The Idiocy of Hacker Keyboards (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboards_hacker_idiocy.html <comment><USER2> Is there any purpose to this article besides complaining about the keyboard preferences of other people? Some people like the way certain things look or feel, and they pay money for it.

I agree that having a "hacker keyboard" probably won't make you a better programmer, but then people pay thousands of dollars for top-end laptops when they could probably do just as well with lower-end ones.

<comment><USER3> Additionally, for an input device you use for 8 hours a day for the rest of your career the price is trivial. Nothing is worse for me than the mushy feel of rubber dome switches.

<comment><USER4> > the mushy feel of rubber dome switches.

Yes. I find rubber dome keybaords much more tiring. It's not really clear when the key activates; I wind up essentially mashing the keys. I pretty much refuse to use them.

Scissor key (laptop style) keyboards are a great compromise for me: cheap and precise. Almost as good as mechanical keys for me.

Mechanical keyboards are best for me, but not always practical due to noise and expense. (Note: mech keyboards with Cherry keys can easily be made much quieter with O-ring dampeners; this is what I do)

<comment><USER5> Is there any downside to using o-rings? How come no keyboards seem to ship with them by default? I just ordered an MX Brown keyboard, wondering if I should buy o-rings.

<comment><USER6> I have only one downside: if you use your keyboard to play games, it feels weird to hold keys like shift down if you have an o-ring on them, because it compresses slightly. I found my hands getting fatigued after a while of running this way, and have since removed all the rings.

<comment><USER4> This hasn't been my personal experience; I don't find they really compress much.

That's not to say you're wrong or anything. Everybody's hands and preferences are different of course!

Just out of curiosity, which o-rings are you using? Here are the ones I'm using: [http://www.amazon.com/Cherry-Rubber-Ring-Switch- Dampeners/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Cherry-Rubber-Ring-Switch- Dampeners/dp/B00AZQ2OF8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A large part of this person's reviews are complaints about the amount of keys. I found the other information in these reviews more enlightening, because personally I don't want more keys.

I like the HappyHacking keyboard. Nice size, good keys and layout, perfect for my needs. I have used it for ~3 years, no complaints, but at its current price you're also paying for warm, fuzzy feelings that come with the product.

Das Keyboard feels a lot cheaper in every regard and makes a ton of noise. I gave it away as a present to a co-worker. He loved it, and it improved his typing skills, but I can think of better ways to improve your typing.

I have a feeling that my HHK won't break anytime soon, but if I were to need a replacement, I would probably buy it again, or look for something similar. Perhaps one of the alternatives suggested by OP.

I am very happy with my ThinkPad keyboard as well. Even for gaming it works fine for me. Probably even better than a traditional keyboard, and definitely much better than the keyboards of previously owned Apple products (MacBook Pro & Air, early generation).

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't really care what other people use in terms of keyboard layout or non- layout, but loud clicking is incredibly distracting. I had to get active noise cancellation headphones to be able to work in one room with a fellow developer who insisted on using such a monster.

<comment><USER9> Correct me if I'm wrong, but active noise cancelling doesn't really work for punctuated noises like keyboard clacks. I tried a coworker's Bose Quiet Comfort active noise cancelling headphones, and ultimately decided that the passive cancelling of the Sennheiser HD 280s was better for anything that wasn't a more of a constant drone. As side benefit, they were much cheaper and sound much better (to my ear) too.

<comment><USER10> As far as I know, sound is actually so slow that you don't need to average the noise and make an educated guess as to what to filter. Acoustic noise filtering in headphones should work by detecting the outside noise with a microphone and playing the cancelling wave form as soon as the sound wave reaches the interior of your headphone.

In contrast, you can't do that for the noise of a car on the road because here the whole car vibrates and you couldn't, even if you wanted to emit sounds that cancel whatever rumbles quickly enough. Therefore they employ some spectral analysis of the noise and cancel persistent noise. This, of course, wouldn't cancel the sound of hitting a wall.

Again, I'm not 100% sure about this because it's outside of my field of expertise. Corrections are welcome.

<comment><USER11> Considering the fact that it takes about 60 microseconds for sound to travel about 2cm, you only have about 900 cycles (assuming the same clock speed as an Arduino: 16MHz) to process the input sound, do a fast Fourier transform of the noise, and output the cancellation wave. I severely doubt that it can be implemented to be _that_ fast. And not to mention that spikes in sound aren't nicely dealt with in Fourier transforms, so it's unlikely to actually remove the noise properly.

<comment><USER10> I doubt that there are analog-digital, digital-analog converters and an FFT module in there. I would have assumed that there's only some analog circuit. You don't even need spectral analysis. It just needs to invert the amplitude and delay the output for those 60 microseconds, right? This would also make the problems of spikes and Fourier transforms go away.

<comment><USER12> Sadly, both of you are quite wrong. ANC can easily cancel wideband sudden sounds. It may have problems at very high frequencies due to frame sizes and required group delay precision. Computing FFT or even more complex transforms with very low latency is possible, as is combining time domain and frequency domain processing. You cannot do analogue ANC at high frequencies, as the internal reflections in the headphone/ear system ruin it, while a digital system can measure these and respond well enough while not damaging the sound. Plus it is very hard to represent psychoacoustics without digital processing and those help preserve sound quality immensely.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for that. I wouldn't have expected it to be practical to have such low latency FFTs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some of their other writing seems to be of a similarly low quality. Another of their pages [0] seems to mirror a post [1] that they had sent to comp.lang.lisp, where they describe their difficulty with finding out the identities behind some blogs in sufficient detail.

> PS it annoys me to no end when one cannot easily find the name of the author > on blogs, when the blog author clearly didn't meant to be anonymous. Is > there a reason you didn't want it spelled it out?

This turns into a small rant against handles, which, if you set aside the jargon, are essentially nicknames.

> (i despise hacker culture, where these "hackers" idiotic-namesake prefer to > go by "handles" or abbrevs (e.g. "RMS", "ESR", "JWZ") or whatnot insider- > fashion fuck. But that's just me.)

One person seemed a bit annoyed by them, so they then responded with a larger rant [2] that proposes that "hackers" are a strict subset of the people who like to tinker with computers, without ever clearly describing _what_ it is about "hackers" that they "despise" — concluding:

> It is this group of people, i despise. More accurately: i despise their > general style and outlook. I despite them. Fuck them. FUCK hackers. FUCK > their hacking. Fuck their mothers. Scumbags.

At this point, I'd have dismissed them as a troll, but they went to the effort of buying a domain name and everything!

[0] [http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/whats_hacker.html](http://xahlee.info/Netiquette_dir/whats_hacker.html)

[1] [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/VQF8CIUIotg/q...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/VQF8CIUIotg/q8fpqJu1kocJ)

[2] [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/VQF8CIUIotg/P...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/VQF8CIUIotg/PBzANdq4JMgJ)

<comment><USER14> Xah Lee is a well known usenet troll. He entered my killfile many, many years ago for his ranting against Python, Vim, Emacs, Lisp, and everything else under the sun.

Must be profitable, if he's still at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How is it surprising that premium/hobbyist keyboards are expensive?

$200 for a keyboard that you use for hours everyday for 5-10 years is not unreasonable.

</comment><comment><USER9> Unclear for what reason the author put the Model M / Unicomp in there. When I click the link, he says he'd like one except for the lack of an ergo form factor.

I own a Unicomp (at home, where I can't bother coworkers), and love the tactile feel of the thing. Plus, I'm a weirdo who types dvorak, and I was pleased to be able to buy the keyboard with a hardware dvorak layout. And, the thing wasn't crazy expensive compared to most keyboards. I think I paid < $100 for it.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article is just Hacker News click bait. Despite panning expensive keyboards the page is full of amazon affiliate links.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am thinking of buying (somehow. because these things doesn't exist in my country, and I am thinking I will have to build it from scratch) a MX Brown keyboard...

Anyone here know if their clicking is less obnoxious, or if they click at all?

I do want the tactile feedback, when you feel the key giving away and can release it immediately, but I don't want to annoy other people (myself I don't get bothered by the noise...)

<comment><USER2> I used a Cherry Red keyboard in an office for a while. It was pretty noticeable for most people around me.

The benchmark for keyboard loudness in my experience is the standard apple laptop keyboard noise or the standard apple USB keyboard noise. It seems like all mechanical keyboard switches tend to be louder than those, and will be noticed. It's possible though that depending on how you type, people won't care.

I spend a lot of time writing text and type quickly and with force, so people could really hear it when I got going on my keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Chorded keyboards are silly - just like chorded instruments. Can't argue with the obvious superiority of the 2000-keyed guitar rather than just one with 6 strings and 20 frets.

Also, it's not like you'll be using keyboards for half a decade, so yeah... learning something like that would be a total waste of time.

^ typed on my favorite keyboard - the $12* Logitech K120

* Canadian... includes a mouse.

<comment><USER19> > Also, it's not like you'll be using keyboards for half a decade, so yeah... > learning something like that would be a total waste of time.

Why not? It's not like we have a revolution in keyboard designs every year. If the keyboard is durable, there's no reason for it not to be used decades hence. The Model M I use at home was made in the same year I was born, and still works just as well as it did new.

Completely agree that chorded keyboards are uncomfortable though. I tried one and can't imagine using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is the "double click" the sound of the keycap hitting the keyboard, or is it coming from the switch itself?

<comment><USER14> Based on my experience with blues, "double click" with blues is both of those. The click from the switch, and then bottoming out a few 10ths of a second later.

