Estonia is planning to launch Estcoin - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/e-residency-blog/were-planning-to-launch-estcoin-and-that-s-only-the-start-310aba7f3790 <comment><USER2> >Since the proposal was published, I've been repeatedly asking audiences if they would be interested in purchasing estcoins and the response is a resounding yes, even if they are not always sure why yet.

Would it be offensive to hint that maybe -just maybe - audiences were (largely) clueless?

>You might be surprised to hear this, but we completely agree with the criticism that estcoin is a solution looking for a problem. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Very clever argument, though:

>E-Residency was also a solution looking for a problem when the programme was launched. The solution was to enable anyone in the world to apply for an Estonian ID digital ID card and then gain access to our e-services, but even many of the first e-residents were not sure what problems this would solve for them. Three years (and almost 30,000 applications) later, we now have a very good understanding of the problems that e-Residency solves by helping democratise access to entrepreneurship globally and enabling the rise of location-independence.

I still completely fail to realize which actual problems were solved by e-residency (setting aside some good money going to Estonia).

<comment><USER3> > I still completely fail to realize which actual problems were solved by > e-residency (setting aside some good money going to Estonia).

It's still not exactly clear what money would go to Estonia. I'm no tax advisor but reading previous threads indicate that even if you incorporate a company in Estonia but solely operate it from another country that has tax treaties with Estonia (and many do) you still need to do your taxes locally, not in Estonia. So except the fee for the card and processing company application there are no big money to be made here.

<comment><USER2> >So except the fee for the card and processing company application there are no big money to be made here.

Well, even that is not trifling, when you make due proportions.

The population is 1,350,000 roughly, the 30,000 (till now) e-residencies at - say - 100 Euro each (state fee only) are 3,000,000, if everyone will register a company that will be another 230 Euro, i.e. 6 or 7 millions, then you will have some yearly fees (for keeping the books, etc., etc.) and possibly some other service fees like (example):

[https://www.leapin.eu/faq/cost-and-fees](https://www.leapin.eu/faq/cost-and- fees)

Let's say 1,500 - 2,000 Euro/year as "basic" costs that will go to either the Estonian government or to Estonian firms/individuals.

If the whole thing will generate a direct and indirect income of 30,000x2,000=60,000,000 that will be 50 €/citizen, not that bad in a country where the average salary is around 13,000 Euro/year.

And this is in the hypothesis that no actual transaction is done by any of the 30,000 firms, surely _something_ will be generated (and some part of it remain in Estonia) by them.

Of course these are only guesses, but - unless there are some favourable tax "workarounds" or however lower taxes - there are very few reason that I can see why one would want to establish a "virtual" company in Estonia.

Most probably the people that will be interested in it are non-EU and coming from countries that _somehow_ have no tax treaties (or whatever) and that (still somehow) will have some advantage.

It is the "somehow" and the actual "advantages" that are not clear to me.

<comment><USER4> The fee used to be 50 EUR which they had to double because of growing demand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love this part:

> Estonia's only currency is the euro and this is an essential feature of our > EU membership, which we are proud to have. No one here is interested in > changing that.

OK, great. Next sentence:

> That's why we have always referred to estcoin as a proposed 'crypto token'.

(top highlight!) Wow, clever! It's not a currency! Oppressive EU regulations (that we agree with and are not interested in changing) have been obeyed. Next sentence:

> Governments do need to consider the disruptive impact of how crypto tokens > can be used as currency

Hahaha. Sorry, but this "we're launching a currency that we don't call a currency but that everybody, including us, knows is meant to be a currency <wink>" is ridiculous.

All that said, I think issuing some sort of government-backed currency might be one way of experimenting with implementing a universal basic income, in order to combat poverty among your citizens. But I don't see that discussed in the article.

<comment><USER6> > All that said, I think issuing some sort of government-backed currency might > be one way of experimenting with implementing a universal basic income, in > order to combat poverty among your citizens. But I don't see that discussed > in the article.

It's funny, because we already have a "government-backed currency" but we prefer to bail-out the banks instead of bailing-out individual in distress... I mean: it's not a problem of technology, it's the lack of political will. Crypto-currencies are not different from any other type of currency in this respect. I don't see why they are better fitted to implement a Universal Basic Income. I perhaps see reasons why they are worse than actual money (technological divide, lack of acceptance in shops, difficult to understand).

<comment><USER7> > It's funny, because we already have a "government-backed currency" but we > prefer to bail-out the banks instead of bailing-out individual in > distress...

What, exactly, does "bailing out individuals in distress" comprise?

<comment><USER8> I would imagine the standard social safety net: food, unemployment insurance, parental leave, and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Launching a crypto to compete against Euro sounds bizarre for a country that needs to reinforce its European membership against the Russian threat. They need to be as close as possible to the core of the EU.

But I really like the idea of a community estcoin to boost the adoption of the e-residence and all the services around. A very interesting side effect of an ICO is how the buyers become instantly in evangelist of the service/solution provided by the company backing the offering. I think the 'community effect' is key for a successful ICO, that's why I like offerings like [https://www.tutellus.io](https://www.tutellus.io) for example.

<comment><USER10> > Launching a crypto to compete against Euro sounds bizarre

When did they specifically say Estcoin was to be used as a currency? An ICO just requires you to issue a token[1].

[1] [https://theethereum.wiki/w/index.php/ERC20_Token_Standard](https://theethereum.wiki/w/index.php/ERC20_Token_Standard)

<comment><USER9> > Much of the criticism of estcoin was based on the fact that Estonia simply > can't start its own cryptocurrency even if it wanted to. Estonia's only > currency is the euro and this is an essential feature of our EU membership, > which we are proud to have. No one here is interested in changing that.

If you read the first news about estcoin they used the term 'cryptocurrency', now the use 'crypto token'.

<comment><USER11> So they took feedback, made logical changes to their plan based on that feedback... and we should fault them for this?

<comment><USER12> When the change is more or less just the name, yes.

<comment><USER11> The feedback was literally about the name. How else do you change the name without... changing it?

<comment><USER12> When the feedback is "hey you can't make a currency", that is not feedback about the name, and changing the name is a questionable fix at best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome. I think bitcoin is a bubble and ICOs are mostly scams, but I love love _love_ how fast Estonia's government is able to iterate on stuff like this. Truly an example to governments everywhere.

<comment><USER14> Indeed, though have to note its a little bit easier applying new things in a country with a population of 1.3 million total

<comment><USER15> In America, the wide independence of states is supposed to work like this: smaller states can experiment while retaining the benefits of access to a large common market.

In practice, it's nothing like that. At least I can't imagine Rhode Island introducing a "RhodeCoin" on six months' notice.

Are American states suffocated by the federal structure? Maybe, but Estonia is also a member of the EU and the Euro currency, so clearly it doesn't have to be automatically like that. (My personal opinion is that the EU/Euro are actually much more innovation-friendly supranational structures than they're generally given credit for. Estonia's economic growth has much to do with their EU membership.)

<comment><USER16> I'm European but didn't gay marriage and (ongoing) weed legalization basically work like that? First it's individual states and eventually it gets to the federal level. Seems to sort-of work for these issues.

<comment><USER17> Sort of, but it doesn't completely work like that in practice, because of how heavily involved the federal government is with all sorts of things.

In fact, both of your examples illustrate this. When gay marriage was only legal at the state level, same-sex legally married couples weren't treated as married for the purposes of income tax, Social Security, immigration, and a bunch of other federal benefits. And even in states where marijuana is decriminalized, the DEA can arrest and federally prosecute you if they feel like it.

<comment><USER18> Much of the point of having states experiment isn't to get everything right, though, it's to prove that the sky doesn't fall when a new social policy is enacted. Usually whenever any new social contract is proposed, there's an immediate chorus of "this will lead to chaos and anarchy!", and it's only when a policy has been in place for a couple years can people judge whether it really _did_ lead to chaos and anarchy.

For both gay marriage and marijuana legalization, for example, certain states tried it against a chorus of voices that said "This will lead to the destruction of marriage as we know it" or "crime will go through the roof". And then that didn't happen, and so other states tried it, and eventually it filters up to the federal level.

There have been other cases where policies have been tried that _did_ lead to widespread chaos and negative consequences, like Nebraska's safe-haven law that defined a child as anyone under 18 and led to mother's abandoning their teenagers because they didn't want to deal with them, or California's Prop 8 that was supposed to keep senior citizens in their homes but had the unintended consequence of restricting the supply of housing and driving housing prices through the roof. In these cases, the laws have not been duplicated in other states, at least not without changing the problematic details.

There's talk in a few states of introducing both universal health care and net neutrality as state laws. This will be an interesting experiment, and will let us see whether the sky does in fact fall before rolling it out nationwide.

<comment><USER19> Prop 13, not 8

<comment><USER18> Thanks. I looked it up beforehand and was like "Prop 13, not prop 8, not prop 60", and then somehow I wrote prop 8.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It doesn't sound like this guy really has the permission of his country to do what he's proposing to do.

He appears to be struggling to fit an ICO into his current role. It's simply a bad idea IMHO.

A blockchain is not a good fit for an organisation that is cleary centralized.

An ICO is a way to raise funding, why does a government department need to do that.

<comment><USER21> As an Estonian I have no idea what the ICO would be about, and why it would be a good idea.

This seems to be a one man show by the author of the article. ICO-s are popular so lets do one of our own! kind of attitude.

<comment><USER2> >This seems to be a one man show by the author of the article. ICO-s are popular so lets do one of our own! kind of attitude.

