Should we be suspicious of the idea of the Anthropocene? - <AUTHOR> http://aeon.co/magazine/science/should-we-be-suspicious-of-the-anthropocene/ <comment><USER3> EDIT: Apologies for the rant, it isn't too relevant to the topic. Downvote deserved.

Our food is made of non-renewable resource.

Every year, we use:

* 105m tons per year of nitrogen-based (natural gas) fertilisers[1]

* 22m tons per year of phosphate-based (mineral based) fertilisers[2]

* 3m tons per year of organic (poo and pee) fertilisers[2]

Nitrogen-based fertilisers are made from natural gas, and phosphate-based fertilisers from rock. Use of fertilisers grow by 10% every couple of years.

Even if there was no further population growth from _now_ , there's not enough resources on Earth for everyone to have a car, not enough space in cities for every couple to have a house. There's not enough food made from renewable resources.

 _Are you going to give up your car?_

 _Are you going to give up having a nuclear-family home?_

 _Are you going to give up eating meat?_

 _Can you convince everyone on Earth to do the same?_

The goal of every politician is to boost GDP, aka spending, aka consumption. How do you convince politicians they are facing the wrong direction?

Thomas Robert Malthus has not been proven wrong yet. It's only because we've discovered a very large cache of oil and natural gas, allowing the population to continue to expand, for now.

The world is fucked.

QED.

[1] [http://www.fertilizerseurope.com/fileadmin/user_upload/publi...](http://www.fertilizerseurope.com/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/statistics_publications/Stat_website.pdf)

[2] [http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2011/pdfs/phosphorus_and_food_p...](http://www.unep.org/yearbook/2011/pdfs/phosphorus_and_food_productioin.pdf)

<comment><USER4> >Thomas Robert Malthus has not been proven wrong yet.

Ah, yes he has, and so has Ehrlich and every other 'the world is ending' doomsayer that ever walked.

Does the human race have problems? Well, obviously. deep seated religion and superstitious unreason remains a key problem.

Has there never, ever been a better time to be alive as a human? Self evidently, yes. It's the best time to be alive right now.

<comment><USER3> I agree. _Right now_ , yes. But look at the numbers. In 50 years time it's going to be a bleak time to be alive.

<comment><USER5> Said every doomsday prophet ever. No one ever comes back and says sorry we were wrong they just change to some other claptrap. Life is too short to listen to these people.

<comment><USER3> In fact, I've already said brc might be right and decided to change to some other claptrap.[1]

No one ever comes back and says they're glad they convinced someone - <USER2> just switch targets and find new people to call doomsday prophets and bloviating windbags.

Thank you for your prejudice and have a nice day.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300899](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300899)

<comment><USER4> For the record I appreciated your comment but can't reply there. It shows a willingness to consider a position. I'm guessing you're probably young, and young people have a torrent of "the end of the world is nigh" thrown at them these days. It's tough to see above this and think optimistically. But the key to a calm mind is to think optimistically, tempered with rational 'what if' thinking, so if bad events do come to pass, it's not earth shattering.

<comment><USER6> How do you account for the failure of past civilizations? What is different this time?

I'm all for optimism, but optimism and ignoring problems are very different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course the very idea of it is ridiculous. Elevating humans to the scale of geological forces is vanity in the extreme.

</comment><comment><USER7> Either the interglacial period is not over yet, or we are actively preventing the next glaciation. Either way, it seems premature to claim human intervention AND say it's a bad thing.

<comment><USER8> [https://skepticalscience.com/heading-into-new-little-ice- age...](https://skepticalscience.com/heading-into-new-little-ice-age.htm)

This is a common enough thought, it's listed as number #14 on the skeptical science site.

Unfortunately current anthropogenic warming and glaciations operate on vastly different timescales.

"Worry about global warming impacts in the next 100 years, not an ice age in over 10,000 years."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> it's funny how all the people are focussed neo malthusianism.

malthunianism isn't about the biophysics of some sustainability paradigm hatched out of a theoretical model that places massive amount of assumptions about bio blablaba.

the real malthusianism is wrapped up in the nature of the relationship between population growth relative to the political-economic societies interacting with the realities of hierarchal governance.

all socieites are based on hierarchchal pyramids of one version of cheap labor or another dominating the bottom, with dominant 1% at the top. call it capitalism, communism , or any other ism to describe every society that has almost ever existed, but the few at the top are always contending with the demographics of the many at the bottom.

in our present circumstance we have a fairly intricate global dollar/euro/yen based credit system.

the economics of the western aging population don't add up to increasing amounts of cheap labor going forward.

even in china this is a problem.

so the solution of outsourcing everything and importing streams of young immigrants (dilution of middle class) is clearly not going to work as a strategy for keeping up the stability of the banking systems and governments layered on top of the western system.

malthusianism is not so much that everything will 'collapse', but that the structure of governments and societies elite power institutions cannot remain remotely stable going into, and especially out of, population explosions.

social structure is highly dynamic in response to the bubblenomics of long term human population explosions.

world wars, failed states and many more things are deeply guaranteed by the underlying demographic realities.

bizarrely enough , it's not because there are too many people. it's because there aren't enough slaves to replenish the pen of tax producers and the pen of 'demand' for usurous credit offered by banks. when decades of pricing mortgaged assets at near zero interest rates, the banks are having a harder and harder time finding people to burden with 30 year mortgages , or as bill clinton liked to emphasize , the american dream of home foreclosureship.

eventually the price and tax reset comes (like in post soviet russia) and the clearing of the pricing and taxing system once again allows for growth in spite of the dynamic balance of debt and demographics.

then again there's always tons of high birth rates in the developing world. so long as that is the case, there's no real problems

</comment><comment><USER10> One should, perhaps, always be suspicious of opinion pieces.

The author is a remarkable man, but one whose advocacy comes with being enmeshed in Corporate USA culture (and DC). Stints at the _New America Foundation_ , background in Law & property rights rather than science, early ties to _The American Prospect_ and so on: definitely a wunderkind of the political class.

What's _actually_ being said in the piece is a lot different to the title.

Tangential link (or not really, work it out).

 _In January 2011, The Nature Conservancy and The Dow Chemical Company announced a breakthrough collaboration—one that will help Dow and the business community recognize, value and incorporate nature into global business goals, decisions and strategies._

 _Over the course of six years, scientists from The Nature Conservancy and Dow will work together at three pilot sites to implement and refine models that support corporate decision-making related to the value and resources nature provides. Together, we are choosing sites that will be distributed around the world—and at each site, we will be looking for opportunities to take what we've learned there and transfer knowledge globally. These sites will serve as a "living laboratories"— places where we will validate and test our methods and models so they can be used to inform more sustainable business decisions at Dow and hopefully influence the decision-making and business practices of other companies._

[http://www.nature.org/about-us/working-with- companies/compan...](http://www.nature.org/about-us/working-with- companies/companies-we-work-with/dow/)

Their revenue streams are simply amazing, btw:

[http://www.nature.org/about-us/tax- form-990-2013.pdf](http://www.nature.org/about-us/tax-form-990-2013.pdf) [warning: PDF]

In short - the Anthropocene definitely exists, and there's no doubt about it. If you doubt it, compare and contrast forest cover circa ~12k BC and now. (And know the difference between mono-crop plantations and actual forest ecosystems - a good case study is Germany, where reforestation after the total losses 8th-18th C which ironically destroyed large amounts of soil quality due to conifers being a net parasite due to their lack of symbiotic fungi evolution. [http://www.bfn.de/fileadmin/MDB/documents/service/Skript_311...](http://www.bfn.de/fileadmin/MDB/documents/service/Skript_311.pdf) [warning: PDF] - that's a case study Germany / China)

[http://www.bgs.ac.uk/anthropocene/EarliestEvidence.html](http://www.bgs.ac.uk/anthropocene/EarliestEvidence.html) [http://envarch.net/environmental-archaeology/a-new- geologica...](http://envarch.net/environmental-archaeology/a-new-geological- period-defining-the-anthropocene-and-environmental-archaeology/)

So. Policy wonks vrs Science. I know who I choose.

