Does TensorFlow Suffer from the Second-System Effect? - <AUTHOR> http://planspace.org/20170311-does_tensorflow_suffer_from_the_second_system_effect/ <comment><USER2> I don't know if I'd consider TF a second-system to DistBelief alone as much as a second-system to a family of Caffe, Theano and Torch. Those predecessors each got some subset of design elements right, IMO.

For instance, symbolic differentiation and compiling is something theano got right, and ease of switching between GPU and CPU in Caffe and theano. And Torch seems to have a simple scripted feel through Lua.

But none of them seem as deliberately designed as TensorFlow. Theano has a sprawling "academic feeling" codebase with many contributors, and can be opaque. Caffe focused mostly on making feedforward convolutional nets simple, and doesn't have symbolic differentiation and pycaffe doesn't seem to support everything easily. Torch picked Lua as a language rather than python and that seems to have made it annoying for some to pick up and debug. Theano is probably the easiest framework to mash up techniques like LSTMs with convnets, but none of them do it very well, IMO.

TF seems to get right the big things that worked in prior frameworks: symbolic differentiation, compiling, the ability to use intermediate results from other networks all together, very useful debugging tools with TensorBoard and graph inspection. The core argument here seems to be that many won't find the ability to run specific parts of the computation graph on different hardware. That may be true. But that can largely be ignored. It is annoying that TF defaults to allocating all memory to itself ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34199233/how-to- prevent-t...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/34199233/how-to-prevent- tensorflow-from-allocating-the-totality-of-a-gpu-memory)), for instance, but by and large I think the core design of a computation graph that can be spread across hardware by design is a net win, even if a lot of people won't appreciate that until a few years from now.</comment>


Ask HN: When your startup IDEA has already been built by someone else? - <AUTHOR>

Lately, I have been thinking about few ideas for my future startup that I thought would be better if I built them. Some of those ideas were really great and as I was diving into them for some research, I came to found that their exists same sort of service already that is doing an excellent job.
My recent incident just for an example, while I was reading http://www.thedeveloperscode.com/, I got an idea for making a social network that would enable people share what they are reading, host their books if they are writer and even enable them to sell them (or let peoples subscribe by paying money) depending on their preference. And I came to know that their already exists http://scribd.com that is doing great job for this. I know it sounds silly that I wasn't aware of it and neither was using Scribd already, because I am noob from a middle class family of a underdeveloped country Nepal (Asia) where Internet is just emerging and has barely touched peoples daily life, which surely has effected me too.<p>My point is, what would you guys do, if you found that somebody has already built a service that you were thinking seriously from last few months? Would you just swift change your ideas? Make improvements in your idea seeing what their demerits are and what services/features they lack? Or just dive into it without caring and start building your own? I understand that their already exist Yahoo search before Google came up, Friendster before Facebook came up, and as there was already Facebook, Google+ came up. <comment><USER2> That depends on a lot of factors.

Do you really, honestly think you can make it better than what already exists? What is in it for your customers, can you make their lives better? Does your (financial) life depend on it or do you do it as a side project for the fun of it (1)? Can you refine your idea with real user feedback or are you on your own? etc...

(1) I develop a community climbing blog and a web framework as side projects, just for fun. The rules change when you do things just for fun - see also my blog post "Why re-invent the wheel" <http://davidtanzer.net/node/81>

</comment><comment><USER3> Well before you get serious with an idea, find out the current alternatives. If the existing one is doing a good job, let it go. If you still think your idea can solve a problem, find out what went wrong with those who tried to build something similar. Competition is good and Do Not be obsessed with an unverified idea. Confirm that its workable, then get into it.</0.02>

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm guessing you're still in Nepal. Focus on a market you know well and look for provable business models - it'll be easy to narrow down your ideas. Also, I wouldn't be ashamed of cloning something from somewhere else and bringing it to your community. There are going to be opportunities in a place like Nepal that aren't in the tech hubs.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you do not want competition then find an idea where there is no products already, but this will be quite hard as there is so many companies already making products and lots of em.

If you want to compete which might be fun and drive you to make your service/product better and better everyday. Then do that and try to survive.

</comment><comment><USER6> Learn how to sell and make money online. Everything else will fall into place.</comment>


Microsoft's undersea datacenter has live webcams now - <AUTHOR> https://natick.research.microsoft.com/ <comment><USER2> I love how Microsoft is super secretive about the location of their Phase 1 deployment, but they made a promo video clearly showing it in Avila Beach: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2oJw1a_qEM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2oJw1a_qEM)

</comment><comment><USER3> Whoah, why are there so many fish??? They're swarming near the cameras like it was feeding time at an aquarium!

<comment><USER4> If I had to guess I would say it's where they're releasing heat. Fish love warm water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jaws must be chewing on the cables; page doesn't load for me on any device

</comment><comment><USER6> Why are there so many fish?</comment>


Flushing Away Unfairness - bathroom equality for women - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/16542591?story_id=16542591

<comment><USER2> I wish more people would consider unisex restrooms - we had co-ed bathrooms for my first three years of college and it really wasn't a big deal.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _The Economist_ does it again, an very thought-provoking article. Did you know that until 1993 no restrooms were assigned to female senators in Capitol Hill? They had to use the same restrooms as visiting tourists. Or that women take 3 minutes to go in and out but men take 83.6 seconds?

I've always wondered how the number of toilet stalls are determined for public spaces a s a function of number of people expected to use it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good job on redefining the meaning of equality.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get started for a NLP grammar corrector - <AUTHOR> I am learning Russian a third language and as a pet project I would like to develop a basic syntax corrector.
There are several resources online but it kinda gets overwhelming so I thought maybe some people here have relevant experience and can give me some pointers to narrow down my research.
What I would like to get into is:
1.Basic theory behind NLP and more specifically automated grammar checking 2. Open source tools/frameworks used for this purpose.
Thanks a lot. <comment><USER2> That's an enormous topic and an enormous can of worms. Modern spell checkers all use statistical methods meaning that they are trained on a corpus. That allows them to understand that the sequence of tokens [what, i, would, like to, get into, is, :] is much more probable than [get, what i, would, like, into, is, :]. I.e the latter is grammatically incorrect.

A good start is to learn about Markov models. For more sophisticated stuff, investigate word vectors and language modeling using recurrent neural networks. The Python library NLTK comes with a free book which can teach you the basics.</comment>


The Long Road to Mongo's Durability - <AUTHOR> https://brandur.org/fragments/mongo-durability <comment><USER2> Indeed, MongoDB (with very careful configuration) has recently passed a round of Jepsen test, although patches were necessary after -rc3; see [https://jepsen.io/analyses/mongodb-3-4-0-rc3](https://jepsen.io/analyses/mongodb-3-4-0-rc3).

</comment><comment><USER3> How does mongodb benchmark against other db products when you configure it for durability. Is it still faster?

<comment><USER4> I haven't run any numbers, but here's how I understand it.

Because of the way its journaling is implemented with sync interval, when you've configured durability with `writeConcern` `j` set to `true`, any write will have to wait for the next sync interval to commit. This wait will be in the range of 0 to the configured interval (~100 ms) and that makes the worst case quite bad.

You can work around it by configuring a lower sync interval and thus less average wait time, but I doubt you ever reach the level of databases that were designed to prefer durability by default, and which have heavily optimized that write path.

<comment><USER5> Well doesn't that depend on what metric you use to define speed? It sounds like you are measuring latency... but if you were to measure throughput you may be getting a different answer. The 100 ms flush may not do much good for latency, but it can allow some good batching on writes, which would most likely increase throughput vs having a write flush at every transaction commit. And it's actually more complex than this, because it depends on the hardware you have, its cache size and whether you have a BBU with a battery that will last long enough to flush the contents of the cache to "permanent and durable storage" in case of power outage. In other words: YMMV

<comment><USER6> Indeed, choice of metrics matte.r To add to what you're saying, there are even more metrics than that!

Consider latency as an example. There's average latency and nth percentile latency (and a similar metric of % of requests above certain latency). You can plot the latency as a CDF (Cumulative distribution function) to visualize it differently. The amount of time you run the benchmark affects things, as performance is typically better 5 seconds in compared to 5 hours in. Performance consistency within a closely bounded temporal interval matters a lot too, as too spiky performance can be detrimental.

Is the same workload being performed? Are the machines configured similarly, or is one a replica cluster while another one is a slower NAS? Are the indexes similar? What is the read workload during that time, as no reads vs high reads affect write latency rate.

