Why Wine Ratings Are Badly Flawed - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703683804574533840282653628.html <comment><USER3> A good friend teased her husband for spending only $7 for a bottle of wine in a facebook status post. So I bet her I would eat a cork if she could consistenly tell the difference. I won.

We held a blind taste test for 12 people with 14 wines ranging from 3.99 to $50. For each variety, there was one wine that was under $7 and one that was $11-50. We bought most, but not all, of the wine at Trader Joes. Participants had to guess if each wine was 'cheap' or 'expensive.' No one got more than 8 right. Aside from guessing the price category, people rated how much they liked the wine from 1-5 so they could see what they liked after the reveal. A 50 dollar Cabernet was one of the lowest rated.

This 3.99 bottle had the 2nd highest rating:

[http://cheapwineratings.com/2008/04/10/villa-cerrina- montepu...](http://cheapwineratings.com/2008/04/10/villa-cerrina- montepulciano-dabruzzo/)

Highest rated was a 6.99 Pinot Noir whose name escapes me at the moment. I don't claim the results necessarily prove anything about the wider world, except that my friends have been overspending on wine.

<comment><USER4> I am convinced that many wineries should sell the same wine for different prices. They could sell the same wine for $7/bottle, $30/bottle and $125/bottle. Of course the $125 should have a different label and should be marketed a lot differently but the wine itself doesn't have to change.

I personally just buy a big jug of dark red cooking wine. I can't tell the difference between it and the other more expensive wine, and I refuse to spend more money for snoberry (note: I have nothing against others paying that much if it makes them feel good/better).

<comment><USER5> Well, there's a big difference between the issue of wine rating silliness and the wide variety of flavor you'll find in wine. A $10 bottle of gabbiano tastes almost nothing like a $10 bottle of monticello rioja and neither will taste anything like your jug of wine. Saying they taste the same is like to saying orange juice tastes the same as lemon juice, and that both taste the same as grapefruit juice.

<comment><USER4> I was saying that I couldn't taste the difference and according to the article, many other people can't either. They are essentially tasting the label and the marketing, which is why the marketing and the label should look different in both cases.

They are people more sophisticated and better at wine tasting, but there are a lot of people who just follow irrational marketing cues.

<comment><USER5> _"I was saying that I couldn't taste the difference and according to the article, many other people can't either."_

This isn't what the article is talking about. The article is arguing that subjective, linear wine ranking is faulty, that preferences are not objective or static, that it's difficult to distinguish between similar wines and that identifying individual flavors and scents (eg, "lavender, roasted herbs") are tied to the taster's imagination.

If you can tell the difference between grapefruit juice and orange juice, you can tell the difference between a gabbiano, a monticello rioja and a generic merlot. They taste dramatically different and you can't give a merlot to someone who knows what chianti tastes like and have them believe it's a chianti. Different varietals have very distinct flavors.

And when it comes to quality, there is a much, much more significant difference between a poorly stored, very low-quality wine and a mainstream ~$10/bottle wine than there is between a $20/bottle wine and a $100/bottle wine. After all, a number of the pricer wines would be simply $20/bottle if it weren't for the ratings systems critiqued by the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Mr. Hodgson said he wrote up his findings each year and asked the board for permission to publish the results; each year, they said no. Finally, the board relented -- according to Mr. Hodgson, on a close vote -- and the study appeared in January in the Journal of Wine Economics._

I love it. He knew from his findings that the wine review board's decision would vary from year to year.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. It so rare that a statistics joke makes me actually laugh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I lived in Cincinnati, the "Everybody's Cooking" radio talk show was like my "Car Talk" for foodies. One of their soapbox things was wine ratings. They thought it was way too complicated. "C'mon, are you _really_ going to taste the difference between an 88 and an 89!?"

Those two chefs proposed the "Siskel and Ebert" system. Thumbs up/thumbs down. "Do you like it? Do you not like it? It's _only_ fermented grape juice!" They advocated ditching the mysticism and just enjoying it with dinner.

<comment><USER9> The style / grape type is probably more important than some number. "I like really crisp whites", "I like really thick, fruity (but not too tart) reds", etc. will narrow down a search better than just looking for high ratings.

If you really like steak, you're probably better off with a cabernet sauvignon than a riesling, rating nonwithstanding.

<comment><USER8> Probably the biggest problem is the _packaging_. With produce, you can go to the store, and feel and sniff the wares. If you don't like it, you go to a different store. With wine, you have to wait until you get home with the bottle. And even if you find a good wine, you have no idea if it will be the same year to year, or even a few months later. You have no idea when marketdroids are going to convince the executives to cash in on the name. (Same happens to beer.)

Whole Foods does right by its customers by handing out samples of chosen wines. I like being able to taste before I buy!

<comment><USER9> Well, with beer, it's much cheaper to get a variety of singles. After my wife and I did that a couple times, we had a very clear idea what styles we like. (And that we prefer beer to wine.)

Incidentally, West Michigan is one of the best places in the US for craft ales. There's Founders (<http://www.foundersbrewing.com/founders/>), Bell's (<http://www.bellsbeer.com/>), and the Hopcat (<http://hopcatgr.com/main/About.aspx>), for starters. :)

<comment><USER8> The Pacific Northwest was marvelous for great, innovative microbrew when I lived there in the early 90's.

Cool, those guys are still around! <http://maritimebrewery.ypguides.net/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Something I was reading lately* noted that those numeric ratings are usually reached tasting wine alone, rather than with food. That can bias ratings toward wines that stand out after tasting several similar cabs (or whatever) in a row, including wines that utterly lack subtlety. "This tastes like getting whacked with a giant oak plank."

* One of the Culinary Institute of America texts, I forget which.

<comment><USER10> I find that the taste of the second glass of a red is often more rounded and enjoyably palatable than the first glass. I don't think this is inebriation but something possibly to do with how the taste buds themselves work. Temperature will alter the flavour a lot, as will the food being consumed alongside (as you noted).

<comment><USER11> Also don't underestimate the influence of oxygen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is one of my pet peeves. I can't figure out any way to find good wine outside of personally sampling it. Ratings don't work, and price only has a rough correlation to quality. My current system is to buy a random sampling of low-mid priced wines and when I find a good one, buy a case.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me of the experiment run by a german tv program where they let some people compare a real, but mediocre wine with a liquid composed from single substances to match the gas chromatograph readings of a good wine. The artificial wine won. [http://www.wdr.de/tv/quarks/sendungsbeitraege/2009/1110/002_...](http://www.wdr.de/tv/quarks/sendungsbeitraege/2009/1110/002_arena_taeuschen.jsp)

</comment><comment><USER14> Fascinating. I don't know much about wine, but I've noticed that my own appreciation of the same type of wine will vary greatly. Sometimes it seems highly dependent on what I was doing earlier in the day and what I've recently eaten. If I was cleaning, for example, perhaps some trace residue of ammonia on my hands might interfere with the taste/smell. Similarly, if I had spicy food, an otherwise enjoyable red might taste strange to me. And of course, there's a fair bit of variability between bottles for various reasons, making the whole process even more uncertain.

</comment><comment><USER15> The strategy I've always employed is to pay no more than $6-9 unless it's a special varietal. Some of the best wines I've ever had were South American bought as one-offs for $10-15 though much of the enjoyment came from the novelty. Much better than honing your pallet to the taste of expensive wine is to learn to pair wines with food. Learn what varietals you like and then play with foods spicy, sweet, and sour. The most enjoyment from wine comes from learning how the tastes combine and change wildly.

Pairing wine is a game of combinatorics. The tricks tend to be to maximize the number of other flavors you can try with your wine. In this way, you can transform a single bottle into 3 or more different flavors. Some tricks:

Bread, cheese, and wine is a common thing but don't go overboard on the bread. Much of the time the heavy starch is going to wipe out the flavors. Invest in more variety in the wines and cheeses.

Spice comes in many, many varieties (from peppercorn to bright red ground cayenne, to Chinese sichuan pepper) and each one often has a different reaction with wines.

Steak and wine is a great combination because well-prepared meats have tons of interesting flavors thanks to the "maillard reaction". Sausages are a particularly good choice.

<comment><USER16> The Economist recently had a article about the scientific basis of the "only white wine with seafood rule": [http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?...](http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14743767). Apparently, the key factor is the level of iron in the wine -- too much iron in the wine/seafood combination results in a "fishy" taste. It would be interesting to see more research into the chemistry of wine/food pairings.

<comment><USER9> From a chemistry standpoint, the biggest factor is the acidity of the wine. Acidic wines (particularly whites) can be very crisp and palate-cleansing, while less acidic wines taste softer and smoother.

I don't have my copy of Harold McGee's _On Food and Cooking_ with me, but that's the first place I'd look for more info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm not so sure that applying statistics to wine tasting isn't like applying physics to haircuts: yes there's probably no relationship between the money you paid and the way you feel about your haircut, but if you thought there was you probably were missing the point.

Wine is an immensely subjective and varied experience. That's one of the reasons people like it so much. There's one feeling you get when you're dining out and a friend turns you on to a 10-dollar red that tastes great and another feeling you get when you go to the cellar for a special occasion to get a hundred-dollar bottle -- even if the wines are statistically indistinguishable.

What can I say? It's a great product. All of human experience goes into the process: peer pressure, prior experience, atmosphere, cost, anticipated pleasure, etc.

When I started trying to learn how to taste wine I went through Wine Spectator and only ordered wines of the very highest rating. I understand this is just an anecdote, but I found that about 1 in 3 were actually distinguishable by me from grocery-store wine. I took that to mean that yes, there are differences, but the amount of signal is vastly overstated.

