Tower 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.git-tower.com/blog/tower2-is-here <comment><USER2> Great customer service too. When Tower was first released at the end of 2010, I asked for a feature (multiple windows) but they said it wasn't part of their plan for the UI. Anyway, this morning I got an email from them to specifically tell me that the feature I asked for was in version 2. They'd bothered to go back through 3 and a half years of support tickets to find customers who would benefit from the new release, I was hugely impressed.

<comment><USER3> I'm assuming you're not involved in the tracking of tasks and releases in your job ? Because linking support ticket / customer to a task, and a set of tasks to a release, is a very common and regular feature of task tracking.

I'm not saying it's not awesome that they contacted you and others like that, it's the rare kind of great marketing that benefits both sides, but I certainly do hope that a company working in their field would know to use proper dev tools and not "go back though 3 and a half years of support tickets to find customers".

(I have no idea why there aren't more companies doing it)

<comment><USER4> Because it is hard and costly to have a system that does that effectively, and harder and more costly to actually maintain integrity in that system over time.

It IS impressive to be doing this, at least once you're past the stage of having a few guys doing customer support.

Building an integration between a CRM and a backlog/bug tracker has some complexity. Maintaining that over several years and proactively contacting requesters back is impressive. At least in my world. :)

<comment><USER5> _> Because it is hard and costly to have a system that does that effectively, and harder and more costly to actually maintain integrity in that system over time._

I don't think this is really true. I implemented it with Redmine for ~12 customer support people in a day or so. Been ticking along for five years without a complaint.

<comment><USER6> I'm more impressed with the social aspect than the software.

Trackers exist and are great, but people tend to ignore bugs/requests and either let them rot without cleanup or do sweeps that kill old information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Tower daily, and used the Tower 2 beta for a bit. I have to say I think they are missing an opportunity. There are a few cool new features (like autofetch) but for the most part, the upgrade smacks of change-for-change- sakes not actual progress towards a good workflow. More clicks are required, keyboard-only navigation is tough, diffs are hidden by default.

One thing most of these guys do is simply smack a UI on top of a command line, rather than explore ways to manipulate the available data into a better workflow than you could possibly get via commands. the conflict wizard is a good step, but that is only part of the story. Repo's are full of data ready to be mined in ways that aren't just 'git pull' and 'git merge'. There is a visual file history, changes made per-person, etc.

<comment><USER8> This is one of the things I really like about SourceTree, that I can do pretty much everything from the keyboard. Several times a day, I type

\- Ctrl-shift-+ (add file to index)

\- Ctrl-shift-c (commit)

\- (type the description of the commit)

\- Alt-enter (validate)

\- Ctrl-shift-p (push)

No mouse necessary.

The SourceTree people know how a developer works.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, you can do this in Tower (1) with the same steps:

\- Cmd + Alt + A (to index)

\- Cmd + Alt + C (add commit message or amend)

\- Alt + Enter (validate)

\- Cmd + Alt + Shift + P (push)

But, as I said before in comments, base UX abilities now broken in Tower 2.

<comment><USER10> They've missed keyboard navigation completely. To be fair, there are shortcuts for many things, but it is still practically impossible to navigate the UI with the keyboard only.

For example, ⌘1 takes you to the working copy, but it only selects the "Working Copy" menu item to the left, it doesn't focus the working copy pane. The first thing I tried was to navigate the unstaged files with the arrow keys, but that just moved me back to the History view since that list was somehow focused in the background. To focus the file list, I had to press tab about 20 times to pass all the controls in the tab order on the way there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That video was extremely well done.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyyuqf1m-2E](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyyuqf1m-2E)

For a moment, it made me want to ditch Windows and migrate to Mac just to use this client.

Personal favorite, being able to see up stream commits without actually applying them on your local branch.

I currently use SmartGIT on Windows and I am sort-of-happy with it. I wonder why no one is trying to create a killer Git client on Windows.

<comment><USER12> _I wonder why no one is trying to create a killer Git client on Windows._

Because there is already one: SourceTree (which is also available for OS X).

<comment><USER11> I am aware of SourceTree. However, I personally don't find it a killer client. I prefer SmartGit over SourceTree. Don't get me wrong, the app is functional but it doesn't have the features I want in a client. E.g. one of the most important feature for me is the Folder View for my repository where I can quickly look up any file and see history for it.

<comment><USER13> You get this (or something like it) in the OS X version of SourceTree: a tree view of your working copy, plus the Reveal Log... context menu option. So if you were going to switch to OS X anyway, purely over the git client situation, once you've spent £1,500 on your shiny new Mac you will at least not have to spend any more on the git client.

(I don't know why the Windows incarnation lacks a tree view. A Win32 treeview would be perfectly functional, and they're easy to code for. (Never having seen the SourceTree code, I can of course confidently say that this would apply here.) But if you don't mind a flat list, Reveal Log... is present and correct. So you'd be good to go already.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I bought Tower before I found out about Sourcetree, and while I enjoyed using it, I found that Soucetree was way more feature rich. Can anyone give me a reason why I should fork over even more dough for an app that I'm not even sure I'd end up using?

<comment><USER15> FWIW when I was researching Git GUIs for some CLI-averse team members, I came to the same conclusion. Sourcetree is the best and most feature-complete GUI out there for Git (Tower was one of the others I looked at).

Plus it is free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been messing around with this for about 20 minutes. I was a huge Tower 1 fan until I found SourceTree, which, back then, handled submodules way better.

I hate when people post things to HN and then the dour crowd posts a bunch of negative crap about it, but I honestly haven't found anything in my scant 20 minutes with it that is giving me the urge to want to fork the $30 to upgrade. I don't really need to drag and drop stuff to branch and push. I understand english pretty well, so I get what "Resolve using mine" means. Otherwise, they kind of look pretty similar to each other, except that it's a bit easier to see what's going on with SourceTree.

I don't know, I raved about Tower before I gave SourceTree a good go. SourceTree's UI has made giant leaps since then and I don't see anything in Tower that's easier to do than SourceTree. Also, the UI feels a little too "large" to me somehow, it's not comfortable at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> In case you are wondering: Yes there's way to upgrade your 1.x licence (€25 + tax), just navigate through the buy process and it'll give you an option to select that. I was searching for that on the landing page but couldn't find anything.

</comment><comment><USER18> Can I squash commits and interactive rebase generally? These are pretty important to having a clean commit history, ie:

      'Add foo'

rather than:

      'Add foo'
      'Small tweak to foo'
      'Fix forgetting to enable foo'

<comment><USER19> Interactive rebase is not yet supported. But is already on the roadmap and will come in 2.x.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Errors on purchase page are not encouraging:

Notice: Undefined index: body style="background-color: white; color: black; font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'lucida grande', verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"> in /kunden/281288_70176/apps/website_tower/releases/9b6ba7f1-20142207090452/www/lib/pricing.php on line 192

<comment><USER21> Agreed. I've used Tower since one of the earliest releases and was ready to pull out my credit card before even reading what the new features were.

Meh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Visual conflict management and visual "git add -p" does look really nice.

(Here's a good SO q/a on `git add -p`: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1085162/commit-only- part-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1085162/commit-only-part-of-a- file-in-git))

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm disappointed. Now we have nice UI plus huge UX downgrade:

\- unchangeable font in sidebar;

\- quick navigation via Cmd + [1,2,3] doesn't resign focus to the file/change list, so you need to click to continue use your hot keys (I hate app that make me clicking unnecessarily!);

\- all main keyboard hotkeys changed (Cmd + Alt + [Shift] + P - for pushing [pulling] and etc). But why do you ask? Because they said;

\- 'Cmd + Ctrl + Backspace' doesn't discard local changes for the selected files, marks them as deleted instead (nice try);

\- submodules autofetching enabled by default and said 'Nice to meet you!' to our project with git-subtree based modules.

As a result, I can not use this app, because my hands still remember and I hate when I'm forced to click without the need!

A good chance for SourceTree.

</comment><comment><USER23> It looks like custom diff tools are currently broken. I've got a plist/shell script for Beyond Compare 4 that worked fine in Tower 1.x but clicking diff tool doesn't seem to do anything in 2.x. Hopefully they'll fix this soon.

</comment><comment><USER24> A third-party git GUI that defaults to exposing the staging area by default and provides nicely granular tool for commit composition? I am impressed.

Only sad thing is i can't usefully try it out, being on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's a nice update, but I wish I could use the search bar to search for files in the tree. This would be really useful when I have an issue in a file and wanted to do a blame for that file. Having to go navigate through the UI file tree to do this is very painful, and it's very simple on the command line. It would be even nicer if find file feature in the seach bar this was a fuzzy finder, it could use the silver searcher to do this even.

</comment><comment><USER26> A nice feature of the previous version of Tower (and even more previously, most SVN clients), is the ability to browse the entire repo and instantly see info about the last commit of each file (e.g., date, author).

That seems to be missing in this version. There is a Tree view of the repo for each commit, but it is cumbersome to both browse files AND see when files were (last) changed. Has anyone seen such a feature in Tower 2 or other GUIs?

</comment><comment><USER27> It's annoying that it takes a bit of digging to find out the actual price.

(Yes, I realize it's only several clicks, but frankly I feel a lot better about handing over my money to a company that clearly displays their pricing)

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there an option to automatically merge --non-ff a feature branch into development? "Finish feature" seems to use just merge

<comment><USER19> In the standard "Merge" dialog (see toolbar button), the option "Always generate merge commit" will make sure the merge is --no-ff.

