Hacker Friendly Summer Retreat Locations - <AUTHOR>

hackernews, I need your advice.
The Olympics are coming to London and I predict a huge clusterfuck. To maintain my sanity I'm looking for somewhere that I can go for approx two weeks. From ~30th July to ~12th August.
I work at a start up so I can't just drop everything and go climb Everest.
* I need somewhere that has good / reliable internet.
* Somewhere I can get by knowing only English
* Similar timezone to the UK (a nice to have)
* Not have to worry about my laptop getting stolen
What I have:
* UK Passport
* £1000-2000 budget
My own research strongly points to Berlin, the rents are cheap, the co-working spaces are plentiful and the flight costs virtually nothing.
I've also considered Reykjavik as I've always wanted to visit Iceland but it is quite a bit more expensive. New York and SF are both viable options too, just that there is so much to do in NYC that I'll get distracted and I know if I go to SF I'll probably end up getting offered many jobs that I would find hard to turn down.
Have I missed anywhere? Any reasons why I shouldn't choose the places I mentioned? <comment><USER2> Iceland is a very good option, I live in Reykjavik and I think you should be able to find everything your looking for here.

* Iceland has reliable internet. * Everybody here knows how to speak English. * Same timezone as UK. * Very safe place so your laptop won't be stole.

The flights don't have to be to expansive if you book them in advance, it is cheap to stay in hostels here. You can work from cafes here since they all have internet connections or if you want I could perhaps assist you in finding a short term office space.

Just send me an email if I can assist you in any way.

regards, Haukur @ bungalo.is

<comment><AUTHOR> Haukur, thanks for your kind offer. I'm really tempted as Iceland is one of the few places in the world I really want to see but haven't done so yet. I'm wondering, what are the living costs, that's the part that concerns me about Iceland. The flights are reasonable but what can I expect to pay if I eat 3 meals out per day, some coffee and maybe some beers? I spent a day in Copenhagen recently working out of a coffee shop and it was too expensive to do for two weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> How about Guildford?

I'm being serious - fulfils all your requirements.

<comment><USER4> Guildford is not escaping the wrath of the Olympics. <http://www.guildford.gov.uk/london2012>

I think you best leave the country to be safe !

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed. 20 mins from Waterloo is certainly not safe</comment></comment></comment>


Deep learning beginner to expert: techniques from Fast.ai - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/ten-techniques-from-fast-ai/ <comment><USER2> "As Jeremy Howard points out, even academic papers often use softmax for multi-class classification, and I too have already seen it used incorrectly in blogs and papers during my short time studying DL."

AFAIK softmax should be used with mutli-class classification and sigmoid can be used with mutli-label classification.

<comment><USER3> I think the author meant multi-label.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice, but doesn't do the Fast.ai course justice. All of the 10 things mentioned are shown in the first 3 / 14 lessons.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fast.ai + Floydhub is something I'd be really interested in... but this appears to just be about the former?

<comment><USER6> Are you referring to using fast.ai library on FloydHub for you own project or going through the fast.ai course notebooks?

<comment><USER5> The former, mostly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is the page only blurry to me?

<comment><USER6> Were you on your phone when visiting the page?</comment></comment>


16 startup projects built over the weekend at Garage48 - <AUTHOR> http://garage48.org/blogger/list-of-projects-built-over-weekend-in-garage48-helsinki-2011

<comment><USER2> Garage48 is one of the best event formats I have seen and experienced. I wrote a first person post on the experience.

I have a business background, but also have a basic understanding what can be achieved with different languages. These events are definitely needed to spur interest towards creating interesting web applications (and startups).

[http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/01/18/last-weekends- experi...](http://www.arcticstartup.com/2011/01/18/last-weekends-experience- called-garage48)

</comment><comment><USER3> Blow the dust - Facebook | Twitter | Youtube Mobile game. Imagine gold miner going to a planet? Find nuggets, covered with layer of dust. Use power of your lungs to blow off the dust (via microphone of mobile phone). More interesting features might come (too fast, too slow). Lets figure out the mechanics, it's going to be a fun game.

Lol, gives me an idea for a similar "game"

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this an exact copy of the Startup Weekend concept ?

<comment><AUTHOR> More or less probably yes (or Launch48, or 24 Hour Business Camp, or many other similar programs). None of us organizers have been to any of other events, so hard to compare. We have set it up so it works well in our region. We're also looking to do 5-6 Garage48 events in Africa this year.

<comment><USER5> Do you know when and if that so called "Non-Profit" Garage48 would be coming up? I'd be happy to participate. However, I don't know anyone who is going to these events. Would this be limiting anything?

<comment><USER2> I personally believe a big part of the experience is to go to these events alone, without knowing anybody else. This is the best way to get the most out of them. You'll basically learn a lot about yourself and also make new friends with a varied skillset.

May come in handy when you're building your next startup, you never know.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


List of languages that compile to JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS <comment><USER2> AKA a list of languages people would rather write than JS.

<comment><USER3> A lot of them are newer versions or slightly modified versions of JS.

<comment><USER4> Which supports the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> a graph of languages that transpile to each other was posted on HN a couple months ago, and pairs great with this list:

[https://akr.am/languages/](https://akr.am/languages/)

discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17470161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17470161)

</comment><comment><USER6> JS is honestly just plain ugly and a pain to read. The same program I write in JS, I could write in C in 3/4 the time or python in 1/2 the time. Classes, this, functions, function factories, anonymous functions, etc. are counter intuitive and confusing.

<comment><USER7> I have 30+ years of experience writing C/C++. And I implement applications written in JS a lot faster than when using C/C++. A good developer can be productive in any programming language.

<comment><USER6> > A good developer can be productive in any programming language.

I agree. I am just more productive in C and Python for most things over JS.

However, the tools and language that you use matter. Brainfuck is turing complete, I could program a full game engine in it, but that would be a waste of time. The language that you use will make a difference in the time it takes to program something, and the most important part how maintainable it will be in the future. Javascript is some of the most unmaintainable code on the face of the planet, and that is coming from someone who has probably programmed more in JS than in any other programming language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it would be shorter to list languages that don't compile to JavaScript. I was not expecting to find Erlang or F# on there.

</comment><comment><USER9> After using ES6/7, I do not find most of them useful (unless you need strong types)

</comment><comment><USER10> I thought that TypeScript transpiles to JavaScript rather than compiles.

<comment><USER11> Transpile is just a word for compiling from one high-level language to another. It's still a compilation process, some people just don't like to call it compiling when it doesn't go to something like LLVM or x86.</comment></comment>


The Patient-Doctor Conversation That Matters Most - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/10/end_of_life_medical_decisions_atul_gawande_book_excerpt_on_no_risky_chances.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here, for those who are interested, is a link to Dr. Atul Gawande's new book, _Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End._

[http://www.amazon.com/Being-Mortal-Medicine-What- Matters/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Being-Mortal-Medicine-What- Matters/dp/0805095152/)</comment>


Stripe Billing is now available in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/en-GB/blog/billing-eu <comment><USER2> Awesome, great to see a great product continue to grow</comment>


Books I recommend to my software engineering students - <AUTHOR> http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/booksformystudents.html <comment><USER2> _Hacker 's Delight_ a zillion ways to do bit population count or over/underflow detection efficiently

 _Introduction to Algorithms_ MIT Press

 _Numerical Recipes_ algorithms for science

 _TAOCP_

 _SICP_

 _AOMP_

 _To Mock a Mockingbird_ combinators are good for you

 _Design Patterns_

 _First Principles of Interaction Design (Revised & Expanded)_

The Dragon book

 _Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management_

K&R C

 _Code Complete_

 _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_

 _Software Engineering at Google_

 _Site Reliability Engineering_

\-- Also, learn these, at least to a novice level: --

Crystal

Java

Clojure

Haskell

OCaml

Erlang

Elixir

Rust

C

x86 assembly

bash, JS, CSS, HTML, SQL, Python

and do Linux From Scratch & BLFS</comment>


How can archive.org release 2,500 free DOS browser games (Dune, Oregon Trail)? - <AUTHOR> The Internet Archive has released 2,400 MS-DOS games free to play in browser.
Write-up: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/01/05/you-can-now-play-nearly-2400-ms-dos-video-games-in-your-browser/
Link to games: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/v2
I wonder how they could do this?  The WP article does not mention copyright issues.  This includes premium titles of the time including Dune, Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, Wolfenstein, etc.  They are hosting the complete game to play right in the browser (see second link.) <comment><USER2> Maybe you've heard the expression, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"?

Being rigorous about permission-in-advance can result in an involved, costly process that often reaches dead-ends and unthinking default ass-covering "no"s.

On the other hand, being bold and then waiting for objections can achieve much more. And by the pragmatism of common-law, and the rough precedents of DMCA takedown procedures, it's plausibly legally defensible! Or at least in practice not too risky.

Most complainants don't want a legal battle, just a prompt fix-upon-request. And some may even be unofficially indifferent to non-profit reproduction, as long as they don't have to go on-record giving permission. In that way, they reserve the right to object at any arbitrary later date, without incurring any negotiation/legal overhead in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER3> Presumably they have copyright permissions. For example, see the work done by Jason Scott of archive.org with the author of Prince of Persia to track down the source, at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8) . But it's archive.org and they push the edge; in part because we don't know where that edge is.