But that misses the point: it's emotional, not statistical.

<comment><USER18> _it's emotional, not statistical_

You just said a mouthful :-)

When I started making my own wine a friend sent me a review of a Barolo -- the variety I was making -- and I mentioned that the wine review seemed awfully similar to high end audio equipment reviews (e.g., $15k CD transports + another $10k for the DAC and preamp!) and sent him a few links.

He was absolutely astounded (and amused): both kinds of reviews used language so similar that in some cases they were almost interchangeable.

What's my point? Both products can be very expensive with little objective differentiation leaving the buyer with a great deal of incentive to defend his purchase vigorously to anyone who asks the question, "why the hell did you spend so much money on _that_ "

<comment><USER17> lol. Your are correct. The less actual substance and more emotion there is, the more tenaciously people will defend their positions. Again it's a feature, not a bug: one of the reasons I decided to look into wine collecting was observing a couple nerd friends of mine argue (discuss) for 30 minutes what kind of wine to order at a fancy restaurant.

 _Both products can be very expensive with little objective differentiation leaving the buyer with a great deal of incentive to defend his purchase vigorously to anyone who asks the question, "why the hell did you spend so much money on that"_

To which the appropriate reply is: "I didn't spend my money on _that_ , I spent my money on _me_ (or you, or our dinner, or your graduation, etc)

It's like weighing the steak at a fancy restaurant and comparing it to the price-per-pound down at Costco

It reminds me of my step-father's view on haircuts: for a certain amount of money, you deserve to get at least so much hair removed. :)

Having said that, I've got a bottle of 98 Donnoff Riesling that has my name on it for Christmas Eve. And I've been saving a 1996 Opus One for gosh, I don't know, perhaps the end of the world or my first million :) And I'm thinking that I've sat on those 4 bottles of 97 Dow's Port long enough.

To my mind, I'll take these wines and statistically match them up anywhere. But who cares if I'm wrong and it's just me? I've enjoyed collecting them, and I'll enjoy the special feeling of consuming them when I think the time is right.

But damn it, I'm right. (grin)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Vodka is an even worse when it comes to peoples perception of quality. The higher the price, the better it must be! Twice I've had bartenders will up shot glasses with well vodka and Grey Goose, then number the napkins - <USER2> friends have got it wrong both times.

I've been to Mt. Hood distillery, they import 180 proof ethyl alcohol by train from the midwest where its distilled from grain, then the use it to make many different popular brands of vodka, gin, liqueurs, and others. The Vodka bought in America is Ethyl alcohol cut with water!

</comment><comment><USER20> Similarly: _Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine_

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743247515/ref=cm_rdp_produ...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743247515/ref=cm_rdp_product)

</comment><comment><USER21> the idea of wine ratings seems weird to me.

Everyone has different tastes, different taste buds, how come we don't have any rating systems for candy? or steak? or eggs? or icecream?

This Snickers bar, really brings out the taste of Artificial Red #503

<comment><USER22> Is it really any weirder than a rating on films or books or music? That is also largely about taste. And there are plenty of competitions and ratings on most kinds of foodstuff (including candy and ice cream), so wine is in no way unique in that respect.

<comment><USER23> In books and films you have a little more information. An even then the only realistic scale is one or two thumbs up.

Suppose the only thing you knew about a film was it's director (the grape) the studio (vineyard) and a score out of 100

<comment><USER22> I'd also know who gave it the score. If a director that I love makes a film that a critic that I respect gives a high score I'd be happy to see that film knowing nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don;t know how to rate wine at all. The way I rate wine is by the burn. If there is no burn and goes down smooth it is good wine.

<comment><USER25> The burn comes from the alcohol. Smoothness could be due to lack of tannins in the red wine. (Tannins cause the feeling of astringency in your mouth and inner cheeks.)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Find food trucks in San Fran (my weekend project) - <AUTHOR> http://briangonzalez.org/calle/

<comment><USER2> I love this. We'll be in San Francisco this weekend and will definitely use it! I'd love to help you port this to work here in New York, too. Let me know.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome!</comment>


Infinitely many twin primes - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.09950 <comment><USER2> Well, a purely heuristic evaluation: this appears to be written in Word rather than LaTeX, it seems to be this person's first publication, it seems they're not affiliated with any institution, and it reads like an undergrad's homework rather than a paper. So I'm pretty skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER3> While I agree with the overall sentiment here, on an unrelated note I noticed someone commented "If I saw Terence Tao's name on it I'd assume it's true" (I'm paraphrasing what they said)

That kind of assumption has actually bitten Mathematics in Academia in the past:

" In the final sentence of the same paper, Gödel added:

In conclusion, I would still like to remark that Theorem I can also be proved, by the same method, for formulas that contain the identity sign.

Mathematicians took Gödel's word for it, and proved results derived from this one, until the mid-1960s, when Stål Aanderaa realized that Gödel had been mistaken, and the argument Gödel used would not work. In 1983, Warren Goldfarb showed that not only was Gödel's argument invalid, but his claimed result was actually false, and the larger class was not decidable. "

So although statistically assuming the proof is correct for a super famous "genius" mathematician isn't a "bad" assumption since you're "probably" correct in that assumption.

That's not the same as certainty.

And before using that proof in further works

It's very important for some others to go through and validate the proof as well.

Even the smartest humans are plagued by the simple fact that they are human and thus prone to mistake/error from time to time.

Source of the anecdote: [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/139503/in- the-histo...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/139503/in-the-history- of-mathematics-has-there-ever-been-a-mistake)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure you can tell this is nonsense by the second page. It uses elementary concepts in a way that doesn't seem to make any sense. How do you form a group from the same number modulo different bases for example?

</comment><comment><USER5> HN comments: Not LaTeX, must be invalid.

</comment><comment><USER6> Fails test #1 of Scott Aaronson's "Ten Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong" ([https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304](https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304)): it's clearly typeset in Word with the Equation editor, not in LaTeX. As much as that is intended to be a joke, it really is true that the vast majority of high-quality mathematical work is typeset in LaTeX.

Also, it isn't from anyone remotely reputable in the area of number theory, so the odds are very high that this is just a crank submission.

</comment><comment><USER7> I see many red flags here:

\- The author claims no academic affiliation.

\- The title of the paper sounds a bit unusual, the gap is not a property of a prime, is a property of a couple of primes. Also, there's no need to specify 'exactly', that's number theory.

\- In general the language used throughout the paper does not follow that of a mathematics paper.

\- No LaTeX, extremely minimal bibliography.

These red flags mean nothing if the result is correct, and I would love it to be correct. I don't have time to check the proof, even if it seems to rely on elementary constructions.

<comment><USER8> > No LaTeX, extremely minimal bibliography.

I prefer TeX! And I've published applied math with just TeX, sent to _Information Sciences,_ an Elsevier journal, and they handled the TeX source easily!

I prefer TeX because Knuth's book is shorter and easier to read than the books on LaTeX.

Yes, for TeX I wrote about 100 macros for table of contents, cross references, help with bibliographies, ordered, unordered, and simple lists, boxes around text, etc.

So, it's not all just LaTeX guys -- TeX is still darned nice!

Nothing comes between me and my TeX!

Give up TeX? It will have to be pried out of my cold, dead fingers!

<comment><USER9> I wrote my thesis in LaTeX, there was at least minimal support at our PhD office (minimal in the sense of they would accept postscript at the time). My choices were MS Word (in early 90s, so ... yuck) which I didn't have on any machine I had access to, or LaTeX. So LaTeX it was.

I wound up using some of the APS macros, and a number of things I wrote.

For me, the cool part of this is that my thesis was built using a multi-pass makefile. I ran it on all of my machines (SGI Indy, OS2 laptop) at the time.

Since then I've written documentation for 2 projects in LaTeX. It worked quite well, but then I was forced into using the dark side's tools (Word) as none of my colleagues were versed in the finer side of (La)TeX.

<comment><USER8> One reason I avoided LaTeX is that I was unsure just how my macros would conflict with what was in LaTeX.

I'm sure LaTeX has a lot of super tricky stuff that does really good stuff and was too much work for me to implement, but with LaTeX if something went wrong then I'd be stuck-o since I would not be able to debug LaTeX.

So, TeX it is. If there are bugs in my macros, then I fix the bugs.

Yes, I got around to TeX in about 1998 on OS/2\. Now on Windows, It's my standard for all more serious word whacking, of course, especially for anything mathematical.

My TeX setup has a converter from TeX's DVI file type to PDF, and my Adobe Acrobat reader can print to FAX, and my computer has a FAX modem card I run my land line phone through. So, net, I can send letters from TeX to Congress!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm not able to evaluate the paper but from what i can make out after a quick perusal the Twin Prime "proof" is showing that the probability of there not being a twin prime approaches zero?? That's an interesting approach (perhaps that's common, I don't know).

There seemed to be quite a lot of approximations in use; that approach _prima facie_ seems shaky - surely the probability there isn't a prime above a particular integer could be anything non-zero and still leave the conjecture unproven.

I've probably misinterpreted it.

