Functional composition: from sine wave to Bach canon - <AUTHOR> http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/functional-composition <comment><AUTHOR> Chris Ford explains music theory using Clojure. He starts with a pure sine wave and builds up abstractions, ending up with a Bach canon.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this, it totally blew my mind. He explains each piece and term so clearly that I really felt I could finally get my head around some of the basic music terminology, and maybe even try recreating some basic melodies.

Wish it had made it higher up on the front page though, it certainly seems worthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is this useful for someone with no knowledge of functional programming languages? I'm certainly interested in the topic.

I recently spent some time learning [ChucK](<http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu>), and used it to generate sound effects for my game. After several unsatisfactory crops with audacity and other tools (bfxr, etc), I found it to be a real pleasure to do the task with a text editor and terminal instead. I'm happy with the result, but I think I'd like to continue learning audio programming.

<comment><USER2> There are a few FP-related piece you might want to know, but as long as you understand the idea of first-class functions (passing a function to another function as an argument), then you should be able to get your head around it quickly. It's definitely worth it, and may be a great way to generate sounds for games as well.

Overtone itself is a bit more sophisticated/batteries-included than the video lets on, because he builds up everything himself to show there's no magic.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. It turns out I enjoyed this very much, and though the syntax was a bit foreign it made a lot more sense than I expected.</comment></comment></comment>


Things I Won't Touch: Hydrofluoric Acid (2004) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2004/03/03/things_i_wont_touch_1 <comment><USER3> As a chemist, my most horrifying compound is Dimethylmercury. It readily passes through protective latex and PVC. Consider Karen Wetterhahn. She spilled a couple of drops onto her gloves, quickly cleaned it up but still ended up dying a rather gruesome death where she persisted for weeks in a state that shifted from comatose to highly agitated before she passed. This was preceded by nearly a year of abdominal pain, weight loss and mental decline. Just a little bit will kill you in a slow, agonizing death and your gloves won't even save you!

<comment><USER4> New England Journal of Medicine write up of this case:

[http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199806043382305](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199806043382305)

<comment><USER5> Good write up, I'd only read the wikipedia summary. That stuff is terrifying.

<comment><USER6> What's weird is the metal and inorganic salts of mercury aren't particularly toxic.

The vapor is toxic, one of my college professors said his graduate adviser was suffering from years of exposure to mercury fumes because in the bad old days they used to seal the gas valves in the lab with a little pool of mercury. Poor guy spent 40 years in the lab breathing mercury fumes.

<comment><USER7> If you can spend 40 years in a lab breathing mercury fumes, maybe it isn't as dangerous as the public perceives it to be? I mean sure, let's stop sealing gas valves with it, a space should be built to be safe to work in for 40 years. But let's not freak out about perorming a couple experiments with it, using a mercury-bulb switch in a thermostat, or the few milliliters released by a broken CFL bulb.

<comment><USER8> Mercury is all-natural after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This puts me in mind of one of my favourite cringe-worthy medical paper abstracts: "Fulminant acute colitis following a self-administered hydrofluoric acid enema" (Am J Gastroenterol. 1993 Jan;88(1):122-6):

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8420252](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8420252)

The phrase "while intoxicated from intranasal cocaine administration" made it into the abstract. One suspects the words "watch this!" were uttered in the immediately preceding moments ...

<comment><USER10> There was a tragic accident in Japan back in 1982: A dentist mistakenly applied HF solution instead of fluorides to a girl, who subsequently suffered extreme pain and died. Both materials are called フッ素 (fusso, which is actually the name of Fluorine), and there was a fatal miscommunication between dentist's assistant and the distributor. The dentist felt so guilty and stressed out that he died from stroke at the girl's funeral.

For Japanese in my generation, the fear of HF was imprinted by the accident. I couldn't find English reference, but here's Japanese wikipedia page:

[https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AB%E7%8E%8B%E5%AD%90%E5...](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AB%E7%8E%8B%E5%AD%90%E5%B8%82%E6%AD%AF%E7%A7%91%E5%8C%BB%E5%B8%AB%E3%83%95%E3%83%83%E5%8C%96%E6%B0%B4%E7%B4%A0%E9%85%B8%E8%AA%A4%E5%A1%97%E5%B8%83%E4%BA%8B%E6%95%85)

<comment><USER10> Correction: After some more searching, it turned out the doctor did collapsed at the funeral from stroke but survived.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My favorite of his is "Sand Won't Save You This Time", about chlorine trifluoride, "a stronger oxidizing agent than oxygen itself":

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time)

which links to this PDF: [http://web.archive.org/web/20060318221608/http://www.airprod...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060318221608/http://www.airproducts.com/nr/rdonlyres/8479ed55-2170-4651-a3d4-223b2957a9f3/0/safetygram39.pdf)

Video of it reacting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4l56AfUTnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4l56AfUTnQ)

Another article: [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/07/chlorine- tri...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/07/chlorine-trifluoride- aka-chemical-can-set-fire-glass/)

<comment><USER12> You just sent me on a long detour searching for the book he references: "Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants" by John D Clark

For any other people interested, it's out of print, but a PDF is available here: [http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Ignition is an absolutely wonderful book, I send it to everyone I meet who thinks they want to be a scientist. It is also absolutely hilarious.

<comment><USER14> It's fantastic, an alternating mix of dry chemistry and hair-raising lab anecdotes.

For those who haven't read it: in the post-war early rocket period, government chemists could tell from basic stochiochemistry what mixtures might make good rocket fuels. But their _other_ properties had to be tested experimentally. Especially hypergolicity and detonation resistance. There's a long subthread about red fuming nitric acid, which would make a great oxidiser once people could find a way of stopping it eating through stainless steel tanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My mother has a story - and some significant scars to back it up, about her time employed in the 70's at Litronix moving wafers from between the stepper, furnace, etching, etc in the era where you could still be in the same room as the wafer.

As this was the 70s, "occupational safety" didn't mean the same thing as it does today, so apparently the etching was done _by hand_. This involved putting on three layers of heavy gloves and dipping boats of wafers in some type of etching acid. My mother wasn't sure of the contents, but knew it involved extremely concentrated acids, which were shipped in daily because the couldn't be stored more than a few days in the glass bottles (!!!). As she described it, the HCl and HNO3 were easy to identify when you worked with them, because they cause intense burning - and scaring - if you splashed any on your arm.

At least one of the etching steps, though (maybe all? I'm not sure) used concentrated HF.

So this went fine, until my mother took off her gloves one day... and aw bone. Didn't even notice it. She sat with her hand under the DI faucet suggesting someone should probably call an ambulance. The paramedics wanted to amputate her hand immediate (on site). Instead, they were talked into trying to estimate how much acid actually actually made it's way to her hand, and spent the afternoon injecting various things to try to neutralize the HF.

Fortunately, it must have been a very small amount of acid, as she made a full recovery, albeit with a nasty scar on her finger. It wasn't even the worst thing that happened to her - she was a _lot_ more concerned the day she discovered someone had used several full storage shelves (total an entire wall wide, floor to ceiling) to store the "empty" nitric acid bottles that were still full of very-nasty fumes. Shelves, that were a few feet from the (full) liquid O2 tanks. That warranted an immediate call to OSHA... from another building.

The industry is a _lot_ safer than it once was.

</comment><comment><USER16> Speaking with my chemist's hat on… _wimp_.

Seriously, there are any number of nasty things floating around a wet chemistry lab. Chromerge and piranha solutions (sometimes _aqua regia_ ) for cleaning glassware, various super acids and bases, pyrophoric organometallics, stuff that's oxygen or water or shock sensitive… the list goes on. HF is certainly bad, but it tends to get the respect it deserves and so is handled safely. I'm more worried about chronic occupational exposure to "safer" things like chloroform.

Edit: the one that really scares me? Anything solvated with DMSO. It dramatically increases absorption through the skin. I bet every chemist has a secret chemical fear.

Edit 2: oh, and peroxides. One idiot postdoc had a habit of buying THF without stabilizers (no need for him to do so), and storing them in the back of the chemicals cabinet where they were frequently forgotten. At least he had the decency to store them on the bottom shelf. So admittedly I have two fears, but I'll work with HF!

<comment><USER17> > Edit 2: oh, and peroxides.

Then you might be amused by his post about _peroxide_ peroxides (just add more -O- links in the HOOH chain)

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/thi...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/10/10/things_i_wont_work_with_peroxide_peroxides)

<comment><USER18> Did someone say FOOF?!

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

<comment><USER17> Derek said FOOF!

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The history of isolating fluorine from HF is pretty scary:

Humphry Davy of England: poisoned, recovered. George and Thomas Knox of Ireland: both poisoned, one bedridden 3 years, recovered. P. Louyet of Belgium: poisoned, died. Jerome Nickels of Nancy, France: poisoned, died. George Gore of England: fluorine / hydrogen explosion, narrowly escaped injury. Henri Moissan of France: poisoned several times, success, but shortened life. For isolating fluorine, Moissan got the Nobel prize, two months before he died.

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fluorine#Early_isol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fluorine#Early_isolation_attempts)

<comment><USER20> Moissan died of appendicitis iirc. Is Fl associated with it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related: "Things I Won't Work With: Dioxygen Difluoride"

[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride)

<comment><USER22> I think the best one in this series is chlorine trifluoride [1]:

> The compound also a stronger oxidizing agent than oxygen itself, which also > puts it into rare territory. That means that it can potentially go on to > "burn" things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and > gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it'll start roaring > reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile.