And we're just talking about one metric for a database. There are other related metrics -- like iops, cpu taken, memory taken, disk taken, disk writes, disk amplification (io per op), etc, that all 'matter'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gossipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/Culture/gossipedia.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The comments here [http://secularright.org/wordpress/?p=2373&cpage=1#commen...](http://secularright.org/wordpress/?p=2373&cpage=1#comment-10068) are even better than the essay (and it has the whole essay too). I liked the first commenter's "Crappipedia" and especially the third commenter's take on anonymous writing (which is why I started commenting everywhere with an accurate nickname, and have generally transitioned to using my full name).

</comment><comment><USER2> As it turns out, I'm familiar with this page - i don't edit it, but took an interest in the guy for unrelated reasons earlier this year.

Although the page underwent minor vandalism which has since been reverted, has anyone looked at his autobiographical alternative? Hardly an improvement from any objective standpoint.</comment>


Tinder Lashes Out on Twitter After 'Vanity Fair' Article - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2015/08/12/tinder-twitter/ <comment><USER2> As an increasingly older and older person I always try to warn myself against becomeing one of those "Kids these days" complainers.

Isn't the Vanity Fair article just a version of that? Mixed in with the usual bias journalists have towards negative spins on things? An article Title "most Tinder users have positive experiences" wouldn't get any where near the views.

When I was a kid, we had to trudge through snow uphill, both ways, just to date the person our parents picked out for us. Kids these days don't know.

</comment><comment><USER3> I HATE when people split up a long paragraph into tweets like this. It's absolutely the worst format for reading long text. You can only read one sentence at a time, and you have to read them backwards! If you can't fit an argument in a single tweet, link to a blog post!

</comment><comment><USER4> Tinder has a point but no way am I trusting a self-reported statistic about the 1.7% of it's users who are married. I'm sure married people looking for side action are being super honest about their status.</comment>


All of New York City's municipal vehicles will be fully electric by 2040 - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2020/02/07/egeb-new-york-city-municipal-vehicles-electric-by-2040/ <comment><USER2> In 1947 Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. 22 years later we landed on the moon.

So, our ambitious goal is to have NYC municipal cars, etc be electric in 20 years?

How about a plan for the next 5 years? China has 400,000 electric buses, for example.

<comment><USER3> NYC could probably do that if the state and federal governments would fund it. But taking the bus example: NYC Transit is broke and cutting service every year. Currently a good chunk of the buses in service are 30+ years old. Replacing the entire fleet in 5 years? Fuhgeddaboudit.

<comment><USER2> No one said you had to replace the entire fleet in 5 years.

I said how about a plan to do something within the next 5 years rather than a "plan" to do everything in 20 years.

Starting with buses should be doable because it has already been done on a large scale in China.

But any forward progress would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If they're pushing it this far back, I don't think we'll be seeing them in 2020 either. 2040 goals are feel good goals for today but are nonetheless meaningless.</comment>


Synaptic Package Manager Still Lacks Wayland Support, Removed from Debian Buster - <AUTHOR> https://tracker.debian.org/news/1037065/synaptic-removed-from-testing/ <comment><AUTHOR> More details on what prompted this decision: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=818366](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=818366)</comment>


Ask HN: What are some good resources to learn about architecture? - <AUTHOR> Architecture is fascinating to me but I know next to nothing about it; I'd love to start learning from some quality online or print resources. In addition, if anyone's studied architecture at university I'd love to hear about your studies as well as any apprenticeships you may have been apart of/your general experience starting a career in architecture out of school (I am a current college junior so the whole leaving-school-starting-a-career thing is something I think about a lot). Thanks! <comment><USER2> I'm assuming you're asking about software architecture and not building architecture since we're on HN.

The O'Reilly book _Fundamentals of Software Architecture_ [1] that came out this year is really broad and the best overview I've seen so far.

[1]: [https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of- so...](https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/fundamentals-of- software/9781492043447/)

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure your assumption is accurate. In part because people generally don't study architecture at university, have careers in architecture, and do apprenticeships when talking about software architecture (and there's hardware architecture too, though the same applies though perhaps slightly less so). But all these are common when talking about architecture in the built environment.

The other reason I'd question your assumption is I'm an architect of the type that designs buildings. Though I don't practice much these days, I still keep one active license and one inactive license just for giggles and because it's occasionally more convenient to say "I'm an architect" when asked "What do you do?" than to describe what I actually do because I'm not exactly sure what that is beyond it being just the things I do.

There is (or was) a sort of standard student cannon in the US that included Ching's _Form, Space and Order_ and Alexander's _A Pattern Language_. Alexander's work of course overlaps with software architecture, so it's "arguably" relevant either way -- though it's not a very interesting argument to me and so not one I'd wish to have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes sorry! I meant architecture as in designing buildings (very new to Hacker News). Thanks for your response.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://github.com/binhnguyennus/awesome- scalability](https://github.com/binhnguyennus/awesome-scalability)

This is a compilation of resources in that regards

</comment><comment><USER5> Start with Christopher Alexander

</comment><comment><USER3> Architecture of buildings or computational systems?

<comment><AUTHOR> Buildings! Really sorry, should have been more specific</comment></comment>


I sold my life for a $2 waffle maker   - <AUTHOR> http://paulyting.com/2011/11/26/i-sold-my-life-for-a-2-waffle-maker/

<comment><USER2> 4-5 years ago I read a story about a guy who was trying to get back from vacation in time to make it to work on a Monday morning so he would not have to take a day off the next day and "miss more work". Was driving though the night, killed his wife and two kids when he fell asleep at the wheel, I don'e even think he had equity in the company. Totally changed the way I ran my business and the way I worked. This blog post is dead on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I'm glad I didn't have to go through all that to realize that happiness and satisfaction has to start NOW. Don't push it off to some rose-tinted future of the ROI of investing heavily in a startup. Startups should be built with sustainable happiness in mind.

Disclaimer: I did my own startup in 2009 via debt financing, only to wake up daily with a sad, solemn face because I did it at the expense of my family, friends and my life purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for the post Jason! :)</comment>


For Whom the Cell Trolls - <AUTHOR> http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/28/for-whom-the-cell-trolls/ <comment><USER2> > At the core of Patrikarakos's book is the idea that narrative war has become > far more important than physical war due to new technologies that shape > public perceptions of conflicts in real time, regardless of what is actually > happening on the battlefield.

In The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, General Sir Rupert Smith repeatedly makes the point that victory in war is about achieving a condition in the _mind_ of the adversary. An opponent who doesn't accept his defeat is still an active opponent. E.g. Japan was defeated at Midway in June 1942, but didn't surrender until August 1945: the U.S. had to convince Japan's government that it had lost.

In this sense, then, digital war is the same as pre-digital war: what matters is public perception. One can only win by convincing the victor and the vanquished alike that one has won.

<comment><USER3> No amount of military hardware is effective if soldiers won't use it. Live video feed provided by cell phones _can_ provide a way for ordinary people to see the truth, naked for what it is, instead of relying on their government. All that said, cell phones haven't stopped the civil war in Syria

<comment><USER4> There's certainly been an evolution

In the Boer War of the twentieth century news of conflict came via patriotic print media

In WWII you got video, but in the form of propaganda footage in cinemas

In Vietnam they watched broadcasts by media companies with some limited freedom to show how bad things were and even talk to real people.

In Syria you can watch a 15 year old kid doing his own broadcast about what life is like in Syria.

Trouble is, most bombs and chemical weapons don't come with claims of responsibility attached, footage is easily misrepresented as being something else entirely, and the reality is that an abundance of evidence of war crimes they've committed and the other faction has committed is a good reason for some armies to _fight on_ militarily.

And perhaps if accounts of the Vietnam War had included clearly authentic self-made videos from South Vietnamese civilians expressing their very sincere fear of the Viet Cong in decent English, it might have actually had more success in persuading the American public to continue to back their doomed military campaign than clumsy anti-Red propaganda and a lot of journalists' photos of carnage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Trolling isn't relevant to the article. Propaganda != trolling. The title a clever pun, but the usage of "troll" in this context is troubling.

The word "troll" is being used to equate annoying comments online with political propaganda. The problem with this is that trolls feed off attention and go away when ignored ("Don't feed the trolls" works just as well as it ever did) while propaganda is doesn't go away when ignored, because the people spreading propaganda aren't doing it to sway opinion.

This is dangerous for two reasons:

1\. Actual trolls are being vilified more than is justified. Not only is this counterproductive (vilification is attention, which is what they want) but it turns the word "troll" into a weapon, where you can call anyone who says something you don't like a troll. Organizations have been quick to seize problems with trolling as justification for policies that hamper free speech. Ironically, when you take away a troll's free speech, they become a martyr for the people who actually believe the terrible things the troll was just saying for attention (see Reddit's crackdown on trolling leading to the cesspool that is Voat).

