The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html <comment><USER2> World War II never fails to horrify me.

The holocaust is only one part of it - the Japanese were _brutal_ in unimaginable ways as well.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre>

They killed, raped, tortured, and experimented on living _humans_ (the first time I found out what a vivisection was, I felt my stomach churn). It takes a lot of effort to make an atomic bomb seem _humane_ , and somehow World War II manages to do it.

<comment><USER3> That feeling is part of the problem. It's interesting how we humans find easier to think in terms of "us" and "them" rather than just condemn both.

I can understand the argument that dropping the bombs made japan surrender more quickly, and thus saved a lot of american soldier's lives.

Most of the people who died in the hiroshima and nagasaki were only responsible of being victims of an oppressing government and state ideology.

Furthermore there were a lot of prisoners who died as well, for example 20000 korean prisoners.

Not sure though if most of the people would find ethically acceptable to actively murder 250000 random people in order save some from cruelties.

I'm sure there can be an endless discussion about this. However, I just wanted to note how easy is overlook completely this when you think in terms of "them".

The bomb wasn't dropped on the torturers, the rapists, which in many cases were not held responsible for the crimes they committed.

I know that it sounds obvious, but this way of thinking, is the one of the reasons all this atrocities are allowed to start in the first place. By thinking of other people as inherently different from you, they can be thought of as inferior and thus you feel exempted of feeling wrong about the stuff that's being done to them.

Humanity has very long history of this behavior, actually it was more common than not (slavery etc). The thing that's peculiar about the WWII is the systematic way, the unstoppable industrial approach and the way that cold heartless "science" gave apparent purpose for nightmares to come true.

WWII helped shape the very notion of evil in our age, it's style and motivation.

<comment><USER2> > The bomb wasn't dropped on the torturers, the rapists, which in many cases > were not held responsible for the crimes they committed.

This is the tricky part. I don't remember exact figures, but wasn't Truman's dilemma a choice between invading Japan or dropping the bombs? I don't really see a viable third option, and I don't remember reading about one either. The tragedy is that the Japanese were not given enough time to surrender after the first bomb was dropped.

Also, the United States has also done some terrible things "in the name of democracy," but I still think there is a difference in magnitude between installing a dictator in a foreign country and encouraging the systematic murder and rape of civilians.

The problem is that these things are on a spectrum - is it not possible to condemn both while admitting that one alternative was better? I obviously don't want anyone to use nuclear weapons, but how should we react when it is the option that results in the least amount of suffering?

And as far as saying "them" -- this was out of convenience. It is a pronoun, after all, and I was merely trying to say that elegant solutions are quite hard to find when you're dealing with ugly problems. Sometimes "less ugly" is all you can find.

<comment><USER4> Lest you forget, while installing dictators and facilitating genocide is bad enough, the US also oppressed civilians during the time. Mississippi, for instance, was a police state with apartheid a good 20 years after the end of the war. Americans with Japanese heritage were forcibly removed and put in concentration camps.

Suffice to say, your moral high ground is not as clear cut to me, especially when you talk about justifying the atom bomb.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying the US was always right - I'm saying that having the US win was a better outcome than the other alternatives. Would you agree with that?

And I'm not justifying use of the atomic bomb in every scenario, or even saying that it was the best possible outcome, but out of the options available to Truman, it appears to be the one that would have resulted in the least amount of suffering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is still pretty shocking to realize how lucky I am to be alive. My grandfather was captured by Germans, sent to prison in Germany, _escaped_ from Germany, was re-captured in Warsaw, sent to a prison which then forwarded him to Auschwitz. Then for the next 3 years he was kept there, sent on to Mauthausen, and then to Gusen until he was liberated by Americans in 1945.

The facts that make it even stranger -- he was not Jewish and was born in Massachusetts in 1916. He apparently told them left and right he was a US citizen and they just ignored him.

Talk about beating the odds.

<comment><USER6> First congratulations on beating the odds :)

 _he was not Jewish and was born in Massachusetts in 1916. He apparently told them left and right he was a US citizen_

Could he prove that he was an American or maybe Americans weren't that popular by then either?

<comment><USER5> He was arrested while using a fake ID to evade the police from his first capture and that ID had a fake first name and birthplace, so perhaps that is the reason. (I never met him -- he died before I was born)

Passports were not required back when he left the US, so I doubt he had proof handy and even if he did it was probably a fine line. Showing proof he was American could have made him a target instead of helping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The scale of this is absolutely shocking. How did they even manage in just 12 years to set up 30,000 slave labor camps, 980 concentration camps, 1,000 prisoner of war camps, 500 brothels with sex slaves and "thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm ...".

They must have really wanted it as a society and hundreds of thousands must have been involved, one way or another. That's not the work of just a few crazy fanatics.

<comment><USER8> I would say that those same people, those that were part of the machine, wouldn't share the same views if they were part of society today.

If anything I think it shows peoples ability to see circumstances as normal (even if they are horribly out of whack with morals from other times) if it appears to be the prevailing wisdom of the group at the time.

I would like to think though that it was pretty much the last possible time that this could happen in history on such a large scale. Today we still have outliers like north korea but in general the world is too connected for the same effect to happen.

<comment><USER9> Respectively, that attitude is why these horrific events continue to happen. Writing them off as one-off events, outliers, which won't happen again in the modern world only serves to relieve our conscious for doing nothing to stop them. They happen frequently and will happen again. Internet or no internet.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot>

<comment><USER10> The current forced labor camps in North Korea looks to be indistinguishable from how the nazi forced labor camps worked, except on a single nation scale.

