Show HN: Lax – Write Python to output LaTeX - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iogf/lax <comment><USER2> The title suggests you can write Python and get LaTeX, but it's "converting ordinary expressions into mathTeX". I was expecting something like this:

        def section(name='Abstract'):
          print('We present a novel new way...')
          fig(path='my.png', width='90%')

Anyway, still a cool project! I might make use of this in the future. Just remarking that the title hints at something else -- at least to me.

<comment><USER3> I feel that (as much as I personally don't like them) IPython notebooks would solve this niche pretty well (though currently you still need a separate LaTeX document).

<comment><USER4> I do feel like there is a middle ground somewhere there between the "format all content to fit A4 paper" idiom of Word/TeX, and the more interactive markdown + simulation environment of Jupyter. The latter is really growing on me, but conferences really still want their paper articles and pdf/pptx slide decks.

<comment><USER5> I believe its possible to export ipynbs as markdown/tex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. Quick question though:

        tau@eletron:~$ lax -c '((x-1) ** ((x-1)/(x+2)))/(y-z+k-e+w)'
        \frac{\sqrt[\left(\frac{x-1}{x+2}\right)]{\left(x-1\right)}}{y-z+k-e+w}

That does not make sense to me. Why do you use a root here? A root with that long of a degree just looks weird to me [1].

And even if, does the degree of the root not have to be inverted? I.e.:

        x**(y/z) == \sqrt[z/y]{x}

[1] [http://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?%5Cfrac%7B%5Csqrt%5B%5Cl...](http://latex.codecogs.com/gif.latex?%5Cfrac%7B%5Csqrt%5B%5Cleft%28%5Cfrac%7Bx-1%7D%7Bx+2%7D%5Cright%29%5D%7B%5Cleft%28x-1%5Cright%29%7D%7D%7By-z+k-e+w%7D)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure i have fully understood your question, could you rephrase?

<comment><USER7> A simpler example:

        $ lax -c 'x ** 2'
        \sqrt[2]{x}

While the output should be:

        x^2.

If you wanted to use sqrt, it would have to be:

        \sqrt[\frac{1}{2}]{x}

<comment><AUTHOR> The output for x __2 was chosen to print out \sqrt because it is possible to have x ^2 in python whose output would be x ^ 2 as expected. The idea is using __to print long sqrt so advantaging this behavior. Although i haven 't implemented x^2 planning to do it next week with the new improvements.

<comment><USER8> If you change the meanings of symbols then the description becomes "write lax, output latex".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am really hopeful for Scribble from Racket as a Latex replacement.

> Scribble is a collection of tools for creating prose documents—papers, > books, library documentation, etc.—in HTML or PDF (via Latex) form. More > generally, Scribble helps you write programs that are rich in textual > content, whether the content is prose to be typeset or any other form of > text to be generated programmatically.

[https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/](https://docs.racket- lang.org/scribble/)

<comment><USER10> Very interesting. I'd be interested in seeing what an alternative to latex based on S-expressions would look like. I'm tempted to try and write it first as a scheme library; the end goal would be to have something more structured and closer to a programming language than latex, with a better content/styling separation…

<comment><USER9> Well Racket doesn't get more scheme like besides well Scheme :) Personally I find Racket to be my favorite Programming Language due to the Lisp and Schemeness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My next plan is extending Lax with a basic set of latex structures and integrating with vy. (This was one of the goals behind Lax)

[https://github.com/iogf/vy](https://github.com/iogf/vy)

I believe some other editors like emacs/vim could integrate with it so people could easily ease the effort for writing some latex structures.

</comment><comment><USER11> This "pythonic" way looks for me like AsciiMath

[http://asciimath.org/](http://asciimath.org/)

Shameless plug... if you want to convert from AsciiMath to LaTeX here is something I've written (it's not beautiful and works only online, but it was a showcase only):

[https://github.com/oerpub/mathconverter](https://github.com/oerpub/mathconverter)

</comment><comment><USER12> Title should be more like "convert fractions to LaTeX using Python". Otherwise it's misleading/overadvertising.

</comment><comment><USER13> Related: [https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX](https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX), which is a "Python library for creating LaTeX files".

</comment><comment><USER14> If this interests you, there's also Sagetex [0]. Sagemath is a fully fledged computer algebra system based on Python; Sagetex is a Latex package that allows you to perform Sagemath computations _and_ auto-generate Latex code while compiling the Latex document.

0\. [http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/tutorial/sagetex.html](http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/tutorial/sagetex.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think Sympy's latex solution is probably more complete, but of course it requires a bigger install (but Sympy is already in Anaconda).

Their example:

        >>> print(latex(Integral(sqrt(1/x), x)))
        \int \sqrt{\frac{1}{x}}\, dx

[http://docs.sympy.org/latest/tutorial/printing.html#latex](http://docs.sympy.org/latest/tutorial/printing.html#latex)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, i wasn't aware of that.However one of the goals of Lax is being extensible through python easily and being simplistic, one could define their own common latex structures in python then reuse it.

<comment><USER16> inversely: [https://github.com/augustt198/latex2sympy](https://github.com/augustt198/latex2sympy) [https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues/5418](https://github.com/sympy/sympy/issues/5418)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> PyLatex looks much more advanced: [https://jeltef.github.io/PyLaTeX/current/examples/numpy_ex.h...](https://jeltef.github.io/PyLaTeX/current/examples/numpy_ex.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think pylatex does what lax does i'm not sure though. Try getting latex output from pylatex for formulaes like x * 3 * y * (x/(x-y)). Lax goal is being handy for quickly writing down common math formulaes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how it deals with code that depends on variables that are known only at run time.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The main idea consists of implementing sort of a "latex-like" templating system using python. Lax goal is similar to what markdown is for html.

<comment><USER11> you should check out AsciiMath ... [http://asciimath.org](http://asciimath.org) It's one of the easiest ways of writing math and already pretty complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> why tho

<comment><USER20> Not everyone wants to learn another formatting language.

<comment><USER21> So the solution is to create a new one?

<comment><USER22> Using common ascii notation of basic maths it's hardly new in any surprising way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Create your web library for your works or personal development - <AUTHOR> https://usekangaroo.com <comment><USER2> Is social bookmarking a thing again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have a look</comment></comment>


How do you document a tech project with comics? - <AUTHOR> https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/12/09/how-do-you-document-a-tech-project-with-comics/ <comment><USER2> Anyone interested in this topic will enjoy Scott McCloud's groundbreaking book, Understanding Comics. For a real example of documenting complex projects with comics, check out Bjark Ingel's Yes Is More, a graphic nonfiction book in which he shows his architectural process.</comment>


U.S. To Build Two Flagship Supercomputers for National Labs - <AUTHOR> http://nvidianews.nvidia.com/News/U-S-to-Build-Two-Flagship-Supercomputers-for-National-Labs-c0d.aspx

<comment><USER2> I spent some time at Livermore, and I work at Oak Ridge now. It's been interesting to see the difference in how the HPC assets are referred to, or not, and I think it reflects the culture and layouts of the labs.

At LLNL it was constant, and everyone I interacted with had something to say about being at or near the #1 spot in the top 500 list (with Sequoia at the time), and advice on projects to try and get time. I went on a tour of the facility too, and it was really neat to get some perspective on the physical aspects of it all.

I've been at ORNL since February, and haven't heard Titan mentioned once. Partially I think this is due to the more cohesive overall mission of LLNL vs. ORNL, but I think geography plays a role as well.

The labs have fairly similar numbers of employees, but with one major difference; ORNL is spread out over a pretty large area and LLNL is a single square mile. Perhaps as a result of that, groups at ORNL feel a bit more insular. Heck, I've been to the "main" cafeteria once here, because I work on an edge of the campus, but at LLNL I went every day because it was easy to get to.

I wonder if a more compressed area results in a more useful utilization of huge assets like HPC because there are a lot more connections to be made between different departments. Then again, I also got the feeling that at LLNL it was a carrot they could try and dangle to draw people out of the valley. ORNL doesn't really have that same local competition for talent.

EDIT: And the article even specifically mentions the difference in lab missions by noting the new computers' uses: security vs. open science.

<comment><USER3> There was some discussion in Dewars book "To the End of the Solar System"[1] about the different cultures at the national labs related to the development of nuclear thermal rockets. Something about the Los Alamos guys being all about experimentation, and blowing radioactive material out of the tail of the rocket, until an Oak Ridge director was brought in and mandating more modelling of internal behavoir. I may have those labs mixed up, it's been a long time since I've read the book.

[1][http://books.google.com/books/about/To_the_End_of_the_Solar_...](http://books.google.com/books/about/To_the_End_of_the_Solar_System.html?id=zmpxV1ygjvsC)

<comment><USER4> The nuclear rocket stuff was in the 50s and 60s. With the shift to stock-pile stewardship at the end of the cold war all of the labs became fairly focused on modeling. It also depends on what group you work for. I worked for one of the modeling groups so we were obviously talking about it all the time. Many other groups did to. Some were more experiment focused. Most the physicists treated it as a third branch to the classic experimental, theoretical split in physics.

<comment><USER5> Why do nuclear stockpiles require HPC?

<comment><USER6> Since actually testing nuclear weapons is banned, the only way to verify (ha! verify with simulation) that the current nuclear stockpile is reliable is with simulation. In brief, the idea is to model degradation of current warheads and how that effects their performance/reliability.

