If the universe is 13.8B years old, how can we see 46B light years away? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/if-the-universe-is-13-8-billion-years-old-how-can-we-see-46-billion-light-years-away-db45212a1cd3 <comment><USER2> If what we're seeing was 13.8B light years away 13.8B years ago and are now 46B light years away, wouldn't that mean that those things traveled ~32.2B light years in 13.8B years. Wouldn't that thus mean they travelled faster than the speed of light?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding though.

EDIT: I guess you also have to take into account the expansion of the fabric of space as well and not just the movement of the galaxies. Still a bit difficult to grasp because I still intuitively want to say that those galaxies are traveling faster than the speed of light with the assistance of space expansion like the old Hollywood trick of actors running on a moving rug to fake superhuman speed. They're still moving faster, just not on their own. I guess the key difference is that an actor on a sliding rug is moving through space faster even if their legs are moving at the same speed, but in the case of the galaxies, space itself is moving thus they're not technically FTL because the speed of light is relative to its movement _through_ space.

<comment><USER3> [EDIT] Everyone please ignore this comment. It is totally wrong.

> If what we're seeing was 13.8B light years away 13.8B years ago and are now > 46B light years away, wouldn't that mean that those things traveled ~32.2B > light years in 13.8B years.

No. What we're seeing was 13.8BLY away (in our reference frame) _when the light was emitted_. Those things are 46BLY away _now_ (again, in our reference frame) but we can't see them _now_ , we can only see them as they were 138B years ago.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry, but that's exactly what I said unless I'm misunderstanding your point.

I said what we're seeing was 13.8B light years away 13.8B years ago, since it took 13.8B years for the light to reach us from the point it was emitted. I never said we could see now where they currently are. What I failed to account for was the space expansion during the time that the light was traveling meaning that the light had to travel further to reach us than the point of emission actually was when it emitted.

So really, it wasn't 13.8B years ago; it was emitted later. I don't know by how much, but it seems like maybe the other commenter does.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I misread your comment. And then on top of that I screwed up the answer. I've edited it accordingly. Sorry about that, I guess I'm having a bad day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not that we can see that far, it's that what we see has moved away from where it was when it produced the light we see now.

<comment><USER5> Indeed; the issue is covered much more clearly in the article from which the most relevant illustration was taken: [https://calgary.rasc.ca/redshift.htm](https://calgary.rasc.ca/redshift.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simply put: We can see 46 Billion Light Years away now, b/c it wasn't that far away when it was created.

<comment><USER7> No, the object is now 46b light years away, but we can't see what it looks like now at that distance. We see an image of it when it was much closer and younger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are turning in bed and can't sleep I'll give you some questions to think about. Even though some are non-sensical in a way, they are a good starting point to ponder about:

\- Is space really flat (infinite) or curved (finite)?

\- If it is flat and the universe had the beginning (big bang) then does it just have "potential infinity", by ever-expanding?

\- If it is curved is it implied that it is encompassed by something that has at lease 3+1 dimension into which it is curving?

\- What would happen if you would happen to stand at the edge of space/universe and push a hand through the edge?

\- Space could be infinite but at the same time with a boundary. Can you imagine that boundary without trying to imagine what it is bounded from?

\- Where does new space, created by the universe expansion, come from?

\- What is space fabric actually made from? Is it discrete or not.

\- Are there other universes outside ours?

\- If there are, do we live in an infinite Russian doll type of universes?

\- What gives the initial conditions and laws in the universe?

\- If the universe is cyclic or there is a multiverse, are there universes with totally different laws and if yes what generated/allowed that?

\- Try to imagine nothing.

\- Try to imagine infinite.

\- You can't imagine how any of these 2 things would work (nothing or infinite), but one or both must exist. Either all existence existed in some way forever, or it had some genesis from nothing.

\- Is there free will?

\- Can you even imagine a proper mechanism that would allow for free will to exist?

\- What would prevent you from "cutting" the smallest possible particle in 2 parts?

\- Are there several dimensions of time?

\- Is there a beginning of time?

\- Is math invented or discovered?

\- Can we ever, in theory, discover every law in the universe if we are looking at it only from the inside.

\- Try to imagine 4.5 billion years of evolution (or more if life crashed to earth from a comet). How many organisms lived, and died, how many actions were made, how many found a partner and reproduced for you to be here and read this text at these exact moment. How many chances for failure at any point in that period were there?

...

Enough for tonight. Happy dreaming.

<comment><USER9> > \- What would happen if you would happen to stand at the edge of > space/universe and push a hand through the edge?

That doesn't make sense if you say the universe is curved or infinite. There will be no edge.

> \- Space could be infinite but at the same time with a boundary. Can you > imagine that boundary without trying to imagine what it is bounded from?

No. That's what the definition of infinite is. There are no bounds.

> \- What is space fabric actually made from? Is it discrete or not.

Probably numbers. But then I like Math, so...

> \- Are there other universes outside ours?

I don't think we are any special. But I'd be happy to be proven otherwise!

> \- Try to imagine nothing.

> \- Try to imagine infinite.

You are having trouble with nothingness because you are linking it to your consciousness. Infinity is easy though. You keep pushing _infinitely_ and there is no edge!

> \- Is there free will?

No. But don't go and do stupid stuff because of that.

> \- Can you even imagine a proper mechanism that would allow for free will to > exist?

There isn't. You are the product of your environment and your parents.

> \- What would prevent you from "cutting" the smallest possible particle in 2 > parts?

Max Planck.

> \- Are there several dimensions of time?

> \- Is there a beginning of time?

There is no time. Try understanding the theory of general relativity.

> \- Is math invented or discovered?

Math is very basic. It starts with set theory and then builds on top of that. It is invented since set theory is invented.

<comment><USER10> >No. That's what the definition of infinite is.. There are no bounds.

just a thought: it sounds like you are more describing the concept of an uncountable infinity in a mathematical sense, a set that is infinite and with no discernible end, as opposed to a countable one, where the set is certainly infinite but it can be iterated through and conceptually has some point where it transitions into a higher meta-set that encompasses it and far more. at least, that's the metaphor i use to interpret the concept of an infinity that is bounded; conceptually, everything that exists must be contained within __something __if you ask me. it could even be contained within a conceptual nothing, but that nothing itself acts as a boundary point for the infinite.

also: i am definitely not a cosmologist or a scientist in any rigorous sense, im just a person that likes to think a lot. my arguments or thoughts likely wouldn't hold their weight compared to one substantiated with support and such, so I just want to make it known that I don't exactly treat my views internally as the canonical explanation, just the one that makes the most sense to me given my limited scope of understanding. thanks for your time :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry, can some explain the 'universe is expanding' concept? So far I thought it only meant that the space universe occupies is expanding, meaning the matter keeps going farther from its origin point, but I didn't know the 'fabric' of the universe is expanding. I'm not able wrap my head around this concept. Can some please point me a resource that dumbs it down?

<comment><USER12> "The universe does not expand "into" anything and does not require space to exist "outside" it. Technically, neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that changes in scale."

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does it mean: "if we left today we could only reach one third of it"?

I couldn't find a the limiting factor... The stars would be dead before we arrived? My best guess. Of course, the qualification would be that we continue to be bound to the speed of light maximum.

<comment><USER14> The universe is expanding, at a rate which I believe is heading past the speed of light.

This limits our ability to reach galaxies further away from us as they are speeding away faster than we could conceivably travel since our engines would of course be bound by the speed of light.

Some more info: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/06/10/can-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/06/10/can- the-universe-expand-faster-than-the-speed-of-light/#64e0a9473605)

<comment><USER15> Why would some things be bound by the speed of light and not others? I always thought of this limitation as an all-or-nothing law.

