If you put your hand in the Large Hadron Collider... - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/10/09/putting-your-hand-in-the-large-hadron-collider

<comment><USER2> By training I am a radiation physicist and actually do know about particle beams hitting people. The LHC beam would certainly give someone an appreciable radiation dose, although the secondary synchrotron X-rays would probably be worse than the proton beam itself. In fact a much lower energy proton beam would have a worse effect on your hand/body, since that beam would actually stop inside you (protons deposit most of their dose at the very end of their range).

Of course the injury you received would largely be determined by the length of time your hand was in the beam. Really not fun results can be radiation ulcers or radiogenic cancer. If the dose were high enough you could get a radiation syndrome, where some/all of the fast growing cells in your body die off and you die in a few days or months.

The only data I could find after a quick search indicated that the dose present in the beam line would be on the order of 10^4 Gy per year. That means if you managed to put your hand in the beam for 1 minute, you're only looking at about 0.01 Gy, which isn't that much.

<comment><USER3> There's actually a reported case of someone getting hit by a proton beam on the head in 1978:

         Bugorski was leaning over the piece of equipment when
         he stuck his head in the part through which the proton
         beam was running. Reportedly, he saw a flash "brighter
         than a thousand suns", but did not feel any pain.

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

He is still alive.

<comment><USER4> In case people take what the first person in the video says combined with your quote from wikipedia but don't read the entire wikipedia page I'll quote this:

        The left half of Bugorski's face swelled up beyond
        recognition, and over the next several days started
        peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam
        (moving near the speed of light) had burned through
        parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue
        underneath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In 1978, Anatoli Bugorski accidentally stuck his head through the 70GeV U-70 Synchrotron. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski>

He is alive, but suffered serious injuries. As I understand, the LHC is of a similar design, at 100 times the energy.

<comment><USER6> The beam path on the LHC is kept under high vacuum. At no point does it intersect air at atmospheric pressure. There's no way for anything to accidentally intersect the beams, which is good, since one of them is made of antimatter.

EDIT: Nope! Wrong! Mistook the LHC for the LEP. The LHC does not accelerate antimatter at any point.

Additionally, while the individual protons in the LHC may only be a hundred times more energetic, there are quite a few more total particles in the beams. I can't find any technical details of the U-70 synchrotron, but it came online in 1957, so there's that.

<comment><USER7> Sorry about the nitpick, but no, the LHC does not use antimatter. Both beams consist of protons (or heavy ions sometimes). Some of the accelerators at CERN, like the LEP (Large Electron Positron) Collider, do use antimatter, but the LHC does not.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the correction. Upvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The LHC has beam dumps, where they re-direct the beam if they need to shut it down quickly. [http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine- outreach...](http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine- outreach/components/beam-dump.htm) "Each beam dump absorber consists of a 7m long segmented carbon cylinder of 700mm diameter, contained in a steel cylinder" They seem to expect that there'd be a lot of force there.

[http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach...](http://lhc- machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/beam.htm) also has some comparisons regarding beam energy and aircraft carriers, cars, etc.

<comment><USER9> I know hardly anything about proton beams. However, here's a thought experiment that's on my mind:

Instead of a beam of protons, lets think about something simpler: a reasonably high powered bullet. Instead of a 7m segmented carbon cylinder, lets have some slats of wood. So, in the same way as at the LHC, the bullet strikes the wooden slats, it deposits all of it's energy in the wooden slats, breaking them up and stopping the bullet.

I think that fits the use case of the beam dumps, where all the force of the beam gets dumped at once, and the important number is the total energy of the beam, since you want to totally stop it.

Now, the thought experiment: replace the wooden slats with single piece of paper. Now when the bullet strikes, it goes straight through - the mass of energy in the bullet mostly stays in the bullet, only enough energy to rip through a small circle in the paper gets dumped. The bullet will carry on it's merry way.

So, relative to the LHC beam, which is your hand more alike: the sheet of paper, or the slats of wood?

It's a simplistic model which ignores radiation from the beam, and lots of other things, but I think it's informative. My guess is that the beam would behave like a laser cutter: cutting a smallish hole, possibly with secondary damage, but largely powerful enough to carry on it's way once it has punched through.

<comment><USER10> A bullet going at relativistic velocity hitting a piece of paper might not punch such a nice hole - it would bust up molecules and atoms, and some subatomic particles, there would be tons of secondary radiation from that, and the rest of the paper would be destroyed along the way by some type of explosion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It would be pretty spectacular.

Each proton would, at the full power of 7 TeV, have 1.12 microjoules of energy. 1.15x10^11 protons per pulse, 2808 pulses per beam and two beams, one of antiprotons, and one of protons; for a total energy of 352,235,520 joules. 87 kilograms of TNT.[1][2]

Your hand would evaporate fairly quickly, then turn into a plasma, then get hot enough to start radiating x-rays. There would be quite a lot of bremsstrahlung from the hyperenergetic protons punching through the cloud of plasma, and producing showers of secondary radiation,[3] which means you would be quite well irradiated by the time the shockwave from the explosion killed you.

1: All this is straight from the wikipedia page, but I double checked the math.

2: I'm not including energy liberated from antimatter annihilation energy, since the total mass of the antiprotons is quite small.

Typing that out, it sounds like a pretty lame excuse. Let's do the math.

3.2292x10^14 protons per beam. Atomic weight of 1, of course, so:

(3.2292x10^14)/(6.0221415x10^23)[4] = 5.362212x10^-10 grams. .536 nanograms of antimatter.

Since annihilating antimatter gets you 9x10^13 joules per gram, you get... 48,259.9089 joules. That's actually larger than I expected, but .01% of the kinetic energy of the beam.

3: Just how much secondary radiation, I don't know, since that depends on the density of the cloud of plasma, which would change over time, be pretty anisotropic, and be a general pain in the ass to model.

4: Avogadro's constant

Buncha edits: forgot HN uses the asterisk to style text.

<comment><USER6> Can't edit this now, of course, but as fjh pointed out elsewhere, I confused the details of the LHC for the LEP, partially. The LHC collides protons and sometimes lead nuclei; but at no point collides antiprotons.

Posting after midnight: Not always a good idea.

<comment><USER11> Don't worry, you had me at "bremsstrahlung".

<comment><USER12> Braking radiation ? What they don't teach that in school anymore ?

Just kidding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a big fan of the whole Sixty Symbols series. For those of you not familiar: <http://www.sixtysymbols.com/>

There's also a "sister" site for chemistry: <http://www.periodicvideos.com/>

It's good stuff. I've enjoyed pretty much every video I've seen from both of them.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why don't we drop a pig into the LHC. If nothing happens, problem solved. If something happens, dinner solved.

<comment><USER15> Peta would be all over that.

<comment><USER16> "You can do the same thing to a tofu pig without harming innocent animals"

<comment><USER17> I'm sure _someone_ would take offense to it being shaped like a pig, or even _referred_ to as a pig, as the implications are still remotely offensive.

Heck, to use the technique of some parents: some starving kid in Africa would _love_ to eat that tofu. We, therefore, should clearly be offended at its waste.

<comment><USER18> Gas pipelines have little machines crawling inside them for inspection and maintenance purposes. These machines are called pigs.

The LHC is basically a big pipe, so maybe it does have pigs inside it already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sorry to be a buzzkill, but the LHC beam circulates in an extremely high vacuum. There's no way a hand could even get in the beam without breaking the vacuum, thereby causing the accelerator to shut down automatically. Also, it's cryogenically cooled. Radiation dose aside, the hand would freeze and probably fall off.

[http://www.lhc-closer.es/php/index.php?i=1&s=4&p=15&...](http://www.lhc- closer.es/php/index.php?i=1&s=4&p=15&e=0)

Incidentally, when I was working at CERN in the mid 1990's, the Large Electron-Positron Collider (the predecessor to the LHC) was shut down by an act of sabotage involving 2 Heineken bottles placed in the beam pipe. The electrons and positrons (and many physicists) were not happy bunnies. [http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/Beer%20bottles.p...](http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/Beer%20bottles.pdf)

Update: Now I see that the vacuum point has already been made. There are no heavy ions in the LHC main collider, they're produced by bashing protons into a target in one of the secondary beamlines. Also, antimatter is frequently the byproduct of extremely high center of mass proton-proton collisions.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's a too little sample to be statistically significant in any way, but I find interesting that no two men have the same favorite symbol, while both the women coincidentally chose infinity and what its symbol represents.

</comment><comment><USER21> If the universe were to be remade, perhaps physical constants would change, like gravity could be 7.1 instead of 6.67.

But mathematical constants like pi would remain the same, wouldn't it? A circle is a circle no matter what kind of universe it's in, so the ratio of the radius to the arc length would remain the same.

As I look at it, math is the universal truth of the universe, because everything is derived using the first principles.

<comment><USER10> 1) Perhaps yes. 2) Mathemtical contstans are purely abstact - pi only exists in a perfectly euclidian plane. It's an abstraction that works for us in a scertain scale because it matches close enough. In real life, there aren't circles.. they're just close enough. So no - a universe could have completely different maths required to describe it. 3) Math is purely abstract and detached from the universe. It operates on theoretical models that try to model reality. Math has it's own universal truths, but reality does not. The universe came before math - math is a tool invented by man to analyze the universe.

<comment><USER22> > So no - a universe could have completely different maths required to > describe it.

