The down side to wind power - <AUTHOR> https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/10/large-scale-wind-power-has-its-down-side/ <comment><USER2> I've driven through wind farms in middle America and for the most part, each tower has a small gravel pad around it with a gravel access road to the nearest public road. Everything in between is farmed as normal. While the overall footprint is large, the majority of the land continues to be used in the way it has always been used. If all the farmland in America became one gigantic wind farm, I don't think you would see a noticeable difference in agricultural production, especially as the farmers collecting lease payments are going to be able to invest in newer equipment.

So when they say that a downside to wind power is the much larger amount of space required compared to previous expectations, is it in the NIMBY "I don't want to see a turbine when I look out the window", or something else? I'd like to give the authors the benefit of the doubt; I wish they'd spent a little more space explaining the downside of the land requirements.

<comment><USER3> Given what you say about wind farms being placed on traditional farms, I wonder if the localized warming the paper discusses would actually be a benefit to the crops. It could extend growing season just a bit more and maybe help buffer against frosts and cold-snaps.

<comment><USER4> A lot of farms already use wind turbines to keep freezes away as long as they can. They're all over California, mostly in orange fields. Some places used to even burn oil at night.

[https://extension.psu.edu/orchard-frost-protection-with- wind...](https://extension.psu.edu/orchard-frost-protection-with-wind- machines)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The analysis in the papers as well as the article quite deceptively presents possible surface temperature effects in a 100% onshore windfarm scenario, as a factor of global warming.

I view this as a controversy motivated inversion of the fact that wind turbines _extract_ energy/heat from the atmosphere in contrast with heat plants (fossil and nuclear) which necessarily release around twice the amount of useful energy they output, as heat to local air and water resources.

A global warming or cooling effect of atmospheric mixing is not established here or obvious to predict, being complicated by cloud cover, precipitation, natural vegetation and farming albedo changes... yet in the context of this "downside discussion" it is associated to wind as a technical risk.

This kind of modelling is of crucial importance to environmental stewardship, but this kind of analysis is at best a stimulating exercise and at worst an obstruction to long over due investment in the clear technological solutions that we are fortunate to have at our disposal. (Wind power wouldn't be much use if fated with a Martian type atmosphere)

<comment><USER6> As I interpret your comment, you are dismissing this paper's conclusions about warming effects using just the arguments that (1) intuitively wind power absorbs energy, not releases it like combustion; and (2) the atmosphere is complicated. Is that it?

(1) seems like an obvious red herring since the heating/cooling effects of fossil fuels have nothing to do with the thermodynamic energy release of combustion. And (2) isn't an argument for cooling, just uncertainty, and you've given us no reason to trust you over a journal article.

<comment><USER5> Wind turbines do absorb energy from the atmosphere, that is clear thermodynamic fact not my intuition. Having arranged an atmospheric modelling capability, these researchers should have included the scenario for heat plants concentrated emissions in their study, or at least in a full discussion.

"heating/cooling effects of fossil fuels have nothing to do with the thermodynamic energy release of combustion"

Re-examine that assumption - If windfarm's might cause problematic warming through atmospheric mixing, how have you assumed ground level heat emission from power plants can cause none? There is actually a growing body of research into this which indicates significant geographical warming is possible. You could look into "effects of anthropogenic heat flux on climate"

<comment><USER6> I did not include "intuitively" to suggest that it's wrong, only to make clear you're not saying anything surprising here. I also did not assume ground level heat emissions from power plants cause literally zero warming, only that it's negligible.

The rest of your reasoning is similarly confused.

<comment><USER5> "model results show that AHR has a significant impact on surface temperature and that it is able to affect global atmospheric circulation, leading to a 1-2 K increase in the high-latitude areas of Eurasia and North America. The results show that AHR is able to affect global climate despite being limited to a region."

Anthropogenic Heat Release: Estimation of Global Distribution and Possible Climate Effect [https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jmsj/92A/0/92A_2014-A10...](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jmsj/92A/0/92A_2014-A10/_article)

<comment><USER6> That paper _confirms_ that carbon dioxide and other gases are the dominant cause of climate temperature changes, not anthopogenic heat release. It furthermore includes _all_ anthropogenic heat (e.g., in cities), not just the heat release from combustion during power production which is relevant to our discussion.

Since you apparently aren't arguing in good faith, I won't continue the discussion.

<comment><USER5> The paper indicates 1-2K of temperature increase from _current levels_ of AHR which is 4 to 8 times as great as the hypothetical situation in the papers that you have now elected to insult me for criticizing.

In the discussed papers ALL energy consumption is generated by renewables (includes transport, air conditioning etc). You must understand that entails ALL AHR (besides a tiny fraction of body heat)

Presently almost all AHR is created by burning fossil fuels - producing waste heat (a portion of AHR) and useful energy which is used and then surely ?? you know this >> ends up as heat again (the other portion of AHR)

So my faith is good here - you feel free not continue, especially in the manner you started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >To estimate the impacts of wind power, Keith and Miller established a baseline for the 2012‒2014 U.S. climate using a standard weather-forecasting model. Then, they covered one-third of the continental U.S. with enough wind turbines to meet present-day U.S. electricity demand. The researchers found this scenario would warm the surface temperature of the continental U.S. by 0.24 degrees Celsius, with the largest changes occurring at night when surface temperatures increased by up to 1.5 degrees. This warming is the result of wind turbines actively mixing the atmosphere near the ground and aloft while simultaneously extracting from the atmosphere's motion.

I am confused: How does the warming work exactly and is this actually a global climate effect? Because this part of the article makes it sound to me as if it's just a very localised change of temperature caused by the exchange of different air layers, which can't be right? Because you couldn't really compare that to climate change on a global scale.

<comment><USER8> The example is clearly hypothetical only. We're never going to cover one third of the continental US with wind turbines.

The more important information to me is that neither wind nor solar have the power density that has been claimed.

 _For wind, we found that the average power density — meaning the rate of energy generation divided by the encompassing area of the wind plant — was up to 100 times lower than estimates by some leading energy experts_

...

 _For solar energy, the average power density (measured in watts per meter squared) is 10 times higher than wind power, but also much lower than estimates by leading energy experts._

Then you have the separate problem that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine, so you need a huge storage infrastructure (batteries, presumably) alongside the wind and solar generating infrastructure.

IMO nuclear is the only realistic alternative to coal to provide reliable, zero-emission "base load" power generation. Wind and solar could make sense in some use cases but not in general.

<comment><USER9> > _IMO nuclear is the only realistic alternative to coal to provide reliable, > zero-emission "base load" power generation..._

Yeah, but no one wants to pay for it. Which is why you'll see more wind and solar with hydro-storage, and even more geo-thermal energy plants in the future. Even with all the extra infrastructure, it still comes in at less than 2 or 3 cents a kwh long term. Whereas even if you take a very optimistic long term view on nuclear, it's just _REALLY_ hard to get down below 3 cents. So for nuclear sources to get higher in the dispatch stack, government _must_ take on more of the costs.

But then, of course, if government is taking on more of the costs, then you're _still_ paying more than 3 cents. Probably a _lot_ more. You'd just pay it in extra taxes instead of a utility bill. So, yeah, I guess that's why energy is a hard problem. No easy solutions really. Just hard to balance pros and cons to every known technology at this point.

(Maybe someday someone will figure out this whole fusion thing and we'll be able to consign all these other, less refined, technologies to history's dust bin?)

<comment><USER10> Time to build also matters. How long does it take to build a storage mechanism for a solar/wind farm, vs the time to build a nuclear plant? What are the _reasonable_ regulatory requirements? (Lest anyone be complaining about the ignorant treehuggers stopping nuclear plants, I think we can all agree that a nuclear plant is potentially more hazardous than pile of batteries, and should be regulated proportionally.) What are the up-front capital requirements of nuclear vs solar/wind + storage?

Another thing people need to keep in mind is we don't need enough storage to run the entire grid indefinitely. We just need enough to smooth the curve out to four nines or whatever number is deemed necessary. And while "the sun isn't always shining and the wind isn't always blowing", the wind is always blowing somewhere.

<comment><USER9> You wouldn't use batteries generally though.

For example, if you had hydro-storage, you'd use the power from the wind or solar to pump water into giant reservoirs. When wind or solar is unavailable, power is drawn from the hydro reservoirs by letting the stored water flow through turbines. (So a dam, basically.)

So, yeah, building reservoirs is pretty well defined. And would _certainly_ take much less time than building a nuclear plant. (The cost would be orders of magnitude lower as well.)