<comment><USER16> Everything that moves through space is bound by the speed of light. But space _itself_ is expanding at a rate such that two distant points can move away from each other faster than the speed of light. Think of it like two ants on opposite sides of a balloon, one ant starts moving toward the other as fast as it can go, but then you start to inflate the balloon. The distance between the two ants expands faster than an ant can move and they'll never meet.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for this clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So space expands itself at every point at a certain rate. There is an elephant in the room here: how do all the parts in space coordinate to expand at about the same steady rate? Why don't we see radically different expansion rates in different parts of the universe, e.g. stars on the left are getting further apart 10x faster than those on the right? We often use the air balloon analogy, but an air ballool is inflated by the same force which equally applies to every part of the balloon. My point is that, there is probably a simple underlying mechanism that drives space expansion and the clever nature of this mechanism would explain the relativity axiom used in GTR.

<comment><USER19> > at a certain rate

No, the evidence suggests that the rate is time-dependent; that is, the expansion is accelerating.

> how do all the parts in space coordinate to expand at about the same steady > rate?

This is a good question!

The answer is: the coordination happens in the much earlier much denser universe in our past, just like the coordination that happened among the fields of the Standard Model that led to the earliest atoms and molecules.

Let's first take the case where there is no accelerated expansion (which is unlikely with current evidence). In this case, the mechanism can simply be inertia, with an enormous early impulse like those in the family of cosmic inflation theories. There must be a fine balance between the _density_ of matter in the earlier universe and the impulse, because gravitational interactions will decelerate the expansion from the early impulse until the matter-density drops/dilutes-with-expansion to a critical point after which the rate of expansion will be constant.

Observations support an early deceleration and subsequent fixed-rate expansion, but about 8 billion years ago the expansion began to accelerate, as seen in images of galaxies with redshifts less than about z ~ 0.5.

> a simple underlying mechanism

This is what the study of dark energy is about: a simple explanation for the accelerating expansion of the universe.

Typically one starts with a field that fills the whole of spacetime, with enormous energy-density in the early universe, with that energy-density decaying at later times. In extremely high-quality vacuum and far from structures like stars and black holes, the decay of this field is faster than near those structures (too near and the field becomes locally stable; the solar system, for example, is not expanding). When the field decays, it gives a local increase to the inertial expansion rate described in the no-dark- energy case a couple paragraphs up. Because there is so much empty space outside galaxy clusters, there is a lot of _local_ , and the amount of _local_ increases over time, so larger regions of the field decay at faster rates as the unvierse gets older.

There are other approaches too, but the effect is the same: the amount of space outside matter structures increases at an accelerating rate in the late universe, and this corresponds _in a frame-dependent way_ to an energy-density that remains constant as the energy-density of the fields of the Standard Model decreases. That is, in such a frame of reference, matter and radiation dilute away with the expansion _MUCH_ faster than dark energy does.

Another approach is literally the cosmological constant, which if zero gives the inertial picture above, but if it takes on a small positive value, it produces a late-time acceleration of the expansion. No _known_ fields behave like this: matter-density varies by location in spacetime (clumpier in space, tending to diffuse apart (especially light) or collapse gravitationally (especially baryons) over time), gravitational fields vary with position in spacetime and typically with the distribution of matter. By contrast, the cosmological constant is literally identically everywhere-and-everywhen. More likely we will find evidence for something which closely approximates the cosmological constant at large scales, with differences in the density of the "cosmological not-quite-constant field" lining up very closely with observed differences in the density of matter.

> clever nature of this mechanism

Cleverness shouldn't be expected of the mechanism itself, although it will probably take some cleverness to describe the mechanism in a tractable/scalable-yet-accurate-in-detail manner.

WRT your final sentence, General Relativity works just fine in the total absence of dark energy, and dark energy as the cosmological constant has been captured as the factor \Lambda in the Einstein Field Equations. That's like saying that all matter has been captured as a factor in the Einstein Field Equations, though: it has taken a lot of work including things like studying [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_inelastic_scattering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_inelastic_scattering) to work out many of the finer details of the stress-energy tensor. A comparable program likely is needed to work out the finer details of \Lambda, which might lead to a formal explanation along the lines of the informal one a few paragraphs above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I feel like we are all idiots repeating "space is expanding" if humans could live 14billion years in age, and we were present when it started, but we left good old Bob on the part of the universe that was travelling away from us, he would have traveled FTL from us. Even if you said space expanded, the traveling has been accomplished. So now we know that space expansion is how you travel FTL.

In other words if humans ever invent warp, the space expansion work around we would effectively have FTL travel.

<comment><USER21> Ok, but you can't use it to go to anywhere FTL. You can only use it to get further away from somewhere FTL.

<comment><USER22> I think we can use it to go back to a place. It is the same as going further just that now we "just" need to shrink the space. Of course all is so far just an exercise of our imagination.

You can take a look at the curvature or more concrete to the density of the Universe. It is possible to be positive and in this case at one point in the future the Universe will collapse back on itself. Nothing will stop it to do this apparently FTL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My two cents worth: One is a measure of time. The other is a measure of distance. The two are unrelated.

<comment><USER7> Um, no. Distance and time are related by the speed of light, which travels 1 light year (distance) in 1 year (time).

If space wasn't expanding, the distance to a stationary object (in light years) would be exactly equal to the travel time of light from it (in years).

<comment><USER9> They are related (in fact there is no "time") but I think what the OP wanted to say is that you can have a universe that it is "that" big from the get go and so objects will be very far from the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> All this assumes that time is a single thing (sort of gigantic X-axis with "t") that works for everyone in universe equally.

What if we have multiple (billions) of realities with their own t-axis and with us being only one of these with our own timeline?

<comment><USER25> What if the entire universe with all of its history was just created 1ms ago?

The answer is, if you can't even conceivably test for it, it's mostly irrelevant to think too much about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I find the notion of the distance between two objects increasing without the objects moving apart highly unintuitive.

<comment><USER18> That's an easy one. We hold the same chain and the distance between us is 100 links. The chain has a curious property: its links subdivide like living cells and on average 1 link takes a minute to split into 2. Thus, every minute the distance between us doubles and half hour later we'll be 1 billion times further from each other. We can replace the chain with a net or even with a 3d net.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> how can universe be expanding faster than speed of light? general relativity doesn't apply here?

<comment><USER28> Idk, but if we travel 13B light years one way, it moves 13B the other then were at 26, and space itself has to have expanded 20 billion light years within the time it takes light to travel 13... So yeah, sounds like something is moving faster than light.

<comment><USER29> Things can't move faster than light, that isn't possible, but we can think about abstract concepts that aren't things. Fairness for example. Infinity. These are not things. Expanding space isn't a thing, it's just a concept. So that can go however fast you want.

Let's try something much smaller and easier to reason about. Take a small fairly directional lamp (in my country we'd say a "torch" but words vary) and hold up a coin in front of it so that it makes a big obvious shadow on a far away wall, you may need to turn down ambient lighting. Relatively small movements of the coin result in the shadow moving quickly. Huh. How fast can that shadow move?

While the coin is a _thing_ the shadow is not, it's just your imagination processing the absence of light.

If you have a big enough room and a strong enough light source, you can do this trick so that a flick of the wrist appears to move the shadow much faster than the speed of sound. If a _thing_ did that in a room filled with breathable air you'd hear a sonic boom. But the shadow isn't a thing, it exists only in your imagination and so you hear nothing.

Large enough objects can occlude a star to have this effect on a cosmic scale. The shadow of a planet can pass over the face of another planet at faster than the speed of light. But no actual _thing_ moved, so no rules are broken by this happening, "faster than the speed of light" was only in your head, all the actual things (including the photons) obeyed the rules and stayed at or below the speed limit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like the thought that, since the Universe is expanding, so is my brain.

<comment><USER31> > Once objects are formed and bound by gravity, they "drop out" of the > expansion and do not subsequently expand under the influence of the > cosmological metric...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe#To...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe#Topology_of_expanding_space)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Isn't light-years a unit of distance and not time ?

<comment><USER33> space and time are the same thing

<comment><USER34> They are not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> And... another author that doesn't get it or looks for a controversial, clickbaity title.

The correct way to state it would be to say: "We are seing things that are currently 46B light years away but since they are so far away we see them as they were 13.8B years ago when they were much closer than they are now."

I see absolutely nothing difficult about that statement unless you really need to create some piece of content and you figured out you will make something difficult so that you can then make it a little bit easier and be a hero.

