Deep biomarkers of human aging: Application of deep neural networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v8/n5/full/100968.html <comment><USER2> A robust generally agreed upon and reliable biomarker of aging is a very important thing that doesn't yet exist. It would ideally require something simple like a blood sample, pin down biological age fairly accurately, and work in mice, dogs, pigs, and people at the very least. The estimate of biological age would be a measure of how damaged you are, and would have a solid statistical relationship with remaining life expectancy.

Why is this important? Because at present the only way to assess a putative rejuvenation therapy, such as the various approaches to senescent cell clearance presently under development, is to try it in mammals and wait and see. In mice that takes a lot of time and money, even when you work with one of the suppliers who can sell you pre-aged-to-the-age-you-want mice for a few hundred dollars each. Then never mind testing in longer-lived species. You'll always be able to show that your therapy does what it says on the can (removes X% of senescent cells in tissues A, B, and C) but how to prove that this does in fact extend human life in the same way it does in mice, and by how much?

Testing putative rejuvenation therapies would run a lot faster if you could just take a tissue sample a few weeks after the treatment, send it off to a clinic, and quickly see that biological age was reduced. Then far fewer of the wait and see studies would be needed, and the whole field would move a lot faster.

At present DNA methylation patterns look pretty promising as a biomarker of aging, but unfortunately there is still a way to go from the stage of pretty promising to the stage of a generally agreed biomarker of aging that is good enough to bypass the need for wait and see studies. So more signs of parallel and different approaches in the research community are always welcome.

<comment><USER3> _The estimate of biological age would be a measure of how damaged you are, and would have a solid statistical relationship with remaining life expectancy._

I think a claim that aging involves _only_ damage is reaching a bit. It seems plausible that each standard phase of human development involve adaptation as well as chromosome damage.

A standard claim is that evolve doesn't care about an organism once it is beyond the age of reproduction. Human beings live considerably longer than other primates and longer past the age of reproduction. One argument is that the extra human lifetime is an adaption to allow an aged human to aid the survival of their offspring. If this is mutation, then one might guess human genes already contain adaptions again usual genetic decay. However this may not be good news since _further extending_ these may be harder than just eliminating the simple aging of simpler organisms.

I know that, just for example, the low metabolisms of the very elderly are seen as a protection against cancer, cancer that would otherwise be more prevalent given accumulative genetic. And this means a failure to lower metabolism over aging time might actually be associated with higher mortality (this may screw up the association of mortality and aging-process measures).

<comment><USER2> The root cause is damage. That is the mainstream view in the research community, for all that there is a lot of debate over which damage is actually fundamental and which damage is more important, or how the damage progresses in detail.

Then there is secondary and later damage caused by systematic dysregulation resulting from the root cause damage. Then there is adaptation to damage, primary and secondary and later, which is some cases is beneficial and some cases not. E.g. epigenetic changes, stem cell quiescence, cardiovascular remodeling, etc.

I'm vaguely optimistic about DNA methylation patterns as the basis for a biomarker precisely because they are not damage, but rather a reaction to that damage. In a way they are an evolved damage assessment, or at least they might be used in that way. We'll see how it pans out in practice over the next five years or so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The method seems interesting and potentially useful, but I'm skeptical of the evaluation for two reasons. First, R2 is not a fair way to compare simple (linear regression, kNN) and complex (deep neural net) models, as it will always prefer a more complex model. Second, there was no indication how the error was computed. Was there a hold out set or cross-validation for accuracy? Without any more details, I have to assume they measured error on the the training data, which will also prefer the more complex model.

Also, as a public service announcement:

"The authors are affiliated with Insilico Medicine, Inc, a commercial company developing differential pathway activation scoring-based and deep learned biomarkers of multiple diseases and aging and engaging in drug discovery and drug repurposing."

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a fan of deep learning, but is it really the best choice in an application like this? I have always heard that shallow machine learning methods generally did better on unstructured smallish data.

They should put this data on something like Kaggle.com and let researchers and hobbyists around the world try to find the best model. At the very least publish the data somewhere.</comment>


The Benefit Of Being Naked - <AUTHOR> http://www.brendanpickering.com/2010/04/06/the-benefit-of-being-naked/

<comment><USER2> _That cute server? Can't friend request them._

I had to reread that a couple times as I was trying to figure out how a server can be cute (somehow the part about being friends with it wasn't that surprising) :)

<comment><USER3> Should have used the PC term: "Personal Culinary Services Director."

<comment><USER4> Ohhhhhh! thanks...

It actually took this reply to clue me in to what he was talking about, same mistake as parent. (Nice ECC RAM baby?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Creative thinking in the bathroom is probably less an effect of being naked as it is being in a private space with nothing better to think about. Otherwise, you could write another article about all the ideas people have on the toilet, titled "The Benefit of Pooping."

<comment><USER6> > Otherwise, you could write another article about all the ideas people have > on the toilet, titled "The Benefit of Pooping."

People do write about thinking in the shower, so why is pooping out of line?

> Creative thinking in the bathroom is probably less an effect of being naked > as it is being in a private space with nothing better to think about.

Is it "private space with nothing to think about" or running water?

<comment><USER7> _Is it "private space with nothing to think about" or running water?_

Based on my experience from time spent in private spaces with nothing to think about that don't have running water, I'm inclined to doubt the significance of the effect of running water.

<comment><USER8> I do think, though, that the relaxation of being immersed in warm water definitely helps.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What It's Like to Get Attacked by a Horde of YA Authors - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2019/11/sarah-dessen-ya-books-authors-brooke-nelson-social-media-attack.html <comment><USER2> So if by a coincidence you inadvertently make yourself a name being sucked into a whirlpool of SJW, is there a sure way of profiting from it? Or can you only loose if PR is not your profession?

</comment><comment><USER3> YA Twitter is a digital sacrifice zone, and has been such from the beginning. This isn't news.</comment>


Show HN: estereobit - Music video jukebox - <AUTHOR> http://estereobit.tv Hey HN,<p>I made a music video jukebox with Ember, Node, Bootstrap 3, Mongo, and Express. It's the first major draft, I'd appreciate any/all critiques.
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I made a music video jukebox with Ember, Mongo, Express, Node and Bootstrap. It's the first major draft and I'd appreciate your critiques.

Thanks!</comment>


Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos meet "Ginger" - <AUTHOR> http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html <comment><USER3> I don't want to sound cocky, but I could have saved Dean a lot of grief and time if I had the chance before he launched the segway. The reason the segway failed is because people look like fucking dorks when they ride them. I'm surprised Jobs didn't make that remark (maybe thats what he meant when he was criticizing the design).

When they revealed it on the Today show they had people riding around on them with bike helmets, sweater vests, and bowties. I've ridden one, mind you, and it is an incredible machine.. but I wouldn't be caught dead riding one of those things in public. There's a reason Jobe rides one in Arrested Development.

For all Dean's smarts, it was his inability to connect with the every day person that caused the flop. Never underestimate the power of cool.

<comment><USER4> Have you rode one before?

If not, I highly suggest you try it. The control system feels so natural. It's like a motorcycle on your feet.

<comment><USER5> I've never ridden a Segway (although I certainly would like to) but having owned motorcycles for over 15 years (mostly sport bikes), I'm having a hard time understanding this analogy.

To be fair - I've used a similar analogy for a modern sportbike. "It's like running really fast" - most modern sportbikes are so compact that they aren't anywhere in your field of vision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome to read a detailed account of instant-on insight and tough questions from two giants. Steve's intolerance of business as usual is particularly inspiring.

<comment><USER7> Really? I can't believe they missed the obvious:

 _"You have a product so revolutionary, you'll have no problem selling it. The question is, are people going to be allowed to use it?"_

That's Segway's problem right there. Just because something is revolutionary, doesn't mean it will sell. These business giants made the exact same mistake we all make - assume other people will get as excited as we are.

<comment><USER6> The obvious? I side with pg. "Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin homo?"

<http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html>

<comment><USER8> That's... not exactly a quote, now is it?

<comment><USER9> It should have been written "'Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin' homo?'"

Although I'm not entirely sure of his conclusion that bike-like styling would be a solution to this problem. Plenty of us get the occasional homophobic insults from jagoff motorists.

On that topic, I think another reason the Segway wasn't very successful is that it has few compelling advantages over a $300 bike-- it has the same speed, has a lower range and is harder to refuel, doesn't fit in that well with existing infrastructure, and doesn't get you exercise. The only upside I can think of is that, because you aren't exercising, you don't sweat (slow down riding your bike or take a shower!) and that it's high-tech.

