Ultralisp: A fast-moving Common Lisp software distribution - <AUTHOR> https://ultralisp.org/ <comment><USER2> Slightly tangential, but I wish some Lisp would make a serious comeback and challenge mainstream languages. For this purpose, libraries are essential. So better tooling would help, and that's why Ultralisp and Quicklisp are interesting.

Clojure is very nice. I have used it for several projects. But sometimes I would prefer not to rely on Java libraries so much, and cleaner stack traces.

Racket may get some critical momentum now, with the whole merge with Chez.

I don't have high hopes for a Common Lisp implementation, as the ecosystem has become too fragmented and stagnant. But I wish I could be surprised here. Shen introduced some great ideas to make a powerful static typing an option in Lisp [1].

[1] [http://www.shenlanguage.org/](http://www.shenlanguage.org/)

<comment><USER3> Re statically typed Lisp, I'm keeping an eye on Carp [1] which seems to be a quite active project.

[1] [https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp](https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp)

<comment><USER4> Common lisp meets Rust, I'm intrigued.

All these new exciting programming languages over the past ~5 years or so are quit exciting. I'm starting to believe that in the not so far future we'll look back on that time period between the late 90s up to the mid 2010s as some kind of a dark age for programming, where we kept using those inelegant, inefficient, hacky languages carried by Moore's law and an incredible demand for new software being written in huge quantity extremely fast, quality be damned.

Now that the gold rush starts to cool down there seem to be a lot of very interesting work to take a few steps back and do it right.

<comment><USER5> I think your dark age and gold rush theory has some truth to it. The whole industry culture and practices changed during that period, _but_ we're starting to see things like people interested in Rust, even though it's not pitched as a faster way to make slicker generic Web sites and phone apps.

I'm also hoping that Racket (which is is like a secret oasis community) will get more attention, and someone will dust off some old Paul Graham writings about startups and Lisp, and some startups (probably ones who're not just doing another cookie-cutter madlibs startup) will decide to use Racket initially. (Disclosure: I have an interest in promoting Racket, because I'd love to help build startups in Racket, and also recruit top programmers with Racket as a carrot.)

<comment><USER3> What do you think are good learning resources for learning racket for an experienced (functional) programmer? Is there a book that isn't focused on learning to program?

<comment><USER5> For an FP person, you might want to instead start with skimming, for half an hour, the R5RS or R7RS Scheme paper, for the base language from which Racket grew (don't worry about the first-class continuations unless you want to). Then go to the Racket Guide or Racket Reference table of contents, to look for things that you might be looking for from your past FP experience, like `match` (though it's maybe not used as much as you're familiar with). Then look into some of the strengths of Racket, like syntax extension and `#lang`. (If you want additional treatment of syntax extension and `#lang`, see things like Hendershott's "Fear of Macros", and Butterick's book.) Also skim the large list of add-on packages, to get a sense of what's there. Eventually read through the Guide and Reference at your leisure.

There's an imposing wall of manuals at: [https://docs.racket- lang.org/](https://docs.racket-lang.org/)

Racket isn't purely FP, but it can be used that way, even with the base language. There's also at least one lazy `#lang`, and you can make more.

<comment><USER5> Oh, you might like another difference between Racket and R5RS Scheme: Racket has changed some basic Scheme types, like pairs/lists, to be immutable by default. And various additional Racket types, like `struct`s, also have both immutable and mutable variants and parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure this is a great idea.

I have a couple projects in QuickLisp, and more than once I've broken them after I pushed incremental or non-working changes to my repo, didn't go back and fix them in time, and QL pulled the broken code.

Developing in branches would solve the problem, but not everybody does that on smaller informal projects.

On the other hand, I've also been annoyed waiting for bug fixes to trickle through to Quicklisp, so it's not an entirely bad idea...

<comment> phoe-krk The bleeding edge isn't for everyone.

But then again, neither are monthly releases.

<comment><USER7> Pinning libraries using Qlot solve the issue of being on the bleeding edge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't understand what problem this solves.

<comment> phoe-krk In the contemporary Common Lisp ecosystem, software is distributed via Quicklisp[1], which is a centralized software repository, where, once a month, a new software distribution is created, encompassing the most recent releases of all software included in the dist. This means that changes in software can take up to a month to be reflected in Quicklisp.

Ultralisp is a Quicklisp-compatible distribution, except it's a bleeding-edge one. Each time a piece of software included in it releases a new version/release/commit, a new dist is created, and the modified software is available in Ultralisp within minutes.

[1] [https://www.quicklisp.org/](https://www.quicklisp.org/)

<comment><USER8> Ah. Understood. I solve this problem by forking every Quicklisp repo I use, and telling ASDF to look in my local clones first. This also solves the problem of making it easy to submit a pull request when I fix a bug in a Quicklisp library.

Also -- and this is very important to me -- it means I'm in control of which version of every library I use. I've been burned too many times by Quicklisp "updating" a library that was previously working which doesn't any more. Now I have direct git control over my version coherency and I'm a happy camper.

<comment><USER9> Is this as easy to do as it sounds? Any chance you have documented any curves along the way?

<comment><USER10> I have been doing this for a while by following a pattern found here[0]. I typically follow this and copy every asdf package dependency into the working directory of whatever project I'm working on [setting the _subdir-search- registry_ to (list (truename "./asdf-systems/")) and placing the files into a subdirectory of that name] .This way I have the option to make changes in them without affecting anything else on the system depending on the same package. In general this means I use Quicklisp as a (huge) convenience in finding packages when programming interactively in the REPL, but not in deployment. I think this setup is also nice because it is dead simple to drop in copies of asdf packages from the web that aren't found in the Quicklisp library.

[0] [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Common_Lisp/External_libraries...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Common_Lisp/External_libraries/ASDF/Configuring_ASDF#Alternative_to_symlinks,_search_directories_recursively)

<comment><USER8> I do it like this because the asdf central-registry variable (which I can't write here because of asterisk problems) is supposedly deprecated:

      (asdf:initialize-source-registry
        (:SOURCE-REGISTRY
         (:EXCLUDE "exclusion-string1" "exclusion-string2")
         (:TREE #P"/Users/me/Lisp/my-repos/")
         (:TREE #P"/Users/me/Lisp/quicklisp-repos/")
         (:TREE #P"/Users/me/main-project/src/")
         :IGNORE-INHERITED-CONFIGURATION))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are there any kind of Semantic-Versioning like controls?

<comment><USER7> Quicklisp and ASDF do not support semver. But you can use Qlot to pin some libraries to a particular version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Url changed from [https://github.com/ultralisp/ultralisp](https://github.com/ultralisp/ultralisp) to the project page.

</comment><comment><USER13> uses:

\- docker

\- mailgun

\- s3

 _facepalm_

<comment><USER12> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

" _Don 't be snarky._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


The most expensive typefaces (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@msilvertant/the-most-expensive-typefaces-in-the-world-d025923084f0 <comment><USER2> I used to be on the side of fontographers before webfonts became a thing.

Want to use a particular font for your print/screen production? Just pay for a license fee -- sure you might have to pay per weight, style, or even _seat_ \-- but at least you got to use it for your graphical productions as much as you wanted.

Enter webfonts and instead of letting those same bought license "rollover" to the new medium they created a new separate "web licence" (ok, I can pay another fee); but then some smarty pants thought it would be a good idea to charge per usage (0-50K monthly pageviews $price, 50k-100k another price etc), good grief.

Of course not all foundries do this, but this move spawned the rise of many open source fonts with free and open licenses (and initiatives like Google Fonts) so we could have an open web without another copyright license to worry about.

In other news, I just found out that Variable Fonts[1] are the thing, good times.

[1] [https://rsms.me/inter/#variable](https://rsms.me/inter/#variable)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure I understand the logic here. Webfonts are a thing now, which makes all kinds of fonts, both free and expensive, available for websites. How is that anything but a good thing?

Of all the things that message board copyright activists get up-in-arms about, it's hard to imagine one where they have a weaker case than typefaces. Literally nobody _needs_ an expensive typeface; we have more high-quality free typefaces now than anyone has had... basically in all of human history.

<comment><USER2> The point is simply that if I wanted to create a website and use Circular [0] (a nice geometric font made popular by Spotify) I would need to pay based on total pageviews which is an unknown, so the price is unknown, which is prohibitive in the sense that I'm now tied to a font license that penalizes me based on the success of my website.

Or, I could use Inter which is similar, free, better (more weights, filetype options) and I don't have to worry. This goes beyond price, I really don't want another thing to worry about and a cool font isn't worth the monkey on my back.

> we have more free typefaces than ever...

That's kinda the point I'm making I guess; I believe the recent rise of all these free/open alternatives to popular established ones was precisely because of the webfont-pay-per-pageviews model.

[0] [https://lineto.com/typefaces/circular](https://lineto.com/typefaces/circular)

<comment><USER4> If you don't have an idea of how many users to expect, your server costs are an unknown too. I don't see how paying per view will change that.

<comment><USER5> Unless gp doesn't use any sort of auto scaling what so ever. In which case, the cost will be that of the (known) provisioned amount

<comment><USER4> The equivalent to that would be to just buy e.g. the 100k users font license, and then stop serving traffic once you hit 100k.

<comment><USER6> Even alone having to implement this (and perhaps become sued if there is a bug in the code) is a massive liability for the business.