<comment><USER4> Correct, it's an exemption. [https://archive.org/about/dmca.php](https://archive.org/about/dmca.php)

(originally submitted by user tosh)

<comment><USER5> The exemption is to the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, not to copyright protection itself. Those exemptions allow you to break DRM in certain circumstances -- they don't grant you any extra rights to copy/distribute/perform works you don't have rights to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> besides Prince of Persia, anybody knows of source code release for any of these games?

</comment><comment><USER7> Not all games have permission to be archived.

Nobody here on Hacker News or the Internet seems to care about copyright of old DOS Video Games and permission to download and play them. It is like they are being given free candy, and they enjoy it, even if technically it was stolen.

But there is a DMCA takedown page that copyright holders can request their games be taken down.

I figure some of the video game makers that have games on Steam and Gog.com will issue takedown requests.

Enjoy it while you can. The Underdogs did an DOS video game abandonware archive 10 years ago and had to take games down as well.

We are all into this playing old games on modern systems craze, so much that we don't really care about copyright and permissions anymore.

The Internet Archive is a non-profit and claims to use the library defense. The Pirate Bay once did this as well, but it didn't work.

Some games like Prince of Persia got released to the public so no permission problems there.

BTW some of the games are really porn, beware if you got your sons and daughters looking into the old DOS games.

<comment><USER3> A lot of the material on archive.org doesn't have permission to be archived. They did not seek out each copyright holder of GeoCities when they made their archive, available from [https://archive.org/web/geocities.php](https://archive.org/web/geocities.php) . Are you going to say that that was stolen? Or was it saved?

And, sorry to break this to you, but we never really cared about copyright and permissions in the first place. Look at the uproar over TRAC when Mooers couldn't get copyright for it at all, so tried to enforce trademark protection over it. Look at the Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists in the 1970s. Look at the sheer joy of people using the original Napster in 1999.

The games industry of the 1970s and early 1980s didn't even really pay attention to trademarks, which is how we ended up with the classic BASIC game "Star Trek".

<comment><USER7> I wrote some things, I had a few Geocities web pages, I worked on some DOS Games, I wrote some games in Commodore 64 BASIC, I helped make text files for a community college BBS in 1989. All of which got used without my permission. I never saw one penny for such things.

But I see how it works now, I don't own my own works, and they are free to be copied and put on display for others to use for free.

In the early 1970's and 1980's there was still a 'fair use' clause in copyright. For non-commercial use, for educational use, for parody/satire, etc. The DMCA changed that so after 1999 copyright law and IP law was more strict. That is why you could have a game in BASIC named Star Trek and not have Paramount care that you did. That is why there were several versions of the old BBS game Tradewars, originally written in BASIC for a TRS-80, and then converted to IBM BASICA, and then in Turbo Pascal, and then Tradewars 2002. Because all of that was done before the DMCA passed.

I can tell by the downvotes that the community here does not care about permission and encourages the copying and saving of older material as some sort of library.

Stuff I worked on as side projects way back in the day, appear to be part of Archive.org and other sites. Yet nobody cares.

Will the side projects people write today get copied and saved in the same way? Will all of the time we spend on working on side projects go to support some archive site?</comment></comment></comment>


Top Technologies to Learn in 2020 and Beyond - <AUTHOR> https://learnitfree.org/top-technologies-to-learn-in-2020/ <comment><USER2> Geekbait

<comment><USER3> Why would you say that?</comment></comment>


Eleventh Circuit Decision Largely Eliminates 4th Amendment Protection in E-Mail - <AUTHOR> http://volokh.com/2010/03/15/eleventh-circuit-decision-largely-eliminates-fourth-amendment-protection-in-e-mail/

<comment><USER2> The 11th circuit "has jurisdiction over federal cases originating in the states of Alabama, Florida and Georgia"( Source: <http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/about/index.php> ). This is quite a conservative area of USA so without getting too political, I'm not surprised at this decision.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thought-provoking stuff.. While the intent of the fourth amendment is obvious and noble, I wonder whether, given the accelerating pace of creation and processing of information, it still makes sense to rely on legislation to prevent privacy violations. How can there be any hope of enforcing such laws in the face of the increasing complexity of worldwide communications, where (as one of the commenters on the article points out) the routing of any given data is nondeterministic and temporary copies are made at every step? It seems to me that the law is hopelessly on the wrong side of technological evolution here (I would make a very similar argument regarding copyright law).

Looking at it from a different angle, perhaps (note a hint of devil's advocate here) we should be glad that modern cryptographic systems (enabled by the very tech that seemed to threaten privacy) offer the potential to make old- fashioned laws superfluous?

<comment><USER4> I'd say that legislation is more important than ever; privacy can now be violated in ways that were technically impossible 30 years ago. I agree that enforcing privacy laws is problematic, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, nor that it isn't worth trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like email encryption should be a pretty solvable problem tech-wise. Does anyone here actually regularly send and receive such mail? If all the emails saved on servers were encrypted, we wouldn't have this problem.

<comment><USER6> Tech-wise, it's a solved problem.

I sign all of my outgoing emails using Thawte (now Verisign) certificates. The problem with encryption is finding the other person's keys. I have yet to receive a signed email from someone else, so I cannot send encrypted messages.

It seems to be a problem primarily with critical mass and secondarily from implementation. Not enough people use signed/encrypted email to spur others to using it. Additionally, certs cost something. Even free certs cost effort in understanding the need for them and figuring out how to generate/download/install them. Then there is the whole problem with "trusted" certs...

Implementation wise, things are only a little better. Once the certs are installed, (desktop) mail clients handle the signing/encrypting pretty well. But I can't sign messages from a webmail client or from my phone.

<comment><USER7> Wrong problem. The issue here is not the sending of the message, but the storage of the message.

You need your ISP to store the emails encrypted even if they were received in the clear.</comment></comment></comment>


Looking back on the Great Leap Forward - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/frank-dik%C3%B6tter/looking-back-great-leap-forward <comment><USER2> I like the part where they killed all the sparrows and triggered huge famines when insects started devouring crops unchecked.

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

<comment><USER3> Yes, the PRC has been run so incompetently by the standing committee of the Politburo of the CPC it has become by some measures the largest economy in the world.

How about when they were so eager to increase production that they failed to prevent wind erosion, causing massive crop failure, starvation, and I guess that means its OK to call it a genocide? Oh yaa, that was in the USA, 19 years before this happened. Where are the article on the Dust Bowl _GENOCIDE_ ? ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl) )

<comment><USER4> Yes, since Mao's death and the complete reversal of his economic policies and embracing of capitalism by Deng Xiaoping, whom Mao disgraced for his unorthodoxy, the economy of China has rapidly developed. There is a reason this article lays the blame for the senseless waste of life at Mao's feet and not the CCP leadership as a whole.

Comparing the Dust Bowl to the Great Leap Forward is... questionable. How many people died due to the Dust Bowl? Did the US government of the time respond to it by doubling down on an absurd economic plan in the furtherance of a political ideology?

<comment><USER3> > embracing of capitalism

Zhao Ziyang embraced capitalism, and he was arrested after the June 4th incident. Capitalism run by the communist party of China?

Also, Mao and Zhou Enlai are who made peace with the USA, not Deng Xiaoping.

> Deng Xiaoping, whom Mao disgraced for his unorthodoxy

Mao and Deng had a falling out in the mid to late 1960s, but Mao empowered Deng again in 1974.

Deng Xiaoping called himself a communist, not a capitalist. He did say it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice. If China was a capitalist system, it would be more like Japan or South Korea or the US or Western Europe.

Deng said he was proceeding in a dialectic manner economically. If you don't know what that means, then you don't know what communism is, and you wouldn't be able to tell if Deng was a communist or not. Actually Mao was accused by people to his left of abandoning communism due to his interpretation of the theory of productive forces (as well as the role of peasantry and proletariat etc.) Deng just expanded on that.

<comment><USER4> The reason Deng Xiaoping had to use a coy phrase about cats to avoid admitting to his policies running counter to communism is that communism is at the core of the Party's identity and history, and that abandoning it openly would seriously undermine their legitimacy. The 'dialectical' approach to communism has meant slowly discarding almost everything which makes an economy communist. The "socialist market economy" allows private ownership, even of means of production and allows the private accumulation of capital. If you want to argue that it's actually communist because the transition was slow and the leadership still claims to be communist with a straight face, I'm not going to bother rebutting that.

The reason China's system is not more like the countries you listed is that it is autocratic, and the reason Zhao Ziyang was arrested was his excessive and open sympathy for a people's democratic movement.

<comment><USER5> > The 'dialectical' approach to communism has meant slowly discarding almost > everything which makes an economy communist.

The dialectical approach is the traditional approach, invented by Marx and added to by Engels and others, which they used to explain pretty much everything. It's not something invented by Deng Xaioping. It is in fact the essence of Marx's philosophy.

In a nutshell, the dialectic is an explanation for the evolution of society that looks at the systems by which society produces what it needs, i.e. "modes of production," and how contradictions in these modes of production are resolved through the creation of new modes. Hegel used the dialectical framework to describe the evolution of ideas, but Marx turned it upside down and argued that ideas were a consequence of the material conditions of life, the basis of which is the mode of production.

The classic example of Marx's dialectical thinking is his analysis in _The Communist Manifesto_ that capitalism "produced its own gravediggers," the industrial proletariat. The proletariat would overthrow capitalism, but existed _because of_ capitalism. The contradictions in the capitalist system caused the creation of an entire class of people which would eventually overthrow it and create a socialist society, and then a communist society. In other words, communism could never exist without capitalism having existed first, because the social class which would create communism would not have existed unless capitalism had created it.

