Maths notation is needlessly complex [video] - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/videos/maths-notation-is-needlessly-complex-it-can-and-should-be-better <comment><USER2> This presentation misses a more fundamental point. It's not about the _notation_ at all, it's about understanding that EXPT, SQRT and LOG are _functions_ with a particular relationship to each other. That relationship can be expressed using a two-dimensional spatial notation, but that doesn't really help you understand the concept at all because there are a lot of _different_ relationships that are naturally described by putting three things in a triangle.

What you _really_ want students to understand is that expt, log, and nth-root are _functions_ that are related in the following way:

      expt(b, n) = x
      log-x-base-b(x, b) = n
      nth-root(x, n) = b

It's really that simple. No fancy notation needed. In fact, fancy notation _always_ gets in the way of understanding because people naturally think in words, not in spatial relationships. Mathematical notation was invented not because it aids understanding, but because when you're writing math with pen and ink it's faster and uses less paper to use Greek letters and spatial relationships than full words. But when you're on a computer, it's easier to write out the names of functions, and that is actually a better impedance match to people's natural mental processes, which involve _language_.

[UPDATE] I would like to revise this: not everyone thinks in language. But everyone _communicates_ in language. For _communicating_ mathematical concepts, language is the best tool we have. There's a reason that the symbology in math papers is invariably wrapped in natural language. It's the same reason that the video has a narration. It wouldn't make any sense otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Nope... The triangle notation is actually _awesome_ because it does NOT put all the focus on the fact that EXP, SQRT an LOG are _functions_ , and it actually promotes thinking at _a higher level than first order functions:_ it's about an _expression than can generate multiple functions_ or _a higher order function_.

Let me explain:

Let we define

        EX(b, e, x) := { pow(b, e) == x }

And then the notational rule saying that "substitution a parameter for a star/asterix in an expression is defined as the value obtained by solving that expression for the substituted parameter", so now we have:

        EX(b, e, *) == pow(b, e)
        EX(a, *, b) == log(a, b)
        EX(*, e, x) == root(e, x) # or sqrt(x) if e == 2

And here you go: "triangles notation" in "words" :)

And from this on you can go much easier to much deeper questions than the ones you get from staring at the graphs of 3 different functions that don't seem to relate much to each other.

Classic mathematical notation is great for doing very basic physics and engineering... but horrible for anything deeper. Only thing is that people doing anything deeper are smart enough to be able to tolerate a few horrible notations and probably even like them because they scare the "peasants" away :)

But we should be prioritising what's best for education, not for the macho-ism of uber-physicists or uber-mathematicians, so go triangles go!

<comment><USER2> I can't quite figure out which side you're arguing here. On the one hand you say that the triangle notation is awesome, but then you go on to use linear strings of symbols in exactly the manner that I was advocating. The whole point of the triangle notation (and all spatial notations in math -- subscripts, superscripts, the various arguments to sums, products, and integrals, etc) is that it's two-dimensional. That makes it really hard to render into ascii, which is one of the many reasons I think it's a bad idea.

I am certainly not arguing against teaching higher level concepts.

<comment><USER3> > The whole point of the triangle notation is that it's two-dimensional.

Nope. I'm arguing that what the OP calls "triangle notation" is just a _particular_ representation of a cool idea. The idea actually happens to be independent of _how you happen to represent it_. Yes, it lends itself well to 2D scribling. but the real reason I find it's cool, and useful to more than schoolchildren is that it's a much deeper idea in disguise. I think the author doesn't even realize how awesome is the idea he's promoting and why...

P.S. And about sides: generally, when I enter a 2-sided argument, I pretend to support one but argue for neither or for both at the same time, and from the argument I try to pull out a 3rd side (yup, I love triangles) that no one has yes seen, offering a fresh perspective. You can never have enough opposing points of view :)

<comment><USER2> We may be in violent agreement here. I agree that the idea being communicated is a cool idea. I just don't think the triangle notation actually contributes much to the effective communication of that idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problem is not that the notation exists and that there are multiple ways to say the same thing, it's that students are forced to memorize all of it for its own sake.

In fact, there aren't just "three" ways to describe 2 * 2 * 2=8, there are infinitely many. Because 2 * 2 * 2=8 shows up in so many different contexts, and notation in each of those contexts highlights a different (hopefully useful) feature for that context, you'll never be able to have "just" one way to say a thing. You can have your favorite, sure, but all notational preferences are aesthetic.

FWIW I think this triangle notation is also misleading in its own way. Students have to memorize arbitrary rules about how "mirroring" the triangle changes the operations at each corner, and whether they actually connect that to the underlying arithmetic operations is just as tenuous as with the classical notation.

You see the video maker say, as an afterthought, that once the students are fluent in this beautiful notation they can go about understanding why the it works, but the same problem as before! They're memorizing arbitrary symbol shuffling, maybe reducing cognitive load but also introducing random extra facts along the way like parallel resistance (which algebra students care about that, again?), and the connection between the true idea and the work they're doing is thin.

<comment><USER5> I agree with everything you say here, except for one remark, which, I'm sorry, is the silliest thing I've read all day:

 _> all notational preferences are aesthetic_

Try multiplying Roman numerals sometime. Or read up on ancient Egyptian fractions. Or learn group theory without Cayley diagrams. Or do algebra on equations written in prose -- _prose!_ \-- as was typical everywhere for a thousand years before the Renaissance. And what good are tensors without indices? Or matrices: do matrices have a first and second index, or do they have rows and columns?

Yes, matrix algebra with indices one and two is just as true, but that's the wrong observation. It takes what we already know for granted. In fact what we already know is the destination, and the point of departure is what you look at, or stare at, until you understand matrix algebra.

How does the brain turn markings on paper into something like abstract truth? Nobody knows, but it's silly to say the markings don't matter. The brain is biology, and in biology everything matters to everything else.

<comment><USER4> The key word here is preference, which is subjective by definition. Just because certain notations are considered outdated does not mean there is no situation in which they can have merit.

To wit, my preferred method for understanding tensors is without indices, and matrix notation is primarily useful for computers, not humans (in that regard I prefer the coordinate-free perspective). In fact, the insistence that linear algebra must be understood entirely using matrices and rows and columns is a red flag in my book!

I'm not saying that notation is irrelevant, I'm saying it's a matter of perspective. Of course there are notational breakthroughs throughout history. But what makes a breakthrough depends on what problems you're trying to solve, which is largely why computer scientists like indices and algebraic geometers like commutative diagrams. Each is as unwelcome in the wrong domain as roman numerals are in algebra.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really need to expand this into a blog post that has been brewing in my head for years, but my overall thesis is that notation is the least difficult part to learn in mathematics, yet because it's the first part that is encountered, it is also the most derided one.

Sure, notation can be better, and maybe this triangle of power is a cute way to make it better. Notation changes and improves all the time, btw. Well, all the time in the mathematical scale of time, which is two or three millenia. In this scale, things like the Greek letter for the ratio of circumference to diameter are remarkably modern, merely 300 years old. Notation for linear algebra is even newer, all from the 20th century.

However, I don't think better notation is where we need to focus most of our efforts in order to make our mathematics easier to understand. Logarithms and square roots are very basic things, and if keeping the mainstream notation for them straight is someone's biggest problem, then there are far bigger things that are likely to be problematic to this individual. If you start reading, say, the following mathematical discussion of neural networks,

[http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html#eqtn7](http://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap1.html#eqtn7)

you're baffled because you don't know what those symbols mean, there's likely far deeper things that are unfamiliar, such as differentials, rate of change, derivatives, and the multivariable chain rule. A couple of days ago we had someone come to ##math in Freenode asking for help with this, and I tried, but the guy had never had any calculus training whatsoever. Normally going from no calculus to the multivariable chain rule as applied to differentials or as a best linear approximation takes at least three semesters in university, and I don't think this path to enlightenment could be shortened much more.

I guess I am being very old school and reiterating that the royal road everyone's been looking for for the past couple millenia just doesn't exist.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road#A_metaphorical_.E2....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Road#A_metaphorical_.E2.80.9CRoyal_Road.E2.80.9D_in_famous_quotations)

<comment><USER7> A lot of math is simple and logical. Notation is a major obstacle, because of a. the sheer amount of various notations which are rarely used by a non-expert in a particular subfield, thus easily forgotten and b. un-searchability. Reading a math text becomes an exercise in jumping around figuring out what the author meant with a particular notation, which usually leads to more notations, etc.

Heck, coding CRUD apps I have access to better notation exploration tools than a mathematician. I can navigate to a definition or check the unit tests in seconds. I don't have to instantly remember the purpose of every function, I can simply look up the precise details on the fly. I can rely that the authors have not overused symbolic operators, so I can easily search StackOverflow for tips on the framework design. No more rote memorization of hundreds of tiny factoids that may or may not be germane to the problem at hand.

<comment><USER6> > A lot of math is simple and logical

And I suppose you are implying a lot of math is illogical. :-)

> Heck, coding CRUD apps

Yeah, I hear the "bad notation" argument frequently from programmers, precisely for the reasons you describe: because you can't read a mathematical textbook with a programmer's IDE.

