Ask HN: Is it advisable to develop a high-scale website using only AWS Lambda? - <AUTHOR> My company (big internet player) is about to create a new product that will scale up to millions of requests per day in 1 year. But, for starters, we are a very small team, with no dedicated DevOps. At this point, I'm considering leveraging AWS Lambda architecture for everything: from front-end web UI delivery to back-end event-driven jobs, at least for the initial stages (MVP) of product development. Is this too risky? <comment><USER2> Just mind that the tools and services around Lambda are getting better, but you will certainly be a relatively early-adopter. It will undoubtedly result in some extra time spent learning, but you'll also eliminate a number of critical operational concerns and concerns about scale.

Mind that Lambda will not handle state for you, functions are stateless. You'll need to store state into hosted services like DynamoDB, Firebase, S3, etc... or stand up (micro)services that manage that state (say, a PostgreSQL database in Docker, saving to an EBS volume).

</comment><comment><USER3> I am exactly there in terms of MVP and team. We had an AWS connoisseur who left just after I joined. Tiny micro nano services all the way except his know-how didn't rubb off that well with the rest if the team which is new to the web dev altogether. That's one thing. The other being the sea of reinvented lock-in technology that AWS is. While support is quick to reply, you will face many "huh?" moments that have little to do with arguments and more to so with unapologetic opinion, especially API gateway and its integration with Lambda. It's for reasons like the above that we're experimenting now with a more mono architecture, replacing API gateway with Beanstalk for now, nginx later, but still run Lambdas in the background.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not that risky, specially for early-stage MVP or prototyping. In my opinion, serverless is the future, at-least for 90% of Web apps, APIs and device app backends. It's great for rapid delivery, high scalability and low maintenance from day one.

Cloud Guru, a local Melbourne startup, is built entirely on AWS Lambda. They host Serverless/Lambda community meetups as well, and write about the tech at [https://read.acloud.guru/tagged/serverless](https://read.acloud.guru/tagged/serverless)

</comment><comment><USER5> I am considering very much the same question — in fact, I got here via an HN search for 'AWS Lambda'. I am currently using Heroku + Heroku Postgres, but increasingly feeling overcharged and not entirely impressed.

At the moment I'm weighing up Amazon RDS Postgres plus either Lambda/API Gateway or Elastic Beanstalk.</comment>


When Schumann Ruined His Fingers – And His Concert Career (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.wqxr.org/story/weird-classical-when-schumann-ruined-his-fingers-and-his-concert-career/ <comment><USER2> [https://www.wqxr.org/](https://www.wqxr.org/) is one of the best classical music websites. Also [https://classicalmusiconly.com/](https://classicalmusiconly.com/) is recommended and was featured once here in HN. Both are totally awesome for any classical music lover.

<comment><USER3> Even if you don't like classical music their "new sounds" station is also extremely cool</comment></comment>


Former TSA Boss Admits Airport Screening Is Broken - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120416/13393018514/former-tsa-boss-admits-airport-screening-is-broken.shtml

<comment><USER2> He makes a lot of good points and his actionable list of suggestions is helpful. But, I won't keep my fingers crossed for any of them being used by TSA.

<comment><USER3> Of course the TSA won't use those suggestions - they didn't when Schneier made them, years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Former". You know the system is f-ed when the person/people sitting in the chair can't speak nor address the truth of the matter.

All this "shut up" policy and management is moving us, on multiple fronts, (further) in the wrong direction.

So, fine, a "former" administrator is speaking up. I'm more disheartened, than encouraged.</comment>


What does "my other car is a cdr" mean? - <AUTHOR> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1864795/what-does-my-other-car-is-a-cdr-mean <comment><USER2> Reminds me of my Lisp professor's terrible joke, "Today we're going to learn about defining functions because that's where de fun's at"...

<comment><USER3> Related: [http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00103.html](http://www.poppyfields.net/filks/00103.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Small sticker on a car's rear bumper: "If you can read this then you're my cdr".

Same on the next one.

</comment><comment><USER5> CAR and CDR [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR_and_CDR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR_and_CDR)

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally I love the response that Peter gave, especially the revision "my other CAR is a CADR. CDR isn't a CAR at all"

<comment> gm-conspiracy CDR is the "input" to CADR and the result is CAR?

<comment><USER7> Not exactly, cadr is what you would get if you called CDR on a list, then car on the result of that. Lisp has several of these types of chains.

Since cdr always returns a list, to get a single item you would need to call car on it, therefore cadr.

<comment><USER8> someone mentioned it earlier but it's not true that cdr always returns a list, for instance, `(cdr `(1 . 2))`

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oooohhh I had forgotten this. For once, this website made me smile.

My it's sad how Common Lisp has faded away in the last 10 years. It had a great community.

<comment><USER10> It's very sad how most new programmers aren't even versed in any functional languages, or even know what they are. Everyone learns imperative because they're so much easier and intuitive initially. Well, that and... almost everyone in software development now uses some kind of imperative language, or some .js framework.

Granted, there still are big projects in Common Lisp today, Emacs still going strong, lots of travel websites are also in Lisp. But yeah, not much motivation for new programmers to learn that type of language.

<comment><USER9> I suppose, and I'm a big Purescript & Haskell fan these days but...

My take is that Common Lisp was never really truly a functional language. It has always been a hybrid language that focused on the unique aspects of Lisp first, and everything else second. Lisp's focus on superior macro facilities, the CLOS, and the MOP really shows in the spec. CL primitives were never as concerned about general composability as they were about offering syntax to cover every conceivable case.

To some extent, I miss this philosophy. Meta-syntactic programming is something important and fundamental to language (as opposed to the monadic style of haskell which is more fundamental to computation).

<comment><USER11> > My take is that Common Lisp was never really truly a functional language.

That's not really news. Lisp was always trying to support functional programming, but it was not enforcing it - though in some parts of the language non-pure functional programming is slightly difficult to avoid.

What Common Lisp did first in Lisp was that it took the lexical binding first/always idea, explored in Scheme, and integrated it into Lisp. Different from Scheme, Common Lisp kept the support for dynamic binding directly in the language and still made use of it in the language. Closures already existed in the precursors of Common Lisp, but as a separate construct (see for example the support in Lisp Machine Lisp).

Common Lisp also defined that lexical binding had to work both for the interpreter and the compiler - whereas in precursors of Common Lisp the Interpreter usually implemented dynamic binding by default and the compiler implemented lexical binding. Scheme in its standard did not mention compilation/interpretation and their effects - though it was expected that both, interpreters and compilers, use the same semantics.

What Common Lisp does, both in the language and in its library, is to support a form of programming with functions, first class functions, higher-order functions. Implementations also support TCO, which enables a more functional style of control flow. Libraries then explore lazy streams (see for example the chapter on Series in CLtL2 from 1990) and similar concepts.

Common Lisp was always a hybrid language supporting multiple paradigms out-of- the-box: symbolic programming, imperative/procedural programming, meta- syntactic programming, reflective programming, object-oriented programming, non-pure functional programming, meta-object-oriented programming. More complete implementations/applications add various forms of logic programming, rule-based programming, concurrent/parallel programming, visual-programming, ...

The

<comment><USER9> Since I have little to no patience today, I cannot resist saying: I have no idea why you said this, who you said it to, who you thought would find it compelling, or what it's point is.

I know a lot of what you're saying, but you presented it in a contrarian mode. Like you were trying to make something clear. But your post doesn't illuminate anything except perhaps some trivia acquired in our shared history.

My only conclusion is that you were eager to talk about this but not to have a conversation about it. Perhaps in the future, placing it higher up the comment hierarchy will get you want you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I _just_ came across a reference to this while attempting to establish my Keybase proof for Hacker News and now I've fallen down a rabbit hole.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here I was thinking it was some kind of joke about you wouldn't download a car.. never learnt Lisp!

</comment><comment><USER14> Mess with the car die like the cdr.</comment>


'Infinity Blade' for iPad/iPhone Generates $1.6 Million In 5 Days - <AUTHOR> http://www.padgadget.com/2010/12/13/infinity-blade-for-ipadiphone-generates-1-6-million-in-5-days/

<comment><USER2> I bought Infinity Blade when it first came out - I'm not surprised they've done so well. The game is beautifully designed with immersive environments, engaging battle mechanics and of course an addicting XP/weaponry/magic setup.

</comment><comment><USER3> that's pretty damn good value for the money, i also purchased this pretty much on the first day, the graphics and gameplay are incredible. and the price, this would easily cost something like 40-50 USD if it were on a console or computer.

does anyone know what the split is with apple? is this standard or depends on your negotiating prowess?

eternal legacy is another nice game, but RPG style instead of fighting.