That wasn't the question, though. Pi is the ratio between circumference and diameter of a perfect circle, whether or not you can create a perfect circle in your universe. We can't even create one in ours, and yet pi still "exists" here. Undoubtedly, wiggly-space mathematicians would also have a conception of pi, though it might be as esoteric to them as toroidial universes are to us.

To put that another way: Math has very simple axioms (e.g. set theory), and everything else derives from them. What theories can be proven from those axioms in this universe, can be proven from those axioms in any universe (and a universe that doesn't obey those axioms likely wouldn't "function" as a universe—it wouldn't have any reason to be causal, for example.) The maths describing a particular universe is its _physics_ , which do change from universe to universe—however, those physics are all just different _subsets_ of the set of mathematical physical models—which are, themselves, a subset of the mathematical theories provable from the axioms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The real question should be: what super powers would you get?

<comment><USER24> You are not allowed to joke in HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you put a hot dog in the collider, will you get little smokies from the spallation process?

I think I just solved world hunger guys...

</comment><comment><USER26> So, these are not the same people who are in charge of determining whether or not a black hole might form and persist, correct?

<comment><USER27> Except they have done research on the black hole possibility, there work centres on the beams colliding not what happens if it hits a certain combination of atoms that make up a human hand.

I guess it's kind of like someone saying to a programmer, hey can you fix my computer, you work in computer right?

<comment><USER26> I guess it struck me as more like someone saying to a C programmer, "Hey, can you help me find the bug in this Java routine?" The C programmer might not know Java intimately but at least he's not going to stroke his beard and act like it's something he's never considered before.

I _certainly_ wouldn't expect two or three competent C programmers to offer wildly divergent opinions if asked a question that fell slightly outside their everyday practice.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Review my iPad app: Inspiring Business Quotes - <AUTHOR>

My first iPad app BizTome is free for the day. I'd love for the HN crowd to check it out and if you like it to please review it.
Inspiring business quotes help motivate me as an entreprenuer, and I've been collecting them as a Google Doc up until I decided to make an app out of it.
http://bit.ly/caqoMT <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://bit.ly/caqoMT>

</comment><comment><USER3> nice, any reason that you chose to deploy on an iPad app vs. a normal web app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted the experience of developing an iPad/iOS device. I've done a lot of web apps but this was my first tablet app. The UX considerations are different and very interesting.

<comment><USER4> Would love to learn more about the UX considerations given that you've done everything from iOS to Flex.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. For one, you touch with your finger and not with a mouse cursor. I wanted the whole app to be in view unlike a web app that could scroll down on and on. Also, you want to let your users hold the device however they want so you have to design for different orientations. When designing a web page, you have more flexibility as to where you put your buttons. I originally laid out my buttons very different and realized my hands were moving all over when using the app. Now it's laid out so that most everything is w/i reach if you hold the ipad with both your hands and use your thumbs to navigate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


eBay's former CEO denies any link to the cyberstalking of a blogger - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/6/18/21295992/ebay-security-stalking-ecommercebytes-cyberstalking-devin-wenig-james-baugh <comment><USER2> I don't get this guy. Shocked to hear details? Wasn't there a company investigation (which he later recounts), was he not even questioned by justice in filing charges against 6 people at the company? This is one of those red flag statements that strains credulity imo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even in the hypothetical scenario where he didn't know about it, he would still be responsible, because the CEO is only informed of the things that the CEO indicates they want to be informed about.

<comment><USER4> > There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a > concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate > was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All > he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and > would have to fly more missions.

If he knows about it, he's responsible. If he doesn't know about it, he's responsible. Certainly you can't have it both ways if it's not willful ignorance?

<comment><USER3> He can be not responsible for it if he didn't have power over it, or if didn't have the power to find out about it. If he had the power to find out but failed in his duty to survey his domain of responsibility, then he would not be absolved, but instead guilty of the additional error of failing to keep track of his subordinates.

It's a secondary point, but I should add that this isn't a catch-22 any moreso than, "a robber is guilty if they ate cereal that morning, and if they didn't." The point isn't that CEOs are always guilty 100% of the time, it's that knowing what's happening is their _responsibility_ , and their guilt hinges on whether or not the bad thing happened.</comment></comment></comment>


White House admits it has 'access' to Facebook, Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.theweek.co.uk/us/53475/white-house-admits-it-has-access-facebook-google <comment><USER3> Facebook: _" We do not provide any government organization with direct access to Facebook servers."_

Yahoo: _" We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers"_

AOL: _" nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers."_

Paltalk: _" Paltalk does not provide any government agency with direct access to its servers"_

Apple: _" We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers"_

<comment><USER4> And if they didn't say that, everyone on HN would be whining about why they didn't deny "direct access" when that was the headline accusation.

Can't win with you guys.

<comment><USER3> It's not the phrase "direct access" (which they could reasonably use given it was used in the original leak story), but rather the construction of the whole sentence.

There are millions of ways you could phrase the response (Dropbox and Microsoft used completely different language), the chance that these five came up with the phrasing used independently seems fairly low. Especially as the statements weren't all given to a single reporter (who could have phrased the question in a particular way) but rather to a variety of different news sources.

It could still be completely innocent, they could all have cribbed off whoever did the first denial or they could have discussed it beforehand and co- ordinated messages without there having been any government involvement.

It is however something that needs explaining.

<comment><USER5> There are millions of ways to deny things.

This is the most clear and direct way

I accused you of doing X

You could say "you know, my brother and I, we once, 30 years ago blah blah blah blah blah blah but X, X never happened".

Most people, however, will just say "No, i don't do X".

They were accused, point blank, of providing direct access to their servers. They said "we do not provide direct access to their servers".

But please, see a conspiracy here because people are trying to be as direct and clear.

<comment><USER6> I accused you of doing X on mondays. You could say "You know, in fact, I do X, but on tuesdays". Most hypocrites however will take your question as literally as possible and will just say: "No, I don't do X on mondays".

You see, people don't want to know if government has direct access(ok, they want, but it is not their primary concern), they want to know what happened.

It simply doesn't matter if google uploads data to government servers or government gets data from google servers by "directly accessing" them. I would even guess that the latter is simpler to implement and maintain.

I don't mean that google is happy to hand user data to government - <USER2> probably aren't - I want to know how many data governments gets.

<comment><USER5> "You see, people don't want to know if government has direct access(ok, they want, but it is not their primary concern), they want to know what happened. "

The companies are saying they have no idea. They literally said "we've never heard of this program". What more do you want?

The claim the newspapers made, in line 1, was, "the government has direct access". The denial made was "the government does not have direct access".

If they want to publish a different claim, i'm sure a different denial will be written.

If you want to know what happened, why are you asking GOogle? Go ask the NSA

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is _terrible_. What exactly did "the White House" say? There is not even one sentence that is attributed to a specific individual. Was it the White House press secretary, or Obama, or somebody else? Or are they referring to the statements from the Director of National Intelligence?

Here is what Obama said: [http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2013/06/07/statem...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2013/06/07/statement-president)

Here are the statements from the DNI:

[http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/191-pre...](http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/191-press-releases-2013/868-dni-statement-on-recent-unauthorized- disclosures-of-classified-information) [http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/191-pre...](http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press- releases/191-press-releases-2013/869-dni-statement-on-activities-authorized- under-section-702-of-fisa)

Nowhere in those do I see any confirmation that there is direct or unlimited access to the servers of the companies mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER8> "EDITOR'S NOTE: Since this story was published, The Guardian has reported that the UK intelligence gathering organisation GCHQ has had access to the PRISM system since at least June 2010 and has generated 197 intelligence reports."

So other governments have a backdoor to our government's backdoor... What stops China among others from being able to access this?

On the other hand, what is the truth if Larry Page is saying that Google does not allow 'direct' access but the White House is saying that it does have access? This just looks like a giant finger pointing and blame game now.

<comment><USER9> > So other governments have a backdoor to our government's backdoor

And we have a backdoor to their backdoor. It's fairly easy to assume that they -- state-sponsored intelligence agencies -- collude with each-other by offering access to each-other's data stores.

In a sense we are all foreign to each-other, and the USG may access American data through requests acting as foreign agencies.

<comment> brown9-2 The US, UK, Australia and NZ have had a bilateral intelligence sharing agreement since the 1940s: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK- US_Security_Agreement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK-US_Security_Agreement)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The presentation makes it seem they are harvesting the data. That would resolve any apparent contradiction. The biggest question is how? Surely google has noticed these man in the middle attacks. I think the guardian misinterpreted the word "provider".

Edit: it appears the NSA has google's ssl keys. That would explain all the talk about "direct access".

<comment><USER11> Google could not provide the NSA with its TLS keys and then argue it hadn't given the government direct access to its servers. Nor could the government MITM TLS, which would be detectable, nor could they have compromised a TLS CA to accomplish the same thing, because Google's keys are pinned in Chrome and recent Firefox; you can examine the builds to see that.

<comment><USER10> How do you resolve the the fact the presentation is real, and Larry Page's statements?

This is the only explanation that makes sense. Some secret court compels Google to provide their TLS keys, which is a a few kb of data. No one at Google has to know, and no one at Google can accidentally detect the leak.

Also, can you clarify for me why you think giving someone access to eavesdrop overlaps with "direct access to servers"?