The sad part is that there are no clear stop to it in any time soon. It seems that as long it is a powerful enough nation/allied nation, they can do what ever crimes they like. Only once it is all over will people be look back and wonder why they let it happen.

<comment><USER11> Going to war with NK right now, even if China withdrew support, would cause even more suffering to both NK people and SK/foreign people than we have now. It's really lose/lose -- the best hope is isolation and clear amnesty/reconstruction on offer, to encourage domestic political change.

Even somehow encouraging revolution could be dangerous, as long as the military stays intact, since one way to deal with a domestic problem is to start a foreign war against (what most of the population believe) is a serious adversary.

My evolving theory of intervention is that any militarily opposed action which can't be accomplished by a single brigade or smaller force in less than 3 months will bring more harm than good, and should only be executed in defense with all other options exhausted. Liberating the people of Equatorial Guinea or ending the MEND conflict (or destroying AQ presence in Afghanistan in 2001) probably would be a net win for humanity (and each could be accomplished by a very small force, maybe 500 + support); NK is at the extreme other end of the scale with occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I guess I'm just willing to accept the holocaust without questioning the evil involved -- a small kernel of evil, and then lots of self-reinforcing fear and self interest, could lead a population of some evil and some just weak people to do horrible things. The banality of evil and all. It's less bad than otherwise because the Nazis were utterly destroyed; yes, they were horrible almost beyond consideration, but they're gone now, so there isn't as much of an ongoing concern there.

But what amazes me and makes me feel the most shame about humanity is how the US and other western nations acted w.r.t. immigration and refugees during the pre-war period, and then how the victors acted after the war (large numbers of German civilians and non-nazi German POWs died after the war, too, and in the USSR, there were POWs in "prison" for a decade after). And the US Japanese- American internment, etc. Very little was said about any of this until the 1980s.

<comment><USER12> I thought after the war the victors (at least England and the US) treated the refugees and immigrants quite well. Admittedly not as well as their own troops in the area but humanely. I know France and the USSR treated the refugees very harshly though.

<comment><USER11> I don't know how much of it was limited resources vs. punitive, but even the US and UK (who were the best of the victors) allowed hundreds of thousands (potentially millions) to die of starvation and disease. But life for UK civilians in the immediate post-war period was also not very good.

The US is the country which probably retained the most industrial/agricultural capacity and could have done more.

<comment><USER12> Yeah from my understanding everyone was on rations in Europe and the civillians got the short end as far as quantity and quality goes. That is a good point though, I wonder if the lack of food was due to long supplie lines and a decrease in production in the US or if it just wasn't prioritized high enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are 2 major problems I have with world war II stories (the article tackles the first one extremely well) ... First of all, most Holocaust memorial articles etc. in general just focus on jews, however, there were other people also equally affected by it (sinti and roma, homosexuals, political left etc.). They all were systematically identified and killed with the knowledge and help of "normal" people in Germany.

Why does the US not focus on their own wrongs in history? I'm German and as a consequence as adolescent I was "forced" every year during high school to hear about Nazi Germany (in German and History courses). This is very important and shaped me as an individual and a lot of my friends. So don't get me wrong, it is important to remember and it's important to understand what happend (and to realize that it's easy to do/support similar ideologies .. most of the German people at the time were no monsters and had also support from people all over the world, who believed that Hitler was needed against Communist Russia ... This is sad to hear yet important. Also a lot of the German scientists who did abysmal things to Humans continued working for the US after the war). I believe the lessons we should draw from Nazi Germany in World War II is that it is very easy for us (for everybody) to accept inhuman behavior, racism and genocide :(

Maybe as German, I don't have the right to say that ... yet,I find it hypocrite to hear from US researchers, French, Austrians or Swiss how much we Germans did do wrong ... When part of the Austrians/French/US actively supported it and some Swiss took the money and gold from Nazi Germany and closed the borders for the victims. This is by no means meant as a justification of the crimes towards humanity my ancestors did, it's important to remember. everybody should visit Dachau or a similar concentration camp and remember not what cruelty we Germans were capable of but what cruelty we as human race are capable of.

*edit: typos

<comment><USER14> I particularly took notice of this:

>Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

>"You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps," he said. "They were everywhere."

We all know that the allies were almost oblivious to these concentration camps during the war.[1] I would be surprised to learn that the allies did not have agents, spies or informants stationed in Germany during the war. How did these people also fail to notice what - according to Dr Dean - would have been obvious?

Even 40'000+ sites takes few people to pull off in a country of over 50 millions. It was a very different time, and as the parent correctly points out, people accepted genocide, torture and blatant racism. Not just in Germany, but everywhere.

A lot of people seem to think that it is something _inherently German_ that made the Holocaust so terrible, but truth be, any other country could have fallen victim to the same propaganda had their situation been similar.

That being said, I still find the Second World War rather uninteresting.

[1] Although, as their progressing through German held Europe moved forward, the true picture began to emerge.

<comment><USER15> > _A lot of people seem to think that it is something inherently German that > made the Holocaust so terrible, but truth be, any other country could have > fallen victim to the same propaganda had their situation been similar._

If not "any other country", surely, "a lot of similarly thinking countries".

Belgium, France and Britain for example, also committed terrible atrocities and countless murders and deaths in their colonies at the same time (and even after world war 2).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A genuine question, please don't take it as an attack, I have some remote jewish blood in my veins, but I have to ask:

What was so special in the Holocaust? I mean there were a lot of similarly dark points in history, both in terms of numbers (people killed) and cruelty, but still, it seems we always only care about the Holocaust (or at least it overshadows everything else).

I think we should remember other events too, more frequently.

<comment><USER17> I am not an expert of Holocaust scholarship. But the Holocaust is unprecedented in many ways.

