst browsing his site looking for an offline copy of Cathedral And The Bazaar.

It's an astute (and as turns out, quite accurate) prediction to have posted hours after the tragedy of 9/11\. The rally cry for concealed weapons feels a little discordant however. Though he does address his views on gun control elsewhere on the site ([http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/](http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/))

</comment><comment><USER2> Ugh. I don't like the way he panders to an uninformed US population under media manipulation and points at Palestinians, equating them with terrorists.

Respect for ESR minus minus.

<comment><USER3> You may not remember that, but when he was writing this TV showed Palestinians singing and celebrating in the street the attacks.

<comment><USER2> While personally I don't think causing, much less celebrating any beings' suffering is a good thing, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that across the world there were many people in many cultures who felt the US had crossed many lines for many decades and had something coming to it. The normal Palestinian people feel the brunt of immense US support for Israel on a daily basis and it is understandable within that light that this rare event gave rise to celebration.

I will also point out that you used the phrase "the TV showed" ... if you look up influences on and historical bias of US television networks, the net change in US international military presence after the event you may find more than one way to explain the visions the US population have been and continue to be spoonfed through the likes of CNN, Fox News, certain computer games and the US military heroism of Hollywood, which are so predictably brought out every time certain topics are discussed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When your only tool is an oversimplified, outdated, bigoted take on libnerdtarianism, every problem probably does look like a shooting range and a "brown people only" lane at the airport.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a natural skeptic, I would question whether this was really written "hours after" 9/11\. Were we referring to it as "the 9/11 terrorist attack" just hours after? I don't know.

The Illuminati invoking pyramid icon throws up red flags for me. Maybe there's a more benign reason for it? Maybe he's an antisemitic conspiracy theorist? If not, why would you invite that kind of perception?

<comment><AUTHOR> I assumed the note at the top was an addendum to give some historical context for those coming across it at a later date (as we have :). This isn't some random guy spouting questionable views on the internet, Eric Raymond is a respectable (as far as I'm aware) hacker, author of the famous book, The Cathedral And The Bazaar.

Not sure why he's chosen a pyramid insignia, but in and of itself it is a benign symbol. Only when one attaches conspiratorial notions to it (as you have) does it take on more meaning.

<comment><USER5> I'm not questioning his software guru status, I'm questioning whether or not he wrote this hours after 9/11, as the historical context states. "the 9/11 terrorist attack" is part of the text, not the note at the top.

The Swastika is a similarly benign symbol which people also associate with anti-semitism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the Internet Archive version from Oct 10 2003.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20031004023100/http://www.catb.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20031004023100/http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/against- terrorism.html)</comment>


Show HN: BigVideo.js - <AUTHOR> http://dfcb.github.com/BigVideo.js/ <comment><USER2> Nice work but one comment: it's not clear to me why this is a jQuery plugin. In the setup you simply install a constructor (ie new $.BigVideo()) and that's it.

Unless there's more to it than that IMHO you'd be better served making it independent of jQuery. As popular as jQuery is, it's not a given.

<comment><USER3> Things from BigVideo that would be varying degrees of PITA to roll your own, pending the browser support:

      * measuring window size
      * creating a slider slider component without full <input type=range support>
      * having appropriate snap points on that slider
      * event model normalization
      * pub/sub
      * detecting when an image asset has loaded
      * $(body).prepend() equivalence: insertBefore() can throw if someone's HTML has a comment comment directly inside the body tag (typical with HTML5 Boilerplate code)

Sure it'd be _nice_ to have this be plain old JS, but as a developer you're signing up for a lot of pain that is merely just plumbing required to build your unique component. If BigVideo was targeting IE10 and everyone else, then we'd have a much better looking story in the code.

<comment><USER4> The exact reason I use jQuery for projects that aren't jQuery projects myself. The years of work and testing that have gone into jQuery make it an invaluable asset when working with Javascript and if you were to do what jQuery and dozens of contributors have been doing the past 5 years that would be one hell of a project.

This couldn't have come at a better time. I've just been tasked with creating a landing page with full-screen background scaling video and this plugin will make my life easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To get this effect by simply dropping in YouTube or Vimeo videos check out this jQuery plugin <http://okfoc.us/okvideo/> or <http://github.com/okfocus/okvideo>.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another guy posted about the tubular plugin as well.