<comment><USER3> And yet plenty of businesses use licensed fonts just fine, and, at the same time, literally nobody has to. What about this system is problematic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a caveat, I'm going on memory here, but I remember licensing to be significantly more expensive than $5000 for international distribution of Adobe fonts for a AAA video game I worked on. They had to secure rights for the font for use in game, in print publications (e.g. print ads), TV, etc. I recall each of these was a full on contract and eye-watering cost well above the prices he quotes.

If the prices he quotes are for unlimited license across all media ... $5k seems cheap to me.

</comment><comment><USER8> Are those prices per license? Apparently Netflix was paying millions[1] per year to use Gotham before they made their own font.

[1] [https://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/03/21/netflixs-sleek-new- ty...](https://thenextweb.com/tech/2018/03/21/netflixs-sleek-new-typeface- will-save-ton-money/)

<comment><USER9> The article implies that they weren't paying millions. Am I reading that right?

<comment><USER10> From paragraph 2:

> It solves a couple of problems: first, Netflix was paying millions every > year just for the privilege of using Gotham. When you license something at > such a scale, it gets really pricey.

<comment><USER11> And just below that:

'It's worth noting that Jonathan Hoefler, founder of the Hoefler&Co type foundry that designed and owns the Gotham font, says that the company has "never quoted a client anything close to a million dollars for anything."'

<comment><USER12> If you bill 80k a month you still end up with ~1M annually but get to say the above line to prop up your business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> $391 for a single font doesn't sound very expensive to me at all. Even for a small-business project, $400 is likely to be a rounding error for anything where the "designer had to pick a custom face" threshold has been exceeded. Certainly, it must be cheap for any serious print project! Printing costs will dwarf that font cost.

<comment><USER13> I'm involved in a project right now where the cost of licensing fonts has clearly made some people involved nervous. Of course, the cost is hardly anything compared to the cost of the project as a whole. Probably even less than the cost of the time spent finding the appropriate typefaces and get a decision to license it.

I think it's just that a lot of people are genuinely surprised that typefaces cost real money, because they are so used to sticking to the ones they have "for free".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Artbreeder ([https://artbreeder.com/](https://artbreeder.com/)) is likely to have a font generation mode eventually. This can generate high quality fonts (as well as lots of Unicode codepoints) and even interpolate between fonts in latent space. You can also take an existing font and find it in latent space, and then regenerate it. Take a look at the header of the Artbreeder homepage to see a small sample of font interpolation. (Apparently the interpolation is not even as smooth as it could be yet.)

I would not want to be a manual font designer in the future.

<comment><USER15> > I would not want to be a manual font designer in the future.

I wouldn't want to be any designer in the future. Eventually there will be a tool to generate any design with easy sliders and stuff. You can already design logos in software that are as good as the best designers 20 years ago for free with a few YouTube videos, imagine what this type of generation tech will do in the future.

I think that along with the current easy to use API 3rd-party systems, like Stripe or Uberauth, we're basically going to go back to a ColdFusion style design tools for the "low hanging fruit" sites like regional grocery stores and below where there are generic templates for a whole e-commerce site and back end for your business with the front end included, but this time you can use all kinds of knobs, levers, and buttons to adjust it to look unique and personal for your business and the backend generation will happen based on your product data requirements and the like.

We already kinda have that for mom + pop stores and smaller businesses. The only companies that will need handcrafted web apps will be the out-of-the- ordinary businesses like Uber, or the huge companies that need more complex logic, like FedEx or Walmart. Everyone else will either do it themselves with whatever the Wix of this type of thing is or they will hire some farm of developers (like an Amazon warehouse, but with developers instead of pickers) to task one of their drones to do it.

On different kind of note, that page header font warping thing is super fun to look at while intoxicated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They are not that expensive. I would gladly pay a similar amount for a decent Baskerville LaTeX font with math support. I would have to hide it to my wife somehow, though...

<comment><USER17> [https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/baskervillef/](https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/baskervillef/) ?

<comment><USER16> This is a good start (and baskervald is even better) but is not of excellent quality. I am not talking about the character shapes themselves, that are OK, but about the relationship with greek characters, with LaTeX math, and the quality of accented characters. What the world needs is an available version of the "SMF Baskerville" described by Yannis Haralambous here: [https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02101627](https://hal.archives- ouvertes.fr/hal-02101627)

<comment><USER17> I wonder if people would chip in to pay someone to do it right.

<comment><USER16> This is exactly what happened. When the french mathematical society ordered this font they probably paid a lot of money, and then it became a sort of "secret sauce" that they want to use exclusively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why is `n` missing from the screenshots?

<comment><USER19> You'll have to pay extra if you want `n` support

<comment><USER20> 'n' app purchase

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's one off fee. Try using Avenir webfont on your website which get 1 million pageviews per month, the total price you have to pay might even exceed the one off fee of JHA Bodoni Ritalic.

<comment> mark-r Use Open Sans instead, it's free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And they forget, that a font face is only a tool. It's just like a golden hammer ...</comment>


Extropy by Kevin Kelly - <AUTHOR> http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/08/extropy.php

<comment><USER2> This is meta-physical drivel, and the guy thinks that 10^x + 10^y = 10^(x+y)

This should not be on HN.

<comment><USER3> Read Cool Tools, but not this. The whole blog is this kind of thing.

<comment><USER4> He outsourced the writing of Cool Tools years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Extropy is neither wave nor particle, nor pure energy. It is an immaterial force that is very much like information._

Bullshit-O-meter: off the scale. Don't bother.

</comment><comment><USER6> I literally stopped reading after he spent an entire paragraph abusing all modern understanding of DNA. Stating repeatedly that it is made up of amino acids did not help his case.

</comment><comment><USER7> There are some mistakes (DNA isn't made out of amino acids, for example) but the general thrust is interesting.</comment>


An oracle for object-oriented programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-oracle-object-oriented-programmers.html

<comment><USER2> I think analysis tools like this are more an indictment of ceremony code that surrounds a big object-oriented design than a win in programmer productivity.

I really do like the idea of taking an existing OO codebase and being able to probe and interact with it(REPL anyone?). I did a stint doing bug support on two big OO software systems a few years ago and it was hard to wrap my head around a huge codebase quickly - the original devs who built the system were long gone and nobody actually knew much about huge pieces of the code. So anything that would have supplemented reading thousands of lines of code, I would have gambled on.

It is awesome that these guys did a user study, but I wouldn't bother using a test with 8 programmers "new to Eclipse" as anything but a sniff test to indicate that a bigger user study was warranted.

Lastly, the article itself sits in a weird space - hackers who read it are going to be underwhelmed. The lay reader (or programming newbie) is probably going to pick up a bunch of wrong ideas about object oriented development.

</comment><comment><USER3> The press release on the MIT site is much easier on the eyes (actually read that one): [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/object-oriented- oracle-10...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/object-oriented- oracle-1007.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> > In the last 40 years, the major innovation in software > engineering has > been the development of what are called > object-oriented programming > languages.

Is it?

<comment><USER5> If LISP shows up in 1958, that means functional paradigm is outside the 40-years range. So there might be truth in it.</comment></comment>


The REST term is problematic and should be redefined to how it's commonly used - <AUTHOR> https://evertpot.com/rest-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ <comment><USER2> "Underspecified RPC" doesn't sound as cool as "REST", so I don't think there will be much rush towards abandoning "REST".

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the point is abandoning REST, but rather use the term REST to describe HTTP services, even if they don't use hypermedia. This is pretty much what most people already do anyway.</comment></comment>


React Native Bridge – bring your app JavaScript code into Nodejs and test it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/invertase/bridge <comment><AUTHOR> Bring your React Native JS code into Node.js and test it mock-free and native code free. Perfect for React Native module developers.

My primary reasoning behind this project initially came from a personal need to fully test our react-native-firebase module - we needed an easier way to test the module end to end with as little effort as possible so that it could be kept up to date easily without constantly writing native tests code and have the ability to automate the entire process.

It's been just over a month, several very long nights/weekends and several iterations of what bridge could be to finally get to a point where I'm comfortable releasing an early alpha of Bridge. What's great about it is you now have the ability to setup continuous integration testing for React Native modules easily just by writing standard JS testing code - it even includes coverage support using nyc/istanbul.

My secondary reasoning is that there's so many great React Native modules out there that we've all come to depend on but rarely are they actually tested because of the difficulty that comes with doing so. Hopefully this will alleviate this difficulty and bring about an ecosystem of well tested RN modules.

I will be providing detailed docs, examples and more over the course of the next few days but would love some early feedback or even thoughts on the whole process.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get hire by YCombinator startups? - <AUTHOR>

I want to work for ycombinator startups, i am a full stack developer with good theoretical concepts also had a year at a startup that got selected for blackbox connect. I have tried couple of time applying at YC startups but never got response. Can anyone suggest me what the preferences of YC startups for their hirings ( candidate must have open source contributions, have +5 year experience .. etc ) I would really love work at such a GREAT environment like YC Thanks <comment><USER2> Keep in mind that even if you work at a YC startup you won't have access to YC directly- its not a coworking space or anything.

If you shoot me your email with your resume I'd be happy to review it. My emails in the profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> i can't find your email in profile kindly update it thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It could be that they may have not gotten you resume. Have you tried angel.co. Lots of startups these days use them for filling their recruiting pipeline.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have heard of Angel.co but never submitted resume will do it now Thanks for suggestion</comment></comment>


Artificial intelligence is changing every aspect of war - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/09/07/artificial-intelligence-is-changing-every-aspect-of-war <comment><USER2> Artificial intelligence is changing every aspect of _everything_. By way of comparison, consider how artificial intelligence is also changing manufacturing, transportation, medicine, government, and emergency response operations (police, fire, etc.).

