Student group leader arrested on suspicion of inciting secession in HK - <AUTHOR> https://hongkongfp.com/2020/07/29/breaking-pro-independence-student-group-leader-arrested-on-suspicion-of-inciting-secession-under-hong-kongs-security-law/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone have insight into how secessionists think that a successful campaign will play out?

The state is small and a shares border with China, so it's not some situation where it will be easy to repeal invaders. And the people are at a severe military disadvantage. Even if every Hong Konger was armed, trained, and well lead, China could wage a war of attrition and win without a single shot fired.

I feel like their only hope would be if America deployed troops to HK and kept the city fed via air supply like with Berlin. And I can't imagine this having much, if any support within the US government or military.

Maybe these people just assume that protests and pressure from foreign governments will be enough to secure their freedom? I can't imagine China giving up on reintegrating HK and will do so by force, if required.

<comment><USER3> There have been plenty of successful, peaceful-ish secessions in history. Off the top of my head, the British Empire mostly dissolved semi-peacefully, which was basically a tonne of secessions. Norway essentially seceded from Sweden. Russia didn't fight TOO hard against the fall of the USSR. You could argue Brexit is a secession of sorts. I'm sure there are more.

Not that there wasn't plenty of protest, struggle and loss of life in things like the dissolving of the British Empire and USSR, but the more powerful actor did eventually give up, vs. simply saying "we have the bigger army, we're gonna crush you."

In most cases, there was extended protest, to the point where popular opinion shifted over time to heavily support secessionists, and the colony/whatever became an expensive inconvenience, that wasn't worth the tax revenue. Hong Kong are probably hoping that eventually the same thing will happen with them.

<comment><USER4> I think the point of the OP is that HK is in a fairly bad situation to survive as an independent state with _one_ potentially _hostile_ neighbour. Nearly 80% of HK's water supply is imported from China [1]. Only about a quarter of food imports are from China [2], so the situation there is better. But what if China were to close the land borders and impose a maritime blockade? It wouldn't be pretty.

When Japan invaded Hong Kong [3] in 1941 during WW II, the city fell after a bit more than two weeks.

Lastly, China is for historical reasons extremely protective of its territorial integrity (because loss of land often presaged the demise of a dynasty and subsequent disarray, and the touchy "century of humiliation" during which many territories were conceded to foreign powers [3b]), as you can see in its attitude towards Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan (China promulgated a specific law in 2005 authorising "non-peaceful means" if Taiwan seceded [4]), and HK and Macao. (See [5] on the contrast of the CCP vs western attitudes - not only can Californians discuss secession if they so wish, but Scotland, Quebec, etc. could vote on secession. Unthinkable in China.)

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

[2] [https://hkfoodworks.com/research/food- supply/](https://hkfoodworks.com/research/food-supply/)

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

[3b] [https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/asia/china-separatism- ind...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/29/asia/china-separatism-independence- intl-hnk/index.html)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- Secession_Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Secession_Law)

[5] [https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/06/on- secession.html](https://www.chinalawblog.com/2020/06/on-secession.html)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, HK independence is certainly not something that would happen SOON. But for decades, nobody thought the British Empire would give up India. After decades of protest and resistance, and shifting political landscapes, they finally did. HK protesters are likely hoping for something similar. It's a long shot, but if they stick with the resistance for long enough (like, literally decades most likely), there may finally come a point when China decides they're just not worth holding onto anymore.

<comment><USER5> "Likely hoping for something similar"? Is this just naivete? As many other comments here point out, there are zero sources that suggest anything close to a majority of HK protesters want independence, let alone HKers overall.

<comment><USER3> There are plenty of HKers who want independence, though from polls I've seen it does seem to be a minority, more like 20% of HKers than 50%. Higher among protestors I'm sure.

One of the core demands of the protestors is sort-of "independence light", though. They're asking for their leaders, including the Chief Executive, to be democratically elected by HKers, without interference from China.

Regardless, the question I was responding to said nothing about a majority of HKers. It was just saying, for those who do want independence, how do they see it happening? And I was speculating that they could be looking to wage a long term battle of public opinion/annoyance, where China might eventually give up, vs. any sort of military conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When the Hong Kong stock exchange listed a Chinese tech index the other day I realised Hong Kong had completely fallen. The CCP rules Hong Kong in totality now as far as I'm concerned.

<comment><USER7> This was always an inevitability. China could ostensibly take territory from any of its neighbors except Russia. The idea that a small island would be able to stay independent was temporary.

<comment><USER8> What "small island" ? I think you are confusing Hong Kong with Taiwan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently purchased _Unfree Speech_ by Joshua Wong, a prominent Hong Kong activist who was imprisoned for 6 months (at the age of 20) for his political activity. I recommend it, as it is a pretty informal, quick read. It felt...odd...reading a contemporary story about political imprisonment. Somehow the term itself feels antiquated, but alas here we are.

<comment><USER10> Careful... under the new HK security laws, you might be at risk for financially supporting or abetting someone involved in secessionist activities!

(kidding, but not completely -- read Article 21: [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Law_of_the_People%27s_Republi...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Law_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China_on_Safeguarding_National_Security_in_the_Hong_Kong_Special_Administrative_Region))

<comment><USER9> Wong actually explicitly says he is against secession in the book, but I doubt that detail is relevant for a motivated prosecutor.

<comment><USER11> What is his plan for Hong Kong moving forward? I'd be interested to see what a local activist thinks could be a solution to their "China problem", especially considering that a country as big and powerful isn't going to simply back off. His fight is a tough one and I have great respect for a person so young to commit to it so fully.

<comment><USER9> The book came out in February but at the moment he seems to be running for the legislature. His overall strategy seems to be to drum up international support for HK democracy, which will then (in theory) pressure the CCP.

 _He intends to run in a primary for the pro-democracy camp that will choose candidates for the Legislative Council vote on Sept. 6._

 _" If more people vote for us ... it could generate more pressure and more hesitation for Beijing," Wong said, in front of campaign posters with the slogan "Ballot, or bullet."_

 _Wong has said he supports the idea of a non-binding referendum for people to have a say over Hong Kong's future but that he is against independence._

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests- joshua-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-joshua- wong/activist-joshua-wong-says-he-plans-to-run-for-hong-kong-legislature- idUSKBN23Q1RK)

<comment><USER12> I am so impressed by these activists but at the same time feel so demoralized.

The CCP has consistently acted with great hostility and any attempt to change the system through existing political mechanisms, protests, and civil disobedience. And our global institutions have been seriously weakened by the election of various far-right, nationalist politicians who have no interest in, or are actively hostile towards promoting civil liberties and liberalism.

What other options do these activists have? Violence?

<comment><USER10> But let me play a moderate and ask you:

Are you an HK secessionist or merely seeking to delay / live out what was promised?

I.e., are you merely advocating for Hong Kong to peacefully continue the rest of its 20 years before full handover to China, under the system they've been used to? This is what was promised -- and you don't want China to prematurely erode HK's civil liberties?

Or are you seeking Hong Kong's independence, and a nullification of the treaty that was agreed to?

Because if you agree that the territory belongs to China, then we're just unhappy about it coming sooner than expected, right? It eventually would revert to China and have all the infringement of rights, which are now just being experienced sooner.

