What Bikini Atoll Looks Like Today - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/stanford-magazine/stanford-research-on-effects-of-radioactivity-from-bikini-atoll-nuclear-tests-on-coral-and-crab-dna-48459144020c <comment><USER2> > "It's equivalent to 216 Empire State Buildings being blown into the sky," > Palumbi says.

> the armada of sunken warships, including the USS Saratoga, an aircraft > carrier the length of a Manhattan avenue block that lies on the lagoon's > bottom.

Ughh, More "Journalist-SI units of measurement." Would it kill him to actually describe the mass displaced in kg or lb, and say the actual length of the warship? I get that he's trying to to dumb down measurements so they are understandable to people who don't know what pounds and feet are, but by using Manhattan-specific units, he even fails for people outside of NYC. Further, he's using one of his JSI units incorrectly: "Empire State Building" is typically used as a unit of height rather than mass. So much fail, avoidable by just using standard units of measurement!

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. You are more than ten football stadiums right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nuclear disaster sites become unacceptable to human life, thus becoming havens for wildlife. See also Chernobyl.

So at what point do eco-terrorists seek to cause nuclear incidents with the intent of causing less harm than human development and presence would cause?

(This has probably been explored in a Tom Clancy/Michael Crichton -type novel...)

<comment><USER5> > (This has probably been explored in a Tom Clancy/Michael Crichton -type > novel...)

This is the plot of Rainbow Six, where a scheming group of evil environmentalists plan to unleash a weaponized strain of Ebola on the world to wipe out 99.99% of the global population so that the ecosystems will survive. Other comically evil things the environmentalists do include experimenting on homeless people abducted from the street and provoking/funding acts of terror worldwide as part of some hazy cover up for their activities.

It all ends in tears for the environmentalists though, at the hands of an all- American red-blooded special forces hero and his multi-national above-the-law and above-Top-Secret counter-terrorism task force.

Not really Clancy's finest hour, IMO, but a good look into the conservative id.

<comment><USER6> What a world we live in, where _environmentalists_ are the scariest ghost around for the all-American red-blooded special forces hero to go chasing.

<comment><USER7> > What a world we live in

Well that's the thing: The book comes from a different world. More precisely, it came from 1998, when the Soviet Union (Tom Clancy's traditional antagonist of choice) was long gone, but Islamic terror wasn't yet the obvious replacement. He wrote a string of books with odd antagonists (eg, Japanese nationalists) during the period.

<comment><USER8> There were even some acts of environmental terrorism at the time, so it was probably an idea ripped from the headlines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had to see the rows of trees for myself. This is what I could find: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,16...](https://email@example.com,165.5602711,2175m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x644c2180a24fadbf:0x4c3f21ce9753a027!8m2!3d11.6065142!4d165.3768099)

<comment><USER10> Nice, thanks! Interestingly, I could only see the grid pattern on Bikini and Enyu.

<comment><USER11> On the other side, I believe this is the Bravo Crater:

[https://goo.gl/maps/jrev6tnbCqE2](https://goo.gl/maps/jrev6tnbCqE2)

<comment><USER12> [https://firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,54.1901984,317m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x44f9c51245a79fe7:0x4874a3fe7e947789!8m2!3d73.718066!4d54.192387)

This one is the biggest bomb ever detonated. I can't find any ground pictures of the site though. Anyone find one that's not airborne?

<comment><USER13> It was detonated at 4kn high and the fireball didn't touch the gound so no real crater was formed.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So it appears that nature can actually recover quite well from severe nuclear explosions and contamination (viz research from the Atolls and Chernobyl etc.). At least upon surface level examination. Deformities in new born living creatures seems to revert back to near normal levels within 2 or 3 generations. Trees and vegetation manage to eke out an existence and grow again.

Hollywood producers who rely on the post armageddon 'nuclear winter wasteland' will have to go back to the drawing boards.

Yet, I wonder what other long term genetic corruption will have occurred even in the surviving and supposedly thriving flora and fauna. Are we subtly developing life forms that will be able to better withstand any sort of nuclear holocaust and thrive once we are long gone?

EDIT: I am thinking the downvoters are reading the first paragraph of my post and not really getting to the last bit and getting the gist of what I am saying... ;)

<comment><USER15> I was distracted by the middle. It's not really the bomb, it's the fires. Setting a hundred cities on fire in an afternoon, each one pushes soot up into the upper atmosphere. sunlight gets absorbed there rather than down on the surface. It's really all about scale.

The wiki article is interesting [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter)

<comment><USER16> That's not true. People said the same thing about the potential Kuwaiti Oil Fires in the first gulf war, and yet hundreds of wells and lakes of oil burned for months and caused no winter scenario.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War)

Nuclear Winter is a case of scientists running personal social activism and using their cover as scientists to implant a false narrative.

> Even Dr. Richard P. Turco, the physicist who coined the phrase ''nuclear > winter,'' discounts the idea.

[http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/23/science/nuclear-winter- the...](http://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/23/science/nuclear-winter-theorists- pull-back.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER17> But volcanos can cause a volcanic winter: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter)

So why not a nuclear exchange?

<comment><USER16> The models justifying the "nuclear winter" scenario are wrong, and "nuclear winter" relies on politically motivated rhetoric to push a social agenda that is at odds with similar events in magnitude. The Kuwaiti Oil fires are a great example, as are events where forests the size of nation-states have burned, and caused no signifiacant cooling.

It's hyped exaggeration using rhetoric for political effect.

<comment><USER15> I don't know why you are getting downvotes. Odds are you are right. People are getting emotionally attached to nuclear winter I guess.

<comment><USER16> I provided a link from the NYTimes with the scientists from the original 1983 Nuclear Winter paper retracting their original prediction as well.

Well done, HN.

<comment><USER18> I suspect its your use of the phrase "social agenda", as if nuclear war might be a thing that it was unreasonable to be against.

<comment><USER16> It is unreasonable to make up fake models and rhetoric, and then push it in the media under the auspices of science. How can you be trusted in the future?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bravo was an interesting fuckup. Yield was far higher than anticipated. The volume of the resulting fallout was also far higher than anticipated, which created an international controversy and eventually led to the Non- Proliferation Treaty.

<comment><USER20> Lithium-7 is some exotic stuff, folks.

Anyways, it's funny that this thing was way bigger than expected, yet less than 1/3 the size of Tzar Bomba, which itself was down rated by 50%!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was very interested to see this first person perspective. I recently wrote an article that might serve as a historical companion to this one, based on public documents rather than on the ground reporting if you're interested: [https://medium.com/insane-before-the-sun/3-nuked-sinking- the...](https://medium.com/insane-before-the-sun/3-nuked-sinking-the- beautiful-marshall-islands-were-violated-by-the-u-s-and-world-6fb088479518)

</comment><comment><USER11> I found this History of the People of Bikini Atoll to be a very interesting and depressing read:

[http://www.bikiniatoll.com/history.html](http://www.bikiniatoll.com/history.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> A more critical look at what effect the US nuclear program had on the Marshall Islands and its ongoing impact on its residents.

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-27/the-dome-runit- island-...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-27/the-dome-runit-island- nuclear-test-leaking-due-to-climate-change/9161442)

</comment><comment><USER23> Have you seen the Runit Dome? [https://goo.gl/maps/55YfnL15iWN2](https://goo.gl/maps/55YfnL15iWN2)

It's mesmerizing to scroll around looking for circles in the ocean. And then to spend all night reading depressing wikipedia articles about past behavior of the US government.

<comment><USER24> It's present behaviour is no better, and that's something you, if you're an American, can actually influence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Was there any actions taken against US for this? Was the original idea to just destroy the place or was it an important point in the pacific side of the war? Either way, while reparations are a bit sensitive, this should have been easy, considering the relative scale of both countries.

<comment><USER26> The Bikinians sued, and there are some reparation payments. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atoll#Compensation_and_reparations)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Remarkably few pictures for a post titled "What <x> Looks Like".

</comment><comment><USER28> Is it possible to currently visit any of these islands? It might sound ridiculous, but I've always thought that "nuclear tourism" was fascinating in a dark way.

Ive seen articles with people walking on top of the "cactus" dome, so clearly some people have managed it at some point.

