The Microsoft Surface Pro Proves That The PC Is Back - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-review/

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry but I'm not buying it. Whenever I hear someone say "I'm not pro X" or "I'm not anti-Y" or "I'm not a Z apologist" it's always followed by a "but" that essentially amounts to "I've put my blinders on and trying my best to sound objective".

Now, this could just be me but I really doubt it - the upgraded specs and compatibility don't mean anything to me even as a power user if I'm not able to comfortably work with the device. I really think the blending of tablets and laptops is a bad idea. Maybe one day someone will come up with a hybrid that changes my mind but so far from what I see all of them look like a hodgepodge of touch interfaces plus a keyboard that's supposed to make the guy who's not so sure about the whole "tablet" thing feel at ease and, wrongly, think that if the tablet-like functionality doesn't work for him he (or she of course) could just slap that keyboard on and they'll be in familiar territory. But not with Windows 8.

I also question having a laptop with a touch interface to begin with. In order to do it right you've got to take into account the types of gestures people are naturally accustomed to plus the size of touch targets, etc. So if you do that then you basically end up with something like Metro which is really pretty but frustrating as hell if you want to use it as a regular PC. People want to use a tablet for "single purpose" apps (I'm kind of loosely using that term) and a PC is for more heavy duty operations where you may need multiple windows open at a time. I might need my Word processor out at the same time as my browser and my IM client and transfer text between all 3 as a very simple example. Try doing that with Windows 8. I have. It's horrible. I mean, I totally get why you'd want to incorporate tablet ideas into desktops and laptops but at the same time you can't just directly port the UI and interactions from a tablet to a PC. It's got to be more subtle. I hate to bring up Apple but I think OS X has done some good work in how their touchpad works. There are a lot of gestures that work very naturally on the touchpad that come from tablets but still make sense in the context of a laptop or a desktop with a trackpad.

But again, that might just be me and this all might just be a lot of stuff I just don't understand. But I've got a feeling it really isn't.

<comment><USER3> I am sitting here typing with my Lenovo x220 Tablet Laptop - a laptop with a touch screen and stylus.

I hate it. HATE it. the touch screen on a laptop is out of place without any way to disable the touch when I want, it overlays the touch technology on the screen which is visible to me in the sun - as well as the screen medium makes the screen more dim than I would like. Especially in the sun/brightly lit areas.

It really needs to be done right in order to make a great experience. Thus far I haven't seen one.

One of the frustrating things about a touch-screen laptop is that I have a very curious toddler. She likes to touch what daddy is touching, so she will come and grab the screen to bend it down so she can see what I am doing and in doing so clicks on things, scrolls and closes windows.

I never use the touch screen on this machine for anything and so it is simply an annoyance.

<comment><USER4> Just curious, did you buy the Lenovo thinking the touch screen would be a plus? I'm not sure a saleperson at Best Buy would be able to sell me a touch screen computer. The mere idea seems unwieldly, like someone desperately trying to make innovation in consistently wrong directions.

<comment><USER3> This is a work provided machine, not my choice :)

<comment><USER4> Ah, sorry to hear that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Device convergence seems like something that sounds great in theory, but based on my observations people seem to enjoy filling their lives with more gadgets rather than less especially when you have devices that can fit one specific use case very well.

Example would be games consoles and the amazon kindle, in fact plenty of people will have 2 games consoles to play different kinds of games (e.g wii and xbox).

I think the main draw of hybrid devices is where buying individual devices is unaffordable to most people (e.g cars) whereas the price is computing devices seems to be coming down.

Dedicated devices have other advantages too, for example if your kids are bored you can hand them your tablet or let them play xbox while leaving your laptop free to work on.

it might also be nice to have a hybrid device if carrying two devices is cumbersome. However in the event that you will be carrying a laptop, you probably have it in a bag find that a small tablet will fit comfortably in there also.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Because of the "hybrid" theory, I also thought that's the future initially. But once I started using Windows 8, and thinking about the compromises you have to make with a "hybrid", I realized it's not the best of both worlds, but the worst of both worlds.

With a Surface RT you get no legacy app support, and it's slow. You get support for Atom ones, but they are still too slow for most legacy apps. And they are not very cheap either. At a time that even an iPad, the market leader in tablets, costs $330, these things are going for $600+ with a keyboard. They stand no chance.

As for Surface Pro, you get the speed of an ultrabook (more than a tablet, but less than a regular laptop, or a PC), but 4h of battery life, so not useful as a tablet, while only having a relatively tiny tablet screen, compared to a laptop, so I don't think you can be that productive on it. It's also too thick and heavy for a tablet.

I now think the future really is having a good, no compromises tablet, that should be very affordable, especially in the future. And a good, no compromises laptop with a large screen, that you can use for work, and you don't have to change every year, or even every 2 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Arstechnica posted an article this morning about the Surface Pro, and needless to say it is not complimentary: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/microsoft-surface- wit...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/02/microsoft-surface-with- windows-8-pro-hotter-thicker-faster-louder/)

<comment><USER8> The verge review wasn't very complimentary either, though I trust Ars more on this kind of thing: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/5/3955130/microsoft- surface-p...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/5/3955130/microsoft-surface-pro- review)

What are those TC guys smoking? Could it be delicious PR funded paid placement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't agree with the statement, "It's a laptop!". It's almost impossible to use in your lap comfortably the way you would a laptop.

<comment><USER10> Everyone uses it like one though; I haven't seen one review even mention the on screen keyboard. Is there even one?

<comment><USER11> I've actually been incredibly curious about how well the on-screen keyboard works for these windows 8 machines on a long-term basis (or at least actual usage, not just fiddling around in the shop), but nobody talks about them.

I can therefore only conclude that they're quite terrible?

<comment><USER12> actually, the onscreen keyboard is quite good IMO. You can switch between the full sized mode (similar to any other tablet), and a layout designed for using your thumbs when holding the device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the paragraph that loses me: "At $1,000, you're paying about as much as you'd pay for a MacBook Air or a more powerful Windows laptop. Is this premium worth the investment? I'd say that it ultimately depends on how you intend to use this system. If it's a laptop replacement as in something you carry on trips or to meetings, then yes. This is a stable and solid machine and will turn heads when you open it up."

If I wanted a laptop, I'd by an Air. If I wanted a tablet, I'd by a Nexus 10 or an iPad. Why would I want a laptop without a real keyboard/trackpad, and why would I want a tablet that's 2 pounds with 3-5 hours of battery life? You can say "best of both worlds" but I think it's more consolidation for the sake of consolidation resulting in a user experience that's compromised for every use-case.

From the article: "The type cover and inputs are flawed. The touchpad on the type cover is woefully small and the connection between the keyboard and the device is often wonky, disconnecting at odd intervals."

This, in my opinion, puts a nail in the whole "but, but, it's an ultrabook!" shtick some people have been trotting out.

</comment><comment><USER6> How exactly? It's just an ultrabook, which aren't much more than a tiny niche market in the PC market right now. And it has a touchscreen does that make it a tablet? A tablet with 4 hours of battery life, that is heavier even than an iPad, that people have already quit for the lighter iPad Mini and Nexus 7's, and that costs twice as much even than the $500 iPad?

The PC is _not_ back, and the falling PC sales during this year will prove it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't usually read Gruber's post, but I see he put up a list of conclusions from several reviews for Surface Pro. They keyword in all of them seems to be "compromise", which is exactly what I said in my others comments:

<http://daringfireball.net/2013/02/the_c_word>

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the aspirations behind the Surface Pro are solid, but everything I've read about the execution leads me to believe that it is a huge failure. That happens. Sometimes you try to push something too early or it requires many iterations to actually get right. I suspect it will take a lot of evolution for some frankensteinian relative of both mobile and desktop operating systems to be good enough to actually serve as the root of the future of personal computing. I'm certain that Windows 8 and the Surface Pro won't be anything more than a footnote in that evolutionary tree.

In many ways this was pretty close to the move that Microsoft needed to make now, but it's not right enough and not good enough and not executed well enough either. In the timespan between the announcement and release Apple will have gone through an entire ipad rev. cycle. You can't fight against an OODA loop that is multiples faster than yours with half-measures and mediocrity. The company is already on the betting table whether you like it or not, you need to play to win or go home.

<comment><USER15> That's pretty much my reaction: Microsoft is being fairly radical, but not radical enough.

What Android, iOS, and OS X have demonstrated is that a lot of people can meet their computing needs without Windows. Microsoft's approach seems doomed to hold on to a huge but ever-shrinking slice of that pie.

Offering something dramatically different might (from my flawed understanding) demand removing some of the older elements of Windows that allow backward compatibility, but prevent deeper changes to how Windows works.

I'd love to see them put out a new-from-the-ground-up OS as a free beta, and get enough things right to generate a lot of buzz around it. They could release it with some limited emulation for Windows, just to ease the transition, the way Apple did with OS X. Of course, they don't have to do this, and anyone considering their new OS would be just as free to consider any OS at that point, but that seems to be happening anyway with mobile devices.

To sum up my rambling, they're an interesting company with a lot of smart people who seem to be shackled to old technology. If they don't move on, much of the world will move on without them, and that would be a shame.

<comment><USER16> It takes a lot of time to build and release a new OS and then jump-start a community of developers around it. The power of the PC and the reason why we'll still be using PCs for a long time is also due to its legacy ... basically whatever tasks you need to do on a PC, there's already an app for it and most people probably know about it too.

Getting rid of this legacy would be Microsoft's poison pill. Unfortunately for them Windows is being disrupted by OS X and Linux for power-users on one hand and Android / iOS for normal users on the other hand. They are in the classic innovators dilemma.

