Oregon Court Allows a Person to Choose Neither Sex - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/us/oregon-nonbinary-transgender-sex-gender.html <comment><USER2> People from fifty years ago would look upon us with fear and trepidation, right?

They would look at us as moral degenerates. But despite this, our society manages to function quite well, roughly.

Correspondingly, we think our ancestors are the bigots.

<comment><USER3> > our society manages to function quite well, roughly.

I don't think that's true at all. It's only true if "roughly" means "for specific kinds of people". I think that clause is necessary for the sentence to be true. And with it, we've contradicted the statement "our society generally functions well".

<comment><USER4> It functions at least as well as it did 50 years ago.

<comment><USER5> In 1966 we had a middle class. In 1966 minimum wage was $1.20 which is $8.29 in 2012 dollars.(1)

(1) [https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum- wage/chart1](https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/chart1)

<comment><USER3> I am unsatisfied with the state of things, but I don't think low wages is fundamentally a problem. Ideally we are able to do more and more with less and less money. In an ideal society you don't need money at all unless you want to do a long-term project that requires a financial instrument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Before people start saying "you can't be neither sex" (theres already one deaded), I would like to remind us that intersex people exist and can be indeterminate.

<comment><USER7> Isn't someone being defined as being intersex someone who is transitioning to another sex?

Wouldn't it just make sense to let the person choose if they would like to be defined as their current sex or what they are transitioning to? So for example, if the person is MtF and they want the government to call them F, they can just ask the government to switch their sex status.

Having a "T" class doesn't make much sense since it doesn't really model what is happening. T is not in itself a sex, it's the representation of people transitioning from one sex to another. That inherently means it is not a state but instead it's a mutation.

<comment><USER6> At the moment, if you are born with abnormal chromosones your genitals can be ambigous at birth, doctors to this day will perform a "corrective" surgery to make you "right"

Intersex people are not a fan of it for the most part and are calling for the practice to be illegal.

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

What you are describing is transgender people which is not intersex people, however both could have an ambigous gender.

<comment><USER8> Intersex people do not have an ambiguous gender, they have an ambiguous sex based on genitalia. However, "In humans, biological sex is determined by five factors present at birth: the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, the type of gonads, the sex hormones, the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females), and the external genitalia".

So really none of it is that ambiguous.

<comment><USER9> > Intersex people do not have an ambiguous gender, they have an ambiguous sex.

Intersex people may have an ambiguous socially ascribed gender, and are probably more likely than most to have unclear gender identity. (Given that gender identity, while _obviously_ highly personal, is also clearly influenced by social cues, including both ascribed gender and social expectations about the relation between gender and physical sex traits.)

<comment><USER8> >Intersex people may have an ambiguous socially ascribed gender, and are probably more likely than most to have unclear gender identity.

That's interesting, because of the numerous population studies in intersex people, this has never been one of the conclusions. Same sex attraction is more likely, however.

I think you have a misconception regarding intersex people -- their presentation aligns with their birth sex. I.e. if they are a female, they will have female secondary sex characteristics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's been a lot of focus on LGB issues but it's time transgender people get their due recognition too. Here's something from my home state: [http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Third-sex-gets- offi...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Third-sex-gets-official- status-in-Tamil-Nadu/articleshow/2869909.cms)

</comment><comment><USER9> Legal sex is more a form of socially-ascribed gender than tightly bound to biological sex, and this is simply progress in aligning socially-ascribed gender with gender identity.

<comment><USER11> That's such a "politician's statment". Nothing of that is the contested point. The very question is whether the official system should care about genders at all or just stick to regular old sex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We have to come to terms that we have built an abstraction on nature and it has leaks. Let's move away for a moment from this issue and consider the issue of some animal being of a given species. A highly scientific classification with little political nature (at least if we stay away from our own species).

Reality is that species as a concept is an abstraction placed on nature. It works well for most cases. A cat is not a dog. A cat is not a lion. Pretty clear. But even without considering past species, we see instances such as ring species. Are they one species or not? And we see animals that can breed but who almost always have infertile offsprings.

In the same way, sex is an abstraction we place on our world. It works in most cases with a few errors. Incorrectly classifying a testosterone immune man as a woman, failing to classify someone born intersexed, failing to differ the XX from the XXX or the XY from the XYY, and sometimes failing to account for cases where the brain might not match the phenotype.

Sticking to our abstractions even in these cases is as I'll advised as sticking to programming abstractions when they leak, if not even more so.

(Bonus round: are there X and Y chromosomes or are those an abstraction as well?)

</comment><comment><USER13> In the legal system, what is the relevance of one's sex? Are there laws that apply to a specific sex, or apply differently based on the person's sex?

</comment><comment><USER14> It's okay guys just set it to a nullable bool and you'll be alright.

</comment><comment><USER15> Honest question: how is a man who thinks he is a woman different from an anorexic who thinks he is fat?

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't say this in a mean-spirited way whatsoever, but your sex is whatever sex you were born with. There is nothing complicated about that fact. With rare exception, a person comes into the world as a male or female.

<comment><USER17> First off, it's likely that "sex" is much harder to define than you'd think. Human genitals all develop from the same proto-bits, creating more of a spectrum of configurations than a stark "clearly this one" or "clearly that one" binary. And chromosomes are not super useful either; just taking stats for two conditions off the top of my head, there are probably at least 1.75 million people walking around who are genitally "male" but chromosomally "female" \-- the difficulty of detection (you have to literally look at someone's DNA) masks a lot of that stuff, and probably it's even more common than we currently estimate.

Second, "sex" in legal terms (for identity documents, etc.) is rarely necessarily tied to genitals or chromosomes, and more often is tied to a set of expectations about how the designated person will appear or behave. So even though the legal system uses "sex", what they're really describing is "gender".

<comment><USER8> >Second, "sex" in legal terms (for identity documents, etc.) is rarely necessarily tied to genitals or chromosomes, and more often is tied to a set of expectations about how the designated person will appear or behave. So even though the legal system uses "sex", what they're really describing is "gender".

Really? I would say genitals as a heuristic for your legal status is probably extremely accurate.

Are you denying that humans are sexually dimorphic?

<comment><USER18> The thing about "heuristics" in this case is that it's a fifty-cent word for "generalizations" and generalizations are almost universally insufficient. Especially when it comes to a legal system.

<comment><USER8> What regarding the "generalization" of sexual dimorphism causes legal issues, in your estimation?

<comment><USER18> The Olympics actually gave up on sex testing once (not sure if they started again or not) because it turns out trying to lump people into two categories is an exercise nonsensical exclusion. Also both historically and currently there have been various category beyond "two" that have had legal distinctions.

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

And of course we've got shit going on right now in the USA like [http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-north-carolina- bathrooms...](http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-north-carolina- bathrooms-20160601-snap-story.html) where that sexual dimorphism (thanks in some cases to modern science and in some cases to the the non-binary nature of human genetics) where that "di"-morphism (morphism meaning shape or appearance) directly contradicts the theoretical intent of some law or another.

<comment><USER8> An exercise in nonsensical exclusion? Men taking testosterone blockers still have more testosterone than women at the third standard deviation. There are skeletal differences in men that create an advantage in a number of high- impact sports.

"Third gender" is bullshit precisely because it tries to create a preexisting dichotomy that doesn't exist. I'm not a masculine caricature. My wife is not a feminine caricature. The people you meet day to day aren't walking gendered cliches.

<comment><USER18> You wanted examples where genitals where an insufficient distinction for the legal system? You're free to argue about why they were insufficient or whether they should be/have-been sufficient but there they are.

<comment><USER8> Mmm. I moved the goalposts in my second reply to 'where sexual dimorphism is insufficient'. Sorry if that created confusion.

I still maintain that genitalia are a very good heuristic for determining someone's sex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How do we know our society manages to function well?

When I look at organisms, it's clear that there is a general trend, the larger the animal is, the more its life seems to be in "slow motion" compared to smaller ones. Its heartbeat, it's lifespan, it's reaction times, everything.

If this is generally true, then societies have lifespans measured in millennia. It's in an even higher degree of "slow motion".

That you look at it and think that it "functions well" because it hasn't fallen apart in 3 years is like a veterinarian examining an elephant just injured and 2 seconds later declaring "it's not dead yet".

Change for change's sake, imposed by angsty college-aged kids upset that all the worthy causes were fought-and-won decades ago.

<comment><USER20> > Change for change's sake, imposed by angsty college-aged kids upset that all > the worthy causes were fought-and-won decades ago.

Hardly. I'm a 90's kid and I already amazed by how far we've come. In the mid-90's, only about half the country approved of interracial marriage. The "liberal" position on LGBT rights was "don't ask, don't tell." Marital rape was still legal in a couple of states.

And there is so much left to do! E.g. Gay marriage is legal now everywhere in the U.S., but it'll be awhile before a church refusing to perform a same-sex marriage is regarded as aberrational as a church refusing to perform an interracial marriage would be seen today.

<comment><USER9> > The "liberal" position on LGBT rights was "don't ask, don't tell."

No, it wasn't. It was the _Clinton Administration_ policy on LGB (but not actually T, which the policy didn't recognize _at all_ , though this obviously had impacts on bi- and _hetero_ -sexual transgender individuals in addition to the other specific issues they faced as transgender individuals) conditions of service in the military, which that administration took after being elected on a promise of taking the _actual_ liberal position in that domain, which was full acceptance without qualification.

