Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports - <AUTHOR> https://stdio.sangwhan.com/wtf-japan-covid-19-report/ <comment><USER2> The team behind [https://covid19japan.com](https://covid19japan.com) fights with this nonsense every day. We're open ears to improvements, and are playing with ways to possibly automate bits.

Our GitHub: [https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/](https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/)

<comment><USER3> This is fantastic, terrific way to visualize this information. It's interesting that Hokkaido is red for infections but the growth rate is really slow. Are the distant prefectures less likely to follow guidelines from Tokyo and reporting more honestly?

<comment><USER4> >It's interesting that Hokkaido is red for infections but the growth rate is really slow.

Hokkaido is about the size of South Carolina and approximate population of 6 million people. ~2.5M of which live in Sapporo. Most of the island is more rural with many tourist destinations. It's a popular destination for Chinese tourists in winter.

>Are the distant prefectures less likely to follow guidelines from Tokyo

Tokyo was seen as mostly following Hokkaido governor's lead early on. Hokkaido was the first to close schools, etc.

>and reporting more honestly?

Could HN dwellers stop implying Japan is handling this dishonestly? That is extremely rude coming from the nation whose CDC was angry to accept 14 infected citizens from the only ally nation that would accept their US Diamond Princess cruise ship and provide care for passengers.

<comment><USER2> > Could HN dwellers stop implying Japan is handling this dishonestly?

They are. The incredible rate of test refusal here is keeping the numbers very low.

<comment><USER4> Really? What is the rate of test refusal Shane Reustle?

<comment><USER5> Please do not cross into personal attack.

<comment><USER4> Asking for the "incredible" rate of test refusal is not a personal attack. Calling Japanese stupid is not okay, but you don't warn the person who does it. You warn the person who takes the bait. You then retaliate by warning me only after I call you out on it.

Shouting fire in a crowded theater is not free speech. What you are doing here is not protected.

<comment><USER5> Nobody called the Japanese stupid. You chose to interpret it that way. Actually, I understand how it could feel that way, and I empathize. But take a look again: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22730110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22730110). It didn't say that. What it did do was repeat an internet cliché [1] in a lazy way. That made it an unsubstantive comment, and an unsubstantive comment on an inflammatory topic is basically always flamebait (as I pointed out to another user earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739350](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739350)).

You've unfortunately been posting to HN quite a bit in the flamewar style. Would you please stop doing that? I realize that these topics are sensitive and hit sore spots all too easily. That's one reason the site guidelines include: " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._" It isn't easy, but it's necessary that we all do it, because otherwise we just end up fighting with each other. Fighting each other feels urgent, but is not interesting, and the purpose of HN is to be an intellectually interesting place on the internet, if possible. This requires that we sort of resist the worst interpretations of each other's words, because they're so often vulnerable to misunderstanding.

By the way, in case you're not familiar with so-called Hanlon's Razor [1], it's not primarily about stupidity. It's really a way of saying that most human outcomes are not the result of malice. So in a way, that post was a (weak and unclear) defense of the Japanese institutions and reports that were being discussed above—a way of arguing that they weren't conscious bad action. The word 'stupidity' appears in that proverb partly out of ironic humor which is typical of the internet subculture that produced it, since it's ironic to defend someone against the charge of malice by making the charge of stupidity instead. It's not intended as the deep insult that the word 'stupidity' would imply in many cultural contexts. If you already know this, I apologize.

There is an additional level also. The word 'stupidity' in that proverb would not normally be a national or racial slur. It usually refers to the 'stupidity' of large institutions, which tend to produce inefficient or inadequate results even when the individuals who make up the institution are doing their best—or to the 'stupidity' of bureaucratic functionaries, who hacker-type people tend to feel superior to and smarter than. If you look at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22556236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22556236), you'll see exactly the same argument applied to Spain's Covid-19 response. If anyone is being criticized as stupid in those comments, it's not peoples like the Spanish or the Japanese, it's mid-level government officials everywhere. Whether that's fair or not, we can leave as a separate question.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Knowing Japan, I bet some poor freshly graduated but elite sod in the health ministry was, out of the blue, told by his boss "here's a bunch of reports from different prefectures. Make a report out of them." So he goes off and try to make sense of the data, which is why you see those magic and unexplained equations in the report.

The kicker is the most complex computer thing he ever did in his life was that Word presentation in university. HTML? Isn't that something you write by hand?

<comment><USER7> My mom is responsible for updating all of Los Angeles' numbers. It's literally "someone sent an email with updated new numbers, put them on the government website/in the database". There's no "making sense of the data" phase, just copy, paste, and hope whoever delivered those numbers did it correctly. She described the situation "all hands on deck, extra shifts, and losing staff to sickness daily"; the last thing they care about is some number on a screen.

<comment><USER8> There's nothing wrong with that - in a peculiar situation, wherein there is no 'standard web site' something ad-hoc is perfectly reasonable.

In the 'old days,' it would be a public number board or chalkboard, but it would be accurate. This is what a lot of ladies in the military or in operational centers would have done.

And definitely nothing wrong with hand-tweaked HTML. I wish sites were basic enough and HTML clear enough that it could be more pervasive.

You can dig up ledgers from 'old-timey' 100-year-old from little stores in the middle of nowhere that were handwritten and _perfect_. Perfect handwriting, perfectly updated, perfect math (i.e. adds up after corrections).

What matters is that the process is legit, that people are responsible for how the numbers are propagated, and they do it professionally.

It's almost weird to think that people expect that there is a 'robust and specific electronic process' for everything.

The level of organizational planning in WW2 was pretty shocking: all docs, notes, cue-cards, human process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While things like masks and social distancing are more likely to be already in place in Japanese culture, there definitely seems to be a bit of a surprise regarding actual numbers vs. means put in place to prevent the spread.

The reports seem to reflect the opacity of communication of Japan's situation about the Covid-19. It's good that the author put out actionable suggestions at the end, but I'm wondering if the opacity is a result of internal issues or intended opacity. Makes me glad to see Canada's stats[1] being so clear in comparison.

[1] [https://www.canada.ca/en/public- health/services/diseases/201...](https://www.canada.ca/en/public- health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection.html)

<comment><USER10> I am extremely suspicious that Japan's numbers look good because they have not been testing enough.

Given that honesty in testing consistently precedes the eventual slowdown in deaths by several weeks, I strongly suspect that Japan is maliciously incompetent and a lot of dead Japanese will be the result.

<comment><USER11> " I strongly suspect that Japan is maliciously incompetent and a lot of dead Japanese will be the result."

When? Japan has had this coronavirus a lot longer than most places. If we expected the transmission rate to explode, we would have expected it to happen already, and we would be seeing the consequences.

<comment><USER12> It looks Tokyo is starting to have an out break

[https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-tokyo- olymp...](https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-tokyo-olympics- coronavirus-20200330-fwlj7xw7rfb6jfkjh5iafplzsq-story.html)

<comment><USER10> The most interesting point in that article is that Japanese citizens and politicians are suspicious of the timing. All numbers looked good until the Olympics were called off. Then Japan started reporting climbing cases and talking about emergency.

I certainly hope that the politicians in Parliament who asked questions got satisfactory answers. I doubt that they did, but there should be time to ask those same questions later when there is a clearer picture.

I just hope it isn't as bad as I fear it will be.

<comment><USER13> > All numbers looked good until the Olympics were called off. Then Japan > started reporting climbing cases and talking about emergency.

Typical causation versus correlation problem. Exponentially increasing pandemic outside Japan can also be the cause for everything: the olympics cancellation, the increasing govt concern and testing, and the sudden surge of cases within Japan from travelers.

No conspiracies needed.

<comment><USER10> First of all, lack of testing and government denials that there is a problem here been a hallmark of the response worldwide. It is hardly a conspiracy theory to say that it happened in Japan as well.

Secondly for a couple of weeks now I've been running across articles of the form, "Japan should have had a problem by now, why are they an exception?" Which is more likely? That they were an exception until now, or that the Olympics provided extra motivation to stonewall?

It is clearly not proof. But extra motivation to fail to try to detect their own problem combined with reason to doubt their version of reality (in the same way that happened over and over again elsewhere) makes my estimate of the conditional probability very high that their government was simply a bit more deliberately blind than elsewhere.

And, as with everywhere else, the cost will be dead citizens. Only the further you let the problem go and the older your population, the worse it is. Japan has the highest concentration of truly old in the world. And may have let it go longer than anywhere else. The result? The final body toll won't be pretty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At the end of the day, hiding exponential growth of this is impossible.

That's what really bugs me about those who love to point fingers at how this or that country is counting things wrong (often revealing their biases in the process).

Maybe every country has a random constant factor between actual cases and reported cases. But it doesn't matter - if it goes exponential, we'll know.

<comment><USER15> Yes, obviously once it goes exponential, exponentials are hard to hide. The point is to stop it _before_ it goes exponential. That's why people were discussing, say, Iran or NYC testing problems and lack of social distancing, rather than saying "well, at the end of the day, hiding exponential growth is impossible, so who cares"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My hypothesis is that the "with no symptoms" and "with symptoms" items actually do include deaths.

> Remember to not include death, because this is a quasi-hierarchy. The table > tempts you to, but it's excluded. (The quasi-nature is because it is under > the PCR tested positive umbrella on level 2.) So what about integrating > level 3?