If what I say is correct, Larry Page's statement is 100% defensible.

<comment><USER12> Could it be that the presentation describes targeted surveillance? PRISM may just be a program to standardize a process and the type and format of information returned.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I think the $20M figure makes it clear it is targeted. They have the ability and authorization to eavesdrop on foreign packets, but that is like drinking from a firehose. They need a way to syphon and interpret the data, and also a way read TLS streams. I think the dates and companies are a combination of getting access to the TLS keys, and actually implementing a sane way of sipping from the firehose. In facebook's case, I think they implemented a way to eavesdrop, and then later compelled Zuck to provide the keys.

The slide about how traffic is routed through the US is really telling. This program works because there is access to the packets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone just tell what the final deal is? I'm quite annoyed by conflicting reports from the media, Internet firms and the US government. Also, please stop playing with words. It doesn't matter if the program is named PRISM or Hexagon. What matters is the access powers to otherwise private data by governments.

<comment><USER14> The White House has confirmed that PRISM existed, and has condemned the leak. This means that the power point slides that were leaked are real.

Now go read the slides, and you'll know exactly what is going on.

<comment><USER15> Even if the White House confirmed the PRISM program exist, and condemned the leak about the PRISM program, it doesn't mean all the facts in some power point presentation is real at all.

<comment><USER16> If the powerpoint were fake, why would the white house hesitate to point that out?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "It [PRISM] cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other > US person, or anyone located within the United States," said James Clapper, > the director of national intelligence.

And how are we supposed to believe this? We were already blatantly lied to.

</comment><comment><USER18> Mark and Larry seem to disagree. Someone's not telling the truth.

<comment><USER19> Or...you may be misinterpreting what's at issue. I can't claim to really know either, but from what I gather, the issue at hand is: Does the NSA have a direct feed into Google's servers, via PRISM?

Google says "No".

However, Google _has not_ denied giving government access to user data: in fact, Google for a few years has been publishing a report of how many times governments ask it for user data:

[http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests&#x...](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests&#x2F);

<comment><USER20> Fixed link: [http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests](http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Eric Schmidt, in March 2010, knew about this when he said the following for users who wished their actions to be private:

> But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search > engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And > [...] we're all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible > that that information could be made available to the authorities.

</comment><comment><USER21> Whatever your views on this are, I hope nobody is actually surprised. If I were a $CURRENT_MEDIA_BOOGIEMAN_SCAPEGOAT_THINKOFTHECHILDREN, I would definitely assume that the usgov has access to any "big data" on the general public and can get it anytime they want. My plans for world-domination won't be sent through gmail or sent in a private message on facebook, or an text-msg on VerizoNSA. I'd take the time to learn and use PGP.

Only regular citizens will be caught by this and... the whitehouse knows it. I only wish the general public could see HN now. Someone with lots of money, _looks-at-Google_ , should buy like 2mins of commercial-time during the Super- bowl to talk about stuff like this.

<comment><USER22> Ok, but what about companies who store sensitive data and emails on Google Apps for business, especially non US companies ? What about non US citizens who seems to have less protection and spyable at mercy ? Should we the ( whatever your country or citizenship ) avoid by all means US internet corps.

If the American gov wanted to kill the cloud, then good job ! I want to clarify that I do not trust my own gov neither ...

<comment><USER23> Nobody should store sensitive data and e-mails on a system where they're sitting there in plain text accessible to god knows how many people at Google and their data centers. That's insane.

<comment><USER22> As Microsoft was the first company to adhere PRISM as stated by the leaked slide, that also means that no company worldwide should ever use office 365, azure or managed sharepoint / exchange !

These software corps better be persuasive because a whole economic part of USA will be endangered then !

<comment><USER23> Yes. Storing sensitive corporate documents in plain text on servers owned by Microsoft, Google, etc, with no legal protections in place, is retarded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> To be honest, this whole thing is coordinated. The leak, the opportunity for outrage, the opportunity to gloss over the outrage, and now it's out in the open where the politicians and CEOs don't have to face real outrage.

True theater!!!

<comment><USER25> If they were truly that powerful and organized, wouldn't they have rather just not orchestrated the leak to begin with?

<comment><USER24> If it's going to come out eventually, why not control the leak?

PR 101, mang

<comment><USER25> But they're not controlling anything, they're just doing now what they would be doing if the leak had been real, assuming it was orchestrated. They would've done a better job letting everyone stay distracted by all the other crap being dropped on Obama's head right now.

<comment><USER26> Not necessarily: you could for example throw in red herrings and disinformation along with whatever facts you're disclosing. The "limited hangout" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout) is apparently a real thing, though of course once you've heard of them it's easy to start imagining them where they don't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't know if you know this, but we all have access to facebook data. Not much of it is private

</comment><comment><USER28> What really pisses me off is something like »It [PRISM] cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States«. Mass surveillance without suspicion of foreigners is even worse than spying the own people.

</comment><comment><USER29> Another Onion fake news became real.

[http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program- dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically- cut-agencys-cos,19753&#x2F);

</comment><comment><USER30> If it's going over the wire, you can bet they have access to it, with or without 'access.'

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A)

<comment><USER31> Facebook is opt-in https and I believe google is https by default. I don't know about the other services.

Without their keys having it over the wire won't get them what they want.

EDIT: poor wording.

<comment><USER30> I don't think it's a stretch to think the government has the ssl keys. Or the ability to find the ssl keys.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The public has unprecedented access to information b/c of the stuff publicized on HackerNews. Should come as any surprise the White House also has this access?

I just assume Barack is LOLing everytime I crack a funny on twitter.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is this article providing anything new? It seems just like a rehash of all the old articles, with a speculative title.

</comment><comment><USER34> V for Vendetta IRL.</comment>


Observing demos hurts learning, and confusion is a sign of understanding - <AUTHOR> http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/eric-mazurs-keynote-at-icer-2011-observing-demos-hurts-learning-and-confusion-is-a-sign-of-understanding/ <comment><USER2> Right, see also:

"Graesser, Person, and Magliano (1995) found that during one-on-one tutoring, when asking students "do you understand?", answering yes was not correlated with performance, while answering no was positively correlated with better performance." [Graesser, A. C., Person, N. K., & Magliano, J. P. (1995). Collaborative dialogue patterns in naturalistic one-on-one tutoring. Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol. 9, pp495-522.]

"twelfth grade science students all viewed the same physics demonstration by their teacher, but they all disagreed beforehand about what they expected to happen, and afterward disagreed about what they had seen and how to explain what they saw (Roth, McRobbie, Lucas, & Boutonné, 1997). [Roth, W.-M., McRobbie, C., Lucas, K. B., & Boutonné, S. (1997). Why do students fail to learn from demonstrations? A social practice perspective on learning in physics. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 34, 509-533. Retrieved from <http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/45493/abstract> ]

And this summary presentation by Brian Pyper:

Best Practices in Physics Demonstrations Or Oh, I thought this was just for entertainment." [https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Femp.byui.edu...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Femp.byui.edu%2FPyperB%2FBest%2520Practices%2520in%2520Physics%2520Demonstrations.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's some really interesting data here, but I think one of the main conclusions they draw is wrong:

 _Confused students are far more likely to actually understand._

Looking at correct vs incorrect answers (almost 50/50 for 'confused' students), it seems like confused students are far more likely to _guess_.

Edit: I realize after posting this that it's important to know the test format to figure out whether students understood or were guessing. The article unfortunately doesn't say much about the test format.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting research. However, before we try to generalize it to whole schooling system, here's another thing - demos make physics interesting, standard school teaching ways make physics boring as hell. The only reason I cared about it was that I watched too much Star Trek when I was a kid. Most of the people I know got bored by physics in school around age of 15.

</comment><comment><USER5> Gee, I hope some high school teachers take this into account - especially the ones that mean well. One of my favorite teachers in high school extensively used physics demonstrations. The AP test scores were pretty high though, so maybe his other excellence balanced that out?

Still, the confusion thing is an interesting statistic to read.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe this explains why I was always so confused in school!</comment>


Open Source Is Worth Your Time - <AUTHOR> http://info.timkellogg.me/blog/2012/04/22/why-open-source-is-worth-your-time/

<comment><USER2> Preaching to the choir?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you think that most HN readers contribute to open source regularly then yes. I have a feeling though that many don't, despite appearances. Really I'd like that blog post to be a gateway for devs to get involved. I'm from the .NET community where there's way too little contribution. If you give to open source projects, good for you! Now go and get your friends involved too.

<comment><USER3> I do not give back. This blog post is definitely helping to motivate me.

It's funny that I think I'm too bad at coding to give back, but a great way to get a lot better is to just try.

I'm going to find something fun I want to work on and just do it already.

<comment><USER4> Fixing a bug or adding a feature to a huge open source project an be fairly intimidating at first. I find it's the build systems, test styles, and so on that get me stuck and often where I give up.

But the first time I received a software update and my name was in the release notes as a feature contributor was quote exciting :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://openhatch.org/>

OpenHatch is a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities.

</comment><comment><USER6> List is great. I would appreciate one for ruby projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah a directory would be great.there's so many projects that do great work but need help. Maybe there should be an app for that :)</comment></comment>


Spain Finds Cervantes' Tomb in Madrid - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31852032? <comment><USER2> You would expect him to be buried together with Rocinante, but I don't see any bone of equine proportions in the photos. That could rather be the remains of Sancho Panza.

