Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/12/275896094/scientists-say-their-giant-laser-has-produced-nuclear-fusion <comment><USER2> Here's the paper.

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13008.html)

They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, _nature_ -ally.

The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289)

[WaPo] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/fusion...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/fusion-energy-milestone-reported-by-california- scientists/2014/02/12/f511ed18-936b-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html)

The "1%" energy efficiency figure [a] is misleading: 14 kJ is about 1% of 1.5 MJ of ultraviolet light hitting the fuel capsule. But creating that UV pulse consumed 3 MJ of infrared light, which in turn took 400 MJ from the flash bulbs driving the IR laser. So the system efficiency is more like 0.003% (and throwing in hypothetical turbines to generate electricity, 0.001%).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#NIF...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#NIF_and_ICF)

[a] I'm referring to this: _" while more energy came from fusion than went into the hydrogen fuel, only about 1 percent of the laser's energy ever reached the fuel."_

(update: from yosyp's link, the fusion figures were 14.4 kJ, and 17.3 kJ, on two different runs:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227950)

<comment><USER3> I'm on campus right now and can download the PDF. I'd upload it, but I don't want to pull an Aaron Swartz. <_<

EDIT: Okay here, but I have limited bandwidth so get it while you can: [https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr- BBl82YJD...](https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr- BBl82YJDNH1ah3_4kSPcU)

<comment><USER4> Upvoted for the sentiment. The actual paper marks just another incremental step in a triple marathon that we seem to be running veeeery slowly.

Also, if you do "pull an Aaron Schwartz" please change the ending - we need a very public Supreme court administered kick-in-the-teeth for all the out of control copyright regime and its criminal sentencing farce.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I do not plan to ever go out like he did!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > led NIF's critics to label the facility an enormous waste of taxpayer > dollars

> government shifted NIF away from its fusion goals to focus on its other > mission: _simulating the conditions inside nuclear weapons_

I think right there lies the problem with our world. People take up more issue with a multi-billion dollar research facility for science than one for military applications. If we spent a small fraction of the world's military spending on these big, as Google likes to put it, moonshot projects we could probably solve some really fundamental world problems (i.e. energy, climate change) in the near future vs. waiting many, many decades (if not centuries).

<comment><USER6> The cost of the B-2 Bomber program has cost as much as ~5 Large Hadron Colliders.

B-2 bomber program cost 44.75 billion[1] LHC cost ~7.5 Billion Euro ~9billion USD.[2]

[1] [http://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97181.htm](http://www.fas.org/man/gao/nsiad97181.htm)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost)

<comment><USER5> The B-2 Bomber is child's play compared to the F-35's 1 Trillion USD program [1], but the comparison to the LHC's pricetag really puts things in prespective.

1: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-lockheed- fighte...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-lockheed-fighter- idUSBRE82S03L20120329)

<comment><USER7> Or even better _failed_ military projects, such as the $25+ billion spent on a spy satellite project before it was killed in 2002.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reconnaissance_Office#Future_Imagery_Architecture)

<comment><USER8> The F-35 is not exactly a resounding success: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-22/flawed-f-35-fighter...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-22/flawed-f-35-fighter- too-big-to-kill-as-lockheed-hooks-45-states.html)

<comment><USER9> It _must_ be a resounding success - the UK is about to commit to buying some - like we committed to buying Skybolt and the F-111 (cancelling the awesome home grown TSR 2 in the process):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAC_TSR-2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk This sentiment is interesting "Over the past few years, NIF has been getting a fat 'F.'" Perhaps now that 'grade' will change.

Actually, I think framing it as a grade is beyond silly; it is irresponsible. Giving a letter grade to long-term scientific project makes little sense. It is not a one-shot thing with a predefined notion of correctness. What can we compare such a grade to?

Instead, we should be asking what we've learned and how the project has advanced science.

<comment><USER10> That's not enough. Learning what doesn't work is sort of useful, but only if it ever leads to something that DOES work. There's an infinite supply of dead ends out there. You need a higher bar than 'learned something' if that something is a negative.

<comment> dj-wonk It depends what question you are asking. If the question is "should we fund projects even if we don't know if or when they will have demonstrable results?" then I would argue that, yes, some portion of research should go towards that.

How long is "long enough" to deem that a line of experimentation "didn't work out?" There is no period long enough. Sometimes a negative result is quite useful down the road. Some research just comes together when the right things are learned and tried. So any notion of a "dead end" is really just a tentative assessment, frozen in time.

<comment><USER11> Without harsh assessments, a massive project will eventually dedicate some of its resources into self-perpetuation, that is justifying its existence rather than producing results.

<comment><USER12> It's a risk we need to take (or mitigate) if we want to have a steady flow of new breakthroughs. Science, just as programming or any other creative discipline, is best done when you have more money than you need and nobody is looking at your hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"?

After decades of work they are orders of magnitude away from break-even. Makes me wonder if the goal is actually break-even and/or power generation. Not really; but it's a revealing question.

I'm no great fan of the budgets these huge projects pull down; I think the bang-for-the-buck is greater elsewhere. But modelling nuclear weapons is an even greater waste of time. It's all kind of a sad epigraph about national science and technology initiatives.

Assuming the modest proposition that fusion energy is possible, why not make fusion energy a 'man on the moon' kind of national goal? It's hardly in doubt that we need a large source of clean energy. Is it a failure of imagination? Is it a failure of the political system - Can't get Bubba to vote for no fusion thing. Is the status quo energy system resistant to change? Whatever, the NIF thing just makes me depressed.

<comment><USER14> > This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they > put in with the laser"?

It's not newsworthy, but most reporters are not educated enough to tell the difference between a real breakthrough and a bogus press release.

<comment><USER15> It is newsworthy. We generated fusion be shining light at molecules, which never has been done before. Aside from that, if you read the article you became slightly more science literate.

<comment><USER16> Fusion with laser has been done before, by the same team. The difference is that they improve the experiment and this time they get ~50% more energy. Or if you evaluate it in other words, the efficiency improve from ~0.6% to 1%, or less depending on what do you define by input energy. More details in other comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227620)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" Strictly speaking, while more energy came from fusion than went into the hydrogen fuel, only about 1 percent of the laser's energy ever reached the fuel. Useful levels of fusion are still a long way off."_

The rest was lost to energy conversion losses. Yeah, not the best breakthrough I've heard today. Their best breakthrough was this CAD-flythrough video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sp1sDpn_M0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sp1sDpn_M0)

<comment><USER18> Considering that they previously had to use way more energy than they got out: This is pretty awesome.

<comment><USER19> Absolutely! It's one step closer to sustainable and exploitable Q+ nuclear fusion and to DEMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It was always my understanding that achieving nuclear fusion wasn't the problem. You can do that with a tabletop device like a Farnsworth Fusor. The hard part is getting more energy out of it than you put in.

</comment><comment><USER21> Wasn't this milestone reached sometime late last year? I remember writing about it: [http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2013/10/08/fusion...](http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2013/10/08/fusion- milestone-reached-many-more-to-go/)

<comment><USER22> lessee: refinedgeek, 10/8/2013: "However NIF has announced today that, for the first time ever for any fusion experiment, their reaction released more energy than what was pumped into it;" where there's a link to: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-24429621](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24429621)

which says (10/7/2013) "The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world."

meanwhile NPR on 2/12/2014 says: "Omar Hurricane, a researcher at, says that for the first time, they've produced significant amounts of fusion by zapping a target with their laser. "We've gotten more energy out of the fusion fuel than we put into the fusion fuel," he says."

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Hurricane says no one knows for sure whether NIF can really reach the point of ignition. "It's not up to me; it's up to Mother Nature," he says. "But we're certainly going to try."_

</comment><comment><USER24> Explained on reddit very well: [http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1xq78u/scientists_h...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1xq78u/scientists_have_created_nuclear_fusion/cfdmt5k)

</comment><comment><USER25> One of the proposed drives for the Daedalus starship design involved laser fusion. The pellet would detonate and would push against a magnetic nozzle to produce thrust, like the Orion nuclear craft, but more efficient. Also, the expanding magnetic fields could cause induced currents in networks of wires designed to capture energy, powering the ship and the next detonation.

</comment><comment><USER26> Like Thorium this does not prove that it will ever be commercially viable source of energy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Link to LLNL release: [https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2014/Feb/NR-14-02-06....](https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2014/Feb/NR-14-02-06.html#.Uvwt3EJdWio)

</comment><comment><USER28> > Omar Hurricane, a researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

That is one awesome name.

</comment><comment> sTevo-In-VA Sounds like a 'needs more funding' article to me.

<comment><USER29> I think they deserve it

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Every time the NIF PR folks make a new overindulgent claim, the press always falls for it, and I don't know why.

Every. Fucking. Time.

</comment><comment><USER31> Anybody else excited that one of the guys working on fusion power is named "Mr. Hurricane?"

<comment><USER32> I thought it was kind of hard to take the article seriously after that. I know it's the guy's real name, so I feel bad about this (as bad as I can feel for someone with an awesome name!), but it doesn't change that it sounds like something from a comic book. A fusion scientist named Omar Hurricane? Come on! Next thing we hear is there's been a horrible lab accident involving high powered lasers and lead scientist Omar Hurricane has died. Only he hasn't really, he escaped death and and went into hiding, avoiding public shame while also training to use his new found weather controlling laser eyes. But for good or for evil? Is Mr. Hurricane a villain or a hero? Buy the next issue to find out!

