Trueface Visual Density - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-JFwp0pK50 <comment><USER2> What's the accuracy for very dense and very sparse crowds?

<comment><AUTHOR> @mebr thanks for you question, we tested it on few external benchmarks and the MAE is: 61 on Shanghai A 15 on Shanghai B 133 on UCF-QNRF

We're continuing to improve our models and develop different approaches so expect those scores to improve over time.

<comment><USER2> That sounds great. Thanks for sharing the info.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple rejects Facebook app that tells users Apple takes 30% cut - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/28/apple-rejects-facebook-app-that-says-apple-takes-30percent-cut.html <comment><USER2> Apple should be allowed to do what they want regarding charging for use of the app store, but they shouldn't be allowed to keep their policies secret. Censoring apps that inform users where the user's money is going when they spend it in an app is unconscionable.

<comment><USER3> Apple not allowing Facebook to use Apple platform to spread disparaging remarks. They're not even going draconian on it and banning Facebook if they make disparaging remarks on other platforms. This is max libertarianism. Apple built the highway and is in charge of setting the rules. You want to change the rules, change them for all competitors.

<comment><USER2> Telling someone the truth cannot be a disparaging remark.

<comment><USER3> First, I'm pretty sure you're confusing defamation with disparagement. Defamation requires the claim to be untruthful. Disparaging remarks can definitely be true - they just require the remarks to paint you in a negative light. All defamation is disparaging. Not all disparagement is defamation.

Secondly, it seems like you're picking sides rather than objectively evaluating the merits of the argument. Sure, Facebook saying Apple gets 30% of the cut is technically a true fact. The truth is ultimately more than a collection of facts that are true. You can manipulate perception by how you present the set of facts, which you emphasize & which you omit. It's totally conceivable to imagine there Apple may feel the true fact Facebook is emphasizing isn't a fair representation of the truth. Even if it were, Apple would surely feel they don't want individual apps putting up advertising that disparages the very platform they are being served by. If they allowed it for Facebook it would open up the flood gates for publicity stunts/coordinated attacks from smaller companies which would force shifts in policy they view as important for the long-term health of the ecosystem (& their revenue & margins too probably).

Finally, Google has the same policies & the notice appears to be missing from the Android app too [1]. This is trying to hold Apple to task over a purity standard that no one follows. This all feels like a media and legal blitz by very large companies trying to leverage dissatisfaction with the tech companies in Congress to wrest significant concessions from Apple. I'm genuinely curious about the media blitz focusing on Apple when Android has all the same policies. Is Apple viewed as the first important domino to then take on Google with? Does Apple just hold the lion's share of profitable users? Is Apple just making stories "pop" more with readers?

Disclaimer: I work at Facebook & have worked at Google & Apple in the past. I don't have a dog in this fight & all opinions are my own.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-apple- exclusive/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-apple- exclusive/exclusive-facebook-says-apple-rejected-its-attempt-to-tell-users- about-app-store-fees-idUSKBN25O042)

> The social media giant also planned to tell users on Alphabet Inc's Google > Play store it would not collect a fee for ticket sales, but that message was > not displayed either, Reuters found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesnt Google do the same?</comment>


Tail Recursion Elimination - <AUTHOR> http://neopythonic.blogspot.com/2009/04/tail-recursion-elimination.html

<comment><USER2> I've been doing some programming with Haskell lately, and what I notice is that almost nothing I write is tail recursive. Why? Because anything that I might write that would be tail recursive uses a combinator (foldX, map, whatever) instead. Only rarely do I write a tail-recursive function, and even for those I'm probably missing some combinator somewhere that could solve my problem.

Python, of course, doesn't use "combinators", but provides loops and iterators and a number of other things that are different, but pretty much just as good. Better some ways, worse others, and that's all you can really ask for from a language since "uniformly better" isn't really on the menu.

The more I learn about functional programming, and modern functional programming in particular, the more this sounds like a gigantic argument over Python not having a _compiler optimization_ that doesn't even make sense for Python anyhow. If you're trying to write a tail recursive function in Python, you've almost certainly passed up a "more Pythonic" solution, which is to say, a solution that is more idiomatic, runs faster, and will make sense to your fellow Python programmers. If you're writing something so painfully functional that you _need_ Python to optimize tail-recursion, it's probably time to get out of Python altogether... it is not a functional language, and while you can dip into old-style functional ("first-order functions", "closures"), it does not and can not do new-style functional ("immutable", "monads", "continuation passing") worth a _crap_.

Tail recursion is the functional answer to the "private" attribute in OO languages, a language design issue that got falsely enshrined in the paradigm itself as the One True Way to program. It's not. It's a compiler hack, and you don't need it in Python, any more than Python programs come crashing down because they don't have "private" variables. (Yes, I know about double- underscores... all about them. That's why I never use them.) Just as you very nearly don't need tail recursion (directly) in Haskell.

I write fluent Python and Erlang and decent Haskell, and I miss OO in Erlang and Haskell (even a basic purely-functional variant, and yes I know about typeclasses in Haskell and various Erlang hacks, I use some myself; I know how to get it done in the native style) far more often and far more acutely than I miss tail recursion in Python.

<comment><USER3> Can I correctly summarize your comment as: "in Python, tail recursion can be considered premature optimization"? In which case I would agree, but wouldn't it be nice if you could 'annotate' specific functions/methods as 'this one is tail recursive, please optimize'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this post by a language designer perplexing.

The fool-proof way of getting proper tail recursion is transformation of the program into a form in which all control flow is expressed in the form of function calls in tail position, including the returns. The standard target is continuation passing style. In this form, the stack-building constructions appear directly in the code. The ones that are merely administrative (bookkeeping the stack without real utility) can be eliminated at compile- time. Those administrative constructs include the ones that would make tail- calls use "stack space".

