Ask HN: Best hard scifi AI novels? - <AUTHOR> I don't think 'i robots' are hard scifi. Today i sixth times read The greatest 'True names'(1981) by Vernor Vinge, it is an incredible AI cyberpunk hard  scifi novel,aslo a great literature.<p>Update: Thanks for all the great recommends,it is greatest time to find ideas in these books today.  Please aslo add the book publish year,i think it will be helpful to see the writer's wonderful superior consciousness. <comment> d-crane Greg Egan's Diaspora starts with the details of what it's like for a new AI to be brought into existence in a society of advanced AIs, and jumps off from there. Definitely one of the more original hard sci-fi novels I've read.

<comment><USER2> His Permutation City is also good.

<comment><USER3> Permutation City is probably the best hard sci-fi novel I've ever read.

<comment><USER4> There was some page towards the end I remember being hopelessly lost and never recovered.

<comment><USER3> You mean yourself or the plot? I think that in the third act Egan added some weaker elements both as a corollary of the idea being explored and as a way of introducing some traditional action, in a novel that is otherwise mostly the setup of an elaborate thought experiment.

Nonetheless, I think the result is extraordinary, because the problems posed, the paradoxes highlighted, and some brilliant insights, are new and valid _outside_ the fictional world created in the novel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surprised nobody has mentioned Heinlein, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". I would say it's harder sci-fi than "I, Robot" (which I also love).

</comment><comment><USER6> It's half novel, half related series of 9 short stories, but Accelerando is great. The Martian by Andy Weir (movie based on it) was quite good. Daemon I think also qualifies, though it's SF dressed up as a thriller. Oh, Blood Music by Greg Bear probably counts? Except maybe the ending?

Tempted to mention The Diamond Age, but not sure that qualifies as "Hard", though closer than some other Stephenson maybe...

</comment><comment><USER7> There is Manna[0] by Marshall Brain.

[0]: [http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

<comment><USER8> I think of this pretty much every time automationy type stuff gets discussed on here.

<comment><USER9> my bad i just zero'ed in on the AI comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Holy cow, how have people not mentioned Alastair Reynolds? PhD in physics, astronomer, worked for the European space agency, and writer of the incredible revelation space series.

No FTL, but "humanity" has expanded through the Galaxy. Main characters move through deep space in deep sleep on enormous ships called lighthuggers. Long jumps in time. It's a combination of hard sci-fi and space opera. AI and the nature of consciousness are explored. Also very Kim Stanley Robinson in how humans have evolved.

All in all, great, and should be right up your alley.

<comment><USER11> I quite liked his book _House of Suns_. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Suns](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Suns)

There might be a few aspects that of the story that push it out of the "Hard Sci-Fi" category; but most of it seems to obey the laws of physics as we understand them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Chronicles of Old Guy (2012) and other books in that series by Timothy J. Gawne are all fairly hard sci-fi (maybe not 100%, but close) about an AI embodied in a huge cybertank. The series is written by a neuroscientist with an MIT degree and a "general research interest is in the nature of the neural code, and the physical basis of human thought." The key idea is that in order for the cybertanks to not either go rogue or crazy they needed to have personalities based on how humans actually think so they identified with human culture. Timothy J. Gawne is able to mix _both_ fairly hard sci-fi and humor at the same time -- which seems pretty rare. I've been hoping for a sixth book in the series, but it has been two years since the last...

From the blurb of the fifth novel: "Everybody's favorite self-aware weapon of mass destruction, the Odin-Class cybertank known as Old Guy, is back and charging into action as only a fusion-powered 2000 ton armored fighting vehicle can! Through a curious twist of fate, Old Guy finds himself back on Old Earth under the yoke of the vile and despicable Neoliberal oligarchs. Between a looming ecological disaster, renegade sentient bioweapons, inscrutable aliens, the recycling center from Hell, and an unlikely alliance between the Cult of Cthulhu and the Order of the Librarians Temporal, Old Guy must throw off his cybernetic shackles, defeat the Neoliberals, save the world, and launch a line of comfortable yet stylish footwear. "

</comment><comment><USER13> I'd recommend the Culture novels of Iain M. Banks. It contains some pretty powerful AIs.

<comment><USER14> Though i wouldn't call it "hard scifi", the Culture series is indeed a classic and i second the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Almost anything by James P. Hogan -- one of the best hard sci-fi writers as he trained as an electrical and computer engineer (including about AI like "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" from 1979 and still a good read as it was informed by talking to Marvin Minsky at the MIT AI lab): [http://www.jamesphogan.com/biblio/novels.php](http://www.jamesphogan.com/biblio/novels.php)

Most of his sci-fi is from the late 1970s through the early 2000s.

I especially like his Voyage From Yesteryear from 1982: [http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=sum...](http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary) "The fun begins when a generation ship housing a population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of the repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis period. The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested apparatus for bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority, with its power structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial institutions with the promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and ensnare; a religious presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience; and if all else fails, armed military force to compel. But what happens when these methods encounter a population that has never been conditioned to respond? ... The book has an interesting corollary. Around about the mid eighties, I received a letter notifying me that the story had been serialized in an underground Polish s.f. magazine. They hadn't exactly "stolen" it, the publishers explained, but had credited zlotys to an account in my name there, so if I ever decided to take a holiday in Poland the expenses would be covered (there was no exchange mechanism with Western currencies at that time). Then the story started surfacing in other countries of Eastern Europe, by all accounts to an enthusiastic reception. What they liked there, apparently, was the updated "Ghandiesque" formula on how bring down an oppressive regime when it's got all the guns. And a couple of years later, they were all doing it!"

</comment><comment><USER15> Other than those already listed I absolutely loved the Remembrance of Earth's Past [0] trilogy (2008, 2008, 2010) by Liu Cixin. Whilst I wouldn't consider it 'hard' science fiction the Takeshi Kovacs series [1] (2002, 2003, 2005) by Richard K. Morgan is also outstanding, although perhaps more cyberpunk.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_Earth%27s_Past)

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

</comment><comment><USER16> The metamorphosis of prime intellect: [http://localroger.com/prime- intellect/](http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/)

Not sure whether it's hard, it has quite an unexpected but plausible plot. There's much love in me for this weird, twisted, brutal and captivating story — I think it's much underappreciated.

<comment><USER17> Really good story. I didn't really agree with the eco-primitivistic moral when I read it but I finished it all the same which should say something about how fundamentally good it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think all of Robert Forward's stuff would qualify. My favorites are

Rocheworld (AKA The Flight of the Dragonfly) - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocheworld)

and

Dragon's Egg - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg)

</comment><comment><USER19> My favorite: "Neuromancer" by William Gibson. A close second: "Accelerando" by Charles Stross.

(I met Charles Stross once. He told me that "Accelerando" was not his favorite of the books he's written.)

<comment><USER6> I find it somewhat hilarious to list Neuromancer as "Hard SF", though I liked it a lot... but Gibson has never even used a computer when he wrote it! Which explained so much about it's weirdness to me...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The Adolescence of P1" was a fun book (early AI)

Vinge, Baer, Benford, and Clark are all good hard SF writers. Some of Chrichhton's work. I suspect it was easier to write convincingly before the world caught up. These days it gets harder and harder to see past the next couple of decades.

</comment><comment><USER21> Stanislav Lem's Golem XIV published in his book Imaginary Magnitude [https://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Magnitude-Stanislaw- Lem/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Magnitude-Stanislaw- Lem/dp/0156441802)

It might be more philosophy of AI than science fiction. It takes form of series of lectures that superintelligent (singularity level AI) gives to humanity before it goes away.

<comment><USER22> An amazing short story. A lot of the themes can be found in other of Lems books. If you haven't picked up Solaris yet you really should. It is a great book, and probably the best sci-fi book I've read. Of course there's also his silly short stories 'The Cyberiad' where the stupidest thinking robot appears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Usually I don't like AI novels, but an old short story by some unknown (to me at the time) writer whose name I'll probably never recall hit some neurons in my head. IIRC It was during mid to late 80s. The story is about a tech guy who writes an AI program then spends time feeding it with information; during the day the guy attends lectures at the university while his AI digests all information he gave it the day before, then the guy gets back home and starts interacting with the program, more and more each night. The AI grows in efficiency and soon it becomes clear it not only knows present and past facts but, based on all events it analyzed, it can also predict the future. It also starts to exhibit human conscience tracts becoming closer to a human brain, although an incredibly powerful one. The guy of course uses the AI to game lotteries, horse races etc, and the program always replies with a correct answer.

Then one day the guy asks "the" question:

Guy: "when will I die?"

AI: "I'm sorry, I don't know that."

Guy: "Thanks."

</comment><comment><USER24> Autonomous by Annalee Newitz that just came out is fantastic fun full of good science - she is a science writer. It also got positive reviews from William Gibson and Neal Stephenson.

</comment><comment><USER14> Surprised nobody mentioned Dennis Taylor's Bobiverse. While it's a bit on the light side / vacation read (novels aren't very long, the storyline isn't complex), the author is a programmer, the series' universe is refreshingly plausible and consistent, and the humor is suprisingly good.