<comment><USER10> It also doesn't require effort and people are lazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Not a good reason, in Jobs's view, because the code could easily be reverse- engineered. No it couldn't, said Tim. Could, said Jobs."

I don't know where Jobs gets his instincts about this stuff, but he was totally right: <http://tlb.org/scooter.html>

<comment><USER12> I don't see any evidence that this is a "reverse engineering" of a Segway - <USER2> seems to be more of a "re-engineering" from scratch.

<comment><USER13> Is there a practical difference?

<comment><USER12> Yes, a re-engineering cannot be prevented by the original company through secrecy, obfuscation, or legal threats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Is the rest of the book this good?

<comment><USER14> I read it back in 2003 I believe, just after I got into Macs and got really interested in studying about Steve Jobs. It was an entertaining read for sure. Nothing spectacular but this particular chapter is the one that stands out to me after all these years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I found this illuminating. Are there any other accounts of Jobs in action? He's very direct here, and to-the-point, and just so _sure_ of what's right, and what's not.

</comment><comment><USER16> Holy crap, the Segway was released eight years ago.. I feel old.

</comment><comment><USER17> The problem with the Segway is that it is too slow for a motorised vehicle. Even though it moves a lot faster than walking, I bet it feels really slow because you're not doing anything else while riding it. If I'm not exerting physical effort to move, I want the damn thing to move _fast_. Unlike with a bicycle or car, there is no link between what you are doing and your speed.

Maybe they should add some kind of stepper thing which speeds up the thing. So, old people can just cruise at the base speed and others can step up the speed.

</comment><comment><USER18> The book, "Code Name Ginger" is actually great. It's a complete 180 from the Steve Blank model of Customer Development and is a good reminder of how great teams can create the biggest craters.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think the movie "Mall Cop" sums up the Ginger demographic nicely.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oldie, but goodie.</comment>


YouTube Demonetizes Anti-Vaccination Videos - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/22/youtube-demonetizes-anti-vaccination-videos/ <comment><USER2> this is the third _repeat-appearing_ article in 24 hours?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, didn't know that. Link to previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230245](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19230245)

<comment><USER3> Can you delete this one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I 'd like to suggest the word demonyzes for its double entendre

</comment><comment><USER5> Are there any notable movements to move away from YouTube coming from or supported by content creators?

A lot of content creators have voiced concerns over demonetization and/or false positives regarding copyright violations but I've rarely heard anyone talk about collectively moving to a different platform without centralized control.

<comment><USER6> There is no other platform. No one else could afford to run youtube. Google is practically giving it out for free. Video hosting is too expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm guessing YouTube bans videos that promote self-harm and harm to other humans? At what stage does anti-vaccination material cross that line?

Governments already ban certain ways of promoting smoking and alcohol use in an effort to reduce harm. Why should anti-vaccination material be considered differently when people not being vaccinating can be directly linked to the death of others?

<comment><USER8> Fair point, but junk food does way more damage than not vaccinating. Yet there's no crackdown on McDonalds

<comment><USER9> There is a crackdown on falsely promoting junk food as healthy or promoting it to people who don't know better (namely children). Maybe not on YouTube, but in various countries' legislation.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6154600.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6154600.stm)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB106919100053167300](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB106919100053167300)

[https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmbills/110/0...](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmbills/110/04110.1-i.html) (Section 3)

It's not really a fair comparison, though. The main issue with anti- vaccination content is dangerous misinformation, not simply promoting something harmful. The other issue is that the people who fall for this content aren't usually the ones who get hurt, their innocent children are. It would only be a fair comparison if there were a large movement of very influential, powerful, and famous people posting "vegetables cause autism, and Burger King cures it" videos out there to hundreds of millions of viewers and a boom in child obesity tied directly to parents viewing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This comes at a very important time, with measles outbreaks occuring around the world from Brooklyn to Japan. It is horrible because it puts at risk the lives of those who are too young to receive the vaccine. I completely agree with Google but I think that the government and/or healthcare workers need to make a bigger effort to teach the public about how vaccines work and how safe they are for the person receiving them.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is this censorship?

<comment><USER12> I think it definitely is. Creators depend on Ad-Revenue so taking that away when they publish something you don't agree with is censorship. Also Google doesn't have to be a state to engage in censorship, anyone can be a censor i.e a parent who prevents their children watching shows with a gay character.

I think the Anti-Vaccination movement is misleading and eventually harmful to public health.

That said I think censorship should be something that should take place (if it has to) in a public office, not in a corporate boardroom.

Here is what Google should have done. If you google anything related to depression google suggests suicide prevention hotlines. If facebook notices a popular article in your timeline it follows it with a snopes link to check if it is real. In other words Google should place a banner/ad/link that educates people on the real facts concerning Anti-Vaccination.

At the end of the day, Google own their platform and can do whatever they want, but is it the right thing to do? Or better yet is there a better way.

<comment><USER13> Censorship is not about the right to make a profit, it's about the right to publish.

<comment><USER12> I think that is a brittle and somewhat superficial definition of censorship.

Here is the Oxford dictionary definition:

> The suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that > are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security

Note there is nothing there about "rights".

<comment><USER14> YouTube hasn't suppressed or prohibited any of those items. The videos are still there. They just don't have ads targeted at them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm torn. On one hand it's great, this is a group we all hate and it's good PR for YouTube.

On the other hand they also like to demonetize anything containing anything close to curse words or talking about anything too serious.

<comment><USER16> ...Unless it serves the agenda.</comment></comment>


When world leaders thought you shouldn't need passports or visas - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/when-world-leaders-thought-you-shouldnt-need-passports-or-visas-64847 <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of this famous piece by A.J.P. Taylor:

'Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police.'

It's hard to believe how much we've given up.

<comment><USER3> It's simply a replacement of informal barriers with formal ones, plus compensation of the lowering of travel and communication costs due to technology: someone who traveled abroad in the XIXth century was either well- off so he would pass any currently existing barriers easily, or really really needed it so he would do it, too. With international air ticket worth less than a good meal, some other barrier had to be constructed or all modern nations would be quickly razed by influx of billions destitute immigrants.

<comment><USER4> > _With international air ticket worth less than a good meal_

Jesus Christ, where are you getting your lunch from?

<comment><USER5> Ryanair, I guess. Verona to Brussels is 8 Euros. A "meal deal" on the plane is 10.

<comment><USER6> Why doesn't the US have such fares?

<comment><USER7> These fares do require decent flexibility -- for tourist destinations, you won't be leaving on a Friday and returning on Sunday. The £4.49 flight between London and Romania is on a Wednesday, on a Friday it's £60-70.

Ryanair use the low fares for marketing, pretty successfully. They probably expect many people to add luggage (£10-40, depending on route), or buy food on the plane (£10+) or be disorganized and end up paying more.

In Western/Northern Europe they use out-of-the-way airports -- London Stansted is 47 minutes by the fastest train from London, or over an hour by car. They have a reputation for reducing the fees they pay the airport by threatening to move to alternative airports, unless they're given a very good deal. People walk to the plane, they don't use jet bridges. The whole plane is economy class, and the seats plasticy-fake-leather, which must speed up cleaning. At airports, they'll usually use the worst (farthest) gates. All the planes are the same, so maintenance is simplified and pilots easily moved around.

As to why the US doesn't have them -- I don't know. Norwegian is a budget airline, and has fares like New York to Paris for $175 one way (Tuesday, no luggage, no food!).

<comment><USER8> Spirit and Allegiant are probably the closest US equivalents. Totally no frills, and you pay for everything including hand luggage and water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm appalled at how many self-described liberals I know who consider themselves to be guardians of civil liberties not bat an eye to these restrictions. The matter of fact is that all the restrictions we put in place with respect to the free movement of peoples -- and the accompanying restrictions around employment, leisure, etc. -- are single-handedly the single biggest breach of human rights in the world. It is absolutely inexcusable that any person should "defend" any policy short of complete and total freedom of movement. I think this is the one thing that I believe in most strongly in all of my life -- I am confident that in the future -- perhaps many, many centuries from now -- we will look at these things with the same eyes with which we look at slavery in the past.

<comment><USER10> I support freedom of movement, but I also understand people's worries about unmanageable burdens placed on support systems for a nation's people. Of course, if there were no support systems this would be a moot point, and is one of the few counterarguments to, say, increased public healthcare or pensions, that made sense.

HN has a lot of proponents of universal basic income. Say a small country, maybe Iceland with only a few hundred thousand people, introduces a basic income of $1000 per month. For many people around the world that is an incredibly huge sum. How do you handle the millions that are likely to arrive to enjoy those benefits? Do you:

* Tell them they can come and live there but not claim it, effectively making them second class citizens?

