A Brazilian Wunderkind Who Calms Chaos - <AUTHOR> http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140812-a-brazilian-wunderkind-who-calms-chaos/

<comment><USER2> He is doing an investigation into the underlying foundations of statistical mechanics.

Statistical Mechanics and thermodynamics are the basis for a huge amount of technology and scientific models of the world, yet they rely on a fundamental assumption which is in some sense unjustified, known as the 'Ergodic hypothesis': Even though (classically) we know that the current position of gas particles in a box can be determined from their positions in the past, in thermodynamics we make the (unjustified) assumption that their positions are actually random and independent of their previous positions. In other words, these models for the world are probabilistic, which contradicts our more fundamental models of the world which say it is deterministic (and even QM is deterministic, with the single exception of the born rule). What he's doing here helps justify the probabilistic treatment, and understand when it does or does not apply.

I have always though this to be one of the great 'foundations' questions in physics (The others being QM foundations/origin of the born rule, and foundations of Field Theory). These are 'hard' and borderline philosophical questions, which most scientists (with good reason) simply assume to be true, to the point they often find them uninteresting. Lately though there seems to be renewed interest in them.

<comment><USER3> I've always found E.T. Jayne's treatment of the topic to be good. Randomness is in the mind of the experimenter, it does not represent an intrinsic characteristic of the system but the ignorance of the experimenter. This is, in my mind, the most satisfactory answer to Gibbs paradox.

Born rule on the other hand, I can't wrap my mind around. Absent wave function collapse (for which there is zero evidence), what exactly are Borne probabilities probability off :(

<comment><USER4> _ahem_

Do you have a moment to speak about accepting Many Worlds Theory as your savior?

<comment><USER3> I do accept Many Worlds, that's why Borne probabilities make no sense :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is Brazil's first Fields Medal - no Brazilian citizen has won a Nobel prize either. Obviously, this is a big deal for our country.

<comment><USER6> No it's not, most of his work was developed in France because here in Brazil we don't give anything about science.

<comment><USER7> A lot of his work was developed at IMPA (Brazils Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics), which has historically been somewhat connected to french mathematics universities. But, yeah, our best minds still go abroad to become fully developed. The big problem in Brazil is that our basic education is crap. We do have good higher institutions, but a lot of the people who end up there never had a good base.

<comment><USER6> >our best minds still go abroad to become fully developed and this is what made me angry, our best researchers needs to leave the country to work because here they don't have a proper support, and when they finally succeed in something the people remember that he is brazilian like it was a determinant factor.

<comment><USER8> sorry, but IMPA indeed was a determinant factor in his prize. Much more than the french institution.

You would be right for any other world class brazilian scientist. BUt IMPA is one institution that can support a world class scientist here in Brazil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Brazilian here: between the fields medal and the world cup, I'll take the medal every time.

<comment><USER10> How is the media reacting in Brazil? If only they showcased him alongside the famous footballers...

I come from India which is fanatic about Cricket. You would think media will understand the need to give India's chess grandmasters the same exposure as cricketers, but in reality it is mostly run as a business :(

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately little to no reaction at all, and I don't think there will be more coverage, specially after a plane crashed today carrying a presidential candidate.

<comment><USER12> Actually, I think the coverage was decent until now (at least on the web), but, yeah, the death of Eduardo Campos will definitely eclipse the award.

<comment><USER8> I agree. He was in every news TV show, including the biggest of them "Jornal Nacional". Also very good coverage of IMPA, the math institute behind his education.

But sure, now with the sad news about Eduardo Campos he will be nowhere to be seen. I hope in the next months and years he is remembered and popularized (is that a word?).

<comment><USER13> > is that a word?

yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats to him! It was also just announced that in 2018 the International Congress of Mathematicians will occur in Rio de Janeiro (being called the "Math World Cup" in Portuguese).

From the video interview, I understand he has been living in Paris for a while but his English accent is surprisingly non-Brazilian (sounds Russian with his Rs and closed vowels).</comment>


IUP Portable User Interface: Multi-Platform Toolkit for Building GUI in C or Lua - <AUTHOR> http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/ <comment><USER2> Using this library and others, there's a neat trick to make Lua GUI programs that fit in a single executable file without dependencies. Of course, the traditional "brute force" way of doing this is to make a self-extracting archive. But the classier way is to use srlua:

[http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/~lhf/ftp/lua/#srlua](http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/~lhf/ftp/lua/#srlua)

Basically, it's a slightly modified Lua interpreter, which you literally concatenate with your script. When run, the interpreter tries to run the script that's appended. Although the srlua documentation was pretty vague on the subject, I've successfully linked it statically with this IUP library, so the appended script can load it and display a nice GUI. Maybe not always the optimal way of distributing programs, but I thought it was cool (you could even make an executable that allows you to graphically edit its own Lua source, though you might have to work around the fact that a running file isn't writable on some platforms).

<comment><USER3> You may be interested in a tool I wrote that builds standalone executables: [https://github.com/ers35/luastatic](https://github.com/ers35/luastatic)

For the following program:

      iup.Message('test', 'hello world')

Build the program to a standalone executable:

      luastatic example.lua /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblua5.2.a -I/usr/include/lua5.2 libiup.a libiuplua52.a libiupcontrols.a `pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-3.0` -lX11

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool, because it has quite a few more controls available than something similarly licensed and minimal (like libui).

One thing, though. What about Mac OS support?

edit: a page mentions Mac OS support via GTK and Quartz, as well as GTK and X11. ([http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/iup/en/drv/gtk.html](http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/iup/en/drv/gtk.html)) But I guess this isn't nearly as well-supported.

<comment><USER5> Eric Wing is sort of working on it. [https://sourceforge.net/p/iup/mailman/message/34307825/](https://sourceforge.net/p/iup/mailman/message/34307825/) [https://github.com/ewmailing/IupCocoa/tree/Cocoa](https://github.com/ewmailing/IupCocoa/tree/Cocoa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> IUP is not a huge system like Qt/GTK+/wxWidgets and the code for GUIs is relatively concise. I think this lends to a perception that IUP is just a simple system for simple applications. Actually, it is focused on engineering applications, with some powerful widgets for data entry and visualization.

The development team is small but very active and responsive. Windows is well supported along with various flavors of Unix. IUP doesn't seem to get much use on Linux. I think IUP doesn't insulate you from the platform as much as Qt does, so cross-platform work takes a bit more care. Not all the features available on Windows will be supported on GTK/Motif.

Even if the only target is Windows, IUP may be worth considering for the clean code, convenient layout management, and the data-oriented widgets.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well that was unexpected, a N800.

[http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/iup/en/screenshots/n800...](http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/iup/en/screenshots/n800_photo.jpg)

Sadly these days i feel mixed emotions, and i keep finding that Linux desktop development seems to have gone off the rails thanks to that thing.

<comment><USER8> > Linux desktop development seems to have gone off the rails thanks to that > thing.

It started earlier. KDE3 used to be great and very Windows-like desktop experience on Linux/*BSD. Then they choose to rewrite KDE and make it more like OSX, the illfated KDE4 and its slow XML KBus trainwreck followed and burned the KDE platform. Many users switched to Gnome 2 which barely got useable with less features than other desktop platforms. Then the whole Tizen (Intel, Nokia, Samsung, ...) debacle with multiple UI frameworks competiting instead of focusing the resources. The whole thing is dead, beside Bada/Tizen is used in Samsung SmartTVs and SmartWatches and waiting in sleep-mode as backup strategy in case Google changes direction with Android. Then Gnome changed direction and rewrote Gnome with Gnome 3. Many users now switched to distributions that forked Gnome 2 like Mint or replaced it with a Gnome 2 like experience (Ubuntu).

What a sad desktop experience there is nowadays. For desktop experience I favor Windows 7 UI theme or Windows 2000 classic UI, or previously KDE3 (is there a up-to-date fork?). macOS and Ubuntu are okay too. For touch Android 5+ and iOS 6 have the best UI in my opinion.

Sadly many have lost their way and alinated their userbase with illfated design decisions (Win8/10, WinPhone7/8/10, KDE4, Gnome3, Tizen). I am looking forward to the new OS from Google, called Magenta/Fuchsia.

And nowadays the browser is like a second OS and Chrome with its simple UI is great. I dislikevthe weird round tbs in Firefox. IE11 was fine too, but MS lost its way. The Win10Store and XBoxOne are failing and have comparable little marketshare - several former exclusive titles now get released for Win7+ and on Steam as well - good that people aren't dumb, and MS evil strategies failed. Now they need a new CEO who axes and fires the people responsible for the last 5 years. Create a Windows 11 without privacy issues and a nice UI that can changed to look like Win classic and 7.

<comment><USER9> KDE3 fork: [https://www.trinitydesktop.org/](https://www.trinitydesktop.org/)

<comment><USER7> Gotta say i love the old KDE3 tarball organization.

Once you have Qt and some other dependencies in place you build it up layer by layer.

present day KDE seems to have taken a page from Gnome, and now is a sprawling mess of tarballs.

The closest i have come to KDE3 on the GTK side is XFCE.

Similarly, while i understand that breaking things down to multiple tarballs have made developer life easier over at Xorg, building it requires compiling a pile of small tarballs.

<comment><USER10> > _Similarly, while i understand that breaking things down to multiple > tarballs have made developer life easier over at Xorg, building it requires > compiling a pile of small tarballs._

I wonder if Xenocara works on anything other than OpenBSD...

