Why we disagree about human nature - <AUTHOR> http://www.histhum.com/what-common-nature-can-exist/ <comment><USER2> I agree mostly with the sceptic takes on human nature. One thing that rubs me the wrong way, and I think is increasingly common when 'human nature' and also evolution is utilised, is a very hard determinism, increasingly popular in some political circles. Such as "if science discovers this or that about human nature, we'll have a much better grip on how humans behave or ought to behave".

But this disregards the dynamism that is central to acquiring knowledge. Once we understand "human nature" if it at all meaningfully exists, this also opens the door to manipulation, which destabilizes the whole enterprise to begin with.

<comment><USER3> "is implies ought" is indeed a fallacy, and even learning that biological instincts, say, support conflict, doesn't mean conflict is good. On the other hand, it is a good thing that we understand that humans and their underlying instincts have been more or less unchanged since the dawn of humanity as evolution works on very long time scales. "Cavemen" had as much internal life as we do ourselves -- they just didn't have as much technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is no single true 'human nature'. It depends on social circles. Different environments attract people with different values and characteristics.

It's easy to get caught up in your own social environment and to confuse the nature of the people around you as being representative of human nature in general.

<comment><USER5> Edge cases like serial killers and murderous world leaders prove there is no such thing as human nature. Human nature is as diverse as all the other life on this planet willing to play any game it can only contained by its technological, social, and political limits. We have figurative dung beetles in terms of people willing to jump into sewers to clean them. We have carnivores and herbivores. and so on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it is best if we look at these issues in terms of human psychology and how it is important for political philosophy.

In order to decide what is the best society, we need to know what is good for human beings, and this depends in part on human psychology. Furthermore in order to have such a good society, we need to get people to behave well, and in order to decide how to most effectively attempt to do that we need to understand why people behave in good or bad ways, and again this depends in part on human psychology.

The question then is what is human psychology, including what is universal about it and in what ways it varies, as from person to person or culture to culture, all as relevant to the questions of what is good for human beings and why they behave as they do, good or bad.

These are complicated matters, but I think they are considerably answered by looking at basic human needs, such as Maslow's need theory, and also basic human cognitive abilities.

</comment><comment><USER7> A big factor is "human nature in nature" and "human nature in high density agrarian societies".

Civilization (so far) depends on the principle of a monopolizable surplus which allows an elite to mobilize lower ranking elements for games of war and power across geographical distances and temporal distances that would be impossible for HnG societies (bound by the non-monopolizable bounty of the land and the lifestyles possible in such lands)+.

An "evil" or "megalomaniac and sociopathic" society in HnG can only extend as far as their adaptive mode of production. Who can gather all the wild fruits of the earth and deny his brother the bounty?

An "evil" agarian society can mobilize the monopoly surplus to cajole and punish societal elements far beyond the "natural" borders any HnG tribe would've been able to maintain and into torturous decades and centuries.

\+ - I've read about a few HnG societies where class structures arose because they had some sort of natural monopoly position; crossroads of a regional trading route or salmon run bottlenecks. But the important part is that monopolizable resources "alter" human nature and society.

<comment><USER8> These are arguments made by some, notably Derrick Jensen, and my new favorite, Helga Vierich.[1]

I'd say I agree that human nature will play out differently when fitted into different systems—so much that I started thinking about the artificial component of our nature as separate:

human artifiture (ar-'TI-fi-ture) human nature refitted to and re-emergent from its own artificial systems

[1] [https://anthroecologycom.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/human- natu...](https://anthroecologycom.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/human-nature-is- shaped-by-culture-heres-how/)</comment></comment>


Govt attempts to gain powers over the design and operation of all networks in NZ - <AUTHOR> http://techliberty.org.nz/govt-proposes-gcsb-control-over-nz-communications-in-new-tics-bill/

<comment><USER2> This all seems to happen in about the same time in different countries: US, India, Australia, NZ, UK recently, France might try it soon, too - and that doesn't even include the more "oppressive" countries.

I don't think it's just a coincidence. After all it's what the UN proposed at that ITU meeting, too, and I think there already was an interception standard passed last fall.</comment>


The BeagleBone AI is Available - <AUTHOR> https://beagleboard.org/blog/2019-09-19-beaglebone-ai-available <comment><USER2> Although it is priced competitively, ~ same as Nvidia Jetson Nano ($125) it seems underpowered when compared to Nano. Nano has 4GB RAM, 128 CUDA cores and can 4K encode/decode 30/60 FPS and also handle multiple streams when compared to 15/15? of BeagleBone.

Perhaps the Vision Engine is better for computer vision tasks, but having to use TIDL suite when compared to Jetson Nano's JetPack with tools which we use regularly on bigger GPUs is going be a hard compromise to make.

Jetpack includes CUDA 10, TensorRT, OpenCV 3.3.1 etc. by default and PyTorch is available separately for Jetson Nano. Besides the community is very active.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for pointing out the Nano, seems they are pricing it at $99:

[https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded- sy...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/autonomous-machines/embedded- systems/jetson-nano/)

<comment><USER2> I bought Nvidia Jetson Nano Dev Kit in India as soon as it became available for (~$125), in USA it's bit cheaper at ~$110 (incl. shipping).

Please note that there is also Nano Module, which is a SOM (System on Module) with 16GB EMMC storage sold for $150. I think this is intended for clusters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me or is the ® symbol being everywhere a bit off-putting (in terms of parsing the text)?

<comment><USER5> It's not just you. Any trademark expert will tell you that you only have to use the symbol once, in the first or most prominent place where you use the trademark.

Also when you use other companies' trademarks, you should have a notice of who the trademark owner is, which this press release does for Sitara but not for the other trademarks used in the piece.

<comment><USER6> > Also when you use other companies' trademarks, you should have a notice of > who the trademark owner is

Do you have a cite for this? Thanks.

<comment><USER5> Sure, here is one:

[http://www.bpmlegal.com/tmdodont.html](http://www.bpmlegal.com/tmdodont.html)

Search the page for "disclaimer", or just read the whole article - it has a lot of good trademark advice. It also somewhat disagrees with what I said about only using the trademark symbol once - it says to use it the first time and "occasionally thereafter".

So here is an interview with an IP attorney who suggests just using it once:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in- progress/2014/03/12/whe...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in- progress/2014/03/12/when-and-how-do-i-have-to-use-trademark-symbols/)

(Disclaimer: I'm not a trademark expert! Just passing along what I've read from those who claim to be...)

<comment><USER6> > (Search the page for "disclaimer".)

This is confusing because that isn't how the USPTO seems to use the term "disclaimer" as regards trademarks:

[https://www.uspto.gov/trademark/laws-regulations/how- satisfy...](https://www.uspto.gov/trademark/laws-regulations/how-satisfy- disclaimer-requirement)

> What Is a Disclaimer?

> A disclaimer is a statement that you include in your application to indicate > that you do not claim exclusive rights to an unregistrable portion of your > mark. For example, if you sell shirts and your mark includes the generic > word "SHIRTS," you could not object to someone else also using the word > "SHIRTS" as part of his/her mark. The word is still part of both marks, but > no one is claiming exclusive rights in that word, because it is an > 'unregistrable' component of an overall mark. (See below for typical > examples of unregistrable matter that must be disclaimed.)

> A disclaimer does not physically remove the unregistrable portion from your > mark or affect the appearance of your mark or the way you use it. It is > merely a statement that the disclaimed words or designs need to be freely > available for other businesses to use in marketing comparable goods or > services.

<comment><USER5> I don't think the bpmlegal article I linked is using the word "disclaimer" in the same sense as USPTO here. One of the examples they list is:

 _Teflon is a registered trademark of DuPont._

They're just saying you should add a statement like that, not saying this is a "disclaimer" in the specific meaning USPTO uses above.

<comment><USER6> > They're just saying you should add a statement like that

With absolutely no evidence that it's required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me or does 1GB of ram seem a little low for a $100+ board? I can't seem to find what speed it is either.

I'm not expecting anything crazy like 8gb or anything like that, but given how many boards sell at ~50$ with 4GB of ram this just seems kinda limited.

<comment><USER8> I think that it probably doesn't make sense to compare this to a general- purpose single board computer. It's apples and oranges.

The BeagleBone AI is aimed at prototyping in industrial automation applications. I've never worked in that area, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that large amounts of RAM isn't a priority for industrial controllers. Probably the software tends to be frugal with memory, because a bigger heap means more cache misses, and more cache misses mean worse latency.

A Raspberry Pi, by contrast, is mostly targeted at running a GUI and memory- hungry user applications up to and including Minecraft. It's meant for teaching kids to program and hobby stuff. It doesn't have built-in DSPs and programmable real-time units, because those are for supporting applications that fall far outside its intended purpose of having fun with Python.

<comment><USER9> That reasoning is just plain wrong. The memory usage has almost nothing to do with the field where it will be used. It will depend on the size of the model being run on the board.

The size of that model will be determined by the number of weights used. Being that industrial automation will likely use CV, that will mean the potential for a lot of weights.

Same goes for any other non trivial use case.

So yeah, 1GB is paltry.

<comment><USER8> It's been a long time since I've done anything in machine vision, but, at least back in the day, what I was seeing was that, compared to other uses for machine vision, industrial applications tended to stay a lot simpler: Lower- resolution images, black-and-white imaging, support vector machines instead of neural nets (let alone deep learning), all that good stuff. They could get away with it because they are able to much more carefully control the input domain - controlled lighting conditions, consistent orientation of the thing being imaged, all that good stuff. So they don't need 10^9 or more weights' worth of ocean-boiling complexity the way you would in something like self- driving cars or impressing your friends with your Imagenet performance.

