Show HN: Subslider.js – fix out of sync subtitles with Angular - <AUTHOR> http://micheleb.github.io/subslider.js/ <comment><USER2> Nice.

I used to watch a lot of movies and in my experience, when a subtitle is out of sync, it is very hard to manually sync it, because of different frame rates and missing sections. So even if you sync it at one point, it will quickly gets out of sync soon. What your tool does can be easily done in vlc player by j/h keys to tweak subtitle delays while playing the movie. But even that does not work. and it will get out of sync with in 5-10 minutes.

What I find the most frustrating is that even after downloading, unzipping and applying 4 or 5 subtitles, you might not find a perfect one. So what I did was to write a tool ([1], [2]) that downloads all the available subtitles for a movie and automatically selects a candidate subtitle from all of them and displays the time at which it appears in each of the downloaded subtitles. You can _select_ the perfect subtitle by finding the time the candidate dialogue appear in the movie and matching it with the list printed out by the tool.

If a dialogue that appears, say 10 or 20 minutes into the movie, is already in perfect sync with a subtitle file, chances are that the rest of the dialogues will be in sync too. And it has worked greatly so far..

[1] [https://hackage.haskell.org/package/hastily](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/hastily)

[2] [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Titley](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Titley)

<comment><AUTHOR> my experience has been a little different: when I find out of sync subtitles, it is mostly because either the video file or the .srt file includes opening credits (and/or the "previously on..." sequence), and the other doesn't.

In that case, fiddling with j/h on vlc is tedious, because you have to "shift" the subtitles by quite a lot. Also, I usually use plex on my raspberry pi to watch movies, so I can't just fix it in vlc and keep watching.

So what I typically do is: (1) I download the most upvoted subtitle file, trying to match the tags of my video file, (2) I use vlc to check if the .srt is in sync, and if not I check the time of the first dialog I find by randomly skipping through the video, (3) I look for that dialog using subslider.js, and set the time.

This is the quickest way that I found to fix subtitles, and it's worked almost 100% of the times. I think I only found a subtitle file that had a different frame rate than the video just once in my life, in which case I simply downloaded another .srt and I was done.

Your tool looks very neat, I'll definitely try it out next time I have a .srt that doesn't work!</comment></comment>


A gallery of interesting IPython Notebooks  - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ipython/ipython/wiki/A-gallery-of-interesting-IPython-Notebooks

<comment><USER2> another interesting topic that floats by on hackernews, with no upvotes (except mine) and no comments (except mine).

does anybody have any suggestions for a smarter site?

-bowerbird</comment>


The Linking Open Data cloud diagram, September 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/imagemap.html

<comment><USER2> It should be noted that whilst the link takes you to a page whose URL suggests it's actually dated October 2007, the page is only intended to be seen as an iframe and the original page with the 2010 update statement is located here: <http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the proper URL. Richard Cyganiak does great work. I especially like D2R server (wraps relational databases as SPARQL endpoints).</comment></comment>


Stochastic Computing in a Single Device - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/devices/stochastic-computing-in-a-single-device <comment><USER2> _use such a device as a random number generator whose bits would then be fed into a set of stochastic logic circuits. In such a system, values would be represented as probabilities—4 would be represented by a seemingly random string of say 100 bits, of which about 40 would be 1s. It's easy to see that stochastic computing would be relatively immune to simple errors where a bit or two gets flipped, because it would hardly make a difference. But it also makes some calculations less complex. Multiplying two numbers, for example, can simply be done with a single AND gate._

I found this as clear as mud. Are the random strings always the same or are they different each time (derived from some stochastic process which always has the same probability of 40/100)?</comment>


Ask HN: Why hasn't there been a company run by AI yet? - <AUTHOR> Just some food for thought, with all the developments over regulations to be set over AI, documentaries like Do you trust this computer, Visionaries like Elon Musk all involved in this movement. Wouldn't it be an interesting experiment to have a whole company run by AI, it could be a small company limited to a certain service, but would have everything a real world company would have (employee (threads/resources/downtime), board of directors, advertising decisions, profitablity decisions) I think even on a prototype model this could help us understand the ethics of an AI system programmed for profitability. It could also provide interesting insights to existing business and operations. Let me know your opinions! <comment><USER2> Ray Dalio's Bridgewater seems to be on this track: [https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/22/the-biggest-hedge-fund-in- th...](https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/22/the-biggest-hedge-fund-in-the-world-is- creating-a-secret-algorithm-to-automate-management.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> We are not there yet, but we're on the track. Simple answer. It's especially hard to digest hard-to-quantify / qualified data, like text. And the world is run by people, people are run by emotions and we're not there yet to understand it good enough to let an AI make the right decisions. AI can help to make decisions, manage economically, but AI can not lead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm but isn't it that AI has always been intended to augment Human actions, to make life easier. In that process, if we look closer it only means that at a deeper level AI has always been able to lead (For example autonomous driving) and it's still under our CONTROL. It's just that the AI actions as of today are limited to a specific sub system and is not aware of the other systems around it. This is what I wanted to propose through this question. Why hasn't anyone built anything like that yet, because regulations are best made when you have an approximate projection of what the Actual behavior is going to be like.

<comment><USER3> In order to be aware of systems around it those systems have to provide quantified data and make them accessible via API. World is just too complex. And perhaps you should also break down what "running a company" means. Because running a company is a lot... people, politics, customers, financials, investors, paradoxes, ... where should the AI rule and where not? It's just not that simple.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> obligatory cstross Accelerando excerpt:

> Manfred is jolted awake by the hotel room phone shrilling for attention.

> "Hello?" he asks, fuzzily.

> "Manfred Macx?" It's a human voice, with a gravelly east coast accent.

> "Yeah?" Manfred struggles to sit up. His mouth feels like the inside of a > tomb, and his eyes don't want to open.

> "My name is Alan Glashwiecz, of Smoot, Sedgwick Associates. Am I correct in > thinking that you are the Manfred Macx who is a director of a company > called, uh, agalmic dot holdings dot root dot one-eight-four dot ninety- > seven dot A-for-able dot B-for-baker dot five, incorporated?"

> "Uh." Manfred blinks and rubs his eyes. "Hold on a moment." When the retinal > patterns fade, he pulls on his glasses and powers them up. "Just a second > now." Browsers and menus ricochet through his sleep-laden eyes. "Can you > repeat the company name?"

> "Sure." Glashwiecz repeats himself patiently. He sounds as tired as Manfred > feels.

> "Um." Manfred finds it, floating three tiers down an elaborate object > hierarchy. It's flashing for attention. There's a priority interrupt, an > incoming lawsuit that hasn't propagated up the inheritance tree yet. He > prods at the object with a property browser. "I'm afraid I'm not a director > of that company, Mr. Glashwiecz. I appear to be retained by it as a > technical contractor with non-executive power, reporting to the president, > but frankly, this is the first time I've ever heard of the company. However, > I can tell you who's in charge if you want."

> "Yes?" The attorney sounds almost interested. Manfred figures it out; the > guy's in New Jersey, it must be about three in the morning over there.

> Malice – revenge for waking him up – sharpens Manfred's voice. "The > president of agalmic.holdings.root.184.97.AB5 is > agalmic.holdings.root.184.97.201. The secretary is > agalmic.holdings.root.184.D5, and the chair is > agalmic.holdings.root.184.E8.FF. All the shares are owned by those companies > in equal measure, and I can tell you that their regulations are written in > Python. Have a nice day, now!" He thumps the bedside phone control and sits > up, yawning, then pushes the do-not-disturb button before it can interrupt > again. After a moment he stands up and stretches, then heads to the bathroom > to brush his teeth, comb his hair, and figure out where the lawsuit > originated and how a human being managed to get far enough through his web > of robot companies to bug him.

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando.html)

<comment><USER5> wow, thanks for reminding me about that. i read it years ago. its exciting that he holds enough rights that he can distribute it himself!</comment></comment>


Why Friends Matter at Work and in Life - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2010/07/why-friends-matter-at-work-and.html <comment><USER2> I strive to be a good friend, though of course time management means that I can't devote the same amount of energy to every acquaintance.

A lot of programmer-types aren't very sociable (as the stereotype goes), and I often hear a lot of us lament, "I never know what to say!"

It's funny that people with social awkwardness say that, because "knowing what to say" is actually only a secondary tool for me. People generally find me easy to talk to, and I enjoy meeting and talking with every kind of person. I have found that the most important skill for making friends is not knowing what to say, but knowing when to listen (hint: often).

It has to do not only with your conversational style, but also your demeanor. Be a little romantic about it. If you have an "open heart," as the Dalai Lama describes it, people will feel comfortable talking to you honestly. And if you subsequently listen to what they are saying, you will build a connection with them, even if it is fleeting or tenuous. It can last for as long as it takes to look a barista in the eye and say "Thank you, have a nice day," or it can last for a lifetime.

In my experience, it's always worth it.

After listening, the next most important skill to hone for being sociable is releasing fears of being judged. If you never say anything, no one will ever laugh at you for being wrong, but you will have two problems: You won't make any friends, and you'll never find out if you're wrong!

Sometimes I feel like "fear of being wrong" is an insidiously common reason for having fewer friends. The more people who you talk meaningfully with on a regular basis, the more likely it is that someone will disagree with you. Our culture seems to train us to avoid this, because being wrong is seen as... well, wrong! So maybe some people avoid socializing because they're afraid people will reject their ideas, or their personality, or even their very soul! But, I try to seek out people who disagree with me, because they are more likely to offer new perspectives that make me think and improve my ideas, even if their arguments come from a different foundation.

