Launch HN: DevFlight (YC W19) – Helping open-source maintainers make money - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
We're Victor and Tony, founders of DevFlight (https://devflight.com). We help open-source maintainers make money. Think of us as agents for open-source maintainers.
We met last year through the Indie Hackers community. It's one of the luckiest things that's ever happened to us. We clicked immediately. It became clear we share an obsession with building things to make developers' lives easier. We began working on small developer-centric projects together.
We started DevFlight after recognizing maintainers are the most underserved developers. They provide immense value and get little in return. We've spoken with many maintainers who've told us the current open-source development model is unsustainable for them. Their projects often end up being a second full-time job without pay. Some have to stop supporting their projects altogether due to a lack of resources.
It's time to start paying maintainers well for their work. Making open-source development sustainable will benefit everyone in the long-term. Our vision is to make it possible for maintainers to receive a stable income that accurately reflects the value they bring to companies. We're accomplishing this by connecting maintainers with companies who will pay them.
If you're a maintainer, apply now on our website to join the waitlist. We're currently working with a small group of maintainers from popular projects. We'll gradually expand this group. Shoot us an email to learn more. We'd love to chat with you.
We aim to make the process of hiring maintainers dead simple for companies. We communicate when maintainers are available and what types of work they can provide. If your company is interested in learning more, please reach out to us.
Companies are paying for things like priority email and on-demand support from maintainers, feature request prioritization, continued development of the project, faster bug fixes, and guaranteed project stability. This is not an exhaustive list.
We take 10% from every contract we negotiate. We're aware the contract model doesn't work for everyone. We're exploring other revenue models based on what's best for our maintainer network. We'd be particularly interested in hearing any ideas about this from the HN community.
This is a difficult problem to solve, because it's fundamentally more of a human problem than a software one. Companies often aren't aware of all the open-source software they're dependent on. Many also have complex purchasing requirements and no clear understanding of how their company can directly benefit from paying maintainers. Solving this problem requires better communication, more transparency, and new systems.
We know the HN community has a wealth of experience and knowledge on this topic. We're excited to listen to any thoughts and experiences you're willing to share with us. We want to continue to learn and evaluate how we're approaching this problem, so fire away!
Victor and Tony <comment><USER3> I really like this idea.

I'm looking for new opportunities in the market and one of the things that I would really love to do is work 100% of my time with opensource projects (as I had in the past until management decided to make my main repository private - one of the reasons why I'm thinking about moving forward) and I really believe there is space for donation-based systems to grow because most I have seen so far seems good enough but something important should be missing because I don't see too many projects getting donations and many times the total amount is just barely enough for going to a nice restaurant once a week.

Maybe something better integrated with GitHub and someone else would be responsible for reaching out people who benefits from the project to ask for donations would work out better.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Companies often aren't aware of all the open-source software they're dependent on".

Gitlinks ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdaQE6FpM_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdaQE6FpM_Q)) is an acquired startup that tackled that problem by identifying open-source projects that a company relied on and auditing the code to find security vulnerabilities. Might be worth it to get in touch as I think their technology could be helpful to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll definitely check them out. Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone interested in the difficulty in maintaining huge OSS projects, I found this episode of ShopTalkShow with Henry Zhu (maintainer of Babel.js) fascinating:

[https://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/344/](https://shoptalkshow.com/episodes/344/)

One guy maintaining code that powers tons of development workflows, funded completely on donations. He spends much of the show wondering out loud just how the heck he's going to make it work!

<comment><USER6> Very fascinating, I will definitely listen to this. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It looks like DevFlight's focus is on identifying active revenue streams for maintainers, based on whatever aspects the maintainer is flexible in commercializing (priority support, feature requests, etc). That's an awesome way to help create revenue without splitting the maintainers' attention between sales and the project.

A tangentially related idea I've had for helping fund OSS is offering a service that generates a passive revenue stream for projects via merchandise/swag sales. Essentially, the project gives you a license to use their IP (logos, slogans, trademarks, etc) for use on merchandise, then you operate an online store that provides branded merchandise for the project and provide a royalty back to the project based on a percentage of profit.

It can be as passive as the maintainers want, other than (potentially) creating a CNAME to the online store and adding a link to their website. All of the operational aspects of running an online store are completely abstracted from the maintainer, and they just get a periodic royalty payment. Or as active as they want, if the maintainers want to take part in designing (or approving) the merchandise, promoting it, etc.

The passive version also works perfectly for 501(c)3 non-profits, as the royalty payments would qualify as an exception to the "unrelated business income" rules and be considered tax-exempt revenue[1].

The size of the revenue stream is pretty proportional to the popularity of your project, so hidden projects with lots of indirect users would likely only generate a modest amount of revenue. But projects with a lot of direct users/site traffic or an engaged/passionate community would likely be a hit, from individuals buying stuff directly to manager's buying swag for their team.

If there are any project maintainers that would be interested in exploring the idea, please reach out (email in profile)! I can cover the execution side of things, and would love the chance to validate the model.

[1] Based on a naive reading of [https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs- pdf/p598.pdf](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p598.pdf)

<comment><USER8> I also like that DevFlight works with individual maintainers, rather than with projects. Many prolific maintainers work with several projects. They may not have created any of those projects, and they may not run them either. When the spotlight is on the project (and by extension the founders of "top dogs" of that project), those valuable maintainers get ignored. I'm glad DevFlight is focusing on the individual.

<comment><USER7> I don't disagree that finding ways for prolific open source contributors to be able to monetize their expertise is incredibly valuable, but I'm not sure if that's actually DevFlight's focus.

Their website copy focuses on "the maintainer's" project, and DevFlight's comments on this post repeatedly reference leveraging any community channels the maintainer created (such as social media and Slack) for outreach. As well, the example list of projects they listed above has a presumption of authority/control over the project or else they don't make as much sense - <USER2> can't guarantee things like project stability or prioritize features without having some presumption of authority over the project to back it.

While DevFlight is focusing on the individual, from what I can tell it's specifically on individuals that are project _maintainers_ , and not simply prolific _contributors_. From a corporate standpoint, those are two vastly different sales pitches. If the _maintainer_ of the project commits to prioritizing feature requests or stability of the project, then they have the actual authority/capacity to follow through on that commitment. A prolific _contributor_ might have the expertise and familiarity with the project to make those commitments, but if the maintainers have other ideas, the contributor would have no resolution other than to fork the project to maintain their commitment. Then the company is operating off of a custom fork of the project, maintained by a single person and not as battle tested as the official project, which may or may not have to deviate further away from the official project over time depending on what the contributor committed to vs. where the official project is going.

Companies hire third parties to customize, integrate, and support software all the time. And a prolific contributor to a project is a really good individual to choose for that type of work. The conversion rate for cold selling those services via outbound lead generation, without the weight of someone who can speak authoritatively on behalf of the project, will be significantly lower though.

Hopefully Victor or Tony can chime in and provide some clarification on who their target audience is. :)

<comment><USER6> Great question. At this point, we're focused on partnering with core maintainers of a project. As you've stated, these are the individuals who have control over what gets implemented in a project and ensuring project stability. However, we are also exploring ways to get expert contributors involved in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great business model, great cause. I really hope you get successful.

