Ask HN: What project are you most proud of? - <AUTHOR> Been working on some awesome stuff and wanted to see what everyone else has been a part of... <comment><USER2> Lifetime: Khan Academy ported some code I wrote; it now runs all of their internal user engagement metrics.

Recently: Erin and Thomas are still busy putting the finishing touches on their half of Starfighter, and I'm basically just on client communications duty, so I gave myself a two-day engineering project as time off for good behavior.

Certain events which happen when players play Starfighter games are significant. We want to congratulate players when they happen, ideally in as close to real-time as possible. Also, since "strike when the iron is hot", if that player happens to be a job seeker that would be a really good time to do an introductory phone call if they're willing to do one.

We have heuristics which identify these important events and pipe them into Slack. The plan was originally "If we see one of the notifications, send them a person-to-person email."

But if you're playing Starfighter in your browser, you aren't in your email client, so you might not see the email until e.g. the next day. What we really want is like Facebook messenger, except inside our own application, hooked up to Slack, with the ability to be selective about who it is open to.

Enter Apollo, messenger of the gods:

Front-end: React and SockJS Back-end: SockJS-go, some Go glue code, and NSQ Back-end for Slack: three very trivial endpoints in our main Ruby on Rails application Interface on Slack: two slash commands and one asynchronous incoming webhook

How it looks in practice:

In-app message window: [https://www.evernote.com/l/Aaf2wn2dyxhPDoHAzSYymDcNIasqcmj91...](https://www.evernote.com/l/Aaf2wn2dyxhPDoHAzSYymDcNIasqcmj91McB/image.png)

Slack: [https://www.evernote.com/l/Aadc- vDMIpxNc7z6XZ1_xH1jMSNOVJ-58...](https://www.evernote.com/l/Aadc- vDMIpxNc7z6XZ1_xH1jMSNOVJ-580gB/image.png)

Not bad for two days of work. (Starfighter will likely OSS the only hard part of this, which is the NSQ-to-websocket piece.)

<comment><USER3> Looks really good! Another benefit of this approach is that it will probably be quite obvious to your users that the messages are not canned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just wrote my first golang library: [https://github.com/jcuga/golongpoll](https://github.com/jcuga/golongpoll)

I'm proud of it because its a general purpose library (http longpolling) versus random prototypes that I normally make. Also it has a lot of unit tests, code comments, and a decent README. I can appreciate the amount of work it takes to create a polished library for others to use after making one myself.

</comment><comment><USER5> My work on Disney's movie "Enchanted". Went to so many damn meetings and hardly got to do what I love, but I learned so much about the process and loads of respect for the leads and higher ups. Also lots of people have seen it, as opposed to the huge pile of schlock I've worked on that nobody has seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is really awesome! I am a little jealous that you got to work on that.

<comment><USER5> Thanks yo! Disney is actually a-okay to work for. I've done a few of their shows. So, probably best not to say what I'm working on now then ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Its really not worth mentioning with all these awesome projects in the comments, but i created a Pure CSS slider, which i think was away for me to show people my level in CSS. Plus it got a lot of stars on github haha. [https://github.com/Elitewares/CSS3-Slider](https://github.com/Elitewares/CSS3-Slider)

<comment><USER7> Of course it's worth mentioning :) Even small projects are worth posting, like this recent one by Holman: [https://github.com/tholman/github- corners](https://github.com/tholman/github-corners)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not for anything else, but I'm proud that I have been able to stick through my current project ([http://www.hellobox.co](http://www.hellobox.co)) for more than 2 years. I used to be very distracted with all sorts of ideas and abandoned projects.

<comment><USER9> Cool! Any plans to open-source Hellobox core? Do you have a pricing model already? If I start a community (linked to a custom web domain) and it grows well over time, who owns the content/data in that community? Can Hellobox snatch the community or hold it ransom for a price?

I guess unless these are made clear, potential community builders might have lot of doubts on Hellobox as a platform.

Good work though, the stuff seems pretty neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know it's small and probably not worth mentioning, but I created a bitcoin exchange's api aggregator (my first Node.js app). Basically it attempts to wrap multiple exchange's api's into 1 common library, so you don't need to constantly look up the docs across different companies.

[https://github.com/jxm262/xchange.js](https://github.com/jxm262/xchange.js)

I built another project to analyze prices across the exchanges using the xchange.js library. Surprisingly both have 13 stars on github :) I'm planning to add _alot_ more functionality over the next month or so to both projects.

[https://github.com/jxm262/btc-stats](https://github.com/jxm262/btc-stats)

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are both actually really awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My own project: [http://www.appointmind.com/](http://www.appointmind.com/) Panasonic and Honda among others use it.

For a client I've built and maintain part of the backends of the largest speed camera app and data provider in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are my babies currently:

[http://www.jque.re/](http://www.jque.re/)

[https://www.unicod.es/](https://www.unicod.es/)

I could keep making these, but it's do or die with side projects. You either commit to them with a full heart, or they begin to bit rot.

Currently I just maintain the projects and promote them the only way I know how (Hackernews and Twitter). There are other outlets for promoting your projects, but they tend to be very niched and specific.

You can see the Twitter accounts here:

[https://twitter.com/unicodetools](https://twitter.com/unicodetools)

[https://twitter.com/jQueryRepo](https://twitter.com/jQueryRepo)

</comment><comment><USER12> I only get about an hour a day to work on it during my commute, but I am having fun with my side project bestfoodnearme.com I am hoping to have a new look for it in about a week, more visual, more pictures.

<comment><USER13> Kudos for finding the time for your side project, even if during a commute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A book series and website where I explain LSAT practice tests. The LSAT is a standardized test used for law school admissions. It's an analytical test with very precise English, and my explanations help people make sense of it.

A significant portion of the material was done in the early years, when I worked like mad. Now I'm running the business at a more comfortable pace, though ramping things up to work on a new product for the site.

[http://lsathacks.com/explanations/](http://lsathacks.com/explanations/)

<comment><USER15> Wow very impressive, looks lie you have 1000's of pages very well organized. You'll definitely be able to sell this at some point I think.

Any plans to monetize?

<comment><USER14> Thanks! The site already makes money, actually. Plus the books sell in hard copy. I'm working on other things to sell on the site, because I think that has more revenue potential than the pdf versions I have on sale currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once upon a time I made some timelapse software for building videos of hackathons (ludumdare, specifically). It got pretty good traction and the quality/quantity of the timelapses in that community went up, which was really great to see. Now it is fairly obsolete (and so ugly!), but over its lifetime it saw about 50,000 downloads and helped build timelapse videos for everything from game dev hackathons to professional car engine builds to medical research.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm one of the authors of QuickSynergy: [https://github.com/cesarbs/quicksynergy- gtk](https://github.com/cesarbs/quicksynergy-gtk)

I was quite happy to learn recently that it's pretty popular with my wife's team at Amazon. She had a pleasant surprise when she installed it on her machine and noticed my name in the About dialog :)

It's due for an update though...

</comment><comment><USER18> My Android location sharing app[1], while still barely known, has generated a lot of great feedback and personal "thank you" emails.

It's barely made any money (40€ in a year or so), but the great feedback makes it all good.

[1] [https://graticule.link/](https://graticule.link/)

</comment><comment><USER19> I just finished writing Python Crash Course, which is coming out this month from No Starch Press. I'm looking forward to hearing what people think once it's out.

[http://nostarchpress.com/pythoncrashcourse](http://nostarchpress.com/pythoncrashcourse)

</comment><comment><USER20> None. I have impostor sindrome.</comment>


WireGuard: Next Generation Secure Kernel Network Tunnel - <AUTHOR> https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/wireguard/ <comment><USER2> One comment I'll make because it's kind of buried in the first paragraph and not really called out: this project is one of the very early adopters of Trevor Perrin's state-of-the-art Noise protocol framework design [https://noiseprotocol.org/](https://noiseprotocol.org/), so you're looking at something _dramatically_ more modern, auditable and (potentially) secure than older, hairier protocols like IPsec, TLSv1.2, OpenVPN, etc.

Best of luck, Jason!

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want a reliable VPN you can use today on nearly every platform, try Algo VPN. It uses simplifies using IPSEC so that anyone who can run a few command line scripts can use it.

[https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)

It's great that someone is working on what comes next after IPSEC, but the platform support for everyone won't come any time soon. If you need a VPN today, Algo is your best answer.

<comment><USER4> I like Algo a lot, but find it approximately as hard to recommend an IPSEC head-end to a sensitive network as I do recommending OpenVPN, and OpenVPN has better clients. Algo makes sense to me as the kind of VPN I set up to run traffic through when I travel, but not for protecting networks.

I'm not convinced that the problem of replacing VPN protocols is so difficult that we should get comfortable with IPSEC. We're really just an OSX client away from WireGuard in the mainstream. And unlike IPSEC vs. OpenVPN, WG is clearly better than the alternative.

<comment><USER3> I'll add WireGuard when it gets better client support. I'm not tied to IPSEC.

The core values of Algo are making self-hosting and initial setup easy and reliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not clear to me that this really solves any of the UI and management problems associated with VPNs. I'm sure the new crypto-design is interesting, but exchanging SSH public keys is actually a huge logistical hassle which scales very poorly.

The other thing is "container-ready" ... well it just isn't. I can use OpenVPN to do the same interface migration trick with a container today. That's not the challenge - the challenge is things like managing what happens when the VPN interface goes down and I need to recycle and reconfigure that interface (at which point you end up back at "allocate a private address space, stick the VPN container in a new address space, play with IPTables there to make sure losing the VPN routes doesn't mean you start routing over the regular NIC".

