Toyota develops first neodymium-reduced, heat-resistant magnet for motors - <AUTHOR> http://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/02/20180220-nd.html <comment><AUTHOR> The headline is about the reduced neodymium content but the most interesting part of the development is good high-temperature performance without requiring any terbium or dysprosium. Additions of those expensive, almost-exclusively- China-produced rare earth elements have been how neodymium magnets are made suitable for high-power, high-temperature applications in motors and generators. Neodymium, cerium, and lanthanum are more common rare earth elements that have more good mineral resources outside China.

Most wind turbines use electromagnets in their generators, plus gearing systems. So-called "direct drive" turbines use high strength permanent magnets and can have longer lifetimes since the gearbox is the fastest-degrading part of conventional turbines. But turbines with permanent magnet generators have been only a minority of the market, in part because affordable and assured supplies of key heavy rare earth elements are not available outside China. (Goldwind, the only wind turbine manufacturer presently with an all-direct- drive lineup, is Chinese.) Powerful magnets with less need for rare materials can improve wind turbines to charge EVs as well as motors to move them.

<comment><USER2> While innovation to substitute an expensive ingredient from a potentially unreliable supplier is laudable, from a chemist/metallurgist point of view I wish there was more innovation in mining and cleaning up the process of getting rare earth in the first place. Every rare earth element increases option value and the potential to make further progress.

The main reason rare earth are expensive is that they mining is done in decades old tech fashion, and dirty as hell. China does not seem to mind as much, as long as it is controlling a strategic resource. Finding higher concentration deposits, and improving the process of extracting the rare earths elements is something I wish to happen more of...

<comment><USER3> I also hope for innovation in the mining business.

This also seems to be underserved niche for start-up companies. From miners that I have talked with, this is a small-moving enterprise setup.

<comment><USER4> The real innovation in mining is coming from companies like Planetary Resource and Deep Space Industries.

<comment><USER5> Those are moonshot companies; if they work they'd have the potential to bring in trillions worth of minerals from space, but before they get there they'll probably require hundreds of billions of investment first. Plus they'd destabilize the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am very curious how they create grains of the cerium and then coat them with neodymium to then fuse them together. I theorize that they first alloy the cerium and lanthanum together and then grind it to a correct particle size. Then they negatively electrically charge the rare earth particles and bond neodymium to it with vapor deposition but I don't know it that is possible at that scale. They would then press the particles together and heat them up so that they fuse but don't liquify. All of this looks very very cool I just have no concept for how it would actually happen.

<comment><USER6> Never mind, I just found the answer to my own question but I find it interesting none the less. So as the solution of the three metals cool if done correctly the neodymium will come out of solution to form a mesh of neodymium around the grains of cerium and lanthanum in a similar way that pearlite forms from austinite and ferrite in steel. This will give them a "sponge" of neodymium to conduct the magnetic field but have the cerium and lanthanum act as filler.

To explain what I am talking about way better than I ever could, this video is how heat treating steel will change it's properties and why different steels act the way they do. [https://youtu.be/6jQ4y0LK1kY](https://youtu.be/6jQ4y0LK1kY)

<comment><USER7> If memory serves, in standard Nd-B-Fe magnets the neodymium also concentrates at the grain boundary in the same way. My guess is that the Ce/La is acting as a stabilizer for the internal structure replacing Nd that would otherwise have been stuck inside the crystallite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Copper induction motors use no magnets at all. 20 years ago, the control algorithms and power electronics required were prohibitive, but the tech now seems fundamentally superior to permanent magnet motors.

Why are magnetic motors of such interest to Toyota?

<comment><USER9> For several reasons. One of them is that induction motors don't work as a generator, their torque/speed curve is bad as well

And magnets instead of electromagnets allow you to have brushless motors. You could go with a synchronous motor but I guess the efficiency is not very good

<comment><USER10> You are incorrect. Induction machines are often used as generators. My employer uses them almost exclusively in the generator configuration. The Lorentz force is symmetric; in the generator mode of operation the magnetizing flux vector leads the torque-producing current vector instead of lags, but the physics still works the same.

The induction torque speed curve is also very performant even when compared to PM machines so I don't understand your criticism. Source: motor control engineer.

<comment><USER9> I stand corrected about not being able to use induction motors as generators, still

As per wikipedia

> An induction generator produces electrical power when its rotor is turned > faster than the synchronous speed... An induction generator usually draws > its excitation power from an electrical grid

Which is not what they want in a car

Also they do want good torque at zero speeds, while it can be done with induction motors it's not ideal

<comment><USER11> The Tesla roadster uses PM free induction motors: [https://www.tesla.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless- mot...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/induction-versus-dc-brushless-motors)

According to the article, the torque limitations are only for a poorly controlled drive current.

<comment><USER9> Good article. And I quote:

> Today, all the hybrids are powered by DC brushless drives, with no > exceptions. The only notable uses of induction drives have been the General > Motors EV-1; the AC Propulsion vehicles, including the tzero; and the Tesla > Roadster.

> Induction machines are more difficult to control. The control laws are more > complex and difficult to understand. Achieving stability over the entire > torque-speed range and over temperature is more difficult with induction > than with DC brushless. This means added development costs, but likely > little or no recurring costs.

A _hybrid_ has different characteristics and requirements from the motor than a purely electrical vehicle as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks like it might be Toyota telling investors "If global neodymium prices skyrocket again, we'll have an edge over our competitors".

The actual heat resistance is only of marginal benefit for automotive uses, where more cooling fins or a fan are usually better solutions.

<comment><USER13> It is probably even more drastic than that: a few years ago China blocked export of some rare earths to Japan for a few months.

This has led to several researchs aimed at reducing the strategical needs of these minerals in the Japanese industry.

<comment><USER14> That's exactly what it is:

"Toyota is trying to make electrified vehicles less dependent on Chinese minerals"

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/toyota-is-trying-to-make- ele...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/20/toyota-is-trying-to-make-electric- vehicles-less-dependent-on-chinese-minerals.html)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/toyota- re...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-20/toyota-readies- cheaper-electric-motor-by-halving-rare-earth-use)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is this special?

I used to work at a company that makes pumps with magnetic bearings. To pump hot liquids, we needed special magnets with higher Curie temperatures than traditional Neodymium magnets. Our high-temperature products had Samarium- Cobalt magnets and ran, if memory serves, up to almost 200°C.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a pretty good overview here:

[https://supermagnetman.com/blogs/news/understanding- magnet-g...](https://supermagnetman.com/blogs/news/understanding-magnet- grades-and-magnet-tables)

Neodymium-iron-boron magnets can have a higher energy product than samarium- cobalt, but require additions of expensive/rare heavy rare earth elements to work well at elevated temperatures. (Or require special microstructure modifications like Toyota has developed.) SmCo magnets have had good high temperature performance from the beginning, but a lower energy product.

Other issues that discourage widespread substitution of SmCo magnets for NIB:

\- Samarium is significantly rarer than neodymium in economically exploitable rare earth resources (see table 1 here: [https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2013/1072/OFR2013-1072.pdf](https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2013/1072/OFR2013-1072.pdf))

\- The iron-boron balance of a neodymium-iron-boron magnet is cheap, whereas the cobalt in a SmCo magnet is relatively expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tried to read it on the phone. Got a huge blank page, with a few chat heads. Wish people stick with basic HTML if they don't know what they're doing...

<comment><USER17> Are you sure the page loaded? What browser are you using?

The blog, and its linked Toyota page, both work well for me in the Materialistic(HN reader) WebView.

<comment><USER16> iOS 10, Safari, private mode

This is all I see..

[https://imgur.com/a/YdhZj](https://imgur.com/a/YdhZj)</comment></comment></comment>


Justin.TV's new Android app in beta next week;  iPhone app hits 1.5M downloads - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/30/exclusive-justin-tvs-new-android-app-iphone-app-hits-1-5m-downloads-video/

<comment><USER2> I think they have got very efficiently implemented streaming video app. I have hardly noticed any buffering even over AT&T's 3G! Congrats to the JTV team!