For example, the National Ignition Facility (the warp core in Into Darkness) was created partly too provide a source of fusion that could be used to verify the computer models used to simulate nuclear weapon stability. Ie, write a general enough model to see what happens in the fusion bit of a nuke, then apply the model to something like what the NIF does, and then actually test it in the NIF. If the NIF experimental outcomes are in agreement with the model predictions, then we now have higher confidence that the model predictions with regards to the actual nukes are useful.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really exciting! (I'm actually running a molecular dynamics simulation on Titan right now.)

What I would like to see though, is also a return to an increase in absolute processing speed. GPUs and more nodes are great for simulating _larger_ systems of molecules and atoms, but they are actually worse for simulating _longer_ timespans. For example, one of my projects was a small carbon crystallite of 136 atoms. I ran that one on my laptop because it would have taken just as long on Titan.

Problems like protein folding require a sequential series of operations where each step depends on the last one. Right now, the solution to this is specific ASIC systems (like Anton) but then that is a lot of money invested into a machine that can only be used for one purpose.

Regardless, most of my work is size bound rather than time bound, so Summit will be great!

<comment><AUTHOR> > GPUs and more nodes are great for simulating larger systems of molecules and > atoms, but they are actually worse for simulating longer timespans.

For a number of reasons, that's basically not going to happen. CPU single- threaded performance is still increasing slowly, but probably not by enough to satisfy your simulation needs.

In a lot of these cases, the only practical solution (assuming you can't spend the money on custom hardware) is to go back to the code and optimize the hell out of it. Partly this means clever low-level optimizations, but it might involve switching to programming models that help make better use of the hardware. For example, S3D, a combustion simulation which was one of the acceptance tests for Titan, runs about 2x faster under Legion (my research project) compared to the previous OpenACC code hand-tuned by Cray and NVIDIA engineers [1].

If that sounds interesting to you, feel free to contact me, and if you'll be at SC next week maybe we can meet up.

[1]: [http://legion.stanford.edu/pdfs/legion- fields.pdf](http://legion.stanford.edu/pdfs/legion-fields.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The joke is the current #1 spot is occupied by a broken machine that has never run at full capacity and spends most of its time OFF or hamstrung to save on power. Tianhe2 was a huge mistake, poorly planned out and poorly implemented.

The American National Labs seem to have the experience and patience to implement new systems that work well enough and deliver on a dollar/flop ratio.

<comment><USER9> Like lots of big programs in China, Tianhe2 was probably more the fulfillment of a national prestige program than a serious scientific undertaking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ignorant question: Why are supercomputers still popular? I would have thought that their examples could equally be accomplished with a more much flexible array of less powerful nodes (see Google's search engine as an example).

That way instead of doing a "big bang" upgrade such as this, you just upgrade individual nodes as the technology allows and are almost always "current."

PS - I find their usage of the term "energy independence" hilarious. That was a term coined largely to justify fracking and other environmentally damaging practices in the US. I'm glad to see it has been over-used so much now third parties are using it to justify other projects...

<comment><USER11> The general reason comes down to inter-node bandwidth. Things like Google's search or SETI are able to use standard interconnect (or the open internet in SETI's case) because the problem, link counting and signal analysis, can be broken down into individual pieces that don't interact very much between sections of the computation.

Things like physics simulations, weather etc., have a lot of interaction between any divisions you could try to draw to be able to split the information between nodes. To work with these problems you need a faster interconnect between processors than ethernet provides, infiniband seems a popular choice but I'm no expert on the details of their architecture. These problems also need to move in relative lockstep meaning loosely connected systems don't work as well or at least don't provide any real advantages. Node homogeneity makes these tightly coupled processing nodes easier to manage.

Occasionally there will be upgrades to a super computer but generally they're run 24/7 until they're too far behind the technology, both in speed and lower power consumption, that it becomes cheaper to completely replace it than to try to do an upgrade that will replace more than half the cluster's total electronics to begin with.

<comment><USER12> >The general reason comes down to inter-node bandwidth

And sometimes even more than bandwidth, inter-node latency, which is where Inifinband really shines over ethernet. Calculations which have high levels of node-to-node dependencies are pretty much the difference between super computers and the type of stuff that large internet companies compute on.

I hear (but don't personally know) that Google-style large data center installs are moving towards the CLOS-style networks that have been popular in HPC for a long time. These network topologies give equal bandwidth between any pair of nodes, as well as nearly equal latency.

<comment><USER13> Not just Google. Amazon's "Enhanced networking" uses a feature in 10GbE that's been used in smaller HPC clusters for around 5-10 years now. And MS Azure has InfiniBand backing their highest-tier instance types.

Many datacenters are adopting HPC technologies to reach the scale they need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> See also: NVLink, which is getting rid of the PCI-E bus between the CPU and GPU: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8609071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8609071)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is interesting to see, Power8 and Volta together. I wonder if they'll push Power8's bandwidth to match Volta's 1TB/s by 2017 as well. Currently has 230GB/s I think.</comment>


Amazon Inspire - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazoninspire.com/access <comment><USER2> why is this locked down?</comment>


Docker is transitioning to the Moby Project - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/moby/moby/pull/32691 <comment><USER2> This sounds bad. It looks like the main motivator is to make the open source version of the project "not docker" and move the binary distributions "CE" and "EE" to another licensing model.

I hope they enjoy fracturing the community. Luckily for the rest of us, LXC containers are built into the Linux kernel and Docker is just a layer on top of it. If things get too bad it shouldn't be too hard to switch to another container manager.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it would be like Ubuntu going back RHEL/CentOS vs. Fedora churn, or turning something like iOS into something like Android.

Sometimes, projects need to leave things that are working alone instead of churn-for-churns' sake.

This move needs more substantive explanation than "we're renaming and duplicating projects, creating the Paradox of Choice." It's already open source.

Plus, being too open, other companies can just come in like with W3 and drive features and complexity that aren't always positive.

Next, one Tragedy of the Commons problem with Android is companies aren't motivated to invest significantly into making the overall platform better because it helps the competition. Sure some do, but they usually make their fork of it slick and shiny on the outside but the upstream/inside doesn't always get the same love.

Finally, a poor execution of an open platform makes the whole platform look bad to customers.

It's not the end of the world if docker pivots oddly but I hope it goes well.

[https://blog.docker.com/2017/04/introducing-the-moby- project...](https://blog.docker.com/2017/04/introducing-the-moby-project/)</comment></comment>


OpenWhisk: Event-driven platform to automatically trigger responses - <AUTHOR> https://developer.ibm.com/open/openwhisk/ <comment><USER2> Source code is at [https://github.com/openwhisk/openwhisk](https://github.com/openwhisk/openwhisk)

I'm pretty excited about this - I'm an IBMer and I was secretly hoping for us to get an alternative to AWS Lambda.

Plus, since it's Docker based and Open Source, you're existing knowledge should transfer pretty easily and you aren't locked into IBM/Bluemix to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's pretty cool. I know a lot of people are skeptical about IBM and open source, but there really is a lot of cool stuff happening. I hope people give it a chance, or at least take it out for a test drive.</comment></comment>


Life Hacking Becoming an Antiproductivity Vortex - <AUTHOR> http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/technology/life-hacking-becoming-an-antiproductivity-vortex-61545.html

<comment><USER2> jjp9999 is poster who submits pretty much exclusively from theepochtimes.com (a Falun Gong site, not good to see on HN frontpage) and techzwn.com, connected to theepochtimes.com

I'd highly recommend this url be added to the blocked spammers list.

<comment> mkr-hn I'm more concerned that jjp9999 hasn't contributed a single comment on any article, not even his/her own.</comment></comment>


Don't date a girl who reads - <AUTHOR> http://sean.terretta.com/dont-date-a-girl-who-reads-charles-warnke <comment><USER2> Well written, though nihilistic.

Conversely - don't date a man who writes.

Find one that leads an undocumented life of events without seeking approval or record. Find a man who knows how to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't read prose written for the sake of sounding meaningful.</comment>


Girl born with half a brain retains full vision - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17489-girl-with-half-a-brain-retains-full-vision.html <comment><USER2> The brain is remarkable in children. I lost my right eye in an accident when I was 7, and of course I can't see from that side, but I /do/ have perfect depth perception. I use shadows, relative object sizes, and parallax to get the data I lose without binocular vision.

<comment><USER3> When I was an intern, I witnessed, helpless, a newborn losing most of his left hemisphere in the first hours of his life because of a massive meningeal hemorrhage (he's hemophiliac). He was only left with an atrophic, gliotic frontal lobe (and an intact right hemisphere).

It was 5 years ago. Today, he can walk, use both hands, speaks two languages and has a normal mental development. He's paretic (reduced force) on the right side and a bit temperamental, but he should live a quasi-normal life (he will have some difficulties at sport).

That's just amazing :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's called neuroplasticity. I've read "The brain that changes itself" by Norman Doidge and it uncovers a whole new world.

</comment><comment><USER5> fascinating read. thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> hacker news

</comment><comment><USER7> Brain == FPGA ?

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought they all came that way...</comment>


We brought an antenna to Davos to track private airplanes, here's what we found - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/600590/we-brought-an-antenna-to-davos-to-track-private-air-travel-and-heres-what-we-found/ <comment><USER2> And what they found was... nothing? This is a strange article, you keep thinking they are going to tell you something interesting. And then they don't. For example, they have a map showing that helicopters took the same routes: it's almost as if people are flying to and from the same airports and there's some sort of plan in place for where they fly. Who knew?

 _Chartering a helicopter flight from Zürich to Davos can cost as much as $10,000. We built our helicopter-tracking rig for under $200._

Is that supposed to be some weird juxtaposition?

Almost feels like this entire article is a justification for them being able to expense the cost of building an ADS-B set up.