<comment><USER6> > but exchanging SSH public keys is actually a huge logistical hassle which > scales very poorly.

How do current solutions tackle this? It seems that at some point, if you want something to be two-way authenticated then you need to exchange some public keys.

<comment><USER5> Well that's the thing: SSH has recently gained support for signed public keys - i.e. x.509 style certificate authorities. Outside of that you have things like monkeysphere doing the same with GPG, or simpler things like LDAP scripts which just check the key against LDAP (Hashicorp Vault does something similar).

But it's why I'm skeptical the UI is substantially improved: the _simplest_ UI for VPN tends to be pre-shared keys - because everything more complicated simplifies to that interface "somehow everyone needs to agree who's allowed in" \- and differs to SSH because SSH has more of a one-way contract "let this connection in, but I can't make the same connection back".

<comment><USER6> > the simplest UI for VPN tends to be pre-shared keys

that's what wireguard is doing.

<comment><USER7> I believe they meant to say "symmetric key without any public key exchange protocol", e.g. like spiped, more than SSH. ("Pre-shared" is a bit more confusing in this particular context, admittedly.)

<comment><USER6> Oh ok. Yeah sure it makes the protocol simpler. You lose a bunch of security properties though (forward secrecy on the top of my head).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Speaking of VPNs....

Is there a guide somewhere on how to partition applications on Linux so different apps use different VPNs?

Obviously the easier way is SSH SOCKS tunnels if the app supports it, but I'd like a more general method.

I believe it is possible by namespacing the apps (or I guess going all the way and containerizing them) and then setting the routing on a per-namespace basis.

Is there anywhere this is written down so I don't have to spent 6 hours trying to work out how to do it?

<comment><USER9> Namespacing would work, but it might be simpler to use multiple routing tables and "ip rule" to match each app and direct it to the right routing table. You can use iptables to match on the process and set a mark on the packet that "ip rule" will match on.

<comment><USER8> Nice..

So:

 _> Is there anywhere this is written down so I don't have to spent 6 hours trying to work out how to do it?_

Edit, I found [https://freeaqingme.tweakblogs.net/blog/9340/netflix- using-a...](https://freeaqingme.tweakblogs.net/blog/9340/netflix-using-a-vpn- for-just-one-application.html) which seems to cover at least some. It is done on a per-user basis though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope to see a mainline submission for public review of this soon.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems worrying to me to put something so complicated in the kernel. Perhaps, not even that, but it feels to me as though the fact that this requires in tree changes seems wrong, given the way that networking is going is to enable these network functions via mechanisms such as BPF.

<comment><USER12> I'm less worried about that because it's so small. WireGuard is ~4k LOC -- thus measurably less complicated than OpenVPN (~100k LOC + OpenSSL), StrongSwan (~410k), or SoftEther (~330k).

Numbers taken from slide 5 of [https://www.wireguard.io/talks/codeblue2016-slides- en.pdf](https://www.wireguard.io/talks/codeblue2016-slides-en.pdf)

Moving to kernelspace brings it up to par with plain IP networking, minus a bit of overhead for the cryptographic operations. Userspace networking has overhead which is hard to overcome: context switching and CPU cache invalidation, copying packets between kernelspace and userspace, etc.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, but BPF can operate in kernel space directly on SKBs. If you look at the XDP work, there's a lot of promise. In fact I've implemented ECC in BPF -- other than the state, and negotiation components, I don't see why this can't adapt BPF.

<comment><USER4> You implemented an elliptic curve scalar multiplication in BPF bytecode? Why? Which curve?

<comment><USER11> So, for one of the implementations, yes, we implemented Curve25519 inside of the Kernel. Basically, every node was pushed into a map with the association of IP/Port to key data.

At the reception of a packet, if we didn't have a key, we'd punt the packet to userspace, asking it to do an exchange.

For some reason -- That I forget, we ended up putting the entire key into each packet. I think that when the "exchange" happened in userspace, we didn't actually store the entire box and key, instead we just generated an association specific key, and we wanted to be able to rotate this quickly. I think we just came up with the fact that doing the derivation was cheap enough that it'd be better to do it on every message.

What would then happen is that if we didn't have a box cached, we would calculate it, and this code was implemented as a helper function outside of the BPF itself. Then we did Poly1305 + XSalsa20 with a random nonce.

Why? Because IPSec is fucking complicated, and because I can?

<comment><USER13> Has a cryptographer ever looked at the protocol you invented? Maybe doing the asymmetric crypto on every packet is just a harmless performance problem that, but maybe you invented something insecure. Or is the protocol strictly from the spec (NaCl?) and just the implementation strange?

<comment><USER11> No, the project never got that far. I did discuss with a security researcher though, and it was secure, but it lacked features like PFS, and the handshake protocol could leak information.

In addition, using "pure" random nonces has all sorts of interesting problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone open the slides or video? Using firefox on Fedora and its saying both file types are corrupt.

<comment><USER15> Same here (both Firefox and Chrome download a 0 byte pdf; on Firefox the video errors, on Chrome it plays).</comment></comment>


Don't Read Your Logs - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@chimeracoder/dont-read-your-logs-13586c790202 <comment><USER2> "Write structured info instead of text logs" is a suggestion which comes up frequently at HN. There's nothing bad at it, the advantages are clear.

Nevertheless, text logs are hard to kill because they are dumb easy to implement both in new codes as well as in legacy ones. And again, there's nothing bad at it -- text lines can be parsed when needed and evaluated statistically. There are many many tools which do that on various levels.

The thing is -- there is hardly a problem to solve here. logrotate helps to save disk space, legacy tools do their job, new ones use fancy APIs which avoid plaintext.</comment>


Tell HN: I'm selling jqueryin.com to help my startup - <AUTHOR>

I'm getting married next week in addition to having recently joined a startup. I need to generate some extra cash due to the switch so I'm selling off my baby, jqueryin.com, which I spent 3 years growing. It's a web development blog run solely by myself that generates ~4k monthly uniques (used to be 5-6k when I posted more frequently). <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote up a quick blog post on the sale:

[http://www.jqueryin.com/2012/07/03/jqueryin-for-sale-on- flip...](http://www.jqueryin.com/2012/07/03/jqueryin-for-sale-on-flippa-com/)

Here's a direct link to the flippa.com auction:

[https://flippa.com/2766655-jqueryin-com-web-development- blog...](https://flippa.com/2766655-jqueryin-com-web-development-blog- pr3-4k-uniques-mo)

I'd love it if this site went to a fellow HNer who could actually turn it into something marvelous. The domain had so much potential and successfully grew with my limited posting.

</comment><comment><USER2> You're going to need to drop a zero off of that asking price if you want to part with your domain. Why do you think it's worth close to twenty thousand dollars?

</comment><comment><USER3> Would suggest you bring that BIN price down. Save your base with reserve price.</comment>


Show HN: Facereplace – Use face recognition to replace faces in images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Risk3sixty-Labs/facereplace <comment><USER2> This made my day.</comment>


How to Criticize with Kindness: The Four Steps to Arguing Intelligently - <AUTHOR> https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport-rules-criticism/ <comment><USER2> An alt to this would be reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about Noam Chomsky? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Simple question: what do you think about Noam Chomsky?
Best, Wiktor <comment><USER2> I have yet to see Chomsky's arguments disproved on the facts. When you parse his detractors' criticisms, they can always be paraphrased not as: "your conclusions are wrong because your facts are wrong," but as "your conclusions are wrong because their implications are unthinkable."

<comment><USER3> What's your views on Chomsky's defense of the Khmer Rouge, and his argument that the evidence for the Cambodian genocide was "third-rate propaganda"?

<comment><USER2> If you took my comment to mean that I think Chomsky is always right, then you have misunderstood. I have simply noted that the enthusiastic "debunkings" of Chomsky that I have come across have been of very low quality, and often include explicit pleading to trust those in power, instead of pointing out where he has actually gone wrong in his arguments.

As to your specific question, a few seconds googling produced this: bigwhiteogre.blogspot.com/2010/07/chomskys-views-on-khmer-rouge- distorted.html?m=1

Myself, I take no position. Let the debate continue. Let the facts be known.

<comment><USER3> I phrased it poorly - I was in a rush to get to dinner with friends, and didn't think my response all the way through.

I was thinking more of the detractors of Chomsky's views in this instance. As I understand it, Chomsky's view is that, based on the facts available at the time, there wasn't enough information to make the conclusion that genocide had occurred. His detractors insisted that there was.

That's why this isn't really an issue of "letting the facts be known", but of the evaluation of the reliability of the evidence available at the time.

The link you pointed to is consistent with my analysis. Consider the full quote starting "If a serious study of the impact of Western imperialism on Cambodian peasant life is someday undertaken...". I take it to imply either that the published work about the genocide, based on interviews with refugees, was 1) not "serious", or 2) not relevant because it didn't take into account the 'impact of Western imperialism' in its analysis. Overall he's saying that at that time we don't really know enough to draw a conclusion different than the current international consensus.

You can see in the later quote that Chomsky, observes that international experts had "concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands" and of the "extreme unreliability of refugee reports." "We do not pretend to know where the truth lies amidst these sharply conflicting assessments."

He's saying there wasn't enough to be able to determine the "facts."

While his detractors at the time judged there was enough believable evidence to show that the numbers of murders was much higher, and that the refugee reports were sufficiently reliable.

