Show HN: AskIzzy – a mobile website for homeless people - <AUTHOR> https://askizzy.org.au <comment><USER2> Great idea, but one suggestion would be to make the site as light as humanly possible. Homeless people probably don't have stable or fast connections. Every kilobyte counts.

This file is 66KB out of the total 137KB: [https://cloud.typography.com/7948374/730248/css/fonts.css](https://cloud.typography.com/7948374/730248/css/fonts.css) \- I would remove it and just use a:

        font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif;

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, could not agree more - we already have an open ticket for this actually! Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> Related presentation with additional information on data-limited mobile users: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jmqsq2OQjc&index=3&list=PLN...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jmqsq2OQjc&index=3&list=PLNYkxOF6rcICcHeQY02XLvoGL34rZFWZn)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Main dev on the project here (I work for rea-group.com who run www.realestate.com.au, but they've given me a years secondment to the project).

Back in 2013 a team at our hackday implemented the precursor to this app, and the leadership team were super impressed.

It's been amazing working so closely with the sector (we meet/do user testing with representatives from lots of organisations).

This is my first project with react / es7, but I've built a few rich client webapps before. React is definitely the best developer experience I've had with client-side frameworks.

<comment><USER5> A bit of data feedback for you, getting to this page on your app:

[https://askizzy.org.au/category/have-your- say/in/2601-Austra...](https://askizzy.org.au/category/have-your- say/in/2601-Australian%20Capital%20Territory/)

Suggests that the Commonwealth Ombudsman does not have an office in Canberra. They actually do though[1].

Cool project, good luck with it!

1\. [http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/pages/contact-us/our- offices/ind...](http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/pages/contact-us/our- offices/index.php)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the feedback, gealian! I've let our data team know about the problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Idea: Put free WiFi hotspots in homeless areas (SSID: AskIzzy) that go directly to (and are limited to) your site when the browser launches.

Remember that people often have phones but are out of data/minutes when they need help the most.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea re: the SSID - Melbourne is actually currently rolling out free WiFi for the entire city, also most of the populated areas around town offer free wireless from nearby shops.

My only issues with free wireless hotspots is that they tend to be unencrypted which can be dangerous, however if you're in need of assistance this might be worth the risk.

If you're interested in what kind of access homeless and at-risk people have to the internet in Australia this is quite a useful paper: [https://accan.org.au/files/Grants/homelessandconnected/Homel...](https://accan.org.au/files/Grants/homelessandconnected/Homeless_and_Connected_web.pdf)

*Edit: Also we have free wifi if you're near our office building or the near by train station which is an area with a lot of homeless people, from your idea around the SSID name - we'll do that here and spin it up this morning - so thanks for that!

<comment><USER8> I could still see small hotspots being a useful way of spreading knowledge about the project. You could then also make in window stickers for businesses that offer the service to also promote it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah good idea about the window stickers! I've passed that on to the PM.

<comment><USER9> If libraries offer free wifi and/or pc's then some stickers for them might also be a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Definitely a good to have service. Definitely feel that updating data is the biggest challenge. We have something similar in my hometown based of Edmonton based on linksf.

[https://github.com/zendesk/linksf](https://github.com/zendesk/linksf)

[http://linkyeg.ca/](http://linkyeg.ca/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the links - we'll check them out!

The other thing we're currently concentrating on is improving / tuning the quality of the search results, when you have a large, complex data set that feeds to many applications it requires careful consideration and ongoing reevaluation to tune the results and to make sure what people are expecting to find with their queries.

We can release to production via our CI / CD pipeline as often as we need, so if any adjustments are required outside of the data itself it's trivial for us to release new code (images), on one of our other apps we were releasing to production over 40 times a day as features and fixes were developed.

<comment><USER11> Do you have a git repository?

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/ask-izzy/ask-izzy/](https://github.com/ask-izzy/ask-izzy/)

<comment><USER11> Awesome :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every city in the world needs something like this.

</comment><comment><USER13> I let it find my location and now I can't change it, so I keep getting "Sorry, I couldn't do this search. Could not find a location matching "Seattle, Washington""

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Jacalata,

The service is not currently live in the US, we're an Australian based organisation as is our target audience at present.

<comment><USER13> No, I get that. What i was pointing out was that once it had a location, I couldn't change it (it never asked me again).

<comment><USER6> Hey jacalata, thanks for pointing this out. I've reproduced the issue as best I can, and AFAICT you should see a link on that page which says "Change you answers".

Clicking it should display a list of the answers you've chosen, and the top one should be your location. Clicking _that_ should let you change your location.

If that doesn't work, drop me a line at firstname.lastname@example.com -- I'd love to get enough info from you to properly reproduce the bug so we can fix it.

Thanks!

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's a bug, It took me a while to realize that "Change your answers" is how I change my location too. Perhaps the wording could be changed to make that more clear :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Testers notified and a ticket has been logged to investigate, thanks again :)

<comment><USER13> Yep, it just didn't occur to me that would allow me to change my location as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a developer at Infoxchange, and we're actually looking for a senior dev to join our Melbourne team. Development of the Ask Izzy app was a collaboration between our team here and REA group, which goes to show the kind of thing you get to be a part of at Infoxchange.

In Melbourne, we have a small team working on a number of projects with Python, Django, Docker, Elasticsearch and React.js. We run some very modern tech, and we work really closely with our amazing ops team and testers.

If that sounds like your cup of tea, we'd love to talk to you! There's an ad for the position with more detail up on LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/112633872](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/112633872) or if you prefer, you can email email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been Ops lead at Infoxchange for over 3 years now, I never thought I'd stay at an organisation for that long. I truly _love_ my job, it's the first time in my life that I wake up on a Monday morning actually wanting to go to work. The people are fantastic, the organisational ethics are real and transparent and there's little to no bureaucracy.

<comment><USER11> I guess this is worth a punt: I'm in Sydney and currently out of work. I've got experience with a lot of languages and I learn pretty quickly, in fact I'm currently working on refactoring the Libreoffice codebase.

I'm looking for part time work, and frankly a lower salary doesn't worry me even slightly as I want to focus on looking after my kids and spend more time with my wife... You wouldn't have any part time work going? I'm a dedicated worker who values quality code and practices.

Hopefully this isn't too inappropriate asking on HN!

<comment><AUTHOR> Chris, completely fine to ask here, What are you Python skills like? If Python isn't your main skillset is there another language you're proficient at?

Check out one of jobs we're hiring for here: [https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/112633872?trk=jobs_home_...](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/112633872?trk=jobs_home_saved_jobs)

Even if you don't quite fit into that description certainly email firstname.lastname@example.com , say that your saw the post here and give some information about yourself!

<comment><USER11> My Python skills are limited, but that's never stopped me before :-) I've got decent skills in Perl (yeah, ancient but Perl is under appreciated!), Ruby has always been an interest of mine... I guess my main skill is I'm a rapid learner.

I'll have a look at the link - thanks! Will shoot over an email once I'm home.

Regardless of the outcome though, it's impressive what you guys are doing. I love that you are doing something to help the homeless :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh great, I think we'd love to speak to you. We do have one Perl app that's still quite heavily used actually...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm so very proud to have been involved in this in a small way.

I work for realestate.com.au (REA Group), and we've been involved for around 2 years now in one way or another. This has included an REA employee joining the project for a year, and further back a development team of 6 spending a full month working on the front end.

If anyone is interested Malcolm Turnbull's speech from the launch is here: [https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2016-01-29/remarks-askizzy- launc...](https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2016-01-29/remarks-askizzy-launch- melbourne)

Edit: Grammar

<comment><USER11> I honestly have to say that some of the stuff coming out of realestate.com.au is pretty amazing. I mean, I was frankly amazed at the quality of your tech blog... I mean, a blog about category theory? I was definitely not expecting that, but it explains why I was actually able to find a house I wanted to buy from the website.

Keep up the good work. Turnbull talks about innovation, but it looks like you guys are actually doing it. I tip my hat to you, and I honestly don't do that lightly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Idea: Try getting this onboard the internet.org program by Facebook. This is literally the only way I think internet.org could be useful without raising a controversy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ... And it was launched by Australia's Prime Minister

I work @infoxchange as the operations lead, when I first heard the idea of a website or app for people that have found or are worried about finding themselves homeless in Australia I really didn't think it made sense - until I saw the stats showing that almost 80% of homeless people in Australia have regular access to a smart phone and data either via a cellular provider or free WiFi (Source: University of Sydney paper: [https://accan.org.au/files/Grants/homelessandconnected/Homel...](https://accan.org.au/files/Grants/homelessandconnected/Homeless_and_Connected_web.pdf))

AskIzzy is the result of Infoxchange winning the Google Impact Challenge in 2015. For me the most interesting things about the site other than it's value to those in need is that it didn't cost tax payers a cent to develop or host and it has no model for making profit of any kind, this resulted in the site being designed truly for the end consumer - the person in need.

