Flutter doesn't need Kotlin (or anything else) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lukeaf/flutter-doesnt-need-kotlin-or-anything-else-5773965d5905 <comment><USER2> I absolutely love Flutter! It feels like what Android development should be like in todays day.

No XML or descriptive interface mumbo jumbo. You write your interface purely programmatically and it's easy to read afterwards. It also looks very good and supports most of Material Design's components. Great built-in library. Dart has some very neat features. I especially love the handling of asynchronies operations. Either use promises or the async and await syntax.

<comment><USER3> >You write your interface purely programmatically and it's easy to read afterwards.

Personally, I disagree. For more complex UI, having XML and designer is way better option than writing UI programmatically.

<comment><USER4> Yep, coming from Delphi, C++ Builder, Forms and quite a few good Java layout designers (Netbeans Matisse), WPF Blend, I never understood what is so cool about doing UIs by hand.

<comment><USER5> I think the sub second hot reload feature, makes it cool. Have a look at the "Unified layout" section in [https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart- dd635a054ebf](https://hackernoon.com/why-flutter-uses-dart-dd635a054ebf) and or install the flutter plugin in vs code or android studio and have a play.

<comment><USER4> Makes it cool, but nothing out of the ordinary for anyone used to other native GUI development tools, like the ones I referred to.

Here is Interface Builder in 1986, [https://paulhammant.com/2013/03/28/interface-builders- altern...](https://paulhammant.com/2013/03/28/interface-builders-alternative- lisp-timeline/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually I think it is more the case of Dart needing Flutter, as its last hope of getting some kind of relevant adoption outside Googleplex.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, is sad that React Native/ Flutter/NativeScript can't be used directly without the JS/Dart non-sense. It kill the "its native" with a poorly interface.

<comment><USER7> Dart offers the static types and traditional classes of Java with the closures, first class functions, rapid iteration, and other nice parts of JS. Dart is a very nice middle ground in my opinion. Dart now supports AOT compilation too.

Flutter is a lightweight declarative UI on top of Skia with hooks into the relevant native events. That means it should generally be easier to get good performance than with React Native (not to mention replacing Android's horrible UI architecture that seems designed to prevent 60fps from happening). Once you start talking about going cross-platform, you have to start talking about compromises. Flutter seems like a very nice compromise when compared to the alternatives (only thing it's missing is the ability to compile to either HTML or Canvas).

<comment><USER6> So, how "easy" is to interface flutter with swift/java/xamarin or similar?

I could live with a "small" dls if is constrained to UI rendering and let me do the logic on a more native lang...

<comment><USER7> There's been a C dart FFI for years. Communicating with whichever other system shouldn't be any harder than the next language. None of those would be my first choice though. The less platform specific code you write, the fewer platform specific issues you'll be dealing with. Plus xamarin isn't native anywhere.

With Flutter apps using the AOT, performance should already be good. Here's an interesting real world comparison between libsass (a C library) and dartsass.

[https://github.com/sass/dart- sass/blob/master/perf.md](https://github.com/sass/dart- sass/blob/master/perf.md)

From the Flutter FAQ

[https://flutter.io/faq/#](https://flutter.io/faq/#)

> How does Flutter run my code on Android?

> The engine's C/C++ code is compiled with Android's NDK, and any Dart code is > AOT-compiled into native code. The app runs using the native instruction set > (no interpreter is involved).

> How does Flutter run my code on iOS?

> The engine's C/C++ code is compiled with LLVM, and any Dart code is AOT- > compiled into native code. The app runs using the native instruction set (no > interpreter is involved).

> Can I access platform services and APIs like sensors and local storage?

> Yes. Flutter gives developers out-of-the-box access to some platform- > specific services and APIs from the operating system. However, we want to > avoid the "lowest common denominator" problem with most cross-platform APIs, > so we do not intend to build cross-platform APIs for all native services and > APIs.

> A number of platform services and APIs have ready-made packages available in > the Pub repository. Using an existing package is easy.

> Finally, we encourage developers to use Flutter's asynchronous message > passing system to create your own integrations with platform and third-party > APIs. Developers can expose as much or as little of the platform APIs as > they need, and build layers of abstractions that are a best fit for their > project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An entire article about flutter and I have no idea what it is.

<comment><USER9> It's a mobile UI framework for creating Android and iOS applications from the same code base.

Here is a good introductory video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4N0hgOWzU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4N0hgOWzU)

<comment><USER10> Won't these apps end up looking and feeling like Android apps and be out of place on iOS?

<comment><USER9> Flutter has the builtin ability to mimic platform conventions (Android on Android, iOS on iOS), which includes scrolling, animations, fonts, etc.

If you have an Android phone you can download Flutter Gallery app from Play Store, go to the menu and flip behavior from Android to iOS. Suddenly you have an app that behaves like an iOS app. Here is a demo like that from the early days: [https://youtu.be/Mx-AllVZ1VY?t=11m23s](https://youtu.be/Mx- AllVZ1VY?t=11m23s)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Wheel of Concept - <AUTHOR> http://wheelofconcept.com/ <comment><USER2> Seems to require Flash, which I have disabled by default (Chrome 13.0.782.41 / OS X). There is no clear indicator that you need Flash, so I spent some time typing and clicking and guessing...</comment>


The Effect of Twitter's SUL on Techcrunch - <AUTHOR> http://www.newcommbiz.com/on-being-an-influencer-and-marketing-as-media/

<comment><USER2> I think it is very poor form of Twitter to be leveraging its power to hurt media outlets it doesn't like. I agree with Arrington: press likely to cover Twitter on a frequent basis should not be on the SUL.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's quite interesting to see the leverage that Twitter can exert on TC now. I certainly hadn't expected them to have any recourse against TC from their last incident, but they have users that are the equivalent of mini-diggs now, and have many of them.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they wield this power in the coming year.

</comment><comment><USER4> Of course, there is no zero on that graph. Add one, and the three companies look about the same...</comment>


The iPhone 5's A6 SoC: Not A15 or A9, a Custom Apple Core Instead - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/6292/iphone-5-a6-not-a15-custom-core <comment><USER2> Wow, I hadn't realized Apple had bought into the 'Sun' model that to be the best you had to have your own CPU. Well I knew they were doing their own silicon, I think that is actually kind of nominal for folks who want to innovate in the small device space since you can't get to the components otherwise, but to change the CPU architecture in the process is a pretty bold step. Sun discovered that you can get a jump on the competition like that, the first SparcStations really blew away the competition, but ultimately you can't outspend even three other competitors at the same time.

Of course this was also why Samsung has been a much bigger threat to Apple than the other Android handset makers, they too make their own SoC silicon.

So we get to see three companies pursuing products in the same space with three different strategies:

Apple - Custom OS (iOS), Customized Silicon

Samsung - Third party OS (Android), Customized Silicon

Asus/HTC - Third party OS (Android), Third party silicon (nVidia)

These kinds of situations don't come around that often so when they do they make for great learning experiences.

<comment><USER3> Is Samsung making their own cores? The news in the article is that Apple is making their own cores now, they've been making their own silicon for the last few revisions, right?

<comment><USER2> It isn't clear to me that Samsung has publicly enhanced the ARM architecture in the Exynos [1] series but they certainly could and exploit that in their own products. Like Apple they are full licensees to the ARM architecture (which means they can make derivative works of the ARM cpu) and of course if they did they would be able to exploit that in their version of Android if they so chose to. There were a few companies that did that with the 6502 'core' back in the day adding some custom instructions in the space that was reserved or undefined by MOS Semiconductor.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exynos>

<comment><USER4> It's _really_ hard to build a custom processor with decent performance these days. There are very few teams that can do it, and it takes way more investment than normal ASIC design. The people who can do it largely work for Intel, AMD, IBM, some at Apple, and probably a few other major shops.

So I suspect it would be hard for Samsung to build a custom ARM processor unless they teamed up or bought a team that already has this specialized skill. That's what Apple did...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is interesting to note that Apple now designes their own programming language, the compilers, the operating system, the processors and the products all that tech goes into. That's a pretty rare configuration of a company that hasen't existed since what? the 80s? [1]. That's a really unique opportunity to do really wild things, I hope they don't squander it. But I guess that requires a bold visionary, not of the Jobs type, more of an academic.

[1] I guess IBM still counts, but mainframes aren't that sexy anymore :)

<comment><USER6> Oracle. In addition they make their own Storage, Servers, virtualization, OS, Compilers, Database, Middleware and Applications.

\- Storage: Storagetek

\- Virtualization: LDOM, Xen (OracleVM), VirtualBox

\- OS: Solaris, EOL Linux, and also Jrockit (Java running on top of Xen)

\- Compilers: Java, Pl/SQL (Compiles to ADA bytecode), C

\- Database: Oracle, MySQL, BerkeleyDB

\- Middleware: SOA Suite

\- Applications: Fusion Apps (EBS, PeopleSoft JDEdwards)

In Addition, Oracle has their own Appliances: Exalogix, Exadata, etc.

<comment><USER7> Storagetek only does Tape; the Pillar division does real storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing that makes Apple in a very special situation is that they have $100 billion cash to fund various forms of competitive advantage. From the supply chain to the hardware design to the software to the retail delivery experience, Apple can invest an optimize every point in the whole process. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out.

</comment><comment><USER9> If this is true, it's strange that Apple didn't tout it more. I guess "And this Apple designed chip we told you is Apple designed already the last few times is even more Apple designed now!" is a hard message to sell, and from a consumer's perspective, those implementation details are completely irrelevant anyway.