I therefore can't categorize his detractors in this case as asserting "[Chomsky's] conclusions are wrong because their implications are unthinkable", so offer it as a counter-example to your original, broad statement.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your clarification. I admit my statement was made broadly, for rhetorical purposes.

But in this instance, his detractors are not criticizing his interpretation of available evidence, they brand him, despite his words, as an apologist for Pol Pot and an excuser of genocide.

I think this is consistent with my larger point that the arguments made against him are of low quality and not fact-based.

<comment><USER3> You are right in that I'm reacting to your broad statements, made for rhetorical purposes. I'll point out though that you've changed the topic. His detractors in the 1970s, who argued that Chomsky minimized the extent of the Cambodian massacre, did not justify their "low quality arguments" (as you term them now) by saying that the implications of Chomsky being right were unthinkable.

What is "unthinkable" about the idea that there were only a few thousand murders, rather that a genocide of 1-3 million people?

I am not referring to detractors who claim he is/was an apologist for the Khmer Rouge. I am only referring to those detractors who in the 1970s argued that Chomsky was wrong in greatly discounting the information from Ponchaud's "Cambodia: Year Zero" and Barron and Paul's "Murder of a Gentle Land".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I was a kid the internet wasn't available so I would always try and seek out weird ideas on my own. I discovered Chomsky's views reading a Rolling Stone issue that featured an interview with him.

I think his pointing out of government and corporate cultural assumptions are fine and generally true but his underline philosophy of 'libertarian socialism' I think is just divorced from the real world.

I used to have one of his interviews with David Barsamian on a cassette tape ( I'm not sure of the date ), but I remember Chomsky saying in response to a question about his societal vision that he believed "skills shouldn't confer power". In short if you have a special talent or skill it shouldn't give you any social leverage. I don't disagree with that but I will tell you one thing. The world will never, and I mean never ever "work" like that short of the personable interactions between close friends and family. To that regard I simply don't see any utility in Chomsky's social philosophy other than it being a foundation to see the corruption of those he critiques a bit more clearly.

So that's my only disagreement with him. I do think muckrakers do the world a service and he has played his role well in unveiling the ideological assumptions of a figure-head and pundit driven media world.

Beyond that, to me he's just another privileged academic who has had the pleasure of traveling the world and saying a bunch of smart things.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recently watched his movie "manufacturing consent" and was surprisingly disappointed. It seemed kind of disjoint with no solid message and unfortunately it was boring to watch to boot.

I really think corporate control of media, and media bias, and how it affects our society is a really important topic that needs its own easy to digest documentary, like black fish, or an inconvenient truth. Something that will popularize the issue, and explain the problems to people who normally wouldn't be interested.

<comment><USER6> Fwiw, it's not his movie. It's named after a book he wrote with Edward Herman. The documentary was made by two Canadians, presumably as an attempt to communicate the ideas from the book via film.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's a simple question with many complex answers, including those with very strong opinions both for and against.

Personally, I'm philosophically inclined towards emergent models of linguistics rather than Chomsky's universal grammar, but I have barely the ability to write Pirahã, much less go into a detailed discussion of the current naturist/nurturist debate.

So your question might be a bit more specific in order to get the answers you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hold him in high regard for the clarity of his thinking. He is a breath of fresh air when it comes to _pundits_.

</comment><comment><USER8> Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist. Sometimes described as the "father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy.</comment>


Too much standing is bad, study finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/standing-sitting-work-move-1.4252006 <comment><USER2> This is funny, but it's also a good example of a particular kind of scientific inquiry: figuring out ways to maximize your life span. Not only is this research often inaccurate (as Science is always a work-in-progress), it tends to promote this idea that maximizing your lifespan should be your highest priority. Some people just want to live faster than others. Everyone should be welcome to their own priorities as long as the negative externalities are tolerable.

Of course, deciding what counts as "tolerable" is a subjective, social process, and rational people can (and do) disagree.

I guess I'm just trying to say life is short, so don't worry too much about how to position yourself at your desk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well for me being stuck at a desk all day (whether standing, sitting, or on my head), is intolerable full stop. I feel that my current lifestyle probably maximises both lifespan, physical and mental health, and enjoyment. (I work for myself from home on my own projects, and take regular breaks and exercise).

I realise that I'm quite fortunate to be in this situation...my wife hates her job and is desperately trying to figure out if she can make it tolerable, or if there's something else she can do instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> sitting will kill you, standing will kill you . . . luckily I float in a vat of nutrient gel like a Guild Navigator

<comment><USER4> I just read a report in Guild Navigator News that found nutrient gel to be carcinogenic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anecdotally, all standing at work did was swapped some health risk factors for other ones. I was doing my back a favor, but I set myself on course for varicose veins and DVT.

Also, standing messed with focus. It helped when switching focus away from the screen (meetings, discussions etc). But keeping focus on the screen became harder.

</comment><comment><USER6> I really envy people with jobs where they can move around a lot. Staring at a screen the whole day in one place can't be good for you no matter standing or sitting.

<comment><USER7> I want an office with several computers in different corners - or possibly several small rooms, each with a computer. I'll use each computer for one particular type of task, and move around as I switch to different tasks. Besides the physical activity, I'd be able to context switch better, and keep myself on topic better - e.g., to take a HN break, I have to get up and walk over to the recreation computer.

I think VR will give me this - I'll wear one portable headset, and walk around to multiple virtual workspaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Turns out doing too much of anything is bad for you.

Also turns out standing in 1 place is still sedentary.

Who would have thought.

</comment><comment><USER9> I prefer to stand mostly because it helps some mobility issues I've noticed while doing olympic weightlifting, notably, sitting for long periods really tightens my hip flexors and external shoulder rotation. It's taken me a couple of years, but gradually my overhead squat has become stable and low. But that process wasn't due to me just standing: over these years I've also done lots of exercises to explicitly improve the position. Standing all day vs sitting all day is just something I notice when I get to the gym. After a long day of meetings, I find I need a solid 2-3 more minutes of hip flexor and shoulder work to get things moving.

However, I don't think for a second that standing all day has anywhere near as significant an impact as doing olympic weightlifting 4-ish hours a week. Building up the body's ability to handle high intensity physical activity doesn't take long, but over the long term, you can make major improvements. For me, I've easily more than doubled maximal intensities I can perform: I recall a time starting out that a 225 lb deadlift was difficult. I regularly pull 400-450 pounds now, and can do it for multiple reps in a single session without significant soreness the day after. And notably, I started at the age of 36, and my bodyweight hasn't changed that much, though I'm less pudgy and a little more muscular. I'm hardly what someone would spot as a "beast" or associate with being a bodybuilder. (Lifting for high intensity involves a lot of central nervous system training, often overlooked until you're doing it.)

In the end, I just question these recommendations to "stand vs sit", because neither of these things are going to really challenge your body. My sense is that unless you significantly challenge the combination of strength, flexibility, and aerobic capacity with some regularity, what you do in low- intensity situations will only change you in a minor way. Subsequently, my guess is that if you actually measured athletic performance (standing vertical jump, V02 max, etc) of someone who sat all day at work vs stood up all day at work, there probably wouldn't be much of a change. And as a corollary, I'd expect if you found a way for people to actually improve their athletic performance significantly, that would likely have a significant effect on their quality of life as they age.

Unfortunately, most athletic studies are performed at colleges on a fixed demo, e.g., college athletes. I'm just not aware of anyone looking at long term effects of athletic performance for the average joe in the workforce. It would be an expensive proposition, too, so I'm not sure it'll be forthcoming.

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess it is time to get on the treadmill desk hype train.

<comment><USER11> Serious Question: can you actually type using this?

<comment><USER12> Easily. At least with a big keyboard like Microsoft Natural. Hitting small areas with mouse becomes much harder though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It found that heart disease was higher for those standing, than for those sitting. So much for the fad of standing desks.

<comment><USER13> It's probably not good for your circulatory system to be mostly motionless for long periods of time, sitting or standing.

<comment><AUTHOR> We already know sitting is bad. Now we know standing is bad too. We know exercise is good, so it seems pretty obvious that the answer is to have regular exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Simple. Stand on your hands.</comment>


Ask HN: Please write the year or 'old' in non recent submissions - <AUTHOR>

It's getting boring and inefficient to click on links that are posts from 2+ years ago.
It's cool that you're reminding us of something prescient, but it just looks like you only just discovered it. Lets keep the signal up!
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'd prefer (2007) to (old)

<comment><USER3> I'd assume he means to use 'old' when it's not possible to determine the age of an article, but that it's known it's not recent. There are a lot of articles out there that don't have a publication date allowing you to easily say '2007' or such.</comment></comment>


Macphun unveils Luminar 2018, takes on Adobe Lightroom - <AUTHOR> https://www.dpreview.com/news/5002868612/macphun-unveils-luminar-2018-takes-on-adobe-lightroom-cc <comment><AUTHOR> I just pre-ordered Luminar; Aperture has been gone for a long time, so Lightroom has the market to itself—and Adobe is behaving like it. So I'm eager to try an alternative.</comment>


Zoho Mail two factor authentication circumvented by using desktop client - <AUTHOR> https://help.zoho.com/portal/community/topic/zoho-mail-desktop-lite-security-issue-unusable-interface-3-7-2018-2 <comment><USER2> Hi there!