And if you can get away with running an SVM on a 1-megapixel black and white image, then your weights will fit in 1GB with an order of magnitude to spare.

<comment><USER9> Ok, what you said about lower res images makes sense. Lower variation of images maybe means you could get away with less weights/more quantization-- you could afford to lose more information in the model. Maybe 1GB can be sufficient then.

There's no reason to use an SVM over a (C)NN nowadays though.

<comment><USER8> Sure there is. With an SVM, you can pick different kernels to more carefully engineer specific behaviors, what kinds of errors your model is likely to make, etc. You can get a good, stable model on less training data, which is great when your training data is expensive to produce. (A situation that I'm guessing is not at all uncommon in industrial automation.) You get all that crispy crunchy large margin goodness. Stuff like that.

I'd absolutely focus on ANNs if I were an academic researcher, because that's the hot flavor of the month that's going to get your career the attention it needs to bring in funding, jobs, etc. I'd also pick it for Kaggle-type stuff, where there's effectively no real penalty for generalizing poorly. Bonus points if you consume more energy to train your model than Calgary does to stay warm in the winter.

In a business setting, though, I would only default to ANNs if it were holistically the best option for the problem domain. By "holistically" I mean, "there's more to it than chasing F1 scores at all costs." The business considerations that caused Netflix to never try productionizing the prize- winning recommendation engine, for example, are always worth thinking about. Personally, I'm disinclined to look past linear models - not even as far as kernel methods - without strong reason to believe that I'm dealing with a curve that can't be straightened with a simple feature transformation. Complexity is expensive, and needless complexity is a form of technical debt.

<comment><USER9> _You can get a good, stable model on less training data, which is great when your training data is expensive to produce_

Huh? SVMs don't perform better than NNs on less training data.

I'm sorry, but the rest of what you said is out of date and wrong. CNNs work better than SVMs for CV tasks. There's no reason to use SVMs anymore for CV, and no one in their right mind does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does this comparing to Nvidia's Jetson- Nano([https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-nano- developer-...](https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-nano-developer- kit) for $99) which is cheaper and appears to be more powerful?

I used BB in previous projects, one thing definitely stands out for BB is that, it could be used as a product directly with a case and some certification(EMC,etc). Nvidia's Nano is more of a development platform.

Beagleboard predates RPi actually, though after Arduino, BB is arguably the very first board running a 32-bit ARM that is also open source, cheap, small, however it's overshadowed by RPi in recently years.

<comment><USER11> Yeah the Beagleboard and more generally the TI AM335x is getting old. Single core, DDR3-800, no PCI-e, no secure boot, and other bizarre limitations. It's nice that they're putting something newer out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dual Cortex-A15, 2 DSPs, 4 Vision Engines, 4 Real-time controllers (PRUs), 2 Cortex-M4s, 2D accelerators, dual 3D GPUs...

It's impressive but, being pretty much domain specific chip, can anyone make use of its capabilities at hobbyist levels where Beaglebone is targeting?

<comment><USER13> Having the PRUs as supporting microcontrollers can be great where timing is critical. For example, it's possible to decode signals from an AM receiver and pass them to the host, or monitor sensors and have immediate responses (such as triggering a shut-off via GPIO).

There's nothing particularly difficult about wiring a microcontroller up to a single board computer to do these jobs, I've done exactly that for reading my weather station and heating oil tank level. But it's messy and I think the cohesion of being able to do it directly on one board is a worthwhile advantage.

<comment><USER14> The PRUs share a section of main memory with the CPU, which is pretty unique.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >low cost development board yet, and it's driving a whole new AI revolution.

This press release is a disaster as far as grammar is concerned. I am legitimately unable to tell if it has any special properties regarding AI.

And NO, it came out yesterday, it's not driving any revolutions.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not overly familiar with TI's SOCs post-2010. Anyone out there with a good overview of what the Sitara AM5729 includes besides the bullet points in that piece?

And what about TIDL adoption? I've been working on the Intel/NVIDIA-grade part of the ML scale and have a few ESP32 boards to fiddle with OV2640 cameras, but very little in between except what Broadcom has been doing.

<comment><USER17> Not a summary (which would be from one perspective or another) the PDF's cover much and can wordsearch down into the details that pick your interest. [http://www.ti.com/product/AM5729/technicaldocuments](http://www.ti.com/product/AM5729/technicaldocuments)

As for tooling, could not say, but as a previous comment stated - the NVIDIA offering for the same money, makes this hard to stick out for many. Though i'm sure it, as most boards do, have a niche - what that niche is beyond already invested in the beagleboard environment and comfort level, that would be the only uptick for some that i'm seeing from initial glance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Any experiences with using tensorflow models with TI Deep Learning (TIDL)?

<comment><USER19> I'd be interested in hearing anecdotes as well.

In my experience, software from hardware companies has been so reliably abysmal that it makes the "enterprise software" us SWEs like to complain about look decent by comparison.

Hopefully it's different this time :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's so "AI" about it? It doesn't even have a TPU. Kendryte K210 has a fixed point TPU, 400MHz dual core RISC V with FPU, 8 channel audio DSP, FFT and crypto acceleration, and costs $8.90 with wifi and $7.90 without. And the module is the size of a half of a postage stamp. Runs TensorFlow Lite (a subset of ops, but good enough to do practical things).

<comment><USER21> That has only 8MB RAM, and the company seems so fly-by-night they can't be bothered setting up Let's Encrypt.

<comment><USER20> 8MB RAM is more than enough to run a quantized MobileNet, which they demonstrate by preloading object detection on it, out of the box. And the chip is real. I have a couple of boards with it, it works. I guess people just have a hard time believing all the stuff in the spec can be done for less than 10 bucks. 28nm by the way, not a joke. The company got its start in crypto mining, so this is a side gig for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone tell me if there are easy to use libraries that can speed up existing ML code, say written in Python, on this?

Or do we have to write custom C/C++ code to make best use of available hardware?

</comment><comment><USER23> It looks pretty cool and I think about getting one. Does anyone know if it has a dedicated neural network accelerator?

</comment><comment><USER24> Can any of the better minds out here compare this with the Jetson/Jetson Nano ?

<comment><USER12> It's much more focused on real time controls (4 PRUs and 2 Cortex M4) than GPGPU processing. It's pretty much for industrial vision applications than the AI actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> What are the typical use cases for this type of board ?

</comment><comment><USER26> DSP and vision does not "AI" make.

<comment><USER27> FWIW, the SGX GPU in it were on of the first to go hog wild on f16.

And if they'd document their ISA, it's pretty amenable to being used for neural networks, wayore than the other mobile GPUs at least. It'd be a cold day in hell before they did that though unfortunately.

<comment><USER28> Their ISA isn't even documented?

<comment><USER27> No. I actually looked at reverse engineering it a few years back. If you pull apart their drivers you can figure it out pretty quickly (there's actually two different ISAs, the main shader cores and a tiny little RISC esque core that marshals work for the shader cores).

But their driver/software complexity is super high to even get a triangle in a buffer or run a compute job. They have a RTOS looking microkernel running on the shader cores, and there's a ton of caching and MMU setup you have to do from the GPU side (not the main app processor). And there's a lot of caching hints and hacks that are hard to work around if you don't know the context (a lot of tables for bug reference numbers and special cased code depending on those)

If anyone from Imagination is listening, the open source community would still love your help in supporting these chips. : ) They're really pretty inside, and the world should know about the good work y'all did!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The press release could have used a real life example, like "Training MNIST dataset takes .5 seconds" or something.

Where can I find info about how these edge computing boards are speeding up training time? Or how they compare to a 1080i?

<comment><USER30> As most of the so called machine learning boards, this one is not for learning, just for inferencing at best.</comment></comment>


Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of the communication misunderstandings around the word "takeoff" that is both a noun and a verb, which led to the Tenerife plane disaster.

The KLM captain said "we are at takeoff" meaning "we are going to takeoff" while the tower understood "we are at takeoff position", and replied "ok". The captain then proceeded to take off without proper clearance.

After the crash, the word takeoff was removed form general usage in ATC communications.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Commu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Communication_misunderstandings)</comment>


Show HN: GoboLinux 016 featuring Runner, a filesystem virtualization tool - <AUTHOR> http://gobolinux.org/gobolinux016.html <comment><USER2> One thing that may be of interest that was introduced in virtual silence is the integration of language specific package managers via a tool called Alien.

So far it seems to support Perl, Python, Haskell(Main Alien --help do not list it, but there is a script for it in the Scripts bin dir), Lua and Ruby.

<comment><USER3> Oh, true that! Alien has been merged into the code base for so long that we didn't really remember to announce it as being one of the new features of the new release. Thanks a lot for pointing that out. We will include a note on that on the web site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks pretty interesting. Bonus points for a tiling window manager. Am a bit disappointed in capitalization of directory names tho :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Tab-completion is case-insensitive, so the names look good and are not a pain to type (and most importantly, they don't conflict with Unix names: Gobo predates /sys, so going with non-Unixy names proved to be a wise choice).