<comment><USER4> The split is always 70/30. If there are any uniquely negotiated deals, nobody's talking (and I strongly doubt there are).</comment></comment>


Sapper, a lightweight web framework written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sappworks/sapper <comment><USER2> It's good to see new web-focused projects in Rust, I think it can be a really great language for this kind of thing. But to be honest, I'm looking forward to seeing what will be considered the go-to approach for Rust web applications _in a year_ or so.

There is much experimentation going on right now, with cool little innovations here and there, but I have yet to see an approach that looks really new and Rust-y to me.

For example: Rust's type system certainly has some nice properties to track dependencies between middlewares[^1] but I'm not convinced middlewares are even the best approach possible here. Also, it will be interesting how a framework based on async IO will look and what tricks/syntactic sugar/macros will be employed to keep boilerplate code down.

This is a pretty big order, of course: While I enjoy using small libraries, a well designed web framework requires a lot of organisational effort for all the small pieces to fit together nicely. I think most of the 'small pieces' are already there or at least well under way, by the way. For example: The async (mio) branch of hyper looks pretty solid for HTTP1/2, the Diesel ORM is fantastic (and will, according to creator Sean Griffin, soon hit 1.0), and handling JSON will only get better with future versions of serde.

[^1]: As recently discussed in [https://chrismorgan.info/blog/tween.html](https://chrismorgan.info/blog/tween.html) and some other posts concerning the use of sessions types in Rust.

<comment><USER3> > For example: Rust's type system certainly has some nice properties to track > dependencies between middlewares[^1] but I'm not convinced middlewares are > even the best approach possible here.

There's a good discussion of this on /r/rust: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4lz92j/tween_a_middle...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4lz92j/tween_a_middleware_library_experiment/)

I'm pretty interested in tomakas's approach, which seems to avoid the approach of middlewares, in favor of explicitness: [https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4lz92j/tween_a_middle...](https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/4lz92j/tween_a_middleware_library_experiment/d3rhglt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fun fact: crates.io is written with a Rust + Ember + Postgres stack, though with its own framework, condiut, rather than Sapper. It uses about 30 megabytes of memory resident. Coming from Rails world, this was... quite the change.

Also fun fact: we had a small amount of downtime today :( Type safety can't protect you from everything. [https://users.rust-lang.org/t/crates-io-is-down- fixed/6060/6...](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/crates-io-is-down- fixed/6060/6?u=steveklabnik)

</comment><comment><USER5> The more I look at Rust the less I like the syntax, what are those? "Ok(())"

<comment><USER6> Or this:

pub fn from_bytes(bytes: &'a [u8]) -> IResult<&'a [u8], C<'a>> { ... }

or something like this:

fn parse_response<'a>(bytes: &'a [u8]) -> IResult<&'a [u8], C<'a>> { switch!(bytes, tuple!(be_u32, be_u32), (::CONNECT_ACTION_ID, tid) => map!(be_u64, |cid| B::new(tid, ResponseType::Connect(cid)) ) | (::ANNOUNCE_IPV4_ACTION_ID, tid) => map!(call!(W::from_bytes_v4), |ann_res| { C::new(tid, ResponseType::Announce(ann_res)) }) |

<comment><USER4> You're missing a <'a> in the declaration there ;)

"from_bytes is a public function with one lifetime parameter, a. It takes one argument, a slice of u8 with the lifetime 'a, and returns an IResult, which gives back a slice of u8 with the lifetime 'a in the success case, and some type C, which is also parameterized with the lifetime 'a, in the failure case."

This is not really normal rust code; it's nom, which is a very macro-heavy DSL. There are decent upsides, and I love nom, but its downside is that it does look a bit odd.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't look a bit odd. It looks impenetrable.

<comment><USER4> Well, without all the whitespace, it is ;)

<comment><USER8> Seriously, you can't strip out the whitespace and then pretend to make reasonable critiques of readability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, when would I use this (and Rust) over some other new web frameworks like Amethyst (Crystal) and Jester (Nim)?

[https://github.com/Codcore/amethyst](https://github.com/Codcore/amethyst)

[https://github.com/dom96/jester](https://github.com/dom96/jester)

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone recommend a good IDE or editor with good IDE-like features for Rust? I think it's time for me to take the plunge and start learning a little bit about Rust.

Also, I'm assuming the windows support is good these days?

<comment><USER11> I'm using Atom (on a fairly speedy machine, VS Code has some solid plugin support too) with:

        * atom-beautify (with rustfmt installed, `cargo install rustfmt`)
        * language-rust
        * linter + linter-rust (using cargo check, `cargo install cargo-check`)
        * you-complete-me (but YCM is not fun to install, so I'd recommend the racer plugin, both require the Rust source cloned and installed somewhere)

Altogether, those plugins give a pretty good Rust experience.

<comment><USER12> Is this like anywhere even close to the functionality of something like IntelliJ? Doesn't really sound like it. Linting and formatting, and completion does not an IDE make. How much code intelligence and introspection is there?

<comment><USER11> Not nearly as much as intellij. However the "linting" in this case is really just highlighting for compiler warnings and errors which are _quite_ good in Rust. That said, you can use clippy ([https://github.com/Manishearth/rust- clippy](https://github.com/Manishearth/rust-clippy)) to get some pretty solid static code analysis as a compiler plug in.

Also, I am very closely following the progress of the rust intellij project, it's coming along nicely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This framework seems to have practically the same API as nickel.rs [https://github.com/nickel-org/nickel.rs](https://github.com/nickel- org/nickel.rs)</comment>


Foxconn to Build $10B Factory in U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-supplier-foxconn-to-build-10-billion-factory-in-u-s-1501102903 <comment><USER2> $3 billion in subsidies for 3,000 jobs.

[http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2017/07/26/scott- walker-h...](http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2017/07/26/scott-walker-heads- d-c-trump-prepares-wisconsin-foxconn-announcement/512077001/)

<comment><USER3> The subsidy is $1.5B for 13,000 jobs. The other half of the subsidy is for capital investment and construction expenses.

It's still a huge number though.

<comment><USER4> The article states that: "At $3 billion for 13,000 jobs, the Wisconsin deal would cost $231,000 per job."

By comparison, economists have estimated $125K/job-year to $202K/job-year from the 2009 stimulus (ARRA). [1]

[1] [https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/revie...](https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/2014/q2/dupor.pdf) , page 3

<comment><USER5> I'm confused about the comparison between cost per job and cost per job year. Presumably this (the Wisconsin deal) would be the better deal as the jobs presumably last more than one year?

<comment><USER6> Doubtful alot of the Recovery Act was for One Time Construction projects, like paving a road.

There were also alot of one off projects like sending people out to help with Energy Efficiency in homes.

There was not alot of long term stable jobs in there.

<comment><USER5> Your first sentence suggests that you disagreed with my previous post, but your rationale very much supports my point. Spending 125-250K on a job that only exists for a year is markedly worse than paying a comparable amount for a job that lasts many years.

<comment><USER6> I dont think the government should be paying for any job.

I disagree with this corporate subsidy, and I disagreed with the Recovery act

<comment><USER5> That's fine, but my statement was neither for not against. Just observing that one appears to be a better bargain than the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it hard to believe that they won't automate it to the max. They've started to do it in china, why wouldn't they do it here where labor is more expensive and the factory is brand new. Foxconn has been manufacturing for a long time and they are looking to reduce costs not increase them by building in the US. Automation is the best way. I bet the jobs are not long term.

Some jobs are better than none but don't pat your back with congratulations.

<comment><USER8> They don't want to have problems with current US administration and Trump wants factories, so they give him factories.

<comment><USER9> Meaning the automation starts as soon as Trump leaves.

<comment><USER10> Automated new factories here in the homeland is still better for us than empty factories.

<comment><USER7> Maybe, they get very large tax breaks plus the take up resources. It's probably a breakeven situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the 1B apple datacenter announcement in 2011 that ultimately created 50 jobs. Reality sux.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-new-data-center- north-c...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-new-data-center-north- carolina-created-50-jobs-2011-11)

</comment><comment><USER11> From a Reuters article: "In 2013, Foxconn said it would invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a new factory in Pennsylvania, but that facility was never completed." So I wouldn't hold my breath.

</comment><comment><USER12> What, 13,000 factory workers? Foxconn isn't going to use mostly robots? Gou has said he wants to get rid of the "animals" in his plants.

<comment><USER13> 3,000 workers according to Foxconn. The trump administration has said it could create up to 13,000 over the coming years, so who knows what that really means...

