The Melancholy of Don Bluth (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://filmschoolrejects.com/the-melancholy-of-don-bluth-1be72847b858/ <comment><USER2> If you didn't grow up with Bluth's work and only know his studio's output from the later years (the unyielding torrent of direct to video Land Before Time sequels)...you really owe it to yourself to watch his studio's earlier stuff. It came at the moment where he had just struck off from Disney, disenfranchised by the output of the other major animation houses, and has his clearest vision.

 _The Secret of NIMH_ is, IMHO, one of the finest animated movies ever made, but _An American Tail_ , the original _Land Before Time_ and _All Dogs Go to Heaven_ are all masterpieces in the own and couldn't really be matched in terms of narrative and animation excellence until the early Pixar movies. They definitely have a distinct aesthetic and a certain style of animation and storytelling unique to the production house.

They lost their way somewhere, I think it was Rock-a-Doodle, and the studio just started hemorrhaging money and losing connection with their audience. Their last two major gasps were Anastasia, a beautifully animated film with a poorly targeted audience demographic and Titan A.E., an ambition mixed-media project, which apparently ran out of money (among other problems) during production and resulted in some hilariously bad computer generated graphics at the end but I think stands up better than Disney's _Treasure Planet_ response.

In the end, the studio floated themselves on cheaply produced, but child friendly, direct to video sequels of _The Land Before Time_ , which is notable as being an unbroked series of sequels dating from 1988 to 2016 which at least has had the advantage of being a series of characters I can share with nieces and nephews who also grew up with the same characters...almost like Star Wars.

<comment><USER3> Treasure Planet was a labored planning process starting soon after (and some sources claim before) The Little Mermaid, so it's not entirely fair to call it a response to Titan AE. Convergent evolution at work.

Also, if you are going to point fingers at possible reasons that Bluth's studio failed, its hard not to point more directly to the interesting but failed experiments that were its LaserDisc games division (Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, ...).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It was a good read. I have been saying how I can't stand how kids are served at Disney and Nick. Every show has someone kissing someone or some other story-line that is good for teenagers but for kids 6-12 year-olds they just see it as "Not Kiddy."

Parents are side notes and they are either dead or your on an awesome Cruise Ship School without your parent. Also everyone is always happy happy or they are sad because they are disappointed. If it is sad and disappointed the plot line is 100% they get what they wanted and now are happy no matter if it was due to bad choices by the main character.

I don't let my kids watch much TV and I just watch YouTube Science videos with them at night (Why is Science and Social Studies the enemy of Math and English and must be only studied every other year or not at all for K-7 grades?) Books usually have better story lines, but I don't have the time to read to them more than about 10-15 minutes :(

<comment><USER5> Disney produced animated TV shows aimed for kids are the worst. The pattern is really set:

1\. There is a problem.

2\. The problem is fixed with either "pixie dust" or a "Mouse ka Tool". Both fix problems magically and immediately. They require no work, sacrifice, or even waiting from the characters

Pixar's rule of "Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating" applies here

Hopefully with Lasseter at the helm things will change drastically not just for Disney movies, but for Disney TV shows as well.

<comment><USER6> > Disney produced animated TV shows aimed for kids are the worst

Gravity Falls season 1 is perfectly fine children's programming.

<comment><USER5> It is to a degree. It's also for a different audience and purpose. I should have been more specific. I was referring to Disney shows targeted towards really young children as educational like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or Jake and the Neverland Pirates

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great little article. I was just talking to my mom the other day and I mentioned that I never forgot the day we were in the McDonald's drive-thru and I somehow convinced her to spend the 5 extra bucks to get the Land Before Time on VHS. I haven't thought of those movies in the article in years, and never knew the same team was behind them. I just remember being a kid and knowing that _something_ was different about those films that separated them from other kids movies, even throughout the entire '90s. It's definitely an aesthetic that sticks with you, I can attest!

</comment><comment><USER8> The Land Before Time _really_ stuck with me. My parents went to a banquet dinner at some hotel, and all the kids were kept in an adjacent room with some baby sitters. I remember them turning the lights down, wheeling in the TV and VCR. I remember us all sobbing. I don't remember the exact storyline, but I remember the mood. One of my most vivid childhood memories.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1) My first thought on reading this: 'LaTeX never seemed all that melancholic to me..." took a second to get reoriented

2) A lot of his films were favorites of mine in childhood, and I didn't know until much later that they shared a creator. Having said that, two of the disney movies mentioned here as not being so great, "The Fox and the Hound" and "The Great Mouse Detective," were also childhood favorites.

3) For anyone thinking "they don't make them like that anymore," I'd highly recommend you watch and then make it all the way through "Adventure Time." The Ice King's arc is as sad and haunting as anything in Bluth's works. Season 9 begins with the effects of PTSD, complete with auditory hallucinations.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I was young, Don Bluth movies, along with few others, were placed by my mother on that high shelf I couldn't reach of movies that made me sob uncontrollably and spend the rest of the day depressed.

I highly recommend them.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you publish an article that uses embedded media, please don't do it like this. Not one of the media embeds in this article is accompanied by anything resembling a useful byline or caption.

</comment><comment><USER11> No mention of Space Ace or Dragon's Lair!

These were very formative to me.

<comment><USER12> Here is more information on Dragon's Lair/Space Ace/etc. than you knew you wanted: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnPOQr1pxY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnPOQr1pxY8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I liked this, but the repeated 'fuck you for X' took away from the quality of the writing.

Which is a shame - still good, but would have been really good without it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Bluth brought Dickens to the 80s. I grew up to his movies (and arcade games!)... I don't think I'm a worse person for it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great post!

I am reminded how much these films contributed to my learning to embrace change and loss. I think I would be much more inclined to run from these things if it were not for these films.</comment>


The Condé Nast salary transparency spreadsheet - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YqdJCJ3LmtVIzxsgOj-YhE8fGBQ3zhuEkWp-_og2HEE/htmlview <comment> 52-6F-62 Speaking as someone in the publishing industry: this is interesting. I hope it to be enlightening—

Where did this come from? And I don't see any obvious efforts at protecting the submission of data. The Google Form is wide open. Do you happen to know if they're taking any measures to ensure the accuracy of the data? I ask because some of the bonuses and salaries are shockingly high for the publishing industry. (Of course, Condé Nast is large but just the same)

<comment><AUTHOR> This was posted on the Nieman Lab website, under "What we're reading", here: [https://www.niemanlab.org/](https://www.niemanlab.org/). And you ask good questions.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there anyone on the Gmail team on HN that can help me - <AUTHOR> I am having a rather large problem with our server's reputation after someone did something very bad.  I cannot find anyway to resolve our problem with gmail. <comment><USER2> Google's spam algorithms are truly awful. I've had this problem on the receiving end for years. Reporting legitimate email as "Report not spam" does nothing except move the email out of the spam box. I find myself whitelisting legitimate emails over and over and over again, some of them verbatim copies of previously whitelisted emails (ie, "Your backup is completed" emails).

Google thinks its algorithms are better than me at detecting false positives on my own email account, and this is enragingly false.

Now, I periodically check all my spam to catch all the false positives. I used to get extremely pissed about this, but nowadays I just allocate time every day to the task, admitting defeat.

The Google spam algorithm simply has a mind of its own, it will not listen to suggestions.

I guess my replying here is aimed at letting you know you are not alone in your frustration.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google does not use RBLs from other sources. They have their own reputation algorithms, and there is nothing you can do to request that your domain be removed.

However, the algorithms are self-correcting. If the bad behavior has been corrected, you will automatically stop being spammed by Gmail after enough time has passed. As to how much time that takes: Google ain't sayin' and I have never succeeded in getting an answer from them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its been a week. I had to cancel a vacation because of this. I just cannot believe we live in a world where we can have one incident with an employee that stops many of our students from being able to communicate with their instructors and we cannot talk to a lot of other colleges. Its just a sucky life.

<comment><USER3> I know. It sucks terribly, and Google just doesn't care. It's total bullsh*t.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is depressing. I cannot help but think that the same strategy will be applied to AI, IoT, and cars. It just is so inhuman. I don't care about scale, there is a certain level of handshaking and communication that needs to occur.

Worse, people don't get why I cannot simply call someone. That's how it works in everything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It might not just be gmail that assigns you a bad reputation, but other mail domains: directly or via stubborn anti-spam databases.

I'd just forget it and move my mail (or the sending side thereof) to a different network, if at all possible.

Working with numerous parties to resolve some reputation issue is going to be time consuming and the whole time, you have disrupted e-mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is only with google at this point. we are not on any spam lists. I hate how one provider pretty much owns the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Erase erase erase

<comment><AUTHOR> ?</comment></comment>


Did Trade with China Make U.S. Manufacturing Less Innovative? - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2016/12/did-trade-with-china-make-u-s-manufacturing-less-innovative <comment><USER2> The cost(time and materials) to innovate in software is way smaller than physical things. My bet is a lot of that innovation shifted there.</comment>


Finally a Nomad - <AUTHOR> Show HN:How to quit your job and become a digital nomad <p>We offer free hack-guides to becoming a digital nomad and are adding more valuable content on our blog, podcast, and the new book that is out for pre-order https://finallyanomad.launchaco.com :) <comment><USER2> Step 0: write a book about how to be a digital nomad

Step 1: spam about it

Step 2: PROFIT!!!!!