As for social fearfulness, it should be eked away at whenever possible. Even though my coworkers, friends, acquaintances and loved ones widely regard me as a "friendly guy," I still get nervous sometimes, especially at parties where I don't know many people. In these situations, I have had the best results by staying vigilant, and forcing myself to engage other people in small ways until I feel more comfortable: Smiling, saying hello, asking "How are you" and listening carefully to their response. Sometimes I won't feel more comfortable all night, and that's okay. It's a constant process--there is no "socially adept" Shangri-Lah where you'll never feel embarrassed again.

<comment><USER3> > In these situations, I have had the best results by staying vigilant, and > forcing myself to engage other people in small ways until I feel more > comfortable

Assuming the neighborhood is safe, if you want a kick-ass warmup say hi with a smile to 50 people. The first thirty or forty or so (e.g. why am I trying) will suck but once you hit the social warmup zone people will start smiling back and responding and you will be ready to mingle.

> As for social fearfulness, it should be eked away at whenever possible.

I have friends who are natural at meeting anyone, anywhere. Unfortunately it all comes down to how committed you are to meeting someone. The difference between hovering vs. a weakish handshake vs dragging a chair across half the floor rather loudly to sit with a bunch of people who you'd like to meet.

<comment><USER2> It's amazing how much your demeanor matters. You can't just go through the motions when it comes to socializing--if your heart isn't in it, it comes through in every single microgesture, and people see through your perfunctory patterns instantly. They won't even know they're doing it; they just won't respond positively to you, and it'll be a lost cause.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My grandfather used to often say, "there are no strangers in this life, only friends you haven't met." When he passed away, I was truly amazed at how many people he had met and befriended. It served as a wake-up call to me--for my generation the difference between "friending" someone and "befriending" someone is so great, and I am afraid I don't focus nearly as much on the latter.

As an aside on the article, Chuck Klosterman has a very humorous analysis of the "I'm not here to make friend's" meme in 'Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs' ([http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Drugs-Cocoa-Puffs- Manifesto/dp/074...](http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Drugs-Cocoa-Puffs- Manifesto/dp/0743236017))

</comment><comment><USER5> There are two types of ambitious people:

1\. Those who suck up to those who can help them out (superiors), even if they have nothing in common with them.

2\. Those who work and collaborate with their friends. No matter how much less it pays than the alternatives.

Its my belief that the former have more financial success earlier, but aren't as happy as the latter, who have little financial success early on, but also wind up more financially successful than the former camp.

When you stick with your cronies, you are happier and more successful.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think more importantly than not getting fired or finding a job, working with people you actually like makes work seem a lot better. I currently have a job at a small company and the Venn diagram of my interests and others on the dev team may not have any intersection at all. This makes work pretty boring.

Working with friends probably means not only that you can socialize well together but that you are working on something that you all enjoy or at least all bitch about together. That's the real benefit of having friends at work.

</comment><comment><USER7> I find that a lot of people these days are super judgmental about others... How much influence does he have? Who are his friends? Is he a slob or is he financially valuable? For some I'm sure this is an intimidating factor in why they shy away from meeting new people and growing their social network.

Personally, I try to avoid judgement as much as I possibly can (it's harder to do than you think, we all do it to some degree) and see the person and their potential for what can be, and not necessarily for what they are currently branding themselves. I help whenever I can, but more often than not they don't need the help (or really probably just don't want it) ... Ultimately, relationships are valuable to me, not just to have someone to drink a beer with, or to make a deal with, but to relate to and share in the experiences of the human condition. And there are a lot of people out there who want to do the same!

But people who are genuine, sincere, and have a lust for life and other people, are a real rare breed these days. When you meet them, hang on to them with force, because they're the ones who make life really worth living for!

</comment><comment><USER8> Ok so I take issue with the examples given in this article, I find that they are pretty weak such as those with more friends in high school will make more money, my own experiences have shown me different, Of course this is as long as you are not a complete misanthrope, in which case it would be hard to get pased the interview stage

<comment><USER9> Obviously there is a limit. Someone with 50 closest friends at high school probably won't get much work done and is unlikely to earn twice that of normal. Also someone with great grades and few friends cannot be compared with someone with many friends and bad grades.

But the doctor who had one friend at high school is probably going to be earning less than the doctor who had 5 friends. The larger number of friends demonstrates a greater comfort functioning in a group, as well as the ability to maintain several relationships at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How to be remarkable #43: Build Great Relationships [http://bighow.com/news/how-to-be-remarkable-43-build- great-r...](http://bighow.com/news/how-to-be-remarkable-43-build-great- relationships)

</comment><comment><USER11> maybe people who are happier don't spend as much time thinking about their own condition as unhappy people, and are thus more free to think about others' conditions. or maybe people who are happier in general take more pleasure in giving to others than people who are unhappy in general, and thus they continue to do so.

there are numerous causation possibilities.

(that said, at the end of the day, being happy is a win for everyone.)

</comment><comment><USER12> a friend in need is a friend indeed.

<comment><USER13> A friend with weed is better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Because we're evolved (hard-wired) social animals. ^_^</comment>


Pentagon Suggests Countering Devastating Cyberattacks with Nuclear Arms - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/us/politics/pentagon-nuclear-review-cyberattack-trump.html <comment><USER2> Great thing for false flag operations.</comment>


Graph query languages: Cypher vs. Gremlin vs. nGQL - jamie-vesoft https://nebula-graph.io/en/posts/graph-query-language-comparison-cypher-gremlin-ngql/ <comment><AUTHOR> I use cypher most days over the last few years and I like it because it's a complete level of abstraction over the database.

In gremlin and this new nGQL, the whole notion of "INSERT," implies that the graph is just a representation over top of a relational db, and power users should understand RDBMS concepts articulated in SQL queries first with this novel and cute graph thingy after for managers. It's like asking Excel users to understand and care about pointer arithmetic.

Gremlin leverages some peoples mental sunk costs in SQL, where cypher is very verbose, but lets me reason purely about my graph model without hacking over the implementation. The others aren't bad, but the people who will be using graphs won't be DBAs.

In this sense, cypher/Neo4j isn't a competitor to noSQL and rdbms products, it's a competitor to spreadsheets, where the majority of people actually get work done themselves, instead of specifying it and having others engineer it.

<comment><USER2> I was really attracted to graph databases mainly for the ability to do joins in effectively constant time rather than O(log N) time.

But then I realized that sharding and localizing data can accomplish roughly the same thing.

Also the graph database doesn't have to duplicate data so much for joins, saving on memory.

If you are going to have a huge dataset, build your data as RDMBS first and then make a cache in a graph database.

I say this only because graph databases are not mainstream yet.

<comment><USER3> I came to exactly the same conclusion after having Neo4j pushed on a project by managers who'd been sold by their "it's great for everything!" marketing. At least as of ~2 years ago, no, it wasn't. Fine for a narrow set of query types for data of a very specific kind of shape (dense graph) that you don't care about much and can re-generate if it gets screwed up. Unsuitable as a "database of record" (poor integrity enforcement, transactions very limited) and quite bad (slow, awkward) at a lot of things one might want to do with it, even kinda "graphy" things, that didn't happen to fall in its strengths. Memory hog, too. Seems like most graph databases, though possibly better at some of those things, will tend to be similar, since they _have to_ make trade offs to achieve notably good performance at whatever they're benchmarking to put on their marketing pages.

Cypher was really nice, though.

<comment> frant-hartm What version did you use? What you are describing sounds like Neo4j from around 6 years ago, not today.

<comment><USER3> About two years ago. Whatever was current then. We had a paid license too because this client was all-in on N4J. They had their own internal champion who'd set himself up as the "Neo4j expert" and got them to send him to conferences and hang out on phone calls and try to fix the fires he was partially responsible for but didn't get blamed for. All their projects had serious issues resulting from their insistence on a particular stack, which had basically nothing really capable of protecting data consistency at any point. We had to fight for TypeScript (vs. their prefered vanilla Javascript) to gain a tiny semblance of sanity, productivity, and stability in that environment.

Transactions in N4j couldn't handle modifying one entity [edit:the schema of one entity type, I mean] while updating another, which was pretty limiting (say, you want to do safe Rails-migrations-style version bumps in the DB in the same transaction as your modifications, so they can't get out of sync). Constraints capabilities and data types were very limited. Perf if you stepped off the Golden Path, which was easy to do by accident with something that looked boring and normal, was mediocre at best for our use case (smallish sparse sub-graph fetching, mostly)

[EDIT] meanwhile, all the official material from N4J was doing its MongoDBest to sell itself as 100% suitable for production for 100% of use cases, because of course it was. Look anywhere else and you got a very different, more accurate story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> No mention of Datalog? [http://www.learndatalogtoday.org/](http://www.learndatalogtoday.org/)

<comment><USER5> FWIW there's a Prolog-based graph DB called Terminus: [https://medium.com/terminusdb](https://medium.com/terminusdb) [https://github.com/terminusdb](https://github.com/terminusdb)

I don't know much about it but they are associated with Seshat Global History Databank [http://seshatdatabank.info/](http://seshatdatabank.info/) which, if I understand correctly, is something like a serious attempt at "psychohistory" (like in Asimov's Foundation.) [https://medium.com/terminusdb/stuffing-the- whole-human-histo...](https://medium.com/terminusdb/stuffing-the-whole-human- history-in-one-knowledge-graph-e52984f562c7)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for TerminusDB. I'm currently implementing a toy datalog-based graph DB in Clojure backed by RocksDB.

(I wish Terminus didn't publish articles on Medium, where you need an account to read)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry, but this article fails big time: no mention at all of SPARQL.

For application developers, having access to general public Knowledge Graphs like DBPedia and WikiData can be a very good resource.