2\. Propagandists are being made to seem less threatening. If you equate internet trolls with highly funded, intelligent, and motivated people, you're going to underestimate your opponent. Calling the likes of Trump or Russian propagandists trolls and pretending he AND his campaign are just unintelligent, childish, or mentally ill, is a grave mistake. Insidiously, using the word "troll" to describe propagandists is a form of propaganda, which masks the power these groups have.

For these reasons you should be deeply suspicious of anyone who uses the word "troll" to describe people who hold any sort of power instead of random kids on the internet.

EDIT: I'd also like to add that bullying, stalking, doxxing, sexual harassment, and other behaviors directed at hurting a specific individual are _also_ not trolling. Lumping these behaviors in with trolling again has the effect of vilifying trolls and downplaying the harmfulness of these behaviors.

<comment><USER6> Disagree. This presents an antiquated and naive view of trolling as harmless banter that begs rather than illuminates the question.

For context, my working definition of trolling is 'malicious shitposting.' Where shitposting is 'posting nonsensical or absurd content for general amusement' trolls do it specifically to rile up people for the entertainment of the troll's peers. This has absolutely become weaponized in recent years and there is a significant overlap with propaganda, like it or not.

<comment><USER5> > This presents an antiquated and naive view of trolling as harmless banter > that begs rather than illuminates the question.

It's unclear what you're disagreeing with. Are you disagreeing with my definition of the word "troll"? Or are you accusing me of not thinking trolling is harmful?

Note that I do think trolling is harmful. It's just not "manipulating a presidential election" harmful or "hiding a genocide" harmful. And when you refer to manipulating a presidential election or hiding a genocide as trolling, you're downplaying the gravity of those very serious problems.

> For context, my working definition of trolling is 'malicious shitposting.' > Where shitposting is 'posting nonsensical or absurd content for general > amusement' trolls do it specifically to rile up people for the entertainment > of the troll's peers. This has absolutely become weaponized in recent years > and there is a significant overlap with propaganda, like it or not.

Can you point out an example, preferably from the article, where one of the people described was doing this? Were Israeli Defense Forces posting to entertain their peers, or were they posting to affect view of their conflict with Palestinians? Was the Kremlin disrupting Ukranian relief efforts and spreading misinformation for the entertainment of their peers? Do you think that the IDF or the Kremlin were just posting nonsensical or absurd content, or were they posting content carefully crafted to support a narrative? Please explain how either of these so-called-trolls fits your definition.

If you really are concerned about the behaviors you describe as "weaponized", why would you insist on describing them with a word you assume people associate with "harmless banter"? That seems like an inept usage of the English language to achieve your goals. Referring to propaganda as trolling definitely does not communicate the gravity of the problem.

<comment><USER6> I think my comment is quite clear.

<comment><USER5> Your comment is not clear on how the groups mentioned in the article fit your definition of trolls. The only thing clear from your previous post is that you didn't think your definition through to its logical conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" The mark of victory in Russia's new narrative war was not to convince the enemy of its position, but to heighten the level of doubt about all news among the target population."_

Mission accomplished.

<comment><USER8> Russia's narrative? It's the narrative of Trump and the liberal media.

With trump calling everything he disagrees with "fake news" and the liberal media calling everything they disagree with "fake news", it's disingenuous for the media to blame russia. It's a scapegoat. Throw in foxnews and the conservative media and their attacks and accusations of "fake news". And you have modern america.

<comment><USER9> > _...to heighten the level of doubt about all news among the target > population._

<comment><USER8> And trump and the liberal media are the main culprits of causing that doubt. As I said, the russia is just convenient scapegoat. And that in and of itself isn't helping people trust the media.

Everytime I see an article about russia now, I can't help but roll my eyes.

<comment><USER6> So you're saying that regardless of the quality/reliability o the article content, you pre-emptively dismiss it? Sounds like this is a you problem rather than a media problem.

<comment><USER10> It is a media problem, though. For my part I have a serious case of fact- checking fatigue which has lead me to just opt out of reading news media altogether.

Reporting the news is only half an outlet's job. The other have is to convince the public that they're presenting a factual, relatively unbiased view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem is centralized sources of information like televsion stations and newspaper companies.

Wikipedia is the answer. It's already the definitive place where the battle for ideas takes place, and the results are generally excellent. We need to force the dictators and manipulators onto the people's turf, so they can be beaten in the war of ideas.

We need a #WikipediaOrItDidntHappen meme to take hold across the world. No one should trust anything they hear or see that doesn't cite Wikipedia directly.

<comment><USER12> This sort of issue is exactly where Wikipedia fails, actually, and as a devout user and lackadaisical editor of Wikipedia, I'd like to see it get freer of propaganda wars, not more embroiled in them.

<comment><USER11> Why do you think it fails? The articles seem to disprove that idea. It may not be easy/simple/straightforward but it seems self-evident that it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://outline.com/4uYY8h](https://outline.com/4uYY8h)

</comment><comment><USER14> That's a pretty good headline.</comment>


Distributed Systems and the End of the API - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/cemerick/distributed-systems-and-the-end-of-the-api

<comment><USER2> [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=distributed+systems+end+of+api#!/s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=distributed+systems+end+of+api#!/story/forever/0/distributed%20systems%20end%20of%20api)</comment>


Google Are you listening? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@snambi/google-are-you-listening-f3a7d26d6f62#.2ab8nsxds <comment><USER2> Without starting an argument on individual preferences of using hardware keys: the touchbar can be configured to show the regular F-key's as default and/or for individual applications via System Preferences => Keyboard => Customize Control Strip (pressing the fn switches the touchbar back to context-aware- mode).</comment>


Is Twitter down now? - <AUTHOR> http://snipek.com/web/a1e27e8f-7798-4f5e-a1d8-524157bf79f5

<comment><USER2> The tweet that broke Twitter: [https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/440322224407314432](https://twitter.com/TheEllenShow/status/440322224407314432)

1M+ retweets in the first hour.

<comment><USER3> Did this end up being the most-ever retweetet tweet? Who holds that record now?

<comment><USER2> Obama at 778 000 retweets [https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/266031293945503744](https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/266031293945503744)

Ellen is already at 1M+

<comment><USER4> And it's passed Obama's tweet now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm assuming this is due to the Oscars and not due to something meaningful like the (potential?) war in Ukraine?

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://status.twitter.com/](http://status.twitter.com/)

No official comment (yet).

Edit: Here we go -

 _Brief service issue 14 minutes ago

Between 19:05 and 19:29 PST today, some users may have experienced issues viewing and sending Tweets on twitter.com and Twitter's mobile apps.

Traffic was redirected away from the components that were experiencing problems, and the issue has now been resolved.

We apologize for any inconvenience._

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Screenshots for both twitter's downtime page and ellen's tweet: [http://snipek.com/web/aebfd1b7-41eb-401e-8ea3-c873c449127b](http://snipek.com/web/aebfd1b7-41eb-401e-8ea3-c873c449127b)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Screenshot ...

[http://snipek.com/web-a/93e846a2-ca5d-4217-a8db-299b64091576](http://snipek.com/web-a/93e846a2-ca5d-4217-a8db-299b64091576)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's back now. Thumbs up for twitter's ops team!

</comment><comment><USER7> Thank Ellen for that :)

</comment><comment><USER8> and its back.

</comment><comment><USER8> yup</comment>


Apple demands $707 million in additional damages from Samsung - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/apple-demands-707-million-in-additional-damages-from-samsung/

<comment><USER2> Apple is trying hard to rival Oracle for the "most dickish technology company" slot. To recap, they've so far:

1\. Partially reversed the commoditization of PC hardware, driving up prices for consumers

2\. Engaged in large-scale App Store censorship

3\. Gouged 30% from eBook content owners

4\. Exploited Foxconn workers (possibly)

5\. Are sitting on an enormous pile of cash and donate nothing to charity

And now patent trolling. I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally feel it is unethical to buy Apple products. I think the ethical tone of the company was set when Jobs screwed Woz out of the bonus for Breakout for Atari.

But hey, they made computing shinier. Yay?

<comment><USER3> The sad part is that very few hackers are willing to put their money (and their hardware) where their mouths are. It truly is not inconceivable that, if we all would spend a little bit of our time and money contributing to Linux/Ubuntu, that we could have a solid OS that we could all use on a daily basis. But instead, we spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on Apple hardware, and Ubuntu has to resort to adding advertising to their OS. It really is quite a sad state of affairs.

<comment><USER4> I would happily pay for Ubuntu. However, Ubuntu would have to charge quite a bit of money in order to make even remotely as much per user as Apple is making by being a high-margin hardware company (where the OS is almost nothing more to them than an incentive to buy more hardware).