I sympathize with your sentiment. Trying to maintain packages even for something as small as Xfce has been a nightmare (with all the Xfce-goodies, at least). I can't imagine what it would take to maintain so many packages needed for KDE and Xorg these days.

While "modular" sounds nice in theory, in practice you wind up wanting most of the modules anyway, so the modularity just becomes a pain in the ass. At the very least, some sort of "mega module(s)" would be nice: one could provide everything, one could perhaps provide a "20% of the code for 80% use cases" type of subset, perhaps there could be various customizations for special purpose applications, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I first used it with CHICKEN Scheme. There's a distro that includes IUP and the Canvas egg for Windows. Eggs are the containers for CHICKEN Scheme packages.

Great for quick, and not too bad looking, GUIs from C or CHICKEN. I haven't tried Lua or the LED mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER12> > It offers a simple API in three basic languages: C, Lua and LED

I haven't been able to find any reference to LED as a language, anyone have a link? Just curious.

<comment><USER13> I think it was a language they developed to be used with IUP. Original research paper: [http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/iup/download/spe95.pdf](http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/iup/download/spe95.pdf) Under "Resources->LED" on the site there is some more information: [http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc- rio.br/iup/en/led.html](http://webserver2.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/iup/en/led.html)

<comment><USER11> Check the site. There's a nice example there. It is basically a script-like way of building interfaces. The cool thing is that it is loaded as a resource, so you can edit the LED script after compiling, and as long as you haven't changed any of the identifier names, you can modify the GUI.

I am going to try that this week. Sounds like a nice compromise between the newer 'Immediate-Mode GUIs' and the standard event-based one. I can see it as a way to let the user skin your app within your control of how much they can modify.</comment></comment></comment>


The machine always wins: what drives our addiction to social media - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/23/social-media-addiction-gambling <comment><USER2> "...we know by now that if social media platforms get us addicted, they are working well. The more they wreck our lives, the better they are functioning. "</comment>


Show HN: zeroheight - convert your mobile designs into dev resources - <AUTHOR> http://www.zeroheight.com <comment><USER2> Shit that's cool. Could see that saving us so much time in our workflows.</comment>


The Business of Beautiful Code - <AUTHOR> http://johnnance01.wordpress.com/2010/06/18/the-business-of-beautiful-code/

<comment><USER2> Funny, I just read another article that reminded me of this one:

<http://cdixon.org/2010/06/14/pivoting/>

"Many products can be built much more quickly and cheaply by settling for good technology plus a bunch of hacks – human editing, partnerships, using 3rd party software – versus creating a perfect technology from scratch."

</comment><comment><USER2> I love WordPress' motto: Code is poetry. Beautifully written code often is.</comment>


App that turns paying off debt into a game - <AUTHOR> https://join.debtfireball.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> I came across this on my social media feed. There seems to be a lot of finance apps popping up but this one caught my attention.

These guys seem to struggle with messaging but I haven't seen one like this.

They are turning paying off debt into a game. Looks like they are only in waitlist phase but I am curious how they intend to do it.</comment>


Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aada/courses/15251f15/www/schedule.html <comment><USER2> Some context for those who don't go/didn't go CMU:

15-251 Great Theoretical Ideas in CS is the freshman spring semester discrete math & theoretical CS (a follow up to the discrete math course they take freshman fall). The course itself goes for breadth over depth. In this aspect, it serves as a solid foundation for all theory classes students take going forward. It's a class where students learn proof techniques, collaboration, and problem solving.

The course is often praised for its rigor. The problem sets require a fair amount of work to complete, and the course staff sets a high standard for responses.

On the other hand, it commonly receives criticism for being quite intense as a freshman class. Many CMU students look back on it as one of the hardest classes they took.

I personally feel quite lucky to have taken 251. It gave me a foundation to appreciate a lot of deeper CS topics, and taking it freshman year meant I had 3 years more to put it to use.

<comment><USER3> I was just about to comment that the topics seem really intense. I got the impression that Carnegie Mellon is an excellent university with very high standards (much better than Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, etc., which are prestigious and have lots of professors which do great research, but the actual scientific education is good, but not extraordinary, and moreover, the courses are not very hard from what I've heard).

It happened multiple times that I googled some relatively obscure topic, and I found multiple excellent sources from Carnegie Mellon professors. For example, there is this excellent document [1] by Jonathan Shewchuk, about the conjugate gradient method, and you will found as many as four lectures about DRAM memory on youtube.

[1] [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake-papers/painless-conjugate- grad...](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake-papers/painless-conjugate-gradient.pdf)

<comment><USER4> My friends had him and I hear Jonathan Shewchuck is indeed an excellent teacher. However, he has never been a CMU professor. In 1994, when your link was dated, he was getting his PhD at CMU, and since 1998 he's been a professor at UC Berkeley (where I went): [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~jrs/](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~jrs/)

I have no doubts about CMU's excellence, but I found Berkeley's undergrad CS education to be quite good. There certainly were research professors who were bad teachers, but many like Shewchuck were outstanding teachers, and there were also several Teaching Professors whose job description to focus is more on teaching than research, like Dan Garcia, Paul Hilfinger, John DeNero, and Brian Harvey (since retired): [https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Lists/faculty.html](https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Lists/faculty.html)

I too have heard that private schools like Harvard and Stanford are not very hard once you get in, just very hard to get into (though I can't speak from experience). I haven't heard people say that about Berkeley, which is a public school so it doesn't have shareholders where alumni can form a controlling majority, and it's funded more by the state than by tuition. That also certainly was not the experience of myself or anyone I know.

<comment><USER5> I also studied EECS at Berkeley and had Shewchuck.

There's this mentality at Berkeley that the EECS classes are the hardest and most competitive in the country (and that private schools just give everyone A's) but after meeting many CMU graduates I realized that it's program is also similarly rigorous. The classes might not be as _competitive_ but then again I don't think that means it's worse for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Recording of the lectures for Spring 2016: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLm3J0oaFux3aafQm568blS9b...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLm3J0oaFux3aafQm568blS9blxtA_EWQv&v=uaAvVNWvi4A)

Slides: [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aada/courses/15251s16/www/schedule.ht...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aada/courses/15251s16/www/schedule.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Those YouTube lectures are prof O'Donnell course. I don't know if they match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder what kind of retention there is. Is one day of class studying quantum computation going to be particularly useful to people when they study it 6 months or 2 years later?

I've lately studied a bit of program design when it comes to working out. A lot of effort goes into designing workout programs, making the programs efficient, trying to get the maximum results from the least amount of effort. There's a clear progression and a clear way of measuring progress. Every exercise, stretch, and movement is supposed to a particular function that best moves you toward your goal. Particular muscle sets are targeted at particular intensities for particular intervals on particular days. There's a reason for every specific decision that gets made.

You can contrast this with the aimless way a lot of people workout. They go to the gym, they do whatever exercises or work on whatever machines seem like a good idea to them at the moment, and hope it increases their fitness in some non-specific way. Lacking good metrics for measuring effectiveness, they often judge a workout by how sore it makes them the next day (an extremely poor way to measure effectiveness). It's not that this approach can't improve your health, it's just that it's extremely inefficient compared to the more goal orientated and progression based system.

In my experience most universities follow the aimless second approach - throwing what they can at the students, hoping some of it sticks, and judging the courses based on difficulty (this usually becomes even more obvious when professors explain their courses). I don't think I've come across any study measuring the effectiveness and metrics of different programs and progression paths.

<comment><USER8> It's a bit more than it seems, on the surface. You're not just expected to pick up what the professors lecture about, but to take it and apply it to a sampling of fairly advanced problems. You end up doing a lot of learning on your own (or in a small group) while completing the homework.

To use your gym analogy, it's like focusing on one muscle group per week. On Monday, you're shown proper form and technique for a squat, but by the following Monday, you'd better be able to squat significantly more than you could a week ago (and you'll get graded on it). Are you going to become a competitive squat weight lifter? Absolutely not. Do you now know proper form, and understand what it takes to train properly? Almost certainly.

I'd also note two things:

\- Most topics covered were useful in later courses.

\- A lot of the credit for this course's success can be given as much to really, really dedicated TAs as it can to the professors.

 _(Note: I took this course my freshman year, it was blisteringly hard, and I wouldn 't have traded anything for it.)_

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> List of important publications in computer science [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_publications...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_publications_in_computer_science)

[http://paperswelove.org/](http://paperswelove.org/)

[https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love#other- good-...](https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love#other-good-places- to-find-papers)

</comment><comment><USER10> Most of the links are behind a login. Why even post this here?

<comment><USER3> The slides are not, and there are so many links that are directly behind a paywall on hacker news... Those really bother me.

<comment><USER11> WSJ style paywall articles are bypassable via the 'web' link. Not quite the same at all.

<comment><USER12> If you are in the US, that is. Their paywall bypass doesn't work for all countries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> reading one of the PDFs referenced [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aada/courses/15251f15/www/slides/lec0...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aada/courses/15251f15/www/slides/lec05.pdf)

Why other mathematicians at the time, were so nasty towards Cantor's ideas? The quotes noted in the PDF -- just sound nasty and dismissive (or may be this is not the whole story)

<comment><USER14> You are highly underestimating the mental leaps required to understand infinity pre Cantor. It's not surprising at all that people should find it ridiculous and get especially angry about it because they couldn't really explain why it was wrong, despite it just seeming like complete BS to them.