</comment><comment><USER3> I use justin.tv quite a bit. Mostly to watch Laker games since I live in Berkeley atm. This means that next week, I'll be able to catch Laker games on my HTC incredible that I just got yesterday. Sweet.

It never ceases to amaze me how a small startup can deliver exactly what I need, and in this case at the cost of a few measly ads that I happily click every now and then. The NBAs implementation is garbage and the mobile part is nonexistent.

I know it's not the most legitimate way to watch games, but if they NBA offered a quality product, I would happily pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER4> How serendipitous - I was just wondering when or if they were coming out with an app last night :)</comment>


Ask HN: Protocol Translator to/from NNTP - <AUTHOR> Many stuff (including this Hacker News) uses protocols other than NNTP. Is there the protocol translator programs to use with NNTP clients?<p>I recommend to implement NNTP on your server instead though, but, if that won't do then the protocol translation program is the second way. <comment><AUTHOR> The NNTP client software I wrote allows this, if instead of the port number you put ! and a shell command, will create a socket pair and execute that shell command connected to it.</comment>


Codecraft - <AUTHOR> http://technically.us/code/x/codecraft/

<comment><USER2> I read a lot of articles that talk about programming being "low social status" or unappreciated.

I can't say that I see that in my daily life at all. Usually, when I'm around non-technical people, if I mention what I do at my job, or what some of friends do at theirs, most people are interested, and want to hear more.

Perhaps this is just an artifact of living in the Bay Area. Do others hear this same sentiment?

That being said, I think this article is right on about considering programming a craft, and is very well said.

<comment><USER3> _Perhaps this is just an artifact of living in the Bay Area. Do others hear this same sentiment?_

I think there's a crucial bit of context missing here. I live in Chile and I can tell you that most (but not all) of the places at which I've worked treat programmers as second-class employees.

Here are some extreme perceptions I've witnessed at some of my jobs: we are either incompetent or overpaid; we have to be monitored and managed correctly, otherwise we'll slack away and/or engage in miscellaneous mischief; we never get things done on time, within the budget or the way the users want them; in other words, we're just a sinkhole for money.

On the other hand, if you talk to a non-technical person outside the workplace context, they'll usually react the way you describe it. I think that, in the end, it all depends on the culture, both corporate and general.

<comment><USER2> I wonder if the work environment has more to do with. The programmers I know all work at companies where what they do is the main product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very well said. This hits on some points that I have been thinking of recently.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's how I gain respect as a programmer. I complete my work on time, I do brilliant work, I don't abide cheesehead managers wanting to set unrealistic schedules, and I maintain a certain level of deliberate eccentricity to keep everyone guessing. Now, nobody wants to piss me off because they're too afraid I'll quit and leave everyone in a lurch. How you are perceived in your career is entirely up to you.</comment>


Show HN: A Billboard-like chart for Wikipedia articles - <AUTHOR> http://top.hatnote.com <comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report)

A curated weekly report that cuts out all the bot-generated hits and gives context.

<comment><USER3> > Always a popular article, but rarely this high on the chart. Founder Mark > Zuckerberg's (#18) recent announcement that he planned to give away 99% of > the gazillions he has earned from giving us the ability to "like" posts > about internet memes and keep informed of the insane racist rantings of your > distant relatives likely caused the view bump this week.

That's fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Designed for simplicity, but there's a blog post with more info here: [http://blog.hatnote.com/post/135182048397/announcing-the- hat...](http://blog.hatnote.com/post/135182048397/announcing-the-hatnote- top-100)

</comment><comment><USER4> B. K. S. Iyengar's page in #1 in English, German, Spanish, French, Catalans and Swedish. Is this a bug or is there a reason all of Europe and the US is fascinated by him today?

And what's wrong with the Italians?

<comment><USER5> Yesterday was his birthday, and the Google Doodle was about him. That probably had a big effect on the article's ranking, as I know I and many others clicked it and read more about him.</comment></comment>


What If Monopolies Are Good for Us? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/seeking-intellect/what-if-monopolies-are-good-for-us-93fe2ea8c290

<comment><USER2> Monopolies can be good..if they aren't abused. But at some point, a monopoly realizes they don't need to compete anymore and we get terrible service, prices, and/or no innovation.

Google, Amazon, and Ebay are all near-monopolies in their fields and I have seen all of the above at one point in time.</comment>


WSJ Pulls Back On What Google Searchers Can Read For Free - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/wsj-pulls-back-on-what-google-searchers-can-read-for-free-112922 <comment><USER2> This has been going on for quite some time at the WSJ. The only truly newsworthy part of this story is that, after being frustrated by a partial page teaser, the author actually coughed up $260 for a year of WSJ when he knew he could wait for an offer of $100 less. Rupert Murdoch must be rubbing his hands.</comment>


America Lacks Meaningful Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://greaterseas.com/2011/05/the-future-of-innovation/ <comment><USER2> I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation selling ads, making social media startups – slaves with white collars. Internet hype has us chasing VCs and tweets, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no AI Winter. No Project MAC. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be Zuckerbergs, and Bill Gateses, and rock star programmers, but we won't. We're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

<comment><USER3> Oh, boo-hoo. You've also apparently been raised to believe that someone (probably the government in some form) owed you the life of your dreams, and as it dawns that you might have to work for a living, you assume your "rights" are being violated, have a tantrum, and compose yet another leftist manifesto.

I suspect there is something wrong with how you were educated by "the system," but it's not what you think.

<comment><USER2> Here I was thinking that everyone on the Internet had seen Fight Club, and you go and prove me wrong.

<comment><USER4> (from India), This is the first movie i am going to watch now. Thanks jff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think there is a bias in where the author, and a lot of the people who have commented below, get their data points on innovation.

If you're routinely reading tech blogs and forums, the usual suspects will appear and you'll naturally assume that the innovation taking place is all web-app related and social media related. If you're reading scientific journals on the other hand, you'll be overwhelmed with the amount of R&D taking place in whatever field you're following. American corporations spend hundreds of billions annually on R&D. These innovations show up in subtle places most people take for granted. Just because you can't see it, or it's not on TechCrunch, doesnt mean it isnt happening.

I would politely suggest that this author, and anyone that routinely reads the same 7 tech blogs, subscribe to MIT Tech Review. It offers incredible insight into more... "fundamental" (for lack of a better word) innovation (not to say improving the way people communicate and access information is not fundamentally innovative).

<comment><USER6> I just subscribed to Tech Review, haven't received my first issue yet but I have been reading the site a lot. Seems to feature a lot more interesting tech news and information then most sites/magazines including Wired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't get this meme. Innovation can happen anywhere - and in fact it often does regardless of how seemingly 'useless' the application is. Livejournal is 'boring', but out of it we got Memcached; Facebook is a 'PHP doodad' (actual news article called it that, I kid you not!); out of it we got HipHop and Cassandra and Thrift. Friendfeed is a 'frivolous social app', and out of it we got Tornado.

 _"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks."_ Sound true at face-value. But guess what? In order to process the huge amounts of data necessary to 'make people click ads', we use map/reduce, and we get and/or improve Hadoop. Both of which may then be used for _other_ Big Data applications.

Sure, web applications _seem_ trivial. But the innovations created as an aside to them very often are not.

<comment><USER8> All of these are hacks. Interesting and useful, but hacks. None of these will be around in ten years. It's not the kind of future-inspiring innovation the author was referring to.

Web applications don't seem trivial -- they are trivial. Scaling them means being creative, but don't confuse that with true innovation.

