Chipmakers Test Ferroelectrics as a Route to Ultralow-Power Chips - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/chipmakers-test-ferroelectrics-as-a-route-to-ultralowpower-chips <comment><USER2> Supriyo Datta is a pretty top level semiconductor theory guy, so its a good chance theoretically this could work, but the place where tons of issues have come up over the years in using new materials is that they often lead to quality or defect issues in the manufacturing process that takes years to figure out.

<comment><USER3> Fwiw, Chenming Hu is a proponent of NC-FETs as well.

Also, GloFo has already fabricated FinFET NC-FETs.

<comment><USER2> oh interesting, was not aware of the term NC-FET -- so basically the ferroelectric material gives it the negative capacitance behavior... interesting.

<comment><USER3> Yup, the NC-FET essentially has the NC and positive capacitor in series to get a voltage amplifier, a clever way of subverting the Boltzmann limit :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Some researchers have predicted that transistors built with ferroelectrics will never exceed 100 megahertz. And some think that building these devices will require very thick layers of ferroelectrics—too thick to be practical.

Wast amounts of low power MCUs are still built to function in single MHzs. A jump from milliamps to microamps is not a small deal.

<comment><USER5> Less than 1MHz is also very common - some MCUs have the option of running from the 32kHz RTC oscillator in low-power modes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Momentum is definitely building on this, although still very much in the R&D phase [https://semiengineering.com/a-new-memory- contender/](https://semiengineering.com/a-new-memory-contender/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how this is related to Ferroelectric RAM, which offers nice properties along all axes except density?

<comment><USER3> So in NCFETs there is something called capacitance matching which is basically the value of the negative capacitor compared to the value of the positive capacitor.

When you have different values, then you can get NCFETs, and in different values, you get FRAM.

In FRAM you get states stored in the polarization of the atoms in the ferroelectric layer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is anyone putting R&D into this besides Global Foundries? I've seen their name pop up in every spintronics announcement lately.

<comment><USER9> Probably not since there aren't enough competitors left to actually invest in chips. If you don't hear Intel, TSMC or Global Foundaries putting R&D into something then you have the way out there research of academia.

Maybe a random startup or two are investigating this but those are academics that figured something out from a grant and are attempting to make a company out of it. The road to beating silicon is a long one.

<comment><USER10> TI and Cypress through Ramtron has done quite a bit of work incorporating ferroelectric materials into CMOS processes and such for FeRAMs mostly. Obviously RAMs are not transistors but the work is certainly relevant. Like the article says, the large feature size for ferroelectrics has mostly been the limitation for ferroelectric applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sure, you can reduce the voltage required, but what about the current required? Ferric materials tend to be somewhat resistive compared to most other metals.

<comment><USER12> The ferroelectric materials here are used in the insulating stack, so actually higher DC resistance is a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> DDR4 on chip frequencies are on the order of 200mhz internally. They get the high data rates by being massively parallel. So never discount the low clock frequencies.

<comment><USER3> It's a moot point anyways since hafnia based ferroelectrics do not suffer from this speed issue. Also this is the _transistor_ switching speed we're talking about, entirely different than DDR clock speeds.

<comment><USER13> Transistor speed is actually the problem on DRAM memories. The process for making great capacitors is terrible for making fast transistors.

<comment><USER3> But DRAM processes use RCAT transistors.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hidden Costs of Memory Allocation - <AUTHOR> http://randomascii.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/hidden-costs-of-memory-allocation/

<comment><USER2> I'm actually surprised virtualized page-zeroing isn't a memory controller feature at this point. With all of the things modern CPUs do or you, it seems crazy that everyone is running CPU threads that waste time and voltage to pump a zero page queue.

<comment><USER3> It's a _little_ bit silly, but zeroing a page is an extremely cheap operation (far cheaper than just about anything you are reasonably going do with the page once it's zeroed -- on the order of a hundred cycles is pretty typical these days). That said, yes, it is a cost, and it's not crazy to want to address it with HW.

FWIW, both powerpc and arm64 have a "just zero the damn cacheline" instruction. That's not quite what you want, but it is quite useful.

<comment><USER4> A hundred cycles to zero a page? If 4 KB can be written in a hundred cycles then, assuming a 3 GHz processor, that's 30 million pages per second or ~120 GB/s. That's pretty fast memory. On x86/x64 processors, which lack a zero-the- cacheline instruction, the memory will also end up being read, so you need 240 GB/s to clear pages that quickly. This ignores the cost of TLB misses, which require further memory accesses.

<comment><USER3> The zeros don't need to get pushed to memory immediately. They go to cache, where they will typically be overwritten with your real data long before they are pushed out to memory. That push of your real data would have needed to happen anyway, so there (usually) minimal extra cost associated with the zeroing.

There are, of course, pathological cases where you touch one byte on a new page, and then don't write anything else before the whole thing gets pushed out, but they are relatively rare in performance-critical contexts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know that in C it is relatively easy to define your own memory management functions (I have written my own, complete with very primitive garbage collector, in an attempt to track down memory leaks before I had heard about Valgrind).

I believe Python essentially does this under the hood by allocating buffers and managing its own memory requests on them (allocating more when it needs more, obviously).

I wonder if it is possible to do this kind of thing in C++? It occurs to me that it might be hard to write platform-independent code which mimics the behaviour of the `new` keyword on a preallocated buffer. A quick Google reveals some syntax[1] that I'd not seen before which allows one to do this, although it looks like your call would look something like:

        MyType* instance = new (my_malloc(sizeof(MyType))) MyType();

which is hardly concise. Perhaps a macro called my_new would allow you to text-transform your way there without as many parens or repeats of MyType.

In any case, asking for all your RAM at the beginning, and then re-blanking and re-using it, is certainly much faster for certain problem types (3D games with physics emulation, some scientific problems.)

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8301043/create-objects- in...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8301043/create-objects-in-pre- allocated-memory)

 _disclaimer:_ This post is about reinventing too many wheels, and should be taken with a pinch of salt! Moving malloc calls out of loops (and replacing them with hand-written zeroing functions) is probably the most useful tip in practise.

<comment><USER6> In C++ you're supposed to do this with std::allocator and alternatives. This allows you to change the allocator used by vector<>, map<>, etc. Or you use the placement new syntax you found with operator overloading (yes, you can overload "new MyType()")

You're really _not_ supposed to do it with macros.

<comment><USER7> To be clear, there are four options you mentioned:

1\. Changing the allocator used by the standard library by passing in a special allocator to instantiations of std::vector, std::map, etc.

2\. Allocating raw memory elsewhere, and instantiating an object with that memory using the placement syntax for new.

3\. Overriding operator new on just a particular class. This does not change the global new; it just means that objects of this class will be allocated with this version of new.

4\. Overriding the global definition of new. All objects whose classes do not define their own operator new will be allocated with your own, global new.

More details here: [http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/new/operator_new](http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/memory/new/operator_new)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does Windows really keep a pool of zero pages? With COW, a single zero page is sufficient -- any copying would be done when a write is attempted over the page.

<comment><USER9> COW isn't free. You still have to spend the time doing the copy.

Better to zero memory ahead of time.

<comment><USER10> Windows-style ahead of time zeroing thread will typically take the cache misses and memory bandwidth for that page twice. (Assuming your code subsequently puts its own data on the pages, instead of just ordering up zeroed pages to sit on)

<comment><USER11> Are you certain it's not bypassing cache on the writes? It's been relatively straightforward to do this on x86 for ages now, especially if you're using SSE to fill many bytes at once. I would be shocked if the page zeroing thread did cached reads or writes.

<comment><USER4> The page-zeroing code may be able to minimize its effect on the cache, but it will then necessarily consume memory bandwidth -- 4 KB of bandwidth per page zeroed as it writes each page. So, it still affects overall performance.

And it guarantees that when a process goes to use the pages they will not be in the cache. Ah, tradeoffs.

<comment><USER9> It does it when the system is otherwise idle.

> And it guarantees that when a process goes to use the pages they will not be > in the cache.

There isn't much point in caching a page full of zeros. Let the cache fill when there is actual data.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Concise History of Asperger Syndrome (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4725185/ <comment><USER2> > ... a peculiar, fascinating physical appearance, with "finely boned > features," of "almost aristocratic appearance"

Is this referencing the mild physical androgyny observed in many Asperger patients, or just Hans Asperger suffering from a small sample size? I've never seen this symptom described elsewhere before.

Regardless, an interesting overview of the state of the field. I had no idea physical clumsiness was so central to the diagnosis in so many systems and for so many years. Poor social skill, need for sameness, but bad motor skills was never something I considered so core to being an Aspie.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like old-school 1940s-era science. Seems like you might be taking it too seriously.

<comment><USER4> It's just one study, but seems to be in the same rough space, and fairly recent: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2051749/Autism- Wid...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2051749/Autism-Wider-eyes- broader-mouth-Scientists-identify-subtle-distinct-facial-characteristics- children-developmental-disorder.html)

<comment><USER5> You can't trust anything the daily fucking mail says. For example, from the article you link to:

> Some scientists however believe there has been an actual rise in autism > cases due to environmental factors. The MMR vaccine has been cited as a > possible cause however a link has yet to be confirmed.