> That's simple. You don't. Because no matter how hard you try, the numbers > won't add up. (e.g. Give it a try - you'll end up with 129 != 131 and 1147 > != 1191. We'll need one of these numbers later.) Level 4 adds up though, so > the plot thickens.

Note, however, that (131 - 129) + (1191 - 1147) = 46, i.e. the number of deaths.

So if you adjust the 131 and 1191 figures to match their subdivision, everything would sum up correctly, including the top level (pcr_tested_positive), which _would_ then include deaths.

This would imply that 2 people without symptoms died, and 44 people with symptoms did.

Taking a guess, "deaths" used to be two separate columns: one under "with no symptoms" (2 deaths), and one under "with symptoms" (44 deaths). It was then decided that "deaths" should be its own top-level item, and someone decided that this was the best way to achieve that goal.

I can't find a way to make sense of the daily increases though, so this might be entirely wrong.

</comment><comment><USER17> Has anyone applied Benford's law to the raw data? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law)

<comment><USER18> I think this could make an interesting post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks mostly right but he is wrong about the Diamond Princess. Those people all went off home, which is not Japan. Mostly western states. So they don't count to the Japanese numbers, only did in the very beginning.

The rest looks indeed cooked, on purpose. Pasting images instead of tables is the usual trick.

<comment><USER20> He is also wrong about there having been no follow-up. Here it is, though only about a smaller fraction of the passengers.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551331](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551331)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this is a case of someone simply scanning various reports into the website--doing it the easiest way possible, not the right way.

<comment><USER22> Seriously, why all the skepticism regarding this? I understand it but it's strange to me. Hanlon's razor seems like an easier explanation, why does there need to be a nefarious plot under every bed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _The reason why I used a two day old report on March 29 is simple, there was no full report yesterday nor today. I 'm guessing the Tokyo lockdown means that nobody can get to work, and PCs are too expensive to buy for home use so the people at the Ministry of Health can enjoy a nice weekend with hoarded pasta._

How's corporate Japan as a whole doing with remote work?

</comment><comment><USER24> The official format is terrible but you can get CSV data from here [https://github.com/kaz- ogiwara/covid19/blob/master/README.en...](https://github.com/kaz- ogiwara/covid19/blob/master/README.en.md).

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been trying to access this website for the last 2 days, it is either down or overwhelmed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I know, data science (was it called that?)...didn't exist until tableau

</comment><comment><USER26> Popular opinion in the US regarding the integrity of various countries' coronavirus reporting is hilarious. Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Meanwhile, nobody is batting an eye at Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers.

Hey guys, maybe China was just having literally the same organizational problems the US is having now leading to underreporting of numbers, back in Jan-Feb when every commenter on reddit and HN were saying China was covering it up.

Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? Anyone who has the slightest awareness of how Japan works knows that this is par for the course. And no, it's not just the government brainwashing the people. The people are complacent in this and defend their government by rejecting criticism and continuing to vote them in office.

<comment><USER27> > Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers > are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence.

Well, this jibes with reality.

I could care less about actual case counts - few countries are close to having the capacity to test everyone so who cares.

What is a huge problem with China is the death statistics. Looking at Lombardy with 6k+ deaths with the outbreak not yet peaked, am I really supposed to believe that only 2.5k died in Wuhan (similar population)? The CFR outside Hubei is ridiculously low - only 1 death out of 1200 cases in Zhejiang (!)?

During China's outbreak, there were additionally lots of accusations of case data being completely made up (insufficient variance in daily numbers) and looking at basically every other country's quite noisy reports today, that was almost certainly true.

The implications are pretty vast: China's reporting actually made the disease seem less urgent than it really was. Perhaps tens of thousands of lives would have been saved had they been more transparent.

<comment><USER28> >"Well, this jives with reality."

You want "jibes" here. Jive means to talk nonsense:

[https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/jibe- jive.asp](https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/jibe-jive.asp)

<comment><USER29> Plus, "couldn't care less", though I'm fighting a losing fight.

<comment><USER30> Maybe they _could_ care less? Yes, it's a losing fight.

Of course, it's probably more literally true that they could care less, after all, they care enough to post about it on the internet. They probably don't do that for... um... articles about the 1984 Honda Accord after all?

Oh English.

<comment><USER29> Think of "I could go out less", "I could eat less", "I could spend less", etc. All these phrases clearly imply that you're overdoing it now and need to stop. "I could care less", as used, means the opposite, that they don't care almost at all.

Your explanation is a retcon.

<comment><USER30> ... that was the joke. But I agree jokes are better when they're explained (not kidding).

Of course, if enough people start saying "I could care less" I guess they get to decide what it means. Living languages are literally awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

<comment><USER32> Oh man, china would like to have a word with you about that statement.

<comment><USER5> No nationalistic flamebait on HN, please.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER4> It's okay to call Japanese stupid.

It's not okay to call Chinese stupid.

??

<comment><USER5> Obviously it's not "okay to call Japanese stupid".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> now days hacker news is often filled non-tech related discussion, specially anything relate to China or politics; come on guys, this is _Hacker_ news, not political news; if you are so passion about politics, go to some forum dedicate for those things;

<comment><USER5> This isn't so different from how HN has always been. Many topics have political overlap. That's inevitably the case on a site that's dedicated to intellectual curiosity ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)).

This is a challenge for moderation, but the approach we take has been stable for a long time. I've written about it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21607844), and there's lots more explanation at [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20political%20overlap&sort=byDate&type=comment) for anyone who wants it.

Concerns about HN getting more/too political go back almost as far as the site itself: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014869). There's no systemic breach, just topical fluctuation.

How we handle major ongoing stories (like this crisis) is mostly by downweighting routine follow-ups, so that just the stories with significant new information get primary coverage: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20major%20ongoing%20significant%20new&sort=byDate&type=comment). That's the intention, at least.

Of course there are always exceptions for submissions that have intellectually curious angles, like the detective aspect in the OP here.</comment></comment>


Show HN: See the number of DOM elements on a web page - <AUTHOR> http://domtree.breckyunits.com/?v=2

<comment><USER2> Nice! Surprised how much I like seeing a simple tree view for HTML elements. I can imagine using this on front-end dev job applicants, replacing my current view source + build quick mental model of how they approach structure. Don't see using it for evaluating performance, as it doesn't indicate the expensive paints etc (and nor should it) - problematic page weight would reveal itself in more direct diagnostics (pagespeed insight, etc). A view like this might be interesting in a larger tool, but no need to expand this into one.

It would be nice if #id values were printed, as their prevalence and values can also tell you a lot about how a page is constructed. Printing classes would get excessive quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat idea. Just added #ids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting to see the high-level structure of the DOM tree too. Functionally similar sites like Hacker News and Reddit has drastically different structures (HN at 328 elements while reddit's at a crazy 1375!)

One question though (I may be overlooking something obvious here...) but how do I pan and zoom?

<comment><AUTHOR> > how do I pan and zoom?

Oh, good idea! I'll add that to the todo list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It wasn't clear to me at first but the URL at the top is editable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Other people also said this. Just made the input focus on page load. Does that help?

<comment><USER5> Didn't help me. It needs to visually stand out a bit. Here's a suggestion: <http://www.webdesigncompany.net/files/hn/snap.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thnx. How about this: <http://domtree.breckyunits.com/>

<comment><USER5> Nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this execute domready as a headless browser or is this just parsing the markup directly into a DOM tree?

I'm sure there will be a few sites that this won't be reflected accurately just because a lot of the content might not be there until loading asynchronously with Javascript unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ok, so what's the point? I'm not trying to be a naysayer. I'm honestly asking.

Is this trying to get us to look at different DOM structures to make us aware of the differences? Are there some things that are clearly good/bad that we should be aware of? Is this just to raise awareness of . . . something? I have no idea.

This seems like a solution in search of a problem. I strongly suspect that there is some hidden intent that I just don't grok. Because I'm an optimist.

(I realized after posting that I was snarky. I'm not removing the snark 'cause I should own up to it but this is an admission that I was probably a jerk. Sorry.)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're exactly right. There's not much of a point.

I'm working on a new HTML template language and wanted to "see" what existing web pages look like to better inform our design. It's been very helpful for that.

Then I wanted to see if web pages have gotten more complicated over the years, so I added the Wayback feature. In terms of # of DOM elements and levels, it appears the answer is no, which surprised me.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting, even if it doesn't clearly solve a common problem. Would be curious to hear if people find it useful for other reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Doh, I think HN broke breck's server aka "The HN effect" ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Doh! Right before I went to bed I checked top and saw load at 40%. Should have seen that coming. Fixed and added Pingdom alert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This could be a useful tool, are you planning to add zoom and pan ability, some of the elements are rendered off the page and I can't scroll down.

Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> Just added pan. Looking into zoom next.

<comment><USER9> Thanks! Looks really good!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow.. what a mess hahaha <http://rakuten.co.jp> .. This is fun.</comment>


Is our world a simulation? Why some scientists say it's more likely than not - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/simulated-world-elon-musk-the-matrix <comment><AUTHOR> The Microverse Battery in Rick and Morty is a fun example of the idea.</comment>


CrossFit's lucrative and simple business plan - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/461063/crossfits-extremely-lucrative-business-plan-is-also-deceptively-simple/ <comment><USER2> Competetive olympic weightlifter here. Crossfit still gets a lot of hate, as comments below show. That's undeserved. They create a lot of attention for barbell training where there previously was none. That's fantastic. More places for me to train, suddenly people understand you why its fun and there's a whole market opening up of quality and affordable gear (iron too) that previously wasn't even an option. There's crossfit boxes organizing WL competitions with actual WL rules because they think its cooler. There's even crossfit boxes with strongman and powerlifting equipment. Crossfit pulled strength training out of its niche and is starting to overule the rediculous, overcommercial rotten fitness industry as it is now. It's a new fitness concept _with actual results_.