<comment><USER28> but this option doesn't work for the "finish feature" part of git-flow

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Would there be any use for this tool if you already know your way around the git command line?

<comment><USER19> Being able to do basic things on the command line is definitely nice. And the question is not command line VERSUS a GUI. Tower, e.g. can be used side-by- side with the command line.

However, Tower help you both become more productive and make fewer mistakes. No one likes to inspect a complex project history on the command line. Getting a visual representation of a conflict helps you resolve it more confidently. Automatically having local changes stashed away prevents problems... There are indeed many scenarios where a GUI is plain helpful - for beginners and pros alike.

<comment><USER30> >Getting a visual representation of a conflict helps you resolve it more confidently.

You can launch e.g. kdiff3 when necessary to resolve conflicts visually without using a GUI git clint.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> How does it compare to SourceTree, which is free?

<comment><USER19> First, let me say that Sourcetree is an excellent application, too. However, most people that chose Tower over Sourcetree prefer our approach in regard to user interface, workflows, usability, etc. A visual conflict wizard, a new service account manager, automatic stashing... Tower goes a long way to make using Git both as easy and as comfortable as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Try SourceTree, save yourself $59.00.

</comment><comment><USER33> Here I thought it was addictive game like 2048 ...

</comment><comment><USER34> Must be tough selling something GitHub gives away for free...

<comment><USER11> I don't think so. I use Windows and I paid 79$ for SmartGit.

[http://www.syntevo.com/smartgithg/purchase](http://www.syntevo.com/smartgithg/purchase)

Git is great but when I am using it 50 times a day, I want to use a UI which lets me focus on my work and as they say, let me avoid the sharp edges. I would be more than happy to pay 59$ for Tower 2. Alas, it's not available on Windows.

<comment><USER35> I'm in a similar boat in that I just switched back to Windows from Mac last week. The Mac Git UI client that helped me avoid the sharp edges was Gitbox ([http://www.gitboxapp.com/](http://www.gitboxapp.com/)) which is only $15. Tower looks like a pretty nice client though.

I'm currently using SourceTree (I find it a little better than Github's Windows app), but I feel like I'm constantly clicking on way too many buttons in the UI in comparison to Gitbox. Muscle memory, I guess.</comment></comment></comment>


A computer engineer has tracked down the first Apollo guidance computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.gadget.co.za/the-hacker-the-scrapheap-and-the-first-apollo-computer/ <comment><USER2> There's so much more I want to know. Who put it on the trash heap? Why did the FBI come looking for it years later? Embarrassment?

OTOH, back in those days, maybe there was more of a sense of pushing things forward, and less nostalgia, and maybe that was a good thing. I can't decide if I like having every speck of computer history catalogued and put in a museum. For one thing, I fear that 50 years from now, people will cling to the stories of the creators of Android or iOS or Pokemon Go, and somehow that old Nokia flip phone I have in my junk box will be a museum piece.

Nostalgia. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

<comment><USER3> The original footage of the moon landings was actually erased and recorded over when NASA had a shortage of data tapes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes). So yeah there is definitely some pragmatism at NASA.

<comment><USER4> it's as if they want you to forget what happened.

Let's just focus on a space station and travelling to the red planet we know little about. What footprints on the moon?

<comment><USER3> Only the original footage was lost. It was still broadcast to millions and there are multiple recordings of these broadcasts. If you read the article you'd find that NASA actually released a restored version of the footage. So no, they don't want you to forget what happened. Lastly I know it's pretty hip to be a conspiracy theorist, but there's a really good video rebutting common claims for it being faked here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU)

<comment><USER5> I don't think he was implying that we never landed on the moon, just that the NASA manned program's priorities today have a misguided set of priorities. There was a scathing article posted about it last night

<comment><USER3> I got a different impression from "What footprints on the moon?" At least to me it doesn't make sense that NASA would want to forget one of humanity's biggest achievements, especially considering what an accomplishment it was for America during the space race. If you can still find the article it would be great if you could link it so I can maybe get some missing context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Long ago I asked this question on quora, it got OK answers including one of my own that's now deleted, but this post prompted me to check on it again and it's now got a really great answer, check it out: [https://www.quora.com/During-the-Apollo-launches-what- happen...](https://www.quora.com/During-the-Apollo-launches-what-happened- when-the-announcer-said-guidance-is-internal/answer/Dave-Mohr-1?share=1)

In particular I am happy about the timing. They accept inertial guidance to be a bit off because transferring it closer to T=0 would make it less accurate because of rocket vibrations!

</comment><comment><USER7> I would argue it was _first_ space flight guidance computer.

Technically nazis V1 had analog guidance computer and traveled in space. The same with all later ballistic missiles etc.

Early soviet manned space flights (Vostok, Voschod) were fully automated, in case pilot passes out. Americans did not had that until Apollo.

There was even 'password' login :-) [wiki, Vostok 1]

> _The entire mission would be controlled by either automatic systems or by > ground control. This was because medical staff and spacecraft engineers were > unsure how a human might react to weightlessness, and therefore it was > decided to lock the pilot 's manual controls. In an unusual move, a code to > unlock the controls was placed in an onboard envelope, for Gagarin's use in > case of emergency.[7]:278 Prior to the flight, Kamanin and others told > Gagarin the code anyway._

<comment><USER8> Title is editorialized.

Even the US Gemini program had an on-board guidance computer before Apollo.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In nasa's defense, outsiders probably don't realize exactly how much material they were dealing with. This may be a treasured jewel today, but at the time it was just part of the pile. I;m glad this was saved, but we cannot build a museum around every bit if space hardware. SpaceX has their first recovered rocket out front of their offices. In fifty years we might all be yelling at them for keeping such a precious artifact out in the weather.

<comment><USER10> It's hard to know at the time what will be considered treasures. For example, I've had a lot of computers over the years. I kept a bunch because I was sure they'd be collectors' items.

Turns out, the only collectors' items turned out to be equipment I'd junked. The ones I kept are all junk. Who knew my H-11 would become valuable? :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That this thing has surface-mount components on it shows you how crazy ahead of its time it was. This is literally space-age technology in a world that was barely using integrated circuits in consumer products.

I can't even imagine how much one of these modules cost to make at the time they were produced. Tens of thousands surely.

<comment><USER12> This kind of component mounting was a fore-runner of larger scale integration.

Quite a bit of circuitry from those days was made like that.

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

Excellent mechanical properties (esp. with respect to vibration resistance) and more compact than the other mounting methods available at the time, it seems to me to have been the obvious choice for anything on spacecraft or aircraft.

<comment><USER11> I mean more specifically the way the components are flush-mounted, not in the standard DIP arrangement. They don't require holes drilled in the board, and more importantly, don't penetrate the board itself, so components can be mounted on both sides if necessary without risk of overlapping holes.

I can remember building computers in the early 1990s with logic boards that looked more primitive than what was in this module from the 1960s.

Apparently surface mounting was developed _specifically for_ the Launch Vehicle Digital Computer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface- mount_technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-mount_technology)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looking back to the past at the evolving technology exposes the intricacies of genius.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is amazing. Does anybody care to speculate why the FBI cared or why it would even be on their radar? In terms of technology this is ancient history.

One has to wonder how it ended up in a scrap auction. I would love to know the provenance of that.

</comment><comment><USER15> Looking for feedback on our page for the AGC

[http://theymadethat.com/things/5ug/apollo-guidance- computer](http://theymadethat.com/things/5ug/apollo-guidance-computer)

</comment><comment><USER16> would this even work? my understanding of rope memory was that the value depended partially on the strength of magnets in a certain position in a copper rope.

what happens when the magnet becomes deplolarized? isn't the only way to ensure the bits he's got out are correct to actually inspect the copper weaves? for all we know they were tossed in the trash because they were defective

<comment><USER17> >what happens when the magnet becomes deplolarized?

I guess then you try the same thing floppy disk rescueing programs did : keep attempting to read it until you have enough data to make a stastistically significant bet. It should work pretty well since you get an analog value encoding a digital one to start with.

<comment><USER16> I feel like there's a really good answer to this that doesn't involve taking the thing apart, but I'm no EE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Original article: [http://www.gadget.co.za/the-hacker-the-scrapheap-and-the- fir...](http://www.gadget.co.za/the-hacker-the-scrapheap-and-the-first-apollo- computer/)

</comment><comment><USER19> If the post title matched that of the page title, it would be a true statement. This was the first Apollo guidance computer, not the first space flight guidance computer.</comment>


Loneliness may warp our genes, and our immune systems - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/29/457255876/loneliness-may-warp-our-genes-and-our-immune-systems <comment><USER2> >"CTRA gene expression was analyzed using mixed effect linear models (43) testing association between average expression of 53 CTRA indicator transcripts (44, 45) and either continuous UCLA Loneliness Scale scores or a 1/0 indicator of chronically high PSI (12) (UCLA Loneliness Scale score of ≥41 in at least 60% of measurements taken during study years 1–5) while controlling for study year, age, sex, race/ethnicity, marital status, household income, BMI, alcohol consumption, smoking history, and gene-specific differences in average expression level." [http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/18/1514249112.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/11/18/1514249112.abstract)

They forgot that immune activity and gene expression are reported to be seasonal[1]. They should control for week of year that data was collected. If, for example, people who come by in the winter months are scored as "lonely" more often, this would correlate with expression levels of various genes even if the two are largely unrelated.