Will be interesting to see a proper teardown at a later date.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've spoken with a maintainer of arxiv.org... anything in "General Mathematics" shouldn't be taken too seriously.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was hoping to click through and see Terence Tao's name on the paper. Then I would assume it was correct. Agree with the other comments as it stands.</comment>


Goodbye PCS, it's been nice knowing you. Hello, desktop as a service - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/good-bye-pcs-its-been-nice-knowing-you/ <comment><USER2> Except Microsoft just changed the rules of the game meaning that no one can offer Windows-as-a-service environment except them. Well, at least not at a reasonable price since they'd have to pay Microsoft a much higher license fee than Microsoft would charge for Azure.

If someone else can figure out how to offer good-enough service that isn't dependent on Microsoft licensing, they might have a real winner.

And don't even start on Amazon's Virtual Desktop solution. I didn't think it was possible to offer a worse and more unreliable service than Microsoft, until I had the misfortune of encountering Amazon's version. Oh Holy FML.</comment>


Apple's Third Co-Founder Sold His 10% Stake For $800 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-third-co-founder-sold-his-10-stake-for-800-2011-9 <comment><USER2> There's a bit more to that story.

"What many people don't realize is that in choosing to leave Apple Mr. Wayne was taking a long-term view. As a full partner he would be liable for any debts Apple incurred. Owing to previous experiences that wasn't something he wanted any part of. So, when Steve started borrowing to fulfill Apple's order from the Byte Shop, Mr. Wayne became very concerned."

[http://www.applematters.com/article/april-12-1976-ron- wayne-...](http://www.applematters.com/article/april-12-1976-ron-wayne-apples- third-founder-quits/)</comment>


Wav2vec: Unsupervised Pre-Training for Speech Recognition - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.05862 <comment><USER2> The authors propose an unsupervised encoder for ASR. The encoder is trained using an interesting upstream task of predicting whether an audio portion or clip succeeds the current one or not. The authors report superior overall accuracy results even surpassing the massively trained Deepspeech 2 model in certain datasets. The authors perform insightful characterization and ablation studies and report results.

The approach seems to provide significant accuracy boost when the supervised training set available is small, e.g., less than 10 hours. The relative improvement is modest over baseline supervised model trained on 10s of hours of transcribed audio. The trends indicate that the improvement is probably minimal when 100s of hours of supervised training data is available.

The authors report improvements over Deepspeech on certain datasets. Deepspeech uses a 5-gram language model. The proposed model has significantly lower performance (albeit on a smaller supervised training set) when it also uses an n-gram-based language model. Improvements over Deepspeech are shown when convolutional language models are used. Hence, it is possible that the improvements over Deepspeech are contributed mainly by the use of convolutional language models. Comparing with Deepspeech+conv language model will provide a better apple-to-apple comparison of the proposed unsupervised pre-trained acoustic model.

The gains also seem to have diminishing returns as the number of hours of unsupervised training data increases (improvement is marginal even with 10x increase of unsupervised training data).</comment>


My experience with the computer language shootout - <AUTHOR> http://alexgaynor.net/2011/apr/03/my-experience-computer-language-shootout/ <comment><USER2> It's true that it's arbitrary; the problem is, there's no non-arbitrary alternative, so it's a weak charge to make.

Unless you're going to allow every language to converge on simply blasting some bytes into RAM and executing optimized machine-language code and watch all the languages cluster to the exact same location give or take how long it takes to load the machine code, you have to draw some lines about what's a "real" implementation and what isn't. If I were running it, I'd be even _more_ strict and insist that the solutions _must_ be "idiomatic"... and what's idiomatic and what isn't would also be arbitrary, because there is no escape from the "arbitrary". Yet the end result is useful. Not totally determinative, but it's not anywhere near "useless" either.

<comment><USER3> Combining your comment and DarkShikari's (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2404278>), it seems like a good shootout should simply compare the simplest, most idiomatic solution possible in each language.

<comment><USER4> The problem with a comparison of idiomatic solutions is that they rely in different degrees on what's in their libraries. IIRC the shootout tries to avoid this by comparing similar solutions using the same algorithm that are actually implemented with the interpreter/compiler in question. IMHO that's the more sensible way to do this.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps that concern is eliminated with good test programs? As an extreme example, if I wanted to compare how different languages do array slicing it's meaningless to force python to implement array slicing without the [:] operator. But then this whole test program is meaningless anyway.

You're right that there's a lot of nuance here, and perhaps there's no better solution. It's not even clear to me if there's a meaningful question to be answered. "This ocean's warmer than that one? What part? In summer or winter? Did you measure near a blue whale's fart?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my experience language shootouts in _general_ are often terrible by design -- with these being just a prime example.

A lot of the problem is in the questions they're designed to answer versus the questions people use them to answer.

For example, if I'm comparing Python and C, I typically want to know "how much slower would my program be in Python?", not "how much slower is my program in Python if I spent so much time hyper-optimizing it that I might as well have written it in C?"

But the test cases usually try to answer the latter, not the former.

<comment><USER6> It might be more reasonable than it seems at first glance. It's true that it's good to know how fast typical code runs, but there's another important question: when I run into performance problems and need to optimize a bottleneck, how fast can I make it before I have to resort to non-portable code or C extensions that complicate my build process?

<comment><USER7> Anybody writing, for example, Python code to solve these sort of problems in the real world would instantly reach for numpy. Which, while not part of the core language distribution, is pretty close to being a standard library for most python programmers. I'm sure several of the other languages have similar libraries that are being ignored in these benchmarks. Without taking things like that into account, theses results don't say too many useful things about real world performance.

<comment><USER8> They say what difference numpy might make!

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=spec...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=spectralnorm&lang=python3&id=2)

[http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=spec...](http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/program.php?test=spectralnorm&lang=python3&id=6)

<comment><USER7> Cool, I missed that

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see why the same program has to run on PyPy, CPython and Python3. Isn't the idea to do different implementations for each language. I know technically they expose the same (or a similar) language, but they're dissimilar under the hood.

I'd imagine the implementation varies across the other languages by more than just syntax.

The point that worries me the most, is the amount of microoptimisation being applied to these "benchmark" programs, making the results more or less pointless for real-world use.

<comment><USER8> There's nothing to say that all of CPython, Python 3, and PyPy _must_ be measured.

For the moment, they all are being measured, so it's interesting to see that programs written for CPython might perform badly with PyPy, and programs written for PyPy might perform badly with CPython.

<comment><USER9> I think in general, programs written in "Python" will perform better in PyPy then CPython, but the current submissions are hyper-optimised for the implementation details of CPython.

<comment><USER8> PyPy was shown for 2 years. PyPy performance with programs hyper-optimised for PyPy would have been shown if someone had contributed them.

Is libc.write a great example of programs written in "Python"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a shame that it all seems to be up to one person and what he will allow considering how often the shootout is referenced in discussions. I wonder if Mike Pall's experience was similar when he posted the Lua/LuaJIT versions.

<comment><USER11> Same experience here with LuaJIT. My submissions using low-level types (byte arrays and such) were put into 'interesting alternative', too.

Almost all other languages can use byte arrays, when they are the appropriate data structure for the job. The C submissions make heavy use of GCC extensions, Haskell gets to use mutable (OMG!) byte arrays and Free Pascal has about as much in common with Wirth's Pascal as the name.

But Python and Lua are not allowed to do that? Apparently not all languages are treated equally. Dismissing submissions by resorting to a flawed definition of 'standard' and then suppressing further debate is really lame.

I contributed almost all of the Lua programs to the shootout, but I do not feel particularly encouraged to continue contributing any programs.

<comment><USER8> Here's how Alex Gaynor compared his program to your programs-

"It's not used to do any crazy hackery like the LuaJIT one, just to access the libc write() function."

<comment><USER11> So what? Look at the C, Ada or ATS submissions for even more 'crazy hackery'. My programs are quite straightforward in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Shootout's C implementations do occasionally turn into a festival of SSE intrinsics and the associated unrolling. Some benchmarks, anyway.

Still, not using SSE when it's available is dumb and perhaps all the other languages need to start playing, too. A little tricker in Python, of course....

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, that's what the compiler is for! PyPy uses SSE under the hood for various float handing things.

<comment><USER12> Unfortunately, SSE - especially in integer-land, so I suppose we're talking SSE2 and beyond - often requires more specialist care and feeding than any automatic method (compiler or run-time) can provide.

Some cases aren't hard to pick up (e.g. bulk operations on big arrays) but others require trickery of the kind that compilers usually don't (or couldn't) have.

This isn't made easier by the notoriously non-orthogonal nature of the SSE integer operations and the rather limited number of ways that you can get in and out of SSE-land (to, say, affect a conditional or get something into a GPR).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe you should have to submit and have it ran against a secret program that covers many areas of an implementation, so it's unknown precisely what needs to be optimized to improve on the test. Have a limit for how often you can retest it to so the only real way to be the fastest is to optimize lots of stuff which is a net win for language users.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why not at the least accept the first submission for the PyPy entries? It shouldn't matter that it doesn't run on CPython -- if it's idiomatic Python and it runs on PyPy it looks valid.

At the same time, I can see where the guy is coming from with ctypes.</comment>


An on-going conversion of Scoopex's Amiga Hardware coding tutorials into C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/spec-chum/Amiga-Scoopex-C <comment><USER2> If you're interested, [1] has a long and detailed description of the group's history.

As someone who was a fledgling member of the demo scene back in the late 80s/early 90s, it's really weird that Scoopex is still so active and talked about. I guess that's being legendary, in a way.

