Ask HN: Please review my 3D+VOIP web project (Assemblive.com) - <AUTHOR> http://www.assemblive.com/home/ We've been working on this for a year now, it's fully embeddable inside any web page <comment><AUTHOR> An interesting aspect of Assemblive for you, hackers, is that you can embedd a 3D+VOIP widget into any web site. You can add realtime interactions and self awareness of your visitors with only a few lines of code. Here is a screencast of it (sorry for the french accent ;) [http://aworldforus.tumblr.com/post/287534616/assemblive- widg...](http://aworldforus.tumblr.com/post/287534616/assemblive-widget-a- convenient-way-to-embed)

<comment><USER2> Which accent ^^ ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I run ubuntu. Got this message:

ASSEMB'LIVE requires one the following operating systems: Windows or MacOS X. Please switch on one of these to go further.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we use Unity3D, a web plugin to run hardware accelerated 3D in the browser. They don't support Linux yet, but now that they raised a huge amount of money from Sequoia they might work on it (if they want to support ChromeOS they'd better hury)

<comment><USER4> Any reason why you chose Unity3D over Google's O3D (<http://code.google.com/apis/o3d/>) ?

<comment><USER5> Comparing Unity3D to O3D is a bit like comparing the Unreal Engine to OpenGL. Unity3D is much higher level, and provides lots of things like Ageia PhysX™, etc.

On the other hand not having to install a plugin would be a killer, so we are definitely keeping an eye on WebGL...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> an interesting idea, but is the 3D really necessary? I would think a multi- stream voice / video chat in normal window type interfaces like we're used to online would be better.

Even better would be to integrate with existing voice chat apps, like voice chat in googletalk, but with support for "conference calls" in video and voice.

I just don't see this as a good idea, the implementation looks great though.

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole idea of this is to allow large groups events. Think 20+ participants. Using 3D allows us to spatialize the event, while staying very dynamic. Groups can form, change, recreate just by moving. The sound is spatialized too, so it could scale to hundreds, thousands of persons. Just using regular voice would make an awful noise. 3D splits group very naturally, while staying dynamic and most of all, intuitive because it's very similar to regular networking events. It could obviously be done by creating voice groups on a "flat screen", but we strongly believe in the power of real world analogies, to make it immersive and help people understand how to behave in this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like the name (although not sure how to pronounce).

"Avatar" could also be a cool name. ;-)

<comment><USER5> On the other hand we are a French startup, so our pronunciation probably doesn't make much sense for native English speakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> looks very cool, but animation can make it inappropriate for serious business events/meetings

</comment><comment><USER9> When do you plan to leave beta stage?

</comment><comment><USER10> nice job. instinctive and easy to use. a good tool to have virtual conference

</comment><comment><USER11> Try it now button awesome.

<comment><USER12> thx, that was my humble contribution ;-)</comment></comment>


Known Vulnerable GitHub Repos? - <AUTHOR> Doing a project for a security class right now about open source programs that have had known vulnerabilities (I have to find 5 and do a writeup on them). Do you guy shave any recommendations for projects to look at? All suggestions are welcome. <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/advisories](https://github.com/advisories)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks mate</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What problem would you pay $5M to solve? - <AUTHOR> I have come to a conclusion that solving easy problems is rather boring, but hard problems worth solving should also come with a reward worth the effort, otherwise the incentives are not aligned.<p>What problems do you have or have seen at work or otherwise that don't have a straight-forward solution, but would benefit the world/co if they were done? <comment><USER2> Cache expiry time ? I guess it won't take $5M. But in my mind it's virtually impossible for me to determine what it should be

</comment><comment><USER3> 'last mile' municipal water quality valuations provided free of charge to the residents in said water districts, values provided daily (POC) and eventually more real time

</comment><comment><USER4> Addiction</comment>


Why We Switched from Angular (2/4) to React - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdsync.io/blog/2017/09/06/why-we-switched-from-angular-to-react/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR we switched to react because 1\. react is small (codebase wise) 2\. react community is wide 3\. react + redux = love.

I personally think that, although 1 and 2 are correct, this is not sufficient reason to choose one framework over another.

For 3, you can do Angular + Redux and it works perfectly well.</comment>


Stephen Wolfram does an AMA - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfram_mathematica_nks_wolframalpha <comment><USER2> I didn't know that Alpha can tell you what planes are currently visible overhead, _holy crap_ , that's awesome!

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=planes%20above>

Ran the query and looked at the sky like an idiot, only birds! And it's pretty clear today, too. Can the flight schedules be that off?

Also learned how many calories a cubic light-year of milk chocolate is: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfr...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfram_mathematica_nks_wolframalpha/c3xxxyz)

<comment><USER3> You can do the same thing for satellites and stars (<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=satellites+overhead>)

You can answer a lot of cool questions with Alpha. Nutritional information for 1/2 an avacado? It can do that. Number of kilobytes in a petabyte? Yup.

Overall, very cool tool.

<comment><USER4> I use it occasionally for word finding, like a friend who wanted a clever .me domain I pointed to: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=words+ending+in+me>

Also, you can use that same idea to cheat at Scrabble (or any variant), though I would never condone such a thing ;)

<comment><USER5> If you like that, try <http://morewords.com>.

<comment><USER6>
      grep me$ /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l
      1699

(WolframAlpha: 210)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I will be interested to see if he answers any questions about reviews like this about ANKS: [http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RUGSCP3XBNBUV/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1579550088&nodeID=283155&tag=&linkCode=#wasThisHelpful)

<comment><USER8> From past experience at lectures, he tends to avoid questions about NKS. His magnum opus turned laughing stock is kind of a touchy subject.

<comment><USER9> He does address NKS at least once, here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfr...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qisot/im_stephen_wolfram_mathematica_nks_wolframalpha/c3y04k2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Disappointing that the top voted 'questions' in these AMAs end up being scandalous statements and conjectures while the actual questions get pushed down to the bottom.

<comment> w-ll That's my question, HattoriHanzo is my name on Reddit. I tried reaching him a year ago when that happened. But sadly, nothing came of it. It's not my fault everyone else wants to know :/ I still use and suggest other to use WA against my better judgement.

<comment><USER11> Looking at the Android app page, they may have gotten confused because the screenshot has WA in it. That is, it's using your app to input math symbols into WA. That may have triggered a simple policy of "issue takedown for anything that is not ours that has WA in it."

<comment><USER12> Worse. According to the Market blurb, it goes further:

"Bonus: Launcher icon opens a quick dialog box with input box to query the WolframAlpha Computational Knowledge Engine and launch your web browser. *Wolfram Alpha is a trademark of Wolfram Alpha LLC"

[https://market.android.com/details?id=net.schwiz.wolfram.ful...](https://market.android.com/details?id=net.schwiz.wolfram.full&hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somewhat unrelated, but does anyone know the cost of the Wolfram Alpha API is after the free 2000 calls? No website seems to give the pricing (except for the old 2009 pricing scheme), and the Wolfram Alpha API site just says to contact them -- quite frustrating (yes I sent an email, but got no response)

<comment><USER14> I think it's dependent on the type of project you do, for instance a school's math program whatever might get charged less where a fortune 500's x project gets charged more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like he's getting preemptively skewered by the Redditerati.

<comment><USER16> I often wonder what kind of thought goes through a person's head before they do an IaMa on reddit. You need to be either crazy, stupid, crazy stupid, or Neil Degrasse Tyson to think "Hey this is gonna be awesome!"

<comment><USER17> I disagree vehemently. The vast majority of AMAs by celebs go very, very well. There've been a few well-known trainwrecks (I'm looking at you, Woody Harrelson), but for the most part they're quite successful and a good way to engage with fans.

<comment><USER16> I used to subscribe to IaMa a while back and yes they were and to some extent are still a fantastic opportunity for the unwashed masses to quiz celebrities of all walks of fame.

Still considering what happened to Woody, I would think that incident would give a few celebs and PR managers a moment of pause to think "Is this really worth the risk?"

On the other hand, generally the dark side comes out of Reddit only when people are obviously (ab)using r/IaMa soley to benefit their current PR campaigns.

<comment><USER18> The problem with Woodys AMA was that it wasnt an 'Ask Me Anything'

It was 'Ask Me Anything About Rampart'

<comment><USER19> Oh that's why posters are saying the Wolfram AMA "ramparted". I had thought they meant that people were ambushing Wolfram (with "ramparts").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting link provided by Wolfram, and funded by his company: <http://www.computerbasedmath.org/>

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems to be an awful lot of asking and not a lot of answering.

