Path-breaking Papers About Image Classification - <AUTHOR> http://blog.paralleldots.com/technology/deep-learning/must-read-path-breaking-papers-about-image-classification <comment><USER2> Some really cool information, but this concluding bit annoyed me:

> By Moore's law, we will reach computing power of human brain by 2025 and all > of the humanity by 2050.

Their graph does show exponential growth, but the data points cut off at the year 2000. Not surprising, given that Moore's law has reached its end in the last decade. ML improvements now depend upon better algorithms to make them more parallel, and the economies of scale which make more parallel computation units available. I don't think we're anywhere near that exponential graph, however, and we'll keep getting further from it.

Perhaps quantum computing will become a widespread reality and blow the field open, but I'm not holding my breath that it will happen in the next few decades.

<comment><USER3> Moore's law is still alive and well, you just have to move over to the parallel architectures like GPU's.

Considering machine learning is all on GPU's and TPU's now, I think this is still a fair assessment.

<comment><USER4> You're conflating things here; Moore's law is about how many transistors you can pack onto a chip, not performance. Moore's law is unsustainable due to laws of physics. Transistors are reaching size scales where quantum effects like tunneling dominate.

Think of a transistor as having two regions, separated by a channel. When the transistor is on, charge carriers flow through the channel between the regions. When off, charge carriers do not flow. But when we move to smaller and smaller length scales, the channel is so small that charge carriers will tunnel through and reach the other region. How will you distinguish on/off behavior now?

<comment><USER3> Todays transistors are still generally on a plane. If we could find ways to build IC's stacked thousands or millions of layers thick, we could really start using the third dimension.

("3d" transistors built on their side don't really count)

<comment><USER5> For CPUs/GPUs it probably wouldn't help that much, since you have to get rid of the heat produced by switching a transistor.

And for storage the main issue isn't how big it is, but how cheap it is to manufacture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The caption for the top graph appears a bit out of whack.

It states "exponential decline in top 5 error rate", the decline looks more like diminishing returns to me, especially if you push the 2017 data point out to where it should be (they've omitted 2016).

It's nice that the error rate is low, but the caption appears to oversell it.

This graph reminds me of a very closely related one I saw in a talk a few years ago [1]. It was showing decline in voice recognition error rates over time, with a highlighted band for "human performance".

The speaker, Roger Moore (the academic, not the actor, and not the Moore with the law), pointed out that this line, while encouraging, hid two important points.

1) For linear improvement, exponentially more training data was needed. 2) No insight into how living beings solve the same task.

These aren't necessarily fatal flaws, but they're worth remembering.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYbVsvxd3bE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYbVsvxd3bE)

</comment><comment><USER7> A more accurate idea of what a computer sees is actually that ML models figure out what parts of the signal to throw away and pay attention to. This is why you can slightly perturb the image so that humans see a picture of two hot dogs while an ML model can be confused into two different things (hot dog and an egg plant).

</comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes I wonder why is the top-5 image classification task so difficult. If you are giving me 5 chances to look at an image and correctly classify it from ~1000 Imagenet classes, I can surely do better than 5-10% error rate.

Also, now that the top-5 error rate been brought down considerably, what is the next benchmark for the research community to beat? A new dataset, top-1 error rate on Imagenet?

<comment><AUTHOR> A large majority of human errors come from fine-grained categories(such as correctly identifying two similar cat species) and class unawareness. I would recommend this article by Andrej Karpathy, where he talks about his learning from competing against GoogLeNet: [http://karpathy.github.io/2014/09/02/what- i-learned-from-com...](http://karpathy.github.io/2014/09/02/what-i-learned- from-competing-against-a-convnet-on-imagenet/)

<comment><USER9> That would be relatively low grade error. Specifically errors have to be valued and not just counted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone have insight as to why they're still doing top 5? It seems to me like the error rates have dropped low enough that they could move on to top 3 or even single guess challenges. Is there data that shows how these same models perform in such tasks? Though I suppose, if I was motivated, all the needed tools are available to find out for myself.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is densenet the one which won the best oaper award in CVPR this year?

And which framework would you recommend to code these in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Facebook's Densenet won the best paper award in CVPR this year. I would recommend PyTorch framework to code these in as it extends the numpy, scipy ecosystem and is simpler to use.

<comment><USER12> I'll prefer utility over hype. One has to see how the community evolves around pytorch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Squeeze and excitation network by momenta.ai has been a watershed moment for Chinese AI prowess and I'll watch out for such Chinese startups to dominate AI landscape for a while. What amuses me is why Google haven't participated in the last couple imagenets?

<comment><USER13> Imagenet as a competition is losing its importance ever since 2016. No idea like ResNet that is widely effective and inspiring from that year. I feel people just over engineered their network structure to claim the state of art by marginal gain.

Google since brought up their Neural Architecture search that can automatically design network, which I think is way ahead of rest of the competitors here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If anyone is interested here are the official ILSVRC2017 results:

[http://image-net.org/challenges/LSVRC/2017/results](http://image- net.org/challenges/LSVRC/2017/results)

</comment><comment><USER15> It would be great if you can share the links to pretrained weights if the networks mentione here in python framework.

<comment><USER16> Here are some. They all have pretrained weight download.

ResNet: [https://github.com/KaimingHe/deep-residual- networks](https://github.com/KaimingHe/deep-residual-networks) Wide ResNets: [https://github.com/szagoruyko/wide-residual- networks](https://github.com/szagoruyko/wide-residual-networks) ResNeXt: [https://github.com/facebookresearch/ResNeXt](https://github.com/facebookresearch/ResNeXt) DenseNet: [https://github.com/liuzhuang13/DenseNet](https://github.com/liuzhuang13/DenseNet)</comment></comment>


Missing connections in our education - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ericaxu.com/missing-connection <comment><USER2> These missing connections need to be defined as a crowdsourced, semantic, knowledge & history graph. Preferably on github so everyone can improve it.

A geneaology of ideas and the historical problems which motivated these ideas, with anaologies to problems and inventions in other times & spaces. These lists are skirting around similar representational issues:

[https://github.com/bayandin/awesome- awesomeness](https://github.com/bayandin/awesome-awesomeness)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists)

It should be possible to jump into this graph at any point, then navigate to neighboring regions of the graph. The onscreen distance between any two nodes should change depending on the interests of the student.

Students should be able to identify gaps by tagging a region of the graph with "Why Do I Care?" and this could be filled in by more experienced students.</comment>


ISO-8601 Week of Year Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://www.programmingalgorithms.com/algorithm/week-of-year <comment><USER2> 7 months ago i was looking for c++ version of this algorithm and now i found it, thanks.</comment>


The EU's disputed system of geographical indications is taking over the planet - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-eats-trumps-lunch/ <comment><USER2> I don't really see how this is a problem. As a European, I can't think of a single U.S. regional gourmet food that you see on the shelves over here.

The only common U.S. food in European supermarkets are the big brands: Kelloggs, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Oreos, etc., and they don't have any of those fancy "geographical indications" to protect.

Doesn't look to me like the U.S. is losing out here. Am I missing something?

On the other hand, there would be a lot to lose in the domestic markets for American farmers from a deal like this. No longer being able to call their cheese "cheddar" or "parmesan", their bubbly wine "champagne" would probably hurt their market share quite a bit.</comment>


Code Inflation (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.computer.org/cms/Computer.org/ComputingNow/issues/2015/04/mso2015020010.pdf <comment><USER2> Fascinating. The /bin/true started as an empty script and /bin/false as "exit 1", then someone added -version command (why!?) and then someone added help for this unnecessary -version command. Now it is 22kB binary and it's not even used because bash implements it's own.

<comment><USER3> You see these things happen in corporates a lot, somewhere in the hierarchy a decree is sent down that every program should have a --version option and that gets implemented without question. The worst of these organisations accrete so many rules that it becomes almost impossible to get any work done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One reason this happens, that I've observed, is risk avoidance. If you're working in a mission-critical code path, every line of code has been battle- tested through {m,b,tr}illions of executions over many years. You better have a damn good reason to change it, and if you do, you better be damn sure it works.

You can preach about {unit,functional,integration,load,performance} tests, but tests can only verify a miniscule sliver of the state space of any non-trivial program.

So in that situation, engineers tend to avoid risky changes and to accrete stuff instead. I haven't been convinced that it's unreasonable, either.

<comment><USER5> > I haven't been convinced that it's unreasonable, either.

Until the company loses the business with a product more expensive than the competition's, because it requires a bigger flash part to house all this accretion. Literally happened to me while I was working for a market leader -- we got beaten by a very recent newcomer who probably followed the same strategy but simply had not got enough accretion time yet.</comment></comment>


Win $10,000 by creating a race car bot in haskell, scala or clojure - <AUTHOR> https://helloworldopen.com/ <comment><USER2> It's not only those three languages.