There's no need to bottom out with mechanical switches, but most people do out of habit with cheaper rubber dome switches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What is most funny about this is by trashing hacker keyboards, the hackers show up with pitchforks... and links.

</comment><comment><USER22> I work with one of the 60% keyboards. The biggest plus for me is having the navigation keys within the home row, but the biggest negative is having to press fn to use the function keys. I don't know if I'd go so far to call it idiocy though.

</comment><comment><USER23> Maybe this guy can buy a keyboard that helps him to spell the word "programer" correctly.

<comment><USER24> it is correct to write programer with single m. Check any major dictionary. I use Truly Ergonomic Keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm sorry but how does having no key labels, improve speed and accuracy? I haven't looked at my keyboard in probably twenty years, and most of the keys are worn off on the current one now. Will erasing the existing ones somehow speed me up?

<comment><USER26> removing the labels helps people who are learning to touch type.

Or they could just put a tea-towel over their hands.

<comment><USER25> In 2005, in a personal quest to improve his own typing speed and accuracy, Metadot Corporation founder and self-proclaimed "Uber Geek" Daniel Guermeur asked to have a totally blank keyboard created. To his surprise, his typing speed doubled after just a few weeks of use.

An existing proficient typer claims he was able to double his speed without keys being labeled.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can a website take your public profile and create accounts with it? - <AUTHOR> I received some unwanted spam today from a job marketplace website stating that they found my profile on LinkedIn and "conveniently" created an account for me on their website with X login and Y password. I've received a lot of recruiter and job marketplace spam before, but none have ever took my public information and created a public profile representing me without my consent.
My concerns are that they are:
1. representing me as someone who is available for work on their platform; worse if someone emails me directly with information taken from their website
2. potentially will treat me as just another platform user and begin spamming me without recourse other than me clicking on a link in an email which they would use as acknowledgement of me being on their platform
Is this legal?
I'm sure others have had to deal with this. How did you proceed?
So far, I've forwarded the email to the FTC per their spam guidelines as well as the host, GoDaddy, per their abuse reporting guidelines. I'm wondering if there is anything else I should do. <comment><USER2> Zuckerberg's recent testimony indicates FB does something similar with "shadow profiles". Those "people finder" and genealogy sites have also been doing this for years. My _guess_ is that it's not explicitly illegal so it's fine unless you break some other law(s) in the process (acquiring data illegally, defamatory profiles, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER3> Legal or not, you can email them and ask them to remove the profile since you do not consent to such representation.

If they don't listen, then do a more formal DMCA takedown request.

</comment><comment><USER4> Don't know if it's legal but LinkedIn, Google and others do it all the time for businesses. Then you have to go on their platform and "claim" the business as an owner.</comment>


Show HN: BookStorm – Speed Date Books - <AUTHOR> http://bookstormapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Folks, I was sick of the click-bait I came across so much, and wanted a place I could go to explore _worthy_ new ideas. I figured books were a good place to find them, so I made BookStorm.

BookStorm uses no algorithms to select the books it shows you, so there's no bias for what you've liked in the past, your browsing habits, etc. If you want tailored book recommendations, there are many other places you can go...but they won't expand your intellectual world like this app will.

I'll add shelves soon so you can focus your browsing a little more, but in the mean time, I hope you enjoy the concept!</comment>


Review of Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products - <AUTHOR> https://jochemgerritsen.com/2020/06/book-review-hooked/ <comment><USER2> You explained everything so well I feel like I don't even need to read the book!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is such a well written review!</comment>


Subversion vs. Git: Myths and Facts - <AUTHOR> https://svnvsgit.com/ <comment><USER2> This is hardly an unbiased post... which is fine, people can write what they want to write, but it makes it easy to dismiss the entire article as simply being the work of an "svn fanboy".

It also has some inaccuracies: git can be extended to support large repositories; Microsoft has OS tooling that enables them to keep the entire Windows codebase in a single git repo, using a "copy-on-access" model, which seems to be equivalent to SVN's offering. And things like git-lfs help with large binaries. As for the "larger teams" argument, if all you're looking for is consistency of single files, SVN's model seems to be equivalent to pulling before a push... which is what you do anyways (Maybe I'm missing something here?).

As for the CLI, I consider that separate from the interesting discussion. There are good CLI wrappers for git (gitless, etc), and also GUI wrappers. I'm sure similar wrappers exist for SVN, but it's besides the point.

</comment><comment><USER3> This may be the first website I've seen that has absolutely no information about the identity of the writer or the purpose of the company behind the .com domain, assuming there is one. Strange.

</comment><comment> java-man having worked with both svn and git (and cvs, perforce, teamware), and having integrated svn/git/cvs/perforce clients into a production application, I have to say that switching to git was the most enjoyable experience.

yes, git commands have weird names. yes, git is puzzled by renames. yes, merging might be a problem.

but svn is just too damn slow! svn is "cvs done right". there is no way to do a cvs right: file-oriented change control must be replaced by a snapshot-based change control (and it was, in git).

now if I could only version directories and attributes in a platform- independent way...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I just can't let your second to last remark pass: SVN is snapshot based.

<comment> java-man Until 1.7 (?) they used .svn/ in each directory. They since switched to a different storage arrangement. I don't know how good or bad it is now. Early on I've seen situations where the workspace got corrupted to the point where I needed to wipe it out and do a clean check out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I don't know, I haven't used SVN in a while, but one thing I certainly did miss when moving to git is that SVN has a revision number for the entire repository [x], which was very handy for build identifiers and the like.

[x] any change to any file or property increments the overall revision number so you can always retrieve the entire state of the repo at any particular point in time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While obviously biased, I have at least learned that svn seems to have easier merge experience than it used to.</comment>


News Outlets to Seek Bargaining Rights Against Google and Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/business/media/google-facebook-news-media-alliance.html <comment><AUTHOR> Markets for widgets generally work pretty well. The consumer pays the distributor and the distributor pays the producer. When consumer preferences change, the supply chain produces more or less widgets with higher or lower quality.

But markets for information are leaky. Consumers can get information without paying the distributor. Many consumers can't tell the difference between high- quality information and information that's deceptive or manipulative. Most consumers aren't willing to pay for high-quality information.

So markets for information don't work as well as markets for widgets. Producers don't get paid, the supply of quality information is diminished, and we are all poorer as a result.

Now the producers want to form a cartel to negotiate with distributors as a bloc. But this only increases the cost of content to the distributor.

A cartel doesn't fix the root cause. Consumers still don't want to pay. Increasing the cost without changing consumers' willingness to pay will only make a bad situation even worse.

At a higher cost, even less high-quality information will be demanded, so even less will be produced. Producers will shrink further into irrelevance, low- quality information will dominate, and we'll all be even poorer.

When consumers aren't willing to pay, markets don't work well.

It's unlikely consumers will suddenly become willing to pay for information they can get for free, so feeds will fill up with even more low-quality, deceptive and manipulative information.

Maybe markets just aren't the right mechanism. Since the public needs high- quality information now more than ever, maybe we need to examine non-market methods to produce it.

<comment><USER2> I would gladly subscribe to an NPR-caliber newspaper that doesn't have pushing liberal narratives as a #1 priority.

Just like Fox is #1 because it's the only not-liberal media outlet, a real not-liberal newspaper would have a huge following because of the lack of alternatives.

<comment><USER3> >a real not-liberal newspaper would have a huge following because of the lack of alternative

Like uh The Wall Street Journal? Lol.

And what do you do if your preferred media posts what may be construed as a liberal headline? Just unsubscribe immediately? Snowflake, much?

<comment><USER2> >And what do you do if your preferred media posts what may be construed as a [opposing viewpoint] headline? Just unsubscribe immediately?

No, because I'm not fragile like liberals are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Real title: Failing news outlets seek government protection for past failures and outdated business models.

The legacy news media has completely failed to understand two things 1) that distribution is king, not content and 2) that their potential customers have so many more options now than just news. They gave away their distribution to Google and Facebook and still think that better content is the driver of their businesses. I am sick of hearing the CEO of News Corp whining about Google and Facebook. They could easily have invested in creating their own alternative distribution networks, but they completely blew the opportunity they had, with MySpace and they could have bought Instagram, What's App, SnapChat (if you don't think these are news networks then you've not been paying attention). So now they go whining to the government? Shame on them.

<comment><USER5> Eh, I disagree. Content is still king, and the sources of good, quality content is still limited. The problem is that Google and Facebook are more than willing to steal that content, and are too large for anyone to fight.

If cornered on it with laws like the Spanish link tax, they're more than happy to just leave until the business situation is more favorable to them, and obviously if any given single provider bans Google's collection, Google can simply post from one of the litany of blogs that reposts other journalists' reporting instead.

<comment><USER4> Thinking that 'content is king' is how newspapers got into this situation. If you have large distribution (Facebook), even if it is pictures of cats, you can make money and then buy "quality" content, which is a niche. If you lose control of distribution (Legacy news) you can't make money and you can't make any content, no matter how good it is.

>The problem is that Google and Facebook are more than willing to steal that content

Really? While Facebook was letting people copy video content from Facebook with no penalty (freebooting), this was never an issue for the news companies. As for the Spanish situation, the news companies gave in because they realised that without Google they had even less distribution than before.

<comment><USER5> That's the whole reason news companies are asking for an antitrust consideration: Google can hurt them massively by simply walking away from the negotiating table. Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse.