<comment><USER3> The InterContinental hotel at which many attendees were staying cost $56 million to build. We bought our lunch for $8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely nothing of relevance? What a sad piece, this should have gone into the drawer or better as a sidenote in some actual reporting to keep others from wasting their time on it.

</comment><comment><USER5> While clearly some of you folks don't find it interesting, we found:

\- The approximate volume of helicopter traffic that fly into and out of Davos, which was previously unknown

\- The approximate number of helicopters that fly into and out of Davos, which was previously unknown

\- The exact types of helicopters that were flying around Davos, which was previously unknown

This data also provide a benchmark for future analysis of and reporting on helicopter use patterns at Davos and elsewhere.

<comment><USER6> Genuinely wondering: why do you think that is of interest ?

<comment><USER5> I find it interesting because it is the only data that exist that can quantify and contextualize the anecdotal reports of the volume and impact of helicopter use at Davos.

<comment><USER4> And why would the helicopter use be of any significant interest to the public?

<comment><USER5> From the piece:

"We went to all this trouble because there is perennial fascination with the flying habits of the 2,800 Davos delegates. Use of private aircraft, though often wildly overstated, highlights the vast wealth and power that descends upon this small skiing town in the Swiss Alps each year. And their transportation choices are frequently criticized for their environmental impact at a conference that seeks solutions to reducing carbon emissions, among other topics."

<comment><USER6> I was on the island of Sint Maarten for a while. Its a hub in the Caribbean for megayachts and superyachts. You should have a look there around Christmas... Talking about helicopters, wealth and power... And there are many more of those of places and events around the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title should indicate that the article focuses on private helicopters as opposed to other private aircraft.

</comment><comment><USER8> We brought an antenna to Davos to track private airplanes, you wont believe what happened next.</comment>


Should Copyright Be Abolished On Academic Work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090724/0445155649.shtml

<comment><USER2> I'm not entirely convinced of this. I totally believe in open access, but putting papers in the public domain would mean that people could lift content and pass it off as theirs, which I think should not be allowed. (It would still be unethical, of course, but I'm not sure that is a big deterrent for some individuals.)

Maybe the standard should be to license papers under something like the Creative Commons Attribution license.

<comment><USER3> Who has used copyright law to punish plagiarism? This "feature" isn't worth preserving if no one uses it.

<comment><USER4> I use CC licenses, usually BY-NC-SA. I don't actively enforce it but I feel I have a right to be named and to have a cut of the money if others are making money directly from my work without otherwise requesting permission.

Copyright enables this: I have the right to label the work as mine, I have the right to license it as I see fit.

If you plagiarise my work (not worth it!) I don't have the funds to chase you, if I did I would and I feel the law should give me that option. If you credit me and share any derivative works then I'm happy for you to use it, unless you've maliciously amended it and are crediting me - then copyright gives me remedies.

Copyright terms stink like pig shit. Copyright is not all bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If it is publicly funded definitely. Otherwise there might be restrictions (I'm not in favour of universities being in bed with companies but I understand there is a lot of money involved and that combined with the push for "applicable research" (in other words stuff that makes money) makes it harder for universities to resist such funding.

<comment><USER3> How common is it for the funder and copyright holder to be the same? I do corporate research and the copyright on my papers ends up owned by ACM, IEEE, Usenix, etc.

<comment><USER5> Which is absolutely beyond the pale.

Tax money I give to the government, they give it to the universities who then do research and I'm locked out of the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, you have a job where you are required to show up for 6-12 hours per week, 8 months per year. For this you are paid between $60k and $200k per year. As part of this job, you are expected to publish papers which document your original work for the benefit of mankind. Any professor who doesn't put any and all work they do while employed by a public university into the public domain (or the closest thing allowed by their university) is the lowest of the low. I can't describe how I feel about such a person without a very large amount of swearing.

Suppose someone came to your house and tell you that they want to work on a way to make your electric bill go down, but unless you give them some money up front they won't have enough time to both hold down an outside job and work on your electric bill. Then, after a while, you ask them how it's going. They tell you that you can see the results of their work if you pay them $50. That is exactly what some people do, except they collect less money and collect it from way more people. Dirtbags.

<comment><USER7> Most researchers make their work as publicly available as possible. It's in their benefit to do so: the onus is on them to convince their peers their work is good and significant. In order to do so, they want to make it as easy to find as possible.

Also, your time breakdown of a professor's week is absurd. They're required to be _in class_ for 6-12 hours per week, but every (good) hour of lecture requires about three hours of prep time. Grading work takes time. And their greatest time sink is research. A young professor trying to attain tenure is putting in 60-70 hour weeks, 12 months of the year. Research continues when classes aren't in session.

You're getting upset over the actions of a person who doesn't exist.

<comment><USER6> Where did you get 3 hours? If you know someone who prepares 3 hours for a 1 hour lecture, and it's not their first day or something, they have some kind of anxiety disorder. The best lecturers I know just walk into class and start writing on the board and explaining things. Sometimes they have to ask the class what the material they are supposed to go over that class is. They can do this because they are competent. If you don't know what you are supposed to be teaching well enough to just teach it, you are wasting your student's time.

Professors, especially good researchers, don't grade homework themselves unless they feel like it.

Professors are _compensated_ research. For them to make money on the side with the intellectual property they were compensated fully to create is just dishonest.

Use the logic that professors should get to keep intellectual property they were paid to develop to any other profession. Coal miners should keep the coal they mine? Magazine editors should get to take their work and put it in a separate newsletter?

<comment><USER7> I got three hours from my own experience. I'm thinking of young professors who are in their first few years of teaching. You can't just walk into a class and expect to pull a good lesson out of thin air. Knowing material and being able to teach it well to students are two different things. _Teaching_ is a skill that is independent of the knowledge you're trying to impart. Developing that skill takes time and effort.

Professors frequently have to grade their own homework. TAs are not in infinite supply. I know my adviser commonly has to grade his own assignments.

I said nothing about professors getting money from the IP they created. In fact, what I said was that most professors make every attempt to make their work as freely available as possible. It is in their own best interest to do so. When you do research in academia, your hardest problem is convincing others that your work is good and worthwhile. In the rare circumstance where academic research leads to something that could be sold, the patent is always joint with the university.

You're upset with a person who doesn't exist.

<comment><USER6> You say they get to keep IP jointly with the University. Then you say that that person who keeps IP doesn't exist...

You are talking on the general plight and struggles of academics, which is another subject, and a subject I have no comment for. This or that aspect of being a professor really has nothing to do with this topic.

I am saying, again, that anything a professor develops, designs, or discovers while collecting a salary or having his research otherwise paid for out of tax revenues should have no ownership of it or financial compensation for it whatsoever (prizes are not compensation), and it should be placed in the public domain, just as the work of a government employee would be.

Financial benefit should go to the party taking the financial risk. A professor takes no financial risk when he researches things, as he collects a salary regardless of his success or failure in any course of research. Rather, all financial risk and cost is paid out of tax revenues.

<comment><USER7> Academics _can_ patent their work jointly with their university, but they rarely do. They have very little incentive to do so: the gulf between what an academic produces and something that is widely useful is usually huge, and academics are not evaluated on patents. Most universities would probably prefer that professors and graduate students patent their work, since it's the university that's more likely to benefit. But professor and grad students rarely bother because, again, they have no incentive.

I brought up professor work habits because I felt your impression of their work burden is wrong. I also got the impression that your mistaken impression was feeding your contempt.

Let me put it this way: I am unaware of any academic who meets your description. All that I know and know of disseminate their work freely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Journals don't take up that much bandwidth-- someone just needs to get around to launching thepiratejournal.org.

<comment><USER9> I thought through this with a friend a while ago.

The problem isn't getting the bandwidth to upload the content, the problem is getting access to content in the first place. In order to download PDFs of these papers, you need to have a subscription through your school/institution. The publishers will notice very quickly if someone starts downloading an entire journal's worth of articles.

<comment><USER10> I think a lot of professors put up their papers on their own websites. But that would really be a pain getting the articles from different places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let's get rid of patents first.

<comment><USER12> Software patents I could see, but I find no compelling evidence to get rid of patents in general...

<comment><USER13> Agreed, software patents need to go. I'd also throw in business method, and biological (dna) patents out too.

If we step back and look at intellectual property, I think it can be safe to start arguing against all intellectual property other than trademarks.

<comment><USER4> To play devil's advocate:

Why should someone researching battery materials, testing various combinations for charge holding and minimal voltage fluctuation, etc., be rewarded with a patent when someone doing the same with DNA sequences for increase grain yields be prevented from getting a patent.

What about a new type of phone closure mechanism. There are thousands of patent applications (or were in my day, though I never worked on this material) for phone flips and sliders.

What about a qubit based factorisation circuit - and then how about the completely novel software required to pass instructions to that circuit. The hardware interface between qubit and IC, how about when it's done using FPGA (effectively software).

How about software alterations that alter the battery use in a phone through microswitching that extends the battery life beyond the benefits of the new materials in my first example. Why rule out software that can have a greater hard physical effect and allow hardware that may not make as good an improvement. (note "technical effect" is a route to getting a software patent in Europe).

<comment><USER13> I personally thing that government involvement in the market, granting monopolies is actually harmful and we should abolish all intellectual property. Now it is proper for the government to stop fraud so trademarks and plagiarism would still be valid government concerns, but deciding what deserves and does not deserve a monopoly would be out of its reach.

<comment><USER14> The problem is more that these days the patent publication is totally useless -- it doesn't describe anything useful for copying the 'invention', and is totally obvious to boot.