From the rules[1]: Programming languages that are currently available for selection are C, C# / Mono, Clojure, CoffeeScript, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Scala, Go. At the moment, due to technical reasons, we cannot 100% guarantee that all of these will be supported, but we'll do our best. You can change the programming language at any time.

[1] [https://helloworldopen.com/rules](https://helloworldopen.com/rules)

<comment><USER3> Also, first prize is $5000, not $10000 - that's the sum of all prizes. You also have to travel to Finland to participate in the finals.

<comment><USER4> From the rules[1]: "The six teams that fight their way to the finals will receive a four-day, all-expenses paid trip to Helsinki, Finland. The trip will include great company, delicious food and one heck of a tour in the capital city of Finland."

[1] [https://helloworldopen.com/rules](https://helloworldopen.com/rules)

<comment><USER3> Yes. Sorry, I was reading below, but that was another event:

"All six finalist teams will get exclusive tickets to the to-be-sold-out tech conference of the year Reaktor Dev Day, worth 500e/piece. More information on the conference. Travel and accommodations costs are not included."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was about to apply but I'm confused about the rules requiring all members to be the same nationality.

I have a French passport, so my nationality would legally be French, but I live in the UK, and work with English, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian developers(all living and working in the UK), some of whom I was considering asking to join a team with me. I think this rule needs some amendment.

Edit: also to explain some more, my French passport is a consequence of some awkward laws - I was born in the UK and have lived here all my life and can't even speak the language of my legal nationality. If I happened to win I wouldn't like to be a representative of "France" and I really dislike this "Passport must match" for the team - it makes no sense.

<comment><USER6> Rules changed. Teams choose which country they represent, and one member needs to be a citizen of this country, but others can be from anywhere. Yay!

<comment><USER5> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The server will send you track details and car positions and your job is to > send car control messages to the server. You'll communicate with a game > server using JSON over TCP. More details will be delivered later."

I don't understand how this could work for a real-time game. I don't know what the input format is like but assuming you need to provide control commands eg:

        {accelerate:1.0, steer:-0.01, brake:0}

Then the behaviour of my car depends wholly on when that command arrives at the server. If there is a small delay it could have a dramatic effect on the position of the car. Similarly, my AI needs to react to information sent by the server which similarly could be delayed when sending over TCP.

Assuming the input format is the actual status of the car, eg:

        {positionx:123, positiony:234}

Then what is to stop me from submitting illegal inputs? Validation might work but it will be impossible for me to validate the output of my AI without access to the simulation code (apparently that is being kept closed source).

Maybe there is another technical solution I haven't thought of? Or maybe the simulation won't run in realtime but will actually work on fixed time steps?

<comment> mikko-apo Hi!

Very good question :) The message protocol is synchronized because of latency. When the developers test their bots against the game servers, the server allows long response times. When automated races are run in the cloud (with low latency), the response times need to be more strict.

<comment><USER8> _Can_ you test your own bots? As far as I can tell, the rules only specify that they're automatically tested daily. I'd like the ability to test whenever I need to.

<comment> mikko-apo Yes, we'll provide test game servers that you can use.

<comment><USER8> Are there limits to how much you can use them? Suppose I want to use AI techniques that require tons of tests to be run. Is that okay?

<comment> mikko-apo Unfortunately due budget constraints we can't allow unlimited access to test game servers. Do you have an estimate on how many rounds would you need to evolve the algorithm enough?

<comment><USER8> No idea. I have no idea how complex the simulation is going to be. How about a simple version that can be run locally?

<comment> mikko-apo I would image the complexity being really high because the game is about racing against other AIs. What do you think?

And I'm afraid local versions are out because:

1\. players would reverse engineer the server's simulation code

2\. we don't want to give access to other team's bots

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps they don't let Erlang race cars because of the "let it crash" philosophy?

<comment><USER10> I was also surprised that erlang did not show up in the list. I had already a team in head. We all do AI + Erlang.

<comment><USER11> I believe Erlang will be supported, so just enlist :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there any limitations on the licensing of my AI (didn't see anything on the front page rules)? I'm somewhat concerned this is just an cool way of outsourcing the AI development for one of their mobile games :D [at the very least it seems like a smart investment for recruiting]

Otherwise the competition seems cool and Helsinki is a nice place. Will certainly think about participating. All members being from the same country is a strange constraint though. I was actually looking forward to using this as an opportunity to co-develop with some US-based friends (I get why it's done though but I think allowing multi-country teams and having them participate as the country of the majority of the team members could have worked).

Edit: The screen shot makes me think it'll be a 3d game but since one of the company behind this is in mobile games it could be 2d (micro machines style). That's one point that should be clarified. Some more info would be helpful as well i.e. how is the world represented, what can we control etc.

<comment><USER13> > All code created by teams must be licensed with Apache License v2.0.

[https://helloworldopen.com/rules](https://helloworldopen.com/rules)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It sounds like a cool competition, but it would be nice if they gave a little more explanation about their technical solution. If it's true that the only way to test your bot is by uploading it to them and waiting for the CI to finish (once per day), then that's not very nice at all.

Will the participants get an environment in which they can test their bots outside of the competition CI?

<comment><USER15> Servers are available for testing during development, running the code on your own computer - the CI server is useful in that it verifies that your code compiles and runs on the linux machine used during the competition.

<comment><USER8> I thought it was supposed to run on your own laptop during the competition?

<comment><USER15> During the finals yes. The qualifying round is run with standardized virtual linux boxes, so all bots must have the same build and run scripts. With the amount of participants we're expecting, it wouldn't be possible to run the competitions manually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > All team members must be from the same country. By the same country, we mean > you should all be of the same nationality.

Why? What if I don't have any coding friends from my country? Silly.

</comment><comment><USER17> "The AI must have have near real time performance on CI and qualifying round. Slow response time is grounds for disqualification."

Will bots with a fast response time have an advantage over "slower" (but still meeting the minimum response time) ones ?

If so, for the sake of argument, won't a C bot have an inherent advantage over a python bot ?

<comment><USER18> C code isn't necessarily more efficient; it's definitely possible to write slow C code if you make poor choices, and the performance-critical work in python can be written in C (it might be already, e.g. if you're using numpy). And if the performance is IO-bound (e.g. communicating with their server), there might be a negligible difference anyway. Also, being high-level can give a big advantage in development time and bug prevention which is more likely than response time to be where things get difficult.

<comment><USER19> Right, but what's he's getting at is: will a bot that responds faster have an advantage over one that responds slower, even if both respond within the time time limit? Or, is the server waiting for both responses to come in before progressing the world state?

<comment><USER18> Ah, I see. Well, I misunderstood the question I guess. I'm not sure why my answer was downvoted, however, seeing as I don't think I said anything incorrect, and it is a reasonable (though incorrect) understanding of what he was asking. Namely, responding to the implication that a C bot will be necessarily faster than a python bot.

<comment><USER19> I agree ;). I didn't down-vote your answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Emailed them and just got this:

> _We just made a little change to the rules:_

> _" Team represents one country. At least one member of the team must be a > citizen of this country."_

Looking forward to competing now!

<comment><USER21> Forgive me for my density, but I'm still uncertain as to what "this country" means. Does this mean that at least one member of the team must be from Finland?

Can a team of 100% Americans compete?

<comment><USER22> Yes, you can. That rule just means that if you declare your team to be from US, then at least 1 person needs to have a US passport.

<comment><USER21> Thank you! Is it necessary that all members of the team arrive in Finland, or just one?

<comment><USER23> Well it says " All team members must have passports valid up until at least July 5th 2014. Finalists will be required to travel to Helsinki, Finland for the onsite finals. Any finalist who is unable to obtain appropriate travel documents, such as a passport or visa, may be disqualified from the onsite finals and an alternative finalist may be selected." [https://helloworldopen.com/rules](https://helloworldopen.com/rules)

so I would suppose that if you get to the finals (meaning to be in the top two teams of your region), then yes you must all travel to Finland, but expenses paid.

However, the qualifying rounds are organised via Internet, so the vast majority of teams will not need to travel. Of course Helsinki in June is a really nice place to visit if you want to come on your own and check out the finals live ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This sounds exciting, and I'm sure I'm not the only one in thinking that coding an AI for a race car bot is at least as interesting as the final prize.

Will the server be open-sourced later ? I think it would be awesome to be able build a bot at home.

<comment> mikko-apo During the competition the server code is not released. There are going to be game servers where developers can connect and test their bots.

