AMC unveils answer to MoviePass - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2018/film/news/amc-moviepass-2-1202851877/ <comment><USER2> Nobody wants a dozen different "movie subscriptions" just like nobody wants a dozen different "streaming service" subscriptions.

The value of the early movers/original services is that they gave access to EVERYTHING (or nearly everything) with a single login/payment.

Whatever value was originally generated by the first service is quickly lost as soon as everyone and their dog gets greedy, spins up their own special snowflake version of (service), and pulls their content out of the original service. This forces consumers to choose between signing up & paying for a dozen different services, or canceling everything and simply going back to the convenience & ease of piracy, which, incidentally, makes everything from everywhere available in a single location (value!).

<comment><USER3> It's at least worth asking if the streaming future you implicitly envision here -- where one service, presumably Netflix, becomes the gatekeeper for nearly all commercial streaming content, dictating what is available to us to watch and, by virtue of their market power, effectively dictating what producers will be paid -- is really all silver lining and no cloud. (There are also downsides to advocating piracy as the solution, and whether it's convenient and easy is definitely in the eye of the beholder, but that's a different discussion.)

For MoviePass vs. AMC Stubs Plus or whatever they're calling it, the market dynamics are different from streaming, anyway; while there _are_ movies that are released exclusively to specific theatre chains, they're few and far between. So in practice, very few people are going to feel compelled to subscribe to both services in order to see all movies -- they're going to subscribe to one or the other.

Also, last but not least, there's strong evidence that the value to moviegoers that MoviePass represents comes from a "the more you use our service, the more money we lose" model. I am not sure that I would sneer at AMC as a "special snowflake" for questioning the wisdom there.

<comment><USER4> The answer is simple, non-lockin to any particular theater chain. Revenue of the $20/mo is split across multiple theatre chains, and goers can see a movie at any participating chain.

Theaters get predictable revenue and guaranteed income, and viewers get a bulk discount.

All you can 'eat', and theater chain freedom are two different features. They can still keep both.

<comment><USER5> Except why would the big chains want to be involved, when they could create their own with lock-in to their chain?

<comment><USER6> Because their own chain versions are bad ($20/month for 3 movies/week for just AMC vs $10/month for 1movie/day anywhere) and will not be successful with consumers.

This reminds me of the late 90s/early 2000s when record company's response to Napster/mp3 was to make worse services for more money. [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressPlay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PressPlay)

<comment><USER5> "Because their own chain versions are bad ($20/month for 3 movies/week for just AMC vs $10/month for 1movie/day anywhere) and will not be successful with consumers."

The AMC one also doesn't involve the dog and pony show you have to pull off with MoviePass, it includes premium showings like IMAX and stuff, and if you're in a place where most, if not all of your local theaters are AMC, it's not a problem.

<comment><USER6> There are likely a few conditions where this made sense. Just like Pressplay also had a few users.

But I'm willing to bet anyone a $100 value smart contract that this thing will not exist for long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We liked MoviePass (pretty sure I even posted about it here). Then the CEO went on an idiotic rampage about people "gaming the system" and we got caught in the crossfire.

We used it about 1.5 x per month and loved it. Something came up one night and we couldn't see the movie we got tickets for. Then they changed to the once- per-film policy, retroactively, meaning we could no longer rebook the movie we missed.

I gave their awful customer service 4 attempts at fixing it via the app CS and via Twitter DMs. Oh well!

Unlike some here I think they have a big opportunity— yes it's built in another industry's back but if they do it right they can end up with their own special events or even buy out distressed theaters and operate independently. Think Netflix moving from licensing to O&O content. Seems like they won't make it that far though, subscribing to tickets in 2018 isn't the same barrier of entry as fast HD streaming in 2008 or whenever Netflix nailed it down.

<comment><USER8> The "Net" in Netflix started as a site where you could rent DVDs, a service that, astonishingly, is still offered.

That was the barrier to entry: they had a customer base already paying them for content. MoviePass has no comparable moat.

<comment><USER9> 1) our neighborhood doesn't have any typical internet providers in it currently, so I actually prefer dvd.netflix.com

2) as someone else stated, Netflix streaming doesn't have everything whereas dvd.netflix.com fills in a lot of content gaps.

<comment><USER8> There are a few long tail effects and the sum of it makes sense, sure.

The most salient is the difference between buying plastic and buying rights.

<comment><USER9> Not disagreeing with the value in the streaming offering, just saying why there is still a market for the rental-by-mail offering existing and why Netflix would still retain the offer (my guess is they probably rip the movies from the rentals and serve those in the streaming when licensing allows and rather than treat the Blurays/DVDs as just a cost of doing business, continue that operation).

<comment><USER10> No streaming movie provider "rips" video from a DVD. Netflix gets a digital master and encodes it to various formats/bit rates across an AWS hosted server farm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always thought this is how this model would play out. MoviePass provided proof of concept, but the theaters have no reason to play ball and enter a revenue-sharing partnership with MoviePass when they can just launch their own competing product.

AMC will make up for discounted ticket sales in concessions. Once you get people into the theater, there are a lot of up-charge opportunities. Food & drinks (and alcohol if they can get a liquor license) make up most of theaters' profit.

I assume the UX will be better than MoviePass as well since ticketing should be fully integrated - no need to physically go to the theater to purchase tickets, find out that tickets for the movie you'd like to see are sold out, swipe a different credit card, not be able to use the theater's rewards program, upload your ticket stub to the app...when you think about it the UX for MoviePass is actually pretty awful.

Doubt many people are seeing more than 3 movies a week anyways on MoviePass, and several subscribers I know also pay for IMAX movies. For them it's a no- brainer to pay $10 more per month to see (effectively) unlimited IMAX films.

<comment><USER12> AMC also has a good relationship with movie distributors, who are the biggest barrier to unlimited movie passes.

AMC can neogicate a revenue sharing model with the distributors, like Spotify does. I'm guessing if a customer sees 15 movies in a month for 20 bucks, AMC isn't paying the distributors for 15 regular viewings. Probably more like (20 / X viewings) * (1 - margin).

MoviePass cannot do that because threaters are middle men in their model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > MoviePass's business model is controversial. ... It believes that the data > it collects on consumer behavior will be so powerful that it will find > alternative ways to make money.

They also shakedown local theaters. This happened right near me. They told the theater that they want 50% of the concessions sales. The theater said no, so Moviepass stopped supporting that theater. The theater lost so many concession sales from Moviepass customers going elsewhere that they relented and agreed to their 50% commission.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I've heard from the managers at my local indie theaters (in LA) that MoviePass tried to shake them down for concessions, then pulled their theaters from the app when they refused...and then came back hat in hand 2 weeks later offering to take only 15% of concessions if the theaters would take them back.

One did, because MoviePass customers at his theater actually purchased enough extra concessions to justify it. The other did not, because the MoviePass customers at his theater were cheapskates who tried to sneak in all their own food and drinks.

<comment><USER15> I must be a cheapskate because I never buy anything at the concession. I carry a bottle of water in my bag. I'm there to watch a movie, not eat junk.

<comment><USER16> I really enjoy butter popcorn, but it's a complete waste of time to bother clarifying the butter and cooking the popcorn for the only flavor of popcorn that taste mediocre when it's not piping hot and that taste terrible the day. If I I'm making popcorn I'm making any other flavor because I'll have also have a snack for the rest of the week.

I exclusively save butter popcorn for the movies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> crooked-v The key bits:

> On Tuesday, the theater chain will begin offering guests the chance to see > up to three movies per week for the monthly fee of $19.95.

> However, AMC's program offers some features that MoviePass has not matched. > Namely, customers can see movies in premium formats such as IMAX, Dolby > Cinema, and RealD. MoviePass can only be used for 2D films.

> The exhibitor said that subscribers will not be able to carryover movies > from week to week if they see fewer than three. Unlike MoviePass, however, > they can even see all three movies on the same day, and they can watch > movies they have previously seen. Guests can also reserve tickets in > advance.

<comment><USER17> None of the articles are explicit but I assume that the subscription can only be used for one ticket at a time; i.e. you can't see one movie per week with 2 guests.

<comment><USER18> In their FAQ ([https://www.amctheatres.com/faqs/alist](https://www.amctheatres.com/faqs/alist)) it says that only the subscription holder can use the tickets.

They check for a photo id on check-in.

<comment><USER17> That's what I figured. The limit seems pretty sensible. Most people won't hit it most of the time, even if they're pretty heavy movie watchers, but it probably prevents usage that's really unprofitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is not a bad deal. I could never get my dad who is a frequent movie goer to deal with the complexity of Movie Pass. But this he would go for. If you see two movies in a month you would break even - even if it's not a movie you would pay money to see. My wife an I look at the movies as either worth paying full price, a "Plex Original", or not worth even taking the time to wait for it to "fall off the back of a truck". We might go out and see our Plex Originals.

I would probably buy her the pass at least because she doesn't work during the Summer and she would see more movies between both our son and the two of us.

If you see even one IMAX 3D movie it's worth the cost and unlike Movie Pass, we can order online and reserve seating in advance.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it seems pretty reasonable if this chain is convenient for you. I don't have theaters convenient for me so I don't tend to go out and would mostly rather watch at home anyway. But going to a few movies a month is hardly in compulsive movie viewing territory and a lot of people prefer to go to the theater for various reasons.

I'd be curious how much AMC thinks they'll make on the actual pass and how much on add-on business (subscriber bringing a guest, food & beverage).