<comment><USER33> Umm... that's Doctor Hurricane.

He didn't spend all that time in Evil Physicist School to be called Mister, thank you very much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Bottom line: It's not self-sustaining fusion. Still long long away from that milestone.

</comment><comment><USER35> Government funded science is winding up behind a private paywall?

</comment><comment><USER36> For less than a billionth of a second. Please.. It could easily be measurement error they are using as a last ditch effort to continue funding.

</comment><comment><USER37> just have a fat person sit on it

</comment><comment><USER38> After the Fleischmann–Pons Cold fusion debacle of the late 1980's at least journalists are asking the right questions.

did you get more energy out than you put in?

Fusion is hard.

</comment><comment><USER39> Oh please. That whole "fusion" thing from that facility is a trick to get taxpayers to fund more nuclear weapon research.

We should have finished this instead, what a waste:

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

Take a guess why congress only funded the one useful for weapons.

<comment><USER40> Given that hydrogen bombs are fusion bombs such a claim can be leveled at all fusion research. Maybe nuclear weapons research is the way they get the US government to shell out for fusion research, like the optics researchers did with SDI.

<comment><USER9> Actually, most of the energy in most H-bomb designs actually comes from fission - but the neutrons that cause this fission come from the fusion of the secondary - so fusion is the key component of the whole thing working.

A notable exception to this was the Soviet Tsar Bomba which used non- fissioning tampers in its multiple tertiary (and probably its single secondary) stages - resulting in an explosion of over 50Mt where 97% came from fusion:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> It all fits into my evil plan! You see, I plan to use this "laser" to turn the moon into a weapon. With this "death star", all the governments of the world will be powerless against me! If they try to stop me, I'll use the "death star" to create "nuclear fusion"! [holds right pinky to the corner of his mouth]

<comment><USER42> Yeah, I was visualizing the scientists making air quotes around "Laser" at the press conference.</comment></comment>


Passive Income is Not an Escape - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2012/06/passive-income-is-not-an-escape/ <comment><USER2> This needs a few more upvotes and comments. This is a gem. I think you could replace Passive Income with anything really. It's anything a person has decided will help them escape their situation and person.</comment>


Taking lessons from the rise and fall of divinity in online games (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/10/mergers--acquisitions/how-we-make-gods <comment><USER2> The article's "Egor" operated in a world with PvP. If the article is implying that you need a government (society, community) to solve these problems, then you must allow PvP as player governments need state sponsored violence in some form. Humanity hasn't figured out any other way (yet). Except many modern games went the other way: revoking PvP and imposing more rules from above.

Early Ultima Online had the makings of the most scalable player-driven/secular solution: karma (reputation). It operated on simple rules to identify good guys and bad guys so it couldn't capture all forms of griefing but it laid out a way for players to identify and police themselves without "Gods" (for the most part). Serial Player Killers (PKs) would earn negative reputation and titles (e.g. Dread Lord). If a PK was spotted near a town, a posse would form to hunt them down.

Later versions of UO rolled back this system, unfortunately, and even introduced servers where PvP was not allowed. This had the unfortunate consequence that PvP server users were seen as asking for a fight.

<comment><USER3> Did the reputation system work? Or more to the point - how easy was it to abuse and in which directions did it break? I gotta think if it worked as well as designed it would have been replicated more widely by now

<comment><USER4> Well, Dread Lord sounds like a cool badge to get.

<comment><USER3> Good motivation to be bad, right? A game needs some villains, so I can see why you'd want to make room for both fame and infamy (as long as weaker players aren't totally at their mercy).

I only played UO for a month or two. The only skill I leveled up significantly was Hiding. I'd go where the loot was, and adventure for a few minutes until the inevitable gang of PKers came wandering through, looking to loot all the players like me. Some players ran, some hid, most died.

If you successfully hid, your player would be invisible to everyone else. So the PKers would walk a pattern through the dungeon, trying to step on every square. As a cowardly hiding level 1 character, I'd wait in hiding as long as I could, then jump out of hiding when I saw a chance to escape. Invariably I'd be spotted. I'd run around a corner, hide again, and the process would restart. I swear I spent more time hiding behind rocks than fighting whatever monsters the game made available to low level players. I could never tell if I was having fun or not!

<comment><USER5> > _A game needs some villains_

Reminds me a little bit of REAMDE.

> _The only skill I leveled up significantly was Hiding. I 'd go where the > loot was, and adventure for a few minutes until the inevitable gang of PKers > came wandering through, looking to loot all the players like me. Some > players ran, some hid, most died._

Really expected your story to be focused on scavenging the loot the PKers left behind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome article, and I highly recommend reading the manifesto [1] mentioned.

Now the article claims that "gods are almost entirely absent from online worlds" – something I severely doubt. Take for instance this message board: is HN completely anarchistic? Not so likely. Is it meritocratically governed? We'd like to think so. Or do "gods" – those who write exist here as well?

When it turns out Spez (Founder and Arch-Wizard of Reddit) has the power to change contents of users' comments on reddit – and exercises this power for his own apparent amusement – is he not a "god in an online world"?

When I read Lorry's manifesto, about the hierarchies of essentially mods on his MUD, its difficult not to think of all the mods, supermods and admins on message boards large and small across the Internet.

[1] [http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html](http://arch- wizard.com/confessions.html)

<comment><USER5> I think the article focused more on RPG-type communities, where direct interaction was possible with more than just words.

WoW certainly has Gods, but they are prevented by certain Covenants from manifesting their powers except in limited cases...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _An admin named Lorry ruled over of the multi-user dungeon MIST in the > mid-80s. "I am the law!" he would announce, killing 1 in 10 players on his > server in a digital plague. His legendary manifesto preached the virtues of > arrogance, ego, and random destruction—and somehow brought his game active > converts._

Anyone happen to have a copy of this manifesto? The page links to a 404, and archive.org only has a copy from 2016 - which is a 404 as well.

<comment><USER7> > An admin named Lorry [] preached the virtues of arrogance, ego, and random > destruction

I was wondering if that was the same "Lorry" as the (in)famous UK ISP "Lorry" and, yep, it's him. Looks like the article just missed the trailing 'l' off the URL (linked via his Wikipedia page) ->

[http://arch-wizard.com/confessions.html](http://arch- wizard.com/confessions.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> " _The man who played under the screen name Egor was a nice guy. His rampages in MUD simple expressed a nascent hacker ethic._ "

I wish to object to these statements.

</comment><comment><USER9> My friend and I were online "gods" back around 2012 when we ran a Minecraft server with a small-but-dedicated player base.

Gods in online communities aren't totally lost, they've just reduced in scope to smaller private servers in more niche games.

<comment><USER5> Godhood just doesn't scale. Even the article notes this:

> _Community users couldn't turn to the wizards; they had grown tired of > settling social arguments in the large world, and forced players to come to > collective agreement before they would mete our justice. Enough players > wanted to "toad" Mr. Bungle—a variation on the Finger of Death—to get the > superpowers who ran the servers' attention, and the sentence was meekly > carried out._

<comment><USER10> However the Godhood system is much more educational than programmatically enforcing rules (PK/PvP zones or ToS and ban threars).

I have two examples in mind:

Riot implemented a player tribunal in League Of Legends. Players would examine chat logs to judge verbal abuse and misconduct cases. Eventually a Riot employee would decide on the punishment (warning or temporary or permanent ban). I don't know if this system is still in place, but at the time they reported good results and players saw it as an improvement.

A French high-school is using Minetest (a FOSS Minecraft) to run a student- driven server. The "administrator" chose to let the player-students do their own thing with as little intervention as possible. The admin even created a reward system granting privileges (fly, ban) up to full admin powers (that is, a god).

They saw player-students create a laws, then a police and then a tribunal. For sure those kids got a better understanding of the society they live in.

In one case, the admin invited his colleagues to introduce them to the tool/game. Those people were clueless and apparently thought that because they were teachers, they were above the rules. The student-players banned them.

Games being an entertainment-only device is a severe misconception. Online interaction in an MMO or a MOBA is often a form of social training. One role of games is to allow to experiment with dangerous things safely. The pseudonymous online society allows people to test different behaviors on others, and I believe that some of the "toxicity" comes from that.

So Godhood is a way for people to experiment with the exercise of power. And as the article concludes, "it ain't that fun after all".

I believe that if more people could have the chance to come to that conclusion, that being able to do anything is not fun, it would be a significant contribution to humanity I believe. Because it seems to me that too many people are driven by the delusion of wealth and power.

<comment><USER5> This is excellent. Thanks for sharing! It seems like a very close parallel to the adage of "my kids will wait tables for a living at least once", to teach humility, respect and empathy.

I'm super stoked that students ran their own in-game government, where no citizen was above the law. I'm curious what rules the teachers ran afoul of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome article. Can't help but think of South Park's infamous WoW episode.

</comment><comment><USER12> > $14.9 billion in annual revenues, greater than the gross domestic product of > Iceland

Er... this doesn't sound right.