We haven't discussed about what happens after the race. Lets see :)

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I understand you don't release the code during the competition so as to not make it too easy for competitors :)

I think building such a bot can be a very interesting exercise at AI and realtime programmation, which is why I'm interested in the potential educational aspects of it.

I'll keep an eye on it !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Its a good guess that the simulator or game engine behind this competetion is TORCS (The Open Racing Car Simulator) [1].

Simulated Car Racing (SCR) [2], is an existing annual AI car racing competition based on TORCS, though without the attractive prizes. It also has a client-server architecture with controls and sensor information sent over UDP using what seem like lisp sexps.

[1] [http://torcs.sourceforge.net/](http://torcs.sourceforge.net/)

[2] [http://scr.geccocompetitions.com/](http://scr.geccocompetitions.com/)

<comment><USER25> Another even better guess is that the udacity self driving car course [1] will see a huge upswing in enrollment.

[1] [https://www.udacity.com/course/cs373](https://www.udacity.com/course/cs373)

</comment></comment><comment> ah- Signed up in the hope to find some time to have a go at this. But it would be great to have some idea what the task will be beyond "creating a race car bot".

<comment><USER26> There is a slightly longer description in the Technical Instructions section on the Rules page ([https://helloworldopen.com/rules](https://helloworldopen.com/rules)):

"The goal is to create an AI for a simple real time racing game. Your AI will sit on the drivers seat of a racing car and race against others AIs on different virtual tracks. The server will send you track details and car positions and your job is to send car control messages to the server. You'll communicate with a game server using JSON over TCP. More details will be delivered later."

<comment><USER27> I wish I knew specifically what kind of data we would be given.

For example, is track details a 3d representation of the map to use for collision detection, the weather in a particular scenario. How much detail do we have for the cars? Drag coefficient, acceleration, max speed, bounding box?

<comment> mikko-apo We're trying to keep the competition both fun and challenging so the simulation is kept fairly simple. More details will be revealed when competition starts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There are no clear rules regarding rights in the code submitted, but the combination of "All content the team provides can be used for marketing purposes without notifying the team by the organizers of Hello World Open 2014." and "Reaktor may change these rules, the contest or its prizes, at any time for any reason without incurring liability to any of the contestants." aren't exactly comforting.

</comment><comment><USER19> From the rules page:

"Access to game servers where they can test their bot and compete against other bots"

Does this mean that teams will be able to run their bot an unlimited number of times against other bots before the actual competition?

I'm wondering whether neural network/genetic algorithm approaches will be feasible given the testing infrastructure.

<comment> mikko-apo Hi

Unfortunately due budget constraints we can't allow unlimited access to test game servers. Do you have an estimate on how many rounds would you need to evolve the algorithm enough?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't have a passport, and even if I did and I were to miraculously become a finalist, I've already got other obligations for the first weekend in June, so no formal entry from me.

 _BUT_ I'd still like to compete, is there anyway someone can unofficially compete?

</comment><comment> C-- It would be interesting to know if C++ support is on the table.

<comment><USER30> I wonder the same. Since they are supporting C it seems like a small amount of effort would get them C++ support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> this is stupid : "ALL MEMBERS FROM THE SAME COUNTRY". Why? I don't really understand the reason behind it

<comment><USER32> It's fixed now, the rule is that one of the team must be a citizen of the country the team represents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> where does it mention that oly haskel, scala or clojure should be used?</comment>


Beautiful Geneva cell phone usage visualization - <AUTHOR> http://villevivante.ch/

<comment><USER2> Excellent viz!

What tools [libs] did you use?

I assume this is all js.... Correct?</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on project - <AUTHOR>

Looking for any constructive feedback on my little php/MySQL project http://whatportis.com - negative or positive comments are all welcomed.<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> <http://whatportis.com/index.php?port=%27>

<http://php.net/manual/en/security.database.sql-injection.php>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cheers, missed out my SQL cleaner in a few places, should be a lot better now :) will give it another check soon.

<comment><USER3> "my SQL cleaner"

Warning bells. Correct practice is to use PDO or MDB2 and prepared statements for SQL access. You should never need a "SQL cleaner".

<comment><USER4> I have to second prepared statements. You wont have to change your code too much to use them and they are way too important not to use. They can even lead to speedups if you're going to reuse queries.

<comment><AUTHOR> The errors shown on the site was actually from a misguided hack I performed to log all search variables into a database, unfortunately I forgot to apply the correct SQL protection techniques that I normally do throughout the rest of the site and created the vulnerability slaps self on head.

Apologies for the confusion I am not actually using a SQL cleaner, in-fact with brutal honesty I don't actually know what one is. I was using the term to reference my usual methods/techniques for keeping SQL 'clean' from injection attempts.

I am fairly happy with my current SQL setup and the way it protects from injection, obviously when I code it correctly, however I will certainty look into using fully prepared SQL, currently I do something 'similar' using my objects so it would probably be very easy to implement.

Thanks for all of the feedback so far and pointing out the flaws, in fact the logs I have gotten from people 'testing' my SQL protection has helped a lot!

<comment><USER3> _I am fairly happy with my current SQL setup and the way it protects from injection_

In all seriousness: you shouldn't be, because it clearly doesn't protect in all cases. ("Failed to wrap a query in a magic function to make it sort of safe" is part of "all cases.") You have demonstrated, by neglecting to use your "correct SQL protection techniques," why non-prepared statements are absolutely terrible. You _cannot_ have the error you just did if you train yourself not to use direct SQL queries, regardless of library. Querying via MDB2 or PDO (or doctrine-dbal, which is a superset of PDO) means you have to intentionally and willfully do something very out-of-the-ordinary to pass in raw data as a SQL query, instead of being forced to wrap your queries in some slipshod, maybe-works-maybe-doesn't homegrown function that has not been rigorously tested.

Don't reinvent the wheel. Safe SQL queries are a solved problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do agree that I should consider implementing none direct SQL, however I am 'faily happy' with my current set-up as it does work and protect (when used correctly).

I will certainly look at none direct SQL, however I just don't feel it's my number 1 priority at the moment, especially when the template isn't even rendering in some browsers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some general feedback:

\- on the statistics link the top ports to their info.

\- provide more information, like how to open or forward ports etc

\- your url format would be so much easier if you could just type whatportis.com/xxxx or whatportis.com/keyword rather than the index.php stuff

\- it's not clear you can search for software that uses a port, you do say name but it would be more clear if it said something like "80, http, world of warcraft" or whatever

\- "is this port open on my computer/server/whatever"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, you can actually search using the URL, for example <http://whatportis.com/80> or <http://whatportis.com/http>, just need to edit the page so it passes the variable like this, not through the usual GET syntax like it is at the moment.

A few of the things I know need doing are:

\- More content for the users and also the search engines as they dont appear to index much of the site, may be even remove the javascript tabs and have distinct pages to help the search engines a bit more...

\- Edit the search page to pass variables through the URL (cleanly)

\- Some how improve the search system, very basic search at the moment and probably returns too many results for some parameters.

I do agree the statistics page defiantly needs some work doing to it, such as there is the same port listed a few times in the top 5 as there is so many records for it.

Really like the 'this port is open on my computer' although dont want to look like I am attacking all of my users with port scans, so might make that a manual click to check.

<comment><AUTHOR> Searching from the home page will now use the correct URL format, and not index.php?port=XXX

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
      $ grep 10080 /etc/services
      amanda          10080/udp   # Amanda
      amanda          10080/tcp   # Amanda

Incidentally, you're lacking this one too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Competition? What about just "Contest"

For a minute I thought you were posting about competing services, then I saw the page and was like "How is this a competition?" It should be something like contest > X entries for following, Y for each port you enter. Weight X and Y however.

I also agree, fonts need help.

<comment><AUTHOR> Contest idea is great, will work on improving that now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice tool. I would love access to the API once its public to write a bash script that allows you to search from terminal.

Suggestion: \- statistics: top 5 ports show only 2 distinct ports. it would be better IMO to show 5 distinct ports

<comment><USER9> > Nice tool. I would love access to the API once its public to write a bash > script that allows you to search from terminal.

        > cat /etc/services | grep " 80/tcp"
        http 80/tcp www www-http # WorldWideWeb HTTP

<comment><USER10> Cat is useless in that line:

       $ grep " 80/tcp" /etc/services
       http            80/tcp          www www-http    # WorldWideWeb HTTP

<http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html#cat>

<comment><USER9> It's not useless. With cat, I don't have to remember the order of grep's arguments.

<comment><USER10> Interesting. With grep you need at least something to search (one argument), don't you? If you don't provide another argument to say "where", it reads from standard input (as most unix commands).

But you already know that because you're using it that way with cat. How can you don't remember then the order of the arguments?

