In search of Western civilisation's lost classics: a library buried in AD79 is slowly revealing its secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24096948-25132,00.html

<comment><USER2> An interesting article, marred only by the occasional clangingly awful sentence like these:

"I am looking at one of the Dead Sea scrolls of classical antiquity: a shard of half-recovered time. It belongs, I realise, to a genre of accidental art that speaks of our relationship to the past more precisely than any intact work; it is the art of the fragment, an art that yields to us, but never surrenders."

</comment><comment><USER3> _The excavators also found what they took to be chunks of coal deep inside the villa, and set them alight to illuminate their passage underground. Only when they noticed how many torches had solidified around an umbilicus -- a core of wood or bone to which the roll was attached -- did the true nature of the find become apparent. Here was a trove of ancient texts, carbonised by the heat surge of the eruption._

Am I the only one whose blood curdled when I read that?

Typical... ancient texts, the only copy to survive from antiquity, perhaps... what better thing could you do than set it alight!

<comment><USER4> Today's hard disks will probably become tomorrow's blunt instruments.</comment></comment>


Container provisioning with Guix - <AUTHOR> https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=8386 <comment><USER2> Since I'm sure everyone is thinking, "but don't we already have Docker for everything?", I'll point out that this was addressed on one of Dave's mailing list posts, in case you're looking for a comparison!

      http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-10/msg00916.html

<comment><USER3> From the mailing list:

> 1) The container tools I'm working on are completely declarative.

> 2) There are no disk images.

> 3) Software and other files shared amongst many containers are deduplicated > system-wide.

> Once again the fundamental building block of every Guix tool, the immutable > store, proves to be an invaluable asset in overcoming the problems of our > imperative predecessors and contemporaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's excellent! I'm digging the declarative approach.

Successively mutating a disk image and needlessly duplicating items that really could be shared in the first place is the moral equivalent of giving up on the problem rather than trying to solve it in a principled manner. I'm very glad we now have containers backed by the sound principles of functional package management.

</comment><comment><USER5> thank you! It's cool to get reproducible sandboxed environment.

</comment><comment><USER6> GuixOps begins!</comment>


Calacanis is having trouble deleting his facebook account - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/11/calacanis-facebook-profile/

<comment><USER2> I deleted my Facebook page about a month ago, and verified it was deleted a few weeks ago. Even though I'm no fan of FB, I'm going to have to call BS on this post.

First off, figuring out how to delete your account is as simple as doing a Google search: <http://tinyurl.com/ycl9der>. The FB group page has the link for the delete page in the left column. This took me all of 10 seconds to find, so I think it's crappy to try to indicate it's hard to locate how to delete your account. While I agree it should be at least somewhat 'findable' via FB navigation, it's an edge use case and as such shouldn't require prominent featuring. Figure it out.

Facebook tells you that it'll wait 14 days to delete your account. Frankly, I like the idea of waiting to delete it. My son said his friends occasionally pull up their accounts when visiting a friend's house on the other's computers. If you left yourself logged in, and then your buddy thought it would be funny to delete your account, it would really suck to try to get all that data back. Leaving the account intact, and emailing you that it's going to be deleted is smart. All it takes is a login to kill the process of cancelation.

Second, AFAIK, third party authenticated/connected apps use an alternate authentication method to access your account. This is usually done using tokens for the service, plus an account issued token. If you revoke these (which is obviously an option) then those apps can't access your account. I can't imagine that the devs at FB would think it was OK to cancel your cancelation based on access by one of these third party app tokens.

Obviously if you run a local app (Adium comes to mind) that has your user/pass stored in it, and it logs you into your FB account to function, it's going to cause a true 'login' to Facebook. I was smart enough to disable Adium and delete the FB app from my iPhone based on the assumption a true 'login' would trigger a cancel of the cancelation. I'm not sure what FB could do to alleviate any confusion to others around this, but maybe they could be more clear about what might 'log you in'.

I found the process fairly straightforward, and the only thing I'd change would be an email that said my account had been deleted when they actually did it. I was a bit nervous about trying to log back in a few days after the deadline because I thought it might cause me to have to wait a few more weeks, but it worked out just fine at the end of the day.

The only thing that I regret is that everyone trying to message me over the past week or so thinks I unfriended them. In a way they are right - it's just that I did it en masse and it really wasn't a personal grudge against them! ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> Who is more ridiculous: Techcrunch writing a non-news or people on HN upvoting it?

</comment><comment><USER4> He clearly would have preferred it if his account were deleted instantly, which would've prevented him from signing into whatever service he had used Connect for. His account was kept because he might end up needing it. He ended up needing it.

> _paradoxically, they are the most talented product team in the internet > space and yet they don't add export features or data portability or open > standards_

This seems pretty portable to me: <http://graph.facebook.com></comment>


Cash Is King No More - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/style/is-it-better-to-pay-with-cash.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&smvar=wknd&_r=0 <comment><USER2> I use cash every day. Other than bills, and orders, every practical transaction is maxe with cash. Its not a big deal. Author seems way out of touch.

Cash is also much faster than the pin cards in use now, after that step backward I actually use cash more.</comment>


Do you feel that golang is ugly? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Do-you-feel-that-golang-is-ugly/answer/Tikhon-Jelvis?share=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Just curious, I hear many people talk enthusiastically about the language, yet every serious critic of it I see runs along those lines and makes me want to skip the language altogether.

<comment><USER2> Just try it out for a project or two if you're curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is actually why I'm posting this, both Nim and Rust are higher on my languages-to-try list. Free time is sadly not unlimited and I'd like other people's opinions as well :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the thing that annoyed me is that the language forces you to put your opening braces on the same line as your condition/loop. I like to have them on the same vertical line, I find it easier to see the blocks.

<comment><USER4> I personally prefer to way Go does it although there are other formatting standards that are enforced that bug me. However, even if I don't like everything I am somewhat fond of the fact that this actually enforced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't code much in Go but the thing that bothers me the most is the way variable types come after the variables names. What is surprising is nobody talk seems to be bothered by this at all....

<comment><USER6> That's actually the more 'normal' way of doing it. In type theory (or mathematics in general), you almost always write value: Type. (For instance F: A -> B.)

This is how it is done in ML, Haskell, Erlang, Rust, Smalltalk, etc...

It's mostly just C-like languages that do it the other way.

<comment><USER7> As dayjob C coder, I just find the way types are written in C complete nonsense (especially when you start declaring pointers to functions), and no modern language should force that horror upon developers.

Go types syntax is well done, IMO, even though I'm not into Go language that much (I rather Rust).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the forced formatting: no more petty battles over what is "best".</comment>


Why don't colonize the Moon as practice before trying to go to Mars? (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3gg3qb/why_dont_we_send_a_group_to_colonize_the_moon_as/ <comment><USER2> Let's stop thinking about the planets, gravity is slowly killing us. We should park a space station near nice asteroid with needed resources.</comment>


Why Apple believes it's an AI leader–and why it says critics have it all wrong - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/apple-explains-how-it-uses-machine-learning-across-ios-and-soon-macos/3/#hm-training-may-29 <comment><USER2> Good post, but this is a link to the third page of the article. This is the 1st page: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/apple-explains- how-i...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/08/apple-explains-how-it-uses- machine-learning-across-ios-and-soon-macos/)</comment>


How APIs Fulfill the Original Promise of Service-Oriented Architecture - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/articles/apis-soa <comment><USER2> The main problem with "SOA" is that the big software corporations (the type that often have 3 letters in their names) realized they could make millions by layering on new 1000 page "standards" on top of the old 1000 page standards and selling crap solutions to CIOs via golf course handshakes.

Now they've got their eye on "APIs", so watch out. And by the way if the author is right about the trends in "enterprise" (and I believe he has a good handle on it) the whole "schemaless" fad is going to get real ugly, real quick.

<comment><USER3> Sticking to the theme about gripes about APIs, why do so many companies have APIs and no webhooks? Polling sucks. Many SaaS providers will say it's "hard" to implement webhooks but they have an API available. I'd like to know what's so hard about making webhooks available.

I've developed a system that's supported webhooks and it was actually easier to create webhooks (and have users submit endpoints on specific events) than it was to create a proper public API for the same service.

<comment><USER4> "deliver exactly once" is still an unsolved problem in computer science, so any webhook service is left with the options:

1.) only attempt once

2.) attempt x number of times

3.) attempt until delivery is confirmed

All of these can be done, but there are nuances and complications. It's not trivial, which is why we don't see more of it.

Also, and perhaps most obvious, if they force you to poll, they are putting the burden of development on you, whereas if they offer webhooks, they have to take on the cost of development themselves.

<comment><USER5> The difficulty of a foolproof solution isn't a great argument against a solution. That is, many cases, I'd rather have a webhook with the "only attempt once" strategy than an API I have to poll. "Pretty reliable" is often good enough. I think OP's question is valid.

<comment><USER6> Whether pretty reliable is good enough depends very much on what you are trying to achieve. I'd rather my salary wasn't deposited into my bank account on a pretty reliable basis.

<comment><USER7> I'd be okay with "at least once" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My belief is that how to divide systems into small pieces and have them communicate technically, be reused and composed, is masking the real problem.

The real problem is representing and implementing a complex business problem or system _within_ the service or application.

Technical emphasis instead of one on the business solution - of modeling the problem domain into code - is a bad smell?

<comment><USER9> But it will scale on AWS....

