Digg Finally Admits the Auto-Bury Exists  - <AUTHOR> http://www.brentcsutoras.com/2009/02/20/digg-finally-admits-autobury-exists/ <comment><USER2> Digg is such a mess. The 1% of users who control the content and make up 50% of pageviews are completely at odds with where the owners want to take the site. There is so much payola going on behind the scenes. Not just on Digg, but Reddit, StumbleUpon, and any other social site that sends traffic. I'm talking armies of Indians and Eastern Europeans who do nothing all day but exchange votes and push stories. Eventually, they might just have to ban them all and deal with the huge drop in traffic and engagement that would result.

<comment><USER3> "talking armies of Indians and Eastern Europeans"

The problem with Reddit is the army of intolerant atheists and the anti-GOP circle jerk. If you just take a look at the front page you will see that this is true. American politics is really not that interesting after the 10th GOP bashing blog-spam article.

<comment><USER2> Most web communities are politically polarized in one way or the other. If you do not like the political stories, Reddit allows you to unsubscribe from the politics sub-Reddit. Or just don't visit the site.

<comment><USER3> The problem is that most stories about atheism is not posted in the atheism subreddit. Most of those stories spill over into worldnews or math or science. Stuff about conservative american commentators gets labelled 'funny'.

"Or just don't visit the site."

That was the solution yes. YCnews is fairly tame and people are well mannered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unmoderated forums quickly become dictatorships by the most insane. The fact that the links that float to the top on Digg are consistently bland, general- appeal, and uncontroversial despite the YouTube-like sophistication of its users suggests that the ranking algorithm is pretty far from democratic.

<comment><USER5> _Unmoderated forums quickly become dictatorships by the most insane._

That is a pretty accurate description of reddit...I'm glad that HN has active moderation, even though it's rarely needed.

<comment><USER6> It's not far off of Wikipedia either. A large number of participants in my Wikiproject, including myself, were eventually burned out by dealing with a few too many highly obsessive and misinformed users.

Seriously, go try to edit one the few somewhat-prominent WP articles that aren't locked and see how quickly someone comes up with a BS reason to revert your perfectly good edits. This happens especially often if you edit something political or religious in nature. It's a mess.

<comment><USER5> Haha, I don't have to try it to know not to mess with politics or religion on Wikiepdia. I don't bother reading those articles either, for the same reasons.

<comment><USER7> +1.

I edit Wikipedia fairly regularly, and have never had anything reverted.

Actually, there was one time when I edited John Dvorak's page to call him a "gasbag". That was reverted pretty quickly, but he did mention the incident on his podcast (which was the point of making the edit). (Also, he _is_ a gas bag. Thankfully I haven't heard about him for a few years now ;)

But really, no _legitimate_ edits of mine have been reverted :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This guy is a known spammer (to pretty much everyone who runs a social news site), so take what he's saying with several large grains of salt.

</comment><comment><USER9> A brief list of things more interesting than this story:

Belly button lint. What I had for breakfast. The first half hour of Waterworld.

</comment><comment><USER10> Why is there drama about this? If pg had an auto-kill script for stories posted by me, would you care?

<comment><USER11> Not if he disclosed that fact.

<comment><USER7> I personally wouldn't care even if he kept it a secret.

I mean, it's a social news site. You have no _right_ to be heard here. (You should hear the complaints I get when I delete comments from my blog. "Free speech!!1!!1". If you want to call me a dumbass, get your own blog. I hear they're free.)

Anyway, if the super-secret auto-kill ruins the site, I will go to one of the other one hundred million (or so). Otherwise, I don't really give a damn.

<comment><USER11> HN has never advertised that it's "democratizing media" though.

<comment><USER7> True, although Digg's "democracy" is no worse than the US's "democracy". (Let me know when I can vote on proposed FCC rules, or the DMCA, for example.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> this is atrocious!

</comment><comment><USER13> About 30 minutes ago this story hit the front page of Digg. Now I can't find it anywhere...

 _X-Files theme song_

The main thing that keeps me from loving Digg is that there's no way to block users and their submissions. If only I could block the small number of spammy accounts making up 60% of the front page - and then see the next most popular stories instead!

<comment><USER14> Can't you just make a new Digg front page with their API + some RSS + hackery?

A user creates an account and can then create filters for the stories that appear on this new front page you make, otherwise it's a total mirror content wise. heck, direct the links over to Digg instead of the original sites to head of criticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the spirit of this news, I'd like to make an admission of my own. I...Post on Hacker News.

(The game is still "admitting painfully obvious stuff that everyone already knows" right?)

<comment><USER7> Clever, but Digg is that way </comment></comment><comment>>

<comment><USER15> I think you missed some irony

In my original post I was trying to amusingly (emphasis on trying) point out the fact that people don't admit things like this until everyone already knows them which in turn makes the admission a moot point. I thought it would be funny (emphasis on thought) to do so in the "Digg-Style" sarcastic tone that most of the posts there are in.

But the real thing that makes Digg an unpleasant place is not the sarcasm but the mean spiritedness that the place can often take on. My comments were illuminating an idea so I really wasn't attacking anyone. Which is when you attacked me.

So really your comment is far more "Digg-like" than mine was</comment></comment>


Competitive advantages of developer-run businesses - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scoutapp.com/articles/2010/01/26/developer-run-business-advantages

<comment><USER2> This may be the wrong venue (e.g. site for startups), but there is a reason the big companies have people that specialize in each of the areas he claims a founder/developer has an advantage in.

While early in the business you benefit mostly in saving money by doing it all yourself, eventually you will want to hire people do these things for you.

A ceo's job is not to be in the trenches answering tech support calls- while that sounds nice on paper, his job, especially when you hit some serious growth is to be looking 5/10 years down the line.

I work at a ~6mil/year revenue company that is <10 years old. I've been here for 3 of those years. In that time, the biggest hurdle I've observed is precisely that- watching the technical CEO relinquish some of his control in order to focus more on growth strategy and quality of the product.

<comment><USER3> Article: when you are small, do X because big guy can't do X.

You: when you are big, don't do X.

Your post looks like you wanted to disagree with something, yet you are in complete agreement with the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do share the observation of technical leaders with a quick observation very well and it has 2 sides of the coin. It can be crucial in the early stage for a company to survive. Some people see it as control, but on the other side it often carries a certain degree of success. The flip side is that kind of close relation of the founder/CEO to customer and not letting go the control can limit growth of a company. And if the company keeps increasing on revenue/employees and the situation has not much improved it sometimes turns to chaos within the organization.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's a common perception that answering support inquires is a waste of time. I agree - it's a problem if you're spending a lot of time debugging issues that aren't incorporated back into the product. It's not an issue if it's good feedback that helps build a better product for everyone else. Most of our support inquires are the latter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hmmm---when you adopt this model you have to be careful you aren't running a consulting business if you think you're a startup (e.g. you'll be underpricing yourself.</comment>


A moon landing in 2024? NASA says it'll happen - <AUTHOR> https://www.wclk.com/post/moon-landing-2024-nasa-says-itll-happen-others-say-no-way <comment><USER3> No chance.

This isn't the 1950s. We don't just throw people atop rockets anymore. These are vehicles, aircraft. There is absolutely no way any of the current crop of space vehicles could be made ready for a trip to the moon anytime before 2024.

Going beyond low orbit, away from the sub-45min return time, is something we haven't done in generations. The craft need to be tested, repeatedly. Each test flight then has to be analyzed before the next test flight. The turnaround for a single test will be many months, even a year. Getting all the bits and pieces together would then take many more years of integration work.

Look at the JWST. Look at the F-35. Look at the 737-max. These are complicated systems with layers of dependencies. Our society today simply does not accept the cowboy approach to safety that was the original moon race. The next moon landing will only happen after a decade-long deliberative, iterative, campaign requiring the support of many subsequent governments.

<comment><USER4> Yawn, space is dangerous. We would all still be living in trees with this attitude.

I don't believe that we can actually design a system that is safe like this, so yes it needs a lot of testing and iterative improvement. In the meantime, we need to use it to launch equipment and a few brave souls that understand the risks.

Actually to add to that, I think putting timescales in front of something like this as a tendency to clarify the goals and therefor simplify the engineering. If we sit around for decades trying to shave a couple ounces off every single part and build in triplicate redundancy so its perfect it will fail.

If you look at apollo, what you see is that they had a review committee that followed up the work and tested/built their understanding from the ground up. Part of that was ripping out systems that were to complex to be easily understood when possible, and considering how everything worked together.

In many ways this appears to be what spaceX is doing, initial design, prove it out with a bunch of launches, fix problems as they appear, etc. So one of most important design goals is designing something that will be launched thousands of times (not necessarily the same rocket, just the scale) rather than something that is designed to be the perfectly safe vehicle for another half dozen launches before we scrap it for another 40 years.

<comment><USER5> The public has no appetite for dead astronauts. It's simply not workable to be so cavalier with astronaut lives, even if the astronauts themselves are willing.

<comment> matt-attack Why does the public get an opinion on an individual's life when they know the risks? To me that's the height of hubris and is something that needs to get corrected if we're to move forward.

<comment><USER6> The public is horrified at astronauts' death, politicians listen to public opinion, politicians cut budgets to "dangerous missions".