[1] [http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/san...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2008/02/26/sand_wont_save_you_this_time)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm the opposite of Lowe. I would never touch HF solutions, and am totally OK with HF gas (and I have used HF gas). HF solutions are a weak base - <USER2> means that quite a bit of it remains as the diatomic molecule HF, which can penetrate cell membranes and wreak havoc in your body. You can get severely injured without noticing it. If there's any risk of exposure, you need to rub yourself with calcium gluconate cream, ASAP.

HF gas, on the other hand, well, it's dangerous enough that you're going to be taking a ton of precautions around it. Your setup is going to be under negative pressure, and in a fume hood. You're going to wear thick rubber splashguard over your lab coat, you're going to have a checklist of things to do in the procedure, the entire apparatus is teflon, and there's a calcium hydroxide scrubber out the other end, and you'll never work with more than 10 mL at a time.

Lowe's account of a leak is a little bit overwrought. Unless you're working in an (idiotic, but I've seen them) positive pressure setup, the best thing to do is to calmly shut the valve to the HF tank, close the fume hood, and walk away.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > If there's any risk of exposure, you need to rub yourself with calcium > gluconate cream, ASAP.

One of the really nasty parts is that an HF solution will penetrate your fingernails, while calcium gluconate will not. You won't like the solution to that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've heard a suspiciously large number of explanations for HF's toxicity.

1\. It eats your bones (BS meter at 99.9% due to stoichiometry)

2\. It poisons enzymes (as seen in TFA, passes the BS detector, but begs the question: which ones?). EDIT: "which ones?" answered by [2], but it's focus is on cell biology not toxicology, so it's possibly answering the question "what causes the local burns?" rather than "what kills you dead?".

3\. It binds Ca++ in your blood, stopping the power stroke of your heart [1] (my own suspicion, although it's obvious enough that there is a 0% chance of it being "original"). EDIT: [3] pretty much confirms this.

I've lost convenient access to the academic literature, so if there's anyone on here who would be willing to do a quick (ha) dive on my behalf, I'd be much obliged. EDIT: I think I found the answers I wanted, but most of the top results were paywalled, so I'd still appreciate a second look by someone with access to institutional subscriptions.

[1] [https://cnx.org/resources/cee66a1bf085ebac300c9c15805098f254...](https://cnx.org/resources/cee66a1bf085ebac300c9c15805098f254299df0/2026_Action_Potential_Heart_Contraction.jpg)

[2] [http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luz_Maria_Del_Razo/publi...](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luz_Maria_Del_Razo/publication/45281342_Molecular_mechanisms_of_fluoride_toxicity/links/09e415101a1cc46320000000.pdf)

[3] [http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mhmi/mmg11.pdf](http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/mhmi/mmg11.pdf)

<comment><USER16> In safety training at a university, we were instructed that if we were exposed to aqueous HF, we were to immediately slather on calcium gluconate on the burn area, grab an HF MSDS, and demand that the ambulance take us to a specific Level 1 trauma center and insist that the physicians understand that we were exposed to HF and not some generic acid.

I don't know the precise mechanism for toxicity (I thought it was hypocalcemia), but if the tradionally safety-lax academia takes HF that seriously, you know it's the real deal.

<comment><USER24> Yep, I got the same lecture, I was specifically asking about mechanism because the explanation we were given was "eats your bones" which is patently ridiculous.

<comment><USER16> Your bones are constantly remodeled, as part of calcium regulation in the body. HF, interfering with that remodeling, may give the appearance of it "eating your bones".

<comment><USER24> As a mechanism for chronic toxicity? Sure. As a mechanism for acute toxicity? Not a chance.

The "slap on some calgonate and rush to the hospital" protocol (of which you were quick to remind us) was justified by way of the acute toxicity (to me, anyway), not prevention of chronic toxicity, so my remark stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Once upon a time I did an electrical engineering internship on-site at an oil refinery. Part of my training was to learn about chemicals like HF and how dangerous they were to human life and what to do if exposed.

Then I learned about how basically in large oil refineries pipes are leaking all the time and crews are always coming in to fix the leaks in the pipes (but not often repair). I left that industry pretty quick and never looked back.

</comment><comment><USER26> Note that he's primarily taking about HF gas, not the aqueous solution. Aqueous hydrofluoric acid is certainly not to be trifled with but I don't think it's in quite the same category as some of the other substances this guy talks about. I used to work in a lab that used large quantities of the stuff and I knew someone who got some on his skin. He went to the hospital but I don't think he suffered any lasting consequences.

</comment><comment><USER27> The current HN title is bad, since the first paragraph says that he will happily work with "hydroflouric acid", but not with "hydrogen flouride" (i.e. gaseous HF).

</comment><comment><USER28> if you like that article you'll love this video "5 of Worlds most dangerous Chemicals" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckSoDW2-wrc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckSoDW2-wrc)

</comment><comment><USER29> It seems stupid to have humans anywhere near this stuff. Robot chemistry labs would make a lot of sense -- doing the same operations over and over, exactly the same way, with limited downside when things go wrong.

I know some of the biochem procedures are moving to "cloud labs" \-- using inherently small amounts of chemicals and repeating things many times. Doing similar things in larger scale labs also seems worth it.

</comment><comment><USER30> I had a professor who worked in a Dupont lab in New Jersey. He studied crystal structures using x-rays, something too cool for me to comprehend. Anyway he said the lab did work with a mixture of acids they called "Liquid Fire". It would pretty much corrode through any container, metal/plastic/glass. He said there were talks to sell it to the military but it would have been too unsafe to get to the battle field. Note didn't read the article, I think I have read this one before.

</comment><comment><USER31> [http://www.ab.ust.hk/hseo/tips/ch/ch005.htm](http://www.ab.ust.hk/hseo/tips/ch/ch005.htm)

A fatality from a small <250 mL spill of HF solution.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think that one of my father's USGS friends inadvertently got himself with some while using a pipette. It must have been thoroughly unpleasant, but the guy was alive and kicking 20 years later.

</comment><comment><USER33> Everyone knows this from breaking bad right?</comment>


Ask HN: How many employees before you can call yourself CE0 & not sound foolish? - <AUTHOR>

Surely 0 doesn't count. <comment><USER2> As someone who has owned several companies there is one conversation that comes to mind with me. When I went to take out my first ever business line of credit I sat down with a banker, our company was small (6 total employees at the time) and I was young (19)

And when the banker asked me what my title was he continued with "CEO, President, etc." and I remember thinking at that point I had a decision to make, I could be the kind of pretentious owner that has "employees" or the kind of hard working example setting owner that has "co-workers" and makes them want to strive and be better so I opted for the latter.

I looked back at the Banker and said well you know Ross when everyone leaves at night and I'm sweeping the floor I usually consider myself the Janitor, so why don't we just go with that.

He chose not to use that title for paperwork purposes but my point in telling that story is that if you're a young and growing company and you're worried about whether or not your title should be "CEO" or "President" the title you are likely to end up having is "Unemployed".

Work your ass off and work with your employees don't let them work for you. If nothing else is to be done pick up a broom, help a co-worker or just find a way to be productive and lead by example. If you do that there's a chance lots of people will be knocking down your door to interview the "CEO" of "X" the next successful company with humble beginnings.

My point here is basically that if and when the time comes to be labeled a CEO chances are someone else will do it for you. Thats what happened to me a few years later when i sold that same company. and until they do you're probably better off just being the janitor :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I might've given off the wrong impression with the title here. Lately been coming across multiple "CEOs" and "VPs" and thought it was a bit funny.

A better title would've been "Isn't it silly to cal yourself CEO when you've 0 employees?"

But I completely agree with what you've said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I prefer "founder" and/or "co-founder" until the company gets to the point that a distinction is really necessary.

I suppose that is not entirely helpful as that still does not answer where that distinction is.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally, unless the conversation warrants (i.e. where it matters) to mention I'm a founder or CEO or anything of so-called C-level / executive rank, I try my best to leave it out. Instead, I usually say "I work for...".

Don't really think its silly but I find that most people don't call themselves a CEO unless you specifically ask for a title in those situations. It's more common for me to hear people say they're working on a new startup (as opposed to really saying they're exploring an idea).

Titles are meaningless in most cases in startups. We made it a point not to even include titles in our business cards on my last startup. It just doesn't matter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Titles are like clothes, and context is important.

The sole proprietor of a one-person company should call himself CEO without hesitation if it helps him get what he wants. The person in charge of a thousand-person company should reject the CEO title when it gets in the way of his goals.

At the last small (~5 employee) startup I ran, I used the CEO title when dealing with media companies and large organizations and the co-founder title when doing marketing to developers. Worked out fine.

If someone's used the CEO title in front of you and you've thought they were foolish, they've either misunderstood the context or you've come across something you're just not the primary audience for.

</comment><comment><USER6> If there is even one other person at the company, calling yourself the CEO is helpful, rather than foolish. In particular, it signals to potential investors and business partners that you are the one to contact regarding investments or other business deals. Don't get hung up on it, just go ahead and be the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER7> 'Chief' is sort of redundant if there are no other 'executive officers'. 'Officer' too if it's just you.

I prefer 'Director'.

edit: as per [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Executive_Dir...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Executive_Director)

</comment><comment><USER8> CE0 (with the zero)? Enough that you can set trends. 10 000 may be a good number to shoot for.

</comment><comment><USER9> I always say "co-founder". It's accurate and unpretentious, but still conveys the important fact that I speak for the company.