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with the premise that APIs fulfill the promise of SOA is that APIs are necessary but not sufficient to describe the interaction between two services. For example, protocol semantics such as retry in case of network failure is absolutely critical to the definition of the contract. The Slack developer "API" is a good example -- not only do they specify your standard REST/websockets APIs, but they include semantics such as rate limiting.

</comment><comment><USER11> s/API/microservices/</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a service like this? - <AUTHOR>

Im thinking about creating a search engine that crawls the web looking for code snippets on websites from certain services like CrazyEgg, MixPanel, and other tools to help site owners look at their usability/analytics/marketing/etc.  You would be able to check off boxes for the types of services you are looking for, then define the types of sites you want (.com, org, edu, .co.uk, etc).
Basically, the idea is to let people find other sites that are using certain services to show the maturation of the service (how many sites use that service) and possibly see how other sites have implemented those services.
I, personally, would use something like this.  Would you guys? <comment><USER2> I'd like to use a service like this. It sure sounds interesting and somewhat similar to <http://builtwith.com/> which is only about frameworks that are being used on one particular website.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out; and the idea does sound similar to BuiltWith.com although this wouldnt really be focusing on the frameworks, web servers, ad- networks, etc. The focus would be more towards marketing/usability/analytics type folks.</comment></comment>


The neuroinvasive potential of SARS-CoV2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32104915 <comment><USER2> From the paper:

> If the neuroinvasion of SARS-CoV-2 does take a part in the development of > respiratory failure in COVID-19 patients, the precaution with masks will > absolutely be the most effective measure to protect against the possible > entry of the virus into the CNS. It may also be expected that the symptoms > of the patients infected via facal-oral or conjunctival route will be > lighter than those infected intranasally. The possible neuroinvasion of > SARS-CoV-2 may also partially explain why some patients developed > respiratory failure, while others not. It is very possible that most of the > persons in Wuhan, who were the first exposed to this previously unknown > virus, did not have any protective measure, so that the critical patients is > much more in Wuhan than in other cities in China.

This is a good example of why writing off COVID-19 as no more dangerous than the flu is itself so dangerous.

I should also point out that most people in the US face similar conditions to those in Wuhan. The extent of infection is not known, and therefore protective measures are not in place. We have been actively discouraged from "buying masks" and told that they are ineffective.

<comment><USER3> Yes, only a N95 or better mask would protect you from incoming, as opposed to outgoing, viruses, and these masks are both impractical for everyday wear and need to be conserved for public health users.

<comment><USER4> I have a small box of N95 masks in my shop - bought last summer for dust protection. When is the right time for me to put them on my family. Part of this is how long will they last before I must replace them. Or should I put them on eBay for a million dollars and hope I life to enjoy my new found wealth?

<comment><USER5> Or you could donate them to your local hospital since there is a shortage. I'm not sure they would take them, but it's worth considering.

<comment><USER6> Local hospitals are not going to be able to take masks from some random person off the street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a side observation: most reporting seems rather binary, i.e. you either die or survive, period. What interests me the most, however, is how often survival means full recovery, especially now that the nervous system comes up. Are there any long term effects? Should one generally expect to come out of it worse, the same, or stronger? I'm much less afraid to die from this than to end up with chronic respiratory and/or neurological issues.

<comment><USER8> EDIT - Just to be clear, I'm not saying that people shouldn't take precautions or that it's not worth protecting vulnerable groups. I'm simply suggesting that perhaps there is news coverage about other things (remember the whole Hong Kong situation that we aren't hearing about suddenly?) that might still deserve some air time.

The media is profiting off this story big time. It's like when the plane went missing and a news station actually put some moron on the air who said there's _technically_ a chance a black hole swallowed the plane. It's disgraceful, to be honest.

That said, it looks like the rate of fatalities is overblown significantly [0](0.2% in a healthy population (COMPARED WITH THE 3.4% NUMBER BEING SPOUTED ALL OVER THE PLACE). I've yet to see coverage that is remotely reputable about long-term health effects after recovery.

EDIT 2 - Case in point about premature statements being made.

> [1]"I think it is likely we'll see a global pandemic," said Marc Lipsitch, a > professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "If > a pandemic happens, 40% to 70% of people world-wide are likely to be > infected in the coming year. What proportion of those will be symptomatic, I > can't give a good number."

followed by:

> [2]"Because I am now less certain of where the R0 will end up (and how it > may vary geographically) I am going to revise downward the range of outcomes > I consider plausible to 20%-60% of adults infected. This involves > subjectivity about what range of R0 may turn out to be true."

[0] [https://institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV- public/an...](https://institutefordiseasemodeling.github.io/nCoV- public/analyses/first_adjusted_mortality_estimates_and_risk_assessment/2019-nCoV- preliminary_age_and_time_adjusted_mortality_rates_and_pandemic_risk_assessment.html)

[1][https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-people-might-one- perso...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-many-people-might-one-person-with- coronavirus-infect-11581676200?mod=rsswn)

[2][https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464](https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1234879949946814464)

<comment><USER9> It is getting annoying that people keeps comparing different numbers to make their points. If you are using 0.2% mortality rate in a healthy population, you have to compare it with the flu mortality's rate in a healthy population, which is still a magnitude lower. It's disgraceful, to be honest, to compare mortality rates on different population at all. And I'm just gonna quote your link directly to make my point, I'm fairly upset at people calling it a bad flu at this point.

"While this correction does not change the assessment that COVID-19 exhibits severe pandemic potential in the absence of effective interventions, the shift in framing brought about by this three-fold revision from 'possibly comparable to the 1957 flu but not 1918' to 'possibly comparable to 1918' may meaningfully impact risk perception."

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure the figures I read were 1% mortality with Covid19, 1:400,000 for flu (in UK). It was that order of magnitude.

So perhaps like saying chlorine is harmless because people drink it. It's a "well yes, but no ..." situation.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director- general-...](https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s- opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---3-march-2020)

Its CFR is 3.4% according to WHO (actual number may be be higher than this because it is an early statistic and does not take into account patients that are still struggling and may eventually die).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Whether you believe this or not comes down to whether you believe references 32-34 from the paper. I haven't read the stuff about transgenic expression of human ace2 in mice, but it would sound a lot more like it was aberrantly expressed, so I'm not counting that. "More evidence needed" is the correct interpretation here, I believe.

There's other literature out there saying ACE2 is ubiquitously expressed (including brain) - so that means one of two things: People saying it's expressed everywhere are wrong, or SARS-COV-2 requires more than ACE2 for infection. There are papers saying that transfecting cell lines with ACE2 doesn't always render the cells susceptible, so it's probably a good idea to consider the requirement for a co-receptor.

Like anything, the true answer probably lies in between all these possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is almost a week old, I haven't read about it anywhere else. I have read and heard plenty of interviews with scientists involved in this in the past few days and noone has mentioned anything in that direction.

Anyone has any link to secondary sources where other scientists try to put this in perspective?

</comment><comment><USER14> > According to the complaints of a survivor, the medical graduate student (24 > years old) from Wuhan University, she must stay awake and breathe > consciously and actively during the intensive care. She said that if she > fell asleep, she might die because she had lost her natural breath

Sounds like something from a horror movie!

<comment><USER15> Reminiscent of the Polio outbreak/iron lung era. A survivor described the sound of clicking tounges in iron lung rooms after the electricity had failed and a few nurses needed to rotate between devices, manually pumping air. Tounge clicking because no one had the ability to exhale air and produce vocal sounds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've only read the abstract, and it seems to clearly say that the virus can get to the brain via the lungs. So I have no idea what people ITT are on about regarding purposeful infection or masks for prevention. Regardless, this abstract also does not explain the mildness of the disease except for the immunocompromised and elderly, which to me renders the link between how you get the infection and fatality a bit suspicious.

<comment><USER17> If you read more than the abstract, it explains that animals that are infected nasally have much higher rates of brain infection than the fecal-oral route of infection.

Edit: changed "oral/fecal" to "fecal-oral," thanks calmworm. Also removed a period.

<comment><USER18> I don't think that was calmworm's qualm with it. Heh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not a biologist, but reading the paper, the chain of reasoning appears to be summarized in this section:

> _Taken together, the neuroinvasive propensity has been demonstrated as a > common feature of CoVs. In light of the high similarity between SARS-CoV and > SARS-CoV2, it is quite likely that SARS-CoV-2 also possesses a similar > potential. Based on an epidemiological survey on COVID-19, the median time > from the first symptom to dyspnea was 5.0 days, to hospital admission was > 7.0 days, and to the intensive care was 8.0 days 15. Therefore, the latency > period is enough for the virus to enter and destroy the medullary neurons. > As a matter of fact, it has been reported that some patients infected with > SARS-CoV-2 did show neurologic signs such as headache (about 8%), nausea and > vomiting (1%)._

There's also this rather disquieting anecdote used as evidence of a link to the nervous system:

> _According to the complaints of a survivor, the medical graduate student (24 > years old) from Wuhan University, she must stay awake and breathe > consciously and actively during the intensive care. She said that if she > fell asleep, she might die because she had lost her natural breath._

Supposing that this neurological link is real,

> _the precaution with masks will absolutely be the most effective measure to > protect against the possible entry of the virus into the CNS. It may also be > expected that the symptoms of the patients infected via facal-oral [sic?] or > conjunctival route will be lighter than those infected intranasally. The > possible neuroinvasion of SARS-CoV-2 may also partially explain why some > patients developed respiratory failure, while others not. It is very > possible that most of the persons in Wuhan, who were the first exposed to > this previously unknown virus, did not have any protective measure, so that > the critical patients is much more in Wuhan than in other cities in China._

So let me ask a dumb question for someone with actual biomedical knowledge. Are they saying that infection of the CNS is somehow easier through the nose, in which case high-quality face masks actually do matter?