One thing BigVideo.js has is controls you can customize and I have an example where you can do autohiding of content on top of the background. <http://dfcb.github.com/BigVideo.js/example-playlist.html>

Also BigVideo.js is built on the Video.js api, so those methods are available to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really hope the websites that implement this also supply an off-switch, it looks great but detracts away from the text and reduces readability.

<comment><USER7> I was worried about that too, it looks cool, makes the text hard to read because its distracting, and ultimately might result in a bunch of pages which get less useful.

<comment><USER8> IMO, it probably wouldn't be best to put this on a page with content is the main factor. This is sort of cool for branding/marketing and can have a big impact in that arena.

<comment><USER9> Then, perhaps, it shouldn't do so on its project page and instead link to a demo. I found it extremely distracting just reading the project web page at all, never mind all the sudden fan noise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> a better, more compatible alternative would be: <http://www.seanmccambridge.com/tubular/>

upload your video to youtube, and use Tubular to serve it. +save bandwidth

or modify the JS to use an flv swf on your server.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really, really cool. Did not know about that one.

Can you add custom controls? Like in this BigVideo example below (click one of the playlist buttons on the left): <http://dfcb.github.com/BigVideo.js/example-playlist.html>

Another benefit is the BigVideo.js is built on the Video.js api, so all those methods are available to you.

<comment><USER10> BigVideo.js would be a FAR better alternative; if you can just fix the browser compatibility issues :)

<comment><USER11> What makes BigVideo far better?

<comment><USER10> mute ambient videos, play series of videos (playlists), image alternate for touch devices. These are not available out of the box on Tubular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great job, man.

However, this project and another that is on the frontpage of HN reminded me that projects like these should always come with a checklist of browsers that support them, even though it is meant to be implicit that all browsers should support the projects.

I don't know if there's a Travis CI-like solution available to solve this task, but it's be useful and relevant if there is.

</comment><comment><USER13> Nice work, but boy do I hope that I never see anything using this on the internet.

<comment><USER14> As with all flashy (pun intended) web technologies, they can be effective if used with good taste and in moderation.

For example, the Path landing page uses a well designed background video and falls back to a simple image if the video isn't available: <https://path.com/>

(Incidentally the background video didn't load for me every time. Straight link to the video: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.path.com/v2_home/background....](https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.path.com/v2_home/background.m4v))

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It automatically takes over the screen of my iPhone when I navigate to it. Great for desktops, and a killer way to Rickroll iOS users.

<comment><AUTHOR> My recommendation is to detect phones through a combo of screen size and touch support and serve a background image or color instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's pretty cool.

Now I'm still wondering how to autoplay a mp3 on page load and on subsequent clicks on a button. I've tried tinkering with an audio tag, never worked. The future is now. Kind of.

<comment><USER17> I use <http://buzz.jaysalvat.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Excellent choice for default footage. I recognized it immediately: <http://www.wildoceanfilm.com/>

I love that film. Own the BluRay.

</comment><comment><USER19> Set up a vm to check compatibility and this will take off. I've been using alot of plugins that overheated my laptop and this somehow doesn't do that so very nice

</comment><comment><USER20> Working on Chrome 21.0.1180.79 on Ubuntu. Looks really cool too. Great demos!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tested on Firefox 14.0.1 and it is working for me. Which version are you on?

<comment><USER21> 14.0.1 - OSX, it starts the video as a tiny square box. if I leave the tab and come back it'll take up the full screen.

[update]: this is amazing great work!

[update]: here is a screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/Mogn3.png> hopefully having the firebug inspector open helps...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll have to do some more work on getting it to work right on Firefox. It is a little different since FF doesn't have native h.264 support so it goes to a Flash fallback. I wanted to make it easy, so that you would just have one source video, rather than do the .ogg/.webm cascade. So...I'll have to work a little more on getting the flash fallback player to scale better/faster.

<comment><USER22> Running Nightly (Firefox alphas) and it works here. The fallback to Flash explains why it's so laggy here on OS X though, making it a distraction rather than a positive addition to the site.

Still, I like the idea behind it and I hope these things can be solved in later versions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Holy smokes, you chose a cool video to demo it with.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is beautiful. I plan on using this, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER25> Nice, I like it.

Does BV.getPlayer().play() work on mobile?