I still think GitHub should have a bounty program.

OpenSource has an unusually large impact on the world. Let's pay people great money to have that impact.

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you have an idea about the size of your target market?

What are the project requirements or qualifications necessary to sign up?

What's the expected input from the developer/maintainer?

How much money are maintainers expected to make?

Also, what exactly does DevFlight do? What tactics do you use? How do you decide who to "target", and how (and how often) do you contact them? I'm assuming the developer sees (and has veto power) over all the communications before they're made?

Part of the site and part of the intro here makes this sound like it's just a job search?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your questions. There are no project requirements to join the waitlist. Right now we're working with maintainers of more popular projects. We're measuring popularity in terms of users. We expect maintainers to be able to replace their current full-time salary if they want to work on their projects full-time. Some maintainers only want to allocate a percentage of their time to open-source, so the expectations for how much money they can make are different in those cases.

The primary maintainer input is getting us up to speed on their project goals, work preferences and existing communities. After we have a good understanding of their preferences, the maintainer can choose their level of involvement. Maintainers can be as involved as they like after we begin our campaign. We provide a weekly update detailing who we've reached out to and the status of each communication. We can provide this information on a daily basis as well.

As far as tactics, we start by collecting publicly available GitHub information related to the maintainer's repo. This includes looking at who has engaged with projects by doing things like submitting issues, pull requests, and stars. We also use social media and any community channels the maintainer has created (Slack, Gitter, Discourse, etc.). Then we act as the maintainer's sales team by reaching out to these leads via a variety of different channels (email, social media, phone, real-time messaging). We find the right people within an organization to discuss how the maintainer can add value to the company, and we negotiate contracts based on the custom plan we've developed with the maintainer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Check out [https://tidelift.com](https://tidelift.com) if you're interested in something more robust that won't take 10%. A bunch of ex-Red Hat guys who are truly open source legends behind it.

<comment><USER12> Have you used them? What's their cut?

<comment><USER11> They're not about "cuts." First they track probably hundreds of thousands of packages/projects. They set up a subscription model where they charge based on dev team size/org size and project utilization and they provide security updates, maintenance, and legal assurances for the open source projects being used. Maintainers who sign up to help "lift" sign on for certain amount based on the popularity/ubiquity of the project. They are essentially channeling the revenues from these companies and paying out the maintainers. It the same as Red Hat charging a subscription fee and providing a whole bunch of stuff around that but Tidelift is paying maintainers directly.

You can read more about it here: [https://tidelift.com/subscription](https://tidelift.com/subscription) and you can search through the packages and get some cool info for a maintainer here: [https://tidelift.com/about/lifter](https://tidelift.com/about/lifter)

 __I DO NOT WORK FOR THEM. Just think this is the future of sustainable open source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My name's Victor and I'm one of the DevFlight founders. Tony and I are here to answer any questions you have. We're very excited to have the opportunity to collaborate with the HN community.

</comment><comment><USER13> I really like the idea, and appreciate that there are people out there trying to solve this problem! I have struggled to financially support my open source projects through donations and support contracts, and ultimately decided on an open core model, which has yielded the most success to date. Moving to an open core model is challenging and building out a sales process and sales team can be a barrier for many developers. I was wondering if you have considered including something like reselling, for lack of a better word, in your offering. Having someone negotiate a variety of monetization options on behalf of the project, including selling licenses, would be very interesting. (note I acknowledge open core is not open source, and therefore may be contrary to the goals of this startup).

<comment><AUTHOR> We really appreciate your support! Yes, we've discussed something exactly like what you're describing here. Open-core is an important revenue stream for open-source projects. We're carefully considering how we can support projects that best fit an open-core model. I'm curious to hear more about the challenges around that shift towards an open-core model.

<comment><USER13> thanks for the response. I will add my name to the waitlist and look forward to discussing at a future date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't want to sound pessimistic, but I think that only a few percentages of OS projects are worth any kind of money to pay for.

Why? Because who is gonna pay for yet another react select component library that you made. Yes, it's convenient for us to use it, but it's also convenient for you that we use it, because we can also contribute and save each other's time.

I do, though, support the idea of paying maintainers of really big and crucial projects. I'd also love to see companies giving some work time to devs to contribute to OS, instead of being forced to do it in their own time.

<comment><USER15> There's a bit of a chicken and egg problem with that; basically you're requiring someone to build and grow the community for free for years until it gets "big and crucial" before paying them, by which time they may well have burned out and moved on.

I think if the software brings you value, you should return some of that value to support ongoing development - at the end of the day you're going to benefit from the software you depend on being better developed. It's incredible to me that people don't support the OSS they use and then spend huge resources switching to a different vendor (e.g. PostgreSQL to MySQL) for something that could have been avoided if they were supporting the OSS from the first place. Supporting OSS is almost an insurance policy against having to rewrite/migrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like the ideal. Something certainly needs to be done.

I've mentioned this in other HN threads, what I'd like to see is a donation system integrated into the Git platform (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, etc.). In short, I buy credits and give them to projects as I see fit. Those projects could in turn give credits, or cash out. The credits can also be used to pay feature bounties and award contribuors.

Sure. Parhaps I only give $5 here or $20 there, but the ease would add up. With the key being the ecosystem created.

Somethink like that.

<comment><USER6> This is an interesting idea. Making open-source more sustainable definitely requires an aggregation of resources. I think something like what you're describing would help make it easier for maintainers to collect donations, and for more people to give them, so it would be worth exploring.

<comment><USER16> I think also, in a good way, it might actually cut down on forks and "splinter" projects. That is, ideally, someone would be more likely to stay and contribute if they know there is revenue to be share with them (as opposed to starting from zero).

I'm certainly in favor of new ideas and experimenting, etc. But when it comes to OSS I feel there are times when two or three rock solid products would be better than six or seven or more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can you share publicly any of the projects & maintainers you're currently working with?

<comment><USER6> Co-founder here. Absolutely! We're working with the wonderful maintainers of projects like Caddy Server ([https://github.com/mholt/caddy](https://github.com/mholt/caddy)) and OctoberCMS ([https://github.com/octobercms/october](https://github.com/octobercms/october)). We'll be able to share more of the maintainers we're partnering with soon.

<comment><USER18> Funny to see caddy here, since they are already offering commercial licenses.

EDIT: In fact, commercial use is only available via the commercial license, even if a company decides to build their own binaries.

<comment><USER19> > _even if a company decides to build their own binaries._

Huh? It's Apache 2, how are you prevented from using your own binaries?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One nice thing about free OSS is that it's not paid for. Hence, less influence by external forces, fewer obligations, no strict deadlines, etc. More often than not, this leads to better quality of such software (given that maintainers are experienced and smart). I'm not sure how establishing a direct relationship between money and work (as opposed to donations and grants) would affect the rather high standards of good OSS..

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a fascinating point. I absolutely agree that injecting money into software can have unintended consequences. After speaking with a lot of maintainers, one common theme is that the widespread commercial use of open- source software has already created this direct link between money and work. Maintainers experience pressure to continue developing their project to keep up with users, issues and feature requests. The more popular the project, the more value is being created on top of their software, and the higher the pressure. Because maintainers are often required to work on their projects in their spare time, working around a full-time job, it's easy to burn out and stop working on the project altogether. We're using this contract route as a way to make open-source sustainable for maintainers and establish clear expectations for both maintainers and companies. Setting those expectations is key to giving maintainers their ideal work scenario where they won't have to sacrifice quality for speed.