While I am also a big fan of more general graph databases like Neo4J, not even mentioning SPARQL is such a HUGE OMISSION that I have to suspect some commercially motivated bias in this article.

The decision of which graph data platform to use is not always black and white. Use SPARQL with a RDF/OWL data store or a more general graph data store like Neo4J as appropriate. Learn both technologies.

<comment><USER7> Is there any SPARQL implementation that returns results under 10 seconds on a big dataset? Because, I never found a public SPARQL endpoint that gives remotely acceptable response time.

<comment><USER8> While there may be several things missing for many productive use cases (especially inserts/updates), I think QLever ([https://github.com/ad- freiburg/QLever](https://github.com/ad-freiburg/QLever)) fits that description very well. There's also a public endpoint linked there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is also EQL. A query language written in EDN

[https://edn-query-language.org/](https://edn-query-language.org/)

Once it use vectors/maps to describe the query, you can compose/generate/transform with simple data operations (concat, filter, assoc...)

</comment><comment><USER10> We evaluated umpteen graph dbs this past year and chose vanilla Postgres instead because Neo4j/RedisGraph have insane licenses.

It's useful you're comparing these languages. I would suggest to make yours more like Cypher, specifically the arrows <-[]-> are much less verbose than BIDIRECT/ REVERSELY, and MATCH is a lot less verbose and more powerful than other query languages. It sucks to want to use Neo4j then not be able to due to license and business issues.

If there were a quality graph db with a permissive license and Cypher, serverless hosting, search and JSON, we'd use it... neo4j didn't work out because they require an NDA to get a price quote (!) and the Redis Source Available License basically reads, "you can't use this for startups"; RedisLabs.com quotes a "low" price of $500 monthly to get modules with basic stuff like JSON, Search, and Graphs ("cloud pro") - but then the pricing page triples that number. We pointed this out to redislabs at least 3 different channels (email, git, Twitter) but the pricing error still exists on their cloud page. If RedisLabs leaves an $800 / mo typo sitting on their page for months, how do you trust them with sensitive customer data? Went with Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL instead. Love Row Level Security (but wish you could specify columns inside your row policies)

You might also include ArangoDB AQL

<comment><USER11> Neo4j is licensed as GPLv3 unless you want the enterprise features (replication). I've run the non-enterprise version in production and it was working fine for a limited workload. Replication would have been nice at some scales but it wasn't the reads that were the issue anyway, it was the writes which replication wouldn't help anyway.

RedisGraph is licensed under their weird license but as far as I can tell you just can't expose the RedisGraph API directly to your customers. Building an API on top of it that adds some abstractions should be fine (think a social network powered by the extension). I could be wrong about that though.

Are you actually doing graph work in Postgres? I learned about recursive CTE queries once upon a time and that was what prompted adoption of Neo4j.

(I'm not a lawyer and don't take legal advice from the internet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I rather like Cypher, easy to get into with the (node)-[edge]->(node) construction, difficult in the middle (until you realise that WITH is very different to SQL's), then a delight. Gremlin, so they let Java's horrible camelCase leak into their syntax? Oh my ...

<comment><USER13> You write Gremlin in the programming language of your choice and with that comes the idioms of that language. For Java that means, camelCased syntax as that is what Java developers expect. So a function like hasLabel("person") looks right to them. In C#, that same function is HasLabel("person") and in Clojure it is (has-label :person) and so on. Gremlin isn't meant to be an embedded string within your programming language. It is actual code within your programming language.

<comment><USER12> Well I stand corrected. I was judging from the examples in the linked article, so will have another look ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I may be missing something, but to any of them let you return information that is not a node in the underlying graph? I had a project once where a user request would result in a graph that was derived: result nodes and edges were derived based on the database's nodes and edges. Rolled my own system because nothing supported that.

Related, do any of the let you do something simple like return a count of vertices obtained from a traversal, or do you need to walk a result and count them yourself?

</comment><comment><USER15> A new "graph query language" that doesn't even mention Prolog is like describing "a new way to create illness immunity by injecting the body with a weakened version of the virus that causes the illness" or "a new computer architecture wherein both instructions and data reside in random-access memory."

</comment><comment><USER16> Is anybody still using SPARQL?

<comment><USER17> Yes.. I work on several projects that leverage SPARQL. The article is also remiss in not mentioning the work the W3C is doing along with Neo4J to do its own alignment ([https://www.w3.org/Data/events/data- ws-2019/](https://www.w3.org/Data/events/data-ws-2019/)). Indeed, this article seems very self serving in its omissions. There is a follow up meeting planned soon for that too.

Also, much of the work in validation (SHACL, Shex) of graphs leverages SPARQL so it's not going anwhere soon. I would like to see it evolve to allow more vertex based searches without the need for extensions though.

<comment><USER7> From your link "W3C's RDF uses URIs (Web addresses) for nodes and link labels in directed graphs. This has the advantage of enabling them to be dereferenced to obtain further information, making for a Web of linked data. In particular, nodes can be dereferenced to graphs on remote databases."

I think spreading those kind of lies[1] if a part of why there is a divide between the W3C (at least the RDF community) and the rest of the word. The W3C should be more transparent about RDF capabilities and realistic about the real power of the Semantic Web.

[1] this false because RDF use IRIs not URLs, and not all IRIs are dereferenceable. Moreover, even URLs used as resource id are not constrained to be dereferenceable per the spec (and when they are, you'll get a lot 404 in practice). Also, the same effect can be obtained as easily with properties (key value pair) attached on nodes of graph database.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, the SPARQL people need to realize that the semantic web was a massive dud in the programming and database market, and a lot of that was overreach, overpromise, and a lack of focus on "real-world" problems.

Thus, if someone is looking to unify graph QLs that are in actual use in "business" problems, SPARQL and the overall RDF aren't going to get attention. You can start with the fact that RDF basically assumes you want to globally address all your data with URIs, which will result in ridiculously verbose overhead in naming/addressing. Nevermind the fact that such things basically promise some sort of long term durability that the actual web has shown doesn't exist. After all, today's URI link to URI www.tla.com/link/to/some/data can mean the world wide wrestling foundation one day, and the world wildlife foundation the next.

In particular, Gremlin was adopted by DSE / Titan / successor to Titan which ran atop Cassandra for near-limitless scalability.

RDF and the Semantic web, while being intended for the massive WWW, seemed to not have any care for demonstrating techniques, queries, and architectures at scale.

Likewise, are Datalog and Prolog used extensively?

<comment><USER19> Both Prolog and SPARQL/RDF/Semantic Web are used at scale and pretty extensively. Unfortunately often behind closed doors, but there are very performant systems involved.

URIs and RDF in general don't need to use public HTTP links or anything like that, meanwhile the layered systems like OWL and RDFS provide some impressive features for implementing complex systems, especially when you actually want to use a semantic graph instead of loosely-schemed bag of nodes and vertices common in non-RDF graph databases.

<comment><USER18> So sqarql rdf should stick to it's limited application space and let more generally applicable graph technologies go their own way

<comment><USER19> Except it's actually a superset of those simplistic models.

It's just not getting the "kool" looks and gushing reviews, mostly written by people who totally missed all the previous research. Which is a common problem all around in computing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Have any of you checked out TigerGraph yet? I have heard if you have run into scale issues with any other GraphDB, to check them out. First glance, benchmarks blow Neo4J out of the water... GSQL seems intuitive, anybody have any experience?

</comment><comment><USER21> They forgot to mention that Cypher is also supported by AgensGraph

<comment> jamie-vesoft Hey Thanks for pointing it out. We'll add that soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Unrelated to the content, but can you please not put white on yellow like that? It's basically impossible for me to read with cataracts.

<comment> jamie-vesoft You meant the pictures right? Sorry for the bad experience. Will definitely improve our color palette for future posts.

<comment><USER22> Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Huge fan of cypher. Used it for a previous start up, including the data store for an OAuth2 implementation.

<comment> jamie-vesoft Good to know. Cypher is quite popular indeed.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What kind of daily online service you would probably pay for? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Chat Service like Aardvark, miss it so badly!

</comment><comment><USER3> Good quality news

<comment><USER4> There are plenty:

[https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com](https://subscribe.washingtonpost.com)

[https://www.nytimes.com/subscription](https://www.nytimes.com/subscription)

[https://www.newyorker.com/subscribe](https://www.newyorker.com/subscribe)

[https://subscription.wsj.com](https://subscription.wsj.com)

<comment><USER3> no disagreement, I subscribe to 3 of the 4.</comment></comment></comment>


Raccoons solve an ancient puzzle, but do they understand it? - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-09-raccoons-ancient-puzzle.html <comment><USER2> > _A third raccoon surprised the scientists by inventing an entirely new > method for solving the problem. She found a way to overturn the entire, very > heavy, tube and base to get the marshmallow reward._

I see these scientists are not particularly familiar with racoons. That's a raccoon, all right. Weld it to the floor and they'll still make a mess of it!

<comment><USER3> I'd quite like to know what the third racoon did. A little frustrating they didn't say.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like she was the one raccoon that unequivocally understood the problem.

<comment><USER5> Raccoons: they hold no truck with your bullshit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is ridiculous. Obviously if you want to test whether a raccoon understands the concept of displacing water with rocks you can't just have one experimental setup. You have to present the raccoon with very different cases where it could apply this concept and see if it has generalized or whether it has to learn each case on its own. (And you may find that there is no bright line; in some relatively similar experimental setups the raccoon may immediately start piling rocks into something and in more different ones requiring more ingenuity it might not. And the same thing goes for human understanding: there is no sharp line between grasping a concept at all and being able to cleverly use it.)

<comment><USER7> > there is no sharp line

Tell me about it. I often thought I understood the concept from the lectures, and then when faced with the problems on an exam realized I was unable to apply it.