I guess Apple will tout completely irrelevant tech specs when it sounds good and fits the message, but when it would just cloud the issue and be confusing they just leave it out, even if those tech specs would put them in a positive light.

<comment><USER10> Apple have touted it. Twice as fast as 4S, longer battery life. That is all that matters to the consumer and those are the benefits brought by the CPU.

<comment><USER9> That's the boring part. Sure, that's what's actually matters (or at least a good deal closer to what actually matters), but Apple hasn't been shy to share some technical details at pretty weird opportunities.

<comment><USER11> I think part of the problem is they already have introduced the cpu as "theirs" in a previous iteration (I don't remember which one) when they introduced for the first time the "Apple Ax". So I think it would now be difficult to explain that the cpu was not really completely made by them, that now this it is their design (built on the ARM IP) and put in silicon by Samsung... Too much hassle to explain I think for too few marketing gain.

<comment><USER12> They could have said "completely redesigned* - the closest they came to that was calling it "A6". They are right to sell the benefits, because that's what sells. Even Woz chastised them for saying "quad-core" graphics for the iPad 3. This time, they didn't even say that - just "2x faster graphics".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty sure power scales quadratically not exponentially with voltage, right?

<comment><USER14> In a general case P = V^2 / R

That said, at the manufacturing scales of these parts leakage in the transistor can be as big a power consumer as the switching.

Leakage current increasing as voltage increases at a rate that is of the order ~e^Vth

I wouldn't really say its strictly either exponential or quadratic, you'd have to know a lot more about the process and the implementation to know how significant leakage current is in the design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is just a bunch of rumors and the author patting himself on the back for being well connected and talking to the right people. Well it may be true, but this article does not really prove it. This is one of the things that, if true, would come from official apple channels rather than un-sourced rumors.

<comment><USER16> Dismissing Anand Lal Shimpi as one would dismiss a blogger is not right. He carries a lot of reputation and experience.

>This is one of the things that, if true, would come from official apple channels rather than un-sourced rumors

Err, Apple has a policy of not officially talking about even the amount of RAM, so we need to rely on third parties for this info.

<comment><USER17> In all fairness, on this particular issue his track record isn't too good :-) Within the last a week he has been strongly of the opinion that it's going to be an upclocked A9, then that it's an A15 mysteriously launching months ahead of schedule, and now that it's a previously unheard of Apple design.

At this rate we're going to hear in two days that actually Apple licensed Krait from Qualcomm, and in a week that what really happened was a switch to Medfield.

<comment><USER18> This is the first time he's claimed confirmation from people who are supposed to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is an important development, as it marks Apple's first use of an internally-designed ARM core in any of its products. Apple's acquisition of processor design expertise is going to start paying off at a much more fundamental level than it has in the past.

I'm excited to see where this leads, as Apple possesses for the first time the ability to design the SoC for a device like the iPhone from the cores up.

It's a huge step for Apple.

<comment><USER20> "Apple's first use of an internally-designed ARM core" : ARM itself was a joint venture including Apple, for just this reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is this really a surprise? [http://gizmodo.com/382929/apple-buys-itself-a- little-chip-co...](http://gizmodo.com/382929/apple-buys-itself-a-little-chip- company-known-for-super-efficient-processors)

<comment><USER22> Right, Apple bought P.A. Semi, and assuming that those guys stuck around after Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel, Apple has a proven CPU devel team.

<comment><USER23> That purchase occurred a couple of years after the Intel switch. In retrospect, it looks a lot like a purchase intended for the newcomer iOS lineup.

<comment><USER22> Oh yeah. I merged things together in my memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not surprised, it was too early for an A15, and Samsung would not give it to Apple before they used it themselves.

Similarly, they were unlikely to be high clocked A9s because of battery life- apple has a history of using low clocked cores too.

I see this as Apple's long-term play for competitive advantage, while their main previous ones- refined OS and high PPI screen- have become the norm.

<comment><USER24> "Samsung would not give it to Apple before they used it themselves."

two mistakes in that phrase:

\- A15 isn't Samsung's to give to Apple -- they license that from ARM. Yes, Samsung manufactures Apple's chips, but the chip is designed by Apple using IP licensed from ARM, Imagination Technologies and others, but as far as Samsung is concerned the chip is a black box.

\- Samsung has given technology to Apple before they used it themselves several times in the past.

I also doubt the first part of your statement. It's early for an A15, but it's certainly within Apple's power to persuade ARM to help them get something they want to market early. Spending their billions to bend supplier's arms is one of the things that Apple does best.

<comment><USER10> 1\. Samsung are poised to be the first manufacturer to bring an A15 based SOC to market. There are no doubt many issues involved in the reality of manufacturing a new arm core, no one else is as close as Samsung. So i maintain that Apple would have needed Samsung to enable them to use an A15.

2\. Yes, they have supplied apple with stuff that only they can make before using it themselves - eg. the iPad screen (but IIRC LG were meant to be supplying too), but i still don't think they would want to give apple a CPU platform that was undoubtedly better than their flagship phone so soon after releasing it.

3\. ARM aren't really a supplier to apple, they just licence designs. ARM have no manufacturing expertise.

<comment><USER25> > "i still don't think they would want to give apple a CPU platform that was > undoubtedly better than their flagship phone so soon after releasing it"

You need to bear in mind that the division of Samsung that sells the chips is totally separate from the division that sells the phones. The silicon division doesn't particularly care about the phone division - they care about their bottom line alone. And Apple turning up with a dump truck of cash, which is basically what they've been doing to secure component supplies, is not something they wil turn down lightly.

Apple is somewhat unique among consumer electronics companies in that it is very singly focused. Samsung, along with Sony, Microsoft, and others, are multi-conglomerates, with vast reaching business interests, and Samsung's chip fab division only really cares about the profits their division is making. Money from Apple, money from an internal cross-charge: profit is profit.

> "3. ARM aren't really a supplier to apple, they just licence designs. ARM > have no manufacturing expertise."

I don't think this is what you mean. You mean ARM have no expertise manufacturing _at scale_. ARM have extensive manufacturing expertise, because they need to supply reference designs _that work in production_. ARM has manufacturing expertise because they need to produce designs that are easy to manufacture.

<comment><USER10> I would say ARM have expertise in 'designing for manufacture' which is distinct from the actual manufacturing, but lets say they have no expertise in 'production manufacturing'.

While Samsung does indeed contain a bunch of largely separate companies, both chips and phones are part of Samsung Electronics, there is one set of top management for both.

<comment><USER26> Samsung have made it very clear that there is a 'firewall' between the component and product sides of the business.

One side does not affect the other.

<comment><USER27> I wonder if it's actually true.

<comment><USER28> They have most likely done many calculations that clearly say "if we lose Apple on the supply side, we lose <insert ridiculous amount of money that eclipses smartphone revenue here>."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hey, I had no idea that Apple discontinued armv6 support from the latest SDK... learned something new.

<comment><USER30> The latest SDK only supports iOS 5 and up (if you want to target 4 you have to install an old one), and there are no ARMv6 devices which can run iOS 5, so it makes sense.

<comment><USER29> Ouch. Do you have to have two Xcodes side by side, or can you install old SDL into new Xcode?

<comment><USER31> Officially, side by side is the way to go. Unofficially, you can sometimes merge the actual SDK bundles into the most recent Xcode directory.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The incredible power of a 16 year old video blogger - <AUTHOR> http://www.22michaels.com/2010/03/juicystar07-and-world-of-new-media.html

<comment><USER2> "Unfortunately conversions is a different story as Juicystar07's audience is primarily 13-17 year old girls."

There's a hidden lesson in this story. 22 Michaels learned this lesson the hard way. The lesson is simple: not all traffic is created equal. It turns out that Youtube views, Youtube comments, Youtube ranking, Facebook shares, and pageviews don't mean much. They're vanity metrics - nice to look at but lacking content.

The only thing that matters is sales. Find traffic sources that generate sales and pour money into the channels the most sales dollars per advertising dollar.

<comment><USER3> Well the lesson could be that they should aim their product more at 13-17 year olds. If they are disproportionately interested in your site it would make sense to optimise for them as customers. My unscientific guess is that custom shoes aren't ever going to fit quite into the premium shoe price range - because at that end you want some extra validation like a famous brand/designer.

<comment><USER4> How does one do that? I can't imagine 13-17-year-olds having the means to order shoes online.

<comment><USER5> In Scotland 17 year olds start University. I had a debit card account when I was 16 (quite a few years ago) and it's quite common for teens (14+) to have part-time jobs even if they're still in full-time education.

Kids tend to get allowances and spending money as gifts for birthdays, Christmas, Easter, etc. in the UK at least.

<comment><USER4> By "means," I didn't mean "money", but rather specifically "a credit card." Parents don't like to let their children have them here—they forsee bad spending habits and debt; that's why "reloadable" service-specific gift cards are so popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Our start-up creates Facebook Applications for these popular YouTubers. Blair is one of our top clients (<http://apprats.com/partners/>) and her app is here: <http://apps.facebook.com/juicystar/> She has been a really awesome person to work with; I have been continually impressed by her.

We have been able to get around 250,000 Facebook monthly users in just over 2 months because of all the traffic these YouTubers can push. I think people are still underestimating how influential and valuable these YouTubers are.

