Nuclear fusion 'will work' (auto-starting audio) - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9585000/9585189.stm <comment><USER2> Maybe. Probably, though people asking for billions of dollars can hardly be considered disinterested observers.

The question really isn't "will it work?", but rather "when, how much will it cost to develop, and (most importantly) will commercial power production via fusion ever be cheaper than the alternatives?"

I see no indication tokomaks will ever be commercially viable, even if they can be made to work. The up-front cost to construct a plant will be ruinous under the rosiest of scenarios. It would probably be cheaper to fake base load power with solar cells backed by lead-acid batteries.

And laser ignition? Who knows? I would like to see someone ask these guys "Okay, assume all the technical problem are resolved the way you expect, how much is it going to cost to build a commercial power production plant?"

<comment><USER3> The billions of dollars of investment is nothing compared to the positive effect that this will have on our society.

The fact that this looks difficult from where we sit is not a good reason to not do the research. Many of the biggest discoveries in history looked impossible before they became ubiquitous.

<comment><USER2> _The billions of dollars of investment is nothing compared to the positive effect that this will have on our society._

You missed the point entirely. Billions of dollars in research, even if successful, will have _no positive effect whatsoever_ if they don't lead to a commercially viable means of generating power. It's not enough to get to break even. The end result has to be cheaper than the alternatives.

I'm not a big solar power fan, in general, because I think it's too expensive. But if we're going to pretend cost doesn't mean anything, we'd be far better off taking those billions and building out a solar infrastructure with technology we have today rather than taking a dodgy gamble on something that a) may never work at all and b) probably won't be cheaper than solar if it does work.

<comment><USER4> > I'm not a big solar power fan, in general, because I think it's too > expensive.

Solar energy has already reached grid parity¹ in Australia².

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity> [2] [http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-07/solar-industry- celebra...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-07/solar-industry-celebrates- grid-parity/2875592/?site=sydney)

<comment><USER2> Sure... with feed-in tariffs and as long as you don't account for the idle capacity that needs to be there in case the sun isn't shining. If you ignore all that... grid parity!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The short version: talking about laser inertial fusion energy, estimating 18 months away from POC in the lab, a decade away from utility scale usage if all goes well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I used to have high hopes for fusion power until I came to learn two things:

1\. Neutrons rapidly destroy any kind of containment. He-3 is seen as some kind of holy grail here. Unfortunately it's _incredibly_ rare. The best source is probably the Moon (which, with no atmosphere, has had billions of years of solar winds to collect non-trivial amounts of He-3); and

2\. To sustain a fission reaction any current research reactor I can recall reading about uses probably radioactive isotopes (most likely tritium ie H-3) or at least somewhat uncommon isotopes (ie deuterium, H-2).

Fun fact: per cubic foot compost generates more power than an equivalent volume of material from the Sun's core [1]. What makes stars such great energy producers isn't fusion per se, it's their sheer size and fuel supply.

Fusion goes hand-in-hand with the Utopian concept of "free energy" because obviously water (and thus hydrogen) is abundant. But no energy will truly be "free" although it may be cheap enough to have the almost the same impact as being free.

There are four component costs in energy:

1\. The cost of building a device that produces energy;

2\. The cost of maintaining that device;

3\. The R&D required to bringing that device to market. Obviously, over time, this cost diminishes to zero; and

4\. The cost of extracting, storing and transporting whatever fuel is required.

So for hydrogen, assuming a fusion reactor doesn't use sea water, you must first extract hydrogen. This is actually relatively expensive. Hydrogen extract is seen as a way of smoothing out power generation from renewable sources (most often wind power) [2].

Sure a fusion power installation could produce the energy for this but remember that any power system needs to produce more power than it uses or its largely worthless (barring corner cases like producing energy in portable form, which is the entire model for batteries). With hydrogen extraction, you've just raised the bar on how much power than reactor needs to produce.

Likewise, hydrogen storage is non-trivial. It's flammable and hard and expensive to store in liquid form (compared to, say, liquid nitrogen [3].

Energy needs to be produced in many forms. Fusion is on the scale required for power stations but that's only one of our needs. What about vehicles? It's really hard to beat the amount of energy stored in oil (by mass or by volume) and the ease with which it is extracted.

I see a long term solution to this in genetically engineering microbes to produce readily consumable compounds for abundant and sustainable inputs. Another fun fact: if you've read Neal Stephenson's _Anathem_ you'll probably recall his mention of "fuel trees" that suggest this kind of approach.

In the far distant future I see the only viable power source that would allow us to live in space, let alone cross interstellar space, to be black holes [4].

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

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_hybrid_power_systems>

[3]: <http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/KarenFan.shtml>

[4]: [http://io9.com/5391989/a-black-hole-engine-that-could- power-...](http://io9.com/5391989/a-black-hole-engine-that-could-power- spaceships)

</comment><comment><USER7> some related links

<https://lasers.llnl.gov/>

<https://life.llnl.gov/>

</comment><comment><USER8> It'll work when someone shows it working. Until then it's just conjecture.

<comment><USER9> It's tempting to say this to avoid getting your hopes up, but there has been solid concrete progress in fusion technology over the last decade. Getting net positive fusion to occur on Earth is an _incredibly_ difficult technical challenge. It's like climbing a scientific mountain, and right now we are a few hundred meters from the top with a few more obstacles to go. So saying you won't believe it until we reach the summit discredits all the progress we have made to date.

This technology is not a matter of 'is it possible?' but 'is it technically feasible?' And the scientific community has been chipping away at the latter for a long time.

<comment><USER10> One thing which surprised me to learn was the fact that the Sun, per cubic meter, generates about as much power as an active compost heap.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Core>

The Sun is not like a nuclear bomb going off. It's just a big radiating compost heap. Its huge energy output is due to its large size, and not the intensity of its reaction. (If the Sun's reaction were like a nuclear bomb, the solar system would be destroyed in a supernova-like explosion.)

In other words, nuclear fusion at the Sun's scale isn't very intense a reaction. Why do we expect it's a good idea for a power plant? Do we expect to get significantly _hotter_ than a star? Significantly more dense? It makes sense how nuclear power works. Fusion power, it's not so clear.

Of course, there are fusion bombs as well, but aren't those set off by nuclear bombs?

<comment><USER11> The bulk of the energy release from hydrogen bombs is not generated by fusion. The general design of a hydrogen bomb is that a hydrogen "blanket" surrounds a fission "core". When the fission "core" goes supercritical, it releases enough energy to initiate fusion in the "blanket".

What the "blanket" does at this point is exert pressure on the "core", which would be beginning to blow apart in a conventional nuclear device. Keeping the "core" together for just that small bit of time longer allows it to remain supercritical for just that small bit of time longer, with the energy release growing exponentially with a time constant of 10^-7 seconds.

<comment><USER12> How about that - I thought it was all about the _binding energy curve_ : [http://ec.europa.eu/research/energy/fi/fi_bs/images/fig2_147...](http://ec.europa.eu/research/energy/fi/fi_bs/images/fig2_1473.gif)

where, as the diagram shows, fission comes up from the heavier elements (less energy difference) and fusion from the lighter (greatly more).

<comment><USER11> Per fusion event, you get about 14 MeV to the about 200 MeV you get per fission event. It's true that the binding energy per nucleon is higher, but there are many fewer nucleons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There is a big difference between "I think it will work" and "it works!".

</comment><comment><USER14> Fusion has always been and always will be 30 years aways...