<comment><USER14> I heard on the news that 10,000 construction jobs would be created, so perhaps both are right - 10,000 temporary construction jobs, and 3,000 permanent/plant jobs.

<comment> brown9-2 Counting temporary construction jobs as permanent seems a little misleading.

<comment><USER15> Politicians mislead to look better?!?

Though you are right, this looks like an exceptionally misleading deal from the point of view of the taxpayer. When I think of Foxconn workers I dont think of the kinds of jobs I think we would want to heavily invest in, but I hope I am wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are the majority of these 13,000 jobs likely to be minimum wage?

<comment><USER17> What do u expect? It is Foxconn, it needs bloody labor not Google engineers.

<comment><USER18> Walmart and Amazon pay well above the minimum wage. It might be because they are so altruistic but I suspect they can't find labor worth keeping at that price. I imagine the same will be true for foxconn.

<comment><USER19> "Well above" isn't super meaningful. I believe Wal-mart's minimum pay is 9/hr and most employees are closer to 12-13. That's not going to be a livable wage in many areas. Add in that half of those are part time and not getting employee supplemented health insurance and it gets less livable.

<comment><USER18> Walmart has a national minimum of $10 an hour the federal minimum is $7.25. I consider a roughly 25% premium to be a significant increase when talking about salaries. My comment is in regards to these jobs paying minimum wage and the evidence leads me to believe that it is virtually certain that these jobs will pay a significant percentage more than that. (not to mention all the managerial and skilled labor jobs that will pay many times more that will come with them)

<comment><USER20> Walmart was forced to offer $10 an hour because they were facing staff shortages. The interesting thing is that their profits certainly didn't nose- dive after the bump in their labor's wage rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >"This is a great day for American workers and manufacturers and everyone who believes in the concept and the label 'Made in the USA,' " said an ebullient President Donald Trump at the White House announcement."

Why is this great for American manufacturers exactly? I'm guessing Trump doesn't know that Foxconn is a Taiwanese company? That sounds about right.

<comment><USER22> Foxconn has more factories in China than in any other country and their largest factory is in Shenzhen.

The implied "Made in USA" vs "Made in China" is fair.

<comment><USER21> My comment was very clearly asking about the "American manufacturers" part of the quote not the "Made in USA" part.

Foxconn has factories around the globe but they are a Taiwanese manufacturer not an American manufacturer, they are traded on the TWSE:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's a one time cost.

Sounds reasonable when you compare it to California spending $21 Billion each year to subsidize 3 million people.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a giant photo op good will by Foxconn. Just like the Carrier announcement. My bet is that there won't be any factory, and even if there is it would be a small outpost employing a handful of people. All financed by giant taxpayer subsidies

<comment><USER25> The subsidies are tax credits. They make the location more attractive, they don't finance the project.

</comment></comment><comment> bytefederal-ceo The subsidy turns lost tax revenue (taxes == slavery) into jobs for US citizens. Please explain how this is a bad thing?

<comment><USER26> Thanks for your input, 4 minute-old account!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> without paywall: [http://archive.is/SiGPl](http://archive.is/SiGPl)

</comment><comment><USER28> Apparently US labor is cheaper then Chinese.

Wow!

<comment><USER29> Almost correct. It's the overall cost equation that is important, not just labor though.

"U.S. Manufacturing costs are almost as low as China's, and that's a very big deal"

[http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/fracking-manufacturing- costs/](http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/fracking-manufacturing-costs/)

"These days, China's labor costs are only 4% cheaper than those in the U.S. when productivity is factored in, according to Oxford Economics. "

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/17/news/economy/china-cheap- lab...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/17/news/economy/china-cheap-labor- productivity/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This will be in Paul Ryan's district. Fishy enough?

<comment><USER31> For anyone actually interested in learning how hard southern Wisconsin has worked to get manufacturing back after the GM plant closure, I recommend Janesville: an American Story. Suffice to say that many, many people both R and D want these jobs in Paul Ryan's district and willingness to offer incentives is fully bipartisan. [https://www.amazon.com/Janesville-American- Story-Amy-Goldste...](https://www.amazon.com/Janesville-American-Story-Amy- Goldstein/dp/1501102230)</comment></comment>


Reviewing Steve Yegge's Prediction Record - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/yegge-predictions/ <comment><USER2> > For reasons that seem baffling in retrospect, Amazon understood this long > before any of its major competitors

I don't think Amazon really "understood". It's more that (according to "The Everything Store", anyway), accidentally, some emergency servers were reprovisioned as servers on demand for a bunch of frustrated devs who couldn't get resources the traditional way. And then demand just exploded and they thought why not sell it and see what happens.

It is true that Bezos appears to have a knack for spotting great products that appear accidentally in his org tree, and spinning it out as a separate team (e.g. the A9 team, Kindle...) but it might be that he thinks like a VC and backs everything that looks interesting instead of letting the bureaucracy kill it, and hindsight is 20/20...

<comment><USER3> There was another essay from Steve Yegge some years ago where he was comparing Amazon vs Google (he worked for both companies) and how Amazon completely transformed themselves into using internal APIs as the only method of communication between teams within the company.

Yegge has recalled an email to all Amazon staff where Bezos outlined new Amazon rules. This was in 2002.

 _1.) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces._

 _2.) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces._

 _3.) There will be no other form of inter-process communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team's data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service interface calls over the network._

 _4.) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions._

Especially the last point of the memo is very telling because it shows that Amazon was planning to externalize artifacts of various teams within Amazon at least 4 years before AWS was actually born.

<comment><USER4> Here the full Yegge tale (or at least a publicly available copy): [https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX](https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX)

<comment><USER5> reading it the second time (last time I read it a year ago):

\- Is ad business model a major reason Google is not providing a platform or hesitant about it? (Out of Amazon/Apple/FB/MS, FB is the only other primarily ad-based company (or is it?) so I wonder how FB is doing it). Because programmatic interfaces means developers can program out ads (unless there's a way for a service provider to avoid that situation, IDK).

\- Or has Google moved towards platform/accessibility model recently? or is it same old same old?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Prediction #7 about the mobile revolution was particularly interesting to me at the time. I was working in the telecoms industry and everyone was saying that super-smartphones were coming out in just a year, 2 at most, that would revolutionize everything, but that was all marketing hype. The reality at the time was to my mind looking really bad. WAP was pretty much a conscious effort by the telecoms industry to trap itself (or actually the users) in a technological stone age ghetto run by committees of marketing executives. The fact that Apple forced the carriers to allow an open mobile internet was utterly shocking to me - in a good way. I was expecting mobile computing to be a dismal carrier-controlled dystopia for a generation at least.

<comment><USER7> The phone makers at the time really had no idea how to make a full-featured mobile computer OS. Nothing happened until Apple giving them a kick and Google saved their butts by handing them Android on a platter.

<comment><USER8> You are forgetting about Windows Mobile for Smartphone and Symbian. There was a reason to expect smartphone revolution - because early adopters had smartphones in 2004.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but they were utter crap. Their browsers were crippled, side-loading software was strictly for geek hobbyists only and their apps were generally appallingly designed. Mobile internet was restricted by the carriers to a teletext-style menu driven system with menu space sold to the highest bidder. It was awful. They had no idea what they ere doing. Mobile payments were supposed to take over the world in 2001+. The carriers have spent the last 14 years utterly failing to execute on that, and even in 2004 they'd spent the previous 3+ years being utterly incompetent. Steve saw what was going on, and he was completely correct that even 5 years wasn't going to be long enough to sort all that out.

<comment><USER9> That was WAP.

Windows Mobile back then had a fully featured browser. It was all pen driven, but it actually worked really well. The first iPhone seemed like a step back at least as far as the browser is concerned.

Data was just extremely expensive, but it was faster than the dial-up internet most of the country was still stuck with back in 2004.

<comment><USER10> Windows Mobile had a start button! Microsoft was literally shoving a desktop mindset into any form factor, and not designing for a form factor.

Windows Mobile sucked not because of WAP, but because you had to use it like a tiny desktop UI and poke at it with a tiny stylus to move a _mouse cursor_ (depending onthe version).

The iPhone wasn't awesome because it had a "full" web browser or whatever (though it helped). The iPhone was awesome because it was a pocket sized super computer with a UI/interaction model that actually worked

<comment><USER11> WM6, when designed to knock off Blackberry devices, was a little better. The "Start" button brought you to an application tray, and it had a 4-way rocker (and optional resistive, stylus-input touchscreen) for navigation. MS took some obvious hints from RIM, but they did deliver a good product.

Of course, it released roughly seven months before the iPhone, which beat the pants off of it. At least it could play NetHack...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's especially important for blog posts like this to have a very obvious timestamp on the page somewhere. This is a contemporary post but I couldn't verify that until I went into the archive view.