Even so, I'd happily pay for that as well; but, I can't, as Ubuntu won't take my money [1]: they don't sell anything I can actually buy; AFAIK, the only thing they accept money for is sending people to my business to give talks about how to better use Ubuntu.

[1] <http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/why-is-it-free>

Now, that said, a lot of the value that Ubuntu brings to the table is actually thanks to the people working on Debian: Ubuntu just takes their packages. I would also quite happily pay for things from Debian; I'd probably be even happier doing so than paying for things from Ubuntu.

However, they also do not charge for things, so I cannot pay them for things. I can donate money to them[2], but now we are talking about something much more complex (involving physical mail and checks or money orders) at a much higher mental cost of deciding "well, now how much?".

[2] <http://www.spi-inc.org/donations/>

I personally don't even think that I'm rare: a lot of people are quite happy to pay for things that provide them value, and Ubuntu is not just helping me personally, it helps my business. I run all of my servers using Ubuntu: I'm paying Amazon to run the machines, I'd happily pay Ubuntu for the software.

I thereby don't think it is quite fair to put the blame for this on the "very few hackers [that/which/whom/omgdunno] are willing to put their money where their mouths are": Ubuntu is much like the business that is undercharging for their services, and thereby cannot satisfy the customer [3].

[3] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4555062>

(Though, I can totally see the argument that the reason that they are able to even do what they do is that they do not charge: that if they charged there would be tons of internal community arguments about what the money was for and who would get it; or, quite simply, the direct monetization could undermine the charitable aspects.)

<comment><USER5> W1ntermute is decrying the fact that the Ubuntu team is in a position where they feel it is necessary to rely on selling access to their userbase.

It seems the most valued contribution skilled peoples can make to Ubuntu is in code and time. Even non-technical users can contribute valuable assets to the project. If your company has spare hardware, that is also useful to the SPI.

However, if you lack those resources, donations are openly accepted by both Ubuntu[1] and Debian[2].

[1]<http://www.ubuntu.com/community/get-involved/donate> [2]<http://www.spi- inc.org/donations/>

Taking fifteen minutes, considering the value added by Ubuntu and choosing an appropriate amount to donate is not "a high mental cost". Nor is writing a check or completing the electronic ClickPledge checkout form.

Further, the argument that if Ubuntu had more money it would undermine their organization's mission and cause endless infighting is baseless. Would you make the same argument about the Wikimedia foundation or EFF?

<comment><USER4> First off, the argument I was trying to make with regards to donations being "hard" is that it turns off a lot of people. I, personally, have made numerous donations to different organizations for the things they provide me.

I have donated to non-profit organizations like the EFF and contributed money to everything from conferences to individuals who are simply "making a giant dent in an important problem but are sadly too busy to dedicate all of their time to it".

However, I am fairly confident that I am rare. I thereby understand that me giving $10,000 to Ubuntu, in the grand scheme of things, is meaningless in comparison to a reality where every serious user of Ubuntu was paying them $200.

I thereby contend that having a system of open-ended donations that requires physical mail with checks or money orders is a problem. You can tell me _I'm_ not contributing enough, but that is both insulting to me and _completely misses the point_.

Note: at this point, you could simply have said "you misread that page, the Click & Pledge system lower down actually allows you to donate without physical anything", but you didn't quite; my response would have been: "I seriously did not notice that, and I'm sorry".

That said, I am not certain how much that changes the overall point: that entire page seems accidentally designed to make people consider donating to Debian both difficult and even "scary": as someone who has to do a lot of writing for random people who may not speak English very well to read, a lot of people are going to think that paragraph about identity theft applies to their online transaction, and not to the Debian Foundation posting accounts to wire.

Secondly, I did not make the argument at the end: I accepted that I could appreciate other people making that argument. Instead, I made the longer argument through the previous set of paragraphs that Ubuntu should actively charge for things.

Your last paragraph and its closing question is thereby highly confusing, and makes me question both whether you read my comment, and whether I should bother responding to yours. That said, I will now put on the hat of the people I overall disagree with and attempt to answer your question.

I, personally, am involved in what I, as well as many, consider more of a "movement" than a product: a specific form of hacking known as "jailbreaking" mobile devices, and in particular the iPhone (although I also do Android work).

In this capacity, I have seen many different people who have myriad opinions on what happens when you inject the concerns of managing money into a decentralized system, and I have seen first hand what happens "on the inside".

For one, you immediately get concerns about who is contributing what to the project, and thereby how the money should be allocated. As the contributions are decentralized, it is not clear that any one person or even one group of people should "own allocation".

In the case of Ubuntu, I imagine that even getting donations is tense. It is my understanding that many of the people working on Debian or with past ties to Debian feel that the Ubuntu project's primary purpose is to leach off their effort.

Meanwhile, I contend that things can get even worse if you start charging. Of course, as I believe that charging is the right course of action, I actually do charge for things personally, so I can talk about how people react to these kinds of charges.

The result is that a lot of people now believe you are "rolling in the money", when in fact you are a community project that is reinvesting the money you receive in improved output by hiring people and donating the rest.

This is difficult for end users to contemplate, however, as all they see is that they are having to pay $200 for an operating system distributed via a medium with a near-$0 marginal production cost (downloadable/copyable files).

However, again, I think that this entire diversion is weird, because I spent an entire post attempting to argue that Ubuntu should charge for things, linking to an argument made by other people, and attempting to state that donations might not be enough.

Thereby, my arguments for why Ubuntu should _not_ accept or even demand money might not be very good: if you are seriously attempting to ask that question, you should ask it to someone who is actually on that side of the argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, they are just (ab)using the system that currently exists, but it takes a lot of gall to ask for yet more, when the positive verdict was so precariously and unfairly won (the jury foreman that completely misunderstood what prior art means and invented an "interchangeability" definition for infringement).

</comment><comment><USER7> Well this just makes them absolutely nasty cunts then. Surely even the most hardcore Apple fanatic thinks this is completely unnecessary and designed to stifle competition?

<comment><USER8> >Surely even the most hardcore Apple fanatic thinks this is completely unnecessary and designed to stifle competition?

My guess is they'll laud the decision.

<comment><USER9> Yes, the battle is nasty and Samsung/Google (both are immensely powerful, and not human) is in no danger of being driven out. Why should I feel bad about it?

I'd like to see 3X damage preferably as an AAPL shareholder.

<comment><USER8> While that is a somewhat rational viewpoint, I am old-fashioned enough to consider the philosophy that right and wrong don't matter, only profits, to be unhealthy.

<comment><USER10> It would be rational if Apple could somehow be certain that they have duly licensed all applicable patents for the technology in all of their products.

So, no... it's about as rational as stripping naked and running through Times Square with a vuvuzela, daring the cops to come after you.

<comment><USER9> It is rational cause Apple can be sure that it does not willfully infringe on others patents and risks regarding those patents mines unavoidable can be managed through ad hoc negotiation and lawyers, lots of lawyers.

Given such a high profile case just resulted in a puny $1B amount, with its over $100B war chest, Apple can take a few dozens of these lawsuits easily. Let's see who's willing to go against Apple and comes out ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel awkward any time I use my Air in public. Business practices like this make me feel guilty for purchasing Apple products.

<comment><USER12> I've always felt that way about apple, which is why I've never owned any of their products. If this is how you feel, you'd likely feel better if you did the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is anybody really surprised to learn that apple is a scummy business? Their polished exterior hides a rotten core - as anyone who's ever worked with xcode or any of their APIs can cofirm - and their smug, self-satisfied, elitist marketing has always been the biggest indicator of this.

</comment><comment><USER13> It feels like Apple's soul is gone and now its a zombie hungry for cash. All of their executives and their top engineers are already awash in cash. They are worlds top company. what are they after now ? Is this how the greed looks like at a global scale ? They should learn from nature, Lions do hunt for food but when they are satisfied they leave other animals to scrape meat off their hunt. They have stopped acting like smart group of people and more like a tumor.

</comment><comment><USER14> I believe Nilay Patel at The Verge has previously said that this is an expected maneuver for this type of litigation after the initial verdict, including asking for maximum damages and sales ban.

Can a lawyer on HN comment on this?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this really warranted? Hasn't Apple won?

<comment><USER16> Apple won the court case, not yet won the mobile war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you take asking for the additional damages the law allows (most of which is based on willfulness, which the jury explicitly upheld), plus an injunction (which everyone always asks for) as anything other than lawyers taking the case to its logical conclusion, you're being silly. Whatever you think about the case, this is nothing new or surprising.

</comment><comment><USER18> And twist the knife.