Marx, followed by others including Lenin and Stalin, insisted that the full development of the productive forces was a necessary precursor to communism. He elaborated on this in the _Critique of the Gotha Program_ , in which he advocated a different distribution of resources than in a full communist society -- some people would get more than others, according to their contribution to society rather than their need. At a later time, the productive forces would be developed to the point that they could provide enough wealth to distribute to everyone according to need, regardless of their contribution to society. (It's not unlike the arguments of some basic income proponents -- automation (productive forces) has created a society in which there is enough wealth to spread around to everyone, regardless of whether or not they have jobs.)

Similarly, the Soviet Union initially instructed the Chinese Communist Party to cooperate with the KMT in the 1920s, because they believed that full development of productive forces, under a capitalist regime, was a necessary precursor to communism. Not helpful, or merely good to have, but _necessary_ according to Marx's dialectical philosophy.

The reason Marxism and Maoism are distinguished from each other is that Mao rejected that view, which was originally formulated by Marx, and advocated that communism be built by rural peasants rather than the industrial proletariat. Deng's ideology was closer to orthodox Marxism than Mao's was, in many ways. Deng argued that Mao tried to move too fast and skip the stages of social evolution that were necessary preconditions for communism, namely a thriving capitalist economy. If you want to redistribute wealth, you have to create it first. Deng argued that a market economy was the best way to do that, and that some people would get rich, but that's acceptable because it could be sorted out later when the productive forces were sufficient to support a true communist distribution of wealth. This is very similar to the views Marx expressed in _Gotha_ , but more accepting of private property -- as long as it remains useful.

Maybe Deng was disingenuous and tried to sneak capitalism in through the back door, or maybe he really did believe what he said. But you can't dismiss his views as being non-Marxist ipso facto, because they are clearly derived from Marx's theory of history and expressed via Marxist concepts.

<comment><USER6> This is probably the best post I've ever read on HN. Thank you for making it. Deng's leadership, as you note, is so canonically, textbook Marxist that arguments to the contrary sort of make me blink and go "what?".

Your post reminded me that the thing _nearly everybody forgets_ (and I'm totally being generous when saying "forgets", because I'm convinced most critics of Marxism--and I consider myself a partial one--have never read Marx) is that Marx considered capitalism, in its state as, you note, as a necessary precursor, to be a _good thing_. Capitalism, for its many, many, many faults, is a damned sight better for your average person than feudalism is. (This is a reason why, despite my own beefs with capitalism and even mixed economies, I will hold up pitchforks and torches when the anarcho-capitalists come to town, because anarcho-capitalism is functionally either wishcasting nonsense or feudalism in a funny hat--no intermediate stage.)

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure Marx would have agreed that capitalism was good, but rather that it was necessary for society to pass through a capitalist phase in order to get to the really good part, communism.

The sad thing is, most people who graduated high school in countries other than the United States know this stuff. Considering the impact these ideas have had on the world, they are worth learning about. I had to explain this stuff to a lot of students when I was in academia, except the foreign students.

<comment><USER6> To be clear, I mean "good" in a relative sense. I mean--like, capitalism, to Marx, is if not a _strict_ positive development, it's real, real close to that relative to the alternatives at the time Marx was writing.

Also, yes, that this is obvious to people who didn't have a K-12 education in the United States is...troubling. But so are a lot of things about K-12.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mao is quite possibly the most murderous, irrational dictator of all time. The communists party of China has more blood on their hands than the German Nazi party.

<comment><USER8> Estimates of Stalin's body count range from 14 million to 70 million, so he's at least a close second. And Pol Pot might hold the record for rate of mass killing, wiping out over 2 million people in six weeks.

Some people scoff when I ridicule them for saying "Communism has never been tried." No, the _communists_ have never been tried - in a court of law.

<comment><USER9> Honestly, the sort of True Believer who classifies Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba, etc, as all "true Scotsman" communism isn't worth talking to about communism anyway.

Rare is the person who is willing to describe some randomly selected totalitarian dictatorship as a "capitalist" regime.

<comment><USER10> That's because capitalism isn't a form of government. It's an economic system. Communism is both a form of government and an economic system (although there is variance in the form of the economic aspect of it).

<comment><USER11> If you look at where the actual political power lies in (say) the United States, it's clear that capitalism is both a form of government and an economic system too.

<comment><USER12> Until we create a form of government where money and politics can't mix, a country's economic system and form of government will always be complementary.

<comment><USER13> Money is not required for an economic system; furthermore, Communism is by definition moneyless.

<comment><USER12> My point stands. It doesn't matter if you're bribing someone with seashells or hundred dollar bills: it's still a bribe.

Corruption can exist in any form of government. Just because a form of government might be moneyless doesn't mean that you can't exert influence with power or wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most of my information on China comes from my father who was born in China, and was very well studied in Chinese history, although he left when he was young because of the famines during the Great Leap Forward. The part of history that he emphasized to me, was that in spite of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution killing tens of millions of people, communism was still much better than what came before. There was _constant_ famine before communism.

I'm not so well versed in Chinese history myself, but I believe this narrative. One thing that confirms this is a graph of China's population. It shoots up after 1950, and you can't really identify either of these major catastrophes by looking at a population graph. The obvious explanation is the population shot up because people had enough to eat, notwithstanding these two discrete events.

Would Chiang Kai-shek have done better? The Guomindang certainly wanted to institute land reforms that would have benefited peasants (the vast majority of Chinese) without the central control of communism. On the other hand, it's not clear that the Guomindang would have had the power to actually implement these policies.

<comment><USER15> It's certainly true that China massively changed its land use policy following the PRC's formation. What I think is most interesting to consider, though, is whether the collectivization process had the same catalyzing action as enclosure in pre-industrial Britain. In both cases villages were pushed from a subsistence-driven existence towards top-down control, trade, and an uprooting of labor that could subsequently move to cities and work in factories. China's development into a modern industrial country may well have been premised on the massive application of violence of the early PRC era.

This prompted me to Google for "enclosure vs collectivization" which brought up this interesting-looking article on the topic [0].

[0] [http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm](http://praxeology.net/SEK3-AQ-3.htm)

<comment><USER16> China has far less arable land per capita than most large countries.[1] There's not much slack for major screwups in agriculture. This has been a major driving factor in China's history. China had six famines in the 20th century, and a long history of them before that. The Great Leap Forward was the last and worst one.

[1] [http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And the survivors still put portraits of him in their living rooms.

<comment><USER18> This is an interesting point. My wife is Chinese and she explained this to me: people like her grandfather are thankful for Mao while they acknowledge his failures. The reason is simple: before Mao there was a long period of Chaos, and before that the Qing dynasty was an extremely oppressive government. Without going into too many details, the peasants were being screwed for hundreds of years. Because of Mao's efforts China became a unified country. Sure, there were decades of terror and famine the severity of which are astonishing, but they were relatively brief historicaly speaking and the people were just happy that China was "theirs". Moreover, the government was stable enough that the people who came after Mao were able to improve things, which didn't always happen historically.

It's not a great comparison but a similar thing happened with the Ming dynasty. If I recall correctly, the Ming emperor was terribly brutal, but people were so thankful that it wasn't the mongolians that they didn't care.

<comment><USER19> In a broader Chinese context it makes some sense to see the suffering and rebellions of the late Ming dynasty and perhaps until Deng Xiaoping as the 'usual' chaos of a dynastic transition.

<comment><USER20> Presumably you mean the late Qing here?

<comment><USER19> I do, thanks for correcting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > 'He who does not work shall not eat.'

Funny that I still hear and read people who see things that way in the modern west: "if you don't contribute, you deserve nothing from society". Welfare still seems to be taboo for some voters.

I prefer to view the Great Leap Forward as a tragedy, rather than a genocide or mao murdering people like it's a plain open intent. I mean if I align myself with the definition of genocide and wikipedia's article, am I so wrong? To me, the moment you starts saying "this was bad, this was worse", you take sides, and I don't think it's objective enough when you deal with a country that is so far away from the west.

I think chinese leaders were eager to not see their oldest civilization falter (at least it was their political belief), so they chose to make huge sacrifices, meaning cracking down on remote rural places that were anti state.

Pointing fingers and comparing the number of people dying with the soviets or hitler, and dismissing the context seems a little easy, and will be perceived as taking sides.

</comment><comment><USER22> The book "Wild Swans" (written a good while ago) gives a very good insight into what it was like for a young person to grow up in this madhouse.

<comment><USER23> Good recommendation.

A few more books worth reading:

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

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

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/118690.This_Kind_of_War](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/118690.This_Kind_of_War)

It may not be possible to fully understand China's 20th century struggles, but it's a fascinating subject.

<comment><USER24> If we're recommending books, there's "Music, Food and Love: A Memoir" by Guo Yue (whose name means "Little leap forward"). He grew up in the hutongs of Beijing, when food and traditional music were pretty much the only subjects you could talk about freely, he therefore became a musician and chef.

In fact he requested the position of flautist when he was forced to join the Red Army, a remarkable request, only more remarkable because they made the position for him.

Every chapter of his life is defined by the smells and flavours of the food at that time, and so each chapter ends with those recipies so you can experience it yourself.

