Get a Packt Pub book a day for free - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/draconar/grab_packt

<comment><USER2> My experience as a reviewer for a Packt book: I gave them feedback about specific technical issues, large pieces which I felt were missing and some general feedback about how the text was full of spelling mistakes and general lack of quality.

I didn't hear much back from the coordinator and/or author and a few months later I received a free copy of the book. It was hardly any different from the draft I reviewed.

<comment><USER3> I am actually the author of an as-yet-unpublished book by Packt and have a few things to say about their publishing process. Essentially the quality of the book boils down to the author, with very little in the way of copy-editing or technical reviewing. The quality I would assume varies wildly from book to book, depending on how much time the author was willing to put into it.

<comment><USER4> What value are they contributing in the publishing process, then? Anything other than typesetting and marketing?

<comment><USER3> That's a good question -- I mean, they will run through the code and make sure it compiles or runs as specified. They will find and provide you with technical recruiters from the community (with promises of their name appearing in the list of technical reviewers). But Packt themselves do not add anything as far as I can tell besides printing and publicizing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Packt once approached me to write a book about LaTeX. They would only accept the manuscript in MS Word.

Needless to say negotiations didn't get very far.

To be honest that wasn't necessarily a red-line, but it was clear that their typesetting was fairly basic (their books at the time did look like Word docs - I've not looked at one in print for a while so I can't comment on current standards) and their ability to provide information about royalties was opaque to say the least. So my confidence wasn't with them.

But fair play to Packt, in a short space of time they've created a large collection of titles, particularly in niche areas which O'Reilly wouldn't touch. It's great that there is a publisher willing to invest in the IT textbook sector. I'm just hoping that things have improved as they've grown.

</comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool. There are some great Packt books (I liked Haviv's MEAN Web Development when trying out the stack), but am I wrong in thinking the signal- to-noise ratio is kinda bad? It reminds me a lot of Udemy (seems like anyone can publish).

<comment><USER7> Many of their books, as far as I can tell, are simply reprints of a framework's API documentation.

<comment><USER8> Interesting counterpoint to this is jQuery. Their jQuery book came out very early in the game and was authored by people very much involved in the project. Some of the jQuery API docs are actually based on the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've just published with Packt and the experience was better than the previous times I've worked with them. The reviewers they had on board spotted lots of issues - both with wording and the technical aspects - and the project coordinator was quick to respond.

My biggest issue with them is that their tooling is poor, from using MS Word templates to having no version control process for documents and code.

I agree with other posters that the quality of the book will strongly depend on the writer.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've published two books through them. The first book was an amazing experience. The second was a horrible experience with a high rate of turnover from my "editors" and a total lack of communication.

I'm happy with the quality of my books, and I feel it was a great opportunity, but my next book I will goto a better publisher or self publish.

Also, my books are about gaming on the Raspberry Pi, which I feel is a very niche topic.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/1784399337](http://www.amazon.com/dp/1784399337)

<comment><USER11> My friend and I were frequently harassed over writting a book on the Raspberry pi. I'm a dev and hes an it automation person. We both have not had experience with the device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Packt was a notorious spammer of my mailing lists in the past, asking literally everyone (so it seemed) if they wanted to write a book, and then after producing one, did it again on another related topic. They didn't seem to have concerned editors and I've heard others echo these statements.

</comment><comment><USER13> Most of these have been starters or quick intros and over a couple years old, although potentially useful. I have downloaded a few and read through the entire postrgres one in under an hour.

I am reading AngularJS Web App Dev Cookbook from packt and it's a pretty good read.

<comment><USER14> I'm the author - thank you! Always great to hear positive feedback. Most of what's been said here stems from truth in their publishing process. They do seem to churn out a large amount of content, and I sense that their higher quality titles stem from the author having to make the push for excellence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is pretty neat, but I wonder why not download an epub or pdf version of the book right away as well:

      var downloadurl = 'https://www.packtpub.com/ebook_download/'+getBookUrl.split('/')[2]+'/epub';
      request(downloadurl)
        .pipe(require('fs')
          .createWriteStream('./books/book_'+getBookUrl.split('/')[2]+'.epub'));

Oh and btw, for those not aware of this yet, if you use gmail, you can use firstname.lastname@example.com and it will arrive in your inbox, but more easy to label as spam and auto-delete if they start spamming.

</comment><comment><USER16> Packt tends to publish books of wildly different quality, some of them are good, while others are lousy written and full of mistakes (not talking about spelling errors here, but software bugs).

Also, they seem to don't know you can use colours in ebooks. I see no excuse for not having syntax highlighting in a programming ebooks. It is just lousy management from their part.</comment>


Cargo bikes as symbolic markers of egalitarian gender roles - <AUTHOR> https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649365.2018.1489975 <comment><USER2> This is a really interesting read for me, as I'm considering the purchase of a cargo bike. Apparently, I fit the stereotype pretty well -- highly-educated urban coffee-drinker (no yoga, no vegetarianism, though). The cargo bike would solve the problem of hauling hardware-store purchases home with kid and sans car. But they're expensive! 1.5 or 2 thousand dollars! So for now we're making do with the bus and the stroller we found with a "free" sign on the side of the road.

It is important to be thoughtful about the roles various types of transportation play for people of different socioeconomic groups in the US. I take the bus and train often in my town, and it's generally a very mixed population. The train/light-rail is becoming a de facto homeless shelter at night, though. At the same time light rail gets criticized for being for the upper class, rather than efficiently serving the poor, because it goes between downtowns/to the airport/to the suburbs/to the sports complexes. Biking, as well, has huge class and race divides. In the US the weekend spandex-wearer is a huge set of the bicycling public. Everyday commuters are a segment too, and then family weekend bikers, and then people who've lost their drivers' licenses due to DUI/DWI or other entanglement with the criminal justice system. How these communities interact and how they use our infrastructure differently is worth considering when planning new investments or thinking about how to encourage bicycling. The weekend warrior wants a nice scenic 45-mile continuous route; I want a seamless path across the city that doesn't involve battling any cars at highway speeds to get into the left-turn lane; neither of us wants to run over a 5-year-old getting the hang of the bike.

<comment><USER3> If you haven't considered it already, a bike trailer is likely to be a cheaper alternative to a cargo bike. I've had a bike trailer for years. Mine is a Croozer 2. I transported my kids to nursery in it, and did supermarket runs etc. The tradeoff is it is an extra thing you have to worry about. It's much less convenient to park / lock-up than just the bike on its own. Regardless, I'm looking forward to getting it out when we more to a more bike-friendly place in a month.

<comment><USER4> I have a trailer for grocery store runs. I feel like a total hipster, probably because I am.

But I have so much shit to do and so little time to exercise I have to multitask and game myself into doing things. A good grocery store recently opened up near me and I committed to riding my bike there whenever possible.

It literally takes 5-10m more but in return I get 20-30m of good exercise. Seems like a good trade.

<comment><USER5> FWIW, a good pannier bag will fit a day or two's groceries just fine. I have both a trailer and a pannier, but the pannier is less hassle for small trips.

<comment><USER6> I have a huge pannier that fit a pair of large groceries bags. I fitted two large holes on the front side for a strap that goes around the saddle pin.

On Saturdays we strap it on our bike, ride to the farmers market and fill the bags up with grossiers for all week for a 3 persons household no problem. Probably some 30kg it can carry with ease. Back at home we take the panniers off so the bike fits in the typical Amsterdam bike shed and fits in the 2 stories bike-racks the train station for daily commutes.

So much more convenient than a Cargo bike that can not be properly stored in 90% of the Amsterdam bike sheds and therefor will need to stay outside all year and take precious sidewalk. At the farmers market it would be quite difficult to find a proper location to park it too. And at train stations even more difficult to find a place to park it.

Taking 30kg on our back in a backpack is not an option for us. Neither is walking through the narrow alleys of a farmers market with a huge backpack.

In the busy pedestrians & bike traffic of Saturday Amsterdam, mounting a canal bridge with an additional 30kg can be quite a feat but not more difficult than a with Cargo bike.

IMHO a _large_ and _dismountable_ pannier is a economic and more convenient alternative for a Cargo bike that can replace it for almost everything except transporting a couple of kids. It's time this means of groceries transport is revived.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a Dutch man owning a cargo bike I have no idea how they came to this conclusion.

There are some stange parts of this study. For example: because the website Geenstijl is linking cargo bike owners to the party Groen Links it is suddenly true what Geendtijl says? It's like saying that electric cars are bad because Top Gear said so.

A cargo bike is just a way to move stuff and kids around in a city. People with low income buy used ones, people with high income buy new ones.

It has nothing to do with status. It's just very convenient.

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know why dads riding these are called "soft"? I've never ridden a cargo bike, but it takes strong legs & constitution to regularly tow a kid or utility trailer more than a few miles.

Is it just that whole notion that fathers who are involved with their children are not masculine?