<comment><USER20> I know what DADT was; I was taking a little poetic license. Clinton represented the mainstream-left party, and signed both DADT and DOMA. In the 1990's, even the mainstream-left wasn't willing to throw its weight behind LGBT rights.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Macbook Pro Alternatives - <AUTHOR> After all of the issues I've had[1] with my 2-yo Macbook Pro, I'm strongly considering buying a different brand laptop for the first time in nearly a decade so I'm wondering what recommendations HN has regarding comparable laptops.<p>My needs are fairly straightforward:<p>* linux support<p>* high dpi screen<p>* good build quality<p>* good keyboard<p>* good trackpad<p>[1]: https://twitter.com/bogdanp/status/1099974380656959488 <comment><USER2> I have a brand new model 15-inch MBP. I have been a long time Apple fan (Since the early 90's). It isn't doing much right now :-(

For my day to day work I am actually using a Lenovo Thinkpad L460. Ubuntu 18, 2tb SSD, 32gb RAM. Everything works, even the dock.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/laptops/spectre-355002-- 1](https://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/laptops/spectre-355002--1)

I sold my MacBook pro and got this.</comment>


Augmented Intelligence – a human-machine marriage - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@craftworks/augmented-intelligence-59fadda461d2 <comment><USER2> What I really like about this article is the realistic approach to implement artificial intelligence into industrial areas.

By augmenting machine operators with AI and how it works, humans will gain more trust and are able to better understand AI.

This is a much better way than confronting them with black box models and convincing them to do what the bot says.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, it's always refreshing to see a bit of realism in the hype around AI.</comment></comment>


What are the options to get fantasy sports data for legal commercial use? - <AUTHOR>

Any options other than scraping or using expensive stats providers? They would need to be API accessible and legal for commercial use. <comment><USER2> Need to specify the sport you're looking for, but it's a pretty mature industry at this point with people who've gotten there a lot sooner than this and ultimately, if you want to make it a business, requires a lot of legwork and frankly...to what aim?

It's not impossible, just a lot more lucrative to monetize and provide.</comment>


Copy-on-write B-tree finally beaten. - <AUTHOR> http://tm.durusau.net/?p=9346 <comment><USER4> I did not read the paper yet, but COW btrees are interesting for practical reasons since it is possible to update the tree just writing in append-only mode, that is nearly the only way to avoid fsync (or alike) but still avoiding trivial corruptions (the new root node is always written at the end of the update). Otherwise you either use fsync as a write barrier or live with the problem that from the OS to the disk itself writes reordering can corrupt very easily your data structure in the event of a crash.

However I think that the real problem here is not at the algorithmic level, but at OS API level: just a provocation, don't you think that in the era of SSD drives where seeks are cheap is strange we resort to append only data structures?

<comment><USER5> You raise a good point w.r.t. SSD drives, but the reality is that even if most computers being manufactured today included a solid state drive, the vast majority of consumers are using drives with moving parts. It will be at least a few more generations of hardware before OS-level developers will be able to focus specifically on the features of solid state drives when designing the filesystem and main OS APIs.

That said, there is room for someone to develop a filesystem API designed with solid state in mind, or even an entire OS, but I don't know if there would be enough of a market to make that development worthwhile.

Is there Anything about SSDs that interests you, from the perspective of the future of Redis?

<comment><USER6> > That said, there is room for someone to develop a filesystem API designed > with solid state in mind...

What about the Journalling Flash Filesystem? It's been around for quite some time.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFFS2>

<comment><USER5> Someone more knowledgable might want to correct me here, but I think JFFS2 arrived a little too early; the performance gains are not enormous and it suffers from too many disadvantages (namely performance with small blocks and apparently determining free space??).

LogFS is yet another file system designed for larger solid state drives (on the order of gigabytes instead of megabytes), and seems to be a step in the right direction. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LogFS>

<comment><USER6> > LogFS stores the inode tree on the drive; JFFS2 does not, which requires it > to scan the entire drive at mount and cache the entire tree in RAM. For > larger drives, the scan can take tens of seconds and the tree can take a > significant amount of main memory.

Interesting. I've only used JFFS2 on embedded systems like OpenWRT routers, where you wouldn't see the large drive penalty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Blog Spam. Actual link: <http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1103/1103.4282v2.pdf>

<comment><USER8> Right, but the blog post does give a second reference.

I prefer giving the Arxiv abstract list, which always links to the current version of the PDF.

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4282>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This sounds, in many ways, very similar to the data structure underlying Google's Bigtable (<http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html>) and its descendants. Multi-version key/value store, data organized into a hierarchy of generations, each generation stored in large linear chunks, Bloom filters to minimize the number of generations consulted for a single-key fetch... it would be interesting to see a direct comparison, too bad the authors didn't mention Bigtable in their analysis of previous work.

I also wish the paper spelled out the data structures and algorithms in more detail. I did a little searching but couldn't find more information anywhere. Has anyone found a more complete writeup?

<comment><USER10> It's somewhat similar in that BigTable (and Cassandra) perform writes as sequential I/O by writing to arrays (for stratified b-tree) or to SSTables (for Cassandra) and then merge them together using more sequential I/O. This is the not-so-secret-sauce that makes inserts stay fast compared to vanilla b-trees.

However stratified b-trees bring some algorithmic rigor to the merging process of the arrays that provides guarantees on the search time.

The authors do indeed provide some comparison with Cassandra which should answer your question - [http://www.acunu.com/2011/03/cassandra-under-heavy- write-loa...](http://www.acunu.com/2011/03/cassandra-under-heavy-write-load- part-i/) [http://www.acunu.com/2011/03/cassandra-under-heavy-write- loa...](http://www.acunu.com/2011/03/cassandra-under-heavy-write-load-part- ii/)

Summary: 1) Single key read performance for Cassandra depends somewhat on when the last compaction was done (Bloom filters help here but even just a couple of false positives per query eats random I/O. The less SSTables there are the less random I/O) so write spikes create poor read performance and 2) Bloom filters don't work for range queries so they tank in Cassandra in general. Stratified b-trees don't need bloom filters and performs better and with more consistency in both cases.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the links. The statistics on latency distribution are quite impressive, to say the least.

Why do you say that stratified b-trees don't need Bloom filters? Yes, the improved merging discipline reduces the number of arrays to read, but presumably there is often >1 array, which is sufficient to make Bloom filters desirable. Even if you only have two arrays, doubling the number of random I/Os per key lookup is easily enough of a penalty to make Bloom filters worthwhile. The paper itself seems to indicate that Bloom filters are used:

"In the simplest construction, we embed into each array a B-tree and maintain a Bloom filter on the set of keys in each array. A lookup for version v involves querying the Bloom filter for each array tagged with version v, then performing a B-tree walk on those arrays matching the filter."

<comment><USER10> The paper doesn't say so I am making some assumptions here but if you had a bloom filter per array then as these doubling arrays get really big all the bloom filter would tell you is that the target entry is probably contained in this giant array. A false positive in the bloom filter would cause a pretty significant amount of work.

The stratified b-trees use forward pointers to help target the search in the next array down the tree. Like regular b-trees the smaller root arrays will likely be cached in memory so the the number of random I/O's will be small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Acunu (<http://acunu.com>) are a UK startup and have an implementation of Cassandra, it supports versions presumably based on this.

<comment><USER12> Correct, here's a post by one of the paper authors: <http://www.acunu.com/2011/03/big-dictionaries-ii-versioning/>

<comment><USER13> this is actually very exciting. I decided to explore the site a little and found this quote:

"most ambitious storage project undertaken since ZFS" (<http://www.acunu.com/2011/03/why-is-acunu-in-kernel/>)

it looks like they put a key/value store in the kernel and they came up with a new userspace API for it. i can see also see how getting something like this into the mainline kernel is going to be a big uphill battle, but it might actually be a really big win.

<comment><USER14> Part of my job is working on a in-kernel key/value store for a data center network operating system. The problem it is the context switching between user and kernel space kills your performance if you're targeting sub-millisecond read/writes. That may not matter for something like acunu when you factor in network latency but when you're using the database as part of the packet path it does. In addition, under a high system load your user space process has a high likelihood of getting scheduled out at the ioctl call which makes latency even worse. Although being in the kernel allows you a little leeway in terms durability constraints and all that because if you screw up the entire system comes crashing down anyway.

It will never be in the mainline kernel. Also, although I haven't actually looked at what they did yet, I assume they're just loading a regular old kernel module instead of actually really messing with a lot of the mainline code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are Fractal Tree's better than B-Trees? Apparently so, as used by a database addon to MySQL: [http://tokutek.com/2010/11/avoiding-fragmentation-with- fract...](http://tokutek.com/2010/11/avoiding-fragmentation-with-fractal- trees/)

<comment><USER10> These Stratified B-trees are basically multi-versioned variations of Fractal Trees (aka Cache-oblivious streaming B-trees). This paper even references the tokutek teams paper - <http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~bender/newpub/BenderFaFi07.pdf>.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Tokutek guys implemented something very similar to this Stratified B-tree to implement MVCC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> edited correct link to the actual paper <http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1103/1103.4282v2.pdf>

<comment><USER17> If we're replacing blog links with arXiv abstract links, note that there are actually two papers linked, both interesting.

