Ask YC: Best computer science degree in Europe? - <AUTHOR>

A friend wants to get a computer science degree in Europe starting next year. What we're not sure about is the best university to apply to. The European education landscape is difficult to navigate and we were wondering whether YC had any good suggestion: outstanding courses, stellar professors, great international student body?<p>Grateful for pointers of any kind. <comment><USER2> Some German universities have Max Planck or Fraunhofer Institutes attached to them. They do interesting and cutting-edge work, and take local students for assistant work, etc., which is great to do something "real" during your studies.

Denmark (Aarhus and Copenhagen) seem to have pretty good CS programs as well.

I don't know though how feasible these programs are if you only speak English. Some degree programs are being offered in English these days, so it may be worth an inquiry.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've studied @ Oxford, have friends at Imperial and Cambridge. Not sure how to say where's "best".. however there's big differences in approach/material studied.

Oxford is small (~20 undergrads/year doing straight CS) and the courses are extremely academic/theoretical in nature - both could be a +/- depending on what you're looking for. The tutorial system at Oxbridge (where you get a few hours personal time with a professor each week) is definately the big bonus that defines what makes it a great education. It's definately not a way that works for everyone though.

For me, choosing where I wanted to study was less about the course and more about the experience I'd have while there - it's a personal thing but I find I learn best by teaching myself, so for me priorities were whether I liked the city, atmosphere, plus the overall perception/reputation of the university since it's obviously nice to come out with a certificate from a "brand name" that people will respect.

The best things about Oxford are the people you meet and wide range of other things to get involved in alongside your course - wherever your friend's looking, I'd definately suggest they use this as part of the comparision.

Let me know if you've got any more specific questions/want follow-ups.

</comment><comment><USER4> Philip Wadler teaches at the University of Edinburgh:

<http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/>

I'd think it a good thing to get hooked up with him, depending on your interests.

<comment><USER5> I second the University of Edinburgh. Every time I've researched CS subjects (usually in AI or near it) I end up at one of that university's sites. They have so many outstanding people, I believe I would have difficulty picking an area in which to concentrate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> ETHZ (Swiss federal institute of technology, at Zurich) has a great CS program - home of Niklaus Wirth.</comment>


Justin Kan: Measuring startup success by head count is toxic - <AUTHOR> http://areallybadidea.com/measuring-startup-success-by-head-count-is-to?f

<comment><USER2> A measurement like "Profit per Employee" is a measurement i prefer. It cuts to the heart of what most businesses are trying to do - make money while keeping headcount (costs) down.

In times of expansion, your profit per employee will decrease, but this should be temporary as you increase your ability to do more business.

Then, as you reach a larger scale, you can focus on increasing your profit per employee through efficiencies.

It's not a perfect measurement because it doesn't account for varying employee salaries, but it's better than "How many people do you have" or "How much have you raised"

</comment><comment><USER3> Good post Justin.

One thing you didn't touch on: Early employees often join startups to _escape_ from big companies. An ever-increasing headcount can give those people quite a sinking feeling ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> You nailed it. The two metrics most startups are judged on are both very toxic: money raised and number of employees.

I blame the press, who use those two false metrics as a proxy for company success. In return, founders tend to want to grow headcount quickly and raise a lot of money, both of which can lead to a quick and untimely death.

<comment><USER5> What is the best metric the press could use for measuring private companies' success? Money raised and number employees might be bad, but I'm not sure they're not also the best ones possible.

<comment><USER6> How about revenue and profit?

<comment><USER5> Do you know a lot of private companies that publicly share their revenue or profit? Of the ones that do, how many do it in a way that can be verified?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This made me think of Steve Jobs solution for the Mac team:

 _The Mac team they were all in one building and they eventually got to one hundred people. Steve had a rule that there could never be more than one hundred people on the Mac team. So if you wanted to add someone you had to take someone out. And the thinking was a typical Steve Jobs observation: "I can't remember more than a hundred first names so I only want to be around people that I know personally. So if it gets bigger than a hundred people, it will force us to go to a different organization structure where I can't work that way. The way I like to work is where I touch everything." Through the whole time I knew him at Apple that's exactly how he ran his division._

Link to the full article: [http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve- jobs-the-full...](http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the- full-interview-transcript/63295)

</comment><comment><USER8> Absolutely agreed that higher head count should not be a goal; less is more. But it's still a good second question to ask because:

1\. It gives a sense of what stage the company is at. E.g. a 50-person company should be well past finding product-market fit. Also, if the asker is considering employment, it gives a sense of how much influence he/she will have.

2\. It's more likely to be answered than questions like revenue, gross/net profits, or revenue/profits per employee.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Measuring startup progress by head count is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight."--Gill Bates

</comment><comment><USER10> The only two metrics that really matter are: 1) Cash on Hand 2) Monthly Burn.

Until a business is cash flow positive, the above two metrics are the most important things that need to be managed.

PS For an awesome startup budget / dashboard tool - check out 60mo.com It's simple, beautiful and the UI focuses on cash remaining

<comment><USER11> Interesting recommendation. I had trouble telling (from index.html page) whether this was alt to QuickBooks, but since the features page includes "Integrate QuickBooks to eliminate data entry"... apparently it sits atop QB and bases it analysis on what you've entered. Bookmarked. Thanks for the lead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think a more accurate measure of success would be net profit per employee

</comment><comment><USER13> I think from a founder's mentality it is 100% true that more people = more problems, not more success.

However, from a consumer mentality, more employees means (potentially) more revenue and stability, but it all depends on the industry. I probably wouldn't buy an airplane from a two man shop, but wouldn't blink at going to a dentist with only two employees.

The problem comes when the founder starts looking at things from the consumer perspective and wants to use headcount for appearances or marketing.

<comment><AUTHOR> A two man shop probably can't actually make an airplane. Industries where there are high headcount requirements usually stem from some underlying reason (like, it actually takes around that many people to produce and support the product). Even still, if you are in one of those industries you should strive to keep your headcount as low _as possible_ (where that means you have orders of magnitude more people than your typical web startup).

<comment><USER14> Infuriatingly, it's not clear whether Burt Rutan built and designed his early planes by himself from the Wikipedia articles.

I may have bought into a mythical view of Burt, but I would definitely believe that Burt Rutan could build an aeroplane with 2 people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Revenue minus costs is what matters.

If you have three employees, costs of 500k/year and revenues of $26 million, you're a success.</comment>


Obama wants Congress to increase prison sentences for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/obama-wants-congress-to-increase-prison-sentences-for-hackers/ <comment><USER2> If we made the penalties as severe as say, lying to congress when you're the head of the NSA, that would make those hackers think twice. /sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER3> horrible. Guaranteed to be abused.

</comment><comment> at-fates-hands This was going to happen in the wake of the Sony DDoS. Right now, there's a huge public outcry to apply the full force of the law against "hackers".

Considering these attacks are starting to increase and their durations are getting longer (The Sony DDoS went on for several weeks) people are getting fed up and want someone to do something about it.</comment>


How many Apple IDs should your family have? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/apple/how-many-apple-ids-should-your-family-have/ <comment><USER2> I am British but live in Germany. I need two Apple IDs for the same iPad. One for my UK account and one for a German account because you can only subscribe to BBC iPlayer Global on non-UK stores. I don't really use the German iTunes account because Apple forces me to use the store in German, which is viable but certainly not my personal preference.

Programmers have a bad habit of assuming that country of residence == language preference.

A worse practice is IP-to-location and then assuming language preference. Grrrrrr.

Did you know that there are more Catalan speakers in the world than people that speak Norweigan? I used to live in Spain. All websites assume you speak Spanish. That must really piss off Catalan speakers, all 11.5 million or so of them.

