Paying for hackernews frontpage links, now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/BidRequests/ShowBidRequest.asp?lngBidRequestId=1130270 <comment><USER2> Just googling around, looks like the guy is Tamour Khan, from Pembroke Pnes, FL

Tamour? You out there dude? Care to explain? What do you need to promote so badly you don't trust the board to vote you up or down?

<comment><USER3> My guess is he wants to push androidster.com (android app consulting)

<comment><USER4> It'd be absolutely brilliant if it were him who submitted this news item ! :)

The cake is a lie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Which is worse:

1\. A 'paid' frontpage story that is sufficiently HN related so that a moderator doesn't kill it,

2\. A frontpage story showing evidence that somebody wants to game a social news site.

<comment><USER6> The first is part of the charter of this site. That it doesn't come up often doesn't change that.

The second is something neither the site owners nor the site community want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Gaming social news sites has been going on for quite some time now, although I don't see why anyonenwould bother gaming HN- the traffic is minimal and too savvy to click on ads.

As for Digg and reddit- many of you have startups and blogs that are floundering with minimal traffic and revenue.

Instead of complaining and being all up in arms, perhaps you should accept that Digg and reddit have been gamed by numerous entities for years, and learn how to game them for your own benefit. That doesn't mean spamming, it means giving your own quality content an extra push. Back when I did that sort of thing, I got dozens of stories to the Digg and reddit front pages. After receiving, synthetically, with many accounts and proxies, the first hundred or so votes needed to get to the front page, these stories went on to receive thousands of natural, real upvotes. So much for your "algorithms". If you can't beat them, join them.

<comment><USER8> Getting your friends to vote you up is one thing... getting a network of proxied spam bots to do so is another.

There's a fine line between "giving an extra push" and being downright unethical. I usually try to convince people (on twitter and irc and personally) to upvote my stories when I think they'll be of interest, but I would never actually contrive a script to do that for me.

I'll add that in my experience, the relatively small push of getting a few initial upvotes from friends, even on reddit, is usually enough to propel articles onto wherever they're destined to go. You don't need a 100 fake votes.

<comment><USER9> Is this a common occurrence here? I've heard of power users on digg doing this, but I'm slightly surprised its happening here.

<comment><USER7> If you're going to game a site, might as well make it a high traffic site- I'm sure Digg and reddit get the vast majority of the bots/fake users.

That said, I see no ethical distinction between asking your friends to vote for a story and asking a bunch of random people on the internet to vote for a story. Either way, you're stuffing the ballot box.

One only has to look at the myriad submissions by Alex Jones/truther "bots" on reddit to see that.

<comment><USER9> I think you can ethically ask your friends to vote up your stories, as long as they actually have accounts used for more than voting up your stories. It would be like asking your school friends to vote for you if you were running for a school office.

I'm just not sure how comfortable I am with users politicizing the voting process. At least spam and most fluff seems to be taken care of quickly, so it isn't really a problem.

<comment><USER10> It's not really unethical, but it is generally frowned upon to have your friends vote up stories. There is a slippery slope with asking your friends to vote up stories; that is basically how digg works.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196778>

<comment><USER9> I'm sure I would not find out from a moderator, but the math for detecting voting rings sounds really interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well, they could disguise their content as an Erlang story...

</comment><comment><USER12> I imagine it's probably not that difficult to game HN. The community's not that big, the big gaming boys work elsewhere on much larger sites so scaling down to HN won't be hard. If the article doesn't fit HN though, that's a different question.

<comment><USER13> you can get to the top with 2-3 upvotes, hardly impossible

<comment><USER14> If it's a lame article/spam/offtopic it'd usually get killed pretty quickly though. I'm not sure that's the case on digg/reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would really, really, really love to be able to see who upvotes a story (just in general).

<comment><USER16> I'd make my up & downvotes public if I could.

<comment><USER17> Crawl <http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=XXX> using your login cookie.

<comment><USER15> That only works for your own login, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If the guy had mentioned the two links on that page he could hope for being on HN front page :D .

</comment><comment><USER19> Somebody should bid $10 on it just to see who's behind it.

<comment><USER20> According to Reddit, this guy: <http://tamournkhan.com/Qualifications.php>

<comment><USER21>
      Master of Science in Entrepreneurship?

I wonder if I get a Ph.D in making it rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Then there are guys like me who submitted his iPhone app info-mercial article at midnight on Valentine's day. Fail.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's inevitable. The theory is that the algorithmic protection and a little bit of oversight can remove the irrelevant stuff. If someone wants to pay to submit relevant stuff, then I don't see a problem.

<comment><USER24> I do. I come here to read stories that are authentic. When or if I figure out that someone "paid" to get their post or article to the front page of a site like this, I'll start to lose something that I consider the best part of HN: honesty and respect. [1]

[1] Maybe with the exception of a few people I read on Tumblr each morning, HN is the most authentic community of like-minded folks who seem to either (a) care about the viewpoints of other members or (b) act civilized rather than become trolls.

<comment><USER25> i agree. its why i don't read digg/reddit.

<comment><USER26> Digg/Reddit used to be civilized and intelligent as well, but then they grew in popularity and everything went downhill from there. It is definitely possible for the same thing to happen to HN if something (I have no idea what) isn't actively done to prevent it.

<comment><USER25> difference between digg/reddit and HN is that HN users typically actively police, and the application restricts functionality based on your karma. you're not allowed to do certain things unless you have a certain level of trust, which isn't the case on digg/reddit.

<comment><USER26> " _HN users typically actively police_ "

This isn't very scalable. If HN's userbase were of the same size as Digg's or Reddit's and most of those people were unwanted (i.e., if a large group of Digg/Reddit users were to begin frequenting HN), it would not be able to prevent them from saying/doing as they pleased.

" _the application restricts functionality based on your karma_ "

The karma is determined by other user's ratings, right? How well is that going to work if a majority of the users are similar to your average Digg/Reddit user?

One of the big differences that makes it possible for HN to maintain its civility is its relatively small size. So far, I have not seen any scalable methods of moderating a user-contributed link aggregation website. Therefore, I can only hope that Digg/Reddit users don't find out about HN (which is mostly a pipe dream).

<comment><USER27> i don't think you've been here long enough to know how this site works.

if somebody submits off-topic or spammy links, they will be killed. if somebody starts acting like a jerk, their account will be killed. it doesn't really matter what the average hn user thinks about it, they will be killed anyway.

the editors are very ruthless about this. it doesn't matter how many unruly users come here, they will either abide by the rules or they will be banned, period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> <http://www.division1movers.com/>

Looks like he might want to promote this site on Digg and Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER25> for under $100? i don't think they understand how much people have paid for frontpage status on digg/reddit in the past.

as for HN, i suppose it was only a matter of time before someone tried to game the system (if they aren't already).</comment>


AMD Threadripper 1950X review - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/amd-threadripper-review-1950x-1920x/ <comment><USER2> More cores and NVMe ... now this should be a computing upgrade for me. I'm currently on an i5-3570K custom build from 2013. ECC is on my _to get_ list as well. I'll miss the onboard video, however. But not a biggie.