PR for space is a very tricky affair.

<comment><USER7> The public is horrified at whatever the news tells them to be horrified about.

Government employees getting killed in Iraq happens often enough that it doesn't get clicks.

Government employees getting killed in Space happens so infrequently that it will get tons of clicks.

Simple journalism economics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> '"I am more interested in maximizing the odds of success for this bold undertaking and making it as safe as any human journey into the deep space can be, than I am in having NASA meet arbitrary deadlines," Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson — a Democrat from Texas and the chairwoman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology — said at a recent hearing.'

Waiting to make a journey until it is "as safe as can be" means that one never makes the journey at all. This has been NASA's curse since the Challenger explosion. Human space exploration is not going to happen with a "safety first" culture.

<comment><USER9> Here we go again...

Why I remember almost 6 years ago, after the Virgin Galactic crash, when we debated the merits of humans in space.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8540279)

Anyway, I think I lost and people were confident that Virgin Galactic would soon be back.

I'll just repost one of my summary thoughts. The entire thread is worth reading. It'll probably be repeated in some form today.

" Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly. In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe."

<comment><USER10> I mean, we have already been exploring the solar system with machines, for a good while. Humans are much more capable today (and for the foreseeable future) at conducting a wide range of tasks in space than the machines we can currently send up.

It could be argued it would be faster to send humans up to build the infrastructure for more humans now (in the near future) than it would be to wait for robotics to get advanced enough to build that infrastructure for us in space environments.

<comment><USER11> What can a human in a spacesuit accomplish on the moon that a machine can't? It's a genuine question, though I'll admit my initial answer is not much.

<comment><USER12> The human-driven rover on Apollo 17 drove 35.9 KM in the three days Apollo 17 spent on the moon. Lunkhod 2 went 39 KM, but it took from January to June 1973 to do so.

When the distance from Earth increases, machines become slower. Opportunity drove 45 KM, but it took 14 years.

<comment><USER13> nothing Tesla autopilot can't handle... (less pedestrians on the moon than even a city in arizona!)

<comment><USER14> Some more craters and layers of light moondust to sink in, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree with most people that it would be nearly impossible without a Manhattan Project style commitment from the Government and I don't see that happening.

That said, an interesting thought experiment would be to put a Falcon 9 second stage to 'sleep' on an up coming mission for a couple of weeks and then have it wake up and relight. If that works push it to a month.

With a system like that you could Falcon Heavy to launch a return stage into a Lunar transfer orbit and have it go into orbit at the moon. Then launch one into LEO. Finally launch a service module and landing craft rendezvous with the stage in orbit, burn to the moon. Land, take off, rendezvous with the lunar return stage, and fly back. This uses all "known" technology from SpaceX with a new lunar lander but we know that SpaceX has the propulsive landing chops to pull that off.

It avoids the currently "unknown" technology of refueling a cryogenic rocket in space.

It does require a reasonable launch cadence on SpaceX's part which is why the experiment of can you leave a cryogenic stage around and relight it.

<comment><USER16> They've done extended, multiple relight tests of the second stage as part of their Air Force mission rating tests.

I don't think it is anywhere near designed to stay usable after multiple days of staying cold, that is a completely different mission profile from what the second stage was designed to do, aka earth orbit missions.

I would expect the stored cryogenics would not take well to it.

<comment><USER17> Exactly, the main issue is the liquid oxygen on board - withou either active cooling or very clever isolation, there will not be any left after a while, as it will evaporate.

The soviets did experiments with a blok d upper stage that was also kerosene/LOX and were able to push it to a couple days, maybe up to a single week.

So really multiple weeks are not doable due to LOX alone withou turning your already mass limitted upper stage to an advanced orbital propelant depot.

Also longer term you will start hitting also other issues, such as battery power (might need to add solar panels), stuff getting too cold/hot, long term exposure of electronics to cosmic radiation, lack of ulage fuel, etc.

<comment><USER15> This was the ULA paper I read about 5 years ago : [https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/extended- durat...](https://www.ulalaunch.com/docs/default-source/extended- duration/micro-gravity-cryogenic-experiment-opportunity.pdf) There are a number of papers on the ULA site describing fairly innovative ways to keep the LOX from boiling away. As this stage would not have a "payload" in the traditional sense it could have a refrigerator attached :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> NASA wants to go to moon in about 4 years (!) but today they can't even lift a human into earth orbit since they discontinued their last spacecraft capable of such a task. Dream on.

<comment><USER19> That will change this spring which isn't too far away.

> Elon Musk's SpaceX simulated a successful emergency landing on Sunday in a > dramatic test of a crucial abort system on an unmanned astronaut capsule, a > big step its mission to fly NASA astronauts for the first time as soon as > this spring.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration- spacex/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration- spacex/spacex-says-picture-perfect-test-paves-way-for-human-mission- idUSKBN1ZI054)

<comment><USER20> Uh huh, that article is from 2017 and also says this:

> Nearly 45 years after NASA astronauts last embarked on a lunar mission, > SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has announced his company's plans to send two private > citizens on a flight around the moon in 2018.

<comment><USER21> The decided it wasn't worth the effort to do all the additional work to man rate falcon heavy when it would probably be hardly used as they have shifted focus to their bigger starship rocket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am extremely pessimistic that the 2024 launch will happen.

The linked article gets to most of the main reasons, but man, could you imagine the fallout of a Apollo 1 type incident leading to a loss of the Artemis crew?

NASA, as a govt agency, slingshots between "safety above all else" and "launch the bastard"

</comment><comment><USER22> There's not much reason to settle the moon and mars prior to the remote establishment of an independent food supply. Aggressive remote terraforming through domes, mirrors, foreign microorganisms, explosives, and robots should come first. Establishing automated synthetic systems on these rocks to mimic what nature provides for free on Earth is the hard problem to be solving. Without such systems already place, wages will be extremely low and no one will want to live there.

<comment><USER23> It may be easier to undertake a massive industrial operation on an unfamiliar celestial body when there is a human around to oversee things first-hand and troubleshoot issues when (not if) they arise.

First Lunar habitats are going to be mostly underground anyway, and nuclear- powered. Not much is needed to terraform.

<comment><USER16> I'm constantly "impressed" (not in a good way) at how good some people are at saying completely unfounded statements as fact. There is literally no reason to believe either premise of most bases being underground, nor is there to believe nuclear power will be the dominant power source. We have a hard time getting RTGs inside steel boxes capable of surviving disasters into orbit.

<comment><USER23> You don't need the reactor working, or assembled, on the way to the destination. Consider a pebble-bed design.

Digging underground is a reasonable way to get a massive layer of radiation protection without carrying it with you. This is important when you are just starting a long-term habitat. Later designs can of course be different.

<comment><USER16> 1) The issue isn't limited to the existence of the reactor. It is linked to the public perception of anything nuclear being launched into the air. A commercial/proven pebble-bed reactor doesn't even exist yet, and last I heard they only started the first design in 2018.

Digging underground is reasonable if your only requirement is "block radiation". Its less reasonable when requirements also include 'get the digging machines into space', 'have it survive landing', and 'learn all the new fun techniques required to dig into lunar regolith in a low g environment with never before tested or used techniques and equipment'

<comment><USER17> There are already big suitable underground spaces in the form of lunar lava tubes. Those should help massively with bootstrapping of any undrground lunar colony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would be better to spend that on robotic exploration. More probes to other planets, the Sun, asteroids etc. and space telescopes. Much greater scientific return on the dollar.

<comment><USER25> if you put a scientist with a shovel and a lab kit on the surface of mars, he'd do more science in a week than all the robots we've sent there to date.

<comment><USER26> But what would the cost to put a scientist on Mars for a week vs all the robotic missions we've sent so far? Which of those missions does the human mission require as a sunk cost?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> NASA's best bet is to bite the bullet, scrap the SLS already, and help pay for SpaceX's development.

SpaceX has a publicly announced rocket design that is capable of getting men to the Moon and back. They are working on it for themselves. They are looking for every source of funding that they can get. They _already_ are planning suborbital flights this summer, and _already_ are looking for it to be human rated by NASA.

Their announced timeline (which is probably ambitious but that is par for the course) includes suborbital flights this summer, aiming for orbit by 2020, going around the moon in 2022, going around the Moon with a human inside by 2023, and humans on the moon for 2024. They have a record of being ambitious, but also a record of launches. And nobody on the planet in recent years has developed more successful rockets or had more successful rockets than SpaceX. More impressively, nobody has done it so cheaply.

So...why isn't Trump talking to Elon Musk yet?

<comment><USER28> There's a reason SLS is nicknamed the Senate Launch System -- Sen. Shelby of Alabama rains fire down on any NASA official who comes anywhere near observing that SpaceX could fulfill any objectives allocated to the SLS. It's as much a pork barrel, to use the political lingo, as it is a rocket -- a steady source of jobs for Alabama and a couple other Southern states for as long as it's in development / production. And no one cares enough to take on Shelby and his allies.

So, rational proposals like using SpaceX are sadly political non-starters at the moment.