<comment><USER9> I say this without irony: I think that Facebook changes everything. If Facebook is not around in 10 years, then at least one social networking site will be. People want to be able to easily communicate online with the people they know in a global way. Facebook is becoming the global human database.

<comment><USER8> You're right that a global database, partially about us and our relationships (including a social network), is the future. Many are working on it, including me. And Facebook has some seed data for that, but that's the extent of it.

We'll remember Facebook in ten years the way we remember MySpace now: We don't. Facebook changes nothing.

<comment><USER9> I can _see_ the changes Facebook has made in how people communicate right now. This is not a prediction, I can observe it. I know people who no longer use email and exclusively use Facebook for online communication. They share vacation photos with their family and friend sthrough Facebook. They announce life-changing events through Facebook. I, personally, have maintained communication with people that normally I would have just stopped talking to. These are not hypotheticals. These are real, actual changes in how I and others communicate. Facebook has an order of magnitude more users than the previous attempts - Friendster and MySpace - and is able to have much more impact than them because of it.

If you're working in the same space as Facebook, you're not doing yourself any favors by denying its impact. One, it harms your perspective, and two, it harms your credibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "The people that are using digital innovations to solve real world problems like energy, health care, agriculture, and transportation are ahead of the curve."

Those are all capital intensive. Most 20 year olds don't have that much capital. It would be great to see more investment in this space, though.

I'm sure someone straight out of school could write software to improve healthcare records management, but the cost of maneuvering through healthcare regulations would be higher than most could afford.

My point is that people fresh out of school who want to be independent are tackling the biggest problems they can on a budget of $1-2000/month.

<comment><USER11> Maybe that's the real lament then - that so many people fresh out of school have such a strong desire to be independent that they don't contribute to efforts to solve the problems you listed in your quote.

I'm not saying people aren't justified in wanting to not "work for the man". I'm just saying that maybe the fact that working for the man is perceived as such a bad thing (or _is_ such a bad thing) is a bit closer to a root cause of America's problems than the idea that making people click ads is the best way to make a buck today.

<comment><USER12> "working for the man"(in his 60s) is the fastest way to stop innovating fast. They are earth grounded not "pie in the sky" reasonable people.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." – George Bernard Shaw

Get a traditional job on your youth and wait to have a family to sustain and not being able to take risks. That is the definition of killing innovation and creativity. Kids are creative, middle age people are not. Kids can think out of the box, adults are "inside the box".

<comment><USER13> |Kids are creative, middle age people are not.

In most fields(except the web) , most serious entrepreneurs are around 40.

<comment><USER14> How dare you go against the Cannon of YC/TechCrunch Everyone who is 30+ is an idiot. People are smartest when they are in High school and progressively detoriate as they learn more

<comment><USER15> People are smartest when they're old, but they're also the most risk-averse when they're old.

60 year olds today are generally uninterested in creating the future. Their main concern is with their own health I find. The more active 60 year olds also seem to love playing with real estate, buying/selling/renovating.

It's very hard to get them to invest in some future technology which will change the world.

<comment><USER16> Exactly! Another very important reason, why the US _is_ THE innovator in the world. Its the only industrial country with lots of young people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't agree with you, I went to the MIT 100K business plan awards the other night and there were very few types of companies of what you talk about. I think you're basing your assumptions on reading too many TechCrunch-ish articles that focus on the consumer web-based marketplace.

For example, the winner of the MIT 100K contest develops sanitation devices for third-world countries. Read more over here: [http://bostinnovation.com/2011/05/11/sanergy-wins- mit-100k-b...](http://bostinnovation.com/2011/05/11/sanergy-wins- mit-100k-business-plan-competition-to-turn-shit-into-gold/)

I can think of tons of other examples, but don't have time to go list them out. Just don't read a website like Techmeme or TechCrunch and think you're really getting a total picture on the startup scene. I can tell you stores of many of my friends working in high-tech ceramics and crystals, and new recylcing technologies...

<comment><USER18> Sounds like something I'd love to be hearing about since I started in Chem myself. Is there a non-software tech news aggregator? Or even a blog by you with interesting developments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> But isn't this just the natural flow of innovation? We solve trivial cases first and then once the all of the idiosyncrasies of the technology have been fleshed out, we proceed to more advanced use cases?

We had Geocities with animated butterflies and horribly designed Guestbooks for others to exchange comments. Now we have Facebook that keeps people connected in realtime regardless of geographic boundaries with a fairly compelling user experience (relative to Geocities and that of 15 years ago).

I have faith in the current generation; trivial problems always become boring so hopefully this pushes into a more meaningful considerations in our software development.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wake up. "Web" is not the largest nor the most innovative startup scene. Bio- tech, medical tech, and energy are all much larger. That's where the the innovation happens. It just doesn't seem that way because they happen not to be industries based on _diffusion of information_. Think about it.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you want "fundamental" innovation, you simply aren't going to get it in a jiffy.

Imagine if a person dead over a 100 years ago woke up today. What present day technologies would he have no trouble recognizing ? 1.Movie Projector. 2.Bulb. 3.Car.

That's about it. We use pretty much the same 35mm format and film projector that was originally invented some 110 years ago( George Lucas's constant lament ). We drive around in cars powered by the internal combustion engine invented a 100 years back. We come home to a dark house and turn on the bulb invented a 100 years ago.

If you allow some leeway for time, you can add a few more "genuine" innovations - Air Conditioning, Transistor/IntegratedCircuit, Antennas/SW/MW/AM/FM, ...

The rest is just fluff. That's always going to be the case, unless you have some major genetic mutation that'll cause all of us to wake up tomorrow & fly away in our flying cars or jetpacks we rig up in the basement toolshed.

<comment><USER14> Drugs, Transpants, Chemotherapy, Vaccines, chemical fertilizers, nuclear energy, internet, Wireless, Jet Engines, Petroleum Cracking, Plastics, polymeric fibers, lasers .......

<comment><USER22> 1\. You are being rude. Don't write anything that you wouldn't say to someone's face.

2\. I believe you completely misread the parent's point: that there are only a few technologies that _are_ 100 years old. (Not sure what that means with regards to the 'transformative' argument, but still...)

<comment><USER21> Thanks. The "only 3 innovations have lasted over 100 years" premise isn't original. I first heard it at a graduation ceremony and it made a lasting impact on me. Ofcourse the speaker was very charismatic & way more dramatic than I am :)

But the phrase keeps popping up in several places. For instance, in Hedgehogging, Barton Biggs goes to a pre-2000 tech conference where they famously declare that technology innovations will propel the Dow to 20,000 in 1 year! Biggs calls bullshit & points out that genuine innovation like Air Conditioning & steam engines are once-in-a-lifetime event. He is asked if the internet is a "fundamental" innovation & he disagrees. He becomes a laughing stock. The next year the Dow drops 2000 points.

<comment><USER7> It pops up in Nicholas Nassem Taleb's works, too: "the technologies that run the world today (like the Internet, the computer and the laser) are not used in the way intended by those who invented them", and: "the three most significant inventions of the past 100 years (...)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The products that are being developed by the new startups in the Silicon Valley are gradually shifting from technology to entertainment, like Hollywood. Google was still a productivity-tools oriented company, while Facebook is mostly Hollywood style entertainment, a new TV if you wish. This can be evidenced by the fact that Google is never blocked at work places, while Facebook is almost always blocked as a productivity killer. The people that this new TV show industry attracts are naturally different from the people that the makers of productivity tools attract.

</comment><comment><USER24> Not to make this a mutual admiration society, but I couldn't agree more. I sent that BusinessWeek article to all of my friends that work for Google and eff-book.

One of the problems is that doing innovative things is, by defacto, riskier. I perceive that the general appetite for risk has decreased a lot for whatever reason.

People are happier than ever hitting singles or doubles rather than opting for the grand slam that really revolutionizes industries and... _solves_ the goddam problem. It's been the hardest thing for me to hire smart/talented people to join an awesome team with a bold vision alone when well capitalized companies can provide safety, enticing salaries, back massages, free food/beer.