Zoho Mail Desktop App is more like a web browser where OTP is mandatory in addition to the account login password. However, if you've selected 'Trust this application' check box earlier, for a certain time frame (probably for about 180 days), the app will allow you to login into your account using account login password itself (i.e., without entering the OTP).

If you have already selected this option while accessing via Desktop app, do let us know about it in an email to email@example.com so that we can request our technical team to debug further. Also, we'd like to clarify that there are no open security issues in our service. We always take security very seriously and have developed a comprehensive set of practices, technologies and policies to help ensure our users data is secure.

Regards, The Zoho Mail Team

</comment><comment><USER3> Never impressed with Zoho, so not surprised.</comment>


How Data Science Helps Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/how-data-science-helps-marketing-d63980fcc8fa <comment><USER2> Data science is rapidly changing marketing. Specifically, contextual marketing is on the rise. Contextual marketing differs from traditional marketing. As its name suggests, this type of marketing strategy is all about CONTEXT. We are no longer interested in observing and predicting how people will carry out simple conscious-decision making. Instead, with this type of marketing, we seek to observe the habits that individuals get into when buying a certain product, booking a trip, or browsing through online catalogues.</comment>


30 by 30 - "Having" is a poor substitute for "Doing" - <AUTHOR> http://www.billda.com/30-by-30

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this post after I quit my job in investment banking and moved over to a dotcom tech company. I realized that so many of us define success as "having" things (money, cars, houses), whereas the things that really contribute to happiness are experiences you have (friends, trips, etc).

The goal of this exercise is to create a list of 30 experiences to "have" by the time you're 30 years old - before you're tied down with family, career, and mortgage. You can use my list as a model, or write your own. Now, go out there and do them - don't waste another day.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is a great post, its something I've thought a lot about lately, I make enough, and have bought most of the things I want, but I've only become less happy the longer I work 15-17 hours a day. This post really inspires me to write a list, and start working on it. Right now i'm 22, so I guess I have 8 years :)</comment>


Pentagon awards contracts to design mobile nuclear reactor - <AUTHOR> https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nuclear-arsenal/2020/03/09/pentagon-to-award-mobile-nuclear-reactor-contracts-this-week/ <comment><USER2> There are a few startups pitching a "nuclear power station in a shipping container" idea -- and having heard them and done a bunch of reading about the state of nuclear, it's hard to not come away with a complete and strong belief that:

1) It's a really good idea.

2) Nuclear power, more broadly, is probably our best bet to quickly the tide against climate change.

<comment><USER3> Nuclear is much more expensive than wind in the UK, and plants take 10yrs+ to build.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy- nuclearpower/nucle...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy- nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report- idUSKBN1W909J) "Nuclear energy too slow, too expensive to save climate: report"

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41220948](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41220948) "Two firms said they were willing to build offshore wind farms for a guaranteed price of £57.50 per megawatt hour for 2022-23. This compares with the new Hinkley Point C nuclear plant securing subsidies of £92.50 per megawatt hour."

Perhaps reply addressing my point rather than blindly downvoting :(

<comment><USER4> Nuclear is expensive because of design costs and regulations. Mass production would greatly lower prices. The fact is when I was a nuclear power plant operator the same WOG value you could buy at Home Depot for 10 dollars costs 300 dollars with all the certifications and requirements for safety need in a nuclear plant.

<comment><USER5> don't you welcome the spirit of all those pesky regulations?

<comment><USER6> Those regulations are buying down risk.

Sure, they could buy them from Home Depot without those regulations. But how do they know they were manufactured to spec? How do they know the manufacturer used the correct alloy?

You aren't paying for "regulations" you're paying for quality pedigree. This is also why aerospace work is so expensive. The industry has determined the supply risk is too great without a verifiable level of quality. Quality is expensive, but not as expensive as failure in these industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In fact US Army did design nuclear reactor that can be shipped in two 4TEU intermodal containers (design of the thing is highly RBMK-ish) and then managed to deploy that and cause nuclear accident with casualties(in the sense of personnel being pinned to the roof by reactor control rods that were somehow ejected out of the reactor)...

<comment> King-Aaron Is that the Three Mile Island incident you're talking about? I'm genuinely curious, though thought that was a full scale reactor

<comment><USER8> I believe dfox is referring to this incident: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1#Accident_and_response](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1#Accident_and_response)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Portable nuclear generators exist in many navies worldwide. Russia has ones on barges. It feels like this is a design imperative we know works because we have many working examples.

I never understood why the same people who make submarines cannot make commercially viable seaborne reactors for power. Probably the cost benefit didn't pan out but does the tech work? There is no question.

The whole "safe at any speed" thing is the problem, not the underlying physics.

<comment><USER10> Russians have, in development, an upscaled version of the reactor tech from Project 705 submarines.

Design goals include ability to just put a power/heating station reactor block on single flat rail car and ship it to and back. Lead/bismuth coolant, passive safeties, if the reactor fails it essentially entombs itself in lead preventing fissile material leak and making it easy to cleanup. And since it's a fast reactor, it burns fuel that typical light water reactors treat as waste.

Remember containerized DCs? It's that, just for nuclear power plants. With possibility to mass produce airliftable 100MW nuclear power plants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks like a potentially great product, especially if it fits in a 40' shipping container.

It'd enable isolated and remote sites to significantly reduce their dependence on diesel generators.

And I'd guess the defence angle enables increased use of hybrid vehicles.

<comment><USER12> How many times could you charge a Tesla with a nuclear reactor the size of a 40' shipping container before you needed more fuel?

<comment><USER13> With 1 MW you can fast-charge 10 at a time. Doing that for 10 years is on the order of 100000 charges.

It'd be perfect for supercharger stations on the Alaska Highway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The military may not have this problem but for civilian use I'd ask: how do you secure this? For example: how do you ensure someone with a semi truck doesn't ram into it and spill massively radioactive stuff all over the place?

<comment><USER15> The nuclear fuel in these is almost always solid. It doesn't spill. All you have to do is ensure it is coolable in all geometries. To do that in this kind of scenario you generally down-rate it to powers that can be carried off by natural circulation of air flowing by it while it lays in the ditch. It's a tradeoff though because you generally want to get as much power as possible out of your equipment. If you want to trade lower power for a longer lasting core with more accident resilience you can do that.

The x-energy gas cooled reactor behind this particular concept has astoundingly robust fuel pebbles called triso. They conduct their heat to the vessel and it passes it to passive airflow in all accidents.

<comment><USER14> Thanks this helps a lot. One other Q: if the pellets spill, how dangerous are they from a radioactivity perspective?

<comment><USER15> Unshielded but intact pebbles would emit extraordinarily high amounts of radiation that falls off with 1/r^2 by geometric attenuation. Picking them up and putting them back in a shield would require remote handling (long tools and/or robots).

But once they're all picked up and re-shielded, the radiation would be gone. Much different from spilling a vat of radioactive liquid which is much harder to clean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Awarding military contracts is how fundamental R&D is being funded in the US. Because direct R&D funding is not popular with the general public you have to go in a roundabout way and pretend it's for military use. There is no guarantee anything practical will come out of this.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would rather spend some pennies to make sure the fellas at General Fusion complete the first full scale demo MTF reactor...fission is an extremely appealing tech for many reasons, the problem seems to always boil down to the general population reaction when a massive disposal factory and relative multi-millennia deep cave gets built next door...GF MTF tech looks like a very good compromise between fully fledged self sustaining plasma tokamaks a la ITER, and experimental pulsed solutions that still do not produce valuable output..

<comment><USER18> Fellas and ladies... just saying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How would these reactors compare to nuclear submarine reactors for example? I imagine those are fairly compact but probably not really suitable for general user power supply?

<comment><USER20> A submarine reactor uses very, very highly enriched uranium not suitable for keeping outside a military installation and onboard a moving tank (with several inches of steel wall) due to security concerns, and the design of the reactor is pretty safe, but it's still using 60's reactor designs running 80's electrical control systems with 2000's PCs running those controls. Lesser enrichment would require a much larger reactor to get the same power, and we have newer gen reactors that are much safer, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a theoretical minimum size for a nuclear reactor (based on current or viable near-future technology)? If so, what kind of dimensions are we talking?

<comment><USER22> I guess the problem is mostly weight, which you need to shield the thing off from its environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well in 2014 I read here that Lockheed will have a prototype fusion reactor on a truck within five years. And its now 2020 sooooo....

</comment><comment><USER24> Where's that clean thorium reactor that never appears to manifest itself beyond vaporware.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is it pre-requisite that it use uranium? Are these Thorium ideas you find on the web real?

<comment><USER15> Thorium requires breeder reactors. Breeder reactors are more complicated. That's why we don't have thorium reactors today.

[https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium- myths.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html)

<comment><USER25> Great material. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If we can miniaturize nuclear reactors to the point that they can be drop-in replacements for batteries, then we can potentially run our electronics, appliances, machinery, vehicles standalone for decades without refuel/recharge.

<comment><USER27> RTGs and betavoltaic cells scale down to that size but the powers that be don't want nuclear material so widely distributed.

<comment><USER28> Betavoltaic cells get outperformed by coin cells and RTGs by solar panels in most applications. There are some niche space applications, but not much else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1)

</comment><comment><USER30> Wonder if they'll finally start looking into thorium salt reactors again (which were originally designed for civilian use).

<comment><USER31> It seems thorium isn't quite up to the hype - [https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium- myths.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/thorium-myths.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Makes sense - half of the Trillion-dollar budgets for middle-east wars was 'fuel to air-condition tents'.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's a good idea because it will greatly cut the amount of fuel to be carried and thus speed up deployment of large scale expeditionary forces.