<comment><USER3> > _Programmers have a bad habit of assuming that country of residence == > language preference._

Ontario here. A few websites have been persistently trying to show me French. The fact that my dynamic IP sometimes shows up as being in Montreal doesn't help at all. But some websites just seem to assume that all Canadians speak French! Luckily, most Anglo-Canadians know by instinct where to locate the English version. We've been thoroughly trained to do that :)

I wonder what it's like in Switzerland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, there is a huge opportunity for a product here. Someone could make a lot of money on taking families into account (no pun intended) when providing "cloud" services. Let me explain through some examples:

My wife and I currently have Android phones. We have several choices for where we can buy music, apps, books and other content. Almost none of them allow us to share our purchases. Apps simply cannot be shared (please correct me if I am wrong on this point). Music can be shared but the process involves (1) purchasing a song on one of the available music stores, (2) connecting the phone to a computer, (3) downloading the song from the phone to the computer (incidentally, the only universal means of creating a backup), (4) connecting the other device to the computer (5) uploading the song.

Google Music does make things slightly easier. For one, there is less reason for backups. However, music purchased on one phone still has to end up on another person's phone via a computer. The situation is worsened by the fact that on Android your Google account is very deeply integrated into your phone experience. The only sensible solution I can think of is for us to create a separate account through which we purchase music, movies, apps, etc.

The situation is a bit better with Apple ID. At least here, as TFA points out, you can have a setup that allows you to not spend 2x or more on the same content, but also have individual accounts. However, the length of the article alone suggests that there is a problem.

The perfect solution would look something like this: a cloud-based drive with several areas: 1 GB of encrypted storage for private data, 20 GB for music and book storage, streaming capabilities for all videos. Anything in these areas should be sharable with a small set of people I choose to share it with. For example, when I buy a song or an app, it should automatically show up on my wife's phone. Bonus points for some kind of a parental control system (no rock n roll for my kids once I have them). Any photo I take should automatically be uploaded to the encrypted area but also optionally shared with my family. All the app data should automatically be backed up as well, so that I can continue using the app on my laptop from where I left off on my phone.

Note, that it is very important to also not share some things by default. For example, if I want to keep a copy of my private GPG key in the encrypted area, I do not want to share it with my wife. Another example would be a document with account numbers from my job: not something my family needs to see.

Obviously this is a tall order. Encryption means no capability to do de- duplication. Sharing apps is also a bit funky, especially I buy them from a third-party app store. However, this system would much more closely address the real-world patterns of how families use smartphones, computers and cloud storage. Whoever figures this out first will likely make a lot of money.

<comment><USER5> What I am waiting for is for Apple to come up with a version of an ID that is "safe" to send out into the world with a handicapped child that is incapable of doing her own updates, but that would allow the folks doing her care to ONLY do updates and not purchase items (on purpose or accidentally) that I will end up having to cover. Of course I find it particularly evil that some of the Sesame Street apps allow in-app purchases. I haven't seen a company rip off adults through their children like that since the old Columbia House Record Club...

<comment><USER6> Just remove your credit card info and buy everything using gift card credit which you add as you need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're Apple, this article just goes to show what a huge mess Apple IDs have become. If there was a simple algorithm like "one Apple ID per human being" and an ability to link family accounts together, that would be great.

<comment><USER8> I'm a single human being, and unfortunately I need multiple Apple IDs because you can't use the same ID with multiple countries' stores. :(

<comment><USER9> This.

There is a reason I don't update my apps as often as I would like. It's because you can't just click update all, enter a password, and be done. No. You have to be careful when updating.

I cannot believe Apple's QA have _ever_ looked at this element to their OS, or if they have, they simply don't care at all. And it's these parts that show how much Apple really cares about its software.

<comment><USER10> I don't understand, when choosing "update all" doesn't it ask you each of your apple ID's password in a flurry of separate dialogs labelled with each account's name, and then update the whole bunch of apps in one round?

<comment><USER9> Yes, until the last part. Unless things have changed in the last couple months, the last part is where it fails. What happens is, iOS complains that I'm not in the right store, so I have to got to that store. This is basically a refresh. But this also means I log out of one store and into another. This stalls other downloads, and could leave things in a half state. I've had numerous updates stall where I can't update or delete the app, and I can't use it either. Then there is a chance that iCloud might get screwed up, and I'll have to reauthenticate for that as well (I forget where that happens, might be iTunes).

And let's not mention iTunes.

I hate updating apps.

Let's make it clear: I do not true iOS to do the right thing when I click update all and enter my passwords. I expect it to do the wrong thing and cause many problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use one ID for my wife's iPad, my kids' 2 iPods, and my iPad. Rather than setting up 'stub' Apple IDs for the three of them, I just added additional email addresses to my ID so that they each have their own Messaging and FaceTime account.

<comment><USER12> My wife and I share the same Apple ID for our three iPads (don't ask), two iPhones, two iMacs and one Apple TV. We see each others iTunes music and iBooks. That can be annoying (my wife has a bejillion apps) but most of the time it's a benefit. Messaging on the iPhone is not shared, and we haven't used FaceTime, so can't comment on that. All in all, it works well. I wish we shared the same Amazon account, so we could read each others' Kindle books easily (we can still do it by signing out and signing in with the other's email, but it's a pain) but we started off on the wrong foot there.

<comment><USER11> I actually just answered within the context of sharing within a family... I also have my MacBook air, the agency Mac pro I use everyday, an agency iPad (used for iOS dev and website testing), and my daughters old iPod touch all using the same Apple ID! I'm really surprised that Apple allows 10 devices to share one ID. It's saved me a lot of money, but I certainly spend my fair share of it in the app store (~$300 this year).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not surprised he has those complicated charts in his article. I've dealt with this issue myself. The quick summary is that all this would go away if there wasn't customer-hostile DRM and sandboxing in the entire ecosystem the purpose of which is to control and regulate my access to things I own. This is never a benefit and always a burden. As it is, I often find it a nightmare to get my content where I want it and have vowed to use Android only in the future. i-* was a mistake for me to get involved with.

<comment><USER8> Actually, only two of those tens of services have anything to do with DRM: apps and iTunes.

For apps: if you stick to free apps, like most Android users do, the point is moot. If your family has more than ten devices, buying a second copy of that $5 app is honestly not a huge burden. If your spouse buys their own apps like any other adult, you can support up to 18 iPhone-toting offspring total, which seems reasonable.

For iTunes: I thought it had DRM-free music now? In which case, you can copy that music on all 200 of your extended family's iPods. What you can't do is let 200 people buy music in your name, but I don't see why you'd want to.

Everything else is unrelated to DRM. It _is_ a mess, yes, but not for DRM reasons.

<comment><USER14> On the iOS App Stores, everything is region-locked and DRM'd, even those which are free. Sticking to free apps isn't an opt-out of iOS's DRM.

For example, even though Apple advertises "the App Store", there isn't _an_ App Store. There's one per country. I've seen some cool apps mentioned on blogs and such that I would love to have, but even if they are free, if I'm not in the right country, I can't download them.

(Yes, I could probably 'jailbreak' my iPod, or sign up for an Apple ID with a fake address, or some other nonsense. Doesn't change the fact that Apple's DRM has such restrictions.)

It seems funny to me that Amazon has no trouble shipping pretty much any item from any country to any other country, but Apple can't deliver bits across borders.

<comment><USER15> I don't disagree with your comment, but Amazon _do_ have trouble shipping items across countries, if I go to Amazon.com right now, 8/15 of their "recommended" items for me are being marked as "We are not able to ship this item to your default shipping address." This selection is even narrower with a country-specific Amazon, e.g. Amazon Japan only ships books and movie DVDs internationally but nothing else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> iOS should have user accounts. The Apple ID situation is fine for the smaller devices (iPod touch and iPhone), as they are usually only used by a single person and Apps can be shared anyways by temporarily logging into another account.