One thing that I think could help are solving problems that are really concrete and tangible -- Like putting a man on the moon. We need more of that sort of drive in order for people to be inspired to swing for the fences.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's pretty easy to disprove statements like "America Lacks Meaningful Innovation" by counterexample. The iPhone. kiva.org. Tesla. SpaceX.

Something along the lines of "Much of America's so-called innovation is meaningless" might be more accurate. But any environment that is sufficiently conducive to innovation will produce a lot of meaningless innovation along with the meaningful stuff. Innovation consists of a huge number of failed experiments and a few successful ones.

<comment><USER26> So you're saying that if people just keep making photo sharing apps (flickr, facebook, color, instagram)....eventually those people will invent space travel or nuclear fission?

<comment><USER21> Heh. That was quite funny, the way you put it.

Seriously though, the chap who figures out controlled nuclear fusion will quite likely work out of a physics lab in a University both of which are funded by the ad dollars I you & the rest of humanity spend on facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't really agree. It's more that innovation isn't publicized and talked about as much as companies that are looking to score big. It also takes longer to mold innovation into something that can be sold; in the end, we still need to eat.

Also, why America? How is it different in other countries? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER28> I don't think the author thinks it's better elsewhere. I assume he's American and is just lamenting that this generation isn't living up to his standards. I don't really know that it matters how much innovation there is or isn't. We can always get better. I'd rather see this argument than the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It would be great to have a comparison of fluff to meaningful innovation today vs. decades ago. How many man hours were spent on silly military ventures? Manned surveillance satellites, nuclear artillery, boomer subs, ICBMs, MIRV, the Orion project etc. These particular projects led nowhere and had few useful side effects. It would be interesting to add up the man hours and compare it to the web economy.

Rhetoric is enjoyable to read, fun to write but in-depth analysis of our economic and technological progress is a hard problem.

As far as the web goes, more can be done on it even before we resort to poorly served enterprise/medicine/energy markets for new ideas. It's the same problem desktop software once had when that market was over-saturated with word processor or email client clones. It's only today that there are word processors with new features, like the no-distraction theme. That could have been done then, but there was a bad environment for new ideas.

Web people are chasing clone ideas because there's a bad environment for ideas again. There's too much feature overlap between various social network and communication tool attempts like conversate, qonversation, twitter, reddit, HN etc. Focus on execution over ideas might matter more for your personal success, but it's horrible for technological progress.

Also I don't expect the web culture of young hipsters and hackers getting excited about enterprise/medicine/energy. Such markets could be served indirectly, through some generic CMS/communication/portal/DB thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> Most serious innovation happens behind the scenes and out of the public's eye. Among other reasons, most of the public (the laypeople) do not understand the actual innovation concepts and technologies, so even if time was spent marketing it, it'd still end up as...

internet = tubes

</comment><comment><USER31> At the risk of unpopularity, let me be the devils advocate here.

Warning: I am going to support 41 M investment in Color and will point out some odd issues with the way Ph.D./University research is funded.

What is the ideal environment for innovation? Give some hard problems to smart people, give them enough time and money to solve them. At the end even if the effort fails one learns what does not work. I feel that the people at Color Inc. have this sort of freedom with a committed 41M funding. No? Do you think all they will do with this freedom is just photo sharing? I doubt.

On the other hand, innovation gets stiffed by short term targets/pressures. It gets stiffed when you need your research proposals to go through a large peer review committee (at NIH or NSF). Why? Most innovative but unproven ideas are killed right there. Feature prominent people as co-investigators or consultants and your chance of funding greatly increases. Of course, this system is still better than in many other countries, but there is some room for improvement.

</comment><comment><USER32> _While many of the best and brightest try their hand with media companies, the bane of the American economy – health care – is begging for talent and innovation._

"Health Care" and the medical industry are not the same thing and that's one of the biggest mental blocks America has. I did the homemaker and full-time mom thing for 2 decades and it allowed me to keep my son with cystic fibrosis remarkably healthy in spite of not having a diagnosis until late in life. Later we were both diagnosed. Because I did the full time mom thing for so long and my idea of "health care" included things like cooking and cleaning (instead of drugs and surgeries), I was able to get well after spending a year at death's door.

I've got your health care talent and innovation right here: <http://healthgazelle.com/> and it has nothing to do with the current medical industry.

Now I just need to grow it, learn to write code and create a more information- dense delivery mechanism (aka game).

</comment><comment><USER33> One question: What is meaning?

Making life longer? Making life better? Creating options? Creating experiences?

I think everyone here can agree on the basic idea that some things have meaning and some do not. Reaching consensus on what specifically has meaning, though, is impossible.

Finally, is it that far fetched to posit that technologies developed and refined to predict consumer desires or the financial markets can be repositioned to predict weather, disease (both on a world-wide level and a cellular level). That these predictions can be used to improve the quality of people's lives, the availability of food, and otherwise? These techniques are the byproduct of the current bubble, and targeting them at the physical world, scaling them up (planetary) or down (molecular) will be the focus of the next century.

Finally, in relation to my earlier point, 42... Discuss.

</comment><comment><USER34> We are a generation of fluff and polish.

Today's most celebrated young 'engineer' is Mark Zuckerberg, creator of a really cool way to rank hot chicks, measure faux popularity and extend the social dyamics of high school into the real world. We make dramatically scored movies about his trials and ultimate triumph and rank Facebook as the greatest company to emerge in the last half-decade with a $50bn valuation.

Where is our Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla or even Howard Hughes? Is it Steve Jobs and his charisma? What we consider innovation has taken the form of the iPhone and the iPad, fancier toys in polished packages with glaringly less functionality than is a technical possibility today, conveniently dumbed-down so it is easier to keep us not thinking too hard and, God-forbid, doing anything really imaginative.

Sure there is interesting work being done out there in green energy, space, biotech and nanotechnology research. These were all conceivable decades ago. We are unable to create good science fiction anymore because our imagination is just as bad as it was in the 1800s. My God, they built driverless cars that work, why isn't that game-changing Google spin-off the hot new company of the decade? Does anyone even know the name of the former Stanford Professor whose work could lower accident rates, eliminate traffic jams and parking problems, make automobile ownership obsolete and drastically cut down emissions and manufacturing waste? We could have a real transportation cloud that actually does something useful other than being a repository for our videos and photos that allows 'sharing with family and friends'.

We are complacent enough to only care about things that distract us from actually being productive. Just about any system out there leaves huge room for improvement. Everything is broken or needlessly inefficient: the government, the legal, financial, energy, educational, healthcare, transportation, and disaster management systems. Even the Internet is broken. We should be building efficient sustainable systems that scale, not software. Real innovation requires an iterate-or-die mindset.

I am an African. Don't even get me started on the developing world.

<comment><USER16> Helping to connect all humans on the planet is not important? This has been said many time before and you don't have to agree with it, but imho Facebook is a really important and revolutionary tool that has improved many lives including my own. Sometimes the benefits where beyond my expectations.

I think, the reason why you see so much development in software, is because its easy! I'm a mechanical engineer and still spend most of my time writing code. Why? Because, all I need as PC! No staff, regulations, no material, no manufacturing tools. This saves time and money and makes you independent and fast. The entrance barrier is just very, very low, so as long as there is any demand for innovation in software, there will be someone who will try to code.

I have this "to much software" feeling all the time, too. We definitely need more innovation in hardware. Luckily, with innovations like 3D printers or Polycaprolactone the entrance barrier for hardware is becoming lower, too. However, in my experience, even these trends are largely fulled and based on software. We are living in the Information Age.