The main problem, as I see it, is that it's near trivial to get a Coach Level 1 certificate (my mom could do it). This results in a lot of bad coaching, resulting in bad form, resulting in unneeded injuries. You could argue that an easy certificate makes it easier to open up a box. Interesting trade off.

There are plenty of crossfit boxes, although I do not know if this is a majority, that hire real weightlifting coaches.

I can't help but think that much of the hate crossfit gets is just some form of resentment. Barbell training used to be unique, now it's getting more popular, and people feel attacked on a personal level.

All that said, good coaching, especially with big weights, is very important. It's a shame not every crossfit box owner thinks that way. Some of the injuries are bad. [https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little- sec...](https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little- secret-97bcce70356d)

<comment><USER3> > They create a lot of attention for barbell training where there previously > was none.

This. As a powerlifter I used to hate everything about crossfit, but now I realize it's a great way to get people away from pseudo body building and into the rack / onto the platform. I think a lot of people find technical lifts like the squat or clean to be very intimidating, but crossfit helps people get over this fear in a group environment. Once this has been accomplished and someone gets comfortable, it's fairly easy to steer them towards olympic lifting or powerlifting.

> More places for me to train, suddenly people understand you why its fun

It's so nice to now be able to travel and not have to worry about being stuck in some crappy commercial gym where people yell at you for using chalk and making noise while deadlifting.

<comment><USER4> That is exactly what happened to me. I was an avid runner who joined a friend in Crossfit. Ended up loving squats and got into powerlifting. I now workout at an old 1000 year old powerlifting gym, but I never would be here without crossfit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As others have said, the best thing CrossFit has done is introduce people to the barbell, and more importantly, Mark Rippetoe. Rip was the barbell SME for CrossFit in the early years and while they parted ways, a lot of CrossFitters still find Rip when they want to get more serious about training strength.

He has literally written the textbook [1] on the 5 basic lifts giving a complete anotomical and mechanical breakdown of each that I think the HN crowd would appreciate, which at $10 for the kindle version is worth it at 10x the price. His website [2] and YouTube channel also provide a large amount of free resources for anyone interested in learning about barbell lifting.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006XJR5ZA](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006XJR5ZA)

[2] [http://startingstrength.com/](http://startingstrength.com/)

<comment><USER6> Rippetoe is all about gaining weight and putting on muscle. Probably not practical for most people. I'd also be hesitant to teach yourself both how to deadlift and squat - I hurt myself doing both after reading Rippetoe, despite the detailed instructions.

Also, according to Nick Curson (coach of UFC Champion Rafael Dos Anjos) on the Joe Rogan podcast, heavy slow weight lifting is counterproductive for most sports [1] [2]

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJmYFlvKloE&t=26m18s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJmYFlvKloE&t=26m18s)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJmYFlvKloE&t=43m23s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJmYFlvKloE&t=43m23s)

<comment><USER5> Rippetoe is all about being strong, because being strong is better than being weak. For the average dude starting to lift, that will likely involve gaining weight and adding muscle. This is, however, not the be all and end all of what he is talking about.

Please take a look at Gus, a woman in her 90s who has recently started to train at Rip's gym and has improved her quality of life such that she no longer requires her walker.

[http://youtu.be/3585w9FmOGs](http://youtu.be/3585w9FmOGs)

It's hard to hurt yourself if you truly read the book, because if you start with an empty bar and only add small amounts of weight using the proper form (as the book instructs) it's tough to hurt yourself.

If anyone needs some help with barbell form you can drop into the forums where coaches will gladly review a video for you, or if necessary find someone to help you in person.

And before I fall down the rabbit hole of repeating Rip's gospel word for word, what a coach says they do for an elite athlete has little bearing on the general population. Elite athelets are genetic freaks that could be trained in many ways and still achieve their results.

Lifting heavy is not going to slow you down or make you big, it's going to get you strong. Training for strength and practicing your sport of choice will just make you a stronger version of your previous self. If you train and eat like a power lifter you are not going to be able to maintain your 3:30 marathon time, but if you add in properly programmed strength training for the goals you are looking to achieve, it is petty hard to argue that being stronger is worse than being weaker all other things being equal.

<comment><USER7> > Rippetoe is all about being strong, because being strong is better than > being weak.

Then again, too much strength competes with balance and flexibility.

<comment><USER8> Citation needed here.

<comment><USER5> I don't get the down votes. If you have several hundred pounds on the bar, you are by definition in balance.

If you can move through the full range of motion of the movement you are flexible enough.

Being able to squat above your body weight is going to make you a more useful human being than putting your leg behind your head.

<comment><USER7> Hey, don't worry about down votes, it's only internet points.

I don't think strength is bad, but: you only have so many training hours and you might want to spend some of them on balance or flexibility instead. Further, it's possible to have such a volume of muscle that you cannot achieve certain positions (e.g. trying to touch your elbows together leaves an 8 inch gap). And it's also possible for your muscles to weigh so much that you can't move as gracefully because equilibrium is harder to maintain. That's all I meant. Ask any dancer, yogi, acrobat, gymnast, skier, martial artist, figure skater, etc. Any discipline where you need strength, balance, and flexibility in approximately equal measure, it's possible to overtrain or undertrain any one of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cross-fit and its boxes is doing a lot of damage to the reputation of traditional bar bell training by emphasizing weight and reps over form and technique.

Many people are getting insured and have long term damage because of poor form and techniques taught by Cross-fit. Even if this is done by box owners it is up to cross-fit to manage their brand and not certify coaches that aren't ready.

If you want to get in shape, spend the time an learn the proper techniques. There are no short cuts, it takes years and you need to listen to your body. Don't power through pain or it will catch up with you later.

<comment><USER10> > _the reputation of traditional bar bell training_

There _was_ no reputation. Almost nobody knew what weightlifting was.

<comment><USER11> Is this a serious common modern belief? Weightlifting was exceedingly popular in my youth, which by millenial scale was ancient history but in actual real terms was in living memory.

<comment><USER10> When I started in 2007 there were perhaps three dozen registered weightlifters in Western Australia (where I lived at the time).

There are now hundreds.

As a sport it's undergoing a second renaissance in the anglosphere. There's no other obvious cause apart from millions of crossfitters taking it up.

<comment><USER12> The account name "oldmanjay" suggests to me that the "exceedingly popular in my youth" refers to the first "renaissance in the anglosphere".

That is, [http://www.awf.com.au/history/HallOfFame.aspx](http://www.awf.com.au/history/HallOfFame.aspx) says that the 1970s were ""the golden years" of the sport" in Australia, and there are many here who were youths in the 1970s.

So when you write "Almost nobody knew what weightlifting was", what population were you considering? If it's predominately those in their 20s ("millenial scale") then you should consider oldmanjay's comment as suggesting there's a bias error in your 'almost nobody.'

While it's not all that indicative, Google ngrams gives an interesting comparison between the use of 'weighlifting' in "British English" at [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=weightlifting&...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=weightlifting&year_start=1920&year_end=2000&corpus=18&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cweightlifting%3B%2Cc0) vs "American English" at [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=weightlifting&...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=weightlifting&year_start=1920&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cweightlifting%3B%2Cc0) .

There's a clear drop in British English during the 1980s, which is what I would expect from your first/second renaissance description, but it doesn't exist in the US English chart. So another possibility is that oldmanjay comes from the US.

Also, in attempting to verify your statement concerning the "perhaps three dozen registered weightlifters in WA" I found the 2007 AWF report at [http://www.awf.com.au/governance/docs/Annual%20Report%202007...](http://www.awf.com.au/governance/docs/Annual%20Report%202007%20with%20Finance%20Report.pdf) .

Under "Number of Lifters in the Top 10 Male Rankings by State" are 58 from Western Australia, and under "Number of Lifters in the Top 10 Female Rankings by State" are 39 from Western Australia. This sounds like there were easily more than three dozen registered weightlifters in WA. I didn't carefully check to see if there were duplicate names, but a spot examination shows few overlaps. And in any case, these are only the top 10 winners.

How do you know there were "perhaps three dozen registered weightlifters in Western Australia" when the limited evidence I can find suggests there were more than that?

<comment><USER10> > _there are many here who were youths in the 1970s._

The 70s are definitely before my time.

Going on what I read from those who were adults in the 70s, it seems like the golden era for the anglosphere was the 50s and 60s. By the 1970s the Russians dominated the sport.

> _This sounds like there were easily more than three dozen registered > weightlifters in WA._

There's a capitation table. 77 registered lifters (~six dozen, I was off by 2x) in the whole of WA in 2007. In 2008 it fell to 68. I can't find more recent numbers, they seem to have stopped publishing the capitation table.

For what it's worth, I competed for five years, during which Crossfit exploded in popularity. They have been a massive shot in the arm for strength sports. It used to be that I'd say I was a weightlifter and people would ask me for tips on bicep curls. Now I have a chance that someone will ask me about my competition total.

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the explanation of the PDF. I've never heard of the term 'capitation table'.

That still leaves the possibility that there's a difference between US/Commonwealth practices, that is, that you use 'anglosphere' where perhaps 'Commonwealth' is a more appropriate term?

