Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/

<comment><USER2> I wish he provided more technical detail as to what differentiates this from every other attempt at exposing a general learning algorithm + NLP to the web. Beside the Wolfram brand-name, there's little reason to elevate this above 'curiosity I'll watch out of the corner of my eye' status.

<comment><USER3> It sounded to me like it was "This problem requires both brute force and cleverness, and I have supplied both.":

"But with a mixture of Mathematica and NKS automation, and a lot of human experts, I'm happy to say that we've gotten a very long way.... But I'm happy to say that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we're actually managing to make it work."

(Ellipses covers several paragraphs in this case.)

The big stopper in some sense has not been the cleverness, but the brute force necessary, because without the brute force collection and translation, there's nothing to be clever with. I, too, am "wait and see", but this could be valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/>

edit:

found out this little gem - Sergey Brin, before google, was an intern at Wolfram

source: <http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2004-10-13/google/>

and a letter from feynman to wolfram (only res I could find) [http://bp3.blogger.com/_6pUR- THE-y4/Rh0pW_ZhckI/AAAAAAAAACI/...](http://bp3.blogger.com/_6pUR- THE-y4/Rh0pW_ZhckI/AAAAAAAAACI/ug0tK70345k/s1600-h/feynman2wolfram.gif)

<comment><USER5> Where's the Feynman letter from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a sequel to the Cyc project, but with more resources being thrown at it

<comment><USER7> Nope, Cyc was built off a ridiculously complicated upper ontology using $80M+ over 25 years.

<comment><USER8> Who uses Cyc?

<comment><USER9> Apparently various parts of the US security apparatus.

Google Techtalk by Dr. Lenat <http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-7704388615049492068>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if this is actually going to work, or if it's going to be like every other failed attempt at this kind of thing - ie amusing at first but far too limited to be genuinely useful.

<comment><USER11> the difference in approach is outlined in the following paragraphs:

"But what about all the actual knowledge that we as humans have accumulated? A lot of it is now on the web—in billions of pages of text. And with search engines, we can very efficiently search for specific terms and phrases in that text. But we can't compute from that. And in effect, we can only answer questions that have been literally asked before. We can look things up, but we can't figure anything new out. So how can we deal with that? Well, some people have thought the way forward must be to somehow automatically understand the natural language that exists on the web. Perhaps getting the web semantically tagged to make that easier. But armed with Mathematica and NKS I realized there's another way: explicitly implement methods and models, as algorithms, and explicitly curate all data so that it is immediately computable."

(eg, the crucial formula is algorithms to compute further information from curated, trusted data)

<comment><USER2> so he scripted google and fed it all into a learning algorithm?

<comment><USER11> what is meant by curated data is the opposite of what google does, eg [http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/NewIn70Comput...](http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematica/guide/NewIn70ComputableData.html)

(google has pretty much admitted it does a horrible job with structured information...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds hype-ish, and loose on details... why are they doing this on their own, not publishing it in peer-reviewed journals?

<comment><USER13> That's just the way the Wolf-man rolls.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Methodolo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_New_Kind_of_Science#Methodology)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Are they going to call the beta version "Wolfram|Alpha Beta?"

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm reminded of the hype surrounding Cuil. So, does this system do anything for my mom? She's not really the math-y sort. From Wolfram's blog post, I wasn't able to determine what's in it for me. Or, are we way too early for that?

<comment><USER16> It seems to me like a cross between Wikipedia with curated data, Mathematica, and Google Calculator. You can ask it a wide variety of things, in natural language, and it is supposed to get the answer right fairly often. We'll see.

<comment><USER17> The important thing being that you can ask it new and novel questions. it sounds in fact something like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_ratiocinator> as interpreted in The Baroque Cycle

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Building knowledge on top of the huge algorithmic base of Mathematica, gives this a fighting chance of doing something significant.

<comment><USER19> Why? Mathematica does not have access to magical algorithms that none of the rest of us know about, nor does it have any particular performance benefits when it comes to implementing specific algorithms. It is a great exploratory tool and an exceptional "generalist" in computer mathematics, but beyond that it does not offers much that can't be done better/faster by a couple of smart people writing some tight application-specific code.

<comment><USER20> > Mathematica does not have access to magical algorithms that none of the rest > of us know about

Yes it does. Quite a lot of them, especially w.r.t. symbolic equation-solving and integration. They're notoriously protective of their trade secrets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> So what exactly can be done with a system like this? What types of problems does it solve?

<comment><USER22> First, we will ask it what problems it would like to solve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So it seems to me that alpha is going to try to create mathematical models from unstructured data found on the web and match them with similar models generated from natural language queries entered by the users. I'm sure probabilistic NLP methods are used extensively and I can see maybe how Mathematica can compute these quickly. But what the bleep is the role of NKS? From what little I know, I can speculate that he might have modeled statistical inference using CAs and so can constrain the probability space of matches?? Jebus I need to know more or forget what I know already, anything in between is frustrating.

</comment><comment><USER24> I respect Wolfram because he has the means to do whatever he likes, even if everyone else thinks it's crazy. That's real academic freedom.

</comment><comment><USER25> Obligatory Wolfram primer:

1) <http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/>

2) [http://groups.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/37f51351f5340e58...](http://groups.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/37f51351f5340e58?dmode=source)

</comment><comment><USER26> Doesn't look like Wolfram|Alpha is even breathing hard.

</comment><comment><USER27> That's all well and good, but when will Mathematica Home Edition be available in the UK so we can play with this stuff ourselves?

</comment><comment><USER28> I do hope they improve the color scheme and the "computational knowledge search engine" tag line.

</comment><comment><USER29> Exited and interesting approach. Adding more schematic will help such a system so it's working with time. Also seems to have the right kind of mad scientists.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is Wolfram the new Xerox Parc?</comment>


Why It Pays to Be a Jerk - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/why-it-pays-to-be-a-jerk/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> Link is broken for me, this one works: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/why- it-p...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/why-it-pays-to- be-a-jerk/392066/)</comment>


Canada says third citizen detained in China - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/8f158e68-03d5-11e9-99df-6183d3002ee1 <comment><USER2> Sadly, the article is paywalled. Do you have a short summary?

<comment><USER3> [https://archive.is/cN3Yt](https://archive.is/cN3Yt)</comment></comment>


Nine things you didn't know were invented by women - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-40923649 <comment><USER2> For me this has the opposite of the intended effect. It makes it really clear that _almost everything_ was invented by men (except the few things mentioned in the story).</comment>


The gargantuan stupidity of the financial transactions tax - <AUTHOR> http://pando.com/2014/03/13/the-gargantuan-stupidity-of-the-financial-transactions-tax/ <comment><USER2> The opposition to HFT here is hilarious to me. HFT and computerized trading is nothing more than the automation of the very lucrative trading industry. Do HFT firms make a lot of money? Sure. But it's coming out of the pockets of traders who in the aggregate would make even more. Its automation concentrating wealth but reducing overall costs, as usual.

<comment><USER3> >Sure. But it's coming out of the pockets of traders who in the aggregate would make even more.

i.e. traders like pension funds, who will end up passing the costs on to pensioners.

<comment><USER4> How actively to pension funds trade? The HFT squeeze harms people who jump in and out of positions quickly. Don't pension funds buy and hold, and thus benefit from reduced transaction costs? One of the hardest things to do in the market --- shopping huge blocks --- is simultaneously something HFT is good at _and_ something that inflicts costs on institutional buy-and-hold investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "In fact, we can show that the spreads must widen to be larger than the tax itself being applied. If there's a tax of 3 bps on a trade then no one's going to trade at a spread of less than 3 bps."