</comment><comment><USER19> They also asked for a permanent injunction on sales of the infringing devices.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/22/us-apple- samsung-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/22/us-apple-samsung- idUSBRE88L04B20120922)</comment>


Patent Office Agrees To Facebook's "Face" Trademark - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/23/patent-office-agrees-to-facebooks-face-trademark/ <comment><USER2> Naively, I ask: does this affect Apple's Facetime? <http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/>

<comment><USER3> No. Or rather, not yet. Right now it only has a trademark on face when used in the context of "book". Now if they update their statement of use to include the word "time", or face as it relates to video chat software/media; then (assuming the statement of use was approved by the USPTO) apple would have legal annoyances. I highly doubt that it would hold up in a court case vs apple if it were approved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't the term "face book" in rather common use at many colleges and universities? Isn't that where they got the name? What if they'd called themselves yearbook.com?

<comment><USER5> It was <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_(directory)>

I wouldn't be surprised if some colleges still have their own facebooks on their website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When a given word becomes too strongly associated with a single company, then the word itself, in all its uses, becomes protectable by that company. The one case I know of is the word "gallo" (Spanish for rooster). The Gallo wine company has such a strong mark that they regularly crush people that try to use the word in any context, such as a small hispanic artist in San Antonio that named his company "Puro Gallo". I'm not saying I agree with this, at all, but that is one aspect of current trademark law. It took the Gallo family decades to establish the strength of their mark. I would guess that the entire idea of "Facebook" will be rather quaint long, long before the idea of "face" can embed itself into general commerce enough to be protectable as a word in all uses.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do I understand this to mean that Facebook is now warring over the two, distinct halves of its name?

For the past while, I've seen Facebook fighting over "Lamebook" and now they're pushing for a trademark on "Face". Do they want a controlling interest in all:

Face* and *book?

<comment><USER3> "Do they want a controlling interest in all: Face* and *book?"

Yes.

<comment><USER7> Can they really do that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wait... maybe I've been grossly misinformed, but I thought you couldn't trademark, for lack of a better term, a single normal word.

Isn't this why Google is called "Google" and not "Googol"?

<comment><USER9> Just try to market an integrated office suite called "Office", an OS called "Windows" or a computer called "Apple" to see what happens...

<comment><USER8> _Just try to market an integrated office suite called "Office"_

Microsoft owns the trademark to something like "Microsoft Office" not the _actual word_ Office, right?

Also, doesn't OpenOffice still exist?

<comment><USER10> They own it when used in defined context:

> Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and > electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users > in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment > subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.

So if you use "Face" ... in any of those areas you're infringing on their trademark, however if you named your cleaning product "facebegone" you'd be fine.

<comment><USER8> I didn't realize you could do that. I guess I learned something new today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see this as an excellent way to give foreign competitors a boost while making sure you can sue the domestic competition.</comment>


[Twitter] Security Bug? - <AUTHOR> http://inessential.com/2013/02/19/security_bug_

<comment><USER2> Sh/couldn't an OAuth provider nullify their OAuth access tokens on a data breach (or when a user changes his password)?

1) Provider cancels access token.

2) App tries to download data using old access token and is notified that the token is now invalid.

3) App asks user to reauthenticate.

4) User logs in to provider and grants permission

At this point, everything is back to normal.</comment>


Ask HN: Flask and Extensions or Ruby on Rails for Upcoming Project? - <AUTHOR> Awhile back I took some Udacity courses and learned just enough basic programming in Python to get started on a web app idea I had at the time. I decided flask was the simple/robust framework I would commit to and I went to town. It's been a couple years now of bouncing between side projects and I'm about to start a fresh one and I can't help noticing that going from 0 to full-featured web application just takes forever with flask. by the time i get all the pluggins i need, i'm not sure how much simple/rubustness is left and i'm worried i'd be making the wrong choice if i keep sticking with it for projects that are more than its intended for. the thing that really gets me is that alot of the extensions haven't been touched for multiple years now and i don't know enough to know whether that is because they are just so rock-solid that they never need to be touched or if they have been fully abandoned and i'd be a fool to build a busy on top of them.
what draws me to RoR is it's web-focus (i don't really have an interest in programming anything but web applications) and what looks to be a large group of people focused entirely on always keeping Rails updated and secure and easier to use the latest technologies on. I don't know a thing about ruby or rails but I have this nagging suspicion that investing a month in getting up to speed on ruby/rails could make the next 6 months of product development go much faster/smoother. but i can't tell if this is just my procrastination talking and i should just use what i already know/have with flask.
any insight/input is appreciated. thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> If you have experience with Python but not with Ruby, Django might be worth a look as a more batteries-included web framework (and maybe quicker to try out if you like that, since less learning is required).

<comment><AUTHOR> ya, i have considered this but ultimately i have no interest in moving to Django. there are some little python nuances i would enjoy dropping if i were to make a big move out of flask (i.e. not having to __init__ everything and making things harder to read having to put \ at the end of every line if i am in the middle of a function.

plus there was just too many negative things i read about django when deciding on flask in the first place for me to look past it. also, i am not sure how actively django is updated anymore and that is a big thing that i am looking for with my lack of time to keep up on everything is to trust that the developers of whatever framework i pick are committed to keeping me up to date with the latest-and-greatest in web technologies.</comment></comment>


To Help Tackle Inequality, Remember the Advantages You've Had - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/upshot/income-equality-isnt-just-about-headwinds-tailwinds-count-too.html <comment><USER2> I think the illusion we have is that we suffer more than others, or that other people do not suffer as much as we do.

Sure, we have all had advantages in life, but we have all had problems as well. Rich people have problems just as much as poor people. Rich people problems are much different than poor people ones, but they are still there.

Too, I think that American culture tends to create the illusion that if you are not super successful, then you are a loser.

I think this especially applies to middle class and upper middle class people.

For whatever reason, our culture has cultivated this cult of success and it just drives people crazy, and sadly, to depression and suicide.

We have deluded ourselves into thinking that more success and more money will somehow result in a lot less suffering. Then, when we taste success or money, we realize that it has very little to do with happiness or suffering.

I know a lot of successful people who hate their lives and other people who are not "successful" that are much more satisfied with their lives.

<comment><USER3> i'm having trouble thinking of a rich person problem that wouldn't also be a problem poor people face at least as much.

<comment><USER4> Terminal cancer,etc.

<comment><USER5> > a problem poor people face at least as much.

I'll see your "terminal cancer" with "any cancer with no ability to pay for treatment or care". Even if it's terminal, the wealthy can afford to die much more comfortably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems appropriate to plug Vicktor Frankl's book, Man's Search For Meaning to anyone who can clearly see themselves in an advantage position of privilege in life, but who still feels terribly empty inside.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_Search_for_Meaning)

<comment><USER7> I just read this (again) during a bit of an existential crisis. It's certainly a good read, and puts things in perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Freakonomics podcast - [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-my-life-so- hard/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-my-life-so-hard/)

<comment><USER8> Interesting how they discount the "headwinds" that white males are feeling, and don't go into detail about the perceived "headwinds" that half the country is currently hallucinating in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've seen this argument that if outcomes of public services( like education) is not upto par then the problem is that there wasn't enough funding for these programs and solution is to increase funding.

is this argument is fundamentally unfalsifiable?

Is it possible to do estimations like we do for software projects. Improving education by x% will cost y$ or are there way too many moving variable to any sort of estimations.

<comment><USER10> I've discovered a term recently that I'm fascinated by: "wicked problem"[1].

Could education be a wicked problem? We know that the students didn't meet the standards. So there is a problem. But are the standards too high? Are the teachers not doing well enough? Are the materials not adequate enough? Etc.

And we can't know what will fix the problem until we attempt the solution. And if the proposed solution doesn't work, we might not even know because the issue could have multiple causes.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The asymmetry depends on the culture. In some cultures moaning is more common than in the others, using Google in English to gauge that, results in serious skew.

</comment><comment><USER12> Anecdata shows that summer camps in things children are interested in are the single most important thing for building esteem, which is its own tailwind.

</comment><comment><USER13> Could anyone link to the non-paywalled source research paper listed at [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27869473](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27869473) ?</comment>


Capt. Sullenberger on the FAA and Boeing: Our Credibility Is Being Damaged - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/capt-sully-sullenberger-where-boeing-and-the-faa-went-wrong-in-this-ugly-saga-2019-03-19 <comment><USER2> The most immediate concern is the tragedies of all the lives lost in the crashes.

Separate from that, I also thought of credibility, since I've been proud of the FAA's and aviation industry's professionalism and numerous safety achievements. I've also sometimes held up some of their practices as models for more responsible software engineering.

I look forward to authorities gaining a comprehensive understanding of whatever went wrong, and taking whatever corrective/improvement action that suggests, as honest professionals. That's what's largely worked for aviation safety.