<comment><USER15> The saying is 20 years not 30 and they're saying it without tongue in cheek now.</comment></comment>


Y Combinator Cuts Ties with Peter Thiel After Ending Part-Time Partner Program - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanmac/y-combinator-cuts-ties-with-peter-thiel-ends-part-time <comment><USER2> Can we save ourselves a really long, pointless political argument?

They ended the entire part-time-partner program, and transitioned some of the part-timers to advisor roles. Thiel is one of multiple part-timers not to become an advisor.

You are not going to get an answer, or more "context", from YC about the political implications of this change. No matter how many times you ask and how carefully you word the questions, you're not going to pry loose any first- hand drama from this situation.

I'm happy Thiel's no longer involved with YC. I'm disappointed that it took this long, but we can't always get what we want. There are people here that disagree with me on both those things. We all knew that about each other. We probably don't need to beat it to death.

<comment><USER3> How can you say "can we save ourselves a really long, pointless political argument" and end your post with a divisive political opinion (that you think people with opposing viewpoints should be silenced)? You're literally inviting the debate that you're calling long and pointless. Or perhaps you just want to only share your opinion without others having the same opportunity, so you can have the last word?

Personally, I think Trump is reprehensible. I also think that silencing people with opposing political viewpoints is dangerous and reprehensible. I don't always agree with Peter Thiel politically, but I would happily do business with him. It's really not our place as the internet lynch-mob to interfere with Peter's role in the startup community because of his political views. Note, @sama said as much when the whole thing went down.

<comment><USER4> > How can you say "can we save ourselves a really long, pointless political > argument" and end your post with a divisive political opinion

Probably because the "divisive" opinion is on a different question than the on tptacek sees as pointless, which he was pretty express about: the pointless argument is about the political _meaning_ of Thiel not being a partner. And he's right, that's not going to get an answer and any argument about it is pointless.

The "divisive" opinion about whether or not it's a good thing that that relationship ended is, at a minimum, not pointless in the same way (it's likely to be fruitless in the way that arguments that rest in clashes of fundamental values are, but that's a different concern.)

> It's really not our place as the internet lynch-mob to interfere with > Peter's role in the startup community because of his political views.

You are free to choose to restrain the means in which you apply your free speech and association rights based on this narrow, misguided, elitist view of the role of the _hoi polloi_ , of course.

> Note, @sama said as much when the whole thing went down.

I'm entirely unsurprised that Altman would say no external party of should question YC decisions on political (or, heck, any other) grounds, but I'm not sure why you think noting that he did so adds any weight to your argument.

<comment><USER5> I was agreeing with the begining of your post, but

> You are free to choose to restrain the means in which you apply your free > speech and association rights based on this narrow, misguided, elitist view > of the role of the hoi polloi, of course.

Is where I burst out laughing and moved on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am still really puzzled over exactly why Peter Thiel so so hated. I believe the level of hatred is completely unwarranted. From my understanding, it boils down to this:

\- He is remotely associated with Trump \- He helped take down Gawker \- ....something something something...but he backed Trump!

For the Gawker part:

Gawker outed him without his permission.

Outing a gay man is something the tabloids used to do in the darkest time period of the United States. Finding someone was gay and making that known publicly was a tool used by very, very unpleasant people to destroy careers and lives for years.

Given how Liberal the tech industry is, it is genuinely puzzling that people would rise to the defense of "Freedom of the Press" to use someone's sexual identity to try to discredit or embarrass them and destroy their career.

This is not freedom of the press, its bullying. If a media outlet did something to you personally and you had a few million dollars to spare to shut them down, you would do it too. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.

So Peter Thiel helped shut down an abusive tabloid that outs gay men against their will and regresses the tech sector back to the 1970's and 80's. That doesn't seem sufficient to warrant the hatred.

Then he was associated with Trump. He dared so say things like: "Our middle class has been gutted by globalization and we are being eaten alive by China."

Bernie Sanders ran on this exact platform. Almost word-for-word, Bernie Sander's political platform economically had many things in common with what Thiel was promoting.

So that leaves one final option: The reason that people hate Thiel is because he made enemies in the Liberal press, they smeared him relentlessly and people internalized this without doing their own independent thinking or research.

I don't like that Y Combinator was expected to "Apologize" for not firing someone for holding political beliefs that align them with 42% of the United States population. I feel the tech industry is now a worse, less free place when demonization of this type has become so endemic.

<comment><USER7> Theil didn't just hurt a bully. He took it a step further. For one, he financed someone _else 's_ lawsuit, because his own was unwinnable (they did in fact print the truth, that he is gay). More importantly, he hurt free speech through the chilling effect of his suit.

What he basically did was say, "don't ever print anything negative about a billionaire because they can take down your entire business". So now if a billionaire really does do something newsworthy and negative, places like the New York Times might think twice about publishing that story, for fear of the cost of defending a billionaire's lawsuit.

That's why people dislike him (other than his Trump support, although to be fair I haven't heard anything about him supporting Trump anymore).

<comment><USER8> "What he basically did was say, "don't ever print anything negative about a billionaire because they can take down your entire business""

No, he didn't. Gawker died on its own merits; in an alternative world where Gawker continued to flaunt the law because someone couldn't afford to fund a lawsuit, I'm OK with this outcome. Not to mention, Gawker did themselves absolutely no favors, from ignoring a federal judge to flippantly answering questions under oath, they garnered no pity from me.

<comment><USER7> I agree, Gawker was awful and deserved to die for many reasons.

But it's important to remember that the judgement was only the death blow -- defending the lawsuit was what gave them a slow death. Even if Gawker was right and won, they still would have died.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This post does not appear to contain any evidence that YC has cut ties with Peter Thiel. They ended the program that he, and many other individuals, were a part of. Just because he is not in this program anymore, does not mean they no longer have any ties to him. There is also no evidence of any connection here to Trump or Thiel's support of him with the ending of the program or Thiel's lack of involvement in a different official capacity with YC. I wish I could have the five minutes back it took to read this click bait.

<comment> racer-v The page literally says: _Edit: Peter Thiel is no longer affiliated with Y Combinator._

That means they at least cut _some_ ties.

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/welcome- peter/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/welcome-peter/)

<comment><USER9> Not necessarily.

<comment> racer-v You don't believe that an affiliation counts as a tie? Or you think YC is lying that Thiel is no longer affiliated?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I know most of these things never get a truly transparent answer, and often for valid reasons. I am very curious for some response from YC.

It may have been politically motivated, and it may not have been. I'm also not aware how much Thiel was involved vs. other partners. Additional insight into much of this could shed good light to those that appreciate much of what YC has done and aims to continue to do.

Some response from YC would be a big win, but also just may not be an option.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a big fan of Peter Thiel, and of anyone who's a divergent thinker and has well thought out opinions that run contrary to mainstream ideology (e.g., Noam Chomsky).

If YC ended its relationship with Peter because of his political affiliations, I'd find that extremely unfortunate. Any institution which closes itself off to outside information, challenging viewpoints and diversity of thought risks becoming an ideological echo chamber and ultimately weakening itself in the long run.

<comment><USER12> _Any institution which closes itself off to outside information, challenging viewpoints and diversity of thought_

Do you make sure to attend flat-earth meetings?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >YC is not going to fire someone for supporting a major party nominee.

This is awesome. I had no idea this had been said. I have a lot of respect for anyone bringing that sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER14> What about Milner?

</comment><comment><USER15> Rumors are swirling that Thiel is gearing up for economic/regulatory war on silicon valley.