<comment><USER29> Continental operates the island hopper [1,2] from Hawaii to Guam, which stops in Majuro and Kwajalein (Marshall Islands), and Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Chuuk (Federated States of Micronesia). So, it's relatively straightforward to get to the country (Marshall Islands). However, from Majuro to the Bikini Atoll is still another 800 km (500 miles) of ocean, and there is no easily available scheduled transport, from what I gather.

FWIW, Young Pioneer Tours (no affiliation, but I've been with them to North Korea and Iran, and can recommend them) offers guided tours of Chernobyl (and also the "least visited countries" tour [3], including Marshall Islands, but not the Bikini Atoll yet).

[1] [http://gmbhome.com/micro05/Islandhop.htm](http://gmbhome.com/micro05/Islandhop.htm)

[2] [http://www.jasonaroundtheworld.com/2011/10/the- continental-i...](http://www.jasonaroundtheworld.com/2011/10/the-continental- island-hopper-from-honolulu-to-guam-with-4-stops/)

[3] [http://www.youngpioneertours.com/tour/least-visited- countrie...](http://www.youngpioneertours.com/tour/least-visited-countries- tour/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just how apocalyptic is an all out nuclear war, really? I know the Hollywood scenario is essentially cessation of life on earth, but is this truly what would happen if all nukes were unleashed?

<comment> crooked-v Well, the real danger in a "launch every nuke" scenario would be the resulting nuclear winter. The radiation itself would cause a lot of unpleasant cancers, but the existential danger would be the debris thrown into the atmosphere causing global famine from the combined results of ruined crop yields and massively damaged ecosystems.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#2014](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#2014)

<comment><USER30> Solution to global warming?

<comment><USER31> Just as a bullet to the head is a solution to a headache.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> _"It'd be wrong of us to forget that we dropped 23 atomic bombs on a coral reef to see what would happen, displaced all those people and created scars on the planet that will never heal," he says. "Can we please not forget what we did here?"_

Of course, the whole article amounts to a description of how the island _has_ healed, but let's not let that get in the way of a good finger-wagging exercise.

<comment><USER24> This "finger wagging" is chronic in any article related to some kind of environmental change made by people. There's really no disaster here. Far more nuclear bombs were exploded in California. Far more rocks and soil were disturbed for construction, land reclamation, mining, canal digging, farming, etc. all over the world. There's nothing sacred about the ground which says we should feel sad or shameful about modifying it. I would say blowing up some islands just to see what would happen is fantastic for both fun and science.

People displaced? Being displaced isn't, on its own, a tragedy. I'm sure those islanders didn't become some stateless, homeless street urchins. They probably did just fine in their new home. I will probably never be able to live in my childhood neighborhood because I've been priced out of the property market. That's a common story, but so what? I have no complaints at all about it and wouldn't want to suppress other people's economic activity just so I can feel familiar about my surroundings.

<comment><USER33> If people experience it as a tragedy then it is a tragedy. Just because something isn't bad in some situations does not mean that it is ok in all situations.

<comment><USER24> In this case, it turns out the relocation did cause problems.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atoll#Relocation_issues)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> That aside, it's interesting to see Stanford on Medium. Maybe Medium is doing better financially?

</comment><comment><USER35> so the cold war nearly saved the planet, imagine the planet being mostly radioactive, wildlife would thrive.

<comment><USER36> Not us however.

<comment><USER35> that's the point. we're the planet's disease.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> we could move rhinos and elephants there, it would guarantee being free of poaching.</comment>


Amazon investing $10B to compete against SpaceX in satellite broadband - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/amazon-gets-fcc-approval-to-launch-3236-low-earth-broadband-satellites/ <comment><USER2> Related question: What's the tech here that this can be accomplished (streaming data via satellite) without spectrum? Spectrum assets are some of the most valuable assets in the US (and are owned by Verizon et al). Satellite phone networks (LightSquared is the big one) have been stymied in the past by unavailability of spectrum and US Govt. concerns about interfering with GPS.

Is that not a problem in this case?

<comment><USER3> They're using frequencies in the 10.7 to 30.0 GHz range (GPS is much lower at 1.575 GHz) that are already allocated to satellite operations. However, they do have to share these frequencies with others. You can read all the frequency stipulations in the FCC authorization.

[https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-20-102A1.pdf](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-20-102A1.pdf)

For example, operation at 27.5 to 28.35 GHz overlaps a 5G millimeter band in the US. 5G is primary and satellite uplink is secondary in that band, so if Kuiper interferes with a 5G installation, they can be ordered to mitigate the interference (possibly by stopping transmissions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since this story came out a few days ago, does anyone know if Amazon has commented on whether or not they plan to launch these 'themselves' / with Blue Origin?

<comment><USER5> Right, seems like the first question people would be interested in hearing an answer to. I assume there is no answer yet. With a quick check, I was surprised to see that Blue Origin is developing a rocket which would be capable of launching these things (launch in 2021?)

<comment><USER6> But could they launch as cheaply or as often as SpaceX's Falcon 9, which is years ahead?

SpaceX isn't resting on its laurel either, with their R&D effort on Starship.

<comment><USER5> Maybe they don't need to launch as cheaply. SpaceX wasn't the first to the idea. There are other players and these companies didn't have their own rockets. The numbers must be good enough to work even with pre-SpaceX launch costs.

<comment><USER7> Elon said that the satellites are now cheaper to build than the cost to get them to orbit, and that they need starship to make it financially viable, iirc.

He says this during a keynote with the US Air Force about 4 months ago. He also says a ton of other interesting things as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the more interesting use cases for SpaceX/Starlink and Amazon's satellite internet projects is their use as a back haul (not sure if the correct term) provider for other ISPs as well.

One of the biggest roadblocks to starting a new ISP or expanding an existing ISPs service area is the big capital expenditure of wiring up areas. I would imagine that having the ability to rent capacity on these networks of satellites would drastically decrease the barrier to entry for new ISPs to form.

I can also see it being useful for mobile data coverage in remote areas. You could install a cell tower along a highway somewhere remote, and you'd just need a solar panel to power the tower, satellite signal to get internet coverage, and then the cell radio to broadcast that to phones.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thread from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24010633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24010633)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting tweet about interference and collisions between the two systems.

[https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/12838888929120542...](https://twitter.com/Megaconstellati/status/1283888892912054273)

Link to FCC filing.

[https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=...](https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=2540187)

</comment><comment><USER10> I would like to see the economics of this. There is a saving in not having to have 5g towers but if everyone in a small village has to spend $$$ on their own satellite dishes then the economics aren't going to make rural high speed internet via satellite so good.

Plus the uplink/downlink kit will be beyond mass consumer gear so the economies of scale won't be great.

Anyone seen the uplink kit for the SpaceX or British efforts?

</comment><comment><USER11> Adopting broadband from Amazon or the other tech giants like google seems like a bad idea for society. They have too much power to begin with, and given allegations of how amazon may have abused seller data, I wouldn't want them to have access to even more data. Not to mention issues around centralized control over information and the digital town square.

</comment><comment><USER12> ...launched with what rocket exactly? I'll believe them (and Blue Origin, supposedly) only after they put something up in space.

<comment><USER13> Blue Origin's timelines are actually realistic, so I wouldn't be surprised to see New Glenn (closer in payload to Falcon Heavy than Falcon 9) actually launch next year.

<comment><USER14> in what sense are they realistic?

I would be happy if they were on time, but it seems BO missed their milestones quite often.

<comment><USER15> Hitting objectives is way more important than hitting a date in BO's case. Even if SpaceX has a head start, Amazon has scale.

<comment><USER16> Blue Origin is not amazon.

<comment><USER15> When Amazon invests 10B it is. That is like saying Alphabet isn't Google.

<comment><USER13> Jeff Bezos invests privately, not Amazon (of course due to that relationship talent and resources will probably flow more easily between the companies).

It's like saying SpaceX isn't Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm wondering why it's FCC which need to approve satellite communication services which orbits and provides services to the entire world?

I mean is the LEO is open for all countries to launch as many satellites as they want? What if China launches 10k satellites in the next year hypothetically?