I would really like to be able to test one of these things before buying. I want to know how much faster _my workloads_ will be when doing the following:

* C++ compiles times in VS2015

* Sony Vegas render to an AVI file using Lagarith

* Handbrake render AVI to MP4

* Output Canon Raw files using Canon DPP

* Resize JPG files using FastStone Photo Resizer

* Search NVMe drives using FileSearchEX

* Running VMWare Workstation guests and their applications (Exchange Server, OS installs, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I would really want to see a comparison with the previous generation Xeons, which do drop in price much faster than the consumer CPUs. I feel like higher- core ones will beat 1950X at tasks that multithread well.

Examples:

18-core Xeon E5-2686 v4 = $450 ([http://www.ebay.com/itm/172668300615](http://www.ebay.com/itm/172668300615))

18-core Xeon E5 2695 V4 ES = $610 ([http://www.ebay.com/itm/272620269793](http://www.ebay.com/itm/272620269793))

20-core Xeon E5-2698 v4 ES = $745 ([http://www.ebay.com/itm/282579817803](http://www.ebay.com/itm/282579817803))

22-core Xeon E5 2699 V4 ES = $920 ([http://www.ebay.com/itm/201883329486](http://www.ebay.com/itm/201883329486))

24-core Xeon E7-8890 v4 ES = $999 ([http://www.ebay.com/itm/352113502495](http://www.ebay.com/itm/352113502495))

<comment><USER4> In my experience the motherboards are a downside when considering a Xeon system - narrow range, expensive, often missing latest features, sub-optimal in an everyday desktop machine. OTOH there are dual socket options which threadripper doesn't have.

There was an article on building a dual Xeon box using cheap second hand chips recently and I was seriously considering it until I saw the range and cost of dual socket boards.

<comment><USER5> I read this article [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12249317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12249317) and had the same idea last year when I went to build a computer for the boy. It wasn't just that the price of the motherboard was a killer, navigating the subtle differences between similar server sockets and chips is hard. And used motherboards are not cheap and often proprietary. Then there's the fact that for a dual socket motherboard, a single chip is a bit economically inefficient...so a pair of chips starts to make sense. And then a bigger power supply. And still not good support for powerful graphics cards because...well, you know...it's a server motherboard.

In the end, I got a bought the boy a used Dell Precision T7500 for less than I would have paid for an equivalent case and power supply. Sure only six Xeon cores and 12 threads. But a system with RAM, a windows license, a small hard disk and 12GB of RAM was half the price of the cheapest Threadripper...including shipping.

<comment><USER4> But again that will lack the latest features that you will be getting with a Threadripper system, but I guess that might not matter to you. Bargains to be had I agree.

<comment><USER5> With similar budgets, half a dozen used Precision hexacore Xeon boxes is within the realm of possibility. That's more cores and threads and memory bandwidth to throw at workloads that significantly benefit from multi- threading. Of course the premise is that most of the benefits from multi- threading come from software rather than hardware.

From a systems perspective, there is a more robust pipeline of replacement parts for the used boxes relative to the latest retail Threadripper motherboards. More boxes means it is possible to stay up with a hardware failure (which is to say that scaling out instead of scaling up means a partial hardware failures versus total hardware failures).

There's no free lunch of course. All those 1100w power supplies are going to equate to higher operating costs. And if first cost is no object then four or five Threadripper boxes will outperform the older hardware. Likewise if having the latest and greatest is part of the problem being solved.

YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be ineterested in seeing how they run the chromium build. It completes in just over an hour on my Ryzen 1700.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen- threadripp...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11697/the-amd-ryzen- threadripper-1950x-and-1920x-review/11)

23.11 compiles per day vs 15.6 for the 1700. 50% faster.

<comment><USER6> Ah, it's on windows. That matches my experience that windows builds take about 50% longer than linux builds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does Ryzen have something similar to Intel's Processor Trace functionality? It's pretty much the only thing keeping me tied to Intel at this point.</comment>


Covid-19 Strikes a Supercarrier - <AUTHOR> https://breakingdefense.com/2020/03/covid-19-strikes-a-supercarrier-months-of-virus-esper-says/ <comment><USER2> Terrible but also they need to get test kits and researchers out there ASAP to collect data</comment>


ConversionXL's Top Posts of 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://conversionxl.com/top-10-conversionxl-posts-of-2012/

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic stuff all year from Peep Laja. My thanks. Short on time? My Top 3 (no particular order): (1) [http://conversionxl.com/value-proposition- examples-how-to-cr...](http://conversionxl.com/value-proposition-examples-how- to-create/) (1A) [http://conversionxl.com/10-principles-of-effective- pricing-p...](http://conversionxl.com/10-principles-of-effective-pricing- pages/) (1B) <http://conversionxl.com/how-to-design-user-flow/></comment>


CrashPlan has my data, won't give it back - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kamens.us/2017/08/25/crashplan-jumps-the-shark/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately it's easy to forget that what you have is not a backup until you have tested it.

I remember setting up a pair of NASes for a customer, units I hadn't used before. I found that the configuration restore did not work at all and the two built-in backup tools a) would only allow a full restore of any backed-up folder and b) were unconscionably fragile, respectively.

Luckily this was blatant in testing and as the rest of the units' functions worked nicely, I decided not to send them back, and rolled my own backup. Which is tested, and has much better alerting/monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER3> I decided having terabytes of data backed up in the cloud is just not feasible. So I picked about 300 GB which I _really_ care about and back up that to the cloud.

For the rest I got my NAS, and I live with the fact that if the house burns down well then that data goes out the window.

Just because you can back up everything in the cloud doesn't mean you should.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is, the majority of the stuff in my backup is my family videos and photos, and frankly I don't have the time to curate it well enough to select out which of the videos and photos are "important" enough to back up and which are not. Perhaps when I am retired. ;-) In the meantime, my time is far more valuable than the money I will spend backing up everything into the cloud. And I'll now be switching from CrashPlan to a backup solution I built myself using Rclone and Backblaze B2, so I will be able to ensure end-to-end that it works the way I need it to.

<comment><USER4> At a certain point, isn't it easier and cheaper to just buy a second hard drive, copy everything over, and ship it to an uncle, or a cousin, or your grandparents?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. My Rclone / Backblaze B2 backups happen automatically every night. They're plug-and-play. The backup scripts I wrote verify random files automatically in the backup every night, to confirm that I'm actually successfully backing files up and can successfully retrieve them. If there comes a time when I need to restore huge amounts of data from Backblaze and I don't want to wait for it to download, I can take a snapshot and ask them to write it to a hard drive to ship it to me. Until that happens, I don't have to worry about it, and given that they charge $.005 per GB per month, the storage costs are infinitesimal.