6bps. To market make a spread you have to buy AND sell. Tax is charged twice at each end.

The intermediaries are charged the tax twice, which means the end consumer (investors, pension funds, whatever) will be charged (at least) three times. Once directly, and twice indirectly because market makers will have to widen their spreads by at least that amount.

<comment> another-one-off Bit of a red herring to say this matters to individual investors though - compared to income tax it is meaningless, and if the share is expected to pay long term dividends it is not big.

It discourages day-trading on stock, but it won't do too much damage to mid/long term investors. It might actually encourage companies to make good mid-long term decisions.

 _EDIT_ and the two endpoints can trade directly with a spread smaller than 6 bps if they are that price sensitive.

<comment><USER5> What do shares have to do with anything? They are a small part of the picture. The spread on the e-mini S&P is currently 0.25, and it is trading at 1800. So 1/7200 is roughly 1.5 bps. This will increase the spread by (at least) 6 bps to 7.5bps, then charge you another 3. So spreads five times bigger. Instead of trading say 1810.00/1810.25, it will be trading 1810.00/1811.25. Do you get it yet? No one will trade. And the comical part is that they project supposed revenues based on current trading volumes.

Also, I've missed the best part so far, when I mentioned that you get charged three times in my first post, that was just to get into a trade. So end-user will get charged at least 6 times per roundtrip (twice directly, four times indirectly through widened spreads).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somebody's pretty angry. Gooooood :)

I see no serious argument in this text. I mean, my god, if we tax them, their prices will rise?! I've never heard of anything like that! :D And everything is so weakly argumented, just a couple of expert terms are thrown around, while the majority of the text deals with attacking segments of opposing views he disagrees with. All in all, very emotional and weak.

And I love his explanation of how this Great Recession came to be. One of the most manipulatively simplified descriptions I've ever heard.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a non-solution to a problem that doesn't even exist. The real "problem" as I understand it is that some people get information sooner than others and can profit from it, creating incentives to get information faster and faster even though there is little benefit to the rest of the economy for doing so. I doubt the total cost is that huge though.

I'm not sure if it's possible to fix that, but one idea would be to do trades in discrete increments of a few seconds or whatever. Similar to how exchanges close overnight and companies can release important information, and everyone can be prepared by the next day when they start trading again.

<comment> another-one-off Making money from pure trading revolves around information asymmetry, and ability to store goods - most of the time this is really good, because it helps to motivate people with clever ideas to put them into practice.

The problem with HFT is that practically speaking, the value of a company can't change in timeframes shorter than a couple of hours (barring exceptional circumstances like a big announcement). So a HFT firm is not actually benefiting from information asymmetry about the product of the company being traded or real-world conditions, it is benefiting from information asymmetry about the conditions at the exchange. In theory this is transferring money from subject-matter experts to experts in how exchange servers & the local fiberoptic grid works.

I'd be alone in a room of HF traders, but this isn't useful economic activity vs. subject matter experts making money.

I don't understand all the arguments about 'liquidity', I don't see why a slight price spread is a bad thing; provided that I can sell stock in an hour or so. There isn't a magic 'efficient price' determined by the gods of the market - it is whatever the buyer is willing to pay.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's entirely correct. They are profiting from information asymmetry. Markets change slightly and they know it 1 millisecond before everyone else. In that millisecond they buy or sell and profit from the price change. This is stuff that would have been done anyways by regular traders. It's just the high speed traders are now faster and so do it first.

As far as I can tell that isn't hurting anyone more than normal arbitrage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The general audience ( that includes me ) thinks that high frequency trading makes easy money out of nothing. But for someone to make money, another's got to loose. So has anyone heard of hft firms going bankrupt ?

<comment><USER9> You are assuming the market is a closed system, but it's not really: you aren't gambling with other people, instead the capital invested should be put to productive use. HFT helps with liquidity, though there are probably better solutions to that problem.

<comment><USER10> Honest question, why would liquidity of anything less than, say a week, be useful?

Same question for a day? An hour? A minute? A second...

<comment><USER11> Suppose we made regular businesses wait an extra week to receive shipments. What if you had to wait an extra minute to launch a new server on AWS? If a fundamentals trader has put in an order to buy a stock they've presumably done so for a business reason and slowing that down slows down their business.

<comment><USER12> I'm sure not automatically trading hundreds of times per second will not impact their business (unless their business is trading faster than somebody else).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The interesting thing I find about HFT discussions on HN is the mindset "it's computers, therefore I fully understand it".

</comment><comment><USER14> The big problem with the research around financial transaction tax is that most of the academics working on it are completely clueless - they have no real idea how a lot of the financial world works operationally in practice.

For example one of the major papers made a estimate for the total daily volume of the forex trading; it was lower than the volume that a single mid-tier investment bank would do.

Most papers also ignore standard practices like deal netting that banks do to reduce organic transaction costs.

</comment><comment><USER3> He sets up a number of straw men which completely miss the POINT of the financial transactions tax.

>In very brief form, it wasn't high speed trading, nor any of >the markets where that occurs, which led to the crash.

In very brief form, the financial transactions tax is NOT about preventing another crash (other regulations are needed for this). It's about preventing HFT operators from effectively levying a tax on the rest of the participants in the equities market (e.g. pensions and value investors).

>Reducing speculation increases price volatility

Absurd. In fact, high levels of capital flows correlate with financial crises (i.e. they're a _cause_ of volatility): [http://www.crei.cat/people/broner/BDES%20pub.pdf](http://www.crei.cat/people/broner/BDES%20pub.pdf)

This can be seen in HFT by looking at the flash crash. Volatility gone nuts. Did that ever happen before HFT?

>the tax itself will not in fact raise any net revenues

Again it's NOT THE POINT of the tax to raise revenues, it's to discourage HFT: [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/robin-hood-tax-how- re...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/11/robin-hood-tax-how-reformers- sabotage-themselves-with-terrible-branding.html)

>and yet will have a cost to both the workers in the form of lower wages and pensioners in lower pensions.

Not only false, the _opposite_ is true.

The profits that HFT firms make have to come from SOMEwhere, correct? Well, they come from you. Specifically, large investors (pension funds), insurance companies, value investors, etc. Other participants in the market.

HFT takes money directly from pension funds who are executing large orders, by 'skimming' off the orders they make. Their profits are not made out of thin air.

>So an FTT would indeed drive up costs for individual investors making the >critics correct on this very point then?

Nope. FTT is infinitesimally tiny % of a transaction. Unless you're executing millions upon millions of transactions a day that's an infinitesimally tiny amount. In which case you're NOT an individual investor, you're doing HFT... the exact kind of behavior this tax is intended to cut down on.

>Sigh. The argument is now that it's not going to cost people very much >because we've decided not to count that cost which is going to be the >largest for people.

Firstly, HFT WITHDRAWS liquidity precisely when it is needed the most. Most algos will freeze up during times of market distress. So yeah, they're not helping when the markets are ACTUALLY suffering from a lack of liquidity.

Secondly, they're adding trading volume, not liquidity. It was never hard to actually sell or buy a stock before HFT. They're not cutting down on spreads (that's what market makers do - and HFT is NOT market making).

When the markets are operating normally, they're _already_ very, very, very liquid (as was the case before HFT). HFT makes little to no difference.

HFT is basically legalized front running. It should be banned somehow because it is parasitic on the other participants in the equities market. The financial transactions would cut down on that, but don't expect them to give up without a fight (as this guy is witness to).

