Blue–Green Distinction in Language - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language <comment><USER2> This is true of the whole Sotho-Tswana branch of languages. They mention it for Tswana, albeit briefly.

It is also one of the reasons why English is taking over (and in less serious cases, borrowed from). English is fully developed for social, scientific, technical, complex, specialised and precise communication to an extent rivaled maybe by only a dozen other languages.

On the Northern Sotho radio stations you often hear kids say, when asked about colours, "Ke ye blue" ("It is blue"). The radio presenter would sometimes correct the kid and say "Aowa, ka Sesotho re re ke ye tala." However, there is something deeper at play and something perhaps unassuming yet complex: _the kid is more accurate_.

The value of languages like these is not the ability to convey or store technical or scientific information. But if a language disappears is like losing in one shot the whole of Beethoven's work (and a bit more than that). Sotho may have less colour words (yellow=brown too) and also it doesn't have delimiters in the sense of "far, further, furthest" (having only "far", "further", and then emphasis) but it has... verb modifiers!

For example: use = to cause to work. Repair = to cause to be good. Understand = to cause to hear.

Wow, am I telling you that verbs convey and encode causality in these languages? Yup, that's right.

<comment><USER3> It's not due to English own linguistic merits in itself - and it borrowed/borrows from other languages as well.

English has taken over because, in our local history so far, because it's been the official language of the last two main world military (hence cultural & business) powers: UK for 19th century, US for 20th century - boosted by WW I & II & furthering globalization.

It's been also shaped by this globalization worldwide.

In 1, or 2 centuries, it very well may be that another language will have taken over.

[https://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/learn- languages/english-...](https://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/learn- languages/english-language-global-number-one/)

<comment><USER4> > It's not due to English own linguistic merits in itself

Well, English is a pretty simple language, grammatically. Compared to its Germanic neighbours, it doesn't have gendered nouns, it doesn't have the funky word order of German, nor the funky word order of the V2 Scandinavian languages. It has fewer letters in its alphabet, and it has fewer phonemes.

It does have a very large vocabulary, mostly due to the French influence, and it's in dire need of a spelling reform to fix all the accumulated crap, but those are hurdles for _writing_ English or _mastering_ English. When it comes to _speaking_ simple English, the bar is lower than what is required for speaking simple German, or simple Norwegian, for example.

It's also pretty forgiving when it comes to word order, which means understanding _bad_ English is also easier. So I think there's some sort of lowest common denominator merit to it that made it easier for it to take over.

<comment><USER3> That's seen through your own lens.

Just compare the delicacies of the differences between British English & American English, if not only for the different understated meanings.

The "funky word order" of German makes sense from a German perspective (and back to ancient Latin & Greek).

Mandarin is not simple, comparatively to English. Yet, you can be quite assured that, would China, for instance, get the military & cultural influence UK/US had for 2 centuries, by 2200 they wouldn't have spread something else than a globalized Mandarin worldwide (as it happened for English; and French and Spanish before them).

<comment><USER5> Besides vocabulary/characters, in what sense is Mandarin not simple?

<comment><USER6> Tones

<comment><USER7> Which is a massive sense in which it is not simple! For any non-native speakers, (I'm a native English speaker), tones were nearly impossible to master, and I still have a terrible grasp of them I think. It requires a complete rewiring of the way you speak language, sure, but it also requires a complete rewiring of how you hear it too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My biggest confusion learning Chinese when I was growing up was the concept of "orange". I believe orange only became part of the common vernacular fairly recently. But since Chinese words are just a combination of other words, the words for obviously orange things were using red/yellow.

Now in modern usage, the color orange is named after the fruit, but the name of the orange fruit differs by region. Some places refer to oranges as tangerines, with no differentiation between oranges/tangerines, so the word for orange is actually tangerine in those regions.

There's a good write up of other colors here: [https://everything2.com/title/Chinese+colors](https://everything2.com/title/Chinese+colors)

<comment><USER9> > Now in modern usage, the color orange is named after the fruit

This is also true in European languages. (Including English.)

<comment><USER10> Interestingly in dutch oranje is the color but sinaasappel is the name of fruit in dutch.

<comment><USER11> There are many various descriptors for red, orange and yellow. In Italian an egg yolk is called "rosso" (red), whereas in Swedish it's called "gula" (yellow). As a side note, Orange (the fruit) is called "Apelsin" in Sweden - meaning "Apple from China", just as in Dutch. Red onions would nowadays be categorized as mostly purple, etc.

<comment><USER9> > In Italian an egg yolk is called "rosso" (red), whereas in Swedish it's > called "gula" (yellow).

In this case, it's possible that the different conventions for what color to call an egg yolk originated from egg yolks that were different colors. Crack an egg in China and you'll get something that is obviously different -- and much redder -- than what you'd get from an egg in the US.

This freaked me out enough that I exclusively purchased high-end eggs from City Shop, which were a reassuring yellow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are "7" colours in the rainbow because Newton said so. He said that because 7 is a biblical number and he was really really into biblical numerology.

<comment><USER13> Newton gave it: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet

Imho, indigo and violet are the same thing (at least very close), and cyan is missing, so red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet would have made more sense

But of course it's indeed quite possible the language shifted and it made sense in Newton's time

<comment><USER14> Imo cyan and blue are a lot closer than indigo and violet

<comment><USER13> To me cyan looks blue-green, really in the middle but also significantly lighter than blue, while indigo and violet both look purple-like

I'm not a native English speaker though, and as far as I know neither cyan nor indigo are commonly used in standard everyday language, but more in their own niches (printing, clothing, ...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In German we nowadays have a distinction between "rosa" (light pink) and "pink" (shocking pink, some hues of fuchsia). It's kind of funny that we got the word pink from English just in the 80s

</comment><comment><USER16> "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages" is a fun read. It covers this blue-green distinction and a few other language curiosities.

<comment><USER17> Awesome book, and one of the things I remember best about it is indeed about colours. He says historians of literature wondered whether ancient (homeric) Greeks were colourblind, since they describe the sea as "wine red"; but in fact it's just that they used "red" to describe certain dark colours. This later already changed in classical Greece.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does someone know if this is purely a property of languages and their evolution or if there is a biological or neurological foundation for this? I understand that you could make names for colours as fine-grained as you want with visible light being a continuous spectrum, and at the most base level there is only a concept of "colour" without further distinctions. But to me it feels like the major divisions as we know them in English are intuitive beyond language. Surely when you look at grass and the sky you feel you need different terms to describe them?

<comment><USER19> I put together a image to try and explain the difference: [http://a.gln.io/blue.png](http://a.gln.io/blue.png)

There's 16 different shades, or colours, there. If I was to point to any one of them individually and ask my young children what colour it was they'd almost certainly say "blue". And I'd understand them fine and consider it correct. Likewise if they were explaining something they saw during the day and said it was "blue" I might make an assumption about which of these shades it was, but I intuitively know it could have been any of them. And most of the time the distinction isn't that important for understanding and sharing experience.

When the distinction is important my kids would probably simply say "light blue" or "dark blue". Additional adjectives will get used to clarify the relative difference between the colours.