<comment><USER13> There is a worrying trend in minimlaist design lately. It seems that more and more blogs are leaving out information about the author (less impotant here) and when the post was created, two very important pieces of information!

<comment><USER14> That's not a trend, it's been like that since the dawn of the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yegge has always been worth reading, which makes it sad that he's been basically silent ever since 2012 (about a year after the infamous "Platform" rant).

Earth to Major Yegge, Earth to Major Yegge, do you copy? Come back, we miss you.

<comment><USER16> Howdy! Boy, HN is terrible at recovering old accounts, so I made this new one.

I just posted an update to the predictions post, with my own scores. Take a look!

As far as blogging goes, I've been on a bit of a hiatus. There's been a lot to learn. The tech world is moving so fast! I've been in Google Cloud Platform for the past 3 years, and next year I hope to start blogging about the experience, and about the technology in general.

For now, though, I'm busy both with my day job at Google and with various personal projects, so there's not much to report just yet. I promise I'll be back someday. :)

<comment><USER17> > I just posted an update to the predictions post, with my own scores. Take a > look!

[https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/ten- predictions](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/ten-predictions) (convenience link)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was really sad that Lisp didn't take off like it appeared it might in the early 2000s. With Practical Common Lisp[1], Yegge's articles and Edi Weitz's software[2], as well as other articles and resources available at the time, it really looked as though the programming world was beginning to get why Lisp is such a good idea.

And then the focus became JavaScript, which has all of the bad and many—but not nearly all—of the good points of Lisp, and one key differentiator: it runs in the browser, on effectively every computer, tablet and phone on the planet.

Maybe the Lisp-compiled-to-JavaScript efforts will help.

[1] [http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/)

[2] [http://weitz.de/lisp.html](http://weitz.de/lisp.html)

<comment><USER19> The move in the center of intellectual gravity from Java/C# to Javascript puts me in mind of Guy Steele's quote about Java, back in the day: "We were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp."

I think Javascript moves those Java programmers halfway further to Lisp. And while the Common Lisp revival movement sort of petered out, Racket (which is honestly much better than Common Lisp to my tastes) is still trucking along and might be poised to be the next step for a generation of programmers who've absorbed the Javascript mindset.

<comment><USER20> > And while the Common Lisp revival movement sort of petered out, Racket > (which is honestly much better than Common Lisp to my tastes) is still > trucking along and might be poised to be the next step for a generation of > programmers who've absorbed the Javascript mindset.

While I personally like Racket quite a bit, I think that the Lisp most posed to pick up the JS crowd is Clojure/ClojureScript.

OTOH, maybe instead of a Lisp we'll get _another_ halfway-from-where-they-are language for the JS programmers, and continue the Zeno's paradox of Lisp readiness...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Steve's best prediction for me has always been his bet on JS in 'The Next Big Language': [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/next-big- language....](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/next-big- language.html) . This is pre-V8 but post- open sourcing of Tamarin.

<comment><USER22> I remember being very intrigued by the article back in the day and I revisited it at least twice to find out if steve ever confirmed what language he was writing about.

Today people seem to take for granted that the NBL was in fact javascript, but I still cannot find any source for this.

Does anyone know more and can point me in the right direction?

<comment><USER21> OK, fair enough, but there aren't any other obvious contenders that fit his criteria. Also, ES4 was in development at the time and would have been a major overhaul to the language (something we're now getting in ES6).

Maybe I am taking it for granted though…

<comment><USER23> I've seen video of a talk in which Yegge says, in so many words, that "NBL is Javascript". Google suggests it was a talk at OSCON 2007, which I can't easily check right now.

<comment><USER24> Citation from the past: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2344077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2344077)

<comment><USER22> Thanks a lot! Exactly what I was looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Totally unrelated, but I saw Steve present at OSCON probably 10 years ago, and it was amazing to see him present on his feet:

The video for his presentation was totally messed up, so his slides didn't load up. He just said "screw it" and went on presenting from memory to a room of around 4,000 people.

He nailed it.

Afterwards, Tim O'Reilly said he had never seen anybody deal with something like that and do as well.

If you get the chance to see Steve present, go for it. He's thought provoking and entertaining.

<comment><USER26> Here's the link to the video (2007), though the site is down at the moment: [http://blip.tv/play/AZPiFQI.html](http://blip.tv/play/AZPiFQI.html)

<comment><USER27> Unfortunately, blip.tv is gone. There's no sure indication that all the content will be migrated, but the odds are low - there was a lot of content at blip.tv. Luckily, most of it is archived and being uploaded to archive.org and will be available sometime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> After reading the article, I am left with the impression that Steve Yegge was mostly wrong.

<comment><USER29> I'd say he was correct on #3, #6, #7, #8. That is 4/9, because #10 was just a joke. So he got roughly half of it right, which is not too shabby.

<comment><USER30> Do you not consider #1 to be at least close to accurate? Instead of XML we got JSON databases (NoSQL) which are very popular in some circles. They definitely do not surpass the number of relational database installations, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they stored more data in absolute terms.

<comment><USER29> No. Yegge bet on XML specifically with all its XPath, XQuery, DTD stuff. I don't believe he was thinking about anything like NoSQL or JSON.

<comment><USER31> The quoted reason is "Nobody likes to do O/R mapping; everyone just wants a solution." From that point of view, I think it's at least arguable that he chose XML databases as a stand-in for NoSQL, which wasn't really a thing yet. The fact that many NoSQL databases use JSON, which is the successor to XML for data interchange, lends a bit more support as well IMO.

In other words, I think saying XML databases are the future in 2004 is like saying JSON document stores are the future now. I don't view either as all that correct, but there's definitely been a surge in interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > I try to avoid making predictions. It's a no-win proposition: if you're > right, hindsight bias makes it look like you're pointing out the obvious. > And most predictions are wrong.

If you are right, then you can point people to your correct predictions. If you are wrong, then silently delete the records or just let people forget about them.

</comment><comment><USER32> > Sure, Mongo may lose your data, but it's easy to set up and use.

Umm... I'm probably too old, as I feel anger when I read something like that.

<comment><USER33> I think it was meant as supportive argument to "popularity contest". So that statement is probably sarcastic in nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yegge's "It's not software" from 2004 has a nice bit about microservices -- pretty ahead of the hype curve on that one:

> What if every "API call" were hosted by a different server? Well, you'd have > a lot of flexibility in fixing any given call without needing to impact > clients that don't use it. And it'd be easier to distribute it over multiple > machines — it seems like it'd be a better design than the BEA WebLogic > design, which is to run a few copies of your MonolithService on each of a > handful of machines. There would be new problems to solve, but who's to say > it wouldn't be a better design overall? We won't know unless we ask the > question.

[https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/its-not- software](https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/its-not-software)

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm amazed he didn't predict that pot would be legal or decriminalized in many states.

<comment><USER36> The reference, for all those who think this comment is off topic, is a blog post by yegge in 2009 entitled "Have you ever legalized marijuana?"[1]

[1]: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever- legali...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legalized- marijuana.html)

<comment><USER37> That's fun to go back and re-read now. He correctly describes "Shit's Easy" Syndrome, but maybe there's an opposing fallacy that's heavily status quo biased. Legalizing marijuana is in fact pretty easy, as bureaucratic undertakings go. Lots of his "what ifs" only make sense for something that's illegal in the first place -- What if illegal smugglers just pull up on the beach and start selling coffee? Why would they do that if you can just stop in at Starbucks?

<comment><USER38> That's the whole point of that list. Transitioning from illegal to legal is complicated in ways that don't affect things like coffee that have always been legal - and therefore, many people don't think about, claiming it will be treated "just like legal thing".

<comment><USER37> I understand the point of the list, it's just that most of the items on the list are not actually issues, or at least not difficult issues, and legalization has gone pretty smoothly in multiple states now. What he fails to take into account is that it actually is easy to just stop throwing people in jail for possession whenever we feel like it, and then take a year or so setting up a licensed legal distribution system.

<comment><USER38> It doesn't sound like you do understand the point of the list then. The point is not that any particular issue is unsolvable or even difficult. It's that laymen eagerly suggest naive solutions without even realizing that these issues exist. That's why you need to plan out your project and devote resources to executing it. Amendment 64 was not a single line "marijuana is now legal". The governor even set up a task force to oversee its implementation. And there are still complications due to its contradiction with federal law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Re: predicting the Rise of JavaScript, it's a lot easier to be right if you know about V8 a year before public release. From "Rule #3: Performance" on [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big- language.ht...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-big- language.html):

 _Generally speaking, NBL will have to have a much greater focus on performance than so-called "scripting languages" have had in the past. I mean, if it's really the Next Big Thing, it'll have to run on mobile devices, game platforms, and all sorts of other hardware-constrained devices. It sounds impossible, I know. But it's not. Those compiler writers are a tricky bunch, and they have decades of experience. A bunch of them got together and did a lot of head-scratching over NBL, and the result is going to perform quite nicely._

</comment><comment><USER40> Interestingly, for all his insight, Steve Yegge doesn't understand why Java is popular and lisp is not.