I'm also confused by this sentence in the introduction, which appears to contradict the hypothesis that the upper respiratory tract is a high-impact area?

> _However, different from SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2-infected patients rarely > showed prominent upper respiratory tract signs and symptoms, indicating that > the target cells of SARS-CoV-2 may be located in the lower airway._

I will note that, unlike some other papers on this topic, this one has been peer-reviewed in what seems to be a legitimate medical journal (Journal of Medical Virology), so there should be some genuine substance here.

<comment><USER20> > There's also this rather disquieting anecdote used as evidence of a link to > the nervous system:

> According to the complaints of a survivor, the medical graduate student (24 > years old) from Wuhan University, she must stay awake and breathe > consciously and actively during the intensive care. She said that if she > fell asleep, she might die because she had lost her natural breath.

Would that explain people collapsing suddenly on the streets as seen in Wuhan and Iran?

<comment><USER21> No, I think that'd be very unlikely because it'd be a late symptom after substantial damage has been done. Compared to the frequency of syncopal episodes I'd expect in people sick with any other cold or flu, I think it's overwhelmingly more likely to be from other causes.

And if it actually were causing neurological damage, I'd expect still more causes like seizures and the like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see a lot of "may", "possible", "if", ...

Is this how people typically write a paper to Medical Virology?

<comment><USER23> > Is this how people typically write a paper to Medical Virology?

I wont assume that (I am software engg.)

I see where you are coming from. Here is my perspective, think of this like a outage of your service. No one has exact answers so team starts to dive in and starts sharing what they find.

These findings mostly prune the "solution space" of the problem.

<comment><USER24> I love that phrase: "...prune the 'solution space' of the problem."

Feels like a new weapon was added to my cognitive toolkit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The link should be changed to the publisher's page where the pdf is linked.

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.25728](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jmv.25728)

<comment><USER26> It's important to see the NIH summary though. Gives the study credibility.

<comment><USER27> Which is actually a problem. Not uncommon to see obvious sham science propagated with an official-looking PubMed link at nih.gov.

"I'm allergic to WiFi."

"No, you're not. Nobody is allergic to WiFi."

"Yes, I am. Here's an official PubMed citation: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26372109](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26372109) . Why do you hate science?"

<comment><USER28> > _Provocation studies on EMF have yielded different results, ranging from > where people with EHS cannot discriminate between an active RF signal and > placebo, to objectively observed changes following exposure in reactions of > the pupil, changes in heart rhythm, damage to erythrocytes, and disturbed > glucose metabolism in the brain._

The paper you linked admits that there are studies that show it's the same as a placebo. Just because most people aren't qualified to realize that the studies in the first half of the sentence might be more reliable than the studies in the second half doesn't mean the paper shouldn't be published.

<comment><USER27> So? You can say exactly the same things about ESP or dowsing. Run enough studies, even properly-conducted ones, and some of them _will_ yield the results you're hoping for. At that point, all you have to do is either ignore the others altogether, or leverage them to argue in favor of "teaching the controversy," as is done in this particular paper.

This strategy is meaningless in terms of scientific value, but it certainly sounds authentic enough to non-specialists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> PDF (link buried within the page): [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jmv.25728](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/jmv.25728)

</comment><comment><USER30> If I understand this correctly, could wearing nose clips and only mouth breathing be an effective strategy to reduce impact?

<comment><USER31> > It may also be expected that the symptoms of the patients infected via > facal-oral or conjunctival route will be lighter than those infected > intranasally.

That seems like the hypothesis they suggest. Interesting implications.

<comment><USER32> All the people who were made fun of in middle school for being a 'mouth breather' will have the last laugh.

<comment><USER33> 'mouth breathing' is actually really bad for you.

<comment><USER34> How so?

<comment><USER35> Your nasal passages include structures called "conchae" which, among other purposes, secrete mucus to capture small and potentially disease-carrying particles from incoming air. [1] It's not a perfect defense, of course, but better to have it than not - and when you breathe through your mouth, you don't get the benefit.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_concha#Immunological_rol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_concha#Immunological_role)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If it did turn out this virus is neuroinvasive and that is what causes acute respiratory problems, how would this be prevented/mitigated/treated, theoretically?

<comment><USER37> This may sound very stupid, but...

As a sort of "vaccine", would it make sense to have people intentionally infected orally so they build up antibodies before it has a chance to spread to their brain?

<comment><USER36> I was thinking the same thing. I'd love an expert to tell us to what degree that's silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Great. I work in an E.R. and my neurological system is already being ravaged by M.S. I'm not sure that I would not just walk off of the job if we are inundated with COVID-19 patients.

</comment><comment><USER39> Question what effect is vaping having on the spread? Walking in a city in the UK I see people leave large plumes of vaper which seems to me be an excellent transport system.

Warm and wet.

<comment><USER40> Score one for the cigar / tobacco smoker

<comment><USER41> As it would seem to affect smokers harder, I'd call that a draw.

<comment><USER40> Cigar smokers FTW...they dont inhale ;)

<comment><USER41> In that case, it seems like an even weirder affect to take on - none of the nicotine, all of the bad breath and mouth cancer.

<comment><USER40> You absorb nicotine in the mouth. You dont get tar in your lungs.

No smoking is good for you but then again the leading cause of death is birth so enjoy the time you have. If cigars are your thing smoke it up

<comment><USER41> In that case I guess you probably shouldn't be trying to keep score in regards to your vice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It is interesting how absolutely _passionate_ some people are about masks. There is a pretty heady contingent here that seems to be of the "I DID MY PART" sort (by mindlessly pushing an absurd anti-science anti-mask angle -- I was one of the silly minority countering it a few days ago, to very little effect).

"If you wear a mask your testicles will shrink and everyone will hate you!"

But the more important question: Is it time to stop trimming nose hairs?

</comment><comment><USER43> Was this forced to second page?

</comment><comment><USER44> Airborne viral particle protection: N95 masks may only be effective used with eye protection. Surgical masks may not help at all.

Looked for interventional studies testing whether face masks and eye protection work in humans to protect against airborne viral particles. A critical issue with many such studies is that medical staff only use masks and/or eye protection at work, opening them to being infected outside of work.

Found a small study [1] getting around this problem by exposing subjects (n = 28, avg age 30.5 years) to monodispersed live attenuated influenza vaccine particles by placing them in front of a vibrating-orifice aerosol generator for 20 minutes, subsequently testing for infection using RT-PCR and culture in nasal washes.

Surgical mask: 3M 1818 | N95 mask: 3M 1860/1860S | Eye Protection: Z87 Uvex non-vented

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

RESULTS

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

No precautions: 4 out of 4 infected.

Ocular exposure only: 4 out of 4 infected.

Surgical mask only: 5 out of 5 infected.

Surgical mask + eye protection: 5 out of 5 infected.

N95 mask only: 3 out of 5 infected.

N95 mask + eye protection: 1 out of 5 infected.

1\. Bischoff WE, Reid T, Russell GB, Peters TR. Transocular entry of seasonal influenza-attenuated virus aerosols and the efficacy of n95 respirators, surgical masks, and eye protection in humans. J Infect Dis. 2011;204(2):193–199.

</comment><comment><USER45> I was actually wondering about this because both the Spanish Flu and the 2009 H1N1 pandemics left life-long brain damage for some survivors in the form of narcolepsy with cataplexy. The vaccine for H1N1 caused it in a very small amount of patients as well. After the Spanish Flu they called it "encephalitis lethargica". It appears that it damages the hypothalamus.

</comment><comment><USER46> Who wants to help make a design file for 3d printed nose plugs? If blocking the intranasal path is effective in preventing the CNS infection, as this paper suggests, nose plugs should be effective here.

</comment><comment><USER47> don't forget that the title includes the following:

"...may be at least partially..."

</comment><comment><USER48> I thought papers dealing with this virus were to be made available publicly?

<comment><USER49> go here:

[https://sci-hub.se/10.1002/jmv.25728](https://sci-hub.se/10.1002/jmv.25728)

keep in mind this is a preliminary, the grammar used in this paper needs to be revised so as to avoid as much as possible, people coming to errant conclusions after misinterpreting poorly written phrases.

so that means that while reading this paper one should not skim but should take the effort to interpret this paper.

there is an absence of references in the abstract, this makes it hard to examine the basis for statements in abstract

<comment><USER49> if you head down to page 4 of the paper there is where you will find references to background literature cited regarding "neuroinvasive potential"

[1] Glass WG, Subbarao K, Murphy B, Murphy PM. Mechanisms of host defense following severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (SARS-CoV) pulmonary infection of mice. J Immunol 2004;173:4030-4039.

[https://doi.org/10.4049/jimmunol.173.6.4030](https://doi.org/10.4049/jimmunol.173.6.4030)

[11] Li, Y.-C., Bai, W.-Z., Hirano, N., Hayashida, T., Taniguchi, T., Sugita, Y., … Hashikawa, T. (2012). Neurotropic virus tracing suggests a membranous- coating-mediated mechanism for transsynaptic communication.

[https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.23171](https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.23171)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> How many fucking names does this thing have?

<comment><USER51> Yes, it's a little confusing. [0]

2019-nCoV (2019 Novel Coronavirus) was a temporary name.

SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus 2) is the official name for the virus.

COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) is the official name for the disease that the virus causes.