<comment><USER15> > In very brief form, the financial transactions tax is NOT about preventing > another crash (other regulations are needed for this). It's about preventing > HFT operators from effectively levying a tax on the rest of the participants > in the equities market (e.g. pensions and value investors).

Actually no. HFT drive down the costs for pensions and value investors. The ones that foot the bill is the traders and the market makers that have seen their margins collapse.

> This can be seen in HFT by looking at the flash crash. Volatility gone nuts. > Did that ever happen before HFT?

Indeed it did. There was a flash crash in 1962 as well. The reason was similar - suddenly the market found they were out of buyers.

> The profits that HFT firms make have to come from SOMEwhere, correct?

Sure, but there are plenty of other players in the market that traditionally have been able to shave a lot more from investors.

As for your comments that HFT is not driving down spreads, there are _plenty_ of evidence that they do. Spreads have collapsed to nothing in the 15-20 years of operating HFTs.

Mandatory reading: [http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html](http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2012/hft_apology.html) Don't miss part 2 and 3.

<comment><USER3> >Actually no. HFT drive down the costs for pensions and value investors. The ones that foot the bill is the traders and the market makers that have seen their margins collapse.

As a % of profits gained from HFT, market making is small enough to not even be relevant. The more profitable strategies involve basically front running the market.

>Indeed it did. There was a flash crash in 1962 as well.

It took a YEAR for prices to rise again. That is not volatility. Or a flash crash. That is a CRASH crash.

Wanna know how long it took for prices to rise again after the flash crash? 15 minutes. THAT'S volatility. One year? Eeeeeh, not so much.

>Sure, but there are plenty of other players in the market that traditionally have been able to shave a lot more from investors.

Yes, it is not the biggest rip off the world (or indeed the equity market) has ever seen. That doesn't change anything about its fundamental nature, however.

>As for your comments that HFT is not driving down spreads, there are plenty of evidence that they do. Spreads have collapsed to nothing in the 15-20 years of operating HFTs.

Spread have declined because electronic trading reduced the transaction costs of trading.

It ought to be glaringly obvious that anything that happened 20 years ago had NOTHING to do with HFT. It didn't even exist in a limited form until 15 years ago and only really took off 5 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article did a good job refuting the arguments in favor an FTT, up until this point:

> In fact, we can show that the spreads must widen to be larger than the tax > itself being applied. If there's a tax of 3 bps on a trade then no one's > going to trade at a spread of less than 3 bps. Why would you trade for a > margin less than the tax you have to pay?

Because you think the asset is going to increase in value in the future, of course!

You might find the article's argument compelling if you are an arbitrageur. The firms spending millions on microwave antennas to trade a few milliseconds sooner might be frustrated that transactions with puny spreads are no longer profitable, due to a .03% tax.

But we (society) swallow far more than that in other markets. How many labor transactions were rendered unprofitable (aka people choosing not to work) via income tax? How many retail sales never happened, because of sales tax? And these tax rates are four orders of magnitude higher than the proposed FTT!

People buying and selling financial instruments is not four orders of magnitude more important to the economy than is labor, or buying goods. If anything, it's much less important. So I don't see why financial instruments should enjoy a privileged tax status.

> Thus all of the revenue from the tax (and as I point out in that paper, this > will be less than the revenue lost from other taxes as a result of the > introduction of the FTT) will have its burden, and more, upon end investors.

How? The math doesn't work out! I am a retail investor, in a high income bracket, and a .03% FTT would cost me $1-2 a month. There's no way you could get the proposed revenue figures from people like me. I have to conclude that the majority would fall on investment firms.

The example investors, whose mutual fund does $85k in transactions a year, are either quite wealthy, or are being taken for a ride.

</comment><comment><USER17> Fun fact: banks having to hold to at least 5% of issued loans has led to market crash. 5% margin on good decisions is just too high for banks. I'd love to work in a bank, where 5% good decisions is considered achievement and not a complete ant total dumbassnes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why don't they set the minimum trading interval to something larger to unencourage HFT?

<comment><USER3> That doesn't really help if the HFT firms can simply pay to be first in line during each tick.

<comment><USER12> Depends how you implement it (a window for placing bids would be one way).

<comment><USER3> This wouldn't help either. HFT operators would race to extract as much information from the bidders during the window (e.g. by bid stuffing) and place the bid during the last possible femtosecond before it closes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So high frequency trading somewhat helps reducing the spread which is a good thing. I can understand that. But if HFT is a fix, instead of taxing HFT why not making it a task banks would deal with and earn money from it? A percentage of the revenue enabled by HFT would go to the bank and the rest to society.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you ask Peter Norvig? - <AUTHOR>

Peter Norvig is coming to guest lecture one of my classes. I want to be able to ask him an interesting question. If you had the chance, what would you want to ask him? <comment><USER2> I really admire Peter Norvig and have learned a lot simply by reading (and re- reading) two of his essays: How to Write a Spelling Corrector[1] and Solving Every Sudoku Puzzle[2].

What fascinates me about these essays is that in one, he is able to get good results from using a simple algorithm over a large corpus of data (books from Project Gutenberg). In the other, he is able to get good results through the application of a clever algorithm (constraint propagation). Both of these approaches (lots of data, clever algorithms) are used in AI. My question would relate to their relative merit, and would be something like the following:

"Have advances in Artificial Intelligence been driven more by the discovery and application of novel algorithms and techniques, or by an increased ability to collect, store, curate and analyze increasing bodies of data?"

However, I would also really like to know how he feels about John Searle's Chinese Room[3] argument.

[1] <http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html>

[2] <http://norvig.com/sudoku.html>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room>

</comment><comment><USER3> Who has been the single most influential person in your life?

Kind of a cliche question, and perhaps not one worth asking, but I've heard it asked of some pretty impressive people and the answer has always been really fascinating. Probably not worth it though, if you only have one question, especially if you're looking for something more technical.

</comment><comment><USER4> How can we convince people to actually adopt disruptive technologies?

-Driverless cars are fun, but will we ever see them on the road?

-Udacity has the potential to educate, but will employers care?

</comment><comment><USER5> How can we convince programmers that literate programming will improve their code quality and keep their code alive?

Tim Daly email@example.com</comment>


Artificial Gills to Breathe Underwater: A Million Dollar Scam? - <AUTHOR> https://gearjunkie.com/triton-artificial-gills-breathe-underwater <comment><USER2> See also the article linked here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11369011](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11369011)

No discussion, but it's a different analysis that concurs with this one - it's impossible.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ah, another one just like the CPAP (apnea machine) that fits in your nose. You can fool anyone some of the time and you can fool some people all the time.</comment>


Facebook may have known it was defrauding children+families through its games - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/25/18197457/facebook-games-friendly-fraud-credit-cards <comment><USER2> Post of the original article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823) .

</comment><comment><USER3> What a shame. I like to think if I ever saw anything like this as a software engineer, I would try to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Honestly, the title of this article makes me not want to read it. $BIG_COMPANY maybe did a thing on purpose.

Big companies do all kinds of things that we can speculate on. Wait until it is confirmed to call it news

<comment><USER5> It's confirmed to be intentional by internal Facebook docs and emails that were made public by a class-action lawsuit.

Furthermore, an employee proposed a fix for the "friendly fraud" that was rejected by management.</comment></comment>


viaweb.com - <AUTHOR> http://web.archive.org/web/19971022011536/www.viaweb.com/vw/com.html <comment><USER2> Check this out:

John McArtyem (firstname.lastname@example.com) is in charge of Viaweb's ordering system, hardware and security.

So this is Morris staying incognito!? ("Mac - RTM") Probably because of being in the PhD program at the same time?