<comment><USER34> Email already connects everyone on the Internet but billions of people are not online by an accident of geography and birth. Mobile phones connect a reasonable percentage of the rest. I may be mistaken but it is doubtful that many users' quality of life would be dramatically affected by the sudden demise of Facebook. It may be as bad as losing your favourite TV channel, but life goes on. Facebook is a convenience that does not solve any of our real problems or alleviate human drudgery in any way, It only increases the enjoyment of existing wealth at idle time.

Incidentally, an explicit statement of what mankind's actual goals are and what resources are being committed to solving them would go a long way to show that we really all want the same things. Anyone that believes our interests are best served by large corporations and governments at war is delusional. These entities rely on the premise that success can only come at the expense of the 'other guy'. In the grand scheme of things they are local optima that promote the very scarcity that they have evolved to manage. Open Source Software can teach something here, there are multiple distributions and programs, each freely borrowing from the successes and avoiding the failures of the other. The healthy but open competition between them means that we get the best operating systems that no money can buy. Even OSS is not immune to meaningless rivalries and sabotage.

The information age gives us new tools to approach the physical world which is where ALL the real challenges still are, even in computing (think the end of Moore's law, and the potential of quantum computing and communication). You mention mechanical engineering, we should have amazing open-source mechanical modelling software that realistically simulates the physical properties of large systems, allowing you to design, build and test machines from a catalog of reuseable components and subsystems in a virtual lab (Tesla did this in his head), and send it out into the cloud for fabrication and delivery.

We all seem to agree that life is hard, why can't we approach it as an engineering problem? I would like to see someone attempt to engineer a society in a systematic scientific way. Evolutionary algorithms, game theory and a few Petaflops of modelling power for the common objective function. No secrecy, sentiment or ideology just let the best algorithms decide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Poppycock.

Health care's problems in the United States are not technical. Health Care's problems are regulatory, and systemic. (My day job is in health care for the last 20 years in 35 hospitals in 5 states.) Health care's problems in poor countries are primarily due to a lack of hygine and clean water. Most of the rest of their problems can be helped with decent tropical disease vaccine research. That's not an interest or willingness issue, that's a funding and economics issue.

There are massive amounts of funding for clean/green tech right now. Those innovations are going to be hard, and come slowly, but we do have a lot of brilliant minds working on those problems.

I dare say I have a front seat at the innovation table by hosting the largest group of garage stage startups at Hackers & Founders Silicon Valley. I see a lot of amazingly cool stuff months before it hits event the startup press.

Here's what I see:

Founders building social media startups are rare. Precious few founders think about monetizing via ads, unless they are building a search engine. Funding for ad based, or social media startups are hard to come by unless they show tons of traction before funding.

The coolest apps I'm seeing built are hardware peripherals to mobile phones or mobile devices: An ultrasound probe attached to an iPhone that can serve as a fetal heart monitor. Motion tracking devices that can be attached to your head and ankle so you can control a racing game on your iPad while excdcising on your bike.

There's a ton of innovation happening around the food space, creating new markets for food producers and consumers.

There are also companies like Genomera.com, which is building a system for crowd sourced clinical trials. Factual.com is building an open source model around big data.

BioCurious is a very cool hacker space/community around DIY bio that's getting organized. As the costs of bio hacking come down, there's going to be a ton of innovation there.

There's tons of innovation surrounding the Kinect. I talked with the CEO of Health 2.0 a few weeks ago, and a Neurologist and a programmer got together at one of their hackathons, and in a weekend, built a pediatric gait abnormality monitor. Wait until the official SDK comes out, and drivers are included in Windows 8, and you're going to see some really cool things.

The very fabric and character of Silicon Valley is changing because of innovation in how companies are funded (Angel List). Hundreds, and soon thousands of two to four person startups are going to be funded. I believe what's going to happen is because of that, the rate of innovation in Silicon Valley and around the globe is going to accelerate dramatically.

You complain that there's no innovation because everybody is just building gadgets. Gadgets like cell phones are revolutionizing 3rd world economies, and mobile payments via cell phones are creating truly disruptive innovation like electronic banking and electronic money transfer. I visited my brother doing economic development in Honduras, and most everyone carries a cell phone, even if they live in a house with a dirt floor.

Have you looked at the innovations that are happening in robotics? My nephew is studying at a community college in rural Minnesota right now, and he's in a robotics competition. He's programming a robot that can crawl around and check to see if a seedling tree is dead or not. If it's dead, the robot pulls the seedling. If not, it keeps driving.

Open your eyes. Stop reading Tech Crunch. Go to Maker Faire. Awesome things are happening and you don't even realize it.

And, if you're sick of the lack of innovation... then create something. Complaining about it online does nothing.

<comment><USER36> the elephant in the room for healthcare is and always has been that the majority of healthcare is bullshit. or, in more technical terms, has no effect on health outcomes.

<comment><USER37> Citation? Obviously healthcare works on some level, else life expectancy wouldn't be going up.

<comment><USER38> Really? You could make life expectancy go up in much of the world with nothing more than clean water. But is that healthcare?

<comment><USER39> Maybe, but you'd also be ignoring other basic staples of western healthcare like vaccinations.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2284/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The author mentions healthcare as an area of innovation but until something happens to the massive regulation hurdles that are in place, healthcare is hard to revolutionize. I'm working on a research project that could be used for clinical stuff but it would be the process of going through FDA approval for the software and all is a major deterrent.

</comment><comment><USER41> This article is geographically myopic. If you're in Palo Alto, you think that all the smart kids are trying to make yet another Color. If you're in New York, you think that all of the best STEM grads are trying to get into the financial industry. Both viewpoints don't capture the big picture of "American innovation."

</comment><comment><USER42> There might be more to selling ads than initially meets the eye - the ability to connect specialized products and services with interested audience can help drive all sorts of innovation quite unrelated to social media. Many of these projects may never take off without advances in targeted advertising.

Indeed better segmentation and the abiolity to get real time feedback could bring about some rather fundamental changes to the very nature of the consumer economy and the way demand is estimated and prices are set on a very broad range of products - full consequences are not easy to appreciate.

</comment><comment><USER43> Are the claims about 'top graduates' in 'top programs' flowing into startups at a rate that is any different than in the past substantiated by fact?

This whole article reads to me like a statistician selecting and manipulating certain data to _prove_ the desired result, except, there seems to be little more than limited conjecture in this piece.

</comment><comment><USER44> This article uses shadow fringes around the letters, which makes it hard to read. Luckily, there is a Readability AddOn [1] for Firefox. I see myself more and more using this handy AddOn... is 'designeritis' spoiling web usability?

[1] <https://www.readability.com/addons>

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm very skeptical of all those marketing centered developments as well, but throwing entertainment in that same bucket is nonsense.

Entertainment is an end in itself. Marketing is a means to an end without (much) intrinsic value. These two things are as far apart as two economic activities can ever be.

</comment><comment><USER46> The problem is the political and legal environment is such that a company can more profitably spend its capital in Washington trying to erect barriers to competition than to actually do something new.

</comment><comment><USER47> and i thought India lacks meaningful/() innovation

</comment><comment><USER14> The important point is that the startups doing meaningful innovation are not founded by college and high school dropouts, but rather PhD students, or Scientist or Consultants.

That is why the idiots such as Peter Thiel and others in Techcrunch/HN/YC who stupidly argue that college education is worthless, should silenced.

Also an important point to note is that nearly all YC startups are also of the same Crap Crop as mentioned in the article.

See I can blog by sending an email [and trash talk by competitors] how innnnooovative!

</comment><comment><USER48> The big perhaps too obvious criticism of the OA is that it's making a broad generalization and is overlooking all the actual innovation and Big Ideas going on. I for one am also sickened or at least unexcited by all the unimaginative and incremental and "me too" startups and products out there. But rather than just complaining about it, I'm doing something about it. Innovation starts with you. If you want the world to be a certain way it's up to you to help make it that way. Start small, think big, act today but aim for the future.