I learned the hard way to do all the homework problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you figure out that A + B = C, do you need to understand how you got A and B to truly have solved the problem? Can't you take this further and say, without understanding every possible underlying system in our universe, we understand nothing?

<comment><USER5> It runs into the Chinese Room debate, which I mean isn't settled or anything but there is a body of literature arguing about the point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe you don't always need to understand the problem to solve it. Understanding things is a luxury for us entertained thinkers.

Evolution comes up with solutions to problems, which is what happens every time a brain did not think about mutating that gene, which is almost all the time.

Instinct, behavior, habit and muscle memory are not thought processes, yet they seem to solve a lot of problems.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sure - for some definitions of "understand".

</comment><comment><USER11> Also, ants seem to use arithmetic and (maybe) information theory when they communicate:

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235654126_Ants_and_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235654126_Ants_and_Bits)

<comment><USER10> Just like atoms use quantum theory when they interact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somewhat unrelated, I recently discovered that monitor lizards can "count as high as six"[0].

[0]: [https://www.earthsfriends.com/monitor- lizards/](https://www.earthsfriends.com/monitor-lizards/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow. Raccoons solved a puzzle that nobody since ancient times have solved?

 _Click link_

Oh. Click baited.</comment>


All locations of Specialty's Cafe and Bakery to close for good - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/all-locations-of-Specialtys-close-15276064.php <comment><USER2> It's been taken down of course, but I will deeply miss their Warm Cookie Radar. It wasn't technically sophisticated or anything but brought me and my colleagues a lot of joy

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm still bitter that the construction of their Santa Clara store on Augustine forced the demolition of _the_ best-run Denny's on the planet. It was a corporate training store, well-run and with an excellent staff. It was my go- to breakfast diner for awhile.</comment>


Writing JavaScript with Only Six Characters - <AUTHOR> https://javascript.christmas/2019/17 <comment><AUTHOR> I don't write alot of blog posts. Appreciate any feedback you might have :)

<comment><USER2> I love it. But I think it cheats a tiny bit by getting a word that requires only characters from "false". It means you're demonstrating the same trick four times.

Maybe you could do a kind of proof:

1\. This is how you get any character 2\. This is how you call eval() 3\. QED

<comment><USER3> Yeah the ability to get any character would really show more of how this works

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's Dwitter, a minimalist JavaScript code community, where we use these kind of tricks to write interesting code, demos and concepts with just 140 characters or less: [https://dwitter.net/](https://dwitter.net/)

<comment><USER5> This is fascinating! Thanks for the share, I had no idea this even existed. Some of the posts are impressive too. Walther is known for their short reset triggers on their handguns for example.

<comment><USER4> I've just posted a working code on Dwitter based on this "JavaScript with Only Six Characters", it shows 1e+100 turning into Infinity. [https://www.dwitter.net/d/16881](https://www.dwitter.net/d/16881)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty good explanation. For those who want to dive deeper, there is an esoteric language based on these concepts: [http://www.jsfuck.com/](http://www.jsfuck.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a limit to what one can do with these six characters? Like, now we're reading values from the string "false". We also could read from "true", and maybe undefined (how?). But can one do more? If one can generate "window", one should be able to call functions through window["functionName"]() and do general computing with this, I think?

<comment><AUTHOR> As I understand, there's no limit to what you can do with these six characters.

It quickly gets more complicated though, and will require alot more code:

"undefined": [][![]]+[] (empty array accessed at index 0 turned into string)

"NaN": +{}

"[object Object][object Object]": {}+{}

.. etc

See the full list here:

[https://github.com/aemkei/jsfuck/blob/master/jsfuck.js](https://github.com/aemkei/jsfuck/blob/master/jsfuck.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> you can make the final code slightly shorter by obtaining the "e" from "true" instead of "false". `(!![]+[])[+!+[]+!+[]+!+[]]`

</comment><comment><USER9> Great article. I've seen articles about this concept before, but none of these had such a thorough explanation!

</comment><comment><USER10> World's most unreadable embedded programming language?</comment>


AT&T to Buy DirecTV for $48.5 Billion - k-mcgrady http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/att-to-buy-directv-for-48-5-billion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 <comment><AUTHOR> The race is officially on! Can the Telecoms retain their terrible monopolies by becoming streaming providers Faster than the Streaming providers (Netflix, Youtube, Amazon Prime et al) trying to become Content creators?

AT&T is running out of customers to squeeze in the cell phone plans market. This is the next frontier for terrible service, exorbitant prices and regulated monopolies...

<comment><USER2> This race is rigged. Even if the streaming providers win the telecoms will just jack up the prices on their bandwidth when net neutrality is killed completely, which I don't think is an avoidable situation at this point.

<comment><USER3> If net neutrality is gone for good, the telecoms don't even have to bother entering the streaming business. They just have to look at Netflix's profits each year and charge (profits-$1) the next year, letting Netflix stay barely in business and capturing the surplus.

<comment><USER4> Netflix is not a replacement for a traditional pay-TV video service, nor will it be. It's really more of a premium channel like HBO or Showtime -- both of which already offer streaming for a similar price as Netflix. I see the industry going one of two ways:

1) Cable TV over Internet -- in this scenario your cable subscription just becomes an app that runs on a wide variety of devices. Watch live TV, DVR, on- demand, etc. with a user interface that is somewhat reminiscent of what exists today. Channels will continue to be bundled and distributed through cable providers (though I expect non-infrastructure owning companies will also be spun off or started up). This scenario is most likely as it is least disruptive to the financial structure that's been set up on the content creation side (also all the big cable/telco companies are building this already).

2) Dissolution of the "big bundle" \-- in this scenario, the content owners just decide to skip the middleman and become more like Netflix themselves. For example, Disney decides to just offer their own subscription service for $12/mo which gets you ABC, ESPN and the other Disney channels. Bundling would still happen here, just on a smaller scale. This fundamentally changes the business model though, and it will take a long time for content owners to develop the appetite and model to assume the risk of running a consumer-facing service.

Until the last 2 years or so, the content owners have also been licensing content to Netflix at low prices -- nobody else was interested in their library content so it was a way to monetize the long tail. But now that Netflix has established that consumers are willing to pay for the content, the content owners are raising prices significantly because the content they own had more value than they initially thought. The existential threat to Netflix is not rising distribution fees, it's rising content licensing fees.

<comment><USER5> I am not disagreeing with you in general, but for me Netflix really could be a replacement for traditional channels. Not too OT: I am visiting my Dad and yesterday morning we saw the new Godzilla movie in IMAX 3D and later last night watched Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" which was such a better experience than Godzilla. Old movie/TV technology done artfully beats less artful tech. Netflix can deliver old and some new content cheaply and on my time schedule.

<comment><USER4> Yeah; there is more than one use case for viewing video, one of which is on- demand video. Netflix does really well there. But it doesn't handle "event" TV (think sports events or American Idol) or the "I'm bored and don't want to have to think about what to watch" use case. Those two are huge, and while I think that eventually those use cases will change generationally, the 30+ demographic isn't likely to change their viewing habits any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Use this as a perfect example to explain to people why Net Neutrality matters.

"What incentive does AT&T have to bring you good streaming experience for Netflix, Hulu, or heck even Youtube when they'd much much MUCH rather you were buying DirecTV from them?"

<comment><USER7> Because I'll switch to Comcast or Verizon if I'm an ATT customer and their internet service is bad?

<comment><USER8> Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner all serve different cable networks. They rarely overlap, so you don't have that choice 99% of the time.

And it isn't really implicitly evil, because they just own the coax in the area and it obviously is not worth the investment to lay redundant wires.

<comment><USER9> _> they just own the coax in the area and it obviously is not worth the investment to lay redundant wires_

Sooner or later, this sort of thing must be addressed with a "public utility" perspective in mind -- not just in US but here in Europe as well. Why can I use different gas providers, or different electricity providers, or even different water providers in some countries, without pipe ownership being a factor? Answer: better laws. A degree of resource-sharing is forced upon providers by law, for the benefit of consumers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Think. How would the content providers - any of them, from Disney to Facebook - get their content at the consumer without the data-distributors, from Comcast to AT&T ? The saying is internet kills the middleman, but this is the real middleman that needs to be killed, and just as our roads are free and open to everyone, so should the digital roads be.

<comment><USER11> Roads aren't free, we pay for them in taxes and tolls.

<comment><USER10> OF course they are not really 'free', but does Amazon pay toll to get things delivered to you? Do government bodies who maintain the roads, tax large suppliers to make use of them?

<comment><USER12> Only in the sense that commercial trucks pay higher taxes. They pay that whether they're driving empty or full though, so the analogy falls apart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do many young people watch TV anymore? It seems like netflix + youtube scratches that itch.

<comment><USER14> Sports. ESPN + NFL Redzone + TNT + Local channels in HD have no good alternative on the internet. If they did I wouldn't pay for TV.

<comment><USER7> Yes! Cable = Sports. If they somehow decouple those two then I'm all Internet.

<comment><USER15> MLB At Bat

NHL Gamecenter

NBA League Pass

NFL Sunday Ticket (currently DirecTV exclusive via contract)

* I am assuming you are American and/or care only about the four major sports in the US. Not sure about futball, rugby, cricket, tennis, cycling, etc

<comment><USER16> NBA League Pass is a horrific abomination. I was debating it, and came across articles that showed that depending on your location and nominated team(s) it could be nearly impossible to get more than 25 games for your favorite team (out of an 82 game season). 30% of the season showed on a "Season Pass" costing approximately $200? No thanks.