The iPad, however, is probably more commonly shared among family members. I'd love to read my mail on our iPad, but I certainly don't want my brother to read them. And always typing in my password is definitely less convenient than just waiting for my desktop computer to boot or using my iPhone.

<comment><USER17> Agreed so hard. _(Edit to add: By this I mean I agree strongly. I find this an amusing phrase, but imagine it might be confusing in writing.)_

It's difficult not to be cynical about this.

Yes, there are challenges that would need solved to add user accounts:

• Basic UI: how to add switching conveniently and yet unobtrusively?

• Relatively limited storage: What happens when you want to tote 5GB of music and your family member has 2GB of photos and a 1.1GB game on your 8GB shared iPad?

And yet, it's certainly possible. The easy answer is they want everyone to have their own device because it means more profit for Apple.

I hope it's on the iOS 6 shortlist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another compounding issue is that for years you could use firstname.lastname@example.com as a valid apple ID but with the release of iCloud they now force you to create a email@example.com address for some of the features (although I can't remember which one). This means that a non-apple email address on your apple id now means you're a second-class citizen.

To make it extra confusing, apple uses your email address as the way to identify the apple id but then also give you a way to change the email address, but only if its not from a me.com address:

<http://support.apple.com/kb/HE40>

</comment><comment><USER19> This is currently the weakest link in the overall Apple experience, and it gets even worse if you want to use, say, Google Contacts and Calendar.

<comment><USER20> Inconvenience of using non-Apple products is part of Apple's design philosophy. They have no interest in interoperability beyond what came accidentally when they used BSD/NEXTStep tech to replace OS 9.

<comment><USER17> That is, strictly speaking, not true.

Trivially so, since you said "no interest." If they had none at all, why would they go so far as to actively support non-Apple services?

Relatedly, their aggressive support of the Web as a platform is by definition interoperable. Their best-in-class mobile browser (or nearly — source: PPK/Quirksmode) can almost be considered a universal interoperability module.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> None.

No google account, no Facebook account, no windows live ID either.

You should not have to sign up for anything to use your device to its full potential.

<comment><USER22> So do you host your own email, cloud storage, music streaming, and web site? Is their a realistic way to have these services with our signing up for an account?

<comment><USER21> Email - check - I run my own IMAP/SMTP server (windows based - virtually zero config). Cloud storage - I use a usb stick in my bag, truecrypt and robocopy. Music streaming - I use an mp3 player on my phone (which has no cloud services). Web site - don't need one but I can chuck one on my fibre line for nothing.

You genuinely dont need those cloud products despite the marketing to the contrary. Why do people assume that they NEED them?

<comment><USER23> Claiming no one needs these things because _you_ don't need these things is like a four star chef claiming there is no need for diners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Zero.</comment>


Elon Musk's Mission to Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/ <comment><USER2> There's one interesting quote in the article:

 _Musk: I can't tell you much. We have essentially no patents in SpaceX. Our primary long-term competition is in China—if we published patents, it would be farcical, because the Chinese would just use them as a recipe book._

If your process/ideas are sufficiently complex, it reduces competition if you don't file a patent.

<comment><USER3> Lots of industries do this. Patents are useful when it's obvious what your idea is, and where it's easy for people/competitors to have have a poke inside. Like a vacuum cleaner or a non-reflective mobile-phone screen coating, or one-click or something like that.

But for industries where that's not the case, like rockets (my current) or to pick another example from a previous job, magnetic bearings for sub-sea tubo- machinery installations like natural gas compressors[1], it makes no sense to file a patent. It's much easier to keep it a secret, because it's not like your competitors are going to scuba-dive down to the compressor control cabinet, whip out a JTAG and see how you've implemented your control loop on an FPGA.

Likewise, if you do patent it, it's very difficult to prove an infringement for the same reasons.

So essentially, in industries where it's not the case that your competitors can see what you've done, secrets over patents is the norm, in my experience, and has been for while.

[1] Mag bearings use electromagnetic stators and magnetic collars on the shaft to levitate the shaft inside a bit of spinning equipment. This means it's entirely non-contact, dramatically reducing wear, especially useful on difficult-to-service installations like sub-sea.

<comment><USER4> The problem then shifts from competitors using your patents to competitors actively engaging in industrial espionage. Considering how easily the JSF program was penetrated by the Chinese, I hope that SpaceX has well guarded data.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. A friend just sent me this:

"china can't compete because all their aerospace students are spies (joke from my chums in the physics department)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was at the University of Washington science and engineering career fair last month, recruiting for Mozilla. Our booth was reasonably busy, but the SpaceX booth had a _gigantic mob_ surrounding it at all times. People are seriously excited about space.

<comment><USER7> Did you come to my Hacker News meetup last month? Chris Lewicki from Planetary Resources spoke, which was pretty awesome.

<comment><USER8> The Explorer's Club in New York had Space Exploration as a theme in 2010, it was amazing how excited people got, and entrepreneurs have really taken hold of space travel. People should also check out Richard Garriott's work in the area, he spoke at the dinner and is another awesome space entrepreneur: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yiWoY36Ukc>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute > for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex > machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who > aren't that creative.

Sounds like so many complaints about the enterprise software landscape, and has certainly proved to be true in my own experience. Codified processes usually start with the guise of open communications and education, either because someone wasn't thinking or because of a pressing need to get a few people on the same page. They are soon adopted and enforced as dogma by natural-born bureaucrats who crawl out of the woodwork from seemingly nowhere. It must be an incredible challenge to fight in any large organization, looking at it from the top down.

So far, Musk appears to be doing an admirable job. These things tend to last only as long as a real visionary is at the helm. He is young so hopefully can keep at it for a while longer still, hopefully even long enough to get us to Mars. From this article, he didn't actually say to much about such plans. I wonder if it's just a judicious amount of prudence on his part or if even he fears it may not be feasible in his lifetime.

<comment><USER10> This is something I've been struggling with. I see the two paths to success being mutually exclusive; throw out process and go big or channel process into success.

See this link and the ensuing discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4727045>

This view is to cultivate habits and work consistently and methodically every day.

Elon's view is to toss out process and dream big.

What is the best way to reconcile these two opinions? Is it a matter of scale (i.e. personal process but enterprise chutzpah?)

<comment><USER11> > What is the best way to reconcile these two opinions? Is it a matter of > scale (i.e. personal process but enterprise chutzpah?)

It's a matter of experience. Process is defined by the boundary at which things start to fray. You can only find that boundary by running into it a few times and recognizing where it is. It gets much, much more complex as you grow in size because the fraying can happen as part of how two individuals interact. The more individuals you have, the riskier it is to assume the boundary is farther out, and thus the safer it is to constrict using process; there are interpersonal boundaries on top of your personal comfort zones.

If you don't need the habits and consistency, then you don't need them. Don't do that. Go big until you fail. Figure out why you failed. Account for it next time. That accounting is process. And probe your process occasionally to make sure it's still valid, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you have't already seen it, Kevin Rose interviews Elon Musk: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8>

Also, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about if there was a space race with China the US would be on Mars in 18 months: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=c...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cVg- snQdrms)

It would be truly amazing if a private company was the first to set foot on another planet.