Germany was a normal Western state—the Weimar Republic was in many ways at the forefront of liberalism and governance. It is unprecedented that by legal and popular politics, Germans created the political and lethal machinery to victimize so many other Germans.

The Holocaust was a civil war where innocents were murdered or forced into slavery.

Hitler was a fool. Germans were among the best educated in the world, but Hitler personally was without precedent Europe's worst governor. Nevermind the betrayal of his own people; his economy relied unsustainably on slavery, his theories were bunk, his cowardice was monumental... He benefited from the long-term gains of the Weimar Republic's governance while simultaneously killing or exiling Germany's greatest asset, its intellectuals.

The Holocaust was a vehicle of this, Hitler's personal madness, unlike any other genocide.

Collaboration, most of all, defines the Holocaust. Hitler found collaborators throughout the whole world, from Japan to Moscow. The Soviet Union, itself the most victimized by the war, was for five years allied with Germany. There were Poles who eagerly betrayed their neighbors. Hungarian fascists were condemning civilians to death not months before the end of the war. The French collaborated in the Holocaust. It is unprecedented that anti-Semitism was so pervasive as to infect all of Europe.

The Holocaust showed that Western civilization, not just Hitler's Germany, was eager to execute unprecedented crimes against humanity.

These are but a few ways the Holocaust is distinct from other genocides, from the experience of American slavery, from even North Korean concentration camps and Soviet gulags. It is not about numbers. It is about what our civilization turned out to be capable of.

<comment><USER18> >The Holocaust showed that Western civilization, not just Hitler's Germany, was eager to execute unprecedented crimes against humanity.

Western governments did nothing about Hitler's rise, but to equate that with Western civilization as a whole eagerly executing these crimes seems a bit of a stretch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "History in Images"[0] is a gold mine of photographs and research into some atrocities committed during WW2. I highly encourage you to view the pictures. The accompanying articles are extravagant, but many of the facts, anecdotes, and statistics are from somewhat credible sources ([1], [2]).

One quote, describing the Red Army occupation of East Berlin: _"In one notorious instance, Red Army soldiers entered the maternity hospital at Haus Dehlem and raped pregnant women, women who had just given birth, and women in the process of giving birth."_ [3]

[0]: <http://historyimages.blogspot.com/> (WARNING: Graphic images, and poor formatting)

[1]: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465003389>

[2]: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/may/01/news.features11>

[3]: [http://historyimages.blogspot.com/2011/10/mass-rape-of- germa...](http://historyimages.blogspot.com/2011/10/mass-rape-of-german-women- when-germany.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> I know you will recoil in horror, you won't believe me, you will fling hate at me. But my duty as a hacker and a person who prides intellectual curiosity above everything: THE HOLOCAUST DID NOT HAPPEN. It's a propaganda lie with no substantiated evidence to defame White European people. To extract monies for Israelites and to justify the ethnic cleansing and race replacement of Whites in Europe and western countries through the "asylum industry".

<comment><USER21> Excuse me for stating the obvious but [citation needed].

Apologies to good HNers for feeding the troll here, but I've always been curious about how holocaust deniers could have the balls to carry through with their opinions despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

<comment><USER22> One must also be open to the possibility that due to the Jews' disproportionately large influence on the media - in that they are more commonly know as to "control the media", that said Jews would propagate lies to forward their own agendas.

I would argue that the holocaust has afforded the Jews enough to warrant motive.

To say "it did not happen", though, I wouldn't take such a stance. I personally would dispute its scope, greatly, in regard to the specific slaughter of Jews, and more relevantly, the constant reminder (read: disproportionately, as mentioned by other commenters) to sympathize with them.

Also, I'm with you on the _[citation needed]_. I've too little interest to contribute, myself.</comment></comment></comment>


5 Tips for Writing a Good Job Pitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.wamda.com/2013/03/5-tips-for-writing-a-good-job-pitch

<comment><USER2> I see these e-mails all the time.</comment>


Facebook prototypes tool to show how many minutes you spend on it - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/22/your-time-on-facebook/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is what we revealed a couple of months ago on hackernews [https://saleemkce.github.io/timeonsite](https://saleemkce.github.io/timeonsite) and the web analytics tool based on it. [https://medium.com/swlh/introducing- time-on-site-analytics-f...](https://medium.com/swlh/introducing-time-on-site- analytics-for-businesses-and-high-end-applications-be4943fc320d)

<comment><USER2> > _It may take from 1 week to 10 days for us to generate and send your licence > key. But you could start using the software from the moment you made the > purchase._

Sorry, that's a guaranteed dealbreaker.

<comment><USER3> It's an odd way of selling software in 2018. I sell a product written for developers and in JavaScript, too--and I effectively sell access to an NPM registry, I don't fearmonger at people like "it's illegal!"; practically there's no serious way for a developer to get even business-level pirates to actually respond. Instead, I don't _give_ people access to Pro-tier features and I open-source the application because it's still useful to people even without those Pro-tier features, rather than freeloading on GitHub's servers?

(Also, the turnaround time is under 24 hours, rather than a week...and that's just because I haven't yet wired up a webhook to create a user in my SSO solution yet.)

But that relies on actual features and not a timer with some local storage. $38 is too expensive for that given the time a developer would have to spend vetting the software to make sure it's any good rather than writing functionally similar code that syncs with existing infrastructure rather than having some separate dashboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> "$38 is too expensive for that given the time a developer would have to spend vetting the software". If so, do you point out a web tracker that captures time on site metric (ignores inactive tab time, multi-tab precise time computing, both real-time and offline time-on-site data feed and so on) so effectively that provides all these great features along with free timeonsite analytics tool [https://github.com/saleemkce/timeonsite_analytics](https://github.com/saleemkce/timeonsite_analytics). Given all these critical metrics, $38 is not a big cost/per year for a company that likes to take intelligent decisions out of product usage & user behaviour. That's why big companies like Facebook and Instagram invest time on building this time metrics feature.

