How to build a windmill - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill <comment><USER2> I had to chuckle at how he nonchalantly just whips up a mill simulator or a Python script for the shape of the blade. Each of those alone would be worth digging into in detail.

Needless to say, this article is my motivator for the day.

</comment><comment><USER3> The windmill is really cool, but reminds me of some trivia.

Remember how Don Quixote was fighting windmills because they were "giants oppressing the people"? _He was right!_ And everyone in Cervantes' day knew it.

Windmills did not, contrary to popular belief, mostly spread as convenient labour-saving devices. Instead they spread as a way for the local lord to enforce taxes. When peasants had hand mills, there was no easy way to see how much food they really had grown, so it was hard to collect taxes. But if they go to the local miller, the miller takes your grain, grinds it, and then takes the lord's cut right there. There is no possible hiding of the food you've grown.

In countries with a strong peasant class, like Sweden, the lords were unable to introduce this form of central taxation. And I've read reports that hand mills were still in use there as late as WW II.

<comment><USER4> So windmills were basically like paycheck deduction of taxes in 21st century America?

;-)

<comment><USER3> That is an excellent analogy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you find the time?

This is actually a serious question - for the various makers on HN, is it sacrificing other things, older (or no) children, flexible jobs, independant income. Or just really awesome time management?

I would like to know so either I stop beating myself up for bad time management, or improve it.

<comment><USER6> I've built lots of little side projects (see <http://jgc.org/labs.html>) and I have lots of other commitments (like a full time job and I'm not wealthy) and I can tell you a few things that have worked for me:

1\. No TV. About four years ago I got rid of my TV. It started as an accident and turned into a habit. Now I watch movies either via a streaming service or DVD. I also watch some TV series (typically I will watch one series at a time, finish it and then move on so there might be one evening a week where I will watch, say, an episode of Downton Abbey). The key here is that I _never_ plonk myself down in front of a TV and channel hop and I'm ruthless about the quality of what I am watching.

2\. Null route reddit, Facebook, etc. I realized I was wasting a lot of time on sites that have no actual value other than as a pure distraction. I simply null routed them in my broadband router.

3\. Slow down. Some of my projects take forever because I don't have time. I stopped worrying about it and gain satisfaction when I do finish things. Just the other day I was making a nightlight out of a candy can, an old perfume bottle, an old wall wart and some LEDs as a gift for a small child. I realized that I'd started it when $SIBLING was pregnant.

4\. Make time in a relationship. It's also important to tell your spouse or whatever that you are going to spend time doing something away from them. That way you can carve out some space (might be just an hour a week) where you do what you want.

5\. Parallelize. I tend to make lots of things simultaneously. That way when I've got a spare 20 minutes I can do something on one of them. For example, on the nightlight I recall a couple of months ago realizing I didn't need to go to bed right then and I could spend 15 minutes hot gluing some parts of it together.

PS One more thing... I think some 'distractions' become less important as you get older. In my experience, it's more important when you are younger to know about the latest TV shows, movies, memes etc. than as you get older. You may 'need' to know about them for some forms of social acceptance. As I am no longer young I don't feel the need to 'fit in' as much and so when someone says "Did you see X Factor last night?", I just go "No" and we talk about something else.

PPS And by observing others in the 'maker movement' who have children their solution seems to be to involve their children in the things they want to do. Chris Anderson is a good example of this, his kids seem to always be involved in his projects. I saw a talk where he was discussing 3D printing techniques and a number of his examples were of things he'd made with his kids for them.

<comment><USER5> This is what I love about HN - I throw my hands in the air at the whole world, and suddenly people I respect are giving me a fix.

Just the things I was looking for. I suspect we all really know many of these - especially TV!

The one I would not have guessed is accepting the pace. Things take the time they take, given everything else in your life. A friend has just got me to restart an OSS project based on us agreeing slower, more realistic output from each other.

Just pottering along and celebrating the wins - I could get to like that.

As for makers involving children - I can see that being the most rewarding portion - just this afternoon I picked up my 3 year old from pre-school and we wondered into the churchyard. He needed an item beginning with S, and so we stripped some bark for twining, tied a cross piece to a stick and added leaves for hair.

He had a stickman to take in tomorrow.

I did too much of the making, but he enjoyed it I think. Its a start.

Thank you.

Good luck with the Babbage replica.

<comment><USER7> Years ago when offered a raise at a previous job I asked for less working hours instead. So nowadays I get paid to work 32 hours a week, but still work a normal 40-hour work week. That gives me 8 hours / week at the office for hobby software projects, and more than enough time in the evenings and weekends to spend time with family and friends.

<comment><USER8> That's a very interesting approach to career progression, I like it! Wonder how well such a request would be received in most occupations? A higher wage is nice, but more free time is infinitely more valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really awesome article @jacquesm, I love these intricate, in-depth, long struggling-for-a-labour-of-love stories.

In fact, not to wax overly lyrical, I think a lot of stories that appeal to people in general follow that pattern. Something about the best aspects of humanity in that kind of endeavour.

</comment><comment><USER10> That's a fantastic story. Now that the research is done, open sourcing this data could allow many people especially in poorer places of the world (once they can access the right tools, which might be a severe stumbling block) to create similar machines and gain power.

I wouldn't have thought that creating a windmill is such a difficult thing. Always cool to learn something new from an unknown domain.

<comment><USER11> I will open source the data one of these days, promise.

<comment><USER12> I had forwarded your article to a friend a few hours ago, and he asked me if it had been open sourced. I told him I did not know, but from what I have read of your writing, I was sure you would be most helpful to anyone following in your footsteps. Just the information you have already passed on is invaluable.

<comment><USER11> Ok, done:

<http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill-ii>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Technical error: the force of the wind depends on the square of the wind speed (q = rho * u^2/2). The cube law refers to power (proportional to rho * u^3/2).

Good article though. For those using software to design and analyze mechanical designs with "pretty good confidence," there's nothing more humbling than actually trying to build it.

<comment><USER11> You're absolutely right, I was using 'force' in the laypersons sense of the word, not the way an engineer would use it, I should have used power instead. I've updated the post to correct the error. Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just being pedantic, but shouldn't it be called a wind turbine, not windmill? After all, it's outputting electricity and you're not grinding down grains or corn. Either way, this was very interesting. Good work.

<comment><USER15> That was the first thing that came to my mind as well!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How great would it be if he could mass produce these! He gained incredible insight leading to variable pitch blades, process of making the various parts...if I were a homeowner & actually had cash I'd buy one in an instant.

Or even write a detailed ebook showing others how to do the same, and maybe sell the tricky parts like the stator sheets and blades to budding windmill DIYers. Great project.

</comment><comment><USER17> > It has survived numerous storms and worked very well supplying our house > with reliable power, far more reliable than the solar panels we had used > exclusively up to the point the windmill was finished.

Italy certainly has its share of troubles these days, but the above made me smile a bit. There are still some good things here.

<comment><USER18> Italy? I understand this marvel was built in Canada.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. I, on the other hand, live in Italy, where solar panels work pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great. If someone asks me the dreaded "what is a hacker" question again I'll link them to the article.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is the best thing I have ever seen on HN. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER21> jacquesm, For some strange and unknown reason, I'm recalling a story about a very powerful magnet suspended in the air, and very heavy metal table... also in the air, attached to said magnet.

</comment><comment><USER22> Wind force goes up as the square of speed, not the cube. Available power goes up as the cube.

Friends of mine are building vertical axis turbines. The key to safety seems to be to make the blades out of lightweight foam & kevlar so that if they do shatter they aren't flinging big heavy pieces around.

<comment><USER11> You are correct. The post has been updated.

As for vertical axis turbines, they are a very tempting way to spend a ton of money without ever shipping a viable product. Many very solidly engineered examples of this exist, none of which have stood the test of time. This is a real pity because I think that the Darrieus rotor is one of the most pleasing purely technical designs ever made by man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> How much did it end up costing altogether, and how much would it cost to make another?

<comment><USER24> FTA:

" _If you bought a machine with those specs commercially it would have cost about $10,000, but that would not be a variable pitch one. This machine cost a (fairly) large multiple of that, not counting our time, tooling and so on, but it could be reproduced well under that $10,000 mark if you already had all the tools and the knowledge and you didn't have to go through a prototyping stage._ "

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I do not believe you have built a windmill- you have built a proper wind turbine.

Very cool project- there are a good number of residential scale manufacturers out there, but I believe this is the first homebrew wind turbine I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER26> I bet <http://opensourceecology.org/> would be really interested in this, if they wanted to open source the plans.

</comment><comment><USER27> How much of the difficulty could have been avoided if the windmill wasn't for generating power? This is an amazing project, but I wonder if it would be quite possible just to get something looking nice that stands strong (even against wind force at the cube of its speed) without such quality lathes and metalworking tools. Obviously, you have decades of experience in the field as you noted, and I doubt this would be possible for most people.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm impressed that you made your own plasma cutting table. That project must be worth a blog post on it's own!

What gauge and quality of metal is that?

</comment><comment><USER29> Nice article. The aerodynamics behind windmills are extraordinarily complex, so 500 Watts is a pretty good output!