[1] [https://demozoo.org/groups/361/](https://demozoo.org/groups/361/)

<comment><USER3> Scoopex' Vectrex [1] was one of the first intros I saw on the Amiga, and I still have the music to it in my music library. It's not advanced by Amiga standards (I don't mean that to insult them; when it was released most demo groups were still learning the Amiga; it stood up fine alongside other releases at the time, but by a couple of years later it was a totally different ballgame) - I mostly remember it because it was a huge step up from the C64 I was used to, but it did impress me at the time.

As for being legendary, I think for many of these groups part of it is simply _surviving_. Very few had many enough members and/or members with close enough friendships to have longevity past people moving apart after school etc..

Of course part of that certainly is down to having grown to a certain status quickly enough to be attractive to be members of, so I'm not suggesting that longevity alone is _enough_.

But the sheer number of well received early releases gave them a reputation that made longevity much easier, and longevity makes _maintaining_ that reputation a lot easier.

[as a total digression, only related in that it's about scene fame/status, this reminds me when I dug up the phone number for Strider of Fairlight from some release he made before he was well known and called him at his home in Sweden (recently he turned up as a Republican politician in California...) to try to convice him to swap with me; he was "famous" by then and I was an annoying little kid disturbing him at dinner; I wonder how often he got calls like that from total strangers in other countries - some of these people had a weird level of niche fame that most people have no idea about]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZobqjVim-6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZobqjVim-6c)

<comment><USER4> _> "he was "famous" by then and I was an annoying little kid disturbing him at dinner"_

At the age of 14, I and a friend decided to pay a surprise visit to a famous demoscene musician at his home in Espoo, Finland. He was not very impressed by this pilgrimage.

This was still in the BBS era, just pre-Internet (around 1994), so scene people would regularly include their mail address for contact purposes. I don't think they expected young teenage fans to show up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really cool! I miss that era. It was quite easy to implement cool effects in assembly on Amiga, even with limited programming knowledge. As a 12-years old kid, you could buy a magazine, read some tutorial or having a friend showing you a few tricks, and you would start from there. Of course, what Scoopex did was another level. It felt like magic back then, especially without the proper CS background.

I'm tempted to play a little bit with these tutorials, but there are so many things to learn, simply to somehow keep up with the innovation...

I also wonder what these guys did for a living and what they do with their computers nowadays. Have they transferred their skills and interests to the systems and organizations of our time?

</comment><comment><USER6> Kudos to the effort!

Don't get me wrong, but without Assembly it seems to lose its charm and clarity. Assembly instructions are far more clear given the subject at hand is hardware programming

<comment><USER7> You can always use C for scaffolding and then gradually optimize things in assembly. Great way for a busy ex-scener. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Scoopex's Mental Hangover was a great demo at the time. I still like its soundtrack by Uncle Tom. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZETBFv6zWs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZETBFv6zWs)

</comment><comment><USER9> Nothing beats coding on the Amiga itself with an assembler like ASMOne. The feeling of immediacy is unparalleled.

<comment><USER7> And those noooooo screams when your speedcode generator writes all over memory crashing the system and you did not save for an hour...

Luckily memory contents (including source code) was often still in RAM after reboot.

RAM disks were pretty common that time. Especially if you had lots of fast RAM, but no hard disk. It also usually survived reboot.

Other common demo writing tools included CygnusEd (text editor), Directory Opus (file management), Deluxe Paint, various crunchers and packers, graphics conversion utilities, Noise/Pro/whatever trackers and of course X-Copy.

<comment><USER10> Well, the main reason I never learned 68k assembler was because it read sooo easy to crash things.

I simply didn't have the patience to wait 2-3 minutes for the Amiga to reboot from floppy.

<comment><USER7> Well, you usually quickly learned to be careful to avoid most crashes. You'd also have a very optimized disk for fast booting. Loading full WorkBench was pointless, when a CLI window would do.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Kids Want Things - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/08/kids-materialism/568987/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> There is no difference between kids and young adults in their 30s anymore. They all want shiny things and like to show them off. Some people keep this up until they are 50.

It's because we live in a western society where we don't impress each other with skills. We impress with looks and gadgets.

We have become large children but it's not our fault. It's the forces of marketing, driven by the forces of capitalism, that is the reason.</comment>


Startup engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-03-15/

<comment><USER2> Some links on negotiation that I use when negotiating over job offers:

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2008/03/16/bargaining-with-your- ri...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2008/03/16/bargaining-with-your-right-brain/)

<http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/>

[http://jnorthrop.tumblr.com/post/16631034370/salary- negotiat...](http://jnorthrop.tumblr.com/post/16631034370/salary-negotiations- dont-be-tough-be-honest)

<http://www.negotiatingguide.com/negotiation/powerarticle.htm>

<comment><USER3> But negotiating a deal at acquisition is slightly different. The terms of the deal are largely going to be held secret and the CEO will tell you anything to keep you on board (they don't want a mass exodus and have the deal sink).

They may even defer revealing the deal terms until AFTER the acquisition has occurred.

If you see this happening, more than likely you're going to get a shit deal, and the only leverage you have is to WALK.

If they don't give a counter offer, you were going to get a shit deal anyways so it doesn't matter. If they do give a counter offer, then you know you were integral to a successful deal and now you have some negotiation leverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> At some point, hopefully soon, engineers as a whole will start to realize they are being taken advantage of and learn how to negotiate better.

Anyone up for a company hack day where we get to work over time without getting paid overtime?

<comment><USER5> "realize they are being taken advantage of and learn how to negotiate better"

I am not so optimistic about that, my friends and I are similar in these matters. We don't want to negotiate those things... We just want to build cool things, and people continue to take advantage of that.

There is hope if you become indie and have the "bad" luck of not being acquired while also manage to be decently successful. Outside of that, it's just a vicious circle.

<comment><USER6> Ten minutes of negotiation could get you 10k, easily. I don't come across more high leverage uses of my time than that. And with more money, you can do cool things like start a scholarship or otherwise give your money away. It's money you almost didn't have anyway, right?

<comment><USER5> Oh.. don't get me wrong, it is not like I don't care about money, it's just I don't have the personality to do that.

It's just like haggling. Sure, I would prefer having two cool things instead of one when you go to those markets, but I just don't the personality (or skills?) to bring that up. And in my circle of friends I am not alone, which makes me think that it might be a more common problem that I would imagined.

<comment><USER3> Why are you insecure about it? I'd encourage you to explore the feelings that arise inside of you when negotiations occur.

And if you can't do the haggling in person, defer on negotiating a number at that time and then negotiate over email?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Natural History of the Sign - <AUTHOR> https://www.herodios.com/atsign.htm <comment><USER2> Note that the actual title of the article is "A Natural History of the @ Sign".

Omitted the '@' (probably an escaping issue) drastically changes the title.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I came upon this page after an Indian collegue of mine called the '@' sign something along the lines of 'aderate'. I did not understand why, and after some searching an article popped up written by someone _who had the exact same thing happen to him_ [1].

[1] [https://invisibleblocks.com/2005/9/28/what-indians-call- the-...](https://invisibleblocks.com/2005/9/28/what-indians-call-the-symbol/)

<comment> D-Coder tl;dr: "at the rate (of)".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the Polish colloqualism for it, "małpa" meaning "monkey" because of the curled tail.

</comment><comment><USER4> "The Sign". Portentous.

I like the Indonesian name best.</comment>


50 Fascinating Things I've Read Lately - <AUTHOR> http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2011/04/15/50-fascinating-things-ive-read-lately.aspx

<comment><USER2> _"In school they give you a question and ask you to find an answer. In the real world the answers are everywhere -- the Internet, calculators, history books, reference manuals. The trick is asking the right questions." \--Adapted from speech by Conrad Wolfram_

There's something really profound here. Teaching fact memorization was necessary in the past because people didn't have those facts readily available to them where ever they went. Now that they do we should really examine the way we teach and adjust accordingly

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I think synthesis of many facts/ideas/etc is the major advantage of the knowledge worker.

When I was getting into programming in the early 00's, most people had stacks of books that they would refer to. I was using Google (and google groups was really useful back then) and just blowing by my co-workers in knowledge and productivity. I became the go-to person simply because I could research a problem and synthesize a solution quickly.

Rainbow's End <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End> by Computer Science prof Vernor Vinge tells of a future where synthesis of data is the major skillset. Interesting read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"So [government] spending [in 2010] was $186 billion higher than if we'd stuck to the [2000-2007] trend, and revenue was $681 billion lower. In other words, the giant deficit is mainly the result of the collapse in tax receipts brought on by the recession, not the increase in spending. Nice to know, huh?" \--Justin Fox

This one seems a little misleading. Fox is comparing 2010 spending vs. revenue to the 2000-2007 trend, but spending far outpaced revenue in this period. When revenue dropped in the recession, he points to that and says, "see, it's a revenue problem." But even if revenues somehow hadn't dropped dramatically during the recession and the trend continued, the federal government would still be spending much more than it is taking in. That seems to me more indicative of a spending problem.

<comment><USER5> This is the first time I've seen the revenue shortfall blamed on the recession. Typically one sees the tax cuts taking the fall for that, don't they?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Matt Ridley seems to be mis-attributing advances in medicine and technology to economic equality. In his world, I can only be truly poor if I rode a horse drawn carriage to work.

</comment><comment><USER7> Something I really enjoyed recently:

      Common sense is that which tells us the world is flat. --Stuart Chase</comment>


First Round Capital Holiday Video - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/firstroundcapital <comment><USER2> That was a great video; I think it's great that First Round is trying to build their individual brand in the community. Josh's intro was brilliantly done.

That said, I was amazed how cut down they all were. I'd seen the previews of a few videos that friends at different companies had submitted, and seeing them cut down to 2 seconds was brutal.