He now owns a restaurant in London where he hosts 16 course banquets of his food, serenading the diners with his flute music.

He's a lovely guy and his memoir, and food is the closest I'll ever get to having a real _feel_ for that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I found most horror stories retold here are very familiar to what I heard throughout the school years way back in Taiwan.

<comment><USER26> And now you're hearing them from another member of the same team in the Cold War.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Half of China population is under 30 and only known the good times of plenty. The original revolution, the cultural revolution,,etc are as about remote as the US revolutionary war and civil war to US citizens.

<comment><USER28> More recently applicable, racial segregation and women's rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> the 'great leap forward' was a result of the policy of forcing all the peasants into big collective farms (aka collectivization); it has been a tragedy in all former communist countries that adopted this policy (Poland didn't adopt it). In the Soviet Union it led to the famine of 1932-1933; this one killed seven millions.

Now the collective farms were supposed to press money out of agriculture, money that was needed for developing heavy industry; they did that, but it cost millions of lives, In China they also had strange notions of backyard steel furnaces in agricultural communes and the four pests campaign. In Russia they had the great terror - but that came later than collectivization.</comment>


Show HN: Fieldbook – Create a database as easily as a spreadsheet - <AUTHOR> https://fieldbook.com/?bc=HACKNEWS <comment><USER2> Greetings fellow devs! I'm the CTO of Fieldbook, happy to talk about anything. We use a node backend stack, with mongodb, and a backbone based front end. We use socketio for realtime and rabbit for some back end messaging.

I'm also one of the authors of RecordStream which has been discussed on here before ([https://github.com/benbernard/RecordStream](https://github.com/benbernard/RecordStream)). I see Fieldbook as an extension of RecordStream but for the web instead of JSON records on the command line.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in the beta, and the product is actually pretty useful. I've never been a fan of complicated spreadsheets. Plus, spreadsheets are 2-dimensional, in a sense. Fieldbook gets rid of several such limitations. You are free to do what you want with your data without having to write SQL queries or macros. The interface also is cleverly intuitive.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! We've tried to do a bunch of iteration on user experience, obviously more to do. Fast iteration and unit/automated tests have been key to being able to build this product.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi all – We're inviting the HN community to join our private beta today. Use the link above to skip the waitlist and get instant access.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well, I had a hard time trying to get the feel of linking sheets. In the video it looks easier.

I don't know how it could be improved, but maybe it will be too difficult for common people (not that I am smarter than common people, I am dumb, if you could see the mess I did in my sheets here right now).

<comment><USER2> Sorry it didn't make sense. Definitely something we need to iterate more on. If you want some specific help, we are definitely happy to provide us. We have an intercom/message us chat system that we love to help users with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Awesome tool. Thank you for advancing the fight against the single- purpose idiot CRUD app that sells for a lot of money.

If it could run locally and sync data in and out of Excel spreadsheets it would be a miracle, but since it can't it is only good.</comment>


Show HN: MVP Website – Update/Maintain Only Using Stored Procedures - <AUTHOR> https://aggregatethreat.net <comment><USER2> It sounds technically interesting. Is there a writeup of the mechanism?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can get an idea from my stored procedure inventory below. This was a perfect way to rollout this mvp without having to spend several hundred hours building the web-based infrastructure to do same thing.

EXEC dbo.InsertNews

'Remote Work Success Story Going to Collapse San Francisco Commercial Real Estate',

'[https://youtu.be/nTg5cw1YeAs?t=290'](https://youtu.be/nTg5cw1YeAs?t=290'),

'Economic',

'video'

EXEC dbo.UpdateTitle 1,'HVAC Can Spread Coronavirus'

EXEC dbo.UpdateMediaID 694,'article'

EXEC dbo.UpdateCategory 489,'crime'

EXEC dbo.UpdateLink 529,'[https://wset.com/news/coronavirus/hobby-lobby- closes-all-sto...](https://wset.com/news/coronavirus/hobby-lobby-closes-all- stores-furloughs-nearly-all-employees')

EXEC dbo.DeleteNews 647

EXEC dbo.Pin 695

EXEC dbo.UnPin 591</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I do as a forever alone software engineer? - <AUTHOR> I don't really know how to form any sort of relationship with a girl. I've tried dating sites with little luck, and even when I meet someone I have trouble forming any sort of connection. I desperately long for some sort of emotional intimacy with someone. I feel existentially lonely, and sometimes I can't even function and get trapped in depression.<p>I've tried meditation, some therapy, and other things, but I never seem to go beyond this. I've tried to just focus on programming and ignore my other troubles, but that only works for a time. How can I move beyond this? <comment><USER2> This was a process I started about 10 years ago but I'm married with two kids so I'd say it was successful.

I decided that if I were going to attract someone I had to be comfortable with myself. I did an honest appraisal and there were some things I didn't like, so I focused on myself for a while. I lost weight, started dressing better, and went out to more meetups, parties, etc. At first I used alcohol to help me loosen up and I practiced talking to people. It was difficult at first but I learned how to hold longer and more interesting conversations and without relying on booze or any other crutches.

I also practiced "fake it until you make it". I recited to myself all the awesome things about me and started taking pride in who I was, and in my newfound personal growth.

I expressly forbade myself from attempting to get a girl's phone number or have any kind of relationship, even just one time sex. With all the pressure off I found it easier and easier to not care what other people thought and just be myself. I would go out and talk to anyone in any situation and leave them with a smile. Every interaction was a learning opportunity.

The more confident I became the more people wanted to be my friend and hang around me. I made several women friends and one of them introduced me to my wife.

It seems like a cliche but it is true: the more you desperate you are to have a relationship the less likely anyone will want to have one with you. When you learn how to accept yourself and be OK with being alone that confidence is attractive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Volunteer. Volunteer. Volunteer.

Church, homeless shelter, camp counselor, big brother program, soccer, etc. I signed up and helped out wherever I could. WHY? Because I suspected that I'd be more likely to find a partner who wasn't into themselves.

If you can qualify your potential partner as someone who is willing to sacrifice and able to love others, that is a good signal that they are willing to humble themselves to love you. And let me say, you'll need it. For a relationship to survive it will take sacrifice, humbleness, and commitment. Because life dishes out some serious bullshit.

When my brother suddenly passed away I'd have easily fallen into drugs. I didn't really want to live because my depression was so deep. My wife stuck it out with me. She'd never admit it, but she knows that she is the one for me. Hands down. And she didn't have to dominate me. She loved me when I hated myself. She said I was valuable when I couldn't find any. I love her so much for that.

So my advice? Step outside yourself and volunteer. And don't go seeking a partner. Just go and love other people. Love those who are weaker than you. Honor those who are needy and easily exploited. When you do that, people will know. They'll see.

I can't promise a relationship (though those who have followed my advice tend to find one) but I can promise that if you approach it honestly, you will no longer feel alone. And that at least will be a start to solving your loneliness problem.

Best of luck!

<comment><USER4> Agreed 100%. Another place to consider is soup kitchens. But as jfolkins points out volunteering your time to help others is very beneficial personally and that makes you more attractive to others. The fact that you're sacrificing your own personal time to help others is very attractive to perspective partners. Not only that, but the dividends you personally collect from helping others will benefit you immensely socially regardless of if it directly delivers a life partner.

First off, you'll realise despite your less than ideal situation that you have a life that's demonstrably better than the people you're helping. Not in a "I'm better than you" way but in a "I've got a lot to be thankful for" way. Not having a partner pales in comparison to struggling for food and shelter. This will give you more perspective on your own life and allow you to more honestly recognise how good you have things.

The truth is that with a more positive view on your own life you will be more attractive to others from both a friendship and relationship perspective. It's not a light switch situation, you won't wake up tomorrow and be a different person after volunteering once. But given time a life with volunteering with become your new normal. If you didn't have new friends and possibly a perspective romantic interest by then I'd be surprised. Still, give it time.

And in the end, even if you don't find a partner out of it you can hold your head high as you've helped a lot of people in the process. But in all honesty, I suspect that you'll find the changes in you that are derived from regularly helping those less fortunate than you will in fact make you a more attractive perspective partner to the opposite sex.

Good luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm exactly in your situation.

I was overweight so I hit the gym properly (cardio three times a week with a clear goal and milestones, changed my diet, sleep, habits, etc.) and lost nearly fifty pounds.

I changed my wardrobe completely because a. I had lost so much weight that almost everything I had was too loose and b. I wanted to refresh my "nerdy" wardrobe.

I put myself out there. I signed up and attended multiple meetups, including some specifically related to meeting potential romantic partners (casual gatherings, setup lunches, etc.) I tried to be social and attended more events outside my comfort zone where I would be near other people.

I tried OKCupid and Tinder. I created genuine, honest, complete profiles. I even had my photos professionally taken specifically for social networking/dating purposes (they are not the standard business portraits). I sent short, to-the-point messages to people I genuinely thought would be good potential matches.

I did all of this but none of it has worked. I'm lonelier than ever. At this point I've put more time and effort in this endeavor than anything else in my life, except I have absolutely nothing to show for it other than my loneliness.

From one forever-alone programmer to another: I sympathize, brother. There is nothing I understand in life more than this feeling. Hang in there, friend. I don't know if anything is going change for either one of us, but if knowing that you aren't the only one in this situations helps in the slightest, I hope this is helpful.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1) Put yourself out there. Get involved in activities you care about and try to meet people. Network through your friends and family. Take a chance and ask potential partners out. You will never get anywhere if you don't try.