</comment><comment><USER3> I've also heard I can become rich investing in real estate in my spare time.</comment>


Flexible Revenue Model vs. MVP and the Two Kinds of Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://read.reddy.today/read/4/flexible-revenue-model-vs-mvp-and-the-two-kinds-of-entrepreneurs <comment><USER2> The problem is support and marketing aren't free so you might be able to use price to buy market share etc. but if you can't cover support costs you run into trouble.</comment>


Jobs gave millions to charity, publically criticised for not doing enough - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.news.com.au/money/money-matters/steve-jobs-secretly-gave-millions-to-charity-publically-criticised-for-not-doing-enough/story-e6frfmd9-1226650636880 <comment><USER2> How is 50 million a large number when refering to Steve Jobs? Last I heard Bill Gates had donated about 37 billion.</comment>


Facebook Saved $1B Dollars By Building Open Sourced Servers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/28/facebook-open-compute/

<comment><USER2> This is not Open Source in the traditional sense of OSS, but it is rather open source platforms (hardware, specifications, technologies and software) through the [open compute]([http://www.opencompute.org/](http://www.opencompute.org/)) initiative.

The article is very scarce on detail, but let's take Zuckerberg's word for it that they saved 1 Billion. I am curious if that is simply the energy saved or also less tangible benefits like better cooperation and integration.

Also, how do you arrive at a comparison? It is not as if there wouldn't be progress without the Open Compute initiative. Let's hope they bring out the numbers in more detail</comment>


YouTube Defense: Viacom "Secretly Uploaded" Content, And They Tried To Buy Us - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18/youtube-viacom-secretly-uploading-content/ <comment><USER2> Viacom has already failed in this lawsuit. If YouTube can prove conclusively that Viacom uploaded the videos then tried to sue YouTube then there is no way they can win.

<comment><USER3> At a company the size of Viacom it's not hard to imagine that one hand (marketing) was not talking to the other (legal).

If it were the legal people uploading content to plant evidence, that's another matter, but I don't think have one department out of sorts with your legal position necessarily undermines the case (tenuous as it was to begin with).

By analogy, think of a software company which has one dept. that steals its tools, does that preclude the company from defending its own IP? Morally, maybe, but I don't think you waive your legal rights by breaking the law by default.

IANAL but I've never heard such of such a principle.

<comment> brown9-2 Even if one hand is not aware of the other, what they did goes far beyond innocent and accidental uploading - it sounds like a pretty systemic policy:

 _It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube._

<comment><USER4> All of that can be explained by attempts at viral marketing. They don't want be 'outed' as the source, not to sabotage YouTube but because the viral kids won't promote BigCo.

I don't know if this will be Viacom's position, but it's one that Google should be prepared for.

<comment> brown9-2 It wouldn't matter. Viacom is a single legal entity. It can't both willingly participate in an act and then sue someone for allowing the act to happen.

<comment><USER5> IANAL, etc., but I believe you have it exactly right. The principle in question is the Clean Hands Doctrine (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_hands>).

In short, an entity can not seek an equitable remedy if they themselves have acted in bad faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is that really a defense, outside the court of public opinion? Not every Daily Show clip was uploaded by Viacom, and it's not infringement when Viacom does it.

<comment><USER7> If they win the case, the amount of money they get will be highly related to how much "damage" youtube did to them.

The fact that they found it valuable to have their content on youtube undermines their arguments that youtube is causing them grievous harm.

<comment><USER8> Is that really true? Seems to me like the monetary awards in copyright cases these days have very little to do with actual damages; see the recent P2P filesharing cases where the damages were over a million dollars for a double- digit number of files shared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think what this case highlights best is the power of a little bit for free. Viacom knew that user uploaded clips on YouTube was a valuable marketing strategy, despite being at odds with current copyright law and potentially hurting the strength of copyright in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER10> I hope this lawsuit goes on because Hulu was obviously an created for the purposes of the lawsuit. I.e., it was created to destroy the argument that the content companies brought this on themselves because they are slow to innovate and to bring their content to the net where their clients want to see it.

When this lawsuit ends, Hulu will likely switch to a pay model for many shows.

<comment><USER11> This has nothing to do with Hulu.

Two things.

1) Viacom removed its shows from Hulu earlier this month. [1]

2) Hulu is going under paywall, announced few months ago. [2]

[1] [http://paidcontent.org/article/419-viacom-taking-its- laughs-...](http://paidcontent.org/article/419-viacom-taking-its-laughs-off- hulu-march-9-last-day-for-stewart-colbert-/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/hulus-paywall-on-the-way- afte...](http://www.businessinsider.com/hulus-paywall-on-the-way-after- nbcucomcast-deal-2010-2)

<comment><USER12> Hulu isn't going behind a paywall. They are providing content that they do not currently offer behind a paywall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> link to the document released by TechCrunch pertaining to the case [http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18/read-the-just-unsealed- docu...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/18/read-the-just-unsealed-documents- from-the-youtubeviacom-case-here/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Apparently many of the videos Viacom is suing over were uploaded by them as a marketing ploy. I don't see any merit in this lawsuit.</comment>


British scientists develop a genetically modified virus that kills cancer cells - <AUTHOR> https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6405481/British-scientists-develop-genetically-modified-virus-kills-cancer-cells.html <comment><USER2> Here's a much better article on Oxford's website: [http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-11-20-modified-virus-used- kill...](http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-11-20-modified-virus-used-kill-cancer- cells)

</comment><comment><USER3> Vice did a special on utilizing viruses to kill cancer 3 years ago. AFAIK the technology was flawed then, it would need improving upon for this to represent a true breakthrough.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18498646)</comment>


Ron Paul speaks against SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/presidential-candidate-ron-paul-slams-sopa-111229/ <comment><USER4> I could come up with a list of things that I don't like about Ron Paul personally, and a few things that worry me politically.

But none of that really matters.

He's the only candidate that I feel I could actually trust to stick by his campaign rhetoric, and the only one I would trust to actually defend the constitution.

Ironic, given that we have a constitutional scholar in the White House and a historian running for the GOP nomination.

Ron Paul is wrong on some things I care about, but so is Obama, and certainly so is Newt or Romney. I think I'll vote for the lesser of a dozen evils, and go with Paul.

<comment><USER5> > I could come up with a list of things that I don't like about Ron Paul > personally, and a few things that worry me politically.

That's completely OT and not really related to your post in particular but what's with the disclaimers lately? Are we becoming the sort of community where you need to preface every thought with a bow to group's believes? Are we so stuck in the "singaling game" [1] even here, on a niche website and clearly among people smart enough to get the gist of a comment?

Or is it just me? As in I'm just noticing those more often?

[1] <http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/against-disclai.html>

<comment><USER6> HN's voting "thingy" is obviously engaging a middle-ground positioning, especially when it comes to political views. Moreover I suspect that arguments are taken more serious when putting some "I try to be aware of my biases" upfront.

Especially among (more or less) non-political communities like this one an argument starting with a"I am an independent voter" premise is most likely going to get a better reception than a "I have been for years a dedicated follower of politician x". Not that I am a fan of this, quite the opposite - but there are other sites much more suitable for political "confrontations".

<comment><USER7> I'd hesitate to describe HN as non-political. The majority of HNer's are very pro-capitalist and pro-business from what I've observed, which makes sense given the community's focus on start-ups. The popular political sentiments that you'll find on Reddit are _very_ different from those you'll find on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is great about Ron Paul's stance is that I am confident based on his continual display of principled politics that if elected he would stand by this. Who cares what the other candidates are tickling our ears with. Paul is the only one who I feel would actually stand up to the Movie Industry.

<comment><USER9> I used to be interested in what he had to say until I saw this: [http://murphysbride.tumblr.com/post/14876601176/bacon- beer-a...](http://murphysbride.tumblr.com/post/14876601176/bacon-beer-and- boobs-afternoonsnoozebutton)

I don't know how credible this is but it leaves me doubtful.

<comment><USER10> _I don't know how credible this is but it leaves me doubtful._

Without checking out each quote, I believe the answer is that it's generally accurate, but you need to understand what these represent.

First, there's the normal crap about taking things out of context...

But more specifically, these are decidedly _not_ things that Paul ever said or wrote. These are things that somebody else wrote in a newsletter that was using Paul's name. That doesn't mean that you should let Paul off the hook. It means that what you should be concerned about is not that he's a racist ass, but that he may have a lapses in judgment, as here where he allowed someone else to use his name without monitoring closely how they used it.

It's worth noting, though, that there are some very strong parallels here between Paul's misstep and President Obama. Consider Obama's association with the explicitly anti-American, anti-Semite minister Jeremiah Wright, and with the communist and terrorist Bill Ayers. Indeed, in my opinion, Obama comes out much dirtier in this comparison, because he refused to disavow those other people, and particularly Wright, who is acknowledged to have served (still?) as a mentor to Obama, shaping his thinking. In contrast, Paul condemns those statements, and there's no reason to believe that he ever took their writers' ideas as guidance.

More discussion of this here: [http://volokh.com/2011/12/22/libertarians-and- ron-pauls-raci...](http://volokh.com/2011/12/22/libertarians-and-ron-pauls- racist-newsletters/comment-page-3/)

<comment><USER11> Here's a nice break-down of exactly why the newsletter debacle is so damning (and how it contrasts with how Wright was handled):

[http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/12/re- thinking-...](http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/12/re-thinking-the- paul-endorsement.html)

<comment><USER12> The newsletter debacle is 'damning' simply because the US corporate media has decreed it so.