<comment><USER30> I think 500W was for the 1/2 scale model and the final scale turbine would've been above 1kW. I still marvel at the thought of it all.

<comment><USER31> Yup, he said that he designed for 2.5kW @ 10m/s wind speed, doesn't mention if he achieved that, though.

<comment><USER32> FTA: "In the end the machine produced 2250 Watts at 10 m/s winds ..."

Cool tech - it would be interesting to see a cost/benefit analysis mapping months to break-even from local $/kWh costs and local wind speeds.

We'll know that alternative energy generation has really arrived when real- estate listings include sun-exposure / insolation figures and annual wind- energy availability along with annual tax estimates and water well outputs.

<comment><USER33> _Cool tech - it would be interesting to see a cost/benefit analysis mapping months to break-even from local $/kWh costs and local wind speeds._

In the article he mentions they don't have grid power, so the payoff will be pretty quick vs. the generator they have. He said they used the generator a lot because their solar panels weren't enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> He takes homebrew to a whole level by building his own CNC plasma cutter.

</comment><comment><USER35> What's the noise level like?

I've read the circular ones are far more quiet?

<comment><USER11> Until you hit 500 RPM dead quiet, above that it makes a swooshing noise, but that quickly gets drowned out by the wind :)

Yes, Eggbeater (the proper term is a Darrieus rotor) are theoretically more quiet, and even more efficient.

Unfortunately those designs suffers from an incurable tendency to vibrate to pieces. There are so many modes of resonance that they don't live long.

Cap Chat in Canada has or had a fantastic machine of that type, but it was shut down after a minimal amount of operation because the safety of the machine could not be guaranteed, even in moderate winds. Google for Cap Chat Eole for more information.

I went there to visit the machine because I considered a VAT (vertical axis turbine) but decided against it because of this tendency to spray windmill bits & pieces.

There are a few more of them near the Canadian Rockies but those are also mothballed.

I still believe this to be one of the most beautiful designs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sweet hack!</comment>


libssh authentication bypass - <AUTHOR> https://www.libssh.org/security/advisories/CVE-2018-10933.txt <comment><USER2> Github did weigh on this now saying they are unaffected [https://twitter.com/GitHubSecurity/status/105231733337972326...](https://twitter.com/GitHubSecurity/status/1052317333379723265)</comment>


Useful but less known HTML Tags - <AUTHOR> http://www.codingdefined.com/2016/03/useful-but-less-known-html-tags.html <comment><USER2> <XMP> \- it used to be possible to wreck poorly designed sites by submitting one of these because it will turn off all HTML rendering until </XMP> is found.

</comment><comment><USER3> Blink.</comment>


How SSD power faults scramble your data (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/how-ssd-power-faults-scramble-your-data-7000011979/

<comment><USER2> Luckily, there are filesystems like ZFS to [help] counter the myriad of bizarre failure modes in today's storage devices...

<comment><USER3> ZFS would help to handle some of the failure types of SSDs. I doubt that it can help in the case of a multiple disk failures due to a power failure.

As for the original report, if you rely on your storage devices to survive a power outage you should be testing them strongly for this feature. It is a feature that is easy to get wrong and when it fails on you it is quite nearly the end of the world as this is a correlated failure of multiple devices at the same time with no time for any rebuild operation.

I've seen different devices even of high end caliber that had flaws in their power-hold circuitry. If you rely on it, test it. The same is true for HDDs too. If you rely on your UPS to hold you for the power outage, be sure to test that one too. And test all of these also as they age, the age affects the ability to hold power in both battery and capacitors.

<comment><USER4> >ZFS would help to handle some of the failure types of SSDs. I doubt that it can help in the case of a multiple disk failures due to a power failure.

It can if there's enough redundancy. If your pool is a stripe of mirrors, then you can mitigate this effect by putting each half of a mirror on separate power supplies.

<comment><USER5> With enough redundant devices any RAID scheme will survive a large number of drive losses. ZFS is not magic.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but ZFS can survive intermittent drive power failure on bother halves of a mirror. As long as one good copy of a block exists, ZFS will repair the mirror by resilvering its counterpart. This is the advantage of checksumming every block on disk and using copy-on-write.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but as opposed to data corruption, your data will throw an error when you try to read it. It's just a different failure mode. In production, SSDs will often accept a write, take a sync/flush (acknowledge they've been written to durable storage), and when reading them back, they will not return the same data that was previously written out to them.

Mirroring is also part of ZFS, but it's not ZFS magic. My preference is the Dynamo / Hadoop / layered approach in which the application is aware of multiple underlying storage devices, and is written in a way that's defensible to underlying device failure.

<comment><USER4> _Yeah, but as opposed to data corruption, your data will throw an error when you try to read it._

No, the data will be repaired transparently and you won't notice a thing. Errors will be logged, of course, but you'll know that the data is intact.

 _My preference is the Dynamo / Hadoop / layered approach in which the application is aware of multiple underlying storage devices, and is written in a way that's defensible to underlying device failure._

And ZFS should be the underlying file system upon which these applications are built. If you don't have protection against silent data corruption at the lowest level then you aren't going to have any idea when it happens.

<comment><USER6> Only if you mirror the data. If you only have one copy of the data, it wont magically repair itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This study performed an automated cut off DC power directly to the drive -- which seems reasonable to me - and is more practical for testing, and I personally like that it's testing the hard drive as a more "self-contained" unit.

Power fault often occur at the AC power, however, and only later gets to the DC power. This is impractical to test as there are too many configurations/variables and it's much harder to test accurately, but it would theoretically be interesting to see if AC power faults to a system power supply had a different affect on the data than DC power faults.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/12/27/208249/power- los...](http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/12/27/208249/power-loss- protected-ssds-tested-only-intel-s3500-passes)

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this the definition of FUD? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt)

> Fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) is a tactic used in sales, marketing, > public relations,[1][2] politics and propaganda.

>FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival.

>The term originated to describe disinformation tactics in the computer hardware industry but has since been used more broadly.[3][dubious – discuss] FUD is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.

>About Robin Harris

>Robin Harris has been a computer buff for over 35 years and selling and marketing data storage for over 30 years in companies large and small.

>Robin Harris is a president of TechnoQWAN, a consulting and analyst firm in Sedona, Arizona. He also writes StorageMojo.com, a blog which accepts advertising from companies in the storage industry, and has a 30 year history with IT vendors. He has many industry contacts, many of whom are friends and all of whom he has opinions about.

The poor performance of mechanical disks is the number one performance bottleneck for most IT systems. I believe that FUD like this is the main reason SSD costs are still relatively high.

<comment><USER10> The findings in this article match the findings of "Analysis of SSD Reliability during power outages" that we discussed 2 weeks ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6973179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6973179)

[http://lkcl.net/reports/ssd_analysis.html](http://lkcl.net/reports/ssd_analysis.html)

<comment><USER9> You didn't answer the question. Isn't this the definition of FUD? Maybe that previous report was the same thing.

<comment><USER10> It's only FUD if it's manufactured. SSDs not being able to properly handle power outages is a problem for many of us. And even if you have a batter backup between your box and the mains, the UPS could still fail. It happened to me (hard crashes of a server) a few times within a couple months at RackSpace years back when they had issues in a wing of their main TX data center.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Understanding Image Sharpness (2003) - <AUTHOR> http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF.html <comment><USER2> Oh wow, this is my father's site! Will try to get him here to answer questions, if anyone is interested.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious what he'd say about anti-aliasing for digital imagery, if anything. In CG, there seems to be a difficult balance between sharpness and antialiasing. If you try to get too close to the Nyquist limit, you suffer more aliasing, and to get rid of all signs of aliasing, you have to compromise on sharpness. Personally, I've started to prefer using a Gaussian filter, but many people in digital imaging feel it's way too blurry. My theory is that we are pretty good at seeing sub-pixel detail even in frequencies that are well (e.g. 2x) below the Nyquist limit, that having something less sharp than ideal only compromises the aesthetic, but not our ability to see the details of what's there.

I did a video project a long time ago in old 480i NTSC and found that filtering vertically twice as much as should be called for improved my ability to see fine details (that is, filtering as if the vertical image resolution is 240). I realize that motion and interlaced video is super different than still photography, but my lesson there has been influencing all my filtering decisions ever since...

<comment><USER4> So, I'm assuming you know this, but the theoretically optimal pixel reconstruction filter is the sinc function. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinc_filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinc_filter) For very high-quality work, I guess we have enough processing power to approximate sinc quite well these days. Is that what you mean by trying to get close to the Nyquist limit? The sinc filter does tend to introduce ringing artifacts.

Very high resolutions are now practical, too, which changes things a lot. Probably in favour of using filters which never introduce ringing artifacts, like the Gaussian.

(And things like the Lanczos or Mitchell filters exist as compromises between sinc and Gaussian.)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I know about sinc and the ideal theory, but nobody uses sinc for production work. Your filter has to be too wide, and the ringing artifacts are too undesirable.

The max sharpness in a digital image, the Nyquist limit, is 1 cycle across 2 pixels. It's not possible to get any sharper than that. But actually rendering images with frequencies exactly at that limit generally cause aliasing artifacts of some kind. That's what I mean about getting close to Nyquist.