Some mathematical texts will do you the favour of having a list of some notation that they consider to be idiosyncratic to their own text, but few would go as far as to letting you look up the definition of plus and minus. In general, though, mathematics isn't programming, despite some similarities and analogies between the two. The symbol for the partial derivative is used nearly universally to mean partial derivatives of some kind, so there's a lot of tradition that writers of mathematical texts expect you to know.

Programming has similar traditions that are baffling to outsiders but as invisible to the programmers as water is to fish. For example, in programming it is understood that everyone is capable of easily handling plain text files. Have you ever seen a newcomer try to write source code in Microsoft Word? I have.

Wikipedia and other online mathematical texts can help a little by hyperlinking the text to explain new notation or terminology, and sometimes texts are just plain bad in that they use idiosyncratic notation without explanation. In the last case, it takes effort to work out from context the likely meaning of a symbol.

In general, though, I stand by my thesis that notation is not the biggest obstacle to mathematics just like learning to use a text editor or IDE is not the biggest obstacle to programming. The fundamental ideas behind the practices of each are much deeper than the superficial aspects of text and notation.

<comment><USER7> > Normally going from no calculus to the multivariable chain rule as applied > to differentials or as a best linear approximation takes at least three > semesters in university.

Multivariable chain rule is much simpler than the 18 months learning curve would imply. It boils down to figuring out what a function is, what a derivative is, what the chain rule is and generalizing to multiple dimensions. We could probably teach it to a sufficiently logically apt high-schooler within a week, provided we could find a sufficiently motivating use-case.

The lack of compelling use-cases being the other major obstacle in learning math. Why bother rote memorizing tens of concepts and hundreds of factoids, when a lot of math texts pride themselves of building the perfect theory in abstract, decoupled from the original motivations.

<comment><USER6> I personally don't find a lot of motivation to learn calculus because engineers in the 19th century needed to figure out how to make better steam engines or cannons or because physicists wanted to understand electromagnetism. My own motivation was: okay, neat, derivatives. This says a lot about a function! What happens now if we try to do this with more variables? Oh, wow, look, the chain rule gets all weird now and grows additions it didn't have before!

For other people, I guess you need to find a different motivation. Maybe neural networks will do it for some. I must admit that I picked up a neural networks text in 1995 because I wanted to build robots, didn't understand a word of it, and ten years later I got a degree in mathematics having long ago forgotten about the neural networks book which I only recently picked up again. But regardless, ever since I was a little kid, mathematics is just something that naturally attracted me.

We should not minimise the intrinsic interest of the subject itself either. There is an artistic side to mathematics, where we do it because it's beautiful for its own sake. Not all mathematics needs a purely practical reason to justify its study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "It's like it's a different language!" (incredulously)

Yes, it is a different language. It is built for expressing ideas about deduction and quantity clearly, flexibly, creatively, and it works beautifully. Saying 2^3 = 8 and log_2 8 = 3 sort of get at the same fact but not really, that's misunderstanding their purpose. They express that we are evaluating functions. You can express 8 - 2 = 6 or 6 + 2 = 8 "in the same way" (Crazy! How can we have two notations +, - when they are just inverses of each other?! We shouldn't give ourselves language to express both "the difference between 8 and 2 is 6", and "2 more than 6 is 8" because they happen to be rearrangements of the same equation!) but the equations are used to convey meaning in different ways in different contexts.

The second example, the 8^(1/3) is not even equal to 2, it's equal to three values, two of them are imaginary. It's important to have notation for "the thing that when you cube it is equal to 8" distinct and understood so that when you begin understanding imaginary numbers (high school iirc) you have context. Then you can explain the definite article in that quoted sentence is actually inaccurate. What if he had selected an example with two real roots, like sqrt(4)? What should we put in the the "triangle of power"? The positive branch cut? Okay, now you have to explain that you're really doing a different operation now, that has multiple answers, but we are going to pick one of them and put it there, but we have to remember that it could be either. Which is best expressed using separate notation to explain the operation you are doing that isn't even a function.

The fact of the matter is that these ideas are distinct and relating them is a separate, worthwhile exercise that helps understand the structure of exponentiation and its inverses.

And in doing mathematics you will find that switching to equivalent but more informative or clean or applicable notation is one of the most valuable workhorses we have for solving simple problems.

<comment><USER9> > The second example, the 8^(1/3) is not even equal to 2, it's equal to three > values

No, the expression "8^(1/3)" is equal to 2 and only 2, even though there are three values of x for which it holds that x^3 = 8.

> What if he had selected an example with two real roots, like sqrt(4)?

The notation √a refers to the _principal_ square root of a, which is defined to be positive. You might recall expressions such as "x = +/\- sqrt(a)", which would be redundant if sqrt itself was a multivalued function. a^b, for rational b, is defined in a similar manner.

<comment><USER8> It depends entirely on the context -- mathematical notation, as always, depends upon the level of instruction, textbook, context, mathematician etc. In algebraic geometry we take the radical ideal sqrt(I) for an ideal I which is most certainly a set of values. When you're teaching it for the first time (as is the context we are discussing right now) it's quite important to reinforce how many square roots there are. Context generally makes it clear (among people who already understand what is happening) which version you mean as is usually the case. Similarly with logs, though we have the nice log/Log distinction which I suppose has become standard-ish. There is literally no reason we select the positive branch other than notational convenience and one of the biggest mistakes I've seen with freshmen students trying to learn calculus is algebra mistakes like this -- taking a square root and only considering the positive branch. Because they were taught square root of 4 is 2. And that's true sometimes (when you are computing sqrt(x)), and not others (when you take the square root of something for the purpose of solving an equation). I've noticed some online resources recently are very careful about referring to sqrt(x) as the "principal square root function", something which is very good but that I have never once heard anyone say in real life, teacher or mathematician.

Obnoxious irrelevant pedantry aside, context matters. You understand the concern here: simplifying notation masks the actual mathematics. These operations aren't identical or as simple as the video would have us believe, distinct notation exists for a reason -- to separate separated concepts.

<comment><USER9> > In algebraic geometry we take the radical ideal sqrt(I) for an ideal I which > is most certainly a set of values.

But that's just overloaded syntax, isn't it? We're concerned with real numbers here.

> There is literally no reason we select the positive branch other than > notational convenience

Agreed, it's just a convention, though a very helpful one.

> I've noticed some online resources recently are very careful about referring > to sqrt(x) as the "principal square root function", something which is very > good but that I have never once heard anyone say in real life, teacher or > mathematician.

I had to look up that one, since my maths education wasn't in English. I agree that it's nicer than what appears e.g. in my textbook: "the square root is always a positive number or zero", which conflicts wiwitthe definition that's on Wikipedia. It's probably the conflicting uses of "square root" to refer to two different things (all solutions, which is more relevant analytically, or the unique positive solution, which is more helpful for notation) that causes the kinds of freshman errors you mention.

> You understand the concern here: simplifying notation masks the actual > mathematics.

My point is that it doesn't mask the actual mathematics any more than the regular notation already does. Which also is a problem, but not the one at hand.

<comment><USER8> >But that's just overloaded syntax, isn't it? We're concerned with real numbers here.

Yes, you're 100% correct, I was just giving an example for why it's natural for some (me included) to think of sqrt(x) as a solution set, I suppose.

>My point is that it doesn't mask the actual mathematics any more than the regular notation already does. Which also is a problem, but not the one at hand.

Well, the normal notation is a little confusing yes, but the new notation makes it worse -- they propose marrying the principal sqrt function, which makes an arbitrary choice and drops information, to the log and exponential function, which both do not over R, and for which the exponential function does not over C.

At least we teach three separate concepts and then unify them later as best as we can, as opposed to trying to pretend they are all the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Math notation is an endlessly interesting subject, but I must say I wasn't very impressed with that idea.

If we're going to give up some notation to adopt another, it would need to have some serious and obvious advantages.

I waited for that throughout the video. The author consistently seems to assume that what he's saying is "intuitive". It isn't.

Why should I put a particular number in a particular corner of the triangle? How does it help computation? I see triangles being nested within triangles and fusing together according to rules that seem completely arbitrary.

Certainly, using our visual apparatus to help us complete computations without having to think about it can be appealing, but that's probably not the most convincing example.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. The notation should ideally have some obvious spatial symmetries/structures that correspond with the symmetries of the operation (sticking a smaller triangle in the corner doesn't LOOK like it cancels out, and it should.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is learning all the special cases of the triangle manipulation (O-plus when its bottom right and the top is missing but multiply in the bottom left, multiply when the top is given and bottom is missing etc) better than just learning the different notations?

Not to mention the existing mathematics you miss out on by using this.

That being said I think it's a fantastic tool to quickly explain the relationship between the notations (the first half of the video).

</comment><comment><USER13> The video doesn't give any examples of complex formulae written using their "triangle of power" notation. This may be useful for teaching mathematics, but it's not clear that it scales. Much of the benefit of the notation could come from simply writing x⁽¹/²⁾ instead of √x. (Annoying, unicode doesn't have a superscript slash. "(",")", "=", and all the digits are available in superscript, but not "/".).

A huge hassle in moderately advanced mathematics, where new domain-specific operators are introduced, is ambiguous precedence of operators. There's a tendency to define operators in such a way as to minimize the number of parentheses required for the most popular uses of that operator. Such idioms make formulas hard to read. For an example, watch Andrew Ng's videos on machine learning.