It's like telling a lay person (or even many mathematics students for that matter) that 0.999999.... = 1. They understand the proofs, but it's so against their intuition there is a visceral negative reaction to it.

<comment><USER15> There is no such thing as 0.9... There is 0.9[k], for k as large as you'd like. However, no matter which k you pick, I can squirrel a number between 0.9[k] and 1, for example 0.9[k]5. Your alleged proof is wrong :p

<comment><USER16> > There is no such thing as 0.9...

Yes, there is. Ask yourself: What's the decimal expansion of 1/3, or pi?

<comment><USER17> I'm not a math pro but I don't think those are good evidence to refute that claim. I have no idea whether the claim is valid or not, though I vaguely recall this discussion from school.

From your examples -- one's a ratio and the other is irrational. Almost as if you suggest "The set of real numbers exists, ergo 0.999999... exists"?

<comment><USER18> The battle over the question whether or not something exists in the mathematical sense has essentially been won by the formalists, who will allow any definition to claim the existence of something so long as it is consistent with the rest of mathematics.

Then, given that 0.99999... exists, what useful properties could it possibly have, if it is to be treated as a number.

0.99999... = 0.9999... * 1 = 0.99999... * 9/9 = 0.99999... * (10 - 1)/9 = (0.99999... * 10 - 0.99999... * 1)/9 = (9.99999... - 0.99999...)/9 = 9.00000.../9 = 9/9 = 1

So _if_ 0.99999... exists and has the same arithmetic properties as decimal expansions of rational numbers, its value _must_ be 1. Now whether you think it should have these properties is an entirely different question, but most mathematicians seem to like it this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why such an old version ;-;

</comment><comment><USER20> no love for coding theory!

</comment><comment><USER21> The Markov Chains lecture has a huge 'meh!' feeling attached to it, I'd be better of not clicking on that PDF in the first place.</comment>


My grandfather at Dunkirk - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40852280 <comment><AUTHOR> Alright then: Britsplaining Dunkirk. Not the actual events, but the significance of it to the national culture. For the actual history it is hard to beat having it narrated to you by Olivier in _The World At War_.

Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour. Many countries also have a famous mobilisation of the people - a revolution, something with a national day to name streets after. Dunkirk is ours.

The popular memory of Dunkirk is one of spontaneous organisation. _Not_ an organised event run by the state, but one where the official efforts had already failed and British lives could only be saved by a mass ad-hoc action by whichever members of the public happened to be at hand to crew a boat. This ties in with the wider popular memory of the war as "total effort": everyone was a contributor.

This leads to "Dunkirk spirit": spontaneous solidarity in the face of adversity. Often invoked lightheartedly in the face of ordinary disasters like being stuck on a train for hours or squelching about a drenched music festival, but it works for more serious events too. It was invoked a lot when the Ariana Grande concert was bombed in Manchester. This is part of why there is no real counter-part to the individualism of survivalists or "preppers" in the UK: everyone believes that when a real disaster happens, you can rely on your fellow members of the public, and we will survive together.

A detail of the news interview that is very relevant to the whole thing is "stiff upper lip", and responding to threats with blithe dismissal and flippancy. The officer on the beach saying "I wish they wouldn't do that" about the strafing is the exemplar here. But there's quite a few famous, extreme examples: [https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/major-digby- tatham...](https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/major-digby-tatham- warter.html)

<comment><USER2> > Many countries have a famous defeat or last stand. Dunkirk is ours; our > Thermopylae, our Alamo, our Stalingrad, our Pearl Harbour.

I'm not sure why Stalingrad is on this list. Do you mean that it was a glorious last stand for the Germans? I haven't noticed it being represented in that manner in German culture before.

If you meant it as an example of last stand in Russian culture, then the most prominent and well-known (in that culture) example of it would rather be this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Brest_Fortress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Brest_Fortress).

<comment><USER3> It was a last stand for _Russians_ in WW2. Stalin was determined not to let the city bearing his name fall. He funnelled a huge amount of soldiers and materiel in order to keep the city. The Germans tried to blitzkreig it, but the Russians held it and the battle persisted on the streets of the city for a long time.

It was a brutal battle. The USSR suffered 1,129,619 total casualties; 478,741 personnel killed or missing, and 650,878 wounded or sick.[1]

The USSR eventually won the battle, and it was the first real turning point in the war.

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

<comment><USER4> It also had actual strategic important - as the closest point between the Don and Volga rivers, it was a center of industry and transshipment. (The industry was mostly destroyed during the battle, but its logistical importance remained.)

These days, it's still a major transportation hub - only there's now a canal connecting the two rivers, allowing ship transport aong the Black, Caspian, and Baltic seas (and to the traditional population and economic centers around Moscow and Petrograd).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For anyone interested in finding out more about Dunkirk and the events leading up to the evacuation I can strongly recommend _" Dunkirk: Fight to the Last Man"_ by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore. It gives the British, French and German viewpoints and covers the incredible scale of the operation in a way that the movie couldn't really do.

<comment><USER6> I'm about halfway through "The Miracle of Dunkirk: The True Story of Operation Dynamo" by Walter Lord. Finding it to be a good read and it looks like it's still only $2.99 on Kindle if that sways it for anyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The World at War documentary series has a good episode about dunkirk.

One of the small boat captains describes picking up soldiers from the beach on dunkirk then getting back to sea, where they were met by a UK frigate. The frigate offered to take the soldiers to let the small boat go back to the beach(as was the plan) and the captain said "no chance mate get your own soldiers we're off back to blighty"

Some great lines in that series

</comment><comment><USER8> Side note, forgotten (by me): Post-Dunkirk, Britain and France--represented by Churchill and DeGaulle--planned to unite. From The Atlantic story:

"Although that battle story is fairly well known, the accompanying political drama that almost saw Britain and France merge is now largely forgotten. But the drama of that near-fusion can help explain the origins of European integration—and the reasons why Britain ultimately pulled away from the European Union in the decision we know as Brexit."

Common knowledge in GB/France? How's the Brexit analysis?

[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/du...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/dunkirk- brexit/536106/)

<comment><USER9> I thought this was going to be about later on, during Suez - I understand a union was proposed then too. This one I didn't know about, so I expect few Brits do.

The Brexit analogy is... eh, kind of overblown IMO, though I guess that's my views on cultural history in general. Brexit is more a result of domestic party politics than a reflection of our foreign relations, and it was Eastern Europe that loomed larger in the public consciousness when talking about the EU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Courage like this always impresses me in a profound way. I only hope I could be this brave and humble about it.

</comment><comment><USER11> what's interesting is the faces they decided not to portray in the movie. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/01/indian- african-dunkirk-history-whitewash-attitudes)

<comment><USER12> What was the actual proportion of the faces on that beach missing from the movie? Was it 1:2, 1:10, 1:100, 1:1000 or 1:10000 or 1:100000?

<comment><USER13> ~1:250 - 1:500 depending on what sources you use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For those who want to know more about why Dunkirk came about and why it was so shocking that France capitulated so quickly, I recommend this book.

> Nineteen Weeks: America, Britain, and the Fateful Summer of 1940

Few things I learned that I didn't know.

1\. After Dunkir, UK govt was actually quite seriously considering suing for peace and to leave the Continental Europe to Nazi Germany. One reason was the financial cost. UK could've sued for peace and save their treasury (already seriously depleted after WW1). Or decide to fight and pay for the cost of war (like in money).

2\. As Prime Minister Chamberlain resigned, he was faced with picking a successors: Lord Halifax and Churchill. Churchill was the 2nd choice.

</comment><comment><USER15> > "I wish they wouldn't do that," said the officer with impressive cool. I > tried to copy his nonchalant tone and said, "I suppose you get quite used to > that sort of thing." "Not a bit of it, old man," he replied, lowering his > voice. "What you get used to is pretending you are not as scared as your men > are."

I guess Lindybeige wasn't spoofing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrauBQf7FpI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrauBQf7FpI)

</comment><comment><USER16> I love this example of sang froid:

"I wish they wouldn't do that," said the officer with impressive cool. I tried to copy his nonchalant tone and said, "I suppose you get quite used to that sort of thing." "Not a bit of it, old man," he replied, lowering his voice. "What you get used to is pretending you are not as scared as your men are."

Anyone got a link to the whole account?

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm kinda surprised he's not a black guy.

</comment><comment><USER18> Germans could have ended the war there. Hitlers hubris saved the western world (to it's current state).

</comment><comment><USER19> Currently reading about Dunkirk because of the movie.

Interesting how the British told the French and Belgians to fight on while preparing and keeping their evacuation a secret. They even forced the French at gunpoint who wanted to defend Dunkirk to destroy their weapons. French who wanted to embark were shot at by the BEF - at the same time when French destroyers were helping the evacuation by fighting German E-boats. The BEF got away and the French fighting were captured. All RAF fighter squadrons were moved to the UK ahead of the evacuation.

It looks this was mostly by the BEF generals in France while Churchill wanted them to fight with the French.

<comment><USER20> Let's not forget that Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to attack the French Navy in 1940 as well [1], killing 1300 people.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers- el-K%C3%A9bir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir)

<comment><USER21> Context being everything, the French Navy was at that stage under the control of the Vichy government of France, essentially a German puppet government and had Churchill not attacked the fleet it was likely it would have been used against the British Forces.