For another US data point, the gym I went to in ~2005 had a stronger emphasis on weight lifting. [http://www.carlandsandras.com/](http://www.carlandsandras.com/) . It's "Under the direction of Carl Miller, former United States National, Olympic, and World Weightlifting Coach", and one of the men in the first salsa class I went to, back in around 2000, was an amateur weightlifter.

Which means that I, like oldmanjay, find it hard to accept that 'Almost nobody knew what weightlifting was' before 2007.

<comment><USER10> Looks like we just had different experiences.

<comment><USER12> Well, yes. (I thought were were discussing possible sources of those differences, rather than leaving it with a "just", but I also recognize that at this point it's the sort of pointless research that easily distracts me.)

<comment><USER10> No worries! Saturday is definitely the best day to discover that I left nits unpicked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Special training, community, certifications and needing a physical location are all part of a very inelegant solution to a straight forward problem. The whole thing (imo) is ridiculous racket.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oknZg- EI8xZFVkemhWMWlkVDg...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2oknZg- EI8xZFVkemhWMWlkVDg/edit) along with a playground (or a pull up bar and rings) has been all I've ever needed.

<comment><USER14> That's great for you, but let's be clear here: bodyweight training isn't going to get you results as quickly as barbell training. I say this with no malevolence: I do bodyweight training all the time. Bodyweight training is perfect maintenance exercise when you're already in good shape because you can do it anywhere with minimal equipment. But if you aren't in good shape, it's going to take years to get the results from body weight training that you'd get from barbell training in months.

Barbell training does require a physical location for obvious reasons. And community might not be helpful for HN introverts, but most people are extroverts.

Certifications are also a good idea for safety reasons: improper lifting is dangerous. However, this is an area where Crossfit is plenty open to criticism: I'm not sure what goes into getting a Crossfit certification, but whatever it is it's just wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> CrossFit equipment tends to get wear and tear much faster than a regular gym.

I remember my box owners face wince with pain every time someone "dumped" (dropped from height) a nice Olympic weightlifting bar to the ground. Those things have moving parts and are expensive!

<comment><USER16> Didn't read the whole article (too many clickthroughs) but I'm fairly familiar with the Crossfit model.

The problem with any gym is scaling. You have limited floorspace = limited number of members = limited revenue. To scale out it seems you need to open more gyms, with high fixed cost for each new location---that is, high marginal cost. This is the model most gym chains have taken.

The genius of the Crossfit business model is it scales without incurring high marginal cost. It does this by using an affiliate model. Affiliates pay a fee to be able to display the Crossfit branch and take on the risk and overhead of the new location. This is basically what fast-food franchises do, and similar to what companies like Uber are doing to achieve scale.

Now it is probably quite difficult to make good money as a Crossfit affiliate, for all the reasons that gyms have difficulty scaling, but Crossfit HQ doesn't have to care about that. There are always more young hopefuls to start a new "box".

(O bars are designed to be dropped. I doubt that is a major issue.)

<comment><USER17> I don't understand how franchising is supposed to solve the problem of "serving more customers means having to rent (or buy) more land". The franchisee still needs just as much land to serve his customers; the fee you can charge him has to take that into account. How does this make scaling any cheaper?

<comment><USER18> It doesn't. It just makes it not your problem, that's all.

<comment><USER19> so the franchise model is basically just another name for outsourcing your marketing?

<comment><USER17> I thought the point of the franchise model was that your franchisees, instead of you, keep any _surplus_ money that they generate, giving them much stronger incentives to succeed under your brand. Compare:

1\. Local outpost of a chain store that doesn't franchise. The manager, like everyone under him, is paid a salary, and whatever money is left over after paying the store expenses goes back to corporate. This model is illustrated by a scene from _The Sopranos_ (here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz0uEzRSWXw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz0uEzRSWXw) ) in which the manager of a Starbucks has to break it to the mafia that he can't pay protection money because he doesn't have any discretionary funding.

2\. Local franchise. The owner has no salary. Instead, he keeps whatever money is left over after paying the store expenses. This is likely to have several different benefits: the owner may feel like putting in extra time at his store. If the janitor has an emergency, maybe the McDonald's owner will clean the bathrooms himself. Similarly, the owner may take a different view toward cashiers dipping into the till than a salaried manager would. And the owner's pricing decisions are much more informed, and therefore more likely to be correct, than the pricing decisions corporate would make.

So with the distinction I describe, scaling your brand as a franchise rather than a chain boils down to one difference: in a chain your store operators are salaried and you keep all the extra money, whereas in a franchise _you_ are salaried and your store operators keep the extra money (you might take a percentage, or a flat fee up front, or some combination. I don't know). Paying your store operators that much more under the franchise model means you can expect them to do more difficult and demanding work. It's not all about marketing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Entrepreneurs: Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You - <AUTHOR> http://feint.me/articles/entrepreneurs-do-one-thing-every-day-that-scares-you

<comment><USER2> _But whats more incredible about this is the change in attitude it has brought about. I'm starting to see through the irrational fears that I have (and everyone else does too) and doors are starting to get opened left and right._

Well said!

We are bound to the patterns we create in our own life. Everything we know and do we fit into systems, so that we can understand and process the information we've got. The problem with this is that while these patterns help us they simultaneously _limit_ us, so that if we are not consciously aware of those patterns we find it hard to escape them.

Look at anybody who's made anything worthwhile and you'll notice that they always made it by consciously looking at what limited them and defying those limits. I just read a series of interviews with Stanley Kubrick, the legendary director of 2001 and The Shining; one thing that emerged every time he talked about film was that there was no extraordinary leap of genius that led to his masterpieces. He simply made sure to look at what he was limiting himself to and then, time and time again, do things that forced him into new areas.

This isn't just advice for entrepreneurs. It's advice for anybody who wants to truly appreciate what life's capable of, experience the truly sublime moments that make all the other moments worth it. (But I guess the difference is that entrepreneurs, and all makers, really, are striving to create new things which will help other people break out of their own patterns. And what a joyful career that is!)

</comment><comment><USER3> "But trust me on the sunscreen."

</comment><comment><USER4> Still getting started, something that I had always "ignored" (not necessarily scared me) was using my own day-job money to hire someone. I always figured, "make a logo? Sure, I can do that." As an aspiring hacker, I was always certain I could learn that skill enough to do something productive.

Then I hit a brickwall in my current project. I found a problem that I could not overcome with internet savvy-ness. The only solution I could come up with was to try and hire someone to do it.

Needless to say--and saving the learnings from my experience into a different post--it was a great experience, almost addictive. I just set up a contract with one of the online freelance websites, and waited for the end result to come in.

</comment><comment><USER5> Okay.

# rm -rf /</comment>


Universities Banning iPads Left, Right and Center Due to Bandwidth Overload - <AUTHOR> http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/18512/38/

<comment><USER2> 1) The site is called FUDzilla. 2) GW's IT has always sucked. Mostly funding issues.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I resisted posting a comment earlier as well. The "article" ignores that the problems are due to the DHCP client on the iPad, not the networks.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What should I do if I can't find any startup I'm interested joining? - <AUTHOR> I am currently working at a later stage startup that pays off pretty well, both in salary and in stock options. But as I always wanted to start a startup and don't feel like I am not learning that much any more at my current company that is helpful to help me get closer to my goal, I decided to look for opportunities in some very early stage startups, in hope I can learn a few thing a bit more for early stage startups. But after I searched through the angelist and YC job listings, I failed to find any particular one that I am passionated about.
Should I apply some anyway and hope I will learn a thing or two no matter what they may turn out after I join them (or I _might_ be not very happy giving up much in salary and stock options to do something I am not super excited about)? Another reason I am looking for a job change is I want to move into the bay area that there are more people making interesting things.
Sorry if I sound to be too undecided. Any feedback/suggestion would be really appreciated! <comment><USER2> I don't mean this in a negative way but aren't there thousands of jobs between HN and angellist?

If you can't find a job that inspires you maybe there is something wrong in one of your assumptions about either what inspires you or what it means to work a job.

I would definitely recommend applying to a few and seeing if anything sticks and then try to see if you enjoy the work.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you really want to start a startup the only way to learn how to do it is to start one.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is your area of expertise?</comment>


Zappos Zaps Its Job Postings - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304811904579586300322355082

<comment><USER2> "how to make the hiring process faster and easier by keeping a pool of willing and able candidates at the ready."

Meaning, people who will take a job for less money because they are lured by intangibles.

"the standard hiring process is too "transactional," said Michael Bailen, who heads talent acquisition for the company"

Translation: candidates actually expect to negotiate a fair salary, sensible working conditions, fringe benefits, and maybe even relo costs, while the company would rather bring in starry-eyed naifs willing to take the company's "fun creation" instead of real compensation.

<comment><USER3> "Translation: candidates actually expect to negotiate a fair salary, sensible working conditions, fringe benefits, and maybe even relo costs, while the company would rather bring in starry-eyed naifs willing to take the company's "fun creation" instead of real compensation."

I don't think your translation is accurate. Your argument seems based around your personal value for money over "intangibles" and misses the fact that these intangibles are a non-trivial business cost for Zappos

Ex. Parties aren't free, nor are the meetings of high-level execs who carefully plan the parties and craft the culture. They just seem free in a similar way that the roads we drive on seem free.

