My Google Rejection Letter - <AUTHOR> http://osherove.com/blog/2011/4/5/my-google-rejection-letter.html

<comment><USER2> _So anyway - if you wanna work there, it doesn't matter what you've done, or accomplished, or how you work with people, or how creative you are. If you know binary searches, you're in._

That's not the logical conclusion. The only evidence is that if you _don't_ know binary searches, you're not in. Why doesn't he know binary search? If he had three phone screens and they all involved binary search, why didn't he learn more about binary searches after the first time?

</comment><comment><USER3> _No, they did not ask about my book._

They can take a look at the book offline. There's no need to spend time in the phone screen talking about it.

In any case, he was not applying for a book writing position.

 _I actually had three different phone interviews there. all failed because of my (obviously lacking) knowledge of implementing binary searches._

If a candidate cannot answer a basic CS question, then the process usually ends after the first phone screen. He probably got two more chances because he wrote the book.

</comment><comment><USER4> Just curious, how many HN'ers have joined companies like Amazon,Google, after being rejected in the interview process the first time, and what's your story?

</comment><comment><USER5> Ack seems a bit resentful - I genuinely think understanding algorithms _matters_ in any case , and it's well known that google do too. Sounds more like lack of preparation to me.

<comment><USER6> Yes, rather quite bitter. You busted a job interview, get over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been rejected by Cerner's software engineer post in my Junior year, because that was the first time I heard of "behavior questions". For technical, they asked me how to implement classes for a chess game, and several simple sorting algorithms. I bombed it, and now I am on their blacklist of people not to give an interview. LOL. Not like I want to work for them anymore, just it's funny to know how long that blacklist is active, so I apply their job every semester.

</comment><comment><USER8> " If you know binary searches, you're in. "

No you are not in. I know 'binary searches' but I have been rejected after the phone interviews when I applied one year ago.

The asked problems were certainly harder than 'binary search', but these were not that DEEP problems. (I've solved much deeper problems in my life.) I don't know the reason of my rejection. My final solution was correct, I checked that afterwards. I was probably just not fast enough, and I made mistakes because of stress (which I corrected later). Also, when they asked 'how would you test it', I might answered incorrectly.

IMHO they use a boolean formula when evaluating you:

A and B and C and D

rather than

A or B or C or D

If you fail in one aspect (or at least they perceive that you fail in that aspect) they reject you, because they can find people who dont't fail in any aspects (or at least they perceive that).

This was the first time in my life that I've been rejected by a company. I was a bit angry for a day, but eventually I realized that it is not a big deal: they have plenty of people to choose from. Maybe I will try it once again if the startup that I am working on now fails. But I will practice more before the interview.

<comment><USER9> I think it's just that Google has thousands and thousands of applicants and can essentially hand pick the top from MIT, Stanford, CMU, Princeton etc. The competition is intense and their interview system is intense because of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes companies would rather miss a good person than accidentally hire a bad person. Google has no shortage of candidates, so they can turn down good hires and still fill their positions with other good hires. If they don't hire someone, it isn't always reflective of the candidate (although it can be).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure what to think about Google's hiring practices. The ones I've met were normal guys, but everyone makes it seem like they are running some sort of Einstien era Institute fo Advanced Study over there. I've got to say, knowing basic algorithms isn't a high barrier to entry.

</comment><comment><USER12> If author thinks it is required to know basic algorithms to get into Google, he should stop whining and learn the damn thing. And, sadly that is required, but not enough. I know it by experience..

<comment><USER13> Looks like he did--in the comments to his post, Osherove says this (sorry, not linkable):

BTW - I DID sit down and learn how to implement a binary search after the first time I got asked. I do not like leaving things 'open' like that. so the next time I got asked I had a much better and faster answer. But it wasn't fast enough (I assume - they never said why) April 5, 2011 | Registered CommenterRoy Osherove"</comment></comment>


How McKinsey helped the Trump administration carry out its immigration policies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/us/mckinsey-ICE-immigration.html <comment><USER2> Mckinsey has business everywhere, with everyone. I'm not surprised.</comment>


Ask HN: How can a elementary school teacher transition into tech? - <AUTHOR> My girlfriend is an elementary school teacher. Money always seems to be a worry - Teachers just don't get paid enough in the bay area. She's interested in doing project management or even data . What's the best way for her to pivot into tech? Both her degrees are in education and it seems to be nearly impossible to pick up a junior PM job without 3+ years of experience. <comment><USER2> Something she might want to consider is entering the tech industry as QA/Tester.

Typically, the barrier of entry is lower for QA than roles such as PM. With the right opportunity, she will get a lot of experience working with tech teams and gain some insight into how to be an efficient PM. And the money can be pretty good too.

I was on a client where, over the course of 2-3 years, one of the QA testers transitioned to a BA/Scrum Master role. She constantly stepped outside of her role and helped with management.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems to me (without knowing much about the bay area hiring), that she should look for an entry into a company, where she can use her existings skills (which I would assume is mostly presenting stuff clearly)...

Maybe something like internal documentation or the like. Then find a company, that lets it's employees grow (they do exists) and slowly pivot over to her end goal.

The reason most companies wants experienced PMs is that it is not nearly as simple as the books suggest. And not being technical makes it even harder to be a technical PM.

</comment><comment><USER4> Second what svennek said: get your foot in the door in a company that supports employees changing roles over time.

In addition to technical writing, another potential position is training. Teaching children isn't the same as teaching adults, but many of the skills will transfer.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Both her degrees are in education and it seems to be nearly impossible to > pick up a junior PM job without 3+ years of experience.

Well it's quite a jump, going from teaching at an elementary school to doing project management. No wonder she's having a hard time finding a company willing to let her do such a jump.

Imho, if she wants to get into tech, she should at least get to understand what sub-field she is interested in and then join pretty much any company willing to hire her and work her way up.

You know... acquire those 3+ years of experience.

<comment><USER6> Well if you consider doing lesson plans a project with the goal of students passing year end tests then that is experience. The words are different for education vs PM fields but the activities are similar that a teacher has to go through to plan out 40 weeks of educational material.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I did this. PM is one route and I did explore that at length. I found the same limits. Instead I went into an area of healthcare technology that required someone who understood technology and curriculum. In my case the entry point was telemedicine. This led me to other technologies and I am now focused on what is called population health data and technology. Healthcare needs smart people who understand how humans use technology and how that translates to how people learn to use technology.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hi! I'm one of the founders of Literator ([http://literatorapp.com/](http://literatorapp.com/)). Transitioning from teaching to project management is going to be tough without any experience as many have echo'ed. We aren't actively looking for people right now as we are bootstrapped but I'd still love to chat with her if she is interested. E-mail is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER9> The obvious path is educational tech. Has she explored that?

</comment><comment><USER10> >>> impossible to pick up a junior PM job without 3+ years of experience.

Of course, managing projects is not a task assigned to junior, so there is no junior jobs in that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is moving away from the bay area out of the question?</comment>


Cloudflare disclose client info on a Twitter discussion - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/692143538360979458 <comment><USER2> Before this gets overly sensationalist, see the follow up tweet: [https://twitter.com/krakenfx/status/692241981309894661](https://twitter.com/krakenfx/status/692241981309894661)</comment>


What are your favorite personal blogs? - <AUTHOR> Mine are
A blog on Ruby performance: https://tenderlovemaking.com/
Container Security and Hacks:https://blog.jessfraz.com/ <comment><USER2> This woman, later in life, retired on a relatively, very-tiny boat. And she's extremely, extremely positive: [http://janice142.com/](http://janice142.com/)

If I let the critic in me show (Janice would not) I would say while her writing is not perfect (who's is?) she more than makes up for it by bringing real joy to the reader's life.

The topics may not be of any interest to you, but her extreme positivity will be. I'd bet on it.

Give a few articles a read :)

(and her website loads really fast!)

Edit, a quote from Janice: "No job ever turns out as easy as originally thought to be. There are always glitches but how we "roll with the punches" determines our ultimate success. And I intend to succeed."

</comment><comment><USER3> James Hamilton of AWS

[https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/](https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/)

Jordan Mechner's journals about making Prince of Persia

[http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/](http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/)

WARNING: You may find yourself staying up all night to page through one of them in entirety. I did.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/) \- Officially about finances but really about many more things such as the fact you already have most of the things you need to be happy.

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://brandur.org/](http://brandur.org/) is one I've recently discovered but it's become by far my favourite both in design, content and how it's built.

A lot of original thought I can agree with as an engineer

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://kottke.org/](https://kottke.org/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Oldie, but goodie:

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/)

<comment><USER8> I just wish it was updated more often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://thesoundingline.com/](http://thesoundingline.com/)

Economic and miscellaneous</comment>


Ask HN: If you hold crypto – are you using them for anything other than trading? - <AUTHOR> Just interested in peoples real world use of crypto at the moment - aside from trading? <comment><USER2> I don't actively trade them. I just bought them awhile back and am holding them just in case the price skyrockets, then I'll sell and probably get out of that market.</comment>


Hastebin: a better way to pastebin code - <AUTHOR> http://hastebin.com/about.md

<comment><USER2> I really like this idea, because I think it solves a problem, also the implementation looks very nice!

I'm assuming this is a Show HN (if so I'd be a good idea to rename), but anyway, heres some of my ideas. First, the keyboard shortcuts (new, just text, and twitter) aren't working for me on chrome with a german keyboard. Also I've run into this problem many times before with keycodes, there's not just the browsers, you gotta worry about language keyboard mappings too. Otherwise, everything worked nicely for me.