Still has regulatory issues, just not nearly as many as dead batteries or nuclear power plants do.

<comment><USER11> There's not many geologically good locations for pumped storage, they tend to be a bit environmentally sensitive, and they're not _that_ quick to build - the one nearest me, Cruachan, took 6 years to build in the 1950s at the reduced safety standards of the time.

<comment><USER9> That's only one way that you would do hydro-storage these days though.

Think, for example, if you drill a hole deep into the ground, lower a cylinder into it, poke a hole in the bottom of the cylinder, then fill that cylinder with water. If I put a platform with a giant weight on top of it, the platform will press all of the water in the cylinder down through the hole in the bottom. That water will travel through a tube to the top of the cylinder and pour _back_ into the cylinder on top of the weighted platform. In that tube, is where you capture the stored energy with turbines.

Then, when the wind picks back up, or the sun comes out, or power is just cheap even from the coal plant, you use that power to lift the platform back up and suck all the water back into the bottom of the cylinder.

Benefits of this are, as the HN User "beat" implied below, it's so cheap and simple to build that even a single, say, shopping mall might invest in it to lower their power draw from the grid. They would build one that only serves their mall for instance. You start to build out a truly distributed power storage infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Buried in the article:

> they covered one-third of the continental U.S. with enough wind turbines to > meet present-day U.S. electricity demand. The researchers found this > scenario would warm the surface temperature of the continental U.S. by 0.24 > degrees Celsius

That's a ridiculous basis upon which to form a conclusion. For reference, that would require building 200,000 copies of the single largest wind farm in the US - the 3,200 acre Alta farm.

<comment><USER11> The intent there is presumably to construct a "worst case" \- US powered entirely by wind - and see what the magnitude of the effect is. If it was 2.4 or 24.0 then it would be a more serious problem, knowing that it's 0.24 is a good result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is practically a non issue. Not only would it be unrealistic to use wind power for 100% of US power generation nor would it be a good decision since a huge benefit of renewable energy is that we can diversify among so many different source.

<comment><USER14> Wind is also hit or miss. I don't live in an area of the country with consistent wind suitable for power generation. The entire SE part of the US is not suitable for wind power. [https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/30m_US_Wind.jpg](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/30m_US_Wind.jpg)

<comment><USER15> Your map ignores the coastal zone, as shown in a comparable map (for the 50m height):

[https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/US-50m-wind-power- map.jpg](https://www.nrel.gov/gis/images/US-50m-wind-power-map.jpg)

Most of that offshore zone is on the continental shelf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So does this only affect ground temperatures in a localized area?

Because if Kansas gets 0.24 degrees warmer but the greenhouse gas reductions result in Greenland not melting off into the ocean, it seems like a clearly worthwhile tradeoff.

<comment><USER17> Speaking of Kansas, one of the other things the article mentions is that turbines slow down the wind. It might not be such a bad thing for Kansas if the wind was slower. Less topsoil erosion, for one thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was a time in the UK when waterwheels were all the rage. It is hard to imagine today but there was a time when rivers in wool making areas were slowed down to no longer flow due to the amount of water wheels present. The external effects of the water wheel was known but there was little that could be done if you were downstream of other mills taking power from the river.

I look forward to the time when we have the 'too many wind turbines' problem to solve.

<comment><USER19> Is that true, surely there's a terminal velocity that's reached by water flowing down a riverbed after - I'd guess - a hundred metres or so (probably much less)? Given the mill is not reducing the volume of water, surely it gets back to speed in time to hit another mill a couple of miles downstream.

Silting, I'd think would be a problem.

<comment><USER18> The mill buildings were really close, a couple of hundred on five small tributaries, each tributary running no more than a few miles before converging to one river that had even more mills on it, larger and not so dependent on river speed. The river had been dredged and otherwise adjusted by people at the time for it to have subsequently been used for the canal of the area. It is therefore hard to imagine how it once was, particularly given that water wheel technology evolved too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Isn't the math on solar really simple? (1) Annual amount of energy the sun generates on the surface of the earth _minus_ (2) the annual amount used by non-human forms of life and natural processes _equals_ (3) annual human energy balance. Now, maximize capture of (1) while minimizing externalities of such capture. How is anything other than direct solar-to-electricity conversion on the table long-term? Presumably even wind energy production relies on surface temperature differentials stored over periods longer than the consumption period in question--meaning, there's a resource being depleted.

</comment><comment><USER21> They say closer to the poles, wind power cools. So, put wind power systems at higher latitudes, and solar at lower latitudes -- where it is more effective. Sorted.

I look forward to the day when the rotors are taken down (and used for roofing?), the pods mined for their rare earths. The towers will have loose mesh stretched between them, and collect wind power by releasing ions against an electric field maintained by the mesh. (This was patented in the '80s by Alvin Marks. Expired, now, both.)

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the planet would thank us for using far less power overall, rather than continuing to be profligate with cleaner power. That said I'd need to read the paper properly to understand it - I don't think this article explains the key points very well.

Interested to know if this applies to offshore wind? Here in the UK we are a great candidate for this and whilst the US isn't quite so fortunate, it still has a fair amount of coastline!

</comment><comment><USER23> Unless we see major breakthroughs in the field of Fusion energy or long distance power transmission (Fibre optics for beamed power? Very high temperature superconductors?), I'm more and more convinced that immediate reliance on solar+wind is an unrealistic goal and we desperately need to be building nuclear plants as a stopgap.

</comment><comment><USER24> Misleading headline. Real one: Observation-based solar and wind power capacity factors and power densities

</comment><comment><USER25> Unlike solar power, land use is effectively a non-factor for the price of wind power. The NREL estimates the financing of land area to be less than a third of maintenance[1] and just 16% of operational expenses. That works out to land use being .06 cents per kWh.

Also, NB for context that .24 C is fairly small compared to the temperature anomaly as it is currently. The global anomaly is .6-.85 C higher over the year[2], and over the US it's usually around 2 C[3]. Note also that 5-20x more area, as they clarify in the journal, is not really representative; the number of turbines is about the same (unless you are in a very population-dense area like Germany), they just have to be spread much farther apart. For instance you can plop them down on farmland just fine.

Computational methods may also help reduce the impact of wind shadows by decreasing "dirty" air, but that's just a band-aid. From what the journal indicates, the limiting factor is energy re-entering from the higher atmosphere. I'm curious how this kind of thing is affected by water vapor. Does it increase or decrease the problem? Are offshore turbines affected the same way? How does farmland play into this, since plants release huge amounts of water into the air via transpiration (a plant's "heart" is effectively driven by evaporation)?

Also, I liked their little map[4] of wind(squares)/solar(stars) capacity factors. It's refreshing! One of the most irritating things about power discussions online is the ubiquitous repetition of blatantly wrong statements about capacity factors (power delivered/nameplate capacity). Here's[5][6] the data:

Coal: 53.5% capacity factor CC natural gas: 54.8% Nuclear: 92.2% Hydro: 45.2% Wind: 36.7% PV Solar: 27% Solar thermal: 21.8%

People are all over the place saying solar has a 10% capacity factor, wind has 20%, nuclear has 98%, coal and hydro have 90%- it's nonsense! Coal is a destabilizing influence on the grid, and wind is practically as good as hydro. When you account for how well solar tracks with daily demand, it's _better_ than hydro.

[1]: [https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/70363.pdf](https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy18osti/70363.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding- climate/...](https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding- climate/climate-change-global-temperature)

[3]: [https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended- mn...](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-blended- mntp/201806.gif)

[4]: [https://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/13/10/104008/Ful...](https://cdn.iopscience.com/images/1748-9326/13/10/104008/Full/erlaae102f6_lr.jpg)

[5]: [https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_b)

[6]: [https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_6_07_a)

</comment><comment> village-idiot And this is why pursuing efficiencies in energy consumption is important too!

</comment><comment><USER26> Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's _local_ , not global warming.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is FUD, to be sure. Don't think so? Hear me out.

If wind turbines are even 10 stories tall, then they introduce the same atmospheric disruption as a residential or commercial building of the same height. That we are not researching the impact of urban sprawl with the same level of scrutiny is telling. What of smoke stacks, cooling towers and high rises? Hmmm?

Meanwhile, the idea that removing kinetic energy from a 400 foot thick layer of a wind's pattern's convection and coriolis path represents atmospheric drag any worse than trees is an idea to be laughed at. What about thermals from parking lots? What about desertification?