[1] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25965853](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25965853)

</comment><comment><USER3> For those that consider themselves lonely, learn about (and practice) stoicism and meditation. They will stop the spiralling thought patterns that are making you ill. This in turn will boost your confidence and you will become more interesting to others around you. Oh, and lift weights - always lift weights they do good things for your health.

</comment><comment><USER4> This journalist appears to be unable to distinguish between correlation and causation.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the study, causation actually goes both ways.

 _> What Canli finds really interesting about Cole's results is that people who felt lonely one year had increased gene activity around inflammation and norepinephrine later on. And people who had increased inflammation felt lonelier the next year. "It's a two-way street," he said. "Loneliness predicted biological changes, and biological changes predicted changes in loneliness."_

<comment><USER4> Again, this finds a correlation, not causation. There could be some external factor which influences both measured metrics.

Canli as quoted clearly does understand the difference, because he states that one predicts the other, which is distinguishing it from causation. But the article as written implies causation without any justification for this additional leap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you're correct. Prediction is still not the same as causation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to validate requests with no back end? - <AUTHOR> I'm a newer programmer who is trying to understand web security.
Say I were to build an IP address lookup API service. I want to make sure that requests come from where they say they do. So I don't want someone to spoof example.com and make a request to my service. Is there a way to do this, without making the real example.com use server side code? <comment><USER2> There's tools like [https://github.com/jakerella/jquery- mockjax](https://github.com/jakerella/jquery-mockjax) \- depending on libraries you're using you'll want to use a different one. Basic term is "mock" or "fake". Just be careful to make sure your fake actually matches the real thing.</comment>


Leveraging Facebook To Compete With eBay Won't Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/07/leveraging-facebook-to-compete-with-ebay-wont-work/ <comment><USER2> I think it could work for things which require a higher trust level or in which locality is a key factor. For example, suppose I have a hundred or so porn DVDs I inherited from my recently collapsed startup. Maybe I don't want to go through the hassle of sending each one out to a different user over ebay but if can give them to folks for $5 a pop who happen to be around campus (or town) then I come out a winner.</comment>


Learn Linux 101: Graphical Desktops - <AUTHOR> https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/l-lpic1-106-2/ <comment><USER2> > Prerequisites: ..You will also need a thorough understanding of the material > covered in Learn Linux, 101: Install and configure X11.

Really? I just want to use a Linux desktop with minimal setup rather having to learn about all the issues, tech etc to do work. Also, why bother with X11 when there is Wayland these days?

> If you cannot find a spin that you like, you can install another desktop and > then install your desired desktop. Or you can perform a custom installation > without a desktop and then install your chosen desktop.

A consistent/standardised desktop for Linux would be beneficial for Linux users since having sane defaults, with minimal configuration on the desktop. This would reduce the burden for devs to support different DE, Window managers with their graphics drivers and optimize on productivity on the same level as macOS and Windows, which ChromeOS does too. Its a shame that the Linux community focuses on having alternatives of alternatives that compete with each other just to achieve the same functionality.

I used to have time to try out many distros, editing dotfiles but one upgrade later, my desktop broke and had to reset everything. I am not willing to 'install another desktop and then install your desired desktop' if it risks damaging my productivity to Google around for error-codes and workarounds.</comment>


Intel Skylake CPUs can crash/freeze when calculating prime numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/skylake-prime-number-bug,30979.html <comment><USER2> Ah, the great Intel tradition of incorporating HCF into the instruction set ;) F00F again.</comment>


Is a Cambrian Explosion Coming for Robotics? - <AUTHOR> http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.3.51 <comment><USER2> Sorry for the off topic but most non-biologists fail to precisely understand what Cambrian explosion means.

It was a time when suddenly an huge variety of species appeared and what was new among them all was the trait of a body plan or body structure with diferent cells forming organs for specific functions. The explanation most accepted by biologists is the appearance of HOX genes. These are genes that switch on/off the expression of other genes and that is what causes cells in the same organism with the same genetic code to be very different in morphology.

<comment><USER3> Curious if there's any analogue out there in the current tech world? Printers that can print or assemble themselves? A/B testing coupled to genetic algorithms that can switch off functionality for certain user groups if it's not useful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Curious that the author suggests an explosive rate of improvement in robot performance but then fails to mention any positive examples of robot performance. Instead the entire article focuses on positive rates of improvement in many constituent technologies needed when building robots.

Judging from the inability of every robot in the most recent DARPA challenge to even get back up after a fall, I'd say today's robots have a long way to go before a Cambrian level of explosive growth is shortly forthcoming.

<comment><USER5> Every robot but one. The CMU robot got up after a fall.

Edit on why no examples: This isn't a review paper for a popular audience. It's a paper on economic perspectives and he says just what he needs to about where he sees the opportunities. The reader can easily find examples elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The "improvements" and "big ideas" the author listed are real and exciting developments. I think about robotics a lot (in academia) but given these developments, a Cambrian explosion (i interpret as robot succeeding in general simple tasks that human can do) is still way beyond my imagination. There are many technical hurdles such as perception, planning, learning and reasoning. The key challenge now seems to be finding scenarios where robots can be successful with current technology.

On a separate note, the robobrain project [http://robobrain.me/](http://robobrain.me/) seems to fit the running themes in the paper.

</comment><comment><USER7> Making better hardware and software for controlling hardware is something that is very difficult (hence most the machines having a hard time with the most basic things for a human - walking, etc.), and because of this, most regard robots as being in their infancy, with many more generations to go before we have a robot that can truly function like a human (in the physical sense).

What's alarming about this is the fact that all of these problems are problems that are solved by intelligence and brute force, and both of these functions can be performed in the virtual world, but a lot of the fears we have about "robocalypse" scenarios are rooted in the physical aspects of robots (e.g., autonomous drones with guns, etc.). Given a computer system with intelligence much greater than a human (not necessarily passing the Turing test or being intelligent by certain human metrics, but being very effective at problem solving and engineering) could result in most of the current problems that companies like Boston Dynamics, et al have been working on for years being solved and tested in simulations in mere minutes. Such a machine can't just be invented, but through evolution (genetic algorithms, etc.) on the copious cloud computing environments, such a machine will eventually happen, unless something changes (e.g., laws to attempt to prevent it, disaster of some sort that sets us back financially and computer-wise a few decades, etc.).

This means, the thing we should really fear is machine intelligence, since the physical world aspect of its existence is really secondary. A machine that can design better solutions to physical world problems (like moving around, negotiating obstacles, etc.) than the hundreds of teams working on the same thing is what I fear.

</comment><comment><USER8> Before any of this can happen key technologies need to experience massive evolutionary improvements:

        Computers:
            10x computing power
            1/10 the volume (think: fits in the robot's head)
            1/10 the power consumption of a desktop computer
            10x reduction in failure modes (can remain operational with some damage)

        Power:
            2x to 10x the energy storage
            1/2 to 1/10 the volume
            Less weight
            Electric vehicle market will help here!

        Actuators:
            10x improvement in power-to-weight ratio
            10x to 100x reduction in cost
            10x to 100x reduction in weight
            10x reduction in fragility (think: still works after impact from a fall)
            Moldability (think of the shape of every muscle in your body)

There's more, of course, starting with software, languages, tools, etc.

<comment> gene-h I disagree on a couple points about actuators. First off brushless electric motors have pretty amazing power to weight ratios, problem is that they have really low torque to weight ratios. We don't need moldability if we take what we learned from electrical engineering and standardize everything.

Cost is a huge issue though, but if we standardize and mass produce them then the problem could be solved. Series elastic actuators have solved some of the fragility problem.

<comment><USER8> I am talking about the finished actuato rather than just the motor. This includes actuator electromics. Think of all the muscles required to operate a human arm, fromthe shoulder to the fingertip, again, including the electronics to drive them. And then build that into a robot. And then have that robot do gymnastics, MMA, compete in the American Ninja course, jog, trip and fall, in general, deal with, survive and adapt to impact and minor damage.

In the context of actuators, not motors, we have a ways to go. It's not hopeless, of course, but we have to admit that the biological muscle is a really awesome machine.

Series-elastic actuators don't really deal with fragilityy as much as they provide energy storage along one axis. Think of punching a boxing bag or tripping and falling. The actuators we use today are susceptible to damage from relatively minor impact from any direction outise of where they have compliance built in. I can punch you in the biceps and will not break it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The big problem in robotics is not sensing, electronics, or logic, but mechanics and integration. Just compare the state of the art with our muscles, or the highly optimized integrations of sensors, logic and actuators that exist in the insect world (many of which in isolation we still haven't reproduced) with anything coming out of a 3D printer and it should be obvious we remain far further from the conditions needed for explosive growth than many appreciate.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. There are plenty of examples of robot hardware that would work great for valuable applications, but the software and sensing isn't there yet.

It's true that most research robots have crappy mechanics and integration. That's because they know that software is the unsolved problem, and hardware is mainly a matter of throwing resources at it. That can wait until the rest of the technology is ready.

Check out a video of IPI's truck unloading robot: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plo7SH9aBgg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plo7SH9aBgg) That hardware more or less existed in the 90s. With the right software, two of those (one throwing, one catching) could unload a truck way faster than humans. But watching it, 90% of the time is sensing and thinking.