As far as suggestions go, I would love to be able to create an account where code snippets could be shared privately with other members of my team (like git does for repos), there's a lot of times where we would like to share code snippets (skype blows everything up), without having to scp to/from the server or dropbox it. If you could make that really easy through this webapp you'd at least have one paying member :)</comment>


Pair programming: the Pairon chair - <AUTHOR> http://www.cenqua.com/pairon/

<comment><AUTHOR> I always thought there should be another April Fools's in August. Kind of symmetrical

</comment><comment><USER2> This is turning into reddit. Please get rid of this.</comment>


Lady Gaga Is Probably Not An Illuminati Shill - <AUTHOR> http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/918-lady-gaga-is-probably-not-an-illuminati-shill.html <comment><USER2> After reading Illuminatus! last night, I really couldn't help but click on this link. Talk about an eye-catching headline.

Voodoo Histories, by David Aaronovitch, would be a fun followup.</comment>


Hackers in China infected computers that control satellites in the US and Asia - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/china-based-hacking-campaign-breached-satellite-defense-companies-us-asia-2018-6 <comment><USER2> Why would this not be left classified? More to be gained from publicity?</comment>


Coanda Effect: Understanding Why Wings Work - <AUTHOR> http://karmak.org/archive/2003/02/coanda_effect.html

<comment><USER2> One warning to the novice is that his experiments all take place at a very low Reynolds number. It's very difficult for neophytes to visualize flow at these scales, not least because the shape of the viscous boundary layer is on nearly the same size scale as the wing itself. In fact, it was long believed that "ideal" wings for aircraft would have a very thin cross section, primarily because this is what worked so well in the tiny wind tunnels of the day. Just look at the difference between an early WWI fighter and a late WWII bomber. (IIRC, we actually lucked into this for structural reasons! Thicker wings are easier to build!)

Over and above that, because the Coanda effect pertains to detached streams, it doesn't actually apply to a baseball, nor to wings. The author seems bright enough to handle potential flow calculations, and it would be a very instructive exercise for him to model a 2D flowfield around an airfoil without circulation, and then to input enough circulation to account for the Kutta condition at the trailing edge. I would advise using a "typical" cross section to avoid certain irregularities around the leading edge. _Fundamentals of Aerodynamics_ , by Anderson, is a wonderful read, even if it is surprisingly infuriating to learn how hopelessly wrong typical aerodynamic intuitions are.

My fluids prof used to comment that people feel perfectly confident making pronouncements about aerodynamics where they'd be appalled to make the equivalently technical statements about brain surgery.

<comment><USER3> If you push an symmetric elongated body at a non-zero angle of attack in potential flow it will generate lift without (applying the Kutta condition to generate) circulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Coanda effect is but one of several sources of lift, and _not_ the main one. There are many, many contradictory and downright wrong explanations out there. See this incredibly informative NASA website [0] and take the Theories of Lift path. Quoting from the site, lift on a wing appears because "...the integrated velocity variation around the object produces a net turning of the gas flow. From Newton's third law of motion, a turning action of the flow will result in a re-action (aerodynamic force) on the object". In other words, wings move air "out of the way" in a specific manner, which causes a reaction force on the wing, and hence lift. That is why planes flight, other effects are secondary.

[0] [http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/lift1.html](http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/lift1.html).

<comment><USER5> I've never quite understood all the "how do wings work?!?" business - you run fast enough to make wind "blow" the bottom of the wing and _poof_ flying.

Edit: Instead of downvoting, how about an explanation as to why this is not a layman's interpretation of the parent comment?

<comment><USER4> I didn't downvote you, I'm not part of that select club.

It is funny that you say "you run fast enough to make wind blow" and then you fly, because at a very simplistic level, that is _exactly_ what is happening.

Making the wind "blow" (and not necessarily under the wing only, mind you) implies a change in velocity, which can only be the result of a change in momentum imparted by a force (the force of the wing on the air). By Newton's third law this generates a reaction force and then you get your "poof flying" moment :)

You really should read the content I mentioned, it kinda is explained all in there.

<comment><USER5> Meta: wasn't blaming _you_ for the downvote - just speaking into the HN air to whomever did downvote.

<comment><USER6> Continuing on meta: HN guideline explicitly advices against complaining about downvotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is wrong. The Coanda effect is about fluid jets; this is how blown flaps work. However an airfoil is in a free-moving fluid not a jet.

[edit] A complete mathematical modeling of lift from first-principles is essentially impossible, as the most straightforward method would likely be Navier-Stokes. That, however, has serious issues with turbulent flow, which will happen _somewhere_ IIRC it becomes quite inaccurate in stall conditions.

It's been a long while since I've done any physics, but my recollection is the practical way to model it is to use Navier-Stokes along with empirically determined approximations of turbulence.

[edit2] A quick reading of the wikipedia article tells me that was mostly right, but NS doesn't have the stall issues, it's the Euler equations (which is a simplified form of NS).

<comment><USER8> It is interesting that the experiment he proposes actually does use a jet of air!

I guess the best counterexample would be to have an airfoil with 0 angle of attack - horizontal on the bottom and curved down on top. Can this wing divert the stream of air downwards, generating enough to allow flight? Even if it does, how much extra lift do you get when you increase the angle of attack?

<comment><USER9> For an asymmetric airfoil, zero angle of attack is _defined_ as the AoA that produces zero lift.

<comment><USER8> Yes, please excuse my ignorance of the technical use of the terms.

It would be interesting to see an experiment that isolated any divergence of the airstream caused by Coanda-like effects. I don't know what that experiment would look like, nor if any lift at all would be generated.

<comment><USER9> It's not a hard experiment to do: make an airfoil out of cardboard and stick it in front of a fan.

<comment><USER8> That would have no coanda effect though, right? I want an experiment that has only coanda (or similar) effects in play.

<comment><USER9> > That would have no coanda effect though, right?

Why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it amazing that every time this topic comes back (and it does come back regularly), there is a heated discussion with multiple contradictory explanations and assertions. People point to multiple sources, each one saying something different.

The net takeaway for me is that I _still_ can't be sure why airplanes fly and there is no general agreement on an authoritative source that will explain this.

<comment><USER11> I think that this topic is a classic example of people trying to answer the problem at different levels of abstraction. There is a famous clip of an interview with Richard Feynman where he cannot give a simple answer to "Why do magnets repel each other?" [1]. He can't give a simple answer because there is no simple answer -- any answer he could give could be followed by the question "And why does THAT happen?", requiring ever more complex answers that quickly descend into quantum mechanics that only top physicists can understand. He makes a meta-point that a person who asks such a question needs to specify the level of abstraction they expect, or barring that, the answerer needs to try to anticipate the correct level of abstraction that will satisfy and/or educate the questioner.

Now, some answers to why wings work are just plain wrong (like the original wrong answer -- the Bernoulli effect). However, when one person says "Wings work because they push air down, and the air pushes the wing up", and another person yells "No, that's all wrong! It's because of <insert-fancy-effect- here>", they can both be right. They are answering the question at different levels of abstraction. They also can be right in different cases -- the source of lift for wings, and the strength of different effects, can change with wing and flow conditions (at low speeds, one effect dominates, and at high speeds, another does. At supersonic speeds, a totally new effect takes over. and so on...)

Here's my attempt at an answer aimed at an appropriate level of abstraction, though of course it is doomed to failure: \- Air striking a wing is divided by the leading edge into two streams, one that flows over the top, and one that flows under the bottom.

\- Assuming the wing has some positive angle-of-attack, the stream under the bottom of the wing will be deflected downward, and therefore pushes back against the bottom surface of the wing. This part is reasonably uncontroversial.

\- The stream flowing over the top of the wing tends to follow the surface of the wing, even when the surface is curving down and away from the stream. Why this happens is subject to the multiple levels of abstraction problem that I mention above. If the curvature of the top surface is too severe, the flow cannot follow the surface, and it separates. This is "stall". Again, why this happens is complicated, and there are multiple effects and levels of abstraction at work, and I only understand the basic levels, so I won't try to go any further. The net result for a typical wing in typical flight conditions is that the flow over the top surface is also deflected downward.

\- You can get the amount of lift on the wing by integrating the pressures over the surface of the wing or by examining the curvature introduced to the flow by the wing -- both methods will give you the same answer (and they damn well better!). This is if you have modeled the airfoil and flow in a CFD software package with a reasonably tight mesh so that you know the flow conditions at every point in space near the airfoil. Or, you can pick a standard airfoil whose properties have been determined experimentally! There are exhaustive tables of NACA airfoils to pick from. [2]

Still confused? Yeah, so am I. This is about as deep as I'm prepared to learn this topic, considering that I've given up my former life as a thermo/controls specialist in mechanical engineering, and am now trying to stuff as much understanding of software engineering and computer science into my tired brain as I can. :-)

[1] [https://www.quora.com/Why-couldnt-Feynman-answer-the- questio...](https://www.quora.com/Why-couldnt-Feynman-answer-the-question- about-why-magnets-repel-each-other) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_airfoil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NACA_airfoil)

* edit for typos

<comment><USER6> > Now, some answers to why wings work are just plain wrong (like the original > wrong answer -- the Bernoulli effect). However, when one person says "Wings > work because they push air down, and the air pushes the wing up", and > another person yells "No, that's all wrong! It's because of <insert-fancy- > effect-here>", they can both be right

But arguably "Wings work because they push air down, and the air pushes the wing up" doesn't really answer the question because air being pushed down is as much an _effect_ of wing working as is airplane flying, but the _cause_ why wing works would remain mystery.