So I can't say this is surprising but I find it all extremely confusing.

EDIT: Mostly rumors I hear from happy hours with some politicos in DC. Sorry, its just meat space rumors.

<comment><USER16> What would he have to gain from such a war?

<comment><USER17> A few large silicon valley companies have a large concentration of power. Libertarians like distribution of power among smaller entities.

<comment><USER18> But that's not Thiel at all. He does want power concentrated; he just wants to be one of those it's concentrated with.

<comment><USER19> He wants power to be as concentrated as it should be when people are free to gain and lose power as consequences of their decisions. That's contrasted with bureaucratic insulation whereby power isn't gained or lost with bad or good decisions.

<comment><USER18> Nothing I've seen indicates that's even remotely close to the truth. He wants power to be concentrated with him.

<comment><USER19> Then why did he support another person's presidential run?

And why is it a problem for him to concentrate power so long as the power transfer is consensual? or democratic?

<comment><USER20> [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/natural_born_citizen](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/natural_born_citizen)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone provide context to this? Sam has been on record saying that he wouldn't cut Thiel solely for political affiliations. Was there another reason?

<comment><USER18> They didn't feel he was a good fit, or maybe Thiel didn't want to transition to whatever they replaced the partner program with. Simple as that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In my opinion, this was long overdue. Anyway, Ycombinator maybe strategically getting ready for a world without trump. Having people who supported this type of a Person won't be a good look in the future.

<comment><USER23> Sure, lets all think the same. Do you play football with people who dont like to eat what you like?

<comment><USER24> > Do you play football with people who dont like to eat what you like?

I appreciate that trivialising the issues to score cheap slippery slope points is de rigueur these days but you must surely see the yawning dichotomy between "people who don't like to eat what you like" and "people who believe other people are lesser beings less deserving of rights, money, health, protections"

<comment><USER23> Peter does not think that</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Packt Publishing is down? - <AUTHOR> 503 errors for last few hours while trying to access account and cart. <comment><USER2> It was for me as well. It's back up now but running a little slow.

btw, for the rest of HN, $5 book and video sale today. :)</comment>


What is an 83(b) election? (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2008/02/15/what-is-an-83b-election/

<comment><USER2> As we enter "bubble 2" it is important to also note a problem with 83(b) elections.

So if you are hired by a company which gives you a restricted stock grant they may also give you the option to use an 83(b) election to recognize all of that revenue all at once. That lets you get the taxes out of the way and as it vests you just get the stock (no additional tax to pay).

The argument is that the value of the stock is going up, so this will save you future taxes (you get taxed at the fair market value when it vests). The challenge is when it goes down.

If you elect and it goes down, you don't instantly get a "tax refund" of the difference in value between then and now, instead you can write off the difference against other long term gains (if you have them). If you don't have them, you get to write it off, up to $3000 per year (not even a single dependent!) until you've used it all up.

I know this because I was writing off just such a devaluation from stock received pre-crash of 2000, and unlocked post crash of 2000. I didn't use up the entire write off until 2006 when selling some stock with long term gains from my then employer.

I say this not to scare you, but to share with you that part of the "entrepreneurial" experience is that you get to visit almost _every_ part of the IRS tax code in some detail, and rarely is it written to make it "easy" for you. Cultivate a relationship with a solid accountant/CPA/tax lawyer before you get to the point of going crazy trying to figure out all this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a much better post on this topic from the folks at Wealthfront: [https://blog.wealthfront.com/always-file- your-83b/](https://blog.wealthfront.com/always-file-your-83b/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Also this is just generally a good example of why you need a good startup lawyer help you with your documents. Sometimes you can cut corners and make mistakes early in a startup and just fix them later. Failing to make the proper 83b election would be very difficult to fix later.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is so absolutely critical, and probably the SINGLE highest-leverage thing you'll ever do if your startup is successful. Please if you're starting a company, you must do this.

</comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, here's the address to use

IRS FRESNO CA 93888-0002

(that zip4 is important) run this by a pro, it's too important to mess up.

<comment><USER7> Some of us don't live in CA... :)

[http://www.irs.gov/uac/Where-To-File-Addresses-for-Tax- Profe...](http://www.irs.gov/uac/Where-To-File-Addresses-for-Tax- Professionals)

<comment><USER8> Your link is a good resource, since not all forms should go to Fresno, but that office is more than just California. For instance, in Kansas and Missouri, 83(b) elections are sent to the Fresno office. The receiving offices are organized by regions.</comment></comment></comment>


Hands-On with the Nokia 8 Sirocco: Reviving Nokia's 'Dream Phone' Concept - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12480/hands-on-nokia-8-sirocco?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social <comment><USER2> Not even HMD people believe that Sirocco is going to sell. They are just putting it into the market to show that they are coming. It's for the presence and testing the market for input. Walk before run. Their next high end phone will be the real thing (and it's going to be 5G phone)

There is a good reason to expect that HMD/Nokia phones will be very competitive in just few years. UMD has Foxconn money and manufacturing muscle behind it plus everything that comes from Nokia Research/Bell labs.

46% of Hon Hai's (Foxconn) revenue comes from Apple. Foxconn wants to reduce its dependence from Apple. Nokia wants to maintain the value of its brand in consumer space.

<comment><USER2> s/UMD/HMD

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have a Nokia 8 for development and it's a nicer phone than the Pixel 2 for the price.

Imagine a world where Nokia doesn't hire a MS exec as CEO to tank the company so they can sell it to MS and instead adopted Android.

They'd be worth more than Samsung.

<comment><USER4> > They'd be worth more than Samsung

Samsung is not just about phones. They are a major computer hardware manufacturer (memory, SSDs, etc.), major appliance manufacturer and also a major producer of mobile chips, among other things.

But yeah if Nokia had adopted android long back Samsung's phone's probably wouldn't have become that popular. Or Nokia might have eaten market share from Apple.

<comment><USER5> They could have started for not having internal wars between Symbian and Maemo units.

Already when the first Maemo tablet was shown to us on internal demos, we saw the future, but it was unthinkable to have GSM support.

Followed by not having a bonus clause for the CEO to tank the company.

Thankfully they managed to survive, even if on a different shape.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few thoughts on this:

The title of the article made me think it's a concept phone, as in not real and unlikely to be produced. I almost didn't click on the article because if that's the case I don't really care.

It looks just like the Galaxy S8, which is a great phone with a great camera that's much more affordable.

It's crazy how many words I see in life (Sirocco) that I know the meaning of specifically because of a lifetime of playing Magic: the Gathering.

<comment><USER7> I've broken more Samsung phones than I can count. I broke my S8 within 3 weeks of getting it, even with a case on it.

They have a reputation of having the most breakable phones for a reason. [0]

By anecdotal comparison, the last Nokia I owned was a windows phone, did not require a case, and lasted me 3.5 years without a scratch.

For me, if Nokia can create an S8 looking phone with the handset quality they are known for, for me it would be worth the investment.

[0] [https://www.techradar.com/news/hold-the-phone-samsung- galaxy...](https://www.techradar.com/news/hold-the-phone-samsung- galaxy-s8-dubbed-most-fragile-handset-ever)

<comment><USER8> To me, it seems about 1 out of 4 people that pull out a Samsung phone has a cracked screen. I don't have hard data, but I've seen it happen enough in my friends phones that I decided it would be best to avoid it entirely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Although AnandTech claims that it has a headphone jack, other reviews state that it does not.