</comment><comment><USER11> We should be suspicious of all ideas.</comment>


Why your coding standards document is crap, and probably misses the point - <AUTHOR>

If you're involved in the Rails community (don't worry, this isn't another pro-Rails post), then you're likely familiar with #sass and #haml. While these tools will try to initially sell you on their brevity and clarity, I think there is another important problem that they solve: the need to create those god-forsaken coding standards documents. You know the ones: "Thou shalt placeth thy braces upon a new line, and put spaces between 'if' and the opening parenthesis."
No one likes writing these style documents. No one likes following them. No one likes enforcing them.
And yet they are a reality. So, along came "code formatters" that allowed you to take the way someone formatted their code, and minify/re-expand the code to fit your coding style. You like tabs instead of spaces? Code formatters gave you the power to say, "Screw your style document!" to everyone on your team, if you so desired.
But code formatters didn't ultimately solve the problem of code needing to be nearly universally readable by other coders. Instead they avoided the problem by giving you a workaround. This was still an improvement in many cases, but not good enough.
Enter tools like #sass and #haml (any many others). The beauty of the approach of these tools is that the things that actually matter about code style (clarity of structure, reducing bugs arising from poor formatting, greasing the wheels of communication between developers) is enforced at the tool level. #haml simply will not compile into equivalent and proper HTML unless it's formatted and indented correctly. The tool itself not only helps improve code correctness, but actually enforces style that's "good enough" to be almost universally readable by all. No, it doesn't solve the problem of poorly chosen identifier names, but that's okay.
Now, before you go cry about "opinionated software" that borders on being Orwellian, and how you think your coding style is an extension of your creativity as a human being, just take a moment and think about how much you enjoy discussing and debating coding standards within your team. You hate it, don't you? It's a complete waste of your time, and the people who generally win the especially heated debates on this topic are often overbearing jerks, which makes you resent the standard even more.
Stop worrying about your style being a reflection of your creativity. It's not. Your best, most awesome creative power as a programmer is the ability to create software, not your ability to design indentaion schemes, which inevitably lead you to becoming defensive and dogmatic about said schemes (I exclude Robert C. Martin from the previous line: I am a fan of your work, generally speaking, and at least you tried to accomplish this on an industry-level where it really mattered, not just on an individual team level).
Whenever I can use a language or tool that enforces code style at the tool level (i.e. compilation doesn't happen until it's correct), I'm willing to give it a shot simply because it means it might grease the wheels of inter-developer communication. If it also solves the problem that I need solved at an engineering level, and doesn't create a new set of equally difficult formatting problems of its own, then I'm sold.
I think you should do the same, and forever abandon arguments about code style wherever you can. It's a waste of your time, your team's time, your management's time, and creates a needless debate in a place that's supposed to be about building great software. Except for the 1 in 1,000,000 people who actually want to debate code style for what they call "fun", I'm telling you, no one gives a crap. So long as we can all efficiently discuss the code itself, that's what we want.
P.S. I'm currently looking for a tool that does for Java, what #haml does for HTML. If you know of such a tool, please post it on this StackOverflow Question - and thank you!
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8418416/html-haml-as-java <comment><USER2> Intelli-J -> Auto-format on check-in, and I auto-format as I go. I have software to write, and I refuse to waste my time on your wild notions of column spacing you haven't codified into a tool or language.

I honestly don't care _what_ format is used, so long as _a_ format is used and it's automatic. Whitespace-important languages are nice I guess, but I still feel bad dicking with whitespace. It's faster just to throw down all the required bits, or let the IDE do it for you, and then auto-format or let the commit auto-format later.

"Coding Standards" should apply to the topics discussed in Clean Code - smaller classes, methods, proper design, etc. Meetings based around discussing whitespace convention are worse than setting cash on fire.

</comment><comment><USER3> I often find that there is usually one person very invested in the standards and it is more of an extension of their need to control their life and environment rather than making things readable. Often I see things as more than opinion rather than absolutes (although no indentations is probably an absolute no-no).

I once worked at a company where code reviews devolved into stylistic debates. We would spend hours witnessing style arguments without ever noticing that a variable was undeclared or a header file forgotten.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup - exactly the kind of think I'm talking about.

I once had an employer ask me about coding standards (this was when we were a dev team of only two people, looking to grow), and the idea was to discuss a coding style document, and put it in place before our team got bigger. My initial reaction was, "I don't care about coding standards." However, what I discovered is that I _did_ care quite a lot about it, but _didn'_ t care to argue about it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: best place to post technical, non developer, job opening? - <AUTHOR>

The non-profit I work for has an opening for a Web Security Technologist but we've had limited success in attracting suitable candidates. Sites like Dice seem more oriented at developers/engineers, this position is a mix of malware researcher and sysadmin. Full description at http://www.stopbadware.org/blog/2013/02/28/stopbadware-is-hiring-a-web-security-technologist if that helps. <comment><USER2> > this position is a mix of malware researcher and sysadmin

Reading through your ad, there's a lot of different stuff here: malware researcher, CSO, sysadmin, customer contact, team lead. Except that the person you're looking for is rather junior.

This seems an odd mix of skills, or rather inclinations: most malware researchers don't want to spend significant amounts of time on sysadminning.

</comment><comment><USER3> You may want to try searching LinkedIn profiles first, to get a better idea of the potential pool of applicants. Mostly this will help make sure you're not looking for a unicorn.

The job description is a bit vague. It doesn't really describe the position well. Why would someone want to work at StopBadware? How big is the team? Who else will the web security technologist be working with? List some specific technologies that you use and applicants should know.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you tried mailing lists?

Surely you're already subscribed to several industry-specific mailing lists or groups. Add "We're hiring!" and a link to your signature whenever you post.

A trick that helped me some time ago was going to a local bookstore and sticking a "we're hiring: come and have a coffee with us" post-it inside of some relevant technical books. Try it: it works :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> The best place to post is Linkedin and Craigslist.</comment>


Guilemacs – Emacs with Guile Scheme - <AUTHOR> https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs <comment><USER2> As a user of both Guile and Emacs this project has always intrigued me, but I think people arguing for speed, multitasking, or configuring Emacs in Scheme or Javascript are missing the point. Guile Emacs represents an ideal where GNU projects share a common library that all benefit from shared improvements. For example, if Guile gets native compilation, Guile Emacs, Guix, and any other Guile project gets native compilation. I would never write my Emacs config in Scheme, but I wouldn't hesitate to call a Scheme library from Emacs, or an Elisp library from a Guile project. Guile Emacs would be a huge step unifying all of these separate GNU projects from both a technical and social point of view.

<comment><USER3> I agree, though Emacs does support native compilation at the moment (it's still a work in progress though). It would have been nice if the Guile stuff go merged, but I think that ship has sailed and we should just embrace the native compiler included in Emacs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Guile-based Emacs is a branch of GNU Emacs that replaces Emacs's own EmacsLisp engine with the Elisp compiler of Guile. It does not attempt to remove Elisp. One advantage is that Elisp will potentially execute faster"

Another initiative was posted here recently [1].

"GNU Emacs can currently execute Elisp code either interpreted or byte- interpreted after it has been compiled to byte-code ... exploiting libgccjit to achieve code generation using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) infrastructure. ... Though still a work in progress ... Native compiled Elisp shows an increase of performance ranging from 2.3x up to 42x with respect to the equivalent byte-code"

1 : [https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/g9vdd0/bringing_gnu_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/g9vdd0/bringing_gnu_emacs_to_native_code_at_the_european/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Watching Tom Tromey's talk on the future of Emacs is a better use of your time I suspect -

[https://irreal.org/blog/?p=8687](https://irreal.org/blog/?p=8687)

He addresses many of the "obvious" ideas many of the casuals that appear in these hn threads have.

<comment><USER2> Funny enough, if you rewrite all of Emacs in Elisp that would superficially seem to make Guile Emacs easier to implement. I wouldn't be surprised if by that time Guile had native compilation and an even better Elisp implementation. Ironically, it would defeat the original intention of Guile extending C programs that was inspired by Emacs, but even the Guile community is starting to lean towards Scheme-only programs with some FFI akin to Tom's ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe if you use Guile to rewrite the parts of Emacs that are currently written in C, and go with the dynamic translation idea currently used in Guilemacs you could achieve the same goal. Then you could rewrite Emacs in Guile at your leisure, or not, retaining elisp compatibility for historical and practical reasons alike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You can also write your own dialect of lisp within elisp, too. I ported Lumen[1] to emacs: [https://github.com/shawwn/y/blob/abcf6f4406178880390308ff0b7...](https://github.com/shawwn/y/blob/abcf6f4406178880390308ff0b782a5ed516c688/y.el#L251-L263)

      (define-global cut (x &optional from upto)
        (with l (dup x)
          (let (j 0
                i (if (or (nil? from) (< from 0)) 0 from)
                n (\# x)
                upto (if (or (nil? upto) (> upto n)) n upto))
            (while (< i upto)
              (set (at l j) (at x i))
              (inc i)
              (inc j))
            (each (k v) x
              (unless (number? k)
                (set (get l k) v))))))

The destructuring LET is so nice.

Emacs' reader can also be completely overridden by user code. I used this technique to port pg's Arc to elisp: [https://repl.it/repls/UnluckySturdyCharactercode#main.el](https://repl.it/repls/UnluckySturdyCharactercode#main.el)

(If you click "run" and type #\a you'll notice you get "a" rather than a syntax error.)

[1] Lumen lisp: [https://github.com/sctb/lumen](https://github.com/sctb/lumen)

</comment><comment><USER3> If one is looking to improve Emacs performance, I would recommend checking out gccemacs [https://akrl.sdf.org/gccemacs.html](https://akrl.sdf.org/gccemacs.html) insteald, as guilemacs has stalled. gccemacs has been merged into the main emacs branch and works by compiling Elisp into dynamically loadable binaries. The performance speedups are very promising, with up to 30x speed improvements over standard byte code. I've been using it as my default emacs and it's been working very well. No crashes and Emacs is finally not slow! Now all Emacs needs is preemptive multi-threading!