The newsletters are definitely offensive, and are reasonable cause for disliking Paul as a candidate and perhaps even a person, but as others have pointed out, they are relatively mild as far as political skeletons in the closet go. If the media favored him, they could be easily downplayed as have been countless much more serious missteps and outright crimes by mainstream candidates in the past.

I was personally very disappointed when I found out about the newsletters and disgusted by the idea that Paul would even associate with people who would think manipulating racial tensions for political expediency is morally acceptable. But let's put it in perspective--in the last decades the lies and criminality of the US political class have led to the wrongful deaths of millions, illegal torture, vast illegal wiretapping programs, vast financial fraud and unprecedented transfers of wealth to the very richest people in the world, stripping of civil liberties that have been fundamental since the Magna Carta... need I go on?

How much airtime do we see devoted to examining establishment political figures' complicity in these and laundry lists of other history-making type crimes? I'm sorry, but the idea that Ron Paul's lapse in oversight on some barely-circulated newsletters 15 years ago somehow ranks as 'damning' on the scale of political transgressions is, quite frankly, utter horseshit. This is just continuation of the usual program--distract from the real issues and manipulate public opinion through manufactured divisiveness and tabloid journalism.

<comment><USER13> You're inappropriately comparing the actions of candidates with people who have actual power. Neither George W. Bush nor John Yoo is running for office. Ron Paul is, and as a non-leadership representative, he's not in a position to affect policy in any significant way. He hasn't had the opportunity do things that Bush did. In order to assess him as a candidate, we have to understand how he acted given his opportunities.

Considering how small those opportunities were, a profitable newsletter publishing articles exhibiting this level of inaccuracy and racial animus is meaningful.

<comment><USER12> First of all, Ron Paul has significant power in congress. He is a member of two important committees and was instrumental, as a recent example, in strengthening the auditing standards for the Federal Reserve. He also has significant ideological influence on the Republican party, whether they like it or not. The rhetoric of the tea party movement was in many ways a direct attempt to co-opt Paul's support. He has used this power in near perfect accordance with his principles, stood against reckless war, attacks on civil liberties, favoritism for Wall St. and special interests, and economic plunder.

There have been plenty of opportunities for Paul to sell out, as there are for every successful politician, and he has rejected these opportunities at every turn. Contrast this with Obama's record: a supporter of the patriot act from the beginning, a friend of Wall Street, a believer in empire, in favor of suspension of habeas corpus for American citizens, in favor of the drug war, tolerant of illegal spying on citizens, tolerant of torture. Obama has broken promises and sold out the American people time and time again. It seems pretty clear who has the better batting average.

Paul is far from perfect, but the only alternative at this point is the status quo or worse for the next four years, and believing in that is a lot more insane and dangerous than any of Paul's most controversial beliefs. In fact, when you look pragmatically at the scope of what Paul would actually be capable of as president, you see that he could only really affect policy in the moderate and generally popular portions of his platform--ending permanent war, ending the drug war, vetoes on overspending. His more 'fringe' positions are well beyond the purview of the executive branch, and his principles explicitly preclude him from overstepping those bounds.

<comment><USER13> Ron Paul is to be commended for amending auditing standards for the Federal Reserve. However, he still hasn't had an important policy position as compared to his competitors for the presidency (excepting Bachmann). This is not a slight, but it should be acknowledged.

Now, I agree that he has had substantial power rhetorically. He has people who are passionate about what he says; his elucidations and opinions have influenced them, raised money, started conversations, and affected the political agenda. That is why it is disappointing that the very little power he has has been used inappropriately in certain instances. If he hired awful ghostwriters who spread stupidly racist material because he wasn't minding the store, then that is not a good sign that he has successfully managed the one area where he did have meaningful power.

Separately: I think you can critique Obama without mentioning things which seem to me untrue or at least misleading, which I think warrant correction:

\- Obama has never (I believe) indicated that he's in favor of suspending habeas for U.S. citizens. There's misinformation around that NDAA does this; it does not. If you're thinking of something else, citation please.

\- The U.S. torture debate has mostly revolved around waterboarding and unauthorized treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc. -- none of these are known to have happened under Obama. Some people believe that the Army Field Manual enables other forms of torture; Obama ordered a full review and asked for all torture to be taken out; if you think he missed things, that's a complex judgement call, not a simple issue.

\- On several other fronts, like the drug war, Wall Street, etc., Obama has in fact applied the policies he stated--I'm not sure what makes you think he's broken promises or compromised his sincere beliefs in any of these areas. He's not a libertarian (except maybe in comparison to H. Clinton).

"Batting average" is a helpful term to use, but I think you're not using the right denominator: Paul hasn't been up the plate many times, whereas Obama, Gingrich, Romney, even Santorum have had a lot more opportunities to either accomplish something or screw up.

By the way, I'm not arguing generally that you should vote for Obama instead of Paul or whatever. But I am defending this newsletter "scandal" as a still relevant datapoint on Ron Paul. Not definitive, but relevant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The censorship of Ron Paul really is pretty incredible. The Daily Show clip was already mentioned in this thread - here's another example I noticed the other day in the Chicago Tribune:

I just pulled out three random stories: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa- io...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-iowa- nbcpolltre7bt0mr-20111230,0,6277647.story) [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politicsnow/la-pn-iowa- ri...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politicsnow/la-pn-iowa-rick- santorum-rips-ron-paul-20111229,0,3492896.story) [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-pn- romney-...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-pn-romney- prospects-iowa-win-20111227,0,6546759.story)

Notice how every candidate name mentioned in the article (for the first time) is also a hyperlink, except Ron Paul.

<comment><USER15> CNBC had an interview where they basically let him talk for almost half an hour. He was great for five minutes, okay through to ten, and then the wheels just came off. He couldn't answer obvious follow-up questions (some with obvious Ron Paul answers). He was bamboozled by questions on the gold standard from people who actually speak monetary policy. Toward the end he was hardly coherent.

I came away thinking his talking points are great but get him off those and there's very little there.

I suspect reporters who have seen the guy up close see this and don't bother with him. I think they're too invested in their self-image as news filters to provide deep, even-handed coverage and let their audience decide.

EDITED TO ADD: As noted below, I can't find a link to the interview I had in mind. So I'll walk back what I've said here a step or two: That's my impression of how the guy seems after extended scrutiny. But I can't now point to a document that would support that impression as well as I'd like.

<comment><USER16> (Full disclosure, I was an activist for Paul during 2008)

I agree that Paul seems to have too narrow of a focus in his talk - he answers healthcare or fuel price questions half the time by saying these wouldn't happen with a gold standard / Fed, etc. I don't think he's thin in his views, but that (in typical libertarian fashion) he focuses just a bit too much on pure philosophy and not on pragmatism.

I agree with the previous commenters with his sincerity and trustworthiness. I think "The Incorruptible" can honestly be applied to his name. Whenever he gave a speech he just got up there and said what was on his mind - it's not all good policy, but he's serious and consistent.

The most likely result of a Paul presidency would probably be, not his legislative force, etc., but perhaps the waking up of America to what the establishment's power (and really the presidency itself) really is - <USER2> controlled by interest groups.

I actually think that Obama is a genuine / smart guy, but he's too afraid (seemingly) to press his views. I think Paul would be fine pressing the views, but would probably be near censured by the true political ruling class.

<comment><USER17> A truly frightening situation would be in the near impossible case that Ron Paul does get elected president: that he ends up looking just as paralyzed and neutered as President Obama and we find out that it isn't a matter of conviction or fearlessness but that the collective power of interest groups and the media has just gotten too powerful.

<comment><USER18> _...we find out that it isn't a matter of conviction or fearlessness but that the collective power of interest groups..._

The collective power of interest groups is indeed the key.

The horror of slavery wasn't abolished by President Lincoln's stand on principle. It was an alignment of the industrial North's economic/geopolitical interests with the principled stand of abolitionists. Lincoln merely walked to the front of the parade and raised his baton. The Emancipation Proclamation was pragmatic, not principled.

Even Gandhi was doing this. He was able to align the interests of the average Indian villager with the principle of Indian independence, and get the population to understand it through clear material examples. (Cloth and salt.)

"The collective power of interest groups" is the reality, the landscape of politics. Those who fight battles and wage campaigns on this landscape had better be aware of its shape and implications. Wars are not won by those who "want it" bad enough. The energy of fervor needs to be directed in the most effective fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ron Paul message resonates with people because he is talking about something none of the other candidates are talking about: returning freedoms and sanity to America. It would be hard to rollback all the damage done by the likes of Obama and his predecessors but I think it can be achieved gradually and with some culture changes in America. This is a great country and I hope to see its freedoms preserved and reinstated otherwise we will head down the road to god knows what and never come back. Freedom begets greatness and innovation.

The media needs to stop its blackout of Paul and the smear campaign and cover the issues he is highlighting which are of the utmost importance.

<comment><USER20> "sanity" being "what you agree with".

That's why we should flag political articles and leave them to other sites.

<comment><USER21> (Disclaimer: I'm not from US).

      That's why we should flag political articles and leave them to other sites.