It's interesting that it's an Android One phone. With support for GSM and CDMA, I wonder whether it will be supported with Project Fi.

<comment><USER10> Its so infuriating that they never show the top and bottoms of phones so you cant tell. On another note, does anyone know how modding friendly Nokia phone are, i.e do they have open bootloaders?

<comment><USER11> From what I have read on reddit, Nokia locks their bootloaders and won't unlock them.

<comment><USER12> They've said they will unlock their bootloaders, but they've not got around to doing it yet from what I understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They say it's IP67 certified, then say it's waterproof. These aren't the same things. IP67 isn't even very good water resistance; IP68 is _slightly_ better, and several popular phones support it.

> Its diamond-cut edges provide a rather comfortable grip, which is much > appreciated on a 7.5-mm thick handset. Obviously, this grip is a > differentiator, so when you hold the N8S, you can easily recognize it.

Diamond cutting is not polishing; you can round and polish metal without a diamond cutter. Maybe these reviewers are confused again and the diamond cutting is for smoothing the glass? And by the way, who are these people that spend almost a grand on a highly fragile glass-covered phone and don't keep them in a rubbery case? (I probably just answered my own question: rich people)

<comment><USER14> The real question is who spends a grand on a glass phone then covers it in a cheap rubber case.

They are the modern day sofa protectors.

<comment><USER15> Someone who didn't want glass on their phone in the first place – someone who treats their phone like a tool, not a trophy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Releasing Android One phones is at least a good move if you want to target the purist segment of the Android market. I have previously bought the Nexus phones and around christmas bought a Nokia 8 because HMD put a more or less stock version of Android on it. I much prefer stock Android to the touchwiz business Samsung is doing, at least as it was on my Samsung Galaxy S2 and S3.

It will be interesting to follow Nokia and HMD and I hope they succeed. There are too many phones with subpar custom UIs and menus + crapware that lags one or two major Android versions behind the latest release.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd be happier if they fixed the damn microphone issues with the existing Nokia 8 first, or at least acknowledged the issue for those Nokia 8 users (myself included) who can't even make a call on this device: [https://community.phones.nokia.com/support/discussions/topic...](https://community.phones.nokia.com/support/discussions/topics/7000011912)

</comment><comment><USER18> I am confused. What exactly did Microsoft buy if Nokia can come back with everything they had previously?

<comment><USER2> They bought only Nokia's mobile phone division and license for the Nokia brand for a few years. Nokia Research, Nokia Networks, the brand and the patents are still owned by Nokia.

After MS sold what remains of the Nokia phone manufacturing (including feature phone capacity that sells 70 million phones a year) to Foxconn, Foxconn and Nokia made HMD Global happen. Nokia provides brand for 10 years, patents and research, Foxconn finances the operation and builds the phones.

<comment><USER5> Also to note, HMD has lots of former Nokia employees, and uses the former Nokia Mobile building in Espoo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why not just make a cheap, high quality phone for developing markets àla Xiamoi?

<comment><USER20> That's the new 3310. And also, why go to the moon when you can climb Mount Everest?</comment></comment>


Ways to Decompose Fat ActiveRecord Models - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/10/17/7-ways-to-decompose-fat-activerecord-models/ <comment><USER2> Ok, let me throw out a different perspective, why are you even using an ActiveRecord Model as your entities in the first place. That in itself violates the Single Responsibility Principle by attaching the persistance mechanism to the entity itself.

What if your entities were just objects that held data and did validation, but you let use case objects determine the behavior of your system beyond that? Data persistance at that point is literally persisting your entities to the DB.

Then you use the DB much more like you would a filesystem - to retrieve and save data. It doesn't determine your model, it just stores and retrieves your data.

So, you end up with 3 types of things in this system... entities, use cases, and data gateways.

Your data gateways can still use AR if you want, or something else, it doesn't matter.

This isn't my idea, Uncle Bob lays it out better than I can here: [http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean- arch...](http://blog.8thlight.com/uncle-bob/2012/08/13/the-clean- architecture.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ok, time to embarrass myself due to lack of Ruby/programming knowledge. A few questions that perhaps someone can clear up as from my OO perspective this, to me, is all over the place. I must admit I'm only just getting started on Ruby.

Firstly, that doesn't look like the strategy pattern to me, isn't it back to front? And even if it were, what the hell are you doing? You do not pass the user to the authenticator, you'd pass the authenticator to the user constructor.

The way you've chosen is very brittle, it's a sure fire way to accidentally shoot yourself in the foot later on when someone accidentally deletes the authenticator or adds a new code path that doesn't contain one.

I also don't understand why you're creating a new class per object query? Ditto for the policy stuff. Why not just use a repository object if you don't want to clutter your main class. Like OrderRepository.GetByCompany(Id).

As for point 7, I don't understand why you're not completely extracting the facebook integration from the comment class. Does Ruby not have events? Why aren't you firing an event that the facebook integrator that initialized on the user object subscribed to? i.e. make a facebook integrator that registers itself on the user object creation.

Also, "View Model" not "View Object", that's what they're called, a lot of other frameworks already use them.

<comment><USER4> Good points/questions. I'll try to respond to each...

* RE: Strategy pattern. My understanding of the strategy pattern is it simply refers to "algorithms are encapsulate and can be selected at runtime". (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_pattern>)

* RE: New class per object query. Agreed that grouping these can make sense. Had to keep the example brief.

* RE: Events. That's another approach -- thanks for the suggestion.

* RE: "View Model" vs. "View". I had it as "View Model" in the original draft and got feedback from reviewers that they are usually called just "Views". :-) I've heard it both ways .

Thanks for the questions!

-Bryan

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is more of a theoretical question, but at what point does a project become large enough that concerns like this begin to truly matter?

When doing a small, limited-use project, it seems often that trying to follow "best practices" like avoiding fat models would be more trouble than it's worth. And yet I've worked on larger enterprise-scale projects that have most certainly benefited from following this and other practices.

Anyone know of any research or work on where the tipping point is for following increasingly complicated patterns and practices?

<comment><USER6> I try to follow a gradual approach to decomposition. When I start to get a lot of related methods I wrap them in a module, but still within the model definition(I just include the module immediately after definition). From there I might just move it to a separate file as is or perhaps I turn into a decorator and add an accessor for it on the model e.g.

      class Retailer
        ...
        def metrics
          RetailerMatrics.new(self)
        end
      end

      class RetailerMetrics < Struct.new(:retailer)
        def profit
          # devious stat twisting
        end
      end

The biggest danger with any of the patterns from the article is that you start using them before you actually need them. Then you just end up with a lot of complexity for no benefit.

<comment><USER4> Yes! Gradual is they key. Your architecture should scale up gradually to handle the app complexity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know anything about Ruby, but it's interesting to see typical "enterprisey" patterns appear for people using these scripting frameworks for web-app development. One thing I've always been curious about when evaluating Python frameworks, or looking at Ruby on Rails sample code in Github was how apps look when they start getting large. I usually see a mess, and it sort of turned me off. It's nice to know that some of the same patterns are being though of and applied in these worlds, too.

Also some good comments below on not just jumping into using all these patterns on smaller projects. Take the benefit of being light and nimble starting, then start breaking things apart as the app and teams grow. Best of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like Ruby on Rails, but "coming" from a Java background I find it odd to have lots of stuff in the models instead of using utility classes or services.