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't do much lisping or scheming these days, but my experience of Guile has be nothing but exemplary. I'm a VIM user, but I would definitely give emacs another shot if scripting it in scheme was an option (with evil-mode definitely; no way am I giving up modal editing).

> It's best to call it "GuileEmacs" or "Guile/Emacs" or such to make it clear > that it's still GNU Emacs.

No love for Guile+Emacs?

<comment><USER8> I'm sure one of them will catch on just like GNU/Linux has.

<comment><USER9> This is about as correct as telling your wife that your beard will grow on her like it grew on you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This really needs a (2016) in the title. The recent edit (not even edits) adds little to nothing and the last commit was in 2015.

</comment><comment><USER11> With Guile 3.0 released recently, that is way faster[1] than before, it looks even more interesting. The only problem is that many distributions still didn't update yet[2].

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/news/gnu- guile-300-releas...](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/news/gnu- guile-300-released.html)

[2] [https://repology.org/project/guile/versions](https://repology.org/project/guile/versions)

</comment><comment><USER12> I was under the impression that this effort has been stalled for 5+ years.

Is that incorrect?

<comment><USER13> This is a stalled project, interesting but stalled.

There are changes happening elsewhere, for example the obligatory rust mashup:

[https://github.com/remacs/remacs](https://github.com/remacs/remacs)

gccemacs is probably the most interesting recent development:

[https://akrl.sdf.org/gccemacs.html](https://akrl.sdf.org/gccemacs.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Surprisingly I found Scheme support in Emacs underwhelming (disclaimer: I'm a Windows user). The best package for Scheme in Emacs seems to be Geiser [1], but it seems pretty basic when compared with Slime [2]. Perhaps Geiser+Guile is a different story if running on Unix, but Slime on Windows just works, so that's a plus for Common Lisp :-).

1: [https://www.nongnu.org/geiser/](https://www.nongnu.org/geiser/)

2: [https://common-lisp.net/project/slime/](https://common- lisp.net/project/slime/)

<comment><USER14> My general sense is that the scheme community doesn't have the "live system" culture the way the Common Lisp and Clojure communities do: schemes generally seem to deemphasize things like live code updates in favor of a more "batch" compiling strategy: I've especially noticed this when talking to people in the Racket community, but my general sense is that Racket inherited this from scheme.

<comment><USER2> I'm quite an amateur schemer and have never used Racket, but Christopher Webber's talk [1] gives me the opposite impression and that Racket diverged from the "live system" culture. In my experience Guile is usually pretty good when it comes to updating things on the fly through the REPL, but there are some gotchas.

[1] [https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/guileracket/](https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/guileracket/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A couple points to note: This works by dynamically translating elisp to Guile Scheme, which is crucial to ensuring that decades worth of elisp will work without change. However, in Guilemacs, one can use Scheme as well as el as extension languages.

Also while it works, it's quite slow at this point in time and, unlike Emacs which rarely if ever crashes, Guilemacs can and will crash.</comment>


SAT Scores Continue Downward Slide, but No One Knows Why - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2015/09/04/sat_scores_more_diverse_group_of_kids_taking_the_college_board_test_but.html

<comment><USER2> the Thimerosal generation has reached college age.</comment>


Gesture Typing - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Gesture%20Typing.ipynb

<comment><USER2> The complexity of gesture typing opens the door to a lot of interesting questions that aren't relevant for "normal" typing. I really enjoyed reading through this notebook, it's very clear and presented well. What's more impressive is that most of the questions were answered with less than ~150 lines of code!

In regards to the 6th question (one left only partially answered), some of you might find this blog post (posted to HN by my collegue a few months ago) that attempts to answer this question in a lot more detail (and with a lot more computing power) [1].

An aside: we made a python library (specifically intended for use in iPython) to help facilitate answering the exact types of questions posed in this article. A bit more time was spent on performance efficiency and visualization but there were some interesting functions in this notebook that would be a welcomed addition to the library [2].

Although the main point of our work was to determine the least confusing keyboard layout for gesture typing, we designed the library to make it quick and easy to answer all types of questions relating to keyboard input. As an example, at the request of an HN commenter on our previous post, we took a quick look at how the average path length on a random keyboard layout compares to the FITALY keyboard. Shameless plug: the question only took 5-10 minutes to code up and answer using iPython with the library mentioned above ([2]). In case anyone is interested you can find that notebook here [3].

[1]: [http://sangaline.com/blog/swype_optimization/index.html](http://sangaline.com/blog/swype_optimization/index.html)

[2]: [https://github.com/sangaline/dodona](https://github.com/sangaline/dodona)

[3]: [http://sangaline.com/blog/optimizing_for_swype/FITALY.html](http://sangaline.com/blog/optimizing_for_swype/FITALY.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool. And the experience of gesture typing is so different from touch- typing on a physical keyboard that I think it might be easier to experiment with or learn new keyboard layouts in this environment.

Way back in the PalmPilot days I used the "Fitaly" keyboard layout (wow, their site is still up and hasn't changed in years: [http://www.fitaly.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm](http://www.fitaly.com/fitaly/fitaly.htm)) and it was fairly easy to learn (by point of comparison, I've never been able to make the transition from qwerty to dvorak on a real keyboard).

<comment><USER4> A circular layout might be easy to use with gesture, something like a rotary phone with radius jumps

<comment><USER3> This loopy gesture-based keyboard won some of the typing speed contests back in the PalmOS days: [https://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/](https://mrl.nyu.edu/projects/quikwriting/)

<comment><USER5> I just rediscovered my overlay last week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These Norvig notebooks are reliably epic.

<comment><USER7> Wow, I didn't realize that this was part of a series until I saw your comment, Thanks! For everybody else who's interested:

[http://norvig.com/ipython/](http://norvig.com/ipython/)

If you don't have ipython notebook installed, you can view them by copying the URL (without the protocol) into:

[http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/<URL>](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/<URL>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That was an absolutely fascinating read. Great detail and cool solutions.

</comment><comment><USER9> The minimal work load average problem here seems like it would be a great candidate for simulated annealing. [0] It gets rid of the local maximum problem that the author mentions, without adding a significant amount of additional complexity to the computations.

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

</comment><comment><USER10> I was a little disappointed by the lack of attention to detail:

> the A key is half way between the Q and W in the horizontal direction

I'm not sure that's been strictly true of any keyboard I've ever used.

<comment><USER11> I think you're thinking of hardware keyboards, which are totally irrelevant here - look at the screenshot at the top of the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't quite get it. Is this much different from after the fact spelling autocorrect in effect?</comment>


A Seismic Shift in How People Eat - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/08/opinion/a-seismic-shift-in-how-people-eat.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur&_r=0 <comment><USER2> A fairly rushed conclusion... "Making these changes will require a complete reorganization of these companies' fundamental business models and global supply chains, but, ummm, hey, they have the money! Right? The end."

If only it were that simple.

The government subsidizes corn and soybeans, which is why they're everywhere and in everything. Derivatives from corn and soybeans account for a staggering proportion of the ingredients, 'natural' and 'artificial,' that appear in the staple products offered by most of our biggest food companies. They're also the feed that raises all of our meat. In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to suggest that corn and soybeans _are_ the nation's food supply. They are pretty much the only crops we can grow cheaply at massive mega-scale, and we derive almost all our nutritionally questionable foods from them.

Transforming businesses the scale of McDonald's and General Mills will require nothing short of a complete overhaul of our current agricultural economic policy. Best of luck with that...

For a more insightful article with a deeper look into the issue, I recommend the recent piece about McDonald's in the New Yorker.

<comment><USER3> If they can be grown at such a massive scale, why do they need to be subsidized? Wouldn't they get grown anyway? Why not subsidize broccoli and quinoa instead?

(Yes I know the question is naive but I still hope for a smart answer.)

<comment><USER2> They can be grown at scale _because_ they are subsidized. Other products suffer at scale because farmers' economic incentives are heavily skewed towards growing the subsidized crops. They carry high opportunity costs.

Apologies; I should have made the direction of causality clearer in my original comment.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I find most interesting about people caring about the content of their food (which is not a new thing, although I can see it is more widespread lately), is the effect it has on capitalism and how consumers make their choices.

In the beginning, the best products simply functioned properly. They looked good, tasted good, etc. Is the bread white? Does the paint stick to the wall?

At some point we started realizing that what goes into a product turns out to be very important too. Is the bread nutritious? Is the paint lead-free? Does the movie player have DRM? I'd say we are primarily in this phase of consumer awareness, and the nytimes article suggests it has gone mainstream. However I see a third level on the way:

People are now starting to care about the impact of products. In other words, what side-effects are there in production and usage. Were animals mistreated when producing this meal? Is the product recyclable upon discard? Did these bananas come from an exploited third-world country? We're still in the early stages of this phase, but I don't see it slowing down.