Except that at other sites, politics equals name callings and rhetoric. I understand that that is the primary reason you want politics to stay out of HN.

But if all scientists, techies and reasonable people stay out of politics and common people are distracted by media, how can we expect things to change? If readers of HN cannot discuss political beliefs in a rational manner, I wonder who can.

No wonder legislation like SOPA has reached to the doorsteps of congress in US.

<comment><USER20> I don't understand how you can equate keeping politics off of _this_ site to _not being involved_ in politics.

<comment><USER21> I'm not. I'm saying signal to noise ratio of political discussions on political sites is so low that any rational discussion drowns out in the noise. Plus, most political sites have a clear and strong bias, such that opposing ideas are rarely discussed based on their merits.

Also, many techies who otherwise would not engage in political discussions (due to aforementioned reasons), can bounce off ideas here. I'm not claiming that HN becomes a political discussion forum, I'm saying downvoting legitimate political discussions for being political is taking it too far.

[Edit: missed a word and it bothered me enough to edit the post.]

<comment><USER20> > I'm saying signal to noise ratio of political discussions on political sites > so low that any rational discussion drowns out in the noise.

And you'd like to bring that here?

<comment><USER21> I'm not trying to be rude or condescending here, but if you read my reply in its entirety, you'll find the answer to your question.

<comment><USER20> The connection you aren't making is that politics leads to flame wars, on the internet. "Politics" regards deeply held _beliefs_ people hold about how the world ought to be run. Also, the same discussions tend to be run over and over on ad infinitum. Hacker news doesn't need it. It does well by having a tight focus.

<comment><USER22> Your point is well taken. But tech discussions can also lead to flame wars and HN seems to handle those rather well. I for one am interested in what this community thinks about many subjects. Including politics.

<comment><USER23> The site has guidelines. Please reread them.

<comment><USER24> It's confusing that you would direct posters to the guidelines while willfully disregarding the guidelines yourself, and call the guidelines "stupid."

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3405357>

<comment><USER23> The guideline I'm referring to here is not stupid.

The "don't comment about flagging" guideline is. It's meant to eliminate pointless arguments about what is or isn't germane to the site, much like how you're asked not to comment about being downvoted. But flags are invisible, and the number of people flagging is dwarfed by the number of people upvoting threads about Ron Paul's newsletters, so that the only way for it to leave the front page of the site (precipitously, if you didn't notice) is admin intervention.

Commenting on this post in the first place was stupid, since the story already got buried. I just felt bad for 'davidw, and I'm a nerd, so when someone says "I think HN is in fact a great place to talk about politics", it's hard for me to resist commenting that it's _by charter_ not a place to talk about politics.

I'm answering in detail because you seem to follow my comments, and I don't want you to think I'm blowing you off. I'm not. I don't know you or have any problem with you personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not surprising that Ron Paul would be against SOPA.

That said, libertarians like Paul would have been against funding the projects that led to the Internet, and are today against funding similar government projects that might lead to future innovations.

In many cases, innovations are bootstrapped by government funding or research, and then handed off to an appropriate role by the free market. Libertarians are usually against regulating the private market once the handoff has occurred (for good in many cases, and definitely in this case), but they are usually against the initial government bootstrapping.

It's easy to imagine attacking the initial ARPA work on privacy, anti- military, or anti-elitism grounds, and I could easily imagine it losing its funding today, decried as a boondoggle that was useless for regular Americans, who of course would never have access to a computer, with taxpayers footing the bill.

<comment><USER26> It's often assumed that without the ARPA the internet never would have existed. ARPA, however, is just one of many "internets" that sprung up over the years. There was also FIDOnet, Prodigy, BIX, Compuserve, MCInet, etc. Everyone with more than one computer thought to hook them together. Heck, even some friends of mine invented their own internet back in the 70's.

If it wasn't ARPA, it would have been something else.

<comment><USER25> The examples you listed arrived after ARPA. CompuServe, which arrived pretty early in the greater scheme, was founded in 1969 as a time sharing computer service. It wasn't until quite a bit later that it became a packet-switched computer network, likely in response to the success of ARPAnet's implementation.

In contrast, the plans for ARPAnet were finished in 1968, and the system was operational in 1969. The concept was pretty pie in the sky at the time, and it's likely that the success of ARPA led to commercial implementations of packet-switched networks.

Additionally, the early private networks did not have the character of the "public Internet" which is a crucial component of the Internet we know and love today. Indeed, the reason we care about SOPA is that the public Internet, and not a patchwork of private internets, won the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The actual article is titled "Presidential Candidate Ron Paul Slams SOPA", which I think is a better title, especially for us non-US residents.

As while I'm hugely interested in the whole SOPA story, being from the UK, I had no idea who Ron Paul was, let alone that he was a presidential candidate.

Now that I know who he is, his stance against SOPA is _much_ more interesting. Just a thought.

<comment><USER28> The first time I heard of Ron Paul was when he was basically the _only_ one who stood up for Wikileaks in Congress and defended them when everyone else was calling them traitors and terrorists. I really liked that and I've been following him since:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM20w0jHH8A>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is unsurprising. Ron Paul is generally against new legislation.

<comment><USER30> As a British person I don't know much about American politics but I often see this Ron Paul guy turn up in discussions about politics in general.

He seems to a hero to many people including those who aren't the stereotypical republican voters. I have to admit I don't quite understand his appeal, his position seems to always just be to oppose any new legislation on government involvement in anything. His position always seems to basically boil down. "let the free market decide" or "let the individual states decide"

At least he appears consistent in what he says and I'm not necessarily saying he is even wrong about anything in particular. But let's say he was elected president , I can't see him actually _doing_ anything (some might argue this is what the president should be). Let's say there was a national disaster of some kind, what would he do? Just say "we the federal government would help but we would just mess it up , let the free market create a solution"?

<comment><USER31> He says "no" a lot because the federal gov't has become way too bloated. There already is a free market solution to your scenario - it's called "insurance".

<comment><USER30> Right, perhaps the federal gov't is too bloated (I wouldn't really know , I'm british). My question more would be does he have a fundamentally different view on what the federal government is for? In which case I would expect him to say "we will do less of all of this stuff, but I think instead we should do more of this".

Seems to me he's suggesting that the federal government do essentially nothing, except perhaps maintain enough of a military to defend the USA if directly attacked.

Perhaps I misunderstand his position?

<comment><USER10> _Seems to me he's suggesting that the federal government do essentially nothing, except perhaps maintain enough of a military_

As I read his position, his philosophy is that of a pretty strict Constitutionalist. That is, the federal powers are limited to what's listed explicitly in the Constitution. Most of those powers can be found enumerated in Article I Section 8 [1]

\- - - - <USER3>

The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defence[note 1] and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

\- - - - End Quote

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_8:_Powers_of_Congress)

<comment><USER30> Interesting. So essentially he is talking of not so much reducing the federal government but basically dismantling it in it's current form and reforming it into something that is basically responsible for the military (although interestingly that list provides no provisions for an airforce presumably because planes hadn't been invented when it was written, so I guess it would have to be ammended) and currency control.

Interestingly also it does provide for copyright control which could be viewed as being consistent with SOPA?

I wonder if his supporters realise what a fundamental restructure this would be and whether such a change would even be practical.

Has he outlines a plan for doing this? I assume he couldn't just turn up on day 1 and basically tell all federal employees to go home.

I can't imagine that you'd really need more than a few thousand federal employees (not counting military) to provide these services.

<comment><USER32> > Has he outlines a plan for doing this? I assume he couldn't just turn up on > day 1 and basically tell all federal employees to go home.

You might be interested in reading Paul's proposed budget for his potential term in office. He realizes that instantly switching to a constitutional federal government would be terrible, so he takes a more gradual approach.

[http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to- resto...](http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore- america/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This morning I woke up with an idea to find out what the different presidential hopefuls have said about SOPA. Sadly, this one was the only one I could find...the only one I thought I could guess his stance on.

</comment><comment><USER33> _Ron Paul currently leads the majority of Iowa polls._

IIRC Mr. Paul was a minoritary candidate in last elections. Please, people from the USA, Could you tell what has changed? Or is Iowa special?

<comment><USER34> Current conventional wisdom is that after Iowa, Paul will leave the "top tier" of the Republican race. He has always been ignored by traditional media and this is the highest hes ever risen, so there is a possibility he may find the staying power.

To get to the meat of your question: why Paul now. Paul has always been a solid choice for people dissatisfied with the traditional Republican party. Many of his libertarian views speak to often ignored American ideals, and he is willing to tell it how he sees it, not the political-speak whitewash heard from everyone else. His supporters even include voters who don't normally support the GOP (hes the Republican with the most significant youth following and I've met many people who would vote Democrat-or-Ron-Paul). Hes showing strong now because the electorate has started to feel (like Paul supporters do) that the rest of the GOP field right now is in pretty bad shape.

There has been a sense of inevitability to Romney picking up the nomination, hes been near the top of all the polls since he entered the race, but it seems voters don't want to be stuck with him. They've been scrambling around and sending a long line of candidates to the front of the polls, and inevitably once they get the spotlight they make an ass of themselves. Then the voters send someone else to the top of the polls. Right now is Paul's turn there (at least in Iowa). It remains to be seen if he can stay there and defeat Romney, or if once voters get to know him better his numbers will start falling.

edit: _Or is Iowa special?_ It is to Iowans, and any pundits who want to act like Iowa will be a bellweather of the country. Really, they just go first. The next races will be in different states, and after more time, and more news cycles so Iowa is not necessarily indicative of anything but the current opinions in Iowa.