<comment><USER13> > Or are you seeking Hong Kong's independence, and a nullification of the > treaty that was agreed to?

> Because if you agree that the territory belongs to China, then we're just > unhappy about it coming sooner than expected, right?

By not living out the terms of the treaty until 2047, it is _China_ that is already nullifying the treaty. The whole point of the treaty was that changes to the basic law would not occur until at earliest 2047 so being "unhappy about it coming sooner than expected" is the same as being "unhappy that China is breaking the treaty". To me it is crazy to expect Hong Kongers not to be protesting such duplicitous actions by China.

> It eventually would revert to China and have all the infringement of rights, > which are now just being experienced sooner.

As arcticbull pointed out ( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992800) ), it is absolutely _not_ a foregone conclusion that they would lose their current rights in 2047. The CCP might not even be able to hold out in its current form until then (ignoring currently trade and military tensions in the area, China's aging workforce is basically a population bomb). If Hong Kongers' want to stay quasi-independent, holding to the terms of the treaty is actually quite crucial. My suspicion is that the CCP sees exactly the same thing and hence why they have chosen to break the terms of the treaty to avoid having Hong Kong causing them trouble if they were to enter rough times in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The bigger question here is what about China? We all (those of us over 35) assumed that as they industrialised, they would gradually become democratic (in the sense of elections but also of human rights and rule of law). That's clearly not the case. The CCP seem to be more firmly in place than ever...

<comment><USER13> > We all (those of us over 35) assumed that as they industrialised, they would > gradually become democratic (in the sense of elections but also of human > rights and rule of law).

I think this was more like a willful delusion on the part of the supporters of such a theory. Either knowingly--so they exploit China's labor force and resources--or unknowingly--because they'd drank the cool aid offered by those trying to profit off of China.

I think we should flip the whole thing. Why would China democratize? If the rest of the world is okay with China's authoritarianism and continues to engage with China economically, why exactly shouldn't they just continue acting as they do. How much longer would apartheid have continued in South Africa, if international pressure didn't mount against it? I honestly don't know the answer to that question, but it's not some guarantee that it would have gone away, just as it's no guarantee that China will democratize. If we truly want China to democratize, we should engage with them economically with that as a _stipulation_ in some form or another. If we don't make such a stipulation, we should stop acting surprised that China does not change its system and instead accept that we are just there to economically exploit the country and that these dreams only exist to convince the rest of the world that it's acting morally even if it clearly is not.

<comment><USER14> I actually disagree about South Africa. I think the regime itself there would have been toppled eventually but they made an active choice to go peacefully rather than for it to turn into a bloodbath 20 years later. I think this is a very interesting example because most regimes fail at that sort of pragmatism. But that's an aside, we will never know and it's just my opinion! :)

Initially we got into bed with China (I am a brit, so by we I mean Europe as well as the US) to get them out of bed with the Russians because communism. That's why there were no stipulations around democracy etc, the stipulation was basically "fuck the USSR" and they stuck to that. They should have been added when the USSR feel, but most countries were too busy dealing with their internal politics (and cheap Chinese imports supported them there).

The excuse there is that by making them richer (and getting richer ourselves, whoops) we were assisting them towards a bloodless transition. That's clearly not working. Instead, china over the last 5 years at least has regressed politically. I would 100% support action on China (and I am an internationalist and until recently quite pro china). But this is hard, we would need most of the west to work together at exactly the time it's "every man for himself" (brexit, trump).

To be honest, I am actually quite worried right now. The total refusal of countries to work together on this and climate change mean the rest of this century is very uncertain. I am 36, quite old really but I won't be dead before most of the shit has hit the fan. Yet everyone both individually and nationally are basically ignoring the oncoming train to pickup pennies from the tracks...

<comment><USER13> > I am 36, quite old really but I won't be dead before most of the shit has > hit the fan. Yet everyone both individually and nationally are basically > ignoring the oncoming train to pickup pennies from the tracks...

This is my general feeling as well (at age 35). I agree on things like climate change as well, but I think even more concrete examples abound. Most of the diplomatic world has simply chosen to ignore the fact that China and Taiwan are two separate countries. The fact that we ignore the decades of threats of invasions coming from China concurrently with China's build up of the capabilities to actually attempt that invasion is totally unacceptable. And we do it so we can exploit cheap Chinese labor and resources. I find it morally despicable and extremely short-sited. If China ever puts its money where its mouth is, all I can hope is that the rest of the world doesn't pretend to be shocked and surprised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ideally Britain would have kept HK island and/or transferred HK to Taiwan rather than China. But I guess that wasn't workable. So the only option for HKers is emigration.

<comment><USER4> Plus, back when the Sino-British Joint Declaration was negotiated (1984) there was already this heady optimism in the air that democracy was inevitable (as expressed in Francis Fukuyama's 1992 _The End of History and the Last Man)_ , and the thinking was that by the time HK would lose its autonomy and become just another Chinese city (2047), China would be a wonderful democracy. Oh well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The secession is forced to hkers. And then start the hammering. Just like u and t people that they are x whatever x is as an excluse to thumb is down.

The best scenario if that is the path is Switzerland model as a neutral ground. In fact that is what 1c2s model is. but that is unlikely now. You have that option if some acceptance of similarity (languages - French, Germany etc as English is the business and government internal language). Hk play a different game due to its proximity and multiple strong countries around (in influence, history and trade).

Unfortunately, China traditional cultural view That the world is one and no coexistence in heart. Its stands is really Hans or barbarian does not help. It got an economic of scale that is hard to beat. And once back on world stage it is a force that fit dominance more. Unless that change Hk fight, our fight here, is hard.

The china does not understand and take this. At least not for long. Dang ... No way out yet. But fight on. Cathedral vs bazaar. One vs many.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is far less tyrannical than what people live under in the rest of China. Imagine it

</comment><comment><USER18> One China Policy is about to fail in the West, the line was drawn. HK's special economic status has now been revoked, which was a wise move, but it's left China with no reason NOT to storm in.

Brace yourselves, Trump is likely to re-recognize Taiwan soon, reversing a terrible decision which was made as a concession.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pure political news. Get this off HN.

</comment><comment><USER20> It is interesting that there was recently a petition asking for people to support the national security law, and that it managed to gather 3 million signatures. For comparison, high estimations on the number of people who went on the streets to protest, was about 2 million. Both numbers are likely to be overestimations, but it seems to show that the Hong Kong people are divided about whether China is good for them, and whether they should support the protests or not. It is unfortunate that the mainstream media only reports Hong Kong events on the surface level, and does not analyze the issue more deeply.

To those that wish to learn more deeply about the Hong Kong events, I recommend browsing Quora. There are quite some people there who say they live in Hong Kong.

<comment><USER20> Does anyone know why my post gets downvoted? Is it not neutral and balanced enough?

<comment><USER21> I think people are assuming that it's relying on questionable sources.</comment></comment></comment>


A History of Punctuation for the Internet Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-history-of-punctuation-for-the-internet-age <comment><USER2> An underpaid community college Instructor, who didn't have tenure, and was working as a landscaper during the summers, said,

"Students--please don't use clichés in your writing."