<comment><USER49> I agree with most of what you said so I'm sorry to nitpick.

The distinction between "complaining" and "doing" doesn't make any sense to me. The OA's intention is to change the way people innovate. This isn't something he can be "doing" in his basement by himself. If he wants the world to be a certain way he can't just _make_ it that way. At some point he's going to have to persuade other people and "complaining" on the internet is a fine place for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> The article is wildly wrong:

The Web? On the whole, it is wildly 'innovative'. Moreover, it is a huge aid to economic productivity and, thus, standard of living and quality of life.

Search engines? On the whole, they are wildly innovative and productive because they help solve a huge problem on the Internet -- finding stuff.

More in search engines? Yes, needed because the only search, discovery, recommendation, curation engines that work well are the ones based on keywords, and they work well for only about one-third of the content. How to get a search engine that also works well for the other two-thirds? That needs some 'innovation'!

A better search engine will likely have to make progress with how humans understand 'information' and 'meaning', and that will need some 'innovation'.

The author views 'innovation' mostly just in terms of what happened in the first half of the 20th century. Innovation is in different areas now. The author is also missing that to support the new approaches to innovation, Intel is now making 3D transistors with 22 nm feature sizes, and that in itself is history-making innovation.

Ads? So far the Internet is heavily supported by ads. Why? Because it's important to connect people with products and services. Why important? Because a key part of a higher standard of living is having people better allocate their limited resources, and key to this is getting people the information they need for such better allocations. One way to get the information is to have a person use a search engine to find the products and services. Another way is to have a vendor of products and services use ads to find the people. So far both ways are important.

The article wants to assume that ads are bad, and this is not good. There must be something very important about ads since they support nearly all of TV, radio, professional sports, just say, old media, and now the Internet. Pro basketball players? Basically they are in the ad business.

One reason entrepreneurs are rushing to Web x.0 companies is that's where the money is. And the money is not just in the US: The US companies that lead in this work rapidly become successful internationally. It's foolish to say that all this activity, internationally, is bad.

But not everything has to be international: The US did just fine, thank you, from about 1850 to 1950 growing mostly just internally and with relatively little role for foreign trade. So the claim in the article that there's something wrong with the US selling to itself is wrong: The better standard of living we want is from getting the work done, and we get it done by specialization with one person selling to another. All this does better when there is more efficiency, and the information via the Internet is a key here.

More information? Currently the US and more important world economies are in a Great Recession. The core reason? Bad information. Thus much of the solution will be better information. Generally information is just crucial for higher standards of living. The best thing that's happened for information so far is just the Internet.

Internet blogs are important, too: They can clear up misunderstandings caused by confused people!

But for some of the innovation the author seems to be dreaming about, that's coming: The foundation is Moore's law, the Internet, and infrastructure software. Broadly the path to more economic productivity is to automate, that is, have the machines do the work. Yes, we want the machines building houses and cars, growing crops, tending livestock, manufacturing boxes, bottles, and gadgets, making fiber, thread, cloth, and clothes, analyzing data needed for progress, yes, including in medicine, etc. It's coming.</comment>


Inside Apple's new Xcode 4 development tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/06/19/inside_apples_new_xcode_4_development_tool.html

<comment><USER2> Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhh.

Holy cow. Maybe this is how the Visual Studio rumors started.

I really hope those tool palettes undock, for those of us with multiple screens: <http://yfrog.com/9e6lhj>

</comment><comment><USER3> Technical accuracy alert... from the article on integrated source control:

> (which work like Time Machine, as Time Machine is based on Subversion)

I'd never have guessed.</comment>


Ask HN: How Can I Learn More About 3 MVP Ideas? - <AUTHOR> I have 3 MVP ideas, each for different markets. I estimate 3 - 5 weeks to build each MVP + landing page, so 2 - 3 months in total.
I always make the mistake of diving right into building something for 3 - 4 months and then launching and giving up when the launch is underwhelming.
This time I want to do two things differently:
1) By doing 3 launches I could at least compare them and declare a winner.
2) Seeing if there's a way to validate the ideas before building the MVP
So, is there something I could do to validate these ideas before committing to a build? <comment><USER2> Call 10 possible customers for each of these ideas and buy them coffee and get their feedback on the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> would it be a bad idea to ask some of those people about 2 or 3 of the ideas assuming I think they're in the market for both or all. Does it bias them in some way? I don't know too many people

<comment><USER2> I guess it's be ok, but it'd be better if you found a way to find people who needed your product (Reddit forums, Yelp, yellow pages, etc). That way if and when you want to market your product, you know where to find them.

So I'd encourage you to learn where strangers who are your target market hang out and reach out to them. Something like "I'd like 10 minutes of your time for some advice because I want to learn about XXX" where XXX is their field. People love giving advice.

This post from patio11 might be good reading: [https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/validatin...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/validating_product_ideas)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow! That's a GREAT article. Thanks for sharing!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Update: Final Netflix Prize Leaderboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.netflixprize.com//leaderboard?limit=10

<comment><AUTHOR> Talk about a photo finish... of course, nothing is decided yet, it will depend on the performance on the final test. I think its possible that one of the team overfitted by submitting tests every day and adjusting accordingly; it might perform worse on the final test for this reason.

We'll see! Very exciting!

<comment><USER2> [http://www.netflixprize.com//community/viewtopic.php?pid=923...](http://www.netflixprize.com//community/viewtopic.php?pid=9237#p9237)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great, looks like BPC will win in the end. Well deserved!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.netflixprize.com/closed>

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope they'll simply restart the contest with the new record holder as the benchmark and another 10% improvement (or 11% to keep it linear and to avoid getting into deminishing returns on investment territory).

<comment><USER5> Are you suggesting that the next contest should improve the winner of this contest by 10%? That seems like you're already well into diminishing returns territory.

<comment><USER6> Maybe not, if they offered a more descriptive dataset next time. I think the only data offered was (customer_rating, movie_id, rating_value, date). If they included things like the customer's age, how long they've used Netflix, and other such data that's on file, I'm guess that the RMSE could be improved by a fairly good amount (at least 5%, if not 10%).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> According to Yehuda Koren, BelKor et al. won the prize after all. We'll have to see tomorrow. Surely there will be some sort of press release.

</comment><comment><USER8> So the team called "Grand Prize Team" didn't win the grand prize? Hilarious.

<comment><USER2> "The Ensemble was created by a merger between the two teams that appear on the leaderboard as "Grand Prize Team" and "Opera Solutions and Vandelay United"."

And no one has officially won as the scores on the test set are not public.</comment></comment>


The Productivity Hacks That Help Me Be a More Efficient Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://justinmcgill.net/the-productivity-hacks-that-help-me-be-a-more-efficient-entrepreneur/

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear what others do to add minutes back into their day. Any tools or techniques that you know to maximize productivity?</comment>


Ask HN: Best talks on programming for beginners? - <AUTHOR> Which are some of the best talks/seminars I can find on programming intended for beginners? I am supposed to conduct a seminar on programming in a university next week and I want to make sure I do my research well before speaking in front of the students. <comment><USER2> Beginners at what?

The presentation should be tuned to the audience. Graduate students in mechanical engineering begin from a different place than first year students in creative writing.

Even within a group of creative writing students, there will be variation in technical interest, knowledge, and ability. Is the presentation tuned to toward the left end or the right end of the distribution...I suggest the right end because people who don't care won't care.

Anyway, it would be helpful to have your list as a starting point and then people can help refine and augment it. I mean my first thoughts were shaped by beginning programmers. Which suggests that my individual experience is different from yours and the resources you use should fit your personality and experience.