Guido refers to how every "stack frame" is heap allocated so they can't be reused. That's a design choice in the compiler's closure conversion mechanism.

Guido also refers to stack traces and exceptions, but these would be explicitly represented in the all-tail-call form of the program as well. What he means is that the language has no tail positions because there is always implicit work to be done in the language as he defines the semantics. That seems like an odd thing to brag about, but that's what he's doing.

But then I'm one of the programmers who has been permanently warped by learning about CPS, and I thoroughly rely on tail recursion being available and implemented efficiently.

</comment><comment><USER5> "I'm inclined to conclude that the author doesn't know much about ... python."

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

<comment><USER6> There's a long history of people trolling/baiting Guido (just on whitespace alone!), but one commenter on this blog post had me giggling for quite a while:

      How very pythonic of you to make up stupid reasons for not implementing a very simple optimization.
      This is very pythonic because it shows poor decision making, poor performance and immature ideology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> He responded directly to a comment I made on yesterday's blog post:

      I hate that Python doesn't have Tail-Call Optimization,
      though it does have the best stack traces of any language
      I've seen, which mostly makes up for it.

      Not being able to cleverly recurse isn't so bad when you
      never have to deal with anonymous "you tried to get the
      head of an empty list" exceptions!

</comment><comment><USER7> With the python installed on my phone, the g(5) example does return the correct result 0, not 4 as the author of that blog post claims. So this kills one of his arguments againt tail call eliminaton. From that example, I'm inclined to conclude that the author doesn't know much about either functional programming nor python. Given that I know who the author claims to be, I think I will just put python on my list of languages to be wary about.

And, by the way, Common Lisp does quite well treating TCO as an optional optimization.

<comment><USER8> _I'm inclined to conclude that the author doesn't know much about either functional programming nor python_

I think he knows much about Python. Maybe not much about your "the python". :D

<comment><USER7> My "the python" is Python 2.2.2 on symbian_s60, which definitely doesn't show the buggy behaviour the author describes as the established semantics of python.

And I started the next sentence with "Given that I know who the author claims to be" for a reason. Maybe I should have ended that sentence with a "¡", which according to wikipedia looks almost like the ethiopian sarcasm mark (if nobody mangles the encoding). (Sorry, no link, apple isn't the only phone manufacturer that can't implement cut and paste.)

<comment><USER9> It's not a "bug" if the behavior is intended.

I just tested the example with Version 2.5, and it returns 4. Version 2.2.2 is over six years old: <http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.2.2/>

<comment><USER10> FWIW, both Scheme and JavaScript have the same behavior as Python 2.5

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why did this have to show up right when I'm getting excited about trying Python?</comment>


News that adapts to your interests, written in Go - <AUTHOR> http://niflet.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm the OP. It uses Go's web server. You'll notice some adaptation to your interests today, but it'll be tomorrow (one day after this launch) before full effect is approached.

It pulls from 4000 news sites and blogs including lots of tech ones. There's capacity for more sources so feel free to send any favorites of yours to firstname.lastname@example.com.</comment>


Microsoft to stop producing Windows versions - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32658340

<comment><USER2> This is interesting. If Microsoft are switching to rolling release, how will they roll out big updates like major UI changes?

Since they are also offering a free upgrade for Windows 7 and 8 users I think Windows 10 will be the next XP.

</comment><comment><USER3> Free point releases like OSX?</comment>


Criminal Overengineering - <AUTHOR> http://coderoom.wordpress.com/2010/06/23/criminal-overengineering/ <comment><USER2> Argh.

Apparently there are two very popular types of article in the software blog world:

Type 1: YAGNI (like this example): Do less now. Refactor later as needed. It won't be needed, most likely. Chill out. (All driven by the question, "Dude, wtf? 100 lines of boilerplate for a 5 line case statement? Snap out of it.")

Type 2: Architect astronautics: Do more now. Build for the next version. You _will_ need more then, so why not prepare now? Decouple that code. Use more patterns. Hoist that jib. (All driven by the question, "What will your code/software/app do if...?")

I read type 1, and it (often) sounds convincing. I read type 2, and it (often) sounds convincing. I get a fucking headache from the cognitive dissonance. I make more coffee and get back to work, no wiser than before.

<comment><USER3> Sometimes the world just is as simple as it seems. Type 1 is right, type 2 isn't.

After 15 years of writing code I can only vouch for two metrics of code quality: clarity and length. For a long time I too thought that clarity means using "thisIsAStudentBirthDate" variable names - but it turns out there are very very few instances where the shortest code isn't also the most obvious at first glance.

I think the turning point was when I decided rewrites aren't a bad thing. I started seeing the code as alive - unchanged code isn't good, is dead. The myth of perfect code is just an illusion. Writing for the next version sounds very sensible - until you get enough years under your belt to realize that either there won't be a next version or it won't be anything like you expect.

<comment><USER4> Type 1 is right for _you_. A good type 2 knows they can't anticipate the future and prepares for the unknown. If overdone, this is bad, but the same can be said for type 1.

And rewrites _do_ become difficult as a system grows if you don't think them through. It's easy to rewrite one component with no dependencies, but it's not so easy to rewrite something that lots of different pieces of code rely on.

<comment><USER3> A problem with a verbose approach is that when ver 2.0 comes you can't really know/remember which part of the code is actually used and which was just prepared for future development - so you end up maintaining and coding around pieces of code that will never be used.

Like I said, what eventually bites you is that you never ever ever know exactly what version 2.0 will require. So in the end you still have to adapt code, and adapting clean short code is easier.

<comment><USER4> If you have to explicitly _remember_ which code was prepared for future development, you're doing something wrong. The point of having loosely coupled code is that it should be easily modifiable under a wide variety of circumstances.