<comment><USER20> It was likely that the French would've tried to scuttle the fleet had the Germans tried to requisition it, as happened 2 years later in Toulon [1]. But obviously, hindsight is 20/20, there was no way for the British to guarantee that this was going to happen.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_French_fleet_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttling_of_the_French_fleet_in_Toulon)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is an ad for a movie, thanks social media.

<comment><USER23> Or maybe this is a response to new interest in the actual historic event?

(Opening weekend was 3+ weeks ago, the media blitz is long gone.)

<comment><USER24> My grandfather was left behind at Dunkirk, taken prisoner, spent the rest of the war in Poland and returned home in one piece but very thin (6ft 4 and weighing around 8 stone according to family legend). He died aged 48 a year before I was born - heart problems, which might be expected I suppose.

I'm now working with the jigsaw of records and archives in the UK to try and find a little more about what happened and where as a result of the film mainly.</comment></comment></comment>


LiteCoin Mining on EC2 is currently profitable - <AUTHOR> http://www.completefusion.com/profitable-litecoin-mining-on-ec2/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the author of the post. I didn't include a lot of background detail because I wanted to publish the technically interesting bits quickly. As I see it, mining LiteCoins on EC2 is currently profitable because of four main factors:

1) Bitcoin's recent dramatic increase in value. (LiteCoin's value is heavily correlated to Bitcoin's.)

2) The relatively low difficulty level for LiteCoin mining right now.

3) Spot instance pricing for the EC2 GPU (g2.2xlarge) instances.

4) LiteCoin can be mined using both GPUs and CPUs (although GPUs are dramatically better, another ~35 khashes/sec from the CPUs is still nice).

Interestingly, the previous average historical spot price for these instances was ~$0.075/hour. The spot pricing has now jumped to $0.10-$0.12, depending on region.

As an added bonus, you may be able to get $100 of AWS credit at [http://aws.amazon.com/big-data/powerof60/](http://aws.amazon.com/big- data/powerof60/) which would give you 2-3 free days of mining.

<comment><USER2> Just so everyone is aware, I filled out the form for the $100 and got the message: "Thank you. An Amazon Web Services representative will contact you." Ugh.

<comment><USER3> Nobody had to contact me to get a free $100 for EC2, but I used the education grant instead when I did a Coursera class ([http://aws.amazon.com/grants/](http://aws.amazon.com/grants/)). I have $70.99 leftover from when I got this free $100, so I will use that and try not to go too much over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, the plethora of bitcoin/litecoin articles on HN news are making me sick now. I feel like there are 3+ articles about it at any given time.

Seriously, with all the hype, I got suckered into buying bitcoin/litecoin just to realize that I can't compete against Chinese miners.

I guess I could buy coins and sit on them but there is no fun in doing so. Arbitrage is practically impossible because of the lag time to pull hard cash from the exchanges.

<comment><USER5> resist, my son. i've made a pledge to myself that everytime i'm tempted to click on some BTC-related stuff i will instead study a new code library. i haven't totally wriggled free yet (obviously) but i'm close. as with all things, chasin paper is no way to live life and get-rich-quick ideas are something to discipline yourself against.

in life, studying code is what has netted me the most cash that i feel proud of earning

<comment><USER6> Earlier this year I decided I would buy 10 or so bitcoins if the price ever fell to $10, and so far I'm sticking to that.

<comment><USER5> heh now there's a plan.

even then i hope you're doin it for fun not investment. until it stabilizes its just kindof a crapshoot. i have long decided that id try it if its stable and succeeding as a currency but not as an investment since the economics are absurd. its been good for those who made a buck off it but its a game and it may have many negative implications. many have taken losses on it already during crashes (or buying mining equipment -- at least EC2 is more like renting, heh). i guess it's buyer beware but i'm not totally convinced that the entire concept doesn't amount to a scam, which is why i get a little fiesty about it.

if people decide its a scheme and no one wants to buy, the only winners will be those who recognized the potential of a pump-and-dump scheme and have been cashing out bits and pieces all along

<comment><USER7> Your idea of investment is not the only possible definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Of course, it won't be profitable for long, now that the secret's out. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. I would estimate that at current LiteCoin values and difficulty level, mining on EC2 will stay profitable until the spot price for these instances passes $0.20-0.21. One thing that will _slightly_ slow down the abuse of this is that by default AWS limits you to 10 spot instances per region for the g2.2xlarge type.

<comment><USER9> couldnt you just register multiple users - and thus by-pass this limit of 10?

<comment><USER10> You could, if you had multiple credit cards I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why would you publish something like this? Why not just ride on your own discovery, get as many instances as possible and get rich?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're not going to get rich from this. AWS limits you to ten spot instances of this type, and profits per ten instances per day are probably going to be $20-30. I've been mining with this setup for ~4 hours and have amassed ~0.2 coins ($8!).

<comment><USER11> $20 per day = $600 per month

Isn't it worth looking at creative ways to go around this 10 instances limit?

<comment><USER12> I know, I just spent $800 on mining hardware at BTC Black Friday (ButterflyLabs) just to bring my output from <$10/day to >$20/day.

I think that's a better idea than buying Amazon instances at fluctuating prices, but then who knows! I also thought it was kind of fishy when BFL e-mailed me just prior to Black Friday to let me know that they were totally caught up (shipping literally months of orders worth of products in the last 24 hours?) and they had stock on the shelves, at 25% discounted prices.

Fishy. After waiting 8 months for my first order to ship, yeah! But at least I'm only spending a fixed amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not seeing the g2.2xlarge instance type when I select Amazon Linux AMI 2013.09.1 - has Amazon disabled this instance type or am I missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't available in all regions. What region are you looking at?

<comment><USER13> Hmm, I just checked in US West, East, Ireland, and Singapore. Still not seeing it..

<comment><USER14> same... not seeing the GPU ones

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Damn discovered this two days ago, hoped that I went under radar for a bit :-).

<comment><USER10> how much did you make in last two days, if i may ask?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm getting hung up when trying to install the CUDA installer. I get the error "The driver installation is unable to locate the kernel source.".

<comment><USER17> When requesting your spot instance AMI, make sure the virtualization type is "hvm" instead of "paravirtual".

<comment><USER18> It's already hvm. Amazon says Kernel ID : - . Can it be the reason? Should we choose kernel manually?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How long did it take the pending to stop? Also, how do we SSH into the instances once pending is over? I cannot seem to find a way to launch.

<comment><USER20> few minutes

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unfortunately due to the spike in EC2 prices this doesn't really seem much profitable anymore...but still awesome nonetheless!

<comment><USER22> I'm looking at the spot instance price and it's hovering around ~$0.10. It's still profitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Naive question from a non-techie - if i were to run 10 g2.2xlarge spot instances, how much net profit per day would i make?

<comment><USER23> Back of napkin math: spend $29 to mine $50 worth of LTC.

<comment><USER10> Thanks... so not that bad considering it wouldn't require any continuous efforts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I bit skeptical of wemineltc.com (no https)

</comment><comment><USER24> Someone should probably try this with Amazon's first year free offer.. I will probably try this out.

<comment><USER25> That's only for the Free Tier which is an m1.small or micro I believe.

<comment><USER26> I tried mining prime coin on spot micro instance (100 of them) and it was useless. Micro is too weak to mine.

<comment><USER27> I am trying the free tier right now. I installed [https://github.com/cbuchner1/cpuminer](https://github.com/cbuchner1/cpuminer). I have got it running, but I don't think its doing much of anything.

Here's a tail of the log:

[2013-11-29 08:15:37] Stratum detected new block [2013-11-29 08:15:37] thread 0: 83388 hashes, 0.73 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:16:32] thread 0: 44064 hashes, 0.79 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:17:55] thread 0: 47700 hashes, 0.58 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:18:14] thread 0: 34596 hashes, 1.79 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:19:38] Stratum detected new block [2013-11-29 08:19:38] thread 0: 65016 hashes, 0.78 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:20:38] Stratum detected new block [2013-11-29 08:20:38] thread 0: 26352 hashes, 0.44 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:20:50] thread 0: 26364 hashes, 2.24 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:23:40] thread 0: 134484 hashes, 0.79 khash/s [2013-11-29 08:23:51] thread 0: 47280 hashes, 4.48 khash/s

<comment><USER28> That's for litecoin and bitcoin. I would assume primecoin would be better for cpu mining because it hasn't been optimized for gpus yet.

<comment><USER27> May be so. I have very little understanding of any of this. What I am doing right now certainly isn't worth even this tiny bit of effort that I have put into so far. My Account Balance is 0.00016236 LTC after 9 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Whats the deal here?

Is this still profitable? I'll pay 20 bucks to someone who can set this up for me and record it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Spot instance price is rising at about 2 cents/hour. By 11AM UTC, it'll be unprofitable.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does any body know how to mine litecoin on amazon step by step from scratch?

</comment><comment><USER32> Looks like the spot prices have already jumped to $0.175 - $0.2 per hour

<comment><USER14> and now up to 0.3+

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> it costs only your _mind_

</comment><comment><USER33> The problem though is that while buying/selling bitcoins is just hard, exchanging litecoins is practically impossible. Currently litecoins are only used as a ponzi scheme, rather than a payment method and if anybody does what OP suggests, please be smart and cash out as fast as you can. You can cash out to bitcoins if that floats your boat, at least they are actually used for things other than being a scam.