<comment><USER20> Thank you for the reply. Let me ask you, why premium is fixed at 10%? As I see it, this would make sense only for large quantities of small payments. I.e. it seems like you're expecting exactly what you say you're hoping to eliminate: small feature requests, bugfixes, maybe some integration tasks, docs, etc. How about yearly support contracts?

<comment><USER21> One of us misunderstood what they do. The way I read it was that they establish a contract between dev and corp with regular payments (of which they take 10%), in exchange for this the corp gets the things listed above like prioritized bug reports and so on. But they don't pay for the single bug fixes or anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd like to know some more about how exactly you go about executing the plan? The landing page doesn't go into any detail there.

I think you'd have a much better chance of getting open source maintainers' attention if they know more about what you do, your credentials, and how you approach working this out as a business. There's really nothing on the website!

<comment><USER6> Thanks for that feedback. We start by collecting publicly available GitHub information related to the maintainer's repo. This includes looking at who has engaged with projects by doing things like submitting issues, pull requests, and stars. We also use Twitter and any community channels the maintainer has created (Slack, Gitter, Discourse, etc.). Then we act as the maintainer's sales team by reaching out to these leads with customized messages. We find the right people within an organization to discuss how the maintainer can add value to the company, and we negotiate contracts based on the custom plan we've developed with the maintainer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love the idea of it but as a company why tf would I ever go " yea ill pay for something i get for free now " when if i need their code based maintained i just pay my existing developers.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the question! Many companies are already paying or willing to pay for open-source software, especially when a lot of their critical infrastructure in production is open-source. This is becoming a more common occurrence as open-source rises in popularity. In many cases it's cheaper and faster for a company to pay expert maintainers rather than hire more developers or get their current developers up to speed (and keep them up to speed) on the open-source software they use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> "We're Victor and Tony, _maintainers /developers of $PKG1 and $PKG2_, and now founders of DevFlight."

might have made for a better introduction.

<comment><USER25> That requires 2 other projects though

edit: I didnt mean this as a snark. I personally do not have 2 public projects where I'd feel comfortable to say "I'm developer/maintainer of X"

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good initiative, how does sales work - what part of it is automated and what is run by sales team ?

<comment><USER26> Seeing this has been answered in one of the below threads. Got it.

>> Thanks for that feedback. We start by collecting publicly available GitHub information related to the maintainer's repo. This includes looking at who has engaged with projects by doing things like submitting issues, pull requests, and stars. We also use Twitter and any community channels the maintainer has created (Slack, Gitter, Discourse, etc.). Then we act as the maintainer's sales team by reaching out to these leads with customized messages. We find the right people within an organization to discuss how the maintainer can add value to the company, and we negotiate contracts based on the custom plan we've developed with the maintainer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there a way for companies to pay maintainers in exchange of some kind of promotion? Like logo in readme or something like that?

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://tidelift.com](https://tidelift.com) is doing something similar.

</comment><comment><USER29> Have you guys looked at the tidelift model in comparison? Would love to hear thoughts there.</comment>


A Functional Programming Influence Graph - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogus.me/2012/05/02/a-functional-programming-influence-graph/

<comment><USER2> Nice. I was under the impression that ALGOL's IF-THEN-ELSE statement was inspired by LISP (but I can't seem to find any references more reliable than some wikis). Also, if System F is going to get a line into Haskell, why not give the untyped lambda calculus a line into LISP?

I'm having trouble finding a detailed history of Clean, but I believe it predates Haskell. My understanding is that Miranda prompted a handful of lazy, pure functional languages. Haskell was an attempt to unify them. In _Coders at Work_ , SPJ mentions that a few of those implementors were not interested in participating with the Haskell group. Is Clean one of those languages? (Of course, that doesn't mean they haven't influenced each other over the years, what I'm trying to suggest is that maybe an edge belongs from Miranda to Clean as well.)

It'd be interesting to see a graph of the influence of functional languages on other languages, too. Things like Python's list comprehensions borrowed from Haskell, and JavaScript borrowing lots of things from Scheme. I can only imagine that such a graph would be larger and less comprehensible than the present one!

<comment><USER3> All amazing questions -- you've managed to identify many gray areas of the graph. This graph is the seed to a large research project and will likely change as the research proceeds.

<comment><USER4> What sort of research project? I'm also curious where you draw the line regarding "traditionally functional" languages with respect to multiparadigmatic languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You might argue that Erlang has influenced Haskell. (E.g. Erlang -> Haskell exists).

In two respects:

* the view patterns syntax was built to enable bit level parsing, inspired by the Erlang support (I wrote the binary library to emulate Erlang support for IP header parsing).

More recently,

* Cloud Haskell

<http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/ErlangInHaskell>

<comment><USER6> There's also an example of Erlang-style actors in Haskell in this video: <http://yow.eventer.com/events/1004/talks/1055>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps there ought to be a single square to represent all languages that aren't traditionally considered functional languages, to represent the influence that functional languages have had on the rest of the language ecosystem. For example, I'd say Erlang's concurrency model influenced both Go and Rust (and Rust would inherit from both SML and Haskell as well).

<comment><USER7> Python borrowed list-comprehensions from Haskell et al.

Lexically scoped closures are from Scheme* and virtually all modern languages have them now. (Well, C++ and Java are late on the lambda boat, but C++11 and it seems Java 8 are getting them.) That's a huge influence.

* Scheme was the first Lisp to gain lexical scope, and C of course has lexical scope but not closures, but what's the full history here? It's also part of the lambda calculus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What reference do you have for Clojure influencing the language Scala? Scala is older, so that seems surprising to me.

<comment><USER3> Odersky himself has implied that Scala was prompted by Clojure in its recent persistent structure implementations. However, this influence is motivational rather than via copied code (as stated at <http://stackoverflow.com/a/3108380>). Although Odersky does mention the word "copied" in an interview that I had with him, but that state of affairs may have changed (<http://blog.fogus.me/2010/08/06/martinodersky-take5-tolist/>).

<comment><USER5> My guess was that it was going to be the container library, rather than the language itself. If libraries are included, then Clojure-inspired HAMTs are in Haskell as well. But really, Clojure, Haskell and Scala are all just implementing Bagwell's ideas, <http://lampwww.epfl.ch/papers/idealhashtrees.pdf> whose feasibility was shown in Clojure.

See e.g. for Haskell, originally as [http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell- cafe/2010-February/...](http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell- cafe/2010-February/073628.html) and now as [http://www.haskell.org/wikiupload/6/65/HIW2011-Talk- Tibell.p...](http://www.haskell.org/wikiupload/6/65/HIW2011-Talk-Tibell.pdf)

However, your graph will be much more complicated if libraries are allowed to influence each other, rather than strictly considering language features.

<comment><USER3> > My guess was that it was going to be the > container library, rather than > the language itself.