<comment><USER11> Which is exactly my point.

You: "But that doesn't answer the question. WHY does the air get pushed down?" They: "Because of such-and-such effect..." You: "But that doesn't answer the question. WHY does such-and-such effect happen?" They: "Because of fluid viscosity and boundary layers and navier-stokes blah blah blah..." You: "But that doesn't answer the question. WHY does fluid have viscosity?" They: "Because a such-and-such bonds between the molecules of the fluid..." You: "But WHY..."

See how it goes? Turtles all the way down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > When I pressed my 6th grade science teacher on this question, he just got > mad, denied that planes could fly inverted and tried to continue his > lecture.

During my time at school I had two teachers that when I started asking questions they didn't know the answer to they'd say something like "Wow, that's an interesting question, I'll try and find out the answer". All the rest were terrible teachers.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the definitive source for how airplanes fly:

[http://www.av8n.com/how/](http://www.av8n.com/how/)

Particularly:

[http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html](http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html)

<comment><USER2> I wish I could agree, but there are a few howlers in there. The significance of compressibility at low speeds around typical airfoils (M < .3 and no slots or blown flaps) is truly negligible, and the flowfield can be very finely approximated with uncorrected potential flow methods.

Also, the author mentions "suction," which is incredibly problematic. Just as you cannot push string, you cannot suck air. We can talk of negative "gauge" pressure, but that's just complicating things. There is a region of _low_ pressure above the wing, but the wing isn't being "sucked" into that; It's being pushed into that by the higher pressure on the lower side.

This "force" formulation is equivalent to the "mass x acceleration" formulation we get when we keep track of the mass of air moving about the wing. (Newton might remind us that F=m x a. Newton; So cheeky!)

He does finally get around to the Kutta-Jukowsky theorem, but it seems buried under a bunch of other stuff.

Oh, well. To each his own.

<comment><USER9> > the author mentions "suction,"

Yes, and he defines it immediately: "suction, i.e. negative pressure relative to ambient" which is exactly the same as 'negative gauge pressure'. So why is this problematic?

> the wing isn't being "sucked" into that

And he never says it is. You're attacking a straw man.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ed Seykota, one of the first systematic futures traders, has a whole web page up dedicated to "stopping Bernoulli abuse" and instead proposing the "Theory of Radial Momentum" as a way to explain lift:

[http://www.seykota.com/rm/](http://www.seykota.com/rm/)

The material isn't explained all that well (at least, for a non-physicist like myself) but it would appear that an object or structure which forces a fluid to expand in multiple directions, will reduce pressure and induce lift.

The example is a playing card adhering to a thimble with air going through a spool. Also works with water from a hose.

Interested to see what someone who understands this stuff well thinks...

</comment><comment><USER14> > _The reasoning--though incomplete--is based on the Bernoulli effect, which > correctly correlates the increased speed with which air moves over a surface > and the lowered air pressure measured at that surface. [...]A few years > later I carried out a calculation according to a naive interpretation of the > common explanation of how a wing works. Using data from a model airplane I > found that the calculated lift was only 2% of that needed to fly the model._

The calculation in the bottom is incorrect. It assumes that the top of the wing is greater, so the speed of the air is greater, so the pressure on the top of the wing is smaller. The problem is that then it multiplies the difference of pressure by the surface of the wing, but it doesn't consider that the top of the wing is greater. (There is another problem, the surface is curved, so you must consider the direction of the forces in order to add them.) When you take into account this, the "lift" you get from this calculation is not the 2%, it's exactly 0% (as 0% because there is a mathematical theorem that says that it's 0%).

There is a more detailed and correct explanation in [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/46131/does-a- wing...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/46131/does-a-wing-in-a- potential-flow-have-lift) . The secret sauce that makes the planes fly is the vortex around the wing.

But there is a detail that I don't like in that explanation. You need the viscosity to get the vortex when the plane starts. You don't need the viscosity to fly. You can fly without viscosity, but you can't "take of" without viscosity. (Well, you need also the viscosity to change correct the circulation of the vortex when you change the speed, o the correct misquotes is "You can fly at constant velocity without viscosity.".)

</comment><comment><USER15> A much more visual, accurate and easier to understand explanation of lift:

[http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/how-wings-really- work](http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/how-wings-really-work)

</comment><comment><USER16> I always enjoy reading about this topic.

If you do too, then you might also enjoy thinking about how reverse swing bowling in cricket works:

[http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/258645.ht...](http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/258645.html)

TL;DR normally a fast bowler will shine one half of the cricket ball to make it swing in the direction of the rougher side of the ball. In certain situations the opposite will happen and the ball will swing "the wrong way".

</comment><comment><USER17> It is helpful to realize the trigonometry of flight. Wings leverage a horizontal force (thrust) to get a larger vertical force (lift). Freestream momentum is deflected some net angle by a wing. If you take a horizontal vector and tilt it, the length is reduced, and the height is increased. The equal and opposite reactions of the freestream momentum deflection are lift and drag on the wing. Turns out, the change in height is larger than the change in length. The following equation expresses the lift to drag ratio: sin(phi) / (1-cos(phi)+f). The phi is not angle of attack, but the net tilt angle of the freestream induced by the wing. There is some correlation between the two of course. f is a non-conservative skin friction factor.

I view aerodynamic phenomena such as stall and Coanda effect as mechanisms that interfere or enable the deflection capability of wings.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yeah lift has nothing to do with air following a "longer path" on the upper surface. A flat plate is symmetric, but makes a pretty decent wing for small angle of attack (unfortunately it's structurally untenable). The article confuses the Coanda effect with the Kutta condition, though both arise from air viscosity.

</comment><comment><USER19> I often see incorrect explanations of how wings works, this included. There's really only one experiment you need to do that demonstrates lift at all scales. Stick your hand out of a moving vehicle or get in water and spin with your hand sticking out. You angle your hand up - your arm goes up. Down, and your arm goes down.

Your hand/arm will go in the direction opposite of the directed flow because the flow is pushing it to go that way. This is the same way a wing works. There are complicated ways to calculate it all, but the general concept is basic.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Using the Coanda effect to explain the operation of a normal wing makes about as much sense as using bowling to explain walking. To be sure, bowling and walking use some of the same muscle groups, and both at some level depend on Newton's laws, but if you don't already know how to walk you won't learn much by considering the additional complexity of the bowling situation. Key elements of the bowling scenario are not present during ordinary walking."

[http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/spins.html#sec- coanda](http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/spins.html#sec-coanda)

</comment><comment><USER21> the McDonnel-Douglas 520 helicopter has no tail rotor and instead has a fan in the tail which utilizes the coanda effect to counter act main rotor torque

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD_Helicopters_MD_500#MD_520N](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD_Helicopters_MD_500#MD_520N)

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

</comment><comment><USER22> The coanda effect was used to great effect in f1 recently to redirect the exhaust flow from the upward pointing exhaust to the floor with no interfering aerodynamics. It's also very well explained, with a very good practical demonstration of it here [0].

[0] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gryojy2cHnI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gryojy2cHnI)

</comment><comment><USER23> I've read in a physics journalist about Coanda effect, and why Bernouli effect couldn't the be only reason, if it was, then it would be possible to make levitating boxes just stuff a fan and a wing in a box and supply enough electricity for the Bernouli effect to raise the box.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm thinking the baseball spinning counterclockwise when viewed from above will curve to the pitcher's right (the same direction shown by Trefil).

Basically friction will cause the ball to push air molecules near its surface in its direction of spin. So air molecules in front will fly off to the left. By conservation of momentum, the ball will be pushed to the right.

The same effect at the back of the ball will push the ball to the left. But there would be fewer air molecules behind the ball, because that's the space which has just been vacated by the ball. Air molecules haven't yet had time to rush in to fill the space behind the ball at the same density as they fill the space in front of the ball.

This makes the rightward push at the front stronger than the leftward push at the back, causing the ball to move to the right.

Now I'm going to finish reading the article and see if my hypothesis is correct.

<comment><USER24> Crud. I assumed the left and right side were symmetric and would cancel, but they're not -- the air's moving at different relative velocity on each side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Isn't angle of attack also pretty important to how wings work?

<comment><USER8> That's covered in the article, at least briefly -

 _We then have to ask how a flat wing like that of a paper airplane, with no curves anywhere, can generate lift. Note that the flat wing has been drawn at a tilt, this tilt is called "angle of attack" and is necessary for the flat wing to generate lift. The topic of angle of attack will be returned to presently._

later

 _It is easy, based on the Coanda effect, to visualize why angle of attack (the fore-and-aft tilt of the wing, as illustrated earlier) is crucially important to a symmetrical airfoil, why planes can fly inverted, why flat and thin wings work, and why Experiment 1 with its convex and concave strips of paper works as it does._

and then in the footnotes

 _7 - In the 1930 's the Romanian aerodynamicist Henri-Marie Coanda(1885-1972) observed that a stream of air (or other fluid) emerging from a nozzle tends to follow a nearby curved or flat surface, if the curvature of the surface or angle the surface makes with the stream is not too sharp._

The essential action of the wing is to divert a stream of air downwards, generating lift and drag in the process. The Coanda effect describes how fluids 'stick' close to surfaces they flow over. The magnitude of this effect is driven by the radius of curvature, angle of incidence etc.