Warfare is just another aspect of everything, but it is one that heavily influences the shape of the world's political and economic realities. The industrial revolution blew away warfare as it was understood in Napoleon's time compared to how war was fought in World War I.

The continued integration of AI into warfare and the development of foundation-shattering changes are to be expected, but no one will really understand the far-reaching implications and results until the new technology is employed in combat.

<comment><USER3> War is politics by another name. Unfortunately that is how human civilization has made the majority of its progress. Sad! But true.

<comment><USER4> other wise known as conducting diplomacy with extreme prejudice to foreign policy</comment></comment></comment>


[Welcome Join] Open Survey on Code Reuse and Re-Implementation - <AUTHOR> Hi my friends, we are software engineering researchers from SWAT lab (http://swat.polymtl.ca/, Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal (Canada)) and SOAR lab (https://soarsmu.github.io/, Singapore Management University).
We are currently studying the phenomenon where developers replace self-implemented code with an equivalent external method, as well as the phenomenon where developers switch from using an external method to implementing an equivalent one themselves. We invite you to participate this survey, which takes you about 5-10 minutes. The results can help us improve the current code recommendation systems. Please note that all answers provided in the context of this survey will be treated anonymously.
Survey URL: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfnI5oHioE-0-etLVwYUW6qtPlrmLM4VEdkYUvdcnO3BAHMgw/viewform
Thank you very much and have a good day! :-) <comment><AUTHOR> Survey URL: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfnI5oHioE-0-etLVwY...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfnI5oHioE-0-etLVwYUW6qtPlrmLM4VEdkYUvdcnO3BAHMgw/viewform)

</comment><comment><USER2> In "preferred programing language", add "other"

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi gus_massa, thank you for your great suggestion! I have fixed your comment. :-)</comment></comment>


Google's DeepMind Acqui-Hires Two AI Teams in the UK, Partners with Oxford - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/23/googles-deepmind-acqui-hires-two-ai-teams-in-the-uk-partners-with-oxford/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone here work there?</comment>


Master–Slave Morality - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality <comment><USER2> The SEP[1] is probably a better reference than Wikipedia for most philosophical topics, especially for individuals like Nietzsche (who, for various reasons, tends to find himself in the intersection of vaguely reactionary thinkers and people who want to read philosophy without seriously engaging with the rest of the canon).

In particular, this Wikipedia article gives the incorrect impression that Nietzsche is especially cynical about divine command and deontological ethics and implies that the MS divide is in some ways constructive. Neither is the case: Nietzsche's moral cynicism is universal and the MS divide is meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive or constructive.

[1]: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral- political...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche-moral-political/)

<comment><USER3> > Nietzsche's moral cynicism is universal and the MS divide is meant to be > descriptive, not prescriptive or constructive.

Could you elaborate? Nietzsche's usage of slave morality seems pejorative to me, and I wouldn't characterise Nietzsche's stance as an universal moral cynicism; his method does not aim at an universal conclusion.

Funny enough, this illustrates well why it is difficult to find good reads on Nietzsche, it is not easy to summarise his positions briefly and without equivocation.

<comment><USER4> To dramatically over-simplify: N. thinks that slave morality was inferior to master morality, however he doesn't think we should return to a master morality system. He also thinks that slave morality did have some benefits in the sense that it turned humanity's creative instincts inward. He mostly has a problem with slave morality because it is life-denying (which is essentially his criticism of Christianity).

It should also be said that he doesn't use these terms in a scientific or extremely specific way ("this is how it was, factually") but rather as a sort of myth-like pattern. They are broad repeating trends, so to speak, not scientific observations.

The overman (Übermensch) should transcend both moral systems and create a new life-affirming one. Unfortunately some reactionaries seem to think that he was advocating for a return to master morality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminded of this quote from Cannery Row:

"It has always seemed strange to me, the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

<comment><USER6> I think the biggest issue is that for the system to succeed, most participants need to display the first list of traits. But for any individual within the system, personal success may be easier to obtain by displaying the second set (though that is not necessarily true, in my experience).

<comment><USER7> It's like the person in the sportscar weaving through traffic on the highway. He can only do it because everyone else drives carefully and predictably. He gets to his destination faster, and thinks he is a much better driver than everyone else, but if everyone drove like him the traffic "system" would fall apart. The master mindset is sacrificing the well working system for personal gain. If you want to go fast go alone. If you want to go far go together. What's not good for the hive is not good for the bee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't be the only one thinking this would be an article on drive replication.

<comment><USER9> I was thinking of 2 drives on an IDE cable[1], until I read "Morality".

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Multiple_devices_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#Multiple_devices_on_a_cable)

(kind of wondering if that use of Master-Slave is so old that I really needed to cite it...)

<comment><USER10> Yep, had flashbacks of PATA configuration problems, as well :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An example why German philosophy of late 19th century is considered deranged by many... Cherry picking some facts, dissecting them in detail, reassembling them in some convincing fashion, pretending conclusions are true without any proof of causality and then just observing how that philosophy spreads like wildfire among people that want to look trendy, contributing to two world wars later.

<comment><USER12> Nietzsche's philosophy had a profound influence on the colonial wars that Europe fought, and the world wars that were fought in Europe.

What an absolute humanitarian travesty that era was.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, just like Einstein and nuclear weapons.

<comment><USER13> Einstein pulled out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nietzsche pulled his books from his publisher after finding that it published anti-semitic books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Classroom morality: the behaviors that make the teacher's day easier and get good grades.

Playground morality: the behaviors that make a kid popular and respected by the other children.

...

This Nietzsche is interesting and it hit me like a slap in the face when I first encountered it, but the most fleshed out and vivid form of this type of thinking is Ribbonfarm _Gervaise Principle_ articles.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Premium Mediocre Life of Maya Millennial ([https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium- mediocre-l...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre- life-of-maya-millennial/)) was a favourite from Ribbonfarm.

<comment><USER15> That post cracked me up. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Similarly-named (I mistook OP for this) but much, much more interesting:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_dialectic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_dialectic)

</comment><comment><USER17> Something I wrote previously:

[http://genevievefiles.blogspot.com/2019/09/putting- victimhoo...](http://genevievefiles.blogspot.com/2019/09/putting-victimhood- behind-you.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Shouldn't we rename this wikipedia page into Leader-Follower morality?

<comment><USER19> Why should we?

<comment><USER18> To follow the trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hypothesis: In a liberal democracy, when leaders adopts a persona of master morality, the slaves are threatened. If leaders instead project a slave morality, the slaves are peaceable and content.

But behind the scenes, it seems like a state needs to rule with master morality, but for peaceableness, promote the adoption of slave morality among the slaves.

Controversial view: Christianity is a perfect ruling tool because it incentivizes slave morality which keeps people peaceful.

Caveat: I'm not saying Christ wasn't real nor an amazing person. Just noting how the religion could be co-opted for ruling purpose.

<comment><USER20> Hypothesis: In a liberal democracy, when leaders adopts a persona of master morality, the slaves are threatened. If leaders instead project a slave morality, the slaves are peaceable and content. But behind the scenes, it seems like a state needs to rule with master morality, but for peaceableness, promote the adoption of slave morality among the slaves.

Controversial view: Christianity is a perfect ruling tool because it incentivizes slave morality which keeps people peaceful.

Caveat: I'm not saying Christ wasn't real nor an amazing person. Just noting how the religion could be co-opted for ruling purpose.

<comment><USER21> Why is it a controversial view? I thought it was a general view that this was exactly why monotheism of this sort got enthusiastically adopted and enforced by monarchies -- one true god, one true king, sheeple and all that.

<comment><USER20> The trigger for controversy on HN is quite fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I came away with a feeling that the article was not representative. It felt creepy, even.

It's frankly a disgusting argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe you should look at the book Moral Psychology with Nietzsche: [https://global.oup.com/academic/product/moral-psychology- wit...](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/moral-psychology-with- nietzsche-9780199696505).

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the reference, it looks good. What's the takeaway?

<comment><AUTHOR> Validation of Nietzsche's ideas in more of a modern, scientific context. Thinking about a person's morality as originating from a person's psychology.

<comment><USER15> What does it mean to scientifically validate Nietzsche's ideas? What invalidated the ideas in the first place? I'm assuming the association with Nazis and Mussolini.

<comment><AUTHOR> Validating them in the sense of using the ideas as a model to understand our own psychology, and the origins of our moralities. Showing that certain ideas that Nietzsche held around free will and the nature/nurture debate hold up to scientific scrutiny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is not a meaningful or interesting article for Hacker News, and in the world of Philosophy this is not a slam dunk of a concept.

<comment><USER23> Counterargument: it was meaningful and interesting to me.

<comment><USER22> Counterargument: This does not make it newsworthy or even discussion-worthy within the venue of this site. There are many, many venues where you could discuss or learn about philosophy.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Now Supports Windows – Oat++ High Performance Web Framework. C++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp/releases/tag/0.19.8 <comment><AUTHOR> Now oatpp is easy portable + it supports Windows.

Github repo - [https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp](https://github.com/oatpp/oatpp)

Full list of supported platforms - [https://oatpp.io/supported- platforms/](https://oatpp.io/supported-platforms/)</comment>


Ito – privacy-first contact tracing app - <AUTHOR> https://www.ito-app.org/ <comment><USER2> Thanks amai for the submission. _ito_ formed when a group of privacy-focussed contact tracing teams joined forces after the German government's hackathon in late March. We have a prototype working where you can try out the Bluetooth distance measuring between two devices. Find our latest release here:

[https://github.com/ito-org/react-native-app/releases](https://github.com/ito- org/react-native-app/releases)

The global TCN Coalition ([https://TCN-coalition.org/](https://TCN- coalition.org/)) which we formed with many other groups from the US and the UK, is standardizing a privacy-first protocol that will be interoperable across borders.