<comment><USER4> It's still annoying :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty neat! It's nice to see something new/innovative in a distro these days.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot! We have been wanting to debut something like Runner for a long time, but now that we have lightweight infrastructure for containerization (such as native overlayfs in the kernel and support for private mount points) that finally turned into reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks interesting. Unfortunately the text based installer does not recognize LVM2 volumes.

</comment><comment><USER2> Time to give the old box a massive update i guess.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for keeping GoboLinux going. What is the date on that blog post?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's hot off the press! [http://gobolinux.org/news/111.html](http://gobolinux.org/news/111.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, GoboLinux is still active. I remember playing with it about a decade or so ago.

<comment><USER3> Yes, and more importantly: there are still some fresh ideas coming out of it. The developers behind Gobo are operating systems and programming languages enthusiasts, so every now and then they use the distro as a platform for evaluating and sharing their ideas in a way that others can benefit from (and potentially improve upon).

[disclosure: I'm one of the guys developing it]

<comment><USER9> How does GoboLinux compare to Nix & Guix these days? Why would one use the former vs the latter?

<comment><USER10> This blogpost has a comparison of Gobolinux and Nix:

[http://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com.br/2011/12/evaluation-a...](http://sandervanderburg.blogspot.com.br/2011/12/evaluation- and-comparison-of-gobolinux.html)

Maybe some of the experts here on HN can comment on how accurate and up to date it is?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great comparison, written I believe by one of the Nix devs.

As far as Gobo is concerned, the outdated parts is that the /System/Links/{Executables,Libraries,...} has been replaced by /System/Index/{bin,lib,...} which makes it easier to build packages (less compatibility issues to deal with, since /usr is a symlink to /System/Index). So it's easier for a user to compile their own stuff and get it working.

And of course, the comment at the end about the project inactivity no longer applies: Gobo is alive and well. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember GoboLinux from a decade or so ago. The Hungarian GoboLinux community took a huge blow when "poliverzum", a very active member of the community had to pursue other goals instead.

I really miss his articles on the topic. :(</comment>


Welcome to Girl Gaming Month - <AUTHOR> http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/28551/Welcome-to-Girl-Gaming-Month <comment><AUTHOR> Is it just me or is everything female-tech-related the new trend?

<comment><USER2> niche market I guess. I was at I36 the other month (big UK Lan Party) and there was quite a lot of stuff aimed at the girl gamers. A LOT more girls were there from previous years too: so I guess it is a growing market.

<comment><USER3> Hah! Will you be at i37? Might drag myself to that or the next one. Haven't been since i26...

<comment><USER2> I think I might be at i38. Off on Holiday the day after i37 so it's pushing it :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Geek Luddites - <AUTHOR> http://chipotle.tumblr.com/post/1432038656/geek-luddites

<comment><USER2> darn, I thought this was going to be a more extreme article about amazing coders that don't own smartphones and the like.</comment>


The Cost of Free Doughnuts - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret

<comment><USER2> I certainly see the point they are trying to convey, but this is a bad analogy.

The Red Cross receives funding through donations and/or government subsidies. The donuts really are not their core product, if anything they would be more akin to a retail 'loss leader'.

The average web startup only has one core product, at least it gets to the Facebook scale of having thread its way into multiple aspects of your life. These startups are only getting their money through venture investors, who most certainly do not view their checks as 'donations'. So, there is a basic requirement to transition from free to revenue generation in some fashion.

The troops most likely saw the donuts as a small token offering from the Red Cross, and also felt they had done something to earn these free donuts. While there is a lot of feelings of entitlement among some customers of free services, I think the bulk of the users understand the company has to make money _somehow_.

In many cases the 'freemium' model appears to work well, as long as the paid versions offer obvious value. I wouldn't recommend for most people to not offer some free version of the product, but I also wouldnt warn them against charging for their products via a story about Red Cross donuts.

<comment><USER3> > I think the bulk of the users understand the company has to make money > somehow.

Understanding and caring are two completely different things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminded me a lot of what happened to Netflix last year when they spun off the streaming service into its own $8/month product. Existing customers who were already receiving it for "free" were totally livid, despite the fact that people in Canada, who didn't have the DVD service, and could only buy the $8 streaming service had no problem at all.

</comment><comment><USER5> If I remember correctly, one of Dan Ariely's first two books covers this kind of human behavior.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely#Books>

<comment><USER6> _Predictably Irrational_ covers the case of an Israeli day care center, though it's actually a slightly different story - in that case, the parents felt an implicit moral duty not to pick their kids up late, which vanished once the cost was quantified (in terms of a 'late pickup fee'), causing _more_ parents to pick up their kids late, even though it was technically free before.

More importantly, when the fee was removed again, parents continued late pickups at the higher (with-fee) rate. That's the real point of both stories - once the terms of the agreement have been moved from the social to the monetary realm, it's very hard to get people's brains to switch back to the social terms.

<comment><USER7> yeah, quantifying the costs says "It's fine, as long as you pay extra." If it's $10/hr extra, hey, that's an extra hour of day care for $10.....

Then when you remove the price you are sending another signal, which is "oh it used to cost money but now we offer this for free!

It's worth really thinking through the whole social signal thing first....

with the Red Cross, one option might have been a donation box right next to the donuts with a note saying what they had been asked to do and why.... and soliciting additional donations, to be used to provide donuts to the British soldiers, perhaps! That avoids changing the relationship.....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, I'm not sure if my emotional attachment to Google is comparable to that of wartime soldiers to free doughnuts. What's left is the fact that a free service is very different from a paid service, and that pulling the rug under your customers is going to leave them very disgruntled. I am not sure this is a novel insight. I guess the historical analogy is still neat.

</comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps a way to prevent the reaction from a change in category is to discontinue and rebrand the product.

If the Red Cross had shut down the donut stations and then came back some time later with comfort food in a modified form, the soldiers would see the new stations independent of their anchor to the previously free stations.

<comment><USER10> I think that idea might be a wee bit insulting of the troops' intelligence.

<comment><USER11> Do you really think that the American troops were that much smarter than the average American?

<comment><USER10> Do you really think the average American would fall for that trick?

<comment><USER11> Yes. I'm sure milesokeefe suggested it because discontinuing a product and then relaunching it is _standard practice_ for companies which want to get rid of anchoring biases.

(And I'm not sure I'd say that trying to evade cognitive biases is a "trick", really.)

<comment><USER12> "discontinuing a product and then relaunching it is standard practice for companies which want to get rid of anchoring biases."

Would you provide a few examples, please? Thanks.

<comment><USER13> Brinks Home -> Broadview [1]

Windows Vista -> Windows Mojave [2] (Although this was just to "taste test")

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadview_Security> [2]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXrKO33Rc2g>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is why "underpromise, overdeliver" is so important in managing customers. People develop expectations very quickly, and then are delighted or disappointed depending on how things turn out relevant to their expectations.

</comment><comment><USER15> "A lot of the online services you probably use are free. Gmail is free. Facebook is free. Yahoo News and NPR are free"

Are these services really free? We may not pay cash to use these services but we certainly are paying something.

<comment><USER16> So were the soldiers. They paid taxes, so they were funding the donuts via the US government.

But that's not the point. The soldiers perceived the donuts as free, and people perceive Facebook as free. Charging for donuts or access to your wall will change that perception.</comment></comment>


Scientists to 'fast-track' evidence linking global warming to wild weather - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/scientists-to-fasttrack-evidence-linking-global-warming-to-wild-weather-9773767.html

<comment><USER2> From the article:

 _"We want to clear up the huge amounts of confusion around how climate change is influencing the weather, in both directions. For example, the typhoon in the Philippines that dominated the UN climate change talks in Warsaw last November and that many people put down to climate change – it turned out it had no detectable evidence. And the same goes for Hurricane Sandy," Dr Friederike Otto, of Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute, told The Independent.

But there are plenty of other cases where climate change is likely to have been involved, she said. Examples include last year's record heatwave in Australia – the severity of which an eminent scientist concluded this week "was virtually impossible without climate change" – and the flooding in the UK at the start of the year, which Dr Otto's department has just established was made 25 per cent more likely by global warming._

In other words, a lot of freaky weather has no connection to climate change, and a lot does.

</comment><comment><USER3> So let's recap:

-no longer allowing differing scientific opinions (in many communities regarding climate change, this is banned)..which reminds me of the same tactics the catholic church used to use in the middle ages -'fast-tracking' science from 1 year to 3 days (which I find extremely hard to believe)

If I proposed this in any other professional field of study, there would be outrage.

I would like to see an investigation on where taxes in many of these European countries are going and who is funding these studies.

So much money is now involved in climate change, it's difficult to see how many of these 'scientific studies' are actually based on facts.

<comment><USER4> I agree this is about politics and money, not science. The leaked emails from the Climate Research Unit proved they were manipulating data and blocking the work and careers of anyone disagreeing.

<comment><USER5> To be more precise, fitting data to a model can be part of an inclusive definition of "manipulating data", and asking to delete emails discussing AR4 in order to avoid a Freedom of Information request definitely falls under "blocking the work of someone disagreeing", so I am not saying you are wrong.

But if you mean fraudulently manipulating data, and having the ability to actually block or seriously and negatively affect the careers of everyone who disagreed? For that, there is no evidence in those emails.