<comment><USER36> It's at lesst a little confusing how something went from 14B light years away to 46B light years away (seems to be a distance of 32B light years total travel) in 14B years.

<comment><USER35> Except the galaxies do not travel. Galaxies are more or less stationary, it's the space inbetween that expands. Think in terms of raisins in a dough or points on expanding baloon. Neither of them could be said to travel, yet they can be seen to become more and more far away.

<comment><USER37> Technically, galaxies _do_ travel:

> In physical cosmology, peculiar velocity refers to the components of a > galaxy's velocity that deviate from the Hubble flow. ....

> Galaxies are not distributed evenly throughout observable space, but are > typically found in groups or clusters, where they have a significant > gravitational effect on each other. Velocity dispersions of galaxies arising > from this gravitational attraction are usually in the hundreds of kilometers > per second, but they can rise to over 1000 km/s in rich clusters.

\-- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peculiar_velocity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peculiar_velocity)

Granted, 1000 km/s isn't even 1% of light speed, so clearly this motion couldn't contribute much to a distant object's recession.

<comment><USER35> That's why I wrote "more or less stationary", which is describing 1000km/s compared to double the speed of light that would come from naive calculation.

<comment><USER37> Ah, fair enough. I glossed right over that qualification, which is not a smart thing to do on HN--a credit to the quality of discourse here :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A New JSON Library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/realtimetech-solution/kson <comment><USER2> Kson is a new data format not compatible with the JSON standard. It introduces different types for numbers (long, float, double, etc) and allows non-scalar dict keys, i.e. lists and dicts can be keys for dictionaries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kson supports 100% Json Standard (it means kson can read / write json standard format data). also Kson support "Extended Format" optionally. (if you don't want extended format, just turn off flag)

just, the point is kson have parse/object deserialize/object serialize is faster than gson(or another lib).

<comment><USER2> Sure, Kson is an _extension_ of JSON. Every JSON file is a valid Kson file. The opposite is not true.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah i see, i found some error in readme_en.md and in this post.

Thx!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Kson is a new data format compatible with the Json standards. It solves the ambiguous number type problem of Json and supports new data types.</comment>


Ask HN: I don't understand why you would join a startup. What am I missing? - <AUTHOR>

I have the opposite opinion of pretty much everyone I know. Could it be that I'm right and everyone else is wrong? Probably not. What am I missing?
I'm 30. I'm an engineer who has solid hardware design and low-level software skills. I've dabbled in higher level stuff (ML, FV, distributed systems) in my spare time, but I don't have real expertise in those areas and I've never touched mobile or web. I don't manage and don't want to.
In order of importance, my priorities are having smart and curious co-workers, working on interesting problems, and having a good work/life balance (for me, that means working roughly 40 hours a week). I'd also like to be able to retire at some point.
Problem-wise, a higher proportion of startups have interesting work, but, I only need one job, so that's a wash.
People at most startups work very long hours. In my experience, when doing creative work (and I wouldn't want to do any other kind), working longer hours is counterproductive. Big companies 1, startups 0.
My total compensation is currently ~$165k in an area with a low cost of living. CNN's COL calc says that's ~$290k in startup-land (SF). Big companies offer me what I'm making + 20% or so. Virtually every startup I've talked to won't go above $120k-$140k, and a typical equity offer is .1%. 1% is unusually high.
For a lower bound, say I'm foregoing $100k/yr in compensation by going to a startup. With .1% equity, no dilution, and assuming the salary differential wouldn't increase, breakeven is $100M/yr. More realistically, with 5x dilution, that's $500M a year. What are the odds of getting an exist like that? Surely < 50%. Big companies 2, startups 0.
The equation drastically if I'm doing my own startup, but that's not the question I'm asking here.
Sorry for the clipped diction; max length = 2k chars and my original was ~3k, so I cut a lot of the $ calculation, among other things. <comment><USER2> I think you're mixing two separate questions here that have easy answers when asked in isolation (bias disclosure: I founded a startup, and have worked at several startups).

Q1) Why would anyone accept a below-market offer (financially) without some non-financial benefit to offset the difference? Answer: one shouldn't, and I doubt anyone does.

Q2) Why would some people perceive non-financial benefit in working at a startup vs a big company? This question (emphasis on " _some_ people") almost answers itself. In fact, you already gave one reason: greater relative supply of interesting work. In any case, the financial value of personal experiences is subjective.

As a factual matter, one shouldn't assume that all startups make below-market financial offers or require longer hours than high-quality big companies.

From your description, it sounds like you'd entertain a market-level offer from a startup doing interesting work that let you stay wherever you're currently located. Such offers exist; many of the startups I've worked with had important remote team members paid (SF) market-level wages.

</comment><comment><USER3> Id say your math is on par from a purely financial perspective.

While you touched on it, if you additionally factor in your pay from a per hour cost perspective the equation can get even more extremely lopsided. Many employees who frequent the startup world won't like to admit it or may not realize it, but the majority of employees who stick with startups incur a decent sized opportunity cost from a financial perspective and the hope is that that can be squashed at some point down the line with a home run exit (these are indeed rare). Your median (note the word median not average) big corp engineer is going to be financially better off than your median startup engineer employee.

So why do people do it? Some people find the environment to be fun and exciting - it usually involves more creativity and quick thinking than a big corp. Some people find that they can get a fancier title easier at a startup (ex. not too unusual to find a startup with a CTO who is few years out of college). Some people have to live in SF/NY and want to be apart of the scene. Some people want to have a big impact in their company and find it easier to do in a startup. Some people want to always have the chance to make millions no matter the odds.

If you're just looking at it primarily financially and you are level headed enough to not be woo-ed by Aaron Sorkin movies, the truth is that the math for the average outcome will never work out for startups (as an employee). Id say the best options are work for big-corp, start your own startup, or have a strong non-financial reason to join a startup as an employee.

</comment><comment><USER4> You don't do startups for the money. So, your calculations are correct. Having dabbled in both startups, small business and big corporations, I can speak to my own experience.

There is a great combination of inexperience, solidarity and overly ambitious, common purpose that makes startups electric for me. Every person believes their personal contribution can make or break the business. That type of purpose and excitement is unique to the small, ambitious startup that doesn't exist anywhere else. And for me, there's nothing like it. I imagine their might be corporate cultures that try to replicate the environment, but I haven't found it yet.

The exit money is something most of us chalk up to the lies we tell ourselves. For a small number of us it happens, but for the rest of us, it doesn't.

As for interesting projects, it's a combination of interesting work and immediate impact on the business that doesn't exist with bigger companies.

I hope that helps.

<comment><USER5> "That type of purpose and excitement is unique to the small, ambitious startup that doesn't exist anywhere else."

Not necessarily. That's what the atmosphere is on the GFiber team. That's what it's like, more or less, on the Doodle team. I've personally got a research project in search quality that's years away from showing anything useful, so I try to keep my own pace sustainable, but I go to work every day knowing that I'll have some tangible progress by the end of the day and that if we succeed it'll change the world on an order similar to the original invention of Google.

<comment><USER4> I'm glad to hear that, but in my professional experience, I've yet to run into that; and maybe one day I will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Start up's offer more freedoms. I'd argue the jobs are more fulfilling and the right start-up may offer you more incentives. Additionally, you seem well educated with a lot of experience, getting 165k somewhere may not be an option some less experienced engineer may receive. Also, a younger less experienced developer may not have a family, or have more freedoms to gamble on that .1% equity (and perhaps more with stock options). But most importantly, I feel the emphasis on the beauty of start-ups are focused on the entrepreneurs and founders rather than later stage engineers where the offers may be more balanced/skewed.</comment>


Max Schireson steps down as MongDB's CEO and this is his resignation letter - <AUTHOR> http://maxschireson.com/2014/08/05/1137/

<comment><USER2> with different titles each time linking to the same blog post, this has been on HN at least two-three times.</comment>


"Stupid rules and how to change them" - <AUTHOR> http://www.librarian.net/talks/mossome/

<comment><USER2> That was refreshingly quirky and true. Thank you.</comment>


XDiff/XMerge to diff and merge code that has been moved and modified - <AUTHOR> http://www.plasticscm.com/features/xmerge.aspx

<comment><USER2> For a slightly less pretty but more useful diff, check out vimdiff. (emacs has a similar mode, for all you heretics out there ;)

I find that I actually spend a good amount of my time developing inside of diff mode in vim. In tandem with the practice of making small atomic commits, it is really killer.</comment>


Ask HN: Programming salaries in London/UK? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a software developer from Israel, thinking of moving to the UK. Probably London, but depending on job availability maybe somewhere else.
I can't find good information about the salary I can expect when I come over. My current salary, in Israel, is roughly 40-45K pounds annually - is this something reasonable to expect in the UK for someone with 3-4 years of experience, in PHP, Python, and Android development (with no formal education)?
Also - is London my only hope? What other cities in the UK offer a good startup/tech scene?
Anyway, any advice and recommendations will be very much appreciated! <comment><USER3> Hi silverarr; I'm from the UK and work within the industry, so I can help you with this.