<comment><USER41> > Interestingly, for all his insight, Steve Yegge doesn't understand why Java > is popular and lisp is not.

What do you think are the reasons? Some folks might claim that Java enables mediocre teams of mediocre programs to turn out mediocre code, while they would turn out utter dreck in Lisp (we know that excellent programmers will turn out excellent code in Lisp, but there are business and operational risks associated with a small team of excellent programmers), but I don't actually know if that's true. Has research been conducted with large teams of mediocre programmers with mediocre management, using Lisp?

<comment><USER42> Let's be real: most people who make fun of Java aren't using a Lisp, and would also make a mess of themselves if they had to program in one.

We use Java at work. Obviously all of the following depends upon your use case.

The main reason we continue to use Java is probably legacy reasons. We have lots of library code. And we're a small shop, so every extra language we program in has a real cost associated with it.

The stability and backwards compatibility is great. We have some libraries we haven't had to touch in almost a decade, being used in apps we just wrote last week. Of course some of them we've updated to use newer Java libraries (such as java.time and java.util.stream in Java 8).

IMHO Java's biggest problem is the community. It's a bit enterprise-y. As long as you don't get caught up in that I think you're OK.

I think the other problem was it went so long between Java 6 and Java 7. With Java 8 there isn't a lot from the likes of Python and Ruby I miss anymore.

For imperative languages, I generally like Go and Python better, because I find them "funner". But once I get past myself, meh. I do think Go gets things a bit more right than Java, but not enough that it merits switching the language we use. Maybe if we had zero code and had to start out fresh.

<comment><USER43> > With Java 8 there isn't a lot from the likes of Python and Ruby I miss > anymore.

Groovy will be feeling the heat here for its original use case. With the lambdas and terseness in Java 8, there's not a lot of reasons for it to exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> There's a comment at the bottom of his original predictions blog, and it reminded me immediately of Alan Kay's 'pop culture' quote

"We work in a fashion industry, and marketing really matters.".

I don't know if I am getting older, but this rings very true to my ears, especially today.

</comment><comment><USER45> If you can afford it road-map wise, starting with the easy details and postponing the hard stuff works sometime. When the easy things are done, the hard things sometime become less hard, and the project got itself more rewarding so it's easier to see it in a good light.

</comment><comment><USER46> If you ask 1000 people to predict 10 coin flips, then there's a 62% chance that at least one of them is right.

<comment><USER47> If you ask 1000 people to ask a coin to identify the major trends in a complex ecosystem and make inferences about their future course... they will look at you oddly.

<comment><USER48> They don't have to ask the coin. They can just assign different meanings to heads and tails, flip the coin, and record the result as a prediction. If you have 1000 people do this, some of them will appear to be miraculous predictors just by chance. It doesn't matter whether they are talking about major trends in a complex ecosystem, or whether they believe they are performing inferences. Sometimes a correct guess is just a guess which turned out to be correct, rather than evidence of prophecy.

<comment><USER49> Map this to Zuck's infamous statement about Twitter: 'They Drove A Clown Car That Fell Into A Gold Mine'.

Nothing succeeds like success. Unfortunately, it's difficult to tell luck from skill quite often.

I'd argue that Zuck didn't do too differently either. Both companies _did_ have technical execution down. But circumstances also mattered hugely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > Lisp will be in the top 10 most popular programming languages by 2010

Let me lay the raw truth out for any lisp fans. It will never be popular or widely adopted. Ever.

It has been around for half a century. At no time was it ever widely adopted. It was always just pushed by a small group of fanboys.

That said, I love it and have learned a ton from as have many others.

<comment><USER51> Never? Why will it _never_ be popular or widely adopted?

<comment><USER50> Because 40 years ago people were convinced it would be popular one day. And 30 years there was roughly the same percentage of highly convinced, vocal people who thought so. And 20 years ago same thing. 10 years ago ditto.

I mean, what is going to take? 10 more years? 20? At what do you conclude that a language really isn't useful for general purpose programming? (not to say it isn't brilliant and useful for specific purposes, learning, etc.)

<comment><USER51> You seem to define the reason as purely historical. Kinda like how Linux was going to take over the desktop "any year now" and it hasn't. Yet Linux is everywhere people don't think it is. It's on most of the world's smartphones, for instance but people still consider it "failed".

I think Lisp is the same: it's everywhere you don't think it is because it's opinionless and languages are defined by their community (and community is held together by the shared values and opinions). Look how many languages are rapidly adopting functional programming idioms. They're becoming Lisp. Eventually you start seeing the value of functional idioms in Blub language. Then you go and look at where it came from and notice, "Hey this is the real thing". Then you get real yourself. (This has been my experience).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> How far off is prediction 9 really? What do sales matter when Apple takes more profits from their computer business than all those combined; Apple having a 30% plus margin and other computer makers a 2-3%?

<comment><USER6> Indeed. It seems likely that Apple could cut their margins and grab that 50% if they wanted to, but since that would reduce their overall profits why would they want to? It seems like Apple can at this point have pretty much whatever share of the market it chooses.

<comment><USER53> It's interesting to me that Apple value profit over market share, unlike many of their rivals.

<comment><USER6> I'm not entirely certain whether their rivals actually value market share over profits as such. It's hard to run a company for long if it's not making money, regardless of what it's market share is.

Market share matters for a lot of companies because economies of scale mean that your unit costs go down as volumes go up. This gives a natural advantage to market leaders, in addition to things like increased brand visibility.

Market share is very important to pundits though, because it changes very rapidly and is often measurable throughout the year on a per-product basis, whereas company financials are less frequently reported and harder to tease out. A battle between products that readers can see in the shops and read reviews for is easier to create a narrative around than corporate financial performance. I think this is why sales numbers and market share are focused on so heavily in the media.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You just can't kill a Linux process that is frozen - <AUTHOR> https://ops.tips/notes/2019-10-01/ <comment><USER2> Or zombies, because they're dead already.

'find.zombie' script:

         ps aux | grep 'Z' | grep -v grep</comment>


Revolutionary 'Robotic Blacksmithing' Technology Could Revive US Manufacturing - <AUTHOR> https://scitechdaily.com/revolutionary-robotic-blacksmithing-technology-could-revive-us-manufacturing/ <comment><USER2> Good lord, this article is unreadable...

<comment><USER3> And video is sped up 4x , but still too slow.</comment></comment>


The Mp3 Experiment Seven - <AUTHOR> http://improveverywhere.com/2010/10/12/the-mp3-experiment-seven/ <comment><USER2> Wondering if anyone else here has participated in an improv everywhere skit. They're pretty awesome if you live in NY! I've been in the MP3 Experiment 3 (central park) and 4 (Hudson River Park). 3 is still my favorite.

<comment><USER3> I was at this one (MP3 experiment 7) as well as MP3 Experiment 5 (Battle for Governor's Island), Cell Phone Symphony (<http://improveverywhere.com/2006/02/18/cell-phone-symphony/>), and Camera Flash Experiment ([http://improveverywhere.com/2008/05/29/the-camera-flash- expe...](http://improveverywhere.com/2008/05/29/the-camera-flash- experiment/)). They've all been quite fun.

<comment><USER2> My friend was working at the Strand when they did the Cell Phone Symphony! Too bad I don't live in NY anymore to experience all the craziness.</comment></comment></comment>


Visualizing buggy saturated subtraction functions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.regehr.org/archives/437

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this very interesting, because it's an example of a problem which can be very subtle when just looking at the code -- but the errors become very obvious when plotted.

It raises the question of what other programming problems could also benefit from visualizations like this -- Aldo Cortesi's work on visualizing sorting algorithms (<http://sortvis.org/>) comes to mind.

Also, wouldn't it be cool if IDEs supported this kind of thing natively? You could imagine a plugin for Eclipse so that each time you have a function of type

      int f(int x, int y)

it would let you right-click on it and instantly plot the output... (obviously it would require some care to deal with side-effects).</comment>


Rat Park - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park <comment><USER2> I'm just gonna be lazy and link to what I wrote the last time the Rat Park page came up on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7743089)

It comes up a lot, maybe because the result is kind of positive and aligns well with HN's crowds drug liberal views?