<comment> james-skemp Do you have a link to more info on your solution?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for asking. It's one posting back on my blog from the link at the top of this HN thread. ;-)

[https://blog.kamens.us/2017/08/24/backing-up-from-unix-to- ba...](https://blog.kamens.us/2017/08/24/backing-up-from-unix-to- backblaze-b2-using-rclone/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Hackerrank is the worst way to recruit - <AUTHOR> Hey there,
I am currently studying my engineering (Undergraduate) and I am in my final year. During this time Companies come to college for Placements. The usual recruiting process goes like this ->
1.Coding Test (Hackerrank)
   In this round, 2 to 3 questions are given that we should solve in 90 Minutes. Few companies also ask aptitude/technical questions. 2. Technical Round 2.
   If first-round is cleared. One on one interview is taken. Wherein we are asked technical questions again usually based on Data structures and algorithms. 3. Final HR Round
   As usual HR questions are asked.
I am not sure how do companies judge just based on the single algorithm-based program. I can code but dynamic programming is not what I will be doing in my job. I have learned about docker, kubernetes, etc. Companies won't even know what are my abilities are.
Hackerrank is not the way to get good candidates. Side projects, open-source contributions, etc should be the criteria, not one program.
Recruiters of HN How do you usually select Students for interview? <comment><USER2> The single algo program is a proxy for "can this candidate think through things logically and come up with a good design, and explain it".

If you can do it, there is hope you can learn docker, k8s etc. However you can be "good" at docker, k8s from courses without being a competent programmer (but a good systems admin).

Also a company has to deal with 1000's of applications and unfortunately they need early filtering stages, they don't have the resources to look at that many Githubs. Let's say it takes on average 30 minutes per Github to evaluate - that 500 hours per 1000 candidates, of which that time is coming from people who should be doing Engineering tasks. Even if they can afford it, it will slow down the process too much.

And then how to evaluate Githubs? - did they just fork something? Was it their code? Did they get help? Etc.

Github is maybe OK for a later stage interview where the investment is worth it to discuss the projects with the candidate in an interview. It could be a nice alternative to a coding test. But you need an interview to get a feeling for if they really wrote the code.

My advice - be a good dolphin, and learn to jump through this hoop.

It's like the driving test where you need to prove you can "reverse around a corner" \- something I have never done while actually driving.

<comment><USER3> This. + 100.

If it is any comfort, it isn't personal. Everyone in the system is just reacting to their incentives.

Just learn datastructures and algorithms and whatever hackerrank tricks you need. This is much easier for a student than for someone who has been in the workforce a few years, and has forgotten CS fundamentals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I can code but dynamic programming is not what I will be doing in my job. I > have learned about docker, kubernetes, etc.

And what do you do with Docker and Kubernetes? Because that's not programming, that's sysops/devops.

Programming tests are dubious, per se. But your "I will not need algorithms" is just as dubious.

</comment><comment><USER5> Using to tools in not "programming". The core requirement from a CS grad is to understand algorithms and data structures.

> I can code but dynamic programming is not what I will be doing in my job

If you know this already, just go ahead and complete the test?

</comment><comment><USER6> Accept status quo and prepare for those hacker rank style interviews. Companies have money that you need.

If you are experienced, you will have more say. But for a fresher, you don't have much choice.

That said, I do think hacker rank sucks. The companies never explain why and where you screw up, if they don't like your coding style, your speed etc

</comment><comment><USER7> > Companies won't even know what are my abilities are.

A rookie discovers that corporate recruiting is broken.

Flip the script. Find an employment opportunity by in-person networking and looking for "people" (not jobs) that you can help. Start attending meet-ups, conferences, trade shows.

</comment><comment><USER8> Once you've been to a few onsites of companies who don't know what they're looking for, or worked for a company that didn't know what it was looking for, you'll appreciate the simplicity and brevity of basic automated screens.

</comment><comment><USER9> I mean, there's a problem in that borderline people generally know what to study for with these kinds of interview questions nowadays, hurting accuracy, but HackerRank is still great because it lets companies filter out dumb people and recognize smart people more efficiently. It also means that the few intelligent students at second-rate universities like SJSU, Drexel, Howard, etc, have better access to the job market instead of just being ignored by everybody who wants anybody good.</comment>


HPV vaccines work: infection rates in teenage girls dropped 64 percent - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/2/22/11094218/hpv-vaccine-effective <comment><USER2> Well, of course, they do, but people are worried about the long-term negative effects on health.</comment>


Laws of Simplicity (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://lawsofsimplicity.com/ <comment><USER2> What concepts from the book haven't stood the test of time?

If I recall correctly, the book was fairly general in its prescriptions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd expect laws of simplicity to be simpler.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahah, true. I found this book in a bibliotech in Valencia. It is true that it forces you to think a little bit, it is not that simple.</comment></comment>


Ghetto Skype - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stanfieldr/ghetto-skype <comment><USER2> Thats amazing, not that i use skype. But the last time i did the client was already 10 years outdated. (Skype on Linux... lol)</comment>


If Microsoft 'Loves Linux,' Why Not Red Hat? - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/platform-as-a-service/if-microsoft-loves-linux-why-not-red-hat/a/d-id/1316800

<comment><USER2> Microsoft does not 'Love Linux'. They love getting money; and they did not want to turn away 20% of their business.

But it's cute how marketing works isn't it? We're accepting linux VM's so we must love linux.</comment>


eGallons: How much does it cost to drive on electricity compared to gasoline? - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/cars/egallons-how-much-does-it-cost-drive-electricity-compared-gasoline.html

<comment><USER2> The article raises a good point at the end: how much one saves versus gasoline is not the only point of consideration. I have a Leaf, glad we bought it, and we'd buy another one (or a Tesla, more likely). When we signed up on the first day Nissan took pre-orders, saving money on fuel was not high on our list of considerations. Simplicity of the mechanics, and voting with our dollars for an alternative means to propel ourselves down the road were top of the list. Someone needs to be an early adopter to get the ball rolling, and we had the means and the willingness to be one of them. Having the "gas station" in our garage turned out to be another advantage we grew to appreciate after the purchase.

But saving money? I don't even know that we will after paying $32K for a tarted-up Nissan Versa, and we don't care. There are other, and better IMO, reasons to drive an EV. You got the option for the really nice stereo and sunroof in the car you bought, we got the option to not have to fill ours with gas. Just as it's nice to open the sunroof on a sunny day, it's nice to drive a nearly-silent car with lots of low-end torque that never sees the inside of a Jiffy Lube.

On topic to saving money, I've noticed that Blink chargers now charge money, at a rate of $1.50/hour ($1 if you pay them $50/year). A Leaf can get about 13 miles/hour of charge. That's just a tad under three hours to equal the mileage our gasoline Scion xB gets on a gallon. So a little over $4/gallon to charge the car at the mall. We're paying _more_ than gasoline at a Blink charger. Granted, we get the nice parking spot. :-)</comment>


Google's AlphaGo AI will play against humanity's best Go player - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/google-deepmind-alphago-ke-jie-match-details/ <comment><USER2> I up voted because this seemed new -- not "likely play" but "will play".

However, as CarolineW pointed out from twitter: [https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/739832323160563712](https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/739832323160563712) "contrary to internet rumours, we've not decided yet what to do next with #AlphaGo, once we have, there will be an official announcement here"

And the referenced source, even with google translate, doesn't seem to say anything definitive.

So, "will play" doesn't seem to have a source...

</comment><comment><USER3> Not necessarily:

[https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/739832323160563712](https://twitter.com/demishassabis/status/739832323160563712)

And there's a discussion about it here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844788](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11844788)

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't wait to get details of this game here in Shanghai via VPN</comment>


Jupiter has 10 more moons we didn't know about – and they're weird - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05725-6 <comment><USER2> One thing to note is that all the newfound moons are small, between about 1 and 3 kilometres across.</comment>


I've wanted enumerable classes for *so long* - awinter-py https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/01/19/enumerable.html <comment><AUTHOR> In CLOS: just call CLASS-SLOTS.