<comment> tuna-piano I agree.

I'm proud of being an American and a human for many reasons. (rational or irrational) I feel pride in Yosemite, the constitution, and our air safety establishments. It's truly amazing that (still) in the US we've gone so long without a truly catastrophic commercial passenger aviation accident (something like a billion flights!).

This whole saga really leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and leaves me with a lot less pride in the US air safety institutions. I hope the truth of what happens comes out and the establishment fixes what was wrong.

-How did the design limits of MCAS get changed without updating the safety requirements for MCAS?

-Why didn't Boeing/FAA take the issue seriously between Lion and Ethiopian?

-After Ethiopian, why did Boeing, the FAA, US Airlines and US Pilots unions not ground/request to ground the MAXs, while foreign counterparts (including the Canadian pilots union) did?

There's a chance the FAA was acting on its best data and actually didn't think there was any significant danger.

<comment><USER3> I hope that if theres a process problem it is quickly found and solved. The FAA has done a fantastic job with air safety. We can only hope that no such accidents occur in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many Americans consider Sully a hero. This statement will be very influential.

</comment><comment><USER5> Oh shit, when Sully speaks people listen... No one wants to be on the wrong side of this hero.

</comment><comment><USER6> The question is whether it was an issue with the plane or with the FCC. If it was with the FCC can the FCC debug itself?

<comment><USER7> I assume you meen FAA.

A problem with the plane _is_ a problem with the FAA, because the FAA signed off on the plane. Seperatly from figuring out the technical failures that led to the crashes, they need to figure out the regulatory failures that led to a plane with such failures being approved.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much does access to consumer credit reports cost in the US? - <AUTHOR>

Also, is it tiered? i.e. based on number of times accessed? And how easy are their APIs to access?<p>(e.g. Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) <comment><USER2> Have you made a good faith effort to research this yourself, before asking us to do the work for you?

Surely if this information is important to you, it's worth taking a few hours to see what you can find out.

And if it is not worth a few hours of your time, why should we bother?

<comment><AUTHOR> I had started looking around, and realize there are APIs, but I was wondering if someone had looked into this previously, and perhaps could give me some pointers.</comment></comment>


Aamir Khan's Satyamev Jayate is back - <AUTHOR> http://www.firstpost.com/bollywood/satyamev-jayate-2-timed-to-coincide-with-polls-says-teary-aamir-khan-1410787.html

<comment><USER2> Don't think HN is interested in Aamir Khan or his shows at all...</comment>


LightUp Teaches Kids Electronics With Augmented Reality - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/31/lightup-helps-kids-learn-electronics-with-augmented-reality/

<comment><USER2> From what I remember from my childhood (age 4-5) it was a lot easier to understand workings of analog components, particularly ones with some physical (or visual) interface that you could actually see. Like relay with visible moving parts, or voltmeter with moving coil/pointer, or oscilloscope, or a resistor that heats up and that you can touch, or a capacitor that makes a noisy spark when discharged. And on the opposite, digital components that were not giving any direct visual/sensory clues were a lot more difficult to understand (like 555).

So, I guess, these extra visualizations can be really helpful at early stages.

With more abstract concepts, like modulated wave, detector radio, etc (which BTW can be understood at 5 as well) I don't think that visualizations like these can help. In my opinion later stages really depend on abstract thinking and there is no way avoiding it.

</comment><comment><USER3> True, visualizations can only go so far, but our goal is to take our platform beyond that. Not too many people have access to an oscilloscope or equipment to analyze the projects they can make with traditional kits. Our app is a cost effective way to show similar analysis, like what a modulated wave would look like on an oscilloscope. This is helpful in understanding abstract concepts.</comment>


4 questions on blog reading - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mLzTg2lB6msc6LAX24xkPv2s9L9ByHqP0YFuKx7_ub8/viewform

<comment><USER2> You'll get more responses if you had some indication of what the email address would be used for, and if it were optional.</comment>


Japan earthquake sparks tsunami scare - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20638696

<comment><USER2> I was sitting in my office and coding when the earthquake hit. When people realized it wasn't a small one, everyone just started rushing outside of the building. I thought it wasn't the smartest thing to do since many buildings in Tokyo have lots of glass windows and panels which could literally decapitate you if they hit you... and since virtually all buildings here are built to be earthquake proof, you'd probably be much safer hiding under a desk in your office than going outside and exposing yourself to all the falling debris. Oh well...

</comment><comment><USER3> The tsunami warning has been lifted again, see <http://www.jma.go.jp/en/tsunami/>

</comment><comment><USER4> When measuring waves, is it from top to low, or from middle to top?

<comment><USER5> My assumption is that the water level represents the center of an oscillating waveform, so it is "top to low" in the sense that it goes from the top of the wave to the "low" representing the normal water level, and it is "middle to top" in the sense that it goes from the (middle) inflection point to the maxima. For the former, note that oscillations may cause a lower amplitude less than the normal water level, but it may look more shallow due to the different diffusion of water relative to air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is a 1m wave really something to be concerned about? The ones last year were up to 40.5m tall! In comparison this one doesn't really seem to be that significant but I'm keen to be corrected.

<comment><USER7> A 1 meter wave can deliver a lot of power but it's probably not really something that will cause much damage in a place like Japan. Keep in mind that the geography of the land will affect the incoming wave. Some geographic features can focus or disperse waves to be larger or smaller. The problem is that you don't really know if it will be 1m or 10m until it is too late.

Our startup (MakeLeaps) is located in Tokyo and this one shook our building enough that one of our support staff who was on the phone with a user asked them if she could call back so she could crawl under the desk. :-) He was far enough away that he couldn't feel it but he was also pretty understanding.

This was one of the first earthquakes in a while that really got my attention. When I saw it was an M7.5 in the same area as the one from 3/11 I thought the tsunami was going to keep getting worse.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Second report of a 1-meter wave hitting ground: <https://twitter.com/japantimes/status/276976633565548546>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1st wave ended up being 20cm: <https://twitter.com/japantimes/status/276975852716167169>

</comment><comment><USER8> All good here in Sangenjyaya. Pretty long one (or two?) though

<comment><USER9> Hey minikomi,

is there any site you know that tracks how the situation is at Fukushima, like how many of the 204 (?) rods / fuel units have been moved to another nuclear power plant?

<comment><USER8> Hey mate I guess you could check tepco's official reports, as far as you trust them. They are written very formally and translate quite well in google translate if you copy & paste them over. <http://www.tepco.co.jp/nu/index-j.html></comment></comment></comment>


Id Software founder John Carmack resigns - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/22/5134500/id-software-founder-john-carmack-resigns <comment><USER2> Wow, I'm just now seeing this news. Initially, I had that _sinking feeling_ set in... I mean, like you, I have been impacted by his story, his games (not just the Wolfenstein/Doom/Quake franchises... I'm talking Commander Keen, boys and girls), his code, reading _Masters of Doom_ , etc.

I can see my copy of _Michael Abrash 's Graphics Programming Black Book Special Edition_ sitting here, which was such a treat to read when it came out, because it has so many great chapters on the development of Quake and little stories about John's discoveries and thought processes throughout the development of the game.

But, then I thought... wait... _this is a new beginning._ I wrote about this previously, but, look for gaming to start heading in the direction of VR with technology like Oculus Rift. Also, with someone of the caliber of John Carmack involved (now totally focused on it because of the resignation announcement) with not only his passion and skill, but his ability to work with graphics hardware manufacturers and driver developers to effect change and garner the necessary support and backing, expect to see vibrant, compelling developments in this field.

In case you missed it, check this video out of John discussing some of his VR work. It is from E3 2012:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg)

That momentary sinking feeling has faded away now... great things are ahead!

<comment><USER3> Frankly, he's too talented to keep making mediocre shooters for twitch gamers. Heck, 3D game engines are practically commodities nowadays. No idea if the Oculus Rift will succeed, but I love it when people on his level take chances. I watch the Rift project very carefully, and really see a lot of potential there. It might not end up being what we expect it to be in the end. We assume it'll be this great little game accessory like a Kinect. It has the potential to be much more.

<comment><USER4> Poorly optimized 3d engines are a commodity. Quake 3, Painkiller and Serious Sam 1 were a piece of great engineering. Also there was nothing mediocre in the twitch based era of id. Their decline began with Doom 3.

<comment><USER5> So, a bit of a rant, I dislike the current game culture meme of "this engine is poorly optimized". I am tired of seeing the following statement: game x is poorly optimized because game y runs better on my box. This is akin to saying: I find apples delicious, Oranges are terrible. Get apples noobs.