This walks a thin line for sure and in Scala the line is almost microscopic. I'll keep it for now since my reasoning was the same as the Erlang->Scala influence. A core language library that is rarely viewed as other than a core feature.

<comment><USER8> I disagree with that. There is great attention between language features and functionality shipped in the standard library. This <http://clojure.com/blog/2012/04/19/take5-daniel-spiewak.html> might also be of interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also, Coq is an OCaml derivative and Agda was influenced by Coq.

</comment><comment><USER10> Add somewhere near the bottom Pure <http://code.google.com/p/pure-lang/>

</comment><comment><USER11> They have a really neat programming influence graph on the wall at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It's displayed in relation to date, so it gives you a bit of a historical reference point.

</comment><comment><USER12> A presentation by SPJ left me with the impression that FP should be pointing to Miranda and several other languages that became Haskell, rather than to Haskell itself.

</comment><comment><USER9> Eiffel wasn't strictly functional but it heavily influences Racket (including current development). See [1].

[1] [http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/~robby/pubs/papers/ho- contr...](http://www.eecs.northwestern.edu/~robby/pubs/papers/ho-contracts- icfp2002.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think www.classes.cs.uchicago.edu/current/22300-1/lectures/FP_history.pdf is a better graph because it focuses more on functional languages and the layout is easier to navigate.

<comment><USER3> That is a very nice graph. I was shooting for a more comprehensive graph, but as you see at the cost of comprehension.

<comment><USER14> Why did you include Fortran and Algol? I'm curious what warrants their inclusion, but not BASIC or ADA or a variety of other languages... they certainly don't meet the textbook definition of "functional."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I did something similar, sometime back, where I used the influences from the information boxes on the programming language pages on wikipedia to generate a global lineage graph. I used SVG as the output format though, since it is much more searchable, zoomable, and linkable. You can see here:

[http://jaisharma.info/static/choice/images/projects/lineage....](http://jaisharma.info/static/choice/images/projects/lineage.svg) .

</comment><comment><USER16> The big surprise for me: Why does this graph show Scala as a descendent of Clojure? I was not aware of that at all. What features or ideas does Scala get from Clojure?

<comment><USER5> Discussed below. The Scala containers library contains an implementation of Bagwell's HAMT type; which first gained fame in its Clojure implementation. HAMTs have since appeared in many language library suites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It would be neat if, say, dashed lines were used for all the descendants of LISP that are Lisps.

<comment><USER18> That'd may be hard, because there's no canonical 'original' Lisp (there were a few similar, but incomplete/incompatible versions), and more importantly, there's no clear definition of what even _is_ a Lisp.

I mean, from the ones shown, it's sort of obvious, but I'm thinking in general. Also, Common Lisp, Racket, and Clojure are different enough that they count as separate languages in their own right, rather than 'variations', which a dotted line might imply.

<comment><USER19> > more importantly, there's no clear definition of what even is a Lisp.

How about: If you program in it using s-expressions, it's a Lisp.

<comment><USER20> Logo is a Lisp and yet does not really use s-expressions, and even has infix operators.

Now, you might argue that means Logo is _not_ a Lisp, but it is actually _extremely_ similar to basic Scheme. You could turn an interpreter for one into an interpreter for the other with mostly minor tweaks. It's also a dialect of Lisp historically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone here use Qi, Mercury, or Agda? I'm interested in what people think of those languages.

<comment><USER9> Agda is a proof assistant. I've used Coq, but not Agda -- I imagine they're similar. You wouldn't use it for general development.

Qi is interesting but the development community is much smaller than its competitors (mainly Haskell). You probably want to look into Shen, not Qi. Qi development has mostly stalled.

<comment><USER21> In the dependently typed family of languages it's a little bit arbitrary to divide between programming languages and proof assistants since everyone in this space can be made to play both roles in a pinch. I think most people think of Coq as more on the proof assistant side and Agda more on the programming language side.

<comment><USER9> Sort of. Dependent types doesn't explain Coq's requirement for pure, total functions. Unless this restriction is weakened I cannot see it as being useful in any general-purpose domain. Agda may be looser.

<comment><USER22> > Dependent types doesn't explain Coq's requirement for pure, total functions.

That's where you are wrong. Partial functions introduce the bottom value and then you can 'prove' arbitrary incorrect things.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure what you're saying. I was saying that simply being dependently typed doesn't necessitate pure total functions. Obviously, these features can be considered either highly suggested or necessary for ITPs. There are a number of ways you can get around totality with dependent types.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Mathematica influencing Clojure really surprised me. Any references?

<comment><USER24> [http://grokbase.com/t/gg/clojure/122nctdz9c/notes-on- mathema...](http://grokbase.com/t/gg/clojure/122nctdz9c/notes-on-mathematica- pattern-transformation-clojure-predicate-dispatch)

Cf. D. Nolen's fantastic work in this field</comment></comment>


Show HN: I made a recursive Kanban board with React - <AUTHOR> http://kanception.io <comment><AUTHOR> Created a nested Kanban board. You can click on the cards and it takes you into that cards board. This way large tasks can be broken into smaller tasks.</comment>


Trading Open Standards for Corporate Ones - <AUTHOR> http://calacanis.com/2015/05/29/trading-open-standards-for-corporate-ones/

<comment><USER2> Startlingly, he's right. Corporate standards of behavior have no place in the real world. I suspect his motivation is all wrong, however.</comment>


OkTroll – reverse engineering OkCupid for crowd-sourced trolling - <AUTHOR> http://www.oktroll.com/

<comment><USER2> I press the send button but nothing happens. Should it?

Edit: Chrome and Firefox on Linux 32bit

<comment><AUTHOR> Try it again. Sorry, bug.

<comment><USER2> Going to "My Followed Threads" doesn't list the threads the I clicked Follow on, logged in, or not.

Also, after successfully signing up, the server response is sent back in raw text and that's all you see.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you know if you are good enough for X? - <AUTHOR> My current dilemma is whether to apply to Stanford GSB or whether the impostor syndrome I'm currently suffering from is real or just holding me back <comment><USER2> Try it. The downside risk is usually much smaller than that little voice at the back of your mind thinks.</comment>


Nigeria Central Switch – Advanced real-time payments platform - <AUTHOR> https://nibss-plc.com.ng/services/ncs/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the article: "NIBSS Instant Payment is so far, the most innovative and revolutionary e-payment solution designed by NIBSS to service the banking industry. NIP is the first and only point to point funds transfer service that guarantees instant value to the beneficiary. Nigeria is the only country in Africa and essentially, the world to have deployed such a solution."

From first hand use, the platform delivers sub 30 second Interbank transfers, serves over 180 million people across Nigeria, complete with 2-factor security, and SMS notifications to both parties. The transaction cost is N100 (USD 0.33) and it has been operational since 2011.

It makes you wonder if the $15-$30 wire transfer fees in the US is a severe case of regulatory capture.</comment>


Play blackjack in Excel - <AUTHOR> http://ironspread.com/blackjack.html <comment><USER2> Excel can do some pretty impressive things.

Another cool-but-probably-useless example:

Excel as a 3d engine

[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131968/microsoft_excel_revolutionary_3d_.php?print=1)

Check out the videos to get a quick understanding of what they did.