Sometimes I use "co-owner" for non-startup people, since "founder" is a somewhat startupy term.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've seen loads of two person companies with a CEO title. And even single person startups with 0 employees sometimes have a CEO. If I were you, I'd get less hung up on titles and just get to work :P

<comment><USER11> Totally agree with just getting to work

But titles are free, so if they make you feel better and make you more productive, might as well give yourself one

<comment><USER10> Agreed. At least with my start-up there were so many roles for each person initially that titles were just there for your reasons. It most likely makes sense later, when roles are more clearly defined.</comment></comment></comment>


Cards Against Humanity's "$5 More" Black Friday Sale - <AUTHOR> http://maxistentialist.tumblr.com/post/68844686496/cards-against-humanitys-5-more-black-friday <comment><USER2> I think this is an important lesson in marketing and getting press attention that other start ups or entrepreneurs should take note of.

The key to getting press / marketing attention / viral affect is to do something different that gets people talking.

On black Friday everyone is cutting their prices. If you put out a press release saying you were cutting your prices too it is unlikely to even register on the press' radar. However, do something so different and disruptive that it becomes a unique and funny story and it warrants press attention and share-ability.

Quite often I notice people on HN reading every post about 'Simple guide to marketing your app' or other people's success stories, thinking 'If I follow these steps they used to promote their app, I'll have the same success' \- however the opposite is true, if you do what they did you're less likely to have the same impact they originally had.

This applies to anything from the original idea of sending personalised emails to the blogosphere regarding your new app, to the original milliondollarhomepage.com.

TL;DR; - Be different, disrupt the expected and gain press by not following the crowd.

<comment><USER3> This is basically useless advice. If you're _too_ different people will think it's weird, or just being different for different's sake, and they'll still pass you up.

The real key is to be _original_. Except that's also useless advice, because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.

<comment><USER4> >because it's only ever obvious in hindsight.

Seriously. We can do case studies until the cows come home and attempt to market products in ingenious ways and still never get noticed. While a different company that does something as a mere joke will get heaps more exposure without even trying. I don't work in marketing, but this must be frustrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if the controversy surrounding their dickwolves criticsm and potential hypocrisy has damaged their branding. I doubt it but it would be interesting to see the numbers.

<comment><USER6> The problem with the dickwolves thing wasn't the dickwolves joke itself, but rather how they responded when people got upset. There is nothing wrong with cards against humanity criticising penny arcade for this while having similar content, _as long as_ they don't respond similarly if people get upset over _their_ content.

<comment><USER7> And to me it isn't hypocrisy, since the main argument to CAH against Penny Arcade was that they screwed their expo over by drawing that kind of negative attention to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The CAH crew has a history of running cute little business experiments like this. One I remember from earlier this year:

[https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689...](https://twitter.com/wesleyverhoeve/status/381151177494130689/photo/1)

<comment><USER9> Just as a historical note: Max also complained that they didn't get much money out of PAX (where they did this) compared to the amount of money they spent. [They made their booth VERY elaborate]

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I bought the UK version one day before Black Friday. Well worth the full price as it's kept me amused every day since!

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting to contrast this with Cards _for_ Humanity, which links the same offensive cards with the goal of donations to charity.

[http://cfh.io](http://cfh.io)

</comment><comment><USER12> david and goliath by gladwell is indeed a good motivational/justificational book for underdog or lean startup aiming at big corporate.

<comment><USER13> Why is he being voted down? The book is referenced in the article.

<comment><USER14> I can't speak for anyone else, but I auto-downvote comments that lack proper punctuation/grammar. It's a fast indicator of quality discourse.

<comment><USER15> Downvoting for bad grammar? What if this person is a non-native english speaker? I know plenty of smart people who grew up with a different primary language, and can make bad mistakes in english while writing.

<comment><USER14> Then that's just too bad, I guess. HN is an English speaking site. The ability to articulate your thoughts in the medium chosen for the discourse is cost of entry. Poor grammar is a quick indicator of content quality to me. In fact, it's just about the only thing I will downvote. Maybe it's because I was raised by an English professor.

Edited: Typo (of course)

<comment><USER16> "en English professor"

Sorry buddy, gotta downvote you now. Based on that typo I can tell that this comment lacks quality and doesn't add to the discourse.

<comment><USER14> What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Do as you will :)

(I was wondering how long it would take before I let one slip. It never fails when discussing grammar online.)

<comment><USER17> a.k.a. "Muphry's Law".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think CAH understands their customer quite well. Others applying this direct approach could be perceived as dicks.

<comment><USER19> dickwolves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I ran a similar experiment with Rejection Therapy a year or so ago. I used big red "DON'T BUY" purchase buttons and sales went up slightly.

Long story as to why I took them down, and I'm not even sure if I should discuss it so I won't.

<comment><USER21> Why did you take them down? :)

<comment><USER20> It's a bizarre and complicated story I hope to one day tell, but not today.

<comment><USER19> Curses to you. I want to know, today. You think the internet has conditioned me to be patient? No! I want it now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you ever "lost" a clever bit of code you weren't able to reproduce? - <AUTHOR>

Discussing with a friend on Twitter I was reminded that as a lad I once wrote an AI routine for haggling with a shop owner in an RPG that remains probably the best implementation I've seen.
Unfortunately, my brother then proceeded to power-cycle the drive with the disk still in, corrupting the file ... I was never able to reproduce the code because I couldn't remember exactly how I'd done it once I saved it.
Have you ever done something like this? <comment><USER2> Often I've lost code not permanently but came across it months or years later after I thought I'd lost it.

More often than not, it turned out that the code wasn't clever so much as I had remembered it being clever. The code itself often didn't even do what I thought it had.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I was a kid I wrote an ascii-art dungeon exploration game in BASIC on our Tandy 1000. I worked on it for months, maybe even a couple years, adding and adding. One day the floppy it was on failed.

I actually did rewrite it, and I remember noticing how much better the code was. I didn't have to think about game design at all, just about the code. In fact it was around that time that I finally understood what GOSUB was for. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that rewrite that brought the realization.

</comment><comment><USER4> Not as much clever as infuriating, but I once had a bit of C++ code that would run perfectly fine, unless you deleted one of the comments, at which point it wouldn't compile. I lost the file in a hard drive failure many moon ago. Mostly, I wish that I still had it simply to prove that the compiler really was that buggy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I once wrote an AI that solves the Sliding Block puzzle: [https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/unblock-me- free/id315019111?...](https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/unblock-me- free/id315019111?mt=8)

The code is still in my PC, but I moved overseas, and didn't bring my PC along.

</comment><comment><USER6> Once, when I was pretty much a noob, wrote a language called OOJASIC which I implemented in Java. It was loosely typed, compiled to Java. I wrote a wrapper over swing as its UI library, and a simplistic visual IDE along the lines of BlueJ, that would show a smiling dino face if the file was compiled, and an anxious one if it wasn't.

All that's left of all this is the compiler code (decompiled using cavaj), and screenshots of the IDE (that I called Rex).

It was the most complicated piece of software I'd written at that point of time, and there's little left to show for it.

Here's a link to the project page, btw. And don't judge. This is from a long, long time ago.

[http://justaddhotwater.webs.com/oojasic.htm](http://justaddhotwater.webs.com/oojasic.htm)

<comment><USER6> I would totally be able to reproduce it though, so it kind of misses the point. I wouldn't be as dedicated probably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It happens. Usually, rewriting the code from scratch will produce a better version.

</comment><comment><USER8> I once (while in university) had the awesome idea to write some fantastic code after a night out.

Sadly I had to scrap the project the next day since it did'nt compile anymore :)

<comment><AUTHOR> My father was the defacto Excel developer in his office and used to have vivid dreams that consisted solely of him writing out the code for some problem he'd been working on.

Then he'd wake up and forget the lot.

<comment><USER9> this. the trick is when u cant remember to stop there, and dont worry or force it, about 10 mins later the answer will come to u.

<comment><USER10> sadly, i use this same technique on the toilet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gimp doesn't properly remove image data - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/4487 <comment><USER2> Works as intended I guess. If I want to manipulate color I use the brush.

BUT, when saving the picture in a file format which doesn't support alpha it should not fall back to the color information by default but instead use white (or grey etc.), if not defined otherwise. And I think that's what Adobe PS is doing?

I believe that's the actual problem if there is any.</comment>


A machine has figured out Rubik's Cube all by itself - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611281/a-machine-has-figured-out-rubiks-cube-all-by-itself/ <comment><USER2> Inaccurate article on one point - they say that in 2014 it was proved the smallest number of moves to solve is 26... but in 2010 it was proven to be 20 moves actually. [1]. (And the article they linked to was from 2008 anyway and said that 25 moves was the max needed as of 2008 best knowledge)

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-10929159](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-10929159)

<comment><USER3> The maximum number of _face turns_ needed is 20, and the maximum number of _quarter turns_ is 26.

<comment><USER2> Would have been nice if they mentioned the quarter-turn metric, and hadn't said "moves" then, which in speedcubing almost always refers to face turns. Especially when the article they linked to was regarding face turns as well.