The RP experiment wrt _morphine addiction in mice_ has not been replicated. Also, afaik, Bruce Alexander had a hypothesis about drug addiction, designed an experiment to prove his hypothesis. Performed the experiment, measured the results and found that they confirmed his hypothesis. It's not a good way to do research. The results of the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiments should be discredited for the same reason. Because their results were tainted by their designer.

Extraordinary claims requires extraordinary proofs. That mice wouldn't become addicted to morphine is most certainly an extraordinary claim.

<comment><USER3> > _had a hypothesis about drug addiction, designed an experiment to prove his > hypothesis. Performed the experiment, measured the results_

That's the very definition of the Scientific Method, so I don't understand what problem you're pointing out:

"The overall process of the scientific method involves making conjectures ( hypotheses), deriving predictions from them as logical consequences, and then carrying out experiments based on those predictions." \-- from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method)

(That the experiment has not been replicated as you claim could be a bad sign, but that's a separate matter.)

<comment><USER4> The problem is designing an experiment to _confirm_ the hypothesis rather than to _test_ it.

<comment><USER5> This is not a problem. You can have any hypothesis and any test. If your test has validity it's a valid way to test the hypothesis. That's it.

The scientific process is a social one, and if you feel that an experiment is constructed unfairly, you can devise another experiment to falsify it.

Saying that an experiment "confirms" a hypothesis is just a rhetorical trick of the comment parent. Experiments can only ever falsify.

<comment><USER6> This is subtle but important distinction. It is absolutely possible to do a confirming experiment that can give misleading results. There is a nice explanation in the wikipedia article under "Confirmation Bias".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)

A striking example is the (2,4,6) test. From wikipedia:

"Wason's research on hypothesis-testing The term "confirmation bias" was coined by English psychologist Peter Wason.[66] For an experiment published in 1960, he challenged participants to identify a rule applying to triples of numbers. At the outset, they were told that (2,4,6) fits the rule. Participants could generate their own triples and the experimenter told them whether or not each triple conformed to the rule.[67][68] While the actual rule was simply "any ascending sequence", the participants had a great deal of difficulty in finding it, often announcing rules that were far more specific, such as "the middle number is the average of the first and last".[67] The participants seemed to test only positive examples—triples that obeyed their hypothesized rule. For example, if they thought the rule was, "Each number is two greater than its predecessor", they would offer a triple that fit this rule, such as (11,13,15) rather than a triple that violates it, such as (11,12,19).[69] Wason accepted falsificationism, according to which a scientific test of a hypothesis is a serious attempt to falsify it. He interpreted his results as showing a preference for confirmation over falsification, hence the term "confirmation bias".[Note 4][70] Wason also used confirmation bias to explain the results of his selection task experiment.[71] In this task, participants are given partial information about a set of objects, and have to specify what further information they would need to tell whether or not a conditional rule ("If A, then B") applies. It has been found repeatedly that people perform badly on various forms of this test, in most cases ignoring information that could potentially refute the rule."

<comment><USER7> Yes their rules might be more specific than the general rule, but that is not a problem. Their rules were a correct subset of the more general rule (if what you are describing is accurate). Now if they are claiming a broad hypothesis and only providing a set of data that asserts a subset of the hypothesis, that is a problem. They are being misleading one way or another. If the researcher is presenting a hypothesis and misses out on data (for whatever reason), then somebody else will (ideally) point this out. Nonetheless, just acting like this misrepresentation can happen therefore don't trust some particular study is little more than baseless criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I lived in an apartment where 6 out of 8 apartments were occupied by alcoholics or drug addicts. Nearly every block on that street was the same. This was Glasgow, and the drug of choice was heroin, although everyone also smoked as much marijuana as they could afford. These people's lives weren't particularly shit on a day-by-day basis, but they had nothing but misery on the horizon. If they had kids they would lose them, they would never work, never be praised. They'd never see the world. Most of them hadn't been outside Glasgow for years, if not the whole of their lives. They would probably never go to the beach or on even the shittest package holiday. Those who were obviously junkies (struggling to walk, sunken faces and destroyed skin) were basically seen as an underclass by everyone from their peers, to the rest of the population and the police. But there were people living in the same street, in the same apartments, with far less money, working shitty jobs, who weren't even open to taking drugs. The structure of this area wasn't bad at all - it could have been Rat Park, if it wasn't filled with drug-addicted rats who just pissed in the common areas and threw their rotting food out of the window. I don't have any great insight here - but I think there's more to it than environment as suggested by this study. There are people all around the world who live in far worse conditions and who aren't turning to substances, even when they are available. My feeling is that rats living in cages, who can see rats living in Rat Park would be more likely to seek addiction. And perhaps even more so if they see other rats being moved from cages to Rat Park, but not them. I don't know if rats could understand this concept though, which might be why they aren't all living in Afghanistan's poppy fields.

<comment><USER9> I like this post because it reminds us that humans have a complicated society, unlike rats. Which can muddle the conclusions of this study.

>> I don't know if rats could understand this concept though, which might be why they aren't all living in Afghanistan's poppy fields.

And indeed humans don't.

<comment><USER10> >> complicated society, unlike rats. Which can muddle the conclusions of this study

Or rather of any study trying to deduce from rats onto humans. And that's not to say that rats have a non-complicated society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of reddit comment I once read of someone's experience with heroin - [http://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/1rhn38/heroin_users_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/1rhn38/heroin_users_of_rdrugs_are_you_addicts/cdnfuxe)

<comment><USER12> I knew someone once who'd used heroin for a while and gave it up and he told a similar story. He said it "makes the pain go away," and I asked what he meant and he just said "all of it" and smiled. He said I'm in horrible, horrible pain and have no idea because I'd never tried heroin before. :O

Immediately made me think of this great old sci-fi story: [http://bestsciencefictionstories.com/2009/05/17/desertion- by...](http://bestsciencefictionstories.com/2009/05/17/desertion-by-clifford- d-simak/)

<comment><USER13> I remember talking to somebody in the medical industry once. I don't remember exactly what his job was, but he told me that he had done some work with opiate addicts. Supposedly, their brains themselves can get so powerfully addicted to the drugs that it actually generates phantom pain in order to force the user to get more opiates to make it go away. Every test they can run shows that the addict is actually feeling real pain, but there is absolutely nothing physically wrong to cause it. The idea that the brain can work on that level, actually causing artificial sensations to trick our conscious mind, is both amazing and scary.

<comment><USER14> Forget physical pain. Opiates make the mental pain, the pain of existence go away. Stress, business problems, finances, it's all manageable with opiates. Most people don't know just how much better human existence can be with a bit of tweaking to our chemistry.

We accept we're no longer in our ancestral environment, why can't we accept that our default chemistry is suboptimal?

<comment><USER15> Suboptimal in what way? We create, develop, improve because we are unsatisfied, not because we are happy.

<comment><USER14> I don't think that's accurate. Certainly some people work jobs just to get cash to pay bills. But plenty of people create for the fun of it.

Our brains operate suboptimal because we can not control their state. We get worried when it provides no benefit. We get sad and troubled when we shouldn't. We experience intense pain with no way to shut it off. We lose focus, even when we really want to concentrate.

Everyone should have the capability and choice of modifying their brain chemistry on demand. Your premise that people should be forced to be unnecessarily unsatisfied because some of them might go on to do great things is cruel.

<comment><USER9> >>Our brains operate suboptimal because we can not control their state.

This is backwards, our brains are _us_.

>>We lose focus, even when we really want to concentrate.

This is a microcosm of the dangers involved, in modifying brain chemistry. Consider things like hyperfocus or working straight on amphetamine leading to shit code.

>>Our brains operate suboptimal because we can not control their state.

Many of the things you want can be achieved well by a machine or somebody without emotion? Do we want this?

>>Your premise that people should be forced to be unnecessarily unsatisfied because some of them might go on to do great things is cruel.

Its hard to decouple satisfaction from drive, and willpower - we have rather blunt instruments and current drugs build real dependency problems making it almost impossible to stop. Today's drugs don't do what you are talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Or, in comic format [http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat- park/](http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/)

<comment><USER17> Holy cow, what a terrible website. Hijacks the back button, scrolling is so over-sensitive as to be useless, the left and right perform in non-intuitive ways, and the animations all have a delay before they start.

<comment><USER18> Further, scroll a few pages using your scrollwheel, then press the right key. You'd expect to continue to the right, but instead are scrolled all the way back to the left to page #2. Eesh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> From near the bottom: "Some further studies failed to reproduce the original experiment's results, but in at least one of these studies[12] both caged and "park" rats showed a decreased preference for morphine, suggesting a genetic difference"

Still, it's an intriguing result. The reviewer comments from science and nature would make interesting reading - too bad they are not public.