2) Build friendships before looking for a relationship. It's generally much easier to find friends than a partner. A relationship isn't the solution to loneliness -- friends are.

3) Be someone people want to date. Find some interesting hobbies. Identify your flaws and work on fixing them.

4) Set realistic expectations. Your mental idea of what it will be like to have a steady partner is a lot different than what it's really like, so don't filter out potential partners too soon. Give things a change to develop.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think first off you need to accept where you are, it is completely fine to be where you are. You are not inherently deficient in any way. If you can be okay with this, others can too. Now, this means practicing awareness of your own behavior and thought and just notice when you start doing something that is driven by some kind of underlying shame that you are not 'enough' in some way (and also just the basic need to be loved). If you can notice it happening you can also practice making a choice of letting it go.

Say you're in a situation where people are talking about something you are completely inexperienced in. Many a nerd (myself included) will have kind of like a knee-jerk reaction and either bring up learned information about said area and try to "win" by knowing the most, feel a sense of inadequacy which makes you put up a front of "fake it til you make it". If you notice this, you can just give up this fight of trying to "be more" than you are. Be open, say you have to experience, ask what others experience is, use your strength of being naturally inquiring and curious! (Also just rejoice in how liberating it is to not try and uphold a fantasy image).

Once you get going with this more and more situations will present themselves where you suddenly notice that you're not letting yourself be. They can be anything for old hiccups to judging others. Each one is a victory and soon you will start feeling free, free to engage in random social encounters because you actually don't have anything to loose, you don't have to protect a fragile sense of self from being exposed as the fake that it was. This is how I learnt to be open to life in the for me newfound sense of the saying. There's a lot of good books on this if it is something that interests you. If it isn't you shouldn't read them :D

Now, all this is from my experience, and I don't really know you. I've just assembled my own prototype version of your personality from friends who've experienced similar situations.

Also: Once you go into a relationship, don't do it as a project to win. Make sure to be alert towards your own feelings.

</comment><comment><USER8> There's the old saying - boxing matches are won in the gym, not the ring.

You'll have to work on understanding other people and their needs, and make yourself have the attributes that make a good partner.

There is something of a chicken and egg here. Before I had a girlfriend, I understood girls poorly. Now I think I'm not so bad. From being with my girlfriend so long, I might have an easier time talking to girls now than guys. It's really just a learning curve.

The thing to do would be to learn without the pressure, ie non-dating relationships like female friends or family. They'd be able to answer you better than HN!

</comment><comment><USER9> You can try online sites but don't expect much from it. It is a race to the bottom (best looking guy wins).

It is harder to change personality but easier to change your look like hair style, how to dress etc. These things shouldn't matter much but they do matter for first impressions.

You need to to appear confident. You need to not afraid of rejections. Just ask girls out.

Travel might help too.

Also, If you are white and American, it is so easy to get girls to be interested in you in other parts of the world like Asia.(hate to admit it.but it is true) You don't even need to try that much.

<comment><USER10> Agree with improving first impressions. Being in decent shape + clean haircut + clean dress + smelling clean are very important. Those things are universally recommended.

Besides those things, read a lot of books / watch Youtube videos on attracting women. Some are obnoxious and border on misogyny, but even those materials have teaching points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you're depressed, worry about yourself first and foremost. In other words, you don't need a partner to be "happy" (i.e. not depressed), believe me.

Make sure your basic needs are taken care of:

\- In general: Stay busy.

\- Socialize (this could mean dating, hobbies, sports, etc.)

\- Exercise (you'll feel better physically, and more confident)

\- Get enough good sleep

\- Consider therapy (really!) if the depression is incessant

All that said, here are some actionable things that might help you meet someone:

Pick up a sport/outdoor hobby. Go with a friend or two. Make more friends.

Try OKCupid. YMMV, but the ability to go into great detail has lead me to way fewer "false positives" than some other more popular, somewhat more superficial alternatives...

Finally, go on more dates.

No, even more dates. Go on one a week, if you can. It might sound crazy (or impossible), but it'll help, I promise.

Make the most of it; you'll learn more about what you actually want from a partner, and if you're friendly and positive you'll probably enjoy the socializing even if things don't work out, romantically.

As far as "how to act around women"; just be yourself. Be open about what you're looking for and how you feel about dating. Sure, some people might be put off by this, but the sort of person you want to attract will appreciate your honesty and you'll be able to connect a lot more easily if all your cards are on the table.

It'll be like night and day when you _do_ connect with someone. When this happens, don't panic: just say how you feel. You wont scare away anyone who feels remotely the same.

</comment><comment><USER12> Forget girls and focus on building basic social skills. Join a club or something. Like any other skill you will suck at it at first and then get better with learning and practice. Being introverted doesn't mean you're incapable of interacting with other people, it just means you have to push yourself to get good at it.

</comment><comment><USER13> I recommend one dating coach, Doc Love [0]. Read a few of his articles, listen to a few podcasts (episode 12 is a radio interview and great introduction to his approach [1]), and listen to this week's radio show on Wednesday/Thursday (depending on your timezone). Call in if you have a specific question.

[0] [http://doclove.com](http://doclove.com)

[1] [http://www.doclove.com/2016/07/02/dwp-012-doc-on-the- outlaw-...](http://www.doclove.com/2016/07/02/dwp-012-doc-on-the-outlaw-dave- show-an-intro-to-his-principles-why-to-never-accept-a-maybe-date/)

Then think and decide for yourself if the way he speaks makes sense.

Also, the way you describe your situation is full of vagueness that makes it hard to give specific advice. This might also be revealing of a lack of clarity in your thinking. You might benefit from improving that. E.g. "trouble forming any sort of connection" \-- _any_ sort? You could slap a girl's butt, and there you go, instant connection right there.

But what you probably mean by 'connection' is mutual interest. So you like her, and she likes you. First, if you don't like her, then who cares? There's no problem for you to resolve here. You move on to the next one.

So the real problem is HER (lack of) interest in you. The problem of getting a girl to like you. Are you a likeable guy? Work on that. Two overlapping aspects to work on:

1\. cultivating virtues that women find attractive 2\. your sales pitch, your presentation, and getting yourself out there

Nothing worthwhile is easy.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not to make light of your individual plight, but it's the new normal for the world:

"TOKYO — A survey conducted by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research revealed that 61.4% of single men aged 18-34 do not have a girlfriend and that 49% of single women in the same age range do not have a boyfriend."

50% of women under 34 in the US are single now. Half of them have never married and the other half are divorced. Younger milles don't even think of dating - you just go to tinder and there's nothing tender about it.

When you develop, you have a plan and strategy. You have to learn new languages and tools. Social, physical and mental self-improvement require the same. Anybody who is trying is going to have a leg-up on the competition.

Take a language class at the local CC, travel. Volunteer as a docent at the Symphony. I have a teenage relative who couldn't function outside of a tinder hookup. He went to Europe alone for a month this summer stayed in hostels. He met scads of people, made int'l friends and is far more confident in himself now.

<comment><USER15> "49% of single women"

This means single as in marital status. I'm guessing a lot of women are married by age 34. Just being pedantic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> 1\. I'm a single guy in late 20s. 2\. I don't get out much. 3\. Always focused on work. 4\. On computer all the time day and night more than 12hrs every day. 5\. I went through clinical depression in the past, I don't feel depressed anymore but sometimes get lonely. 6\. Tried online dating sites, but never made any connections. 7\. Not very social, I'm quiet, and am an introvert.

Things that keep me going: 1\. Family. 2\. Occasional get-together with old friends. 3\. Science and technology and the fact that I exist and can experience the things that I can feel with my physical senses. 4\. Hiking and hobbies that require physical activity. 5\. I'm not religious, but sometimes visiting local churches to genuinely get to know new people helps too.

Something that I should look into: Fashion. Skinny jeans LOL. cool socks and hair styling. Putting myself out there where there are girls.

</comment><comment><USER17> I find that my social skills come and go with practice. If I spend long days or weeks programming then the skills get rusty and I find it difficult to interact with people. Maybe trying getting out there and spending time with people (at a sports club/meet up/board games, whatever you enjoy). Read some novels (there was a study that suggested humans learn social skills from reading about human interactions in books). I'm not suggesting you're not sociable already, just that forming a connection might be easier if you feel confident socialising generally. Connections with others are based on honesty, so make sure you're yourself. Also...remember to love yourself! Good luck :)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm at my early 30s, and I finally had a relationship this year. but after few months in this relationship, I started to miss "lonely" days. my altitude now is rather being alone than being in an imperfect relationship. I listed all things made me happy and I care most, including understanding new computer science theory, being able to draw and play instruments or starting a company. being alone lets me focus on these things and polish myself.

I start to think that relationship might not be an necessity of life. I also don't have the incentive to have kids.

<comment><AUTHOR> So you just have shitty relationship? If you had a better relationship would it be different? The idea is not find a relationship at all costs, but to find a good relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You should lobby hard for more even gender balances in the workplace. Publish blog posts, send out tweets, talk about it at the pub, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> Learn how to sail.

* It is generally impossible to sail a boat "single-handed" (alone), you always need a crew, so sailors are forced to socialize. People who own sailboats are perpetually trying to find people who will help crew a boat with them, so they are always willing to make new friends.