[0] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/bit-chaotic- christen...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/bit-chaotic-christening- new-coronavirus-and-its-disease-name-create-confusion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Would this explain the apparent sudden collapse of people on the streets in China and Iran? [1]

[1] [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/people-collapsing- coronavi...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/people-collapsing-coronavirus/)

<comment><USER53> Folks, if you see someone collapse on the street and they're wearing a mask. TAKE THE MASK OFF OF THEM. They're not getting enough oxygen. It is taxing to breath through an N95 mask. Source: I passed out when I put on a surgical mask while my wife was getting an epidural. Not from seeing the needle because I didn't even see the needle, and I don't get squeamish anyway. I have low blood oxygen and it was too hard to breath through the mask.

<comment><USER54> Perhaps I'm selfish, but if I see someone wearing a mask and they collapse, the last thing I'm going to do is get near them...</comment></comment></comment>


No, cell phones are not "cooking men's sperm" - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/02/24/no-cell-phones-are-not-cooking-mens-sperm/ <comment><USER2> It feels like the author is confusing cancer with sperm count. So he spends half the article discussing how cell phone signals don't have the energy to cause DNA breakage and then cause cancer. But this is about sperm count. All you have to do to lower sperm count is increase the temperature. It's been shown that just bathing the balls in a bowl of hot water daily drastically reduces sperm count. So heat is definitely contrary to sperm production, and it isn't as tough to produce as DNA breakage. That said, there is no permanent damage. Sperm production resumes when the temperature returns to normal (which is below body temperature for the balls hanging out of the body).

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't many paragraphs into the article at all before the author writes, "First of all, let's look at the central hypothesis, namely that cell phone radiation causes decreased sperm count and motility, both of which are associated with male factor infertility, for obvious reasons. There's only one plausible biological mechanism (and, even then, it's not so plausible) to explain how cell phone radiation might decrease sperm count and motility. After all, it's well known that increased temperature is associated with decreased sperm count and quality. It's the very reason that fertility doctors recommend that men being evaluated for infertility wear boxers instead of briefs."

He then goes on to investigate the plausibility of that claim in great detail and rejects it. You can follow the rest of the article as an example of how to read a medical study thoughtfully. (The author is a medical researcher who writes blog posts to educate the public on what medical research shows and what it doesn't show.) The conclusion is, "The bottom line is that cell phone usage as measured by a study like the Technion study is almost certainly a confounder, a surrogate for some other factor that is known to be related to infertility that the study doesn't control for."</comment></comment>


Searching for scientific visualization/modelling tools for use on a website  - <AUTHOR>

I am a physics student, and I have old code laying around from some projects I have done. I would love to create a website where I can talk about the project, demo the code being used and explain my findings, but I have no experience with web applications/development. I would love any suggestions on: Tools/tutorials/the right direction
The code I used is mostly MATLAB and FORTRAN, but I am pretty sure I can port the MATLAB code over to octave.
Wouldn't it be nice if science (physics) people did this? If every theoretical paper you read had a linked online document that demoed the code, allowed you to play around with the parameters and see the results?
Yes, the answer is yes. <comment><USER2> This is a place where I think Wolfram is making big moves <http://www.wolfram.com/cdf-player/>

Not only is Mathematica becoming a super rich programming environment, but Mathematica 8 now allows Wolfram Alpha web functions. Along with the CDF player it's my humble opinion that Wolfram is poised to become the next gen computing tech.</comment>


GNU Stow 2.1.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-stow/2011-12/msg00001.html

<comment><USER2> > This is the first official release of Stow since January 2002

Wait, is this right? The last official release was more than _9_ years ago?

<comment><USER3> Yes, that is right. That's why it's a big deal, and worthy of HN.

Now, the situation would be better if 2.0.x had been released.

Troy Will, the maintainer, had put stow into maintenance mode, and basically stopped after 1.3.3. Kahlil Hodgson did a major rewrite that became Stow 2. The both contributed to it a bit, getting us to 2.0.2.

Stow 2.0.2 was considered stable, and though it could be downloaded from Savannah, Troy felt uncomfortable releasing it officially because he was unfamiliar with the code and felt he couldn't maintain it, or address any problems found. Kahlil wasn't willing to step up as maintainer.

So, 2.1.x marks Adam Spiers becoming involved in the project.

Here is the thread that sparked this: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/stow- devel/2011-11/msg000...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/stow- devel/2011-11/msg00000.html)

(I am the Luke Shumaker quoted in the beginning of the thread. I had an email exchange with Troy about this back in February, but it happened off-list)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am in the process of getting a plugin installation system working, _right now_. I was going to try to use ZeroInstall.

Y'all think Stow is worth learning about. I like ZeroInstall because it should take care of package dependencies.

<comment><USER4> I want a 'stow-store'. Something like homebrew for linux. Also the formulas would be written with Python or JSON.

I also long for a deb to stow converted, and Python Package installs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty great. Stow (plus git) is how I'm managing the config files for multiple hosts in my respective home dirs, and the conflict resolution switches are going to be a huge help.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've just been installing applications into ~/base/app_name/app_version using the configure script's --prefix option. Can a Stow user tell me how it is an improvement over my setup?

<comment><USER7> How do you get at the bin directories? I'm assuming you just add them to your path... Stow basically starts out similarly to what you are doing now--you configure and install to ~/base/stow/xxxx (I usually use app_name-app_version for xxxx but there's no rule). Then you use stow to create a symlink tree in ~/base/{bin,lib,share,etc...}. That way the PATH (and MANPATH, INFOPATH, PERL5LIB, etc.) doesn't have to keep growing for each new app you install. I think that is a nice improvement.

Uninstalling (stow -D) runs through the symlink tree and removes anything from that package.

<comment><USER6> Thank you very much, I see the advantage now. Handling PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and the like has been the most annoying part of my setup. It is great to see that Stow can help me out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This sounds like it has similar goals to the Nix package manager. <http://nixos.org/nix/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Does it still link to subdirectories instead of files? That was the reason why I switched to graft long ago.

</comment><comment><USER10> /etc/alternatives competitor?</comment>


Pessimistic pros missed the big rally, and so did many Americans - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-11/u-s-stock-market-wall-street-pros-missed-out-on-the-big-rally <comment><USER2> It seems this rally has now come to a crashing halt! The stock market is absurd right now. Apparently a lot of first-timers are investing via Robinhood. Some will make money, most will lose it all as they all seem to be trading options.

ZeroHedge is a pretty scummy website, but it occassionally has some good stuff: [https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/google-searches-day- tradin...](https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/google-searches-day-trading-and- call-options-explode-record-highs)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some dev culture tricks you have in your company? - <AUTHOR> - How do you maintain teams? - Tech debt? - Motivation? Or any other trick others may not know? <comment><USER2> Socially, the easiest improvement you can make is to banish the word "just" from your vocabulary. It's very easy to fall victim to: in code review, technical discussions, retrospectives. "Why don't we just X instead of Y?" as opposed to "Is there a reason why we X instead of Y?". "Just" leaves a lot of room to come across as condescending or aggressive, to be misunderstood, and more. There are many things you can do to foster a fruitful professional environment, but this change has a huge payoff for the effort made.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm it reminds me of the culture of fostering changes that are wise" in a company, but on the other hand not being arrogant.

I always wrote in a notebook the things that we're weird or off in a new place and then after 3-4 months I would bring the issues that I still saw relevant. That criticism was much more welcomed.</comment></comment>


From PHP to NodeJs - <AUTHOR> https://leemason.co.uk/from-php-to-nodejs/ <comment><USER2> I went to the page and the first thing it did was to do a popover (modal window) asking me to hand over my email address and sign up for a newsletter.

No thank you, I closed the window.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that, its meant to have a 60 second delay before showing up, giving you chance to read my blog and see if the newsletter would be any benefit to you. shoving a signup form in your face as soon as you hit the site was definately not my intention. I apologise for that and the issue has been adressed now.</comment></comment>


Rosetta's big day in the Sun - <AUTHOR> http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Rosetta_s_big_day_in_the_Sun <comment><USER2> I'm glad the ESA is getting its day in the sun (pun intended).

To steal from Joe Biden: 'this is a big fucking deal'. Why? Because, first, we've never gotten this amount of detail from a comet before, and second, because it's _different_.

Being different is good. To a large extent ESA's Galileo is a ripoff/copy of the USA's GPS. But not this. It's not a Mars lander or a flyby of the outer planets, both of which NASA has already done. It's something else. It's new scientific research, which will lead to new discoveries and new theories.

</comment><comment><USER3> Since the sun exposure is going to be decreasing from here on out, does this mean the Philae lander is a fully lost cause?

(I know that the Rosetta team would emphasize that the Philae lander is responsible for only a pretty small part of the overall set of scientific objective)

<comment><USER4> no it is never a "lost cause"!

Philae lander has upto several months before the comet goes out of perceptible solar exposure. During this time, Philae will conduct numerous experiments and relay those data to Rosetta, which in turn to us. Already lots of data has been generated, and upto Philae's operational timeline more will be available. From that data, hopefully in the coming years, scientists will be able to gain significant knowledge of the birth of universe, and most importantly about the origins of life and water.

<comment><USER5> Right, but it hasn't spoken to Rosetta in over 3 weeks: [http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/20/rosetta-and- philae-s...](http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2015/07/20/rosetta-and-philae- status-update/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, 300kg per second of water ejection. Seems like a pretty decent delta V for the comet, which makes me wonder how orbital calculations work at all on these things if they start randomly thrusting in various directions like that.

<comment><USER7> The mass rate doesn't tell you anything without a speed to go with it. I don't know what speeds you'd see here, but at a random guess I'd say it's probably under 10m/s. That gives you a thrust of 3000N if it's all in the same direction, which it surely isn't.