<comment><USER34> > exchanging litecoins is practically impossible

> Currently litecoins are only used as a ponzi scheme

What? I'm not really a fan of Litecoin but you can't just make false claims.</comment></comment>


PenTest Market Magazine is for FREE now - <AUTHOR> http://pentestmag.com/pentest-market-is-for-free-now/ Free content from PenTest - about 50 pages monthly. <comment><USER2> I can't get the site to give me the free issue. Anyone else have success?</comment>


Flight attendants have a higher risk of all types of cancers, finds study - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/cabin-crew-cancer-risk-flight-attendant-radiation-exposure-sleep-cycle-obesity-smoking-a8416166.html <comment><USER2> Anecdotal: Arthur W. Astrin, sort of father of WiFi, hired by Apple to develop and incorporate 802.11b into their products, died of cancer in 2016.

He spend most of 1998/99 flying West Coast-Taiwan twice a week (coordinating iBooks/iMacs manufacturing), got diagnosed with cancer in 2003.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj5NNxVwNwQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj5NNxVwNwQ)

</comment><comment><USER3> More radiation up at 10k feet.

<comment><USER4> US navy nuclear operators receive less radiation per annum than any other average citizen. Working inside a metal ship next to a well-shielded reactor actually results in a decrease in exposure. Many common real-world tasks give you significant doses of ionizing radiation, like medical/dental x-rays and high altitude flights.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Snake, the Twitterbot – an experiment in game design - <AUTHOR> http://yro.ch/snake-the-twitterbot/ <comment><USER2> [http://bash.org/?9322](http://bash.org/?9322)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've tried designing "games" on Twitter, but limitations of the format and low API limits constrained the design in lousy ways. Instagram has slightly more potential in this area, but neither is well-suited to it (I'm sure they don't consider this a valuable user scenario anyway.)

</comment><comment><USER4> @letsplaysnake ... They missed the opportunity to call it "Twit Plays Snake".

</comment><comment><USER5> Neat, doesn't render properly on android Twitter app [https://imgur.com/WS2jBJJ](https://imgur.com/WS2jBJJ)

<comment><AUTHOR> Weird. This is with the official Twitter app (6.0.0) on my phone (LG G3, Android 6.0) [http://imgur.com/gIzAY50](http://imgur.com/gIzAY50)

<comment><USER5> I guess my emoji aren't monospaced?

<comment><AUTHOR> «If you'd like to post your hard work to social media sites, you may also discover that Twitter has its own set of unpredictably-sized Emoji.» [1]

Ouch.

[1] [https://ianrenton.com/blog/adventures-in- emoji/](https://ianrenton.com/blog/adventures-in-emoji/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Really Useful Tutorials You Should Have Read in August 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3avenue.com/2009/08/31/tutorials-2009-august/

<comment><USER2> The comment on the page says:

      > BigLinuxGuy says:
      > Might have wanted to had the title mention that
      > these were web tutorials. I work almost exclusively
      > with enterprise architectures, and none of these are
      > really applicable to my profession.

I'd go further. For me, they were a waste of time completely.

Please, some truth in advertising helps your cause. If you get fewer readers, at least they'll be the ones who will care.

I remember when my parents were running their business, times were tight, and my father proposed reducing the terms on the invoices. Those on 90 days be reduced to 60 days, those on 60 days reduced to 30 days, those on 30 days reduced to 7, and those on 7 reduced to COD. My mother was panicking. "We'll lose customers!" she said.

"Yes," replied my father, "But they are the customers who are costing us money. That's a net profit."

Similarly, be honest in your title and you may lose some readers, but they'll be the ones who will get annoyed at reading something that's irrelevant to them. Some of them may be rather vocal about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I expect whoever posted the title didn't even realise that it was a niche set of tutorials - if all you code is web, it's easy to forget that not everyone else does the same. Can it be relabelled?</comment>


Envy on Facebook: A Hidden Threat to Users' Life Satisfaction? - <AUTHOR> http://warhol.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/~hkrasnova/Ongoing_Research_files/WI%202013%20Final%20Submission%20Krasnova.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> This study makes a lot of sense and I totally agree on its findings.

But: the more I think about it I come to the conclusion that Facebook -- still something depressing if you use too often -- became a key driver for all my accomplishments the last years.

The envy the study describes is nothing new, we had these kind of feelings always towards our peer group and FB just increased and accelerated those feelings to the max. But nonetheless those feelings of inferiority pushes one to new limits, drives people to be more active (in the long-run) because they want to be on par to their peer group's top achievers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "According to our findings, passive following triggers invidious emotions, with users mainly envying happiness of others, the way others spend their vacations; and socialize."

"Finally, our results offer an explanation to the ever increasing wave of selfpresentation and narcissism behavior witnessed on social networks – a phenomenon we refer to as the self-promotion - envy spiral."</comment>


Cask: A Scala HTTP Micro-Framework Inspired by Python's Flask - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lihaoyi/cask <comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Did anyone realise, that it had been time 1400000000? - <AUTHOR>

It was a time 1400000000 on 13. of May 2014. But nobody wrote about it in any IT news source I know. There are lots of fireworks on New Year's Eve, but nobody is celebrating that magical Unix time, though it happens just once in 3.17 years. Well, I wish you a happy new hundred of millions of seconds :)<p>http://www.currenttimestamp.com/ <comment><USER2> Yep: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7738394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7738394)

<comment><AUTHOR> wow, thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 0x53724e00 doesn't look too magical...

Call me again at

        $ LANG=C date -u -d `printf "@%d\n" 0x60000000`
        Thu Jan 14 08:25:36 UTC 2021</comment>


Reality Check Checklist + the Best Foreword in the History of Man - <AUTHOR> http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/10/reality-check-c.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Bypass the book promo and scroll for Fake Steve's superb foreword.</comment>


Why you should never, ever, ever use MongoDB - <AUTHOR> http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2015/07/19/why-you-should-never-ever-ever-use-mongodb/ <comment><USER2> Shhhh! Don't tell Splunk :)

Of course - this article is 2+ years old, and several of the points, while "true", just don't matter in many cases

</comment><comment><USER3> Lets hear the other side.</comment>


Google Cloud Platform Opens Region in the Netherlands - <AUTHOR> https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/01/Google-Cloud-Platform-opens-region-in-the-Netherlands.html <comment><USER2> Part of me really wants this to be called the nether region... </joke>

</comment><comment><USER3> The linked PDF with the Dutch version of the announcement has a clearly bogus map.

<comment><USER4> That or Google just accidentally leaked the location of their submarine datacentres...</comment></comment>


Rails for Designers - Rails front-end design and development guide - <AUTHOR> http://frontcube.com/rails-for-designers

<comment><USER2> That sounds like a great idea. Do you already have a rough overview of what it is going to cover?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes. It going to cover Ruby and Rails basics. Templeting, asset pipeline, SASS, CoffeeScript and front-end development best practices.</comment></comment>


How do I Calculate the M in my MVP? - <AUTHOR> http://russell.ballestrini.net/how-do-i-calculate-the-m-in-my-mvp/

<comment><USER2> Talk to potential users and customers to get an understanding of where they feel the pain and at what point it will be something really helpful to them.

Talking to 2-3 of your target customers will help you understand how you need to change the idea. And keep doing it until you get consistency in their feedback.

You also get bonus points if they are willing to pay for the privilege of getting access to it first while you work with your first small set of users.

</comment><comment><USER3> The whole point of M is to design an experiment that answers the very question you just asked. This doesn't necessarily mean you need to do any coding, but might instead be an e-mail sign-up page or even a marketing web site for you product with a purchase page. You need some real indication of whether people might purchase your application ... Not our opinions.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your links to HN are broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops! Fix it, forgot the protocol in the href. The images on the post are an example of the service I plan to build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Easiest calculation in the world!

 __M == minimal __

1\. Do you think anyone would use my MVP or service?

Depends on whether you build it or not. If you don't build it, the probability of its success is zero. If you do build it, the probability of its success is nonzero.

2\. Have I missed any other market segments?

Yup. All of them! You miss 100% of the shots you don't try.</comment>


World's largest 3D reconstruction of neighborhood, generated from drone imagery - <AUTHOR> http://blog.spotscale.com/2016/09/13/big/ <comment><AUTHOR> Video that gives a better feeling of the generated model [https://vimeo.com/189332811](https://vimeo.com/189332811)</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite audio books? - <AUTHOR>

Are there books that you would recommend that really suit the format? <comment><USER2> So far it's been World War Z, hands down.

The book lends itself to the audio format extremely well due to the fact that a large part of the book takes place in the form of interviews. The author (Max Brooks) plays the part of the interviewer.

Another reason I love it is the cast. Alan Alda, Rob Reiner, Henry Rollins, Mark Hamill, John Tuturro among others make it a fantastic listen.