Eight different committees, from multiple countries and organizations, "investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct." This includes the Department of Commerce, as requested by Senator Inhofe, who believes that global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people".</comment></comment></comment>


Feds Charge Chinese Hackers with Ripping Off Video Game Loot from 9 Companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/barium-winnti-china-hackers-video-game-loot-indictments/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a non-trivial plot element in Neal Stephenson's "Reamde."</comment>


Ask HN: Why can I not open this HN link? - <AUTHOR> So i decided to find the highest point stories on HN[1] and came across this[2]. Why can i not open it ? [1]:https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&dateStart=715305600&dateEnd=1577059200 [2]:https://news.ycombinator.com/x?fnid=b3rV0rfs0vjJ7EZ4FASrjm&amp;fnop=error-msg <comment><USER2> Because that's a continuation, a page that was generated on the fly as a result of what the user was looking at at the time. It has since expired.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably because it uses a flaw in the HN software that has been fixed since? (You can still access the comment section and see some discussion about it)</comment>


What are your thoughts on Joomla? - <AUTHOR>

I work extensively in .NET with some background in PHP on the server side. I've never worked with Joomla before and I have a close friend asking me what my thoughts are -- some firm is trying to sell it to him as a CMS that is "as easy to update as a blog". Assume he has zero technical knowledge and is a business guy trying to get a website up. I know he needs a hacker, but focus your comments on how you think the Joomla experience would be for a non-technical user once set up by someone who knows how. The guy is also touting it as a SEO  miracle, bringing search results up several ranks just being installed.<p>Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Joomla has been lagging behind the curve for some time now. They have tried to change this with their new 1.5.x releases and I understand that this new branch has done much to address the issues that Joomla has had for a long time, but they already lost me before that.

From a hackers POV who is interested in maximum flexibility, and using the most modern tools for the job that also promote standards compliance, I think there are much better options out there, such as Drupal (staying in the LAMP space). Joomla just feels more clunky and legacy to me than other options. I also really disliked past experiences I've had with the Mambo CMS and Joomla is a fork of Mambo. There is also more of an "industry" around selling add-on modules and templates for Joomla, where as just about all modules/templates for Drupal are free (as in speech and beer).

Joomla would be "as easy to update as a blog" if all you are using it for is to run a blog. But to be fair, this is generally true of Drupal and other similar offerings as well.

Neither Joomla or any other CMS is a "SEO miracle, bringing search results up several ranks just [by] being installed" this is complete bullshit. It comes down entirely to how the template that the site will use has been designed, how the content of the site is organised, marked up and optimised, and all the other normal issues that surround SEO. How well all this comes together of course comes down to whether the people doing the design/development know what they're doing.

From a "business guy" POV - who assumedly cares little for such things as standards compliance and maximum flexibility (he has a specific function to fill only) - in the end, There would not be a lot of difference between Joomla and another similarly featured CMS, _as long as the guys providing the technical skills know their shit_. Depending on your priorities, Joomla is not inherantly crap, nor is any other CMS a magic bullet. Just make sure that these guys offering services to your friend are of the afore mentioned type who know their shit.

But to me, if someone is recommending Joomla as their primary offering, this does not inspire confidence in me that the people doing the recommending have their "finger on the pulse" as it were.

</comment><comment><USER3> Joomla is great. I personally like it as it is sexy for clients and extremely usable. The look of the site should be custom thought, in my opinion, and he needs to make sure the developer isn't augmenting a template that thousands have already used.</comment>


The First Leftist - <AUTHOR> http://mises.org/story/3425

<comment><USER2> And the first libertarian was communist</comment>


The Bright Students Left Behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bright-students-left-behind-1440024541

<comment><USER2> Earlier discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10096990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10096990)</comment>


Fabulous: Functional App Development - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/xamarin/fabulous-functional-app-development/ <comment><USER2> This is surely a nice framework. I took my time to go through it. I would like to ask. Are there companies currently using it in their stack for mobile app development??</comment>


Ask HN: Argentinean Indie Hackers how do you deal with stripe not working? - <AUTHOR> Is there a fellow Argentinean here that knows how to replace stripe for charging international customers on a SaaS? <comment><USER2> They shutdown in Argentina? Macri's Argentina is the new Maduro's Venezuela.

<comment><AUTHOR> They never opened</comment></comment>


China and "our standard of living" - <AUTHOR> http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/im-really-thinking-maybe-i-shouldnt.html <comment><USER2> Wow, spot on! Likely not news to anyone here, but I really wonder how many people out there are smart enough to realize how amazingly cheap the stuff we buy is, and really think of where it comes from.

<comment><USER3> Well not quite spot on. It did mention that these people were willing to do what ever to get away from the hellish alternative they were born into. But if you blinked you missed it, you missed the most important point:

People are doing this voluntarily. Rumors of forced labor are greatly exaggerated. Perhaps somewhere in Burma but in China and India and other places, people do this hard work because the alternative is harder. This is how you work your way up from a very low starting point.

England wasn't always a workers' paradise either. Wages in China will rise.

<comment><USER4> If you saw a drowning person, would you ask them to be your slave forever in exchange for throwing them a life preserver? That's a voluntary exchange too, but you're still a dick for doing it.

Yes, most of these jobs are better than the alternative, namely, starvation in the countryside where there are no jobs. In the worst cases, (not all) these jobs pay so little that the workers can't accumulate capital, can't send their kids to school, etc. And due to the magic of subcontracting, the large Western employers have no long term investment in the country -- they'll pick up and leave when the next country over offers them a slightly better deal.

In Thailand I met a woman who was working for a private museum. She had figured out that her boss had basically made his fortune through selling slaves. Voluntary indentured servitude for several years, sold out of villages. And this isn't just some backwater, Thailand is where a lot of manufacturing is happening lately.

<comment><USER5> Modern, first-world standards cannot be applied to the third world - I am a prime example of this. I owe my life to child labor and sweatshop labor, allow me to explain.

My family is originally from Taiwan, and both of my folks grew up when Taiwan was still an inconsequential tropical island consisted mostly of fishing villages and a hodgepodge government-in-exile. Both of them are beneficiaries of the "abusive" practices of foreign businesses. My father worked in a plastics plant, and once had to outrace a cloud of deadly chlorine gas, and survived by the grace of a low wall surrounding the factory (chlorine crawls along the ground). Safety practices were almost non-existent - my mother is still missing a small chunk of her right index finger (and she was lucky). My mother's family was desperately poor - my grandfather eventually succumbed to years of breathing in coal dust with no protective equipment, and all of his children worked from as young as 10 years-old to put themselves through school.

But here's the thing: people in that country could not afford to educate themselves, and if it were not for the willingness of employers to hire child labor and form sweatshops, they would never have had the opportunity to climb out of that hole.

If you had insisted on no child labor, minimum pay standards, and rigorous safety adherence, there would have been _no_ reason to set up shop in a backwater island like Taiwan, and then where would we be? My family would likely still be living in the jungles up on some mountain somewhere, starving.

<comment><USER6> _Modern, first-world standards cannot be applied to the third world..._

That's part of the problem, though, isn't it? The tremendous migration of manufacturing jobs to third world countries has been in large part because they are not limited to a 40 hour work week and first world safety standards. Of course it's cheaper to manufacture in China, their regulations are a lot more lax than ours, although that may be changing.

I, too grew up in a Third World country. My parents were missionaries in Central America in the 80's. I grew up playing soccer with children who's bellies were bloated from parasites and could not afford shoes.

I've worked in communities that were essentially indentured servants to the tomato packing industry. The tomato company owned the housing, ran the schools, provided plumbing, etc.. to their workers. The employees were willing to put up with indentured servitude, because on a certain level because it was better than starving. It was better for their children to get a 6th grade education and then go off to pick tomatoes than to have no education at all.

Why did that happen? So we can have tomatoes at our local grocery store for $1 a pound.

I agree that it is better for the people in the third world to have jobs rather than not have jobs, but I'm pretty conflicted about the entire situation. Starving children, vs children working 16 hours a day in a tomato field? That's not a good choice to have to make.

<comment><USER7> _starving children, vs children working 16 hours a day in a tomato field? That's not a good choice to have to make._

I'd be careful where you draw the line in your judgment.

For instance, the _next_ generation of people will start with a 6th grade education and a minimum standard of living. _Their_ challenge is to move the goalposts further.

That's just how the rest of the world did it, in fact, starting off with child and virtual slave factory labor and slowly moving to better and better conditions. If you've got some kind of shortcut to make it happen inside of one generation, I'd love to hear it.

<comment><USER6> Are you trying to say that child labor is a good thing?

The point I was trying to make, albeit not too successfully was that it's a difficult situation, and there aren't a whole lot of great options for people in those situations.

<comment><USER7> I'm trying to say that depending on where you draw the line, you can make all sorts of moral judgments that may not turn out to be true when drawing a line in a different place.

Take the invasion of France in WWII. The Allies killed over 14 thousand French _civilians_ in bombing in preparation for the invasion. Would you say that's a good thing? It's obviously an awful thing, no matter how you slice it.

But looking at the longer picture, sometimes good things come out of bad things. This was the case for the invasion of France, and I believe this is also the case for child labor and sweatshops in third world countries.

That doesn't make bad things into good things, that just means that context is important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This applies to the food industry as well, like how we get our meat. We'd be better off if the things we buy were responsibly produced and priced. It's hard to know what we can do about it besides voting with our dollars and educating others.

</comment><comment><USER9> There is no message in this post, no "good points" (to a point). Clearly the writer has no experience of Chinese culture or has ever really been there (I know its satire - but the point is to make a point, no?).