Being a consumer takes so much brainpower...

<comment><USER5> Being omnivores our senses help us to distinguish good food from bad. For example we prefer sweet food because sugar in nature is rare, the fruits delivering sugar being a source of carbohydrates, vitamins and other essential nutrients. We avoid bitter plants because that's usually the taste of substances that do us harm. And rotten meat disgusts us. Plus we rely on the wisdom of our ancestors to know what to eat.

But the food industry, in all its wisdom has produced foods that (1) lie to our senses, (2) are rich in calories, but poor in nutrients and (3) are so novel that our bodies aren't digesting it properly.

Being a consumer is actually easy, if you can read the signs. It's the food industry that's feeding you the lie that nutrition is complicated and needs expert guidance. Does the food come in a package? Does it make health claims? Is the list of ingredients containing substances you don't recognize? Is sucrose or high fructose corn sirup one of those ingredients? Does it come from far away? Is it sold in a super market?

All of those are red flags you should watch out for ;-)

<comment><USER6> >Is the list of ingredients containing substances you don't recognize?

This is a bit of a bogus argument. If you had to break down meat into its component chemicals, nobody would understand it then either. We just have a guideline that requires man-made things to list the components which leads to the false argument that seeing lower level chemicals in something means it's bad.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but my ancestors ate meat from chicken, pigs or cattle, they survived and I'm alive as well. Compared to rats, we don't have to do a trial and error for everything we eat, as culture is part of who we are and we've been eating most of the same meat, vegetables and dishes for hundreds if not thousands of years.

You are never going to see meat being broken down to its components on an ingredients label. The only way you're going to see chemicals on such labels is if those chemicals were added by food processors, for various desired effects, like for improved texture, or taste, or for extending shelf life.

It's usually bad because, as I said, it's meant to fool your senses. Why do you think sugar or HFCS is in everything these days? It's also bad in the case of health claims and fads because _reductionist science_ is applied.

<comment><USER7> I mean let's be specific. This article calls out Hershey for moving away from polyglycerol polyricinoleate (PGPR) to friendlier-sounding emulsifiers. In exactly what way does a consumer benefit from reduced consumption of PGPR?

Your ancestors also ate a lot of meat roasted over open fires, or in comparatively primitive ovens. Within the next 20 years we're going to come to understand exactly how carcinogenic that millennial-old practice is ( _cooking_ , it is going to turn out, is basically carcinogenic), and it's going to make us feel silly about caring about PGPR --- and, I hope, about looking to micronutrients in the food supply as an answer to most of our public health concerns.

<comment><USER8> I'm dimly aware that that wonderful black and brown crust on the meat I've grilled is carcinogenic, and I try really hard not to think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _McDonalds needs to do more than use antibiotic-free chicken. The back of the house for its 36,000 restaurants currently looks like a mini-factory serving fried frozen patties and french fries. It needs to look more like a kitchen serving freshly prepared meals with locally sourced vegetables and grains — and it still needs to taste great and be affordable._

I would have to disagree. Nobody has ever gone to McDonald's for healthy food. McDonald's growth was fueled by its reputation for quick service, clean (usually) restaurants, tasty food, consistency (a Big Mac is a Big Mac in New York or California) and low price.

IMHO McDonald's needs to dump about half of its menu. Focus on basic, good- tasting fast food, and making it fast again. Bring back the beef tallow for frying, those french fries tasted great. Chasing the organic, vegan, whole- grains market is a losing strategy. The McDonald's customer is not part of the market segment that cares about any of that.

</comment><comment><USER10> "freshly prepared meals with locally sourced vegetables and grains"

I will never understand this obsession with "local". Local is not safer, local does not embody less CO2 (it actually has more), it does not mean more nutritious, it does not mean less pesticides.

Pretty much the only argument that ever made even a bit of sense to me is cultivating a relationship with the farmer - but what difference does that make when you buy the food from a chain restaurant (as described in the quote above), or even a grocery store?

Is this author just trying to load up the article with as many buzzwords as possible? I noticed they didn't mentioned "organic".

<comment><USER7> It doesn't _necessarily_ mean more nutritious or fewer pesticides, but if you are optimizing for attributes like that, your best bets are going to end up being a local producer.

Not all local is good, but the best producers usually are.

<comment><USER10> > Not all local is good, but the best producers usually are.

Wait, so you are saying, if I live far away from the farm the exact same produce suddenly tastes worse?

<comment><USER7> Yes. It's _not_ the exact same produce. The very best produce doesn't travel at all.

If you live in a major US city, go to one of the top restaurants in it sometime for dinner, and ask your server a lot of questions about where the vegetables come from. Chances are they don't come from big purveyors; most will come from farms with names you can write down, and probably buy direct from --- but not from your supermarket, and definitely not from a supplier anywhere more than 150 miles away.

Sometimes these are gold-speaker-cable kinds of differences, and sometimes they're real differences that you'd have to train your palate to detect (and so why would you want to do that?), but sometimes they are _huge_ differences, products you simply have to live in the region and buy at the right time of year to get.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's hard to tell if we're eating better or just being duped in a new way. "Fat free" is bullshit, "Organic" is bullshit, "Gluten Free" is bullshit (unless you actually have celica's).

<comment><USER5> How is organic bullshit?

<comment><USER12> Apart of other replies, there is also no evidence that is any better for than conventionally grown produce.

<comment><USER5> I'm not from the US, but from Romania. My grandparents lived on the country- side, working the land and during the communists Romania did not have much access to the vast quantities of pesticides and fertilizer that the US was left with after WWII, due to a large surplus of ammonium nitrate and of various poison gases. Our animals were not fed and grown on cheap, subsidized corn and kept alive with antibiotics. Our diary products were not low fat. Our white flour was given for export. Etc, etc.. And guess what, after 1990, after the revolution, when we started importing food and adopting the "western diet", we ended up with the same shock like everybody else ... people getting fatter, increased rates of type II diabetes, increased rates of coronary artery disease, etc. And most importantly I think - our food is losing its taste, because vegetables grown with pesticides and artificial fertilizers have shallower root systems, grow faster and thus are unable to gather the same amount of nutrients as vegetables grown normally and in season. Same goes for animals, like cattle or pigs or chicken, raised on corn and kept alive with antibiotics.

In regards to your statement, organic food is the _conventional_ way to produce food, and note that I'm not talking about any standard, but about how people have been growing food before we discovered what fossil fuels are good for.

There's actually plenty of evidence to go around, plenty of studies, showing links between the western diet and type II diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, with my father's PhD thesis being one, evidence that has been ignored because it flies in the face of the low-fat bullshit we've been fed, plus it goes against a multi-billion dollar industry. Artificial fertilizers are also known to be responsible for the destruction of our environment, leading to such effects as water pollution with nitrate or acidification of the soil.

<comment><USER13> But 'organic' only covers a third of that. You can make horrible junk food with organic ingredients.

<comment><USER5> True. We need a new word I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know it's asking a lot, but I wish people's eating habits were driven more by environmental and humanitarian factors, than what they like or even what's healthy (though I believe none of these are mutually exclusive). I find the current state of things horrifying.

</comment><comment><USER7> 1\. The changes in the lede of this article --- no more artificial colors, no antibiotics in poultry, emulsifiers with friendlier names --- are marginal. Many of them, like the food colorings, are probably there to satisfy a market demand in the first place (not for the additives, but for the shelf-stable properties they impart on the food) --- if the market would rather have white cheese rather than radioactive orange, why spend the extra 0.5c per package to make them orange? By and large, these aren't "seismic" changes. Marked changes in macronutrient content would be, but that mostly hasn't happened.

Great example: shifts from high-fructose corn syrup to "natural" sweeteners (an almost entirely cosmetic change that puts minimal disruption on the supply chain), or to "gluten free" products.

2\. One seemingly enduring and significant change in the food industry is the move away from "liquid calories". Low-fat, Atkins, Paleo, juice cleanse, whatever: regardless of the fad, the conclusion that sweetened soft drinks are practically toxic has probably stuck. "Americans are drinking less soda" makes for a less sexy lede, though.

3\. The major shift I see isn't in how people eat, but rather in how the same stuff we've always eaten is marketed to us. Maybe it's gotten easier to handle distribution logistics, or to bring new products to market, but there are a zillion more brands. Where in 1980 we might have had one or two category- killing brands for any given snack, frozen meal, or beverage, we now have 100 different brands --- most of them owned by one of a few major companies.

But again, that's got less to do with "how people eat" and more to do with market segmentation: given a roughly stable COGS for, say, microwaveable frozen dinner entrees, customers today get to choose based on things like loyalty to childhood favorite brands, or "organic" labeling, or "low-carb", or "ancient grains".

Multiply serving size by calories/fats/carbs/proteins/fiber per serving, though, and my guess is that it mostly doesn't matter which one you choose.