<comment> simba-hiiipower very cool; thanks for the links.

and that would be absolutely amazing; though in some ways (and not to discount musk's undertaking at all) i feel it speaks more so to a failure of governments (generally speaking) in investing to drive technological advance.

it should be the public sector that leads in these types of endeavors. one of the most important functions of a state is its ability and willingness to invest in projects that would be otherwise unprofitable or far too long-term for any rational player in the private sector to take-on. these investments, while maybe unprofitable to a single entity, are what lay the foundation for significant productivity and standard of living gains down-the-line (which, in-turn, spur many future profitable companies). it's how everything from highways spanning a continent and parks in the middle of crowded cities to the internet and atomic energy get developed; and it's so crucial to society..

it's really quite sad to see this important economic function of government neglected, particularly in the us where its proven so successful in generating wealth and societal good time-and-time again.. i mean would we have microsoft and apple around if it wasn't for the development of the internet? (and google certainly wouldn't exist).

it's also sad that the great focus that the nation apparently (long before i came to be) had in driving technological advance has stalled, and such investments have become issues of budgets and 'big government' (which i am not a fan of at all by the way). if governments are going to run ridiculous budget deficits anyways (even in years of economic growth) then there should at least be something to show for it at some point; that doesn't seem to be the case these days..

fortunately there are irrational players in the private sector, like elon musk, who are able to fill the voids. unfortunately though, if (and most likely when) such endeavors prove unprofitable in the long-run, little may show for it.. you'd think more people would be interested (and economically incentivized) to have a government that covers the expensive research and development costs associated with spearheading technologies which they can one-day build-off of (and in incredibly profitable ways), but i guess economic self-preservation (and therefore political pressure) prevail over advance.

with all that said, i really do hope he succeeds.

(also, off topic, but i really wish i could afford a model s right now!)

<comment><USER4> Can't say I agree that funding this type of endeavor is "one of the most important functions of a state is its ability and willingness to invest in projects that would be otherwise unprofitable or far too long-term for any rational player in the private sector to take-on." Government does many things marginally better than the private sector, and many things poorly.

For example, the Pyramids are a stunning achievement that couldn't have been completed without using government. However, I don't see them as being particularly helpful today.

Governments don't need to have "economic functions" other than protecting property rights, and maintaining a sound currency.

<comment> simba-hiiipower not wanting to get into a philosophical debate here, but even as someone who generally argues for smaller government, i disagree..

people generally discount the significant economic advantages (to all in an economy) that government investments provide; in most cases, investments in transformative projects which otherwise would not have occurred were it up to the private-sector alone.

take development of the us interstate system as an example.. the costs involved in building-out the network are estimated to have been in excess of $425 billion [1] and the original phase took over 35 years to complete as planned; no rational, profit-seeking, company would ever undertake such a project. the economics just don't make much sense. and even if the private sector was able to come-up with a similarly adequate solution (potentially networks of small/regional players monetizing usage through tolls), the cost to society both in actual usage charges (sufficient to generate profits for the firms) and in lack of a consistent, expandable, and reliable network that so many people and businesses depend on would likely be far in excess of the $425 billion cost.

the fact that the us built-up solid infrastructure (both physical and in terms of networks and connectivity systems) early on (relative to many other nations) provided domestic companies a major competitive advantage over less/later-developed countries; its freed-up physical ($) and intellectual capital towards other endeavors and was a key part of why, collectively, more significant commercialized innovations over the past few decades (by private companies) have come from the us.

and beyond the economic savings from the outcome of the investment itself (i.e. a system facilitating a reliable, consistent, and relatively inexpensive means of transportation), the actual exercise in carrying it through also yields a lot of ancillary economic benefits. new construction methods may be developed, equipment manufacturers may grow in scale or scope, and a lot of people (and companies) are employed (and contracted) in carrying-it through (gaining new skills/experience).

beyond that, there is all the subsequent innovation and opportunity to develop profitable businesses that are created once a major transformational technology is introduced. think of the advantages ups (and later fedex) would have in utilizing the interstate system to grow in scale relative to competitors in countries that lacked similar systems (now lookup who are the leaders in that industry). the benefits are even clearer when you look at all the technology and defense companies that have benefited from foundations laid-out by, or innovations developed during, large government-funded projects such as the internet or during the space race..

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System>

<comment><USER4> Just because government can do big projects doesn't mean it should.

And Fedex's success depended far more on aviation advances than on the Interstate Highway System. Aviation that was pushed by private industry (while also enjoying support from the militaries of the world).

In the US, the major "infrastructure" type projects that were government driven are often listed as the Erie Canal, the Hoover Dam, and the IHS. Some will throw in the TVS as well, though I consider that more of a state- cooperative effort. Yet we still seemed to have a great deal of scientific progress that in turn led to economic progress before these huge programs were enacted.

The steam engine, the locomotive, the airplane, wireless radio, etc. etc. Goddard didn't have much government support in his initial efforts yet was a pioneer.

I'm not discounting that governments can have a disproportionate impact on some programs. But do we really want to have a government that picks winners and losers as we currently do with alternative energy? I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

<comment> simba-hiiipower ..never said i'm in favour of 'trying to pick winners and losers' nor do i think the current approach to alternative energy (essentially doing just that) is the right way to go by any means.

rather, i'd like to a concerted effort by the government to find a solution itself (i.e. _let's get a man on the moon in ten years_ ... _let's have all new vehicles running on a clean and sustainable fuel source within the next 20 years_ ). that type of approach is fundamentally different than _let's invest in this particular company's particular solution_ or _let's give a loan to these guys_.. it's more analogous to the projects you described in which the government funded research/planning, developed particular approaches, and then contracted-out the development of potential solutions/implementations, and where it all fit together towards achieving a tangible goal. that's very different than what's going on today.

and i'd say 'alternative energy' is a poster-child for a project in which the cost of development and commercialization is fairly significant, but the economic and societal benefit of an adequate solution being realized far outweighs it; to me, that makes for an ideal case (and one of few) where increased government involvement can play a good role. _especially so, given the government has already distorted the market by subsidizing 'traditional energy' sources for so long._

as to what happens tomorrow, i doubt we'll find-out how it impact this issue in any meaningful way. as i see it, it's a choice between continuing to pick winners and losers or just giving up entirely; neither is ideal as far as i'm concerned..

<comment><USER4> Jerry Pournelle has been a huge advocate of X-prizes for advancing technology. These were very valuable at the dawn of the aviation era, and races like the Schneider cup helped push boundaries. The cost is zero if the company/organization fails to reach the defined threshold. Too bad so much govt. spending is associated with buying votes instead of advancing technology.

<comment> simba-hiiipower now there's something we can agree on.

happy election day good sir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm an Elon fan, but his comment about the old Russian engines his competitors are using deserves some scrutiny. He's talking about the NK-33 which has a thrust to weight ratio of 137. That's better than any current SpaceX engines though the Merlin 1D under development is apparently aiming for a ratio of 150.

As for the engines being in a warehouse in Siberia since the 60s - that part is basically true. There was an Equinox (UK) documentary called "the engines that came in from the cold" about it. When the cold war was over the Americans finally found out about these engines that were left over from the space race, 20 years old (at the time) and better than anything they'd developed since. Now they're over 40 years old and _still_ the most efficient!

So credit where it's due eh Elon? The NK-33 was and still is a masterpiece.

<comment><USER14> > The NK-33 was and still is a masterpiece.

Its a bit aggressive to label this engine a masterpiece when it has never actually launched successfully. I don't even think there has been an attempted launch with the NK-33, just ground tests for the N-1F rocket which was cancelled. Interesting note - the second attempted launch of the N-1 rocket, which used the original version of the NK-33 (NK-15) resulted in the largest non-nuclear explosion of all time.

There is more to an engine than power to weight ratio, such as actually successfully putting a rocket in space.

<comment><USER15> Here is more on the N-1 and the explosion: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)#Launch_history>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apologies for being somewhat off-topic, but does anybody know if there are citizenship requirements for working at a place like SpaceX?