Considering cultures in Asia/Africa (possibly even South America) from a Western perspective will always lead you to draw conclusions such as "slave labour" and "abuse".

Now, I'm not going to deny for a moment that such things do go on - but not in quite the same way and on the scale certain people wish to imagine.

Anecdote from my university course: our dept. was open 24/7 (even on Sundays if you had a special pass). I would regularly walk past the lobby at 1am and see the Chinese continget (there were many on my course) still working there. We tried to get some to come to a pub once and they didnt really get the whole relaxing/chilling out thing.

It was an interesting insight into the culture - and when I was lucky enough to travel in some of the less well known areas of Asia you see it in even more detail. Greater thabn 40hr weeks are not borne out of the manufacturers getting more out of the labour. It is borne out the culture (and, yes, they took advantage of it).

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm posting two very interesting blog posts about China factories and its "bio-robots" but it's in Russian :( May be try google translate... Mices and headphones: <http://sergeydolya.livejournal.com/55293.html> Sony and Panasonic factories: <http://sergeydolya.livejournal.com/55924.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome!

Fake Steve just gets better and better. ;)

</comment><comment> onreact-com Soon enough when there is no manufacturing left elsewhere China will capitalize on their monopoly and the rest of the world will have to work 7 days 80h+ shifts to make a living.

</comment><comment><USER12> Of course we do not care man. It is not like the Chinese gave us the wealth. We invented stuff, we traded with other countries and shared our knowledge, they decided to close up, to live in some island, and now that they are opening up they will have to start at the bottom no.

You may ask whether the birth lottery is any fare and I do not know about that one really, it is, it goes really deep and it effects everyone, but being a practicalist, although this one event may be unfortunate, until the Chinese government opens up fully and adopts our values, there is not much we can do really. So stop crying and start working on making those super cool macs cheaper :)

<comment><USER13> It's obvious the birth lottery isn't "fair". It's just as obvious that fairness is irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While the story had some decent points to it, the ending was a really horrible cop out and cowardly way to accuse the young man of stealing an iPhone. Even if it is true.

</comment><comment><USER15> I really hope one day we learn that FSJ = SJ.

<comment><USER16> Learning NP = P is more likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> That is one of the best posts I have ever read.

</comment><comment><USER18> This exposes the truism that there is always a standard of living continuum in society. In a different era there were Kings and Lords and Peasants. Now we have Europeans and Americans and Chinese and Indians.

If globalization can succeed at improving the standard of living for those at the bottom of the continuum, it will have to be at the expense of those at the top. It's a zero sum game.

<comment><USER19> How is it zero sum? I'd make you a bet that right now, more people are living happily than ever did in the past. The bar constantly rises.

<comment><USER18> Let me expand upon my one line explanation. I apologize for being terse last time.

Let's say the stock market increases at 10% per year. This growth is driven by more capital being invested in the market each year. That means everyone in the market earns 10% interest every year, right? Well, in reality, that's not the case. Some people earn 30% and some people lose 20%. In fact, if anyone earns over 10%, that means that someone else _must_ be earning less than 10%. So, maybe it's a 10-sum game, but most people still use the term "zero-sum game" to describe the situation.

Distribution of wealth and standard of living work the same way. Everyone's standard of living is increasing at 10 moon units per year. This growth is primarily driven by technology. However, if people in emerging markets are to have their standard of living increase at 15 moon units per year (which it is, and that's great), then someone else will have their standard of living increase at less than 10 moon units per year. That doesn't mean that our standard of living will decrease (although I wouldn't rule that out); it just won't increase as rapidly.

<comment><USER20> This is only true if the bar is rising at a pace regardless of increase in participants.

In reality, increases in trade raises the bar faster for everyone, often so much that it offsets the drop from the increased competition.

So say both country A and country B are increasing at 10 moon units per year. Country B trades as a net exporter with country A, and takes 1 moon unit per year from country A. However, the increase in economic activity boosts 2 moon units per year for everyone. Now country A is increasing at 11 moon units per year, and country B is increasing at 13 units per year.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nova: The Architecture for Understanding User Behavior - <AUTHOR> https://amplitude.com/blog/2016/05/25/nova-architecture-understanding-user-behavior/ <comment><USER2> 10 million events for free is insanity. With Mixpanel, we pay $1,000 for 8. Anyone out there with experience using Amplitude?</comment>


Show HN: Chrome extension to remove all annoying stuff from medium articles - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gyopak/medium-clearer <comment><USER2> Another extension that does this (and more if I am not mistaken) is this one: [https://makemediumreadable.com/](https://makemediumreadable.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really nice. Medium has a lot of good content, but sometimes you can get easily distracted from the article by all the stuff going around</comment>


Bootstrapping a simple compiler from nothing - <AUTHOR> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/edmund.grimley-evans/bcompiler.html

<comment><USER2> My own experiments along these lines are in StoneKnifeForth, a self-hosted compiler for a variant of Forth: <http://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth/> and tokthr, where I'm hoping I can get to a usable interactive interpreter in under 2K: <https://github.com/kragen/tokthr>

I think I need to correct stoneknifeforth a bit to make it run on current Linux.

<comment><USER3> Hm ... you using Python to bootstrap. Much harder would be to assume no languages whatsoever and go from there (some musings I've done on this type of project: <http://boston.conman.org/2009/11/05.1>)

<comment><USER2> In MS-DOS, you don't need an octal-to-binary conversion program, assuming you're content writing your next program in decimal instead of binary, because you can type any 8-bit byte with Alt and the numeric keypad. You can also write useful 8086 machine code using only printable ASCII, but that's probably making things hard on yourself unnecessarily.

Did 1982 MS-DOS have I/O redirection? You're right that that would help quite a bit.

I think one of my first programs in that environment _would_ be some kind of editor. Maybe a hex or octal editor rather than a text editor, but an editor nonetheless. Typing programs more than a few dozen bytes with no ability to see or fix typos gets old fast.

I don't know how much harder the job really gets if you bootstrap directly from machine code instead of Python. I don't think it's that much.

<comment><USER2> > Did 1982 MS-DOS have I/O redirection? You're right that that would help > quite a bit.

According to Ralf Brown's interrupt list, <http://www.ctyme.com/intr/rb-2554.htm>, MS-DOS 1.0 did not support redirecting standard output; that was a feature added in MS-DOS 2.0, which didn't come out until 1983: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_x86_DOS_operating_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_x86_DOS_operating_systems)

So if you really had to solve this problem on 1982 MS-DOS, you'd need to open an output file with a file control block and INT 21 with AH=0F. (And if you really can't type NUL bytes on the keyboard, I think you are going to have to write some code to zero out most of the FCB at start time, too. Ick.)

This program might solve that problem for MS-DOS 2+, although I haven't tested it yet, and you'd have to use something like JKLMNO instead of ABCDEF for your hex digits past 9:

         100:	b4 01                	mov    $0x1,%ah
         102:	cd 21                	int    $0x21
         104:	24 0f                	and    $0xf,%al
         106:	88 c2                	mov    %al,%dl
         108:	c0 e2 04             	shl    $0x4,%dl
         10b:	cd 21                	int    $0x21
         10d:	24 0f                	and    $0xf,%al
         10f:	08 c2                	or     %al,%dl
         111:	b4 02                	mov    $0x2,%ah
         113:	cd 21                	int    $0x21
         115:	eb e9                	jmp    100 <loop>

        kragen@VOSTRO9:~/devel/misc$ xxd < hexconverter.com
        0000000: b401 cd21 240f 88c2 c0e2 04cd 2124 0f08  ...!$.......!$..
        0000010: c2b4 02cd 21eb e9                        ....!..
        kragen@VOSTRO9:~/devel/misc$ od -t u1 < hexconverter.com
        0000000 180   1 205  33  36  15 136 194 192 226   4 205  33  36  15   8
        0000020 194 180   2 205  33 235 233
        0000027

I think you could probably create that program successfully with COPY CON in not very many tries, but it's not much better than COPY CON itself. I don't think INT 21 function 01 even supports backspace, and in that sense it might actually be _worse_.

<comment><USER2> In case anyone's interested, I successfully entered the following version in DOSBOX using COPY CON, and indeed even used it to recreate a copy of itself:

        kragen@inexorable:~/devel/inexorable-misc$ od -t u1 hexconv.com
        0000000 180   1 205  33  36  15 136 194 192 226   4 205  33  36  15   1
        0000020 194 180   2 205  33 235 233
        0000027

It turns out the 08 meaning "or %al," was getting interpreted by COPY CON as a backspace, so this version adds AX to DX instead. (I sure am glad I didn't have to debug that using TYPE.) This program has advantages and disadvantages compared to COPY CON:

1\. It echoes its input so you can see, at least in theory, if you made a mistake.

2\. You only need to type two keystrokes instead of one to four per byte.

3\. There are no forbidden bytes. At least in Dosbox, COPY CON converts ^@ to the sequence 00 03, interprets 08 as backspace (even if entered on the keypad with Alt), and stops copying when it gets a carriage return, even if the carriage return was entered with Alt.

4\. To exit, you must reboot. In Dosbox, the output has already been flushed to the filesystem, but I have my doubts about whether, on MS-DOS, every single INT 21H AH=2 would write a 512-byte floppy disk sector with the newly appended byte. On the other hand, you could probably just mash some key on autorepeat long enough to fill up a couple of sectors, and you'd be good to go. This program, after all, only has to be sufficient to enter the next phase of the bootstrap, one with backspace and explicit termination.