<comment><USER22> Did you read the story? 3pm-5pm ET is when it happens.</comment></comment>


Interactively Programming Flappy Bird in ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> http://rigsomelight.com/2014/05/01/interactive-programming-flappy-bird-clojurescript.html <comment><USER2> This is wonderful. I really need to get past the reading through a tutorial stage with clojurescript and actually build something.

On the REPL side, I wrote a little python lib [0] to do this for raw js for me in Chrome. It watches for local changes in the filesystem and pushes them directly into the browser (which means it's editor agnostic, though, linux only). It's pretty primitive but can be useful when you're working in that environment.

[0] [https://github.com/aidos/chromesync](https://github.com/aidos/chromesync)

</comment><comment><USER3> To me this looks more like immediate programming than interactive programming á la Bret Victor. You program the same way as ever, but changes can be seen immediately since browser can load new code very fast. I use LiveReload for this:

[http://livereload.com/](http://livereload.com/)

You can get it for free, with Python for instance:

[https://github.com/lepture/python- livereload](https://github.com/lepture/python-livereload)

It is so fast that it usually takes me more time to switch focus from editor to browser with alt-tab than LiveReload uses to refresh browser state. Also, it reloads assets like CSS and images. I used it even with LightTable's internal browser, with ongoing REPL connection, albeit briefly, but it worked.

Choice of technology involved beside, the post makes great points. I truly enjoy programming more when there is less contextual switches and waiting between coding and the runtime. REPL into the browser is also a must. ClojureScript has a REPL, but for some reason there hasn't come a JavaScript equivalent. A dev console is not nearly as powerful than complete cli app, though they seem to be getting better and better. I'd like to have a NodeJS console with connection to browser tab with the app.

And I'd like to have a way to modify the code visually direct from browser, but we are not there yet...

</comment><comment><USER4> This is great, but the author already has a ton of working code and a framework that he can plug and play into.

When I see these types of demos of live coding, I always wonder what it looks like when nothing is working, and when you aren't exactly sure how things are going to come together. Is it worth it, or just an interesting distraction?

<comment><AUTHOR> As the OP I firmly believe that this is more than just a distraction. I don't have a ton of code and a framework that I am leaning on. I am leaning only on a practice. And that practice is to write functional code and then reap its many benefits. One of those benefits is being able to see my running programs change in real time.

In the ClojureScript community we passed a threshold where we can now program interactively, I am simply pointing out that occurance.

<comment><USER5> > One of those benefits is being able to see my running programs change in > real time.

Those benefits were all available in the Xerox PARC systems:

\- Smalltalk

\- Interlisp

\- Mesa/Cedar

But thanks to many mistakes, the world got UNIX instead and now newer generations are rediscovering what interactive coding really means.

<comment><USER6> Could you elaborate. I'm curious why interactive programming isn't more popular.

<comment><USER5> Most likely because:

\- Xerox PARC systems were too expensive for most companies. Alan Kay says if you want the future today, you must be willing to build the hardware from 15 years in the future

\- The commercial attempts to bring Smalltalk and Lisp into the market failed, mainly due to mismanagement and the high prices

\- The first set of UNIX clones start spreading into the industry, were much less expensive and good enough

\- Attempts to replicate Smalltalk and Lisp interactive experience in common early 80's hardware failed short to provide the same experience as in the Dorado and Star systems.

\- Younger developer generations educated in UNIX and microcomputer OS never experienced such systems

\- Probably something else

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that's an interesting topic

<comment><USER5> You might find these videos interesting, cross linked from another discussion.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7565751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7565751)

These systems were working in the late 70's, early 80's as personal workstations. Now compare with what many developers still use today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice! I wonder if interactive programming might end up encouraging a _trial and error_ approach to coding which can be a very bad habit.

Just a minor tip: I feel like you spend way too much time typing in the demo. You should just copy and paste the changes you want to make ahead of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. That was my first screen cast. I went through like 7 iterations eventually I just threw the towel in. Yeah the whole sine-wave function thing takes to long. Next time I will paste stuff like that in.

<comment><USER8> Actually I'd like to strongly urge you to not copy/paste code in. The trend lately has been to not paste code in but to do the typing... it's more akin to live coding and I think learners gain more. A lot of the better online tutorial sites make their teachers work the code out live. In addition to that, they often discourage the use of macros and shortcut keys so the viewer can see and learn what's going on. With modern video players those who don't want this can scrub past it.

The risk of typing the code in and not copying and pasting for those who are up to speed is that they have to take a few moments to watch the coding or skip past it; the risk of not live coding for those who aren't up to speed is not understanding what's going on. The time taken to live code is really helpful for people like me.

<comment><USER7> I like live coding too but I think how much of it is acceptable depends on what you're trying to demonstrate. If you're doing a programming tutorial video then yes by all means type every line so the viewer can follow along. However, if you're trying to show how various code changes get reflected in your browser do you really need to dedicate 20% of your video time to writing a sine function?

<comment><USER8> I think so, especially in this case. In this case, you only really get a sense of just how interactive the programming is by watching how a really short amount of time coding produces game play changes. When people cut and paste I think the viewer wonders in the back of their mind if something else got tweaked (not intentionally to mislead or anything, but because of the nature of coding). This is probably one of the reasons why, for example, the PeepCode Play by Play videos got so popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _I can easily say that when I return to projects that don't have an interactive workflow I feel like I am in the stone ages._

i really can't put it better. it's like when i first found Firebug or Mapquest.

<comment><AUTHOR> We should make people program without Firebug every now and then and so they can experience the pain we went through.

<comment><USER10> When I debug in firefox, I use the native debugger. Firebug takes a long time to start up. Am I missing out, or are the two similar at this point?

<comment><USER11> They're basically the same, except the native debugger--like you said--is faster. I love Firefox, but I've switched to Chrome for the dev tools and overall speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why not just use light table?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question! And I have to first say that I haven't used light table a lot. But from my experience Light Table has what I will call REPL based interactivity. You choose which sections of code to have compiled and then evaluated in the browser environment.

This is different from the the experience of just saving a file and having the behavior change. But you can probably integrate this workflow into Light Table quite easily. Well actually you can use figwheel inside Light Table and have both repl based and file based interactivity. Pretty cool.

I also think that the Light Table interactivity for javascript is not REPL based but I would call file based. But the dominant javascript programming paradigm in javascript is imperative and thus very brittle when working with live coding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me or is the game stuttering every half second ? Is this because of the screen capture, JS GC, scrolling implementation or am I just imagining things ?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you are on mobile the game is certainly stuttering. I built this primarily to demo interactive coding not with an eye to making it perform well on mobile. Are you on a mobile platform?

<comment><USER14> I think the commenter may have referred to the video, in which there's a lot of stutter. I found this distracting as well, since it made it difficult to see just how interactive (or immediate, for the semantically inclined) the programming really was. That said, I think this is great work, and the screencast is otherwise doing a great job getting your points across. I disagree with other comments saying there's too much coding, and copy/pasta would've been better; I feel the balance was just right. Thanks for sharing this with the world!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How does figwheel compare to boot? [http://github.com/tailrecursion/boot](http://github.com/tailrecursion/boot)

<comment><AUTHOR> I just read the README and it looks like boot is Clojure centric, not ClojureScript. And it is a build tool where figwheel hooks into a ClojureScript build tool and send code changes to the browser.

But it looks like boot could be a good foundation for a project like figwheel. But for now I am going to stick with lein.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm waiting for LightTable to properly support Erlang to enable this kind of workflow.

</comment><comment><USER17> > If you tell me that I can experience live behavior changes in the browser as > I type and all I have to do is defonce the reference to my program state I'd > call that a clear win.

But your codebase is only ~20 lines.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. But I'll say that with React and ClojureScript you can make a very large code base where all the components manage their lifecycles in a way that is completely reloadable with little effort going into thinking about reloadability itself :)

<comment><USER18> Are you using react/cljs without using any of the Clojurescript wrappers? For learning purposes do you think is better to start that way?

<comment><USER19> I'm using Om quite heavily and it was my first look at react, clojurescript and single page web apps (prior Clojure experience though). Its been a reasonably pleasant experience and I can see myself continuing to use them quite a lot. Learned a lot about React in the he process too.

I personally would stick with the wrappers as it makes for a more streamlined experience. I like Om though the others look a little simpler, so may be more suitable if you're looking to stay close to React.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great stuff! Would that work in both Android and iOS?

<comment><AUTHOR> They both have browsers with Websockets, so theoretically you could live code in the mobile browser. Although I haven't done it yet.