<comment><USER17> The dilemma can also be disrupted, by pulling a Henderson of some kind. Change what it means to be a PC/desktop. Put all those legacy apps in a 3D world, tool up for holographic displays, something.

Or just slowly die, filing lawsuits to retard the industry and drag out your lifeblood a few more years.

<comment><USER16> I actually agree with you. Microsoft, instead of working on mediocre hybrids, should work harder to innovate the desktop, while slowly pursuing the path of hybrids with WinPhone. The truth is the world is not ready for hybrids yet. And when the world will be ready, then I predict both iOS and Android will be there.

Instead they've chosen to handicap the most successful product they've ever had. I couldn't say I'm sorry as I haven't been a Windows user for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For me the jury is still out for Surfaces in the home commerce market. A few refinements and I can see Surfaces being a success in _Enterprises_. Hybrid tablet / PC, ability to run a Citrix client onsite, LDAP integration, groups policy etc...

</comment><comment><USER19> Tangential, but that "wedge" mouse looks quite RSI inducing.

<comment><USER10> I got claw-hand just looking at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > the 64 GB has only 23 GB available and the 128 GB model has only 83 GB > available.

How does Windows 8 take up 41GB? Is it purely the OS? Bloatware?

<comment><USER21> This is a question I've been wanting an answer to myself. I have a 64gb SSD that has -only- a blank windows install on it; no programs or anything, and it takes up 54gb of space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Put an Atom processor in the RT then I'm sold.

<comment><USER23> ASUS VivoTab?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > wacom input

please, Apple, please

</comment><comment><USER4> But...how? Tablet is becoming a buzz word that makes consumers forget themselves so they buy a trendy thing. Here's why:

Hackers won't want to buy the Surface. It's got a touch screen. What do they want with a touch screen? They want a full powered, no proprietary Linux installation; a Mac OS X Unix with a lot of freedoms and some great proprietary software; or, if they love ASP or Visual Basic, maybe Windows. But not Windows developed for a touch screen tablet. Actual Windows, on a computer screen.

And users who think critically probably won't want the Surface because, after the glitzy touch screen and processor speed holds no more euphoria, they realize that they're not holding Windows Vista or Windows 7. They're holding Windows 8, which is not really a full operating system on a tablet. Microsoft advertises it this way, but in fact, Windows 8 looks better on a tablet than it does on a laptop. So really, Microsoft just switched the discrepancy such that it could claim the tablet had a "full operating system" - a full operating system would be a hackable Windows 7 implementation, and all the processing demands that would carry with it.

Windows 8 doesn't seem to be progress to me. It seems to be part of the trend to slowly fuse tablets and laptops into this strange combination that will universalize every computing need.

And that's crap. That's something like saying an iPad can replace your laptop (it just can't, most of the time).

People are confusing trending with progress. It's not progress to try to universalize your devices. You can't forget that hardware still has software needs. What's the point of calling it a tablet if you're just going to make it a less powerful laptop? Microsoft gets away with this because of terminology. Let's change tablet with "less powerful laptop":

If I have the choice of a less powerful laptop with a touch screen, and a laptop with a superior processor, more hard drive space, more RAM and a larger screen, I'm going to buy the second, especially if it's proportionately priced to its advantaged.

This is a dumb trend, don't buy into it.

EDIT: I venture a theory that Microsoft is trying to defeat Apple's iPad with the Surface by redefining tablet (no, literally, not in a marketing campaign kind of way). A tablet is useful under certain circumstances, the same way a computer is. It's SUPPOSED to be streamlined. So if you completely un- streamline a tablet, what do you have? A computer that is bloated and less powerful. It manages to be less able to satisfy the demands of either.

A tablet is specialization. So when the specialization is removed, it's no longer worth it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Here's the Anandtech review featured on HN just a few hours ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5175190>

If that one got flagged off the front page then this one stands no chance. No point in wasting time writing up comments. Save your breath for the extremely negative posts, those will stay on the front page for days.

<comment><USER6> It did not get flagged off the front page. I watched it myself how it dropped to the bottom of the page. Getting flagged off the page would've meant disappearing from the top early on. Maybe it's too hard to admit people just don't care much about it.

<comment><USER25> Then why was it sitting below another article that was posted around the same time but had only nearly half the points?

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

Edit: Even now, it ranks lower than another article with the exact same points posted a full four hours before it.

<http://i.imgur.com/Yg5kXJb.png></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's 1978 office floor plan - <AUTHOR> http://cdespinosa.posterous.com/plan

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to see the toilet is in the center of the building. When Jobs took over Pixar the new campus development was planning to build three separate buildings: for creatives, for producers and for business people. But Jobs insisted that they be brought under one roof, with toilets at the centre — because that's where everyone meets and talks.

<comment><USER3> It works too. The atrium is a very common chance meeting place, and that's nearly 100% due to the coffee, conf. rooms, and bathrooms being centrally situated.

<comment><USER4> This is a also applicable to residential architecture - I lived in several large student houses in Austin, and the houses whose floorplans required new arrivals to pass through common spaces (living room, kitchen) on the way to their private rooms invariably had closer and more general ties than those that did not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see that in such an early year, Jobs and Woz's offices are almost as far apart as they could possibly be in the building.

<comment><USER6> It's because Woz always wanted to stay as an engineer, not as a manager. That's why Jobs and Markkula is one place while Woz near the software team.

<comment><USER5> You could also say, conversely, that Jobs placed himself next to Markkula instead of Woz, finding it more important to sit next to the VP of marketing than the chief engineer.

I'm not making any judgements on the way they organized the physical space in the office. It clearly worked, after all, Apple in 1978 was on the precipice of an unprecedented success.

I'm just interested in the way that the physical location of people in an office affects the work that is done there. I wonder, would the early history of Apple had been any different if Jobs and Woz had sat right next to each other every day?

How many startups today seat the technical and business co-founders next to one another, versus those that sit far apart, and how does that change the personalities of those companies?

<comment><USER7> According to Isaacson's biography, it was Markkula who insisted that Jobs be heavily involved in the non-engineering areas of the company.

<comment><USER8> According to the same book, Wozniak specifically insisted at some point that he would prefer to be treated as an engineer and not be involved with high- level management.

One could also say it would be interesting how things might have turned out if Wozniak was more ambitious.

<comment><USER9> On the subject of counterfactuals, I recently finished reading Jobs' bio and Woz's autobiography and found myself contemplating how their lives would have turned out if they hadn't met each other.

It seems easy to project the most likely outcome for Woz if he hadn't met Jobs - he'd probably still be an engineer at HP (assuming he didn't get laid off by one of their disastrous CEOs), his Apple ][ board a forgotten relic sitting in his garage. Less likely but still possible is that someone else would have helped him commercialize it, but there never would have been a Macintosh as we know it and the company would have ended up like Commodore, Tandy, and Atari.

With Jobs, though, it's much more difficult to imagine where he'd have ended up without Woz. I could see him pushing Atari into PCs (but Bushnell didn't want the Apple ][, so that seems unlikely), or he could have been a religious leader, or a burned-out hippie living in Humboldt County, or a tyrannical Silicon Valley middle manager, or any number of other things.

<comment><USER10> Here's a random theory:

They would've met each other a little later, and done the same thing. Jobs and Wozniak orbited each other a few times before they really connected professionally. If you change one little thing so they wouldn'tve met each other, they would've met each other some other way.

And if you change enough things so that they NEVER would've met each other, you'dve changed enough things that they wouldn't really be Steve Jobs and Woz anymore.

<comment><USER11> We're doing counter-factuals. So what if it's not "never met", but "never went into to business together". Is it really hard to believe that fate could have conspired in such a way that Woz and Jobs didn't become business partners? Was the universe really curved in such a way to inevitably push Woz and Jobs to start Apple together?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sign of the times: three secretary/receptionists for a 20 person company. I suspect they were the only female employees, too.

<comment><USER13> Not true ( I don't think.) I know Susan Kare designed the icons, and she was working for Apple around the time of the Macintosh.

<comment><USER5> dsr_ 1 is correct. On that floor plan, at least, the only women are secretaries or receptionists.

Susan Kare desiged the icons, as you say, but that was years later. In 1978, the Apple ][ was still only a year old itself.

The Macintosh isn't really that early in Apple history, for those of us who grew up with Apple ][s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My grandparents had an Advent when I was a kid. That thing probably spat out more radiation than I ever would care to research.

It was a beautiful beast though and could heat a room.

<comment><USER15> Youngen here: Might I ask what an Advent is? It's a hard thing to Google.

<comment><USER14> An Advent was a three tube projection system. It had a triangular arrangement of the CRT's, one red, one green, one blue. You had to focus and align them yourself, but with a good screen you could get a pretty good looking 60" television. It required a dark room.

Since it sat in the middle of the floor, it was subject to kids bumping into it (in my grandparents home anyhow) and also then subject to grandfathers shouting.

He later replaced it with a front projection set that bounced the CRT projectors off a mirror onto a screen. It was a beast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Funny how everyone is mentioned by their first name except Steve and Woz.

<comment><USER17> It would be a bit confusing to have two 'Steve' offices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I also think it's interesting that with Jobs and Woz's offices being across the building from each other, that forces them to walk past everyone else to talk to each other in person. That has to make it easier for founders and executives to keep track of how things are going in the trenches. That could also make employees feel that management doesn't consider themselves "above" them.

</comment><comment><USER19> Tennis Courts!

<comment> j-dev Maybe it was ping-pong table "courts".