<comment><USER9> There:

> {1} With grep you need at least something to search (one argument), don't > you? {2} If you don't provide another argument to say "where", it reads from > standard input (as most unix commands).

And 'find' is the other way around.

I just don't see any reason to not to use cat. It's not like grep will use fseek() to speed anything up, if I call it with file URI instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> clickable: <http://whatportis.com>

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the design would benefit GREATLY from some whitespace, and using native fonts instead of cufon.

If you're interested in better web fonts, look at Google Web Fonts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to leave a quick message, thanks everyone!

This is probably some of the most helpful feedback I have gotten in a long time, on any project :)

</comment><comment><USER11> hey,

The nav at the top, right hand background-image isn't rendering on my ff5/win7 ".details .tabnav li a span".

as so: <http://imm.io/7KxD>

Also, I'd stay well away from centered text if I were you. And the Red highligthed text is quite disconcerting seeing as they arn't hyperlinks.

Hope that helps :) even if its not technical feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input/images, looks like the layout needs fixing sooner than I thought, I would like to go for something CSS, clean and basic.

Taking inspiration from something like server fault, however I am not a designer and finding a template that matches that is hard :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why canvas for rendering text?

<comment><AUTHOR> The design is 'temporary' and off themeforest just to get the hack/project live and on the web - I don't like most of TF's designs however this did seem more minimal than most.

Preferably I would like something with less javascript and a lot more clean, just need to find a designer :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why is all of this text images? :/ Also, ripe for SQL Inject

Web fonts > Cufon

<comment><AUTHOR> Have fixed a lot of the SQL flaws thanks.

Not sure what you mean by the images? you want more? and less text?

<comment><USER14> No, I just prefer native web fonts to cufon. And you're still not escaping at least one of your queries properly unless you fixed it in the last 10 minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully it has been fixed, gone through all the searches over the past hour and can't see any that are still getting through.

<comment><USER14> You must have really just fixed it. I'm not seeing the sql errors anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed - Feedback is only useful when you act on it ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Celebrities among dozens charged in sweeping US college admissions fraud scheme - <AUTHOR> https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/celebrities-among-dozens-charged-in-sweeping-us-college-admissions-fraud-scheme-20190313-p513p3.html <comment><USER2> front page, please check for duplicates before submitting:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19368815)

</comment><comment><USER3> How does stuff like this not delegitimize prestigious schools? Imagine having a school full of kids so dumb their rich parents have to pay milluons just to get them in. I wouldnt want to go there, how am I supposed to believe the institution has any integrity? If they're taking money for admissions what else could they be taking money for?

<comment><USER4> The point of Elite colleges are the networking, not the education you get.</comment></comment>


Federal Circuit Slams Patent Troll  - <AUTHOR> http://ipwatchdog.com/2011/08/04/indicia-of-extortion-federal-circuit-slams-patent-troll/id=18568/

<comment><USER2> Although Gene seems to discount the inhibitory effect of a patent troll getting fined over $600,000, I think this case will focus the minds of overzealous patent owners, as well as the patent attorneys involved, for whom a Rule 11 sanction carries a burden beyond the dollar amount of the plaintiff's fines.

And while a broad variety of litigious patent holders sometimes get unfairly lumped together as trolls, this outfit clearly seems to deserve the epithet, and in this case the system, in its current form, ultimately seems to have worked.

</comment><comment><USER3> >>Defendants also need to unite and bring a RICO action actions these bad acting non-practicing entities. Extortion can be captured by RICO and that is exactly what these bad actors engage in. It would do the federal government well to investigate as well. The Federal Trade Commission should go after these nefarious actors for engaging in unfair business practices.

This is the best part of the article. Now, how do we get the Federal government to prosecute them for extortion?

<comment><USER4> Fortunately, RICO also provides for civil action. If a good case can be put together, RICO's provisions are strong enough that even a civil suit should be able to bankrupt a patent troll and their backers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "As a result of the misconduct found, Judge Martinez of the United States Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington slapped the patentee-plaintiff with Rule 11 sanctions totaling $141,984.70 for failure to perform a reasonable pre-filing investigation. The district court also awarded the defendant $489,150.48 in attorneys fees and costs pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 285."

So the sanctions were only about a quarter of the half a million dollars in legal costs the defendant had to put up to fight the case? I understand that the plaintiff had to pay the costs in the end, but this is hardly going to deter trolls.

It seems to me that with sanctions such a small proportion of legal costs, trolls can just carry on doing what they are doing and the defendant's fear of being sunk in legal costs will far outweigh the troll's fear of the sanctions for the troll (which after all are probably smaller than his legal bill!)

In what way is this a deterrent?

<comment><USER6> I'm with on the idea that, on the surface, it feels lopsided - $142,000 in sanctions vs. $489,000 in defendant's legal fees - but AFAIK sanctions are not related to defendant's legal costs. You're trying to tie two unrelated concepts and getting twisted that they aren't more inline with each other. Sanctions, in most cases, are regulated - there's a minimum and maximum - whereas defendant's legal fees are not. The judge hopefully gave the maximum sanctions available.

<comment><USER5> I understand that sanctions are not related to defendant's legal costs.

I think they should be, because I think it's a joke that sanctions can be far less than what the defendant had to risk to fight the behaviour that caused the sanctions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Newbie legal question: Can the companies who have already settled with Eon-Net now simply stiff them on the license fees?

<comment><USER8> Yes. The old contracts are similar and kinda like the 'fruit of the poisonous tree' doctrine.

Though.

I doubt Eon-Net is going to 'take them to court' and face a similar result (that is if the companies can afford the law suit and/or if Eon-Net can NOW afford the law suit).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Should we consider this a ray of hope or an exception? Also, as per the article, the case concluded last week. I am surprised that other tech media did not cover this given the buzz around patent trolls these days.

<comment><USER10> Seems to be neither:

 _Indeed, the written description of the patents in question expressly refuted the claim construction of the patentee-plaintiff. As a result, the district court properly found that EonNet pursued objectively baseless infringement claims._

If this set a precedent it wouldn't be against vague patents, or against suing implementations of the obvious, etc.

<comment><USER11> It sounds potentially about as true of Lodsys' claims as this patent troll's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know how it would be handled but something has to be done about such blatant abuse of the legal system. If any company files suit but offers to settle for lower than the cost of defending and states it that way in the offer, then I fail to see how that is not extortion. It would seem that you should be able to go before a judge and show the settlement offer to have it ruled so. To me, with this case the defendant's legal fees shouldn't have been as high since the judge should have tossed it almost immediately.

This type of thing is going on across the country and not just in patent infringement cases. You have people all over the place clogging up the courts with suits that are essentially extortion using the law in unintended ways. This has got to stop before we've all lost total confidence in our legal system.

Of course, it's almost a joke now as it is...</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone with experience in using IBM Watson? - <AUTHOR> Tried to get in touch regarding using IBM Watson but haven't hear back. Anyone out there with experience using IBM Watson? <comment><USER2> Hey. There is a slack team set up for Watson that has a few IBMers that answer questions, although it can take a few days to get replies. (wdc- community.slack.com) Also, Zach Walchuk is their developer evangelist. (firstname.lastname@example.com)

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER3> yes i used the psycholinguistic services and tradeoff analytics. not much beyond that.

<comment><AUTHOR> did you get a swift reply or did it take a while? how long ago was that?</comment></comment>


Now In Europe: SimpleDB, CloudWatch, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/09/now-in-europe-amazon-simpledb-cloudwatch-auto-scale-and-elastic-load-balancing.html

<comment><USER2> Nice, but I'd rather see DevPay coming to Europe!

<comment><USER3> Funny. I had exactly the same thought.

I couldn't care less where my apps are physically running. For latency critical stuff there are CDNs and you can always buy satellite hosts anywhere. Sane billing (DevPay & FPS), now that's a different story...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty Please: When do I see AWS in APAC/HK? Thanks, Jeff!</comment>


Tunneling HTTP Over NFC on Android Using Host Card Emulation - <AUTHOR> https://blog.classycode.com/tunneling-http-over-nfc-on-android-using-host-card-emulation-907947a721ac <comment></comment>


Learning to Read in Your 30s Profoundly Transforms the Brain - <AUTHOR> http://maxplanck.nautil.us/article/338/learning-to-read-in-your-30s-profoundly-transforms-the-brain <comment><USER2> Cool article! The original is actually from a year and a half ago ([https://www.mpg.de/11312776/lesenlernen-veraenderung- gehirn-...](https://www.mpg.de/11312776/lesenlernen-veraenderung-gehirn- erwachsene)), curious why they published it only now in English.

One quote bothered me, however: "Hindi, one of the official languages of India, is based on Devanagari, a scripture with complex characters describing whole syllables or words rather than single letters."