Or this humanoid: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9673386](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9673386) (video sped up 10x). The hardware could indeed be optimized, but it's good enough that it's not the limiting factor. With sufficiently smart software, that could be the robot butler of the future. If you put automotive-scale engineering resources behind it, the hardware would be slick, lightweight, and rugged.

<comment><USER9> Those robots, compared to biology, are utterly unimpressive. You aren't going to get a robot butler before you have a robot honeybee, but where is the robot honeybee? It's mechanically limited out of existence.

Software etc. are simpler nearer to useful than our hardware is, but it's the hardware parts that are missing to make use of current software.

<comment><USER3> The wing of a plane is incredibly simple compared to the wing of a bird. No muscles, no bones, no feathers - it doesn't even flap. And yet it gets the job done.

Nature has a lot of path-dependence that can be avoided with design. Think of how much cruft accumulates in a software program after 15 years of continuous evolution, and then multiply that by a million. It's not unreasonable to think that whatever hardware we use to emulate various human tasks might be a _lot_ simpler than the wetware that makes up an actual human.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Workstation Alternative for Mac Pro - <AUTHOR> I feel like Apple no longer cares about the pro market. I've been using macs for the past decade and have been very happy with no complaints.
Apple's lack of vision for the Pro market has me worried. Is anyone else in the same boat? I am waiting until the end of 2016 and I may have to switch to getting a Winbuntu workstatio. It breaks my heart to even think about switching.
Anyone know anything about what's going on at Apple and their plans for he Pro computers?
Also what are your plans if Apple ditches the pro market altogether? <comment><USER4> They're making a lot of bad anti-consumer choices with their products the last few cycles and I have no reason to believe it will get any better.

I've been waiting for such a long time for the new line of Macbook Pros to come out, I've been in desperate need of an upgrade for quite some time now and am finally at the point where an MBP makes a lot of sense to me (I've been using Thinkpads exclusively the last 12 years) but here I am still waiting for a product announcement.

I'm highly discouraged by Apple's move to replace every port on the Macbook with a single USB-C and I believe the new MPBs will feature a similar concession, possibly 2 or 3 USB-C ports only. And adding insult to injury, the new machines will probably not include a 3.5mm headphone jack (among other Apple "improvements").

The MBP is a flagship product and I believe will be around for a while, I don't believe Apple is giving up on that market segment, but if they bungle the new products enough it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's crazy to me that I'm still anticipating this product launch yet am aware that the machine itself will probably be a letdown and I'll ultimately go with another Thinkpad. I need to see the announcement to know for sure, but gee, what a way to ruin an entire product line.

</comment><comment><USER5> Updates will almost certainly arrive in the Fall to coincide with the new macOS. It's doubtful they'll change the Mac Pro's form, so don't expect a return to tower cases, but the specs will certainly align with more contemporary options.

I've heard that many pros in the pro video editing area are building Hackintoshes. They're annoying to update but they do work and you can keep using your original software. I'm guessing that if you post here then you know enough about how to build a Hackintosh.

Or you could consider a HP workstation alongside a current Mac Pro: [http://www.mackungfu.org/MacPronotpowerfulenoughHPmighthavew...](http://www.mackungfu.org/MacPronotpowerfulenoughHPmighthavewhatyouneed)

</comment><comment><USER6> Last week, I had my 2nd logic board failure on my 2nd 13" pro in 4 years. Logic board died on laptop 1, couldn't go the 5 days waiting for a repair, so bought a new one on the spot. Lasted 2 years until the new laptop died last week and again, couldn't go the 5 days without a laptop, so bought a 2nd one on the spot. The first one eventually got repaired and went to the wife; this 2nd will follow the same path or become a backup for me / secondary use machine.

(This time, I bought Apple Care - something I've never done in 15 years of being a Apple user)

So - a: quality has gone down in recent years IMO. 2 laptops failing in 4 years? Unheard of back in the day

b: removal of the _rom drive - not a huge issue, but as a pro user, it 's needed sometimes. Yes, external USB _rom drive, blah blah blah - <USER2> shouldn't need accessories.

c: removal of the ethernet port - again, USB ethernet adaptor, but why? It's a machine for pros - it doesn't need to be super portable, it doesn't need to be thin; it needs to be reasonably portable and reasonably weighted with good battery life.

d: the proprietary components are getting ridiculous. Now that I have this fancy, dead laptop, I ordered one of those OWC external MBP SSD enclosures so I can pull the drive from the dead laptop and use it with my new one for the time being until I feel like getting the old one fixed - but again - <USER3> can't use a standard SSD drive? Why? Don't tell me it's space for the battery or other bullshit - it's a pro machine; pro's expect more.

I can't say I'll leave Apple if they ditch the pro market - I still hate Windows 8 / 10 with a passion - but I can't say I'm happy either.

We (the wife and I) are die hard Apple users; from a time capsule, to airport expresses that control speakers; apple tv, apple watch, laptops - we are poster children for the company. But as die hard fans, we're getting pretty pissed lately. Don't strain this relationship, Apple. We've invested to much money in your ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER7> For my desktop workstations, I've always been a fan of building my own in a generic black box. I've been using the same i5 debian desktop since 2013 and its been fantastic so far. I've never been able to justify the expense for an Apple desktop over a traditional off the shelf parts build. Laptops are a different story, I had an XPS 15 with ubuntu in 2014 but it was the least reliable and flimsiest 'pro' device I've ever used, I promptly returned it and got a 15" pro and I've been happy since.

</comment><comment><USER8> What specifically are your frustrations? I have a 15" Pro, and it doesn't bother me much if the computer is lighter, thinner, etc. The machine is pretty powerful. Here is what is coming next (rumored). [http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/macbook- pro/](http://www.macrumors.com/roundup/macbook-pro/)</comment>


imageflow - <AUTHOR> https://www.imageflow.io/ <comment><USER2> Please correct me if I'm wrong; just curious if we can write a wrapper using GIMP API to achieve the same?

<comment><USER3> Actually, the image rendering parts are far less difficult than the codec parts. You need the whole system in an operation graph in order to do the right thing to every image. Also, GIMP's scaling is still completely wrong - something I'm ashamed I haven't fixed yet.</comment></comment>


Inside the Great Poop Emoji Feud - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/inside-the-great-poop-emoji-feud <comment><USER2> This is a fantastic read. I can not stop laughing.

"Will we have a CRYING PILE OF POO next? PILE OF POO WITH TONGUE STICKING OUT? PILE OF POO WITH QUESTION MARKS FOR EYES? PILE OF POO WITH KARAOKE MIC? Will we have to encode a neutral FACELESS PILE OF POO?"</comment>


MobaXterm free Xserver and tabbed SSH client for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ <comment><USER2> I've been using this for about 2 years at work, and am pretty happy to have a program that provides ssh access and an X Windows servers "out of the box." It's nice that I can recommend this to my colleagues and then not have them come back to me with a lot of questions about how to get it working.

For me, MobaXTerm is a well-working substitute for PuTTy + MinGW.

The GUI does a few things differently from how I'd prefer. I think the SFTP client doesn't work with the style of password authentication I work with, and I wasn't able to get the "master control port" functionality working successfully. But mostly, it Just Works, and that's a good thing to be able to say of a piece of software.

I don't use the GUI to run Unix-y programs, though. I've installed some assortment of MinGW-based Unix utilities that will mostly run from my command line or (preferrably, for me) from ConEmu. For when I really need industrial- strength CygWin, I use the command line built into Git - or maybe CygWin itself.

</comment><comment><USER3> MobaXterm is nice, but be aware that it doesn't play well with Unix tools other than the old versions that it comes bundled with. I use vagrant for all development now, so I thought that meant I could use Windows. I tried setting up an environment that used MobaXterm, a newer version of git, rsync, vagrant, VirtualBox and Emacs. That wasn't much to ask, I thought -- every other Unix tool I needed could run inside the vagrant boxes. However, I just couldn't get everything to work together after days of fiddling. One symptom of the problem: almost all of the above tools come with their own copy of SSH.

My recommendation: install mingw-get [1], and then install everything from there.

[1] [http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started](http://www.mingw.org/wiki/Getting_Started)

</comment><comment><USER4> It looks nice. I suggest that all http requests to redirect to https (also enabling HSTS and preload it into browsers HSTS list), it makes admins easier to suggest the software for their users. On the other hand I wouldn't suggest a closed source software for ssh for my users, but that's just me. However it's hard to suggest putty for Windows users either since it's _virtually impossible to download it securely_ [1]. I think the most secure suggestion is cygwin+openssh also it's the most inconvenient.

[1] [https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software- saf...](https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software-safely-is- nearly-impossible/)

<comment><USER5> It's based on GNU GPL software and MobaXTerm is under GPL v3. I found the license link on the bottom ([http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/license.html](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/license.html)) and the source files ([http://download.mobatek.net/sources/?C=M;O=D](http://download.mobatek.net/sources/?C=M;O=D)). "To compile the program, you will need Borland Delphi 7 Professional Edition with the Jedi VCL library, AlphaControls components, SecureBlackbox components and Overbyte ICS components." (from the readme in mobaxterm-7.7-src.tar.bz2)

<comment><USER4> Oh, sorry then. It seems to be a plus for a security critical software that it's open source though, it could be advertised more. Although compiling the pro version for free could be simple, it requires more expensive software to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using it for a year or so as my main terminal app (putty replacement), renewed for 2nd year and will keep using it. While it is a great kitchen sink for anyone on Windows overall UI experience is not so great. Windows UI guidelines are not followed - dialog boxes look like they are from another planet. Occasional weirdness occur with SFTP browser not starting when connecting (app restart required) and other little things like that. Support is decent. Loving MOSH support.