Feel free to contribute and to spread the word so we can make sure everyone can visit other countries with some more reassurance and without needlessly giving up their identity. Track infections, not people!</comment>


The hidden images within PHP - <AUTHOR> http://mattiasgeniar.be/2012/02/21/the-hidden-images-within-php/ Did you know that the logo's of the PHP project are hidden within the PHP source code and can be magically shown using a simple URL string? <comment> unix-junkie Nmap leverages that cool stuff for precise PHP version fingerprinting.

See <http://nmap.org/nsedoc/scripts/http-php-version.html></comment>


Dutch MPs vote for 'yes unless' organ donor register - <AUTHOR> http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/09/dutch-mps-vote-for-yes-unless-organ-donation-register/ <comment><USER2> On the one hand, I'm an organ donor and think it's a good idea. Once I'm dead, you can have what's left over.

On the other, a person's body is the one thing you can't take from them (without this being a Cronenberg movie). I know they can still opt out, but having the default be to take somebody's body when they die seems wrong to me.

Why not have an awareness campaign, or offer some kind of small tax incentive to organ donors?

<comment><USER3> The government tried raising awareness for years, it did not work. Other EU countries that have a yes unless donor standard have significant more donors. We need more donors, the people on the waiting list is too long. It will take a few minutes to opt-out if you feel it's wrong.

That saying, it still need to be passed in the first chamber, which will check if this infringes our law.

<comment><USER4> > The government tried raising awareness for years, it did not work.

Or it did, but people just decided that they didn't want to be donors.

<comment><USER5> But people wants to have a transplant when they are ill, you can't have them without donation

<comment><USER4> Well, then people want transplants, but people also don't want to be donors. Maybe that's just how it is.

In a way, making it "opt-in" by default is kind of similar to these anti- patterns we see online. Where the "close" button is very tiny in the corner, or the option to hide content is buried under 3 layers of settings.

Until we make organ donation mandatory and no longer optional there is only so much we can do. We need to accept to play the game and recognize the right to people to not be organ donors, whatever reasons they may have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it becomes law, I guess me and a lot of people I know will have to register _not_ to get our organs removed after death... What a bother.</comment>


Zero-configuration submodules with auto-update in Gitbox - <AUTHOR> http://gitboxapp.com/?submodules <comment><AUTHOR> The coolest feature is that you can pull, checkout a commit or reset a branch and submodules will be updated automatically no questions asked. Unless, of course, you've been working on them and they are not in a clean state. This makes debugging much easier as you jump through commits with just a single click.

I don't understand why everybody else is adding a lot of options and preferences even to the simplest functions like pull/push to their Git clients. In Gitbox you only configure URLs and then just interact with the same UI without jumping to extra windows all the time.

<comment><USER2> Oleg, your vision is exactly what I like about Gitbox. Git is a toolbox to create your own VCS, Gitbox takes a stance and uses those tools to define a usage model, without tying itself to tradition.

It doesn't work for hardcore users and even I sometimes fall back (cringing) to the CLI, but I really appreciate it.

Feature request: easier way to switch local and remote branches with the keyboard. Currently I use Cmd-Shift-? to get to the menu.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nothing against gitbox but I find it a bit of a tragedy that they can advertise with making submodules bearable in first place.

This stuff really needs an overhaul in core-git. The CLI experience is indeed so terrible that most people avoid submodules altogether.

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal problem with git was inherent inefficiency of CLI. E.g. I was typing "gs" to see the status almost after every little command. In Gitbox you just _see_ the status. Similar thing with submodules: you need to get in and out, verify the status of a submodule and its parent. In Gitbox you just see the whole picture and click a single button to do something useful.

My question is not to git CLI guys (they are doing great job, by the way), but to others like Tower and SourceTree: why in the world they complicate things so much? If one needs a very flexible/configurable environment, git CLI is just fine.

<comment><USER3> To me the CLI is about fine. It's just the submodules that are poorly executed and break all sorts of expectations.

The mini-primer on submodule-WTFs: "must be executed in root-directory", no auto-clone/update of submodules, incomplete info about submodules in status- commands, manual maintenance of .gitmodules, a wide range of irritating/misleading failure modes and error messages...

It's really no surprise you hardly ever see a submodule on e.g. github, even on projects where it would make sense. The maintenance headache usually dwarves all potential benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I remember correctly, last time I tried gitbox, I couldn't use it for more than a few minutes because it showed commits as a linear history. I understand that they want to hide complexity, but that's exactly the complexity I need to see and understand. I need a tree-based view like gitx or the github network view to keep track of what's going on with my team. That along with line-by- line staging of commits are the killer features for me.

I still use the original version of gitx because it is simple as possible but still has these two features.

</comment><comment><USER5> nice. would love to use gitbox but it lacks the most basic functionality of gitx. easy inline browsing of staged changes / diffs

you have to click on every file to open up a diff in order to preview changes before checkin</comment>


RFC 3514: evil flag introduced into IPv4 header - <AUTHOR> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt

<comment><USER2> Here's your problem: This things set to evil.</comment>


Show HN: Bit – A fast and easy Python Bitcoin library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ofek/bit <comment><USER2> Am I the only one annoyed by the name? "Bit" isn't very useful or specific, yet it takes up a pretty big parking space.

<comment><USER3> A parking space in ofek's city though. Feel free to call your project bit too.

<comment><USER4> That's not really how Python packages work. Public packages need unique names, mostly because of PyPI, where package names are all on the same namespace. This can cause some interesting problems:

[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0541/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0541/)

Even locally, all packages are supposed to have unique names (though virtualenvs can make things nicer).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for testing on pypy and for supporting Python 3! Sometimes it's just a small set of changes to support python 3 and testing on pypy is awesome, so thanks!

bit.PrivateKey.get_transactions -- would there be any way to filter these on transactions since a given block height?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but limiting by # of confirmations is planned!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice to see the project that inspired your recent [https://github.com/pyca/cryptography](https://github.com/pyca/cryptography) performance work, ofek!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! FYI, with pyca/cryptography 1.8 using your [https://github.com/wbond/asn1crypto](https://github.com/wbond/asn1crypto), Bit's ECDSA signing is >100 usec faster :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Vulnerable if [https://bitpay.com/api/rates](https://bitpay.com/api/rates) gets hacked.

<comment><AUTHOR> You don't have to rely on that [https://ofek.github.io/bit/guide/advanced.html#server- integr...](https://ofek.github.io/bit/guide/advanced.html#server-integration)

<comment><USER3> I think that relying on it should be the default rather than an advanced option. Kind of like "locked down by default" that you'd want from a database that isn't mongodb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So what is real life case for this ?

<comment><USER8> > When I originally went to experiment with sending Bitcoin there were really > no good choices.

[https://ofek.github.io/bit/guide/intro.html#why- bit](https://ofek.github.io/bit/guide/intro.html#why-bit)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Version 0.2.0 is out now! [https://ofek.github.io/bit/community/updates.html#release- hi...](https://ofek.github.io/bit/community/updates.html#release-history)

</comment><comment><USER9> bitc would be a better name

using a generic word as name would make it harder for search engine to rank your site</comment>


Back-up failures led to Dutch emergency phone line breakdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/06/back-up-failures-led-to-emergency-112-phone-line-breakdown/ <comment><USER2> > _The initial analyses show that something went wrong in the back-ups,' > Grapperhaus said. KPN is now trying to establish what happened and, the > minister said, the results of that investigation will be double checked._

When money is at stake, downtime matters. This, however, was about lives and matters so much more. The public deserves the utmost transparency and a full explanation of what happened, how three separate backups failed, how the issue was resolved, and what the plans are moving forward. I only hope we receive it.

Some questions I would like to know:

How did three separate backups fail?

What was the process on verifying the backups, or was there one?

How many lives were lost during the outage?

What systems are going to be put in place to ensure this cannot happen again?</comment>


PxCode Challenge – Day 4 Video Home Fully Responsive Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJdY4ycTqcw&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=pxCodeTeam <comment><AUTHOR> Give us your Sketch, and we give you the Code! Fully Responsive challenge this time, We make this page within 23 mins. Can you go faster? Check our results below!

Preview the result here: [https://bit.ly/2DYtI6x](https://bit.ly/2DYtI6x)

Final source code at CodeSandBox: [https://bit.ly/3hst3rG](https://bit.ly/3hst3rG)

Send us your Sketch; We will show you how powerful pxCode is. pxCode Official Site: [https://www.pxcode.io/](https://www.pxcode.io/)</comment>


Your load is too heavy: Zork deep reading - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zarfhome.com/2017/08/your-load-is-too-heavy-zork-deep-reading.html <comment><USER2> A while back I made a partial emulator for Z5 (a version of the virtual machine Infocom games ran on) that recompiled the game dynamically to Javascript[1], and I remember while pouring over the dumps coming across the fact "You're holding too many things already!" depended by a random number. I never checked whether it could actually fire, though! I assumed it was vestigial, with the "Your load is too heavy" message in the same function.

Another quirk I came across was how in the Canyon View, on many emulators when you "climb down" you are greeted with "The xc ec knwall munz doesn't lead downward." It turns out the Solid Gold edition has no name for the "down" object, which probably didn't exist in earlier versions, and emulators don't tend to check the text length field for the object (0 in this case) because the string encoding uses something like null-termination. Text is encoded in 5-bit blocks, explaining how the random data stays within the alphabet. Whatever emulators do, it's still a bug in the game.