</comment></comment><comment> dav- Would this work with standard JavaScript as well?</comment>


Scientists find first evidence that many universes exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-scientists-evidence-universes.html <comment><USER2> _Still, the scientists acknowledge that it is rather easy to find a variety of statistically unlikely properties in a large dataset like the CMB_

One is reminded of "Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick!" as an example of this error (<http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html>)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I think this comment gets it exactly. This kind of research always bothers me because it starts with narratives like the Big Bang and parallel universes and then (ab)uses the data to corroborate them. The problem is that, on a multiversal scale, we really have only one observable data point (our universe) so just about any cognitive model that we can come up with can be used to explain its idiosyncrasies with equal validity.

This result is very different from actually observing many universes bumping into each other, or multiple universes starting from a big bang. It's more like seeing a coin come up heads once, and then claiming that the model "coins always come up heads" is the best model describing that situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this really just a variation on the Penrose fallacy that occurred not- so-long ago, probably resulting from an inability to account for the statistical and technical properties of our CMB measurements?

</comment><comment><USER5> I read this headline as "Scientists find first evidence that many universities exist". Vacation clearly cannot come fast enough.

<comment><USER6> This would make for an epic onion article ;p

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the two-slit experiment the "first" evidence that other universes exist?

<comment><USER8> My head just exploded, that explains everything! The collapse of the electron wave function is a symptom of something causing the electron to stop behaving as a multidimensional particle and begin behaving as a single dimensional particle. woah.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if you're making fun of me, or your response is just way over my head.

<comment><USER9> > I'm not sure if you're making fun of me, or your response is just way over > my head.

Honestly, cosmology is like that for most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really hope this isn't true. I can't begin to imagine the horrors we'd have to accept as part of reality as a consequence.

<comment><USER11> What horrors? Our sun is already one of 100 billion in the Milky Way, and our galaxy one of (is it?) 1 trillion in the 13-billion-year-old observable Universe. It's only a small step to accept our observable Universe is only one of 10 trillion bubbles in the Multiverse.

<comment><USER10> The fact that the apparent randomness seen in quantum mechanics is actually our traveling down one of many possibilities, each of which manifest of their own right. Which means that, if I reach success in my life, thinking back to the hopeful sorry self in my past, I can no longer say, "to think, that sorry guy became the success he is today". That sorry guy also died of cancer, fell off a cliff, died alone, became a heroin addict, and won the lottery. It means that if we as a race ever successfully end poverty or oppression, there will be infinite other amount of scenarios where it never happened and probably got worse. I could imagine all sorts of horrible possibilities but I won't.

I'm just going off of what other people seem to conclude from this theory. I admit it seems a bit juvenile that _every_ conceivable thing is possible. ("Everything you can think of is true" - Tom Waits) There's probably a lot of physical limitations. But I still worry what sorts of horrible scenarios it may allow for.

But, I dunno, maybe not all multiple universe theories are the same.

<comment><USER12> I think it's cool too, since every possibility has a non-zero probability of occurring, so I can attempt absolutely anything I want, no matter how crazy, and somewhere I will have succeeded. I don't even have to put in any effort.

Of course, if the set of possibly horrible things is much larger than that of possibly great things, then yes reality sucks. Given that there are always many more ways things can go wrong than right, I guess reality sucks.

So, the end result is I don't even have to do anything and my dreams come true, but that doesn't matter because so do my nightmares, and there are more of them.

<comment><USER13> >I think it's cool too, since every possibility has a non-zero probability of occurring

So, in some universe there is no extent multiverse?

Not every thing that appears possible is.

<comment><USER12> Physically speaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", right?

How much data would be required to determined _which_ of the googleplex of imaginable alternate universes are the ones which intersected this one?

<comment><USER15> googolplex; the Googleplex is a place :)

(Can't resist pedantry in this case; my grandfather taught me what a googol and a googolplex are way back in the dark ages and I have some affection for the terms)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> another article trying to perpetuate the big bang myth by fitting evidence around a predetermined conclusion. We really need to abandon the big bang theory and just admit we just don't know yet instead of fitting evidence to our conclusion. If the paper concludes no single bang, and no singular event, then no big bang happened.

<comment><USER17> Big Bang is currently accepted to the extent that it is because it has managed to fit the facts best. Isolated suggestions here and there will explain this bit better or explain that bit better and it makes for a great New Scientist article every last freaking time somebody somewhere puts a pre-pre-print up on arxiv, but nobody has actually put together a theory that explains the totality better than the current standard theory. Everybody already knows that it's broken, that's not news. And it takes more than "one paper" to determine the matter either way, I can pretty much find "one paper" that'll say just about anything.

We know we don't know. That's not news. Nobody has anything better yet. But that's hardly an excuse to just throw our hands up and "abandon" what is currently the best we've got.

In other news, everybody knows the Standard Model of particle physics has to be broken; it is accepted not because it is _right_ but because nobody has actually come up with anything uniformly better.

<comment><USER18> Scientists call it the Big Bang Theory. And in Science, the word "theory" is supposed to basically be the equivalent of a proven phenomenon. Scientists do not admit that the Big Bang theory is broken. They really believe that everything in the universe came from nothing even though it violates everything in cause-and-effect.

<comment><USER19> Go back far enough and everything boils down to "something from nothing" or "something was always there". Both options violate everything in cause-and- effect.

We either don't exist - demonstrably false - or the universe's start doesn't necessarily abide by cause-and-effect as we humans understand it.

<comment><USER12> Couldn't God have created everything from nothing? God is philosophically understood to be a self sufficient being. He is also understood to be all powerful, thus capable of creating something from nothing.

Seems a justified and tidy resolution to the supposed problem you refer to.

<comment><USER20> You are just adding another layer of abstraction. Something created God or God has existed forever.

If the universe existed forever, you don't need to create a God to create the universe.

<comment><USER18> There is a difference though. From what we know of the big bang, there is a starting point of the universe. The universe being started from nothing violates physical laws. A spiritual entity wouldn't be bound by the same physical logistics. Even if someone argues that it is "unlikely" for God to exist, it is still atleast a logical possibility.

<comment><USER19> > From what we know of the big bang

There's a lot we know we don't know of the Big Bang.

> The universe being started from nothing violates physical laws.

So does a God. Something has to be violating physical laws as we currently understand them (and we hardly know everything yet...), so adding God doesn't really get you anywhere.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: $ npm i npmusic -g && npmusic - <AUTHOR> Made a little toy that plays music during npm tasks<p>$ npm install >> $ npmusic install<p>$ npmusic -m exciting #play an exciting song<p>$ npmusic # =play random song<p>$ npmusic --help for all options<p>$ npmusic -p <youtube_url/music_path) # play a song at a specific location <comment><USER2> how do you plug it with your npm tasks?</comment>


SQL query for site search in URL - <AUTHOR> http://jasonbos.co/search-for-power-users-place-sql-query-in-url#

<comment><USER2> Is public shaming without warning allowed? In that case I got a couple of sites here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3406144>

Some of them been told how to fix it by yours truly, yet remained unfixed.

Let me know if public shaming is frowned upon or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Is public shaming without warning allowed?"

Since when was "public shaming" not allowed?

<comment><USER2> Seems kinda... unfair without giving them a fair shot to fix their exploit. If it hasn't been fixed within a week (should really be a day, but I'm being overly nice) then sure by all means go ahead.</comment></comment></comment>


Tessel, a NodeJS-based microcontroller - <AUTHOR> http://www.dragoninnovation.com/projects/22-tessel

<comment><USER2> I don't understand this craze to use JS everywhere. It's not the best language for every job. The main argument seems to be 'if you know JS you can use it in product X'. If you're not competent enough to learn another language then are you competent to write good enough JS?

<comment><USER3> I think in this case there are a few reasons:

1) Node.js has a huge ecosystem and it's easy to use

2) JavaScript is known by many

3) JavaScript may not even come close to being a proper language for hardware programming but it is good enough for these kind of devices

<comment><USER4> > Node.js has a huge ecosystem

So do many other platforms.

> JavaScript is known by many

So are many other languages.

> JavaScript [...] is good enough for these kind of devices

So are many other languages.

The question, as I got it, was "why JavaScript is chosen among many possibly alternatives?". Your comment does not answer it, I believe.

<comment><USER3> Even if you used the same argument for all my points, the intersection of the result sets seems to be empty.

To be more clear, AFAIK, no other platform accomplishes those three goals as good as JavaScript. Maybe Python? GitHub language stats used to say otherwise (until they removed them). I also have the impression that as far as dynamically typed languages go, JavaScript is one of the most optimized ones. Well, Lua and some others beat it on speed but they are not as popular and/or provide what node.js provides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's not strictly NodeJS based - According to their site it runs on top of Lua...