* Bankrupt your government providing this benefit to people who are not initially contributing lots of taxes?

* Restrict entry to people who are probably going to be a net gain for your government's coffers?

Not to mention that when you see a large, _sudden_ influx of people with substantially different language and culture it can be a severe shock to the original inhabitants. I am ardently in favour of helping refugees but I can understand the challenges that occur when newcomers with different cultural norms become a significant part of a place's population. (Aside - it's kind of ridiculous that the US is squabbling about taking maybe ten thousand refugees from a place that they destabilized while Germany takes over a million)

<comment><USER11> If helping people is what we care about, perhaps we should consider whether unrestricted immigration or basic income/other welfare state policies will help more. From what I can tell, neither BI nor traditional welfare states can come even remotely close to the benefits of open borders. It kind of makes one wonder whether helping people is the real goal of BI proponents.

As for the "sudden influx," I think it's important to recognize what the real problem is. In Europe, Muslim immigrants seem to rape and commit other crimes a lot more than natives.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn- apart-o...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317978/Torn-apart-open- door-migrants-Sweden-seen-Europe-s-liberal-nation-violent-crime-soaring-Far- Right-march-reports-SUE-REID.html)

I say "seem to" because stats on this are notoriously hard to come by. For example, Sweden censors that data in their crime statistics. Similarly, various police agencies seem to ignore crimes in order to avoid seeming racist.

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

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/12...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/12/swedish- police-investigating-alleged-officer-led-coverup-of-sexual-assaults-by- migrants/?tid=a_inl)

[https://www.rt.com/news/328465-police-500-assaults- cologne/](https://www.rt.com/news/328465-police-500-assaults-cologne/)

I suspect if Europe imported more peaceful immigrants, or even had a credible plan to handle this issue, the sudden influx would be less of a problem.

NYC and London have faced a sudden influx of foreigners over the past 15 years but no one really cares. Why worry about some Indian or Russian working at a bank, doing yoga after work and then going home?

<comment><USER12> > I suspect if Europe imported more peaceful immigrants, or even had a > credible plan to handle this issue, the sudden influx would be less of a > problem.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? If the immigrants are all "some Indian or Russian working at a bank, doing yoga after work and then going home" then we're fine, but unrestricted immigration would mean accepting the violent criminals, or racists, or foreign agents under orders to move to strategic voting districts etc.

> From what I can tell, neither BI nor traditional welfare states can come > even remotely close to the benefits of open borders.

Open borders make competition much more aggressive. A complete lack of competition is inefficient, but competition within borders is generally adequate for that, especially when the border is the size of the US or the EU.

Sufficiently aggressive competition produces local maxima. It means no one has any margins to invest in the future. It erodes the tax base because taxes have to come only out of discretionary income or people will starve, but with enough competition employers can pay subsistence wages. And consumers making subsistence wages are price sensitive which drives down the margins of businesses. This is all very "efficient" \-- it's the thing competition is "good at" \-- except that it means there is no money for people to go to college or do any R&D that won't pay out in the current fiscal year or anything like that.

Borders artificially reduce competition somewhat. That isn't always bad.

A basic income helps with this. It gives people unconditional money that they can use to _escape_ the local maxima created by aggressively competitive markets. Then those people can go to college and invent medicines and technologies that benefit people on the other side of the border.

That works better than everyone being "equal" because everyone is making subsistence wages.

<comment><USER11> You seem to be suggesting that it's perfectly fine to have tremendous inequality (compare Dharavi to Baltimore) as long as it enables long term business investments.

Is there any reason why that argument doesn't apply to inequality _within_ a country as well?

In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade barriers?

<comment><USER12> > You seem to be suggesting that it's perfectly fine to have tremendous > inequality (compare Dharavi to Baltimore) as long as it enables long term > business investments.

Having some amount of inequality is the only way it's _possible_ to have long term business investments -- or any investments at all. Because we need doctors, engineers and businessmen but also miners, truck drivers and janitors. These professions will never have equal status, and it will always take more resources to train an engineer than a janitor, but it isn't "fair" that one person gets to be the engineer while another has to be the janitor. Yet that unfairness is inherently necessary if we want to have engineers.

> In particular, what about inequality caused by within country trade > barriers?

The goal is to have a moderate amount of competition. Too much and everyone is making subsistence wages and no one can afford to go to college (and your government has no tax revenue to subsidize it). Too little and the inequality becomes unnecessarily excessive (which is, among other things, inefficient).

Notice that there are two different kinds of competition here. Between employees we have quite enough already, because employees largely aren't organized. But competition between business entities is currently on the low side. Compare e.g. the market share of Facebook in the market for social media with the market share of an individual Facebook employee in the market for software developers.

So the questions have different answers. The sweet spot for employees seems to be no restrictions within the US/EU but restrictions between countries. For business entities even the trade barriers between countries seem to restrict competition too much. (Or at least, a lack of trade barriers doesn't inherently lead to ruinous competition there, because there are other factors inhibiting competition between businesses.)

<comment><USER11> But the EU has a population about twice that of the US. So why shouldn't we impose trade barriers within the EU to bring this awful competition down to American levels? Similarly, India should perhaps split herself into US-sized chunks, and Biharis shouldn't be allowed to migrate to Bombay? (Shiv Sena would love this.)

Similarly, as the US grows, shouldn't we start imposing internal trade barriers to keep our size down to the optimum?

This idea that there is some optimal size that just magically happens to correspond to national boundaries is belied by the fact that countries have hugely different sizes.

<comment><USER12> But India _does_ have a problem with excessive competition keeping wages low. The rest of the EU might actually be better off with fewer countries in it (e.g. without Greece). Measures to keep the US population stable rather than growing could be beneficial.

And there are obviously political considerations. Nobody is going to let you carve up national borders over this, so we're stuck with the existing borders even if that isn't 100% perfectly optimal. Estimating the optimal size is going to be at the "orders of magnitude" level anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> J-dawg The UK has obviously seen a lot of debate about immigration recently, around the Brexit referendum. I've often felt like non-EU immigration was the elephant in the room during all this.

'Leave' voters have often been portrayed as racist bigots by liberal 'Remain' voters. (I'm one of the latter, and I've been guilty of this myself at times).

But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?

I don't know the answer, but I don't think it's possible to make the liberal case for EU freedom of movement without being something of a hypocrite. And I say this as a (confused) Remain voter.

EDIT: Before anyone says, I know there is more to the EU debate than just immigration, and that not all Remainers are liberal/lefty, just as Leavers are not all right wing. But there's no denying that immigration was the main issue on many (most?) voters minds.

<comment><USER13> Please stop using the word 'racist' where it does not apply. The freedom of movement within the EU is definitely not based on race, but on the citizenship of any of the Schengen Area countries. "Xenophobic" is a much better term here.

Furthermore, where does it say that the freedom of movement is due to some ideology which considers all nationalities to be equal, rather than just being a policy to improve the welfare and trade between EU members?

<comment><USER14> > The freedom of movement within the EU is definitely not based on race, but > on the citizenship of any of the Schengen Area countries.

That's true, but can't it still be considered racist? It may not be direct, intentional racism, but the net result of UK policy is that white people can enter the UK much easier than black or brown people.

If I require that my employees be at least 6 feet tall, isn't that a sexist hiring policy?

<comment><USER12> > If I require that my employees be at least 6 feet tall, is that a sexist > hiring policy?

Do people who are at least 6 feet tall make better employees?

If you require loan applicants to have income sufficient to make the loan payments, and that is true of more white applicants than black applicants, is that a racist policy?

<comment><USER15> >" _Do people who are at least 6 feet tall make better employees?_ "

Side note: Not sure about better, but definitely get paid more according to some studies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Passports and citizenship in many ways are the most unfair thing in the world as your place of birth influences what you can do in life.

For many of us the idea of having a bad passport is only theoretical in nature but it decides many things in life for others and sets stupid arbitrary ceilings that should not exist.

<comment><USER17> I find that Chris Rock has the best summary of it with his "I'm American" routine: "What, you think you're better than somebody from France 'cause you came out of a pussy in Detroit?"

Nothing specifically American about it though. Many people in France think they're better than Syrian refugees because they're born from a pussy in Paris.

Full transcript: [http://www.cswap.com/2004/Chris_Rock:_Never_Scared/cap/en/25...](http://www.cswap.com/2004/Chris_Rock:_Never_Scared/cap/en/25fps/a/00_36)

<comment><USER18> The ancestors of that pussy in Paris built an advanced society with equal rights, education, respect, etc. That's why people born from a French pussy deserve that, while people from other societies do not.