<comment><USER6> Coming from a java background to rails I found it entirely refreshing that everything wasn't in a utility class or service. Decomposition of a system using utility classes and services(in the n-tier style) is to make your system more procedural rather than more OO. This article is encouraging more OO patterns, closer in spirit to DDD. The article doesn't actually go into this but all of the techniques described can be used to compose a class so that there is still a single API for each model in your system i.e. the decomposition into policies, decorators, services(of the domain type) etc. can be hidden from the user behind the model api.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point. It sounds like what you're describing is essentially a Facade. That can be useful if you need coordinated objects to manage complexity, but want to keep it simple for clients to use that part of the application. I sometimes create a Facade for a Ruby module that is a package of fine grained classes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool stuff. @brynary, how do you organize your app? Are all seven techniques dumped into app/models or do you keep each technique in its own directory?

<comment><USER4> I wrote about that bit in my previous post:

[http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/02/07/what-code- goes-i...](http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/02/07/what-code-goes-in-the- lib-directory/)

But really, in short, don't worry too much about it. Plan on reorganizing once or twice as you find what works for you.

-Bryan

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps it's my lack of training or the projects I work on, but I've never seen a Rails model so large/cumbersome as to justify even one of these techniques.

Is this a case of fixing the wrong problem?

<comment><USER11> I have a project which will benefit from Bryan's advice.

There are models which are overly large (the project started as a Rails 1.2 project now at 3.0). The project has moved through different hands and the cruft and bloat has built up.

I look forward to applying some of Bryan's points to these models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Good article. Concise. Something I will come back and reference.</comment>


MIT's Digital Food Printer Could Create Nutritious Meals - <AUTHOR> http://www.inhabitat.com/2010/01/20/mits-digital-food-printer-creates-nutritious-meals/ it's just a concept as pointed out below. <comment><USER2> I would question whether this could be news.

It's not a product. It's not even a prototype. They don't even know how to build the thing. It's just an idea, like my time-machine or my warp-drive. It has the benefit of a nice 3D model though...

But that too doesn't look very practical either...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a 3D printer that uses sugar. It's not nutritious but at least it's real.

<http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/candyfab>

</comment><comment><USER4> Yuck. Seems like a step in the wrong direction as far as food goes. The genesis of our current health problems as a nation can be mostly traced to eating too much processed food. Seems like this would exacerbate the problem to the extreme. High Fructose Corn Syrup isn't healthy no matter what the shape.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems cool, but still a long way from a replicator that can brew me a cup of hot Earl Grey.

</comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't look like it would create many dishes of the sort most of us would consider meals. It looks more like something for prototyping highly- processed junk foods.

</comment><comment><USER7> ...so can plants and animals!</comment>


What To Look For In A Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://thenetsetter.com/blog/startups/what-to-look-for-in-a-co-founder/

<comment><USER2> A surprisingly good article. I thought it would just rattle on the same old points, but it had a personable, fresh perspective. Thanks for posting it up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have always been skeptic of family being a part of the founding team of a startup. Anyone with thoughts/experience on this subject?

Life is hard as it is and if one more gets involved it will completely shake up family life unless ofcourse you are very disciplined and leave work at _work_. During financially tough patches it may impact even more as one house should not depend on such shaky source of income.

<comment><USER2> To me, my closest friends are like family (in the sense that I don't consider losing their friendship an acceptable cost, no matter the circumstances). So my advice about starting up with a friend would apply there too: [http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a- friend...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0005-starting-up-with-a-friend.html)</comment></comment>


Notifications are a UX Anti-Pattern - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/c4d8c9ccce39/

<comment><USER2> why the hell to i have to click a down arrow to scroll. who thinks this is a good idea.

also i assume i am the 5 billionth person to complain about a medium.com article.</comment>


Developer created a chat bot to talk to recruiters for him - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/whokilledkevin/how-i-created-a-bot-that-talked-to-recruiters-for-me-54n5 <comment><USER2> I thought this was going to be about the bot pretending to be him, not a glorified web form he asked recruiters to fill out.</comment>


How to find that perfect husband in college - <AUTHOR> http://www.redandblack.com/opinion/how-to-find-that-perfect-husband-in-college/article_8b6d38e2-c575-11e1-8ce5-0019bb30f31a.html

<comment><USER2> Great post, but there is a lot more to finding that perfect husband. Assuming you have followed the given steps so far and some guys to chose from ...

1\. Have many common interests that will last a lifetime.

2\. Do not get in college debt yourself and do not marry someone with a big debt either. Your generation is way, way behind in terms of big debts coming out of school.

3\. Make sure your family approves fully of the guy - before you fall too far in love to back out. Your parents and siblings are likely to give you good advice.

4\. What makes a man attractive on the campus may not last beyond it... Women want powerful guys, and what defines power on campus mostly only works on the campus. You want an ambitious guy, one who will work hard for the family when school ends, not just a popular frat boy or middle of the road jock.

5\. Be prepared to find a guy after college. Especially when hooking up with older guys, its easier to do that around people you later work with and their connections. The prettiest women get married first, but they are not necessarily the happiest.

6\. Be ambitious yourself, and pursue a career that does not need the man to be the breadwinner. That way, your guy can spend time with the family too.</comment>


Spammers Paying Others to Solve Captchas - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/technology/26captcha.html

<comment><USER2> This has been going on for years... not sure how this is news. Any site that is big enough to be targeted by spammers has (or certainly should have) learned that CAPTCHAs are just one of multiple layers of security that are necessary to prevent abuse of their service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Back in 2004, someone pointed out to me a nice way of getting free CAPTCHA solvers by offering certain audiovisual materials to visitors and requiring the visitors to solve CAPTCHAs in order to access those materials. To maximize effectiveness, said audiovisual materials tended to "appeal to the prurient interest," to put it politely.

</comment><comment><USER4> I didn't bother to read the actual article, just responding to the headline: Did you ever look at getafreelancer.com? There are _tons_ of jobs for captcha solving. Permanently.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is recaptcha safe?

<comment><USER6> I don't see how it's any different than regular Captchas.

<comment><USER7> reCaptcha is more than captcha since the user is reconfiguring the misconstrued word taken from a real source. If I remember correctly, the words are from old versions of New York Times and they are put through computer programs to make them hard to decode with computers.

In essence the spammers are really being helpful more than they know!

<comment><USER8> Yes, but this makes reCaptcha no more secure than other captchas - just more tangentially useful.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields - <AUTHOR> http://www.neuroquantology.com/repository/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65:honeybees-are-found-to-interact-with-quantum-fields&catid=59:quantum-field-theory-in-brain&Itemid=70 <comment><USER2> I'll repost my comment from the last version of this article, since I don't think any new developments have invalidated it.

 _This connection to QFT is almost surely nonsense. The flag manifold in question comes from matrix groups; basically, consider some subset of 3x3 matrices which satisfy a certain property. I.e., certain types of transformations of a 3d space. While the space of 3x3 matrices has 3x3=9 dimensions, subsets can have fewer dimensions (in this case, 6).

The two-dimensional projections she discovered are functions of the 6 dimensional matrices. So here is the occams razor explanation for what is happening. Inside the bee's head is an ODE (ordinary differential equation) solver, basically an analog computer. Just think of the ODE solver as a complicated timer, but with output depending on both time and some hidden variable. These are common objects in biology, and don't require many neurons.

The output of the ODE solver is wired to some neurons which reduce 6 variables to 2, according to the formula she discovered.