5\. There is no backspace, so if you hit any incorrect keystrokes, you must start over. For programs of this size, that's not a major constraint — it's pretty easy to carefully enter 40 or 50 or 100 keystrokes without making any errors — but it becomes more serious as programs get larger.

<comment><USER2> Further details at [http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- hacks/2011-April...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen- hacks/2011-April/000519.html).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a fun exercise for anyone who has just read "Reflections on Trusting Trust." "You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself." Well what if I _did_ totally create all the code myself?

I guess you'd still be susceptible to microcode, so you'd have to create your own CPU too. Sigh, back to the drawing board. :)

<comment><USER5> If you didn't write quantum mechanics yourself, how do you know it's not out to get you? :)

<comment><USER6> you HAD to make me write new laws of physics? you %@#$

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have fantasized about doing this for 15 years, and after reading this, I think I have finally got the motivation to do it.

<comment><USER2> I'm interested to see your results when you get done!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Combine this with a guide to making your own OS: <http://www.jamesmolloy.co.uk/tutorial_html/index.html> and you've got a very interesting project.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is my dream vacation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Just text, formatted for 80 cols. Anyone else really likes reading stuff in this "format"?

<comment><USER11> I do.

<comment><USER12> Makes reading on cell phones a pain though.

<comment><USER13> Amazing that 80 column unstyled ascii text, which is supposed to be the absolutely lowest level of abstraction, able to pass through even the dumbest mail servers without being mangled, able to be read by any computer made in the last 40 years, windows boxes, mac boxes, sun boxes, dumb terminals, propped-up toasters running NetBSD; is finally stymied by the ultimate low end machine: one with a screen that isn't physically large enough for 80 column text.

<comment><USER2> Lots of home computers from 30 years ago couldn't fit 80 columns on the TV screen.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


RadioShack Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy After a Deal with Sprint - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/radio-shack-files-for-chapter-11-bankrutpcy/

<comment><AUTHOR> I literally started my career in a RadioShack computer center. It's sad to see them go out this way.</comment>


Could a £400bn plan to refreeze the Arctic before the ice melts really work? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/12/plan-to-refreeze-arctic-before-ice-goes-for-good-climate-change <comment><USER2> This sounds like that futurama episode where they drop a giant ice cube into the sea whenever it gets too hot.

[https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/13083-how-big- would...](https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/13083-how-big-would-a- futurama-ice-cube-need-to-be-to-combat-climate-change-hint-really-big)

<comment><USER3> These schemes are all insane. Just imagine the damage done to the environment by:

1) Tens of millions of fans floating in the ocean and blowing air on the ice.

2) Oceans being flooded with massive amounts of green algea, sucking up CO2 and producing who knows what out of it.

3) Filling the skys with sulfer aerosols to block out the sun.

There is no way CO2 can be worse than any of those.

<comment><USER4> What? Did you read the article? That's not even close to the plan mentioned.

<comment><USER3> Just now I did, it says the new plan is: "building 10 million wind-powered pumps over the Arctic ice cap. In winter, these would be used to pump water to the surface of the ice where it would freeze, thickening the cap."

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't that be salt water? Would it actually freeze at all?

<comment><USER6> It freezes just fine, just at a lower temperature of -2C.

<comment><USER5> I wonder why the polar oceans don't freeze solid?

<comment><USER7> Because ice floats to the top of the water, and insulates the water remaining down below beneath the ice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why are they so worried about the Arctic melting? Are they hiding something? [http://www.theonion.com/article/melting-ice-caps-expose- hund...](http://www.theonion.com/article/melting-ice-caps-expose-hundreds-of- secret-arctic--2806)

</comment><comment><USER9> How about deploying a cluster of "umbrella" satellites to throw some shade on regions of the planet that get too hot? 15 years of having less solar illumination, not complete darkness just a penumbra, could maybe do a lot.

How big of a shadow would we need?

Edit - someone already thought about it; [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160425-how-a-giant- space-u...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160425-how-a-giant-space- umbrella-could-stop-global-warming)

</comment><comment><USER10> If the political will to do something like that existed, we wouldn't need to do it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Or perhaps drifting platforms that stay adrift at the edge and blow water onto the ice? That way it's even possible to measure the edges.. This way it would even help to stop pieces from breaking at the edge (and thus floating away to warmer climates.)</comment>


Show HN: A high-speed laser camera trigger for under $2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.vela.io/posts/building-a-laser-camera-trigger-for-2-dollars/ <comment><USER2> Did something very similar for a final project in a physics/electronics course.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ox5wxmnhzg045b4/Final.pdf](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ox5wxmnhzg045b4/Final.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Nice! Hope that milk didn't end up on your cereal afterwards!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This post completely sums up what makes HN great.

<comment><USER5> Find that lately there are less of this kind of Hacking articles and those talking about interesting and inusual things, and much more about New frameworks or libraries.

<comment><USER6> I went back into the archive and tried to run into a hardware hacking post before a framework post. It went, startup, startup, Google buys YouTube, startup, startup, then this [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1981) (2694 days ago). I couldn't find evidence that this site cut its teeth on hardware hacking.

<comment><USER5> It not specific on hardware, it's general about all things not about programing and new products. Also it's not about new posts, at the new section I keep finding them. It's that they hit the front page less frequently and when they make it the fall to the second or third page in a mater of one hour, compared to the framework or product posts that stay very high with relatively less points. Maybe it's not the case, maybe it's just the habituation to HN contents after three years of daily reading. If it happens I don't know if it's due to the new curation team (for example now I find that conversations are not growing so much into long rants about small details as before) or to more people flaging non "programmer" stuff more than before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> $2 sounds really cheap--did I miss the laser on the bill of materials?

Anyone else hoping for a modern and inexpensive replacement for the legendary classic EG&G microflash?

<comment><USER8> _I picked up a 1 mW pointer for £1.98 on eBay._ That's about $3.38 USD.

<comment><USER9> > I'm only including the cost of components, and not things like cables, > breadboards or the laser pointer (or flash).

<comment><USER10> I like that! I'm going to start giving estimates like that

"I'll do this for free, not including my hourly or the cost of materials"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gotta wonder about the schematic, looks like it's wrong. The battery and the cathode of the opto is not connected correctly.

<comment><USER12> Looks correct to me. The idea is to trigger in the _absence_ of the laser--- i.e., when the beam is broken by a projectile.

When the laser shines on the base of the phototransistor, the transistor pulls current from the node between the two resistors. Assuming the laser causes sufficient electron-hole pair generation in the base, the transistor can pull a bit more than 1mA (5V/4.7k) from the battery; the photodiode inside the optocoupler then has 0V across it, and the output of the opto is high-Z (i.e., not conducting).

In reality, the phototransistor's collector won't pull much closer than a couple hundred millivolts to its emitter while conducting that much current (the transistor goes into saturation), but that's fine: most optocoupler diodes have a forward drop of 2V or more when they're conducting sufficient current to turn on the output.

<comment><USER13> I don't see how the opto can ever be turned on? Its cathode is always at highest potential in the left half circuit.

<comment><USER12> Ah, I see the confusion. The power supply should be connected such that the positive terminal is on the left. If you look at the breadboard, you can see that this is, in fact, what's built. My description of the circuit's operation above is accurate when the power supply is properly connected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an awesome post, I love seeing these kind of projects. The money shot at the end with the BB is very cool. Nice job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


The New Trending App in China: Confessio - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/confessio/id929253617

<comment><USER2> My favorite part: "'Confessio' isn't yet approved by Adventism nor Holiness movement."</comment>


Code to Cloud in 5 minutes and 55 Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloud66.com/post/44063734098/code-to-cloud-in-5-minutes-and-55-seconds <comment><USER2> Saying it's a Heroku dyno is disingenuous by the poster. (Article itself doesn't mention Heroku). Heroku can run things other than Rails.

</comment><comment><USER3> Offtopic: another startup blog that points their logo at the top to... their blog and not their product.

[clarification] <https://medium.com/startup-shenanigans/cc1a60ea7bf2>

<comment><USER4> Is this good or bad?

<comment><USER3> imho bad; see added clarification in parent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Switched one of my apps over to this setup (C66 + DO). Going good so far, server provisioning is super slick.

<comment><USER6> With the growing app marketplace on C66, I'll soon be moving my app to this setup. Love it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What does this have to do with Heroku? I see only Cloud66 and Ocean.

<comment><USER8> The term "Heroku" doesn't even appear in the post at all, so I think this is definitely one example where it does make sense to match the HN title to the blog article title.</comment></comment>


Programmers don't need a union. We need a profession - <AUTHOR> https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-dont-need-a-union-we-need-a-profession/ <comment><USER2> When you're a professional, there are certain rigid processes you have to follow. A lot of it involves significant governance, and every professional has obligations of due diligence.

A lot of programmers became programmers or enjoy being programmers precisely because of the lack of the aforementioned things in their profession. Besides a lot of programmers are self taught or learn most of their skills by themselves.

A professional (doctor or engineer) would have to go through rigorous schooling and a grueling examination process to get their license. They can't become self taught doctors or engineers. Hell, most programmers would drop out of school if they got a good job at a growing start up when presented with a decent equity.

As a programmer I completely disagree with this post.