Indeed, watch all the hurricanes disappear, because we soaked up all that motion with fan blades dotting the terrain. Does anyone believe that a wind shadow carved into the Atlantic coastline with an array of modern windmills could effectively disrupt hurricane alley? I sure don't.

And no, I don't think that's a grossly oversimplified comparison.</comment>


Richard Feynman Didn't Win a Nobel by Responding Promptly to E-mails - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2014/04/20/richard-feynman-didnt-win-a-nobel-by-responding-promptly-to-e-mails/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=richard-feynman-didnt-win-a-nobel-by-responding-promptly-to-e-mails <comment><USER2> I tried to advocate this approach in military intelligence for information deep dives.

It didn't go down too well haha. Great interview though and I am glad my thinking has been somewhat exonerated.

Much appreciated.</comment>


Google-based Ranking of American Computer Science and Engineering Departments - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/rank.html

<comment><USER2> This guy isn't serious - look at these quotes:

"Given this data, we now compute our own, novel AverageRankX statistic, which simply averages the above two tables and ignores virtually all other data, in what some have called a "useless" and others a "flat out wrong" statistical method:"

"Other schools are about in the right place. This point is especially true if you (1) ignore some results and (2) play with the data in an odd and unsound manner, using (for example) the much-maligned AverageRankX algorithm."

" Future Work: In the future, we plan to conduct other searches, using advanced Google features such as quotes around the search terms and the OR keyword. We also hope to automate this process even further, thus eliminating the need to type up a report or even look at this web page again."

</comment><comment><USER3> I think a more interesting ranking might be Google's hiring practices/biases.

</comment><comment><USER4> Methodology: Typed the following terms into Google . . .

I smell a grant!

</comment><comment><USER5> where is mit?</comment>


Learn How to Make Webpages with HTML and CSS on Khan Academy - <AUTHOR> http://cs-blog.khanacademy.org/2014/11/learn-how-to-make-webpages-with-html.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is Pamela, from the Khan Academy computing team, and creator of the curriculum. It's loosely based on our CC-licensed materials from GirlDevelopIt SF, which I started developing while I was at Google and that we've been teaching for the last 4 years. Those materials are at: [http://www.teaching- materials.org/htmlcss-1day/](http://www.teaching-materials.org/htmlcss-1day/)

If you have feedback on any of the challenges, please click Report-a-problem, I'll be improving the automated graders tomorrow. If you have other feedback, leave it here or email us at email@example.com

<comment><USER2> Hi Pamela, I love the contextual interactive hints.

I'm getting stuck on the second step of how to write a poem, perhaps this hint could be clarified? [http://i.imgur.com/LEhLwUJ.png](http://i.imgur.com/LEhLwUJ.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, the <_> is meant to imply that you have to figure out the tag name to put in there, the _ is a placeholder. What would make that more clear? (We do colored boxes in our JS hints, but I was going to avoid that complexity until necessary in HTML. It's possible it's already necessary).

<comment><USER2> I skipped to this activity and didn't read the instructions, so I didn't see the part about line breaks. It seems to me that a good solution would to be have the green guy mention the line break, or some other reinforcement of the fact that the goal is a line break.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is the best mail merge service provider? - <AUTHOR> https://vocus.io <comment><AUTHOR> I got alot of preference for vocus. What you guys say?</comment>


BleepingComputer was sued and silenced for a negative review (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/announcement/bleepingcomputer/press-release/ <comment><AUTHOR> This went under the radar for many folks.

>Bleeping Computer also agreed to continue monitoring SpyHunter and to have an open line of communication with Enigma. Any issues of concern that Bleeping Computer becomes aware of will be communicated directly to Enigma Software Group, and they will promptly respond to them.

So don't ever expect a critical review of ESG products in the future</comment>


Ask HN: Best Mathematics book for complete noobie? - <AUTHOR> Here's the story, I have never been very good at maths in school and to be honest, any other subjects really. I could get by, but never pushed myself. School was never the best environment for me to learn, but when I'm studying at home, I like it.<p>So over the past few weeks I have been thinking about trying to learn mathematics again at my own pace (starting at the basics), what books would you recommend? <comment><USER2> "An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning" by Peter J Eccels. Teaches the _vocabulary_ of mathematics, just the basics you need to think like a mathematician, not a mathematics _user_ like most science texts.

"How To Solve It" George Polya. Heurists and problem solving skills, by a great mathematician.

Do a google search, specially in the sci.math newsgroup. Again, read books by mathematicians _for_ mathematicians; they're often far more enjoyable and actually far more straightforward (I was often confused by the examples in my school work; I didn't care for "vehicle moving at speed X" or "object falling at from height Y". We all have a different internal _visual_ mind and I tended to think in abstract patterns, usually colors, lines or nested bodies, without real physical objects distracting me.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic reply, thank you.

An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning loks good, just going to read some reviews on Amazon first.

Would 'How To Solve It' be aimed at someone like myself?

<comment><USER3> How to Solve It seems to be aimed at math teachers, but it is useful for almost anyone wanting to learn more math since it gives ideas about how to think about maths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What kind of math do you want to learn?

There's a lot of great resources out there, but you need to be more specific.

For example: I really enjoyed Gilbert Strang's course on Linear Algebra, available as a series of video lectures on MIT OCW ([http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-06Spring-2005/Cours...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/18-06Spring-2005/CourseHome/)).

If you are interested in Discrete mathematics, Knuth's "Concrete Mathematics" is a great book--but it might not count as "basic" enough for your purposes, depending on your background.

If by "basics" you mean "the stuff you should have learned in high school or as an undergrad", the Standard Deviants videos are fun: <http://www.sdlearn.com/default.asp>

<comment><USER5> Those Strang videos demonstrate that there are benefits to lecturing in front of an empty chalkboard (or several, in his case), chalk in hand, vs. displaying slides from a computer. Watching how he steps back and thinks out loud about what he just wrote and what to do next, double checking his work, making and correcting the occasional error, all greatly enhance the pedagogic impact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is some general advice.

First have some kind of goal. Do you want to be able to determine the orbit of an planet, evaluate the complexity of algorithms and computing models, study human interactions as walks on graphs, or use statistics to model and predict complex systems. Decide on this first, don't wonder around mathematics aimlessly.

Secondly, work the books. Maths can not be learned by observation, and reading proof after proof is simply observation. Memorize proofs, work from your current point back to first principles, and do all the problems you can. Of course there will be times when you simply can not find a means to start on a problem, and at that time find help or try and come back to the problem later.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm in the similar situation as you (OP). My high school education was interrupted quite badly and 13 years after graduating I lack confidence in my comp sci endeavors because my maths sucks so bad. I'd be interested to hear of any hackers who have missed education milestones (like high school maths) but gone and successfully filled in the gaps. The reason I'm asking is because I'm kind feeling that things like maths knowledge is layered on year after year and if you lack the foundation its really a huge amount of work to repair each successive layer.

Passing on some wisdoms to the young hackers around here... I wish someone had grabbed me by the face in highschool and told how important all these layers of skills/knowledge would be for getting the kind of jobs I want now. <I come from a blue collar background - by the time I realised how important education was (age 22) it was too late to do much about it>

<comment><USER8> I left school when I was 16 to do homeschool, which turned out to be nothing more than my parents buying me books when I asked for them and nothing more.

I did my GED and dropped out of college, so I think that I can relate to how you feel. There's a huge inferiority complex that comes from having less education than others. Filling in the gaps is difficult but I've found that whenever I fill something in, I've benefited pretty quickly. Lately I realized that I sucked at systems programming concepts, so I've been reading about that, which has been really helpful. I make a living as a programmer, but I have to continually be studying to try and fill in gaps before I'm hurt by lack of knowledge.

If someone can work through a discrete math textbook and do the exercises, I think they could get a lot out of it. Calculus has some important ideas, but I think the discrete math is much more relevant to every day programming. I took a course last year at my community college that used Discrete Mathematics with Applications, by Susanna S. Epp. I don't recall it requiring higher math than algebra, but it did require sharp thinking. Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science is probably a good textbook, but I haven't used it, so can't say anything about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find the Khan Academy videos to be pretty helpful. They start with the absolute basics and go on up. <http://www.khanacademy.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "What is Mathematics" by Courant and Robbins is quite good and respected, but it will challenge you: [http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Elementary-Approach- Ideas-...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Elementary-Approach-Ideas- Methods/dp/0195105192) It may be more advanced then what you're looking for though.