Good luck.</comment>


You Guys Realize the Apple Watch Is Going to Flop, Right? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3042987/you-guys-realize-the-apple-watch-is-going-to-flop-right

<comment><USER2> You do realize these types of articles are just noise? If it wins or fails, it adds no value to debate it ahead of time.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how well the gold version is going to sell. People will spend thousands on a gold watch that will last them many years (decades). But will they spend thousands on a gold watch that will be obsolete in a few years? Will Apple offer a trade-in?

<comment><USER4> There are companies that will replace your iPhone casing with a gold casing. I bet the mark-up is huge and that the market is much bigger for watches than for phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > it has given us the iPod (the prototypical MP3 player), the iPhone (the > prototypical smartphone), the Macbook Air (the prototypical laptop), and the > iPad (the prototypical tablet).

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe none of these were prototypical.

<comment><USER6> Archetypical?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have to admit that I don't see the point in it. Maybe this will be one of those instances where I am just blind to its appeal.</comment>


Only One Woman in Top 100 Stack Overflow Accounts - lindsey-kirch https://hackernoon.com/only-1-woman-in-top-100-stack-overflow-accounts-1c9ded763684#.ug803llzg <comment><AUTHOR> The title is somewhat misleading, I think.

> In total, the visual recognition API classified 1,428 profiles as masculine, > 84 as feminine and 1,964 as unclassified.

> The top 100 Stack Overflow users consist of 77 masculine profiles, 21 > unclassified and 1 feminine profile.

They only identified a single account belonging to a female, but there 21 unclassified accounts in the top 100 that could also belong to females.

I would certainly expect women to be more reluctant than men to note their gender on their online profiles.

</comment><comment><USER2> It seems odd to have used avatars as the sole metric. I know many male individuals that use female avatars and the vast majority of both males and females I know do not use any representative avatar.

Is there a particular reason you chose to use the avatar instead of gender weighting based off of the posts and questions, which tend to provide more accurate results? While we noted when we tried this that most technical discussion on stack overflow leaned towards masculine even when written by a female, it should still be far more accurate than the avatars.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does one have the gall to make this kind of claim with such a flawed methodology?

> Out of the top 3,479 profiles, the visual recognition API classified 1,515 > profile images with a discernible gender.

3,479 seems to be an arbitrary number and no explanation is given as to why that was number was chosen. But, more importantly, more than half of these top users, who could be of either gender, were eliminated from the results, which already makes this study inconclusive.

The second major flaw is that the author determined a user's gender by their profile image, using a "masculine" or "feminine" classification. If already less than half of user profile images had a discernible gender, who's to say that, of those images that did have a discernible gender, the profile image accurately represents the user's gender? What if I decided to set a celebrity's image as my profile image? If my profile had Melissa Joan Hart as the image, does that make me female? If my profile image was of Bryan Cranston, does that make me male?

Also, how is "feminine" and "masculine" determined by this API? Does having long hair qualify as a feminine trait? John Romero has long, flowing hair and painted fingernails; does that make him female? Conversely, if a female has short hair does that means she's categorized as part of the "masculine" group?

The title to the article is absolutely misleading and wildly inaccurate. Even after the author admits:

> Determining gender on Stack Overflow turned out to be trickier than we > initially anticipated.

She still has the nerve to make the claim that there is only one woman in the top 100 SO accounts in the title and throughout the article.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70)</comment>


The California Ideology (again) - <AUTHOR> http://fugitive.quadrantcrossing.org/2012/08/the-california-ideology-again/ <comment><USER2> You know what would be nice? The adoption of an uncapped economy (a currency) based on kindness, generosity, and civility. Something like Bitcoin, something virtual that would add up, but where the only trade-off would be reputation. A "Like" button attached to your name. But instead of having someone else Like you, you would have to Like yourself and tell why each time (using 140 characters? !)

Think about it. Each time you give, you share, you note it. Then others sees it. Just thinkin'.</comment>


Run and Debug Java 9 in Visual Studio Code - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/11/10/run-and-debug-java-9-in-visual-studio-code/ <comment><USER2> Anyone using VS Code for Java projects here? How does it hold up compared to something like Eclipse or IntelliJ?

<comment><USER3> I've used it on Java 8 projects. The VS Code Java extension reads regular Eclipse projects (.project, .classpath) and offers intellisense like completions, red squiggles etc. But that's basically it. I think there is also support for Mavens poms. What's lacking is the general refactorings, generating boilerplate (hashCode, setters, getters). It's too little for real work but it's surprisingly good so I'll keep evaluating it from time to time.

<comment><USER4> Microsoft employee here. Thank you for trying! Actually some basic features such as getters, setters, renaming are already supported for Java in VS Code with Red Hat's language server. We'd also like to learn which features are most important for Java developers, please provide feedbacks to us through [https://gitter.im/Microsoft/vscode-java- debug](https://gitter.im/Microsoft/vscode-java-debug) or submit [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-java- debug/issues](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-java-debug/issues) for whatever you believe is missing.

<comment><USER3> > Actually some basic features such as getters, setters

Do you mean generating getters and setters based on fields? Because I can't find this option (tried searching for "getter", "java", "generate", no luck) and I've got Red Hat LS installed (alongside the entire Microsoft's Java Extension Pack).

Thanks for you hard work! Language Server Protocol is a hidden gem of VS Code, the most important feature in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> VSC is going to become a real threat to Intellij IDEs. At least for JS/TS, they must have felt the impact.

<comment><USER6> Which killer feature of VSC does IntelliJ lack?

<comment><USER7> Does VSC have refactoring?

<comment><USER4> Microsoft employee here. Some basic refactoring feature is actually supported, such as rename. Of course there're a lot of other coding assistance and refactoring features could be added, we plan to further improve the Java experience, including editing, on VS Code in next months together with Red Hat and other community members.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It might have a shot in making Java fast /sarcasm</comment>


To Persuade Someone, Look Emotional - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us//blog/to-persuade-someone-look-emotional <comment><USER2> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17648566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17648566)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not so sure the Dukakis example is fitting in the context of persuasion. It's not what he decided or how, but the simple fact that, evidently, a large percentage of voters disagreed with his answer. It wasn't about him. It was about them. If they had their doubts, that was a deal breaker; a deal breaker defined by the receiver.

With that said, if you want to persuade someone then empathy is your number one tool. Convincing them of your opinion isn't as important as understanding their current place and nudging them away from that.</comment>


UVB radiation was the Devonian-Carboniferous extinction kill mechanism - <AUTHOR> https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/22/eaba0768 <comment><USER2> > Hence, ozone loss during rapid warming is an inherent Earth system process > with the unavoidable conclusion that we should be alert for such an > eventuality in the future warming world.

Did not know this worrisome hypothesis. The idea that a warming world could inject more reactive material into the stratosphere via convective storms seems reasonable. Thanks a lot for one more reason not to sleep tonight.

<comment><USER3> Hence the larger conversation around becoming multi-planetary as a species being a survival mechanism.

<comment><USER4> Fixing the ozone layer is far easier than moving a substantial of the earth's population off-planet. The total amount of gas is not extreme, which makes it so delicate but also means that we may be able to artificially manage it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure what you are saying here. What this paper is saying is that at some point the planet (before homo sapiens) had an "event" of some sort that basically removed the ozone layer and killed off most of what was living on the surface.

People don't have a mechanism to "inject ozone" into the stratosphere (we count on the Sun to do that) so if it were removed again, we would all likely die.

Similarly, at least one extinction event was due to volcanism, another thing we puny humans have no means to control (as much as I would love to be able to).

It is not disloyal to the global warming cause to acknowledge that there are things that we _aren 't_ responsible for that could kill us too.

<comment><USER5> Even if the Earth loses all its ozone we would still be more protected here than anywhere else in the Solar System. So any solution you come up with for, for example, living on Mars would work here as well and be cheaper. If you live in shelters covered in 2 meters of dirt on Mars, you could do that here too and not have to generate oxygen to breath.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not a high profile paper. The accompanying domain to this post is (unintentionally) misleading: the actual journal that this paper is published in is 'Science Advances', not 'Science' (the prestigious one).