[1] It was an excuse to figure out how to make an Emscripten-like relooper, to figure out how to simulate blocking calls ("continuations") using exceptions, and to learn about the design of the Z-machine.

Edit: I guess I should mention for the "xc ec knwall munz" quirk that the directions are all objects, and "climb" is meant for ropes and stairs. I believe what is happening is that you can go down in the Canyon view, but "down" isn't the vehicle which will carry you there.

<comment><USER3> Infocom's games handled compass directions strangely -- they were treated like omnipresent objects. In some versions of Zork, you could give a direction (like "east") to a hungry troll, who would proceed to eat it.

This, among many other bizarre bugs, is documented at: [http://graeme.50webs.com/infobugs/zork1.htm](http://graeme.50webs.com/infobugs/zork1.htm)

<comment><USER4> Directions-as-objects seems to be a common pattern. LambdaCore does the same thing, though LambdaMOO later added a Generic Detailed Room with basic support for directions, so a separate object wasn't required. (Anything more sophisticated than "go west" still requires a separate door object.)

In addition to missing checks causing unexpected interactions, this approach also has the problem that the two ends can become asymmetrical, causing confusion (though this may be desired e.g. in the case of a trap-door). In the case of LambdaMOO, there's an entry northwest from the living room to the kitchen, but no corresponding entry southeast in the other direction!

<comment><USER5> Asymmetrical navigation was definitely used as a game element. "You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I was a teenager, I loved the Infocom games. I actually called a tip line once or twice to get unstuck. I would spend hours playing through, taking notes, and mapping my progress. I also loved stuff that came in the boxes. It has a similar nostalgia pull that I think some people get from vinyl records.

When the BBC put the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy online [1], I loaded it up and went to work. Then I quit after about 15 minutes. I'd love to watch my 14 year old self working his way through that game. Did I have better focus? Did I have fewer things to spend my time on? Why was it so captivating then? It seems almost arduous today.

Have you played an Infocom game after a 30 year break? How did it go for you?

[1]: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the- hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition)

<comment><USER7> I played through _Deadline_ recently, as part of a project to play through a bunch of detective games. The last time I'd tried it was in the late '90s (so not quite a 30 year break, but still substantial), and at the time I could literally make no progress at all. This time around it went a lot more smoothly; except for one particularly unfair bit that I had to eventually look up, it felt like the there was tangible progress at regular intervals.

But Deadline is maybe a special case; it's not really a game of traditional adventure game puzzles using wacky dream logic. It's one half figuring out exactly what made each of the NPCs tick and manipulating them into doing things that advanced the plot, and one half doing mundane investigative work.

It also has one of the most brilliant uses of a text parser ever. When interacting with a certain item in the house, you're naturally going to use a specific verb. This will just give you a bland and generic result. But if the player has discovered a specific bit of evidence and realized what it implies about the crime, it's obvious that you could use another verb on that object to verify the hunch. It's also not a verb you'd ever just randomly use on an item, so even people trying to brute-force their way through the game would miss it. It ends up as a really cool way of making sure that it's the player rather than the character solving the crime, and something that would be very hard to replicate in a graphical adventure game.

<comment><USER8> I grew up on King's Quest and its ilk which were similarly "hardened" against blind clicking that became common in later games of the genre. I don't think I'd have the patience to solve KQ1 from scratch today.

Anyway, I too have a fond memory of text parsers in games, graphical or not.

Sierra's maybe weren't the best with some maddening quirks where certain word orders wouldn't work and the responses were nonsense. Sentences that had direct and indirect objects were frequently problematic: "give the mouse the cheese" would result in "you aren't carrying the mouse". I should probably blame my pre-teen english for the frustration however. Infocom games were smarter, as I recall.

KQ1's puzzle requiring writing the alphabet forwards and backwards and encoding the name "rumplestiltskin"... have to admit I never figured that out on my own. They dumbed down that in the VGA (and all later) releases accepting the name simply spelled backwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, this is actually kind of neat. I mean, if I'm carrying too many things in real life, I will probably not be able to pick something else up. But if I try again a few times I may be able to fit it or grasp it somehow. The probability of this working decreases depending on the number of items over my "easy to carry" limit. That's a cool detail.

<comment><USER10> Definitely, though the Zork 3 message still sounds like such a better way of letting you know what's happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of my favorite memories of zork, after giving up once, was something very similar to:

Kill self

> With what?

Self

> You don't have the you.

</comment><comment><USER12> Amazing! All those times I went adventuring carrying too little... I should have just tried 'take x' again! There is a type of ironic zen lesson in all of this somewhere...

</comment><comment><USER13> While I've always loved the Infocom games, I was partial to Magnetic Scrolls: The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, Jinxter and so on.

Magnetic Scrolls games came with a little bit of graphics (or, in the case of the later Wonderland game, a whole graphics environment, including a visual inventory you could drag stuff around in), and also had a more sophisticated parser. For example, if you had a green bottle and a brown bottle you could do something like:

        > put water in bottle
        Which bottle?
        > green
        The green bottle is now filled with water.

This also worked with modifiers in-sentence ("put water in the blue bottle"), and it could handle complex sentences like: "go southeast and get the harmonica and the bottle and then get the knife that is on the table and use the knife to cut the sandwich".

The internal data model was also more abstract, and therefore more flexible. For example [1], if you needed to cut something, you could use anything that was sharp enough, because the data model didn't require a specific object. If you had a knife, you could cut a rope, but if you also had a vase, you could break the vase, then use one of the shards to cut the rope with.

All the Magnetic Scrolls games are playable today on many platforms through Magnetic [2], and you can find the files online. The original Magnetic Scrolls developers were able to recover the old source code from tapes [3] and will be remastering the other games, and releasing the code. A remastered version [4] of The Pawn came out recently for multiple platforms, including mobile.

[1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/4760332/In-my- opinion-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/4760332/In-my-opinion-What- are-you-made-of.html)

[2] [http://msmemorial.if-legends.org/magnetic.php](http://msmemorial.if- legends.org/magnetic.php)

[3] [https://strandgames.com/blog/magnetic-scrolls-games- source-c...](https://strandgames.com/blog/magnetic-scrolls-games-source-code- recovered)

[4] [https://strandgames.com/games/thePawn](https://strandgames.com/games/thePawn)

<comment><USER14> Ah, I'd forgotten about those. I saw the ads as a kid and was interested but never got a chance to play any of them. This does remind me of The Hobbit, though, which seems to have some similar features:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1982_video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_\(1982_video_game\))

<comment><USER13> They're similar. The Hobbit was simpler from a parser perspective. But it had music. It also had the added feature that all the art was vector graphics [1], and it drew the vectors slowly as you were watching. (The graphics models on computers like C64 were limited in the ways colours could be placed next to each other, so while the drawings are beautiful, they also look a little wonky.)

[1] [https://youtu.be/3z64d56p7Lw?t=44](https://youtu.be/3z64d56p7Lw?t=44)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Zork is smarter than Siri.

</comment><comment><USER16> Obligatory link to the Eaten By A Grue podcast, where the hosts play old Infocom games and talk about them. The first podcast is, of course, Zork.

[http://monsterfeet.com/grue/](http://monsterfeet.com/grue/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I played this on the mainframe in the early 90's while mounting tapes on the night shift. It was hard. I cheated. I looked at the source code for the key to get out of the twisty little maze. Wonderful stuff.

</comment><comment><USER18> Off topic, but the way the mobile version of this site steals left- and right swipes makes a terrible UX.

</comment><comment><USER19> Proof looking at code makes things less fun?</comment>


Forgot to nest a query – or "how we ended up email spamming our users" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/ValCanBuild/status/1273903449999118336 <comment><AUTHOR> I recently launched a product, called Thankbox.

Product idea is really simple - you can set up a Thankbox (like an online card) for someone and share it within your group of friends to put messages, images, gifs and cash in it. You then send it to the recipient.

We wanted to add a feature where the recipient could respond to everyone who had left messages on their card - a kind of "Thanks so much for your kind words" type thing.

We rolled it out to production. The first time it ran it _spammed everyone who had ever left a message on any thankbox with the response_. Luckily we just launched and we didn't have that many users.

I thought it'd be a learning experience worth sharing, though, so I wrote up a Twitter thread about it to share my embarassment as a learning experience.</comment>


Top Canadian Court Permits Worldwide Internet Censorship - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/top-canadian-court-permits-worldwide-internet-censorship <comment><USER2> This is a clickbaity version of what is already on the front page,

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14657061](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14657061)

The EFF should really try to be more objective.</comment>


My chat with Jeff Bezos in 1997 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@SanjayManandhar/my-chat-with-jeff-bezos-in-spring-1997-bbe4f6cdca46 <comment><USER2> One thing that hit me is that bezos has a clear vision since 1997. No pivoting or other crap.