What isn't really covered that well is that the Coanda effect is not essential for a wing to work. Simply having a wing at an angle of attack will divert air downwards and cause lift. The Coanda effect can be used to generate greater amounts of lift [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coand%C4%83_effect)

<comment><USER9> > the Coanda effect is not essential for a wing to work

Indeed. The easiest way to see that is to take a piece of paper about the size of a wallet size check and drop it while giving it a little bit of spin around the long axis. The paper will fly, and the reason it flies is _exactly_ the same as the reason a non-spinning wing flies. See:

[http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec- spinners](http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-spinners)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Mandatory XKCD:

[http://xkcd.com/803/](http://xkcd.com/803/)</comment>


Towards the future RDF library - <AUTHOR> http://nicola.io/future-rdf/2015/ <comment><USER2> This is really neet! I will share this with the rest of the biohackers at [http://2015.biohackathon.org/hackathon](http://2015.biohackathon.org/hackathon) as a nice approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, let me know!</comment></comment>


Xiaomi's global vice president Hugo Barra is leaving the company - <AUTHOR> http://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/xiaomis-global-vice-president-hugo-barra-is-leaving-the-company/articleshow/56729359.cms <comment><USER2> I might be too sentimental (knowing that it's PR speak and therefore downplayed) the last paragraph strikes me as sheer hell.

"What I've realized is that the last few years of living in such a singular environment have taken a huge toll on my life and started affecting my health. My friends, what I consider to be my home, and my life are back in Silicon Valley, which is also much closer to my family. Seeing how much I've left behind these past few years, it is clear to me that the time has come to return,"

<comment><USER3> Was he in China? Culture shock can be quite devastating. And you might think that after 3 1/2 years that you get used to your new environment, but it can actually get progressively worse. I was pretty lucky that when I moved to Japan I instantly felt at home. I've seen people pretty much melt down from the stress of having all their values brought into question and everything that they thought was common sense thrown out of the window. Even when you have a good gig and you love what you are doing, it can be impossible to continue. The worst bit is that it can actually be harder to return because without knowing it, _you_ can change. And everything your remember about home is a little different. I remember the first time I went abroad, when I returned I felt that I lost my home. It took me years to find a new one.

<comment><USER4> > I've seen people pretty much melt down from the stress of having all their > values brought into question and everything that they thought was common > sense thrown out of the window.

I'm curious as to what values are so different in China. Could you give an example, please? For my part, I've lived in Argentina, USA, France, Spain, German, and the UK. I've found that values are _pretty similar_. Nothing that makes me feel shockingly out of place. But they're all "European" countries, hence the question.

<comment><USER3> I can guess what values are different in China, but since I haven't lived there it's probably better not to. Instead, I can tell you about one of the most difficult aspects of Japanese culture for most foreigners.

It's a bit strange because this is one of the things that I personally _like_ about Japanese culture, even though it is definitely unsettling at times. People in Japan are _very_ polite and helpful. If you meet someone, they will smile and say good morning. If you are lost, they will often go well out of their way to help you.

This friendliness is expected in the culture and people work very hard to keep it up. It extends into your personal relationships and there is a saying that you have one face that you present to everyone, one face that you show to your family and one face that you never show anyone else. The corollary is that every interaction you have with people involves an artifice to a greater or lesser extent.

If you ask someone for their opinion, they will generally try to guess what you think and give you that opinion -- because they don't want to upset you. Often when you are at work, people will be very nice to you, even if they don't like you very much. In fact, it may be the case that someone will actually _hate_ you, but act like you are their best friend. Some of the people who have helped me the most and to whom I owe the most are people who I'm pretty sure despise me (but they are first on my list for souvenirs when I go travelling!)

In western cultures, there is a kind of tradition of clearing the air. You feel that you need to share your differences and work them out so that you can come to a better understanding of each other. This is _not_ the case in Japan. If you suspect that there is a problem and try to work it out, the other person will be very uncomfortable. If you press the issue, they will squirm and lie about their feelings. If you press the issue even more, they will eventually break down and get very angry.

But then, having gotten angry, they will be embarrassed and upset and they will never speak another word to you for as long as you live.

To some people, this is incredibly upsetting. There is _no way_ to determine if people genuinely like you or if they hate your guts. You will catch people out in little lies that have been constructed so that you don't have to discuss a difference of opinion. While this is done ostensibly to promote the harmonious flow of day to day life, you can get the feeling that nobody takes you seriously. Nobody is actually listening to you. Nobody cares what you think. They just smile and... well, lie to your face. And since many westerners are judgemental by culture, they imagine that they are being judged by this infuriating group of incessantly smiling jerks that are laughing at them behind their backs (when in fact, nobody cares what you think as long as you don't make trouble).

As for me... I'm living in a land of very polite people who smile and treat me well, even if they don't like me. As someone with a different way of looking at things, people take pleasure in listening to me and congratulating me on my unique view of the world. They go out of their way to help me and I return the favour. Nobody gives a damn if you agree or disagree or if you like someone or don't like someone. For me it's a kind of paradise where I can relax and throw out all the drama of western style relationships.

But even still, I can understand why some people can't deal with it.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! That's a pretty good summery I guess. But there's a lot of outright bullying going on as well. I guess this where a lot of foreigners draw their line.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you mean by bullying. The biggest thing I see is that there are true value clashes. Some cultures have more difficulty than others. I see more Americans and British people having problems than some other cultures, for example.

Americans in particular often believe that Japanese attitudes are morally wrong. And it's not so much bullying as it is that Japanese cultural stances are immovable. You can throw yourself against that wall as much as you like and it is _not_ going to budge. So if you honestly believe that some things are morally wrong and you call people out on it... well you are going to grind yourself into dust.

Although I shouldn't get too carried away, I'll tell one last story. When I worked at the high school here, my supervisor was trying to get me to work without compensation on weekend (there was a special event). All of the other teachers got a day off in lieu, but my supervisor didn't want to upset the apple cart by trying to get the same treatment for me (I was on contract, so played by different rules). This is pretty typical, and I've seen other foreigners absolutely get squashed by the system as they try to preach about worker's rights.

Instead, we had a drinking party that week. So I sat down with the department head and a bottle of nihonshu (Japanese sake) and we preceded to enjoy ourselves. At the appropriate time (just before he passed out), I casually asked him if the regular teachers were getting time off in lieu. He said, "Of course". I laughed and said something about the unfortunate lives of those who work on contract. He stood up (unstably) and assured me, "No! It's not right. We can fix this!". At which point he yelled over to the principal on the other side of the room, "We can get a day of in lieu for Mike-kun here, right? He's a good guy!" To which the principal laughed and said, "Of course, of course!".

My supervisor was clearly livid the next day as he brought the schedule and asked me when I wanted to have my day off. This is Japan.

<comment><USER5> I believe I share your stance. Probably the only approach to live your life in peace somehow. But there is a lot of real bullying going on. Maybe it is something no related to being a foreigner. Probably it is indeed the "culture". For me it is where I draw the line and it brought me some trouble. To me it would be the same as to allow sexual harrasment to happen during let's say a informal drinking party.

<comment><USER3> OK. I think I understand a bit what you mean. I tend to think of Japanese culture as having an inside and an outside. All things are negotiable if you are outside. No things are negotiable if you are inside. Everyone is allowed inside, but you _must_ play by the rules -- all of them, with no exceptions.

Foreigners often have difficulty with this because rules in most western cultures are negotiable. You can appeal to common sense. You can argue your position and modify your environment. This is generally not possible in Japan. The idea of drawing a line, as you have described, will almost certain end in an extremely difficult position if you wish to be inside.

I think there are 2 happy places in Japan. You can decide that you aren't going to follow the rules and accept to be outside. Everyone will smile and be polite. They will be very helpful to you. They will praise you on being able to use chopsticks, etc, etc. You will forever be an honoured guest.

But not many people want to be treated as a guest in their own home, so most people want to be inside. This is also fine, but you have to learn the crazy rules and follow them exactly. You have to be OK with being reprimanded for making the slightest error. You have to slot yourself into society exactly where they put you. You have to do what is expected of you.

Where you get into trouble is when you want to be inside, but you want to pick and choose which rules that you wish to follow. Or if you wish to negotiate those rules. Or if you wish to convince others to play by other rules. That's just not going to work in Japan and I think it's why most foreigners don't stay, even though it is technically very, very easy to immigrate here. Like I said, especially if you have a very strong moral sense of right and wrong, it's going to be really, really difficult unless it happens to match exactly the sense of right and wrong in Japan (which is pretty unlikely if you were not raised in Japan).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Xiaomi strikes me as one of the very few Chinese gadget companies I would buy from. Their phones always look polished and their specs are always fantastic for the dollar spent.

I have no idea about their quality but some day I will take the plunge and buy.

<comment><USER7> I own a Xiaomi product (not a phone)

Xiaomi phones have the same problem as all Chinese phones: If you can't put Cyanogen mod on it, it is close to useless.

<comment><USER8> MIUI > AOSP/Google Android, but that's my opinion.

They even fixed the shitty non existant backup/restore situation on Android, hence why Titanium Backup&Restore is the best selling paid app for years. Built in solution backups apps with data (also overrides backup permission set in manifest) and all system settings. You can run it periodically, save in desired storage location, locally or in MI Cloud. After I had to reflash cousins phone which had a vendor MIUI installed, the restore did everything and was almost a 1:1 copy.

Not to mention updates, my budget 135€ device has January 2017 Android security update and is updated weekly.

It has it's own funny things though, like expanding notifications with two fingers only and a bit fiddling to allow apps to run in background and receive notifications, but this whitelisting isn't anything different that other Android vendors have done to save battery.

<comment><USER9> You also can't change the launcher.

<comment><USER10> Of course you can, I'm running Nova Launcher.

<comment><USER9> I take it back. I had to check what my last Chinese phone was. It was a Letv 1s running EUI. I thought it was MIUI.