It might be useful to always parenthesize in textbooks. Teach kids to always write "log(n)" instead of "log n". After all, how does "log n × m" parse? Is there an official standard on that? If so, where?

</comment><comment><USER14> When I learned the basics of electronics in middle school our teacher (and, actually, every teacher since) explained the relation between resistance, voltage and current using a triangle:

         /U\
        /R*I\

(Where U = voltage, I = current, R = resistance.)

I'm not sure it helped _me_. Anecdotal evidence: Just now, as I was trying to figure out which letter goes where, I was actually thinking in terms of what's going, as in "if at constant voltage I increase the resistance, the current should drop, ok, so I = U/R?".

So, in conclusion, I don't know which one is "better". Most likely, different people think in different terms and require different methods of learning, so if there's another way of explaining things I think that's good, isn't it?

<comment><USER15> I always pick one at random, U=R/I

You really only have 1/2 chance to make a mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Most of the way through the video, the narrator is saying things like "the student can easily see that..." No, she can't! Not if 'see' implies understanding. The narrator acknowledges this at the end, but by then, he has passed up the opportunity to show the usefulness of this notation (if that is so) by applying it in more complex situations.

The video is also plagued with distracting visual effects (there are some that are worthwhile, but most are not.)

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the problem statement, I like the use of a 2D representation, but the triangle symbol as drawn in that presentation is _gargantuan_. I think the symbol needs more work.

One thought that comes to mind is that I'm not convinced the bottom part of the triangle should be there. It implies a direction connection that I'm not sure exists. Removing that overlaps with ∧, logical and, though.

Another that comes to mind is that I can't think of another mathematical symbol that has such divergence in meaning depending on what is left blank like that. The closest I know of is integral, where you can leave the from and to parts blank for a symbolic integral, but that's still not like leaving those blank turns the integral into a differentiation (the opposite), depending. I'm sure there's something else somewhere up in math, too, but nothing your average student will hit.

Similarly, note that filling in all three corners of that symbol is actually an _equation_. I'm also not aware of any other symbols that constitute entire equations on their own. In fact hiding away an = symbol is probably a big strike against the idea as if anything standard math education underplays and abuses that most fundamental of symbols; let's not add to that. Again, somewhere up in higher maths than I've gotten to there may be symbols that constitute entire equations, but it won't be something most students see.

Also I think once that symbol is being shown with full expressions rather than cute little single-digit numbers or single-letter variables, it's going become very difficult to deal with.

I think there's something to this, though. I'm criticizing in the spirit of continuing to move forward. (I'm aggressively hostile to the idea that math notation is perfected and debating better alternatives is some sort of betrayal or something.) Personally I'd seek out a smaller, inline symbol that may visually reference a richer presentation (which may not be this literal triangle) for a nicer didactic experience, but doesn't literally draw it out in the formula.

<comment><USER18> > _One thought that comes to mind is that I 'm not convinced the bottom part > of the triangle should be there. It implies a direction connection that I'm > not sure exists._

The operator in question is actually quite common.

> _Buying stocks. Suppose you buy $1000 worth of stocks each month, no matter > the price (dollar cost averaging). You pay $25 /share in Jan, $30/share in > Feb, and $35/share in March. What was the average price paid? It is 3 / > (1/25 + 1/30 + 1/35) = $29.43 (since you bought more at the lower price, and > less at the more expensive one). And you have $3000 / 29.43 = 101.94 shares. > The "workload" is a bit abstract — it's turning dollars into shares. Some > months use more dollars to buy a share than others, and in this case a high > rate is bad._

[https://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-analyze-data- usi...](https://betterexplained.com/articles/how-to-analyze-data-using-the- average/) (harmonic averages section)

The concept describes various processes which contribute towards identical workloads at different speeds (or rates).

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure how to relate what you said to my post? Wrong reply button?

<comment><USER18> > _One thought that comes to mind is that I 'm not convinced the bottom part > of the triangle should be there. It implies a direction connection that I'm > not sure exists._

I should have included this quote to begin with. I'll put it in now.

In any case. A direct connection does exist. If you follow the link, there are other examples where the (+) operator would be useful besides parallel resistance.

<comment><USER17> Now I see. Thanks.

I still think it implies a degree of symmetry that will confuse students, though, and that the notation can be further improved from what was proposed there. The operation in question is not trilaterally symmetric, and using a trilaterally symmetric symbol is probably misleading. The root symbol is arbitrary, but at least it doesn't promise nonexistent symmetries.

<comment><USER18> The root symbol (as a multi-valued function) returns the roots of unity (multiplied by a scalar). Which is like, the posterchild of imaginary symmetries. </pedantry>

More seriously. The selling point of the triangle operator is that it highlights isomorphisms between the three more traditional operators as a cyclic group. Which is a symmetry, just not the commutativity that students might naively expect. So I suppose it's a double-edged sword. I agree that it sucks as an operator. Nonetheless, the video could help a lot of students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> While HN has definitely identified the problem with adding yet another notation, I think it's fairly straightforward to to remove the "root" operator. Simply use the exponent notation with a power of "1/3".

This gets directly at the core concept of what a "root" really is, and it's straightforward to manipulate with addition/multiplication of groups of roots using the normal arithmetic methods.

<comment><USER20> While I do prefer fractional exponents sometimes, what about the "asymmetry" of imaginary numbers?

There may be a benefit to capturing that sqrt(square(x)) != x

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Beautiful, elegant, and I disagree it should be taught.

∆ Is used for delta's so frequently that I could see some nasty issues arising in notes for higher level maths.

I think this could be an excellent teaching tool, to be honest I sometimes pull log notation back into exponential with a variable if I can't remember it immediately, but I think this guy didn't read Feynman's biography where he discusses the problems with creating notation.

<comment><USER22> I don't think this notation would get confused with deltas; how it's used is pretty different, and overloading symbols (especially once you're in higher levels) is common enough.

<comment><USER21> Overloaded symbols became a nightmare in some of my later undergraduate work.

It is not the math classes where I'm worried that this would be a problem, it's in the engineering courses. There's a few situations in mechanics/structures/materials that I can think of where using ∆ instead of the existing 3 notations would become nearly untenable. In these circumstances each "line" of a solution/step usually took the form of more than one page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This seems like a good teaching tool, but seriously would anyone want to write out big equations with the triangle instead of x^n ? Powers are used incredibly often and the standard notation is clearly easier to write in both typing and handwriting, and the same is true for log. And as has been mentioned the n-th root symbol is technically not a true extra notation, as you could always write x^(1/n) - but it does make some equations extra clear because there are so many roots that often need to be taken.

So, don't complain about the notations - the triangle would be far more annoying to write equations with if that's the only thing you use. The notations are like 'helper' functions that make implementing a larger function easier, but also make things less clear to start out with because there are more forms of the same thing - so use the triangle to point out it's all the same thing (or all related, anyhow) but keep the notation all the same.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is futile. It's just another standard. xkcd said it best: [https://xkcd.com/927](https://xkcd.com/927)

</comment><comment><USER18> In one of my (middleschool?) science classes, my teacher explained the density equation in terms of a triangle. Of course, we didn't adopt it into our notation. But I think that just having shown the class the diagram helped a lot of my peers.

Later in high school (in a different state), a mathematically-challenged friend was studying logarithms during study hall. Our curriculum used this bizarre, three-step arrow rule to transform logs into the familiar (y = b^e). Having remembered the density triangle, I showed my friend a similar diagram for logs. He said "Thanks. I was probably going to get a zero on the next quiz. I might actually pass now."

      d = m / v
      v = m / d
      m = v * d
          .
         /m\
        /---\
       /v | d\
      .</comment><comment>-.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's even worse than shown in the video. Consider:

sin^2(x) = (sin(x))^2

sin^-1(x) = arcsin(x)

Switching to triangle notation would help remove this confusing overloading of the superscript operator. The only drawback I see with triangle notation is there's no obvious way to type it on a single line.

<comment><USER26> You might be able to approximate the triangle in line by using slash and backslash. 2/3\ = 8. 2/\8 = 3. /3\8 = 2. Not nearly as pretty, but if you're familiar with the triangle in a hand written context, it might get the point across.

<comment><USER27> Just use the connecting edge: 2(/)3 = 8, 2(-)8 = 3, 3(\\)8 = 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> And we should all learn esperanto because it is so much more rational and regular than English. Somehow it doesn't work that way.

</comment><comment><USER29> I suppose what would be really nice is for computerised mathematics to be marked up such that these interchanges can be made automatically, with libraries of rule sets shared online.

You're reading a document and it has some funny triangle thing you don't understand? Click on it to get a menu of alternative representations, and you see it can be swapped to "log" notation. Further, you go to your reader preferences and add a rule "whenever you see this triangle thing, show me it as a log".

A student finds some crusty old document with funny "heart monitor" symbols, clicks on them and finds they're just a particular kind of power triangle. They update their preferences to replace those symbols with power triangles.

Of course, holy wars rage on mailing lists about whether the default rules should convert "tau" to "2pi" or "pi" to "tau/2" ;)

Seriously though, too much time is spent making computerised mathematics look right in PDFs (e.g. TeX), compared to telling the computer precisely what it is/means. Thankfully there are some attempts at this (e.g. OpenMath), but they don't seem to be very widely used.