We did a lot of research, working with homeless and at-risk people throughout Australia and Service Providers, it's really been quite an eye opener especially for my team who are largely technically focused. The research encompassed an approach called emotion centred design and was a collaboration between Infoxchange, Navy Design and Swinburne University Centre for Design Innovation.

We (Infoxchange) have had a large database of providers centred around services for disadvantaged and at risk people in Australia since the early 90s, it goes back so far that we used to offer this information up over BBS - and we actually ran the very first 'online' search engine in Australasia, back then it was called 'the info X change'.

On the technical side, it's essentially a front end (open source) that accesses data from our services & providers database which is called 'Infoxchange Service Seeker', that platform is a number of Python app that use Elasticsearch backed by PostgreSQL with PostGIS, it has its own set of front ends for various purposes and has a pretty flexible API to query data, which is what is used by services like AskIzzy to get the information they need. In the back end we host the various components of the platforms out of load balanced application containers (Docker) and rely on the usual open source tools of the trade such as Nginx, Puppet, RabbitMQ, GitLab (and Gitlab CI) etc...

Back in 2014 I gave a talk on the history and journey with search and our database of providers - those slides are still very much relevant and contain some screenshots from the mid 90s of someone accessing the data via Mosaic - check out: [https://smcleod.net/search-a-journey-of-delivery-on-a- budget](https://smcleod.net/search-a-journey-of-delivery-on-a-budget)

With regards to updating data - I think that might be the hardest part, we all know garbage in == garbage out, so we tend not to like the idea of scraping, Many service providers do not have the technical skills or infrastructure to expose the the state of their services online but are more than happy to fill out a small status update form on a website, email an update to one of our systems etc... We also have a dedicated team of database updaters that make regular stop ins with service providers to ensure their details are correct.

The database content of services mostly already existed thanks to us running [https://infoxchange.serviceseeker.com.au](https://infoxchange.serviceseeker.com.au) for the last 20-25 years in its various forms, we spent a lot of time on the research, working with homeless and at risk people to understand what they actually need / want and how they would find it, a lot of UX design went into the project and a lot of time is still being spent on search result quality which is always hard.

For the initial funding, we put the idea to Google as part of their 'impact challenge' which they give funding for good ideas that help develop technical services / projects for society and those in need. A number of other organisations around Australia have assisted us by providing media coverage, additional development and testing resources which we are very grateful for. Ongoing we will be checking to see if it has made the difference we think it can by a research project measuring social impact over several years.

We are a not-for-profit, charitable organisation - we're not making any money off AskIzzy and pride ourselves on our financial and technical transparency.

* Product video: [https://www.infoxchange.net.au/ask-izzy](https://www.infoxchange.net.au/ask-izzy)

* Launch video: [http://goo.gl/tRnGSD](http://goo.gl/tRnGSD)

* Code base: [https://github.com/ask-izzy/ask-izzy](https://github.com/ask-izzy/ask-izzy)

Within the first few days of the launch we had:

\- 7290 total unique visitors

\- 172,266 requests have been served

\- 8,119 sessions

\- 6,759 unique users

\- 123,885 page views

\- 00:02:59 average session duration

\- 82.4% new visitors / 17.6% returning visitors

\- 0.7% bounce rate

*Edit: I should note that if you're not in Australia and want to try out an Australian location search - try 3000 which is Melbourne's CBD

<comment><AUTHOR> Note: We're also looking for a Python developer to join our team in Melbourne, see Josh's comment here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11030860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11030860)

<comment><USER11> I just tried to view the site, but getting a blank page :-( but do you accept pull requests?

<comment><AUTHOR> The site as in the LinkedIn job ad or AskIzzy?

If you mean AskIzzy - yes we definitely accept pull requests: [https://github.com/ask-izzy/ask-izzy](https://github.com/ask-izzy/ask-izzy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tested in Adelaide and after a couple of local results for my fake criteria, it listed shelters interstate, 6-11 days walk away. Maybe don't show those or separate them obviously so they don't confuse anyone.

Or offer an "if all else fails" hotline number at the bottom of the results (even if you have one shown at the top).

Great initiative though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input, if it's not too much trouble would you mind submitting where you are and what you searched for perhaps with a screenshot of the map to the 'submit feedback' at the bottom of the page?

<comment><USER16> I'm in Halifax Street (Adelaide 5000). It showed a hotline, two local options and then the rest were over a week's walk away.

<comment><USER6> Thanks, prawn, I believe I've reproduced the issue and we're looking into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should have mentioned earlier that if anyone wants to assist us with improving search results quality and has experience with Python and Elasticsearch we'd love to hear from you. The quality of the results is incredibly important but it happens to be one of the biggest challenges when you're dealing with quite large data sets and diverse search usage, please contact us via one of the various links we've provided throughout these comments if you have something to add.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love this idea. Unfortunately, everything I tried gave me:

        Sorry, I couldn't do this search.

        Could not find a location matching "Nashville, Tennessee"

I'm.. so proud. :-/

One more reason (as if I need more) to be thankful I do at least have a roof over my head.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're an Australian based organisation and our data and target audience is Australia wide at present, we are doing other work in New Zealand and potentially South Africa - more on this soon.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're really keen on getting any feedback that you might have, good or bad - we're keen to fix any bugs that get found and improve the app as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER18> Are there any plans to expand the apps reach beyond Australia, or is there any alternative for the US?

<comment><USER6> No plans to expand outside of Australia that I'm aware of. Another commenter mentioned ([https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=11029770](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=11029770)) a similar product for the SF area: [http://linkyeg.ca/](http://linkyeg.ca/)

<comment><AUTHOR> To expand on this, we are a very open organisation that loves knowledge sharing, the front end of the site is open source and we always entertain working with other 3rd parties / organisations to share ideas, so just because we're not planning to launch an off-shore version the app doesn't mean that we won't ever work with others to help create / improve their services or ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Errr... I have to ask... so... a homeless chap... with a mobile device???

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe it's just me, but I first read the name as "ass-kissing" \- intentional?

edit: to downvoters, I'm not trying to be funny here, surely that's potentially useful feedback?

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the feedback, definitely not intentional :)

A lot of effort and consultation with a number of groups (including end users) went into choosing the name. Turns out, naming things is surprisingly hard!

<comment><AUTHOR> "There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things."

\-- Phil Karlton

<comment><USER6> ...and off-by-one errors.

<comment><USER21> np-hard problems are pretty hard

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice job guys!

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice job guys

</comment><comment><USER23> Seriously....</comment>


Am I just a whiny bitch? :/ - <AUTHOR> Have you ever walked into an interview and you're greeted at the door with "we have to at least invite 3 females to our quarters when hiring, welcome"? Well, I have at least three times and by this time I'm so traumatised by all this bullshit, that I'm working undercover freelance most of the time and it's depressing. So often they let you do some programming exercise in advance, so you can verify you're worthy to talk to. Before you show up at the office you torture yourself with questions what to wear... Do you go all professional with the suit or casual? After all you might end up with som e people in your interview, who don't even take time to shower and will great you with a layer of grease and laugh at you for your neat outfit. I had to go through that. Several times. But that's alright. I don't care about how people dress in my team. But then they'd ask questions and won't let me answer. Once there was even one guy there for no particular reason except blurping out (wrong) answers. When I asked for feedback on the code challenge they couldn't find anything wrong, so the guy just told me while going through my code "umm, your code... I don't like it.". <comment><USER2> No, they are the jerks. And they're often not qualified to perform an interview. No training, they don't know what they're doing most of the time. Probably the biggest problem here is the people performing the interviews are not qualified to do the interview. I received formal training on performing interviews and it still took 50+ of them until I did it well. Most of these people aren't taking it as seriously as they should be -- because they're jerks, probably.

Over time, the number one qualifier to accept an offer or make one is that I don't want to work with jerks. Neither do you. Good for you.

You're lucky to see such "flags" early in the process. So you're doing a great job finding out which jerky companies you won't like working for.

About what to wear: when invited for on-site interview, ask whether you should wear formal or informal business attire, always ask, its a perfectly valid question.

Anyone who says you are only there to be interviewed to fulfill some kind of gender quota is not someone you want to work for anyway. You want to be hired for the merit of your domain expertise and qualifications. I can't imagine any worse feeling than showing up for work every day and knowing that you're just the "token girl coder".

And you absolutely deserve feedback.

You'll be on the other side someday interviewing candidates, so please remember all of these experiences and make it a pleasant one for your next team members.

My best advice is that _you_ have plenty of control. You can walk out at any time. You have the skills they need. It is your time. They need you.

Best wishes!

</comment><comment><USER3> The use of "female" as a noun when referring to human beings is in itself a red flag for me.

You're not being whiny. Default startup culture is not particularly welcoming toward women, and it seems to be worse in some places than others - particularly where founders in their 20s who've never held a job outside a startup predominate. The behavior you describe is unprofessional and suggests some of these interviewers may be skirting the lines of legality (in the US at least).