</comment><comment><USER3> Until society wakes up and starts valuing ethics/morals over dollars this will remain nothing more than a dream. One of the core principles of the professional/craftsman was that things were to be done _right_ even if it cost more and took longer. Sadly our grandparents seem to have been the last generation which widely held to that.

</comment><comment><USER4> > A person who completes medical school is a _doctor_ and, unless the license > is revoked because of a serious ethical lapse, has valuable expertise. No > manager or employer can take that credibility away for political reasons.

Anything at all can happen for political reasons. This very thing is happening to my mother (a _doctor_ ) right now.</comment>


Jelly is a semi-weekly work-together, and you're invited - <AUTHOR> http://www.workatjelly.com/ <comment><USER2> Great concept, but I went once and it didn't work for me. 15 people squeezed into a 2 room apartment with no air conditioning. I was the only one who didn't bring a laptop. If I had, I would have had to balance it on my lap. The people seemed nice enough, but every one of them had their head down, working away furiously. I hated to interrupt anyone to chat.

Better for me would be working from home alone and going out to a bar or restaurant to socialize. Oh wait, I already do that.

Interesting to find out if anyone here has had any good experiences with Jelly.</comment>


Show HN: Read Hacker News in a Pinterest Way – Build with AngularJS - <AUTHOR> https://hnews.xyz/#/ <comment><USER2> Its interesting to see the different landing pages for posts on Show HN.</comment>


Notes From a Meeting with Warren Buffett - <AUTHOR> http://undergroundvalue.blogspot.com/2008/02/notes-from-buffett-meeting-2152008_23.html <comment><USER2> Excellent article. It seems what he said about classmates would also apply to choosing a startup founder:

What if you could buy 10% of one of your classmates and their future earnings? You wouldn't buy the ones with the highest IQ, the best grades, etc, but the most effective. You like people who are generous, go out of their way, straight shooters. Now imagine that you could short 10% of one of your classmates. This part is usually more fun as you start looking around the room. You wouldn't choose the ones with the poorest grades. Look for people nobody wants to be around, that are obnoxious or like to take all the credit. If you have a 500 HP engine and only get 50 HP out of it, you'll be beat by someone else that has a 300 HP engine but gets 250 HP output. The difference between potential and output comes from human qualities. You can make a list of the qualities you admire and those you despise. To turn the tables, think if this is the way I react to the qualities on the list, which is the way the world will react to me. You can learn to turn on those qualities you want and turn off those qualities you wish to avoid. The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken. You can't change at 60; the time to look at that list is now

</comment><comment><USER3> "If I wanted to do something wild & crazy I could do it, but Anna Nicole Smith is gone. Reminds me of the story of the 60 year old man that got a 25 year old to marry him. When his friends asked how he did it, he replied, "I told her I was 90."

And that, people, is how that guy is rich.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is excellent stuff.

</comment><comment><USER5> Berkshire Hathway's letters to their shareholders is a great read as well.

Also, look up Charlie Munger and his essays, the #2 guy after Warren buffet.

</comment><comment><USER6> Buffet's investing record puts him on a league of his own. But his humility and compassion, in spite of all the wealth, now that's exceptional.

</comment><comment><USER7> _"If you want a great business, take Coca-Cola. The product is unchanged, they sell 1.5 billion 8 ounce servings per day 122 years later."_

1.5 BILLION servings of Coke a day?! That's 1 for every 4 humans on this planet. Now that is a crazy stat (and I thought Starbucks opening 7 stores per day was crazy)

<comment><USER8> Well he is talking 8 ounce servings, which means I had eight servings myself today (medium coke at Taco Johns for lunch, with one refill). So I'd guess Americans make up about half of those servings, since our drinks are so absurdly large.

Was an interesting aspect of living in Spain. I had to get used to making an 11 ounce bottle of coke last a whole meal, or pay another $3 for a 'refill'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The paragraph at the end of the notes is possibly the most relevant to startups:

"After a talk at Harvard, I told them to work for who they admired the most, _so they all become self-employed_. It's important to go to work for someone or some organization you admire."

<comment><USER10> I think that's a dig at Harvard...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can Warren Buffett be my hero?

<comment><USER12> Can we share him? Please. Pretty please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disturbing. I find it strange that no one reacted to this part yet :

"I had nothing to do with my own success. [...] I was born with the wiring for capital asset allocation. I had the right wiring at the right time. Temperament is a large part of my wiring. I was naturally good at it, and I used some feedback to develop it better.[...]"

Do you realize the logical assumption behind such statement ?

It means that if you fail, you're not responsible either, because you weren't born in the right place at the right time with the right "wiring". So basically Mr. Buffet doesn't believe in free will, and if you're on the lucky side, "there is no reason to feel guilty about it.". If you're on the unlucky side, there is really nothing you could do about it but try to be happy anyway with what you have.

But isn't the american society based on individual merit ? "Anyone can succeed if he really wants to", wich leads to the logical implication that "if you fail, it's also your fault". Mr. Buffet's philosophical conclusions can be summed up by his "ovarian lottery" metaphor that comes up a lot of times in the interview : you won in the vagina, should you apologize to the others ? Then why should it be different in the society, son ?

Now let me be clear : I'm not emitting a moral judgment about what Mr Buffet says, that he should believe something else or whatever. I just find it paradoxal that Mr. Buffet, wich is one of the icon of the american society, tends to not believe in what makes the heart of the american society paradigm : free will & individual merit.

<comment><USER14> Plenty of people don't believe in free-will; in fact as computer scientists, many times with interests in AI, I'd suspect the majority of us are complete mechanists.

<comment><USER13> Free will has always been a very disputed notion since the Greeks, but the debate took another dimension with Freud's discover of subcounscious. As I said in my conclusion, I did not intend to open such a vaste debate here, I just noticed the paradox of Mr Buffet stance on this matter considering the core values of the society in wich he lives (and what he represents).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always like it when a billionaire says "To focus on what you don't have is a terrible mistake. With the gifts all of us have, if you are unhappy, it's your own fault."

Is it so much for a person to want to own their home, have a personal savings, have health care, and be able to retire at a reasonable age? I don't think it is a 'mistake' to want for any of these things, and sadly, there are a good number of people in the world that this is not accessible to.

<comment><USER8> "and sadly, there are a good number of people in the world that this is not accessible to"

This was (and has always been) Buffet's point. Everyone in America has won the 'ovarian lottery' (as he calls it) because we were born here with the opportunity to achieve all those things and more. He's not implying it's only possible here, and he is not implying everyone should be happy where they are. He is just saying we should be thankful that we live in a country that generally makes it possible, and even probable.

<comment><USER15> Replace 'world' with 'US' and the statement still stands. In fact, being born into poverty in the US is very unlucky because it is highly unlikely that you will achieve a fraction of the success of your more well funded peers. It is possible, but unlikely.

The fact that you have the opportunity to become super rich is no 'gift' when you consider that the most likely outcome is that you will work a shit job making shit money so some asshole like Buffet can squawk about how grateful you should be.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people getting rich. But please realize that the gap between the average Joe and the Warren Buffets of the world has been growing larger for quite some time.

<comment><USER8> "it is highly unlikely that you will achieve a fraction of the success of your more well funded peers"

Just goes to show that the human psyche cares more about relative prosperity than absolute prosperity. This is well documented in research. Still, I have to question why you would prefer to be 'rich' in a place without running water rather than be 'poor' in America (where the poor people only have one TV and have to drive used cars).

Of course, there are a lot of people worse off than my above glibness suggests, and I think we should definitely be doing all we can to help those people out, but don't try and claim being poor in America is somehow worse than being poor anywhere else just because people like Warren Buffet live here.

"Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with people getting rich."

The fact that you called Warren Buffet an asshole shows that you do. If you knew anything about the guy, you'd know he doesn't rate anywhere on the asshole scale. My guess he is just a soft target because he happens to be so rich that he is a statistically anomaly.

<comment><USER15> You seem to consider quality of life as something you can measure by material gain. Nobody cares about televisions and cars when they come down with cancer and can't afford treatment.

Being rich in America is certainly great. Being poor in America is not that much different than being poor in the developing world, aside from the better hand-me-downs.

<comment><USER16> I'm speechless. Now I finally understand why all of those poor Americans in makeshift boats are sailing to Cuba or south across the Rio Grande.

<comment><USER17> I think you guys missed the point of this downmodded guy's argument because he focused on the wrong thing. In the world economy today, if you're born poor, whether in America or the third world, you're not going to end up like Warren Buffett. It's impossible to go from the lower class to being an uber- capitalist.

<comment><USER8> You are probably right... I think all the opportunities to pull a Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates or Sergey Brin/Larry Page in our current economy require education, (some) resources, and free time to tinker, which is really hard when you are living hand to mouth.

The ability to social climb probably requires several generations at this point. First getting into the middle class, then the upper middle class, then finally into the owner class. I still say it's possible, but yeah, it'd require a brilliant mind and a lot of luck to do it all in one leap.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Auroracoin: "a cryptocurrency for Iceland" - <AUTHOR> http://auroracoin.org/

<comment><USER2> Good. Although I have no reason to believe this particular coin will succeed, the more projects and attempts like this the better. The sooner governments around the world lose their corrupt and illegitimate stranglehold on currency the better. Every new coin gets us closer to the day when people can be free of parasitic, incompetent governments.