Said by an Estonian this is preoccupying, Kaspar Korjus is usually presented as an official speaker for the Estonian Government for the e-residency program:

[https://cybersecforum.eu/en/speaker/kaspar- korjus/](https://cybersecforum.eu/en/speaker/kaspar-korjus/)

[https://europe.money2020.com/speakers/kaspar- korjus](https://europe.money2020.com/speakers/kaspar-korjus)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Everyone's heard stories about investors losing access to their crypto > tokens — perhaps because they forgot their private key for example — but > this doesn't happen to e-residents if their wallets are linked to their > government-backed digital identity.

How is that supposed to work? You do not fully own crypto tokens unless you and you alone hold the private keys.

<comment><USER23> It works by associating your tokens with your identity. You're the only one with the private key, however the identity manager (government in this case) decides which public keys are linked to an identity.

Of course this also means that the government could seize your coins.

<comment><USER24> It would also mean that pseudonymity is out the window. Does anyone else remember when anonymous transactions was the _sine qua non_ of cryptocurrency hype?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Has someone founded an Estonian company and offers a subscription service. Stripe is not available. And I want to use EDD for Wordpress and I could not find a plugin for subscriptions with Braintree and I wonder why? I may program it myself but I wonder if there may be a reason nobody has implemented it yet.

<comment><USER26> Yes, desperately waiting for Stripe to come to Estonia. Just got my e-residency but that's my only reason for not taking the next step and incorporating my business there. I guess the market isn't big enough yet for Stripe to open there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I like how Estonia is embracing technology. However while doing my research on how crypto friendly they are, I came across this surprising ruling by the Supreme Court in 2016 against a Bitcoin exchange that was forced to move out:

\- [https://cointelegraph.com/news/owner-moves-bitcoin- exchange-...](https://cointelegraph.com/news/owner-moves-bitcoin-exchange-out- of-estonia-after-landmark-supreme-court-decision)

\- [https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4efdam/estonia_now...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4efdam/estonia_now_officially_worst_country_in_eu_for/)

Anyone more familiar with the situation have any thoughts on this? This seems contradictory to what they are trying to do.

<comment><USER28> The apparent contradiction can easily be resolved - "We don't want to allow crypto tokens, unless we control them."

A sort of "We are pro change, as long as things stay the same."

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Pros:

* virtual money with monetary policy. This could shield it against manias, panics, bubbles and crashes

* Estonia is not big enough to dream of imperialism and hegemony (hopefully).

Cons:

* scale is everything. If the Financial authorities of the U.S., China, England, Japan, Facebook, Google, WeChat or Tencent implement something like that in a global scale, it will be hard to compete.

* Mario Draghi, the "cappo-di-tutti-cappi" in the European Union says no: [https://qz.com/1072740/mario-draghi-of-the-ecb-dashes-estoni...](https://qz.com/1072740/mario-draghi-of-the-ecb-dashes-estonias-plan-for-an-estcoin-cryptocurrency-backed-by-the-government/)

<comment><USER30> Can someone enlighten me in what way disparate digital currencies, like EstCoin, UsCoin, SwissCoin, ChinaCoin, etc etc would be an improvement compared to status quo?

<comment><USER29> Trust.

It is hard to sell a bread or chewing gum in a coin that you can't be sure will cost 10 times more tomorrow or will be worth nothing. This is why Steam and WrapBootstrap (among many others) gave up on Bitcoin. Most current currencies have this volatility and instability because:

a) it is hard for them to technically adapt to scale (e.g: allowing more transactions, changing algorithms,...)

b) the supply of money must respond to price oscillations. This is basic monetary policy and is how Central Banks assure that fiat currencies remain stable and reliable (well, at least is what they should do).

<comment><USER31> So then what does UsCoin get you over USD?

<comment><USER29> I am not American and don't trust the American government to control my money or to keep it away from Putin or Bulgarian criminals, so it gains nothing.

But if it was implemented by a reputable government that respects privacy and implements the convenience of most crypto-currencies than I would take it, for sure.

<comment><USER31> To ask more specifically: what benefit does a cryptocurrency give you if you still need to trust a central entity?

Some guesses of mine:

\- Could be easier to trade than forex (though I don't think this is currently the case with crypto)

\- A centralized ledger may reduce the information that individual financial institutions need to store

\- Blockchains are generally tamper-resistant databases

\- Blockchain's may be easier to police for e.g. fraud

As a consumer, most of those are 'not my problem'. What benefit do you anticipate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The problem is that the EU court may force Estonia to any decision they want. This already happend with Ireland - the EU forced them to collect 13 Billions in additional taxes from Apple even if Ireland didn't want to do this.

<comment><USER33> Well, corporations go to Ireland because they have low taxes and they are in the common market. I doubt one of those alone would work.

<comment><USER5> Besides the low taxes, Ireland also has the enormous advantage for foreign corporations of being an English-speaking country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > _Estonia's only currency is the euro and this is an essential feature of our > EU membership_

That's just false. Eurozone and the EU overlap, but they aren't the same. UK has its pound, Switzerland uses francs.

<comment><USER35> You're right, but Switzerland is not a member of EU.

<comment><USER2> >You're right, but Switzerland is not a member of EU.

... and UK soon won't be anymore.

Denmark is a better example:

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

And there is of course the "curious" situation of Sweden:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am not sure why, but it reminded me of something that happened to another small European country a while back:

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

</comment><comment><USER37> I think Estonia will pull this off and it will be useful. Take a look at their success with e-voting, for example. Is any other country even close to these numbers?

'In the 2015 parliamentary elections, 176,491 people, 30.5% of all participants, voted over the Internet.'

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia#2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia#2015_Elections)

<comment><USER38> Nobody sane would want e-voting. It has exactly the same problems as voting machines and in addition to that is heavily vulnerable to DDoS attacks and ID theft.

Tom Scott on electronic voting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> As of the current moment at the end of 2017, the prime use case for cryptocurrencies is overwhelmingly as a tool for gambling.

It should be obvious and unsurprising to see governments attempt to join the market and take over the most widespread forms of gambling for revenue purposes and to regulate potential fraud.

It's the same set of incentives that caused the old mafia-run numbers games to become state lotteries.

<comment><USER40> Completely proofless comment. I could also write the same but just remplace "gambling" with "drugs"

<comment><USER24> GP said, "at the end of 2017". Drugs were the prime use case from 2011 to 2013.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This feels like it's straight out of The Corrections.

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

(If you haven't read this, stop everything you're doing and go find a copy)

</comment><comment><USER42> e-coin was probably already taken

</comment><comment><USER43> That is coming too soon after a major flaw was discovered in the cryptography of their electronic IDs [1], doesn't inspire confidence.

[1] [http://news.err.ee/616732/potential-security-risk-could- affe...](http://news.err.ee/616732/potential-security-risk-could- affect-750-000-estonian-id-cards)

</comment><comment><USER44> No technical infos? Will this be a chain on it's own or based on an existing chain?

<comment><USER11> Idea phase, not implementation.

There are three separate ideas for what estcoin could become.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Amazing how technology allows people to create value out of thin air.

</comment><comment><USER46> So a decentralized system is now centralized?

</comment><comment><USER47> Oh the irony had they labeled it "e-coin" (reference to _Mr. Robot_ on USA)

</comment><comment><USER48> A centralized, nationalized cryptocurrency? How revolutional!</comment>


Hummingbird, Real Time Web Traffic Visualization - <AUTHOR> http://projects.nuttnet.net/hummingbird/

<comment><USER2> I'm the author of Hummingbird. I originally built it for the flash sample sale site Gilt Groupe, to visualize the gigantic traffic spike that happens at noon. (from 20 req/s to about 2000 req/s then, probably at least double that now)

Since then I've been slowly building out some features that are more useful for smaller sites, like the map view. The awesome mapping library is PolyMaps, using CloudMade tiles.

<comment><USER2> And sorry to those of you outside the US--I've recentered the map so that you can now see more of the world by default.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for creating this and open-sourcing this great app!

One question: Does aggregates.html work? I can see that metrics are being recorded in mongodb, but it does not load the js properly to display the hourly, daily, and weekly metrics. I can get everything else to work fine (in index.html). Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm glad someone put that demo back up. I saw it in presentation slides last year but the live site never worked when I tried it. node.js had already changed a lot since it was written so I thought perhaps it had become dead code.

I built something similar recently, also using node.js to power the data collection:

<http://www.w3counter.com/stats/demo/1>

<comment><USER5> Nice work -- Looks slick. How do you differentiate from ChartBeat?

<comment><USER4> W3Counter is a 7 year old web stats service where that dashboard is just one feature, whereas that's their whole product.

I really built it because it'd be fun anyway, not to compete. It doesn't do half the neat things Chartbeat does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hacked up something similar the other day with Smoothie Charts: <http://kedge.loggly.com/>. I was inspired by Hummingbird though - glad to see it working again!

<comment><USER7> This looks awesome, but is unusable on my Quadro FX 380 in Linux - X spikes to 100% and my entire machine (despite being a Xeon + 16G + SSD) lags incredibly.

Checked with a colleague and it works fine for them however, must be a bug in my setup of some description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hummingbird looks like it has potential. I currently use a product called Woopra: <http://www.woopra.com/> to do the same thing. It's a solid product but gets expensive when my sites get a lot of traffic (they only give you 30k pageviews a month for free). Once hummingbird matures if it gains more of the functionality woopra offers this could be a viable DIY alternative.