Think of days when electricity-to-fuel will be able to also produce liquid fuel for tanks, jets etc. to operate, then moving large masses of armor deeply into the enemy territory will become a no-brainer to such a point that territorial depth will cease to be a viable protection!

<comment><USER34> Until someone brings the other kind of nuclear to the battlefield.

<comment><USER33> Logistic chain suffers a lot under the threat of WMD, because many things it depends on such as ports, airfields, and bridges, are stationary and a no- brainer to be nuked. If enemy starts using nukes, not having to carry too much liquid fuel all the way will help a lot. And it makes the most of the supplies army has to transport, with proportion increasing because say, need for ammunition decreases as shells get smarter, but better protected tanks and APCs weight more and thus need more fuel.</comment></comment></comment>


Introduction To ElasticSearch - <AUTHOR> http://www.jurriaanpersyn.com/archives/2013/11/18/introduction-to-elasticsearch/

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting, especially the "lessons learned"-section.

However, the latest version (as of writing this) is Elasticsearch 0.90.7, released November 13, not 0.90.5 as stated in the article, which I guess relates to lessons learned, part 3: "TRY to keep up with releases".

There is a lot of stuff happening right now with Elasticsearch as they're nearing a release of 1.0 (which I'm told we're to expect in H1 2014), and a lot of fixes/features are still showing up in new 0.90.x point releases :)</comment>


A Sculpture That Perpetually Sells Itself On eBay - <AUTHOR> http://laughingsquid.com/a-sculpture-that-perpetually-sells-itself-on-ebay/

<comment><USER2> Same story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079016>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1070033></comment>


Strong consistency models (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models

<comment><USER2> This is great. What are some good keywords to search on to learn more about topics like this? "distributed systems" seems too broad, and I'm sure there are whole fields of research into these types of concurrency problems. Any suggestions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe not keywords, but I'll leave here some links that you'll probably like:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421858)

[http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/p...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2290180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2290180)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8159969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8159969)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10017549)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love this guys blog. The jepsen/call me maybe series is critical reading.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think Windows will eventually use Metro as it's only interface? - <AUTHOR>

My friend and I just have a debate over whether of not Windows will eventually use the Metro interface in favor of Explorer/Ribbon (As in Explorer eventually no longer existing, leaving us with tiles.). My friend thinks this will eventually happen because the end user is usually watching YouTube of browsing the internet. He also thinks that services like Steam/Origin may eventually use the Metro interface. He also believes that developers will adapt to a Metro style IDE...
I feel that explorer will always be around because the need for complexity in business apps. I feel that developers would loath the cuteness of the Metro interface when trying to debug an app. Or for example, hospitals, and business networks that use very complex software for data management. I also don't feel that developers are going to like tailoring their applications to the Metro interface.
Do you think that Microsoft will offer a Metro only version of Windows? They're already removing Explorer use on tablets. Or do you think Explorer is here to stay? <comment><USER2> "Windows"? No. I do think there's a possibility that in the future we're going to see another NT/'95 split, i.e. one "professional" system for offices or "experts", one for entertainment, network and media management. The "NT" one could possibly be a superset of all the "95" features, and I wouldn't be too surprised if Windows Phone gets merged with the entertainment/tablet version. Right now I think they're keeping the options open, depending on how the landscape for devices will turn out in the near future.

It could be Bob 2.0, after all.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know. Let's look at the past.

When Windows Vista was released, pretty much everything started to move to Aero. And right now it looks like almost everything is Aero, with the expcetion of legacy apps.

I think Metro will rule the Windows world until Microsoft decides to change it.</comment>


Why Gumroad is the next billion dollar startup – The developer interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupproject.org/2011/04/gumroad/ <comment><USER2> April fools was 5 days ago. This is way way way way too ahead of itself.

PayPal shuts down all similar attempts at mass payouts like these, then you are stuck.

Go talk to the tipjoy people.

Any business model that relies on PayPal and can't tell them to go #$@^! themselves when they suspend your account is not a viable model. They best start researching and implementing Amazon and other solutions.

<comment><USER3> It looks like they're only using PayPal to pay money out to sellers. If PayPal shuts that down, they can probably find a way around it (in the worst case, send checks).

<comment><USER2> Sending checks requires much more liability and overhead.

<comment><USER4> Dozens of ad networks pay publishers via PayPal. They have a MassPay feature specifically for these situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When a weekend app is touted as "next billion dollor startup", you know you are in a bubble.

Dont get me wrong, I like gumroad's idea and even the implementation, but extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence, and I see none yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> When did everything become a billion dollar startup. It's as if anything between 0 and 1bn is unfashionable and not worth doing.

</comment><comment><USER7> good implementation but if it took 48 hours to launch, the barrier to entry isn't particularly high.

how would Gumroad differentiate if a competitor (or paypal) started providing the exact same service?

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand why this is such a big deal. What can people sell now they couldn't before?

<comment><USER3> I understand where you're coming from because I didn't get Blogger. Around that time, I had my own example.net/~jambo homepage that I updated with stories, probably using Pagemill & FTP. What made Blogger a big deal is that they (eventually) made what I was doing easy for anyone to do. Simplifying something can be a big deal. Gumroad could do this for publishers, and it has an obvious revenue model & incentives built in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The closest alternative is properly clickbank.com, but if you look at their site the signup process is horrible, the product you sell has to be approved and you have to set up a website.

The only problem I have with Gumroad is that I can't pay with my paypal account (I am too lazy to dig out my credit card and actually enter the numbers).

</comment><comment><USER10> A bit premature maybe, but it is a novel implementation.

</comment><comment><USER11> wouldn't content producers rather use kickstarter?

</comment><comment><USER11> needs more bitcoins</comment>


FastMail no longer available in Germany [German Article] - <AUTHOR> https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Zwist-mit-Bundesnetzagentur-Keine-Neuanmeldungen-beim-E-Mail-Anbieter-FastMail-in-Deutschland-3755918.html <comment><AUTHOR> Google translate link: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FZwist- mit-Bundesnetzagentur-Keine-Neuanmeldungen-beim-E-Mail-Anbieter-FastMail-in- Deutschland-3755918.html&edit-text=&act=url)

TDLR: Email providers on the German market were asked by the Bundesnetzagentur (bascially the German FCC) to register as a public telecommunications provider as required by the law. FastMail cannot say wheter they will be able to come to an agreement with the Bundesnetzagentur and therefore disabled signup for German IPs and also removed the mobile app from the (German) App Store and Google Play.</comment>


Q – Initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers - <AUTHOR> https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/ <comment><USER3> I tried testing the Bernstein Vazarani algorithm on a 5 qubit quantum computer that IBM let us use for an afternoon for one of my university classes last semester. It was unable to recover the hidden string, even though simulating the circuit classically recovered it. Anyone can launch a "quantum computer as a service" platform, but the service won't be valuable if the computer doesn't work. And so far no quantum computer has solved a problem faster than we can do classically

<comment><USER4> > but the service won't be valuable if the computer doesn't work.

So the state-of-the-art in quantum computing is still basically "can tell you the 200th prime number, sometimes"?

Not very useful.

<comment><USER5> But this is new territory, and researchers shouldn't give up just because it doesn't work very well now.

I recall that the iPhone/iPad were preceded by attempts at tablet computing that were very crude in comparison.

Give it a couple of years and see where it leads.

<comment><USER6> > I recall that the iPhone/iPad were preceded by attempts at tablet computing > that were very crude in comparison.

That's a very poor analogy. Here we are talking about stuff that is not even functional, technology wise.

<comment><USER5> Poor poor analogy, but at least you get the picture.

They are talking 15- and 17-qubit-capable processors today, but are looking at 50-qubit ones in a few years.

<comment><USER7> The key question is whether QC algorithms are scaling as predicted by QC theory, or at least better than classical algorithms for the same task. If the error correction is causing them to scale poorly, the design is probably infeasible for large-qubit calculations.

I expect it is scaling poorly, or IBM would have reported otherwise when moving from 5- to 16-qubit machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The point where it gets interesting for realistic physics and chemistry applications is around 100 (error-corrected) logical qubits and 10^8 coherent operations, see for example [https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03859](https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03859).

The error correction adds another factor of at least 100 or so in both qubits and gates needed (but possibly much bigger than 100, depending on qubit quality), see for example [https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2316](https://arxiv.org/abs/1312.2316).

Other fields of application - factoring large integers, for example - <USER2> many many more qubits to be interesting.

While it's good to get people excited about the potential of quantum computing, it's seems a bit disingenious to suggest that a 17-bit quantum processor is commercially interesting. I especially like how they juxtapose it with the publically available 16-bit quantum processor to make it seem like one extra qubit makes it worth paying money...

<comment><USER9> Don't forget cryptography.

<comment><USER10> That's covered by "factoring large integers", I do believe.

<comment><USER11> There is more to crypto than that, right? The discrete logarithm problem is independent of integer factorization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. Do they claim that the backend is actually a quantum computer? Or are they just providing a quantum computing like interface, which is backed by a classical computer emulating a quantum computer?

2\. Looking at their Terms Of Service (excerpt below) it's unclear whether you share rights any model that you try in their playground?