<comment><USER8> I'd imagine it has to do with symbolically giving up the role of predator to nurture children.

<comment><USER9> Yep seems like pecking at a keyboard is the alpha thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I bike around SF with my kids in a Cargo bike all the time. The bike is freeing in the city, and the kids love it.

As they've gotten bigger and older, I had to put a motor on it for the hills. I hate that bikes are controversial in the City, as they are such a great way of increasing mobility around town. eBikes, are also amazing for this aspect of mobility.

With all the new scooters and rental bikes though, it's stressing our already limited bike lane capacity, pointing toward what's been set aside as far too shortsighted.

<comment><USER11> > As they've gotten bigger and older, I had to put a motor on it for the > hills.

How steep are the ones you have to deal with? I take mine up a short 6% grade in my second to lowest gear without too much difficulty, but I imagine that if the hill was much steeper, I wouldn't be able to make it up without getting a granny gear on my bike's cassette.

<comment><USER10> it wasn't really a capability, so much as a speed thing. I didn't like being so slow compared to the cars when going up hills. With a bionix I we can cruise up minor grades at a much better clip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have been commuting with my son on a cargo bike to school and to work for the past year. It has a canopy/fairing on the front that keeps him dry and warm in the winter rain so that we can commute year round. We are up to about ~3500 miles.

It has been the best purchase I've ever made.

</comment><comment><USER13> The major problem with biking in the US, is cyclists are not first class citizens. Having lived in The Netherlands for two years and Portland Oregon (which has a fairly progressive bike culture) for sixteen years, there is no comparison.

There is no political or financial willpower to make the kinds of changes that would make cycling more pervasive and safe for both drivers and cyclists in the US.

</comment><comment><USER14> This seems like fake research to me.

It's simply gethering some news articles and saying that the stereotype of cargo bike owners is of liberal upper-middle-class families of a certain stripe, and implying that they are also possibly riding them to signal virtue and status as much as for practical purposes.

ie dressing up a commonly held stereotype in the garb of an academic paper.

</comment><comment><USER15> Let's say following: all the urban infrastructure is car-centric, period. Even in most developed European cities the car drivers are privileged. Why should we bike riders use side lanes/walks and not main lanes for example? On rare sundays when vehicles traffic is nearly absent in my town, we do really enjoy cycling the main roads - it is much faster to get to any place even if my town is relatively good place for bicyclists - there are many separate cycling-only roads and bridges.

</comment><comment><USER16> Can someone explain why the title and abstract is in 3 languages (English, French, Spanish), but the article just in English?

Is this a new thing?

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing it's an EU thing to make the article easily discoverable for 3 main EU languages (how the English language thing will work after Brexit, no idea. EU may still have English as an official language for cross border communication).

Many academic people speak English well enough to read the article. I'm guessing from my own struggles while Googling stuff in a different language, that is a different art.

<comment><USER18> I don't think it's that; German would have been chosen instead of Spanish if that was the case.

<comment><USER17> True. The strange thing is the site overall has other journal articles with the same English, French, Spanish abstract set up. May be a convention for that site.

I'm guessing that the article itself isn't translated into those other languages due to cost. The site provides paid translation services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is merely a series of opinions in academic article form.

<comment><USER20> Taking something as innocuous as a utility bicycle and applying classist and sexist connotations to its use is so _progressive_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I see more and more parents out there with cargo bikes in Portland, especially no with young kids. Personally the risk is not the reward for me...

</comment><comment><USER22> Although bikes are well protected in Dutch cities, for American cities, I intuitively see taking kids around on a bike as extremely risky.

<comment><USER23> I don't. So long as they have helmets in States with helmet laws, the risk isn't any greater than having them on one of those kid sets behind you or in one of the single wheel things you can attach to your bike.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Whatever. Subtle "toxic masculinity" "slut-shaming" of men whom don't act meeker than women.

<comment><USER25> We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait and ignoring our requests to stop.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and give us reason to believe that you'll use the site as intended in the future.</comment></comment>


LTE Congestion - <AUTHOR> https://www.ronaldlangeveld.com/rain-speedtest <comment><USER2> I hope for the best, but I hope the local copper thieves can disambiguate buried copper from buried optic!

<comment><AUTHOR> haha cheers!</comment></comment>


A platform for selling small startups, developed codes, patents, IP? - <AUTHOR>

I know a number of companies - small and big - which have developed IP  of value, but do not have the time or the energy to find a buyer. OTOH, a lot of big companies might be just interested in buying these IPs. Can we create a platform, as AngelList is for investing, for buying and selling? <comment><USER2> would something like flippa.com fulfill this need?

If not what features is flippa or others missing.

On patent transfer, I am not familiar with that, but I would assume that process is much more complicated than transferring ownership of a site and domain name.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seconded. I would use <http://flippa.com>.</comment>


Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit? - <AUTHOR> http://www.makersacademy.com/global_pilot

<comment><USER2> Take this one instead: "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years". The quickies can teach basics needed to make calculators or some utility scripts even in one week. That's ok, if you only need to do some simple stuff every now and then, but to learn how thing really work, where to optimize and how to design programs structure, you have to code for years with different languages, types of programs and environments.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having met the instructors (and some of the students), they're an incredibly bright bunch of people. They would have put a lot of time and effort into arranging this course. This is probably an excellent way to kick-start your programming skills, let alone "legit".

Do note that entry requirements are strict i.e. you need to show some aptitude for programming before they even let you start the course.

</comment><comment><USER4> Might be legit, but is that tuition justified?

As an "external", not having a job in coding but with coding skills, the only way I see worth paying that kind of money is if "graduating" gives very high chances to land a position (high= >80%).

<comment><USER5> For our London course, we have a variety of hiring partners and graduates are getting full-time jr developer positions. The reason we aren't promising to actively do this for the Global course is that it would be impossible for us to have relationships with hiring partners across the globe. That being said, we do have relationships with a variety of global recruiters and we'll do everything we can.

From a technical perspective - our graduates are well prepared for these types of positions.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the reply. I was away so I could not say this before. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Absolutely legit! Having met the guys at Makers Academy I have seen first-hand their sincerity, ability, and passion to truly deliver what they set out to do. I'd encourage anyone with a desire to learn programming to check them out and see for yourself!

</comment><comment><USER7> If you're going to learn digitally, there are a lot of great free resources out there.

Check out Startup Engineering on coursera. There is a session going on now.

But, to answer the question, yes you can learn in 12 weeks from your couch.

</comment><comment><USER8> I know a few of the guys that run Makers and to give them credit, they do a fantastic job.

They are one of very few initiatives in the UK that are actively trying to bridge the skills gap in tech that's currently crippling the industry.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the kind words - we really do want to change the way that people learn how to code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The world is becoming more digital. We need more programmers. Makers Acadmeny have one of the leanest and most effective coding courses in the world. Check them out.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's not that cheap. Maybe it's easier (and free as well) just to learn those things by yourself.

<comment><USER11> I think the fundamental question is whether you have the self discipline to do the work by yourself. If you are highly self disciplined, and a self starter, then there are a lot of good quality, free options, like Coursera, Udacity, MIT's OpenCourseware, etc.

If you need an external push, like knowing that you've spent a lot of money on a course, then this may be for you, although it seems like a lot of money to me.

<comment><USER10> Completely agree with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Legit! Great stuff!!</comment>


An apology too soon? Toyota recalls more cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/650262.html

<comment><AUTHOR> We were pretty set to buy a RAV4 this month, now my wife will have none of it. Based on previous discussions on HN, I thought the Toyota acceleration issue was just due to dumb (older?) drivers and dealers installing wrong mats. Maybe not.</comment>


What if Planet 9 is a Primordial Black Hole? - <AUTHOR> https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.051103 <comment><USER2> One should not miss Figure 1 of the arXiv preprint, which is, alas, absent from the final PRL.

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11090.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.11090.pdf)

It is among the rarest journal-article figures in physics. If I'd been asked to referee the paper, I'd have campaigned hard to keep it in.

<comment><USER3> Fascinating. And kind of funny. I wonder, are there any YouTubers who walk through the math in papers like this? Asking because it seems really interesting and sometimes it's fun to learn bits here and there from applied math rather than always working up from the fundamentals.

<comment><USER4> The channel I find most accessible for laymen, that goes into the maths, is DrAPhysics[1]. It's done by some random English radio jockey with a background in Physics. Nothing on the cutting edge, but I like his simple presentation of manipulating symbols on paper by hand. If you want visuals there is this[2].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foRPKAKZWx8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foRPKAKZWx8)

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

<comment><USER5> This kind of makes me want to do Youtube videos about stuff that I know. Procrastination is a b*tch though ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this was true, this would be extremely fortunate for our civilization if we can figure out not to kill ourselves in next couple hundred years.

Black holes offer about the most effective process to extract energy from matter, orders of magnitude more efficient than fusion and it is not picky about what kind of matter you put in.