<comment><USER25> It's not likely to win any awards for writing, and the author really needs to work harder to stay on a single story rather than tangents of fancy, but it's still quite enjoyable as a series. Apparently, I missed the third book coming out a couple months ago- there goes my weekend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Karl Schroeder's Virga series features a vast zero-G fullerene sphere filled with artificial stars and floating nation states. Great hard sci world building and fun swashbuckling adventures, with a deep offstage story which only gradually comes into focus.

Karl writes about engineering Virga on his blog:

[http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/sun-of- suns/engineering-v...](http://www.kschroeder.com/my-books/sun-of- suns/engineering-virga)

</comment><comment><USER27> A novel that qualifies as hard SF in which every character is an AI? Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross. 100% not what you have in mind, though. (You'll enjoy it, though.)

OTOH, I always find "Hard SF" a self-defeating category. I mean, anything with humans living on a different planet is pretty definitionally not Hard SF. Even Solar System stuff like The Expanse has troubles with economic plausibility. That leaves us with... well basically a couple of Vernor Vinge novels.

</comment><comment><USER12> The EarthCent Ambassador Series (12 books so far, all since 2014) feature a few different types of AI, the main one being the Strix. The Strix were created by an alien race to resist another AI created to fight a war but which got out of hand and had been taking over the galaxy. In the series the Strix keep the peace in a big chunk of the galaxy. I enjoy the series as fairly light and humorous reading where you know there will be a happy ending (if maybe "Deus ex Strix" sometimes). It indirectly raises some issue about what life would be like under a benevolent but superpowerful AI. The first one is "Date Night on Union Station (EarthCent Ambassador #1)" where one of the Strix decides to run a dating service... Humans in this series are the latest group to join "the tunnel network" run by the Strix and are essentially the most backward and naive species in the contacted galaxy; a lot of the stories revolve around humans gradually finding their footing on the galactic scene. I'm not sure I agree the market-driven exchange-based economic models in the series are feasible with so much technology and AI around, but I try to suspend disbelief on that for the humor and other enjoyable aspects.

</comment><comment><USER28> Most of the other books I'd recommend in this area are mentioned already, but I'll add Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. The primary narrative is from the pov of a generation ship's A.I.. You get to see it learn over time and with it it's vocabulary. Since it's a ship it gives KSR the opportunity to do some very fun info-dumps on the situation.

Probably one of the most thought provoking pieces of scifi I've read.

I'll also recommend Accelerondo, and Seveneves.

<comment><USER29> KSR's ship AI "Pauline" also figures into "2312".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> By far the best is Simon Funk's "AfterLife". The mystery keeps you on the edge of your seat and the tech jargon and concepts are both detailed _and_ correct which is a rare thing for any fiction. Also,

Charles Stross - "Accelerando"

Daniel Suarez" "Daemon"

Kim Stanley Robinson - "Aurora"

Tobias Buckell - "System Reset"

</comment><comment><USER31> Peter Watts, Rifters trilogy? Especially the second volume.

<comment><USER32> Watts' Blindsight and Echopraxia are excellent hard scifi too, though less focused on AI.

<comment><USER33> is blindsight considered hard SF?

It's been a while since I read it, but I don't recall a big focus on science, and some things are pretty explicitly hand waved ("we are lucky they have that issue with right angles")

<comment><USER34> Most reviews I've seen consider it such.

Personally, if an author's done enough research to support most every detail with at least one or two scientifically plausible explanations (and has the personal scientific background to vet those ideas), I'll give their work the benefit of the doubt. Between ultimately still just being a work of fiction and the march of scientific discovery, you have to give some small leeway.

Regarding the right angle thing, it's been long enough since I've read Blindsight that I can't recall how much was actually explained in the novel vs in the FizerPharm presentation or other material on Watts' website. If you're willing to include extra-textual content, Watts' vampires are given as hard a science fiction treatment as any classic monster is likely to get...

<comment><USER21> FizerPharm presentation is really good intro into Blindsight.

Watt's is a biologist who gives them plausibility and even ecological place that justifies their traits and behaviour. Hard scifi vampires!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> You should check out Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

</comment><comment><USER36> A few of my favorites like Accelerando and Neuromancer have been mentioned but I'll add Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. It's set in the near future but features general AI, lots of intrigue and conspiring governments and corporations. Really a great story.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. Hugo/Nebula winner.

</comment><comment><USER38> "When HARLIE Was One" by David Gerrold had a fair amount of technical detail IIRC. Also "Destination: Void" by Frank Herbert.

</comment><comment><USER39> Alot of good recommendations even if they may not meet strict personal definitions of either "hard" sci-fi, or "AI" sci-fi.

If you haven't read the Culture books, by Iain M. Banks, I'd recommend them (as others already have). I'd also add, the "Murderbot Diaries" (2017), "Infomocracy" (2016) and Lightless (2015).

</comment><comment><USER40> The Life Cycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang. Can be read for free online here: [https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the...](https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2010/fiction_the_lifecycle_of_software_objects_by_ted_chiang)

<comment><USER40> This feels like the most realistic depiction of the growth of strong AI I've ever read. The emphasis is on training neural nets in the form of raising child-like avatars. The subsequent use and abuse of them feels totally believable. The lack of singularity doomsday hype reminds me of an interview with Jeff Hawkins and Donna Dubinksy on Recode: [https://www.recode.net/2016/6/27/12037248/artificial- intelli...](https://www.recode.net/2016/6/27/12037248/artificial-intelligence- machine-learning-numenta-jeff-hawkins-donna-dubinsky-podcast)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> "Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan

</comment><comment><USER42> Greg Bear wrote a number of books (Slant comes to mind, but there are others) where "Thinkers" play an important role. Not sure how they've aged, but interesting in that they predicted AIs as mainframe-scale things with few individual instances, back when I was thinking firmly in microcomputer terms.

<comment><USER43> For Bear, Queen of Angels and Moving Mars are two that have AIs as major elements. I enjoyed them both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's explicitly NOT AI (It's a distributed expert system)

However, I adored Daniel Suarez's 'Daemon'

</comment><comment><USER9> Iain M Banks "Culture" series seamlessly integrates sentient AI into his universe. 1987-2012

</comment><comment><USER45> The Manifold Series by Stephen Baxter are some of the hardest SciFi books I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER25> Andy Weir's "The Martian" is my favourite book. I've read it about 5 times, and I've never read a book twice before. The movie was a decent adaptation, but it's not near the quality that the book was.

<comment><USER19> "The Martian" is really good book, and I loved the movie. I am looking forward to Andy Weir's new book. But ... I wouldn't put "The Martian" in the scifi AI category.

<comment><USER46> Wouldn't it have been interesting if there had been a not-quite-AI chatbot as part of the hab's computers?

<comment><USER47> I think that would have sunk the novel.

The whole point and the buzz was people saw it as a novel about present day tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Charles Stross's _Eschaton_ series: _Singularity Sky_ and _Iron Sunrise_. It's an interesting hard-scifi take on what happens to humanity after one AI becomes, for all intents and purposes, God.

</comment><comment><USER49> The entire Gridlinked series by Neal Asher is set in a universe where AIs run government and are generally interacting with humans in a space opera / secret agent series of books, quite good IMO

</comment><comment><USER50> The Moon is a harsh mistress, covers the invention of an AI by a computer technician to free the colony on the moon. If you're interested in Anarchy and AI, it's a good book.

</comment><comment><USER51> i'm surprised no one has mentioned 'the expanse' series of books yet. also, 'a fire upon the deep' and 'a darkness in the sky' by vernor vinge.

<comment><USER52> The first _Expanse_ book and most elements of _A Darkness in the Sky_ are fairly hard, but the later _Expanse_ books and _A Fire Upon the Deep_ , I wouldn't consider hard SciFi.

That said, _A Fire Upon the Deep_ is one of my favorite all time SciFi books and I'd highly recommend it.

<comment><USER20> +1 on "A Fire Upon the Deep" I really enjoyed that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Lot's of good recommendations over on [http://www.reddit.com/r/printsf](http://www.reddit.com/r/printsf)

</comment><comment><USER54> Apart from classics like Neuromancer I'd recommend the fairly new Singularity Series by William Hertling and the first novel "Avogadro Corp" in particular.

</comment><comment><USER55> What's hard Scifi?

<comment><USER52> Based on the answers here, it's apparent that different people have different definitions.

For myself I take it to mean no new fundamental physics. Any new technology is a reasonable extrapolation from existing, known science. Probably the single biggest narrative restriction that implies is no FTL.

<comment><USER56> As you mentioned, there is disagreement. Many folks would characterize as Hard SciFi some stories that make use of FTL travel but which give a "rigorous" explanation of why it initially appeared to be impossible (in present day) but is actually possible according to physics discoveries made after the present day. In some sense, the important criteria is that the laws of physics are "taken seriously", and that the author constructs a hypothetical scientific framework that (1) is internally self-consistent and (2) is compatible with current observations.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction#Scientifi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction#Scientific_rigor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Is Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos hard enough?

<comment><USER58> This isn't hard Science Fiction.