<comment><USER13> Just did a quick google search, the article was written in 2014 so the annual GDP of Iceland leading up to that period were:

$13.3B in 2010

$14.7B in 2011

$14.3B in 2012

$15.6B in 2013

$17.3B in 2014

So presuming the article was written prior to the 2013 GDP figures being released then the statement was indeed correct when made (and may still be barring new information about revenue growth).

<comment><USER14> Those numbers don't come close to matching what I find when I search. For instance: [https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/gdp](https://tradingeconomics.com/ireland/gdp)

<comment><USER15> Iceland not Ireland.

<comment><USER14> Well, crap :) Mea culpa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nautilus uses cookies to manage your digital subscription and show you your reading progress. It's just not the same without them. Please sign in to Nautilus Prime or turn your cookies on to continue reading. Thank you!

<comment><USER17> Amazingly my browser is capable of showing me my reading progress and without sending cookies to anyone.</comment></comment>


Distributed Redis based EventEmitter for NodeJS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arunoda/drev

<comment><AUTHOR> Will you going to play with this?</comment>


Emotional, behavioral and social difficulties among high-IQ children [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/docs/PAID16.pdf <comment><USER4> Summary: negative result.

 _" In conclusion, the data from the EDEN mother-child cohort do not support the hypothesis that 5–6 year-old children with high IQ experience more emotional, behavioral and social difficulties than children with normal IQ. If they do, then these difficulties must be very subtle and therefore went undetected in the present study."_

<comment><USER5> And it is _just_ this 5-6 year groups that has been studied here -- nothing about older children.

<comment><USER6> I guess if they studied the 13-16 band they'd get positive results. Especially those who got special treatment as a child prodigy.

<comment><USER7> In my middle school and high school I don't remember the smart kids being bullied any more than anyone else so I would be interested in a study on that age group. This is purely anecdotal and sample size of one but my experience with a smart kid who got bullied he thought that people bullied him because he was smart but in reality he was condescending and followed too many rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was in elementary school I was singled out as "a genius" because I could add numbers in my head faster than anyone else. I was pretty good at consuming and regurgitating all of the information thrown at us, and I spent a lot of time reading/doing educationally valuable things thanks to my parents (of "ordinary" intelligence, whatever that even means).

Naturally, this went straight to my head, and left me with a lot of latent narcissism around my intelligence.

Around middle school I lost interest in my education and being smart and was no longer the best at school, though I still got A's without much effort. I struggled socially, but I don't think that this was caused by my intelligence; rather an inability to find the right people to do the things I enjoyed with. By the end of high school I was fairly popular, once I started finding those people and others stopped being so socially nepotistic.

By the time I got to college, my smarts were running out and I feel like I've hit an "abstraction ceiling" [0]. Compared to most STEM students towards the "top" of the board, I'm about average or below and very far from "a genius".

It's really difficult for me to continually remind myself of the fact that I was never special, and that there are a lot of people above me who are, because that was such a core part of my identity at a very formative age. That's been the biggest difficulty for me.

[0] - [https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music- premiere...](https://anchoragechambermusicfestival.org/new-music- premieres/douglas-hofstadter/)

<comment><USER6> I had a similar experience. I was raised as a curious child, with encyclopedias and stuff around, my mom says the first thing I ever said was "what's this?". In elementary school my teacher realised my interest in science and specifically physics and astronomy, gave me a comprehensive set of books on various scientific topics, for children, fifty-sixty books. I read them all, and learned a fair bit of stuff about astronomy, electronics, chemistry, and history of science. Add to that a 120-130 IQ test result, my friends called me the "professor", and in third grade my parents and my elementary school theacher decided that it was better to move me to a private school with "better" education. I took tests at some of the most pricy colleges of the country, and was accepted by a very famous school with full scholarship. This school was the fifth most expensive school in my country and a lot of the richest families had their children study there. During 4th grade I went to both my normal school which was public, and to this other school to catch up on English. And in fifth I switched full-time to the private school. I, as a son of a low-income family, in fact was getting on very well with the other kids there, but a couple years later, I was losing my interest in science and school in general, so my exam grades went down and down. On my way to adolescence, I wanted more friends and fun. So at the end in 7th grade I was moved back to a public school, and this was my big disaster, because, raised among the children of the richest and best families of the country, and with minimal exposure to random kids before that (not many kids in my neighbourhood), I couldn't integrate, and this resulted in me a depression and solitude that dured until my 20ies. As a 23-yrs-old guy, I still live the effects of the experience, though I've overcome the depression.

During high school I was obsessed with becoming _normal_ , like _other kids_ , pretended being an _ordinary stupid boy_ , because I was always marginalised as I never experienced the _vulgar street life_ and basically didn't know how to act in such a setting. I don't want to come off as a snob, but truly my social life was limited to my parents, my brother, three-four well-behaved kids from my street and a bunch of Richie Riches until I was about 14, so go figure. I still am a bit the odd kid but as the years went by I learned to embrace my _abnormalities_ as my distinct personal traits and found out that I wasn't all that unique, but I was without contact to people like me. Seems obvious now, but not so much to a depressed adolescent which I was.

So my recomandation to parents of high-IQ kids would be: make them feel that they're smart, but make them know that this is not that big of a deal, and don't treat them specially or move them to weird schools. I've ended up losing all my interest in becoming a scientist and spending my best years in solitude and depression.

<comment><USER9> Though there is nothing I can say to change the tough years you endured, I would however like to say to you that the best years are yet to come. Look ahead my friend. There are many years ahead of you.

Rationally, I concede that, in theory, there's a possibility that they may be terrible but you have to concede that given your current levels of self- awareness and your ability to introspect, you have a lot of agency and things may turn out to be much better than those unpleasant years.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish you good luck.

<comment><USER6> This is what I love about internet: when you honestly open your heart even a little bit, you get to read nice and cozy responses like yours. Thanks a lot for the kind words.

I'm certainly way more positive nowadays. Over the years I've accepted myself as I am and have seen that once I am more poised and confident and _love myself_ , I become more and more accepted and liked by others. And when one's nonchalant before the _ephemeral_ stuff, he's more easily content. After adopting these ideas I've begun enjoying life in the last three-four years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't be surprised if the same group of kids in the study end up being the trouble makers or socially awkward ones with the beginning of primary school. Learning as a whole, waiting others to catch up and other methods of "modern" education does negative wonders on gifted children.

I have a profoundly gifted child, and witnessed this cycle (normal in preschool, problem child in primary) not only on my child but on many other gifted children. And almost all the parents of gifted children around me tries to find a remedy to boredom in school. School system actually leaves gifted ones behind by forcing them to slow down. The teacher makes a lot of difference but it's not enough if the child is still in the same curriculum.

Families of normal children don't help either. They totally reject the idea that gifted children needs some special attention, thinking that these kids can do well on their own because of stereotypical image of giftedness in society.

Edit: Some terms.

<comment><USER11> Why not move the child up to the grade level to which he/she performs?

They do this at my children's charter school. My son is in 3rd grade doing 4/5th grade math (accelerated charter school) and he has a 7 year old in his class. My son reports that its all good.

I firmly reject forcing a teacher to cater to all the "special flowers" in his/her classroom. Here is the standard for the grade level. If child are above standard, move up... if child are below... move down. If child has a learning disability, here is a specialist or a class with similar children and more teacher aids.

Edit to add: My daughter has several special needs children in her class (1st grade) and all she talks about is how disruptive they are. The teacher places some of them near her because she is well behaved and will help the teacher "police" the disruptive children. She hates it and we have a meeting with Principal about it next week.

I don't care that these children may be the next Einstein's and are disruptive because they may be bored and smart. The fact is they are disrupting EVERYONE in the class. Who should take responsibility for that? I think it is the PARENT.

<comment><USER12> _Why not move the child up to the grade level to which he /she performs?_

Because we need to be socialized by spending time surrounded by kids our own age. Seriously, that's what they said when I was in elementary school. Eventually the administration allowed me to skip one grade -- but only because I was born in February, and thus only barely younger than the youngest kids in my new cohort.

I'm not a pedagogist so I can't comment on the accuracy of the theory in general, but in my case it was absolutely counterproductive; I was socially closer to my intellectual peers than I ever was to my chronological peers, and rather than "socializing" me, keeping me with kids close to my age merely taught me to treat them with contempt.

<comment><USER13> Further, it's single-year cohorts that's the big break from almost all of human history. I'd expect associating with a range of ages to be the right thing for socialization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> IQ has always been a difficult thing for me. I was born into a 3-sigma family to 4-sigma parents. And, on average, we all have lived below average lives.

My parents can barely manage their lives, and I'm the only child (of 4) who was able to finish college. So, I always find the fascination with IQ to be odd.

At 3rd grade, my siblings and I were separated from the rest of the kids and given the gifted label. (Someone once explained that 'gifted' was a cold war program to beat the soviets - idk). We were then given special treatment: small classes, lots of logic puzzles, access to technology and science, lots of field trips etc.

By the end of high school, approximately 25% of my class had already dropped out. But, for some odd reason (probably because obedience - i.e. 'conscientiousness') I succeeded.

Over all of those years, I came to realize that there were kids with high IQ who were smart but even more who were very stupid. Even of the smart ones, many of them seemed to completely lack creativity, intuition, or lateral thinking. And, many were also stricken with major behavioral and learning disabilities.