This is bollocks, and we knew it was bollocks before 2011 (when this article was published).

The GMC hearing; the Lancet retractions, and Wakefield being struck off all happened in 2010.

<comment><USER4> The article publisher wasn't the interesting part. Other publications reported on the study.

<comment><USER5> Why not link to the study and avoid the reputational hit that you'll always get from the daily fucking mail?

<comment><USER4> "reputational hit". Heh.

<comment><USER6> Daily Mail was pro Hitler and pro killing babies because they were gay. They are really good at SEO though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a high functioning non-normative, I have found kinship with many of those diagnosed with Asperger's. The full isolation of the Autistic have generally had little parity with the challenges I have faced.

The blithe dismissal by the writers of the DSM-V of an entire developmental process has led me to dismiss the entire psychological profession as self- serving.

<comment><USER3> If someone is high-functioning, why is a diagnosis necessary? Why pathologize personality? I think that was part of what the removal of Asperger's was about. It's unclear if there was any effective therapy for what many don't even regard as a disorder or disability.

There are many personality traits which might be uncomfortable in various situations, but aren't classified as medical disorders. It doesn't mean they aren't worth exploring as part of self-discovery.

With that said, there are some captured into this category who really do need help, which is what the ASD spectrum diagnosis can capture.

<comment><USER8> I'm high functioning but still have sensory processing disorder related to ASD which makes it hard to function in very sensory overwhelming environments.

I also had a lot of difficulties relating to socialization growing up related to ASD, even if they are less relevant now that I'm an adult.

<comment><USER3> Hopefully we get better at spotting sensory disorders and perhaps someday "sensory processing disorder" will be a recognized diagnosis with specific evidence-based treatment.

From the article: "field trials showed that DSM-5 ASD has improved specificity at the cost of excluding more cognitively able individuals, including up to 75% of those previously diagnosed with AS". Also from the article: "there is evidence that patients, families, education professionals, and health professionals connote AS with positive features and associate Autism with strange behavior, learning disability and family dysfunction".

Autism correlates with various things and I imagine that these would involve different therapy. For example, the number thrown around is that 1/3 are nonverbal and do not develop functional speech in adulthood ([https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Autism&oldid=7996...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Autism&oldid=799627286#cite_note-36)). In children, about half engage in self-harm ([http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2788.2003....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2788.2003.00507.x/full)) or physical aggression ([http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946712...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946712001456)).

See also (not necessarily endorsing): [http://nymag.com/news/features/autism- spectrum-2012-11/](http://nymag.com/news/features/autism-spectrum-2012-11/) [https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-no-label- movemen...](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-no-label-movement) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DIY Bird Trackers Cost $30, Help Science - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/03/birdmonitors.html <comment><USER2> This is beautiful --- using home-made waterproof microphones and computer software to detect migrating songbirds.

Here's a direct link to the microphone construction details: <http://www.oldbird.org/mike_home.htm>

The directions are delightful, and include helpful hints such as which model number of Kmart flower pots work best for the purpose.</comment>


Show HN: Mini GaussSense – New Toy for Hacking Toys - <AUTHOR> http://gausstoys.com/?ref=hn <comment> david-given Here's a vastly better link that actually explains what it is:

[http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~howieliang/GaussSense.html](http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~howieliang/GaussSense.html)

tl;dr: grid of Hall effect sensors that can accurately sense the position of a magnet that's within a few centimetres of the sensor.

<comment><USER2> And in particular the video there, [https://youtu.be/ifwDZwgmcLI](https://youtu.be/ifwDZwgmcLI).

The GaussStones remind me of map tables in war-rooms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for interested in this :) This product is from the original research team of the Gauss Project. We are dedicated to making this technology easier available, so developing this module for the one who is willing to give a try. The module supports full features that we've published in a few academic publications, e.g. GaussBits, GaussBricks, GaussStones. Although the sensing area is small, it supports breadboard prototyping and allows for expanding the sensing area by tiling them. Please find more information on [http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~howieliang/HCIProjects/pro...](http://www.cmlab.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~howieliang/HCIProjects/projectGauss.html) or our main GaussToys website. Thanks again!

</comment><comment><USER4> FYI, features != any of : easy to use | versatile | reliable | scalable.

Those are debatable facets, not functional qualities

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> New unboxing video of Mini GaussSense with 2 examples of hacking toys: [https://youtu.be/q0pH_APBkw0](https://youtu.be/q0pH_APBkw0)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mini GaussSense is the breadboard-compatible magnetic camera module designed for makers, hackers and designers who are dedicated to rapid prototyping, innovating and sharing. This versatile Lego-like sensor will satisfy your creative soul!</comment>


.NINJA domains are available in exactly 2 weeks - <AUTHOR> http://name.com/domains/ninja/index.php

<comment><USER2> Serious question, is _it even possible_ for the so-called "little guy" or "mom and pop" to acquire one of the new domains coming out?

If so, how? during the last group of .tech, etc, the land-grab was incredibly quick.

Say there is a new .petstore domain, how can mom and pop buy theirs before Acme Inc mass purchases them all. (Pick any major city.bike, for example, and it has already been snatched up by places like Domainsales.com)

<comment><USER3> Yea, it's pretty easy to get a good new domain. You can use pre-registration on sites like name.com and they basically compete with bigger companies on your behalf. The second a new domain name becomes available, they do everything in their power to be the winning registrar and get you the domain name you pre-registered.

A place like Domainsales.com is probably putting in pre-registrations on a lot of registrars, which increases their chance of winning the name because they then have multiple registrars trying to acquire the same domain name for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many registrars are offering priority preregistration of domains, but this includes a non-refundable fee of at least $100. So in order to secure rockstar.ninja, for example, you would need to perform priority registration at all registrars (Name.com, GoDaddy, etc.) which process .ninja domain names. I doubt being out hundreds to thousands of dollars in non-refundable fees would be worth it to secure all but the best domain name.

<comment><USER3> Name.com doesn't have a fee. If you don't get the name you pre-register, you get a full refund.

<comment><USER4> In that case, they should update the wording on their site to make that clearer. It currently reads:

      "Place an early preorder for your best chance to secure this domain.
       * Includes $100.00 non-refundable application fee. Annual renewal: $20.99"

"Non-refundable" doesn't have any qualifiers to it, such as "non-refundable upon successful registration". In the info-box below, it states:

      "You will receive a full refund if we are unable to secure the domain name
       for you."

Refunding a non-refundable amount is like dividing zero by zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Exciting, but I'm still holding out for .PIRATE...

<comment><USER3> Not sure if that's coming... I think .HORSE is coming though. :)</comment></comment>


The quest for every beard type - <AUTHOR> http://www.dyers.org/blog/beards/beard-types/

<comment><USER2> Sadly i'm one of these guys: <http://i.imgur.com/0xdmt.jpg>

<comment><USER3> Ah yes...I've had this cycle going consistently for years. I'm currently in the perseverance phase...again...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ordered by trustworthiness: <http://i.imgur.com/PHmF5.jpg>

<comment><USER5> I've always said that with great power comes great responsibility.

Most people, if they were capable of growing these amazing moustaches, they would already be dictator of a small nation.

Not Jonathan E. Dyer. No, this man uses his beard growing skills for the _benefit of science_ and humanity at large.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This man can really grow a beard, well done!

Most men only have one or two styles they could pull off and unfortunately it takes a while to find the right one…I suspect that's a big reason why many won't even try. A light beard isn't usually too great, either, but you can always dye it and use an eyebrow pen to retouch inbetween treatments.

<comment><USER7> I suspect the trick is to grow a big unruly beard and then plan how you're going to cut it. I wouldn't be surprised if you could get almost a dozen styles out of one beard simply by trimming a little, taking a picture, then trimming a little more until you get to the next style, and so on until the last picture might be the soul patch. With enough planning (and the right genetics) you could do all of his styles in 2011.

<comment><USER8> There are a couple interesting math problems in there.

<comment><USER9> It seems like there are a number of states (beards), with transitions only being possible between some of those states. Map that all out and it's a graph theory problem - how many can you visit in one go?

We can transform it into a more classic problem (visit every single node) by adding more edges with weights, where the weight is how long it would take to grow enough beard to make an otherwise invalid transition.

<comment><USER8> What's the minimal number of such beard-paths required to cover the beard- graph, and what's the best algorithm to construct such a cover? Now, suppose we weight each beard-vertex by how long it takes to grow -- what's the least- weight beard-path cover, where the weight of a beard-path is determined by the maximum-weight (starting) beard-vertex?

<comment><USER9> Well you can get from any beard to any other with time and a trim, so the graph would be complete, and thus have n(n-1)/2 edges. As for constructing the cover, I guess you could divide the face into the relevant areas (sideburns, lower sideburns, cheek, center chin, edge chin, middle moustache, edge moustache, moustache to chin connectors, etc) and note how long each section is for a given beard style. Given the rate of hair growth (or if it's non- linear, an equation for the time to get from one length to another), you can then work out how much growth (if any) is required to get from one style to another.

I'm confident the graph construction can be done in poly time (O(n^2) edges), solving it is harder obviously! However, if this work is correct, we have a polytime reduction to TSP, thus showing that the "beard problem" is NP- complete.