<comment><USER20> From the article:

"The building had four quadrants: Marketing/Admin, Engineering, Manufacturing, and a large empty space that we did not know what to do with when we moved in. That's why it's labeled 'Tennis courts?'"</comment></comment></comment>


Nondeterministic Functions in MySQL (i.e. Rand) Can Surprise You - <AUTHOR> https://www.percona.com/blog/2018/12/05/nondeterministic-functions-in-mysql-i-e-rand-can-surprise-you/ <comment><USER2> I prefer to prepare the datasets first, and not depend on the order of evaluation (which you may fail to predict correctly):

      select * from some_table
      join (select rand() as random_id) on
        some_table.the_id = random_id

This way it is obvious that rand() will be evaluated only once.

<comment><USER3> I like your query as a portable version of the written function, but I also think that it could fail to yield the results probably intended before that mess was written.

If the intent is actually to select one, and only one, random row from the table than this Stack Overflow entry has a result that is in most cases in the direction I was thinking (LIMIT 1, and have some way of selecting a random entry, remembering that the ID field might be monotonic, but isn't assured to be continuous (have no gaps))

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19412/how-to-request- a-r...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19412/how-to-request-a-random-row- in-sql)

Unfortunately it seems that it depends on language extensions that are not portable.

EDIT:

It unfortunately also appears that the easiest query scales poorly to large tables as it works by assigning EACH row a random ID and then limiting it to one of those by some order (probably lowest assigned row).

A more effective approach might be a function or procedure based around a pre- recorded 'maximum' ID for the column (assuming it's vaguely monotonic and not a GUID), picking a random result between base and that ID, Verifying it exists, and if it doesn't trying again up to N times before using a fallback procedure. (E.G. after 100 random stabs that fail selecting ~500 records in the range of lastRND +/\- 250 and using the ORDER BY rand() or equivalent on that sub-set). If even /that/ fails pick the next or previous record by which is closest.

<comment><USER2> I think that something like

      select * from the_table
      offset rand(select count(*) from the_table)
      limit 1;

would do the trick with least bias, though not necessarily very fast.

<comment><USER3> The offered example query is could return no results in the presence of record gaps / deleted records; also the OFFSET value should probably be computed within a sub-query, not exposed.

A corrected version based on being >= or <= the random number (picking the nearest) COULD work (in fact, that's the way my suggest final fallback works), but would still be biased.

That was the reason I suggested taking a limited number of stabs at random numbers within the allowed range; my example still has some slight bias (a little in the 'best case' fallback, and a lot in the absolute fallback), but it tries to deliver a truly random result first, many times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do people use "i.e." instead of "e.g."?

EDIT:" For people who think I don't know what they mean, I do. I meant that the author of TFA obviously meant to write "Nondeterministic Functions in MySQL (e.g. Rand)", because the entire article is about all non-deterministic functions and just uses rand as an example.

<comment><USER5> well in this case they only really talk about the one function so i.e. is not incorrect.

<comment><USER6> They say "Functions" though.

<comment><USER7> Here one would read "that is" as something like "specifically".

<comment><USER8> But that's not how one should read "that is". The author should have used "e.g." here, no question. Using "i.e." would imply that there exists only one nondeterministic function in MySQL, which is not the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As to SQLite3, the author should have indicated what version they tested, and they should have tested more versions. SQLite3 3.8.3 introduced a flag for marking functions as deterministic (vs. not), and in the version I just tried (3.11.0) it works as expected.

The rule I expect for where clause expression evaluation is: standard short- circuit semantics. That calls to deterministic functions get memoized, or that constant sub-expressions get hoisted out, is a plus -- I do expect GCSE and optimization of deterministic functions from modern RDBMSes. I also expect that functions meant to be used in queries have no side effects -- that they insert/update/delete no rows on any tables.

</comment><comment><USER10> For SQL Server it looks like an index seek on the following so it is evaluated once.

SELECT * FROM SomeTable WHERE ID = CAST(Rand() * 1000 as int)

In addition this query: SELECT TOP(100) rand() AS RandData from SomeTable

Returns: 0.940284064056996 0.940284064056996 0.940284064056996 . . . .

A old trick to actually get random data on SQL Server that I think has been replaced with newer functionality is:

SELECT ABS(CHECKSUM(NEWID())) FROM SomeTable

However if we move the NEWID.... stuff into the WHERE clause we end up switching to an index seek so back to being evaluated once.

</comment><comment><USER11> My name is Alex, I'm the author of the original article on Percona Blog. I wanted to thank everyone for the great comments and discussion! Additional SQL examples are great as well.

</comment><comment><USER12> FWIW, the proper what to get a random row is actually:

        SELECT column FROM table
        ORDER BY RANDOM()
        LIMIT 1</comment>


New d&d data exploration and ML tool from MIT - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2019/drag-drop-data-analytics-0627 <comment><AUTHOR> What do you think about those visual tools, especially in ML? There are some successful ones (like Rapid Miner) and aspiring ones like Luna, but I'm not convinced. I think they want to target a layman for whom they are too difficult to use (because building a model requires a technical mindset) and advanced users prefer to write a script. It is tempting to try to build something similar, and I am trying myself, but I want to avoid this trap. I am thinking about a tool that would take some burden from the advanced user leaving all the power and access to raw code.

</comment><comment><USER2> Please title this correctly. I got so excited to go through a dataset about dragons and the dungeons they reside in.</comment>


Google India Labs Group Site is hacked. - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/google-india-labs

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.pluggd.in/2008/08/google-india-labs-group-site- is...](http://www.pluggd.in/2008/08/google-india-labs-group-site-is-hacked)</comment>


Bjorn Lomborg: How to Get the Biggest Bang for 10 Billion Bucks - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121720170185288445.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

<comment><USER2> Odd how in these situations no one ever thinks of simply funding companies that would generate the most economic growth. And yet if you diff present conditions against conditions 100 or 500 years ago-- even in the poorest places-- I'd bet most of the improvement came not from explicitly benevolent projects so much as ordinary economic growth.

Obviously the two are hard to disentangle, but even in a project like shipping vaccines to poor countries, think about how much better it is to have things like fridges, phones, aircraft, etc. To say nothing of all the infrastructure in the labs that make the vaccines, etc, etc.

<comment><USER3> I agree that economic growth outweighs anything else.

But why would funding companies be the best way to generate the highest economic growth? There are many obstacles that prevent economic growth, especially in poor countries. Examples are high child mortality, malnourishment, corruption, lack of any kind of (micro-)credit, lack of education, tariffs, red tape, etc.

Taking away such obstacles can do very much for economic growth. The main advantage of funding companies is that their profits are returned to the investors.

E.g. the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws had a much greater positive effect on economic growth in Britain than any investment in specific companies.

<comment><USER2> Really? Are you sure the repeal of the Corn Laws had more effect on economic growth than Boulton's investment in Watt? I'd be reluctant to claim that.

<comment><USER3> Let me try to make the case:

The repeal of the Corn Laws led to a massive flow of people to the cities, providing much needed labour to fuel the industries there. And by lowering the price of food, the entire country people had more money to spend on other goods. It also created a bigger market for the surplus of grain that the U.S. was able to produce, which gave a huge boost to their economy, and allowed it to continue to absorb enormous numbers of immigrants.

Also, the repeal of the Corn Laws became a landmark for the free trade movement, leading to a more efficient division of labour between states that gave a huge boost to economic growth that continued throughout the 19th century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest question in my mind when reading this article is "how are the relative costs and values actually being calculated?"

How can we say that $1.00 spent on clean energy will bring $11.00 in benefits, when $1.00 on counter-terrorism will bring $0.30 in benefits? How much of it is speculation?

In other words, what was the method for quantifying the amount of benefit that we see from the investment?

<comment><USER5> You'll be able to find the details (or the publications which contain them) here: <http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not one figure passed the smell test. If you can actually say "1 dollar here or there provides x or y ROI" life would be pretty simple. It isn't simple.

For my part, I would put every penny on genetic engineering R&D. The ROI would either be zero or infinite.

</comment><comment><USER7> Lomborg on TED [http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html) [video] 15 min.

</comment><comment><USER8> This article doesn't make any sense. Lomborg says that cap-and-trade returns 90 cents on the dollar, but investing in clean energy would return 11 dollars on the dollar. But the whole case for cap-and-trade is that it's the most economically efficient way to invest in clean energy.

<comment><USER9> No, cap-and-trade is supposed to be the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. Investing in clean energy has many other benefits (improving science and tech, creating new industries, job creation, lower cost of energy, etc).

<comment><USER8> I understand that not all of the money under a cap-and-trade system goes to generating new clean energy. For example, in many cases using a kilowatt of energy we already have more efficiently is less expensive than generating a new kilowatt. However, the idea that we should design our energy policy around maximizing new energy creation even when it's more cost effective to make our current products more energy efficient makes no sense, assuming we take economic benefit to mean wealth created per dollar spent. Unless Lomborg simply means that investing all of our money in clean tech would create more jobs, in which case that's just an example of the broken window fallacy.

(And I understand that many cap-and-trade schemes also have provisions for things like paying South American countries to reduce their rate of deforestation, which is neither a case of conservation of existing energy nor production of new energy, but this amounts to only a few million dollars per year.)

<comment><USER10> > However, the idea that we should design our energy policy around maximizing > new energy creation even when it's more cost effective to make our current > products more energy efficient makes no sense, assuming we take economic > benefit to mean wealth created per dollar spent.

Sure it does. Even if we made all of our current products us 0 energy, we might want more energy for other things than the amount saved.

BTW - is it actually more cost-efficient or is that assumed because it's convenient for some other argument?

<comment><USER8> "Even if we made all of our current products us 0 energy, we might want more energy for other things than the amount saved."