AMOP is one of the best books I've ever read and despite being over a quarter century old (1991) I've still never seen an object system as well designed.

<comment><USER2> Just in case anyone else was wondering, because it took me some googling: that stands for Art of the Metaobject Protocol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am intrigued by the mention of writing AST walkers and a data flow tool for call graphs. Is it possible that you can talk about them on a blog post ? I would like to know why they are useful and how you write them.

<comment> awinter-py not sure there's a simple codebase to study for learning this stuff, but most sophisticated linters or static analyzers will have some amount of dataflow.

At minimum you're going to be managing nested scopes, resolving names to values and assigning types to names.

Sample PR from the eslint project that has all these elements:

[https://github.com/eslint/eslint/pull/10020/files](https://github.com/eslint/eslint/pull/10020/files)

IMO dataflow is more useful for dynamically typed languages. In static languages where the type of every name is declared somewhere, tracing values through local scopes and function calls isn't as critical (though still valuable).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In d: __traits(allMembers)[1]. If you just want variables, it's _slightly_ more work, but not a lot.

1: [https://dlang.org/spec/traits.html#allMembers](https://dlang.org/spec/traits.html#allMembers)</comment>


1000 Years of Reverbs - <AUTHOR> http://www.aes-media.org/sections/pnw/pnwrecaps/2015/costello_jun2015/ <comment><USER2> The presenter's blog at the Valhalla DSP site contains some fascinating reads as well:

[https://valhalladsp.com/category/archaeo- acoustics/](https://valhalladsp.com/category/archaeo-acoustics/)

[https://valhalladsp.com/category/dsp- heros/](https://valhalladsp.com/category/dsp-heros/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Loved the slides. Convolution reverb still my favorite, even if half my ir's are from those old reverb units/plates/springs/chambers, fun to mess with the parameters possible with convolving. I cannot recommend max4live's Convolution Reverb Pro more, changed my life. Tons of cool IR's around for free too. Valhalla is great too!

<comment><USER4> If I may ask...

Why would somebody choose Live 9 Convolution Pro instead of, say the paid version of SFZ? There's a 4x difference in price ( I think, unless the reverb is seperable from Live 9 )

( I mix with a different reverb, print a reverb channel mix, then use a convolver I wrote that's not a plugin. It's not nearly as horrible of a process as it sounds :) )

It's all sunk cost here; I don't take clients. I will record (mainly live) for friends if they ask and can put up with the process. Most just wanna cellphone video.</comment></comment>


" how computers might be different had they been designed by visual thinkers" - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G0r7jL3xl8 <comment><USER2> The title of the video is "Viewpoint demo" or "Viewpoint: Toward a computer for visual thinkers", (1987) is also appropriate.

It's a strange interface for a graphics/text editor, lots of weird features in the behavior.

For instance the font is anything you draw onto the on-screen keyboard, and word wrapping logic uses those same graphics to decide what is graphics and what is text. The "graphical boot" at 12:15 where he shows how the interface is constructed is a bit painful to watch but fascinating.

The fundamental idea seems to be that the on-screen bitmap is the only state and some of the logic, the user and processor work together on modifying it based on a few things the processor can do automatically.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not watched the video, but hate to tell you, they are designed by visual thinkers. Linearization comes after the fact; one has to be able to visualize the operation of the logic networks etc during the design - and debug - processes. Things happen in parallel a lot inside a computer, no way is linear thinking going to create that. Validate, yes, but not create.

At least, that's my experience, not just of myself but of a number of the early inventors of these things that I happen to bump into a few times a year. Those still surviving that is.</comment>


Ask HN: Review LowerThis.com - <AUTHOR>

As avid HN readers, we'd love your feedback! LowerThis.com is crowdsourced experts who find the lowest price for all your online purchases - saving you money and time! Check it out at http://www.LowerThis.com. For anyone who provides feedback, please let us know if you would like a special coupon for LowerThis.com. Thanks!! <comment><USER2> Um, you want us to wait for a result? Finding the lowest price isn't hard it's called going to Amazon.com. What exactly made you think crowd sourcing lent itself to this type of problem?

I just don't see a need, I don't want to wait, I already know how to find the cheapest price.

<comment><USER3> ...google searches for products also show prices...on demand.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Interestingly, the experts can find a lower price than Amazon. E.g. a user was looking to buy a gaming console and one of the large merchants was having a anniversary promotion and had a great price. It is rare that a single merchant has the lowest price on all products all the time. Also, the experts can search for the lowest price across different product categories that are carried across different types of merchants i.e. it works for items ranging from electronics to Broadway tickets to auto parts.

<comment><USER3> Often, I am willing to pay a few bucks more to purchase from a retailer I like...or who I am comfortable doing business with.

I think you may be assuming that people only check one place for a price...consumers tend to look at a few merchants. They compare the price of the product and the shipping cost from the merchants. Another item to consider, is that many shoppers also look for free coupon codes to get free shipping or 10$ off from a merchant.

What I do like about your idea is that the prices are checked via crowdsourcing.

I think your site UI could be a little fresher.</comment></comment>


Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> This is written more like a speech by a politician than as an attempt at analysis. The type of economic inequality that successful startups yield, and which accounts for a lot of the entries in the Forbes 400, is described merely as a theory cherished by the rich, and dismissed with evidence it would be a compliment to call anecdotal. And while there's a lot of talk about how the rich own the government, he doesn't even attempt to analyze whether this is more or less true now than it was 50 years ago, when there was less economic inequality (on paper).

<comment><USER3> The Forbes 400 is mostly entrepreneurs but the "Forbes 40,000" is mostly financiers, only a small fraction of whom create net positive value.

<comment><USER4> Source?

<comment><USER3> No source since the "Forbes 40,000" doesn't exist but I can assure you that it's much more common to make $100m on Wall Street than in entrepreneurship. My direct manager when I interned at Lehman Brothers had probably socked away $50m himself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Top 1% in income is, hmm, $500kish? I hate to break it to you, but that isn't a CEO of a Fortune 500 company (that would imply the had 99 employees apiece, right?) or a hedge fund owner. That's like a couple dozen people who post to HN, or someone with a successful medical practice, or a well-rewarded peon who has leverage in an industry made of money. (A quant, for example.)

$500k is a lot of money, but it isn't "senators are at your beck and call, own houses in six countries" money.

[Edit to add: guesstimate based on misremembered data. Real number closer to 400k.]

<comment><USER6> 250k of _household_ income puts you at the 98.3 percentile, so any two married valley engineers probably qualify, and they probably can't afford a house.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER7> Same situation here in the UK - you become one of the hated "rich" at about GBP 37k where income tax goes up to 40%. Nowhere in the Home Counties is that enough to get a mortgage even on a 1-bedroom flat, let alone a house. A super- tax of 50% kicks in at GBP 150k - but an ordinary family home costs around GBP 500k.

As normal in politics, the middle classes are being raped for the benefit of those at the top and at the bottom.

<comment><USER8> > GBP 37k

What is that percentile wise?