Both of course are mentioned at cube20.org ... [http://www.cube20.org/](http://www.cube20.org/)

<comment><USER4> They clearly refer to quarter-turn metric: "Finally, in 2014, it was shown that any valid cube can be optimally solved with at most 26 moves in the quarter-turn metric, or 20 moves in the half-turn metric [26, 25]. The quarter-turn metric treats 180 degree rotations as two moves, whereas the half-turn metric treats 180 degree rotations as one move. For the remainder of this paper we will be using the quarter-turn metric."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Harvard Berkman Center Launches New Internet Data Dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://dashboard.thenetmonitor.org/ <comment><USER2> Url changed from [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99141](https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/99141), which points to this.</comment>


Writing an Operating System with Modula-3 (1995) [pdf] - vezzy-fnord http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~savage/papers/Wcsss96m3os.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Modula-3 was a required course at Cambridge, including for postgrad (which I did). I _hated_ it, and so did most of the others on the course.

It did structural polymorphism well before Go, but did the whole thing through a 32-bit hash. This meant you could (quite easily) structure a type that was castable to Int, String, anything you wanted...

And OMG the ridiculously verbose syntax.

<comment><USER2> [quote]And OMG the ridiculously verbose syntax.[/quote]

Not as bad as Ada, VHDL, Cobol etc.!

<comment><AUTHOR> Seriously, we were using 80x25 terminals, and everyone was designing languages where you couldn't write a simple function that fit on the page!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. I have never heard of Modula-3. I remember Modula-2 and then Oberon. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER2> It was very influential on Java (as the Java people acknowledged in their early documents) and C# (unsafe types).</comment></comment>


Ubuntu Founder Mark Shuttleworth on Productivity and Linux  - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/software/exclusive-lifehacker-interview/ubuntu-founder-mark-shuttleworth-on-productivity-and-linux-294941.php <comment><USER2> I always wondered why "Web apps" have to be made with HTML and accessed through a URL. Web apps are basically regular applications with a shared user database. If you have a graphics intensive application, instead of using AJAX, why not use mature client-side graphics facilities and release a downloadable program that talks to a remote shared database for Web 2.0 style functionality? The only downside is that software updates are harder to propagate, but with update alerts this is not so much of an issue.</comment>


So I started a blog ... about learning how to code - <AUTHOR> http://dumbblogname.wordpress.com/

<comment><USER2> Python is a great way to start programming. Congrats on starting! However, I'd suggest following a university course (like stanford's cs106/cs107 etc) and doing the weekly assignments. That way you'll learn concept after concept rather than just random programs like prime factors.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! I'm trying to get some good online learning courses to look at (learning on one's own can be so directionless). I'll definitely look at it, thanks again!

<comment><USER3> You should definitely follow mcplusplus's advice.

Another introductory course is Harvard's CS50[1] which covers a lot of subjects: Programming concepts, C, basic algorithms and data structures, recursion, basic web programming with databases, a glimpse of operating systems and computer architecture. And the instructor (David J. Malan) is great!

And I second Stanford's CS106A/B[2] (CS107 is much harder if you're just learning how to program) - it only teaches in java, but it has more _depth_ than Harvard's, especially CS106B which covers a lot of algorithms and data structures.

[1] <http://cs50.tv>

[2] <http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx>

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. I liked hackernews before. Now I'm in love. Thanks for all the tips everyone. Front page? COOL!

Will definitely look at these courses. Muchas gracias amigos

<comment><USER4> And for the basics of Python: <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I also recommend following a tutorial, it's really hard to start coding on your own, you will definitely get bad habits or a very shallow, incorrect understanding. I know this from long experience.</comment>


Why do users click randomly and rapidly when an application hangs? - <AUTHOR> http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/39413/why-do-users-click-randomly-and-rapidly-when-an-application-hangs

<comment><USER3> In my experience, I simply do this as a way of polling the app to see whether it's still working. A working app will often have the main gui loop running so you'll be able to see the GUI respond to clicks, focus changes etc. If the app doesn't do that, it's a sign that it's blocked waiting for something (network or file access, for instance). Experience then informs me whether it's normal for a certain app to behave in this way, and whether I should wait longer to let it finish or just kill it off.

So for instance, a long time ago I was an Opera user on Linux. In certain cases some bug would cause it to go on a memory eating rampage which would slow the machine to a crawl of swapping if I didn't react quickly enough to kill the process. I developed a very good sense at "smelling" when this was about to happen, so I could react quickly enough to kill the process before just switching over to the terminal would take something like a minute.

<comment><USER4> Same here. In addition, I usually attempt to perform an action that will result in a visible response, like scrolling or selecting text, so that if/when the app does start responding again, I'll see.

I also sometimes move the window or switch to another window to see if it's the app or a bigger problem.

<comment><USER5> I usually switch to another window or program as well, in the hopes that the other window/program will distract me long enough to give the slow app an opportunity to recover. If other windows/programs are slow as well, then I start killing processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I do this it's because I'm irritated that it's hanging and I hope that my clicks will queue up and punish the insolent program. Kind of like sentencing it to 2,000,000,000 cycles of hard labor.

<comment><USER7> Fractions of a second of punishment seems far too little for this type of crime. I think the program should be punished for at least whole seconds.

<comment><USER8> Not applications, but I will refresh unruly/bad ui web pages with a timed auto-refresh (like every 5-10 seconds so I'm not overdoing it) with a 404 url that leaves a log messages related to whatever the annoyance is (in hopes the developer/sys admin will perhaps see it). If it's a really angry message, I will sometimes give an apology message a while later when I'm not so annoyed :)

<comment><USER7> Heh. Though speaking just for myself, I disable 404 notifications if there's no referrer, so I'd only see it if I happened to be trawling through the log with extreme care (i.e. never). If other developers are like me, you might want to use curl (or whatever) so that the referrer is actually set. In fact...I may start doing this.

<comment><USER8> Didn't think about it being filtered on no referrer, but that would make sense after thinking about it and why. I end up doing it hoping it has a better chance of reaching someone with the power to fix stuff in some of the larger companies. Going through the PR front end sometimes feels like a lesson in futility so might as well try to make it fun and hope someone listens while defusing web rage :)

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In Windows, moving the mouse about can actually prevent certain processes from hanging.

eg.

<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/168702>

<comment><USER10> Honestly when you read that as an actual solution it sounds like a joke

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, the number of bugs I've fixed by performing "unrelated" and silly actions...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My 17 month old plays with several numbers and letters apps on my Surface. If the app hangs even slightly, she taps over and over until the app reacts again. I find it interesting that even she does the rapid fire tapping as well.

<comment><USER12> I have a similar aged lad who uses his pad just like all the other much older kids do. Just want to say what an amazing thing it is to see kids so young so easily and comprehensively using these touch screen devices.

As an example, he can search YouTube for The Number Song, which has already taught him to count to 100. Alphabet 90% reliably correct too, not to mention shapes and colours. He has been using pads since he was about 15-16 months, something like that, he is now 2 years 3 months, and I still find it incredible. Way ahead of my other kids.

In an ideal world, I would love for every child to get one of these, plus an internet connection, free from what ever education department, when the hit, say, 18 months. Yeah, I know.....

What I don't know though is whether its a good thing or a bad thing? To this 40yo Dad, something seems sad about seeing him there, on the sofa, with his face lit up by his "Samsung". But equally, it seems like a modern miracle. Even though he still like books,, actual toys, running about in the garden, pulling the cat's tail, giving his food to the scrounging dogs, it still _feels_ like he is being robbed of something. I suppose thats my age or generation, or something stupid.

As for the pad hanging, he now has patience, and simply waits. He used to tap away, then hold the pad out for one of us to fix it, but now he just waits. If he gets no response after a while, he restarts the pad.

<comment><USER13> Your kid might enjoy "The Big Numbers Song" from the KidsTV123 youtube channel. After 100, it counts by powers of 10 up to 1 trillion.

Mine is a little older (3 years 4 months) and has graduated to spelling and skip-counting, mostly on the "havefunteaching" youtube channel.

He's also learned which apps seem to respond well to extra taps. There are a few that do, and a few that just require patience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A psychologist friend whom I just asked about this said that in animal models of behavior, this is called an "extinction burst." Animals that have been conditioned into a behavioral response through operant conditioning will often be found, after a reward is no longer given for the conditioned response, repeating the response often and with random timing. Sometime human beings are trained by their computers rather than exercising volitional control over their computers.

<comment><USER15> Ha! That totally reminded me of my dog. He begs and begs for a treat, and when he finally realizes he's not getting his nth treat that day he totally "extinction bursts" and starts ramming his head into things.

Stand clear when he does that, he's a big dog!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I often hit the caps lock key (once) to see if the indicator light comes on to tell if the whole computer is dead.

<comment><AUTHOR> This was my favorite test as well, back in the day.

<comment><USER17> Why back in the day? It should still work just as effectively.

<comment><USER18> Sure does. Did you know that you can _still_ entirely lock up windows simply by having a bunch of programs access the hard drive too much at once?

(And last time I made linux thrash it wasn't any better. Why is it so easy to keep the system responsive when a program or two hogs the CPU, but so hard when they hog disk I/O.)

<comment><USER19> I haven't actually looked into this question, but I suspect the problem isn't so much that the system isn't responsive when I/O is hogged, but rather that individual programs are not responsive. On my computer, I occasionally get into a congested hard drive issue, and almost all programs I am running are incredibly non-responsive. However, my window manager (awesome), and virtual terminals stay snappy during this period. This is in contrast to when my CPU starts getting thrashed, when even those begin to get unusable.

<comment><USER18> In my experience the core UI systems usually lock up. I can't use even the simplest already-active non-memory-allocating programs. And can you explain caps lock not responding for 8 seconds without 'total system lockup'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If someone was standing in front of you, and you asked him a question, and after a 30 seconds didn't get a response, would you just stand there, or would you prompt him again to figure out why he didn't answer? Maybe say it louder, because he didn't hear the first time. Or perhaps he's confused, and you can clear that up by asking your question in a different manner. You wouldn't just stand there waiting forever, however.