</comment><comment><USER7> I loved this app but I couldn't find anything as fully featured for mac, does anyone know of anything similar for OSX?

<comment><USER8> Maybe [http://www.royalapplications.com/ts/osx/features](http://www.royalapplications.com/ts/osx/features)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, this looks great! It doesn't appear to have SCP or FTP as connection types though.

<comment><USER9> The developer is extremely responsive, you could probably reach out and ask. Typically for scp or ftp I just use a terminal session anyways. You can setup custom connection strings, so you could have a terminal session launch and connect with scp/ftp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Where is it storing the keys? The amount of clients I have tested that store keys in plaintext locally on the hard drive. It is mostly trivial to hoover these up if you are so inclined. Most malware checks for the default paths to keys on your system. Of course, if the value you enter is checked against a hash we are fine, but most people do not take that step of entering the pass each time. In other words, if I can fire up the application and suddenly I'm in an SSH session, so can anybody else. A common technique I have seen in some clients is using the machine GUID as a salt to login, but even that can be hoovered up by malware and replayed on another system.

</comment><comment><USER11> Free as a best examples of modern day demo crippleware

>Max. 12 sessions >Max. 2 SSH tunnels >Max. 4 macros >Max. 360 seconds for Tftp, Nfs and Cron

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks great, ive been using Putty Connection Manager since forever when stuck on Windows but its not being maintained for years.

</comment><comment><USER13> Have not used putty or WinSCP in the couple years since I've installed MobaXTerm. Nice package.</comment>


Ask HN: Google waves invite request - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
could somebody please send me an invite for Google waves? It would be much appreciated. I'll delete this once I get one.
maxz941 at gmail dot com <comment><USER2> done

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, my friend.</comment></comment>


EventRegistry – Real-time, annotated feed of world news - <AUTHOR> http://eventregistry.org/ <comment><USER4> The pricing is contact us levels, so right off the bat probably more than three quarters of readers brushed this off.

I don't see any free public API like twitters mini firehose (10% of traffic for free).

<comment><USER5> Given their client base, it seems they don't really care about attracting small players.

<comment><USER6> We are happy to accommodate big as well as small players, as well as collaborate with others on joined projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My startup is actually a similar product, although we are approaching it in a very different way:

[https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/)

We are also specifically targeting investing, as opposed to a more broad market (for now).

Piglet, tracks top news stories, identifies how domain experts feel about said news stories (as well as general topics), and provides trend, sentiment, and net promoter tracking. We just launched a very rough MVP a few days ago.

If you're interested, on the first of every month, we send a survey. If completed, you will receive the next month free of charge. It's free as long as you keep providing feedback.

<comment><USER8> All of the investment is handled by the user, right?

You only handle the news?

<comment><USER7> Yup, only handle news, sentiment, and trends on subject matter.

It's basically an engine bubble up only the most relevant news. Then get experts opinions on said topics / news.

We are also very close to releasing our financial advisor, based on top of the data. Currently, it's written in python, so we need to make it accessible via the website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really great idea, thanks for sharing! I do wonder, is this really annotated feeds?

For me, this is machine-curated feeds rather than a form of annotation given no additional information (besides meta-data scrapped and categorised) is displayed. Not quite as catchy, but annotations make me (at least) think of something else.

Note: am passionated about designing to support annotations on media directly.

<comment><USER10> Afaik there is no meta data scrapped (technically I think some HTML meta tags are scrapped but not sure if used).

There is machine-learning in the annotations - categories rely on a (cross lingual) text classifier, entities rely on matching to Wikipedia articles, maybe a bunch of small other things to - I don't know all the details - <USER2> are some papers published about it.

<comment><USER11> interested in knowing about these papers. can you point me to some?

<comment><AUTHOR> A query to Google Scholar and quick skimming through the papers yields this as interesting start:

Event Registry – Learning About World Events From News [http://wwwconference.org/proceedings/www2014/companion/p107....](http://wwwconference.org/proceedings/www2014/companion/p107.pdf)

Using news articles for real-time cross-lingual event detection and filtering [http://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/f917/c0cff24fed1af45f94c...](http://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/f917/c0cff24fed1af45f94c53b74ca0229874966.pdf)

<comment><USER10> Correct. Main author of the project is Gregor Leban:

[https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=5pAxBWsAAAAJ&hl=...](https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=5pAxBWsAAAAJ&hl=en)

The original crawler (newsfeed.ijs.si) paper is from

Trampus, Mitja and Novak, Blaz: The Internals Of An Aggregated Web News Feed. Proceedings of 15th Multiconference on Information Society 2012 (IS-2012).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be cool if they provided a public WebSocket that anyone could use to consume events.

Related: it would be cool if there was a directory of public WebSockets offering a variety of real-time data streams.

<comment><USER13> I'm not too familiar with WebSockets. How trivial would it be processing power wise to provide this service? How trivial would it be for a large news organization like BBC to do something like this?

<comment><USER10> trivial processing power but news organizations tend to want traffic on their websites where you can see ads and click on them and other content. Not sure for how long they will even support RSS let alone make an effort to support websockets. They begrudgingly push stuff into social media only because it significantly pushes traffic to their sites.

<comment><USER14> > Not sure for how long they will even support RSS

Many don't. Examples I tried recently include:

The Telegraph (dead link from [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/follow- us/](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/follow-us/) and feeds available for _some_ sections at [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/{section}/rss.xml](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/{section}/rss.xml) \- not e.g. politics)

The Times had links available with comically out of date (years) feeds - <USER3> can't find the page now, so maybe they did respond to my tweet in a way... although not quite I'd hoped for if so!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does figure out the location? Somehow it thinks that the Champs-Elysées is in Brasilia, Brazil? [http://eventregistry.org/event/eng-3221578?tab=articles&arti...](http://eventregistry.org/event/eng-3221578?tab=articles&articlesSortBy=cosSim)

</comment><comment><USER16> What if we added bill and statute changes at every municipal, could we measure if cities are more "business" oriented as opposed to "humane" oriented?

</comment><comment><USER17> > See the future

I'm curious to see this in action but it seems like I have to pay. Any idea what they could be doing?

Feeding tags and dates into a machine learning model to predict future events?

<comment><USER6> No, you don't have to pay. Here is for example a list of known events that will happen in the next month: [http://eventregistry.org/searchEvents?query=%7B%22dateStart%...](http://eventregistry.org/searchEvents?query=%7B%22dateStart%22:%222017-06-20%22,%22dateEnd%22:%222017-07-20%22,%22preferredLang%22:%22eng%22%7D&tab=events&eventsSortBy=rel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hi - I've used this API several times. Ask me anything (though there have been been changes since I last used it)

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat!

\- What did you use it for?

\- What where the alternatives you considered?

\- What was your overall experience? (eg. data quality or API ease of use)

<comment><USER10> I used it only for research (1 for media bias analysis related to the refugee crisis and 1 at the intersection of social/media and economy).

I know the people who started EventRegistry (same department/institute as me) so I didn't care so much about finding alternatives (I.e I got free access, I think most research users do have free access)

Data quality was mostly ok but some artifacts of the article content extraction (e.g. Something like readability) were present like bits of social media share buttons. Also some updated articles were not marked as updates but rather as new articles (after some threshold of changes).

The API has been improved since I last used it - but I found it a bit unintuitive and complicated at the time (almost a year ago). From my understanding it is a bit engineered in order to prevent users from accidentally doing expensive queries or pulling in too much data. kind of makes it harder to use. But still simple - you get up and running Withings minutes and just refine your queries as you go. API limits were generous and you could always resume work after the limit reset (I was getting historical data rather than following the stream)</comment></comment></comment>


Any resources for designing the syntax for a programming language? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I have found many articles and E-books on creating a compiler / interpreter for a programming language, but virtually none on how to design the language itself. Could anyone please recommend me to a few free E-books or articles on how to design the syntax, constructs and standard library of a custom programming language (from ground up)?
Thanks,
Ndrewxie <comment><USER2> The usually best introduction for this is "Compiler Construction using Flex and Bison" Anthony A. Aaby 2004 [http://foja.dcs.fmph.uniba.sk/kompilatory/docs/compiler.pdf](http://foja.dcs.fmph.uniba.sk/kompilatory/docs/compiler.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah. I read the original question as 'I know about lex/yacc' or their modern equivalents flex/bison.. but I guess not. You can do a lot just with lex/flex, e.g. it's fine for small languages. Probably play around with that before attempting something insanely ambitious.

Also, I'm not sure how getting to the first-ever-designed language will help with anything, as you (OP) seem to be trying to do. Probably it's not being aware of lexical analysis (lex family) + parsing (yacc family) . There are some great books on those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Take a look at the blog "lambda-the-ultimate.org", there is a thread on the sidebar called "getting started". There's links in there to several good resources (Types and Programming Languages; Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs; Concepts, Types, and Models; Essentials of Programming Languages; etc).

Also: Start off by not thinking about syntax at all -- in fact, take all syntax out of your language. Break it down to the key concepts you want, such as how data is manipulated, what makes the program flow, etc. To do this, make your first stab either in a prefix-style language (Lisp, Scheme), or postfix- style (Postscript, Fourth, Factor). By minimizing the syntax you can figure out what makes your language different. Then start adding syntax back in.