<comment><USER3> Robert was so anti-publicity that he refused to let me list his name on the About page. As a compromise he let me list him under a pseudonym.

"The Bunster" was his girlfriend (now wife).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://web.archive.org/web/19971022011842/www.viaweb.com/cgi- bin/master/EDITOR/cgi-bin/ownacct>

the html forms submit to /x like YC.news do!

<comment><USER3> We put a gratuitous cgi-bin in the urls to throw off potential competitors, so they wouldn't guess how our software worked. Not sure if any were even sophisticated enough to wonder about that, in retrospect.

<comment><USER4> Would you recommend a similar tactic now?

<comment><USER5> yah dude, put .asp or make it look like a java based server. Even .php would probably work nicely that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/bugbear/how.html>

The original white paper for the company, then called WebGen.

"We do not expect that the web will replace printed catalogs. We do expect that it will eventually account for a substantial fraction of catalog sales. The Internet, like the telephone and the print media, will be a valuable sales tool for those who know how to use it."

</comment><comment><USER5> "Our software submits your pages to Altavista, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, WebCrawler, OpenText, and HotBot." Nice. Those were the days. Does anyone else remember when google was underground? I remember when it seemed just me and a few of my friends knew about them. For 2 years I would say "don't use altavista- use google." and whoever it was would say "Googol? Ogle? What?" Guess it wasn't that long ago at that...

<comment><USER3> Google wasn't just underground then; it didn't exist. Google wasn't founded till a year later.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found out about RTML at Viaweb. Would Arc have anything to do with it? Maybe inspired by it?

<http://web.archive.org/web/19971022012152/www.viaweb.com/vw/rtml.html>

<comment><USER7> That is great. I've been wondering about RTML lately. Could users run an RHTML page without having to republish their entire site? How interactive was the structure editor (the language environment)? Did it have an interactive toplevel? Was each page independent of all others, as far as executing RTML?

PG, RTM, TLB: any chance you could show us some of the Common Lisp code that implements RTML? I suppose code snippets of the internal implementation wouldn't go over with Yahoo's lawyers... I've read everything I can find (like this: <http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/paulgraham/bbnexcerpts.txt)> already; what I really want is to look at the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wasn't Omar Khudari a founder of ViaWeb or did he come later? I met Omar a couple of times when he was on the board of my friend's company and what a terrific guy.

</comment><comment><USER9> I love the search page... "Words to look for".</comment>


Space Station grabs SpaceX Dragon ship - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18195772

<comment><USER3> [2008] "Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work." (<http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2008/08/musk_qa>)

Elon Musk doesn't seem like the easiest person to work with, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a more accomplished human.

<comment><USER4> The enthusiasm shown for this accomplishment on Hacker News is borderline ridiculous. This comment seems particularly over the top to me. What does this even mean, how do you measure the attribute of "being accomplished" on a 1d scale across vastly different _kinds_ of accomplishment? To me it seems obvious that some of the medical accomplishments of the past 100 years are easily and vastly more important than a private space launch, but I wouldn't normally compare those things in such a manner. I had to rewrite this paragraph multiple times because it feels so bizarre. I haven't even touched on the question whether and to what degree you can ascribe an accomplishment of a group of people to an individual, which makes the whole comparison even stranger and less meaningful.

I mean, I guess some people here subscribe to the notion that space travel is imperative for human survival. In that case, you might argue that each step towards it is more valuable than anything else that does not immediately push towards human space travel. Human space travel will save humanity, your piddly vaccine only saves a couple of hundred million people. But that seems a bizarre argument to make (and maybe that's why one really makes it).

Edit: -3 in one hour? Wow. For what it's worth, I made this comment in good faith.

<comment><USER5> I too find the enthusiasm, displayed here and on reddit and everywhere in between, for this to be patently ridiculous, although not for the same reasons. I'm a great fan of space exploration, in all forms - observation, robotic, and human - but this docking is simply _not_ a significant event. Not in space exploration terms, and not in the grander scheme of human activity. It is neither a scientific nor a societal accomplishment, it showcases neither innovation nor courage. It's just - something that happened. Something that happened roughly on a monthly basis until a few months ago. I don't care.

I think a great deal of the enthusiasm stems from the fact that it's a private company doing this, and not a government. Well, I'm most emphatically _not_ enthusiastic about that. In fact, it smells rather dystopian. Governments can, with care, be kept under control. However bad corruption gets, democratic governments will always be bound to the electorate. Corporations - no. I don't want space exploration to be led by a private company, and certainly not by a small group of insanely rich individuals. As much as I admire Elon Musk - <USER2> Jeff Bezos, and all the others trying to get us back into space - these people are not the ones who ought to be leading us.

Part of my discomfort with this course of events is no doubt just my personal political views - I'm about as far left as you can go. But what's happening also reminds me of some of Heinlein's stories - when space exploration was fueled by money, human rights (especially the collective right of self determination) fell by the wayside.

If the cost of going to space is the permanent privatization of exploration, I can't be enthusiastic about it.

<comment> sasha-dv _It is neither a scientific nor a societal accomplishment, it showcases neither innovation nor courage. It's just - something that happened._

While governments are cutting down their budgets for scientific research and basically accepting the status quo regarding the spaceflight, there's this guy from Africa doing something extraordinary and you see no innovation or courage?

If you describe what happened today as "there was this thing that came close to some robotic arm or something, and then the arm slowly captured it, and ... that's about it.", then I agree with you - that is boring. But, that's not what happened today.

Today we saw one guy's _insane_ vision becoming reality. And if that is not something I don't know what is. And what's even more exciting about it is that this is just the beginning.

 _Governments can, with care, be kept under control. However bad corruption gets, democratic governments will always be bound to the electorate. Corporations - no._

Aren't corporations regulated by the laws made by the governments elected by the electorate?

<comment><USER5> _there's this guy from Africa doing something extraordinary_ ... _Today we saw one guy's insane vision becoming reality._

What happened today is only different because it was not government-funded[0]. I'm not allergic to the idea of government doing things (I agree with Barney Frank that "government is just the name for the things we decide to do together"), and so I really don't consider it to be interesting, or extraordinary, or insane. It's exactly what many others have done, just funded differently.

 _Aren't corporations regulated by the laws made by the governments elected by the electorate?_

The obvious, cliche response is "not nowadays". But, more helpfully - who has jurisdiction in space?

That is my fear. At the moment, the power with jurisdiction in space is the power that can get to space. And I want that power to be elected.

Up until now, space operations have always been nonpartisan, co-operative, and peaceful. As eager as I am for humans to go further, I can't help but think that if we can't maintain that way of doing things - if humanity must, in order to get to space, give up on the hope of universal rights and self- determination (meaning democratically elected bodies of power) - then we're not ready. If we can't decide to go to space cooperatively, as one unit - if a few lucky individuals have to do it for us, _even if they're right_ (which I believe they are), then we're not ready to go.

[0] That's a lie, of course. It _was_ partially government-funded, because the promise of contracts with NASA et al is what's making this possible (to my understanding). But that's beyond my argument.

<comment><USER6> > _Up until now, space operations have always been nonpartisan, co-operative, > and peaceful._

Oh please. Space operations grew directly out of unbridled Cold War militarism, and have been pure political football at least since the approval of the absolutely insane space shuttle program.

I want high taxes, I want big government, I want single-payer health care, I want a welfare and social security system that makes Scandinavia look like a libertarian wasteland. I want ten times the corporate regulation we have now.

But there is no reason for the government to be the primary driver or provider of routine space launch services, especially when it's done such a piss-poor job of it since Apollo.