People begin clicking, typing for the very same reason. You're trying to figure out why a response wasn't given. You click again to make sure that your click registered the first time. If it wasn't the application will now respond. If it was, now you're trying to decipher whether the application is hung or not, or perhaps something did grab focus, like a pop behind, as a commenter suggested.

I guess I don't find this a particularly interesting investigation of human behavior. What's the alternative for the person? Sit there and wait forever?

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been using computers for over 20 years and believe me, every one of these actions has worked at some point.

Clicking might get the application into another state, or at least get the operating system involved in killing it of. Pressing return might answer hidden input fields (wrong focus, broken modal dialogs). Pressing escape might help exit one of these. Pressing ctrl-alt-del gets the OS involved... etc. etc.

What UI experts ignore, is the fact that a crashed/freezing application is no longer in a well-defined state. Therefore the apps logic no longer applies.

</comment><comment><USER22> An analogy that comes to mind - physical exercise. When you are stopped doing exercise (e.g. running at a traffic light), people often will jog in place. Obvious reasons - keep heart rate from large deltas, muscles warm/responding well, etc.

If you watch competitive PC gaming, you will notice that even professional gamers will often 'spam' their hotkeys in low activity periods, typically the beginning of games. Some people claim that it is simply for actions-per-minute stats, but I could see it as some kind of setting of mental/physical cadence.

<comment><USER23> I don't think that the analogy holds. Jogging in place is to maintain movement and keeping the body warm so that it's easier to continue running when you can run.

Spamming before a round starts is done in order to fire off an action before your opponent or just as soon as possible.

Neither scenario is analogous to a non-responsive software application because everything is in fact responsive. If the stop light is red, then that's temporary, it is in fact the whole purpose of the signal. Only if the light hangs for an abnormally long amount of time do people get nervous. In the game scenario, there's usually a countdown to the round starting, so again nothing is frozen.

<comment><USER18> No, not before a round starts. For a concrete example, in starcraft all you normally do in the first minute is build up your worker supply and make 1-2 buildings, maybe send a scout. But you'll see players hitting hotkeys to view their base, no view over here, no view the base, now use the mouse to select all the workers, now do it again 7 times, now give this one ten move orders to the same spot as fast as you can click... They're not trying to get an action done faster, they're not even hitting keys that do anything, they're just constantly spamming input.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> People want to feel they have some level of control over a negative situation. This is why people will take a way home that is 15 minutes longer to avoid a 5 or 10 minute delay caused by a traffic jam. It's also the reason people are sometimes afraid to fly but not afraid to drive, even though it's generally far more risky.

Perhaps clicking repeatedly is an outlet for trying to control an application that has developed its own agenda.

</comment><comment><USER25> This highlights what is in my opinion one of the biggest failings of modern operating system/GUI design (this and modal dialog boxes, but don't get me started). We are used to interacting with things in a physical world. When they fail it's their functionality that fails not their interface. If your DVD player breaks you can still push the buttons. Even if your computer breaks you can still press the keys, but when GUI apps break the interface itself stops working, and given all the work that has gone into helping you to believe that GUIs are just extensions of reality it's like reality stopped working.

I have always felt that GUIs should run in their own nonblocking thread at the system level so that you can still use the interface to interrogate the functioning of the program. I try to do this in my own programming. Even if the brains die, buttons still push, the focus still changes the menus still drop down, no bazar interaction queueing and if it's expectd behavior the app could respond by providing info like a waiting on IO light. If it's unexpected then the lack of response would be telling. As it is no information is communicated.

</comment><comment><USER26> I remember that whenever a printer crashed at my university, its queue would fill up as people kept queuing additional copies of whatever document they were trying to print.

Thankfully the permissions on the print queue were loose enough that we lay users could purge the impatient people's documents from the queue rather than waiting for the printer to churn through their duplicate requests.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm off to patent:

Method to detect an application has hung

\- by when a user repeatedly clicks randomly in a short time period of time

<comment><USER28> And they say the halting problem can't be solved!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Actually this makes a little bit of sense these days on linux (or maybe it's gnome-specific?) An application that's unresponsive will just hang there, but if you try to interact with it and it doesn't respond you'll get the "do you want to kill it" dialog. Of course that's important only in case you really want to kill it - it won't fix anything.

</comment><comment><USER30> Mildly related, and mildly humorous: After the last update to my phone I've started randomly experiencing dips in responsiveness. It might be doing GC or some other heavy tasks, but it remains in low (not zero) responsiveness for several seconds.

Whenever I experience it, I start tapping the back-button furiously, in a quick steady rythm, causing a pileup of tap-events. These will be dispatched in batches, each tap causing a small buzz in the vibrator engine. When the buzzes start happening at an even pace, I am back to having a responsive phone.

The purpose of this behaviour is to know when my phone is usable again, but it kind of evolved from me just wanting to see if I could provoke it or whatever. People are curious things.

</comment><comment><USER31> For me its:

1\. Click on chrome to see if the window responds

2\. Click on enter to make sure any hidden modals are accepted

3\. Alt+F4, die bastard die

4\. Ctrl+Alt+Delete, kill it with fire

<comment><USER32> Hidden modals is the kind of fun people miss in KDE.

But when I use Windows, I'm not bold enough to just click enter on whatever I'm not seeing to get the program back. I'll kill it on control panel before that.

<comment><USER33> I use KDE and there are two situations where I get "hidden" modals.

One is when FF decides I need to enter my master password more than once - <USER2> a restart that opens more than one page that requires authorisation.

The other is when an app crashes, if there are multiple crashes then the crash reporter hides subsequent error dialogs.

What's most frustrating is when the ordering gets broken, probably due to my interactions, and one can't click the topmost dialog as it's blocked by a later dialog.

Generally the dialogs aren't hidden because you see them on the application bar but with grouping on (the default) they get hidden within the group. It might be worse with things like sloppy focus or focus stealing prevention set differently.

If I can't see a dialog on MS Windows I'll try Alt-Tab then hit escape, then Alt-F4, then try and bring up task manager ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I used to do this in the OS 9 days, but these days of no swapping (lots of RAM and SSD) and OS X where the window manager never hangs and we have the pinwheel cursor for apps that stopped responding to UI events, I've stopped doing it (at most I'll move the cursor around in circles frantically to ensure there's no hardware/disk freeze, or scroll up/down to see if there's one of the frequent Safari WebProcess freezes).

Do any other OS X users do this, or is it limited to Windows/Linux? Is it due to poor feedback?

</comment><comment><USER35> It's the digital form of "Percussive Maintenance" - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percussive_maintenance>

</comment><comment><USER36> Sometimes I do it to try and get the program to crash instead of just hang. Software is pretty stable these days, so sometimes it feels good to see a complete crash to the desktop.

</comment><comment><USER37> I think a better question is "why don't we harness that behavior to make our apps 'feel' more responsive?" If we make UI for humans and humans act like that then why not give them a reactive but non-functional button to click to "make it faster"? While waiting for a light to change at a crosswalk I feel a lot better if I can hit a button on a pole instead of just standing there feeling helpless. Even if I know the button won't do anything.

</comment><comment><USER38> Reading in the comments this also gave me a chucke as I have caught myself doing it constantly:

"ctrl+c ctrl+c ctrl+c, just to make sure :)"

<comment><USER39> Since I'm always in some sort of tmux/screen terminal, I find myself cycling through some combination of Ctrl+a q,Cntrl+q to make sure I didn't turn on flow-control (Ctrl+s).

<comment><USER40> This is why I have stty -ixon in my profile. I never use flow control anyway, not sure why I want it on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> On Macs, randomly moving application windows when an app hangs often helps when beachballs pop up.

</comment><comment><USER42> Possibly related to operant conditioning with intermittent reinforcement.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Intermittent_rei...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Intermittent_reinforcements)

<comment><USER43> It does look eerily the same as the documentaries when you see a monkey being trained to put a ball in a cup or whatever and then receives a treat.

When the treats stop coming, the monkey will start performing the action rapidly and repeatedly for a little while - hoping the rewards will start happening again!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I suspect many people do this for the same reasons that we yell at other drivers from within the sealed environment of our own car. There's very little chance that the other driver will hear us, but it provides an outlet for frustration.

</comment><comment><USER45> Reminds me of the entry _plokta_ in the jargon file so it must go back to the beginnings of time:

<http://www.retrologic.com/jargon/P/plokta.html>

</comment><comment><USER46> In India I found that there's a widespread belief that refreshing the desktop (on Windows machines) makes things go faster, and some people do so repeatedly while waiting for slow computers to load heavy programs.

</comment><comment><USER47> Quite a few very entertaining responses. Unfortunately the clicks aren't "random" as indicated in the question; therefore this is not an easily tapped source of entropy.

</comment><comment><USER48> i click and highlight and such out of boredom, similar to how i tap my fingers when waiting or thinking. if i click while a program is 'hanging,' it isn't out of frustration or expectation of a response. people actually do that for those reasons?

</comment><comment><USER49> So glad I took Principles of UI Design in school, made me appreciate this answer much more.

</comment><comment><USER50> ...because the alternative will be smashing my cup of coffee in the display :)

</comment><comment><USER51> Focus. If the window can't be brought into the foreground it's dead.

</comment><comment><USER52> I guess it's the equivalent of shaking a radio, or patting a TV.