Edit: Crap, that's the wrong way round to show NP completeness isn't it? You'd have to show that, given a TSP problem you can reformulate it as a beard problem. I'm not sure if a beard problem necessarily exists for every TSP problem, I'll think on it...

Update: Ok, the first part is to make sure we can represent all the nodes / edges, and we can. We just need to increase the number of segments (areas of hair growth we are concerned with) to match the number of nodes. If we have three nodes, A, B, C, then we need three areas corresponding to them. For a given node, we set the area corresponding to it to the maximum distance between that node and other nodes. Once this is done, we set the other areas so that the distance, in hair growth, from each node to the others matches the graph. This then works.

However, this only works for a complete graph. I can't think of a way to easily resolve that, i.e. make it not permissable to get from some nodes to others without going via intermediaries... You could make it so going from one beard style to another means you will have a third along the way, but it seems non-trivial to enforce that.

So, we can reduce TSP on a complete graph to a beard problem. I think we can maybe convert a non-complete TSP to a complete one by adding arbitrarily heavy edges? However, this would necessitate extremely long beards, perhaps impossibly long. Thoughts?

<comment><USER8> I was imagining a simpler model, where different areas of the beard are either present or not; length doesn't matter. If you're growing one part out, you might as well grow all of it out. Therefore, in this model, you only "grow" to the full beard vertex.

I'm not sure that your reduction from TSP works. Given two nodes A and B, I understand that you're setting their distance on the associated facial areas to match the distance in TSP, but what if they're forced to be even more distant on the area corresponding to some other node C?

<comment><USER9> I think you're correct, I found other problems in my reduction too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Smogzer's method for "How to see yourself in every beard type" :

1) Grow a huge beard. 2) Put yourself in a comfortable and repeatable pose, i.e. fixate a point in space, shoulders back, make sure you are able to repeat the position you are in. 3) pick 1-5 camera poses around you. 4) with your huge beard take pictures from every camera position in various lighting settings, or have a friend do it. 5) shave, standing in place if it has to. 6) take pictures again. 7) with photoshop or gimp overlay the beard picture on top of the beardless one and delete and clone parts of your beard ! 8) since this is hacker news, the post would not be complete if you do not: 8.1) create a startup from it ;)

<comment><USER10> Also check the article "image based shaving" for an algorithm for beard removal: <http://graphics.cs.cmu.edu/projects/imageshaving/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to grow all these beards, but unfortunately I have the facial-hair- growing capability of Ethan Hawke (except I had enough sense to give it up when it didn't pan out).

<comment><USER12> Yeah ... it saddens me that the only thing I could muster is the "The Pencil", and even that would look funny on me. Oh well, at 24 I guess it's time I accept that I won't be able to grow a beard :)

<comment><USER13> My facial hair is somewhat denser now at 26 than it was when I was 24. No idea how common this is, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Grow a beard. It will change your life.

<comment><USER15> My friends and I did a "Beard-tober" a year ago -- no shaving for the entire month of October. It didn't change my life - I just looked like a guy with a light colored and somewhat patchy beard.

<comment><USER16> Try growing one for a minimum of six months. It takes dedication and courage. At the very least, it's a great social experiment. You'll encounter prejudice, admiration, and endless hours of fun like the guy in the link!

<comment><USER17> Also noteworthy: the type of girls I meet when bearded are of a very different type than the type I meet when not bearded. (not better or worse, just a whole different experience) Particularly when I keep my beard tuned to "vaguely edgy".

Of course you'll have to learn to put up with lots of looks of disapproval, and old ladies holding their purses tighter around you, but that is worth it in its own right too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I do believe this qualifies for "epic". Amazing spread. And awesome job on the "Federation Standard", I got a _huge_ Star Trek vibe immediately.

</comment><comment><USER19> Don't forget this one <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=081dHOYY6IE>

</comment><comment><USER20> Curious: how old is this? I hate it when there's no date on blog posts.

<comment><USER21> There is a date under every post, and he updates it every time he gets a new beard.</comment></comment>


Magit (fantastic Git mode for emacs) is running a crowdfunding campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1681258897/its-magit-the-magical-git-client <comment><USER2> Normally I'm not a fan of crowdfunding OSS projects, because the person(s) leading the project tend to walk away from the project as soon as the money runs out.

In this case, the fact that this person has contributed for such a long time speaks in their favor. However, the kickstarter raises a valid issue: there is only a single maintainer and that has led to this situation. The campaign itself then talks about what kind of features will be implemented using this money, but to me as a user I care far more about the long-term sustainability of magic. In other words, the actual problem raised in the campaign is not solved by the campaign; even worse, it might even make the problem worse.

Don't get me wrong, I love magit, but I would be more likely to donate for past contributions that for future commitments.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's a shame that the fellow behind something as awesome as Magit is willing to settle for less than $60,000/year. Magit's worth so much to the world; he deserves twice that at least.

</comment><comment><USER4> Backed! I hadn't heard about this Kickstarter campaign, thanks for posting.

Magit is such a great tool that I think it's worth learning emacs for, even if you just use emacs for revision control and spend the rest of your time working in a different IDE.

</comment><comment><USER5> Using Magit has been one of my best workflow improvements of the last year. I'm happy to back its continued development.</comment>


An informative read on sexual harassment in tech - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/sexual-harassment-doesnt-happen-at-my-company-2d29c23ea905#.f02hyv7zh <comment><AUTHOR> This is really making me question all my assumptions when it comes to sexual harassment in the workplace.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It is a powerful piece and reminds us that we have a lot of work to do in the overall industry.</comment>


Ask HN: Image Negotiation - <AUTHOR>

Hi all,
Is there any way for a browser to negotiate image size with the server?
A lot more sites are now being designed using responsive techniques. This may lead to images of various sizes being need. One way of doing this is to embed a few IMG tags and then set display:none on all but the img you want. However, this means the client will download all of the images, most of which won't be displayed.
The size of the image can be calculated by the browsers, provided style="width: x; height: y" is set (probably within a media query somewhere) and this could be sent up using a header. I think the most appropriate would be the Accept-Features header, but it doesn't seem like it is supported.
Is this possible now? Will it become possible? Thoughts please. <comment><USER2> Can you do

and then set width, height _and_ background-image in the css using media queries?

I don't know whether clients will download all the images or just the one needed.</comment>


Why C is on the top of programming language? - <AUTHOR>

C is on tiobe(Base on http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html) the top of programming language of choice? What are the well known application today that is written in C that makes it on the top? I'm programing in PHP and Javascript a years now. I decide to go back to C  and to study it because I felt my skills are not enough and sometimes it is in the requirements of the employer. and I want to be comfortable in different language to be flexible in my future job. Currently I'm doing some basic console programs. What are the benefits of learning this language for the future? What are the applications that are now on the market that is written in C? Thanks. <comment><USER2> There are far more job listings for C# and C++ than for C. C is very important for the software that forms the underpinnings of just about everything, but application level software seems to be written in easier languages.</comment>


Snapshot: Viaweb, June 1998 - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/vw.html <comment><USER2> _Trevor graduated at about the same time the acquisition closed, so in the course of 4 days he went from impecunious grad student to millionaire PhD._

In 1998, I had made an effort to do the whole "once a day, learn a random new word from the dictionary". I did that for exactly _one day_. The one word I learned was "impecunious." Up until now, I've never, ever, seen or heard that word used.

So in 1998, independent, near simultaneous events (Viaweb being acquired, and me learning a single word) were set in motion that would culminate 14 years later in me reading for the first time an actual legitimate use of that word, resulting in a very self-satisfied grin. Consider my day made.

It means "poor" btw.

<comment><USER3> Here's another word for you:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity>

<comment><USER4> That's actually quite common in the self-help community.

google _site:stevepavlina.com/blog synchronicity_ for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "We put cgi-bin in our dynamic urls to fool competitors about how our software worked."

Love it.

<comment><USER6> <http://www.viaweb.com/cgi-bin/master/EDITOR/cgi-bin/ownacct>

And I'm sure having randomly nested cgi-bin's in some of the url's really had their competitors scratching their heads. Funny stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm interested in rtm's pseudonym: John McArtyem, specifically the 'Artyem' part. This is actually a Russian name (I know because it's also my name). I wonder why rtm chose it. Maybe because attempting to pronounce 'rtm' can lead to 'Artyem'? Sounds like the rest of the pseudonym could have been influenced by John McCarthy.

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artyom>

<comment><USER8> Probably because "Artyem", out loud, sounds like "R T M".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Don't use software that generates your pages dynamically... Currently, all search engine crawlers ignore dynamically generated pages..._ [1]

Alas, I am too young to remember fascinating parts of Internet history like this one.

But I do remember the hesitancy to use personal names on the public Internet. If we could tell our 1998 selves about the modern "personal branding" craze our old selves would never believe it.

[1]<http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/se.html>

<comment><USER10> > If we could tell our 1998 selves about the modern "personal branding" craze > our old selves would never believe it.