"Stratified B-trees and versioning dictionaries" <http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.4282> This is actually the newer paper, and presents the "Stratified B-Tree" data structure itself. It also explicitly mentions SSDs and appending, by the way.

"Optimal query/update tradeoffs in versioned dictionaries" <http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.2566> This is a longer and more, shall I say, academic paper. It appears to be incompletely finished, though, because it has a TODO, and also a marginal FIXME.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for that. The second paper you reference contains more details of the data structure. I have submitted an updated version of the second paper - <USER2> will probably appear on arxiv in 2 days. We have a much improved version of it, though, which I hope to post sometime next week.

For more information about append-only B-trees and SSDs, see [http://www.acunu.com/2011/04/log-file-systems-and-ssds- made-...](http://www.acunu.com/2011/04/log-file-systems-and-ssds-made-for- each-other/)

<comment><USER19> I don't suppose there's a chance of seeing the O'Caml implementation released as well, is there? It's neat to see it being used for what (IMO) is a really underutilized sweet spot for the language.

(That & the fact that a code release is an invaluable road map for anyone looking to follow in your footsteps.)

<comment><USER18> The OCaml implementation is what we use internally to test implementations of complicated new data structures, and as such, it's quite unreadable to anyone else! We will probably talk at CUFP about our experiences of OCaml. It definitely has some upsides, but is not without some fairly major downsides (concurrency, serialization, lack of consistently-named library functions, ...) . As such, we're rewriting our basic data structures in Scala - <USER3> seems like it keeps most of the benefits but without some of the major problems. Now we know how to implement the structures, we might be able to do a clean implementation which can be released!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Since they want to start with an implementation built into kernel libs, I wonder how easy would it be for btrfs to switch... Since the interface is similar, I really hope it's possible.

<comment><USER21> btrfs can't switch the structure is tied into the disk format.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Slides from a recent talk <http://www.acunu.com/2011/04/algorithms-at- cassandra-meetup/>

</comment><comment><USER22> Before even reading the paper, I lazily wonder if any of the techniques used have implications for clojure's persistent vector implementation

<comment><USER23> The challenges faced with on-disk data structures compared to in-memory ones are quite different in some respects, so not necessarily. (e.g. disk seek time isn't uniform, indirection hits you MUCH harder, sectors are much bigger than cache lines, robustness against sudden loss of power is important, etc.).

That said, I can't tell what they're suggesting from a cursory reading, I'll need to spend some time deciphering it. (this one seems to fall into one of those unparseable academic publications where the interesting bits are buried somewhere deep within the text)

<comment><USER19> On the other hand, cache-oblivious algorithms (and upon first skim, the presented data structure is) should play just as nicely at the L1/L2 vs RAM level as they do at the RAM vs disk one, without needing to be specifically tuned or rewritten.

That's the theory, of course. ;)

<comment><USER23> As _danvet_ has hinted at, on-disk data structures don't exist in isolation. You've generally got a CPU and memory system attached to the disk that is orders of magnitude faster[1], so if you can reduce the number of dependent disk I/O operations by increasing the required processing power, that's usually a trade-off you want to take. As an example, linear searches through each 4kiB disk block you read are absolutely acceptable, whereas doing that for an associative data structure in memory is madness.

In any case, having inspected the 2 papers a little more in depth, this data structure is very different from Clojure's in that it holds multiple versions directly.[2] Additionally, it does indeed take all the trade-offs to minimise disk I/O in favour of more computation. I find it unlikely that much insight can be gained from this for in-memory data structures.

[1] you can expect ~10ms latency for spinning disks, ~10-100µs for solid-state drives, ~10ns for memory and ~1ns for the CPU. spinning disk to memory is 6 orders of magnitude, 3-4 OOM for solid-state drives.

[2] In Clojure the MVCC STM is implemented at the _ref_ level, not the collection level. Doing it at the collection level may be possible, but probably not desireable as complexity will go through the roof.

<comment><USER18> In general, I agree - as you'd expect, practical implementations of this structure will naturally deviate quite far from the paper's presentation, and indeed we do make many optimizations for SSDs and rotating disks. But, in theory, disk vs RAM is no different to RAM vs L2. A central trick is the 'stratification' procedure that operates on arrays - that could be helpful elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, anybody know if they're pursuing a patent on this tech? A quick Google Patent search didn't turn up any US results. I ask because this language from the paper sounded patent-y:

"In a more involved version of the construction, elements from higher levels are sampled..."

Reads like "in one embodiment of the invention, ..."</comment>


Programming Android (O'Reilly Labs) - <AUTHOR> http://programming-android.labs.oreilly.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> I really like the Open Feedback Publishing stuff that O'Reilly is doing (I used it for the Django Book and Apprecticeship Patterns). Is there a list of what books are currently in the program? It would be nice to see the list of what books are available or at least what books have been "completed" through this program. I dug around the site for a while and I couldn't seem to find anything.

The best I could do was a Google search for 'labs.oreilly.com' that turned up a bunch of books that I wasn't aware of.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nothing has helped me more with Android than a great Java book (Effective Java.) The rest you can read in the official Android docs or rip apart examples if thats your style. So far this looks like a nice marriage of all of those parts.</comment>


Lego a "better investment than shares and gold" - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/11817380/Lego-a-better-investment-than-shares-and-gold.html <comment><USER2> Every day someone will stand up that's willing to pay huge sums for something that has an intrinsic value that's way lower. Rarity isn't enough, there also needs to be an demand.

The hard part is guessing what people will want (now: legos, old cars) and what people won't want anymore (antique furniture and stamps are dropping in price right now)

In the end it's just gambling.

<comment><USER3> Back in the days my sister enjoyed playing Tetris on the Game Boy. A couple of weeks ago I decided to buy her a Game Boy and Tetris and make it part of this year's Christmas present.

As I am usually not interested in (vintage) gaming I initially thought that game boys should be cheap. Sure, there are many people who'd like to purchase one for nostalgic reasons. But then again, the supply is probably not small.

As it turned out I noticed an interesting, at first sight, paradox pattern: The newer the Game Boy model, the cheaper it was on Ebay. If you think about it it makes perfect sense for the original Game Boy is the most iconic one. Yet it is somewhat counterintuitive that the technically best Game Boy is the cheapest one. [0]

While the classic Game Boy usually ends up at 40-50 €, the Game Boy Advanced tends to cost around 17 € (+/\- 5€). I was lucky and scored a GBA+Tetris DX for 14 €.

[0] That is Game Boy < Game Boy Color < Game Boy Advacend; the SP wasn't that cheap I think.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps it's not demand but supply? I imagine there are probably significantly more GBAs (as the market grew) out there than original gameboys... Especially considering the original is older so fewer are likely functional.

<comment><USER3> Intersting point! I haven't considered that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Had a friend that collected legos and put them all in his basement. Unfortunately, the basement had moisture problems and all his lego boxes got mildewed. Last I was him, he was cleaning them and putting them into a covered trailer. Make sure you have a clean dry place to store them.</comment>


Dungeon Master - <AUTHOR> https://amigalove.com/games.php?game_id=81 <comment><USER2> This was an amazing game. The Amiga's stereo sound gave the dungeon DEPTH. If you heard a monster moving in both speakers but you didn't see it, you better turn around and look behind you! That was the creepiest part of the game for me.</comment>


One man wrote all your next-gen crypto - <AUTHOR> http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2016-March/028824.html? <comment><USER2> The main reason this cites is correct: Bernstein's algorithms are simpler and easier to implement correctly than RSA, DSA, or even AES. They're smaller in code, easier to port, and easier to understand.

Barring major problems with the algorithms, their simplicity also makes them inherently more secure. Complexity is anathema to security-- complex code is hard to audit, hard to understand, and has more "bug surface area." Bernstein himself calls this "boring crypto": the use of simple easy to understand constructions in simple predictable and easily auditable ways.</comment>


Ask HN: Movies that changed your perspective for the better? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> When I was a little kid, I watched _Pirates of Silicon Valley_ (1999) a bajillion times. Great soundtrack – love the _In a Gadda da Vida_ scene –, editing and overall mood. That movie might be the cause for my obsession with all things HN.

Although _No Time_ from _The Guess Who_ still makes me extremely anxious.

</comment><comment><USER3> "The Shawshank Redemption" \- No matter how tough life gets never lose HOPE. Focus !! Plan ahead and keep working towards your Goal.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Castaway_. Reinforces notions of self reliance, practice makes perfect, the need for companionship (whatever the source), determination, and healthy eating habits!

I love the image of Tom Hanks when he's turned into the lean and mean "Islander / Survivor" and is spear fishing for survival. Badass image and I plan to post that image in my "snack cabinet", so I have to look at it every time I'm tempted to snack mindlessly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Star Wars! Spent tons of time happily playing with Star Wars toys as a kid. Definitely made my life better.

</comment><comment><USER6> _Touching the Void_ is the story of Joe Simpson's epic climb on Siula Grande with Simon Yates.

They summited the 20,000+ foot mountain in the Andes, but Joe fell just below the summit and broke his leg. Simon could have climbed down alone to "get help", but he chose to try and get his partner down. I won't give away any more; Joe survived in one of the most epic survival stories ever.

The movie is based on a book, and it's really well done. This story makes me stronger in the mountains, because every time I start to complain about how hard or miserable something is, I realize things could be much, much worse. If I ever do have an epic of my own, I'm pretty sure I'll handle it better for being aware of Joe's story.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" \- Jiro is the John Carmack equivalent of cooking. Fascinating look into the life of someone who is utterly dedicated to his passion and life's work.