Obviously for the news agencies, their hope would be that Google be somehow forced to pay them for access and not be allowed to shut down the service. Of course, it's hard to imagine how the government could require Google News to operate as a service.

The thing that's broken here is that in any other content situation like movies or music, the content is unique and copyrighted. If you want Katy Perry or Star Wars, you have to deal with the companies with rights to those, and the MPAA and RIAA are formidable industry associations which can swing a lot of weight and force a negotiation. If you want any "music" at all, really, you have to sit down with the RIAA.

News, however, can't really be copyrighted that way, since fact can be restated by anyone. It's fair use. In a traditional situation, all the affected corporations (like every major news org) would band together and set the bar for negotiation. Someone like Google would have to comply or lose out on a lot of information to base their services on. However, in the case of news, Google has an infinite amount of blogspam to feed off of that is cannibalizing and resharing the news from journalists. Google wouldn't be hurt enough by news agencies blocking them, at least, compared to how much it would hurt news agencies to not be distributed by them.

<comment><USER4> >Either they give up their content for free or Google drops them, and they hurt even worse.

They haven't give up their content to Google/Facebook; they give up their distribution. Links to news sites on Google and Facebook are a form of distribution that link back to the original article. As for antitrust, that's somewhat difficult to argue when a new entrant (Facebook) is currently taking a massive amount of distribution and ad revenue away from Google. Who's to say that another new entrant, funded by the legacy news industry, couldn't do the same?

The legacy news media should have, and still should, focus on making or buying new distribution channels. Instead of whining to the government, they should compete in the market.

<comment><USER5> Arguably, between AMP and Instant Articles, the original articles don't really count as "in play" anymore.

I doubt news is as easy to enter as you imagine. Google and Facebook are in it due to their dominance in search and social respectively. Both are arguably monopolies in their respective fields, and news distribution runs secondary to that.

I see where they're coming from, but it's also hard to imagine a legal framework that supports what they'd like to have here in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of these media companies saw changes for decades? around distribution occurring and seemingly did nothing about it. Even now, as better distribution models are making their businesses obsolete, they refuse to innovate and seek legal protections instead.

I don't have much sympathy here. The history is revisionist: these companies used to be powerful actors who now find their businesses evaporating. And many of them had a big hand in the rise of fake news themselves. They're all apparently blameless in both scenarios.

</comment><comment><USER7> "that once paid for the quality journalism that Google and Facebook now offer for free."

What? I have yet to see Facebook offer "journalism" of pretty much any kind.

<comment><USER8> They're saying:

NYTimes is quality journalism. People used to pay for the NYTimes.

Now Google and Facebook offer the news from NYTimes for free.

<comment><USER7> >> Now Google and Facebook offer the news from NYTimes for free.

But they don't. They offer links to the NYTimes. Well, actually they probably get paid to offer links to the NYTimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It was what, 7 or so years ago that Rupert Murdoch was threatening to remove all links and content from Google, and News Corp were saying:

"The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it."

Oh how times change. Another example of a situation where a little bit of forward thinking, rather than clinging to an established model with a blinkered attitude, would have gone a long way.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's curious that the publishers' trade group lobbying Congress to allow them to form a cartel made their argument in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

"How Antitrust Undermines Press Freedom" [https://www.wsj.com/articles/how- antitrust-undermines-press-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-antitrust- undermines-press-freedom-1499638532)

Since the WSJ is paywalled the public can't even read their argument.

What's the rationale here? Does paywalling their argument get more subscribers for the WSJ? Or does it intentionally limit visibility to elites likely to have a subscription while keeping the public in the dark?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "it is impossible for us to go as a one-off company and negotiate or even get an appointment with these companies."

boohoo. cry me a river. this sounds so entitled. Like the Big Banks who cried for a bailout during the Financial Crisis in 2008. "i deserve help because I make lots of money"

<comment><USER11> It's interesting to see that apparently only now do news organizations now realize who their real masters are.

Did they not see the writing on the wall when their analytics showed almost all of their traffic originating from Google and Facebook?

<comment><USER12> Of course they did. But what can you do when Google and Facebook command almost all of the traffic on the internet?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Speaking as an ex-journalist, I think the battle has already been lost because the distribution platforms will always make more money than the content producers. Even when I was a journalist I rarely bought physical newspapers/magazines or had any subscriptions because I consumed things on story by story basis from different publications.

I worked in local news and I think there's probably more hope for smaller, nimble outfits which combine tech and news well to survive. Depending on your geographical location, I think you can provide enough local value to sustain < 10 staff. But then that requires having access to engineers willing to work in such an operation.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ultimately, what do they want? (assume they can bargain together)

<comment><USER15> They likely want to implement a pay to link scheme for news articles. This would be similar to the way that every songwriter gets a small royalty when their song is played on the radio or on a streaming service. In the case of the songwriters, it is government sanctioned and therefore not an illegal cartel.

<comment><USER10> and this is how I would react if I was Google:

"awesome, ok.. so you know what? you win. you are right. we shouldnt link to you without paying you anything. So instead of paying you we've decided to remove all your links from our index. happy? no? but thats what you wanted! no..? ok i am confused.. what do you want?.. wait you want free money? ok.... then"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The New York Times has been fighting against anything Google for their advertising network and Facebook for offering alternative news services. With the change of Google News demoting NYT stories this maybe their last chance at being viable as a national news source. Maybe if the NYT would get rid of that paywall they get more readers and relinkers.

<comment><USER3> The New York Times is severely fucked even without Google messing with their rankings.

They still make most of their money from dead tree newspaper subscribers who are almost all over 50 but are losing those subscribers at a massive rate. There is an internal initiative to basically double digital revenue by 2020 to make up for the losses on the paper side but, speaking as someone who worked there, it's not looking good. At all. They brag about how they just got 40k new digital subscribers in the month after Trump got elected but a lot of those are subsidized / deal subs and won't be sticking around in the long term.

It also doesn't help that the NYT continually downsizes its newsroom and editorial staff to make ill-informed forays into tech (The NYT digital r&d department was a complete joke - like they paid 5 engineers high six figure salaries to basically jerk off and put a monitor behind a mirror - oh wow so innovative).

Most of the bloat at the NYT is absolutely in the tech department but they rarely fire anyone there (I quit). They have big teams supporting legacy systems that are used by maybe a hundred people a month. They have an entire lexical / semantic team with a "sophisticated" (re: expensive, old, and clunky) tagging system that does essentially nothing for the NYT, because guess how many people use their "topic" knowledge base (e.g. [https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/hillary-rodham- clinton](https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/hillary-rodham-clinton))? I'll give you a hint: more than zero, but not by much. But there's like four or five full time engineers with six figure salaries supporting it.</comment></comment>


Hacker News search recently changed? - <AUTHOR>

https://news.ycombinator.com/<p>At the bottom, the search bar now leads to a new site. Is this new or am I just misremembering things? <comment><USER2> Yes it was. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118496](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7118496)</comment>


Why Probabilistic Programming Matters - <AUTHOR> http://zinkov.com/posts/2012-06-27-why-prob-programming-matters/ <comment><USER2> _The point with probabilistic programming is you are able to explore slightly more complex models very easily._

Coincidentally, a colleague at lunch yesterday made exactly this observation about Stan, a probabilistic programming language he is using (<http://mc- stan.org/>).

Stan's notation is very similar to, if not the same as, that shown here. In Stan, those model{} statements are combined with data{} and parameter{} statements that plug in values of interest. The algorithmic details appear to get specified by the command-line invocation.

I found the Stan user guide a bit more enlightening than this essay. The essay shows a bunch of models, but it has very little discussion about what the models mean, or how they express the ideas alluded to in the short introductory paragraphs. The Stan UG does a marginally better job of showing why the model looks the way it does, and relating it to the math they're trying to solve. Still, like this essay, the exposition is definitely pitched toward somebody who already knows the field (unfortunately, not me).

<comment><USER3> I had never heard of probabilistic programming languages and was intrigued but unfortunately also rather confused by the submission. So thank you for the excellent pointer.

<comment><USER4> Anyway, I wrote this post as a precursor to a more substantial set of writings explaining how to practically use these upcoming languages. Most of what I am trying to show here is that while we use specialized algorithms for most of our machine learning at this moment, it is only a temporary solution before it becomes feasible to just specify your models in one of these languages. The point of the code is to show that many really complicated models with high specialized libraries for just them is less than 10 lines of code in this framework.

For a really good introduction to this topic I recommend of Josh Tenenbaum's Growing a Mind talks, <http://videolectures.net/aaai2012_tenenbaum_grow_mind/>

I never realized this article would be read by regular folks and am incredibly confused why something I wrote 6 months ago is suddenly all over the internet now.

<comment><USER5> This is an amazing talk by Tenenbaum. Thank you for posting it!

I'd really like to subscribe to your blog/site so I can read your more substantial set of writings as they appear -- but I can't seem to find the appropriate RSS or ATOM feed on your site. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> You can subscribe with <http://zinkov.com/rss.xml>. I get this question a lot, what's the standard way this is solved?

<comment><USER6> You can enable RSS auto-discovery by adding a tag to your HTML:

      <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Feed" href="http://zinkov.com/rss.xml" />

Any decent RSS reader (e.g. Google Reader, TTRSS) would then detect the feed if the user tried to subscribe to your homepage. Some browsers and browser extensions also provide a one-click subscribe button based on that tag.