<comment><USER3> Ha, that's great.

I knocked up a more or less working FreeCell solitaire in Excel one bored afternoon, so Blackjack should certainly be possible in plain old Excel VBA.

Most impressive Excel things I've seen by other people: a Game of Life (I'm guessing not SeanDav's, but who knows!), a Dijkstra's algorithm demo which let you resize cells and recalculated the shortest distance between two cells, and this rather impressive Enigma cipher encoder/decoder: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3755656>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The same thing is possible in Excel VBA by creating a

Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)

in the appropriate worksheet, which will be called when a cell is changed. I don't see any reason why a complete blackjack game would be impossible.

I am however sure that the python code is much nicer than the VBA code to do so, and if it weren't for the distribution trouble (requiring a plugin to be installed for all users of the workbook) I'd definitely use IronSpread.

</comment><comment><USER5> If it's python, if i'm able to use python modules and call functions from excel ( udf ), why IronSpread folks pushes for useless demos ?

Show me some network stuff. Show me how can i write a simple crm ( no not like the one on their blog ) " with " centeral db and gives me ability to work with my coworkers together. Show me how can i gather information from different sources ( web, db v.s. ) and analyse it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Or there's always the lighter weight option pyspread[1] in which cells are objects, works with numpy arrays and any module.

[1]: <http://manns.github.com/pyspread/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the snarky remarks at the end of the code like: _dealer_says("Now I have to go back to working as a VBA programmer!")_

</comment><comment><USER8> For a bit of a laugh I wrote a Conway's Game of Life in Excel using cells as pixels. I could get quite smooth animation up to a screen size of around 200x200 cells. The main bottleneck was the need to check every cell in the grid, every generation, which quickly becomes hard for VBA to do smoothly. It was fun however to see Excel doing animation.

</comment><comment><USER9> Later year students have taken control of our entire pilot plant for our electrical 'controls and instrumentation' engineering with excel.

Very impressive, I used to scoff at the engineers using excel (I'm a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering student) but it can do some excellent stuff.

</comment><comment><USER10> speaking of, it says on their FAQ that they will be able to call python function from excel mid-july. Update? Or maybe we're talking a different year, not 2012?

<comment><AUTHOR> This works! See our docs: <http://ironspread.com/docs.html#udf>

The FAQ is updated - thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wouldnt be surprised if theese guys are beeing bought by MS sooner rather than later.

Replacing VBA feels like it should be quite high on the priority list.

</comment><comment><USER12> Probably a cool way to learn and apply Python too.

</comment><comment><USER13> So? Play PacMan in excel: [http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play- pacman-i...](http://www.cypherhackz.net/archives/2006/10/05/play-pacman-in- excel/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We work with Excel 2007 and 2010 ;)</comment></comment>


Best interview questions to spot ideal employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.williambharding.com/blog/hiring/meta-analysis-best-interview-questions-to-spot-ideal-employees/ <comment><USER2> An interview should be a conversation, shaped to each individual. The aim is to try to discover information about the person (and vice versa) gradually by following threads of thought and argument in a properly developed context. The style of conversation, and the specific subject matter, should differ between individuals - it should be shaped to their context, and their responses should be shaped to your context, for it to be a valuable use of everyone's time.

The moment you start to think in terms of 'sets of questions' or much worse 'best questions' to ask everyone and anyone who comes in for an interview, you've failed as an interviewer, in my opinion. This just gets more true as the questions become more generalised and abstract, which unfortunately they will tend to in order to filter up into a set of 'standard' or 'best' questions you'll find online. That's not to say you don't want topics or themes or ideas of questions to steer the conversation towards, and of course as with anything all the skill is in the delivery, but it's a fine line to walk and certainly thinking of an interview in terms of getting through a list of topics or questions is veering towards the wrong side of that line.

It's tempting to pull questions from these lists, and just rap them off, because it's easy and you can convince yourself it's a good idea because a lot of them exist on the internet, so there seems to be some consensus that this is a good practice. I've done it myself in the past, and it was a mistake. It's lazy, it gives awful results, neither side of the interview will have a good experience or a genuine, valuable human interaction. It's not smart or a hack, just bad interviewing.

</comment><comment><USER3> These sort of interview question posts really get to me. It's all just a power trip thing by mostly little people; "we're on this side of the table and you're on that side and it's a great opportunity for us to feel good about ourselves by asking you stupid and personal questions that makes us feel really important, smart and insightful while you're sweating bullets".

Edit: My experience is that you never really know how people turn out. Sometimes an interview can contribute to a hiring decision, but mostly not. Just hire someone for a few weeks and see how they go, if you work great together ask them to stay for another few months, etc.

<comment><USER4> Lol these types of assumptions, that I have the luxury to just interview for weeks on end, really get to me

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >"What will make you love coming to work here everyday?"

An important addendum should be: "Are you able to do quality work somewhere you don't love?"

If your interview process filters for superhumans, _you won 't get superhumans,_ you'll just get liars.

<comment><USER6> That's like those pre-hire personality tests. You just get the best liars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reads more like a pub crawl companion evaluator than an employee interview guide.

Employees don't have to be likeable - they have to be able to get the job done.

<comment><USER8> > _Employees don 't have to be likeable - they have to be able to get the job > done._

I've seen places where that's the de-facto prevailing culture, and that's not where you should spend most of your waking hours.

<comment> sudo-i Amazon?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Culture fit. Does their personality match the company's values?"

Culture fit means demographic group membership, it has nothing to do with values or whatever, but I'm sure they didn't want to open that can of worms.

</comment><comment><USER10> > Focused. Can they possibly eschew Facebook, Twitter, IM, Hacker News, et al. > for eight hours?

What does it have to with being focused? I take some short breaks and visit HN and reddit to "empty" my mind and to have some fresh air not because I'm lazy or unfocused.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Focused. Can they possibly eschew Facebook, Twitter, IM, Hacker News, et al. > for eight hours?

How about NO?

</comment><comment><USER12> I still want to know: How many dentists _are_ there in Poland?

<comment><USER13> There are roughly 190k practicing dentists in the US [1]. There are approximately 2.2 physicians per 1000 people in Poland and 2.5 physicians per 1000 people in the USA [2]. There are 38M people in Poland and 319M people in the USA [3].

Starting with the same density, (190k / 319M) * 38M, we would get 22.5k dentists in Poland. We know there are slightly fewer physicians per capita in Poland though. So let's take 22.5k * (2.2 / 2.5) and we get roughly 20k dentists in Poland.

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

2\. [http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS)

3\. [https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...](https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_pop_totl&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:POL:USA&ifdim=region&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false)

Edit: Off by a factor of 2. Darn!

<comment><USER14> Actually I think it's just a difference in definitions. You were looking at practicing dentists, while the number I quoted was licensed dentists. If I'm interpreting the numbers correctly, there are only 13088 dentists actually practicing dentistry (I don't speak polish, so I'm not sure if the difference is explained in the report). I'm also not sure how the world bank data is derived.