I have a solid background in materials science and metallurgy from a world- class university, and find what Musk is doing very inspirational. After I finish my PhD, I'd love to be a part of it, but I'm British and I know with some companies in the industry there're citizenship requirements for security reasons. As he mentions in the interview, they wouldn't want China stealing their ideas, for example. And I know a lot of the job postings on SpaceX list "US citizen or permanent resident" as a requirement, but I didn't know if this was a hard and fast rule, or whether exceptions are possible.

<comment><USER17> I think the limitation is actually put in place by the US government because rocket technology is basically weapons technology. I may be wrong about that though.

<comment><USER18> It very much is a government thing, yes. I've looked into this in the past when looking at internship opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "It's like something out of a movie or my old Tintin books. It's the way space was supposed to be."

Yes! Finally someone gets it!

Motherfucking space! Is aspirational!

We go to space not because it is easy, but because it is hard AND AWESOME.

</comment><comment><USER20> What I find amazing about this is how they could make such big technical advances leading to such big cost reductions by essentially being unencumbered by bureaucracy and bad incentive structures. (And that's of course not to deny their hard work and smarts - I'm really impressed by what they've done).

I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise, but it's still hard to avoid naively thinking that surely there had been technical challenges holding up the technological progress in those areas for so long.

</comment><comment><USER21>
      Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren't more risk-
      tolerant than non-entrepreneurs.  They just have an extraordinary ability to believe
      in their own visions, so much so that they think what they're embarking on isn't
      really that risky. They're wrong, of course...

If you are determined (you keep trying) _is_ it actually that risky? For example, if there's a 1 in 10 chance of success, and you try 10 times, it becomes a 65% chance (1-.9^10). Plus, of course, you will learn a tremendous amount from each attempt; gather more resources; ask others; change your approach; even modify your goal (perhaps to something more audacious).

I think what stops people is aversion to the unfamiliar (whereas some people like it), and the _pain_ of each failure. People like Edison fail a thousand times, and keep going (even if you hate him, you have to admit that takes a certain courage).

After 3 rocket failures, Musk said something similar <http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa> (at the end):

      Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen.
      As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work.

If you don't give up, success is inevitable.

<comment><USER22> Tip: do not start a career in Russian Roulette. Let's say you can 'win' by playing it 100 times. Then, if enough people do not give up, success is inevitable. However, there is no guarantee that you will be the one that is successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was telling my dad the other day this is a guy I could see my kids or grandkids using as a subject for a school report. Such an interesting person.

</comment><comment><USER24> Elon Musk is a leader of our generation, with vision that most of us can only dream of.

<comment><USER25> Lots of folks have a vision of a mission to mars. What counts is the execution.

<comment><USER26> To be fair to those folks most of them aren't billionaires.

<comment><USER27> To be fair to Musk, some of them are billionaires (think about folks like George Lucas who have made billions through sci fi movies etc.)

<comment><USER26> Extremely true

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great read, makes me want to quit my job and start building a rocketship...

I love that this brilliant guy is talking about interplanetary space travel as the obvious future.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Musk: The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative."

I nearly cried. This is my company, and it is so very disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Thans it, i'm making a shrine for Elon. He's close to a demi-god as you can get. Officially my new hero. Just think about the shear amount of time he puts into Tesla motors alone. And Elon just says fuck it. Lets go to Mars. Humanity doen't want to live up to their potential? So I will.. god speed Leon.

</comment><comment><USER31> Elon Musk is such an inspiration. for him, nothing is impossible and that is what I admire the most in him.

</comment><comment><USER32> Elon Musk is boss. He puts every other visionary out there to shame. What a guy!

</comment><comment><USER33> The complexity of getting to Mars is nothing compared to the complexity of creating a social unit that can survive and thrive on another planet.

Specifically, an Antarctic planet covered in chlorinated brominated rusty dust with essentially no air pressure or atmospheric water, a dim sun, rotten weather, two ugly little moons, and 57,600,000 millisecond ping times.

No chance to ever feel fresh air on your face, no chance to go swimming, never meeting a stranger until they're suddenly your neighbors for life, no chance to ever get away and start anew, and no chance to go back to Earth.

In a box, on a dead planet, for life.

<comment><USER34> Seriously, are dismissive and pessimistic remarks like this the top-voted comment on _every single_ Hacker News post these days?

Elon Musk has built a fucking space rocket company and is defeating Boeing, Lockheed Martin and MDD in a business they've dominated for the last 40 years. I think this is an incredibly impressive accomplishment, and SpaceX's ambitions to make it possible to do manned missions to Mars is exactly what we need to bring humanity forward. Just from the science side alone, having actual people on Mars would be of tremendous value. If you think of what we know about Mars, think about how much more we would know if we were able to do more complex experiments there. Whether you personally think it's a good idea to settle down on Mars or not isn't very relevant.

You're pointing at some very relevant issues, but why not phrase it in a more constructive tone? I'm sorry for the negativity, but it pisses me off when grand ideas and accomplishments are dismissed so offhandedly. Getting to Mars is not nearly "nothing", even compared to _anything_ that humans have ever done.

<comment><USER33> Sure. Elon Musk is a heroic man. His car company is a marvel, and his space program is spectacular. His unfettered ability to speak without a mouth full of funder's cock or a PR minder sitting in the room is refreshing. His visions are grounded in technical and physical reality, his powers of observation are keen, and he has the personality and resources it takes to organize people in service of great accomplishments.

Sanely priced two-way trips to Mars will change the course of humanity by enabling us to colonize the solar system and perhaps ensure a longer story for all mankind. This is the most interesting thing I've read all day, and he deserves every bit of attention.

Now back to your regularly scheduled pessimism:

Humanity has a long way to go, and a change of scenery isn't going to do all that much for her. The United States of America with her vast resources and impeccable pedigree in advancing Enlightenment is operating a torture camp for political prisoners in a subtropical shithole.

What exactly happens when we send a thousand of our best and brightest and edgiest and most ambitious to live in what is essentially an submarine entombed underground for a decade? Do they live up to the Star Trek ideal? Or do they do what people in confined spaces tend to do?

Can we provide a reasonable quality of life for colonists? Beyond maintaining air pressure and food, can we provide for them spiritually and emotionally? Can we provide a -life-? Geology only gets you so far. Even on Earth it's kind of an obscure trade, and geology is about _all_ there is to -do- on Mars.

What does a day to day life look like there? Do the children go to school? How is conflict handled? Who participates in what activities? What if there is too much to do? What if there isn't enough to do? How do you settle transplanetary custody battles when it means mommy or daddy taking the kid on a potentially lethal trip to another planet? How do you handle disease when everyone's in a thousand foot wide sphere? How do you bury people on an igneous planet? What does suicide mean for a Martian civilization?

There are a billion things to consider, and Elon has the first five thousand handled. I am delighted that we get to think about the rest now.

<comment><USER35> First, a reply to your original post :

> In a box, on a dead planet, for life.

Sign me up, right now!!!

> Can we provide a reasonable quality of life for colonists?

I don't care. I would need a) air+water b) food c) a place to sleep d) tools to colonize the planet - like create more living space. For quality of life, if I can get e) book or movies or even f) internet access, great! If I can't that's not a dealbreaker.

So, sign me up!!

<comment><USER36> I do admire this sort of enthusiasm, but I also wonder if it can survive such a mission. However we don't need to send a mission to Mars to find out, and if anybody truly wants to send people to Mars on anything other than short term suicide mission then we really need to do a lot more research in this area. Build enclosed isolated environments with limited space, resources and comms, and see how teams get on over long time periods if they believe there is no way out.

I'm not convinced that our future as flesh and blood humans is in space, or even on any of the other planets in our solar system, but if we're going to try then we cannot focus solely on the hard technical challenges.

<comment><USER35> I'm totally motivated and committed to Mars. Would that commitment survive in a mission? IMHO, totally because I'd even say yes to a one-way trip with a time limit (ie your "life support system will stop working in 3 years")

But the idea of an enclosed isolated test environment just doesn't raise the same kind of enthusiasm in me.