* Crewing on a sailboat (especially during a race) teaches you how to work in a team, how to follow orders from people, how to be coachable, etc. This helps build social skills.

* Sailing puts people together face-to-face for several hours, there is nowhere to leave, everyone can't be staring into their phones (since they all have a job to do), and you might not even have a cell phone signal. This makes it easy to socialize and make new friends.

* Sailing gives you something in common with others to talk about, which helps build relationships and make friends. Sailors are very passionate about sailing, sailing is a very involved sport, and sailors love to talk for hours about all aspects of sailing. So when you are with fellow sailors, you always have something to talk about and stories to share, that are completely unrelated to your work life.

* Sailing is a highly knowledge-based activity. You have to know how to tie different types of knots, you have to learn a whole vocabulary of sailing terms, you have to know how to maintain an engine, how to read nautical maps and navigate, how to operate on analog and digital radio and sattelite communications (HAM radio can be subset hobby of sailing), how aerodynamics work (lift/drag on sails), how weather patterns work, how the "rules of the road" work on the water, how to dock and moor a boat, how to do various kinds of emergency "MacGyver" repairs on a boat while on the water, you have to know about all the different kinds of sailboats, sails and rigs, you need to know safety, surival and rescue skills, how to plan and provision for a long trip, you have know the rules of racing and different racing tactics, you can learn about celestial navigation (how to navigate using the stars), you learn about different islands and destinations where people go to sail, you can learn about all kinds of software that is used for competitive sailing (to plan optimal routes based on real-time wind patterns), you can learn about naval architecture (how boats are designed), you can build your own boat, you can learn how to repair and make sails, you can learn about state-of-the-art computational fluid dynamics designs for sails and vessels, you can read about the history of sailing, you can follow different competitive sailing sport events (America's Cup, Fastnet, Olympics, etc), you can learn about different building materials used in boats (wood, fiber class, carbon fiber, etc), you can learn how to cook in a galley, how to climb a mast, you can pursue sailing "fashions" (what to wear to look good while sailing), etc. It is really a world and a culture unto itself.

* You will literally be part of a social club. Sailing clubs hold all kinds of social events. It is highly entertaining, everyone is friendly and willing to make friends - much more so than meeting strangers at a bar or a nightclub.

* You get to be out in nature when you are sailing. You get to see beautiful sights of nature and city skylines, that most people do not experience. Sailboats are powered by the wind, which means that they are very quiet (no noisy engine running), so it is a very serene experience and helps you relax and connect with nature. You might sail the oceans under the night sky where you can see the spectacular show of stars in the night sky.

* A lot of people like to "party" on sailboats, when they are docked for the day. It's much better than the bar or nightclub.

* Sailboats are vehicles. That means you can go on trips with them. That could be a trip a few hours away, to another port in your locality, or it could be crossing oceans and sailing through exotic islands that most people never get to visit. Experiencing this with others can build lifelong friendships.

* Sailing is for people of all ages and genders. There are plenty of women who love to sail. Some of them like to ride on boats and wear bikinis ... When you are young, you might meet a girl this way. If you have children, you can take them on sailing vacations. When you are old and you retire, you will have something to do with your spare time.

* Contrary to popular opinion, you don't need to be rich to sail. Some community sailing clubs or local colleges let you be a member for a small monthly fee, and freely use their boats. At the fancier sailing clubs, you do need to know a member who owns a boat, but you will find mailing lists for people who want to sign up to crew on other people's boats during race nights.

* I could go on, but I'll stop here.

<comment><USER21> Wow. Who would have thought?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Go to the gym, get a trainer at least for the first few times. After 5 days a week, 3 months of 1.5 hour training you will look different, and that's what matters most in dating. New fitting clothes are important as well (though your size will change a lot).

You can look at goodlookingloser.com as well (all other ,,PUA'' sites are BS), but any guy in the gym can help you get started on your looks.

<comment><USER23> I second this comment. Lot's of things in my life improved after I spend time improving my body-look & social-skills.

Gym also increase the level of testosterone, which WILL change the way you feel, not only the way you look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Update your perspective.

It's women not girls.

And stop thinking of yourself as some sort of exception. You are not. And that notion is making an artificial distance between you and others.

You are just another human. Your experience and your place on the bell curve is neither exceptional nor terrible.

Loneliness and vulnerability are Universal. They form some of the basis of your connection with others. Stop trying to avoid them.</comment>


ShowHN: Generate your own MTV (Last.fm+Youtube) - <AUTHOR> http://TV.ListAndPlay.com

<comment><USER3> I had the same idea but dropped it after seeing GrooveShark and being too busy with other things. Still, it has tremendous potential. A lot of people get their music from YouTube, but there's currently no good mechanism to leverage that.

Now, for the advice:

1\. On the front page show who's listening to what. Drop the How, What, etc. Don't tell people. Show people.

2\. Allow people to create playlists with interjections, such as "That was Little Dragon with 'Twice', and now..."

3\. Allow people to do insert temporal video casts: Sports, weather, news.

This could be really big if you hit it right. Find a designer for God's sake. And feel free to drop me a line. My email is my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback David, I was thinking about a 99design contest in order to improve the UI. Right now I see they don't accept 'html code/css' contests, anyone aware of a similar contest site which supports JQuery/CSS contests?

<comment><USER4> Perhaps use a psd to html shop?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love it. Wanted something simple like this without realising it. Its great for room parties in a college dorm when you just have a laptop and some speakers.

If you want to improve it, you could do some clever check on whether the video is actually a video or just some still images with the music on top - as 60% of the videos I played seemed to fall into the latter category.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thnx, glad to hear people like it! It took me 2 months to realize the whole thing (first the ListAndPlay.com concept and during the last 2 weeks this Last.fm mashup).

The idea of checking for still images was something I've tried in a previous version. I decided to remove the function because somehow there is a reason why a video is popular on Youtube and is no 1 in the results (often good sound quality). FYI: checking for still could be done by comparing the 3 different thumbnails youtube generates for every video.

<comment><USER5> Ah I didn't think of that. Well thanks for the speedy reply and neat tool - <USER2> will be using this a fair amount probably.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That is a cool idea. I had no problems with the UI, just entered a song and hit "go". But you definitely need an overlay presenting the song title and artist name in MTV-style with a fancy fade-in and fade-out, that would be awesome :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah that would be really cool! I tried to find some code examples of that being done in JQuery, but couldn't find any. Anyone with a good idea how to fix this? What about the cpu load or isn't that an issue?

<comment><USER6> CPU load shouldn't be an issue at all. It is really easy with jQuery. You just make a div with a high z-factor and trigger fadeIn(), fadeOut() whenever the video changes: <http://api.jquery.com/fadeIn/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I've got the fadeIn/fadeOut already running at this moment (top left). I'll see if I can make it more fancy, any fancy JQuery examples of what's nice is welcome :)

<comment><USER6> Just make it big now, you don't need more jQuery, only CSS styling.

Name of the Song
Artist

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've put it on the todo list :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great Idea !

Some points : \- The UI should adapt according to the screen size ( buttons are pretty big on my laptop, and TOO small for my 24 inches. Maybe create 2 or 3 different sizes ? )

\- Being able to see the "playlist" and being able to "drag and drop" the previews in the horizontal direction (like "which one will be next, etc").

\- About the UI, you should keep it simple, but also keep it as "close" to standard player/TV UI. Like standard Play/Pause/Volume big at the center ( bottom or top )

\- You need a colorful/media Logo, definitely.

For later maybe : Like Spotify and others, being able to create & share playlist of videos, ranking them, etc. and NOT only by artist. Let's say I'm at a party, and I made a nice music video playlist at home, I just connect thru facebook, and I can play my playlist, etc. Youtube is crap for that, and that's EXACTLY the kind of "share tool" you would need I guess.

\- Being able to easily vote for music videos ( just a click, no more ) and that would help then to provide the user with the best videos first (and kick out the image music videos from the first of the search results).

I don't really have much free time, but could give you a hand. Kinda have a "final working product" in my head, and it looks great.

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER8> Funny, made this one two years ago <http://playmymusicvideos.com/>

<comment><USER9> Very nice. I find your project better than the on posted. It's the more minimalistic approach that I liked. Very good work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. :)

I'm wondering, do you have any plans to monetize this? If so I'm curious as to how, I'm not sure about the terms of the YouTube API but the last.fm one says it's strictly for noncommercial use.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me it's impossible to monetize it yet. I'm located in The Netherlands and I've got to deal with a RIAA similar organisation called Buma/Stemra. If I monitize it I've to pay large amounts of license costs (I'm just a poor medicine student). Since a half year Buma signed a deal with Youtube which finally allows me to embed (music) videos for free, as long as I don't monitize it. Last.fm API is free, but they want to see money if you're getting rich by using their API. Youtube doesn't seams to be a problem. Youtube doesn't seams to be a problem.

tl;dr Not at this moment. Dutch RIAA problems if I do. Last.fm wants money if you are getting rich.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love the idea! The layout/UI however needs some work.

Why do I get a second HUD (upper right corner) when I'm in fullscreen mode? Why are there two buttons to toggle fullscreen mode? Why is there a tick icon in the search box? Why do you have the "Generate your own MTV, click here!" text still visible, after I already searched for an artist? Your "Why? What? How?" text is also pretty nondescript. And why am I able to resize and move the floating box anyway?

Again, the idea is great, but the UI is very confusing. There's too much going on. Try to simplify it!