"The Aviator" \- How far one can go when one is utterly determined to make things happen despite the obstacles, the naysayers and public ridicule.

</comment><comment><USER8> Big Fish. Imagine how you'll live if you discover the exact moment and circumstances of your eventual death.

<comment><USER9> I liked this movie too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> \- "The Money Masters" by Bill Still, which is about the history of the Federal Reserve.

\- "America: Freedom to Fascism", which goes into the history of the IRS and the Federal Reserve.

These were just incredible, detailed films.

</comment><comment><USER11> What Dreams May Come - After dying in a car crash a man searches the afterlife for his wife.

It's something I think back to when I find myself surrounded by fear of circumstance.

</comment><comment><USER9> The King of California (the fact you can believe in something and not let obstacles get in the way.)

Indie Game: The Movie

The Revenge Of The Electric Car

just to name a few...

<comment><USER12> The King California was great, one of my fav. low-budget movies. It's too bad noone I know has ever heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Man on Wire gave me an amazing "think big, think crazy" feeling.

</comment><comment><USER14> _Monty Python and The Holy Grail_.

</comment><comment><USER15> Baraka</comment>


Ask News.YC: What are your favorite startup-related news feeds? - <AUTHOR>

I would be interested to know about the feeds to which the rest of News.YC subscribes. <comment><USER2> I get the e-mails from the NFIB and I subscribe to A VC.

</comment><comment><USER3> pmarca, Venture Hacks, and Guy Kawasaki's blog are among my (many) favorites.

</comment><comment><USER4> Techcrunch.

<comment><USER5> whs

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is it.</comment>


Crowdfunding for Crypto Currencies - <AUTHOR> http://koinify.com/

<comment><USER2> It looks like their basing their platform Counterparty, and focusing on DApps and smart contracts. Pretty cool idea. Hopefully they don't turn into a bait and switch like other platforms who have tried to do this have done. They don't mention anything about equity though - seems they're taking the legal route....I like.</comment>


Standard C++20 Modules support with MSVC in Visual Studio 2019 version 16.8 - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/standard-c20-modules-support-with-msvc-in-visual-studio-2019-version-16-8 <comment><USER2> This is huge milestone for C++! Congrats to the team who have been adding this and implementing it over the last few years.</comment>


Ask HN: Any startups offering online software engineering apprenticeships? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Interesting idea! Of course there are initiatives such as Google Summer of Code, but I haven't heard yet of a startup that has remote internships. Although it would make sense if the whole company is remote.</comment>


Ask YC: Would you fund an adult themed start up? - <AUTHOR> First a preamble - I know and realize the history for big exits with these types of enterprises is notoriously bad and usually I think that is a mismanagement issue related to the senior leaders in these companies. But my question for HN would be - would you consider funding a adult themed start up for the YC program, and is there a line which you wouldn't cross?
Three categories of adult themed I might be thinking of:
"Maxim" style, where it's targetted at males, but doesn't have nudity.
"Playboy" style, which is similar to "Maxim" style but does have nudity.
"Porntube" style which is full on pornography.
Personally I think there is big potential in the disjointed and mostly pirated adult themed sites of today. Three benefits I see of this business could be:
- easy(easier) to gain traction, several sites I know which launched in the 2008-2009 time frame have reached top 100 sites globally. - lack of innovation in this space, mostly pirated content and taking an existing paradigm and switching it to adult themed (playboy does an online version of their magazine, various you tube copy cats) - large profit potential, I know several low(er) traffic sites which are making plenty off ads, there is an IPO potential here I'm sure
Long story short, I have several ideas for adult themed "hacks" which could be big.
But the fact reminds I know of no YC funded adult themed web sites and am not sure the YC program would support such a thing.
I posted this to HN also to generate some hopefully insightful discussion. <comment><USER2> I've by coincidence and lack of foresight become the owner of a site that has an adult component, even though that was not what we had in mind when we started out.

We've had contact with VCs and some very large companies that we have partnered with, and invariably the one thing that floats to the top is brand damage.

This is the big fear of any large player, as soon as there is even the remotest risk of that you have a problem.

That pretty much rules out your second and third option, leaving the first.

And YC being a tech oriented investor rather than a media company I figure that that would not be their cup of tea either, but in the end the best way to find out is to ask Paul Graham directly or to simply apply.

My guess is you'll be turned down, but that's worth very little, it's just a guess. Based on the companies that they've invested in in the past and what I know about the people behind YC.

The first is something that you'd have to spend quite a bit of time and money on mocking up to the point where you can show a potential investor what you're planning to do.

The people you'd pitch to would probably be established players in the market that are looking at expanding their offering without taking on more employees.

Personally, I'd rather get _out_ than in to such a line of business, the website that I run with the 'adult component' has been quietly on the market for years but so far no takers.

<comment><USER3> Then is there is an opportunity for adult-themed angel fund? Brand damage would be a non-issue for such a niche fund.

(A fund on lines of fbFund or iPhone apps fund.)

<comment><USER2> I just posted a link to something like that below, but I think they went under, there are some rumors of fraud.

I don't think there is really room for such a fund, simply because the competition is so fierce that you would have to do 100's or more investments to get one that gives you a good ROI. The successful ones can bootstrap, the others die and try again.

One of the more interesting observations that I read on the adult market somewhere (I can't find where, sorry) is that the adult and the gaming industry are the only two 'mature' internet industries, in the sense that the cards have been dealt and new entrants have a very hard time getting traction.

That alone would be a reason to make an investor very skittish.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Both those industries are decent ones to be in if you want to make a secure income without shooting for the stars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You left out a critical fourth category: the world's oldest profession.

* This is LEGAL just about everywhere other than the US (including Australia and the UK).

* The market size is huge

* People will pay serious cash money, unlike online porn

* Far less competition and tech in the business (see myredbook, cityvibe, and erosguide for the state of the art)

* Given the dogfooding imperative, recruiting lonely male programmers would probably be very easy

I say all this only half tongue in cheek. With a little bit of technology you could become the world's biggest pimp.

<comment><USER6> > including Australia and the UK

Prostitution is legal. Pimping is not. (at least here in the UK).

This is standard across large parts of Europe (with a few obvious exceptions; Holland, Germany etc.)

<comment><USER7> /me looks out the window at the "massage shop" across the road

<comment><USER6> hehe. Yeh ok (ironically there is one just round the corner from here too!). There are plenty of "escort" websites as well. But it's still illegal.

In terms of a viable business you couldn't _really_ hide it under coy terms like "massage parlor" and "escort services" if you had VC funding :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't go for funding. Porn seems like the sort of thing you can bootstrap yourself. Hell, it seems like the sort of thing that would bootstrap _it_ self. It also seems like the sort of thing that doesn't need a huge amount of attention (set up a simple uploading video server, set some upload caps so you don't get spam, and check back on it once in a while), so you can do it while you work somewhere else.

Dang, this is starting to sound like a not bad idea.

(I'm with vaksel too: remember Betamax? I don't, but I've heard stories that porn didn't choose it, so it died.)

</comment><comment><USER9> In general, this conversation has left technology and gone into philosophy and ethics and some things I think I discussed in that Sociology 110 class I took in college. That's pretty much how all conversations about adult technology go for me too, though, so I understand.

I'm in the adult industry, and it happens. We've approached several VC's, angels, and some other investor folks, and we get a lot of "You want to do what?" or "Did you say 'adult'?"

We get slapped around, yelled at, and cursed, but honestly, we run a clean business. We've never had a chargeback in our 6 months with nearly 4,000 transactions. We receive a letter of praise on amazing customer service regularly, and with the exception of an eBay sale to Brazil, we've never had a complaint.

No matter, there's no explaining it. Most VC's and angels run away, for they have some vision of lawsuits and chargebacks, but that aint the way it works these days. Sure, we're shunned, but honestly, its a hell of a lot of fun, and we're not doing too bad.

So in my opinion, bootstrap it, e-mail me, or that guy who has unlimited risk allowance, and run with it. But be prepared for the fury of porn customers who will try to pretend they don't even know what exactly porn is.

</comment><comment><USER10> You're going to face a lot of problems, mostly cultural ones.

Porn sites are like the "your parents have sex" realization in Internet business terms. We all know it's there and it happens, but we like to put our fingers in our ears over it. Even though most of us here are surely regular purveyors of pornography, not many people of a certain class/culture or over a certain age want to admit it or acknowledge they like porn. This love/hate relationship makes it easy to get traffic but hard to succeed (whether financially or to just get funding).

</comment><comment><USER11> the answer is no.

p.s. "lack of innovation in this space"...I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. From what I understand porn has been driving innovation for a lot of things

<comment><USER2> > From what I understand porn has been driving innovation for a lot of things

Absolutely. First credit card payments, first (live) video delivery, first affiliate systems and so on.

<comment><USER12> is that still the case? I heard how porn drives innovation, but I'm not sure I've seen too many examples in the last 4/5 years.

<comment><USER2> Hard to tell without being hip-deep in that world, but the number of players makes it an ultra-competitive market, possibly the most competitive segment of all online business.

And that includes gambling / gaming and so on.

Right now I think the major players in the market have all gone through several boom-bust cycles, and are concentrating on billing and other financials.