It's also common to just put a visible link somewhere on the page, since not everyone knows about auto-discovery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> i am confused about whether it's best to post here on in a separate thread, so apologies for doing both, but this provoked me to look for a good intro to probabilistic programming and i found [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/in...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/cambridge/projects/infernet/docs/InferNet_Intro.pdf) which is a very easy read.

<comment><USER8> I only got partway into [http://projects.csail.mit.edu/church/wiki/Probabilistic_Mode...](http://projects.csail.mit.edu/church/wiki/Probabilistic_Models_of_Cognition) but mean to come back -- it looks worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> See <http://probabilistic-programming.org>

</comment><comment><USER10> The question I'd have about creating a new programming language for a new technique is what does the syntax give you to compensate for the costing of learning a new language?

<comment><USER11> This is not an issue of _syntax_. You can have probabilistic languages with existing syntax--Church, for example, uses Scheme syntax[1].

[1]: <http://projects.csail.mit.edu/church/wiki/Mixture_models>

You can even embed your new language in another, well-known general-purpose language, letting you reuse the host language's syntax. Haskell is great for this sort of work.

This is entirely a question of _semantics_. And what do probabilistic semantics give you? They make writing complex models for data much more natural. These languages allow you to abstract away much of the incidental complexity of specifying these models, making the logic clearer. In turn, this simplifies reasoning about the problem and working on a solution.

More generally, this is the motivation behind _most_ domain-specific languages. The core idea is to express yourself in a way that fits the domain you're working in. For machine-learning, you want to express your program in terms of probability distributions. For writing parsers, you want to express yourself in terms of CFGs. As people like to repeat, a program written more for people to read than computers to execute, and reading something in terms relevant to the domain is easier than trying to force the domain to fit an existing programming language and paradigm.</comment></comment>


Volkswagen Is Ordered to Recall Nearly 500k Vehicles Over Emissions Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/business/volkswagen-is-ordered-to-recall-nearly-500000-vehicles-over-emissions-software.html <comment><USER3> I research for the auto industry and this was very well known by the authorities. Fixed test cycles like the New European Driving Cycle [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Ne...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/New_European_Driving_Cycle.svg/640px- New_European_Driving_Cycle.svg.png?1442593779002) were easy to detect, and easy to optimize against. That's why coming regulations introduce more realistic cycles like WLTC [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/WL...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/WLTC_class_3.svg/1024px- WLTC_class_3.svg.png?1442593767685) and real road tests, where particle emissions will be trapped and compared against the lab test, and only a certain % of deviation will be allowed (last time I looked they didn't decided this % yet).

<comment><USER4> I hope this gets fixed, although I don't believe it. I care about the noise emissions. AFAIK they are measured on a real road, but only up to 50 km/h and in a ridiculous narrow test.

Harley Davidson and other are known to optimise for this test with movable parts in the exhaust pipes so these get much louder when the bikes goes faster than 50 Km/h.

<comment><USER5> Well, as much as a cheat it is, I'm happy that those bikes can go quiet on slow (city) streets but as loud as possible on the highway (increase security _and_ swag).

<comment><USER6> I'm always surprised when people don't realize that large bikes are suppose to be loud so that drivers can hear them coming. It's a necessary evil.

<comment><USER7> I'm a motorcyclist and I'm downvoting this fallacy. If this were seriously the case then good beginner bikes like the Ninja 250 and Honda CBR250R would be unsafe, especially for new riders. Enjoy your loud pipes if you like (I do on my throaty Aprilia) but don't pretend they give you any safety benefit to balance the annoyance it causes some people.

<comment><USER6> TL;DR - I stand by my comment, loud bikes helps people hear you but that doesn't mean you have to be EXTRA LOUD to be cool.

I understand the point you are trying to make, and perhaps I wasn't very clear in my off-hand comment. I agree that overly loud bikes are annoying, however, as I stated before, sound is a necessary evil[0].

Do I believe that motorcycles should use straight pipes and increase their sound output? NO, in fact its quite annoying. However, louder bikes will get your attention.

In fact, in reference to [0], there is a standard that some vehicles had to INCREASE their decibel output because of less risk to pedestrians. This isn't an apples-to-apples comparison as this study was mainly geared towards electric vehicles, but it did state that vehicles should have an output of ~ 55dB for pedestrian safety (page 102).

Secondly, I couldn't find good stats on motorcycle decibel output, but I did find a study of some motorcycles and their average output[1]. What I learned is that most bikes are fairly equal with regard to output and all are at, or above the, legal limit[2].

I took a single bike you pointed out `Honda CBR250R` and was curious how the noise output performed to a Harley: `Honda CBR250R`: [3] \- With dB-Killer fitted: 86 dB @ 4,250 rpm \- Without dB-Killer fitted: 94 dB @ 4,250rpm

2006 Softail Standard 1,400 cc: [4] \- 97 decibels at idle \- 102 decibels at cruising speed \- 111 decibels revved

So what it appears to me is that most motorcycles are `roughly` the same decibel output and that having a vehicle that outputs sound to make yourself known to other riders is beneficial. Should you be increasing the sound trying to be cool? No, I don't think so. In fact its annoying when the 5 Harleys are sitting outside my window on Friday night revving their engines to be "cool".

[0] - [http://www.motorcycledaily.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/Qu...](http://www.motorcycledaily.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/Quiet_Vehicles_NPRM.pdf) [1] - [http://audiologyworld.net/img/rnhposter.pdf](http://audiologyworld.net/img/rnhposter.pdf) [2] - [http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXI/266/266-59-a.ht...](http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XXI/266/266-59-a.htm) [3] - [http://www.autoevolution.com/news/honda-cbr250r-gets- street-...](http://www.autoevolution.com/news/honda-cbr250r-gets-street-sport- exhausts-from-yoshimura-36558.html) [4] - [http://lic.abateflorida.com/Library/Library/cycle_news__nois...](http://lic.abateflorida.com/Library/Library/cycle_news__noise_study.htm)

<comment><USER7> One, decibels are a logarithmic unit. Two, you are comparing factory exhausts on the Harley meant to comply with noise regulations with top of the line aftermarket race exhausts for the Honda (which is probably as loud as you could make the Honda without removing the pipes entirely). They are not anywhere near each other - and the data in [1] really makes that point, I'm not sure how you concluded that most motorcycles are anywhere near each other in sound output.

<comment><USER6> > One, decibels are a logarithmic unit.

That's not a good statement. Just because a number is logarithmic does not make sound logarithmic...Here is a video that shows two different exhaust with similar dB output: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax6W-V9bsmg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax6W-V9bsmg)

As a side note, opening a can of coke will record 101.5 dB from one meter away: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAd2BUB6XqQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAd2BUB6XqQ)

> Two, you are comparing factory exhausts on the Harley meant to comply with > noise regulations with top of the line aftermarket race exhausts for the > Honda (which is probably as loud as you could make the Honda without > removing the pipes entirely). They are not anywhere near each other - <USER2> > the data in [1] really makes that point,

Honda are subject 1 and 3, Harley are 5 and 6.

Subject 1 - 105 dB A, Subject 3 - 99 dB A.

Subject 5 - 101.8 dB A, Subject 6 - 106.7 dB A.

The two Hondas are not the same one you mentioned in your original post, However, stock exhaust is 72dB at idle and 86dB at half throttle on Honda CBR250R. [http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/2013/03/article/2013-honda- crf...](http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/2013/03/article/2013-honda- crf250l-comparison/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I last bought a VW (2008) I was concerned due to a clunking noise after first starting it up and driving a few miles; I called the VW service dept and they explained that there was a compressor which captured exhaust fumes and released them at a lower rate for the first few miles of each journey -- to help them meet EPA emissions standards. I was assured there was nothing to worry about.

While this is a different case, it struck me then that the emissions guidelines were being gamed by manufacturers. We're regularly reminded that barriers will be circumvented; what is the correct approach here? Like performance enhancing drugs in sports, too stiff of a fine and manufacturers are encouraged to find more subtle ways to beat the system, unenforced you leave a polluting industry to destroy our environment..

<comment><USER9> There is a more charitable interpretation.

When engines are colder, they burn less efficiently and produce "worse" emissions. A system that treats the warmup period differently than the steady- state of running a hot engine is potentially quite reasonable.

<comment><USER10> If you output those same emissions at a different time you haven't really done a lot for environment (except if they're cycled through catalyc converter or DPF filter which are usually less effective on cold start) - you're just gaming the system to get better eco ratings.

<comment><USER11> If you're recirculating exhaust back into the engine, you're able to attempt to reburn any fuel that wasn't burned on the first pass, while also exposing any emissions to higher temperatures on the second pass (higher temperatures = easier to break down when those emissions reach the emissions control system).

<comment><USER12> _If you 're recirculating exhaust back into the engine, you're able to attempt to reburn any fuel that wasn't burned on the first pass_

That's not what EGRs do.

EGRs take exhaust, which is relatively inert (combustion having already taken place) and injects it into the combustion chamber to _lower combustion temperatures_. The reason you want low temperatures is that NOx (nitrogen oxides) form at high temperatures.

<comment><USER11> It appears I was mistaken!

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

"In internal combustion engines, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is a nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions reduction technique used in petrol/gasoline and diesel engines. EGR works by recirculating a portion of an engine's exhaust gas back to the engine cylinders. This dilutes the O2 in the incoming air stream and provides gases inert to combustion to act as absorbents of combustion heat to reduce peak in-cylinder temperatures. NOx is produced in a narrow band of high cylinder temperatures and pressures.