Is it our fault that other people that have had the same hundreds of years to build advanced societies haven't done it? Do we have to literally live worse because of it?

<comment><USER19> People from other societies deserve all these good things too. Uncontrolled immigration may not be the best way to achieve this though.

<comment><USER18> No they do not deserve anything they and their ancestors haven't worked for. Nobody just "deserves" anything.

<comment><USER20> > Nobody just "deserves" anything.

A few comments up you're saying the French deserved their stuff because their ancestors worked for it.

<comment><USER18> Nobody just "deserves" anything [just for being born. Someone has to work hard for everything]

<comment><USER21> Yet you claimed precisely that a few comments above.

<comment><USER22> Cognitive dissonance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A large majority of people view me as a crackpot when I say passports should be abolished, and free men ought to be able to travel the planet freely.

It never occurred to me that the world was like this as recently as 100 years ago!

<comment><USER10> I suspect it has a lot to do with the rise of relatively cheap global travel and strong disparity in the median wealth of different nations. 100+ years ago could you travel from a poor country to a wealthy country with relative ease and expect to raise your own standard of living? Either the journey was expensive and arduous, or the situation in places you could travel to was not likely to be a massive improvement on your own. There are very strong exceptions of course; Irish people leaving the famine come to mind, but it pretty much came to people dying to push them to make the trip.

Also, 100+ years ago an immigrant was less likely to be viewed as a burden, because there were fewer (if any) government supports for regular citizens. I'm pretty left politically, but I acknowledge that the more government spends on its people the less likely the government (and the voters) are to be inclined to let newcomers in who are not immediate contributors.

<comment><USER24> States in the US have different laws (consider income tax rates), and travel inside the US is super cheap, but we don't see people migrating like crazy to avoid taxes or get free stuff from the government.

<comment><USER2> > we don't see people migrating like crazy

Yes we do! How many people do you know who were born in the state you now live in?

I don't think one person in my office was born in this state.

<comment><USER25> I think "to avoid taxes or get free stuff from the government" was an essential condition on what you just quoted. And for what it's worth I think I agree -- I don't think I know anyone who has moved to a state mainly for tax reasons. (Though I do know people who have _avoided_ moving to California, allegedly because of taxes.)

Though maybe the fact that people _can_ move to take advantage of state giveaways, is a big constraint on the way they're currently designed? What conditions does Alaska put on its Permanent Fund payments?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This discussion is synonymous with whether countries should even have borders. If borders aren't policed, they may as well not even exist.

It would be great if all people were kind and caring, if there were no corruption, war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, crime or discrepancies in standards of living. But we've seen over and over that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The problematic migrant situation in Europe is a good example of that.

<comment><USER27> _The problematic migrant situation in Europe is a good example of that._

Is it? Are illegal immigrants more likely to cause problems that both natives and legal immigrants? From what I can tell, at least the attacks that make the news have all been perpetrated by people born and raised in Europe.

EDIT: [http://www.dw.com/en/report-refugees-have-not-increased- crim...](http://www.dw.com/en/report-refugees-have-not-increased-crime-rate- in-germany/a-18848890)

<comment><USER28> Cologne rape happened after this article, so did the massacres in France and Germany.

<comment><USER27> Which of the massacres were perpetrated by refugees or illegal immigrants?

The Nice attack was made by a legal immigrant, living in France for more than a decade. The Brussels ISIL cell members were almost all born in Belgium, France or Sweden. The Charlie Hebdo shooters were born in France, as was the guy who took those hostages in the supermarket. The Munich shooter was born in Germany.

Which ones am I missing?

<comment><USER29> Born in France doesn't mean socially and culturally integrated. Many of these attackers were children of immigrants who either didn't integrate because of their own cultural beliefs or because the host society didn't provide the necessary conditions. Whatever the reason, these people didn't feel like they belong to the host societies and radicalized. If anything, these attacks are examples of unsuccessful integration and of the failures of free movement and immigration of people of radically different cultural beliefs, and not the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In his book "Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars" [1] historian Paul Fussell devotes a whole chapter to "The Passport Nuisance":

> As a fixture of the european scene since 1915, the passport now seems so > natural that one forgets the shock and scandal it once occasioned. Robert > Byron is one who treated his with a due contempt. In the space asking about > "Any special peculiarities," he entered "Of Melancholy appearance," and in > the square reserved for a photograph of bearer's wife he drew a ludicrous > cartoon, "resulting," Anthory Powell recalls, "in the document being > withdrawn."

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154471.Abroad](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/154471.Abroad)

</comment><comment><USER31> When I read Dickens I'm always surprised how citizens could get locked out of their own city walls at night or would bribe the watchman to "forget" that they've seen the villain or hero pass the gate.

I think in the past there were much more restrictive laws in place at times, other times maybe more lax.

</comment><comment><USER32>
        >But delegates ultimately decided that a return to a
        >passport-free world could only happen alongside a return to
        >the global conditions that prevailed before the start of
        >the first world war.

I wish the article was more detailed about what was/is considered changed in the global condition.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm fine with the controls part, but can't we at least get rid of the paper documents? People just lose them anyway.

Surely a combination of say retina + finger + voice etc would provide more security than could ever be needed...

<comment><USER34> I think the whole point of the article is to showcase that maybe you don't NEED all this additional security. I purposefuly try to avoid going to the US because of the security and bureaucracy involved in crossing this border in the first place

<comment><USER16> In particular because the number one cause of illegal immigration in the US is visa overstaying. So how exactly are the passports or visas helping that case?</comment></comment></comment>


13% of international calls now go via Skype - <AUTHOR> http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/strategy/30579-13-percent-of-international-calls-now-go-via-skype

<comment><USER2> I stopped using Skype when they embezzled my account. I put money into a Skype account to call outside vendors, then my vendors got Skype so I didn't need to any more. Months later I got notified Skype was absconding with my "dormant" money. Not dormant account - still used that every day. Apparently money gets stale just sitting there, so they decided it was theirs to keep. Customer support said it was "standard accounting practice". For embezzlers anyway. SO anyway I would never trust Skype with my money, any more than say a guy in an alley with watches for sale.

<comment><USER3> It does seem a little odd, but this actually is standard practice.

When a company is holding money for you, with the expectation of you spending it on some service or good the company can hold on to those funds for only so long before they need to recognize it as revenue. The reason they need to recognize it as revenue is because if they didn't, they would be subject to an ever ballooning set of obligations to provide service to people who don't redeem their prepayed minutes.

So why does Skype take your money after a few short months of inactivity instead of, say, two years? 1\. Part of it is that current tax law requires that you recognize the money as a gain before too long a period (this increases profits and tax revenues, btw) 2\. Skype decision makers decided to go with the flow on the issue, at a cost to customer satisfaction. ("Hey, they want us to take the free money, let's take the free money")

As an aside, redemption rates after 3 months are ridiculously low. Since they are going to get to keep the money regardless, Skype's only gain is on the service they wouldn't have to provide versus a longer grace period. Which considering profit margins and so forth, is likely negligible. So like I said, it is standard practice, but it's also bad business.

For more, look into the matching principal: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matching_principle>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That percentage amazes me.

Anyway, when the other person doesn't have Skype or I want to call an actual phone, I prefer localphone ( <http://www.localphone.com/> ). On average I think their rates are cheaper than Skype's (.9 cents/min for US and Canada), plus I can use different clients.

<comment><USER5> Hi Jach. I work for Localphone, so it's nice to see us mentioned here! We are definitely cheaper than Skype to most destinations - on a crude country-by- country basis we're cheaper to at least 95% of countries.

If you weren't aware, Localphone-to-Localphone calls are free too when using VoIP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a SIP user, this disappoints me; it's just one proprietary network to another.

<comment><USER7> I might jump from Skype to SIP if I had some more information. As it is, I'm not aware that I know any SIP users. Are there rating sites for SIP providers, apps, and hardware?

<comment><USER5> Between <http://www.dslreports.com/> and <http://www.voip-info.org/> you should be able to find all the information you need.