I thought there was something funny about the abstract...most abstracts in high profile journals have a much different tone.

<comment><USER7> The underlying dataset is fascinating and supports the UV-B damage hypothesis while also falsifying the mega-volcano hypothesis. It took a great deal of Wikipedia research for me to get a feel for the paleo geography and paleo climate of East Greenland 359 Mya. The "warming causes ozone collapse" meme seems aimed at gaining media attention but that tactic seems to be the norm now in scientific papers.

Sometimes the curation role of a journal is important and peer review can identify errors. In this case it seems like access to the right geological formations by competent scientists is key and I read nothing in the paper made me question the science. I don't think the lack of journal prestige diminishes the significance of this specific paper; it probably reflects the modern relevance of this extinction event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Context for those of you (like me) who aren't geologists and don't know of any historic extinction events other than the k-t (66 Mya):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Devonian_extinction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Devonian_extinction) (376–360 Mya)

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't see a temperature for when this might become a problem. Does anyone have that?

<comment><USER10> [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/835/tab- pdf](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/835/tab-pdf)

That's the ref in the paper. It's a bit confusing because they're looking at chemical processes taking place at 15-20km altitude. Temps there are around -55C maybe, 200K).

They plot changes for activation of the process, but I don't have enough knowledge about it to understand the implications. The bottom axis of their graph runs from 195K - 210K though so clearly it's not a big delta. They seem much more interested in the amount of water vapor at altitude.

The other thing is that it seems like the process has a fairly short cycle time. By which I mean they mention changes on the order of days. When I think about ozone holes I think mainly in the context of decades.

So I'm not sure how much the mention of warming and ozone loss in the OP paper was a 'hey that might be of note,' or was a more substantially linked relationship.

(I kind of wonder if pole reversal/magnetic field weakening or solar events could play into the loss of ozone during the extinction in the original paper?)

The paper makes this statement at the end:

Last, we emphasize that because chlorine ac- tivation depends exponentially on water vapor and temperature, and in turn that the forcing of climate may well control the convective injec- tion of water into the lower stratosphere, the idea that ozone "recovery" is in sight because we have controlled chlorofluorocarbons and halon release is a potential misjudgment.

<comment><USER10> Ok so I think the parameter you want to be looking for is the temperature (not necessarily at altitude) that results in some particular amount (ppmv) of water vapor at altitude. With the understanding that the hotter it is at altitude the worse the mechanism is for ozone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm wondering how modern species would be differently vulnerable to a similar UV challenge. The paper specifies the evidence they found and a mechanism being DNA corruption in plant spores which were very exposed – well today most of those plants (like all sorts of ferns) are extinct and replaced by flowering plants with their much hardier seeds.

<comment><USER12> seeds or spores are they interchangeable?

I thought spores are like sperm, they are needed to produce seeds... or am I wrong?

<comment><USER11> Not at all interchangeable.

The lifecycle of ferns is a bit exotic and familiar.

It's classified as alternating between two generations, the one which produces the familiar large plant, and one that produces tiny plants.

It's something like "sexual reproduction with extra steps".

The fern chops its genome in half and produces spores with these haploid genetics. The spores grow into tiny plants (< 1 cm) which grow leaves and roots and then produce the sperm and/or eggs (the sperm actually swims to the egg!) which fertilized, grow into a new familiar fern.

In flowering plants, seeds are the result of fertilization which happens in the plant, they're bigger, contain food, and protective shells. The living cells which carry life are hidden inside. Pollen is a bit like a spore in that it's tiny and contains haploid genes, but still I'm guessing that process of reproduction is considerably more durable to increased UV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh hey, another bad thing to worry about happening in 2020.

But it's a cool paper. It would be interesting to see if they can find more instances of this sort of damage over various, widely space geographic areas. And especially in other species/other external signs of UV damage.

Even though they do analysis to try to eliminate other possible explanations, I'm not sure I'm super on board with immediately accepting the UV/ozone explanation whole sale. I always like to see bets hedged with "lends further evidence to support...." language.

I'd also love to hear from anyone with domain knowledge that might be able to add their perspective on the paper.

<comment><USER13> I have searched for, but been unable to find, a chart of estimated UV levels at ground level over the past few hundred years.

I'm interested in it because suntans seem so much worse now than in the past, where people didn't have access to suncream, yet still spent lots of time outside.

"I got used to it by spending my whole life outside" doesn't seem to fully explain it.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if they even have that data for that length of time. You might find some info in literature regarding the difference in UV exposure in areas under the ozone hole vs areas of more normal exposure.

As an aside, don't get misled by nutters talking about ground level UVC levels. They don't know what they're talking about and are citing people who don't know how to use their UV-C meters (which are sensitive at wavelengths other than UVC and therefore require extensive filtering).

Further edit: I should mention total solar irradiance has remained relatively consistent over time (and continues to). I bring up these things because I've talked to some nutty people about this stuff in the past and those are common stepping off points into la-la land.

<comment><USER14> >I should mention total solar irradiance has remained relatively consistent over time (and continues to).

It should be noted that the 11-year solar cycle is much stronger in the shorter wavelengths, especially below 200nm. Since that is absorbed in the ozone layer there is a change of up to 2K max in the stratopause (~50km). It doesn't really appear to propagate down, and is rather on the level of a scientific curiosity, but still. [0] (Longer-term changes than the 11-year oscillation seem to be much lower, but this is hard to determine.)

[0] [https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/gr08900n.html](https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/gr08900n.html)

To the parent post:

If you want to have information about UV at ground level you can look at proxy data. [1][2][3] Of course there are some complications with that as always though, and it's not that easy to interpret. But it looks like while there is variation it is mainly along the 11-year cycle. (I can't say much about the strength of the change on ground level without further reading. It's in the low percent range on top of the atmosphere, but almost all of that will be stopped in the ozone layer.)

[1] [https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/PP/b9045...](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2009/PP/b904515e#!divAbstract)

[2] [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0143116050007705...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01431160500077051)

[3] [https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1469-...](https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.03815.x)

Considering the issue of suntans, I think looking at the clothes people wear is more relevant to the question to be honest.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hopefully this time we'll be able to geoengineer our way out of it. I would think pumping out tons of ozone is significantly easier than removing atmospheric CO2 or, you know, burning less carbon(how absurd, right?).

<comment><USER16> Anybody can make Ozone, but how do you propose getting it high enough in the atmosphere?

<comment><USER17> 1) Advance solar cell technology a little bit more

2) Make a Solar Impulse kind of planes that basically deposit excess power in sparkgaps

3) Ozone

I suspect the ozone layer is not our biggest problem with the warming though.

<comment><USER18> Oh, we can already build planes that use high-efficiency propellers (with efficient and lightweight gear-less axial flux motors) and soar above the clouds 24/7, using height instead of batteries and ultra-light back-ground solar cells laminated into a giant flying wing (or at least much more wing than fuselage, because the motors should be distributed to reduce demands on wing stiffness). A weight of less than 2.5kg/m^2 in the wing should be feasible with large, monolithic carbon fiber sections, joined by narrow engine segments. Overall it should be possible to stay below a wing loading of 5kg/m^2, so a 100m span, 1m chord 500kg plane gets about 18h out of 10km height, see [https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2601411-Is- wi...](https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2601411-Is-wing-loading- what-determines-the-minimum-sink-rate-of-a-glider) .</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Interactive Guide to NPR's List of Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfsignal.com/interactive/npr100.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> This is based on <http://www.box.net/shared/static/a6omcl2la0ivlxsn3o8m.jpg></comment>


How can I see a friend's specific comment on a popular post? - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1452415018359127 <comment><AUTHOR> How is it possible that a 6 step procedure requiring substituting two id's is required to find a reply to a comment you that has been made?</comment>