"Funnel your paragraphs."

"Students--just don't use clichés ever! Why use them? Even among yourselfs?"

"And don't use acronyms, unless your writing a technical paper, and it's absolutely necessary to the paper! Please?"

I just remembered his name--Dr. Roland? I was waiting for my girlfriend, and overheard his wishes while sitting on the floor outside his class. I could tell he was tired. I can still smell the carpet cleaner.

</comment><comment><USER3> Internet typography: computers and software make it hard to read.

Centuries of progress to make text readable, and internet are decades of regression:

\- slow disappearance of "non easily typable" stuff. Ex: Ê œ (ligatures/and weired stuff) that do have sense;

\- unreadable text due to inconsistent spacing (quadratin spaces are underused, and hyphenation sux), and the "justification" on web browser is a shame;

\- poor fonts;

\- too large/narrow columns of text, scrolling is unpleasant to the brain;

\- web pages often don't scale relatively to the fonts size making zoom degrade the text;

\- the vibration of a screen is really tiring much more than paper for reading (add the ads, the blink bzoom of custom js effects or the distractions)

Typography is a lots of simple rules. When applied they make text more readable. TeX does automatized typography in an awesome way.

Why are modern developers unable to port the greatness of automated typography to web browsers? Because, well readability does not count, you don't make money of people reading.

Regarding typography its lack in modern browsers is pissing me off.

Btw, yes every country/region have special rules for typography/hyphenation so compared to unicode it is even harder to make a standard. Typography should be dynamically applied at the view level based on the context.

Typography should be modifiable. Because well, else we cannot represent Guillaume Appolinaire nicely typographed poetry. Because typography is also part of the expression and people have the right to have choices.

We are in 2015.

Computer are doing a very poor job for the most important vector of human dialog: presenting text in a way that can be easily read.

And I forgot: if you ever read the books made with fonts of the "Imprimerie Nationale": our fonts are sucking bigs.

They are ugly, the small size are unreadable, the italic/bold are horrible, the different size should not be always obtained by homothetia, all the letters should not be exactly aligned on the bottom line ....

Computers could be better. But we prefer invest in HTTP2/0 to bring you more securely 15Mb of advertisements while reading 1000 characters.

</comment><comment><USER4> Youdontevenneedspacesuntilyouwanttotalkaboutyourvisittopenislandfortheexpertsexchangeconference.

<comment><USER5> Ever watched Arrested Development? _anustart_

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Speaking of Sayre's Law ..

</comment><comment><USER7> Is there a longform article of the topic? I don't read terribly many New Yorker articles -- is this typical article length? Reading [this article], I feel like I'm taking a little sample taste of a few slightly disjointed points.

<comment><USER8> This isn't an article, it's a book review; those tend to be shorter. The New Yorker also publishes a number of shorter online pieces (roughly this length). Actual articles, which appear in the weekly magazine and online, are much, much longer and in depth, such as this from the current issue[1] or another currently on the HN front page[2].

If you're interested in more, I suppose you could read the book(s). I intend on doing so.

1:[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/14/a-house- divided](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/14/a-house-divided)

2: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/30/inflamed](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/30/inflamed)

<comment><USER7> Thanks. That makes more sense. I didn't initially make the connection between "Page Turner" and book review.</comment></comment></comment>


Entrepreneurs should listen to rap music - <AUTHOR> http://arbor.posterous.com/entrepreneurs-should-listen-to-rap-music-all

<comment><USER2> I sort of agree with the spirit of this article. I'm not the biggest hip-hop fan - being more of a metal guy - but there is a lot of inspirational stuff in hip-hop, and there are a lot of hustle references that can inspire one and help get you fired up.

That said, I still prefer to go back to my old standbys, like Mötley Crüe:

        Black jack roulette
        Losing high and low
        She rolls the dice
        She's cold as ice
        Turn a young man old

        Comedy and tragedy
        Entertainment or death
        Like sister morphine
        Hooked on her game
        Time to place your bets

        If it wasn't for bad luck,
        I'd have no luck at all

        Keep you eye on the money
        keep you eye on the dealer's hand
        Keep you eye on the money
        keep you eye on the lady's hand

        Queen of hearts
        Or Ace of spades

        I'm dancing on the blade
        Freak show goin' broke
        The crowd screams on for more
        Electric shock won't bring ya back
        You've gone over the boards
        Can't beat the clock, the deck is stacked
        The crowd looks on in horror

        If it wasn't for bad luck
        I'd have no luck at all

        Keep your eye on the money
        Keep your eye on the dealer's hand
        Keep your eye on the money
        Keep your eye on the lady's hand

The biggest difference I find in hip-hop and metal, is the level of abstraction. Metal has more metaphor and analogy in it; where hip-hop seems to be more straight-forward and down to earth.

Maybe it's just me, but at the end of a long night, when I need something to help keep the adrenaline flowing so I can push through fixing some problem or whatever, I find that the right music is tremendously powerful. Whether it should be hip-hop, metal, classical, or $whatever, is a matter of taste.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm sorry but this is the most ridiculous thing I've read on HN in a while. Those lyrics are hilarious and if they inspire you do do anything significant in your life then you need to step back and re-examine a few things in your life.

<comment><USER2> _Those lyrics are hilarious_

By whose standard?

 _and if they inspire you do do anything significant in your life then you need to step back and re-examine a few things in your life._

Such as?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had felt that the degradation of HN was overstated. Until now.

</comment><comment><USER5> 'Had a dream I was king, I woke up, still king' -Eminem

</comment><comment><USER6> if you talk about it, it's a show, but if you move about it then it's a go - Shabazz Palaces.

</comment><comment><USER7> Before I even looked at the comment I could already see the back lash against this article. Hip Hop even the most simplistic is inspirational not so if you ideal life is different from those that make up the core demographic of hip hop. I for one am a entrepreneur, a start up owner, and a programmer who doesn't listen to rock or pop for the same reason some people don't listen to hip hop. Because the songs aren't relatable to me or my life. It's a good article just maybe the wrong dmemographic for it.</comment>


Why "no code operations" will be the next big job in tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@edavidpeterson/why-no-code-operations-is-the-next-big-job-in-tech-b8bb886378ac <comment><USER3> A really good workflow engine could really improve many corporations in my opinion. Yes, there are solutions like MS Flow (renamed now) and IFTTT, but I think both services are lacking, especially for debugging problems and their cloud nature is heavily annoying and is no good fit for many corporations.

For basic stuff like SIP phone rings and isn't answered -> mail to XY. New, urgent QA process -> inform all relevant participants... there are unlimited use cases.

Workflow engines need to be integrated with on premise user management like AD services to really shine. Cloud solutions are penalized here or need to interface Office Online. Of course there are better solutions available, but MS is widespread in this landscape.

No code workflows can be really good and dependable. That does NOT mean custom code should be excluded. MS made a custom HTTP request a "premium" feature in Flow. Of course the product can only fail with this approach.