I realize that there are correlations with IQ to 'success'. But, the IQ club, for me, was really a circle jerk. And, I don't believe that they're somehow more re 'fit'. So, this analysis seems spot on.

Edit: oops, if I had actually read the link, instead of just the headline, I would have seen that it's not 'spot on'. Sorry :-)

<comment><USER15> This. I was in GATE from 4th grade - 8th. Separate classes, separate field trips, produced a daily school news tv show. Most of my gifted classmates became highly involved with drugs in highschool. Few graduated high school, let alone college.

<comment><USER16> I was in a program like this in 5th and 6th grade. I believe I was among the lowest achievers in the class, both by grades and extra curriculars. Of those I still keep in touch with, I believe I'm still among the lowest achievers - <USER2> never finished college, among other things, although I'm certainly doing fine for myself professionally. The class fed to two different high schools so I lost touch with roughly half of my classmates, but as far as I know they all finished high school and all that I know of finished college or university. Just another perspective.

<comment><USER17> I also had a very different experience, was part of various "gifted" programs from 4th grade until I graduated high school. Many of my classmates are doing extremely well (grad school/consulting/tech) - I don't think problems with these programs are intrinsic. My classmates from high school are on average doing better though, I think there might be some survivorship bias going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At age 5-6, kids are just glad to have other kids around.

It's in the older elementary, middle, and high school years that kids start segregating into in- and outgroups and vigorously policing social boundaries.

<comment><USER19> Not all kids. At age 5, I was perfectly happy to sit in a quiet corner with an interesting book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone with high IQ kids should check out the Johns Hopkins CTY program. I felt bored, uncomfortable and out of place pretty much my entire pre-college educational life, with only a small handful of positive experiences, CTY being the best.

<comment><USER21> Can you share more about your positive experiences, especially with CTY?

I hadn't heard of it before now and your anecdote would help shed light on what I'm reading about. I teach and I'm interested in all things learning.

<comment><USER22> Agree with the other commenters. It was fun to live the collegiate life for 3 weeks. Surprisingly, they have strong traditions despite only being in session 6 weeks during the summer.

I went two times. You only took one class for three weeks, but you spent A LOT of time in that class and in study sessions. It actually makes college look pretty lightweight to some extent.

Other than that, there were physical and social activities. It's fun just bonding with some other odd cats in college dorms. At times, I just wanted to hang out with the other kids instead of going to class. It was summer!

I took a cryptology class with a professor who worked at the NSA. We started with the easiest ciphers and progressed through to the German Enigma, which we solved as a final project.

The other class was probability and game theory. It didn't do that great of a job clearly, since I'm still terrible at probability. Sidenote: I confess I don't even really believe in probability as a strategy for making singular decisions. I later learned, thanks to the Internet, that this is a debated philosophical problem :)

Another year, instead of CTY, I did this lighter weight version of it where you take more classes but each is less time-intensive. I remember thinking it was really easy and not very worthwhile academically. The social life was definitely better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The mothers of highly intelligent children where at a much higher risk of postnatal depression.

The sample size was small, but it could indicate that there is a connection in older ages.

I am not sure how much of the measured intelligence in small children is related to their adult intelligence, and how much is variation in development that might even out.

</comment><comment><USER24> "N = 23; Full Scale IQ"

Enough for me to pretty much stop reading right there. Isn't 23 far too small? If there is signal there, you probably need more samples to draw it out.

<comment><USER25> The people who claim that high-IQ types are doomed and will be 'The Outsiders' and will be discriminated against to the point that 90%+ of them will not get appropriate higher education (I won't link to the pseudo-statistics that supposedly 'proves' this) are claiming very large effect sizes (and blaming that for why they need shelter in high-IQ societies).

In this case, such large effects can be rejected pretty soundly; with the sample sizes given, 23 vs 1058, you have 80% power to detect `pwr.t2n.test(n1=1058, n2=23, power=0.80, alternative="greater")` ~> d=0.52 (which is, for example, about half the size of the black-white IQ gap, and considered a 'medium' effect size).

In addition, the longitudinal cohort studies of the gifted like Terman, Hunter, TIP, or SMPY, do not find any signs of severe emotional/behavioral/social difficulties, the genetic correlations ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation#Intelligence)) are all in the wrong direction, adults are more able than kids to self-select into stimulating environments (possibly why heritability of intelligence increases with age), and so on. A new review paper which is relevant: "From Terman to Today: A Century of Findings on Intellectual Precocity" [http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From- Terman-t...](http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/From-Terman-to- Today-A-Century-of-Findings-on-Intellectual-Precocity.pdf) , Lubinski 2016.

From a statistical perspective, this result doesn't tell us much about gifted adults not because the sample size is far too small, but because IQ scores at age 5-6 inherently don't predict adult IQ sufficiently well. This subsample of 23 kids with mean IQ of 134.6, selected because they are past the 130 threshold, are going to regress to the mean as they grow up. With the usual r=0.5 of 5yo/adult scores, their adult mean IQ will be more like 117 - <USER3> is above average but not 'gifted' by anyone's criterion. To try to study gifted adults by starting with them as kids, you would need to start another standard deviation up, around 150 IQ, which would be extremely difficult. (The correlation rapidly increases up to middle school, which is why TIP/SMPY don't suffer from this issue as much: much higher threshold and also much more reliable tests.)

<comment><USER26> I assume you're referencing Grady Towers' essays about high IQ people feeling like 'Outsiders'. His argument, I think, was that high IQ does not inherently doom people to be outsiders/fail to get appropriate education/be unhappy and mal-adjusted/etc., but that high IQ is a potentially alienating trait and that it is the alienation - in those cases where the high IQ person doesn't have enough peers, support, and meaningful challenge - that does the damage.

What do you think of that argument, and do you know of any relevant research on that aspect of the question? It anecdotally resonates with my experience, and seems to be a prominent subsection of the responses in most threads of this type, but I would like to know what formal attempts have been made to measure it, if any exist.

Also, again IIRC, I thought Towers reassessed one of Terman's longitudinal studies and found that there was a correlation between the highest IQ individuals and social/emotional mal-adaption. Do you disagree with Towers' assessment?

<comment><USER25> Many people are alienated and feel unable to make connections to others; I have yet to see any convincing evidence that the high IQ are especially prone to this or have any special characteristics (besides the tendency to congregate in self-pity clubs). Towers might have done such a thing but I doubt any such result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone interested in this subject will probably want to see Grady Tower's essay, "The Outsiders". [http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM](http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM).

My IQ is just on the cusp of the level where these effects become a risk in Grady's view, and I think I did suffer from them rather badly--by the time I got to college I had extreme social anxiety that made me almost non- functional, which lasted through most of my 20's. (And still affects me a little bit now even at age 60!) I think it was rooted in the fact that my relatively high IQ made me interested in things other than what my peers are interested in (science, etc.), and to generally take an unusually cerebral approach to life, so I was different. So I was a bit bullied and isolated, which me feel more different, which made me more self-conscious and therefore less social functional, which made me more bullied and isolated, which made me feel more different, in a spiral that eventually led to deep despair for years and years.

But most high-IQ people don't have those problems. There usually have to be other factors at play than IQ, which are exacerbated by IQ. In my case I think it was because I was also unusually sensitive pretty much from birth (as described by my nursery school teacher in a report I still have!), so I really felt any rejection unusually strongly, and other factors including parents who shared none of my interests, and no siblings until I was already pretty far down the spiral.

Elsewhere in these comments, Johns Hopkins' CTY program is mentioned, where smart kids spend a few years each summer studying and hanging out. Kids who attend it generally love it because they finally get to be with like-minded kids. I feel that if I had had that opportunity it might have broken the spiral. So when I had my own kids I looked for an opportunity like that, and when I came across CTY I made sure my kids had that opportunity. One of them feels like it was the turning point of his life.

</comment><comment><USER28> An anecdote: Our kid is about to be moved to a program that is for kids who have emotional and behavioral issues. He would likely be considered high-IQ (tests in the 99% percentile, reads at level several grades above their own, etc), but has basically been unable to focus and learn in a normal classroom setting.

Last year, when he was 6, he had some issues as well, but was mostly able to stay in the classroom. This year, at age 7, the issues skyrocketed.

I'd be very interested in a study like this conducted on 7-8 year olds, because it wouldn't surprise me if they found some very different results. A 5 year old kid is so much different than a 7 year old.

</comment><comment><USER29> I always felt that the human brain has some kind of maximum capacity and you can trade one skill for another (even across major domains like logic and social skills) and that brain structure / skills are mostly defined by your actions early in life.

Genetics sure play a huge role here and there are countless abnormalities that are known to change the brain and mind, but I think that the development is what defines your strengths and weaknesses.

Unfortunately we can't proof if the brain structure you end up with was mostly caused by your actions, or if your development progressed the way it did because your brain is just built that way.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would be much more interested to see a study of profoundly gifted children, IQ of 150+. My intuition, from interacting with kids in this range in a regular basis, is that the result would be different.</comment>


Why Are Companies Still Building Project Management Software? - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/why-are-companies-still-building-project-management-software.html

<comment><USER2> From the article: "Why on Earth are new startups popping up, all trying to solve problems that were seemingly solved years ago?"