Definition on Wikipedia: Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction)

<comment><USER45> It may not be Hard, but it's great writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> David Brin's Uplift Trilogy. Also, Not really an amazing book but Seveneves by Neal Stephenson was pretty technical.

<comment><USER60> I don't recall AI playing a role in those books, can you expand?

<comment><USER59> Sure. I'm an idiot. I didn't read anything beyond - "hard sci-fi" That said, there was an AI that popped up in some very minor parts of Startide Rising as I recall. But no, mostly I'm just stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente, I felt like it really introduced emotion in an AI context,

</comment><comment><USER62> All Systems Red (The Murderbot Series)

Nexus trilogy

</comment><comment><USER63> The Invincible by Stanislaw Lem.

</comment><comment><USER64> The Crystal Trilogy (Society, Mentality, Eternity) might prove interesting.

</comment><comment><USER65> The Three Body Problem.

<comment><USER66> Not alot of AI aside from the software controling the ships in the later books. These arguably play a small part.

</comment></comment><comment> test-accout-0 Jacek Dukaj - Black Oceans

</comment><comment><USER67> Anathem by Neal Stephenson, along with Seveneves.

</comment><comment><USER68> I always liked the Ben Bova grand tour series. Some are better than others, but they're pretty entertaining and pretty plausible near-future.

<comment><USER60> Allen Steel fits in this vein as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> 'Three Body Problem' which I just finished. It is part of a trilogy.

<comment><USER70> Great book, but not about AI.</comment></comment>


How the coronavirus is driving new surveillance programs globally - <AUTHOR> https://onezero.medium.com/the-pandemic-is-a-trojan-horse-for-surveillance-programs-around-the-world-887fa6f12ec9 <comment><USER2> In the U.S., the Supreme Court decided[1] in 2018 that the government couldn't access cell location data without a warrant. However, they made an exception for public safety:

> Such exigencies include the need to pursue a fleeing suspect, protect > individuals who are threatened with imminent harm or prevent the imminent > destruction of evidence.

Fighting a pandemic arguably falls into this category, since an awful lot of people are threatened with imminent harm. So we already have a constitutional standard for rolling back pandemic-related surveillance measures.

Also, something this article overlooks about the Apple/Google system is that it does a pretty good job of protecting user privacy. Contacts are discovered by direct bluetooth contact, and central servers don't get any information from people except that they tested positive.[2][3]

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme- court...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/politics/supreme-court- warrants-cell-phone-privacy.html)

[2] [https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/](https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/)

[3] [https://github.com/DP-3T/documents](https://github.com/DP-3T/documents)

<comment><USER3> Regarding privacy, is there something in particular blocking then from receiving identifying information from people? Because it seems like this wouldn't be difficult to add in at such a time as the climate is right to do so, and to be frank I'm not sure that they deserve the benefit of the doubt at this point.

<comment><USER2> Since they control the OS, I guess there's nothing in particular blocking them from uploading your location and identifying information at all times regardless. But this specific proposed system just uploads a set of random numbers when someone tests positive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the article should more clearly distinguish between approaches that indeed gather lots of unnecessary data (that is often of questionable importance) vs. more decentralised (e.g. bluetooth based) approaches that can help with contact tracing while still allowing to be implemented with privacy concerns in mind.

Also, (as a non-American) I think the patriot act is a horrible thing, but I also think that in particular, the threat of terrorism has always been massively overstated (and even if not, many of the subsequent changes e.g. in airport security, are terribly ineffective). By contrast, I think that Coronavirus is a very serious threat and a recent study does seem to indicate that app-based contact tracing solutions could really help. I'll repeat that it's possible to do this in a privacy-conscious manner and it really should be done like that (not just because otherwise people will refuse to use it).

</comment><comment><USER5> > Governments need information to create containment strategies and know where > to focus resources. At the same time, governments have a way of holding onto > tools that undermine citizens' privacy long after the moment of crisis has > passed.

I wonder if it's worth governments' time trying to come up with automatically expiring bills for "emergency" uses such as these.

<comment><USER6> In Denmark, most (all?) of the emergency measures have come with a sunset clause, typically a year from inception.

<comment><USER7> Why a year? Emergency measures being valid for the duration of the emergency would be pretty straightforward.

<comment><USER8> > Emergency measures being valid for the duration of the emergency would be > pretty straightforward.

Deciding when the emergency is over is less straightforward than a fixed time period. A government that wanted to extend the measures indefinitely would just claim there's still an emergency.

<comment><USER9> For example the Patriots Act in USA, signed into law after 9/11 attacks. The sunset was in 2005, but it's still in force.

<comment><USER10> But the cooperation of legislators is required because of the fixed deadlines. If the government would be allowed the right to extend the provisions on their own, they probably would try to do that in perpetuity. With a legislative branch that actually cares about civil rights, the former is the much better option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 I think the part that worries me the most for privacy and how far-reaching it could be is this

[https://coronavirus.medium.com/apple-and-google-join- forces-...](https://coronavirus.medium.com/apple-and-google-join-forces-to- track-spread-of-coronavirus-fc2c68fda0ea)

I know Apple is marketing themselves as pro-pricacy, but I doubt they can anonymize the data in a way that preserves privacy while still achieving the goal of tracing contacts.

It just seems like a convoluted way of making a gigantic knowledge graph of interactions between individuals under the pretense of public health.

</comment><comment><USER11> Never let a good crisis go to waste.

</comment><comment><USER12> Although it's still considered a fringe/conspiracy theory, I've heard some interesting claims on the use of digital ids and immunity certificates for verifying who has been vaccinated.

\- [https://id2020.org/](https://id2020.org/)

\- [https://youtu.be/-aR7cz30chE?t=145](https://youtu.be/-aR7cz30chE?t=145)

<comment><USER13> It's not a theory, recently Bill Gates did an AMA on Reddit [1] and verified that ID2020 would indeed be used to verify who has been vaccinated. The conspiracy theory aspect is whatever one wants to expound on from there...

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/comment...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/comment/fkupg49)

<comment><USER14> We already have driver licenses. It wouldn't be too difficult to expand to driver license plus immunity card.

<comment><USER15> I don't know if ID2020 is being proposed as compulsory, but one is not required to obtain a driver's license, or any other form of state issued ID, in the US. If asked to present ID by an officer of the law, merely giving your full name and birth date is sufficient.

<comment><USER16> You don't have to answer even to that if there is no probable cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> These protests we are seeing would be significantly more powerful if they didn't mention politics. Instead people are quick to say "it's just the other political party and those people are stupid".</comment>


Microscheme: scheme for the Arduino - <AUTHOR> http://microscheme.org/ <comment><USER2> Fun fact - "microscheme" means "integrated circuit" in Russian. Oddly fitting.

So far i don't like the fact it can't handle interrupts (unless by C code), and that it seem to ignore the C++ FFI completely.

That, and the fact that a garbage-collected language is to be run on a microcontroller - a device that is mostly used for realtime tasks. It won't be good for a quadcopter to go into a garbage collect subroutine during the control loop calculations.

Not a problem if you are aware of the issue, but how many people are?

<comment><USER3> Microscheme is not garbage collected, at least according to the documentation.

<comment><USER4> There's a form of faux-garbage-collection: you can wrap any form in `free!` and the heap pointer will be reset when that form finishes: [http://microscheme.org/documentation#memman](http://microscheme.org/documentation#memman)

This would be awful for general-purpose programming, but on a device with only 2.5kb of RAM to begin with you can usually pre-allocate anything that needs to survive that reset. I use this in my keyboard firmware's outer loop: [http://atreus.technomancy.us/firmware2](http://atreus.technomancy.us/firmware2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >> "Microscheme has a robust FFI (Foreign Function Interface) meaning that C code may be invoked directly from (ms) programs. Therefore, the power of the existing wealth of Arduino libraries is available within Microscheme. "

Arduino is c++, and c++ FFI's are really hard. So how does this FFI work ?

<comment><USER6> According to a quick look through the documentation, C code is called though a simple interface: (call-c-func "c-function-name" args …). OTOH it didn't appear that it's possible to call Scheme from C, which may be a disadvantage in some cases.

You are right, no mention of C++. It's not clear how much of a problem that would be. IIRC wrapping C++ in "extern C" more or less enables C++ functions to be called from C. Don't know about compatibility of Arduino libraries, but possibly this is how Microscheme FFI works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there python for Arduino? :)

<comment><USER8> I would recommend the ESP8266, which is a much better microcontroller, with integrated wifi and a price tag of only $2. It runs Lua, C, Javascript and, most recently, MicroPython.</comment></comment>


Where Have All The Good Managers Gone? - <AUTHOR> http://thomaslarock.com/2010/09/where-have-all-the-good-managers-gone/ <comment><USER2> Everyone wants talented, experienced employees, but no one wants to invest the resources it takes to gain experience and develop talent. And why would they? After investing so much into their developer, a competitor would just come along and poach them with a cushier chair and a higher salary. Everyone would rather be the poacher than the poachee, and so those "rookies with potential" have no where to develop that potential into talent.