<comment><USER14> And doing even more analysis, there were 87687 practicing doctors (not including dentists) in Poland in 2014, i.e. 2.3 per capita, which is close enough to that it could have been World Bank's data (which isn't available for 2014). Comparing those numbers to the US it just seems that Poland has a smaller dentist/doctor ration than the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is a team player essentially a person who schmoozes well?

</comment><comment><USER16> > "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Okay, I'm done...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

<comment><USER17> Please don't do this here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: FiveFootShelf – Curated reading lists for great literature - <AUTHOR> http://fivefootshelf.org

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

This is a Meteor app I've been building for the past six weeks. It's definitely a "scratch your own itch" project -- I've wanted a source for well- curated, topical reading lists, but haven't found anything that quite fit the bill. Rather than complaining or waiting for somebody else to build it, I went ahead and did it myself.

This is very much an MVP — it has some rough edges, the design isn't exactly drool-worthy, and there are several much-needed features on the way. But I'd rather have the thing launched and be a little embarrassed than to stash it in the Graveyard of Dead Projects (my Dropbox folder).

Any and all feedback is welcome... just please keep in mind that (1) it's an MVP and (2) it's not for everybody. I value the HN community's thoughts — take a look and let me know what you think!

</comment><comment><USER2> What does the word "curated" offer that "selected" or "chosen" doesn't? And for that matter, who sees a reading list and doesn't suppose it to have been selected?

I also have to say that "subscribe to this list and track your progress" strikes me as odd. Pick up a copy, mark or dog-ear, and that job is done. Register and read for free--Gutenberg doesn't require registration, and as far as I know doesn't track one.

But the site is handsome.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's great, but I like much more the content itself than the "app" functionalities.</comment>


Please Review StockChatBoard.com: Digg + HN for stocks - <AUTHOR> http://www.stockchatboard.com

<comment><USER2> First thoughts were, why should I submit these ideas or stocks. Why should I really trust people's advice based on karma? I would rather see people ranked by the accuracy of their predictions.

Perhaps when you submit a stock or vote on one during the week it could record the current price and after a few days your karma points are based on the new price of the stock.

I also think you should have links to the stock price. I'm too lazy to type in all the ticker names into google.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this might work better in prediction market form, where people get rep points after their prediction has come true.

<comment><USER4> <http://stocktwits.com> with this would be great.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like StockTwits, but the information seems to be all over the place. My goal was to make opportunities easier to find, as well a bit of enhanced research by crowdsourcing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Also, how would you detect fakes! I can say I bought 1000 $AAPL at 80 last year and sold them for 270 this year to get some karma.

Look at <http://profit.ly> for a twitter like take on stocks

<comment><AUTHOR> Karma is only awarded from other members in discussion areas. Additionally, a virtual trading system is in the works to accurately track member performance. The trades are entered on the site, and compared to the actual market so there would be no fake scores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the stock market the Digg for stocks?

<comment><AUTHOR> Touche. But by the time you get news from the market it's probably too late to be useful.

<comment><USER7> Hahaha.. circular. By the time news happens.. its already too late =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I currently use the Motley Fool CAPS site[1]. What about your service is going to be better than CAPS?

[1] <http://caps.fool.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not so much about being better, but rather in addition to something like CAPS, because I think CAPS has the right idea and both services could shed light on trade opportunities. The model for CAPS is highly ranked/successful members sharing trade ideas and I think that's valuable. One difference, however, is that I plan to pay any members with significant audiences visiting their profile blog on an ad revenue sharing program. This will hopefully draw participation from many top traders to the site.

<comment><USER2> Sorry if this comes off too negative. But, you want to pay 'top traders' who probably already make good money a few bucks to blog about their tips and other information?

Im not too familiar with how 'info friendly' traders are, but I was under the impression people didnt openly share all their tips.

Wont the community end up just being full of people trying to promote specific stocks they are interested in and not necessarily ones people in general might want?

Edit - So I looked around CAPS and it seems they have a blog section. So i guess people do like to share something. But the comments and votes seemed pretty dead today.

I still think people are more interested in what people are actually DOING in the stock market rather than what people THINK about certain stocks. I would love learn from 'top traders' by looking over what they have done in the past. Lots of people talk, few people do.

<comment><USER8> Well, I've bumped into a few traders (mostly in the energy commodities trading arena) and you really get all sorts. There are the guys that won't even tell you where the bathroom is in their building, then there are the guys that love spreading their opinion around so they can reap the recognition when they made the right call.

Presumably equity traders (which I believe is the focus of this site) are the same way.

I do think the OP is going to have something of a tough sell to get any of them to participate though. I'm not sure if the incentives are high enough... particularly during the "get it off the ground" phase.

Still, I think it's an interesting idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not your target audience at all but here's the first thing I noticed:

The big blank blue space up top (plus the logo) take up roughly 20% of the screen real estate. The nav then takes up another 5%.

1/4 of the screen wasted and now I'm finally at the content!

</comment><comment><USER10> An ok concept, but poorly executed, in my opinion.

What is the user voting for? The stock itself? Or the reasoning behind the submission? What will you do about multiple submissions on the same stock, say AAPL, that could flood the frontpage?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair point. The user is voting for both the stock and the reasoning. The idea is that people with the best insights will rise highest. It's certainly a new concept which may evolve as time goes by. There will also probably be a duplicate checker to alert the submitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would be useful if you find a way to link a stock with a news' submission. You know "buy the rumor, sell the news".

So for me the useful information is the news or the rumor and not any user's bet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I know what you mean and I'll continue to look at ways to integrate buzz about a stock. However, my rather ambitious goal would be to have the site almost create news, similar to the Digg effect, so that top voted items on the home page might one day garner so much attention the stock might rise by default.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Instead of showing the vote buttons but having them do nothing when the user is not logged in, use a tooltip to tell them that they can vote, comment, etc if they create an account and login.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do, thanks!</comment></comment>


Germany is turning on its monster stellarator - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.my/germany-is-turning-on-its-monster-stellarator-2015-10/#tqgboZYo4ZsctBCU.97 <comment><USER2> Source article: [http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature- bizarre-r...](http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/10/feature-bizarre- reactor-might-save-nuclear-fusion)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wendelstein 7-X - from concept to reality: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyqt6u5_sHA)

Im Zeitraffer: Zusammenbau von Wendelstein 7-X: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJpSrqitSMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJpSrqitSMQ) (best @ 0.56x)

Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10437075)

More: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAx243-m51RI- k_4lsAqidA/fee...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAx243-m51RI- k_4lsAqidA/feed)

<comment><USER5> the first video claims a magnetic field strength of 2.5 Tesla(o) roughly that of an MRI(i)

can anyone speak to sort of considerations that lead to this value? 2.5T seems insignificant considering the events it will be confining

how sensitive is the field to magnetic interactions outside of the device?

(o) [https://youtu.be/lyqt6u5_sHA?t=301](https://youtu.be/lyqt6u5_sHA?t=301) (i) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(unit)#Examples](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_\(unit\)#Examples)

<comment><USER6> Steady magnets can't get much stronger than that. The very strongest steady magnets, purpose built, are in the 40-70 tesla range. I believe the limit is set by the break down of normal matter. Higher field strengths can be achieved, but only for fractions of a second and are general destructive.