<comment><USER17> Spend $5/mo on unblock-us.com and you can see every "blackout" game...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is getting dangerous. Imagine a world where a public transportation company owns the network of roads too and denies any other transportation company to come up besides their own.

<comment><USER19> Not a perfect analogy, but this may be of interest to you -

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy)

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady There's no way this can pass, especially with the Comcast/Time Warner deal still in process. Maybe this will scare regulators into denying both deals.

<comment><USER20> Doubt there will be any regulatory grumbling since it actually increases competition in the "triple play" space (Internet+Television+Phone). My hunch is that AT&T waited until they thought the Comcast + Time Warner deal was a virtual certainty before pulling the trigger on this. Who this will put more of a squeeze on is content providers (e.g., Disney/ESPN) as they now have to deal with two juggernauts.

<comment><USER21> Call me cynical but I can imagine a golf-course deal where Comcast and AT&T agree to this. Theory being, AT&T+DirecTV will seem like a more-meaningful competitor for Comcast+TimeWarner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> wow, I thought you meant "million"? You don't just buy a company for $48.5 billion, and have a tiny matter-of-fact headline like this.

What's the last company that got bought for even $30 billion!

This is a mind-boggling sum of money.

Check out the largest mergers and acquisitions of all time:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and- worst/largest-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and- worst/largest-mergers-and-acquisitions-of-all-time-deals)

(Do bear in mind inflation - add 45% since 1998 according to [http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/))

This deal must still be way up there. I wonder if someone can find the largest acquisitions of the past 2-3 years.

<comment><USER23> There have been a lot more, even recent ones... [http://www.businessinsider.com/16-biggest-acquisitions-of- al...](http://www.businessinsider.com/16-biggest-acquisitions-of-all- time-2014-2)

<comment><USER22> Thanks.

As you can see #16 as listed is in the ballpark and actually it says in your list's lead paragraph that #16, which is what prompted your list article, was for $45.2 billion. (So, less than this deal.) They get their ultimate figure by adding debt the acquirer takes on (as is typical). Including debt, our article actually says "Including the assumption of DirecTV's debt, the deal is worth about $67.1 billion" so just a hair shy of #16 on your list if you include the debt.

Either way, this is an absolutely mind-blowing deal in nominal terms. (As are all sixteen on your list.) This is a huge amount of money by any standard on Earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Net Neutrality is a ruse: providers "promise" to maintain an SLA against their competitors when they still own the last mile, and the service, and the core network. In practice, SLAs are weak sauce.

The more viable competitive model to me would be to a mandatory Open Access Network.

[http://www.opennetworkforum.org/what-is-an-open- network](http://www.opennetworkforum.org/what-is-an-open-network)

1\. Spinoff of existing Big telcos own the core physical fibre or RF infrastructure

2\. Various network providers own and operate active equipment & billing on the network - no one owns the last mile

3\. Various service providers provide content & applications on the network.

4\. No company performing one role can compete in another role, so as to avoid monopoly

This of course will never happen in the USA because the inmates are running the asylum.

So we'll have to rely on countries like Sweden to prove it out:

[https://www.acreo.se/sites/default/files/pub/acreo.se/EXPERT...](https://www.acreo.se/sites/default/files/pub/acreo.se/EXPERTISE/broadband/forzati- mattsson_-_vitel_2013.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER25> Is this acquisition from cash that AT&T hand or would they go to a bank and work with them for capital?

<comment><USER26> $28.50 of the $95/share is cash while the rest is AT&T stock. From the PR release[0], "AT&T intends to finance the cash portion of the transaction through a combination of cash on hand, sale of non-core assets, committed financing facilities and opportunistic debt market transactions."

[0]: [http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_directv.html](http://about.att.com/story/att_to_acquire_directv.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The graphs in the article are really good and clear, matched scale across the different graphs, enough years for context. I hadn't realised that US cable really was declining on such a scale rather than cable cutting being something more talked about than really happening.

</comment><comment><USER28> Next up AT&T + Comcast merger... 'Cause why not?

<comment><USER20> That won't happen. Comcast + Verizon, perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is interesting. My building has tv/phone/internet via DirecPath, a fiber based isp now owned by DirecTV. The only alternative is via the local telco, AT&T. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

</comment><comment><USER30> S. Derek Turner's take: [http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2014/05/19/why- the-att-d...](http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2014/05/19/why-the-att- directv-deal-dumbest-most-wasteful-deal-ever)

"So for $67 billion, AT&T could pass 71 million new homes with gigabit fiber, and connect 21 million new subscribers (assuming an industry-average 30 percent take-rate)."

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm surprised Apple didn't get into this recent movement of communications company acquisitions. For 1/3 of their cash pile, they could have streamlined control of not only the devices (tablets, phones, tv's) and the content market place (itunes), but also the infrastructure to provide media and telecom services through possible acquisitions of time warner, directv, and/or tmobile.

<comment><USER32> There are rumors of partnership with Comcast (which is looking to merge w/ Time Warner)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's almost like the industry _wants_ the government to step in on anti-trust grounds.

Wait a minute...

</comment><comment><USER34> Put that WhatsApp acquisition in your pipe and smoke it, Zuckerberg.

<comment><USER35> This acquisition is actually pretty easy to make sense of, unlike WhatsApp acquisition of Facebook. This is a company which made USD 31.7 Billion in revenues last year[0].

[0]: [http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1465112/0001047469140...](http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1465112/000104746914001182/a2218415z10-k.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Ridiculous that these things are allowed in the US. So for all your media needs there'll basically be only two providers some day - at&t or Comcast. Pathetic

</comment><comment><USER37> You have to wonder how much the NFL Sunday Ticket was worth as part of this transaction.

<comment><USER38> Not very much considering it's up for renewal at the end of this year. There have been some fun rumors about who is in the bidding, including Google.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/directv-said- near-r...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/directv-said-near-renewal- of-deal-to-carry-nfl-sunday-ticket-.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If they can compete against the devil--Comcast; I'm all for this merger.

<comment><USER40> Markets with a small number of large players tend to converge in terms of pricing and strategy, so we may end up with a cozy oligopoly rather than any serious competition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> According to them lack of competition is good for the market. Maybe Zuckerburg can start a bandwidth company and bring another (desperately needed) player to the game.

<comment><USER42> How? Wireless?

That'd be at least 3 years away, if he could piggy-back on another network.

According to their Q4 report, AT&T spent about $50B EACH in expenses in 2013 on their wireless and wired operations. Zuck only has $25B (personally). How much of a network could he (or Facebook, after he gets shareholder approval) build? This isn't an app built in PHP or Objective C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> hopefully this will get blocked

</comment><comment><USER44> Dinosaurs mating.

</comment><comment><USER45> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT&T_Broadband](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT&T_Broadband)

The cable/telco consolidation 1.0 play.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is it bad that I read this as 'AT&T to Buy DirecTV for 2.7 WhatsApps?'

<comment><USER47> Yes. This is not only a trivial, inconsequential point to raise, but your arithmetic is also off ($48.5/19 \approx 2.55$).

<comment><USER46> You sound like a fun person to hang out with.

My arithmetic wasn't off. I misremembered the price by $1b.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Both industries are doomed. I'll stay tuned to see how this turns out in like 5-10 years from now.</comment>


Computers Without Clocks – Ivan Sutherland (2002) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Computing_Without_Clocks.pdf <comment><USER2> Steve Furber (creator of the BBC Micro, and co-designer of the ARM CPU) headed up a team at Manchester University that designed an asynchronous version of the ARM CPU, called AMULET.

Details: [http://apt.cs.manchester.ac.uk/projects/processors/amulet/AM...](http://apt.cs.manchester.ac.uk/projects/processors/amulet/AMULET3_uP.php) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMULET_microprocessor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMULET_microprocessor)

</comment><comment><USER3> "First, asynchrony may speed up computers. In a synchronous chip, the clock's rhythm must be slow enough to accommodate the slowest action in the chip's circuits. If it takes a billionth of a second for one circuit to complete its operation, the chip cannot run faster than one gigahertz."

Haven't read the whole article yet but pipelining was made specifically to address this exact problem.

Also synchronous circuits have a nice property of dealing with metastability. Merging different clock domains is a nightmare and I would love to know how they plan on solving similar issues.

<comment><USER4> Could you give a bit more information to non EE experts like me:

\- What do you mean by pipeline ?

I try to make a analogy with the instruction pipelining, which can increase your throughput but it's not fixing the issue that your CPU has a fixed clock rate.

\- What is metastability?

\- Why are you mentioning merging clocks as each asynchronous circuit is clock-less ?

EDIT: Thanks for all the replies!

<comment><USER5> It takes a certain amount of time for a signal to propagate through a series of logic gates (or other electronic components) within a chip, which are also dependent on many other factors. In most synchronous chip design, you look at the worst (slowest) timing case for the design, and constrain your clock speed to that.

You can break up critical (the longest/slowest) paths of a design through pipelining, which can be done manually, or through nice automated techniques like register retiming. Basically, you can add flops (as in D-flip flops, also known as registers) between sections of the design that can be broken into independent pipelined components.

Example:

Say you have a design that takes 10ns from start to end flops. This means the max clock speed for that component is 100MHz. If you are clever, you may be able to dice that up into 10 separate components, which are pipelined, meaning that while there is a 10 cycle startup latency, if you have continuous throughput you can run the design at up to 1GHz. Even better is that nowadays, synthesis tools can do automatic pipelining through something called register retiming. Without doing any work, you can tell the synthesis tool what clock speed you want to run at (or how many cycles you want in your pipeline), and it is able to automagically insert flops to decrease timing for the overall design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.greenarraychips.com/](http://www.greenarraychips.com/) these are an interesting example of clockless chips. Not sure how they work.