<comment><USER10> I didn't think about the subscriber bringing a guest. Most people don't go to the movies alone.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. So if I'm a subscriber who goes to a lot of movies and don't have a specific partner who always goes with me, I'll be inclined to drag along various friends who might not otherwise have paid for a ticket and gone to the theater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Also important: MoviePass parent, Helios and Matheson's. Stock was trading at $38.86 a share in October 2017. $0.44 today. Yeaaah moviepass is screwed (I am a subscriber who likes the product but understand it is completely unsustainable).

<comment><USER20> For some additional context, HMNY was at $2.50 in _September_ 2017.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a Moviepass user I'm likely gonna ride it til it dies then switch to this because:

1\. Online ticketing means I can see a movie even the first night and not worry about selling out since you have to get to the theatre to buy the ticket

3\. The concession rewards will def be nice too.

4\. The IMAX/3D option is nice even if I don't use it much.

This was very smart and calculated by AMC, especially on the release date. It doesn't look like Moviepass has more than a few months left and won't be able to adjust to this. I'm also hoping this will force Regal to do the same because frankly, it's a better theatre when available.

I'll miss Moviepass and glad it came, but I don't see any way it lasts. I'm just glad I got the chance to burn the VC money towards over 40 movies in the past 10 months for the low price of $2.5 a movie.

Honestly though, this deal is surprisingly good as well and wondering if it goes away after Moviepass dies. The 12 month price guarantee is amazing too though.

<comment><USER22> It is 3 movies per week. Which chances are is more then what the average person is seeing weekly anyways.

<comment><USER21> Oh WOW. I misread that. Wow that's a deal. Edited my comment accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ouch. MoviePass' parent company was already down 30% this morning on news that they want to do a reverse split. Then 20 minutes later AMC lets this loose. I can't imagine that it was coincidence.

<comment><USER20> HMNY was up 26.7% yesterday, all in the last half hour of trading. It's now down about 8% (or 3¢) on Monday's close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Been a MoviePass subscriber for a long time (back when it was $30+) and I am still a big fan, but this offering has me honestly thinking about switching.

I already pay for AMC stubs and go to AMC the majority of the time. Combined with being able to book beforehand, go to premieres, and see the 1 or 2 movies in IMAX that I want to each year this could be good.

Only drawback is AMC's pass not having the flexibility/number of theater's with MoviePass, especially for more indie theaters where I live. Curious to see how MoviePass responds (if at all)

</comment><comment><USER25> And here I just bought a Sinemia[1] pass (billed annually) ... ~$10 per month for 2 tickets for 2ppl per month (4tickets total). I do like that I can reserve 2 tickets at once though (seats beside eachother)

[1]: [https://www.sinemia.com/new-plans](https://www.sinemia.com/new-plans)

</comment><comment><USER26> $240/year seems way too steep for me. And 3 movies per _week_ is too many.

Perhaps if it included 2 guest passes a month it would be significantly more compelling.

Rule of thumb, Recurring monthly revenue is worth 5x the one time purchase. If my actual utilization averages out to once a week I want to be paying closer to $10/mo for the $50 of al la carte tickets.

It doesn't matter to me that it's AMC only because I have a great local AMC and they carry all the movies I would expect them to.

If you could pre-pay for a certain number of months of it, it could be a pretty neat gift idea.

</comment><comment><USER27> An interesting question here is whether this will ever affect what AMC ultimately pays the movie studios. In the same way that Moviepass had to pay AMC the full ticket price for each admission, I'm sure that for now AMC will have to pay the studios their full cut for each admission. But will the exhibitors start approaching the studios about working out a revenue sharing model for subscription passes that's not tied to individual admissions?

</comment><comment><USER28> The only theater in my town is an AMC "Classic" which means they don't have Imax, or Dolby Cinema and I don't care about 3d so I think I'll stay with Moviepass as long as AMC accepts it.

</comment><comment><USER29> > Since 2002, ticket prices have increased by 54%, while ticket sales have > fallen 22%.

The movie-theater industry seems to make it seem like the former is a reaction to the latter, but it's probably the opposite.

Wouldn't the rational economic reaction to falling ticket sales be to _reduce_ prices?

<comment><USER30> It's rational only if you expect that lowering prices would result in enough additional volume to increase profits.

If you can boost your prices by 50% and only lose 20% of your sales, that seems like a win in terms of net profit.

<comment><USER17> Especially when there are so many other forces that probably are causing people to go to movies less. Other entertainment options (no streaming in 2002). Bigger/better TVs in many homes.

Honestly, you could tell me I could go to a local movie theater for free and it wouldn't change my behavior (to rarely go) one bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> AMC fires people for wearing MAGA hats.

</comment><comment><USER32> I am naturally going to assume people will be uneasy with AMC having their data compared to MoviePass since they are now owned by Chinese?

<comment><USER33> "This guy likes comic book movies" seems like a pretty minimal data point. China can have that info on me, if they really want to pay for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't find enough good movies in the theatres that warrants paying for a subscription plan.

<comment><USER35> Personally, I feel the same way. Never really did enjoy the cinema experience, maybe seeing one or two movies per year, and as we head deeper into a world packed with $FRANCHISE films, I end up having less and less major releases to care about.

One of the folks at work has the MoviePass subscription, and while he does like going to the movies it sounds like he ends up going a lot just because he has it.

To the folks that have MoviePass: Were y'all already going to the movies frequently, or do you end up going more because of MoviePass?

<comment><USER19> Went to cinema less than once a year without moviepass. Now maybe once a month?

<comment><USER34> If you go once a month do you save money with the moviepass? I usually get discounted tickets from Costco when I want to watch.

<comment><USER35> Not all markets have MoviePass _and_ CostCo. I grew up in the wealthiest county in my state, and we still didn't have a CostCo, but we had plenty of theaters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Most new movies suck. Not even 80%, but more like 95% are just derivative crap designed to make most of their money on the international market with CGI spectacle rather than good writing. I'm perfectly happy to pay full price for the one movie I see a month in the theater I like, especially since MoviePass and the like are just more I-am-the-product fuckery.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't spend $240 a year at the theatre and I have no intention of starting now.

If this is the best AMC can do while keeping a margin, then we might be in trouble.

<comment><USER38> This is very interesting, because I wouldn't want to spend that much on movies either. Yet a decade ago, people were happy paying $1000 a year for a cable subscription. Not directly the same value proposition, but similar.

It seems like the price people are willing to pay for entertainment has gone down significantly, in sync with it becoming far cheaper and more abundant. So movie theaters are in trouble if they're selling entertainment by quantity, because the supply only goes up.

I think they're more successful selling cultural commonality; you watch the latest popular release so that you can talk about it with other people, and the marketing has already gotten you excited about it. (I find being pre- excited about something and thus not having to learn about and pick from a huge array of options a value-add all on its own)

<comment><USER17> >Yet a decade ago, people were happy paying $1000 a year for a cable subscription.

Many still do. Including myself but this will probably be the year I drop it even though I get no live TV otherwise.

<comment><USER39> Without a doubt my favorite subscription has been YouTube TV. Can't recommend enough (no affiliation whatsoever).

<comment><USER40> just curious how much do you pay for your internet connection?

At $50/month + the $40 for Youtube TV you'd be over $1000 a year (not that this was what you were responding to but I'm curious as thread started w/ $1000 year).

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but in general, wouldn't it be $50/month + $60-70/month for cable and internet?

<comment><USER40> Right. Was going with $50/month for internet (but I personally can't get it near that cheap) and $40 for YT TV which puts you at $1080/yr.

I guess my real point is who ISN'T paying $1000/yr now? You pay almost that much for the internet package alone in a lot of America.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LiteTree: SQLite with Branches - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aergoio/litetree <comment><USER2> Fossil[1] is a SCM system (like git) created by the very same author of SQLite (D. Richard Hipp). It uses SQLite as its database and implements versioning and branching[2] and even merging (which LiteTree doesn't do) on its own, by recording the changes on each item on a separate table.

This approach is more complex to implement but a lot more versatile and flexible. Most of times you wouldn't want to version or branch the whole database, but only parts of it.

[1] [https://www.fossil-scm.org](https://www.fossil-scm.org)

[2] [https://www.fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/branchin...](https://www.fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/branching.wiki)

<comment><USER3> I had the same thought.

So, I was wondering why they didn't use fossil itself

<comment><USER4> > So, I was wondering why they didn't use fossil itself

Fossil is a SCM for files. LiteTree is a branching RDBMS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for posting this. My first thought was - has this been sent through the official SQLite battery of tests? If so, have the tests been adapted to validate branches, rapid branch switches, branching under failure conditions (malloc fails, power outages, etc) and concurrent access patterns?

One of the reasons why SQLite is so widely used is that it is carefully tested and shown to be reliable even in potentially faulty conditions. As detailed on [https://sqlite.org/testing.html](https://sqlite.org/testing.html), there are three test sets, one of which is public (the TCL set). I'd love to see test results to assure the safety of any data stored in LiteTree.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! It was not tested with the official SQLite public tests yet, but this will happen in the next month. Some tests will need to be adapted (maybe a lot) so it may take a while. But stability and reliability is our focus as it will be included in the Aergo blockchain ([https://www.aergo.io/](https://www.aergo.io/)).

<comment><USER6> Are you sure the SQLite tests are public?

I went looking for them a while back, but didn't find them.