He knew _exactly_ what he was building and what his ultimate goal was.</comment>


How Techies Armed the Predator, Nearly Stopped 9/11, and Invented Remote War - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-rogue-techies-armed-the-predator-almost-stopped-911-and-accidentally-invented-remote-war/ <comment><AUTHOR> I had to change the title a bit to fit it within the character limit, which led to some personal editorializing of Wired's title, but I wouldn't classify any Pentagon project as rogue, even if they were able to skip a number of bureaucratic hurdles, and I also wouldn't say that remote war was an accident.</comment>


Ask HN: How to validate a SaaS product? - <AUTHOR> I am building a SaaS product with a friend that I think will be very useful for people who browse the web and businesses who generate traffic to their websites. How do I validate that I am solving a real problem and people will actually pay for it?
Edit: Sorry for being vague. Find the link to the product we are working on below. So the value proposition is everyone is browsing web and want to follow and keep themselves updated on different interests but there isn't an efficient way to be updated on a particular event. It may be anything. Be a phone launch or when stripe atlas opens LLC registrations. Our product enables you to create links for each of these events and embed them on your site or service to which users can subscribe to with their emails. The website owner will then send updates to that event subscribers regarding only that event. In doing so, website owners keep the users who would otherwise close the tab and never comeback interested in part of their offering and keep them in the loop and users who browse the web can keep track of only what they care without giving away their identity.
Link: http://test-cab.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/
* Signup for an account in the top left dropdown
* Find the embed script under settings
PS: Please be forgiving I am sharing an internal prototype. <comment><USER2> The first thing that strikes me is your description of the target market: "people who browse the web" and "businesses who generate traffic to their websites". That is, businesses and consumers who use the internet. In other words, EVERYONE.

EVERYONE has different needs, EVERYONE hangs out in different places, EVERYONE has their own budget, and therefore EVERYONE is a nearly impossible market to target. There's no leverage there, no foothold for your idea to find purchase -- only an amorphous blob of people. Even Facebook, a product truly built for EVERYONE, started off by targeting a small group of people (Harvard students).

Step 1: Stop coding. The #1 mistake programmers make is that they ignore marketing and prioritize development. (Read a few interviews on [https://www.indiehackers.com](https://www.indiehackers.com) and you'll see the pattern.)* You need to do the opposite. Every line of code you write without understanding your market is time wasted.

You need to find a niche. Identify a small group of people who are related in some way, and who would absolutely rave about what you're building. If at all possible, target _businesses_ , not consumers. The majority of revenue generated comes from B2B sales. Consumers are fickle and are terrible at valuing their time. Businesses generate revenue and are quite used to paying for services that increase their bottom line.

If you can't think of a niche that likes your product, you need to build something else. If you _can_ find a niche of potential customers, however, then you need to start talking to them. What do they need? What are their biggest problems? What do they love/hate? How technical are they? What are they spending money on now? Where do they hang out online? Who are their celebrities and leaders? The more you learn about them, the more likely you are to build something they love. You'll also know a hell of a lot more about how to market a solution to them.

*Disclaimer: I'm the creator of Indie Hackers. The site is made specifically for people like you, so you can learn from others' mistakes instead of making your own, and hopefully go on to build a successful business. I highly recommend giving some of the interviews a read.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. Added a description and internal prototype to the question.

> Step 1: Stop coding

Sorry mate. Damage already done.

> You need to find a niche.

I have found some niches and I am in the process of reaching out to them.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I am checking out indiehackers right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think updating people with push events on topics they care about is a great concept.

I've built a related tool to send me a text message when a new episode of Silicon Valley is released online. It also tracks when the local snowboarding resorts have opened for this season, as the date varies widely and shockingly enough their advice is "check our website every day"... get real. It's been immensely valuable to me personally.

As far as validation goes, and I'm saying this intentionally without clicking through to look at your prototype, it's just: Do you have users? How much are they using? Really you want to know is it providing significant value to them, but that's harder to measure at this stage. Then eventually, are people willing to pay for it?

I would recommend you create a single-page marketing site, it doesn't even need to use any tech, just pure html and css, that explains: what the problem is, use cases people would have, some recommendations from early stage users eg your friends, and a sign up button. That's what most startups do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This is very practical. Will test it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Put it out there for people to try. Is it available somewhere already ? Who is your target customer ? You say it is useful for people who browse the web. That like everyone who uses the internet. You then mention "businesses who generate traffic to their websites". Again, this is pretty much any online business because everyone wants to generate traffic to their website. So this is too vague and abstract. you need to drill down further and explain the product specifically for what it does.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could you talk to them, maybe show them some screenshots and see what they say?

Actual pre-payments will be worth more than vague promises to pay in the future. Being able to demonstrate real and specific value to potential users will be helpful in collecting dollars up front.

Depending upon the nature of your product, creating a manual method to achieve the same results might save you a ton of development time while you understand customer demand.

</comment><comment><USER6> Shameless Plug:

Ask the people who use my colossal list: [https://github.com/Ryanb58/the- colossal-saas-list](https://github.com/Ryanb58/the-colossal-saas-list)</comment>


Dilithium crystal fusion impulse engine in development - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57523867-1/star-trek-fusion-impulse-engine-in-the-works/

<comment><USER2> The other article has a nonzero information content, for a change:

[http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star- tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek- researchers-to-begin-fusion)

Summary: it's nuclear pulse propulsion (riding the shock wave of a nuclear explosion). _Small_ nuclear explosions in this concept: they hope to create small (~1 ton TNT eq.) pure-fusion explosions using nanosecond bursts of extremely powerful electric currents (plasma Z-pinch). Basically, it's the same problem as fusion power plants based on "inertial confinement" (euphemism for "explosion").

Lithium is a progenitor of tritium. This is common D+T fusion.

This concept is not remotely close to practicality. Which is why the reported goal ("a mind-bending 62,600 mph") is bizarre; it's only a small factor better than chemical rockets. It's just as bad as e.g. nuclear thermal propulsion, which was designed and built 40 years ago. So I really don't see the point.

<comment><USER3> The fuel has a much greater energy density than chemical rockets, making longer distances practical, and the process is safer than nuclear fission.

<comment><USER2> That's my complaint, it _doesn't_ have much greater energy density, or more precisely it's not usefully translated to momentum. The speed target in the article is extremely low ("62,600 mph") -- only a small factor higher then what chemical rockets achieve, and comparable (as I mentioned) to nuclear thermal rockets. (It looks like they edited their article to mention NTRs.) They have extremely energetic fuel, but they don't get any meaningful specific impulse out of it. Maybe they don't easily extract momentum from high-energy radiation. Or maybe they lose too much mass to radiation damage or vaporization ("ablative shield") -- their mass consumption could be dominated by shielding, not fuel.

 _Their ultimate goal is to develop a nuclear fusion propulsion system by 2030 that can spirit spacecraft from Earth to Mars in around three months—about twice as fast as researchers think they could go with a nuclear fission engine, another scheme that is being investigated but has not yet been built._

<comment><USER3> The speed doesn't tell us the whole story. If a chemical rocket can only practically carry enough fuel to burn a couple times on a one-way trip to Mars, while this has fuel to burn for maneuvers and a return journey, then it is a big advancement. We weren't given enough info, so it's a bit early to discount it as worthless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Dilithium crystals weren't used in the impulse drive though, they're used to catalyse the matter/antimatter reaction through their crystal structure.

Also it seems to be fusion pulse propulsion. Pretty good for going fast.

</comment><comment><USER5> Original article:

[http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star- tre...](http://txchnologist.com/post/32463368168/channeling-star-trek- researchers-to-begin-fusion)</comment>


Avoiding Programming burnout: lessons learned from a 19th century philosopher - <AUTHOR> https://codewithoutrules.com/2018/09/27/avoiding-burnout/ <comment><USER2> The article refers to John Stuart Mill's _Autobiography_.

Mill talks about his amazing early education at the very beginning of the book, starting with

 _I have no remembrance of the time when I began to learn Greek; I have been told that it was when I was three years old._

[http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10378/pg10378-images.htm...](http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10378/pg10378-images.html)

His father, James Mill, was one of the founders, with Jeremy Bentham, of modern utilitarianism. This essay by (JS) Mill about Bentham I think is magnificent as an appreciation of Bentham and his huge influence, and as philosophical prose.

[https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mill-the-collected- works-...](https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/mill-the-collected-works-of- john-stuart-mill-volume-x-essays-on-ethics-religion-and- society#lf0223-10_head_038)</comment>


After Las Vegas Shooting, Fake News Regains Its Megaphone - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/business/las-vegas-shooting-fake-news.html <comment><USER2> Ironically, I've half convinced this is a problem the "mainstream media" helped create.

I think the endless race to get the news out first, has trained us to expect so much information in the first minutes or hours - and created this problem of what happens when "information" appears before facts do.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and I believe the pressure for instant news is creating one. We really can't act surprised when the vacuum is filled.

It's a tough nut to crack though. I'm not sure I fancy the idea of google & facebook becoming arbiters of facts - but neither do I want to see them doing nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> On one hand, it is worrying, but on the other...

 _There is also a labeling issue. A Facebook user looking for news about the Las Vegas shooting on Monday morning, or a Google user searching for information about the wrongfully accused shooter, would have found posts from 4Chan and Sputnik alongside articles by established news organizations like CNN and NBC News, with no obvious cues to indicate which ones came from reliable sources._

...it's 4Chan... is that not a clue? Where is the line betweeen attempts to deceive, and just dealing with the human LCD?

<comment><USER4> My step sister is repeating this stuff as fact. Clearly there are deeper issues than which website the spam comes from originally.

<comment><AUTHOR> How old is she, out of curiosity?

<comment><USER4> 30s

<comment><USER3> Wow... you must have to exercise the patience of a saint!

<comment><USER4> Many people remark on my patience. She definitely contributed.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Abcjs - an open-source JavaScript musical notes rendering engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.drawthedots.com/abcjs

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is pretty impressive actually.

Lilypond has for a long time made a big deal about the quality of their output (<http://lilypond.org/web/about/automated-engraving/>). But to my musician eye, it looks good but not exceptional.