> Very high resolutions are now practical, too, which changes things a lot. > Probably in favor of using filters which never introduce ringing artifacts, > like the Gaussian.

Yeah, this is mostly true, and it is one way I justify using a Gaussian.

But it's important to know and remember that without the right filter, you can get visible ringing artifacts no matter how high your resolution is, and no matter how much you super-sample your pixels. This doesn't come up all that much in CG film or photography, but I have a digital art project where it matters a lot and comes up all the time. (And I order expensive prints too, where artifacts not very visible on my monitor can become plain & obvious on paper).

> And things like the Lanzos or Mitchell filters exist as compromises between > since and Gaussian.

Yes, and I suspect those are the most common ones used in VFX and CG film & print production. But those are balancing sharpness and aliasing. For situations where I really need no aliasing, they aren't good enough.

I can't usually see the difference between Gaussian, Lanczos and Mitchell without zooming and studying high frequency regions, but I've watched VFX supervisors comment on the softness they feel after watching like 2 seconds of film. Some people have an incredible sensitivity to sharpness.

<comment><AUTHOR> \+ My understanding of the way the Nyquist limit plays out in digital photography is that it guarantees no moire. If moire isn't an issue in a scene then it is possible, but not guaranteed to get higher resolution (that of the individual pixel). Of course resolution and sharpness are not exactly the same thing...that's why a 16 mega pixels is a resolution not a sharpness and why a lot of studio photography uses cameras without anti-aliasing filters (e.g. medium format digital). In the studio, conditions can be set up to avoid moire in ways that aren't practical for sports or wedding photography. Similarly, moire isn't going to be a problem with astro-photography and some subjects in landscape photography.

\+ For what it's worth, ringing artifacts are often caused by diffraction or lens aberrations rather than aliasing from sampling frequency (though they can be).

\+ The shape of the modulation transfer function (MTF) is different between film and digital. The line pair comparison in the article illustrates it without being explicit. The Nyquist limit means that sharpness falls off a cliff in digital images and the example line pairs go from resolved to gray abruptly. The example line pairs for film fade to gray, what is and isn't sharp is determined by observation rather than an equation. Digital images often appear sharper because they are only ever so sharp and film appears softer because it is kinda sorta sharp beyond the point where it is clearly sharp. It's why film has a different look...or is a different artistic medium than digital when it comes to some forms of expression.

<comment><USER5> Getting close to the Nyquist limit is unsafe. The limit is theoretical; it applies only to an infinitely repeating signal. You'd have to create and then observe an infinite signal for the Nyquist limit to be correct, but of course you can't do this.

That would be 2 samples for each feature detail you want. Things work OK in the real world at about 4 or 5 samples, but it takes 10 or 12 samples to work pretty well.

<comment><USER6> I'm doing some amateur work on sub pixel matching at the block-level for stereo, currently using cheap APS-C prime lens commercial cameras ( Ricoh GR) and my background is maths not cameras, but what I've observed (all in RAW) is

a) Real world scenes often go below the Nyquist limit ( e.g pattern from a brick wall at sufficient distance)

b)In a camera without a low-pass filter (e.g. the Ricoh GR) in practice you don't see Moire but you can definitely generate it artificially off real world objects

c) The Point Spread function seems quite important (e.g a 1-pixel scene feature for the GR will have half the effect on the sensor as a 2-pixel function because of the point spread)

d) I'm a bit confused as why Fourier/ DCT all work as well as they do, as the Nyquist assumption for a modern digital camera seems incorrect, but on the whole sub-pixel matching in a Fourier space (while Nyquist assumption is not true) seems roughly on par with matching in the spatial domain - I would love to see something that explains why this is so

Happy to discuss this more as I am still learning

<comment><AUTHOR> _Manual of Photography_ might be worth reading.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the pointer - I've just skimmed the last 2 chapters and looks like a good book but don't think it solves my specific problem (just to give more context, when I said amateur I'm doing this for fun not money, but have previously built an image processing pipeline from raw sensor output and I get the basics of wavelets, Fourier etc )

My specific question is "If I am matching a RAW stereo block (say 8x8 or 16x16 block), for sub-pixel resolution matching from two similar cameras, why (if at all) is it better to use DCT/Fourier matching e.g. matlab normxcorr2 or the elphel guys [https://blog.elphel.com/2018/01/complex-lapped-transform- bay...](https://blog.elphel.com/2018/01/complex-lapped-transform-bayer/) , rather than try to match in the spatial domain (linear algebra). On writing this I suppose I better look at the H.264 and HEVC algos and see if they work in the frequency or spatial domain when they are looking at sub-pixel matches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how I hadn't stumbled on this site before, but it is _crazy_ good. The amount of information is a bit overwhelming to be honest, but skimming it I see a metric ton of gems for image processing and photography and optics. I see some math & advice that apply to audio processing as well. As someone working in CG, this is going to be a great reference.

<comment><USER2> My dad clarifies that he hasn't updated this page in about 15 years. Eventually his work on this got sufficiently out of control that he founded www.imatest.com, and that's been keeping him busy ever since.

<comment><USER7> I was going to say this looks a lot like the stuff on the imatest website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having struggled with video autofocus issues, I've asked some videographer friends what the solution is. They've told me that I have to learn to manually focus for shots that the autofocus has trouble with. Also, most, if not all, cinematographers do not use autofocus when shooting movies or films.

I have a newfound respect for the 1st AC (or Focus Puller) on a movie set.

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

<comment><USER9> That's really what blocking is all about. You set places for the camera and talent to be (set distance) and the focus should be set accordingly. If people are moving (or camera is moving) you simply pull the focus from one block to the next (like key frames).

There are cases where the AC needs to manually (with eyes) focus, and yeah, those are very skilled individuals. I was looking for a video of Chivo's Focus guy working while Chico worked the frame from the Revenant, but I can't find it.

[https://youtu.be/a5tgTQXr62M](https://youtu.be/a5tgTQXr62M)

<comment><USER10> Another trick is, in chaotic handheld tracking shots, to light up the set and stop the lens down for a large depth of field. If you watch the long scenes in _Children of Men_ for instance, even objects far away are sharp; this is because lens is stopped down. That way the subjects stay in focus even if the blocking is not terribly precise. In those long shots, Cuaron uses framing and contrast to direct your eye, rather than focus pulls. He creates depth with haze, which reduces contrast in distant objects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This might be off-topic, but does anyone know of analyses of the effects of the debayering process on modern digital cameras on the end image? For example, based on experimentation, it seems to me that some of the characteristics of Alexa cameras (e.g magenta bleed around highlights) seem to be reproducible in digital material if you apply a pixel mask like that of the Alexa sensor and implement an approximation of the debayer process. I'm not quite confident enough of my conclusions to put my foot down on them yet, though.

</comment><comment><USER12> Great text, a bit difficult to understand. I have written a 'digested' version in the process of understanding the concept:

[https://epxx.co/artigos/dof_en.html#pmp](https://epxx.co/artigos/dof_en.html#pmp)</comment>


Forensically: a tool to detect doctored images - <AUTHOR> http://29a.ch/photo-forensics/#forensic-magnifier

<comment><USER2> The main photo is not visible in Chrome, but it's visible in IE11.

The clone detection is a little paranoid, I get a lot of false positives with the default configuration. It's better to increase the thresholds.</comment>


Thoughts on dropping out to do a startup - <AUTHOR> http://joel.is/post/34510193020/thoughts-on-dropping-out-to-do-a-startup <comment><USER2> "As a result, my advice to anyone thinking of dropping out is to keep studying, and use every opportunity to build projects and startups on the side."

Yes. In fact, I'd go even further. Don't even try to build startups. That's premature optimization. Just build things that seem interesting. The average undergraduate hacker is more likely to discover good startup ideas that way than by making a conscious effort to work on projects that are supposed to be startups.

<comment><USER3> And unless you're Gates or Zuckerberg (protip: you're almost definitely not), that college degree is going to be infinitely more valuable to you than anything you might come up with while in college.

A lot of people think that it was because he dropped out that Zuck was so successful, but IIRC, during Startup School 2012 he said that Facebook hit 1 million users before he dropped out. So unless you're coming up with the next Facebook (and you're almost definitely not), dropping out is a boneheaded move.

Your startup can fail at any time before people give two shits about it (and most do, quite quickly), but a good degree from a quality university will stay with you _for life_.

<comment><USER4> _Your startup can fail at any time before people give two shits about it (and most do, quite quickly), but a good degree from a quality university will stay with you for life._

Actually it'll stay with you for your first entry-level job, after which people will simply stop asking when/where you went to school.

<comment><USER5> No, College degree matters. In fact in many cases your resume may not even pass through the filters if you don't have college degree on it.

People seriously need to think before dropping out. What do you plan to do, if your start up folds up? Which is a very likely scenario given how many start ups fold up.

You can do the start up thing anytime. But going to college has always been a young mans game.

<comment><USER6> _In fact in many cases your resume may not even pass through the filters if you don't have college degree on it._

If you want to be a doctor or lawyer, sure. If you want to work in technology, I've never met anyone who cares. In hindsight, I believe you can optimize your path for your career which often would not include college, but admittedly it is difficult to see that path as a youth, which I suppose could make college a good default.