As an American, I am perpetually shocked at how low UK salaries sound when I hear them, especially given that I know consumer goods are more expensive on your side of the pond. Is it made up for by comparatively lower cost of housing or other essential items or what? Or is there a huge transatlantic income gap that I never really hear about (mostly it's cost of living differences that seem to draw attention)?

<comment><USER9> Well it's definitely not cost of housing, which is very expensive here. For the most part you can expect to pay a lot more for a much smaller house in the UK compared to the US.

I'm not sure where it is that we make up the difference in costs, or if indeed we do.

<comment><USER10> As a guess: Healthcare. My understanding is that it is largely covered by the government in the UK but consumes somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% of US incomes (figure remembered off the top of my head -- I really want to say about 22% but that implies more accuracy than I feel confident implying). So that one item alone should make a quite large impact on actual outcomes.

<comment><USER11> But, assuming we've been talking about before tax incomes, the mechanism by which you pay for your health care doesn't matter for the purposes of this discussion, does it? I.e. the U.K. has higher individual tax rates in part to cover the NHS's expenses.

That said, the U.K. spends a lot less as a percentage of GDP on health care, but then they have a substantially lower per capita GDP.

ADDED: off the top of my head, U.K. health care spending is 6-7% of GDP, US is 17%.

<comment><USER12> Note that UK healthcare costs are lower than US healthcare expenditure in part _because there's no parasitic insurance industry_. (Or rather, there is, but it's tiny: private healthcare accounts for <10% of UK healthcare expenditure). Instead, there's a single payer that funds everything and doesn't bother with assessing individual eligibility for treatment except in edge cases (foreign visitors, or rare and horrendously expensive cancer cases, mostly).

<comment><USER11> Are you asserting that the US system spends more effort "assessing individual eligibility for treatment" than the U.K.'s?

Well, I suppose so, the UK's NICE ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Health_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Health_and_Clinical_Excellence)), much like our CMS ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Medicare_and_Medica...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Medicare_and_Medicaid_Services)), establishes the impersonal guidelines, but in the US only those over 64 or on Medicaid are impersonally bound by them. In practice when our "parasitic insurance industry" addresses this it's about providing coverage beyond the CMS guidelines, since the latter are a floor which our legal system won't let the "parasitic insurance industry" go below.

That legal system and most especially its lack of the English "loser pays" Rule is probably a greater influence on costs, especially since the NHS has _got_ to have some level of sovereign immunity.

<comment><USER12> _the NHS has got to have some level of sovereign immunity._

Does it? (I don't know of anyone suing NICE, but they've certainly brought lawsuits against GP practices and hospital trusts, and won substantial damages for malpractice and/or judgements requiring the provision of treatment that was at first denied on various grounds.)

Meanwhile, the NHS bodies that deliver healthcare -- be they PCTs or fundholding GP practices -- don't have a profit incentive for excluding people with pre-existing medical conditions from receiving treatment. (They may have a _cost control_ incentive to for denying anomalously expensive treatments, but that kicks in at the opposite end of the supply-and-demand chain: and it's defended by reference to metrics like quality-adjusted life-years per unit expenditure rather than the requirement to show a profit.)

Finally, the "loser pays" rule has been greatly undermined by the widespread adoption of conditional-fee lawsuits for civil damages in the UK over the past decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's really difficult to take this sort of article seriously. Whether it's the talk of the top 1% "taking" (which is strange, because everything else in the article is trying to demonstrate ther undeservingness) or this:

> While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as > Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve > the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed > inequality to grow.

Wait, is the problem poverty or inequality? If "the plight of the poor" is simply that they're not as comfortable as those in the top 1%, but they still have cars, and TVs, ad microwaves, I'm never going to be impressed by this sort of article.

</comment><comment><USER14> We all agree the article's dumb and pretty poorly written. Many lower income people pay no income taxes at all. I think that's rightly so, but it seems silly to write about a lack of redistribution in the US. In fact, the top 50% of households in income paid 97% of income taxes in 2008.

What is troubling, and what the author ignores, is the changing distribution of returns in our economy. There's no point in trying to legislate it away, but more and more work is becoming automated. We're in the middle of a second industrial revolution, and many kinds of work that people rely on for income and identity will go away over time. Will we end up in a society where 90% of us, who don't have the skills to be productive, are subsidized by the remaining 10%? That seems like an awful outcome from a social perspective, but I'm not sure how we should respond to it.

From a policy perspective, I would like to see a higher short-term capital gains rate to limit the attractiveness of financial instrument trading, and I think carry income (on VC and private equity) should be taxed as income, not at the lower rate for capital gains. But apart from those areas, we need to address the long-term trend of growing income inequality as a society, not with legislation.

<comment><USER15> You get a pretty skewed version of the facts when you talk about income tax shares. Payroll taxes hurt quite a bit at lower income levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don't need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes._

Not only is this paragraph entirely unsubstantiated in the essay, but I doubt that it's even true. Perhaps the author could have interviewed people in this top 1% or cited polling data or _something_. Instead they went with caricature.

<comment><USER16> To be fair, I think the US itself is a pretty good citation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article makes one logical fallacy after another, offhandedly referring to "economists" as an appeal to authority without providing any reference, proclaiming numbers and statistics without any evidence, making bias slurs and assumptions without giving any warrant or citation. It spews Keynesian Economics and a Communistic regard everywhere while blaming Capitalism for the consequences of Progressivism in the last century. That somehow the Recession is the fault of a rich CEO and not hyperinflation and credit expansion. And provides no accountable cross reference to other time periods or governments. It is a great relief to see that this was not upvoted by HN for its content but rather to demystify its preposterous pontification. Worst of all, the author tagged himself in the keywords, now talk about vanity.

</comment><comment><USER18> The key section of the article is the last one, about _"the erosion of our sense of_ [national] _identity, in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community are so important."_

The author, Joseph Stiglitz [1], doesn't explain how inequality of wealth alone _causes_ such erosion. On its own, inequality very well might not.

But other factors might be at work as well. Consider the effects of envy, or more precisely, "relative deprivation" [2]. There's been research indicating that no matter how well off humans are on an absolute scale, we tend to become dissatisfied when we perceive that we're worse off than our neighbors; we tend to believe we're somehow entitled to do at least as well, or even better, than they. (See also "keeping up with the Joneses.")

Envy is probably a product of natural selection; it can be a useful motivator, at least when properly channeled.

On the other hand, envy might be less adaptive in an era of global mass communications. It's certainly easier today for millions of people to become aware of, and then (perhaps subconsciously) resentful of, others who seem better off than they.

So it could be that we have a combination of causes at work: Increasing public awareness of wealth inequality leads to increased envy, which might indeed start to erode the social fabric.

If this turns out to be the case, what could we do about it?

Some might say humanity should be less envious, that people should just accept inequalities of wealth as natural consequences of their own limitations. History suggests that they -- or should I say, we -- probably won't.

[1] Joseph Stiglitz, professor at Columbia, former chief economist of the World Bank, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics 2001 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_deprivation>

</comment><comment><USER19> The worst kind of article is the kind that makes you want to flag it for being inappropriate and rant about it at the same time.