Perhaps First Round will release the Director's-Cut edition down the road, but given how many portfolio companies they have now, that might be a 30 minute show! ;)

For next year, it might be best to go back to the formula that worked so well last time- Weave the clips into one narrative, rather than just playing them one after another.

Lots of fun, and Happy Holidays!</comment>


The Future of the Mac After Lion | The Mac Observer - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/the_future_of_the_mac_after_lion/ <comment><USER3> I dont' get the fear that because some elements of iOS are added to Lion, it means its getting dumbed down.

I've used Lion for a bit over a month now (in beta and release), and beyond some changes for the better in terms of my workflow (gestures for spaces, etc), nothing really changed. Ruby runs fine, autotest, Spork, git, etc.

The things that are great, like Spaces and Mission Control (nearly) have made things easier. The system is a bit faster than it was before, and I don't have to install a bunch of mods to get rid of Aqua.

But really, nothing got dumber or smarter. It changed, and mostly for the better. My wife likes it better, as do my parents. It makes more sense to them. My dad for instance never got the hang of the Applications folder, so he loves Launchpad.

Until you can write iOS apps on an iOS device, OSX as we know it and use it isn't going anywhere, but I welcome it getting easier on the surface for others.

<comment><USER4> I would agree, except when such ease of use comes at the expense of your standard (or more experienced than standard) techie.

It's my opinion that the Mac platform has been able to succeed because of its developers, and its developers flocked to the platform because it made coding so fun (and full of Unix goodness). (For more thoughts along those lines, see _The Art of Unix Programming_.)

Hiding the Library & System folders isn't terrible, because it's easy for me to undo. However, requiring me to type in my password every time I move an application tells me that Apple is going in the _wrong_ direction here, a direction that only hurts developers and, by extension, its own platform.

<comment><USER3> How? Protection against something for 99% of users causes inconvenience to 1%. Maybe. But it makes the platform more useful for those 99% who make up the economic ecosystem for the 1% using osx for profit.

Protection of the apps folder is great.

<comment><USER4> As I say, taking steps that make life harder for engineers & techies will eventually drive us away. I'm pretty sure that Apple has been successful because it's fostered a developer community, and if it stops fostering that, it's success could be a very reversible phenomenon.

<comment><USER3> But again: how is it driving you away? Apple dogfoods everything they do internally and evidence points to their 5000+ engineers being more picky than anyone. Marble (Xcode 4) is evidence of this.

If anything, making an Os more suited for the average user is better for the dev community at large. Not worse.

<comment><USER4> I don't see how most of the changes help the end user. I only see how it simplifies and constrains the user interface. Those two metrics are orthogonal.

<comment><USER3> Which end user? You or someone like my mom and dad and wife?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This makes a lot of sense. Well, the _author_ makes a lot of sense. I suppose this is a more consumer-friendly way for Apple.

As someone who lives in Emacs and the Terminal, I'm not sure I'm happy about this. I like my MBP with Snow Leopard. The Apple OSX Experience rocks my socks off - today. But I sure don't like the iOS experience... at _all_. It's _not_ geek friendly.

I'm afraid that the Apple train is leaving me behind, and I regret that - <USER2> like having a reliable & professional operating system that isn't weird^H^H^H^H^H Windows.

<comment><USER6> None of his changes affect Terminal. Who needs a GUI for these tasks anyway? Not us.

I have had Lion for a few months and I haven't seen felt limited by any iOS- like features.

Maybe the Mac Pro will go away, but with Thunderbolt allowing additional monitors on the iMac, I bet most pro users don't even mind.

<comment><USER7> I would think that the MacPro isn't so much about more monitors, though it can do that, but about sheer horsepower.

Running Photoshop filters, rendering. Stuff that needs 12 cores isn't going to run so well on an iMac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One observation that really bugged me:

> The burden is now on technically-skilled users to find out how to get where > they want to go. It's hard to argue with this logic.

There should be no burden. Good UI should be scalable to let the 95% in to do their thing with no thought and no worries, but "expert mode" should follow that same mindset while exposing details.

<comment><USER9> For those who want to have ~/Library where it always has been on Finder:

chflags nohidden ~/Library

<comment><USER4> An alternative is to use the SetFile command, which can alter all kinds of file attributes on HFS+ and non-HFS+ volumes.

I have the following in my bash profile:

      alias see='SetFile -a v'
      alias hide='SetFile -a V'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I understand certain pro users being skeptical on the whole 'Back to Mac' iOS- ification of OSX, me included but i'm already loving the Lion terminal. Nice implementation of full screen, 256 colors , no distractions and just one swipe away from all the 'consumer' things I want to do. There's a lot of fluff in this release, but the new Terminal alone made the $30 upgrade worth it for me. As for the Mac Pro disappearing, I couldn't care less. I would think this would impact high res image/video guys more since that seems like the Pro's target market. Developers seem fine on laptops with an external display.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a Windows user, I get more tempted to switch with each new hardware release from Apple. But Apple's historical and maybe just now truly culminating priveleging of 'consumers' over power users scares me off in equal proportion. I'm very conflicted. It seems more and more likely that I'll just break down and get an Air and maybe run Windows on boot camp.

Edit: Any veteran Mac users have misgivings about the issue? If not, what gives you confidence about the future of power users on Apple platforms?

<comment><USER12> As a longtime Mac user I'm concerned about this as well as what appears to be a waning interest at Apple in supporting the professional creative market. However, Windows is much less friendly still to the command-line user and none of the apps I depend on are available on Linux so I'm not sure what to do.

<comment><USER13> Windows on the desktop, Linux on the server in your basement

<comment><USER6> I.e. go back to 1998? No thanks.

<comment><USER13> You have a better solution?

<comment><USER6> Well, having used Lion for the past few months, I can say that Terminal is unaffected by the changes they are talking about. Running open source development stacks hasn't been affected. So, I don't think a solution is needed.

I still believe that no one makes better hardware than Apple and their OS is the best possible system for a developer that also needs to run things like MS Office, Adobe Creative Suite, etc.

Do you have needs that are not met by Lion?

<comment><USER13> Closed-source development tools, which are non-negotiable.

<comment><USER6> What changed in Lion? Are we talking about tools that worked on Snow Leopard and these changes to Lion break them? Or are you just not able to use Mac OS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do you know what - in my house I have a number of machines. They do things like cleaning clothes and dishes and making food hotter. They all have microprocessors in them and can do quite sophisticated stuff - but their interface - almost always a single dial. And that's great because I don't actually care how they do it I just want the job done. Yes I am technically capable of getting in their and reprograming the chips but why would I?

And this is the thing - there is no reason why half the things on my computer should be hard. When I am working with documents (text , video , music , etc) then I just want to easily open the document and work on it. I want backups to be trivial etc. etc. And what is more 99% of users want this and only this.

But the great thing about the mac is that if you look at the SDKs there is ever more sophistiation and "cool" stuff for us developers. Terminal had a lot of love this time round, Xcode might not have the greatest UI but it also gets a lot of attention - Apple take developers seriously

It doesn't bother me that my computer is powerful and easy to use. I don't think this is a bad thing and I also think all the people reading into this "oh the mac is going to just be for idiots" are idiots themselves: go and download the SDKs and XCode and then tell me that Apple are dumbing down

I do think that Apple are moving away from the "pro" market BTW - they have their sights on something much more interesting - the pervasive computing future when most of our computing needs are met by a cloud of little machines. I already love that I can walk into a room in my house and flick up stuff from my phone or ipad onto my TV or walk into another room and make music appear from said phone or iPad. There will come a day when your "computer" is a coming together of screen , processor unit and keyboard and when you get up taking the processor with you that computer is no longer physically there until next time you come past. We are going to see this in the video game world too - we aren't far from an ipad or iphone that is your portable gaming device and when you are near your TV is your console and when you are with your mates is your lan party (with or without screens and speakers) - and if Microsoft and Sony aren't paying attention they will loose the entire market overnight

<comment><USER15> The gap between turning a simple dial and having to code something up (even a bash script - and are the Mac APIs bash accessible?) is very deep, though, and lots of people don't have neither the time nor inclination to cross that gap. And frankly, why should them?

On the other hand, my washing machine does have about twenty buttons, so I may be the wrong person to talk about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had minor problems since using Developer Preview 4 of it, and since I moved to GM, I haven't seen any significant.

There is something strange with NVIDIA's CUDA driver (keep asking me to update).

There was an issue with MacPorts due to Mono.Framework installed (might've been not related to Lion at all, MacPorts is now at 2.00, so who knows).

I'm aquamacs (emacs clone) user, and it works pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER17> Well reasoned article that follows along with the current trend (stop selling xserve, FCPX, Lion).

I wonder what this implies for Apple if they've not only ditched the server and compute-farms, but are now ditching professional A/V as well (or at least pushing towards enthusiasts and "prosumers")... not sure I am convinced they are going to go that far and ditch the MacPro.

</comment><comment><USER18> Lion is the same OS X with some interface changes. Everything for the power user is still there...

Today I learned "power user" means someone who changes the Finder preferences and knows some shortcut keys.

<comment><USER19> I think that's actually a pretty apt, if trite, description of a power user.