<comment><USER3> Don Quixote is based on fictional characters. This is the grave of Cervantes, the writer of the novel.

<comment><USER4> I thought it was a tongue-in-cheek joke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not 100% confirmed yet. Follow up here: [http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/03/18/inenglish/1426667907_532...](http://elpais.com/elpais/2015/03/18/inenglish/1426667907_532263.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> En una cripta de Madrid, de cuya ubicación no se querían acordar...

<comment><USER7> Vamos, que lo han desahuciado también a él, con lo tranquilo que estaba ;-)

<comment><USER8> For whatever reason I cannot help but hear a strong spaniard accent when reading this. I could almost swear that you are from Spain. I'd say that the "vamos" at the start is what is tipping me off. Quite amusing how one can discern nationality by little things like that.

<comment><USER7> Nobody expected the spanish "En un lugar de la Mancha de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, viva Mejico, cabrones"... :-)

Well, is a post about spanish language after all, should be ok to have some fun about the topics... You can trust me, such thing like a "spaniard accent" does not exist at all. A common mistake for non native speakers that mix lots and lots of accents and clichés. Spanish dialects and local variations are a big minefield.

<comment><USER8> Is like saying that English accent (from England) doesn't exist. Of course it does. Every single region has its own accents. And yes, I guess within Spain accents vary, which I guess is the thing you are being pedantic about.

Well I would definitely not expect a mexican to write Mexico with a "j". So are you from Spain or not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First idea that come in to the mind? Lets open its grave and mess around with bones... Was this really necessary?

<comment><USER10> The counterpoint to that is if we don't "mess" with them (i.e. mark them for preservation) now they're much more likely get plundered / messed with by other, less well-intentioned persons at some point later on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lorca, however, remains undiscovered.

<comment><USER12> Everybody knows where Lorca is, and he'll continue buried in a hole until digging up the corpses of the ones executed after the Civil War stops being a matter of pride for certain people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like the third time is a charm for this story.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9217162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9217162)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9217229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9217229)

It would be interesting if HN showed submission so people could do analysis on submission time, for example.</comment>


US appeals court says Trump cannot block Twitter followers - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/09/us-appeals-court-says-trump-cannot-block-twitter-followers.html <comment><USER2> Had an idea. What if there was a distributed Twitter-like "Protocol" where tweets were posted to the network and were distributed based on the user subscription list? Make it so there was no central control that allowed a user (like Trump) or an organization (like Twitter) to censor any of the messages? It would have a standard API so anyone could write an app or webpage to interact with the network. Make it run on blockchain so messages couldn't be deleted by anyone.

Anyone could run a "node" which would basically be a server that ties into the network and allows a user's app to register subscriptions and post the messages to the network.</comment>


Tell HN: Help me get to 100K MRR and be rewarded for it - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
A few months ago I launched my unlimited design-as-a-service (Manypixels) on HN and IndieHackers (https://www.manypixels.co)
I shared everything during my journey (how we built our MVP in 5 hours, how we got to 50k USD in MRR) and I learned a lot from those communities.
It has been a roller coaster: We learned a lot from our users, we did many good things, but many bad things too. We are improving day by day though.
A big mantra I have is: Make what customers want. But I want to take it one step further: Make what customers want WITH them.
Here is my crazy offer for HN (which I also posted on IH): Can you help me improve Manypixels and our operations by being a user and directly (on a weekly basis) contributing with actionable feedback on how we can improve our services?
What you will get :
1. Free ongoing subscription of Manypixels so that you can build your business and get unlimited design help 2. Inside look at the operations of my company (metrics, operations, processes) 3. Be the "fly in the room" in our weekly sessions on Skype with project managers, designers, and the management team
What I am looking for in return :
1. Test our processes and team to the nitty gritty by making design requests 2. Communicate to me actionable feedbacks and improvements on a weekly basis 3. Help us test our new dashboard and project management / tracking of tasks
--> I have 5 spots open for the position of "HN Tester" and I will make a decision on the 15/04.
If you want to become one, tell me the following in the comments:
1. Do you require design services? 2. What is your experience in building companies and why do you think you could be the one chosen to help us improve? <comment><USER2> 1\. Yes we have a variety of design challenges we could use your service for that we don't have the bandwidth for each month. From ads, to illustrations, to graphics, blog templates, in app work, and more.

2\. I am building my 3rd startup that is ramen profitable currently [https://www.mightyscout.com](https://www.mightyscout.com). I've primarily been the main person responsible for design at the companies I've worked at. I know how important it is to give feedback in a thoughtful way so that the team can take action on it. If Manypixels works how I'd want it to, it could free up my time to focus on biz ops and sales while still being able to give initial direction and feedback on designs. I think you would ultimately replace a good portion of the marketing design I need to do each month. I'll be giving you a lot of feedback each week, direct access via chat if you'd like, because I want your solution to succeed in helping me free up more bandwidth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will also reply on Sunday!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. I've bought more than 100 domains and I'm planning on launching atleast one site every week. They should mostly be wordpress CMS sites but I also have few SAAS based ideas for them. So, I need a lot of design services. Though I'm a designer myself I hardly have to time to work on my own projects as I've lots of things going on.

2\. I work as a Remote UI Designer for Healthcare based SAAS startups similar to TelaDoc for companies in US, UAE and India. Since, I work as a contract designer myself for entrepreneurs who bootstrap their startup, I could help in what kind of output your customers expect in what timeline, will they be okay if you take time more than deadline. I have successfully completed more than 3 projects from idea to implementation. Each project takes atleast 6 months to 18 months to complete. I have been the core members of companies in initial stages and Now, I'm on track to create websites of my own.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Getting back to you on Sun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't you think your relationship with said "customer" is going to be too cozy and hence not "real"?

Why don't you randomly offer half a months rebate to some percentage of your customers last month? (Also those who left you). Consider offer money as well as freebies (esp. for the former customers).

As you have a 10-day no questions refund policy also make sure, that you write clearly that it is a one time offer and totally okay if they don't wanna help..

I think you will learn more of that..

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Sven! Yes, totally. My plan is actually not to deal with the customers projects myself and not to tell my staff that this customer is not "real" :)

Good ideas for the rest, will experiment with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are bringing in that much cash a month. Why not just hire someone to help you with the skills you require?

Not a complaint about your request but it seems to be an indirect route to accomplish you goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand your point of view. I think hiring entrepreneurs with real design needs (and experience) can help us in two ways:

1\. We will have to work on real projects and treat them as "real customers" which will give us customer insights on what we should improve.

2\. Targeting communities of entrepreneurs such as IH/HN will allow us to pick skills in a pool of people "who have done it before" or who might anticipate problems we might have and suggest actionable solutions.</comment></comment>


The EU is launching a market for personal data - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/11/1006555/eu-data-trust-trusts-project-privacy-policy-opinion/ <comment><USER2> >the policies do not currently provide any way for citizens to opt out.

And how long before I need a 'Data Trust ID' to use the internet.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's kind of interesting approach. Assuming that there is only one place where information is stored it's easy/easier to control access to it.

Later down the road it will be also much easier to enforce control since as all the data exists in this marketing store _any_ offsite store would be a violation.

Downside would be that this data vault would most likely be the highest value target.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interestingly this will create a much more cohesive and valuable set of data about an individual, linking silos from different companies. It will be interesting to see if online data will also be linkable to real world data (credit score, address etc)

</comment><comment><USER5> The EU should be further constrained to put the continent back on the map. This is an atrocious idea. Driven by fear of irrelevance it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does a data trust require you to prevent "entities other than the trust" from storing data?

Is there a way to do that ?</comment>


Master Plan for Clojure Enterprise Mindshare Domination - <AUTHOR> http://blip.tv/clojure/neal-ford-neal-s-master-plan-for-clojure-enterprise-mindshare-domination-5953926 <comment><USER2> I like Clojure (and its community) mainly because every time I saw a github Clojure project, it comes with a few things: test-automation (/test folder) and some way to build the project: get dependencies, run tests, package it up, and ready for deployment (using leiningen, a'la Maven).

That for me feels like home. (Plus I put premium on projects with test automation: it shows to me that the developer cares).

But I don't necessarily agree with Neal's first few minutes regarding "I'll choose technology X, knowing it will fail, over technology Y, knowing there's a risk but might achieve big win".

There's no big win when it comes to the so-called "Enterprise Project".

Either you met the requirement (pray it doesn't change too often, even if it does, pray that the management extends the deadline), or you under-deliver but within budget (cut features).

And most of the time it, the failure, is rarely because of the technology (.NET, Java, Ruby, Clojure) any more these days (excluding SAP, PeopleSoft, and some of the truly heavyweight). It's usually something else: management, people, developer's skill, overall culture, process.

<comment><USER3> >And most of the time it, the failure, is rarely because of the technology (.NET, Java, Ruby, Clojure)

I disagree, while it won't come down to C# vs Java - things like libraries, tools (that are tied to languages/platforms) and their suitability for the task that you're trying to solve can make or break your project, especially with a short deadline.

<comment><USER2> Uh... sure...

What kind of "snowflakes" (very unique) project you're talking about?

And how short is short?

I'd like to know the silver or gold bullet we're about to discuss here, I'm curious. (just don't bring ASM/C vs Java/Ruby lame example though, you know, them kind of example that is too obvious and too weak to disprove generalization-but-not-100%-always type of statement).