It's completely possible I missed them though. :)

<comment><USER7> [https://www.sqlite.org/src/dir?ci=tip](https://www.sqlite.org/src/dir?ci=tip)

In the generated makefile there should be the tests targets, I guess. In the Makefile.in I see the targets : tcltest, quicktest, test, valgrindtest, smoketest and many others

<comment><USER6> Excellent, thank you. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > LiteTree is more than TWICE AS FAST than normal SQLite on Linux and > MacOSX!!!

In my experience, claims like these usually end up showing that the author didn't understand the `PRAGMA synchronous` setting at all, or they chose to ignore it to juice their stats.

In this benchmarking test are the data durability guarantees the same for both LiteTree and vanilla SQLite?

<comment><USER9> Looks like the speed comes from using lmdb rather than sqlites own storage layer.

<comment><USER10> I first read this as IMDd for Internet Movie Database and got confused, but probably you mean LMDB for Lightning Memory-Mapped Database, which makes much more sense. :)

<comment><USER11> lmdb != Imdb

Check your fonts if those two look the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat. I'll have to compare this to my own implementation.

[https://github.com/cannadayr/git-sqlite](https://github.com/cannadayr/git- sqlite)

Instead of storing the transactions as a separate lmdb commit, I decided to store the database in a git repository and expose the diffs using sqlite's sqldiff utility. This allowed my workflow to be almost unchanged and limits the dependencies to git, sqlite, sqldiff, & bash.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I did not know your repo. I guess they have different use cases. Yours is good to store the db inside of a git repo. I had only read about storing the dump of SQL commands on the repo and then use the git diff. But it requires dumping and rebuilding the db each time. LiteTree focuses on very big databases, in which making a file copy is not feasible on a branch creation.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I saw similar ideas ~ a year ago, & figured it was possible. It was just a matter of using sqlite's (excellent) sqldiff utility and wrapping a custom git diff driver. Took about an evening to get the proof-of-concept working and a little more fiddling for ease of use.

I don't have stress test results, but it should be similar to git. I think I remember getting it up to several hundred megabytes at one point and it was fine. I mostly use it for smaller sets of highly relational data that I want to track like I would source code.

By leveraging git & sqlite it lets me avoid writing a network sync implementation, architecture specific code, or patching any C code to recompile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I will use the sqldiff code internally to implement diff between 2 branches. Excellent work from Richard Hipp and its team indeed.

And thank you for your work! I may use it someday.

<comment><USER12> yup, np. shoot me an email sometime, looks like we're on a similar page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There has been earlier work on getting git-style branched versioning on top of databases. For relational databases, OrpheusDB ([http://orpheus- db.github.io/](http://orpheus-db.github.io/)) puts a layer over PostgreSQL. They also supply a gRPC layer for interacting with the server.

For key-value systems, there are simple techniques for adding branched versioning to key-value (particularly ordered key-value) stores. We are using it for our research dataservice that holds 25+ TB of Connectomics data, which includes 3d image and segmentation data ([http://dvid.io](http://dvid.io)). Our paper is currently under review but should have been out several years ago :) We can use a variety of key-value storage backends and are experimenting with versioned relational DBs, so I'll definitely give LiteTree a look.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for posting this, it's useful to understand where LiteTree sits in context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone elaborate a use case for something like this? I'm guessing there's some blockchain connection but it's not immediately obvious

<comment><USER16> You can use it for "what if" analysis. \- Take a fork of the database \- Transform data in the fork. i.e. costs+5% \- Point your current queries to run on the fork

You can see how with just the effort repointing queries a reporting app could show the real world and the world you are modelling.

<comment><USER15> That's helpful, maybe I'm naive but isn't that like an Excel workload? I haven't seen scenarios where the entire database needs that kind of functionality. Can you elaborate on what kind of data and business problem one would be working on where they need that level of robust versioning?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is the function similar to PostgreSQL's deprecated "Time Travel" [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/6.3/static/c0503.htm](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/6.3/static/c0503.htm) ?

AFAIK this can be a foundation for some form of Snapshot Isolation [https://www.sqliteconcepts.org/SI_index.html](https://www.sqliteconcepts.org/SI_index.html) (?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, we can read the database at any point-in-time by selecting the branch and commit number. So it is similar to a snapshot. And yes, it is a type of Snapshot Isolation or MVCC (Multi Version Concurrency Control) but more than that because we can have concurrent readers on different branches.

<comment><USER18> How do you find the branch associated with a specific point in time? Didn't see that in the docs.

Also, are there guarantees that no two branches can be created at the exact same point in time?

Thanks for the excellent work! I can actually see some use cases for this in one of my side project. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess I wrote it wrong. The access is made by specifying the branch and desired commit number (integer value). It is not done by a date-time value. Although adding metadata (like date-time) can be supported if required by the users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If merge gets supported than it could serve as an alternative for program development -- using tables to store function definitions, constants, etc. instead of using flat files.

<comment><USER20> I think it could be pretty cool for concurrency.

Branch off, do some queries, inserts/updates and then merge back in

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am looking for exactly for this kind of implementation for my work project - having a DB using version control model.

However I need a production ready solution.

There is also: [https://github.com/attic-labs/noms](https://github.com/attic- labs/noms) But the project does not seem mature enough.

Do you know if there is any way to achieve this with an aim for production? What would be the best way/stack to get this result with current available tools?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to know your interest! LiteTree is implemented with production use in mind. It will be used in the Aergo blockchain ([https://www.aergo.io/](https://www.aergo.io/)). New tests will be released in the next weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm looking at this will little knowledge of how this makes the blockchain application easier. What seems odd to me is that merging branches isn't supported? So you can't perform a bunch of "transactions" and then merge them back into your master state. Maybe someone could illuminate the purpose this solves a little more clearly, as I'm guessing it has _nothing_ to do with my naive understanding.

<comment><USER23> We would need some rules for how to resolve collisions. If I change a record in two different ways, which one wins?

<comment><USER24> That is up to the upper layers to decide which record wins.

In my implementation, the default is to take the records from the "other" branch because you want 'devel' in 'master' not the other way around. Not sure I am clear. LMK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting project. How do you achieve theses performances ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that LMDB is the root of the outstanding peformance. Check it out, it is an innovative key/value database that uses a memory-mapped db file, the OS cache, zero-copy on reads and copy-on-write.

<comment><USER26> Are you really comparing the same thing, then? Do you have the same consistency guarantees if the system shuts down unexpectedly?

<comment><AUTHOR> When I saw the results I did not believe, so I reviewed the benchmark code. It is basically the same SQL commands being run in normal SQLite and with the branching enabled.

Yes, LMDB is proved to be safe. It is used in many apps and even other DB implementations, including Monero.

What I have not tested is SQLite with WAL (Write-Ahead Log). In this case it may be faster than the default journal mode.

<comment><USER27> Yes, it would be nice to see results with WAL, as it's significantly faster in most cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Very interesting stuff!

Is it possible to see a history of a column, table, schema, etc? Is it possible to tag a certain point in time?

It would be liberating for many schema designs that we could just change stuff and be sure that the database knew what was changed and when with the ability to roll changes back.

</comment><comment><USER29> Looking at the README it's not clear how indexes are managed. Like when we create a branch and add some data to an existing table and move back to a previous branch and try to add data with the same index keys ?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you create an index on a branch it will only be visible to the child branches starting from the point where the index was created. I encourage you to clone and test it. It is easy to compile, and it's fun! I will make a video in the next weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting, I implemented something similar a long time ago, have to see if I can dig up the source code. The goal was to support forking data without duplicating unchanged data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this is also used in virtual machines disk images (I guess)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This looks great. Thank you for creating it and sharing it

</comment><comment><USER24> Why did you choose LMDB among leveldb, wiredtiger and bsddb or even gdbm?

It seems like you do not rely on range queries at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because of the performance. Have you seen the results?

Memory-mapped file database with zero-copy on reads, just returning the pointer to the data on memory. LMDB is awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting. The branches could solve the "date-effective" table designs. In the past I had used Git as a database to store multiple versions of a document efficiently.

Or this could be used as some elementary partitioning logic where each branch is effectively a partition.

</comment><comment><USER33> The use case seems to overlap with noms dB - [https://github.com/attic- labs/noms](https://github.com/attic-labs/noms)

Noms doesn't have the appeal of SQL, but it is versioned and forkable and strongly typed data.

<comment><USER34> A few other and I are attempting to use noms specifically as a versioned database. I haven't seen anything else that can do everything that noms does. Its only problem is that it's really a database engine, not a full fledged database... so some development work is needed to get it usable within a project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is interesting and I hope I can find a use case for it. However, the performance compared to vanilla SQLite makes me anxious that there is a trade- off elsewhere, such as crash integrity.

<comment><AUTHOR> LMDB is crash-proof and its speed is unbelievable! I hope LiteTree will be too. The trade-off is storage space as all the history is recorded. But is uses way less space than copying the entire db on each branch creation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> > LiteTree is implemented storing the SQLite db pages on LMDB.

Why are you doing it like that? Does it lead to some limitation of some sort? Like making merge very costly?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is way easier to store the pages in a key/value db than storing them in separate files. And I don't need to implement concurrency access control as it is dealt by LMDB.