</comment><comment><USER7> The power of social media isn't lost on any of the visitors of HN but it's still worth taking a moment to read about how Shoes Of Prey worked with 16 year old video blogger Blair Fowler to make a make a YouTube video and post it to her account. She has nearly 300,000 youtube subscribers and the promotional video sent nearly 200,000 visitors to the Shoes Of Prey website. To give some perspective, Techcrunch was only able to deliver a tiny fraction of that number of visitors.

Visitors don't always mean sales though. The Shoes Of Prey blog says they didn't get many sales out of the deal and speculate that Blairs follower demographic of 13-17 year old girls can't afford the expensive shoes. I don't know how much they paid Blair to do the video but I'm sure enough of those kids were able to convince their moms to buy some shoes.

[http://hnsummary.com/2010/03/28/the-incredible-power- of-a-16...](http://hnsummary.com/2010/03/28/the-incredible-power-of-a-16-year- old-video-blogger-2/)

<comment><USER8> Well, this'll be interesting. I think this comment is valuable (good summaries of articles usually are), but the site you link to isn't (because other comments are also valuable). However, as I suspect you're the guys from mixergynotes, I don't think this account has a chance in hell.

<comment><USER7> If I get down voted consistently then I'll stop. Most of the value of HN is in the comments so I'll link back to the original HN post in each summary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gotta say this is impressive, though.. a world where a 16 year old both looks _and_ talks like a 25+ year old is a pretty alien one to me. I'm only glad I'm out of the dating pool! When I was 16, the girls were spotty, wore no or bad make up, and were into screaming over boy bands. It's a different world :-)

<comment><USER10> I don't think the lesson here is, "Boy, girls today!"

This 16 year old is an outlier, despite her mainstream looks. She has built up her audience to the point that she can attract 450,000 views to a youtube post on shoes, and she has monetized this audience. I don't like a lot about what she represents (teenagers should aspire to $305 custom-made snake skin high heels? ugh) but she is very good at what she does.

When we were kids, there was essentially no way for an ambitious, entrepreneurial, but non-technical 16 year old to do this sort of thing. Viva la internet.

<comment><USER9> _This 16 year old is an outlier, despite her mainstream looks._

Good point, but unless you're trawling social networking sites,the ones plastered over the TV (MTV, 90210, et al) are the only ones we see a ton of :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The comparison with TechCrunch in not relevant, i guess that only a small percentage of the average techie tc user visited the site, let alone buy anything. A girl oriented site/whatever was a better way to promote something like this. Btw, i'm impressed with the results too, trying this with a more tech related vlogger (if there are any) for a more tech/web2.0 related startup could be a nice experiment.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is reminding me of a post I read on HN about some guy who was trying to start an advertising business focused around getting popular video bloggers from youtube to advertise products.

Does anyone have a link to that post? Im intrigued on reading it again in light of this.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you make travel sites better? - <AUTHOR>

I travel over a 100k miles a year for work and have a lot of down time sitting at airports and on the plane with no wifi, so I thought I'd start a new travel related side project that I only work on while I'm at an airport or on a plane (20 hours a week or so).<p>I want to build something that will actually benefit travellers and not just myself, so I'd love to know any pain points you have or any features you wish existed when you are planning your trips. I'm open to any and all ideas. <comment><USER2> Single point WiFi database. List of networks, their cost, what services they allow you onto (HTTP, any TCP, VPN, etc), their speed, et al. Have it be filterable, so if I am sitting in airport X then I can look for "WiFi which supports VPN tunneling."

Just like Amazon's product catalogue but with WiFi networks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Day planning that is aware of open & closing times, with on the fly schedule adjustments. E.g. behind schedule after visiting A, traffic prevents visiting B, too early to visit C, find alternate D that is worthwhile, open and reachable from A.

</comment><comment><USER4> Flexibility. I always start using travel sites but their formats are always so rigid that I'm forced to change the way I do things or I am forced to stop using it.

I always go back to excel.</comment>


Show HN: SeeAround.me – See and share local news - <AUTHOR> http://www.seearound.me/

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem: hyperlocal news is fragmented - on news sites, blogs, newsletters, events pages, etc. I built this so the local community can see, submit, curate, and discuss local news, all in one place and with a map.

<comment><USER2> maybe the mobile app is better but when I want to post something I thought I would get an option so oauth and submit something from my social account not a file I have on my computer.

How is the mobile UX?

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean there was an issue with Facebook login..? It should only try to open a file from your computer if you're submitting a story and try to attach an image. Re mobile: It's too complex for a small screen, so there's a mobile page that just says there will be an app soon.

<comment><USER2> No i logged in without fb (just to see that experience first). so this is used more to kind of geo see what is going on around you? wouldn't an instagram be the best integration because then you can see events that are going on around you?

<comment><AUTHOR> At first I thought I could just try to pull in geo-tagged feeds from Instagram, Twitter, and other sources. The trouble is, most of that content is not actually about the location. Someone might say, "I love lasagna!" and it's geotagged nearby. Unfortunately, I found there's simply too much noise for that approach to work.

Edit: The answer to your first question is, yes, that's exactly what it's for!: to see news within a certain radius of where you are.

<comment><USER2> yeah I see how that can be a major issue, since rarely do people use the goe tag feature on social...

maybe an easy way to designate if their post,tweet or share should also be share on seearound by denoting a #seeme?

Idk just an idea

<comment><USER2> oh yeah I definitely see what you mean. Well ill keep playing around the app and maybe something will come to me :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks for taking a look and sharing feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A few people have been using it in the bay area, mainly in Oakland and Barkeley and a few in SF. Note that in other locations you can still use it, but there isn't much content to see!

</comment><comment><USER3> Same purpose: [http://localflow.co/](http://localflow.co/)</comment>


Software bug made Bombardier planes turn the wrong way - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/29/bombardier_missed_approach_bug/ <comment><USER2> I understand the bug, and it's one of the worst imaginable.

Doing an unauthorized departure turn can impact terrain. At night, it may not even be noticed by the pilots.

Source: commercially-rated pilot.

<comment><USER3> It seems pretty far from "worst imaginable". I mean, it's not like it goes into an uncontrollable dive.

<comment><USER4> If you still have control surfaces, is a dive at sufficient altitude ever uncontrollable? Flat spins are way scarier.

<comment><USER2> The main issues are:

\- dive with power causing overspeed

\- dive causing controls to lock due to transsonic shock waves

\- improper recovery from a spiral dive will over-G

\- MCAS-style confusion

\- bottoming out on a phugoid oscillation

\- unrecoverable spins, usually in jets

But in general, if you unload the wings (reduce G), then nothing breaks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Four months ago there was a post of another article from theregister.co.uk about another bug. The cockpit/flight deck displays went blank if a Boeing 737 landed at any runway that was oriented at 270 degrees true.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21991087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21991087)

<comment><USER6> That sounds more dangerous than this one, but flying the wrong missed approach or departure is far more dangerous than any display/instrument failure because the crew wouldn't be aware of the problem. If the flight display fails you look at the backup instrument and keep flying, every crew is trained for that.

But if the missed approach or departure procedure is wrong the crew has a high probability of not noticing it (this all happens in a very high workload situation). If you don't notice you can't fix it. What makes it worse is that this bug happens in situations whether the procedure requires a turn "the long way around", they wouldn't design the procedure that way unless it's really necessary. So there is a big chance there is terrain or an obstacle on the other side.

Source: I'm a commercial pilot

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another reverse polarity incident:

[https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1424233&...](https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1424233&sid=6b6dc652243a92d64d2d4359a3f5bad5)

</comment><comment><USER8> >Most bugs in airliners tend to be unforeseen memory overflows

the 21st century, planet Earth.

</comment><comment><USER9> Another turn the wrong way issue that happened was on the early versions of the 737. It would cause the rudder to go hard-over to the other direction it was commanded. It happened so hard it was difficult (if not impossible) for a pilot to counteract it using the pedals (they would basically have to stand on the pedal).

It killed at least 157 people. The culprit in this case iirc was a combination of a flaw in the hydraulic cylinder design with large temperature swings. The story of the guy who finally figured it out is a fun one.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues)

</comment><comment><USER10> I keep noticing that more and more aviation and space missions fail because of software problems. It seems to me that the new generation of engineers are generally less competent or companies see software as an afterthought which can be outsourced to lower-wage countries.

The Boeing MAX and Starliner come to mind, but the failed Moon missions by Israel and India are also examples of this trend.

Cost cutting in software development is costing companies dearly. Boeing may even go bankrupt because of this.

<comment><USER11> (The MAX was not so much a software issue as an architecture issue (starting with insufficient redundancy). So that's not a good example of software causing problems for airliners.)

There are two reasons why you can expect software to be more and more the cause of airliner safety issues:

\- software is eating the world

\- software is getting more complicated

The first is a long-term trend now. Look under the hood of any automobile from before the 80s: no computer to be found. Look under the hood of any automobile from the past 30 years: computers abound. The reason for this is that many problems are easier to address in software than in hardware. Of course, you go from N hardware problems to some possibly smaller set of possibly simpler hardware problems at the cost of gaining a set of software problems -- but this trade-off usually pays off. In some cases this trade-off enables functionality that would be infeasible to create otherwise.

The second problem is also a long-term trend: CPUs, systems, operating systems, and applications have all tended to get more complex. In embedded systems the trend has been less strongly towards ever-increasing complexity, but even in embedded systems things have gotten more complex.