This isn't entirely correct.

Devanagari:

\- isn't complex. there are only 46 characters, whose strokes aren't meaningfully harder than Latin ones to write, unlike, say, Chinese where strokes can be intricate. They're typically one or two-stroke characters.

\- 1:1 unambiguously maps writings to sounds, unlike English. yes, it does map to syllables. it's immediately obvious how to pronounce a word when reading it. I can't imagine them having to learn a language like English, where you have to rote memorize exceptions all the time.

\- doesn't have characters that describe whole words...not sure where they got this idea. There are really short words that can be said with one syllable, but that's coincidence, like in English "a" is both a character and a word, though I wouldn't claim that letters map to words because of it.

<comment><USER3> English is easy to learn if you just pronounce it like it's written and how it was pronounced, you _know_

<comment><USER4> Seems like a good time to link to "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenite [1]... It serves to educate native English speakers on how absurd the language (written vs. spoken) is, while simultaneously striking fear into the hearts of ESL folks worldwide.

Best read out loud - try too appreciate how much context and rule-of-rhyme you have to apply to read it correctly.

[1] [http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html](http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm about to turn 33 and only within the last year have I really discovered the joy of reading books. I went from reading maybe 1 or 2 books a year to reading a book a _week_ , and I'm on track to read close to 50 books this year (slowed down quite a bit by reading a textbook as part of auditing a class).

If only I had discovered this earlier in my life who knows where I'd be now, but better late than never I suppose.

<comment><USER6> I've been wanting to get in to reading, but my biggest issue is finding something to read that interests me. How did you start finding things?

<comment><USER7> Easiest for me to get started (since it was topical and I could convince myself there was value) was to pick the most interesting books from the "most mentioned on HN" lists out there [0].

[0] [https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker- news](https://hackernewsbooks.com/top-books-on-hacker-news)

<comment><USER8> Thanks. Didn't know about that. Bookmarking that pronto!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Learning IS brain transformation. Essentially by definition. Also, lack of exposure to novel intense experience actively prevents brain development because it prevents learning. This will be a growing problem as adolescents in particular lead lives which are designed to eliminate all novel stimulus and thwart every natural inclination to seek novelty. It's certainly encouraging news to see that the dropoff in neuroplasticity that comes later might be caused by the dead boring lives of industrialized adults rather than any insurmountable biological hurdle. At least, that's what I get out of this.

<comment><USER10> but how do you know that the crazy distractions of the modern world aren't growing adolescent brains in ways yours will never grow?

Throughout history adults have always looked down on children, yet the upcoming generation always ends up surpassing their parents achievements.

This reminds me of something Socrates said, over 2 millenia ago:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

<comment><USER11> > Throughout history adults have always looked down on children, yet the > upcoming generation always ends up surpassing their parents achievements.

So far. There is some evidence that IQ has actually peaked.

Some studies suggest a highly distracted, unfocused mind is actually measurably worse at important tasks:

[http://www.talentsmart.com/articles/Multitasking-Damages- You...](http://www.talentsmart.com/articles/Multitasking-Damages-Your-Brain- and-Your-Career,-New-Studies-Suggest-2102500909-p-1.html)

<comment><USER12> Problem: it hasn't done so in the US, which is the epicenter for the distracted, unfocused lifestyle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if a similar change would occur in the brains of native English speakers who learn Chinese or Japanese as adults? After all, it's a whole new way set of very different characters to learn and decode.

It may be that once the big shift has occurred when you learned to read your native language, it will never happen again, as you now have the "firmware" to read anything.

<comment><USER14> Learning Japanese at the age of 30 definitely bent my brain in new and interesting ways. Certainly when communicating, it made me realize how much of speaking is actually stringing together groups of words to convey meaning and way less about using some perfect syntax or grammar. The whole backwards grammar relative to English also was pretty new and challenging.

<comment><USER15> As a native English speaker currently learning Japanese I love just how _logical_ it all is. I'm not sure if it's because I'm from a software development background but I'm finding it so easy to learn.

As you suggested in your comment, it's a whole different way of thinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what the effects will be of learning to read a "new" language, in addition to ones that we already know. Would that result in detectable changes?

Would the type of "new" language matter? Say, Someone who knows English, learning to read French, v/s the same person learning to read Mandarin, which has a very different structure?

</comment><comment><USER17> I enjoy reading, but I've always struggled with it, particularly with larger, slower-paced, and more complex books (though it's never stopped me). I suspect I have pretty strong aphantasia [1] and so I never build mental images of the characters or their scenes, rather I only remember abstract descriptors about everything. I find that this makes it hard for me to follow storylines and in particular multiple story arcs in multiple different locations or timeframes. I think that this does impact the level of joy I get from reading, and envy those who get a rich tapestry of mental images from the stories.

I found, for example, Matthew Reilly's _Ice Station_ a relatively easy story when I read it as a teen because the pace was high and the action was contained to a relatively simple scene. On the other hand, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's _Quicksilver_ right now and I'm really struggling to follow the story arcs because it jumps all over the place with its characters, scenes and timeframes. The fact I'm already familiar with most of the characters' names helps some of it stick, but I'm resigned to most of the secondary Royal Society characters being a generic conglomeration of traits and just treat them as a supporting cast without defined personalities in a lot of ways.

I find that I also very quickly forget the contents of novels I read. I read _Snow Crash_ about 5-8 years ago and then again earlier this year, and I barely remembered any of it. Certainly I think more stuck the second time, but it was still mostly new to me (e.g. the character concepts and biggest plot points kind of stuck, but nothing more).

I sort of hope that reading can help me improve with my memory, but it hasn't in about 25 years of reading (I'm in my early 30s) so I don't hold particularly high hopes. I do wonder whether the aphantasia would've been even worse had I not read so much when growing up, but maybe if it hasn't noticeably improved in my life then equivalently it would never have been any worse had I not read. I wonder if my brain in some ways reflects an illiterate person in the visual cortex areas?

On the other hand, reading is undoubtedly the reason my vocabulary and spelling is as good as it is. Certainly, it's is a very valuable skill and I am glad that I continued to engage it since I learned to read as a child.

[1]: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how- it-...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/blake-ross/aphantasia-how-it-feels-to- be-blind-in-your-mind/10156834777480504/)

<comment><USER18> That's interesting about aphantasia. I knew some people have incredible visualization ability far past the normal amount, but I never knew that some people have none at all.

I think my visualization ability is about average, although I do very well with visual thinking. Not sure what the correlation is there.

I've been a prolific reader since about 11 years old. I would say that in general, I don't try to visualize what the author writes. Whenever the author spends a lot of time going into setting up the environment with lots of visual details, I only lightly skim that. I don't bother trying to visualize exactly what the author is trying to convey.

So sometimes it does lead to a little bit of confusion later on in the story if something I read doesn't match up with my made up visualization, but generally I might only get a blip of confusion a few times during a book, it doesn't really amount to much or affect my enjoyment.

I'm not sure how much time Neal Stephenson spends on visual details in Snow Crash, but I remember the first 200 pages of Anathem being a chore to get through because of the incredible amount of time he spent on setting up the environment. Because I largely skipped the visual details in Anathem, there were parts later on in the story that were confusing due to the fact I didn't have a grasp on the layout of the monastery and such. Assuming he didn't make mistakes at any point.

<comment><USER17> I catch myself skimming over details like that too, because they are essentially meaningless to me. That said, I've never had the situtaion of a mental image being wrong, because I never end up actually drawing one. I just end up getting lost, like I'm constantly encountering new scenes that haven't been described to me. It's disorienting but now I've come to adapt to it, I know that I'll not necessarily follow details I would otherwise expect myself to follow, not because it's badly written (as I used to sometimes wonder) but that it just doesn't gel in my mind. So I've come to adapt to that, in a ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It never really occurred to me how utterly foreign reading was. I guess it makes sense because, like the article mentions, it's such a recent innovation that a dedicated region hasn't yet evolved in us. I never thought about the actual deep changes in the brain that must happen when learning.

When I read a book, I'm often totally transported into that world. I wonder if areas of my brain invoved with vivid dreaming are being activated when I am in this state.

<comment><USER20> two of the main things people use to enter a lucid dreaming state (becoming aware that you're dreaming while you are asleep) are switching a light bulb on and off and the other is to read some text. both are fairly new things to our brains.

the light bulb one is easy enough. you just have to flick a switch every time you walk past one (this is during the day while you're awake) and then eventually you will remember to do it in your dream. when the light doesn't switch off in your dream, thats when your conscious mind will hopefully notice and you can start to take control over the dream

its a bit harder to do the same with words. when you find some in your dream, you have to focus on a few of them and try to memorise them, (which isn't easy when your mind is in that state) then look away for a few seconds and then look back and see if they are still the same.

ive only ever managed to test that out once myself but after a while the words started to change and others disappeared which made me snap out of it and realise i was in a dream.

tl;dr wordz is new init?