I do wonder how this will work though. Will people want to use it if their allocation of Auroracoin doesn't reflect their pre-existing share of wealth. So the appeal of this coin should be in negative proportion to a citizen's relative wealth... so poor people will want to use it most, and rich people least... so the only people incentivised to use it will be the people with the least to trade.

Hmm.</comment>


Ask HN: Can I have my Karma locked? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a few cannabis related sites, and my karma just hit 420. Is there any way to keep it there? Please? <comment><USER2> Upvoting has never been so tempting.</comment>


Lawyers representing families who sheltered Edward Snowden want Ottawa's aid - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/03/22/lawyers-representing-families-who-sheltered-edward-snowden-want-ottawas-aid.html <comment><AUTHOR> Also:

Press release from 'For The Refugees': [https://fortherefugees.com/press- conference-statement/](https://fortherefugees.com/press-conference-statement/)

Full video of press conference [https://fortherefugees.com/press-conference- stream/](https://fortherefugees.com/press-conference-stream/)

Canada's Immigration minister: [http://www.parl.gc.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members/Ahmed- Huss...](http://www.parl.gc.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members/Ahmed- Hussen\(89020\))</comment>


FDA warning: Scores of heart implants can be hacked from 20ft away - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/fda-warning-scores-of-heart-implants-can-be-hacked-from-20ft-away/ <comment><USER2> Does this mean we will eventually see peoples hearts being ransomware / crypto-locked?

 _Send 100 BTC to avoid shut-down of your heart_

<comment><USER3> Not viable. Most of them are already bankrupt from heart surgery.

<comment><USER2> Good point.

 _Send .02 BTC to avoid locking your heart_</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the best laptop brands to use for Visual Studio development - <AUTHOR> Ask HN: What are the best laptop brands to use for Windows development with tools to include SQL Server, Visual Studio, etc.? Thinking of retiring my 3-year old Asus Core i5 laptop and replacing with higher-end Windows machine. <comment><USER2> I replaced my Dell i5 460M with HP i7 2860QM and it works awsome until i spell water on it then replace it with my current laptop HP 3630QM, also used HP with i7 6500u and my answer will be use dell,lenovo or asus with i7 processor like i7 4770HQ or if new laptop then hit for i7 7820HK, 16/32GB RAM and SSD if possible NVMe like intel 600p or better samsung EVO or pro. Your laptop is good if you put a great components in it.

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience the best installation of Windows I've used is a VirtualBox VM on a MacBook Pro. So my answer would be "Apple". Windows just seems to run better in a VM on a Mac.</comment>


12,000 year old pre-agricultural temple findings - Gobekli Tepe - <AUTHOR> http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/449/gobekli_tepe_paradise_regained.html <comment><USER2> Wikipedia article on the temple:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe>

Is anyone else troubled by the submitted article coming from Fortean Times? That's not usually considered a reliable source, as it doesn't fact-check the way many other publications would.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Times>

<comment><USER3> I was troubled, but read the article. It was a little breathless, but seemed okay.

Though I didn't like clicking through a link on HN and seeing, essentially, "Garden of Eden located!" I was suspicious enough that I googled Gobekli Tepe and found this Smithsonian article:

[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli- te...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html)

So at least I knew the subject was valid before reading further on the submitted link. Definitely seems like a weird source though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I read all the links from Wikipedia entry and searched for more articles before submitting, but I liked this one.

But all articles I found beside the Wikipedia one, had something I didn't like; they were boring, less information, or had needless speculation. But the submitted one despite the speculation had extra detail.

I never heard of Fortean Time. I didn't know of their reputation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> These time scales do cause one to consider: what is the lifetime of SGML, HTML, XML, RDF, ... How have those Gutenberg typefaces held up? I was in a British church last year, and the floors were made of carved granite, which were completely illegible.... People walking on the floors for centuries caused gradual wear.

Chiseled granite!! What names or words were written? I don't know, but 12,000 years is a long time to propagate a certain signal... This causes one to consider...

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a must-read.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about this experimental twitter app - <AUTHOR>

Since it's harder to follow conversions on twitter, we've created a new twitter app(chrome extension) : Conwitter. This is still on alpha stage - what do you think?<p>https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bfjidghmenmplpaokfnopnnjefmhlafp <comment><USER2> I see the problem you're trying to solve, I'm not sure I like the implementation. Simpler I think would be a way to create lists of users on the fly and see only their Tweets to follow a conversation.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable links

[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bfjidghmenmplpao...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bfjidghmenmplpaokfnopnnjefmhlafp)

<http://www.conwitter.com/></comment>


Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Compensation Soars 69 Percent to $42.1M - <AUTHOR> http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/yahoo-ceo-marissa-mayer-compensation-889087 <comment><USER2> It's important to note that Yahoo's board did not give her a 69% raise this year or decide that her performance over the last year was worth more than $42M. This is the compensation she agreed to as part of contract when she joined as CEO.

Ever year we see a multitude of articles highlighting CEOs of poorly performing companies who had a huge increase in compensation, but they completely miss the point. There is no "news" here, per se. It's just like a professional sports player who signs a very large, guaranteed 5-year deal. It doesn't really matter if the payments each year are equal or if they are backloaded so that the player gets a huge "raise" in his final years. Just take the total size of the contract, divide it by 5, and call that his effective yearly compensation.

Now, it is certainly the case that we can debate whether the board overpaid for Mayer, but that's completely independent of this "news".

</comment><comment><USER3> i dont understand why ceos get paid so much. companies are always trying to cut costs -- we see outsourcing to mexico and massive layoffs fairly frequently -- but ceos never seem to get cut as a cost. when one is fired another is hired and paid just as much. 40 million for being the ceo? how is it possible that you could never find someone who could do the job just as well who would take 20 million?

<comment><USER4> Because that is what the job is worth and it's a miniscule amount of what the company earns and pays out to the rest of the employees (in total).

Nobody seems to complain when their favorite sports athlete or movie star gets paid millions so why is a CEO any different?

You have to put aside the amount itself (which just seems large since it's such a big number for many) and realize how the economics of it workout.

<comment><USER5> They made $99 million losses in 2015. Sure 42m is tiny compared to 1.09b rev, but it's half of their losses which does feel weird. If you made losses, why are you compensated at all with bonuses? But this was obviously negotiated a while ago but it seems strange when that happens. If your favorite sports athlete or movie star does not perform year after year they are not going to get millions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can someone explain how this works? Is there any economical logic to this?

<comment><USER7> Not sure.. didn't they just release relatively poor earnings too? On the other side maybe she's closer to finding a buyer?

<comment><USER8> Maybe _she_ is going to become the buyer? She's got more money than sin.</comment></comment></comment>


There is a storm coming - <AUTHOR> http://michaelkk.tumblr.com/post/25298397157/there-is-a-storm-coming?site=yc&date=20120621&type=blog

<comment><USER2> The Swiss are flush with money at the moment, because of everyone trying to avoid the possible Euro crash. Other parts of Europe may not be in the same bubble.

</comment><comment><USER3> The storm has been coming a long time. But with Occupy Wall Street, the 99%, etc, it seems to me it is already here. The question in my mind: What are we going to do to make things better?</comment>


'Oumuamua Might Be a Giant Interstellar Hydrogen Iceberg - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/oumuamua-might-be-a-giant-interstellar-hydrogen-iceberg/ <comment><AUTHOR> Link to paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.12932](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.12932)

</comment><comment><USER2> It might have been a weird iceberg, or a lightsail fragment, or just a boring rock or a gift of fire from the gods. We'll never know because we didn't get our shit together and went out to look. There's just so much you can derive from a light curve and a few orbital elements.</comment>


Show HN: Interesting Finds – Amazon products with honest descriptions - <AUTHOR> https://interestingfinds.co <comment><USER2> Nice minimalist style.

How do you plan to handle growth? Will there be categories, or search functionality, or just a curated selection?

I immediately recognised the Mini Materials bricks, from this story previously on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16429467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16429467)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback! Those are all very good questions! I do have categories built in the backend (currently not visible to users). However, right now I am more focused on getting user submissions to help grow the content. Eventually I would add search functionality when there is enough content and demand for it. And yes, those mini materials blocks are pretty cool!</comment></comment>


Magazine Deadpool: Add US News and World Report  - <AUTHOR> http://www.magazinedeathpool.com/

<comment><USER2> They'll still publish special issues, so I presume their educational rankings are the only thing still making money.

I wonder if this is the prick that will pop the bubble so many have been discussing? Besides the underlying question of competence, the brand will be on newsstands only 8 times a year instead of 33; a 75% drop in penetration seems certain to weaken its influence. This is as good a disruptive opportunity as a competitor could wish for.

</comment><comment><USER3> What inane metric will alma mater (UIUC) choose to game now that the granddaddy of all stupid rankings is dead?</comment>


"We Own You" – Confessions of an Anonymous Free to Play Producer - <AUTHOR> http://toucharcade.com/2015/09/16/we-own-you-confessions-of-a-free-to-play-producer/ <comment><USER2> The final paragraph is pretty good:

 _Every time you play a free to play game, you just build this giant online database of who you are, who your friends are and what you like and don't like. This data is sold, bought and traded between large companies I have worked for. You want to put a stop to this? Stop playing free games. Buy a game for 4.99 or 9.99. We don't want to be making games like this, and we don't want another meeting about retention, cohorts or churn._

Gamers are such a wonderful userbase to exploit, and they have pretty much willfully put themselves there.</comment>