These intangibles have been at the core of Zappos' success for years and it's clearly been working for them. [0][1]

The Zappos network is yet another experiment in a long line of experiments from a customer service company located in the desert considering new, innovative ways to attract and retain the right talent for their culture. This experiment might completely fail or it might give them the extra leverage they're looking for to help their small HR team.

[0] [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best- companies/2013/s...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best- companies/2013/snapshots/31.html) [1] [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best- companies/2014/s...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best- companies/2014/snapshots/38.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> " _A few months ago, online shoe retailer Zappos did away with job titles for its 1,500 employees._ "

This may come out harsh, but the above suggests to me that the company at best doesn't get it, and at worst doesn't care about its employees' futures after Zappos.

Making me play "games" on an private, internal social network to get the company interested in me? Well, it might work for other fields, but I don't think the company is _that_ special for this to work for the sort of technical types I assume they need ... and note, while this might be a failure on the part of the journlist author, it says nothing about networking, referals from current employees, etc.

This is so bizzare I reread the article, and note that I wouldn't even know if I wanted to start playing the game, i.e. do they need people with my sorts of specialities? After a rather ugly narrowing of this sort of thing, the field's wild with production quality or thereabout languages, databases, all sorts of infrastructure. If I were a front end developer I could make judgements (but not if they were planning on doing something new), but behind it all....

Well, they could make the game more interesting by letting participants poke around their backend systems ^_^.

<comment><USER5> Zappos is an unconventional company run by an unconventional CEO, Tony Hsieh. You can read an earlier interview about his hiring strategy[0], take a look at his office[1], and read about his plan to turn around downtown Las Vegas[2]. An unusual man, but unusually effective.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html?pag...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/business/10corner.html?pagewanted=all)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/business/tony-hsiehs- offic...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/29/business/tony-hsiehs-office- welcome-to-the-rain-forest.html)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/magazine/what-happens- in-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/magazine/what-happens-in-brooklyn- moves-to-vegas.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER4> I understand that, although to a greater extent now, e.g. they're the only compay I'll buy unfamiliar footware from (although I wish they did a better job with their inventory). And I find nothing wrong in your [0], although I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'd demonstrate I'd _"Create fun and a little weirdness."_ in an interview (relating past examples would be right for me).

I'm just questioning if this new and most certainly unconventional approach--- as filtered through a journalist---will allow them to hire the technical help they need. Or any other field where the labor market is tight.

<comment><USER2> I read it as Zappos not wanting to pay market rates for good talent, so they introduce a wildcard game element to the process that "rewards" loyal people with job offers. Offers that happen to be what the company wants to pay, not what the market rate would demand.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


29 years ago today Steve Jobs demoed the first Mac [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ12vNZ5yMY

<comment><USER2> Darn, I missed it because... I was 3.</comment>


Show HN: Beautiful, Updated Periodic Table - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/new-periodic-table#comment-419640 <comment><AUTHOR> We couldn't find a new, updated periodic table, so we created one! I think you'll love the video.

Leave a comment saying what you'd call the next element that get's discovered and we will pick someone to send a free poster.

We'll be giving them to schools and also sending a few of our postcard version to various Trump folks expressing the need for science ed!

If you want to skip Product Hunt, the Kickstarter page is here: [http://kck.st/2j4TeeY](http://kck.st/2j4TeeY)</comment>


TweetValue - How much is your Twitter profile worth? - <AUTHOR> http://tweetvalue.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be first to comment on this.

Seems pretty lame... must be a straight metric of followers and followees, right? What is the point of websites like this? Just a giant advert? How much money do you reckon "Jonas Lejon" has made from that big banner at the top?</comment>


Why Do All the Great Node.js Developers Hate CoffeeScript? - <AUTHOR> http://procbits.com/2012/05/18/why-do-all-the-great-node-js-developers-hate-coffeescript/ <comment><USER3> I've been accused of writing linkbait-y titles in the past, such as "CoffeeScript isn't a language worth learning."

[https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2011/12/...](https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2011/12/jargon.md)

So I suppose I'll have to just say that looking at the article itself and argue the content rather than the packaging. So here's the premise: A bunch of great JS developers aren't also CS developers.

Possibility #1: Correlation == Causation. Writing CoffeeScript rots your brain and makes you unfit for writing great Node.js code.

Possibility #2: Writing great Node.js warps your brain such that CoffeeScript is unpalatable.

Possibility #3: Writing great Node.js code means you're very comfortable with JS itself and your tool chain, and thus you look askance at _any_ switch.

I'd say that both #2 and #3 are far more likely than #1. Neither of them imply that you shouldn't use CS today if it seems appealing.

<comment><USER4> I'd give 3 more possibilities:

#4 pretty much the only advantage of CoffeeScript is saving a few keystrokes, not worth spending time on

#5 most of your day is still spent reading javascript, the mental overhead of switching between JS and CS all the time makes it unappealing

#6 using javascript makes for writing better javascript libraries than coffeescript

<comment><USER3> #5 is probably true for many people. #6 might be true, might not. Amplification of your ideas would be welcome.

#4 needs some clarification. If you're making a global statement, then you're contradicting my experience and the statements of many CS users. Agree or disagree, clearly it's "debatable" and not axiomatic accepted fact.

Or you might be saying that for _some developers_ , including the quoted node developers (and possibly yourself), there are insignificant benefits. I listed the possibility that the node developers saw no significant return on investment, so if that's what you're saying, then we agree.

<comment><USER4> > Or you might be saying that for some developers, including the quoted node > developers (and possibly yourself), there are insignificant benefits.

Exactly, I read your comment in this style (which seems to have been correct according to what follows my quote) and decided to use the same. These were not intended to be understood as the absolute truth brought down from the mountain.

Although some of these points do roughly match my thinking (if I'm going to learn a not-JS-but-compiles-to-it, I'd rather use something drastically different which can bring significant gains — e.g. Roy or ClojureScript — or build -my-own via SweetJS than limited syntactic sugar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great node.js developers are writing libraries, not application code, and they see a difference: libraries are abstractions that try to build upon as little abstraction as possible, and attempt to integrate with as many 'things' as possible.

CoffeeScript's advantages - clarity and concise code - are outweighed by the feeling of building on an abstraction, and narrowing your contributor base. This feeling may be increasingly inaccurate: a lot of people write coffeescript, it's pretty well integrated nowadays.

<comment><USER6> we write plenty of application code actually, all of us listed there I'm sure, we just dont give a shit about the "features" coffeescript "adds"

<comment><USER7> > 'we just dont give a shit about the "features" coffeescript "adds"'

I'm not sure why you're claiming to speak for the other nine developers listed in the post.

It's a good point that tmcw makes. Plenty of developers, including Jeremy Ashkenas (creator of CS), write their open-source library stuff in vanilla javascript while hacking away with CoffeeScript for other things which don't rely on community contributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get it. Look at Jade, Stylus ... pythonesque isn't it. The same arguments that are made against CoffeeScript certainly can be argued for those sugar syntax alternatives of HTML and CSS respectively. Some will argue ad nauseum for not using semicolons and then hate on CoffeeScript.

I've had no problems debugging or understanding CoffeeScript and while I'm not at the level of a Jon Resig, I can more than hold my own with Javascript. CoffeeScript is just syntax and generally safer than plain Javascript. It will declare vars for you if your forget. It will use an optimized for loop. It will put a wrapper around code to minimize leaks ...

<comment><USER6> The main difference there is with stylus / jade you basically have two states, tag and non-tag, rule and property, so it's much less ambiguous. Once you get into lots of logic in either however they similarly ambiguous, there's no doubt about that

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> TL;DR: Several high-profile Node.js developers seem not to have used CoffeeScript for any of their public projects (unless you count forks). In addition, some unspecified expert Node.js devs (perhaps the same ones, perhaps not) made an unspecified joke involving CoffeeScript on a podcast. Therefore, all the great Node.js developers hate CoffeeScript.

I'm not arguing what the article seems to circle around to near the end - <USER2> CoffeeScript is worth trying - but its nominal premise seems a little shaky. Perhaps those developers simply feel as I do, that Javascript syntax is fine and there's not that great of an incentive to switch. I actually like braces and semicolons, and I definitely prefer function literal syntax to arrow syntax.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the end, its just syntax. Some like the python/ruby-esque mode and thus go for coffee.

<comment><USER10> In the end it's another syntax, another compiler, several new plugins for your editor, another dependency, a bunch of new abstraction, another unproven technology, another black box, etc. It's not so simple, the choice shouldn't be made lightly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love CoffeeScript. But then, I am well-versed in JavaScript. People who don't understand scope, lambdas, prototypes, etc. should stick to JavaScript, as CoffeeScript obscures some of that. You really should understand what's going on behind the scenes.

Which makes it all the stranger that experienced JavaScript developers seem to avoid it, while less experienced ones embrace it.

My main gripe with CoffeeScript (there are a couple, but here's one) is code organization/readability when a method takes multiple functions as arguments.

        foo ->
          bar()
          baz()
          quux()
        , (error) ->
          throw error if error

That does look a bit odd, and you run into these a lot when you're using caolan/async. You can avoid this by avoiding anonymous methods, but with so many callbacks in Node.js that is probably less readable.

<comment><USER12> You can assign the functions to variables and then make the function call in one line. Adds one line of code and a lot of readability.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but please see my last sentence. With so many callbacks in Node.js, it can make it just as difficult to follow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really love CoffeeScript. Javascript has some great programming concepts within it and CoffeeScript makes these more elegant and easy to use. The reduction of needless syntax is also a boon to me.