It leads to an easier implementation and robustness, as the main data processing is done by SQLite and LMDB. LiteTree is something like a glue, and the code is simple. What leads to better maintainability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> great stuff :) this is innovation :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Cool project thanks for sharing your work. There's an older project using lmdb (which doesn't support branching or anything, just for storage)...is litetree's usage of lmdb comparable to what sqlightning does? How does litetree work with the write-ahead log? How do multiple concurrent connections interact? Are multiple writers allowed? Can readers and writer(s) coexist?

<comment><AUTHOR> In SQLightning the database _rows_ are stored on LMDB instead of writing them to SQLite's B-tree.

In LiteTree the database _pages_ are stored on LMDB instead of writing them to the WAL.

LiteTree has MVCC, that comes from LMDB and SQLite's WAL. It can have many readers and one writer at the same time.</comment></comment>


Disney Claims House of Mouse Built with Copyright, Ignores Public Domain - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120910/02485220325/disney-claims-house-mouse-built-with-copyright-ignores-public-domain-foundation.shtml <comment><USER2> tangentially interesting that this article, from 2012, offers an argument against the now-dead TPP.</comment>


Wacom blogs post explains its phone home behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wacom-tablet-sending-data-google-analytics <comment><USER2> Every 'developer' thinks their collection of data and user usage is just and moral, and that the users simply don't understand that they will never use them for anything evil.

They're wrong.</comment>


WebM Decoder in Flash using Alchemy - <AUTHOR> http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2011/01/15/webm-decoder-in-flash-using-alchemy.html

<comment><USER2> Instead of using hardware acceleration like browser-native video decoders can, this involves compiling C to ActionScript and running it on Flash's VM.

So don't expect his frame rate of 1.5Hz (!) to improve much.

This is not a real alternative, even if you just consider how much of your users' batteries this "technique" would burn away.

</comment><comment><USER3> With this as an alternative on platforms that don't support webM, wouldn't you get more native support for a video encoded in webM using flash as an alternative than you do currently from h.264?

With firefox overtaking on browser usage in the EU, I think it's at least true there. Here's hoping this helps to open up video even further.

<comment><AUTHOR> WebM encode gives you native Firefox / Opera / Chrome / newer Android, Flash for Safari / IE and nothing for iOS.

H264 encode gives you native Safari / IE / iOS / Android, Flash for Firefox / Opera / Chrome.

<comment><USER3> the fact that you can hit iOS as a user means I guess H264 would be probably the better option for now, but it does come with a possible price tag in the future of whatever the legal bills may come to :)

also, H264 isn't native in IE at all on release versions either, and things may change drastically before release, so I wouldn't bother including speculation on prerelease versions. That means with ID moving over into the flash for both, you're left with native on Firefox / Opera / Chrome / newer Android vs. native on Safari / iOS / Android.

I guess if your target is mobile then pick the closed format, and if it's deskop go open rather? Or perhaps if your target is more likely to be using Mac than PC, then go with H264, or webM if it's PC?

<comment><USER2> > price tag in the future of whatever the legal bills may come to

Oh great, FUD. If you are doing free video, you don't have to pay anything. If you are selling premium content, then sure you might have to pay license fees (~10¢/user/year, and that will never go up by more than 5% every five or ten years), but why would you expect a lawsuit!?

<comment><USER3> actually, the free for non commercial only applies up to 2015 I think it is? after that, your already encoded video could cost you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What tech do you want to learn? - <AUTHOR>

What one tech skill or tool would you want to learn if you had a choice? <comment><USER2> I'd love to learn the core concepts of artificial intelligence (cliché, I know) but I have a lot of math to brush up on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Likely an outlier, but for me it would be data science applied to synthetic biology

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you talking about analytics? Like with big data?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: when is Google Instant coming to my GMail search? - <AUTHOR> Show me my matching mails real time a la Google Instant. This would be very useful. <comment><USER2> Google Instant will most likely never come to GMail search. The speed at which GMail queries are returned simply aren't fast enough for real-time search, and it's unlikely Google has a monetary incentive to improve the speed to this level. Remember, GMail search is a feature; Google Search is a business.

There are a few reasons GMail search is slow:

* GMail searches must search a genuinely real-time index of your e-mails. An e-mail must be searchable the instant it's created. Web search has an inherent latency which allows Google to do offline processing to improve search speed.

* It follows that, GMail must be an exact match, while Web search is an approximation.

* Popular queries can't be cached and returned quickly.

Source: [http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Gmail-take-longer-to-search- my...](http://www.quora.com/Why-does-Gmail-take-longer-to-search-my-inbox- than-Google-takes-to-search-the-entire-web?q=gmail+search+)

<comment><USER3> Would you accept an approximation for results as you type, with the true, exact search happening when you stop typing? I think this would be very useful, especially since I don't need to search the absolute real-time index of my emails 99% of the time. It would probably confuse users, though- having a new result pop in .5 seconds later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gmail doesn't even have substring search (e.g. searching for "hack" will not find instances of "hacker"). I think that would be a prerequisite for Instant- style searching.

<comment><USER5> No it wouldn't, instant search doesn't search substrings, but strings it _thinks_ you are about to type in.

You could create a lookup table of those for each GMail account in the background even if you didn't have substring search.

<comment><USER4> True. But it's worth noting that those predictions are sufficient for a slow, partially-working substring search. Gmail could search for the n most likely completions of your query terms in addition to the normal search, and collate the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know about you, but I find that Gmail searches take quite a bit longer to process than web searches because they can't be cached and they cannot have _any_ latency. Sometimes it takes multiple seconds just to process a seemingly-simple search of my mail.

How would they be able to really quickly (instantly) perform accurate and up- to-date searches of mail if a single query can take multiple seconds in its current state?

<comment><USER7> What is more, I actually find annoying the lame state of search in Gmail, given their all-mighty web counter part. Pretty slow, in general. No caches. No query expansions. No query suggestions. No nothing more than simple operators (and, or, in:, label:, after:, before:, and others I don't remember) and thats all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Suggest a feature for Gmail: [http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=suggestion...](http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=suggestions.cs)

<comment><USER9> To suggest Google Instant, scroll down to the bottom, and under "I have another idea", select: Interface and settings > Gmail interface > Search options. I've just suggested "Google Instant mail search".

(I assume you can just suggest under Other, but I think Search options makes the most sense.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wrote a Windows application which reads in all your email files and creates an SQL database/index, along with a Lucene index for searching the email body.

You can do an SQL wildcard search like SELECT * from mymail where SUBJECT like "%Gmail%", and the results are more-or-less instant.

I use it all the time for my own purposes, but nobody wants to beta test it.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would settle for GMail to be usable again, let alone improved. As of right now, I can't send or reply to any email's from any account[1], I can't search within my emails, I can't view emails that aren't on the front page anymore or are archived, etc.

Its not a matter of it being slow; its a matter of clicking a button before lunch, and the page still not being loaded when I sit down again afterwards[1]. And it happens on three different accounts; one @gmail, one free Apps and one paid Apps.

1\. Wired connection, its not timing out or anything like that.

<comment><USER12> Really? My Google Apps email has 57930 emails in it and if I search for something, I can usually get the results back in 3-4 seconds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cloudmagic does just that! I've been using it for about a week, works really well.

Here's the link: <http://www.cloudmagic.com/>

<comment><USER14> no linux support :(

<comment><USER15> <http://www.greplin.com> is better if you trust them.

<comment><USER16> How is greplin better than CloudMagic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How would anyone here have any idea?

<comment><USER18> I was thinking the same when I saw this question posted on the main HN page. I guess it could have been worded differently and not be an ASK HN When ?

<comment><USER19> Shoulda been 'Ask HN Googlers', and the answer'd be 'no comment' either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good chance to get a job at google. Be quick!</comment>


Ask HN: What external data do you consume in your work and what format is it in? - <AUTHOR> Do you mostly use APIs or you use data dumps or databases, flat files etc?<p>Please state your industry and what sort of data you are consuming. <comment><USER2> Almost always data dumps. The kind of analysis I do benefits from a synoptic view.

I build 'data rich' applications targeting verticals such as finance, healthcare, documentation, etc.

I do use APIs when I need records to support individual interactions. For instance, I run phone numbers of people who call me through EveryoneAPI.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for Startup Weekend - <AUTHOR>

I am attending Startup Weekend in Calgary (way up in Canada!) as a developer. Anybody from HN going??
Just wondering if anyone has any tips/tricks/suggestions people have for Startup Weekends in general!
Note: I am currently a student / novice hacker. I've gathered some of my peers / novice hackers together from school, we are thinking of attending together as a group. Do you recommend us to stick together as a group or fan out? Should we practice anything together / standardize on some kind of platform so we can act efficiently as a team?
Other things I've though of: -prep dev machine/environment (prep RoR / NodeJS / Python) -dev warm-up / standardize on platform
Any other suggestions would be welcome! Thanks. <comment><USER2> I've been a participant and an organizer for SW and it's great to hear you're excited enough to prepare for it.

Let me try to answer your direct questions first:

Sticking together should be optional unless you've planned to work on something as a group beforehand and are simply using this event as a time to actually build it. I would highly encourage you to keep an open mind, listen to all the projects/people out there, and pitch your own project (each one of you has at least 1 idea I am sure).

As far as practice/standardize, it hinges on the first question. Are you trying to build something specific you have pre-planned? Then, yes. If not, don't.

Random tips:

Have fun. This shouldn't be a (bad) stressful event. You're getting a chance to create something you want to work on.