£40-45k p/a is pretty average within London, where living expenses are higher, for a mid-experience sort of job.

However, £40-45k p/a will give you much more 'bang for your buck' in a location such as Bristol, where there's a pretty good tech community.

Hope this helps a little,

JLT

</comment><comment><USER4> As I'm considering to move to London too, I asked two friends of friend who are Head Hunter for tech professional (web dev). What they said is: Expect 30-40k£ if you are a junior, 40-55k£ if you have some experiences.

Beside the annual salary, you can ask for good benefits: half of phone, internet, transport bills, health care, vacations.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yep, that's in the right ballpark: £40k - £45k is middleweight webdev level territory at least in my experience.

London is obviously good. Bristol or Edinburgh also have thriving tech scenes, and I know some people who are trying to hire in Bristol without a lot of luck, implying that there's a demand for programmers there.

</comment><comment><USER6> The salary breakdowns on AngelList seem to be about what you're looking for [https://angel.co/salaries](https://angel.co/salaries) (click on london, or whatever city you want to narrow down)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, no answer from me.. But recently my wife was wondering what kind of money I could make in the UK..

15 years experience, currently focused on C, Java, Python and increasingly Go.

</comment><comment><USER8> You can look for jobs matching your profile on this website [http://www.theitjobboard.co.uk](http://www.theitjobboard.co.uk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've been looking at various job boards, but this one seems like a good one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a financial sector (London) it starts from GBP 60K. For non-juniors - <USER2> 80-90K.</comment>


JQuery++ - <AUTHOR> http://jquerypp.com/

<comment><USER2> Is there any information on browser compatibility? I see ES5 getters/setters in use for fastfix as well as CSS animations, so I'm assuming there'll be a compatibility matrix somewhere.

Also, swipe doesn't seem to work on Chromium 17/Fedora. Otherwise, great work!

<comment><USER3> It has been tested on all major browser including IE 7 and up. ES5 getters, CSS animations etc. will only be used conditionally if the browser support it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was pissed off at first because we have enough "jQuery"* libraries that do just about nothing when it comes down to business.

Then I looked at the DOM HELPERS and said "yeah I've had to build that from scratch" for every single one.

Very good copy, too. This looks good.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh gosh. Website is completely unusable on mobile.

<comment><USER6> Hmm works fine here. (Opera Mobile)

<comment><USER7> Android 4.0: [http://jarofgreen.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2012/06/Screensho...](http://jarofgreen.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2012/06/Screenshot_2012-06-05-07-49-02.png)

In fact, I see this so much here's a blog post about it: [http://jarofgreen.co.uk/2012/06/fixed-page-elements-must- die...](http://jarofgreen.co.uk/2012/06/fixed-page-elements-must-die/)

<comment><USER8> I commented on your blog too, but I just want to let you know that I've pushed a quick fix for the mobile browsers, and I'm looking into making a proper mobile version now. Thanks for reporting this.

<comment><USER9> It's better now. I can see the menu when I scroll but only for a second before it clears.

(latest mobile Safari)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No touch support for the drag events? Weird, since swipe is working well on touch devices .. Would be nice to be able to have jQuery++ for both CSS3 animations and touch support instead of two separate plugins.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are some really great things in here, it feels like the creators have grown this out of a lot of experience using jQuery, gathering up all the pain points and omissions over time. Even the little things like $.formParams, I always wondered why that wasn't in jQuery, whilst $.serialize is, the former seeming much _more jQuery_ (or perhaps more JavaScript, maybe that's the difference).

Very impressed. I started listing a few I especially liked but then ended up listing the whole lot.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you only select one module to build a custom script, it downloads an empty file. Other than that, awesome project!

<comment><USER3> The download builder ran out of space on MongoDB and started returning empty files some time today. It should generate everything properly again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do multi-selects work with formParams?

</comment><comment><USER14> Your "formParams" link refers to the "dimensions" anchor, might want to fix that oversight.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing that out. It should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great plugin collection! To be honest though, I first expected this to be a library that fixes JavaScript's prototypical OO.

<comment><USER16> What needs to be fixed with prototypical OO?

<comment><USER15> Writing code that utilizes that specific feature of JavaScript is cumbersome.

It's one of the reasons why Prototype.js was created, and one of the reasons that people use CoffeeScript, don't you think?

<comment><USER17> No. If anything you need to have a better understanding of JavaScript's prototyping behavior to write good CoffeeScript. It's only cumbersome if you're not familiar with it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I want to play a game… the Qvik Code Puzzle game - <AUTHOR> http://qvik.fi/codepuzzle/ <comment><USER2> The game could use:

\+ A description of syntax, i.e. that commas separate commands.

\+ Moving the triangle for incomplete or incorrect solutions to allow iterative solving, REPL style, would improve game play.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the makers here, our "human" record is 18 moves. With a genetic algorithm we got 12 moves.</comment>


Enigma.io raises 4.5M Series A from VC's, American Express, and New York Times - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/30/enigma-raises-4-5m-from-to-help-plumb-the-depths-of-and-derive-insights-from-public-data/

<comment><USER2> This is rad news. Data FTW.</comment>


Pondasee - A Front-End Starter Kit Combined With The Power Of SCSS & Compass - <AUTHOR> http://tokokoo.github.com/pondasee/ <comment><AUTHOR> Found via: [http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/06/pondasee-front-end- sta...](http://functionn.blogspot.com/2012/06/pondasee-front-end-starter-kit- combined.html)</comment>


HML = Hanna Montana Linux Distro - <AUTHOR> http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/Site/Home.html

<comment><USER2> Here's what will happen.

Through some seemingly-tiny feature of the OS that the developer arbitrarily decided to include (something not related to Hannah Montana), this will become the best-choice Linux distro for a small group of people. A couple of these people will turn out to be brilliantly gifted hackers, and will continue to enhance the OS to the point where it begins to overtake other distros in overall experience.

HML becomes the flagship distro of the Open Source movement, and on its strength Linux finally overtakes proprietary OSs and establishes a dominant market share. Eventually, nearly every computer on the planet runs HML. By 2100, HML is the only thing anyone remembers the name "Hannah Montana" for.

<comment><USER3> So 2100 is finally the year of linux in desktop! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is entertaining. Is it intended to be serious at all? because having these 2 Q&As consecutively in the faq:

\--- Q : How/why did you make such a great OS? A : I thought - what would attract young users to Linux? So I created this idea after a lot of reading and work.

Q : How can I watch DVDs and other Media? A : click the Hannah Montana menu, then Utilities, then Konsole, then type: sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 kubuntu-restricted-extras \---

is comical. to me, this says, "it's for kids, and the first thing they should learn is that linux requires you to learn obscure things to do stuff that's easy as pie and very commonly used on other computers."

<comment><USER5> What learning? You're asked to paste something into a terminal, not to understand it. That's not learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> After I choked back the vomit, I began to think "Shouldn't this just be an Ubuntu theme?".

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure it is just a KDE theme over Kubuntu.

Apart from the trademark infringement, copyright infringement and the headache inducing colour clash on the website of peach and lilac and the fact the theme creator thinks they made a new OS, apart from that it all looks great.