Some of the larger ones own their own IPSPs and are facilitating payments for third parties, ironically most of them non-adult. This is to manage the charge-back rates, because historically large adult companies have been literally blown up by taking their banks down.

I used to be fairly close to people working in the adult business, so my knowledge is at least a few years old, the innovation right now is centered more around business models, finance, diversification and other non-technical items.

I think that is in part because all the basic components to run an online business are now well understood and there are plenty of ways to deliver media.

edit: maybe mobile devices will really create a shift, but from what I've seen so far it will be an incremental thing rather than something that just hits one year and will leave the way we interact with online resources unrecognizable from the year before.

I doubt if there will be any major technological development, inside or outside porn until we hit something like 'the street' from Stephensons novels.

<comment><USER9> The only real development I know of going on in the porn industry right now is 3D. They're all on it. I'm not sure who's doing what with what technology, but I'd look out for some very Idiocracy style pornography in the near future.

[note: I'm in the adult industry, as many of you found out tonight here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193169> ]

<comment><USER2> Ah yes, good point, 3D would be a logical next step.

I completely overlooked that :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used to work at a content publisher with an adult focus that took in a significant amount of VC money from credible investors. It's true that many VCs will shy away from adult but not for the reasons you might think.

Whether or not YC will back your "hack" should be secondary to whether or not you can create a credible business. Youporn was a "hack" created by 2 guys and is now despised by the rest of the industry and is largey credited as letting pandora out of the box. They're also not rolling in cash. If you have a solution to "solve" the current situation adult publishers face then you've got something of real value.

The adult industry is in an awful state due to the rise of free sites and talent brain drain over the years. That makes for a perfect environment for companies to try and innovate in this sector and do what Apple did for music - but you've got to understand the business before you try to fix it. And being a consumer of the product is a lot different than creating a business out of it.

</comment><comment><USER14> This doesn't answer the question about YC, but adult web startup Zivity started with real Silicon Valley VCs behind them. It looks like that relationship didn't last though.

[http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/amicable- spli...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/amicable-split-for- zivity-and-vc-investors/19109225/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/23/zivity-splits-employees- exe...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/07/23/zivity-splits-employees-execs- venture-funding-into-two-companies/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I have also thought about this as well as many other people I guess: A porn site or Netflix-like company but run by techie people, not industry insiders, a Google-like no-nonsense approach if you will. Apart from the investor killer aspect (as well as the social stigma: e.g. how many women can accept that their fiancee/husband are the owner of a porn startup) that most people point out there are other problems: 1\. Customers are indiscriminate: There are many well photographed sites but how many of your prospective customers are willing to shell out monthly fees when bad quality content also "does the trick". 2\. Service providers may be jumpy. You might have difficulty using some of the channels that are common to early startups, e.g. Amazon's S3 once prohibited "obscene" content; they now have:

11.6.3. ensuring that any materials posted on your site or within your Application are not illegal and do not promote illegal activities, including without limitation any activities that might be libelous or defamatory or otherwise malicious, illegal or harmful to any person or entity, or discriminatory based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age;

What if someone at Amazon decides that some of your content falls into this category and yanks it off. Remember how quickly Apple booted off iPhone apps with such content.

I think the best way to go about this is: (1) Go after a niche area to reduce the huge amount of competition, e.g. "porn for women" and (2) partner with a content provider so you don't get into the intricacies of producing content. I thought the Fyre Box ([http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-01-10-po...](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/2008-01-10-porn- set-top-box_N.htm) had an excellent idea (streaming movies with detailed search functionality) but they have disappeared.

</comment><comment><USER16> I doubt YC would fund an adult site, but who knows?

I'm not categorically against it though. For one thing, porn is a proven money maker, and as evidenced here at least some of your potential competition won't touch it.

Regarding the 3 styles, I think #3 (hardcore) is the only one that would work as a startup. To be blunt, the less hardcore the porn the prettier the models have to be, and you can't afford Maxim or Playboy tier models.

<comment><USER17> I think if you're producing the content yourself you're doing it wrong. There's a lot you can do in distribution and marketing without ever having to photograph a single naked woman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The investors I've heard speak on the subject have pointed out the unlikelihood of an exit, though that has very recently (as in the last five years) begun to change, though very slowly. Since VCs and angels in the valley need an exit to make money, they don't invest in porn. Given that we can count the number of really good exits for porn companies on one hand, and have fingers left over, I think it'll be a while before current tech investors start falling over themselves to get in on the trend.

I don't think ethics, brand damage, or any other factor would keep investors out of the field if they thought they'd make a lot of money on a porn investment. Thus, I think investors still doubt the ability of most porn companies to have an exit. It doesn't mean porn companies aren't or won't make money, possibly even a lot of money, just that they probably won't do it in a way that leads to the investors making a lot of money.

<comment><USER19> That merely requires a different pattern of investment. There is a ton of easy money in porn. One wouldn't have to have a big exit i.e. acquistion or IPO to make a lot of cash as an investor in such a business, just a pattern where you collect a certain percentage of the revenue stream for x years.

<comment><USER18> I think you overestimate the ease of making money in porn. It is a highly competitive space.

But, yes, there could be other ways to structure deals that don't require an exit to make everyone happy. But most current high tech investors don't invest that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This question has come up before, and IIRC the answer was "no, because VCs don't want to touch porn sites".

<comment><USER2> Hm, my earlier reply to you seems to have vanished.

There was this thing called 'adultvest', but I think they've died.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultvest>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The adult industry seems pretty good, anywhere you have people acting economically irrational is an opportunity to make money.

<comment><USER2> It is true that there is lots of money going around in that world but the pie has to be divided by a _very_ large number of parties, who are very adept at analyzing and copying each others ideas and business models.

To gain and keep an edge in that world is very hard work.

<comment><USER21> But that's even more true of the Internet at large where queasiness isn't preventing throngs of people from competing.

<comment><USER2> I think you have that backwards.

Queasiness isn't preventing throngs of people from competing, the amount of $ going around in porn is what is encouraging lots of people to compete.

The word 'sex' is present (according to google) 574 million times, and is probably the one of the heaviest SEOd keywords on the net outside of some medical bits & pieces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hey smakz, I'd be interested in getting in touch with you (see email in profile). I might have some things you'd be interested in.

</comment><comment><USER23> No

<comment><USER23> Sorry, I forgot myself and just said 'No' rather than 'No blah blah blah.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> No, I wouldn't. I believe that peddling pornography is the same as peddling drugs -- both are addictive, dangerous substances that do great harm to families. No matter how much easy money is in it (and there's a lot), I would keep my name and any money I had as far away from it as possible.

<comment><USER24> Woah, people! Down votes on HN comments are only supposed to be used for malicious or spammy comments.

He's expressed a valid opinion. Don't downvote.

<comment><USER25> Not really. He made broad, sweeping and unreasonable assertions, incorrect assumptions and no one has any real reason to believe anything written up there.

It was a personal opinion that many disagree with.

<comment><USER19> >Not really. He made broad, sweeping and unreasonable assertions, incorrect assumptions and no one has any real reason to believe anything written up there.

I shouldn't have to _convince_ you to be respected. I have other things to do with my life than gather together a compendium of research on porn. The truth is out there for all to see. You can find it yourself if you want to. The thing is not malicious, it's just an alternative opinion. I don't stand in your way, you are free to live your life as you like. If I condemn a thing you want to think is good, you don't need to take personal offense, just politely disagree and let's all be on our ways.

EDIT: I'm truly curious to see this one get downvotes. Do you guys really want people to call you out on every opposing opinion and make you run to and fro gathering a corpus of data, anecdotes, and other evidence to support every claim you make? I just don't have the time for it, and I don't have the interest because I know that I won't be changing any minds here, it'll just get written off with, "Well that psychologist/victim/whatever is a religionist so obviously he's backward", etc. Be sensible here, please.

<comment><USER6> I didnt vote but I dont like to see downvoting go unreplied - so here goes.

> I shouldn't have to convince you to be respected.

Here, like anywhere really, respect is definitely earned. To make a broad statement like you did without supporting argument you are going to need "respect" for your experience in the field.

For example Tptacek can make pretty broad statements about cryptography/security, Patio11 about business/startup etc. etc. without much clarification because we know their expertise is supporting the statement.

Yourself we know nothing about; except you consider pornography a problem on a level with drug abuse. Which is definitely not going to put your comment on a good footing to start off with. It sounds personal - and while we can respect you feel strongly with it the way it was presented is discouraged.

> If I condemn a thing you want to think is good, you don't need to take > personal offense, just politely disagree and let's all be on our ways.

There are some problems here. Firstly the main problem downvoters will have had is how sweeping your statement was with no supporting evidence. You didnt even add "In my opinion".... presenting a theory without evidence is frowned on here :)

Secondly the statement is worded in a way that suggests either your trying to cause offence or trying to brand people who might think porn is ok (probably the majority actually) as bad/imoral/wrong/ destroying their families.

I hope that helps :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Subtitles Done Automatically - <AUTHOR> https://www.happyscribe.co/subtitle-generator <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

For the last months, we've been working on a product that generates subtitles automatically from a video file, and an online editor that allows you to edit them.

How it works: 1\. Upload a video file 2\. Speech-to-text recognition is used to automatically generate the text 3\. We use an algorithm to create the subtitles automatically as well. 4\. User arrives on editor where she can preview the results, edit them, export or burn subtitles into video.