<comment><USER20> But also, from the immediately preceding paragraph: "Several later studies did appear to confirm its findings — for example, Bozarth, Murray and Wise in 1989, also published in Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior — but nothing came of those either."

That paints a confusing picture, so without looking at the specifics of the later studies for possible differences, I think it's hard to come to a conclusion.

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia isn't so good when it comes to drug related topics. Or rather, it is atrocious since the linked study ([http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/HOUSING.html](http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/HOUSING.html)) arrives at the completely opposite result Wikipedia claims. It's an interesting read because it also discusses why setting up a study to fairly measure voluntary drug intake among groups of mice is very hard.

<comment><USER20> After reading portions of that study, I find it hard to make meaningful comparisons across them. The cited source's two conditions seem to be fairly close in many respects IMHO:

"The first group was housed in individual stainless steel cages (18 x 25 x 18 cm) that prevented tactile and visual contact among the rats."

"The second condition consisted of rats housed in groups of 10 in a large stainless steel cage (45 x 101 x 39 cm) that permitted social contact; these rats displayed normal play behavior, dominance struggles, and social grooming."

Okay, one rat in 450 cm^2 vs 10 rats in 4545 cm^2, both in steel cages. Compared to Rat Park, which was 8.8m^2 (close to twice the size), and was specifically _not_ a steel cage[1]. Then again, I doubt this study was done specifically to confirm or refute the earlier experiment, but to test further hypotheses in the same area.

1: [http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat- park/14...](http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat- park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park)

<comment><USER2> Rats are social creatures so you can't just measure the area of their habitat divided by the number of inhabitants. The experiment setup would be analogous to humans living either in prisons or in solitary confinement.

In my previous comment, I cited another study ([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9148292?dopt=Abstract)) that also failed to replicate RP. That time the flaw of that replication was possible inadvertently introduced strain differences among the mice. It's always possible to find some variable that is different and therefore claim that the result isn't relevant. I'd imagine that's one big reason why replication efforts is so uncommon in the scientific community.

Btw, BK Alexander has had over 30 years on him to setup a new Rat Park, have it monitored by other scientists, and prove once and for all that his original results weren't just "a fluke."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Puts me in mind of a study a few years back where they had socially housed monkeys self-administer cocaine [1]. Like all primates, each group of monkeys ended up with a dominance hierarchy. The most dominant had a relatively nice life compared with the subordinates: more grooming from others, more play, more attention in general.

It turned out that the subordinate monkeys were much more susceptible to the temptations of cocaine. In contrast, the dominant ones were able to resist its allure a lot more effectively.

The researchers also looked at the neurobiology of the monkeys. Before being socially housed, they were kept in individual cages for a couple of years. They looked at the main pleasure centre of the brain and measured the level of dopamine receptors (of the D2 type) present there. These receptors are directly stimulated by naturally occurring rewards like social activity, food, sex, and so on - but also stimulant drugs like cocaine.

All the monkeys had pretty much the same D2 receptor level when they were cooped up in single cages, with little variation. But when they were socially housed, the D2 levels of the dominant monkeys rose significantly higher; this too was associated with their lessened vulnerability to cocaine.

So it seemed that social environment can have quite the effect on the neurobiology of one's reward pathway, and potential for drug abuse (as the Rat Park experiment suggested).

On reward pathways - in human stimulant addicts you also see lower D2 receptor levels than in non-addicts [2], although this is lacking a comparative reading from before they were addicted, so we don't know if that's near the state they were in when they started abusing the drug. Having said that, in non-addicts there is a natural variation in D2 receptor levels, and those with less D2 enjoy stimulants a lot more [3], just like the subordinate, lower D2 receptor monkeys.

Unlike Rat Park, however, all the above is based on stimulants, which directly affect the aforementioned receptors. Whereas morphine takes a more indirect route, with different receptor types, so it's not quite comparable. Still, interesting to think about how much we may be slaves to our neurobiology, and our social surroundings.

[1] doi:10.1038/nn798

[2] doi:10.1177/026988119901300406

[3] doi:10.1176/ajp.156.9.1440

</comment><comment><USER22> Diacetylmorphine is still used in several European countries as a front line analgesic. Other forms of morphine are widely used for pain relief on a prescribed basis all over. If it is as simple as using morphine addicts you to morphine, why are no much wider swathes of the population addicted to it?

I don't know that it's purely environment, but there's plenty of evidence out there that seems to suggest it's more than simply chemical dependency.

<comment><USER23> Really? Which countries are those?

My impression was that basically the only country that uses heroin for pain relief is the UK, and even there it is basically only used in cases where addition is not an issue, e.g. terminal cancer patients.

<comment><USER22> I might have been mistaken on several countries - I can only find sources for it's use in the UK

But it is used by first responders as well:

[http://www.sjtrem.com/content/22/S1/P15](http://www.sjtrem.com/content/22/S1/P15)

A decent amount of air ambulances polled use diamorphine. I'm pretty sure (but unfortunately having difficulty sourcing) regular ambulances have it available as well.

It's widely used as palliative care in the UK as well, as you pointed out - but it might be worth noting that's not it's sole use, and palliative care doesn't always mean they're going to be dying soon enough that addiction wouldn't be a harmful issue to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This was brought up by Johann Hari on the Bill Maher show last week: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmvFRtYuYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxmvFRtYuYQ)

(I heard that discussion discussed on the Adam Carolla Show from the 10th. I'm guessing it's a hot topic at the moment due to Hari promoting, I think, a book)

</comment><comment><USER25> I would suggest this submission from a few days ago, to anyone interested in the subject: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029301)

</comment><comment><USER26> He's lucky he didn't do this experiment in today's climate; it would've been the new "shrimp treadmills".</comment>


Software Developers Who Became Rich Thanks to MVP - <AUTHOR> https://belitsoft.com/custom-application-development-services/successful-saas-startups-mvp-lean-paying-customers-first#saas <comment><USER2> This fantasy of hitting it big with the MVP reminds me of a similar fantasy in Hollywood: making it big with a treatment.

The idea -- and this apparently worked in the 80s -- is that if you had a "high concept" script, you could sell it for millions.

A high concept script would be one where the idea was the driving force so, for instance, a man and a dog switch bodies. Or, aliens take over people's minds through drinking water, or whatever.

The values of these treatments fell over time, because the market learned to correctly price in the execution risk.

<comment><USER3> Very interesting historical example! (I did not know this about the film industry.)

But when I think of the 80's, I think of awesome concepts for films. When I think of the early 2000's I remember...nothing outstanding?

Compare for yourself:

[http://www.imdb.com/search/title/?release_date=1980,1989&tit...](http://www.imdb.com/search/title/?release_date=1980,1989&title_type=feature)

(Many of which I had in mind as I wrote the first paragraph.)

And:

[http://www.imdb.com/list/ls057556971/](http://www.imdb.com/list/ls057556971/)

I've seen many of those films: I couldn't remember a single one. Also throwaway films like Bond films are in the list.

There were between 5 and 9 Bond films in the 80s depending on how you count (for example License to Kill, For your eyes only, The living daylights, Octopussy, A view to Kill, Never say never again, The Naked Face, Bonds are Forever) not one of which made it to the first cited list above, edged out by better and more memorable stories and films.

Who is going to remember "Up in the air" in ten years?

The fact is, although there are twice as many (my first link shows 50, my second list 100), there is hardly a concept among them.

So the interesting fact you've stated about the eighties can be seen very, very clearly. The concepts from the 2000s...simply suck. Your additional information about the market history of concepts is most interesting.

\--

EDIT: in response to ajmurmann's reply below:

So I consider those worse concepts than the concepts embodied in the first list, movies from the 80s. Really look at the two lists (really) and see the strength of the concept behind them. They're worlds apart (to me.)

I realize this will be a subjective judgment. Look at the overall impression, not just one or two films.

<comment><USER2> I like that you're using actual data to back up your claim.

However, I have one issue: how come you're comparing the 80s (a whole decade spanning 10 years) with the _early_ 2000s (a span of 3 years? maybe 4?).

If you looked at the entire decade, I think you would see many fine movies.

One way to go about remembering movies is to think about the great film makers of the time: Cohen brothers, Aranofsky, Nolan, Fincher, Tarantino, Boyle.

A lot of their great work was done in the 2000s.

Edit: Do you think your 2000s list is worse than your 1980s list?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, by "early 2000s" I meant the _decade_ 2000s. I used "early 2000s" because if I just said 2000s, for me that could include 2011, 2012, etc. You are right I didn't use standard usage.