Be inviting towards others and ready to learn. It can be really awkward, especially for the people who go alone, when many people are in groups. Everyone has their ideas, at least hear people out. Everyone can teach you something if you let them. As a programmer, I love working with other talented programmers, I've learned a lot from these kind of events and being stuck in a room with smarter people than myself for 48 hours. It's a great opportunity to learn new languages, tools, processes, and more.

Odds are your project is dead on sunday night. Talk with your group beforehand about expectations, code, and what happens afterwards. Sometimes, people want to continue, sometimes people don't. Agree beforehand, it reduces disagreements later.

<comment><AUTHOR> All awesome tips! Thanks.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2444855> \- I've seen these tips and what you're saying seems to be aligned with the stuff said in there.

I am stoked! Thanks again for your tips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hey,

My last bog post was just about that. Feel free to have a look, you might be able to grasp some ideas :)

[http://www.lengrand.fr/2012/12/how-we-won-our-first- startup-...](http://www.lengrand.fr/2012/12/how-we-won-our-first-startup- weekend/)

And enjoy the week-end, it's awesome !

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks! I'll take a look</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where does the herd immunity number comes from? - <AUTHOR> Some claim it's 40% while some says it's 70% and some claim it to be 60%. Where does this number comes from? <comment><USER2> I'm not an expert, and I'm sure it's more complex than this in practice, but if each infected individual transmits the infection to n others, and you assume that a fraction f of the population are immune, you want

(1-f)*n < 1

to avoid exponential growth, so

f = 1 - 1/n

Your examples cover a range of 1.7 to 3.3 as estimates for n, which is roughly aligned with what I've heard reported.</comment>


Yes, the "gigantic enormous" Windows really can run on a tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/yes-the-gigantic-enormous-windows-really-can-run-on-a-tablet/3422

<comment><USER2> I bet that 100 years from now, in the post-Singularity wasteland with pockets of humans surviving here and there, and with unimaginably advanced hardware available that responds to your thoughts at will, Microsoft if it survives is going to try to port Windows with all its bugs to the latest thought- controlled quantum hypercomputer, their marketing message being that "it turns blue when you're sad -- it's still Windows!"</comment>


VLC cone (2005) - <AUTHOR> http://nanocrew.net/2005/06/23/vlc-cone/ <comment><USER2> Interestingly it also became so popular it led to further memes [1]

[1] : [https://politicalmemestoday.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/prot...](https://politicalmemestoday.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/protestor- helps-cop-install-vlc-media-player.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> That cone always reminds me of Season 1 of 'Newton's Apple' ... opening theme. (It was changed for Season 2. )

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWIrDST8TcY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWIrDST8TcY)</comment>


Psychedelics and Mental Health: A Population Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0063972

<comment><USER2> Textbook example of Self-Selection and Survival Biases at work to completely invalidate results.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Data drawn from years 2001 to 2004 of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health consisted of 130,152 respondents, randomly selected to be representative of the adult population in the United States."</comment></comment>


Cloudy: reverse-engineering Gmail to add attachments from the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.milouchev.com/blog/2012/10/cloudy-attach-files-to-gmail-from-the-cloud/

<comment><USER2> haha pretty useful</comment>


Delete any Photo from Facebook by Exploiting Support Dashboard - <AUTHOR> http://arulxtronix.blogspot.in/2013/09/delete-any-photo-from-facebook-by.html <comment><USER2> This guy was lucky to be proficient enough in English to recieve the bounty, unlike this guy: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/18/4633046/facebook- security-...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/18/4633046/facebook-security-bug- let-anyone-post-on-walls)

<comment><USER3> He might even get into Y combinator, if he tried.

There, I did it. Haha.

Can we stop beating dead horses, we all read Hacker News around here?

<comment><USER4> That was a dig at Facebook, not pg or YC.

<comment><USER3> That was a complaint about the style of posting, not about pg, YC or Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Facebook should make a "Hack Me" profile for people to mess with, so they don't have to use Zuckerberg's instead.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/accounts/](https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/accounts/)

<comment><USER7> That just gives out the same info as [https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/](https://www.facebook.com/whitehat/), unless (I speculate) you already have a Facebook account and are logged in.

<comment><USER8> When logged in, it shows the test account dashboard: [http://i.imgur.com/Wh72kJF.png](http://i.imgur.com/Wh72kJF.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe now we can delete our own facebook photos...

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it still worth it to follow every link on Facebook and check the URLs/AJAX requests whether the parameters can be tampered with? At Facebook's scale I always assumed there would be someone full-time employed to do this. In fact, I wouldn't mind if it was good paying. Just give me all the Facebook frontend endpoints and I will go by them one-by-one. Manually. I will even document the test cases and what could be intercepted, changed or can be improved in terms of validation.

<comment><USER11> Two people have done it publicly and successfully over the past month or so, so yeah, I would argue that it might be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Facebook really doesn't test anything for security vulnerabilities before pushing to production, do they?

<comment><USER13> They most likely do test for security vulnerabilities. However, the attack surface and overall complexity is so large that things will slip by even with the most rigorous testing.

For now, the best you can hope for is a layered defense and rigorous dev and ops practices to help minimize the attack surface and reduce the overall damage a single successful attack can achieve.

<comment><USER14> Putting the user id in the request is obviously wrong, since the owner can looked up from the photo id.

Automated testing/fuzzing could find this, but probably better training/practices would be easier to get right and save time/money in the long run.

<comment><USER15> I think this is one of the things that Microsoft did a pretty good job with. There is a security process in place that every product goes through for every release. While it still can't catch everything, even the simplest of threat models would have caught a bug like this.

While Facebook most likely does do some form of threat modeling for their main site, without a rigid process for all code that goes public you'll run into issues like this that are just as severe. Just because it's a mobile support site for requesting photo removals doesn't mean it is less important surface area in terms of security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> wow that's a nice bounty for changing two parameters on the end of a URL.

<comment><USER17> The exploit is easy, but the implications are very dangerous. Such an exploit could have been automated to take down hundreds of photos before it was even detected.

<comment><USER18> nope, only thing this would've shown is that pictures aren't really deleted. Think about it. Facebook would do a rollback and all the pictures would be back. However with a little bad luck on their part they'd mess up which would lead to them restoring rightfully deleted pictures (many of them embarrassing). Would this have happened for sure? Probably not, but I strongly believe that this could have ended hilariously and frankly I am a little disappointed that the researcher was a white hat ;)

<comment><USER19> Rolling back is a last-ditch effort, it often causes more problems than it would cure. Sure you'd get the pictures back, but everything done in the interrim would be deleted. And if he were a black hat, we'd have never heard about this.

<comment><USER20> I can't imagine Facebook could roll anything back on their scale. Everything touches so many things, it would be a nightmare to get done.

I'd imagine they'd find the accounts that were responsible for deleting the pictures that weren't theirs (as this hack allowed to have happen) and restore the pictures deleted by those accounts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As I understand it, the exploit involves crafting a URL to send in a removal request to the Facebook support. Wouldn't this count as social engineering or were the removal requests automated?

Regardless, well done!

<comment><USER22> It seems you can send a crafted URL to request the deletion of images owned by Person A, to Person B. Cutting out any interaction from the original owner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Pretty sure Mark Zuckerberg has had his Facebook profile fucked with more than anyone else, judging by all these disclosures I've been reading :)</comment>


Mysterious 'Jumping Gene' That Appears 500k Times in Human DNA - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/line1-jumping-gene/563354/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The parasite theory is that transposons are rather like early computer viruses that replicated by embedding themselves in other executables: they exist only to make copies of themselves in their host genome. This theory is not incompatible with these results. Evolution is not a rational design process. Once a transposon starts replicating it is quite possible for the host genome to evolve to incorporate the transposon in its regular mechanisms.

To continue the computer analogy, imagine that some mad programmer decided to practice software reuse by calling a routine embedded in a virus. Now when you clean the viral infection from your computer the mad programmer's app no longer works. But that doesn't mean that the virus isn't continuing to replicate and cause other harm.

Aside: this is yet another counter-example to the Intelligent Design "theory"; no sane engineer would have done it like that.

<comment><USER3> Aren't most intelligent designs actually done by sane engineers filled with quirks like this? Spaghetti code at places, leaky abstractions, hard-coded things, replicating old bugs to make the program compatible with bad OSes or other old software, etc. etc. This could just as easily be an artifact of the complexity of reality, not an argument for- or against "intelligent design". There might be reasons do doubt intelligent design hypothesis, but this one does not seem like one of them. (Also why would it need to be a "sane" engineer? It could have just as easily be a bad junior engineer, that does not produce "perfect" code - just code that works.)

<comment><USER4> Wait what? Are you arguing that 'god(s)' where and or might be incompetent?

Anyway, I don't think ID requires that every mutation was designed, rather that an intelegent agent made at least one adjustment to an ongoing process. The problem is it's not a falsifiable theory because it makes no specific testable predictions.

<comment><USER3> > Wait what? Are you arguing that 'god(s)' where and or might be incompetent?

I get the humor in your question. Yet I would like to comment for the people who might be more seriously interested in this question, that the most enlightened view seems to be that 'god(s)' are not incompetent, but are simply not done yet, they haven't completed the design. That the design itself is not a finished final product, but rather a continuous form of development. If there is such a development, it would be quite logical that one could take any future (or just further in terms of advancement) iteration of some thing (like human genome), compare it to a previous version and make a claim that it's "inferior" or "incompetent". But this is just an assessment of a logical mind. It could just as easily be called an iteration which is perfectly designed for it's time and place and has an irreplaceable role in the grand scheme of things.