May I ask what location you're looking for work in and how you're finding openings? It seems to me that typical culture varies from city to city.

</comment><comment><USER4> Short answer: NO !

Slightly longer response: Your experiences are par for the course. Everybody has a stack of bad of interview experiences. In your case, you are also subject to vacuous discrimination. It really sucks when you are looking for a good job where you can work with intelligent, emotionally aware human beings. If the interview experience is aggravating, you can't expect the work environment to be any better.

</comment><comment><USER5> one strategy you can try is to develop a better filter when evaluating companies to meet with.

What what cultural cues do you get from the product / service offerings?

Google stalk the employees in the company. What can you learn about them? For example, I imagine that Uber is no longer attracting the best and brightest in light of their recent scandals.

Putting in the time to really dig into the human sides of potential employers is important.

Reach out to former employees of said companies. See if you can get an opinion on things. I'm often surprised at how candid people will be, even over Skype.

Then, at the end of it all, you should listen to your gut feeling.

</comment><comment><USER6> The deck is stacked against you... don't let the bastards get you down

</comment><comment><USER7> No, you are not. This sounds crappy.

</comment><comment><USER8> No. The moron who "didn't like" your correct code is the whiny bitch.</comment>


Show HN: YouPoll – approval and range (score) polls to increase group happiness - <AUTHOR> https://youpoll.me/ <comment><AUTHOR> Check out Nicky Case's interactive guide detailing alternative voting systems:

[http://ncase.me/ballot/](http://ncase.me/ballot/)</comment>


Anthropology: The sad truth about uncontacted tribes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140804-sad-truth-of-uncontacted-tribes <comment><USER2> This fascinating story has been making its way through the science community for a few weeks. Here's a report from July 11:

[http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/07/uncontacted-t...](http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/07/uncontacted- tribe-brazil-emerges-isolation)

(Abstract only, main report is behind a paywall.) And the recent update:

[http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/07/did-brazils- uncont...](http://news.sciencemag.org/health/2014/07/did-brazils-uncontacted- tribe-receive-proper-medical-care)

The last paragraph reveals how serious the lack of medical attention can be:

"In the mid-1980s, a group of Yora tribespeople who made contact with loggers in their region in the Peruvian Amazon were first infected by influenza and later came down with pneumonia and other secondary infections. Without antibiotics, "the old people died and all the young kids died," Hill says. A subsequent study by medical anthropologist Glenn Shepard of the Paraense Emilio Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil, revealed that some 300 people died, between 50% and 60% of the population."

It's a tragic illustration of one of the points of Jared Diamond's book _Guns, Germs, and Steel_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wikipedia has a pretty interesting article on the subject: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_people)

The Sentinelese (mentioned in the OP) are somewhat special in that they actually attack any other humans that come near the island.

<comment><USER4> The Sentinelese also have the unique(?) advantage of living on a _very_ isolated island with no significant exploitable resources of interest to others: [https://goo.gl/maps/0xTek](https://goo.gl/maps/0xTek)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, that's one misconception I harboured that's now been corrected. It makes sense upon reflection that uncontacted tribes knew far more about outsiders than the other way around, but I never thought that most of their fear was due to prior killings or disease through both uncaring and caring encounters.

<comment><USER6> > I never thought that most of their fear was due to prior killings or disease > through both uncaring and caring encounters.

It's even worse than that. I recently read Jared Diamond's book The World Until Yesterday. In it he describes just how violent inter-group affairs can be among pre-industrial societies. Globally, the default is typically to kill anyone from another group before they have a chance to do the same to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing I found interesting about the book 1491 New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus were claims that there were some tribes more advanced around the Amazon than many would commonly think. Of course after first contact, who knows what exactly happened to the people in the area. It has never been exactly well developed even today.

</comment><comment><USER8> 'Pururambo' is a documentary available on Netflix about visiting uncontacted tribes like this, if anyone is interested.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh, BBC. Did anyone else notice their persistent use of "Indians"? Kind of hilarious.

<comment><USER10> You'll even find extremely knowledgable American history professors who use the term to describe Native Americans. Their graduate students, however, will tell you separately that they want and expect you to use more politically correct terms instead. Just has to do with the times.

<comment><USER11> In theory the rule is that you're supposed to refer to people by what name they prefer (e.g. "Little people").

Here's what Wikipedia says:

* The terms used to refer to Native Americans have been controversial. According to a 1995 U.S. Census Bureau set of home interviews, most of the respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as "American Indians" or simply "Indians"; this term has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups _

<comment><USER12> A late-'90s Russell Means polemic against "Native American" (along with the fact that it got quite a bit of agreement) has been somewhat influential in that respect: [http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/wai.shtml](http://www.nemasys.com/ghostwolf/Native/wai.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr:

It seems inevitable that any group of humans too long cut off from the majority of humanity is destined for destruction once contact is re- established due to cultural shock, unscrupulous or illegal activity, but chiefly by diseases against which they have no natural immunity.

Second: a bunch of formerly uncontacted people have been interviewed after contact was made and _none_ of them indicated a desire to abstain from the evil outside world or to preserve their way of life... They were merely afraid and/or lacked appropriate opportunity for contact.

Further, none of them were wholly unaware of life outside their small isolated villages/reserves; people gossip and even the most isolated peoples have some knowledge of the rest of humanity.

Best we can tell this process is inevitable. The article has some suggestions for minimizing the damage but by and large there is little anyone can do despite the best intentions unless we were to forcibly isolate these people and prohibit them from making contact.

<comment><USER14> At least in the mean time we can try as best as possible to learn from them, before their cultures are forgotten. So much of what we assume is standard operating procedure is deeply made-up. Seeing how other folks do things is a way to learn.

<comment><USER15> This and ideally leave them with the space and privacy to maintain (or not) contact with other groups on their own terms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> TL;DR; We still have human zoos.

Contrary to popular belief, living in these societies would not be a fun experience. Well if you're a strong man happy to live to 50 they might be ok. To bad if you're a women.

But we allow them to continue by actively prohibiting people from helping them purely for our rich persons entertainment.

<comment><USER17> Paleolithic culture is a genuinely mixed bag. Not as bad as almost everyone thinks, but worse than the rest think. I would put 1850 as my over-under for the year that neolithic culture provided an improvement in average quality of life. The problem with being a foraging people is that farming peoples can push you off the nicer land, as the article corroborates. Over millenia, foraging probably got to be a worse deal.

It is far from clear, though, that living as a hunter gatherer isn't fun. Reports from the 18th and 19th centuries mention the scandal that when white farmers were captured by indigenous tribes, they hardly ever wanted to go back. Foraging beat farming in terms of qalys, it seemed.

<comment><USER18> Studies of the ǃKung San, who were recently hunter-gatherers living in a rather marginal environment, showed that they could get by doing _far_ less work than farmers. The work they did do was strenuous. For example, they practiced persistence hunting. However, on average they had a lot more leisure time. Being a hunter-gatherer was probably an even sweeter deal before farmers and ranchers gobbled up all the prime real estate.

Interestingly enough, the recent history of the !Kung shows that settling down and joining the rest of civilization does not always benefit the fairer sex. !Kung society was much less sexist before contact than it is now, as the surrounding peoples they are now in contact with are not exactly the most egalitarian. Most archaeologists consider egalitarian social structure to be typical of hunter-gatherer societies, with rigid hierarchical structure being an innovation resulting from settlement. Consider the concept of being "rich" for example. In a nomadic pastoral culture, wealth might be owning a big herd. In a sedentary culture, wealth might take the form of housing or accumulated items. A hunter-gatherer does not own animals and has to carry everything he/she owns around. A hunter-gather's abilities are his/her wealth.

There are plenty of "civilized" places on Earth today where being poor is basically hell. There's ceaseless toil, no power or freedom, pollution, violence, poor nutrition, and no real access to the wonders of modern medicine that most of us are aghast at the thought of doing without. I'd far rather be among today's last few hunter-gatherer tribes than an immigrant worker in UAE or Qatar.

<comment><USER19> This basically tells us that land ownership and control is the critical ingredient against egalitarianism. The structure of the society is built around preserving land ownership; suddenly because family membership and inheritance grants you access to land it becomes a point of contention, and control is imposed on women to maintain that boundary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We used to live like this. Eating organic food, getting lots of exercise, dying in our 20s...

<comment><USER21> Those people don't all die in their 20s. It's harder to get past 20, but once you did, you could live up to 70 if not more. There wouldn't be elders otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> God I hate how much that can be perceived as an animal welfare issue. Not "Oh fuck, there are groups of people on Earth in danger of going extinct."</comment>


Europe's Waiting Room - <AUTHOR> http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2015/europes-waiting-room/ <comment><USER2> In order to stop having refugees, one must stop having wars, like the one we have in Syria. The NATO supported the 'rebels' while the Russians supported the 'authoritarian regime'. Of course depending on where you get your news from rebels could be named 'terrorists' or 'freedom fighters' and what not.