<comment><USER5> I upvoted you for your braveness but I strongly disagree with you. (For me) Type 2 is wrong for everybody because: \+ Been there, done that, ended sadly; \+ We're all different but our limitations are pretty much the same, respect your colleagues! \+ Every successful achieving programmer I've worked with are persons with particularly good sense; \+ Knowing how programming related skills like abstraction and logic are highly related to cleverness you can be easily tricked into seeing programming as a cleverness demonstration or competition. That should be done in college or in controlled environments(no deadlines, no changes in team).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this one line sums up my views about a lot of trendy software development practices:

> If you're about to take a hundred lines to write what you could in ten, stop > and ask yourself this: what the _fuck_?

TDD advocacy is my pet hate for this today. I read an article the other day that managed to turn _Hello, world_ into about half a dozen source files and dozens of lines of code, all pulled together with a makefile several times longer than the whole effort should have been, and seemed to be claiming some sort of profound revelation from doing this!

The quote is also a succint analysis of why C++ and Java are becoming less useful every year, relative to the field of programming languages as a whole.

And of course, as in the example in the article, it's good for bashing people who think tools like design patterns must be used everywhere, regardless of whether they actually help to keep a design clean and maintainable.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, can you post a link to the "hello, world" article?

<comment><USER6> Your wish is my command. :-)

[http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2010/05/20/hello- world...](http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2010/05/20/hello-world- revisited)

<comment><USER8> I kept looking for the give away that this was some kind of sick parody. But no, it seems totally sincere.

<comment><USER6> I'm afraid several of the guys at ObjectMentor lost the plot some time ago. It's a shame, because back in the day, some of them wrote about ideas that were thought provoking even if you didn't necessarily agree with all of them.

I don't often visit their blogs any more, but occasionally, I still come across their site after someone links to it. It's one of those things where you know it's bad and you should just look away, but somehow you can't help yourself. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Part of the problem is that a language like Java:

1\. Is verbose by its very nature 2\. Has language characteristics that push the developer in the direction of using design patterns at every opportunity.

So what might be a 1000 line program in Ruby is a 3000 line program in Java (translated as directly as possible), but then the deficiencies of the language turns simple idioms in a powerful language into complex design patterns in Java. See: closures, lack of duck typing/deficient type system, etc.

<comment><USER10> I think the Java culture plays a big part in the whole mess.

It would be easily possible in other languages to write 4 implementations of a basic list or public setter/getter for every member or buffered stream interfaces for all kinds of I/O.

Its not done because long solutions are frowned upon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a large part of a post I made April of last year:

KISS: Keep It Simple and Succinct

Succinct means brief and concise, to the point. A succinct argument is one that more directly addresses the point under discussion.

The "traditional" meaning of KISS completely misses the point. The biggest problem KISS addresses is over-complication of plans - and it is not a problem of stupidity. Those most prone to over-complicate are the more intelligent, especially the highly intelligent and highly educated, but lacking in practical experience. Experience, especially wide experience, is the best prophylaxis for over-elaborate plans.

[http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/04/kiss-keep-it- simpl...](http://williambswift.blogspot.com/2009/04/kiss-keep-it-simple-and- succinct.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> In this context "The Evolution of a Python programmer": <http://gist.github.com/289467>

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think I've ever read a rant about code smells which couldn't be trivially fixed with basic functional programming principles.

<comment><USER14> It also depends on the language. I bought a book about functional programming in Java once. I found it painful.

<comment><USER15> You should seriously consider checking out Clojure. It's awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think frameworks have to be engineered carefully; the use of the strategy pattern in the example is a typical and is very soundly used in a framework. I think the problem is that developers write far too many frameworks than they should. Interestingly enough, it's code that isn't extensible that ends up being a framework -- mostly because the authors have time to focus on documentation, support, user interface and the like.

</comment><comment><USER17> TLDR: Don't solve for problems that don't exist.

<comment><USER14> I think a better way to put it is:

        1 - only solve problems that already exist
        2 - only accept solutions less painful than the problem

Really, if programmers could stick to this, this would be all the methodology we'd need!

<comment><USER18> > 2 - only accept solutions less painful than the problem

That sounds good, but it doesn't work unless you have the experience to tell how painful the solutions you thought of actually are--which you don't have if you haven't been hurt by some overengineering.

<comment><USER14> Lacking that, lines of code isn't a bad place to start. Also, if you have coworkers, look at their facial expressions when you explain the thing to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the article... up to a point. Write your programs to be as simple as possible - but not simpler.

</comment><comment><USER20> I completely disagree with the example given in this blog. I don't have time to give a full explaination but I believe the google clean code talks gives a far better arguement than I ever could.

On the general principle I agree that overengineering is to be avoided, but I actually think the example shows a clear disregard for Object Orientated principles.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F72VULWFvc>

<comment><USER21> One of my lecturers wrote the following at the top of our course notes:

 _Contrary to popular opinion using OOP does NOT mean "thou shalt make every last thing an object"_

<comment><USER14> Really, it depends on your environment. In Smalltalk, most things are objects. Not surprisingly, it turns out to be easiest to make _most things_ objects. I find that Smalltalk is best when a program is mostly objects, there's a sprinkling of short-ish procedural methods whose workings are hidden by encapsulation, and perhaps a handful of long optimized algorithmic methods.

I suspect that in Self, it's easier to make more things objects. (jk - _everything_ is an object in Self.) Objects aren't quite as easy to use in C++ and Java. The cost is higher, so the opportunities to use objects with a good cost/benefit payoff are fewer. That's all there is to it.

Does this generalize? In most Functional languages, functions are really easy to use, and can be used in flexible and powerful ways. What's the best way to program in them? Why, using functions! Yup, seems to work. Fancy that!

<comment><USER21> A lot of stuff can work as objects; in fact in many cases an object _can_ be the smallest (or simplest, or most logical etc.) piece of code.