<comment><USER3> Quality UI tools and frameworks ? Ever tried to use those fancy thin-client frameworks like Cappuccino or ExtJS ? Spend days figuring out esoteric language/syntax/API and then fight with fragile implementations and no error checking + the ridiculous amount of boilerplate and bad structure. Compare that with XAML/C# with VisualStudio and tell me you don't see the productivity boost. Not to mention entirely different platform characteristics/capabilities.

As for libraries - just a week ago I was writing an app for image processing, among other things it needed to do indexing on images by extracting meta data in image headers and different formats (IPTC,EXIF,XMP) and there was no library to do that on Mono/C# that actually worked and after a day and a half of mucking around with half-assed wrappers I wrote the app to feed the DB in clojure with a Java library in few hours.

Sure in some abstract 10000 feet view tools don't make a difference, or if you're doing the simplistic CRUD stuff, but in day to day work it matters a lot that you get to use tools (eg. debuggers, intellisense, profiling), libraries, frameworks etc.

<comment><USER2> Uh hang on. Cappucino or ExtJS vs XAML/C#? Are you trying to compare Apple vs Orange or JS vs Flash/SilverLight?

One of the previous companies I worked for bet on WPF and it didn't go well. Memory hog, crashes, boilerplate code (sometime hidden by VS.NET), and the consensus was that WPF pretty much sucks out of the box (have to work very hard to make it look good).

By the way, another company I used to work for used GWT + Ext-GWT (GWT port of Ext-JS). It was pretty good as long as you don't have to modify the Look-n- Feel to be something it is not.

<comment><USER3> >Uh hang on. Cappucino or ExtJS vs XAML/C#? Are you trying to compare Apple vs Orange or JS vs Flash/SilverLight?

Silverlight vs Cappuccino and ExtJS. We tried both before silverlight and eventually gave up as the code became a complete mess (javascript and that monstrosity objective-j), debugging was hell (especially with objective-j) and documentation substandard (cappuccino had the assumption that you were keeping the apple cocoa reference handy I guess). OTOH Silverlight and MVVM Prism worked like a charm, we were able to redo the months front-end work in few days (everyone needed to pick up Prism). Things were super easy to mock and provide concepts with the Blend tool. If they only had TPL it would have been ideal.

>One of the previous companies I worked for bet on WPF and it didn't go well. Memory hog, crashes, boilerplate code (sometime hidden by VS.NET), and the consensus was that WPF pretty much sucks out of the box (have to work very hard to make it look good).

So you agree then - tools and platforms do matter ? If there was no time to "work very hard" would the project succeed ?

<comment><USER2> They rewrote from delphi, that was usable and efficient, to wpf. Bad call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want very badly to love Clojure and have done my best to try and use it in a number of medium-sized projects composed of several services... unfortunately it seems that deploying JVMs on EC2 (under Ubuntu, anyway) is just not reliable and we would always get into situations where the VM was locked up and pegging the machine at 100% CPU. Not sure if this was a Clojure problem or a JVM problem but it definitely was a huge headache.

That, and the fact that many of the libraries are immature (so you end up spending the time to fork them and add whatever they're lacking), and many of the error messages and exceptions it throws are pretty cryptic and useless... I'd be wary of Clojure in a production environment at this stage, unfortunately.

Which is really too bad because it is such a great language!

<comment><USER5> Excuse me if I'm totally off (I haven't actually used clojure, just evaluating it), but regarding the lacking libraries: isn't the fact that it runs in the JVM nullify this by having access to the rich java libraries?

<comment><USER4> The java interop is very verbose and kind of ugly (next to "pure" clojure code anyway) so many clojure wrappers or reimplmentations for existing Java libraries exist. So yes, sometimes it's as simple as extending the wrapper to expose the part of the underlying Java library you need, but other times there are fundamental issues with the design of the library that prevent it from being useful in a multi-threaded multi-user server environment (instancing etc).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What are people's experiences in writing such dense functional code in a production environment? What does maintainability/debug-ability/bringing other functional folks up to speed like?

<comment><USER6> Maintainability is immeasurably boosted by referential transparency; most of the time you can look at a single function in isolation and understand everything that's going on rather than having it be affected by other pieces of the codebase. I find it's much easier to work on a large codebase in Clojure vs Ruby just because it encourages a clean separation of concerns.

Of course in Clojure a 30k LOC project is considered very large. It's an open question whether this is due to Clojure's expressiveness vs the fact that it might not have been around long enough to spawn any massive projects.

Debuggability is helped a fair bit by having access to the repl in production contexts, but for the most part needing an actual stepping debugger is very rare, precisely because of referential transparency.

Bringing other folks up to speed is definitely the biggest problem. People who have experience with other FP languages usually don't know much about the JVM runtime and ecosystem, while people with Java backgrounds have a lot to learn about immutability and lisp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nothing mind blowing but I agree. It seems like the bottom line is that there has to be a killer app and an easy way to get started.

</comment><comment><USER8> Would someone please post a one sentence summary of what the 'master plan' is? At work and too busy to watch the video. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER9> It will be most effective to grow the language from the bottom up by: propagandizing the benefits among developers, building bridges to other technologies (simple APIs), befriending other alternative language communities who are selling the idea that Java isn't necessarily the best and only way, and bury Clojure implementations in larger contexts.

That's not exact but it's a rough approximation.</comment></comment>


Nintendo's mistake led to the creation of the Sony Playstation - <AUTHOR> https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/how-nintendos-massive-mistake-led-to-the-creation-of-the-sony-playstation-25-years-ago <comment><USER2> > Some have suggested that this may be chalked up to cultural differences and > Japanese contract law that no one at Nintendo felt obligated to inform Sony > of their decision to renege.

HOLY. How this didn't end with a massive lawsuit on either side completely astounds me. Imagine if these were US companies with our time-honored culture of litigiousness.</comment>


Execute on Being You - <AUTHOR> http://garyvaynerchuk.com/2008/09/11/execute-on-being-you/

<comment><USER2> This guy is a bit intense huh? Not that that's a problem, but, you know, I like my video life-advice in the form of videos of people who don't look like they've just snorted a gram...

</comment><comment><USER3> The photo for Gary Vaynerchuk in the header kind of makes him look like Mr. Bean.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Most people in the wine industry are douche bags" - Gary V.

I've been following him ever since and my interest in wine has, not surprisingly, grown.

</comment><comment><USER5> What the hell is going on to his left that is more important than talking to his audience??

</comment><comment><USER6> Gary Vaynerchuk has some serious character. A great guy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> no doubt he is a bit over the top but that passion and energy is really exciting.</comment>


Show HN: Felix AI – Transform any blog post into a video, story or audio clip - <AUTHOR> https://gofelix.ai <comment><AUTHOR> Excited to be sharing this after working on this for a while. Simply send in any blog post URL and get out a video, story and audio clip.

Essentially wanted to make it super easy to re-purpose your content into other formats ready for sharing elsewhere!</comment>


Ask HN: I've designed a smart defibrillator how can I kickstart it - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
So I've came up with the design of this smart defibrillator that uploads the patient data to a cloud server so that doctors have access to it even before the patient arrives at the hospital.
I would like to put the project on kickstarter but it does not quite seem a fit there, is there a better platform for this kind of stuff? <comment><USER2> Hi! Researcher and designer for a US-based healthcare company, here.

To a layperson, this probably sounds awesome, but the red flags to me are:

\- "So I've came up with the design" Industrial design? If so, are you an industrial designer who has worked on AEDs before? Designing something that jumpstarts a heart that can be used by someone with no medical training is hard. Software design? Do you know what sort of hardware AEDs are built on and the software they already run? Service design? Are you mostly focused on the "cloud server" part?

\- "of this smart defibrillator" All defibrillators that go into business and homes (AEDs) are "smart" in the sense that they figure out your heart problem and then jumpstart you automatically. What else is "smart?"

\- "that uploads" Many AEDs also require EM/RF shielding, and minimum distances from RF-generating equipment. On-board GSM/3G/LTE/Wi-Fi hardware might be very difficult to accomplish. Browsing around, I see one that has wireless transmission of log data... via IrDA. I see another one with serial or USB ports. So, this is something that may already be possible with a tethered computer with a cellular data connection, which makes me wonder, why isn't already being done? Is it because it's not an actual need by EMTs/doctors/etc.?

\- "the patient data" What data? The heartbeat readings that the defibrillator got that caused it to shock your heart? Is there anything else? Is that useful?

\- "to a cloud server" And suddenly you're in the world of HIPAA and other patient privacy things. Who has access to this data? How? Why? For what?

\- "so that doctors have access to it" Unfortunately, "doctors" are not a homogenous group with identical privileges and information access, nor are hospitals all using identical hardware and software systems. To require admitting nurse practitioners, physicians assistants, hospitalists, residents, etc., to access a data silo for a tiny snippet of information about a heartbeat from 30 minutes ago may not be worthwhile to anyone. To integrate "somehow" with hospital software systems when they don't have a record of you yet (because you haven't arrived) and may never (because you aren't formally admitted) will also be a challenge.

\- "even before the patient arrives" A doctor is probably treating patients who are already there. They're not just sitting around, waiting for an ambulance to roll up, at least not in the US. They'll look at your data eventually, maybe, probably. Is there documented usefulness of old data in this case?