Whether the problem is less competence among today's programmers is hard to establish here. First, we need much more software, which means we need many more programmers, which means the quality of programmers you get probably does decrease, though then again, we do have more programmers overall as more people (competent and otherwise) are attracted to the industry. But more importantly, the increase in complexity of today's systems could very well be enough to make yesteryear's competent programmers incompetent today -- you can't really compare software development 40 years ago to software development today.

(I object to this idea that lower-wage programmers necessarily can't be competent, though that isn't quite what you wrote. It's true that a lax process for outsourcing can mean you get less competent programmers, and it's probably true that higher GDP/capita correlates with availability of competent programmers. But it doesn't follow that there are no competent lower-wage programmers in India, say.)

<comment><USER10> The problem seems to me that management doesn't appreciate the need for competent (and therefore expensive) software engineers in critical projects like defense, aviation and space. The whole idea of trying to save a few bucks on something as critical as a fly-by-wire system or end-to-end testing seems totally ludicrous to me.

Boeing has been cutting too many corners since the MBA's took over and started reorganizing things to maximize profitability. There's a good chance the company will fail because of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> not the 1st time bombies did this: [https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/deutsche-bahn- ic-1.47...](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/deutsche-bahn-ic-1.4773380)

</comment><comment><USER13> Turning off the feature doesn't sound so bad considering the CRJ-200 first flew in 1991, it took 26 years to identify the bug so I assume it's not used frequently at all.

<comment><USER14> It's an avionics bug, so very likely the affected equipment is aftermarket.

<comment><USER15> How's that? Are most avionics issues due to aftermarket equipment?

<comment><USER14> I don't know about that, but it'd be a surprise to see an airframe of that age in commercial service that hadn't had its avionics upgraded, since that's a relatively simple way to gain new flight management capabilities. It'd also be a surprise to see so severe a bug go undetected for so long, if it was part of the original equipment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of a meetup I attended last fall, they were talking about the Spectre/Meltdown issues. I asked the presenters if anything in chip manufacturing/verification processes had changed as a result of that and they seemed surprised.

To me, when a software bug shows up in a critical system, that means you actually have a logistics bug. Airplane control software should not be allowed to have bugs. CPUs should not be allowed to have bugs. And OS's should not be allowed to crash (looking at you Microsoft).

When one of these things happens, in my opinion the correct response is _not_ to just release fixes and workarounds and then say "we'll try really hard to not let it happen again." You do that, sure. But the first time you see airplane software malfunction, that means you need to change the way the software is written and released so that the whole class of issues will not ever happen again. You don't stop at a public apology, you don't fire the person that unintentionally wrote the bug. If you have to hire mathematicians to formally prove the critical paths of the software, you do that. If it costs 10x more to release bug-free software, oh well, you do that.

All of these corporate people thinking they can save money by spending less on quality are extremely naive. You can do a financial analysis of this, but they're doing it wrong. Did you ever consider what the cost of a whole generation just not trusting air travel at all would be?

<comment><USER17> You are correct, but airplane companies already do that for the most part and much much more.

The difference in reliability between normal software and airplane software is so vast that "best practices" from normal software can not be applied to airplane software since that would be gross criminal negligence. To explain, in the 10 years prior to the 737-MAX problems there were 50,000,000 flights and software was not implicated in a single passenger air fatality. The average flight is ~5,000 KM which is ~4-5 hours. So, in ~250,000,000 flight- hours, there were two crashes due to software. A plane takes ~3 minutes to fall from cruising altitude, so we can model this as a downtime of 6 minutes per 250,000,000 hours which gives us an downtime of 1 in 2,500,000,000 or a 99.99999996% uptime (yes, that is 9 9s). In contrast, I think most software people would agree that AWS is high quality. The AWS SLA specifies a 99.99% uptime (1 in 10,000 downtime). So, by this metric, airplane software is 250,000x more reliable than normal high quality software.

The point of this is that the standard for airplanes is almost inconceivably high compared to normal software. To think that they are incompetent or suggest that all they need to do is adopt X or Y common-sense/best-practice is a gross misunderstanding of what is being done and what needs to be done to improve. It would be like someone trying to tell a civil engineer making a 50-story skyscraper that they really need to adopt high quality wood construction techniques from makers of doghouses. To actually improve it, you need to consider practices 250,000x better than "best practices" and go from there.

To put it another way, the solutions are actually really really good, unfortunately the problems are really really really really hard.

<comment><USER18> Not to detract from your point that aeronautical industry software is reliable (it is), but the 737 MAXes that crashed were all new planes. There wasn't even 24 months between the first delivery of a MAX to the model being grounded.

The issues with the MAX were also clearly preventable and there were multiple failures of the systems (regulators, internal reviews, etc.) that were in place to catch these kinds of issues.

But as you point out, the aeronautical industry has an excellent track record for software reliability, if you evaluate reliability by hull losses. By other metrics, it's a bit more debatable (eg. the integer overflow for Dreamliners such that they need to be restarted at least every 248 days), but still keeps people moving safely.

<comment><USER17> Yes. I included the MAX because otherwise the software-related fatalities over the last 10 years is 0. If you do just the MAX, the low end in terms of flights is ~200,000 with an average of 3 hours per flight. Using the same time basis above, that is 1 in 6,000,000 or 99.99998% uptime which is 600x better than AWS by my previously used metric. The software of an unconscionable deathtrap is 600x better than extremely high quality server software.

My primary point is that many people look at these failures and incorrectly conclude that the processes in place are objectively terrible and below average. This leads to them discounting the processes in these systems in favor of policies from vastly less reliable systems that they think are quality-focused or "best practices" because they, fairly, think "bad" in a safety-critical context means the same as regular "bad", so regular "amazing" is clearly better. In truth, "unconscionable deathtrap" and "gross criminal negligence" in the airplane world is more of a synonym for "amazing beyond belief" in the rest of the software industry. The correct takeaway is understanding that regular "amazing" is actually orders of magnitude worse than "unconscionable deathtrap" and is thus completely inadequate for the job. As a corollary, if you do not think you are doing "way better than amazing" you are probably not doing an adequate job in these contexts.

To reiterate, the solutions are really really good, unfortunately the problems are really really really really hard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just flew out of this airport yesterday, only 5 passengers onboard a Bombardier Q400.

Thankfully there are no nearby hills for this bug to kill anyone there.

Unrelated, but how many carbon offsets do I buy?

<comment><USER20> You'd have consumed about 0.45 l/km of kerosene per flight km per passenger. Calculation based upon [0]. That means you'd need to offset CO² emissions of about 1.11 kg CO² per flight km [1] for yourself.

[0] [https://www.flyradius.com/bombardier-q400/fuel-burn- consumpt...](https://www.flyradius.com/bombardier-q400/fuel-burn-consumption)

[1] [https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels- d_1085...](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/co2-emission-fuels-d_1085.html)

<comment><USER19> Wow that's great, thank you for finding these and doing those calculations. I'm glad to read it's one of the more fuel efficient aircrafts.

Flightaware puts the actual distance at 760km, so it'd be ~844kg of CO².

I found this great guide by the David Suzuki Foundation which assesses different carbon offset vendors with a few different measures:

[https://davidsuzuki.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/10/purchasin...](https://davidsuzuki.org/wp- content/uploads/2019/10/purchasing-carbon-offsets-guide-for-canadians.pdf)

Pages 42-49 go into the different criteria, Page 50 is the table scoring them all.

I decided to go with [https://carbonzero.ca](https://carbonzero.ca), it was $19.89CAD for 0.88t. Thank you for your help :)</comment></comment></comment>


I was wrong with my project. - <AUTHOR>

The time showed that I was wrong with one of my many spare time projects ... www.jobitems.com (not counting nice pagerank:)
So what :) I'm not a salesman. If you guys have some interesting idea to run some niche job site, we can make a deal. You will provide a domain (owned by you and directed to my dns servers) I will provide a code (owned by me).
Also I would like to give a hosting space at site5.com which I need not anymore to people working on some interesting open-source project. Hosting is prepaid for the next 14 months. You can find hosting parameters here: www.site5.com/hosting
Please understand, I can't reply to every e-mail I get (address is in my profile at news.YC). Also note for some people: jobitems.com domain and code aren't for sale. <comment><USER2> You can also try and offload projects on sitepoint.com .</comment>


How to Extract Data from Wikipedia and Wikidata - <AUTHOR> https://linktosheets.com/extract-data-from-wikipedia-wikidata/ <comment><USER2> Extracting just raw text from the Wikipedia dumps is pretty hellish. Apparently the official Wikipedia parser itself is something like one 5000 line PHP function. There are about 30 or so alternate parsers that attempt to do this with limited success. I tried a lot of those options, but eventually had to hack together some terrible scripts of my own to do the job.

[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers](https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers)

It was for a web app that I made as a way to learn web dev. The data extraction from Wikipedia was what really killed my motivation and eventually left the project in a sort of amateurish, half-finished state. But, if any language learners wants to practice reading difficult English texts it might be somewhat useful:

[https://lexical.io](https://lexical.io)

<comment><USER3> >Extracting just raw text from the Wikipedia dumps is pretty hellish.

Did you try just asking them? I'm sure someone there can flick a switch and get it all to you. After all, it's _just_ text, and they must have it all set up to serve however they want.

The total size of the English Wikipedia is under 100 GB as uncompressed xml[1] (bearing in mind that xml is pretty verbose).