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember working with a product called oracle case in the 90's - <USER2> could write systems - no developers needed was the blurb. The problem with all these things is the corner cases, things that are exceptions to the normal flow.</comment>


TensorForce: A TensorFlow library for applied reinforcement learning - <AUTHOR> https://reinforce.io/blog/introduction-to-tensorforce/ <comment><USER2> In the past, i've found that these higher level libraries built on top of TF are useful for quick model building, but should be used cautiously. By having default hyperparameters it can be easy to blindly build semi-working models without knowing what's happening. I would recommend either reading the associated papers or implementing the models in code (at least once) before using these pre-built models. That being said, i'm really excited by this project! I think it'll save researchers a bunch of time.

<comment><USER3> If I understand the project correctly it precisely does not advocate default hyperparameters but exposes all configurations through the declarative interface.

<comment><USER2> I may have used the term hyperparameter too loosely. Yes, this project does a good job on taking a configuration first approach, but even they set some defaults. For example, they set relu as their default layer activation function. I haven't had time to see what other such defaults are being set.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your feedback! To clarify our philosophy regarding default configurations: On the one hand, we try to make all hyperparameters and settings of the agents/models centrally configurable, by specifying one configuration object/file. On the other hand, we try to provide a set of default values, where it makes sense for the applied user, for whom the full range of hyperparameters is probably not interesting. In doing so, we try to combine "the best of both worlds", but sometimes that might lead to conflicts. This is something we're actively working on, to get the balance right (and comments are very welcome, best on GitHub).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is super cool. Might be replacing something I've been building with it.

Are there any benchmarks I could check out? Especially for a3c.

<comment><USER4> Hey, glad you like it! We haven't properly benchmarked our models yet, but it's one of the things at the top of our ToDo list. (However, we will only run benchmarks on some selected "standard" environments, given our limited resources.)</comment></comment>


Memories of Mozilla at 15 and Thoughts on Mozilla Research - <AUTHOR> https://brendaneich.com/2013/04/mozilla-at-15-memories-and-thoughts-on-mozilla-research/

<comment><USER2> Mozilla Research is awesome. They punch way way way above their weight.

Google is chock full of programming language people, but Mozilla's work on Rust and Javascript (ES6, asm.js, sweet.js) is producing far better languages than Google has done with Go and Dart in my humble opinion.

<comment><USER3> You can't compare Google Research against Mozilla Research. Google is really moving computer science forward, just look at their papers and real implementations (disclaimer: I am not a Google fan).

If you compare the Google Chrome source code vs Firefox you will quickly understand how miles ahead Google is.

<comment><USER4> To be fair though Chrome was started from scratch in 2007/2008 whereas Firefox has a lot of legacy stuff still hanging around from the early 2000s.

<comment><USER5> Chrome was started off of WebKit, which also has legacy from many years earlier. Both WebKit and Gecko have code that dates to before the year 2000 in fact.

This is pretty much expected for a huge multimillion line C++ codebases, like all web browsers currently are. All have crufty parts (not sure why GP thinks one browser has nicer code overall? That's not my opinion based on the code I've read.)

<comment><USER6> V8 was new and WebKit was still a newer codebase than Gecko.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rewriting the browser stack in an evolving language feels like trying to shoot the moon. However, I hesitate to bet against Mozilla when it comes to impossible rewrites.

<comment><USER8> I love the idea. It will give Rust lots of feedback about real-world, practical problems that arise on large-scale software. I think it will make it all that much more likely that Rust will be an industrial strength systems language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _As Peter Norvig argued, design patterns are bug reports against your programming language._

Does anybody know what the actual quote is? I love this.

<comment><USER10> There was a link: <http://www.norvig.com/design-patterns/>

I think you are looking for an exact quote but the link is to slides of a talk :(

I also agree with the sentiment, but you Architecture Astronaut will no doubt disagree.

You really can't just take a design pattern and apply it blindly across languages. I spend far too much of my time on a C# application where I have to deconstruct anti-patterns and make them more amenable to change.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I've shared that sentiment for a while now, but it was the turn of phrase that pulled me in, and I wanted to know whether to attribute it to Peter or Brendan.

<comment><USER11> I turned that particular phrase based on Peter Norvig's old Harlequin-era talk.

I've also heard people say that "design patterns are feature requests", or "the kindest form of feature request", but bug or feature -- what's the difference?

/be

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the slides shows a benchmark where Rust beats GCC; it would be really nice to see the code.

<comment><USER13> In what? Compilation speed? Atm Rust is no way the light nimble language they need it to be.

<comment><USER14> Runtime performance. This is mostly an LLVM versus GCC thing.

Runtime performance is far more important to us than compiler speed—a fast-to- compile Web browser is useless if it loses to existing engines in UX or benchmarks (every cycle counts!)—but we continue to spend time on compiler speed, because it's important for developers.

<comment><USER12> > This is mostly an LLVM versus GCC thing.

So how does clang do on nbody.c?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I never liked Mozilla for a number of experiences:

Their transition from an open source project to an organization receiving millions from the Google search box.

The restrictions (based on security reasons) to install an extension from a site different than mozilla addons. For me this was a prequel of app stores.

Mozilla Thunderbird team had no respect for people who reported bugs: they closed important bug reports.

Lack of respect for extension developers breaking compatibility between versions and not clearly isolating extensions. I remember looking into the TabMix Plus extension and seeing ~40 IFs handling special cases with other extensions.

Lack of a good community (circa 2007) where complex questions were never answered.

I can think about more disgusting experiences...

<comment><USER15> _> Their transition from an open source project to an organization receiving millions from the Google search box._

I have no problem with this as long as they use the funding to continue producing open source software. I don't think it would be possible for them to compete with Chrome as a pure open source project with no major funding. Mozilla's role since its founding of providing a viable alternative FOSS browser is just as valuable and appreciated now as it was in the IE days, imho.

 _> The restrictions (based on security reasons) to install an extension from a site different than mozilla addons. For me this was a prequel of app stores._

For a product aimed primarily at easily-duped non-tech lay people, I have no problem with this either. As long as the addons remain FOSS.

 _> Lack of respect for extension developers breaking compatibility between versions and not clearly isolating extensions._

As a FF user I can live with this, as long as the breaking changes move the browser forward technically, or get rid of some legacy cruft, or similar. It's definitely not in FF's interest either, as it incentivizes users to try other browsers, so I expect it's on their todo list, just maybe not as high a priority as other issues.

<comment><USER3> > As a FF user I can live with this...

The issue is from the developer perspective but also (although invisible) from the user side. Extension developers make titanic work and users can loose some extensions in the way of compatibility. Obviously important brands will never be incompatible but less known extensions will.</comment></comment></comment>


Age of Empires Definitive Edition Announcement Trailer - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyPlECHiXcM <comment><USER2> wololo, the sound of my childhood</comment>


Apple and Verizon Consider iPhone Deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2009-04-26-apple-verizon-iphone_N.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> I would so switch away from AT&T in 2 seconds. Even if I had to buy a new phone. Really, really hope this deal goes through. Too long have I dealt with the bullshit horrible cell phone coverage and crapping internet that is AT&T 3g.

I have a verizon 3g computer modem and it never fails me.