\- "at the hospital." I may not be going to a hospital. I may assume I am fine now that I've been resuscitated. I may go to my GP first, three days later. How does that affect usage?

But other than those things, it doesn't really matter where you launch the product, Kickstarter or IndieGoGo or wherever, because with crowd-funding, it's not really random people who fund your work. You need a large enough social network yourself, already, to get something like 25%+ of the way there in your first 24-48 hours, to even have a chance of word spreading widely enough to get the rest of the way there.

So, assuming you have answers to all of the above, do you have a personally- reachable, financially-solvent-enough social network large enough to do that?

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.medstartr.com/](http://www.medstartr.com/) built by Alex Faire, may be a better fit but it's a pretty small audience. Have you gone over the project with a regulatory fine-tooth comb?</comment>


I love my husband more than I love my children (2004) - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/fashion/truly-madly-guiltily.html?referer=android-app://com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox <comment><USER2> Apparently this essay, published in 2005, "led to extensive and vitriolic debate" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayelet_Waldman#Motherlove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayelet_Waldman#Motherlove)). You can kind of see why, though I think probably mostly from the perspective that an awful lot of women perhaps don't feel the same way as she does - but I wonder how many divorces the fact of this simple statement has resulted in: "the wife's passion has been refocused".

<comment><USER3> Yeah, there was a time that this was not a controversial assertion at all.

The marriage must always be number one. That's not such a distinct thing from the welfare of the children, though; the lives of all family members are inextricable. _Neither_ the husband nor the wife are going to be pleased and say the marriage is going fine when the prosperity of one or more of the children is in jeopardy.

"The children" and "the marriage" are not really separable. They are two fully blended parts of the same thing, "the family". Spouses and children are not competitors; they're collaborators. Any action on one part is going to spread out over the others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are many who say maintaining the marriage is more important than the kids. The kids are born into the marriage and then 20 years later (hopefully) are gone but the marriage must endure.

Having said this, my brother married a seemingly perfect partner. They played squash/tennis, went out on a Friday night date each week, played bridge with others, loved crosswords together, and still ended up divorced 10 years and 3 kids later. Sigh.

<comment><USER5> Did your brother and his ex-wife continue those things after having the kids? Or did it stop with the kids?

<comment><USER4> Yes, they were adamant that they needed their own time.

<comment><USER5> Wow and it still didn't work out, eh? I currently have a two year old and my wife and I have 0 time with just the two of us. I think we went on one "date" in the last two years so things have been real tough (and only one child).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I mean, her husband is Michael Chabon. It's hard to to better than that.</comment>


Trump Signs Executive Orders on Drug Prices - sahin-boydas https://www.npr.org/2020/07/24/895290378/trump-signs-executive-orders-on-drug-prices <comment><AUTHOR> That story was complete garbage. After reading it, I don't know much about what the executive orders actually are. Not a single quote from the orders or a link so we can read the orders ourselves. We have summaries of the orders, but given that the whole article feels more like an opinion piece pretending it's a new article, I don't know if I can trust that the summary is accurate.

One of the experts spends a whole paragraph telling us that the orders are meaningless, without saying why they are meaningless. There is some evidence given for why they might not work, but even the expert doesn't say they won't but that they might not.

In fact, I could sum up the article this way:

The first three executive orders may or may not be beneficial for drug price reduction.

The other executive order has not been issued and is a way to force the pharmaceutical industry to negotiate new drug prices. This might or might not be beneficial for drug price reduction.</comment>


Heard of Google Instant? Well, I built YouTube Instant. - <AUTHOR> http://feross.net/instant/ <comment><USER2> Why the shortened url? I thought HN had them banned for submissions. Full url: <http://feross.net/instant/>

<comment><USER3> Seems it's Facebook's shortening url, perhaps for tracking?

<comment><USER4> I made it while working there. It was originally for the twitter exporter <http://twitter.com/search#search?q=fb.me>

I don't know what else they're using it for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apparently he got a job offer from YouTube: <http://venturebeat.com/2010/09/10/youtube-instant-job/>

<comment><USER6> Before this article even dropped off the front page, impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, what a brilliant concept.

Needs a keyboard shortcut for "give me another one with the same query", though. Then it would be both media bliss and a wonderful way to chill out.

<comment><USER8> By viewing the source code you can see that the author intends to add a "More Videos" features, but it's currently commented out. <http://feross.net/instant/instant.js>

I'd personally recommend not finishing this "More Videos" feature. I think the simplicity of just 1 video per search is awesome and creates beautiful serendipity. But, I know such a suggestion is very subjective.

<comment><USER9> Hi there Andrew, I'm the author. After reading the comments on HN and elsewhere, I'm surprised to see my hack being praised for it's simplicity. If I had more time last night, I would have implemented more features - I have a ton of ideas.

I guess it's good that I didn't. It looks like simplicity won.

<comment><USER10> Speed it up by not going through your server to get the query suggestions. You can drop the jsonp parameter and just eval the results. Or change the jsonp parameter and include it as a script tag.

<comment><USER9> I'm now doing everything client-side using JQuery and <script> tags to get around cross-domain XHR limitations. Now Google can't block it. :)

<comment><USER11> I'm curious: how do you get around crossdomain XHR limitations using <script> tags? Thanks!

<comment><USER9> <script> tags aren't subject to cross-domain restrictions. Think about it - all those website statistics scripts are hosted on external servers, but their Javascript gets executed just fine. By dynamically inserting <script> tags into the page, you can force Javascript from another domain to execute in your domain.

<comment><USER11> Got it, thanks. I finally got around to learning JSONP.

JQuery's $.ajax API handles it automatically for you too (if you use the 'jsonp' or 'script' dataType options), which is very nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the minimal interface. This website is perfect.

Your getting something unexpected stumbleupon style, but you are controlling the seed of randomness, making it more interactive and game like.

The funnest thing is entering random letters\nonwords. For example "rowlz".

<comment><USER13> It would be great if there was a stumble button that proceeded to next random video. I always thought there should be a stumble upon for video.

<comment><USER14> have you seen nowmov.com?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Endless youtube is another nice youtube hack. Just put endless before the youtube part of the URL, e.g.

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw5j6aI8sg>

becomes

<http://endlessyoutube.com/watch?v=7Nw5j6aI8sg>

It repeats the video, or a portion of it, and has a neat inline search facility.

<comment><USER16> Same strategy with <http://youtuberepeat.com> but you just get the repeating video, not all of the other stuff around the edges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is it intentional that there's no timeline / 'skip to' possibility?

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe not great for real uses as the top hit isn't always right, but I know of several parties where this on full screen would be an instant win at least.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd love to see every 5th response Rick Roll the user, but that's just me.

</comment><comment><USER20> I like the serendipity of discovering stuff this way. The selection of videos is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER21> Feature request: a way to get to the original video so I can share it.

Got an awesome video for "doctor who", but I can't find it on youtube.com

<comment><USER22> click the "youtube" logo on the bottom right

<comment><USER23> Rather than a link to the current video, I'd like to see a list of history.

E.g. how do I get to what I saw two videos back? I started typing "drum video", saw something interesting as an intermediate result as I was typing, but as it processed more of my query, it had jumped to a new video before i could click.

Granted, I just retyped my query letter by letter to find what i was looking for ("dru"). But I don't know if a fixed query always bringing back a single result or if that's desired functionality vs limitation vs bug.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't know what I'm supposed to see or what it's supposed to do. I use Opera (just got the update this AM). I don't get Google Instant, either.

</comment><comment><USER25> I typed in "marissa mayer laugh".

<comment><USER26> Jesus. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcSujceZDmg>

<comment><USER27> Holy crap! Brilliant video edit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nice idea. However, for me it's currently too slow to be really usable (sorry!). Just goes to show how amazing Google Instant is, I think.

<comment><USER28> Update: it works much, much better (faster) now - good job.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for noticing! I re-wrote the data fetching to happen directly on the client-side without making a trip to my server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Someone that study computer science or something like that and told me what is the big deal about this , what is the special thing about,? it is the backend algorithm ? maybe this have porcion of I.A or Genetic Algorithm or Probabilitys metrics?? I dont know. to me this is just make a request using ajax to the db youtube and search for the most relevant search recently made (maybe 1 hour o 15 minutes i dont know) 3 hours or less look a pretty razonable time to do this,.. but maybe i'm wrong about my conception, somebody could please give an explanation about this? what's the big deal ????

</comment><comment><USER30> Cool. Would be better if it had a list of thumbnails to choose a different video.

<comment><USER25> That would break the minimalissimo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can you extend it to show other results below, too? Right now - as fun as it is - it seems more like YouTubeRoulette. (Yes, I'm in a pedantic mood today ;o) )

<comment><USER25> YouTube.com has this feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> needs video controls also maybe some way to skip to the next video

<comment><USER23> At the very least, click to play/pause and a volume slider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How do you do it,please help me built similar stuffs,I am in Silicon Valley.Email me to firstname.lastname@example.com I am looking for like minded individuals who would like to change the world!

</comment><comment><USER34> Strangely enough (certainly just a coincidence), but the words "mov" (lead suggestion moives) and "drumm" (which leads to drummer boy) took me to the exactly same wild west view...

</comment><comment><USER35> You should have the text field do autocompletion if you hit tab

</comment><comment><USER36> Kudos. This is great. The only thing I'd like to see is a row of, say 5, related videos just in case the first isn't exactly what I want.