<comment><USER35> Winning Iowa, or at least winning expectations, correlates with additional fundraising and additional support leading into the following states: NH, SC, FL, NV. A winner is able to build up momentum into those states and have the chance to continue a successful campaign (Obama for America 2006-2008). And to be honest, Iowa and New Hampshire both are special. I've been to both states countless times and the people are fervent in understanding today's issues and the candidates' stances on those issues, more so than any other state in the country. But you are partially correct with your final assessment, winning Iowa does not guarantee a successful campaign run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have to say it's jarring to hear Ron Paul referring to "6000 years of human history" as though that is the totality of human history. While I still support him fully because everything he has to say wrt government and foreign policy is sound and principled, it's really difficult for me to reconcile this one thing.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that about how much written history we have?

I don't think he's being a creationist here, at least, that's not how I read it.

<comment><USER37> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLw> \- In this video he claims he does not "accept the theory of evolution as a theory". While he doesn't come straight out and use the tired "just a theory" attack, it sure sounds like it.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eiR_U8vhIo> \- A reading from his book expounds on his answer to that question. He seems to think the question of evolution is "silly" and irrelevant to his campaign. He also attacks public schools and evolution with rather weak and banal rhetoric.

Ron Paul lacks the perspective to be commander-in-chief of this country.

<comment><USER38> From his book liberty defined: <http://libertydefined.org/issue/17>

No one person has perfect knowledge as to man's emergence on this earth. Yet almost everyone has a strong religious, scientific, or emotional opinion he or she considers gospel. The creationists frown on the evolutionists, and the evolutionists dismiss the creationists as kooky and unscientific. Lost in this struggle are those who look objectively at the scientific evidence for evolution without feeling any need to reject the notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator. My personal view is that recognizing the validity of the evolutionary process does not support atheism nor should it diminish one's view about God and the universe. This is a debate about science and religion...and should not involve politicians at all.

<comment><USER37> For Paul to claim that someone could hold a "scientific opinion as gospel" shows that he has either forgotten his scientific education that he no doubt received during his Ph.D. candidacy, or that his meaning was lost in his sweeping rhetoric. In this age of climate change, resource depletion and environmental degradation the most powerful country in the world needs a Commander-in-Chief that demonstrates the ability to understand and interpret scientific advances. Paul has not shown this ability.

<comment><USER38> He's an MD not a PhD, as for showing ability to take science into account, I'd say that the politicization of science has been extremely detrimental to the publics trust in it. I've done a lot of research into the philosophy and history of science, and basing policy on "cutting edge" research seems to be wrought with disaster. In general scientists and engineers are extremely optimistic in the systems we can design, control, and understand. In government, we need a conservative approach that waits for science to be firmly established before acting, though a case be made against it, and in general it's better to directly convince the public to do something than use the threat of violence. Of course counter examples do exist (leaded gasoline and CFCs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Good on Ron Paul! I've expressed this sentiment on here before, but it still bothers me that so much of what I read in opposition to SOPA is linked to actual piracy. Sure, I think that DRM is ridiculous and counter-productive, but piracy only serves to legitimize the claims of SOPA supporters, and undermine the claims of it's opponents that it would do no good. Please, if you oppose SOPA, stop using rhetoric from sites that appear to condone piracy.

</comment><comment><USER40> It should have been more convincing for me if he instead made this statement before the goDaddy boycott, and net giants public opposition against SOPA, not a few days before the election circus.

Politics is still politics, and this kind of rhetorical display and timing have long been around for centuries as politicians' device that pander to the media to get the favor from the people. I do not question his principles and previous acts, it's the timing that's fishy.

</comment><comment><USER18> TLDR for your non net-savvy friends and relatives:

SOPA = takedown of websites without due process = censorship for those (corporations) who can afford big legal teams

Restriction of _where you can link to_ = restricting dissemination of information = censorship for commercial interest over free speech.

Simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER41> The economist has a great write-up of Ron Paul: <http://www.economist.com/node/21542199/>

<comment><USER42> How was that a great writeup when it discounts him in the first paragraph, using adjectives like wacky, radical, no-hoper and quirky? I was expecting it to be an objective look at Ron Paul's policies by Economist.

<comment><USER43> """wacky, radical, no-hoper and quirky"""

That IS a great summary of Ron Paul, so the Economist is being reasonably objective - as they usually are. Only the libertarian fringe and people who don't know much about anything support Ron Paul.

<comment><USER17> Those adjectives are inherently subjective: the opposite of objective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Good work getting a political article up to the front page.

</comment><comment><USER44> The thing I like most about Ron Paul is that he's unelectable as a national candidate, he knows it, yet has fun on Reddit and the national stage every four years.

The thing I like the least about Ron Paul is that some of his ideas are easily comprehended and adopted by people who I would otherwise consider intelligent and educated. It breaks my heart that for all intents and purposes, they are insane.

edit: had an extra "and" in there.

</comment><comment><USER45> Political pandering; I would not trust this.

<comment><USER46> It's not pandering; it's consistent with the philosophy he's been touting for the last billionty years. Every time he gets up to speak, he talks about freedom of the individual, and having the federal government get out of the way. It's almost comical how people continually want to know his positions, when he doesn't have positions, but rather a unifying philosophy that positions grow out of.

That's the unique thing about Ron Paul, he's not your standard politician, which is why he confuses the media so much.</comment></comment>


A Pamphlet against R: Computational Intelligence in Guile Scheme (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://panicz.github.io/pamphlet/ <comment><USER2> Mother of all clickbait titles.

I read the first few pages and didn't see any content about R. The first chapter is an introduction to scheme. I scanned it and didn't see any R code all. It's an introduction to scheme that builds up to K means.

R does suck in so many ways, especially the object oriented systems and the horrible default libraries with so many inconsistent idioms, but we put up with it because mainly because it provides the most advanced open source ecosystem for modeling and visualizing data and it is also pretty fast, especially with data.table. If being fast is important we have Julia as a competitor. If having a better designed language with a reasonably complete ecosystem and sometimes being slower is OK we have python. Like pretty much every other domain area, there just isn't a competitive niche in data science for a lisp.

Also, R is already pretty functional and Lisp-like, sure it doesn't have prefix syntax, but it does have first class functions. Using various types of map (lapply, apply &c) is practically mandatory after a certain point.

I love the Wizard Book too, but this is embarrassing.

<comment><USER3> My main beef with R is that this is valid code:

        > f <- function (n) {
        +     f <- 1
        +     if (n == 0) return(f) else n * f(n-1)}
        > f(5)
        [1] 120

The language has some warts, that's for sure.

<comment><USER4> Isn't that just lisp-2-like behavior where functions and data maintain separate identities?

<comment><USER5> No, if you set f <\- 42 between the moment where you define f as a function and the moment where you call it then it doesn't work anymore:

      > f(5)
      Error in f(5) : could not find function "f"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand how this relates to R? It starts of saying R is bad (agreed) but then what it just goes off on a tangent about something unrelated without really explaining what's better.

I've said this before and will say it repeatedly - R is a bad programming language by design to allow it to be a brilliant tool for stats/data science. Language geeks who approach data science from a comp sci background seem to miss this point - R works precisely because it's not a good language.

I'm perfectly happy to discuss a better alternative but without first understanding why R is used so widely in the first place misses the point of the discussion

<comment><USER4> What aspect of not being a good language makes it work well for mathematicians?

<comment><USER7> It has many nice shortcuts for exploring and manipulating statistical data. These shortcuts come at the cost of consistency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> R is probably the best, most productive DSL that exists for data analysis work, but it is a horrible programming language, made worse by the fact that I don't think most of its users think of what they're doing as programming. I've never seen an R project that looked like it had learned anything from software engineering best practice of literally any period in history. Your data is flat, your script starts at the top and runs to the bottom. There are rarely any abstractions.

One thing that gives me hope here is that an increasing number of universities have dedicated Research Software Engineering groups who can explicitly apply their expertise (mostly in performance but often just in writing better software) to the problems being approached by academics. But I've yet to see most computer science adjacent courses (including the plethora of new Data Science courses in the last few years) explicitly tackle software engineering as a valuable discipline.

All that said, the R ecosystem is fantastic and you're wasting time turning your nose up at it. I had hoped Incanter would take off in the Clojure world but it did not. Lately I have been lucky enough to be able to confine my needs to Bayadera, a framework for Bayesian data analysis in Clojure. But I think the grand hopes of Lisp becoming a first class language for data analysis will always fall by the wayside - Lisp people (outside of myself) are smart enough to fulfil their own needs, and you don't have the conveyor belt of new algorithms that R gets from academia (and indeed Python gets from the same place, and increasingly from industry giants).

<comment><USER9> The DSLs are key. As I wrote below, I feel like there is still room for data analysis DSLs that optimize heavily for usability by end users. Racket has best-in-class support for building new languages, and is a nice language itself.

Clojure and Incanter's failure to capture market share also bums me out. In a lot of ways, I feel that Clojure's small amount of syntactic sugar and collection abstractions make it a very, very user-friendly language itself even if its meta programming isn't quite what Racket's is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a mis-titled (disingenuous?) introductory book to Scheme, basically using R to draw eyeballs.