4\. If that (3) is the case, it doesn't really much matter that consumers are shunning iconic American food brands. They're substituting them for niche brands that are now or soon will be owned by PepsiCo or Kraft.

Any discussion of how Americans buy food they prepare at home probably has to include a discussion of Whole Foods, which has in the last decade gone from a specialty store to one of the largest grocery store chains in the country. But look around at a WFM next time you visit, and notice what percentage of the store is allocated to produce, dairy, and meat, and what percentage is allocated to frozen meals, snacks, and prepared foods. The biggest difference between a WFM and a Safeway isn't the size of the produce section (many "conventional" grocers have bigger produce sections), but rather the size of the prepared foods section, where you can stop in and buy a pizza, a pre- cooked chicken, or a deli of potato salad.

<comment><USER15> I don't believe we can say there completely has been a move away from "liquid calories," particularly when you look at the calories in a typical Starbucks order. Your drink can easily have 400 calories, more than the chocolate croissant you are eating with it.

Sweetened carbonated beverages are over (for now), but their non-carbonated equivalents- Vitamin Water, Odwalla smoothies, "coffee drinks," etc are not.

<comment><USER7> Starbucks is unhealthy, but it is nowhere near the public health problem that PepsiCo is: as Dave Arnold points out sometimes on Cooking Issues, people use sweetened soft drinks as a _complete hydration solution_ , often drinking nothing but. There are people that do that with Frappucinos, but not a lot of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It will be interesting to see whether (or when) this will be followed by a decrease in obesity rates.</comment>


Now is a really good time to buy a helicopter - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/755787/now-is-a-really-good-time-to-buy-a-helicopter/ <comment><USER3> This seems a lot like buying a Mig-21. Yes, you can get them for dirt cheap (under $50K in the Mig-21's case [1]). But the cost in parts, maintenance, fuel, and hiring an instructor pilot so you don't kill yourself the first time you take it up will quickly exceed the initial purchase price. There's a reason why people are selling them.

[1] [http://www.city- data.com/forum/automotive/503914-mig-21-ebay...](http://www.city- data.com/forum/automotive/503914-mig-21-ebay-49-000-buy.html)

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, what does the average person need a helicopter for? The expertise and cost is no joke.

Enclosed autogyros and weightshift ultralight airplanes should should suffice for what its worth. And they are presumeably safer to fly!

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OU98We- mcw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OU98We-mcw)

<comment><USER5> If you do need a heli, you are hardly an average person, are you?

And aren't helis mostly used when you specifically need the ability to land on a building or hover?

<comment><USER6> In general, yes, but there's a fairly large market for filming with helis since you can mount nice camera equipment unrestricted by fixed wing fuselages, propellers, etc. and take nice, slow shots at low altitude. Of course, this is being replaced by much cheaper drones. Sightseeing is another decent size use case, which often doesn't really involve hovering. And news/traffic reporting usually occupies a few helis in cities where they're primarily cruising around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Global rotorcraft production will likely total just 1,050 in 2016, which > would be the fewest in at least a decade, according to Forecast > International.

This is surprising to me; I would have expected the number of helicopters made per year to be a lot higher. (The figure accompanying the quote clarifies that it's referring to the civilian market; presumably military helicopters are being made in larger quantities?)

Also, it's counterintuitive that they cite lower fuel costs as a reason for the decline (since they're popular with oil and gas companies).

<comment><USER8> There are a lot of old helicopters out there. They're expensive so you can't just junk them and buy new like a car.

A 1970's helicopter can still be $500,000 US

<comment><USER9> As an aside, this is something that's always bothered me. A good car/truck should last decades with proper upkeep but somehow manufacturers have talked us into thinking we need to keep buying new ones instead of repairing the old ones.

<comment><USER10> Some people have considered building "life cars" which are vehicles designed to run forever because all of their parts can be replaced. On the plus side you only need new tooling when the old tooling starts getting out of tolerance, on the negative side your car looks the same as it did in the 60s. So go back and look at cars in the 60's and ask yourself if the asthetic works for you.

So the next step is car _chassis_ that last forever but the body can be replaced. Prior to unibody construction this is how a lot of cars were built. And the 1970's VW beetle chassis was used by lots of people as the starting point for a fiberglass re-make (look for 'VW kit car' in images and see what I mean) That fixes the "look" (sort of) but the body work and interior work is over half the cost of the car. So you don't save too much and do you keep tooling for the 10 year old bodies?

<comment><USER11> What about safety?

<comment><USER10> What about it? Such a car would always be just as safe as the day you bought it. One would have to sell new cars with the required level of safety equipment but it doesn't change the value proposition of a car that you can always get parts for. What are your thoughts about safety?

<comment><USER12> I presume the user meant that vehicle safety tends to improve over time: a modern car is substantially safer than a 1960s model can readily be modified to be, thanks to radical body redesigns as well as innovations like ABS that _might_ be possible to retrofit. I'm not sure the rate of improvement in safety has been quite so large since the mid 90s, but certainly wouldn't rule out significant safety innovations over the next 30 or 40 years that couldn't be retrofitted to a chassis built this decade.

<comment><USER10> I presumed the same thing. Safety, like any requirement, cannot be applied retroactively. It does not invalidate the concept of a product that is maintainable in its useful state indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Sure wish I had a couple million lying around to go buy a helicopter! :P

<comment><USER13> Robinson R22 is < $300k.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_R22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_R22)

<comment><USER14> And at that price, for me, it might as well be a billion dollars :-)

<comment><USER15> Thats new price. You can buy them for under 100k second hand. Have a look on conttoller.com.

<comment><USER14> Half a billion, then. Mang, I'm trying to buy a house right now, $20k is a far-off and scary number to me where I'm at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My brother-in-law (was a Navy Chief) mentioned once that one in six Navy takeoffs had a mechanical failure of some kind. He always took a boat to shore when on carrier duty. So maintenance surely varies across the services.

</comment><comment><USER17> Think about anything that might be used on a well site in the Bakken (generators, light towers, pick up trucks, drill pipe, drilling rigs, yellow construction equipment etc.) and it's pretty cheap right now...

</comment><comment><USER18> You can get some planes for under $30k too, but there isn't lots who know how to fix em'

<comment><USER15> What? Any aviation mechanic can work on a the likes of a C150.

<comment><USER18> Our of curiosity how do you find a good aviation mechanic?

<comment><USER15> Ask around. Avoid the big AMOs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm saving up for Airwolf.

</comment><comment><USER20> Curiouser and curiouser.

Another luxury goods market that's reporting a significant decline. Private planes are also down a lot, real estate in Manhattan is dropping. SF real estate not dropping, but not increasing as it used to either. Spending on luxury goods down a lot. Let's go down the list:

Gold prices up ... check. Lots of money flowing (or attempting to) into government bonds ... check. Corporate profits down ... check. Corporate lending up by a LOT ... check. Energy down (demand-side problem) ... check. Goods shipping down (a lot) ... check. Lending standards tightening ... check (except for central bank lending). Spending down ... check. Bankruptcies up ... check. Luxury goods markets down ... check. Asset prices generally going donw ... check. "Sin" stocks rising (alcohol, gambling, ...) ... hmmm ... yes, sort of ... not yet totally pervasive (although CSH is doing almost suspiciously well)

We're in a recession ! Also : f*ck, I was looking at changing my job around.

And ... major wtf: stock prices ... all time high. That's weird.

<comment><USER21> One of the weird things about the stock market is that its success is no longer in any sort of relationship with economic reality. The economy continues to hobble around, and economic growth is not only low, it may be permanently stunted.

But the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq all closed at historic highs today - <USER2> first time all three have on the same day in 17 years. [0] Does the US economy and consumer confidence (and hell, general health of the middle class) feel at all like we should be seeing record market highs?

[0] [http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN10M14R](http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN10M14R)

<comment><USER22> The way I would put it - a delicate framing - is that the market is honest, not correct. The situation is such that most people think they can stay in a little longer even as the analysts are pointing to all sorts of warning signs. There is always theater around the economy in election years, and they might succeed again in propping things up for the next president to handle.</comment></comment></comment>


Mathematicians revive abandoned approach to the Riemann Hypothesis - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-05-mathematicians-revive-abandoned-approach-riemann.html <comment><USER2> A mathematician has spent years trying to prove the Riemann hypothesis – without success. Finally, he decides to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for a proof. The devil promises to deliver a proof within four weeks.

Four weeks pass, but nothing happens. Half a year later, the devil shows up again – in a rather gloomy mood.

"I'm sorry", he says. "I couldn't prove the Riemann hypothesis either. But" – and his face lightens up – "I think I found a really interesting lemma…"

</comment><comment><USER3> _The idea for the paper was sparked two years ago by a "toy problem" that Ono presented as a "gift" to entertain Zagier during the lead-up to a math conference celebrating his 65th birthday. A toy problem is a scaled-down version of a bigger, more complicated problem that mathematicians are trying to solve._

 _Zagier described the one that Ono gave him as "a cute problem about the asymptotic behavior of certain polynomials involving Euler's partition function, which is an old love of mine and of Ken's—and of about pretty much any classical number theorist."_

 _" I found the problem intractable and I didn't really expect Don to get anywhere with it," Ono recalls. "But he thought the challenge was super fun and soon he had crafted a solution."_

That sounds like a potentially useful problem-solving trick - pull a small but key problem out of your bigger problem, and then nerd-snipe your friends into solving it.