<comment><USER25> Then use YouTube.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Awesome.

I love the single video. In my opinion, instant is far more useful here than it is for regular search. If only it were faster...

</comment><comment><USER38> Here is my version of YouTube Instant.

<http://travisbeauvais.com/yt>

</comment><comment><USER39> Freaking awesome. Simply said, awesome.

</comment><comment><USER25> …and there the minimalism went away. Tweet-links and Facebook-Likes galore. Sad.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow, that's great. More useful than Google Instant, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER41> anybody has the instant.js file? the link for it does not seem to be working anymore:

<http://feross.net/instant/instant.js>

??

thnx

</comment><comment><USER42> This is incredible

</comment><comment><USER43> suggestion for "monkey" was great

</comment><comment><USER44> Down right now, any mirror?

</comment><comment><USER45> Bookmarked. Nice project.

</comment><comment><USER46> doesn't work at all on mac 10.6 with chrome 7 (dev channel)

<comment><USER9> The site went down earlier because Youtube blocked my server. I rewrote the site to use client-side JS so it should work for you now.

<comment><USER46> cool, seems to be working now, though I get a click hiccup on first page load, no video or text, but the search box

pretty cool app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Works for "San Bruno"

</comment><comment><USER48> well done! +1 for a button to go to next video

</comment><comment><USER49> is it just me or is there no sound?

</comment><comment><USER50> awesome feross!

</comment><comment><USER51> I like it, fastest way to find music videos that I have encountered ever.

</comment><comment><USER52> now a Facebook application on YouTube Instant : <http://apps.facebook.com/ytinstant/>

</comment><comment><USER53> Check out Youtube-Links.com you will enjoy it! :)</comment>


Laservex: HTML5 Laser Puzzle Game - <AUTHOR> http://www.laservex.com/

<comment><USER2> interesting especially in HTML but the black lines (mirrors) need to be able to MOVE as well as adjust the length. Maybe I missed it but the only way to move a mirror is to walk it one edge at a time.

<comment><USER3> You can move by dragging either end of the mirror. It's not entirely obvious, maybe an easier way to move the mirror would be helpful.

<comment><USER4> Yes, this is painful as is. Also, when I complete a level the entire frame shifts about 10 pixels to the left as the save button appears. Nice concept though.

<comment><AUTHOR> The left shift is probably due to the scroll bar appearing (since the save button makes the page slightly longer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My count of favorite HTML5 games moves up to 3. First Subbania then Buildy and now this one. You should probably add more physics as @ivan_ah said.

</comment><comment><USER6> Really interesting game! I love the concept. It's simple, yet challenging. I am finding it quite hard, which is good.

I couldn't figure out level 5, and here is my level six at the moment <http://i.imgur.com/vvZOX.png> bit of tweaking and I'll have it

<comment><USER7> I don't know if you want a hint, but... If you do it the right way, no tweaking is needed at all. (The puzzle can be viewed as a very nice illustration of ergodic trajectories.)

<comment><USER8> infinite power!

<http://imgur.com/AbvXE>

<comment><AUTHOR> In case people are curious, the reflection limit per laser is currently set to 500 to avoid infinite loops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very cool.

I would be interested in collaborating with you to add some more physics: refraction (laser passing through slabs of glass) and curved surfaces (parabolic mirrors and lenses using the thin-lens approximation).

This would be the coolest way to learn about ray-optics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice ideas! I have a small list of higher priority features to add first, but I am adding these to my queue:

\- refraction polygons \- concave/convex lenses \- concave/convex mirrors

I think the easiest way to add these would be to just make them fixed objects in the level (so the only drag-able items would still be the straight mirrors).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love this, but I would like to be able to return to my solved puzzles after I've done them (assumed that's what the "Save" button did).

Quite happy to finally get level 11 done.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have to say, the game is cool, and it works fine with my Palemoon(Lots of HTML5 games do not work well with this browser).</comment>


Is this booming Northwest land a paradise or disaster waiting to happen? - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sej-cascadia-06062016-snap-htmlstory.html <comment><USER2> The New Yorker covered this last year[1], and it's the reason I won't move to Silicon Valley or Seattle. Call me paranoid, call me crazy, but I'd rather be wrong and miss out on a job opportunity or two than be right and be in deep trouble.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really- big-...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one)</comment>


How Not to Name a Startup: The Curse of the Camel Case - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/12/22/how-not-to-name-a-startup-the-curse-of-the-camel-case/

<comment><USER2> Microsoft used to be MicroSoft</comment>


A JVM Does That? (2011) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2011_WhatDoesJVMDo.pdf <comment><USER2> If you are part of the HFT crowd who uses the JVM then you know who the author, Cliff Click, is.

His Blogs (former and current) are goldmines for high performance JVM information.

[http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/author/cliff](http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/author/cliff)

[http://www.cliffc.org/blog/](http://www.cliffc.org/blog/)

I had one CTO of a public HFT firm tell me that short of FPGA's Azul's pause- less GC ([https://www.azul.com/products/zing/pgc/](https://www.azul.com/products/zing/pgc/)) was the biggest performance win they'd had in the past few years, note: this was a few years ago.

EDIT: someone emailed asking for how HFT firms write their java code. I haven't written java in 3 years so I'm probably not the best person to author a list but this is what I'd include:

In order of importance:

\- Measure, measure, measure. Every HFT firm can tell you to the nanosecond, as much as that's possible, what their time is from receiving a packet to when it's replied to. Focus as much, if not more on the 95%, 99% times as the average time.

This time increasing is considered a bug in the same way that an app crashing due to user input is considered a bug, which is to say that you just don't ship with this kind of bug.

\- no GC's, everything else starts to become less important if the GC is called every 30 seconds. Some guys will have only one GC call a day, which means you have a really large Eden GC space

\- short call stacks, and no recursion

\- one physical core per thread

\- non locking data structures and use the one writer principle where possible

\- don't use the kernel if possible, ie solar flare Ethernet cards that have userland drivers

\- cache friendly data structures

Watch this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iINk7x44MmM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iINk7x44MmM)

<comment><USER3> If performance is THAT critical in HFT, why do they pick java as the starting language?

I understand that java is very fast, faster than most people believe, but does it beat hand-optimized assembly? Fortran? C?

Why Java?

<comment><USER4> It's close to impossible to get certain kinds of code correct in C, for instance, string parsing. Also until pretty recently, C and C++ did not have a sane memory model so what happened when threads was involved was dependent on what CPU you are on, the sign of the moon, etc.

Java could very well be the first programming language designed by adults and it shows. (That is, they solve the hard problems, not just pretend they don't matter)

<comment><USER5> The amount of contortions you need to do with your "adult" language arguably negates a lot of advantages of using it. Just because you don't have pointers doesn't mean that all bugs are now eliminated.

Take Android for instance, getting solid performance out of the JVM there is a huge bear because the language is just not suited to low latency operations. I won't claim that C is a perfect language but I hate it when I see people throwing around that you're committing some sin for each line of C code you write.

If you want cache friendly operations and predictable performance you're not going to find it in any JVM or language that has a GC.

<comment><USER4> I just think the people who make Android are high on drugs or something.

For instance the subjective experience of using Android is that you can never close any app that you've opened other than by uninstalling it. Even after you turn your machine off and turn it back on you still see windows for every f-- king app.

Then they run a bunch of articles about what an idiot you are if you try to close these because it won't save your phone's battery.

Well I admit I do have some cognitive limitations and it is --hard-- to scroll through 30 apps just to switch from (say) the web browser to the PDF viewer, but I guess Google thinks it is great this way because you always have a Google Plus window open.

Then there are all the articles about the fancy power management they are going to have someday that doesn't face up to the fact that an android device may or may not charge if you plug it into a charger, might turn itself off when it is running, and that the most reliable way to turn it on is to do a hard reset... And this isn't any old piece of junk, this is a nexus device.

<comment><USER5> Those are just screenshots captured from the app you're seeing. If you switch to any OpenGL based app you'll see it restart.

FWIW Force Stop from the settings->app section will stop an app unless it's forced to be sticky because another service depends on it.

<comment><USER6> > Those are just screenshots captured from the app you're seeing.

That's not entirely accurate. Many of the apps can and will stay in memory (it doesn't suspend all of them). Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

<comment><USER5> If you want to get _really_ pedantic those are screenshots in the app drawer that are swapped with an application's surface in SurfaceFlinger just as it comes fullscreen.

But yeah, Android doesn't kill apps outright when you switch away, that would be a pretty poor experience to restart each time you opened a link in Twitter and came back from it for instance.

<comment><USER6> > if you want to get really pedantic those are screenshots in the app drawer > that are swapped with an application's surface in SurfaceFlinger just as it > comes fullscreen.

Oh I know I was just being specific since you said they were "just" screenshots. Wanted to make sure it was clear some of those apps may in fact still be in memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sitting at the offices of an HFT firm here.

I think there's more than one kind of fast. There's development speed, and there execution speed. Both are important.

I don't know what qualifies as HFT these days, but a loose definition is people who trade more often than once a day. That's still a whole lot of different people.

At one end, there's textbook, pure footrace arbitrage. You something offered at 100 on one exchange and bid 101 on another. You rush to do them both. This is possibly the most obvious strategy ever, and the only thing that matters is how fast you can get those messages to the relevant exchanges.