Private companies like SpaceX have ample incentive to advance the state of the art in launch services and are demonstrably doing so for less than the government has ever managed before. NASA can and should take advantage of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I mentioned this yesterday, but I believe Reisman's quote really captures that feeling we are all having about SpaceX and particularly their first ISS mission:

Pelley: _"You know, I'm curious... you have so much background in engineering, you could have easily gotten a job at Boeing, or at Lockheed, but you came here..."_

Reisman: _"If you had a chance to go back in time, and work with Howard Hughes when he was creating TWA, if you had a chance to be there, at that moment, when it was the dawn of a brand new era, wouldn't you want to do that? I mean, that's why I'm here."_ [1][2]

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNwg8FvfuuU#t=425>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Reisman>

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's an animated gif of it docking: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/123449/dragon/Dragon%20docking%20wit...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/123449/dragon/Dragon%20docking%20with%20ISS.gif)

<comment><USER9> For anyone who wants a smoother video version of this,

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My favorite quote about this is from Don Pettit, right as the ISS grabbed the Dragon capsule.

"Looks like we've got a Dragon by the tail," station flight engineer Don Pettit said moments after grappling the craft over northwest Australia.

<http://www.spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/003/status.html>

<comment><USER11> And after that "okay, this was a great sim. now to turn it around and do it for real".

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Honey how was work ? \- Oh nothing special, i just helped the first private company in history dock a space capsule to the international space station.

<comment><USER13> I think it must be quite humbling to be a part of one of humanity's accomplishments, whether it be inventing an aqueduct or traveling through space.

<comment><USER14> Are you sure you mean humbling, and not the opposite?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> On one hand, this is a momentous day for private space flight. On the other, we're closer to Moon lobbyists than ever.

<comment><USER13> Privatizing area on the Moon is quite frightening to think about. I wonder if one day copyright law will also reach other planets and moons.

<comment><USER16> Where humans go, human concerns will follow. The sole, singular, and only alternative is for humans not to go.

(And for those inclined to take that as their cue to strike the fashionable misanthropic pose where they claim that would be a good thing, remember: The moon is a dead, sterile rock. The Moon has no copyright law because there is no creative activity of any kind there taking place that could be copyrighted. There is nothing there to abuse, no "environment" to foul, no natives to exploit, nothing, not even bacteria. The alternative to humans going there is death, forever. And not "human" death, either, but total death. No life. Deader than the worst possible nuclear holocaust could ever make Earth. If that is truly your position, fine, but I hope I can at least remove the fashionableness from your pose.)

<comment> DanI-S > There is nothing there to abuse, no "environment" to foul, no natives to > exploit, nothing, not even bacteria.

I agree with the sentiment of your post, but this is incorrect. The Moon is a uniquely pristine environment that holds irreplaceable evidence regarding the formation of both our and other solar systems. It may even contain bacteria, trapped long-dead within meteorites, that could tell us more about the development of life on Earth or elsewhere.

It is of huge importance that we are able to extract as much of this information as possible before we start tearing it up.

<comment><USER16> There is a _planet_ full of it. An _entire planet_. If we made a conscious effort to deliberately go forth and destroy all evidence, it would take us _millennia_... with generous technological assumptions.

Also an entire solar system and indeed an entire _universe_ full of further such stuff.

Space is _big_.

This is a terrible argument.

<comment> DanI-S How could we possibly eat _all_ these pigeons? There are flocks, 300 miles long, that turn the sky dark.

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

<comment><USER16> Complete bollocks. This is a _planet_. You are talking about taking a shovel to an entire _planet_. This is not something that's going to just, whoops, accidentally happen in a couple of hours, sorry, didn't think about all that science lying around. We haven't even done that level of "damage" to Earth, by orders of magnitude, _with the entire history of human civilization_ , on a much larger planet, and you're sitting there worrying about bespoiling a dead rock.

By the time we've "wrecked" all that precious precious data about the formation of the solar system we'll have better recording equipment than we can even dream of now anyhow, since we're talking centuries and centuries from now in the "best" case. Not to mention we'll have visited a few other places in this case.

<comment> DanI-S There's no need for the aggression. We're two grown-ups here, having a discussion about a subject we both find fascinating.

That aside, here's some elaboration.

Trillions of meteorites have landed on the Moon's surface since its formation. Some of these may be remnants from violent collisions between other planetary bodies. A few of these events may have happened at a time where life was starting on Earth. An tiny portion of these pieces of rock may actually contain fossil evidence of early life, in the form of bacteria or complex biochemistry. Similar evidence that once existed on Earth is likely to have been destroyed by our active geology, or by more recent biological processes.

The likelihood of life being preserved in this manner is so vanishingly small that, out of the trillions of meteorites on the Moon's surface (an area around 20% larger than that of Africa), only a minute number of them are likely to contain anything like it.

It would be a shame if the key to understanding abiogenesis was lost in an industrial rock-grinder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's incredibly difficult to overstate the importance of this moment for science and humanity as a whole. The commercialization of space travel is the only way that we will ever see the stars, as no longer are we at the mercy of the fluctuating interest in space travel from the already over-extended tax payers of certain nations. This is a beautiful moment for humanity, and a damn awesome way to start the weekend!

<comment><USER18> Personally my view is the exact opposite. Privatizing space travel will never bring us to the stars. It will get us into orbit for very high fees but e.g. deep space exploration? Too expensive, too low likelyhood of payoff. But for the really long term survival of humanity, it's a must.

<comment><USER19> I'll see your exact opposite view with with my own exact opposite view.

Privatizing Space will do the same thing for it that privatizing the Internet did for all of us. It will take a government-pioneered oddity that was out of reach of the masses and explore millions of ways to make it of financial benefit to the entrepreneurs who can get there first. Like with the Internet, society will be pulled along in the vortex of the Race to Space. Space will become accessible for a price and in ways that would have been inconceivable a decade before.

The technical challenges with space travel are much greater and so the time before we reach the exponential part of the curve is further away, but when the critical mass of Space travel technology has been reached it will be like the Internet in the 1990's. The Internet had been around for 20 years and only governmental and academic types even knew anything about it. Within a few years of its commercialization, its use and uses had exploded. We went from the average joe not knowing anything about it to seeing an abundance of commercials on television for it within just a couple of years.

I mention the Internet, but the pattern is one that you can see in the adoption of transatlantic sailing, rail travel, electricity, automobiles, etc. Space travel will be no different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I must say I was more excited when SpaceX did their first successful launch, but this is a lot of fun for essentially being parking. Can't wait for the future though. If there's one things that sets Elon Musk apart from other entrepreneurs it's his ability to make long-term plans. It seems like everything he (and his team) does leads up to somethings even greater.

<comment><USER21> "essentially being parking"

I gotta say, that is one hell of a simplification—launching a rocket into space and meeting up with another craft, already in orbit, is a _little_ more difficult that parking your car. :)

<comment><USER22> I think they let the valet actually park it. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Amazing stuff, also amazing is being able to watch the live feed from space on my phone!

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it me or is this getting absolutely no press?

<comment><USER25> I don't think its you. I've talked with various folks about the events playing out and the split between amazed enthusiasm and barely cognizant is not smooth at all. There is a noticeable number of people who don't care at all.

I think that is in part that a lot of people don't understand the significance of what has just occurred. Even now there are people in government who are 'alarmed' that a private company has this capability. After all, its a technology we're attempting to deny the North Koreans and now Elon Musk's company has all of the parts it needs to build an intercontinental weapons delivery system. The Dragon capsule can be 6 tons. Even neophyte nuclear weapon designers could probably make a device that is less than 6 tons. What is worse is the company won't just die a horrible death if our government pulls all of its contracts.