<i>"IBM does not want to receive confidential or proprietary information from you through our Web site. Please note that any information or material sent to IBM will be deemed NOT to be confidential. By sending IBM any information or material, you grant IBM an unrestricted, irrevocable license to copy, reproduce, publish, upload, post, transmit, distribute, publicly display, perform, modify, create derivative works from, and otherwise freely use, those materials or information. You also agree that IBM is free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques that you send us for any purpose. However, we will not release your name or otherwise publicize the fact that you submitted materials or other information to us unless: [...]"</i>

<comment> semi-extrinsic How is it unclear? It seems pretty explicit from the passage you quote that they can take anything you upload and do whatever they want with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know next to nothing about quantum computing, but something about this seems extremely fishy. Had they developed a working quantum processor, would they not have publicized its capabilities far and wide before releasing an enterprise API? Failing at that, would there not be a benchmarks page that demonstrates the capabilities of this system? Could someone better acquainted with this technology weigh in?

<comment><USER14> Indeed, someone spends what AFAICT is a very small amount of his time debunking every last claim that any given quantum computer does anything straightforward simulated annealing can't do.

<comment><USER15> Scott Aaronson?

<comment><USER14> Sounds right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > While technologies like AI can find patterns buried in vast amounts of > existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important > problems where patterns cannot be found and the number of possibilities that > you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous ever to be > processed by classical computers.

Oh what a load.

<comment><USER17> There's some pretty cool problems in quantum systems like chemistry that even a classical supercomputer would not be able to solve This could have a very positive impact on fields like medicine

<comment><USER16> I am not saying what quantum computing is or isn't doing. Contrasting quantum computing and AI is like comparing... digging a hole and shovels. "While digging a hole is useful, these shovels are even better than hole-digging!" It's nonsense sauce. If quantum computing can be useful at AI tasks, then quantum computing won't replace AI, we'll be doing AI on quantum computers. This is just marketing mumbo jumbo to convince some C-suite type that doesn't know a thing about data science to say, "Why are we still using AI and not this quantum thing IBM has? Quantum is better than AI!"

<comment><USER18> It's a little funny that you're defending the integrity of calling the status quo "AI", don't you think?

<comment><USER16> Yes, yes, real AI died in the AI Winter because the settlers didn't have enough parenthesis to last until spring, it was all very tragic, and now we're all just stirring the pile of linear algebra until the results look good. [1] But that doesn't make IBM's marketing copy any better. And IBM loves making grandiose claims that don't work out in practice. [2]

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1838/](https://xkcd.com/1838/) [2] [https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2017/02/md-anderson- cancer-...](https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2017/02/md-anderson-cancer- centers-ibm-watson-project-fails-journalism-related/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Their product marketing surely is in a quantum state.

</comment><comment><USER20> What interesting computation can you do on a 16 qubit processor?

<comment><USER21> you could factor an 8 bit number really fast heh

<comment><USER8> I think it's more like a 6 bit number, and probably not very fast at all...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's been available for months. Has anyone used it?

<comment><USER23> A five-qubit processor has been available for a bit over a year now [1]. Last week, they've announced that they'll make freely available a 16-qubit processor, but for now it is invite-only. They've also announced that they'll sell access to a 17-qubit device.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/how-ibms-new-five- qu...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/how-ibms-new-five-qubit- universal-quantum-computer-works/)

<comment><USER24> I was listening to a podcast yesterday where Google is basically "guaranteeing a breakthrough" in QC by the end of the year.

Something about the 49-qubit threshold or some such proclamation, so maybe that's something that will finally move the needle.

<comment><USER25> Was it this Podcast? [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052800h](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052800h)

"IBM is giving users worldwide the chance to use a quantum computer; Google is promising "quantum supremacy" by the end of the year; Microsoft's Station Q is working on the hardware and operating system for a machine that will outpace any conventional computer. Roland Pease meets some of the experts, and explores the technology behind the next information revolution."

<comment><USER24> Yep...that was the one...further on in the broadcast the researcher from Google explains that for "Quantum Supremacy", that "49-qubits" are enough to "leave the fastest classical computer in the dust" or some such hype.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The explanation videos are very fluffy. Anyone find any technical overview articles?

</comment><comment><USER27> > All of this sophisticated engineering makes [the 17 qubit processor] at > least twice as powerful as the [16 qubit processor].

Isn't an n+1 qubit processor _always_ twice as fast as an n qubit processor?

</comment><comment><USER28> Looking at the SDK, the programming language of the future is Python.

</comment><comment><USER29> 16 qubits? How hard is it to simulate those 16 qubits with a regular computer? I get this is marketing but people would be better off just running a simulator at this point.

<comment><USER8> It's pretty easy. If your computer has enough ram to store a size 2^16 length complex vector (which is 2^20 bytes, or 1MB) than you can open up an ipython notebook and write code to apply quantum gates to it with no problem.

The problems start to set in if your RAM can't hold the wavefunction in memory (so around 28 qubits, which takes 2^32 bytes = 4GB of RAM.)

With specialized code and supercomputers you can get a little farther, but you will be fighting exponential growth, so not too much. The practical limit for classical computers is in the 40-50 qubit range.

<comment><USER30> > If your computer has enough ram to store a size 2^16 length complex vector > (which is 2^20 bytes, or 1MB)

One megabyte was enough even for quantum computing! Wow. Bill Gates, what a visionary ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> IBMs Mo seems to be jump onto new technologies with name recognition. Make BOLD claims they can't back up. See Watson. See Q. See IBM Blockchain.

This only serves to build distrust with developers but I bet their investors love it, but only since they don't understand it

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems that IBM is really struggling to stay connected to reality, let alone run a profitable business.

<comment><USER32> Are you suggesting IBM is not profitable?

<comment><USER7> They seem to be running on inertia at this point. I haven't seen any plausible new enterprises from them. It's possible I'm looking in the wrong places, though.

<comment><USER32> Fully agreed, but they've been running on inertia for the last two decades, but that has nothing to do with profitability. They're still printing money, every quarter and are paying out substantial dividends.

Obviously that can't go on forever and they're desperately searching for a path to a viable future but for the moment they are definitely in the black and will - as far as I can see - stay there for quite a while to come.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is horribly reminiscent of the marketing programme for IBM Blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER34> Amazing this has not been renamed to Watson.

<comment><USER35> I'm glad it isn't, it really waters down both brands...</comment></comment>


International founders who brought tech culture home and made it their own - <AUTHOR> http://fndrs.net/globalizationsv <comment><USER2> Excellent article. Having lived in the Czech Republic for 6 years I agree with Ondrej that Prague is awesome. And I agree it's important for founders coming here to focus on their greatest strengths. The Czechs are super creative and outstanding at engineering. And Rami's right--Finns know how to build. I've worked with many Mexicans and Peruvians--very hard workers who create a great esprit de corps.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am thrilled to learn even more on starup scenes outside SV and the outcomes when heading home full of thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be cool if other non-Silicon Valley founders from the HN community share their thoughts on this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could be interesting to hear the reverse influence as well, to which extend these founders do affect SV.

<comment><USER6> yes please - anyone else have a thought on this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So interesting to find similarities with non-Silicon Valley founders worldwide.</comment>


I have no idea what I'm doing #1 - Twilio - <AUTHOR> http://charlotteis.hostghost.io/i-have-no-idea-what-im-doing-1-twilio/

<comment><AUTHOR> I wont actually receive your texts anymore; I had to turn the Twilio service off (thought the app still works as expected). I shared it with my small twitter network and someone used up all my Twilio credits and sent me 495 texts!

But whatever, valuable experience! :)</comment>


Ask HN: What do I need to know to start an eCommerce business? - <AUTHOR>

From high level business factors to nitty gritty payment details.<p>Links to relevant websites and books would be much appreciated as well. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I ran an online retail company for seven years. In no particular order, these are the things that hurt us and killed our competitors:

1\. Drop-shipping product is a cheap way to add lots of vendors with very little overhead, but the margins are slim, and customer service issues tend to take much more time and energy because you're dealing with a third party.

2\. Good customer service people are worth their weight in gold. By 'good', I don't just mean people who are cheery with the customers - I mean that they know when to bend over backwards for a customer, and when the customer is simply a lost cause.

3\. Thanks to Amazon, no one wants to pay for shipping. We experimented with every possible variation, from passing true shipping costs along to absorbing a percentage, to free shipping. We eventually settled on free shipping for orders over a certain price point. Shipping costs almost never correspond with a customer's perception of value for the shipped product. Bottom line, be sure that you're really charging enough for shipping to stay in business.

4\. The simpler the checkout process, the more sales you'll have. Our conversions jumped 30% when we switched to a one-page checkout form.

5\. Recurring sales are the foundation of your business. Build your list, and send (at least) monthly emails.

</comment><comment><USER3> This might help: <http://sellitontheweb.com/blog/ecommerce-101/></comment>


Open source multimodal transit routing - <AUTHOR> https://mapzen.com/projects/multimodal-transit-demo <comment><USER2> Hey, I'm with Mapzen, let me know if you have any questions. We're importing GTFS feeds from multiple transit agencies and serving them via a single API via our Transit.land project. We then pass the data into Turn-by-Turn, our open source routing engine which serves them up as data tiles. We select routes with on-the-fly costing and draws it via LRM (Leaflet Routing Machine).

</comment><comment><USER2> hey eean -- that's on our roadmap! We can already route by bike, and by BART. Multimodal Bike+BART would basically look and act like the walking + transit directions we have now. Drop us a line at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll let you know when it's ready.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you support my BART+bike lifestyle?</comment>


The United Nations has a radical, dangerous vision for the future of the Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/09/24/the-united-nations-has-a-radical-dangerous-vision-for-the-future-of-the-web/ <comment><USER2> "As reports like this are making increasingly clear, however, these platforms were developed by people who never imagined the struggles that women face online. We're using tools that weren't designed for us; they had other people and values and priorities in mind."