Soon they'll learn "sky blue", "baby blue", "navy blue". Then teal, turquoise, aqua, cyan, cerulean, etc.

Assuming the language has those words. That only occurs when the need to distinguish is common enough to established a shared understanding across a large enough group of people that they effectively reach a consensus that it's now a thing, like English speakers did a few hundred years ago with the introduction of the colour orange. Nobody invented a new colour, we started using a new word to describe something that had always been.

<comment><USER19> Definitely tangential to this discussion, but it's about language and sufficiently geeky I think the HN crowd would probably appreciate:

I read a book a few years ago called Alex's Adventures in Numberland ([https://www.amazon.com.au/Alexs-Adventures-Numberland- Alex-B...](https://www.amazon.com.au/Alexs-Adventures-Numberland-Alex- Bellos/dp/1408809591/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=)). In it he has a story about a group in South America who have no words in their language for a number greater than two (or maybe it was three? It's been a while since I read it). Anything larger than that was just referred to as "many". It's not as though seeing more than two of anything was uncommon, most families would have a half dozen to a dozen children. But if you asked how many children they had it was just "many". Whether it was eleven or twelve just wasn't an important distinction to them.

He goes on to discuss how language can expose what's important to a group and shape thinking. The introduction of a concept and word for zero was hugely important for our advancement in all number of fields. He also discusses how our constant pursuit for ever increasing levels of specificity has it's trade- offs: we seem to be becoming increasingly bad at estimating (which is both language, social expectations around what we value, and a reliance on tools).

Anyways, it was a story about language and numbers that I thoroughly enjoyed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> XKCD's Randall Munroe did a survey about color names, and the report he did on it is fantastic: [https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey- results/](https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/) , both informative and hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER21> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language#/media/File:Colours_in_Irish.png) is probably the main reason why the term for a black man in Irish Gaelic is 'fear gorm', the default literal translation of which would usually be 'blue man'. (Not a native speaker, but I had reached a decent level, many years ago now.)

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how much the invention of azo dyes effected our perception of color and words thereof.

</comment><comment><USER23> "They're so different" [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja2fgquYTCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja2fgquYTCg)

</comment><comment><USER24> White and gold.

<comment><USER4> Blue and black!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The more and more I learn about color, the more I learn what we're taught as children is wrong.

Primary colors are arbitrary, the only reason there's three is possibly because we have three types of cones, but really to cover most of the visible spectrum.

So yeah, color spaces are a thing.

Cone sensitivity doesn't line up with primary colors, and some are more sensitive than others.

Tetrachromacy exists in humans, so some people can see more colors.

Magenta and violet are very different. Magenta isn't a real color, two colors we interpret as one.

The sky is actually blue and purple. If you look hard at it you can see both, kinda like seeing RGB on a white LCD.

And I'm sure there's more.

<comment><USER26> My high school art teacher made us make color wheels using red, yellow, and blue paint. She showed us books that use these "primary colors" and said that this makes them more pleasing to children.

I thought about it for a moment. If these are the primary colors, why aren't they what printers use? Printers use cyan, magenta, and yellow. And there's a great symmetry there, since those are all the secondary colors to light's primary red, green, and blue, which are the colors used in computer monitors. And the only thing that makes these colors primary to us is that they're the colors that the cones in our eyes perceive.

So I decided to experiment. When I made my color wheel, I substituted blue for cyan and red for magenta. The color wheel I produced was much more vibrant and beautiful.

There are a lot of things my school teachers tried to teach me that show up on wikipedia's common misconceptions list. For example, the "equal-transit-time explanation of aerofoil lift". I got pretty jaded about this stuff. Now I don't trust anyone's explanations unless I can understand them on a deeper level.

<comment><USER18> Printers use cyan, magenta and yellow because printing is a subtractive process. It's the complement of the additive RGB that monitors use. For example, cyan acts as a filter for red, so a combination of magenta and yellow filters out everything but red and thus appears red. Ultimately, the difference is in whether something emits light (a monitor) or has to reflect light (a white piece of paper).

You're right in that what we're taught is often incomplete or misguided. Teachers are fallible. But as a child you assume their authority implies them being correct. I reckon seeing through that illusion is an important part of growing up. And to me, part of us growing up as humanity must involve not having to rely on the authority of governing bodies.

<comment><USER26> The additive/subtractive colors thing is has a really neat sort of symmetry to it. That's how I knew it was the correct explanation. There was no such beautiful internal logic to the Red Blue Yellow system and I couldn't figure out how people came up with it.

I never believed my teachers. As early as 4th grade they were treating me like a troublemaker for not following rules like their three-paragraph essay format.

I don't like the idea of having authorities on knowledge. I much prefer Montessori or Socratic teaching methods, or explorations. They're harder to do, but they produce a better understanding of the material and they allow the student to teach the teacher as well.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, unfortunately color perception is one of those things that is a bit too complex for a self-discovery method. While the "symmetry" explanation is satisfying it really isn't correct at all. Color perception and color matching within art (where it was useful) and more recently as a science is something that is complicated and took many years of the best scientific minds to figure out. Sometimes you need authorities on knowledge, and stand on the shoulders of giants as it were.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080717034228/http://www.handpr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20080717034228/http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color6.html)

The teachers aren't completely "wrong", they were just conveying a simplification of history of pigments (also touched on in that article). It is after all true you can mix those colors and get a wide-range of colors (including a blacker black then you would with CMY). But any pedagogy that says there is such a thing as "primary" colors that make all colors is necessarily going to be wrong, even if its CMY.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Web Application Defender's Cookbook (review) - <AUTHOR> http://365.rsaconference.com/blogs/securityreading/2013/01/03/web-application-defenders-cookbook-battling-hackers-and-protecting-users

<comment><AUTHOR> Good to see more books that talk about mitigation. Hacking books are great fun and insightful but they are often not as practical for admins.</comment>


On Facebook, your memories are owned by other people - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/compass-and-rule/10850f1bd707

<comment><USER2> Thats a problem when a centralized philosophy is followed ,even though it is for privacy sake</comment>


Scrutinizing SpaceX, NASA Overlooked Some Boeing Software Problems - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/science/boeing-starliner-nasa.html <comment><USER2> I think Americans should be scrutinizing a lot more of it's incumbent institutions/companies. They probably don't deserve the steady funding/regulatory capture they receive.

<comment><USER3> Specifically in the Boeing case, you'd think that the software quality issues on the airplane side would trigger anyone doing business with them to be more skeptical about their software.

<comment><USER2> It's amazing how far Boeing has fallen. But I suppose you can diagnose the problem by looking at their leadership. Why has their leadership moved to chicago?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you have a one-page resume/CV? - <AUTHOR>

I was just talking with someone who said it's unacceptable for anyone to have a more than one page resume unless they have a PhD. I said that for people in technical fields it's more common to have a longer resume, but I only have personal experience on which to go. <comment> alok-g I have gone against such advice and have been using a four-page CV, with the idea that I want to provide enough understanding of my past projects to the reader. In other words, I have made the CV long to make it easier to read and understand. To help the reader manage through a long CV, first quarter page is a summary.