<comment><USER9> You should check out my take on this: <http://chartaca.com> Free, as many charts as you like, and no data limits! :)

Just a word of warning ... it's barely even an MVP at this stage. More a sort of experiment to see how far I can push one of those free Amazon micro instances (pretty far when you use node.js as it happens!).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be great if Hummingbird offered a way to track API requests we get. Obviously, a transparent gif won't work for that...

<comment><USER4> Why not? Your API can make HTTP requests to the URL of the transparent gif. And if that doesn't do what you want it to do, it's open source so you can make it do so. Or write to the same database with your API and just use the code for visualization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really like the real time displays but we also need to look at what happened yesterday, last month, etc. Is there any way to get historical information/graphs/charts?

<comment><USER12> Well, there are many web analytics tools that will show zou historical data, you can use Google Analytics for free, then you also have Google Webmasters Tools which you a different insight into your website. But monitoring the traffic in real time is a real curiosity. That is where Hummingbird comes in. Very neat.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. However, if Hummingbird is capturing the data anyway it should be possible to build an interface to allow me to troll through it. I just didn't know if this was built-in to HB or if would be something that I would have to build.</comment></comment></comment>


Micron Kicks Off Mass Production of 12 Gb DRAM Chips - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/13569/micron-kicks-off-mass-production-of-12-gb-lpddr4x-dram-chip <comment><USER2> Google said 40% of their data server operating cost comes from paying for energy _, it makes business sense to switch to this type of DRAM.

_ I couldn't find the actual youtube video where a google employee shows the 40% energy cost, if you do, please link it. Meanwhile here is another graph that is somewhat similar: [https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2008/11/cost-of- power-in-l...](https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2008/11/cost-of-power-in- large-scale-data-centers/)

<comment><USER3> I am not an expert on microchips but looking at Apple's A12 vs Intel chips in terms of power and energy usage. Wouldn't the industry really benefit moving away from X86 architecture to something else in terms of reducing power consumption? These savings could be passed to users of cloud providers.

<comment><USER4> We have about 40 years of software development on x86. I'm not even sure we could reuse any of that when moving to a new architecture.

<comment><USER5> Does that matter for some cases.?

Linux supports arm and we have massive companies where economies of scale and a Linux/OSS plus their code could all be cross compiled, I mean if your the average biggish none tech company then yeah you might be stuck on x86 because of windows but that isn't everyone.

<comment><USER6> In any organization if you have an internal tool or software it's not like you can press a button and make sure it is cross compiled to ARM from x86. That is a huge and expensive undertaking.

<comment><USER7> >> In any organization if you have an internal tool or software it's not like you can press a button and make sure it is cross compiled to ARM from x86. That is a huge and expensive undertaking.

That depends on the software. Many linux distributions can be compiled for x86, ARM, PPC, RISC-V, and even some others. Cross compiling is not difficult if your software is written with even a little of that in mind. Windows itself used to be available for 3 or 4 instruction sets - and an OS requires low level hardware support. Applications should be largely target independent.

<comment><USER8> Lots of x86 code plays fast and loose with alignment which will blow up on ARM.

<comment><USER9> Modern big ARMs let you play fast and loose with alignment as well.

Hell, a CortexM3 lets you have unaligned loads and stores too.

<comment><USER10> Even if they don't you can just turn unaligned access emulation on in your OS kernel. This was a thing in QNX and is also a thing in Linux.

<comment><USER9> I think it's fair to not want to turn that on in the kernel on chips that don't support it in servers. It's really expensive on those kinds of cores to trap into the kernel (a KPTI makes it dramatically more expensive).

That being said, server cores with their long me or pipelines are the most likely to not have an issue with unaligned access, so it's probably a moot point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope these exciting advances in science and engineering will lead to... DRAM that costs the same as several years ago.

<comment><USER12> It makes you wonder what advances in science and engineering have been stalled because of DRAM costs. Particularly in countries with less money to throw at research etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> 12GB seems an odd number, when it's usually multiples of 8. Anyone else think that? I wonder if it's because of size constraints?

<comment><USER14> Phones want 6 GB so they're making 1.5 GB chips. Apparently 4x 1.5 GB is cheaper than 3x 2 GB, probably because of yield. I imagine it complicates the address decode slightly but that's it.

This reminds me of triple-core processors that were "inconceivable" right until they shipped.

<comment><USER15> Were there _any_ 3-core processors which were not de-rated 4-core processors?

<comment><USER16> PS3 had a 9-core (3*3).

<comment><USER17> The PS3 had a PowerPC main core cpu and a 8 core cell chip. Of the 8 SPU cores, only 6 were available to developers as one was reserved for OS functions and the other, ironically enough, was held back for yield purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Probably a good idea to change the title from "Gb" to "Gbit" to avoid ambiguity.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this type of RAM still having rowhammer memory corruption effects?

<comment><USER20> LPDDR4 has some mitigation for rowhammer, and LPDDR4X is a variant of it. So I don't know that it's immune, but it should be more resilient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are those the chips in the new iPad Pro? Would make sense since according to reports the 1TB iPads have 6GB RAM.

</comment><comment><USER22> I hate these "new parts available" announcements that are so vague they don't even have part numbers.

Fortunately a search at Micron's website reveals that this is the "Z2BM" with two part numbers, MT29VZZZ7D8DQFSL-046 (containing 2 Z2BM) and MT29VZZZBD9DQKPR-046 (containing 4 Z2BM). No public datasheets (yet), unfortunately, I was curious to read a little more.

</comment><comment><USER23> Does anybody know how many of these could we expect to fit in a Macbook Pro? My understanding is the power consumption has been a limiting factor.

<comment><USER24> You can fit exactly zero of these in the MacBook Pro until Intel ships chips that actually support LPDDR4X (aside from the Cannonlake paper launch).

<comment><USER25> Or Apple switch them to the A series processors! Although I really cannot see that happening on the pro lineup anytime soon (Although I think its highly likely on the air and non-pro MacBooks)

<comment><USER26> I read somewhere that it wouldn't actually help at the moment. LPDDR4 on the A series chips is in the same package as the CPU. From what I understand, this is the only current way that anyone in the industry is using LPDDR4.

What Intel is promising is LPDDR4 packaged in it's own chip(s) on the motherboard.

<comment><USER27> In the iPads, the RAM is not stacked onto the CPU, it's normal separate chips. e.g. two Micron here: [https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/WHKDR5ZU6SSQA3qa](https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/WHKDR5ZU6SSQA3qa)

<comment><USER26> Had to double check that....but you're correct. So now I'm really hoping for a AX macbook pro. Imagine what the A12X in the newest ipad could push if you added some nice cooling to it ;)

<comment><USER28> As long as you aren't using any Adobe software.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Young, male, testosterone-fuelled CEOs more likely to start or drop deals - <AUTHOR> http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/2010/09/08/young-male-testosterone-fuelled-ceos-more-likely-to-start-or-drop-deals-ubc-study/

<comment><USER2> That correlation seems spurious to me, especially considering the method of study was "The researchers analyzed 350 merger and acquisition bids in the United States between 1997 and 2007, using a securities database from Thomson SDC."

I didn't notice any testosterone tests of those involved in there. What's the baseline?

Off the top of my head, I can think of several other youth-related behaviour you could easily attribute to that correlation:

* Less experience

* Idealism

* Impulsiveness

* Willingness to take risk

<comment><USER3> I agree that there may be some flaws in the study. But as a young, male, testosterone-fueled entrepreneur, I find studies like this invaluable for ego- control. I am always realizing that I need to check myself before hubris takes its toll. I even have the phrase "all glory is fleeting" (a la Roman generals) visible on my computer as an indirect reminder to think first, then act.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like you've already got a good handle on things.

The primary issue with the article is that it could lead you to misdiagnose the root cause of any impulsiveness (in your business decisions) you may have.

You don't need this article, there is more value in having an experienced mentor to help you keep your impulses in check.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ProShot – The manual camera app you've been waiting for (iOS) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/proshot/id924438909 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I'm the dev; looking for feedback and spreading the word about this iOS release. There are many camera apps out there, but this is the only one offering true DSLR-style control right at your finger tips.

(In case you were wondering, yep, this is the same ProShot from Windows Phone, built from the ground-up for iOS :) It's free for now, comments and crit are welcome. Enjoy!

</comment><comment><USER2> Installed on iPhone 4S.

Just like to say that this is a well made Camera app that I will more than likely be using for a while, even if it goes paid, it is simple to use and works well on my iPhone 4S.

I'll give it a good test once I have more time and provide a feature request.

Sample capture: [http://i.imgur.com/F8fju0G.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/F8fju0G.jpg) Cheers

</comment><comment><USER3> I've just downloaded it and it's great! Some suggestions:

      - manual focus control is a bit small to adjust
      - a black&white mode would be so great (e.g. my Leica DLUX 4 has such a great mode called "Dynamic B&W")

Keep up the good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

1) I'll see about tweaking the hit size of the MF control 2) Yep, that's definitely on my to-do list. No ETA on when it'll come (I am still learning Apple's APIs), but it's something I do want to add :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hello :) I have just downloaded the app and it's great!

I have a small comment/request, though. Can you like rotate also the text/captions to the current orientation even if Portrait Orientation lock is on? Just like the native camera app.