> The problem is it's not a falsifiable theory because it makes no specific > testable predictions.

I so wish that more people would understand this. I was trying to point into exactly this by the original comment, saying basically that no scientific truth can be an argument for or against any spiritual claim, that they simply belong to the different areas of knowledge. People who are proficient in either areas of knowledge, are often ignorant to this incompatibility, trying to prove each other wrong. The solution is to recognize the proper way to fuse the two areas, not choose one of them and pretend that it's enough.

<comment><USER5> > saying basically that no scientific truth can be an argument for or against > any spiritual claim.

This is an agument for "NOMA" or Non Overlapping Magisteria. While this is true in the abstract pure Deist standpoint, it's not true for most religions or supernatural belief systems. All Abrahamic regions (for example) make specific claims about the nature of reality that is in direct conflict with science.

<comment><USER6> The degree to which practitioners of Abrahamic religions believe best guess scientific claims from thousands of years ago varies, of course.

<comment><USER7> And also, in some scenarios people mock the bible for calling a whale a fish in the story of Jonah, when a whale is a mammal. However the people of the time did not distinguish animals like we do. We only started classifying animals like that in the 1800s.

<comment><USER8> I suppose before the 1800s whales were also able to swallow humans. /s

<comment><USER9> A sperm whale could theoretically swallow an adult human, but it is very doubtful that this has ever actually happened.

[http://www.whalefacts.org/can-whales-swallow- people/](http://www.whalefacts.org/can-whales-swallow-people/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you are interested in this, you might also be interested in "promoter genes" which tend to be destructive to the organism they are part of, but which are also very good at promoting themselves, so they survive in the genome despite being harmful. A good book on the subject:

Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements

[https://www.amazon.com/Genes-Conflict-Biology-Selfish- Elemen...](https://www.amazon.com/Genes-Conflict-Biology-Selfish- Elements/dp/0674027221/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529667609&sr=1-1&keywords=genes+in+conflict&dpID=51LvhyS38vL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)

<comment><USER11> Indeed. It is this sort of "worm-like" or "near-virus" -like behavior of these genes (transposons, promoters, etc) that made me decide to split the difference between comp sci and molecular biology (bioinformatics) as an undergrad.

Nevermind the mitochondria - the powerhouse of our cells - which is basically believed to be a bacterial companion that our single celled ancestors integrated so tightly with - that it became part of our genome [1].

1 - [https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origin-of- mito...](https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origin-of- mitochondria-14232356)

<comment><USER12> Mitochondria are indeed thought to have arisen from incorporation of free- living organisms, but interestingly they mostly retain their own replicating DNA that is not incorporated into our genome [1]. 1- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_DNA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What if it's just a semicolon?

<comment><USER14> Please, please be a parenthesis...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few years ago I read Nick Lane's _The vital Question_ , which explored "junk DNA" extensively, in the context of abiogenesis.

The analogy I particularly liked was that they are little turing machines, and the very original stuff of life - indiscriminate, self-replicating, and therefore part of the bootstrap for everything that came after.

Also, more on LiNE. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrotransposon#LINEs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrotransposon#LINEs)

<comment><USER16> They're not self-auto-replicating. They need the host cell machinery to do so, thus they can not be the original stuff of life.

They are a very specialized DNA chunks that retains the absolute bare minimal needs to trick a host to replicate them. They are parasites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "Geneticists tend to pay attention when LINE1 inserts itself in a bad place, > causing cancer or genetic disorders like hemophilia."

But it's not always doing bad, correct? The point being, these random insertions are not only part of the process, they are key. Without deviation these is no evolving.

<comment><USER18> Transposons are waaay more likely to break things than to evolve them in a positive direction

<comment><USER19> Well that's with any mutation :)

<comment><USER18> While I understand the joke this isn't actually true :) A substitution mutation might not have any effect or might just result in switching an aminoacid for a similar one (due to how the genetic code works). On the other hand, a large insertion will likely mess up the gene much more than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does so called "junk DNA" consist entirely of this "LINE1" DNA, or does junk DNA cover other genes as well?

<comment><USER21> Not just LINE1. Currently only about 6% of human DNA has ascribed function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Clearly, it's Core Wars :-)

</comment><comment><USER23> They are goto statements :)</comment>


Is LinkedIn About to Be Sold? - <AUTHOR> http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/12497 <comment><USER2> If I were LinkedIn, I'd sell. Facebook is going to crush them.

<comment><USER3> "If I were LinkedIn, I'd sell. Facebook is going to crush them."

Where's the intersection? I like linkedin. I've had a few recruiters and business folks contact me through there. I'd be very reluctant to put my career stuff on fb. Perhaps some people mix business and pleasure?

<comment><USER4> I agree, I don't think most of the comparisons out there are apt, other than the fact the two companies are both at the center of IPO speculation in the valley.

Granted I'm still in college, but my Facebook profile and my LinkedIn profile are like night and day. I do put some of the information from LinkedIn on Facebook (they do have a Work & Education section in profiles), but that's not why people look at my profile.

I certainly wouldn't want the comments on my wall showing up when people are analyzing my profile as a job candidate.

The two services just don't mesh very well on a high level.

<comment><USER4> ...yet. If all the college (and now graduate) students on Facebook start using the service as a recruiting tool, then I can see it being a real threat to LinkedIn.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Third Hand" Languages - <AUTHOR> http://jonbeebe.net/2012/08/third-hand-languages.html

<comment><USER2> Is Haskell then a "Third Hand" language because it is compiled into C?

<comment><USER3> It seems like he's using the term "third-hand" to refer to languages that merely undergo syntactic expansion in the process of translation to their target language. In the programming languages community, we often refer to this as a "desguaring" transformation, since when CoffeeScript is "compiled" to JS, the syntactic sugar is removed and replaced with JS that exactly replicates the semantics.

This is in contrast to Haskell, which undergoes a fair amount of static analysis and optimization before code generation ever happens. Also, GHC doesn't only output C, and doesn't even translate Haskell directly to C. Instead, Haskell is transformed into C-- code, and GHC can be made to target C to be compiled by GCC, as you say, or the LLVM intermediate representation, or, most commonly, machine code directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Third Hand" languages ... for young teenagers who have nothing better to do and can't hack the real thing or think they are developing something useful. Been there, done that.

<comment><USER5> Javascript was made to be a target language ... Brendan Eich is a supporter of the BYOJ ( Build Your Own Javascript) movement

<comment><USER4> That's because he knows how much his JS sucks as a language to program into.

<comment><USER6> Which is a good thing, because just about every language sucks, but some languages realize it less than others. :-)

<comment><USER7> Zing!

Yes, JS sucks. It's also getting less sucky, because it won't go away. Kind of obvious at this point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interesting Times for Video on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-times-for-video-on-web.html

<comment><USER2> That's a surprisingly strongly worded endorsement of Theora from Google. I'm still fairly shocked that they support it in Chrome at all, and this seems to point towards Android support.

Strangely this is credited as if it was written by the guy who did some of the ARM tweaks for Theora, who doesn't work for Google as far as I'm aware. I knew of the work but thought he'd done it on spec and then got paid by Mozilla/Xiph to relicense it as they required. Google's involvement was news to me.

They also seem to make a point of mentioning On2 but say nothing more about the fact that Google just bought them.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The even better news is that support for this is already arriving - Firefox, > Opera, Chrome, and Safari have already rolled out HTML 5 support and other > browsers won't be far behind.

If we ignore Internet Explorer, will it disappear?

<comment><USER2> Internet Explorer has announced HTML5 video support for version 9.</comment></comment>


Wildstar and the Case of the Too Pretty Alien Females - <AUTHOR> http://www.usgamer.net/articles/wildstar-and-the-case-of-the-too-pretty-alien-females

<comment><AUTHOR> Excerpt:

 _There is a frustrating absence of weight to their characterization. Like every woman in this universe, they stand wide-hipped and wasp-waisted. Their faces are as rounded as their mammaries, framed with either a halo of leaves or what resembles real, fibrous hair cast in plaster. And where their Y-chromosomal counterparts might bear chunks of inscribed facial granite, the female Granoks are restricted to woefully mundane-looking earrings. Earrings. Why the Holy Carpfish of Good Taste would they want to wear ornamentation of such a manner? Big, bold jewelry clipped to the ears seem a ludicrous decoration on a race built on combat, don 't they? What if they get ripped out? What if they catch a glint of dying firelight and divulge the Granok's location to hypothetical quarry? Why can't I make my bold, boulder-y lady not pretty?!_</comment>


Comparison of Neural Network Simulators - <AUTHOR> https://grey.colorado.edu/emergent/index.php/Comparison_of_Neural_Network_Simulators <comment><USER2> This list seemed to miss almost all modern deep learning tools... with the exception of theano, for which the version info here is years out of date. But this small detail at the bottom of the page explains it:

This page was last modified on 10 November 2014

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. The list is outdated, but that timestamp doesn't reflect the last edit as the list is dynamically generated using Semantic Mediawiki.

Also - a lot of work went into this!

<comment> alok-g This is an excellent list! Thanks to all who contributed.

When was the last edit? Most of the tools are marked as last released on or before 2015. I am sure many have gotten updated.</comment></comment></comment>


New £100 note to fund UK Tech Startups - <AUTHOR> http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/59212 Anyone else think this is silly? <comment><USER2> An interesting idea - but it has a few snags. I do not think that Government funding would sit comfortably with the start-up culture. Governments (and quasi governmental organisations) are required to be risk averse. Plus there are already a host of grants and similar available - although those come with all sorts of complexity and obligations.