I'm curious about the "Truth" page in the SourceForge site, that page can't be viewed, does it tell us that the rest of the site is a lie?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The diversity of GNU/Linux distros is turning into something similar to rule 34 :

"If X exists, there is an X-themed Linux distro"

</comment><comment><USER9> Someone must be held responsible for this.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm waiting for HML Server Edition.

</comment><comment><USER11> I contemplated loading it for my daughter for a second... naw

<comment><USER12> Why not? A lot of goods offer pleasant and appealingly themed branding to lure customers to adopt their use. At least this one is educational and might help serve her more in the future.</comment></comment>


January 2018 US diplomatic cables warned of coronavirus leaking from Wuhan lab - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/ <comment><USER2> > "The idea that it was just a totally natural occurrence is circumstantial. > The evidence it leaked from the lab is circumstantial. Right now, the ledger > on the side of it leaking from the lab is packed with bullet points and > there's almost nothing on the other side," the official said.

That's how I feel. Isn't it just the darndest coincidence that the worldwide deadly pandemic just happened to originate in the backyard of the only BL-4 research center in China. And they just happened to work with bats, and somehow two years earlier someone bothered to warn US govt. about safety issues there.

It also interesting to observe the level of coverup here. That page about the visit was scrubbed, doctors silenced, etc.

How many vendors at the wet market, the alleged source of the virus, even sold bats or made bat soup and such? How does it compare with other wet market around the country or the world?

<comment><USER3> Talk like this would have gotten you cancelled two months ago. Now it's on WaPo. Wonder where we'll be in another two months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I saw posts on Reddit months ago pointing out the virology labs in wuhan studying this exact virus and wasn't it a coincidence. I am actually quite surprised that US scientists that twice visited the lab sent strongly worded official communications back to the US government stating concerns over safety and the competence of the personnel working at the lab and saying that they needed more assistance.

Now that China has disappeared people who were speaking out, shut down the Shanghai lab that originally published the virus' genome, and is back to tightly controlling information out of the country, I doubt we'll ever know for sure if this pandemic was a preventable accident. Either way it is a major black eye for China.

<comment><USER5> For what it's worth, I saw posts on Reddit saying the opposite: that Bat coronaviruses are BSL-2, not BSL-4, and so it wouldn't make sense to restrict yourself as a researcher by studying them in the most stringent lab.

(I'm not saying this to argue that the lab escape theory is wrong, just to argue that Reddit posts are difficult to appraise.)

<comment><USER6> Research papers, posted in comments on HN just days ago, show that the lab made hybrid bat-human cells in which to grow viruses. This was BSL-4. Both HIV and coronaviruses were grown. The idea was to breed the viruses until they would replicate well in ordinary human cells.

That's some diabolical research.

To put it in DnD terms: The researchers have high intelligence, low wisdom, and probably low dexterity.

<comment><USER5> Want to share some links to them?

<comment><USER6> OK.

Here is China making a coronavirus like the one causing the pandemic, even acting on the ACE2 receptor and testing it in human cells, publishing it in early 2008: [https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899](https://jvi.asm.org/content/82/4/1899)

Here they are again, years later, still playing with extremely hazardous coronaviruses that act on the ACE2 receptor in humans:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12711)

This one gene-edits the host cells to have both human and bat traits, making it easier to breed bat viruses into becoming human viruses:

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00705-010-0729-6](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00705-010-0729-6)

There are more. The ASM's virology journal published more of generally the same kind of stuff. I can't find the link right now.

<comment><USER7> One summary of the overall findings of those articles is something like: there sure are a lot of SARS-like bat coronaviruses in natural reservoirs, and a bunch of them are alarmingly able to spread well in human tissue too, either unmodified or with tiny edits. That doesn't rule out the theory that a lab escape was the source, but it also suggests another SARS-like zoonotic transfer was pretty much a ticking time bomb, and it wouldn't be surprising for it to have happened through that route either.

<comment><USER6> It's not OK to be actively trying to make those edits, especially after a history of lab containment failures.

After the USA banned this research because of the danger, some of it moved out of the country. At least one of the researchers moved from the USA to Wuhan, China. The ban should have been a clear message: such research is unacceptably dangerous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a very disappointing thread on Hacker News.

First, the article is title "State Department cables warned of _safety issues_ at Wuhan lab studying bat coronavirus." Immediately sensationalizing the title to imply _this_ coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan lab is not good.

Did the coronavirus leak from the Wuhan lab? Maybe, there's some evidence to suggest it's a possibility, but jumping on conspiracy theories, or unproven claims (e.g. "it was the wet market" \-- it may have been, but many of the original infectees were not involved with the wet market) is just spreading fake news. Haven't we had more than enough of that over the last few years?

</comment><comment><USER9> >US diplomatic cables warned of coronavirus leaking from Wuhan lab.

That's not at all what the original title was, matter of fact not even what the original article was about.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would put an interesting perspective on the reasons behind some Chinese officials claiming it was released by the US in Wuhan.

</comment><comment><USER11> WaPo edits the url when loaded to prevent you from pasting into outline

</comment><comment><USER12> But how fast they jumped on all these -CIA term used to discredit people with valid concerns- when they said that. Now ever the MSM writes about it. I won't read WSJ anyway.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone have an archive link for us non-Americans?

<comment><USER14> Mirror: [http://archive.is/OIguS](http://archive.is/OIguS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was downvoted in another thread for pointing out that reporters have failed to do their jobs here.

Doctors knew about this back in November-December timeframe, maybe even earlier, and were asking people with cough and chest pains if they had been to Wuhan recently.

<comment><USER16> You are claiming that doctors (which, were?) were aware of this disease before its first official case was diagnosed/published?

<comment><USER17> This was a public health crisis in China before last Nov/Dec. I would hope that doctors in large cities were asking about travel to China during this time.</comment></comment></comment>


Sir Tim Berners-Lee Looks Back: the "//" in Web Addresses Was Unnecessary - <AUTHOR> http://www.beet.tv/2009/10/webs-inventor-sir-tim-bernerslee-double-backslashes-were-unnecessary.html

<comment><USER2> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881278>

<http://searchyc.com/berners?sort=by_date></comment>


Ask HN: What are some best practices/strategies for backing up a web app - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a social bookmarking site and I'm looking for some advice on automated backups (scripts, third-party services, etc.) so my app doesn't turn into the next Ma.gnolia. <comment><USER2> You'll need to outline a bit more of your technology stack before anyone will be able to help you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. Here it is:

CentOS/Apache/cPanel/PHP/MYSQL

<comment><USER2> There's lots of information on how to do backups. For starters, back up your data and back up your code. If you're using a VPS, see if you can take a snapshot as a backup.

Above all - I learned this the hard way - make sure you can restore from your backups. Try a full rebuild from your backups. You'll learn a lot.</comment></comment></comment>


New algorithm can separate unstructured text into topics with high accuracy - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-01-algorithm-unstructured-text-topics-high.html

<comment><AUTHOR> here is the journal: [https://journals.aps.org/prx/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevX.5.011007](https://journals.aps.org/prx/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevX.5.011007)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you test and develop your microservice based architecture? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Some lessons learned for me.

1\. Each service is an island, treat it as such.

2\. Each service gets its own source repository.

3\. Each service does 1 thing nothing more. That one thing might be 4 different pieces.

4\. Tests are unit tests per service, and you should have 100% coverage. We are primarily node.js and use mocha for our tests.

5\. Services never talk directly to each other. A message queue or bus architecture should keep services from talking to each other. Yes this adds complexity but it prevents laziness from causing fragility in the system.

6\. Have integration test that test functional requirements that span multiple services. This lets you confirm that version updates of one or two services hasn't broken anything.

If you have specific questions let me know. We screwed up a bunch but I think found a good path now.</comment>


Map of HN visitors that clicked the #3 post this morning - <AUTHOR> http://daverecycles.com/post/3105375261/less-than-an-hour-ago-i-posted-a-blog-explaining

<comment><USER2> Wish the map had hover - tell me where they are coming from. My geography is not good!