Thanks a lot and more power. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! D'oh, I forgot about rotation lock. I'll look into it :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is a good way to monetize a newsletter? - <AUTHOR> Hi guys,<p>I'm running a little JavaScript newsletter (~600 subscribers) and wonder what could be are some ways to monetize it? Without any money flow (even a thin one) it's very hard for me to continue supporting it. <comment><USER2> job ads.</comment>


Fitbit's 150B hours of heart data - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-fitbits-150-billion-hours-heart-data-reveals-secrets-human-health-133124215.html <comment><USER2> Anecdotally, the heart rate data they have isn't very good. I had a Fitbit to track my HR while running, and the HR reading would change dramatically based on what I set my stride length to in the app. I would run on the treadmill, and it would guess how much I ran. If my stride length was set to a longer length, it thought I was an elite athlete and told me my resting HR was sub 50 BPM. If I set a normal stride length, my resting HR would be 60+. That's when I stopped caring about health trackers.

<comment><USER3> For me, doing hill sprints on a bicycle sometimes completely fails to register on the Fitbit. My heart rate will sometimes show up in the 90-100 range on the Fitbit, despite my Garmin (which gets data from a chest strap monitor) showing me 160-170, which is far more believable.

And then there are weird situations while merely walking around where I'll see strange spikes (160+) on the Fitbit when I _know_ my heart rate is near 90 or so.

<comment><USER4> I've seen the same thing. I'm a middle aged guy, endurance athlete, was competitive nationally at the NCAA level way-back-when. I learned a lot about nutrition and physiology as part of my sport.

Back then the conventional wisdom (not universally accepted) was that max heart rate was "220 minus age". Well, if you do that math on me, the peak -- not sustained -- rate that I reach now is outrageous, in a good way. Granted, I've learned to push through and perform at high levels of exertion and exhaustion, it didn't happen from one day to the next.

Anyway, there were times ~3 years ago where I'd be tearing up a workout, Fitbit would read 130, I knew it was f __*Ing wrong. Bought a chest strap and saw what was really going on. Low 190s. Thanks FitBit!! I would have been happier if the FitBit just put up "??? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING OLD MAN???"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >The scientists note that Qatar seems to be an outlier. Seventy percent of the Qatari population is obese — yet their RHR is an impressive 62. How could that be?

Might be because the obese Qatari aren't the Qataris buying fitbits?

<comment><USER6> Also Qatar is probably a bit of an outlier in that 88% of the population are foreign workers [0,1]. Maybe the 70% obese stat includes only Qatari nationals while the resting heart rate includes everyone.

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

[1] [http://gulfmigration.eu/media/pubs/exno/GLMM_EN_2017_03.pdf](http://gulfmigration.eu/media/pubs/exno/GLMM_EN_2017_03.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I am a privacy advocate in most aspects, I fail to see how my basic health data like HR, weight etc is going to be used against me except for bad marketing practices.

If I talk ill about some political ideologies and that gets stored until some evil dictator gets in power, that I can get. But who is going to put me in prison for having a high heart rate?

The benefits in the other hand is great. I get to see and view my health improve or get worse over time and they can use my data along with many others to get patterns and help improve the health of everyone.

I guess what I am saying is that I don't really get the panic about giving up health data that is displayed in this comment section. I also own a Withings / Nokia watch together with a scale and it works great, have motivated me to get more sleep and exercise more. My experience is purely positive and I am quite certain that owning devices like this helps a lot of people get more healthy, detect bad trends etc.

<comment><USER8> > health data like HR, weight etc is going to be used against me except for > bad marketing practices

You could pay more for health and life insurance.

<comment><USER9> One problem facing insurance companies is the asymmetric information between buyer and seller. Should we be able to keep our age secret when buying life insurance? How about sex or weight?

My teenage son is in all likelihood a less safe driver than the average teenage woman, should a woman pay the same for her insurance as the generally more reckless man?

With regard to our health information, should we be keeping information from our insurance companies? Would it be right to lie about it? If not then should we hiding it. It seems that in this case we are taking advantage of others that will inevitable have to pay higher premiums to cover costs of those that are less honest about their health.

I bought a house recently. The owner didn't disclose a crack in the slab. They had covered it with a recent floor covering that fooled both me and the inspector. Is that okay? Isn't this similar to trying to keep a life insuance company from realizing that one has a significant risk say of a heart attack?

I don't like companies collecting data on me, so if Fitbit does this I would hope that there was a way to opt out; nevertheless, I feel that we shouldn't expect private insurance companies to charge us all the same. This leaves many people in circumstances where insuance would be unobtainable—a big problem where government could play an important role in a just solution.

<comment><USER8> > should a woman pay the same for her insurance as the generally more reckless > man

Already sexist. Why not say "should a woman pay the same for her insurance as a man"?

If you are going to be sexist and agist for the sake of calculating insurance risk factors, you might as well be racist too.

<comment><USER9> From [https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/teenagers/fatalityfacts/t...](https://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/teenagers/fatalityfacts/teenagers)

"About 2 of every 3 teenagers killed in crashes in 2016 were males."

<comment><USER8> I'm not disputing any statistics. I'm saying, if it's okay to discriminate based on age and gender (because of stats) then why is it not okay to do the exact same thing with race?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They missed the sampling effect across ages. I've seen it in action quite a few times already. Prior: Conditional on Having a fitbit, the 70 yr old is a larger deviant from average health, than the 30 yr old. That effect could easily explain away the falling RHR with older age. The population in that age group is getting more healthy by self-sampling. The proposed solution in the article (the use of beta-blockers) seems inadequate. What proportion of the population and the Fitbit-users is on those medicines? (Article does mention some stats in the multicountry comparison.)

As always the bayesian/multilevel approach could help: buying a Fitbit is a decision with information on your health-status in itself, model it likewise. Add information on weigth, BMI, activities per week etc. as indicators of in which class of users you fall (the uberfit, healthy, the aspiring, ...). Then use the predicted RHR per age instead of the data itself.

</comment><comment><USER11> A low (R)HR isn't always indicative of good health. High blood pressure can cause your HR to drop, for instance.

I hope they're actively researching their data set, I suspect we can learn a lot from it. They might even be able to detect certain arrhythmias, though that can't be easy with just an optical sensor which only reads HR.

With a user base this large, I'm sure people have died while wearing their fitbit. Maybe they could help predict/prevent the sudden cardiac death syndrome that many young athletes are afraid of?

<comment> Engineering-MD While you are correct, it's not normally seen as an indicator of high blood pressure. The larger concern would be an arrhythmia or a form of heart block. These are definitely dangerous, but usually concern is only raised if symptomatic or the heart rate is below 50. Even in this case, a heart rate below 50 can be normal in very athletic people.

<comment><USER11> Oh yes, you're absolute right. I'm not saying that a a HR below 60 is abnormal or bad. I'm just saying that "low = good" isn't automatically true. AFAIK devices like fitbit have no indication of blood pressure (or heart block or certain kinds of arrhythmias), so they can't really make this bold claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Europeans drink alot of wine. Just sayin'

I really wish scientist would stop "just sayin'" things like this. With all this value in data and possible contributions to the understanding of our vascular system, I find it quite dangerous to counter that with the suggestion that drinking alcohol is a healthy option to reduce stress.

<comment> Digit-Al Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm sure that bit was a humorous comment by the author of the article rather than a comment by the scientists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yes, there are cases when a sub-60 resting heart rate is bad. For the vast majority of people, lower is better. The athlete's heart undergoes remodeling that is similar in outcome to pathological processes (eg, cardiomegaly and cardiac hypertrophy), but is in fact healthy, not harmful.

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

I have personally found that average RHR per week tends to correlate strongly with my own physical activity. With consistent workouts, I can get down to 47 bpm. When my RHR gets above 55, I know I've been slacking off for too long (or it's an exam week and I'm stressed).

<comment><USER14> _I have personally found that average RHR per week tends to correlate strongly with my own physical activity._

Weird, my morning RHR has consistently been 54bpm since I was eighteen years old, whether training for an ultra marathon, high-level bicycle racing, or sitting around being a (relatively) fat slob for a period of time. So consistent, that now in my 50s I just don't bother paying attention anymore.

<comment><USER13> That's super interesting. I wonder why that is.

<comment><USER14> Dunno. It's why I always thought RHR was kind of fixed, and if it varied then you're measuring me wrng (differing times of day and the like).

As for the affect of exercise, one of the better bike racers I've known said his resting rate was never below 60. Young guy, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It kind of sounds like marketing pitch by fitbit to let potential clients in health industry know that they have so much of data to sell. Otherwise It seems odd for fitbit to share this information with the author.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love this.

I was most surprised by the "Women vs. men, young vs. old". To learn that HR gets lower with age. Since old people die a lot. All of them actually.

Feels like a paradox since lower HR is associated with being healthy - and the rest of the graphs seems to suggest so.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what they mean by "optimal", which this article seems to be mentioning a lot.

It seems that they are referring to a maximum or a minimum in the curve, and calling it optimal. It seems to offer the hypothesis that a low resting heart rate (RHR) is good, and then runs with it. It does not explain how it arrived at that conclusion.

It feels that they saw that most people at a given age have a resting heart rate of X and therefore they conclude that this is optimal. However, I wonder if people with a lower-than-average or higher-than-average have a longer life expectancy. I understand that FitBit data would not show that, as the age-at- death seems to be one of the few data points they don't have :).

</comment><comment><USER18> Are there any relatively dumb trackers that can log only locally or to Apple Health without aggregating my data or storing in the cloud? I'd like to replace a Charge HR and have some activity tracking and real time heart rate.

<comment><USER19> Amazfit Bip. Does pretty much everything an Apple Watch does for a fourth of the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have to wonder about the "findings" regarding sleep of 7 hours being a causation for a lower RHR. Could it be that the cohort of those who are getting up early to exercise regularly are trading an hour of sleep in order to do so? To assume that "too much sleep is bad for you" seems incorrect given just the aggregate of all data with so many other variables.