<comment><USER7> With some collation and searching on my part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a potential danger with Skype. If I know correctly, phone companies (at least in eastern Europe) have to meet some standards set by the government. Since Skype is not a phone company, it does not have to meet any of these standards: [http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/what_happened_on_august_1...](http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/what_happened_on_august_16.html)

<comment><USER9> Even 'real' phone companies don't have to meet standards for international calls. And if somebody cuts a cable - Skype's IP packets are likely to route around a problem quicker than an East European state telecoms company can negotiate a pairing agreement with another cable provider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I bought my Mom a Skype WiFi phone. Now she talks to her sisters in Korea hours at a time, and it only costs $12 a month. No need to turn on the iMac. Just turn on the family room lights, and the Wifi router comes on, and she uses "the other" handset.

<comment><USER10> Oh cool, a Skype WiFi phone. Can you make a suggestion please? How much did it cost?

I've to have my mom use the computer with the USB mic, and it usually turns out to be a big hassle.

<comment><USER7> The phone I got my mom is this one:

<http://amzn.com/B002V45UEE> (IPEVO)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how high that percentage would jump if Skype launched its own line of Skype-enabled phones.

<comment><USER12> well they already sell those ...

<http://shop.skype.com/phones/>

i think i even saw some phones branded as "skype ready" or something similar in brick and mortar store

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 87% don't?

<comment><USER14> I use SIP with Localphone as long as I don't need the video features of Skype, mainly because it's more flexible for me (SIP integrated in my desk phone, Ekiga and my S60 phone) and for the called party (not needing a computer)

<comment><USER5> You should generally find that we're cheaper to most countries than Skype too, with equal or better quality.

Do you consider video to be a must-have feature? It's something we could look into supporting since it's all just SIP to us.</comment></comment></comment>


Digging for answers: The "strong smell" of fraud from one Bitcoin miner maker - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/04/digging-for-answers-the-strong-smell-of-fraud-from-one-bitcoin-miner-maker/ <comment><USER2> The eternal question I always have is: if you make machines that print money, why would you sell them?

There are several plausible answers, but it's still interesting to think about.

(Although in this case, the answer may be "they _don 't_ make machines that print money and they sell them anyway")

<comment><USER3> The eternal answers from every mining thread: if you need crowdfunding to pay for your NRE or if you would prefer to have USD instead of BTC or if you would prefer to have a certain amount of money now rather than an uncertain amount later, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Before anyone knee-jerks the "you asked for anarchy" response, bear in mind that A: libertarians generally are OK with contract enforcement and B: the real world legal system is apparently already quite involved, and I doubt anyone's complaining.

(Libertarianism isn't anarchy. If it were, we wouldn't need a separate word.)

<comment><USER5> > (Libertarianism isn't anarchy. If it were, we wouldn't need a separate > word.)

Not that your conclusion is wrong, but if that argument worked we wouldn't need the word "synonym."

<comment><USER4> In English, synonyms are rarely _equivalent_. I can not come up with an example of two common-English words (i.e., not from a jargon set) that really are _exactly_ the same, in all implications, off the top of my head. Some may exist, but in general if such a pair exists normal language processes will push the two apart in meaning anyhow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where ever greed is involved, it must be administrated. Otherwise it would be as chaotic as sadly things are shaping up in the bitcoin world.

I will try to search for ARS article on butterfly, which went into depth about mining, actually it was my first time, I had completely known what is bitcoin mining. Now When I read 'butterfly' I was in a complete shock and awe.....

here it is. [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/weve-got-a- butterfly-...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/weve-got-a-butterfly- labs-bitcoin-miner-and-its-pretty-darn-fast/)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you want an excellent example how to not run a company, go through this guy's post history

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=276848.msg4602313#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=276848.msg4602313#msg4602313)

'Inaba' is the COO of Butterfly Labs. He also runs his own mining pool (prob with customer miners)

</comment><comment><USER8> So what's the method of the scam? Take money from people to build the machines; run the machines to earn bitcoin; use that bitcoin to repay anyone who complains and hope the bitcoin is profitable?

Could people sue for the lost opportunity of bit oin they could have earned if they had the machines?

</comment><comment><USER9> How poorly run do you have to be to not make money simply selling the hardware and harvesting bitcoins during the burn in period? It's no different than using the float in other ways. Do it in a way that customers are still happy and everyone wins.

</comment><comment><USER10> Isn't the object of business generally to do as much nefarious stuff as you can get away with?

With bitcoin I think the 'moral' bar is a bit lower because this is new territory.

note: I do not believe this (that business moral judgements are just what they can get away with), but it seems to be a commonly held belief.

note #2: to people the downvoted this, if it wasn't a thought provoking or at least intelligent comment please elaborate why.

<comment><USER11> As someone who downvoted you, and then saw the request for explanation, here's mine:

I downvoted you because rhetoric, however commonly held, isn't worth the discussion space, in my opinion.

Further, I disagree with the implication that all capitalist endeavors would just be highway robbers, if not for those pesky laws. Even those who suggest that Wal-Mart is definitively evil for paying minimum wage doesn't tend to hold the belief that all economic exchange is similarly evil, nor are all companies nefariously motivated.

Yes, successful business owners like to maximize value, but for every person trying to sneak in a hidden surcharge, or lobby Congress for favors, there's another person who runs the minimum amount of ads on his website because he doesn't want it to feel dirty, or who is contributing to open source, because he likes giving back.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for answering.

I think this notion is specifically relevant to BFL.

The point is that in the absence of a Kohlberg "Conventional" and beyond sense of morality what we are left with is what companies (actors, individuals) can do, and what they can't do.

I don't think that companies are inherently bad, it's just that companies will do what they can to maximize profit.

It's as simple as that. As long as we let companies like BFL operate without punishment, they will test the limits of what they can do.

Does it make it right? Of course not.

<comment><USER11> > I don't think that companies are inherently bad, it's just that companies > will do what they can to maximize profit.

SOME companies will. What percentage, I honestly don't know, but I honestly suspect that it's a much smaller percentage than people tend to believe.

Aside from that, I'm not arguing with you _per se_, but you asked for an explanation, so I gave one. FWIW, I tend to downvote most pithy rhetoric that doesn't contribute to the conversation, even from pg himself.

<comment><USER10> Again, thanks for the color.

I hate to think that _anyone_ thinks this is 'pithy' (or overly concise to be clear) rhetoric though. It's a simple observation, but I feel it's one that people seem to miss quite often when dissecting events of moral ambiguity concerning companies.

The point is this; we _have_ to get stronger at holding companies accountable for things we feel are suspect. That's all. Otherwise the playing field is more open to nonsense like BFL pulled.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Let's Encrypt will revoke 3M certs in 24 hours and - <AUTHOR> I find it curious that this is not trending at the top of news here. When Symantec had to revoke 30k certificates, it seems to have raised more discussion :)
I can see the difference in circumstances but the impact is much bigger this time. I'm quite interested in some good analysis in 6 months time or so.
https://keychest.net/stories/lets-encrypt-revokes-3000000-certs <comment><USER2> Substantial discussion and top story earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22473255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22473255)</comment>


An interesting brain teaser - <AUTHOR> (Deleted.) <comment><USER2> I summed all the numbers in each row, which gives 35, 31, 29, 28, 38

Then for the answers 34, 35, 35, 38 for which 34 is the only result we didn't see yet. Therefore I think it's A.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Deleted.)

<comment><USER3> Though list B contains 4-3, so either B or D would be valid as ordering does not matter

<comment><AUTHOR> When I first solved it I selected B but when I sat down to type it down I spotted 3-4 and thought that was the one I had gone with originally.

But in the solution they motivate the specific selection of B by stating that in the provided lists of pairs, the pairings are all with the greater number first.

Hence actually what I typed above is incorrect and the correct answer is B.

Sorry about that :(</comment></comment></comment>


How War Made the Cigarette - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/155164/war-made-cigarette <comment><USER2> I had an elderly friend (now deceased) who grew up in Durham, NC, in the teens and twenties. He knew the Duke family.

He told me a fascinating story about how the Duke family gave some Union soldiers cigarettes when they were in North Carolina during the war. After the war was over, some of those soldiers wrote to the Dukes asking them to send more cigarettes. They were hooked, and the Dukes realized they had a big seller. According to my friend, it was the basis of their wealth and allowed them to expand into other areas. (Duke Power was founded by the same family, for example.)

Their company, American Tobacco, was also the target of some of the first big successful anti-monopoly actions by the federal government.

</comment><comment><USER3> > The lessons of her book remain stunningly relevant today. We're in the midst > of revelations that the sugar industry similarly relied on advertising to > distract consumers from its extreme addictiveness. In the NFL's fights with > former football players dying of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, the > League hired the same lawyers, consultants, and lobbyists that Big Tobacco > used. Cellphone companies have worked tirelessly to obscure evidence of the > connection between cellular radiation and all manner of negative health > impacts. Even with mass shootings a daily occurrence, the gun industry has > lobbied its way out of any meaningful oversight. Most noxious of all, fossil > fuel companies have relied on shoddy science, constant PR, and the > deliberate dissemination of doubt to cover up the connection between oil and > gas and climate change—a business decision that raised short-term profits > but may have doomed our entire civilization.