67P is estimated to have a mass of about 1e13kg, so 3000N will accelerate it at 0.3 nanometers/s^2. If it spent a year at this acceleration, the total delta v would be about 1cm/s.

I'm sure some of these numbers are pretty inaccurate, but that would seem to indicate that it's not much of an effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mankind will go to space and stay there, and a vital part of it is to utilize the comets and asteroids there.

In many ways they are much easier to get to and from than moons and planets.

<comment><USER4> IMO it is not because they are easily accessible thats why scientists are interested in them, it is because these comets and asteroids are formed from the very inception of the universe (big bang!) and thus contain critical data related to the origins of complex matter, which leads to life!

<comment><USER9> A minor nitpick. The comets and asteroids are worthy of study, but they weren't formed at the big bang (except in the trivial sense that all matter in the universe came into existence then).

The comets and asteroids in our solar system were created at some point after the solar system accreted out of a molecular gas cloud 4.5 billion years ago. At such they contain lots of evidence about conditions in the primordial solar system. But the universe itself is about 13.5 billion years old and none of the structures in the solar system (including the comets and asteroids themselves) existed at the big bang.

<comment><USER4> right, my bad! my point is that they are the oldest accessible source of information</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A VIM-inspired keyboard only interface for WYSIWYG rich text editor? - <AUTHOR> Hello, I am working on a project that you can think as Typora + Vim keybindings.
Here is a demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97lAMRrAcF4&feature=youtu.be
I have previously posted on reddit/r/vim here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vim/comments/a2kjx9/work_in_progress_rich_text_editing_with/
Do you think there is an audience?
Do you think that it needs to be collaborative and implement branching in itself, or it is better just as an editing interface for Markdown and let Git handle branching/merging in plain text? <comment><USER2> This looks really neat. I would love to download and play around with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a link to the code/implementation?</comment>


Why Most Software Engineers Don't Contribute to Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://devwp.eu/community/why-most-software-engineers-dont-contribute-to-open-source/ <comment><USER2> How about. I'd rather spend time with my daughter than impress idiots I've never met by working for free?

No other profession is expected to work nights and weekends in order to be considered competent.</comment>


Magic Leap's cheapest headsets will cost as much as a high-end phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17010360/magic-leap-rony-abovitz-code-media-interview-pricing-tiers <comment><USER2> So the comments here so far seem to be lamenting the price, which is kind of ironic given the crowd this place draws.

The (possible) price range given is somewhere between $1-2000. Yes that's high but not obscenely so. Infact I'd guess a majority of you spend that on a yearly/bi yearly basis on a certain laptop for its brand merit and half that yearly for the latest phone "upgrade".

Let's face it though, the price isn't going to be an issue for the early adopters and any techie, or "nerd" really worth his salt can see the potential of this tech. That's not to say that this specific device has that potential, after all Magic Leap has been less than forthcoming, they've made some claims and not really backed them up. At the moment, they don't need to. Sure it could be a scheme to suck money from investors and swindle early adopters, but it could just as well be excellent marketing. Either way they've certainly generated a buzz.

They also mentioned it could be a replacement for a phone and why not? Integrate a 4/5G sim and your golden, though I can't see even the most hardcore wearing these things for ~14 hours a day perhaps it could be some sort of external BT connected lightweight minimal device - after all what's a phone? A speaker, a microphone and a cellular connection. That would open up the possibility for the "average" user to get it much the same way they get their $1000 dollar iphone, subsidized at 20-30 a month.

Fact is, we won't know until it's out in the wild and the hands of hackers/developers for 6 months. Fact is that one day this kind of tech will be ubiquitous.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll believe it when they actually ship something. But seriously, the initial target audience for this is "first-wave application developers". The closest competition, Microsoft's Hololens, costs $3k. It shouldn't be priced like a consumer device, and it won't be.

</comment><comment><USER4> "the high cost is justified because over time, a Magic Leap headset can replace "your phones, your televisions, your laptops, your tablets, which add up to thousands of dollars"

Does he even believe this? Even by marketing standards, this is a stretch

<comment><USER5> From what I've read, especially on Karl Guttag's blog, Magic Leap is a sort of running joke. They've pivoted to make something a bit less useful than Hololens, with a patent history that reads like a fever dream. Bullshitting about the price after so many outright lies abou fiber scanning nonsense seems tame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So they want to charge $2000 to $3000 for their AR headset. I think they are getting high off their own dope.

If they are smarter, then they would aim for the $500 to $1000 range.

When the iPad was first announced, all the pundits mocked it. But the reason why it was so successful with consumers, was its $500 entry level price tag.

If they charge $2000 to $3000 for this device, then they are going to just shoot themselves in the head. This thing is dead-on-arrival.

This AR, as "magical" as it might be, will not become mass market at these insanely high prices.

And, there is a reason why people buy televisions. Often times, it is to just have a social experience at home, to share with the family. Everyone can watch the same show together. The Magic Leap AR is not a social device. Even the picture of Shaq modeling it, looks alien and unsocial.

Everyone needs a phone. And the iPhone has taken over the high end segment. And the Androids have taken over the low end segment. But, not everyone needs a Magic Leap AR headset.

Then, Apple will come out with their own AR device for $700, and wipe them out. I'll wait to see what Apple has up their sleeves.

<comment><USER7> This begs the question, will we ever value certain pieces of technology in the same way we value a house, or a car, as a longer term investment that you pay quality for, so you don't have to go back and buy again?

People balk at paying more than $1k for a phone, but most people would assume you're scamming them if you sold them a new car for $5k.

That said, I don't agree with the pricing of this: In an immature market where the difference between a high/low end product isn't discernable, trying to get someone to pay a large amount of money just to bet on it isn't a great idea.

<comment><USER8> > This begs the question, will we ever value certain pieces of technology in > the same way we value a house, or a car, as a longer term investment that > you pay quality for, so you don't have to go back and buy again?

It's only just recently you can buy a computer and not expect to replace it in 2-3 years. Not just by the fact things break, but that everything would have moved far passed you by then.

Obviously it doesn't make sense for people in general to value technology as a long-term investment, when the technology itself isn't even remotely long-term (at the consumer level). But obviously too, when technology stabilizes, and we stop seeing absurd improvements over short units of time, then it'll naturally progress to longer -term value. When you can't sell on dramatically better features, then you'll sell for reliability, consistency and durability.

Or you'll lock it down, strangle/monopolize the market, and add features on your own clock, hopefully postponing the plateau far into the horizon

we'll see

<comment><USER9> Ironically though, equipment that is supposed to last a long time and hasn't progressed that much over the years are lasting shorter. Examples are cars, microwaves, fridges, washing machines, etc. Recent cars for example on average malfunction quicker than ones 20 years ago.

So in that sense, technology that does not progress fast does not necessarily improve reliability

<comment><USER10> You're wrong about cars. They might need more specialized maintenance, but they are much better than they were 20 years ago.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cars-now-last-longer-than- ever-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cars-now-last-longer-than-ever-will- yours/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can someone explain the console for me? - <AUTHOR>

Just some quick questions google hasn't been able to answer. i'm in doubt as to which language does the console use. I've heard it's Bash. Sometimes Shell. Sometimes Unix. Is it one of them? All three?<p>Also, does Mac and Windows and Linux use the same console language? That is to say, if you input the same commands in the console of the three OS, will they output the same?
By console i mean the console.app in Mac, and the little black screen in Windows that lets you type (cd, ls, etc) Thanks <comment><USER2> Okay, I'll give this a shot.

"Unix" is an _operating system_ that came out of Bell Labs long ago. It has had many imitators, any of which might be loosely called "Unix". The imitators include the various flavors of Linux. MacOS X has one buried inside it. Windows is something rather different.

The program that runs in a console window is called a "shell". So a "shell" is a _kind of program_. Modern shells include lots of fancy functionality, which varies from one shell to another. But their basic operation is the same: type the name of a program, and the program gets executed.

Most shells from the Unix tradition have names ending in "sh" (guess why). Bash is one of these. Other popular shells include zsh, ksh, and tcsh. Bash is by far the most popular these days. It is the default shell run by console.app in MacOS X. It is also the default shell in many Linux distributions.

Windows, as usual, is different.

So, typing the same commands into a shell in Linux vs. MacOS will likely get you similar results. Differences might be due to configuration that differs from one system to another, and programs that are installed on one system, but not on another. Typing these same commands on Windows will probably get you completely different results.

As for "language": we usually don't use this term when referring to directly typed console commands. Most modern shells do include a programming language whose syntax is based on the command-prompt syntax. So a shell doubles as an interpreter for its built-in language.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you'll have more luck if you start researching "Terminal Emulators" instead of the more generic, "consoles".

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

Your confusions are well-founded. This is a very vast topic.</comment>


Planck telescope reveals ancient cosmic light - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10501154.stm <comment><USER2> Too bad our galaxy occludes most part of the picture. I'd like to see that image distorted in a way that better exposes how sky looks when looking directly up and down from galaxy plane.</comment>


Comcast plus Time Warner Cable: Together isn't better - <AUTHOR> http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/08/comcast-time-warner-cable-together-is-not-better/index.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> While I can agree with the points laid out here (underneath the silly video), I can't say that forcefully stopping the merger does much good. Nor does requiring them to ask permission from the FCC to do so. You've got two bad companies that get low ratings, but no one can enter the market and compete with them on the local level because of the regulation that keeps out the small guys in the first place.