</comment><comment><USER11> Have you seen this thread?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=665029>

<comment><USER12> That thread recommends many very few good books, but probably mostly books too hard at first for the participant who has posted this new thread.

I'll recommend a couple of books from that thread:

<http://www.springer.com/physics/book/978-0-306-45036-5>

[http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Short-Introduction- Timothy...](http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Short-Introduction-Timothy- Gowers/dp/0192853619/)

I agree with the recommendation of An Introduction to Mathematical Reasoning in this thread.

Another participant has already recommended my favorite for background reading, Concepts of Modern Mathematics by Ian Stewart.

[http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Ian- Stewar...](http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Ian- Stewart/dp/0486284247/)

Get that right away.

Sawyer's A Mathematician's Delight is surely also good (I've read other books by Sawyer).

<http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0486462404/>

Read those for background as you get my favorite overviews of mathematics: Basic Mathematics by Serge Lang and Numbers and Geometry by Joseph Stillwell.

[http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge- Lang/dp/038796...](http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Mathematics-Serge- Lang/dp/0387967877/)

(Basic Mathematics is mostly high school level math, with a minimum of fuss and bother, and good exercises.)

[http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John- Stillwell/dp/038...](http://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Geometry-John- Stillwell/dp/0387982892/)

(Numbers and Geometry is mostly undergraduate level math, with very good explanations and excellent exercises.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've had pretty good luck using the MAA recommendations list for libraries: [http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/?pa=content&sa=viewDocum...](http://mathdl.maa.org/mathDL/19/?pa=content&sa=viewDocument&nodeId=3219)

I recommend reading Theodore Gray and Jerry Glynn's Brain Rot article for some ideas on what math skills are worth intensive study and development and which are less important: <http://www.theodoregray.com/BrainRot/>

There are several articles and blog postings on the topic of math self study that I found interesting and you might find useful in determining what and how to study: Developing your intuition for math: [http://betterexplained.com/articles/developing-your- intuitio...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/developing-your-intuition- for-math/) Math every day (Steve Yegge): <http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/math-every-day> Math for programmers (Steve Yegge): [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for- programmers...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/math-for- programmers.html) How to read mathematics (Shai Simonson and Fernando Gouvea):<http://web.stonehill.edu/compsci/History_Math/math-read.htm>

</comment><comment><USER14> If you go back and learn Algebra, Trig, Geometry, then I fully recommend the Cliffs Study Solver series of textbooks because they are very cheap and very thorough plus each day you do a chapter, you'll make cumulative progress.

You are introduced to a concept, given a set of practice problems to see the concept in action, then given a problem set to solve on your own.

[http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-I-Cliffs-Study- Solver/dp/07645...](http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-I-Cliffs-Study- Solver/dp/0764537636/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249996670&sr=1-1)

Each book is about 350 pages and you'll be up to speed in no time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I came back to doing maths after a gap of over a decade. I found the student survival guide very clear and useful. I imagine it would be excellent to someone who is not good at maths.

I read the guide every evening while I was cooking (its not a difficult read) and my maths improved greatly.

<http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~jenolive/> [http://www.amazon.com/Maths-Students- Survival-Self-Help-Engi...](http://www.amazon.com/Maths-Students-Survival- Self-Help-Engineering/dp/0521017076)

</comment><comment><USER16> That's depends on what you want to learn and for why, well, some people want to understand the formalism of a theory, as theoretical computer science or theoretical physics where others are only interested in applications, so I will take a generalist approach in the topics, yes topics not books, that I will advise you to learn. Unless the book is awful (and there are many out there that are) it will makes no difference which book you pick, you generally will not "read" a math book, the only case in which you will is when it's a book for divulgation (as Polya's "How To Solve It"). For me the basics is: Statistics (Descriptive and some Probability), Calculus, the idea of Limits, Derivatives and Integrals (for Multiple Variables) and applications, Linear Algebra and also some Applications (there are many), numerical Linear Algebra is totally necessary if you want to apply it in the real world, a basics in Differential Equations, some Numerical Analysis.

If you want to learn things closer to computer science then learn something of Number Theory, some Enumerative Combinatorics and Graph Theory as well. The list is extensive because I come from a mathematical background. If you learn at least a bit of these topics them the next step will be apparent for you.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 I know this doesn't answer your question since you asked about math in general, but in case anyone ever starts a "Best Physics books for complete noobie?" thread I'd like to go ahead and suggest Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos": [http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture- Reality/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture- Reality/dp/0375727205/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249998147&sr=8-1)

<comment><USER5> Maybe more on topic than you suggest, as some Physics books double as pretty good books about math.

[http://www.amazon.com/Road-Reality-Complete-Guide- Universe/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Road-Reality-Complete-Guide- Universe/dp/0679776311/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250000533&sr=1-1)

OK, I haven't actually read it, but it _looked_ like a really good book for learning a lot of interesting math when I thumbed through its contents at the library. :)

<comment><USER17> I agree with hyperbovine -- Road To Reality is a downright terrible book for the casually-interested nonprofessional, and I don't understand why it gets recommended so frequently. Roger Penrose is a bright fellow and a good writer but this book is not for the person who did OK in high school math and physics and now wants to take it to the next level.

<comment><USER18> How would it be for a guy who aced second semester freshman physics and the math GRE (40 years ago), and top 100 on the Putnam?

<comment><USER17> I'd guess you'd be in his target audience. Someone who's already comfortable with complex causality and relationships between seemingly-random facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Honestly I think Schaum's is pretty good because it does a bit of explanation, but you primarily learn through doing two dozen pages of problems per chapter.

</comment><comment><USER20> Some years ago I took the same approach to start again from ground zero. I found Polya to be good, but a Mathematician's Delight is better and more accessible: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0486462404?ie=UTF8&ta...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0486462404?ie=UTF8&tag=jorg-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0486462404)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want to DO math, nothing beats working through a decent textbook. I have worked through several since I'm approaching 50 and don't use math enough to keep my skills up (and like any skill, you have to keep practicing to stay decently competent in math). The best Precalculus textbook I have used is Swokowski's "Algebra and Trigonometry with Analytic Geometry" which is clear, concise, and has lots of problems.

If you want to learn ABOUT math, Davis and Hersch's "The Mathematical Experience" is a fairly easy read about philosophy of math, how it is used, and a bit about studying math.

Eric Temple Bell's "Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science" is a bit dated but an excellent history of math for someone interested in learning to do advanced math; the author's a bit biased towards algebra over analysis, number theory, and geometry, but not excessively so. Its biggest lack is only one short chapter on probability and statistics. This is not a particularly easy read since it covers things in some depth, but I think it is worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER21> I haven't picked it up yet, but I remember reading about "The Princeton Companion to Mathematics" on here a while ago. It looks like a pretty complete guide to all of modern mathematics and sounded like it was easy enough for a beginner to get through while still being able to teach math experts some new things.

Thanks for reminding me about it - I think I'm going to order my self a copy!

<comment><USER22> My own math background is through Calculus II right now, so I'm a beginner, but I can't say the Companion (though it is excellent) is something I could 'get through' in the sense that people usually mean it. By necessity it is terse, despite its massive size. I personally find it useful as a survey on the field, but I wouldn't recommend it as a teaching guide in and of itself for people who happen to be as dumb as me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For proof based mathematics, I found "How to Prove It:A Structured Approach" helpful.

</comment><comment><USER24> I heartily endorse reading the classic works of geometry as a way to both the subject as well as a way of thinking about math, proof, and argumentation.

Start with Euclid's _Elements_, and then move onto Archimedes' short books on levers and floating bodies, Apollonius's wonderful treatise on conic sections, and Ptolemy's _Almagest_.

They are excellent for self-education, providing both geometrical knowledge in itself, as well as extensive training in sound reasoning. Don't be fooled by the antiquity of their origin: they teach more clearly than most modern day texts, and their content is timeless.

<comment><USER25> I completely disagree. Do not rely on ancient texts to give you understanding of what mathematics is about. They're very difficult to read, they do not teach well, and you'll know next to nothing about even basic notions of mathematics, as understood now, after you're through with them.

Do read the classical texts for pleasure, to round out your education, or to understand the history of mathematics. But don't study math from them, that'd be a terrible mistake.

<comment><USER24> I'd be curious to know what you find difficult about them, and why you think they do not teach well.

I find Euclid extraordinarily clear in his exposition of geometry. And I have not yet found a better teacher on conics than Appolonius, although Descartes comes very close with his analytic geometry.