This should not be prohibitive for a Wikipedia admin to generate and to serve to you at your request. Why not?

It's a community project sponsored by donations.

[1] Eyeballing the trend on this page - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia) which mentions "As of May 2015, the current version of the English Wikipedia article / template / redirect text was about 51 GB uncompressed in XML format", so I estimate based on the shape of the graph that it is less than 100 GB today.

<comment><USER4> You can download a database dump which contains the wikitext source. You can interpret this into HTML. What GP means is extracting the natural-language text from this (separating it from the infoboxes, presentation information, etc).

<comment><USER3> oh, okay. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Worth mentioning is dbpedia, which is an open database made from extracting data from Wikipedia.

[http://wiki.dbpedia.org](http://wiki.dbpedia.org)

<comment><USER6> Is there an easy way to host a local DBPedia copy? Last time I checked it uses a little known database software. MySQL, Postgres or Lucene/ElasticSearch support would be prefered.

<comment><USER7> That "little known database software" is called an RDF triplestore. You can think of it as a graph store on steroids, which allows you to formulate very complex queries on linked data (which wikipedia has plenty of). Take a look at [https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/linked- data](https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/linked-data) for learning more (not affiliated with the authors, just enjoyed the course).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note what this is for. "When to use it: Seek spikes in pageviews, find out the reason it triggered interest, and try to replicate it. If you're unable to replicate it, you can produce content related to that trigger." This is an article on how to generate clickbait content.

<comment><USER9> A little cynically, one could say that a lot of "life" is about seeing someone exploiting a niche, and imitating them.

Unprincipled, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wikidata is very interesting experience. Using their API is rather cool. For example, here is the wikidata API call for Hacker News: [https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=...](https://www.wikidata.org/w/api.php?action=wbgetentities&ids=Q686797&format=json)

The mainsnaks snytax is a bit confusing but once you get used to it it's quite powerful. I use it quite often.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been investigating Wikidata, because I want to add informational cards to the sidebar of [https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com) (like Google does), so this spreadsheet is a great head start.

</comment><comment><USER12> I made a cli tool [0] a while ago to simplify this. I remember the API was pretty difficult.

[0] [https://rubygems.org/gems/wik](https://rubygems.org/gems/wik)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there a way to use a local version of Wikipedia (english) on a raspberry pi? That can be accessed and searched via the shell? On a USB stick. Images and media fils excluded.

I know there is Gozim - [http://scaleway.nobugware.com](http://scaleway.nobugware.com) \- but that serves a local website.

<comment><USER14> You could use kiwix and have the rpi host a nas w/ the db.</comment></comment>


We Need Cruel and Unusual Punishment - <AUTHOR> https://outlookzen.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/we-need-cruel-and-unusual-punishment/ <comment><USER2> It starts with the false premise that a psychologist can say that someone "is of no further danger to society."

If that were true, then the solution is easy - psychological evaluations for everyone and rehabilitation until they are no threat!

It then posits that a new criminal system would choose "a prison system, similar to what we currently have in the States." Which is a horrid system; what sort of people, working with a fresh slate, would decide _that_?

> "Sounds too good to be true? It shouldn't be."

Or, why not choose the Norwegian approach? Low crime rates, jail programs to help rehabilitate, and their prisons don't "cripple the convict's future."

It's almost as if there were other alternatives between choosing the US prison system or caning.

> But what does that really mean? Instead of carelessly tossing around that > term, as though it's supposed to end all debate, let's critically analyze it > for a second.

All that analysis, and not one link to the US Supreme Court cases on that topic or other legal definitions? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment) says "There are generally tests that can serve as a guide to what cruel and unusual punishment is according to various legal textbooks in accordance with the law. These are: 1) the frequency at which the punishment occurs in society, 2) overall acceptance in society, 3) severe (the punishment fits the crime), and 4) if the punishment is arbitrary."

Caning in the US does not fit #2.

> Our current system of mass incarceration is horribly broken.

Agreed.

> But in order to truly punish and deter criminal behavior, and do so in a > manner that imposes minimal long-term costs on both society and convicts, > it's time we started considering other forms of punishment.

Or, you know, a strong social net, more social equality, a reform of the prison system to treat prisoners as people and not a modern form of slavery, and other things which _aren 't_ simply a shift in how we punish people.

<comment><AUTHOR> You've nitpicked a large number of details but failed to address the central point. If you have a convicted mass-murderer, and a wonderful rehab program that has succeeded in rehabilitating the murderer, what do you propose should happen next?

If you say the prisoner should be released on some sort of parole, you've just broken the hearts of the families of every one of the murderer's victims, and also sent a chilling non-deterrent message to anyone else considering a life of crime.

If you say that the prisoner should continue to serve a substantially long prison term, and eventually be released decades later with the prime years of his life taken away from him, you've just wastefully crippled his long-term prospects and potential.

Taking all the punishment that is spread out over a long term prison sentence, and compressing it into a short period of time, is the only sane approach that avoids both of the above problems. If you disagree, we'd love to hear you describe how you'd handle the above scenario.

<comment><USER2> I think it's proper to nitpick by pointing out when scenarios are highly artificial and therefore should not be use to make policy decisions. Why not use actual examples, rather than make one up?

Look to Norway. They have a mass-murderer, Breivik. They have a wonderful rehab program. If they are convinced that it doesn't work, then the state will place him in custody for longer than the 21 year maximum sentence, in order to protect the population.

If they believe he is rehabilitated, and his sentence is over, then he will be released. But don't confuse punitive punishment for preventive detention!

Now, you argue that we should not break the hearts of the families of the victims.

We surely cannot use that as our primary guide, for that means that killing an unloved homeless man would carry less punishment than killing the beloved mother of 8. Is that what you want?

How much weight should heartbreak place on the decision? If the family hated their abusive father, and had no remorse over his death, should the murderer get _less_ of a sentence?

I don't agree with the importance of "prime years of his life taken away from him". Do you think Breivik should have been caned then set free? Or that if Norway had caning for mass-murder that Breivik wouldn't have done what it did?

Given that Breivik can play X-Box and is a full student in the bachelor degree program in political science at the University of Oslo, can you really say that his prime years are "taken away"?

What do you think are Breivik's "long-term prospects and potential", should he have been caned instead of being placed in prison?

Feel free to explain the likely long-term prospects and potential of any other mass-murderer you are thinking of, had they been caned instead of imprisoned.

Does your argument change if the mass-murderer is past the prime years of life? Specifically, Andrew Philip Kehoe, at 55 years of age, who killed his wife and 43 other people (including 38 children). Now, he committed suicide, so it's clear that no amount of punishment - caning or otherwise - would have affected him.

But if he had been sentenced, is your argument that it would have been okay to put him in jail for the rest of his life, because the prime years of his life were over?

And you'll notice that nothing - caning, prison, preventive detention, etc. - can deter a mass-murderer who plans to commit suicide, so it's not like the threat of punishment (even corporal punishment) can be convincingly dissuasive.

So, rather than construct artificial scenarios about a young mass-murderer who kill people from loving families, why not point to real-world examples instead, and argue how institutionalized caning would have improved things?

And why not use as your baseline a country like Norway, with a human prison system, instead of one which is inhumane, like the US?

<comment><AUTHOR> _" They have a mass-murderer, Breivik. They have a wonderful rehab program... If they believe he is rehabilitated, and his sentence is over, then he will be released."_

I'm glad you bring up this example. There are 2 conditions here for his being released:

1) They have to believe that he is rehabilitated.

2) He has served his minimum sentence, which in his case, is 10 years.

There is no reason to believe that 1) cannot happen at an earlier point in time, compared to 2). Ie, he might be considered to be rehabilitated after spending just 4 years in prison. According to the Norwegian justice system which you're holding up as a role model, he would then be forced to spend another 6 years in prison, even though he's already been rehabilitated by then.

If you don't believe in punitive punishment, then why do we need 2) at all? Why should Breivik be given any minimum sentence at all? Why shouldn't he be released as soon as officials believe him to be rehabilitated, no matter how quickly that may occur? Are you really going to endorse such a reform which will allow murderers to be released, as soon as they are rehabilitated, no matter how soon that may occur?

If you answered yes to that question, I refer you to the outrage over the following: [http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/us/sexual-assault-brock- turner...](http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/us/sexual-assault-brock-turner- stanford/)

If you answered no to that question, then you too believe in punitive punishment, even though you may not like to admit it.

The only question remaining, is what form that punitive punishment should take. You seem to believe that the best form of punitive punishment is locking someone up in prison for many years/decades. I believe that the best form of punitive punishment is taking all of the unpleasantness that the prison sentence is designed to inflict, and compressing it over a shorter time period, so that the prisoner can move on with his life as soon as possible.

<comment><USER2> > "If you don't believe in punitive punishment"

Please define "punitive". According to [http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/punitive](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/punitive) there are two meanings:

Definition #1: "intended to punish someone or something". I'm for that. But c'mon, a fine for $1 is a punishment. An order to stay away from someone else is a punishment. Is that what you mean by punitive punishment?

Definition #2: "extremely or unfairly severe or high". I'm against that. I don't believe in cruel and unusual punishment. Like caning. I don't believe in inhumane punishment. Like most prisons in the US.

Just because I am against "extremely or unfairly severe or high" punishment doesn't mean I am _for_ no punishment. I can still be for moderate or measured punishment. Which I am.