</comment><comment><USER21> > And as for Pakistan, with the worst activity level and a sky-high RHR — get > with it, people!

This is...insensitive, to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER22> I rather wish they'd focus on making sync more reliable. All my immediate family have Fitbits and no one's syncs reliably.

<comment><USER23> We are actively working very hard on this! Unfortunately it's the typical tech story — the system that worked well over 10 years ago isn't working as well today and it's a big project to replace it. We have a whole team of very experienced engineers who are working to improve it for all our devices.

<comment><USER22> Thank you! <3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Now if only it were accurate...

<comment><USER25> Am a Garmin user for years. Was in a hospital ~10 months ago and was connected to a heart-rate-monitoring-thingy via a finger-clip. At the same time I had my Garmin Fenix 3 on my other arm. Was looking at the screen and comparing it to what my watch was showing and it was +-2 points at all times. Tried holding my breath to see what happens and both were almost identical.

<comment><USER26> Optical heart rate when not moving is pretty easy to do.

Measurements are much harder when the user is moving around erratically, such as is typical with exercising.

Source: I worked on a fitness product using optical HR for 3 years.

<comment><USER27> My experience of hospital grade equipment for monitoring the heart is that it isn't great with movement either. This was in an MR scanner (magnetic field and RF) so I ones milage may vary.

<comment><USER26> > My experience of hospital grade equipment for monitoring the heart is that > it isn't great with movement either.

For anything optical, you need accelerometers and lots of fun algorithms to compensate for motion.

Soon as the motion is something the algo wasn't trained on, everything falls apart.

<comment><USER27> Optical, electrical (from chest or skull) and even a BP cuff (pneumatic) were used. It's a hard problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's just amazing! Very interesting analysis of the data there.

</comment><comment><USER29> > modern smartwatches and fitness bands can track your pulse continuously, day > and night, for months. Imagine what you could learn if you collected all > that data from tens of millions of people!

Please no. Surely nobody thought collecting health data from all their users was a good idea, right?

> That's exactly what Fitbit (FIT) has done. It has now logged 150 billion > hours' worth of heart-rate data. From tens of millions of people, all over > the world.

Argh…

> Fitbit also knows these people's ages, sexes, locations, heights, weights, > activity levels, and sleep patterns.

Just stop it already.

> Before you freak out: Fitbit's data is anonymized. Your name is stripped > off, and your data is thrown into a huge pool with everybody else's. (Note, > too, that this data comes only from people who own Fitbits — who are > affluent enough, and health-conscious enough, to make that purchase. It's > not the whole world.)

"Anonymized". Just with the data posted above, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to correlate the data to a person. And auto-enrolling everyone who buys a health product is not an excuse to mine all their data.

<comment><USER30> This large scale data analytics is probable the best (or at least usually fastest) way to solve the worlds big health challenges I would guess. Nobody forced anyone to wear a smart watch or health tracker. I for one thinks the world is slightly better off because of companies like Fitbit!

<comment><USER31> If used by researchers, for research. Not sitting in vaults of private companies, doing God knows what. I don't even know what they need that data for.

Sure, now that's there, it could be useful. But why can't we ever go about collecting such data the right way? Opt-in, and for the right purpose?

<comment><USER32> > If used by researchers, for research.

Sure, but that's application. Great things usually can do terrible things depending on application.

At some point we have to take a leap of faith and acknowledge that some things, like heart data ingestion, is an amazing advancement for humanity. Lets not try and stop it, lets try to move it in the right direction. Ie, not private, etc.

<comment><USER31> I can imagine potential good uses. I just don't trust this particular actor.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A list of practical projects that anyone can solve in any programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/karan/Projects <comment><USER2> My go-to for this sort of thing has always been Project Euler ([https://projecteuler.net/](https://projecteuler.net/)).

<comment><USER3> I've posted this several times, but...

[https://github.com/seaneshbaugh/rosetta- euler](https://github.com/seaneshbaugh/rosetta-euler)

It's an ongoing thing I work on when I'm not working on anything in particular.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to mention that Project Euler states that they'd prefer that people not publish the solutions publicly:

 _> I learned so much solving problem XXX so is it okay to publish my solution elsewhere?

It appears that you have answered your own question. There is nothing quite like that "Aha!" moment when you finally beat a problem which you have been working on for some time. It is often through the best of intentions in wishing to share our insights so that others can enjoy that moment too. Sadly, however, that will not be the case for your readers. Real learning is an active process and seeing how it is done is a long way from experiencing that epiphany of discovery. Please do not deny others what you have so richly valued yourself._

Just saying.

<comment><USER5> That "epiphany of discovery" may be a good feeling, but I disagree with the idea that knowledge should only be bought with hardship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >SQL Query Analyzer - A utility application which a user can enter a query and have it run against a local database and look for ways to make it more efficient.

Non-trivial if "look for ways to make it more efficient" means non-trivial suggestions (ie. not "add moar indexes").

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi all. It's Karan here - the creator of this repo.

Thanks OP for posting the link; I'm glad to see people like it. I'll be reading comments here, so keep 'em coming. ;)

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing. I'm putting together materials for a course on data structures that I'm teaching this fall.

I have the theory part covered, but I'm always on the lookout for things that could make for decent practical assignment problems - reasonably attainable in scope, but without being too contrived.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Prime Factorization - Have the user enter a number and find all Prime > Factors (if there are any) and display them.

not to sound pedantic, but for any integer greater than 1 there is always at least one prime factor: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_arithme...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_arithmetic)

edit: for prime numbers, it is the number itself

<comment><USER10> and "1" does not, so the thing youre trying to be pedantic about isnt even wrong.

<comment><USER11> True, and when talking about "numbers" one would generally include 3/7 and maybe _e_ , negative numbers and perhaps complex numbers... or at the very least negative integers...

<comment><USER10> all of which have prime factors ;)

besides, you may as well consider 1 a prime factor. the task is just a silly programming toy problem. 1 not being prime is pure definition, including 1 in the primes would not materially change the definition of primes. just make a lot of advanced math tedious to write down.

<comment><USER12> The Real numbers do not have any primes. Every real number is a unit.

EDIT: Because it gets brought up so often, I want to respond directly to the 1 being prime point. Saying this is true purely by definition is only true in the highly technical sense that we could make the definition whatever we want.

One of the core properties of primes is Euclid's lemma, which states that if p is a prime and p divides xy then p divides x or p divides y. Symbolic, this is p|xy => p|x OR p|y.

Indeed when we generalize the notion of "prime" from the integers to arbitrary rings, this "lemma" becomes part of the definition. In fact, even "irreducible" elements, which is a strictly weaker requirement than prime elements, excludes units (such as 1).

<comment><USER13> The property "p|xy => p|x or p|y" does in fact hold for p=1. (The conditions on the LHS and RHS are then true for all x,y.) The simplest formulation of the condition for irreducibility (p=qr => q=1 or r=1) is also true for p=1.

Taking 1 not to be prime is, none the less, pretty clearly better than the alternative. Here are a few examples of neat things that would break if we took 1 to be prime:

When p is prime Z/pZ -- i.e., "integers mod p" \-- is a field, meaning a thing in which you can do +,-,*,/. This would be false if we allowed p=1, though admittedly there's a not-too-crazy way you could change the usual definition of "field" that would fix it.

The "fundamental theorem of arithmetic": Every positive integer is the product of primes and this product is unique up to rearrangement. This would be false if we took 1 to be prime, because you can always add or remove 1s from the factorization.

The famous Riemann zeta function (zeta(s) = sum over positive integers n of n^-s) has a representation as an infinite product: zeta(s) = product over prime p of (1-p^-s)^-1. For a little example of why this is nice, note that it provides an instant proof that there are infinitely many primes, because as s->1 zeta(s)->infinity, which would be impossible if that were a finite product. This would become nonsense if we allowed p=1 because one factor would then be 1/0.

Prime numbers all have exactly two divisors (1 and p). This would become false if we took 1 to be prime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is also the 99-problems sets, started in Prolog [0], then Lisp [1], Haskell [2], Python [3], and more.

[0]: [https://sites.google.com/site/prologsite/prolog- problems](https://sites.google.com/site/prologsite/prolog-problems)

[1]: [http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/func...](http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~meidanis/courses/mc336/2006s2/funcional/L-99_Ninety- Nine_Lisp_Problems.html)

[2]: [https://wiki.haskell.org/99_questions](https://wiki.haskell.org/99_questions)

[3]: [https://wiki.python.org/moin/ProblemSets/99%20Prolog%20Probl...](https://wiki.python.org/moin/ProblemSets/99%20Prolog%20Problems%20Solutions)

</comment><comment><USER15> Great list for inspiration! Though, it is not true that all the problems can be solved in any programming language: try to make a "Bandwidth Monitor" in Coq.

<comment><USER16> I think that looks like a framework for proving things about the bandwidth usage of other programs, no?

<comment><USER15> You are right :-)

But we could also consider another example: try to return the nth digit using a regular expression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You might add in some basic (useful) encryption like RSA. There's a running joke in the CS department at my university that every other class has to teach RSA, so it is not incredibly difficulty to do.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thanks for this - I'm just beginning on the long journey of learning programming, and have been looking for challenges to set myself now that I have (some) of the basics down (but large, practical projects are still somewhat daunting).

</comment><comment><USER19> There's also [http://exercism.io/](http://exercism.io/) where you can solve problems and get/give feedback on the solutions.