<comment><USER3> Facebook and Instagram spend time building this stuff _because buying it off- the-rack would cost more_. That tends to be true for a lot of stuff at Facebook scale, but that's also true for much smaller companies that need (note: not "think they need") the feature, too. It's neither complicated nor complex as a feature--the hard part, and the meaningful part, is contextualizing that timer with regards to the application and the decisions being made with that application. Your "free" analytics tool actually costs them a lot of money (because developer time _isn 't_ free) and there's an inflection point at which building a tool, bringing the knowledge and ability to maintain it in-house, makes a lot more sense than buying.

It's not that the feature isn't good, or the feature isn't worth $38 in a vacuum. It's that that $38 buys _negative value_ for teams working on products that would derive value from the feature. You're trying to sidestep an existing metrics ingest pipeline and existing analytics tools. But the people who have metrics don't want you to sidestep it and the people who don't aren't the people who would materially benefit from this feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> > "It's that that $38 buys negative value for teams working on products that > would derive value from the feature. You're trying to sidestep an existing > metrics ingest pipeline and existing analytics tools."

How do you say that it buys negative value? Additionally, We're not trying to sidestep an existing metrics; yes, this metrics is already available but with poor accuracy and implementation issues. Check the numerous issues with Google Analytics here: [https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN777IN782&ei=Gb...](https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBD_enIN777IN782&ei=GbIzW7O0KIWuvwS5oq24DQ&q=session+duration+issues+in++google+analytics&oq=session+duration+issues+in++google+analytics&gs_l=psy- ab.3...45679.51221.0.515126.96.36.199.0.0.0.270.2430.1j14j2.17.0....0...1.1.64.psy- ab..11.11.1686...0j0i7i30k1j0i13k1j0i8i7i30k1j0i30k1j0i7i5i30k1j0i5i30k1j0i8i30k1.0.pJ- nXmMuHbI) So, we try to fix & improve the well-known metrics so that our products benefit straight away with accuracy and metrics-reliability.

#analytics #GA #timeonsite

<comment><USER3> Oh. Okay. Where's your Influx backend? Where's your CloudWatch Metrics backend? How do I get your measurements in Graphite? Is it going to take longer to write it myself to use those pipelines? If it takes more work to hammer what you have into the metrics tooling and pipelines everybody who actually needs this product already has, _you present negative value_.

Jimbo's PHP Site doesn't need this, they can't materially act on the information it provides and don't know how to read it meaningfully anyway. The companies that benefit from this are already actively metrics-oriented. And you are sidestepping existing metrics _pipelines_. It's easier to build over the fairly trivial feature set you present and integrate it with the kinds of monitoring you get out of the box with AWS et al. than to bend somebody else's questionable code--and don't take that personally, everyone who isn't me's code is questionable until proven otherwise, but your "you need a license for this code that talks to a webservice you have to host and puts it into a MySQL database you _also_ have to host" stuff sure doesn't help--into acting right.

And, uh. You should really, really stop with the hashtags nonsense. Don't be gross.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Intrigued to see Facebook following Apple and Google's footsteps[0] in deploying a tool for its users to keep track of their application/website usage time.

Wonder how much of an impact this tool will have in bringing more internet-IRL balance to millions glued to their screen, given that this move is a complete 180º from Facebook core business model.

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17426922/apple-digital- hea...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/5/17426922/apple-digital-health-vs- google-wellbeing-time-well-spent-wwdc-2018)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, you are right. This data is formidable. [https://medium.com/swlh/introducing-time-on-site- analytics-f...](https://medium.com/swlh/introducing-time-on-site-analytics- for-businesses-and-high-end-applications-be4943fc320d) Look at the post images(time metrics) by various measures, I wrote about time-on-site metrics on just 100K records in Mysql DB. The results were curious and compelling. Imagine what if we apply this solution over 10M, 100M, 1B or more records. It's definitely worth finding analytics and usage patterns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like a tobacco company making a tool that tells you how many cigarettes you smoke per day, and the results are displayed on the pack of cigarettes.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, sometimes you don't need real-time data. Offline works well in many cases to help you take decisions consciously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> All this is ridiculously silly compared to making it a useful site in the first place, notably by removing ads and using a chronological timeline. To make myself a broken record, I would certainly pay for such a useful social network. Facebook is not that, and had shown little inclination in providing this value to their users.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, useful site needs analytics/precise metrics to make it even better and user-focused, right?</comment></comment>


The Great Big Lil B NYU Lecture Cheat Sheet - <AUTHOR> http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/47624/the-great-big-lil-b-nyu-lecture-cheat-sheet

<comment><AUTHOR> So much life and startup game here its unbelievable.</comment>


The Nutt Sack Affair - <AUTHOR> http://www.badscience.net/2009/11/the-nutt-sack-affair-part-493/

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't give enough information to tell what's going on or even to Google for the context.

<comment><USER3> It's a big story currently in the UK so this article doesn't try to cover it all just one minor element. Namely, that politicians have been claiming that even if they take advice from scientists, then the politicians are still the experts in how people will react to changes in legislation. Which is clearly false.