<comment><USER7> This is a point which often worries me, I decided to skip higher education to travel and began programming (professionally for a company) when I had just turned 19, now, 7 months in I'm starting to see that my friends who went to college and university are actually light years behind me when it comes to achievements so far.

It's a bummer that I'll probably never work for the Facebooks or Googles of the world, but there are always jobs going in tech and once you have experience, your education is pretty much irrelevant.

 _Your education shows your first employer that you are dedicated and know your stuff, when you go to your second job, it is your performance in job one which will instead be validated._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing that almost never rises up when people talk about college is US work visas. Having a university level degree is pretty much essential in order to obtain a H1b visa to be able to work in the US. Of course there are ways around it but that itself is a good motivation to finish your studies if you're a foreigner.

I agree that school is good time to work on side projects and learn by doing. One other good way is to do a internship for a US based startup as obtaining a J1 internship visa is relatively trivial if you're in college. That was the single best thing I did in school.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'll second the "keep studying" part. After high school and summers during college, I worked at a wonderful startup. Software was a big part of what they were doing, but hardware was the real innovation and everybody there except me was a hardware guy. By my second year I was giving architecture presentations to the client, because who else was going to do it? At one point I contemplated just dropping out and going to work because I'd be coming in at a higher salary than if I graduated and went somewhere else. I spent the summers grinding at that company, spent the school year doing projects on the side, and frankly blew off school because who cared about GPA when you had all that experience?

It's been five years since I graduated college, and to this day I regret not spending that part of my life focusing on that part of life. Fact of the matter is that I realized the things I genuinely enjoyed hacking (compilers, operating systems) had all been done in the 1980's, and I had no interest in all the web stuff that was being done now. At the same time, anything else I might have wanted to do was closed off because of my college grades. You don't realize at 18-19 how much your college grades matter, especially if you wander outside the tech field.

I'm sure lots of kids are more responsible than I was at that age. They can balance hobby projects along with acing classes. But if you're not one of those people, then I suggest either doing school or doing a startup, but not trying to do both at the same time and letting both suffer. There is plenty of time in life for entrepreneurship. And frankly, outside the little Silicon Valley bubble, your chances at starting a successful business will be greatly enhanced by the signaling devices you can earn by focusing single-mindedly on school.

I do always like to point out the irony of the fact that Peter Thiel graduated from Stanford UG and Stanford Law, clerked for a Circuit judge, then went to go work for an investment bank. He was almost thirty by the time he started his first venture! Life is long, the only thing you're rushing towards is death. :D

<comment><USER10> > _anything else I might have wanted to do was closed off because of my > college grades. You don't realize at 18-19 how much your college grades > matter, especially if you wander outside the tech field._

'rayiner, if you're who I think you are (Northwestern Law?), your grades must not have been _that_ bad; you seem to be doing just fine career-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A lot of the benefits he's talking about appear to assume that you're being supported financially during tertiary education (college/university) so the advice is like "if you find yourself in a situation where you are completely financially supported with a lot of free time, don't stop being financially supported in order to start a company". Which is pretty obvious advice.

</comment><comment><USER12> Stop thinking about "doing a startup" and start thinking about "starting a business".

<comment><USER2> That's like saying stop thinking about eating an apple and start thinking about eating fruit.

Startups are a proper subset of businesses. It's up to each individual what type he or she wants to start.

<comment><USER13> I think what he is trying to say is just concentrate on what you are building/creating and not whether it fits a certain buzz word which is sound advice.

<comment><USER14> He probably should have said that then. I didn't know what he meant initially either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the value proposition of college is completely based upon whether the learning strategy of classroom lectures followed by written tests works for you. For me, reading books and attempting projects are the only way I can learn effectively. Technical lectures are incredibly boring as I can't control the pacing, and many times I find they are altogether irrelevant.

Technology moves at such a blistering pace that if you aren't working with the cutting edge tools on a regular basis, you are falling behind. Unfortunately, most classrooms insist on teaching with antiquated methodologies and overemphasize classroom time/testing versus building projects with modern tools. For example, I had to take a full year of Scheme, which in hindsight was helpful, but could have been done far more efficiently by me reading How to Design Programs [1] over the summer and attempting the exercises. School time could then have been used to teach modern methodologies via project work.

1\. <http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/>

</comment><comment><USER16> If you are not American, do not drop out. You will have issues obtaining a US work visa without a uni degree, i.e. you cannot go to Silicon Valley, i.e. you will be at a disadvantage.

<comment><USER6> On the flip-side, if your reason for going to SV is to look for riches, the composition of the top 1%, according to Gallup, is comprised of:

      23% college graduates
      27% college dropouts, or less
      49% post-graduates

Unless you are willing to do post-graduate studies (which, I imagine, is primarily limited to professional degrees like MD and JD), you are statistically worse off by having a college degree.

<comment><USER17> The statistics you present do not show that you are worse off for having a college degree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is a reason the average age of successful first-time startup entrepreneurs is something like 35. And this is something I only learned in retrospect, having precocious talent for being at the right place at the right time in my 20s and never really capitalizing on it. Yes, there are outlier cases but really successful startups tend to be led by people that already have a few iterations under their belt.

Experience is more valuable than it ever seems like it is before you have it. It will also take more than the couple years in college you might skip to acquire it. College does not add that much value from the standpoint of building a technology startup but there is also little upside in not completing college or using it as an opportunity to gain some early good experience.

Dropping out and doing a tech startup should be independent decisions.

<comment><USER19> Your whole point is based on the "35 year-old" static. That being said, if you don't link to the resource you are getting that data from; your argument is likely not going that far.

I dropped for two years, and experience was the main bottleneck (though I thought I had a lot of experience when I did). I'd be interested to confirm that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In my early 20s. Dropped out of college to get "real world experience."

In retrospect, the thought of having blocks of free time to pursue whatever I want is very appealing. For now I am stuck doing 40+ hour workweeks and trying to cram side projects in on nights and weekends.

I wish I were back in college.

<comment><USER19> Could you elaborate more how college would have benefited you more now? Many people with college degrees are wearing your shoes.

<comment><USER20> I think in particular, I would/could have benefited more from the increased number of opportunities for free time and flexibility:

* No longer have seasonal breaks outside of the odd vacation time.

* Can't cram work into only a couple days a week as I am expected to show up every day.

* In college, you can skip classes that you already know the material for and only show up for tests (i.e. do the minimum possible to maintain a good grade). With work, you are expected to be 100% productive every single day. There is no chance to get ahead: If you run out of work to do, you are given more, or more will be created for you.

This mostly assumes that you're already very smart and while in college you are financially supported via loans or scholarships, but if you're attending Stanford, MIT, or Harvard, you probably meet both criteria.

It's not that I want a college degree. I want to be financially supported while having (more) time to work on the cool things I want to work on, which is actually the same reason I want to run my own company. College is one such example that provides that opportunity.

<comment><USER6> Why not try freelancing? Take on only enough work to support your living costs, which should be _far less_ than a full time job if you are a developer (I'm betting you could get by on 5-10 hours per week if you are careful with your money), and leave the rest of your time free to do whatever you want.

You are not going to get rich doing it that way, but wealth doesn't seem to be a concern of yours anyway.

<comment><USER20> That's definitely something I have considered and may well end up doing. I just haven't started moving in that direction yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As an experiment, pick three random portfolio companies from a16z.com, benchmark.com, and sequoiacap.com and see what percentage of the founders are college drop outs.

In SV, what you know and who you know are both very important.

</comment><comment><USER22> One thing to keep in mind ... sure, look at Gates and Zuckerberg the two prime examples of college dropouts who went on to found wildly successful companies. But if I'm not mistaken, these guys were already wildly successfull before they dropped out?

Another thing to keep in mind is that the majority of successful tech startup founders probably did finish college and have some life experience... E.g. Elon Musk is a prime example - he got degrees in both Economics and Physics before going on to found Zip2, X.com (precursor to PayPal), SpaceX and Tesla motors.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hopefully this is related: can anyone give some advice or input on dropping out to work in silicon valley in general? I'm not close to done (first semester freshman), but I have an internship at a certain large SV company this summer. If you were in my position, and that company offered a job, would you take it?

<comment><USER24> Not to discourage you, but your education will likely benefit you far longer than most SV companies will be around. The benefits of education also brought, in my life, career choices that would not have been available without it. Choice is liberating. Who knows though, the world does seem to be changing.

<comment><USER6>
      > Choice is liberating.

I find it to be overwhelming. I am routinely contacted by people asking if I am looking for work, and what they are doing seems like it could be an amazing experience, but you get comfortable in your six figure job that you love and taking the risk on something new is a huge decision. Like, "should you divorce your wife to date the interesting new girl you met?" kind of huge.

I did not have the opportunity to obtain a formal post-secondary education though, so maybe that is something you learn to manage in that process.

<comment><USER25> > I am routinely contacted by people asking if I am looking for work, and what > they are doing seems like it could be an amazing experience, but you get > comfortable in your six figure job that you love

One percent (of developers) problems.