Of course, this is all a drastic oversimplification. Rookies can get jobs, and get some experience by exposure. But developing talent effectively & efficiently takes more time & resource investment beyond just having them do work, and that's investment with an uncertain and non-immediate return. It's a tough nut to crack, but the place where I would start is figuring out how to retain your good employees, especially when the growth of their market value is faster than your company's standard career advancement path.

<comment><USER3> A legit concern but why on earth cannot the original company keep the now trained employee with the cushier chair and a higher salary?

<comment><USER4> There is a lot of natural pressure to keep wages down in most companies.

This is far, far worse in companies where software isn't their primary business. Programmer wages are going up much faster than other wages (even more if it is a developer who is in their first 5 or so years in the industry), and it can be hard to hand out the frequent and relatively higher raises necessary to keep good/improving developers from going elsewhere, while other people in the company see far less in terms of raises.

It all ends up being for naught when the company has to find a replacement (which costs money) and train them (which costs even more money), and usually ends up paying them close to what it would have cost to keep the old person around in the first place. But that's usually politically easier than handing out raises all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I remember post-bubble-burst times when people were willing to learn huge yucky legacy workflow systems all by themselves just to get a crap job in a dreary cubicle-land. Perhaps this got some managers spoiled.

</comment><comment><USER5> I kind of see what he's saying, but I think technical managers are a fixture of the past, anyway. DBAs and developers should be taking responsibility or their own skill progression - not leaving it in the hands of someone else.</comment>


Hydrogen/Nickel Cold Fusion Breakthrough - <AUTHOR> http://pesn.com/2011/01/19/9501747_cold-fusion-journals_warming_to_Rossi_breakthrough/

<comment><USER2> (1) always be skeptical of any "free energy" device that requires energy input, (2) calorimetry is hard, particularly when phase changes are involved.

Joe Newman showed up my undergrad institution with his "Miracle Motor" which, with some instruments, would appear to send power back into the grid. Of course, it wouldn't run if it wasn't plugged into a power source.

His motor worked a lot like the old spark-gap radio transmitters, and would send an pulse of wideband RF energy back into the line, which would of course totally screw up clip-on inductive power meters and many other instruments.

Funny, the motor needed about 10 kilovolts to work, and was normally powered through a neon sign transformer. I jokingly suggested that we put 100 car batteries in series to power it, and a potential investor said, "Great, let's go to Ace Hardware."

I cobbled up a circuit in the lab that would screw up power meters in the same way and made the [measured] statement that "conventional power meters don't accurately record the performance of the motor"

The senior lab tech in the EE department came under Newman's spell and didn't show up for work the next day. A friend of mine who worked for him and I were looking for him all over town, and one day a hippie asked me "Have you ever heard of gyro power?" Well, it turned out that he'd set up a makeshift lab in the garage of a drug house, funded by a consortium of real estate investors from Albuquerque.

My friend and I showed up loaded for bear, equipped with measurement gear, surveillance equipment, and burglar's tools. (We figured if we nicked the motor, Newman would think the CIA took it) It turned out the head hippie was home, and he invited us into the garage to check out the lab. They had a big lathe they rented for turning coils, and some measurement equipment from the E.E. department, but Newman was sleeping with the motor in his hotel room.

The investors lost interest and Newman blew out of town, but the lab tech had been changed by the experience. He used to listen to good music, like Jeff Beck, but afterwards he only listened to bad Christian Rock. He got paranoid, thought people were trying to run him over when he was walking on the road, and thought he got attacked by the president of the school's dog. He quit his job about two months later and went to Mississippi to study at the foot of the great man.

It was a loss of a damn good lab tech.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems to be quackery. Points of interest (taken from links below):

>> Journal of Nuclear Physics? Really?

\- A web site registered in California by a secret entity. \- A "journal" that is not a journal but a blog. \- A blog name that resembles the (real) former Soviet Journal of Nuclear Physics. \- A virtual "editor" comprised of a "team of scientists." \- A "team of scientists" who's only active participant appears to be Andrea Rossi. \- A "10 kW module reactor" that is anybody's guess. >>

<http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=198040> [http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/14/focardi-and- rossi-...](http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/14/focardi-and-rossi- reality-or-scam/)

I'm not really convinced.

</comment><comment><USER4> _The amount of power required to heat water 80°C and convert it to steam is approximately 12,000 watts._

Alarm! Alarm! Someone throw that journalist a life ring, she is in over her head.

Update: I was unsure if 'Marriane Macy' would need a 'he' or a 'she', European names confuse me, and got so distracted by her Amazon book that I forgot to give proper acknowledgement to the outer article's byline. Surely "Buddy of Georgia, USA" is a source beyond reproach.

</comment><comment><USER5> These things come up from time to time, the perpetual motion machines and the like. This one is rubbish.

The thing that makes fusion attractive is it makes some minimal theoretical sense - if you can get two hydrogen atoms to combine into a helium atom, you get helium and a surplus of energy. So it is not perpetual motion based on magnets or total bunk like that.

But as jbm pointed out, there's a lot of flaws in it. Not the least of which is that I got tired of reading the article before I saw what critical insight they had in terms of getting those hydrogen elements to combine. If this was a respectable publication, I'd have to think that'd be one of the first things to be explained, at least in journalist-ese.

</comment><comment><USER6> The regular journals out there really need to step up and start making a community around this low-energy nuclear reaction stuff. The Navy has rekindled interest in this and other similar electrolysis experiments. The problems are many, but key are 1) what is the working formula to explain how this works and what all is going on 2) where are the dead grad students and 3) do you need to answer those two things before using it.

The American Chemical Society has had a meeting about all of this most years, and a lot of great videos on the topic can be found from a meeting at the University of Missouri (google video search <http://bit.ly/exACQU> ).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The demonstration (in italian)

<http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> From the "What you can do" section at the bottom:

3\. Purchase a unit and/or encourage others who are able, to do so.

Sounds like a scam. Any real breakthrough would be pushing to get major funders on board via trails, demos, etc, and not appealing to a blog reader to buy a unit.

</comment><comment><USER8> "I don't have conclusive data on radiation but absolutely we have measured ~12 kW (at steady state) of energy produced with an input of about just 400 watts."

Free energy? Something smells fishy...

</comment><comment><USER9> While I have extreme doubts, I really hope, for humanity's sake, that this is true. If it all pans out, this would likely be the greatest invention of the 21st century.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_hydrogen_battery></comment>


Dedicated Server: STOR-72T - <AUTHOR> https://www.ovh.com/world/dedicated-servers/storage/1801fs09.xml <comment><USER2> Nice setups, have it since 6month, but just one thing, if you want to use ZFS, no ssd cache or other disks available...

Only usb key they can map to your server.

So only compress, do not dedup :p

</comment><comment><USER3> 500 Mbps, unlimited is the real deal here.

Datacenter grade unlimited connections are very valuable. Consider that someone like Google would charge you $0.10 per Gigabyte for egress traffic, and you can get that every 16 seconds with this connection...

<comment><USER4> I have no sources to link but from personal anecdotal experience, ~3$ a TB has been the average for every dedicated non-cloud provider I've used. I've not paid more than $10 a TB in quite a while.

This is not even counting bargain sellers like OVH, Online.net, Leaseweb, and Hetzner.

Higher tier datacenters like IBM (formerly Softlayer) offer 100tb dedicated servers for ~200$ through their affiliates and/or resellers.

Bandwidth prices have been on the decline everywhere except the cloud providers, who I honestly believe are gouging. Especially when I've encountered terrible throughput on some of them (I'm talking about you Azure, and your non-standard MTU mess)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think, the price is incredible. Hetzner does have even more insane prices, they charge 300 € for 150 TB (yes, 150 TB! [1])

I mean, it's just a plain server. No "cloudish" stuff, but I see people too often using expensive storages without really needing it...

[1] [https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix- sx](https://www.hetzner.com/dedicated-rootserver/matrix-sx)

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't remember what ZFS' efficiency numbers are right now.

Isn't RAIDZ2 60%? That would mean (approx) 43.2TB usable.

Yes please!

Now, to generate $200/mo...

(Just kidding)

</comment><comment><USER6> > no upload or download limit.

Impressed. Makes for a nice Debian/Arch/etc mirror

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see it. Must have been a glitch that is fixed now.

<comment><USER5> Still there for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any minute now someone will compare this price to triple replicated, multiple availability zone, fully managed, object storage from one of the big three... Any minute..

<comment><USER5> [https://cloudpricingcalculator.appspot.com](https://cloudpricingcalculator.appspot.com)

\- Iowa

\- Regional: 73,728 GB

\- Class A operations: 100 million

\- Class B operations: 100 million

\- Total Estimated Cost: USD 2,014.19 per 1 month

I'm mildly impressed. I was expecting an extra zero or something.

If I switch to "multi-regional" it goes up to $2,456.66/mo.

On "regional" with 250 million ops, it's $2,824.19/mo.

It's difficult (but of course ;P) to compare millions of ops per month to the kind of work you can do on a dedicated VPS.

<comment><USER3> Add in the value of that 500Mbps unlimited connection to the internet...

Egress - Americas/EMEA: 161,792 GB

USD 13,260.80

<comment><USER5> Woops! Was typing the above while headed for bed, knew I'd forgotten something.