In fact, I've been using CoffeeScript to postprocess data from molecular simulations (supercomputer output). It's about 3x less code than an equivalent C program and requires a lot less thinking so I can get things done quicker. But I tend to use CoffeeScript in a functional style (which in my opinion is the best language paradigm for handling a lot of data).

</comment><comment><USER14> There are "systems developers" and there are "applications developers". The two groups often use different tools, so JavaScript vs CoffeeScript isn't much more surprising than C vs C++ or Win32/COM vs .NET for that matter.

Systems developers provide services for other developers; generally they want to minimize dependencies. It doesn't make sense to write foundational tools in CoffeeScript unless all the clients of those tools will be written in CoffeeScript as well. Otherwise you're just adding complexity to their projects and making them harder to debug.

<comment><USER15> _systems developers_? You mean those guys who wrote V8 in C++?)

<comment><USER16> You mean those guys who wrote C++ in C?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because CoffeeScript causes a cognitive dissonance by a) Attempting to address Javascript's shortcomings. b) Shows how much more comprehensible a well- designed language could be. c) Shows what one smart guy with a deeper CS knowledge and good taste could do.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Personally, I would want to understand JavaScript before moving on to some abstraction. The official Node.js documentation is written in JS, etc.. Then, once I am totally capable with JavaScript, there just isn't a great incentive for me to learn another language to code on top of the same environment. I'm very happy with JavaScript. CoffeeScript has become an instant turn-off to me, and I think this sentiment is common in the community. If someone asks for help in the IRC channel, I just can't offer a thing. And usually no one can. I've seen many calls-for-help that fell on deaf ears because few people are willing to learn CoffeeScript for assisting a fraction of the community. Why do I hate CoffeeScript? Because I like helping people. :( This is my personal history, and you may notice that I am totally ignorant of any benefits that CS may provide by way of being more concise, or linguistically harmonious.

</comment><comment><USER18> Quote: "Having defected from Rails, I love CoffeeScript."

This is a common reason I've heard. Here's the bottom line, CoffeeScript is not javascript.

Suppose you want to speak Japanese but only know English. Google comes out with Translate 4.0 that does realtime translation on the fly. Great! Now you can speak Japanese, right? No.

Most of the devs I've personally interacted with that like Coffeescript are conversely bad at javascript. Admittedly this is anecdotal and only based on my personal experiences.

Learn javascript. Get a book, read some tutorials. Quit trying to squirm around just because closures make you nervous.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is like analyzing some of the huge Java projects out there, noticing they don't use Scala, and deciding everyone hates Scala. Particularly with public projects, you want them as easy to use and simple and require as little as possible to get into them. Adding an extra language translation will not help with those things, especially if the language is not as common as the one it translates into.

I don't particularly like Java compared to some other options, but I still code in it most, simply because of the huge number of libraries and developers who use it. It's very difficult to write any big project by yourself, which means you need others, which means you need to not use obscure languages and other technologies that prevent working together. I much preferred writing for Linux PDAs than I do writing for Android smart phones, but if I did that, no one would use my stuff. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> I like CoffeeScript. It makes writing some things in JavaScript a little bit easier and maybe even a little bit faster.

However, I don't like _using_ CoffeeScipt. It immediately shuts out the other 85%+ of JavaScript users who aren't familiar with CoffeeScript from reading and understanding my code.

</comment><comment><USER21> I dislike using coffeescript mainly because the language is _too_ flexible. Being able to optionally omit a ton of syntax has led to some annoying problems that aren't obvious at first glance. This ambiguity is exacerbated by the way javascript is typically used (chained methods, nested lambdas, etc).

The other gripe I have is that debugging it is a pain in the ass since errors that come back reference the javascript code, not the coffeescript. Apparently this is a problem being worked on but it's still irritating.

<comment><AUTHOR> But because nesting is a pain-in-the-ass in coffeescript, I've become used to breaking down code into chunks and invoking functions which ultimately makes code more readable solving many other problems.

I do agree on the debugging aspect. I always have to go back to the compiled javascript to understand errors. Can you please point me to solutions being worked upon in this regard? Open source?

<comment><USER9> One of the things provided by the CoffeeScript Redux project is source mapping, which enables line-to-line correspondences for debugging.

<https://github.com/michaelficarra/CoffeeScriptRedux>

<http://ryanflorence.com/2012/coffeescript-source-maps/>

<comment><AUTHOR> CoffeeScript Redux project seems interesting. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not a great node developer, but I personally don't like CoffeeScript for the same reason I don't like UI interfaces for Git. I'm never sure what it's going to do.

Yes, I could go look at the output, or go really learn it, but if my goal is to produce javascript then it's just another leaky abstraction on top of something that isn't that hard to do by hand. If my choices were CoffeeScript or ASM, then I'd choose CoffeeScript in a heart beat.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't truely see enough benefits for coffeescript. 99% of the eco-system uses vanilla JS and i would like to stay in one "language" as much as possible.

In general i don't really feel comfortable with code-generating layers that abstract away what i want (and need) to know. I want to look into the Chrome Devtools, see "line 23 in bla.js" and correlate that to the source in my editor. Same reason i don't use all that less/sass/haml etc. etc.

</comment><comment><USER24> I doubt that the CoffeeScript-haters would accept any compile-to-js language. Maybe it's language stockholm syndrome. ;)

But for me, JavaScript's shortcomings are far worse than CoffeeScript's.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't care about any language that isn't natively supported in the browsers.

Not all browsers have support for source maps, and sometimes you really need to debug browser specific behaviours without having to debug generated code along the way.

Additionally in most teams I work on, it is often the case that besides myself no one even knows what CoffeScript is.

CoffeScript just adds more code to debug without any real benefit.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not a very experienced Node.js developer, but I have taken the time over the last couple of months to learn how to use it. I find working without CoffeeScript to be much more productive.

Then again, that may change when I get a lot more comfortable using Node. At the moment I just prefer to know exactly what's going on under the hood.

</comment><comment><USER27> The reason I have not learned coffeescript yet is because I want to truly understand javascript. I feel that learning something more portable is the way to go. As I understand more javascript I think about what problems CoffeeScript is trying to solve.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm learning the variable scope of javascript very thoroughly because it is powerful. I don't want to be hindered by shortcuts eliminating some of that power/understanding.

<comment><USER29> Without trying in jsfiddle, what does this alert;

var i=3; function x() { alert(i); var i=5; } x();

and why is this powerful? I agree with you mostly, but I don't like this 'feature'.

Edit: hoisting yes, but why, besides compiler optimization is it more powerful for the programmer than if it would not do hoisting, or, why is it in a modern language like JS?

Edit1: I'm not in favor of coffeescript I used Javascript most of the time during my work day, I was just seriously wondering, if not for low level optimization why it would be a problem to have global scope until local is defined.

<comment><USER28> Undefined, that's hoisting.

I think it is dirty, but the point of the var statement (and your hoisting example) is that you implicitly imply the variable scope. In Coffeescript, you just do an assignment and it will be function scope if it (the variable) doesn't exist in any parent scopes? That seems dirtier to me and dangerous.

If you are awesome and namespacing and keeping clean/modular/maintainable code, Coffeescript may work great.

<comment><USER28> Someone correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not a pro by any means: var statement allows for implied variable scope and avoid variable collisions from parent scopes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I question the premise.

</comment><comment><USER31> I just love JavaScript

</comment><comment><USER32> Jeez, there's the word "hate" again, second time this morning. What a bunch of drama queens we all are. Not particularly caring for a language or disagreeing with the premise for its creation is "hating". OK. And here it's even worse, because the author elevates these developers to the status of "great" and then paints the fact that they do not care for CoffeeScript as "haughty".</comment>


Ask HN: Most interesting career change after programming - <AUTHOR>

i'm sure you can guess what i've been thinking about, but i'm wondering if anyone has any interesting stories or articles about people who went in to unexpected fields after quitting programming- like someone who became a train conductor, or an artist, or an architect etc. <comment><USER2> Well I only tried this out then came back to programming after a few years, but I started a Ph.D. program for a Classical Studies degree (Greek & Latin). I finished the Masters but figured out it wasn't for me and skipped the dissertation. Nevertheless it seems to really impress people. I like to say that if you can read Greek you can certainly read Perl or C++. :-)

There are tons of opportunities to apply tech to ancient languages. The problem is there isn't much money in it. I'd love to see a well-executed online critical edition with hyperlinks and diffs for comparing manuscripts. I wrote a script once to read in dactylic hexameter and automatically scan it. A tool to export L'Annee Philologique entries as bibtex would be awesome, but their native format is a mess, and you'd have to detect bibliography words like "and", "ed.", etc. in French, German, Spanish, and others.

When I was at Penn I kept hearing stories about how one of the sons of Hewlitt or Packard (I forget which) had a lot of classics-and-programming projects, but I don't know any specifics.

<comment><USER3> FYI I believe you are thinking of Dr. David Woodley Packard, the son of Dave Packard, who was a professor of Greek and Latin studies among other things. Super interesting guy! He did a lot of studies into classics and language and used much of his families technical background to make strides in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Saw this[0] a few weeks ago on HN[1]

[0] [http://hello-world.io/death-of-a-programmer-life-of-a- farmer...](http://hello-world.io/death-of-a-programmer-life-of-a-farmer/)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492110)

</comment><comment><USER5> I know about a guy who, after finishing and shipping the nightmare-project-of- his-lifetime went and became a car salesman.