General comments I have heard from hiring managers is that my CV is impressive, and that they found projects X and Y particularly interesting (something which could not have happened unless I were providing enough explanations).

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting idea - how many projects do you have to talk about?</comment></comment>


30K application lines + 110K testing lines: Evidence of...? - <AUTHOR> http://www.knowing.net/PermaLink,guid,1e1d2066-8a6f-4eb9-aff8-4298736712bc.aspx <comment><USER2> Short version:

Logic errors are much trickier than type errors, so I focus tests on parts with tricky logic.

Long version:

I really like the BDD approach of thinking about tests as executable specs. Before I write any code, I need to think through how exactly I want my code to behave. While I'm doing this, I might as well capture it in a list of (empty) specs, so that I and others have a clear and concise summary of the code's declared behavior.

A lot of web app code is fairly trivial / non-mission-critical, so I don't spend too much time testing it. Instead I focus my effort on the parts where it really matters (e.g. a permissions system that could expose private user information or lead to data loss if a bad code tweak goes unnoticed).

Some things I couldn't imagine writing without tests. Right now, I'm building a somewhat complex grammar using a parser generator library, and the only way to stay sane in this process is by building a test suite that alerts me whenever a subtle logic mistake in one of my rules breaks something somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER3> Quoting the classics:

"During their operations they seem to focus entirely on the process, but very little on the quality of the code. Sorry guys, but having a 1:4 code:test ratio is not focusing on code quality. It's focusing on test quality."

<http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think it sounds healthy. But maybe writing tests is primarily a way to kill time? Like when I am not fully awake, I may not be able to concentrate hard enough to write some real code, but test code is less difficult.

<comment><USER5> I've found that Test Driven Development is particularly beneficial when tired. The test suite reduces the size of the program that I need to keep in short term memory, and the quick test-solve-refactor cycle keeps me focused. Later, when more awake, I review what I did by quickly scanning the test suite and looking for any obvious omissions.

The above isn't necessary an argument for TDD, but I think you might find it useful to try to view building a test suite and building your codebase as complementary activities rather than exclusive ones. If you use them together, the entire process becomes less difficult, and code in your test suite is just as valuable as anywhere else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it would really have to depend on what the tests were doing. If the tests were just goldbricking code testing random crap, yeah, 1:4 C:T is crazy. If you really are validating functionality and business logic, is 1:4 C:T so crazy? I would feel a little more fearless about changing a system if the tests were that comprehensive.

</comment><comment><USER7> One of the most important things I focus on is how easy it is to modify the original app once you get user feedback that indicates some of your original assumptions are wrong--that is, you need new features or to change the way implemented features work.

So I am very interested in how the test suite will help or hurt this. Will having the tests allow quick reworking with confidence? Or will changing the features break the tests so badly that the tests are effectively broken, causing more work rather than less?

<comment><USER3> My personal approach to tests combines few ideas.

First of all, it doesn't make too much sense to test everything, every single method, every single LOC etc. Your time's so valuable you should focus on things that are critical to the application, or pretty complicated. Testing whether 1.equal?(1) is not.

As you noticed, tests can limit your ability to incorporate changes quickly. I believe that more tests you have, less free you're to modify the code without a risk of breaking the tests set. This is about finding the gold equilibrium.

In case of Rails, I fanatically follow Fat Model approach, so most of the hard code is in the models. As they change less often than the views or the controllers, their tests tend to live longer, delivering better return on investment.

Personally I believe that writing tests is oftenly a very good excuse for not writing the real code, or improving the existing one, especially in case of web applications that are technically mostly trivial.

<comment><USER8> I totally agree with everything you've said here. I've built many, many web apps, and I've found that code coverage is NOTHING like code quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Conversations like this without being able to see the code have about as much relevance as talking about total lines of code as it relates to the average carrying capacity of a swallow.

</comment><comment><USER10> The spreadsheet mentioned is hands-down the most exciting program I've run into in recent months. They've built a usable, reliable, powerful system around a novel concept. The whole thing just works.

Looking at the program, you wouldn't guess it's only 30,000 lines of application code. They've obviously made all their code count, kept it short and maintainable. 110,000 lines of test code is a small price to pay.

[OK. correlation != causation, they might have made an even better program with less test code. Intuitively, I doubt it]

</comment><comment><USER11> Actually, its a little strange that they would do this for a spreadsheet program. Spreadsheets are, by nature functional, and would yield themselves to approaches like quickcheck.

<http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~rjmh/QuickCheck/>

It would also help to know what exactly the tests were about. One could always write tests that test (tautology) the same invariant.

</comment><comment><USER12> My tests are about 4 times more verbose in comments than my code. Why? Because I do random crazy things that don't make sense in order to do negative testing.

Evidence of anecdotal evidence that really doesn't mean much?

</comment><comment><USER13> ... lack of sense for a good cost-benefit ratio? Given that test code also needs to be maintained, blowing up the whole code base will make maintenance probably more expensive that needed.

</comment><comment><USER14> It sounds to me like evidence that the language needs a good macro system to help make the tests less verbose.

</comment><comment><USER15> ... for lack of a better term 'humbleness' perhaps ?

<comment><USER16> "Humility" is a good term, I think :)

I'd rather acknowledge a weakness and account for it moving forward than ignore it and have everything explode when it compounds a problem down the line.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Mostly home for the next month. What part of programming to dive into? - <AUTHOR> Due to COVID-19, a lot of us are going to be home more than usual.
I want to take this time to dive into programming languages, concepts, projects.
What would you recommend?
for e.g., I'm interested in learning more about functional programming patterns, how to use Rust in a real project, or contribute to OSS. <comment><USER2> I would recommend functional programming, it definitely gets the brain working and will broaden your horizons.

If you are interested, we are working on an OSS programming language compiler in Haskell, and we are looking for contributors :) [https://github.com/wasp- lang/wasp](https://github.com/wasp-lang/wasp)

</comment><comment><USER3> Go and proceed where your heart leads you. Just dive in.

I can only speak of myself, but if you are interested in security and haven't gave Electron a try, I've written an open source template that could be improved upon: [https://github.com/reZach/secure-electron- template](https://github.com/reZach/secure-electron-template)

Oh, and be sure to cover your mouth if you cough! (And politely yell at people who cough in their hands :) )</comment>


Ask HN: When is the task too complex for a GUI? - <AUTHOR> Some people are enamored with a graphical user interface for a tool.  Others prefer the command line.  Often people will start out using a GUI to do development and then switch when it becomes more complex or too cumbersome.
When developing a tool, the idea of having a beautiful GUI to demo how easy your tool is sounds great to Marketing.  But often the complexity of the number of different choices makes the GUI implementation less useful for day to day work.
Does anyone have rules of thumb or pointers to books or articles that discuss where that crossover point is that a command line is superior to a GUI as a tool?
(And I recognize that a large portion of the people here are command-line only users.  But even so I'd love to get your input on when a GUI might make sense for the tool interface.) <comment><USER2> I'm not sure why there is necessarily a conflict between developing a tool with a GUI and developing a tool that can be used on the command line. As an example you might consider GIMP. You can drive it with a GUI or it has a "batch mode."

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe Excel is a good example.