We should ask that question more often and expect a solid, reasonable answer from the responders.</comment>


Gov Calls for Internet Security to Last the Lifetime of a Product - <AUTHOR> https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/03/gov-calls-internet-security-last-lifetime-product.html <comment><USER2> So, how can you do that when the government is also demanding that you keep magic back doors with a master key so that they can unlock anything at any time of their choosing?</comment>


Show HN: CapacitorJS – a webcomponent based client side router - <AUTHOR> https://capacitor.non.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently working on a side project ([https://non.io](https://non.io)) that's webcomponent based, and I really wanted to try and make something production version that operated more like a mobile app - e.g. you send the entire app at once, and the app decides what page to display.

This was the result, and it's pretty quick! Would recommend it for small projects, but as it's webcomponent based browser support isn't fully there yet. If you wanna see how it feels on a larger site, feel free to log in to the dev version I have of my site ([https://non.io](https://non.io) username: firstname.lastname@example.com pass: asdfasdf) and click around.</comment>


What's the Best Way for a Programmer to Learn a New Language? - <AUTHOR> http://www.informit.com/promotions/what-is-the-best-way-for-a-programmer-to-learn-a-new-139481&&WT.mc_id=NewProgrammingLang_InformITFacebook

<comment><USER2> Theres such a difference in learning "a" programming language when you already know one, and learning your first one.</comment>


First Dates and One Night Stands for Co-Founders - <AUTHOR> http://blog.startupsquare.com/customer-development/first-dates-and-one-night-stands-for-co-founders/

<comment><USER2> Open source projects are often dominated by alpha-male chestbeating nerds. Really. Its easier to be a newb in an online game, than to try to contribute to an open-source project. I'm sure open-source selects for something. I'm also sure its nothing I want in a co-founder.

<comment><USER3> lol...I'm trying to imagine an "alpha-male chestbeating nerd" an failing utterly. Serious karma points for anyone who posts a picture.

<comment><USER2> [http://lolabrigada.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/little-big- leagu...](http://lolabrigada.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/little-big-league/)

<comment><USER3> Thank you for giving me nightmares.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Origins of Scala - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/origins_of_scala.html

<comment><USER2> Scala is definitely a _rara avis_ , a serious engineering attempt by a PL academic. This doesn't happen often enough, though the effort involved makes it easy to understand why. Odersky should be applauded for his work, which is a contribution to both academia and industry.

      What we did in Scala was try to be more complete and
      orthogonal.

These are two of the most important contributions of PL academia: orthogonality and completeness. (I would say that soundness is the third.) Separating out designs into their atomic parts paves the way for better implementations _and_ improved programmer understanding.

      I believe one of the things we have to work on is better
      tool support. Right now when you get a type error, we try
      to give you a nice error message. Sometimes it spans
      multiple lines to be able to explain more. We try to do a
      good job, but I think we could do much better if we could
      be more interactive.

Type inference research has spent a lot of time trying to infer types in more complicated settings (GADTs in Haskell, etc.). More time, I think, should be spent on understanding _failure_ to infer types. The Damas-Milner inference algorithm for the Hindley-Milner type system is a good starting point -- few would argue that Ocaml and SML type errors are sufficient!

</comment><comment><USER2> Parts two, three, and four of the interview:

<http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/goals_of_scala.html>

[http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/scalas_type_system....](http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/scalas_type_system.html)

[http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/pattern_matching.ht...](http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/pattern_matching.html)

Edited: to fix hyperlinks.</comment>


PDFKit, a powerful PDF generation library for Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://devongovett.github.com/pdfkit/

<comment><AUTHOR> Code here: <https://github.com/devongovett/pdfkit>

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm affraid the name collision with the Apple and GNUStep PDF Kits will be problematic for the search engine visibility of your project.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't naming a library "*Kit" usually used for Obj-C libraries?

<comment><AUTHOR> Meh, I couldn't think of a good name. Straight up 'pdf' was taken in npm...

<comment><USER4> Too late to switch to PDiddy-F?

<comment><AUTHOR> lol!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: BestChoice – Phone-chooser that even your grandma can use - <AUTHOR> https://bestchoice.io/ <comment><USER2> My grandma (age 80++) wants:

* A flip phone:

\- People that are no longer very dexterous have a hard time with touch screen phones

\- It's a phone - she will only be using it as a phone; all the touch screen features are just confusing

* An "SOS" button that texts / dials a list of family numbers for help if she has an emergency that doesn't warrant calling 911. Having dedicated memory dial keys is a passable compromise.

I ended up buying a Voca V530. I bought it just last week, so it is too soon to call it an unqualified success, but it looks like it will do the job we want it to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right ! I didn't include Flip Phones because they lack diversity and are pretty inexpensive. And people that buy flip phones usually don't search on the Internet websites like mine.

<comment><USER3> No, but people like that frequently depend on people like us who might visit such a site, and so therefore there is a big "friends and family" potential market that you are missing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Choosing a phone has become too complicated in 2018, so I wanted to create something simple and objective to find the right device. No marketing gimmicks nor biased reviews. Just features and benchmarks, for real people.

Hope you'll enjoy it, would love your thoughts!

Here's the HN thread that gave me the idea : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14561498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14561498)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a very minor point, but I just happened to be checking your site on a laptop with a 1366x768 screen. At this resolution, the "easy to use" button actually doesn't display the word "use" [0].

In the materialize.css file you're using, the _xl_ breakpoint for the grid system begins at _min-width: 1201px_ , and there doesn't seem to be a consideration for higher resolutions than that.

If you wanted to fix this, since 1366x768 is a fairly common resolution on things like Chromebooks and older laptops (i.e. the computers your target market is somewhat likely to be using) you could just remove the _xl2_ CSS classes from the divs containing each of the buttons. This would display the buttons in three columns even on higher resolutions, enabling users to see the full button text.

That might look pretty mad on bigger screens though; you could also change "easy to use" to "simple" and that would probably also solve the problem — but that'd be cheating.

Personally, I'd add in my own _xxl_ media query for higher resolution screens. Working with materialize.css's existing media queries, it would look something like this [1].

After adding that media query to the CSS file (after the others or it won't work), I'd then change the _xl2_ CSS classes to _xxl2_ , leaving _m4_ , so that it would display the buttons in three columns unless a high enough resolution is used that can display all the button text in six columns.

(Obviously, you could also use flexbox and it would solve the aforementioned issue as well, but I guess if there's a demographic that is likely to be using a browser that doesn't support flexbox, it's the elderly.)

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

[1]: [https://paste.sh/Axgmkd20#Q8zs4FfhQ_pbxrAzfUfSK9h8](https://paste.sh/Axgmkd20#Q8zs4FfhQ_pbxrAzfUfSK9h8)

\</comment><comment>-

Besides that, cool site. I have a question though: are you adding each device manually to your own database, or will you be getting the data from somewhere in the future?

I ask because I find it difficult to believe that I cannot purchase an iPhone SE in the UK, for instance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the code ! I'm still new to Web Design, it's a big mistake for a lot of users indeed.

I'm getting the data legally from fonoapi.freshpixl.com , but the Speed and Camera Scores are calculated with some Python wizardry. There's still a few prices missing, I'm adding the iPhone SE UK right now !

<comment><USER4> No problem, it's a cool project and I wish you the best of luck going forward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks very good. Things I noticed based on "even your granma can use it" (i'm using it on an iphone):

-there is a white "phones" word overlapped to everything on the top of the page, it should be fixed

-it's already been said inthink but long labels that don't fit in buttons are not displayed or only partially displayed

-even i don't get the logic of the first 4 buttons, i know my grandma would not find it intuitive: why the first 3 can be on simultaneously, but "best price" switches everything off? What's the deal there?

-I tried the drag price range thingie expecting it to be bad on a phone, and i was truly amazed by how smooth it is and the range->a to b range->single price transition. This being said, there is no reason why when a single price is selected, you are not able to move it around. You should check it up.. But you almost did it xD

Hope i'm helping

</comment><comment><USER6> A very important thing you forgot and that a lot of people tend to not think about until it bites them in the ass are the available bands. Some of those Xiaomi phones for instance are amazing and cheap and intuitive, but that's not going to help you if it only works with a small subset of the bands used in your country and therefore you get a garbage signal everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think speed and camera should be more intuitive. Speed doesn't actually make much sense, it could be divided into classes like social media, gaming etc. And what about phones not rated by Dxomark (assuming you have used their scores). Also, do you have your own rating framework for ease-of-use?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, it's possible to distinguish media and gaming performance (ie with basemark OS and basemark X) but I want to keep things simple for the average user.

And yes I've extrapolated the camera Scores with my own rating framework based in ISO, exposure, noise, etc. All processing is done in Python!

<comment><USER3> If you're going to use speed as a distinguishing factor, you should be more clear on the site as to where that value is coming from. And you should be willing to expose the underlying data for those of us who might care.

Which benchmark(s) you use to judge the relative speed of one device against another one is actually quite important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this open source? I'd be interested in seeing the implementation.

Other information to surface could include whether the device is on the latest OS, whether it gets timely updates, and whether it's available unlocked or only from carriers.