</comment><comment><USER30> \- 2^3, log_2(8) ... why do we have 3 different ways ? Because, playing with tautologies is the whole point of mathematics (and language) !

\- The new "notation" is essentially expressing the same language in a different alphabet.

I was hoping for some smack talk about partial derivatives (see SICM) or about the absolute proliferation of symbols in Differential Geometry...

<comment><USER31> I strongly need to reread that book.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My own personal opinion on this, is that it's all well and good but it's not that students are "Made" to learn three different types of notation but that these are three standard forms that you need to know to work in the mathematical space.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's a work in progress [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenzizenzizenzic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenzizenzizenzic)

</comment><comment><USER33> I agree that the notation can be a problem, but it has to serve a number of different uses:

1\. Communication between mathematicians.

Like coding (or legal communication), the notation needs to be precise and unambiguous or you can cause misunderstandings the derail the point you are trying to make. This does not always make for easy to understand notation.

2\. A shorthand for key concepts and relations to other math users.

This is something of a problem that is caused by the fact that mathematicians are often the people who teach the non-mathematicians. Who then in turn use the math or teach it to novices. It's a large hurdle, but then you're left with people who learned one notation as a novice, and are then forced to relearn how to communicate these concepts if you want to participate in the academic conversation.

3\. A method of communication between non-mathematicians (like physicists or engineers).

There is actually a fairly large difference between how physicists communicate a key concept in their field, and how a mathematician might communicate the same idea. This isn't a large problem at the start, but then you're left with trying to move the ideas down the chain to novices and you have possibly several competing notations that eventually have to be sorted out. Which is why some notation is carried down and others eventually gets "weeded out".

</comment><comment><USER34> While this post limits itself to basic mathematics, the notations in group theory and advanced linear algebra JUST DON'T MAKE SENSE. Please read the "Brakerski's Homomorphic Cryptosystem", section 3.3, of this ( [https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/137.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/137.pdf) ) paper.

I had to read it 10 times to truly understand what the notation was trying to say! Fail.

<comment><USER35> That seems just fine and should be understandable by a reasonably sharp undergraduate.

<comment><USER34> Would you care to elucidate the exact math that makes homomorphic search possible

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> i feel like the usual best practice for studying math is to use the same concepts in as many different settings/with as many different terms for the same thing as possible. By this I mean, literally, knowing the subject so well that there's not a context that can confuse you. Notation is no exception to this. If you know 2 ways to correctly solve a problem all the better. If you know 3 that's even better, for instance.

</comment><comment><USER37> Presumably people have been rightly complaining about this for 100's of years? I'd say the same is true for musical notation. Though similarly I doubt anything will ever be done to ameliorate these issues, the bad old system which has accreted over time has a tremendous amount of cultural momentum

</comment><comment><USER38> Let's see how this notation holds up to nesting...

</comment><comment><USER29> This also brings to mind other attempts to clarify notation, such as [https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/sicm_edition_2/chapter009.html) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_algebra#Relationship...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_algebra#Relationship_with_other_formalisms)

</comment><comment><USER39> Not this crap again.

The notation is the way it is because it works for mathematicians. Works well. It's not that complicated, but it does take some time.

Just learn the god damn notation and quit whining about it. Ugh.

<comment><USER40> I've always viewed it kind of like minimized and obfuscated source code. If you took a program and replaced all of the variables with single (greek) letters and created custom notation for every type of function you would get something that looks a lot like mathematical notation.

People can certainly learn it, but it's hard to argue that it isn't a barrier to entry and has no doubt helped to turn many students off from mathematics.

I mean the primary reason a lot of our notation looks the way it does is so that it can be written compactly (paper was expensive) using quill pens. Is it so crazy to consider a world where mathematical language is more self documenting?

<comment><USER41> It's not just math, but every other field as well. Notation has only become more succinct as the price of paper fell, so it's really programming that's held back by legacy limitations and ASCII.

<comment><USER42> Even in latex or scala you're going to write out the symbol name anyway, for the writer of the symbol there is no significant advantage over raw ascii. Unfamilar readers will have to spend time understand the notation instead of the underlying concept. Familar readers however do get a moderate increase in readability.

Generally in tech we have a lot of domain specific knowledge which means you will find yourself far more often in the position of the writer or unfamilar reader than the familar reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't like it for a number of reasons.

One relatively simple one is that it doesn't naturally convert to a typed out version. Outside of category theory, where big commutative diagrams really do a ton of work, we should try to avoid introducing too much notation you can't type out, especially at the introductory level. Suppose two kids are trying to study together over facebook chat - how are they going to write these huge triangles out?

Second, it's actually unecessarily complicated. It introduces three concepts (exponentiation, logarithms and roots) as though they were entirely separate. But actually, the easiest way to understand how to work with roots is to just define them in terms of exponentiation. E.g. the nth root of x is just x^(1/n). All of the normal rules for roots follow from the rules for exponentiation (and fractions) immediately. You don't need a third side to the triangle, that's just adding extra complications - all you really need is exponentiation and logarithms and a way of representing that they're inverse operations in a certain sense.

So there's actually a simpler way to express all this in a notation that's much more similar to what we've seen before. The trick is to draw out parallels between familiar operations like multiplication and division. Note: I made this up 10 minutes ago, apologies if there are very similar proposals, it's just really obvious.

Most of the basic arithmetic operations can be written using binary infix operators, e.g. +, * and /. It turns out, exponentiation and logarithms can be too. In fact, if you're typing, exponentiation already is.

Let x raised to the nth power be written as (x ^ n) (note this is essentially exactly the way it's already typed out, only I'm using some unusual extra white space to emphasize that we're treating ^ as an infix operator). It's a little upward arrow that says scale x up by n (exponentially).

And let log base n of x be written as (x v n) or possibly (x \/ n). It's a little downward arrow that says scale x down by n (logarithmically).

This makes the two operations work in a way that's fairly analogous to multiplication and division in a relatively neat way. For example, for positive integers, multiplication can be thought of as (linearly) scaling one number up by another, while division scales it (linearly) downward in an inverse way. As already noted The same holds for these two operators, only the scaling is non-linear.

Lots of familiar relationships carry over, e.g. Note that ((x * n) / n) = x. Similarly ((x ^ n) v n) = x. And where (n * (x / n)) = x, it's also the case that (n ^ (x v n)) = x.

And where multiplication and division interact with addition and subtraction, those operators interact similarly with multiplication and division, e.g. where x * (n + m) = (x * n) + (x * m), similarly x ^ (n * m) = (x ^ n) * (x ^ m). And so on. You can derive all the relationships you need from a very small number of rules that are easy to remember because they're structurally almost exactly like the rules for operations you're familiar with. You already know those when you learn about exponentiation, so you don't have to learn new and weird geometric relationships.

All of those nice properties there follow from the fact that exponentiation is just the next operation in the sequence of hyperoperations (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperoperation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperoperation) ) after multiplication.

Introducing this weird three place operator actually masks the underlying simplicity of exponentiation and its inverse.

<comment><USER44> "And let log base n of x be written as (x v n) or possibly (x \/ n)." "Lots of familiar relationships carry over, e.g. Note that ((x * n) / n) = x. Similarly ((x ^ n) v n) = x."

You must mean ((x^n) v x) = n. Note that ^ is not at all a symmetric operator, and neither is v.

"e.g. where x * (n + m) = (x * n) + (x * m), similarly x ^ (n * m) = (x ^ n) * (x ^ m)."

You must mean x ^ (n + m) = (x ^ n) * (x ^ m).

It seems your proposed notation does not make things so clear as that one cannot get lost in it, either.

<comment><USER43> Ah bummer. Both of those were actually just transcription errors because I was writing formulas out in the course of a meeting, playing with whether the order of the v operator should be that way or the other way around - I don't have time to give it much thought at the moment but I'm admittedly less convinced I picked the right one. In the second case, that was a typo. In the first case, what I'd meant to write was: "Note that ((x * n) / x) = n. Similarly, ((x ^ n) v x) = n." You're right that neither is a symmetric operator but of course neither is division or subtraction. I sort of glossed over that intentionally, but the non-commutativity of the ^ operator would indeed probably be the main place that switching to infix operators could mislead.

<comment><USER44> I didn't mean to come across as unduly harsh. But, yeah, I think a misleadingly symmetric looking notation for an asymmetric operation can be a source of confusion (this is also a potential problem with the misleadingly symmetric looking triangle of the linked video, and standard notation for subtraction, etc., for that matter [though in this last case, it's been beaten into us with enough familiarity that we all know the deal]).

Actually, I don't like infix notation in general: it leads to unnecessary, distracting questions about operator precedence and so on. I'd rather we all switched to some other notation for writing out even additions and multiplications and such; drawing out the actual tree structure of nested operations, say. (I often feel notation should simply follow the structure of what's being notated, nothing more or less. But, alas, inertia; I can only use the notation I like in the privacy of my own home...)