The government is granting a not-so 'limited monopoly' for what is essentially a trade secret. If software patents required full disclosure of source code and schematics, they wouldn't be nearly as shitty.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best free / paid cartography program for tabletop gaming? - <AUTHOR> So I've been asked to do some game mastering for a tabletop game campaign.
Back in the day I used AutoREALM and it worked a treat, but it doesn't do much automatic generation and is increasingly unable to produce high-enough resolution images to print.
What are the best programs (preferably offline / perpetual license) for the use case of 'generate me a map, let me customize some tiles, then let me label points of interest before exporting to a big image'?
I am willing to pay for good results, but I can't pay $200 (just a hobby after all).
FWIW the current campaign is sci-fi but I'd like to future-proof if possible so fantasy tilesets etc. would not go amiss. <comment><USER2> It may not be an exact fit for your needs, but Legend Keeper ([https://www.patreon.com/legendkeeper](https://www.patreon.com/legendkeeper)) may work.

 _The ultimate writing and organization tool for game masters, writers, and worldbuilders. LegendKeeper is a cloud-based application for building and organizing fictional worlds for authors and RPG enthusiasts. Write articles, upload maps, drop pins, create secrets, and invite your friends to explore it all with a powerful access control system._

I haven't used it but did stumble upon it on Reddit some time ago. It seems to have a great community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sending this my way, I hadn't seen this before. This program appears to support some of the ephemera for tabletop game worlds, which is quite useful, but not directly what I'm after (creating the maps themselves).

This one appears to support uploading your own maps, but unless someone has a hookup on crazily cheap on-demand RPG map generation, I will still need to make the maps myself, at least based on the patreon page provided.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Podaero – get dropped into a small discussion group - <AUTHOR> https://podaero.com/info/show-hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone – I'm putting these groups together to help people expand their personal networks and hold threaded discussions in an environment where everyone gets to know each other. Up to this point, I've directly invited most of the users in the groups.

Right now I'm still working out the UX and trying to figure out the direction the community should take. I want to experiment with groups and complex organizations as a means of empowering the individual users, but also as a way of achieving larger goals though cooperation and collaboration.

I've met some really great HN users through the first few alpha groups, and I hope to keep that going.</comment>


Throwable Camera Captures Stable Video and Images - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/news/throwable-camera-captures-stable-video-and-images-looks-like-pokeball

<comment><USER2> When I read "throwable", I thought it implied "disposable".

This, in a way, reminds me of the scene in Prometheus where the scientists map the interior of the cave/ship using a pair of floating censors than scan the walls. I can imagine (a more hardened version of) something like this being dropped down a mine shaft or crevasse in search and rescue situations. Or even thrown into a building.

The radio-controlled robots have a relatively narrow field of view and you often only see where the camera is pointed (on the throwable ones, I think the camera is confined to one axis, up/down, motion).

Combine this with the gigapixel camera ( [http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/50-gigapixel-camera- straig...](http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/50-gigapixel-camera-straight-out- science-fiction-840003) ) and you have Prometheus tech today. Just gotta work on that anti-gravity part now.

Edit: Just finished watching the full video demo. Looks like they're pushing the search/rescue angle too. It makes perfect sense really. I hope it gets to market soon!</comment>


No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-20/no-end-in-sight-for-crypto-sell-off-as-tokens-take-fresh-hit <comment><USER2> Since the article states "the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear" I'm really curious if somebody here could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop. The Bitcoin Cash fork seems suspiciously correlated but is it big enough news to cause such a turmoil?

Being a cryptocurrency-skeptic I won't pretend that I don't experience a little bit of schadenfreude when I see CC crash, however if I'm trying to be a bit more constructive I suppose that means that we're nearing the "make or break" point: if the huge investment in cryptocurrency-related technologies over the past four years or so manages to produce something actually useful over the next year I have no doubt that this is only a temporary set-back and we'll see BTC (or some other coin) breach $20k again.

On the other hand if, like I believe, it's mostly scams, empty promises and poor understanding of technology and/or economy, then this might be the beginning of the end. Hype can only sustain a $100 billion market cap for so long. That being said I wouldn't be the first Pythia to erroneously predict the downfall of cryptocurrencies...

<comment><USER3> Trading volume has dropped significantly over the last 6 months. Large holders have been patient waiting for new money to enter the market. Eventually, when the only activity is a few automated traders and the exchange liquidity provider, large holders are faced with opportunity costs of investing in something else and the limited liquidity the market can absorb as they exit. It's a domino effect as they see each other wiping the liquidity off the books as they market sell. No one wants to be the last one holding the bag.

<comment><USER4> This is also the result of the federal governments of the world, the US in particular, choking off all the fiat<->crypto exchanges with their expanded and draconian know your customer laws.

As an anecdote, I didn't buy my monthly bitcoin purchase early this month because I've been (and still am) locked out of my ~5 year old coinbase account I use constantly because they are being required to require new forms of ID and I cannot supply it.

Even if the stupid speculation markets and their off chain antics didn't exist this would be a problem.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, KYC/AML is totally bad because of trying to actually prevent money being funnelled into crime organization etc.

This is why I cant stand ignorant crypto-fans.

<comment><USER6> Even according to the IRS's own estimates, laws like Fatca would never pass a cost/benefit test. The implementation costs of such bureaucratic monstrosities is in the range of hundreds of billions, whereas the benefit is a few orders of magnitude lower. The established banks do not complain much about it because the high fixed cost of compliance disproportionally affects small firms, thereby protecting them from being disrupted by innovative startups.

<comment><USER2> So I know next to nothing about these regulations but what do you mean by "cost/benefit" exactly? Surely if these rules are meant to fight (directly or indirectly) organized crime then you can't just judge them on the amount of money saved? If you spend $10 millions to prevent $1 million to reach a terrorist organization, can't you consider it money well spent?

<comment><USER7> Exactly. If we want to do a true benefit calculation, we have to look at alternate futures.

One important future to avert is where organized crime is rampant. Even if we look at only the economic costs, one study in Italy suggests mafia domination cost 16% of per-capita GDP. Given the US's $20 trillion GDP, that's quite a lot. And that's ignoring people's preference for security and safety. As an entrepreneur, for example, I think it's great that I don't have to worry about paying for "protection" to keep from having my business burned down or my legs broken.

We also have to look at terrorism. KYC/AML work to keep cash out of the hands of terrorists. Terrorism is, moral and human cost aside, very expensive. The 9/11 incident alone sees estimates in the $2-3 trillion range for total economic costs.

So even if KYC/AML really does cost hundreds of billions, which I doubt, it's a bargain compared to the problems it's meant to prevent.

[1] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12235](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecoj.12235)

[2] E.g., see [https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-world- after-911-part-...](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-world- after-911-part-i/) and [https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011...](https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/cost- graphic.html)

<comment><USER8> > One important future to avert is where organized crime is rampant... one > study in Italy suggests mafia domination cost 16% of per-capita GDP. Given > the US's $20 trillion GDP, that's quite a lot.

You're making two separate, tenuous extrapolations here. Can you justify them?

<comment><USER7> I probably can. Did you want to ask some specific question? Better, do you you have a way of calculating path-not-taken costs for rampant organized crime that you think might be more effective?

<comment><USER8> I didn't see any calculation in the parent comment.

<comment><USER7> Are you asking me to do some sort of calculation? If so, could you spell out what and why?

The point of my original comment was to point out a couple of things we'd have to include in a cost/benefit analysis of KYC/AML regulation, not to actually do a proper analysis, which I would expect to run to hundreds of carefully researched pages.

<comment><USER8> Maybe I misread your comment. What did you mean by "Given the US's $20 trillion GDP, that's quite a lot"? What is "that" in this sentence referring to?

<comment><USER7> That "that" refers to the implied product of 16% times $20 trillion. It's meant to provide an order-of-magnitude notion of what rampant organized crime could cost an economy, so that people who had previously read "costs of such bureaucratic monstrosities is in the range of hundreds of billions, whereas the benefit is a few orders of magnitude lower" could more usefully think about what the benefits of crime reduction really are.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. You have provided no reason at all to think that repealing KYC laws (which were introduced by the Patriot Act in the 2000s) would transform the US into Italy, which is frankly just silly.

It also flatly contradicts the fact that the US _didn't_ lose 16% of its GDP to mafia activity before KYC laws were introduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having seen four of these major wipeouts over the years, here's the pattern for this highly cyclical spectacle:

1\. Nobody cares about Bitcoin. If you tell anyone you bought it, they either shrug or laugh.

2\. Bitcoin refuses to die. The long-predicted technology show-stoppers never happen and the network keeps chugging. A small but dedicated group of users continues using it on a regular basis.

3\. Speculators who had written Bitcoin off as a fad take a second look.

4\. Defying any explanation, the USD/BTC exchange rate begins a modest rally.

5\. The financial press starts running stories about that crazy Bitcoin idea, and how it's not dead and the modest gains made by those crazy enough to buy in.

6\. Seeing this coverage, people without much technical or financial savvy begin getting interested in Bitcoin.

7\. Stage 6 continues relentlessly, producing jaw-dropping gains.

8\. The financial press gives Bitcoin a bear-hug, dedicating special attention to it with special segments and even dedicated shows.

9\. A full-blown speculative mania is now in progress. Gains of 3-8% per day, for days on end are not uncommon. Everyone, it seems, is an expert on Bitcoin.

10\. An event takes place. Most likely, the collapse of a major Bitcoin exchange, although it could be something else. Regardless, a sharp decline takes place.