But not _everything_ must be abstracted :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Suggestions on advertising available office space? - <AUTHOR>

My company has got an extra team room right now that would be perfect for a startup based in SF. Anyone have a suggestion for where I should advertise the space? <comment><USER2> 42floors.com comes to mind as the new hotness, though I haven't used it myself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Craigslist

</comment><comment><USER4> loosecubes.com</comment>


I turned off JavaScript for a whole week and it was glorious - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/i-turned-off-javascript-for-a-whole-week-and-it-was-glorious/?mbid=psocial_qz <comment><USER2> I don't need to be sold on it. It certainly is glorious. I make a slight compromise: because some websites are broken and require javascript someone should introduce this guy to NoScript.

</comment><comment><USER3> Javascript, the way it's used, is at best useless, and at worst breaks navigation (especially scrolling, back/forward, bookmarking).

As a result, disabling javascript boost performances on most pages. Not surprising, when you look at the flood of people coming into web development that know close to nothing about it...

</comment><comment><USER4> It's ironic that an article about the awfulness of js on the modern web is rendered unreadable by javascript and/or flash: [http://imgur.com/8Iikyd7](http://imgur.com/8Iikyd7). The page literally crashed my browser on first view.

<comment><USER5> The difference between what happens when I turn off all my blockers([http://imgur.com/yNnP3km](http://imgur.com/yNnP3km)) and when I just turn off JS([http://imgur.com/cPSi5qq](http://imgur.com/cPSi5qq)) is pretty dramatic. It looks like most of the load is advertising according to Disconnect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> of the main reasons I _still_ run Opera 12: Instant global JS on/off switch built right into the browser.</comment>


The $0.001 DIY iPhone 4 Antenna Fix - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1663768/iphone-4-antenna-fix?partner=hacker_news

<comment><USER2> Is this a joke that I'm not getting? Scotch tape? Really? "This problem isn't real, but here's how you fix it."

He also completely dismisses public perception. Did everyone forget Toyota's mess so quickly? If there's a perceived problem with your product, then there's a problem with your product.

<comment><USER3> I can only imagine the reaction if a major Apple competitor had the same problem. Apple gets a pass on everything.

<comment><USER4> That's really what you think? Really?

What do you expect would happen if some Android phone had similar issues? I don't think a lot more than this shitstorm. A few articles on Gizmodo and Engadget maybe, nothing like the widespread coverage we are seeing here.

<comment><USER5> In fact, there were a few (smaller) problems with the EVO 4G:

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/14/htc-evo-4g-and-droid- incr...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/14/htc-evo-4g-and-droid-incredible- suffering-from-unresponsive-scre/) [http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/13/htc- evo-suffering-from-gl...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/13/htc-evo- suffering-from-glass-separation-issues/)

None of the coverage was anywhere close to the iPhone's coverage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could you imagine buying a brand new Mercedes CL550, finding out that if you grip the steering wheel with your left hand it will shut the car down, and then having Mercedes insist that there is no problem and that you should buy a steering wheel cover?

This is so far beyond unacceptable for apple. I cannot believe (well yes, actually, I can) that they're not doing a recall on this or, at the very least, providing users with a free case.

The other tragedy of this whole thing (or maybe it's just brilliance on behalf of apple) is that the stories about the antenna issue are all overpowering the issue that 3G users are having with iOS4. V4 renders the phone slow and buggy. Opening SMS messages will sometimes crash the SMS program. Things are slow, opening the ipod function can take upwards of 10 seconds sometimes.

Really really really really bad form apple. The last 6 months have been terrible for them.

<comment><USER7> In this example the Mercedes also costs the same as a Honda, right?

Look, Apple sets expectations super high, and to a certain extent that's their fault. But they're also innovating like crazy and, unfortunately, there are bound to be some missteps. Would you rather they slow things down a bit? I wouldn't.

<comment><USER8> Ah yes, good point. A Honda that shut down if you touched the steering wheel would of course be met with relaxed shrugs from owners.

<comment><USER9> Because that's what happens when you touch an iPhone? The phone equivalent of what would happen if, hypothetically, Honda shipped a car that "shut down" when you touched the steering wheel?

<comment><USER8> No, but apparently according to the original apologist comment, a faulty Mercedes is okay if it costs the same as a Honda. Do you agree?

I think 'lalalalala omg not listening - nerrds!' would be a more credible, mature response than some of the fallout from this antenna issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one confused by the combination of "this happens to every phone" with fixes, including both this and the official one(s), which are workarounds to prevent shorting the exposed antennas, which no other phone has?

<comment><USER11> RF energy is strange stuff. The coupling to your hand will change its radiation pattern and reception sensitivity. For any phone, where you put your hand changes its RF abilities. The engineers try to make it so common hand holds aren't too bad.

If you are old enough to remember analog TV and "rabbit ears" then you might remember the frustration of trying to adjust your rabbit ears to get good reception on a station. Sometimes it would be great while you were standing near the antenna, but bad when you walked away. Sometimes people would resort to distorting the patterns directly with aluminum foil tags on the rabbit ears.

The same thing happens to phones, though the distances are much smaller because of the frequencies.

If you want to experiment, remember that the direction to the current tower is also important in this system. There is no reason to believe your phone receives uniformly well in a polar pattern about your vertical axis.

Go someplace with less than full bars. Get a grip. Turn 360 degrees slowly enough for the bars to respond, record data at various angles. Try a different grip. Repeat.

<comment><USER10> Yes, I get that stuff. Now how does attaching a bit of tape over the gap, or avoiding bridging the gap with your hand play into that?

It's like they're saying "yes this is a common problem in phones that we're well aware of _and which our unique new "genius" design makes worse_ " without wanting to actually admit the latter bit. So you end up with strange-double talk advice that tells you how to fix problems they're not admitting to having.