So where does that leave us? In a very very interesting spot. We are approaching a point where orbital launch technology will be available to 'everyone' and we have to deal with everyone having it. If you were around for the 'great super computer panic' that was when our government realized that there were no microprocessors they could constrain from export that would allow bad guys to build their own super computer using clustering techniques.

Its a similar problem but with the twist of being actionable (or being able to exploit it against the national interests of the US more easily)

Its also one of the reasons I've been following the progress of SpaceX trying to build their own launch facility in Texas. You might see how that combination (private space craft company + private launch facility) would exacerbate the problems for people who wish to keep this particular genie contained as long as possible.

<comment><USER4> Is being able to launch into orbit equivalent to being able to launch an ICBM?

I must admit I haven't thought about what the privatization of space (and SpaceX specifically) means regarding weaponization and proliferation. I suppose I always figured the main thing restricting proliferation is engineering the payload and not the delivery system. I guess that's only true for nuclear proliferation, though.

<comment><USER25> There are three things that non-proliferation folks talk about; mass to low earth orbit, guidance, and multiple payload deployment.

If you can put something into a pre-chosen orbit you've got the launch and navigation down (after all an ICBM in in 'orbit' that just happens to be highly elliptical and intersects the planet rather than goes around it.) But there is always the mass problem, conventional bombs, combined with relative lack of orbital precision, means that even a 2,000 lb bomb which is a 'big' iron bomb if you can't accurately get it within a mile or two of its target it won't be very effective. A nuclear weapon clearly can 'miss' by a couple of miles and still be very effective, but they are really really heavy unless you know what you are doing. The first bombs built by the US weighed in about 5 tons, but they did damage equivalent to more than 20,000 tons of explosive (a 'gain' of 4000). State of the art weapons have much higher yields. But if you're new at the game you have to have a rocket that can lift 5 - 6 tons before you are a 'threat' to the rest of the world.

"I suppose I always figured the main thing restricting proliferation is engineering the payload and not the delivery system."

Well if you can build a bomb, but the only way to hit someone with it is to fly it in on a huge transport plane, or drive in with it on a truck, it is both easy to defend against and you have plenty of time to figure out if you _need_ to defend against it. If on the other hand you can launch it into space and have it fall out of the sky some where in 45 minutes to an hour, that requires a different strategy on the part of folks you might seek to attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's amazing is SpaceX beat companies like Boeing to the punch. That's pretty remarkable!

<comment><USER27> Not at all. It's classic innovator's dilemma where Boeing, Lockheed etc. simply can't face the implications of competing with someone coming in from outside.

SpaceX just won't have the same baggage that bigger outfits do.

<comment><USER28> The innovator's dillema mainly talks about the lack of motivation of established entities to offer a lower cost service so they won't hurt current profits. this doesn't seem the case.

<comment><USER27> It's not necessarily about current profits, but future ones for sure. They will have people internally capable of doing it, but their structure will prevent them being cost-competitive, so they resist entering the whole area at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Truly inspiring. Elon Musk has and certainly will continue to inspire me as an entrepreneur and technologist. I hope I can get the chance to meet him one day.

In his interviews, he seems like a very nice guy...I wonder what it is like to work for him.

</comment><comment><USER30> One small step for man, One giant leap for private enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER31> Truly historic feat. I'm working for the man on screen 1 as I watch more interesting happenings in space on screen 2.

</comment><comment><USER22> Dragon was berthed to the Harmony module of the #ISS at 12:02 p.m. EDT

</comment><comment><USER32> Official time: 9:56AM EST, and it took place over Western Australia. Congrats to SpaceX!

</comment><comment><USER33> It looks like SpaceX control room is using VLC to stream video =)

</comment><comment><USER34> Hatch Opening now in progress: <http://www.spacex.com/webcast/>

</comment><comment><USER35> Go Canada(rm)!

</comment><comment><USER36> This is so cool! I can't wait to see more humans in space.

</comment><comment><USER37> Not docked yet.

</comment><comment><USER38> Pass a law that whoever parks their pasty butt on the surface of another planet owns x square meters of it, but they have to land in person and affix a notary.

there has got to be a way to monitize seeding a civilization on mars.

<comment><USER39> I know you're probably not being serious, but this would stop that: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty>

<comment><USER40> Yes, it would affect the "pass a law" part of the OP's proposal, but would Mars-bound indiviual colonists, representing only themselves and no nation, be bound by treaties between the dinosaurs of Earth?

<comment><USER41> I believe the correct response from any future colonists to cries about international treaties would be _"Come and stop us."_</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Parents, how is virtual education going for your kids? - <AUTHOR> We are finding virtual kindergarten next to impossible, and borderline traumatic for our 5 year old. 4th grade for us, however, a different picture. Our 4th grader can manage his virtual meetings and schoolwork... <comment><USER2> My kids are back in school now on a hybrid mode, 50% online/50% in person, which equals 100% ineffective. The bottom line is, it is not working. The technology is halfway there, still has long ways to go. Teachers and school districts (overall) are not trained to deal with it. Kids do not have the discipline either. But, it is what it is, and all I can do is try to compensate it by using some of the time with them at home to teach things that the school will not cover (e.g., cooking, financial literacy).

<comment><USER3> I'm with you there. It's not working, no one was prepared for this. I feel bad for parents who have young ones and work all day and can't homeschool them. In all honesty, most kids probably aren't going to learn or retain anything doing it all online or even 50% online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My kids are in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grade. They all work very independently, and seem to enjoy school more than they did in person.

We always hear about the negative aspects of virtual education, but I think a big positive effect is that they are required to be more independent about watching the schedule and managing time.

Another big positive effect is that I feel like we have more time together as a family. A couple minutes here and there add up throughout the day, and I'm grateful for the extra time with them at this age.

Our elementary school has grouped the remote kids together so that the teacher can manage the class consistently, without trying to be hybrid. Their schedule follows a regular school day from 8-3, approximately alternating 30 minutes synchronous/asynchronous. We pick up a bag of take-home classroom material every 2 weeks, including textbooks and readers, and the students generally work on paper and submit photos of their work through Google Classroom or present during a Google Meet.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am very grateful to be living in a country where the kindergarten/schools weren't closed (for kids under 15 years).

<comment><USER6> Can I ask, why?

As a mid 20s male with no thoughts of having children anytime soon — all I can think about is how many people seem to be grateful about being given the chance to expose their children to a respiratory system-based illness in which even short term effects aren't understood.

<comment><USER7> They probably believe the benefits of providing their children with in person education outweigh the risks of COVID (and car accidents driving to school, and whooping cough, and flu and so on). Life is about managing risk and uncertainty.

<comment><AUTHOR> The doctors in my neighborhood (several of which work in the Covid unit) have been moving their kids TO in person education. For the smallest kids, where early childhood education is so crucial, the value outweighs the risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 3rd Grade is a nightmare in our district where the apparent idea was to settle for the worst possible online experience.

It's a google slides deck that the kids have to edit. They've been assigning the same work accidentally day after day. We've contacted the principal countless times, and although she's sympathetic, the quality has not improved as it's a curriculum from the district.

We just stopped logging in completely and are doing a home school curriculum.

If the school reaches out, I'll deal with it then, but so far there's no indication that they've ever reviewed an assignment to begin with.

<comment><USER9> wow my 2nd grader had to do the edit-google-slides thing today and I wrote the teacher a nasty note about how stupid it was!