You can put a Dyson sphere/swarm around small black hole and extract something on the order of up to 40% of mass-energy equivalent of the falling matter. With BH of the mass of Earth the sphere would be pretty small and easy to make.

<comment><USER7> "Small" Dyson sphere is relative. The tidal forces at 50km from an earth-mass black hole would still be pretty significant, so it probably couldn't be smaller than that.

E.g. to pick something on the scale of a human, the difference in gravitational acceleration (being GM/(r^2)) between two points at 50000 and 50002 meters from such a black hole would be about 1.6 G.

<comment><USER8> What does that do? I mean you can walk in 1G just fine, so probably we could go there, take a walk/sit there in 1.6G, and leave, right?

That means that if we put a 100km wide structure around it, we can service it easily(?) even without robots.

<comment><USER9> It's not that, it's the difference in the gravity field between two points. On Earth, the gravity field is very close to uniform.

Near a small black hole, the field changes rapidly and is very strong.

It's a "pull" effect, meaning that if you were oriented with your feet towards the object as described by the GP, and 2m tall, your feet would experience 1.6 G more "gravity" than your head. It's a tidal force, literally working to pull you apart (same effect causes tides on Earth).

If you were to fall into the black hole, at some point you'd be "stringified" as that force stretched you into spaghetti shape.

<comment><USER9> So, I just calculated the orbital speed at 50 km. It came out to 282,378 km/s. The speed of light is 299,792.5 km/s, so we're way into relativistic territory.

Good luck having enough energy to build a structure around it! ha

<comment><USER6> Black hole with radius of 50km (escape velocity of speed of light at radius X is definition of Schwarzshild radius for nonrotating black hole) would have mass of 17 suns.

We are talking about small primordial black holes, in the vicinity of 10-50 times mass of Earth.

At 10 Earths, the radius is 8cm (!!!) and at 50 Earths it is still measly 44cm.

<comment><USER10> You can calculate the orbital velocity of an object from your distance from the object. v=sqrt(G _m /r) where v is the velocity, G is the gravitational constant, m is the mass of the black hole, and r is the distance from the black hole. Any slower and it'll fall in; faster and it'll drift away.

For an object 10x the size of the earth, a satellite would need to travel at 282300m/s to orbit the object at 50km. He's off by a factor of 1000, due to units change from m to km. This is about a thousandth of the speed of light, but about 4x the speed of the fastest manmade object.

If you weren't at orbital velocity and were stopped instead, you'd be pulled towards the black hole at 162600g of acceleration.

10_mass of the earth is a lot of mass. You get pulled towards the earth at the rate of 1g when you're (earth's radius) distance away from the center of earth, you're dealing with an insane amount of force when you're only 50km away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A person should be allowed to dream sometimes, how freaking cool would this be. A block hole right in our neighbourhood, even closer than Alpha Centauri. Just imagine what kind of things can be learned from studying it.

<comment><USER11> Cool, and absolutely terrifying.

<comment><USER12> Agree with cool, but not with terrifying. According to the paper, the mass would be ~5-15 M⊕ at a distance of 300-1000AU, so not a threatening object in any way.

<comment><USER13> And at 5M⊕ would have a diameter of about 9cm (or at 10M⊕ about the size of a bowling ball).

<comment><USER14> How would we ever find that? Gravitational lensing of the background stars?

Do we stand a chance of uncovering it at all?

Edit: from the abstract,

> The observational constraints on a PBH in the outer Solar System > significantly differ from the case of a new ninth planet. This scenario > could be confirmed through annihilation signals from the dark matter > microhalo around the PBH

Wild.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The interesting bit about this to me, if this is happening in our immediate neighborhood, is if it's an indication that it's actually a commonplace phenomenon and further - an explanation of our missing matter to bind galaxies.

A primordial black hole is not visible but it would interact gravitationally, potentially with multiple of them clustering up in groups. Dark matter work this way seemingly including clustering. Some galaxies seem to be made up by a ton of the stuff, others by barely anything. Could that be due to random chance; i.e. primordial black holes distributed unevenly since the cosmic inflation era, much like the non-uniform distribution of matter at large?

</comment><comment><USER16> _annihilation signals from the dark matter microhalo around the PBH._

What? Since when do we know enough about dark matter to say something like that?

Even if we did the diameter of a black hole with the mass of a dozen earths is smaller than a beach ball and the density of dark matter in the outer solar system is one AMU for every three cubic centimeters. I'm skeptical we have equipment sensitive enough to detect such a small number of interactions at the distance of 500+ AU.

<comment><USER17> That part seemed more speculative.

I imagine most likely this is being used as an alternative hypothesis if we search for the undiscovered planet and fail to find it. Simultaneously if we become more certain about the observed gravitational effects, the probability of a PBH would increase.

<comment><USER16> There's speculation and then there's fantasy. Hypothetically you could build a detector sensitive enough and a set of algorithms robust enough to observe the vibrations of a single crystal and decode from them every sound being made on the entire surface of the earth. Just because something is not physically impossible does not make it realistic or keep it from being foolish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This paper has been on Arxiv since nearly a year ago; surprisingly it apparently didn't make HN at the time, even though it did get a bit of publicity then, including the MIT technology review[0]. Despite the sense of humor evident in the included to-scale "picture" of a black hole, the paper is quite serious... it may be speculative, but it's science. Also, the authors are not the first to speculate that the OGLE microlensing events could be best explained by a population of primordal black holes[1]. However, Planet 9 could still just easily just be an ordinary planet.. the final point of the paper is that we should look for both, the two requiring different search strategies.

Anyway, no matter how plausible or implausible, this post made my day. A mini black hole, close enough that we could send a probe there? How cool is that?!

[0] [https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/09/30/410/is- planet-9-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/09/30/410/is- planet-9-actually-a-primordial-black-hole/)

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.07120](https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.07120)

<comment> T-A > This paper has been on Arxiv since nearly a year ago; surprisingly it > apparently didn't make HN at the time

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21078068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21078068)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We know that most heavy elements in the solar system come from a supernova explosion. I have always thought that the 9th "planet" was the remnant of this explosion and that this dead was the ancient binary companion of sun.

But yeah. Just fanciful thoughts here and no evidence, or even, good arguments to back it up. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> So would this PBH orbit the Sun?

> This scenario could be confirmed through annihilation signals from the dark > matter microhalo around the PBH.

How long does this experiment take to construct, and to execute? Days/weeks/decades?

BTW has anyone thought of getting in touch with the Lectroids? They're bound to know more about Planet 9 than we do.

<comment><USER21> Planet X and the Annunaki. I really enjoy some of those 'out there' outer space/alien documentary shows because even if untrue, they expand my mind with ideas. Sort of the mind expansion of getting "high", without the substance part.

They have an episode on Planet X and Annunaki and predict a black hole is Planet X.

[https://www.amazon.com/The- Annunaki/dp/B07JW478HG/ref=sr_1_1...](https://www.amazon.com/The- Annunaki/dp/B07JW478HG/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&keywords=Anunnaki&qid=1596081149&sr=8-12)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Assuming its location can be determined, what experiments would you like to try in its vicinity?

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been wondering - if the black hole was very small (I've read elsewhere that it would be grapefruit sized), would it be possible to build some kind of box around it so you couldn't accidentally go into the event horizon?

<comment><USER24> There's no material that you could make the box or shell out of that could withstand the gravitational forces near the black hole. Even the gravity _differential_ (tidal forces) is strong enough to rip anything apart (the so- called spaghettification). And if you made the shell large enough (planet- diameter), it would collapse into a spherical body just from its self-gravity, never mind the additional gravity of the PBH.

<comment><USER23> But given that it's so small, what would the gravitational forces be if you made a shell with a 100km radius? Or pick a number - surely at some point it might be practical to build something.

<comment><USER25> Size of the object doesn't matter. Gravitational force depends on its mass and how far away you are from the black hole. Standing on a shell ~6300 km above a black hole with the mass of the Earth is equivalent to standing on the Earth itself.

<comment><USER26> I have a hard time really accepting this concept given how unintuitive it is to me but I found your comment helpful in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If true, would this be the smoothest planet in the solar system?

<comment><USER24> I guess that _technically_ the IAU definition of planethood would not exclude a primordial black hole, but I doubt that's the intended interpretation.

<comment><USER27> someone, somewhere who sat in the planet definition committee: "seriously? again? what else didn't we think about...."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> shouldn't this be something we can look for without resorting to additions to the standard model?

</comment><comment><USER29> I really doubt Pluto is a black hole.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, anchoring a Mass Relay to a black hole would be too hazardous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are we still allowed full verbal use of the spectrum, or should we say "singularity" here?

Asking for Nathan Poe.

</comment><comment><USER32> Since it's a black hole, it's gravitational effect would be at least as much as the Sun. Is there evidence to support this tug of war?