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry! It's just a screenshot of the analytics app (Clicky). Maybe next time I'll whip up something more dynamic.

<comment><USER2> I just wanted to see my dot :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Be mindful also that this is reflective of the time of day the post gained traction. I'm always surprised by the number of fellow Aussies (though I'm now in London) who read HN - no clicks here represents the fact that the post was submitted about 4 hours ago ... 3pm London time; 2am Sydney time.

</comment><comment><USER4> what does the blue dot represents?

<comment><AUTHOR> It means 2+ actions, while red is 1 action. So they probably clicked a link on the page after reading.</comment></comment>


Emberlight is shutting down, bricking all previously sold hardware - <AUTHOR> https://www.emberlight.co/blogs/glow/emberlight-is-shutting-down <comment><USER2> Proving yet again that the "Internet of Things" won't work until the "Local Area Network of Things" works. If the "thing" requires the Internet to work, these kinds of failures will continue plaguing them for eternity.

Sadly the "IoT" market is practically predicated on selling some hideously expensive service that you don't want or need on top of a piece of hardware that would be perfectly happy working against a home edge gateway rather than "the cloud". Approaching a VC asking for money for digital lightbulbs and dimmers that work against a local server running on a Wifi-router-like-box? Using a standardized protocol, so you don't need 10 different home edge gateways to orchestrate different tasks? Get out, we don't even want to hear it...

Accessing the Internet should _add features_ \- not having the Internet should not burden or brick the device.

<comment><USER3> Except consumers want the ability to control/check their IoT devices when they are not at home. Most homes in the US do not have a static IP address. Yes, you could set up OpenVPN on a router and use DDNS, but you would still be reliant on a 3rd-party DDNS provider that could always go out of business. Also most home routers supplied by broadband providers do not support OpenVPN.

An admittedly expensive solution would be to use the Ethereum main network to communicate with the IoT device.

<comment><USER4> A middle ground is have a local-first control, that the company exposes to the internet via the customer's account.

For example, a local administration page that can be accessed within the LAN, and which can then be proxied by the provider. In the case that the provider goes out of business you lose the remote control (unless setting up your own VPN) but the device won't be bricked.

Unfortunately, I imagine some companies intentionally avoid doing this to require customers to pay a subscription fee.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of these companies don't have any subscription fees. They just provide the "free" cloud service for as long as it takes to make a whole bunch of sales, then shut it down and suddenly all the devices stop working. if you're selling a $50 device that people have to wire into their home, with an expected lifetime in years or decades, it's pretty negligent to not provide for a sustainable service.

<comment><USER3> You're saying it would be more responsible to charge a monthly fee? How could you compete against those firms that do not charge fees?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd prefer they just let you run the hub/central service yourself, with an option to have them run it for a fee, yes.

I think we'll start to see regular consumers harmed by some of these start-ups destroying hardware when they go out of business, and perhaps people will stop buying them unless there's some protection. Then the "free" solutions will be looked at suspiciously and hopefully discounted by the tech press and retailers. Alternately, retailers might be held liable for refunding purchases of products that stop working before the legally mandated warranty date (such as in the EU) or by credit card companies in the US, so they'll stop selling any cloud required garbage.

<comment><USER3> It's possible but sounds pretty optimistic. More likely that the big 5 tech companies (who can pay for cloud services to function indefinitely) will consolidate the smaller IoT plays, and offer users a limited feature set for free, with premium tiers as well.

Also remember that if you're maintaining the hub yourself it won't get security updates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems to be a recurring problem in the IoT industry.

I've had dozens of lightbulbs affected by TCP Lighting and Homebrite choosing not to support them anymore. They can't be accessed from the internet anymore and their schedule can't be changed.

The worst, though, is TCP. Someone reverse engineered the API to the home hub, and shortly after TCP pushed a software update to everyone's hub encrypting the software. Then they terminated the service. So, they bricked the device in slow motion.

This is why when I buy new bulbs, I'm only going with HomeKit stuff. Apple's not going anywhere. And while it likes you to have the latest, greatest stuff it at least provides updates for its iOS devices for five years. Hopefully that's an indication of the longevity of HomeKit connectivity.

</comment><comment><USER6> The title strongly implies the hardware is intentionally being bricked.

Being put out of commission by downed servers is still pretty terrible, but intentionally bricking the devices is a separate further step to me (and has been done by other companies).

<comment><USER7> They could always have designed their product in a way that doesn't turn into a brick when the servers disappear.

Call it "negligent bricking"?

<comment><USER8> No, the proper term is "IoT-grade architecture".

<comment><USER9> The "S" in "IoT" stands for security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> $30 - $50 plus a paid subscription seems expensive for what is basically a wifi on/off switch, especially if you wanted to do a whole house.

<comment><USER11> They did a lot of things right. It seems like they just couldn't compete with copycats. Maybe they overestimated demand at that price point?

<comment><USER10> At $50 a bulb, it would cost me $1550 to do every permanent fixture in my 1600sqf house. $1100 if I skipped the bathrooms and closets. Another $250 for lamps. I think I was mistaken about the subscription fee, there wasn't one. Regardless, that is crazy expensive.

<comment><USER11> Their competitors don't appear to be much cheaper ($40 per bulb), and their pitch materials cite home lighting automation kits that start in the thousands (possibly wired?). They seemed to think that they had a significant price advantage.

Well, hopefully we'll get a more detailed post-mortem than "we ran out of capital."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> SmartThings recently announced support for some local control of devices even if the internet is down, which is a good step from a big player.

In the current IoT landscape, I feel like you have to either go with the biggest players that have the best chance of surviving or hack everything together yourself to work locally.

<comment><USER3> _> I feel like you have to go with the biggest players that have the best chance of surviving_

Both Nest and Logitech have bricked old products.

I think the only way the industry survives is if consumers understand that they are not just buying the 'thing,' but also a license to the software that powers it. Some SW licenses are open source, some require a monthly fee, and some are sold 'as-is.'</comment></comment>


Fluid Grids - <AUTHOR> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/fluidgrids <comment><USER2> Very interesting. Sounds much like Typogridphy:

<http://csswizardry.com/typogridphy/>

I've been experimenting with that as well as the 960 grid CSS sets. Really quite handy

<comment><USER3> Judging by the page itself, Typogridphy isn't a fluid layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They're getting there, although this article doesn't show how to combine fluid and fixed-width columns.

<comment><USER5> _doesn't show how to combine fluid and fixed-width columns_

Maybe because this quite nightmarish (yes, I've tried) and they didn't want to ruin their premise. Generally the magic falls apart as soon as images get involved or when you need to align something pixel-perfectly - which also mostly happens when you want images to line up.

I'm very fond of the idea - but not so fond of the possible implementations (including this one) that I have tried. The math alone drops you into the funky realm of rounding differences between the browsers. Values like 14.575% just don't come out the same in every browser and it's a bit of a gamble whether you'll be able to fix the resulting uneven gaps or not.

There's also the issue of font-rendering. Most fonts are optimized for a few standard point sizes and develop a nasty blur or bad kerning when you start sizing them with em's or percentages instead of hard pixel values. The aforementioned rounding variances make it near impossible to have, say, an 1.4em helvetica (relative to a 75% container) look crisp on all platforms.

So far I have yet to see a grid-based fluid layout with images that actually looks convincing across browsers and platforms - without requiring kilobytes and man-months of CSS hacks.

Over here we've had good success with pixel-based grids for graphics heavy sites and fairly simple, albeit markup-dependant, approaches like Malo for liquid layouts. We've also used the "holy grail" for n-column layouts but found that to become a maintenance-hassle over time.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's not great about Elixir? - <AUTHOR> This isn't an attempt to bring out some great clash, but I find discussions (in the phase of the language hype cycle that Elixir is probably at anyway) centre around what the language does right, what it does well.<p>There's not much talk of drawbacks, but in a way I find a discussion of the tradeoffs more informative, both in a way that's more generally language agnostic, (like 'x' language feature is pretty cool, but usually carries these implications because of 'y'), but also just giving me a sense of where the language sits within the tech space. <comment><USER2> When it's said that Elixir is highly distributed what is sometimes left off is "within a datacenter". BEAM / Erlang / Elixir clusters are not intended to be used/scaled across datacenters due to latency issues.