The basics details of the actual story are here:

[http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Political_fallout_from_the_sacki...](http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Political_fallout_from_the_sacking_of_Professor_David_Nutt_gathers_momentum)

and here:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Government_positions>

<comment><USER4> ... and not really related to HN IMHO.</comment></comment></comment>


US sees 99.9% drop in flu cases after coronavirus lockdowns - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm <comment><USER2> The cited CDC weekly report has a graph that compares weekly ILI (influenza- like illnesses) cases per week for each of the last few flu seasons. For the same time period (calendar week), influenza cases are roughly the same for 2020 as in past years, according to the chart. I don't see what the OP is referring to.

CDC do note that they are going to change how this is being reported in the coming weeks to include COVID. This could cause confusion when tracking both COVID and regular ol' flu when the flu season cranks up...hope they make things better than worse.

</comment><comment> just-juan-post What they are saying makes no sense. The UK tried this exact same things a few weeks ago and a handful of sane people called them out on it.

So what then - Coronavirus somehow eliminated the flu, killed it perhaps? Did the flu simply decide to disappear? Why did the flu disappear now? Has this ever happened before?

I'd really like to hear an explanation.

<comment><USER3> It makes sense that social distancing works for the flu and other diseases, too. See [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01538-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01538-8)</comment></comment>


Game Changing Android Application - <AUTHOR> http://www.enkin.net/ If Android manages to clear the porting obstacles that await it as it's distributed over more than one reference device, and if it manages to deliver a high bar of quality (at least as high as the SDK has shown so far), it could really change the way we live/work.  Those are some big ifs ... but some exciting ones nonetheless. <comment><USER2> Very cool. The "life mode" is the incredible part. Here's a thought about where this could go: Imagine if multiple Android users could have their locations published live to the other devices. You could look through the life view screen and track the location of your contacts through walls or other obstructions.

(Edit: I saw the end of the video and it looks like they're already one step ahead of me with the live location broadcasting).

Parents who want to keep track of their children at Disneyland could spot them through a crowd of people without calling them and getting them to describe where they are. Maybe this could be useful in search and rescue missions. The ELT (Emergency Location Transmitter) on downed aircraft could be equipped to broadcast in this way, to make it easier for teams trying to find the aircraft.

Something about this reminds me of FPS video games, where the "Objective" is marked on your screen so that you can see where you need to go even though it happens to be on the other side of the map.

<comment><USER3> Could this make real life FPS? I haven't read the article, but I've been trying to think of a feasible way to make a real life multiplayer FPS that also virtual players could interact with. I think that'd be pretty sweet!

<comment><USER2> It's really just the video from what I saw. The demonstration looked a little choppy but as it progressed and smoothed out I could definitely see a game being created out of this (at least it's feasible).

I doubt you would want to do this on your phone, but similar technology on a smaller scale used in a laser tag or paint ball game would be really interesting. You could set objectives and see where your team is at, and then mark locations for other team members (meet me at waypoint X).

I'm sure the military is already way ahead of us on this, but the live camera view is new to me.

<comment><USER3> I have read about special forces training with something like this. It'd be really cool though if it can be replicated with cheap off the shelf tech.

Do you know how hackable cellphone transmitters and receivers tends to be? I really see the cellphone as the portal into a virtual/physical life hybrid. If there was a cheap, popular cellphone with hackable hardware, then this could be a reality right now. If it was also the hub for a personal network, then you could plug all sorts of interesting gadgets into the mix.

<comment><USER2> I know that phones tend to be very hackable, I just don't think that people would use them (especially if they're priced anywhere near comparable smartphones/iphones) for games where they could break.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting technology.

Side note those two are the definition of geeks. But if that tech works out they will be some wealthy geeks.

<comment><USER5> Or the definition of the _stereotype_ of a geek... I like to think not every geek is like them... and me ;P

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's cool, but lets keep a few things in mind:

1) When navigating a 2d plane, or looking for things in a 2d plane, an overhead view is just as practical. Although you could argue this lets you see data points farther ahead of you, a good overhead view implementation could do the same thing.

2) This would be nice viewing differences in elevation. Finding your car in a parking garage for instance. However, GPS has an elevation error rate about 3 times larger than its horizontal rate. (Also most gps's don't work well in things like parking garages). This means you'll only be able to detect the elevation of something within ~30 meters on most phones.

Mostly I see this being fun, but not anymore useful than other, more traditional ways of looking at maps. It might prove helpful to people with exceptionally poor spacial thinking (if thats the term you use to describe people who can't read maps, I'm not sure).

<comment><USER7> If you're good at getting your bearings, yes. But having witnessed myself and others struggle to figure out "wait, which way is which according to this map?" for a little bit before getting our internal compass aligned with the map's orientation, it would be much simpler to literally _point your camera at something_ and have it tell you what's in that direction. Depending on how precise the tags are, they would also be useful just to provide information about various interesting objects in the area, particularly if you can see tags that everyone puts on real-world objects.

<comment><USER8> Yes! This is exactly why the live view is so useful.

I did a land nav course in the Marine Corps; we had compasses we used to sight landmarks so we could triangular our location. To do this you held up the compass and looked through a slit. I'd call that analog navigation: The live view of Enkin is the same concept in digital form.

<comment><USER9> Sailors do it that way too, its called a hockey puck compass, you site through it at a landmark and triangulate your position on a chart after you get a few bearings on a few different spots. Now most people just use GPS but the idea is the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow. And who said you can't do great things with java.

<comment><USER11> Java was the Ruby of its day (even though they're almost the same age!).

<comment><USER10> yes I was being tongue in cheek, forgot the smiley.

I thought ruby is quite a bit older.

<comment><USER11> Hey mn,

Java used to be "Oak," and according to our good friend Wikipedia it was created in "June 1991." I thought it was later but guess not. It had the whole set-top box history, and would eventually run our fridges and toasters in the 21st century.