<comment><USER20> The last tsar of Russia and his lot also practiced denial. The ensuing tragedy not only wiped them out, but also caused misery to countless people for almost a 100 years. Lets hope history won't repeat itself.

<comment><USER21> Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, you can apply that argument to just about anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a good time to reflect again upon PG's essay 'Mind the Gap' - <http://paulgraham.com/gap.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> The top 1 percent of American income-earners account for ~25% of the nation's total income every year. The top 1 percent of American wealth-holders account for ~40% of the total wealth. I hear statistics like this all the time but I never understand... What is the "correct" amount? The _top_ 1 percent of anything by definition are going to hold some larger share. There are compelling theoretical reasons for wealth and income distribution to follow a power law (ie. Pareto distribution). Why should these numbers be as they were 25 years ago, or as they are in other countries now?

<comment><USER24> A recent survey found rather surprising consensus between people on different part of the political spectrum if you asked them what an ideal wealth distribution would be. Overall, people thought the top 20% should ideally own about 32% of the wealth; liberals preferred 30%, while conservatives preferred 35%. People making over $100k/year were slightly more pro-inequality, but still only gave 40% as their ideal target. No demographic group gave anything close to the current proportion, which is around 83%, as their ideal target.

So it seems like "top 20% should own 35% of the wealth" is roughly the consensus of the vast majority of Americans, give or take 5%, across many demographic and political groups. Where they differ is what, if anything, we should do to make that happen.

Source: [http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20pre...](http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf)

<comment><USER25> So what would that actually mean? If you put everyone on the X axis in order of their income, with the Y axis representing income, what would the curve look like in order for the top 20% to own 30% of the wealth? And if you left this running, what would the total wealth graph look like after say 50 years?

<comment><USER26> According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States> the total household wealth in the US is $55 trillion. [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/us.html) says the US population is 313 million. $55t/313m = $175k per person on average.

The most conservative proposal from the survey splits the wealth at roughly 40:20:20:10:10. That means if we had an average representative of each of the 5 groups, they would each be worth 5* $175* (that group's percentage) = $350k : $175k : $175k : $87.5k : $87.5k

Meanwhile, the most liberal proposal was roughly 30:20:20:15:15 giving $262K : $175k : $175k : $131k : $131k

<comment><USER25> Heh, the fringe Scottish Socialist Party had a much maligned proposal to instate a wage cap of £250k (approximately $350k), which according to this study actually aligns with the conservative ideal. Just shows how firm a grasp of the statistics people have when it comes to this sort of thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some people work very hard and are very creative. Those who produce more should get more. That isn't the entire picture of how people get wealthy in America, but it is the gist of it.

Of course, America has an increasingly corrupt government and a great many people acquiring wealth by using government to scam the rest of us. And we should be railing against that.

But the fact that wealth is distributed unevenly is inevitable. Not only are the productive wildly different in their abilities to produce, the ability of the corrupt to steal varies greatly as well.

<comment><USER28> Your second paragraph is very interesting and reminded me of this talk here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmzZ8lCLhlk>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> NYT piece from a few days ago shows trends of top income earners over the last 90 years - [http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/inequality- is-m...](http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/inequality-is-most- extreme-in-wealth-not-income/)

</comment><comment><USER25> What's the point of taking arbitrary cutoffs like 1%, 20%, whatever%? Just show us the overall plot/curve.

</comment><comment><USER30> This article is fodder for those 1000 Thoreau is talking about -- "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."

Not once did the author submit forth anything of value. I kept thinking I wish I wrote this article and instead of complaining about the troubles focus on WHY? WHY is this happening? I've always come to the same answer: give kids the opportunity to find what they love (or who they are) through education.

I dislike the PIE analogy! Anytime they mention pie and those greedy few it gives the wrong idea about wealth generation.

I think a growing trend of more educated peoples will fix this inequality over time -- wealth distribution will be more sparse.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just consider this. Most tax money goes toward providing defense, Which is just a nice word for protecting the property of the wealthy. The more property you have, then the more value you receive, thus the more, not less, you should pay. Its called welfare for the rich. Our taxes go towards securing their position and goods. Say hello to that boot rushing down on you.

<comment><USER32> > Most tax money goes toward providing defense

It seems like (FY2010) 20% of Federal expenditures go toward defense, and 58% go to entitlement programs (which (I speculate) the 1% wealthiest do NOT receive disproportionate benefit from).

Source: [http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/03/usa- incor...](http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/03/usa-incorporated- grim-look-at-financial.html) second graph

<comment><USER33> From that chart, it appears the problem is the healthcare industry is getting too much money. Medicare is expensive along with the tax deduction for health insurance. If we could get down healthcare costs, it would solve the problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Art and Spirit in Mathematics: The Lessons of Japanese Temple Geometry (part I) - <AUTHOR> https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/art-spirit-in-mathematics-the-lessons-of-japanese-temple-geometry-part-i/ <comment><USER2> > When Temple Geometry met Western mathematics the latter won, because math- > based technology gave Commodore Perry bigger guns and faster ships. Math > continues to be a vital weapon for our military, and also contributes to > many aspects of the unsustainable destruction of our living environment. In > stark contrast, Temple Geometry, which was cultivated for peaceful purposes, > for personal development and pleasure of the Temple Geometers, was part of a > more stable and harmonious culture.

Japan had real mathematicians working for the shogunate who had even started to develop calculus. It was admittedly behind where other countries were at but much less so than the field of medicine which had been hugely hindered by the influence of traditional Chinese medicine.

It ended up being much faster to throw all this stuff out and switch to the western systems, but it's still interesting from a historical perspective.

If you search for "wasan" you can find some information in English about real math in pre-modern Japan, which in my opinion is much more interesting than this "temple geometry" nonsense.

<comment><USER3> > the field of medicine which had been hugely hindered by the influence of > traditional Chinese medicine.

Western medicine until after 1880 had rejected the benefits of cleanliness - with surgeons taught to operate covered in filth. This could have appeared at the time to be a rejection of primitive superstition.

<comment><USER4> > _Western medicine until after 1880 had rejected the benefits of cleanliness > - with surgeons taught to operate covered in filth._

If anyone's interested in a good read on this I'd recommend

"Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates" by David Wootton

[https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Medicine-Doctors-Doing- Hippocrate...](https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Medicine-Doctors-Doing- Hippocrates/dp/0199212791)

It's pretty eye-opening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also part II ([https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/art-spirit-in- mathemati...](https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/art-spirit-in-mathematics- the-lessons-of-japanese-temple-geometry-part-ii/)) and part III ([https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/art-spirit-in- mathemati...](https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/art-spirit-in-mathematics- the-lessons-of-japanese-temple-geometry-part-iii))</comment>


The Issues of Post-Mortem Debugging with Promises - <AUTHOR> https://www.joyent.com/blog/post-mortem-debugging-and-promises <comment><USER2> The author is focusing on the server side but similar issues imho. are on the client side too. I've recently stumbled into some reactive compiled TS code while debugging and it became frustrating very quickly. The challenge to debug async code is a hard one - at times it seems promises and observable may just make easier to build a larger callback hell instance.

Besides the probably never fully granted wish of being able to replay considering the standardization of these patterns is there anything we can do:

\- making the promise easier debug-able by changing the promise itself?

\- making the environment more supportive of debugging (approach like zone?)?