<comment><AUTHOR> UI needs to be simplified indeed. It's a bit complicated because I used the original ListAndPlay.com UI to start with.

Second Hud: those are the 'most often used' buttons, removing duplicates is a good idea indeed. The 'generate' text is visible to give you a way to enter artist search mode in non-fullscreen mode. The search bar above the link (with tick in it) is for searching through Youtube directly (instead of using Last.FM data). The tick is to show all the ajax is finished, a loading animation is being shown while busy.

Why What How is maybe not clear enough, what would you suggest as intro? Resize & move is incase someone got a low resolution and couldn't see the dropdown.

Thanks for your feedback phoboslab :)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I type the name of an artist the list of songs that is displayed seems randomly sorted. That makes it harder to find what I'm looking for.

After selecting a song nothings seemed to happen, until I noticed the progress indicator in the upper right corner. Center screen would be a more visible location.

The most practical problem seems to be the difference in volume levels; I keep having to adjust the volume. I realise that that could be hard to fix, but it's what made me switch back to the radio.

<comment><AUTHOR> The list is sorted on 'most popular' according to the Last.fm DB.

The reason why I immediately close the overlay is because I want to avoid users to click other songs while another ajax search is still running and I want to give the experience of the thing going 'fast'. ('overlay closes, hmmm something happens, ah there is my MTV!' instead of 'selected artist, mmm what is it doing? searching, mmm does it work?, reclick, reclick').

Volume could be a problem in some occasions, I've already tried to find a way to measure the volume level and normalize it, problem is that I can't get the values from the Youtube Flash player API. Is someone aware of other ways to fix this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm generally very wary of these services because they usually lump a lot of stuff I don't like into it, but the results starting from Nas' Memory Lane have been great so far.

It'd be nice if there were a better way to tell if the youtube video is actually the video or just an mp3 with a shot of the album, but since its just playing in the background, it hasn't been too much of an issue.

Also, it would be nice if there were a restart, or some way to scrub the actual video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Repeat is on the todolist, for now press the close button and reselect the video from the bottom bar. See comment below for reaction on mp3/still image issue, hard one to solve.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some technical details: It's a mashup of Last.FM data & Youtube. Futhermore, there is a Facebook integration (you can discover new music through your friends) and it's easy to create playlists of all the (new) music you find. Playlist urls are being stored as a Bit.ly url. Everything is clientside JQuery code, so there are no scalability issues. Any feedback is welcome!

</comment><comment><USER14> Okay, I love it! Thanks for building this. I had been toying with the idea but I never seemed to be getting the time.

It seems very simple to use. I did have to try out a few different songs since it wasn't able to generate its list based on the songs that I initially tried.

I will have to spend more time in understanding the playlist aspect of it though.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great idea, but didn't do what it said on the box. The page asked me to enter a specific song, which isn't what last.fm does - why not just ask me for my last fm login? Also no videos played, with no error message why. It might be because I'm on a iPad and you don't support HTML video, but please just print some kind of error - all I saw was black.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yeah that's indeed the problem. iPads are not supported yet, but they will as soon as Youtube releases the HTML5 video support to the public! I'll put the 'error' on the todo list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It doesn't seem to work with certain foreign songs and artists. For example, it couldn't find Hotel Supramonte by Fabrizio De André which is available on YouTube ([http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hotel+supramonte...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hotel+supramonte&aq=f)).

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried to do a lookup for Fabrizio De André, Hotel Supramonte is not in the top tracks of Fabrizio (at least not in the Last.fm db), I selected Via Del Campo: [http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Fabrizio%20De%20Andr%...](http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Fabrizio%20De%20Andr%C3%A9%20%7C%20Via%20del%20Campo~~)

Btw: problem with some of the videos on YT is that a small amount is not embeddable, that could explain why a video doesn't shows up on sites like listandplay.com

<comment><USER16> Thanks Jonathan. This is an excellent project. Funky UI, but excellent nevertheless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great! but interface is a bit confusing. i still do not understand it fully. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Thnx! Yes, UI is a pitty one, I could use some good advice on that.

Main problem: I'm trying to combine the 'MTV functionality' with the original functionality of listandplay.com (generate playlists in a few clicks). I thought about splitting up both projects, but I want to avoid that... What would you do?

<comment><USER11> I really think it should be as simple as possible. Split both projects.

Your UI could be just a search box, where you enter the artists name, and the App then creates a continuous stream of music videos. Not more, not less. Maybe add the Skip button and count (server side) how often a video has been skipped, to create a "blacklist" of bad videos, that won't show up anymore.

Look at the UI of <http://www.mixest.com/> for instance - I think they nailed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My advice would be to make this a Roku channel. The SDK is available, the API is fairly easy. This would win you MAJOR brownie points within the Roku community (forums.roku.com). I'd love to be a beta tester.

<comment><AUTHOR> Roku sounds good, I see they use BrightScript, do they support any javascript or do I've to recode everything?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My friends and I always talk about how cool a site like this would be, awesome work! This is pretty much exactly what we were thinking of; we referred to it as "Pandora with music videos."

</comment><comment><USER20> Neat product, how do you match up the song title with the correct video on youtube ? - from my experience with searching for song titles on youtube the top hit often isn't the one you want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, the workflow is: 1. User enters artist name 2. Top tracks of Artist shown as dropdown (Last.FM) 3. User selects track 4. Max 150 Similar tracks fetched from Last.fm according to that song 5. Fetch for every track the first hit from youtube (yes, 150 ajax calls) 6. Merge jsons, produce 1 big list 7. Start MTV!

Somehow this approach works for 99% of the times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great Idea! One rule of thumb should be not repeating songs of the same title (ie. covers). If I search Where is my mind from the Pixies, the next song is Placebo's cover.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess you are using the regular search, that one shows the top 40 results from youtube. I'm not able to build in filters since it could be used for other things like checking out bbc news reports.

If you want the MTV functionality: press 'Generate your own MTV, click here!' below the search bar, enter Pixeis, select Where is my mind and there you go! [http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Pixies%20%7C%20Where%...](http://listandplay.com/#Search~Similar~Pixies%20%7C%20Where%20Is%20My%20Mind?~~)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This works great for me! The "MTV" function covers a need I didn't even know I had. Thanks a lot, and rock on!

</comment><comment><USER23> Outstanding. This is going to fly.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice project. Would be perfect in combination with GoogleTV.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, would be great to use on the television. Anyone here with a GoogleTV box? Does the site work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really doesn't work with FF and Flashblock. I can't even enable the flash object because it keeps catching the click even and displaying an alert.

<comment><USER26> You can disable Flashblock for a certain domain from the Flashblock context menu.

<comment><USER26> Go to Tools -> Add-ons -> Flashblock -> Preferences tab Whitelist and add listandplay.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> congrats, by i do it this at my site <http://fliis.com> time ago, and more options.... example [http://www.fliis.com/?radio=Madonna&fine=Like%20a%20Pray...](http://www.fliis.com/?radio=Madonna&fine=Like%20a%20Prayer)

</comment><comment><USER28> MTV Circa 1993

</comment><comment><USER29> Hey Jonathan I was thinking about getting youtube music videos, but I got scared off when I read about <http://www.muziic.com/> getting in legal problems my music studios : <http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/20/muziic/>

I was wondering what your thoughts are on that? I'm still young and in University atm, but our profs scare us like hell when talking about law suits, and they can ruin your entire life...etc etc, so I've been to scared to act on the youtube music api. Can you guys drop your thoughts on the issue?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a few interesting points about this:

First, my server is located in The Netherlands, as far as I know only the law applies of the country where the site is being hosted.

Second, our RIAA (Buma/Stemra) made a deal with Youtube that ensures every Dutch citizen can embed YT videos without any problems (see: [http://www.bumastemra.nl/en- US/OverBumaStemra/Actueel/Buma_a...](http://www.bumastemra.nl/en- US/OverBumaStemra/Actueel/Buma_and_YouTube.htm) and this from their FAQ <http://i55.tinypic.com/svi1jt.jpg>). It says that I don't have any problems as long as I don't monetize it. Since I hate banners and my costs are really low this ain't a problem.

Third, I actually don't store _any_ data or playlists. What I've done is coding a few scripts that let you crawl Youtube and Last.fm in a smart way. In that POV i'm not different to a regular search engine with a 'share your results' button, futhermore my server does totally nothing after you received the javascripts, it's just your browser and the other sites.

Last but not least, it's impossible for me to measure how many and what kind of videos are being played. All this stuff works with # anchor urls, my server simply can't register that.

I'm very curious in what other people think about this, can you ask your profs?

<comment><USER29> I'm in Canada so not sure if I can do the same, my service would require you to at least create a playlist like thing, so in essence you can find our how many plays have been made from youtube. Youtube really needs to write better guidelines for their youtube api for music. I'm still contemplating whether I should do it or not, my site would also be free to use...but have a lawsuit during my school semester would really get in the way.

What do you guys in HN think about the issue? Can we use youtube api to freely grab music videos? Can we store index to the url (for playlists?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Hot Chip - One Life Stand:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPXPIx1LlPY>

It doesn't show up in your search results. How come?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/mPXPIx1LlPY> gives <yt:noembed/> as response.