</comment><comment><USER3> The tenth anniversary edition of American Gods is read by a great cast, and is more like a play than an audio book. Each character is read well. Really sucked me in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, American Gods sounds great! It didn't occur to me to look for audio dramas, but I have always liked them because I grew up listening to a show called Adventures in Odyssey that was extremely well done. (It was built around an extremely conservative Christian viewpoint that I have since strayed from, but the stories have stuck with me through the years.)</comment></comment>


Zed Shaw completes mongrel2 manual - <AUTHOR> http://mongrel2.org/doc/tip/docs/manual/book.wiki <comment><USER2> "TCP

Programmers think these are streamed sequential messages, so if they send a "message" that's 10k long then when the receiver gets it and read from the TCP socket they get a single 10k message in reply. This only works in small messages and not on the internet, so it's easy to see how it would seem to work that way. The reality is you can get messages of any size, and without some framing mechanism you wouldn't know where one messages ends or beings. TCP is a streaming protocol.

UDP

Programmers think UDP sockets are single fast reliable messages that can be sent to one or more target clients. They at least know UDP has a fixed upper bound size, but they don't get that UDP is very unreliable and that the addressing is fairly weak.

"

Writing tip: start by saying what they are, rather than what they're not. People may not have existing notions to shatter. A lot of Django documentation suffers from this too: 'before frameworks, you would have..., but not with Django' isn't relevant if you're learning to program with a framework.

<comment><USER3> Ah, I'll take a look at that, but actually I was describing 0MQ not TCP. Did you mean I should describe what 0MQ is first?

<comment><USER2> The preceding sentence is:

"What ZeroMQ ends up being is "sockets the way programmers think sockets work." Programmers usually hear about TCP or UDP sockets and they think in a naive way that they work like this: "

Which makes me think you're talking about TCP or UDP sockets outside of 0MQ.

There's also some tightening you could do in your opening paragraph about why Mongrel 2 is awesome. How about this for an intro:

Mongrel 2 is awesome for the following reasons:

* It can serve both traditional web apps and realtime push-style apps, where the server sends stuff to the clients when you need - great for making chat apps (there's one included in the sample code), stock sites that sends updated pricing to browsers, live blogging updates about news events as they happen or anything else you can think of.

* You can make Mongrel apps in your preferred language - PHP, Ruby, Python, C++ now, more soon. You can even configure it in that language.'

You say all these things now, but you're currently using too many words. _Make it tighter_.

<comment><USER3> Done: [http://mongrel2.org/tktview/b685326bc0ded7a466b61fb0d1c6e7d5...](http://mongrel2.org/tktview/b685326bc0ded7a466b61fb0d1c6e7d598c5a5d4)

I tend to spew at the mouth then tighten it up later.

<comment><USER2> Cheers. If it's not obvious, it's me who's bugging you about task-based stuff on Twitter. I spent a few years writing professionally and have a somewhat thick skin of my own when it comes to the editing pen, so pardon if I'm a little insensitive in the suggestions.

* You are, genuinely, missing a few 'open your browser, hit this port and try it' bits per Twitter. yes we're looking at the same doc, but I think you're presuming people will actually open their browsers and look at the <http://localhost:6767/tests> or whatever, rather than being told to do so. You also don't show or mention what people can expect to see when they visit this. Throw a screenshot in.

* The sections about Steve and Knuth, sysadmins who can't code, and alternative inits you've tried but not liked, can be removed. They distract from the topic at hand. I read the bit about 'insulting to keep you interested' but it doesn't lend the doc character: it comes off like you're bitter, and doesn't help the end user actually set up Mongrel.

* For config, first show people how to configure mongrel using the default Python config file. Once you've done that _then_ point out that they can create their own config formats if they don't like Python or want to automate stuff. Mention MVC if you want, restrict it to one sentence at the end. The aim is to making a working web server - anything asides from that gets in the way. See Kathy Sierra's stuff about 'helping users be awesome' for some good info on this.

* Be specific. 'Hacking' could be 'making web apps with Mongrel 2'. Per Twitter 'hacking' is ambiguous - think of the HACKING file in every GNU app which discusses modifying the program itself, rather than using it.

With a bit of editing, the current daunting manual could be about 50% the size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Zed is clearly in the wrong business. He's such a prolific writer, he should really be rewriting and updating the O'reilly catalog.

<comment><USER5> He'll have to learn how to write without insulting and alienating half his audience.

<comment><USER3> First off, I didn't insult you by name right? Which means I didn't insult _you_ I insulted your ideologies. To me there are no kings or heroes to worship. If you get offended because I disagree with you then you're not intellectually honest and most likely would get offended no matter what I say.

Second, it depends on the audience, but I plan on purpose to alienate 1/3 of my audience when I write technical documents like this. I focus on alienating the 1/3 of the audience who are arrogant, obnoxious, and too blind to see that their beliefs and values are killing the industry.

I just don't want to work with them, especially if they can't take a joke. Surprisingly, this turns out to be a very small number of people in practice, and they're usually just pseudo-intellectual blowhards.

If you go through all my insults, they're aimed at the people who are screwing things up for the regular Joes trying to get things done. And _that_ is the entire purpose of the Mongrel2 project too.

<comment><USER5> I never said you insulted me. I quite enjoy your writing, and belong to the half of your audience who doesn't give a shit.

My point is that your style is very personal and confrontational. You usually start discussions by aggressively speaking out against programmers or certain types of programmers, and only after this move on to any specific work that they've done or their ideologies. What you're really trying to criticize is the work.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. But it probably sets an unnecessary upper bound on your readership.

<comment><USER3> Oh, well my appologies then, I was assuming you were offended (there's plenty of them :-)

Actually, quite the contrary. Even the people who hate that I insult them still read it...and then talk about it for days on end like they have no lives.

<comment><USER6> Zed,

I also belong to the ranks of people who don't get offended when you insult people. But I wonder what you gain from it. 1. How do you know that the people who do get offended are the same people you don't want to work with? 2. How do you know that ranting actually deters these people from using your products?

My point is similar to jpeterman's, but my focus is on how you know that you are actually setting and upper bound on your readership, and if you are, how do you know that you are benefitting?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a minor point, but procer is basically exactly the tool I've been looking for. We're using runit to launch processes and getting runit to actually, you know, _run_ has been a major pain in the ass, and it's really weird. And the c code is horrible.

Without having looked at the code, is there any way that procer could be made a standalone thing? I don't think I'll be able to get traction on mongrel2 anytime soon, but procer I could use today.

Edit: I looked at the code. Looks pretty tied into mongrel2. I might just take the ideas and run with it, though.

<comment><USER8> I was trying to get runit to work last week and it consistently broke my terminal. After calling runit nothing I typed would show up, including newline.

<comment><USER7> The "runit" binary itself is supposed to replace init. If you want to use runit as a user-space process manager you have to use runsvdir and friends.

<comment><USER8> Yes, I was calling runsv and trying to bring it down again with sv. I suppose I should have been specific.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yeah, completes documentation on a product he announced an intention to develop 5 seconds ago (internet time).

Gotta respect the guy's work ethic and coding chops!

<comment><USER10> People can say whatever they want about Zed, but they can't say he doesn't get things done.

<comment><USER11> Tons of people are getting things done everyday around the world. Zed happens to be part of the subset who are promoting themselves agressively on the web. Not that I think that self-promotion is bad. But it's important to recognize the distinction between promotion and productivity.

<comment><USER12> I have been thoroughly impressed with how productive Zed can be.

whether or not he is good at promoting himself - and he seems to negatively affect enough people that the point is arguable - he _is_ good at getting things done, people who fail to acknowledge that reveal more about themselves than they do about Zed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Doctors Die (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/03/how-doctors-die/ <comment><USER2> A great companion piece is [https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very- slow-decay...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/)

 _You may have read the excellent article How Doctors Die. If you haven't, do it now. It says that most doctors, knowing everything I've just mentioned above, choose to die quickly and with very limited engagement with the health system._

 _...I think if I were very debilitated and knew I would die soon, I would want to go to that park or one like it on a very sunny day, surround myself with my friends and family, say some last words, and give myself an injection of potassium chloride._

 _This will never happen. Or if it did, it would be some kind of huge scandal, and whoever gave me the potassium chloride would be fired or something. But the people dying demented and hopeless connected to half a dozen tubes in ICU rooms aren't considered scandals by anybody. That's just "the natural way of things"._

 _...21st century American hospitals do not need to "cultivate a culture of life". We have enough life. We have life up the wazoo. We have more life than we know what to do with. We have life far beyond the point where it becomes a sick caricature of itself. We prolong life until it becomes a sickness, an abomination, a miserable and pathetic flight from death that saps out and mocks everything that made life desirable in the first place._</comment>


How we scaled Nginx and saved 54 years every day - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-scaled-nginx-and-saved-the-world-54-years-every-day/ <comment></comment>


A practical nonparametric statistical tests library for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ergenekonyigit/nemene <comment><USER2> Is there a basic explanation for what this does? :)</comment>


Death Row – Last words of every Texas inmate executed since 1982 - <AUTHOR> http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html <comment><USER3> Note that this text is in some cases censored. See Cameron Todd Willingham's statement:

"Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - <USER2> the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby. [Remaining portion of statement omitted due to profanity.]"

The full text is in fact pretty profane; see [http://www.theawl.com/2009/12/cameron-todd-willinghams- real-...](http://www.theawl.com/2009/12/cameron-todd-willinghams-real-last- words) .

The New Yorker article which lays out the case for Willingham's innocence omits the latter half of the statement entirely — see last paragraph of [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann) .