<comment><USER7> Imploding coils. This stuff gets me every time I see it - chills down the spine. You can induce a field in the _MEGA_ tesla range for an infintesimal amount of time. Take a copper (or superconductor, if you're feeling ballsy) coil, run a huge current through it from your enormous capacitor bank, set off a wad of high explosive surrounding the apparatus - the near-instantaneous collapse of the conductor causes the field within to become absolutely enormous - and equally importantly the Ts-1 - i.e. the rate of change of the field - again, you can induce enormous currents outside of the apparatus through induction.

This technique is mostly used in solid state and, surprise surprise, fusion experiments. Oh, and you can make an EM bomb if you make a big enough one, and wipe out a city's electronic infrastructure in a microsecond. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad that Germany now has the option of stellarating the monsters they capture.

EDIT: On reading further, it turns out I may have misinterpreted the article.

<comment><USER9> Even better if they make a portable version and call it Mr. Fusion

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I once did an internship at the MPI in Garching and had the opportunity to visit the Stellarator. Although it looks much less spectacular with all the coils hidden in their housing it is still an incredibly impressive machine with an audacious design.

Today the numerical effort required for realizing it might seem not very impressive given the technological capabilities that we have, but you have to take into account that the first version (Wendelstein 7-AS) was built in the 1980s already.

That said I really hope that the experiment confirms the viability of this design and its (potential) superiority compared to the classical Tokamak fusion chamber.

<comment><USER11> I have no doubt that a design that goes with the physics (instead of going against it like Tokamaks do) is going to yield great results, however I hope something comes out if it that will also allow for viable Tokamaks. Stellarators are hellishly complex and expensive.

<comment><USER12> Can you explain what you mean by tokamaks "going against the physics"?

<comment><USER13> Tokamaks need, to contain the plasma, a continuously changing magnetic field. To create a continuously changing magnetic field, you need to continuously increase or decrease the current.

The issue is that you can not turn up the current more than a maximum level, and you have to keep the direction the same (so you can't switch between turning off and on).

Stellerators instead solve this with complex geometry and the plasma creating its own continously changing magnetic field.

<comment><USER12> > Tokamaks need, to contain the plasma, a continuously changing magnetic field

Do you have a citation for this claim?

<comment><USER13> I could source one from German Wikipedia, but english wikipedia does not seem to have that information.

You might be able to find some sources when you search for the reasons of Tokamaks pulsed usage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is likely to be more important, for much less expenditure, than ITER.

Edit: to add some additional context, the main problem with fusion reactors is confinement time and plasma stability. The general idea of a fusion power plant using magnetic confinement is that a gas is turned into plasma, confined magnetically, and heated until it can undergo significant fusion reactions. There are two core problems to creating fusion plasmas that could potentially produce power. One is pumping the plasma up to conditions that enable self- sustaining fusion by maintaining a high enough temperature from balancing the heat losses in the plasma against the heat gains from fusion reactions. The other is producing more energy from fusion reactions than was put into heating and containing the plasma. The longer the fusion plasma is contained the longer it has to continue fusion reactions and producing energy.

Tokamaks are easy to build but have a fatal flaw in that they have high plasma current, which makes them difficult to control with very unstable plasmas. Stellarators are vastly more difficult to build but they don't rely on currents in the plasma itself, which offers the potential for vastly longer confinement times.

<comment><USER15> This is wrong comparison.

Wendelstein 7-X is small early experimental reactor for testing stellator geometry for reactor. Research questions are similar to where JET (the largest working tokamak today) was 30 years ago. Stellator is more complex design but promises inherently stable containment.

ITER is solving different questions. ITER solves engineering problems for full-scale electricity-producing reactor that would be practical to build and operate. JET studied containment in Tokamaks. ITER is the last step before first industrial fusion reactor design DEMO (Demonstration Power Plant).

There is also lots of technical overlap of course. Vacuum vessels, cooling, magnets, breeder blankets, etc. ITER is developing these for industrial-scale reactor, even for stellator.

<comment><USER16> This is exactly right. Regardless of which technology proves viable first, the reactors will have their parts built in the same factories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > The key to a successful nuclear reactor of any kind is to generate, confine, > and control a blob of super-heated matter, called a plasma — a gas that has > reached temperatures of more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit.

Um, what? I'm about to pass a nuclear fission plant on my way to work, and I surely hope there are no plasmas in _that_.

AKA, they mean _fusion_ reactor.

<comment><USER16> Nucleons are reacting. It's most definitely a nuclear reactor of some type.

<comment><USER18> _nuclear reactor of any kind_

They're not disputing the _nuclear_ term, but _fission_ vs. _fusion_.

<comment><USER17> Ding ding ding.

Also, hello from Indian Point, Buchanan, NY! I can see a containment dome as I write this.

Next up on my Snake Plisskin-esque commute is literally going through Sing Sing prison: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-73.8700067,613m/dat...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-73.8700067,613m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en) (those train tracks are the Metro North Hudson line, among other things)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Designed in Hell" \- really? Goddamn, I hate modern media outlets...

<comment><USER20> Hell, CA; Hell, MI; Hell, AZ; Hell, Norway; or Hell, Netherlands?

<comment><USER19> Hell, the Devil's playground... because it looks strange.

What kind of association does that make in people's minds, they already think nuclear = death...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Assuming these experiments work as desired and this reactor can produce more energy than it takes in, how long will it be (roughly) until a power plant becomes operational (i.e. connected to the grid) that uses this technology? Years, a decade, many decades?

<comment><USER20> It's not yet designed to produce net energy – it can't handle the necessary (radioactive) tritium fuel.

Assuming it works as intended, the next step would be a research reactor that can, _that_ would be a pilot project to generate net energy which could be connected to the grid (probably more for symbolic reasons at that point…) and breed tritium for further reactors.

 _Then_ we can start to plan building actual power plants. So, few decades, as always.

<comment><USER22> I guess we can still say it will be the most important energy source over the next millennium...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good to see that there is enough money to pursue stellarators while simultaneously working on tokamak designs like ITER.

<comment><USER24> I was chatting about this with a friend and there are something like 5 different in production technologies which produce or cause nuclear fusion. Only three I think are aimed at sustainable power generation, but it's still pretty cool.

<comment><USER25> I hadn't heard of this one before, always interested in fusion news. 3 others I know about are

[http://www.generalfusion.com/](http://www.generalfusion.com/)

[http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/](http://lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/) (Focus fusion)

[http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact- fusion.htm...](http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/compact-fusion.html)

<comment><USER26> Tri-Alpha is the biggest private effort...about $200 million invested, 30 Ph.Ds, 150 employees. They recently announced they'd achieved stable plasma, the only major milestone left is scaling up the temperature. They think the plasma will get more stable at higher temperatures. Like focus fusion, they're attempting boron fusion.

Helion is similar to Tri-Alpha but with a pulsed design instead of steady state. They have funding from YCombinator. Instead of boron they're shooting for a hybrid D-D/D-He3 fuel cycle (the D-D reaction produces He3). They say only 6% of the energy released would be as neutron radiation.

Sandia's MagLIF project is interesting. According to their computer simulations they can get 100x to 1000x energy gain by preheating a fuel capsule and crushing it in an upgraded Z-Machine. Things are looking good so far.