<comment><USER4> Definitely. Two fairly standard techniques in mathematics are solving a cut down version of a problem and lifting that to a full solution, and solving a more general version and specializing to a particular case. Sometimes, amazingly, the more general problem is easier to solve, perhaps because fewer irrelevant details stand in the way.

Both methods have yielded a lot of progress in mathematics. For example, solving a cut down version of Fermat's Last Theorem got us the theory of ideals in algebra. Relatedly, Wiles work on the modularity theorem ultimately led to the actual proof of FLT.

<comment><USER5> _> Sometimes, amazingly, the more general problem is easier to solve, perhaps because fewer irrelevant details stand in the way._

True, and that's why we like to generalize things. It's usually easier to prove a mathematical object belongs to another class of structure which has certain properties than to prove the object itself has all those properties.

Of course as you've noted it's not always like that at all. It's significantly easier to prove many things about finite-dimensional vector spaces over fields versus infinite-dimensional modules over rings.

Solving mathematical problems is a lot like working a sponge. It's often useful to alternate between expanding and contracting the scope of your problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "This method doesn't work and Ken knows that, not sure wtf this article is. At most, this idea can show that the zeroes off the critical line are density zero, which would be a huge result, but could never prove RH. Again, Ken knows this (he says as much when he talks about it) so wtf is this article?"

\- Someone on Reddit ([https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/brgp5z/mathematicians...](https://old.reddit.com/r/math/comments/brgp5z/mathematicians_revive_abandoned_approach_to_the/))

</comment><comment><USER7> Neat. I mean, I don't understand the mathspeak since I stopped taking math after calculus in college, but it's neat to see fun approaches turn into viable tactics for finding a solution.

By coincidence I toyed with the problem a bit this past week. Pretty difficult to tackle with a "basic" math toolbox (calc, trig, algebra, and some discrete math/number theory that's taught in many CS undergrad curricula). Much like Fermat's Last Theorem, it seems like this might require much higher-level math to solve what seems like a simple problem.

<comment><USER8> Man HR is harsh as hell. While yes, if a proof of RH is found it will probably use advanced tools, ever finding a proof with elementary tools is not totally out of the question. Regarding the Prime Number Theorem, which can be seen as a baby version of RH, experts in the field such as Hardy have been quoted as saying elementary proofs would not exist. Then 50 years after Hadamard and Poussin found the original proofs, Selberg and Erdos published proofs based on elementary methods. No one can say that it's worthless for someone to try the same for RH.

<comment> math-fan I've taken math up to calculus and linear algebra and enjoy watching 3B1B proofs. Is that enough to follow the elementary Prime Number Theorem proof? I've been interested in understanding that for a while. Any good links?

<comment><USER9> You will need to learn some complex analysis which is very beautiful. Ash has a very good chapter on the Prime Number Theorem as a reward for learning complex variables: [https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~r-ash/CV.html](https://faculty.math.illinois.edu/~r-ash/CV.html) You don't need to learn the whole book just some knowledge of contour integral and analytic continuation is sufficient to understand the proof. So you could just start with the last chapter and fill the gaps as you go. (If you go linearly through the book you will encounter things like the normal family not required for your stated goal. Even though the normal family stuff are even more beautifully amazing IMHO the presentation here may be too abstract to grok and could discourage one to soldier on.)

<comment><USER10> Visual Complex Analysis by Tristan Needham is an incredibly approachable textbook on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've seen a paper[1] that claims RH, as stated, is undecideable, and then proposes to prove that an analytic continuation of it has the property required. The idea seems to be that you can choose your continuation to have or not have the property.

It's not clear to me what could be undecideable about the original proposition; either the continuation matches at the points in question, or it doesn't, and if it doesn't, how is it a continuation?

Enlightenment welcome.

[1] [http://phys.lsu.edu/~fmoxley/r1.pdf](http://phys.lsu.edu/~fmoxley/r1.pdf)

<comment><USER12> I've been following the development of the Bender-Brody-Muller approach to the Riemann hypothesis because I knew one of the authors in a previous life. I don't think it's taken that seriously by number theorists [0][1]. The paper was written by physicists, who sometimes play a little fast and loose with mathematical rigour.

Maybe this line of argument fixes the flaws in the original BBM paper in some way - I'm not qualified to comment - but I sort of doubt it.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02644](https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02644) [1] [https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2211278/riemann- hyp...](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2211278/riemann-hypothesis- is-bender-brody-m%C3%BCller-hamiltonian-a-new-line-of-attack)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice detailed lectures on RH along with a suggested proof is here [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRsxymPrOKUAk3eXhK9FZ...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRsxymPrOKUAk3eXhK9FZdGAPmgGGrhfb&disable_polymer=true)

<comment><USER14> I have looked at Eswaran's paper that purports to prove RH and I'm pretty sure it's all wrong. (Currently-latest version of paper is here: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.06971v10.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.06971v10.pdf))

The basic idea is to prove that a certain function L(N) doesn't grow too quickly. It's _true_ that appropriate bounds on L(N) imply RH.

But Eswaran's arguments for this point are full of handwaving, and in this field handwaving is just not good enough. L(N) is a sum of terms +1 and -1, and he claims that it behaves like a series of coin tosses, but the specific ways he argues it's like a series of coin tosses are _not enough_ for the conclusion he needs.

E.g., in section 5, on page 13, he states a theorem which says: you can pair up the +1 and -1 terms in that series, so that for each +1 there's a -1 and for each -1 there's a +1. This is certainly true, but it doesn't imply that the series is random-like or that the partial sums L(N) don't grow much faster than sqrt(N) (which is the condition he needs). E.g., consider the series that goes ++-++-++-++-++-++- etc., whose partial sums obviously grow like N/3\. This satisfies that "pairing" condition just fine. (Pair the first + with the first -, the second + with the second -, etc. There are infinitely many of both, which is all you need to make that work.)

In appendix V, he tries a different approach. (The fact that he gives two different "proofs" of the same key result, and both are handwavy, is a Very Bad Sign.) There's lots here that looks wrong, but here's one thing: he claims to prove that if |L(N)| ~ N^a for some a then we must have a=1/2, and having given his proof he claims to have proved that in fact |L(N)| ~ N^1/2\. But _these are very different propositions_. Another possibility is that we don't have |L(N)| ~ N^a for any a at all, which in fact is true because it's known that infinitely often |L(N)|<=1 and infinitely often |L(N)|>=sqrt(N).

The lectures appear to be about his alleged proof rather than about RH in general. In any case, I would not trust someone capable of making the errors in his RH paper to teach any research-level material in pure mathematics.

<comment><USER15> Thanks a great deal for your comments.

You have been reading almost the very first version of the paper. The correct version of the paper is: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325035649_The_Final...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325035649_The_Final_and_Exhaustive_Proof_of_the_Riemann_Hypothesis_from_First_Principles)

The basic idea is to prove that the Liouville (lambda) series of length N behaves like coin tosses or as a random walk for very large values of N.

The "alternate proofs" that you talk about are just alternative proofs of certain theorems that are necessary for the proof of RH. Their existence does not mean I do not believe in the previous proof.

The Reply to your misgivings can be found by studying Items (3) and (4) in the Summary below. But before you peruse them, I suggest that you must Trust me, because I am a serious researcher and what ever I have found I have openly written about them in my papers and Project Notes and my lectures (I have been open and free with my ideas). If you think that I am a non-serious philanderer then you can save yourself the trouble by not reading what I have done. I am of the firm belief, that to begin to understand someone's new idea one must first trust him!

Most of my work has been uploaded in Research gate and there have been thousands of reads/downloads. The work is Outlined in the summary below:

SUMMARY OF KUMAR ESWARAN'S WORK ON RIEMANN HYPOTHESIS

1) THE MAIN PAPER:IS: (Version May 2018) [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325035649_The_Final...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325035649_The_Final_and_Exhaustive_Proof_of_the_Riemann_Hypothesis_from_First_Principles)

2) HIS INVITED TALK IN IIT MADRAS (Date May 14 2019) [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333185552_Invited_L...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333185552_Invited_Lecture_at_IIT_MADRAS_On_the_Pathway_to_the_Proof_of_the_Riemann_Hypothesis)

3) Along with this Invited Talk an Extended ABSTRACT outlining the Crucial Steps of the Proofs and References to Notes are given see: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331889126_The_Pathw...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331889126_The_Pathway_to_the_Riemann_Hypothesis)

4) He has made many additional Notes on his work in the following Link Project Notes and Replies to various comments on RH

His answer to various comments can be found by clicking 'Project Log" in the above Link.