<comment><USER33> Black holes do not have more gravity per mass than any other object.

Put the other way, if the sun would suddenly change into a black hole without losing a lot of mass, the earth would still follow the exact same orbit.

<comment><USER32> That's true. My point was that if there were a solar mass object beyond Pluto, it would have significant effect on orbits of all planets. But apparently PBHs can be lighter

<comment><USER34> I would suppose so. I would expect a lot more perturbation in the kuiper belt if a solar mass object was lurking out there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Element.prototype.diffHTML - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tbranyen/diffhtml/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's will be interesting if Chrome has this API. Then Backbone can do what React does.</comment>


Is algebra an unnecessary stumbling block in US schools? - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f7b0c544f83743509960e1a665000751/algebra-unnecessary-stumbling-block-us-schools <comment><USER2> It's even worse than requiring Algebra I. A typical college here, Oregon State University, has this high school requirement:[1]

       Mathematics
       3 years
       Culminating at the Algebra II level or higher

Algebra II, viewed in isolation, is truly useless for 99% of people. Who needs to factor 5th degree polynomials in real life?[2] The only purpose of teaching that sort of math in high school is to hope it generalizes to other problem solving skills.

But if that's the goal, why not make it more explicit by changing the curriculum?

Having said that, nobody is getting into a "good" school without good SAT or ACT scores, and those do require more than a modicum of math.

[1] [http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/main/admission- requirement...](http://oregonstate.edu/admissions/main/admission- requirements-1) [2] when I was helping my daughter with Algebra II, Wolfram Alpha made it _very_ easy to check our work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have no idea. However, I suspect that HN is not a good place to look for insight, given the presumably small portion of the readership that ever had problems with algebra and the presumably large portion that regularly uses math beyond arithmetic.</comment>


Ask HN: What exactly is a hackathon?  How do I participate and why? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> A hackathon is another form of self selection, much like going to a club where any guy needs to buy a bottle to get in. The bottle in this case is willingness to spend your free weekend on coding up some random project. Usually the participants like programming, have an idea, or just like socializing with other coders.

You can find hackathons through websites, meetups, friends. These two websites are pretty helpful:

<http://hackathon.io/> <https://www.hackerleague.org/>

While I have only participated in 1 event, it seems like the winning teams are ones with good idea, decent presentation skills and come prepared to execute. Ones that work well with each other, have a solid idea, done some fundamental ground work like looking through the APIs to see what kind of data and queries you can do, manipulating JSON, bootstrap, and basic teamwork stuff (github push / pull / merging), etc.

You meet all sorts of people at these things, and exposes you to more randomness. If you haven't done one, book a weekend and try it. And please take care of your self with healthy food and a decent night's sleep.

</comment><comment><USER4> A hackathon is essentially a code-sprint. Imagine running a marathon - <USER2> you're doing it by writing code.

The reasons are many, and depend a lot on what you want from the hackathon and what others (the ones you'll be hacking with want).

For example, in a small company setting, hackathons are great to implement features or fix-bugs that have been lying around for a while. It's a concentrated effort to get something done.

In a medium sized setting, a hackathon might serve the purpose more of enabling newbies (or people from outside a certain team) to get to know another team's code-base and philosophy.

In a slightly larger sized company setting, a hackathon might just be more about idea exchange and getting to know people simply because there might be a lack of focus with so many people around.

That's just my take on hackathons. I'm sure there are other more interesting views on it.

And whatever you do, please sleep well and eat healthy when you're participating in one.</comment>


Smashgather: Automating a Smash Bros Leaderboard with Computer Vision - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pathgather.com/blog/smashgather <comment><USER2> This is insane...and useful. I gotta find an N64 on ebay, ASAP!

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely</comment></comment>


Looking under Yellowstone for the next supervolcano - <AUTHOR> http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/08/yellowstone/achenbach-text/5

<comment><USER2> A few years ago Discovery Channel aired a fun disaster 'docudrama' (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano_%28docudrama%29>) about the worst case scenario for a Yellowstone eruption.

It was surprisingly well done...ie entertaining, more tied to facts that the garbage coming out of history channel lately (eg <http://www.history.com/content/nostradamus>)</comment>


Creating a game title using envelope deformation - <AUTHOR> http://www.2dgameartguru.com/2017/12/creating-game-title-with-envelope.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow up on the tutorial on the last step-by-step tutorial on creating an engaging title screen. I just dropped the logo/title into the last scene with a brief comment - which was picked up in the comments with a request to explain it a little more.

[http://www.2dgameartguru.com/2017/11/creating-engaging- game-...](http://www.2dgameartguru.com/2017/11/creating-engaging-game-title- screen-in.html)</comment>


A Primer for PHIGS (1991) - <AUTHOR> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acd/literature/books/phigs/contents.htm <comment><USER2> It's not hard to see from the first couple of chapters why DEC PHIGS and PEX were routed by GL. I mean, the main factor was that Jim Clark took a VLSI design class from Carver Mead and Lynn Conway, doing a 3-D accelerator, and founded SGI with it in 1982: [https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Impact/FundingaRevol...](https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Impact/FundingaRevolution.html)

But really, Fortran for examples? In a 1989 book?

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't surprise me if most people using PHIGS/PEX in 1989 were doing visualization for scientific computing on workstations, and any UI or graphics was an afterthought compared to the number crunching code that was generating the data to visualize. If so, they were probably using Fortran, and there's probably lots of people doing that sort of work in Fortran even now.

Not that I would recommend using Fortran for anything, just providing context. Even Numerical Recipes didn't get a C version until 1988. The original edition from 1985 was Fortran and Pascal. So even Pascal was considered a more mainstream language for this sort of work than C, at that time.

<comment><USER2> That's a good point. Even Matlab and IDL didn't have the widespread reach of Fortran for that kind of thing until later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This page explains what it is: [http://www.chilton- computing.org.uk/acd/literature/books/phi...](http://www.chilton- computing.org.uk/acd/literature/books/phigs/overview.htm)

</comment><comment><USER5> Still used it at the university, it was quite enjoyable somehow.</comment>


Ask HN: Dirty tricks for faster mysql alter table ? - <AUTHOR>

Mysql is a great program, countless websites wouldn't exist if it weren't for this really neat open source package.
One thing I can't get around though is that every time I have to do an 'alter table' on something that has been in production for a while the whole thing stops dead cold as long as it takes it to do its job. And that can be quite long if the table is large enough.
There are a few dirty tricks out there to speed things up a bit, the most frequently used one builds an empty 'shell' table with the right structure but without the indexes and then uses the repair facility to recreate them. It's a little faster, but even that is too long in all but the simplest cases.
Is there a better way to do this ?
I'm about to 'do it again' on a production table with 50M rows in it and I really am not looking forward to taking things down while doing this. <comment><USER2> Here's a trick to consider if you've got a truly large table to migrate, but with today's ActiveRecord-style abstractions it's harder to implement than if you were doing it yourself (like back in the PHP days).

1\. Create a new table with the desired structure. 2\. Modify your application to check the new table for data first, then the old table if the new table doesn't have the data. 3\. Create a script that migrates data X rows at a time (in a transaction), populating the new table with the old data. 4\. Once the new table is in place, replace the old table with new, and modify the application to check only that table.

Again, the setup required here can be developer-intensive and somewhat hackish, but if you have a truly colossal data store that'll take hours or days to ALTER TABLE, it's one way to work around it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good approach, it will be a bit more work but at least I don't have to contend with a lot of downtime like that.

Thank you!

<comment><USER2> Glad I could help. Hope it works out for you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This isn't a MySql problem; it's simply how databases work. When you change a table's structure by adding/removing/changing a column, _any_ database (MySql, Oracle, DB2, etc) has to change _every single row_. To change all rows, that requires an "exclusive lock" on the table.

An ALTER TABLE statement that adds/removes/changes-data-types of a column requires what is called a "schema lock" - meaning that you must acquire exclusive access to the entire table so that you can fundamentally change each and every row. You can't add a new column to only "some" of the rows, right? You have to modify the entire table. In order to adhere to relational database standards, this must be an "atomic" operation: all or nothing. To do so, MySql locks the entire table.

There are no shortcuts that I know of. Sorry!</comment>


I'm Building a Startup – Is This Normal? - <AUTHOR> https://staysaasy.com/scaling/2020/05/07/startup-is-this-normal.html <comment><AUTHOR> Something will ALWAYS be on fire.</comment>


Ask News YC: Making connections - <AUTHOR>

Hello!
In an effort to meet new people and make meaningful connections for my startup, I'm looking to fly out to California a couple of times in the next three months.
I'm wondering where I'd go? Conferences? Hacker news meetup (when's the next one?)?
How do you make connections? How do you promote your startup other than on the internet?
Let me know, maybe I'll meet some of you guys :) <comment><USER2> Why do you need to promote your startup somewhere other than on the internet?