There's also another JavaScript microcontroller crowdfunding at the moment: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/48651611/espruino- javasc...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/48651611/espruino-javascript- for-things)

<comment><USER6> AFAICT the Espruino and Tessel are slightly different. The Espruino's focus seems to be providing an ultracompact, low-power, very simple JS-powered Arduino, which (with physical adapter) could be used with existing Arduino shields. The Tessel seems to be focused more on the interfacing-with-the- internet side of things, with built-in wifi.

I think there's plenty of room for both, and it's exciting to see continued efforts towards making it easier to bridge the gap between embedded devices and the software world!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the price, I still think that most developers are better off buying a BeagleBone Black for $45MSRP which can run a flavor of nix. The default "IDE" it ships with is cloud9, and has js libraries to control the pinouts, etc. JS fans can use this happily, or you can put nix on it, and just install Node.

<comment><USER8> I agree. Even the default distro that the BeagleBone comes with (Angstrom linux) has Node preloaded onto it, out of the box. And the power that thing offers for $45 seems almost impossible to beat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The question I have for this is, why not just use Node with Firmata on an Arduino? Anyone give me the apparent weakness of that setup that makes this more preferrable?

<comment><USER10> I've played with Arduino and the #1 complaint I have about it is that in order to do anything I have to learn a whole lot about electronics. With Tessel you just plug a new module and npm install and you're good to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> See relevant discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6214553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6214553)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there any information on when it's shipping? Read through the crowdfunding site a few times, but might have just glanced over it.

<comment><USER13> February 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Isn't it a bit too expensive? I think it is, especially when considering the competition (Arduino).

<comment><USER13> I think you aren't taking into consideration the differences between this and the competition. The Tessel is intended to be a powerhouse right out of the box. For example, 160MHz compared to <20MHz, and 32MB of flash and RAM compared to 32-256kB.

<comment><USER3> You can achieve the same level of flexibility and more with arduino + raspberry pi, put together in a custom case. It still doesn't cost that much. I really wanted to play with this, but I find it too expensive for having it just to play with it.

<comment><USER10> The difference I see with Tessel is that you require less learning electronics and you're right away capable of programming modules just after you plug them in. To me that has considerable value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well now that just ruins the fun of programming on a microcontroller. I like my little Arduino and Teensies because its low level programming, bare metal programming.

<comment><USER15> [https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/234856345579446272](https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says/status/234856345579446272)</comment></comment>


Kogito – Cloud-based business automation platform - <AUTHOR> https://kogito.kie.org/get-started/ <comment><USER2> It really strikes me how many times new products fail to describe efficiently what they do. It often seems they're explaining what the project/service does to someone who already knows it rather than to someone who just landed on their website. Many Apache products lack of proper explanation, in my opinion. Some times even AWS services.

Well, it could be I'm bad at understanding their explanation. Am I the only one thinking this?

<comment><USER2> I hope you guys at Kogito take this in a constructive way. For instance, once you want to know more and you read "examples", as user, I want to fully understand what does it do! Instead, I find a link to [https://github.com/kiegroup/kogito- examples/releases](https://github.com/kiegroup/kogito-examples/releases) . I have no doubt your software is amazing, I just would like you to help me understand what it does and if it suits me. :)

<comment><USER3> we will! We are currently working on making our documentation and getting started experience more accessible. We welcome constructive feedback like this :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In case people from this project are still checking this thread. I am actually looking into Drools at this moment so the timing cannot be better...

I have a few questions:

1\. Is this a new skin/interface for existing tools like Drools / jBPM or re- implementing that functionality?

1a. If new skin: is it fair to say, once the business application is built (there maybe bugs along the way due to the stage of this project), since the foundation is Drools / jBPM, we can expect production quality that we would expect out of Drools/jBPM?

2\. What is the KIE Group? Is this owned by Redhat? It is very hard to tell by reading the footer.

3\. Does the team provide consulting services to use these tools for an enterprise adoption?

<comment><USER3> 1\. it's both :) we're keeping a lot of the features in place but we are taking the chance to renew some parts and drop or redesign some 2\. KIE (Knowledge Is Everything) is the collective name of the development group that works on Kogito/Drools/jBPM/OptaPlanner. It's not a legal entity so it's not technically "owned" by RH, but the majority of us work for RH 3\. RH provides subscription services and consulting

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does it do? Business automation platform sounds very nonspecific.

<comment><USER3> Full disclosure: I work on Kogito. This is a "rethinking" of our traditional engines (Drools, jBPM, OptaPlanner) especially meant for containerized/k8s/lightweight deployment, with support for native compilation through Quarkus.

Also you may want to take a look at our fresh new editors: they are available as VSCode extension, Chrome extension and stand-alone via bpmn.new and dmn.new :)

<comment><USER6> I came across Kogito some days ago as I was looking into some alternatives for our drools based engine. I'd like to build some kind of online editor for business people to manage drm rules easily. How would one go about doing something like that with Kogito?

<comment><USER4> Could you please share your reasons for looking at alternatives to Drools? I am in the process of evaluating Drools and it will be great to understand why people move away from it.

<comment><USER6> "Looking for alternatives" was maybe a bit too much. As far I understood these are built pretty much on the same core? So using the same rule sets should work on Kogito too. We recently moved to micro services and I'd like to have the editor as part of another service instead of kie workbench so I've been looking around for ways to accomplish that.

<comment><USER3> you should look into our new tooling [https://kiegroup.github.io/kogito- online/#/](https://kiegroup.github.io/kogito-online/#/)

also, yes: Kogito is still based on Drools for the rules part

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You've got to update your marketing page with some examples besides a small diagram and some java class names. I had to get all the way to mentioning drools before I knew WTF Kogito did.

BTW rules[1] is pretty good.

[1] [https://github.com/jruizgit/rules](https://github.com/jruizgit/rules)

<comment><USER3> We know. We are doing our best to update the docs and website, we will publish something better soon. In the meantime you can have a look at our blogs (e.g. [http://blog.athico.com/](http://blog.athico.com/)) and our examples [https://github.com/kiegroup/kogito- examples](https://github.com/kiegroup/kogito-examples)

this deep dive is also a nice overview of the project (also yay I am there) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBkX6v57Jbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBkX6v57Jbo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> the name sounds a lot like "cogito" by ExpertSystem

<comment><USER9> Epic EMR also uses Cogito as part of their branding.</comment></comment>


Renewable power is good; more is not always better - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21678955-renewable-power-good-more-renewable-power-not-always-better-when-wind-blows <comment><USER2> Distributed power generation would reduce transmission power loss & make the grid more robust; similar to distributed computing or the internet.

Distributed power generation would also create more community autonomy. Currently, there are large middlemen extracting profit from the users & altering local ecosystems; where the decision makers are not part of the ecological feedback loop.

Technologies like biogas use compost & manure to create methane. Biogas reactors are inexpensive, can be built DIY, & scale small to large. Europe has adopted biogas & has several large reactors. [http://european- biogas.eu/](http://european-biogas.eu/). The compost can be used to create soil health in the local area. Compost can be collected using bikes in local neighborhoods.

Here's a coop called pedal people. [https://www.pedalpeople.coop/](https://www.pedalpeople.coop/)

Communities becoming self-reliant with their energy production would increase neighborhood autonomy, keep money inside of the community, & would increase awareness what is thrown away.

Another underutilized resource is human poop. Millions of tons of nutrients & fuel are poured into the oceans as toxic sludge. Rather than devastate environments, we could utilize this resource to power our cities & heal our soil.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Better energy storage would help, too. Hydro-electric power stations have been used to store energy for decades. But there is not always an uphill reservoir handy, and other ways of storing energy, such as lithium-ion batteries, are expensive. More promising, probably, is automatic demand reduction. Smart meters can turn down household freezers and air-conditioning units briefly when power is in short supply and then power them up again, thereby shifting demand. Sia Partners, a consultancy, estimates that European countries could cut peak demand by 9% with such methods._

This is what I'd bet on.

Re-flow batteries are cost effective for many application and available now, and combined with companies like Tesla pushing the cost of lithium-ion and other technologies down it is pretty clear it will only get cheaper.

Batteries and smart meters also de-centralize power generation. This is important because it cuts the costs associated with transmission.

</comment><comment><USER4> This article makes quite an attack on Germany's Energiewende (energy transition) and repeats a number of myths.

Here is a link that sets out to debunk some of those myths in a fairly rigorous manner:

[http://www.energypost.eu/energiewende-dark- side/](http://www.energypost.eu/energiewende-dark-side/)

</comment><comment><USER5> What a strange _tone_ that article had.