11\. A prolonged period of USD/BTC declines unfolds. Initially, the press is all over the story, telling the tales of woe from those who bought in at the peak of the mania and lost it all.

12\. Occasionally, BTC/USD shows signs of life, either rallying sharply or falling precipitously. These short-term changes are usually reversed quickly.

13\. After months or years of flat to downward USD/BTC motion, the only people left holding bitcoin are those who understood it and wouldn't sell at any price.

14\. GOTO 1

<comment><USER10> "13\. After months or years of flat to downward USD/BTC motion, the only people left holding bitcoin are those who understood it and wouldn't sell at any price."

Lol

<comment><USER11> Aparently Bitcoin is emo now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's what happens when you screw over the general public in a giant pump and dump. There is just no more money left to steal. First time was for the early adopters at $1000, second time was for the late majority at $19,000. You're not going to see that happen again.

<comment><USER13> "You're not going to see that happen again."

I've heard that during the last 4 bear markets. Give it some years it always comes back stronger to absorb fresh money

<comment><USER14> I know the feeling, but at one point you gotta stop repeating the same thing forever. Bitcoin is not a new thing that will repeat 1000% growth.

<comment><USER15> You are aware Apple was worth $1tn as a company? $150bn more or less in the grand scheme of things isn't a lot of money, which is about the size of the crypto market.

I just don't see banks and institutions (i.e. Nasdaq and Vanguard) building out crypto capabilities to then not use them. They'll market the hell out of them at some point, and the cycle will repeat.

<comment><USER16> > I just don't see banks and institutions (i.e. Nasdaq and Vanguard) building > out crypto capabilities to then not use them

Let me start by saying that I agree there will be a repeat. But, the assertion that companies build some capability to always use them is wrong. What companies did was look into a hype cycle and bought into it as the next "cool thing". After sometime they will forget it even exists. And move on to the next "cool thing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _picture of a bitcoin man on a free falling rollercoaster screaming /weeeeeeeee/_

What's the purpose of that article? What can be discussed about Bitcoin and the other crypto currencies that hasn't been discussed here several times already?

There is no news besides the price collapsing but that has happened before as well. _But this time it 's different_ They are saying that during a bull run and during a bear market.

I don't believe that, there's no limit to human greed.

<comment><USER18> > _What 's the purpose of that article?_

I stopped watching cryptocurrency prices about a year ago. The novelty wore off. These articles say "hey, that thing you forgot about is doing something interesting—give it a minute."

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> And still, even on HN, the discussion of cryptocurrency is oscillating between totally different axioms?

Some of us speak as prophetic market analysts and bring up "nails in coffins" and other crystal ball bull shit, and some of us wonder about the technology itself and understand that the price against the dollar only matters to gamblers.

<comment><USER20> Has anyone come up with a use case for blockchains yet, that isn't buying illegal drugs or money laundering?

I keep seeing pie in the sky hypotheticals like "supply chain trust" from people who think farmers are etching their cucumbers with serial numbers, but I've yet to see any use case presented for a blockchain that has real utility and isn't better solved by existing processes or systems.

<comment><USER17> They aren't cucumbers but over here in Europe, eggs do have a serial number.

Making an analog asset machine readable and tied to a trackable digital asset is certainly an entertaining thought.

Especially for an industry like the food industry where currently we have to trust that the state is controlling them correctly or even that they are controlling them themselves (which several food scandals showed that this isn't working very well).

But we're still early days in that regard. None of the existing crypto coins could handle the necessary transaction volume.

<comment><USER21> do you have a counter argument for: "you still need to trust the devices that write to the blockchain" \-- so ultimately you would be trusting the supplier.

<comment><USER22> In order to write to chain you need a key. If malicious activity is found, these keys can be banned from the network along with any products that they verify.

It's not that the system can't be exploited, it's introducing incentives to make it economically unviable to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good. Bitcoin is too wasteful when it's at a high valuation. The amount of resources in both electricity and gpu hardware that gets locked into mining is too high.

It can still do it's job as a currency with a lower valuation.

<comment><USER24> The problem is that all that computing power still exists. If the hashrate drops, then a 51% attack becomes possible.

Remember that those mining farms still exist, even if they've temporarily turned off their mining equipment. Someone can turn all that equipment on suddenly to attack the network and start double-spending their coins.

In effect: the hashrate MUST remain high if the BTC network is to remain secure. That's just how Bitcoin was designed. A big drop like this where "good" miners start to turn off and sell off their equipment puts BTC in a highly vulnerable spot.

The electricity usage will remain high, OR a 51% attack will happen. The electricity usage can never drop without severe risk to the entire system.

<comment><USER25> > _The electricity usage will remain high, OR a 51% attack will happen. The > electricity usage can never drop without severe risk to the entire system._

Sounds like the best argument against bitcoin I've heard yet.

<comment><USER26> The forking also seems to have had some unintended consequences of changing the use of hash power such that the main chain is more vulnerable.

<comment><USER27> It also ruined the concept. In its most innocent terms, bitcoin is for sending money to people. What happens when person A has all their wealth tied up in Bitcoin Cash #1 and person B has it all in bitcoin cash #2. What coin does person C who wants to send something to person D use? With every new coin, the argument for switching to bitcoin for transactions weakens.

<comment><USER25> I mean, that argument works for any currency. All my wealth is in US Dollars, all my cousin's wealth is in Russian rubles.

What does Person C use to send something to Person D? Whatever Person D deems as acceptable.

<comment><USER26> Hence medium of exchange, not so much store of wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Only a few months back, I happened to talk to a person associated bitcoin trading. You instantly get that feeling of talking to a person deep in a pyramid scheme.

He talked endlessly about how he plans to buy a luxury villa with all fancy facilities worth crores, and an expensive car, and it would all happen, and he would defy the world and rub it in their face. All with bitcoin money. He continued to justify his actions, decisions with unimaginable zeal. The closest I've seen this kind of conviction is among high religious people. It almost felt the same way.

The general feeling among this crowd is their heaven is only steps away, and will come to pass sooner. Other people will left watching, and will come to be envy of their success. And he can do all that by just investing in some coins and watch it become very big.

I was tempted to debate, but given how deep he was in fantasy, I thought it best that he be left alone, at least the guy can have fun in his thoughts while he can.

But the larger problem is with people, so many people want to do so much with one life. Many people go into wrong academic tracks, end up being accountants, or real estate brokers or whatever. And they see no bailing or escape from low paying jobs, and living working through a mediocre career, under achieving all the way. Its easy to lure such people into any thing that mildly looks to pay disproportionately with little effort. What follows next is religious conviction in such pursuits, even if they can proved totally irrational. People do like to believe miracles can happen in the face of every day mediocrity. And when ponzi schemes come along, they helpless fall for them.

</comment><comment><USER29> Miners in China supposedly throwing out their rigs after this latest crash made them too expensive to keep running.

[https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1064878600594305025](https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1064878600594305025)

<comment><USER30> Does this mean GPUs will be flooding the market? I've been looking to buy something for gaming...

[https://us.bidvoy.net/gtx_1070/27386](https://us.bidvoy.net/gtx_1070/27386)

Guess not. I suppose if most of the miners are on BTC, they'll be using custom ASICs.

<comment><USER31> The price of other crypto's reliant on GPU's will also fall with the price of Bitcoin, likely making them unprofitable.

GPU prices are fairly cheap right now to be honest. I just picked up a GTX 1060 6GB for $139.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Bitcoin still has a $77B market cap. This is bigger than many well-known and long-living companies. Let's be real - Bitcoin still has a long way to drop.

<comment><USER33> Market cap is a silly way to look at crypto.

A well-known and long-living company that went from $19k/share to $4k/share would be rightly deemed to be struggling, and folks would have concerns about its long-term potential.

<comment><USER34> The thing about a company is that its share price doesn't have to be related to the health of the company. Lots of companies' share prices dropped 50% in 2008, but that didn't mean that the firms were struggling, it meant that people were afraid of the firm struggling, or even merely afraid that they wouldn't get their money out so they sold at a loss to get something. Imagine if Coca Cola (KO) dropped 50% today. Is KO struggling? Not at all. You have cause and effect backwards. The firm deemed to be struggling tends to have its share price decrease. And those that can tell the difference between a company that _appears_ to be struggling and one that actually _is_ struggling make money.

Unlike most companies, though, which provide tangible goods and services for which people pay and has factories and stores and real estate you could sell, Bitcoin is just a list of numbers floating around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Investing in crypto currencies because you believe in blockchain technology doesn't make sense. Any good use case I've thought of doesn't require public chain.

So why invest in a specific crypto? How is Bitcoin fundamentally more valuable than Ethereum? How are either fundamentally more valuable than EOS? As a currency or store or value, each have essentially the same properties. Leaks in the ecosystem, like scam ICO and products like Tether only siphon money from the market. At least gold or silver doesn't have this problem.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I'm generally with you— but the value in a public chain is probably just not having to set up the larger infrastructure yourself, and rather just tie into the existing network.

Couldn't you say, why invest in companies that support the internet backbone rather than Cisco?

Definitely couldn't answer why one is more valuable in dollars over another. There does seem to be more practical use and development of Ethereum out there than the others (at least from where I've stood).

But that more or less would support your point—I've definitely seen more groups just creating their own private fork or networks rather than directly tying into the public chain— JP Morgan, Microsoft, etc...