The platform is all open source on Github.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd like to make a wikipedia-of-code where each page corresponds to a "project" like the ones listed here. The project entry would look like a Jupyter notebook, and you can edit/execute the code freely.

<comment><USER21> I made a start on that once with [http://wry.me/~darius/hacks/howtodothingswithdocs.tar.gz](http://wry.me/~darius/hacks/howtodothingswithdocs.tar.gz) \-- it runs literate programs in Scheme on the server. Ancient Python code.

<comment><USER20> I don't know if I'd be courageous enough to run random internet code server side, but I know there are some people that do. I was thinking about trying to get a lisp-to-javascript compiler, then use it to compile a lisp-interpreter- written-in-lisp to javascript, then the notebook would just be a fancy client- side lisp REPL.

<comment><USER21> The part you might find interesting is how it treats pages as modules you can import (from other pages), and integrates that with built-in version control (though I never got to the UI for the version control).

Yeah, running it all client-side makes more sense. See my profile info if you ever feel like chatting about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've actually been working on this while trying to help a friend learn programming.

I've been looking for some meatier projects that still have good feedback loops, without requiring too much domain knowledge.

For example, I've been working through a project with the friend that involves scraping prices off of a website and trying to build a thing to automatically order things off of the websites.

Multiple distinct parts, each with their own, very visible, success state. But at the same time, not too many challenging domain specific issues (main issue was just explaining CSS selectors and form POSTs).

</comment><comment><USER23> _Exercises for Programmers: 57 Challenges to Develop Your Coding Skills_ by Brian P. Hogan

[https://pragprog.com/book/bhwb/exercises-for- programmers](https://pragprog.com/book/bhwb/exercises-for-programmers)

</comment><comment><USER24> How do you feel about actually solving them in any language and then documenting the solution? [https://github.com/megamindbrian/jupytangular](https://github.com/megamindbrian/jupytangular)

</comment><comment><USER25> I really like Rosetta Code esque projects. Rosetta Code has been somewhat abandoned as of late recently though.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree. This is a great list. Will like to see some game projects as well, and more in the security section too.

</comment><comment><USER27> Any other lists of projects like this?

<comment><USER28> Advent of Code. Not a list but also a set of problems to solve - nice for learning.

[https://adventofcode.com/](https://adventofcode.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Should one consider them self skilled if they can complete all of these projects with some amount of ease?

<comment><USER30> Skilled relative to...

...most of the population? Yes.

...John Carmack? No.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Near native C++ speeds with barcode scanning with WebAssembly - <AUTHOR> https://websdk.scandit.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Disclosure: I work for Scandit.

This is a project we have been working on for a while and just launched. Feel free to ask me anything regarding barcode scanning or porting large and optimized C++ code-bases to webassembly.

[Edit] Here's the NPM package if you want to try this out yourself: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/scandit- sdk](https://www.npmjs.com/package/scandit-sdk)

<comment><USER2> can you do a blog post about the porting process?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice! You might want to check mines, in javascript and with pretty pictures/animations

[https://github.com/aguaviva/ArtificialIntelligence](https://github.com/aguaviva/ArtificialIntelligence)

</comment><comment><USER4> Mobile safari 11 doesn't appear to work</comment>


We built our ML platform on AWS–and why that may have been a mistake - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/aws-gcp-f5727aa55239 <comment><USER2> So they want to support GCP and AWS. I understand that they have a small engineering team, but supported very low cost hosts like Hetzner would be good. Lots of hosting companies have very low GZpU rates.</comment>


How The Pursuit of Truth Led Me To Selling Viagra - <AUTHOR> http://www.icir.org/vern/talks/vp-truth-usesec09.pdf

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. It's the first time I've seen hard numbers explaining the monetary appeal of spamming.

<comment><USER3> It is much more appealing than the network security researchers think, because they don't think like affiliate marketers.

Assume Bob buys $100 of Viagra for you. They count it as worth being $100, and wonder how it could be profitable with the high costs of spamming. What they're missing is what direct marketers call the "backend": now that we've established Bob is willing to spend money on the Internet to improve his performance, he becomes an _extraordinarily valuable_ source of recurring revenue. His expected LTV might well be over a thousand bucks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In one of the graphs there is a mention that the last slammer was seen in August 2009!

</comment><comment><USER5> Damn, I was wondering why my viagra order was never placed.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you dead? - <AUTHOR> Can we please stop entitling articles, "Is whatever dead?" Let's leave the drama to Bruce Willis and ask better questions. <comment><USER2> Ha ha. I gather you refer to questions like "Is this project still actively maintained?".

While these kind of questions might be a bit annoying, I still think they are valid in many cases. Sure, you can phrase it very eloquently, but if you have indeed moved on from your (former?) pet project to new exciting ventures, then that is a waste of time, both for the one reading, and the one who asks.

Remember that you would not get this question, if the one asking didn't like it in the first place, and isn't seriously considering to use it.

But maybe they can formulate it a bit friendlier: "Say, is your project still alive and healthy?" :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hear, hear!</comment>


The stability implications of the US nukes' burst-height compensating super-fuze - <AUTHOR> https://thebulletin.org/how-us-nuclear-force-modernization-undermining-strategic-stability-burst-height-compensating-super10578 <comment><USER3> This general problem discussed in this article, a technological change affecting the perceived nuclear arsenal balance, is a reminder of the existential peril of nuclear weapons that we have seemingly forgotten since the fall of the Soviet Union. In some ways this peril has never been greater than it is today with unpredictable leaders of nuclear powers and ever- decreasing barriers to entry for nuclear weapons (e.g. North Korea).

As Einstein said in 1955, when the existential threat was both new and real, "You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years."

We are complacent at our species' peril. How many intelligent civilizations in the universe have ended shortly after the dawning of their nuclear age? That's one possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Thus far, humans have been unable to resist use of a technology to gain power and the abstention from use of nuclear power seems only as strong as the current world power structure, which will inevitably fail. There are no easy solutions to this problem but it's one we must solve to survive. Perhaps we even need to change ourselves biologically, as a species. To engineer ourselves off the paleolithic savannah into one fit to survive in the modern world of nuclear powers and interconnection.

<comment><USER4> Nuclear weapons are not currently a threat to the existence of the human species. Modern civilization might be at risk, but there are a lot of people spread across vast stretches of land and not enough nukes to kill them all.

Granted they make it vastly easier to kill everyone in a city or even a small country, but people have done similar things for the last 10,000+ years.

<comment><USER5> The truth is that we don't know what the long term impacts of a total exchange would be. Theories range from extreme nuclear winter events, to just the fall of civilization. I sure won't pretend to know where on that scale the reality is, and hope never to find out.

Here is some food for thought though, about the potential for our civilization to fall; it will not rise again. We've accessed far too much petrochemical wealth and burned it, and the same is true of coal, and metal resources. We get around that by using our existing industry and technology to go deeper, refine more, and in general access resources which require advanced technology to exploit.

There is nothing left which can be accessed by primatives, and so no way to claw back from such a reduced state. It will be many millions of years before those resources are reconstituted, far more years than the history of our species so far by orders of magnitude. This is our chance, and if we burn it away in nuclear fire, we are done. It probably won't happen overnight, but the fall of our civilization is the fall of humanity. Let's try to avoid that.

The same goes for any cause of systematic civilization-wide collapse, we would be done. The reason we clawed back in the past is that we has only scratched the surface before, but we've fully plundered global resources now. It's onward and upward, or lights out.

<comment><USER6> >Here is some food for thought though, about the potential for our civilization to fall; it will not rise again. We've accessed far too much petrochemical wealth and burned it, and the same is true of coal, and metal resources...exploit

This is nonsense, for a number of reasons.

First, you ignore that smaller, shallow deposits of petroleum still exist all over the world, in more than enough quantity to support a developing civilization if it were to be reduced to, say, less than 1/10th of its current size.

Second, existing stores of substances necessary to civilization will not simply evaporate. Metals, plastics, and other raw materials will be recoverable and recyclable.

Third, while there may be a couple hundred years or so of dark ages, I think it is extremely unlikely for any substantial amount of our current scientific progress to be eradicated. Unless we cover every mile of civilized earth with bombardment, I imagine it is guaranteed that there will be survivors with minimal technical knowledge required to operate computers and harvest various data that will inevitably be left on servers in random locations. All it takes is a handful of hackers to spread knowledge of operation and recovery. Not to mention books and magazines will likely still exist.

I think you underestimate the resilience that modern technology can offer over decades in terms of recovery after a global catastrophe. A laptop, a generator, and a copy of wikipedia will get you far in preserving enough scientific and technical knowledge. Civilization at this point is hard to permanently wipe out.

<comment><USER7> I fear you _overstate_ the resilience of modern technology.

In the case of, even brief, total civilizational collapse, I doubt you'd be able to access any server whatsoever. The Internet is not stable, it's actively maintained and in the state of constant flux. As for accessing individual computers and small computer networks - just how many of the survivors will have enough knowledge to arrange for electricity at appropriate frequency, ensure it doesn't burn out the fragile machines, and then be able to interface with a (likely password-locked, disk-encrypted) system to extract some useful data?

And even if they do that, just for how long will it do them any good? Modern electronics are built with planned and unplanned obsolescence. Their lifetimes under active use are measured in years, and even inactive they'll age. With no industry (requiring a complex, global supply chain of millions of people) to build fresh replacement drives, there will eventually be nowhere to move the data to.