I found the software a bit frustrating but I can tell you the build quality was the best I've experienced in a phone. Mind you, all my phones have been sub £200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if he's been poached to work on Andy Rubin's new high-end Android handset startup. Timing and his background would seem to align...

<comment><USER12> That's the exact same thing I thought as soon as I saw the headline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have noticed this is common pattern for Sr execs placed in Indian subsidiary by parent US companies. Mostly people of Indian origin go to India for few years, fulfill their yearning for homeland, parents, friends etc and then come back to US when a new opportunity shows up.

In this case, Hugo is not even of chinese origin so it must be specially hard for him.

</comment><comment><USER14> One thing fundamentally broken on xiaomi phones is GCM. So if you are not whatsapp or Facebook (they have pre configured exceptions) and you need push notifications, you have no options. You can't even have a persistent connection because your app is killed whenever. The user needs to specifically turn off restrictions for your app which do not persist across updates. Users don't really understand all that so your app is "broken" for them.

<comment><USER15> Whatsapp didn't have preconfigured exception in the Redmi phone I bought in 2016 in India running official MIUI. It was infuriating as I had no idea that MIUI kills apps and you need to except apps from that

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sure, maybe what he said is true. Or maybe the food/water/pollution issues are what drove him away.

But, more often this kind of departure is a prelude to either more departures, accounting issues, or the sudden public disclosure of previously hidden away infighting in the executive suites.

</comment><comment><USER17> Xiaomi turns out to not have a big moat. And run on extremely thin margins. Top line growth has been flat. And the writing on the wall is that we might be seeing revenue contraction ahead.

I wonder what their private market valuation is doing?

<comment><USER18> As owner of one of their excellent products, I couldn't care less about their private valuation.

(btw, mi is owned by their employees)

<comment><USER19> They are obviously concerned about long term viability of their core cellphone business, enough that they are diversifying into a massive range of products from alkaline batteries[0] to reverse osmosis water purifiers[0]. Some of their offerings, such as wifi routers and rice cookers (yes, Xiaomi make rice cookers[2] that send notifications to your phone when your meal is ready) are mildly successful while others are received with either apathy or outright animosity such as their drones which crashed during a livestreamed demo flight. And nobody wants to buy their laptop computer for sure.

[0]:[http://list.mi.com/14](http://list.mi.com/14) [1]:[http://www.mi.com/water/](http://www.mi.com/water/) [2]:[http://www.mi.com/dianfanbao/](http://www.mi.com/dianfanbao/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good share.</comment>


How Palantir embedded itself in the NHS - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/05/16/inside-story-cia-backed-palantir-embedded-nhs-socialite-running/ <comment><USER4> > So when the NHS revealed that Palantir was building emergency data mining > tools to help Britain cope with the pandemic – for no fee – there were > understandable reservations. What might be expected in return?

It has to be something more valuable than a 'fee', What could that possibly be? I'll give you a huge hint.

We can recall what happened when DeepMind got involved with the NHS ~3 years ago and the result was illegal [0] and now Google is taking over their contracts [1]. There is only one thing that Palantir wants from this which is more than just money.

[0] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2139395-google- deepmind...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2139395-google-deepminds- nhs-data-deal-failed-to-comply-with-law/)

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217939-google-is- takin...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217939-google-is-taking-over- deepminds-nhs-contracts-should-we-be-worried/)

</comment><comment><USER5> As per the guidelines, please use original title: How CIA-backed Palantir embedded itself in the NHS

<comment><USER6> It may have been edited to remove extraneous information.

<comment><USER7> Is that objectively extraneous? I feel like it was not something I'd known prior.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used the original title, it was removed by a mod.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow...there is a lot unsaid here.

Like Max Mosley..."former racing motor boss"...okay, that is what he is known for :)

But we should probably call it what it is: corruption. For someone that is supposedly assisting the govt, they seem to employ a hell of a lot of civil servants from that inefficient govt...wonder why?

(This kind of corruption has completely exploded in the UK. It actually isn't politicians either, it is mostly civil servants...as in, the "Nudge Unit" that was spun out of govt and then won lots of contracts to do the exact same work for double the price).

<comment><USER9> TBF, Max Mosley isn't really involved in this, it is his nephew who is the focus of the story.

The Telegraph just likes to pitch the idea that who your parents are is important, if the story was in the Daily Mail it would tell you how much the houses of anyone mentioned were worth.

<comment> blaser-waffle Gotta make sure those Brits remember their class distinctions

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 'Some believe that it is access to NHS data, among the most lucrative data sets in the world, that is the real attraction here'.

..."We must beware Palantir – and any other data mining company – bearing gifts during a pandemic," says Ioannis Kouvakas, legal officer at Privacy International.

<comment><USER11> They may have access to it, but how can they monitize it beyond services directly for the NHS? Is it wrong to assume that just having access to the data does not mean Planatir can use it to benefit parties other than the NHS?

<comment><USER12> Based on the parties involved here, it'll be used to control the outcome of elections to ensure the Tories keep in power forever. The guy running it, Mosley, is the grandson of Oswald Mosley - founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists - "Hooray for the blackshirts" and all that. He's a "Tory activist", which basically means he would like to see a fascist white ethnostate. I'm not exaggerating. This is who the Tories have become - <USER2> party of brexit, of isolationism, of eugenics, of corrupt in-dealing, arbitrary justice, and "hostile environments".

Literally every name in there is someone associated with the far right.

There's also prior form to this end - see the as yet unresolved and probably never to be resolved hoo-hah over Cambridge analytica.

This smells like Cummings and his gang.

<comment><USER13> > I'm not exaggerating

He said, exaggerating.

<comment><USER12> No. I went to school with plenty of the clade now in power - one is a cabinet minister, another just an MP, others are Tory activists or were Tory MPs until the last election. The cabinet minister was the most profoundly racist and bigoted person in my year. I won't repeat the kind of slurs he routinely came out with here, but I will say that he was kicked out of history, repeatedly, for saying "they got what they deserved", when discussing the holocaust. The MP was suspended for a term for sexual assault. Yes, that's anecdotal, but it speaks of the character of the type of person attracted to their ideology.

In more concrete terms, if you look at what is being said, privately and publicly, what is becoming policy, which dead cats are being thrown at the press, it is extremely worrying.

<comment><USER13> Feel free to name names

<comment><USER12> I like breathing, so no.

My godfather spoke out against them a few years ago when told to preside over a secret court. They destroyed him through the press. Cameron went on national TV to condemn him for being a paedophile apologist, when he's absolutely no such thing, and the court transcripts from the supposed incident clearly show that the remarks ascribed to him were actually made by a police constable. His wife committed suicide in the aftermath, and his children fled the country as they were being threatened by the public and hounded by the gutter press. He is a shadow of the man he was.

So no. I won't name names.

<comment><USER14> I can't find any relevant comment by cameron accusing/condemning anyone for being a 'paedophile apologist'. Or anyone being a godfather so accused. It's difficult to evaluate such accusations without more info, but it's equally important to know this stuff if what you say is accurate. These are very serious claims indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > " Palantir was building emergency data mining tools to help Britain cope > with the pandemic – for no fee"

Pure comedy that.

<comment><USER16> It's true. They work for free, because they really want to help you fix your problem. Until you depend on them. The you'll have to pay as much as they think you can pay.

<comment><USER15> That's not the problem. The problem is that the "free" work is absolutely not free. You pay in several ways: giving them data, giving them knowledge of how you approach data and analytics problem solving for your organization, giving political connections and sunk cost hooks for them to gain a future contract.

And worst of all, reputation laundering. They can brag about "charitable" work for a prestigious client, and try to whitewash the reality of how utterly deplorable and morally sickening they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As someone that actually used palantir, they don't do magick. Splunk beats them in every category for conventional data analysis.

They do however have an excellent grasp on ML. Let's say you have billions of images,document images and documents (of any kind) they will search it better than google can. They obviously do a lot more but the thing that makes them shine is the UX. If you're a cop for example you put in a license plate and it shows you all you need about the car,driver,history,correlations and analysis of all entities and much more without the user being expected to know anything technical at all(you can imagine what can be seen when someone puts in your IP or phone#). They do a good job at linking documents and data points. I'm afraid I don't know enough about off the shelf ML to make a good comparison.

I don't agree with Mr.Thiel but his logic is "if we don't do it,someone will". And that's the idea behind in-q-tel (I'm sure HNers and the VC scene know that name well). Thiel was also wrong about Trump, things are now worse off foe everyone. America has just about lost her grasp on keeping the world order,many trust relationships that kept peace and order since ww2 have been ruined.

As far as their work, I don't think "someone else" would have done it,because even if they did the quality may have been poorer. But I do agree the problem is far more deep-rooted and sinister than it appears.

For a long time you could safely trust the IC to know and respect democracy and the rule of law. But in recent times, they have violated every core tenants of a legitimate rule of law and civil liberty. Keeping the nation secure is not an excuse, if it is then any coup or subversion of elections can be justified this way. Are they helping their country or hurting it?

The existence of palantir and in-q-tel is very natural. The problem is how the IC and LEO communities as a whole have collectively lost sense of how everything they do is by consent of the people. But moreover, they should be on the people's side protecting rights and liberties. They stand as enemies of our liberties, sophisticated stalkers that will break any law to stalk you and control you all for your own good.

I think Mr. Thiel will regret his place in history. But it's very hard to blame him or pala tir. It's like blaming the sharpness of a knife when someone stabs you.