<comment><USER21> This is interesting to me, because I'm an avid reader in real life and usually lucid dream (though I don't train myself to). Most dreams to a degree feel like fiction to me and they're enjoyable in the same way reading a good book is, except better, since they're about me. I have never linked this to my reading before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >"These deep structures in the thalamus and brainstem help our visual cortex to filter important information from the flood of visual input even before we consciously perceive it." Interestingly, it seems that the more the signal timings between the two brain regions are aligned, the better the reading capabilities. "We, therefore, believe that these brain systems increasingly fine-tune their communication as learners become more and more proficient in reading," the neuroscientist explains further. "This could explain why experienced readers navigate more efficiently through a text."

I read the headline and instantly wondered if the same result occurs as we age and continue to fine tune our reading skills. The above passage seems to confirm the age old saying of reading keeping the mind active. One thing I am wondering though is if there is a certain types of literature that the brains reacts in a more positive or less than observation way. For example, does our brain engage more when we're reading a technical literature review moreso than if it was a novel? Or vice versa. Is this why professionals—lawyers are the main ones i can think of—who comb through hundreds of dense reading weekly get viewed as achieving such a masters ability in reading?

<comment><USER23> As long as you make new neural connections your brain is going to grow[0]. An anecdotal fact which I heard many years ago was that adding a new perspective to look at something is like increasing your IQ by 10-20 points. Simply reading a lot of text within your comfort zone is not going to increase your mental capacity.

[0][https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung](https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung)

<comment><USER24> 1) Neurogenesis halts in your early 20s. After that, no new neurons for you, sorry. Although the connections may change.

2) "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points" is actually one of Alan Kay's famous quips.

<comment> bad-joke > 1) Neurogenesis halts in your early 20s. After that, no new neurons for you, > sorry. Although the connections may change.

This statement as written is almost total nonsense. A cursory internet search yields abundant studies on adult neurogenesis. Even small amounts of cardiovascular exercise increase brain volume, stimulate neural growth, and create synaptic connections in adults well into old age.

At best, one could claim that neuron growth _slows_ as we age, but it absolutely doesn't _halt_.

<comment><USER24> And yet when Arturo Alvarez-Buylla and his team of researchers actually searched for physical evidence of young neurons in adult brains, they found... nothing: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25975](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25975)

The studies which came before may be based on nonprimate animal models in which adult neurogenesis does occur. But the best evidence we have to date suggests that adult humans do not grow new neurons.

<comment><USER25> That article you linked to is about neurogenesis in hippocampus only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is there a difference between vertically and horizontally written languages, given that the left field of view of each eye are processed in the same half of the brain, and the right half of FOV processed in the other half of the brain?

For horizontal languages like say english, the most relevant words are to the left and right of the current word, so left context and right context are initially in different halves of the brain.

For vertical languages relevant symbols are above and below the currently observed symbol, so if there is overlap of right and left FOV then both halves have the full context, if no overlap then both halves get the full context but only partially each symbol...

<comment><USER27> Does this matter in practice? We have binocular vision--when I read, I focus on a word with both eyes. The occasions where I'm reading with just one eye or another are fairly rare.

<comment><USER28> The field of vision split is right down the middle of each eye. One side of the brain gets the two left-halves, the other the right. FWIW. Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat has a chapter on hemispatial neglect which is an interesting read.

(The entire book is fascinating.)

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

<comment><USER29> Try as I might, I can't find details about the field of vision split. Like how perfectly vertical and straight is the division? What is the microscopic structure like: how crisp is the line at the cellular level? Is there some messiness at the boundary with regard to which hemisphere the cones and rods are routed to? Does the division run precisely through the middle of the fovea?

<comment><USER28> This paper should help. :)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10944/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10944/)

Empirically, when running tests where you wanted a clear hemisphere separation, we always used between one and two degrees off the centerline axis. This was undergrad cog sci in the 90's, so take it for what you will.

<comment><USER29> Thanks. I see from the side bar have been hitting this site. Let's see, recently viewed items:

"Poppy seeds: differences in morphine and codeine content and variation ..."

"Spectrum of human tails: A report of six cases ..."

"Spontaneous knotting of an agitated string ..."

:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >reading is such a new ability in human evolutionary history

As I understand it, only about 2% of our species' history.

But I would give anything to know if there are undiscovered enormous innovations on that level and if so, what they are.

<comment><USER31> As of 2017, we're generating more data each year than we previously generated in the entirety of human history. Although comparing refrigerator's IP addresses to the Iliad may not be a fair comparison.

</comment></comment><comment> black-tea It makes sense. Unlike speaking, reading is something we don't just learn naturally, yet it completely changes the way you see the world. When you see some written language you can't _not_ read it.

I do wonder, though. Do humans with no written language still understand that writing contains information, or does it just look like noise to them?

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm curious how much of the benefits accrue if you use audio books - which is how I do much of my "reading".

<comment><USER33> Do you primarily listen to audiobooks while you're doing something else?

<comment><USER32> Audiobooks are the easiest "multitasking" I think. A great example is while driving. This weekend I listened to 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson while driving. I also listen while gardening or cleaning. Really only works for tasks with really low cognitive load.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seeing how this research is done with syllabic scripts, it might be worthwhile to have the same repeated with alphabetic and hieroglyphic scripts and see if any interesting results can be gleaned, like something equivalent to Sapir- Whorf hypothesis.

Edit: Grammar

<comment><USER35> I've once started learning Tibetan and felt like on some powerful nootropics during the days. Perhaps that's the effect and it can possibly happen to literate people if they learn a language that is very different to their mother tongue and uses a really different script.

<comment><USER34> That's an interesting sample point. Lets hope research can shed more light on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > _"While it is quite difficult for us to learn a new language, it appears to > be much easier for us to learn to read._

Sometimes the writing system of your own language can be formidably difficult, on par with learning a foreign language, if not harder.

<comment><USER36> Can confirm - after many years of study I'm finally at the point where my spoken Mandarin is passable, but _dear lord_ the written language is tough...

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wonder what (if any) effect do graphic novels or hieroglyphics have in the brain. Do they change the brain structure fundamentally like this too?

</comment><comment><USER35> I wish I could actually learn to read... I mean faster than average (I read more slow than average actually) while still getting everything.

<comment><USER38> I read very slow too. Nothing really helped so I decided to just ignore it. It doesn't really affect my life except I can't read subtitles (they change much faster than I can read). I can read books just fine, except a few times slower than normal people. This also didn't affect my academic performance. It's an unfortunate situation nevertheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I've noticed that since I've started reading books for fun, that understanding technical information is easier.

</comment><comment><USER40> What if I only read buzzfeed. Is there a scientific study for that?

<comment><USER41> That's a different type of reading, you don't immerse sufficiently enough into lecture to get anything other than information from it. Deep reading requires you to spend time with one long read at a time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> When does everyone prefer to read ?

<comment><USER43> All the time, to be honest. I find myself reading way too much at work, instead of doing other things (grading papers, proctoring a test efficiently, etc.) I read at home, at the gym (and sometimes skimp on running to do inclined treadmill or bike just so I _can_ read) and even when I'm in a car with others driving. Hell, I read during a board game meetup the other day (it was at a bookstore!) because I was close to finishing one (yes, I do realize how rude it was, and didn't read except while waiting to start up a new game).

I read at night mostly though, and it's a nice way to wind down before bed. During the summer, while I'm off, I'll also walk and read as well. I generally don't tend to pass of social events to read, though (boardgame night was an exception because I had, like, 20 pages left), so that cuts me down some.</comment></comment>


CryptoLinks.com – World's Best Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Directory - <AUTHOR> https://cryptolinks.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Free to use cryptocurrency directory, to help crypto community to grow, learn and expand. You will get all the information whether you are complete newbie or professional trader in crypto world. Form cryptocurrency exchange to mining of bitcoin and altcoins. [https://cryptolinks.com/](https://cryptolinks.com/)</comment>


Smart Drugs: Fenn Lipkowitz and his Amazing Lifelog - <AUTHOR> http://quantifiedself.com/2011/12/fenn-lipkowitzs-amazing-lifelog

<comment><USER2> I am familiar with smart drugs from a medical perspective.

I am not 100% convinced that it is not primarily a placebo effect.

I think that the benefit Mr Lipkowitz received from improving his diet may have had a larger role that taking supplements.