</comment><comment><USER6> My wife opened high-end dog collars online store after helping our standard poodles to look pretty :)</comment>


Flipper bridge switches left to right-side drivers without stopping them - <AUTHOR> http://www.neatorama.com/2010/06/15/flipper-bridge-switches-left-side-drivers-with-right-side-drivers-without-stopping-them/

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1435044></comment>


Y Combinator Challenge #14 - Tools for Measurement - <AUTHOR> http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/y-combinator-challenge-14-tools-for-measurement/

<comment><USER2> Its not a bad idea, but I think it misses the potential that YC was suggesting.

Read the book 'Making Things Talk' - think about the potential of measuring things in the analog world, temperature, weight, flow, force, sound, etc, and correlating these things with enterprise data.

Maybe you can start off by measuring things like heartrate, blood glucose levels, physical mobility, dietary intake, etc. For instance, if someone is stressed all day, this probably is going to correlate with productivity.

<comment><USER3> That books looks sweet, thanks for pointing it out. Reminds me of a good post by Seth Godin I read the other day: [http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/let-me- see.h...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/07/let-me-see.html)

I started down this path, looking at things like: \- number of people who Emailed an individual asking about a specific topic -percent of time spent in Outlook vs Visual Studio vs WoW (RescueTime-esque stuff) \- number of IMs initiated from someone at least one level higher than them

But at the end of the day, can that really tell you quantitatively that Bob is better than Suzie? Even the example above about being stressed - I know people who are super chill and excel at their job, and others who are stressed all the time and also excel (and vice versa).

Maybe the answer is to pull in hundreds of these variables and run a neural net against actual performance rankings to see if any statistically significant correlations pop out?

<comment><USER2> Hell yea its sweet! :) I initially was pointed there by this great presentation: <http://www.tomtaylor.co.uk/talks/delighting-with-data>

I think you are right about pulling in hundreds of these variables to correlate with both intuitive and quantitative tests that we have to define 'productive' employees. Then you can send an electric shock whenever someone's theta waves get too low or something..

Seriously though, our first level of productivity is dictated by things biological, and if you can create models to paint a strong enough picture of a productive worker then it gives you a feedback loop. And don't forget, not everyone is a knowledge worker like us, people still drive trucks for a living, pick fruit, do construction, etc. That is a huge market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea if implemented would measure niceness (political sleekness) but not productivity.

<comment><USER5> Not sure about that. There was a guy who knew his stuff and ran the build and version control system at my last job. You had to kiss his butt to get things done (=pay karma), but I wouldn't call him nice.

What it overemphasizes is jobs that benefit multiple people in visible ways. At my last job, I wrote code used by the internal QA team of 50 people that made their lives easier. I imagine that would earn a lot of karma. On the other hand, when I worked on a bug for an external customer, only my manager would care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think his second assumption that people know who the high performers are is wrong. Often, recognizing competence requires a great deal of competence.

Also, I think d0mine's right that kinder people who are easy to work with but not necessarily great performers will get lots of points.

<comment><USER7> Well, being easy to work with is in itself a valuable trait in a co-worker.

<comment><USER6> By "easy to work with" I mean qualities such as being amiable, outgoing, funny, or good-looking. Those are valuable traits, but pointing out who's the nicest guy in the room's not the problem here, and it's not even a difficult problem to solve. Everyone always knows who the popular people are.

<comment><USER7> Right, but the proposed solution wouldn't involve asking people which of their co-workers they like, it would be based on hopefully meaningful work-related interactions (emails). Obviously, the model breaks down if people give the thumbs up to forwarded joke emails or to mass "oh crap my review is coming up, can you give me a thumbs up" emails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this implementation would work at least as well as state of the art modern management techniques do. It's a decent idea.

I've daydreamed about something similar. Not sure whether it would be better or worse, but my implementation would limit the amount each person can give, per month. I also struggled with the idea of making it a token economy. Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> I think the token economy thing is a good idea. You could also do a market approach of rewarding people who pick the top performers, but that gets really tricky.

<comment><USER8> All the research on token economies shows they don't work, at least according to Punished by Rewards.

<comment><USER5> That's an interesting looking book. I'm familiar with the whole intrinsic/extrinsic motivation arguments. I guess it depends on the definition of "work". In this case the economy would be intended as a measurement tool more than a motivational tool. However, I suppose you could still make a case that it would become demotivational, which would be at cross purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This implementation would be utterly trivial to game.

Fail.</comment>


Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation? - <AUTHOR> http://www.airspacemag.com/space/is-spacex-changing-the-rocket-equation-132285884/?all

<comment><USER2> This should be tagged 2012.</comment>


"Create a place that doesn't rely on alcohol or negative jokes" - <AUTHOR> http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/hiring-isn-t-enough

<comment><USER2> An extremely short summary of an extremely long post is don't fraternize or fornicate with your direct reports.

If you run into someone who doesn't understand why (perhaps myself when I was younger) then they're stuck reading this for 30 minutes.

Other than that, her boss sounds awesome, which is really too bad.

"He asked what I had done to change things.

I was speechless."

<comment><USER3> 30 minutes?</comment></comment>


Chris Pirillo: How Do You Invite People to Events? - <AUTHOR> http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/09/01/how-do-you-invite-people-to-events/

<comment><USER2> I phone them and they let me know. I never understood why people refuse to talk on phones now that the internet is here.

I've had a friend relate a story of how another friend told her they should catch up and to email her, when she was standing right in front of them.

<comment><USER3> Phones work well, but only for a very small number of people. Beyond that it becomes virtually impossible to update the whole group to changes in time, location, ect.

<comment><USER4> Phone trees are implicitly massively parallel, and can deliver messages to a set of recipients in logarithmic time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use facebook. 99% of the people I want to invite are already on there. If they aren't, I can invite them by email address. Works perfectly fine.

<comment><USER3> Most people that we've talked to about using facebook for events say that unless they're creating a large event, it's not worth going through facebook's multiple step process with a bunch of required fields. Any opinion on that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How do you guys plan to make money?

<comment><USER3> We have lots of ideas for making money, all of which add value to the users. Currently, we're just looking to build a solid user base and confirm that we're on the right path of making something that people actually want.

<comment><USER6> Nice. Best of luck, your system is slick!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i send an email - now with a google form in it.</comment>


Ask HN:  How many people will be at Work at a Startup? - <AUTHOR>

Just out of sheer curiosity, does anyone know how many programmers will be invited to Work at a Startup?  Is there a fixed number or does it just depend on demand? <comment><USER2> Probably about 120. The limit is the number of people we can fit in the big orange room, but we're not exactly sure what that is now, because we just expanded it.

If we get a huge number of really good applications we might have two sessions. So far we have 196 applications.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on the startup. Apple was two guys. Google started as two guys. Same with Microsoft. Then as things grow they often hire rapidly.</comment>


Panto: Discover, create and share videos with secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.pantoapp.com <comment><USER2> I've been using it for weeks now. Gets addictive! Great app!

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun app with a pretty unique idea. Wish there was more content still, but it does seem to be growing steadily.

</comment><comment><USER4> This app is great! After reading all the great reviews i decided why not try it out? Im glad i did!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a wonderful app. It's a great combination of being interactive and having fun!

</comment><comment><USER6> Lots of videos with fun puzzles. Great idea, excellently designed! You should try it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Personally love the app. Lots of fun and cool way to bug my friends!

</comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting take on mobile interactive content! Can get addictive!

</comment><comment><USER9> go Panto! quite addicting with a sleek design. A fun way to bring all your friends and family together .. If you love challenges, this is a definite must try :D

</comment><comment><USER10> Cool new app great way to be interactive with your friends

</comment><comment><USER11> Fun new puzzle app - cool for "where am i" puzzles

</comment><comment><USER12> Cool app! Why wasn't this idea thought of before.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fun new way to share moments with friends and family

</comment><comment><USER14> new and unique ... its addictive, fun and engaging at all levels. Really dig the layout and intuitive design ... Novel idea. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER15> Great app. Tons of fun! Can't stop playing it!

</comment><comment><USER16> Nice App with good Interface! Worth Checking out...

</comment><comment><USER17> Quite fun, new social element with a hidden twist

</comment><comment><USER18> Fun social app. Definitely worth checking out!

</comment><comment><USER19> Cool app for those trivia loving friends! it has a bunch of options to interact with participants, yet it feels simple, fast and well designed. give it a try!!

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool app; fun, simple to use. Clean interface

</comment><comment><USER21> Novel idea to interact with video content!

</comment><comment><USER22> Fun and engaging. Best charades app on iOS

</comment><comment><USER23> Great app lots of fun and great content!

</comment><comment><USER24> I just tried the app. It's awesome!

</comment><comment><USER25> Celebrity charades are hilarious. Pretty fun app actually, and already has quite a bit of content to keep me entertained during my layover today.

</comment><comment><USER26> great all in one app to keep the fun alive in your social circles

</comment><comment><USER27> fun and addictive app. highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Loving Panto!

</comment><comment><USER29> Great app

</comment><comment><USER30> I could spend hours on this! So addictive =D

</comment><comment><USER8> Very interesting take on mobile interactive content! Can get addictive!</comment>


Breaking carbon dioxide faster, cheaper, and more efficiently - <AUTHOR> https://m.phys.org/news/2019-11-carbon-dioxide-faster-cheaper-efficiently.html <comment><AUTHOR> Original paper: [https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/12/1915319116](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/11/12/1915319116)

</comment><comment><USER2> So much effort to re-invent a tree.</comment>


Most of Mars' air was 'lost to space' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39459561 <comment><USER3> > That liquid water once stood on Mars' surface or flowed freely at times > seems obvious.