I think you may be confusing power users with developers (one is a very small subset of the other).</comment></comment>


I launched my first side-project over the weekend. Here is what I learnt - <AUTHOR> http://totalink.co.uk/beta-release

<comment><USER2> Nice!</comment>


Ask HN: Would you appear as witness against Apple? - <AUTHOR> Remember how Microsoft had to pay billions for bundling their IE with Windows and hindering competition?
The current situation with Apple and its App store seems much worse. Are you fed up with being bullied by the review team? Has Apple abused its market power to hinder you deploying your application to iOS devices? Do you just miss alternative 'free' markets on your device? <comment><USER2> Apple doesn't have anywhere close to a monopoly on smartphones, so this is ridiculous.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Apple App store isn't a monopoly on IOs devices?

<comment><USER2> That isn't how monopolies work.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is still a monopoly, albeit maybe not in all legal senses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Voting machine hack costs less than $100,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/government/74447/voting-machine-hack-costs-less-100000 <comment><USER2> By comparison, that is less than 1/50000 of the $5,300,000,000 spent on the US presidential race.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Researchers have previously disclosed other ways to hack the systems, including tampering with the machine's firmware by replacing one ROM chip with another."

How the hell are you supposed to do that discreetly?</comment>


How many are waiting for YC fellowship result? - <AUTHOR>

The day Sam tweeted, got 6500 applications. Many of friends lost hope of selection.I think it doesn't matter whether we get or not. What matter in startups, we must enjoy what we do. Kick ass! Lage raho! <comment><USER2> So 6500.. Suppose partners spend 2 min per application. That's 24 working days (9 hour per day with no breaks). Knowing the system with which they'll cut down this time sure must be awesome. Getting selected here is like graduating Ivy League and winning the lottery at the same time:D

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm waiting! Application says 'In-progress'...I am refreshing like I did my admissions responses for college, ha.

Good luck to you and the others. Wonder how many people applied in total?

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn it's 6500</comment></comment>


Show HN: Discover Recipes by Ingredients - <AUTHOR> http://skipthepizza.com/ <comment><USER2> Seems like your search uses OR, not AND. So adding more ingredients broadens the search rather than narrowing it. That seems kind of useless... adding just a handful of ingredients would end up matching basically all recipes.

<comment><USER3> If you click the star next to the ingredient name, it tags that ingredient as "recipe must include this ingredient", so you can click all of the stars to do an AND.

Edit: And if you click the star a second time it tags it as "this recipe must not include this ingredient", which would be helpful for people with allergies (or picky eaters).

<comment><USER4> >>> And if you click the star a second time it tags it as "this recipe must not include this ingredient"

And this is a prime example why icons without labels (in this app, there are no tooltips either which is even worse) are useless.

Star as in... favourite ingredient? save ingredient to some list? wut...?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very simple compared to other apps I've seen do this, which is much appreciated.

Worked well on desktop but unusable on my iPhone5 in either safari or chrome. There seems to be a polling script or something that's causing a page refresh every half second or something? Safari continuously shows the loading bar preventing you from selecting the ingredients bar and Chrome just flashes the page continuously.

Great work though!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here. Thanks for all the feedback so far!

I just disabled the navigation via pushState as it seems to be buggy on iOS devices. I'll put some more time on this and test it properly.

Regarding the questions with the OR/AND search. Yes, it's an OR by default but you can either force or remove ingredients by clicking on the star icon. In case you are just searching by OR, recipes with a higher "match rate" should appear on top. I clearly need to rework this part as it doesn't seem to be intuitive.

Again, thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER6> I see two distinct use cases. One is "these are things I like, show me ways to combine them" and the other is "This is a list of stuff I happen to have in the kitchen, what can I make". Ask the user which of the two they are trying to do and the AND/OR question basically answers itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is doing OR search which doesn't make much sense to me.

try to search lime and cilantro [http://skipthepizza.com/recipes/cilantro+lime](http://skipthepizza.com/recipes/cilantro+lime)

recipes either have lime or cilantro and there is no guacamole

</comment><comment><USER8> Where did you get the recipes from? I used [http://openrecip.es](http://openrecip.es) as the database for [http://openrecipesearch.com](http://openrecipesearch.com), but the results were so bad I had to just turn it into a disgusting content farm, since I couldn't reasonably expect anyone to use it.

<comment><USER9> You only have to use the app for a minute to answer that question. It seems that all the recipes are on recipes.wikia.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've looked for recipes with Beef, Caviar, Coffee, Eggs, Ham, jalapeno, Lemon Juice, Sugar, Tomato Sauce,Vodka and it still finds me a dozen of recipes...

I understand that you can take ingredients replacements in account (as jalapeno, still keeping paprika recipes) but here it doesn't make sense anymore.

</comment><comment><USER11> It would be nice if it was tolerant of misspelling (e.g. "mozarella") and also handled commas as a tokenizer. (I typed in "tomato, mozarella, basil" before realizing I had to hit enter after each ingredient.)

Also, adding ingredients to the list (hitting enter) is dog slow on my machine.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm actually working on something similar, but we're spending quite a lot of time on the algorithm - it's quite hard to get it perfect.

One note is that your search isn't working for me, it seems to just be rapidly refreshing the page. Latest build of Chrome on Mac OS X Mavericks.

<comment><USER13> Would love to chat, also working on something. Profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is this different than Gojee? [http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/21/recipe- finding-app-gojee-qu...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/21/recipe-finding-app- gojee-quietly-gets-acquired-by-xo-group-after-talks-stalled-with-yahoo/)

<comment><USER15> After actually going to the site, I find that this is an app into which one enters ingredients in order to search for recipes that use those ingredients. Gojee, however, appears to be some sort of social network that wants to show me pictures of food until I give them my Facebook particulars. No thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I actually use these sites (mostly Yummly, but I always try new ones), and I have a comment that applies to all of them. It has to do with the variability of the underlying data.

Do I have "parmesan" or "parmesan cheese" or "parmegiano reggiano" or "parmegiano-reggiano"? Also, there is an implied hierarchy to some ingredients. For example, if I have fresh lemons, then I have "lemon juice" and "lemon zest" and "lemon peel".

I don't really know how this site or any others like it handle those types of things. Maybe its fixed behind the scenes, but a visual indicator would be great.

<comment><USER6> The other problem is substitutions. If for example I have Parmesan, feel free to show me recipes calling for Grana Padano or even Pecorino.

<comment><USER16> Yep, agreed.

It's probably a lot of work to build these relationships up front.

It's probably easier to allow the user to make their own relationships. In other words, when I search for "lemon", give me the ability to easily roll up "lemon juice" and "lemon peel" and "lemon zest". Make this a one time activity and have it save to a profile (also, easy incentive for users to create an account).

You can monitor all of your users' custom relationships and curate the good ones. Automate this for common relationships, i.e., if 50 people build the same lemon relationship, push it out to all users. You could make it opt out as an advanced setting for the purists I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my university (Manchester, UK) there's a whole year course in the first year when you are assigned to a group of people and you have to make a website, anything you can come up with.

Every year, someone makes a web site for searching recipes by ingredients :)

To be more on topic, I like the idea but I think implementation (i.e. manual work required) is a bit too... demanding, involved? We are in the world of 1 click. I would like an app which would allow easy input (scan bar codes?) combined with machine learning to discover new meals (taste, effort required). Google Now for food?

<comment><USER17> The dreaded group project. So in your typical group of six you have a project manager, someone writing the functional specification, someone writing the technical specification, someone that does testing, someone that writes the manual, someone that parties rather than show up and nobody that codes!

I remember it well, five people waiting for someone to write some code before they could do their bit. Of course that code had to be in Ada rather than a vaguely useful language. Under such doomed-to-failure circumstances it is irrelevant what the project is, it might as well be 'Hello World'. So if some group does actually hand in code that allows for recipes to be searched for then I think that course is doing jolly well!

'Google Now' for food exists to a certain extent, if you do want to order pizza or get some other fast food in. I would like 'Google Now' for food that would factor in the fridge, the corner shop, the local super markets, their inventory levels and opening hours. It would be particularly cool if you could rustle up something amazing using just the local corner shop, perhaps someone should write one for the cash and carry company that all the corner shops use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I stupidly spent a while trying to type all the substrings leading up to "Avacado" hoping that autocomplete would kick in. Perhaps I've got used to Google correcting my terrible spelling.

</comment><comment><USER19> Infinite refresh in Safari 7.0.3 OS X

<comment><USER20> I see the same problem on iPhone Safari with iOS 7.1.1. Just keeps refreshing.

<comment><USER12> Same here with Chrome 33 on Mavericks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The first thing I searched for was lemon, but I noticed that it differentiated between lemon, lemon juice, lemon zest, etc. If I have a lemon, I have all of the above. I'm sure there is a lot of work to know that lemon zest is derived from a lemon, but that would make this stand out against other similar ideas.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's no pictures next to the recipes? I pick recipes based on whether it looks appetizing. Just having a name there isn't helpful.

This site does a better job with pictures (but has other problems)

[http://www.supercook.com](http://www.supercook.com)

</comment><comment><USER23> This looks great! I like the slick and simple interface. Nice to see another Laravel site too!

I have been working on something recently that I think would complement your site really well, please feel free to shoot me a mail: me AT codemonkey.io to discuss.

</comment><comment><USER24> I think ANDing should be on by default, since that's likely the most common use case - especially since that's what the left side of the UI implies. Ingredients are usually combined, else it's not really a recipe.

</comment><comment><USER25> You can also use google: [https://www.google.com/webhp?tbs=rcp:1](https://www.google.com/webhp?tbs=rcp:1)

Search, then use 'Search Tools' to narrow by ingredient

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a clever idea, makes it simple to get ideas for things you already have in your cupboard. Although its in a simple form currently, you could do so much with this concept.