<comment><USER43> Infix notation IS funny, though I figured anyone learning arithmetic would be familiar and we're stuck with it - we probably can't convince grade schools to use Polish notation for arithmetic by default. In general, my attitude is that you should pick a notation that makes all the similarities with things you already know as obvious as possible and then stress the differences. They've already learned about non-symmetric infix operators if they've learned subtraction and division, and the only reason to expect that ^ would be symmetric was by analogy to multiplication, which is easy to clear up. Take it as a lesson that by default you should never assume operations are symmetric, in preparation for linear algebra ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> One practical concern I have for this is that you're going to need bigger triangles to avoid things bumping into eachother around the triangle.

I _really_ like the point he's making, just not sure if this triangle notation is the most practical.

</comment><comment><USER46> I thought it would talk about lack of namespace, implicit overloading of symbols etc...

<comment><USER47> Lack of support from normal unicode text files, particularly with the frequent use of subscript and superscript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know the history of this notation? Like were the concepts discovered independently by three different people? Hence there are three ways to notate?

</comment><comment><USER49> :( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12125756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12125756)

</comment><comment><USER50> Is there a quick way to use this triangle in LaTeX?

<comment><USER38> A variation of this should do the trick:

\newcommand[3]{\triangle}{{}_{#1}\overset{#3}{\Delta}_{#2}}

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I can't help but wonder if the triangle of power is a Zelda triforce reference.

<comment><USER45> I'm sure if would capture imaginations if it were called the "triforce" :)</comment></comment>


Wasmcloud Progress: Structure of FaaS Back End for WebAssembly Code - <AUTHOR> https://christine.website/blog/wasmcloud-progress-2019-12-08 <comment><USER2> This looks interesting, and it's coded in Go no less so the code will be rather simple to read for anybody interested. I've been excited about WebAssembly since the day someone on HN pointed out it's generic enough to run on backends. I think the possibilities are endless. I could see even game engines targeting WebAssembly as an approach to mods or scripting.</comment>


How to Start an Email Newsletter Company - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupdigest.com/2010/08/03/how-start-email-newsletter-company-howto/ <comment><USER3> What's the upper limit of recipients for a 3rd party solution like MailChimp? I manage the infrastructure of a newsletter that's sent to over 2 million recipients in a 12 hour deliverability window, and it didn't look like 3rd party solutions came anywhere close to hitting this. I looked around briefly but no services seemed to come anywhere close.

<comment><USER4> They normally can accomodate for that, but they don't show you pricing on their site. Basically, you'd have to contact them and talk about your specific needs. But I don't believe companies like Mailchimp, Aweber, and SendGrid would turn you down.

<comment><USER5> Yep if you contact them directly you can get direct pricing on any sized list. If you contact me (emails in my HN profile) I can put you in touch with our guy lance at Mailchimp

<comment><USER6> (Make sure to put your email in the about box, otherwise it is hidden)

<comment><USER5> whoops, done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote this in response to a HN member who asked me how we got started with our email newsletter. If your interested in starting an email newsletter business or just curious about the industry check out the post.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for taking the time to write the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Chris (Cmccann7) was fantastic on the phone. I really can't speak highly enough of him. He responded to my email, took the phone call, explained patiently what he did and then wrote up an entry about it. Thank you again Chris for being so supportive.

<comment><USER5> Thanks Sebastian :) A lot of new entrepreneurs ask me this same question and I figured instead of repeating myself each time, why not write a blog post about it!

Goodluck with your newsletter business!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just started a newsletter list for guys with girlfriends. Make your Girlfriend Happy: <http://makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com> we give you useful reminders about your anniversary and her birthday plus weekly ideas to help make her happy.

Let me know what you think.

<comment><USER10> I think if you need an email reminder about anniversaries/birthdays your relationship is pretty much shot. But maybe some of the other stuff could be useful for me.

I think you need to make the past content much more visible on the site so users get an idea of what they're signing up for. You really aren't creating any interest for the user unless you do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Realizing that starting an email newsletter company is costless and doesn't have to distribute only news is actually a big idea. There's a ton of businesses to be made around distributing curating publicly available content, and being able to serve members of a community you really love is a rare, awesome opportunity.

<comment><USER5> The HackerNews digest (I think that's what the HN newsletter is called) is a great example of this. Curated and sent to my inbox to keep me up to date on all of the HN discussions, I love recieving it.

<comment><USER12> I think you are referring to the newsletter I started up a month ago - <USER2> Newsletter, <http://www.hackernewsletter.com>

(And thanks!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do these companies monetize their lists? (Please forgive me if this is common knowledge.)

<comment><USER5> A post is coming on this topic soon.. But based on what I have seen the short answer is direct advertising, ecommerce, or paid subscription.

<comment><USER13> Thanks Chris. (I'm running a brand new niche email newsletter for patent attorneys and would enjoy chatting if you have the time. My email is in my profile.)

<comment><USER5> Can't see your email, make sure to put it in your about section (can't see it otherwise). Send me a note, mine is in my about section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> We did a podcast interview with Chris McCann of StartupDigest just a couple weeks ago. Lots of interesting topics were covered. It's well worth a listen.

<http://techzinglive.com/?p=243>

<comment><USER5> And if your looking for a new podcast to follow, TechZing is a great one

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> if you use mailchimp to send emails, why would you also need ReturnPath for deliverability?

<comment><USER5> Deliverability is seperate from just sending out the emails. Deliverability is the business of making sure your email was actually sent and recieved to your subscribers.

Deliverability itself is a big industry and return path is the leader in the field. Mailchimp resells Return Path as it's "inbox checker" product which we use to analyze our emails to make sure we aren't tripping off spam filters.

<comment><USER16> In this case, deliverability is MailChimp's job...not ReturnPath's. MailChimp says so on their site. They have feedback loops with ISPs to show you opens, bounces, spam complains etc.

The "Inbox Inspector" add-on shows screenshots of what your email looks like in a handful of email clients and runs what I'm guessing is a SpamAssassin check that returns a spamminess number. If this add-on is from ReturnPath, then the service they are providing isn't exactly "deliverability" once you've sent --- it's really a toolkit to inspect and QA your messages BEFORE you send them.

<comment><USER17> ReturnPath's stuff is a bit more advanced than that. They give you a large list of email addresses to send to (consisting of a number of webmail clients and ISPs). They then pick these up and provide stats on which have and haven't been delivered. They also ran your content through a number of spam filters (including, but not limited to SpamAssassin).

They also provide a whitelisting service (previously the "Bonded Sender" programme) which helps deliverability in a lot of cases, but the primary benefit is that it's pretty much the only way to guarantee delivery of large quantities of email to Hotmail.

So, they are closely involved with deliverability, but you're right in saying that it's down to Mailchimp to keep their sending IPs reputation clean.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Quantum Computers and Machine Learning Will Revolutionize Big Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data/ <comment><USER2> > Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google's search engine > whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing > which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring > with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that > his scheme went against their business plan. "They want to know everything > about everybody who uses their products and services," he joked.

I'm confident that wasn't just a joke. That's what Larry Page thinks is Google's direction, and I think he's wrong. I was just telling a Googler friend that this is the wrong way, and in the future they will face increasing criticism for it, especially if the Internet's users en masse decide to switch to a much more secure, much more private Internet, where user tracking would be very difficult.

When that day comes, Google won't be a friend anymore for web users. They'll be the enemy. And I'm saying that as a still somewhat loyal Google user right now.

The problem is Google has always "won" by being a _friend_ to web users. If they are the enemy, they will lose. That's why it's vital for them to find a way to make money, that doesn't automatically make them the enemy of a much more secure Internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Lloyd's 2 recent papers are pretty interesting ... [http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0411](http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0411) [http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0471](http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.0471)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which tools help with your Zettelkasten system? - <AUTHOR> I'm reading 'How to take smart notes', and intend to implement the work flow within. I'm not an academic, and not planning to write a book. I just want to get more value from the time I spent reading and thinking.
What tools work for you? I know Zotero is the go-to tool for references.
I'm not sure which tool to use for the slip-box. I'd love something that:
- Has a GUI or at least ncurses interface
- Doesn't require familiarity with emacs
- Stores things as plain files (which can be versioned with git, or synced to a cloud filesystem) <comment><USER2> [https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/) was mentioned in "Ask HN: Thinking of using Zettelkasten , recommend software/platform" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22979257](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22979257)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm considering using:

\- The Archive [https://zettelkasten.de/the- archive/](https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/)

\- Connected Notes (doesn't exist yet): [https://github.com/tsiki/connectednotes](https://github.com/tsiki/connectednotes)

\- Zettlr [https://www.zettlr.com/](https://www.zettlr.com/)

\- Zettelkasten (UI seems complex, and the app is crashing on my system) [http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/](http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/)</comment>


Landing page of our upcoming product. Do you understand what we do? - <AUTHOR> https://staply.co/landing

<comment><USER2> "Create groups, send links, share files and we'll organize them so you don't have to" <\- This doesn't mean much to me. Maybe I didn't 'identify' with the problem you're trying to solve.

If I understand correctly, you're a service that uploads e-mail attachments to a central location? Kinda like sending all -mail attachments to google Drive, then sorting by who you send to?

<comment><AUTHOR> Uff, so good that you've commented, thanks. There is a huge misunderstanding. We let you create folders (groups) with a chat built in. All shared content is shared with a message. It is made so that it is later possible to understand who sent what, when and why.