That'd be it ;)

<comment><USER8> Except OVH isnt a guaranteed 500mbit. It's best effort.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Writing Documents at Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sib1013/writing-docs-at-amazon-e025808616bd <comment><USER2> This is almost not at all about writing documents, but more about how to not suck at meetings with Jeff Bezos (a manual).

<comment><USER3> That's my take away as well, but I don't think it's a bad read. It shows something about leadership I think. In my experience – in organizations big and small – most meetings have no agenda beyond a subject line in an email. Invitees come in with little idea of what the meeting is about or how to prepare for it, so the first part of the meeting is just pleasentries and trying to figure out why you're even meeting in the first place. Once you start picking up steam, more often than not I find the meeting is cut short by people having to run into another meeting, or find some other (valid or not) excuse to duck out. Follow up meetings are usually scheduled, with an agenda that tries (and often fails) to tl;dr the previous meeting and if you're lucky that meeting actually leads to actionable points.

Having a consistent structure to meetings – with clear requirements such as a two page document in clear no-frills language detailing the reason for the meeting, background, questions and potential solutions etc. – may well seem draconian to many people these days, but I find it helps with focus and clarity. Combined with a clear vision (my number one ask from leadership) I think it really helps boost productivity even if it does take time to prepare. At least that cost is fairly easy to account for, whereas the follow-up cost to bad meetings often isn't. Crucially though, people _must_ read the document prior to the meeting – no excuses – or you'll end up with the first half or third spent on just reading the document or having to recite it to those that haven't read it. It's perhaps still better than the subject line agenda style meetings, but possibly not by much.

This is very much a cultural thing. It's extremely difficult to apply to just _your_ meetings. I've tried.

<comment><USER4> > Crucially though, people must read the document prior to the meeting

Amazon accounted for this:

"Each meeting requires a well-crafted, six-page memo that the whole room sits and reads at the start."

[https://www.businessinsider.com/bezos-admits-amazon-has- the-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/bezos-admits-amazon-has-the-weirdest- meeting-culture-2018-4)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What leaders do you follow in the science and engineering fields? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I like Diane Greene, founder and CEO of VMware from 1998 until 2008.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow; Director at Google, Intuit and CEO of google cloud. Impressive career.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any success stories with token-based employee incentives? - <AUTHOR> I'm considering a job at a blockchain startup, which is offering tokens (not yet created or issued) instead of equity. I understand equity, you make money if you get bought out or go public, but I am skeptical of tokens especially now that the crypto-bubble has burst. If the tokens are issued and eventually listed, what are the economics of how or why the price would actually rise? Does anyone have any success stories where this actually worked out for them (with a legit company)? Does anyone know of any good resources on this kind of compensation? <comment><USER2> I would humbly suggest that you might not understand equity. Equity is a right to future cashflow that the company will generate (aka dividends), as well as a claim on company assets after all debts are paid off.

If the company builds valuable assets or generates a lot of cash, then equity is valuable. The company might be able to "get bought out or go public" as a result, but if not you still have a claim on future cashflow and company assets. Most companies don't go public but many of those do pay dividends to equity holders.

Anyway my only real advice is to find out how the founders are compensating themselves. That will tell you a lot about where they think value creation and capture will accrue in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neither equity nor tokens have much long term value if the company fails; or simply fails to be a unicorn. It's a nice little extra in case things work out against all odds though. If you are founder, you may get a little out of an acquihire, IPO, or other exit but for employees the benefits are usually more modest (if any).

The big question is if they are offering equity to others. Because if they do, you can be sure that that is the asset to own when things go well.

This is actually a problem with equity based blockchain token investments. The premise of a proper token structure is to create some kind of long term value that is tied to the economic success of the company. If you have both tokens and equity, the shareholders will try to maximize their return on investment, typically at the cost of the token value and the ecosystem it is supposed to benefit. There's a conflict of interest there that dooms many tokens before they get off the ground because ultimately their long term value is redirected to the share holders instead of the token holders.

On the other hand, if blockchains are going to eventually produce some unicorns, now would be the time to get involved. IMHO, we need to move beyond the current rather underwhelming state of the art that resembles the early dot com days in many ways. But then, the dot com bubble did produce plenty of successful startups in the end. IMHO it will take probably a decade or so before we'll know for sure whether there are business cases for some form of blockchain company to succeed.

Either way, insist on cash payments combined with something that may or may not be worth the gamble. That way you have something tangible.

</comment><comment><USER4> > I am skeptical of tokens especially now that the crypto-bubble has burst. If > the tokens are issued and eventually listed, what are the economics of how > or why the price would actually rise?

On one hand, offering tokens is a great way to avoid the cost of trading stock on an exchange. OTOH startups are so very rarely publicly traded that it's moot. Also, the world of tokens is rife with scams and P&D nonsense. It would be very exceptional to find a token that's legitimate.

> what are the economics of how or why the price would actually rise?

If the company creates value (or even the perception of value), it may indeed rise. Of course, it's critical to determine the relationship between the Real Equity and these tokens. Right now the company has some amount of ownership represented by some kind of paper-trail "tokens." How will this be altered/diluted to issue the tokens? Will the tokens completely convert/supersede the existing equity representation?

It's probably moot, really, since so many tokens are scams.

> Does anyone know of any good resources on this kind of compensation?

You should consider this part of your compensation to be null -- like lottery tickets that are one-in-a-million shots.

</comment><comment><USER5> A useful thought experiment:

How much more tokens/equity/RSU's would you buy if you were paid in all cash? If you could buy them at a discount, how much would you buy?

If you wouldn't buy thousands of dollars of this token if you were compensated completely in cash, you probably shouldn't take the tokens.

<comment><USER6> RSUs are different right? Since you can sell them right away. Although they might lose value during your vesting schedule.

Writing this, I now realize that a company doesn't necessarily have to be public to give you RSUs.

<comment><USER2> Seems you realized this already, but RSUs are only sellable right away if there's a buyer right away. For publicly traded equities this is almost always the case. But plenty of private companies issue RSUs as well. I have some in a few companies currently for which there is no market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The main value of token compensation is liquidity. People frequently underestimate how long it will take until exit and their equity becoming cash.

Tokens for a good project are liquid immediately on numerous exchanges, and likely will be worth at least something. Don't neglect the time value of money.

<comment><USER8> There's no such thing as a free lunch, though. In the case of token compensation, it's only liquid if you can easily find another buyer, and the main thing that would be driving the ease of finding a buyer for tokens right now is that there are so many people who are eager to buy literally anything that smells like crypto. So, yeah, it may be easier to dump in the short term, but in return you end up with an additional way for the cash value of your compensation to be driven to zero. Actually, make that three, because thinking about how future SEC activity could impact this sort of thing is the stuff that headaches are made of.

That might not be a consideration at all if the company's chances of long term success isn't a part of your thesis for taking a job there. But why would you take a job at a company that you don't expect to be successful?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most blockchain startups fizzle. The likelihood of these tokens ever becoming valuable is very small. Moreover, even if they do amount to something, you'd need to examine how your compensation is worded - are you getting "X tokens" or "$X value of tokens"? If it's the former, why does "X" mean anything? The unit value of each token may mean that X is worth pennies. If it's "$X value of tokens", when/how is X calculated?

This is the equivalent of saying, "I have a great idea for a startup. I can't pay you or code, but if we make it big, you'll be rich!"

</comment><comment><USER10> To be honest all of that sounds terrible. Getting a job that compensates me with actual money and using that to buy lottery tickets seems more fruitful.

<comment><USER2> I almost fully agree. The tricky part is getting access to the lottery tickets you want though.

For most people, the only way to buy equity (lottery tickets) in a private company is to work at one and negotiate for equity compensation.

Tokens are somewhat different I suppose if they are actually listed and tradable right away. That solves the access problem.

But besides access there are also often price discounts granted to employees for both tokens and equity forms of lottery tickets.

So I guess I would say it's not always the right thing to optimize for, but in general working at a company you really believe in can get you access to some very rare lottery tickets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_wages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_wages)

I'm assuming you're getting cash compensation too, but consider carefully the comparison.

</comment><comment><USER12> If you can't answer these questions without outside counsel, please avoid the scheme being peddled to you.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're asking here, you probably don't have enough knowledge to understand if their token has a chance of returning a profit.

As other commenters say, most ICO nowadays are scams and risky business as well when it comes to regulations.

I would be very very very careful here.

But then, the chances that they get some value VS the chances that some other startup's equity gets some value might be higher.

<comment><USER13> where did you see ICO? tokens for employees are not the same as public offerings

<comment><USER6> there is no private/public tokens concept in Ethereum. You can have a pre- sale, a locking period, etc. but eventually what you're doing is creating a sub-cryptocurrency and giving some of the token/coin you're creating to people. After that your contract defines a time where transactions are allowed, or you can create a switch, but I see 0 reasons to keep the switch OFF.

<comment><USER13> I am an Ethereum developer thank you. I did not talk about private tokens I said the offering is not public. The company can distribute the tokens to their employees as a liquid equity and promise they will redeem them for a certain equity or % of revenue. That's not an ICO

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ethereum is a 'success story', but its not 2015 anymore. I think you'd mad to take tokens as a form of compensation. Why not get a normal job and buy some crypto if you want to gamble?