This is a fantastic discovery, a triumph of applied math. But the connection to QFT is almost surely coincidence: QFT uses symmetries of matrix groups over 3 dimensions, and the bee (which lives in 3 dimensions) also does. This phenomenon is called universality. Certain objects repeat across diverse areas simply because it is the only logical way (or the most common logical way) that things could happen._

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=391396>

<comment><USER3> Are you a biologist?

      > Inside the bee's head is an ODE (ordinary differential equation) solver
      > basically an analog computer. Just think of the ODE solver as a complicated
      > timer, but with output depending on both time and some hidden variable.
      > These are common objects in biology, and don't require many neurons.

Do you have any sources to back any of this up at all?

EDIT: Here's a very long list of papers on Honeybee navigation. <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/287/5454/851.abstract>. From the looks of no one really knows how it works. That includes the OP.

<comment><USER2> No, I'm a (former) mathematical physicist. My main source for that particular paragraph is a math bio textbook I used in grad school (standard yellow book), combined with attendance at a huge number of math bio seminars [1].

However, if you want a source for the general statement that a lot of systems biology works out to ODEs, I'll point you to some general models which form the basis for most work in mathematical neuroscience:

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

[1] If you are in quantitative grad school, I highly recommend you to do the same even if you are studying something completely different (e.g., quantum physics or abstract algebra). The math and biology are usually simple and explained very well, and you wind up learning a lot about both.

<comment><USER3> Sure. But the point here is that your simply presenting _another theory_ , possibly as far-fetched as the one presented in the original article.

<comment><USER4> ahahaha. The idea that bee brains contain a structure known to exist already in many other types of brain is equivalent to bees being able to use virtual particles for computation?

That's crazy talk, and you know it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes, she has probably been reading too much Deepak Chopra - but the comments saying things like "scientists should keep that kind of sloppy thinking to themselves" seem to be off the mark in the other direction.

If a serious researcher, like she's trying to be, has an idea that there may be even a slight chance something amazing might be happening, they should talk to everyone she knows in the field - not keep it to herself.

If a journal is willing to publish - it must have past some muster. It's not like this is going to clutter the field.

Most of the amazing ideas in science where heretical in their time (even to other scientists) - we should encourage this type of thinking in science instead of encouraging only those unwilling to take any risks.

</comment><comment><USER6> Based on the content of the article, it would be more accurate to say that "honeybees are speculated to interact with quantum fields".

</comment><comment><USER7> According only to that linked article, there are two separate claims:

1\. Bee dances are based on 2-dimensional projections of 6-dimensional flag manifolds.

2\. Bees detect quark quantum fields, hypothesized because they can also be described as flag manifolds.

The first claim seems to be much more plausible and interesting to me.

I do not really understand flag manifolds, but are they computationally difficult to project to 2D?

<comment><USER2> _I do not really understand flag manifolds, but are they computationally difficult to project to 2D?_

Not for the purposes of this article. It might be computationally difficult to predict the progress of a dance as t -> infinity (to answer this question, I'd need to know more about flag manifolds), but it's unlikely that bees solve that problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Susprisingly well explained for something that involves math, biology and physics.

Made me laugh:

The flag manifold, she notes, in addition to providing mathematicians with pure joy, also happens to be useful to physicists (...)

</comment><comment><USER9> Thank you for this article. Just the thing to get my brain going after the indulgences of the weekend.

It also knocks me flat to contemplate the ideas this intriguing article generates. It does good to be staggered by something new once in a while: it keeps complacency at bay.

</comment><comment><USER10> This:

       I wasn't looking for a connection between bees and the
       flag manifold," she says. "I was just doing my research.
       The curves were nothing special in themselves, except
       that the dance patterns kept emerging.

reminds me of that great quote from Issac Asimov:

      The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
      the one that heralds new discoveries,
      is not 'Eureka!' I found it!
      but '... That's funny ...

</comment><comment><USER11> Having a background in biology with an interest in physics and extra- dimensionality, I found this article very intriguing. I immediately thought of the mathematicians who developed the theory of prions (the likely causative agent of Creutzfeldt_Jakob Disease otherwise know as Mad Cow Disease) being a protein only transmissible infection even before it was though to be biologically plausible.

</comment><comment><USER12> I smell Penrose pixie dust.

</comment><comment><USER13> Overheard - "Code red. Humans know our secret."

<comment><USER9> I am biting my tongue here to keep myself from making references to recent episodes of Doctor Who.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Quite interesting. Thank you.</comment>


Melinda Gates Has a New Mission: Women in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/melinda-gates-has-a-new-mission-women-in-tech-8eb706d0a903#.o4p0eghbt <comment><USER2> Melinda Gates says: "Some of the best programs, UW, Stanford, Berkeley — or what [president] Maria Klawe is doing at Harvey Mudd — are finally looking at that very first CS course. If it's completely geared towards an 18-year-old white male, and they are not thinking about role models for women or problem sets they get for women, how do we keep [women] in the course?"

I can really see myself in this -- as a teenager I wrote a lot of code recreationally, writing scripts to automate playing text-based computer games ("go north. a monster attacks!") and writing my own games.

It was the first CS classes that drove me away from it, and led me to think:

\- CS isn't for people like me

\- CS problems aren't interesting

\- CS doesn't do anything to make the world a better place.

It took me many years to come back around to the coding career I'm in today. I really believe that small changes to the classes could've prevented me from developing those misconceptions and being driven away from it.

<comment><USER3> Can you expand? Because I really, really don't understand. How do you "gear" a programming course towards a gender? I can't recall a single example in any CS course I ever had that was anything more than writing code. I honestly can't even fathom how you would make that gender or race biased. It's mathematics and programming.

<comment><USER2> Here's just one example of how little moments in class can impact student's ideas of whether CS is interesting and whether they "belong" in it.

It's easy for CS teachers to get boys excited by introducing a new topic with something like "these algorithms are important in VIDEO GAMES!" Boys are vastly more likely to play video games than girls, so this example will likely be much more motivating to boys than girls.

Girls are often socialized to highly value a career that helps other people. An example like "these algorithms are important for helping doctors determine which patients have cancer" may be more inspiring to them.

<comment><USER4> I think the male to female ratio in gaming at large is pretty much 1:1 now.

See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Demograp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Demographics_of_female_players)

<comment><USER2> Right there in your link:

"While 48% of women in the United States report having played a video game, only 6% identify as gamers, compared to 15% of men who identify as gamers. This rises to 9% among women aged 18–29, compared to 33% of men in that age group."

They might play a game now and then, but women are less likely to identify themselves as "gamers" or to think of gaming as a part of their identity. When we think about creating an inclusive environment where students can see themselves in the career, this is the sort of statistic to consider.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _fewer than one in five CS degrees are earned by women_

Boys born today are 40% less likely to graduate than girls. I think this 'problem' will solve itself.

EDIT: I was not very clear. This is not success rate after joining college. Today 60% of all students are women and this fraction is rising. In 18 years men will be a small minority at university education.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally, I had five woman in my CS program out of 100 students (I know, pathetic)... but all five of them graduated. Can't say the same for the men.

My wife was an Electromechanical engineer, in her program they had the same number of woman but a higher percentage because there were fewer students in the major in general. I think they all graduated although a couple of them had to retake some courses so they didn't finish on time.

But my guess is it is a cultural thing not an aptitude thing. Woman have certain standards they need to live up to that aren't necessarily expected of men. Especially in male dominated majors where I have definitely observed the attitude where woman need work harder to prove they deserve to be there than men.

Edit: summary: my hypothesis is men fail out due to apathy since they are told from birth that college is their right and expectation whereas woman have something to prove. As that changes I expect either the woman will become apathetic too or the men will step up their game. Either way, a system out of equilibrium seeks balance.