My (completely accidental) approach is:

1\. Spend four years being heavily involved in open source development (FreeBSD in my case) and gain a reputation for producing really cool software (both FreeBSD Update and Portsnap have elicited reactions of "how did we manage to survive before this was available" from multiple sources).

2\. Announce that I'm working on a new project.

3\. Watch as emails flood in from users of my earlier works who are convinced that whatever I'm working on right now has got to be the best thing since sliced bread.

Of course, I haven't launched publicly yet, and I don't know how many these enthusiastic people will end up paying to use my current project -- but it certainly won't hurt to have an established reputation for doing cool stuff.

<comment><USER3> "Make something people want, for free"

"Then make something people want and ask money"

How'd you support yourself while working on the FreeBSD stuff, or did you get paid to do it? Do you think the same people who liked your open source work will turn tail at the thought of paying for software? Lots of them will, likely, but do you have indications that some won't?

I agree though, open source is a good place to be for a variety of reasons.

<comment><USER2> I started out doing FreeBSD work while I was a university student supported by scholarships; but in 2006 I spent 4 months working on FreeBSD Update and portsnap funded by donations from the FreeBSD community -- I sent out an email saying approximately "here's the work I'd like to do; here's how long I think it will take; here's how much I'd earn if I spent that time working at the university; if people send me that much money, I'll spend the time working on FreeBSD instead", and the money arrived.

Given that many of these people were willing to pay me to write open source code, I'm sure that many of them will accept paying for online backups (especially because of the unavoidable hardware costs).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> \- <http://superhappydevhouse.org/>

\- <http://barcamp.org/> \- organize a news.yc meetup \- make friends on irc, freenode, #facebook, #rubyonrails, etc, etc \- depending on how far along your startup is you could probably try to set up some vc meetings</comment>


Some Electric Car Drivers Might Spew More CO2 Than Diesel Cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-16/the-dirt-on-clean-electric-cars <comment><USER2> This trope again. Yes if you manufacture cars using dirty energy, then the operational payback is on a different starting basis. But the operational CO2 is almost always lower for electric cars. And where it's not, the progress of national infrastructures may flip that during the life of the electric car anyway.

What's not discussed: as the market grows for electric cars, then the market grows for batteries, which then feeds into reduced battery costs, increasing access of battery tech for electric infrastructure markets. Electric cars are good for the future in that way.

Yet this article makes it a question of what vehicle tech to choose, instead of a question of what infrastructure and factory investments to choose. I think my outlook on this is that environment concious consumers should choose electric cars based not only on the vehicle, but also on the decisions their makers elect in their supply chain.

</comment><comment><USER3> While we are calculating the externalised costs, why not include the considerable health care impact of the exhaust gasses on the populace? I'd welcome the reduced personal costs, if electric vehicle adoption is much more:

* My immune system would work much better without having to deal with all the pollution so I wouldn't get sick as often.

* I would be able to commute work by bike if I wouldn't have to inhale that much smoke during such an intensely aerobic activity. I wouldn't need public transport that much either.

* I wouldn't have to consume fuel (or charge for that matter) when there is a jam.

* I would feel and think much better if I don't have blood full of CO. Less reason for costly vices that forces me to feel only slightly better.

If I have to put a figure, I estimate ~$150 monthly savings minimum for my current lifestyle which is nothing to sneeze at personally.

</comment><comment><USER4> Because supply chain externalities are fair game when evaluating electric cars but somehow diesel cars are magically grown in forests without factories building them and diesel itself is fairy power source that flows from magic fountains?

It's amazing how many of these articles talk about the "dirty factories" or "dirty electricity" of electric vehicles, but just happen ignore that diesel and gas cars come from the same factories, and just happen to stop follow supply chains at gas pump, as if the complex, carbon-heavy supply chains for extraction, refining, and shipping oil/gas/diesel to gas pumps don't make even the most noxious, mountain destroying, coal-powered electricity look like a wonder of efficiency and green energy.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are a lot of caveats here that this click-baity headline doesn't convey:

They COULD create more CO2 "if it's made in a factory powered by fossil fuels in a place like Germany, according to Berylls' findings."

That's a big assumption and one that doesn't account for the long-term impact that electric vehicles could have on the road. Also, the overall impact of the CO2 emissions depends on where the car is being driven and where the factory is located.

Also this:

"'It will come down to where is the battery made, how is it made, and even where do we get our electric power from,' said Henrik Fisker, chief executive officer and chairman of Fisker Inc., a California-based developer of electric vehicles."</comment>


Back To School - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/02/back-to-school.html

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Columbia/NYU joint program that puts graduate students (mostly law school and business school students) into pro bono consulting gigs with startups ..."_

Now that sounds like an interesting idea.</comment>


What Rect is not the shortened of Rectangle? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@TapirLiu/what-rect-is-not-a-shorten-of-rectangle-7a2fb93e1c0e

<comment><USER2> > I can't understand if programmers can view Rect as Rectangle, why others > can't?

Programmers use an abbreviated version of the word in contexts where it's common. This phenomenon is pervasive in English; if a long word gets used too frequently within a community, that community will often develop an abbreviation. But 'rect' for 'rectangle' is not used generally because, outside of some specialized areas, it's quite rare to refer to rectangles at all.

I wouldn't bother changing the title. Some people will laugh, but the connection they're making is enough of a stretch that nobody should be embarrassed to refer to your game, and many people won't see any issue at all unless it's pointed out to them.

Counterfactually, if you had a game called "Wrecked 'em", that would most likely be interpreted as a purposeful reference to "rectum", and it would be worth changing if it was unintended. "Rect Pusher" may not be perfectly idiomatic, but I don't think it will cause problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your explanation and opinion!</comment></comment>


New in Gmail Labs: Preview Pane - <AUTHOR> http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-in-labs-preview-pane.html

<comment><USER2> I was just about to switch to the new Mail in Lion and now this comes out. Thanks Google ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a long time user of Google Apps / Gmail and this layout feels weird, uncomfortable and cluttered on my 15" MacBook Pro. It might be just that it's new and might take a few days to get used to the new layout.

<comment><USER4> Or may be it's not meant to be used on a 15" screen

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The screenshot looks remarkably similar to the Google wave layout.

</comment><comment><USER6> I thought Google axed Gmail Labs a while ago... Turns out there's more than one Labs in Google, and they're killing off some other one.

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind- fewe...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-fewer- arrows.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> The new Gmail interface itself is ugly and then you add this to it...it's all gray everywhere and kind of hard to make distinctions. Don't even talk about using this new Gmail theme in lower screen size laptops...it's looks absolutely ugly...come on Google, I'm sure you can do better.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like this will actually take advantage of the screen real-estate on a 24"+ monitor. Great!

</comment><comment><USER9> Getting ever more usable.</comment>


Microsoft Stores Are Permanently Closing - <AUTHOR> https://news.microsoft.com/2020/06/26/microsoft-store-announces-new-approach-to-retail/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a big mistake for them. The closest I ever got to buying a Surface was when I visited a Microsoft store and actually held one and played with it. I ended up getting n iPad instead (which I also spent a long time using in the Apple store). Even if these purchases happen online, I think using these physical stores as showrooms increases sales, even if those sales end up being online.

I guess it's fair to say the cost of the physical stores is too high for the value they deliver, but I suspect they don't really know how many extra indirect sales or how much more customer loyalty is generated by the physical locations.

<comment><USER3> I agree, although I found another good option is to buy it from Costco and use it for a couple months and really get a feel for it and then return it. I've done that with several Surface Pro devices, which has allowed me to appreciate how they've improved over the years, but also made it clear that they are not yet ready to replace a real laptop for me. Little things like the annoying lack of a "monitor off but computer still active" state that I might not have realized by just playing around with it in a store. Of course Costco doesn't have a great selection of all the different models, so it's not necessarily a great alternative depending on your interest. But you can usually find some store with a good return policy of at least 14 days.

A potential area where the Microsoft stores could've been great as if the employees were actually knowledgeable and could have answered questions. But I found them to be completely ignorant of anything other than very high-level basics. Several times they told me things that were flat out wrong. It was always more effective to just Google a question than to ask a store employee.

I've spent a lot of time in Microsoft stores in malls, killing time, since there's nothing much else for me to do when I'm dragged to a mall. Frankly that is the saddest aspect about this announcement. With Radio Shack gone and most GameStops gone, the Apple store will now be the only non-clothing store in malls.</comment></comment>


Analytics Tools Galore: R, Python, SAS - <AUTHOR> http://www.edupristine.com/blog/sas-vs-r-vs-python-sql <comment><AUTHOR> As the Analytics field grows and new tools and technologies keep emerging – and emergence of Big Data hasn't helped the matter – one must evaluate effort in mastering yet another language or tool or mastering new machine learning theory. Let's take a look around and see what's out there and what they are good for.</comment>


Martin Shkreli Says 'Of Course' He'd Raise Drug Price Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-23/martin-shkreli-says-of-course-he-d-raise-drug-price-again?cmpid=BBD122316_BIZ <comment><USER2> Why is it news that he'd do the same thing again? His response was perfect: "It worked and we're making more money, exactly as intended".