I think this is a fascinating comment. I was using my real name on the Internet in 1998, and now I mainly stick to pseudonyms. Occasionally I Google up what I was talking about on usenet 10+ years ago when I was a geeky teenager and cringe. Let's hope Google never puts together a comprehensive IRC log the way they were able to with usenet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nicely done, PG. I'm amazed at how ahead of its time Viaweb was... 3 years before IE6! I agree with the other comments here that it's quite good even by today's standards. To withstand the test of time (14 years!) of web design/technologies is seriously impressive.

I do wish the test drive worked though. It'd be great to be able to really test it out in its original form!

PG, if you don't mind me asking a couple of questions (or point me to the answers if they are already available elsewhere)... how many man hours do you think went into the project (MVP and maintenance)? And how did you come to start developing it? Was it an original idea at the time or were you aware of other online store builders and decided you could do a better job? When did it all start?

</comment><comment><USER12> Favorite quote is from the pricing page, <http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pric.html>:

        "The public should always be wondering how
        it is possible to give so much for the money."
        — Henry Ford

I also find it fascinating how so many YC companies have a very similar footprint of pricing, features, and basic pages right there on the homepage. It sounds obvious that, yeah, you should be telling your potential customers what your prices are, but this is not always shown so readily.

<comment><USER13> I have a theory: if a company makes it hard for me to get (and compare) their prices, they are too high.

Actually, it started with another observation: if you have to buy the product before you can download the documentation, it's probably crap.

<comment><USER14> Similarly I feel like if it is hard to find out they might be too high in price or slimey to deal with.

<comment><USER15> Not stating price allows you to get in the ring with a customer and then later convince them of the value of what you are selling. But depending on the actual service or deal there could be slimey reasons no question about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From the press release about Trevor Blackwell's graduation (linked in this article):

 _In addition to his work in randomness, Dr. Blackwell has also developed pioneering techniques for rapid mass deletion of potentially critical information. His original work on /usr directories at Harvard has successfully been applied to IP addresses, and also, with the assistance of his wife Laurie, to human hair (see illustration).

"It's not a Flowbie!" said Dr. Blackwell. "They're the very same kind of clippers that actual barbers use."_

I salute your use of inside jokes as press releases. And I identify with it. In fact, it reminds me of a press release my company launched about a year ago, in which we promise "mondo shirtage": [http://www.prlog.org/11203938-new- shirt-website-promises-mon...](http://www.prlog.org/11203938-new-shirt- website-promises-mondo-shirtage.html)

It's just hard for us to take press releases seriously.

</comment><comment><USER15> The homepage is timeless and quite good even by today's standards. It gets across very clearly what you can do, what the product is, pricing and why you should use. It contains "awards" giving the visitor confidence in using the service.

"So you can build a store and start taking orders in minutes."

<comment><USER17> yeah, i was thinking the same thing... includes the one sentence headline, some social proof (1000 users :), press icons, though seems to lack the big call to action button that we all use today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm impressed (though not particularly surprised) at how well the Viaweb home page has aged. It's a good example of an observation from pg's "Taste for Makers" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html>):

 _Good design is timeless._

Indeed. Well done.

N.B. The press release for tlb's graduation propagates one of the John Harvard Statue's famous Three Lies: Harvard was founded in 1636 and not, as reported on the statue and in the release, in 1638. Minor error, or sly joke? We may never know for sure.

</comment><comment><USER19>
        3. You can have orders forwarded by fax.

Not much to comment on regarding this, other than it jumped out at me. Wonder how popular this feature was and if it was automated at all

[edit: quote from <http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/howitwor.html>]

<comment><USER20> It was very popular. Fully automated. We needed a bank of 6 fax modems to keep up. Most of the merchants had existing paper catalog businesses and most of those orders arrived by fax, so it was easiest for them to handle it the same way. They needed a paper copy anyway to walk around the warehouse with.

<comment><USER19> awesome! thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > His office was nicknamed the Hot Tub on account of the heat they generated. > Most days his stack of window air conditioners could keep up.

I ran the servers for a whole company like that, everyday thinking that's totally unprofessional but it is effective.

After we went to our own raised floor cold room, I still never felt it was that much more reliable. Cleaner, more polished yes. But 80% of the effect for 20% of cost is usually a good deal.

Fitting out your server room from the local hardware store felt like a successful hack.

</comment><comment><USER22> Actually, the same snapshot is still live under Yahoo!'s domain: <http://oldvw.stores.yahoo.net/>

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm amused to see mention of "hits".

 _Viamall as a whole is currently getting over 9.9 million page views per month. That corresponds to over 72 million "hits", or http requests._

Once upon a time these were the currency of the internet :)

Of course now, even page views is seen as archaic and a little _cough_ exaggeratory. I remember campaigning at my place-of-work (in early 2000) to have this term banished in favour of unique visitors.

<comment><USER24> Agreed. (next page) I am (next page) thankful that (next page) this harmful (next page) practice has (next page) been abandoned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In June of 1998 I was working at IBM, and wondering if I should buy myself some Apple stock since it was only about $25/share. I didn't, and I kick myself now.

I remember the web in 1998. It stunk. And every TV commercial said "visit us at blah.com, or America Online keyword 'blah'".

Ah, the good ol' days.

<comment><USER26> "Find us on Facebook"

<comment><USER25> Hash tags, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's funny, I actually like the design of the site. It holds up well to the test of time. A lot of newer sites could learn from this. Aside from the 640x480 site design it's perfectly modern.

As they say, Simplicity is the height of sophistication.

<comment><USER28> I'll give you all that, but the color palette is not great. Even using "web safe" colors, I think it could have been significantly improved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _We charged a flat fee of $300/month for big stores._

Elsewhere it says Viaweb had 1050 customers. So does this mean Viaweb had < $3.8m / yr in revenue when it was sold ?

<comment><USER30> Small stores were $100/month and there were more of those. We made $144/store/month on average.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I miss the days of 7 search engines. Get penalized in one, and the world wasn't going to be over.

<comment><USER32> From the standpoint of someone using those search engines, it's a lot easier now to find things. And there are more things to find. I don't remember the likes of Altavista and Ask Jeeves with much fondness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> My first client project was through an internship for a small firm that leant me out to a company called OpenMarket, in 1997 - located in Cambridge. Was this Viawebs only competitor? Were they competitors at all?

<comment><USER34> PG discusses both OpenMarket and ViaWeb here - <http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish I could read "statement on security" but it leads to <http://www.viamall.com/security.html> which is, obviously, not working any more.

<comment><USER36> The Wayback Machine (from Archive.org) has a copy, though: [http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/19980110225731/http://viamall.com/security.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the original trademark application which was approved:

[http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=7...](http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75032133)

</comment><comment><USER37> How many employees did Viaweb have when it was acquired?

</comment><comment><USER34> The "Award Winning" Link redirects to <http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/vw/pcmag.html> instead of <http://ycombinator.com/viaweb/pcmag.html></comment>


Google Launches Family Link App - <AUTHOR> https://families.google.com/familylink/ <comment><USER2> Spyware for all the family!</comment>


Served with a cease and desist from a multi billion dollar social media company - <AUTHOR> I am having "conversations" with the legal team of a big social media platform about a blog that I have. They claim that it is in violation of their copyright infringement and from my research this is just plain not true.I'm not particularly attached to this blog but I dislike the idea of a large US company bullying people. Does anyone in this group know much about US trademark infringement and copyright? I'd much appreciate a quick chat :)! I am living in Canada but the blog is registered with a US hosting company. Thank you in advance :) <comment><AUTHOR> _UPDATE_ Here is the time of events.

\- Received Notice of Infringement of the company's Intellectual Property Rights via my domain provider (I have my information private).

\- I reply with the email below: "This email is in response to your expressed concerns regarding my blog.

To clarify, my blog uses the term hacking in the way of a "life hack" – a strategy to manage one's time and daily actives in the most efficient manner possible – specifically, in this case promoting the use of XXX in a positive way. Examples of this type of content are explanation and examples of XXX features and instructions on how to use the platform.

To further clarify, I am not using my blog commercially. I am not gaining any financial benefit from its use on my blog.

If you wish to purchase the name of my blog, I'd be open to having that discussion."

\- They email back saying that they do not reimburse incurred expenses in setting up my blog.

-I do not reply.

\- They contact my hosting provider with the same request they initially contacted the company I purchased my domain through.

</comment><comment><USER2> My take: it's almost certainly not a battle worth fighting. If it is worth fighting, hire an attorney. If it isn't, devote energy elsewhere and consider it a lesson learned.

I'd give the same advice if it was a local restaurant rather than a mega-corp.

</comment><comment><USER3> More information would help. What content did you put up that they're upset about?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've updated with the timeline of events :). I didn't post anything but my bio. They're upset cause I used the term "hacking" alongside the name of their company. I used it in a life hacking way but I think they are more concerned about the domain name then the content as there isn't any content there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Switch to a Russian hosting provider and you should be fine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate on that? Are they not able to proceed legally if the hosting is in Russia?</comment></comment>


Do you miss Homebrew on Windows? Don't. Use Scoop - <AUTHOR> http://outcoldman.com/en/archive/2014/07/20/scoop/ <comment><USER2> I was wondering why the requirement for PowerShell but then I see the author used to work for Microsoft.</comment>


High School locked down after student brings mercury-filled thermometer to class - <AUTHOR> http://www.wtsp.com/news/local/article/285396/8/School-locked-down-over-thermometer

<comment><USER2> School closed down and HAZMAT sent in for a thermometer? Obviously the teachers don't realise that almost all fluorescent tubes have mercury in them; did they call in HAZMAT when one of those is broken? Have schools become so risk averse as to become stupid? What do the students learn from this? At this level of stupidity it's a wonder that they don't call the CDC when a student turns up with the cold.