<comment><USER18> Because they still need ground stations (and users!) in the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are these supposed to be replacement of Satellite Phones? If I have a cheap Gbps connection or a cheaper 100 Mbps mobile connection, am I still a target customer?

<comment><USER20> If they have spare bandwidth they could actually undercut existing providers. And why not? The marginal cost of adding an additional subscriber is effectively zero. So the cost could change by location depending on how much competition for bandwidth there is. All they need to do is make enough money to increase the number of satellites and maintain the network. And as the number increases the footprint can be reduced. The satellite targets a smaller area on the ground. And you add more subscribers using the same logic.

It's an amazing business model really. You have a different price and a direct kind of customer in different places. A satellite starts an orbit over Antarctica and uploads scientific data. Then heads out over the sea and connects a few ships. Over Africa it connects rural 4g masts, schools and thousands of small businesses. Then over the Mediterranean it serves Netflix to cruiseline passengers. Over Europe it connects data for a NATO exercise and rural communities. Then later over London it sends data for high frequency traders. Then heads out over the North Sea to send YouTube to oil rig workers and telemetry for wind turbines. Heading up into the Arctic circle it connects a stream of airline flights to the web. And all you have to do is be _slightly_ cheaper than the competition to win customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://www.underluckystars.com/save-our- stars](https://www.underluckystars.com/save-our-stars)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for sharing this, it's an amazingly unfortunate consequence of this technology which I never thought about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how long people are going to be ok with these projects when one of them comes from China or Russia. Or even Germany...

</comment><comment><USER24> Too bad the FCC does not think about space pollution. The astronomers were already very fed up with the Starlink constellation interfering with their observations, now they will have to deal with twice the number of satellites. Not to mention the risk of collision in space which keep going up.

<comment><USER25> I'm supposed to "think of the astronomers" when billions of people will get cheaper internet and advance humanity? Astronomers can find ways around this, we can't stop progress for 0.0000000001% of the population.

<comment><USER22> Are you entitled to clean air when 0.000000000001% of the population can make billions from selling fossil fuels ?

<comment><USER26> Air pollution results in a higher death rate and is a public health issue. Light pollution is certainly a problem, but probably not on the same scale.

<comment><USER22> This point I'm making here is that it's really just a matter of perspectives.

<comment><USER27> Even if one might quibble with the premise, parent's point is that the fortunes of the many outweigh those of the few. Your point is what... the converse? I don't think I can agree.

<comment><USER22> That is only because it's the view of some peope this will be of net benefit to the world, flossing over some of the more obvious problems we are seeing the Internet cause today. Surveillance, disinformation, interference in democratic process to name a few.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> These space internet monopolies look increasingly like an international security and privacy nightmare in the making. Space wars indeed and i wonder how non US/Korea/china people will be able to protect themselves.</comment>


French affluent flee the tax on super-rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/16/france-depardieu-exile-idUSL5E8NG3Z520121216 <comment><USER2> Socialism only works untill they run out of other people's money :-)

So what if he flees, he payed a lot during his life and has done things, people only dream about. He has taken risks, he should get rewarded.

They are trying to punish him because he took an opportunity with both hands and grabbed it and became succesfull.

He employed 50-80 people .. At least he contributed to society in (also) a more economical way.

Hollande and socialists in Europe are crazy... The socialists in America are the "extremists" here.

<comment><USER3> anyone making a non-trivial amount of money profited from public services, infrastructure, and protection paid for by taxes. Ensuring a stable and strong infrastructure is in the interests of the rich anyways.

Not like the super-rich will see much of a difference in their lifestyles anyways.

I understand that there needs to be an incentive, but to act like anyone but maybe wandering barbarians could make a significant amount of money without the help of solid infrastructure is naive.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Not like the super-rich will see much of a difference in their lifestyles > anyways.

As a thought experiment, would you approve 75% tax on your income right now? I would assume you do OK by Western standards but not quite rich yet. However even with 25% of your earned money your lifestyle is going to be lavish, say, by sub-Saharan standard of living.

Point is, doing good by poor people's standards is not really an aspiration wealthy people have. They have money, their lifestyles are costly. E.g. Depardieu is an avid gourmet, other people collect expensive cars they ride on weekends, yet others plan personal missions to Mars, and so on.

Yes we all are indebted to society, but taking most of income away is doing nothing here than killing incentives for big earners, and it's not like the money they stopped earning would suddenly appear among city poor.

<comment><USER4> Count normal tax rate of up to 45% and value added tax of up to 20% for normal workers in many European countries. That's what many engineers do pay, and most are ok with that and would gain nothing by going to Belgium, because Belgium has only nice taxes for rich people.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not as bad as it sounds: there is normally a substantial non-taxable base income, and the xx% tax you pay only concerns the amount over it. In most European countries there are also numerous tax deductions: daycare, mortgage interest (in certain countries up to 100%), savings accounts for youths and so on. VAT is a base consumer tax paid by everyone, and shouldn't be lumped together into income tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nothing to see here, just politicians trying to blame their failed policies on the the wealthy.

<comment><USER6> Nope, just politicians trying to get the wealthy to actually give back to the society they benefited from.

<comment><USER5> I think he did that already - isn't this more about a government pretending that all the country's woes are caused by the wealthy, rather than all the people that are out of work? [by this I mean lack of taxes, not some other problem]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd wonder how many films Depardieu got famous for haven't benefited any tax money from public financing. And how many would have been possible at all without it.

<comment><USER7> During his lifetime he paid almost 150 million euros in taxes, so more than most of us will ever pay - so I think he can go wherever he pleases. And yes, even as a completely non-rich person, I think that the French 75% tax is absurd by every possible measure.

<comment><USER4> You don't answer my point - which is that the high taxes helped him get rich in the first place.

<comment><USER8> The point is is it doesn't matter how he got rich. He is rich and can afford to flee the higher tax bracket. You can argue it's wrong or immoral of him to do so but none of your arguments will induce him to stay and pay the tax. You try to squeeze the class with the most means and mobility and they just slip through your fingers.

<comment><USER4> Yes he is free and we are. He has the right to do so, and others have the right to criticize him for that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Data Center Trends and Investment - <AUTHOR>

I'm doing some research to find out more about the U.S. data center market. I am having trouble pinning down the size of the enterprise data center market and whether or not the different tier levels are regulated and maintained by a central organization. Any insight is much appreciated. <comment><USER2> There is no regulation of the tiers - but the best place to look for info is the Uptime Institute.

You should attend their DC conference may 14th

The expo pass is free: <http://symposium.uptimeinstitute.com/registration>

Register there and you can go and get more info.

You're going to have a hard time getting accurate info on the enterprise DC market given how that info is not well reported.

You should also read datacenterknowledge.com</comment>


Functional-navigational programming in Clojure with Specter - <AUTHOR> http://nathanmarz.com/blog/functional-navigational-programming-in-clojurescript-with-sp.html <comment><USER2> Wow, I love this. My impression is that Specter is (at least in main use cases) Haskell's lens package. But while lens is very inside-baseball (at least in the tutorials I read), this explanation describes an extremely useful principle.

Every language needs a lens/Specter. If you're spending a lot of time messing with data, this article will go directly to your heart.

<comment><USER3> Exactly what I thought, either lens or zippers.

<comment><USER4> Definitely more lens than zipper. If you think of a lens, in simple form, as a path into a structure then a zipper is a structure plus a path into itself. This constrains the form that a zipper can take.

If you examine these paths on their own then you get into general "optics" which is where the lens type lives and where specter lives (it seems). In particular, we start talking about generalized folds and traversals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've read about specter before on its github[1], and I must admit I didn't see the bigger picture that is explained in the opening example of this article.

I thought I could get by with just using:

        (-> huge-thing :key1 :key2 first ...)

But now I actually grok the value behind Specter! Great stuff, and I will use it next time I begin up a re-frame[2] app!

[1] [https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter](https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter)

[2] [https://github.com/Day8/re-frame/](https://github.com/Day8/re-frame/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Presentation from StrangeLoop 2015

"Specter: overcome your fear of nested Clojure data" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZxkpX5nt8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZxkpX5nt8)

</comment><comment><USER4> > _Any connection to transducers?_

Yep!