Was popular outrage, the majority of which was from people who had no prior knowledge required to frame what was happening (and I didn't have that knowledge either) and no power to affect it really supposed to make him regret it?

<comment><USER3> I imagine if you asked Dick Cheney about the Iraq War, Wall Street executives about the 2008 financial crisis, or the heads at the NSA about the Snowden revelations, they would give you a similar response.

Even when you are caught lying, fabricating, breaking the law, or defrauding the public, you will get away with it 100% if you are in a position of wealth and power. American institutions are apparently not strong enough to deal with this kind of corruption.

Sometimes I wonder if I should give my children the advice "Be good and moral and care about other people" or "Do everything you can to be rich and powerful so you can make yourself as immune to adversity as possible."

Sometimes I feel like the latter would be more helpful.

<comment><USER4> >Sometimes I wonder if I should give my children the advice "Be good and moral and care about other people" or "Do everything you can to be rich and powerful so you can make yourself as immune to adversity as possible."

Give them the former advice, and also tell them to make themselves as immune to adversity as possible because the world contains bad people. Goodness doesn't stop being good because badness exists, nor does the world become better by a refusal to confront and eliminate bad things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> He has done us all a service. The real problem is not the jacking up of the price of some obscure drug that almost nobody uses, but the constant yearly 10% to 20% increases in the blockbuster drugs that billions are spent on. By dragging the activities of the pharmaceutical industry into the light he is helping make change possible [1].

1\. I do have some sympathy for the pharmaceutical industry as it has through its greed managed to get itself caught in the vice of rising regulation and safety requirements and payer (insurance) coverage restrictions. If only it was pharma management rather than the scientists that are being crushed.

</comment><comment><USER6> >Shkreli, a former hedge fund manager who posts on Twitter frequently

This is terrible reporting. Donald Trump posts on Twitter frequently. Shkreli's a veritable memelord.

<comment><USER7> Lol, every other tweet is about harambe, his supposed upcoming rap album or hillary having parkinsons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Shkreli is right to ask anything he wants. If you want real change, get the AFD to loosen up their competition-killing requirements.

</comment><comment><USER9> He has some good content here [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8gjB1PSXv_oAUSAQ16S0fA/videos)

</comment><comment><USER10> Why should he be any different than the rest of the industry?

</comment><comment><USER11> It's just basic economics. Supply and demand. There are only two options: raise the price so that producing the drug makes sense, or stop producing the drug altogether. For people who need the drug, the first option is obviously preferable.

<comment><USER12> This is not a typical case of Supply and Demand. This is a case of someone having complete control of supply on a necessity for some people and charging whatever they want because insurance and social programs will foot the bill. In some cases the drug companies can very cheaply produce the drugs.

This isn't a problem in a competitive market they would never get away with this sort of stuff but our laws and our healthcare system have created a perfect environment for exploiting.

Can't blame people like Martin for doing it but we can blame politicians for not doing something about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So, to sum up, "I have no regrets, except for the ruinous consequences of my actions." Well, okay. I'm amazed that he still gets to play like he's the smartest guy in the room, having so comically overplayed his hand.</comment>


LibreSSL Documentation Status Update - <AUTHOR> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20200817063735 <comment><USER2> >Writing documentation finds bugs in the code

This is so true. I've found documenting how a function should behave concentrates the mind on how it might actually _not_ behave in that way and yields good tests that very often find bugs.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's such a great effort, and a laborious undertaking!</comment>


Ask HN: Does an index fund count as diversifying? - <AUTHOR>

So, I'm average joe programmer.  I contribute to 401k, and I have a high yield savings account for very short term stuff.  I would like to start investing in something that will be usable in the short-medium term.
I don't know much at all about the stock market, and don't want to learn.  I am thinking about putting some fixed amount of money per month in a single index fund (a large, broad index fund).
Is this enough in terms of diversification, given my other investments?  Goal is to either:
1. Be able to take the money out in short-medium term (3-6 years maybe) as a down payment for a house 2. Go "all the way" and provide funding for an early retirement.
Is contributing $100ish per month through a standard online broker (scottrade, etrade, sharebuilder, whatever), to a single index fund a smart choice for somebody like me?
Some base stats: Age: 26 Immediate liquid capital: low 5-figures, enough for 6 months of living, in a random high-yield savings. 401k contributions: ~10k/year
The obvious "put more in 401k" I don't think applies to me.  I am already contributing a pretty substantial amount, and I would like to potentially have access to the money much sooner than a 401k would allow.  Picking a single index-fund seems to make sense for me, since I'm going to be doing repeated small contributions, and thus will save on brokerage costs.
AAAAAAAAND I'm rambling.  Any advice would be appreciated. <comment><USER2> Please read this very tiny succinct powerful book: <http://sivers.org/book/SmartestInvestmentBook>

I put my notes on that page, but the real book is really worth reading. It sums up the wisest advice about passive investing so well.

Don't go with one fund. Do three:

#1 = An index fund representative of the US stock market in its broadest terms. (Fidelity: FSTMX, Vanguard: VTSMX)

#2 = An index fund representative of the international stock market in its broadest terms. (Fidelity FSIIX, Vanguard: VGTSX)

#3 = An index fund representative of the US bond market in its broadest terms. (Fidelity: FBIDX, Vanguard: VBMFX)

ASSET ALLOCATION:

LOW RISK = 14% stocks, 6% int'l stocks, 80% bonds

MEDIUM-LOW RISK = 28% stocks, 12% int'l stocks, 60% bonds

MEDIUM-HIGH RISK = 42% stocks, 18% int'l stocks, 40% bonds

HIGH RISK = 56% stocks, 24% int'l stocks, 20% bonds

(NOTE: all stock-holdings are 70% domestic, 30% international. Only choice is how much are stocks and how much are bonds.)

<comment><USER3> Question I've been wondering. Is it ok to buy into a bond fund like VBMFX right now in this low interest rate environment?

If interest rates go up a lot in a year or two will my share price drop a lot and cancel out any gains from interest?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No single fund is truly diversified. For example, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Fund offers stocks across all industries and includes growth and value companies from domestic and international, large, mid, and small-cap companies. That's pretty darn diverse, but it only covers stock. To really diversify, you may want to purchase a bond index as well.

I use Vanguard. Vanguard has some of the lowest cost index funds. The only downside is they all have $3000 (or more) initial limits. Oh and there are generally no transaction costs with Vanguard, so you could do $100 a month via direct deposit and personally incur no fees.

<comment><USER5> > The only downside is they all have $3000 (or more) initial limits

That's what ETFs are for, among other things.

> there are generally no transaction costs with Vanguard

(but you do lose that part w/ any ETF)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Most online places charge about $10 per trade. So even if you're putting $200/mo in, you're losing 5% immediately. Best choice would be to save up for several months and do fewer trades.

You really need to do better research, your statement that you don't want to learn about the stock market is a good way to guarantee that you never really make the kinds of returns you should. If there was a reliable, easy no- knowledge way to grow your investments, people would already be doing that.

A better option may be to look at some money market accounts. We have accounts with Ford Motor Credit and GMAC (now Ally). Check out <http://www.ally.com/money-market-account/index.html> it's not going to be the highest possible return rate, but there are no fees for "investing" your money, the funds are liquid, and as you get to higher balances you can get better returns. This is where we keep our "accessible" funds (low 6 figures).

Also, I'm not sure how much you're contributing to your 401K, but it may be worth bumping that up as well. You should probably at least be doing 10% of salary.

High-yield CDs would also be something to look at.

In short, for the dollars you're talking about, I would NOT consider anything that charged a transaction or maintenance fee, it would eat up any potential earnings.

<comment><USER7> Honest question: What's the logic behind keeping hundreds of thousands of dollars in a money market account? Is there a larger chunk of money sitting in places that earn a better return? If I had that kind of money sitting around that I wanted to use in the next couple of years, I can't imagine putting it in anything with less of a return than the low-risk Vanguard core funds. I don't know much about these things, so if I'm wrong, I'd like to know before I have money to lose.

<comment><USER6> When I said low 6 figures, I meant very low. We don't usually keep more than $150,000 (and it varies between $60K and $150K as things cycle) in "accessible cash". This is, for us, funds used to purchase a new vehicle, or deal with some around the house issues, or move to a new investment opportunity.

This is just an amount that, for our purposes, is enough to cover most random unanticipated issues without keeping too much money uninvested.

<comment><USER7> Sounds reasonable. Thanks for the information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If your employer isn't matching that entire $10k, you should look into other retirement options.