In a gasoline engine, this inert exhaust displaces the amount of combustible matter in the cylinder. In a diesel engine, the exhaust gas replaces some of the excess oxygen in the pre-combustion mixture.[1] Because NOx forms primarily when a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen is subjected to high temperature, the lower combustion chamber temperatures caused by EGR reduces the amount of NOx the combustion generates (though at some loss of engine efficiency).[2] Gasses re-introduced from EGR systems will also contain near equilibrium concentrations of NOx and CO; the small fraction initially within the combustion chamber inhibits the total net production of these and other pollutants when sampled on a time average. Most modern engines now require exhaust gas recirculation to meet emissions standards."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The tech industry has been guilty of this in the past as well. Example: Nvidia and AMD drivers detected if you were running certain benchmarks or games, and would cheat by downgrading various rendering settings that had minimal effect visually.

Often this was a simple check to get the process's executable name; simply renaming the .exe would get you significantly different perf results.

<comment><USER14> Yeah that was how I first learned about this with ATI cheating on Quake III in 2001, as discovered by HardOCP. Here's a link to an article about it (original article doesn't seem to be around anymore):

[http://techreport.com/review/3089/how-ati-drivers- optimize-q...](http://techreport.com/review/3089/how-ati-drivers-optimize- quake-iii)

<comment><USER15> Wayback has it [http://web.archive.org/web/20020223144052/http://www.hardocp...](http://web.archive.org/web/20020223144052/http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/vidcards/ati/8500/quack/) along with a link to a German site that points out some of the quality loss in the ATI driver. [http://alt.3dcenter.org/artikel/2001/10-24_a.php](http://alt.3dcenter.org/artikel/2001/10-24_a.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This was a longstanding practice to make diesel engines more efficient while passing the official emissions test. There was a similar enforcement against Caterpillar and other truck makers in 1998:

[http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/caterpillar-inc-diesel- engin...](http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/caterpillar-inc-diesel-engines- settlement)

And against Ford in 1998:

[http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents...](http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-06/documents/defeat.pdf)

along with a clear ruling that defeat devices were illegal.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if the primary control code should be open source. That's without respect to right to modify or reuse the code, just whether it should be mandatory that it be published. And it'd exclude things like user space apps and UI/UX stuff. But any of the code that controls or affects steering, acceleration, ignition, braking, and lighting, really seems like it's not OK to just consider it a black box, subject to DMCA, copyright, and trade secrets laws and thus risky (or flat out illegal) to reverse engineer and understand how it works. And right now a significant part of an automobile is a black box, and you do not fully own it.

It was supposed to be that patenting required you to fully disclose all the details of an invention. The idea was to not only make clear what you had a monopoly for, but so that others could learn from your invention and make something different that was better.

<comment><USER18> If it's just published you can't be sure it's the same code that runs in the car. You should be able to compile the code and inject your locally compiled firmware to the ECU if you want to verify that the car engine is doing what it's supposed to be doing.

<comment><USER19> If you can do it, chances are an attacker can, too. I prefer hardware that won't load unsigned software in such places.

<comment><USER20> Then use reproducible builds. You inspect the source code, and if it does what it's supposed to, compile it reproducibly, and compare the binary with the official one which has a signature. If they match, then everything is kosher.

<comment><USER17> Difficult unless the compile tools are free and open source, and the manufacturer documents the exact version of what compiler they're using, and what feature flags are enabled, etc. Otherwise the exact same source code can produce many different binaries, each of which hash differently.

I don't know the solution, but the black box approach we have right now I do not like. As a pilot this is a bit weird for me to say because those systems are also completely proprietary as well, full on black box - and not the d/v recording type. And I'm even wondering if that's overdue for a change as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is actively malicious. There had better be criminal charges filed.

<comment><USER22> I expect at the least they are going to get hit with the maximum administrative fine, 37,500 per vehicle.

<comment><USER23> That maths out to somewhere in the ballpark of eighteen billion dollars.

In 2012, the EPA issued $252 million in fines, total. Kia & Hyundai were fined $300 million total in 2014.

I don't see them hitting VW with eighteen billion.

e: Eh, that might not be so unreasonable after all. In 2012, VW made about $28 billion in profit on $250 billion of sales.

<comment><USER24> If the cars can't pass smog testing without cheating, then they also need to be forced to buy each and every one of them back. $18 billion sounds reasonable to me. This needs to _hurt_.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure the patch will allow them to pass the tests. It'll just reduce driving performance as well.

<comment><USER26> Likely true; the problem with that is the owner ends up with a car with lower specs than they agreed to when they bought it. The owner of the car needs to be compensated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anyone know if this "defeat device" would be a violation of the various Euro* regulations in Europe? It's been widely reported [1] that diesel cars emit more NOx than the specification allows, but so far no consequences. More than 50% of all cars sold in the EU are diesel fueled, and many countries are breaching the EU air quality limits. This causes an estimated 400,000 premature deaths each year [2]

[1] [http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-new-icct-study- sho...](http://www.theicct.org/news/press-release-new-icct-study-shows-real- world-exhaust-emissions-modern-diesel-cars-seven-times) [2] [http://www.euractiv.com/sections/health-consumers/eu- sends-b...](http://www.euractiv.com/sections/health-consumers/eu-sends- belgium-and-bulgaria-court-over-air-quality-315532)

<comment><USER28> Apparently made illegal at least by 2007 regualtions (maybe adopted later, not expert in EU law)

[http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:320...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32007R0715)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> What actually incentivizes a customer to take their car to a shop to get this fixed though? It's not causing harm to individual car owners, and it's not like they can get collections agencies to sieze them.

Seems like they're going to have trouble getting compliance here...

<comment><USER30> I've got a 2013 Golf TDI and was thinking about this as well. If it isn't a safety related recall, I'm not sure how you get people to comply aside from some other action related to, say, their next years registration (i.e. if your VIN doesn't have this fix applied, you can't reregister your car). Not sure if that's a thing, though.

I'd personally plan to take my car in "real soon now" to get the fix.

<comment><USER31> I wonder how you car will drive after the "fix." I suspect you won't be very happy with it.

<comment><USER30> Yup, quite possibly thinking about bailing on the car sooner rather than later. I have no idea if this kind of thing significantly affects resale value, but I'm not sure I want to wait around to find out.

<comment><USER32> There will be aftermarket kits to remove the controls. Just like there are now for all diesel engines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand how California detected this. The one time I had to take my 2010 Jetta turbo diesel for a smog check, the inspection was ENTIRELY visual. The inspector did not insert a probe into the tailpipe. He did plug the test rig into the OBD-II port under the steering column and turn the key to the accessory position (presumably to electronically capture the VIN), but that's it. I even asked him at the end if it was an entirely visual inspection and he said, puzzled, yes but that's what the computer told him to do.

<comment><USER34> California's CARB is the gestapo of car emissions. If anyone has the motivation, expertise, and evil disposition to detect this, it's the state of California. I've never lived in a state like this. Bi-yearly tailpipe sniffs and visual inspections. Even if your car's emissions are cleaner than their ridiculous requirements, they'll still fail your car if it has parts on it that are not stock. I ended up having to sell my car to someone out of state because I'm not going to swap in and out my carefully customized (and clean) intake and exhaust system every two years just so they can shine a flashlight in and see stock parts.

I'm not shocked that California is a part of this.

<comment><USER35> More interestingly: Did the German TÜV not detect this? They have even stricter rules.

<comment><USER36> Europe doesn't have stupid emissions rules biased against diesels.

<comment><USER37> On the contrary, California emission standards held diesel passenger vehicles to the same standards as gasoline/petrol passenger vehicles. Whereas in Europe, diesel emission standards were much more lax compared to their petrol counterparts.

I suppose one could say that being more concerned with the more directly harmful and smog forming emissions(NOx and PM) over CO2 would constitute 'bias' against diesels. But, conversely, there's a rather compelling argument that the more lax European diesel regulations spurred diesel adoption and protect their domestic manufacturers.

[https://www3.nd.edu/~jthurk/Papers/MMT.pdf](https://www3.nd.edu/~jthurk/Papers/MMT.pdf)

<comment><USER38> A lot of jurisdictions in Europe are rethinking their diesel prioritisation a precisely because of particulate and Nox emissions.

In the case of Volkswagen, the TSi engines are a much better buy than the TDi engines. Better power delivery, clean running and nearly as good fuel economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> They even made commercials to prove how clean the cars are. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNS2nvkjARk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNS2nvkjARk) I own a TDI VW and fell into believing that the ride is indeed clean. Now it looks like their software hacks are even more refined than the combustion tech.

<comment><USER40> Of course this is a major part of their marketing. If the EPA makes them reflash my ECU and as a result my fuel consumption goes up noticeably I'm going to expect them to buy the car back. They sold them on false claims.

This also pretty much guarantees that I will never buy another VW.

<comment><USER41> > If the EPA makes them reflash my ECU and as a result my fuel consumption > goes up noticeably I'm going to expect them to buy the car back.

Good luck with that.

<comment><USER40> If they face a choice between having to pay an EPA fine equal to the original sale price of the car, or buying them back at depreciated values, I can imagine which one they'd prefer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> If the ultimate and only resolution to this is that VW has to pay a fine, or other outgoing monies due to the recalls, in an amount that is not significant to the operation of their business, nobody should be surprised that this happened, nor question whether it can happen again.

</comment><comment><USER43> I don't quite understand how the car can known it's getting an emissions test. I thought you just pulled up and revved the engine. Or do they plug the computer in nowadays?