Some people use Excel to do what other people would do with Jupyter, pandas, matplotlib, etc.</comment>


Sham? - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/wells-fargos-failure-to-authenticate-led-to-sham-accounts-1092982-1.html <comment><USER2> If the requirements are an SSN and a debit card, then that's easy to fake -- both numbers are easily obtainable from a legitimate customer and then you don't need to get them again.

Requiring a verifiable and provable second factor authentication system is the hard part.

Maybe the thing you have needs to be a crypto device with a secure enclave, so that it can't be easily faked? Maybe a Yubikey or an Apple Watch?</comment>


Generate download links in your Laravel applications - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-link <comment><AUTHOR> A simple Laravel package for generating download links with options such as expire time, IP restrictions, etc.</comment>


The lasagne theory of game design - <AUTHOR> http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/lasagne-theory-of-game-design.html

<comment><USER2> The analogy reminds me of Shrek. Ogres have layers, so they're like onions, which have layers, but not like cakes that have layers? I think the article would have been fine without that analogy, and just dove into the relationship and differences between the 'layers'.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great post. The whole blog looks very interesting.</comment>


Scientists induce visual hallucinations by stimulating brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25459-induced-hallucination-turns-doctors-into-pizza-chefs.html

<comment><USER2> I would love to know how accurate the hallucinations were. If there were a poster on the wall would he be able read it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Although the submitted title was a reasonable attempt to tone down the ludicrous linkbait of the original, we toned it down further.

[1] "Scientists Virtually Transport Man Back In Time by Stimulating Brain Parts"</comment>


Ask HN: What contracting paperwork do you use? - <AUTHOR>

I recently started doing freelance and contracting out work for small companies in my area. I know that several HN members are freelancers and/or have contracted out work.
My question to you - what templates, documents, and other legal documentation (whatnot) have you found useful for your work?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> [http://www.quora.com/search?q=freelance+contracts&contex...](http://www.quora.com/search?q=freelance+contracts&context_type=&context_id=)

<http://jacquesmattheij.com/be-consultant>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links. The secondary link is really good resource. I've read a lot of Jacques stuff, and find it really useful or just relevant.

Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Web-scraping – Do patterns/recipes exist for common scraping targets? - <AUTHOR> I'm fairly familiar with web scraping/crawling however I was wondering if there is a company/tool that has re-usable modules for scraping common websites?
Examples could include: scraping article texts from news websites; extracting recipes from Good Food etc.
Rather than rewriting what others have - is there an existing library of these scrapers/crawlers to use 'out of the box'? <comment><USER2> Not exactly what you're looking for, but there's a OSS Chrome Extension that allows you to record your actions in browser and transcribes them into Nightmare.js code:

[https://github.com/segmentio/daydream](https://github.com/segmentio/daydream)

Probably the best you're going to get - most things worth scraping are worth money, and as such are not freely available

</comment><comment><USER3> For extracting news articles: [https://newspaper.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://newspaper.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

<comment><AUTHOR> While not general purpose templates, for news articles that seems exceptionally useful

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try: [https://www.scrapinghub.com/](https://www.scrapinghub.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know ScrapingHub actually, has some useful tools but as far as I know they don't have a library of off-the-shelf scrapers for popular websites?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What you're looking for sounds very open ended but the closest thing I can think of is the Huginn project on github?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is sorely needed IMO.</comment>


Does infinity really exist? - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/does-infinity-really-exist-977063658 <comment><USER2> I did not like the examples. They made me believe that the author doesn't have a good grasp on the concept of "infinite." For examples:

"The king's worth, therefore, cannot be bound within a finite set of values."

There's no reason to say that the king has an "infinite score". Nothing would change were the score equal to all of the other pieces of the game combined, plus 1.

"More importantly, philosophers, religious scholars, legal experts, and ethicists often assign an infinite value to human life."

We observe in real life that this isn't true. We send people into space when we know there's a non-trivial chance (~0.5%) that they will die. If we assigned an infinite value to their lives then we would never do that.

There would be no difference if "infinity" in this case were synonymous with "all the wealth in the world."

"And therein lies another kind of infinity: death. Assuming that nothing awaits us in the afterlife, the termination of our lives represents a kind of eternity."

This logic is inverted. Lives are finite. If time continues forever then the complement of "finite" (to cover the period when someone is not alive) is indeed infinite ... in the same way that the termination of 9 July 1904 is also a boundary between a finite time range and a hypothetical infinite time period.</comment>


Richard Posner: "The Real Corruption Is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich" - <AUTHOR> https://promarket.org/richard-posner-real-corruption-ownership-congress-rich/ <comment><USER3> For the record, the United States was not designed to be operated in the way it is currently being operated.

It was designed to have a bicameral legislature. The lower house was supposed to be full of your neighbors, folks that lived down the street. They were supposed to only serve for a couple of years at a time. It wasn't a lifetime job. One of their main responsibilities was handling money.

The upper house was specifically designed to be a bunch of old, privileged, party hacks from the states. They work six years at a time, and might stay in for a long haul. They are the architects. They are responsible for monitoring and maintaining the structure of the system and keeping an eye on the other two branches.

This is not where we are. Somehow we thought that the more democratic the legislature, the better. That is not the case. The structure of the system suffers. Somehow we have Representatives that have jobs for life. The system suffers.

Now I can't tell the difference between my senators and my representatives. They're all camera hungry partisan hacks voting solidly as a block. Voting for them is pointless.

It's not rich people. It's not privileged people. It dumbasses over the years that have hacked the system into something it was never supposed to be. Democracy is not some special thing where the more you get of it the better you are. It doesn't work like that. It never worked like that. You take apart the body of legislators that were specifically responsible to monitor and fix the system and turn them into run-of-the-mill politicians? Then the rest of it is going to fall apart. What else would you expect?

<comment><USER4> I don't think this is actually all that insightful. Political parties are a component of every single democratic system on Earth, and were emerging in America even before Washington "warned" about them. Hell, he was actually doing to support his own faction, beginning the long American tradition of "it's partisanship when the other guy does it."

The real problems here are the assortment of the _general population_ into self-selected "red America" and "blue America", who have different economic priorities, live in different sorts of municipalities, and fundamentally different analyses of the world.

(I'm actually partial to both for some reason: I like the "plainness" of the Reds, but think Blue _usually_ has a somewhat half-decent analysis of reality while Red is _usually_ wildly delusional. My actual preferred analysis might be called "the Other Red", the one with the gold stars and roses and such.)

Complain about "partisanship" all you like, but it won't sort out the difference between someone who thinks the economy runs on consumer demand, thus requiring a level of wages that lets most people consume without much debt, and someone who thinks it runs on manliness and resource extraction, thus requiring wage suppression until all those namby-pambies buck up and do a day's work. Those are just different causal models.

What we could really use is proportional representation, so that "partisanship" could at least sort itself out into multiple competing parties within each of the two broad coalitions, and every well-supported analysis of the world could find some official expression.

<comment><USER5> The solution isn't a better direct democracy -- that is the problem.

US Senators were elected by the state legislatures for 125 years prior to the 17th Amendment. They were supposed to represent the states and not national special interests.

Think how much easier it is to contact your state representatives than it is a US Senator which is basically impossible.