So if you are an AWS user for example and want to be in multiple availability zones the Elixir distribution model will not scale and you'll have to use the same techniques and tools other languages use for distribution.

With that in mind, I think the whole distribution buzzword is way over hyped since the majority of companies will be leveraging cloud platforms like Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, etc.

I write Elixir code daily because it's an awesome language to write in and not for the distribution features.

<comment><USER3> you are not supposed to use Erlang built-in distribution in the main path in production anyway.

I only use it for management and non-critical low t-put control flow, never for the high t-put and/or data flow.

For high t-put you need to implement your own protocols over TCP or something like ZeroMQ.

Some major Erlang-based open-source projects (ejabberd, riak, RabbitMQ) use built-in distribution and that's why they usually either slow or fail under high load in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When doing CPU intensive tasks, Elixir can be considerably slower than the usual other languages.

<comment><USER5> I don't know why you're being downvoted. This disclaimer can be found in most Elixir books such as "Elixir in Action" and "Programming Elixir".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some of Phoenix's best features, like presence and websockets, break the 12-factor application rules. State is stored in the app and nodes require linking together. Most container systems are not set up for this and you have to rely on something like etcd to do orchestration between nodes. That or just move the state back to redis.

I think the positives outweigh the negatives. It's nice to replace a lot of moving pieces in a RoR application with just Elixir and Phoenix.

</comment><comment><USER5> The main thing I'm having troubles getting used to is the configuration being part of the _compilation_ phase. In a world where so many applications are deployed in AWS and URL/ports/etc are not necessarily known at compile time it makes no sense to me.

You end up having to use tools such as Distillery and Conform in tandem just to be able to configure your app at runtime.

Another thing that worries me a bit is how such a large part of the community comes from Ruby. I wish it was a little more balanced with more diversity in regards to people's background.

Other than that, it is a great language, and I'm having a lot of fun with it :)

<comment><USER7> I think as the language grows more mainstream traction you'll see people from other languages gravitate towards Elixir instead of just people from Ruby. I do feel like an outsider as I recently moved to Elixir after doing 6 years of C#/.NET and have no Ruby experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Deployment can be a bit tricky to figure out. I end up compiling on my production server, which seems extremely unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER9> While not addressing the drawbacks per se, I enjoyed reading this in depth comparison between Elixir and Go from an internal language perspective. [https://blog.codeship.com/comparing-elixir- go/](https://blog.codeship.com/comparing-elixir-go/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh those don't come out till a few years later when we figure out it was the worst thing in the world.</comment>


Last Day of Print at the New York Times - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> Last day of _Linotype_ , not print, at the New York Times in 1978. Also, the actual title is "Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu".</comment>


We're putting a TARDIS into orbit - Really [Kickstarter] - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/573935592/were-putting-a-tardis-into-orbit-really

<comment><USER2> "A magnetic, passive attitude control system is in place which will keep the TARDIS's camera pointing toward the planet"

Can anyone explain this bit? The project doesn't bother to. As far as I can see, it's just a box with no control systems or means of adjusting its position or orientation.

And why the on-board camera? Is it just filming stuff for some future alien race to collect, because there's no means for the data to get sent back down...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the project page is very lacking in technical details :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not to rain on anyone's parade, but space debris is already a sufficiently serious problem that active removal has been seriously considered. (Nobody wants a runaway Kessler scenario!)

Has deorbit of this model TARDIS been considered?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FWIW: I'm not related to this project, I've only submitted the url. And the video does get a bit annoying.

But...

TARDIS! In SPACE!</comment>


How to Read Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://web.stonehill.edu/compsci/History_Math/math-read.htm <comment><USER2> I wish I had this advice when I started university! Back then there was no web. Kids these days, they are spoiled!

</comment><comment><USER3> Examples are also key to reading mathematics. Whatever you are discussing, you should have a bunch of examples in your head. Eg if you are discussing groups, you need to memorize maybe 10 examples of groups -- trivial, nice groups, some finite symmetric groups, some infinite groups, an asymmetric group or two, and one or two weird examples. Then whenever you listen or read a theorem, think about what that means for your examples, starting with nice cases like R^n and proceeding to ugly cases.

Thanks Prof Ram. I didn't really appreciate memorizing all that stuff at the time, but it's handy now. If anybody needs a dozen examples of any type of group you can think of, grab his old web pages: <http://www.math.wisc.edu/~ram/math541/></comment>


The First Penny - getting your users to pay you anything at all - <AUTHOR> http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html <comment><USER2> It's important to understand that there are a lot of non-monetary costs associated with paying for things, such as entering payment info and deciding whether it's actually worth paying for in the first place.

<comment><USER3> agreed, clearly the discontinuity in the demand is based on the non-price costs, which is why people like the idea of easy micropayments so much. But the psychological difference between free and not-free is pretty significant.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. Even with micropayments, I would still have to think about it, and I don't like having to think. This is part of the reason why the most popular micropayment system on the web is Google AdSense.

On the other hand, I regularly send text messages on my phone without much though given to the crazy $0.15 per-message fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've actually never read anyone discussing the elasticity of demand for web services. Here's a thank-you to my econ teacher in college!

Sobering quote: "The biggest gap in any venture is that between a service that is free and one that costs a penny."

</comment><comment><USER5> It's kind of funny- I think about web apps constantly. After reading this, though, I decided to make a list of the web applications that I have actually paid for. I could only think of one- it was one of the ediet ones that lets you pick your diet (out of many popular ones) then emails you meal plans and shopping lists each week. I'm not even on a diet.

The fact that it saved me time and thought thinking through healthy meals was what got me to pay. And it made me realize also how few web apps actually end up saving me time in the end (which is the make-it or break-it factor for me, but I realize probably not for others).

So here's my question- what web apps have you other news.YC'ers ever actually paid money for? Any?

<comment><USER6> Also, a friend of mine used one of the major dating sites like eHarmony, and I think it cost her about $20 for 3 months. As in your example, it seems like the money is worthwhile because it saves time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It may just be me but I didn't really get much from this article. The author states that it's hard to get users to pay for something, and then doesn't offer any advice as to how to fix the problem.

<comment><USER8> I think how you fix the problem is finding other means to make money rather than having users pay. I must admit, if I see a dollar sign on a website, I'm less likely to even try it out. And if I never try it, then I never get hooked, and everyone loses.

I think we're on the verge of a new form of web advertising. One that works, actually makes money, and isn't annoying (like flashing banners). Google's way is a good start, but we need something revolutionary, and once it happens I think the question of whether or not users pay becomes futile.

<comment><USER9> I think how you fix the problem is finding other means to make money rather than having users pay.

The one issue with this is that it smacks of dot-bomb "Build it and they will come" thinking.

Although a few leaders will emerge, I don't think it's a viable theory for most start-ups. You're better off lowering your expectations and sharing a piece of a smaller pie.

Of course, VC's don't like that thinking too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is true that making your users pay to try your product is the best way to keep your userbase small. I think that offering a free version and then a pay version with extra features is the only real way to expect users to pay. The problem is what happens when someone else comes along and offers all of your features for free? Google was really smart with Gmail because they started out offering people 2 gig of space, which seemed insane. What was even better is that they then made it constantly 'increase' so it seems like you have as much space as you'll ever need. But if you actually watch that ticker it's increasing so slowly that it probably isn't costing them any more money, and in fact their cost probably goes down, to give each user that much space.I guess my point is that once you have a user offering them a better 'precieved' value, even if it's not better than someone else, will get them to stick with you, or get them to consider a pay account.