I'm still trying to work out the headline, where the strange tone starts. More wind power in Germany is bad because.... German miners will protest at the closure of coal plants? Because Germany only has very limited carbon tax? Surely a carbon tax would lead to... more renewable energy.</comment>


Array Thinking – Let it snow - <AUTHOR> https://arraythinking.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/let-it-snow/ <comment><USER2> Unlike the original video about Life, this one is almost impossible to follow and understand what's happening

<comment><USER3> Nah, that's just APL. Normal human reaction.

<comment><USER4> I thought it was a pretty nice intro to APL and what you can do with it ..</comment></comment></comment>


Gruveo announces WebRTC Embed API, accepts beta applications - <AUTHOR> https://www.gruveo.com/developers/embed-api/ <comment><USER2> Cool! feel free to post the news on [http://rtc.news](http://rtc.news) ;)</comment>


The agony and the irony of Tim Cook - what went wrong for Apple - <AUTHOR> http://gravitationalpull.net/wp/?p=2321 <comment><USER2> The core assertion of this piece is that Tim Cook somehow ballsed up the supply chain.

It makes this assertion without offering any numbers. This is called making- shit-up.</comment>


The divorce rate has fallen because the demographics of marriage have changed - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/09/millennials-divorce-baby-boomers/571282/ <comment><USER2> Marriage is expensive and divorce is even more expensive, especially for men. The antidote is to marry only in your money league, or higher.

Women used to do that, for their own protection - now men must do the same, and obviously the mating pool shrinks.

</comment><comment><USER3> A question I have is...why marriage at all? Is there a reason I need the government to recognize the union between my and my SO?

<comment><USER4> I used to parrot about marriage - "license and registration are for cars."

But, getting married (after 7yrs with SO) had 2 powerful effects:

1\. The power of social contract as a signal to family, friends, society etc is huge. It's also really nice to celebrate with loved ones. There's not enough ceremony in our lives as it is...

2\. The power of agreement with SO had an immensely positive impact on our relationship. Words have power, agreements have even more so. Just choose carefully and intentionally the agreement that you're entering with your partner.

<comment><USER5> I had a similar experience though a lot more recently. My SO had to almost drag me through the altar - I didn't care much either way but didn't want to jump through the various hoops (especially the financial ones) to get it done.

I can't say it has affected our everyday life in any way but it is an experience that you end up sharing forever and becomes a part of your relationship.

That said I'm lucky that we both wanted a small ceremony. I may not have fared as well if we were dropping tens of thousands of dollars and spending months planning a wedding. That'd be a whole different animal.

<comment><USER6> > sharing forever

Which is not necessarily good. If your marriage fails, it's 'regretting forever'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could part of the reason be that online dating pairs people who are more suitable for each other? There are less people just settling, to start a family. Some of those who, in the past, found someone who had just settled for them. May find it more difficult to find someone, willing to do that.

<comment><USER8> >Could part of the reason be that online dating pairs people who are more suitable for each other?

I'd want a source on this because an algorithm matching people does not seem to be the most effective. yes there are special occasions where lifetime partners have met online but I don't think online dating is the _sole_ purpose behind the decline of marriage.

Currently waiting for class to start so I can't search for a link right now but iirc, the economy health is one of the main driving force behind marriage numbers dropping. In a healthy economy, more people are willing to marry, start a family, purchase land, etc. When economy is bad, all of these extra costs become more of a risk than before.

<comment><USER9> The algorithm used doesn't need to be any good at matching people for online dating to increase your chance of finding a suitable partner.

A system which showed people to each other in a totally randomized way would still drastically increases the number of people you can superficially evaluate, and even a tinder style photos + blurb profile is rich in personality/cultural clues to base evaluation on.

<comment><USER8> >A system which showed people to each other in a totally randomized way would still drastically increases the number of people you can superficially evaluate

Is this really the ultimate goal for online dating? To expose us to a plethora of options in order to choose which one is best fit. It reminds of how Hot or Not could be seen as an early type of online dating that exposed us to randomized people, although without the option of being able to communicate with them beyond.

<comment><USER9> The ultimate goal of the user is to find a suitable partner. Whether you can achieve that goal better with sophisticated selection of who you show to whom isn't obvious to me either way.

(Anecdotally, having used multiple apps, there is one that seemed to effectively "learn" my preferences and was successful in showing me women I was interested in meeting at seeming better than chance. But that's a single data point, and it's possible I'm "oddly predictable" from their model's perspective)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's been explained to me that in the United States you pay less taxes when you are married, thereby resulting in a higher marriage rate than otherwise. I'm surprised this hasn't been contested - doesn't it seem discriminatory to those who don't want to institutionalise their relationship? I don't know any other country that has this tax aspect.

 _edit_ many seem to presume there are not alternatives to marriage: a de facto partnership should offer the same legal protections/restrictions without the concept of a couple registry needing to get involved.

<comment><USER11> That right, there's three or so tax filing statuses with different rates [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filing_status](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filing_status). Presumably that favoritism in rates assumed an investment by the country in the children that naturally follow the union of a man and woman that are majoritatively fecund by a wide margin populationally speaking. Despite there being marriages that are inherently or voluntarily infertile when does the presumption no longer match reality is an interesting question. Put another way when is the married subpopulation not the primary group to which children are born.

<comment><USER12> are we (u.s.) not already there? if not it has to be very close.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The biggest factor in America's high divorce rates is, by far, the advent of no-fault divorce starting in the 70s.

I think there's also something to the cultural tropes and propaganda we've seen since then portraying marriage as dull, monotonous, and oppressive while lifting up devoting one's life to an office job, travel, and 'exciting' flings as the path to self-fulfillment. When nothing could really be further from the truth - there's a reason millennials and gen-zers are horribly depressed and dying enough deaths of despair from drugs and suicide to bring down the average lifespan.

<comment><USER14> "Marriage is miserable. But not as bad as divorce or never getting married."

Is that the idea?

<comment><USER15> The order goes 1)Happy marriage 2)Being Single 3)Shitty marriage

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Marriage is a wonderful institution and the children that come from it are the greatest gift you can be given.

Our culture tells us the opposite. But our culture is insane and wants you to be an isolated, rootless, consumer wage slave.

<comment><USER17> > Marriage is a wonderful institution and the children that come from it are > the greatest gift you can be given.

This is true only if the finances are there to support it and both people really want it. In which case any "institution" can be considered wonderful and the fruit of it a "gift."

Most people can't get out of the consumer wage slave trap, it's their only opportunity or the only one they know about or can use to try to be in a better economic situation.

Children strain things and make things less happy between the mom and dad in a lot of marriages unless there's enough money.

<comment><USER18> A close friend of mine had her mom and step dad married for easily 25 years and they both hated each other. He hated her kids (that lived with them) she hated his kids that were weed dealers (tbf so were her kids thats how I knew them lol). She gambled online all night or went to bingo, while he powered through a 30 pack on a Tuesday chillin on the couch.

They had to stay together because they couldn't afford to live without the other. They were already in a small ass apartment, they didn't have assets to liquidate. They were slaves to each other because they needed the money.

Unfortunately some of my close friends are stuck in a similar situation. Luckily they like each other more than the case above and have pretty much always struggled financially. But it's clear they need each others income to survive, and they just had a kid. Hoping they can maintain the love.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "If you were to include cohabiting relationships [in addition to marriages], > the breakup rates for young adults have probably not been going down,"

It's interesting that they think to factor in cohabitation when when looking at overall breakup rates, however they go the opposite direction and fail to account for how well-paying jobs actually relate to college degrees over the years:

> Chen connects this trend to the decline of well-paying jobs for those > without college degrees, which, he argues, makes it harder to form more > stable relationships. Indeed, Cohen writes in his paper that marriage is "an > increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality." [...]

In 1960, 22% of Americans ages 25 to 34 had some college or more. By 2009, it was 60%. [0] For the sake of argument, let's say we have 100% employment among this age group and that those with college degrees always get the best paying jobs. We'll define a "well-paying job" as the top 50% of jobs by wage.

That means that in 1960, the college folks get the top 22% well-paying jobs. That leaves the remaining 28% of well-paying jobs to those who skipped college. In 2009, we have all well-paying jobs filled by the college folks, and they actually spill over into the non well-paying jobs, since we have so many now.

So yes, there is technically a decline in well-paying jobs among those without college degrees. However, that's only because there are a larger proportion of those with college degrees in kind! If you want to consider "social inequality", it makes more sense to look at the proportion of those with well- paying jobs compared with those without, which is 50% in both theoretical scenarios.

[0] [https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures- table...](https://trends.collegeboard.org/education-pays/figures- tables/educational-attainment-over-time-1940-2009)

</comment><comment><USER20> Clickbait title. The reason is because fewer people are getting married in the first place.