> "The only question remaining what form that punitive punishment should take"

I do not agree with "extremely or unfairly severe or high punishment", no.

As the essay points out, some people are much more affected by certain forms of punishment than others. The "extremely or unfairly" may be hard to determine. This is why Breivik is allowed to plea for a change of his conditions.

This is indeed a question. It's a well studied question, with a long history and associated court cases from multiple jurisdictions.

But as I complained, the essay ignores the existing concept of "cruel an unusual punishment", and makes things up out of whole cloth - literally, by positing a new culture which just happens to reproduce the US prison system and also happens to consider caning as something other than "cruel and unusual."

<comment><USER2> P.S. Caning doesn't solve everything, even in Singapore. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Singapore)

> Capital punishment is legal in Singapore. The city-state had the second > highest per-capita execution rate in the world between 1994 and 1998

Including [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_(Singapore...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misuse_of_Drugs_Act_\(Singapore\)) :

> The statute's penal provisions are draconian by most nations' standards, > providing for long terms of imprisonment, caning, and capital punishment.

If caning is so effective, why is there _also_ capital punishment? Surely that will take away decades of the "prime" years of someone's life. Like Van Tuong Nguyen, killed at age 25 for drug trafficking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any math-focused gift recommendations for kids? - <AUTHOR> My son is 8 years old, and loves math. I want to get him some books, toys, tools, or models that let him explore fun aspects of math that he's not typically exposed to in school.<p>When I search online, it's hard to tell what's mathematically sound and what's just popular because it looks nice. <comment><AUTHOR> We got him the Turing Tumble [0] last year, and he loved it. He'll take years to work through all the challenges. I found The Boy Who Loved Math [1] years ago, and now he reads that on his own.

[0] - [https://www.turingtumble.com](https://www.turingtumble.com)

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Loved-Math- Improbable/dp/1596...](https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Loved-Math- Improbable/dp/1596433078/)

<comment><USER2> Turing Tumble is really neat. We have a copy at work. Not a lot of replay value, but there are hours of play in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Books:

The Number Devil

Alice in Quantumland

If you can tolerate a little off color humor, any of the "Cartoon guides..." By Larry Gonick are excellent for a variety of subjects.

(If you can find old Star Wars themed software by Lucas Learning that still works, they did terrific things. Iirc, Droidworks basically taught set theory, though by example. It provided no explanation and I had to provide the explanation of set theory to my sons. But I assume it's all out of print now.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a 3yo and a 6yo. I want to cultivate there creativity and critical thinking skills in a way that relates to "math" but I'm not really concerned about teaching arithmetic. They get that enough in school. I also want to instill the idea that though getting "things" are nice, there is value other than just money.

Here's one thing I've been doing/discovered that appears successful so far:

For years I was part of a maker space and I would bring my kid with me a "make" presents on the laser cutter. These were things I designed (like a press fit box) that they helped pick out what to etch on the cover. They would then help my put the material on the machine and push the button. Their friends (and friends parents) loved these gifts.

2 years ago, we moved to a new house and we bought a cnc router for the basement. It is nominally a tool for my side project making wordclocks. Though I've made a few clocks, we've mostly been making birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah gifts for their friends and cousins. The kids help me with the general concept, drawing ideas on paper, I make a cad design and program the machine. Then they help me "set up" the machine and push the button. Lastly they help me sand the final parts. One design we've made a TON of is a custom engraved magic marker holder based on their original design concept. Some of these ideas have even turned into a side, side project and we sell them on Etsy.

We're not selling that many units, but I am getting a huge amount of satisfaction as a parent and the kids are having fun making things. Little do they realize that they are learning to design and fabricate. More importantly (I think) they are learning that if they have an idea, they have the power to implement it (albeit with a lot of help now, but that's not the point). I like the idea of sneaking in STEM, creativity and confidence without the kids even noticing!

So if YOU are interested in making things, I suggest getting a cnc router, 3D printer, or other digital fab tool for YOUR hobby, but get your kids involved in the process.

———-

For those curious about the projects I mentioned:

Wordclock: [http://www.finewordclocks.com](http://www.finewordclocks.com)

Marker Holder: [https://www.etsy.com/listing/693459373/personalized- childs-m...](https://www.etsy.com/listing/693459373/personalized-childs- marker-holder-marker)

</comment><comment><USER5> What about a spirograph, or folding paper and a book about origami?

<comment><AUTHOR> He got into origami a few years ago, and has a bunch of books and supplies that he keeps going back to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> i found the dragonbox suite of apps on ios to be good at reward / learning

</comment><comment><USER7> Buy him a pentagoo

</comment><comment><USER8> My recommendation:

[https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Reversed- Himself/dp/014038965...](https://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Reversed- Himself/dp/0140389652)

Pair it up with 4 D toys on ios: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/4d-toys/id1143791442](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/4d-toys/id1143791442)</comment>


The Perils of Future-Coding - <AUTHOR> http://sebastiansylvan.com/2013/08/16/the-perils-of-future-coding/

<comment><USER2> Saw this when it was retweeted by John Carmack.

I've been guilty of future coding before and it can turn out exactly like the OP says. You only want the best for the codebase but it turns out to be wasted effort.</comment>


Top Down Operator Precedence (1973) - <AUTHOR> http://tdop.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> The only copy I could find was a PDF that contained images of the original paper, literally printed on paper. It seemed worth redoing and putting online properly.

I've tried not to change _anything_ beyond the typography, but it's tricky to get perfect. It's on GitHub, so feel free to chip in.

<comment><USER2> There seem to be a number of places where you've changed hyphens to em-dashes. (E.g.: "This argument is independent of whether we specify program control explicitly, as in Algol—like languages, or implicitly, as in Planner—Conniver- like languages.") It's a bit confusing to read. Would you possibly mind fixing this? Thank you!

<comment><USER3> I collected up a number of nits like this, plus some more meaningful transcription errors, into a branch, and have sent a pull request: [https://github.com/tdop/tdop.github.io/pull/2](https://github.com/tdop/tdop.github.io/pull/2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read through the whole thing, but there's something about the writing style which I think makes it rather difficult to follow; even the Dragon Book was more straightforward.

If I'm not mistaken, this article describes the same thing, and it was far easier to read:

[https://www.engr.mun.ca/~theo/Misc/exp_parsing.htm](https://www.engr.mun.ca/~theo/Misc/exp_parsing.htm)

<comment><USER5> It took me a number of readings before I figured it out, back in the day. I summarized my understanding in [http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2010/01/02/top- down-operator-pr...](http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2010/01/02/top-down- operator-precedence-parsing) \-- hope it's helpful

<comment><USER6> I found [http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2011/03/19/pratt- parsers-e...](http://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2011/03/19/pratt-parsers- expression-parsing-made-easy/) really useful as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Worth noting is Doug Crockford's TDOP parser implementation in JavaScript, it's quite elegant: [https://github.com/douglascrockford/TDOP/](https://github.com/douglascrockford/TDOP/)

As well as his accompanying talk, titled Syntaxation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e_oEE72d3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e_oEE72d3U) (sadly, the recording has gaps and is generally horrible; as far as I know he gave the talk only once).

Crockford's talk led me to the original paper and together they really expanded my horizon on how to make _maintainable_ parsing engines. Thanks for putting in the effort and making it more accessible!

<comment><USER8> Surprisingly, when people can shoot movies with their iPhones, we have nothing to help here. I'd love to see something similar to super-resolution, merging multiples audio sources into a 'higher' res one. And temporal markov graph- cut, to fill gaps as much as possible.

<comment><USER9> Wrong post?

<comment><USER8> Just a strong digression. It's sadly common to have badly recorded talks which is surprising considering the era.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it doesn't help that conference organizers tend to discourage the audience from doing their own recordings.

<comment><USER8> Why is that ? Copyrights or syndicated revenue ? Professional conference recording seems quite pricey[1]. Maybe there can be a middle ground solution.

[1] There's a crowdfunding to help pay for some lambda talks, it was around 15k. I don't know the details though, if it's for many days in many rooms

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love the idea of remastering old papers for the web. While SVG and MathJax allow to easily include diagrams and math, this work shows that you can get away with using only Unicode.

To make the most of the capabilities of HTML, I would have made citations hoverable, so a tooltip can show the reference next to it without the need to go to the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have used TDOP and made variations of it before (e.g. combining TDOP and PEG, as well as introducing a form sub-grammars, like what you get with CFGs). I could also see the similarity between TDOP and left corner parsing, which gave me a better grounding on it.

Still never really felt like I deeply understood it. I think there was some intuitive leap I just wasn't making. A lot of it had to do with the choice of left/right binding powers, and loop that does the comparison and chooses whether to keep extending or to "dive down" into a new sub-tree.

Perhaps if there was a _slightly_ different formulation, or something that was just a plain obvious description or methodology for getting the numbers right I would finally get it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not hard-code the operator precedence into the BNF? Like the K&R book does it.

<comment><USER13> If you're using something that generates a parser for you—like bison or yacc—then sure, you can express your grammar like that, and there are advantages to doing so. On the other hand, if you don't have something like that available—say, you're working in a language where nobody has written a yacc clone yet, so there's no way for you to generate a parser from a BNF description—then implementing a Pratt parser is a _lot_ easier than implementing a parser generator.