<comment><USER5> > _Woman have certain standards they need to live up to that aren 't > necessarily expected of men._

Could you name some? I have opposite experience.

<comment><USER6> I can't quantify it. Sociology is not my field.

However, it has been my experience that men are expected to have a fair amount of recklessness and irresponsibility that woman are not.

Examples:

\- Men being with many woman during college is considered experimenting, whereas for woman it is considered slutty.

\- A man answers wrong on a question in class and people just move on. A blond woman does the same and she's a dumb blond. (I've seen this happen)

\- A man fails it's OK, failure happens and is a part of learning. A woman fails, and it's because maybe women aren't cut out for this.

Again, not my field just going by conversation I've had with woman I know.

<comment><USER5> > _Men being with many woman during college is considered experimenting_

Or it is considered a rape. General advice today is to treat college as a workplace and date girls outside, who are not students.

> _A blond woman does the same and she 's a dumb blond._

I seen many dumb men

> _A woman fails, and it 's because maybe women aren't cut out for this._

...or maybe it is because of environment, conditioning.. When women fails we need to raise awareness, funds...

When men fails it is natural, no help is needed.

<comment><USER6> For the record I don't agree with any of those things at all. Far from it. I married a feminist and it is hard not to be one myself :)

<comment><USER5> I am feminist myself. It is about gender equality after all. Anyway, good luck ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's easy to dismiss the push for diversity by saying that women themselves do not want to go into tech. I used to believe the same when I saw most of my girlfriends opt for non-tech majors - their reason being this is not my cup of tea. Made me feel superior for not only choosing tech, but also being successful academically and later in career.

Now that I have kids, I realize how early the push for conformation to some societal ideals starts. 3-4 yr old kids in day care already have this notion of how girls are not supposed to play with boys, they should look pretty all the time, they should not play rough with each other or other boys. Girls in 1st grade paying more attention to how their hair looks than how good they are reading/writing. I remember that many of my girlfriend's families passively discouraged them from going into male dominated majors, saying it would be easier for them in the long run.

Once, in a line at gamestop, I saw an altercation between a pre-teen girl and a pre-teen boy. The pre-teen boy was adamant that the girl should not be allowed to purchase a game he thought was meant just for boys. Neither of them knew each other. The girl's father interjected and made it clear to the boy that she can choose to play whatever game she wanted and it was not his job to keep her out of it. This is not abnormal in gaming world, grown men even today scorn on female gamers.

IMO, the best way to combat this problem is to have parents actively push their daughters into tech education from early years. Dads spending time with their daughters and giving them confidence that they can be as good as boys will work wonders. And I say Dad specifically because when the most important man in a girl's life shows her that she is as capable and can compete against other boys who will eventually become men, she cares less about fitting societal norms.

<comment><USER8> Besides your anecdotal evidence, there are strong proofs that the society is NOT influencing a woman's choice too much.

A gigantic survey (I could find references if you are interested) has shown that from ultra-repressive environments (Muslim or African countries) to ultra-liberal countries (Northern Europe) the percentage of women going into CS is about the same. It actually decreases a bit in progressive countries.

This strongly supports the fact that the environment does not matter, biological differences do.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't strongly support that at all.

A similarly plausible argument is that despite a lack of overtly regressive policies towards women in the West, there are still a number of cultural norms that influence their behaviour. Which is exactly the point the parent comment is making.

<comment><USER10> There was research done in various nordic countries that when men and women are free from severe economic selection pressure, They naturally prefer different roles something like nurse vs construction worker.

Also area's like India,when men and women are under more economic pressure, there is more gender equal distribution in fields.

I've had this explained to me as the "Nordic Paradox".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what the relation is between "We need more <gender> in <sector>" and the average salary of workers in a sector?

<comment><USER12> Let's see some more females in the coal mines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why not more female sanitation workers or more male elementary school teachers? What makes the gender demographics of building websites so much more important than all these other imbalanced fields?

<comment><USER14> Or coal miners! /s

Seriously, the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech, money, success, and influence. The general thinking is and has been that you try to fairly populate the mid-top range of jobs, and that's more effective than trying to shoehorn in more women driving dumpsters.

<comment><USER15> _the answer is the same as why half of the planet wants to be in tech_

Because they're nerds?

 _[...]money, success, and influence._

Oh. Well, I'm sure they'll stay in the field when the find themselves crammed into an open office, working on yet another webapp, with little to no control over product direction. And a wage trajectory of a field that is leveraging it's current cultural cachet to drive a huge recruitment effort.

Once the jig is up, and exposed as just a way to drive down wages, we'll be back to being seen as the hate-worthy nerdy fuckers in the basement. And society will go back to encouraging girls away from the field.

<comment><USER14> I think you're overestimating the relative glamour of waste disposal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are we encouraging or shoving? Just the other day I heard a counselor tell a student she should enter tech not because she wanted to but because it was 'needed'.

</comment><comment><USER17> The main question for me is whether people accept there are basic biological and neurological differences between men and women?

Women consistently score higher in empathy and lower in spatial recognition tasks than men. Maybe that's something you shouldn't fight against?

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't really think there's much of an issue here. Equal opportunity ≠ equal outcome.

I truly believe equal opportunity exists and the issue is more cultural than institutional.

<comment><USER19> Yes, one thing I constantly miss in discussions is understanding that equilibrium does not mean 1:1 ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good on her. My regular disagreement w my feminist friends is their SJW stuff does them more harm than good and the only way forward is our having more female engineers. Clearly then, I think this initiative is really tackling the core of gender issues.

</comment><comment><USER21> I like the idea that she wants to look at data, however, I'm not convinced that she'll look at right data and draw the right conclusions.

In my CS class, the women had better grades in general, I was barely passing.

Looking at the data you would expect the high performing women to have amazing careers while I'm drowning in my sorrow on where it went wrong.

Turns out: the opposite happened.

They had better grades, what they didn't have though was: love for the craft. Their goal was to get good grades, they didn't have any love for it.

I enjoyed coding, for them, it was work, for me it was fun. Maybe this is a social construct or maybe it's biological, either way, I feel that who care about this should shift their perspective. If you shut down all programming jobs, I will still code in my spare time, can you say the same thing about people who only care about coding because it makes a lot of money?

</comment><comment><USER22> Has she got nothing better to do?

<comment><USER6> The nice thing about having money and freedom at the same time. She gets to choose what to do based on what she wants to do not what other people thing she should be doing. Within the bounds of the law, hopefully.</comment></comment>


Show HN: SnapEditor - In-Place WYSIWYG Editor - Try the demo for the new version - <AUTHOR> http://snapeditor.com/live_demos/blog_post

<comment><AUTHOR> The latest release includes

      - Image uploading with automatic resize to fit the editing area
      - Form Based Editor that uses a TEXTAREA. This completes our dual In-Place Editor and Form Based Editor goal.
      - Improved link creation with separate interfaces for linking text and images
      - Outline hover mode (outline when hovering over editable area)
      - Tab/Shift-Tab to navigate tables
      - Tab/Shift-Tab to indent/outdent lists
      - Numerous bug fixes

Please check it out and let us know what you think.</comment>


Lisp and Sex - <AUTHOR> http://sharjeel.2scomplement.com/2009/09/24/lisp-and-sex/

<comment><USER2> Well, for the record, I clicked on your link because it has Lisp AND Sex in the title. I just had to see how you were going to relate the two.