<comment><USER3> I'm willing to bet that the thermometer wasn't mercury anyway. You haven't been able to buy a mercury thermometer for home use in 10 years or more. Most moderm thermometers with what looks like mercury in them usually contain Galinstan, which is non-toxic.</comment></comment>


N00B NEWS- a weekly newsletter with articles on learning web development - <AUTHOR> https://www.getrevue.co/profile/n00b_news <comment><AUTHOR> I have a slightly easier to remember link for signing up too:

[https://n00b.news/](https://n00b.news/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Even if the links are quality it's probably not the best name to get people to sign up.

No-one likes being called a 'noob' even if they are. Compare it with something like Frontend Focus ( [https://frontendfoc.us/](https://frontendfoc.us/) )</comment>


"I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read" (1958) - <AUTHOR> http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html <comment><AUTHOR> So influential there is a documentary of it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE)</comment>


Federal rules leave gifted kids behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/65330407.html

<comment><USER2> I think the big question mark here is what are we supposed to be accomplishing with our education system? Are we going for equality or maximum output?

To get more total productivity out of graduates, there's a huge crop of low- hanging fruit in the form of unchallenged gifted students.

If we're aiming for equality, then we have to rely on a cultural motivation to get the above-average students to go out of their way to challenge themselves. As a once gifted student myself, I find this to be highly unlikely.

<comment><USER3> My question has always been, why is the US dropout rate at ~30% country wide, but Canada has a figure marginally above 10%. What is the social norm that's having a huge effect on these children's ability to stay in school?

This isn't mentioning that even American institutions recognize that Canadian children are better educated. Even the sports scouts who hand out college scholarships say that while American students need an 80% to apply, Canadians only need a 60% because the educational standard in Canada is higher. How can a country consider its education system even passable, if the standard of its high school graduates with 100% is worse than any Canadian kid on the honour roll?

<comment><AUTHOR> _why is the US dropout rate at ~30% country wide, but Canada has a figure marginally above 10%._

Source for those figures? Are we sure that the school-leaving age is the same in both countries?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent article. This is a very real problem.

I taught for a while in a private school, so I had more control over my curriculum and methods. Even so, one of my regrets is that I didn't work with my gifted students enough. My lesson plans were aimed at the middle--and also were exceptionally well-suited for those with learning disabilities. However, my gifted students were left unchallenged. (The irony is that I was a gifted student in school.)

In my case, the cause was not enough time. I've never worked so hard in my entire life as when I was a teacher (it doesn't even come close to programming). There was never enough time to get everything done, so some things slipped through the cracks. What would've helped me is fewer preps and sticking around longer (I left teaching after three years).

<comment><USER5> Is it? Most education money comes from state and local governments [ <http://www.nsea.org/CORE/SchoolFunding.htm> <http://www.mnbusiness.com/mng/front.html> ] This article is discussing federal standards of which it claims determines 60% of a school's _federal_ funding which is less than 5% of a school's total funding. Not only that but in the schools I went to as a kid they always took the "gift" kids out of regular class a couple times each week to challenge them above and beyond.

The crux of this article is the following paragraph,

"This fact is demonstrated by research recently released by the Fordham Foundation. Tracking students over seven years in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math, the study revealed that low-achieving students (those in the bottom 10 percent) were progressing in reading at five times the rate of high-achieving students (those in the top 10 percent), and at three times the rate in math."

I see two problems here. One, there is nothing to compare this to other periods of history so this disparity could have been happening prior to the NCLB act and two it stands to reason that when you are particularly talented at something already improvements will come in smaller increments where as when your are at the low end large leaps of improvement are relatively easy to achieve. With sports like running this is certainly true and it strikes me as a paradigm that would also hold true for academic achievement.

NCLB may well be of suspect value but I don't think this article presents a convincing argument.

<comment><USER6> _This article is discussing federal standards of which it claims determines 60% of a school's federal funding which is less than 5% of a school's total funding._

That may be true (although at least here in NJ it varies widely from school to school). But that doesn't drive the conclusion that the federal influence on the disposition of money is proportionate.

It's conceivable, and I think even probable, that state and local governments are willing to throw considerable portions of their own money in to chase those federal dollars. There's no reason to think that they won't use inefficiently a big chunk of their budget just to extend it by that additional federal chunk.

I base that on (1) the willingness of states to follow all sorts of other federal guidelines in a quest for funding (speed limits, drinking age, etc.) without questioning their importance for each individual state; and (2) my opinion that despite the lip service of the NEA the rest of "the education lobby", their primary motivation is to build and solidify their power base and individual member benefits, rather than to serve students.

(I agree with your criticism of the logic comparing achievement by low achievers vs. high achievers.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Be interesting to segment off the "bell curve" of IQ into the small lower and higher segments, and the large middle segment, and then be able to find the amount spent per student.

My guess would be that spending on getting the lower-IQ into "middle" performance would be far higher than what is spent on helping the higher-IQ advance even further.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not just gifted kids, but kids who simply learn differently, are being underserved.

I think there are so many more poor performers that they have hogged all the attention. So we've been attacking the problem of poor performers, and assuming everything else is working fine.

<comment><USER9> I agree. Though you only need one or two "difficult" children in a class for them to take 60% of a teachers time. The pigeon-holing of children in categories is also irksome. I never met an "all-round" genius, and currently schools are not set up to perform to strength. There is no rule saying that a child cannot be in grade five maths and grade two reading at the same time. University is set up with more flexibility, why not school?

<comment><AUTHOR> _There is no rule saying that a child cannot be in grade five maths and grade two reading at the same time._

Exactly. First dividing children into groups with age as the main consideration plays havoc with many aspects of school administration. Schools don't have to be organized with age-segregated grades, and probably shouldn't be.

<http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To me it is baffling that while there is a revolution in many ways of life, the education system still seems to be following the long established norms for the most part. Use of laptops and presentations are just different mediums, the philosphy behind imparting knowledge needs to be looked at. I would like to live in a world where I am able to pick up knowledge on say latest advancements in the M-theory within weeks or months, but years at a university :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Leaving aside whatever "gifted" means, why bring additional challenges to people who are ahead of the curriculum? It frees them up to explore being people. Having the freedom to create your own challenges is much more important than some misguided attempt by control freaks to monopolize your time.

<comment><USER11> > It frees them up to explore being people.

This was not my experience. Granted, it was a while ago, and I'm not sure I'd call myself "gifted," but being ahead of the rest of the class certainly didn't get you any time to do interesting things -- it got you a pile of busywork and angry glances from the teacher for being such a pain in the ass.

I doubt things have changed much; if anything, due to increased student:teacher ratios, I suspect they've gotten worse. I don't have any kids but if I did, I'd be far more concerned about a particularly bright one being wrecked by public school than I would a special-needs one who lagged the rest of the class.

<comment><USER9> I guess my point was more along the lines that "gifted" is a very undefined quantity and in my experience people who excel at class work are average in life. Also that given our education system, the best and brightest do not become teachers, thus any sort of "gifted" program is going to be for muppets by muppets. Given it is pretty much that already the news article has nothing to offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps this is an indication that a single, all encompassing program is impossible to fit to every student. Perhaps a range of programs could be offered, and students and their parents could chose the education program that fits their needs best. A choice in education, if you will.</comment>


Cheap and Fast Municipal ISPs Are Blocked in Almost Half of the US - <AUTHOR> https://uk.pcmag.com/why-axis/127007/cheap-and-fast-municipal-isps-are-blocked-in-almost-half-of-the-us <comment><USER2> Regulatory capture.</comment>


I just discovered that my online banking password is not case-sensitive - <AUTHOR> Try it for yourself if you have a Capital One account. I just logged in with an entirely downcased password when the password I signed up with was mixed case.<p>What the hell? How is this allowed? <comment><USER2> Not hashing passwords...

<comment><USER3> Can convert inputs to all lower-case or all upper-case before hashing. The result being people who mess up their capitalization or have CAPSLOCK on can still login without issue.

This is a surprisingly common practice. Not one I agree with, personally, but one I can at least see where the logic comes from.</comment></comment>


What If I Waste Too Much Time on Tracking Work Time? - <AUTHOR> https://www.actitime.com/when-time-tracking-takes-too-much-time.php <comment><USER2> That's why we have automatic time trackers now... nobody manually tracks their time anymore when you have these:

[https://wakatime.com/](https://wakatime.com/)

[https://www.rescuetime.com/](https://www.rescuetime.com/)

[https://timingapp.com/](https://timingapp.com/)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webtime- tracker/pp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/webtime- tracker/ppaojnbmmaigjmlpjaldnkgnklhicppk)</comment>


Why Women Need Half as Much as Men to Start a Business - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-25/why-women-need-half-as-much-as-men-to-start-a-business <comment><USER2> Might have to due to kids and jobs. If my wife were to start a business it would be considerably less because should wouldn't need paid at first other than daycare. If I started one I would need to replace our household income.</comment>


Ask HN: What problems your industry has that desperately need a solution? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I work in tech, and we really need to find a way to get tech companies to move from the bay area to different metro areas in the country.