 _Disclaimer: I do own a few Eth, I bought some time ago and have just been sitting on. It was never to be a serious investment, just wanted to play along. Never bought into the ICO madness._

All that said, I always thought this was interesting as a use case (also further supporting your point):

[https://qz.com/1118743/world-food-programmes-ethereum- based-...](https://qz.com/1118743/world-food-programmes-ethereum-based- blockchain-for-syrian-refugees-in-jordan/)

> _Building Blocks replaced the payment part with a ledger that records the > transactions on a private version of ethereum that it developed._

<comment><USER35> IBM, Microsoft, and AWS each have private Blockchain solutions that can be launched in under an hour. It's not easy to build your own network, and it might not have a native currency, but I'll use one of these solutions if the business case requires privacy and permission controls. Public Ethereum is an amazing invention for many reasons, but asking users to pay for their transactions is a tough sell from a UX perspective.

<comment> 52-6F-62 I definitely agree. Though I will say, even though I can't easily picture a use case—that fact hasn't entirely convinced me there isn't one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cryptocurrency crash will hopefully bring expectations back in line with reality. Legit blockchain projects will only have to deal with the stigma from being associated with a giant pump and dump when they approach VCs.

<comment><USER36> I have yet to see a _single_ blockchain project that's actually interesting and worthy of anyone's attention.

<comment><USER3> I think secondary markets could benefit from a distributed trusted database with smart contracts.

I also think that behind the scenes on wall street there are some interesting things around securities settlement, something that is very time consuming and it's handled with some antiquated technology.

If securities trades are settled faster and ownership is more easily verified it could lead to some very interesting shareholder voting behavior.

The problem with all of these is that it requires a deep understanding of the process and the nuances of the industry to build a DLT solution that works.

<comment><USER36> For any solution for settling trades, the one without the blockchain will be faster. And the use of electronics for trading systems where it makes economic sense is already a done deal.

<comment><USER3> I'm talking about inter-broker settlements. Like settlements of securities between large banks. The actual physical securities that are stamped and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What is interesting, the losses of those who got in after $10k could be approximated by analyzing daily trading volumes, and the sum of loses is about to exceed by far the .com loses.

Such a huge loss of real, usually borrowed, money must affect the economy, at least in US and Asia.

<comment><USER38> Now this is the article i want to read

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ouch for my crypto investment, makes no difference to my crypto product. And that's the point, price of bitcoin is irrelevant to most crypto products. We're in the business of Fiat > Crypto > Fiat instant money transfers which is immune to what the current market is.

Crypto as a technology will keep moving forward.

<comment><USER40> > We're in the business of Fiat > Crypto > Fiat instant money transfers which > is immune to what the current market is.

You should chat with Pablo, Luiz and Patel. They own a bodega, a bill pay stall and an electronics stall in a rapidly gentrifying part of Brooklyn. All three of them have been providing this service for years, without the need for expensive computer equipment or bitcoin. Some of their customers don't speak English, have a fourth grade level of education and just fill out slips of paper to send/receive money worldwide within a few minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Still nowhere near low enough for me to feel okay about ditching back in 2016 ...

<comment><USER32> I remember looking at the price of Bitcoin when it was $23, $250 and $400. I didn't have any money, so I couldn't buy, but still fun to think about 10x-ing my current bank account.

To be completely honest, even if I did have money, I wouldn't have bought. The price used to go up and down by 10% like daily. At that point it feels like gambling.

<comment><USER42> Sometimes I nearly shed a tear when I open my wallet that shows me how many coins it held over its lifetime. It even converts it into my local currency as if to mock me. I remember times where those Bitcoin faucets (is that still a thing?) gave you 50BTC every X hours just for entering your wallet address. Of course I spend nearly all of them on stupid stuff later on but before they gained considerable value. I still have an old external HDD with somewhere between 20-50BTC on it that I broke and haven't had the money to fix it and retrieve them.

<comment><USER43> You can't afford to fix a hard drive with $250,000 on it? Can't you borrow some money against that?

<comment><USER42> It's questionable if the data can even be restored.

Plus there's more sensitive data than just Bitcoin private keys on that disk I'm not really that comfortable sending that in to some lab for data recovery.

When the disk broke I inquired what it would probably cost to retrieve the data and I was quoted with something around 150-300€ which to me is too much just for the small chance to actually get those coins. I don't like to gamble.

<comment><USER44> Discounting the sensitive data issue (I don't know what keeping that confidential is worth to you), a few hundred bucks for what I presume is a good chance at a 1000x up-side doesn't seem like much of a gamble to me.

<comment><USER42> I assume you have more disposable income than me.

For me this would be a gamble and like I said the chance of data recovery isn't to high in my case that's why I haven't done it mainly. I had someone who works with HDD's take a look at it and he assumed that most likely the platter itself was severely damaged/scratched. And there was something about the encryption in addition to the scratches that would've made recovery not that likely.

Please note that I have absolutely no idea about HDD data recovery and am only remembering what I've been told a few years ago.

<comment><USER43> Sell it as-is for €1,000 to someone that is willing to take the risk. :D

<comment><USER42> While 1k does sound somewhat enticing that disk was my secure storage holding all my passwords (albeit old ones), ssh keys, wallet seeds, pgp keys, 2FA backups, payslips, bank statements.. you name it it's probably on there..

I just keep it in case I get some unexpected money that would allow me to get it fixed securely under supervision. I'm a tiny bit paranoid about that particular disk falling into the wrong hands even if it's broken :)

And well.. I didn't exactly loose any money on it since I didn't buy those coins with real money so I'm not too frustrated about it.

But it was a great lesson advocating for redundancy! Now I have everything storage related in pairs. One storage server at home, one offsite etc.. (I didn't loose everything, most stuff wasn't that important)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Still up 500% since January 2017.

<comment><USER46> Still down 78% since December 2017.

What's your point?

<comment><USER47> Just because a bubble pops doesn't mean it's useless or dead. Many bubbles pop in the real world, they always recover.

<comment><USER48> They don't always recover. It's hard to recover when you are a commodity that doesn't have any inherent utility other than being a method for completing transactions.

Also - Tulips.

<comment><USER49> It's a lot easier to recover when a recovery mechanism is built in - aka the halving. We're a solid year and a half away from that event happening, it'll go lower than this in that time but once the new supply restricts it'll make its slow ascent back up, people will see the opportunity and the demand will skyrocket again.

I say this a lot, it's helpful to think of bitcoin as an algorithm, I just see this pattern playing out the same way over and over and over again every four years.

<comment><USER50> This only works if demand continues at all. "The halving" is of little consequence if nobody cares.

<comment><USER49> Yeah I'm sure nobody's ever going to care about bitcoin again you're right.

<comment><USER50> Not nobody, sure, but the halving really only matters if interest is at least half what it has been in prior bubbles.

Reduced supply may push up the price... or it may not if there isn't much of a market for the supply anyway.

<comment><USER49> The interesting thing is is that bitcoin enthusiasts tend to buy a fairly steady supply over time, this is what's maintaining the current price. Eventually demand will starts to wane off after a big run up but the core people are still buying in steady amounts, then once the halving comes and the demand stays relatively steady you start to see the price trend up, this draws in new interest and runs the price up even more, then you have all the rest of the people who are tuned out and they come rushing in and you have full blown FOMO, all the people who've been buying steadily begin to cash out and the price drops off.

It's happened before and it'll happen again like clockwork and that's because bitcoin is just an algorithm.

<comment><USER50> >> this is what's maintaining the current price

The price that's tanked about 30% in the last week alone?

>> It's happened before and it'll happen again like clockwork

I'm afraid this is a very bold prediction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Funny that the top in bitcoin was the day futures started trading on it

</comment><comment><USER52> Is this below the price where it is economic to mine? Presumably at some point the miners would have to pull the plug to avoid loosing money.

<comment><USER3> Difficulty adjusts dynamically to ensure there is always an incentive to mine.

<comment><USER53> Difficulty adjusts when total hash power changes, so for difficulty to adjust downward some miners will have to take equipment offline, ie "pull the plug".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Is there something useful that all the custom built bitcoin mining rigs can do now that it probably is less economical to use them to mine?

<comment><USER55> Bitcoin mining has been custom ASIC dominated for years now. Almost all miners (in terms of hash power) are custom purpose built machines. So no, they really can only do sha256 hashing on payloads of comparable size to bitcoin blocks.

<comment><USER56> Which might make them harshly powerful password crackers for anyone daft enough to use SHA256 as a password.

<comment><USER57> Except that BTC does a double hash, so it won't work on any 'regular' single hashed password.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I hope we start to realize the power consumption from crypto will contribute to global warming and take appropriate measures.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is good for Bitcoin.

<comment><USER60> I agree this is the market correction I've been waiting on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> The price has been bouncing off the 6k magic "resistence" for ages now. Each bounce reaching lower and lower highs. It was only a matter of time before the that energy disapated.

Technical analysis of stocks and efficient markets is a fool's tool, but BTC is fool's money so TA is an efficient tool.

Yes, I did explain this prediction half a year back to my BTC holding friends. As you can imagine; they ignored the advice.

It has taken 10 months for the trail off in public interest to feed into the pricing model. In those 10 months a great many tricks and scams have been played to prop up the price, we'll see more news about those tricks unwinding soon.

<comment><USER24> > The price has been bouncing off the 6k magic "resistence" for ages now

"Resistance" is from above, "support" is from below.

Last week, the 6k USD / BTC price looked solid. Every time 6k was tested, the community would buy up BTC and the price would go back up. Today, we have blown through the 6k USD / BTC "Support" and selling has continued down, beyond the 5k mark.

Its hard to say what the next support mark is. If you asked me yesterday, I would have thought that 5k was the next support. But now that's been pushed out now. So 4.5k is my assumed support area for now.