UW has the Dynomak project, which is fairly similar to tokamak but a lot smaller and cheaper. They need $10 million to test the concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Better article: [http://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/2167675...](http://www.economist.com/news/science-and- technology/21676752-research-fusion-has-gone-down-blind-alley-means-escape- may-now-be)

<comment><USER28> Thanks! The diagram at the top of that one made more sense than the entire OP article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow - it looks like very Steampunk with all those valves and ports.

<comment> stargazer-3 Looks more like modern art to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is one of the greatest events in the history of energy research. Really, really hoping that the upcoming results of the machine will at least meet expectations.

</comment><comment><USER31> A naive question - if this kind of reactors start producing more energy than consuming, what kind of fuel would they need? AFAIK the Sun slowly burns hydrogen into helium. Does it mean that stellarators would only need hydrogen to operate? That would be basically free energy.

<comment> Tuna-Fish Fusion reactors can use different fuels based on how good they are at containing plasma.

Right now, almost all research is directed towards the easiest possible fuel that requires least powerful containment, that is, Tritium (H3) and Deuterium (H2). Deuterium can be separated from water, and Tritium can be bred from Lithium using waste neutrons.

T+D is inexhaustible, but also quite expensive as both separation and neutron breeding are relatively expensive. However, as a fusion reactor consumes tiny amounts of fuel per unit of energy, a T+D reactor could potentially still run profitably.

If we get better at containing plasma, other fuel choices become available. Most important being Boron + Hydrogen, which would be inexhaustible, cheap, and produces minimal neutrons during fusion, making it easier on the equipment.

However, free fuel doesn't mean free energy. The cost of all nuclear power, including current fission power, is utterly dominated by the capital cost of equipment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It doesn't say how many watts of power this machine would produce and what is the cost to produce per watt? It would be interesting to compare numbers and see if this machine would ever see mass production in next few decades.

<comment> ju-st Zero watt. It's a research reactor. And they don't want to use tritium (which is apparently needed for power generation) because it would cause radiation. And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor. Source: German wikipedia

<comment><USER20> > And radiation is bad when you want to do research on the reactor.

As in, you want to partially disassemble and tweak the reactor regularly. Neutron activated metals will be radioactive enough after a while, no need to make things worse by adding tritium to the mix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> That machine looks absolutely beautiful to me, I love the design. It would also be perfect for in movies and computer games :)

</comment><comment><USER34> When exactly is it turned on?

<comment><USER35> That was not reported. This is what was reported on Oct. 23rd by sciencemag.org:

"Approval to go ahead is expected from Germany's nuclear regulators by the end of this month"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Tell me that doesn't look like it came straight out of Akira... :)

</comment><comment><USER37> "Designed in hell" low class.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm still waiting on LFTR.

<comment><USER26> Uranium-fueled molten salt reactors will probably happen first; they'd have the same safety advantages but without the huge extension of fuel supply that you'd get from thorium breeding. Some designs would be more proliferation- resistant than LFTRs. Startups attempting it include Terrestrial Energy, Transatomic, ThorCon, Moltex, and Seaborg.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's how Germans do it - they keep quiet and just do it. Respect!

<comment><USER40> Sometimes they keep it very quiet: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal)

No, seriously. All these statements about German character or German mentality should stop. If the last few months haven't taught us anything else, at least it should have taught us that. First, Germans and the German government were praised as reliable in connection with the Grexit (as opposed to the Greeks), then a few months later, a German government owned car producers is caught in what might be the biggest corporate fraud ever.

I wonder if mentality and national traits even exist.

<comment><USER13> And how did VW handle it?

CEO resigned, 10 board members suspended, all non-management employees (engineers, programmers, etc) have full immunity, even if they worked on the defeat device.

That's the most honorable reaction one could expect, and it allows to get rid of the issue.

<comment><USER41> > all non-board employees have full immunity, even if they worked on the > defeat device

I'm not trying to pick a fight, but how is that in any way honorable?

<comment><USER13> Because this defeat device is nothing you should blame on a single engineer, it is clearly a systematic issue, and normal engineers should not be held accountable for actions that the CEO and board forced them to do.

<comment><USER42> On the other hand it teaches those on the ground that obeying illegal orders is perfectly fine, because, hey, you won't get punished.

<comment><USER13> It is also the only way you get people ever providing evidence against their boss, as otherwise they'd risk incriminating themselves.

<comment><USER42> You can support that goal by offering immunity to whistleblowers.

<comment><USER13> Well, offering immunity to everyone who just followed orders is an important part of doing so. And it makes in this case everything a lot easier.

<comment><USER42> Offering immunity to everyone who just followed orders is far more drastic than offering immunity specifically _only_ to those who _actually_ takes the step of whistleblowing before the issue becomes known.

The former creates no incentive to be a whistleblower - it just takes away one of the risks of doing so. The latter creates a strong incentive to be the first to report something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Every week I learn something new to admire about Germany.

Or at least its responsible investment behavior by its government.

USA would not build such a thing in today's political climate of nonsense unless it had weapons research possibilities.

<comment><USER13> Actually, the US invested in both the National Ignition Facility for H-Bomb and Fusion research, and in ITER.

Just because the US invests _rarely_ in civilian research doesn't mean they _never_ do (compared to military research; compared to other countries they still invest a lot in civilian research)

<comment><USER43> NIF is weapons research, hence my point.

Congress won't fund a civilian space shuttle anymore but we spend billions for the military to have their own.

Like I said, if it's not about killing people, destroying things and spying on the world (including our own people) we pretty much won't spend money on it anymore here.

Germany did the investment beyond war.</comment></comment></comment>


Someone please give lulzsec a job... - <AUTHOR>

Personally I think lulz security to be paid by governments to let companies be aware and advise to fix security holes, as online security is a MASSIVE issue of national security. Rather than be arrested and put away.
I would rather they hack for good than bad. After all their are non public hacker groups.
I mean look at the Citi bank hack... I know that is security 101, but COME ON.
Either that, or force the general public to use an openID run by a hack proof source.
Or is this just me? <comment><USER2> What is with these submissions? Flagging this.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> Child labour laws. You could never employ 2/3 of them for long enough for their own desire to do this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> OpenID is not a trust system.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it isn't a trust system, but some kind of similar solution

<comment><USER5> People don't start worrying until something actually happens. The general public is deluded when it comes to internet security, and Lulzsec exposed the internet's vulnerability. Yes, they did break the law, but they had the right intentions nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lulzsec is a bunch of psychotic kids playing with massive customer-driven online services the way a child plays with ants and a magnifying glass. And you want to give them government jobs?

<comment><USER7> Entirely agree with you. They are nothing but script kiddies. Anyone can download Metasploit, Nessus, Nikto, etc. and test for thousands of vulnerabilities. Then they either turn vulnerable servers into botnet zombies or steal their data and post it on the web. I've seen no sign they have any 0day exploits (which would make them the real deal), just some basic SQL injections, XSS, and brute forcing.

Not impressed.

<comment><USER8> What should be impressive at this point is that we're still not past SQL injections and XSS. Or URL tweaking. In banking. (Good God!...)</comment></comment></comment>