It is the loss of classical liberalism that is causing all the problems.

And I disagree that people are all that different or if economic philosophies are even relevant to most of the population.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "If you become a member of Congress, you'll get a card from the head of your party that you will spend five hours [each] afternoon talking to donors. That's not the only time you spend with donors—they'll take you to dinner, cocktails—but these five hours are important. The message is clear: You are a slave to the donors. They own you. That's [the] real corruption, the ownership of Congress by the rich."

In other words, if you live in the US, your congressman/woman is spending FIVE HOURS A DAY (!) on the phone raising money from people at the top of the wealth/power distribution.

Yikes!

<comment><USER7> I don't teach my children they live in a democracy. Maybe we should all stop doing that and maybe we can start to address the lack of democracy (and excess of lobbycracy/plutocracy/capitalism) as a problem.

<comment><USER8> >I don't teach my children they live in a democracy.

That's good because if you read the Federalist Papers, you will see the founders explicitly set out to design a Republic at the federal level. Each state, however is a democracy, but people seem to ignore state-level politics for some reason.

<comment><USER7> Sorry not living in the US. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's an actual, real world solution that has been implemented in Arizona and Maine and appears to work: [http://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10941690/campaign- finance-left](http://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10941690/campaign-finance-left)

If you prefer the more academic version: [http://mysite.du.edu/~smasket/Masket_Miller_SPPQ.pdf](http://mysite.du.edu/~smasket/Masket_Miller_SPPQ.pdf)

What's more, it doesn't appear to favor one side of politics (which challenges some partisan rhetoric around the influence of Soros/Koch on outcomes. Note that this is different to corporate influence, which may well be a worse problem)

<comment><USER10> Arizona - the state that elects McCain over and over again. Yep, must really be working well.

<comment><USER9> I'm not from the US (and I'd be considered very left leaning in the US!), but as a former Republican presidential candidate it would seem unsurprising that McCain has backing wouldn't it?

I haven't heard any allegations of corruption or scandal around him either.

What am I missing here?

<comment><USER11> >I haven't heard any allegations of corruption or scandal around him either.

[https://www.google.com/#q=john+mccain+corruption](https://www.google.com/#q=john+mccain+corruption)

<comment><USER9> Well, looking at that one is about 'the Keating scandle' from the 1980s where 'Mccain was cleared' and the others were his anti-corruption statements.

<comment><USER11> Huh. Maybe google is showing different results for people in different locations or something similar? On my setup, after about the first five results, about half the articles are negative on McCain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congressional Fundraising: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2016) is a serious eye opener:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylomy1Aw9Hk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ylomy1Aw9Hk)

</comment><comment><USER13> OK, so he says that antitrust is dead. And that wealthy entities own the government. That fight was lost in the US about 150 years ago, when corporations got human rights. After former slaves, but before women, I note.

But I don't get his devil-may-care attitude toward Google etc. He seems to acknowledge that they're a monopoly, but argues that it's not hurting anyone. Loves to Google stuff.

So what am I missing? Is it just that he's a cynical libertarian?

<comment><USER14> anti-trust enforcement is premised on the existence of some harm, generally related to anti-competitive practices (like price fixing), and it seems like Posner doesn't see a harm there, at least in traditional anti-trust terms. this is not surprising: posner (I would assume) ascribes to the chicago school re: anti-trust, where anti-trust is really all about _consumer_ harm and efficient outcomes for the industry, and on those terms especially hard to see harm since google is "free" to what most people understand as consumers, and even the real consumers (advertisers) don't seem to be banging on the door saying they are overpaying (at least not yet), and google seems to do a decent job of running their ad markets efficiently (that's a total guess honestly, feel free to correct me if wrong!).

on a funnier (and more cynical) level, when posner says "anti-trust is dead" he may very well be giving himself a pat on the back, since he's a leading thinker of the "law and economics" school (usually attributed to u chicago, where posner has long been a professor - his seminal paper on the subject here is pretty amazing: [http://m.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/53.Posner.Values_0.pdf](http://m.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/53.Posner.Values_0.pdf)) that many give credit / blame for shifting anti-trust's focus away from reigning in corporate power (the traditional "trust-busting" rationale, which was really as much about trying to avoid total capture of government by the big trusts), and instead focus on consumer harm and market inefficiency, which is generally indifferent to the expansion of corporate power so long as they don't gauge prices or do anything blatantly harmful to the market. this shift in focus greatly reduced the scope and practice of antitrust prosecution, and I think posner in general thinks that's a good thing since he's prefer less gov intervention. what's odd to me is that he seems concerned (or honestly, he just seems annoyed ha) about corporate influence on government, but doesn't seem to care that the fact that these companies are able to become so massive is in large part why they are able to influence the government so much...

this is the backdrop to a lot of the interview, good example is when the interviewer asks "Are we only concerned about seeing low prices, and not about other things like capture or having members of the House of Representatives owned by one large company?"

this is just rambling at this point (sorry!), but posner's response here is totally amazing / weird - he seems to basically say the problem is that the court system has been making bad decisions because it has been politicized because appointments are made by politicians, and (at least in part) because money influences politics, the politicians are picking judges for their stances on token political issues, not their abilities. that all makes sense, but his solution is not to attempt make the entire political system less full of shit...but just have other smart judges/lawyers appoint new judges (presumably producing more judges like...him).

he seems to want to simultaenously NOT reign in corporate power at all (or maybe he just doesn't believe it's possible, which is a fair assumption), but still not have corporations influence (at least one branch of) government - feels pretty "cake-and-eat-it-too" to me. not the worst idea, but exposes posner's high view of himself to be both smart and nonpartisan (not surprising and honestly pretty well-deserved) and his arguably naive belief in the ability of judges to be "above the fray" \- very few people in general are as intelligent, idiosyncratic and nonconformist as he is - pro market, pro choice, pro drug legalization, pro human organ markets, and frankly he's widely considered a genius (an eccentric one for sure, but that's not an unusual pairing)!

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the great background. I really don't get how unlimited corporate power is compatible with independent government serving public interest. Even with priestly judges, not on the take. With unlimited corporate power, you basically have government that's just a puppet show.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're all corrupt. How many people are unwilling to vote against incumbents? How many people are unwilling to vote out an incompetent just because the incompetent is wearing the right jersey?

Change is the best antidote to vested interests. So, term limits and always voting against an incumbent unless they are doing a demonstrably superior job are going to be far more effective than other approaches.

<comment><USER15> Incumbency/change is largely an orthogonal issue, as money works well in both cases. In fact, it may be more effective in an environment of continual change, driving up the cost of participation beyond the reach of true grassroots campaigns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109](http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1118373109)

</comment><comment><USER17> The U.S. is presently in a state of constitutional crisis and we lack the means to do anything about it. Those who are responsible for creating a government consistent with constitutional principles have abdicated their duty and succumbed to corruption.