<comment><AUTHOR> "But if you actually watch that ticker it's increasing so slowly that it probably isn't costing them any more money"

Multiply the increase by the amount of users that receive it and the number doesn't seem so small - and can never be considered 'no cost'. The trade off is that with the more mail they can index per user, the more relevant advertisements they can display and the more people they can lure with their gimmick. Of course, they're also taking advantage of the 10% rule when it comes to offering that large amount of storage.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. Storing more email helps to target their ads, and most users will never use the full amount of space. Also, at the rate that storage gets cheaper they are able to continually increase the limits. It's like the problem that Amazon had with excess servers, they had so much infrastructure that they needed something else to do with it, to fix the problem they started the EC2 and S3 programs. Gmail could serve the same kind of purpose for Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The key objective is to develop an solution that would either generate revenue or save time and money for the user. If you cover that in your app, your group got a winner. Remember the key is to develop solutions not "stuff". An old economy rule for consultants. Be a problem solver.</comment>


HP joins MS's Chromebook/Android assault with $199 laptop and $99 Windows tablet - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/29/6869489/hp-stream-tablets-laptop-release-date-specifications <comment><USER2> It will be interesting to see if Intel & Microsoft can compete with Chromebooks on price if they try: how much of the pricing is due to technical cost (weight of x86 & Windows) and how much of it is business overhead (licensing fees & IP profits)?</comment>


A social network that every Reddit/HN fan should check out - <AUTHOR> http://intoo.im/

<comment><USER2> [https://d2gn4xht817m0g.cloudfront.net/p/product_screenshots/...](https://d2gn4xht817m0g.cloudfront.net/p/product_screenshots/images/original/000/453/107/453107-2c2e5df513992111b7d802da49e1c486a654612e.jpg?1420547699)

[https://d2gn4xht817m0g.cloudfront.net/p/product_screenshots/...](https://d2gn4xht817m0g.cloudfront.net/p/product_screenshots/images/original/000/453/740/453740-0edb544ab378b121fb3e81c6c39e2a64788c3056.bmp?1420630396)

the images in question

<comment><AUTHOR> This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.</comment></comment>


Flowtrackd: DDoS Protection with Unidirectional TCP Flow Tracking - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-flowtrackd/ <comment><USER3> Cloudflare essentially centralizing the Internet is disturbing to me. They have the capability to MITM huge swathes of internet traffic, and coupled with the fact they're a US company, I'm pretty wary of them receiving some sort of order from the NSA.

Every time I've used Cloudflare, it's been on a dedicated, cookieless subdomain serving static content only. Call me paranoid, but this company may be doing serious damage to our privacy online.

<comment><USER4> It is the same thing as google, amazon or microsoft - they are all centralizing the internet.

I have written a mitming proxy that is capable of blocking by ASN ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_\(Internet\))), beside blocking domains and other things we are used from the times of proxomitron. I have once tryed to block all 3 companies to see what will happen.

Nothing worked any more. From CDNs breaking pages of those rare occurances where they werent hosted on some cloud owned by those 3 companies. Even duckduckgo wasnt accessible anymore.

The funny thing was that yandex and baidu were still working flawlessly.

Welcome to dark ages of internet, we blew it. Instead of beeing capable of surviving third world war (as it was designed for) it is now in hands of 3 companies out of pure lazyness, lack of knowlidge and greed.

(I will release the proxy in next 2-3 months)

<comment><USER5> Is this stuff news to people? Having worked in that segment of industry, yes, that is how things largely work now, and that's largely how they've always worked, even if perhaps there's a bit more consolidation now (market factors do that somewhat automatically, if not always in the same direction).

This may be my relative youth, but I don't really recall people complaining that Akamai or--well, I don't know as good an analog to the modern major cloud providers, but maybe, say, Equinix or Rackspace--handled so much of the internet back in the day.

Cloudflare may have more of a consumer brand presence because they intentionally market that with their free plan, branded error pages (the "Intel Inside" of CDN services), and ancillary services (220.127.116.11 and their phone VPN), but it's not like the internet of yore was some decentralized collaboration of freeholder fiber owners running their little own 1-person ISP cum hosting provider. Maybe in the early, early, more academic and hobbyist days, but I don't think it's surprising that those were more of an anomalous landscape after the internet's birth than the norm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> More and more of the internet is now moving behind Cloudflare, one feature at a time. I saved some serious amount of money by just by using free service they offer. I am astonished every time Cloudflare comes up with a solution for the problems of the internet.

<comment><USER7> > More and more of the internet is now moving behind Cloudflare

This is a big double-standard here on HN. Everyone hates Google for making decisions on behalf of the internet as a whole; yet Cloudflare has done the _exact_ same thing with a different OSI layer.

I'm not very trusting of Google, but I certainly dont trust Cloudflare any more-so, because they keep things much closer to the chest.

<comment><USER8> > double-standard

Meanwhile upthread...

> Cloudflare essentially centralizing the Internet is disturbing to me.

Maybe different people have different standards, and HN isn't a completely homogeneous group with a single viewpoint. _Just like every other group where individuals are free to express themselves._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like a marketing piece light on technical details. For instance

>flowtrackd is then able to determine if a packet is part of a new connection, an open one, a connection that is closing, one that is closed, or if it's an out of state packet.

How?

<comment><USER10> That is common with Cloudflare... Never understood why so many tech. praise them when clearly many of their claims are false. You would think that 99% of the internet was under a ddos attack 99% of the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Never understood why so many tech. praise them when clearly many of their claims are false._

Which of our claims are false according to you?

<comment><USER11> We can start with DNS ANY queries. Cloudflare lied their way through this whole process, with the claim that CF were just following standards, when in fact it was exactly the opposite: Not conforming to the standard while simultaneously pushing through draft changes to the standard in order to support CF's business decision. I'm a trusting guy, and took CF's claims of championing privacy to heart, but this move completely blew that out of the water. Nowadays, I genuinely wonder sometimes how long until someone blows the whistle and it turns out CF is building dossiers just like Google, and renting out access to governments and law enforcement and adtech, shoveling even more crap onto the pile.

<comment><USER12> It was me who was pushing for DNS ANY changes, and I'm pretty proud of it. If you worked on any DNS software, you would see how messy handling ANY was.

Fundamentally the question is about Zones. I personally don't believe "zones" in the modern internet make sense. Modern DNS is not pure-bind/flat file. It's autogenerated labels, managed and pulled from different sources. Fundamentally, answering ANY is at least super hard if not impossible.

I'm sorry you think we were not transparent. I wrote two blog posts, and helped with the draft to promote the deprecating on ANY. But the real push to do something about ANY wasn't us - it was firefox who tried to query resolvers for ANY in order to save AAAA query for IPv6. This is totally bonkers. Proved that nobody understands ANY and that it only brings cost and confusion.

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/deprecating-dns-any-meta- query-t...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/deprecating-dns-any-meta-query-type/)

[https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns- operations/2015-Mar...](https://lists.dns-oarc.net/pipermail/dns- operations/2015-March/012899.html)

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/rfc8482-saying-goodbye-to- any/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/rfc8482-saying-goodbye-to-any/)

[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8482](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8482)

<comment><USER11> What you've done here is demonstrate why Cloudflare cannot be trusted: You do not get to decide for the rest of the internet which use cases are valid and which are "bonkers" \-- you probably just thought to yourself "Oh, but I did". This is a pattern of behavior at Cloudflare (cf. Cloudflare CEO waking up one morning to remove a domain from the internet because he didn't like the contents -- which is a polite way of saying he caved to the Twitter mob). You and Cloudflare made a business decision that supporting the DNS standard was too costly, despite DNS being a core offering of Cloudflare. You appear to be saying that you personally made a value judgment about someone else's use case, used that as an argument to drop support for the standard, then pushed draft changes so that Cloudflare could retroactively claim to support the standard.

You have forced changes in the DNS standard based on your own personal value judgment, and Cloudflare was duplicitous in its support of this relative moral position. I could not have made the argument against trusting Cloudflare better, myself.

<comment><USER12> > You and Cloudflare made a business decision that supporting the DNS standard > was too costly,

No, I made a decision that it was time to fix an obscure feature that was impossible to use correctly, and caused real damage to the internet - <USER2> firefox ANY saga.

Fun fact. We kept on supporting ANY until the RFC was ratified.

> You have forced changes in the DNS standard based on your own personal value > judgment

No, we worked on the standard in the working group. I'm not the one assigning RFC numbers. This is a process.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>