They couldn't come up with _any_ other way to give a multiple choice sheet? I was convinced it was some kind of local terrible decision but now I'm concerned.

Follow this up with day-after-day of technical nonsense problems, kids interrupting the class all day, lack of breaks/time-awareness, and non-stop testing and I'm ready to stop dialing in.

<comment><USER8> Our original plan was just to use homeschooling material to supplement things he probably wasn't learning well enough like math and some language stuff. He told me he wished he had workbooks to use, but now after seeing the disorganization and low effort from the teacher/district (I'm not sure exactly where to assign the blame), we're pretty glad we got stuff for every subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a 1st grader and pre-schooler.

While the district mandated google classroom for all kids, teachers of younger ages have been given the option of using Seesaw. For young kids its miles better. Even as an adult I find Google classroom to be awful. It feels like enterprise shovelware with bad UX, inefficient workflows, etc.

A lot of it is both how much work the teacher puts in, and how much leeway the school/district give. At this age, it requires an adult nearby at all times. It may be to help him stay on task, occasional assistance (finding something, tech issues, etc.), and even just company of another person. We've had to juggle help from family, and my wife is not working just to keep things going.

We were lucky last year to have an amazing Kinder teacher who did a lot to try and hold things together for the classroom (including 1:1s, summer penpals, and a lot of things on her own time). This year is a WIP, but our school has been very receptive and flexible. I worry most about the kids with two parents who must be at work and cannot give the same level of support we've been able to. They are likely to fall behind :( Thankfully teachers are trying to help those kids the best they can. It is not easy.

Last spring while my son was finishing kindergarten it was extremely difficult. Seesaw helped a lot because they enabled community sharing so kids could see each others work and reply to it. We had to put a lot of effort in to keep him engaged, doing as much work as possible, etc. There were many meltdowns over seemingly simple things like "write 1 word".

Preschool is different and in a tougher position. The primary goal is socialization and kinder-prep. Both are largely out the window for online only. Kids of this age just can't sit for that long in front of a Zoom type session.

In person is limited but now available. The main challenge is preschools are struggling. The regulatory burdens force class sizes to be a fraction of normal. Naps are basically non starter (physical space requirements), food is tricky. That means the pre-schools are losing huge amounts of money every month or laying off staff. To top it off, the recent fires create such pollution you have to choose: (1) Close windows and violate covid regulations (2) Close for the day.

<comment><USER11> Seems odd the schools even do that much screen time for kids that age. I mean, isn't the school going against the AAP recommended screentime limits for that age group?

<comment><USER10> Absolutely, but there's no alternative short of no school.

Our first grader is still adapting. Historically he got maybe 20m of screen time a day max. Now it's about 4.5 hours. There's a lot of movement breaks and some non screen activity (quiet draw or read), but it's still a lot of screen time. He's often pretty bored.

For preschool when they could not open for in person the most they could offer was about 30m a day. That was basically story time and sharing so kids could say hi. Many families opted out.

<comment><USER11> I remember when I was a kid (first grade) they would send home the text books and a bunch of worksheets if you were out of school, or for summer work. I would much rather have my kid reading the books and practicing writing via the worksheets.

I guess I'm biased, but I hate how reliance on computers is being ingrained at such a young age. Especially if it's just being used for something like Google slides, which to me seems like a poor replacement medium for paper worksheets.

<comment><USER10> Slides are indeed a poor way to submit work. That feels more like a lazy way out vs a thought through curriculum. Writing is an important part of the learning process.

In our case most of the work is done on paper and they hold it up to the camera for the teacher to see or take a picture and submit it.

<comment><USER11> That's sounds better

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm lucky that my daughter just wrapped up Pre-K and is now starting Kindergarten, two "years" that are pretty low stakes in terms of what gets done. With that caveat, remote learning went fine and home schooling is going smoothly (1 week in).

</comment><comment><USER13> UK 100% back to school now. Hope it will continue that way as life is a lot easier for us and them at the moment and they seem a lot happier and will learn more effectively.

</comment><comment><USER14> We bailed early and now do 100% offline homeschooling. Thankfully we live in a state that makes homeschooling a simple process. We registered our homeschool, it was approved the next morning, and we notified the school that day.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish we could do that. My wife and I both work... but of course it's hard to focus when you know you the kids are getting a pretty shitty education. The options aren't great.

<comment><USER14> I hear you. Hope you find a good solution!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> we help our daughter get a bit ahead. So online zoom lessons have been pretty easy for her.

If the numbers look good, she will return to in class in a few weeks. Having her start out virtual gave us an opportunity to see what the teacher had planned for her.</comment>


Developers needed; Hackers need not apply - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jayfields.com/2008/07/developers-needed-hackers-need-not.html <comment><USER2> > The second developer receives the assignment and spends the next 30 minutes > talking to the business to see how the software will be used and what value > it provides.

He then spends the next three years writing software to import and export CSV files into various other formats. XML figures heavily in his job. Java is of course the only programming language allowed, due to corporate rules.

<comment><USER3> I see your point, but that's a bit extreme.

The example in the article is obviously stretched, but getting feedback on your work isn't always a bad idea. Getting feedback from users, other hackers, or from business people can help you understand what your customers want. I'm not saying you should always follow their advice, but you should definitely listen and make your own decision. If you're at a small startup where you don't have business people, listen to your users instead.

<comment><USER2> Stretched? It's stretched like a slinky that doesn't slink any more. It's a lame article with a false dichotomy, as others have pointed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think I am giving up on this "hacker" thing, there are just too many possible meanings and different people perceive it differently, thus it makes no sense to use the word in real life anymore.

The original, true meaning has been lost: nobody I know uses this word it in's original context. A "hacker" these days means one of these three:

1\. Programmer (or a manager) who prefers quick&dirty hacks that can't be maintained and, after accumulating into a critical mass, tend to bring the overall project progress to a halt.

2\. Someone who breaks into other people computers, steals their personal porn, collection of cat photos and, of course, credit card numbers.

3\. The other, non-business type of founders of "Internet Startups". Often not having an MBA, or simply a possession of "Python in 21 days" automatically qualifies you as a "hacker".

And since majority of people use the word in one of those contexts, I figured why bother... BTW my cat is a hacker too: his portfolio of hacks is growing every day.

<comment><USER5> Reclaim the word "hacker"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a bit of a fallacious argument, based on some dodgy definitions of the key words. "Hacker" does not equate to "over-engineering-prone developer who likes to live in his little walled garden".

Part of writing great code that, as a hacker, one can be proud of, is to understand the purpose of the code. Otherwise, there's no way to tell whether the code is great.

In fact, in my experience, "Developers" (as opposed to hackers... if such an opposition is warranted) are the ones who are likely to over-engineer a solution by building things they think are needed (because they're hinted at in the waterfall-produced spec) rather than questioning every single requirement directly themselves and then producing a much smaller piece of code that does what the business actually needs, rather than what they said they needed.

What he's saying, in fact, is that he prefers developers who are capable of doing analysis work to those who aren't.

<comment><USER7> "he prefers developers who are capable of doing analysis work to those who aren't"

Thanks, far better way to put it than the OP. And Alan Perlis agrees: _Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis._

[http://www-pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epig...](http://www- pu.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/users/klaeren/epigrams.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The second developer receives the assignment and spends the next 30 minutes > talking to the business to see how the software will be used and what value > it provides. After he's gotten the information he needs he says thanks, but > instead of letting him leave, the CTO offers him the job on the spot.