<comment><USER17> It really does seems rather un-democratical if just single (albeit voted) representative wields so much power, apparently withou much the others can do about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This could be done, if everyone involved were willing to accept massive risk to the lives of the astronauts (including the astronauts, obviously).

By which I mean, after hurriedly building rockets and testing them, finally going ahead with a backup rocket _and crew_ to meet the deadline if the first one blows up on the pad.

With the risk of the backup doing the same...

If they're simply gambling on technology and engineering these days 'being faster', they're doomed to failure and I hope the individuals involved don't wind up killing anyone.

</comment><comment><USER30> they should hold a press conference and get a reporter to ask about the possibility of SpaceX getting to the moon. Then they respond laughing saying "those amateurs? look, this is NASA, the big boys not some techies with a website". Then just get some coffee and wait.

we'd be back on the moon by 2023.

<comment><USER31> SpaceX will beat them there regardless. Not out of a difference in skills, but NASA, let's face it, is a political football. If Trump wants us to go to the moon, half the country will argue we should never set foot there again. NASA is basically gridlocked until the next administration, so SpaceX will get to the moon and Mars first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The problem with creating custom spacecraft each time is it's expensive and takes a while. It's done to get the most out of a single rocket launch (and because it extracts the most money from the customer AKA Congress AKA taxpayers).

CubeSats have been revolutionary for standardizing small spacecraft launch. Next I want to see CubeLanders: standardized vehicles that land your payload on the Moon.

Also I wish we did more on-orbit spacecraft assembly. A lot of the mass limitations go away if you don't have to fit everything for a moon landing and return onto one superheavy rocket. Just scrap the SLS and pay for a bunch of smaller launches!

</comment><comment><USER33> No its not. This is a notion that vice president has and NASA would like it. But they will absolutly not get the money from congress. And even more so, Congress only cares about blowing money up Boings ass and literally nothing else.

So any architecture that would actually work and be reasonable quick to deploy, will not be allowed. Congress with force NASA to use lots old technology and force them to use Boing, LM, Northrop. This has just reasently been something were congress published its 'plan' (ie, plan to force 10 billion to Boing and Lockeed).

</comment><comment><USER34> "The Apollo Program cost roughly $25.4 billion, unadjusted.

That makes the total Apollo Program cost $163 billion inflation adjusted to 2008. That's our total cost to go to the moon. Consider, however, that this was for a project spanning from 1959 to beyond 1970 with six successful missions."

This is not going to happen again unless China decides they want to get there first but, hey, it never hurts to hope.

</comment><comment><USER35> 2004: [https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/bush_vision.html](https://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/bush_vision.html)

"Our third goal," Bush said, "is to return to the moon by 2020, as the launching point for missions beyond."

</comment><comment><USER36> It's ambitious but possible. And this time it will be permanent, so even more preparation.

</comment><comment><USER37> We/our government is completely unwilling to invest the multi-trillion dollar expense of creating a permanent moon colony. In light of that, I believe arguments to the effect of "a moon base would make Mars easier" are baseless since creating that type of installation on the moon would dwarf the cost of a single shot to Mars and back. In light of that, our current moon efforts are nothing but make-work doing things we've already done because Mars is actually hard.

<comment><USER38> Why would a permanent Moon base make Mars easier? Would the idea to build a space elevator or manufacture rockets and fuel there?

<comment><USER39> Because most of the technology needed on Mars can be proven on the Moon, which is far, far cheaper to reach and resupply.

Establishing a moon base and concentrating on making it self-sustaining is critical to any successful space penetration by humanity.

<comment><USER40> Actually, establishing any self sustaining space colony would do. No need to build it at the bottom of a gravity well.

<comment><USER39> Look at the difference in the size of rocket needed to lift two men to lunar orbit vs earth orbit. It's really not a big deal to blast off from the moon.

Gravity has lots of advantages. For one thing, toilets work.

<comment><USER40> Gravity is easy to simulate with spin.

<comment><USER39> That's not so easy - the station has to be very large to do that, otherwise people get dizzy with coriolis effects. With a large station comes the problem of dropping something sharp/heavy and having it crash through the hull.

A large station means every gram of material has to be boosted up out of some gravity well to it.

Whereas on the moon, the idea is to use the material already there.

<comment><USER40> I get all that. But keep in mind that nothing has ever been manufactured on the Moon. Nothing. I love the idea of using Lunar regolith to make stuff. But the first Moon bases will be shipped there. Just like the first space bases. Baby steps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> We were able to land on moon in 1969. How come are we not able to do it again 50 years later with all the technological progress?

<comment><USER42> It's really about the willpower and desire to have it happen (by which I really mean budget...) .We have the technology to go but it doesn't make any sense to devote the resources it takes to make it happen. Yes it would take years to put together a manned moon mission again, but I feel confident that if for some reason the US absolutely needed to it could put men on the moon by 2024.

Certainly our knowledge of how to launch Saturn Vs has atrophied. But we do still routinely launch things into space. We put lots of robots on Mars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I feel like I see this headline every few years with a slight bump to the target year.

</comment><comment><USER44> I hope not. I like telling old people that nobody has been to the moon in my lifetime. Last moon landing was December 1972, which puts bounds on my age and what I consider old people...

<comment><USER40> Old person here. I was 13 in December 1972 when NASA talked abut a permanent colony on the Moon by 1984. That drove me to graduate college with a BS in aerospace engineering. I attended one of the top three universities for aerospace. In order to study rockets I had to do it via "independent study" because all of the classes had been removed from the curriculum by 1979.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > A moon landing in 2024 would mean a triumph during the last year of > President Trump's second term, if he gets reelected in November.

Yeah, sounds just like Trump to rush this program (and endanger lives while doing it) just so he can bask in its (hopeful) success...

</comment><comment><USER46> Ignoring that such bullishness is expected of the current administration's appointees, the devil's advocate can make a convincing case;

        Q. Can NASA send a crew to the Lunar Surface by 2024? And safely return them to Earth?

Yes, they can.

Sandworm laid out the mission cost in lives problem, but modern spaceflight already has defined an acceptable margin for loss of crew in most missions - <USER2> in 270 as set by NASA for its Commercial Crew Transportation System (CCTS) program. The historical mortality rate for astronauts remains at 3.2%, or a Loss of Crew (LOC) rate of 4 in 125 across all vehicles and missions. Let us assume that the political calculus changes and the 3.2% LOC rate becomes acceptable. What's next?

What's next would be the design of a navigation system for translunar and cislunar navigation - after Apollo, and the exploration of the solar system, this has become a solved problem. We can run and code an AGC with inputs from far better sensors on an Arduino. NASA's engineers can also automate astrogation using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) technology. There are also highly efficient hydrogen upper stage engines available off the shelf for the Orion and the lander.

Unlike Apollo, 2020's NASA can use a more modern approach of Earth-Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) to construct the Trans-Lunar Injection (TLI) stage with a lander and lunar orbiter via separate launches. Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) rendezvous and docking has become routine for us in this era. It's a maneuver that's performed several times each year at the International Space Station. LIDAR and automated docking has made an EOR safe and, virtually, error-free.

For this theoretical exercize, the vehicle could be automatically assembled in an 100mi orbit. Crew could go up and rendezvous in the final lunar orbiter- and-return component of the vehicle, or in a temporary (Dragon) capsule. The EOR approach reduces the size of the launch vehicles required, making it feasible for a COTS provider like SpaceX to provide a Falcon Heavy for this purpose. It also allows for the re-use of current CCTS providers, by letting crew proceed to the vehicle in a human-space-flight rated Dragon capsule (or a mated CSM-equivalent). This system can be constructed via hardware that is currently being flight-rated, or will be flight rated soon, making the SLS redundant (in the short-term).

The SLS - for political reasons - could be repositioned as a long-term support and heavy payload delivery vehicle as a part of an extended Space Transport System, as originally envisioned for the Shuttle. SpaceX could provide the reusable "shuttle" aspect. The SLS heavy-lifter capabilities. And a lunar gateway as a refueling station. A deal that keeps all parties happy.

For the LEM component, NASA has the benefit of hindsight. The LEM designs still exist, there are LEMs in storage and can be mapped in 3D to study them. The data collected from 6 landings can be used to implement "in hindsight" improvements, making it easier to take the LEM template from Apollo and modernize it by reducing the electronics requirement and payload capacity. NASA doesn't have to redesign everything from scratch, there is a design that works. A design that was taken down to the surface with great uncertainty in 11 and 12, but worked for 14, 15, 16 and 17.

The most difficult aspect of the mission - the ascent stage - was studied following Apollo, and can now be trivially simulated in computer games, such as Kerbal Space Program. We can beg, borrow and steal the LEM design, and simulate what the original planners could not, giving NASA a much faster turn- around time this time around. It is conceivable that, if the payload characteristics were more realistic, and the goals of staying on the surface were trimmed down, a slightly up-scaled LEM and a down-scaled Altair/LSAM [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_\(spacecraft\)) could be made in 2 years or less. Flown in 3. Making it possible for an autonomous lunar landing in 4 and a surface jaunt in 4.5 years. However, that's theory, which would require tremendous resources to achieve.