Let's say it costs 5 dollars to save one kilowatt of electricity. Let's also say it costs 20 dollars to generate one new kilowatt of electricity. Both ways, we get one new kilowatt of electricity, but one way is less expensive. Of course at any given time we would be pursuing a mix of strategies that involve both new generation and conservation. We should always pursue the mix of strategies that is the least expensive, assuming the cost of carbon is internalized.

<comment><USER10> > Let's say it costs 5 dollars to save one kilowatt of electricity. Let's also > say it costs 20 dollars to generate one new kilowatt of electricity. Both > ways, we get one new kilowatt of electricity, but one way is less expensive.

Except that energy saving is capped. If we're using 5kw and we want 100kw, saving that 5 is nice but only 5% of the goal.

And yes, we're going to need significantly energy than we have today. The first of those "extra uses" are also known as India and China.

Also, while the assumption that energy savings costs 25% of new production costs is convenient for an argument, it isn't all that common. People don't spend more money than they have to. As energy costs have gone up, the low- hanging fruit has been picked.

Of course, some folks cheat by including "savings" that requires changing behavior/reducing value and assuming that that's cost free. That's wrong because minimum energy use isn't the goal - the goal is to maximize value for cost. Just because you don't see the value of something that uses energy doesn't mean that everyone else agrees.

<comment><USER8> "Except that energy saving is capped. If we're using 5kw and we want 100kw, saving that 5 is nice but only 5% of the goal."

Your argument is flawed because you are assuming that you either have to create new electricity or conserve electricity and you can't do both. The least expensive way to get X units of new energy is always going to be some mix of conservation and creation, and the free market lets us find the most efficient point along the spectrum.

"People don't spend more money than they have to. As energy costs have gone up, the low-hanging fruit has been picked."

[http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/28/energy_efficien...](http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/28/energy_efficiency/?source=newsletter)

<comment><USER10> >> "Except that energy saving is capped. If we're using 5kw and we want 100kw, saving that 5 is nice but only 5% of the goal."

>Your argument is flawed because you are assuming that you either have to create new electricity or conserve electricity and you can't do both.

Huh? In my example, I did both.

I should have written that the low-hanging fruit is being picked.

The fact remains that expected energy demand exceeds current capacity. That means that savings can't get us out of the problem.

Also, if you care about CO2, you want to replace existing sources even if the existing sources provide enough energy.

<comment><USER11> The technology _used_ to save can: what we want is new _useful_ energy, not new energy per se. If a new use, using current technology, would require 100 W, but using energy-saving technology [developed to save on current use] would only require 50 W, then investment in current savings will produce future savings. Compare the trends in electricity use in California and the rest of the US since the '70s: California's per capita use has been nearly flat, while the rest of the country's has grown substantially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Providing Vitamins for undernourished children"

A "solution" proposal like that doesn't make me trust the whole approach very much. There are many underlying issues besides buying a heap of vitamins for x dollars. I think most children would not benefit so much from the vitamins if the situation that made them malnourished stays the same. Perhaps they would be slightly more efficient soldiers, though.

Changing the political situation surely is more complicated than simply throwing money at it.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Spending an extra dollar cutting C02 to combat climate change generates less than one dollar of good, even when we add up all the economic and environmental benefits."

I don't think there's any sort of consensus on that. I've seen varying figures proposed by economists. An accurate cost benefit analysis would seem to require too many facts we just don't know yet.

</comment><comment><USER14> Of course, some of these goals counteract each other. If we treat disease, we increase population and thus hunger and climate change. I wonder what kind of ROI we get on investing in population control.

</comment><comment><USER15> How do they have any idea of the return on R&D? It's like trying to predict the odds of fusion power becoming possible if we spend a billion dollars researching it. Who knows?

</comment><comment><USER16> One of the first things to tackle would be access to clean water.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lomborg is a menace:

[http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/17/debunking-bjorn- lombor...](http://climateprogress.org/2007/09/17/debunking-bjorn-lomborg-cool- it-water-heat-waves-global-warming/)</comment>


Why learning Haskell/Python makes you a worse programmer (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/why-learning-haskell-python-makes-you-a-worse-programmer/?

<comment><USER2> Probably none of you care, and some of you will hate me for pointing this out, but look, here are a few previous submissions:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407796> <\- Lots of comments

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=946258>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1883663> <\- A few comments

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2410202>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2489298> <\- A few comments

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3171630>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4828284> <\- Lots of comments

It will be interesting to see if this discussion raises any points not in the earlier one. Or the earlier one. Or the earlier one.

And to the inevitable downvoters, I don't care. No, I'm not baiting you. I just wanted to help people see that this has been discussed before, and if you have any respect for the HN community, and if you think the HN community is smart in any way, then you may want to see what this smart community has said about this in the past, rather than re-hashing the same old arguments.

Or not. Go to it.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting that HN has no URL matching to prevent simple straight- forward (multi)reposts like this.

<comment><USER4> It in fact does but I think there may be some manner of "expiry", and it is also trivially easy to get around from what I have read. This submission appears to have a /? at the end of it which may be enough to get past a dupe check.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see how far C# progressed since this was written. Just a couple of years later, C# 3.0 came out and his example becomes:

        mylist.Select(foo => foo.Description())
              .Where(x => x != "")
              .Aggregate((a, b) => a + "\n" + b);

Which is, I think, pretty nice.

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's interesting. Is 'x' just a magic var for whatever Select() yields in each iteration?

<comment><USER7> x is the variable in the anonymous function 'x => x != ""'. I don't know C# but I presume that everything before '=>' is the argument list and the rest is the function body (with implicit return).

You can see it again in '(a, b) => a + "\n" + b'.

As a side note, I find it a bit funny how C# chooses method names in Linq for the benefit of programmers who know SQL, despite `Select`, `Where`, and `Aggregate` acting exactly like what other functional languages would call `map`, `filter`, and `reduce`. Not wrong, just sort of quirky.

<comment><USER8> JavaScript will use the same "fat arrow" syntax for anonymous functions in ES6:

<http://css.dzone.com/articles/javascript-fat-city>

<comment><USER7> Coffeescript uses it already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is quite silly, of course. A solid developer has no problems switching idioms (not just syntax) when hopping languages.

There's really not much sense in an argument that says you "lose" something by learning newer things -- provided, that is, you're really making an effort to wrap your head around the newer things that you're studying, and not just cramming selected phrases and reflexes into your head in order to finish some current task at hand.

If anything he's become a _better_ C# programmer, not a worse one, precisely because of his "bad" experience, because he now sees that overuse of certain habits can lead to bizarre or otherwise undesirable results (just like with any language).

So really he should be thinking positively about the whole experience, rather than negatively.

<comment><USER10> I personally agree with TFA. Being able to change your environment is really key--I write Java in my job and it's just awful for me. I definitely lose motivation from knowing there are better alternatives.

He's not saying you lose anything, more that it's harder to use those things when you're constantly thinking about how wrong they are. Similarly, the overuse of certain habits is not always avoidable.

<comment><USER11> You should consider secretly using Scala or Clojure in order to see how long it takes for someone to say something.

<comment><USER10> I've thought about it--it's a rather small company, with generally smart people on the team. It might happen, but the problem is mostly political. I also need to learn more Clojure... (I've learned enough Scala to convince myself that I don't really want to learn it)

<comment><USER11> Scala is good _if_ you have good programmers. Otherwise, it's painful, because they tend to write Java-in-Scala code. Also, it has a compile-speed problem that is tolerable in general but catastrophic if you have bad engineering practices (specifically, cyclical dependencies).

I just got back into Clojure after leaving my last job and the language (which was already very good) has gotten a whole lot better in the past 2 years. I recommend it highly.

Where do you live? What's the tech scene like in <X>? My wife and I are both ready to leave New York. We'll stay if I find something great, but I don't want to work in social media and my "job hopper" story (too many startups and consulting projects, NYC finance firms tending to perceive the latter as similar to short-term jobs even though they're not) is making finance annoying. (I can still get hedge-fund jobs, that's easy as crap, but there are few good ones and, besides, I like technology a lot better than finance.) Our short list is SF, Austin, Boston, but not limited to those 3 places by any means.

<comment><USER12> Send an email to Yanis Varoufakis @ Valve. He's the economics guy doing analysis of in-game economies and applying various machine learning techniques to determine pricing strategies, etc. I suspect even if that doesn't appeal, there'd be a bunch of interesting work that could use someone with your background.

<comment><USER13> Wow, that's a great suggestion. Valve + finance + ML. I can't imagine a better fit off the top of my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For anyone thinking "WTF, what about LINQ?", note LINQ was part of .NET framework 3.5 and wasn't released for another year after he wrote this post.

LINQ makes coding in C# a whole lot more pleasant.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, it does a lot. If it weren't for LINQ i'd hate c#.

<comment><USER16> I'm using .Net 1.1 for my day job. God how I hate C#.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I do most of my current work in Python, and I have no problem switching between paradigms within the language. Whatever makes it easier to read is how I look at it.

There are times when a functional solution makes the most sense, and if it makes the most sense, it should be clear and easy to read and understand. But then there times when a functional solution looks like a symbolic mess, and it's easier just to throw a couple of for loops into the code so it's easier to see that i'm, say, iterating through some list.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think that having higher standards for solutions doesn't make you a worse problem solver.

</comment><comment><USER19> I program in Python everyday but I still think in C/Java and have to google things like enumerate for for loops. Though this is happening less often now.

I also try to do Python thinks when I switch back to C.

input = scanf();

</comment><comment><USER20> If learning anything makes us worse at something we should just stop learning

<comment><USER21> Or just stop learning the things that make you worse?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is going to be fun!