There's no "resistance" on the upper-end of the BTC market depth charts until ~7k USD/BTC. Someone really wants to sell at 7k USD/BTC, where there is ~300,000 BTC waiting to be sold (if the price ever got back to that height). The community as a whole would have to spend over $2.1 Billion to grow from $6.9k to $7.1k (wiping out the 300k BTC available at 7k). Such a huge-sum of money is why that point is called a "resistance", because it will "resist" efforts to bring the price above 7k

Just an FYI.

<comment><USER3> Don't let the order book fool you. Big players spoof the market all the time with these massive orders.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> No utility = no value. Tell me, how much utility is there one ethereum? Currently close to none. Why in the world would anyone pay anything over transaction value for eth? I think the answer is clearly hype and irrational behavior we saw in 2017 crypto rush. What we are seeing is natural return to real value, which for most crypto is next to nothing. Bitcoin is a bit different as you know and my bet with that one is someone or multiple someones with hefty bags are liquidating to save their asses.

</comment><comment><USER63> >the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear

What I think has happened, a stop loss order of a big actor was hit by a random small move and that started a chain reaction. Totally possible.

</comment><comment><USER64> Well, what's interesting or perhaps not-so-interesting to those that understand the underlying mechanics is: there's 'crypto sell-off' but only Bitcoin is mentioned in the headlines. In other words, the implication is BTC crashing leads or is concomitant with ETH and LTC and others crashing, and no one is surprised or curious by this.

I really makes one laugh at all the "diversify your portfolio" advice of yesteryear's crypto shills.

</comment><comment><USER65> Assuming mass adoption and use is not going to happen without a turn of events, what's on the crypto horizon, medium or long term, that could reverse this trend?

Eg, proof of stake?

</comment><comment><USER66> What I wonder is why BTC is still the main "entry point" for acquiring crypto with fiat. Having so few ways to trade crypto for fiat, and so few ways to spend crypto, means that the various cryptocurrency markets are highly correlated. It's a bad situation for cryptocurrency as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER67> Nvidia stocks are dropping like a rock, too: [https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nvda](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nvda)

</comment><comment><USER68> Ethereum's dropping too, maybe I can afford a new GPU next year!

</comment><comment><USER69> Crypto coins are all worthless. Just my 0.0000^-11 Bitcents

</comment><comment><USER70> "No End in Sight" stupid title for a chart which has nearly recovered (thanks to manipulators but still).

</comment><comment><USER71> keep a close eye around any volatile times (potentially related to scares of manipulation) :) for checking up on trends and ai forecasts of the next few hours checkout [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz)

</comment><comment><USER72> Wonder how this will affect coinbase. Didn't they just raise a ton of money?

</comment><comment><USER73> What would a "pump and dump" for short sellers look like?

</comment><comment><USER74> Just curious, do you guys throw a bit of your retirement portfolio into BTC just to diversify? I do, I keep maybe 3% of mine in BTC just in case.

<comment><USER75> Just curious, do you guys throw a bit of your retirement portfolio into roulettes at the casino just to diversify? I do, I gamble away maybe 3% of mine just in case.

<comment><USER76> I get the gag here, but it's not a very apt comparison. The expected return from a roulette spin is really well understood: a loss of about 5% of your bet, albeit with high variance. The future of these investments is less understood. Again the variance is high, but its performance over time is also really good. Perhaps you have plenty of reasons to doubt the future performance of BTC, but it's not like it's a known bad bet.

<comment><USER75> The point is it's the same as gambling. Pure luck, no proven way to project future demand, does not generate cash flows. It's also hyped AF so you can't even tell what's real vs. speculative demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> HODL, buy low!

</comment><comment><USER78> My suspicion is that insider trading is rampant in the crypto world and that someone might have been tipped off as to what the outcome might be in the Tether investigation.

At risk of a downvote party I will express my opinion that, since many other interesting cryptocurrencies still closely track Bitcoin's price, this "black friday sale" is a buy opportunity for some great other concepts.

</comment><comment><USER79> Here's a rumor. [https://twitter.com/GeoStar79705164/status/10585100371260211...](https://twitter.com/GeoStar79705164/status/1058510037126021120)

</comment><comment><USER80> One of the people that decide the price of Bitcoin lost upward control so they are doing the next best thing. They will then re buy at the bottom which is a number only they know, then artificially Jack it up to 5k and sell off again and probably get out permanently.

</comment><comment><USER37> The legacy of Bitcoin should be studied to understand better how _memes_ or semantic viruses are spreading through social groups and affects our inner representations or models of the world, trained by endless screaming streams of bullshit^W information we are forced to process.

There is nothing more fascinating than this - how a global Ponzi Scheme based on a few memes about poorly understood abstract concepts unfolds.

<comment><USER81> s/Bitcoin/Central Banking/g

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Everything sells off this time of year. Nasdaq is down 7% on the month. It's end of year profit-taking for tax purposes. As BTC has become completely mainstream now, this makes sense.

<comment><USER83> No, it is almost certainly related to the network split, as mentioned in the article. There are issues with bitcoin that limit its long term potential. For example, the effective limitations on the number of transactions per second, and the huge energy cost for providing proof of work.

<comment><USER60> You mean the fact that it can be split ad infinitum and new bit coin like currencies with much better properties can be had at the drop of a hat by any dude or dudette in his-her den?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> These discussions are interesting as a distilled, pure exhibition of cognitive biases.

Nobody has any way to accurately value BTC. Yet when it goes up everyone discussing knew it and was right all along, and when it goes down everyone discussing knew it and was right all along. Logical arguments are applied to observed history & present conditions and used to forecast the future of something fundamentally impossible to predict.

You know the future price of bitcoin about as well as you can predict my next coin flip. Afterward, if you've guessed correctly, you might believe supreme intuition or reasoning led you well. And if you believe you've done something well, you're more likely to say so on some public channel such as this one.</comment>


7 websites that will help you learn online marketing from scratch - <AUTHOR> http://foundertips.com/money/7-websites-learn-online-marketing/

<comment><USER2> So, how do we know that the 7 Websites he is listing aren't "scams" that pay him for this article?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well:

1\. It's she that is listing those websites :P

2\. I guess you have to take a look at those websites and evaluate them for yourself.

Here's a useful tip if you want to learn online marketing without getting burnt:

\- People tell you that building a business and making money online is hard, that it's going to require a lot of time and efforts, and that you are not likely to see the results for 6-12 months and get profit for the first 12-24 months? They are probably legit.

\- People tell you that making money online is easy, say that you can make thousands of dollars working only few hours a day, and try to sell you their very expensive products with the magic formulas for making money online? RUN AWAY AND NEVER LOOK BACK. THEY'RE SCAMMERS.

The truth is that you can learn most things that you need for free.

I'm all for investing in yourself, and it's true that premium products by legitimate experts can help you achieve the results much faster, but my advice is not to buy anything in this niche until you have a good understanding who those legitimate experts are.

I get why are you so suspicious, though: online marketing world is full of BS.</comment></comment>


Anybots is for real: Check out Trevor's robots on the Surrogates trailer - <AUTHOR> http://splashpage.mtv.com/2009/08/05/surrogates-mini-documentary-explores-how-close-the-films-tech-is-to-real-life/#

<comment><USER2> There's something a little strange about the idea that a company/product becomes real when it appears in a movie (or in the research/advertising for a movie). Isn't it the other way around? Cool clip though.

<comment><USER3> You've never read Walker Percy's The Moviegoer. He writes eloquently about how we seem to believe that the only truly real people are those we see on the big screen and if by chance we come into contact with one, we often feel more alive...

<comment><USER4> If we are living in a computer simulation, that may be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen these bots with my own eyes and they rock - [http://damirhorvat.blogspot.com/2008/08/visiting- valleygoo.h...](http://damirhorvat.blogspot.com/2008/08/visiting- valleygoo.html)

And the anybots crew... such nice people! Visiting YCmbinator and Anybots office was really cool. Thanks guys again for nice presentations and for putting our pictures on your wall of fame! Thanks and all the best. Damir

</comment><comment><USER6> that's really awesome! I saw one of the robots hanging out at the YC office, it was just standing on it's two wheels chilling. I felt like he/she was staring at me. =)

</comment><comment><USER7> How come the people living via Surrogates aren't as fat and degenerate as the people from WALL-E?

All they do is lie in their surrogate chairs all day, apparently.

<comment><USER8> Good product placement opportunity for promoting some health food. 'Stay fit by eating X though you lay on your ass all day'

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Trevor comes on at about 1:10 in that video clip, if you want to skip forward.

</comment><comment><USER8> What if it turns out that we are actually surrogates for some aliens?

</comment><comment><USER10> That was awesome. Of course it had the obligatory "10 year prediction" near the end.

</comment><comment><USER11> Kind of a high-tech spin on sending your twin to work.

<comment><USER12> except you don't mind if the twin gets killed.</comment></comment>


IKEA Is the Largest Charity in the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.insatiablefox.com/blog/2016/6/23/ikea-is-the-largest-charity-in-the-world <comment><USER2> Hey welcome to like 2006 just another 10 years to go and you'll be discovering new content!</comment>


North Korea is shifting its time zone 30 minutes to align with South Korea's - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/29/north-korea-to-align-with-souths-time-zone-in-reconciliatory-move.html <comment><USER2> still less absurd than DST nonsense in EU, I wish i will experience in free years that we will have all years same time and won't stress little children and other people with this nonsense

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a shame, I thought Pyongyang Time was kinda neat. It's a callback to historical Korean timezones</comment>


WebGL on iOS8 Safari and WebView - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ludei.com/webgl-ios-8-safari-webview/ <comment><AUTHOR> It also looks like both iOS and OSX are using same Webkit Api. Webviews get the same stuff Safari has access to, which mean Webviews also get access to JIT compilation including FTL tier.