Unless there are side benefits (like freedom - ie build a new country from scratch in the middle of say Antarctica!!) I don't know why, but I really don't feel like taking part in the experience.

I guess it's all about selfishness - being on Mars matches my selfish motives. Doing a 10 years test somewhere in a controlled bunker on earth, a sacrifice for the next team who might do the same on real Mars??? I'll pass the opportunity.

That makes me wonder if it would be a good thing to run such an experiment, considering the volunteers would certainly be different (in their reason and personalities) from the ones who would volunteer for a real Mars mission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've read rumors that the reason Jeff Bezos started Amazon was to fund his dreams of space exploration.

<comment><USER38> Your talking about Blue Origin <http://www.blueorigin.com/>

[http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Amazon_Founder_Recruiting_...](http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Amazon_Founder_Recruiting_For_Private_Space_Program_999.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm open to any additional questions you guys might have; well for another hour or two at least.

</comment><comment><USER40> very interesting. he also made a clever move on the patents.

</comment><comment><USER41> He reminds me so much of Clive Sinclair.

</comment><comment><USER42> Imagine the world when the 10 next Elon Musk's lurking HN see their own successes.</comment>


MySQL and Data Truncation: A descent into IEEE hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.ahristov.com/tutorial/Blog/MySQL%2Band%2BData%2BTruncation%2B%3A%2BA%2Bdescent%2Binto%2BIEEE%2Bhell.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I run into this warning all the time. It forces me to double-check. Finally I understood the reason. And it was an interesting read too!</comment>


Non Commercial GPL - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know if a BY-NC-SA version of the GPL exists? The closest thing I can find is the Creative Commons version ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ ). Unfortunately from what I read this is primarily intended for "works of art", not for software.<p>Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> It's hard enough to make money from GPL'ed software; a non-commercial variant seems redundant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that isn't really the point. The point is so that those who want to use your software commercially would theoretically have to negotiate a different license with you. It may be self defeating in a way, but it would be nice to have the option.

<comment><USER2> Just release plenty of FUD about "virality" and the customers will line up for the commercial license. See MySQL.</comment></comment></comment>


The First 'Nigerian Prince' Scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-first-nigerian-prince-scam/ <comment><USER2> It's quite easy to use Nigeria in a con story these days without it being questioned.

So she wants us to believe 14 year old in 1910 (early 20th century she said) claiming to be a Nigerian Prince from Nigeria BUT posting the letter from within the US went undetected?

First of all Nigeria did not exist until 1914 and I wonder how this 14 year old "negro" (as they were called then) discovered this country and had the intelligence go execute this.

This anecdote is obviously a figment of the writers imagination and such fable does not deserve to be on the front page.

There are enough challenges with the damage fraudsters using Nigeria's image are causing Nigerian citizenry we do not need to give audience those that parade fables as fact.

<comment><USER3> According to this account (which appears to include case numbers), these cases happened in 1949 and were indeed from Nigeria, not from within the US.

[http://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2015/07/28/history-re...](http://text- message.blogs.archives.gov/2015/07/28/history-repeating-itself-mail-fraud/)

<comment><USER2> Good find.

It's quite a similar story with the submitted article but many of the facts of the matter do not match up with her early 20th century tale.

<comment><USER4> I think you're stretching.

She describes the newspapers filled with ads in the early 20th century, but not explicitly the scam, which nonetheless happened in the first half of the 20th century.

Is there enough actually wrong to gripe about it? I see virtually no differences between the two links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Arguably, rampant cynicism regarding a 14-year-old's attempt to make us all "feel like worthy people" says more about us than the kid. [0]

[0] [http://myfunnymemes.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/Nigerian-...](http://myfunnymemes.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/04/Nigerian-Prince-Doesnt-Understand-Why-People-Dont- Want-Free-Money-Tranfered-To-Their-Bank-Accounts-In-Comic-By-See-Mike- Draw.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER6> The logic that house wives who said yes the first time in the survey were more likely to say yes the second time being attributed to "foot in the door", seems specious. Instead, folks who are more gullible (or helpful), tend to remain so in other encounters. Without knowing the percentage of folks who agreed to the first survey and those that did not, it's hard to make conclusions that the survey was the cause of folks being helpful in the second.</comment>


How do you come up with an idea? - <AUTHOR>

There is a popular belief that ideas are worthless and implementation is everything. However, it seems that for me, coming up with a good idea is more difficult than its implementation. How do you get your inspirations for ideas? <comment><USER2> They pop into my head like magic. Often I wake up with them. Sometimes just when doing other stuff like having a shower. Fully formed and ready to go.

Some great ideas, some average, some stupid.

</comment><comment><USER3> Listen for complaints to industry problems, think about how you would solve the problem if you had no limits, then narrow that list to realistic possibilities.

</comment><comment><USER4> Observe people at work. What could be improved? What sucks? What is great?</comment>


Stephen Wolfram's Introduction to the Wolfram Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P9HqHVPeik

<comment><USER2> Where do you even begin?!

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing details about the language. I simply can't believe we have such an advanced tool available as of today.</comment>


D-Wave's Quantum Computer Courts Controversy - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=d-waves-quantum-computer-courts-controversy <comment><USER2> There's nothing particularly controversial about it as far as I can tell. They have a mechanism for optimizing systems fairly quickly using either "true" quantum parallel tempering, or a classical (perhaps analog) simulation of the same - either way, the speed at which they can optimize is the deciding factor, and not whether there are "true quantum" effects. It certainly doesn't seem to be based on the traditional model of a quantum computer and I'd guess it isn't technically able to implement something like Shor's algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5720258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5720258)</comment>


A review of Internet Explorer on Xbox 360 - <AUTHOR> http://www.broken-links.com/2012/10/16/internet-explorer-on-xbox-360/

<comment><USER2> One point from article that I found fasctinating/weird:

>The on-screen keyboard is QWERTY (which I don't understand as that's only useful for two-handed typing)

Personally, I _hate_ when devices like that use anything different than QWERTY. I feel like I can translate what my fingers hit on regular keyboard to what I see on screen and input with thumbsticks, whereas when I'm presented with ABCDEF keyboard I feel like I'm 3yo again, hunt-and-pecking.

<comment><USER3> I think neither suit the context very well. I would have thought MS to come up with something more intuitive to use, like Steam's Daisy Wheel: <http://i.imgur.com/l7Rmw.png>

It's not ABCDEF (good for learning), nor QWERTY (good for keyboards), it's something else, adapted to the current interface. It may not be perfect, but it's a good way to start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Halo 4 is coming out and my son has been bugging me to get another xbox (the last one red-ringed about four times). Browser testing just might justify the 150 bucks. Im willing to bet that it is a bad browser. It will be interesting to see if people will figure out a way to hack the xbox via IE.

<comment><USER5> I really hope I don't have to start testing for IE on an XBOX.

</comment></comment><comment> james-skemp Since no one else has commented ...

I find it interesting that even this is tied to an Xbox Live Gold account. Questionable decision, but I expect this browser won't be used all that much. I think the majority of people use another device for surfing while at their TV.

</comment><comment><USER6> This acts like a review of browsing capabilities but it seems to me that isn't what this is for. It's for YouTube or maybe going to CBS.com to see last weeks Big Bang Theory. I'm not browsing HN on my Xbox.

<comment><USER7> Only if CBS.com doesn't use Flash or Silverlight, as IE9 Xbox doesn't support either of those.

<comment><USER6> seems unlikely it's flash. why would people still use flash?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd imagine one of these[1] would make it much less annoying to use.