\-----

5) Additionally Prof Vinayak Eswaran took it upon himself to give a series of Seven Lectures addressed at the level of undergraduates.. His motivation for doing this is given in his INTRODUCTION which may be read first: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRsxymPrOKUAk3eXhK9FZ...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRsxymPrOKUAk3eXhK9FZdGAPmgGGrhfb&disable_polymer=true)

END OF SUMMARY

I thank You Once again for your interest.

Regards KE

<comment><USER14> The version I linked to was (so far as I could tell) the latest on the arXiv, posted a couple of years after the first version. I've now looked at the latest version and it seems to me it still has much the same problems as before, just hidden a little better.

As you say, your argument depends on having the Liouville series behave like a series of independent coin tosses. But you never really show that it does. In your "Appendix IV" you argue, e.g., that if m,n are coprime then lambda(m),lambda(n) are "independent". Strictly speaking, that's nonsense: independence is a relationship between _random variables_ and lambda(m),lambda(n) are not random variables at all. There might be some theorem that says something like "if you consider a long enough series of these, then their statistics are very close to those you'd get from independent random variables", but your argument doesn't show anything at all like that.

(You do argue -- the argument seems clearly unsound to me[1], but the conclusion, or something like it, is probably correct -- that for fixed L and large enough N you can't deduce lambda(N) from lambda(N-1),...,lambda(N-L). But this has nothing at all to do with the relevant notion of statistical independence.)

[1] Why is it unsound? Well, several things look wrong with it. Here's one of them: you say, in effect, that you can only work out lambda(N) from earlier values if you have lambda(some divisor or k). But clearly that isn't true; e.g., if N is a multiple of 3 then you have lambda(N) = lamda(2N/3).

The "arithmetical proof" in Appendix V is exactly the same as before, and remains unsound for the same reason: it doesn't distinguish between "if L(n) ~ Cn^a then a=1/2" and "L(n) ~ Cn^1/2". The second of these is in fact clearly _false_ , as I said before, because for some n L(n) is very close to zero.

The errors being made here are not, it seems to me, the sort of superficial ones that just indicate glitches in the exposition of a basically-sound underlying argument, and that need patching over. They indicate fundamental misunderstandings of how this stuff works.

A couple of other wrong things -- but, to be clear, the point isn't that a few specific statements are wrong, but that you don't have a firm grasp of just what it is you need to prove:

In section 3.1 of your "pathway" document you say that it will be enough if the function lambda satisfies three conditions: (1) +1 and -1 equally common, (2) sequence not periodic, (3) can't predict new values of lambda from previous values. This is _simply not true_. For instance, consider a sequence defined as follows. Start with the sequence +-++--++++---- etc. (i.e., runs of length 1,1,2,2,4,4,8,8, etc.) This has properties 1 and 2, and it "almost" has property 3. Now perturb it by flipping each sign with probability 1/8 (either actually randomly, or using a deterministic-but-random-like sequence -- e.g., if you consider that the actual lambda(n) form such a sequence then you can flip the sign of the n'th term iff lambda(3n), lambda(3n+1), lambda(3n+1) are all +1). This still satisfies properties 1 and 2, and now clearly satisfies property 3 as well. But it doesn't at all satisfy the condition you need, of growth no faster than about sqrt(n): if you pick n=3.2^k-2 (i.e., at the end of a run of +) then the sum is approximately n/4.

In section 5.2 of your main paper, you give two slightly more refined versions of the "twin" argument from older versions of the paper: it's not just that we can pair up numbers so that lambda(n),lambda(n') have opposite signs, but that we can divide the positive integers into subsets (the "towers") each of which has alternating signs. Or: ... into subsets which we can pair up with one another so that corresponding numbers in paired subsets have opposite signs. But these conditions, even taken together, _don 't have the consequence you want_. Suppose we have _any_ sequence of +,- at all, provided it has infinitely many of both signs; it can be decomposed into subsets satisfying those conditions, as follows. We start with all "towers" (of course they aren't "towers" in precisely your sense) T1, T2, ..., empty, and a "next sign needed" for each tower of +,-,+,-,+,-, etc. Now go through our sequence in order: n=1,n=2,n=3,..., assigning each number in turn to the "highest- priority" tower it's eligible for. Highest-priority means smallest value of (tower number) times (1 + number of numbers already assigned to tower). I claim we always assign infinitely many numbers to each tower. If not, consider the towers that only ever get finitely many numbers, and suppose tower k is the one for which (tower number) times (1 + max numbers ever assigned) is minimal. Then once n is large enough tower k will have highest priority, and we have both infinitely many + and infinitely many -, so tower k will get another number assigned to it, contradiction.

I profoundly disagree with what you say about trust. "Nullius in verba" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullius_in_verba](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nullius_in_verba))! Being a serious researcher doesn't mean that your work is exempt from checking or immune to serious error. I'm happy to trust that you mean what you say and are trying to get the mathematics right, but no one is entitled to be trusted _to have actually got it right_.

(Incidentally, "philanderer" doesn't mean what I think you think it means. A philanderer is a man who is in the habit of flirting with (or more-than- flirting with) a lot of women. Perhaps you're looking for a word like "dilettante"?)

<comment><USER15> May 29, 2019 I thank you for your detailed commentary and queries. My replies are as follows.

to your point [1]:

The point I make is that knowing lambda(N) (N large) and possibly, lambda(N-1), lambda(N-2), ..., lambda(N-K) For some fixed K. It is not possible to predict ALL the other lambdas higher than N. This is proved in the paper and can be intuitively understood because one cannot predict when the next prime occurs. Thus lambda(n) behaves like c(N) where c(N) is the Nth toss of a coin tossing experiment.

It is only necessary to prove that lambda(N) behaves (approximately) like a coin toss for large N. As explained this requirement is from Littlewood's theorem (proved in the paper). It is not necessary that the lambdas are perfectly random, of course they are not. Example, lambda(2n)= -lambda(n)) but if you choose n very large say n=10^100, then 2n will be very far away from n. Thus the 'randomness' in a very large sequence of lambdas is still practically undisturbed; the unpredictable occurrence of new primes also contribute toward 'randomness' \- this is especially so for very long sequence of length N; To prove RH we only need this behaviour for N near infinity to satisfy Littlewood's Theorem. (Appendix VI actually verifies this phenomena over very large sequences). In a paragraph below I show how if M is large it is impossible to predict lambda(M+1) knowing only lambda(M) with out actually calculating it by using all the info on primes below Sqrt(M).

Regarding your argument where you construct an example in your para [1], of a sequence of lambdas and flip the signs of lambdas according to your specific rule is not permissible. Because you must remember that the lambda(n) take on values +1 or -1 depending how many factors the particular integer n has. So you cannot 'flip' their signs arbitrarily or as per your prescription, without actually demonstrating that your prescription does not violate the rules of arithmetic or the rules of factorization. The lambda's are arithmetical functions and obey some rules. I suggest that you study the proof of unpredictability (independence). it will convince you. NOTE: If you have a method of predicting lambda(n) from (say) its k previous values (k fixed), then this (hypothetical) method should work for ALL n, clearly it then means there exists some function f(x1,x2,..xK) which predicts the value according to the hypothetical method. The paper proves that such a function cannot exist, (this is my second proof of independence; see page 13 para 2(a) of Main Paper or slides 54-58 in my IITM Lecture).

In the next paragraph (where you talk about towers), you again "suppose" the lambdas in the towers to have some properties - you cannot suppose these things without actually proving that your "suppositions" do not violate the rules of factorization and arithmetic that govern the values of lambda(n).

Each tower contains integers whose lambdas alternate + - + - etc. I know that there are infinite number of towers; this does not make any difference to the proof - they are all countably infinite. The important thing is that each integer occurs only once in some tower and does not occur in any other tower.

To prevent ourselves being inveigled by Cantor-like arguments (which imposes "pre-suppositions" on the properties of the lambdas), I suggest that we get out of this "mapping" mind set. I have given an independent proof (which should be studied) of equal probabilities which only uses induction and the assumption that each even integer is followed by an odd integer which precedes another even integer (i.e the number of even integers is equal to the number of odd integers). Because of the latter reason, I believe this proof is water- tight. This proof is given in: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324828748_A_Simple_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324828748_A_Simple_Proof_That_Even_and_Odd_Numbers_of_Prime_Factors_Occur_with_Equal_Probabilities_in_the_Factor- ization_of_Integers_and_its_Implications_for_the_Riemann_Hypothesis)

\--- Regarding your last point, I agree I was just loosely stating matters when I put things like: "L(n) ~ Cn^1/2"; (sorry!). The actual rigorous requirement for the proof of RH is that as N tends to infinity one must have Mod[ L(N)] < C. N^(0.5 + e), where e is small but positive. The inequality must hold in the limit for very large values of N not a particular value, so Littlewood's condition actually specifies a bound; you can read the statement of Littlewood's Theorem given in the paper.