Are there some defective constructions in the Conic Sections or in the Elements that lead you to say that "you'll know next to nothing about even basic notions of mathematics"?

It's not clear to me why you think that the ancient texts are lacking in pedagogical power, except for perhaps a personal aesthetic preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm pretty at Mathematics and doing that takes a lot of work. And the Mathematics books for noobs are no good.

The better approach is to get a theoretical book, something like Spivak's Calculus or Linear Algebra by Friedberg, Insel and Spence. And then from there whenever you have difficulty with the material spread out laterally and you really start to gradually grow an understanding of mathematics.

And then perhaps, one day you'll be up for Spivak's Calculus on Manifolds!

</comment><comment><USER18> _The World of Mathematics_ edited by James Newman (a four-volume anthology) may give you a feel for and an interest in exploring math further. It's a great collection ranging from mathematical curiousities and puzzles to memoirs of mathematicians to a very moving short story by Aldous Huxley.

Also, _One, Two, Three, Infinity_ by George Gamow (a great physicist) is a great intro.

Second the _How To Solve It_ recommendations.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you have some decent background in reasoning and logic, I would suggest Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler. It provides a general introduction in mathematical reasoning as well as providing a strong framework for maths needed in many fields.

[http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Right-Sheldon- Axler/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Linear-Algebra-Right-Sheldon- Axler/dp/0387982582/)

</comment><comment><USER27> For a "popular" treatment of mathematics that does go into some mathematical detail "Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics" by William Dunham is difficult to beat. It is by far one of the best "Math" books I have read that have kept me coming back to it. Also, try some of the books by John Derbyshire along similar lines.

</comment><comment><USER28> I second the OCW reference. Some of the Calculus for Dummies, type books are good. Its good to remember that Calculus and Linear Algebra don't have to be that complicated. I also recommend scan the books before you buy them, I wasted far too much money at college on txtbooks that I ended up despising

</comment><comment><USER29> It's not strictly math, and I can't recommend it from experience, but I've always been curious what a beginner's reaction to _Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics_ might be. It's free here:

<http://mitpress.mit.edu/SICM/book.html>

</comment><comment><USER30> "Scientific Notation and Other First Principles: Comprehensive Mathematics for Lawyers and Politicians," by Jacob Herwitz. Penguin, 1992.

Great introductory text which starts from algebraic first principles and goes through pretty much everything up until differential equations. Very thorough.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think Kreyszig's Advanced Engineering Mathematics is an excellent text in applied math.

I'm not sure where you're at or what direction you want to study, but once you're familiar with calculus concepts this text is a good place to go to deal with ODE and analysis.

</comment><comment><USER32> Concepts of Modern Mathematics

[http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Ian- Stewar...](http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Modern-Mathematics-Ian- Stewart/dp/0486284247/ref=pd_sim_b_88)

</comment><comment><USER33> There are a few math books in the "Head First" series (which I always love). Those might serve more as refreshers for most people, but for a true math noob (like me), they have really helped.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Naive Set Theory" by Paul R. Halmos.

<comment><USER2> Set Theory is the building blocks of mathematics, and Halmos is a first-rate mathematician and teacher. Excellent recommendation Paul. I worked through Halmos 8 months into my mathematics self-study and loved it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35>

</comment><comment><USER36> 'Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea' by Charles Seif</comment>


Ask HN: Why are there some really old stories on the ask page? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Maybe someone upvoted the story, causing it to get bumped back up?

<comment><USER3> Actually it looks much better today. For the past few weeks the majority of the first 30 links were 250+ days old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> pg may have been messing with some code</comment>


Future of Internet Search: Mobile version - <AUTHOR> http://petitinvention.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/future-of-internet-search-mobile-version/

<comment><USER2> I've seen this post before but this is definitely cool if true.

<comment><USER3> Cool, but in a superficial way. Like the computers we use today would be futuristic by ~8 yrs ago, but we don't give them a second thought.</comment></comment>


How Wolfram Alpha May Trump Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23468/

<comment><USER2> They seem to be going about the same task in two different ways. Alpha is built essentially by having an army of experts massage the data, and input it to a specially designed database. My guess is google will just apply what it knows about search to its newly available data, without messing around with it.

I'm suspicious of Alpha's ability to live up to its hype, unless there's significantly more to its inner workings than I'm aware of. It almost seems like a brute force solution to the problem.</comment>


FCC may release new wireless spectrum, unused television channels  - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/12/AR2010091203925.html

<comment><USER2> Can someone elaborate on why broadcasters have been OK with wireless mics but not with other devices in this spectrum? Wouldn't wireless mics risk stomping on TV channels if poorly designed too?

The section on "Internet connected refrigerators" is plain silly. You would be hard-pressed to find a worse usage scenario for wireless broadband, given that a fridge is 1) fixed in a spot and 2) couldn't possibly require much bandwidth to order eggs.</comment>


Porting a 75,000 line native iOS app to Flutter - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/flutter-community/finished-porting-a-75-000-line-native-ios-app-to-flutter-b5c0bff93715 <comment><USER2> Nice short article, and another endorsement of Flutter. Notable:

> After the port, the Flutter app had half as many lines of code as the > original iOS app.

While supporting 2 platforms.</comment>


The History of Linux Complexity - <AUTHOR> https://ungleich.ch/en-us/cms/blog/2019/05/29/history-of-linux-complexity/ <comment><USER2> TL,DR: systemd is evil, and there is a Debian distro with good old system5.</comment>


Collaborative vim plugin - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FredKSchott/CoVim

<comment><USER2> This is amazing. A pity it's not organized for vundle/pathogen, but that can be fixed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know, I really like it. I'm surprised this article has flopped. This is right up most of the readers' alley.

<comment><USER2> It's probably due to all the excitement from Google I/O that stole the spotlight away. I'm working on a fork to get Vundle working with it. I think I'm done. Just need to test it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Post a link? :)

<comment><USER2> I made a pull request that was accepted. You should be all set .</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Dustin Sallings Doesn't Use Maven - <AUTHOR> http://dustin.github.com/2010/04/01/why-not-maven.html <comment><USER2> Maven and Ant are unnecessarily verbose. I find Makefiles and CMake far simpler. Maybe it's just the XML I'm sick of.

<comment><USER3> I always thought about Ant as `make + native Java plugins`. Is there anything else it can do that doesn't fit in that description?

<comment><USER4> Correct dependency handling and implicit rules, for one. The amount of effort required to translate

      %.o: %.c

into ant is unbelievable. You can use the depend tasks but those require you to know your dependencies ahead of time and take explicit action to check them.

It is more a measure of how unbelievable maven 2 is that ant looks pretty good in comparison, because ant is terrible at most things other than running javac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing I do like about Maven is that you're pretty much guaranteed that if the build works on your machine, it'll work for everyone else too.

This might be because it stops you doing anything stupid, but removes power too. Like blunt scissors.

I'm going to be switching to Buildr for my next project, if only because it can pull in dependencies that aren't in the Maven repos, which would mean it's even more likely to work on someone else's machine... as long as I don't do anything stupid :)

<comment><USER6> Like hell you are.

You're guaranteed that it will work on a machine that has network access to the same resources, that has a similar enough version of Java, and with permissions to write wherever the hell Maven decides it wants to put things.

From my point of view as a sysadmin, Maven is a tool that was invented to punish people in my profession. Want to test in a sandbox separated from your SCM for security reasons? Good luck. How about grabbing a defunct project from the Internet because it does what you need, and discovering that it won't build because it wants a dependency that it can't download, and so rather than just letting you supply the dependency in a way that will satisfy the compiler, you have to make Maven happy as well.

I shouldn't have to fight this much with a build tool to do simple things, like BUILD THE APPLICATION.

This is one of the few rants I've posted here, but fuck Maven. It's an overcomplicated answer to a problem that the mindset that led to Maven development created in the first place.

<comment> brown9-2 _Want to test in a sandbox separated from your SCM for security reasons? Good luck._

How in the world does the choice of build tool affect if you can test your application (once it's built) in a sandbox environment? If you can compile and package the application, you should be able to upload it to whatever environment you want.

<comment><USER6> Unless that 'build tool' is Maven, which wants to be build tool, dependency resolver, project manager, SCM, and very likely the Pope. Maven really doesn't like being cut off from its network repositories.

<comment> brown9-2 You can pretty easily set up your build to package up your app and all it's dependencies as a tar.gz/zip/whatever during the package phase. This is what you can export to your sandbox environment. Or does what you would want to test in the sandbox include the building and dependency resolution phases?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How come all Maven criticism is completely off the mark?