I know he's joking, but I agree-- to a point.

First, if you write Haskell-in-Java code, you're going to do a horrible job unless you have _so_ much autonomy that you end up reinventing Scala... in which case you should just use Scala. (See: Greenspun's Tenth Rule.)

Second, I think you learn a lot by studying other languages, but most of the superiority of Lispers or Haskellers comes from the fact that good programmers _in general_ tend to be a curious set. Learning Lisp will make you a better Python programmer, and possibly a better C++ system architect. Will it make you better as a subordinate grunt on a gigantic C++ codeball? No, absolutely not. It will make you a morale problem and get you fired.

Third, you learn a lot more _in_ expressive languages that makes you a better programmer but the languages itself don't get all the credit. When you use a Lisp, you can get a lot done quickly if you know what you're doing and cover a wide swath of computer science. When you use a true fringe language, you end up implementing a lot of libraries you'd just assume work in Java. These experiences are highly valuable but not rooted in the languages _per se_. It's just that a lot of the work you have to do to make a non-mainstream language usable in primetime contributes to your long-term awesomeness growth.

Fourth, if you want to be a Corporate Programmer (TM) and not be challenged too much, then maybe get tapped for management in your mid-30s, then Haskell and Python will poison you. I've written a lot about the progress of developer competence (see this, just today: [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais- macle...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/gervais- macleod-23-the-shodan-programmer/) ). Once you cross the 1.4 rubicon, there really is no going back, and you'll be in conflict with managerial authority _forever_. Well, at least until you become _so_ good that it's eminently obvious and you can escape the CrapFactory (or is it CrapVisitorSingletonFactory?) Corporate Programming world.

 _However_ , if what you want is to be a _great_ programmer (not an easily employable one) then Haskell and Python will do you favors, and learning a few more languages (also C, because the low-level will always be important for some domains) is probably necessary.

This was written in 2006; I wonder what he'd think of JVM languages, especially Clojure.

<comment><USER22> I know you're joking, but I agree -- to a point.

First, if you write FORTH-in-Java code, you're gonna do a horrible job unless you get to reinvent Factor, at which point you should just use Factor. Also, you get to use Factor, which is awesome.

Second, I think you learn a lot by studying other languages, but most of the superiority of FORTH hackers come from the fact that good programmers, in general, tend to be parsimonious. Learning FORTH will make you a better programmer. It will also make you better at C++. In fact, it will make you better at everything, including being a morale problem, getting fired, being a hero to your co-workers, and being promoted.

Third, you type less in concatenative languages. When you use a Forth, you can get a lot done quickly because you don't type as much.

Forth, if you want to be a Corporate Programmer (R) and not be challenged too much, then just use FORTH, because, like COBOL before it, FORTH lets you hold down the Shift key constantly.

However, if what you want is to be a great programmer, then FORTH is still the answer! Why? Because it says so:

: ANSWER ." FORTH is pretty much the best way to be a great programmer. " ;

<comment><USER23> _...good programmers, in general, tend to be parsimonious_

Good programmers are frugal to the point of stinginess?

<comment><USER22> Good programmers are terse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if the same argument applies to using Reactive Extensions (Rx), ReactiveCocoa, etc..

</comment><comment><USER25> Resubmitting this article when it's so out of date seems like anti-C# FUD spreading.</comment>


Docker at Lyst - <AUTHOR> http://developers.lyst.com/devops/2014/12/08/docker/

<comment><USER2> I'll repost my question from the blog here (And thanks again Lyst team!):

Really enjoyed the write-up, Lyst team! Thanks for the info.

As a member of another large-ish Python dev shop with a number of dependencies, one of things that have kept us from moving fully in the direction of Docker is total deployment time. Since Docker is a 1-process/1-container model, our dependency sizes can be large since we run a number of processes on a single host. This means that our network into a newly launched host would be theoretically very large. How did Lyst deal with that? Or was the flexibility and slight slowness just preferable to something like shipping pre-built AMIs?

<comment><USER3> We (hi, I work at Lyst too!) see Docker images as fairly similar to pre-built AMIs conceptually, just a lot more lightweight. We bake our Docker host AMIs relatively regularly and use them in the ASG that runs the Dockerized website. Building AMIs (and booting new instances from them on each deploy) takes a lot longer than building a new Docker image and launching containers from it.

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're asking though. We've so far only Dockerized the main Python application, and not many of the supporting applications. We don't think we'd go down the route of running Postgres, ElasticSearch, Redis etc under Docker.

To give you an example of times taken, Pull Requests take about 10 minutes to test, a full master build (including uploading build artifacts) takes around 15 minutes, and a deployment to 8 Dockerized web hosts is about 5 minutes, including a smoke test on each host.

EDIT: Just realised what you're asking. If you're running many processes on each host then yes it can take a while to deploy. We deploy our Celery workers under separate Docker containers and this can take a while to stop and start. For the website though we run uWSGIs in forked mode, so it's only one container per host. This will probably change in the future, we're evaluating Mesos + Marathon for a more PaaS-like deployment where we can say "14 web processes please!"

Hope that answers your question.

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much for the answer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Dockerfiles are great for simple cases but need a lot of external help to use in more complex situations. Even simple variable expansion would be helpful."

Interesting that many who use docker "for real" have the same problems we did. This is why we ended up building this:

[http://ianmiell.github.io/shutit/](http://ianmiell.github.io/shutit/)

There's a long thread on this here:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/docker- user/3pcVXU4h...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/docker- user/3pcVXU4hgko)

<comment><USER5> Here's a nice way to do Docker builds with Ansible, which allow using the template engine and all of that good stuff:

[https://github.com/ansible/ansible-docker- base](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-docker-base)

(Disclaimer: wrote Ansible)

<comment><USER6> I attempted to do something like this when figuring out our build problems but it didn't really work for me. It doesn't solve the problem of actually getting configuration into the build very well because it still relies on Dockerfiles and has the added side effect of making the cache mostly useless. Maybe I was just doing it wrong?

I also attempted to try Ansible for deploying containers and had issues with both of these bugs:

[https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules- core/issues/27](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules-core/issues/27) [https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules- core/issues/188](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-modules-core/issues/188)

Do people actually use Ansible to control Docker in practice? It would be great to have something that was a step up from building random Python scripts from scratch :)

(Disclaimer: I'm not very good at Ansible.)

<comment><USER4> Our experience was that Dockerfiles were almost completely useless except for the most trivial of cases. We effectively ditched them, spitting out Dockerfiles that implant the ShutIt functionality and no more, eg:

      curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ianmiell/shutit/master/library/osquery/dockerfile/Dockerfile | docker build --no-cache -

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hello Lysters from the side of the square to your left! Can you give an example of what you replace in your Dockerfiles using Makefiles? We haven't needed to modify ours dynamically.

<comment><USER3> _waves_. We don't change anything in the Dockerfiles, it's more that we use the dependency logic in Make to ensure that x is done before y and before z. We also use it to actually run a lot of our containers with the ability to switch in configs for production-like databases if the developer needs it.

Make was the perfect tool for the task at the beginning, but it's getting a little unwieldy and will probably need rewriting in something else soon, probably Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is amazing how many in this community are able to just dismiss this "Oh yeh, boot2docker performance is still awful." If Docker was a product by Google or Microsoft, we'd have pitch forks out by this point. Yet somehow Docker is still able to skate by on having incredibly subpar Mac OS X performance.

"How Docker Got The Apple Community To Love It, Despite Horrible Performance" <\- will someone please write that post, since that's what I really want to know.

<comment><USER9> If I understand correctly, Docker's performance on OS X is a function of running in a Linux virtual machine, because Docker requires Linux. Is there something about Docker that you feel like inhibits performance beyond the VM itself?

<comment><USER10> One area of possible improvement is that boot2docker's default mechanism for sharing volumes with the mac is virtualbox guest additions, which are notoriously slow. As for performance, to my knowledge it's simply a matter of the underlying vm config.

tldr: boot2docker should expose ways to leverage faster vm configurations.

<comment><USER3> I'd love for it to work over NFS. It should be easily doable, but I guess it means adding another dependency to the boot2docker ISO.

<comment><USER10> We're mostly looking at supporting remote volume sync in docker itself, with a pluggable transport - could be smb, nfs, periodic rsync, sftp... bradfitz started an awesome contribution with a full remote-fuse-protocol sync :) pretty awesome but we haven't been able to merge it yet because the volume system needs to be made sufficiently clean and modular first.

The advantage of doing it in Docker proper is that it works in all distros without outside dependencies, instead of just boot2docker.

Note: we are looking for help on this, if you feel willing and able. Even better if you can invest some recurring time to maintain and help others contribute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are Lyst and Lyft friends?

<comment><USER3> We haven't yet had the pleasure.</comment></comment>


Please give me feedback on my simple site idea - <AUTHOR>

http://www.isthisgameworthwatching.com
Over the weekend I concocted this site; it's for people who Tivo sports games and want to know before they watch them if they're worth watching at all.  The idea is to remove subjectivity from the equation; what one person considers "worth watching" may not be what another considers "worth watching".  Instead it uses simple metrics based on the sport/league/score to determine a basic "worthiness" and then just answers "YES" or "NO".  I use it for Euro soccer games that I often can't watch live. <comment><USER2> Haha well I think it's an interesting idea.