</comment><comment><USER53> Misclicks are common, and it's normal to click two or three times to get something right - how many times have you mousedowned on a button, but had the pointer move off the button before mouseup?

Also, very occasionally, an application will respond to a click where it previously wasn't, and faint hope is better than no hope.</comment>


Imagine K12 Graduates Its First Class of Ed-Tech Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/09/14/imagine-k12-graduates-its-first-class-of-ed-tech-startups/#.TnDdeSZSM90.hackernews <comment><USER3> I love this idea, because there is so much room for improvement in the field of ed tech. There are some pretty interesting questions to answer, many of which are a mix of social/ business/ ethical/ technical considerations. For example, we have a huge gap in access to educational resources. I would hate to see ed tech startups widen this gap.

US government funding is $800bn, so obviously there is a pool of money available to effective innovators. But this brings into question the issue of how much profit to aim for, and how to ensure equitable access to new technologies.

How should ed tech startups approach trying to find a balance between maximizing profit, and while maintaining equitable access to their product? One thought I had was to aim for a distribution between pay-in-full access, discounted access (in price only, not in features), and free access - <USER2> distribution should align with a society's income distribution somehow.

Is this issue being addressed at all?

<comment><USER4> As a part of the Imagine K12 cohort announced here, I can tell you that this issue is being addressed. It varies from company to company, but overall we're trying new ways to monetize and close the gap.

<comment><USER3> Can you offer any links to a discussion of the issue, or how it is being approached by different startups?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love the thought of encouraging better education, especially through technology, but I have to wonder if that's a wide enough base to support the incubator? It seems a rather narrow vision.

<comment><USER6> US Government spending on education this year (at local/state/federal levels) is $800bn, how big a market do you want ?

Saying education is a small market is saying healthcare or defence is a small market.

ImagineK12 isn't even the only education incubator, there's also Startl based out of NY.

<comment><USER7> There is also the large markets of tutoring and online learning. Not to mention the huge market that is higher education.</comment></comment></comment>


Before Wired, There Was the Eccentric "Mondo 2000" - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/tech-time-warp-week-wired-eccentric-mondo-2000/ <comment><USER2> There was a discussion about Mondo 2000 here on HN maybe a year ago, and I remember someone commenting that they & all their friends growing up in California saw Mondo as a huge joke. Their parents and older friends were all working with VR and the Internet and it was nothing like Mondo made it out to be. They couldn't believe anybody took it seriously.

One of the replies really resonated with me. Growing up in the midwest in the mid-90s, where scarcely anyone had heard of the Internet, Mondo was paradise. It portrayed a humanistic, technophilic world of sex, drugs, and high technology so far away from the humble, conservative "Breadbasket of North America" around us.

I have a full run of Mondo 2000 I intend to scan someday. Flipping through those back issues, it really does feel silly today. But back then, each of those issues symbolized hope for me. I kept a stack next to my bed for inspiration. I would dream about the future I was about to create.

Looking back, that's why I was so disappointed with college the first time around. I spent the last couple years of high school drooling over virtual reality rigs and cyberspace, only to have a required COBOL class my freshman year. I dreamed of dropping out and moving to San Francisco where all the cool people were, people who understood technology and the limitless future that lies before us.

Timothy Leary was my hero, and I wept the day he died. I tried reading Chaos and Cyberculture[1] again a couple years ago and it felt like barely-coherent word vomit. But in 1994 it blew my mind.

I worry that this will be the legacy of Mondo 2000 and its ilk. Taken out of context, I'd say it's 90% "weird for the sake of weird" crap. Although I must say that it's beautifully illustrated crap, pushing the limits of 1990s hardware and software. And that's the thing - so much of Mondo's value is in its context. The team behind Mondo were cyberspace missionaries spinning tales of a digital utopia, inspiring us to realize it. When the mainstream went grunge, they went digital. I feel like my passion for open source today springs from that same dream of a global kumbaya we were promised decades ago.

[1] [https://drytoasts.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/timothy- leary-...](https://drytoasts.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/timothy-leary-chaos- cyber-culture.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of people miss that it was in in part _literally_ a joke. It seems a lot people look at that "R.U. a cyberpunk" bit and think that it was meant to be serious. Hell, it was all right there in the editor-in-chief's name.

But of course it was also more than just a joke. Have you read "The Guy I Almost Was," mentioned in another comment here? I asked R.U. Sirius about that when I interviewed him in 2002 [1] and he said:

"I say that all the time in public interviews, 'We made it all up.' Which in a sense is true — some of it we made up and some of it we didn't. Mondo 2000 clearly wasn't journalism in the conventional sense. It was mostly composed of interviews, very subjective, really dedicated to people speaking in their own voice. It was very playful and very surrealistic. I never really wanted to do journalism — I do now because I have to to make a living. And we do it at Thresher, I guess because it's become a habit now. To say we made it all up is kind of flippant, but we weren't concerned with responsibility or credibility. We were more concerned with creating a sense of excitement and energy and a sense of belonging to the next wave of culture. And we were concerned with making people laugh."

<comment><USER4> This sounds quite similar to Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo Journalism:

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

<comment><USER5> There was a lot of that. I was one of the people behind Fringeware, well- acquainted with the Mondo crew.

I named my son Hunter Speed Thompson.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These magazines always brings _The Guy I Almost Was_ ¹ to my mind (previously discussed on HN in 2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=740760))

① [http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/](http://www.electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/)

<comment><USER7> Ha, yes. Always comes up in my head too.

But the best Electric Sheep comic was Delta Thrives. I look at it several times a year still. Gorgeous stuff.

[http://e-sheep.sansara.net.ua/www.e-sheep.com/delta/heartoft...](http://e-sheep.sansara.net.ua/www.e-sheep.com/delta/heartofthesun/index.html)

<comment><USER8> I remember Electric Sheep too... So much better than badly drawn sneering blobs and stick figures expressing smug superiority or banal cynicism. Man did Internet culture ever turn to trash after ~2001.

90s Internet culture: what you posted.

Today's Internet culture: LOL I p00ped today! Because science!

It's really just a mirror of the larger culture though. I watched some old Star Trek TNG a while back and was just amazed. You could never even write anything that optimistic today.

History says these things are cyclic. Hope that's still true. Probably is. The 20s will probably be pretty awesome.

<comment><USER9> There's still good stuff out there in corners of the internet. And there was a lot of garbage on the net back in the 90s, too. There's just so much more good stuff AND garbage on the net now. Because almost everyone is on it, no matter how rich or poor, no matter how much or little free time they have to craft art.

For instance - since we are talking about one of the pioneers of webcomics - there s now a huge flourishing world of people doing comics on the web. One that's big enough and noticeable enough that people can find an audience to make a modest living self-publishing, with a pretty fuzzy border between it and the world of people who do work for "real" publishers. If anything it's getting easier and easier to make a living on this stuff with things like Patreon and Kickstarter.

It's just that yeah, we also have stuff like XKCD or the Oatmeal or Zen Moments that is honed to a razor-sharp edge of "something cute you want to re- share".

<comment><USER8> I guess it's like music. There's engineered pop that's designed for catchiness but otherwise is pretty crummy, but if you dig you can find good stuff.

I feel the two are to some extent mutually exclusive. Some of the parent cartoons are amazing but they're also _weird_. They're "heavy." I might not post those to my Facebook feed. My in-laws are on there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone remember the beautiful cover stock used by Wired in the mid- nineties? That was a fantastic era for the magazine. Their online portal Hot Wired was ahead of its time. It's design lead Jeff Veen went on to found TypeKit. I had a subscription during that time and would excitedly check the mail every day. Before that, I'd trek to the local college to flip through their copies.

<comment><USER11> Hot Wired is also credited with inventing the banner ad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Man, this brings back memories of lying on my loft in college, listening to industrial music while reading William Gibson. Studying CS, playing with 3D on the Amiga, reading 2600, Wired, Mondo, etc., etc. It doesn't matter if it was tongue in cheek or half joking, for some of us, it was describing the world you wanted to live in, or hoped was the future since Max freaking Headroom :-) It was fun!

</comment><comment><USER13> And before Mondo 2000 there was ELECTRIC WORD [1], edited by WIRED's founder Louis Rossetto. How many of you remember _that_?

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

<comment><USER3> I've been trying to track down copies or PDFs of Electric word and Language Technology to no avail. I'm really curious what the design and contents were actually like. Best I've found are some scans of the covers and a little info on a few issues:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080819193753/http://www.rynne....](https://web.archive.org/web/20080819193753/http://www.rynne.org/electricword)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd recommend "Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge" which is a compilation of articles from the magazine about drugs, technology, music and other topics:

[http://www.amazon.com/Mondo-2000-Aphrodisiacs-Artificial- Tec...](http://www.amazon.com/Mondo-2000-Aphrodisiacs-Artificial-Techno- Erotic/dp/0060969288)

<comment><USER15> Yes, great stuff, everyone was so idealistic (and naive...) before Facebook and the NSA. Apparently Google wasn't even going to be evil.

<comment><USER2> Not really. We rallied pretty hard against the Clipper Chip. John Perry Barlow ran in those circles (he interviewed Ted Nelson for one Mondo issue) and the EFF was a big presence in the hacker culture.

I'll admit we _were_ naive about Google, though. But at the time, they were a couple college students taking on "big business". In a way, they were re- democratizing the Internet, and that was a good thing. "Don't be evil" was exactly the kind of message we expected to hear from an Internet company.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily call MONDO 100% naive. There was a lot of paranoia about government surveillance and the misuse of technology in its pages as well.