[https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~scott/papers/NCL2.pdf](https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~scott/papers/NCL2.pdf) This sort of circuit appeals to me a lot. Multiple rail encoding, where every single gate has a hysteresis threshold before it can change its output. Pipeline stages start out dark, and gates light up as data flows in. There are no inverters inside a stage; gates only go from low to high. Once stage N+1 is done calculating, an inverted ack signal cuts off the input to stage N and it goes dark again.

<comment><USER7> A better link might be [http://www.theseusresearch.com/NullConventionLogic.htm](http://www.theseusresearch.com/NullConventionLogic.htm)

Sutherlands micropipeline and most (all?) the other clock-less approaches, are fundamentally racy and depends on a difficult timing analysis to determine that the latch is slow enough. What makes NCL so interesting IOM is that it is guaranteed to work timing-wise by construction. This also means that it is tolerant to changes in logic time, which means it circuits can tolerate a wider range of voltage swings (= can save power). (The gate construction has to satisfy a trivial timing requirement, but it's local to the gate, not the complete circuit).

The obvious drawback of NCL is that it uses quite a few more transistors than the equivalent circuit in traditional clocked implementation and tooling is weak or non-existing.

Karl and his student Matthew presented "Aristotle – A Logically Determined (Clockless) RISC-V RV32I" at the 2nd RISC-V workshop. Slides & Video: [http://riscv.org/2015/07/2nd-risc-v-workshop/](http://riscv.org/2015/07/2nd- risc-v-workshop/) I'm not sure of the status of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They used to have a website talking about the FLEET architecture, but it seems to have been taken down. Here it is on archive.org: [https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.b...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/)

Edit: the page cited above has these links, but I should explicitly call the slides they call the best introduction to Fleet [1], and a page full of memos [2]

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.b...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/docs/slides.pdf)

[2] [https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.b...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120227072220/http://fleet.cs.berkeley.edu/docs)

<comment><USER9> FWIW, as I recall this was FLEET's fatal flaw (part of the communication discussion);

* This can cause deadlock

* Programmer must keep input dock fifos from overflowing

Sun did a lot of work with async logic in the SPARC 10, it was written up in IEEE Spectrum I believe, and one of the things that always is a problem are that fabrics without flow control (back pressure or emission control) are subject to failure at the worst possible time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The one question I have about asynchronous chips since I studied them at my undergrad is: How does one sell them?

Selling a clocked processor is easy. One tests for a finite set of clock speeds, and marks by the fastest one that works. People buy the chip, and run at the tagged clock getting a predictable performance.

Now, make it a batch of asynchronous processors. Each chip you make will have a different performance - one will add some floats faster, another will fetch run faster (but only if the second bit of the address is set), while a third one will shine on integer addition, but completely suck at subtraction (due to a problem in a single transistor).

How does one tag those chips?

<comment><USER11> I have an asynchronous CPU cluster on my desk right now (a pair of GA144s). The performance spread isn't actually very dramatic; just a few percent. After all, the foundries aim for consistency so that synchronous devices get good yields.

<comment><USER10> You can have either consistency or high performance, not both.

Your batch is consistent because the foundry you brought from isn't pushing the envelope for performance. The latest Intel or AMD chips don't have this level of consistency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've always been fascinated by async circuits but don't know how state of the art has progressed since the early 2000s. Would any EEs be willing to comment?

<comment><USER13> I'm not an EE, but my dad was the co-author on this paper, if you have a couple of questions for him, I could pass them along if you'd like.

<comment><USER14> I am curious about how it turned out after 13+ years. Any serious road blocks in theory or practice?

<comment><USER15> There are a number of technologies that just aren't worth pursuing until the "normal progress" slows down. Transmeta, for instance, arguably died because while they produced a superior chip, by the time they could ship it they were basically tied with what Intel was putting out anyhow.

Asynchronous chips is an example of the sort of thing I expect to start hearing about again when we run out of die shrinks. Which we're getting pretty close to, probably. (Another example is "active RAM" where the RAM sticks can do some sort of computation. Also something like the greenarray chips [1]... while they're trying to compete with normal growth it's hard for a tiny company to get traction.)

[1]: [http://www.greenarraychips.com/](http://www.greenarraychips.com/)

<comment><USER16> >> There are a number of technologies that just aren't worth pursuing until the "normal progress" slows down.

I don't know. The field of low-power micro-controllers doesn't really benefit much from scaling, since sleep current increase when decreasing transistor size. And they are relatively simple circuits(with low-cost development) but still a huge market, so it's an ideal place to try a new development methodology.

And yes, some have tried, but it's not being used today, so it probably failed.

<comment><USER17> The tools are a big obstacle. The industry is built around synchronous design. How are you going to time your circuit? Verify it? Etc.

It's a really big chunk of work to bite off, even with a "little" microcontroller.

We might see it one day, but as best I can tell things like sleep states are still a big focus, as they can save orders of magnitude power, instead of a few percent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A great 20min talk from Rajit Manohar from Cornell, talking about self-timed (or asynchronous circuits) and their use in neuromorphic chips.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVrJRPL-e0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVrJRPL-e0g)

Async is a perfect design style for these kinds of event driven chips, since you really don't need to run a fast clock if most of the time the circuits aren't computing anything ...

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh man, this article was one of the first things I ever read about computer architecture when I was about 14. I had no idea Ivan Sutherland was the author until just now. It really stuck with me - I recall the bucket brigade illustration quite vividly whenever I think about asynchronous CPUs.

</comment><comment><USER20> It intrigues me how similar the internals if a cpu and the workings of a network is.

</comment><comment><USER21> See also: [https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~scott/papers/NCL2.pdf](https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~scott/papers/NCL2.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER22> I thought most of the benefit can also come from skew tolerant circuit design:

[http://www.cerc.utexas.edu/~jaa/vlsi/lectures/23-2.pdf](http://www.cerc.utexas.edu/~jaa/vlsi/lectures/23-2.pdf)

For example, in a pipeline "allowing a slow stage to "borrow" from the time normally allocated to a faster stage"

</comment><comment><USER23> Intel used an asynchronous technique in their Pentium-4 processors. You may recall that the internal core ALUs ran at 2x the frequency of the rest of the chip. This was done with self timed domino circuits.

These are notoriously difficult to get working.

</comment><comment><USER14> > The technological trend is inevitable: in the coming decades, asynchronous > design will become prevalent.

I wonder if this statement is right on time or still decades away.

<comment><USER10> Since it was stated just above a decade ago, the complete lack of change we had until today does not invalidate it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I got this from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10328784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10328784). Thanks vmorgulis!

If you haven't heard one of Alan Kay's many explanations of Sutherland's seminal Sketchpad work ("a Newton-like leap"), here's a wonderful one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY- hBgYLJqc#t=46m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY-hBgYLJqc#t=46m30s). Note the reference to Wes Clark, the pioneering system designer who died recently ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11183970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11183970)). Clark liked Sutherland and gave him computer time in the middle of the night, which is how the Newton-like leap came to be.

<comment><USER24> There's way too much Kay content online nowadays. Thanks for the tip. It's cool to see him rant about the forgotten wonders on stage, it's a different thing to see him look around like a kid when describing sketchpad 'face to face'.

<comment><AUTHOR> I got to meet him last week and couldn't resist gushing about how much I've learned from him. He seemed embarrassed. I couldn't help it—there's no one who's influenced me more in computing. He's agreed to do an AMA on HN, so hopefully we can set that up soon.

If you get beyond its terrible sound quality, that YouTube video has many stretches of Alan riffing that are pure gold. He embodies the history of our field and the values of the classic ARPA community culture. Much of that precious stuff is encoded in oral culture that we don't have a good way of continuing. I wish we could find a way for HN to facilitate that. It already does, to a small extent. But we need more than just to capture it as history, we need to carry it on, and I don't see that happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wave pipelining is also a technique you could use to run critical datapath circuits synchronously without using clocks. It saves space as well, but eliminating pipeline flip-flops.

<comment><USER26> it's very VERY difficult to do this over a reasonable range of process corners, and limits you to a single carefully chosen clock speed</comment></comment>


Computer Science Was A Dead End For Me - <AUTHOR> http://www.lastpodcast.net/2008/05/16/computer-science-was-a-dead-end-for-me/ <comment><USER2> Ok, while she may have point about incomprehensible math instructors, the rest of this was filled with blatant ignorance.

But that may not be her fault. If she doesn't see programming as a career, then it's possible that the field is incorrectly portrayed in higher ed. If I were to describe what a programming career looks like, it would go something like this:

You solve interesting, hard problems every day, and not just "math" problems. You solve communication issues, design issues, and you learn a hell of a lot about the way other businesses operate.

You get a flexible work schedule, not a 9-5 hell (unless you _choose_ corporate life). For women, this can be especially helpful. As a woman who kept working through the whole family starting phase, I can tell you that almost no other career will allow you such freedom in working hours. Get in at 8, go home at 3 to pick up the kid, code from home 8pm-12am after the child goes to bed. Hours in the office matter less than the quality and size of your contribution. I can't imagine being a single mom with rigid work hours; I'm being judged on what I produce, rather than how warm my office chair is.

You have so many avenues in programming to start your own business, be it a consulting shop, or a start-up business. Build a webbapp, a desktop app, or help others do that.

Here's my favorite: your programming skills apply to EVERY industry, interest, or hobby. No matter what you love the most, there is a way to use programming to further that thing, streamline that thing, advance that thing. Try to find an exception.

So how interesting is a programming job? How convenient? How suited to women? I say: A Whole Fucking Lot.

<comment><USER3> " If I were to describe what a programming career looks like, it would go something like this:

You solve interesting, hard problems every day, and not just 'math' problems. You solve communication issues, design issues, and you learn a hell of a lot about the way other businesses operate."