</comment><comment><USER2> That would definitely be a step up from AT&T, in my area Verizon is clearly better than its competitors signal wise. Unfortunately I am stuck on Sprint because I have the greatest cell phone plan in the entire world. I'll just have to suffer with a Palm Pre.</comment>


Ask HN: Why suddenly there are so many Q&A services? - <AUTHOR>

Quora, formspring.me, stackexchange and more. Is this some kind of a trend ? <comment><USER2> There have always been a million clones of Yahoo! Answers. You're just noticing some good ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a good question for quora.com

</comment><comment><USER4> In a nutshell.. user contributed content, original content, good SEO, and monetize on views. It pretty much takes care of itself with little effort. If you look at what stackexchange they pretty much commoditized the tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly to what I am thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> alley insider had a good post on this subject with CEO adam d'angelo: [http://www.businessinsider.com/what-i-learned-from-being- cto...](http://www.businessinsider.com/what-i-learned-from-being-cto-of- facebook-why-i-started-quora-and-this-is-why-gen-y-kicks-ass-at- entrepreneurship-2010-9)

i think it's one of those group coupon-type industries. the potential has always been there, but nobody has fully executed on the potential.

to dan's point: i'm a big believer that some of the best ideas sprout from areas in the larger corporation that just don't get enough attention. yahoo is focused on a little of a lot, whereas quora has a lot of a little in mind.

i personally think quora is the next big thing, and to that end, i've already started including my profile in my email sig :)</comment>


With greater longevity, the quest to avoid infirmities of aging is more urgent - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/can-we-live-longer-but-stay-younger <comment><USER2> So many people think anti-aging science is just about living more years, but that's missing half the picture.

Anti-aging science is not just about living more years, it's about being able to live healthy and fulfilling lives both physically and mentally even as you age. Way too many people are broken by age before they die, to prevent that would be fantastic.

<comment><USER3> > _So many people think anti-aging science is just about living more years, > but that 's missing half the picture. Anti-aging science is not just about > living more years, it's about being able to live healthy and fulfilling > lives both physically and mentally even as you age._

Thats's 2/3rds of the picture. The other 1/3rd of "anti-aging" is selling snake-oil fads to suckers and for people with anxieties to obsess over.

<comment><USER4> > _and for people with anxieties to obsess over_

One man's lack of anxiety is another man's Stockholm syndrome. That in this day and age, anti-aging research is still considered fringe and frowned upon by the overarching culture, instead of being one of the top priorities of R&D worldwide, is _pretty damn shameful_.

<comment><USER3> > _One man 's lack of anxiety is another man's Stockholm syndrome._

Well, people have escaped kidnappers. None has escaped death, and until this happens (which very well could happen technically at some point) it's just anxiety over the inevitable.

<comment><USER5> Each living person has escaped death one more day... increasing healthy lifespan is a good thing right?

Why not want to extend it rather than make up reasons for old people to die that aren't killing them?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In this thread I've seen the overpopulation argument framed as theft. Here are all the others I've found.

Summary of pro death arguments:

      Fairness
          Only rich people will get it. (No tech has ever done this.)
          Better to give money to the poor than science. (family, city, state, nation, has proven local investment beats foreign.)
      Bad for society
          Dead people make more room for new, other people. (consider going first.)
          Run out of resources (live people discover/extract/renew better than dead or nonexistent)
          Overpopulation (colonize the seas, solar system, or have a war.)
                Stop having kids
                Worse wars (nukes are more dangerous than having your first 220 year old person in 2136)
          Dictators never die (they die all the time and rarely of age)
          Old people are expensive (50% of your lifetime medical cost occur in your final year. Delay is profitable.)
          Old people suck.  (death is an inferior cure to robustness.)
      Bad for individual
          You'll get bored. (your memory isn't that good, or your boredom isn't age related)
          You'll have to watch your loved ones die. (so you prefer they watch you?)
          You'll live forever in a terrible state. (longevity requires robustness.)
          Against gods will (not if he disallows suicide, then it is required.)
          People will force you to live forever (they aren't able to do this now, why would they begin to be?)

Do you think less people make progress faster? What's your target level of depriving life of existence? How do you plan to keep mankind robust from extinction events on a single planet? You might just need more people. What do you think our technology would look like if we had 10x less people for the last 100 years?

More people make more progress faster. Aren't you glad your parents didn't decide the world would be prettier or work better without you in it? If great minds like Einstein, Bell, Tesla, Da Vinci etc., were still alive and productive today, the world would be a better place. You're literally asking for others to die out of your fear. The burden should be higher. Have courage. If living longer comes with too many disadvantages, we'll know 100 years from now and decide then.

Man up, save your family, save yourself.

P.S. Curing aging isn't immortality. You die at 600 on average by accident, and if the parade of imaginary horrible things comes true, even earlier.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention the other flaw of the "theft" framework or one or the other. Even if there was a fixed limit we would run against in spite of all innovations it is more efficient resource wise to build one person for 1000 years than 20 generations that live to 50. Growth and death itself has more expenses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The most intriguing thing I found in the article, is that, If you design & sell items specifically to elderly, they wont buy it. Because they don't want the product to remind that they are old.

So the solution is to design a product which suits to the elderly but seems like its designed for young generation.

<comment><USER9> Hence, infomercials with ludicrously clumsy (but young) people.

<comment><USER10> Wow that explains a good majority of infomercials to me... Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've seen this sort of argument many times before, most notably from Francis Fukuyama. The common thinking on the subject seems to be a deeply inaccurate decoupling of longevity and health.

Yes, we fear death, but we also fear the image of ourselves spending the final years of our lives bedridden and in pain. What we don't seem to understand is that patients in such poor health don't survive very long (despite the inevitable anecdotes about relatives who survived far too long in feeble condition, more a matter of perception than fact).

In other words, unhealthy people tend to have poor longevity.

<comment><USER12> Especially with dementia you can live a very long time. I have watched this with my dad now for more than 10 years and he may outlive my mom even though his mental capacity is not there anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone interested in the idea of living longer (without the detrimental effects of aging) should check out any Aubrey De Grey talk/video/interview.

<comment><USER14> I'm _extremely_ interested in the topic (as I get older but happen to like living). However some people seem to think De Grey is a bit of a crackpot?

<comment><USER15> Well, we've had some wonderful crackpots through the ages. Tesla comes to mind.

Whatever you think about his idea of escape velocity you can't doubt the engineering approach he advocates makes sense. Solve these 7 problems [1] and there will be no reason the organism should die.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_de_Grey#The_seven_types_of_aging_damage)

<comment><USER16> I can doubt of the engineering approach he advocates, because I am aware that people like me is completely an outsider in this branch of science and I cannot differentiate a charlatan from an actual scientist.

You could fool a person ignorant enough in a speciality with statements such as:

\- To fly we just need a way to defeat gravity.

\- To resurrect a body we just need to insufflate the soul back to the body.

\- To make a head transplant we just need to reconnect the nerves and wait the meat to glue.

\- An artificial intelligence will solve our company's problem.

This ver same person could be highly skilled or smart in other aspects. The more technical or scientific we sound the more a subject will give authority to the charlatan.

I ignore if these statements made by this person are overall valid, if the list is exhaust and if the things there are additional factors I ignore. Even in such case we also ignore the deepness of the problem and circumstances related.