<comment><USER4> I find it profoundly dissonant that, while reporting the last words of people who were then legally murdered by the state (an inexcusable, brutal injustice, to my mind), the functionaries responsible yet found prissiness enough to cut out the swear words.

State-sanctioned murder? No problemo! A couple of swear words in the victim's dying breaths? Woah, hold it right there - there might be children present.

Unbelievable.

<comment><USER5> Reminds me of Apocalypse Now. Kurtz: We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This one really hit me:

> The act I committed to put me here was not just heinous, it was senseless. > But the person that committed that act is no longer here - I am. I'm not > going to struggle physically against any restraints. I'm not going to shout, > use profanity or make idle threats. Understand though that I'm not only > upset, but I'm saddened by what is happening here tonight. I'm not only > saddened, but disappointed that a system that is supposed to protect and > uphold what is just and right can be so much like me when I made the same > shameful mistake. If someone tried to dispose of everyone here for > participating in this killing, I'd scream a resounding, "No." I'd tell them > to give them all the gift that they would not give me...and that's to give > them all a second chance. I'm sorry that I am here. I'm sorry that you're > all here. I'm sorry that John Luttig died. And I'm sorry that it was > something in me that caused all of this to happen to begin with. Tonight we > tell the world that there are no second chances in the eyes of > justice...Tonight, we tell our children that in some instances, in some > cases, killing is right. This conflict hurts us all, there are no SIDES. The > people who support this proceeding think this is justice. The people that > think that I should live think that is justice. As difficult as it may seem, > this is a clash of ideals, with both parties committed to what they feel is > right. But who's wrong if in the end we're all victims? In my heart, I have > to believe that there is a peaceful compromise to our ideals. I don't mind > if there are none for me, as long as there are for those who are yet to > come. There are a lot of men like me on death row - good men - who fell to > the same misguided emotions, but may not have recovered as I have. Give > those men a chance to do what's right. Give them a chance to undo their > wrongs. A lot of them want to fix the mess they started, but don't know how. > The problem is not in that people aren't willing to help them find out, but > in the system telling them it won't matter anyway. No one wins tonight. No > one gets closure. No one walks away victorious.

[http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_info/beazleynapoleo...](http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_info/beazleynapoleonlast.html)

<comment><USER7> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Beazley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Beazley)

Crime committed age 17, executed at 25

<comment><USER8> Interesting from Wiki: victim was the father of a Federal Judge, J. Michael Luttig. During his appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, three of the nine justices recused themselves because of their personal ties to Judge Luttig, leaving six justices to review the case. Justice Antonin Scalia recused himself because Luttig had clerked for him, while Justices David Souter and Clarence Thomas recused themselves from the decision because Luttig had led the George H. W. Bush Administration's successful effort to gain U.S. Senate confirmation for them to the Supreme Court

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The title should be " ... of every inmate executed in Texas since 1982."

From reddit [1], here is a word cloud:

[http://imgur.com/t61UIgH](http://imgur.com/t61UIgH)

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/26rui7/oc_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/26rui7/oc_a_word_cloud_of_all_the_final_words_spoken_and/)

<comment><USER10> Interesting comment on that word cloud:

"Wonder what their victims word cloud would look like? "Mercy" "Please" "I'm begging" "I want my Mommy!" "Help""

<comment><USER11> You have an additional speech mark at the end of that sentence.

> "Help""

<comment><USER12> He nested quotes. The entire line was wrapper in quotation marks, as well as the individual quotes inside the line. </ocd>

<comment><USER13> My brain is throwing all sorts of parse errors at that quote full of quotes. This is why we have escape characters! (Or, more realistically, two forms of quotation marks for nesting).

<comment><USER12> Or separate symbols for the beginning and end of a quote, so nesting is unambiguous. You know, something like:

(quote Wonder what their victims word cloud would look like? (quote Mercy) (quote Please) (quote I'm begging) (quote I want my Mommy!) (quote Help))

Everyone just needs to learn s-expressions.

<comment><USER13> A professor collaborator of mine has the habit of saying "that does not parse", or "that does not type-check" to nonsensical sentences uttered by clueless research students (full disclosure, that set includes me). At first I found it somewhat weird, but now I've grown to respect it. It totally makes sense.

I remember in high school (when I was already a proficient programmer, but still within-grade in the other sciecnes), struggling with some hard physics problems, and running to my dad for help: he would always say: "dimensional analysis". If only I had connected the dots: doing "dimensional analysis" in your work is _exactly_ the same as type-checking your manually executed paper algorithm. This lightbulb went off in my head approximately a decade too late...

<comment><USER14> We repeated dimensional analysis in my first physics class until _everybody_ got it ( all six of us... ).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When California released a similar database a few years ago, it completely convinced me of the horrific barbarism that capital punishment is. It is no deterrent to crime, and the risk of killing not just innocent people, but genuinely reformed people, is far, far too great.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, a list like this tugs at your humanity.

Then again, these people wantonly killed others (as judged by juries and appeals judges and governors).

Where are the last words of their victims?

[edited for clarity]

<comment> k-mcgrady Regardless of how horrific their crimes were we can never really be certain enough of their guilt to kill them. Nor should we give our government power to kill its citizens. I don't know how anyone can believe the death penalty to be a good idea.

1\. Look at the countries America is in company with in allowing capital punishment - it's not a list any country should want to be a part of.

2\. Imagine yourself as an innocent person on death row. It's very likely there have been people in that situation[1]. Do you still think it should be allowed?

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

<comment><USER16> _Regardless of how horrific their crimes were we can never really be certain enough of their guilt to kill them_

That's a strange thing to say categorically. So if we have a lot of witnesses, video, a manifesto of motive, physical evidence, etc... we can't be certain enough to feel that someone should be permanently removed from the world?

<comment> k-mcgrady IMO no. Witnesses can lie, video can be manipulated, physical evidence can be tampered with. Obviously we can be very close to certain but unless we are 100% certain (which I don't think is possible) killing someone is a big risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This list is yet another example of how the condemned receive something that neither their victims nor most other convicts get: a ceremonial death. They get last words. A last meal. Last rites with the clergy. Candlelight vigil by those against capital punishment. Final appeals to the courts and to the governor for clemency. Witnesses to the execution. To rot in obscurity would be greater punishment for these people. Instead they get to go out as celebrities, complete with profiles on an official government website. Disgusting.

<comment><USER18> Disgusting as it may be, there are only a few options here, and none of them are going to make everyone happy.

If you leave them to rot in prison like you suggested, people are going to be upset that the society is paying to keep them alive(surely it would be better to get rid of them?)

If you eventually execute them like some countries do now, some people(like you) are upset that we make a show out of it - we don't. If one occurs it's a result of a judicial system that takes years to reach a final decision,and then we are "too humane" to just shoot people in the head without giving them the last meal.

And of course there is the last option of executing people on the spot - caught a child molester during the act? Why not shoot them right there, it is literally saving the taxpayer millions in costs of trials, judges,lawyers etc. No one can argue that it would not be a huge saving for the society. But I think we can do better than dispensing justice on a whim. As much as I enjoy Judge Dredd comics, I would not like to live in his universe.

Also, one could argue that a much better system would be about rehabilitation,not punishment, and in such system death sentence is simply not needed.

<comment><USER19> > If you leave them to rot in prison like you suggested, people are going to > be upset that the society is paying to keep them alive(surely it would be > better to get rid of them?)

I've heard that execution as practiced in the US today is more expensive than life imprisonment.

<comment><USER20> I know a lot of people who would be okay with us going the cheaper route of putting a bullet in their head rather than the more costly method of injection.

<comment><USER21> Its not the injection that makes it expensive. Its the years of legal costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Average age is around 39

      var ages = [],
          sum = 0;
      $('tr').each(function(a,b) {
          var age = $(b).find('td:nth-child(7)').text();
          if (age !== '') {
              ages.push(age);
              sum += parseInt(age);
          }
      });
      console.log(sum / ages.length);

Returns 39.10679611650485

<comment><USER23> No need to store a list of ages. A simple counter should suffice.

<comment><USER24> Or just count the number of <tr> elements and subtract one to account for the table header. That's what I did to find the average race.

      $('tr').length-1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Texas you don't get the death penalty for murder, you get it for committing a second felony and murder. Rob Will is on Polunsky DR and likely innocent considering he was handcuffed at the time, zero physical evidence, and his partner confessed to the murder. DA is a stepping stone to governor and senate there is much incentive for DAs to seek the death penalty due to all the media attention these trials receive, propelling the DA into a household name. The more inmates you kill the bigger your public profile.

<comment><USER26> Wasn't aware of his case:

From the judge denying a new trail: "The questions raised during post-judgment factual development about Will's actual innocence create disturbing uncertainties," he wrote. "Federal law does not recognize actual innocence as a mechanism to overturn an otherwise valid conviction."

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/us/texas-death-row- appeal-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/us/texas-death-row-appeal-is- more-than-a-matter-of-innocence.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> 467

> Yes, Tell my sister Tracey, I love you. Nicole, thank you and I love you. > Wanda and all of my friends, I love you and thank you for your support. To > the State of Texas, I am an innocent man. Never trust a court-appointed > attorney. I am ready Warden. Thank you, Brad, I'm sorry. Check that DNA, > check Scott. Here we go. Lord Jesus, Jesus.