On the other end, there's more intricate stuff like statistical arbitrages (a wide category), where there's more than one way to skin a cat. Some principles are known from finance 101, but your implementation will be slightly different to other people's. You still want to execute fast, because the opportunity may not be there forever, but it's not like every time you seen an opportunity you know it's first come, first served.

My sense is that those closer to the former will tend to use c++ over JVM. Most people are not going to have the time to carefully test what's faster, and c++ has the reputation as the thing that will be faster.

Similarly, JVM languages have a reputation for being faster to code in. As strategies get more complex, you need code agility. There's a lot of changing things up when you're writing strategy. Of course, results vary, but if you're building a strategy platform, you probably go for JVM.

But that's just what my gut feeling tells me. I've only met the people I've met, and it's not that easy to find public info on just what people are getting up to. I'd love to hear what kinds of strats are running on Azul.

<comment><USER8> It's been a while since I was working in HFT, but the HFT firms making the most money were all using Java predominantly. Yeah a lot of firms use C++ but I think that's more because of myth than actual benefits.

Pure simple arbitrage is a race to the bottom very quickly, and it's very difficult to remain profitable with those sort of simple strategies regardless of what language you use. Maybe FPGAs and radio networks could let you make money off of simple arbitrage (someone must be making money from it). C++ isn't going to give much advantage over Java with GC disabled.

<comment><USER9> I'm at a Denver based HFT firm, we are all Java. We do options market making, triangles on currency futures, calendar spreads, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is interesting

      – (Azul GPGC: 100's of Gig's w/10msec)
      – (Stock full GC pause: 10's of Gig's w/10sec)
      – (IBM Metronome: 100's Megs w/10microsec)

Some how these numbers are hard to come by in Java land where any request for hard numbers receives response like Java GCs are 'generational', 'state of the art', 'best in industry' etc. All the technical arguments while true of course but they do not tell numbers.

<comment><USER11> I think when comparing numbers like that you might need throughput figures as well. Supposedly there is a tradeoff between GC pauselessness and throughput.

<comment><USER12> Azul's GC required a read-barrier (some instructions to be executed on every pointer read) - which cost something like 5% performance on an X86. In exchange _max_ GC pause time is something in the low _microsecond_ range (I helped implement the Azul JVM and portions of the GC relating to starting and stopping threads)

<comment><USER13> A friend of mine that worked for Azul said that older 0x86 processors didn't support the instructions that they needed. Which is why originally they built their own hardware. I'm uncertain what those are, but my impression is you can't do what they needed with a single atomic word access.

<comment><USER14> There's a talk somewhere (by Cliff again) on how the Azul chips differed from x86. Intel seems really slow to add features useful for high level GCd languages but apparently nowadays x86 has caught up which is why they don't bother making their own chips anymore.

<comment><USER12> No change to the X86, instead user-mode TLB handler from RedHat allows ptr- swizzeling, that plus some careful planning and the read barrier fell to 2 X86 ops - with acceptable runtime costs. Cliff

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Might be unpopular opinion, but I kinda like to look how people introduce will-be-a-problem-in-the-future things (let's say GC) and than heroically are solving following problems (pause-less GC), it's like Don Quixotes of modern age, except you build windmills yourself.

<comment><USER16> Priorities. Getting rid of manual memory management can be a worthwhile goal even with slow gc, just like not having expensive runtime memory management automatisms can be a worthwhile goal. Making gc faster (or just more predictable) on top of that is not heroically solving a follow-up problem, it's an optional bonus achievement.

<comment><USER15> I might be too old fashioned, but the only case where some sort of memory management is pleasant and comfortable - constructing/modifying strings, though even here many languages separate mutable and immutable strings into different beasts.

In all other cases just allocate virtual page from OS (way too old school I understand, people usually don't use this one and believe that C Runtime Library with malloc is the only "approved" way to allocate memory), you get from 4kb to many megabytes of continuous memory - do whatever you want there, and deallocate whole virtual page later on, no leaks, no problems. Sure I do understand that manually managing millions of objects on heap is hard, but managing 1 to 10 virtual pages? it's simple and easy, just forged about generic allocators and use specialized ones (like block allocator for example).

Also it's good to know if you even need to deallocate at all ... for example ninja build system ([https://ninja-build.org](https://ninja-build.org)) simply doesn't deallocate memory after build is done, just because it's too slow to do it (though they do use heap allocations), just kill the app and OS will clean up after you.

PS. On other hand what I'm saying is just a personal rant. Reality is that the industry is mostly moving to tools that don't allow writing unsafe code (for example languages without pointer arithmetic), and this might be very limiting in language expressiveness. There is an another approach - statically proving that unsafe code is safe. This is what "Checked C" is all about, and this is how Windows drivers are working without crashing the kernel (at least BSODs are pretty rare on Windows nowadays). But I do agree that tools for statically proving unsafe code are so non casual that only greybeards are interested in them nowadays :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm probably missing something obvious here, but on page 25 it says:

      Azul Systems has been busy rewriting lots of it
      - Many major subsystems are simpler, faster, lighter
      - >100k diffs from OpenJDK

If Azul Systems' JVM is based on OpenJDK, shouldn't it be open source? OpenJDK is licensed under GPLv2.

<comment><USER18> OpenJDK is licensed under GPLv2 but it used to be available under commercial licenses as well. Kinda like how MySQL is GPL/commercial dual licensed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you were incentivized enough (by being an HFT firm, say), is there anything stopping you from re-implementing the Erlang memory/GC-model on the JVM? I know the JVM has green-threads (somewhere amongst a million other concurrency primitives); but could it be modified to give each green-thread its own heap, and then do background-GC passes of each green-thread heap when that green- thread isn't currently scheduled?

You'd certainly have to write your Java somewhat differently—though you wouldn't necessarily have to move to a full-fledged no-shared-memory message- passing model to see a benefit. (For example, every JVM object could be treated similarly to Erlang's large binaries, where they exist as refcounted objects in a shared heap, and then the ref-handle within the green-thread heap is _itself_ refcounted by the green-thread, so the shared heap only needs to be synchronously updated when a green-thread heap is discovered, on GC, to have released its last ref-ref.)

<comment><USER20> Relevant: [http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/](http://mechanical- sympathy.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER21> Exist a resource like this for .NET?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am curious if someone could shed some light on page 15 - "Illusion: Consistent Memory Models", specifically:

X86 is very conservative, so is Sparc Power, MIPS less so IA64 & Azul very aggressive

I dont't thing I've heard the term "conservative memory model" before, in what sense are x86 and SPARC conservative?

Also why is Azul mentioned as an ISA?

<comment><USER23> Azul has their own hardware for facilitating pauseless garbage collection with their JVM.

I recall they have a pure software pauseless JVM now as well, but it's not nearly as high performing.

<comment><USER12> Azul hardware had a very large core count of low-performing cores. If you had enough parallelism then it was hard to beat - but most applications didn't have enough parallel work, so the market wasn't big enough

<comment><USER23> I… just got corrected by Cliff Click~! (You're like my language implementation hero (along with Mike Pall).)

Vega sounds like it would have a nice niche in network processing. Shame it didn't find a big enough market. It was pretty interesting from what I read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These slides are great! "Standing on the shoulders of giants..." If time-to- market is important, JVM is the way to go... Manually managed memory is for low-level/OS software, GC is for the rest (apps)... with some exceptions...

</comment><comment><USER25> (2011)

Good slides anyway. Anyone know of a recording of the corresponding talk?

<comment><USER26> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL2D3qzHtqY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL2D3qzHtqY)

<comment><USER25> Thanks! Guess I should have searched on youtube for the title - I searched on google for the conference mentioned in the slides and didn't find it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm curious about going above 32GB of heap size, heard that compressed pointers kill performance?

<comment><USER28> Going above 32G doesn't kill performance per se, it just means that there is not point in using heap sizes between 32G and 48G due to the larger pointers. If you go above that, it's all good again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's another talk that you might want to watch if you liked these slides:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzzABBxo44g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzzABBxo44g) Bits of advice for VM writers.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is this assertion really true?

 _Class files are a lousy way to describe programs_

Class files seem alright to me

</comment><comment><USER31> The JVM's memory model was something amazing when I first encountered it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you pas for this link (via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12025929) )

</comment><comment><USER32> What does this mean?

      Large chunks of code are fragile (or very 'fluffy' per line
      of code)

<comment><USER12> It means what it says it means? "fragile" code is code that can't be touched because touching it causes it to "break" \- exhibit bugs that can't easily be fixed. "fluffy" code is bulky code: code that says in 1000 lines what could better be said in 10 lines. Cliff

<comment><USER14> What's your view on Graal? Is that making headway on de-fluffing and robustifying the code or does this not really tackle the issues you had in mind?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Relevant:

JavaCPP, the glue code that acts as a bridge to C++/C

[https://github.com/bytedeco/javacpp](https://github.com/bytedeco/javacpp)

JavaCPP's creator works with Skymind, and we use it for our open-source deep learning framework, Deeplearning4j

[https://github.com/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j/](https://github.com/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j/)

We're push the limits of the JVM (and we love Cliff's work!).

<comment><USER34> JavaCPP does not compile Java bytecode to C++. It is a Java to C/C++ bridge ala JNA, just better. Major difference.</comment></comment>