<comment><USER6> 25% of the North American population are college educated. Based on the previous poster, I would assume at least 25% of the population have to deal with it. In fact, they probably have it worse given the more opportunities than I have access to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> this is a tricky subject with the current state of free online education. im currently enrolled in a small tech for game design. its becoming more apparent as time goes on that everything im learning in school is easily found online. not to mention my school keeps losing all of our good instructors to full sail and Disney leaving us with fresh college graduates. for me it boils down to the quality of education im paying for. i know being in debt is apart of getting your degree but at what point do you take the leap of faith and just try to educate and grow on your own?

</comment><comment><USER27> It's really easy to forget that the only reason you have these swathes of free time is because your life is funded by a student loan (which is usually the cheapest credit you'll ever get in your life).

</comment><comment><USER13> Customer development is not a "Startup concept" it's fundamental. If you get that wrong then you certainly shouldn't drop out.

</comment><comment><USER28> How many startups can actually reach stable revenue? I don't mean you need to take down Facebook or Google. But there are way too many startups. Sometimes I start to think: how many customers do they get? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? How long? A year?

But on the other hand, startup is great for fresh out graduates. They learn better and quicker in theory - they are forced to adapt to the change of specs and environment. It's a great place to test your ability as an engineer and a team person. It's a challenge.

<comment><USER29> I think the majority of startups teach great lessons in how not to run a business. Some of the best lessons Ive learned is watching others as well as myself inadvertently blow stuff up and realizing that should have been done a lot differently. Every once in a while the stars align but what the tech media doesn't say is that the majority of work that goes on in startups is doing stuff that is experimental but typically turns out to be a not so great or extremely bad business decision.

<comment><USER28> I think it's true. Well, two blades. Business wise, you need a real business man. Technologically you must employ the right technical lead. Then you and your employees (in particular fresh graduates) will learn quicker and better.</comment></comment></comment>


New features in Vim 8 - <AUTHOR> http://vimhelp.appspot.com/version8.txt.html <comment><USER2> I don't know enough about VIM to really understand this. But are VIM proper trying to catch up with NeoVIM?</comment>


Show HN my christmas project: Focus.app, cut off your Internet so you can focus - <AUTHOR> http://therealfocusapp.com/

<comment><USER2> The comment on FocusHelper's allowAllOutgoingExceptions is pretty amusing: [https://github.com/benofsky/Focus.app/blob/master/FocusHelpe...](https://github.com/benofsky/Focus.app/blob/master/FocusHelper.m#L69)

<comment><USER3> If the guy who wrote the comment ever reads this, it's "brightened". :)

<comment><AUTHOR> ha, it looked wrong at the time, thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is already available, SelfControl, its open source and I use it all the time: <http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/>

<comment><USER5> and freedom: <http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27958/freedom>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't there an OSX app that does this?

I remember people on an extremely distracting forum using it, ultimately it doesn't work. Those same people are still spending a lot of time on that forum, they've stopped turning it on.

<comment><USER7> SelfControl

<comment><AUTHOR> Hadn't seen that, only a pay for app (and I'm cheap :))! Anyway, Focus is tailored perfectly for me, hope some other people can find use out of it too.

Edit: Clarification (I'm sorry I can't reply to your comment, it won't let me), I meant I had only seen a pay for app and not this one.

Edit 2: (reply to comment also) also doesn't appear to have exceptions, maybe I'm wrong.

<comment><USER8> Self Control does the same thing and it's been open source on Github since March 2009.

<http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please be careful, I intentionally made there to be no easy way (it can actually be reversed in one command but not in the interface) to re-enable internet access before the timeout. Hope you like it!

Github: <https://github.com/benofsky/Focus.app>

</comment><comment><USER9> I can't seem to add an exception.

Edit: Literally clicking [+] does nothing, so there's nothing to save. I'm also not convinced 5 is enough: I want dropbox to be connected, github, our bug tracker, our team chat, my email, and basecamp — that's 6 already.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, quite a few people are having this problem. I'll have a fix soon hopefully!

EDIT: It's working now download the new version at: <http://therealfocusapp.com/focus-alpha-0.1.app.zip> — thanks to all who helped fix!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A really nice paid alternative (I use it every day) is <http://getconcentrating.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> I can confirm that this method is a pretty effective method for getting me off Twitter and on TextMate.

</comment><comment><USER12> I actually use my hosts file, and block all the common time wasting sites I like to waste time on. There is no time period - the sites are off limits for the computer, period.

I have another computer in another room for time-wasting - with no restrictions. But sitting there is acknowledging that you're wasting time. You can't fool yourself or anyone else that you're being productive, otherwise you'd be at the 'real' computer.

I find this to be far more effective than a periodic-blocking application. Because anything you can turn off with the click of a mouse, will get turned off just when you need it the most. Editing a hosts file is a major PITA in comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> This cannot be turned off with a click of the mouse (see my warning below) :-) — although, one who spent 5 minutes reading the source, could turn it off! But still, not click of the mouse.

And yes, a second time wasting computer would be ideal but ye I don't have one :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> First, great app.

I use SelfControl.app, because when I need to focus, I need internet access JUST to the sites/domains/IPs I work with.

Benofsky, is there a posibility to add a whitelist of IPs/domains to this app?

<comment><AUTHOR> You may add 5 in the settings. :)

EDIT: Thanks btw!

<comment><USER13> Superb, you should make this feature clear on the site

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks excellent. I like the fact that you can specify an arbitrary time, whereas SelfControl restricts you to 15 minute intervals.

It would be nice if it were scriptable (which SelfControl is).

[http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleSc...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptX/Concepts/osa.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think disabling internet connection will help you focus. If you want to focus for some time, then you will.

Also, I made something similar just a week or two ago. It doesn't disable anything, it just shows you an icon in status bar.

<http://zone.codingwithlove.com>

</comment><comment><USER16> Found a small bug:

I set the default minutes to 15, yet when I go to start focusing the default appears to be 60.

I thought maybe they'd go into effect after restarting the app, but no, it still defaults to 60.

It does default to the last value of the Start Focusing form, so long as you keep the app open.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ye there're some problems with the preferences, I'm working on it. Are you on 10.6.5 by any chance?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anything like this exist for Windows?

</comment><comment><USER18> My computer comes with this built in: <http://cl.ly/3sRk>

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems similar to Freedom: <http://macfreedom.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> ifconfig down; sleep 100000; ifconfig up (add parameters as needed) Does this need an app?

<comment><USER21> Click a button or type all of that or run a shell script, hmm. I would clicking the pretty buttons.

This app seems to work.

<comment><USER22> Ok, turn the previous command into a shortcut. Done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I opened it, I didn't realize it went to my toolbar. If you want this to be used by a broader audience you should have a "run once" to let people know how to use it.

<comment><USER23> Yeah completely agree. I was looking everywhere, opened it twice, then, scratching my head glanced randomly @ the tool bar. The prod version will certainly need some sort of pointer to what's going on re: this. Config wizard or similar i guess</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who uses the HN api and what for? - <AUTHOR> Hi all, I've seen a few comments/posts lately saying that they or a service they know use the HN api. I'm curious about more of these services/uses.
Please post projects you made or services you use which utilize the HN api.
I'd also love to know a bit about "why" for each of those. <comment><USER2> Get HN replies notifications without a centralized server or needing to provide your email: [https://gist.github.com/Decagon/1ef31011d05bf71aa5570f2bddda...](https://gist.github.com/Decagon/1ef31011d05bf71aa5570f2bddda41c4)

Bit hacky, but uses the HN API to get a comment based on their ID (scraping the new comments page for ids), and then extracts the id from the comment and checks if the parent comment is the same as your username (by querying the API again), and if it is, then it sends a notification.</comment>


Musk Says Tesla Will Build 500 Cars per Day Starting This Week - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/05/15/tesla-model-3-production-500-per-day-elon-musk/ <comment><USER2> In just one more week, he could have had the much more impressive headline 'Tesla Building 500 Cars a Day'.

...or not.

<comment><USER3> It was stated in an internal email to employees. Whether it was intended to be leaked, or to grab headlines, isn't clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why would anyone buy a Tesla now? From my understanding, it's impossible to get parts or work done on these cars. Yes, they're solid state and shouldn't need it but we live in the real world...

<comment><USER5> Maybe you got your understanding from reading HN, but Tesla owners, as a group, are very loyal to the brand. In fact Tesla owners have the highest loyalty among cars in its price band. So apparently your understanding is wrong, or, Tesla owners are all bat-shit crazy and are covering up the fact that their cars are broken and can't be fixed.

<comment><USER6> Being insanely loyal can often blind you to the reality of the quality of your choices. Especially since your mind wants to reinforce choices you've made, to avoid being self-critical. Nevermind the sunk-costs fallacy works with more than just actual cash

<comment><USER5> OK, so you're voting for "bat-shit crazy". That's not bad, coming up on 200,000 bat-shit crazy customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's 500 a day, 7 days a week, folks:

"With production now running all week over 500 per day would add up to over 3,500 Model 3 vehicles per week."