The rendering of Abcjs in this example, while not perfect, is pretty impressive for something that's running in your browser. It seems pretty lightweight; Lilypond, in contrast, is extremely large and slow. And its convenient features like as-you-type rendering and highlighting the corresponding part of the text are really compelling.

I hadn't actually heard of ABC notation before. Apparently there is a language "standard" published, though it's really just a definition (it is not adopted by any standards bodies AFAIK): <http://abcnotation.com/wiki/abc:standard:v2.0>

I'd love to see some more substantial examples of music in this format. It looks really promising, but music notation has tons of hard cases, and amateurish typesetting really stands out. I sing from stuff on cpdl.org all the time, and the low-quality editions have obvious problems, like they'll get the spacing wrong, or they'll have awkward line crossings.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great highlighting based on caret position, easy-to-read syntax and the output updates quickly.

Very well done.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very excited about this - as a musician/programmer, I've been looking for a way to easily embed notation in q sit for a while. ABC is a great choice - very simple to lean. You've given me a new weekend project-posting the notation for my music! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER5> Brilliant! I wish I had an excuse to use this for something. ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Used it here - <http://www.eastofcleveland.com/flashcards/notereading.php>

</comment><comment><USER7> Looking at the SVG source, the notes are rendered using <path> \-- I'm wondering if higher level objects could be used like lines and ellipses

</comment><comment><USER8> it seems to be occasionally drawing staff lines on partial values to where the aliasing falls half-alpha on two pixel boundries. probably just need to drop the precision of the y.</comment>


War Without Soldiers - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/05/30/military-robots-technology-tech-security-cx_ag_0530robots.html

<comment><USER2> Two comments, one personal, one theoretical.Personally, as a geek and physics major turned military officer, specifically spending my last 18 months in the fleet doing force protection planning and ops,now a father, 3rd year med student, and homeowner in New Orleans, I can't conceive of a war these warbots could win. They can only start and continue violence. They can't build homes, mend communities, teach children or care for the sick and injured. They can't stock shelves or forgive debts. These war bots appeal to young men who have not yet faced physical adversity &military & political leaders too far removed and too surrounded by military contractors. Would you want your family to face these machines? I disagree with the claim that force protection is a valid basis for bots. Thebots don'tprotect the troops. They continue violencethey can't stop. Every bomb dropped leaves more work for soldiers on the ground and increases the hostility of the local population toward those troops. Those troops are your friends, neighbors, sons and daughters.

If code is law, what codable theoretical concept can society use to stop young men and the leaders of the military-industrial complex from killing us all in a scorched earth search for a technological solution to war? The concern most have expressed here boils down to _moral hazard_ , the same concept employed to curb bailouts of housing speculators and big companies. In both the bot and bailout cases, moral hazard has been gradually removed from the decision- making process. In finance, computing power, a credible objective(profit), gimicks, and the failure of regulators to keep pace with their charges, made it possible for the actors to get into the problems they now face. In the military-industrial complex the case is more extreme:massive computing power, a credible objective (less danger to our troops (they thought)), and a complete abdication of regulatory responsibility, and exceptionally simple regulatory basis (can't get much simpler than the five bases of jus ad bellum). How to put lot more moral hazard back into the equations?

</comment><comment><USER3> I know all of the arguments. Saving American lives etc. They sound good. I love robotics but I still recoil at the thought of first-world technological giants deploying semi-autonomous, or ever fully autonomous machines to kill vastly outmatched humans in third world nations at no risk to themselves. It just _begs_ for abuse. If not now, certainly in the future.

<comment><USER4> I understand your concerns but I'm also generally against holding back technological progress as a way to slow down the roadmap to the inevitable bad things that will result alongside the good ones.

<comment><USER5> Technological sophistication is orthogonal to societal progress.

<comment><USER4> So in a parallel world where computers and the internet (or equivalents) never happened society would be at exactly the same level?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really am torn by technology like this. On the one hand, force protection is the responsibility of any commander, and anything that contributes to that mission is a valuable asset.

But on the other, if we can go to war with no risk to ourselves, can we also resist the temptation to do so on the slightest pretext?

<comment><USER7> Assymetric warfare is such that you are mainly trying to not kill civilians. A teleoperated bot that doesn't fear for its life is better suited to storm a city building by building.

Symmetric warfare will always include nukes. There is a huge risk, regardless of the boots/bots ratio on the ground.

<comment><USER6> Technically asymmetric warfare is such that you are _only_ trying to kill civilians.

<comment><USER8> Well no, asymmetric warfare is any warfare where the two parties differ substantially in strength. In Iraq at the moment, for instance, we're trying to kill the enemy while the enemy doesn't seem to care whether they kill our soldiers or random civilians, but it would remain asymmetric even if the enemy would be so kind as to restrict themselves to trying to kill our soldiers.

Unless you're saying that the enemy in Iraq counts as "civilians" because they're not part of any proper and recognized army, but that's a rather point- missing definition of "civilian", since the defining characteristic of a civilian is whether they're engaging in combat.

<comment><USER6> It is not such a stretch to envision a world in which we have flocks of these circling endlessly over "enemy" population centres waiting targets of opportunity. Our own people barely even need to be aware that we're doing it, no body bags coming home, no loved-ones overseas for years, it will no more make it to the news than when a Tomahawk is fired now.

 _That_ is a terror weapon, in the most literal sense.

<comment><USER9> Well put.

That being said, I'd prefer this scenario to the present one with body bags coming home. That is, as long as I'm still living in the U.S., away from the perpetually aloft drones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As the article pointed out, the adoption of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is much smaller until now than that of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

If you are interested in UGVs in the military, check out the company iRobot. I listened to a recent webcasted analyst conference from them and they basically think that 2008 is an "inflection year" for UGVs - it's the first year they sell their robots not only to specialist teams (mainly explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams) but to the infantry, which is a much larger market. In September, they await a decision if the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV), a new smaller robot part of the Future Combat Systems, will be accelerated (earlier it was planned to start production in 2013-2015).

The webcast I'm referring to is here (you don't have to fill out the form, just press 'Access Event'. The presentation of the military division is in the second half of the presentation, but it's also pretty interesting to just watch the slides (the presentation of the military division starts at slide 93)): <http://investors.irobot.com/eventdetail.cfm?eventid=53016>

<comment><USER7> There aren't as many obstacles in the air. Line of sight is measured in miles. GPS is perfect. The kinematics are smooth.

The UAV problem from a robotics perspective is trivial compared to UGVs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I give you, Boston Dynamics BigDog Robot ... aka the Army Mule: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=mpBG-nSRcrQ>

Check out the related video for more gas powered mule fun.

</comment><comment><USER12> the reason warbots bother me is that people (including the decision makers) haven't seemed to figure out what exactly they're trying to accomplish when they go to war. What is the U.S.'s goal in Iraq? With no clearly defined goal, how do we know when the war is over?

P.S. I know the economic reason for the iraq war ([http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,00.h...](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,00.html)) but that doesn't explain why we're still there.

</comment><comment><USER13> At some point robots will be mainly designed to fight other robots rather than humans. Which is a welcome development, if indeed humans will be allowed only to watch the fight from the sidelines.

<comment><USER14> High Quality Entertainment. Just like how during one US civil war battle the civilians had a picnic and watched.</comment></comment>


A lambda calculus for quantum computation - <AUTHOR> http://www.het.brown.edu/people/andre/qlambda/index.html <comment><USER2> Very cool! The examples on this page are Scheme implementations of the Examples section of his 2003 paper[0] linked on the page. He goes over the derivation of the programs for these examples in more detail in the paper.

[0]: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0307150.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant- ph/0307150.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting resource. Given that "no-cloning" [1] seems to be a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, I would expect any relevant programming language to enforce linear types i.e. "use exactly once" constraint.

[1]: [https://quantiki.org/wiki/no-cloning- theorem](https://quantiki.org/wiki/no-cloning-theorem)

<comment><USER4> The linked paper says in the abstract:

 _The calculus turns out to be closely related to the linear lambda calculi used in the study of Linear Logic. We set up a computational model and an equational proof system for this calculus, and we argue that it is equivalent to the quantum Turing machine._

<comment><USER3> Yes, I was placing that statement in context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A brief survey of quantum programming languages, [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/1618](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1618)

A functional quantum programming language, [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/251](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/251)

A Quantum Lambda Calculus, [http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/node/3769](http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3769)

<comment><USER6> That survey was written over 10 years ago. The field of quantum computation has grown by leaps and bounds since then. Modern quantum programming languages like pyQuil [0], Qiskit [1], and Q# [2] are designed to address the progress of quantum computing; like the fact that we now have small devices with 10s of qubits.

[0]: [http://pyquil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](http://pyquil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

[1]: [https://www.qiskit.org/](https://www.qiskit.org/)

[2]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/quantum/quantum-qr- intro?vi...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/quantum/quantum-qr- intro?view=qsharp-preview)

<comment><USER7> There is an abundance of tools for reasearchers now, each with specific purposes. Libraries such as libquantum have different uses to libraries such as qiskit.

<comment><USER6> Could you give me an example of different use cases for libquantum vs qiskit? Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's awesome! Also D-Wave uses Common Lisp[0].

[0]: [https://cjelupton.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/quantum- computing...](https://cjelupton.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/quantum-computing- and-lisp/)

<comment><USER6> D-Wave doesn't have a quantum computer. They have a quantum annealer.</comment></comment>


Now That Google Has Cloned It, What's Next For Dropbox? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/24/now-that-google-has-cloned-it-whats-next-for-dropbox/ <comment><USER2> The problem with dropbox-like companies is that there isn't really a high barrier to entry. If Google wants to clone it, they will.</comment>


Announcing the "stm-containers" library - <AUTHOR> https://nikita-volkov.github.io/stm-containers/ <comment><USER2> This needs a (2014) in the title.