<comment><USER18> I agree with your general take but I'm surprised by your last line.

> I think Mr. Thiel will regret his place in history. But it's very hard to > blame him or Palantir. It's like blaming the sharpness of a knife when > someone stabs you.

If Thiel actually wanted to help the problem, there are surely much better ways than making Palantir. I think the "someone else will" logic is a thinly veiled excuse to justify what he wants to do, for other reasons. I think he 100% made the world worse with what was done here, and deserves according blame for that.

To replace your analogy, I would say he saw a stabbing about to happen and instead of attempting to stop it, he decided to stab the person with a slightly blunter knife. The analogy breaks here, but this could have been thought on for years, and he couldn't think up any other solution to it, or spend his time somewhere more worthwhile instead? Even a failed attempt to stop the stabbing would have at least been understandable.

<comment><USER17> I wasn't saying he was right but that ultimate cause and blame is not pointed at him. Much like the role IBM and BMW played when helping the Nazis. (Not that I think the US IC is anywhere near as bad).

<comment><USER19> fundamental difference between a business being co-opted by an autocratic state (do x or we take you over/arrest your families/...) and a business choosing to create a certain product that they could simply not have created.

A better analogy might be a weapons company that chooses to make cluster grenades or chemical weapons knowing that they are not ethical even as far as weapons (machine learning) go, but it pays well..

<comment><USER17> IBM is american,they volunteered to help Germany before the US cared about WW2

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >One of the least sexy, yet most critical, challenges was integrating bits of data from hospitals, laboratories and factories so that the Cabinet could get a better grasp of how the virus was spreading – and make better decisions.

>For just over a month, the NHS has been using Palantir's Foundry software to bring together lab test results, hospital and supply chain data to see which hospitals need beds, gear or ventilators.

Is this really true? We've been absolutely shambolic in the UK, and seem to be heading to have the worst performance against the virus in the world - <USER3> still seem to have a lot of cases each day, whereas Spain and Italy have tailed off greatly. Either Palantir's help hasn't been much use, or we would have been even worse off (and I'd be genuinely interested to know which, although I know we'll never know what pies Palantir now has fingers into).

I'm afraid that our leaders have been shown up to mostly be completely out of their depth, and we're going to pay a massive price as a result - as if the looming of Brexit wasn't bad enough.

<comment> open-source-ux The scale of ineptitude from this government is off the scale. Will this government ever get its rekoning over its handling over the Coranavirus? Alas no - our nasty, mostly right-wing national press will never subject the ruling Conservative party to sufficient scrutiny to expose their failings.

This comedy video of Health Secretary Matt Hancok has gone viral, but you can't laugh - it's painful to watch. These are the people in charge.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osgcTSVt7eU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osgcTSVt7eU)

<comment><USER21> Does <190k views over 10 days really count as going viral?

<comment> open-source-ux It's been viewed widely on social media too. On twitter it has had 2.2m views:

[https://twitter.com/MrMichaelSpicer/status/12590315118918778...](https://twitter.com/MrMichaelSpicer/status/1259031511891877888)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> [https://archive.md/9DpTM](https://archive.md/9DpTM)

<comment><USER23> thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I guess most people don't know how Sauron uses palantirs.

</comment><comment><USER25> I thought HN frowned upon paywalled content?</comment>


Goldman Sachs Leads $30 Million Investment in Software Supply Chain Fixer - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/02/04/goldman-sachs-invest-sonatype/ <comment><USER2> Typo in the headline doesn't help the credibility of this article ("This comany's tech helps developers deal with buggy open source code.")

And I guess quotes like the following are just baiting developers:

"Since most developers draw on open source code to build their software, that leaves open the possibility for countless computer bugs, compatibility issues, and security gaps to creep in."

Sounds like a great way to burn a pile of money.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's mostly for Java components. SonaType also backports security fixes into older components that are still widely deployed, but receiving less attention from upstream devs.

From a 2012 article, [http://allthingsd.com/20120710/sonatype-manager-of- grown-up-...](http://allthingsd.com/20120710/sonatype-manager-of-grown-up- open-source-software-lands-25-million-from-nea/), _Sonatype runs something called the Central Repository, essentially a library of some 400,000 software components that is so widely used by software developers that it gets about five billion requests a year. That gives it a lot of visibility into what components are being used, and what potential problems might be cropping up. Simply keeping track of what software components were used to build an application goes a long way toward solving problems as they arise down the road. "_

Edit: better article on the GS funding, [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/md-b...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/md- based-cyber-firm-picks-up-30-million-led-by-goldman-sachs/2016/02/03/eebcf1ec- cac8-11e5-ae11-57b6aeab993f_story.html)

 _"Imagine a situation where Toyota let their line workers make all the decisions about which suppliers to use without any governance or oversight; imagine what cars would be like," he said. "All the cars would be really hard to maintain and an orderly recall would be next to impossible ... Some of the company's larger customers pay Sonatype hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, Jackson says, and a few pay close to $1 million._</comment></comment>


Small Ontario towns pay ransom after hackers hold computer systems hostage - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/small-ontario-towns-pay-ransom-after-hackers-hold-computer-systems-hostage-1.4826545 <comment><USER2> > The total cost of the virus, including consultants, overtime, and > productivity loss, saw taxpayers on the hook for just over $250,000.

not bad. perhaps an order of magnitude cheaper than having good security. of course, it's $250k for a single incident ...</comment>


Australian AF cracked codes on fighters sold to them by US - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22451478-2,00.html

<comment><USER2> The US sells lots of weapons to a lot of people. Many times we "black box" technology so they can't see how it works or limit it's capabilities. It's only natural that even our closest allies circumvent these measures. So good for the Aussies! At least we can trust them not to sell the secrets to the Russians or Chinese. Not so for the Israelis though...

<comment><USER3> Isn't it solidly against the interests of the Israelis to sell secrets to the Russians or Chinese?

<comment><USER2> Depends. Here is a case where it wasn't:

-Israelis recruit a DOD employee(Jonathan Pollard) to spy for them during the Cold War.

-He tells them how to crack our naval codes.

-They sell the codes to the Russians in exchange for Jewish Ukrainian refugees.

Israel is a democracy and the Arabs in Israel are reproducing faster than the Jews in Israel. So if they want to continue to be "The Jewish State" they need immigrants to keep the majority. So in that case is was in their interest.

Great story from the New Yorker about it: <http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/576453/posts>

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that link.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Revolutionary Approach to Treating PTSD (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/a-revolutionary-approach-to-treating-ptsd.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I know this isn't 'exactly' the same but I can't help but find a coloration to this and Somatosensory Therapy [1].

I've had a traumatic past and I've volunteered at a place that uses Soma. Essentially it's 'creating new memories through play'. It was used for abused/molested children.

I hope Kolk can get some finding for clinical research because I do think there is a possible benefit to role-playing.

Psychology knows that when a child is developing to role-play verbally/physically specific situations, to train a child. I learned this through my college course 'Child Psych.'. I was surprised that there is research on role-playing but...no one in my circle seems to know it's value.

Or in other words, if your child can't be quiet waiting at a doctors office, while you are at home, you'll 'recreate' the situation and talk out what you and the child can do in the situation next time. "I'll play with this toy that I like so much. This will help me pass the time because it's so boring in the waiting room." Etc.

I know what I'm saying isn't the exact situation but there are parallels to role-playing with little humans and adult humans. :)

[1] - [https://www.amazon.com/Doodles-Dances-Ditties-Trauma- informe...](https://www.amazon.com/Doodles-Dances-Ditties-Trauma-informed- Somatosensory/dp/098927070X/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1423258834&sr=1-1&keywords=doodles+dances+and+ditties)

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Psychomotor therapy is neither widely practiced nor supported by clinical > studies._

Well if this dancer-turned-psychologist is so hellbent on his methods, shouldn't he subject them to the rigor of clinical research? If I were in his shoes and I had a method that showed promise, I'd want to evaluate it against my peers to ensure I have the most eyes available to make it the most effective - in the same way a crypotographer testing a new algorithm would open-source his work to find as many exploits as early as possible to strengthen his work.

I want to believe, because my dad suffers from real bad PTSD from Vietnam, but it's quotes like these that immediately suck the life out of any hope I had for ways to help him.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article goes into that. It's hard to get funding.

<comment><USER4> Is it, though?

Science isn't always an expensive endeavor. Certainly checking in with clients a few years after and comparing outcomes with a control group could be done with volunteers. Setting up a blind can be done with basic survey tools which are available at low cost.

The expensive parts of this research are getting facilities and people willing to take an untested treatment. But he already has both those, so I really can only attribute the lack of scientific evaluation to a lack of will to do it.

<comment><USER5> while you are essentially correct, I would imagine that a therapy such as this would be hard to 'own' and profit from after successful development, so the sources of funding may well be quite limited compared to the funding available to develop a new drug therapy.

<comment><USER6> There's a much higher bar, too, to any form of research that involves human subjects. There's a whole regulatory regime that must be complied with to even get permission to do this kind of research. If the possible downside is high (as it is here... what if the treatment makes the subjects _worse_ and a bunch of them wind up more suicidal than they were before?) the level of required oversight is pretty high.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- unethical and/or misguided researchers have actively harmed their subjects too many times in the past. Nonetheless, it's something that people who haven't done human subjects research often overlook, and something that can add a huge amount of expense and delay.

If you're doing generic CS research* the worst that usually happens is that you have to reboot. We can't reboot people, at least not yet. :-)

*If you're doing research on, say, human computer interaction, you generally do have to get human subjects approval, but not usually for compilers, algorithms, or the like.