After a cislunar docking maneuver, our astronauts can come home riding a far superior thermal protection systems than any contemporary material available in the Apollo-era. The amount of research that has gone into this area is extremely impressive, and gives our pioneers a safe journey home, where they'll land and descend via parachutes - which are far more complicated, but something that NASA, the organization, has more cultural experience with than SpaceX or Boeing.

From this template, a mission is not only conceivable - it's doable. The only question is _how much_.

How much is congress willing to give to make this a reality? And how far is the Trump administration willing to go to seal the deal?

</comment><comment><USER47> carrots and rabbit holes

</comment><comment><USER48> Elon Musk will land on the moon before NASA does. You can carve that prediction in stone.

<comment><USER49> Maybe but it likely won't be any time soon. [https://www.space.com/35876-how- spacex-moon-flight-will-work...](https://www.space.com/35876-how-spacex-moon- flight-will-work.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> First time for everything.

</comment><comment><USER51> uh-oh, time to take the secret sound stage in Arizona out of mothballs ....

<comment><USER52> _Okay, boss, this LTX-71 concealable mike is part of the same system that NASA used when they faked the Apollo Moon landings. They had the astronauts broadcast around the world from a sound stage at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernadino, California. So it worked for them, shouldn 't give us too many problems._

<comment><USER49> I'm never sure when watching that movie if Dan Aykroyd is acting or just being himself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> First let's get the space suits and things that actually matter ready this time eh? :p

</comment><comment><USER54> I would like to know the "why" behind landing on moon project. Don't we already know enough about moon? Why waste money on it? Can't this money be used in other space projects like Mars Landing or earth projects like fighting poverty?

</comment><comment><USER55> Can somebody explain what the benefit of sending men to the moon is?

I mean science or engineering. I don't mean PR or funding visibility - you can get that by sponsoring a NASCAR ride.

Both the Space Shuttle and ISS have been huge money sinks with no benefit. How will another moon visit be any different?

<comment><USER56> > Both the Space Shuttle and ISS have been huge money sinks with no benefit.

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Absolutely no chance. NASA spent 20 years designing this new super rocket, never even built a single one of them; so it only exists on paper, and when you look closely at the design it is basically the Saturn 5 with some slight modifications.

The reason so many engineers jumped ship from NASA and went to work for SpaceX is that at least Elon is doing something with some alacrity. NASA is just a bunch of paper shuffling time wasters at this point (especially at the top). People forget that they subcontracted most of the Apollo project. Having civil servants who never get fired is not the way to achieve excellence in any product or service!

<comment><USER58> SLS is repurposed Space Shuttle hardware, not related to Saturn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Put me in the No Way! column. NASA budget for exploration including SLS is about $3.5 billion. The Apollo mission cost $145 billion. Just not going to happen. Best guess: double budget to $7 billion and spend that much every year for 20 years and we will be back on the Moon.

<comment><USER59> You mean the entire Apollo program cost $145 billion. This is one mission to the moon with much better technology and lower costs. You just can not compare costs like this.

<comment><USER60> According to the per-year costing in [0], about 80% of the entire Apollo program cost was accrued before the first moon landing. That suggests that even just one mission will come with a substantial price ticket, even if no hardware is built for subsequent missions.

[0] [https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3737/1](https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3737/1)

<comment><USER61> Yes, but analogous 80% of the entire Artemis cost are also already spent and the results are there. Engines, launchers, spacecrafts (Apollo analog maiden LEO flight is expected this spring), electronics, power, communications...

<comment><USER60> Since the lander and gateway are yet to be built let alone tested (at least Wikipedia still has them as a "concept") it seems too soon to say what the final cost will be. By way of comparison the first full Apollo stack flight was 20 months before Apollo 11, which puts it close to the 60%-spend point, and that was some five years after the LM contract was placed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Here's a prediction of "back to the moon" by 2018 in 2005:

[https://www.space.com/1567-nasa-moon-plans-apollo- steroids.h...](https://www.space.com/1567-nasa-moon-plans-apollo- steroids.html)

Face it lads; we, as in the US, ain't going back. Country will fall apart first. Humans might go back some day. The US won't.</comment>


Easy-to-use auto-SSL reverse proxy as a Docker container (Caddy, Let's Encrypt) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hartwork/docker-ssl-reverse-proxy <comment><USER2> Looks cool, but this is exactly what Traefik does as well.

[0] [https://docs.traefik.io/user-guide/docker-and-lets- encrypt/](https://docs.traefik.io/user-guide/docker-and-lets-encrypt/)

<comment><AUTHOR> True. Traefik is not nearly as easy to set up, though.</comment></comment>


Apple: The New Headquarters of Computing - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/06/10/apple-the-new-headquarters-of-computing/

<comment><USER2> Looks like a walled garden to me.</comment>


Common patterns of markup & style - <AUTHOR> http://pea.rs/

<comment><USER2> Overall I like it, It can be very usefull for initial mark up where design isn't much inportant. Definitely took a place at my bookmarks.

Only one thing I noticed. I am not sure if it is a bug, but please check this page <http://pea.rs/forms/multi-left-labels> (and apparently same at <http://pea.rs/forms/top-labels>)

It has some problems with displaying textarea, at least for me it looks like that: <http://i.imgur.com/tJKiG.png>

I am using Windows 7 with Firefox 9.0.1

<comment><USER3> That's because the markup says <textarea id="bio"></textarea> instead of <textarea id="bio"></textarea>

It's going to look like that for everyone.

<comment><USER2> the question is, was it intended to look like that? I doubt it

<comment><USER4> I don't think so either, but editing the form on Firebug or WebKit's inspector is really easy. And the text area is looking nice, really similar to text fields :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a web developer trying to be a designer as well and the one thing that always frustrates me with HTML 5 resources is that they focus on the definition of each new element and not proper use which preserves its semantic value within a document. This one pretty much nailed it with good examples. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a good initiative but utterly wrong regarding best practices for css selectors.

ol.tags li a span.meta

Really? Why not something like:

.tags-vertical .meta

I like the overall style a lot tho.

<comment><USER7> It says it's a Word Press theme. Maybe WP expects those identifiers?

<comment><USER6> Maybe for the top level, but anything between that and the classname is useless IMHO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome stuff. Are these layout elements valid HTML & CSS (I'm too lazy to run it through a validator at the moment)?

This is a great resource of commonly used web elements, kudos to you.

</comment><comment><USER9> Awesome resource. Quite jealous of those just starting out. I wish I would have had stuff like this when I first started.

<comment><USER10> Don't be jealous, on the contrary -- be thankful you got to learn without having the correct answer handed to you on a silver platter.

If there's anything to be thankful for in the current climate, it's the diversity of browsers and device form factors forcing designers to think about the layout outside of Photoshop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks good, but what should I be learning from this?

<comment><USER4> It's look like it's just a base for creating nice wordpress themes. It's not intended to learn much I think.

Anyway, it has really great style. Very good looking components and very useful to get started easily with a cool site, not necessarily a wordpress one.</comment></comment>


CrowTrax: Crow Attacks in Vancouver Interactive Map - <AUTHOR> http://giscourses.net/crowtrax/crowtrax.html <comment><USER2> Vancouver's crow population is out of control. A spring "egg-shaking" campaign is in order.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to see a similar map for Seattle.</comment>


The Metamovement - <AUTHOR> http://umairhaque.blogspot.com/2011/10/metamovement.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm feeling a twinge of regret for posting this. I was hoping for more meta- discussion but it seems most comments are making more of a political point about a particular movement. Which, in retrospect, I suppose was to be expected.

Our HN etiquette is preventing any full scale flames, but I feel my post wasn't very constructive anyway. I'll think twice before posting things like this next time.

<comment><USER2> I for one would like to thank you for posting it-- I've been thinking about these things a lot lately, and it's good to see I'm not the only one.

From my perspective, the underlying point -- which it seems the IMF is starting to realize -- is that there exists a _fundamental_ tendency for things to even out over time, and this tendency is as valid in economics and social policy as it is in thermodynamics, and for the same reason: any extreme action necessitates an extreme reaction. One can't exist without the other. Wealth sitting in a bank account accomplishes no more than gas sitting in a tank; to get work done requires _movement_ of energy from high-energy (wealthy) states to low-energy (poor) states. Equalizing inequalities.

What that means is that actions you take that affect other people in turn affect you; helping someone else will come back to help you, and screwing someone else will come back to bite you in the ass. Maybe a hundred years ago, a tycoon could rip somebody off and be reasonably confident he would be dead before the social consequences of that action caught up with him. We don't live in that world anymore; thanks to the Internet, if I screw somebody today, or do something nice for somebody, I might find myself getting screwed or helped -- in a completely unrelated but causally connected way -- _next year_.

I think this is something that hackers _get_ intuitively. For example: Say I invent a new programming language.

If I'm Sun in the 90s, I'm thinking about my profits. Developing a language costs time, and time is money. I want to lock down the IP tight, not to control it, just to make sure people pay me my fair share for the development. This works, for a while, and I earn back my investment; but the programming community explodes, my proprietary system can't keep up, and I get left behind. I eventually relicense the technology as FOSS, but it's too little, too late. I get bought.

If I'm an unemployed hacker in 2009, I don't have any illusions about making money from the project. I release everything for free. Three months later, a hundred people are contributing to the project. Six months later, it's a thousand. In two years, the first commercial projects using my language launch, and I'm using them. I've directly benefitted my own life-- all without seeing a cent from it.