We're working now on a way to allow the users to tune the parameters of the Subtitle Algorithm to change things like CPS, CPL etc...

We're a small bootstrapped startup based in Barcelona and we'd love any feedback. What do you think? Any observations?

Thanks!</comment>


The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/ <comment><USER2> The article was very interesting, and I know this isn't the main point of the article, but this is an interesting fact I like to share-

> "Fish generally ... are in a certain part of the phylogenetic tree."

Fish are actually paraphyletic[0], meaning they are in multiple "parts" of the tree of life. To try to use fish as a phylogenetic term is useless because the clade that contains everything we call fish also includes reptiles, birds, and humans. Try explaining that to King Solomon...

[0] [http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss1/phyly.html](http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/glossary/gloss1/phyly.html)

<comment><USER3> Cheers to you and Scott! "Whales are not fish" annoys me more than a true statement really should.

I think it's because the characters in Moby Dick sometime whales fish. It's not as if those guys were ignorant. They knew perfectly well what whales are -- more viscerally (!) then you or I could. And if they chose to call them fish, well perhaps they had good reasons.

<comment><USER4> IIRC, Moby Dick has an entire chapter where the narrator debates whether or not whales are fish, coming down on the "yes they're fish" side for largely the same reasons as this article's Solomon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just on the topic of silliest athiest argument, the silliest _theist_ argument I've heard is that since Bananas are the perfect size and shape for the human hand they must have been designed by God for humans. Never mind the fact that actual natural bananas are nothing like that they're more akin to a small yellow pomegranite. Or that in some countries (Australia in my experience) you can get Bananas the size of cucumbers. Or even, that all commercial bananas are actually cloned (by way of transplanted cuttings) from a single Banana, which was probably selected "by man" based on various aesthetic, and practical parameters such as "it fitting perfectly in the hand".

<comment><USER6> > _Just on the topic of silliest athiest argument, the silliest theist > argument I 've heard is that since Bananas are the perfect size and shape > for the human hand they must have been designed by God for humans. Never > mind the fact that actual natural bananas are nothing like that they're more > akin to a small yellow pomegranite._

That's not a real counter-argument. God, in all his wisdom, guided humans to breed the perfect-sized bananas we have today. So what the "natural bananas" are is irrelevant.

<comment><USER7> Well, the original argument wasn't just "according to our beliefs, God was involved in this"; it's implying that bananas would be unlikely to be the perfect size and shape for humans by chance, i.e. unless they were designed for that purpose. Which means there has to be a designer (who cared about humans), which for natural phenomena would have to be God, or at least some sort of god. That is, if you exclude evolution and other natural optimization processes; those are known to be able to simulate the appearance of intelligent design, but in theory could be excluded if there weren't a plausible mechanism for something to have evolved in response to humans, e.g. because they haven't been around for that long in geological terms. (Except that plenty of other animals with opposable fingers have existed for longer, but – details. I'm not saying the argument would actually be valid, even if bananas' current appearance were entirely natural.)

On the other hand, artificial breeding provides an explanation that doesn't require God in any way, so it does invalidate the argument. The only way to salvage it is to say that God is responsible for it being _possible_ to breed bananas into such a form, but that's obviously much weaker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Defining terms is important, but defining sets much less so. Arguments about "is X a Y?" often have little to no value in the abstract. There are exceptions, but these are when the definitions are the most precise and can be evaluated objectively. E.g., a square is a (type of) rectangle and therefore its area is length * width. As the article shows, "is a whale a fish" has no value in the abstract. It depends on if you want to hunt it or know about its evolutionary path.

Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? It depends on if you are a chef or a botanist. The botanists have the more rigorous definition, but I wouldn't call the chefs wrong. What about a pumpkin? Is a strawberry a berry? ([https://imgur.com/gallery/pfEnXNT](https://imgur.com/gallery/pfEnXNT))

You probably saw the memes go around a while back about what is a sandwich, according to D&D alignments. Good for a laugh and a debate. But let's say you settle the question "is a hotdog a sandwich?" Now what? What did you get from that effort? It doesn't tell you anything about a hotdog that you didn't already know.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a great essay but you get to the same place from here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation)

</comment><comment><USER10> This was the article that got me hooked on Scott's writings. The other Scott (Aaronson) has a good blog too and they occasionally reference each other.

There is a response to this article titled "The Categories were made for Man to make Predictions" which you can find with your favourite search engine. I'm not saying I agree with everything in the response, but if you're the kind of person who likes Scott Alexander then you might also enjoy reading opposing points of view without immediately wanting to pick up a pitchfork.

</comment><comment><USER11> I believe that this essay is an example of the practical application of the Principle of Charity[0]. This is laudable as it is practically a prerequisite that at least one side does this in a useful debate.

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

<comment><USER5> Perhaps also pertinent on these lines is the principle of _" Unconditional Positive Regard"_ [0] it is easy to infer the worst possible motives when somebody does something bad, but it can be helpful to assume that they did in fact mean well, when attempting to step into their shoes.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is an excellent article and has actually helped me to redraw my own boundaries with regards to the matter of substance that it covers. I have one nagging boundary issue that remains however and that is with regards to where the boundary be drawn when applying such an effective therapy to minors.

</comment><comment><USER12> _Theory is a useful servant but a bad master, liable to produce orthodox defenders of every variety of the faith. We ought always to set light to theory and be on the look-out for ways of improving it_

\- Harry Guntrip (attributed)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the best articles I've read on here.

<comment><USER14> If you enjoyed this article, there's probably quite a few more on Slate Star Codex you'd find interesting! I personally rather enjoyed (and recommend) "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" [0] for the insight, "...And I Show You How Deep The Hole Goes" [1] for the hilarity, and "All In All, Another Brick In The Motte" [2] as an interesting introduction to a debate style I think we've all seen at some point but not been able to describe properly.

[0] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate- anythin...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything- except-the-outgroup/)

[1] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how- dee...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the- rabbit-hole-goes/)

[2] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another- bri...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the- motte/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is why I find movements like HBD so disgusting, despite their "scientific" origins. They start with a conclusion, the justification of race, and seek evidence to prove it. Of course, they find such evidence. Anyone looking to prove any conclusion can find evidence - even scientifically strong evidence. Heck, even psychics and supernaturalists have scientific evidence on their side! [1]

No matter the evidence though -- Categories aren't facts.

> _"If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" And the answer: > "Four – because a tail isn't a leg regardless of what you call it."_

Categories are useful _caches_ of information. We define "limbs involved in the movement of the center of mass of a body" as _legs_ because the concept is useful as a cached "leg". If the concept stops being valuable, we will eventually purge it from the cache. The danger lies in mistaking the cached concept for the original value. [2] Race doesn't predict anything; nowadays, the cached value, crime/success/happiness, is substituted for race, and the results are a reinforcing cycle. [3]

More relevant to HN, categories are why "adversarial" effects on many neural networks are so strong. NNs are training to categorize to exacting strategies - strategies not at all in mind by their creators. The apocryphal tank NN meme - that dataset bias led algorithms to detecting sunny skies instead of tanks -- comes to mind. [4] The story is made up, the moral somewhat muddled in the telling, but the surprise survives. What we reward and what we desire are separate things, and in the difference, the whole world lies.

[1]: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is- ou...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-group-is-out-of- control/)

[2]: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/02/causal-models-at- work/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/02/causal-models-at-work/)

[3]: [https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/3/27/15695060/s...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/3/27/15695060/sam-harris-charles-murray-race-iq-forbidden- knowledge-podcast-bell-curve)

[4]: [https://www.gwern.net/Tanks](https://www.gwern.net/Tanks)

<comment><USER16> That's a strange argument to make on this article. Sure, races are an attempt at categorization of something much more complicated than the categories can encode. As such, there's differing perspectives about how many racial categories there are, how to draw the boundaries, and no matter what, there will be people who don't fit into any of your categories. None of this detracts from the fact that racial categorizations are useful and predictive for the overwhelming majority of the Earth's population, just as the questionable status of Pluto doesn't interfere with research on extra-solar planets.

By HBD, I assume you're referring to differences in intelligence between races, but please correct me if you're referring to something else. It's always a bad idea to start with the conclusion you want and work backwards. However, in the US, amongst the present-day population, there is OVERWHELMING evidence that there are average IQ differences between races. The open question is what causes these differences in the averages.

We know IQ is partly genetic, and we know races differ in allele frequency of many genes. It's possible, though exceedingly unlikely, that genetic differences between races contribute precisely zero to average IQ differences. And there seems to be some circumstantial evidence that genetic differences between races do account for some of the average differences. This is a question that is at least amenable to study, by correlating genes with IQ, and matching this against allele frequency in groups.

HBD is not unscientific, and the comparison to psychics is unwarranted. HBD is an attempt to explain an observation (IQ deltas) with a hypothesis.

<comment><USER17> What races are you referring to? Irish, German, English, Spanish? What's their average IQ? And what genes play a factor in IQ?

<comment><USER16> What I said is true no matter how you split races, because any sufficiently complex trait will have average group differences. You can read about average IQ differences at lots of different levels of granularity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The comparison between someone having a hair dryer in the passenger seat of their car and "giving them cheap natural hormones" is ridiculous. A serious discussion about taking hormones would consider a metric, perhaps rates of self-harm before and after treatment. This post is not a serious discussion. Scott is "... writing ... because [he] just finished accepting a transgender man to the mental hospital".