If you take the approach of picking syntax from various languages and putting them together, it is kind of like taking pieces of several songs that you like, and trying to make a really good song out of those. Doesn't work as well as writing a new song from the bones up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Tony Hoare's Hints on Programming Languages Design are still worth a read: [http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~bchandra/courses/papers/Hoare_Hin...](http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~bchandra/courses/papers/Hoare_Hints.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great question. On second thoughts, is there much to say except "Combine the parts you like from existing languages and the new things you want"? And, read stuff about how existing languages were designed.

<comment><USER6> I googled about the origins of many common languages, but most of them were just based off of another language. I tried finding out how those languages were made, but it just goes on...

<comment><USER7> Well, that's still the right direction that you should pursue.

The buck stops somewhere, the history is not that long - if you trace all the ancestors and key influencers of a single language, that's generally 10 at most; and if you trace another language, half of them will overlap.

You can't really skip that step anyway, it's not like you can make an informed decision about a particular syntax feature if you haven't taken a serious look on how that feature works or doesn't work in a dozen languages; and the more obscure languages tend to be very useful in this regard because they explore a larger variety of features and their combinations. Getting a short overview of syntax of at least some 25 languages would be a reasonable prerequisite before designing another one, and that overview would still be the easy and straightforward part.

<comment><USER6> OK, I'll follow the chain to the end :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I started dabbling in programming languages design, Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide was invaluable for me. I cannot recommend this book enough. First edition is available for free from one of co-authors site [0].

[0] [https://dickgrune.com/Books/PTAPG_1st_Edition/](https://dickgrune.com/Books/PTAPG_1st_Edition/)

Edit: minor clarification.

</comment><comment><USER9> hi @ndrewxie. who are u and what is ur underlying purpose ? what's ur background ?

<comment><USER6> I'm a C/C++ developer for 15 years. I'm planning to do this mainly for learning purposes, and to create my newest project (actually an umbrella project containing 5 different projects).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> hi

<comment><USER6> Please don't spam.</comment></comment>


James Murdoch in line to replace Musk as Tesla chairman - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-chairman/james-murdoch-in-line-to-replace-musk-as-tesla-chairman-ft-idUSKCN1MK2DY <comment><USER2> From the article: The son of Fox mogul Rupert Murdoch, he joined Tesla's board in July 2017 after years of work with media companies. He has no experience in manufacturing and has never led a company that makes cars or electric vehicles.

What exactly does this guy bring to the table for Tesla? Money? Connections?

<comment><USER3> I assume "will do whatever Elon says" was the top requirement.

<comment><USER4> To be fair he's used to doing that from his father.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sorry, we live in a world where News Corp has been at the epicenter of cultivating "Merchants of Doubt"[1] when it comes to anthropogenic climate change. Anyone tied up in that universe deserves skepticism if not outright rejection for the unbelievable damage they have wielded on society's ability to address climate change. The cost to society is enormous, and their grandchildren and grandchildren's children will pay.

Even if James Murdoch is entirely amoral and more of an abacus-bean-shifter (i.e., money guy), we must recognize that the reason why an electric car company like Tesla even exists is because of headstrong founders and employees who demanded a sustainable form of transport that was not just excellent among electric cars, but one of the greatest cars.

In a way, money guys getting into Tesla is validation of the mainstream viability of sustainable transport, but we are still in a fragile state where all kinds of forces are aligning themselves against Tesla. We still need people ideologically committed to a rapid sustainable transition.

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

<comment><USER6> Are electric cars genuinely seen as part of the solution to climate change? Surely there is no place for cars in our utopian green future, they are terribly inefficient means of transportation and completely anti-social and anti-urban. The future is in advanced metro systems, high speed rail, cycling etc. In this future, cars would become decided niche.

I had never thought of Tesla being one of the 'good guys', especially with Musk's backward - even reactionary - views on public transport.[1] It hadn't occurred to me that this might not be mainstream thought.

[https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike- mass-t...](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-awkward-dislike-mass- transit/)

<comment><USER7> There is no getting rid of cars for the foreseeable future, making them electric is the obvious next step for reducing their environmental impact

<comment><USER8> If we can't get rid of cars I'm really not sure there is a future.

<comment><USER9> Seems a bit hyperbolic. Even if mass transit was ascendant/dominant, you'd still have "last mile" issues where only a car would suffice.

Wishing for cars to go away is as pie-in-the-sky as wishing POTS or Email would disappear. Simply not going to happen - it's too ubiquitous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh I see how this works. Pay the boy some big bucks and the bad news goes away?

It's the same shit-show in the UK. The same 20 Chairmen who know how to grease-the-wheels cycle around the big co's, milking fat-cat pay for 4 days a month.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> More coverage from The Guardian: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/10/james- mur...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/10/james-murdoch-elon- musk-replacement-tesla-chair)

This doesn't seem to be set in stone; rather, Murdoch is the lead candidate. There has to be a replacement for Musk by mid-November.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whoever does handles PR/brand image for Tesla must have stomach ulcers at this point. The amount of ire (whether potential or real) drawn in the last ~1 year is insane:

\- Elon makes false accusations

\- Elon says dumb thing about going private

\- Elon smokes weed on a podcast (this is a +/don't care for me but I imagine not for Tesla's entire audience)

\- Elon lets slip that the Saudis are where the money might have come from

\- James Murdoch ( _that_ Murdoch, which generally people don't know or hate) might replace Musk on the board of Tesla

\- Near constant questioning of company finances and viability

Before this year, Tesla was basically an awesome, expensive, trendy, and progressive car company that by and large people (those who can afford one, those who build them, those who love the planet, those who like high performance cars) loved --

<comment><USER12> 1\. You seem to confuse false and unsubstantiated 4\. "lets slip that the Saudis are where the money might have come from" That's honest. Perhaps the problem is that the Saudi might take a share? If so, why is that a problem other than Western capitalists chose not to finance such operation instead? If the Saudi are OK to pay the best price to lead the transition to EV, why refuse? If the problem is with the communication of the info, then why do we prefer to be kept in the dark and not know how sausage is made? 5\. Elon said that it is incorrect (cf direct reply to FT). I'm curious: who would you recommend? The guy is a clear supported of the transition to sustainable energy, while being part of a family known to lead the fight against it. He's probably well armed for the job, then. 6\. Near constant questioning of company finances and viability: Most is just FUD from short-sellers, which the media repeat because its sensationalism makes people click.

We'll know soon enough with Q3's results. In the meantime, Model 3 are selling like hot cakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Found a primary source on Tesla board about news of this type. 20% stake holder, therefore has huge influence on decision.

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050164164805545984](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050164164805545984)

Tesla and Elon Musk propaganda campaigns are so successful on Hacker News that I'm getting close to just being done with the site entirely.

<comment><USER13> Feel free to go read your precious article again by the way. It has been edited to reflect the fact that actual people with strong control over this decision have said that it is not as the article originally implied.

Hacker News? Every correction had zero upvotes. But now its the next day. This story is no longer on the front page. Anchoring effects are taking hold. Will Hacker News even ever know there was a correction to the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wonder how long until Fox News does a 180 on global warming and starts talking about the importance of electric vehicles?

<comment><USER15> or Tesla getting an ICE?

<comment><USER16> or ICE getting a fleet of Tesla

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nothing could make me want this company to fail more than knowing the Murdoch's are involved.

<comment><USER13> The story is not correct.

<comment><USER13> A 20% stake holder and board member, who unlike the quoted article is not anonymous, has publicly refuted the misinformation currently being treated as true on Hacker News with regard to claims about James Murdoch.

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050164164805545984](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1050164164805545984)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Elon has tweeted that "this is incorrect".

</comment><comment><USER19> Nepotism is going to save Tesla! Right?

If I were an independent investor, I'd be pulling my money out after this news.

<comment><USER20> How is this nepotism?

<comment><USER21> James Murdoch is good friends of Elon Musk.

So it is technically nepotism.

<comment><USER22> Their friendship would make it cronyism, not nepotism.

<comment><USER21> Nepotism:

"the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs."

[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nepotism](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/nepotism)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spike Lee Shares His NYU Teaching List of Essential Films - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/spike-lee-shares-his-nyu-teaching-list-of-87-essential-films-every-aspiring-director-should-see.html <comment><USER4> Nearly the whole conversation here is about how terrible it was to update the list to include some women.

Imagine if instead of "women" it was something else. Maybe, "Why didn't you include any Soviet filmmakers?" Or, "What about Alfred Hitchcock?" Or maybe, "You should include some films from the silent era." And imagine Spike Lee took those suggestions and said, you know what, you're right, I _should_ include some films from the silent era, there's some great stuff in there.

Would you be just as upset about Spike Lee bending to his critics instead of sticking to his guns in that case? Or would you see that maybe there is some merit in this sort of back-and-forth? Would you accept a suggestion for "silent films" but rail against a suggestion for "films by female directors"? If so, why is that, exactly? Does the merest suggestion of political correctness shut off your thinking?

<comment><USER5> The reason it irks me is because it has nothing to do with the quality of the film, which this list is ostensibly based on. What if the suggestion was, "There aren't enough movies that start with the letter F, Spike you should add some so as not seem letterist."

Taking the sex of the director, or writer, or lighting tech, into account weakens the list because you're introducing noise into your criteria.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it strengthens the list by getting him to consider things he didn't previously consider.