Five years later, I'm employed as a consultant advising on my own platform. I still contribute to a dozen other FOSS projects and help people online; what I'm selling I'll gladly give away for free. According to the fundamentals of economics, my time should be worthless. But people who can afford to pay me for it, not out of altruism, but because they understand it's an investment in our community that will definitely pay back tenfold, whether or not that value winds up in their ledger books or someone else's.

This isn't speculation; we're watching it happen. Companies in the tech industry who are always willing to spend a little more on an interesting idea that probably won't pay off-- well, it usually doesn't. Sometimes they go out of business. But the ones that do pay off pay off _big_ , creating whole industries, and carrying the rest of us along for the ride. The people who went out of business have no trouble finding investment capital for their next crazy idea.

Meanwhile, the industrial powers who only got big by eating each other, the old giants of manufacturing and finance^, companies who have been so obsessed with cutting costs to boost quarterly profits have been quietly (and not-so- quietly) running themselves into the ground, taking their entire industry and economy down with them.

^And, yes, I'll say it... Government.

<comment><USER3> A very nice comment, insightful and inspirational, just one point -

> What that means is that actions you take that affect other people in turn > affect you; helping someone else will come back to help you, and screwing > someone else will come back to bite you in the ass. [...] ^And, yes, I'll > say it... Government.

I like the sentiment of your comment and 100% agree about doing good deeds on an individual and business level. Unfortunately, the point about doing nice things doesn't always scale to a governmental level.

History backs this up quite clearly - when you capitulate even a little bit to demands due to unrest, you almost always get more unrest within 5 years. It's how the British Empire lost the 13 Colonies.

See, legitimate grievances do have to be addressed, but unfortunately addressing them in response to protest creates hugely empowered people fundamentally hostile to the government that capitulated. These people's power stems from their ability to extract concessions under rebellion or threat of rebellion, so, humans being what they are, they'll inevitably rebel or threaten to rebel after a short honeymoon period.

The solution is pretty clear in the history books - crack down brutally on the leadership, wait a suitably short amount of them, and _then and only then_ redress grievances. That way, the people who are actually suffering have their needs fulfilled, but you don't have a class of organizers feeding and fueling further unrest and riots.

That particular policy has worked consistently throughout history. Crack down, _then_ redress grievances and help the people. There's notable examples it working effectively across all eras and continents. Redressing and hoping that rioters are satisfied and don't continue without the crackdown doesn't work. Neither does cracking down without fixing problems.

This doesn't make the position ethical, moral, aesthetic, or what should be done. But it does seem to be the best way to fix problems without setting off a cascading cycle of violence and revolution.

<comment><USER4> Can you elaborate more on the circumstances in which it happened?

<comment><USER3> If you want a number of examples, contrast how the British treated the American complaints and dissent against them, vs. how Washington and the American leadership treated dissent and rebellion among their ranks.

The Americans executed a number of people who rebelled against the Continental Congress / Washington's Command, whereas the British were lenient. A very thorough treatment of this can be found in Chernow's "Washington - A Life" which is a very thorough biography/history.

You could also look at the Sengoku Era of Japanese history for many examples, you could compare Napoleonic France with the Neapolis Revolts in the same era. You could look at how Rome treated its protectorates and dependencies, as well as Britain (most of the time, America being a strange exception).

Abraham Lincoln's treatment of the Confederacy would be another example. Crush them, then bring them back into the fold.

Or compare the Pacific Theater of WWII vs. the Vietnam War from America's perspective... Japan was better-armed, better-trained, with superior forces than the Vietnamese, and the Americans were worse-equipped and more hastily trained at that point. The Japanese were easily equivalent guerrilla fighters to the Vietnamese. Yet America went total war and crushed the Empire of Japan (then rebuilt Japan intelligently - crushing without rebuilding creates a potential Nazi-Germany-after-Versailles situation)... whereas the American leadership tried some "moral leadership" insanity in Vietnam instead of total war.

Again, I'm not _advocating_ any of these things. This is meant to be more descriptive than prescriptive, but maybe I'm being sloppy with language. But treating Hanoi in the 1960's the way they treated Tokyo in the 1940's would have seems like it would have likely secured a demilitarized and protected South Vietnam from the Northern Forces.

Maybe they couldn't have totally destroyed the communist forces and taken the North, but they absolutely could have fenced off the South and stopped the Khmer Rouge genocides from ever happening (they started the same year America withdrew - this isn't a coincidence). Millions of lives would have been better, more like South Korea than North Korea.

The examples in history of this abound. Leniency and concessions provoke more unrest. Crackdowns without redress eventually lead to the dam bursting. Doing both together tends to resolve the situation most often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think a mass of disappointed people with no particular goals is very easy to manipulate. They're very vulnerable to someone hijacking their movement, telling them what they want, and then giving it to them.

<comment><USER6> You mean like the tea party? (Not meaning to flame, but it looks that way to me from the outside.) Though I think masses of people in general are easy to manipulate; disappointed people just provide a certain attack vector instead of others that are just as effective.

On the article: I thought the article was annoying to read in the pop-out slideshow style usually reserved for picture galleries. It's also an interesting idea to suppose that all the protests are inter-related however loosely. To me that just sounds a lot like people fearing the end of the world "because we have more natural disasters now than ever" when in fact they're just being informed about them more.

<comment><USER7> Not to Godwin the conversation, but I'm guessing that the OP was referring to Hitler's pre WWII rise to power.

<comment><USER5> Nope :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to believe this article. That there is some kind of movement occuring. But more likely people just get upset when they run out of money, and everyone is running out of money...

<comment><USER9> Hold on. You really should read up on the recent uprisings in Spain, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Israel, London and more recently, Wall Street.

This is not about 'people running out of money'. This is about an entire generation coming to the understanding that current political dogma is absolutely against their future.

Looking at this issue through the narrow perspective you describe is the same old-school thinking that misses the whole point.

<comment><USER8> What are they about then?

Is there more democracy? No.

Are there more freedoms? No.

Is there less money? Yes.

What's this movement about?

People are losing jobs, the lower-socio economic groups are the first to feel this. Students are among them, and they are also the most 'active' (in activist sense), and thus we hear about it.

If the world was flush with cash and countries were all in massive surplus, would we still have these protests? I don't think we would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The Arab Spring is part of the Metamovement; the London Riots were part of > the Metamovement;

The Arab Spring, or the Madrid rallies are not the same thing that the London riots. The last one was mainly looting and arson attacks, while the other were pacific demonstrations demanding more democracy.

<comment><USER11> I lean on the side that these are related events. These events seem to be catalyzed/centered around youth that are disengaged from any sense of traditional growth norms in their society and when given an opportunity, lash out against that system. In the Arab uprisings, that system was represented by repressive governments, in the UK it was the upward-mobile consumerist culture.

I was also under the impression that the UK looting was opportunistic until I saw the press around OccupyWallSt. The way these things sound from inside versus how they are portrayed by the media are worlds apart.

"A riot is the language of the unheard." MLK

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The US 'Tea Party' initialized as a populist dissent against the concept of a government, disconnected from the people, imposing arbitrary regulations on the people.

I don't know if I'd want to draw a deep connection between the Tea Party and the Arab Spring. I think, in general, the swing is towards populism right now. Obama's big wave came from his populist appeal.

 _pre-flame-shield_ Yes, I know that there was astroturfing. But I know a number of people who genuinely adhere to those ideas.

<comment><USER13> I think we can say that the Tea Party traces its lineage to Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty - which was totally NOT AstroTurf. Then Republicans warped everything, and we got the Tea Party - my dad is a firm believer in them. I know that...

<comment><USER12> At the time when the Tea Party wave first hit here, it was very much not a mainstream Republican Party idea. The people that I knew who it drew in were typically Libertarian or Republicans dissatisfied with the Republican Party leadership.

<comment><USER13> Yes, this is exactly what happened. Tea Party both drives and get driven in the national conversation. Unfortunately, all the best stuff about them: social liberal policies, banking reform, and non-interventionist foreign policy got driven out.

Now it's all: "No taxes!", "Let 'em starve!", etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My observation of this movement(in the OWS iteration) is that it is more about discussion than about action. Although there is a form of rebellion against broken systems, spurred by economic conditions, acts of protest come secondary to the debate of "what next."

In the same way that we embark upon exploratory or research projects, this movement casts a broad net to educate people and find consensus, rather than seeking hotbutton issues and partisan politics. In that light, the idealistic, open-ended messages are actually extremely powerful, as they are invitations to join and learn means of accomplishing the goals.

I see it as Endless September, version 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow. Regardless of the merits of his political thesis, that is some excellent writing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another Blogspot blog that pulls s/a resource/resources/ from blogblog.com and is completely invisible with NoScript enabled. (Google's own LatLong blog, in its current format, is another.)

I suppose I should look, myself, but is anyone familiar with this situation? Having Blogspot "disappear" for us paranoid types would be annoying.

EDIT: Took a glance. Ugh. Wall of scripting and apparent (in my biased opinion) obfuscation. Off to better things...