The author posits that it's a "bad thing" because:

* ... the decline of well-paying jobs for those without college degrees makes it harder to form more stable relationships. And thus, marriage is "an increasingly central component of the structure of social inequality."*

And yet, those "well-paying jobs" that led to "more stable relationships"... were more likely to end in divorce before. So if the decline is due to a socioeconomic class less likely to get married, that class historically saw higher rates of divorce.

I get what the author is going for, but anchoring to divorce rate (which is dependent on socioeconomic mix and the underlying marriage rate) seems backward versus just talking about marriage rates in the first place.

<comment><USER21> > The reason is because fewer people are getting married in the first place.

It's the divorce RATE that is declining, not the number of divorces.

The reason,as stated, is that the people who are getting married tend to be more mature and economically stable than they typically were years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's "Not-So-Great" about that?

<comment><USER23> I guess the author prefers people to marry young? It seems to me that the "problem" is that people aren't feeling forced into marriage and are instead deciding to wait until they ready before getting married. Maybe our shifting societal attitudes towards sex before marriage have something to do with it? The author seems entirely hung up on the socioeconomic side of the picture, but I'm not sure that's the entire situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> [2018] . Apparently the article says that the rate of growth of divorces has been overtaken by the growth of the average marriage age?

<comment><USER25> I would also be interested to see if the divorce rate of first marriages has changed. I assume that people getting married later in life is due to a reduction in the 'moral' pressure of living together.</comment></comment>


Turing Award winner's blockchain project [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://org.saito.tech/conflux-taking-a-dag-based-approach-to-scaling-proof-of-work/ <comment><USER2> I really like the way Conflux combines POW and a DAG. With that said, I still do wonder how the economics are supposed to work out.

Once multiple blocks are produced at the same time, what is stopping the miner with the greater hash power from just stealing the transactions (and their associated fees) from the side-blocks and moving them onto the larger chain. This sort of economic substructure feels like a leap of faith. Maybe it will work, but Bitcoin does have a single thread of miners and blocks for a reason.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Andrew Yao is the only Chinese recipient of the Turing Award. Interesting show on his blockchain project for those who follow these things.</comment>


Say hello to your JSON clone. - <AUTHOR>

This would be mine http://reminderof.me/json/ruggero
Do you see the advantages of having such a clone to synchronize the content where you get mentioned?
Example use case:
When you mouse over the link on my name on a random website you see all my up-to-date contact icons.
When you mouse over my name on a different website the same icons appear
When I change my contact all the random websites mentioning me stay up-to-date and reliable content. <comment><USER2> "Clone" is silly. We have a perfectly good word for this, its called a "profile".

This has been done a lot before; formats in this space include vCard/hCard, XFN, and FOAF, that I can think of easily.

The really hard part (as with most things dealing with the semantic web) is getting "random websites" to use a link to your authoritative public profile when they mention your name, not coming up with yet-another serialization format for basic profile data.</comment>


OnLive comes to Ouya, Controller Makes Full Frontal Debut - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console/posts/275869

<comment><USER2> This is where projects like this may fail brutally.

Controller-design is hard. Mapping small fast movements to the screen, especially when playing 3D-games, needs a perfectly for the job designed hardware. Consoles lack a good input anyway, compared to the mouse. That is why kinect was so promising, though of course movement-controllers have their own set of issues.

Their solution now is to cave. They didn't design their own controller. Instead, they oviously took the xbox and ps3 controller and merged them. Those controllers solved some issues when compared to the old controllers for the snes and such, with the circle-sticks (which unlike the one from the N64 aren't as high thin and probably therefore longer lasting) and the holdable form.

So the controller is nothing special, but from the conept-side it at least won't be much worse than the ones from current consoles. Maybe using such a generic one was a smart move.

<comment> adam-a >> That is why kinect was so promising

Perhaps it was promising, but it is fairly terrible in practice. Except for a few dance and fitness games. The thing about traditional controllers is they are both precise and abstracted. Button presses are clear, and work well with the complexity of most games. The analogue features give a higher degree of control but are still very discrete. As for their abstracted nature, one of the distinguishing features of humans vs animals is our ability to use tools, devices which are one step abstracted from direct action. This is why controllers, mice, keyboards, etc work. Why not embrace it instead of trying to work around it with immature technology like the Kinect?

>> Their solution now is to cave. They didn't design their own controller

So why do you think they need to revolutionise the controller? The original XBox had a mild stab at something new but they quickly reverted to a design much more similar to the Playstation Dual Shock. The target market for Ouya is XBLA and PSN players, people who want a cheaper, more open living room console. They are sensible not to try to reinvent the wheel when they don't have the resources to do it well and their audience likes the existing wheel.

<comment><USER3> >So why do you think they need to revolutionise the controller? The original XBox had a mild stab at something new but they quickly reverted to a design much more similar to the Playstation Dual Shock.

There weren't really that many changes from the original XBox controller to the 360's controller. The face buttons and the stick positions didn't really change. In terms of buttons, the only major change was the removal of the black/white buttons from the original XBox, and the addition of the RB and LB bumpers to the 360.

The major change was that the side grip rails were made smaller.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The big news here isn't the controller, it's OnLive. With Google fiber rolling out, and eventually pushing the country toward gigabit, there will no longer be any reason why a cheap, weak box with an internet connection can't topple the console giants. Eventually this will spill over into general computing. There is a giant pie to be won here, and both OnLive and Google know how valuable it is.

<comment><USER5> Just pointing out: bandwidth isn't half as important as latency is in this context. We still don't know how good latency will be on Google Fiber.

<comment><USER6> Maybe the answer is to have local nodes. Think of it like a traditional video arcade, somewhere in your town is a small datacentre full of servers hosting various games.

<comment><USER7> And if that still isn't good enough then each gamer can have their own personal mini-datacenter in a box right by their TV or monitor! :)

<comment><USER8> I presume you're joking and therefore don't need a proper reply to this, but figured I'd check..

<comment><USER9> Well, to be fair, there is a lot of spare sillicon in most households. One giant powerserver per family, is much more efficient and should provide more bang for your buck.

<comment><USER8> If everyone has the processing power to run the games in their own home it sort of removes the point of OnLive..

<comment><USER9> Agreed. But the combined sillicon of the xbox, desktop, ps3, mediacenter and multiple laptops in my house, had a seriously high price attached, but using all that sillicon to do one task fast, isnt even an option.

We need an open standard to share spare cpu cycles within the local network. Imagine updating the performance of all your appliances at once, just by pluggin a server in your home network.

But yes, it kind of defeats the purpose of OnLive as a closed product. On the other hand, local ISP can start selling not just bandwidth, but also cpu cycles with low latency. (they could hook up the servers straight in your neighbourhood)

The problem with OnLive is that its not a standard, and its focus is not width enough. They get to choose what kind of computation i want to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honest question: is anyone here using onlive? How is the gaming experience? Are the visuals, performance and latency acceptable? How are they doing in terms of their sales/subscribers?

I remember reading about it a long time ago thinking that it would be a sign of the future and something I would definitely want to try. It seems to have fallen off of my radar and I don't know anyone who uses their service, and I would consider myself and my friends "hardcore" gamers.

<comment><USER11> I played through Arkham Asylum on the PC and Arkham City on the OnLive console, and found it ... adequate.

I tried the beta and it didn't even work, but went back when AA was 99 cents and was impressed that they were even able to make a reality. I pre-ordered AC because it came with the console for free, and it was pretty slick.

However, I subscribed to their "channel" and have been pretty disappointed, the games are mostly old or random indie titles that don't always fit the model, and a good number require a mouse/keyboard which you can make work with the console, but is much clunkier than the slick wireless controller (which is _very_ well done).

There are 2 problems: 1) Anything even smelling like a dropped connection boots you entirely out of the game, and can take a few minutes to get back in. This includes just pausing and walking away for 5-10 minutes.

2) The batman games worked because they have a slower, more deliberate input system, and auto-save constantly. Otherwise it just won't be able to keep up.

So, barring licensing, I just don't see it being able to play something that needs a good twitch response time, multi-player, or something that is hard to recover after an immediate drop. So, no diablo, CoD, real-time strategies, or MMOPRGs.

Without those titles, it won't be able to get a lot of traction.

Still, a really awesome technical achievement. The PC executeable is a couple of _megs_ and can then just stream anything, but a lot of gaming needs either fast response time (which you lose with the server round-trip), or the ability to just stop for a few minutes without losing everything you've got.

<comment><USER12> MMOs have lots of potential actually. They are built to deal with lots of lag on input, and hide it well.