Everyone loves to assume the worst, here. The original list was apparently perfect, and any change is an adulteration. I wonder why?

<comment><USER6> Most commenters seem to be assuming that he took his original criteria seriously and the result happened to be one that some people found offensive. I think that's assuming the best. Meanwhile, those offended seem to be assuming the worst - some sort of bias.

<comment><USER7> >Most commenters seem to be assuming that he took his original criteria seriously ... Meanwhile, those offended seem to be assuming the worst - <USER2> sort of bias.

Firstly, I'm not offended by the original list, and I don't think many people were. Most people arguing here are offended by the reaction to the additions.

But more importantly, I don't think someone has to be biased to simply not think of particular films when compiling his list, nor do I think one has to be "not taking it seriously" in order to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > When Spike originally released this list, many noted the lack of female > filmmakers. Lee accepted that critique and released an updated list.

Does that mean that he saw movies that he felt were worthy of being on the list and (perhaps subconsciously) decided not to list them? Or did he end up listing some movies that he didn't feel were as good as the others, just to meet the quota?

<comment><USER7> Why are so many people assuming that the initial list represented his comprehensive judgement of all films ever?

Is it not far more likely that he added films as sufficiently important ones occurred to him, and at some point decided the list was fairly comprehensive and stopped?

Then subsequently, someone pointed out that there weren't many films by female directors, and this prompt made him think of a bunch of other films worth adding?

<comment><USER9> _Why are so many people assuming that the initial list represented his comprehensive judgement of all films ever?_

Because he's doing it in his role of NYU professor! If Donald Knuth released a list of "CS papers every professional should read," I would fully expect it to be his comprehensive judgement of all papers ever. Do you think that he may have missed one? Do you think Spike may have? In both cases it's their professional environment, and I would expect that it would have been discussed in their professional environments. To imply that they missed something important is to imply that their close colleagues missed it too. It could happen, of course, but not something that you think about when you read a list like that.

Until you see that he missed "Captain Ron." Then all bets are off.

<comment><USER10> I would apply more lenient standards when looking at lists of arts or crafts. Sure, Spike Lee is a professional in the field, and I am not. But many of the films I see in his list, I would consider "boring". This is _his_ personal list of films that contain important teaching moments. And because it is the arts, the list _has_ to be personal.

Knuth leaving out an important CS paper may do grave disservice to a huge chunk of the field (Edit: I mean disservice to the readers who intend to learn from the list). Science and technology builds on prior work. The arts, not so much. If I ignore the lessons taught by "The Godfather", the film I'm making may be weak in some aspects, as judged by some people. If I ignore the lessons taught by Turing's works on computability, my software (or research paper) could potentially be stillborn.

<comment><USER9> _I would apply more lenient standards when looking at lists of arts or crafts_

Why? I would expect the top of the line people in the arts to be as professional as in any other field. I would expect that great directors (and actors for that matter) have a notebook (or something) of great scenes and why they are great. I would expect artists to have their equivalent.

I mean, goddamn, if you are a great director and you say you have a list of essential viewing, then, yeah, I would assume that according to you the list would be at least very nearly complete. If may evolve a bit over time after review and discussion, but I wouldn't expect a 30% change in the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The list has little value in isolation. A brief context about why a particular film is in the list would be much more helpful. The audience can then understand why he included "controversial" directors like Gibson.

The list on its own is just a list of films to watch that someone enjoyed...and everyone would most likely have a different list.

<comment><USER12> I'd counter that if you watch the films on this list and don't understand why Lee included them, you're not likely to be a good film director.

<comment><USER13> But this is a list for aspiring directors - If I'm currently aspiring to be a better director, then some level of explanation would be beneficial to me

<comment><USER14> It's a list for aspiring directors _who are part of the NYU Graduate Film program_ [http://tisch.nyu.edu/grad-film/courses](http://tisch.nyu.edu/grad- film/courses) ... and they get three years of context.

You could ask for context from any university reading list... [http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/offerholders/...](http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/offerholders/reading- lists/english.html) ...they're of passing interest to people looking to be 'well read', but are provided mainly for the students, and the context is the course.

<comment><USER11> I think that was my point. As a reader of this list, it is of passing interest. Take the course this list accompanies and I will receive much better context and substantially improve my understanding of their inclusion.

<comment><USER12> Well, no. You stated it was list of films someone enjoyed.

But that's not what it is. It's a list that one of the top living film directors on the planet thinks that directing students at one of the leading film schools in the world should watch.

That's a different thing entirely.

Each one of these films has things directors can learn from by just _watching them_. Film being a visual medium and all.

Sure, some lectures can provide context, but the movies themselves are the actual content.

<comment><USER11> Fair point. I'm sure he did enjoy them as well as their content being of notable worth.

I very much doubt the list, and the act of watching them is the whole lesson Spike is trying to impart. The lecture series would complete the educational message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _" When Spike originally released this list, many noted the lack of female filmmakers. Lee accepted that critique and released an updated list."_

It's interesting to see that people that label themselves _anti discrimination_ actually not only live perfectly fine with _positive discrimination_ , but they actually come to expect it as a standard policy and take offense when it doesn't happen.

<comment><USER16> Being anti-rascist or anti-sexist does not necessarily imply being is anti- discrimination. To give an example, in many places positively discriminate old people by offering lower prices or better seating. Yet it would be absurd to claim that this constitutes ageism towards young people. It is understood that being old is in many ways a handicap, and by discriminating positively, we seek to lessen that handicap.

<comment><USER17> >Yet it would be absurd to claim that this constitutes ageism towards young people. //

Can you walk me through this?

A pensioner is a millionaire, say, and gets a free bus pass (OAPs in the UK are entitle to a travel pass regardless of their financial position). A school child wants to get to school but can't afford the bus so has to walk 2.9 miles each way to school.

How is it not ageism that based only on age the pensioner gets a bus pass and the child doesn't? You can argue that the ageism is justified as the general principle is sound (for example) but it's still ageism - discrimination based solely on the age of the subjects.

The child could be disabled, they still wouldn't necessarily qualify for a bus pass.

<comment><USER18> That's not discrimination against young people because it's not saying that young people _aren 't allowed_ to ride the bus, just that they have to pay the regular price. (Also, most children in the U.S. are bused to school for free. Is that not the way it is in the UK?)

<comment><USER19> So, it's OK if normal seating is at the back of the buss, but white only premium seating is at the front?

<comment><USER18> If you have to make this kind of leap to support your argument, you don't have an argument.

<comment><USER19> What leap? You said normal vs premium was perfectly acceptable? Premium aircraft seating was at the front of the aircraft... How about if we call the back of the bus the 'premium area' and exclude whites?

PS: If you don't defend your argument, I am going to assume you already conceded defeat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Many people are talking about the great films that he is missing. But if this is a list of films every aspiring director should see and not just a list of very good films, I think it would also be important to watch bad and very bad movies. Ed Wood should be in a list like this, for example, as well as TV films, anime, stop-motion films...

<comment><USER21> Ed Wood or Plan 9 From Outer Space?

<comment><USER20> Both

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> List on IMDB: [http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070332247/](http://www.imdb.com/list/ls070332247/)

<comment><USER23> Just to add, it's not in any particular order.

(well it is, alphabetically by the director's name)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We should just accept that whatever anyone puts on their "must see" list is up to personal discretion and, when asked of a director, is going to say more about the director's viewpoint and formative experiences than anything else.

If one wants to see "all the great films", I suggest focusing on specific genres/languages/formats one at a time rather than an uncategorized "top 10/20/87/100...".

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be interesting to see top developers list their favourite computer programs.

Would you revise your list to be sure the lead developer on each program made a certain distribution amongst different characteristics sex/age/location/first-language? Should a Uni degree including dev ensure that amongst the programs/theorems/languages studied that some were from a particular group/sex/ethnicity/whatever?

<comment><USER25> I would actually. "Lists" of these types get stale after a while. Providing lusts along some defined attributes makes things interesting and can introduce one to something that would not make a typical best of list.

Netflix is doing it with their movie suggestion (ie. Strong female lead) and I'm sure they're not worried about being too "PC", though I'm sure some, somewhere have intimated at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I respect his humility. However his own film "Do the Right Thing" should be on this list.

</comment><comment><USER27> How are _The Element of Crime_ [0], _THX1138_ [1] and the _Qatsi Trilogy_ [2] not on this list?

The former is simply _the best film ever made_ , the second interesting as a gritty example of lowish budget success in a completely different genre from that which the (very famous) director became known for (and is a _successful remake_ of a film from his student days), and the latter proves once and for all the power of cinema regardless of conventional plot.

[0] [https://torcache.net/torrent/CC4B99AC6FE2EA3D23173F05C95F9CD...](https://torcache.net/torrent/CC4B99AC6FE2EA3D23173F05C95F9CDA6870683D.torrent?title=\[kat.cr\]the.element.of.crime.lars.von.trier.1984)

[1] [https://torcache.net/torrent/B138110324E5F7D8AF381E553BCE0AF...](https://torcache.net/torrent/B138110324E5F7D8AF381E553BCE0AFE361B2B59.torrent?title=\[kat.cr\]thx.1138)

[2] [https://torcache.net/torrent/447F5AA67047731AD64F10653CBEEA7...](https://torcache.net/torrent/447F5AA67047731AD64F10653CBEEA7BA7A34A8C.torrent?title=\[kat.cr\]qatsi.trilogy.1982.2002.brrip.720p.krazykarvs)

<comment><USER27> Zero discussion downvote. Typical. HN is such a cultural community, ha!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I find it disappointing that the films on this list are overwhelmingly old. Sure, many of these were groundbreaking and influential in their time, but filmmaking has come such a long way since the days of Hitchcock, for example.