Edit: "people willing to take an untested treatment"

That's exactly the rub. The potential subjects for something like this are what's known in the jargon as a "vulnerable group". You have to be very, very sure (and be able to convince a skeptical oversight committee) that your subjects are, in fact, giving their active and informed consent for an experimental treatment. That's quite hard to do for people with severe psychological problems (again, rightly so... some of the abuses of the past make for sobering reading).

<comment><USER4> But he's already performing the treatment on people. He's already skirting the regulations. Merely collecting data on what he's already doing doesn't make it worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm reading van der Kolk's best-selling book on trauma right now - The Body Keeps the Score [1]. It's good. My therapist recommended it to me as the best book on trauma out there right now. Lots of good, current research, his personal experiences actually healing trauma, and hope that people can get better. My wife has PTSD (veterinary school and previous relationships) so I'm trying to understand, and it's helping.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing- Trauma/dp/01...](https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Score-Healing- Trauma/dp/0143127748)

</comment><comment><USER8> I've just recently performed in a psychoplayback evening for a small group of veterans with PTSD for hanuka. "Psychoplayback method uses playback theatre as the basic method that enables participants to enter a psychotherapeutic space." We obviously did not recreate scenes nor change them, as that would have been too close of an expirience. However it did allow to show them others can get a glimpse of what they are going through, and show other angles such as their family's. Not being able to understand them was a common theme. Psychiatrists included</comment>


New lighting technology won't flicker, shatter or burn out - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2012-12-goodbye-fluorescent-bulbs-technology-wont.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Being able to mimic the Sun's 'perfectly white light' is brilliant. Many people find CFL's really annoying.

Almost as cool though is the fact that it can easily be built in any shape desired, as it sounds like you run a change through a surface instead of having a specific light-generating element.

The example they give is of a 2x4 'panel' replacing CFL's in offices, but could imagine some fantastically cool applications of this in interior design.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Original submission here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4864241>

Submitting it as a new item as the BBC link seems to be dead.</comment>


A static file server in x86 Assembly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jeaye/toybox/tree/master/httpd-asm#a-static-file-server-in-x86-assembly- <comment><USER2> With that much syscalls assembly actually looks kind off clean.

 __; TODO: It 's possible to climb outside the web root using ../ __

But (not) doing stuff like that in asm is where I remember why we use high level languages like C.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note this is i386 assembly; these types of syscalls may not work on all amd64 Linux distros (won't work on WSL).

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the most readable assembly code I've ever seen.</comment>


Verizon says some of its media assets are so useless it won't try to sell them - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2019/1/23/18194865/verizon-layoffs-aol-yahoo-shutdown-flickr <comment><AUTHOR> The bit about not thinking Flickr was worth the effort of selling it to Smugmug -- at a profit -- says something about what to expect of their future moves.

<comment><USER2> Have there been numbers how much SmugMug paid in the end, and if Verizon really made a profit on that?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What movies that showcase leadership will you always recommend? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It's not a movie but I just saw this in March:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/jonny-kim-nasa-astronaut- nav...](https://www.businessinsider.com/jonny-kim-nasa-astronaut-navy-seal- medical-doctor-why-successful-2020-3)

</comment><comment><USER3> There are many military movies. Band of Brothers (technically a mini series). Has examples of good and poor leadership as well as slightly different styles.

There are many sports movies too. The movie Greater shows how one can become a leader by inspiring their peers and persevering.

I can't think of that many business movies. There have been a couple movies about Steve Job. He was successful, but I'm not sure I'd call him a good leader.

</comment><comment><USER4> Star Trek TNG, especially scenes with Data in command.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Bridge on the River Kwai

</comment><comment><USER6> APOLLO 13

NASA Director: "This could be the worst disaster NASA's ever experienced."

Gene Kranz: "With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour." \---

Gene Kranz: "I don't care about what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do."

THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965)

Frank Towns: We got an injured man in there. The doctor says he can't be moved. You're suggesting we tack him onto this thing...and bounce him around...

Dorfmann: With the material and personnel available ...this project would require at least 12 days. Dr. Renaud, how long did you say Mr. Scarnati might be expected to live? Six days?

Dr. Renaud: Perhaps less.

Dorfmann: [looking at Towns] See? The problem does not even arise. \---

Frank Towns: The little men with the slide rules and computers are going to inherit the earth.

THE CORE

Col. Robert Iverson: Being a leader isn't about ability. It's about responsibility.

Maj. Rebecca Childs: Got it, sir.

Col. Robert Iverson: No you don't, Beck. I mean, you're not just responsible for the good ones. You've got to be responsible for the bad ones. You've got to be ready to make the shitty call.

Maj. Rebecca Childs: What makes you think I'm not?

Col. Robert Iverson: Because you're so damn good. You haven't hit anything you couldn't beat. I mean, hell, you were the one who figured out how to save the space shuttle. You made me, you made the rest of NASA just look like an ass. It's just you're used to winning... and you're not really a leader until you've lost.---

THE SEVEN SAMURAI

Kambei Shimada: As a matter of fact, I'm preparing for a tough war. It will bring us neither money nor fame. Want to join? \---

Kambei Shimada: Go to the north. The decisive battle will be fought there.

Gorobei Katayama: Why didn't you build a fence there?

Kambei Shimada: A good fort needs a gap. The enemy must be lured in. So we can attack them. If we only defend, we lose the war.

GALAXY QUEST (yes,GALAXY QUEST)

Tommy Webber: Whoo!

Guy Fleegman: We're getting hammered, Jason! Return fire?

Jason Nesmith: No! Divert all energy to the armor!

Sarris: How adorable. The actors are going to play war with me.

Gwen DeMarco: Sarris' ship accelerating toward us at Mark 2.

Jason Nesmith: Accelerate to Mark 4! \---

Sarris: Let me remind you, sonny: I am a general. If you are counting on me to blink, then you are making a deadly mistake.

Jason Nesmith: Well, let me tell you something, Sarris! It doesn't take a great actor to recognize a bad one. You're sweating!

Gwen DeMarco: Armor almost gone, Jason!

Sarris: You fool! You fail to realize that with your armor gone, my ship will tear through yours like tissue paper!

Jason Nesmith: And what you fail to realize is my ship is dragging mines!

Sarris: OH, NO! TURN! TURN!</comment>


As Child Covid Cases Rise, Doctors Watch for Potential Long-Term Effects - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-child-covid-cases-rise-doctors-watch-for-potential-long-term-effects-11598289636 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/XVJSq](https://archive.vn/XVJSq)</comment>


Japan's "Suicide Forest" - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2127414/The-suicide-forest-Japan-Mystery-Mount-Fuji-beauty-spot-100-bodies-year.html

<comment><USER2> It's actually a very beautiful forest aside from its more popular claim to fame. Every year there is a volunteer expedition to remove any human remains so that they may be buried and unknowing hikers don't find themselves tripping into a massive grave after their descent from Fujisan.

Also, the attributing any of this to the internet is a bit of a stretch as "loneliness" is hardly the only factor. The number of suicides has grown significantly over the past 30 years but then so has the population and stress of doing well in school, work, etc. "Prime time" in Jukai is at the end of the fiscal year (when people get laid off) and the end of the third trimester in Japanese schools (when people find out they've failed such and such an exam, class, or whatever).</comment>


NASA Does Not Detect "Largest Asteroid to Pass This Close to Earth in a Century" - <AUTHOR> https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news203.html <comment><USER2> How close? 65,000 km. For reference, GEO is 35,000 km, Earth diameter is 12,700 km.

<comment><USER3> And the Moon is 360,000 - 400,000 km away.</comment></comment>


Time, People and Money: Exactly Why 'Hardware Is Hard' - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@senic/time-people-and-money-exactly-why-hardware-is-hard-48d0abf668f0

<comment><USER2> I helped fund this project on IndieGoGo, originally set for delivery of June 2015. I was super confused when they went to Kickstarter after already raising one crowdfunding round. Then I realized - they just used IndieGoGo to fund their prototyping phase. I have yet to receive my Flow/Nuimo/whatever it is they call it, or even an expected ship date.

It seems a little duplicitous to me that they presented this concept as largely complete at the start of the IndieGoGo campaign and then turned around and started crowdfunding again. I know, they're saying "we're making the product better! It will ship so much cooler!" So what? You said it was plenty fucking cool up front. I thought it was plenty fucking cool up front! But I'm really frustrated as a customer - I felt a little bait-and-switched.

On top of that, it kind of bugs me that Senic seems to be focusing a bunch of their energy on writing a ton of self-congratulatory blog posts instead of getting product out the door. Sure, they went through this really hard, grueling design and manufacturing process to get to where they are. So what? They haven't moved the dial on their total users at all in doing so.

/rant. Mostly frustrated that I haven't gotten my Flow/Nuimo/whatever it's called yet.

<comment><USER3> Well the impression i have is that Indiegogo only got traction because Kickstarter stopped accepting projects that didn't have working prototypes to demo.

<comment><USER2> I was always wondering what the difference between the two was. Now I feel like an idiot for not knowing this up front. Oh well, $100 I may or may not ever see again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked for a hardware startup for 2 years. In my experience, part of the reason "Hardware is hard" is because it's not something that a lot of people in the tech space have spent their lives tinkering with in the way that they have with computers. Version 0 of software just runs on your computer than you already have. Version 0 of hardware (beyond 3d printed prototypes) isn't fundamentally impossible, but most of the startup people I know aren't the sort who know how to cast aluminum in their backyard, for example.