<comment><USER26> I know I shouldn't due to work BUT WOW this guy was clearly should have been a death penalty case! You need a murder with a felony being committed. His felony robbery of a day planner ("found" during the trail) and a missing wallet. Medical Examiner clearly showed the man was innocent. The victim defended herself and was violently beaten and wounded. Defendant had zero wounds and no evidence of crime in his home or his car. Sick sick world.

[http://www.skepticaljuror.com/2011/05/impending-wrongful- exe...](http://www.skepticaljuror.com/2011/05/impending-wrongful-execution-of- cary.html)

<comment><USER26> Clearly shouldn't be a death penalty case!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I haven't got that far yet, but only one of the five statements I've read has made any kind of apology, and he was already in prison at the time he committed the crime for which he was executed (running over a corrections officer in a stolen truck while trying to escape).

Also surprising to me was how many murders were committed for very little potential gain: theft, escaping from a police officer while under arrest for a petty crime; there's less headline-grabbing evil than I expected here (though there is its share); it's mostly just a mixture of reflexive stupidity, greed, and violence.

All in all quite an unsettling read.

<comment><USER25> There's also 2 guys declared 'unfit to execute' yet they are still in solitary on death row since the 70s

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> We have a word cloud and a "greatest hits" list posted here.

Remember that this is more than 500 separate cases worthy of consideration or at least having enough decency to hit the back button rather than dig into such a heavy topic.

What's not cool is turning these words into a Top 10-linkbait list or a variety show or some other mechanism for insulating yourself from the horror of this post.

<comment><USER30> Folks have published 'famous epitaph' books before - is this different? Of course its black humor, all such topics are by definition. Is it just too soon? If they had all been pre-1950 would that have softened the horror?

Or is it just that the Internet is way too slight of a medium to support Any serious topic? I would tend to agree with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> >Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.tdcj.state.tx.us

I hope we did that.

>Try reloading: www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html

Wow, chrome actually thinks that out to google.com. Sneaky.

[http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/death_row/dr_executed_offenders.html&usg=AFQjCNFrs1WvjG4EQEFSlnwgnvW7_8WisA)

</comment><comment><USER32> Can anybody explain why the Race column is stil there? What is the relevancy of this statistic? Why not sex, or religion?

<comment><USER33> Because a disproportionate number of people sentenced to death are non-white.

<comment><USER34> From the data:

      White    231 (44.9%)
      Black    190 (36.9%)
      Hispanic  92 (17.9%)
      Other      2 (0.4%)

<comment><USER35> _As of the 2010 US Census, the racial distribution in Texas was as follows: 70.4% of the population of Texas was White American; 11.8% African American; 3.8%, Asian American; 0.7%, American Indian; 0.1%, native Hawaiian or Pacific islander only; 10.5% of the population were of some other race only; and 2.7% were of two or more races. Hispanics (of any race) were 37.6% of the population of the state, while Non-Hispanic Whites composed 45.3%_ [0]

The Hispanic portion is difficult to parse, but it certainly seems that African-Americans are very over-represented.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas#Racial_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Texas#Racial_and_ancestral_makeup)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The New York Times ran an article[1] on this in 2009. Here are the last words they picked out -

\---

Go ahead?

Nothing I can say can change the past.

I done lost my voice.

I would like to say goodbye.

My heart goes is going ba bump ba bump ba bump.

Is the mike on?

I don't have anything to say. I am just sorry about what I did.

I am nervous and it is hard to put my thoughts together. Sometimes you don't know what to say.

Man, there is a lot of people there.

I have come here today to die, not make speeches.

Where's Mr. Marino's mother? Did you get my letter?

I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me. You don't have to.

I wish I could die more than once to tell you how sorry I am.

Could you please tell that lady right there — can I see her? She is not looking at me — I want you to understand something, hold no animosity toward me. I want you to understand. Please forgive me.

I don't think the world will be a better or safer place without me.

I am sorry.

I want to tell my mom that I love her.

I caused her so much pain and my family and stuff. I hurt for the fact that they are going to be hurting.

I am taking it like a man.

Kick the tires and light the fire. I am going home.

They may execute me but they can't punish me because they can't execute an innocent man.

I couldn't do a life sentence.

I said I was going to tell a joke. Death has set me free. That's the biggest joke.

To my sweet Claudia, I love you.

Cathy, you know I never meant to hurt you.

I love you, Irene.

Let my son know I love him.

Tell everyone I got full on chicken and pork chops.

I appreciate the hospitality that you guys have shown me and the respect, and the last meal was really good.

The reason it took them so long is because they couldn't find a vein. You know how I hate needles. ... Tell the guys on Death Row that I'm not wearing a diaper.

Lord, I lift your name on high.

From Allah we came and to Allah we shall return.

For everybody incarcerated, keep your heads up.

Death row is full of isolated hearts and suppressed minds.

Mistakes are made, but with God all things are possible.

I am responsible for them losing their mother, their father and their grandmother. I never meant for them to be taken. I am sorry for what I did.

I can't take it back.

Lord Jesus forgive of my sins. Please forgive me for the sins that I can remember.

All my life I have been locked up.

Give me my rights. Give me my rights. Give me my rights. Give me my life back.

I am tired.

I deserve this.

A life for a life.

It's my hour. It's my hour.

I'm ready, Warden.

\---

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20cameron.html?_r=...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20cameron.html?_r=3&)

<comment><USER37> I am curious why you pasted the entire list of last words from the NYT article in addition to linking to the article? Why not provide a link to the article (maybe a small relevant excerpt) and let people choose if they want stop reading the comments here to read the NYT list?

<comment><USER38> I personally appreciated the full paste - I generally dislike leaving HN through links if I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The first one I read was already interesting. He talks about being at peace and says a few nice things to his family and friends. The striking thing is that he never mentions the murders he committed. He killed a 51 year old woman, a 24 year old woman (daughter) and a 3 year old child (grandchild). All were stabbed to death. I believe the 24 year old woman was his girlfriend at the time. Saying your sorry, not sorry, or that you were innocent, I'd expect that. But not saying anything at all it really odd. [http://murderpedia.org/male.V/v/villegas-jose- luis.htm](http://murderpedia.org/male.V/v/villegas-jose-luis.htm)

</comment><comment><USER40> Some charts from the data : [http://theuforce.blogspot.in/2014/05/visualizing- executed-of...](http://theuforce.blogspot.in/2014/05/visualizing-executed- offenders-in-texas.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> Execution #492 [http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2012-11-02/framing- the-g...](http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2012-11-02/framing-the- guilty/all/)

Regardless of the truth, there are a lot of open questions and this man was put to death with all these questions still not answered. This is not who we should be.

</comment><comment><USER42> Here are some visualizations of this data set:

[http://vis.berkeley.edu/courses/cs294-10-fa13/wiki/index.php...](http://vis.berkeley.edu/courses/cs294-10-fa13/wiki/index.php/Assignment_1:_Visualization_Design)

This was an assignment in a Berkeley visualization class taught by Maneesh Agrawala.

</comment><comment><USER43> Last statements are endlessly fascinating things. I hope that by the time I die that tombstones will have flash storage built into them. You'll push a button on the tombstone and out pops a holograph that projects whatever message the person would like to share. I'd spend days in the cemetery.

</comment><comment><USER44> One of the best:

"Somebody needs to kill my trial attorney."

George Harris Executed in Missouri on September 13, 2000 for a murder. [http://wgrd.com/the-weirdest-last-words-by-death-row- inmates...](http://wgrd.com/the-weirdest-last-words-by-death-row-inmates/)

Clearly he didn't get a good lawyer.

<comment><USER45> Maybe he scared away the good lawyers by threatening to murder them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The title for this is incorrectly applying the public suffix list ([https://publicsuffix.org/](https://publicsuffix.org/)) and comes up with "tx.us". That's not the registered domain name here.

<comment><USER37>
      // The registrar notes several more specific domains available in each state,
      // such as state.*.us, dst.*.us, etc., but resolution of these is somewhat
      // haphazard; in some states these domains resolve as addresses, while in others
      // only subdomains are available, or even nothing at all. We include the
      // most common ones where it's clear that different sites are different
      // entities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I may go to hell for this...

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K6LOJ8x1dP85CGAMjDwn...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K6LOJ8x1dP85CGAMjDwnM8lSxzMagPNDNj6kDbTQ_ag/edit#gid=1671808171)

</comment><comment><USER48> What a disgusting, morally bankrupt society that permits the state to take a life. And then to censor statements? Damn. Nobody is claiming these were good human beings, but disgust isn't nearly strong enough a word.

</comment><comment><USER49> Absolutely chilling. It disgusts me that we're still killing people for killing people in the 21st century. I hope our descendants look back on this the same way we look back at slavery today.

</comment><comment><USER50> There are no atheists in foxholes... or on death row apparently.

<comment><USER51> There are atheists in foxholes, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> that's.. oddly haunting.

</comment><comment><USER53> Many more should be added. Start with Aldrich Ames, Bernie Madoff and Robert Hanssen.</comment>


What's the best way to do Database Versioning? - <AUTHOR>

How does everyone do their database versioning? At work, one of our applications is a custom cms, where we need to keep track of changes to two small tables and preferably keep them in sync with git branches.<p>I really haven't used anything more advanced than keeping a directory of db scripts under version control, so any advice would be appreciated <comment><USER2> Liquibase

<comment><AUTHOR> It looked pretty heavy. Can you describe how your team uses it?</comment></comment>