\- creating promise et. al. awareness in debuggers?

What are the existing best practices and how can we improve on them?

<comment><USER3> From what I see, the only thing that can help with post-mortem debugging is changing the promise so that it doesn't catch the exception when calling the initialiser or handler. You can still do whatever you could with Promises (but you have to do `Promise.reject(...)` or `reject(...)` instead of `throw ...`), but it's not going to conform with the standard. Many libraries are probably going to break if you drop-in a Promise implemented this way.

Edit: I didn't explain why this change is important: if the Promise is catching the exception, the Execution Context where exception was thrown is lost and (potentially) irrecoverable, the program has to crash there and now if you want to debug the reason for the exception. This is a property of the Promise standard, changes to debugging tools or environment won't help. You could make Node aware of promises, and capture the execution context with promise exception, but I don't think Promises are special enough.</comment></comment>


HP Creates First Hybrid Memristor Chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21710/?a=f <comment><USER2> Does anyone at HN know where the memristor is going? From my perspective this seems like exactly what is needed to maintain d/dt[computing power/$] during the next decade, but given how bleeding edge this is, it is difficult to find good information about just what is going on.

Are there any good articles or papers about how to make gates from memristors, for instance? It would be interesting to see what all the fuss is about.

<comment><USER3> According to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor> it would probably be utilized as <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbar_latch>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is really interesting that they're applying this to FPGA's. Reconfigurable computing would be great, if it was a) easy to program for and b) cheaper. This could solve the cheaper part, and make it even more powerful at the same time. However, I don't know how hard it is to program reconfigurable computers.

FYI: Reconfigurable computing is like parallel computing, but instead of running all of the threads on commodity hardware, they are each dynamically implemented on a FPGA. This makes a super computer with thousands of simultaneous processes much cheaper, and take far less space, if you can program the system.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconfigurable_computing>

Wikipedia says that reconfigurable computing systems commonly increase speed 4 orders of magnitude and decrease power consumption by one order of magnitude. (that's right, order of magnitude) However, this is in spite of the fact that FPGAs are behind commodity hardware by almost the same amount. If memristors make a decent dent in the hardware disparities, then reconfigurable computing could be huge.

<comment><USER5> I'm excited about FPGAs, too! I think FPGA co-processors will be very useful in servers. There are a lot of software and OS problems to solve first.</comment></comment>


Ask PG/HN :Why is the upcoming batch referred to as Winter 2012 funding? - <AUTHOR>

See here http://ycombinator.com/apply.html Why not Winter 2011? Because the batch will start in December 2011 I would have thought it should be called winter 2011 funding? If I had applied to grad school this year, I would be joining in Fall 2011 and not Fall 2012, right? Is this a cultural thing with the US or is there any specific reason why its called Winter 2012? Have previous funding rounds been named similarly? Surely, you don't believe the world is going to end in Winter 2012 to move Winter 2012 a year earlier! <comment><USER2> "[T]he winter 2012 funding cycle ... will take place ... from January through March 2012."

Even if it starts in December, the majority of the time is in 2012.

"Fall" is vaguely September---December, isn't it? (I've always assumed "fall" is the American word for "autumn", am I wrong?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed that the majority of the time is in 2012 and that could very well be the reason why its named that way. Just that when I first read Winter 2012 I was under the impression that it is for next years batch.

<comment><USER2> If I worked for YC and got to name the funding cycle I'd call it Winter 2011/12; both Winter 2011 and Winter 2012 are ambiguous imo. But I don't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's always been named that way since they started, and I guess once they started it was much harder to change.</comment>


Show HN: A Python with Hindley-Milner-like type annotations, compiling to C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alehander42/hermetic

<comment><USER2> Those who like this might also like my language project, Runa:

A Python-like systems programming language. This means that the design borrows as much from Python as makes sense in the context of a statically-typed, compiled language, and tries to apply the Zen of Python to everything else. The most important design goals for Runa are developer ergonomics and performance. The compiler is written in Python and targets LLVM IR; there's no run-time. More information can be found on the project website.

[https://github.com/djc/runa/](https://github.com/djc/runa/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Packaged: [https://aur4.archlinux.org/packages/hermetic- git/](https://aur4.archlinux.org/packages/hermetic-git/)

</comment><comment><USER4> A typed and fast Python with concurrency is something I've wanted for the longest time. I really hope that this will take off.

<comment><USER5> Have you looked at cython? It's (optionally) typed, fast (with only a little bit of effort extra effort over writing normal python), makes the GIL optional (for a reasonable subset of cases) and, most importantly, stable and ready to use today (so no waiting).

<comment><USER6> +1 for cython. The only criticism I could make is that the real speedups come when you can avoid using PyObjects which means the easiest way to employ it is in the inner loops of numeric code where it truly is phenomenal. Complex data structures have to be boiled into C-style structs to get any significant speedup with them although there is still a base level performance boost from having everything compiled into cpython API calls.

<comment><USER5> _Complex data structures have to be boiled into C-style structs to get any significant speedup_

I've never really played with it, but cython does have mappings between python builtin types and STL containers, as well as letting you create C++ classes using cython syntax that you can inherit from and access in python.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's correct, but if you are using semi-complex objects, then you have to invoke the python interpreter and lose most of the advantage of going to Cython in the first place.

Even for things like ints, floats, etc - if you want to see a significant speed up, you have to convert them into c ints and floats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There have been other typed Python variants. RPython, in which PyPy was written, is sort of one. Shed Skin tried to do it entirely via type inference, which is really hard across functions.

It's clear now that you want at least enough type inference in a language that LHS types of assignments and variable creations are inferred when possible. When you have that, as in Go, Rust, and even C++ to some extent, most of the declarations are in function definitions. There, you want them for documentation purposes anyway.

<comment><USER9> MyPy is a pretty good typed Python variant. I believe the "optional type annotations" PEP used their style.

[http://mypy-lang.org/](http://mypy-lang.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The value-add here is that it compiles to C and therefore the type enforcement is done at compile time. If you are OK with interpreted Python and runtime checking you can use [https://github.com/prechelt/typecheck- decorator/](https://github.com/prechelt/typecheck-decorator/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks cool! It's pretty different though, it's more like a "design by contract" tool. I have a similar one, more Python2 style dsl (it supports also function overloading through a kind of pattern matching) [https://github.com/alehander42/py- matchete](https://github.com/alehander42/py-matchete)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A Python 3 based library that compiles to C?!

> "yeah, you need a shower now, doncha"

I saw that there is a requirements.txt file, but it's blank. This project amazes me, knowing it exists gives me motivation to get better

That is all...

</comment><comment><USER12> Correct me if I'm wrong but IIRC HM is not applicable with class-based inheritance. How do you (plan to) deal with this?

BTW I really like the idea of a typed, compilable Python, keep it up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well yeah, but I wanted to experiment with the language type system(it started from HM, but it can go anywhere).