Ah, he has learned the Joel Spolsky secret: with contrived examples, you can prove anything.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article is like writing about white and black and pretending that there's no such thing as grey. Ninety-nine percent of hackers/developers would have attributes that put them in both categories to varying degrees (by almost any definition you care to give the two terms). By the way, since when did "hacker" start meaning "no real-world development skills"?

</comment><comment><USER10> Hmm. The hacker / developer dichotomy being set up here just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. At least for the values of "Hacker" with which I am familiar. I definitely consider myself a hacker. But I also know (and practice!) the value of working with the people who will actually use my software, so that I can make them happy. One memorable moment for me was the gratitude I received from a user who had made a request for a small feature. It was only an afternoon's work for me, but it saved her one week a month in make-work. Requirements analysis is a given in my mind for true hackers. Make something people want.

</comment><comment><USER11> So... hackers create startups and developers work happily in the corporate world? I'm fine with that.

</comment><comment><USER12> So they had one guy who didn't ask any upfront questions, but delivered something. They have another guy who did ask upfront questions, but didn't deliver anything. Why choose the second over the first?

<comment><USER13> _Why choose the second over the first?_

To give Blub programmers the warm-and-fuzzies, one assumes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hate the presumption that "real" developers need to know how to distill requirements. That's what you learn in school, but it isn't necessarily true, it depends entirely on where you work. I never talk to customers where I work, and generally for the requirements we decide as developers we do as a group, we don't need to trick non-techs into telling us what they really want. Somebody at every company is going to have to do this, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the developers

<comment><USER15> The developers still have to interact with people to figure out what they need to create. The people that they're extracting the information from may still be techies, but determining what you need to build is still key.

And this is where I think the article falls flat on it's face -- In my opinion, I think one of the key features of being a hacker is the ability to look at a situation, analyze what you need to build, and come up with a minimal and elegant solution within the constraints that you determined. That requires communication and analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stop poisoning Hacker News with crap articles filled with logical fallacies. _Flagged_.

</comment><comment><USER17> Being a hacker and asking simple requirements questions aren't mutually exclusive.

</comment><comment><USER18> Attacking the word "hacker" will definitely get response from the YC community. I think the YC community at large is in love with calling themselves "hackers".

<comment><USER19> It is sad that this discussion is about the definition of the term 'hacker', instead of the article's topic: some programmers care about the business core (a concept also touched on by Eric Evans (DDD)) while some others don't.

It is a good reminder, as often we're going too deep into the rabbit hole while writing code, forgetting in so doing the real business requirement.

Working on the business core resonates with Agile principles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if the second developer could write FizzBuzz...</comment>


Chinese surfers see red over Microsoft blackouts - <AUTHOR> http://news.zdnet.com/2424-9595_22-243130.html

<comment><USER2> From the article, "If the price of genuine software was lower than the fake one, who would buy the fake one?"

Brilliant argument - great journalism.</comment>


Chinese developers sue Apple for 'abuse of App Store control' - <AUTHOR> http://www.tribuneindia.com/mobi/news/world/chinese-developers-sue-apple-for-abuse-of-app-store-control/450608.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if they'll get anywhere - it's been reported that their apps were removed because they didn't have a Governmental VPN Licence which seems perfectly valid on Apple's part.

<comment><USER3> I think the story mixes the lawsuit story in with the story about the removal of VPN's as an example of Apple's ability to arbitrarily remove apps that meet its guidelines, not as an example of the types of apps that the plaintiffs develop...since the article mentions the cut of in-app purchases Apple takes.

It seems unlikely that Chinese developers of apps that are illegal in China would be suing Apple over their removal. But I could be wrong.

<comment><USER2> I think you're right about the conflating although now I'm doubly confused since Reuters says this started back in April - before the VPN dust-up and before the app purge in June.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple- idUSKBN1AQ1B3](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-apple-idUSKBN1AQ1B3)

> The law firm invited developers to join the complaint in April and on > Tuesday filed it to China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce > and the National Development and Reform Commission, which oversees antitrust > matters in the country.</comment></comment></comment>


I sent a balloon to space and photographed Venus for under $200. Ask me anything - <AUTHOR> http://anyasq.com/195-i-sent-a-balloon-to-space-and-photographed-venus-for-less-than-$200

<comment><USER2> "BTW, our balloon just missed a JetBlue aircraft while on its way to near- space. (It was still safe as we notified nearby airports of our launch)."

Does that statement scare the bejesus out of anyone else?

<comment><USER3> No. Define "just missed". Flying across country (Florida to Washington), I saw another plane flying in the other direction. The plane looked and felt like it was right next to us, like .. hundreds of yards apart. Cross-country planes do this all the time, so far as I can gather.

[edit: fixed typo, added ending to sentence]

<comment><USER4> What you experienced is a "near miss" and it probably happened only because someone somewhere fucked up.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_miss_(safety)>

<comment><USER5> In my opinion, it's far more likely that he greatly underestimated the distances between the two planes. People who aren't used to these things tend to see a few miles of separation as a few hundred feet instead. Airliners are _big_.

<comment><USER3> This is an incredible possibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 30km up is not "to space". Not even "near space", if we take the Kármán line at 100km to be the generally agreed upon definition. The balloon is amazing and impressive but this headline is misleading.

<comment><USER7> Look at the pictures: <http://www.thelimitisinfinity.com/> For laymen, it's a pretty good definition of getting into space. And it sure looks like space!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really like their project. The pictures are amazing. Too bad we can't watch the video on their web site (<http://www.thelimitisinfinity.com/>) from the US (This video contains content from EMI, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds. Sorry about that.)

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the father and son who got to 30km (and recovery!) with nothing but an iPhone tied to a weather balloon - the video is amazing.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtXquYhY7wo>

As others have said, sure as hell looks like space to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wouldn't this be more appropriate on reddit's IAMA sub?

<comment><USER11> Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The site is a complete rip of a subreddit.

<comment><USER12> Hard to blame the operator for trying. AMA and /r/AskScience are both pretty strong candidates for spin-offs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice idea and cool pictures. Too bad instead of HD they are only in micro format and embedded into a flash. Or did I just not find them on the site?

</comment><comment><USER14> Definition of space is 100 km (Karman Line). You did not send a balloon to space.

</comment><comment><USER15> Remind me of this one with the weather balloon and the iPhone:

<http://www.vimeo.com/15091562>

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe it's my monitor, but I can't really see anything inside the circle in the Venus photo. This is a cool project though.</comment>


Apple expected to unveil ultra-slim notebook at Macworld - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23036909-5014108,00.html

<comment><USER2> I can't wait. It's wrong that after all these years of Moore's Law, my computer is still the heaviest thing in my bag.

<comment><USER3> You _could_ run linux off a gumstix. <http://gumstix.com/>

With exponential progress, we prove that desire expands at an even faster pace.

It reminds me of a joke made by a general to a bunch of military tech makers: "our marines carry 100lb of extremely light weight gear"

<comment><USER2> I have a Nokia N800 and a folding keyboard I can use with it, but the screen is too small for real work. I want something with a 12" screen that's very light.

<comment><USER4> Asus Eee looks great for that, but I'm with you, a thin Macbook makes me feel happy :-)

<comment><USER3> The screen is actually pretty small on the Eee. Too small for any development unless you're using a curt language and exclusively single character variables :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Apple didn't need to take thunder from CES, there was nothing to take," Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research, wrote on the company's blog._

</comment><comment><USER6> This has been rumored for a year or two now. I'll believe it (and probably buy it) when I see it. The Asus Eee is nice, but I'd like something I can comfortably touch-type on...

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope it also has a multi-touch screen.

<comment><USER8> And a trackstick</comment></comment>