@mml: Maven is in no way ant-based. It has an ant-plugin but that's pretty much all.

@dustin: The release thing? It's called the 'release-plugin'.

<comment><USER8> Maven is clearly ant++. The concept of XML as buld descriptor language is clearly lifted direcly from ant.

It's a tragedy that the java environment is so comparatively weird that make & cousins weren't obvious choices to build java projects.

I spent a majority of the last decade & change dealing with ant and maven builds on million line projects. My hatred for both is from years of bitter experience.

Sorry, I hate them both with the zed-like fury of a billion suns.

<comment><USER9> My opinion of Maven is the same as Winston Churchill's opinion of democracy: "It's the worst system, aside from all the other systems."

I've seen plenty of makefiles bomb out on systems that were different from the system they were written for -- it's hard to have that problem with Maven. And the idea of a versioned repo that stores multiple revisions of all of your components is awesome, provided you actually use it correctly and don't leave everything at 0.1-SNAPSHOT forever.

The problem it's solving is inherently hellish, so while there could be better ways of solving it, Maven's the least crappy one I've seen so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maven, of any version, is fiendishly idiotic. The fact that the now almost extinct jellyscript is considered a good thing by the author gives me pause.

Really, I can't fathom why anyone persists in using any ant-based system when there are many better choices (like suicide).

If you'd like a short chuckle, look up the origins of ant.

</comment><comment><USER10> +1 for the guy sitting at the window story.

Maven killed the ANTLR parser generator for me. I wanted to try making a compiler and ANTLR looked like the bee's knees. So I download it, try to build it using the official instructions, and package downloads start zooming across my screen.

"What in the nine green hells of Zorgon is this?!," I think to myself.

Then Maven blew up.

"Oh, crap," I think.

Then I look at the config file to see how to fix it. XML.

"Oh, CRAP!" I think.

I try to do a clean rebuild. Maybe a stray file got into version control, maybe an HTTP server horked during the downloads, that sort of thing.

Maven could no longer read its own repository.

"!@#$!@$ !@#%% !@#@$@!! !@#@#@ $#!$$!@," I say out load.

And delete ANTLR. Life's too short to be stepping through a debugger for the build tool for your build tool for you build tool.

<comment> brown9-2 Why don't you just download the binaries from the ANTLR site?

<http://www.antlr.org/download/antlr-3.2.jar> for "Complete ANTLR 3.2 jar; all tools, runtime, etc..."

<http://www.antlr.org/download.html>

<comment><USER6> Perhaps he wanted to build from source, for whatever reason?

Certainly a 'build tool' should make this, well, easy.

<comment> brown9-2 Yeah it should. And the project should make sure it's easy to build from source as well. I just tried to download Antlr source from the site and build it and I get errors about how they've configured a plugin which needs to connect to their SCM but they haven't configured their part.

I can see that Maven has a sharp learning curve, and that it can be frustrating when you want to get just one task done - I think it shines when you are working in an environment with many projects with inter-dependencies between them - but some blame should be pointed here at the Antlr project authors, who haven't made sure that you could cleanly build the source on their site.

<comment><USER10> I wanted to give the Python target better support for characters outside the Unicode Basic Multilingual Plane. I.e., I was smoking crack.

"I think it shines when you are working in an environment with many projects with inter-dependencies between them"

I haven't seriously used Maven, obviously, but its basic design violates the separation of concerns principle. A combination of projects is simply a higher-level project, whose targets can perfectly well be created by a Makefile that downloads them. Maven is a shining example of what happens to people who don't understand recursion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


International Space Station Comes Together (animation) - <AUTHOR> http://i.usatoday.net/tech/graphics/iss_timeline/flash.htm

<comment><USER2> It's quite astonishing that all planned supply ships will _actually_ supply the ISS.

The good old Russian Progress for cargo, the European ATV for cargo and boosting the station and the Japanese HTV (not actually in this animation) for cargo (both pressurized and unpressurized) as well as International Standard Payload Racks (the ATV can't bring them up because the ATV docks on the Russian part of the station and the Payload Racks don't fit through the Russian hatches).

All already had at least one successful mission, all will fly again – which is kinda important, now that the Space Shuttle retires.

The only way to bring people up there will be Soyuz, though. Cheap and extremely reliable Soyuz but it would still be great to have some sort of alternative soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's hard to believe the ISS is 12 years old this year. This is a prime example of what the world can achieve when we work together. Amazing.</comment>


Projects at Kestrel Institute - <AUTHOR> http://www.kestrel.edu/home/projects <comment><USER2> Please fix title, it's a bit misleading in that this institute isn't an actual Stanford institute anymore than HP is.

<comment><USER3> I don't know what the title was before but the current title [Projects at Kestrel Institute] is suitably leading.

<comment><AUTHOR> I put "Stanford Research Park's* Kestrel...:" I was being a bit of a click- wh*re (-_-) oops.</comment></comment></comment>


When a 20-year-old punk put on a series of illegal shows in the desert - <AUTHOR> https://www.huckmag.com/?p=414909 <comment><USER2> Reminds me of an idea I had a few years ago when the northeast states and provinces like Quebec and Ontario were in the grip of an intense cold snap as a result of a "polar vortex". I live near Lake Ontario and the surface of the entire lake froze over to a thickness that would support a transport truck.

You probably see where I'm going with this: throw a big party/rave in the middle of the frozen lake. The goal would be to keep it on the Canadian side (where I live) but far enough out into the lake that local police have no jurisdiction - IANAL but my primitive thinking was to see if you could situate it where it would require federal intervention, which seems to me unlikely to materialize in time to stop a party.

In any case, we would be in the middle of a very large lake, and I'm not sure that there are any laws preventing throwing a party there in the first place.

Naturally, to be a welcoming environment, a party like this would greatly benefit from a huge bonfire, raising concerns about risks that are less likely when you party on dry land, but I thought it was a fun idea...

<comment><USER3> In the late 90s, there were a few "no man's land" raves in places where jurisdiction was ambiguous between Israel and the (then brand new) Palestinian Authority's west bank territories. Neither the israeli army, police or palestinian police wanted to mess with a huge, internationally negotiated agreement for the sake of a party.

Around 1999-2000 the "Oslo Process" which created those jurisdictional grey areas collapsed into it's current state, things got violent and the raves ended.

Funny how "what's normal" depends on where you're from. Middle Eastern no- mans-land seemed like a cool place for a party, to 16 yo me. Frozen lake in winter seems way to dangerous to even consider. What sort of a lune would go to a frozen lake party?!!

<comment><USER4> Lots of people in freezing areas of the world do all sorts of things on frozen lakes/water bodies. There are ice roads in Canada's North that are only open when it's cold enough for the water to freeze. Heavy transport trucks use them all the time! And of course there's the hockey/skating and ice fishing.

<comment><USER3> Madmen. You can run from or fight violence. Can't outrun cold.

In my mind, if a lake is _that_ frozen, we're in a war against nature.

<comment><USER5> I know you're joking, but you can - you know - literally outrun the feeling of cold in most situations.

You're really cold? Eat. Run. Increase your insulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not that this isn't an interesting story, but the headline is dubious. The origins of Burning Man had far more to do with the SF Suicide Club and the Cacaphony Society than what was going on in LA. The first burns were arguably Cacophony society events, and there were Cacophony Society trips to Black Rock prior to Burning Man moving there.

<comment><USER7> Seems more relevant to Coachella than Burning Man. Concert away from people, not novel, just interesting.

Pre-real BMan organization - definitely cacophony society, but also those with extended interest like shooting galleries, etc were there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> During the early-mid 80's there was a strong illegal party atmosphere in youth culture. It was promoted by the punk rock fanzines and people were throwing illegal shows everywhere. I was an Iowa punker, and my buddy and I (who I later formed software companies with) used to rent out apartment club houses, church basements, various small venues and then overwhelm the situation with 2-3x the allowed occupancy, 3-6 unannounced local punk rock bands, a school bus with literally 60-80 kegs of beer inside, and every local drug dealer had a little private space to do business. These would be "1 night" events that would last 2 days, the situation would be so out of control the police would just try to manage the crowd. We simply took over with a mob of degenerate youth. I remember one major blowout the cops tried to shut the party down and gave up as the crowd simply ignored them. They even tried billy club force, until surrounded by skinheads shaking their heads. Christian Iowa had no idea how to handle this, and we had a blast.