Most of people, including myself, are no biologist or cryonogists and have not enough knowledge on that level, in addition it is in the human nature to have high hopes in self perpetuating ourselves. Thats the perfect ground for charlatans to grow.

<comment><USER2> Charlatans sell stuff. De Grey funds stuff: [https://www.sens.org/srf- publications/](https://www.sens.org/srf-publications/)

Pretty massive difference.

<comment><USER16> I think funding doesn't qualify or disqualify him, if funding would give extra credibility points, tomorrow all charlatans of the world would fund something. He also raises big amounts of money and offers no results and that fact alone does imply nothing by itself.

P.D. many bluff companies have also lots of publications, papers etc... and that doesn't mean that they are innovative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yes we can. Calorie restriction is well known slowing biological aging process.

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

<comment><USER18> I swear most HN users have some form of orthorexia.

<comment><USER19> I had never heard of that term but now that I know what it is, I think you're right. There are so many very strong opinions about diet here and very little quality data to back it up (because for the most part it doesn't exist).

<comment><USER20> "There are so many very strong opinions about diet"

This is true for almost every group including scientists studying nutrition, it changes frequently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yes.

Don't eat sugar. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Eat fruits and vegetables. Exercise regularly. Walking counts, but you probably want to throw some upper-body stuff in there as well. Working in the garden counts.

That's about 80-95% of "how to stay healthy using forces under your control" as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER22> > Don't eat sugar. Don't smoke. Don't drink.

Oh but where's the fun in that? :)

<comment><USER23> Vegetables are delicious, most low in sugar. If you really want to ingest nicotine, use gum or patches.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Somewhat off-topic, but I always thought the most prominent real-life reenactment of The Fox and the Grapes was all of the media and thinkpieces that people have written about how living for an extended period of time would be just _awful_. You wouldn't find many people who think that 40 years would be an acceptable lifespan, and most people would probably like to live to 100 if they got there in good health, but as soon as the idea of living potential centuries is floated, it's all "it would drive you crazy with boredom!" It seems like a good-sized contingent of people believe that extending the human lifespan wouldn't be impossible or immoral so much as it would be _undesirable_. Boy, it sure is convenient that our "natural" longevity (whatever that means) is right at the limits of what humans can reasonably enjoy, huh?

I could understand the impulse people would have to not extend their lives if that's truly what they wanted, but the almost _cultural_ belief that seeking immortality is Bad and Wrong, something only pursued by cartoon villains and insane emperors seems like a collective agreement among people to throw their hands up and go "well, fine! I don't even _want_ to live longer, who'd like that?"

All of this, of course, doesn't touch on the moral, economic, environmental, etc. problems that crop up with greatly extended longevity, for which there are a number of altogether more palatable arguments that would need to be engaged with more fully. Still, it's an odd piece of ideology that makes people feel like they don't need to deploy any of these in the conversation - why would they, when they _totally_ don't even want to live much longer than 100 anyways?

<comment><USER25> These are the same people who complain that they would be bored if out of work for too long. I personally have so many personal or passion projects that I would like to undertake, but don't have the time for, that I'd happily fill a few lifetimes with interesting things to do.

Of course, there's a difference between a few lifetimes and thousands of years or immortality.

<comment><USER26> I expect most people's experiences when they're unemployed are colored by being... unemployed. You're not retired or on vacation, you're jobless. You're not supposed to be having a good time following your passions, you're supposed to be looking for more work or skill-building so you can get work. And money is going to run out eventually and who is going to want to hire you when you haven't had a job in six months or a year?

A lot of cultural baggage and shame in it, most people just end up stressed out and depressed.

<comment><USER25> I'm not talking about the people who are unemployed against their will, but the people who are not unemployed and say "no, they couldn't take a load of time of work[1] because they would be bored". I took some time off a while back, to destress and work on my own ideas for a while and the amount of people who said they couldn't do it, they'd be bored was mind blowing.

> who is going to want to hire you when you haven't had a job in six months or > a year?

I'm lucky enough that in our industry, this hasn't affected me. Tech companies seem pretty open to the idea that people take sabbaticals and such. Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusion that this isn't a problem for other people and other industries, it absolutely is, unfortunately.

[1] Assuming they could financially afford it

<comment><USER26> Yes, I think even when people choose to stop working, they often still fall into the trappings of joblessness and stress about the uncertainty of what they're going to do when it's time to go back to work. And so they don't enjoy it.

Not everyone, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I found Joe Rogan iterview with David Sinclair really interesting:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTS0HS7aq4)

</comment><comment><USER28> isn't this happening already? From totally unscientific perspective, if you look at pictures of people from olden days (say high school seniors from 1970s/1980s vs from 21st century) as well pictures of 60+ people from 1940s/1950s,

you will notice people now look a lot younger. It isn't only the sense of grooming/clothing but also physical attributes which have changed

<comment><USER29> Sunblock.

<comment><USER30> Cigarettes too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What I'd like to more accurately identify is the point at which we get diminishing returns to health from strenuous exercise, in measurable form. Exercise of course provides enormous health benefits, but progressive overload for instance demands ever increasing caloric intake which runs counter to health recommendations. This is probably easier to track than high intensity cardio except in terms of pure caloric need. I deadlift twice my bodyweight at up to 5 reps and consume somewhere in the range of 2000-2500 calories a day. But is reaching the 1000 pound club worth it from a health standpoint? I doubt it, but the evidence surrounding this is sorely lacking.

<comment><USER32> It would vary depending on type of exercise. Giving my opinions based on being very interested in the subject for years, without bothering with citations.

For muscle-mass, the health benefits come from having higher glycogen storage (helping to prevent diabetes), as well as maintaining function late into life. The latter is subject to diminishing returns, and maintenance is more important than the amount when you peaked. Also, having too much muscle mass would put a strain on the heart.

Daily light movement is important for circulation. 10-12k steps seems to about ideal.

15-20 minutes of moderate-intensity (120-140 bpm) or 4 total minutes of high- intensity (> 160 bpm) cardio improves heart function, blood-flow, and mitochondrial density. Any more seems to be subject to diminishing returns.

Stretching around 10 minutes per day may help prevent cancer and preserve function.

This leads me to the following recommendations:

1-3 weekly strength training sessions of around 45 minutes

10-12k daily steps

2-4 weekly cardio sessions of around 15 minutes

10 minutes daily stretching

<comment><USER31> This closely approximates what I've gunned for. I'm not aiming to be a maximalist, but want my investments to be worthwhile. My intuition has suggested to me that with cardio (moderate/intense), a little goes a long way and long sessions can eventually yield injury. You mentioned not bothering with citations but if you recall any sources I'd check those out.

You didn't mention it, but the other benefit of strength training is higher testosterone levels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't see discussion about the natural emotional maturation process. Even with a much better body, I don't feel about life and things the same way. We might as well take care about not misaligning somatic health with mental health too much. It would be fruitless.

<comment><USER34> Maturation means improvement. If something is getting worse, then it's not maturation.

<comment><USER33> ... your evolution towards life is neither better or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "but"?

</comment><comment><USER36> By living longer you are merely stealing resources from those that follow you.

You can have immortality or reproduction - choose.

<comment><USER19> I would never classify being alive as "stealing resources" but regardless, you're assuming that people don't make meaningful contributions to society while alive. What if while you were living longer you cured cancer?