Every day? I'm skeptical. I've worked at various levels of programmerdom, and at least of the time the work was fairly mundane. At certain points I did get to work with great teams of smart people doing interesting work, and perhaps on the whole it is a win, but there is still a fair amount of tedium in coding.

People looking at programming for a career should think of the big picture and know that some days, perhaps for extended periods of time, life will not be filled with cutting-edge work that challenge your complete brain and fills your dreams with Turing-complete psychedelia.

Over all, though, if you do let yourself get into a rut (and that means actively learning new technologies and probably a good number of job changes) you will be well rewarded.

Basically, the cool things the OP listed are not likely to be up for grabs for most entry-level coders _, but show some initiative and take charge of your career and you can very well be the stand-out hacker that gets the deserved perks. (You will be in a minority.)

_ I may very well be wrong about entry-level options; YMMV, etc., but that's been my experience over the last 10 years or so. And a strong motivation for having my own company.

<comment><USER2> Ah, there may be mindane aspects of a coding career, but there are mundane aspects to any career. Even entry level coders can contribute and solve interesting problems, but I suppose a lot of that depends on where you choose to work.

In any case, the whole idea that programming is a boring, non-career path is wildly incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article read like a rejected submission to The Onion.

<comment><USER5> Actually, I don't understand how this article is related to this site (HN). Was it posted here just because it's funny? Or is there any lesson on it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "2-3 Math courses all four years of college"?

Is it just me or does that seem like kind of a outlandish statement? I guess her school could just be really different than mine.

Actually the whole article is kind of ridiculous. But then again I'm kind of biased.

Good for her, for finding a major that fit's interests more.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you have to love math to be successful in IT? No lol - what a fallacy. It's totally acceptable to be a great developer without knowing how to hand code a bubble sort or how to calculate the tangent of a klabobble. If you want to work at Google then yes, it's probably a good idea to have a CS degree though. I think this person just isn't really sure what she wants though. "In the end, CS just seemed like a dead end job. I want a career." Huh?

I would assume that more than 80% of IT workers worldwide do not know higher mathematics. I've been an IT trainer for nearly a decade and trained thousands of people as well as worked with many as a consultant and I base my guess on my own exp.

<comment><USER8> Math for IT? No. For real computer science? Absolutely.

If you don't understand math you can't understand all the cool parts of computer science. 3D - it's all math. AI - from minimax to clustering algorithms: math. Writing CRC and hash algorithms: math. Security in general: math. And it goes on and on.

If you know math you can build a raytracer in a weekend, like this guy: <http://www.superjer.com/pixelmachine/>

Really, who wants to build CRUD (DB create/retrieve/update/destroy) applications his whole life?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> sounds like this person had some strange expectations for the field of computer science.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hilarious.

From the article: _I excel in reading and writing (like you can't tell)._... _It's their way or the high way._

<comment><USER2> Yep. I stopped paying careful attention when I realized she hasn't mastered the very thing she's claimed to master.

Her disinterest in programming has nothing to do with her sex, and much more to do with her (ahem) obvious deficiencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I stopped reading when she wrote about her math woes.

<comment><USER10> I liked how she was upset that she had to understand the problems she was solving instead of just applying some formula written on the back of her hand. It's a conspiracy, I tell you! College isn't for thinking, it's for getting a degree, right!? </sarcasm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> idiotism</comment>


A Passenger's Wish List for Improving Airports - <AUTHOR> http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/travel/24prac.html?ex=1303185600&en=256480b71aa81415&ei=5087&WT.mc_id=TR-D-I-NYT-MOD-MOD-M172-ROS-1010-L1&WT.mc_ev=click <comment><USER2> _But Foy Allen Edelman, a cookbook author from Raleigh, N.C., had another suggestion: how about installing reclining chairs that have a compartment underneath where you can stash a small carry-on bag?_

This would probably triple the number of lost bags at the airport, all of which currently generate security events.

<comment><USER3> The problem is space, reclining chairs will probably take up more space and need maintenance, not to mention the cost per chair and how to justify it. Airports and Airlines want to make the process of boarding more streamlined...investing in chairs that comfort the wait due to delays are a waste to them and a problem that needs fixing prior to the delay. Sure you have the elements to deal with, bad weather etc. which we all accept. The funny side of this post is that we all forget about when we eventually board the plane and it takes 1 hour to get to the runway to take off. Then 8 hours stuck in a chair that is less friendly than the one this post is complaining about. ;-)

<comment><USER2> I get that facilities are to a great extent an externality to the airlines, but don't they compete and pay for airport gates? Can't facilities grants be factored into the bidding process?

<comment><USER3> I would think the gates are not airline specific due to flexibility for when things go wrong such as aircraft docking requirements not working. Currently they simply change the gate. Therefore this "Comfortability" issue would need to be a Airport expenditure and would have to be rolled out across the entire airport. Not sure all airports will want their landing rates increased for this reason as not all are on the same rates or sizes / no gates etc. The other problem is the more comfortable the waiting area chairs are the more uncomfortable the aircraft will feel when they eventually board.

<comment><USER2> If I understand correctly, the gates are _very much_ airline-specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reading this, my first thought was that it's certainly nice that Heathrow Terminal 5 has faster than normal baggage reclaim and smoother security procedures, and that Calgary International Airport has free wi-fi outside the Tim Hortons, but it's never going to sway my decision. If I have to travel by air, I have to travel by air.

Then I actually thought about recent times I've travelled by plane and I realised that competition does exist in London at least. I have:

Spent £50 more (a 70% fare increase) to fly to and from London City Airport. LCY is smaller and as such seems to be much more efficiently run. There's no long walk/shuttle between security and the gate. Security takes all of 5 minutes at most. The check-in desks have no or very short queues and there's seating nearby if you do have to wait. It's closer to the city centre so there's a 20 minute transfer instead of an hour long transfer between the airport and London. This extra expenditure netted me a nicer airline as well, but the main justification was the airport. About £20 of the cost was mitigated by not having to travel to another airport on the outskirts of London (with the exception of the ~£8 journey to and from Heathrow)

Spent £50 more (a 10% fare increase) to fly to and from London Heathrow Terminal 5. The terminal opened in 2008 and is very modern. Baggage reclaim seems faster than other airports I've visited, the overall layout is more sane and security tends to move quite fast for an international airport. It's certainly worth a little extra in my opinion.

There's room for improvement. I still prefer the 4 hr 30 train journey from London to Edinburgh v. the similar priced 1 hr plane journeys. Air travel might win if it can beat the convenience of just turning up at the train station 20 minutes before the train leaves, only paying a small extra fee if I want the freedom of using any train that day instead of a specific train and compete with the fact that the train stations are in city centres, whereas the airports are on city outskirts. These problems are quite hard or impossible to solve, so it's going to have to try harder in other ways. Oh, and the trains have (somewhat spotty in parts) wifi as well.

<comment><USER5> I know what you mean about LCY - just a pleasure to use. It's a pain if you have to head over to say, Richmond or Ruislip, but for the centre or east of London, it's a dream. I choose it every time I go to London (which is always short-haul).

I also choose to travel Porter whenever it's possible when I'm going to or leaving Toronto - Toronto City airport is incrediby central (less than 1km from the central business district?), with added bonus 2 minute ferry ride from the city to the dinky little island.

Long haul from Europe into South-East Asia or the South Pacific/Australia from Europe, there is almost always a plane change.

Choosing between Dubai, HK, KL, Bangkok or Singapore is a no-brainer: Changi is hands-down winner. Long waits are handily dealt with by the free city tour or the short MRT trip into town to pop into Little India or Chinatown or the malls, or the beach or ... Airport facilities are generally awesome, especially the (groundside) basement Hawker food hall in the fourth sub- basement of Terminal 3. I love the rooftop pool on Terminal 1. And SQ is a good reason to choose Changi all on its own.

So yeah, I choose airports and airlines based on facilities and pleasure of use. For long-haul the differences can be a matter of only a couple of Euros, but the difference in the experience, the amount of saved time etc is significant.

Decent TGV services mean than I haven't had to use the god-awful CDG place for many years. I hope the same sorts of services will be implemented in the UK at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Airline passengers are captive audiences, as far as the airport management is concerned. Anything that lets the passengers relax (for free) is only grudgingly given: the goal is keep passengers moving, hopefully through the shops, or if they must sit, hopefully in a restaurant, bar or cafe where they'll spend some money before being shifted on, like the temporarily homeless people they are.

</comment><comment><USER7> As long as the airines/airports have no incentive to improve things, nothing will be done. Real competition is needed, but I don't see where it might come from - maybe people deciding to stop traveling by plane.

<comment><USER8> Airports will never stop, due to the fact you can't take a train from Australia to London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> one idea I had - You're in an airport bar - watching tv (usually sports). Why can't they customize the crawl at the bottom of the screen to show flight status?

</comment><comment><USER10> The best airport amenity I've seen is the shower rooms at Tokyo Narita. Remember to pack some clean clothes in your carryon!

<comment><USER5> My fave is the swimming pool and spa on the roof of Singapore Changi terminal 1. Pack your bathers - they provide a towel, lockers and showers.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, Changi takes the cake as far as I'm concerned for "best airport". In the US, though, I think that award has to go to PDX- airport-wide free wifi, plenty of microbrews, and three branches of Powell's Books.</comment></comment></comment>


Redesigning Gesture Icons – A Proposed System - <AUTHOR> http://www.somerandomdude.com/2011/10/10/redesigning-gesture-icons-a-proposed-system/

<comment><USER2> Heartening that he examined at least some of the related work that came before him.