Seriously though, do you remember when Java was released? It was fun! And definitely considered the "hip" language at the time, much like Ruby is now.

I think it's interesting that so many in the Java camp have jumped ship to Ruby, because what is said about Ruby now, was said about Java then.

But they're still nearly the same age, so the ten-year spread in their respective heydays is sort of amusing. It's like Roger Moore supplanting Connery as Bond ten years later, despite the fact he's older. ;)

<comment><USER10> I didn't know that about Roger Moore - well you learn something every day ;)

I read the book by patrick naughton on the history of Oak etc, quite an interesting read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I hope the guys who made the video get to check out labs.live.com/photosynth/

Photosynth would allow Androids screen to display actual pictures of the situation when zooming in using the satellite view (not live view). The various people in live view could also add images to locations not already documented by photosyth's database.

Someday,

D T

</comment><comment><USER13> You can read interview with them:

<http://tinyurl.com/4p4tg2>

In other note: notice the robotic dinosaur in middle bottom of the video (30sec)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is bloody AWESOME! Although they could develop the application for the iPhone right now, since it has all the required hardware inside. I'm worried about GPS accuracy although.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of that scene from Fight Club where he's in the condo with the little IKEA names and prices floating next to the furniture and accessories in the room.

</comment><comment><USER16> this is pretty cool, but I remember seeing something very similar to this being demoed in Japan about 8 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very cool, but I wonder how usability will be impacted when the number of tagged things increases a lot.

</comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me of Metroid Prime.

</comment><comment><USER19> mmm.. annotated reality

Well I'm sold, time to get a tricorder.</comment>


Ask HN: Is technical recruiting broken? - <AUTHOR>

Context ... about to quit my job. Likely for entrepreneurship. On a lark, I emailed a few companies off of the Feb Who's Hiring thread on HN. Since I was interviewing anyways, I also applied to a few large corp jobs to see what is out there.
Pretty much every place I spoke to, I had 1-2 chats with a recruiter before I got to a phone screen. Did 2 phone screens each at 3 companies. Company 1 has gone mum. Company 2 wanted to fly me out (I declined) and Company 3 wants to do a third screening interview.
And those were the good ones. Two companies asked me to do multi-hour "homework assignments" as part of their screen. I declined those right away.
In the old days, I've gotten jobs with 30 minute conversations. Is that pretty much gone now? Do people take a month off of work when they need to find a new gig? <comment><USER2> Yes, it's broken.

It's an employers market and each employer has ridiculous demands. They expect homework, code tests and phone interviews with various team members. All that just to get your foot in the door. They don't value your time or efforts. You don't get any respect at any point. And if you do make it through their process, you will just get an insulting low-ball offer. Some companies are not like that. But the vast majority is.

IT is becoming more and more a robot-slave market. Companies are hiring profiles and specs, not people. They don't care about what you can do. All that matters is how you fit in their factory and how low their cost will be.

And the best part is, none of that is happening in the other areas. We're engineers. We could have easily become bankers, doctors, lawyers, rocket scientists or whatever else we wanted. We can still make the change if we want to start from scratch. The pay is better, you get infinitely more respect and nobody treats you like a criminal when trying to find work.

So stop pouring your energy into an IT job. Nobody cares. And you're definitely not going to be rewarded for it. Instead, you should leech off of any company and focus your attention on yourself and your future. That's what your manager does. That's what your CEO is doing. And that's how most people think. Juggle some simple office politics, work as little as you can and go build a startup in your spare time.

Fuck the IT job market. Start working for yourself.

<comment><USER3> > It's an employers market and each employer has ridiculous demands.

I don't agree. May be so where you are from, but here a lot of companies are desperately looking for candidates, meaning that I get spammed by multiple recruiters every week.

I think it's mostly an employers market when you are Google, Facebook or another popular company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Companies asking their candidates to do a test? Doesn't sound broken to me.

If you want a job with just a 30 minute conversation, you then have to work with people who got the job with just a 30 minute conversation!

<comment><USER2> The test is not the problem. The fact that it's not paid is.

Each company wants at least a couple of hours of tests. So at most you could apply to maybe 10 companies a week (2 tests per day). That's a week you could work somewhere else. A week in which you could start building a startup. Or a week of vacation and recharging. Instead, you're doing useless and redundant tests FOR FREE. And the response is usually _" Sorry, we chose to go with someone more qualified"_.

Candidates don't like tests because not only they don't get anything out of them, they lose valuable time. But if you paid for that time, I'm sure everybody will be happy to take any tests you want.

STOP EXPECTING FREE WORK FROM JOB CANDIDATES.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It depends on the relationship with the employer/hiring manager. If it's a former boss, good friend, etc. who knows your ability inside & out, then maybe you can bypass it.

Otherwise, the typical interview process is 1-2 phone calls (one high-level intro with company, another more technical) then at least a couple hours in the office for more in depth discussions. Some will throw in those homework assignments, which seem unnecessary in most cases IMO, but it's not uncommon. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> >In the old days, I've gotten jobs with 30 minute conversations. Is that pretty much gone now?

That's an unrealistic comparison. If I'm a hiring exec and I'm going to invest in you-- we want to thoroughly you check out. That includes multiple conversations, team buy-in, and a technical test. That's how we shake-out individuals who are serious from posers.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't usually defend recruiting practices, but in this particular case:

It sounds like you're experiencing what happens to a hiring process after lots of unqualified candidates apply to jobs they're not qualified for. The same companies who used to have 30 minute conversations now have walls and basic- literacy tests, and pre-pre-pre-screens and coding-challenges and all that nonsense. It's a shame really, for everybody involved. But I get why they feel like they need those hurdles.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, it's broken... When MBA start writing 2,000 word essays for the their jobs it might start to get fixed...