<comment><USER3> This is starting to happen I think. The economics are starting to make sense, for some companies, due to insane rent and cost of employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are no young new workers in the construction trades.

Average age of some trades is now 60 and these are not trades typically performed by older generations.

Wages are rising but I believe there exist opportunities to use AR to transfer tacit knowledge - the type of knowledge thought to be difficult or impossible to formally educate.

I believe solving for x on this problem has higher order side affects that we don't presently anticipate because this topic is a neighbour to long standing mysteries in AI.

<comment><USER5> I would love to ask you a couple of questions.

Do you have an email or social media profile where I could reach you?

<comment><USER4> See my HN profile.

<comment><USER6> PS: Your email is not view-able from your HN profile. Test in a private browser tab

<comment><USER4> Not sure why that's set to private and don't see an option to make it public.

Here's the address: delete-username-dashes-only-i-n-t-e-r-n-a-u-t@internet- mail.org

<comment><USER6> I think that you have to write it in the about field in your profile page

<comment><USER4> Of course! Seem to be a bit dim today. I'll blame it on the weather. It is raining and the sky doesn't have a colour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In my day job, I work as an advisor to UHNW families and individuals. They have their investments spread across multiple institutions, each providing their own monthly statement, holdings, etc. Our clients pay 4-figures fees monthly to have a consolidated statement (how much money I earned on August, what has been my return YTD, etc.) and portfolio holdings (How much fixed income do I have? How much I am exposed to the Turkish lira? to Argentinian stocks?). Most of the information is in the individual statements (in pdf) and the rest from providers such as Bloomberg and Morningstar. The solutions out there are custom-made and have a lot of manual input. I think a bit of AI and good visualizations can go great lengths to solve this problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> I found it incredibly difficult to find part-time (20-30 hours per week) work. It was even more difficult to find it remotely.

</comment><comment><USER6> Older thread (9 years): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=893529](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=893529)

</comment><comment><USER9> I work in Fintech, I think training people on how to write good requirements and specifications is lacking

<comment><USER10> I am finding the same issue in many areas.

But I am asking myself if it is just lack of knowledge and knowhow or is it also lack of time, processes and tools for writing and maintaining requirements.

My observations are that along with not knowing how to gather and write requirements people at the project level also threat them as second hand objects for the success of project.

Eg: some people in agile talk about requirements being user stories with clarifications and decisions around them. Other people say that in agile requirements are conversation starters.

In a way these might be good points but also it creates the impression that we should not invest quality in requirements. As it will anyhow change.

<comment><USER9> What I find is that many people do not consider different edge cases or understand what the data really represents. They have some vague notion of what they want, and you only get that very high level limited case.

They almost need some training on how to think like a program in some sense to understand just how much detail is needed to provide a good spec.</comment></comment></comment>


Philae has landed - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30026398 Live coverage here http://news.yahoo.com/video/abc-news-plus-special-report-220000361.html
Thanks @brianpgordon - Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination: https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif
Live twitter feed of ESA https://twitter.com/esaoperations
It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding <comment><USER3> Absolutely stunning feat of engineering. My bosses are on the drill team for Philae and were amongst the nervy faces being beamed all over the world. Great example of what European nations can do when politics don't get in the way. ExoMars [1] and Bepi-Colombo [2] are perfect examples of the inverse.

Look forward to the first pictures from the surface. I'm at the Division on Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting [3] in Tucson at the moment, and there are already incredible results being presented based on data acquired by Rosetta. Stay tuned for a whole lot more!

[1] [http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46048-programme- overview](http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46048-programme-overview)

[2] [http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/BepiColombo_...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/BepiColombo_overview2)

[3] [http://aas.org/meetings/dps46](http://aas.org/meetings/dps46)

<comment><USER4> At the risk of turning political, it's a great example of how our taxes are wasted. Playing with space toys shouldn't be funded with taxpayer money.

I'm sure I'll get downvoted to hell for this, but why should my money be funding this? Sorry, but it has no benefit whatsoever.

edit: Instead of downvoting a dissenting voice, why not argue your case - <USER2> should taxpayers fund space toys?

edit2: Well, looks like I'm banned from commenting. Good job dealing with those that don't agree with you...

<comment><USER5> I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent.

<comment><USER4> Health, welfare, lowering taxes, employment.... y'know, things that enrich real peoples lives.

Space toys and exploration are fun for those working on them, but will this event transform civilisation? Nope. Did the moon landing really transform civilisation? Nope.

<comment><USER6> How do you know the moon landing didn't transform civilization? Did you try living in an alternate timeline where it did not happen and find things to be the same?

What about all those scientists who learned to build rockets, who would later go on to help NASA launch the first weather satellites? What about the work done that led to the formation of the global positioning system? Are you sure it would have happened in the same timeframe by some other actors if NASA hadn't gone to the moon? Where would the scientists have gotten their training? What would have been the economic rationale for doing it?

Remember, too, that the moon landings were not scientific exploration. It was a military operation to prove supremacy. The russians put a man in space one month earlier, so Kennedy basically said "Yeah? you put a man in space? well we'll drop one on the Moon and then bring him back!"

It was an insane commitment to proving our supremacy. We sent fighter jet pilots on the first several missions, and didn't send a single scientist until several missions in.

Meanwhile, exploring the origins of comets helps us understand how the early solar system formed, which helps us understand how the universe formed, which helps us understand physics at a fundamental level, which helps us make better microchips, solar panels, and superconductors that make the tech in our world better at serving our needs.

It has nothing to do with "fun for those working on them", though I'm sure they have fun. Truck drivers probably have some fun too, but that doesn't mean delivering goods isn't worthwhile for legitimate economic reasons. Hard science is the same - it costs relatively little and the payoff, while abstract, is huge.

If you want to complain about spending, complain about military spending. In the US it is 70X NASA's budget, and 2x the military budget at the beginning of 2001. THAT is bloat. We know how to manufacture bombs. Making more doesn't do much for innovation. Funding science does.

<comment><USER7> I had to create an account just to thank you for this response. I always recommend anyone wondering about whether or not space exploration is worth it to view the following amazing video compilations.

"We Stopped Dreaming - Episode 1": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc)

"We Stopped Dreaming - Episode 2": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFO2usVjfQc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First images from Philae's ROLIS camera:

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

1) 3km above comet:

[https://twitter.com/DLR_de/status/532587248555143169](https://twitter.com/DLR_de/status/532587248555143169)

2) Few seconds before landing:

[https://twitter.com/nanotousch/status/532593372218023936](https://twitter.com/nanotousch/status/532593372218023936)

3) First surface image?

[http://i.imgur.com/0XK8Ar4.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/0XK8Ar4.jpg)

4) Possibly a new image from the descent?

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2QySLrCUAAZbEL.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2QySLrCUAAZbEL.jpg)

Edit: no, here is the source (Rosetta's NavCam from yesterday):

[http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/11/NAVCAM_top_1...](http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/11/NAVCAM_top_10_at_10_km_5)

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

Rosetta Lander Imaging System (ROLIS)

[http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=PHILA...](http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=PHILAE%20%20%20-02)

</comment><comment><USER9>
      More analysis of @Philae2014 telemetry
      indicates harpoons did not fire as 1st thought

Ouch, seems like it didn't land? [https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/532575061543485440](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/532575061543485440)

 _edit_ \- the landing is confirmed, however the harpoons did not fire: [https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/532579871202238464](https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/532579871202238464)

<comment><USER10> It did land, here's the next tweet:

> It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on > amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding

but the harpoons may have failed to fire.

<comment><USER11> Why does it need to anchor itself? It's not like it will blow away?

<comment><USER12> Gravity there is so low that something like a light push may be enough to launch. If anything used to examine the surface makes contact and presses (drill, digger), good-bye lander.

Firing the harpoon would also be enough to launch, but at least the hook would grab the surface and pull the lander back down, giving enough pull to drill viable long-term anchors.

<comment><USER13> Are there any forces in effect as it gets closer and swings around the sun that might cause it to separate from the comet if there is no further attachment by then?

<comment><USER14> Absolutely! If its attached, its via surface ice. That ice will all melt on close approach to the sun. At some point the probe will drift away.

<comment><USER13> Of course, I should have deduced that. Is the harpoon expected to go deep enough to prevent this from happening?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anyone knows where i could find some info about the software stack this kind of probes are being built with ? Languages, programming methods, patching methods,os, runtime, etc.

I'm really curious to know how different it is from the web or enterprise development worlds.

<comment><USER9> Most likely they have headless web browsers running on both the main spacecraft (probably chromium) and the Philae lander. Web sockets enables the lander to communicate to the spacecraft which then sends its signals down to earth using regular HTTP (you don't want to keep an interstellar HTTP connection open). All of it is of course written in JavaScript, more specifically vanilla-JavaScript - which frankly I find weird given that I'd hope they would use a framework such as socket.io - bad engineering if you ask me. The lander obviously uses latest Node.js and npm to update some of its modules which are again sent across the wire using interstellar HTTP.