<comment><USER11> Most importantly for the meme, that little gap in the metal provides a focal point for people to stare at and say _Well there's your problem!_ It isn't nearly as interesting as "hand vaguely cupped about the lower third with the pinky extended and then curled back touching the bottom left side while up against my face" (which is the transmission killer on my first generation iPhone. If our connection breaks up, there is no reason to assume it was an accident.)

It seems likely that plain old electrical conductivity is in play here. Some people's skin conducts much better than others and anecdotally tape insulation helps. So that is a different mechanism from most(all?) other phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Like my idol, Léon Theremin, I will use this "defect" to develop a special app that allows the user to play music by stroking and caressing his/her iPhone on its various "sensitive" radio receptors.

Then we can sit back and wait for our very own Clara Rockmore to emerge...

</comment><comment><USER13> I've always held my 2G at the top of the phone, primarily to avoid attenuating the wi-fi noticeably, but also to reduce the energy being absorbed by my hand.

Carrying this over to the iPhone 4.0 appears to completely avoid this 'problem'.

It's a shame, because the phone is fantastic and in the areas of magazine-like screen quality, running multiple apps, speed and build, has exceeded my expectations wildly.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is sad in a way: people just spent a few hundred dollars on a shiny (literally) device and now they need to tape it in a very visible place so that it works consistently.

</comment><comment><USER15> All this fuss over the perceived problem of the antenna, it reeks of premature optimization. Has anyone actually observed this being a problem while on a phone call? I'm not talking bars, since bars are a very loose indication of signal strength.

<comment><USER16> Phone calls generally work even with very bad reception. More important here is the data transfer over 3G which has been observed to slow down significantly. The "death grip" is exactly how you would hold the phone when browsing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My iPhone 3GS (and probably all of them) have a somewhat similar problem: when I hold it at the bottom I cover the microphone with my palm and the other side can't hear me. When they start asking me to repeat, I change the way I hold it. Not sure how I discovered this is the problem, maybe other people think they have poor reception.

But there was no media hype about this one. Maybe if Steve Jobs didn't mention the innovative antenna design, no one would have noticed.

</comment><comment><USER18> Marco Arment also has a solution: <http://www.marco.org/733115343>

For those who want to make a clearly visible statement about their antenna woes. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> I hate it when someone on the Internet starts being practical.</comment>


Disney Forces Captain Marvel on Australian Cinemas for an entire week [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpPnmGYMshg <comment><USER2> I did some checking myself and this looks fake. It's really sad how hard trolls are trying to bring down what they perceive as anti-men movies, shows.</comment>


Prisoner's Dilemma for Extra Credit Points at UMD - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/statpumpkin/status/619485489012183040 <comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, what would you do - perhaps this should be a poll instead?</comment>


Colorado Pot Tax Proving More Lucrative Than Expected - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/02/20/colorado_pot_tax_revenue_more_money_than_expected.html

<comment><USER2> So let's do some back of the envelope math

Colorado: 5,268,367 people (2013 est.)

Pot Tax Revenues: $98 million

That's $18.60 per person.

Assuming demand is constant across the U.S. (which is probably not true, but let's go with it)

U.S. population: 317,580,230 (current est.)

That's $5,906,992,278 in tax revenues for the entire country.

2014 is expected to be even bigger.

So what could the nation do with $6 billion+ extra dollars every single year?

Of course even a basic analysis of the situation shows that the money earned/saved is far greater than this: reduced need for enforcement, reduced prison requirements, reduced etc.

The U.S. spends about $74 billion per year on just prisons. What if we could reduce that number by 1/3rd? I wouldn't mind an addition $25 billion/year sloshing around in more productive uses (in addition to the $6b/year in sales tax).

I'm sure there's some more detailed analysis on what the actual numbers might look like, but I'm guessing nationwide, it's something nearing $100 billion/year of money that might be repurposed for things that aren't stupid.

<comment><USER3> Here's a longer, but still mostly back-of-the-envelope calculation: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more- tha...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-than-you- wanted-to-know/)

It turns out that the tax benefits pale in comparison to the slight reduction in car accidents caused by drunk drivers (because pot use seems to displace alcohol use.)

<comment><USER4> Well, that's not exactly what was said at [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more- tha...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-than-you- wanted-to-know/) \-- but I appreciate that you linked there because with some careful record-keeping, some actual data could be collected in Colorado.

Quoting now from [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more- tha...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/01/05/marijuana-much-more-than-you- wanted-to-know/):

      Costs from legalization compared to current system: 200 kQALYs and $2 billion
      Benefits from legalization compared to current system: 260 kQALYs and $7 billion

Although it's not going to be necessary, we can interconvert QALYs and dollars at the going health-care rate of about $100,000/QALY ($100 million/kQALY):

      Costs from legalization compared to current system: 220 kQALYs
      Benefits from legalization compared to current system: 330 kQALYs

And get:

Net benefits from legalization: +110 kQALYs

Except that this is extremely speculative and irresponsible. By far the largest component of the benefits of legalization turned out to be the effect on road traffic accidents, which is based on only two studies and which may on further research turn out to be a cost. And by far the largest component of the costs of legalization turned out to be the effect on IQ, and we had to totally-wild-guess the QALY cost of an IQ point loss. The wiggle room in my ignorance and assumptions is more than large enough to cover the small gap between the two policies in the results.

So my actual conclusion is:

There is not a sufficiently obvious order-of-magnitude difference between the costs and benefits of marijuana legalization for a evidence-based utilitarian analysis of costs and benefits to inform the debate. You may return to your regularly scheduled wild speculation and shrill accusations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ugh, is this going to look like Big Tobacco in 50 years?

Vice taxes and revenue streams to be kept alive for the district?

That's going to be such a kick-in-the-backside for everyone who just wanted to decriminalize it & stop putting people away for years.