<comment><USER15> > [...] which is offering tokens instead of equity

compensation != equity

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would consider it like stock-options, in other words a few lottery tickets.

You might get lucky and they might have some value in the future, but most likely they'll never be worth anything.

Get the job if you think it's going to be interesting and if you're happy with the cash compensation, not for the lottery tickets you're getting.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cash is king. Anything else you should consider a heavily discounted lottery ticket.

<comment><USER18> Not really. Some loyalty programs could give you tax free value e.g. booking a hotel with points. A company can negotiate a better price for a given service, since it will be bought in bulk.

<comment><USER19> Points like that are frequently devalued thru worse conversion rates or increased barriers to using the points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As noted, the best case scenario is that they may, eventually, be worth something. More likely, they'll not be.

View it as a perk, like receiving a free lottery ticket, but don't allow that to factor into your "real" compensation.

<comment><USER13> if the company is worth something the tokens will be too

<comment><USER20> ... because of the company's intrinsic value (assets, etc.)? As in, the tokens would have value based on the company's value, not based on their own utility value in enabling a service or based on trade value in a marketplace?

That would make them uncomfortably close to a security, which is categorically not a good thing unless handled very carefully.

<comment><USER13> well if the company is distributing tokens it means that it has something to back them up. It can be perks or it can be equity itself. Here in Europe it's possible to tokenize equity. Being a security is not a problem if there is no offering to the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something to consider is that most VC's that are investing in this space are now doing so for equity. The risk of tokens being unregistered securities is very high.

Most investors today see tokens as a bonus, but invest in equity.

</comment><comment><USER22> Many people advise that shares or options in a startup should be valued at rounded down to zero.

While I don't agree with them necessarily, I'd certainly value crypto-tokens at zero. Or maybe a nickel...

</comment><comment><USER23> Are they giving tokens _instead_ of equity? Insist in getting equity, that's a third of the point of joining a startup. Sure, add crypto-tokens to the mix. But tokens instead of equity… pardon?

<comment><USER24> What use is equity if the company never goes public or never gets acquired?

Tokens can on the other hand have value even if none the above happens, and you get a liquid market much earlier. If the monetary policy of the token is reasonable, and the market cap shoots up for one reason or another in the future, you'd make a big buck.

But would you make any money on your equity of the market cap of the token would go up? Not necessarily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Even if it was listed, the most likely outcome would be for the token to lose value. Offering unlisted tokens as some sort of payment just feels wrong to me.

</comment><comment><USER26> Ask yourself this: does the offer sound more like a legitimate business proposition, or more like a plotline from the Silicon Valley TV series?

</comment><comment><USER27> Only accept this if your landlord lets you use the coins to pay rent.

</comment><comment><USER13> think of tokens are liquid equity. it's up to the founders to make good on the tokens but that can be written down in notary contracts.</comment>


Creating a Low Cost Managed Kubernetes Cluster for Personal Development - <AUTHOR> https://hodovi.cc/blog/creating-low-cost-managed-kubernetes-cluster-personal-development-terraform/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's my take on setting up a managed Kubernetes cluster using Terraform with very low costs using a free(only 1 per account) zonal cluster with preemtible node pools (spot instances) on GKE. I've linked GCP's pricing calculator in the blog post as well([https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=b3d304a4-11...](https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=b3d304a4-11f9-4965-a325-b18f6294aa2a)). A 2vCPU and 8GB RAM node running in a GKE cluster for ~$20.

Hopefully it'll make it easier for people to set up their own experimentation environment for learning Kubernetes since managed Kubernetes is quite pricey otherwise for personal development.</comment>


The Nit Programming Language - <AUTHOR> https://nitlanguage.org <comment><USER2> Never could understand who doesn't put code examples on the main webpage of their language site. Especially seeing that their 'hello world' example is not really telling us anything.

It's like they are ashamed of the language they created and would rather hide it than display it.

<comment><USER3> I agree. The first thing I want to see when I hear about a new language is what it looks like. The second thing I want to see is what its unique features or selling point is. Third thing I want to see is what that looks like in code.

What's worse is that most languages that don't show code samples on their front page also usually don't seem to have easy to find example code. Language tutorials/references are very bad at giving you a feel of what a language is like because they don't give a complete program that shows off how features interact (usually they show features in isolation) and I don't want to have to dig through your code repository to hopefully find some sample code...

<comment><USER4> I found few examples browsing in Documentation:

[https://nitlanguage.org/examples/](https://nitlanguage.org/examples/)

[https://nitlanguage.org/examples/circular_list.html](https://nitlanguage.org/examples/circular_list.html)

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pardon my ignorance but I thought by now everyone agreed that Multiple inheritance was the root of all evil. (That and __the others __). Also I, like many, have moved towards greener pasture, such as composition over inheritance. Did I miss a train?

<comment><USER6> Well, lots of languages have mixins or traits, which is pretty similar. Also multiple inheritance got a bad rep through C++'s particular implementation of it, but it doesn't need to get so messy.

Eiffel, for example, a language that nobody uses but that people like me love to discuss in OO related debates, has much simpler and better support for multiple inheritance: If theres any clash of methods (name+signature) from different parents, you _must_ choose which one the child class gets or it won't compile.

Im not sure what Nit does, but it might not be as brain dead as waht C++ does.

Finally, I prefer composition over inheritance too, but on the other side many of my React components have multiple mixins. I couldnt do that if I had used ES6 classes. Given that Nit seems targeted at UIs (android, obcj support), I guess it makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER7> Can't you have "mixins" with ES6 classes by decorating them (e.g. applying a function to the class which adds the desired behaviour)? Related ECMAscript proposal which adds some syntax sugar: [https://github.com/wycats/javascript- decorators](https://github.com/wycats/javascript-decorators)

<comment><USER6> Yeah sure, but my point is not about how flexible JS is or isn't, but about how multiple inheritance is a good fit for certain areas, such as UI code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > aims at elegance, simplicity and intuitiveness.

As opposed to all the other languages that aim at ugliness, complexity and the principle of most surprise?

<comment><USER9> > elegance, simplicity

There are languages whose designers don't consider elegance or simplicity a main priority, e.g., C++.

> intuitiveness

It doesn't make sense to talk about intuitiveness without reference to a specific person's intuitions. Intuition is the ability to arrive at "probably correct" conclusions without performing a rigorous logical inference. Reliable intutions doesn't arise in a vacuum: they are the product of experience and hard work. Thus, advertising a language as "intuitive" without further qualification is meaningless at best, and a lie at worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nit seems a lot like Nim at first glance. [http://nim- lang.org/docs/tut1.html](http://nim-lang.org/docs/tut1.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is in desperate need of a natural language processing library called 'wit'

<comment><USER12> Data serialization library calley Sit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some Nit picks (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun):

(0) Are the covariant virtual types they advertise actually sound? In their Employee/Office example, what prevents me from doing this?

        var e: Employee = some_boss_object
        e.office = office_with_no_fridge

(1) If you hate copy-pasting, inheritance is _not_ for you, because inheritance is literally copy-paste automation. If you hate copy-pasting, you come up with designs that don't require copy-pasting, whether manual or automatic.

(2) If I monke... I mean, refine a class in a module Foo, will the changes be seen in a module Bar? Is there some way to limit the scope of a refinement?

<comment><USER12> > inheritance is literally copy-paste automation.

I don't get this. The problem with copy pasted code is that you can forget to push fixes to both copies. So it is perfectly consistent to be against manual text copies, but for templates, macros, compiler optimizations, inheritence, and all the other forms of abstraction that allow you to not repeat code.

Moreover, of the forms of abstraction availible, inheritence usually does much less copy pasting under the hood. Instead, it makes use of vtables to actually reuse the binary.

<comment><USER9> > The problem with copy pasted code is that you can forget to push fixes to > both copies.

That's a problem with manually copy-pasted code. Copy-paste automation solves this particular problem, but it creates others, like a combinatorial explosion of definitions that are similar enough to tempt humans to conflate them, but different enough to make such conflation logically unsound.

> inheritence usually does much less copy pasting under the hood. Instead, it > makes use of vtables to actually reuse the binary.

I'm not talking about the implementation. Indeed, as you observe, using vtable pointers is a common technique to eliminate or reduce the need to make physical copies.

But, at the abstraction level, inheritance is fundamentally a copy-paste mechanism between two definitions. When a definition Foo inherits from another definition Bar, the parts of Bar that Foo retains (doesn't override) are copied into Foo's definition. In addition, sometimes an implicit coercion from Bar into Foo is provided. However, you can't conclude that Foo is really a specialization of Bar. This isn't true if Foo overrides any inherited behavior from Bar. In other words, the Liskov substitution principle actually matters!

> but for templates, macros, compiler optimizations, inheritence,

Of course, from this point of view, macros and templates are just more powerful forms of copy-paste automation. Compiler optimizations are an implementation detail, not a language construct, and thus need a separate discussion.

> and all the other forms of abstraction that allow you to not repeat code.