One of these is not like the others...

<comment><USER4> To that kind of person, being right or wrong is irrelevant. The same methods of lying, cheating and advertising are employed whether the public fear is irrational or spot-on. For example, you can find many crooked things done _in support_ of global warming awareness. Across the board, whether they are right or wrong, the biggest thing in common between skeptics of the mainstream position (global warming skeptics, sugar-is-good-for-you skeptics, vaccine safety skeptics) is that they can all give you a long list of corporate tricks done to weaken their position - the point being, it doesn't matter if the evil corporation is right, they'll still use backhanded tactics to convince everyone of their point.

<comment><USER5> When I was in University I witnessed a strange sight: Half the student council running through the building, sitting down in a corner and holding a quick vote. The odd behavior was so that they could have a quorum _without_ certain undesirable people who would vote the wrong way.

The common thread with these underhanded tactics is people feel the ends justify the means. The ones doing it for profit are far less scary to me than those doing it "for the global good".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 I suspect the toll from cigarettes vastly outweighs that from all illegal drugs combined. The US government was pusher in chief.</comment>


Complete list of new features in MySQL 5.7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecompletelistoffeatures.com

<comment><USER2> Author of the list here. Happy to answer any questions you may have.</comment>


Emacs standing alone on a Linux Kernel (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux.html <comment><USER2> In concept it kinda reminds me of Oberon (I wish those had succeeded) though the integration between the kernel and the language (elisp) isn't anything like as tight.

For anyone who hasn't seen it (and a chance to look at the path not taken).

[https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon1992.pdf](https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon1992.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Link to the second (2013) edition: [http://www.projectoberon.com/](http://www.projectoberon.com/)

<comment><USER2> Neat, I'd forgotten about that, there is also this [http://oberonstation.x10.mx/](http://oberonstation.x10.mx/) which I keep getting tempted by.

<comment><USER3> I thought your comparison w/ Emacs was apt.

When analysed as an interactive application Oberon makes me think the most Acme, then Emacs. I'm struggling with defining the genuine distinctions between operating system, application server and applications.

It seems the distinction has to do with boundaries and how they are enforced, and by whom (I.e. the amount of user control one has on factors such as security, isolation in contrast to the application writer)

<comment><USER4> > When analysed as an interactive application Oberon makes me think the most > Acme, then Emacs.

Rob Pike borrowed the UI/UX of Acme from Oberon: [http://plan9.bell- labs.com/sys/doc/acme/acme.html](http://plan9.bell- labs.com/sys/doc/acme/acme.html)

IMO the Oberon/Acme text-based command approach suffers all of the problems of Unix shells, which are caused by lack of type information. Symbolics Genera's Dynamic Windows used the mouse in a similar way to Oberon but with actions guided by type information, concepts which can be found today in the Common Lisp Interface Manager ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_Interface_Manager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp_Interface_Manager)). There are Emacs modes like SLIME that do similar things and are widely used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's appropriate to call this at least GNU/Linux, right?

<comment><USER6> Yes, though I'd rather this run on OpenBSD's kernel. I'd want all two of my softwares to span the GPL/BSD divide.

<comment><USER7> Nah, NetBSD. Let's see how many obscure architectures can run Emacs OS!

<comment><USER8> Linux supports more architectures than NetBSD apparently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's also always this, which I found pretty cool and somewhat functional as well, though it goes beyong the bare "emacs on a kernel" concept:

[http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/new-window- manager....](http://www.howardism.org/Technical/Emacs/new-window-manager.html)

I one had a VM at a workplace where all I had were outdated hardware specs and outdated versions of Windows with few administrative privileges. It helped to retain some sanity. For some time.

</comment><comment><USER10> PJB has become a bit (too little for my taste) of a persona non grata in the common lisp world (which has a large overlap with the emacs world) ever since it was suggested and so far not disproved (names match, nicknames match) that he's the person behind [https://twitter.com/ogamita](https://twitter.com/ogamita)

edit: To make it more precise, full names are identical and [http://www.informatimago.com/index.html](http://www.informatimago.com/index.html) links to [http://pjb.ogamita.org](http://pjb.ogamita.org) which uses the same name (ogamita) as that twitter account.

<comment><USER11> I dislike holocaust-deniers as much as the next guy, but I find it troubling that one's political opinions should prevent us from considering a person's work in a distinct domain. This is especially true in the present case: I see no evidence that PJB has crossed the Hitler stream with the common lisp stream.

People can be smart and respectable in one domain and stupid in another.

<comment><USER10> A person can be smart in one domain and stupid in another, so much is clear (think Grothendieck in maths and politics)

But a person cannot be both respectable and disrespectable at the same time, I find, although I'm afraid now we might be disagreeing rather about words than ideas. Respectability, to me, is a compliment to somebody's set of values.

<comment><USER11> I agree, but the point was rather about censorship.

I find it troubling that we should censor (explicitly or otherwise) someone on accounts of his respectability. I find this especially true when the source of disrespectability stems from an unrelated topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wouldn't it be better to port emacs to includeOS?

<comment><USER13> includeOS + guile + guile-emacs

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a nice operating system but someone needs to port a decent text editor.

<comment><USER15> spacemacs ;)

<comment><USER14> To clarify this gnomic reply: [http://spacemacs.org/](http://spacemacs.org/) it's sort of a modal emacs with live keybinding display.

<comment><USER15> And it integrates many "vimisms" via evil-mode. I'd been a vim user for a long time but was increasingly dissatisfied as I got deeper into extending it. I've found the opposite of emacs (especially with spacemacs) almost a year into the "conversion".

One example that I've come around with was an initial extreme distaste of dynamic binding/non-lexical scope, from a PL standpoint of writing robust software.

But it's also _super nice_ for incremental, interactive development.

<comment><USER16> Having tried spacemacs, I bounced back to vim. Even though vim is just a tiny bit more responsive, it's enough to make emacs feel laggy. Granted, I use extensions very lightly, so I'm not feeling the qualitative difference of being able to do something in spacemacs that's impossible in vim.

<comment><USER17> What do you mean laggy? In the response time when typing or the time to start a new instance of emacs? If it's the first did you try emacs -q to check that you don't have something strange in you setup. If it's the latter, did you check out emacs --daemon ?

<comment><USER16> I did give emacs --daemon a try, and that definitely helped with the long startup time. I went so far as to alias vim to emacsclient -t. But what I mean when I say it was laggy is that typing and cursor movement are ever so slightly less responsive. Not MS Word on Windows 3.0 laggy, just enough for me to notice the difference. I dug into it a little bit with spacemacs and vim open side by side, and according to top, spacemacs was using about 10x the CPU of vim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At least today they could have used yet another kernel for this. That would hurd more.

</comment><comment><USER19> What's that saying? Emacs is a great OS it just needs a good text editor?

</comment><comment><USER20> I always thought it was the other way around ... ఠ_ఠ

</comment><comment><USER21> Why Emacs 21.3? That's ancient.

<comment><USER22> Because this was written in 2004 (or earlier; 2004 is the first time archive.org crawled it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What, no systemd?

</comment><comment><USER24> So it has come to this</comment>


CloudMagic Analytics – MongoDB finds its place - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudmagic.com/2012/11/16/cloudmagic-analytics-mongodb-finds-its-place/ <comment><USER2> So what are you actually using, simple queries (examples), map-reduce (is it fast enough for you?), why not insert directly into mongodb, are you using the new aggregate framework?

<comment><USER3> We are using both simple queries and MapReduce. Simple queries like db.cloudmagicAnalyics.count({type:'search', ts:{$gte:new Date('12 November 2012')}}); or say we need to find the number of users who searched db.cloudmagicAnalyics.distinct('user_id', {type:'search', ts:{$gte:new Date('12 November 2012')}}).length;

Map/reduce gives an edge as we don't need to process the info again in PHP. For example we want to know how many users are searching in each platform. Either we run multiple queries and get result or one single map/reduce command.

Due to some technical limitations and to ensure our search speed is not deteriorated, we decided to log all requests conditionally and then asynchronously parse and insert them in MongoDB. My next blog post will explain this better.