In between a few million people die, lose everything and so forth. Entire generations vanished. The NATO countries and Russia should take care of these refugees. They should pay for shelter and social re-abilitation. Even host at least half of them... Of course the best solution would be to stop war, but people are weak and stupid.

In Greece many people help these refugees, actively. Others hate them because especially in Athens the number of 'aliens' is overwhelming. Hence, Golden Dawn got 6% in 2012 by running an anti-immigrant campaign.

Generally speaking throughout Europe, anti-immigration sentiment is growing stronger. Switzerland is about to close borders to everyone else, the UK, Slovakia, Poland and the Czech Republic want stricter immigration control. France is openly against Muslims (due to the recent events, Charlie Hedbo, etc.).

It's like living in 1932 all over again.

<comment><USER3> > France is openly against Muslims (due to the recent events, Charlie Hedbo, > etc.).

What?

There is certainly a growing anti-islamism (political movement who supports using the Qran (Muslim's sacred book) as a social and political framework), and lots of frustrations the infamous binationals from Algeria (holders of french and Algerian citizenships) that decided to massacre people for drawings.

There has been also some shock to see _lots_ of support for Charlie Hebdo's terrorists among muslim communities online. During the aftermath of the event, a hashtag on twitter was among the top of the country (#Che - in Arabic "Che" means "you deserved it").

I would not call France "anti-Muslim", especially when 10% of the population is of Arabic descent, and Muslim. Seriously, the US has barely 1% of its population that is muslim. France has no lessons to receive to anyone concerning how it handles its muslim majority. The cultural pressure is unparalleled.

Disclosure: French expat of Algerian descent - immigrated to France in the 90s.

<comment><USER2> How would you call that? [1]

[1] [http://www.rt.com/news/224395-muslim-incidents-rise- france/](http://www.rt.com/news/224395-muslim-incidents-rise-france/)

<comment><USER3> I do deny that there are rising tensions. However, before I continue, I would like to highlight that those numbers are coming from a non-gov that have a pretty infamous record, as well as strong ties with Islam fundamentalism circles.

\- Their definition of "hate-crime" is pretty blurry. For example, in 2007 a civil employee asked a muslim woman who was fully veiled to take off her niqab in order to verify her identity. This was considered a "hate crime". There is a plethora of similar stories.

\- They do not disclose their methodology or data.

\- They hold some seriously backward views on society. For example, they consider any feminist organization to be "islamophobic" de facto. There have been plenty of controversies raised by their leadership for being openly antisemite. Accusing the government "of favoring the jews".

If you read french, more at [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectif_contre_l%27islamopho...](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectif_contre_l%27islamophobie_en_France), there has been some very interesting analysis made by investigation journalist from Le Monde (left) as well.

=====

Now, even ignoring the fact that those numbers are almost certainly made up. I do not think you can really generalize that to the whole country. It is really confusing for an outsider, but refugees, educated muslims and muslims living in the suburbs are pretty much very distinct groups in the eyes of most people.

No one is pissed at someone for being a muslim, what generates anger and frustration are the ones who: \- commit crimes \- try to pull their religion on everyone else.

I would not say that France is openly against muslims. There isn't one muslim community. Plenty of people from north-african ancestry, who happen to have been raised by a muslim family are doing just fine. I have friends, lived in a nice neighborhood in Paris. I was invited by my neighbors, and so on.

I am now living in SF, it's a bit different although I haven't had any major issues. I got some stares from time to time, but it's probably because I walk funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This whole refugee crisis is hard for me to accept.

My whole family ended up in the West in an earlier crisis, and they tell us about how they rented crappy boats, almost died, almost got pirated, etc, trying to get across the water.

They also talk about the generosity they met once they got to their respective countries. There's stories about various strangers who volunteered to put up entire families in their own houses, helped them with the language, getting a job, studying, childcare, and so on.

A few weeks ago I was driving through Calais, and there were so many migrants on the road they spilled onto the opposite lane. There's stories about people getting killed clinging on to the bottoms of trucks, people dying of asphyxiation in containers, people getting run over by the train. People dying in overfilled boats.

-How did attitudes change so much that we can no longer accept that someone would like to change an accident of birth?

-Why do we hide behind refugee status (and there are real refugess from war these days, esp in Turkey) when we know that people did not choose to be born in an economic hellhole?

-Are we really happy to let capital move freely but keep the labor stuck where it is cheapest?

EDIT:

So, before I got attacked for not feeding, housing, and educating thousands of migrants on my own, I was going to add this:

\- Why is there such reluctance to spread the burden? The numbers arriving in Italy and Greece are orders of magnitude higher that those living in the shanty in Calais, hoping to come to the UK. It was 140K crossing the Med according to the BBC in 2014. There's 350M people in Europe, and several of the rich states are actually shrinking.

<comment><USER5> I don't really mind letting a lot of people in who are willing and able to work. I mind letting people in who are going to receive the very generous welfare payments Denmark gives out, and which are part of the social contract since they never payed into the system.

I absolutely hate those who come here and turn to crime - want to come and work? Fine, show that you have a job and you can stay. Want to come and start a business? Excellent. Show that your are making money, you can stay.

Want to come and contribute to the fact that Denmark has the highest rate of burglaries in the EU? You can stay out.

<comment><USER4> >I don't really mind letting a lot of people in who are willing and able to work. I mind letting people in who are going to receive the very generous welfare payments Denmark gives out, and which are part of the social contract since they never payed into the system.

Quite a lot of locals have a negative balance vs the system. Doesn't it seem a bit arbitrary to leave it that way? How about a probation system... learn the language, get a job, limit the money you can take, and don't commit any crimes.

<comment><USER6> > Doesn't it seem a bit arbitrary to leave it that way?

It is not arbitrary. A country has obligations fundamentally only to its citizens. The whole sovereignty thing.

<comment><USER4> The whole notion of sovereignty in its current form is an accident of European history. The borders of the world can't be said to be much other than arbitrary, for huge pieces of it.

Seen another way, you could remove the citizenship of people who went negative. Then you'd be rid of your obligations.

If it sounds absurd, that's because it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Take some countries where refugees are coming from. Just Nigeria itself has a population of 177 million.

Disregarding individual near term humanitary issues for a moment and looking at the big long term picture, it's not likely that a large portion of Nigerian people's lives can be improved by moving to Europe.

The most efficient way is probably to help it locally.

This is what organizations like the Gates foundation and also many development aid projects (not all) are aiming towards. Some for example boost entrepreneurship, where a larger portion of the value addition chain could be done locally before export (instead of just exporting raw materials etc).

<comment><USER2> It takes 1 Libya bombing to create a damage so big would take 1000x Gates foundations to heal.

The bigger problem is that average Joe doesn't give a sh _t. As long as the refugee /immigrant is not there, to _get his job* he doesn't care. When he finally arrives and takes his job, instead of getting mad to the people who is exploiting the situation, he gets mad to the immigrant who can barely speak the language.

<comment><USER3> > The bigger problem is that average Joe doesn't give a sht. As long as the > refugee/immigrant is not there, to get his job* he doesn't care. When he > finally arrives and takes his job, instead of getting mad to the people who > is exploiting the situation, he gets mad to the immigrant who can barely > speak the language.

I think you dramatically underestimate the place cultural differences are taking in the growing frustration of the people of Europe. Three things:

* - Because racial statistics are forbidden in Europe, whenever someone complains that element from a certain group are causing problems their opinion is immediately dismissed as being racist. If you spend even a week in Paris, chances it will be hard for you to stay neutral and support that Muslims/Gipsies aren't committing more crimes than any other groups combined.

The problem is, people aren't oblivious to what happen around them. When some of your relatives/friends gets assaulted in the subway once by someone from north-african ancestry, it is a coincidence. Twice, it was bad luck. Third, something is going on.

* - More people complain that they do not want such a steady, and large immigraiton flow. Politicians, because they are either powerless or stubborn ignore the people -> Far right politicians, who have put secure borders and immigration quota at the DNA of their programs are on the rise.

Rinse, and repeat.

<comment><USER8> I don't know much about France, but in Denmark people definitely notice _some_ groups' criminality more than others. There are basically two main groups that contribute a disproportionate amount of Denmark's crime: 1) poor immigrants, and 2) poor Danes. The media seems to like railing against #1 a lot more than #2, though. It's no longer politically incorrect to stereotype immigrants in general, but it's still taboo to stereotype poor, uneducated Danes; you'll be accused of being just an elite Copenhagener who looks down on "white trash".

Much of Denmark's violence (though there isn't a lot of violence) comes precisely where these two groups meet each other and get into fights, over for example controlling the drug trade. Shootouts between biker gangs (who are almost exclusively Danish) and immigrant gangs (who are obviously not) are some of the few times you will find an actual shooting in Denmark. If gangs of Danes are fighting gangs of immigrants over control of an illegal business, I personally blame both groups, not only the immigrants.

<comment><USER3> I think you have addressed the core of the issue.