Wtf are they talking about? You think twitter was developed for misogyny in mind?

</comment><comment><USER3> "But the United Nations proposes both that social networks proactively police every profile and post, and that government agencies only "license" those who agree to do so."...

That's horrible. So Facebook, Twitter, etc will have to hire people to monitor profiles 24/7 and pay more fees to the government? A way to add more barriers to entry... I hate this idea. Just block people if they're being annoying.</comment>


WhatsApp Finally Has a Plan to Make Money, and It's Genius - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/robbie-abed/whatsapp-finally-has-a-plan-to-make-money-its-genius.html <comment><USER2> This has been in testing for a while, so I'm guessing they already know how to prevent businesses from having automated replies to each customer message to avoid paying the charge. Anyone have an idea how they do it?</comment>


No,I am not a 10x developer.But I can get things done - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nikantvohra/no-i-am-not-a-10x-software-engineer-2e7d1297f74b <comment><USER2> IF there are 10X engineers out there, would they not be charging at least 2X what regular engineers charge?

And where is the startup who is willing to pay even 1X what an engineer is worth?

The people going on and on about "hire the best of the best" all seem to be type-A Bros with MBAs who decided they should be CEO at 22 and confuse teenage testosterone for savvy business sense.

And of course these are also to the type that claim %2.5 in the company (5 year vesting 1 year cliff, natch) and a $80k salary is going to really make you rich when the company takes off.

If I was a 10X engineer (I've never seen one, in fact, I've never even met anyone who has met one) I wouldn't fall for that. Assuming I'm a 1X engineer, well, I'm already smart enough not to fall for that.

(So, my advice is, only take the risk of joining a startup if you're earning %33 of the equity-- eg you're a founder, and that's borderline- take %33 if the other two founders are stronger than you... otherwise try to cofound and take $50 of the pre-investment (or %51). My other advise is, the CEO should be an engineer. MBAs are cheep, young MBAs need guidance.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have yet to see some proof that 10x developers exist. I watched some videos of pair programming, and they are the closest thing I have seen to some sort of mastery of the stack. I think they are a myth.

<comment><USER4> How about the works of some famous programmers? Fabrice Bellard, Richard Stallman, etc.

But yeah I'd too like to see a list of videos about good programmers at work. Anyone have good recommendations or links to playlists? One I've been following is Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero series. He's quite good and easy to believe 10x average when he's not doing it with such an educational focus (and in 1 hour stretches on evenings).</comment></comment>


Email reveals Clinton worked with Google CEOs to keep Benghazi video blocked - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/16800#efmAUgAVkAdUAdnAePAe2 <comment><USER2> Too much to ask for "Benghazi" to be spelled correctly? Also, this is overblown, doesn't mention Clinton, and DOES mention that this email was already voluntarily given to House Select Committee on Pretending That Benghazi is a Real Issue (aka Gowdy-Doody Time).

<comment><USER3> Other than it saying "Hillary Clinton Email Archive" at the top implying where it came from and it says "Office of the Secretary" in the email itself? I mean, I understand the committee thing was a waste of time but don't pretend with your obvious bias that absolutely nothing happened here.

<comment><USER2> Yes, whereas you of course have no bias! Let's be honest: everyone has made a judgment about whether this is a real issue or not, by now.

My point, however, was a factual one: this particular email was a) voluntarily disclosed, and b) does not mention Clinton or substantiate the allegation in the headline, and c) also fails to show that anything untoward occurred here.

<comment><USER3> What exactly is my bias you detected in my statement?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What specific video? I mean, yes, it is interesting that state asked Google to block something on YT, but knowing what video is highly relevant to understand the significance.

<comment><USER5> This is likely in reference to Innocence of Muslims[0] the movie which allegedly prompted the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi. It can be easily found on Youtube today.[1]

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_of_Muslims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_of_Muslims) [1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl2-NyONaL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl2-NyONaL8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if anyone at Google would resign over something like this, or if everyone has already rationalized it away and now just keep their head down for the next paycheck.

Some people definitely do go in with very strong principles, but those seem to dilute quickly.

<comment><USER3> I see nothing wrong here. It appears it was an informal request that a private company could have nicely said "no" in response. YouTube is taking down videos all the time due to informal requests that have no authority of law behind them, no one complains that much about those.

<comment><USER7> The Secretary of State calls up and asks you to take down a video and that's an "informal request"?

<comment><USER3> The President of the United States of America can personally call you and request that you take the Trump sign off your lawn. That is an informal request unless he can specify what law he is enforcing that you must be in compliance. You can politely or impolitely respond in any way you wish regardless of the fact of the position the man currently holds.

If there is a threat to you for non-compliance of his request, then he has likely broken the law.

<comment><USER8> "The President of the United States of America can personally call" I think Barrack Obama can make a personal call but The President of the US can't.

When an email comes from @state.gov with the description of "U.S. Department of State SUBJECT TO AGREEMENT ON SENSITIVE INFORMATION & REDACTIONS." I don't think it can be considered Hillary making a personal request.

Ironically this might have been a very appropriate use of Clinton mail.

<comment><USER3> It is Monday so my recollection could be incorrect, but last I checked Barrack Obama is indeed the President of the United States of America and he can make a personal call whenever he feels like it. I was referring to the man that currently holds that title, not the office. But, a personal call and an informal request can be two different things completed at the same time.

I didn't claim Hillary made a personal request. I stated that an informal request was made, whether it be from Hillary herself or a staffer on her behalf. It is still an informal request that a private company can politely or impolitely decline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> YT bans videos all the time. Why does this incident make Clinton or Google "evil"?

<comment><USER10> Because Hillary Clinton is running for President and certain parties want to imply a criminal conspiracy on her part regarding the Benghazi attacks.

<comment><USER3> First I've heard of a criminal conspiracy between Secretary of State and YouTube. Is there any good links on that conspiracy theory?

<comment><USER10> An email was published to Wikileaks, obviously there's a conspiracy afoot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I understand correctly, it's possible that someone in the State Department asked Google to temporarily take down a YouTube video, which they believed was actively inciting murderous violence against our embassies.

I'm okay with that.

If the government had attacked a private individual's server, and taken it down, that's different in my mind. But YouTube does and should reserve the right to not host content, yes?

Perhaps the Terms of Service have changed (they probably have), but they currently include rules like:

Violent or graphic content - It's not okay to post violent or gory content that's primarily intended to be shocking, sensational, or disrespectful. If posting graphic content in a news or documentary context, please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand what's going on in the video. Don't encourage others to commit specific acts of violence.

Hateful content - Our products are platforms for free expression. But we don't support content that promotes or condones violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity, or whose primary purpose is inciting hatred on the basis of these core characteristics. This can be a delicate balancing act, but if the primary purpose is to attack a protected group, the content crosses the line.

Perhaps in the heat of the moment (and with lives on the line), everyone made a bad decision. The video is actually currently available, so maybe they have changed their minds about some or all of this.

But yeah, I'm okay with this. I may change my mind when more evidence comes out.

<comment><USER12> My understanding is that there was never any rational basis or honest belief that a YouTube video was ever "inciting murderous violence against our embassies." It was a smoke screen to try to blunt the impact of what the expert reports at the time described as a well-planned terrorist attack.

But I guess if you have to pick between gross incompetence or lies and cover- ups, you can take your pick, or perhaps the truth is just, "yes".

<comment><USER11> Let's say they thought it was unlikely that the video was to blame.

With lives on the line, how certain would you need to be, in order to ASK Google to temporarily take it down?

10%? 5%?

And it's interesting to me to try to picture things from the other point of view... People think that Sec Clinton didn't believe the video was causing a problem, so she took a politically risky move and had the video taken down. If she didn't boast about taking the video down, then why would she do it? I guess people picture her like they Keystone Cops, or something. Or is there a rational way to explain this, that I'm just not seeing? Like: She arrogantly believed it would never come to light, so why the hell not ask to take it down, even though she believed it had 0 impact on the situation?

<comment><USER12> I don't know if taking down the video was just part of perpetuating the narrative that the video was somehow relevant, or if they actually believed the video was relevant and thought taking it down could somehow help matters, or maybe they even thought taking down the video was "right" in any case because, heck our govt is so keen on censoring "offensive" speech...

My only point is the choices are "dumb" and "dumber" so it's pretty depressing no matter what you choose to believe they were thinking at the time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So... whatever happened to "Don't be Evil"?

This incident depicts the US government asking for clandestine political cover from a multinational corporation, and receiving it. The State Department was the organ by which this unity of corporate and political power was achieved.

A candidate currently running for election was at least in part responsible for the underhanded censorship of information from the public.

These favors end up being repaid at some point, because that is how politics works. I doubt we will be informed about the nature of the favor that will be transacted from the US government to the credit of Google.

<comment><USER14> > So... whatever happened to "Don't be Evil"?

Google is a for profit corporation, not a person. It has a fiducary responsibility to maximise profit and investor returns within all legal bounds. Nothing else matters in the long term, no matter how much you might wish it.

<comment><USER15> There Is No Effective Fiduciary Duty to Maximize Profits

[https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective- fiducia...](https://medium.com/bull-market/there-is-no-effective-fiduciary- duty-to-maximize-profits-939ae50d0572#.7xoi4zn44)

<comment><USER14> It is implicit and accepted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google is the Halliburton of information.