In his original list, "City of Gods" (which he didn't even spell correctly-- the english title is "City of God") is the only film made in the last 2 decades.

His updated list, which was supposed to be more inclusive to women, adds Apocalypto, District 9, Kung Fu Hustle, and Dirty Pretty Things, all of which are directed by men-- and he even removed "City of Gods", one of the few movies from the original list that had a female (co)director.

In fact, the entire list reads like a giant insult to all of Lee's contemporaries. Does he want every aspiring filmmaker to enter the business with antiquated sensibilities about cinematography?

He's coming across like the smug high-schooler who just discovered Led Zeppelin and declares that they're the greatest band of all time, and all modern music is crap.

<comment><USER29> Maybe for an aspiring director, it's already pretty obvious what movies to see from the last 20 years, and they've already seen them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Surprised to see no Almodovar. Interesting to see a less well known Woody Allen pic

</comment><comment><USER30> Good list. However, I notice lack of movies from such great directors as Wim Wenders and Andrei Tarkovsky. Well, I guess it is difficult to put together a list like this anyway.

</comment><comment><USER31> Is there a site/webapp that i can drop this list into and it will tell me which titles are available on netflix? (or other online streaming services)

<comment><USER32> Not the most elegant solution, but quick & easy: you could paste the list into a Google Spreadsheet, then add a formula to create a hyperlink to Netflix. E.g. for iTunes (I'm not on Netflix) this would be

      "http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/search?term="&A1

, with A1 being the field for the movie title. So take a look at the Netflix search results url and see if you can do the same there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wow - this is lacking. Very much a Hollywood/ NYC focus.

I could think of 5 (each) Russian, Chinese, French, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Australian films would be before "Bad Lieutenant" (a film I like a lot - <USER3> with the original Schooly D soundtrack)

For women - Maya Deren for historical purposes and no Chantal Ackerman or Pilar Nair?

I am not a film buff even - this is just a crap list.

<comment><USER17> I'm curious - why do you list women as a separate category, is there something essentially different about how women direct? I've never watched a film and thought "that must be by a $sex director".

<comment><USER33> Agreed - I didn't, the article did. It is a fatuous distinction. In fact - that categorizing is an example of the complete lack of imagination that I am talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> District 9 doesn't belong anywhere near this list.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is not much different than most film school lists. Nothing special.

</comment><comment><USER36> > Note: When Spike originally released this list, many noted the lack of > female filmmakers. Lee accepted that critique and released an updated list.

Thanks, I'll stick with the original list. Given the small number of female filmmakers in Hollywood an only-male list is not unlikely. Political Correctness is a bitch.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I'd hate to be exposed to eight more great films if they were made by women. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Apocalypto by Mel Gibson? Huh.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, I was thinking the same thing for that one. I'm not sure why he picked it. I don't think Gibson as a director made any memorable movie (some are decent but I can't see them being in such a list).

<comment><USER12> Lee picked it because it's exceptionally good cinema.

<comment><USER17> Do we know this? Perhaps there's one scene that stands out; or he feels that the visuals are perfect but the story is terrible; or it's an example of how you can make great movies but still be hated; or ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> No Battleship Potemkin? No Birth of a Nation? Metropolis?

</comment><comment><USER40> Surprising lack of Citizen Kane. At the same time, a lot of social/cultural struggle films.

No Psycho by Hitchcock but 3 other movies by him?

Updated list completely different from the first list?

<comment><USER41> > _No Psycho by Hitchcock but 3 other movies by him?_

Not like my opinion matters (nor does Mr. Lee's, in the grand scheme of things), but Psycho probably isn't in my top 3 Hitchcock films, either.

Vertigo, The Birds, Rear Window for me. Consider Notorious, North by Northwest, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder...there are quite a few permutations, taste dependent.

<comment><USER40> Unlike most of his other movies, Psycho broke ground in horror filmmaking. For filmmakers you want the first instance of something.

[http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/film-techniques-used- fil...](http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/film-techniques-used-film-psycho- by-alfred-470093)

It shouldn't be a list of good movies, but movies that were responsible for paradigm shifts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> A few observations: * No citizen kane, some other "classics" have also been omitted * No French cinema * No silent cinema * The omission of what is generally heralded as Kubrick's strongest work surprises me * No Tarantino

<comment><USER43> > No French cinema

The following films are on Lee's list and are French:

        Les 400 coups (400 Blows), Truffaut
        La Nuit américaine (Day for Night), Truffaut
        A bout du souffle (Breathless), Godard
        Paris brûle-t-il? (Is Paris Burning?), Clément

So 4/87 (approx 5%) of his films are French.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I feel bad that we now live in a world where a person can't release a list of influential filmmakers without including another group arbitrarily. As someone in the tech world, if someone asked me who my list of influences were, I'd be afraid to answer for fear of being lambasted for not including Sheryl Samdberg or Marissa Mayer.

<comment><USER45> You don't have to change your lists because people complain. People complain about everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> My favorite movies, but for no particuliar reason:

Platoon

Wall street

Three days of the condor

Chinatown

Sunset Boulevard

The Stranger(actually all of Orson Wells movies)

Any Andy Griffith episode

Bicycle thieves 1948

Niagara

Double indemnity (actually most billy wilder films)

The Misfits (last film for Marilyn and Rhett Butler--forgot his name.)

Giant

Rebal without a cause

Leaving Las Vegas

Blow out (all three)

Saturday night fever

Yes, even Urban Cowboy

One flew over the cocos nest

Deliverance

Hanna and her sisters

East of Eden

Dr. Strange love

Back to the future

Jaws

In cold blood(with Robert Blake)

In cold blood (with Eric Roberts, and forget his name)

The asphalt jungle 1948?

All about eve

The hot rock

Little Haus Big Halsey (Redford said it was his worst movie. Yes, it's masagonistic. Yes, he plays a jerk. But the movie captures the 70's I recall as a kid. The filming is great. His side kick in the movie did a great job playing a sweet, innocent, country teen.)

A lot of foreign films I have yet to see.</comment>


Ask HN: Temporal, RESTful-API / different resource types - <AUTHOR> Hi,
for a temporal Open Source NoSQL storage system I'm currently changing a RESTful-API slightly (no stable version released as of now -- or way back a few years, so I can change the API) as I now support the storage and querying (querying as of now via XQuery only XML) of either XML or JSON data in a binary- and in-memory format.
Would you simply build URLs as for instance with the following schema (and query parameters):
https://host:port/xml/database/document https://host:port/json/database/document
or use the HTTP "accept" and "Content-Type" headers? Basically I just need to know if I have to open a database which has XDM/XML nodes/records stored or JSON nodes, but it affects the RESTful-API.
Up until now I simply had URLs in this format:
https://host:port/database https://host:port/database/document
kind regards Johannes <comment><USER2> What you are trying to do is called "content negotiation", afaik ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_negotiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_negotiation)). Perhaps you find more information about it, when you use this term.

I like the header approach, because it is nice and clean and it can be applied easily to an xhr abstraction in JavaScript, without much change.

But to make a resource absolutely idempotent in a more expressive way (which would be nice), you could also use a file-extension-like apporach:

[http://host:port/database/document.json](http://host:port/database/document.json)

or use a parameter-based one:

[http://host:port/database/document?format=json](http://host:port/database/document?format=json)

</comment><comment><USER3> Many frameworks have plugging or middleware that can automate content negotiation for you too. Using one of those will likely inform your decisions.

I have not seen it as part of the path before, that seems weird, would avoid that method.</comment>


A PHP Prophiler Toolbar - <AUTHOR> http://prophiler.fabfuel.de/

<comment><AUTHOR> Been using this tool for a few days now, and it works brilliantly. I even forked it and committed a few improvements.</comment>


JSON-LD Is The Bees Knees - <AUTHOR> http://manu.sporny.org/2013/json-ld-is-the-bees-knees

<comment><USER2> IMO: json-ld is little more than namespace support for json, one of several xml features the "json crowd" rejected in favor of simplicity. The real question in my mind regarding json-ld is do the institutions that would benefit from json-ld over json benefit more by choosing json-ld over xml.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well said. As somebody who is maybe a bit more of an "XML advocate" than the average HN'er, I definitely agree that this is a valid question. It'll also be interesting to see just how much JSON has to do in terms of "moving towards XML" as uses for it grow.</comment></comment>


What is bare metal scripting? (thread on luajit) - <AUTHOR> http://www.freelists.org/post/luajit/LuaJITonXen

<comment><USER2> This idea of OSless application frameworks over VM hypervisors is nice. In my day we used to call them "processes".

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this site break the back button for anyone else? It's horrible, horrible!

<comment><USER4> It does for me (FF on OS X). It's run by a former co-worker of mine, though -- I'll let him know.

<comment><USER3> Great, because I got totally lost when I pressed the back button, thought it took me back so I clicked on the next item in the discussion and got very confused.</comment></comment></comment>


Mymentor.io Helping the world share & gain experience on the go - <AUTHOR>

Get mentored but the brightest people in Tech and design, mymentor.io <comment><AUTHOR> Come signup to get early access to the app in 2 weeks. www.mymentor.io</comment>