He found: <http://gestureworks.com/features/open-source-gestures/> && <http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1071> && <http://blog.rongeorge.com/design/gesturcons/> && <http://gesturecons.com/> (which I didn't know about)

He missed: [http://www.kickerstudio.com/blog/2008/12/touchscreen- stencil...](http://www.kickerstudio.com/blog/2008/12/touchscreen-stencils/) && <http://mattgemmell.com/2010/07/14/touch-notation/></comment>


AnonymousIRC leaks hundreds of docs from Arizona law enforcement (3rd time) - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/4L6emvnC <comment><USER2> > we want a world free from police, prisons and politicians altogether.

I hear Somalia is nice this time of year.

<comment><USER3> Somalia has tons of police, prisons, and politicians in every faction state. The TFG, Puntland, Somaliland, and whatever else dipshit Somali govts out there all have some resemblance of law, no matter how poor.

Don't spread the glib ignorant idea that Somalia is some sort of anarchist heaven. That just makes you sound like another silly westerner. It's a former state carved into several other competing states with their own separate order.

<comment><USER2> Oh, I'm aware it's not a heaven. And history seems to prove that any anarchist system eventually turns into a bunch of little competing fiefdoms .

<comment><USER4> _Oh, I'm aware it's not a heaven._

Or, you know, anarchy. Current lack of a permanent winner does not imply that no one is playing the game.

I'm not sure that anarchism can be as stable as government, but I think it's certainly possible. In any case, history doesn't appear to show that there's _any_ system which is stable in the long term -- the Roman Republic didn't remain one. Considering only longevity and stability, monarchy may be the standout government type.

<comment><USER5> _I'm not sure that anarchism can be as stable as government, but I think it's certainly possible_

your free to think anything you want, but with no empirical data or any substantial evidence to support your opinion...why share them here?

<comment><USER6> Somalia is ruled by warlords. This is hardly a secret, if you want proof just google it.

It is by definition not an anarchy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't it ironic that anonymous hacks a police website and exposes police officers' personal information, all the while basing this on an ideology that information should be unhindered and free. But throughout all of this anonymous remains just that, those in anonymous get to hide their own information, their own details, while exposing those of others. Are anon's some how more entitled to privacy than the civil servants that protect us possibly with their lives. Anonymous has strayed from their righteous path, operation freedom and their crusade against scientology were admirable, or at least slightly virtuous, but now they are becoming petty. Standing for freedom is one thing, but what of these individuals freedom to privacy, is that meaningless?

</comment><comment><USER8> Wrong target, Anon. Law enforcement personnel, while a natural ally to every form of official corruption, do not have the power to improve the immigration situation. At most they could refuse to uphold the law by ignoring any suspicion of illegal status. Maybe they should do this, but not because they fear Anon; because they know it's right.

<comment><USER9> I don't believe it either. Because of the vast amount of laws on the book and places that police can patrol or investigate, there is a lot of potential for selectively applying the law. Selectively applying the law allows them to introduce bias and change the immigration situation, or any situation!

A good example is the drug-busts of medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Federal law enforcement ran the busts, but they got help from California state troopers & city police, even though the Californian policeman should be upholding California law and the 10th Amendment. They were choosing to misapply the law. I hoped they would have defended the dispensaries-- and at the least, I was hoping that they would be a neutral force.</comment></comment>


I want to learn how to design websites. Where do I begin? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Are you referring to front-end design/development? If so, there are many subscription based websites as well as free websites to use.

Sub-based: CodeAcademy (mentioned by anthonycerra), teamtreehouse.com and codeschool.com are a few.

Free: Udacity.com (some HTML5 and design courses), w3schools.com and stackoverflow.

As systemtrigger said using Chrome Dev tools and changing style rules is incredibly useful. Do not neglect using dev tools. In Chrome shift+control+j will bring up the tools, and I highly recommend just playing around in that environment. Type in scripts in the console and just see the different things you can do with JQUERY and Javascript.

Best of all is to have a basis for an idea and just start hacking something together. If you have any questions you can email me at email@example.com and I will try and help.

</comment><comment><USER3> There was a great post on HN by someone who was in your same shoes. She used Codecademy to get started.

[http://www.tiffany-young.com/website_progress.html](http://www.tiffany- young.com/website_progress.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Check out [http://www.trydesignlab.com/](http://www.trydesignlab.com/)

Email me deny at trydesignlab and I can give you access.

</comment><comment><USER5> Open a page you admire in Chrome, inspect it in DevTools and play with its style rules. Start a project and copy liberally from the masters.

</comment><comment><USER6> Want to propose a different approach - (Disclaimer, I maintain this website).

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

Is a market place where people sell & buy side projects. There are quite a few "websites" for sale or seeking co-founders. Many non-tech people are interested in starting their own little project and it's been quite popular among them. Want to check it out?

<comment><USER3> This is spam.

I've noticed you promoting this site in multiple threads and have continued to bite my tongue because I admired the hustle, but I think this crosses the line.

OP asked about learning to design websites, which suggests s/he is in the very early stages of discovery. The last thing OP needs is people telling him/her to spend money on something loosely tangential to the request.

You could have mentioned a couple great resources that would actually be of value to OP and then gently mentioned "but if your end goal is just to run a web business, you can skip ahead and check out my site".

Love the hustle, but please be more mindful of spam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Try hackdesign

</comment><comment><USER8> What do you mean by design?

</comment><comment><USER9> MDN</comment>


How does the tech for that Super Bowl music light cube installation work? - <AUTHOR> Have you seen the art piece with the bike powered game?<p>There's a big cube installation being built in SF, in what they're calling Super Bowl City. I want to know who makes it and how it works. <comment><USER2> Happy to help. I'm Alex Green–the creator of the Sugar Cubes and co-founder of Symmetry Labs.

To your question about how the Sugar Cubes work:

First of all, the game-powered-by-bikes installation at the Super Bowl is a custom game we developed for the Fan Zone at Super Bowl City. Light Cycle is a two-minute interactive light installation experience where players physically generate energy with bikes and hand cranks. It's built from the Sugar Cubes, which are modular cubes that can be reconfigured in any shape and are driven by our proprietary software. (We have built everything from stage sets for live shows and music videos to a giant Cube chandelier for The Foo Fighters last year.)

The Cubes are wired with addressable LED strips and they can display practically any pattern–usually synced with music. A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm within our custom software allows the person running the Cubes drive animations using the various frequencies in the music. The cubes can also react to midi input. The structure itself is modeled so that each LED acts as a pixel within a 3D dimensional canvas.

If you get to stop by Super Bowl City in SF, you can play with the Cubes in real-time. (They'll be there until Super Bowl Sunday.) Or you can go to the Symmetry Labs website, play with a simulator, and pretend to be a genre- defying DJ :)

Happy to answer more questions about how the Cubes work! They're the love of my life right now, the technical possibilities are practically endless, and we have exciting plans to use them in many new ways in the future.</comment>


Ask HN: Working at a startup founded by the "Business Guy" - <AUTHOR>

I'm a developer at a small to medium sized SaaS company, with 10 developers & 150+ full time employees. We have about 5000 paying clients all at different levels of subscription though largely receiving the same service.
It's very much a business oriented culture, with little emphasis on the technology that enables us all. A significant portion of our company can't tell an operating system from a web browser, and often don't use any SaaS tools besides what we provide and facebook or google.
We have 1.2 million lines of production code spread across 3 Microsoft frameworks. Our code evolved from a desktop app based on microsoft access about 5-6 years ago. It's not far off to say you could smell our code from Pluto.
The core functionality of the software has largely remained untouched, though it's become very bloated as hundreds of features have been added as a result of paid feature development from clients. Many of these remain undocumented and require detective work on my part to figure out if something that seems like a bug is actually a feature.
Because our software has usability and accessibility issues stemming throughout our system, signing up a new client usually takes 2-3 weeks plus 3-4 live training appointments so people can actually figure out how to use our software to run their business.
Despite these setbacks we are growing, and just received another round of large venture capital funding to continue doing all the crazy things we do best.
I make a decent impact on our code base and do all I can to encourage the other developers towards good practices, though many of them are here to do the bare minimum amount of work required to get to what their product manager wants. They have very little personal investment in the success or failure of our product as a whole.
So fellow Hackers I ask advice from you. Would you work in a top down sales/marketing company that seriously limits the technology you can use? Do you think our code smells will slow us down as more and more competitors can recreate our service cheaper and quicker? What is the outlook and future of a junior programmer in a company like this? Am I wrong in anyway doubting the quality of our product and it's long term success? Also what options do I have to influence and change things for the better amongst our team? <comment><USER2> 1\. Lay out the problems caused by the current architecture. Not in developer terms like "tightly coupled" but rather in terms managers will understand - the real cost per client. Prove that a cleaner architecture will lead to faster turnaround and therefore reduce the overheads - leading to more clients and/or higher profits.

2\. Design a cleaner architecture. Look at current and possible requirements. Maybe not too much detail, but perhaps a basic database schema, class designs, etc (whatever is appropriate to your language/framework).

3\. If you are using MS tools, read up on the lastest developments there - ASP.NET MVC for example - and show how using new tools would improve the design.

4\. Perhaps get yourself involved more in the management side of things. Learn more about the business as a whole, why decisions are made. That will make you sound more informed on the technical side as well.

If all else fails, then look for another job by all means - but bear in mind that the situation you describe is all too common in non-technical lead companies. In an ideal world, the business-savvy techies would be in charge (and those that are - Google, Gates-era Microsoft, etc - they are) but those companies are few and far between.

If you are otherwise happy at the company then perhaps start a side-project - commercial or open-source - to keep your skills fresh, so you'll be in a better position for your next job.</comment>