Criminality isn't tied to race, or religion but to an individual's socio- economic background. Poor people are more likely to commit crimes than other. Maybe cultural factors can come into play, but probably in less significant proportions.

I do not think however that it is realistic to expect to integrate culturally AND economically that many people at once.

If I am right, it means that crimes committed by immigrants will rise even more (not because they are immigrants, but because they are poorer) causing even more frustration until we reach a breaking point, where people say "enough!".

I think this would be a tragedy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On that note, Europe has more than one waiting room these days. Malta and parts of Italy seem to be fulfilling a similar role for illegal migrants coming north from Africa, for example.

<comment><USER6> Don't forget whole of Libya :(</comment></comment>


When sequencing makes genotyping obsolete (soon) - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/gnxp/when-sequencing-makes-genotyping-obsolete-soon/ <comment><USER2> The author makes the comparison between the cost of 23andme's genotyping arrays and the cost of whole genome sequencing (WGS), but the comparison with whole exome sequencing (WES) is probably more appropriate. For the unfamiliar, exome sequencing specifically sequences the exons (which are the components of genes). I'm not sure how many SNPs 23andme genotypes outside of exomes. Since the exome is 1-2% of the whole genome. You can imagine the savings when doing WES vs WGS (although the prep for WES is more costly). WES can be done for under $300 at this point (I'm not sure of the actual price point on the latest Illumina systems, but my guess is it's lower than this).

<comment><USER3> Anything that is interrogating risk for complex disease must look outside of exons. Most genome wide association study (GWAS) index SNPs, in diseases such as cancer[1], autoimmune disorders and psychiatric disorders, fall in introns of genes and the large intergenic regions. This means that it's hard to pinpoint the gene that is being effected, and if you're only looking at the exons of genes, you're missing almost the whole picture of inherited risk.

[1] from my paper in 2012: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3467035/figure/g...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3467035/figure/gks542-F1/)

<comment><USER2> I agree with you completely, but comparing from a consumer standpoint the exome gives you a lot more information than the SNP chips for a potentially similar consumer price point.

<comment><USER3> That's fair, but if you don't already present with a disease, I don't know how much WES can tell you. At least with a SNP chip, and the correct analysis, you can start speculating about what may happen down the road.

<comment><USER2> I agree completely. The nice thing about the exome is that the knowledge is more extensible than the SNP chip. If we discover new variants within the exome you won't need to be genotyped a second time. That logic probably argues more for WGS though. It is also the problem with WGS and WES. You get a ton of variants of unknown significance that the patient/customer will be curious about but be able to obtain no answers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The terminology is not accurate. Sequencing can be a form of genotyping. What the title refers to is that sequencing makes array-based genotyping obsolete.

<comment><USER5> Yes - with Sequence-based Genotyping or RADSeq you use sequencing machines for genotyping

The upsides of using genomic or RAD reads compared to array-based is that you don't need to make an array first, and sequencing reads is still more expensive than using an array; but with an array you get a more complete set of called genotypes, and you don't get problems with any eventual bad-quality read library.

Nevertheless, at some point we'll drop array-based genotypings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They are correct in calling out Illumina's de-facto monopoly rents they are extracting on the market, but sadly I don't share their wildly optimistic view that we are eminent for technological disruption that will re-start the price plummeting of whole genome sequencing.

Nanopores are no where near the throughput and accuracy of Illumina's sequencing by synthesis tech, and if there is a pathway to challenge Illumina's position, it will be extremely complex, iterative and _long_.

Meanwhile Illumina is amassing a billion dollar war chest and is adding its own complex and iterative improvements to its platform (two-color detection, longer and longer reads, higher cluster density), maintaining its market lead.

As much as the analogy to microprocessor manufacturing and Moore's law is alluring, the messy stuff of biology and single molecule chemical manipulation and sensor detection is unlikely to obediently follow the same innovation curve.

<comment><USER7> I've got something for nanopore sequencing coming out in the next few month. Stay tuned.

<comment><USER2> Do you use a different nanopore than α-hemolysin or MspA?

<comment><USER7> solid-state

<comment><AUTHOR> Read some of your works, if its related, sounds pretty cool! Would love to hear more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the real differentiator for a company in this field would be to let you pay full price for your genome, but with the guarantee that they will not retain any copies of it once you have received it.

<comment><USER2> Almost all sequencing centers will not hold your data much longer than a few months (and won't put it to any use in that time). The storage requirements are just too high for them to put them on tape and archive them long term. Companies like 23andme are obviously a different story.

EDIT: I'm talking about sequencing core labs that do sequencing as a service. They also have no need to keep the data because they don't necessarily have any metadata about the samples that they are sequencing.

<comment><USER9> "The storage requirements are just too high" Yeah? Can you elaborate on how big we're talking here?

<comment><USER2> 100GB per person for the raw data from 30X WGS

<comment><AUTHOR> So right now, one can buy 5 TB hard-rive for about $130 (lets ignore bulk buying because I have no knowledge of such).

If you theoretically could get 30 Million people at 30X WGS, that would be about 3M terabytes (600k drives) and you would need at least $78M, which seems a bit expensive, but it seems feasible if you were planning on capitalizing for at least a order of magnitude more, no?

<comment><USER10> Buying those 600,000 drives is probably only 10% of your costs, you need to run a data center if you want to actually use that data.

Also analysis pipelines generate intermediate results that are also large, and data is stored with 2x or 3x redundancy. So that 100GB might be more like 300GB once you factor in robust storage and bioinformatics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Still, multiply that by 3, then 1.5 for the overhead… that's still about 5 months of QE :P

A post doc at who worked at ATLAS came to visit our lab a couple weeks a go, and just listening to the workflow they have for the events coming off the detectors… and all the BS they have to deal with working in academia… yeah… I'll take that money, erect a CSP system up in Spain and ask them to come do this with me, just to start off with a fun side project :P</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where did your inspiration for your start up come from? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> For me it was more of seeing an end-user need not being served and slowly mulling over ways to serve that need, progressing to building a prototype on my own time, finding an equally-motivated co-founder, before finally going full-time.

The end-user need wasn't served because of both technological and business reasons. Customers complained without much being done, so I thought that might be an opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER3> My whole life.

Let me explain.

I was born on the day my father started his business full time (quit his day job).

My start up idea is to completely revolutionize the industry of my father's business. So my life time exposure to my father's business is my inspiration for my start up.</comment>


When to migrate hosting?  - <AUTHOR>

I am developing a web application that we hope to one day turn into a high-traffic website. Our site is currently in a shared hosting account which is fine because it is in private alpha and has only a handful of users. As we move towards beta and eventually our release, we will need to migrate hosting to a virtual host.  For those with experience building a web app, when did you decide to migrate?  Is it better to move earlier or wait until you have enough traffic that it makes sense to move? <comment><USER2> Try a place like slicehost.com or linode.com where you can seamlessly upgrade your account over time. Both start around $20 a month, and both will let you instantly upgrade your account. That said -- if you have a good growth trajectory, you will know when you've reached the limit of your current hosting company. But honestly, the most you'd save is about $120 a year, so if your serious about your project, I'd start with a virtual server you can upgrade on the fly, it will cost you less than you spend on 2-3 months of your cellphone service (depending on plan).

</comment><comment><USER3> Please use Ask HN: in the title of future questions. This way users can instantly recognize when a question is being asked, rather than the default assumption that this is a link.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's just a good idea to always have a $20/mo vps unix account. Just far less headache for just twice the price of a shared host. For one thing, it will allow you to have a platform to test several versions of your app; you can run several instances of a web app and use a proxy to direct incoming traffic to one of them based on your own criteria. You have a full blow Unix environment, install every oddball development tool you want, it's just you.

</comment><comment><USER5> A starter level VPS account costs $20 a month, which is rounding error next to the amount of engineering effort you'll expend doing a changeover on a live site. I'd move it before you start beta. If it costs you $15 a month extra times a year until you "need" the VPS, oh well, cost of doing business.</comment>


The Docker Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.dockerbook.com

<comment><USER2> It's cool that someone is writing a book about Docker, but I think its too early. At this stage there are new features added every month, so once the book comes out several of the features might not work the same way anymore.

<comment><USER3> Hi - I'm the author. It is very early. But the book won't be published until Docker is 1.0 at least. The site is there to gauge interest and provide a bookmark for people to suggest ideas on content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would you promote this so early with a site devoid of content? Maybe it would be better to delete this submission until you have something substantial to show.

<comment><USER5> From the submission history, it appears that the OP is a fan of docker, so it's likely the site was shared with that in mind, rather than him/her being the author of the linked content.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep I'm just a fan and minor contributor to Docker. Thought it was interesting to see a book so early but I do agree it's probably too early. Docker is changing fast. Version 0.5 should likely be out today.