[1] [http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/04/qwerty...](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2007/04/qwerty- xbox-360.jpg)</comment>


How I Turned an Idea Into a Hit iPad App - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tannerc/how-i-turned-an-idea-into-a-hit-ipad-app-5726d9ab79f1

<comment><USER2> great work, great app. makes me a little sad that so much effort and talent doesn't really pay back very well...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reading, and the kind words. It's paid back pretty well, but the drop off has been tremendous so only time will tell.</comment></comment>


Apple declined to implement 16 Web APIs in Safari due to privacy concerns - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/apple-declined-to-implement-16-web-apis-in-safari-due-to-privacy-concerns/ <comment><USER2> I'm not a fan of this. While I see the privacy benefits of not implementing some of these APIs, I think it's also worth noting that:

1\. Privacy and convenience will always be a trade off, and if you constantly put privacy/security as your top priority, you'll hold back tech/society and limit what new products/services can be created. The potential for abuse shouldn't be the sole deciding factor between whether someone gets invented/implemented or not.

2\. As people have said, app store apps have access to this stuff. This makes it less like something Apple did for privacy, and more to try and limit competition from web apps, since if those do well, Apple won't get any money from them.

3\. It restarts a worrying trend where browser devs just decide they can ignore the spec because it's convenient for them/in their best business interests. That's something that was terrible back when Internet Explorer had a near monopoly, is worrying now with Chrome/Webkit being in the same situation, and just as bad with Apple here.

<comment><USER3> 1\. If people wants Chrome they can install Chrome. I for one like to see the browser landscape diversify. Peeping Tom Chrome is fast and works well for those that care little. Just because a spec takes a bad turn we shouldn't just end the web, we break the spec instead and maybe even make a new one. XHTML style.

2\. That an app that I choose to install has access doesn't mean I want a web page to access it. I trust my local webpage with their news, not their security prowess. The most important is that Apple always have someone to go after if an app is doing something illegal.

3\. The specs are already too big for any other competition in the web engine space and you want to make it bigger?

And let's face it, those features will take development time from something else that might be more important, like containers.

Yes there will be a lot of angry js devs but who really cares about 'em? My cpu isn't a free for all buffè.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While this is spun as privacy, the reality is appstore apps all have access to this stuff.

It's simply Apple doesn't want anyone making a good web-app. They want web- apps to be clunky and slow. Too many powerful web apps will make migrating to android much easier.

<comment><USER5> I assume it's because Apple has much less control over fingerprinting in the web over apps. That said, it could still be technically solved by asking users for permission prior to use, as always.

But yes, they don't particularly care for web apps, as seen by the state of PWAs in iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Blokes, I'm calling it. Before 2030 we'll see "for your safety if you don't allow Bluetooth we cannot allow you to continue to read the news at our page"

Money always finds a way.</comment>


Types of `map` function in Haskell, Scala, and Clojure - <AUTHOR> http://missingfaktor.blogspot.com/2014/08/types-of-map-function-in-haskell-scala.html <comment><USER2> Very interesting comparison, thanks for pointing out the advantages / disadvantages of the different implementations.

I can see why the corner cases of CanBuildFrom are perceived as very troublesome, but I have to say that after working with Scala for many years now, this has never been an issue in practice.</comment>


Expressive Speech Synthesis with Tacotron - <AUTHOR> https://research.googleblog.com/2018/03/expressive-speech-synthesis-with.html <comment><USER2> This is the audio equivalent of the Face2Face algorithm that takes one person's face and places it onto the character in a video, matching the latter subject's expressions.

This means we now live in a world where you can create a recording of Donald Trump saying, "I colluded with the Russians to rig the election," and not only have the voice sound like Trump but also bring along his personal expressive style so that it becomes indistinguishable from Trump himself.

Would love to see these two combined - make an audio-video recording of an actor confessing to election fraud, then use Face2Face to swap in Trump's face _and_ use Tacotron to swap in his voice.

<comment><USER3> Also this means that any confession evidence can not be trusted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note that this is separate from the other front page post about Google Cloud TTS powered by WaveNet. That's a product, while this is exciting new research (which will hopefully become part of a product).

</comment><comment><USER5> This technology has been around for a year but we only got a few samples. I'm very excited. I use TTS to read back all the text I consume on PC.

This web demo allows you to enter your own text:

[https://cloud.google.com/text-to-speech/](https://cloud.google.com/text-to- speech/)

(select US American and Wavenet)

<comment><USER6> > This technology has been around for a year but we only got a few samples. > I'm very excited. I use TTS to read back all the text I consume on PC.

Nope! These two papers are fresh work on prosody modeling. You can see the evolution of work this team has been publishing about here:

[https://google.github.io/tacotron/](https://google.github.io/tacotron/)

> This web demo allows you to enter your own text:

That web demo is unrelated to this. It's about a Google Cloud TTS API, which only includes WaveNet, not Tacotron.

[https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/03/introducing- Clo...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/03/introducing-Cloud-Text- to-Speech-powered-by-Deepmind-WaveNet-technology.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/global_style_...](https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/global_style_tokens/demos/gstwn/gstwn_vs_g_2.wav)

Ha!

<comment><USER8> A bunch of RPG games are going to have much better character voices after this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, I guess it's time for authenticated phonecalls.

</comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations Daisy! This work is really impressive (and quite fun).</comment>


Ask HN: What does a hacker house need? - <AUTHOR>

I am a student at the University of Michigan and this year I will be living with a bunch of EECS (electrical engineering and computer science) majors in a 6 bedroom house. We want to do what the Palo Alto hacker house does and start inviting hackers in the area to just come over and hang out. Before we do this what does HN think we need in our house to make it hacker friendly? <comment><USER2> seating, USB hubs, lots of fridge space, tons of can koozies, a whiteboard, some ancient used video game systems (including a gameboy in the bathroom), and some good coffee-table reading materials like a subscription to wired, entrepreneur mag, etc

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Other hackers

2) LOTS of seating

3) Bandwidth / Access Points

4) Mini-fridges (makes it easier to enforce a BYOB)

5) Power, power, power.</comment>


Weaveworks announces subscription for upstream Kubernetes - <AUTHOR> https://www.weave.works/blog/operate-and-scale-kubernetes-with-our-support <comment><AUTHOR> This is a totally a product announcement, and to declare interest I work for Weaveworks. As it's Kubecon EU starting tomorrow there should be a lot of interesting news about K8s. Already wandering around there are more vendors and a bigger range of interests represented. Hope the talks will be as good!</comment>


PHP Hacking aka trying to push PHP internals forwards - <AUTHOR> http://www.xarg.org/2011/06/php-hacking/

<comment><USER2> I've read a lot of the PHP internals source code (I'm an author of phc), and this post leaves me a tiny bit optimistic, and a tiny bit disappointed.

I completely agree of the need to fork to make PHP a better language. The PHP internals community is the most awful OSS community I've ever been involved in, and getting shit done there just isn't going to work. So this is a good first step.

I also like the things he has taken away. PHP suffers from too many unnecessary options. I know that "unnecessary" is often subjective and in the eye of the beholder, but the OP seems to have a good eye for this. The things he removed are a blight on the codebase, so well done.

The optimizations are so-so. While I can see the benefits of the hardcoded constants, the other optimizations are hacks. And that has historically been the problem with PHP optimizations - they're all hacks. The engine needs rearchitecting to be fast, and all these hacks need to be removed, not more added.

Take for example that strlen is slow. The problem is that all function calls in PHP are slow. And if you looked at the function calling code, it's very obvious why. The correct solution is to make _all_ function calls fast, presumably by using some kind of inline cache, or just refactoring a ton of that crap out.

(Actually, someone introduced a patch to PHP-internals about two years ago to cache function calls somehow. I don't remember the exact details, but it was similar to the concept of an inline cache, perhaps storing a function cache struct in some bytecode or something. As I recall, it was denegrated as not being a full PIC. Sigh).