How about a different approach? We currently have SBRI initiatives [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/48481/5414-advanced- heat-storage-competition--small-business.pdf) that expose a wealth of interesting challenges and match them with direct funding to seek solutions. The snag here is that while the SB in SBRI is supposed to stand for "small business" in fact there is no such restriction. So some SBRI style challenges restricted to micro businesses and start-ups could be the seed corn needed to get a lot of businesses off the ground and a lot of real world problems solved.</comment>


Show HN: Facebook Photo Browser (#backbone, #github, #minitutorial) - <AUTHOR> http://nambrot.com/blog/4

<comment><AUTHOR> author here. this is just a small prototype of a facebook photo browser since I wanted to play around with Backbone. I deployed on Heroku, published on Github, and wrote a small guide to what I was thinking. I hope you enjoy it</comment>


Lessons from the Gnome Patent Troll Incident - <AUTHOR> https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/lessons-from-the-gnome-patent-troll-incident/ <comment><USER2> I think the best way to neutralize bogus patent claims would be to sue the patent office, and the involved examiners themselves, once a patent is found to be invalid (it shouldn't have been granted in the first place).

Why? Because it shouldn't be someone else's burden (time, cost) to have to clean up the mess they created (not to mention the waste in public money with court proceedings).

But, as usual, government employees/agencies have "sovereign immunity", which means they can get away with doing a bad job any other type of private employee would get fired for, without repercussions.</comment>


WebNumbr: graph any number on the web  - <AUTHOR> http://webnumbr.com/

<comment><USER2> First of all, I really like it. I think it is nice.

Some questions, then some thoughts, and some prognostications. What is the OpenID box? I don't know what to put there. I don't have an openid. Will openid be a link to the numbr? Is it my email address? I tried to click on the OI icon inside the box to get some help, but alas, I never figured out what that box is for and I'm a computer guy! (A ha, just got to firefox and it told me my email address wasn't a valid openid. hmph, did it still create? Nope, not on the first page...) Why does OpenID matter? Let me use my Email address.

Well, it's a good idea. I still like it.

When I am in Opera and I click the "Create Numbr" button, nothing happens. In IE 7, when I enter the url and click the "Pick a numbr on the Page" button, I get something about it not being displayed and then it was aborted and I see a blank nothing. On my way to firefox (see above...) Couldn't save my numbr...

What I wanted to save, was the number that appears in the link at the bottom of the first section on the cover of <http://news.google.com>. This number is the number of articles about the "top ranked" article at google. It would show whatever google's algorithm puts there.

But it could come from Bing or any aggregator. How popular the most popular story at Hacker News is, etc...

I tried with text too, but it said it wasn't a number. Considering the one I _tried_ to create, it would be nice to see what that article is, though because of this particular topic, you could do a little research. For today, the top article may be obvious, but what was the world talking most about on Jan 17, 1987?

Of course the Internet wasn't around back then really, I mean, it could have been, but WebNumbr wasn't and we can't take WebNumbr back to 1987 to figure it out ... okay, we could do research today about how many newspapers in the world had a particular headline for dates past, but that would be a tremendous amount of work. It would be an undertaking so vast and incomprehensible that we just wouldn't even do it at all.

And here, you've created a piece of equipment using the power of technology, that without even thinking about it moving forward into the future is going to do that very task, with almost no human interaction -- 100% automated. A task previously thought insurmountable, on your site is being done, right _now_ 300 times an hour or so? Could be thousands, millions, even billions really. It _is_ able to do it with a lot of numbers, like the dow, or a stock price, or the weather on a particular day or time of day and that's very, very cool and useful for a lot of people who track things using the web.

A lot of people have to track things, so they go to the web and type them in and write them down, or enter them into a database. They don't have to do that anymore.

I can understand the technical reasons to keep it to numbers only and why the limitations are there now, but if you'll allow me to indulge in a bit of speculation about what types of things your users will request in the future, beyond what I've already mentioned, would be the ability to pick a particular number _within_ a group of numbers. The numbr in the top articles I mentioned was actually in a span with text in it, but it accurately picked the correct number (nice work), however, what if there are multiple numbers and I want the second one, will it still work?

What about dates and times? Maybe you want to track the numbr of days since the last injury, which is a number, but what if the only number on the page would be the date of the last incident? Like the X's on one of the keep motivated articles we take in once in a while.

You also may want to alert people if the values change, I'm sure you've thought of that. Give them thresholds to fire an event or call a web page or post to a page, etc...

Those are just some ideas. Keep in touch. Remind us of you going into the future so we can monitor changes and keep track of how things are going.

<comment><USER3> Wow, thank you for your feedback.

\-- OpenID

Leave it blank if you want (maybe I should write "optional" somewhere). I didn't want to make a username/password scheme and openid seems like a perfect fit.

\-- Opera, IE7

I never tested it there. Adding to list...

\-- Text associations

I've been tossing this idea around, but couldn't come up with a good way to do multiple related extractions and plot some as labels and others as graphs and correlating them. Maybe v2.

\-- Nicer way to query

Well my interface just lets you click and it gets that numbr. If you want something fancier, you can write some code (XPATH) and it can happily get your numbr. Go ahead and do substring-before and after. See this one : <http://webnumbr.com/semantic-sm-video> and look at the xpath

\-- Alerts

yes, great idea. I also wanted highs and lows. Vote for it [http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...](http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestions/449742-alert- me-when-a-number-changes-or-hits-a-threshold)

Thanks for the feedback, its nice to see excitement over something I've built! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat! I have recently been needing exactly this, as I have been obsessively checking Avatar's box office totals to see if/when it will overtake Titanic:

<http://webnumbr.com/avatar-box-office-total>

</comment><comment><USER5> It might be worth checking out the Reform project: <http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/toomim/toomim-reform.pdf> and the Zeotrope: <http://www.adobe.com/technology/pdfs/uist08zoetrope.pdf> for explorations of this idea in an academic context.

edit: And, of course, CamelCamelCamel for amazon price tracking: <http://camelcamelcamel.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's an, uh, example: <http://webnumbr.com/tlrobinson-hacker-news-karma>

(not very interesting yet but you get the idea)

</comment><comment><USER6> I found this a little interesting. It triggered something in me that made me want to go out and find numbers! I settled with making a counter for Britney Spears popularity which does a query on Google and takes the number of hits.

It's just a dirty shame that making any kind of long-term statistics will be hard due to the screen-scraping nature of the application. Anyone's who has ever tried scraping IMDB knows what I am talking about. :)

I like it.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, i agree about the scraping. The good news is you can edit your numbr (if you registered with an openid) then you can fix your scraping.

Also, you can start a new numbr but with the history of an old numbr imported. I don't have that in the UI (taken out due to clutter) but i'll figure out a place to put it back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just showed a blank page for the "pick a number" screen when I tried to make a number for my Stackoverflow reputation.

When trying to make one for my HN karma, it won't let me get past the next screen. Every time I click Create Numbr, it seems to do some kind of AJAX call, then highlights "Good Name!" with a red box. Over and over. A bug, I guess?

<comment><USER3> When I run stackoverflow through tidy, I get back "". Vote for it :[http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...](http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestions/449734-make- it-work-for-http-stackoverflow-com-?ref=title)

As for the the ajax call, does it say "Not a number" where it shows you your extraction? A screenshot would help a ton if you can sent it. email@example.com

<comment><USER7> It's probably an Opera-specific problem. I've created a uservoice idea/issue for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about tracking HN stories from a custom interface. Starting with this one :)

<http://webnumbr.com//points-for-hn-story-on-webnumbr>

<comment><USER3> I'm sure you can hack together a little input form that creates a webnumbr. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good stuff, I like it a lot!

I'd love to see an export to CSV feature - graphs are nice, but having the actual historical numbers available would be awesome.

<comment><USER3> You mean like... _drumroll_ <http://webnumbr.com/webnumbrs.all.json> (large, once every hour for about 6 months).

Do you really like CSV? If so, vote and i will build it. [http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...](http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestions/449740-export- in-csv)

<comment><USER9> Ah, nice - that does the trick. :)

No, I have no particular taste for CSV, though some people like it because you can open the files in Excel without any conversion. Personally I usually use data in code instead, and JSON is better there.

You might consider putting a link to these files in the page, unless you think it might become a big resource drain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Heh, you guys are awesome.

Here is the number of numbrs <http://webnumbr.com/webnumbrs>

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't create one, it keeps telling me: "You do not own that identity" while I certainly -do- own that OpenID and am logged in.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Can you email me your openid that you're trying?

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Funny, this was made during an internal y! hack day months ago. It's weird to see it surface now.

<comment><USER3> I just showed it at super happy dev house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Neat, but the value axis in the plots should be zero based, or at least have that as an option.

<comment><USER3> Good plan. vote for it :[http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestio...](http://webnumbr.uservoice.com/forums/38506-general/suggestions/449738-add- option-to-make-axis-plot-0-based)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't work very well when the number has thousands separated with a space.

<comment><USER3> Example? I thought I covered that case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great, more numbers pulled out of context. Especially if you embed.

</comment><comment><USER15> Weird I was just looking for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER16> funny, i created this exact same thing about 4 years ago. Got it all working and then lost interest before launching it.