I would argue that the fact that you can drop in any one of a half dozen solid engines based on your programming language of choice speaks to the fact that they are commodities. At this point, for the vast majority of cases, it makes as much sense to write a 3d game engine as it does to write your own web server.

You can do it, but you could spend the time doing something that directly relates to the product you want to sell instead.

<comment><USER6> I think you misunderstand that for a long time, Id Software has made a lot of money turning 3d engines into a commodity. For John Carmack, the emphasis has always been on developing new graphics technologies that advance the entire gaming industry. He's first and foremost an engineer. He may have done a significant amount of game design back in the day, but for at least a decade he's primarily been focused on pushing the hardware to its limits. Since Doom 3, Id's games have pretty much been tech-demos for their engines. That's not to say that Doom 3, Quake 4, and Rage weren't good games, its just that none of them are truly memorable experiences like their older games were.

There are only a handful of major players that are making meaningful contributions to the world of 3d engines. If companies like Epic, Id, Valve, and Crytek didn't continue to develop new 3d engines, they wouldn't be a commodity anymore.

Also, the Source, Unreal, Cry, and Id Tech 5 engines are still differentiated from one another enough to warrant all four of them existing.

In short, I don't think 3d engines are a "solved" problem. Of course an indie studio looking to publish its first 3d game should obviously use a readily available engine, but the major studios still have good reasons to roll their own.

<comment><USER7> I'd imagine that a lot of the need for new engines is driven by new hardware, and it seems that the video hardware has stopped evolving at a rapid pace. nVidia and AMD have been focused more on computation than graphics recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is _fantastic_ news.

I loved Id back in the day. When all it took for a game studio to be great was the most advanced code, Id was king! Then FPS games became more like movies, and Id became a bit like Michael Bay. They still pushed the technology forward, but almost everyone was making FPS's that had better plots, characters, etc.. The technologies Id licenses to other game studios are put to better use by them than in Id's own hands!

VR has been around for decades, but it has always _sucked_. Low resolution displays and poor head-tracking have historically been problems, but _latency_ has long been a problem that trumped all others. Carmack and Oculus were already working on getting Rift's latency down to levels that would make VR a less nauseating experience for users.

This move just means Carmack is finding his work at Oculus more rewarding than at Id. That means we can probably expect great things from Oculus in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this check had been in the mail for a while. He is clearly far more excited these days about VR and where it can go. I'm sure he has more than enough money too to never have to worry about working again if he wanted.

I really wish him the best of luck, truly one of my favorite people in tech. I hope we still can get his annual keynotes, because they are great to listen to.

<comment><USER10> It's weird they didn't designate him as "Spiritual Leader" instead or something that fits him better long ago.

Everyone knew this, so it's weird it had to end in this drastic manner.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps I'm unaware of the circumstances, but what about this is drastic? His company got acquired, he stayed for a few years, and now he's moving on to the next thing that excites him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First Winamp, and now John Carmack leaves id. This has been a brutal week.

On one hand, it's exciting to see John working on VR tech. I really do hope we see something amazing out of it. But it still feels wrong, an id Software without Carmack. Hopefully they can continue on and reclaim some of their former glory as well, and let's hope Carmack keeps in the spotlight.

<comment><USER13> Both are positive things, the best Doom has already been made and Winamp stagnated for years now.

Time to stop being lazy, learn foobar2000 and buy an Oculus Rift.

Too bad IdTech6 won't be as awesome as it could be, but again VR will be so much better instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Obligatory mention of "Masters of DOOM", the biography of Johns Carmack and Romero:

[http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed- Culture/dp/0812972155)

Like reading iWoz... a lot of stories of brilliant engineering at an elite level.

<comment><USER15> Seconded!

And I can recommend the audio version, Wil Wheaton does a great job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Slightly testy tone in that iD statement, isn't there?

<comment><USER17> Not sure why anyone is downvoting you- this is the quote:

"John Carmack, who has become interested in focusing on things other than game development at id, has resigned from the studio,""

It does sound kind of testy/flippant to me. But it could be out of context.

<comment><USER18> This is from his twitter:

 _I wanted to remain a technical adviser for Id, but it just didn 't work out. Probably for the best, as the divided focus was challenging._

And then:

 _If they don 't want me to talk on stage at Quakecon next year, we'll just have to fill up the lobby like the old days. :-)_

<comment><USER19> I'm pretty sure they'd PAY him to talk at Quakecon. Although it's not a big money event, so they'd probably just ask really nicely. :)

<comment><USER20> I am pretty sure there is 0 chance that I would pay attention to quakecon if not for Carmack's talks.

<comment><USER21> Amen. That is the biggest thing I'll miss as a result of him stepping down. They'd really be screwing up their conference by taking him off the docket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is the end for id.

The only thing id has had going for it are Carmack's engines. In recent years his stuff has been as amazing as ever, but so many commercial engines are only a fraction of a step behind, and the difference hardly matters.

Design-wise id is a complete mess. They're stuck back in the 1990s. RAGE appears to have had no leadership and no vision, and the actual design work that shipped is amateur-hour at best.

<comment><USER23> ZeniMax will fold the id software llc, keep anybody worth keeping, and work on making money with the intellectual property (either internally or farming it out). There's nothing else left at id that's worth what ZeniMax paid for the company other than the IP and the game engine. I'm sure they knew the day would come sooner than later that they'd lose the Carmack value factor in id.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This makes me happy. I have a feeling that iD were dragging John down. He could always make a brilliant tech that they somehow always failed to makes decent game of after q3 arena.

I really hope that he will be able to push the limits of possible about graphics technology once again.

</comment><comment><USER17> Very happy for John - his early days were at the very forefront of PC game development and while iD still does great stuff, video gaming is in a very stable, iterative place right now.

Hopefully chasing this VR dream will take him back to those early pioneering days.

</comment><comment><USER24> > John's work on id Tech 5 and the technology for the current development work > at id is complete.

So he's leaving just before starting to work on the voxel/polygon id Tech 6 hybrid gaming engine. Darn it!

[http://raytracey.blogspot.com/2008/08/carmack-id- tech-6-hybr...](http://raytracey.blogspot.com/2008/08/carmack-id- tech-6-hybrid-rendering.html)

Hopefully id Software will continue that without him, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER16> It has to be uncertain whether iD's commitment to open-sourcing its engines will continue after his departure, too.

<comment><USER25> Most likely not.

The FOSS culture is not part of the gaming industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Carmack is going full-time and the company is doing a lot of hiring...

[https://careers.oculusvr.com/jobs/](https://careers.oculusvr.com/jobs/)

I'm not into VR, but this could be one of those "this changes everything" moments.

</comment><comment><USER27> Off topic but why do so many people capitalize "id" as "iD"? I did myself years ago as well but I have no idea why I did. None of their logos use that capitalization and my memory of the early games is too poor to recall where, if anywhere, it was written like that.

<comment><USER28> I've seen this usage in the wild a few times. It makes me twitch just like when someone types out "FireFox".

<comment><USER29> or "BitCoin"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I find it interesting that iD and Carmack are still described in terms of Doom and Quake.

<comment><USER31> They've embraced it to a large extent with a huge number of sequels. Aside from that, Quake 3 is considered by many to be the apex of fast-twitch FPS skill games. It certainly makes Call of Duty look like grandma's bridge club.

<comment><USER12> Quake 3 was pure perfection. That game _never_ crashed. And I was playing on Linux in the bad old days of the late '90s, when sound and graphics drivers were spotty at best. I don't think we'll see anything like it again. It's a FPS that plays more like an action arcade game than a simulator. It took some of the elements of Quake 1 and 2 but placed them in a Snow Crash cyberpunk world.

<comment><USER32> The Quake games probably never exposed any driver bugs, because they were the games the driver authors used to decide which code paths to test, optimize, and (in some cases) even which bits of the driver to actually write in the first place. I wouldn't be so quick to infer anything either way, from the fact they never crashed ;)

(I used to have a PowerVR PCX2. Its OpenGL driver did exactly what Quake II needed - and absolutely nothing else. As I recall, they didn't even bother to get the OpenGL screen savers working. I believe the Voodoo GL drivers "worked" along similar lines.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's bittersweet for me. I grew up with id games and John Carmack has just always been there as id's genius programmer guy. Feels like the end of an era.

On the other hand, John Carmack is working full time for Oculus VR!

<comment><USER34> Yes, as their CTO. Which makes me wonder if we've seen the last of his Code God skills. (But maybe not...)

<comment><USER33> I seriously doubt it. You should read his tweets. He's still very much a programmer.

<comment><USER34> I should add that I _hope_ we haven't seen the last of his Code God skills. The title of "CTO" kind of scares me in that regard, unless, of course, Oculus is still small enough that the CTO might still be expected to put his hands in the source.