Our civilization is like a living system, in the sense that it constantly works to repair itself everywhere. Disturb that, and it will rot and die.

<comment><USER6> GP claimed civilization would be unable to rise again, implying thousands of years of knowledge would disappear.

Wikipedia is available for download and requires less than 15GB of space[1]. This is an unprecedented density of self documenting data, containing thousands of years of advancements in science, mathematics, philosophy, arts.

Consider how many people live in or visit dwellings that are tens or hundreds of miles from large population centers, and how many of these dwellings have emergency gasoline generators and working computers.

Now, presuming that most of the destruction happens in major cities, and the rest of the earth generally remains livable, there will still remain millions of people, and if just a small sampling of competent technically minded people survive, there will be billions of abandoned, unused, solid state devices, and millions of generators to power them, ripe for picking. What are the odds that not a single competent survivor will have backed up a copy of wikipedia to be able share with other survivors in the decades after catastrophe?

When a single human can hold in his hand all of the science and mathematics necessary to derive the technologies upon which modern civilization is based, rebuilding is easily within the realm of possibility. Not to mention, artifacts of modern technology will remain as examples for engineering and even use with sufficient technical knowledge.

Further, I encourage all of you to download and keep a copy of wikipedia for this very, however farfetched, purpose.

[1][https://www.google.com/amp/s/lifehacker.com/how-to- download-...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/lifehacker.com/how-to-download-all- of-wikipedia-onto-a-usb-flash-drive-1798453949/amp)

<comment><USER7> Fair enough. Access to some amounts of computing may be initially available, but I still believe it would not last more than a few years.

It all boils down to supply chains and the economy, basically. Electronics capable of working with today's data storage media is incredibly complex, and manufacturing replacements will require large and insanely expensive fabs. Those fabs themselves are full of precise tools and exotic materials, every one of which requiring other specialized fabs, using tools requiring other fabs... The whole pipeline from dirt to CPU involves many thousands of people directly, and itself can only exist in an advanced civilization like ours - where lots of other people do everything from agriculture to catering to logistics to law and law enforcement. To build a CPU, you first need to build a civilization like ours. And to build a civilization like ours, you need cheap energy sources - it literally wouldn't be possible without them.

> _GP claimed civilization would be unable to rise again, implying thousands > of years of knowledge would disappear._

Our best bet to retain all that knowledge after total civilizational collapse is to form orders - not unlike medieval monks - whose sole purpose would be to make exact paper copies of that knowledge. Otherwise, after computers eventually die, a lot of that knowledge would disappear (because it wouldn't be used), and what would stay would get increasingly distorted over time.

<comment><USER8> The most problematic would be the high density integrated chips and storage media. Lower densities on scale of say 80s tech are doable in a basement with the right know how and most basic electronics can be fixed or replaced easily enough, (The problem is stated as how to make a good enough plasma doping chamber to make transistors.) If at a cost to size and efficiency. (Even advanced voltage regulators...)

That said, a lot of that hardware, especially rugged, would easily last for a few decades.

We'd have to use cassettes for data storage once again.

<comment><USER5> I feel like this conversation is taking place in a strange parallel universe in which people don't appreciate what 15,000+ nuclear warheads being exchanged would do. The fires started from them alone would be an extinction event, and the kinds of incredibly remote areas in which you might find long-term survivors would not be laden with caches of electronics and populations capable of using them.

Getting enough food and water that wasn't dreadfully contaminated alone would be the preoccupation of generations. By the time anyone had ideas about rising from barbarism, what we think of as civilization now would be rusted, eroded, and overgrown.

All of that assumes the most optimistic of assumptions regarding global wildfires, teratogenic effects, and nuclear winter. We wouldn't be using magnetic tapes, we'd be using rocks and sticks and animal hides.

<comment><USER4> The earth's surface is ~200 million square miles. 1 bomb per 13,000 square miles seems bad, but we had survivors very close to ground zero with even H-Bombs and these nukes would not be eventually spread over the surface. Many people would be 5,000+ miles from the closest detention.

Remember we actually detonated a large number of nukes on the surface with minimal impact on global radiation exposure.

While relatively small by modern standards Yoshitaka Kawamot was less than 1km from the hiroshima blast and survived. Yes, these nukes may be 100+x as powerful but destruction is far from 1:1 with yield sizes.

<comment><USER5> People are not evenly distributed on the surface of the earth, most of which is ocean. Nukes do. It target randomly, they target population centers and strategically valuable regions. Most people live where nukes are aimed, which is why they are aimed there.

15,000 warheads concentrated where humans live, on the fraction of the 27% of Earth that isn't water. Be reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces > by a factor of roughly three

The measure by which the authors conclude a tripling in killing power seems to be intentionally misleading:

> This 86 percent probability is very close to what could be achieved using > three warheads with conventional fuzes to attack the same target. To put it > differently: In the case of the 100-kt Trident II warhead, the super fuze > triples the killing power of the nuclear force it has been applied to.

While obtaining the same probability of destroying any given target requires one third as many warheads, the more relevant statistic seems to me to be expected number of warheads required per target, which is decreased by less than half; Total targets destroyed per missile launched, which seems a more accurate descriptor of "killing power", is increased by a factor of about 1.7 - still notable, but very much not the tripling claimed.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am not a nuclear policy wonk, so I apologize if this question is answered elsewhere.

Much of the argument presented in this paper from last year is based on how destabilizing it is because Russia does not have an orbital launch detection capability. Since it would _double_ the time they had to respond and requires no action banned or restricted by treaty, why would they not put satellites in orbit that could detect the IR signature of a missile launch? Why not strap it on to their constellation of GLONASS satellites? This seems like a much easier technology to develop and deploy and test (the US is launching rockets every month, it should see every one of those launches reliably). What am I missing here?

<comment><USER11> First off, it may not be quite that simple. They may need detector tech that they lack. Secondly, development of these dead-hand weapons systems may be easier for them or more appealing for whatever reasons (perhaps cultural).

But yes, you'd think it'd be better to double decision times than to deploy dead-hands.

Also, the U.S. could easily share early warning satellite technology with Russia. This might be a lot easier if relations weren't already so frosty.

I believe Obama's sanctions against Russia were unwise, and ratcheted up tensions unnecessarily. Moreover, Congress' subsequent affirmation of those sanctions and removal of the President's ability to remove them further ratcheted up tensions. And all of this over a very partisan domestic feud about supposed Russian interference in the 2016 election, in a country that regularly interferes in other countries' elections. Is this really worth it for Democrats? Is it really worth it for all those very many Republicans that voted for that silly bill (probably so they could head off Democrat claims of being in cahoots with Russia)?? Almost certainly not. But such is the degree of bitter, uncivil partisanship in the United States today. President Trump doesn't even have the ability to negotiate a thaw in relations given the current statutory situation -- a treaty could be used, sure, but there's no reason to think that the Senate would welcome it anymore than it was willing to let the President be able to reduce sanctions by himself (as would have been the usual case).

My guess is it will take Republicans having a very good 2018, or failing that, a very good 2020, before tensions can decrease. Alternatively, Democrats would have to sweep in 2020 and somehow allow themselves to un-blame Russia for 2016, which just doesn't seem likely, not given their rhetoric so far.

<comment><USER12> > And all of this over a very partisan domestic feud about supposed Russian > interference in the 2016 election

The majority party in the Congress that adopted the sanctions is the same as the one of the President who allegedly benefitted from the interference. And national security officials in that same Presidential administration have described the Russian interference as something that happened in 2016 and can be expected to continue.

Blaming the sanctions on a domestic "partisan feud" is incorrect.

<comment><USER11> My impression is that Republicans voted for that bill because they were afraid that voting no would be used against them as proof that they were in cahoots with the Russians. I think that's at least a tenable interpretation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Noam Chomsky has been talking about this for a while. He gave a talk at Harvard* that discussed the threat of terminal war and mentioned this in his talk. Some might claim that 3x stronger hard-kill power is a stronger deterrent and can allow us to retire the land based ICBMs. It can also ratchet up tensions, and I'm going to lol all the way to the bank if the military gives up a huge source of funding. Inter-branch competition has been that way since the inception of the nuclear program. Capabilities have been replicated wastefully at various points to keep people happy.

[https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4675156/noam-chomsky- requiem-...](https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4675156/noam-chomsky-requiem- american-dream-10-principles-concentration-wealth-power)

EDIT: It was actually at the unitarian church outside of Harvard.

</comment><comment><USER14> We've been adding such improvements for as long as missiles have existed. Better nosecones, rearrange the interior furniture, new guidance software, etc. When the Cold War was still on, we made two-three foot shots (0) from Vandyland (1) per year. Each one was mined for research and used for tweaking. The two big changes were solid fuel boosters and multiple warheads. Everything else has been minor in comparison.

0 [https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/amp9936/behind- the...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/amp9936/behind-the-scenes- at-a-rehearsal-for-armageddon-16355867/)

1 [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_Air_Force_Base](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_Air_Force_Base)

</comment><comment><USER15> This was why I was assuming the Russians brought back the nuclear torpedo. Not needing the B part of a ICBM greatly decreases fuel and thus size requirement.

<comment><USER16> Actually, a drone of the size of Status-6 will need a huge amount of fuel. It's easier to travel through the air than through water. Unless the Russians plan on deploying it from ships right off shore, it'll need very long range.

<comment><USER17> Status-6 is supposedly nuclear powered, so its range is effectively unlimited.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status-6_Oceanic_Multipurpose_System)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Humanity as a whole is probably better off.