On the fancy Haskell lens hierarchy (hackage.haskell.org/package/lens) we have the notion of a fold or a "getter which touches multiple items". The existence of a fold for a type like `Fold s a` indicates that we can extract from the type `s` some number (0 to many) `a` values in sequence. This is the idea of "Foldable" in Haskell.

Given a foldable type `s` and a transducer we execute the transducer by passing the "build" reducer in and then "visiting" each value `a` inside of `s` with the reducer that the transducer returns (modulo the early stopping bit which is just sort of a Clojure-specific optimization). Essentially, the transducer is a notion of "visitation" which is invariant to how the final summary is constructed—essentially the same thing that's captured in the "getter which touches multiple items" of a Fold.

So there really ought to be a way to treat any specter optic as a possibly very limited transducer. Essentially, the "read" component of a lens will correspond pretty directly.

We can also see this by remembering that any pure transducer is semantically equivalent to a function `a -> [b]` which you can read as a way of finding 0-to-many `b` values "inside" of `a`.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like Specter, but it doesn't quite give me the holy grail it promises. My main pain-point is that it assumes I know the route to the datapoint I want to change. What if all I know is the general shape of a subset of data, and also that that shape might appear none or more times in my client dataset?

I'd love to be able to describe features of a data structure and have all qualifying elements be transformed, without my having to tell the select function how to get to those data structures in the first place; just hand it a data structure, and have it grovel through looking for matching subsets, then transforming them as desired.

Sort of like a grammar/DSL for Clojure data structures, without having to be specified from the basic character level up.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like you're looking for the "walk" selector, which comes with Specter:

(select (walker number?) {2 [1 2 [6 7]] :a 4 :c {:a 1 :d [2 nil]}})

=> [2 1 2 1 2 6 7 4]

I've personally found this to be a use case that comes up infrequently.

<comment><USER4> Walk shows up quite often in the "uniplate" functionality of Haskell's `lens`. It's really, really useful for handling AST transformations, but depends a bit on laziness here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the idea.

Here's another that seems similar to it: an immutable language wherein you could create a mutable, write-only copy of an object. After writing all that was required, the copy could be finalized, at which point it becomes read-only (hence immutable). This is a bit like the builder pattern, but I've never seen a language with built-in support for it.

Thoughts? Is it much different than what the OP proposes?

<comment><USER10> Clojure/script already has this. Its called transients

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also check out traversy, by the super-talented Chris Ford. Even works in Clojurescript. :)

[https://github.com/ctford/traversy/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/ctford/traversy/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER12> Specter also works with Clojurescript :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is pretty nifty. What is so exciting about Clojure is that the language does fully realize the original lisp intention of creating building blocks on which any paradigm or style of programming can be built.

<comment><USER14> How exactly was that not realisable before?

Common Lisp is a multi-paradigm programming language, arguably more so than Clojure because it has a fully featured multi dispatch object system as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh! I'm glad to hear about this. I was getting painfully close to having to implement it myself...

</comment><comment><USER15> Does something like this exist for JS?

<comment><USER16> The other name for this kind of abstraction is a 'lens' (as touched on at the bottom) - I found this library pretty quickly: [https://github.com/DrBoolean/lenses](https://github.com/DrBoolean/lenses)

</comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk I find the use of all-caps to be non-idiomatic. Take `LAST`, for example.

<comment><USER8> Regular functions are treated as filters, so that's done so that things like ALL, LAST, etc. are clearly delineated as something different than filters.

<comment> dj-wonk It is stylistic and idiomatic preference. I'd probably group those kinds of functions into a namespace. Then again, I didn't write the library. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand how it's doing it, but it looks seriously cool - like a paradigm I want to start programming with.

<comment><USER17> To whoever downvoted this - instead of doign so, why not point me to a beginners-guide? I have read whatever I've found so far...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> We definitely need an elixir port.

<comment><USER19> José Valim talks about current details and future plans for Elixir 1.3 here [https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/elixir-lang- talk/DHF...](https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/elixir-lang- talk/DHFEd5rq4k4/r2QeE17TOlAJ)

</comment></comment><comment> herrvogel- Exactly what i need! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of SPARQL.

</comment><comment><USER21> Reminds me of XSLT.

<comment> dj-wonk Lenses (as a construct) can encompass traversal, getting, setting, and transformation. With this in mind, I'd suggest that lenses are closer to a combination of XPath and XSLT. A key difference is that no schema is imposed.

That said, I'm a little sad to hear that lenses remind you of an XML technology. :) I suppose I'd rather that XSLT be perceived as a very particular way of doing data transformation under particular conditions with a particular syntax.

All of the above said, I think good lessons could (in theory) be learned from XML, but I feel like XML's notational particulars get over-accentuated and the underlying thinking about data structures gets muddled and even lost.

<comment><USER21> Good points.

I just realized that when I think of 'XSLT' I tend to think of it in terms of the combination of XSLT and XPath.

<comment><USER22> Which is exceedingly reasonble to think, since XSLT actually mandates XPath expressions for all select attributes. However

The major conceptual difference I can see is the ability for (apparent) in- place editing/updating, the lack of which was/is a major pain point in XSLT.

As XSLT is a functional language for traversing and manipulating heterogenous trees, one can expect quite a lot similarities beneath the surface syntax for most solutions targeting the same problem. At least in part because the limitations of the users (us) and the problem to be solved tends to constrain the solution space for generic (library like) solutions rather strongly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chopping the Long Tail down to size - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07/long_tail_debunked/page2.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at the lognormal curves shown here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log- normal_distribution> I see tails. Don't you ? And this tail can be long.

The real question is whether it is possible to build a viable business by exploiting the tail. From what I understood this depends on two things: 1° on the benefit you can make by exploiting the tail, 2° on securing it against the businesses exploiting the belly of the curve.

What Will Page tells us is that the tail is a starving zone. Since he works for the belly business he simply tells us that the second rule applies. Whether the first rule apply depends on the costs and benefits which may vary greatly with the business model considered.

Once again the Register demonstrates a lack of common sense.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reply article [http://gigaom.com/2008/11/11/once-again-the-long-tail- refuse...](http://gigaom.com/2008/11/11/once-again-the-long-tail-refuses-to- be-buried/)</comment>


Google Does Away With "Sponsored Links" Label, Now Ads Are Labeled "Ads" - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/google-does-away-with-sponsored-links-label-now-ads-are-labeled-ads-54956 <comment><USER2> I like "Ads" much better, it conveys the same information more succinctly, and without the cheesy euphemism.</comment>


The Horror of Hudson Yards Is How It Was Financed - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/04/hudson-yards-financing-eb5-investor-visa-program-immigration/586897/ <comment><USER2> The summary is that through some insane gerrymandering, the Hudson Yards project is lumped in with a bunch of low-income areas in Harlem. This means that foreign investors only need to invest $500k to qualify for a visa program that would normally require a $1M investment.

What's unclear from the article is how extensively this exception was used (that is, how many <$1M investments were accepted).

The article says there were 3,200 foreign investors who qualified for the EB-5 through Hudson Yards, for a total of $1.2B invested. That's an average of $375k per investor, which makes no sense -- $500k is the floor. It might be that the 3,200 number was derived by dividing the $1.6B (that includes the still-accepting-investors phase 3) by the $500k requirement for the TEA (Targeted Employment Area). Without real stats it's hard to see how bad this is -- "buying your way in" is maybe a tough pill to swallow for people who have tried to immigrate, but the $1M EB-5 path is open regardless of zoning shenanigans.

<comment><USER3> The worst thing is people aren't paying $500k, they're investing $500k, so probably will get most of it back again. It really costs them nothing.

<comment><USER4> Why's it bad? I think immigrants bring a lot into this country and we should have more immigrants. And if you're worried about immigrants stressing the welfare system, this method selects for those with greater means and less likely to rely on these programs

<comment><USER5> This isn't about immigration. It's bad because this program was designed to inject investment in to economically depressed areas with high unemployment, not downtown Manhattan.

This also means the investments are not as "risky" as likely was intended. They'll almost certainly make it back, with dividends, because its NYC not rural Arkansas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are people who paid 10-15 years into SS and Fed taxes (sometimes more than 500K) yet have a long, long way to a Green card or citizenship.