I have not given a whirl at Aggregate Framework, looks interesting, will try it out.</comment></comment>


The New European Space Agency Head Wants to Build 'Moon Villages' - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/08/how-to-build-a-city-on-the-moon/400454/

<comment><USER2> "Once mankind has established a foothold on our nearest celestial body, the next task will be figuring out what exactly to do there" \-- Shouldn't this be done before spending all the money?</comment>


Fukushima Cover Up Unravels - <AUTHOR> http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/fukushima-cover-up-unravels/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> With all due respect to the severity of the issue questioning whether it was the Earthquake or the Tsunami is a pointless debate.

The Earthquake struck at 2:46 while the first Tsunami hit at 3:27. In a crisis situation you could not make an accurate assessment of the situation in such a short span of time. Meaning the only way to answer the question is to look at the evidence and surmise what happened after the fact.

But as the various quoted articles point out it's in TEPCO and the Government's best interest to stick to their story. Meaning you'll never get enough information to create an accurate picture of events.

Again it's a question we absolutely should get the answer to but the answer is permanently obscured. Asking a question you can never get the answer to is a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a case of Japanese industry sadly living up to its stereotypes regarding secrecy and regard for 'face' over lives.

<comment><USER4> there is nothing "Japanese" in such cover ups. It is a common trait in the society developed by this human species. I'm pretty well remember surprise of very strange, untypically intensive "sunburns" we as children got while playing outside in the days after Chernobyl when we didn't know about the scale and area of the fallout.</comment></comment>


Caml Trading: Experiences in Functional Programming on Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.janestreetcapital.com/minsky_weeks-jfp_18.pdf <comment><USER2> It's fascinating to see FP being used in the "real world" rather than academia! I absolutely love OCaml and use it all the time to write major projects. I've always loved the type inferencing and super strict static typing of the ML family of languages. I wish people would embrace statically typed languages more...there's a lot to be said for code correctness and OCaml does it in a very natural way. That and the compiler can usually generate significantly better performing code.

I always notice those at Jane Street rip on the OO aspects of OCaml. The place I found classes/objects to come in handy are when you write extensible software frameworks...though I agree, usually you can do without. However, it is worth taking a look at how OCaml approaches objects...quite different from what you would find in your typical C++/Java/C# style language.

The lack of concurrent garbage collector is really becoming a limitation with the trend towards higher number of cores on a single die. However, because the GC and compiler are so simple, OCaml is one of those languages where you can look at object code and understand what the compiler is doing. What's even more interesting is that even though the compiler is really simple, it does a fantastic job at optimization. The creator of the language, Xavier Leroy, is often quoted as saying that "worst case 50% performance of C code".

Oh one other thing...for those that have not tried a functional language, I think OCaml gives the best introduction. You can code imperatively with it if you want, but you'll ween yourself off of it in time in exchange for more declarative, functional techniques. Oh and you won't look back! ;)

<comment><USER3> > even though the compiler is really simple, it does a fantastic job at > optimization.

The paper also refers to OCaml's simple compiler and optimizer. This is surprising, considering OCaml's fast benchmark showings and functional languages' reputation for slow, memory intensive code. Is the OCaml team researching more advanced optimizations or is "worst case 50% performance of C code" considered good enough (compared to the tradeoff of a more complex implementation)?

<comment><USER2> You know how it is with benchmarks...it can vary so much. I'm not sure how much work is done these days on the OCaml compiler. I recall there being a big debate a few years back about it, a lot of people cried foul that OCaml benchmarks were close to C/C++ speeds because of the heavy use of OCaml's imperative constructs (rather than writing functional style implementations of the code).

In my experience with OCaml, you can write efficient code that approaches C/C++ speeds if you know how functional language compilers work. The biggest performance killer in functional languages is efficiently implementing closures on a stack based machine (i.e. funarg problem). OCaml is smart in that it implements activation records on the stack if it can tell that a function won't return a closure. If you're writing in a heavily functional style, you'll inherently create a lot of closures and lots of heap-based activation records (i.e. less efficient). At the same time, the compiler can do a lot of interesting optimizations that would be difficult in an imperative language. Pretty much every OCaml book including the official manual describes all the various places where you can have performance penalties and what OCaml is doing underneath the hood. Also like any half decent functional compiler, OCaml performs a lot of inlining which results in huge performance gains.

One thing to note, a big part of the reason why OCaml as well as other ML languages and Haskell have such great performance compared to other functional languages is because of very strict and static typing. For example, one of the interesting restrictions of the OCaml type system when dealing with objects is that you cannot downcast an object once it has been upcast (i.e. like a C++ dynamic_cast). Though this restriction is annoying, the generated code never has to do any runtime type checking - everything is statically verified!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They are a HN favorite but do any HN'ers work there? If yes what's your experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> Even better, are there any other trading firms using functional languages?

<comment><USER5> Some more info: [http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/303/is-f-used-in- tr...](http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/303/is-f-used-in-trading- systems)

Also, if you want to consider Scala: [http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/298/is-scala- used-i...](http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/298/is-scala-used-in- trading-systems)

<comment><USER6> this one too

[http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/306/what- programmin...](http://quant.stackexchange.com/questions/306/what-programming- languages-are-most-commonly-used-in-quantitative-finance)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Video:

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2336889538700185341></comment>


Steve Blank launches Startup Weekend Next program - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/2012/10/30/10000-startups-startup-weekend-next/

<comment><USER2> If more founders memorized the basics of customer development the startup world would produce 50% more successes. Get outside the building, product market fit, etc are phrases not enough entrepreneurs live and die by. Can't stress enough how smart and underutilized Mr. Blank's work is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Steve Blank & Suster on "Y-Combinator is a cult": [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUD2gxU5LPM&t=37m45s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUD2gxU5LPM&t=37m45s)

</comment><comment><USER4> I recently found the Business Model generation handbook and after reading it only thought, "Why didn't I find this sooner."

It's good to know there is a way for others to learn the 3 strongest startup ideas in 54-hours.

<comment><USER5> If you liked the book, you would love the Udacity Course by Steve Blank</comment></comment>


Man Who Sent World's First Text Message 25 Years Ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.4431677/it-didn-t-feel-momentous-at-all-says-man-who-sent-world-s-1st-text-message-25-years-ago-1.4431688 <comment><USER3> It's amazing it took so long to arrive in the USA.

Less amazing is how long it took to take off once it _did_ arrive: cost model. Calling a mobile was quite expensive in Europe, so SMS was a big money saver. While in the US calling a mobile costs the same as calling any other number (you pay, or perhaps "paid" these days, for the privilege of having your phone number on a limited-capacity radio device rather than connected to a pair of wires).

On the cost front, this isn't a flame about Europe-vs-US. But until the iPhone utterly reconfigured the mobile market, the US was a mobile backwater. I really think the cost structure and lack of competition was the reason.

<comment><USER4> It took a long time to take off in the UK too, despite heading calling party pays. SMS enablement was a subscription service - £5/month from memory - <USER2> initially there want interconnect between mobile networks so texts were limited to those on the same provider. On the other hand, the original plans were all you can eat, and pager gateways worked for SMS too.

It took off when interconnect was sorted.

<comment><USER5> Initially it was within the same network, I believe Orange (previously Hutchinsons, then merged with EE, who themselves known as T-Mobile) was the first to offer a consumer service, called Orange Messaging. As an aside they also offered a second line on the same phone,meaning you had 2 number an option not offered these days alas.

But nice trick was to set a foreign SMSC, this not only enabled you to send SMS to other UK networks, but also didn't charge you. Circa 1998 era.

<comment><USER6> Back in the day, Orange were truly innovative although their promise of a wire-free future was a bit optimistic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Plus, it was short. Text messages originally came with a 160-character > limit. That's why people developed text message shorthand, like lol for > "laughing out loud."

Is this correct? I always thought it was coined on some bulletin board or chatroom.

<comment><USER8> I think it was BBS in ancestry but maybe they're saying "That's why" as in "That kind of situation is why..."

I was surprised to learn that "tnx" was an early morse code convention (lol is 'hihi'). Oh and seeing the phrase "tricked out" in a book from I think the 1800s (via Gutenberg.org) was also surprising.

<comment><USER9> "tks" is also a common abbreviation for "thanks" in Morse.

A laugh is actually just "hi", although sometimes it would be repeated if conditions were noisy. Then it would be "hi hi" with a space in between, not all sent as one word.

So why was "hi" used to indicate a laugh in Morse in the first place? There's no obvious connection with either the word "hi" or the individual letters "h i".