</comment><comment><USER18> In case anyone doesn't know, Richard Posner is a federal judge, for the 7th circuit court of appeals (and former chief judge of that circuit) and a professor at the University of Chicago law school. RP is widely regarded as the most influential legal scholar in the last 50 years (eg, he's the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century). As a judge, his body of legal opinions over his 36 years (and counting) on the 7th circuit put him in the company of Hand, Holmes, Cardozo, etc.

this piece by RP appears to echo Larry Lessig's. Interestingly, LL was a law clerk for RP, after graduating from the law school where RP taught.

</comment><comment><USER19> Today somebody on Reddit linked to this video which talks about the process of money influencing politics [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig)

It doesn't discuss the role of the judicial system. It's all about the legislative aspects of US government. It's pretty compelling and well made. Hopefully a bipartisan movement can have some impact.

The video was made by [https://represent.us/](https://represent.us/)

<comment><USER20> A pretty interesting video pointing out some damning stats.

I'm curious however, how does the data look for other democracies, e.g. in Europe. The question is, whether this is a problem of US and its "money in politics" issue, or whether other democracies suffer from that problem too. I have a suspicion that this is inherent to politics in general, regardless of form - that money and power will always find themselves in bed together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recently watched Capra's "Mr Smith goes to Washington" (1941). The more it changes, the more it stays the same...

Anyone who didn't see it should go watch it, it's still worth it.

</comment><comment><USER22> The picture looks like young Jack Nicholson talking to current Larry David.

</comment><comment><USER23> In a globalised economy, breaking up your own multinationals because they have an effective monopoly in you own country is to concede the global market to foreign competitors. Capitalism and global markets are now more powerful than any individual nation.

<comment><USER24> People haven't yet realised that it's not EU versus US versus China but rather corporations versus the people. If they did, states would cooperate more so as not to let corps play one against the other and thus screw everyone.

Anyway, the solution to the particular problem of the rich owning Congress isn't breaking multinationals but rather limits on campaign donations - <USER2> whole "money is speech" argument is just bullshit.

<comment><USER25> > _People haven 't yet realised_

Thankfully we have enlightened people among us to guide the sheep, right?

> _that it 's not EU versus US versus China but rather corporations versus the > people_

Corporations have zero ability to act by themselves. So where do you propose to draw the between the "corporation team" and the "people team"?

<comment><USER26> > _Thankfully we have enlightened people among us to guide the sheep, right?_

Please don't do this here. If another comment takes a wrong turn, going further that way doesn't help. Instead, please help the thread self-correct by posting more substantively.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You'll shoot your eye out…with a 1MW laser pulse pistol - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2011/03/10/youll-shoot-your-eye-out-with-a-1mw-laser-pulse-pistol/

<comment><USER2> So, if a 1MW pulse can shoot through a razor blade, it could also cause a serious wound on a bare skin. I wonder what kind of damage a 10MW pulse would do (aka "laser rifle")?

</comment><comment><USER3> Where did he get the laser for it?

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not actually 1 MW, it's 1 KW.

<comment><USER3> Source?</comment></comment>


Answering the Phone Exposes You to Fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/business/fraud-robocalls-spoofing.html <comment><USER2> Example A of the importance of voicemail.

I don't answer numbers I don't know (unless I'm expecting a call at a certain time) and if they don't leave a voicemail I don't call back.</comment>


Who's Hiring for Remote Programming Jobs/Gigs? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for a LAMP developer with boatloads of client and startup experience after August 15th, get ahold of me via my profile :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I am looking for a new gig for myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wait a few days and you will see the official post</comment>


An In-Depth Analysis of a Piece of Shit - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0001969 <comment> vingt-2 How is that... Figure 1... How ?

</comment><comment><USER2> This may be the best posting all year.

</comment><comment><USER3> :)</comment>


Ask HN: Are you applying to YC this batch? What does your startup do? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> After some unsuccessful applications, I will apply again. We created an AWS for publishers or, in other words, Publishing as a Service.

After working for some time in the industry we notice some niche or local news publications are formed by a really small team but they require almost the same software and operations that a traditional publication needs. Thus we buillt a publishing service that takes advantage of scale.

We have a landing page setup at [https://mutinit.com](https://mutinit.com)

<comment><USER3> Looks awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought about applying with [https://www.esoterica.io](https://www.esoterica.io), a word game that people really seem to enjoy (It's a toy! People love it! It could be a platform for knowledge games! Diffuse mental time!)

But I'm not sure that ingesting the VC business model is ultimately a healthy thing. (Nor do I have extra time... alas)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've thought about it for [https://keygen.sh](https://keygen.sh) a lot this year, though I doubt my numbers are "there" yet to be considered--but either way, I think I'm going to push that decision back another year. I've found larger B2B sales tough, but I've been slowly improving that so I figured I'll stick to bootstrapping for now.

</comment><comment><USER6> We applied last year but were rejected and got no feedback.

Hopefully we have a stronger statement and mission plan for this batch. We try to provide the most efficient paths for learning any topic. Be it React.js, Go, History or Math. The project is also fully open source which I presume is the reason we failed the batch as monetising Open Source projects is quite hard. The website:

[https://learn-anything.xyz](https://learn-anything.xyz)

<comment><USER7> Constructive criticism, I have typed in "Flying", I was suggested "Travelling" among others (none directly related to just flying). When I clicked that word I was taken to page with some links to known travel sites. I have no idea what is going on, what are those and what I am choosing. I would encourage you to iron some UX and UI to be more noobie friendly. Nice concept, but I would like to be able to use it without getting lost so quickly.

<comment><USER8> Typed Golang, "erlang, juggling, software tooling, neurolinguistics, portuguese, korean, programming languages" as suggestions. I'm guessing this is just very early stage?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Today we're known for this [https://doarama.com](https://doarama.com) \- 3d maps for sports, if you know any paragliders, ask them about Doarama. We're like the strava of paragliders, and we're seeing lots of other uses as well.

<comment><USER10> [http://i0.wp.com/dba43ifez0ney.cloudfront.net/assets/1513902...](http://i0.wp.com/dba43ifez0ney.cloudfront.net/assets/1513902090096/images/avatar- default.png) \- this asset is meddling with the connection security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've considered applying with [https://dndemail.com](https://dndemail.com) \- do not disturb for your inbox. I have developing traction and a growing user base.

</comment><comment><USER12> no

<comment><USER13> shame</comment></comment>


Is Gary Kasparov Playing Chess in This Picture? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@idancali/is-gary-kasparov-playing-chess-in-this-picture-c3d7b789f9dd#.5k43qhg7v <comment><USER2> No.

It's set up with the initial board; no piece has moved. Kasparov is on the white side, and white goes first, so it's supposed to be his move. The opening moves of any game are so well practiced that they go quickly. Basically, they are memorized, and there is no need to spend time thinking about them while playing, especially not the first move.

If Kasparov were playing a game of chess, he wouldn't be thinking about his first move but would be making it.

In addition, take a look at the timer clock. It's depressed on Kasparov's side. That means time is counting down for black. But it's white's move, not black's. This setting is meaningless, which means no game is in play.

Therefore, no, Kasparov is not playing a game of chess in this picture.

I realize the picture was meant as a metaphor for other purposes. Perhaps there's a different metaphor lurking in the picture, like "looking like you are concentrating doesn't mean you are concentrating on what it looks like you are doing."