"Only a few weeks ago, Musk confirmed that Tesla was producing just over 2,000 Model 3 vehicles per week, but he also said that they have been working through some important bottlenecks that could result in significant production increases."</comment>


Ask HN: Tech work, mistakes, and anxiety - <AUTHOR> My view of mistakes is pretty lousy. I beat myself up about them for extended periods, and when I make the initial discovery I feel a rush of panic. I'll sometimes find myself remembering old mistakes from years ago, for no reason at all.
I've been an anxious person since I was a kid. I suspect it's in my nature, as it's certainly in my family. I've been in the workforce for a decade, working as a general programmer/knowledge worker the entirety. The self-doubt and anxiety are at their worst. Maybe I'm partial, but this field seems like it feeds these fears more than other careers. Lately, I've been thinking about moving on to something else. Maybe I'm not cut out for it, but I do love what I do.
There are much wiser people than I around HN. I, and maybe even some others, could very much use some of that wisdom on this topic. <comment><USER2> It's not the role or the job. Changing those offers a moment's escape, but then those thought and habit-patterns will return. I'm a commodity trader who's been fighting these issues for twenty years.

I recommend that you investigate mindfulness first. This gives your mind/awareness the opportunity to recognize these unhelpful thought patterns being created by your brain-organ. Over time you can better balance your sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous systems, so you're not terrorized by your own amygdala. Jon Kabat-Zinn as a fantastic lecture at Google that explains mindfulness. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc)

The mindfulness ability gives me the "fleeting moment of volition" where I can avoid immediate reaction to amygdala-terror.

What I'm working on now is what Kabat-Zinn calls an "orthogonal rotation of thought" and what psychologists call "cognitive reappraisal training." The idea is to look at whatever problem you're traumatized by and intentionally choosing other ways to view it with different conclusions, and also to be able to observe the fear/problem without being stung so badly.

This is a new skill I'm working on, and I think it's bearing fruit. I've been experimenting with some simple software to prod more of the orthogonal-type thinking, rather than suffering endless cycles of the same unskilled patterns.

Good Luck. Feel free to DM me.</comment>


Makernews - <AUTHOR> http://news.makerland.org/

<comment><USER2> I'm really sorry that makernews does not have a "lame" layout like hackernews. On hackernews I can scan for interesting articles really really fast, on makernews it's SLOW. Also the design elements while cute might not appeal to the more hardcore maker crowd.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. One of the main things I like about HN's simplistic style, is that within a few seconds I can scan a dozen or so entries and filter out what I'm going to look through.

<comment><USER4> guys, what's your method of scanning? how could we improve?

<comment><USER5> Links:

\- Color. Make it dark. Light blue on a white background is very hard to read.

\- Font size: Too big. Look at HN.

Layout:

\- Reduce the padding in between entries. HN is easy to scan because everything is neatly packed. You only need to scroll a little to see the rest.

\- The header is too big. Kept it simple with a little logo. The focus here is the content, not branding. The tweet button should go in the bottom of the page.

\- The footer is nice, but a bit too big.

\- The subscription form is in the way of the "More News" link. Also, a lot of people in your target market refrain from giving their name along with their email.

<comment><USER6> Font size on HN is too small. I wonder why every webdesigner uses 14px and smaller. there is a reason why 16px is default size.

<comment><USER5> You can adjust it with ctrl (or cmd) +/-.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like HN might need to think about subHNs

<comment><USER8> I'm running [http://www.trejdify.com/](http://www.trejdify.com/) which is like HN but with business news only, and I have a modified spam-filter that sorts the articles automatically in the different categories. Maybe HN needs something similar?

<comment><USER9> How do you do the sorting?

I've thought about doing something similar with the metadata of posted urls but obviously that might be ridiculously easy to game.

<comment><USER8> I use the same spam filter as in the book "Programming collective intelligence"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool. The news starts a bit far right and far from the top for my liking, see [http://i.imgur.com/WjoXblB.png](http://i.imgur.com/WjoXblB.png) for what I mean.

<comment><USER4> thanks for the suggestion! we'll fix it!

<comment><USER10> Oh and take a look at the subscribe bit near the bottom in FF & IE

<comment><USER4> we'll do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In your background image, the screws at the top are threaded anticlockwise, but have a clockwise rotation arrow. Vice versa for the screw at the bottom by the robot head.

</comment><comment><USER9> In one of your scripts you appear to be missing an end bracket "}" \- also there's no real reason to have them in separate script tags that i'm aware of although i'm just being nitpicky at that point.

It looks nice - I like the graphics.

<comment><USER4> thanks! thank you for the kind words! and as far as typo is concerned we're going to fix it asap, just not now.. we have 250 active visitors right now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here is a link to the blog post with announcement explaining why it was created: [http://blog.makerland.org/post/62144777669/makernews](http://blog.makerland.org/post/62144777669/makernews)

</comment><comment><USER12> Desperately needs an RSS feed.

<comment><USER13> that's a great idea!

<comment><USER14> Ah - I mentioned RSS a few threads back before seeing this one. Yes, good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In order to read this website, are you supposed to 3D-print yourself some special glasses that render light blue text on white legible? Is that the secret handshake?

<comment><USER4> hahah, yeah, we need to change this

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only person who really hates the term "maker"? It's awful, generic and self-aggrandizing.

"Hacker" is a great term because it's fairly specific (you're working to alter something/make something work) and it's self-deprecating ("I'm just hacking away at it.").

<comment><USER17> Went to Maker Faire NYC this weekend. Feel the same about the term.

It should have been called 3D Printer Faire. If not that, then Kit-maker Faire. There was less "making" on display than at a typical arts and crafts festival, and much more commercialization of RTA kits than I'd expected.

Also, I feel like Rasberry Pi should only come after Arduino which should only come after one of these: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Radio-Shack-CK1000-Basic- Electronic-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Radio-Shack-CK1000-Basic-Electronic- Parts-Kit-/251343548006). (Not the 150 in one project kits, actual components.) Start with hacking things from sensors and transistors before programming chips.

As an example, on the linked "maker news" site, the home page currently has a headline about flickering a household bulb like a candle with Arduino, [http://flowcon.us/td/hwmach/](http://flowcon.us/td/hwmach/). This doesn't need a chip. You could do it a variety of ways with the components above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We definitely need such a place to gather news about 3d printing, not just publishing projects. Thanks to the team.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there an RSS?

Edit: Nevermind, just saw its going to be added tomorrow

<comment><USER4> added!

[http://news.makerland.org/rss/](http://news.makerland.org/rss/) [http://news.makerland.org/atom/](http://news.makerland.org/atom/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What is the engine behind it? Available somewhere?

<comment><USER21> It's python and django. We will probably release it as open source soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Deal breaker without a RSS feed.

</comment><comment><USER23> I like.</comment>


InstanTRIP: a new approach to VR headsets for mobiles from Japan - <AUTHOR> http://pad.instantrip.global/pad2-en.html <comment><USER2> Oh! I got to try the InstanTRIP PAD 02 a while ago but it never seemed to have made Hacker News. Thank you Sacha for posting. The Pad02 is a interesting step forward from the 01 version [http://www.amazon.com/InstanTRIP-PAD01-4-5-5Inch- Smartphones...](http://www.amazon.com/InstanTRIP-PAD01-4-5-5Inch-Smartphones- Cardboard/dp/B00U20GQSI/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1446682172&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=InstantTRIP) , a lot cheaper, a lot lighter. The only problem I see left with the device are that the lenses are fixed size (only working with devices of a limited screen size). Else the product concept is very nice imho. I would love to forward (translate) the HN communities opinion to Cocoloworks.

(Disclaimer: I know the creators - Cocoloworks - in person . They are members of the same coworking space as I am and I helped a little with the technical concept of the Pad02)

<comment><USER3> "I helped a little with the technical concept"

"Hold the smartphone firmly in your hands"

Seriously?!

Why didn't you help more?

<comment><USER2> Head Mount setups - as you point correctly out - are required for a long-time VR consumption. But they come with caveats: \- They make the devices heavier & bulkier. \- You need a good mechanism to fastly switch back to use as a mobile phone (i.e. when you receive a phone call while in VR) \- You need to make sure that the phone is tightly in place. If you move your head considerable force is applied to the casing.

Using your hand allows InstanTRIP Pad 02 to be tiny. It is folded together so tiny that you can put it in the back-pocket of jeans and forget you put it in there. Other VR boxes have to be carried in a bag and consume a lot of space in there.

Other head-mount-less "cardboxes" cost at least 20% more than InstanTRIP (for most you pay double the price) and the setup time is considerable.

There have been trade-off's made but I don't think that they are all bad (feel free to correct me)

<comment><USER3> If this thing is so tiny and light, why can't they simply staple some rubber bands on it?

<comment><USER2> The rubber bands would hold the case in place but the case is not strong enough to sustain the device. In other words: move your head to fast and it flies away. Hands prevent that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


To These Boys, Neil Armstrong Was Just Dad - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/science/neil-armstrong-auction.html <comment><USER2> This is submarine for the upcoming movie.

Of course, you can still enjoy the article. Just so you know, you are being primed.

<comment><USER3> Jokes on them, no one is going to watch it until its on Netflix, and then its just going to vanish into our queues forever and ever to never be seen again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is well written article. It does not wander into irrelevancies. I learned lots of new things. It had fun anecdotes. It was short.