Also it's barking up the wrong tree. R is known for its statistics prowess and working with large datasets. ML/AI is just a small subset of it. What's the equivalence in Guile that deals with statistics and data processing?

</comment><comment><USER11> So apart from not really being about R, this author also seems to completely miss the point of scientific computing: it's not about having the cleverest language, it's about having a solid ecosystem and community building useful tools (e.g. RStudio). People work around language warts pretty easily, most people doing scientific computing just need to get shit done and don't give a rats arse about the programing language arcana.

<comment><USER12> I'd expect a scientific language to be deterministic. A list of numbers as a single element inside another list _sometimes_ in some functions returns the inner list, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've written a jupiter notebook kernel for Guile Scheme [https://github.com/jerry40/guile-kernel](https://github.com/jerry40/guile- kernel) , I wonder if it is possible to set up a dedicated server using Jupyterhub and made it public in order to make articles about Guile more 'live' and perhaps put SICP examples there but I have no experience in this matter. If anyone give a piece of advice to me, I will be grateful.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish we could down vote this clickbait garbage.

R isnt good in many respects, but it can run most statistical models.

Get back to me when your language of the day has a package to easily run blundell bond type dynamic panels with different iv and gmm estimators, cause that is what R can do.

Until then, stop wasting my time comparing a useful toolkit for a specific thing with some arbitrary language the day that us used by two people and has never solved a real life problem ever.

And give me my five minutes back.

</comment><comment><USER15> Slightly off topic, but after reading a couple of pages from the pamphlet I don't think I'm going to change to a lisp like language anytime soon. My choice of language is between Python and R.

I'm in a position where I can freely choose my own language for my analysis and modeling work, and use Python and R in my day to day.

The thing that really put me off R is the opaqueness of the language. In python I like to think I have a rudimentary understanding of how the language is structured , and I can actually read error messages. But in R, if something fails all bets are off, and you just have iteratively comment out code to find the error. Rstudio is usually given as a really great IDE for analysis, but it just crashes too often, and is slow to a point where you just have to wait minutes on end if you click the wrong variable. Pycharm (professional) does the same as Rstudio, and more: I can plot, I can see variables, I have a working debugger and code completion is to my opinion as good as it gets.

Two things in python are not up to snuff: Plotting (ggplot2 is really good) and some statistical models. That's the reason why I still sometimes have to fire up Rstudio. I hope I can phase out R in my work as much as possible though.

<comment><USER16> I don't think there is anyone in the python ecosystem who is as good as Hadley Wickham at understanding data analysts and designing API's that a budding analyst can reason through and understand.

ggplot2 is of course the prime example. It simply and elegantly allows characteristics of your visualization to either vary based on data, or remain fixed to your specifications. Since so many data visualizations in science and industry are really variations on that theme, you can do the vast majority of what you want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This (metaprogramming, macros, language as a datastructure in the language)is why I learned Julia, but R + R-studio still draw me back by being just so useful.

<comment><USER18> R actually has pretty nice metaprogramming capabilities though. The tidyverse heavily relies on them to create its DSL.

<comment><USER17> Agree and tidyverse is another reason to use R. I think Julia is a programers language though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> R already has a failed lisp predecessor: XLISP-STAT. I don't know that it was bad at all - it was developed by one of the core developers of R and by all accounts was numerically superior. I believe the conclusion regarding its demise was that lisp syntax just does not appear to captivate a large enough audience.

<comment><USER9> I've wondered out loud a few times whether Racket's language-oriented could facilitate even better / more natural DSLs than R.

R has lots of little DSLs that reduces the cognitive burden of doing stats for people more concerned with applied research than programming. XLisp-Stat's syntax barrier might have been overcome by better DSLs.

In the case of Racket, creating new syntaxes isn't a barrier, though if someone needed to break out of the functionality of your DSL, they'd be right back to Racket (or some other equivalently expressive language like typed- racket or rackjure).

Projects like Julia are neat because they're researching the possibility of building a high level language that obviates resorting to C, C++, and Fortran when speed is needed.

Equally interesting, but less sexy, is figuring out the human interaction aspect of statistical computing. R is a somewhat organic language that has evolved (and in the case of Tidyverse researched and engineered) DSLs. I'd love to see what stats savvy computer scientists could do with Racket to rethink or improve stats DSLs. If I were a tenured prof with time and research money, I'd surely explore this question.

Put another way, I think Julia is tackling numerical and statistical computing the XBox / Playstation way: pushing the state of the art in performance. I think there's room for a Nintendo approach that speaks to the humans using the system rather than optimizing the technical bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> See also:

Back to the Future: Lisp as a Base for a Statistical Computing System

[https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-20...](https://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~ihaka/downloads/Compstat-2008.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER20> I admit I was a bit surprised that 'pamphlet' extends to 75 page documents.

</comment><comment><USER21> 2nd order Clickbait ... Avoid.</comment>


Web users judge sites in the blink of an eye - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060109/full/060109-13.html <comment><USER2> """These days, enlightened web users want to see a "puritan" approach"""

I believe that this is now absolutely critical. I'd like to see some research to back this.

</comment><comment><USER3> It takes me more like 30 seconds to judge a site.</comment>


Clerky (YC S11) Helps Startups Save Time And Money On Legal Incorporation - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/11/yc-backed-clerky-helps-startups-save-time-and-money-on-legal-incorporation-stock-issuance-forms-and-more/

<comment><AUTHOR> How does Clerky handle having a registered agent in Delaware? Neither the article nor Clerky website have any info about that. Incorporating in any state requires a registered agent that is physically located in the state.

<comment><USER2> We partner with Incorp, one of the largest registered agent service providers in the US (the other two are CSC and CT). Let us know if you have any other questions!</comment></comment>


Robot jazz band showcases its freestyling skills - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26848-robot-jazz-band-showcases-its-freestyling-skills.html#.VMgDR_54rSs

<comment><USER2> Thats really cool

</comment><comment><USER2> omg</comment>


China begins trialling payments in its new digital currency from next week - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/china-starts-major-trial-of-state-run-digital-currency <comment><AUTHOR> _In recent months, China's central bank has stepped up its development of the e-RMB, which is set to be the first digital currency operated by a major economy.

It has reportedly begun trials in several cities, including Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, as well as a new area south of Beijing, Xiong'an, and areas that will host some of the events for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics._</comment>


Some Microsofties say that women's brains make them less interstd in engineering - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-employees-uproar-over-diversity-2019-4 <comment><USER2> The original qz.com article has more on the headline topic than the businessinsider.com that quotes qz.com does. [https://qz.com/1598345/microsoft-staff-are-openly- questionin...](https://qz.com/1598345/microsoft-staff-are-openly-questioning- the-value-of-diversity/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I assume that some of these quotes are upset reactions to things that seem unfair or dumb to the person saying them... _but_ quotes that are alleging disproportionate genetic inferiority of some other gender/race/etc. groups for their jobs... are really insensitive to all people from those groups.

And if they were later to say (as I assume will probably happen, for obvious reasons) to one of those people of the groups, "I don't mean you; not all <group> are inferior", that seems further offensive to me, because it's like they're doubling down on insensitivity, rather than realizing their offense and humbly backing down.</comment>


Node-fetch: Call for maintainers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bitinn/node-fetch/issues/228#issuecomment-351500102 <comment><AUTHOR> Some more context:

> As node-fetch is being used in more environments, notably through package > like react-native, I think it's time we add a few more collaborators to > address various use-case issues.

[https://github.com/bitinn/node- fetch/issues/252](https://github.com/bitinn/node-fetch/issues/252)</comment>


Ask HN: What contracts/paperwork should cofounders set up before starting work? - <AUTHOR>

We're in the process of starting a potentially profitable company.
Does HN have any advice on what sort of paperwork we should setup amongst us cofounders regarding ownership percentages, vesting shares, etc. None of us have any experience with the legal aspects of starting a company.
Should we seek legal counsel or is this something we could take care of ourselves? (Keep in mind that we're all broke college students).
Thanks for your help! -Advait <comment><USER2> Here are some great resources we've been referencing:

Founders Agreements: [http://www.yourlegalcorner.com/articles.asp?cat=corp&id=...](http://www.yourlegalcorner.com/articles.asp?cat=corp&id=15) [http://blog.optimalupgrades.ca/2010/01/founders- agreements-2...](http://blog.optimalupgrades.ca/2010/01/founders- agreements-2/) [http://blog.simeonov.com/2010/02/22/startup-founder- agreemen...](http://blog.simeonov.com/2010/02/22/startup-founder-agreements/)

Others: [http://startuplawyer.com/startup-issues/7-legal-documents- fo...](http://startuplawyer.com/startup-issues/7-legal-documents-for-your- tech-startup) [http://startuplawyer.com/incorporation/the-when-to- incorpora...](http://startuplawyer.com/incorporation/the-when-to-incorporate- decision-matrix) [http://startuplawyer.com/startup-issues/if-i-launched-a- star...](http://startuplawyer.com/startup-issues/if-i-launched-a-startup)

</comment><comment><USER3> Get legal help. If you are college students there may be low cost legal help available through your school. I regretted not getting legal advice for a company i founded 7 years ago, lawyers are good at foreseeing problems that you are unlikely to. Figure out vesting, what to do when a founder leaves, what to do for new hire stock options, and how it will go when you raise or borrow money.