</comment><comment><USER27> Feedback:

\- The lack of an option to search only vegetarian recipes makes this pretty much useless for me.

\- Adding ingredients has a fairly large delay. I suspect some optimizations could be done there.

<comment><USER21> I'm unsure if having a 'vegetarian' option is the best way to go since there are about 40 different forms of vegetarian (I have been one for 15+ years). Maybe a better approach would be the ability to exclude ingredients and groups of ingredients. To me that solves a much bigger problem that I frequently have...I have three ingredients, but don't have the one that is generally required to go along with them (ie, I have olive oil, lemon, and garlic, but am out of basil).

If I can put in that I need a recipe without basil and without a category of meat or animal products (however, honey and egg are fine), that makes this infinitely more useful. If I can save that preference, that's even better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice, but please don't break the "back" button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just saw this bug, thanks for letting me know. Will fix it asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Firefox 29.0.1: Can't type into the text field to put in an ingredient. EDIT: Typing is there, can't see the text. (White on white?)

<comment><USER29> Same here with Firefox 30.0, can type but can't read what I'm typing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Could you add an option for recipes which include only these ingredients/expands the search if it doesn't find very many?

</comment><comment><USER31> Were you thinking about a more visual approach? Because other food related startups tend to show off the beauty of the culinary

</comment><comment><USER32> A version of this which focused on drink ingredients could be a (perhaps more easily manageable) implementation of this idea.

</comment><comment><USER33> Brilliant. I love the idea and I have always wondered why such a thing doesn't exist already.

Now give me an app :)

</comment><comment><USER34> No garlic scapes in the database? Seems like it's a bit limited.

<comment><USER28> Seriously… that's the first thing I searched.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Apply to SoftBank's Minority $100MM "Opportunity Growth Fund"? - <AUTHOR> Just read about this and was curious to see what kinds of businesses they're investing in. But it all seems very hidden and purposely out of view.
I can't find anything concrete except articles on blogs.
Can't find a link anywhere with more details, or a link to "Apply".
Is it all smoke and mirrors? <comment><USER2> Any update? I haven't seen any links or posts to apply either.</comment>


As Apple And Google Fight, Amazon Quietly Lurks - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/10/amazon-phones-tablets-set-top-boxes/

<comment><USER2> Ah, my favorite RISK move. Amazon is holed up in Australia while Google and Apple scrap over the rest of the board. Patience...</comment>


Moving from Azure to Google Cloud Platform - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/25/moving-to-gcp/ <comment><USER2> previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17341508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17341508)

</comment><comment><USER3> Kubernetes? Yeah right... The reasons are very clear: 1) GitHub being acquired by Microsoft. 2) Google is an investor in GitLab (through GV).

<comment><USER4> GitLab began migrating to GCP months ago, long before GitHub had anything to do with Microsoft.

[https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab- integration/](https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/)

<comment><USER3> At the very least GitHub acquisition is pushing them to do it faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand that Gitlab helm charts are now beta in 11.0, does it also mean Gitlab is fully running on Kubernetes on Azure (there's no mention of AKS)?

I wonder if they'll also publish the difference in cost between the two platforms.

</comment><comment><USER6> For everyone saying this is a political decision, I don't see why Gitlab would be afraid of being political, especially seeing as a lot of developers were annoyed/angered at the Microsoft buyout.

I also can't see on a technical level a company planning this kind of maintenance operation this quickly. It would be reckless.

<comment><USER7> This is the same organization that switched precipitously to unstable CephFS in 2016. Recklessness doesn't seem to be a problem at GitLab.

[https://about.gitlab.com/2016/11/10/why-choose-bare- metal/](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/11/10/why-choose-bare-metal/)

<comment><USER8> We tested CephFS but we never switched to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They claim this is because of their focus on Kubernetes, but I have to wonder how much of this has to do with Microsoft acquiring Github. That aside, that's a tough slight for AKS.

<comment><USER10> I think GV investing $20 million on them helps too:

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/gitlab- raises-20m-series-c...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/gitlab- raises-20m-series-c-round-led-by-gv/)

<comment><USER11> GV is not partial to a particular cloud vendor. They do not push GCP onto the startups they invest in.

<comment><USER12> Do the start-ups that they invest in get discounts/credits/a better rate though? They might not push GCP, but they may give incentives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The irony of GitLab running on Microsoft and GitHub not.

<comment><USER14> Indeed. This moves them closer to reversing that. Now to complete that, all that has to happen is for GitHub to move to Azure. They probably wouldn't want to do that now because it would look like they were implementing the merger before regulatory approval.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> btw, this was announced in April, before the GitHub acquisition.

Credit to detaro ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17393538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17393538)) for this tidbit.

</comment><comment><USER16> First announced in April.

[https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab- integration/](https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/)

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting to see details of the performance issues motivating this.

<comment><USER18> It's probably more of a branding and PR strategy than a technical decision.

<comment><USER19> It was a technical decision. They announced it before the GitHub acquisition.

[https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab- abando...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab-abandoned- microsoft-azure-for-google-cloud/) [https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke- gitlab-integration/](https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab- integration/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How did they end up on Azure in the first place? Any Gitlabbers here that know the story?

<comment><USER21> A year or two ago Y Combinator startups would be given around $1M in Azure credits, should they move to Azure. GitLab.com at the time moved over to Azure, with the goal being to reduce costs before we consumed those credits. I think we consumed all of it in a matter of months. Once you're stuck with a hosting provider (Azure or not), it's difficult to move away from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Who's surprised? They can't afford to run on their biggest competitor's platform.

<comment><USER23> Netflix does, at least ec2.

<comment><USER22> Is amazon video their biggest competitor? I'd have thought that Hulu, HBO Go, iTunes and other streaming services might be more popular than Amazon Video. I have no data to back that up though.

ps: given that Amazon Video is available for all prime members, we can't compare total number of subscribers. Hours of videos watched per day might be a better number to look at.

<comment><USER24> Amazon is definitely Netflix's biggest competitor when comparing who's spending the most on original content in streaming. They're also a major competitor when it comes to bidding for exclusive rights but there are many participants in that fight, including cable plus companies like Disney setting up their own streaming service.

It would be an enormous risk for any cloud provider to attempt to degrade the use of their platform or snoop on how it's used by a company who is a competitor in another area, be it streaming or code management.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS sprites shouldn't add production time (and 4 other tips) - <AUTHOR> http://matchstrike.net/strikepad/2009/11/5-things-you-might-not-know-about-css-sprites/

<comment><USER2> The transparent spacer image hack seems horribly antiquated to me. I'm surprised anyone still does it that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool library I've been working on (still early in dev, but I'm using it to generate production assets): <http://github.com/merbjedi/sprite>

It's a ruby executable (no ruby knowledge required to use it though) that easily generates sprite files and css from a directory structure. It defaults to something sane, but you can overwrite it via config/sprite.yml

Install it via:

        gem install sprite

Then run it via:

        sprite

Check out the README to learn how to configure. If anyone knows their way around ImageMagick on the command line, please msg me on github (merbjedi). Would love your help on 4 lines of RMagick code I need to get converted so I can remove this dependency.

</comment><comment><USER4> These are good tips, but it doesn't eliminate the additional production time required to use sprites. You still have to combine all the images into one, then take time to position them where you want.

The tips speed up production with sprites, but it's still faster to produce sites without using sprites.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're combining images into one at any point, then there's probably a better way to do it. If you design from the beginning with CSS sprites in mind, you should always be working from your spritemap image. Then it's a matter of time spent positioning vs. time spent managing the images themselves in your document, which I've found to be pretty even.

I really didn't touch on this as much as I would like in the post. Would a process post on this be of interest to you?

<comment><USER5> _> Would a process post on this be of interest to you?_

It would to me. I have some interest in CSS sprites, but working with them always seems cumbersome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> is there a tool (preferably a rails plugin or gem, or rack middleware, but hosted web service would be fine too) that will take images linked to in a site's css and auto-sprite them, fixing up the css at the same time?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's several: Google "CSS sprite generator"

I'd categorically recommend against all of them, however. I feel it's a better practice to manage it yourself. Of course, if you need to convert multiple sites fast, they might be worth a try.</comment></comment>


Men lose their minds speaking to pretty women - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6132718/Men-lose-their-minds-speaking-to-pretty-women.html <comment><USER2> _When a man meets a pretty woman, he is what we call 'reproductively focused'._

I guess this is the scientific term for horny.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't call it reproductively focused, that's _way_ more than most men think when they meet a pretty woman. I'd say carnally focused; reproductively focused comes a few hours later if they've forgotten a condom.

<comment><USER4> I would still call it "reproductively focused". Condoms and being legally forced to support your biological kids have both been invented since we stopped evolving ;-)

<comment><USER5> we haven't stopped evolving

<comment><USER4> I was being facetious...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Being software engineers, I don't think we need to worry about pretty women in the workplace degrading our work performance.

Hacker News itself is 94% male, according to the poll that was up a while ago. That's a ratio that goes unmatched at the nerdiest tech schools.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but there are always those women who are "IT" hot. You know, the ones that wouldn't get a second glance out in the bars, but look pretty good in the workplace talking about hardware and whatnot.