<comment><USER3> _It is made so that it is later possible to understand who sent what, when and why._

I think that's a good problem to solve. Just a few minutes ago one of my coworkers walked over to another coworker's desk to explain a file they just uploaded to Dropbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> It really is. File-sharing nowadays is half way done. It works good to share files across devices, but it lacks context in case of person to person sharing. Now we just need to understand how to present our solution, and you just helped us a bit, thank you one more time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like your design, and the message was quite clear. It didn't take very long to find out was your product does and was value it can add to a group workflow.

The parallax effects on the front page aren't very smooth when scrolling though, and my personal opinion would be to have the Russia/English navigation item displayed as the last item rather than the first. Other than that, it looks great!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! Yeah, we probably need to optimise that parallax. And you are right about the RU/EN navigation , don't know how we've missed that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand what you're doing, but the plans (at least in English) are quite confusing. Technically they are all month to month plans, but naming them "Month" "Year" and "Eternity" is rather confusing. I would definitely think about renaming them to something not having to do with a date range.

<comment><USER6> Completely true. I would also suggest to write a bit more about your security. Just SSL doesn't sound convincing to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. May be we are not right here, but we didn't want to write how secure Amazon is. Probably we'll have to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Short: no. I'm guessing it's about sharing files and commenting on those shared files. But, that's a guess. So, try another version of your explanation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, we definitely need to make some changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got the general idea of 'better shared files', but it only really made sense when I saw the screenshot. I'd suggest moving that further up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like Dropbox + Messaging? Looks interesting...looking forward to trying it out.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly how the initial concept sounded like. So glad to see this "formula" here. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ditch the broken scrolling. It's jerky and jumpy on a MacBook Pro.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for advice, sorry for a headache, we'll fix that.</comment></comment>


Show HN: 1337repos - <AUTHOR> https://reimertz.github.io/1337repos/ <comment><AUTHOR> Haha, someone starred all of the repos.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry this is entirely offtopic, but do you play rocket league? I played a game last night with someone with the tag "busta_reimertz" and it seemed like too big of a coincidence not to ask.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do play rocket league, but not yesterday. :D Do you play on PS4?</comment></comment></comment>


How to easily delete your online accounts - <AUTHOR> http://www.accountkiller.com

<comment><USER2> You can't delete your account on HN btw. You can get banned, but your posts and profile remain.

<comment><USER3> I believe pg sometimes deletes accounts if you email him.

<comment><USER4> It's not clear that you should have the ability to delete your old posts. They have often become part of a conversation that is no longer yours alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really? Tiny Adsense ads in the "instructions" area to fool us??

<comment><USER6> When you refresh, it moves to a different block. This is in violation of Google's AdSense guidelines. If you report the site, they'll get in trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Deleteyouraccount does just the same, with a much cleaner UI;

<http://deleteyouraccount.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> nice site, i think very useful, but lacking in presentation (not usability) but design-finesse.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've got a landing page in "spanish".

The translation is _so_ bad that I would never _ever_ use their service. Hint: you should never use google translate to provide localizaed versions of your website.

For those who did not get it: your dog speaks _insert language here_ better than google translate does. Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER10> In a lot of cases apps don't delete your account, they just mark you deleted.

<comment><USER11> In some cases it's a performance thing. Instead of deleting the entire table with user X's info, they just flip a value in the deleted/disabled table column. If they really want to delete it they can run a batch job later.

Then again, it might have as much to do with reactivating accounts as it does with server performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would love to see a facebook account deletion phishing site where it lured users into entering their login credentials and clicking a few submits and deleting their account.</comment>


Marking Streets to Improve Parking Density - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.09057

<comment><USER2> I'll add a mention here in favour of marking spots, all the time, even if the spots are over-sized. I recently used a car-sharing (Mercedes/SMART fortwo vehicle) service, and parked the car reasonably, let's say 40cm front and rear. Close, but fair. Between the time I left the car, and someone being "parked in", someone had left, leaving a space, where someone had then parked nearly touching the car I left, subsequently in the now _tiny_ space behind the new parker, someone else parked, too close. The middle parker unable to extricate their vehicle called the police reported my car as the offender "it was nearly touching my bumper, I can't get out" leading to €370 fees from the police for towing the shared car I had used (although, a call to the provider would have rendered it unlocked and drivable), and a further €120 in fees from the car sharing service provider.

I now take a photograph of my car (or rented shared cars) in all parking situations, in the hope that evidence that "i was there first" might mean I am not subject to accusations of offensive parking when over-eager city-dwellers park in spaces that are really too small, and later find themselves blocked in.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you using Indinero? - <AUTHOR>

We're trying to decide b/w: a) using quickbooks or b) using indinero and giving our CPA access to our account and having him categorize our transactions and export them to his quickbooks.<p>Has anyone used both? What are the main points to keep in mind? <comment><USER3> This is Jessica from inDinero -- happy to give you a complete picture on what the ideal choice is.

For small businesses (where it's just you and possibly a few employees), they typically use inDinero exclusively b/c they don't have complex needs.

For larger businesses (more than a few employees), we actually see a few customers on both inDinero and QuickBooks simultaneously, where the business owner will use inDinero, but they'll also have an accountant on QuickBooks.

In any case, it completely depends on what you're looking for. Accounting software like QuickBooks was built with accountants in mind, so many of our customers are converts. Feel free to email ceo [at] inDinero.com, and we'd be happy to give you the complete low-down.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try mint.com too.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a replacement for indinero? I was planning on using it for my personal finances and indinero for business finances.

<comment><USER5> Indinero seems most like a cash-flow and cash-flow projection monitor.

If you need to keep a business' finances in order, prepare for tax allocation, keep track of P.Os, etc, InDinero may be a piece of the puzzle.

As you've stated you have a CPA who prepares your financial statements (I'm assuming). They use Quickbooks so anything that doesn't export to that is kind of a waste.

Indinero, Less Accounting, Xero, there are a lot of products out there that claim to do business accounting easily. Mint.com works very well too - <USER2> question is does Indinero have the feature set you need at the price you want?</comment></comment></comment>


Students turn to online tutoring  - <AUTHOR> http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303763804579186043194947628?ref=/home-page

<comment><USER2> >The drawback, she says, is that communicating via text chat "takes a lot of time." Mr. Swaminathan says TutorVista can provide audio-chat sessions if scheduled in advance.

Really? I would not pay $45 an hour for text based tutoring. I had assumed up until I read this it would be skype-like video to video chats. Having to schedule _audio_ chats as if this is some kind of special feature is a bit of a joke is it not?

Fair play to all of the tutors giving up their time to help students, that's great but the people behind tutors.com really ought to consider adding video features as standard. Even if it's just using Skype or a similar service</comment>


Russell's Paradox and Frege's Mistake - <AUTHOR> http://cs.smith.edu/~jhenle/sr/Files/russ06.pdf?trk=object-title

<comment><USER2> Rather overwrought, in my opinion (and I'm a very big fan of Frege). That second paragraph is especially sketchy. (Check out Augustus De Morgan, Georg Cantor, Mr. Boole, and another of my favorites, Pseudo-Scotus.)</comment>


The rise, fall, and rise of the status pineapple - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-53432877 <comment><USER2> The lengths wealthy people go to outdo one another are just absurd. I heard a segment on the radio about the Atlantic salmon fly-tying community, who tie based on historic patterns that used ever rarer bird feathers.

Modern tiers are faced with a choice now that the birds that were rare then have become even rarer (or extinct): Tie with something else, or find a source of authentic feathers.

The segment was an interview with the author of The Feather Thief[0], who investigated the lengths one "enterprising" tier went to to acquire authentic feathers, destroying the historical scientific record for whole species in the process.

It seems insane that a fad of rich men from a long time ago becomes the obsession of a subculture of the larger fly tying community and that the result of that is a hole in the scientific record. It's enough to make you wish that folks would get obsessed with growing rare pineapples instead.

[0] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44153387-the-feather- thi...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44153387-the-feather-thief)

<comment><USER3> When you're talking about fly fishing, you're already selecting for {time to fish} && {unwilling to pursue the most efficient method of catching fish}. So it's not a leap to && {slightly crazy}.

(Said as a fly fisherman)

<comment><USER4> > {unwilling to pursue the most efficient method of catching fish}

What's the most efficient method of catching fish?

<comment><USER5> What's the most efficient method of catching fish?

Explosives, hands down, by a wide margin. Most people aren't optimizing for pure efficiency though.

<comment><USER6> Dutch commercial fishers devised a way to electrocute fish and scoop them up.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In South Africa right now alcohol sales have been banned as part of the regulations to deal with covid-19 pandemic. This has led to the rise in popularity of the pineapple as it is used to make home made booze.[0]

[0][https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and- africa/2020/07/18/...](https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and- africa/2020/07/18/south-africa-bans-alcohol-sales)

<comment><USER8> Can anyone explain why everyone on HN seems to use footnotes even in short comments with a single link which follows the aforementioned footnote?

It's not a jab at the parent comment, I am simply interested if it's some kind of cargo cult, or I may be missing something here.

<comment><USER9> We also zero index, as all counters should.

But seriously, footnotes keep the text cleaner.