<comment><USER44> Tests have fixed usage patterns. You detect those while total mileage is low, and you assume it's a test. After X thousand miles, you stop detecting. Job done.

<comment><USER45> eh, not really. In atlanta, it was once a year, around your birthday. Where I am, outside savannah, it's never. So my car would have no idea if it's being tested or not

<comment><USER22> That's not the test we're talking about here. This is the official test to get a certificate of compliance and sell a vehicle in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> The NYT is being disingenuous in presenting this as VW detecting the EPA test cycle and doing something to cheat. I think they've confused open loop and closed loop engine operation.

VW's 4-cylinder engines which failed the EPA tests are all turbo engines. Turbo engines run hotter than naturally aspirated engines and so, they produce more NOx, since it's one of the high temperature byproducts. In fact, EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) systems inject exhaust into the intake to lower combustion temperatures and NOx output. All engines do this, turbo or not.

Whatever NOx makes it out of the engine can be catalyzed in the catalytic converter if there is enough O2 for the catalyst. All the engine's intake air and temperature sensors, and pre-cat and post-cat O2 sensors exist to balance the gases coming into the catalytic converter to optimize the catalytic reaction.

When the engine is using all of these sensors to fine tune the amount of air, fuel and EGR to maximize catalyst efficiency, it's running in something called "closed loop" mode. The sensors and inputs work in a closed loop to balance the system. This is what happens when you're cruising on the highway or driving around at relatively fixed throttle.

Give the car a lot of gas, and something else happens. All of a sudden, a LOT more air enters the engine. The sensors can't change reading fast enough (mass air flow sensor, for example) or their readings are now out of the sensor's useful sensitivity band (for O2). The engine code knows that sensor capabilities have been exceeded, and it goes into "open loop" mode. In this mode, rather than using sensor readings, the engine reverts to pre-programmed maps, usually indexed by RPM, throttle position, engine load, and boost level. These maps are designed for relatively clean combustion and engine safety, but they will not generate optimal catalyst input gases, and so, the catalyst efficiency drops off tremendously. Furthermore, performance cars will often burn rich (too much gas for amount of air) in order to prevent engine destroying pre-detonation.

Most of the EPA test cycle will happen in closed loop mode. Most high throttle acceleration or "fun" driving will happen in open loop mode. There's the source of the discrepancy between EPA test cycle and real world driving. VW got caught, but every car does this, as we don't have wide-band, high-rate sensors yet at a price point even close to where it would need to be for consumer cars.

(Next time you see someone racing off from a stop light, in pretty much any car, watch the exhaust pipe, you'll see dark smoke. I guarantee you they're running rich in open loop mode).

<comment><USER47> > The NYT is being disingenuous in presenting this as VW detecting the EPA > test cycle and doing something to cheat. I think they've confused open loop > and closed loop engine operation.

The NYT is not at all confused. The cars in question have software in the ECM _specifically_ meant to detect testing. The software looks at various inputs, including steering wheel position, speed, duration of operation, and barometric pressure. The values it looks for precisely track the parameters of the federal test procedure use for EPA certification.

When the software detected this, it switched to a mode that VW actually called "dyno calibration". At all other times, it used a mode VW called "road calibration".

Source: [http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov- caa-09-18-15....](http://www3.epa.gov/otaq/cert/documents/vw-nov- caa-09-18-15.pdf)

<comment><USER48> Wow. From the source:

"VW continued to assert to CARB and the EPA that the increased emissions from these vehicles could be attributed to various technical issues and unexpected in-use conditions. VW issued a voluntary recall in December 2014 to address the issue. CARB, in coordination with the EPA, conducted follow up testing of these vehicles [...] to confirm the efficacy of the recall. When the testing showed only a limited benefit to the recall, CARB broadened the testing to pinpoint the exact technical nature of the vehicles' poor performance"

I remember spending half a day at the dealership to deal with this recall, which was required to get my CA registration renewed. Can't believe it was just a BS update that didn't really fix anything. Shocking and extremely disappointing behavior from VW

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> How would this benefit Volkswagen? The article says the device activates emissions control systems when it detects the car is being tested... so it's not as if they're saving money by emulating a system they're not manufacturing.

<comment><USER50> Don't the emissions systems affect performance? I have a 2012 Golf TDI and really like it, one of the advantages over one of the hybrids is that I get pretty great fuel economy for the kind of driving I do, but it doesn't feel like I'm driving a weed eater.

This really pisses me off. It doesn't surprise me I guess but it never occurred to me that a car manufacturer could get away with something like this for, apparently, 6 model years.

<comment><USER3> Yes, a common strategy is to inject more EGR (exhaust gas) into the fresh intake air. As EGR is already burned, it is inert, so it negatively affects the combustion, lowering the temperature. With lower combustion temperature you get less NOx... but less power for each amount of fuel, so your efficiency/performance is lower, and also non burned products (CO, C) increase. You then trap those with the Diesel Particulate Filter... it's a very complicated game with very small margins, that's the reason of so much cheating.

<comment><USER40> Since this EPA action is about NOx, it seems VW will need to lower combustion temperature, leading to higher soot and therefore more particulate filter cycles. That will also increase fuel consumption.

<comment><USER22> In addition to the recall, and likely upcoming penalty, VW can now look forward to a class action suit regarding vehicle fuel economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I guess this is the automaker equivalent to a CPU detecting its running benchmark code.

</comment><comment><USER52> > The software was designed to conceal the cars' emissions of the pollutant > nitrogen oxide, which contributes to the creation of ozone and smog.

Is this an error in the article or is creating ozone a bad thing?

<comment><USER53> Ozone production at ground level won't reach the upper atmosphere. It is too reactive. So all it's doing is burning people.

<comment><USER54> > Ozone production at ground level won't reach the upper atmosphere. It is too > reactive.

And, also, heavier than air.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I have an Audi TDI, but luckily not one of the affected models. I would be furious, especially if post-update performance was noticeably different. If so they are going to be up to their eye balls in class action suits demanding buybacks and the like (not unprecedented, Dodge just did a buyback).

</comment><comment><USER56> I drive a mazda, and my car definitely runs rich (visible buildup on tailpipe, the exhaust smells like gasoline when the engine is cold), but it just passed its first emissions test (at 6 years old) showing no detectable gasoline. I wonder if there's some gaming going on there too.

<comment><USER57> From the factory all vehicles run rich - it helps immensely with longevity as the extra fuel cools and lubricates the engine.

<comment><USER58> Vehicles run rich _when cold and at full throttle_. No engine would pass emissions checks if they didn't run stoichiometric mixture during idle and low-throttle operation.

<comment><USER57> > _stoichiometric mixture during idle and low-throttle operation._

I don't believe I've ever seen a factory tuned vehicle run less than 16:1, most are 17 or 18 : 1

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin Many of the comments in this thread follow a similar pattern. They are all essentially derivatives of Goodhart's law. [0]

>> Once a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

It's quite useful to have a name - a label - for this sort of behaviour. In this case, the means by which VW optimised for this metric was crafty computer software! A metric is only as good as the cost of the unintended consequences that come with imposing it on people, in particular large corporations.

I am not surprised that this is done by many corporations as mentioned elsewhere in the comments (ATI/Nvidia etc). This is because regulations and benchmarks that can be gamed, such as engine efficiency, _will_ be gamed because the incentives of corporations work out that way:

(I hope this isn't perceived as an anti-corporate rant because it's not. Just a way of framing facts).

For regulations imposed on large corporations in general (think EPA admissions standards):

1) Regulations are mandated by a government to effect some purpose (stop destroying Earth)

2) Executives - the people running the corporations - are _bound by legal responsibility_ \- their fiduciary duty [1] - to create value for their shareholders (selling lots of cars, and profitably).

3) Regulations can obstruct the activities of a corporation by making them do things they don't want to (making efficient cars is hard and costly and affects the bottom line - its cheaper to manufacture a car with less platinum [2] in it)

4) Companies are incentivized to minimize the time and money spent on adhering to regulations

5) Once a regulation is standardised and codified, it becomes possible to follow the letter of it, while ignoring the spirit of it. All a corporation has to do is meet the metrics in the specification to abide by the regulation - in other words - game the system.

Given these incentives, we have seen that corporations prefer to abide by regulations in the maximally efficient way: gaming them. Thus reducing a well- meaning government initiative to gamesmanship.

Kudos to the EPA for calling VW out on this. This kind of incident reinforces (in me at least) the idea that environmental legislation is an extraordinarily difficult thing to get right.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

[1] [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty](https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fiduciary_duty)

[2] Catalytic convertors

<comment><USER22> >This kind of incident reinforces (in me at least) the idea that environmental legislation is an extraordinarily difficult thing to get right.

And the more detailed you make the regulation to prevent gaming, the harder it is for new competitors to enter the industry. Also good god having read and interpet their frequently self contradicting regs is a nightmare. Hell, Tesla got hit with an EPA penalty early on because they didn't certify the roadster's non-existant emissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Seems very UnGerman to patch over a flaw instead of rooting out the problem from the ground level and engineering a solution. I'm just saying deceitfully patching over the problem seems uncharacteristic of the cultural norm/stereotype that I know.

</comment><comment><USER60> How anybody at VW would think it's a good idea? Sure, it's a clever trick, but when they get caught - and it's assured they will - they'd probably get it pretty hard. I mean, Toyota got hit for $1.2 bln for problems that were mostly imaginary[1], how much _this_ would cost?