Regarding the "set number of heartbeats", David Scott mentions it while they were training for Gemini in "Two Sides of the Moon". Neil had a physically less demanding role in the mission and chose to train less hard. Great book, recommended.</comment>


What's it like to be non-technical and own a company? - <AUTHOR>

I met with a family member over the weekend to discuss his latest endeavor for his company. Him being more of a business person and I more of a technical guy, he wanted me to take a look at what he had going on. The idea itself solved a good problem, was a web application, but was written pretty poorly. The application ran him around 10K (custom developed from some shop) and I think I could have did it in 2 weeks max.
The entire time we spoke he kept jumping out of the technical areas and back into business land. At some point I got annoyed and just asked him to clearly define how he was going to go from investment to potential profit. He didn't have an answer or any clue of how to finish off the application as he was not technical and couldn't finish it himself. When I looked at the code, it was workable, but in my opinion needed a good cleaning (not a total rewrite, but almost) to get to where he wanted.
When I have these sort of ideas I tend to knock them out rather quickly, by myself and then think of what I can do with it. Creating all this stuff never costs me money unless I really feel like it is worth my while. I couldn't imagine being in a situation where I had a decent idea and actually had to pay for it to get created.
So with all that said, how do non-technical people do it? I get the whole risk/reward model, but at what point do you feel out of your element and how do you actually produce? <comment><USER2> Well you have two primary types of non-technical people. Those who understand tech but can't write code and those who don't understand any of it at all but have ideas. It's the ones with just ideas that rarely (although it does happen) succeed. Your relative seems to be the kind that doesn't understand.

But I think there is a bigger problem here. Even if he doesn't understand the technical stuff, he SHOULD be able to understand what it should do, how it should solve the problem, and ways he can make money. You don't need to know a lick of code or any technical stuff to know what you want out of your product. I think the problem is a bit different than just feeling out of element.

As long as he genuinely wants to solve a problem and is actually innovative and passionate about doing it, money or not as a primary motivator is not the issue. The issue is whether or not he can figure out all the things he need to figure out as the business guy.

<comment><AUTHOR> He can read through the code, but he can not articulate it well. There were many times when I stopped to correct him so he knew. I think his biggest issue is that he doesn't understand the level of effort in writing a full scale application like this.

He sees the idea is almost there and has already moved on to thinking of other ideas. I suppose this is why they rarely succeed. The lack of technical understand blinds them as to what really needs to be done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a good technical understanding, but am no developer. That said, I am jumping into the start-up world and here's how I'm working at it:

Step 1: find a cofounder who is as excited about your ideas as you are with his, and whom you enjoy working with and vice-versa. I am still new to the startup world, but am working well with my co-founder. Hiring someone to code every time your product has a problem is not the correct way to go about it. You have to be able to constantly work and change to keep pushing something forward.

Step 2: immerse yourself in technology Really, I don't feel out of my element because I have surrounded myself in my life with technical people and technical things (went to MIT, have taken tech classes, worked at [stereotypical corporation] doing design and working closely with developers, and am learning how to dev in the process).

Step 3: learn your product and learn it well (including the technical parts) You have to understand your product in and out in order to make sure you are able to speak to those who need the product. If someone asks about security: know it. If they ask about a specific API you don't want to have to "get back to them."

Step 4: find a good balance between what you're doing, what everyone else is doing, and what needs to be done. I think the hacker/hustler combo is really valuable At some point the devs will be way too hosed in the development of the [product/site/whatever you're doing] to go out and find funding/sell the product. You need people who are confident to talk about what you're doing and will have fun doing it.

and Step 5: have fun. Getting into the start-up world is hard. You really have to enjoy taking risks, moving around, getting out there, and meeting people.

I'm sure I'm missing steps in all of this, but the steps above really help.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm solving the "I have no technical co-founder" problem by becoming the technical co-founder.

Let's hope it works out. I _am_ very familiar with tech and computers, but not in the programming sense.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like me.

<http://railstutorial.org/> to start with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about a company that offers a technical co-founder as a service.

You could take your idea to them and they would decided weather or not that wanted to work with you.

If both sides agree they took you on as a client for a 20% cut.

For the programmers it would give them a chance to work on multiple startups per year and for the client they would get the expertise or help they needed.

<comment><USER7> Great idea! It's just what my partner and I need for our start up!I wonder if there is a company out there like this?? .

<comment><USER8> Never worked with them but I believe SproutBox out of Bloomington, IN does just this.

<comment><USER7> Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: A story about a research adviser who automated himself - <AUTHOR> Some time ago I read a story here about a researcher who automated his paper critiques. The scripts detected weak sentences or something. I've been rummaging for about 2 hours through my bookmarks, history and HN history and I can't find it. Did anyone remember facts about that story, bookmarks or direct links? That would be much appreciated. <comment><USER2> Was it Matt Might? He wrote "3 shell scripts to improve your writing, or 'My Ph.D. advisor rewrote himself in bash.'"

[http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive- voi...](http://matt.might.net/articles/shell-scripts-for-passive-voice-weasel- words-duplicates/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!</comment></comment>


ideas are just a multiplier of execution - <AUTHOR> http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just_a_multiplier_of.html <comment><USER2> It seems a reasonable model to say that outcome = idea x execution, but there's no reason to put the dollar sign on the execution.

Rather than

outcome = idea x $execution

The more honest model would be

outcome = $(idea x execution)

</comment><comment><USER3> is this stolen out of the Getting Real book or did they steal it off of this guy's website??</comment>


SpaceX raises another $100M - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000118141217000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml <comment><USER2> Is that a lot or a little? How am I supposed to judge? It looks like SpaceX is well over $1B with a B in funding in total now. In comparison Blue Origin just gets money from Bezos, so "no" funding?

Big wikipedia list of private space companies (no funding info): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_companies)

Overall venture funding going up (from 2015): [http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/vcs-invested-more-in-space- sta...](http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/vcs-invested-more-in-space-startups- last-year/)

<comment><USER3> Well, Pinterest also has over $1 Billion in funding, if that makes you feel any better.

Sure reality is more nuanced than that, but it's a fun comparison to make.

<comment><USER4> Jesus F. Christ, you're right.

Just shows where humanity's overall priorities are, funny enough.

<comment><USER5> Instagram cost 19 billion. You can buy 73 of the worlds largest container ships for that amount of money.

<comment><USER6> Just as a side note, that's such a weird thing to compare against... What intuition does the average reader have about the price of container ships? If anything, I learnt that container ships are less costly than I would have guessed...

<comment><USER7> It's probably a misunderstanding of common media units of measure. If an Olympic swimming pool or an Empire State Building are a valid unit of measure, why not a container ship?

<comment><USER6> Those are probably weird too, but most people have some idea of how tall tall buildings are (even if they haven't been to NYC), and likewise have probably been to a pool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish SpaceX was traded on the stock exchange so I could buy stock in it. I had to settle for buying some TSLA.

<comment><USER9> There's no way Elon will take it public unless he absolutely has to. He said this about Tesla earlier this year:

"I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company." \- [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon- musk-inve...](https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon-musk- inventors-plans-for-outer-space-cars-finding-love-w511747)

The stock market news cycle is a constant barrage of criticism every quarter: commentary on whether they made some random analyst's projections, investors asking the same inane questions over and over... How many times has he given the "there's no point in giving you delivery estimates for specific months because the ramp will be exponential and small factors can change individual months by an order of magnitude" speech? I've heard him say that at least 10 times, and yet investors keep asking the same dumb questions every earnings call.

Which isn't really that huge of a time sink, but then people go and make a big deal out of that stuff in the press, "Model 3 production was supposed to be 5,000 by year end, and it's looking more like 500... Tesla suffers 90% crash in production rate! It's all over folks!" Even though Musk described this scenario two years ago, and said it was accounted for in their planning.

Now imagine he's trying to get to Mars and every 3 months he has to go in front of investors who are asking, "So, your orbital launch rate for this quarter seems to be 50% lower than projections, would you say that's more due to your incompetence or is it more that your business model is fundamentally flawed?"

He's not optimizing for quarterly revenue. He's not optimizing for revenue at all, he's optimizing to make something fundamentally new and valuable happen, and he's calculating that the value will come, although it's never clear what year. But a segment of public investors seem unable to accept that story.

<comment><USER10> Unlike Tesla, Spacex is not a threat to any other publicly traded company AFAIK. So the barrage of negativity will be minimal. For every incompetent investor who comes on board, you'll have a great investor who'll trust you. This is the case in Tesla too. I mean, the odds that most of your investors will be incompetent is fairly low. It's not that much of a time sink, if you are running just one public company. Running two is a miracle. Jack Dorsey is doing it, so I wouldn't put it past Elon. All said and done, given a choice, Musk will keep Spacex private forever.

<comment><USER11> > _For every incompetent investor who comes on board, you 'll have a great > investor who'll trust you._

Incompetence is blind trust. A good investor actually cares about the performance of the companies in which they invest - and that includes its ability to realistically project and meet those projections. A CEO who promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his job well. I am a fan of Elon, but you can't take a whole heap of money and then complain that people are interested.

As people have said, you can avoid this obligation to your shareholders by not having any.