Finally, I really don't like the added functions. No problem with the functions themselves, just that adding functions to core PHP is not useful to anyone but the author. What if they clash with a user's function names? Why couldn't they just be implemented in user space? Etc. This is very much going on the wrong direction.

In the future, I'd like to see an effort like this go wild and make backwards incompatible changes like making the needle/haystack parameters consistent, but that's optimistic. (If they were to do it, phpcompiler.org could well be used to provide a 2to3-like too for doing the user-code porting automatically).

So overall, some good and some bad. If the OP focussed on making optimizations which improved the code base, removing more crap, and avoided adding "new" things, this would be really nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good to see. It's about time PHP got forked even if experimentally.

It seems to me that you could fix a lot of the problems with PHP by breaking backwards compatibility.

<comment><USER4> Many of the problems and annoyances with PHP could be fixed while keeping backwards compatibility.

Just a short list I can think of now:

\- Short array syntax. Completely optional but would clean up the language quite a bit. This has been proposed several times and shot down each for no real good reason.

\- Promote complex primitives into objects. With the proper interfaces it wouldn't break any old code. Once this is done, deprecate the myriad of str* and array* functions in favor of the object methods. This also cleans up the "what order do i pass in the args" problem that so many people cite.

\- Named parameters. Gets rid of passing in default params or an array blob for functions/methods that take lots of optional params. It also opens up the way for DSLs.

\- Replace PEAR with something better. The quality of PEAR modules is really low and PEAR always seems to be broken one way or another.

\- Add a list and hash type. PHP's array is very slow for some cases, and sometimes you need to enforce the datatype you're working with.

\- Use exceptions for errors. Could be a runtime flag to prevent breaking things. It's incredibly easy to write bad code because PHP make it easy to ignore problems. Things like functions that connect to the db or trying to retrieve data from a stream don't throw exceptions on error.

<comment><USER3> Well to be honest if you deprecate the str* and array* functions you are pretty much breaking backwards compatibility.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be a good thing but those functions are one of the defining features of PHP imho

<comment><USER5> Deprecation is not the same thing as removal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Boo, deleted short tags. Why do people hate short tags again? I can't remember because <? is not valid XML so there shouldn't be any problems with mixing php and xml... hmm... I wonder ....

<comment><USER7> <?= always exists as of PHP 5.4, despite the short tags setting.

<comment><USER8> Awesome. I remember arguing for it on the mailing lists and I'm extremely happy they did this.

With echo tag you can have a very simple and powerful templating system written in the language itself. (I usually just use two methods, Temaplte::show and Template::get, which both are less than 20 lines long.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to import the PHP source-tree first, then apply each patch one at a time/in a batch. That way applying these patches at a later date would have been easier.

<comment><USER9> That's what was done.

[https://github.com/infusion/PHP/commit/790d551ac9ef8e204b44f...](https://github.com/infusion/PHP/commit/790d551ac9ef8e204b44f4030291536137b0be25)

<comment><USER5> No it wasn't. As sc68cal says, its a patchbomb. And if you think otherwise, let me know how I can revert his changes to remove short tags and the mysql* changes using a single git command (hint, there isn't).

I'm all for changes to an open source project - whether it acts like one or not - but every open source developer should, at some point, learn that gigantic patchsets with lots of unrelated changes are a big no-no.

<comment><USER10> I'm just pissed that he didn't even bother to actually fork the project. On Github! WOW! All the previous commits before the fork? Gone. Poof. It's completely without any context. Even though there's a big "FORK" button!

<comment><USER9> Well what project would he fork? The (apparently) official PHP mirror is way out of date:

<https://github.com/php/php-src>

<comment><USER10> Well, then just use git svn to update the master of his fork to match the official PHP svn. It'll just be a fast forward anyway.

Two birds with one stone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm a long-time PHP user (since 1998) but I never really peered inside the discussions of the internals of PHP. Now that I'm more connected to others in the PHP world, what you see inside the mailing list for PHP internals is what I would label as obstructionism and an attitude that seems to imply that if you cannot code the requested changes yourself, don't even bother asking.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way are the only three choices available to any language.

<comment><USER6> Also, if you can code the change yourself it gets rejected as "not a bug" for a few times, then they think about it and say that it's too late for any reasonable release and that it will go into PHP 6 or 5.3 or something that you won't upgrade too because it breaks too much other stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was hoping for more profound changes. I've never read PHP internals but I'm under the impression the opcode language is not 'jitable' because it's an unformal mess while even python and lua are getting there ... It seems that Opcode caching is the most you can get out of the language as is.

</comment><comment><USER12> And in a true PHP fashion, the new functions follow at least two naming conventions. Cf. _str_random()_ vs _strcut()_

PHP has no vision, it draws no people with vision and suffers for it very much. I say it as someone working with it for historical reason.

</comment><comment><USER13> So, are strings in PHP cstrings, or are they a length/address pair?

<comment><USER2> length/address pair.

<comment><USER13> I see. Why is strlen such a hit then?

<comment><USER2> function call overheard. isset is a builtin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Might be not completely offtopic if I asked here: is there some reason array, resource and object were never folded into one type (object)? It seems like array and resource are kept separate just because it's done this way internally (with array and resource super classes). Why can't resources or array be native-code-backed objects like some modules in python?

It seems like many special cases were left over from old versions and the inertia prevents any change.

</comment><comment><USER15> Minor nitpick given the scope of these additions, but his use of a boolean argument to enhance implode is not my favorite.

      implode(',', $array, true)

A new function (or even leaving it the way it was) is far more readable.

      implode_keys(',', $array)

      implode(',', array_keys($array))

</comment><comment><USER16> This should be the mainline version, a lot of good stuff especially the new array syntax.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know if there are any benchmarks about this?

</comment><comment><USER18> Mmm, string looping!</comment>


Screw design and get data, says Ben Huh of I Can Has Cheezburger - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/23/screw-design-and-get-data-says-ben-huh-of-i-can-has-cheezburger/

<comment><USER2> So this article really emphasizes how little Ben actually understands what design is. "But good product isn't pretty: Good product is product that works for users and works for the company." I don't know how many times in my comment history I've said it; but design is not "pretty". Design is functionality merged with simplicity.

He cites Craigslist, which we've talked about all too often here. Their lack of a better design was acceptable at a time when technology didn't allow for it and when people didn't expect or know what good design was. The entire Padmapper debacle was because they did Craigslist better than Craigslist. Then eBay. We had a discussion about this recently too - the UX is terrible and the search - which should be their #1 tool - is even worse.

Now with Amazon, they're one of those sites where the necessity to keep the design dry for the sake of usability is integral to the business. Even still, they've nailed their UX down so that you've only really got to use two or three functions of the site to get where you need to go and then some.

Then he really loses me when he says that this is painfully clear because people buy Ford Focuses instead of Ferrari's. I really don't even need to touch this one and I'm not even sure why he shot himself in the foot like that. The comments on VentureBeat do a good job of picking him apart there.

As an aside, I don't think I've been to that site in years, and I'm not exactly sure who does - is it below the ranks of 9GAG and FunnyJunk?

Actually now that I think about it, I once had a recruitment agency tell me that "that Cheez-.. what is it - 'I have a cheeseburger?' .. 'Can I have a cheeseburger?' site is constantly hiring our designers" and "maybe we should check with them." I laughed on my way out. When your talent agency can't even remember your name, maybe design (as branding) is something you _should_ care about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good design/product by definition (for the web at least) is the melding of fantastic graphic design with the needs of your business and users. These are not mutually exclusive pieces, they all have an effect on your bottom line. His statement seems very short sighted to me.</comment>