<comment><USER7> A friend of mine worked in the US for 17 years under various visas, but never managed to get her green card. She is facing retirement without the social security she was taxed to fund. She also won't get anything of usable value from the old-age pension program in her country of origin since she worked out of country for so many years. A real immigration trap.

<comment><USER8> What is her country of citizenship? There are different rules on eligibility for non-US citizens living abroad based on your other citizenship.

<comment><USER7> Canada. My understanding was that green card holders get social security, but non permanent residents don't, no matter how many years they've been working in the states. But if in fact the visa status at time of working or time of collection doesn't matter, then that would be welcome news indeed.

Also the Canadian version of SS is a sliding scale based on how many years you paid into it, I implicitly assumed it's the same for the US but only now realized that might not be the case.

<comment><USER9> It seems likely that she would be eligible for Canadian benefits.

[https://www.ssa.gov/international/agreement_descriptions.htm...](https://www.ssa.gov/international/agreement_descriptions.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What a wonderful and equitable world globalism has created. The wealthy can just buy citizenship while the poor, the desperate and the refugees languish pretty much stateless. At this point a wealthy chinese, saudi or israeli citizen is more of an "american" than a poor kid born in the rust belt. At least the government and the elites value these wealthy foreigners more than any poor citizen here in the states.

<comment><USER11> > _poor kid born in the rust belt..._

... or in Harlem apparently.

It is a little infuriating that they are, essentially, stealing from impoverished rural and urban areas.

<comment><USER12> That's not what's going on at all. You think that if Hudson Yards wasn't built, Harlem would somehow get all that money? That's not how it works, it's not a zero-sum game.

<comment><USER13> If I understand it correctly - there is a limited number of these Visas and this mega-project used up most of them.

If true, then this scheme is indeed taking opportunity away from Harlem and other areas it was intended to help.

<comment><USER12> That's a fair point. But have you considered that maybe Harlem would be hard pressed to find investors, even if the investors got a Visa? It would only take away investment from other areas if a) all the investment visa spots are fully allocated and b) If the investors would have given the money to some low-income community instead.

I'm certainly not an expert on this, but it sounds plausible to me that at least one of the aforementioned conditions is not true.

<comment><USER13> According to the article there's a 15 year waiting list for these Visas for Chinese investors (it's not clear FTA why it would differ based on country of origin).

It sounds like there's enough demand for this program to work (mostly) as intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The actual article title is "The Hidden Horror ... "

Having been there, financing is but one of its many horrors. NYC is great for many reasons. Having high end airport malls is not one of them.

<comment><USER15> I was in the neighborhood the weekend it opened and strolled through. Thing that struck me was that there was no seating almost anywhere. People were sitting on the floor and it felt like a weird refugee area.

<comment><USER16> There's hardly any public seating in New York City other in major parks.

<comment><USER17> And the parks will give you a ticket if you sit on a bench after sunset. I've gotten them for taking a rest on the way to walking between work and my parking garage.

<comment><USER18> What on earth? America truly is a dystopia

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have worked in the United States for 10 years on a non-immigrant visa (I have no other way to work in the United states and 7 years of H1-B lottery have yielded nothing). I have paid more than six figures in taxes to the Feds, as well as contributed to an American business and being an active community member. I have no path or way to immigrate to the United States nor can I use by past decade of contributions in any way. Its a slap in the face when I read about people literally buying there way in and corrupt politicians and businessman manipulating the system without consequence.

<comment><USER20> >Its a slap in the face when I read about people literally buying there way in

Why? The US is a capitalistic society and more so than other countries such as those in Europe. Presumably you liked the US because it is such a capitalistic society with high pay, slightly lower taxes, etc. Paying to get in is pretty much the definition of capitalism.

<comment><USER19> So in your world view, bribery should be absolutely allowed than? You have a piece of land I want, but the law prevents me from stealing it from you and you won't sell. So I grease the hand of the local authorities and get them to take it via eminent domain, pay you some cash for compensation and just take it. I have more capital so its fair... We go to court, but since I have more money I'll just grease the hand of the judge.

<comment><USER20> I quoted a specific part of what you said for a reason. The only dubious thing they did was get the cap for investment lowered from $1m to $500k. The lower cap does not change the fundamental issue you stated which was paying for citizenship. Merely changes how much they had to pay.

So on that point, buying your way in is not bribery if the legal system allows it. It's merely paying for a service from the government. For example, I pay the government to register my car, to get permits for work I'm doing or get a concealed gun permit. In this case they're paying for citizenship. This is also merely one way to pay for citizenship, little different than the usual "pay $100+k for a US college degree so my child gets OTP and can apply for a H1B."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just auction off N green cards every month. That would be much more transparent and fair than the current system.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Which terrible is the real terrible" can be problematic debate.

Still, I'd say the original claim that this visa program could help low income neighborhoods deserves entry on the list of terribles along with it's overt hijacking.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't really understand the point of an urban TEA at all, at least in a thriving city in the midst of a housing bubble like New York. It sounds like a way to just directly funnel funds to gentrification projects.

</comment><comment><USER24> "EB-5 is supposed to be a way to jumpstart investment in remote rural areas, or distressed urban ones". And most of the investors apparently are from China. Is China really strategically investing in important infrastructure all over the globe?

<comment><USER25> Mmm, no, these people have no interest in that per se. They're trying to buy individual access to the United States. The lack of interest in renovating dilapidated infrastructure is also underlined by the topic of the article, which is how these funds were actually invested in luxury real estate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure what is so bad about this. Hudson Yards got money, investors got visas. Why is this a problem? It's not like it's taking investment from low income nrighborhoods: it's not a zero sum game.</comment>


Show HN: Devsheets – Quickly find the cheatsheets for everything tech - <AUTHOR> https://mohitkhare.me/devsheets/#/ <comment><USER2> Love it! We all have our own, why not centralize and share!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's the idea behind devsheets. Do contribute :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Needs some spacing love on mobile but otherwise looking great!</comment>


Divshot Public Beta Now Open - <AUTHOR> http://blog.divshot.com/post/33239348367/divshot-public-beta-now-open <comment><AUTHOR> Link to TechCruch coverage [1] and associated HN discussion [2]

[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/09/divshot>

[2] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4632917>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's fairly common to see games in beta charge a usage fee, however I haven't really seen this in other software before. Not sure if I like it, but at least there is a free trial period as well.</comment>


How to not feel bad when one's ideas are not accepted (by co-workers or bosses)? - <AUTHOR>

A co-worker (and friend) has this "ego-problem."
When he offers ideas in work meetings or up the hierarchy (at work) -- if the ideas are shot down, his feelings get terribly hurt. He feels so bad that he shuts down and eventually stops proposing ideas.
What are some ways in which he can become less invested-in and identified-with whether or not his ideas are accepted? How can he get his ego out of the way? How can he learn to focus on the process (offering ideas) instead of the result (whether said ideas are accepted or not)? <comment><USER2> The best way to have a great idea is to have tons of ideas, but without sharing these tons of ideas, you don't know which ones are the good ones, and which aren't.

Rather than just accept that his ideas were 'shot down', he should try to understand why a certain idea was 'shot down'. Maybe it was outlandish, wouldn't work because of things he hadn't considered, etc. etc. If he uses each of these experience to further hone his idea generation, he can look at each proposal of one of his ideas as an opportunity to get further down the track to the right idea.

I think a big part of that is in HOW he proposes the ideas. Rather than jumping in whole heartedly with "this is how xyz should be done", he could come at it with "I was thinking about the way we do xyz, and maybe it would be better if we did it by abc..." then he gets the feedback and gets to hone the idea.

I fondly remember why my favorite mentor became my favorite. I had never had a mentor before, but we were working on a large project and when we'd discuss ideas, he would say little things that would open up my thinking further, which I would grab hold of and push further again. I called it 'leapfrogging', where people were coming together to discuss an idea and each others ideas would progress the whole together further. There was no ego, as it was a truly collaborative environment where ideas flowed freely. Not every idea worked, but the experience was fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not something that can be taught. He just need to have a thicker skin.</comment>


Ask HN: Suggestions for seeding a local Q&A - <AUTHOR>

Moving to a new city, I naturally had many questions. I thought of setting up a city-focused Q&A, but would love some ideas on how to seed the site and drive traffic. <comment><USER2> Seeding...