Even if you have alternatives, there are _still_ situations in which you might want to use a Pratt parser. It's much easier to understand the internals of this kind of parser than understand the shift/reduce rules of an LL(k) grammar, and Pratt parsers have the nice property that you can easily modify them at runtime, making it easy to switch to alternate grammars in particular contexts—e.g., directly parsing SQL within particular delimiters is a pretty trivial task that is somewhat more difficult with a BNF-style grammar.

EDIT: Actually, a better final example would be user-defined operators with arbitrary precedence and branching. There is no way of expressing this directly in a BNF-style grammar, but it is trivial with a Pratt parser.</comment></comment>


Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Give Real-time Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://mcfunley.com/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-first-give-real-time-analytics <comment><USER2> Full-time web analyst here. Total agreement.

Information is as useful as your ability to act on it--no more, no less. Real- time analytics is something that sounds sexy and gets a lot of headlines (and probably sales), but it's not particularly useful, especially compared to the cost to implement. Most organizations aren't capable of executing quick decisions of any significance. In fact, quite a few business models wouldn't have much to gain even if they were capable of it.

My experience is that there are three types of companies, with very little overlap:

1\. Companies large enough to receive statistically significant amounts of data in under an hour.

2\. Companies small enough to make decisions regarding significant site updates in under an hour.

3\. Companies whose name is "Google."

Fact of the matter is, any change to your site more significant than changing a hex value will require time overhead to think up, spec out, test, and apply. Except in the most pathological cases of cowboy coding, it will take at least a day for minor changes. Changing, say, the page flow of your registration process will take a week to a month. You won't be re-allocating your multi- million-dollar media budget more often than once a quarter, and you have to plan it several months in advance anyways because you need to sign purchase orders.

In short, you can usually wait 'til tomorrow to get your data. Really, you can. Sure, you can probably stop an A/B test at the drop of a hat, but if it took you a week to build it, you ought to let it run longer than that.

I have had one client who really did benefit from real-time-ish (same-day) data. It was a large celebrity news site. They could use data from what stories were popular in the morning to decide which drivel to shovel out that afternoon. This exception nonetheless proves the rule: Of the 6 "requirements" listed in the article, only 1.5 were needed in this particular case: hard yes on accessibility, and timeliness was relaxed from 5 minutes to 30.

(Note that when I say analytics, I mean tools for making business decisions. Ops teams have use for real-time data collection, but the data they need is altogether different, and they are better served by specialized tools).

<comment><USER3> Why single out Google? They're in category 1.

<comment><USER4> He is saying that only Google can do both number 1 and number 2.

<comment><USER5> They seem to qualify for number 3 as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gah, yet another article that links to Evan Miller's article on how to not run an A/B test. I really need to finish writing my article that explains why it is wrong, and how you can do better without such artificial restrictions.

His math is right, but the logic misses a basic fact. In A/B testing nobody cares if you draw a conclusion when there is really no difference, because that is a bad decision that costs no money. What people properly should care about is drawing the wrong conclusion when there is a real difference. But if there is a significant difference, only for small samples sizes is there a realistic chance of drawing a wrong conclusion, and after that the only question is whether the bias has been strong enough to make the statistical conclusion right.

He also is using 95% confidence as a cut-off. Don't do that. You don't need much more data to massively increase the confidence level, and so if the cost of collecting it is not prohibitive you absolutely should go ahead and do that. Particularly if you're tracking multiple statistics. If you test regularly those 5% chances of error add up fast.

<comment><USER7> _He also is using 95% confidence as a cut-off. Don't do that. You don't need much more data to massively increase the confidence level, and so if the cost of collecting it is not prohibitive you absolutely should go ahead and do that._

Statistical significance grows roughly like the square root of the number of samples. Moving from 2-sigma (95%) to the physics gold-standard of 5-sigma requires drastically more data in almost all cases.

Selecting a measurement's uncertainty is something which should be carefully considered. Sometimes you only care about something to 10%, sometimes a 1-in- a-million part failure kills someone's Mom.

If you're doing lots of A/B testing, where trials penalties add up, it might be worth looking into the way that LIGO handles False Alarm Rates. They have to contend with a lot of non-Gaussian noise/glitches.

<comment><USER6> _Statistical significance grows roughly like the square root of the number of samples._

No, no, no. You are confusing the growth of the standard deviation (which does grow like the square root of the number of samples) with the increase in certainty as you add standard deviations. That falls off like e^(-O(t^2)) where t is the number of samples. This literally falls off faster than exponential.

What does this mean in the real world? In a standard 2-tailed test you get to 95% confidence at 1.96 standard deviations, 99% confidence at 2.58 standard deviations, and 99.9% confidence at 3.29 standard deviations. These numbers are all a long ways away from 5 standard deviations.

Let's flip that around and take 95% confidence as your base. If you are measuring a real difference, then on average 99% confidence requires a test to get 32% more data, and 99.9% confidence requires a test to get 68% more data. Depending on your business, the number of samples that you get are often proportional to the time it takes to run the test. If making errors with x% of your company involves significant dollar figures, the cost of running all of your tests to higher confidence tends to be much, much less than the cost of one mistake.

That is why I say that if the cost of collecting more data is not prohibitive, you shouldn't be satisfied with 95% confidence.

<comment><USER7> Assume a random variable is barely resolved at 1-sigma off zero with N samples. If I wish to increase my confidence that it really is off zero (and the mean with N samples is actually the mean of the distribution), then I'll need 4N samples to halve my uncertainty and double the significance of the observation (as measured in sigma-units). It is in that sense that the significance of a measurement increases like \sqrt(N).

Viewed from my perspective, if you'd like to go from 2-sigma (95%) to 3.29-sigma, you'd need (3.29^2)/(2^2)=2.7 times the amount of data used to get the 2-sigma result, or 170% more samples.

It looks like you've reached your conclusion that I'd need 68% more data to reach 99.9% by taking 3.29/1.95=1.68. I believe that this is in error. Uncertainty (in standard deviation) decreases like 1/\sqrt(N), not 1/N.

\sqrt(N) has driven me to depression more than once.

<comment><USER6> You are right that I used linear where I should have used quadratic.

However consider this. To go from 95% to 99% confidence takes 73% more data collection. So for 73% more data, you get 5x fewer mistakes.

To go from 95% to 99.9% confidence takes 182% more data. So for less than 3x the data, you get 50 times the confidence.

My point remains. Confidence improves very, very rapidly.

<comment><USER7> Neat to see a different side of a coin. In our lab, individual measurements can take as long as a year. \sqrt(N), when constrained by human realities, presents a wall beyond which we cannot pass without experimental innovation.

As the derivative of \sqrt(N) is 1/2*1/\sqrt(N), your first measurement teaches you the most. Every measurement teaches you less than the last. In general, we measure as much as we must, double the size of the dataset as a consistency check, and move on. The allocation of time is one of the most important decisions of an experimenter.

<comment><USER6> Ah. Well I talk about the cost of data acquisition for a reason.

I've seen a number of businesses who have a current body of active users, and this does not change that fast. So when they run an A/B test, before long their active users are all in it, and before too much longer those of their active users who would have done X will have done X, and data stops piling up. In that case there is a natural amount of data to collect, and you've got to stop at that point and do the best you can.

Businesses are as alike as snowflakes - I am happy to talk about generalities but in the end you have to know what your business looks like and customize to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So I built and use a realtime analytics dashboard that tracks revenue, projected revenue, revenue by hour for a portfolio of social games. I find it incredibly useful, but I will give a couple tips that address some of the issues in the article:

1) You have to provide context for everything. Current real time revenue is presented right next to the 14 day average revenue up to that point in time, and also how many standard deviations the delta between the two is. Ie: Current revenue is $100 at 10am, vs. 14 day average of $90, which is 0.2 standard deviations of revenue at that time.

2) Hourly revenue is presented the same way, right next to the 14 day average revenue for that hour and the SD delta.

3) Look at it a lot. I've been looking at this sheet regularly for over a year now, and I have a really good feel/instinct for what a normal revenue swing is, and an even better feel for the impact of different features/content/events/promotions on our revenue.

4) This approach also works better when the impact of your releases is high. A big release typically spikes revenue 2-3 SD above baseline, and causes an immediate and highly visible effect. So while I'm not strictly testing for statistical significance, it's one of those things where it's pretty obvious.

5) It also works better if you use it in conjunction with other metrics. We validate insights/intuitions gained from looking at realtime data against weekly cohorted metrics for the last several months of cohorts.

<comment><USER9> While this sounds very cool, and my inner geek would love this dashboard on the wall of the office - is it actually useful or is it a distraction?

What actions or decisions would you make within minutes of seeing the results? If product changes take days or weeks, daily analytics is just as useful, and stops people wasting time on looking at the data more than once per day.

<comment><USER10> This is precisely the right point. We look at an analytic display to determine if action should be taken, and what those actions should be.

The vast majority of "big data" is noise, more than effectively summarized with basic statistics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like this rant. Seldom do I see the need for a real-time system and sometimes I think engineers and program managers gravitate towards the concept to better answer questions of "why" a problem happens. But analytics problems most of the time can't be solved in real time. You have to put on your thinking cap, take a step back, do some background research, and be patient. And as an analyst it is bad for your credibility to jump to conclusions. Unlike engineering, it better to be slow and right on your first try than "move fast and break things".

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice post. Ops guys though, like to see the bushes rustling right away so that we can reboot that switch before all hell breaks loose :-)

The central theme is a good one though, tactics or strategies have an innate timeline associated with them, and deciding on tactics or strategies with data that doesn't have a similar timeline leads to poor decisions. The coin flip example in the article is a great one.