Under your philosophy wouldn't reproducing steal _even more_ resources? If you have three children then you're stealing them 3X faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish we lived little less, resulting in, less knowledge transfer, less technology, less of the destruction caused by humans on nature.

We live longer than most of the creatures of our size, and we have larger brain. That's the reason of the damage we create to the earth like swarms of locusts do to the green grass fields [1].

And still we wish more life! Sad!

On a serious note, the most intriguing thing I found in the article, is that, If you design & sell items specifically to elderly, they wont buy it. Because they don't want the product to remind that they are old.

So the solution is to design a product which suits to the elderly but seems like its designed for young generation.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bx5JUGVahk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bx5JUGVahk)

<comment><USER37> > So the solution is to design a product which suits to the elderly but seems > like its designed for young generation.

Aren't a lot of products you see on infomercials exactly that?

I've seen people argue that it's a market failure or an inefficiency of capitalism that people are trying to market products for elderly and disabled people to younger people and families. From this it seems more likely the opposite. They are designed for the elderly or disabled but are falsely marketed to everyone in order to get their real target audience to buy it.</comment></comment>


Astronomers may soon have the first picture of a black hole - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/04/black-hole-event-horizon-telescope-pictures-genius-science/ <comment><USER2> I saw one of these guys, Shep Doeleman, talk last year. What they do for this is nuts. They have to transport an atomic clock with them to each site, and something like a 20 of the biggest helium-filled disks available in a custom machine to each site (which is somewhere crazy, like the South Pole, the top of a mountain in Chile, a volcano, etc). And run them all at the exact same time.

They end up with something like 7 PB of data and process it all down to like a 10 MB image. They then throw the rest of the data away because they can't afford the disk space for storage.

I think they have serious plans for putting a constellation of satellites around a Lagrange point.

<comment><USER3> I believe every radio telescope has their own reference clock that lives at the site. The EHT team is not responsible for schlepping these clocks around. There are other reasons besides VLBI to have really good timing at the site—for example, pulsar timing.

<comment><USER2> I think there was a question about that: they had some issues with two different standards and decided it was better to pick one type and use that at all locations even if they had to bring it up themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> They won't have the data processed until later this year, there is no picture right now.

<comment><USER5> > The hard drives from the South Pole telescope can't be flown out until the > end of the winter season there at the end of October.

Yeah, it'll be a while.

<comment><USER6> Pretty wild we potentially have technology to photograph a black hole and accumulate 1024 HDDs of data pertaining to something light years away but not have the tech to transmit them electronically on our planet.

<comment><USER7> It says it's equal of 10,000 laptops. We probably don't have a general need for that in the South Pole, so no one paid for it to be installed.

<comment><USER8> What's 1 laptop unit? From what I can gather 7PB/10000 = 700GB, so 1 laptop is 700GB?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny, just a few days ago I watched a TEDx talk about this by a computer scientist on the team. Maybe you enjoy it as well: [https://www.ted.com/talks/katie_bouman_what_does_a_black_hol...](https://www.ted.com/talks/katie_bouman_what_does_a_black_hole_look_like)

</comment><comment><USER10> Pics, or it didn't happen!

<comment><USER11> > But that sense of relief is tinged with anticipation: So much data takes > time to process, and the team must wait months to find out if their massive > effort was truly a success.

It could be a few months before something comes out.

I have the same sentiment that you expressed.

Eagerly awaiting pics. What wonderful times we live in.

<comment><USER12> _...the team must wait months to find out..._

This is like previews to a Pixar movie.

<comment><USER11> Even more delay...

> The hard drives from the South Pole telescope can't be flown out until the > end of the winter season there at the end of October.

The picture will be incomplete till end of October plus associated processing delays.

<comment><USER13> Now that's some latency

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My first cut guess is that at each telescope at each relevant point in time, they need to capture both the intensity and the phase of the sub-millimeter wave electro-magnetic signal and, then, for each point in time add those signals.

So,

(1) How do they get the time points coordinated just right among all the telescopes?

(2) How do they capture both the amplitude and the phase of the signals?

Gee, maybe readers are not supposed to ask such questions?

<comment><USER15> (1) Atomic clocks.

(2) They mix the bands of interest down to intermediate frequencies that can be readily digitized. It's the same old superheterodyne principle we've used for the last century or so.

<comment><USER14> Super! Thanks! I wondered how they would get an analog to digital converter to work a sub-millimeter frequencies. So, right, they don't!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A slightly better explanation: [https://www.universetoday.com/134996/black- hole-imaged-first...](https://www.universetoday.com/134996/black-hole-imaged- first-time-event-horizon-telescope/#)

</comment><comment><USER17> "The telescope zeroed in on two supermassive black holes: a beast as massive as four million suns". It's incredible thinking about how tiny and insignificant our planet is compared to the rest of the cosmos.

<comment><USER3> That's the one in our galaxy, and the other target—in the galaxy M87—is around 5 _billion_ times the mass of the sun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it went well? For an article essentially about the data taking it was surprisingly vague on how the actual observation went...

<comment><USER19> From the point of view that the data was successfully collected, yes, it sounds like it went well. Actual data analysis will take some time. I imagine it will be published in Nature which means that the results may be embargoed for a few more months after data analysis is complete. I'd say that we might hear something in 1.5-2 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The project's page is: [http://eventhorizontelescope.org/](http://eventhorizontelescope.org/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Kinda click-baity title. There's nothing new here. They still need to process the collected data to get an actual image.

Also, it has started to bother me the way that popular science articles overly dramatize things. For example, the description of waiting for good weather as "nerve-racking." I almost laughed out loud when I read this trying to imagine the action-movie-like intensity they were attributing to what was probably a predicted and fairly routine part of the project.

<comment><USER22> > trying to imagine the action-movie-like intensity they were attributing to > what was probably a predicted and fairly routine part of the project.

As someone who is one step removed from the EHT project (several friends/colleagues of mine were up at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array [ALMA] assisting with the data-collection), these types of observations are not routine at all. This was part of a special campaign, coordinated between major observatories across the world. In order to ensure the data are useful, the precision of the calibration and timing is typically in excess of what the observatories do normally as part of their day-to-day operations. So while the observing campaign was set up well in advance, it is certainly not a routine part of operations.

Regarding the title, it's a little bit click-bait-y, but it's also true that we don't know if there will be an image of the black hole (shadow). The data are not yet in their final form; even the cross-correlation between observatories (necessary to resolve the approximate size of the black hole's shadow) haven't yet been done. So it's entirely possible (though perhaps unlikely) the data that were acquired end up being unsuitable for making an image of the black hole (shadow).

<comment><USER21> > these types of observations are not routine at all.

Perhaps you think I was saying that the EHT project as a whole is uninteresting. I wasn't suggesting this at all. I understand that this project calls for a novel type of data collection that requires more coordination, etc. My opinion was that the author's use of certain wordings made things sound more dramatic than they actually were. I imagine that the possibility of bad weather would have been foreseen and planned for (i.e. routine).

> it's a little bit click-bait-y, but it's also true that we don't know if > there will be an image of the black hole (shadow).