<comment><USER3> It's certainly not a controlled experiment, but at the same time, I can report apocryphal success with daily doses of 500 mg of Tyrosine, a teaspoon of flaxseed and fish oil, 200 mg of CoQ10, 240 mg of Gingko biloba, and 10 mg of vinpocetine along with several other innocuous supplements that may or may not have a role here.

The upshot: several weeks in I got hit with three gnarly race conditions in 30,000 lines of GPU code. 3 days later, the bugs were all fixed and overall performance was up several percent. I'm good at what I do, but the speed at which these bugs were vanquished floored me. These were _nasty_ hard to isolate, seldom occurring problems and I picked them off one by one on seemingly gut instinct alone.

Which is to say I do think something's going on here, but it's hard to isolate exactly what. More data is needed but I'm reluctant to attempt to _fix_ what is apparently not _broken_.

As for the raw diet. I _love_ the raw diet. But unless you're Demi Moore, Alicia Silverstone, Woody Harrelson, or living in a cooperative situation with a bunch of fellow raw foodies, it's just way too much work. That said, upping the consumption of green leafy vegetables, and correspondingly reducing the consumption of sugar and animal products in this day and age is a no-brainer (i.e. Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead).

Amusingly, the picture of Mr. Lipkowitz on his blog site is taken at the Googleplex - a place that served some of the most healthy food I've ever eaten - to some of the fattest, out of shape and unhealthy nerds I've ever seen in 14 years in the tech industry.</comment></comment>


Robots and Firms - <AUTHOR> https://voxeu.org/article/robots-and-firms <comment><USER2> This seems to be a fairly obvious finding, doesn't it? Any change in business practices that gives you a competitive advantage gives you, well, a competitive advantage!

The study seems to say: if your company automates jobs away, you'll actually create jobs in the long run because you'll be able to take over competitors' market share! But I don't think those jobs are of the same type as the ones eliminated - probably trading manual labor for strategy/marketing/engineering, which is not much consolation to current manual workers at your firm.

Also, the study neglects to mention industry-wide effects. Maybe one tech- savvy company can grow its headcount even after automating a bunch of jobs away, but given the heavy headcount losses sustained by competitors, will it still be a net increase in the industry? I would suspect not.</comment>


The Müller Formula: Predictable color preferences - <AUTHOR> http://www.livelygrey.com/2007/08/the_muller_formula_or_predicta.html

<comment><USER2> This analysis is a bit silly. In both cases, the "ugly" combinations have much less value contrast.

More useful link: <http://handprint.com/HP/WCL/color11.html>

<comment><USER3> Actually you're exactly wrong about the contrast.

If you convert the red-orange scheme to grayscale you'll see that both the _ugly_ and _nice_ schemes have the same value contrast. If you convert the green-blue scheme to grayscale you'll see that the _ugly_ combination has _more_ value contrast.

See: <http://img357.imageshack.us/img357/9127/grayfx0.png>

The issue isn't contrast, it's hue.

The author uses the Müller Formula to explain it, but I'm not convinced about the "follow the natural brightness" argument – does that explanation still make sense if you reorder the colors in the scheme?

I learned this stuff in color theory without this formula. It's simply this: combinations of colors with similar hues don't look good together.

I hope this picture helps explain it: <http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/3797/vomitev5.png>

Obviously the left scheme doesn't look _great_ in that graphic because all the colors have the same value. But you can see that it looks better than a scheme with colors of similar hue.

<comment><USER2> You have the shittiest "convert to grayscale" I've ever seen: it doesn't come close to preserving the value of the colors. Convert the image to Lab, and look at the L channel, and you will see that the "ugly" combinations have very little value contrast, while the "nice" ones have a great deal more.

To see who is "exactly wrong" more graphically: <http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/7098/grayfxbetternp7.png>

Notice that in the bottom row, where we take the value from ugly and nice combinations and reverse them, the combinations with the "nice" choices of hue are now looking ugly as sin, while those with the "ugly" choices of hue no longer look so bad.

Also, in your second image, the green stripe on the left is quite a bit brighter than red or blue stripes, which is the dominant reason that the combination on the left looks "better", while the three stripes on the right side are of quite similar value.

Image showing this: [http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/2456/vomitev5betteryu5.pn...](http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/2456/vomitev5betteryu5.png)

I didn't really have the half hour to spend on this (paper due tomorrow; blargh), so hopefully someone finds it edifying.

(Edit: None of this is to say that there isn't some real truth to the link's author's claims about commonly preferred color combinations based on hue. It's just that the graphics he uses to demonstrate it [and also the one you made] are horribly misleading, and mostly reflect a completely unrelated effect)

\----

Another edit to add: the hang-up may be that the "value" of the HSV model has almost nothing to do with the term "value" as used by artists or color scientists. So that may be the source of your confusion. HSL and HSV were designed for the 1970s and are nearly useless in an age of fast computers.

<comment><USER3> Your second edit nails it. I thought the brightness in HSB was equivalent to value, which is what I built my second graphic around. If you use my shitty grayscale converter ( _Desaturate_ in Photoshop) they all come out to the same gray, so I thought I had it right.

Using _Black & White_ gets me results much closer to what you've made.

Thanks for criticizing my graphics and putting up improved ones. (The second one isn't working, but I understand your point about the green – again, _Desaturate_ convinced me they were all the same value.)

It's really hard to isolate and demonstrate one property of color at a time.

<comment><USER2> Yep. It's true. Which is why it's annoying when posts like the article linked from the top of this thread attribute effects to one of those "properties" which are clearly mostly caused by another.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to be overly aggressive in calling your grayscale conversion "shitty". Hope it didn't come across the wrong way. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Huawei banned from using SD card branding - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/24/huawei-sd-association-ban/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully all of this causes a push away from closed standards and branding. Its a shame how things like android, bluetooth and wifi while seemingly open are still very limited with proprietary components and branding.

</comment><comment> em-bee what surprises me the most here is how a trade group for setting global standards can be under control of a single country.

this in itself is a problem that needs to be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it legal if they just put a SD card like slot in the position where the SD card usually is with a SD card compatible driver, and just avoid writing SD card in the description and case of the computer?

</comment><comment><USER4> How long until Chinese device makers just abandon SD cards en masse and form a new standard? Unlike, say, x86 or Windows, the capabilities of SD are not hard to replicate.

<comment><USER2> I wonder if they could simply fork SD cards and make something compatible but without the branding or proprietary parts.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how many "counterfeit" SD cards are on the market already, especially in places like china?

<comment><USER2> Ebay is filled with ultra cheap high capacity sd cards that are either fake or quality control rejects. These are still using the SD card branding though. It would be nice to see a high quality retailer of "SD cards" selling them under some generic name and then with the text "SD compatible"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also, the better comms modes. Major sad day for them.

<comment><USER7> Best phone I have ever owned.

<comment><USER6> Sad day for you too. This is a mess!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> why is engadget redirecting to [https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=) ?

<comment><USER9> This is a frustratingly common problem, the answer is crappy advertise javascript. I have reported this problem numerous times to various sites such as anandtech, etc. Most commonly for me it only happens on iPhone and redirects to some kind of you won an iPhone ad.

I had some luck reporting this to publishers but they feel basically powerless, they have to blacklist these advertisers manually and they always come up with new tricks to get around it.

And as much as I would say, dump these ad brokers, I guess the reality is that it's hard to make money in online news at the moment, and these ad networks are the best they have.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for the insight.

Well, they lost me then and probably many other potential readers on mobile devices.

<comment><USER11> Happend also on desktop

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thus the noose tightens. Huawei is a security threat, and until they do more to show they are independent from the Chinese communist government, the noose will just get tighter.

<comment><USER13> Fist, Huawei will be mostly fine. They have the largest consumer market called China to them. Second, the notion that a company could be "independent" from the government of the countries that they operate in is hard-to-define at best. Google and Microsoft immediately shut down business with Huawei following Trump's order, without concrete evidence that Huawei had done anything wrong. Huawei is just operating under the laws of China, and also US, EU. They are not so different from the likes of Google, Apple, and Microsoft. All this is a tragedy for the 200 thousand Huawei employees and their families, to see the company they built with hard work getting ruined. And if China retaliates, it will create more tragedies for US companies, their employees and families.

<comment><USER14> "Huawei will mostly be fine"

"All this is a tragedy for the 200 thousand Huawei employees and their families, to see the company they built with hard work getting ruined"

Are they ruined or fine?

<comment><USER13> It is a long game.