In other words, they disabled the embedding of that specific video. Just try this one: [http://listandplay.com/#Search~Hot%20Chip%20-%20One%20Life%2...](http://listandplay.com/#Search~Hot%20Chip%20-%20One%20Life%20Stand%20original~~Videos~wif8DAyXkVc%7C~~)</comment></comment>


How Airbus is debugging the A350 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-02-13/how-airbus-is-debugging-the-a350#p1 <comment><USER2> I am impressed they have a distributed CAD/CAM system which lets them share the schematics of the planes construction with all the partners. "Source Code Control" in the 3D CAD space was abysmal, got better in the 3D digital feature space as studios created systems for asset management, and it seems to be solidly implemented by Airbus here : (video link: [http://videos.airbus.com/video/dc6bd25e7f3s.html](http://videos.airbus.com/video/dc6bd25e7f3s.html))

<comment><USER3> > "Source Code Control" in the 3D CAD space was abysmal, got better in the 3D > digital feature space as studios created systems for asset management, and > it seems to be solidly implemented by Airbus here

I doubt that when technical drawing "versioning" predates CAD by decades, in the form of drawing release/review and configuration management (CM) groups that were highly organized by WW2. This was then implemented by packages like ENOVIA, SolidWorks PLM, which facilitate the review/signoff process to be paperless, but it is basically the same. This is completely different from the entertainment industry, which doesn't care about part compatibility, analyst reviews (stress, aerodynamics, weights, etc.), not to mention the nature of CAD data (rife with engineering metadata on assembly hierarchies, dimensions with tolerances, materials) being very different from the "looks good" graphics of entertainment/art.

<comment><USER2> My take on it has always been that 'drawings' (in the draftsperson meaning) were essentially the archive format of designs. So while you could look through a list of change orders in a drawing, _seeing_ what that change was, or more commonly not seeing it, has been the challenge. Boeing made a big deal about this when, as a Sun customer in the '80s, Sun helped them put basic drawings online as living models/schematics.

I would agree its less impressive if everyone is forced to used the same CAD package. The video did not state whether or not that was the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Airbus has been one of the success stories commonly told by the static analysis community:

[http://www.astree.ens.fr/](http://www.astree.ens.fr/)

(Here I mean [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_program_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_program_analysis) , not [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_analysis) )

<comment><USER5> I'm fairly ignorant of the details of static analysis, but why is it being done on programs written in C?

Shouldn't they use languages specially suited for this kind of analysis?

I remember learning that stateless programing (ie. functional programming) makes this kind of analysis several orders of magnitude easier since it eliminates coupling and control flow dependence. Yet I've never heard of critical software being written in Haskell or whatever.

<comment><USER6> When you're writing safety-critical code, what you want above all else is _lack of surprises_. Sure, C has pitfalls, what language doesn't? But we know what the pitfalls are. We have decades of experience in avoiding them. The toolchains are mature and very well tested. The source code maps fairly directly to the hardware. You don't have to put your trust in esoterica like trying to find a garbage collector that claims to be able to meet real-time constraints and then trying to understand the edge cases in the analysis on which that claim is based.

It's okay to have bleeding edge technology in the ancillary tools like the static analyzer. But for safety-critical work, you don't want bleeding edge technology in the language in which you're writing the actual code.

<comment><USER7> Also, a straightforward mapping from source code to machine code is important for auditing generated code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given for how long we have been developing airplanes and even planes in almost the same size as the A350 the lack of a somewhat standardized development process astounds me. Did newly developed planes used to be less safe and were more problems worked out during actual use? Or did they just not have as many problems to begin with due to less automation and sturdier but heavier materials?

<comment><USER9> Having worked in the flight test industry in a 'prior work life', nothing that this article describes sounds especially interesting or novel. I think what happened is that when the planes started getting technologically intense and at the same time the development team became highly distributed (geographically and contracted), there was a period of time where things 'got out of control' in that a) the design/simulation tools didn't have good capabilities for dealing with this level of distributed/revisioned work b) it was more important to 'get the job done' than making sure that everyone used the same exact toolchain and was working on the same version of the model etc. Eventually this caught up with them and they experienced some significant issues (like the wiring snafu the article mentioned, and I also recall another issue where fuselage parts wouldn't mate up), which finally made the industry pull back and get serious about fixing these design tool/practice issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So if I'm following this correctly, Airbus's breakthrough design philosophy is to use distributed version control to facilitate iterative construction with a heavy emphasis on integration testing?

</comment><comment><USER11> The megastructures documentary provides a pretty captivating look at construction:

[http://www.youtube.com/user/megadocumentary1](http://www.youtube.com/user/megadocumentary1)

<comment><USER12> Link is to doc on A380 not A350.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Imagine the difficulty in debugging modern CPUs. Remember the floating point problems Intel had? There are far too many possible edge cases to be confident that testing alone will reveal them. Consequently, both Intel and AMD use formal proof methodologies to verify the correctness of their processors. I know that AMD uses (or used to use) the work of Boyer and Moore for validation of their designs. Intel uses it own prover. [1]

[1] Fifteen Years of Formal Property Verification in Intel by L Fix, 2008 [[http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~herbert/CS6320/EXS/LimorFix%20Intel%20...](http://www.cs.ucc.ie/~herbert/CS6320/EXS/LimorFix%20Intel%20FM.pdf)]

</comment><comment><USER14> This is nothing new and isn't different from Boeing in anything they mentioned in the article. Yes the 787 had issues, but the same types of testing occurred. The 787 was fundamentally different from previous Boeing aircraft with lots of primary components made by subcontractors. Lack of rigor and believing things would just work (too optimistic) from what I have heard on the outside.

Iron birds, flight tests, etc are the requirements from the certification authorities. I.e. this is a fluff piece acting as journalism where the title and conclusions don't match the data.

<comment><USER15> To me, not being an expert, the article mentioning a lot of rigor and thoroughness to not run again into the A380 problems, this

"This is nothing new and isn't different from Boeing in anything they mentioned in the article."

contradicts this

"Lack of rigor and believing things would just work (too optimistic) from what I have heard on the outside."

<comment><USER14> This is an article with no attempt to understand the state of the art outside of what Airbus wanted written and is PR spin. Most of the techniques here were used in the 737NG program in the late 90s

<comment><USER15> So your answer in this discussion is "PR spin. PR spin."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A good fiction book for those interested in aircraft engineering, testing, maintenance, root cause analysis after problems, etc. is "Airframe" by Michael Crichton.

</comment><comment><USER17> Anyone know how they built their 3D graphic page?

[http://images.businessweek.com/graphics/airbus-a350-3d-graph...](http://images.businessweek.com/graphics/airbus-a350-3d-graphic/)

How did they go from the Trimble/Sketchup A350 model to showing the model in the browser in "3D"?

<comment><USER18> No idea, but it put this in the Javascript Console...

       Recommended listening:
        http://youtu.be/AjzcdvF3gDc?t=3m48s
        http://youtu.be/mGF_0AcHaGs
        http://youtu.be/kn6-c223DUU
        http://youtu.be/eF-4Cr9Iy_8

edit: further investigation looks like they're using [http://threejs.org](http://threejs.org) loading a COLLADA-format file (that can even be QuickLooked on my Mac somehow) [http://images.businessweek.com/graphics/airbus-a350-3d-graph...](http://images.businessweek.com/graphics/airbus-a350-3d-graphic/models/airbus-a350-900-repos.dae)

<comment><USER19> I love easter eggs like this. I'm going to start checking the JS console for every website from now on..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Re: "Derisking"

Can someone explain me whether/how Agile methodologies would be applied to an Airbus project? I'm asking this because I can't always explain how to do Agile when people pretend there are a lot of reqs, so an industrial project would be a good example to try it on.

<comment><USER21> Not realistic. Agile has many very good practices, but the ones that are missing are exactly the ones needed when you have a zero bug tolerance. You mention derisking - creating a proof of concept (a short sprint that proves you can do something you're unsure about) is one way of eliminating risk. Agile however, includes no practices for identifying, analysing and managing risk. Similarly, absolute reliability requires upfront design, and documentation. See [https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=99bb5987-e08d-4e8...](https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=99bb5987-e08d-4e81-974d-daa5e07c0d5f) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I posted this story over the weekend and it didn't get traction. So my question is, what is the lag threshold to when it becomes a new submission?

<comment><USER23> This story has an extra "#p1" at the end of the link, which defeats HNs duplicate detection. The submitter probably did it accidentally, by going to a different page of the story and then back to page 1.

<comment><USER22> Well I'm glad it did slip by the detection; it meant more people got to see the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Breaking rumor: Google may stop sending paid search query to sites - <AUTHOR> http://ghergich.com/blog/not-provided-slams-paid-search/

<comment><AUTHOR> This would mean that web analytical packages and third party PPC management tools wouldn't have access to the data about what terms people had searched for before they click through.</comment>


Show HN: Diva – Python package for creating interactive dashboards - <AUTHOR> http://diva.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html <comment><USER2> Is there a way to tell this to stretch a plot to fill the entire window? For my screen the plots are only taking up 1/4 of the view.

<comment><AUTHOR> For matplotlib, you can pass the the figsize=(w, h) argument to the plt.figure and plt.subplots functions to set the size in inches. I've just added an example to the "More Examples" section of the User's Guide. I'm looking into having the plots adapt to the div size in the future.</comment></comment>


Worldwide Covid-19 Dashboard Map - <AUTHOR> https://covid-map.world <comment><AUTHOR> Please check it out and let me know of any comments or suggestions. Thanks!</comment>