<comment><USER6> Great initiative! I'm a big fan of starting with books when I'm learning something new as they usually have a better narrative and deeper explanation than the docs and 'getting started' guides do. Maybe this could be written using github with pull requests and stuff when things change? Open sourced books rocks. ;)

<comment><USER7> If you are looking for an open source docker book, check out [https://github.com/kencochrane/docker- tutorial](https://github.com/kencochrane/docker-tutorial) I'm building a Docker Guidebook, that I hope to release as a free ebook.

It is on github, and pull requests are welcome. It is currently written for Docker 0.5. I will keep it up to date, and when we hit 1.0 I'll look at getting some hard copies made, if there is a demand.

I still need to pick a license, not sure what is best for a book, open to suggestions.

<comment><USER3> Neat! Great to have an ecosystem of content starting to grow. The Creative Commons license chooser is a good way to go: [http://creativecommons.org/choose/](http://creativecommons.org/choose/). And their "before licensing" page is pretty good too: [http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing](http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If James happens to see this I'd be interested to know what tool chain he uses to produce his books (I don't think the OP is the author right)?

<comment><USER9> Please let it include DocBook.

<comment><USER8> I was hoping for org-mode actually :-)</comment></comment></comment>


What is your most indispensable subscription? - <AUTHOR> For example, I have subscriptions to several news sites that I consider invaluable -- LWN and the LA Times, to name a few. At one point, I considered my IEEE and ACM subscriptions as such, but now that I'm no longer in academia they seem much less important and have lapsed. And while I subscribe to several stream sites, I wouldn't consider them "indispensable". But I'm curious -- what subscriptions do people consider their most useful? <comment><USER2> I'm deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem so I'd have to venture that my iCloud subscription is the most central item to me. It hosts my main email address (that I have been using for seventeen years), backups of my iOS/iPadOS devices, synchronises my whole platform, and so forth. I've been relying on it on an ever-increasing capacity since it was called iTools, when I claimed my @mac.com address and used the iDisk functionality right on my mac's desktop.</comment>


Code blocks in Python - <AUTHOR> http://mtomassoli.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/code-blocks-in-python/

<comment><USER2> This is a terrible idea, and ruby used the wrong implementation. If you want this behaviour, you should just define a higher order function/decorator, and put your "block" in its own function. This is a case where there should be only one way to do it.

<comment><USER3> Blocks in other languages can help maintain encapsulation, if they can access variables from their local scope. They can also enable programmers to write their own control structures which look like natural first class control structures in the host language. I don't see this as a natural way of doing either.

<comment><USER4> Nested functions can access variables from local scope in Python, so this isn't a huge issue. It's a bit wonky in python (see discussion of the nonlocal keyword, Python did this wrong from the start) but it solves your encapsulation problem.

        def sorted_by(xs, attr):
            def cmp_attr(a, b):
                return cmp(getattr(a, attr), getattr(b, attr))
            return sorted(xs, cmp_attr)

It takes a little more vertical space and requires you to give a name to something that might otherwise be anonymous, but in the long term it's actually beneficial in my opinion. I've actually taken to using the same pattern in my JavaScript development, giving all of my callbacks names, because it makes maintenance so much easier later.

        var load_into = function (url, elem) {
            var handle_response = function (response) {
                $(elem).html(response);
            };

            $.get(url, handle_response);
        };

<comment><USER3> That's not bad. I agree named functions are fine for many solutions for maintaining encapsulation. They're not that great for writing your own control structures. How would you implement my ifTrue:ifFalse:ifMaybe: example?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like a good way to make your code harder to read and harder to debug.

<comment><USER3> Anonymous functions can generally be abused in ways that make code harder to read. Then again, so can recursion. It's a double edged sword.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone give me an example where using a code block is better than using a simple function? And is the added complexity and loss of readability worth it?

<comment><USER7> Some people may consider:

        def is_prime(n):
            if n % 2 == 0:
                return False

            sqrt_n = int(math.floor(math.sqrt(n)))
            for i in range(3, sqrt_n + 1, 2):
                if n % i == 0:
                    return False
            return True

        def main():
            with concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor() as executor:
                for number, prime in zip(PRIMES, executor.map(is_prime, PRIMES)):
                    print('%d is prime: %s' % (number, prime))

uglier than (borrowing some JavaScript syntax):

        def main():
            with concurrent.futures.ProcessPoolExecutor() as executor:
                for number, prime in zip(PRIMES, executor.map(
                        function(n) {
                            if n % 2 == 0:
                                return False

                            sqrt_n = int(math.floor(math.sqrt(n)))
                            for i in range(3, sqrt_n + 1, 2):
                                if n % i == 0:
                                    return False
                            return True
                        }
                        , PRIMES)):

                    print('%d is prime: %s' % (number, prime))

I don't, mostly because in the second example, I cannot unit test the anon version of is_prime in isolation. This is a rather trivial case, but I've seen much more complex and enigmatic anon functions in Node applications.

Note: the original comes from [http://docs.python.org/dev/library/concurrent.futures.html#p...](http://docs.python.org/dev/library/concurrent.futures.html#processpoolexecutor- example)

<comment><USER8> "Some people may consider: [example A] uglier than: [example B]."

Do people really think that? I ask in all seriousness. I am a hardware developer by profession and don't often dive very deep in software, though I love exploring software space.

I find example A to be very clear and readable. I like to look at things in bite sized chunks.

I also like to create things in bite sized chunks. In hardware design, specifically digital chip design, I will know what my overall problem is to solve (aka the requirements), but I don't always have a clear view of what pieces I need to get there.

In the cases where I'm not sure about the smaller pieces, I'll write the larger overall structure and when I get to a spot where I'll need a block of smaller functionality, I'll just make up a function name on the spot and pretend it's already written and does the right thing.

Then I take a second pass, implementing those smaller blocks, and keep going down. I guess that's a typical top-down approach? I don't know, but it is what I do.

But I also do bottom up. Even without knowing all the steps between, I'll often have some idea that there are some basic building blocks I'm going to need, and I'll implement those.

So I iterate with some steps top-down, others bottom-up, until I meet in the middle.

All that is a long winded way for me to say that your example A fits both approaches for me. I can start with the overall structure and implement "main" first, or know what my basis will need and start with "is_prime" first.

Whereas example B seems like an all at once approach that is both more difficult to write and read. At least, that is how it seems to me.

edit: wording

<comment><USER7> > Do people really think that?

People have been investing a lot of time in this. That certainly indicates someone considers it a worthwhile endeavor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to see some before-and-after examples of Python code that's been rewritten to take advantage of blocks using this module.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, but I'm having a hard time seeing how this syntax saves me much in terms of code size and complexity compared to just wrapping the code blocks into named functions and passing those.

<comment><USER11> The problem with that is that it forces moving the code above where it is passed, which can greatly clutter things.

For example, consider the function "forever" in Haskell:

      forever action = do
        action
        forever action

Now you can use it as a new control structure, e.g:

      forever $ do
        (sock, addr) <- accept listener
        forkIO $ handleClient sock

The $ simply means "apply" and is low-precedence, so it removes the need to put () around the entire argument to be applied.

In Python, you could define:

      def forever(action):
        action()
        forever(action)

but then, to use it, you have to give a name to your function, so:

      def accept_once():
        (sock, addr) = listener.accept()
        fork(partial(handleClient, sock))
      forever(accept_once)

This makes "forever" much less useful as a new control structure/looping primitive.

In this sense, Python makes DSLs less usable. The built-in primitives are first-class, and can have code directly within their use. Library functions are second-class, and can only have code passed by name which must then fully appear before the use.

Another example is callbacks. The reason "twisted" is probably called "twisted", and that people hate callbacks so much, is that it forces writing the code in backwards order, precisely because of this problem. For example:

      def handle_result(result):
        print "Done:", result
      def connection_started(conn):
        conn.request(SomeRequest(), handle_result)
      def start():
        start_connecting(connection_started)

Compare this with Haskell, as an example:

      start = startConnecting $ \conn -> do
        request conn SomeRequest $ \result -> do
          putStrLn $ "Done: " ++ show result

Note, in Haskell, this would actually be worked out to be (by overloading the semicolon):

      start = do
        conn <- startConnecting
        result <- request conn SomeRequest
        putStrLn $ "Done: " ++ show result

But even the former nested representation is better than the backwards ("twisted") representation that makes people hate callbacks so much.

<comment><USER12> But you _don't_ have to write your callbacks in reverse order in python:

      >>> def fight(batman_wins):
      ...     def t(): return "pow"
      ...     def f(): return "oof"
      ...     def b(msg): print msg
      ...     # if_but not defined at this point
      ...     if_but(lambda: batman_wins, t, f, b)
      ...
      >>> def if_but(cond, true, false, but):
      ...     if cond():
      ...       v = true()
      ...     else:
      ...       v = false()
      ...     but(v)
      ...
      >>> fight(True)
      pow
      >>> fight(False)
      oof

Sure, if you want to call if_but outside a function, it has to be defined, but inside a function (as in your example, and in 99% of python development that doesn't occur in a REPL) _x()_ is effectively _globals()['x']()_. Have I totally misunderstood your point?