You could use data entry workers to go out and get questions and answer about the city from various sources. Perhaps hire 1 to find questions and another to look for the answers that the first one posts.</comment>


Libreboard, an open source project that mimics Trello features - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/libreboard/libreboard

<comment><USER2> Holy hell, the signup page is exactly the same as well.

Did someone steal Trellos source code?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> How legal is it for them to literally clone trello like this?

</comment><comment><USER3> wow, it doesn't just mimic Trello features, it mimics everything Trello- related</comment>


SlideShare acquired by LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.slideshare.net/2012/05/03/linkedin-acquires-slideshare-2/ <comment><USER2> Wow. 3MM raised, 119MM exit. 40x return, and they made that 3MM last 4 years from 2008-2012 with revenue. Congratulations!

<comment><USER3> The good news is that since the employees owned some we can be sure that they saw some of that 119M$. That being said their site died :-)

[1] Random note: It seems to me that that KK would be the appropriate unit for millions (thousand-thousands) and MM would be Million Millions or (10^12, or trillions.

<comment><USER4> Mille, i.e. Latin for a thousand. Thus MM = 1000 x 1000 = 1,000,000.

I rarely see MM used to denote a million outside the financial world. I have never seen a job, for example listing remuneration as "circa 120M" meaning 120,000

<comment><USER5> It's widely used in advertising/marketing. CPM is Cost Per Thousand.

<comment><USER4> > I rarely see MM used to _denote a million_ outside the financial world.

<comment><USER5> Yes, MM is used with some frequency in advertising and marketing to denote million.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know what the cash/stock split was, but it's worth mentioning the LinkedIn's IPO raised $352M* so buying SlideShare was just under 34% of all the money they raised.

* [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-18/linkedin-raises-352...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-18/linkedin-raises-352-8-million-in-ipo-as-shares-priced-at-top-end-of-range.html)

<comment><USER7> Linkedin has revenue though, they're not just burning cash. Wikipedia tells me they grossed $243M last year, so a purchase like this doesn't sound unreasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I just looked at LinkedIn's P/E. It's almost a thousand. How is anyone valuating the company in such a way that could even assume they would increase their revenues 50 times over in the next few years?

<comment><USER9> P/E is market cap divided by profits. Your comment about increasing revenues by 50x is non-sensical.

Consider a company with $100M in revenue, $1M in profit, and a market cap of $1B. PE is 1000. Now say this company has a shot at doubling revenue in the next few years without incurring additional cost. They will then have $200M in revenue, $101M in profit, and the PE will be 10.

Just looking at P/E in isolation is like judging a programmer by how fast they can type. You need to take a broader approach to reading financials and understanding the underlying business.

I haven't followed LinkedIn close enough to have an opinion on the current valuation. You may be right that it is overvalued, but the PE ratio isn't a very good indicator in isolation of expected future earnings.

<comment><USER10> _Consider a company with $100M in revenue, $1M in profit, and a market cap of $1B. PE is 1000. Now say this company has a shot at doubling revenue in the next few years without incurring additional cost. They will then have $200M in revenue, $101M in profit, and the PE will be 10._

Can someone provide a concrete example of a company that has doubled revenue in a few years without incurring additional cost? I realize that it is possible, but I'd love to see where this has actually occurred.

<comment><USER9> It is uncommon in most industries, but quite common in pharma and theoretically possible in tech. I am not in front of a bloomberg terminal, but off hand I believe Google doubled its quarterly revenue in 1 year. Something like $800M-> $1.5B and added just 2000 employees[1]. That is why the stock went from $110->$400 in the first year of being public.

It is not uncommon for small pharma companies to have 1000% increases in revenue with little cost increase, especially if the companies don't manufacture or do marketing and just take royalies from big pharma.

[1] My memory is not perfect, but I was invested at the time and paying close attention. I remember being blown away that their revenues doubled and they only cost they added to the business was mostly non-search related activities.

<comment><USER11> Google listed on 8/19/04. Q4'04 revenue 1031.50M, Q4'05 revenue 1919.09M. Cost of revenue doubled too, 362.10M to 655.16M.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats to team SlideShare. Good product!

Wondering whats the goal of LinkedIn for this acquisition? It is not a people acquisition. And SlideShare is already integrated with LinkedIn's platform. So I'm curious!

<comment><USER13> It seems like a strategic acquisition. LinkedIn looks poised to be expanding more into business operations/communications, especially given their previous acquisition of CardMunch. I can definitely see them trying to position themselves as an indispensable communication tool for industry and business professionals.

<comment><USER14> Then they should buy Yammer next.

<comment><USER15> I think Yammer is probably too expensive at this point. But they might want to build a competitor. Social CRM in general is a hot space and LinkedIn is well positioned to take a big chunk of that market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is incredibly good news - no not because it's another acquisition but rather it is an acquisition of a quality and worthwhile business that has a defined set of competitive advantages to sustain itself in the long-term. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does LinkedIn own a Webex yet? If they're going from a recruiting site to a full business-communications type model (archiving, in this case) they're going to need it.

<comment><USER18> Webex is owned by Cisco for a long time already I did not hear anything about their intentions to sell.

<comment><USER17> "A" Webex, as in a service similar to what they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congratulations to the Slideshare team. Very inspiring to all the women and minority entrepreneurs (and to everybody else of course)

</comment><comment><USER20> One of the stars of the New Delhi start-up circuit! Kudos to the team.

</comment><comment><USER21> This makes total sense to me - slides and enterprise are like bread and butter</comment>


Show HN: A Kick-ass Google reader replacement - <AUTHOR> http://www.swarmiq.com/register/askhn Hi Guys,
      We're been hard at work building SwarmIQ, a Google Reader replacement over the last several months. We would love to get feedback from the HN community. Do give us a whirl and let us know what's missing and what can be improved. <comment><USER2> Looks like the creator of this website has a history of using sockpuppets when he posts on HN.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4514376>

Strange how people create new accounts just to say positive things about this site...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Robert, Is there something wrong with asking one's friends to sign up and share their experiences and give us an upvote. Not sure why you're going through all this trouble to figure out what is generally an obvious thing for any site seeking traction to do.

<comment><USER2> "Is there something wrong with asking one's friends to sign up and share their experiences and give us an upvote."

If you aren't aware of why asking your friends to post reviews about your site (without disclosing their relationship to you) is unethical, I'm not sure I can explain that to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I need to see a free demo of it before I'll sign up. With Google shutting down Reader, plenty of people have come out of the woodwork with "the best Reader replacement" that turns out to not be that great (or at least not the way _I_ use reader). It does both of us a disservice if I sign up, use it for 5 minutes and then never return.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some screen shots would be nice to look at before I sign up.

</comment><comment><USER4> Dear swarmiq, can we have screenshots or better yet a demo site to see how your product is "kicking ass"? The landing page isn't looking great and tells me little about what's so great...

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it Google Reader API compatible? I have an iPhone app that talks to Google Reader that I want to get migrated to another service.

<comment><AUTHOR> We currently do not have a Google Reader compatible API that can serve as a swap-in replacement for your iPhone app. We're working on building an API and should have it ready for use in the coming weeks.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys, Per your requests, We've added screenshots to the landing page at www.swarmiq.com. Hope that helps.

\--Team@SwarmIQ

</comment><comment><USER6> Some constructive criticism:

• Users can be reasonably expected to browse a landing page before committing to signing up or demoing software, but they can _not_ be reasonably expected to sign up or go through a series of pages to _then_ see the pictures and cool reasons to join

• Corollary to my first point, this isn't "cool" enough - by that I mean, NewsBlur for example has a vibrant, expressive, slick landing page. It also details _much_ more information than this landing page does. It gives readers an incentive to actually sign up and check out the service, if not use it completely. This does not give solid reasons that differentiate it from competitors

• Segue from my last point, what's the wow factor? What's different about Swarm that competitors like NewsBlur don't have?

• What are you doing that shaves off the disadvantage of being a late entry to the race to replace Google Reader (by several months)? This is a not insignificant harm to your traction potential if you can't figure out a core competency or feature the other competitors don't have. It will be very difficult to displace NewsBlur and Feedly at this rate.