I always trick myself into checking the score to see if something is worth watching. The problem is when I know the score I don't want to watch it again! Argh.. lol

Funny interesting idea, wouldn't spend too much time on it though. Maybe instead of metrics have it crowdsourced by other fans.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I thought about crowdsourcing but that introduces a subjective aspect that I'm not sure about. If my team loses, I'm more likely to say that they game is not worth watching. If there are more fans of my team than of the winning team, then the results will be skewed. It's a tough problem!</comment></comment>


Calm down trendspotters – 'lagom' is not the new hygge (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/06/lagom-sweden-hygge-lifestyle-trends <comment><USER2> >Lagom är bäst, meaning "enough is as good as a feast".

Not to be pedantic, it means "good enough is best"

<comment><USER3> Pedantic is "lagom" here.

The closest approximations to "lagom" in English are "feels just right" or "contenting because it feels comfortable" with an implied caveat of "for me/us". It corresponds to a subjective, pleasant, centered experience in the sense that it applies when the experience would not feel as good in either of two departing directions, such as air or water getting too cold or too warm. I believe this feeling and corresponding concept are absorbed and developed at a very early age, because we use the word a lot in Sweden; but to explain it to an adult who never knew it with a dictionary definition does not impart the sense-perceptions and particular feeling that were crucially experienced together, in blissful instants. And later in life that "lagom" sense will remain connected to a joyful core going all the way back to childhood bliss.</comment></comment>


Embraer Phenom 300 yaw damper fail due to loss of GPS signal [pdf] - a-no-n http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Notice/GENOT_7110_711_EMB-300.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> What a mess. We botched GPS/AHRS integration in our 2005 Grand Challenge vehicle. Seen this type of problem.

Here's the problem. You have an Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS) with three rate gyros and three accelerometers, plus a magnetometer as a compass. From this information, you want to get aircraft orientation and heading. Integrating the rate gyros gives orientation, but because you're integrating a rate, there's cumulative error over time. The accelerometers give you a down reference. Not always a good one. Some AHRS units will lose their down reference if you fly in a circle for a while, and the accelerometers see a consistent but wrong "down" direction from centrifugal force.

So AHRS systems are prone to cumulative error accumulation. You also have a GPS system, which is prone to short-term noise but does not accumulate cumulative error. GPS is position only; there's no orientation info from GPS. (There are some multiple-antenna GPS systems that get orientation, but those are rare) So AHRS/GPS systems try to combine the two using various filters. Those filters embody assumptions about the error properties of each system. Fusion of the two sources provides position information, with the GPS fixes being augmented with short-term info from the AHRS. However, it's possible for GPS position to "jump" due to radio propagation problems. You see this on smartphones all the time. It's not as bad for aircraft, which usually have a clear view of the sky. (It's much harder for ground vehicles, which can't always see enough GPS satellites. We had a lot of trouble with this in 2005.)

The important outputs are attitude (pitch, roll, and yaw) which drive the artificial horizon ball (or, today, a graphic which looks like one). There's also heading, which drives the compass. The attitude outputs also drive the aircraft's stability control systems. The AHRS data can be used raw, or combined with GPS data to get not only attitude but position.

Usually, the AHRS outputs are used without GPS info to drive the aircraft systems that just need attitude. But the fused AHRS/GPS data is usually better, and dealing with inconstencies between the unaugmented AHRS info and the fused data is a pain. So there's a temptation to use the fused data for everything. Embraer apparently did this.

There's an argument for source integration. Air France 447 crashed because they lost airspeed and altitude data when the pitot tubes and static ports froze up. An integrated AHRS/GPS system would have given them accurate info on vertical speed and altitude even without air sensors. So integration isn't fundamentally a bad idea. If you integrate sources, though, you have to deal with sensor conflicts. That's a hard problem. Filters alone will not do it.

The integration used by Embraer (who did the avionics, by the way?) apparently doesn't handle GPS failures properly. The AHRS is still there, and that's all you need for aircraft stability. But if the fused outputs are used for stability augmentation, stall warning, and such, apparently they can fail when the GPS data does.

<comment><USER2> > who did the avionics, by the way?

Garmin

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a known issue - and old issue.

These jets cannot fly without GPS.

When they (the military) knocked out GPS intentionally around China Lake NAS a few months back (for testing aircraft in GPS denied environments) -- all Embraers were told to avoid the area:

 _THIS NOTAM APPLIES TO ALL AIRCRAFT RELYING ON GPS. ADDITIONALLY, DUE TO GPS INTERFERENCE IMPACTS POTENTIALLY AFFECTING EMBRAER PHENOM 300 AIRCRAFT FLIGHT STABILITY CONTROLS, FAA RECOMMENDS EMB PHENOM PILOTS AVOID THE ABOVE TESTING AREA AND CLOSELY MONITOR FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEMS DUE TO POTENTIAL LOSS OF GPS SIGNAL._

[https://www.faasafety.gov/files/notices/2016/Jun/CHLK_16-08_...](https://www.faasafety.gov/files/notices/2016/Jun/CHLK_16-08_GPS_Flight_Advisory.pdf)

<comment><USER2> > These jets cannot fly without GPS.

No need for FUD. Loss of Yaw Damper is not something that would endanger an aircraft

<comment><USER3> tried to edit it. but why would they mention it so prominently in the NOTAM?

<comment><USER4> Because when this bug happens, the pilot is going to face a "christmas tree" of warning lights and cautions, most likely provoking an immediate PAN or Mayday and a possible diversion to the nearest suitable airport.

Loss of attitude info is a serious business, in the worst case the pilot may be left to fly only "raw data" and using the backup "steam gauge" instruments, because the displays and automation will stop working. Such event is no cake on a big jet, even during daylight, perfect weather and with the crew perfectly current and capable to fly like that.

Murphy will have it that it happens during night, in a storm and most crews today are trained to rely on the automation and rarely getting to hand fly, even less raw data, without any of the computers. The result will be another AF443 ...

<comment><USER2> See the other links around, there's a Garmin manual showing the failure modes regarding loss of GPS data (even some people saying loss of GPS only should not cause YD failure)

And it's AF447

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-no-n [http://forums.jetcareers.com/threads/emb-300-phenom-yaw- damp...](http://forums.jetcareers.com/threads/emb-300-phenom-yaw-damper-fail- due-to-unreliable-or-unavalible-gps-signal.234746/page-2)

<comment> a-no-n Another pilot forum also [https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/gps- interf...](https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/gps-interference- testing-affecting-biz-jets.95388/)

<comment><USER5> And on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856131)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does an aircraft gets certified with out an INS for stability control?

</comment><comment><USER7> > VENTRAL RUDDER FAIL, YAW DAMPER FAIL, AUTO PILOT FAIL, AND CAS MESSAGES > ASSOCIATED WITH UNEXPECTED ROLLING AND YAWING OSCILLATIONS (DUTCH ROLL) AT > HIGH AIRSPEEDS

Damn.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can someone provide context?

<comment><USER9> It appears that the Embraer Phenom 300 has GPS so deeply integrated into its "flight control computer" that the loss of GPS results in the loss of a number of important systems, including the system that prevents a common aerodynamic instability, known as "Dutch Roll".

Modern planes aren't flown directly by people. They're flown by computers, with people using the controls in the cockpit to tell the computer what they want the plane to do (there is no direct link between the stick/yoke and the flight surfaces). The computer integrates all the information at its disposal and determines what movements of the flight control systems are necessary to meet the pilot's commands (this is known as fly by wire). In this case, it seems that computer is _really_ dependant on GPS.

<comment><USER10> > (there is no direct link between the stick/yoke and the flight surfaces)

Almost true and oft-repeated. There are still means to somewhat control most FBW aircraft in the unlikely event all electrical control is lost; A320 can pitch/yaw with mechanical linkage to stabilizer trim and the rudder, for example (but, to your point, neither involve the sidestick). The flight is very likely headed for an unpleasant end but the intent is to buy time to restore computer control. Landing with trim, rudder, and differential thrust alone is possible (some have landed with less), but it's a big ask for a pilot accustomed to automation.

That scenario aside, when a whole lot of things fail an Airbus can also go into a mode called Direct Law, which basically tells the computer to take a hike and puts the pilot in direct control of surfaces proportional to airspeed (and puts structural integrity in jeopardy, because the computer isn't helping to obey design limits). The aircraft is extremely sensitive in this configuration.

(If you saw _Sully_ recently, one of the reasons he quickly started the APU was to prevent the aircraft from leaving the relative safety of Normal Law in the absence of electrical power. This was described in the report, if I recall, and was one of the more critical decisions made.)

Boeing is entirely different in FBW philosophy from Airbus. A coarse summary might be that Airbus drivers are negotiating with a computer while Boeing drivers are generally flying the airplane. Both have merits and drawbacks and vocal camps.

<comment><USER9> > Almost true and oft-repeated. There are still means to somewhat control most > FBW aircraft in the unlikely event all electrical control is lost; A320 can > pitch/yaw with mechanical linkage to stabilizer trim and the rudder, for > example (but, to your point, neither involve the sidestick).

Yeah, that's why I was specific about the stick/yoke connection. Though, after some research, it appears I was wrong about that as well (as least in the case of Embraer). In the 190, the ailerons are, effectively, directly controlled (there is a hydraulic system in line, but it is directly actuated by cables from the yoke). I was unable to find any conclusive details about the Phenom 300 after a cursory search, but it appears it is "fully" FBW.

> Boeing is entirely different in FBW philosophy from Airbus. A coarse summary > might be that Airbus drivers are negotiating with a computer while Boeing > drivers are generally flying the airplane. Both have merits and drawbacks > and vocal camps.

Yeah, and both sides can point to major incidents that wouldn't have happened in the other cockpit.

<comment><USER11> I know of Air France 447 in the "fly the airplane" camp. (An inexperienced copilot stalled the aircraft all the way from cruise altitude to impact, and because the sidesticks aren't linked, no one else could tell that was what was wrong.)