<comment><USER16> You joke, but FTP has indeed actually been used to communicate between Earth and a probe. A team at NASA's JPL , led by Vinton Cerf, completed a study of what would be needed for an Interplanetary Internet [1]. There are already IETF RFCs for delay-tolerant networking [2], which include mechanisms for store-and-forward communications (e.g. each transceiver is a relay).

Science fiction has some great depictions of interstellar communications, such as my favorite by Vernor Vinge, the Hugo award-winning novel _A Fire Upon the Deep_. It is a most excellent space opera that prominently features an interstellar system like Usenet as part of the plot [3], as well as superhuman intelligence, physics, and all sorts of other wonderful bits.

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

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay- tolerant_networking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Coverage of this has been very confusing.

The ESA live feed at most times show people in some kind of control room staring at screens. There is no apparent way to see any highlights, unless I want to try scrolling back and forth through the hour-long video stream.

At any given time, various forum threads seem to have more information than the ESA site, which seems to communicate mostly through either lighthearted tweets, one-line headlines, or general background articles.

All I want is a simple timeline of events, constantly updated with latest news and images. Instead we have forum threads where you have to dig through comments to find out what is the newest info.

<comment><USER18> [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science- environment-29985988](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science- environment-29985988)

<comment><USER19> The Guardian live-blog is good as well. Less tweet-heavy than the BBC:

[http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the- universe/live/...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the- universe/live/2014/nov/12/rosetta-comet-landing-live-blog)

<comment><USER20> The guardian seems to have made more fuss about the guys shirt than the actual event.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow, I listen to the solutions they invented to hibernate the probe safely - to save on the electricity they had to hibernate it, but then it could have change orientation relative to sun, and wouldn't have enough energy to wake up.

So they disabled the orientation system to save energy, but first they made the probe rotate quickly to stabilise it like a gyroscope.

That's stuff from sci-fi books / Mc Gyver movie :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Live streaming of the event here [http://news.yahoo.com/video/abc-news-plus- special-report-220...](http://news.yahoo.com/video/abc-news-plus-special- report-220000361.html)

Thanks @brianpgordon - Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination: [https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif](https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif)

Live twitter feed of ESA [https://twitter.com/esaoperations](https://twitter.com/esaoperations)

It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding

<comment><USER22> or straight from the ESA [http://rosetta.esa.int/?landing](http://rosetta.esa.int/?landing)

<comment><USER23> Or the xkcd version [https://xkcd.com/1446/](https://xkcd.com/1446/) (see older frames at [http://xkcd1446.org/](http://xkcd1446.org/), the first few are blank so start around #16)

<comment><USER24> What is this? What's the point?

<comment><USER23> It's a series of over 100 frames that are being drawn and uploaded live before and during the probe launch. It illustrates the position and status of the probe. (Edit: it's still updating)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For anyone who wants to see how they got there

[http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/](http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/)

pretty mind blowing for me to plan ahead 10 years

<comment><USER21> And to near miss planets 4 times in that period just right to steal some momentum from them through gravity...

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Amazing job! This might be a silly question but are their any ideas as to the actual real world benefits we could see from this? The director-general of the ESA said "This is a big step for human civilisation" so I presume there is some idea of what they expect to gain from this mission?

Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.

<comment><USER26> The actual real world benefits of Space Flight are strange. For example the Apollo program didn't bring back DeathCrystals from the moon, that allowed us to crush the Soviets in a glorious patriot war (obviously sarcasm).

Instead it gave us seemly random things, that we were looking for, but are beneficial nonetheless and some which may not come out right away.

The Apollo Mission gave us

ASICs, Cordless Tools, CAT scan, Ear Thermometer, Smoke Detector, Shoe insoles, carbon based water filters, satellite television (boardcasted, not passive reflected), Scratch resistant lenses.

These things aren't why we went to the moon. Inventing them kinda just happened to see the program though. Space travel challenges the status quo of technology. Its really REALLY hard. So when ever we (humans) do it, we face new problems, and our solutions sometimes have effects for those on earth.

<comment><USER27> > For example the Apollo program didn't bring back DeathCrystals from the > moon, that allowed us to crush the Soviets in a glorious patriot war > (obviously sarcasm).

Sarcasm aside, this is more due to Geneva Conventions rather than actual lack of Death Crystals on the moon.

<comment><USER26> I'm pretty sure if we had found Death Crystals on the moon we would have figured out a way to synthesize and weaponize them on earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It is just me or has the story evolved into something a bit less jubilant in the course of the last two hours. It's an amazing feat, but this stuff is always a huge gamble.

As someone's who's worked on a few spacecraft project I feel really bad for the team(s) (recently worked on one which didn't go so well, years of work down the tube). Even if it didn't go perfectly I hope they're commended for the work they've done so far & the landing they achieved.

</comment><comment><USER29> I highly recommend this video that explains how Philae works:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-77-Z_DHTlY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-77-Z_DHTlY)

</comment><comment><USER30> Seeing their faces on the live feed when it landed was amazing. It must be so exciting.

<comment><USER31> It is so exciting, even from watching the live stream!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Science is amazing. I'm glad to be living in a period where I get to be around for stuff like this.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hope this isn't a dumb question, but how does Philae stay put? If the gravity strong enough to keep it on the surface? Also, as the comet nears the sun and parts of the comet start flying off, is there a threat of Philae getting swept along with it?

<comment><USER34> The robot deployed harpoons to fasten itself to the 2.5-mile-wide ball of ice and dust.

<comment> a-priori I love how simple and low-tech this solution is. People have been using anchored ropes and cables of various kinds to fasten things together for millennia. People have been using harpoons at sea for whaling for centuries.

<comment><USER35> I now have a picture of the lander having one ivory leg and the asteroid called Moby Dick. Thanks, :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is an incredible day for science and Humanity. ESA, CNSA, ISRO, SpaceX etc have done a great job so far to carry forward the legacy of NASA and ROSCOSMOS to new levels.

Still can't believe ESA planned and landed a robot on a comet. Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER37> No announcement yet, but just now in the ESA webcast of the control room everyone stopped, gathered around a guy that I assume is the team lead, and are now going home. I have a bad feeling about this.

</comment><comment><USER38> Total non-sequitor but...I'm surprised no one else has yet made the observation that Philae Lander put together is philaender, or philander. Juvenile post of the day award anybody?

</comment><comment><USER39> we just landed a friggin' robot into a friggin' commet

mind blowing

<comment><USER40> Not really we... Just very few people, most of us have no idea how they've done it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is huge. In both technical and political ways. And bringing all the details into live online event is twice as huge. I just watched the guy reporting the unsuccessful initial anchoring of the probe, and I felt so happy that I could see this. Incredible. By the way the lander software runs on Harris RTX2010 processors -- the US contribution.

</comment><comment><USER42> Congratulations Europe. But why don't we hear people saying that the EU should focus on their poverty first and would be better off putting this money into getting the Greece, Spain, and Italy economies in order?

<comment><USER43> I'm reminded of [http://xkcd.com/1232/](http://xkcd.com/1232/)

(Edit: Not intended to be snarky; I just think people do ask those questions all the time, and this xkcd answers it well.)

<comment><USER44> I am all for govt. funding scientific endeavours and space exploration like this. But one thing I don't like about the comic is it implies that many problems faced in the world like hunger and malaria are not easily solvable.

IMHO, It is quite simply a travesty that there is still so much absolute poverty and deaths (through malnutrition easily curable and/or preventable diseases) in the third world. Many of these problems were solved in the early 20th century- It is a lack of political will of governments and the collective apathy of its citizens, who are engrossed in their own first-world problems. To answer the xkcd comic: Yes. 15 years should be enough to at least halve world-wide deaths due to hunger and diseases like Malaria and Cholera, If the citizens of the first world make it a voter issue. Such endeavours will pay themselves multiple times over. (increased human output, new trading markets for companies, reduced population growth) And you don't need to sacrifice funding for scientific research to do it( _coughs military budgets_ ).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Awesome! Think of all the nice desktop backgrounds I'm going to have.

I am wondering what this will mean for humanity. Do you guys think the insights we gain from Philae will be as impactful as the ones from other space missions?

<comment><USER35> If it turns out the asteroid is full of platinum or other rare / expensive minerals, unlike the moon which seemed barren rock, it'll be enormous and the start of the true space age IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Philae has made the first, historic landing on a comet, after descending from its mothership"

To me, no other statement could be more impacting. Earth is finally sending motherships to space. _feeling mind-boggled_

</comment><comment> apa-sl Awesome! Launched over 10 years ago (our "smartphones" back then had 1mpix cameras, youtube was not born yet, etc), travelled +6,5b km and nailed a target 3-4km wide...

</comment><comment><USER47> Big congrats to all involved! What an achievement!

</comment><comment><USER48> Three.js version of the comet [http://cabbi.bo/rosetta/](http://cabbi.bo/rosetta/)

</comment><comment><USER49> "where were you when Philae landed?"