[http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/the-worlds- easiest...](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/the-worlds-easiest- guide-to-understanding-retirement-accounts/)

 _"First, I would max out any 401(k) match that my company provides. Second, I'd max out the $5,000 for my Roth IRA. Third, I'd max out the rest of my 401(k), up to $15,000. Finally–if your employer doesn't offer a 401(k), you're not employed yet, or you still have money left over–I'd open a regular, taxable investment account and put money there in stocks, index funds, etc.

Why max out your Roth before your 401(k)? Well, there's a lot of dorky debate in the personal-finance world, but the basic reasons are taxes and tax policy: Assuming your career goes well, you'll be in a higher tax bracket when you retire, meaning that you'd have to pay more taxes with a 401(k). Another common reason for the Roth is that tax rates are considered likely to increase. Remember: Your 401(k) money is taxed at the end, while Roth money is taxed right away and then grows tax-free."_

<comment><USER8> Besides considering (1) the current-tax-rate vs. retirement-tax-rate and (2) tax rates are likely to increase, the other major thing to keep in mind is (3) that the government may decide to tax Roth IRA distributions in the future (even though it says it won't now).

Think it won't happen? Social security benefits weren't taxed until 1984.

EDIT: Also, if you're currently raising a family and/or paying for kids' college, it's very plausible and reasonable that you'll be in a lower tax bracket when you retire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think it is a good idea for a individual to put money in the stock market, whether as you are doing now (via your 401k) or through some other method.

In theory, the stock market should be a place where companies can raise money to carry out enterprises that return more money to the stock holders. In order to be able to raise money from more people, rules are applied that make sure the powerful and rich don't rip off the weak; this is how the original stock markets, certain coffee houses in London and Amsterdam, fell upon the idea of only admitting members who agreed to record all of their transactions upon a chalk board on the wall, open for all to see.

In the current reality, companies don't pay dividends, when you buy the stock the money you pay is not going to go to the company to fund any enterprise, and well connected people at Goldman Sachs employ "high frequency trading" which is essentially shill bidding in an open-outcry auction.

The people who thought "high frequency trading" was OK are still in charge of the stock market; I'm not sure if they currently claim that is stopped or not, but it doesn't matter, the people who failed the test of allowing it in the first place are still in charge. Had they been selling cattle as a licensed auctioneer, and allowed that sort of thing to go on, they could go to jail.

Other places to put your money could include government bonds; you might look at the inflation protected series of bonds. You could simply keep your money in an FDIC insured savings account. As long as you are thinking you might need the money in 3 to 6 years, anything else seems foolish.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the resources guys. It sounds like I need at least a couple of index funds to be adequately diversified, and the books that have been mentioned here have been mentioned in numerous other places that I've seen; time to give them a look and spend at least a little time learning.

As for the people talking about not taking the time to learn, I understand that I'm not going to have crazy returns or anything like that. I just want an investment vehicle that will outperform basic savings accounts and such, and, hopefully, beat inflation.

Also, as for people saying "don't put money in the stock market if you need it in 3-6 years." I certainly won't need it; I was more emphasizing that I want something sooner than 401k, and potentially would like to have it available that soon. T

he more realistic scenario is I use it as a gap retirement fund. I'm 26 now, and would be happy to retire in 25-30 years. This means I need 10-15 years of gap money before 401k becomes viable.

Vanguard has been mentioned multiple times in this thread. I used to have a 401k with them, with a previous employer, but I didn't pay much attention to their offerings. For passively dumping small amounts of money into a small set of ETFs monthly, do they offer a superior service to some of the other online brokers that I mentioned?

</comment><comment><USER10> It is impossible to answer this question without knowing what kind of index fund you are investing in ("large, broad index fund" does not say much). For example, if you buy an S&P 500 index fund, you are _not_ indexing the stock market. You're just indexing a bunch of blue-chip US stocks, and you don't have exposure to asset classes such as bonds, small cap equity or foreign equity.

If you will need the money in 3-6 years you should not put it in the stock market. If you want to fund an early retirement then there are a lot more variables into this equation that you do not seem to take into consideration. What is "early"? How much money will you need into retirement? What other source of income besides savings will you have during retirement? Do you intend to raise a family? Etc. It is impossible for anyone to answer these questions for you. This is why you _should_ learn about the stock market, and about personal investing in general, if you want to make informed decisions about making your money work for you.

I very strongly suggest that you read "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Malkiel.

</comment><comment><USER11> Someone double check my information on this, but I believe that you can take a 10,000 withdrawl penatly free for a first time home purchase. The distribution will still be taxed, but there is no penalty.

ConsumerReports.org usually has a pretty good list of low load, no load index and mutual funds that they suggest. They are a non profit, and I'd been consistently pleased with their advice over the years.

</comment><comment><USER12> Max your Roth IRA for now. Judging from your current contribution level, you are still qualified.

Check out Permanent Portfolio if you have more money.

Get into real estate if you can. I participated in the last great real estate run-up and benefited greatly.

</comment><comment><USER13> Broad index funds are great, but the big problem with them is that all your eggs are still in the "USA basket". Consider adding some foreign or emerging market funds, but also realize that it is impossible to diversify perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe do half s&p 500 index fund and half vanguard bond fund. That way you're more diversified.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hear a lot of 401k.

Anyone have any experience with it while not being a us citizen?

E.g. Work in the US for some yrs and then leave for good.</comment>


The hedgehog and the fox - <AUTHOR> http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/7/12/the-hedgehog-and-the-fox <comment><USER2> Current hedgehog fodder:

* Subscription as alternative vs. reducing life on newer technology. While being wasteful works in today's "make everything in China" world, long-lasting high-quality products that consumers "rent" make more sense than throwaway products financially and environmentally.

* Mining first-world trash. Third-world countries do this manually, but isn't commercialized in first-world.

* Developing products and services that rely on greater levels of energy than currently available. Energy, propulsion, etc. advances will be made more quickly in coming years.

* Undersea and underground living: greater use of heat, heat or pressure differential as energy sources, related horticulture, and mining - but there are problems to be solved: how do we adapt things we need for overground living to deep underground and deep underwater?

* Space, the final frontier, e.g. transport: SpaceX, distribution: Blue Origin, mining: Planetary Resources, touring: Virgin Galactic, propulsion systems: Orbital Sciences, etc. - but there are many niches to fill.

* Solving world problems of hunger, poverty, unsafe water, lack of shelter, violence - e.g. agricultural transforming, fair redistribution as a service, clean water as a service in the third world, alternative building materials, guns/tasers/billy clubs replaced with net guns.

</comment><comment><USER3> By reading just the title, I thought that this was related to some old games, [Sonic the Hedgehog]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog)) and [Titus the Fox]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_the_Fox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titus_the_Fox))... :)

<comment><USER4> That was my first thought too. Sonic the hedgehog and his sidekick Tails was a fox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think one of the "hedgehog" facts that wasn't mentioned (but alluded to in a comment on the post) is that the Internet will be balkanized.

The Great Firewall of China will become the norm. It's what countries and media companies wanted with DVD region codes. VPNs will fight this but eventually get banned or constrained.

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER6> > In the last 20 years or so, there were a few important things that drove > everything else in tech. The internet would reach everyone, and so would > mobile phones and then smartphones.

Half of the humans are not on the internet.

<comment><USER7> > They have a lot further to run - smartphones will go from close to 3bn to > over 5bn users, for example - but there's nothing very contrarian to them.

The author addresses that literally one paragraph later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would strongly recommend that anyone who hasn't read the original essay, do so.

<comment><USER9> The original essay is about War and Peace. Therefore read War and Peace first of all :)

<comment><USER8> It's not really that the original relates to this blog post, as much as it's just one of the best essays written in the English language in a long time. (big IMO)</comment></comment></comment>


Google Scribe - Get autocomplete suggestions as you type - <AUTHOR> http://scribe.googlelabs.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. It can also be used as a Markov chain text generator. Type one word, then just accept every suggestion.

"In the case of these two types of information that is not appropriate for all users of the catalogue should also be noted that there is anything you would not believe how much I loved them."

<comment><USER3> You can even get it to repeat itself after a while:

        I have been able to find anything in these search results from RT on your
        Google searches by subscribing to the feed via email to state their case
        and their ownership of their owners and are strictly for viewing and printing
        of these books are nothing but another form of therapy for these patients
        is not known whether these are the only ones who can not afford to pay for
        their own users and groups to their Friends / Favorites list yet, so I'ma
        keep popping up in their own right and do not want to be related to their
        particular field or industry in which they are attached to their respective
        owners and are strictly for viewing and printing of these books are nothing
        but another form of therapy for these patients is not known whether these are
        the only ones who can not afford to pay for their own users and groups to
        their Friends / Favorites list yet, so I'ma keep popping up in their own
        right and do not want to be related to their particular field or industry in
        which they are attached to their respective owners...

<comment><USER4> Congratulations, you just found a fixed point attractor.