<comment><USER6> I suspect that legalisation of weed is going to be a blip in history and they'll heavily tax it to phase it out. It just doesn't make sense to encourage people to breathe in smoke.

<comment><USER7> Marijuana is a drug that encourages people to be less political active(the "laziness" effect) . I would think governments would like such a thing in politically unstable times.

<comment><USER8> I don't think governments have big evil long-term schemes like this

<comment><USER9> You forgot your sarcasm tag, I hope.

<comment><USER8> Yes, governments are simultaneously short-sighted, cunning, inept, plodding, plotting, shambling, scheming and carry out very long-term schemes. But they're also short-sighted and can't do anything right. But also they do nothing unintentionally and 20 things don't go wrong with their schemes. And you can understand governments best by thinking of them as having the motives of a single person in your hunter-gatherer band, who is too greedy and too powerful who takes too much and doesn't give enough back. You can understand governments as you would by trying to read the motives of a single person, capable of thinking, coherency, making singular decisions, led by greed. Basically governments have all the properties of a action movie villain. Think of an action movie villain that isn't motivated by greed or power lust, just like every political villain from all time ever. Taking too much and not giving enough back; betrayal. Or, wait, was I talking about the Greek gods? The natural world can also be understood as reading the motives of a person with human emotions that never do anything by mistake. Think of a movie villain that was more or less accidentally carrying out their misdeeds, mostly coerced by circumstances, blundering along the way. That wouldn't be a very fun movie to watch. Villains always fully choose their evil, no circumstantial factors force their hand. Also Greek gods. And you can understand them by imputing their completely human motives; they always plot and scheme. You have to be able to guess the actions of the other members of your small hominid tribe. Every movie villain explains his motives and his long-winded scheme that would quickly fall apart in reality but that kind of realism wouldn't make a good movie. Political villains however, are often as hopelessly inept as incredibly as they are cunning and good at carrying out multi-generational schemes. Scheming and plotting like a person would. Like Lothar over there by the fire who doesn't give enough back from the hunt, or Runs with Horses over there who is amassing so many alliances as to be a possible threat to my alliances. Could he be planning to attack me, or take my stuff? Me, I care only about the tribe, for others in the tribe, the Real People we should care about, which also includes me of course. I've been doing a lot for the tribe lately. Could you help me tomorrow to rebuild my hut?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The "think piece" part of this article, which makes up most of the text, is pretty hilarious:

"A key question about the public health impact of legal marijuana is how does it change alcohol consumption patterns. To the extent that legal marijuana displaces legal booze purchases, you're going to see an offsetting decline in alcohol tax revenue. Which would be fine—a big win for public health, in fact—but not quite the financial bounty states may be hoping for. Alternatively, if legal pot leads to a complementary surge in beer drinking, you'll have lots of tax revenue but potentially large problems."

So we don't have any evidence or idea if this will affect booze sales, but you know, it could! Also, if it doesn't, there could be other problems, just in general for people...

<comment><USER11> Not saying it does, just "asking the question." Gotta love speculative journalism.

<comment><USER12> It's very clearly not providing an opinion guised as a question. It suggests that it could go up _or_ down, and concludes that it is something to watch out for, because these are two variables very likely to be connected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Marijuana should be legal because the US is supposed to be a free country and there is no reason it should be illegal. Tax revenue is a dirty justification that only demonstrates the extreme hypocrisy. It should never be the justification for legality or illegality. The whole discussion about tax revenue allocation is nothing more than red herring. A 25% tax is nothing more than extreme government theft.

<comment><USER14> Well said. But that's the conflict of America - lip-service to freedom on the one hand, extreme moral conservatism and idiotic public policy on the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The key question posed by the author is presented as an either/or scenario, it omits a (IMO most likely) third possibility. Alcohol consumption stays the same, as does pot consumption, the only large effect is the revenue stream from pot sales shifts from illegal growers/cartels, to taxable entities. This is not a new drug, it's always been fairly easily attainable.

</comment><comment><USER16> How much is it going to save in legal expenses to charge people for posessing/distributing pot?

</comment><comment><USER17> Pot, gambling, junk TV, junk food, social media.

Escapism and distraction.

</comment><comment><USER18> The article notes that it's possible pot purchases may cut into beer purchases. To a certain extent I think that may happen, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people like myself, who smoke a LOT more marijuana than they drink alcohol. I suspect there's a lot more revenue to come from legalizing than there is to lose from people choosing weed over beer.

</comment><comment><USER19> It will be interesting to see statistics on law enforcement expenditure in Colorado.

</comment><comment><USER20> It'll be interesting to see how this windfall tax revenue is actually spent.

Under Amendment 64, the Colorado state constitution requires that the first $40MM of revenue each year be allocated towards public schools[0]. To my knowledge, the rest of the tax money has not yet been earmarked, so it's currently up for grabs.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Amendment_64](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Amendment_64).

<comment><USER21> Since money is fungible (a dollar is a dollar no matter from which hand it comes from or pocket it goes into), it doesn't matter. They'll simply have a bit of handwringing the next time the budget gets tight, then offset the education spending by the amount it is increased by the pot tax.

This happens with remarkable consistency across the US on earmarked taxes, generally sin taxes or lottery receipts. [+] It also happens in a variety of other contexts -- donating $1,000,000 to your university as cash or with the proviso "must be used ONLY for undergraduate scholarships" has the same effect either way.

[+] Edit to add: I wildly underestimated how many taxes were actually earmarked. See: [http://mercatus.org/publication/effects-dedicating-tax- reven...](http://mercatus.org/publication/effects-dedicating-tax-revenues)

<comment><USER20> > Since money is fungible (a dollar is a dollar no matter from which hand it > comes from or pocket it goes into), it doesn't matter.

It does matter, not because those recipients will necessarily receive more money as a result, but because they will become beneficiaries of Amendment 64 and the (legal) marijuana trade.