Do you have Sony devices in there?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not Open Source yet, the codebase is still too messy. Good old PHP/SQL/Jquery Stack and parsing is done in Python.

Thanks for the tips, I'm working on career selection features! Also the OS and updates are mentioned in the descriptions. You can even select brands with good Update support in the "More Features" menu.

There are a few Sony devices, you can select them in >more features>Brands>Sony. I'm still adding more devices !

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome interface

I wish we could have something like this for laptops.

Maybe when you cleanup the code and open source it, someone (maybe I) could clone it and implement one for laptops

<comment><AUTHOR> That'd be incredibly useful.

Even though it's hard to repertory all variations of each laptop (10 on average), it's the next item on my todo-list. Thanks for the proposition !

<comment><USER6> You might want to get in touch with notebookcheck.net, they have the exact data you would need for that. I don't think they'll give it to you, but who knows, if you impress them enough with the phone chooser you might be able to strike a collaboration.

<comment><USER9> That could potentially end up with a very useful product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome website! I love it. My girlfriend loves. Should get a YouTube guy to review it for you. Get some good traffic. Keep up on it and always improve!

<comment><USER10> A cool feature would be compare. Just make sure the ux is simple. Always hate pain in the ass compare features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about voice quality? It's a phone!!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Voice quality is pretty much always the same on gsm networks.. I did not find any metrics on the subject.

<comment><USER3> Depends on the codecs that are used, and the bands available. Some devices might not have more recent codecs, and therefore might sound worse.

Other devices might have newer "HD voice" codecs available, and could sound totally different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please add the OnePlus brand :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You can select it in More features>Brands>OnePlus ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> no moto g?

<comment><AUTHOR> Phones appear according to availability in your country, I'm adding more links!</comment></comment>


Apple wins EU-wide ban on Galaxy Tab 7.7; Tab 10.1N not covered - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/apple-wins-eu-wide-ban-on-galaxy-tab-7-7-tab-10-1n-not-covered/

<comment><USER2> I await the apologetics from the "It's an extremely narrow design patent" camp who claimed that this would never apply to a device even slightly different, physically, from an iPad. Sigh.

Obviously the action itself isn't a big deal in isolation, being against a device that isn't selling much anyway. But it's time to admit to ourselves that Apple is simply a bad actor, and it's only a matter of time before they hurt something for real.

<comment><USER3> > a device that isn't selling much anyway.

In EU, Samsung Galaxy Tabs (either 10 or 7) are the only non-iPad tablets I've seen in the hands of not technical people. Most phone carriers offer cheaper mobile data plans bundled with a Galaxy Tab. I have no data at hand, but I'm pretty sure that they are the only non-Apple tablets with a 2-digit percentage of the current EU market.

They are also much appreciated by people that call them "iPads", the kind of people who mostly use the Facebook app, the camera app and, seldom, the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am really getting seriously disappointed in Apple. I don't care at all about their excuse that 'we are just buying patents to fight patent trolls' anymore. Obviously, they are patent trolls themselves and should be treated as just that.

Pathetic of a close to trillion dollar company to stave off competition by throwing lawyers and BS patents around.

<comment><USER5> I'm not a fan of how Apple is going about this, but.

To me, a patent troll is a company that holds a patent and wields it aggressively _without producing anything_ , and that's the way I've generally seen the term used. Clearly Apple doesn't fit this definition, as they are both making and selling tons of devices that use these patents.

In fact, there's nothing you can really say that indicates Apple is misusing patents. They are, unfortunately, using patents exactly the way patents are meant to be used. Patents are _meant_ to stifle innovation in a direction that's already been taken. It's their purpose: exclusive rights for however many years in exchange for public disclosure. The only critique that I think can be made of Apple's use of patents at this point is that they're using them at all (which is a perfectly valid critique, mind you).

<comment><USER6> The issue is, you should never be granted obvious patents like "swipe to unlock".

Mobile phones / tablets are fairly trivial by now. Computer, touchscreen, software. It's not rocket science. Nothing there should really be patentable IMHO.

<comment><USER7> The thing is that it just isn't that obvious. Not one cell before Apple's iPhone had swipe to unlock. Not one cell had touchscreen that works without stylus.

Same thing with tablets. Sure, Microsoft started making them long time ago but using styluses on the same GUI was not that practical. That's why they never entered mainstream market. iPhones and then iPads brought new GUI for whom you didn't have to use styluses and you didn't have tiny unclickable icons. Everything is made for touching from the ground up.

Sorry for going off topic.

<comment><USER8>
      Not one cell had touchscreen that works without stylus.

Incorrect: LG Prada.

For me, pointing to one or two features of the iPhone as proof of it being innovative misses the target. I regard Apple products as innovative and successful principally because they are consistently usable, designed well, marketed well and technically innovative at the same time. Apple's competitors rarely hit all those targets in a given product.

(Likewise, sorry for off-topicness!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is comparison between original (banned) 10.1 and new 10.1N model that court deemed sufficiently different from iPad - <http://i.imgur.com/NhlGO.jpg> (top one is 10.1N).

<comment><USER10> I'm positively surprised that such slight change is OK. If this is how things work I don't really have problem with bogus apple design patents. Such us for Air that could hurt one or two manufacturers but not others. And even those two can avoid it with just a few cosmetic changes (so not a huge economic impact).

People were afraid that it's much more dangerous.

<comment><USER2> It got the device _banned from the market_ , how is that not "dangerous". It's not like you can ask the court ahead of time. Manufacturers are forced to go to production, enter the market and roll the dice awaiting lawsuits. You think Apple would have just said "gray is OK" if you asked them ahead of time? ( _edit: and just to point out the inanity, I got the distinction wrong . Gray is not OK, the lighter one is the infringing model. I guess it's something else._ )

And note that it's not just any "slight change" that works. Shrinking it by 30% did not, for example.

<comment><USER11> … or maybe they could come up with their own designs instead of copying what others are already doing? If their design is so like another company's design that they're not 100% sure that it's allowed, that's a sign that maybe a tweak or two is in order.

<comment><USER12> There isn't really much you can do with a tablet design. There isn't room for variety. Sharp edges are uncomfortable, so you round them. You need to hold the thing, so you need a frame. The screens come rectangular from the factory, so you make it rectangular. Apple's design patent seems to cover any reasonably comfortable tablet designs.

Perhaps, just to differentiate, for the next iteration they could go with a sea urchin inspired design and put spikes all over the back. I'm sure that would make a great tablet. Or they could use a design that makes sense, and risk getting sued again.

If changing the size dramatically, using a different aspect ratio, and having different styling isn't enough, what is?

<comment><USER13> >> There isn't really much you can do with a tablet design. There isn't room for variety.

Edit below: clarifying that the _whole product_ is the consideration. Also, they all look like a blackberry a few miles away; the point is what do they look like to the user.

So you'd have trouble distinguishing among the Microsoft Surface Tablet, the Kindle Fire, and the iPad? How about when they are on?

<comment><USER12> At what distance? From across the room, they'd all look pretty much the same to me, outside of size:

[http://geekntech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Surface- tabl...](http://geekntech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Surface-tablet-the- verge.jpeg)

[http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/08/galaxy...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/08/galaxy- tab-7.7-product-image-lead-1314834951.jpg)

[http://www.eweek.com/images/stories/slideshows/ipad_security...](http://www.eweek.com/images/stories/slideshows/ipad_security_enterprise/ipad02.jpg)

[http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4ec2a063eab8eae47e0...](http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4ec2a063eab8eae47e000033/kindle- fire-app-library.jpg)

<comment><USER13> If one of those had a keyboard, that might help it stand out...

<comment><USER12> Ah. Gotcha. Here's an iPad with a keyboard. [http://www.warepin.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/ipad-keybo...](http://www.warepin.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/04/ipad-keyboard-case.jpg)

Ok, I'm not entirely serious with that. The thing is that the keyboard is an accessory for the surface, and the styling of all the tablets is quite similar. (I was actually surprised by how similar when I looked up the images). If shipping an accessory is enough to prevent design patent infringement...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am the only one that is really tired of all those silly disputes between apple and samsung? I think apple is being so silly in all these that to protest I purchased an samsung tablet.

<comment><USER4> I am just 'done' with Apple. Getting the Google Nexus and retiring my iPad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what the Apple execs are thinking.

1) "Steve wanted to nuke them, this is what he wanted! LETS KEEP DOING IT FOR STEVE!"

2) "Damn, we don't know whether we should release product A or product B. Neither of them are really polished and nobody cares anymore now that Steve is gone. Let's go to plan C which always works: sue the competition!"

Either way, I fear Apple is going to end up in the same state as they ended up without Steve last time.

</comment><comment><USER16> News flash from 2022:

"Cauliflower wins APAC-wide ban on Broccoli; Broccolini not covered"

</comment><comment><USER17> This makes Apple look rather pathetic. Can't they just spend the energy to improve the product? The correct response to competition is to be better, not appeal to the law to stifle competition. I think the term here is "patent weasel".

</comment><comment><USER18> And the patent abuse continues...

</comment><comment><USER19> That sucks. I have been a long time Apple supporter and I am disappointed in them. That said, Samsung should play the game and make their stuff look different.