And no, just to be sure, this library isn't extremely popular. Most of the time, just `TVar (HashMap k a)` is fine.

<comment><USER3> How does this address the problem outlined in the article?

 _«deleting or inserting a row requires marking the outer TVar as changed, so multiple transactions cannot be modifying the table structure concurrently»_

I know precious nothing about STM in Haskell, so just asking.

<comment><USER4> TVar (HashMap k v) _doesn't_ address the problem in the article – it _is_ the problem in the article!

<comment><USER2> My original comment is in the sense of avoiding premature optimization. For a typical app you likely won't see the difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> (2014)</comment>


New Windows exploit lets you instantly become admin - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/new-windows-exploit-lets-you-instantly-become-admin-have-you-patched/ <comment><USER2> Compromising the domain controller is far worse than gaining admin on one machine. It would potentially give you remote access to all the company machines.

</comment><comment><USER3> Long time since i heard about windows exploits.</comment>


Ask HN: My physical goods social enterprise may have been cloned by a for profit - <AUTHOR>

RickshawArt.org got cloned as Rickshaw Canvas. What should I do? <comment><USER2> I don't think there is much you can do. Your idea is not unique and they did not copy some individual business method. When I read the headline with the word "cloned", I thought they copied your web site or business model. You are selling something that exists and so are they.

That being said, I wish they were not doing what they are and am rooting for you over them. I just don't believe they have really infringed on anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, right, nothing can be done -- no patent, nothing, just execution (let the fittest win, I know, it what makes the difference =) ).

CLONED, because they used pictures I took, pretend to have the product I sell (it's original art, so I'm pretty sure they don't have another copy) and re- used without changing the tag-line I used.

In this context, my question would be: what's the strategy to follow to interact with them?

<comment><USER3> If they're using pictures that you took, and thus have the copyright to, then you'd presumably have grounds for a DMCA takedown request to their hosts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should be excited someone validated your idea. Then you should turn it to for profit (and be one of the rare examples of for profit social enterprise that may actually work.) Then you should raise money and ramp marketing.

Or do nothing since your original goal was to do some good which by creating the idea and frame work you have accomplished.

<comment><AUTHOR> Humm .. understood point #1. Yes, the original goal was to bring money to a fund through sales.. but if the sales are diverted to a for-profit, ultimately beneficiaries will not enjoy it.

<comment><USER5> I think you may want to examine the assumptions in 'but if the sales are diverted to a for-profit, ultimately beneficiaries will not enjoy it.' Is that the truth, or is that what you think the truth is? There is an important difference between the two.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. There is a very real chance that being a for-profit company can propel to you making more money for both the company and for your beneficiaries since you can hire more talented individuals.

It's pretty well known that non-profits often starve for top talent simply because a lot of the top talent also wants to make more money than a poor college kid.

Making money doesn't have to be orthogonal to doing good things in the world. There are plenty of companies that manage to do both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talk to the couchsurfing guys about how being cloned for profit feels.

<comment><USER8> I understand Couchsurfing in the process of monetizing, wish them well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's the URI for the other site? Google turns up a lot of sites for "Rickshaw Canvas".

<comment><AUTHOR> Started as a Facebook group

Edit: addition

# if you look at the album, pics are from us

# The tagline "We offer you the best Bangladeshi ..." is exactly the same...

# and the worst, they managed to catch clients (maybe i'm just jealous?

edit2 # their content as well :/

<comment><USER9> If it's on Facebook they will definitely shut it down if there's a valid complaint.

Here's the information you need:

<https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=157024904418383></comment></comment></comment>


DNA Computing - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_computing <comment><USER2> Very interesting topic. Does anyone have any personal experience with it? If yes please share.

<comment><USER3> I work in the field (DNA nanotechnology) and a question I often get asked is, "When are DNA computers going to replace silicon based computers?" The answer is that that's highly unlikely to happen. They both have their strengths and drawbacks and their own domains. For instance, DNA computing will probably never match the computation speed of silicon based computing since in order for DNA to compute,chemical reactions such as DNA hybridization or dissociation with their complementary counterparts must occur (which is very slow compared to manipulating electron flow). Also, the error rate using DNA is pretty high, e.g., for DNA computing using double-crossover tiles (which is mathematically equivalent to Turing-universal Wang tiles) implementing an XOR logic cellular automata, the best error rate is currently roughly on the order of ~0.1%. Two of the greatest strengths of DNA computation are its energy efficiency and massive parallelism. A microtube containing just 100 ul of DNA solution can have roughly 10^17 or 10^18 strands of DNA working in parallel. Lastly, it may be easier to get computing DNA nanomachines to work /in vivo/ or inside cells as opposed to silicon based nanomachines.

<comment><USER4> can you expound on energy efficiency? How much energy does it take to chemically synthesize the dNTPs required to do the equivalent of moving a bit and how does that compare to, say moving an electrons in a bit from SSD to cpu and back?

<comment><USER3> Good question. The second law of thermodynamics dictates a theoretical maximum of 3.4 x 10^20 (irreversible) operations per joule (at 300 K or room temperature). I think there is an exemplary work which answers your question. In 1994, Len Adleman (the _A_ in RS _A_ ) wrote a Science paper[0] where he used DNA to solve a directed Hamiltonian path problem. In that work, he calculated that in principle 1 joule is sufficient for ~2 x 10^19 operations using DNA. This number is remarkable in that it is extremely close to the theoretical maximum. Existing supercomputers (at the time the paper was written) execute at most 10^9 operations per joule. He goes on to say that "the energy consumed during other parts of the molecular computation, such as oligonucleotide synthesis and PCR, should also be small in comparison to that consumed by current supercomputers".

[0] L. Adleman, "Molecular Computation of Solutions to Combinatorial Problems", Science 266, 1022 (1994)

<comment><USER4> Nowhere did I see you address the dNTPs.

Nucleic acid computation vs electronic computation is rather like SpaceX vs traditional rocketry, in that in traditional rocketry you have to build your entire infrastructure and medium from raw materials each time you want to do a new launch.

Adelman is right that process of oligo synthesis is energy cheap and amortizable, but he's not a chemist: the dNTPs themselves are not. A nucleotide triphosphate is not an easy molecule to make by virtue if their instability, and their usefulness derives from their instability.

<comment><USER3> I think you're confusing the energy efficiency of computation and the energy needed to create the elements which perform the computation. The initial comment refers to the former whereas you're asking about the latter. Your question, "How much energy does it take to chemically synthesize the dNTPs required to do the equivalent of moving a bit..." is not an appropriate analogy because synthesizing dNTPs (energy needed to create computing elements) is not analogous to "moving a bit" (energy needed to perform a computation). It's like comparing how much energy is needed to manufacture a hard disk and how much energy is needed to read/write to and from the hard disk. It's a meaningless comparison.

<comment><USER4> that's exactly correct. YOu only need to make a hard drive once and it's good for tons of computation. Not so with DNA.

<comment><USER3> You only have to make DNA once. If you actually wanted to make a sensible comparison, then the question you should be asking is, "How much energy does it take to manufacture a silicon based computing element (such as transistors or CPUs) as opposed to an analogous DNA computing element?" But again, this has no relevance to the computational energy efficiency of the element.

<comment><USER4> you only have to make DNA once per task, that's correct. You don't need to build a new hard drive or a GPU each time you want to do, say, a gigaflop's worth of an ML experiment. It is reusable across tasks.

Also really fun would be writing your unit tests to make sure the DNA algorithm you've programmed was acutally correct.

<comment><USER3> Currently, DNA may not be a general purpose computing element as the examples you have given, but again this is beside the point you're trying to make, namely, the comparison between the energy efficiency of computation and the energy needed to create the elements which perform the computation. They are not comparable in any sensible way.

<comment><USER4> Tell that to United Launch alliance.

<comment><USER3> You're welcome to do that yourself, if you're so inclined. I doubt they would take your argument seriously though since you're not making any sensible comparisons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Service where I can ask questions to a local in a country? - <AUTHOR> I want to ask some questions to a local person in, say, Egypt. Is there such a service? <comment><USER2> Back in the old times. Was always fun chat with foreigns on Skype (was showing country flag and city).

Nowadays, there is the website Facebook - Connect with friends and the world around you ?

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you tried Reddit?

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://hinative.com/](https://hinative.com/)</comment>


What My Mom's Death Taught Me about Living - <AUTHOR> https://shefska.com/blog/what-my-moms-death-taught-me-about-living <comment><USER2> Zach's story is moving and I appreciate him sharing. I hope it brought some cathartic closure, Z, and BTW you're an excellent writer. I'm sorry for your loss. I've walked in those moccasins but failed to come away with anything positive from being there during the active process of dying. I learned much more from the living moments, first about her younger self, then about myself, during 6 years caring for demented mom in her sometimes sweet state where our knowledge of each other was a mystery to both of us and every hour was a surprise, sometimes (usually) heartbreaking, occasionally (rarely) joyous and with laughter.</comment>


SoftBank Looking to End Partnership with Wirecard After $2.1B Went Missing - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/softbank-looking-end-partnership-wirecard-075712359.html <comment><USER2> 2020[reaping the results of years of mismanagement] is not the year for softbank.. always in the news, always for bad stuff..</comment>