Merger: -1 + -1 = -2 No Merger: -1 OR -1 = -1

Um... I guess, but where's my +'s at? This seems to me to be pointing the finger in the wrong direction.</comment>


Beautiful Code, Compelling Evidence [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.renci.org/wp-content/pub/tutorials/BeautifulCode.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> A note - this is _not_ by me. I did not write this. I just found it by accident, and it looks really interesting.</comment>


Cyberprivacy startup Anonyome Labs raises $20.4M for secure messaging and payments - <AUTHOR> https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/08/28/cyber-privacy-startup-anonyome-labs-raises-20-4m-secure-messaging-payments/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original title: _Cyberprivacy startup Anonyome Labs raises $20.4M for secure messaging and payments_ (2 characters too long)

Techmeme summary: _Cyberprivacy platform startup Anonyome Labs raises $20.4M Series B, with Symantec CEO Greg Clark and Lifelock founder Todd Davis among investors_

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone here used any of their (Anonyome Labs) products? [https://anonyome.com/](https://anonyome.com/)</comment>


Interpolique: A new mechanism for preventing string injections - <AUTHOR> http://recursion.com/interpolique.html

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised this didn't get more interest at HN, it's highly germane to our lives. I have a few questions about it, including "what about non-string datatypes in the DB?"</comment>


Nuke Map: Interactive Nuclear Bomb Map - <AUTHOR> https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/ <comment><USER2> I spent a couple days obsessed with this shortly after moving to Seattle (from small town Midwest) a few months ago.

Wouldn't mind having something similar for impending mega-earthquakes and tsunamis.

Wait, why did I move here? Oh, I guess I got sold on the rain and the high cost of living. :)

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth, the Midwest would be a prime target during a nuclear war due to its ICBM silos. There aren't many places far away from both population centers and military targets that could be considered safe. Maybe New Zealand.

<comment><USER4> I live in Berlin. Used to be targeted by dozens if not over a hundred nukes. Bonus: from _both_ sides.

So over quickly, rather than wasting away from fallout, nuclear winter and the complete and total collapse of civilization.

<comment><USER5> Exactly.

Would I like to be nuked? No.

Would I like to live out The Road or Mad Max (depending on your preference of atmosphere)? Doubly no.

<comment> blubb-fish The cynical truth, though, is that faced with that decision you'd still choose the second option.

<comment><USER4> Nope, I really wouldn't. I am highly pain-averse. And the point of being targeted by 50+ nukes is that I wouldn't even have to make that choice :-)

<comment><USER6> Weird, I've found a situation where my insane pain tolerance could help me. (From migraines)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm really glad this one keeps making the rounds. Of course this is not even close to the first time this has been posted but I always continue going back to it after all these years.

</comment><comment><USER8> Question: If I understand this correctly, it means all one would have to do is move 30-60 mins away from the center of a suspected target city to massively increase one's chances of surviving an attack on said city?

(From 20mt NK strike, for example)

<comment><USER9> Yes - unless there are ground bursts generating fall out, and the wind is blowing in your direction.

The only way to survive fall out is to stay in a shelter with good shielding for an absolute minimum of two weeks. In an all-out war in which most cities are attacked, that could easily extend to months, or even a year.

Unless you have a Geiger counter or dosimeter you won't realise you've been irradiated, and it can take two to four weeks for a fatal dose to kill you.

For the first part of that you may well feel absolutely fine.

<comment><USER10> Considering that there is almost zero public shelters anywhere in the western world nowadays, if a nuke goes off nearby I'd say it's a good bet you're dead even if you survive the blast.

<comment><USER11> why would you need public shelter? i have relatively big cellar in basement of my apartment building where I could squeeze my family, so does my mother, while my father's cellar is like 4x5m, he could stay there with many people

only when I think of my sister who built house without basement or same goes for cousin, I guess they don't stand much chance

we really need remake of Threads

<comment><USER10> Well, for starters, I currently live in the UK and I don't know anyone who lives in a building with a basement. They are just not very common here. And second of all - even if you do have a basement - do you have any supplies in there? Air filters? Fresh water? It's cool for a day or two, but if you have to stay there for two weeks then it's just not good enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Look like this site has been nuked, oh the irony :(

<comment><USER13> Ahem. Hacker Nuked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The only winning move is not to play. Boom!

</comment><comment><USER15> It's good for driving the point that usually you want _lots of small nukes_ , not _a few big ones_ for _maximum damage._

Oh, and yeah, there's also the _" surface detonation for maximum mayhem"_ lesson to be learned.

Highly educational!

<comment><USER16> I thought you wanted to detonate a bit above the surface to spread out the shock waves, explosion, and not "waste" energy going into the ground?

<comment><USER17> AFAIK, detonating at altitude is done for fallout reasons. Detonating at the ground would make the fallout much worse.

<comment><USER18> Airbursts are generally used to maximise the area damaged at the cost of peak damage - so for soft targets like cities. Ground bursts would be used for hard targets (deep bunkers, missile silos) that are relatively small but hard to kill. I suspect in wartime fall-out wouldn't be a major factor in planning all out attacks whereas it was a big factor in atmospheric testing.

<comment><USER19> I also wonder how dangerous fallout was considered to be, in the long run. I have the impression that up into the late 60s fallout was considered dangerous in the short term but not after say a year.

<comment><USER18> There are rules of thumb like the 7:10 rule:

[https://emilms.fema.gov/IS3/FEMA_IS/is03/REM0504050.htm](https://emilms.fema.gov/IS3/FEMA_IS/is03/REM0504050.htm)

Long term effects are tricky because of biological processes concentrating some elements (I think mainly calcium, iodine).

Of course, if you want to get _really_ nasty you can salt your bombs with appropriate elements (notably cobalt) that have long lived nasty isotopes:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author is currently working on a sequel/companion to NUKEMAP: MISSILEMAP.

</comment><comment><USER21> Truly horrifying

</comment><comment><USER22> It's a nice page - I used to use it to illustrate the power of the various weapons in an intro to international politics class I taught. The Tsar Bomba was always a hit with the more morbid students.

</comment><comment><USER11> just checked it on Beijing where I used to live and it seem only tourist city center would be eliminated with regular weapons, while most of the population outside would be untouched, I was surprised how weak is supposed to be nuclear bomb, I remembered always it was like 10-20km deadly and 50km run away zone, but maybe I am confusing it with nuclear power plant

</comment><comment><USER23> After recent news, I kind of miss Guam in the preset list.

</comment><comment><USER24> Morbid

</comment><comment><USER25> does this site block NK access, I can see Kim Jong Un using this to plan his next move.

<comment><USER26> does this site block US access, I can see Dolan Trump using this to plan his next move.

<comment><USER27> At least Harry Truman can't get to it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ship of Theseus - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm wondering how this applies to software. If the code and design changes, it's still the same software. If the function changes, can it still be the same? Are there any examples of this?</comment>


Cloud Billing for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.killingbilling.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you think of this idea: developing billing plans as functional code (sets of functions), managing them in Git (changes, versions, effective dates) as any source code, treating stored account data as immutable results of transactions (making account data available for any given moment)?</comment>


Ask HN: 2020 Summer Reading List? - <AUTHOR> Hackernews used to have an yearly post about this! Wanted to start it again.
Question: Have you read something interesting recently?
I read the three body problem trilogy earlier this year. It was amazing. Being locked down, the book was a portal to the universe.
2018 version: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17513576 <comment><USER2> Survive - The Economic Collapse (and I'm half joking here)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sea of Rust, The Electric State</comment>


Dave Shen: What I've Learned in Angel Investing - <AUTHOR> http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/what_ive_learned_in_angel_investing_march_2009.shtml <comment><USER3> That was a very good read whether you are trying to be an investor or not. Really laid things out and lets you know where investors are coming from.

<comment><USER4> Also goods tips here to extract for entrepreneurs looking to raise angel money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Be Wary of Entrepreneurs Who are Building for Businesses They Have No > Experience In

Does anyone have any advice on this? What if you want to do (for example) a startup in music, but don't come from a music background. Can you mitigate this point by having a few advisors and research to back your project up? Do you _need_ a founder with direct experience in it?

We were of the opinion that we're coming from _outside_ the box is a great thing - we know whats broken and how we'd fix it, whereas if you grew up in the industry you might not be aware of it.

<comment><USER6> I'll comment on this as I wrote the post...

Coming outside the box is a great thing. If you're in a startup versus a big corporation, you're already enabled to work outside the box versus typically being stifled. My issue is that I've met entire teams who had, upon further conversation, skewed or incorrect impressions on how an industry worked. I think this is dangerous and will cause extra "bobbing and weaving" in their strategy, which costs them in time and money: money that an early stage startup doesn't have much of.

So I look at this as a probability game: you don't want to lower the odds of success by not really knowing how an industry works but raise it. Some possible solutions are having advisors and being open to research, but I've also seen teams who didn't have resident founders not really act on advice or research. It's much better to have a founder who has direct experience with that industry to be a daily, trusted member of the team pushing in the right direction constantly BUT you have to not be discouraged by the way an industry currently operates; you must have belief, focus, and drive to push disruption to change the rules of the industry you're attacking. What often happens with resident industry experts is that the team gets discouraged by all the barriers - to me this is the killer of an idea, not the knowledge.

Can you be a success without having a founder from the industry? Sure - <USER2> at Paypal who defied normal conventions of banking, amongst other really big examples of disruption. Let's just say there are many factors that drive success and that being disruptive is only one. Again, it's a probability game and you want to load the odds in your favor for success, not lower them...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I attended AngelConf too and it was very instructive. Both for entrepreneurs and for budding angels.