Ideally one could say "What is the shortest interval of coin flips I can measure to 'accurately' determine a fair coin?" And realize that accuracy asymptotically approaches 100%. One of the things that separate experienced people from inexperienced ones are having lived through a number of these 'collect-analyze-decide' cycles and getting a feel for how much data is enough.

<comment><USER6> _One of the things that separate experienced people from inexperienced ones are having lived through a number of these 'collect-analyze-decide' cycles and getting a feel for how much data is enough._

If you're going off of "feel" instead of statistics then you're doing it wrong. Period.

<comment><USER13> >If you're going off of "feel" instead of statistics then you're doing it wrong. Period.

I disagree, at least to a point. Take an experienced Operations/monitoring guy who's been around the block more than once, then sit him in front of the monitoring utilities for a new company developing a new service.

Then, take a total newbie and put him in the same place.

Train them both to equal skill on your tools and operations.

Who do you think will make the most proper calls? Why?

At this point, those statistics and that documentation do not exist yet. What constitutes a "false positive" vs a "drop everything and spin up more VMs and get on the load balancer" can be more of an art than a science, especially when you're first starting out.

As hokey as this sounds, certain systems have a "personality" that varies between installations and companies, that nothing short of day to day use will educate one in.

<comment><USER6> For operations, I agree. A lot of the numbers you have don't have a rigorous statistical interpretation - for instance is a load average of 20 fine or a problem? Depends if you're looking at the Oracle database.

But the original article was talking about A/B testing, and that is the context that I was thinking about. There you both can and should use statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I once interviewed for a lead webdev role at a small startup. They had 10-12 people, and a product that was doing OK. (I was thoroughly unconvinced by it, but that's another story). One of the things they talked about was their upcoming plan to build a real-time analytics system to track user behaviour. A big project! That I would get to spearhead! They'd budgeted 2-3 months and 6-8 people to implement it. We talked about their plans for a bit, before I asked (what I thought was) the obvious question:

"So, what's the real-time system going to help you decide that the current system won't?"

There is a long, uncomfortable pause as the two people look at each other, each hoping the other will answer.

"Well... it's not so much the real-time element, per se..." one managed. "But we want more granular data about how people are using our app."

"Okay. But you're currently doing analytics via HTTP callbacks, right? Why not just extend that to hit some new endpoints for your more granular data? You've already got infrastructure in place on the front and back end to support that."

No answer. We moved on. I don't know if I actually saved them 1-2 man-years of work or if they plowed ahead anyway.

</comment><comment><USER15> And we shouldn't have calculators because we may forget the relationships between numbers?

I use analytics to do significant A/A testing on every configuration the sites users are actually using to determine what will work for my A/B testing later... Should I maintain a separate realtime analytics or delay deployments by 24 hours when I would like a little more assurance? This is not a rhetorical question, whether I should keep maintaining separate tracking for the 20% of the time where google analytics is unfit is an open problem for me.

Similarly, I would like to know if there is a sudden plummet in some demographic the second I start a test. It usually isn't significant, but the client panic will be. It is better to cancel the test and do a post-mortem before restarting.. A B test doesn't have to get its day in court.

Giving delayed numbers for routine reports is perfectly valid, dressing up that pig is luddism.

<comment><USER16> Presumably anything along the lines of the "demographics drop" you mention would be in live operational metrics if it is something that is an effective metric for monitoring the health of the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a really interesting post.

While I agree with the basic premise that Real-time analytics are rarely helpful, here are a couple places where they could be very useful:

* Conferences - Being able to see live user analytics on a conference site, since it is ephemeral, would be great.

* Pop-up Sites - Again, the short nature of the site means seeing a blocking action or a broken link early is tremendously valuable.

Basically there are a couple circumstances where real-time analytics might make sense, but they're generally short duration engagements. Getting analytics info for a site which is no longer being hammered is useless unless it's a long term project.

<comment><USER18> What action will the conference take based on any immediate information or do you mean the information will go on the site?

Broken links etc. is probably in the operational category although a validator is a better solution for that issue. Logging errors and maybe tracking accesses to ensure every page is being reached can be done by realtime operational stats and doesn't contradict this article.

<comment><USER17> So think of conferences where there's a site up for one day.

If one wants users to clickthru to a particular page, but they're all going elsewhere, that's something that's only actionable on the day of the event (as changing it 12 or 24 hours later does one little good).

I see your point about not contradicting the article, but I think there are instances where evaluating the performance of a website in real time (for time-sensitive events) could have a real impact.

I don't think we're disagreeing so much as talking about the same point from different angles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "You just need to understand cause and effect," said Apollo.

"He's right, mortal. This isn't what you would call rocket science," added Athena.

"Okay, and my business will succeed if I can understand cause and effect?"

"Yes," said Apollo.

"Of course! Why are you wasting time? Go write some software", said Athena.

So yeah, real-time A/B testing seems like a bad idea, but real-time analytics sounds fine. On the other hand, maybe the Gods gave you the idea of cause and effect to destroy you. I bet more than one story on hacker news today pretends to understand the causes for an effect.

</comment><comment><USER20> I agree with this in general, but there are exceptions. For example, it would be nice to know _immediately_ if a new change has caused your conversion rate to drop precipitously for some reason, so that you can turn it back off and take a minute to see if you can figure out why before you lose a full day's worth of revenue.

<comment><USER21> Agreed- seeing real-time changes are helpful to respond to drop-offs or spikes.

Also, if you are aware of the general trend of Tuesdays being higher traffic/results than Saturdays (to take his Etsy example) and don't take those to heart around product decisions, then watching real-time numbers to respond to changes as they happen can help you hop on waves with supplemental content or messaging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting post though I feel the author is somewhat missing the forest for the trees; the issue isn't about "real-time" the issue is that many people conducting A/B tests don't understand what the statistics are telling them nor do they understand when an adequate "sample" has been pulled.

Real-time data isn't needed for A/B testing but this falls into the PEBKAC category.

</comment><comment><USER23> Splunk? - I cant help but think that is piece of software would address most concerns this article raises.

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes, Yes, and a Thousand Times, Yes!</comment>


Ruby Under the Influence [of Scala] - <AUTHOR> https://thoughtbot.com/blog/ruby-under-the-influence-of-scala <comment><USER2> But .map is slower than .each Explanation with MRI source code at [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31529069/is-map- faster-t...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31529069/is-map-faster-than- each/31529299#31529299)</comment>


Soverin Private Mailbox Review - <AUTHOR> https://anonymster.com/soverin-private-mailbox-review/ <comment><USER2> This is not a review, it reads as an advertisment.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is clickbait, albeit more subtle than the usual sort - instead of the Buzzfeed listicle, it's bait for the thoughtful shopper. But bait it is nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a nice service but seriously lacking on some fronts. Especially their relationship with Bits of Freedom is great. I looked into migrating our business email to Soverin but the absence of 2FA and less importantly DKIM and IPv6 kept us from doing so.</comment>


Predicting Airbnb's valuation in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rgoksor/predicting-airbnb-s-valuation-in-2020-f2436b8c8515 <comment><USER2> Good article, healthy level of skepticism.

Low visibility into how the sausages are made coupled with high incentive to juice up the 'headline valuation' make for a sketchy situation.

I agree with the conclusion(s). One thing I wonder about is how a company like this will fair any downturn in 1) easy money injections (no more private capital to burn) or 2) the general stock market (unfriendly environment for IPO). Presumably they would only be left with selling the company at a firesale if they get into trouble as you point out. Five years is a very long time to project growth, and we haven't had a meaningful downturn in financial markets since 2008 so it seems unlikely to me that one won't happen before 2020.

"In one sense, what you want in a bull market is a kid who is too young to know that what he is doing is foolish. You want a kid who will race into a bubble and leverage it higher and higher. Guys like me not make nearly so much money because we see what is going on. The kid does not know why he is making money, which is why he is making money. The rest of are experienced enough or smart enough to know that this is going to end badly. What you want is a kid with very little experience and just enough brains to be very dangerous. But you need to be smart enough to know when to pull out, to save yourself from his lack of knowledge and experience, and that, of course, can be hard to do. When things go bad,. you certainly do not want that kid around - and the kid is probably not going to be around by then anyway."

\-- "Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets", by Jim Rogers, pg 63

</comment><comment><USER3> I predict that middleman entities across all verticals will suffer an almost complete collapse due to enhanced automation of trade, including more complex cases of trade in services or renting of physicalia that need to be underscored by community feedback and reputation systems. This will be as true for Uber as for Airbnb, as true for Amazon (the retail interface only; not the warehousing or the IaaS) as for Ebay. I am in fact working on this problem. If anyone's interested in a long term bet and development in this direction, get in touch.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Another question is if the market is ready for a $50B+ IPO. The current IPO record holder, Alibaba, was valued at $25B."

He misunderstood the reference; Alibaba raised $25b in their ipo but was valued much higher ($231b). There's plenty of room for a company worth 70b to ipo.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I did misread the note -- see updated version. Interestingly, Alibaba's IPO came at a time of accelerating revenue momentum.</comment></comment>


Forgot how many hours you spent at work? Ask Google - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/locationhistory

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one that thinks this is a little creepy? I've been meaning to turn this off for a while now but still haven't gotten to it, goes to show how concerned I am about it I guess. (Though I don't use an Android phone anymore).</comment>