This was my point. We still don't know. But, in my opinion, the wording of the title (which is now different than the link text) sort of suggested that we do know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there a slight chance that they are not "holes" but massive vantablack spheres?</comment>


Moon illusion - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion

<comment><USER2> If you look at the moon on the horizon upside down through your legs the illusion that it is large goes away.

<comment><USER3> Now you're just trying to make me look silly!

<comment><USER2> You may look silly but it works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Back when I was an MIT undergrad in the early 1970's I got a ride back to eastern New York for Thanksgiving or Christmas break with several other MIT students. That evening, the moon appeared very large, and I mentioned it was just an illusion. (I had read the July, 1962 issue of Scientific American growing up and knew about the illusion--it was the cover story.) Try as I might, I could not convince the others in the car that it was an illusion.</comment>


Successful Former Teacher Responds to Wisconsin Gov with a Scathing Letter - <AUTHOR> http://magazine.good.is/articles/scott-walker-ryan-clancy-wisconsin-teacher-small-business <comment><USER2> standard public union claptrap that pretends public resources are unlimited, and that their works is the good lord's.

</comment><comment><USER3> One irony is that the letter contains a run-on sentence plus another I can't even figure out.</comment>


Change in Complex Systems - <AUTHOR> https://intenseminimalism.com/2015/a-framework-for-thinking-about-systems-change/ <comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR hotlink to chart: [https://i0.wp.com/intenseminimalism.com/wp- content/uploads/2...](https://i0.wp.com/intenseminimalism.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/framework-complex-change-v2.png?w=1200&ssl=1)</comment>


Show HN: PHP-ECertificate-Generator: Let's Generate ECertificates - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/praveenscience/PHP-eCertificate-Generator <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first Show HN. I tried revving up the forgotten language of PHP to create eCertificates. The full source code used in the YouTube Live Stream is available here and it's Open Source. Feel free to contribute to it. Looking for feedback on this from the community.

<comment><USER2> Far from forgotten, my friend. It's still alive and generating tons of money for lots of companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whenever I say that I love PHP, people start throwing stones at me, no idea what made people hate PHP. :(</comment></comment></comment>


GoPlan takes on 37Signals... is that a horrible idea? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/20/goplan-takes-on-37signals/ <comment><USER2> Horrible idea? The first impression I got of GoPlan was that it had a nice design and looked pretty damn good.

If I was in the market for a web-collab app, I would now be considering GoPlan instead of immediately thinking of 37Signals.

That doesn't seem like a horrible them for them at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> No one is asking: "How big is this share of this particular market?"

That'd be my question. If these two companies are fighting for share of a tiny pie, it's just stupid. If the pie is much bigger than I believe it is, then the game for market share hasn't even begun yet. The big players haven't even really placed their bets, and that's when things will get interesting (but you have to be there before the big players if you want a chance at walking away a big winner).

Anyway, it's not a market I'd want to go after, because I don't see it being big enough for so many contenders (there are others out there--it's not just these two). But then, almost no market looks big "enough" to outsiders. People are always confused when I make claims about how large our market is (niche software for a 10-20 billion dollar worldwide industry that's increasing at a couple billion per year).

So, if they've researched their market and found it large enough to make for big winners in a year or two, now is a fine time to enter it. Just because you and I know all about 37signals and think they're cool, doesn't mean anybody else knows what the heck they're building. The real market (folks who aren't web 2.0 developers) hasn't even begun buying this product on the web yet, and they certainly will. Everybody has an equal chance to be "first mover" at this point.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've read alot about 37Signals and quite a few people have said that it's a really bad idea to compete with them. I'm personally not afraid, but I wondered if anyone had any input on that subject. The things I've heard are that you never want to compete against a company that is smart, fast, and small and 37Signals would be that company. Anyone have any thoughts?

<comment><USER4> I think sooner or later they'll get full enough of themselves that someone "hungry" will come along and go them one better.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I learn Erlang? - <AUTHOR> There's a cryptocurrency project I'm considering contributing to that's written in Erlang. I'm curious about Erlang's usefulness in other contexts. Is it a language that can open doors for you (job-wise)? <comment><USER2> There are plenty of companies using erlang in production. The community is relatively small and almost everyone knows each other. Yes, you can find erlang jobs or elixir jobs - a lot of those these days (PM me if you are looking)

Besides, erlang definitely gives you new perspective in building large scale system; supervision tree (let it crash), the actor concept, message passing, preemptive vm, built-in distributed erlang nodes, the repl, hot code swapping - any much more

The power comes from the whole ecosystem. Concurrency is built from ground up on language & vm level.

<comment><USER3> > Besides, erlang definitely gives you new perspective in building large scale > system; supervision tree (let it crash), the actor concept, message passing, > preemptive vm, built-in distributed erlang nodes, the repl, hot code > swapping - any much more

Can't emphasize this enough. Programming in Erlang will enable you to build novel mental models, useful beyond Erlang/Elixir.

Moreover, Erlang is a small language, and once you get past the unusual syntax, pretty easy to learn.

I work on a large scale production system in Erlang on a day to day basis; feel free to email me if I can be helpful in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Erlang itself is pretty hard to find work in, though not impossible.

That said, it's an interesting platform that is a lot of fun, and its concepts can be applied to a lot of different platforms. Its inherent "treat everything as a self-contained service" turns out to be a fairly useful way to structure applications.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are not many Erlangs jobs, but as only the more determined developers bother to learn it, you can expect better qualified co-workers in an Erlang shop compared to an average/popular language shop. (Generally true with other niche languages too.) So, once you find an Erlang job chances are good that you will like it. Also it as a language to beat the averages TODAY. [http://paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://paulgraham.com/avg.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Honestly, once you learn 5 or 6 languages, picking up a new one (not as a deep expert, but enough to functionally contribute to an open source project) takes only a day or so.

If you are not there yet, take every opportunity to learn a new language, doesn't really matter which as long as you have a good breadth (e.g. don't do entirely functional languages).

<comment><USER7> > Honestly, once you learn 5 or 6 languages, picking up a new one (not as a > deep expert, but enough to functionally contribute to an open source > project) takes only a day or so.

I think this really depends on some of those 5 or 6 languages being similar to the new one. If I know C, C++, Python, Java, Perl and C#, I'm not going to walk right into Prolog or SML or Scheme. (Your second paragraph is related to this, I just wanted to call it out a little clearer.)</comment></comment>


Social networking with the elite - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/nov2007/id20071114_257766.htm

<comment><USER2> The problem with any community like this is that the community organizers are encouraged to over-invite once the cachet has been achieved.

FWIW I've been trying to subvert ASW by inviting the biggest computer geeks I can find on to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> They talk about this as if it's a new thing. ASW has been around for what, 7 years?

</comment><comment><USER4> It smells like a PR-piece for 'DiamondLounge.com', a site that right now still redirects to "DiamondDaddy.com | The Ultimate Sugar Daddy Dating Site."

Can't imagine that was intentional though ;)</comment>


Is free will a bias of the rich? - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/is-free-will-a-bias-of-the-rich-3f4527343508 <comment><USER2> No, it's the fantasy of a religion that invents an all powerful god, but still needs a way to blame people for their actions.</comment>