The second list is from 2000-2009, so the decade in question.

Basically, as you look at the list of _concepts_ 2000-2009, to me those concepts are objectively weaker than the first list of movie concepts. This is just my personal opinion.

<comment><USER2> Ah, I see what you mean. It is not easy to dispute matters of taste, but @ajmurmann has a good point in their reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like my definition of MVP is different. When did MVP become "marketing landing page and mocks"?

I'm not discounting the strategy. I think getting the idea in front of eyeballs to see if it is worthwhile is great. I'd even recommend it. I just don't think it is an MVP. You don't have a viable product yet if customers can't buy it.

I'm just curious if this definition is common.

My definition is: a product that has the minimum set of features implemented possible in order for people to be able to use it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know all of these wonderful gentlemen and their businesses... how are you defining "rich"? In terms of personal fulfillment? At $500K - $1.1M in MRR per month, nobody is getting rich here (just yet).

<comment><USER6> Are you kidding?

<comment><USER5> Are you? Do you know anything about how large their teams are and what their total salaries run per month? The OP also makes the assumption that the CEOs are taking money out of the business (beyond salaries)... which is not how you build an early-stage SaaS business.

<comment><USER6> If you have 1 million in revenue per month and you can't make good money from that then you are not running a real business in my view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is not a joke. Counterexample: another one did not use MVP (By the way, he was not a developer) and lost $50, 000!</comment>


A New Era Of Search Is About The Answers, Not Just The Links - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/07/search-answers-not-just-links/

<comment><USER2> _In new iterations of search, you will type the name of that restaurant and be provided with its address and map, a view of its menu, the option to reserve then and there via OpenTable, see its ranking on Yelp, CitySearch, Zagat—along with photos, tweets, what your friends have said about it in your private social networks, and a quick and simple way to compare it with other similar restaurants._

I guess he hasn't noticed that Google has these things today. Of course homepage, address, phone number, and star rating are there, but there's a lot more too. Map? Check. Hours? Check. Directions? Check. Reviews from Yelp, CitySearch, etc? Check. Tweets from your friends? Check. That's all right on the results page, and of course with instant search you don't even have to press enter to see it. Photos, related places, and links to reservations on OpenTable are one click away on the place page.

</comment><comment><USER3> In some ways nothing new here. For example, right now you can type in pi into Google, and Google will provide its value above the search results.

I doubt that the page of links will go away anytime soon. For restaurant addresses and other highly focused searches that rely on public information, that works. However, content creators will fight you mightily if you as a search engine want to use their copyrighted content to generate your own content. What's in it for them, if you provide the answer to the customer and take them out of the loop?

And this now implies that you become more than a traditional search company, you become a content company. That's no easy feat either.

</comment><comment><USER4> You mean, maybe soon someone is going to rebrand their search as a _Decision Engine_?

</comment><comment><USER5> A phrase may represent multiple questions, and a question may have multiple answers.

It's definitely much better to provide links relevant to the phrase for users to identity the right answer, instead of giving an irrelevant one.</comment>


Show HN: Komiser – Reduce AWS and GCP Cost - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mlabouardy/komiser#1 <comment><AUTHOR> Azure support will be released next week</comment>


RoboCop is real at the Stanford Shopping Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/20/robocop-robot-mall-security-guard-palo-alto-california <comment><USER2> Gathering license plate info? "Intercepting" cell phone pings?

On it's own, meh, but combined with this...

>> All the information is streamed to Knightscope's cloud software and then streamed back either to the customer's control center, or in some cases to a mobile app held by a human security guard.

Am I the only one that feels like this is a bit of a datagrab by this Knightscope company? If there's an option for purchasers to have the data streamed directly to their servers then my concern is lessened, but I'm increasingly turned off by the relentless vacuuming up of data that is becoming so prevalent in new devices these days.

<comment><USER3> Anecdata: At least the one in stanford mall, rolls around in between buildings and is no where near any parking or streets. I doubt it captures many license plates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I noticed a few of these there occasionally over the last year, but starting two weeks ago it looks like they are a permanent presence. They roll into their own charging stations.

It's an interesting concept. I'm not sure how much I like it. On the one hand, it's a great reference if anything bad ever happens. On the other hand, while a mall is a public place you still don't expect to be tracked to the level of detail that such a device actually does. I know a handful of people that simply won't go there anymore.

Personally, the cell phone tracking bugs me. I do not expect that my cell signals are tracked by anyone but the phone company. This kind of technology makes me think about dropping my cell altogether. Sure it's nice to have one, but honestly I can easily get by without having one constantly attached to me. I'm not that important that people need to contact me wherever I am.

I also feel negatively about mass facial recognition. I _almost_ understand for large events, but I'm simply not that afraid of terrorism. If we start talking about malls doing it I would just rather not be on camera. If private industry doesn't self-regulate in this regard, people will push the government for privacy and that could kill any budding businesses. If I were an investor I would simply stay away from that kind of technology.

<comment><USER5> >but I'm simply not that afraid of terrorism.

What it really boils down to is that you have a .00000001% chance of being affected by terrorism, but a 100% chance of being affected by strongarm "responses to terrorism". The sad fact is that most of our population is cowardly and/or apathetic enough to simply accept our ever growing loss of privacy and freedom without objection (or in many cases, notice).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "infra-red cameras; microphones ... detection systems that can intercept the pings of mobile phone devices, and license-plate reading software that can process 300 license plates every minute"

a surveillance drone for mall-cops. just great /s

</comment><comment><USER7> What does this thing actually _do_ besides roll around and look impressive? Can it answer questions? Is it sometimes a remote presence device, so people can talk to a human? This seems closer to Japanese marketing robots than an actual security function.

There have been "robot guards" before, but they're for empty buildings, checking to see that they're empty and not being robbed. That's useful, since the job is utterly boring and better done by hardware. The Army was trying out a few for guarding their storage buildings about a decade ago.

</comment><comment><USER8> At $7/hr to rent it, security guards should start thinking about pivoting career.

There was an OECD opinion piece recently where they said on balance automation would not destroy jobs. I don't believe it. It will begin by eating these low skills jobs away and then eat its way upwards.

<comment><USER9> A real security guard does more than this robot, though. Especially in case of trouble.

<comment><USER10> A real rent-a-cop calls the real cops if there is any trouble (which the robot can certainly do). They are a deterrent, not enforcers.

<comment><USER11> Security guards can give CPR.

<comment><USER9> That, and they have actually a pretty complete neural network with years of training to adapt to a bunch of circumstances.

<comment><USER12> Many of them, not so much

<comment><USER9> No, you are thinking about cops maybe?

<comment><USER13> So maybe it'd be better if security guards could call enforcer robots if shit hits the fan?

<comment><USER9> At least there would be more chance this way that the procedure is followed before using firearms.

<comment><USER11> As long as there's no regression with a new release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How long before kids start pranking by dropping blankets on top of them?

<comment><USER15> :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is really eye-opening on where we are in society compared to sci-fi.

We're here boys, and girls, we've finally made it!

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm probably missing something obvious here, but is there a reason the article mentions this is regards to the Sandy Hook shooting incident? Because there aren't exactly any features here that would have helped much in preventing it, unless you think detecting the shooter's car by the numberplate is somehow going to have made a major difference.

If they really wanted to stop things like school shootings and terrorist attacks, then the robot needs to actually be armed in some way, since no one is going to take this thing as some sort of deterrent.

Really, it seems mostly useful as a sort of tourist attraction rather than anything more, since it's apparently really popular with the people visiting the mall.

</comment><comment><USER18> I work a few buildings down from Knightscope. Walking to lunch my co-workers and I were talking about how they would make a perfect bit on Silicon Valley. They're just bumbling around the parking lot continually, looking both hilarious and vaguely creepy.

</comment><comment><USER19> So tempted to run a Kickstarter and get one of these for Detroit. Detroit is getting the RoboCop statue and it's only fair they get one of these to give the cops a little help.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it smart enough not to scan a picture of a license plate?

</comment><comment><USER21> Needs to look like a Dalek or other recognizable robot and people will blithely ignore the invasions of privacy and whatnot.

<comment><USER17> I think designing it after a known cyborg killing machine like a Dalek would make the feeling worse rather than better. Especially in the UK.

That said, a design based on a famous robot or cyborg would be a pretty interesting way to make one of these things fit in at a sci-fi convention or something. It'd at least help theme the event slightly more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's fucked up.

</comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of the security drones in psychopass.

</comment><comment><USER24> Looks like those police bots in psycho pass

</comment><comment><USER25> You think it's cute now...</comment>