Unfortunately your entire post was meta and as such I'm afraid I can't send you to the front page.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best sf story I've run into combining the two is John Varley's _Press Enter_. Highly recommended.</comment>


Twitter terminates DDoSecrets, falsely claims it may infect visitors - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/twitter-terminates-ddosecrets-and-falsely-claims-it-may-infect-visitors/ <comment><USER2> Here's Emma Best's full thread [1].

[1]. [https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1275554481510457351](https://twitter.com/NatSecGeek/status/1275554481510457351)</comment>


Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Bug Bounty - <AUTHOR> https://bugcrowd.com/fca <comment><USER2> More like a reaction to this and other security issues with its cars than being a visionary car maker, but still good to see:

[https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep- hig...](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/)

<comment><USER3> Like a scene straight out of iRobot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's great to see big car makers trying to get in front of vulnerabilities like this.</comment>


Show HN: Four months of indie game dev - <AUTHOR> http://www.cannonade.net/blog.php?id=1587

<comment><USER2> Congrats on finishing and publishing the game.

I skipped a bit through the video and checked the game at the end.

Please, please, please save 1000-2000 grand, browse dribbble.com or similar, and get a decent designer to update the look on the game.

I'll try the game when I get home but if you hope to make some money out of it, you really need to polish the graphics/UI.

<comment><USER3> > 1000-2000 grand

O_o

<comment><USER4> If you're boggling at the $1-2m mistake, then fair enough.

If at the $1-2k budget being too small, then:

When there are people around the world entering design competitions for simply a chance at $xx, and a few are half-decent, you could get some mileage for assets at $1,000-2,000. At least something that will improve the polish on this game.

(Otherwise, I love the progress video. Great to see persistence!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based on the timestamps on the video it seems like 2 months were spent building the core game functionality. The remaining 2 months were pretty much used to polish the game.

Is that the case with most indie games? ~50% core gameplay and ~50% polish.

<comment><USER6> I would say the 50/50 rule holds true for most software, not just games. Although most people usually express it as the 80/20 rule where 20=the other 80%.

<comment><USER7> "Writing the first 90 percent of a computer program takes 90 percent of the time. The remaining ten percent also takes 90 percent of the time and the final touches also take 90 percent of the time." -- N. J. Rubenking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea of showing the progress of an application over time. You could use your CI system to take a snapshot on every commit. In the simplest form you could just take a screenshot, or to capture interaction you could record selenium tests (or any equivalent suite).

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did it at the end.

Just went back through the Git history, found milestones and checked out those commits. Ran each commit in the sim and took a video. First time I have done that and pretty happy with how it turned out :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice! It's always super cool to see this type of thing. The more people doing it the better. I recommend putting together an easy to view infographic image.

I did something very similar for a project and put together a full blog post, video, and infographic. The infographic got waaaaaaay more attention and views than everything else.

Blog: <http://forrestthewoods.com/30-weeks-of-development/>

Image: [https://outland-live.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/media/downlo...](https://outland-live.s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/media/downloads/30weeksOfOutland.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. I was going to agree with the guy below about the ui needing some polish, but once it got to the later iterations I think it looks great. Shame I don't have an iOS device to try it out on.

I'm doing some game dev now too and wish I had video's of my progress to compile into a video like this. I guess I've got screenshots that I could stitch together that I used to show friends my progress early on.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can the horizontal rotation being performed on the discs/coins as shown in the game, be performed with a 2D engine? (Is there some kind of matrix transformation that can accomplish it on an image?)

Or is it absolutely necessary to have a 3D model of a coin, in order to do that?

</comment><comment><USER12> Fascinating way to view the development of an app. I'd love for more developers to do this!

<comment><USER13> Do you think it would be better with commentary and unedited?

For instance, imagine watching a 20 minute video of the dev trying to get the discs spinning with the textures? It'll be like the Let's Play[0] videos on YouTube of people playing a video game with commentary (usually unrehearsed) except this time the person is writing code and switching between their IDE and StackOverflow.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya2mm6iwiKs>

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe not unedited, but definitely commentary would be cool :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great video OP! Really inspiring stuff. Rooting for you and your game! :D

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much. Awesome getting such wonderful support from the HN community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting to me that the thing you started with was the flipping disk. Reminds me of some blogposts from a year or two ago about 'juicy' interaction, and why it's important.

<comment><USER16> "Juice it or lose it" is the best presentation I've seen on the matter. It's really funny and it clearly show how adding some bouncing or some particles can completely change the feel of a game (or UI) <http://youtu.be/Fy0aCDmgnxg>

<comment><USER17> That sounds a lot like what Tim Rogers calls "friction".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's really great to see the evolution of a game like this, i agree with other commenters that it would be great to see other game developers do this.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great work! loved the vid too</comment>


One byte used to cost a dollar - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190827-00/?p=102809 <comment><USER2> How about early internet cost?

Poland was the first Central European Soviet block country connected to the internet. In 1990 a link was established between Warsaw University and BITNET/EARN (European Academic Research Network) node in Denmark Lyngby using newly laid Baltic fiber-optic cable. PLEARN <-> DKEARN, whooping 9600 bps IBM RSCS based mail/newsgroup exchange. Finally two years later in 1992 it got upgraded with several additional 64 kbps TCP/IP links (Stockholm, Vienna, BGP!), and at the same time very first ISP, POLPAK, started offering commercial access. Cost: $15/month + $.3/minute + $5/megabyte.</comment>


A new way to block ads but still support content: buy them yourself - <AUTHOR> http://www.adieu.io/

<comment><USER2> So its [http://contributor.google.com](http://contributor.google.com) ?

<comment><USER3> I think the interesting thing here is that they're using the existing ad auction systems, but you're bidding against the ad companies. So it doesn't require the sites to opt-into a separate system like Contributor does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very nice idea. I'm really glad that someone is brave enough to do something like this. The only risk I see with this, is that you might cause price increase for ads, if you will have substantial amount of users, which will make your service more expensive. Good Luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> > $5 buying you about 500 ad blocks.

So that's what, 100 web pages? I could easily hit that in a couple of days.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could, but you won't. We're not able to buy all ads, so for most people $2 will last a good while.

For reference, the average US web user sees ~$5.60 worth of ads per month. Of those only 40%-ish go out for auction, and of those we buy as many as we can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I... why do I need to pick a separate screen name after giving my email address?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a little like pinterest, in that the groups of curated ads you create can be shared with others. And we use the screen name to do that, rather than giving out your email address.

Also, we have Big Plans on where this will go, and want to be forwards compatible in that regard.

Thanks for playing.

<comment><USER6> I think the service itself is a great idea! I especially like that doing it this way doesn't screw up the design of the page so any article is unreadable, which sometimes happens with some ad-blockers. Unfortunately the 'enter your email address; no wait, also give us a username/password crap' flow felt like a bait-and-switch sort of thing and I almost stopped right there.

Maybe prompt for a username when a user starts making groups of ads? Curating a bunch of pictures doesn't sound like fun to me (I'm sure that's just me though), so I'll probably never do it, so setting a username for that seems like extra friction.

Big Plans are nice, but optimize for little plans so they can take hold first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I can see that.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Multi-value slotmap experiment in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dakom/slotmap <comment><AUTHOR> Whups! I had a mistake when I originally submitted - and thought it was a failed experiment...

Fixed that up and now the slotmap is _much_ faster :)

Current benchmark has it beating a native-map based approach by 2x in a mock real-world scenario</comment>