Classes/records are not implemented yet, but I can imagine that we have two cases:

      <object_with_known_exact_class>.<method>

then we'll just convert that to a normal function invocation in c(because we'll be able to detect the exact ancestor which defines the method and the method)

      <an_instance_of_some_class>.<method>

if we only know that an object is an instance of a class, we can wrap the invocation in an inline switch on the type field of the object.(instances would map to C structs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very cool idea, I like it. But I can't really get much to compile yet -- while loops do not work, nor does range(). Anyway, quite impressive!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, it's still more like a prototype, so not everything is supported(but I'll add support for all basic constructs soon, stay tuned)

<comment><USER13> Nice. I wanted to find out how well it performs (with a simple summing task) but I gave up before I had managed to loop over a range. I'll check back in a week or two ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> It does support `for ... in range(start, end)` and `while` now. You can check out two summing examples in the examples dir too. It typically gives ~ 6-7x speedup on my machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Python is the new lisp.

<comment><USER15> Now if we could just get an emacs written in Python =).

<comment><USER14> Well considering the amount of courses now in python, who knows what will be asked to and done by students. Maybe it will land before guile-emacs is stable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Really impressive work!

<comment><USER17> And that generated C code is quite amusing to boot!</comment></comment>


The Learning Technology/Coding Care Package - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/126959684/Learning-Technology-Coding-Care-Package

<comment><USER2> If only someone can put all this information with a format like hack design. That would be pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this is awesome! Did you make this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Sometimes we forgot how difficult it can be to navigate the cloud of information out there. This itself can be a big barrier to entry to those who want to learn more about technology and dive down into learning how to code.

Giving people a starting point to take almost any direction they want and also additional references to those already in the tech community can hopefully spread some opportunities around.</comment></comment>


Visualise all the knowledge of the world as Mind Maps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map <comment><USER2> I'm really looking for something along these lines and would appreciate some input: what's a good way to externally index one's knowledge (at least the "serializable" parts)?

Right now I have a few big org files that are already surprisingly helpful: I can use ag (SPC s a p on my Spacemacs config, I haven't bothered to rebind it properly yet) to search for, say, "pigeon", which leads me to Skinner's experiment.</comment>


New NVidia GeForce driver license - <AUTHOR> http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-March2009/licence.php?lang=us&type=GeForce <comment><AUTHOR> Limitations:

No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted.

<comment><USER2> Wow! Good catch. Do they have another product geared for that market?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, the more expensive series: Quadro and especially Tesla.

NVidia realized that their consumer products are good enough for many people in Deep Learning, and they like that not one bit.

<comment><USER2> Yes. I think this is the first time I've seen a consumer level device with a licensing agreement that calls out market sector. I have seen those that call out geographic location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> recently, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15983587)</comment>


Mathematics in the 20th Century (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.tamu.edu/~rojas/atiyah20thcentury.pdf <comment><USER2> Wasn't this the guy that claimed to have some new proof on the Riemann hypothesis? What eventually happened? I'm not sufficiently into the mathematics field to stay engaged with this news but I'm curious to see what was the deal in the end. I remember lots of people being generally upset.

[1] [https://blogs.ams.org/blogonmathblogs/2018/10/01/on- michael-...](https://blogs.ams.org/blogonmathblogs/2018/10/01/on-michael- atiyah-and-the-riemann-hypothesis/)

<comment><USER3> Yes, but this text was written in 2002 when he was still lucid.

<comment><USER4> This sounds oddly similar to the movie Proof from 2005.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really did love linear algebra in college. Shame I've not made it more a part of my career.

I imagine this totally missed the data science stuff.

<comment><USER6> This isn't really relevant at all to the linked paper.</comment></comment>


BlackBerry Unveils an Android-Powered Phone with Security Features - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/blackberry-unveils-an-android-powered-phone-with-security-features/?src=twr <comment><USER2> For years, I've believed that Blackberry missed the boat on mobile operating systems. They should have long since developed a really good Android handset leveraging their great keyboard and security expertise. It might have done well. Too bad for them that they only recognized this recently.

By the way, the NYTimes blog is unreadable on my iPad. Every time I try to scroll down, it jumps back to the top. I wish they'd stop with these mandatory mobile versions that are buggy and limited. Just the text, ma'am.

<comment><USER3> On my iPhone I don't get the scrolling bug you talk about (and don't recall ever having it on NYT pages), but I do have two options to fix it if it comes up - the reading mode where it strips everything but the content, and the "show me the desktop site" button that would presumably strip whatever the mobile site is doing that screws it up for you. Haven't owned an iPad for a few years though so don't know how different it might be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best bit about this news is that it will be an android phone with a physical keyboard. There have been no new ones for around 3 years.

<comment><USER5> My wife's number one request for a new phone was a physical keyboard. Since she can't buy one she has moved on to a Samsung Note. I told her about the phone and she says she would miss swipe typing to much. I wonder how many people actually want a physical keyboard with the added bulk?

<comment><USER6> The priv physical keyboard is touch captive and also supports swiping up for word completion

<comment><USER5> you might have just sold a Blackberry phone. You should ask for a commission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone who went back to BlackBerry when BB10 was launched, I'm not sure I'd buy this phone - in my opinion the Android UX is just so ugly and I'm not convinced that the Blackberry hub will work as well on Android as it does on BB10 (the two things I love most about my phone).

My Z10 is now 2.5 years old and I'm considering replacing it with a brand new one. I'll take a look at the Priv but my thoughts are it's too expensive and won't be as effortless to use as it would have been if it was running BB10.

<comment><USER8> Definitely consider BlackBerry's Passport. It's a fantastic phone. Lots of screen real estate for reading e-books and spreadsheets. And it runs Android apps (using 1Mobile Market, Amazon App Store or a half dozen other portals).

<comment><USER9> It would be great if Blackberry launched an Android-based Passport. I'd get it without thinking twice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The same blackberry that handed over its encryption keys to most world governments?

<comment><USER11> Yes, and they decided to build on an OS that is known for its poor security track record and privacy invading features.

Even if by some miracle they will decide that they want to offer real security, they can't secure customers from the OS developer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I bought a playbook a few years ago, and it bricked after draining the battery. Apparently this was a fatal design issue that affected all playbooks, it just won't charge again after reaching 0%. Suffice it to say it'll take a lot for me to buy into blackberry hardware again.

</comment><comment><USER13> Still not seeing any technical details about if this is a native implementation of Android or virtualized with QNX. One of the key issues with their past approach was lack of any accessibility at the system API level. I wonder if they will be blocking or interfering with native Android app accessibility.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm pretty pumped for the phone and look forward to give it a spin. I'm not yet fully convinced though and hope they will be able to handle the OS Updates better than some of the other Android vendors. *Disclaimer: I run a german BlackBerry blog.

</comment><comment><USER15> Exactly what I said they should focus on. Way, way too late though. Probably.

</comment><comment><USER16> How will updates be handled? If we have to wait for carriers to pass along fixes for things like stagefright bugs, then this is dead in the water.

Getting updates right will be crucial.

<comment><USER17> what are stagefright bugs?

<comment><USER18> Stagefright is the name of the native module in charge of playing media (and by the way that's an awesome name).

Since it is deeply embedded in the system, it is not possible to just push a Play Services update in order to update it.

These past months, several vulnerabilities have been revealed in that module. They allow privilege escalation & remote code execution.

The Nexus line (directly handled by Google) now receives very frequent security updates. Now, all the OEMs need to follow suit and also publish these updates for their own terminals.</comment></comment></comment>