[1] [http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/justice- departme...](http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/justice-departments- unjust-toyota-fine)

</comment><comment><USER61> If these controllers were open source, drivers could decide on their engine settings themselves. That could be an interestimg strategy for VW as it would move responsibility to the drivers.

<comment><USER62> It's my understanding that there's plenty of aftermarket opportunities available for this kind of tuning.

<comment><USER63> VW denies you warranty repairs if you do this tuning if the damage can be traced to ECU modifications. Class action lawsuit in 3...2...1...

<comment><USER58> That's a perfectly reasonable policy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> There is also quite some lies "optimism" in the EU regarding stated mpg L/100km from the manufacturer and real world measured mpg.

Is it the same software that the car companies use during EU drive cycle tests vs real world production cars? If you were a cheating manufacturer you would tune your car lean for the tests and more sporty with slightly higher consumption for the real world production run.

<comment><USER65> Sure, the real challenge must lie in quickly recognizing the different test setups for consumption vs pollution, because they certainly "require" very different engine parameters. I would not be surprised if (or rather: I'd be surprised if not) consulting industry experts managed to sneak some easily detectable patterns into the initial part of the standardized "test scripts". It's not like these kinds of optimizations are in any way brand exclusive, or it was impossible to know of them before these news (the only way to not know about them, assuming a moderate interest in all thing car related, was deliberately turning a blind eye for the sake of believing in progress)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> That's okay. They just need to grow the wheelbase a bit and reclassify all their cars as "light trucks". Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm wondering how this is going to be implemented.. it doesn't seem like a thing that's really fixable here.

<comment><USER30> Total speculation based solely on experience as a consumer (and I own a 2013 VW Golf TDI, so it affects me), but my guess is that the fix would be updated software to apply the stricter emissions controls all the time, presumably at the expense of engine performance.

EDIT: And reducing fuel economy, which is a huge selling point of the TDI in the first place. No idea "by how much" though, and typically TDI numbers are understated, so its possible that a reduction in economy will still be in line with their claims.

<comment><USER67> Yea, I have a 2015 Jetta which is why I was curious. I wonder if this explains why my car sounds really weird for the first few minutes of running.

<comment><USER30> I think that's just a diesel thing.

<comment><USER67> I don't have a diesel, but it sure sounds like I do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is interesting. VW has already been performing a nationwide ECU reflash on all MkIV TDI cars this year. Was that part of this action, or was it the cause of this action?

</comment><comment><USER68> Given the low cost and ubiquity of sensors nowadays, you'd think it would be feasible to require car makers to test emissions in real time, in the real world.

<comment><USER69> We already have that, It's called OBDII.

Besides error codes, OBDII has 8 emissions monitors. In California all cars after 2001 are checked by means of a visual and these 8 readiness monitors: catalyst, heated catalyst, EVAP, SAI, O2, O2 Heater, EGR/VVT, AC

Source: I work on my two Audis

<comment><USER70> If you need to, you can beat most O2 monitors with a 555, most O2 heater monitors with a $0.45 resistor (or an O2 heater from a neutered O2 sensor), an EGR sensor monitor with a diode and couple resistors. Many catalyst monitors are just downstream O2 sensors that detect cycling (another 555 will defeat).

OBD2 monitoring, without fairly careful visual inspection, isn't a full solution. It's used because it's cheap, easy, and close to good enough, but enthusiasts are easily able to defeat it, for "off road use only", of course...

<comment><USER71> Until recently O2 sensors were not used on diesels. There are a host of reasons for this, one of the main ones being that until recently, diesel fuel in most places had high levels of sulfur, which is a known poison for Pt and some of the other metals which are used in both catalysts and O2 sensors.

As for EGR monitoring, most OBD2 systems I've seen monitor the presence of the egr solenoid by looking for the back emf. So you'd need an inductor or a solenoid for that. Additionally, they usually will often do a test of the manifold pressure while cycling the valve, to confirm the flow rate (obviously this can only be done of the engine in question has a MAP sensor). And if the MAP sensor is the primary sensor for doing fuel monitoring (ie, no MAF sensor), then there would be no easy way of defeating this monitor without messing up the normal performance of the engine. So in my experience, defeating EGR and passing the EGR related OBD2 monitors is non trivial. But then, since there is usually an allowance (in the current CA smog check schemes) for some of the monitors to not have completed running while still passing the test, it doesn't matter too much in practice (can't disconnect the EGR valve, but the egr readiness monitor is moot). The EGR monitor is usually the last one to run anyway, so this makes passing the smog check with what would otherwise be a egr related OBD2 failure, fairly easy.

Beating O2 monitors is actually much more difficult in practice. First of all, an increasing number of O2 sensors in cars are wideband sensors which don't output the traditional switching signal one could simulate with a 555. Even some older cars use wideband O2 sensors (I have personal experience with two MY 1998 Toyotas [california cars] for which this is the case). Secondly, even if you do have all narrowband O2 sensors on a car, the way the O2 monitors work is that the downstream (of the catalyst) O2 sensor(s) output is compared to the upstream (of the catalyst) O2 sensor(s) to see, not whether the O2 sensor is working, but that the catalyst efficiency is above some threshold. Simply simulating one or both signals with a naive switching circuit will trip the catalyst efficiency monitor. And why would you want to disable the upstream O2 sensor(s) anyway, it's main job is to provide an error signal to the fuel system which would otherwise be a completely open loop system? Without a working feedback loop your fuel system won't be running very well, and usually falls back to a super conservative fuel mapping because of the danger of unknowingly running lean (obviously a concern for gas engines only, not diesels).

Defeating OBD2 monitoring in these sorts of ways is not an issue in any meaningful sense. Enthusiasts often will replace their ECUs wholesale with an aftermarket one. When the ecu hardware and its programming is completely outside of the manufacturer's control, who can say anything about the validity of it's outputs for emissions compliance purposes?

<comment><USER70> EGR back EMF is simulated with a resistor bridge (for the "EGR not engaged" signal) and a diode to alter the effective resistor bridge (for the "EGR engaged").

Agree that it's totally counterproductive to remove an upstream O2 sensor for a road application. (For an off-road application, the only reason is to allow the use of TEL (leaded) fuel additive as an octane booster and an open loop controller and any such application would drive so few miles per year that it doesn't need to be worried about. The reason to eliminate a downstream is to remove (or dramatically reduce) the catalyst function. I have not experienced a car that did a "compare downstream to upstream"; I'm sure they exist, but manufacturers have an incentive to reduce nuisance MILs, so most controllers are designed to detect gross defects and typical failure modes of installed components, assuming all specified parts are installed, not to detect all possible types of intentional tampering.

I agree with you that this isn't a significant issue in terms of pollution levels, as the enthusiast market that will mod their cars to this extent isn't large in numbers, but based on the amount of poorly modified cars I see (gassers with tailpipes so sooted up they look like diesels, diesels modified so they can better "roll coal", people who think "more fuel must be better" when changing ECU maps, etc), I wonder how many regular cars' emissions are equally by some of these poorly modded enthusiast cars.

(I love and have no philosophical objection to auto enthusiasts and modded cars. Despite my hands-on experience above, I now drive an electric LEAF, which is not exactly an enthusiast car, but does payback the environment for some of my youthful transgressions...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 2009-2015, I'm surprised it's only 1/2 million vehicles.

<comment><USER72> It's only the diesel models, which are still only a small fraction of the cars being sold today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm keeping my old Mercedes diesels with no computers at all.

<comment><USER24> That's OK, I probably use more clean air than I need anyway.

</comment></comment><comment> ju-st The technical debt of petrol engines is becoming apparent.

<comment><USER73> The technical debt of petrol engines is not relevant to this article:

> The allegations cover roughly 482,000 diesel passenger cars sold in the > United States since 2009.

<comment> ju-st Sorry, I'm not a native speaker. I thought the word "petrol" includes diesel, too!

<comment><USER73> No worries! "Internal combustion engines" might be the best phrase to use, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> This reminds me of gaming hardware benchmarks.

</comment><comment><USER75> I can't believe such a large company would cheat like that. I think there must be more to this. Maybe a rogue employee?

<comment><USER76> More like a Rogue CEO and Board. Decisions of this magnitude going over so many years likely were made by the people at the top.

Recall that VW Chairman Ferdinand Piech resigned earlier this year [http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/25/uk-volkswagen- ceo-c...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/04/25/uk-volkswagen-ceo-chairman- idUKKBN0NG0N920150425)

The board was quoted: "The members of the steering committee came to a consensus that, in the light of the past weeks, the mutual trust necessary for successful cooperation was no longer there"

What likely happened was that the EPA filed suit against VW in April, and in uncovering the evidence needed to support the suit, VW chair Ferdinand knew that he needed to go in order to let VW continue to be a company. Or, Ferdinand could have been the ethical one and blew the whistle.

Either way, let out the stink. Corporations aren't nearly the kind of flawless entities you think they are.

<comment><USER77> Corporations aren't flawless, but it definitely isn't a given that the people at the top have any clue what is going on with their software either. I can think of two instances that I've personally seen very similar to the referenced story where someone in middle to middle-upper management made the call, and only 1-2 devs/analysts had any idea what was done.

If anything that should go to show the lack of sophistication a lot of these projects have. There often is no project manager, no code reviews, and a messy codebase where snippets of very unethical logic can hide for years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> While this seems to be made on purpose, my gut feeling is that car makers shouldn't do software...