What's a good example in the "negotiate with the computer" camp? Perhaps it's merely a tendency on my part, but I don't think I have run across any accident which militates as strongly in favor of Airbus's design as AF 447 seems to militate against it.

<comment><USER12> AF447 is more complicated than just that sidestick issue, if you look at the accident report closely.

The contributing factors were loss of outside air temperature and airspeed sensors because of icing, a dark moonless night above the ocean, and flying/falling outside of the operating range of the stall horn (when they pitched the nose down, they started recovering from the stall, airspeed went up, and the stall horn activated. when they pitched up, they went back outside of the operating range, and the horn muted).

A big contributing factor as well was that in an airbus, in normal operating conditions, pulling the stick all the way back will configure the aircraft for the best rate of climb (which can be different from just putting the elevator in full climb conditions). Due to the pitot tubes being iced up, the flight computers were in Direct mode (where movement of the sidestick is directly translated in movement of the flight controls, without computer intervention), which didn't help.

<comment><USER2> > the flight computers were in Direct mode

Almost that, they were in Alternate Law

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone have a sense of what the primary failure is here? Is there some Kalman filter that gets out of whack when an error term can't be calculated, or what?

</comment><comment><USER14> Translation: we never tested flight with the GPS off.

<comment><USER2> Planes are not built by "stuff.js" hackers I'm afraid

And it does work without GPS, as this link (which was posted in this page [http://forums.jetcareers.com/threads/emb-300-phenom-yaw- damp...](http://forums.jetcareers.com/threads/emb-300-phenom-yaw-damper-fail- due-to-unreliable-or-unavalible-gps-signal.234746/page-2) ) shows

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a commercial rating. The HN title is wrong.

What this is saying:

1) If you don't have a yaw damper, then you'll have a rough ride

2) because the autopilot will induce oscillation (dutch roll) after loss of GPS

<comment><USER9> The HN title is literally the subject of the notice, very slightly paraphrased (abbreviations expanded, etc), so you may want to let the FAA know they got it wrong...

I also think you misread the notice. The report is stating the loss of GPS apparently resulted in the subsequent loss of a number of other systems, including the yaw damper.

<comment><USER15> I think you're right. The wording about "no yaw damper" would have been clearer as "failed yaw damper" \- I guess that's what was meant.</comment></comment></comment>


Scullog: Log File Streamer and Local File System Browser, based on NodeJS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sanketbajoria/scullog <comment><USER2> Looks neat!

A screenshot would be helpful, to get a sense of what kind of interface will be available when I install it. Take a look at how NodeJS-Dashboard was advertised: [https://formidable.com/blog/2016/10/12/introducing-nodejs- da...](https://formidable.com/blog/2016/10/12/introducing-nodejs-dashboard/) \- the screenshot gives you understanding at a glance.

I'd also recommend proofreading the page. It has some typos or grammar errors.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have added screenshot. But, I am not very sure about proofreading. Is there any built-in tool in github to check for typos or grammar errors.

Really thanks, for your valuable feedback. :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Scullog, having capability of sharing the local drive to the browser. Stream the log file via Socket.IO over browser. It run on any platform such as windows/linux/mac. It run as service or standalone mode.</comment>


Clasp 0.4 – Joining Common Lisp and C++ - <AUTHOR> https://drmeister.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/clasp-0-4-joining-common-lisp-and-cxx/ <comment><USER2> Fascinating project! I kind of hope to need to work on C++ sometime so I can try it out. Particularly the Clang AST library would be a enormous boon for any LLVM / C++ / C work. IMHO, 9/10's of any compiler work is just figuring out how to write recursive functions to modify the AST which is a pain using C++ and visitor patterns. Working in LISP for these parts while being integrated with C++ for other parts sounds like it would be awesome if not outright fun.

<comment><USER3> Thanks - yes it's fun and very powerful. An integral part of Clasp is "clasp- analyzer" \- a static analyzer that uses the ASTMatcher library to analyze all of the Clasp C++ source code (>170 source files). It builds an interface to the Memory Pool System garbage collector (coming soon) and builds a fast replacement for dynamic_cast. We are planning to use it to write a "super- swig" that could automatically build foreign function interfaces for C++ code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Announcing Clasp 0.4 – a new release that incorporates a brand new compiler – capable of generating 200x faster code than previously, many bug fixes, a more complete Common Lisp implementation, and improved C++ interoperation.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hate to be negative, but that code base is a complete mess. I looked into helping out on the project a few months ago, but stopped almost immediately when I saw the code. I'm a little sad that a release is being announced and the code is still a mess.

For example, in the src/core directory there are about a million files, of types _.txt,_.cc, _.cxml,_.xml, _.old,_.py, _.sh,_.prototype, _.csc,_.pdb, _.moe,_.grep, *.fbp, etc., and many of them have mysterious names like "tf.csc" or "v.txt". And a lot of the files seem to have nothing to do with common lisp or C++, and contain mysterious 1 or 2 line code snippets or shell one liners.

Honestly, it's just a terrible first impression. Are there any plans to clean it up and make it usable by other people?

Edit: And perhaps more worrying, there are things like this [https://github.com/drmeister/clasp/blob/master/src/clbind/cl...](https://github.com/drmeister/clasp/blob/master/src/clbind/class_registry.cc), where there's a copyright notice, and then immediately below it an older copyright notice to somebody else.

<comment><USER3> Yes - I have a plan to clean it up. Clasp exposes the clang source to source translation library. Now that it's fast I'm going to automatically refactor the whole thing in one go.

<comment><USER5> So you can do this without using >4GB of ram per source file now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there some sample code for the C++ interface? It is a good idea but I am curious how much headers and templates complicate things.

<comment><USER3> There are several. In Clasp there is [https://github.com/drmeister/clasp/blob/master/src/asttoolin...](https://github.com/drmeister/clasp/blob/master/src/asttooling/astExpose.cc#L1076) \- that exposes the entire Clang AST class hierarchy. Then there is [https://github.com/drmeister/demo-clasp- cxx](https://github.com/drmeister/demo-clasp-cxx) \- it exposes a small "Hello World" example. Then there is the SFML library that is being exposed by flash- one of the regulars in the #clasp IRC channel: [https://github.com/clasp- developers/clasp-sfml](https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp-sfml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is already a Clasp in Debian, but its something else: [https://packages.debian.org/sid/clasp](https://packages.debian.org/sid/clasp)

<comment><USER8> Same with Homebrew.

        $ brew info clasp
        clasp: stable 3.1.3 (bottled)
        Answer set solver for (extended) normal logic programs
        http://potassco.sourceforge.net/

Would be great to rename this recipe to potassco instead.

<comment><USER9> No, it wouldn't. The program is called clasp. Renaming it to potassco is like renaming Microsoft Excel to Microsoft Office. It's also years older than the LISP clasp. And finally, the program is an amazing piece of technology and state-of-the-art in its scientific field.

<comment><USER10> There are already several other Lisp projects called CLASP ;-) : For example...

[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/util/lang/lisp/code/math/cla...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/util/lang/lisp/code/math/clasp/0.html)

'Common Lisp Analytical Statistics Package'

Early 90s...

Or a simulator for electronic circuits in Common Lisp:

[https://doaj.org/article/6a656a29acba4a748a65f20bff63721b](https://doaj.org/article/6a656a29acba4a748a65f20bff63721b)

Or a production system from 1991:

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=7...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=79709)

Or a reasoning engine in Lisp:

[http://www.researchgate.net/publication/221393440_Towards_th...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/221393440_Towards_the_Systematic_Development_of_Description_Logic_Reasoners_CLASP_Reconstructed)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ah, the converse of Greenspan's tenth rule in action. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule))</comment>


2012 Thiel Fellowship application is out - <AUTHOR> http://www.thielfellowship.org/apply/

<comment><USER2> This competition could benefit from a over 19's category. Not all great work is done by the precocious. Some could be done by jaded 20 somethings ...</comment>


Unicorn Bubble or Boom: With Dropbox, Airbnb, Altman, Livingston [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-04-09/unicorn-bubble-or-boom-bloomberg-west-full-show-4-8 <comment><USER2> Off the top of my head, the only web 2.0 unicorn to flameout was Evernote. The rest have either retained their value or keep going up. I remember briefly using evernote in 2013 and finding it confusing, cumbersome, and pointless. I don't need this huge app to store notes.

<comment><USER3> I don't like that categorization. If a company bubbles to $7 billion, then recedes to only a half billion at which it keeps a steady business, that doesn't seem like it should be called s flameout, even though it failed to maintain its bubbly valuation.</comment></comment>


'User Pain' as bug metric (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://lostgarden.com/2008/05/improving-bug-triage-with-user-pain.html <comment><AUTHOR> This has been posted previously (2008, 2009) with no comments. I'm interested in HN's opinion on this.

Does any bug tracker support that feature? I haven't seen it in the ones I'm using.</comment>


Larry Lessig: On why I am not running - <AUTHOR> http://lessig.org/blog/2008/02/on_why_i_am_not_running.html

<comment><USER2> While I'm not an American, it will be very interesting to watch how Mr. Lessig is able to raise awareness of government corruption and to see how successful his efforts are. Here in Canada, the government seems to be looking into updating copyright legislation in some, shall we say, suspiciously biased ways. If his methods are successful, I hope we can adapt them to the Canadian system.

The Canadian who seems to fill a similar spokesperson / visionary niche as Mr. Lessig is Michael Geist (<http://www.michaelgeist.ca/>). He was the figurehead in the fight against the recent proposed copyright reforms here and had a great grasp of the situation and how to organize a grass-roots opposition to it.