<comment><AUTHOR> We hadn't considered getting legal help through our school. We'll definitely look into that route. Thanks for the suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're trying to build a scalable startup and raise funding, seek an attorney to set everything up. There's quite a few different legal documents you'll want in place beyond setting up the company and stock distribution. I would not try to do this yourself. And ALWAYS vest all cofounders.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're planning on bootstrapping. We plan on having positive cash flow within a couple weeks of deployment so the the cofounders agreed to foot the initial costs. Unfortunately, that has its consequences (trying to spend as little as possible). But from the looks of the comments here, it looks like everyone is suggesting to get legal help. That's probably the route we'll take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Founders Agreement, Operating Agreement, Restricted Equity Agreement (for vesting).

You should seek counsel. Remember that technically, each of you should seek your own counsel (and so should the entity).</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone Using Google's "Speech-to-Text" Service? - <AUTHOR> I'm thinking about building a little test app that uses Google's Speech to Text Service, but since it involves money (yea you can do a bit for free, but generally speaking, there's a cost involved) I'm trying to make sure all my bases are covered before I do a deeper dive.
Basically I'm looking for something similar to the following functionality:
1. Client sends request with audio 2. App server receives request and forwards to Google's S2T API 3. S2T transcribes the audio into text and responds to the app server 4. App server responds to client with transcribed text
Would this type of functionality be available? Any help is appreciated. <comment><USER2> Amazon has a s2t API as well</comment>


Intuitive Understanding of Euler's Formula - <AUTHOR> https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding-of-eulers-formula/ <comment><USER2> The article is quite right that multiplying by _i_ gives a rotation. But it doesn't quite explain the reason for this: it's because that's the whole point of defining imaginary numbers in the first place!

Remember you start off wanting to find a solution for the equation:

        i^2 = -1

This is actually easier to think about if you multiply it by a general real number r:

        r i^2 = -r

In other words you want _i_ such that if you multiply _r_ by _i_ twice, it's the same as multiplying _r_ by -1 once.

This is tough if you try to solve it by analogy with real positive numbers. If you picture the real number line (all the possible _r_ ) and multiply it by a positive number, let's say 4, then the whole thing stretches out quite a bit. It's pretty obvious that the way to break this operation into two equal parts is to stretch it a bit less (in this case, by a factor of 2).

The analogy of a stretch for -1 is a reflection: Imagine the whole number line collapsing in towards zero and bouncing back out again. But if you stop this half way then everything has just settled on zero, and doing that twice is obviously not going to get to the whole reflection. No other intermediate point seems any good either. (These are all the multiplications by _x_ where -1 < _x_ < 1.)

The key idea of imaginary numbers is to consider multiplication -1 to be a rotation by half a turn rather than a reflection. That is a lot easier to do half of! As soon as you have multiplication by -1 as a rotation by half a turn, it is obvious to identify _i_ as rotation by a quarter turn.

<comment><USER3> > it's because that's the whole point of defining imaginary numbers in the > first place!

People used imaginary numbers for a long time before Cartesian coordinates even existed.

<comment><USER4> I'll be honest, I've never understood how humanity didn't invent Cartesian coordinates until 1637, with all the other engineering we had.

Once we had linear equations, for example with the ancient Greeks, not one person ever thought to plot a line with it? Or to use it to calculate the necessary building materials for something like a pediment or cathedral?

<comment><USER5> I think one of the keys to understanding math, and to a lesser but still significant extent, physics history is to remember what you believed as a child, and how you struggled with the concepts taught to you. And that's even with a math curriculum designed to lead you to modern math. (One can debate how _effective_ it is at that, but that's a separate topic.) Those misconceptions we had as children are pretty fundamental to the human wetware. Even today, with centuries of refinement and educational advancement, really only a small fraction of people come away from school with the ability to think truly mathematically.

For instance, even "just" negative numbers is a fairly counterintuitive concept. Despite how they may seem universal today, they actually didn't pop up in all that many cultures historically before their current line. And that story gets repeated over and over for all sorts of developments. It takes time for fields of study to process and abstract these things, because they weren't just handed it on a silver platter in school.

(To the extent that that doesn't seem to be the case today, I'd say that as we have become more and more mathematically sophisticated and the area of mathematical inquiry exponentially increases, the dominant factor 'holding back' math today is our inability to cover territory. Today nobody can completely cover a major discipline before the next generation is already coming in with fresh brains. That's a relatively recent development.)

<comment><USER6> > It takes time for fields of study to process and abstract these things, > because they weren't just handed it on a silver platter in school.

A sense of the phrase "knowledge is power" aligns with this.

I read Alan Kay's "User Interface - A Personal View" [1] recently, wherein he discusses Seymour Papert's [2] ideas on learning, specifically the 3 stages of learning. I found Papert's conception (with only mild exaggeration) to be illuminating. For example, I now have a explanatory model as to why certain inventions that did not require the du jour technology of the industrial age were developed so late in the game.

[1]: [http://www.vpri.org/pdf/hc_user_interface.pdf](http://www.vpri.org/pdf/hc_user_interface.pdf) [2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> TLDR; Author writes:

 _Argh, this attitude makes my blood boil! Formulas are not magical spells to be memorized: we must, must, must find an insight. Here 's mine:

Euler's formula describes two equivalent ways to move in a circle._

Euler's identity is a massive elephant and there have been many ways to look at it from different angles. It wouldn't be fair to say that this single interpretation suffices for views from other angles.

Here are couple of articles that goes in more details:

The remarkable Euler's Formula (3 part series): [http://www.integralworld.net/collins30.html](http://www.integralworld.net/collins30.html)

An Appreciation of Euler's Formula: [https://scholar.rose- hulman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](https://scholar.rose- hulman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1357&context=rhumj)

</comment><comment><USER8> 3blue1brown also has some nice visual explanations:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0yfvm0UoU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_0yfvm0UoU)

<comment><USER9> He made a "sequel" video two years later that improves on the explanation.

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

</comment></comment><comment> man-and-laptop I once had an interesting thought about the function e^x. I think this is a key idea in the theory of Lie groups.

If the x in e^x = (1+x/N)^N is understood as some transformation, then e^x is essentially repeating an infinitesimal transformation lots of times. So it's like a for-loop where the body of the loop is some infinitesimal transformation.

I tried to define the integration operator in terms of e^x. The 1 + x/N needed to be one "infinitesimal" iteration of integration, that adds an extra infinitesimal rectangle to the area. But it didn't seem to work out.

Ultimately that helps to explain Euler's formula. For large N, 1+ix/N is an "infinitesimal" rotation by angle x/N. Repeating it N times produces a rotation of angle x. That's essentially what TFA says. And it's a special case of the Lie theoretic view of e^x.

<comment><USER10> >> I tried to define the integration operator in terms of e^x. The 1 + x/N needed to be one "infinitesimal" iteration of integration, that adds an extra infinitesimal rectangle to the area. But it didn't seem to work out.

You're close! This can indeed be done properly and is then called the Euler- Maclaurin formula. For this, you define the "shift to the left by n operator" e^(nD) where D is the differentiation operator d/dx.

You then always take the current value of f(x), multiply it by the small shift n to get the first rectangle. Then you shift to the left by n, i.e. to e^(nD)*f(x) = f(x+n), multiply that by the small shift n to get the next rectangle etc.

The book "street-fighting mathematics" [1][pdf] has a very hands-on and playful derivation of this in chapter 6.3.

[1] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting- mathematics](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/street-fighting-mathematics)

[pdf][https://www.dropbox.com/s/722rlvrwy9l9w73/7728.pdf?dl=1](https://www.dropbox.com/s/722rlvrwy9l9w73/7728.pdf?dl=1)

<comment> man-and-laptop Amazing, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The proof of the formula is beautiful. It's common to defined the complex exponential as the extension of the Taylor expansion of exp(x) to the complex plane. Thus,

      exp(iy) = 1 + iy + (iy)^2/2! + ...

Now just group the even-numbered terms together and group the odd-numbered terms together, the i's multiply to become 1 in the even numbered terms, and what you get is

      (the Taylor expansion of cos) + i(the Taylor expansion of sin)

<comment><USER12> Interesting. Looking at the Euler equation again as Argand plane rotation, would e^-ix be a form of clockwise rotation? Using the methodology of:

[https://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/eulers- formula.html](https://www.mathsisfun.com/algebra/eulers-formula.html)

as a reference template, e^-ix would seem to involve:

(taylor cosine series) - i * (taylor sine series)

or e^-ix = cos x - i sin x = -1

which suggests another twist to the familiar identity:

e^ix * e^-ix = (cos x + i sin x) * (cos x - i sin x) = (cos x)^2 + (sin x)^2 = (-1) ^ 2 = 1 = e^0

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Euler's identity was my secret weapon in graduate-level EE classes. Out of laziness, I only ever memorized a couple of trig identities. (Trig functions are a huge part of EE.) Whenever I needed a trig identity on a test, I whipped out Euler's formula. From there, you have one step to definitions of sin and cos that you can manipulate any way you want.

<comment><USER14> Wasn't some sort of engineering-grade complex analysis part of your EE (undergraduate?) curriculum? I am sort of surprised Euler's formula would be a "secret weapon" in EE classes.