It does, however, make it hard for me to appreciate the subtitle "Everything depends on the answer to this question. Everything.".

<comment><USER3> Ah, I had stopped reading immediately after looking at the picture for the same piece placement.

In this picture, G Kasparov is earning a paycheck by posing in front of a chessboard while trying not to look at the camera.

Good for him, too ;-)

<comment><USER4> I hope you didn't see the first stock image of a hand moving a pawn. It's horrible, don't look at it.

It looks like this article was written by someone that doesn't play chess, so I don't think that it is a reliable person to make conclusions about the subject.

<comment><USER2> I didn't really look at the images past the first one.

I looked. It is horrible. I can only hope it's a picture of a person putting the last piece onto the board, rather than black making the first move in a match.

Looking now, did you see the fingers "typing" on the German keyboard, where most of the fingers are positioned _between_ keys?

Edit: But it could be legal! If white moved a knight out, and black moved the pawn by one, then white pulled it's knight _back_ , then this could be the move from f6 to f5. That sort of ridiculous move is still not what the author means by the metaphor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I have to commend you on your keen sense of observation. I really did not notice that. I was looking for a clean picture with a light background, but I know what I'm looking for next time I search for a picture of someone typing :) Thanks for reading though, I do appreciate it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PredictionIo joines salesforce - <AUTHOR> http://blog.prediction.io/salesforce-signs-a-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-predictionio#.VsjgVJMrJsM <comment><USER2> Jeez, did you have to use "journey" in your announcement?</comment>


Anton (Computer) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_(computer) <comment><USER3> To make this more timely, DE Shaw Research has been posting COVID-19 related simulations done on their Antons: [http://www.deshawresearch.com/resources_sarscov2.html](http://www.deshawresearch.com/resources_sarscov2.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> "The performance of a 512-node Anton machine is over 17,000 nanoseconds of simulated time per day for a protein-water system consisting of 23,558 atoms.[5] In comparison, MD codes running on general-purpose parallel computers with hundreds or thousands of processor cores achieve simulation rates of up to a few hundred nanoseconds per day on the same chemical system."

17,000 ns of simulation per day sounds crazy small but I wonder how that compares to the timescale of molecular interactions. How helpful have Antons been to pharma research etc?

<comment><USER5> [Disclaimer: I used to work at D. E. Shaw Research from 2011-2016]

The early Anton 1 numbers of 17us/day on 100K atoms were huge leap forward then. At that time, GPU-based simulations (e.g. GROMACS/Desmond on GPU) were doing single digit ns/day. Remember, even for 'fast-folding' proteins, the relaxation time is on the order of us and you need 100s of samples before you can converge statistical properties, like folding rates [0]. Anton 2 got a 50-100x speed-up [1] which made it much easier to look at druggable pathways. Anton was also used for studying other condensed matter systems, such as supercooled liquids [2].

Your question of why is this so slow or small is prescient. On the reasons that we have to integrate the dynamical equations (e.g. Newtonian or Hamiltonian mechanics) at small, femtosecond timesteps (1 fs = 1e-15s) is because the vibrational frequencies of bonds are on the order of picoseconds (1 ps = 1e-12s). Given that you also have to compute Omega(n^2) pairwise interactions between n particles, you end up having a large runtime to get to ns and us while respecting bond frequencies. The hard part, for atomistic/all- atom simulation is that n is on the order of 1e5-1e6 for a single protein with 100s of water molecules. The water molecules are extremely important to simulate exactly since you need to get polar phenomena, such as hydrogen bonding, correct to get folded structure and druggable sites correct to angstrom precision (1e-10 meters). If you don't do atomistic simulations (e.g. n is much smaller and you ignore complex physical interactions, including semi-quantum interactions), you have a much harder time matching precision experiments.

[0] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/334/6055/517](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/334/6055/517)

[1] [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7012191/](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7012191/) [the variance comes from the fact that different physics models and densities cause very different run times -> evaluating 1/r^6 vs. 1/r^12 in fixed precision is very different w.r.t communication complexity and Ewald times and FFTs and ...]

[2] [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp402102w](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp402102w)

<comment><USER6> This explanation is interesting. Thanks for sharing it. While reading it, I got the impression that the simulation is not fully quantum mechanical, but rather classical with select quantum mechanical effects.

Which parts of quantum mechanics are idealised away and how do we know that not including them won't significantly reduce the quality of the result?

Are you possibly using stochastical noise in the simulations and repeat them multiple times, in the hope that whatever disturbance caused by the idealisation of the model is covered by the noise?

<comment><USER5> That's a good question and there are a number of ways to try to tackle this. One of the main reasons you cannot do QM simulations directly is that the high quality methods can cost Omega(n^6/eps) to get eps. relative accuracy (you can do better with DFT, but then you're making your life hard in other way). At a high-level (and I mean, 50,000 ft. level), here are the simplest way:

1) Do quantum mechanics simulations of interactions of a _small_ number of atoms — two amino acids, two ethanol molecules. Then fit a classical function to the surface E[energy(radius between molecules, angles)], where this expectation operator is the quantum one (over some separable Hilbert space). Now use the approximation for E[energy(r, a)] to act as your classical potential. \- Upshot: You use quantum mechanics to decide a classical potential for you (e.g. you chose the classical potential that factors into pairs such that each pair energy is 'closest' in the Hilbert space metric to the quantum surface) \- Downside: You're doing this for small N — this ignores triplet and higher interactions. You're missing the variance and other higher moments (which is usually fine for biology, FWIW, but not for, say, the Aharanov-Bohm effect).

2) Path Integral methods: This involves running classical simulation for T timesteps, then sampling the 'quantum-sensitive pieces' (e.g. highly polar parts) in a stochastic way. This works because Wick rotation lets you go from Hamiltonian evolution operator e^{i L}, for a Lagrangian density L, to e^{-L} [0]. You can sample the last density via stochastic methods to add a SDE-like correction to your classical simulation. This way, you simulate the classical trajectory and have the quantum portions 'randomly' kick that trajectory based on a _real_ Lagrangian.

3) DFT-augmented potentials: A little more annoying to describe, but think of this as a combination of the first two methods. A lot of the "Neural Network for MD" stuff falls closer in this category [1]

[0] Yes, assume L is absolutely continuous with regards to whatever metric- measure space and base measure you're defined over :) Physics is more flexible than math, so you can make such assumption and avoid thinking about nuclear spaces and atomic measures until really needed

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.02948](https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.02948)

<comment><USER6> > Upshot: You use quantum mechanics to decide a classical potential for you > (e.g. you chose the classical potential that factors into pairs such that > each pair energy is 'closest' in the Hilbert space metric to the quantum > rest) - Downside: You're missing the variance.

Couldn't the quantum mechanical state become multimodal such that the classical approximation picks a state that is far away from the physical reality?

And, couldn't this multimodality excaberate during the actual physical process and possibly arrive at a number of probable outcomes which are never predicted by the simulation? Is there more than hope that that doesn't happen?