As an aside, I find Mr. Lessig's presentation style quite interesting. For online presentations, where one can't use the flesh and blood presence of the presenter, the frequent updates are a huge attention magnet. It would be a pretty big departure from the 10-20-30 rule, but I wonder how well a business pitch made in this style would work. Another example of a presentation of Mr. Lessig's that exemplifies the style (and is beautifully and passionately presented) is available at <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/187> . ("How creativity is being strangled by the law")</comment>


Death on Mars - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/death-on-mars1/ <comment><USER2> Non-clickbait (actual) title:

"Death on Mars. The martian radiation environment is a problem for human explorers that cannot be overstated"

... yet this nonsense, also this week:

"Elon Musk drops details for SpaceX Mars mega-colony. SpaceX CEO wants to put a million people on the Red Planet by 2050."

[https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-drops-details-for- spacex...](https://www.cnet.com/news/elon-musk-drops-details-for-spacexs- million-person-mars-mega-colony/)

Those funds are better spent on Earth (climate | social | ... issues), raising questions to true motivations.

<comment><USER3> False dichotomy. "better spent" relates two essentially unrelated things, claiming they are exclusive (have to do one or the other).

<comment><USER4> It also suggests that Elon Musk is somehow obligated to spend his money for these other things, in a way that isn't necessarily how he sees these issues getting solved or at least dealt with. Instead of electric smart cars, electrical battery farms, solar roof tiles, communications in space, getting to space, etc, he should drop it all to spend it on this one specific thing someone completely unconnected to him or his plans decided he needs to spend it on.

The world's problems don't have a singular solution. There are many things that need to be done.</comment></comment></comment>


The History of the Internet in a Nutshell - <AUTHOR> http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/ <comment><AUTHOR> 1988's Milestones:

        1. IRC

        2. The Morris Worm</comment>


Show HN: To what data I can apply my news search engine, other than news? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readrz.com/?v3

<comment><AUTHOR> Obvious: comments, twits... Any non-obvious ideas?</comment>


West Bank Buzz: The Quiet Rise of a Palestinian Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.worldcrunch.com/tech-science/west-bank-buzz-the-quiet-rise-of-a-palestinian-silicon-valley/palestine-internet-ramallah-web-technology/c4s9946/#.UI6u0Gl278R

<comment><USER2> I had the privilege of being part of a delegation of American businessmen sent to the West Bank earlier this month. It was planned by the US State Department in conjunction with the Aspen Institute and we had the opportunity to visit with business leaders, politicians, and startup founders all over the West Bank and Israel.

Very eye-opening. A lot of great innovation in that region (on both sides). Met a team that's independently constructing wind mills in the West Bank to power up to 20% of their energy team. Another that is making custom furniture for small spaces in Gaza.

There were Israeli companies outsourcing to Ramallah instead of Bangalore, and ideas and ingenuity was very impressive. All in all, I was extremely impressed.

The path forward, I've always believed, was rooted in economic prosperity. Nothing creates chaos like poverty with no chances of escape.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to work for an American company with a large Israeli workforce.

When I left the company they were actively trying to hire engineers from the West Bank. Apparently this used to be hard to do, but has gotten easier thanks to a government-sponsored (from both sides) program.

I believe it's a win-win -- Palestinians of the West Bank are cheaper than Israeli engineers and in need of better paying jobs. And hopefully working together will lead to more cross-cultural understanding.

I found myself quite depressed by the politics of the region and didn't like flying there -- but this provided a much needed glimmer of hope.

More info for the curious: [http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-high- tech-compa...](http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israeli-high-tech- companies-outsourcing-to-palestinians-1.331256)

</comment><comment><USER4> Not quite the middle east depicted by the media:

At Asal, 120 software developers work in a large, air-conditioned open plan office fronted by a semi-circular glass wall. Twenty percent of them are women.

<comment><USER5> Quite true! I am surprised to read this, and thrilled that the technology industry is having an impact for Palestinians as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The anti-NGO sentiment resonates with me. I spent the last year living and working in Bangladesh and it's the same story. People get educated to get jobs for foreign aid agencies, not to innovate. This creates a very clear, wide- spread systematic culture of dependency.

Clearly aid agencies are doing good things sometimes. And there are NGOs moving toward fostering business and accountability rather than traditional giving. Still, a lot of work needs to be done. Basically aid should be reserved for post-emergency situations, I believe. Multi-decade aid programs are not going to lead to self-sustaining economies. At least not if some major changes happen.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great work. Hope us Israelis can start working more closely with our neighbors. Definitely considering making a version of <http://mappedinisrael.com/> for the West Bank.

<comment><USER8> Simplest question: has anyone made an Arabic translation for Waze?

Also, they take salaries of _70%_ less than us? Ya Allah, we're fucked. Better get _all_ the West Bank tech workers employed to bring the wages up to our levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. The path to peace is education, high skill jobs and prosperous businesses.

</comment><comment><USER10> All hanging by a thread, since random buildings can be bombed or demolished as 'retaliation'.

<comment><USER11> You're thinking of the Gaza Strip, which is under Hamas rule. Israel doesn't bomb buildings in the West Bank.

<comment><USER12> Israel doesn't bomb buildings in the West Bank right now. They do demolish them randomly in retaliation, or because they need the space to build more Jewish-only roads and settlements, or... (Note that I do genuinely mean Jewish-only rather than Israeli-only here; non-Israeli Jews are allowed but Israeli Arabs aren't.) That's not to mention the odd state-sanctioned and IDF- protected terrorist attack by settlers on Arabs in the West Bank.

<comment><USER13> > Israeli Arabs

Nitpick: 'Israeli Arabs' aren't necessary non-Jewish; there are a number of Arab Jews throughout the middle east, and some of them are in Israel.

(Your point still stands, but people are unaware of the above often enough that I feel it's worth pointing out, because it emphasizes that the region is not as black-and-white as poltiics sometimes seem.)

<comment><USER14> The term "Israeli Arabs" in particular is something of a term of art, meaning roughly: people with Israeli citizenship who primarily identify themselves as Arabs. Jews originating in the Arab countries (the Mizrahi Jews) tend not to consider themselves Israeli Arabs, or be counted as such in censuses. Since Israel identifies itself as "the Jewish state", they identify with the majority Jewish population instead.

Whether Mizrahi Jews are Arabs in a more general sense ("Arab Jews") is a more complex question with more disagreement. My sense is that most don't identify as Arabs, at least not anymore, though a minority do. But they definitely don't, in general, identify with the term "Israeli Arab", which denotes a distinct socio-cultural group.

(It's probably worth noting, though, that many people who _are_ counted as Israeli Arabs in that sense don't identify with the term either: a substantial number prefer other terms that incorporate a specifically Palestinian identity, such as "Palestinian citizen of Israel".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like Mediterranean climes are good for startups.

</comment><comment><USER16> Low-cost outsourcing compared to Silicon Valley?</comment>


PyCon 2020 Update on Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://pycon.blogspot.com/2020/03/march-2-update-on-covid-19.html <comment><USER2> The doubling period of Covid-19 is between 1.8 and 4.1 days where large scale quarantine measures aren't being taken [1][2]. The conference is in 43 days so without large scale quarantines and stopping large events then the number of cases in the US could grow to as many as 800,000 assuming a doubling period of 3 days. It seems therefore fairly obvious that most large events in April will have to be cancelled.

[1] [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs15010-020-01401...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs15010-020-01401-y) [2] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.25723](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.25723)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing the journal articles.

According to [1], on January 31, 2020 US had 6 cases of Covid-19. And according to several news sites, as of March 2, 2020, there are 101 cases.

If I did the math correctly, that seems to be doubling about every four days or so, which lines up with the doubling period mentioned.

<comment><USER2> Its difficult to tell because the US hasn't been doing as much testing as other countries. You can look at the curves for various countries at [https://covid.bio/](https://covid.bio/) Most countries that haven't initiated large scale quarantines have a doubling period of between 1.5 and 5 days

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, one wonders if that curve measures not infection rates, but testing kit manufacturing output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Currently, there have not been any COVID-19 cases in Pennsylvania

No boundaries to stupidity. Such arguments makes no sense at all, better check how many people have been tested in PA. While everyone cancelling large scale events there are few mohicans going forward seeing no risk.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe buy a few temperature guns and point them at people's foreheads before they enter?

<comment><USER7> Due to the long incubation period, infected people can be infectious even while not presenting symptoms or relatively asymptomatic.

Bai, Yan, Lingsheng Yao, Tao Wei, Fei Tian, Dong-Yan Jin, Lijuan Chen, and Meiyun Wang. "Presumed Asymptomatic Carrier Transmission of COVID-19." JAMA, February 21, 2020. [https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.2565](https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.2565).

Guan, Wei-jie, Zheng-yi Ni, Yu Hu, Wen-hua Liang, Chun-quan Ou, Jian-xing He, Lei Liu, et al. "Clinical Characteristics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China." New England Journal of Medicine 0, no. 0 (February 28, 2020): null. [https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032](https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032).

"Patients often presented without fever, and many did not have abnormal radiologic findings. ... Fever was present in 43.8% of the patients on admission but developed in 88.7% during hospitalization."

<comment><USER8> While that's certainly true, viral load is important and this likely still would be an effective risk reduction measure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The biggest news here is that pycon still uses blogspot.

</comment><comment><USER10> Eagerly looking for the updates on this!</comment>


Covid-19's Impact on Tor - <AUTHOR> https://blog.torproject.org/covid19-impact-tor <comment><USER2> Did Tor lose funding which resulted in the layoffs?</comment>