I just got a Samsung Galaxy S III phone: fantastic device (1280 x 720 pixel screen). Really awesome :-) I find myself using it instead of my iPad (although the iPad is great for web browsing and Netflix).

</comment><comment><USER20> I suppose the following deserves downvotes in the HN context, but man, I'm just fucking tired of all this BS.

Patents are granted, ultimately, by "the people" (U.S. context, at least) to promote productive activity.

At this point, "the people" should rise up and tell this army of lawyers and designers that, ok, you can't have your patents anymore. (Now go do something useful.)

Reality is that property, including IP, is a social contract, not some divine absolute.

\--

Star Trek... (whatever number the movies are up to).

The team comes back from the future, to invalidate countless destructive patents by presenting a "pad" mockup from the set of "The Next Generation".

Counter-point: They are promptly stripped of their "future-ware" by lawyers (and the DOJ, of course, who does the actual stripping in full battle armor) who point out that there's now a patent on "pants having two legs " that will most certainly be extended ad infinitum into their timeframe.

Side plot: What happened to the whales' residuals?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best website you cannot find on Google? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> This question is ambiguous and poorly stated. What does "best" mean? What websites are not indexed by Google?</comment>


Is dark matter made of primordial black holes? - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2018-04-dark-primordial-black-holes.html <comment><USER3> Arxiv link: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05032](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05032)

I recently went to a talk from the author of [https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06576](https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.06576), which claims that PBH's can't make up the majority of the dark matter because the merger rate would be much higher than what LIGO observes.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Primordial Black Holes idea is "probably not totally dead." [0]

Try these lectures on for size:

[0]: linked directly to primordial black holes

[https://youtu.be/vPHfvMQd73A?t=31m39s](https://youtu.be/vPHfvMQd73A?t=31m39s)

[1]: previous lecture

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

</comment><comment><USER5> How would this work? What does it mean to be "made of" a black hole

<comment><USER6> "Dark matter" is just a word for the missing mass we can detect gravitationally, but can't otherwise detect. We know there's something out there from it's effects on other normal matter. But it doesn't seem to have any other effect apart from gravitation.

What the authors are suggesting is that this "dark matter" effect is actually the result of many small black holes orbiting galaxies. That they aren't exotic particles, just something we already know about in an unexpected place.

<comment><USER7> That's such a good explanation! I chose the spreadsheet life instead of the space life, but I especially love difficult ideas explained simply!

Is the unexpected element of this that it is weird to think that very small black holes interact with each other? What does it mean that they don't collapse into each other and rather stay individual?

<comment><USER6> I'm not certain- I too chose the spreadsheet life, but am a space nerd. Someone correct me where I'm wrong!

I think it has to do with the number of black holes that would be required, the rate that black holes evaporate naturally(?), and our current best theories of the history and mechanisms of the universe. Like maybe in a universe where all these black holes form, we wouldn't expect to see [something we definitely do see]. So you need to adjust more variables to make that fit the puzzle, but now more things we do see don't make sense.

It's a bit like a big Sudoku, but with way more constraints!

<comment><USER8> Black holes of any realistic size evaporate _very_ slowly, and will be absorbing more mass than they will be radiating for most of the lifetime of the universe.

You're talking billions of billions of billions of years before most of them even start shrinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That would be fairly mind boggling - > 84% of the matter in the universe is black holes - we'd be living in a universe that's mostly black holes.

<comment><USER10> But wouldnt be all visible light bend and wobble like looking through a pond of glass pearls when looking at the stars?

<comment><USER11> I doubt we could detect the lensing of these black holes so close to the galaxies they orbit. I think we would, perhaps, eventually see something falling into one.

edit: someone pointed out the gas in the galactic halo is not dense enough to form accretion disks around PHBs, so, no. We wouldn't see anything glowing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't we expect to see a great many black holes interacting with regular matter and so emitting a great deal of radiation?

<comment><USER13> black holes do not emit appreciable amounts of radiation themselves. Their accretion discs do. That in turn requires mass influx large enough to form an accretion disk with enough friction to radiate. The gas in the galactic halo and for that matter even the interstellar gas in the center of the galaxy[0] is just too thin on average to provide that. We only see them when they're draining mass from a binary companion or swallowing a gas cloud.

[0] [https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dozen-new-black-holes- fo...](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/dozen-new-black-holes-found-milky- way-center)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Could my one fudge factor be used to legitimize my other fudge factor?" "Could this legitimize my career as philosopher of fudge factors?" Lots of important questions...

</comment><comment><USER15> What if they are not PBHs but particles produced by evaporated PBHs? Does this make sense at all? I'm not a physicist.

<comment><USER16> Particles like that would be ordinary matter. In the quantities necessary to produce the effects attributed to dark matter, we would be able to detect them easily.

Even if they remained "dark" \- not emitting any light of their own - <USER2> would block or otherwise interfere with the light coming from everything behind them.

The reason PBHs can be a dark matter candidate is because they can compress enormous amounts of matter into a very small space, and are difficult to detect when they're not interacting with ordinary matter.</comment></comment>


Journey to the Stack - <AUTHOR> http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/journey-to-the-stack/

<comment><USER2> Truly great to see Gustavo back to blogging!</comment>


Scientists Achieve Direct Counterfactual Quantum Communication for First Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-achieved-direct-counterfactual-quantum-communication-for-the-first-time#.WRNM6p-Tnac.facebook <comment><USER2> Can someone ELI5 this?

I don't feel the article did a good job of explaining what they didm</comment>


Longform Podcast #204: Malcolm Gladwell - <AUTHOR> https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-204-malcolm-gladwell <comment><AUTHOR> The actual interview starts two minutes in...</comment>


Cashbleed: Blockstream employees siphoned millions worth of Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://cashbleed.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> One shouldn't take information from random websites as fact, this included.

If it did turn out to be true though, it would explain a lot about the company culture and the antics of their employees.

Only in crypto will you find company executives aggressively trolling large companies in their industry simply for disagreeing with them.

<comment><USER2> I did not see any sources on the page. Also even if it was true, the important bit is whether the BTC price is set below market rates when signing the contract, or if it is just below market rate in hindsight.

E.g. I could imagine signing a contract that promises BTC valued at 10k USD for a certain period, which would allow my employee to buy them now, relatively cheap, and me to get more BTC than I would expect to be able to acquire otherwise.</comment></comment>


Paul Buchheit: Four Reasons Google is still Awesome - <AUTHOR> http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/12/four-reasons-google-is-still-awesome.html <comment><USER2> Great article.

Choosing a place where people appreciate honest criticism works for friendships as well. My biggest criteria for friends is that the person is cool with honesty, including telling them when they're wrong.

Interesting point about how if you never fail, you're too conservative. The same idea applies to poker. Microsoft fails constantly and people accept it, yet every Google failure means they've lost their mojo. No Wave and no Buzz means no GMail.

<comment><USER3> Microsoft fails constantly and people accept it? :) I would argue the exact opposite - Microsoft succeeds consistently in a lot of very measurable ways but isn't given enough credit for it (that a Google/Apple would get for doing the very same thing).

<comment><USER4> Care to list some examples? (Not that I disagree)

<comment><USER5> 1\. Project Natal/Kinect

2\. Surface Table

Both are good innovations, on which media would go over gaga, had they come from Apple/Google.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but both of those are (I believe) technologies developed outside of Microsoft that were then purchased.

While Google and Apple do also purchase technologies, they seem to produce more interesting in-house products than Microsoft. At least in my perception.

I can't recall the last time that Microsoft actually developed internally and rolled out a significant "game changer" device or software.

<comment><USER7> Your perception of Microsoft may be correct, but it alsao applied to the others. Apple didn't invent multi-touch either. Google didn't do Android inhouse it was an acquisition (at least at first).

<comment><USER6> No, but I would credit Apple with "inventing" the iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air. Even though all of those products likely have core pieces that were from acquisitions, it seems like Apple executed the grand vision of bringing it together.

Same thing with Google, though they appear to buy several things that they don't fully roll out (Dodgeball, etc.). Android may have originally been an acquisition, again it feels like Google made it into a finished product far beyond what they acquired.

Microsoft appears to have bought the Kinect technology/product and done little more than change the logo on the device. The surface table also hasn't been productized into anything revolutionary or different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hhmm. You didn't actually mention my first reason (though #3 is sort of related): Google creates more value than it captures. Remember the Web in '98? Remember domain name bidding wars, because typing "www.shopping.com" into the address bar was actually a plausible strategy for attempting to buy something online, because search basically didn't work? Google made search work, which made the Internet work, which changed millions of lives and created many more billions in value than they have ever booked as revenue. Wave was an attempt to fix the way hundreds of millions of people work. They are trying to substantially improve the way we get around the planet. Succeed or fail, Google persistently tries to make the world a better place. How many companies can say that?

</comment><comment><USER9> I think equating Wave to a 'big' risk is a bit much, financially there was no risk. All they lost was face.

Also Chrome and Android are not successes, Google Adwords is a success, MS Office is a success, MS Windows is a success. The key ingredient to a success for a company is some MONEY. Anything else is just showing off.

I'm still very disappointed with the follow through on Wave and Buzz, a bit of PR and a few man years of engineering is pretty minor compared to the profit they make. The 'oh well, it didn't work, we're giving up' attitude Google has been displaying recently is pretty disconcerting.