The only thing missing was some kind of template, or recipe for becoming an angel. We heard from 10+ amazing current angels, so you can sort of figure out what the rules and best practices are.

But it didn't tell you: if you want to become an angel today, do X (or join X). That's the question I was hoping to answer at AngelConf.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've met him - he's a sharp guy.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've heard good things about David, so he's definitely done a good job of branding himself as a solid angel.</comment>


Teen Discovers Lost Maya City Using Ancient Star Maps - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/teen-discovers-lost-maya-city-using-ancient-star-maps-1775735999 <comment><USER2> That is an amazing discovery. And brilliant research on his part. I hope for his part that he gets to go on an expedition to explore the city.

The article says he is 15 but in the photos he looks 12 years old.</comment>


Side project, a YouTube Video Mixer - <AUTHOR>

I've been relentlessly coding for about a year and a half and I decided to take a 4 day break and.. ha! code some more, but this time what I consider leisure coding. I was tired to switching between windows when using YouTube to cheaply DJ at parties so this week I have put together a YouTube video mixer and playlist creator using the YouTube API and some jQuery magic. May be you find it useful too so here is the link http://ibizaah.com. And now back to coding.. is only 1:38am! Thanks. <comment><USER2> Nice idea and well executed. Quite a bit of fun. Maybe integrated an option to "show related videos in the other channel search"?

I would recommend using the HQ videos though for better audio (they do have higher bitrate if I recall correctly). edit: You just did? Newly loaded videos are HQ now, nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I hope you or your friends find it useful one day. I like your suggestion of recommended videos to load automatically on the opposite channel search.. I am going to check how to do that with the YouTube API. Thx!</comment></comment>


The Shady Cryptocurrency Boom on the Post-Soviet Frontier - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/cryptocurrency-boom-post-soviet-frontier/ <comment><AUTHOR> _In June 2017, Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-Canadian whiz kid developer of the Ethereum cryptocurrency platform, reportedly managed to convince Putin of blockchain's charms during a chance meeting at a conference. Immediately, analysts told Vice, the Russian state development and central banks both launched blockchain projects._</comment>


Ask HN: Ideas for small apps - <AUTHOR>

Does anybody have ideas for apps or services they'd like to see created, especially smaller ones?
Most of my ideas right now have longer development cycles (an example would be something on the scale of Thyme, discussed here yesterday, which had a six-month beta alone).
Here's one: a quiz-builder for tech hiring. Would anybody find that useful? Basically the app would make it easy to create job quizzes, notify candidates and track results.
Anything you want to see built? <comment><USER4> I posted an idea in this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848766>

quoting myself: ''' Hey, this isn't my idea but I wish someone would do it. Only useful to programmers or web developers, but hey..

A little tray-app (or something) that works like this: - You select text representing a color in a text editor (i.e. something like #ff00ff, (1.0,0.0,1.0), (255,0,255) etc.. - You hit the tray app or some magic key combination and it sends a Copy message to the window, pops up a nice modern color editor, you edit the color, then you hit "Apply" and it sends a paste message with the new color formatted in the same way as the old one.

This would allow gui color editing in any text field with almost any program, and sharing of palettes between programs that use different representations.

This is totally doable in X11 or Windows. '''

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I probably should have said "Web apps."

This reminds me, there's an easy way to add hexadecimal color codes to the standard OS X color picker (not the same idea as yours, just reminded me):

<http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the quiz builder, I think brainbench is commonly used for this - <USER2> good exams is a difficult problem.

I personally think contributions to existing open source is the best idea for small projects. imho most apps that are started from scratch require a while to get really useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's a good point. The idea was for groups with custom questionnaires, such as smaller companies, but I was concerned that canned tests wouldn't be offered and it's possible that potential users would prefer to have them.

What I'd really like to do is create a couple of small but useful apps that at worst could be used as portfolio pieces, as I need to find some freelance work and most of my recent work is walled up inside organizations (another reason I never want to have to return to the enterprise world as a FTE).

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I am in a similar position. Are you working on any application of your own? I am, so most of my effort goes towards that. I am interested in the questionairre idea as well and in fact I have a polling piece of code I am working up for my portfolio right now. I just keep the portfolio stuff separate from my main work - I don't want to address issues like scalability, security, cost of servers on something that I primarily want to use as a portfolio piece. I'm contemplating something open source as a better example than some pseudo-open portfolio piece that I just use to demonstrate some basic techniques.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds familiar. I've been working on an app for a couple of months but am putting it on hold because my blog posts and tweets haven't generated any preliminary interest, AdWords rates in the category are too high and the development life cycle for the product is too long.

Meanwhile I need to start bringing in some income so I'm hoping to find consulting work. So I'll be thinking about some more ideas (quickly, because there's not much time).

Depending on the platform Heroku's Blossom plan might be a good hosting option for a portfolio app.

<comment><USER5> I don't think anybody has much interest in random people talking about software that hasn't been written yet. I barely keep up with sites that are already up and I'm pretty interested in the space... Where are you looking for the contracting work? elance/odesk/etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you used those successfully?

I got a good client off Guru in 2000 but that was a long time ago and I think I just got lucky.

<comment><USER5> Nope, but others have recommended them to me. I haven't even signed up yet - <USER3> was just curious because I will likely have to look for that kind of work sometime relatively soon.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Regexly – WYSIWYG Regex Playground for JavaScripters - <AUTHOR> https://regexly.chipto.io <comment><USER2> Cute tool. I like the way you highlight the 'matched' section on the textarea. Couldn't you have done it all in a codepen ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for positive words.

This couldn't have been done on codepen for two reasons, one is that I use service workers for offline capability (try disabling wi-fi) and service workers have strict requirements of domain (cross-origin policy)/host. And second is just professionalism, I think it shows visiters that I'm serious and careful about my stuff.</comment></comment>


What it means when you get an "expired link" when submitting an application - <AUTHOR>

It means you ignored the instructions at the top of the form about clicking on update regularly to save your work.  We put this in bold face and people still ignore it. You should click on update as regularly as you'd save a file when editing it: every few minutes. <comment><USER2> Hi Paul,

Did you ever read Joel Spolsky's guide for User Interface Design? Users don't read anything. You need to design your UI with that in mind.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062....](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/uibook/chapters/fog0000000062.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe me, I know this is true for users in general. But I'd hoped it didn't extend to people who applied to YC.

<comment><USER3> Of course there is more at stake for them which should make them more careful. But whether someone reads the text in the UI is not in general a measure of cluefulness. In fact smart people may be even less willing to read anything because they assume they don't need to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Most environments for writing text have an autosave. There's a PeriodicalExecuter, in Prototype, where you can run a javascript command every n seconds, so you could do a form.submit every 5 minutes or so, to avoid the timeout issue, if this starts becoming major.

</comment><comment><USER5> I just find out we could be late on submission, We find out Y-combinator 3 days ago.

I think we submit an hour late, Made a mistake calculating the time zone from Sydney. Hopefully our application will be considered.

Yours.

<comment><USER6> I hope you aren't pitching a timezone app.

<comment><USER7> The application is the first of a kind. It violates causality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I applied for the last summer funding round, I typed up most answers in emacs.

</comment><comment><USER9> It means you didn't take the application all that serious. I'm sorry, but it really wasn't that hard to scroll all the way down and press update.

<comment><USER7> You're not even thinking about it correctly. The question wasn't whether or not it was hard, it was whether or not people -- good people -- actually did it.

I would hope that at least some people were thinking harder about world domination than about whether or not they needed to scroll down and update. Since I've been personally burned by forgetful webpages before, I wrote everything in a text-file. In the process of copying, pasting, proof-reading and reformatting, I just barely tipped over the timelimit, however long it was. Argh. (Luckily, the back button wasn't so forgetful as in, say, facebook.)

An investment firm that would turn down an otherwise great opportunity to make money due to some small mistake like that is making a mistake.

<comment><USER9> I see what your say saying, but essential you knew the information you were entering was very important to you, that you wanted it saved. You chose to do it offline. The functionality was built in from the start, so I chose to use it.

Regardless, Cheers and good luck with your application.</comment></comment></comment>


Utilize JavaScript to build your integrations in minutes - <AUTHOR> https://account.apigum.com/integration-details?guest=test-drive <comment><AUTHOR> Connect your customers to Twilio, SendGrid, Shopify, Stripe, Freshdesk, Zoho, PipeDrive and others.</comment>


Website rents female coplayers to lonely gamers - <AUTHOR> http://www.aolnews.com/tech/article/website-gamecrush-sells-female-companionship-to-lonely-gamers/19653951

<comment><USER2> I don't see how this is different from any other webcam prostitution racket, apart from the fact that it's ostensibly not about sex (which I doubt).</comment>


Show HN: Amp – A text editor for your terminal, written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://amp.rs/launch <comment><USER2> >> Written in Rust, a modern, low-level, high-performance language without garbage collection.

"safe" is missing.

<comment><USER3> The "high performance" claim is misleading, when there are languages like C.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having some screenshots might be nice.

<comment><USER5> a screenshot shows up on desktop, but not on mobile, it seems.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. The site is responsive, and it was tricky to fit something properly onto a smaller width device. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For another small rust text editor project see Iota: [https://github.com/gchp/iota](https://github.com/gchp/iota)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm already comfortable with Vim. Is there anything in Amp that might tempt me to switch?