I disagree that it's an employers market, I get 5 calls a week from recruiters that want to fill positions. (They usually aren't that great but there is definitely demand.)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9107657](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9107657)

</comment><comment><USER9> I had 6 interviews with 8 different people at a startup over about 1.5 months and ended up not getting the gig! It wasn't for a technical position, but it included different assignments and definitely put me off.

I mean after all that effort I at least expected to get a job out of it.</comment>


Neural network spotted deep inside Samsung's Galaxy S7 silicon brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/22/samsung_m1_core/ <comment><USER2> My Computer Architecture professor Daniel Jimenez worked on (invented?) something like this:

"Dynamic Branch Prediction with Perceptrons" (PDF)

[http://hpca23.cse.tamu.edu/taco/pdfs/hpca7_dist.pdf](http://hpca23.cse.tamu.edu/taco/pdfs/hpca7_dist.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I read the paper description and immediately jumped to conclusion that you are Calvin's student :) We had to study this paper during one of my classes at UTCS

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see why branching is so hard -- it's two cycles to test the branch, one more if the branch is taken, one more if it crosses a page boundary! /6502joke

<comment><USER5> well... for the size of its pipeline (1?) and the amount of speculative execution going on (0) the non-existing branch prediction of 6502 was basically optimal.

<comment><USER6> The 6502 has a tiny bit of pipeline/speculative execution. The CPU fetches the next instruction before the current one has finished.

[http://www.atarihq.com/danb/files/64doc.txt](http://www.atarihq.com/danb/files/64doc.txt):

 _" If an instruction does not store data in memory on its last cycle, the processor can fetch the opcode of the next instruction while executing the last cycle."_

The 6502 also sometimes does excess reads and writes. For example, _" Read- modify-write instructions (like INC) read the original data, write it back, and then write the modified data."_ ([http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?t=2](http://forum.6502.org/viewtopic.php?t=2)).

One could call that speculative execution, where the processor writes back the value, just in case adding one to it doesn't increase it, and then, having discovered that adding one changes the value, writes the right value :-)

<comment><USER7> The 6502 had no concept of not doing a memory operation.

Either it's doing a read or it's doing a write, there is no option to use the bus unused. So the 6502 spams dummy reads and occasionally dummy writes whenever it's doing something internally.

Edit: And that's not the only interesting thing I've learned recently about the 6502, There is a very good reason why the stack is on page 1 and not some other constant page. There are only 3 constant values which can be pushed on the SB/ADH buses, 0xff, 0x00 and 0x01.

Ox00 is loaded into upper address register for zero page instructions. For Push operations, it loads 0x01 into the upper address register and puts the stack pointer + 0xff into the adder, which subtracts one from the stack pointer. (The 0xff is just the default bus value, if nothing else is pulling it low, so you get it for free)

For Pop operations, it pushes the same 0x01 into both the upper address register and the adder, at the same time.

So if they wanted to put the stack page at another constant page, or at a variable page they would also need to provide more gates to provide another constant one somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is literally insane. I've never heard of a neural net branch predictor.

Edit: my layman knowledge about branch prediction and neural networks is showing its gross inadequacy :/

<comment><USER9> e: was wrong about everything

<comment><USER10> If you have to pull an army of cores to fight two the really impressive arch belongs to Apple.

OTOH I see this as the optimization of hardware to fix the cap that software, paradigms and devs mean.

<comment><USER8> As long as the die area is same, I see it as a fair fight.

<comment><USER5> In fact, for the same die size, Android hardware has been adapted to work better with the way Android works (many small processes working together).

This is maybe not the best approach for certain games or benchmarks, but for normal use this has proven to be great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Even with all those neural net advantages, dual-core, 2GB RAM iPhone 6s beats octa-core, 4GB RAM Galaxy Note 7:

[http://www.redmondpie.com/galaxy-note-7-vs-iphone-6s-real- wo...](http://www.redmondpie.com/galaxy-note-7-vs-iphone-6s-real-world-speed- test/)

Video (3:29 sec): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-61FFoJFy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-61FFoJFy0)

PS: I highly recommend you check out the video... iPhone completely obliterated Note 7.

<comment><USER12> That test is relevant for the end user, but it doesn't make sense as a hardware test. It's a different system, on different hardware, with different apps (that happen to share the same name), and essentially what you're comparing is resource loading strategies. iPhone is better at that - great.

But for a hardware test, I'd expect a single running app, executing shared native codebase, in no disruptions airplane mode, measuring specific part of the hardware. And that's not even close to measuring before/after improved branch prediction, which could be useful in both phones.

<comment><USER13> > That test is relevant for the end user, but it doesn't make sense as a > hardware test.

Err? It seems to me that the only tests that make any sense are those that count for end users. Everything else is pointless. It doesn't matter if it's the same system or code base or whatever other engineering fetish.

Users who compare their phones to see which goes faster look at how the same app opens and runs on two separate phones. Which incidentally is what this test is about. It's the only sensible test you can do.

<comment><USER14> > Everything else is pointless.

Better understanding individual components lets engineers build better overall systems. Millions of choices and decisions go into something like a phone, most of which can't have their result easily measured by just looking at the end result. But if enough of them are good, you end up with the iPhone.

If enough of them are bad, you end up with mass recalls, and a class action lawsuit because your phones catch fire when charged overnight because your engineers didn't think to test that specific use case, didn't test their capacitors, didn't test their QA process, didn't unit test their battery management code, or otherwise failed to indulge their "fetish" (read: job.)