<comment><USER14> I agree that naive isn't quite the right word. A lot of the attitude and world view have their roots in the 60s counter culture and hacker / raver culture which combine huge optimism in human potential with a deep distrust of authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mondo. Boing Boing as a zine. Fringeware Review. I used to have all of 'em. Wish I'd kept them, but at least I absorbed them.

All I have left from the late 80s - early 90s are 2600s. Small enough to keep around.

<comment><USER16> A few years ago I emailed Mark Frauenfelder about where to find Boing Boing back issues, and he told me they were planning on releasing them all as an iOS app.

Sadly, it hasn't happened.

<comment><USER17> Still on the cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> After devouring Mondo 2000 in early 90s the early issues of Wired seemed sort of meh despite similar optimism.

When you were reading Mondo 2000, it seemed you were on the verge of participating in something great, the world was going to change (all hail Gibson) and you knew it better than those boring over the hill 30 year olds in suits.

I suppose it was the same feeling that teeenagers got from reading some punk zines of late 70s.

</comment><comment><USER19> I had a fairly extensive collection of M2000 issues inherited from my older brother. Also had a copy of the 'Mondo 2000 User's Guide' book. All were stolen during a house party in 2010 that went limbic :-(

</comment><comment><USER20> Mondo was probably the biggest typographic/layout stylistic influence for me. In that regard it was awesome !

</comment><comment><USER16> probably the best article ever written about mondo:

[http://totse.mattfast1.com/en/ego/literary_genius/mondo2k.ht...](http://totse.mattfast1.com/en/ego/literary_genius/mondo2k.html)</comment>


Yesterday I had this copycat idea: People pay me $30, I make them a web design - <AUTHOR> http://www.designfor30bucks.com/

<comment><USER2> Haha, how far can it go? ;-) People pay me $100000, I make them a logo? Ah, hang on, that's what big name agencies do already.

P.S. Unless this is a parody, a casino/money theme with a black background is an... _interesting_ route brand-wise.

<comment><USER3> Why is a casino site with a black background a bad idea? I'm honestly curious...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I personally find the design by the $15 guy better…

<comment><AUTHOR> except that is not avalaible to do them? yeah...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this yours Paolo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you start a business? What was the first step? - <AUTHOR> What was your first step to start a business or startup.
Was it side project? or was it hobby? or was it remote work?
Did you just left the job or pursue it? or you grow your business first?
I wanted to do business but I do not know where to start. what did you do as a first thing to start a business? <comment><USER2> The first thing I did was find paying customers, as brudgers mentioned.

There are many many many business ideas that are hard to generate a single dollar of revenue off of because the problem you're solving is not big enough.

I'm in the cannabis point-of-sale space. The problem I was solving was inventory management for a single store I knew. If could help him track his numbers better, that was worth money to him (because he would save money for his business), and he was willing to pay $100/month for that right off the bat.

If I was solving something like, have a cool iPad display to show your products to your customers, that wouldn't be worth any money. It's not solving a big enough problem.

As we scaled, our value propositions shifted from a micro-scale more towards government compliance. Now we charge $500/month because we are solving a bigger problem.

Long story short: find a problem people are willing to pay for. If nobody's willing to pay, that's because the problem isn't big enough.

<comment><USER3> well said sir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find _paying_ customers.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use to A/B test in Django - <AUTHOR>

There are some feature switch libraries out there like https://github.com/disqus/gargoyle/ and https://github.com/jsocol/django-waffle but not an actual A/B testing library. What libraries do you use ? <comment><USER2> [https://www.djangopackages.com/grids/g/feature- flip/](https://www.djangopackages.com/grids/g/feature-flip/)</comment>


The Model-View-Controller Song - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/musical-geek-friday-model-view-controller-song/

<comment><USER2> here's another nerdy-dorky song

<http://www.modlost.net/home/music/programming/lisp-song.html>

<comment><USER3> Somebody played this for me a couple days ago. I had to beg him to stop. The pain still hasn't gone away.

<comment><USER4> Hey, at least it's better than the Free Software Song... ;)

<comment><USER3> Ha! That's exactly what I played him for revenge!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chip Industry's Fundamental Shifts in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://semiengineering.com/fundamental-shifts-in-2018/ <comment><USER2> Speaking about design challenges - it would be nice if industry will switch to LLVM-like low-level HDL (or RTL) language, that will allow easier cross-tool integration. So far every project implements everything itself. There is an idea[1] to adapt FIRRTL[2][3] for this needs. Here is a good paper[4] describing its features. Apparently Intel also using it, at least in the research labs. This will help to integrate all parts of FPGA and ASIC design pipeline together. For now chip-design feels like programming in 1990 - quality of tooling is very bad.

[1] [https://github.com/SymbiFlow/ideas/issues/19](https://github.com/SymbiFlow/ideas/issues/19)

[2] [https://bar.eecs.berkeley.edu/projects/firrtl.html](https://bar.eecs.berkeley.edu/projects/firrtl.html)

[3] [https://github.com/freechipsproject/FIRRTL](https://github.com/freechipsproject/FIRRTL)

[4] [https://aspire.eecs.berkeley.edu/wp/wp- content/uploads/2017/...](https://aspire.eecs.berkeley.edu/wp/wp- content/uploads/2017/11/Reusability-is-FIRRTL-Ground-Izraelevitz.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It will stay like this for the foreseeable future. Chip design IP is too obscure for the mainstream oss people to force an oss ecosystem. There's also too much proprietary foundry information needed to even have an oss ecosystem that actually works properly.

Ironically the closedness of chip design tools and foundry information is also what prevents it from truly growing. Entrenched players (cad companies) benefit from this, but the losers are the actual chip design companies. They are bleeding generation of engineers who have forsaken this climate for the more cozy cs oss climate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fairly interesting article. I'm a bit baffled by the reference to a supposed attempt at abandoning the von Neumann architecture (full citation below) - what would these alternative architectures be? It doesn't seem at all likely to me, and I'm wondering if this is more about some way to market rather minor changes as some kind of radical shift.

\</comment><comment>-- "And the drive to put AI on the edge is causing new design architectures. "There has been a rethink on compute architectures for cache coherency, for heterogenous computing," points out Synopsys' Nandra. "In 2018, different approaches have been attempted to solve ML inference challenge. They are all trying to work out how to do inferencing on an edge device and being able to quickly process data so that they don't have to upload information from the Cloud and to do things in real time. That has opened a big debate about von Neumann compute architectures to different approaches where you are separating memory, accelerator chips—be they dedicated FPGAs, dedicated GPUs, application specific processors—and new chips that have blocks that talk with each other.""

<comment><USER5> _what would these alternative architectures be?_

A traditional von Newmann computer reads instructions and data from memory, into something that does arithmetic, logic and control (call it a CPU).

But consider that the "memory" nowadays is composed of multiple instances of 8 Gib DRAM. That's a lot of bits to be sitting there, read out perhaps 64 at a time by the CPU.

Instead, can some logic be embedded within each memory chip? Some way to bypass the "von Neumann bottleneck"?[1]

Ideas like that are the essence of "alternative architecture". Can a system composed of these, let's call them "non-von Neumann" elements, be faster or cheaper than the computer architecture we've been using since Johnny's 1945 seminal paper.[2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_N...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_architecture#Von_Neumann_bottleneck)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the_EDVAC)</comment></comment>


WorksheetWorks: Educational materials made to specification - <AUTHOR> http://www.worksheetworks.com/ <comment><USER2> Are you planning to charge the user for this service? This might ought to be addressed somewhere on the site.</comment>


Eight Futures of Work: Scenarios and Their Implications - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/eight-futures-of-work-scenarios-and-their-implications <comment><USER2> They aren't the most interesting scenarios. I'm quite a fan of scenario planning in general. The Global Business Network [1] used to do really good work in this area. The book "The Art of the Long View" is a classic book on the subject, and more resources here [2]

        [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Business_Network
        [2] https://thinkingfutures.net/scenario-planning-resources/

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this comedy?

</comment><comment><USER4> So, according to this, the assumptions are: 1\. NO NEW TAXES!!!!! 2\. No safety nets! If you are out of jobs, you are ____ed. 3\. Thou shall work 40hr a week. 4\. Governments can only act for /against immigration.

All of which are, obviously, interesting. I mean, even _today_ , people are asking "the rich" to pay more taxes. Even today, people are looking for way to help their fellow human beings (in US, the current fights are cheaper education and protection for pre-existing conditions).

So, imagine a future with higher taxes and basic income. In that case, the whole shebang about "competition for jobs" looks really different. I mean, if you are guaranteed livable income, low-skill jobs will be the first to go (surprised! Raise your hand if you like to scrub toilets for $7/hr). If you are guaranteed livable income, skill acquisition becomes much less risky.

But of course, read their lips: no new taxes (and thus no new social safety nets whatsoever; don't you know that if you bail out the poor, society will disintegrate into chaos?)</comment>


Uncertainty Driven Testing (defending TDD a little bit) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@blambeau/uncertainty-driven-testing-45936a80b99f <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author. If you are a software developer or run a software company, how would you define your global test strategy? What and why do you test?</comment>


NYPD punished man who filmed Eric Garner killing with targeted harassment - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18253848/eric-garner-footage-ramsey-orta-police-brutality-killing-safety <comment><AUTHOR> 'For a police department claiming not to be targeting Orta for his filming of Garner's death, they sure brought it up a lot. New York City Patrolmen's Benevolent Association president Patrick J. Lynch released a statement saying: "the arrest of Ramsey Orta for criminal possession of a firearm only underscores the dangers that brought police officers to respond to a chronic crime condition in that community. Sadly, in the effort to keep neighborhoods like Tompkinsville safe, a tragedy occurred. But that doesn't change the fact that police officers routinely risk their lives for the benefit of the community and that they have earned their support and understanding."