</comment><comment><USER17> Funny, it wouldn't load in Firefox 3.6.18. Had to go to IE.

(Why am I not on FF 7? Aardvark and RoboForm not compatible yet).

</comment><comment><USER18> This is the coolest blog design I have ever seen</comment>


Peter Thiel, YC, and hard decisions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/projectinclude/peter-thiel-yc-and-hard-decisions-2b91bab83764#.ajcow35xl <comment><USER2> Wow, this is the third time I've seen this link climbing up HN front page in the past hour [1][2]. I'm interested in this topic, why does it keep getting flagged?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12727973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12727973) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12726970](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12726970)

<comment><USER3> I wonder why too. The thumb seems to be on the scale on this one, either algorithmicly or by mods; which it is, I don't know.

The main discussion thread has been reliably showing up on page 2 in the past hour or so.

<comment><USER4> sctb claims that it's user flags; hopefully he's right: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728092)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For something that is so related to ycombinator, and hackernews, I find it odd that so many people find this article worthy of purging.

</comment><comment><USER6> From The Education of a Libertarian [0]

\---

"I believe that politics is way too intense. That's why I'm a libertarian. Politics gets people angry, destroys relationships, and polarizes peoples' vision: the world is us versus them; good people versus the other. Politics is about interfering with other people's lives without their consent. That's probably why, in the past, libertarians have made little progress in the political sphere. Thus, I advocate focusing energy elsewhere, onto peaceful projects that some consider utopian." \- Peter Thiel [0]

[0]: [https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter- thiel/educatio...](https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter- thiel/education-libertarian)

\---

Leaving aside all the drama surrounding YC and Peter Thiel, this is where it all breaks down for me. How am I supposed to take Thiel at his word today, when less than a decade ago he was convinced that politics is "too intense" because it angers people, divides them into us-vs-them groups, and tears them apart.

Is it simply that he's changed who he is in that time? I mean, that's a legitimate reason, and one I could respect even if it means I don't agree with who he is today. I'd want to know what changed his mind.

Or are there different Peter Thiel personas? I can understand this, too. As Hillary Clinton pointed out, Abraham Lincoln believed that politicians have a private and a public persona, because most of the electorate would shudder to see how our tasty, democratic sausage was being made.

Or is he a capricious man who doesn't stick to his principals when motivated by financial or political need? That would be disappointing, but the cynic in me says it wouldn't be surprising.

Without knowing who he truly is, and why there is such a divide between just 7 years ago (still fully within his adult life) and now, his whole persona just doesn't compute with me and I'm left with the inescapable conclusion that he's too chaotic to trust.

Does anyone have any insight?

</comment><comment><USER7> good to see Project Include standing up. now is a good time to stand up as an organization CEO, director, investor and declare where you stand. It could save your company lots of money down the road white-washing your history if Trump implements only part of the things he says he will. Ask the likes of Volkswagen & Daimler how they like their roots.

And don't tell me companies don't need to have an opinion. That was true 100 years ago not in the age of TTIP. But it could be that considering Thiel's investment portfolio that he does want actually more war. Who is the biggest spender right now in Cyber? (hint it's not just crappy IoT devices). Defense applications are way more expensive and proftable to build than consumer apps. Especially in times of fear.

Companies are people, so please YES do take a side and don't be a coward CEO hiding behind "it's politics therefore we should not speak of it at work".

I wish YC would have followed the example and I'm still waiting from S.Altman to say something on twitter that doesn't sound like an appalling excuse!

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm starting to feel a lot like Hacker News's aversion to political topics is not only over-bearing but naive. The fact is, we don't live in a vacuum and the political climate does affect us, even though we'd all like to pretend it doesn't. This article has trended three times and been flagged three times. What's the explanation for this?

</comment><comment><USER9> > Today, we struggle to rationalize Peter Thiel's power and influence as he > moves further and further out there. We were _confused by his seasteading > funding, angered by his negative views on women's voting rights_ , amused by > his reported fixation with living to 120, and annoyed by his keynoting the > Republican National Convention.

He explains both his seasteading interest and his position on the apparent statistical inevitabilities of voting patterns in the very essay Pao linked (the link is on the words "negative views").

He explicitly states (whether he's lying or not is another matter, but let's remember the principle of charity) that he's not in favor of disenfranchising anyone within current political systems.

We can argue all day the egalitarian position, but if Thiel is right that the future is dim under current politics, and bright under libertarian politics, then there's a problem: do you sacrifice the future (potentially the future of humanity) for equality now, or do you sacrifice equality, or set up alternative political spaces with the characteristic that people who participate in those political spaces are disproportionately libertarian? Which may or may not, but probably would, mean relatively fewer women and minorities self-select to participate in those political spaces.

</comment><comment><USER10> The purge begins.

And the left calls Trump supporters fascists...

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh what a scholar!</comment>


The dangers of quick thinking (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://theweek.com/articles/478388/dangers-quick-thinking <comment><USER2> Favorite book of all time! :)</comment>


How the IPO Ruined Google - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/08/how-the-ipo-ruined-google/ <comment><USER2> I think the article incorrectly assumes that Google is investing in social media because of shareholders' expectations.

It's become clear to Google that social cues are the next generation of ranking factors for Search.

</comment><comment><USER3> What the heck does G+ have to do with the end of the twitter firehose deal?

<http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/13/twitter-google-firehose>

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't express how much I want to be ruined like Google.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know why I'm wasting my time on Easter on a TC article, but oh well.

The "Suspicious Timing" bit is the typical "Google has had failures" gambit. Yes, they've had failures, they're not perfect. That's not an argument that leads anywhere, let alone to me accepting the premise that Google is only engaging with Plus because they think it will please Shareholders.

The "Success is besides the point" does no work what-so-ever to show that social-in-search is bad, it simply says that Plus is no Facebook or Twitter, which while true, is a bit out of Google's control. (The bit about Twitter's firehorse is just outright inaccurate to my understanding anyway).

As many of Google doomsday folk do, this author has missed the point as well. I think Google is well aware of the five bullet point "strengths of Google" at the end of that article and I can see how each of those is (supposed to be) enhanced by Plus or vice-versa.

If you don't think Plus is about acquiring information and enhancing search, then you're not paying attention.</comment>


Show HN: I made a tool to help older people find senior discounts - <AUTHOR> https://www.owlyapp.com/feed/search?placeId=ChIJA-2qKIt9hYARZ5N1NdUVtHE&address=Oakland,%20CA,%20USA <comment><AUTHOR> My co-founder and I have been working on products to improve the lives of seniors & make them less lonely for about a year now. After various ideas, we discovered that the biggest concern from most seniors when it came to activities, socializing, or otherwise getting out of the house was cost.

We also learned through meeting with seniors that they are far more online than people give them credit for.

Owly is at the MVP stage right now but we're building something that is somewhere between product hunt and Yelp to help seniors engage more by saving money.

I've got some known bugs but happy to hear complaints, critiques, and questions!

<comment><USER2> Congratulations for the initiative. Given the target audience,I think that you should focus on compliance with Web Accessibility Guidelines [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Gu...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines)

As a matter of fact, all websites should.

PS: there are tools that allow you to test the compliance. A list can be found here [https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/](https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/)

Another idea is to have web push notifications to notify the visitors about new opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I love the focus on seniors, who are typically more price sensitive than younger people due to fixed incomes.

Excellent design, too, although larger type, larger savings indicators, and custom images instead of the emoji might be appreciated.

Filtering by savings type might also be helpful, e.g., "save on dinner," "save on outings," etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback on the design. That's definitely the area I have the least training on so I appreciate the comments.

For sure, my co-founder had me make some last minute text changes and I will be continuing to do so. I've also got a bit to learn about accessibility for this project as well.</comment></comment>


What's the purpose of humanity if machines can learn ingenuity? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/marcus-du-sautoy-book-extract-creativity-code <comment><USER2> This article is a perfect example of the plague afflicting tech journalism today. It manages to ask vague unanswerable questions (and subsequently not answer them), haphazardly reference dozens of famous people (Picasso, Plato, Shakespeare, and Einstein, to name a few), and include contemporary buzzwords like "embracing failure". It does all of this while not actually _making any point._

<comment><USER3> But did you read the article "As Picasso once said: "The chief enemy of creativity is good sense." "

It sounds like you are the enemy of creativity!

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think I fail to accept the premise that a.) we have a purpose at all and b.) if we do it's defined by our works.

To accept that we have a purpose and it's defined by our creativity leads to so many circular arguments that it's more sensible to accept that life is absurd. There is no purpose. There is only existence. And our existence thus far has been due to a random series of mutations and fortunate events.

If we create intelligent machines then perhaps they will further humanity's dominance on the planet. Perhaps they will destroy us and lead to a new era of evolution.

In that sense the purpose of the earliest primates was to pave the biological path for humans. Perhaps it's our purpose to create and pave the path for a better species still, biological or not.

... or maybe even better, waxing and waning about unanswerable philosophical questions like this is simply intellectual masturbation that conflates issues and reduces reality to unrealistic black and white absolutes.

<comment><USER4> I think the best we can hope for is something like the _Culture_ \- where us slow stupid bags of meat do what we are best at (basically having fun) and our fellow machine citizens do what they are best at - which is basically everything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What is the purpose of parents when they are eventually surpassed by their kids?