<comment><USER9> Sounds similar:

[https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation- world/article17873589...](https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation- world/article178735891.html)

<comment><USER8> We never managed to have a persistent venue in Iowa, as far as I know. The scene centered around a wonderful college radio show called "No Commercial Potential Radio" from some little community college. Gawd, those were the daze.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Illegal shows and music fests were common here on native reservations, in forests and abandoned buildings until overdoses happened so much the scene was killed. At the time Nicholas Sand was hiding from the FBI and flooding the local market with high purity lsd/mdma ect. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Sand](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Sand) When his lab was busted fake drugs started being peddled at these events causing enough problems the police and reserve police took zero tolerance of any unlicensed shows/raves.

I've also noticed in the beginning, when it's just people involved in that scene, there's no problems. It's when popularity of your illegal festival spreads and outsiders show up who have no connection to anybody involved that problems begin, such as meatheads who eventually turned up on a regular basis to these parties to throw punches, set fires and sell piperazine derived pills.

<comment><USER11> Just goes to show -- the drug providers making quality product are keeping people safe! People will still seek their escape/bliss, but if they can find something with predictable effects it's way better than allowing free market forces to take over in the vacuum left behind when you bust a drug provider.

<comment><USER12> As i recall, most heroin overdoses happen when someone tries to get clean, slips, and ends up injecting a dose based on unknown purity and fails to account for their loss of tolerance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pssh, ravers have been doing this in the deserts of socal since the early nineties (if not earlier)

Surely deserts anywhere have a rich history of people secretly partying there, just like forests and whatnot.

A lot of that scene has died down but the burner contingent is still going strong. If you know the right names and the right people to talk to its fairly easy to find.

<comment><USER14> Are you referring to full-moon parties? I was hoping for a mention in the article. I would guess their origin also took inspiration from these parties, considering they started in 1983/4 i.e. a few years before the raves of the "early nineties".

<comment><USER13> Yeah, full moon stuff is going strong here. I'm not entirely sure when the socal rave scene started, but those guys are also still active (at least according to the folks I know who roll with that crowd) if a bit diminished

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of the generator parties Kyuss used to play at in the early 90s. So wish I could have gone.</comment>


Intel Launches Stratix 10 TX: Leveraging EMIB with 58G Transceivers - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12477/intel-launches-stratix-10-tx-leveraging-emib-with-58g-transceivers-?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> >Previously these were (and have been called) 56G, but Intel is using the term 58G because it believes that its solution will perform better than other 56G solutions on the market, enough to call it a 58G device.

G here should mean Gbps, it's a technical description not a marketing term. Either the transceivers can be configured for 29GHz PAM4, or they can't, I don't see how there's room for interpretation here.

<comment><USER3> Where does anandtech get this from? The Intel press release very clearly states:

> up to 144 transceiver lanes with serial data rates of 1 to 58 Gbps

And the Altera website agrees: [https://www.altera.com/solutions/technology/transceiver/over...](https://www.altera.com/solutions/technology/transceiver/overview.html)

<comment><USER2> Hmm, I wonder if they initially designed it only for 56G but they found that it worked acceptably well up to 58G after tape-out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Now, this gets interesting.

FPGA's usefulness as an accelerator in DCs was hugely hampered by IO bottlenecks. Even PCI-E can be said to be limiting the theoretical peak throughput of top FPGAs. With more IO being done by physical hardware, this should offset IO bottleneck somewhat.

I'm still waiting for FPGA on package Xeons that will have raw register to register linkage connection. They were once announced in 2016, some samples were shown, but then they went silent.

<comment><USER5> keep in mind that raw speed (in terms of say, ram access or PCI-E access (which is already faster than this implementation)) is rarely the obsticle these days, the issue is fetch/rtt latency, especially with trying to integrate FPGA acceleration into a codebase for offloading some operations, the penalty for for which can often be tens of thousands of cycles, or more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems pretty desperate. It was known they were having a real hard time bringing up Altera's gigabit transceivers on Intel's processes. I guess they've given up and decided to just bond separate chips together.

<comment><USER7> Which isn't necessarily a bad solution....

<comment><USER6> Its a lot more expensive so I guess it depends on your definition of "bad".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a neophyte to this area, but did I read this correctly, the stratix 10 SoC comes with an ARM cortex chip? Intel sells solutions with ARM chips?

<comment><USER9> ARM don't make chips. They design them. Then they license the designs to chip users, who in turn get chip manufacturers to make them. Intel make _lots_ of ARM chips (as well as their own in-house designs).

<comment><USER10> Intel only recently signed a manufacturing deal with ARM in 2016, I'm not sure how extensive it is though. I'm only aware of LG taking advantage of it until now.

Intel used to both design and manufacture their own line of ARM SOCs back in the 2000s under the XScale brand, but they sold it to Marvell in 2006.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article made no sense at all. It could have made sense with a few strategically placed definitions.</comment>


Sales figures for an ebook compared to it's hardback edition - <AUTHOR> http://meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/scottpack/2010/08/some-digital-numbers.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder if we'll start seeing book contracts that say "if sales drop below X for Y months, the ebook price goes from Z to Q."

Is this how iTunes handles its cheaper songs?</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for a visa to Europe - <AUTHOR>

Hi there,
I'll try to make this as short as possible. I'm posting here only because I'm out of ideas. I'm a Syrian, 22, holder of a B.Sc. from the University of Portsmouth, UK. I have about 5 years of experience in web development and my works is of high quality. One of my projects even won the Website of the Year 2012 award at Pan Arab Web Awards, and yes that was during the war. I work as a front-end & WP/NodeJS developer. I've been living in Turkey for more than a year now. I came without knowing a single word of Turkish and now I can practically say anything I want using it. My only problem is the following:
In Turkey, Syrians are treated like unwanted guests. They are not legally refugees and they have no rights to work, buy land or become citizens. This means that we have no future here.
What I want is to live in a country where I'm respected just as any other citizen. To have rights and to build a future. I'm not seeking to become a refugee but I only want a work visa to any country that respects us for being humans. I have applied to many job applications recently, mostly in Germany & Sweden, and passed the 3 interviews but had no luck as all employers were concerned that my visa wouldn't be approved.
I've also recently found a job in the UK and my employer started with the visa application procedures while I'm working as a contractor, but it has been two months now and we have got no answer from the home office. I'm not very optimistic about it. I've been told that UK visa is the toughest one in Europe.
So do you have any suggestions for me, or can any of you help me? If someone is willing to take the chance and sponsor my visa I'd be very happy. Any kind of visas which can be switched later would be helpful as well. I don't want to deal with smugglers.
Thank you and sorry for the long post. <comment><USER2> "it has been two months now and we have got no answer from the home office." Two months in government bureaucracy time is like 2 days. I wouldn't despair.

Also, why are you focusing on Europe? Many countries have easier programs to bring in high skilled workers, like Australia or Canada.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh well, maybe I'm just losing my mind while waiting.

I have already been accepted into the new program offered by Canada, but I'm not sure about that. Most of my friends are in Europe, and I have nobody in Canada to ask whether it would be a good place for me for a new beginning. The thing that discouraged me about Canada is that you have to pay high fees and also have some a good amount of money to support yourself for a few months (between 3 and 6, I'm not sure). I would prefer Europe, but I'm keeping Canada as a last choice.</comment></comment>


What would the male-only version of the Female Founders Conference be? - <AUTHOR> http://istommydrunk.svbtle.com/the-maleonly-version-of-the-female-founders-conference

<comment><USER2> I don't agree with the mirroring proposed by this post. A true mirror would be a Male Founders Conference focused on the problems that male founders specifically face (maybe dating / work-life balance / fatherhood / fitness / ???). Closing the gender gap is the wrong takeaway (I think).

Having nitpicked the author's take on the FFC, I'll throw out my own: it seems like a mistake to make it a female only event (or am I misreading that?). I could see a lot of value (for women) being generated by having high profile (male) VCs and tech advisors attend the conference as well. Right or wrong, the vast majority of advisors and VCs are men at the moment, and educating them on how to help female founders seems just as valuable as educating the founders themselves.

<comment><USER3> As I understand it, the conference isn't female-only, it's female- prioritizing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this whole tempest in a teapot reminds me of Morgan Freeman's sage comments on "Black History Month":

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh8mUia75k8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh8mUia75k8)

To paraphrase:

"I'm going to stop calling you a 'female founder' and I'm going to ask that you stop calling me a 'male founder'. I know you as Jane Doe and you know me as John Smith."