<comment><USER41> Actually watching the live Rosetta event from Darmstadt. And I am about to drink for the success of this mission right now. Still can't believe it happened. SO much work, 10 years of work. This is how international large scale co-operation should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> First _successful_ unintended lithobraking in the history of space ;-P

</comment><comment><USER51> ITT downvoting to invisibility because you disagree with someone honestly held and cogently expressed opinions.

Silencing diverse opinions is quite possibly the worst facet of HN.

<comment><USER52> Libertarian world philosophy is totally bunk (if that's what you were referring to). I down vote most of that because it's generally ridiculous.

<comment><USER53> But what if you were no longer allowed to hold this particular opinion? If we generalize the postulate, it does not compute.

<comment><USER52> You're allowed to hold this opinion, where did I suggest you're not allowed it?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Great Jeff Dean, who is he? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Jeff-Dean/What-are-all-the-Jeff-Dean-facts

<comment><USER2> Technically, that should be 405 Method Not Allowed O:-)</comment>


Climate change means the US must start building big things again - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615045/climate-change-green-infrastructure-us-public-works-building-boom/ <comment><USER2> I wish that thinkers in this area would find some middle ground between NIMBYism and "screw your property values".

Before we criticize existing homeowners for rejecting reasonable compromises, I think that we need to actually offer them reasonable compromises.

It seems to me that there's a huge difference between construction that an architect designed to be aesthetically pleasing, interesting, and compatible with the existing environment and just building some soulless concrete or glass & steel structure.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/ap19141688066851-w...](https://cdn.technologyreview.com/i/images/ap19141688066851-web.jpg?sw=1918&cx=0&cy=5&cw=3000&ch=2031)

I love that picture. It's a testament to California's California-ness. Thinking it's Europe, but realizing it's America, with a monument to failure looming over the very people who voted against HSR.</comment>


The DCI Architecture: A New Vision of Object-Oriented Programming (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/articles/dci_vision.html <comment><USER2> DCI piqued my interest when I first heard about it. It seemed to solve some problems I was seeing in the typical model structure of MVC apps. In the end while I still agree with the principles behind context (keeping the primary workflow of a code module linear and organized in one place) I found interactions (mixing in behaviour with data) to be largely unnecessary in actual practice.

The problem DCI purports to solve with OOP is in fact largely caused by failing top apply OOP properly (yeah, yeah no true Scotsman...). Issues like overloading objects with too many responsibilities (MVC models do this almost always), relying on inheritance when composition is what is needed, not defining and enforcing module or transactional boundaries and naively applying DRY to everything all lead to high coupling and low cohesion and ultimately cause the problems that DCI attempts to solve. However they can be solved by simple avoiding the above and using simple principled objects with clear dependency trees and boundaries.

Bottom line: Follow the basic principles of OOP and SOLID instead of just paying them lip service and no secret sauce is required.

<comment><USER3> Do you think most devs spend enough time thinking through a good way to model what they're building?

<comment><USER4> In my experience, most devs start with an ORM/data store/framework/pattern and try to shoehorn the solution into it.

I think Domain Driven Design[0] has held up well as an alternative to this - especially the strategic design patterns. The DDD strategic patterns are all about expressing the model in the domain language and finding the boundaries around clusters of interrelated model concepts (DDD calls these "Bounded Contexts").

DDD is often mentioned alongside CQRS[1] these days, but it also works for plain old OOP and functional systems as well.

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain- driven_design](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-driven_design)

[1] [https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CQRS.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CQRS.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another vision of Object-Oriented Programming that has gotten quite a bit of traction. (Especially in the game development community.) Is the Entity- Component-System model: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93component%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity%E2%80%93component%E2%80%93system)

If you want to play Entity-Component-System. I'd suggest you check out A-Frame, a WebVR framework that uses and promotes Entity-Component-System: [https://aframe.io/](https://aframe.io/)

<comment><USER6> I spent quite a lot of time exploring ECS before building my own ECS library for developing 2D games. I have found that with my (minuscule) ECS library it greatly alleviates just about all of the issues I was facing with normal OOP. Everything scales extremely well, the code is almost crystal clear, and it makes code structure very simple. I'm not sure how you could effectively apply ECS outside of simulation style applications but I'm interested to see what influence it has in other domains such as UI.

<comment><USER7> Well, of course ECS does that. It's ultimately the same approach to data as a normalized relational schema. It's a bit of upfront work but the flexibility of processing and optimization is awesome.

For UI the issue is one of expressing lightweight dependencies, which may be detached and recombined easily. I am currently exploring an approach that combines "imgui" concepts with hierarchical path data, akin to the hard and symbolic links in Unix. Having the path as data allows assemblages of partial routes to be combined to express a "final" data point. The data itself may not entirely exist in a physical tree structure but instead be a combination of procedural data, stored data, and a parser.

<comment><USER8> The extreme version of an ECS is an EAV: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity–attribute–value_model](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity–attribute–value_model)

When you further qualify by time/transaction you get EAVT like Datomic and then just do queries (potentially recursive), and can implement semantics like "classes" over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The most interesting part is that as good as this sounds I haven't heard of it again since that article first came out.

<comment><USER10> The problem with DCI is that it didn't have native support in any programming language. Coplien, one of the co-founders of DCI is actually working on a programming language called Trygve which implements these ideas.

[https://github.com/jcoplien/trygve](https://github.com/jcoplien/trygve)

<comment><USER11> Is that still being developed? Has some recent commits, but parts of the manual are clearly somewhat out-of-date; for instance, in 5.3.1 (Defining Generics) there's a "try doing that in Java!" that's trivially accomplishable with Java generics.

<comment><USER10> Since when can you create new objects of a generic type T in java using "new"?

        class MyGeneric<GenericType>
        {
             public GenericType stupidJava()
             {
                 return new GenericType();
             }
        }

You still can't do that with java. In order to create a new instance from a generic type you must use the reflection mechanism. Or alternatively do what Java people did for ages, factory classes.

Trygve allows you to use "new" keyword. So no, the manual is correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> DCI despite its claims, simply cannot be easily understood by its target audience. It claims to represent a better mental model, but it mostly succeeds in alienating those looking for a better way to model concepts in the world, abstract and real. The arrogance and condescension shown to newcomers by adherents like Jim Coplien, doesn't help.</comment>


PCs running Dell support app can be uniquely ID'd by snoops and scammers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/pcs-running-dell-support-app-can-be-uniquely-idd-by-snoops-and-scammers/ <comment><USER2> tl;dr

[http://localhost:7779/Dell%20Foundation%20Services/eDell/IeD...](http://localhost:7779/Dell%20Foundation%20Services/eDell/IeDellCapabilitiesApi/REST/ServiceTag)</comment>


Ask HN: How to safely extricate yourself from a contract? - <AUTHOR>

I was asked to fix a mess of infrastructure & code and for the most part I have, but the company hosts thousands of installs of an open source php app that gets hacked daily.
I have tried to communicate the danger of this to the owner, but he is oblivious and gets angry at me for telling him the risk.
He refuses to upgrade the php apps, and as a result there are countless known exploits running on the server.
He also has a really bad habit of acting like me giving him good technical advice is annoying him and that I am bothering him by pointing out very serious problems.
He has thrown tantrums and raised his voice when I  try to solve this problem.
I want out, but I am worried that these hacks will destroy his business and that he may try to sue me, even though I did not create the problem and I have tried to solve it.
I have a clause in my contract that disclaims liability, but am not operating via an LLC, a rookie mistake I know.
I like the other employees at the company and feel bad leaving them in the lurch, but the anxiety & depression from this job is killing me.
What would you do? <comment><USER2> As long as you're working there, put your risk advisories in writing, and address any and all concerns about them in writing. Don't be political about it, use fuzzy terms like, well, 'risk advisory' rather than using loaded/hyperbolic terms like 'danger' or 'countless', so as to do your job of communicating without making it confrontational. It sounds like your boass feels he's getting the blame for the situation, doesn't know what to do, and is dumping his stress upon you. This is bad management, of course, but he probably doesn't have it in for you personally, he just wants you to make the problem go away.

Try quantifying the performance loss involved, and the mitigation/maintenance cost. Mention and quantify replacing the PHP apps as an afterthought but don't make an issue of it (eg 'Doing A and B will cost C...and finally doing X and Y will cost Z. I recommend I and J, unless you want to re-examine the notion of replacing the PHP apps in which case the cost would be closer to Q and R.'). So, rather than giving him a problem (ugh) and requesting a green light for your solution, give him several solutions and let him pick one, but present as low a level of decision pressure as possible.

I'm not a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but my gut feeling is that he's most unlikely to sue you even if you quit - chances are you don't have sufficient resources to make the expense worth it, so the main risk would be to your reputation. At bottom this sounds like a people problem, and it's not all that uncommon for a deicison-maker to 'shoot the messenger' who brings them bad news - hence my advice to focus on the actionable solutions rather than offering a single unpalatable prescription that makes him feel like the situation is out of his control. Think back to successful interactions between the two of you on other technical challenges and see if you can identify what factors allowed the two of you to work together effectively there, and look for a way to replicate those factors in this new context.</comment>