</comment><comment><USER6> Title taken from Wikileaks' tweet:

[https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/710855886940540929](https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/710855886940540929)

</comment><comment><USER7> If it was Condoleeza Rice who had made this request a lot of people in this comments section would be singing a different tune.

</comment><comment><USER17> That to me seems like a good reason to have your own private email server. (add appropriate sarcasm tag)

How will she scratch back Google once elected? What kind of favors will be exchanged??

<comment><USER18> I was wondering this the other night will looking at the bar chart at the top of the "Democratic Primary Results" query result. Bernie's behind for sure but if you removed the superdelegate portion, which they've had in there from day one, it looks much less like a runaway lead.

Rather maddening as a Bernie supporter, but I guess that's the way the game gets played.

<comment><USER3> More the way the game plays you.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: dexy.tv -- legal movie search like it should be - <AUTHOR> http://www.dexy.tv

<comment><USER2> Dexy is awesome - all my content in one place across the web? Enough said!</comment>


Windows Holographic Shell Demo [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu09UWqS8-Q <comment><USER2> At work, on my desk is a Hololens. In some ways, it's cool. In others, it is a complete pile of garbage not worth anyone's time.

Cool:

New display type, that puts out really good looking holograms floating in reality.

Really solid SLAM algo that allows building of areas in 3d.

Battery and usage is really solid. Can actively use it at full brightness for 6 hours before recharge.

Suck:

Runs only things from their "App Store" aka the slum store where PuTTY is $5...

Sorry, no X86 apps. Period. End of story. Use Metro/UWP or whatever they call it these days.

Very little applications for platform. What little useful ones available are for ridiculous amounts. Open source is non-existent.

Loads of crypto data going to and from MS domains. All pinned cert data. The size seemed to correspond to the total size of rooms scanned listed in the settings.

No Administrator access, nor is there even a file manager. You are a renter on this platform, not an owner. This of this as "Surface RT for your face".

Requires Microsoft account to use, full stop. Don't have an account and don't want an account? You have a $3000 paperweight.

If you're prone to getting migraines, using this for any length of period will likely trigger a migraine. I know 3 people who get them, and each of them received a migraine within 5 minutes of usage. It has to do with how the clip/strap works on the head.

<comment><USER3> How do the suck points measure up for DayDream and other VR alternatives?

<comment><USER2> Well, in the VR side of stuff, we have the Rift DK1 and DK2, Vive, and the OSVR.

Everybody has their content for the Rift. They were first. And it shows by the number of people making content.

The Vive is pretty awesome. The controllers are top notch. I was playing (edit: nope, not Incredible Machine) Fantastic Contraption, and having a great time at it. Things just work, and work well. Make sure to put the room position sensors up about 5-6 feet on tripods though.

The OSVR... Well, a pile of crap is putting it nicely. The scripts that install the drivers are that: bad scripts. half the stuff is command-line and badly documented (unless you go through source as your documentation). There's almost no applications for the platform, and no way to run Oculus based demos and games on it. Head tracking was a disaster- when it worked. Save your money and frustration. Buy something else.

<comment><USER3> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You gotta love how the first application to be shown in that video is e-mail. I can just imagine how that meeting went.

Dev: "OK, we've created the first platform for fully holographic interfaces. You can create entire worlds where the only limit is your imagination. What should we build first?"

PM: "Outlook!"

Oh Microsoft, never change ;)

<comment><USER5> One of the points is that they didn't build a new Outlook for it, that's just crusty regular old Outlook being Outlook (in a 3D space, but Outlook might not even know that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft has completely missed the most powerful aspect of VR/AR here...

I believe strongly that one of the KEY features of AR/VR for humans is that it leverages our _excellent_ spacial memory. The spacial metaphor is a powerful one, and the reason memory techniques like loci work. We need to leverage this in VR. Standing at a virtual computer screen is exactly the wrong way to think about this.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure Microsoft hasn't forgotten that. It's subtle in the video, but the applications are more than in just one "virtual screen" spot and seem to remember where they were left (Outlook and Edge are in very different positions in her space, for instance). Same with the virtual knick knacks and doodads scattered in the space.

The promises from earlier Windows Holographic pitches is that it is very space-aware including making it easy for multiple machines and people to share a consistent space between them.

Certainly there's probably a lot more that the 2D applications could make use of 3D space, but the point of the demo (and Windows Holographic) is that existing 2D applications play nice in your 3D spaces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob) Can we get over it?

<comment><USER8> Perhaps it will work better in 3D?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's sad that the promise of VR was that we could be taken to places that we couldn't go in real life. Like Iceland - I'd love to go to Iceland, but there are issues that prevent that. Or maybe The Louvre, but without all the other tourists, etc. clogging up the joint.

No, we get email and a virtual dog.

So far, I'm not seeing a reason to even want VR, much less shell out ridiculous amounts of money for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm guessing you noped-out before the end of the vid. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu09UWqS8-Q&t=53s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu09UWqS8-Q&t=53s)

<comment><USER9> OK, that's more like it. The marketoids should have led with that and gotten bigger from there, rather than leading with the mundane stuff I can already do just as well with a bog-standard computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> straight from my gut:

virtual renditions of remote touristic places & events: YES !

virtual desktops, apps that work best in 2D forced into 3D and virtual pets: rather no.

<comment><USER11> Try 'HoloTour' for an amazing demo of virtual tourism on the HoloLens.

[Edit]: Didn't realise that the linked video actually showed off HoloTour :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't help thinking of Community's take on virtual reality: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMTQxCzStuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMTQxCzStuw)

Whatever pointing device they give had better be good. Flailing around in mid air trying to click a tiny box right next to two other tiny boxes sucks.

</comment><comment><USER13> In case you might not know: The first few minutes are most likely a nice nod to Microsoft Bob [1], the first time they tried to create an alternate shell environment (and hopelessly failed, I might add).

Well played Microsoft, well played.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob) \-- Note the dog.

</comment><comment><USER14> Regular 2d apps in 3d space could be great, basically a natural extension of the multi-monitor setup. But I don't see it being viable in the next five years. Current generation VR displays are not even close to the required resolution for useful office work.

</comment><comment><USER15> Virtual office cubicle with Microsoft Office. Like Job Simulator but real. The future we deserve.

</comment><comment><USER16> Looks similar to [http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/)

<comment><USER15> More like [http://store.steampowered.com/app/448280/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/448280/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's the resolution of these displays? -- I can't imagine using Outlook (!) on my Rift DK1.

</comment><comment><USER18> Microsoft Bob VR. This will be the biggest thing since 3d televisions.

</comment><comment><USER19> Looks like the search companion dog is back! But where's Clippy?

<comment><USER20> buried under a thousand windows and widgets, or theres not enough RAM left for it.</comment></comment>


Numerical recipes in Hadoop - <AUTHOR> http://www.decomposer.org/blog/2010/04/01/slide-deck-numerical-recipes-in-hadoop/

<comment><USER2> This looks very interesting and substantial, but I don't understand it. What are the standard texts one should read in order to gain the necessary background?

<comment><AUTHOR> Linear Algebra by Axler

Matrix Computations by Golub

Collaborative filtering papers by Koren: <http://research.yahoo.com/Yehuda_Koren>

Stanford paper which is the source of Mahout project: [http://www.cs.stanford.edu/people/ang//papers/nips06-mapredu...](http://www.cs.stanford.edu/people/ang//papers/nips06-mapreducemulticore.pdf)

Map Reduce algos book by Jimmy Lin: <http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~jimmylin/book.html>

Pattern Recognition by Bishop (or Theodoridis)

Linear algebra by G.Strang

Graph Theory by Gross

Hadoop the definitive guide by Tom White

Natural Language Processing by Manning

Information Retrieval by Manning

for additional references here is a great compilation: [http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/3/12/learning- about-m...](http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/3/12/learning-about- machine-learning-2nd-ed.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I saw Jake give this talk at the Seattle Hadoop/NoSQL/Scalability meetup last week. It really opened my eyes about the usefulness of linear algebra.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice presentation - I had not played with Mahout for a long while, but I just installed the new version and reviewed the docs for clustering data in Solr indices - really useful!</comment>


Worlds First Invisible Skyscraper - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/09/13/south-korea-will-soon-be-home-to-an-invisible-skyscraper/

<comment><USER2> Building an invisible tower near the airport sounds like a bad idea. Not because a 747 is going to run into it, those are flown by sophisticated enough computers, but what about smaller aircraft where the pilots are more likely to be flying partially by site, or if something goes wrong?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think they should delay the display by 12 hours. So it shows daylight of the previous day, during the night and vice versa. Even if it will be annoyingly lit up. At least they won't have any issues with aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this work for all angles? If I am on the ground looking up, will I see the view behind the building from my point of view?</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to learn React? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The best way of learning `anything` is time, dedication, practice, self motivation, studying, persistence and not only. They have documents and a simple google search also leads to quiet a lot of articles, tutorial, videos, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/getting- started.html](http://facebook.github.io/react/docs/getting-started.html)</comment>


The problem with GNU make for scientific workflows - <AUTHOR> http://bionics.it/posts/the-problem-with-make-for-scientific-workflows/

<comment><AUTHOR> Author of post here. Hope for some input on the topic, as it is an area I'm exploring and researching at the moment and am eager to learn all I can about.</comment>