<comment><USER79> Who should write the software then? People who don't know anything about cars?

<comment><USER80> People who know software, sitting in the same room as people who know cars.

I fear a big company would find it impossible, but that's how you get good software.

<comment><USER81> Are you under the impression they don't hire programmers to write their software? I don't understand your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Funny coincidence, reading the article we see that the american gov just punishes foreign companies.

<comment><USER83> What is coinciding with what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> DDOS VW shall we?

</comment><comment><USER85> Does HN not detect duplicates? I submitted the same article 3 minutes before OP.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10239985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10239985)

There's also another submission 15 minutes after OP's submission too.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240106](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240106)

<comment><USER86> It does to a point.

 _The OP 's link after .html:_ ?_r=0

 _Your link after .html:_ ?module=Notification&version=BreakingNews&region=FixedTop&action=Click&contentCollection=BreakingNews&contentID=50913528&pgtype=Homepage

 _The 3rd link after .html:_ ?referrer=

In this case, while the links may lead to the same article, they are NOT the SAME link.

edited: to make url differences more visible

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Is this an example of software becoming a hindrance or more beneficial to the industry?

</comment><comment><USER88> Good for Volkswagen.

</comment><comment><USER89> I love the look/feel/drive of a VW, but I will never again own one.

My parents bought a 2002 VW which I mostly drove and the maintenance costs were through the roof. There have been at least 3-4 recall notices, one time while parked on an incline, it rained and flooded the back of the car with water. When I went to VW, they said that I had to manually clean out some drainage underneath the car. How the hell am I going to do that?

Then the coolant leaks, engine belts, cracked radiator. You name it I probably had to get it fixed.

Never again.

<comment><USER10> Interesting, since here in EU the VAG group cars (Seat, Škoda, VW, Audi) are widely perceived as the most reliable and there's a huge amount of people buying nothing else.

<comment><USER90> Perhaps it's where they are built. I assume most US-bound VWs are from Mexico or US proper due to NAFTA and auto-import regulations.

<comment><USER32> Yes, VWs made outside of Germany are basically junk.

<comment><USER91> As was my German-built Corrado in the 90s. Of course, is that stopping me from buying another one this year? Nope, it just took me 15 years ago to get over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Instead of fining the manufacturer, just fine everyone who owns one. If every VW owner was forced to pay 20k or so, the problem would fix itself.

<comment><USER54> Well, sure, if auto purchasers were at risk of massive fines if they received a vehicle where the manufacturer had done something that the average user wouldn't have the skill to detect, no one subject to the government imposing such fines would ever buy a _car_ again, which would solve the problem quite completely.

OTOH, destroying the entire auto industry in the subject jurisdiction _might_ not be considered an _optimal_ means of resolving the problem. (And, indeed, might be so suboptimal to the population as to have catastrophic political consequences for the government imposing it.)

<comment><USER92> > destroying the entire auto industry in the subject jurisdiction might not be > considered an optimal means of resolving the problem.

I don't see how passing the costs along to future car purchasers is better than extracting the costs from the people who were actually harming others.</comment></comment></comment>


Ouya is new player in the console video game wars - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/story/2012-07-10/ouya-game-console/56118310/1

<comment><USER2> Give me a compelling shooter, even if it doesn't have the best graphics, and I'm in.</comment>


Find the closest point in O(logN) complexity? - <AUTHOR> "Given a billion points p1, p2, p3,...,pN in which each point is of the form (x1,y1). Also given a point Q which is of the form (x,y). Find the closest point P from Q. Constraint: Time Complexity O(logN)".
The Naive's solution to this problem is of the order O(N). I'm wondering if there's any optimization to this to get the best case order O(logN).<p>EDIT: Each point {pi} is unique. <comment><USER2> We're talking euclidean distance measure, right? If you are performing many queries against the same set of points {pi}, then yes. Create a structure such as a BSP or quadtree containing all N points {pi} in O(n log n) time, then you can perform a single search of it in O(log n) time. You'll have a bit of extra bookkeeping since it's possible that points closer than the "best point so far" could lie within more than one branch of the tree, so you can't naively follow the usual quadtree, bounding box type algorithm.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great. Thanks for your suggestion on BSP/Quadtree and Yes, we're talking about the Euclidean distance measure. The Inputs points {p1,p2,..,pN} are given as an Array and to perform the search in the order O(logN), as you said we are supposed to construct the BSP or Quadtree which takes O(NlogN) time. when it's put together it will cost us O(NlogN) time i.e. O( NLogN + logN ). But according to the problem, all operations have to be performed within O(logN) time. EDIT: I'm not performing the computation on the same set of points. Each point is unique.

<comment><USER3> There is no general sorting algorithm that is faster than O(n log n) worst case. But when sorting only happens once then the value of (n log n) is a constant and the running time of search is (log n + c) where c is some fraction of (n log n) amortized across each (log n) search.

       The big O for (log n + c) is O(log n).

However, you can do better by memoizing the search to get O(1) speed in exchange for O(n) space. But that's probably not in keeping with the parameters of the exercise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a beginner in Algorithms. can you please explain this "But when sorting only happens once then the value of (n log n) is constant" ? is it a good practice to assume that as a constant? because we usually see the problem as a whole and individually compute its running time like sorting (NlogN)+ search (logN) to get the final running time as O(NlogN). we can solve the problem in O(N) time which's nothing but finding the Euclidean distance to Each Point and keeping the Min. distance in memory. but that's regarded as a Naive solution.

<comment><USER3> I am a beginner as well. The actual worst case time of an algorithm with big O notation of O[log n] is [(a * log n) + c] where:

[a] represents the idea that there may be an arbitrary number of steps in the portion of the program that is _proportional_ to [log n]

[c] represents the idea that there is a constant amount of running time overhead that is independent of the core efficiency of the algorithm.

Big O notation is convenient because it gets rid of [a] and [c]. It can be misleading because [a] and [c] might dominate the run time in all practical cases. It can also be misleading because as [n] becomes large, O(n log n) often approximates (a log n).

Here we are only doing one O(n log n) operation...so long as the sorted array is memoized and used for future operations. Note that if the array is sorted destructively, then the memory is [a' * n] or O(n} which is the same as having an unsorted array (though [a'] may be bigger than the factor required without sorting.

Anyway, I don't really know what is or isn't a naive solution. But I've read a bit of Knuth and I don't think he would encourage looking for unneeded complexity because algorithms and computer science are hard enough just taking the simplest approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, yeah. Thanks for the clarification.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should HN have some sort of RSS? - <AUTHOR>

Should HN provide an RSS feed? I don't know about everyone else, but i think at least for me it'd be nice to have a feed for at least all articles that get at least say 5-10 upvotes so I can have checking HN just be integrated into the workflow of checking my email...<p>any thoughts? <comment><USER2> HN does have an RSS feed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss>. As to filtering by upvotes: you might be able to figure something out with Pipes (although I'm not sure how).

</comment><comment><USER3> The current RSS takes the front page stories. Is that not enough of a filter for you?

</comment><comment><USER4> Could we please get a meta tag for that feed?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ahh, I didn't see the link at the bottom... most webpages, I guess i'm used to firefox's rss icon in the addresbar</comment>


C for everyone else - <AUTHOR> http://wizardryandfunnyhats.com/2013/11/18/c-for-everyone-else/

<comment><USER2> This is very well-intended, but it suffers from _both_ lots of formatting errors and pure factual ones. It makes my highly conditioned (from Stack Overflow) C lecturing mode almost auto-trigger.

It's way too long to do a rebuttal here, though.

Some problems:

\- Bad terminology ("C has no object", when in fact the term really is very useful in C even though it probably doesn't mean what you expect if you come from C++ or Python)

\- "Booleans don't exist", I don't understand how the author can both acknowledge C99 and say this. Booleans _do_ exist! Their name is not so user- friendly, unless you include stdbool.h, then you get bool, true and false.

\- Pure random errors, like the first structure example code ("struct point foo={x: 5, y: 4};", what are those colons and numbers doing there?!)

And so on.

<comment><USER3> > Null terminated strings also don't allow us to use multibyte encodings such > as utf-8.

This just makes me cry.

<comment><USER4> Because it is unfortunate or because it is incorrect?

<comment><USER3> I admit that it's certainly technically correct that you cannot embed a U+0000 into UTF-8. Of course, anybody who actually needed to be able to represent U+0000 in a C string would simply represent U+0000 as 0xC0 0x80 and be done with it.

<comment><USER4> Heh, I wasn't calling you out, I was curious - I've done a little work with multibyte strings in C but never UTF-8, and it's been a very long time, so I didn't remember enough of the details to be sure of which you were saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Something tells me I shouldn't have done this out of an impulse. I basically hacked it away in 1 hour with one proofread. I felt on fire and wanted to push it out that probably wasn't such a good idea.

Of course you can represent utf8 in null terminated strings but you have to escape escape the null character, or if used as a terminator implicitly assume it's there. The basic jist of that was that I wanted to say, dont use byte encodings internally if you got large registers available and keep attention to null termination and it's pitfalls.

But justification beside I'm going to give it more time and reference check against the standard, refrase my intentions so that they are clear and probably shine more light on the positive aspects of the language and put it intro relation with other languages.

Hacker News isn't a place for pre alpha done in very little time drafts.

<comment><USER5> I think it definitely has potential. Throw it up on Github, and let people submit pull requests. Don't feel like you need to spend more of your time fixing the examples.</comment></comment>