<comment><USER5> I think a fixed point attractor would be a word or phrase where it goes naturally but then doesn't have any more suggestions: a dead end.

This is more of a periodic-solution attractor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd actually like to see the exact opposite: an editor that warns me every time I use a too common and worn out phrase or sequence of words.

That shouldn't be too hard to do, should it? :)

<comment><USER7> 1 I'd actually like to see

2 the exact opposite

3 worn out phrase

4 that shouldn't be too hard

5 should it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I shared a similar app here on HN a while ago that used Google's own suggest feature to guess the next word or two: <http://chir.ag/projects/ktype/>

KType was a demo for something like Scribe that I wanted to make for disabled users.

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://imgur.com/8YJIB.png>

Looks like it includes someone's source code, probably that of the page itself?

<comment><USER10> I thought perhaps someone was trying to see Scribe with XSS exploits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried it with the entire alphabet.. you can see it here: [http://blog.cankoklu.com/google-scribe-abcs-nothing-but- anot...](http://blog.cankoklu.com/google-scribe-abcs-nothing-but-another- form-o)

The attractor does seem to be "nothing but another form of therapy"..

Almost all letters end in this loop..

</comment><comment><USER12> There are so many things to say about this. Thanks to Google for creating this tool which I must say still seems a bit random in its objectives though.

I think the main issue here is that logic behind scribe is based on statistical frequency of co-occurrence of strings rather than any semantic logic. Granted, automating the semantics here could be tough and very expensive with the amounts of data available to Google's. However, there are some ways to do that if the index can be structured more efficiently and by using low-level semantic logic like taxonomies - I wrote a white paper about this if anyone is interested: [http://www.exorbyte.com/index.php/White- Papers/ajax-incremen...](http://www.exorbyte.com/index.php/White-Papers/ajax- incremental-search-interfaces.html)

<comment><USER13> Interesting, thanks. I'm not sure if I agree, though; I think our natural understanding of language is acquired mainly though statistical inference, even though it may be encoded in the brain using a semantic taxonomy for efficiency.

I doubt that a lot of people will use this, although the obvious place to deploy it is in mobile communications, where per-word prediction is still very slow and text entry is very inefficient. This seems 'good enough' for most functional communications. But I would imagine that it is or will be running in the background soon on all Google pages featuring text entry, like docs or mail, because that will provide a huge flow of data to refine their models against.

<comment><USER14> From my very limited knowledge of language acquisition, my guess is you might be wrong (although I'm happy to be corrected). Don't human children acquire language much faster, more accurately and from poorer signals than would be possible via statistical inference?

<comment><USER13> I could be - I'm no expert on this either. My understanding of academic linguistics is that there are two main schools of thought: on one side you have Noam Chomsky as the most famous exponent, saying that all languages have a sort of universal grammar that somehow reflects our brain structure, and on the other the behaviorism of BF Skinner, that languages are largely arbitrary, syntactic processing is learned behavior, and complexity is both a result of and a selector for intelligence as an evolutionary trait.

I don't have a really strong opinion, though I lean a bit towards the behaviorist approach. There have been some suggestions from ethnomusicologists that small children everywhere sing the same sort of melody on the same scale, which inclined me to the opposite view for a while, but I think that was more of a theory than a finding and still needs evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Neat! So is this just a fun project or does Google plan to use this technology in any of their products?

Edit: You can use Scribe on any web page. From the help section: "Google Scribe can be used anywhere, on any web page, using the Google Scribe Bookmarklet.

From the Google Scribe home page, drag the Google Scribe Bookmarklet (located below the text box) to Bookmarks toolbar (or Favorites toolbar depending on your browser). To use Google Scribe on a web page, click on the Google Scribe Bookmarklet. Google Scribe will then enable itself on the active text field on the webpage. Enabled text fields display the icon at top end corner of the active field."

<comment><USER16> _So is this just a fun project or does Google plan to use this technology in any of their products?_

It might make sense to use this as one predictor for transcribed text in Google Voice. Then again, once the results begin to diverge, this would amplify the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems as if they blacklisted inappropriate suggestions - the most outrageous thing suggested so far was "why do atheists gravitate towards stuffed animals"

<comment><USER17> "Homosexuality is a" yields interesting results

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Be sure to check out the bookmarklet. It works on any text field (I'm using it now).

</comment><comment><USER19> Start with a word, hit tab 10 times, paste your result.

> Moneywatch MovieTome mySimon NCAA Showtime SmartPlanet TechRepublic The > Insider on TV and radio.

<comment><USER20> Hacker News is an online business directory that has the most complete and up to date with the latest active trackers for this torrent download

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not sure if its the UI. But the auto-complete is actually more obtrusive than what I would expect from a text editor. If its gonna pop a suggestion box for every keystroke, it hinders my writing flow. It would be better if the editor could suggest better phrases (than the one I already wrote), or better words to make the text more formal.

</comment><comment><USER22> it predicts what you're going to type next. this is really nothing new. perhaps the most interesting use of predicting input in this fashion is dasher:

<http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/>

it uses this prediction to make it efficient for people who cannot type, type.

<comment><USER7> predicting text and predicting text well are two very different things.

<comment><USER22> what's the relevance of that comment?

is your claim that dasher does not predict well?

or rather, that google scribe predicts better than dasher?

it would surprise me: dasher adapts to the linguistic habbits of the particular user. it learns in real time.

google scribe doesn't appear to do this. it doesn't know who i am.

<comment><USER7> my point is that saying "nothing new here" often dismisses what really matters, the quality of something.

I've never used dasher so I can't comment on it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's too slow to be useful -- suggestions don't keep up with typing at a reasonable speed. Plus, the fact that 10 suggestions need to be scanned before you can proceed slows the process even further. Maybe it's useful as a way to work around writer's block or to remember a word that's slipping off your mind.

</comment><comment><USER24> If only it auto-inserted a space after words it would be so much more efficient.

</comment><comment><USER25> Neat technology. If it was just slightly more responsive, I am sure it could be interesting for some use cases such as helping out non-native English speakers write with proper grammar and diversified vocabulary.

</comment><comment><USER26> Hmm, doing this seems to be slower than actually writing a text.

<comment><USER27> I would imagine the appeal is less towards native/fluent speakers at this point, and more for people who are learning or uncomfortable with english grammar.

I have several friends who use Google to as a first editor of their grammar by making sure that phrases they aren't sure are correct return lots of search results. This seems like a convenient way for them to streamline that process.

<comment><USER28> That's really a clever trick, though my initial reaction was horror at the idea of checking one's grammar against the Internet.

Looks like Scribe is only looking one or two words ahead, though - it's not actually checking what you've written, just throwing the Google Suggest box into your writing.

<comment><USER29> I use it all the time to check difficult words. It works well. Google usually even suggests "did you mean" the right spelling when you get it wrong.

<comment><USER30> This works especially well for words you can't find in the dictionary or when you want to know whether the context in which you use a word is appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would be interested to see if they can improve the results speed to the point where choosing the results would be faster than typing.

</comment><comment><USER32> If you type a semi-colon, you get ";:::;" - Where did they mine that from, it looks emacsy!

</comment><comment><USER33> Funnily enough, the auto-completion censors profanity.

</comment><comment><USER34> once upon a time in the world of technology we were not significantly different from those that have already passed their driving test

</comment><comment><USER35> <http://cl.ly/5aca0e33680045e2a99b>

</comment><comment><USER36> Reminds me of Clippy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Today

</comment><comment><USER37> From

</comment><comment><USER37> today and from

</comment><comment><USER38> _Osama bin Laden dead or alive xtreme beach volleyball._</comment>


World's first smartphone with a molecular sensor is coming in 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2017/01/07/smartphone-with-scio-sensor-changhong-h2/#.jjlzEoT3aqG <comment><USER2> > Looking at the back of the phone, you'd be forgiven for thinking the sensor > is just the phone's camera. But that odd-looking dual lens is the scanner, > basically the embedded version of the SCiO. It uses spectrometry to shine > near-infrared light on objects — fruit, liquids, medicine, even your body — > to analyze them.

> Say you're at at the supermarket and you want to check how fresh the > tomatoes are. Instead of squeezing them, you'd just launch the SCiO app, > hold the scanner up to the skin of the tomato, and it will tell you how > fresh it is on a visual scale. Do the same thing to your body and you can > check your body mass index (BMI). You need to specify the thing you're > scanning at the outset, and the actually analysis is performed in the cloud, > but the whole process is a matter of seconds, not minutes.

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

... Tricorder X PRIZE: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder_X_Prize](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricorder_X_Prize)</comment>


Q & A with Colombian Hacker Andrés Sepúlveda - <AUTHOR> https://sinletras.com/2016/11/08/q-a-with-colombian-hacker-andres-sepulveda/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a translation of an interview Sepulveda did in Spanish. The description of the technology and resources used provides an important glimpse at how public opinion is being manipulated in social media.</comment>