The purpose of humanity is to build the machines, teach them what we know about the world, and make sure they don't destroy themselves in the process.

<comment><USER6> I really like this take. It's much more hopeful...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is it different from other animals being able to be creative and ingenious? That has never been traits exlusive to humans, or something defining the purpose of humanity, whatever that could mean.

Human evolution pushed creativity and ingenuity way further than other species, but those traits aren't unique to us.

</comment><comment><USER8> To train machines that can colonize the Universe like evolution trained humanity to colonize earth.

<comment> martin-adams I find the thought that the purpose of humans is to give birth to machine, that go on to colonize the universe very interesting.

By using machines, we don't need to be as concerned with the vast distances of the universe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Iain M Banks put it best: "Machines provide the How, Humans provide the Why"</comment>


Monthly Dollar Club – Put $1 a month, vote what to do with the total - <AUTHOR> https://www.tilt.com/campaigns/monthly-dollar-club-month-1-december

<comment><USER2> Lol very interesting. First time doing this or have you done it before? Would love to see how you can take it a step further.</comment>


Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/10/exclusive-computer-virus-hits-drone-fleet/ <comment><USER2> This is from 2011</comment>


CoreOS Linux does away with the upgrade cycle - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2449300/coreos-linux-does-away-with-the-upgrade-cycle.html

<comment><USER2> Rolling releases aren't exactly new:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux#Versions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux#Versions)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux#Rolling_releases](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Linux#Rolling_releases)

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

Apparently this is the first rolling-release distribution billing itself as an "enterprise solution"?</comment>


Mastodon is not Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://digitalscofflaw.com/writing/mastodon-is-not-twitter/ <comment><USER2> This was what I got:

"Mastodon is different. It has all of the same functionalities, but it's _different_. Also, following and contacts and everything are the same, but you can export your info, and that's different. People don't understand, but it's different."

I honestly can't tell if I'm reading a piece of satire.

Having started with no knowledge of Mastodon, at the end of the read all I know about it is that it seems to have all the functionality of Twitter?

At the risk of being crass, this sounds like a desperate founder or investor trying to self-validate and coming up woefully short on evidence.

<comment><USER3> Mastodon: Twitter, except with moderators who will kick Angry White Boy Assholes (Nazis, gamergaters, trolls, etc) off.

Mastodon: Twitter, except with a 500-char limit and no "sponsored tweets".

Mastodon: Twitter, except without a whole bunch of VC investment that it needs to try and pay back by monetizing your eyeballs and keeping you on the site as long as possible for as long as possible, regardless of whether that's by making you happy or enraging you.

Mastodon: Twitter, except a bunch of technical bullshit you probably don't care about unless you'd like to run your own Mastodon server for you and your buddies.

<comment><USER4> I mean, all they had to do was say that first one, and a lot of people would probably perk their ears up.

<comment><USER3> Seriously! This is the initial value proposition that got me and all my friends to check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Since all instances are more or less part of the same federation, it's as > simple as clicking follow when they see you've followed them from a new > instance.

That's not simple, not at scale. It doesn't tell you who the new account is, match them up to the old account, unfollow the old account, automatically remind you when you go to @mention them, or otherwise make the transition automatic.

Simple would be the old account that you trust signing a message saying they're now the new account, and when your instance saw that message, it automatically moved your follow over, remembering the old account and using that as a hint to help you switch over.

</comment><comment><USER6> Decentralized projects never seem to gain steam until mainstream users are forced away from centralized services. Take a look at this recent article looking at why the majority of mastodon users are from Japan: [http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2017/08/18/mastodon-is- bi...](http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2017/08/18/mastodon-is-big-in-japan- the-reason-why-is-uncomfortable/)

<comment><USER7> What are some examples of decentralized projects that won over centralized services?

<comment><USER8> email

<comment><USER9> Not exactly. Gamil, Hotmail etc. are some successes that had clearly centralized email despite remained on the same protocols.

<comment><USER7> Gmail and Hotmail are still part of a federated email system. Email won over messaging on centralized services like Compuserve and Prodigy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Exporting is the differentiating feature?

As someone who worked in the social space for years, I find this quite misguided.

Users want more than exporting. When building a social produdct, you have to be able to excite a mainstream audience.

The math behind a superior network connection model or techy-feature like exporting is practically useless to these people.

Build something people (from St. Louis) want.

<comment><USER3> The two biggest differentiating features in my circles seem to be:

* less nazis/gamergaters/people who think it is fun to be assholes on the internet (unless you wanna go hang out on an instance that welcomes them, which is probably banned from federating to a lot of other instances)

* you can actually emit a paragraph containing a complete thought instead of a very simple sentence

Being able to hide the bulk of your post behind an arbitrary user-entered "content warning" tag is damn nice too.

<comment><USER11> > you can actually emit a paragraph containing a complete thought instead of a > very simple sentence

This is one of those interesting things about a two-sided product. That is a feature for _writers_ , but it's not always feature for _readers_. I use Twitter for breadth; I follow a lot of people. The more people can write, the fewer people I can follow. So for me, "they can write more" is an anti- feature.

<comment><USER3> How many of these people regularly make 3-4 tweets in a row, in which they emit a complete thought?

How much of your Twitter feed is people quote-tweeting the first of many of these, with a comment along the lines of "Thread"?

<comment><USER11> Of the people I follow? It's a pretty rare for me to see multiple tweets in a row.

The quoting of one tweet in a thread is more common, but that's fine by me. Indeed, I follow a number of people specifically because they're good at that; it helps me increase breadth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mastodon really isn't a replacement for Twitter. The original Wired article did a poor job of critiquing it.

I think this guy does a much better job of critiqueing Mastodon than the article linked in the parent post.

[https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the- water-888c10e...](https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the- water-888c10e8abb1?gi=78a14d4791ce)

Key points:

"The foremost problem is that federation is a lie. Well, it's partially a lie. The benefits described above do work; if you send a message to anyone at @email@example.com, it will be delivered to them. But if @custom.website is a domain that mastodon.social deems inappropriate, replies from that users on that domain don't show up in your notifications or on your feed, unless you explicitly follow them. So if you're having a conversation with your friend, @firstname.lastname@example.com, and another user from custom.website wants to chime in, they will be invisible to you."

And

"Suppose you're a semi-famous content publisher. You have 10,000 followers on Twitter, whom you converse with regularly and have a large history of communications with. If you decide to switch networks to something like Mastodon, you immediately come into contact with the Hardest Problem of Identity on the Internet, which is that your social graph is not portable between platforms."

I feel these are two very important limitations to understand about Mastodon.

I see Mastodon as basically Wordpress for people who want a twitter like experience off of twitter. Aka niche communities.

<comment><USER13> For the first, you're always at the mercy of the whims of the mods for whatever service you're on. The difference with federated services is that you can move to or even set up a server with different mods. Can't do that with Twitter.

For the second, that's a limitation of Twitter. If you had 10,000 followers on a federated system, you could switch networks and your old followers could just re-follow you there. They wouldn't have to switch with you.

<comment><USER12> Yep, fair points. To clarify, I think Mastodon is really cool and a big step in the right direction. I don't mean to come across as overly critical.

I do feel the second issue he raises is still valid. re-following is a lot of friction, even in a federated system, albeit less so than moving from one centralized service to another. It would be nice if Mastodon provided some way of altering users when someone switches to a new instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is Mastodon not like Twitter? I didn't understand after reading the article, it mostly repeats:

> _Mastodon is different. <describes how it's similar to Twitter>_

<comment><USER13> It's a reaction to this article [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15244596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15244596) which is linked in the first sentence.

<comment><USER14> I read that, and I still don't understand the point the article is making about how Mastodon is different to Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mastodon is very interesting to me but discoverability would seem to be an issue. Despite Twitter's flaws, I can at least search all of it.

What are people using to find things across Mastodon servers? Google search?

</comment><comment><USER16> Not really sure what point to take away from this article. It's not Twitter, because of some differences in the way the network is set up? It doesn't really seem to make any arguments to the first article (or more so comment thread) that it links to. Obviously Mastodon is a different service than Twitter, but to ignore and dismiss the comparison seems lazy and misguided.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel that trying to dismiss criticism of something by saying "It's different!", without actually saying why those differences matter is pretty weak sauce.

<comment><USER17> I think this was in response to some articles flying around earlier this week that said, essentially, that Mastodon will fail because some of its features are slightly different from their Twitter equivalents. The target audience was like people who had read them.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but just saying, "It's different! You don't understand!" doesn't really inspire confidence, or reflect well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's the same because of how it is but different because of techy features no one who is needed for it to get traction cares about so it's doomed to obsolescence.