In the case of the schools, this was intentional - in ten years, if someone wants to repeal Amendment 64, they either (1) have to come up with $40MM elsewhere in the budget, or (2) have to face criticism that they are "cutting the public school budget"[0].

The intent of the tax (alongside the stipulation that it be spent on education) was not to raise money for schools; it was to make opposition to the measure less palatable.

[0] Don't underestimate the power of PTAs - in fact, it's the PTAs in rich areas that originally lobbied in the late 1970s to repeal _just one part_ of the Rockefeller drug laws in New York (possession of marijuana under 27 grams). Their children were being convicted of minor possession, and due to the mandatory minimum sentences, judges were powerless to do anything but sentence them to prison.

Of course, these same rich parents did not view (e.g.) the crack cocaine vs. power cocaine sentencing disparity as a problem, so those laws remained in effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have to imagine these revenues are inflated by the lack of competition. It will be interesting to see how revenues go when pot tourism isn't a thing anymore.

</comment><comment><USER23> The portion of the tax going to public education should have been $40 million plus a flat 5% of revenue to really scale if it's really that lucrative.

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how its doing in WA state.

<comment><USER25> If I recall correctly, the implementation in Washington isn't nearly as far along as in Colorado.

<comment><USER24> It sure feels like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't believe America sometime. Americans are supposed to cherish freedom. Yet they cravenly surrender and prostitute their freedoms at the slightest sign of moral outrage and censure from their fellow citizens. What free-minded person would support 25% taxation on a product which, if used correctly, has no negative effect on anyone other than that person (i.e. incurs no negative externalities) - and therefore no conceivable justification for taxation?

<comment><USER26> Two thoughts:

1\. Your objection applies to all sales tax. 2\. Why do I think you would be equally outraged for staggeringly high laws on pollution-generating industries or firearms, which do have negative effects on other people.

<comment><USER14> 1\. That might be true. I haven't thought about that in any detail.

2\. I don't know why either, because I wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if there is any (increased) consideration for stronger laws against smoking in public areas. Particularly on high traffic sidewalks.

Cigarette smoke is bad enough (and should also be banned in such areas), but Marijuana smoke is far more pungent. It's bad enough we have to deal with exhaust from cars that are clearly illegal (emissions wise), why is it OK to spray toxic fumes all over a sidewalk with a smell that is aptly described as a public nuisance?

<comment><USER28> are you seriously proposing making something illegal because you don't like how it smells?

<comment><USER27> That's clearly what I have proposed. Let's ignore the decades of research that clearly indicates that smoke produced from burning any form of cigarette is carcinogenic and triggers allergy symptoms and complications caused by chronic illnesses like Athsma in others.

It takes a certain level of inconsideration to sit there and cause other people to breathe smoke. How much would it impact someone, say yourself, to kill someone by inducing an Athsma attack on your lunch break?

Further, it's already the case that laws exist to make certain behaviors illegal for the very reason that they inconvenience other people, not because they cause harm. That includes being excessively noisy and producing foul odors in some cases, among many other things.

What I've learned today is that there are a lot of inconsiderate assholes on Hacker News. Be it out of general apathy of others or just sheer stupidity. I'd have argued the latter could not have been the case many months ago, but given the recent discussions and new posters, it seems to be a contender. Perhaps then, it is vogue to "care about others" when it's convenient (for instance, when it makes you look good or benefits you), but otherwise fuck other people, because "what I want to do is more important than your entire life".

And here I thought this wasn't /., reddit, or 4chan. Wrong.

<comment><USER28> as an allergy susceptible smoking asthmatic, i'm going to go out on a limb and guess pollen (or dust, or mold, or...) is a bigger trigger for allergies and asthma than second hand smoke. but i welcome any sources that support your claim.

when i was 12 i was sledding in a park and an overwhelming smell of cigar smoke came over me. i found the guy and asked him to stop smoking because it bothered me, he said "get out of here kid". when i was 12, it felt unjust. today, i consider myself audacious and inconsiderate for even asking.

>> _And here I thought this wasn 't /., reddit, or 4chan. Wrong._

likewise

<comment><USER29> Yeah, if we were banning things because of allergies, lets go after the oak trees first. Those things are absolute menaces: [http://www.joelgarver.com/imgs/pollen.jpg](http://www.joelgarver.com/imgs/pollen.jpg)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Programmer's Life in Developing Country is Harder than in Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/778deed9cd94

<comment><USER2> It seems that the author is articulating the idea that developing for slower connections and using older technologies requires a different skill set than developing using the "state-of-the-art" in the Valley.

Isn't this self-evident? It's unclear why this should necessarily equate to greater respect for developers in the developing world, as a general assertion.</comment>


Exploring 3-Move – A LambdaMOO inspired environment - <AUTHOR> https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2017/04/09/exploring-3-move-a-lambdamoo-inspired-environment.html <comment><USER2> I could say a lot about this topic, but I'll try to keep it brief.

There were a number of similar "post-LambdaMOO" systems built in the mid to late 90s, and early 2000s. I wrote something of my own during a year long bout of .com crash unemployment 2001ish time frame. But before that there was "coolmud" [written by Stephen White who wrote the original MOO before Pavel Curtis adopted it and created LambdaMOO] and then Greg Hudson's "coldmud", which spawned "Genesis", a few other projects, and the thing I was working on but never finished.

Basically they were attempts to generalize the "extensible object oriented network service" side of MOO beyond the 'game' or 'chat' oriented of LambdaMOO and to fix some technical weaknesses that LambdaMOO had.

IMHO these types of architectures/systems were sort of an alternative path for how the internet could have developed if the web and HTTP based architectures hadn't taken over and defined how we think about what the Internet is. (For people who didn't use the Internet prior to the existence of the web it's hard to imagine that, I know.)