At his arraignment in Staten Island for the drug charges, an anonymous police source told the Daily News, "He took the video, now we took the video."'</comment>


Chaff Cloud That Lit Up Radars as It Drifted Across Midwest Remains a Mystery - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25438/huge-chaff-cloud-that-lit-up-radars-as-it-drifted-across-the-midwest-remains-a-mystery <comment><USER3> Chaff has always been a short term phenomenon - it settles, so how do you make it neutrally dense or even lighter than air so it will not settle. The key is related to the aluminum coated Mylar balloons - make them as light as air, Helium diffuses out quickly but if you use hydrogen you can create a chaff machine that uses two sheets of plastic, one coated with very thin aluminum. trap helium or hydrogen between them, then laminate and separate them into tiny tubes with neutral density so the residence time in air is quite a few hours with Hydrogen, lots less with helium. You can make it in advance, but popped popcorn fills a plane quickly, but unpopped corn allows you to mobilize more chaff in the plane. This would be a good method to fox radar guided missiles, or radar satellite surveys or launches. These short straws of Mylar would have the needed aerial residence time and could even be made to rise, loiter and then fall with the right choice of gasses (mixed hydrogen and helium allows a rise, followed by a fall as the helium diffuses out) - <USER2> helium as well

<comment><USER3> both sheets need to be metallized to reduce diffusion across the film.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. I was looking at radar with my co-worker yesterday, we saw these scans and were like WTF is going on? Chaff from a C-130 huh? They do some interesting stuff with those planes. I worked on a project where we flew C-130 thru clouds, took pictures of the clouds and did data analysis etc.

Spent an entire summer analyzing pictures of ice crystals like this [1] in MATLAB. Fun times...

[1] [https://www.eol.ucar.edu/instruments/two-dimensional- optical...](https://www.eol.ucar.edu/instruments/two-dimensional-optical- array-cloud-probe)

<comment><USER5> Might've been "smart" chaff to achieve this same thing.

Kinda like that fake tech they used in the movie Twister to map tornados.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They issued an update today with quotes from the West Virginia Air National Guard:

[http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25451/a-west- virginia-a...](http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/25451/a-west-virginia-air- guard-c-130h-was-responsible-for-massive-chaff-cloud-over-midwest)

</comment><comment><USER7> I thought of migrating birds, as they sometimes show up on radar, but there does not appear to be anything here[1] corresponding to this event.

[1] [http://birdcast.info/live-migration-maps/](http://birdcast.info/live- migration-maps/)

Update: I got the date wrong, this would have been Dec 10... Data is missing from 10:40 to 16:10 CT, and the spatial resolution is not high, but the map is showing medium rates of migration in that area at the later time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems like the same people who search for meteorites could get a general location for where this went off radar and go walk around. Other than actual chaff, my mind goes to possible "black projects" when reading things like this. I can't think of any possible applications though.

<comment><USER9> It looks like once this stuff has dispersed into the air, it is very fine and sparse, so there probably won't be much to see on the ground. Must do wonders for the local wildlife though.

<comment><USER10> Unless it's laced with some exotic heavy metal it's probably better for the environment than most plastics.

<comment><USER9> If it's thin aluminium foil, then it'll probably decompose fairly quickly. I'm more concerned about what will try eating it before it does so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> " _The Red Hills MOA is relatively large, including areas of both Illinois and Indiana. We don 't know if the MOA was active at the time the plume appeared on radar, but it might help explain the incident._"

The military releases "notices to airmen" (NOTAMs?) indicating when a MOA is in use, no?

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if they will be able to put AI into missiles to detect Infrared decoys (flares, IR laser) or radar countermeasures (chaff, jamming).

Military countermeasures are really cool, if you can get past the whole moral dilemmas in working with technology like that.

<comment><USER13> > _I wonder if they will be able to put AI into missiles_

Missiles arguably already have AI. It is a source of mild frustration for control systems engineers to note AI researchers "discovering" techniques and algorithms that are mathematically identical, or very similar to, things that have been known and used in control systems for years, decades even.

<comment><USER14> That's the downside of working on classified tech, right? You get huge budgets and work a decade ahead of civilian gear, but you're doomed to see civs reinvent your stuff and take all the credit.

For instance, the NSA had public key crypto long before RSA was discovered.

<comment><USER13> Yes, it happens in secret vs open but I'm talking about all open stuff. It just isn't sexy when control systems engineers do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You do realize we're in the middle of a fairly intense meteor storm, where lots of sand sized particles are turned to plasma when they hit the atmosphere, right?

It was even today's Google Doodle.

</comment><comment><USER16> "chaff was released by a military C130 [sic] northwest of Evansville."

Not exactly a mystery.

<comment><USER17> Uncorroborated seemingly random claim on twitter as stated in the article.

</comment></comment><comment> time-domain0 If the chaff had maximum surface area-to-weight ratio approaching spiders ballooning, <2.5 um dust particles and dandelion seeds, and there were enough thermals upwelling air in the area, it's entirely possible for chaff to persist as long as there is an average slight updraft gradient to periodically relift material.

Granted, it's of limited military value unless it were dumped in large quantities (such as an/several E- prefixed US mil aircraft flying air defense suppression/Wild Weasel) and such upwelling wind conditions were present. It's usually intended to create false echoes to misdirect a missile or break a radar lock in real-time with a starting velocity similar to the original aircraft, and then it has no purpose once it separates far from the launching aircraft.

<comment><USER18> Doesn't the chaff need to be of certain lengths to match the frequencies of the incoming radar. I thought I read something about that in one of my previous wake cycles

<comment><USER19> Yes, peak scattering will occur at 1/2 wavelength, and multiples of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "By clicking continue below and using our sites or applications, you agree that we and our third party advertisers can:" break EU law and screw us over.

No thanks.

[https://outline.com/36cJVa](https://outline.com/36cJVa)

<comment><USER20> It seems I need to use Outline to read the majority of articles linked here. Outline is a great site!

<comment><USER21> Does it work on paywalled pages like WSJ?</comment></comment></comment>


The Boston Globe gets a look at a DB of every bomb the US has ever dropped - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/07/29/century-data-and-destruction-chronicled-air-force-officer/5m2HK2CP9UcwwJzMhtdQOO/story.html

<comment><USER2> "One particularly relevant example: From October 1965 to May 1975, at least 456,365 cluster bombs were dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, according to the records analyzed. Cluster munitions, designed to release small bomblets, often did not explode on impact and still pose a hazard to villagers."

Apparently Laos is the most bombed country in the world:

"During the Vietnam War, Laos was the target of the heaviest US bombing campaign since World War II, making Laos the most bombed country in history."[1]

I believe the story is that US B52 bombers would take off out of Thailand to drop their load on Vietnam targets. However, if they bypassed their target they were not allowed to dispose of their load on Vietnam terriroty. Since the bombers can't land with their load on board it has to be disposed of before landing. Apparently Laos was the place of choice. [2]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Harvest>

[2] <http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bombies-the-secret-war/>

<comment><USER3> > Apparently Laos is the most bombed country in the world

Yep that is unfortunately true, and many people there are still suffering from this today. The famed Ho Chi Minh Trail went primarily through eastern Laos as well. It's such a shame, Laos is a wonderful, beautiful country full of good people who were never involved in any conflict.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It is worth pointing out that the article never claims that the database contains information on _every bomb the US has ever dropped._ The article clearly states that more information is needed, eg:

        "For the Korean War Robertson found the detailed mission records for the
        first 10 months of the three-year conflict but he is still trying to
        get his hands on the rest."

</comment><comment><USER5> "The database, he said, has recently been used to investigate civilian deaths in Afghanistan and to judge claims by Iraqi villagers that bombs containing depleted uranium contaminated their water supply."

Wait, how about we have a "hackathon" to figure out ways to stops those bombs from being dropped in the first place! That would be totes awesome!

</comment><comment><USER6>
       He worked nights and weekends finding out.
       Robertson unearthed 1,000 original World War I
       raid reports, and entered each by hand. For World War II,
       he scanned roughly 10,000 hand-written or typed pages.
       More modern conflicts meant combing a hodgepodge of
       conflict-specific databases.

This is the kind of thing I wish they [the Pentagon] would open up to hackathons. How many hours of this valuable historian's time was wasted doing manual entry, something that could've been expedited with some mTurk + OCR work? Not all civic data projects draw attention, but this one at least has the cachet of notable history, worldwide good (to help identify areas of possible unexploded unordinance) and, of course, things that go boom.

<comment><USER7> Those reports could contain phrases like "we didn't see our target, so we dropped them on the city". Making them public could be painful for some people and might lead to litigation.

I also guess most of the time spent will be spent in interpretation (is this target code consistent with what we know happened from other sources?), not in data entry.

<comment><USER8> Are you sure that the reports aren't already public? Are you saying that aircrews were allowed to pick their own secondary targets if their primary targets were not reachable?

<comment><USER7> Saying: no. That 'could' and that 'guess' give that away. I do think there will be quite a few non-public reports in there, certainly for recent history (Iraq, Afghanistan)</comment></comment></comment></comment>