More info in this talk: Introduction to Modern Webkit Api [https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2014/)

<comment><USER2> That's very good news. Now I just want a way to turn off the 300ms tap delay without needing fastclick.

<comment><USER3> Apparently that's fixed in iOS8 :)

[https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick/issues/262](https://github.com/ftlabs/fastclick/issues/262)

<comment><USER4> "False alarm. iOS 8 simulator: fast clicks. iOS 7 simulator: slow clicks. iOS 8 device: slow clicks."

<comment><USER3> Ack. That is seriously disappointing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is very exciting for a number of reasons. Apple's platforms were some of the first to adopt WebGL (you could turn on WebGL in any iOS WebView with private APIs three years ago), but they were the last to turn it on by default.

Hell, even Microsoft beat them to the punch with IE11, but at least the implementation in Safari is 'complete' and 'comprehensive', as opposed to the silly restrictions in IE like 'floating point vertex attributes only'.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's quite the funny coincidence that WebGL is being made available to HTML5 apps at the same time that the native SDK gets an OpenGL replacement in Metal with "up to 10x performance". Yet again it would appear that HTML5/webapp remains a second class citizen to the native app experience.

<comment><USER7> I don't know why you're being downvoted for that; your interpretation, while uncharitable, is still most likely the correct one, given Apple's history.

Not to mention the games market for the iOS App Store is very saturated and most of the money has likely been sucked out of it for the time being, so now Apple finds they don't have much to lose by allowing the possibility of OpenGL-based games for iOS which bypass the App Store.

In case anyone is quick doubt or dismiss the above criticism, just recall that for _years_ Apple's iAd framework officially supported WebGL, but Safari and UIWebView did not. This implies that Apple could have released WebGL support in Safari and/or UIWebView any time they wanted; they simply chose not to for for non-technical (i.e., business) reasons.

<comment><USER8> Well, the statement was kind of wrong.

Metal isnt really an OpenGL replacement. Most people would use it in their apps - you don't write games in metal, you write game engines in it.

<comment><USER6> The end result is the same though? If you want to publish a game through the web, your game (or your game engine) has to target webgl. If you go native, your game (or your game engine) can target metal instead and gain a massive performance advantage.

<comment><USER8> No, you don't target metal - you use the Unreal engine which is now using metal underneath in an implementation detail that most developers wont worry about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a hobbyist game dev, and although I appreciate this, I'm disappointed that sound works so poorly on mobile in html5 and I actually consider that a bigger issue than this (after all, my game already renders fine in the 2d canvas). Why don't others seem to care about this issue? Is it because they plan to use WebGL for something that doesn't need sound or is it because they know of some sound workaround that I've never heard of?

Here's the details of my complaint: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19365175/with- html5-audio...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19365175/with-html5-audio- limitations-on-ios-is-it-possible-to-play-background-music-and) and [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19365931/does-phonegap- co...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19365931/does-phonegap-cordovas- media-class-overcome-the-limitations-of-ios-android-audi)

<comment><USER10> The Web Audio API - supported in Safari and Chrome for Android - solves this pretty well. You can even connect up HTML5 audio to play through Web Audio for features like streaming long tracks and still be able to process them. Is there something still wrong with that?

<comment><USER11> Web Audio also works in Firefox, and IE has pledged to implement it, so things are looking good, even if they aren't quite there yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Finally a link about WebGL on iOS is upvoted enough to land on the frontpage: I was hoping to see what would be HN's reaction about the news yesterday, but no submission seemed to get through.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any changes in the lovely JavaScript/Objective-C bridging stuff on iOS8? Does it work with the new stuff WebKit? Is it any better documented or have more features?

MacOS since 10.3 has the handy WebScriptObject / JSContext stuff, which made it into iOS 7, but wasn't very well documented, and took some tricks to use. You have to fish a JSContext out of the WebView with [webView valueForKeyPath: @"documentView.webView.mainFrame.javaScriptContext"] ...

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Webkit/Classes/WebScriptObject_Class/Reference/Reference.html)

[http://blog.impathic.com/post/64171814244/true-javascript- ui...](http://blog.impathic.com/post/64171814244/true-javascript-uiwebview- integration-in-ios7)

[http://asciiwwdc.com/2013/sessions/615](http://asciiwwdc.com/2013/sessions/615)

[http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c- jav...](http://www.steamclock.com/blog/2013/05/apple-objective-c-javascript- bridge/)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2254372/calling- javascrip...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2254372/calling-javascript- from-objective-c-via-webscriptobject)

[http://will.thimbleby.net/script/](http://will.thimbleby.net/script/)

Here is the header file, the best documentation available:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS7.0.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework/Headers/JSContext.h

</comment><comment><USER14> Now if only we could get some WebRTC support! Has anyone heard anything about that in iOS8?

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately no,

No WebRTC audio/video or data!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great news! I've been disappointed with the slow adoption of webgl in mobile webviews. This will make it easier to create mobile HTML5 apps with animations that look as good as native apps.

<comment><USER17> Wouldn't that be too taxing on battery life? I'd rather have WebGL used for 3D games or visualizations where I at least know the impact beforehand rather than like flash or as a CSS animation alternative.

<comment><USER16> That's a good point. I've never compared the battery usage. But you don't have to make everything 3D (I think). I think you can use WebGL in a 2D context and the battery impact is probably less significant.

Mostly, I just want to avoid learning each mobile platform just to make one app. That's been turning me off from mobile development for years. I'd rather use something like Cordova with webgl and hit all mobile platforms in one shot.

<comment><USER6> I've never heard of "WebGL in a 2D context". WebGL is WebGL is WebGL - it's a WebGL context. Whether or not you decide to feed it drawing commands that will end up looking like a 3d object or like a 2d sprite is up to you.

<comment><USER16> I was thinking of a 2d canvas context. Basically, I would expect battery consumption to be lower when WebGl is rendering 2d than it would be if it were rendering 3d. It just seems intuitive that 3d requires more computation. But I really don't know. I've never seen any battery usage comparisons.

<comment><USER18> the browser may be able to optimize the 2D canvas operations by using the GPU more efficiently, but drawing with the webgl stack is going to suck the same amount of battery whether doing 2D or 3D. After all, 3D is really just correctly positioned 2D triangles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can someone tell me what the recent negative news around OpenGL (see for instance [http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/06/03/apple-ditching- openg...](http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/06/03/apple-ditching-opengl/)) means for the future of WebGL? I don't follow the graphics world from close, therefore my question.

<comment><USER20> Given that the same company that's "ditching OpenGL" according to that article is the one now throwing their weight behind WebGL, I think it's safe to say that the article in question is overblown. Apple isn't ditching OpenGL. In fact, OpenGL remains the only 3D acceleration API available on Macs. Apple just added another API with lower overhead to certain devices.

<comment><USER21> Technically you don't need OpenGL for WebGL, it just makes the implementation easier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since the site appears to be down, here is a cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wkB31vC...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wkB31vCCvH0J:blog.ludei.com/webgl- ios-8-safari-webview/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Unfortunately, the images do not appear to be cached.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is great news. I, and others, use WebGL to generate realistic interactive educational content. Not falling back to images or SVG on iOS will provide a more effective experience on one of the most popular educational platforms. It's a win for more than games. We can even offload computations from some simulations onto the GPU.

</comment><comment><USER24> 502 nginx error.. looks like their blog didn't handled traffic pressure ;)

<comment><USER25> It is back up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> (the site is currently unavailable)

Has there been confirmation at WWDC that this will remain enabled through the final release of iOS8?

<comment><USER27> Yes, there was a very brief mention of WebGL as a Safari feature during the keynote.

Edit: On second thought, don't take that as proof. I was thinking of the Mac OS X portion, and I don't recall them calling it out specifically for iOS.

<comment><USER28> I would be surprised if desktop and mobile Safari didn't have comparable rendering capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> That is good news! Finally I can say to my customers that my products work on all significant platforms.</comment>


Scientist Who Rejects Warming Is Named to EPA Advisory Board - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientist-who-rejects-warming-is-named-to-epa-advisory-board/ <comment><USER2> Christy is likely the most credible Climate Change denier that I know of given his earlier career. However his public commentary on the inaccuracies of our climate models are often nitpicks over inaccuracies (not data with poor precision) without providing a reasonable alternative. Like the other commentor said, if Christy was presenting a good faith argument he would improve the models he was criticizing rather than publicize his opinions.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Most climate scientists would say that Christy is wrong when he asserts that climate models overestimate warming._

Could someone please show me some legitimate study that would reinforce this assumption?

</comment><comment><USER4> > Christy, who is a frequent critic of EPA regulations, said he will use his > position on the 45-member board to question the results of climate models.

So do what scientists do? Question models and improve them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Disgustingly simple title, to be honest. Even these so-called believers in science turn out to have a single brain cell.

I can't wait for a world where we understand that people with an opinion different than mine doesn't make them the only trait that defines them.

<comment><USER6> I'd say that it stretches further than just "having a different opinion" when (i) it's a very relevant factor in the context of what's happening (the appointment), (ii) this "opinion" becomes a replacement for scientific consensus in decision making.

For instance, we wouldn't say that a parent who refuses to vaccinate their child is simply someone with a different opinion. True, they have a different opinion, but that's not what makes the matter dodgy - it's the imposition of that opinion where the stakes are high and we can't afford to have mere opinions.</comment></comment>