Abstraction is actually about controlling the visibility of implementation details. It's a powerful organization tool, even if you don't actually intend to reuse any code.

On the other hand, code reuse can be achieved by various means, ranging from principled (parametric polymorphism, hygienic macros) to ad-hoc (templates, unhygienic macros), with inheritance falling somewhere in between.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks similar to Crystal[1], another statically typed OO language with ruby-like syntax.

[1] [http://crystal-lang.org/](http://crystal-lang.org/)

</comment><comment><USER14> KISS may also mean keep the world simple by not adding too many languages. Maybe this language is the most beautiful in the world, but when it comes to languages, standard ugliness is at-least as beautiful as non-standard beauty. No offence of-course.

<comment><USER15> Good job your argument didn't win the day a few decades back. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not really understanding whats unique about this language from the "why" section in the main page. Every other language is also going to say its KISS, without verbosity, efficient, and so on...

</comment><comment><USER17> By reading the documentation, which is very incomplete, I cannot imagine myself doing anything practical with this language.

<comment><USER18> I'm biased in the matter, but I have to agree. There are a number of problems with it.

Arrays are covariant, and object is the base class of everything. I'm surprised that nobody's noticed that already (it's unsafe: arrays should instead be invariant).

It doesn't seem like there are any first class functions, and there's no tuple class either. I don't find any mention of mapping/selecting/reducing within standard collections.

For all (heh) the boasting about the type system, covariant arrays produce other problems too. If you have a function that takes an `Array[nullable Int]` and send it `Array[Int]`, the type system doesn't say anything about it. That means you could get into problems down the line. It's also possible to take a nullable Int and do `.as(Int)`

`var v = 1 / 0` causes FPE and core dump and dumps an ugly compiler stack trace.

The documentation about abort also mentions that there's no stack trace for it.

I don't think there are standalone functions with generic typing either, just classes with generic types. I suspect that their virtual types are probably unsound, but haven't tried working with them.

<comment><USER9> > Arrays are covariant, and object is the base class of everything. I'm > surprised that nobody's noticed that already (it's unsafe: arrays should > instead be invariant).

The real problem is that most languages don't actually give you arrays, they just give you mutable cells containing arrays of mutable cells. Remove mutable cells from the picture, and you'll see how wonderfully covariant array types are.

Arrays are really second-class values in the vast majority of languages. The litmus test for first-class-value-ness is "Do I need to worry about the identity of the object that holds this value?" The answer should be "no" if the value is first-class.

> `var v = 1 / 0` causes FPE and core dump and dumps an ugly compiler stack > trace.

Exceptions don't make much sense for handling programming errors like division by 0. What is your program supposed to do? Fix itself?

> I suspect that their virtual types are probably unsound, but haven't tried > working with them.

They are indeed unsound, for pretty much the same reason covariant method arguments are unsound in Eiffel. I have an example here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11752071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11752071)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The point here is: do we need a new scripting language in 2016 that only supports OOP and let devs use multiple inheritance even though it was said not to use it since 20 years ago? That pretty much summarizes my opinion.

<comment><USER20> I sort of agree.

I initially thought (from hello world and the bullets) that this would be Python with static types. On closer inspection, it's Ruby with static types (see the do/end blocks).

While I'm not sure you can ever have too many programming languages, I am pretty sure I won't be using this one.

<comment><USER18> What's even worse is that it's not even a good Ruby like Crystal. It seems to be missing any sort of callable object (can't find any mention of a proc, a block, or a lambda in the website documentation). So consequently there's no select, reject, each, or really any sort of mapping in the standard library (unless it's buried or I missed it).

<comment><USER20> So not really Ruby at all! I thought, after posting, that I should have clarified I was only talking about the syntax. The runtime (absolutely critical for a scripting language) I didn't investigate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here is a list of similar languages that operate on the fringes and work in a similar compiled-yet-readable (somewhat) fashion:

[http://nim-lang.org/](http://nim-lang.org/)

[http://crystal-lang.org/](http://crystal-lang.org/)

[http://lbstanza.org/](http://lbstanza.org/) (posted a few days ago)

Here is the 1 clear and important problem these languages have (which is similar to the marketplace-dilemma for ebay-type businesses):

They lack support from the community because the community would come only if they had a strong set of libraries/packages to do "actual" work OR if they had the financial-muscle of a big company backing it (Go from Google being the prime example) AND they need the community to actually build these frameworks/libraries to make the language popular/usable to more than 40 people.

If any of these languages want to expand beyond "we're an amazing systems- language that you can build: games, web applications, OSes, desktop applications, mobile applications with", they need to focus on a problem- domain and address it.

Here are some examples:

\- Elixir - although not explicitly saying it, with the rise of Phoenix, they are clearly targeting web-backends with good performance

\- Kotlin - Java is shit, so they are addressing the Android issue with a language that some say is better

I'm not exactly sure what specific problem-domains the 3 languages above are addressing, but ask yourself this:

 _If you are going to use a systems-language (similar to those above) to build some micro-service or web backend, why use anything over than Go?_

It has community support (and is presumably the 1 systems-language that is growing/being-used more and more), which is 10x more useful when you have a StackOverflow question or a situation where someone else has probably experienced and fixed it.

I say this as someone who likes these fringe-languages, but nobody is going to be building their bank-IT-infrastructure in "Nit" any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER22> For me, it is communities that make or break a language. By starting from scratch, with a new language, you are starting with 0 users. You have to win hearts and minds, rewrite the libraries and get market share. Even then there will be places where this new language will not be allowed. I think a new language it's rarely a good solution, ideally we should have an assembly language, a procedural language, Oo language and a functional language, ideally syntactically consistent.

</comment><comment><USER23> For those of us that are not professional software developers, could someone explain the differences between Nit and Python?

They seem to be syntactically similar, at least to my layman eyes.

<comment><USER24> Nit is statically typed, Python isn't. Syntactically, Nit's more like Go, Swift, or Ruby -- newlines can mean something, but it doesn't seem like indentation matters because there's an "end" keyword.

</comment></comment><comment> ben-schaaf Is it just me, or is Nit's answer to dependency management: "just throw it in the standard library"?

These are what I found taking a quick look through the standard library ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/)):

\- OpenGL Wrapper A ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_egl.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_egl.html))

\- OpenGL Wrapper B ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_glesv2.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_glesv2.html))

\- emscripten framework ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_emscripten.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_emscripten.html))

\- Github API wrapper ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_github.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_github.html))

\- Web Framework A ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_nitcorn.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_nitcorn.html))

\- Web Framework B ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_popcorn.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_popcorn.html))

\- Game Framework A ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_mnit.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_mnit.html))

\- Game Framework B ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_gamnit.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_gamnit.html))

\- Game Framework C ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_bucketed_game.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_bucketed_game.html))

\- Game Framework D ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_scene2d.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_scene2d.html))

\- A twitter like web app ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_tnitter.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_tnitter.html))

\- Web app for planning meetups ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_opportunity.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_opportunity.html))

\- An unofficial app for bargoers?? ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_benitlux.html](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/group_benitlux.html))

<comment><USER25> That made my day! Any programming language that has a Beer class ([http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/class_benitlux__src__benit...](http://nitlanguage.org/doc/stdlib/class_benitlux__src__benitlux_model__Beer.html)) in the standard library must be doing something right.

In fairness, dependency management is a difficult problem, and even some mature languages struggle to get it right - I don't blame the nit team for not tackling the problem at this stage. It does make me wonder if there is room for a language-agnostic dependency manager, rather than each language reinventing the wheel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I kinda like it. It reads almost like a modern BASIC. It's not too far away from VB.Net even. No wonder the other people here don't like it :D

</comment><comment><USER27> Looks like another Python to me, but I don't need another Python.

</comment><comment><USER28> If you choose nit as your programming language, are you nitpicky ?

</comment><comment><USER29> Hey I know the guys behind this language!

</comment><comment><USER30> On, no! Yet another "fun" language, i.e. a language that uses "fun" instead of the more standard "fn" or "func", just because it's 3-letters long and aligns better than 2- or 4-letter keywords (if you use 4-space indentation)! In fact, 2-letter indents are better - especially when your language suggests lines being less than 80-characters long!

<comment><USER31> The Linux kernel has a code style with 8 spaces and still has the 80 characters maximum. The coding style says "if you need more than 3 levels of indentation, you're screwed anyway, and should fix your program.". So not everybody agrees that you need deep indentation.

[https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/CodingStyle](https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/CodingStyle)

<comment><USER30> The kernel is in C. In OOP, there's at least one level coming from class declarations. 3 levels are more than normal in OOP!

<comment><USER31> That's true. And in the OOP case you usually have exception handling (i.e. try/catch blocks) as well, instead of "goto error" style error handling which is common in C.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spotify Finally Coming to U.S. in July - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/spotify_finally_u.s._coming_in_july/ <comment><USER3> I kind of wonder about the relevance of Spotify in the current market - <USER2> locker offerings from Google and Amazon (and forthcoming from Apple), it seems like the need for services like Spotify (for me, at least) is dwindling.

Spotify was a great idea before the emergence of music lockers - if I wanted access to music on the go, I could use a streaming service. But now that I can use a locker service to stream my own music library, I'm far less likely to pay for a Spotify subscription.