<comment><USER35> I don't believe he would take any job where he wasn't programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Basically confirms that VR is in the "Slope of Enlightment".

<comment><USER37> "Slope of Enlightment" assumes that the peak excitement of the technology is already behind us. I don't think we've seen that peak yet. VR in the 90s never came close to living up to expectations and was a dud.

The peak is yet to come in my opinion. When the oculus consumer version comes out, people are gonna go crazy and predict that we're all going to live in the virtual world very soon. That won't pan out in the short-term, but we will slowly get there. That's when the Slope of Enlightment will hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> John can make real impact on the videogame industry a second time at Oculus, the same couldn't have been said about id. This is a win for everybody.

</comment><comment><USER39> It doesn't seem like an amicable parting. You never want to have a guy like Carmack just leave. He's a giant in your industry, he's popular and highly respected and you gain a lot by having him be associated with your company. So at the very least you give him a honorific title and invite him to all the corporate parties. It didn't seem like this happened here.

</comment><comment><USER40> A developers developer taking the opportunity to flex his wings on something new, what a fantastic turn of events for us all.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sounds like good news - I'd rather see him working on core technologies that can benefit all games than working on iD's games, which I'd characterize as merely being "pretty good" (albeit very technically impressive).

</comment><comment><USER42> In the early days of PC gaming John Carmack was a genius, and Quake 3 was his masterpiece. I guess he is still a genius, but from an outsider's perspective the advancements he has made since then don't seem to changed the world in the same way.

Graphics get prettier, but gameplay stays the same, or even gets worse because the prettier graphics require higher budgets which require lowest-common- denominator appeal to recoup.

So it's good that he is trying something truly new now, where he has a chance to make a difference again.

</comment><comment><USER43> It will be interesting to see how the future pans out for both companies. John Carmack is a brilliant person and I think that Oculus VR will do very well with him on board full time.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is a good thing. Carmack said at a recent Quakecon that he didn't let us have a light on any gun in Doom 3 because he didn't want another light source in his rendering..

this is a guy who has no business making games. And none of his games have been good for a long time (and they were always pretty bland, Quake was the peak).

Having Carmack out of id's games is a good thing. Having him geek out on technical problems without being allowed in game design decisions of any sort is also a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER45> What a strange move. Maybe he wasn't spending enough time at iD and was forced to leave?

You'd think his having a leg in gaming and a leg in VR would create a wonderful synergy. Knowing all the in's and out of both worlds he could have insured great integration of Doom 4 with the Oculus rift - making sure iD was on the technological forefront while the Oculus would have a great demo from day 1.

(see the Leap Motion for an example of what happens when you don't have a good demo day 1)

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm not sure how to feel about this... He's always been an inspiration to me. But I don't really care about VR tech, and would much rather see Carmack working on games (at id or any other company). But I wish him success anyway.

</comment><comment><USER47> I guess I should feel dumb, because I thought Carmack left id when he joined OculusVR.

</comment><comment><USER48> Am I the only one surprised to find that Carmack was still working for iD? I had thought his taking a position with OculusVR implied his departure months ago.

<comment><USER49> I felt the same way when he was doing Armadillo Aerospace too. There are more people than JC who have said: "I invented some cool tech, made a lot of money, started a family, and also I think I'll start a rocket company on the side." How much time/energy to these people have? This is like a thing now.

<comment><USER50> Well apparently he didn't really have the time/energy to keep AA going.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is truly the end of an era. John's work has given me countless hours of joy and I look forward to seeing what he produces next.

</comment><comment><USER52> Initially this is depressing until you see where he is going. I think Oculus and VR in general will change the gaming industry.

</comment><comment><USER53> Wherever he goes, he shall kick ass. Best wishes, Carmack!

</comment><comment><USER54> Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

</comment><comment><USER55> At first I was elated, but then I realized I was confusing Carmack with the egotistical John Romero.

</comment><comment><USER56> It's a little sad news but exciting as well. I'd rather see John's mind helping push VR/AR and 'cheaper/nimbler/entrepeneurial/hacker-maker/DIY' aerospace forward than churning out yet another 3D FPS game. We have tons of great games/engines of that type already to choose from, and lots of great people continuing to work in that space.

</comment><comment><USER56> smells like vesting and/or end of golden handcuffs period (in the context of the prior Betheseda -> iD acquisition)

<comment><USER57> Agreed.

He and the rest of iD seemed to have lost themselves once Bethesda came into the picture, but these types of things are almost a certainty after a big M/A event. Good luck to John!</comment></comment>


Aubrey de Grey's SENS Foundation 2012 annual report - <AUTHOR> http://www.sens.org/sites/srf.org/files/reports/SENS%20Research%20Foundation%20Annual%20Report%202012.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> They give updates on all their major research projects, a great way to know how much progress is being made.</comment>


Stephen Hawking's explosive new theory - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/26/scihawking126.xml

<comment><USER2> Ok, I will take a stab to explain it.

There are comparing the current universe, to light. Light is both a particle and a wave, that means that photons exhibit both properties, and it all depends on how you observe it. The other interesting part of light, as it always chooses the path that takes the "shortest time". Not the shortest path, but shortest time.

Eg. If you shot a laser beam thru ice, the laser beam will reflect to a certain angle, b/c it is the quicker angle to get away from that material. Why does light choooses this path? In quantum theory, it seems that light explores ALL paths possible, (wave property), and we observe it in the shortest path (as a particle), as it is the most likely to occur.

So, basically the are claiming the Universe is like light, a big giant wave, with no beginning, and unlimited posibilities/paths, but we are observing only one, the most likeley one.

When a particle travels, from point a, to b. It has a distinct begining, you can pin-point it. That's the bing bang, if you thing of our universe as a particle.

But if something both wave/particle properties, there is no distinct beginning, as it is all around. You can observe it at certain points, but it also can be in other points simultanosly, but you just observe one at a time, but you can't pin-point it exactly.

...

One interesting experiment, about the wave/particle property, is the double slit experiment: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc>

Take mark of the last phrase: "Merely observing the particle, the observer collapse the wave function, and made the particle act as solid". So, we are the observers, the universe is the giant wave/particle thing, and by us existing and observing it, we are collapsing to a concrete thing (to us at least).

...

"At first, they found that the most probable history of the cosmos had only undergone "a little bit of inflation at the beginning, contradicting the observations," said Prof Hertog. Now, after a correction to take account of how the data we have on inflation is based on only a view of a limited volume of the universe, they find that the wave function does indeed predict a long period of inflation."

In other word, let's fudge some math here, some there, and re-arrange some stuff there, to have the data to support our hypothesis. Unfortunately it is hard to know if this is right, b/c it is just one of the so many theories.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it OK to admit I don't get it?

<comment><USER4> When I'm on my death bed, not having learned enough physics will be my greatest regret. I hope.

<comment><USER5> If you trust popular wisdom, you surely will not regret not working enough.

Carpe Diem.

<comment><USER6> But learning physics _is_ carping the diem - it's what I would be doing if I wasn't working.

<comment><USER7> Hear hear! Dumb work preventing further piddling away in astrophysics classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hard to tell from the article which kind of skimmed over stuff, from what I can tell, the theory posits we live in a large, isotropic, semi-classical world following a long (more than Plankian scale) epoch of inflation, because a large sub-set of vacuum states in the landscape of vacuum states in string theory are such that they will lead to long periods of inflation, thereby producing large, isotropic, semi-classical post-inflationary regions such as the one we observe. I suppose if one can demonstrate a large subset of the possible histories in string theory lead to alot of inflation, one can say it is "most probably" to find oneself in a history that has had a lot of inflation. I suppose earlier versions of the Hartle-Hawking "sum over histories" approach didn't take the string theory "landscape" into account, and this theory in the article is "new" in the sense that it is the same "sum over histories" approach, but attacked from the viewpoint of the string theory landscape, attempting to demonstrate how one can get inflation from some non- vanishing subset of histories associated with the string theory landscape. But I haven't seen the actual paper, so not quite sure if this is exactly what it is doing. Be interesting to see what if any refinements of current predictions this model could lead to. Specifically if any insights are given for say the cosmological constant driving the current cosmic acceleration.

<comment><USER9> Abstract of the paper: No-Boundary Measure of the Universe <http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v100/e201301>

Another paper on the topic by the same authors: The Classical Universes of the No-Boundary Quantum State <http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.1663v1></comment></comment>


Pot-Kettle Advertising - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/08/british-news-outlets-could-fail-due-to-coronavirus-ad-blocking <comment><USER2> The article title is "British news outlets 'could fail due to coronavirus ad- blocking'", pot-kettle is the submitter's take on the story.

Please use the original title were possible.</comment>