</comment><comment><USER8> >inspired by Vi/Vim

Ok. I'm interested!</comment>


Mono Project: Next Steps - <AUTHOR> http://lists.ximian.com/pipermail/mono-list/2011-July/047311.html

<comment><USER2> Why hasn't MSFT hired this entire team yet? They want the .Net platform to be pushed as far out as possible and Mono is a great way to do that. Plus it'll give MSFT +1 Open Source.

<comment><USER3> Please God never let this happen - look at IronRuby to see what happens when MSFT hires an open source team.

<comment><USER4> > look at IronRuby

There's now a working implementation of Ruby on Windows. Am i missing something?

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's dead now.

<comment><USER4> Source? A new release came out a few months ago and I don't see anything on the site saying it's dead.

<comment><USER6> [http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2010/08/start-spreading- news...](http://blog.jimmy.schementi.com/2010/08/start-spreading-news-future- of-jimmy.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Reached Out to Microsoft President Brad Smith – Bad for Sandberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-brad-smith-bad-sign-sheryl-sandberg-2018-12 <comment><USER2> Very different roles. Brad Smith is MSFT's chief legal officer. Sandberg is the COO which probably includes some legal given Facebook's recent challenges, but she also built and oversees their advertising engine (this is why they brought her in from Google). Zuck probably wanted some legal advice and wanted to hire him as similar role in FB.

</comment><comment><USER3> the old "want to spend time with my family" line?</comment>


How to build cross-platform mobile apps with JSON - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform-mobile-apps-using-nothing-more-than-a-json-markup-f493abec1873#.318bp8pum <comment><USER2> JSON is the new XML. Except XML was actually designed to have semantics, while similar attempts in JSON are just hacks.

In general, JavaScript is becoming the new J2EE. Ambitious ideas, clueless implementations, insane complexity.

<comment><USER3> 1\. OP article has nothing to do with JavaScript.

2\. It's not like the JS community is anti-XML, most JS libs/frameworks still use HTML/XML markup for rendering.

3\. The JS community is vast and diverse - generalisations around 'clueless implementations, insane complexity' don't make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER4> >It's not like the JS community is anti-XML, most JS libs/frameworks still use HTML/XML markup for rendering.

Its pretty anti-XML outside of node. Pure-js solutions for xml are not as great as built in features other languages provide, while JS only natively does JSON.

>generalisations around 'clueless implementations, insane complexity' don't make a lot of sense.

When you are creating languages that compile to JS and adding entire markup ontop of it along with literally hundreds of dependencies in any average project, JS has plenty of insane complexity.

<comment><USER5> > When you are creating languages that compile to JS and adding entire markup > ontop of it along with literally hundreds of dependencies in any average > project, JS has plenty of insane complexity.

Like parent said, this project doesn't compile to JS. It's simply a JSON to native mapping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Typo in title. Should read "How to _build_ mobile apps in JSON." And drop the "Yes, JSON" bit.

<comment><USER7> Not sure why this was downvoted. The click-baity "Yes, JSON" is really annoying and should be removed.

More generally, the title should be corrected to the actual title, which is almost fine:

"How to build cross-platform mobile apps using nothing more than a JSON markup"

Maybe remove the click-baity "nothing more than" part, but other than that, the original title is much better than the submission title.

</comment></comment><comment> aaron-santos So why JSON of all things? When I reached the "write a full declarative program in JSON" section I was internally screaming "but s-expressions!"

<comment><USER8> Same thinking, I expect, that gave us XSLT.

<comment><USER9> XSLT was proposed as a limited transformation language, and actually (still) does a very good job of that. And since we're doomed to repeat the past we now see various XSLT-ish languages being developed for JSON/YAML/etc, relearning all the edge cases that drove XSLT into its current form.

On the other hand, students of the past will notice that Jsonette looks awfully similar to Ant build files, which sucked. JSON/XML/YAML is a horrible way to construct general-purpose programs. Computing languages exist for a reason.

<comment><USER8> I spent a lot of time with Ant and was pretty good at it because I understood the tragically backward 'first writer wins' decision they made and had an elaborate set of techniques to work around it. That decision and the attempt to keep all conditional behavior entirely out of the build process wounded it gravely. The fact that they kept making compatibility breaking changes in minor version numbers was the genesis of my dim view of Jakarta projects. Once I started noticing the pattern I couldn't stop.

I think we are finally starting to accept that Turing-complete data is a bug, despite what the Lisp people have been saying for 50 years, and is not a feature on the Internet. Microsoft served as the poster child in the 90's.

The tension, I strongly believe, comes during debugging. When you are trying to figure out why the data doesn't look right, the less the code resembles the data being emitted, the harder it is to locate the source of the error. Templating engines get pretty close to addressing that concern, in ways that transforms or generators don't. So we keep trying to invent a better one. But once you let a little logic in, everybody wants all the logic.

Ant found the Uncanny Valley, in a way that few other tools have managed. I think I'm okay with your implication that it was actually worse than XSLT, which is saying a lot.

[edit] Ant is also the reason I shift uncomfortably whenever someone announces proudly that a tool was 'designed and implemented on a plane trip'. I'd rather have code you wrote when drunk than code you made while stuffed in a sardine can, subjected to noise levels that OSHA would have issues with, and suffering from altitude sickness. You literally designed this while your brain wasn't getting enough oxygen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-inner-json- effect](http://thedailywtf.com/articles/the-inner-json-effect)

</comment><comment><USER11> That's nothing. I can write a chess engine using nothing more than the Latin alphabet, Arabic numerals, and a couple punctuation characters. All you have to do is compose these building blocks in the right way, and gcc will take care of the rest.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've seen so many projects like this over the years that claim that they're the one that will allow for true cross platform app development, and they've developed a simple abstraction for doing so.

I've never seen any succeed at anything more than the most basic apps.

I put more stock in projects like Xamarin or MOE (and even they aren't perfect).

<comment><USER13> I understand the sentiment, which is why I approached Jasonette with some curiosity mixed with scepticism... which I quickly turned into obsession!

The platform is incredible and I've been able to build a complex app in no time at all. Give it a try, you'll be surprised. I'm in the Slack room too if you need trouble shooting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is made by the guy who made TextEthan.

direct link: [http://jasonette.com](http://jasonette.com)

</comment><comment><USER15> A heads up for anyone wondering if this can do anything "real" on the phone (such as, you know, take a picture or access the memory card):

[https://forum.jasonette.com/t/media-in-android- port/79/2](https://forum.jasonette.com/t/media-in-android-port/79/2)

Short answer: _Sort of_ (on iOS) and _No, not yet_ (on Android)

</comment><comment><USER16> The framework and approach described might be useful in some cases, but... you still need to understand CSS, HTML, and... pretty much everything about webfrontendism to meaningfully design and "build" such an app, of course (even if you do manage to cram all that metadata into a single JSON file).

So it's a bullshit title, basically.

</comment><comment><USER17> If it can be done in JSON it can also be done in YAML.

I pick YAML.

<comment><USER18> Have you read the specs for both? You should read the JSON spec. It will take you ten minutes. The YAML spec ([http://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html](http://yaml.org/spec/1.2/spec.html)) may take you a little longer. . .

<comment><USER17> S-expressions will take you ten seconds still nobody uses them. YAML is made to simplify the lives of the reader and the writer, not the parser. Let the parser suffer, let the coder rejoice. You pick your own level of suffering, I pick mine. Deal?

<comment><USER5> What language you use doesn't really matter much when you can easily transform one into another. I think that's exactly the case with JSON and YAML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> But why ? What does it solve ? This is xml xslt alk over again.</comment>


OS jitter analysis for the masses - <AUTHOR> https://bitcharmer.blogspot.com/ <comment><USER2> Hey, W, fancy meeting you here!

Rgds

Damon

<comment><AUTHOR> The world of The Geek is claustrophobic, no? Not surprised to see you here too. Also, hope you will find this material entertaining.

<comment><USER2> Ha! I care about real-time and jitter too (nice article, BTW), but for rather slower CPUs these days, possibly orders of magnitude away from what you care about!

Rgds

Damon</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is C# developer to electrical engineer a vertical or horizontal move? - <AUTHOR> I've been a C# dev for long enough that I feel like I've plateued.
Meanwhile Im in love with microchips like the esp8266. I see dirt cheap intelligent single purpose devices opening up a lot of new opportunities.
But how do you compare a good C# developer to an electrical engineer? Would it be  a step up or just a step sideways?
When I say electrical engineer what I mean is the person who designs electrical systems on PCBs using software like Autodesk Eagle. <comment><USER2> First thing, before anything else, buy the new version of "The Art of Electronics" and read it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll keep that in mind because I actually prefer learning from books. What's really interesting is that the rules of the system come from nature itself. So by knowing how a computer system works from the point at which its components interact with the physical world to how the software works would give you some kind of technical mastery that has to be good for something.

<comment><USER2> It's called "The Art..." for a reason, it should maybe called "The Black Art..." \- robustness of the kind required for real world use by arbitrary punters is surprisingly hard to achieve, there are lots of tricks and traps that you need to become aware of.</comment></comment></comment>


What Web-Scraping community can you recommend? - <AUTHOR> Super passionate about it. Soaked up several books. Curious about your favorite scrape-community, group, blog, website.<p>What can you recommend? I already checked out black-hat-world and searched a lot on HN. Couldn't find any Twitter influencer. <comment><USER2> I would love to see one for Outwit Hub... There is this one I know about: Data Miner user community - [https://www.facebook.com/groups/1728774897362992/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/1728774897362992/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know if such community exists, but it could be really fun to have weekly scraping challenges and have the possibility to compare them to other's solutions.</comment>