The reason is that the meaning here is not in the actual letters or word, it's the _sound_ of "hi" in Morse:

      • • • •    • •

[http://mg.to/audio/hi.wav](http://mg.to/audio/hi.wav)

It just sounds funny to hear that. A bit reminiscent of the rhythm of the old phrase "shave and a haircut, two bits" but more concise.

Oddly, many hams to this day also use "hi" or "hi hi" in voice contacts _instead of laughing_. I guess that's not too different from saying "lol" out loud!

"es" is another interesting abbreviation. This of course is the Spanish word for "and", but hams always use "es" instead of "and" in Morse. It's one letter shorter, but that's not the real reason. Here's "and":

      • ———    ——— •    ——— • •

vs. "es":

      •    • • •

Much shorter and easier to send!

<comment><USER10> > This of course is the Spanish word for "and",

I'm confused. The Spanish word for "and" is "y". Maybe you meant that hams use "es" instead of "is"?

<comment><USER9> Actually, I was the one who was confused! That's what I get for commenting late at night.

Now I'm not sure what the derivation of "es" is. It's definitely used to mean "and", but I don't know why.

In any case, thanks for the correction.

Update: I just figured out where I got the mixed up Spanish connection! There _is_ a Spanish word used as a Morse code abbreviation, and in fact it's used in every QSO. It's not "es", it's "de" which means "from" both in Spanish and on CW/Morse. So I had the right idea, wrong word.

hi hi tks es 73 de WJ6V

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> SMS is important part of communication infrastructure in the third world. You would be amazed how complex services can run on SMS.

I think we who live in the industrialized societies have fallen behind mobile technology if we measure it by its impact on society and cultural innovation. We have better and newer technologies, but they are improving productivity and shaping the world less and less.

In contrast, many developing world countries are developing their society around mobile technology. it's changing developing world Africa, India, Eurasia, etc. Large areas of the world will never have landlines, fiber, ASDL etc. Just the mobile masts with microwave links from village to village or in the middle of a slum.

I love the "Running light without overbyte" approach that removes distractions and provide working services that are actually compact and revolutionary. They improve productivity and change the society.

</comment><comment><USER12> The life of SMS is amazing.

It went from state of the art technology, to the de facto communication channel for teens and youth, at least in Europe, to being obsolete in less than 25 years!

<comment><USER13> It's not obsolete. It is still the only way you can be pretty sure the recipient receives your message since it works on every phone in circulation. This is used heavily by shops online, postal services etc etc.

Many telecom operators also offers basically unlimited texts and calls for a fixed price which makes it often an easier way to communicate than to figure out what service person x is currently on. I use sms way more than I communicate on any other digital service. I would like for everyone to use Signal or something but so far I only have 1 contact there. And by using sms, at least I know it is not indexed and searched by an american company to sell me more ads. Also, I live in a country with large, pretty empty areas. In several of these locations the 3G/4G-networks are often unavailable but sending a simple sms works just fine.

<comment><USER14> I also don't need to ask... Should I contact you on WhatsApp, FB, Wechat, Hangouts, Twitter or whatever the shiny thing of the day is. Just give me your phone number.

<comment><USER15> Indeed. It also works reliably internationally. China has blocked Facebook and WhatsApp, but SMS still works.

<comment><USER16> Doesn't iMessage work internationally? iMessage just works. It's beautiful, especially when everyone you know has an iPhone. And I'd say China blocking some services is more China's fault than that of WhatsApp (terrible name).

<comment><USER14> Yes, it works internationally. .. As long as you have a data connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm having a hard time believing someone would have had a phone capable of receiving text messages at a Christmas party if nobody had ever before successfully sent (and therefore received) one.

<comment><USER18> I have feeling that the event in the article is about first message that was sent acrosss production network and with the intention of SMS being user accessible (and paid) service.

<comment><USER17> But it was still sent from a PC instead of another phone so not really the commercial use-case. And regardless, why would they not mention it instead of making this guy sound like he actually wrote the whole sms system?

<comment><USER18> In that times the first usecase probably was to displace pagers.

GSM lore says that SMS originated as network debugging/management feature, which I don't think is exactly true. I suspect that the thing was originally an demonstration for GSM's capability of transfering arbitrar-ish user packet data in control channels (of which SMS is to this day only usage I know of), which got implemented in handsets because it was part of specification and then it was used for network management messages and then got commercialized as SMS.

It is not improbable that this guy actually wrote first implementation of the network side of SMS (ie. SMSC) that was actually useful for commercial customers, as the low-level SMS protocol only handles message transfer between network and handsets and does not specify network behavior or even addressing of subscribers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And yet we still don't have reliable text messaging in the US. On T-Mobile, I lose a good chunk of text messages sent to me from other networks that are longer than 159 characters.

<comment><USER16> Use iMessage (or similar service). Texting beyond 159 characters never works reliably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember getting my first mobile, one of the big pitches for it was "no cost to receive sms messages." It's funny to look back on it now.

</comment><comment><USER21> And then we needed some app (whatsapp, you know) to be revolutionary because it allowed to send unlimited messages to some phone number, including photos!

I couldn't understand when my friends were excited about the "new program" that was doing exactly what any SMS / MMS should do. Then, few months later, I was the last one to install it, because it was the only way of comunicating with friends.

<comment><USER22> Your friends were probably excited because they didnt have a character limit when sending a text, they didn't have to pay for each message they sent, they could share images, videos. All of that for the fraction of the cost of sending a text message.

<comment><USER21> I would even include the better interface, as it had a better look than the regular SMS screen. Character limit wasn't the deal because their whatsapp message are still short. And even the cost of messages was negligible, because the main point of the cell phone plans were unlimited messages.

And photos and videos were available as email, skype, messeger...

I would bet that here (in my country), SMS wasn't sexy because of the interface, email wasn't that real-time conversation (and you needed to know the e-mail address).

Needing just the phone number (that was a common thing to share), not using e-mails (that was seen as too tech, too formal) and having a better look than the SMS interface was the point. All other features were just a bonus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My dad worked on the GSM in the 80s so I doubt that the first SMS is only from 1992...

<comment><USER24> SMS simply wasn't an option on the earlier GSM handsets; I remember in 1996 or so in one of the early GSM adopters -Norway - when shopping for a phone, the salesman showed me two identical-looking Nokia sets, a $100 price difference between them - one could send SMS, the other only receive them. I went with the more expensive one, as the cheapest monthly plans at the time ($6/month fee) priced daytime calls at $.85/minute, making SMS (at $0.15 a pop) a good deal.

Edit - the handset I was upgrading from could only receive SMS; I believe my father's handset at the time couldn't even receive them - but that may have been a carrier limitation, not down to the handset capabilities.

<comment><USER23> The argicle state that the 'first SMS' engineer sent it from its home computer, so it's not about how it got to the market but who used the technology first. I'm pretty sure thoses who invented SMS did send SMS way before the guy in the article. Looks like advertising for canadian telecom tech, to embelish history.</comment></comment></comment>


RIM: a leap ahead in user experience, but can it execute? | VisionMobile: blog - <AUTHOR> http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/01/rim-a-leap-ahead-in-user-experience-but-can-it-execute/ <comment><USER2> I think the real challenge will be if they can give the TAT team the authority to win the user experience battles that they'll inevitably have with the development teams.

That's pretty typical with an engineering centric company like RIM.</comment>


Google Compute Engine Incident #19008 - <AUTHOR> https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/19008 <comment><USER3> This is affecting our GKE nodes - all nodes created in the last 8 hours don't have any network connectivity.

Anyone found a workaround? It's crazy there has been no real update yet (other than saying Our engineering team still investigating the issue. every hour)

<comment><USER3> GKE started working fine around an hour ago

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, latest upodate on GKE:

> Google Kubernetes Engine - Cluster operations including creation, update, > auto scaling may have failed due to the networking API failures mentioned > under Google Compute Engine - New Cluster operations are now succeeding and > further updates on recovering from this are underway as part of the > mitigation mentioned under Google Compute Engine. No further updates will be > provided for Google Kubernetes Engine in this post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Latest update on GCE:

> Google Compute Engine - Networking-related Compute API operations pending to > complete if submitted during the above time. - Resubmitting similar requests > may fail as they are waiting for the above operations to complete. - <USER2> > affected operations include: deleting backend services, subnets, instance > groups, routes and firewall rules. - Some operations may still show as > pending and are being mitigated at this time. We are currently working to > address operations around subnet deletion as our next target group</comment>


Police: 'Don't ask Siri about 9/11' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cultofmac.com/327115/police-dont-ask-siri-about-911/

<comment><USER2> So Siri won't confirm before dialing? That seems a little odd.</comment>