</comment><comment><USER17> in "embed code for graph": 'allowTransparnecy' should be 'allowTransparency.'

<comment><USER3> thanks! fixed

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> What a great idea!

</comment><comment><USER19> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER20> useless data visualization, is this spam? #ITS use FLOT, it's awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> No. Are you a troll?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is both the coolest and dumbest thing I've seen all day.

<comment><USER3> pfff! I agree with 1/2 of your statement.</comment></comment>


The Semantic Grid System: Page Layout For Tomorrow - <AUTHOR> http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/08/23/the-semantic-grid-system-page-layout-for-tomorrow/ <comment><USER2> I don't think this is particularly useful. The end result CSS is going to be bloated with large amounts of repeated styles. It also lacks reusable HTML components. The article references Bootstrap, but Bootstrap still produces a grid that is based on using reusable HTML classes - a better approach.

When you're looking at modifying the grid at different viewport dimensions, this grid system looks like it will require you to redeclare every selector that applied the `.column()` mixin.

<comment><USER3> I agree. And not to jump on this framework, but you can't just hand-wave away the responsive problem.

If you intend to have your site viewed on a phone, you probably don't want to send full-sized assets down the pipe only to have them sized at 25%.

<comment><USER4> I hate abhor mobile formatted sites that only send me an image reduced to 25% of the size. I can zoom in and see full detail on that full sized image when I want to, but only if you send it to me. At least allow me to tap a reduced image to grab the full asset on my phone.

[This applies particularly to photos or any images with small text in them.]

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree with the case you described, but as a counter-argument in favour of sending customised resources _by default_ , modern sites frequently use things like image carousels or video. In such cases, you are unlikely to benefit from downloading the full-size resource every time, and the difference in file sizes for reduced-resolution resources can make a big difference to costs and caps for both host and visitor (since mobile plans typically have much lower data transfer caps and/or bandwidth compared to fixed line broadband).

Also, if whoever is rendering the original material can send you an intelligently customised low-res version, you can still have well-chosen, pixel-perfect presentation instead of relying on your phone to get the aliasing right when it scales an image down without context and showing the whole image at reduced resolution rather than perhaps clipping it more tightly but preseving some important detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a fan of LESS. It's great. I'm a bigger fan of SASS (and I means .sass not .scss), but that's because of the syntax.

Whenever someone is evangelizing LESS they mention how it's better because it can be compiled on the browser via javascript. However they will also often mention that you wouldn't want to do this in production (I agree) which means setting up server side compilation (run time by the server) or design time compilation (thick client / command line).

So... what's the value in browser based javascript interpretation / compilation if you shouldn't be using it in production anyways?

I would even argue it's a negative in that it could encourage the bad practice of browser compilation.

<comment><USER3> It's convenient -- that's the value.

Our product (CMS) supports on-the-fly LESS compilation in development because it was easy to add to our existing node.js setup. We're looking to add SASS but it's not such a trivial addition.

Nobody smart enough to use LESS is dumb enough to compile in the browser on a production site.

<comment><USER6> Since you're using Node I assume you're compiling on the server and not the browser anyways right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So this adds extra motivational fuel to complete my own project: <https://github.com/wickedchicken/mondrian_grid>

Much like traditional C compilers can perform static analysis at compile time, I wanted to craft a language that would facilitate some correctness analyses of your design.

What I ultimately wanted was a language that would verify I was doing something dumb with div widths and warn accordingly -- again, static verification for web design. It's still pretty basic and I haven't thought out much, but seeing LESS should spark some ideas for a better syntax :)

</comment><comment><USER8> The real page layout for tomorrow will be the CSS Template Layout Module imo, which has now been rolled into the CSS3 CSS Grid Layout module that should ship with IE10. (Yup, IE10 will be the first browser with a proper CSS layout system.) <http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-grid-align/>

In the mean time, the slightly older Template Layout Module is available as a jQuery plugin that would make an excellent basis for a truly semantic, separate, and A/B test-able grid system: <http://code.google.com/p/css- template-layout/>

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised there's no mention of <http://compass-style.org/> anywhere. Compass has much more of those features(variables, mixins, support for other frameworks like 960 and blueprint, css3 mixins, etc)

The comment about reinventing the CSS syntax is nullified by the not-so-new SCSS syntax by the way.

</comment><comment><USER10> _Grid systems require that Web designers add .grid_x CSS classes to HTML elements, mixing presentational information with otherwise semantic mark-up._

This is a pretty shallow problem analysis because total separation between presentation and semantic mark-up isn't possible nor even relevant. Also, why is it that lots of developers argue in favor of semantic markup but fail to explain exactly why and how it matters? What's the measurable difference on header/footer/article instead of nested divs? Seems that many devs just assume that semantics equals "better" code without taking the time to really understand if, why and how.

<comment><USER11> Semantic tags simply carry meaning in themselves whereas div-tags don't. There was a campaign to use standardized attributes to convey meaning (the campaigns name escapes me at the moment), but that's just a hack.

Just an example, if you want to scrape a website for the first 100 characters of its articles, you can just look for <article>-tags. If the website used <div>-tags you would have to figure out how to identify the articles (perhaps the author used the class .article or .main_article, etc.), and you'd have to do it for every website you want to scrape.

Screen readers would be another example of software that profits from semantic tags.

<comment><USER8> These are the common arguments I also believed, but I dug into them for a book project and found they are pretty shallow.

The HTML5 spec is such a mess when it comes to the new "semantic" elements that they are nigh on useless for anything. They're so broad (e.g. check out how broad the definition of "article" is) it's like calling a knife, a spoon, a plate, and table all a "fork" -- too broad to be useful. Div's are fine. They're all ignored equally by machines.

Screen readers also pay zero to no attention to these tags -- heading tags are, however, very much used, but HTML5 intends to supersede that in a completely botched way too. It's not pretty. Also, you would imagine strong and em were useful as opposed to b and i. It turns out most screen readers ignore all of them entirely.

Re the parent comment - as for the usefulness of true separation between presentation and content, I find it very promising for A/B testing layout, and therefore a worthy goal, but CSS really needs an actual layout system.

<comment><USER12>
      > These are the common arguments I also believed, but I dug
      > into them for a book project and found they are pretty
      > shallow.

I am someone who does HTML/CSS for living, not just dog for one project, and these arguments are solid. Also CSS has a bunch of tool you can produce layouts with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've used semantic.gs during the beta test period and love the fact I tell my html it's grid based using css and not the other way around. Declaring grids in HTML always felt like doing table based layouts but even more obfuscated.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think this is a good approach, but the preprocessors really need to be improved. Take a look at the examples of "Compiled CSS" included in the article, where declarations are repeated over and over. You'd get unnecessary bloated end results using this method, but a good minifier or preprocessor _should_ be able to solve it for you.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is very similar to Susy for Sass / Compass.

The big benefit for me is not having to revisit the markup to change a class from grid_4 to grid_5 and such. You just leave the markup as is, and all the work to change the layout stays in the style sheets, as it should be.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you use the [LessFramework](<http://lessframework.com/>) (now v4) you'll find yourself doing these calculations and I'm pretty sure that if your using Less, Sass, or Stylus you've got width/col mixins too.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've created a stylus version for all you node junkies <https://github.com/dmmalam/semantic.gs></comment>


Show HN: Who is hiring? with time sorting - <AUTHOR> http://nizhu.github.io/hn-job/#/ Got sick of having to go through a ton of comments I've already read looking for new comments so I thought I might scratch this itch and learn some AngularJS.<p>Hope someone finds it useful. Suggestions/criticisms/everything else welcome :) <comment><USER2> Looks cool! The UI could be a bit cleaner, but it definitely works! I starred the repository on Github. I'm interested to see if you take it any further.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'm a hopeless designer :(</comment></comment>


Supercomputers find a way of making 'imitation graphene' from salt - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/07/supercomputers-find-way-of-making.html <comment><USER2> The text from nextbigfuture is a copy of the press release at [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/miop- sfa07291...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/miop- sfa072916.php) .

That in turn is a subset of the original press release at [https://mipt.ru/english/news/physicists_use_supercomputers_t...](https://mipt.ru/english/news/physicists_use_supercomputers_to_find_a_way_of_making_imitation_graphene_from_salt) . Which also contains more information.

I suggest the link be updated to [https://mipt.ru/english/news/physicists_use_supercomputers_t...](https://mipt.ru/english/news/physicists_use_supercomputers_to_find_a_way_of_making_imitation_graphene_from_salt) .

The actual paper is 10.1021/acs.jpclett.6b01214 . I was interested in knowing what supercomputer they used. According to the acknowledgements:

> Calculations were made on 'Chebyshev' and 'Lomonosov' supercomputers of the > Moscow State University for the possibility of using a cluster computer for > our simulations and on the supercomputer cluster "Cherry" provided by the > Materials Modeling and Development Laboratory at NUST "MISIS" (supported via > the Grant from the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian > Federation No. 14.Y26.31.0005).

[http://www.t-platforms.com/solutions/completed/chebyshev- sup...](http://www.t-platforms.com/solutions/completed/chebyshev- supercomputer.html) and [http://www.t-platforms.com/solutions/completed/lomonosov- sup...](http://www.t-platforms.com/solutions/completed/lomonosov- supercomputer.html) give details of the first two machines. Indeed, they are high-end machines.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yet another reason to fund bigger and badder supercomputers :). No self interest here, none whatsoever.</comment>