<comment><USER11> Right, except that the problem is the client drops and you have to jump through a ton of hoops to get back to the service, which terminates the connection as soon as you drop. Its not really an issue of 'lag' as it is 'not recovering'

<comment><USER12> Yes, but in the context of OnLive, connection drops aren't any more horrible than they would be on a regular MMO client. In fact, since the whole problem with MMOs is the distributed nature of them and unpredictable latency to the clients, services like OnLive that put many clients very close to one another in latency could actually improve MMO lag issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not going to lie, that controller is looking pretty ugly. Any word on if they'll support USB controllers? Obviously you'd lose the touch functionality...unless you plugged in a Wacom or something, lol

<comment><USER14> Well, the system is open and hackable, I'm sure someone will write drivers to allow PS3, Wiimotes, 360 and generic USB controllers to be used.

<comment><USER15> PS3 and Wiimotes would be relatively easy, as both are just Bluetooth devices and the OUYA has that built in.

Xbox 360 controllers would require either wired or the RF adapter that MS sells for PC use.

<comment><USER14> Actually there are also dedicated PS3 USB and Xbox USB controllers, most commonly used in tournament fight sticks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the fun things I get from that is that OnLive are going to make an ARM build of OnLive. That means it should be Raspberry Pi compatible! (OnLive have released ARM builds of their desktop service to run on tablets which shouldn't be too far from the full on game product, but afaik this is the first time they've promised an ARM-targeted version of it).

<comment><USER17> Maybe... Rasberry Pi has an older ARM core without the v7 instructions and a much simpler GPU than the Tegra 3 chip that's in the Ouya. I'd not expect it to work there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This has been mentioned before, but by simply using colored circles for their controller buttons, they are ignoring the needs of a lot of color blind gamers. This is why every console manufacturer has symbols on the buttons. Color coding doesn't work so well when a significant percentage of your players can't differentiate between green and red.

This could be solved very easily by picking some symbols to go along with the colors. Of course, our patent and trademark laws are ridiculous and it's highly likely that Microsoft has already patented the letters X, Y, A, and B...

<comment><USER19> Seems like a no-brainer to use: O, U, Y, A.

<comment><USER20> there will be letters. and yes, O, U, Y, A. [http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/4547820/ouya2_ga...](http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/4547820/ouya2_gallery_post.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The pipe is not going to be bottleneck in this case. It's the device's speed/processor/etc.

</comment><comment><USER22> haha! ugly as sin</comment>


Smartwatches still in a 'so what' phase - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240863/Smartwatches_still_in_a_so_what_phase_

<comment><USER2> I love my Pebble, but I definitely agree with this article. Most people I know don't see the point of it, and I partially agree with them at the moment, as most people don't see the use for a device neither designed for content consumption or creation.

There's a bit of a chicken and egg problem here, as these devices need more 'apps' available to really demonstrate their potential, but those apps aren't going to be created until the devices are more ubiquitous. Hopefully the hacker crowd has enough interest to make things on their own.</comment>


How North Korea Turned the Built Environment into a Tool for Control - at-fates-hands http://www.archdaily.com/794767/architecture-is-propaganda-how-north-korea-turned-the-built-environment-into-a-tool-for-control <comment><AUTHOR> Korea is a fascinating place. I am currently on vacation here and did a tour of the DMZ. The tour guide was really passionate about unifying the two Korea's and essentially freeing the North. It is a very strange experience visiting the DMZ, which is essentially a theme park. South Korea is definitely profiting massively from the "show" North Korea is putting on. I shamefully bought some DMZ chocolate.</comment>


Ask HN: Which companies do you want to work at? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
This is something I have been generally excited by.  What kind of companies do people find fascinating and really want to work for?
For me, I have 4 companies in mind
- Stripe because I am fascinated by it - Pioneer[pioneer.app] because they are building a search engine for Lost Einsteins
- Substack because they will create more solopreneurs than ever - Figma because they are going to be the GitHub of Design. I was a kid when they started and took over the world. Figma is the next thing.
Which companies do you work at & why? <comment><USER2> None.

I have been out of work for two months after my new employer decided to delay my start date indefinitely due to the pandemic. I've been searching for other jobs in the mean time. I wouldn't bother looking if I could swing it financially long term.

I work to live. Not the other way around. I'm capable of finding useful activities to fill my time. The time off has been great and I don't look forward to returning to the grind.

I have worked for nine different companies in four different industries since I started working at 17. In every case work has robbed me of my time and mental health. If I had the option I would not choose to work.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wanna work at a company that:

\- pays me a lot

\- allows me to work from home

\- does not expect me to read emails or anything in my free time (of course in special cases that's ok, just not the standard)

\- has other employers I can learn from

That's it! I don't fancy any company for what they do. Because most likely you end up doing pretty much the same at every company.

<comment><USER4> > read emails or anything in my free time

Is this widely expected now?

<comment><USER5> In my company - yes. They tout work life balance, but you are expected to pick up your phone 24/7\. On a related note, our policy says you need to put in a 7.5 hour day. But if you want to be promoted, the unofficial number is 9+.

<comment><USER4> I do see work life balance in a job ad as a red flag these days, or at least questions to be asked, a bit of doublespeak :-)

<comment><USER5> I've seen the company violate so many of it's own policies over the years and it's supposed to be one of the top 20 best places to work (Computer World list) . I just wouldn't trust or believe any any company at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly, I am not lured by any particular company based on what it does or it's image or even it's culture. Because a company does X, it doesn't mean my job at that company will be good. Also there might be super interesting roles hiding in boring looking companies, like for example a pension company or a staple manufacturer.

However to answer the question as best as I can, doing a CS PhD would be the most exciting thing - especially in those moonlight months at the beginning when you are exploring the space and learning. Maybe less so when writing the dissertation!

</comment><comment><USER5> I would most like to work for myself. I would enjoy running a small farm. I'm tired of the company politics and BS.

</comment><comment><USER7> One that I create. :)</comment>


Every Lost episode visualized and recreated - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2012/10/03/every-lost-episode-visualized-and-recreated/

<comment><USER2> Love this. Data visualization + LOST for the win.

The direct link to Santiago Ortiz's Lostalgic is here:

<http://intuitionanalytics.com/other/lostalgic/>

There's also a great interview by Greg J. Smith at Creative Applications that gives more insight into the project.

[http://www.creativeapplications.net/featured/anatomy-of-a- se...](http://www.creativeapplications.net/featured/anatomy-of-a-series- santiago-ortiz-lostalgic/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. Was that all custom-built, or is he using some sort of visualization / timeline library?</comment>


JPEG Looking to Add DRM to Images Supposedly to Protect Images from Gov - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150714/06503331631/jpeg-looking-to-add-drm-to-images-supposedly-to-protect-images-govt-surveillance.shtml

<comment><USER2> The article mentions screenshots as a means of DRM circumvention.

Sure, but this is why individual calls for DRM in individual components (e.g. "just in certain websites") are disastrous. They combine to make profoundly anti-user systems.

Once you have DRM in JPEGs, browsers, monitors, video cards etc. you can achieve full-stack lockout.</comment>


Distributed teams are rewriting the rules of office politics - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/18/distributed-teams-are-rewriting-the-rules-of-officeless-politics/ <comment><USER2> I worked remotely for four years and liked it a lot. The only problem was as the company grew more people came onboard who didn't really understand how to work well in a remote environment, which eventually ruined it. If you're on a remote team with people who don't like video conferencing, asynchronous text chat, etc then it's very hard to work effectively.

This is going to be a bigger problem as remote work gets more common - at the moment companies that work remotely attract developers who want to work remotely, so it works. As time goes on more developers who _don '_ want to work remotely are going to be pushed in to remote environments as a cost saving measure, and that's going to make it much harder for everyone. How to deal with that problem is going to be a challenge.

<comment><USER3> You hear about remote jobs all the time, with more and more people wanting them because of the leisure and convenience. Along with that, you hear about people with on site jobs that want to go remote. You never really hear about people who prefer on site over remote. I'd be interested to hear some stories about on site workers who were forced(or pushed towards) remote work and denied it.

<comment><USER4> I hate remote work. I want to go to an office and do work there and then when I leave I'm living the rest of my life.

I even rented myself an office when I was working solo for almost a year before hiring someone, just so I could have a desk, a file cabinet, a printer, and a real office environment to get work done. I lived alone. I still got up in the morning and went to the office, it was good for my productivity and mental health.

I feel that it's important to set up boundaries, or tasks and work will contaminate your personal spaces. I also think that it's just 100x better for communication to have everyone in the same room working together. Nothing beats verbal interpersonal communication.

With that said, I recognize that my opinion on this is 1) entirely subjective and 2) maybe because I'm old.