If your goal is to create unity and harmony, it is a funny tactic to focus on and amplify that which separates and differentiates rather than that which is shared and common across any of the perceived 'differences'.

<comment><USER5> From what I understand, it's not so much about unity as it is preparing women who wish to be founders for the challenges they will meet _specifically as a female_ in the tech industry.

Also, on a long enough timeline, ignoring differences between groups of people may equalize them if participation is high enough, but it can often help things along a lot if more energy is put into the side of the misrepresented. That's not to say this can't be overdone, there's a balance, but equality doesn't come from just sitting around _not_ being sexist/racist/whatever. You often have to convince others that you are deserving of having a place at the table. Source: civil rights movement.

I happen to think women in tech are pretty under-represented, and having a conference that prepares them better for a male-dominated industry (as well as networking with other men and women alike) is a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like this part:

This could take many forms, but my suggestion would be helping men, especially men who believe they are in no way sexist, identify some of the biases they have and some of the things they do that make women uncomfortable. We could talk pretty openly, get some of the horrible things we believe off our chest because we'd be explicitly there to identify and combat them,

So there's no possibility men who think they are not sexist actually aren't sexist. They just haven't been properly shown _how exactly_ they are sexist. They haven't been shown how uncomfortable they make the women around them (and this is a topic so deep even a specialized conference can cover only "some" of it). They haven't been exposed to the fact that the things they believe are actually horrible and need to be combated.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's some possibility men who believe they're not sexist aren't sexist, it seems unlikely that it's a common thing though. It would take an incredible force of will for anyone to be totally devoid of the influences of patriarchy.

<comment><USER6> Postulating existence of the "patriarchy", whose grip is unescapable, makes the argument perfectly circular. Of course (nearly) all men are sexist, what do you expect if they are influenced by the patriarchy? And of course patriarchy exists - what else you expect from the sexist men?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a circular argument, it's a circular reality. That's exactly how things actually work - we're raised in patriarchy, so we all carry some of that with us. The goal is to carry less and less over by becoming conscious of it. Then the circle becomes an inward spiral, continuing to perpetuate itself, but getting smaller all the time.

<comment><USER6> Is it? We're talking about it for four generations at least now, and all men are still irredeemably sexist. When we know that it got small enough so a man has a workable chance of not being sexist? 25 years? 50 years? 100 years? Who would determine that and how?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One word... sexist. It would be called sexist. While I'm totally pro female, exclusivity is still bigotry no matter how you look at it.

<comment><USER8> Not at all. Why must there be a label associated with everything?

I supposed girls nights out are now sexist as well, or just chilling with the guys and no girls.

How far will it go?

<comment><USER9> Any time you distinguish a group based on gender by definition it's sexist, plain and simple. Is that _bad_? Arguably not (then again, some people would say it's an issue).

Once you start to give one group preferential treatment based on their gender, that's sex _ism_. There's a difference between the _-ist_ and the _-ism_ , but it's an important one :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Jessica and PG if you see this - there are some assumptions I made about you guys and the conference in this piece that I will correct if they're wrong (namely - the timing of the conference is somewhat in response to the Information incident and the goals of the conference). Just let me know. It's not the core point, so I'd love a fact check there.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the male equivalent of the Female Founders Conference would be a Male Elementary School Teachers Conference -- or possibly a Male Daycare Workers Conference.

<comment><USER3> Except in most fields where women dominate demographically, men face few issues (men are actually, in my experience, _praised_ for doing carework) and are actually paid more than women on average. FFC is obviously more than just "women are sparse in tech"

<comment><USER10> _men face few issues_

This is certainly not the case for the male elementary school teachers I've heard speak about their experience. Unless you don't consider being accused of being a pedophile to be an issue...

<comment><USER3> That's not an "issue" with being a male elementary school teacher, that's just too many men being pedophiles.

<comment> barry-cotter I regret I have but one downvote to give. This guy really thinks that all male primary school teachers should be presumed paedophiles unless proven otherwise. Or maybe a more charitable interpretation would be that paedophilia is a normal male thing. Either way this person makes Mary Rosh look like a decent human being.

<comment><USER3> Not sure how you got any of that from what I said. The public image of the pedophile is male for a reason. "Most sexual offenders against children are male" (Lisa J. Cohen, PhD and Igor Galynker, MD, PhD (2009-06-08). "Psychopathology and Personality Traits of Pedophiles". Psychiatric Times.)

If pedophilia was as common in men as it is in women, no one would be stigmatized. On the other hand, women in programming face problems, marginalization, violence, from men, _just for being women_. But if you didn't understand that initially I doubt you will 15 minutes later.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if statistical approach is ok to apply to only men or everybody? E.g. if group X statistically commits more crimes, proportionally, than its share in population, is it ok to presume every X is a criminal unless proven otherwise? If group Y statistically produces more false statements on topic T, is it ok to assume, unless very strong evidence to contrary is given, that any statement of a member of group Y about topic T is false by default?

>>> just for being women.

And this is different from you justifying stigmatizing every male as potential pedophile by statistics - how exactly?

<comment><USER3> "is it ok to presume every X is a criminal unless proven otherwise"

I never said this? I don't think that men should be assumed to be criminals.

<comment><USER6> You supported the idea that men are stigmatized as criminals by providing statistics that criminals are encountered among men. I am just asking if that applies to any criteria and any group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Admins: what happened to this post? It's been bumped from the front page twice, is there something wrong with it? If it's my account, I'd love for someone else to re-post it - you can even take the text and put it on your own blog I don't care. I feel this is worth discussing.

<comment><USER10> People are flagging it, probably because they don't want to see yet another thread on this topic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh. That's too bad!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Or you could try reading the post before responding...

</comment><comment><USER12> Male Founders Conference???

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love for you to actually read the post if you have a second - even if you stand by that opinion, I think you'd have more to say if you read it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to find contributors for small open-source projects? - <AUTHOR> Do tiny/small open-source projects ever actively look for new contributors?
I know that there are programmers looking for stuff to do (a quick Google search for "find open source project to work on" shows lots of results). A lot of responses to questions about this advise people to work on huge projects such as Mozilla Firefox, find projects through sites like OpenHatch, or contribute to projects of which they are already users.
Using something like OpenHatch doesn't seem to make sense for small projects. Small projects often don't have huge user bases to begin with, so there aren't a ton of contributors from that set of people.
So what about the really small projects that would welcome new contributors? Do they ever actively look for new contributors besides just hoping that users of the project end up deciding to contribute something substantial? What kinds of strategies do people use?
Is the Internet even a good place to actively look for contributors? Or does it not make sense for small-scale projects (or in general)? Is it enough just having a good culture surrounding issues/pull requests, having a clear contributing guide, and so on?
[I've asked a bunch of related questions; feel free to talk about any or all of them.] <comment><USER2> A lot of small open-source projects lack a structure that allows them to be worked on by more than one person at a time. Without that structure, it is nearly impossible for external people to contribute to a project.

Categorizing issues by required familiarity with the code ("novice" vs. "expert" levels) and establishing a good contribution and style guide are just a few of the very useful things one could apply to his or her smaller open- source project.

One OS project that I've seen and love is [https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/). Most of the work is done by a few contributors, but some members of the community give back at times.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, concerning to open source and free software (taking advantage of an expression said by ESR in the Cathedral and the Bazaar [1](: "every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."

It doesn't matter if it is an alternative to Microsoft Word, a driver for an obscure wifi card or a fps game, people usually get involved in open source not out of the goodness of their hearts but because they are passionate by the end result of their work, software development being only a mean to an end.

So get the word out about the specific problem you are trying to solve with open source. If there are other people out there with the same problem and the technical skill to help they most certainly are going to find out about your effort and try to help.

[1] [http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral- bazaar/cathedral...](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral- bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s02.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Contributors are a subset of an open source project community. So the obvious answer, _get contributors from the community_ , points to the hard general problem of building an open source community. That's probably more work than writing code and suggests why programmers may be disinclined to engage in it when programming is fun.</comment>


Facebook's Oculus must pay $500m in virtual reality lawsuit - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/01/facebook-oculus-vr-lawsuit-zenimax <comment><USER2> duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13544871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13544871)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well played with the title Guardian!</comment>


Derek Powazek - I'm Not The Product, But I Play One On The Internet - <AUTHOR> http://powazek.com/posts/3229 <comment><AUTHOR> This write-up explores the ways that internet business models, and companies' respect for users, are governed by factors more complicated than just "if you're not paying, you are the product".</comment>