We shot ourselves in the foot by paying for tooling for castings before we'd validated it beyond 3d prints. It ended up having minor flaws that we couldn't fix because it required adding material to the tooling, which isn't something you can do easily. If we'd had somebody on the team who was the sort of guy blowing shit up, setting stuff on fire, and making aluminum ingots in a homemade forge when they were 16, I'm confident we wouldn't have screwed up in such a basic way.

<comment><USER5> >>>not something that a lot of people in the tech space have spent their lives tinkering with in the way that they have with computers.

Its one of those 'truths' that are so true that people just don't want to deal with it: you can upgrade your software within seconds, but it takes - at least - a few minutes (if you're lucky) to upgrade your hardware.

I've also worked for hardware companies, over the years. Hardware is hard because you're pushing atoms around. Not electrons. The difference between the particles is reflected in the difference between the kinds of engineers: you can express, in words, mere electrons - in seconds. But it takes a lot longer to make that same expression in hardware.

>>>We shot ourselves in the foot by paying for tooling for castings before we'd validated it beyond 3d prints.

We need better tools, and this is pretty clear to the hardware engineers who are trying to bring the design and production of hardware products to the same level of software.

Imagine if, one day, we can build new hardware near-as-rapidly-as new software. In many ways (e.g. OpenSCAD: [http://openscad.org](http://openscad.org)) we could compile hardware components as simply as we can software.

When the gap is closed, we will have a new class of society: simply, wizards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hardware is hard because it's slow and expensive to iterate. Furthermore, it's hard/expensive/impossible to update products that are in the field.

</comment><comment><USER7> Going to crowdfunding before contacting factories and thinking about design for manufacturability seems dangerous to me if you haven't done hardware products before. Real products are rather different than arduino / raspberry pi prototypes.</comment>


Iraq War Recollections: Stories From Those Within - <AUTHOR> http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20111219-iraq-war-recollections

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a pretty amazing series of recollections about the war. Thought it might benefit us all to see the point of view of those in the middle.</comment>


Pornhub "Hawaii on Alert" traffic stats - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Pornhub/status/953668567714680833/photo/1 <comment><USER2> I bet the link is SFW, but for people on corporate networks like myself: the shortened link from the tweet redirects to pornhub.com which may, or may not, be on your companies whitelist...

On the plus side, if anyone from IT Net asks about my websurfing history, I was just reading it for the 'insightful analytics' ;)

<comment><USER3> For people that don't want to dare their companies filter:

Traffic graph: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTwcgMZXUAAn1uX.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DTwcgMZXUAAn1uX.jpg)

The blog post reads as follows:

On Saturday January 13, residents all across Hawaii received a text message at 8:07am stating that a ballistic missile was on it's way to their island and advised they should take shelter immediately. With international tensions currently at a high, it's no surprise that the warning was taken very, very seriously. We can't begin to imagine what would go through someone's mind after reading that message, but based purely on the traffic numbers, it's NOT to be watching porn.

Based on real-time, per-minute pageviews, and compared to levels on the previous two Saturdays, our statisticians found a precipitous drop in traffic at 8:07am immediately after the warning was sent out. By 8:23am, traffic was a massive -77% below that of a typical Saturday. As residents were notified around 8:45 that the initial warning was sent in error, traffic began to return to normal and Hawaiians collectively breathed a sigh of relief. Those seeking further relief, headed back to Pornhub where pageviews surged +48% above typical levels at 9:01am.

<comment><USER4> > We can't begin to imagine what would go through someone's mind after reading > that message,

Sure we can, it's simple. It's what would go through your or my mind if we received it.

My first thought would be "amusing-someone's hacked the warning system, better check online... yeah, it's bullshit".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an interesting graph, but I wonder if it's specific for the adult vertical. I could imagine traffic for YouTube showing the same pattern. Entertainment-related site use may just have gone up and down along this curve (with news-related sites maybe showing the reverse pattern)? Does anyone know other sources of traffic stats (arent there public stats of big internet hubs somewhere?)

<comment><USER6> Yes. Could we get this graph from HN please?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1 in 5 people didn't give a damn about the missile alert and kept watching.

<comment><USER8> It's also quite amusing to see the number of people making up for lost time afterwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A graph with absolute scale might have been more interesting to see how many people kept watching after the warning!

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like porn is being used to de stress

</comment><comment><USER11> Do they have 10% traffic fluctuations every minute? That seems quite a lot...

<comment><USER12> What are you comparing to? People rarely present per-minute graphs without smoothing since they're very noisy. I usually see hourly/daily ones, even internally.

The minute ones for web traffic easily jump +/\- 5% in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Scrambling for a safety while having a hard on. Ouch.</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone ever tried to post at the top? - <AUTHOR> i notice a lot of comments not at the top of hacker news, and was wondering why people just don't post to the top? <comment><USER2> How does one "post to the top?"</comment>


Goto and the folly of dogma - <AUTHOR> https://manybutfinite.com/post/goto-and-the-folly-of-dogma/ <comment><USER2> What good references on programming style assert this dogma?

Because it looks like a caricature of the topic, somewhat like how some Agile people incorrectly argue about how first there was waterfall and then came the Agile manifesto.

Just because a lot of people learned crap habits fourth-hand, doesn't make it a dogma. Dogma - real dogma - must be come from authority.

McConnell's "Code Complete", from 1993, has a checklist of "Unusual control structures" on p366 of my copy. This is much closer to what the real dogma of goto looks like:

[] Are gotos used only as a last resource, and then only to make code more readable and maintainable?

[] If a goto is used for the sake of efficiency, has the gain in efficiency been measured and documented?

[] Are gotos limited to one label per routine?

[] Do all gotos go forward, not backward?

[] Are all goto labels used?

Most of the CPython examples fit these criteria. I don't have experience with the other projects. My own use of goto also fits this form.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another example of this idiocy is the lack of goto in WebAssembly</comment>


How and why did humans domesticate animals? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/how-domestication-changes-species-including-the-human <comment><USER2> On this topic I strongly advise to watch this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOmjnioNulo)

Also all the others videos are worth watching.

</comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone read Sapiens? The book argues that the farming revolution around 10000 years ago was our biggest misstep in history. We casted off our symbiosis with nature and sprinted towards greed and alienation and have domesticated ourselves. I thought the idea that we have been enslaved by wheat was interesting since I never thought of it that way.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love how the article elides that humans have also been domesticated by nobles without quite saying so.

<comment><USER5> Did you mean alludes? I looked up elides because it was a word I didn't know, but the definition does not seem to match the context.

<comment><USER4> I meant elide :)

The article skips over this conclusion while getting rather close. Nobody has really looked at this hypothesis in any depth because of the political consequences of finding it is true.

<comment><USER5> I'll start researching it if I see the proletariat developing floppy ears and other cute features :)

<comment><USER4> It is not just the proles that get domesticated, it is the nobles too. Since in even the most ridged societies there is movement across classes, if the peasants become domesticated then the same genes will eventually end up in the nobles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sometimes wonder why humans would find animals "cute".

Is it mere coincidence?

Or is there some (evolutionary) reason for it?

<comment><USER7> I think they have traits that set off the cuteness triggers we have for (human) babies - big eyes (relative to head), big head (relative to body), etc.

<comment><USER8> > cuteness triggers we have for (human) babies - big eyes (relative to head), > big head (relative to body)

Known as "the baby schema". Is adaptive in the evolutionary sense - cute baby will be more attractive to adults, hence better cared for, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd conjecture the answers are "long ago" and "because animals are awesome companions".

<comment><USER10> "Long ago"? Did the title read "when" instead of "how" at first?

> because animals are awesome companions

Now this is of course obvious to everyone here other than baby infants but domestic animals are "awesome companions" for many reasons:

\- they're _tasty food_ (and I might add _fully_ nourishing for those whose ancestors thrived off mammoths for many ice-age millenia),

\- or _capable and strong beasts of burden_ ,

\- or _providers of wool, hides, leather, candle wax and countless other useful product pre-cursors_ ,

\- or _skillful hunting /tracking companions grateful to share the prey in a co-op fashion_,

\- or _defenders of the realm against predators vermin and pests_ ,

\- or _powerfully speedy transportation engines running on cellulose_..

\- later on, the _soil fertilization_ didn't hurt either I reckon

I'm sure I'm even still missing aspects.

<comment><USER11> >I'm sure I'm even still missing aspects.

Perhaps this comes under 'defenders of the realm', but: dogs bark at strangers thereby acting as an alarm system.

I wonder if dogs domesticated _themselves_ , at least to begin with. By following a human camp around they would be more likely to breed with other human-liking and human-tolerated dogs.

<comment><USER10> +1 the alarm system!

It occurs to me that domestic animals are (certainly in a moderately-warmish climate) all that's required for a "fine", "humane", "quiet pleasant" human civilization. Not a highly industrialized one perhaps, or a highly complex hierarchy of state and formal roles, but still, if & as long as humans could use enough of their gray matter to reign in their own breeding in sync with pasture-land availability and domestic-animal breeding.. seems even for metal- working and old-school defence (perhaps useless in the nuclear age) is quite doable without industry or slavery indeed. Something the doomsday preppers would be wise to keep in mind and focus on, rather than memorizing what small proportion of calorically meagre, highly seasonal, local herbs/mushrooms/nuts/berries aren't immediately deadly / long-term damaging, or wasting valuable pasture space trying to sprout a some silly freedom fries ;) one cow feeds a man for 12 months, or absent freezers, 12 men for a month, with full nutrition and copious kcals, nothing else will ever beat that. Smaller animals are a decent hedge and for variety.</comment></comment></comment></comment>