<comment><USER10> I think zero makes sense as array indices when it refers to an offset as some kind. But I find it more intuitive for counters to start at one, in line with colloquial ('1st' and 'first') and mathematical usage.

<comment><USER9> First is arbitrary. We could use binary encoded using swallows mentioned in Monty Python.

But I digress :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love that picture's description:

> Margaret Thatcher (left) and a pineapple

<comment><USER12> I wasn't sure if that was British humor or accidental.

<comment><USER13> See also:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National_Antarctic_Expedition&oldid=968107679#Second_voyage,_1904)

 _" Piper Gilbert Kerr (right) alongside a penguin, March 1904"_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scottish_National_Antarctic_Expedition&oldid=968111930#Second_voyage,_1904)

 _" Piper Gilbert Kerr (with pipes) alongside a penguin, March 1904"_

Much as I disapprove of wiki vandals, I think this is a harmless injection of light humour into yet another dreary badly mangled wikipedia article (not the topic itself, just the way that wikipedians slowly squeeze the life out the written word revision by revision).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It helps that pineapples are really delicious. Also, eating them is sort of a family project. Everyone observes the thing sitting on the kitchen counter like a little potentate, waiting for it to ripen. Then it must be sliced up in the best way to remove the horrible armor while saving every bit of the delicious flesh. All that work is worth it, though: unlike other labor- intensive fruit e.g. pomegranates they're big enough to flavor multiple meals. Pineapples seem particularly well-designed to demand the spotlight.

<comment><USER5> >waiting for it to ripen.

This is only because of modern refrigeration. In centuries past a pineapple, or any other tropical fruit was ripe by the time a pineapple made it to NYC or London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I grew up in a city with a lot of Colonial buildings, and you'll often notice pineapples carved into them (above the front door, for example). My grandmother told me they symbolize hospitality, which Wikipedia confirms:

        In architecture, pineapple figures became decorative elements symbolizing hospitality.

So I guess the story doesn't really end where the article does! I wonder how much revisionism is involved there: at the time they were actually carved into the architecture, were they _intended_ to symbolize wealth? Or hospitality?

<comment><USER15> Here's a great example, it was actually the first result on Google Images for "newport colonial home". Scroll through the pictures and count how many pineapples you can find:

[https://www.curbed.com/2017/3/9/14868658/historic- colonial-n...](https://www.curbed.com/2017/3/9/14868658/historic-colonial- newport-rhode-island-homes-for-sale-sherman-clarke-house)

Try it next time you're visiting a historic place :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> TIL: the pineapple is native to southern Brazil near the border with Paraguay at the very state I live in for 15 years and I had no idea about that.

<comment><USER17> Paraná?

It's consistent with the fact that no worthwhile crop grew in the dry tropical portion of Brazil until the 20th century. But it is really unsettling to think that pineapples are not natively tropical.

(But on a second thought, even today they do have the best pineapples there.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've long wanted to stay in this fabulous Pineapple folly in Scotland operated by the Landmark Trust [https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and- book/properties/...](https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/search-and- book/properties/pineapple-10726/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Slightly surprised not to see a reference to the Dunmore Pineapple:

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

 _" the most bizarre building in Scotland"_

<comment><USER20> > "the most bizarre building in Scotland"

Surely that award should go to the Scottish Parliament Building?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> One, there is a variety of pineapple (white pineapple) you can only get in Hawaii because it is too delicate to ship that really is tastier than what you find in U.S. supermarkets.

Two, this article doesn't address the crazy urban rumor I heard years ago that people who place pineapple flags outside their homes, at least in the suburbs, are signaling that they are swingers.

<comment><USER22> With so many delicious varieties of pineapple it's remarkable how for the most part even in the Bay Area all that's available to buy is "pineapple".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's something so innocently charming about this whole story, the idea of an aristocrat taking his pineapple down the street to impress his peers is ridiculously funny.

<comment><USER24> It makes me wonder what the current equivalent "flex" might be.

<comment><USER25> Driving an expensive car with its muffler removed, so that you get +5 HP but also so that everyone in the neighborhood hears, and sees, your expensive car.

<comment><USER26> The louder a car is the least efficient it is. I bet the loudest cars will fast be seen as the worst when luxury sport EV will become the norm.

I can't wait for the Tesla Roaster 2.0 to be delivered in volume (idem for its motorbike equivalent), so I can finally sleep with open windows.

<comment><USER27> > I can't wait for the Tesla Roaster 2.0 to be delivered in volume (idem for > its motorbike equivalent), so I can finally sleep with open windows.

If it's accelerating using cold gas thrusters (SpaceX package) it'll be extremely loud. Thankfully it'll probably only have 1-2 seconds of juice from the air tanks.

<comment><USER28> Honest to god thought you were joking about cold gas thrusters, but apparently Musk has genuinely floated the idea.

Next up, flamethrowers on the front?

<comment><USER29> and tunnel boring cutting heads under the nose to avoid traffic

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't help but see a slight resemblance to the induced scarcity of certain Instagram famous houseplants such as a monstera albo variegata, for which buyers will regularly spend several hundred dollars for a tiny cutting in hopes of propagating one for themselves.

<comment><USER31> I had no idea "Instagram famous houseplants" was a thing. My grandmother had loads of those around her old farmhouse in the 70's and 80's.

<comment><USER32> What's your grandmother's Instagram?? I need to follow her and see the plants!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This presumably, _finally_ explains why there's so much pineapple-motif furniture.

</comment><comment><USER33> Sir Christopher Wren placed two golden pineapples atop St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

[https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/st-pauls-gold- pin...](https://www.mylondon.news/news/zone-1-news/st-pauls-gold- pineapples-18354270)

</comment><comment><USER34> 'We will eat snails and fish eggs! Then the poor will feel even worse about themselves!'

</comment><comment><USER35> I always wondered why the logo for these very fancy British hotels was a Pineapple!

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

</comment><comment><USER36> The last sentence in the article mentions celery as a luxury good:

"No, they didn't. Dr O'Hagan says the truly wealthy then set their caps at another luxury and difficult-to-grow food. Celery."

Does anyone have a good link to the story about how celery became a luxury item? The obsession with pineapple as an exotic luxury makes at least some sense to me. But...celery??

<comment><USER37> [http://www.sporkful.com/when-celery-was-more-special-than- ca...](http://www.sporkful.com/when-celery-was-more-special-than-caviar/) \- podcast ($). Interested in the pyramidal black prince pineapple too.

[https://www.tastecooking.com/celery-was-the-avocado-toast- of...](https://www.tastecooking.com/celery-was-the-avocado-toast-of-the- victorian-era/) better article

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> My pineapple: [https://imgur.com/a/o68U2](https://imgur.com/a/o68U2)

</comment><comment><USER39> Veblen goods.</comment>


Apple won't let bad guys use iPhones in movies, says Knives Out director - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/2/26/21154151/apple-bad-guys-movies-iphones-product-placement <comment><USER2> But didn't Adam Sandler's character use an iPhone extensively in Uncut Gems? He's the protagonist, but definitely not a "Good guy."

P.S. Yes, it's an excellent film, and it's on Netflix.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup (it's called Kumbuya) - <AUTHOR>

We're about to launch Kumbuya (www.kumbuya.com) - where you promote the businesses you love by creating and sharing your own deal of the day. It's another take on the coupon / deal phenomenon, but with Kumbuya, <i>you</i> create the deal for the products and services you want. Any thoughts would be appreciated! <comment><USER2> Nice. But definitely needs some designer love! Just the basics of C.A.R.P. would help a bunch: <http://thinkvitamin.com/design/how-crap-is-your-site- design/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: <http://www.kumbuya.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> Good idea. Landing page should be simpler. Way too much clutter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks tgrass... I agree; we'll try to simplify it.</comment></comment>


Rewriting a large production system in Go (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2013/08/rewriting-large-production-system-in-go.html

<comment><USER2> Probably needs a [2013] tag. Previous discussion was here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6234736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6234736)

<comment><USER3> Thanks. Added.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Quote from the linked paper [1]:

The majority of Flywheel code is written in Go, a fact we mention only to dispel any remaining notion that Go is not a robust, production-ready language and runtime environment.

[1]: [http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43447.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43447.html)

<comment><USER4> At my company, our high-volume Go systems are some of the most reliable and predictable ones we run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could someone familiar with the Go ecosystem comment on how well Go works with relational and NoSQL databases? Specifically, I'm interested in libraries that serve an ORM (or ORM-like) function, or that are non-blocking.

For example, in the Java world, libraries like jOOQ[1] make type-safe SQL construction a breeze and allow you to make your relational schema a "first- class citizen" of your app, versus a mere afterthought of how your ORM happens to represent them.

Or in the Scala world, there's a non-blocking MongoDB driver called ReactiveMongo[2].

Would love to hear how this compares to the Golang ecosystem.

[1] [http://www.jooq.org/](http://www.jooq.org/) [2] [http://reactivemongo.org/](http://reactivemongo.org/)

<comment><USER6> My open source NoSQL database, Aerospike, has made a strong commitment to Go. I first posted to golang-nuts in 2009, and our native Go client has been out for a while ( [https://github.com/aerospike/aerospike-client- go](https://github.com/aerospike/aerospike-client-go) ). We've supported the GothamGo meetup, which was a great session if anyone was in NYC that saturday.