We may all hate MS, but at least they tend to follow through with some serious chops when the going gets tough (I'm thinking Silverlight rather than Danger).

I'm actually getting a little worried about Google's follow through on certain projects, as an external company I wouldn't be putting any investment in any of their new products given their recent track record.

I'm also not keen on Google 'competing' in the 'oh, we'll make money through search advertising' way they're doing recently. It's stifling innovation in certain markets imo.

Actually, rereading my post, I really don't agree with Paul very much.

On the other hand, I still think they're great, if a worrying monopoly. It could be worse though, Google could be run by Zynga.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome and Android are both a huge success. Google takes a long-term view which doesn't require every product to immediately pay for itself, which is very smart. The long term value of owning these platforms is immense.

Also, your notion that "Wave was not a risk" is similarly mistaken. The opportunity cost of having a large team of smart people working for several years is enormous.

<comment><USER10> If you want to argue that we should take the long view with respect to Chrome and Android making money, then I would counter with needing to take the long view with respect to their being a success as well. The OP was (IMO) correct - a product's success, when done by a private company, is whether or not it improves the company's bottom line. I don't think that that claim can be made about Chrome or Android at the moment. I certainly doubt whether the little money they are currently making out of Android would not be largely blown aware by another allocation of that energy and resources.

That's not to say that in the long term these products don't end up being major successes, but until they start making money, that claim can't be made.

<comment><USER11> You should read some material on microeconomics and about complementary products. That's not arguing, it's how the economy currently works.

         a product's success ...
         is whether or not it improves the company's bottom line

Microsoft controlling the platform through Windows and IExplorer hasn't improved their bottom line?

RedHat paying high wages to highly skilled kernel hackers to work on (get this, open-source software) hasn't improved their bottom line?

         until they start making money, that claim can't be made

Because, you know, Apple and Microsoft installing Bing alternatives (Maps / Search) on their phone operating systems wouldn't affect Google in no way whatsoever.

[http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/jan2010...](http://www.businessweek.com/print/technology/content/jan2010/tc20100119_759795.htm)

I find it quite baffling actually that so many people are criticizing investments made by Google, Apple or Microsoft; These are big companies that grew to unimaginable levels in just a few years (with respect to oil mining which can take a few generations to reach a fraction of that size).

You should really learn from them, because not so many companies can achieve what they did ;-)

<comment><USER10> You're not replying to my point. I didn't say that Android and Chrome wouldn't end up being critical products that add to Google's bottom line. I said that right at the moment, that's not the case, and until it does become the case, you can't claim that they're a success.

It's important to read what is written, not what you think is written ;) (yeah, I find the winky smiley annoying when it's placed after a condescending remark)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not to stir the pot, Paul, but was google the only place where your criticisms were welcomed? What about Facebook?

<comment><USER13> ycombinator?

<comment><AUTHOR> Y Combinator and FriendFeed don't count, naturally. Somehow, they don't go in the "job" category the same way other jobs do.

<comment><USER14> This implicitly means Facebook _does_ count. You don't have to answer this one.

In light of YC's recent tie-up with Facebook, it's good to see that there might very well be a voice of caution within the organization.

<comment><USER15> Note that he said "Google was the only one where me speaking my mind never seemed to cause a problem." So he's not necessarily implying that all criticism is wholly rejected at Facebook, just that his criticism _sometimes_ caused problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Chrome is a risk? I'd say Chrome is a hedge against risk - allowing Apple, MS, Mozilla, etc. to dictate the terms of browser innovation.

<comment><USER17> Developing Chrome is a risk. It's only a hedge against risk if it _works_.

It's a little like if you could buy insurance, but there'd be a 25% chance that you paid for it and it just didn't do anything. The insurance is a hedge against risk, but buying it is (another) risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The thing about taking risks is spot-on. I noticed that where I work, every project is treated as though failure would mean death to the company; there is no agility or experimentation, and projects that should die because they suck last forever because failure is absolutely not an option. If we said, "hey, let's try this out" once in a while, we would have a lot better technology.

</comment><comment><USER19> In retrospect Google is the new type of Einstein and Tesla and it is very exciting to be living right now with all their new pushes in inovation.

Paul, would you mind sharing the title of the new google book?

<comment><USER20> You're kidding me with the analogies. Seriously?

"Google" is not a person/individual. I'd definitely place _why, brad fitzpatrick, and zed shaw as POSSIBLE equals to einstein and tesla, but that would still be a stretch...

<comment><USER21> ""Google" is not a person/individual."

Neither was "Edison".

<comment><USER22> Thomas Edison? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison>

<comment><USER21> From that article:

"Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results."

So, when you read "Edison invented such and such", it really means that the people working under him invented such and such. So, it really is similar to the way "Google" is inventing lots of interesting things. The difference is Larry and Sergey refrain from claiming that they personally invented everything that comes out of Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> BTW, when is Google going to allow third party developers to enhance its core search results via a search API?

Such an API would allow third party developers to add Wolfram Alpha like features among other things right into the core Google search.

<comment><USER24> I think they used to do this - I could swear that I used to have a third-party plugin that I "installed" on my Google account that would show me JavaDocs whenever I Googled a Java class name. It hasn't shown up in about 3 years, though, and I haven't found any trace of it in the code I work with (which should be right around that area of the page...), so maybe it was discontinued.

<comment><USER23> Was there any third party computation/ui?

Such a feature would fit nicely with the app engine to provide third party computation/ui to enhance the core search results.

User feedback would determine which third party code is run by default for various queries/contexts.

Third party developers would make more money when their code is executed more often.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, it was totally third-party, and labeled as such. I have no idea how the technology behind it worked - I was just a user, not a developer.

<comment><USER23> It should not require you to subscribe. User feedback (possibly implicit) should be used to determine what third party code is used for which queries/contexts by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What I think Google could hugely benefit from, is stop hiring too much PHD & engineering-type people. I think they have a cultural problem that has the effect of many consumer products they develop (where the technology is not the only important ingredient) to don't work: you can't rule the "social" world from the nerd-point-of-view, seriously. Get creative/artistic people into the mix, and Google could turn into some magical stuff again.

<comment> mike-cardwell Engineers _are_ creative and artistic people.

<comment><USER25> No... engineers, like any other subset of people selected by profession, are a mix of creative/artistic and non creative/artistic people. And if you hire doing a huge selection pressure based on PHDs, ability to reply to strictly logical problems, and so forth, you are mounting a selective pressure that will get you with an environment where there are high logical skills but possibly deficiencies in other fields.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> #3 is my favorite thing about Google. On some level it makes me feel better about handing over personal data when the company doesn't act asshole-ish.

<comment><USER27> _On some level it makes me feel better about handing over personal data when the company doesn't act asshole-ish._

As well meaning as all of the employees at Google are, and as far as they'll go to do the right thing (far, in my experience), from what I understand of our legal system, it's really the role of government to protect you from corporations mis-purposing your data. The free market isn't meant to be a democratic institution, and while some top executives have a certain talent for aligning stockholders interests with those of their users, the system they operate within simply isn't _designed_ with democratic responsibility in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I suspect risk taking is only encouraged outside their core business.

<comment><USER28> With what justification? Google has made numerous innovations in terms of search. Think Instant, Goggles, and their shiny new (painfully unusable) implementation of Image Search. Plus they've got a bunch of micro-innovations --the AROUND operator, for example, and the reading level filters.

<comment><USER23> As an example of something really risky, see my comment about a search API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I've always been the "tell the truth because it is truth" type and I wish my startup had an advisor like Paul. It would be an invaluable asset to any startup that really cared about making it. I can see why YC was able to attract him.

</comment><comment><USER30> Shouldn't this be titled "Reasons Google is still awesome"?

</comment><comment><USER31> IMHO the main reason Google will remain a force to be reckoned with is that they have 10000 driven and highly skilled individuals on board with the right experience. That trumps all arguments the article provides.

</comment><comment><USER32> One word: _Intrapreneurship_

<comment><USER20> Six words: absorb other startups into your company</comment></comment>


Hack Education and Win $5,000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/virtual-hackathon-reforming-education

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find more details here: [http://lincolnlabs.com/hackathons/virtual.html](http://lincolnlabs.com/hackathons/virtual.html)</comment>


Code turbulence - What you can learn graphing churn vs complexity - <AUTHOR> http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/2011/03/turbulence-measuring-turbulent-nature.html

<comment><USER2> Great stuff! Code churn is an early indicator of defect density ( <http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1062514> ) and rarely gets the attention it deserves. Good use of hashalbum too.

Have you thought about doing coupling as well?</comment>


MK-1 Robotic Arm Capable of Near-Human Dexterity - <AUTHOR> http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/MK-1-Robotic-Arm-Capable-of-Nea

<comment><AUTHOR> Be sure to watch the video for a wealth of interesting engineering detail.

More details at <http://hdtrobotics.com></comment>


7 rules to maximize your creative output - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/01/7-rules-for-maximizing-your-creative-output/ <comment><USER2> Anyone here work better with a lot of background noise (like in a coffee shop)? Personally, I can hardly get anything done when it's noisy.</comment>