\----

      The better way to intuitively understand as to why the lambdas behave like coin tosses is to consider the following argument:

(a) Each integer, n, can be uniquely factorized into primes, (b) So the larger the value of n, the number and variety of primes become more, because there will be more number of primes. So if is a large number M, (say M=10^100) and if lambda(M)= +1, meaning M has an even number of prime factors, then it is impossible to say whether the next number (M+1) will have lambda(M+1) +1 or -1 without actually calculating it. You will actually see that the primes which factorize M are different from the primes that factorize (M+1), in fact they will be completely different. That is why the lambdas behave like "coin tosses". Another way of "seeing it", is to compare a binomial distribution (of coin tosses) with a Gaussian distribution (this comparison is valid for large number of samples). It is well known that: if a random variable X (say height of a person) depends on very many unknowns variables like diet, height of parents, environment etc.. then the random variable X behaves like a Gaussian. The same for coin tosses (coin toss depends on the very many ways it can be tossed) and a similar thing happens here because the lambda(n) depends on the factorization of n involving many primes(variables).

In Appendix VI (I strongly recommend that you read Appendix VI in its entirety), I have taken very large sequences of consecutive lambdas and I have actually shown by doing a chi-squared fit and comparing each sequence with a binomial sequence of the same size, that they are indistinguishable (statistically speaking) from coin tosses. In fact if one considers, the sequence of the first 176 trillion consecutive lambdas, the sequence is indistinguishable from coin tosses. My paper gives an explanation (reason) for such a phenomena and this reason lead to the proof of RH.

As far as I can tell, I think I have answered your Queries; the answers are also contained in greater detail in Lecture 5 to 7 in the Lecture Series of Vinayak Eswaran, whose Link is given in the last paragraph of this note: "SEVEN LECTURES". I very strongly suggest you study them and then you can read the papers and Notes contained in "THE SUMMARY" and my "Pathway" (see my previous write-up for the links in Researchgate under my name). \-- Yes "dilitannte" would have been the correct word. By using the word "trust" I only meant that you should trust me just for the duration of time that it would take you to have read my arguments and to have studied carefully my papers and the Notes (as suggested in the previous para) till the very end, with an open mind. Of course, after this is done, (but not before), I expect that my reasoning will be subject to the closest and strictest scrutiny.

\--

I thank You once again for all the interest you have taken.

SEVEN LECTURES: Since this blog will be read by others. I just wish to say (for the curious non-expert): that my brother Vinayak Eswaran (formerly professor at IIT Kanpur and presently a professor at IIT Hyderabad), has taken it upon himself to upload a series of Seven Lectures entitled "Seven Lectures on the Proposed Proof by Kumar Eswaran of the Riemann's Hypothesis".See Link: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRsxymPrOKUAk3eXhK9FZ...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRsxymPrOKUAk3eXhK9FZdGAPmgGGrhfb&disable_polymer=true)

These lectures are set at a level which can be understood by a STEM undergraduate student.

Regards K.E \----</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has the HN entry about Sam Altman running for office just been removed? - <AUTHOR> I'm sure it topped the home page ten minutes ago. I came back two minutes ago to see if there were any comments, and the entry is nowhere to be found.
What happened?<p>This was the story: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/05/y-combinator-head-who-pushes-basic-income-is-reportedly-running-for-office/ <comment><USER2> I'll answer this in a few minutes. The answer is what it usually is (user flags and/or dupe) but I suppose a bit more explanation might be helpful.

Edit: ok, here you go:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198) was flagged as a dupe because it points to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337507), which at 109 points and 41 comments clearly passes the 'significant attention' test for duplicates ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)). Did that story belong on HN in the first place? Yes and no. On the one hand it's sensational and super close to home. On the other, it's far from substantive. All that happened is a gossip column published one side of a conversation and then the click-starved trade sites farmed it out in their usual fashion. If there's an 'interesting phenomenon' in HN's sense here, I'd say it's that Willie Brown became an old-school, Herb-Caen-style society columnist after his incredibly long political career. I had no idea.

A couple more points about standard HN practice. First, when a story hasn't happened yet, there's usually little value in discussing it. Most stories that haven't happened, never do happen. We call this category "announcement of an announcement" and have learned over the years that it is the low-hanging fruit of offtopicness. Some recent comments on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311910) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314105). For HN purposes, there's no harm in waiting for the actual thing to occur. Patience is a virtue i.e. a strength.

Second, when stories about YC are involved, we moderate HN less, not more. That's literally the first principle of HN moderation: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20no...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment). This case is a funny one though. What does 'moderating less' mean? If we mark a submission about this as a dupe or penalize it as fluff, some say we're moderating HN to suppress an unwanted story. But suppose it spent the day on HN's front page instead—then others would say we were moderating HN to stealth-promote a political career. That's a classic Bateson double bind: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_bind).

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, in general when a story disappears while not being a dupe:

> Users flagged it. That's nearly always the explanation.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337524)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I'd love to understand why a perfectly regular piece of news was flagged, then. Definitively something not transparent going on, on a very sensitive subject for the community.

<comment><USER4> But it's not a perfectly regular piece of news. It's a rumor. Hacker News isn't a gossip site. If/when Sam announces he's running the announcement will not get flagged.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe people flagged it as not all HN readers live in US and care about US politics.

</comment><comment><USER6> It was marked as a dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14342198)

<comment><AUTHOR> Which was flagged... Why? Said dupe was ON TOP of the home page, whereas the other entry was definitively not popular. Result: the news has been buried. Am I allowed to say I smell something foul?

<comment><USER7> Of course you are allowed to say that, but at the same time, I would have totally flagged that story if I had seen it for the same reasons I flagged this one: I don't live in the US, I don't care about politics, and I have no interest in random rumors.

<comment><USER8> > I would have totally flagged that story if I had seen it for the same > reasons I flagged this one: I don't live in the US, I don't care about > politics

Why flag though? Is it because parent threads don't have downvotes so people opt to flagging?

Politics and rumors aside, I'm confused by why people flag something that they just don't care to read, instead of going onto the next story. If a post makes the front page, it's probably a good case that it's a subject people want to talk about. By flagging it because you don't care for it, makes no sense to me.

<comment><USER2> > _I 'm confused by why people flag something that they just don't care to > read, instead of going onto the next story._

It's because the front page space is so limited. Each story there takes a place that could go to many other interesting things.

<comment><USER8> But "other interesting things" is subjective...

I don't know how many flags it takes for it to be taken down but if it makes it to the front page, does the number of upvotes change how many flags it takes?

<comment><USER2> It's subjective in the sense that people disagree about specific cases and that there's interpretation involved—that's true. But HN's notion of 'interesting' as described at [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) is narrower than you might think. For example, it is not the same thing as 'like'—not even close.

Of course people use upvotes to signal 'like' all the time. That's inevitable, and one reason why both flags and moderation are necessary as counterweights.

<comment><USER8> Ah, makes sense. Thanks for clarifying, dang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> angry-hacker All in all I hope we can see Thiel against him to balance it out.</comment>


Ask HN:what free Mac application to build to learn ObjC - <AUTHOR>

Hello
Got my new minimac im ready to learn ObjC (i have 15 years ok c++ experience )  and developing native mac app .
i will learn via building app . the problem i dont know which app to build ?
what is missing in MAC desktop world ?
it will be free and open source
thanks! <comment><USER2> You could take any small feature app (like for instance servus.io on HN frontpage ) and try to emulate it

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks but the site is down , what is this app ?</comment></comment>


Reddit's secrets are being leaked by the company's former CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/15/8967477/doxxing-reddit-yishan-wong-ellen-pao-steve-huffman-alexis-ohanian

<comment><USER2> "" if there was anything racist, sexist, or homophobic I'd ban it right away"" \- so much for free speech :|</comment>


Crooks Go Deep with 'Deep Insert' Skimmers - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/05/crooks-go-deep-with-deep-insert-skimmers/ <comment><USER2> If the internet revolution was lead by porn, then the hardware revolution is being lead by crime.

Its sort of fascinating that criminals are able to deploy this sort of thing. We have come this far that hardware is this easy, and this disposable.</comment>


A specific example of the power of one's network - <AUTHOR> http://www.kulveer.co.uk/2007/06/a-specific-example-of-the-power-of-ones-network/

<comment><USER2> Peekay ran a network? :p</comment>


Measuring Article Quality - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~baquy/papers/cikm07.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my projects is to create a wiki like site for revenue generation, specifically aimed at technical professions such as architects / engineers / tax accountants etc.

One of the problems considered was how to rate the article content, so I have looked at the various strategies (star ratings seem worse than like/dislike, which seem worse than like only).

My thoughts was to layer a tag taxonomy over each article so that the authority of the author could be determined based on topic, an issue raised at

[http://drvidy.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/measuring-article- qua...](http://drvidy.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/measuring-article-quality-in- wikipedia-models-and-evaluation/)

I have thought about outsourcing the article generation to the usual places, but I am concerned about creating low quality "content farm".</comment>