<comment><USER15> Analog electronics and signal processing fundamentally tied into complex numbers but it's completely possible to do the math to pass exams etc. and become EE engineer without deep understanding complex math. You just use formulas and do arithmetic with them.

Most practically oriented engineering students bitch about the math heavy parts because they don't have any use for them. They are happy with just the formulas and arithmetic. They can calculate electronic circuits, do Laplace transforms and Fourier transforms mechanically. As long as they understand what goes in and what comes out, it works just fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> my favourite intuition about Euler, which is not really an explanation, somewhat tautological, and may or may not be wildly incorrect, but I like it nonetheless:

e^x is a function whose value is its rate of change. (De^x=e^x). Now imagine the unit circle by taking a point an unit away from O, and set "rate of change" perpendicular to that vector. You will end up with Df(x) = i f(x), which really only works when f(x) = e^ix, supposing i means perpendicularity.

<comment><USER17> That is exactly what it is!

In the real plane you get exponential growth: the rate of change is equal to the current value.

In the Argand plane you get a curling action due to the quadrature effect of the imaginary unit. The rate of change at each point is the tangent, and the result is therefore a circle.

Lie infinitesimal displacements capture this nicely, and also render the generic case which is a similarity transformation, e.g. rotation through two half reflections, e^(-w/2) * x * e^(w/2) like those found in quaternions and Clifford algebras.

<comment><USER16> Thank you for this! The wikipedia rabbit hole beckons :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice. Made some similar explanations with GeoGebra drawings a while back. See those pages in french (just look at the pictures !) :

[https://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/Calcul_avec_les_nombres_comp...](https://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/Calcul_avec_les_nombres_complexes/Annexe/D%C3%A9monstration_de_la_formule_d%27Euler)

[https://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/Calcul_avec_les_nombres_comp...](https://fr.wikiversity.org/wiki/Calcul_avec_les_nombres_complexes/%C3%89criture_exponentielle_et_trigonom%C3%A9trique)

</comment><comment><USER19> To anyone who finds this sort of explanation interesting or helpful, I recommend you check out "A Most Elegant Equation" by David Stipp, who covers Euler's Formula from step 0 for those with zero formal math knowledge. I'm definitely in that camp of people, and I was able to get a lot out of it. It's actually the book that helped several mathematical concepts "click" for me. Plus David Stipp just writes very romantically about math, which I thought was warming, and gave a lot of life to a field that I know nothing about.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for your kind words about my book. I never quite knew when writing it whether it would find its way to the people I mainly wrote it for -- those interested in math who don't know a whole lot about it. They aren't thick on the ground. So it's a real, sort of rare blast for me to hear about it arriving where I'd hoped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> People that like this article might be interested in 'Visual Complex Analysis' by Tristan Needham. It's (IMHO) a rare book of collections of "concrete" analogies for complex analysis.

<comment><USER22> Yes, this page appears to be lifted directly from that book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The way I thought about it is that the trigonometric, hyperbolic, and exponential functions are all nontrivial solutions of the differential equation y'''' = y. Sharing differential properties is a very powerful kinship, which is also why you can substitute any of them for any of the other: the solution space of a linear differential equation is a vector space, and these three families of functions are just a change of basis in this space.

Well, I don't know, this is what makes sense to me.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a very confusing way to explain a simple thing. In fact "Eulers formula simply shows how one can parametrize a helix using the exponential function", see

[https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3510/how-to- prove-e...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3510/how-to-prove-eulers- formula-ei-varphi-cos-varphi-i-sin-varphi/625151#625151)

And that's it.

<comment><USER25> There are many answers in that thread; I think different things work for different people.

My favorite angle on this is the following graphic/animation, also present in the thread:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/ExpIPi.g...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/ExpIPi.gif)

This shows how (1+i * Pi/N)^k, k=1..N traces out a semi-circle for large values of N.

Geometrically, all it says is:

* Draw a right triangle ABC with AB=1, BC=Pi/N, and ABC the right angle

* Make a copy of ABC, call it A'B'C', and scale it so that A'B'(the long leg) = AC (the hypotenuse)

* Put A'B'C' over ABC so that A'B' and AC coincide

* Let ABC=A'B'C'

* Repeat the process N times

* Look where you end up when N is large enough

The answer is: when N is large, Pi/N is small, and the right triangle ABC is almost isosceles, AB ~= AC. So you end up with N slices of a pie that make up a fraction of a circle.

Which fraction? Well, the perimeter is N/Pi * N = Pi - so half a circle. So if A=(0,0) and B=(1,0), you end up at (-1,0).

Now (1+x/n)^n approaches e^x, so it makes sense to _define_ e^(i * Pi) to be the same limit - which we found out to be -1 + i * 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Yet another way to visually understand complex functions is to think them as 2D plane to 2D plane transformations. You draw a picture, grid or curves into complex plane, then run it trough complex function you are interested in and see how it looks like.

Here is w = e^z:

[https://i.imgur.com/pAALOh2.png](https://i.imgur.com/pAALOh2.png)

Just look at the above picture and every detail until it starts to makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER27> I love reading posts like these. I was talking to my friend about how doing math proofs during HS is pretty similar to a math "lab" even though it's tedious and seemingly useless to some. I wish we were taught higher levels proofs like this. Even though we couldn't appreciate it at that time, it would of definitely helped us in the future.

</comment><comment><USER28> i^i is actually multi valued - it depends on which branch of log(z) you choose. The rotation analogy is still correct.

<comment><USER29> And all of the values of i^i are real!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> It looks as a circle only from one direction.

I imagine it as a spiral.

Imaginary number adds 2nd dimension, and exponential growth adds 3rd dimension.

</comment><comment><USER31> When was this posted? I think i read exactly that explanation like 7-8 years ago and it really made it click for me. It was a wonderful insight!

<comment><USER32> It was posted a few times here before, first time was 2010. Todays posting is the first that gained traction and comments.

See [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Intuitive%20Understanding%20of...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Intuitive%20Understanding%20of%20Euler's%20Formula&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> (i^i)^i is pretty easy to do with Euler's formula: it's just i^(i*i)=i^(-1)=1/i=-i.

<comment><USER34> I think you have to be careful here when using rules that hold for real number for complex numbers. In fact, Wolfram|Alpha says, that -i is just one of multiple results: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(i%5Ei)%5Ei](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=\(i%5Ei\)%5Ei)

<comment><USER29> Indeed you can easily produce completely incorrect results if you aren't careful, like 1 = sqrt(-1)/sqrt(-1) = (-i)/(i) = -1.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't understand why this is so profound. I knew Euler's formula was a trig formula simply by looking at it. I don't know why there needs to be this complex explanation of where it came from where its obvious that it comes from trig and the concept of a unit circle.

The problem is that reliance on intuition doesn't prove anything and its very deceptive. You end up having to store several cases of explanations instead of deriving one through a proof.

For example, one would intuitively think dropping a heavy object and a light object would conclude with the heavy object hitting the ground first which is not the case. This is just one example.

I'd much rather derive things the traditional way and not be duped by "intuitive" explanations. Because ones intuition is often different from natures.

<comment><USER36> Intuition is not an absolute thing. Intuition changes as we learn. Sometimes we learn things without building an accompanying intuition. This post is about building a sound intuition for something learned.

<comment><USER35> That's nice. I didn't say there was no value in intuition. I just said it was unreliable and I demonstrated an example of why its unreliable.

Its better to focus on solutions that don't rely on intuition because intuition is based solely on experience and often can't be applied to everything. This is why there's a strive to find general solutions to things. Intuition can help you, but you should not base your understanding off it. Intuition can lead you astray easily as in my example. People just assumed it was correct for many years until Galileo actually proved it through experimentation.

In fact, I found this explanation way more complicated than just stating that you are performing trigonometry in two different domains. Your sine is scaled by an imaginary value and your cosine is scaled by a real value. The radius equates to an exponential. When you move it pi units you get sin = 0, cosine = -1 which you use algebra to get Euler's identity.

You don't need to introduce complex intuition in order to get it. Intuition is often a crutch people use to try and think they understand something and just blame others when they don't get it much like this post. If intuition was so important, why not submit it as a legitimate mathematical way of proving things?</comment></comment></comment>


Apple's Secret Weapon - Forbes.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/04/flash-memory-apple-tech-enter-cx_bc_1104flash.html <comment><USER2> I read the title as "forbes.com is Apple's secret weapon", leading me to expect an article about the Jobs RDF.

Flash and the low price of RAM are two things lately that have given me that feeling of awe about the progress of computing. Technical progress is amazing.</comment>


Higher Education Today Resembles Ponzi Scheme - <AUTHOR> https://www.city-journal.org/higher-ed-diversity-bureaucracy <comment> chupa-chups A TLDR wouldn't hurt much. The article seems to be circling around students not qualified enough, but still considered qualified due to Covid-19 related circumstances ("Higher education today resembles a massive Ponzi scheme. Colleges desperately recruit ever more marginal students who stand little chance of graduating.")

Also, it seems to focus on non-diversity ("Elsewhere, campus diversocrats enjoyed similarly enviable mobility while the rest of the country was shutting down", "The frenzied desire to boost "diversity" creates the pretext for much of the bureaucratic bloat. Colleges admit so-called underrepresented minorities (URMs) with academic qualifications far below their white and Asian peers.")</comment>