This isn't meant to discourage you. Just wondering.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Dylangs, Thank you for your valuable feedback.

\- Screenshots: We're going to have those up on the home page shortly.

\- Differentiated User experience: We've really worked hard at making it as easy as possible for users to fulfil certain tasks. Our objective is to have the functionality be self-evident and not require a manual or a help page to use the website. We have some pretty powerful customization options.

\- This is a great point. We're just about coming to parity w.r.t Google reader-like functionality and we're late. However we believe our next release which will focus on personalization and making greater use of user training data will set us apart and deliver highly tailored relevant news to our users, cutting down the clutter.

<comment><USER7> _"Our objective is to have the functionality be self-evident and not require a manual or a help page to use the website."_

Wouldn't that be a basic requirement for any well-designed mass-market web application? I certainly didn't need any help pages to figure out Google Reader or NewsBlur (which I'm very happy with, by the way) or any of the half- dozen other RSS reader sites I've tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's wrong with encoding other than ISO8859?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are actively working on supporting other encodings and non-english RSS feeds. However, we currently do not support encoding other than ISO8859.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> why did it close the page once we submit the registration information? is this site valid?

</comment><comment><USER10> sooo, my russian rss feeds are completely broken. no unicode support?

</comment><comment><USER11> oh hey so it's closed source and could disappear just like google reader, anytime, right?</comment>


Google Calculator Fun/Bug? - <AUTHOR>

I realized tonight that Google Calculator will give you incorrect results.
http://www.google.com/search?q=10000.01+%2B+10000.03999999999999
...gives me 20000.1
https://www.google.com/search?q=10000.67+%2B+10000.02
... gives me 20000.7
I wonder why it insists on rounding my answers (and sometimes incorrectly)? Any hypotheses? Is it a bug? Do they only allow a certain number of significant figures? <comment><USER2> 100000.01 + 100000.03999999999999 gives 200000, so it's not wrong, just rounding to 6 sigfig.</comment>


Most Reported Genetic Associations With Intelligence Are Likely False Positives - <AUTHOR> http://coglab.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Chabris2012a-FalsePositivesGenesIQ.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Another current article,

Epigenesis for epidemiologists: does evo-devo have implications for population health research and practice? George Davey Smith Int. J. Epidemiol. (2012) 41 (1): 236-247.

doi: 10.1093/ije/dys016

sums up the most up-to-date research similarly. The author mentions an earlier author who predicted this outcome in 1927.

"Pearl's prediction (based on biological reasoning) has proved spectacularly prescient: molecular genetics suggests that of Mendelian influences of individually tiny effect contribute to the heritability of intelligence. . . . Indeed, the shuffling of such tiny Mendelian effects could, Pearl said, 'be relied on, I think, to produce in the future, as it has in the past, Shakespeares, Lincolns, and Pasteurs, from socially and economically humble origins.'" (citing Pearl, R. Differential Fertility. Q. Rev. Biol. 1927;2:102-18).

I've had the privilege of meeting Wendy Johnson, a human intelligence researcher who has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and who has worked with both the twin studies researchers at Minnesota and with Ian Deary at Edinborough. Her review articles are very informative on the latest directions in studies of genetic influences on human intelligence.

The review article "The neuroscience of human intelligence differences" by Deary and Johnson and Penke (2010) relates specifically to human intelligence:

[http://www.larspenke.eu/pdfs/Deary_Penke_Johnson_2010_-_Neur...](http://www.larspenke.eu/pdfs/Deary_Penke_Johnson_2010_-_Neuroscience_of_intelligence_review.pdf)

"At this point, it seems unlikely that single genetic loci have major effects on normal-range intelligence. For example, a modestly sized genome-wide study of the general intelligence factor derived from ten separate test scores in the cAnTAB cognitive test battery did not find any important genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms or copy number variants, and did not replicate genetic variants that had previously been associated with cognitive ability[note 48]."

The review article Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182

[http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/...](http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/Johnson%20Current%20Directions%20Psych%20Science%202010%20\(G%20and%20E%20in%20IQ\).pdf)

looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial selection.

"Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA and height, the likely influences of gene–environment correlations and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances."

</comment><comment><USER2> > "All of our analyses controlled for graduate/sibling status, age, gender, > and the interactions of these variables, as well as the first three > principal components of the genetic data from the full set of 90 genotyped > SNPs (to account for possible population stratification)."

It is customary to do genomic control using likely-uncorrelated SNPs (i.e., excluding the 13 SNPs nominally reported to be in LD with the trait of interest). That they included these 13 when estimating pop strat from a small overall number of alleles makes me concerned that they may have unintentionally "controlled for" the actual effect, if any did exist.

Even then, since they controlled for the first 3 PCs of that data, and I would assume the 13 candidate SNPs to be in linkage equilibrium, they shouldn't be getting rid of more than a couple actual associations, yet they find none replicate. So my observation is probably just a curio.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting. Though I'm not finding it overly surprising based on everything I've read on effects of environment and nurture on growth and potential.

Few snippets I found interesting:

"These and our other results, together with the failure to date of whole- genome association studies to find genes associated with g, are consistent with the view that g is a highly polygenic trait on which common genetic variants individually have only small effects."

"By far the most plausible explanation for failures to replicate reported SNP-g (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) associations in our three studies, however, is that the original studies whose findings we sought to replicate did not have sufficient sample sizes—and not because of any error in design or execution."

"Our results add IQ to the list of phenotypes that must be approached with great caution when considering published molecular genetic associations... Failing to exercise such caution may hamper scientific progress by allowing for the proliferation of potentially false results, which may then influence the research agendas of scientists who do not realize that the associations they take as a starting point for their efforts may not be real... And the dissemination of false results to the public may lead to incorrect perceptions about the state of knowledge in the field, especially knowledge concerning genetic variants that have been described as "genes for" traits on the basis of unintentionally inflated estimates of effect size and statistical significance."

<comment><USER4> why? how is your previous reading about the "effects of environment and nurture on growth and potential" related to the quoted passages?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> ...bracing for the inevitable headlines that claim exactly the opposite of the first sentence of the abstract: "General intelligence (g) and virtually all other behavioral traits are heritable."

</comment><comment><USER6> Just to be clear, this doesn't disprove that intelligence is an inheritable trait; merely that there is so far no clear candidates "an intelligence gene" and there may never be such.

<comment><USER7> It seems unlikely that something as complex as the behaviors associated with a test of intelligence would be determined by one specific gene. That we have found that multiple genes that have a negative effect on intelligence should be proof enough of that.</comment></comment>


Apple's Chickenshit Approval Process Has Gone Too Far - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5325539/apples-chickenshit-approval-process-has-gone-too-far

<comment><USER2> I would laugh if Google stopped serving their map tiles to iPhones. Google controls a lot of the iPhone (and of the Internet), and I think they should "remind" Apple of that.

<comment><USER3> Memo to Microsoft: assiduously cultivating the "Do no evil" PR means people will actively fantasize about your anti-competitive behavior.

<comment><USER2> How would this be anti-competitive? Imagine the following scenario, I invite you over for dinner regularly. One time, afterwards, I suggest that we have dinner at your place instead. You say no. I stop inviting you over for dinner.

Is that anti-competitive? Then why does Google have to serve map tiles to someone that won't let them write an app to dial phone numbers?

<comment><USER4> That's not anti-competitive because we aren't competing companies, we're friends and (to follow this metaphor the rest of the way through) my girlfriend hates you because she's afraid I'll leave her for you, and she'll throw _such_ a big fit if I have you over, but she's on the lease and there's nothing I can do until the lease is up without causing even more drama.

It's more like, you're Standard Oil, and I'm Ford, and because my dealers are allowed to use every brand of motor oil except yours when they do oil changes, you refuse to let your service stations fill up my cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anybody else find it funny that Apple blocks apps that allow the user to go around the carrier, given that Jobs and Woz's first entrepreneurial endeavor was selling phone phreaking equipment?

It isn't unexpected, of course, but I find it a bit ironic.