> However, climate models, based on the limited evidence to date of what the > atmosphere was like, have struggled to simulate a Mars on which conditions > were warm enough to allow lots of liquid water. Much of it would have been > locked up in ice, they suggest.

Bit contradictory here.

<comment><USER4> I disagree.

The section you are quoting is titled 'climate conundrum'.

The writer is saying that it is visually obvious that there was running water at some point, but climate models do not support this.

That is why it is a .....conundrum.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What does that mean for terraforming? Establish a magnetosphere first so that solar winds don't drag away an atmosphere?

<comment><USER6> At humantimescales it's a non-issue. Any terraforming effort capable of generating an atmosphere over ~100 years or so could more than compensate for losses to space.

One great idea I heard to make mars more habitable in general is creating a large magnetic field at a Lagrange point between mars and the sun. A sort of "radiation sunshade"

<comment><USER7> It's important to realize that when it comes to terraforming you have a tradeoff between speed and cost. The notion of producing an atmosphere in a 100 years is borderline magical, but certainly _staggeringly_ expensive in terms of energy input. Your "sunshade" is another example of a quick, but incredibly pricey option.

Most terraforming research tends to be more realistic, and therefore looks at scales of thousands of years for change to take effect, often driven by engineered single-celled organisms in stages.

<comment><USER8> For those who are interested, I recommend the terraforming video by the excellent Isaac Arthur:

[https://youtu.be/ikoNQNj9ZnU](https://youtu.be/ikoNQNj9ZnU)

I discovered his channel a few weeks ago, and was blown away. He has tons of videos that cover all aspects of humanity's potential future in the stars in great detail, and does a very good job of staying grounded in hard science. It seems like he really knows his stuff. The episodes can be quite long (15 - <USER2> mins), but definitely worth checking out. I've been slowing making my way through them.

<comment><USER7> I'm always looking for youtube channels like this, and that's right in the timeframe I look for. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> My pleasure. Some of the earlier videos from his megastructure series are a little slow, but he has some absolute gems.

So far, I've really liked the video on "Black hole farming at the end of civilization", some of his Fermi paradox episodes, as well as the one on terraforming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some of my friends cite 'sources' that humans came from Mars but destroyed the planet's atmosphere and had to escape to Earth. They seem (slightly) less crazy now!

<comment><USER10> Yes they had the technology to travel to another planet but when they arrived they threw it all away and lived in caves and hunted with rocks and sticks.

<comment><USER11> That's more or less what happens at the end of Battlestar Galactica (syfy version).

<comment><USER12> What ending?

That series never got renewed. It's a pity; the first season was nice. I'm glad they didn't, though, because an ending like that would have made me scream.

<comment><USER13> Yes, this ranks up there with my disappointment that they never made Star Wars episodes I-III.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Socratic Dialogue on Theoretical Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://processalgebra.blogspot.com/2009/02/socratic-dialogue-on-theoretical.html

<comment><USER2> On the one hand, the physicist counterpart sets a high conversational bar. On the other hand, even in academia the "computer science is fixing computers" misconception and the lack of awareness of theoretical aspects to computer science are very pervasive; this is a good resource.

Additionally, I'm happy to see my academic pick-up fantasy played out. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> One thing that has always struck me as odd is the convention of calling theoretical discussions on the nature of information 'Computer Science' but calling discussions of computers 'Information Science'.

<comment><USER4> In many cases I find it more than a little difficult to separate the two. I would say that Knuth presented a theoretical construct in TAOCP ("Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."), however it has as many practical implications as it does theoretical. Proper algorithm choice in my area (systems programming) can often mean the difference between 10 cycles and 10,000 cycles. Of course, I am also a physics minor, so perhaps I see through rose-colored glasses.

P.S. I think I've been programming in assembly for too long today. I read "convention of calling..." as "calling convention" and my mind immediately jumped off and started listing %rdi, %rsi...</comment></comment>


Partsie: a new minimalist video rating service - <AUTHOR> http://partsie.com/blog/

<comment><USER2> We have been doing this for a little while now at <http://www.15seconds.me/>. It's a little bit simpler than what Partsie is doing in that we only allow an "up" or "down" vote.

The viewer ratings below the video here: <http://www.15seconds.me/404211799> can be used to scrub through the video and get to the parts that the audience enjoyed the most. We only allow people to vote on the videos at the time they are broadcast though.

Great to see others are thinking along the same lines that we are. I believe that there is a big need to attach as much rich meta data as possible to videos.

</comment><comment><USER3> You don't have any link to home page on your blog. Your service should be all premium. It can be like Nielsen ratings of video. Nice idea.</comment>


A Student's Smart Microsoft Rebranding Is Better Than The Real Thing - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670245/a-students-smart-microsoft-rebranding-is-better-than-the-real-thing#2 <comment><USER2> I think the student put in a lot of hard work on that project but I wouldn't say the logo is better.

I'm not a huge fan of our new logo either although I think win8 one is pretty good.</comment>


No more tail calls in Javascript? - <AUTHOR> http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3047 <comment><USER2> I am missing something here if it is considered hard to implement. It is not that hard to TCO in Scheme or ML, so I must surely be missing some detail that makes it hard to implement in Javascript.

I can't see why you would leave that out of the system.

<comment><USER3> Eval is what makes TCO hard to implement in Javascript. It is extremely hard to perform certain optimizations in an environment where any symbol can be referenced at any time. If you had a pragma that said "this function never calls eval or calls anything that calls eval" it would be much simpler.

<comment><USER4> This is interesting, can you expand a bit on this? Scheme has an EVAL as well, but surely no-one would consider droping TCO there.

<comment><USER3> I never suggested it is impossible, merely it requires some work from the ground up. For lack of a better word, features like continuations and TCO are global, not local rewrites. They aren't bolt-on features like some sort of optimization stages you throw in on top of an existing implementation.

And that's the political problem here: The implementors don't want to start with a blank sheet of paper, they want to work from what they already have and find convenient to build.

You know the expression "Lisp is a black hole?" TCO is one of those massy features that drags a language inside Scheme's Schwarzschild radius. They will end up writing a Scheme implementation with JS syntax and DOM support.

They know it and obviously don't want to go there, thus the mealy-mouthed "this feature is not necessary because we provide the all-powerful for loop and OO programming." Meanwhile, as the OP points out, the other features they provide can be written by programmers and supplied in libraries, so they really are not as essential to the implementers' debate as TCO.

 _Portions of this rant may be Erik Naggum's intellectual offspring, only misshapen and lacking his insight and biting wit_

<comment><USER5> One thing I find interesting about Lua is that it has tail-call elimination, coroutines isomorphic to one-shot continuations, proper lexical scoping, and a "feel" similar to a (cleaned-up, better thought-out) JavaScript. The language has an entirely intentional semantic resemblance to Scheme yet seems to orbit that black hole rather than get sucked in, to abuse the metaphor.

I suspect that one reason it can do this successfully is that the authors are not afraid to break backwards compatibility with each new major release of the language. The fact that it is intended to be embedded within an application which ships with the appropriate revision of the language helps greatly in this regard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion, that's not really such a big deal.

For example, Python does not optimize tail calls, but supports many functional idioms anyway and is quite pleasant to use.

So, yeah, having tail call optimization be a _mandatory_ part of Javascript would be cool from a language nerd point of view, but it would have very little practical impact.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but, if you can't rely on tail-call optimization, you can't really use recursion and expect your code to handle any arbitrary amount of data that's thrown at it. To write robust code, you're forced to use iteration instead.

The difference between O(1) and O(n) memory usage is a big deal, IMHO...

<comment><USER6> > To write robust code, you're forced to use iteration instead.

That's exactly the point. You can use nice functional idioms in Python as long as you make the main loop(s) that crunch data iterative. Same thing in Javascript.

Adding tail-call optimization adds little to Javascript; it's nice to have but has no high return on investment (in terms of the effort you put into the language vs. what becomes impossible if you omit it).

Case in point: Think of all the criticism directed at Python. The lack of tail-call optimization is not voiced very frequently.

<comment><USER8> that's a huge step back for computing.

The point of recursion is that it makes really hard problems simple to solve.

<comment><USER9> It makes some hard problems simple to solve. Other times you end up wasting a lot of time figuring out how to send the return value to an accumulator without accidentally creating an infinite loop or doing things twice.

Anyway, in Python you can always fake TCO using decorators. As long as someone invents the same thing for Javascript, no harm, no foul.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My script that spams a Google Form with Urban Dictionary terms and definitions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/willwhitney/FORMFUCKER

<comment><AUTHOR> I was bored in an algorithms class, so I made this Python script to spam a friend's Google Form with Urban Dictionary word - definition pairs. It uses Mechanize and Diffbot (which I've been waiting for an opportunity to use). The results are pretty entertaining. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqdDpSAepX68dGR...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqdDpSAepX68dGR6TGJuZXg4NC1VUEVpRERQbWFCY3c#gid=0)</comment>


Non programmers reading code (code as documentation) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JpOnline/Blog/blob/master/language.md <comment><AUTHOR> This idea passes through BDD, Ubiquitous language, code as documentation and single source of truth.

Do you think is possible and desirable to have code so idiomatic that a domain specialist would be able to understand a functionality by looking at the code?</comment>