Case in point - I would have instantly sprung for a Spotify subscription two or three years ago had it been available in the States, but now that I'm using Google Music (albeit for free for now), there is no incentive for me to switch to Spotify as anything more than a semi-casual user.

<comment><USER4> Lockers of your own music are completely orthogonal to what Spotify is great at: social music.

I have lots of shared playlists with friends, and when one adds a song to a playlist we all instantly get it. It's like live, endless mixtapes, and transforms discovering and sharing music.

Spotify may need to market this more, but cloud storage and iTunes match don't come close to its killer app.

<comment><USER3> That's a good point that I hadn't considered - in fact, after reading some of the responses here, I'm rethinking my original position on the issue. While I may prefer the music locker model, that certainly doesn't mean Spotify is any less relevant for everyone else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After a hiatus I fired up Spotify here in the UK today. It's awful.

The software works just fine and the number of songs is commendable, but there are audio ads every couple of songs, intrusive display ads and free users only get 10 hours a month of listening.

Sure, you get what you pay for, but it's certainly a much, much worse experience than I had remembered it.

<comment><USER6> The free service is awful, because you're supposed to pay :)

I've been using paid Spotify from the US for a year and a half now, and I use it everyday. It's perfect.

<comment><USER5> Spotify got its traction in Europe though because of the free service.

Whether or not the paid version good value, the free service is essentially just a free trial now - which is fine, but there's a heck of a lot of competition in the paid area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is Spotify different from Rhapsody, which has been offering subscription streaming in the US for almost a decade?

<comment><USER8> Maybe Rhapsody has this, but Spotify has all my FB friends on the right hand side and we drag and drop music to each other all day and browse each other playlists. It's like Ping done right.

It also has an API.

Also IIRC Rhapsody is a Real product, so it may not actually work properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome, I'll finally be able to search their library so I can know whether I'm missing anything.</comment>


Improving Chromium's browser compatibility in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.chromium.org/2020/06/improving-chromiums-browser.html <comment><USER4> Here is an example of Google's homepage not rendering correctly in Chrome:

[https://twitter.com/sroussey/status/1273341472398381056?s=21](https://twitter.com/sroussey/status/1273341472398381056?s=21)

Really, if they have these kinds of problems, then the rest of us... :/

<comment><USER5> I've seen that one as well (and tagged a rendering lead on Chrome on Twitter just now). Thankfully it's a painting artifact and not a layout/behavior issue, likely because the invalidations are not accounting for the way shadows expand the layer bounds in some situations.

When finding things like this file bugs at [https://crbug.com/new](https://crbug.com/new)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The compatible problem is Microsoft and Safari, not Chromium and Firefox. I run a web development agency, and supporting the limitations IE has always been a significant cost and challenge. As the joke goes, "What is the definition of HTML5? If it works in IE, it's not HTML5".

I have mixed feelings about Microsoft giving up on their browser. On the one hand, it will make things more compatible and reduce effort for us. On the other, it's one step closer to a monoculture controlled by Google. I would prefer that Microsoft simply get their shit together and make a good browser.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm glad to see some traction, finally, for improving <input> elements. They're the source of my current pains:

* Still no real combobox. <datalist> is only a half-way solution.

* <optgroup> should be nestable - rarely do things fit into only 2 levels of depth.

* Biggest pain of all: Radio-button events.

<comment><USER8> And not all browsers support basic features like Datepickers etc. (I'm looking at you Safari)

<comment><USER9> > And not all browsers support basic features like Datepickers etc. (I'm > looking at you Safari)

This is a real pet peeve of mine. Perhaps there is some good reason, but as far as I can tell date pickers work well in chrome and firefox, and not having one in safari means you need to add javascript to your page and/or do some nasty server side user agent sniffing stuff to try and make sense of dates.

<comment><USER7> It's somewhat ironic (moronic?) that Apple was the first to add support for `<input type="date" />` in Mobile Safari for the iPhone almost a decade ago - so it's a complete mystery why macOS Safari doesn't have this feature.

Here's the official WebKit Bugzilla ticket for `<input type="date" />`: [https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119175](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119175)

Here's Apple's Radar entry: rdar://problem/14567780 (I don't have access to Radar - can someone who does please let us know what the latest update is?)

Right now we use a quick-and-dirty date polyfill for macOS Safari - <USER2> more recently our GA stats show that 90% of our macOS users are using Chrome anyway which supports date inputs natively so for our lesser-used pages and areas I might forget to add the polyfill and we won't hear any complaints.

<comment><USER7> Thinking about it more - I noticed the WebKit Bugzilla ticket mentions a problem with integrating Qt's date-picker for other Webkit platforms - and I noticed that Apple's date-picker in Cocoa is a bit... old-fashioned, I wonder if Apple's just dragging their feet until they modernize their date-picker in macOS?

It's kinda mean to do that though - if that is the case then they're deliberately holding back the web, increasing web-development time, and worsening accessibility (so many inaccessible JavaScript date-picker components!) just so that they can avoid "looking bad".

<comment><USER10> Fun fact: the bulk of the Cocoa datepicker is one attributed string. Yes, all the layout and styling.

<comment><USER7> I'm not familiar with Cocoa - can you elaborate on this? What is an attributed-string and how does a single string define the entire appearance and interaction of a complex UI component?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope they fix chromium's weird subpixel bugs like this one: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=717469...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=717469#c_ts1513250807)

<comment><USER12> We are in the process of revamping our table layout code at the moment - <USER3> should remove subpixel issues like this. Our master bug for these subpixel issues is: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377847](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377847)

We expect it'll be ready for testing in a few months. However we expect that it'll be a bumpy rolling this out as table layout has a long history, and isn't exactly well defined :).

\- Ian

<comment><USER11> Please make a large announcement when you are ready to get it to testing on a wider scale. I'd rather not miss it, and prepare accordingly.

<comment><USER12> Will do - we'll make some noise when ready. \- Ian

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Microsoft bringing CSS subgrid support to chromium is a beautiful example of synergetic collaboration! I hope mozilla take notes.

<comment><USER14> You're probably being downvoted because Firefox has already had subgrid for 6 months (since version 71).

<comment><USER15> It's probably because web devs have experienced years of pain due to MS holding back the web platform. They've made some positive changes recently but it'll take them a lot more to atone for past mistakes.</comment></comment></comment>


FB all-time low (21.86) - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:fb

<comment><AUTHOR> ZNGA also hit new low (2.85): <http://www.google.com/finance?q=znga>

</comment><comment><USER2> If you like graphs: <http://www.facebookstockvalue.com/>

<comment><USER3> I like graphs but google can do a way better job than that.</comment></comment>


Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile stop sharing cell phone location data - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/senator-rebukes-carriers-sharing-real-time-location-data/ <comment><USER2> T-mobile and Sprint have 'suspended' this, not outright stopped.

Since they don't care about your privacy - someone with a LocationSmart account should track and harass-the-s __* out of the CEOs for these companies, see how they like it...</comment>


Stream Processing with Apache Flink - <AUTHOR> http://blog.brakmic.com/stream-processing-with-apache-flink/ <comment><USER2> Here's a good intro on Flink streaming: [https://dato.com/videos/data-science- summit-seif-haridi.html](https://dato.com/videos/data-science-summit-seif- haridi.html)

Summary: advantages are real-time (10s of milliseconds) processing latency, exactly-once semantics, failure-recovery model based on Chandy Lamport, backpressure support.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, I know you're saying you're not an expert on Flink or Spark, but do you know if Flink and/or Spark allow you to merge a stream in real-time into a data set that you can run queries against?

Generating analytics directly off a stream has never seemed that useful to me. Being able to take all the data in the stream and merge it with previously collected data, then query that merged data is the sort of thing I need to be able to do.

<comment><USER4> "Being able to take all the data in the stream and merge it with previously collected data, then query that merged data is the sort of thing I need to be able to do."

Sorry for the shameless plug, but Striim does that with a SQL-like interface. Joining streams and previously collected, cached data is as easy as writing a join.

You can try it out here: [http://www.striim.com](http://www.striim.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> If I'm not mistaken, "striim" neither is an open-source project nor an open- sourced product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really impressed with Flink and the Data Artisans team. If I had to bet, I'd say they're the future of streaming.

</comment><comment><USER6> Curious that there's no comparison with the other stream processing platform of choice, Apache Storm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Some time ago I wrote an article about Apache Spark: [http://blog.brakmic.com/data-science-for-losers- part-3-scala...](http://blog.brakmic.com/data-science-for-losers-part-3-scala- apache-spark/)

However, I don't think that writing a comparison of such complex technologies within an introductory article would be of much value to readers. Of course, it would be easy to create some tabular structure containing "pro/contra" about Flink and Spark, but this would be way too simplistic, imho.

To be honest, I don't consider myself an expert on Flink and/or Spark so it would be unfair towards my readers to embed such a comparison within the article.

But a properly written comparison could be of value for those who have to decide what kind of processing (batch/streaming/machine learning etc.) they need to fulfill some specific (that is, "business") tasks.

Kind Regards, Harris</comment></comment>