Proper hardware tests might be pointless to end users, but that doesn't make them pointless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is not new, AMD has been using perceptron-based predictors probably even before Bulldozer. They are good, but harder to optimise for than standard rule based heuristic ones.

<comment><USER16> They should expose the NN coefficients to the end user so that one can at least start from a known-better value. This problem would seem analogous to JIT warmup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The latter half of the article makes me wonder to what extend the cycle count of instructions is specified, or up to a specific implementation.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmm now I'm wondering if the brain does something like this? Might the brain need branch prediction? Interesting line of thought.

<comment><USER19> I have a background in Machine Learning and it is my belief that the mind does use branch prediction. Take for example a scenario where you are climbing down a stair in your house. Your brain already predicts that you are about to land on the next step. Now if the step height was lowered than the usual, the prediction fails and you immediately focus back on the climbing-down process to see what has happened and prosecute whatever fall-back actions are needed to minimize disruption.

<comment><USER20> Reminds me of what happens when you step onto an escalator that isn't working (the broken escalator phenomenon):

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why is it still slower than oneplus3 and htc 10?

<comment><USER22> Samsung bloat?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> iPhone excel because the OS and HW is designed by one company unlike Samsung where the HW and OS are from different companies, add to android Samsung bloatware.

The iOS works well with the iPhone simply because it is fine tuned for the product. On the androids side the OS is tuned to add bloatware of the respective HW manufactures. To add the so called speed the HW manufactures put in more RAM.

<comment><USER24> You do realise that samsung designs and makes most of Apple stuff, right?

<comment><USER25> What parts do Apple get exclusively from Samsung and depend on their expertise these days?

It seems like they go for redundancy, use two suppliers etc for common parts and chips. Which means these are built based on the designs of Apple. Samsung just manufactures them.

I don't follow closely though so I might be wrong.

<comment><USER5> I think that was the plan after the court fight with Samsung. But after some quality problems (IIRC with LG displays) Apple had to give up the dual-source approach for at least some components.

Now the original iphone was probably 80% Samsung design and manufacturing, but these days the design part is closer to 0%.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Discord Store plans to best Epic with 90/10 revenue split - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/14/discord-store-90-10-split/ <comment><USER2> Note that since Unreal Engine costs 5% if you aren't on the Epic Store, Epic's 88/12 offer is still a better deal for UE4 titles, as they'll be a 85/5/10 split on Discord's store.

But it's exciting to see the price war really launch, and it shows Epic games made a hugely consumer-friendly move by attacking the 30% cut model. I'm really excited to see them tackle Android next year as they've stated they plan to.</comment>


DNA ties Ashkenazi Jews to group of just 330 people from Middle Ages - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ashkenazi-jews-dna-diseases-20140909-story.html

<comment><USER2> I'm no scientist, but I'm skeptical. The claims in the article are:

1) All of the Ashkenazi Jews alive today can trace their roots to a group of about 330 people who lived 600 to 800 years ago

2) These people lived 25 to 32 generations ago, and their descendants grew at a rate of 16% to 53% per generation

3) Today there are more than 10 million Ashkenazi Jews around the world, including 2.8 million in Israel

I just can't believe the growth rate. It's astronomical. Especially in times before modern medicine, with wars, plagues, pestilence. Especially considering that the Nazis alone killed millions of Jews before/during WWII.

Also Jews were/are relatively widespread in Europe. Even before WWII there were populations that were separated by thousands of miles. Until recently it wasn't easy to migrate thousands of miles. There were already people in most places, it was hard to travel, it was often dangerous to travel.

I dunno. I'm just going by intuition here, and as we know that is something that is often (usually?) wrong when it comes to things outside of our normal experience. But I believe that there were _considerably_ more than 330 Ashkenazi Jews in the middle ages.

<comment><USER3> Historically, there was nothing extraordinary about having 3-5 (or more) children. 5 children gives you a high rate of population growth even if you have quite some early mortality.

Also, it is a case of exponential growth, so you get a multiplier of up to 25,000 (from 1.5^25). Or 400,000 from 1.5^32. I guess it isn't really that simple, but that explanation is at least useful for enhancing intuition.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. Exponential growth can be pretty amazing.

But think of it this way. Let's say the total population of Europe was 20,000,000 at some point in the middle ages in the countries from where the Ashkenazi Jews originated (corresponding to the time that there were 330 Jews). [1] This is a very crude estimate, as the population certainly varied a lot. So you're telling me that those 330 Jews out-competed 20,000,000 gentiles to such an extent that, before the Nazis and WWII, there were (perhaps) 10,000,000 Jews in Europe?

That growth seems very high. My guess would be 20,000,000 people overall in the middle ages means at least 20,000 Jews (0.1% of total).

But if there really were only 330 (really only 165 couples?) then they certainly had a knack of "getting it done"! This implies that Jews were _much_ more adept than the general population at "survival", reproducing in each generation regardless of all the droughts, wars and plagues.

One other explanation would be that the 330 starting number is accurate but corresponds to an earlier period of time, maybe 2,000 years ago, not 600 to 800 years ago as the article claims.

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

<comment><USER3> The Ashkenazi Jews were part of the population decline:

[http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140909/ncomms5835/fig_tab/...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140909/ncomms5835/fig_tab/ncomms5835_F4.html)

So you wouldn't want to compare the ~300 to your peak population estimate.

Getting it done was very common in those times. People had lots of children.

<comment><USER2> Ok, my fault for just reading LA Times article and not following the Nature link. The figure you link to really makes clear the bottleneck and the subsequent exponential growth. I'll read the Nature article and see if I can gain a better understanding.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>