<comment><USER5> Don't sell yourself short. Everyone works differently and not everyone keeps the same interest in how they work forever. I personally don't mind an office or the clear delineation between work and life __if __the office and company are set up in such a way as to not crush my spirit and allow flexibility. Otherwise I like being to work however I want. Usually this ends up being coffee shops. Right now this is coffee shops while I 'm road tripping and living out of my car. It works for me kind of, certainly wouldn't for everyone. But, I can't work at home. Even if I have a home, I go to a coffee shop or park, partly for the reasons you mention.

<comment><USER6> I have had the same mentality. Being married for the past few years and with a step-daughter, I've been thinking of having better boundaries like that.

If it were just me, I think I like remote work, living alone, just fine.

<comment><USER5> It's also much more supportive of different levels of productivity throughout a day. I have incredibly poor consistency when it comes to focus. So sometimes I'll sit down and not be abke to get anything done, so maybe I'll go exercise and pick it up at a time where I'll be abke to concentrate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Purely distributed teams are great if all processes are designed for that. But most companies don't do it right. In my company we augment the US team with Indian devs and it really sucks royally. Most decisions are still made in meetings so the Indians don't know what's going on. The 12 hour time difference requires either that the Indians stay up late or come in early or the US workers have to do it which sucks if you have a life outside of work. Resolving even little issues takes too long because round trip time between question and answer is often several days. We also never travel to India so we don't know the people personally and don't know how they are set up.

The way a lot of companies go about with distributed teams is the same they do with agile. Management picks a few artifacts (daily standups, detailed backlog) but most other structures stay in place so the result is highly dysfunctional.

<comment><USER8> I've worked full time remote for two companies now, and one was more like you described, where most of the team was in one place with "augmented" remote employees, and the other bit the bullet and treated everyone remotely, even though there are large physical offices where some people like to work. And the main issue is communication.

"Augmenting" your team with remote workers leads to horrible communication. First, meeting rooms require very good audio setup, and very few people will spend the time, hire a sound engineer, and operate the meeting such that everyone in the room is clearly audible. As a end result, the remote workers often sit there with the sound up trying to figure out what's being said most of the time. Thus, people can never really act normally - everything has to be this composed, staged, response.

Additionally, the mostly local team will frequently have offhand conversations the remote workers are never a part of. Thus, you get siloing. Add time zone shifts, and the amount of siloing increases.

The place I work for now has teams that rarely meet in a physical room together - even though several members sit near each other, everyone's got a headset. It is amazing how decent audio changes communication. We also frequently have chats online.

Additionally, all major meetings at my current company are held as if people are remote. And events or other informal affairs are kept organized and isolated. I don' t have to sit through notifications about the coffee machine on the 3rd floor of a building 1300 miles away being broken.

I believe this has led to senior management feeling comfortable working remotely as well, so some VPs work from cities where there is no significant office or company presence.

Now, I _do_ wish this company relied on writing, but not everyone is a good writer. It takes a lot of time to build up that kind of confidence. If I could make one change, it would be to improve writing.

<comment><USER9> As someone who has to sit next to a team that does that, it's annoying as fuck to listen to people have a meeting like that.

EDIT: I don't know why this is downvoted. It's incredibly rude to have meetings at your desk like that in an open plan office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most ambiguous thing I have found about remote work is how a decision gets made in a group, and then who directs the action on it.

It's too easy to talk past one another on conferences. Add flat organizations where you are supposed to be able to read the dynamic between the lines, then local culture differences, and you can end up in passive aggression hell.

Without physical presence, you need clear, logical rules in place.

The article splits the main challenges of "loneliness," and "collaboration," almost evenly. I don't get loneliness, but collaboration and distance are almost definitely conflicting needs.

I would be surprised if the rules for managing distance being a constraint on the dynamic aspect of collaboration was not a hard zero sum trade off.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me, or did the article completely fail to answer it's premise? I really wanted to hear about how office politics works in a full time remote workplace. The closest thing to an answer for this is "we write stuff down so it's permanent."

<comment><USER12> People talk shit about each other over Slack, and hope it never comes back to bite them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is important to differentiate between distributed and remote, as well. I work for a very large company that has offices scattered all over the country. We are distributed, and remote exists but is not the norm.

It is unusual to have a meeting that doesn't make use of videoconferencing, even when everyone involved works primarily from an office.

For employees who _are_ remote, this setup is wonderful. It means that there's little difference between being remote and working from a different office.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm remote but part of a team where some people are office based, and it can be nightmarish at times - I'm cut out of the loop time and time again, and the excuse that 'oh we just had a quick conversation about it and you didn't happen to be there' has now worn thin to the point of transparency. It's definitely the case with remote working that failure to prepare (on a company's part) is preparing for failure.

<comment><USER15> This happened to me in companies with teams scattered across different rooms/buildings/countries.

That's bad communication and insularity. Remote working only makes it more obvious.

<comment><USER14> > That's bad communication and insularity

Suspect it's more than that, unfortunately. Thankfully though my circumstances are changing soon and I'll hopefully be out the door to somewhere better. Life's too short etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Sarah Cooper's "10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings," which includes…_

I took the bait and read the 10 tricks. These are all natural tendencies for me. This must explain why clients think I'm smart because I'm really not as smart as everyone treats me.

<comment><USER17> I would very much like to have a small discussion on this if you don't mind sharing your thoughts on the following:

What would be the ground truth for some notion of smartness level? It could certainly be subjective, sure, but could you please tell me what you think being smart means? Do you think people around you have different scale/notion of smartness than you? Would it be possible that you're being hard on yourself? If not, how would you rate/think about your coworkers smartness?

I am really interested in knowing your thought process because a part of me certainly identifies with your statement. And I am very much interested in discussing "appearing to be smart" vs "being smart". Something tells me there's not much difference between the two or perhaps only the former exists and latter is too abstract to be useful for any comparison.

<comment><USER16> I do a lot of consulting so that might have something to do with it. Basically I get paid to appear to be the smartest person in the room (which I personally think is utter and total horse shit but that's another rant). I've been told my whole life that I'm "smart" but the problem is there are lots and lots of people out there who seem (I've tried to read their papers on ML) like they're an order of magnitude smarter. I write like a 13 year old, but maybe I speak better? IDK.

For most people I think it's totally subjective. If you surprise someone with a bit of knowledge they don't have (either memorized or figured out for yourself) people think you're "smart". People who share what they know or help others come to a novel solution appear "smart".

I do believe in a general concept of intelligence (q). I'm willing to bet mine is only slightly above average if even that, only because I keep meeting programmers who cannot think as clearly as I can so I have to assume I'm smarter than some of them.

I'm sorry I don't have a better answer. It's a total mystery to me. I feel like a total dumb fuck most of the time.

You said you identify with my first comment. How so?

<comment><USER17> Thank you very much for your answer. It gave me a lot to think about.

To answer your question - I have been told by my peers and teachers that I have "potential", some pointed out that I am exceptionally good at grasping new concepts. From my point of view I "sort of" accept whatever new information is presented to me as truth and my mind goes into a kind of overdrive. It constrcts all the possible realities and finds inconsistencies or irregularities. It just doesn't know when to stop. Over time, I believe I have improved the way I communicate these imaginations of my mind which I suspect makes people think I am smart. However, this doesn't say anything about whether I actually understand the concept or if I have deep knowledge of the presented subject. This, in my opinion, is an appearance of being smart rather than actually being smart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All no-brainers as usual. I've been working remotely full time for three years now. There is no downside for me. Offices (and open floorplans) exist out of inertia only, and, because of the politics they encourage, are havens for the incompetent.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. Remote is not "from your house". Rent an office near home, walk there.

2\. Use video conferencing every day without fail. Something very monkey brain makes a human face you are talking to real, and prevents you flipping the doofus bit on people (and they you)

3\. Everyone and everything must be remote-first - business and IT. There is _real_ advantage to walking over and saying hello, shaking peoples hands.

4\. Meet up in person and work together (pairing, meetings, clarifications) at least once a week. This basically limits the distance you can all be from each other (roughly two major metro areas apart - London and Paris, NY and Washington)

Ultimately this all costs money. it's cheaper to hire crap people and expensive office space.

YMMV

<comment><USER9> "Rent an office near home, walk there."

Why should I have to be the one to pay extra?

<comment><USER20> Some companies compensate you for colocated offices.

In certain areas you can deduct your expenses from your taxes.

But yeah, you should certainly take this into account when you are discussing your salary.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Superbetize - <AUTHOR> http://superbetize.com

<comment><USER2> I enjoyed this. Great job!

The applications for this type of auto-sort are endless. Would be great to democratize best guesses and manual category switching..

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you enjoyed it!

That's the next step I think. For now, I have a cron job emailing me all of the 'Not Categorized' items once a week and I manually put them in the groceries array.</comment></comment>