<comment><USER19> I don't see that the article says we /should/ give hormones to transgender people at all. Just that dismissing the idea on the basis of (1) maleness being trivially categorisable or (2) transgender being a psychological disorder are baseless.

Whether or not it's the right solution is, obviously, a much more complicated question (and one that is probably rather better left to experts than armchair psychiatrists on discussion boards). But it's also an entirely separate question.</comment></comment>


Hackchains – The Worlds First Wearable WI-FI Jammer - <AUTHOR> https://www.hackchainz.com <comment><USER2> Using this is against federal law in the US, so I suppose buyer beware.

Edit: source [https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/jammerenforcement/jamfaq.pdf](https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/jammerenforcement/jamfaq.pdf)

Edit 2: selling and marketing it is also against federal law, and the seller appears to be a US resident with credentials listed in the Kickstarter. Facepalm.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great idea, but I'm not sure of the legality in various jurisdictions.

The video has a disclaimer to only use this on one's home network for protection. However, less than a second later it is shown in a car, presumably for wardriving.

The text of the page says in passing that multiple attacks can be launched, yet only one is described. If I need to deauth people on my network, I think I'll do it myself.

Great idea, though! Thank you for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER4> It is ESP8266 starting from 3$ [0] [1] and [https://github.com/spacehuhn/esp8266_deauther](https://github.com/spacehuhn/esp8266_deauther)

This kickstarter should not exist.

[0]: [https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=ESP8266](https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=ESP8266)

[1]: [https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ESP8266](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ESP8266)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this! I know what I am doing (after the ali stuff has arrived in a couple of weeks).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh. I almost hope that they make a ton of money out of this. It's so bad its almost pretty good. Would it qualify as a satirical fundraiser?

</comment><comment><USER7> That kickstarter is hilarious.

It's a scam.

</comment><comment><USER8> I feel like these things could do a lot more harm than good if put in the wrong hands...

</comment><comment><USER9> tl;dr esp8266 deauth attack. You can DIY for as low as $1.</comment>


Has iPhone become a legitimate gaming platform? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.playhaven.com/?p=236 <comment><USER2> it has become a gaming platform, but its games are nowhere near the quality of DS games.</comment>


What is a 'unikernel'? - <AUTHOR> https://ma.ttias.be/what-is-a-unikernel/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one getting a bit fatigued by all of this now? I think when we hit containers I just got a bit tired of going even further down the rabbit hole. Yes I might get a little more performance or stability or whatever from a container vs a full VM or a unikernel vs a container but it just gets more frustrating to manage in my experience. Anybody else feel the same?

When I just had a full VM with a full stack running on some hypervisor I could treat it just like a physical machine so management tools worked pretty much the same (with a few little exceptions). When containers came into the mix it just hit me with so much more work to admin. Unikernels seem like a lot of work too.

Am I alone in thinking this??

<comment><USER3> Seems pretty weird that we think it's normal to run a computer that simulates several physical computers, each running an operating system built for the mainframe in a 70s university CS department closet that then only ever runs one user and one application. You just think it's easier because you're used to it. I'm glad that this development is happening. In a few years when it's mature, we'll all have a saner setup to work with.

<comment><USER4> >In a few years when it's mature, we'll all have a saner setup to work with.

I'm happy you get to work in an environment with no legacy applications that require a specific old operating system but that's not the case for a massive portion of sysadmin jobs.

<comment><USER5> From a recent post, here's a talk[1] about containers where they use SmartOS (Solaris/IllumOS derivative) to containerize Linux by just implementing the syscall table. The future of hosting legacy apps might be providing legacy interfaces on modern OS's (IMO).

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFIEH3vXPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFIEH3vXPw)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While the term unikernel is fairly recent,the basic concept goes back a long time.

One example of this general design is VAX ELN.

The following is a brochure from the V2.2 release, from 1986:

[http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/vax/vaxeln/2.0/VA...](http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/vax/vaxeln/2.0/VAXELN_2.2_Brochure_1986.pdf)

Compile and then link the application code with the particular pieces of the toolkits that you needed and with the provided kernel into a single download image, and either embed or boot or network boot the target box using it. Remote debugging was available, as well as a relational database, etc.

<comment><USER7> This is also how most embedded applications utilizing an OS also works these days. The OS is a library, you link in whatever you need from the OS + compile time configuration of OS features etc. + link in whatever you need for your application.

<comment><USER8> Have they worked anyway differently?

I remember you always had to bundle everything together with the exception of what was already present in the firmware.

Also some books I had access in the mid-90's were all about creating your own libOS with tasks and lightweight communication primitives and then bundling everything together.

Coding since the 80's, but the most embedded stuff I did was PC (bypassing MS- DOS), Amiga and Symbian and reading also PIC programming on Elektor.

So maybe my perception might not be the correct one.

<comment><USER7> Sure - I didn't mean to imply this was a new thing.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, I was just getting a clarification, trying to understand it.

As I mentioned, I have a very small view of how it all works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not an expert here, but it seems to me like unikernel is the latest buzzword. The alleged advantages are:

> Improved security: only the core of the OS is implemented, no video or USB > drivers that aren't needed and could be a source of intrusion.

I am not aware of any video or USB driver vulnerability which led to security concerns on a typical server setup in the last decade.

> Very small footprint: imagine being able to remove 95% of the kernel size, > simply because your application doesn't need it.

This may free up 1 MB of RAM or maybe two. Unrelevant unless you're doing embedded programming, which is not the environment unikernels are targeting.

> Specialised implementations: you know your application and you can tweak and > run your kernel exactly the way you want it.

Too vague of a statement to even criticize, anyway my applications conform to the POSIX specification so that they are portable and run exactly the way I want them.

> Quick enough to be "Just in time" to summon a unikernel live (similar to > live spawning Docker instances), with boot times less than 1 second.

This may be a fair point in a system where the deployment time of a new instance is critical.

<comment><USER10> > I am not aware of any video or USB driver vulnerability > which led to > security concerns on a typical server setup > in the last decade.

CVE-2015-3456 was raised in April which had a privilege escalation due to a floppy driver controller, and caused widespread reboots and replacements of images in the Amazon cloud:

[http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-3456](http://cve.mitre.org/cgi- bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2015-3456)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> OSv looks really promising. Turns regular jvm bytecode into unikernals. If you are building immutable apps, why not deploy them with an immutable foundation as well? The HN hivemind has declared microservices bad for bootstrapping new apps, but I'm convinced an end to end immutable workflow could actually dramatically boost team wide productivity. Tomorrow is a snow day so I get to play with OSv and see if I'm right.

<comment><USER8> > Turns regular jvm bytecode into unikernals. ?

It has nothing to do with bytecode per se.

It allows a JVM to run bare-metal, there are plenty of them already in the embedded world.

For example J9 from IBM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I keep meaning to write a counter to the linked paper by Anti on I/O and whatever else I spot once I get past that part. Paints an inaccurate history of I/O and where problems come in. The I/O actually started more complex and effective with dedicated I/O processors, architecture, & programs. This eventually became Channel I/O for mainframes:

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

Thanks to that, the compute nodes are always computing and I/O processors are always handling the interrupts, protocol processing, whatever. This kept utilization and throughput high. Things being so expensive are why they stripped components out until the small machines DOS and UNIX were on didn't support crap, esp Channel I/O. Like most legacy effects, such fundamentally architecture was kept in there as hardware improved and got beyond cheap enough for a Channel I/O-like solution. We've seen over past decade various offloading mechanisms but the original architectures were fundamentally better for smart I/O and virtualization. They just weren't adopted, forcing people to work around the crap we have in clever ways.

Note 1: Even true for embedded as I/O coprocessors can greatly aid determinism and throughput. Upon my suggesting it, Ganssle sent me a SOC that had a mid- to-high end part for compute plus a weaker CPU for I/O handling with many supposed benefits. The old mainframes had a high-end processor for compute plus low-end one for I/O handling. Put a smile on my face to see the lesson rediscovered. :)

Note 2: A number of systems, esp kernelized architectures, tried to minimize the amount of OS for user applications or OS's starting with VM/370 I believe and KeyKOS later doing nanokernel. So, that isn't new either. Rump kernels easy integration with kernels without forks or extensive modifications are a significant innovation, though.

</comment><comment><USER13> 1) How does a unikernel differ from a library OS? Is a unikernel a kind of library OS?

2) Is the specialization the important aspect? I see OSv referred to as a unikernel but it does no specialization, it supports almost the entire Linux ABI. I'd argue it is a library OS, though.

<comment><USER14> Yes I think 1. is true, it is a library OS and your application, but very much in the library OS model.

OSv is a bit unusual architecturally, it is almost a very small OS that runs applications in a single address space. It is perhaps a hybrid architecture.

<comment><USER15> I've described it by saying unikernels are constructed by library operating systems. ie, the unikernel is the artefact but the libOS is what you (as a dev) actually work with.

The first line of the Wikipedia page is written this way - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unikernel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unikernel)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _Honestly, if you 're thinking about all the levels an application is built > upon, it's a miracle things even work._

One mitigating factor is that all those russian-doll levels don't switch back and forth all that much (thinking in computer, not human, time). Moreover, some of those levels (like the BIOS) do their thing and then they cede control until the end of time (i.e. reset).