They will have a lot to tackle in 2019 and 2020. This is a sad story, if they are targeted for no wrongdoing. But in the longrun, they should be mostly fine. Moreover, it is foreseeable that these events _help_ Huawei accelerate their chip and operating system businesses, because there will be a lot more incentive for Chinese government and companies to promote Huawei's ecosystem.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Accountability - Not Code Quality - Makes iOS Safer Than Android - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/accountability-not-code-quality-makes-ios-safer-android-042012

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual research can be found here: <http://www.trailofbits.com/research/#mobile-eip></comment>


Enough with the Dead Butterflies (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://emilydamstra.com/news/please-enough-dead-butterflies/ <comment><USER2> This is one of the most interesting articles I've read this year: the subject matter is really intriguing (I had never thought about this being the reason butterflies in pictures look so clinical and saddening, but it completely makes sense!), and almost more intriguing is that the author is passionate enough about this to write such a wonderfully extensive article about it.

<comment><USER3> > This is one of the most interesting articles I've read this year

Just in case you missed it, have you read this?

[https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from- du...](https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust)

<comment><USER2> I hadn't; this was really fascinating. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently Behringer, a musician's audio equipment manufacturer, teased a clone of the Wasp, a historic synthesizer. They copied the design language down to the original wasp icon as can be seen in this image.

[https://media.sweetwater.com/api/i/q-82__ha- fc89e45000b982eb...](https://media.sweetwater.com/api/i/q-82__ha- fc89e45000b982eb__hmac-58da05cb846e98105a040618811ae9bad8a093b2/images/items/750/BehrWASP- large.jpg)

Seeing this announcement immediately reminded me of this article. A strange wing position for a wasp. So far as I know, that wasp is dead and mounted, for the same reason that the butterflies are dead.

</comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013)

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't find the article that I thought had been linked to in the previous thread, but there was a similar article about depictions of the Moon that I read around the same time as the first postings of this. The point of that article was that people are really bad at depicting correct combinations of phase, orientation, and position for the Moon. It's actually pretty straightforward to get it right once you think about what the phase and position tells you about the Sun's position.

<comment><USER3> [https://ciechanow.ski/earth-and-sun/](https://ciechanow.ski/earth-and-sun/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems to me, actually, the body position that seems most incorrect (eg in the Monarch poster). The body remains largely horizontal, and "above" the wings.

I saw this post first time around (on HN) and bought the complaint completely. But, having now looked at lots of slow motion butterfly flight pictures I think she's over-stating it a little.

Look at this [1], or a slow-mo of Monarchs: the white & black Tree Nymph (I think it's called) in particular, especially at first take off, or when gliding, has quite a swept forward wing. Perhaps about 120deg spacing.

Other butterflies, of the ones I saw it was smaller ones but the OP observes the contrary, have greater than 180deg spacing. That made me wonder if the wing sweep was more to do with flight conditions (wind speed, etc.)?

Projection, the angle you observe from, is a key factor in the apparent shape too.

[1] [https://youtu.be/aBfJtTm_XD4](https://youtu.be/aBfJtTm_XD4)

<comment><USER8> I dunno, to me it makes the most sense to portray an at-rest butterfly as it would appear by choice, when it is resting with its wings fully extended (whether for display, or to soak up sunlight, I don't know). And those seem to nearly universally have overlapped wings, as the author describes.

As for snapshotting a butterfly in flight, the wings are so briefly spread fully that it seems more problematic to show such a brief, flat angle all the time.

All in all, though, I kinda hate this post. I can't unsee it now.

I still find it to be a great, well-stated, and thought provoking, though.

<comment><USER9> My impression is that at-rest butterflies usually have their wings folded together, like this: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melanargia_galathea_...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Melanargia_galathea_bottom_MichaD.jpg)

When they're sunning themselves it's a more relaxed position, similar to [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Man_with_a_backpiece...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Man_with_a_backpiece_Christian_and_Enlightenment_tattoo._Color.jpg)

Overall though all the positions seem good and it's more of an artistic choice. The "dead butterfly" pose shows off the wing patterns better and it's close enough to positions the butterflies assume in daily life. You don't often see spread-eagle positions in photos either but nobody would mind using it to show off some full-body tattoos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh no! Another thing to get head-aches from. I alread get head-aches from bad kerning and badly tied shoe laces, and now I'll have to watch out for badly depicted butterflies.

Anyway, it's a beautiful and interesting article!

<comment><USER11> Badly tied shoelaces?

<comment><USER10> [https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm](https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Site is down. Internet Archive version: [https://web.archive.org/web/20191214080139/https://emilydams...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191214080139/https://emilydamstra.com/news/please- enough-dead-butterflies/)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's hard to unsee the fact that the common depiction of a butterfly is a dead one instead of an alive one, and based upon a field guide/ shadowbox.

<comment><USER14> I dunno. I read about this when this article was posted before and totally forgot about it until just now. Then again, I don't have a lot of stuff with images of butterflies. I do have a friend who is obsessed with them who I sent the same article. I wonder if it's stuck with her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This one these things you don't pay attention until you read about it and now you are not able to unsee it.

Super interesting, thanks for the read!

<comment><USER16> no more butterfly merch for me....

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wonderful write-up! I just love articles like this, when a person takes a tiny thing and examines it as if under a microscope. Not only have I learned something about butterflies today and gotten a grim chuckle out of thinking about all those gaudy dead butterfly products, I've also gained a bit of appreciation for butterflies and I'm sure this will lead to me looking up scientific papers about them.

</comment><comment> mark-r The best way to get realistic pictures of butterflies is to use a camera. As a kid I had a fascination with collecting butterflies, and would chase them with a net and kill them. Once I grew up I realized the pictures were much better.

</comment><comment><USER18> Very interesting, but sad article.

I found out not too long ago, that some butterflies migrate - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidoptera_migration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepidoptera_migration)

</comment><comment><USER19> If it's more than a year old and it's interesting, it's already been posted to HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460013)

</comment><comment><USER20> What an interesting bit of trivia. It's also very different to see a non pinned butterfly since I see this as a flying lifeform, it has aerodynamics.. (bioengineering early years)

</comment><comment><USER21> -its become the defacto way to represent a butterfly and is unlikely to change

-the vertical and horizontal symmetry is part of the aesthetic

-the live butterfly examples read more like moths

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe if we depict butterflies more alive, we would treat them better?</comment>


A new way for psychology to address its replication crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/save-psychology-by-replicating-studies-before-theyre-published/475983/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I thought a recent study said there was no replication crisis. And in fact the original study replicated most results, but with weaker effects.

<comment><USER3> I bet that study won't replicate. Reproducibility issues in psychology are an established fact. I think at least two studies reproduce the problems with reproducability in psychology.

<comment><USER2> Could you provide references?</comment></comment></comment>


A Crisis at the Edge of Physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/a-crisis-at-the-edge-of-physics.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

<comment><USER2> Yesterday's discussion thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9669945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9669945)

</comment><comment><USER3> >>How are we to determine whether a theory is true if it cannot be validated experimentally?

A theory without experimental falsifiability is not a theory, but a hypothesis. I understand that Physicists might be frustrated by the lack of ability to validate all the math they've been doing, but if that's the way it is then they are not special and certainly not in a unique position in human history.

I'm sure a lot of great thinkers in the past felt the same way about the atom, etc. You don't get to opt out of science/knowledge just because you don't like that current human technology can't validate any of your ideas.

Edit: Martin Rees has addressed this very topic. It might be that humanity never gets to discover everything about the Universe: [http://edge.org/response-detail/25519](http://edge.org/response-detail/25519)

<comment><USER4> In science a theory is a framework that connects facts, it can't be demoted to a hypothesis nor can it become a law. Sometimes people say theory to mean hypothesis but that's not how it's being used in this article.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone else nostalgic about the early internet (90s) - <AUTHOR> Ugly web design for sure, but today all we have are sleek pre-designed wordpress themes and twitter bootstrap. The web resembles a high-end mall but it's lost a lot of it's character.
When I was in high school, a bunch of us would create websites on angelfire or geocities. I'd assume kids today are just trying to get followers on Youtube or Instagram.
Today, the algorithim is almighty. But back in the day things like webrings and guestposts worked. It was more personal. There was less obsession with "going viral".
If I google "fried chicken recipes" I'm gonna get a 1500 word tome. The author will talk paragraph after paragraph about the first time she ate fried chicken, songs about fried chicken, how fried chicken is truly American, where the best spot in her state is, just to bump up the word count for SEO. And of course she'll recommend an affiliate link for a fryer, which she's never actually bought.
I guess I get nostalgic about the sense of exploration and serendipity.
Does anyone else feel this way? Is a return possible, or is nostalgia just nostalgia? <comment><USER2> It sounds like gopher, which is actually still in use to some degree. A little harder to find your way around though, since you don't have the Googles and the Yahoos and the Bings paying attention to it. But there is a lot of info that you won't find anywhere else. One of the few remnants of the 90's Internet that is still around, even if at a smaller scale.</comment>