</comment><comment><USER21> doesn't work in firefox, the video plays in the background but as a tiny box instead of being full screen

</comment><comment><USER26> Horrible on a slow internet connection

<comment><USER27> For ambient video, you could slow it down (say 0.5x or 0.25x) if it buffers too much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Works great for me. Chrome 21.0.1180.79 m.

Nice work. :D

<comment><USER29> Not on linux though. Wasn't working for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> nice work! running great on chrome 21/win7

</comment><comment><USER31> Does not work on Chromium 18.0.1025.168 on Ubuntu, but does work on Firefox 14.01 Ubuntu.

Also, video does not resize when browser size changes, leaving content missing.

Nice work tho.

</comment><comment><USER32> nice man. this is a really awesome plugin that would be super useful for my new site I'm looking to launch soon.

Have you noticed any effect on site performance in terms of speed with this plugin installed?</comment>


Polygames: Improved Zero Learning - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.09832 <comment><AUTHOR> Open-source zero learning framework available at [https://github.com/facebookincubator/polygames](https://github.com/facebookincubator/polygames)</comment>


InMobi Settles FTC Charges for Tracking Consumer Locations without Permission - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/06/mobile-advertising-network-inmobi-settles-ftc-charges-it-tracked <comment><USER2> So, let's see, a $950k penalty for illegally tracking "hundreds of millions" of consumers' locations works out to ... ($.0095, $.00095)/consumer.

I'll bet InMobi really feels chastised now! Thanks, FTC; you sure showed them!

<comment><USER3> I guess the question is, how much value did InMobi get per customer from those acts of illegal tracking?

<comment><USER2> Do you honestly think it was on the order of half a cent per, or close enough that this penalty has teeth?

Several months ago, Verizon was fined $1.3m for their UIDH "super cookies". That worked out to _half a minute_ of their revenue for 2015 — for a program that had been in place _since 2012_. These penalties are meaningless. They're press release fodder for the company paying them, to be able to say to people, "Gosh, I guess we were naughty. We're really, really sorry. See how contrite we are? You can totally still trust us!"

The lawyer who negotiated that settlement for Vz probably got a bigger bonus than the fine the company paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > InMobi was subject to a $4 million civil penalty, which was lowered to > $950,000 "based on the company's financial condition," the FTC said in a > statement issued Wednesday, without elaborating.

Why should the penalty be reduced based upon InMobi's finances? If the fine bankrupts them, all the better!

Edit: Honestly, I don't know why companies can't be fined based upon a percentage of revenue taken over, say, the past year. A fine of 10% yearly revenue would actually make these bastards sit up and pay attention.

<comment><USER5> Revenue based fines aren't necessarily always going to be fair because some companies focus on revenue more than others, and it's not fair to penalize them for that.

My guess as to why they lowered the fine is because the FTC doesn't want to appear as though they are deliberately bankrupting companies in efforts to simply make them go away. Things could get way too political at that point, and people could start trying to influence the FTC to bankrupt their competition.

<comment><USER6> What is the difference between stealing money from one's pocket/locker, and stealing information about someone? In both cases, one is doing it for profit. The only difference is that in the latter, you utilize the information to make money.

The amount of fine appears ridiculous. The FTC might as well could come out and say that there's no violation here as we do not want to appear as being on a witchhunt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If it is doing this in the US and got caught what kind of information must they be collecting in other countries where the laws are not so well defined and/or enforced?

</comment><comment><USER8> We updated the submission link from [http://www.infodocket.com/2016/06/22/privacy-ftc-says- mobile...](http://www.infodocket.com/2016/06/22/privacy-ftc-says-mobile-ad- provider-tracked-hundreds-of-millions-of-consumers-locations-without- permission/), which just quoted the FTC's press release.

</comment><comment><USER9> _[...] InMobi collected nearby basic service set identification addresses, which act as unique serial numbers for wireless access points. The company [...] then fed each BSSID into a "geocorder" database to infer the phone user's latitude and longitude_

The author of this article might need a new technical advisor.

<comment><USER10> Why exactly? It says that the company was inferring location based on nearby wireless networks. Does your quote not accurately reflect that?

<comment><USER9> 1) _geocorder_ , with a random "r"

2) you don't plug in a BSSID into a geocoder, you would use something like wigle.net to go from BSSID -> lat/long

<comment><USER10> 1) Typos happen

2) That's why geocoder is in quotes. It's a system that performs an operation similar to a geocoder.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


On Reddit, 'The Button' is stressing people out - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/thebutton?