<comment><USER11> This problem is indeed less severe when the names are defined in a non-local namespace (inside a class, or as globals).

But callback-style often appeals to defining very-local callback code. In fact, it would be anonymous in languages that support it, but it is forced to not only be given a name, but also potentially clutter some namespace (or be written in reverse order).

Consider having every for/while loop, or every "if" require giving a name to the code block[s] within it. It sounds insane. The same doesn't sound insane for library functions, but in my opinion that's really just because everybody's used to this limitation.

When I moved from Python to Haskell, one of the many joys was that I could stick an anonymous code block anywhere so easily.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This seem like a whole series of posts on 'how to twist python syntax to save a line of code or two and make it unreadable'.

</comment><comment><USER14> Adding function literals to Python would be nice. Something to turn "inc = lambda x: x + 1" into "inc = def(x): return x + 1".

But blocks? They're a misfeature of Ruby, badly copied from Smalltalk.

[edit: added "return"]

<comment><USER15> It looks like you changed "lambda" to "def" and added parentheses. It seems like that feature is already there...

<comment><USER14> Perhaps my example was crap. They would also allow anything inside them.

<comment><USER4> The problem with multiline lambdas it that no one knows a good way to indent them. If they weren't butt-ugly python would probably already have them.

<comment><USER3> "The problem with multiline lambdas _in Python_ is that no one knows a good way to indent them."

How about new keyword(s)? "begin" and "end"? I imagine this has thoroughly been discussed ad-nauseum. Is there a good synopsis?

<comment><USER15> Basically, there is no scope or block ending token anywhere else in python. And Guido thinks inline multi-line anonymous functions make programs harder to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I also question the utility and reason behind this. I spend a lot of time fixing memory leaks from lousy developers who use closures and anonymous functions incorrectly in JavaScript. I'm just learning Ruby as well, and see a lot of room for similar black-boxing pitfalls in procs and blocks. It seems to me like you're reducing code size at the expense of readability and debugability. That might be the ruby way, but it seems to me like a bad way to program.

Like I said, I'm just learning... so I'd love counterexamples and reasons why I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is all well and good, but it doesn't appear to add support for the one thing I've often wanted in Python: proper closure support for functions within functions.

<comment><USER18> Do you mean 'nonlocal' keyword?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "code blocks" is why they invented functions and procedures half a century ago (and even those differ only in how they return). I think people forget (or don't know) that these are all labels to jump or branch to. So your named functions, functions, lambdas, code blocks, etc, become.. well.. equivalent. Hipsters, don't confuse the young ones with your 30 ways of jumping into a block of code. Cheers!

<comment><USER3> Not the whole story. Code blocks can be used to protect encapsulation and create DSLs which are first class citizens of their host language.

 _So your named functions, functions, lambdas, code blocks, etc, become.. well.. equivalent._

They can also become so lexically awkward as to be unusable. For example, one code a toy "fuzzy logic" system in Smalltalk with a handful of methods. The result looks like a 1st class member of the language, just like the control structures that are already there. (Same goes for the loops)

        "Here is the standard if-else"
        (condition)
            ifTrue: [ ... ]
            ifFalse: [ ... ]

        "Here is what my DSL can look like"
        (condition)
            ifTrue: [ ... ]
            ifFalse: [ ... ]
            ifMaybe: [ ... ]

Doing this with named functions is going to scatter code between different functions. It's semantically equivalent, but harder to read. Write anything involved in such a way, and it becomes untenable. Blocks can make such DSLs an order of magnitude more readable.

 _Hipsters, don't confuse the young ones with your 30 ways of jumping into a block of code. Cheers!_

A good heaping fraction of hipsters don't understand what's good about code blocks.

<comment><USER19> "Code blocks can be used to protect encapsulation". So can functions, which are already in the language.

"Doing this with named functions is going to scatter code between different functions". Please show an example.

"A good heaping fraction of hipsters don't understand what's good about code blocks." That's one way of phrasing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The code examples are confusing. First, I think there is a typo in the first two examples; I think _<_ should be _< <_. But he never actually explains what the semantics of _< <_ are until several examples in, and it took me a long time to figure out that the string value 'x, y=3' gets evaled into code. Which is strange, to mix strings as code, when the whole point is to have code be code.

At the very least, the semantics of this need to be explained better. When you give a new code example, you always need to say "And this is the result." Otherwise, I can't close the loop; I have new code with new and unknown semantics, and an unknown result. I need to have a known result to figure out the new semantics. (Much like you can't solve a single equation with two unknowns; you either need to have one unknown, or two equations.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just read the docstring of the module. It's very detailed.

As for mixing strings with code, I still need to adhere to Python's syntax in order to avoid syntax errors. Anyway, syntax errors in strings are caught at "rewriting time". Using words instead of operators would also cause some problems.

<comment><USER20> You're putting the carriage before the horse. People want to evaluate what it is they're getting into _before_ they download it. If they can't understand the code examples, they won't get as far as downloading the module and looking at the docstring.

I understand why you had to use strings as code. I had two concerns about that. One, you didn't explain it - I had to figure it out on my own. And two, if a solution is supposed to make things cleaner, but ends up introducing warts like that... maybe it's not worth it. What you implemented is interesting, no doubt, but I wouldn't want to use it for that reason.

However, I think you would benefit greatly from having improved examples. Even if people don't use your module, they can still build on your ideas if it's well explained.

<comment><AUTHOR> People want...? codeblocks is free and I don't get paid for it. If someone is so lazy that he won't even have a look at the doc in the code (as suggested in my article), I don't want to have anything to do with him or her.

1 click --> bitbucket

1 click --> source

1 click --> codeblocks.py

It's that too much to ask?

<comment><USER20> _shrug_

I'm assuming that you want people to use your work. People need convincing. There are thousands and thousands of ideas and projects out there. The ones that are well explained are the ones that will get attention. I do research for a living. The research itself is only half the job. _Presenting_ the research - convincing people that what I did is important and useful - is the other half.

Basically, what is your objective: do you want to be _right_ , or do you want to be _heard_? You said you welcome constructive criticism. That is what I'm trying to provide - except it's not about your work itself, but about better ways to present it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do research for the heck of it and if other people think that what I'm doing is useless, I'm ok with that. That's the mathematician way. The exploration is the end, not the mean.

I'm not trying to convince anyone that my "project" is useful because that's not my project anymore. Anyone can look at it, dissect it, propose new feature, etc... Now that the thrill of the exploration is almost over, I'm losing interest... but I'll keep an eye on my repository on bitbucket.

By the way, if someone could provide better examples, documentation, etc... I'd be grateful. Let's just say I'm not much into the "convincing thing". If you need convincing, don't look at me. I gave you an object. Now it's your job to figure out what to do with it (or just toss it away) ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Adding blocks to Python feels like adding classes to JavaScript... Do we really need them?

<comment><USER21> No. You can always use "named blocks", but they are called functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I did something very similar 3 years ago: <http://billmill.org/multi_line_lambdas.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I know. My module is your fault! :)

<comment><USER22> I really like the << x syntax, it's devious :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tips on managing/being on a remote team - <AUTHOR> Would love to see any bookmarks or hear anecdotes anyone has on this. I'm doing software development with a remote team and trying to evaluate which best practices the team might adopt. Less thinking of tools than rules of thumb like "have a standup on Slack once a day" or the like.<p>Search results are of course SEO'd to heck with advice that hasn't been as great as stuff I know I've seen here and lost track of in the past. <comment><USER2> Use emoji in your slack convos, have regular non work related chats, learn about your colleagues hobbies. Basically, really try to engage in the same types of things you would do in an office, just adjusted for your remote tools.

I have found that if I put in some real effort with interpersonal communications and relationships, the work experience is an order of magnitude better. Then things like code reviews, backlog grooming, etc go a lot smoother.

</comment><comment><USER3> Go often for a walk, your workspace should be separated from any place in the house, be prepared for meetings, stay updated with what your coworkers are working on, etc.</comment>


Chartd: responsive, retina-compatible charts with just an img tag - <AUTHOR> http://chartd.co/ <comment><USER2> A few folks were asking about open-source alternatives. I've found Quarz's Chartbuilder is really nice, though not able to throw-parameters-in-a-URL which is a super handy feature.

Use: [https://quartz.github.io/Chartbuilder/](https://quartz.github.io/Chartbuilder/) Source: [https://github.com/quartz/Chartbuilder/](https://github.com/quartz/Chartbuilder/)

Chartd looks super awesome for a variety of use cases though, especially if you've got regularly updated data you want to visualize.

</comment><comment><USER3> if Google has taught us anything, it is that this is a bad idea. Sooner or later this service will shut down as it has no business model taking your app with it. It should be available as open source to deploy if you need to do so in the future.

<comment><USER4> Oh. I assumed this was open source and you host it on your own server. Yes, not a good idea to use a free hosted product provided by a company where you're using the service anonymously over the Internet.