<comment><USER5> Yes, for sure. In practice (and not at the 50,000 ft. level), you do try to include the multimodalities — you don't _really_ just use E[quantum_energy(r)]. But you ARE still reliant on some computable/smooth/Lipschitz moment and/or expectation from the quantum surface. The semi-heuristic argument for why you get away with this in biological simulation is somewhat heuristic, but of the following form:

\- Most quantum field theories are described by of the form L(E), where E is an energy level ["effective field theory"] and the Lagragian changes as E change.

       - When E is low, L(E) is classical mechanics & EM

       - When E is around 1GeV, L(E) is the aforementioned plus QED

       - When E is around 100GeV, L(E) has the aforementioned plus some QCD

       - When E is at 1 TeV, L(E) has the aforementioned plus Higgs-like stuff

Now biology is on the lowest end of that scale, so you mainly have to deal with QED and perturbative electronic expansion. These electronic expansions are the most important part — you need them to get hydrogen bonding + electrodynamic molecular interactions correct — BUT they are highly local.

This locality is what you take advantage of when you normalize — you find from QM that the potentials only matter when the two charged/polar molecules are close, so you try to make a classical potential that has quantum 'jumps' when these things are close.

Do you miss the purely quantum stuff? Aharanov-Bohm, Chern classes, and the like? Of course. But from a practical standpoint, you do get the structures that you measure from experiment to be correct because the 'cool' quantum with 'tons' of states is less important for pedestrian things at low energy scale.

It is still hard to get right though! There's a lot of entropy you need to localize correctly and in some sense, you have to make sure you get the modes as a function of local particle positions correct.

The final thing to point out is that the Wick rotated path integral stuff works for biology much better than for real HEP-type of stuff because molecules are contained at low energies — those tunneling probabilities are O(h E), and log(E) is still dwarfed by -log(h) so you _can_ safely ignore them.

This is _not_ true for things like circuits, however, because the lithography at EUV scales (3nm -_-) does have tunneling issues at high field strengths.

tl;dr: Biology has some saving graces that give you good approximations. Are they perfect? No, but if you find a time that I have to compute a vanishing first Chern class in a noisy, ugly biological system, then you deserve a Nobel Prize!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is an Anton 2 (no wikipedia article unfortunately)-

[https://insidehpc.com/2016/02/anton-2-supercomputer-at- psc-w...](https://insidehpc.com/2016/02/anton-2-supercomputer-at-psc-will- increase-speed-and-size-of-molecular-simulations/)

<comment><USER8> There is also "Son of Anton".

<comment><USER9> Gilfoyle, is that you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a lot of respect for david shaw. He quit managing his hedge fund day to day because he said something along the lines of finance make me stupid or something and went back to doing something useful. If only more of our elites realized this (and cared to do something useful with themselves)

<comment><USER11> Me as well. It does seem that the whole point of being a billionaire is to do whatever you want. I can't imagine why so many seem to stick to managing their creations, which after a while can't be much fun.

<comment><USER12> Most billionaires got their wealth through inheritance. All they know is to manage the wealth creation agent that was handed down to them.

Most of the self made ones too have spent a large chunk of their lives perfecting the wealth generation agent which made them rich. It would be like asking a pro NBA player to also take a shot at being a pro NFL player. It's not what they trained for; they would need to learn a new skill, a new industry and they will most likely fail anyways.

Only a minority of such billionaires actually end up doing different things; Elon Musk comes to mind. Most are victims of their previous successes.

<comment><USER13> To fully connect the dots: after spending many years doing something _really well_ , it can be humbling and depressing to try to extract purpose or identity from something you're comparatively terrible at. Impactful competence (or at least, the belief thereof) is a tough drug to come off of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> All these years running laps around everyone else doing MD simulations - <USER2> do they have to show for it in terms of discoveries?

<comment><USER15> It is strange that their academic output isn't on par with some of the more prominent bio-molecular simulations research groups.

But I don't know much about their internals, perhaps, they're leasing a good bit of computer time to biotech companies.

<comment><USER16> I'd say this is very much on purpose (I worked there for two summers, also with one of the people in this thread). DESRES is very, very particular about the papers it puts out, so, while there is an incredible amount of great science with brilliant people who were mostly poached from academia, only the very top papers ever get published. Many more are written or kept as internal documents, but the firm is very particular about only publishing very impactful research.

Unlike in academia, there isn't a push to publish only okay or average quality research since funding is not public and there are no metrics to push.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to run simulations on this big guy :)

<comment><USER17> Without breaching NDA, do you think it was able to show outcomes which the naieve computer scientist would say justified the approach?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Now seems as good a time as any to share a replica of an Antoine van Leeuwenhoek microscope that my father made. The lens he made in the same way as the original... heating up glass to a semi molten stake, then letting a drop fall through the air. By the time it had landed and cooled...voila! A spherical lens.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/in4x3vjysw1o1wc/IMG_0291.JPG?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/in4x3vjysw1o1wc/IMG_0291.JPG?dl=0)

<comment><USER19> Can we please have more information about this? And better pictures?

<comment><USER18> My pleasure. Thanks for taking an interest:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/qhs8qf2qw5e4n35/micro_01.jpg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qhs8qf2qw5e4n35/micro_01.jpg?dl=0) From the back

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/4vl3rbfkelf1nv9/micro_02.jpg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/4vl3rbfkelf1nv9/micro_02.jpg?dl=0) Same, but annotated. 1 = The lens housing 2 = The 'stage'. Basically, just a pin that you stick the subject onto 3 = The handle. using this, the assembly is positioned in front of a strong light.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/4xra81bu2qdsxj9/micro_03.jpg?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/s/4xra81bu2qdsxj9/micro_03.jpg?dl=0) The front, showing the viewing hole

The whole thing actually works. The lens is hit or miss (literally), and it shows. Plenty of chromatic aberration. Basically just a droplet of glass. He tried many times to get it right.

Why did he make it? Well... he has a fascination with old technology. He was a founding member of the British Vintage Wireless Society, and has written a book on the subject of old radios. Also one on ancient navigation techniques. He is an old fashioned polymath. Also have in my possession a replica of Galileo's first telescope. Also works fine.

<comment><USER19> Very cool. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My master's thesis work was on MD simulations. My setups had around 150k atoms each, and it took months and hundreds of cores to finish any meaningful simulation. I was incredibly jealous of that machine.

But frankly I am still not convinced of the usefulness of the MD studies except for a few cases (docking studies, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER21> Its really hard to get a job at DESRES.

<comment><USER22> probably as a swe or research scientist, yes, i was contacted by them for an SA position ~6 years ago

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thank you first time hearing about this

</comment><comment><USER22> how is this compared to gpus?

<comment><USER15> Anton is MD calculations implemented in hardware, so an applications specific machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> who else thought about son of Anton, from Silicon Valley show ?

<comment><USER25> I would say it's likely that the SV Anton was named after this.

<comment><USER26> I've always assumed it was a reference to Anton LaVey (seemed appropriate for Gilfoyle to name his server after the founder of the church of satan). It would be interesting to know which theory is correct.

<comment><USER25> Good point, and while SV does have a lot of obscure references, this one may be a _bit_ too obscure. Happy coincidence perhaps.

<comment><USER27> Gilfoyle refers to himself as a LaVeyan satanist early on in the show.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I was referring to the supercomputer as obscure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>