I think the combination of prototype oriented object systems plus multi-users plus networking plus group-authoring plus socializing is something that still hasn't been realized to the depth that these systems had, even if they were hobbled by their lack of multimedia capability.

I believe there were similar efforts on the LPC/LPmud side of things, but there were some differences in philosophy there.

LambdaMOO itself lives on and gets some ongoing development here and there.

<comment><USER3> Can you expand (or point to a resource that expands) on the "internet as extensible object oriented network service" concept? I'm having difficulty grasping what the key differences between that and the HTTP approach look like.

My understanding of HTTP is essentially "send request with resource locator to server, receive response usually with document" which seems at face value similar to "send message to object, receive message back".

<comment><USER2> Well, before the development of fat Javascript heavy AJAXy type apps, with websockets, webrtc, etc. the difference was more marked.

A huge difference in granularity, at least. But also a conceptual one. In MOO type worlds the 'physical' objects one 'sees' in the [textual] 'world' are directly associated with programmatic objects (w/ prototypical inheritance but nicer IMHO than Javascript's).

And the environment was such that any MOO user could author -- by creating objects [cloning prototypes] and -- if they had programmer permissions -- by adding "verbs" (methods) to those objects.

And code written in the language was well sandboxed with decent permissions systems and a runtime that enforced good behaviour on programs. Tho in the early days of LambdaMOO it was somewhat easy to DOS the system, that got fixed.

Authoring was easy, barrier to entry low, but there was a consistent metaphor: users in adventure-game-like rooms, with objects that could be manipulated through English-like commands, and a descriptive narrative applied throughout.

I can't help but think this would all be much cooler in this day and age with the arrival of robust natural language parsing, 'augmented reality', and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you don't make it to the end of the article, there's a server running on bluishcoder.co.nz, port 7777:

        nc bluishcoder.co.nz 7777

or with SSL:

        openssl s_client -connect bluishcoder.co.nz:7778

<comment><USER5> Down at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's back now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Upvoted for LambdaMoo, even though I was more of an LPMUD guy. :) LPMUD was the first environment I programmed in for an extended period outside of a course, and it taught me a lot.

<comment><USER7> I was an LPMUD guy too. I found once I got used to its verb syntax it was hard for me to switch codebases to something like a MOO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been off and on playing a DIKU-based MUD [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DikuMUD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DikuMUD) called MUME (Multi Users in Middle Earth) since the early 90s:

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

telnet mume.org 4242

This is an amazing place; it's sort of like actually playing inside the Lord of the Rings books. The world is enormous and gorgeous. It's designed to be player vs. player (one side are the good races, like Humans, Elves and Hobbits, the other side are the evil races, such as Orcs and Trolls.)

However, evil players rarely make it west of Bree. The Shire is a big and safe Player vs. Environment area.

Here's the current global map of zones:

[https://www.realms.org/mume_map.txt](https://www.realms.org/mume_map.txt)

The B is Bree, R is Rivendell and the Ms are Moria.

<comment><USER9> I clicked through to your map link, expecting something massive, sprawling, and Tolkeinesque. In retrospect, what I got was what I should have expected. Also, makes me grin: so perfectly typically MUD. :-)

<comment><USER8> Hah! Well said.

You need to create a character and login to the world and start walking around to enjoy the 'goodness' I described.

It's not conducive to a rapid 'check this thing out' kind of look.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I used to mud/moo back in the day (1994-1998 probably, since that's when I was at school), but apart from infrequent ifcomp-inspired excursions, I haven't tried any lately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Damn, just spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to reset my password. I think this would be one of my oldest accounts.

FYI: Connect info:

telnet lambda.moo.mud.org 8888

<comment><USER6> Most of the old MOO/MUDs didn't have password reset functionality, IIRC. The best you could do is try and convince an admin to do it. I know my MUD of choice didn't require an email address.</comment></comment>


How to Brainwash Your Startup Into a Lean Culture - <AUTHOR> http://theleanstartupmachine.com/2011/10/how-to-brainwash-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> We have "build, measure, learn" and "faster, better, now" whispered in a hypnotic tone constantly playing but barely audible in the background of acid trance music. That and sleep deprivation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Be 1 person. I brainwashed myself.</comment>


Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos <comment><USER2> _'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $250 per home.'_

Make that $2,500. Somewhat less affordable. That's a $2,500 capital investment for electricity that's about a third of the going rate, so it'd pay for itself reasonably quickly (within 5 years, I'd guess).

All this said, if they're safe, easily positioned _and_ cheaper than the regular power grid in base costs, surely the power companies would be interested in rolling these out to lower their own costs? You'd certainly reduce "cost of transport" issues that exist with the current system.

Like the $1/watt solar panels, I doubt we'll be seeing these real soon, no matter the promise, but I hope places like Antarctica, remote island communities, etc, get them first.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone have more concrete information about the design?

How do they modulate the reactor to deal with varying loads? (Or do they dump the energy?)

How is the heat converted to electricity?

<comment><USER4> A little more info is here - not all positive

<http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/12/a_nuclear_hot_t.php>

<comment><USER5> No. The only thing added is a highly speculative and suggestive quote ( _Of course, factoring in enough cronyism, corruption and official ignorance and boosterism, it's possible the principals could make some money during the initial stages, before the crows come home to roost_ ) from the "Los Alamos Study Group".

Also, the article ends in the words, "Or maybe not".

That _fully_ sums up the criticism of the device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> None of this is going to happen without a more streamlined regulatory process to allow their sale in the first place.

<comment><USER7> It looks like these things are going to be a lot easier on the Environment. Not as visually disruptive and I don't think they'll be killing many eagles.

<comment><USER6> nevertheless the anti-nuclear fringe will go haywire over this regardless of its benefits. You are forgetting that these guys operate like a religion, not a rational group. If not, they would have gone pro-nuclear a long time ago.</comment></comment></comment>