So yes, the multilayered cake is pretty impressive, but the situation is not that dire.

</comment><comment><USER17> Unikernels : hypervisor :: processes : traditional operating system

Joyent CTO Bryan Cantrill gave a great talk at Velocity NYC 2015 about the history of containers (going back to March 18, 1982 when Bill Joy added the chroot system call) and the problems of running containers on operating systems in VMs on hypervisors:

"Stop killing kittens and melthing the ice caps: Run containers on bare metal already!"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFIEH3vXPw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFIEH3vXPw)

</comment><comment><USER18> From the article:

> Even core modules in the Linux kernel don't apply to every installation. > Things like USB drivers are useless in a virtualised "cloud" environment, > but are still included in the kernel.

You don't have to compile them in, or load them as modules, if you don't want. Or am I confused about what they're trying to say?

I've been using Linux for long enough to recall when you _had_ to recompile your kernel in order to add device drivers...

<comment><USER19> It is said in a very confusing manner. The core idea is dependency inversion: instead of the admin dictating the capabilities of the kernel, dictating the capabilities of the applications, we turn the whole thing around.

The client application might use a library dependent on, say, a high-frequency clock. Therefor, during the build of the application, the specific capability is build into the kernel. Synchronisation and sanity checks of this high- frequency clock runs _only_ when this specific image (or unikernel) is loaded.

It's a pretty neat idea and fits well in the global trend of dependency inversion. It also highlights the gaping architectural hole in the current container (docker) offerings: by using a base-image, you specifically ask for everything that is necessary for: networking, IPC, process management, scheduling, file system management, package management, printing, the whole POSIX interface etc. etc. This in turn creates a huge attack surface from a security perspective and makes maintenance and quality control much harder.

My sole question with unikernels is: doesn't this just move resource management (scheduling) upwards and security (access to resources) downwards? Or in other words, are we not creating two extra rings?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like NodeOS is gaining steam. [https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS](https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS)

A very minimal linux kernel, a basic set of CLI primitives, NPM, and a few JS ports of traditional POSIX tools.

Looks like it'll be an easy path to building immutable stateless web servers. It can be run on bare metal (Raspberry Pi), Docker containers, and everything in between.

Start small and extend using the existing ecosystem.

I'm really looking forward to this project reaching full maturity.

</comment><comment><USER15> There was a recent post about about Unikernels and Docker [1] (that post is also linked in the OP).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10585404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10585404)

</comment><comment><USER21> I don't understand the point of running a unikernel inside a Docker container. I mean, Docker runs on top of the Linux kernel, so how is this reducing the stack in any way?

<comment><USER22> in general you would run it inside of xen or other hypervisor. iirc in docker the one thing you CANT change is the kernel.

<comment><USER22> take a look at github.com/tv42/alone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how much of this is premature optimisation, or even optimisation targetting the wrong layer, where people would be better to focus on application changes.

</comment><comment><USER24> honest question: would elaborate run-time-environments e.g. erlang-vm considered unikernel for an application running in this environment. for example, as we now know, erlang provides some fairly low-level primitives for application execution e.g. it's own os-agnostic preemptive thread scheduling, per thread async io, per-thread-gc etc. etc.

<comment><USER25> I don't think so. But you're in luck, there is a project to turn Erlang into a unikernel: [http://erlangonxen.org/](http://erlangonxen.org/) EDIT: Spelling

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article references a golang unikernel, but doesn't name it. Does anyone know what it is referencing?

<comment><USER22> [http://lsub.org/export/clivesys.pdf](http://lsub.org/export/clivesys.pdf) clive is the golang one. It's not focused on actually running golang programs. It's acutally more of a research project by some academics who are looking into replacing unix style ipc with golang style channels (because they can return an error). I was unable to get any response from them depsite trying several different contacts. I also couldn't get their system to actually compile even though I tried several different targets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> All my code is position independent and my compiler only makes position idependent code. My OS is ring-zero-only. Just in time compilers do not need a linker in a single address space -- they just insert the address of the function call.</comment>


Crowd Funding bill Stalls in Senate - <AUTHOR> http://www.investmentnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120101/REG/301019980

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes "investor protection" means making sure that the bankers and lawyers get their 8%.</comment>


How To Share an iPhone Screen Live Across the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://mgalligan.com/post/29978268510/screen-share-iphone-live-on-internet

<comment><USER2> Reflection only works with the iPhone 4S, before you get too excited here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. I'll update the post.

<comment><USER3> If you can, update the HN title as well. If you do that, also mention iPad 2+ in the title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been using Reflection with Screen Sharing often to demo iPad software remotely to my user base. It's pretty good software and relatively cheap. It's not perfect though, sometimes things get weird, especially when the iDevice you're using switches screen orientation. I've found it's best to lock the screen to prevent this.

The shared screen is of a slightly lower quality and there is some delay, but for most things it completely workable.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wrote something for this, works with all versions of the iPad and iPhone. The other user just needs an internet browser.

<http://remotewhiteboard.com/>

Of course, this app can only show you something that is going on in the app, buy you can use it for presentations, or helping someone over the phone.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's the reason this isn't compatible with the iPhone 4/other devices?

Also, trying to open the preferences (10.6.8) takes 20-30 seconds of beach ball frozen before the window comes up (and 5-10 to close as well, without changing anything)

<comment><USER7> Because only the iPhone 4S and iPad 2+ support AirPlay Mirroring.

There are ways to do it with apps for jailbroken iOS devices, though you're likely to get a lesser quality. You might want to have a look at this one for example, made by a former colleague: <http://www.plutinosoft.com/idemo>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Best thing to share these is to root and install veency

<comment><USER9> That was my first inclination as well, but I'm not sure that it's any better for getting the job done than the solution described here. This way seems a bit easier, if you don't care about sending input back to the phone. Also, Veency/VNC can have some visible tearing/lag that I doubt the Airplay mirroring experience has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This would also be a good method for recording a video screen capture of your iPhone. Just have iShowU or similar record the computer screen.

<comment><USER11> Jailbreak and install display recorder. Profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I downloaded and launched Reflection, but my iPhone won't show the Airplay button when I swipe left twice in the task bar. Ideas?

</comment><comment><USER13> Is there an AirPlay compatible app for linux?

<comment><USER14> Yes. There's shairport and many XBMC builds include servers to receive AirPlay audio and even video, but not AirPlay mirroring. (There are really three levels of AirPlay - audio, streaming video, and mirroring - essentially the whole device's display.)

There are even Android servers like AirBubble and Android HIFI that can receive audio but not video and clients like HoneyPlayer (audio) and iMediashare (audio and video).</comment></comment>


Mosquitoes fatally attracted to deadly, sweet-smelling potion - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170823090939.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Looks like a more effective & cheaper solution than Google's Verily?</comment>


Airport body scanners 'unlikely' to foil al-Qaeda - MP - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8439285.stm <comment><USER2> What an extraordinarily candid piece. Most of the stuff in the mainstream media about these scanners portray them as though they would have stopped the underwear bomber in his tracks.

Maybe one of these days some politician will have the guts to step forward and will admit openly that securing air transportation while keeping it affordable and safe is not possible at current traffic levels.

<comment><USER3> How feasible is an unsafe airlines startup? Seems like a great way to capitalize on the situation.

<comment><USER4> Since negligence is a hot knife cutting through limits on personal liability I think this startup would last right up until its first minor accident, after which point the officers and backers of such a venture would spend the remainder of their natural lives in court trying (and failing) to keep the injured parties from taking every penny they have...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I managed to go through the "security theatre" twice this past weekend while traveling from Canada to the US (first flight canceled). I was actually impressed with the rigorous patdown, and the hand search of my carryon (and in one of them the security officer engaged me in conversation), which was made much easier by the severe restrictions on carryon luggage. It was, in fact, impressively layered - this entire process was at the gate, after the usual stuff at the security entrance.

On the plane, they just discarded pretty well the entire protocol. Once you were on the plane, there were no real restrictions.

And I had to put a bunch of expensive electronics and camera equipment in my checked luggage, which made it to my destination completely unscathed. Which makes the whole carryon process much more viable. If passengers were convinced that checked luggage is treated securely, quickly and with proper care, then we wouldn't have to bring the kitchen sink in our carryons.

<comment><USER6> It's not entirely relevant to your point but anyone with a film camera would be concerned with checking their camera gear (well films at least). Similarly, most airlines charge extra for checked luggage while some staggering amount of checked luggage is delayed, lost for a small time (weeks-months) or lost indefinitely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh I'm currently in Germany and the BBC is one of the few English channels available. The experts they've interviewed to date have all said things along the lines of "scanners and physical checks won't stop embedded explosives", "the terrorists will simply use internal explosives next" and "we have no means of screening for explosives". As one HN commentator mentioned: "state of the art for explosives detection is a labrador retriever".

Putting aside the fact these experts have just told terrorists where security gaps are (perhaps its a false admission to try and catch terrorists offguard?) it is deeply concerning if these security gaps do exist and that increased security measures will do _nothing_ more but infringe privacy.

</comment><comment><USER3> I foresee Al Queda moving to fat, ugly bombers.

<comment><USER2> Or send through a bunch of guys with harmless stuff on them first.

After a number of 'false positives' the chances of missing something real would definitely increase.

Or get two or more people to smuggle bits & pieces. That's probably a lot harder to pull off though.</comment></comment>