<comment><USER10> A CEO who promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his job well

But Elon is not promising the moon. He is very clear when he states his goals, that these goals are very ambitious goals and that the probability of meeting them is fairly low.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Uses Rule 506(b): "If the issuer will not use general solicitation or advertising to market the securities then the sale of securities can be issued under Rule 506(b) to an unlimited number of accredited investors[4] and up to 35 other purchasers."[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_D_(SEC)#Rule_506](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_D_\(SEC\)#Rule_506)

<comment><USER13> Im not sure why you posted this? Is this important? (honest question)

<comment><USER14> If I understand correctly I believe they are pointing out that after a certain point in raising funds they will be forced to go public because they will have too many investors.

<comment><USER15> Elon seems pretty bent on having SpaceX do regular trips to Mars and back before IPO. I would guess that he will ensure that SpaceX stays within the private company rules so as not to go public until the Mars trips are commonplace.

Also, does this mean that SpaceX could raise funds indefinitely without going public as long as they come from the same source?

<comment><USER16> And those 35 sources can do credit swaps and various other kinds of deals with other sources...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know it's probably in the docs somewhere but I'm feeling lazy: how much does it cost SpaceX to launch a rocket? I'm sure there's some variation so a range or average will suffice. Thanks.

Edit: Turns out that was a bit of a silly question. Thanks for the replies.

<comment><USER18> Off the top of my head I'd guess it's $30M for the rocket launch itself:

\- SpaceX _charges_ $60M per launch.

\- Elon said fuel is $200k-$300k when explaining the value of reusability.

\- majority of cost is probably engine, followed by fairing, which Elon has said is expensive enough to want to reuse.

Keep in mind that there're a _lot_ of operational and R&D expenses, and the launches have to cover that too, so I assume a healthy margin on each launch.

<comment><USER16> Majority of the cost is probably operational and R&D costs.

A F9 rocket is 14 tons of mostly aluminium alloys. The materials aren't a big fraction of the costs.

Manufacturing is very expensive, but due to the accuracy, repeatability and size of parts needed, the vast majority of the work is semi-automated. It's the tooling and design thats expensive, not each individual rocket.

<comment><USER18> Wouldn't that suggest that the first rocket in a line, say the F9, would be very expensive, and subsequent F9s would be close to the cost of the raw inputs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> $450M, not $100M, right?

<comment><USER12> Also says "common stock issuable upon conversion of preferred stock"

So maybe this is about shares conversion?

<comment><USER20> It's likely an artifact of the nitty-gritty details of SpaceX's corporate structure; usually when you see something like this, it's reflective of a clause in their corporate charter saying something along lines of, "from now on, all additional equity stock issued for fundraising purposes will be in the form of a warrant that will convert to common once the preferred holders are able to cash out."

\- fmr investment banker

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does cash flow cover operations with existing technology? They will launch 18 or 19 times in 2017, most with paying customers. I could see new capital going to new technology like the Falcon Heavy and Human launches.

<comment><USER22> Existing F9 operations - commercial launch and ISS resupply - is comfortably profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Whoah, I'm actually surprised they're not cash-flow positive

<comment><USER24> They spend everything they earn, plus more, on R&D. The whole goal of SpaceX is to get to Mars. No one else would take them there so they want to build spaceships and rockets that will. To fund that they build the Dragon 9 and are working on their satellite internet constellation. Everything SpaceX does is meant to fund getting to Mars. So they could potentially be cash positive, but Mars.

<comment><USER25> Adding to this: Reinvesting everything you can in a productive way is exactly what you want in a low-interest rate economy. It can be debated whether you should also raise more/borrow in order to further increase investment, if you are capable of investing it in a constructive way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Maybe they're using all this money to also do stock buybacks.

<comment><USER27> What stock?

<comment><USER16> Even though they aren't publically traded, they still have shareholders. And some of those shareholders might want to sell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why would SpaceX want more funding?

<comment><USER29> Typically funding is wanted to pay for things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Musk should do a SpaceX ICO

<comment><USER20> MarsCoin has a nice ring to it

<comment><USER31> There is already a MarsCoin. According to coinmarketcap.com it has a "market cap" of about $100k, and a volume in the ast 24h of $148.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And this is why Blue Origin will ultimately come out ahead in the private launch race. This, for the most part, is technology that once shown possibly, is possible to replicate.

But what it takes is money, lots and lots of money. Bezos has that....

<comment><USER33> SpaceX has consistently developed technology for a small fraction of what it costs anyone else.

As a case in point, Blue Origin started before SpaceX. They have put more money into development than SpaceX. But they have yet to launch a single rocket into orbit.

And yet, Blue Origin is not bad. They appear to be in the same ballpark of costs as NASA originally estimated for development on the Falcon 1. They are just failing to rewrite the rules the way that SpaceX has consistently done.

That said, if SpaceX ever fails as a business because Elon takes one risk too many, I'm sure that Blue Origin will happily buy the technology...

<comment><USER21> SpaceX is wisely recycled NASA and Russia Tech too. Why reinvent all the wheels? SpaceX lured away some of the best industry engineers by promising projects that actually get launched. Accomplishment is as important as money to some of us techies.

<comment><USER34> Yeh what's that story of the engineer saying they need a heat shield solution. So spacex just bought the company that made what he recommended they look into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Oh, man.

I read _SpaceX_ , exactly as written in the title. My brain convolved it with _Tesla_ , and I started reading the comments thinking 'This won't do much to increase Tesla's runway'.

Need... deprogramming... now...</comment>


Runtime Compiled C++ for Rapid AI Development [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.gameaipro.com/GameAIPro/GameAIPro_Chapter15_Runtime_Compiled_C++_for_Rapid_AI_Development.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Found via the Runtime-Compiled C++ blog [0], which also pointed out that all the chapters from the first volume in the Game AI Pro book series (published in September 2013) are available for free download from the bottom of the main Game AI Pro website. [1]

[0] [http://runtimecompiledcplusplus.blogspot.com/](http://runtimecompiledcplusplus.blogspot.com/)

[1] [http://www.gameaipro.com/](http://www.gameaipro.com/)

<comment><USER2> I've never seen GameAIPro before. Great resource. Thanks for the link as I know just who to send it to.

</comment></comment><comment> awinter-py whoa, cool alternative to JIT.

Let's hope the future of closures in all languages (C++ through to JS / lua) is a rich one. The ability to synthesize code at runtime is powerful, but it would be much more powerful if it were better-supported.

The hoops these guys have to go through to get past console data-protection bits is insane.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the tl;dr for this article? What's the key insight behind making compile times faster?

<comment><USER4> Dynamically unloading/reloading DLLs to re-update code.

Cool if you can pull it of, but seems very house-of-cards. All you need is one bad reference floating around and boom.

I kinda wonder what this would look like in Rust. You could track all the lifetimes appropriately and make sure nothing got a handle into code that could be dynamically unloaded.

You'd keep all the native performance gains but without being nearly so brittle.

<comment><USER5> Keep in mind that when you have a dll you are unloading instructions, not data.

Also C++ has unique_ptr that also tracks lifetimes, I don't think Rust would really give you anything you don't already have and I think you are overestimating the fragility. I've done hot reloading of .dll and it isn't really all that fragile. If you have the c runtime as a dynamic .dll the heap won't be tied to the .dll either.

<comment><USER6> uniqe_ptr does not "track lifetimes".

For example, this Rust program:

      fn main() {
           let r: &i32;

          {
              let b = Box::new(i32);
              r = &*b;
          }

          // r is dangling here, this would be bad:
          println!("{}", r);
      }

Is caught at compile time. Rust keeps track of the lifetime of both b and r, and knows that r will be dangling.

The C++ version:

      #include<iostream>
      #include<memory>

      using namespace std:

      int main() {
          int *r;

          {
              uniq_ptr<int> b(new int(5));

              r = &*b;
          }

          // r is dangling here
          cout << r << endl
      }

This compiles with no warnings under -Wall -Wextra with no warnings, and happily does whatever you ask with r, even though it's dangling.

Yes, this specific example is a bit contrived, but such is the way of examples. My point is just that C++'s smart pointers are a great thing, but that doesn't mean they do everything that Rust's do.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


FTC Files Suit to Block Edgewell Acquisition of Harry's, Inc - <AUTHOR> https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/02/ftc-files-suit-block-edgewell-personal-care-companys-acquisition <comment><USER2> Harry's is the T-Mobile of razors and no doubt customers have benefited from a state-of-the-art razor at a fair price.

It's interesting so see the FTC wake up after so many years. It also vindicates the model of developing a new brand with direct-to-consumer before getting into retail markets. I am sure the retail is a much bigger channel, but it would be hard for a conventional consumer products company to make a really different brand promise.

<comment><USER3> Dorco has been offering comparable razors for decades, just without the level of marketing of Harry's or Dollar Shave Club.</comment></comment>


FotoBlog is a simple app to share your blogpost in a form of a photo - <AUTHOR> http://fotoblog.me/

<comment><USER2> What is there to discuss?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to share a hobby project.</comment></comment>


How to write a markdown editor with live preview in 50 lines of Python - <AUTHOR> http://meyerdumont.blogspot.fr/2014/02/write-markdown-editor-with-live-preview.html

<comment><USER2> good for you, meyer! empower the people! nice job. :+)

-bowerbird</comment>