</comment><comment><USER19> i wish this was about the band.</comment>


IAd not iPad is the future - <AUTHOR> http://insideaffiliate.net/apples-iad-not-ipad-is-the-future/

<comment><USER2> I would expect Apple to adopt the same business model they use elsewhere. Lower volume, higher price. I doubt they want to compete head-to-head with AdMob selling low value ads to diet pill web sites and punch the monkey scams. More likely they'll have a short list of exclusive deals for mobile advertising mostly with Fortune 500 companies. Apple could have had AdMob if they wanted them. I get the feeling they were never fully committed to the idea of becoming a dumb ad aggregator and that's ultimately why they passed on AdMob. If we want to get really cynical maybe Apple never had _any_ interest in AdMob. They simply wanted to provoke Google into making what looks like an anti-competitive acquisition. They know Google, like Microsoft, has the war chest to buy first and think later. Did Google really need AdMob? It seems to me Google could have murdered AdMob in-house with the leverage they already have with AdSense/AdWords. Maybe Apple's plan from the start was to go the premium route and just wanted to distract Google with what appeared to be a more direct threat.

<comment><USER3> I'm not so sure that Apple was baiting Google into legal trouble. Google CEO Eric Schmidt even said that iAd would help push the AdMob deal through, being "evidence of a highly competitive market." <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63B0F820100412>

My impression was that Apple simply wanted to keep AdMob's mountain of analytics data away from Google, given AdMob's majority share of the in-app iPhone ad market. I doubt even Apple has as much usage statistics as AdMob.

This idea would appear to be borne out by recent changes to Apple's iPhone developer terms of service agreement, which seem to limit or even outright ban the sharing of usage data by developers to third parties:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1253810>

Of course, Apple did end up buying one of AdMob's lowlier competitors, Quattro. It seems they gave up on keeping user data out of Google's hands, and are now working to raise the standard of advertising on the iPhone while being able to collect a bit of that data themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What they should do is actually get rid of the ad after you "explore it", so it does not take up vital screen space.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps collapse it down to a thin bar? I think you'd want to leave the option of reopening it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually don't like the "emotion" aspect iAds are supposed to have. Web ads, even when I see them, are easy to ignore because they have no emotional impact. They're just like white noise cognitively speaking. "Emotional" advertising seems so much more disruptive. I guess I just don't want my emotions fucked with for stupid commercial purposes like selling me a new shoe.

<comment><USER7> It looks like the "emotion" component was only part of the "pop-up", not so much the banner itself. It's only as disruptive if you activate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well since iAds can be made with html5, I'm pretty sure we'll soon see cookie- cutter templates that will make generic ads a breeze.

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope these ads can be made votable, like reddit ads. I'd very much like the ability to vote down obnoxious ads and banners. The voting information itself could be sold. This would help maintain the quality of the ads. Apple should also provide a way to email links to ads to friends.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I enjoyed the slide about interactivity (online) vs. emotion (tv) because Steve is really in a position to KNOW what he's talking about here:

Apple spends hundreds of millions on TV and I can't think of a more effective emotional TV campaign than the "there's an app for that" of late for iPhone.

This is another visionary product, IMO, and demands a singular platform - that's been one of the ongoing problems for CPM online is the breadth of formats - aggregators have done a good job standardizing some of the formats but nothing like this.</comment>


Ultrabooks are dead?  Then why are they outselling Apple's entire laptop line? - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/02/lets-take-another-look-ultrabook-numbers/

<comment><USER2> After cutting Ultrabook shipping forecasts by 50% for the year, the 4th quarter shipments are supposed to be larger than the sum of shipments in the first three quarters?

And in this one quarter alone, those shipments will exceed the sales of Apple's laptop line.

Using the numbers in the article (6 out of 12 million in Q4), that makes Utltrabook shipments about 2 million each in Qs 1-3.

Apple sells (not ships) abut 3 million laptops per quarter. That means Apple regularly sells 50% more laptops than the entire PC industry ships Ultrabooks.

Cherry picking that one quarter and conflating sales with shipments still can't make a compelling case for Ultrabooks.

So Ultrabook sales have been dismal and manufacturers are dumping inventory. That won't improve sales unless they slash their prices, which already suffer from razor thin margins.

I don't see the story. Comparing one company's sales to an industry's output (not sales) in one quarter of an otherwise dismal year is meaningless.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're analysis is a bit flawed, as well though.

[http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/...](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/10/Screen-Shot-2012-10-01-at-3.29.16-PM.png)

Q3 (actual) data should show near 1.0x coverage (eyball ~ 3.0)

Also, You're mixing apples and oranges (excuse the pun). The Apple data includes mature MacBook pro + MacBook Air. The non-Apple data is for a newly launched product that has steep QoQ growth ~100% per (regardless of level deltas). Normalized Q1 2013 (projected) is 2x covered. Even if its half-off, its 1.0x covered. which is 1.Nx covered for direct comparison to MBAs.

So, the main takeaway is that the MBA form factor is legit. The Author of this piece (he admits) just bought one, etc. I can't imaging lugging around a 4-5 lbs to regularly travel/leave the office. They are like the old 17incher. Like boat anchors, now =].

So, Intel called the pitch right (they knew what to expect). It remains to be seen if the can hit the ball, get on/and around the bases (ie, make a long- term business line). The Intel "branding" of ultrabook and tech specs, etc is sort of a side-show and is cool as insider-y gossip, but really missing the point.

Like the iPad, Apple created a form-factor that is better for many (most) specific uses. If you need a keyboard, to work on images, or other "real" uses tha require a "proper OS" while traveling, MBA is the winner. Only if you need gaming/video editing, complete image/work from the office, etc, must you bring a 2kgs of MBP. IMHO.

<comment><USER2> It's OK if my analysis is flawed because I'm not trolling for page hits. I did write that on my Air though.

<comment><AUTHOR> It doesn't matter why its flawed, its just worth thinking things through clearly. I'm always wondering how these articles are re-butted within 6 hours by another counterpoint. More likely than not, these are PR plants. I cant imagine who else would be sitting around on their ass waiting to write these stories. But what do I know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


99 Things You Can Do to Become a Better Software Tester - <AUTHOR> https://ministryoftesting.com/dojo/lessons/community-thoughts-99-things-you-can-do-to-become-a-better-software-tester-v2-0 <comment><USER2> There are some really interesting nuggets in here. I especially liked:

'Sit down next to someone and ask in your best curious 'I'm just interested and wanna learn' voice: 'whatya doing?''

Always best to do that whilst offering snacks or treats :D</comment>


Schrödinger's Firefox OS - <AUTHOR> http://elioqoshi.me/en/2016/01/schrodingers-firefox-os/ <comment><USER2> So um, early adopter, I have a Mozilla Flame as my daily phone.

Will it continue to receive (nightly) build updates to gaia and gecko plus security fixes as Firefox OS diversifies and matures?

<comment><USER3> My read of the article is that there is no more Firefox OS. So I doubt there will be any diversifying or maturing. I don't know what the new thing will be and apparently no one else knows either.

<comment><USER4> It is more like; Firefox OS will continue to exist but it isn't about smartphones any more, but about other kinds of devices like TVs, fridges and so on.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Github repo recommendation service - <AUTHOR> http://woolam.org/github-recommendation-service/

<comment><USER2> It looks like it's just returning my watched repos -- what type of recommendation algorithm is it running?

<comment><AUTHOR> It might service some of your watched repos because of data quality issues. It uses a very basic nearest neighbor shared item set model. I'm definitely planning on improving the quality of the results in the near future.

<comment><USER2> Try loading the data into Neo4j and running Gremlin on it (<https://github.com/tinkerpop/gremlin/wiki>).

Examples...

Ranked similarity search [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neo4j/tuoqDlq45ys/1g1G9nTzjh...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neo4j/tuoqDlq45ys/1g1G9nTzjhYJ)

Multi-Item Based Recommendation [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neo4j/XlGGdsSedVw/7pCPqghA84...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neo4j/XlGGdsSedVw/7pCPqghA84kJ)

Recommendation engine [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neo4j/_dnyanUSmtk/eDhJ6rjNCn...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/neo4j/_dnyanUSmtk/eDhJ6rjNCnUJ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Coincidentally, I'm building a github recommendation service as a SNA research project. You may be aware, but for those who are not, GitHub actually had a NetFlix-style recommendation contest in 2009.

<https://github.com/blog/466-the-2009-github-contest>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome. I didn't know about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Neat in concept, but mostly useless in that it recommended pretty much all projects that I have zero interest in (javascript/coffeescript stuff), which is odd considering I'm not watching any Javascript projects, or at least I don't think I am. It made a couple of shell recommendations, one for IE which I would never touch, one for Spark which I already have installed, and one for Gitflow. Gitflow seems neat though, so I guess one good recommendation might have been worth the rest of the noise?

</comment><comment><USER5> This is cool.</comment>


Lost Second Reel from Laurel and Hardy's "The Battle of the Century" Found - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/movies/comedys-sweet-weapon-the-cream-pie.html

<comment><USER2> Ah, the creamy non sequitur! If anyone was ever qualified to deliver the pie fight to end all pie fights, it was Laurel & Hardy.

In those days, they didn't have computers or anything for special effects & tricks. Everything had to be done for real in the studio. This art form has been lost since then, but I will always remember Laurel & Hardy.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pie R Two. I am so pumped to see this I could toss a pie or two right now.

<comment><USER4> The funniest bit has to be Stan boarding the delivery truck to hand pies to people so that they can continue the fight.

According to wiki, they used over 3000 pies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Too late for Maarten van Rooijen, he would have been psyched about this. Silence is golden.</comment>