<comment><USER6> Probably my favorite PG quote: "Their previous business experience consisted of making "blue boxes" to hack into the phone system, a business with the rare distinction of being both illegal and unprofitable."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Welcome to carrier controlled Mobile software development. Life sucks, telecoms don't like competition, wear a helmet. I continue to be amazed at the outrage generated by Apple fan-boys over an issue that has been happening in the mobile world for many many years.

Perhaps the solution to any company that exerts dictatorial control over it's own property is to throw a legion of Apple nerds at it?

(This isn't to say that these arguments are wrong...they're just several years late to the party)

<comment><USER8> My 4 year old WinMo phone can run whatever I want it to. I'm in Australia. Hasn't this been possible in the US?

<comment><USER9> It's easier to buy hard drugs in the US than it is to get the phone you want with the carrier of your choice.

<comment><USER10> How hard is that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the solution to all this is simple, don't buy apple products. stop bitching and just stop buying, and tell your friends not to buy either. I refuse to do business with companies like apple and sony who show no semblance of respect for the customer's intelligence. if you want to do crazy stuff with your hardware fine, but don't lie to me about in such an obvious manner.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what other people's motivations here are, but mine—for thinking the same thoughts—is that even with the cons factored in, the iPhone is still strictly better than its alternatives. I don't want to abandon something just because it has a problem, I want to _fix_ the problem. This all reminds me of what happens whenever someone asks about a relationship issue on Yahoo Answers: the first response is always, always "you should leave them."

<comment><USER11> I personally avoid products where the company thinks they can dictate to you how to use it after you've purchased it. If you factor that in and still find a product to be value added, no problem, room enough in the market for lots of players.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why people acts like this is news? Apple loves this kind of control.

<comment><AUTHOR> From a developer's perspective, I think it's important to talk about this until Apple addresses it, or people move to a different platform.

I think the problem is the sheer arbitrary nature of their decisions; it seems like there is a "Wizard of Oz" effect going on - Some mysterious force rejects applications, but you can't ask about the rejections or the reasons because nobody who speaks to the developers is authorized to do so.

It's devolving from an irritation to an evil (in the Google sense of the word).

<comment><USER13> It is important. But I am sure Apple would listen more if people voted with their wallets.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, I think the _only_ way Apple will listen is if people vote with their wallets. I'm just of the mindset that there has to be a compelling reason to go to another product first. Developers are the force that can make that happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is why the 'Web will Win over native apps' because if you serve your app through the web you don't have to deal with anyone's 'Chickenshit approval process'.

</comment><comment><USER15> Cell networks are dead meat and they know it, and as such are trying to extract as much bank as quickly as possible before their demise.

What troubles me is that if Apple is, indeed going to release a tablet of some description in 2 months, and app development and deployment is going to be along the lines of the iPhone/iPod Touch system, then they'd better fix this fast, and regain developer trust or the platform, no matter how cool, will founder and join the Newton in the hall of shame.

<comment><USER16> I don't think cell networks are dead meat. They will be, relatively soon, for anything but data carriage yes. But everything you want to get: voice, messaging, web, whatever else; you (and I) want it over the inet. They're (cell nets ops) problem is that inet access is _just_ one product. They got quite confy over the years selling all kind of products and product levels enabled by their cell nets. Inet access is only one product, and in the long term, tends to have only one level: fast, no limitations.

That is a big problem for them I think. No room for up-sells, no room for fudging price plans. It's going to have to be fast and with no limitations or someone else will provide something that will get you closer and closer to that. And the natural advantage of having those towers is not going to last forever (think WiFi, WiMAX and what comes afterwards) so they will have to reduce their expectation and be contempt of selling plain, unlimited inet access. I'm eagerly expecting that future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Are we forgetting about Cydia? If apple wants us to avoid their official app store, then so be it. GV Mobile is already downloadable via Cydia on a jailbroken iphone/ipodtouch.

<comment><USER18> RTFA

Dammit, I forgot this was HN. It'll never happen again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The iPhone belongs to ATT. The fact that it has a fruit logo on it is irrelevent. You are paying to use ATT's system get used to it. When apple does a deal with FOX for the next Mac you will have a machine that can only access Fox.news not the BBC. But it will have a nice smooth case - so don't worry.

<comment><USER20> If you think that, you haven't seen the way Apple works deals with companies.

AT&T is leaning heavily on Apple because it's scared, rightly so, that they'll lose a lot of money when the iPhone goes to Verizon, which it will.

I also don't approve of that snide little comment at the end. If you've got something to say, say it, and leave the snark somewhere that isn't here.

<comment><USER4> I really don't see Apple jumping into another carrier-exclusive deal, especially not with phone-crippling shitheads like Verizon.

<comment><USER10> Why is Apple signing exclusivity deals at all in the US? Down here (Australia) they just go with everyone. The do make them bend and turn and invent new plans that include a calls/texts/data package that's more to Apple's liking, but they go through everyone.

<comment><USER21> I suspect they had to, initially, and the only terms they could get were for several years (basically until now).

Every US phone is aligned with a carrier. It's not immediately clear to me why that is, but there you go. When the contract is up, Apple has a serious opportunity to shake that notion, but I'm not sure if they will.

<comment><USER4> Many phones pass out of exclusivity and are offered through multiple carriers. The RAZR used to be Cingular only--then, every carrier had them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get customers signed up for a free trial? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking into the UI aspect of getting customers to sign up for a free 30 day trial and then convert them into paying customers.
Do you think it's best to use wording "a month" instead of "30 days"?
How about getting rid of "trial" and just using "Try namehere"
Examples:
Try namehere for a month, free! Try namehere free for a month!
Free trial for 30 days! Free trial of namehere for 30 days! Free trial of namehere for a month! <comment><USER2> These experiments by 37signals might give you some useful insights:

[http://thinkvitamin.com/web-apps/how-to-increase-sign-ups- by...](http://thinkvitamin.com/web-apps/how-to-increase-sign-ups- by-200-percent/)

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2705-behind-the- scenes-37sign...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2705-behind-the- scenes-37signalscom-redesign)

<comment><USER3> tl;dr - "See Plans and Pricing" vs Free Trial or the like. Second post - iteration, iteration, iteration.

<comment><USER2> Just copying what they did without understanding the context of their site and audience might not work. The details are important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have 2 variants on my homepage :

"Free Trial" <http://www.zookshop.com/?comb=1-b>

"Sign up : 30-day Free Trial" <http://www.zookshop.com/?comb=2-b>

The first one is way more effective than the other.

I have no data with "a month" because I haven't tested it, but it seems to be common knowledge that "30 days" is better, because it looks longer.

<comment><USER5> I think, you listed it reverse. comb=1-b is actually "30-day Free Trial" and second link is "Free Trial"

<comment><USER4> Indeed, my bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Test all this stuff. Use a tool like Optimizely to create a few variations and see what works best.</comment>


Guidelines for hosting a high traffic WordPress site - <AUTHOR>

The following rules shouldn't just be applied by ZippyKid, if you run a high traffic website, you should invest in a code audit, even if you host elsewhere.<p>https://www.zippykid.com/2013/01/30/high-traffic-wordpress-hosting-plans/ <comment><USER2> This post should not be in Ask.</comment>


Dolphin Progress Report: December 2016 - <AUTHOR> https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/01/02/dolphin-progress-report-december-2016/ <comment><USER2> Dolphin is still a wonder of engineering. Still one of the most impressive emulators. It's one of the few emulators that has an organized team of people who are willing to work together, instead of having all the developers make their own, worse emulators. GameCube and Wii emulation is infinitely better for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dolphin is great but I wish Nintendo would just get behind / build an emulation platform for all of it's legacy content and sell it to me for $100 - $150.. The NES Classic is a great example of what they could do (minus the awful shortages).

<comment><USER4> They have something similar to this via Virtual Console on the Wii U and 3DS. You can buy select older games and play them natively.

If we ever want the kind of thing you're discussing to be feasible or people like those who work on Dolphin to get compensated for the great work they perform, we need to fix our copyright laws.

<comment><USER5> The original Wii also had this AFAIR (I own a Wii but I never played it much but I recall the commercials)

<comment><USER6> Yep! There were a number of 64 titles released this way. Pretty sure older games made an appearance as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dolphin also runs on the PS4 ;)

[https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/814497640599658496](https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/814497640599658496)</comment>