<comment><USER2> Stop pushing the damn button [http://teespring.com/greys- forever](http://teespring.com/greys-forever)

</comment><comment><USER3> The premise seems to be based on the button in the tv show Lost, where that code "had to be" entered in before the timer, but no one was sure what would happen if they didn't.</comment>


Kalashnikov Rifle Changed the World. Now There's a Kalashnikov Kamikaze Drone - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/02/23/kalashnikov-assault-rifle-changed-world-now-theres-kalashnikov-kamikaze-drone/ <comment><USER2> Suicide drones, nice, what spin! It's a cruise missile drone as championed by the US. A cheap cruise missile drone, but a cruise missile drone nonetheless. Is this a good thing? Probably not. As I can see certain Western governments giving them to "freedom fighters" to fight dictators not sympathetic to their agenda and the like. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

<comment><USER3> _" as championed by the US."_

It has 6 pounds of explosive vs a tomahawk at 1,000 lbs. I would guess the use cases aren't very similar.

<comment><USER4> Well, if we designate the use case as "blow something/someone up", that's similar enough I would think. In fact, dont see how the use case of 1000lbs of explosive would be any more constructive.

<comment><USER3> Who said either was constructive?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Drones will be the key to guerrilla resistance of current armies. Until they deploy swarms themselves.

I also never understood why guerillas never deployed ballon-lofted nets to counter air power.

</comment><comment><USER6> non-paywall-link: [https://outline.com/VN2pP6](https://outline.com/VN2pP6)</comment>


Can we build a Starship with our current technology in the next 10 years? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Can-we-build-a-Starship-Enterprise-with-our-current-technology-in-the-next-10-years?share=1 <comment><USER2> YES.

Remember that the only condition for a star ship, is to be able to have thrust all the time. Even a very small thrust is enough to reach relativistic speeds, and therefore make the travel-time human-scale. FOR THE TRAVELERS!

Now, the problem is that unless the travelers include the trillionaire that will finance the projects, nobody will want to finance a travel, where the travellers reach the destination after their dead, and can give back news only after the payers' children are dead.

But travelling one year on board to reach Proxima Centauri (4 light years away) wouldn't even be tiring for the traveller.

(Ok, perhaps we could pay for this destination, after all, we'd get news about landing ten years later).

<comment><USER3> NO.

There are two limitations you did not take into account. The first is the rocket equation, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsiolkovsky_rocket_equation) . You need a thrust with a very high exhaust velocity - much higher than what an ion drive can produce - to get to relativistic speeds. Otherwise something like 99.999999999999% of the ship's mass will need to be propellant. I worked it out a few weeks ago at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281830#12282399](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12281830#12282399) . The ratio of payload to propellant for ~0.8c using engines 10x better than an ion engine was 1 to 74 quadrillion.

The second is to have enough thrust to get to relativistic speeds for the human passengers in their lifetime. A engine with an ISP of 8000 s (about 10x better than the current best ion engine) would get there eventually, but long after any crew died of old age.

To get 4.25 lightyears in a year requires a continuous acceleration of a good sized fraction of a gravity. We simply don't know how to do that, outside of theoretical proposals like Dyson's "Super" Orion. Quoting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_\(nuclear_propulsion\)) :

> At 0.1c, Orion thermonuclear starships would require a flight time of at > least 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri, not counting time needed to reach > that speed (about 36 days at constant acceleration of 1g or 9.8 m/s2). At > 0.1c, an Orion starship would require 100 years to travel 10 light years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've already sent 5 unmanned probes meant for interstellar space, one of them Voyager 1 is in interstellar space. Sending actual people is a tremendously hard thing to do, sending probes is much easier, we already have they're just moving so slowly it will probably take 300 years to reach Alpha Centauri.

<comment><USER3> Voyager 1 is going about 17 km/s. It's the probe with the fastest speed away from the sun.

Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light years away. That trip would take about 77,000 years, were Voyager 1 pointed the right direction.</comment></comment>


Flow Hive: the high-tech honey extractor - <AUTHOR> http://www.designer-daily.com/flow-hive-the-amazing-honey-extractor-51226

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flow%20honey&sort=byPopularity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=flow%20honey&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)</comment>


[pdf] Comments on 'PILE OF POO' Derivatives: Feedback on PDAM2 October 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17393-wg2-emoji-feedback.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> The linked document contains a summary of comments on various proposals to the Emoji subset of Unicode. The entire thing is definitely worth a read, but a notable excerpt:

1F979 FROWNING PILE OF POO: Question on the justification for encoding this character, and whether it will encourage the encoding of other emotions on PILE OF POO; request to remove character.

MICHAEL EVERSON: This character is damaging to both ISO/IEC 10646 and the Unicode Standard. It is bad enough that the ESC came up with it, but it beggars believe that the UTC actually approved it. Organic waste isn't cute. The existing PILE OF POO character was added for compatibility with Japanese telco sets. It is a pity that Apple followed Softbank rather than KDDI in its reference glyph, since a coil of dog dirt with stink lines and flies is surely the only proper semantic. The idea that our 5 committees would sanction further cute graphic characters based on this should embarrass absolutely everyone who votes yes on such an excrescence. Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC? Will we have to encode a neutral FACELESS PILE OF POO? As an ordinary user, I don't want this kind of crap on my phone. As a representative of the National Standards Authority of Ireland, I have to wonder what possible good could come of encoding such a character. Bullying, perhaps? Requested change: Remove this character from the PDAM and reject its encoding.

ANDREW WEST: I'm concerned that this character will open the floodgates for an open-ended set of PILE OF POO emoji with emotions, such as CRYING PILE OF POO, PILE OF POO WITH LOOK OF TRIUMPH, PILE OF POO SCREAMING IN FEAR, etc. Is there really any need to add a range of emotions to PILE OF POO? I personally think that changing PILE OF POO to a de facto SMILING PILE OF POO was wrong, but adding F|FROWNING PILE OF POO as a counterpart is even worse. If this is accepted then there will be no neutral, expressionless PILE OF POO, so at least a PILE OF POO WITH NO FACE would be required to be encoded to restore some balance. I recommend removing FROWNING PILE OF POO pending further study and public consultation on the need for additional PILE OF POO emoji.

<comment><AUTHOR> Demystified abbreviation soup:

WG2: [http://unicode.org/wg2/](http://unicode.org/wg2/)

ESC: Emoji SubCommittee of WG2

PDAM: Proposed Draft AMmendment ( [http://www.unicode.org/faq/alpha_soup.html](http://www.unicode.org/faq/alpha_soup.html) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Obviously the solution is to allow composing poo + face or face + poo like how we just got face + skin tone modification characters. This pushes the issue down to implementations. ;-)

On the point of emoji composition, wtf were they thinking with their half assed skin tone only stuff. Why can I have all these wonderful accurate skin tones, but my beer is always pale golden, and symbols such as the check mark and heavy cross out, are only green or black and black or red respectfully, to say nothing further of the panorama of colour in the symbolic box character sections and how irritating it is I cannot select which colour I want my zodiac symbols.</comment>


IGoogle shuts down in 24 hrs: Grabwall saves your settings & gives a facelift - <AUTHOR> http://www.grabwall.co

<comment><USER2> Has facebook sign up and own local brew sign up but no Google sign up, somewhat missing the iGoogle target audience.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Grabwall takes the igoogle news feeds and presents them in a great format to consume and curate content.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice! :)</comment>


Ask HN: Blockchain: Is now a good time for smart contracts? - <AUTHOR>

Hello Hacker News,
I'm a young entrepreneur and programmer. I go to HN more than 10x a day to keep up with new libraries and startups, and to stay relevant. I'm addicted to the viewing of a huge number of posts that get added daily to this site.
I'm posting on HN today to see if the project I've been working on for the last year is relevant in today's tech and consumer climate.
I have gained a growing interest over the past years in Bitcoin and it's blockchain, especially with recent news from Nasdaq regarding their planned prototyping of some sort of exchange system utilizing the blockchain.
As smart contracts are noted as being the "game changer" that the blockchain brings with it, I was curious how many of you had an actual interest in this space. Have you tried playing with smart contracts? Have you any thoughts regarding how the idea of smart contracts could change or supplement various business processes?
I'm really seeking to validate and scope out the market of the idea and driving force behind my new startup, Contracted (http://contracted.bitmountainfund.com).
I've been running BitMountain Asset Management (a quite small algo-based investment shop in NC, USA), but I've been seeing more and more of my time and interest being spent on my new startup Contracted, and the coolness and innovation it would add to the world of Bitcoin technologies.
I'm interested in what you all have to say regarding the "smart contracts" space and my questions above.
Thank you for your feedback on this question. <comment><USER2> In my opinion, the more esoteric uses of the blockchain, like using it as a platform for smart contracts, will require a very large investment of time to realize, but have practically limitless potential to advance the world and create new revenue sources.</comment>