Shameless plug over, please forgive me, but you did ask about Go and NoSQL.

"non-blocking" is kind of a funny concept in go, because since they have green threads, even what might seem blocking isn't "really" blocking. Not sure quite what you mean - do you really mean "using channels and goroutines as the interface" ?

The comment about Go's typing system not working well with NoSQL is certainly true. I find it's annoying working with JSON - similar problem - but the JSON tools have these nice ways of tagging your fields with the JSON fields for easy conversion. We might have to look at this with Aerospike.

I spent time with one company, LiquidM in Berlin, who rewrote a PHP production system ( that's not "muscular C developers" :-) and had a very, very positive experience. They told me their switchover to GoLang was incredible, with line counts reduced massively (like 3x) and performance up 10x and programmer productivity way up. I was trying to find a blog post about their experience, but nothing's coming up.

The most annoying problem with Go is its lack of performance compared to JVM (including probably Scala), where common operations are usually 2x ~ 3x faster runtime, in production. In my opinion, the GoLang people need to stop blaming their garbage collector, because even with GC off Go is far slower.

The GoLang argument is code is easier and funner to write, which is certainly true, and Go is still an evolving implementation.

Go's big thrust this year is solid support for ARM, likely so they can support Android well. I'm running Go on my Raspberry Pi2 (and my original Pis, but they only have one core so it seems a little dumb). It is a fun language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Previous HN Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6234736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6234736)

</comment><comment><USER8> > If I could get out of the 1970s and use an editor other than vi, maybe I > would get some help from an IDE in this regard, but I staunchly refuse to > edit code with any tool that requires using a mouse.

Ob"Fallacy of the excluded middle": you can get this kind of contextual information in emacs pretty easily.

<comment><USER9> > > , but I staunchly refuse to edit code with any tool that requires using a > mouse.

Like Acme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I meet a function and I have no idea what it returns, the lazy thing I do is

         foo, bar := someFunc(baz)
         int(foo)

Most times the conversion does not work and I see a nice little error with the type of foo.

</comment><comment><USER11> Coming from an Erlang on Emacs background, does vim not allow you to follow variable declarations to their definitions or otherwise get contextually relevant information?

<comment><USER12> It does: [https://github.com/fatih/vim-go](https://github.com/fatih/vim-go)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> On the topic of rewriting, has anyone had difficulty refactoring Go code? Having the compiler scream at you whenever you decide to leave a variable undeclared seems to make this more challenging as opposed to just having your IDE point out to you a variable is unused.</comment>


A Gut Wound That Changed the History of Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/keeping-an-eye-on-your-gut <comment><AUTHOR> The article describes it as a shotgun wound. The original description by the doctor says it was a musket-shot wound[1]

[1] [https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=H6F4_9joRkgC&pg=PA7#v=o...](https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=H6F4_9joRkgC&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER2> I don't think there's actually an inconsistency. On page 8 of the book linked, it describes "the charge, consisting of powder and duck-shot ...". Merriam- Webster[1] defines "duck shot" as "a medium-heavy lead shot used in duck hunting". Muskets used smooth (unrifled) barrels until around the middle of the 19th century [2], so they would have been well suited for firing shot shells.

[1] [http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/duck%20shot](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/duck%20shot)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifled_musket#History_and_deve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifled_musket#History_and_development)</comment></comment>


Node.js v0.12 Is Now Available with Improvements to Clustering and Performance - <AUTHOR> https://strongloop.com/strongblog/node-js-v0-12-released/

<comment><USER2> Time to warm up the test suites and see what the damage is...

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh... I think that's why the announcement hasn't been made on Twitter and such just yet. Waiting to see if they need to immediately release 0.12.1

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yay !!! Took a year, but it's here now..</comment>


Mark Pilgrim on The Setup - <AUTHOR> http://mark.pilgrim.usesthis.com/ <comment><USER2> This one is well worth reading. He doesn't just list his kit, he has quite a bit to say on writing and some very interesting ideas about a "dream setup".

</comment><comment><USER3> _This may become a factor in choosing a publisher for future books: the ability to avoid Microsoft Word altogether._

I can relate; writing a book in Word (or OOWriter) is an absolute nightmare. Never again.

(I am also having trouble imagining working on a computer while sitting in a Poang armchair. Your body is not at the right angle to look at something in front of you, really.)

<comment><USER4> Eric Drexler is said to have hung a monitor from his ceiling so he could read it reclining. Back in the CRT days. (I don't remember the source.)

<comment><USER4> (I always thought of that as the CRT of Damocles.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the Poäng chair from IKEA, but I don't know how anyone can sit in it all day long at a desk. It's a lounge chair.

<comment><USER6> And I don't know how anyone can sit in a desk chair all day long.

Here's how it works: wireless mouse on a table next to me. Keyboard on my lap (with the wire plugged into a front-side USB port). Feet up on the matching Poang footstool. Monitors about six feet away from me on a regular desk. Appropriate text sizes in Emacs and terminal, and appropriate zoom levels in Chromium. (Chromium remembers per-site zoom levels automatically.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd love to see a photo of Mark in setting at his desk working from the chair in front of those monitors.

</comment><comment><USER8> The bit that has surprised and interested me with usesthis.com is how few people they've talked to use Linux, and how many people use OS X.

I mean, I knew OS X was big in the geek market, I just didn't quite realise it was this popular.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not even near being a designer, but the font on that post is awesome.

<comment><USER10> Museo Sans. Looks like some of the weights are free-as-in-beer, too.

<http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/exljbris/museo-sans/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> He writes in raw HTML? Hm.

<comment><USER12> Could you (or someone else) possibly expand on that? Is writing in raw HTML generally discouraged? I am totally ignorant in this area, but I am curious about it since I admire Mark's formatting and he seems to get a lot done.

<comment><USER13> I can't speak for the person you're commenting on - that is, I have no idea what the 'Hm' meant. Also, I don't think it's generally discouraged. Lots of people write raw HTML (in some contexts).

But _I_ certainly wouldn't want to write an entire book in HTML - it forces you to type a _lot_ of brackets and tags. I'm sure your editor could take a lot of work off your shoulders, but even at that you end up typing a ton of macros (I would think). In any case, it seems easier to me to type the bulk of it in Markdown (or the like) and only occasionally drop down to raw HTML. To each, his or her own though.

<comment><USER14> Might be a nice step up from docbook, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Install Suricata IDS on Any Linux Box in 5 Minutes - <AUTHOR> https://danielmiessler.com/blog/how-to-install-suricata-on-a-linux-box-in-5-minutes/ <comment><USER2> I don't get why using your package manager to install/upgrade suricata, or anything else for the matter, should always be a Bad Thing(TM).

If sudo apt install suricata results in a less-than-ideal configuration, probably the package needs fixing.

<comment><USER3> Because some software requires configuration beyond what a package manager can accommodate.

You would not want to deploy web servers or anything else which can be considered even remotely "complicated" if it was installed using apt-get, apt- get would get you something functional but it doesn't mean it would be optimal and no if it's not optimal it doesn't mean the package needs fixing because there is usually no single "optimal" setup.

Additionally this guide should work for every Linux system regardless of the package manager in question and the underlying architecture because you download the code and compile & build it on the system, which is also what they've said at the end of their guide.

Even fully prepped install wizards often either require some pre-Install configuration/work to be done, or post install configuration work to be done, this goes for commercial software even on systems with arguably "better" installation managers like Windows.</comment></comment>


SyrianStories : timeline of the revolt in Syria in pics & vidz - <AUTHOR> http://syrianstories.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> (i know there's normally no politics here, but i think it's worth sharing)</comment>


Driving a car with an iPhone. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/11/driving_a_car_with_an_iphone_a_frea.html

<comment><USER2> That is really neat. Seems they didn't have the brakes set to fail-safe though. "BRAKES!"

<comment><USER3> It says on their site that they use UDP for sending/receiving steering and breaking commands (among other things).

I would assume they have some major redundancy on each command. Would it not be smarter to use TCP to control a car?

<comment><USER4> I would think UDP would be better, since they are not concerned with perfect data integrity, just as long as the data gets there before they hit something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That'll teach me to scoff at Bond. The first thing I thought of was Bond driving his car in Tomorrow Never Dies (10ish years ago), with a device that looks suspiciously like an iPhone.

<comment><USER6> Yea back that it all looked so futuristic. All we really need is a gyrosensor and some processing power. The iPhone app aint anything amazingly special, its the hardware they built that is :P Wait, no its not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of a YouTube video I saw a while back:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiLoANg6nNY>

I assume it's fake though... if only because that's my default position on these things!

<comment><USER8> Cool video. I can't tell if it's fake or not… On one hand, I don't see how they would risk a Formula 1 car with that kind of stunt.

On the other hand, well… there isn't anybody in it! (and it's probably not a big deal to develop for a Formula One engineering team)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here in Austin, TX -- anything is possible. Keen engineering, Waterloo Labs!

<comment><USER10> LabView was used by city ordinance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ... a _horrible_ car remote?

<comment><USER11> A Dr Horrible joke falls on deaf ears in a geek forum?

/sigh

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I want to say a lot of things but right now, all I can say is supercool.</comment>