It's funny that you mention Google. Google used to offer a web-based chart API a lot like this one. Well, it looks like they're technically still offering it as Image Charts [1] but it is deprecated. I think it used to be called just Google Charts, but that brand was repurposed to a client-side JavaScript library. I'd say it's virtually certain that they pull the plug on it at some point, given Alphabet and the whole "era of fiscal responsibility".

I've actually written a clone of Google Chart API for private use. It relies on ChartDirector though which isn't free; it's basically a URL skin over that product. If this would be useful open source to anyone I could see if my company is willing to agree to release it. However I had sort of assumed that web-based charting APIs were dead by this point in favor of client-side ones.

Edit: Is this a paid API? StatHat looks like something that's a paid service but I can't tell if the feature in the article is paid.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts](https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts)

<comment><USER3> At the very top of the page. I thought it was already gone.

"Warning: This API is deprecated. Please use the actively maintained Google Charts API instead. See our deprecation policy for details."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disclaimer up front; party in back: I'm about to discuss a freemium service that I built & operate related to this :)

I looked around for a solution like this for a while last year while building a new weekly email for Ramen[1]. I tried a bunch of services but ran up against a bunch of issues mentioned in this thread:

\- GET query string character limit

\- Stress around unreliability of free alternatives

\- Need to be able to handle large spikes of image generation when sending emails

So I ended up building a service and turning it into a freemium product: ChartURL.com[2]

It is:

\- Free for low usage w/ branding

\- Based on C3.js[3] (for major flexibility)

\- Supports datamaps.github.io[4]

\- Has an API whereby you can POST huge datasets and get back a short URL that can be used in an img tag

\- Supports retina & `srcset` via a `retina=1` option

You need to sign the URLs which means it's not a simple "just drop the data in the URL" but it's close.

I'll hang out in the comments here for a while if any of you want to ask questions about it.

[1] [https://ramen.is](https://ramen.is)

[2] [https://charturl.com](https://charturl.com)

[3] [http://c3js.org/reference.html](http://c3js.org/reference.html)

[4] [http://datamaps.github.io](http://datamaps.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER6> First, despite the reservations expressed by others so far, I think it's a good thing that something like this exists; it's a big shame that Google abandoned their own equivalent.

Having said that, I would be surprised if there weren't good open-source alternatives (anyone?); maybe the problem is that server-side requirements might get a bit awkward, even if you can find a good solution in the language of your choice.

> All chartd charts look great on retina displays. The SVG charts are vectors > and render perfectly. chartd generates all the PNGs @2x the resolution so > they scale appropriately.

Is this why when I view an image directly [1] it's twice the size of the requested dimensions? I'm viewing this on a 'retina' screen, in case that affects things. Is this the best way of handling retina displays, to make everyone else's image 4 times bigger than it needs to be, and scaling it in- browser?

[1] e.g. [http://chartd.co/a.svg?w=580&h=180&d0=SRWfaZHLHEDABKKTUYgpqq...](http://chartd.co/a.svg?w=580&h=180&d0=SRWfaZHLHEDABKKTUYgpqqvws0138eZfaYtwxxsxyst)

<comment><USER7> It's a bit stale, but I've used Eastwood in the past as an open source substitute for Google Charts

[http://www.jfree.org/eastwood/](http://www.jfree.org/eastwood/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One shortcoming: these requests are always HTTP GETs, and various web browsers/servers/proxies will impose different limits on the length of the request. In the best case, it looks like you're going to get 8k requests, and if you're dividing that up among multiple timeseries, it's not a _whole_ lot of data points.

You'll also end up needing to do a length check client side, since the degradation is probably not graceful as you approach the request limit (fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, HTTP 414).

That's probably fine for a lot of use cases, but if you adopt this charting library / system and then later want to do more complicated things with it, you're going to end up needing to rip it out and replace it with something else that doesn't have this limitation.

I don't see a way around it, you can't make the browser POST to get the img tags AFAIK.

<comment><USER9> 'get' to a shorter url which has more of the params you want which POSTs, then passes through the img data back? might be more trouble than it's worth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I agree with the previous comments about a project like this not being open source isn't a great idea. Hard to monetize on GETs and anyone who invests a lot of time developing to the url's API will have to redo their app when you deprecate your service, as google did with the chart API.

Still, having it as a hosted service doing image charts can be great, you just need to give folks a backup plan.

</comment><comment><USER11> To show responsiveness, it would be better to place the "don't care about responsive?" in a separate page...

</comment><comment><USER12> Wrapping on the <pre> tags is broken. You need to specify white-space: pre- wrap;

</comment><comment><USER13> Hi, I'm the author of chartd.co. Let me know if you have any questions!

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't see pricing info. Will this be free forever?

<comment><USER13> The revenue from StatHat supports it.</comment></comment>


Things That Should Trouble Apple - <AUTHOR> http://kickingbear.com/blog/archives/305

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I understand the points you're making.

If you watched a season of community on netflix, why didn't you watch it on netflix on the apple tv if that's what you said you wanted to do in the next sentence?

Your other two points also don't make sense to me. You start complaining about iTunes as a hub and then go back to talking about content? And you talk about the people who made iOS and retention problems but you never talk about what those retention problems are.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought that this was one of the worst written articles about Apple I have ever read. It was linked from Daring Fireball for some reason. Why should Apple do CMS? I don't understand where to even begin: IWork, iCloud, iWeb, mobile me, etc. must have never existed or just disappeared. Also, when did iTunes die? Did people just last night stop buying music, apps, ebooks, and movies from Apple? When did Apple's incredibly profitable ecommerce solution stop making sales? I should just stop here. If you haven't read the article, consider not wasting your time. It is not just without merit or basis, it doesn't even contain any interesting links, but I can't down vote links in HN, so sorry.

</comment><comment><USER4> Three things that should trouble this bloke

1\. Using popular language as "Do this, I don't care how" makes you come off as unintelligent. It gives the reader a feeling that you have no idea what is involved and that you just want your one special thing. Everybody who has ever worked with clients of any kind knows what I mean.

2\. Itunes is dead? What does that even mean? Are you by any chance a Hipster? That would explain...

3\. It's a bad time to make a list-based-blog-post right now <http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ranker_sucks>

</comment><comment><USER5> Horrendous colour choices on that site. Made my eyes hurt using an iPad</comment>


How passionate are your users? (A comment on Blackboard acquiring Angel) - <AUTHOR> http://ekstreme.com/thingsofsorts/seosem/how-passionate-are-your-users <comment><USER2> _...the problem is that Blackboard produces (apparently) rubbish software and has horrible customer support. Angel (apparently), lives up to its name in that it provided access to source code, super-fast responsiveness and generally angelic customer support._

We used Angel at Penn State, and that software was broken and cumbersome to use... I can only imagine the hell that is Blackboard.

<comment><USER3> Trust me, it is worse. The interface is so unintuitive that even after 3 years of using it I make the same mistakes (clicking on news items expecting to go to the relevant page, trying to view grades for class x on class x's page, ect.).

Furthermore, the instructor interface is so bad that only about 10% of my classes even use it, despite the fact that the professors are clearly computer literate, many electing to create their own website from scratch.

<comment><USER4> Thankfully, there are better, free alternatives out there to either Angel or Blackboard. Sakai (<http://sakaiproject.org/>) has the more substantial "big school" base, and looks like a good platform on which to build if you're okay with a Java app stack, and willing to put up with some "design by committee" architectural choices. Moodle (<http://moodle.org/>) on the other hand is much easier to get up and running quickly (it's just a standard PHP app), and has an active community of extension, theme, and patch contributors, albeit at the cost of some of the typical PHP framework's tendency to grow warts.

<comment><USER2> We evaluated all of these, as well as some less-known (free) learning management systems (LMSs), and they are all quite painful and unintuitive to use, compared to current web apps.

<comment><USER4> I would honestly say that they're all pretty equally terrible, across both the paid and free/OSS segments on the market. Making any of them useful for your environment requires customization, training, and plain old time.

When I was working at a school that had to pick a new LMS, we eventually settled on Moodle simply because it was the only option that was sufficiently hackable for us to turn it into something usable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how much this is people who passionately like Angel vs. passionately hate Blackboard.

My school uses Angel. As far as course software goes, it's actually pretty good. But I can't imagine being a passionate fan of it unless the alternative was absolutely awful.</comment>


Manned fighter to face autonomous drone next year - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33866/manned-fighter-to-face-an-autonomous-drone-next-year-in-a-sci-fi-movie-like-showdown <comment><USER2> I'm betting on the autonomous drone. No way a human can outmaneuver something that doesn't pass out from excessive g force.

> The design of the drones themselves would be freed from parameters required > to accommodate and protect a human pilot. Their planforms could be better > optimized for aerial maneuvering and the pilotless aircraft could handle > greater stresses during more aggressive flying than would be deemed too > dangerous if a person was inside.

</comment><comment><USER3> Let's go the whole way and cut out the aircraft completely. What can an aircraft do that a dedicated missile can't?</comment>