Ask HN: What RSS feeds/newsletters are you subscribed to? - <AUTHOR> My top follows:
The Orbital Index, for weekly updates about the space industry: https://orbitalindex.com/
Bitcoin Optech, for weekly Bitcoin news: https://bitcoinops.org/
Lil'log, for well-written content on topics in AI: https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/
The Gradient, for the same reason: https://thegradient.pub/
Slate star codex, no explanation needed: https://slatestarcodex.com/
I also subscribe to releases for Python, Julia, Rust, Matrix, Jami, LBRY, and a few others.
And a shameless plug for my own blog: https://jarbus.net
I use newsboat as my RSS reader, lovely way to check the day's feed from the terminal. <comment><USER2> [https://feeds.pub](https://feeds.pub) is an RSS reader built for sharing feeds.

Here are the feeds I subscribed: [https://feeds.pub/timqian](https://feeds.pub/timqian)

<comment><AUTHOR> Never heard about this before, thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://buttondown.email/cryptography- dispatches](https://buttondown.email/cryptography-dispatches)

</comment><comment><USER4> cool</comment>


Ask HN: Favorite note taking/wiki software? - <AUTHOR> I was looking into org-mode, but it seems to be a bit overkill for my needs at this point.
I've read a lot of comments and threads here on HN, but I couldn't find ones newer than 5 months on some of the software I was considering.
I want something I can use easily for university (Research papers/essays/ rich notes), and creative writing projects(I may pick up scrivener eventually)
I am particularly interested in Treesheets & Tiddlywiki. OneNote is nice, especially for annotation/drawing but Microsoft is kind of creepy. I could encrypt, but I also prefer open source.
Has anyone tried those all/others and have a favorite to recommend? I will probably write most of my notes for school on paper then transfer them, but for big projects, I prefer something more useful than like Microsoft word.
Thank you!! <comment><USER2> You might be interested in an open source project I am working on [https://github.com/bryanph/Geist](https://github.com/bryanph/Geist).

</comment><comment><USER3> When i was still in college, I would use Google Docs + Dia. Google Docs has really good shortcut keys for doing outlines and anything drawn on a board, I was able to replicate using Dia (again, using the shortcut keys). I'd export the Dia drawings to png, add then to the Google Doc, and at the end of class, publish it directly to a Blogger site that was setup to share the notes with the rest of the class.

Today, I do use OneNote almost exclusively because I'm not sharing the notes and they auto sync across my devices. Having OneNote open on my desktop, open the same note on my phone, take a picture of a white board and insert it, let the sync happen, and it is on my laptop is a very common scenario for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I might just reorganize my very messy one note

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been using nvAlt[1] for the past 3-4 years. It is well designed and it is easy to use. All the notes are in text format and can be synced via dropbox (so you can pick up these notes in mobile).

I use Evernote[2] to store notes with images.

[1]: [http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/](http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/). [2]: [http://evernote.com/](http://evernote.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From my perspective and usage Treesheets has the right features and more importantly the right scale and learning curve. I don't use it every day, nor for everything I could possibly do with it... but for the things I do use it for, I feel like it works really well.

I also have DevonThink but to be honest I lack the obsessive drive it apparently requires to make good use of.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's super cool. What do you use Treesheets for in particular?</comment></comment>


Git team workflows: merge or rebase? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/10/git-team-workflows-merge-or-rebase/

<comment><USER2> IMO rebase is great as a cleanup tool right before merging the feature branch into master, especially squashing meaningless commits. I don't think squashing everything down to a single commit is a good idea though, since separate commits provide some context to the changes, and can come in handy in git blame.

On my personal project or when I'm the only person working on a branch, I only ever rebase, since that's easy to do and I like my tree clean. In a team environment though when you have different people contributing to a branch, merge might be preferable just because the branch can get screwed up if not everyone on the team is on the same page. I would probably only rebase right before merging into master and only do merges before that.</comment>