<comment><USER8> And the men are also "IT" hot, so it evens out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of my sister's friends, a short average looking bald gay man is constantly hit on by very attractive women (he lives and works in NYC). He says it might be due to the fact that he is totally non-plussed by beautiful women (since he has no sexual interest in them)

There is always desensitization training. In one day, you could probably approach fifty attractive women and effectively tame your fear. I've never done that, and I think it would be a courageous (courage comes after the action) personal exercise (probably to attempt in a city you do not live in)

<comment><USER10> My dad acted in the Theatre and so I had been doing Theatre tech since about 11 years old (and have many, many beautiful women as friends). With that experience in mind I can verify you sister's friend's claim.

When you come right down to it there are two things you have to realize about women.

1\. As hard as it is for Men to comprehend the truth is attractiveness isn't that high on a woman's list. It's not that women don't like an attractive man it's just lower on the list. Here's an example I use to explain it to men. I, as someone who dated a lot of theatre women, like dating professional dancers (for reasons I won't be so crass as to spell out here). But I'll certainly be interested in a beautiful, smart, funny woman who isn't a dancer. Attractiveness to women is like being a dancer to me. It's a plus but not a deal breaker. Hence "average looking bald guy" isn't necessarily a deterrent.

2\. Attracting women in general boils down to one simple concept: Stand out from the crowd in a good way. No women wants a guy that seems average to her. So when your sister's gay friend shows a lack of interest in a woman every other man drools over it makes that woman wonder why and gives the guy a sense of mystery to him. Hence he stands out in an appealing way which makes women want to take a shot with him and see why he's different.

<comment><USER11> It seems to me that men would actually very much like to believe that women don't care about attractiveness, but we do. If it was the case that women don't care about attractiveness, why is it that (if research is to be believed) most couples tend to be about the same level of attractiveness? Probably because women actually do very much care about attractiveness. Is it possible to have some personality attribute that would outweigh average or below-average looks? Yes, but not nearly as common as most men it seems would like to believe. I am having a hard time buying the hot women hitting on average bald gay guy story. It is fun to flirt with gay men, definitely, but not because we actually want to get with them, and NYC women know how to spot gay men. There's something missing to this friend of a friend of a sister of a... story.

<comment><USER10> First, might I suggest you read a comment before replying to it. I never said women didn't care about attractiveness in fact I said just the opposite.

Second, most couples in my experience aren't of equal levels of attractiveness (and I'd like to see the research you quote because I don't know how levels of attractiveness could be gauged effectively enough to conduct such research). In fact, I'd say just the opposite in that there is legitimate research that says women are prone to date/marry men older than they are which would mean other traits rank higher than attractiveness (which of course fades as we age).

Beyond that, looking at the extreme, have you ever looked at the husbands of SuperModels?

Like Paulina Porizkova: <http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/9066/paulinaqv6.jpg>

Or Heidi Klum: <http://www.clevelandleader.com/files/heidisealbaby.jpg> (I love ya Seal but that stuff on your face is weird)

<comment><USER12> You didn't say that women don't care about attractiveness, but you did say that attractiveness "isn't all that high on a woman's list." So while your position was a bit misrepresented, I don't think you can quite claim to have said "the opposite."

This is all a question of degree. I do think that physical attractiveness does play a very big role in both directions. But clearly women do place a somewhat lower premium on it than men do.

Just to add to the anecdotal useleness, rich men do attract women, but women swoon over Brad Pitt or that twilight star waaaaaay more than they every will over "the donald".

<comment><USER5> Brad Pitt is both rich and famous. I'm not sure he does much to make your point.

At 46 years old, Brad Pitt is also about twice the age of the women who get the most attention from men. In order to make a fairer comparison, imagine a man who's very handsome, but whose career and overall signals of success are on par with the physical attractiveness of "the donald".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Self-consciousness lowers competence.

 _I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think 'whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might,' infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbour as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbour; you must be living with your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing._ \- Oliver Wendell Holmes [http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/ability_and_ach...](http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/ability_and_achievement_quotes.html)

OTOH, A simpler hypothesis is that the blood supply available to their brains was reduced by the interaction.

<comment><USER14> Men have got two brains, but only enough blood to supply one at a time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I could tell you that without a "research study". And any of my grandparents were also aware of it.

These kind of studies leave me a bad taste. It's as if they ran out of funds and want to produce something entertaining that sells stories and that looks like real research.

It also promotes sexism. I mean, what would be the natural conclusion coming out of such a study? Stay away from beautiful women? Don't hire them because you'll go nuts?

<comment><USER16> Unless they fake the data, researchers do not have control over the results.

Yet I hope the article is not being upvoted as startup advice: "Don't hire beautiful women."

Perhaps heterosexual men can also train themselves to think of beautiful women as people first instead of as sex objects primarily.

<comment><USER17> True, but don't discount the importance of _interpretation_ of results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> fuck this noise, take this pseudo-science off of hacker news please.

</comment><comment><USER19> In my experience women are far more self-conscious meeting the opposite sex, displaying a complete range of behaviour from being nasty to people they like through to completely avoiding them because they can't cope. It seems this is one of those articles destined for women's magazines.

</comment><comment><USER20> There is something in women which evolved for millions of years. Like many products of natural selection, it is highly complex. It works on many levels, some of which are banal, some of which are fascinating on the deepest intellectual and aesthetic levels.

It drives me crazy how many women hold themselves in low esteem. (I think it's worse in the US.) Even the plainest, most homely woman can light up given the right circumstance.

</comment><comment><USER21> Oh man, it happens to me all the time and I make the same mistakes every time. I just cannot prevent it!!! :(

<comment><USER22> I wonder who funds "research" like this. And where do they do studies of this sort? The "duh" school of research?

<comment><USER23> <http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38575>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm, I wonder if this happens if men are trying to impress women with their intelligence. There was an article on HN a little while ago about how women are attracted to intelligence.

<comment><USER24> I thought it was about how women _aren't_ primarily attracted to intelligence (unless you mean a different article)? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=567807>

<comment><USER23> It was this one actually. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=799344>

However, its only about birds... I'd forgotten that.

Oh well, I still wonder if it happens to guys who are trying to show off their intelligence (probably a decent strategy in some limited circumstances).

<comment><USER25> The general impression I've gotten is they go for pure animal magnetism when looking for a good fuck, and sensitivity, intelligence etc. when looking for some chump to help raise their kids.

<comment><USER26> >chump

>their kids

You're apparently not going to be winning any parenting awards.

<comment><USER5> Are there special parenting awards for mistakenly raising another man's kids?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> wow, thank you captain obvious...

</comment><comment><USER28> Awesome. This totally precipitated the requisite defensive responses from the younger crowd.

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: press release interpretations (especially of gender studies) are playground arguments, in this case over whether guys or girls are better. If you didn't get it out of your system then, you're probably still in it.

That is, the only people who care about the outcome are those sad, insecure souls who think every generalized test of some self-confirming experiment likely crafted in a Ritalined-up haze by a disingenuous grad student MUST apply to them.

Need proof? What is this experiment testing? Would you put college kids in a computer lab for an hour to test general rules about gender and attraction in society? No. No you wouldn't.

No, HN, this study is not very good, and neither is the silly reporting about it. But if you want, you can have social awkwardness as a door prize.

</comment><comment><USER25> We need science to tell us this?

<comment><USER29> We do. Just because something that was found to be true sounds completely plausible a posteriori doesn't mean everything that sounds plausible a priori is true.

I remember Al Gore quoting Mark Twain in an Inconvenient Truth: "It's not the things we don't know that gets us into trouble, it's the things we know for sure that just aint so."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> reproductive organ is a redundancy.</comment>


Snowden Warns World Against Trusting Privacy to Tech Giants - <AUTHOR> http://sputniknews.com/science/20160321/1036696585/snowden-warns-world-against-trusting-privacy-to-microsoft.html <comment><USER2> Relevant hn posting and discussion from 2 days ago. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11322978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11322978)

</comment><comment><USER3> Are there any efforts to create some kind of open equivalent of the iPhone Secure Element? It seems difficult to not trust your privacy to tech giants when only tech giants are providing the technology you need.

<comment><USER4> If you want privacy you shouldn't be broadcasting electrical signals from your living room.

I very much question that you "need" to be broadcasting electrical signals from your living room. You probably "need" to be broadcasting electrical signals from your office in order to get a paycheck.

You're still free to send pictures and letters to people using public infrastructure like the post office. You're free to keep those pictures and letters privately in your house.

I don't know why you feel so entitled to your privacy when you're willingly giving information to a 3rd party private company.

If you want this to change, you should be in support of public communication infrastructure based on individual rights. You should be in support of government regulation that makes private 3rd party companies like Apple or Facebook legally liable for the information that they hold on behalf of their customers. You should get more involved with the political and legislative process.

Or get involved with free and open source software and hardware. There are plenty of projects that you could be contributing to!

But honestly? If your really worried about privacy, the easiest thing to do is to not use the Internet.

"You can't always get what you want".

<comment><USER5> Seriously? You can't imagine why people might want to take advantage of modern technology while simultaneously wanting privacy protections?

Your argument reminds me of this Onion video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY)

<comment><USER4> I can definitely imagine that people might want to take advantage of modern technology while simultaneously wanting privacy protections.

I just can't imagine why they think that relying on a private company is the proper course of action.

I can also definitely imagine why thinking that public infrastructure or using free or open source software and hardware will lead to actions that will actually make a difference towards securing privacy protections.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MySpace Previews Cleaner New Home Page Layout - <AUTHOR> http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/08/myspace-previews-cleaner-new-home-page-layout/

<comment><USER2> In other news: Who goes to MySpace?</comment>