A core strategy of US nuclear forces for the past sixty years has been to increase precision and to reduce warhead size.

The biggest US warhead ever was in service in 1954 - a 15,000 kiloton bomb. Our biggest current bomb, designed in the 70's, is 1,200 kilotons, less than a tenth of what we've had before. Our latest ICBM warhead is only 300 - <USER2> kilotons.

Also with the increased precision, the US has been reducing the number of warheads - we now have one third? the number of warheads we had in the 1960's. In fact, Russia has more declared nuclear weapons than the US.

The increase accuracy is likely to save a lot of lives in the case of war.

<comment><USER19> You're missing the forest for the trees. The accuracy to kilotonnage ratio of the warheads, as well as the absolute warhead count, is irrelevant. The US nuclear arsenal as a whole is 2-3x more effective, and thus 2-3x deadlier, because of the super-fuze.

Also, even if the increased accuracy results in less civilian casualties during the first strike (debatable, as strategic population centers will still be targeted...with greater accuracy), the super-fuze is still likely increasing the overall probability of nuclear war. Thus I would hardly say it makes humanity as a whole better off.

<comment><USER18> In the eighties, the US had missles with a CEP of 300 feet. The increased accuracy from the fuzes is irrelevant in terms of attacking cities. It only matters for attacking nuclear hardened silos.

The US arsenal has been getting less deadly against civilians and the earth, while becoming more effective against other nuclear forces. Seems like a good trade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One of the interesting things is that both the US and Russia gave up a significant number of warheads per missile through MIRV number reduction treaties. Submarine and lane based missiles on both sides that might have previously held 3 or 4 MIRVs now have a single re entry vehicle. But things like the status-6 are not covered by these treaties.

</comment><comment><USER21> How many centurys do you expect to have civilization before someone that doesn't value life as much as you do does the unthinkable?

</comment><comment><USER22> This is compensated for by Russia's implementation of fractional orbital bombardment systems that bypass radar detection.

<comment><USER23> Nobody is actually worried about that supposed compensation. The biggest joke going, is the notion that any of these technology improvements matter once you start lobbing hundreds of nuclear weapons at each other.

Bypass radar detection? Funny stuff.

The US has never thought it could stop dozens, much less hundreds, of Russia missiles. Fractional orbital bombardment system? A waste of money that Russia doesn't have, as one of the poorest major nations on earth (with a GDP per capita below Grenada).

Do you know why the US has spent so relatively little pushing nuclear weapons tech forward the last 40 years? Because it doesn't matter: just about everyone dies regardless. Russia has no missile shield, and the US has no missile shield that can stop a large volley of traditional missiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very informative article. Sheds more light into the emerging nuclear weapons race.

</comment><comment><USER25> > In particular, Russia is now in the process of testing a 40-ton nuclear- > powered underwater unmanned vehicle (UUV) that could robotically deliver, > across thousands of kilometers, a 100-megaton nuclear warhead against the > coastal cities and ports of the United States.

Interesting. What kind of damage would that do. Maybe a few of those blowing up at the same time would cause a tsunami wave? It sounds like something out of Dr. Strangelove. Water is also good at dampening explosions, I'd think.

Aha, there is XKCD for this already: [https://what- if.xkcd.com/15](https://what-if.xkcd.com/15) . It turns out the wave created by one won't be like a tsunami wave as it will break too quickly. So maybe they'd need to stagger a few devices in a row.

Linked from there is a very thorough paper "Evaluation of Various Theoretical Models For Underwater Explosion" [http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/737271.pdf](http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/737271.pdf)

<comment><USER26> I think that instead of trying to create a tsunami, it _might_ be slightly more effective to drive one straight into a port/city, and detonate at the surface.

New York: [https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?t=a1c1cd0eeccb2488024ace...](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?t=a1c1cd0eeccb2488024ace3456c44d36)

San Francisco: [https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=100000&lat=37.747095...](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=100000&lat=37.7470957&lng=-122.5095451&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&ff=52&psi=20,5,1&zm=9)

<comment><USER27> Why wouldn't you just use Fedex, DHL or an intermodal shipper?

<comment><USER25> You joke but they have an intermodal shipping container missile. You can buy it if you have some extra cash laying around:

[http://roe.ru/eng/catalog/naval-systems/shipborne- weapons/kl...](http://roe.ru/eng/catalog/naval-systems/shipborne- weapons/klab-k/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> TLDR: smarter targeting allows the same explosive power to be more effective.

This general principle has been known for a very long time. These are the same people who put out the totally useless "Doomsday clock" and like the "Doomsday clock" are just trying to stir up fear.

<comment><USER29> I rightly hope that everyone is scared shitless about the possibility of any war - let alone nuclear war.

<comment><USER11> But not so scared that a larger war results from unwillingness to fight a smaller war. We saw that movie in the 30s.

<comment><USER29> We've also seen how it has turned out in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Libya. Hundreds of thousands of people dead, for nothing. But as long as it's other people dying, we're totally fine with that.

<comment><USER11> Strawman. None of those involved genocidal maniacs (unless you include Cambodia, where the U.S. did _not_ intervene) nor plain old tin pot dictators bent on world domination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't, for the life of me, understand why the major nuclear powers still cannot commit to full denuclearization. It's really one meeting away between Russia and US, they agree to take all nuclear weapons out of service by 2050 then strong arm every country in the world to participate.

What plausible purpose do these weapons serve (except deterrence itself), fully knowing that using them will almost guarantee massive retaliation?

<comment><USER31> At this point, I imagine it's a "you first" issue. Trust is pretty darn scarce these days, how can you be sure the other side won't just annihilate you the moment they know you can't retaliate? That or be sure that not even one nuke is active or to take a page from guns, "80%" or nearly-active?

Even if we do manage full denuclearization, it'd be pretty darn hard to keep it that way seeing as how we can't even stop North Korea from joining the club.

<comment><USER30> Who said anything about trust? It would certainly proceed in a lockstep process, with strict accountability and transparency, where the parties agree on a schedule to gradually dismantle all weapons and production infrastructure and supply detailed information at various checkpoints. You can't build a nuclear arsenal overnight.

NK joined an exclusive club and now Kim is rewarded with a visit from Trump. In this version of the world, possessing nuclear weapons is a source of legitimacy for any country. In a non-nuclear world, actions to obtain them will prompt imediate preemptive conventional attacks. Russia, US and EU could agree to maintain minimal deterrence capability against rouge actors like NK, but insufficient for global war.

<comment><USER32> Even if you do establish a procedure, how do you guarantee that the reported number of weapons prior to dearmament is accurate (and thus matches the number of dismantled weapons), and that the other side didn't keep a stockpile in an off-the-books location? That brings us back to trust -- that the other side is legitimately engaging with the process and that the totality of weapons is known, rather than merely reducing their numbers (which would be no bad thing, but significantly different to total disarmament, particularly if only one side goes through with it)?

<comment><USER30> > the other side didn't keep a stockpile in an off-the-books location?

This seems an implausible strategy on the long run, to organize such a conspiracy you would need thousands of people in the know, from political leaders to technicians. The value of this intelligence would be so colossal that it's unfathomable nobody would sell it for profit or release it for conscience reasons. See the Israel story and Mordechai Vanunu.

Then again, if you manage to have a stockpile of nuclear pits (actual warheads require continuous maintenance, Tritium replenishment etc.) that only 15 people know about, in an non-deployable configuration and hide them so deep that the ultra-sensitive nuclear detectors mandated by the treaties can't sense them, is that a major threat? Their existence might simply fade out of institutional memory.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Racket v6.1 released. Undefined values from uninitialized variables eliminated - <AUTHOR> http://blog.racket-lang.org/2014/08/racket-v61.html

<comment><USER2> The new "plumber" mechanism is useful for things like flushing buffers, doing clean disconnects from network services, committing or rolling-back transactions, and releasing kernel resources.

For example, you might be using a buffered TCP/IP connection to a message broker. Registering a plumber flush callback would let you automatically flush and close the connection before the process exits.

Similarly, the PortAudio library [1] requires you to call Pa_Terminate on pain of possible kernel resource leaks. The plumber mechanism can be used to ensure Pa_Terminate is called before process exit.

[1] [http://www.portaudio.com/](http://www.portaudio.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a more technical discussion about the new undefined behavior in the mailing list, when it was incorporated: [http://lists.racket- lang.org/users/archive/2014-April/062148...](http://lists.racket- lang.org/users/archive/2014-April/062148.html)</comment>


#foocamp pulls strings at Google - <AUTHOR> http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&source=hp&q=Sebastopol,+CA&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=us&ei=gPiYSqGeOIXAsQPfrIG3Ag&t=h&ll=38.411239,-122.840398&spn=0.000194,0.000436&z=22

<comment><USER2> To one of the 9 upvoters in the know: can you tell us what this means? Google used a high rez picture of one piece of land. So, what's the point?

Or is _that_ the point? The fact that Google made an exception to its algorithm for a conference is newsworthy?

<comment><USER3> I think it's interesting. What I'm wondering is, does that mean given current technology and "infinite" budget, Google could have this high a resolution for the whole planet? What stumbling blocks, obvious or otherwise, are preventing such an upgrade?

Or is this just a one-time hack where they took the picture from an helicopter or something... In other words, Will it Scale(tm)?

<comment><USER4> A lot of the better images are _aerial_ instead of from satellites. Close-up like this is not common though, costs would probably be insane.

I guess this image was donated by an independent person to Google, a employee maybe.

<comment><USER5> Actually, we booked an overflight (plane) a couple of years back at Foo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was there when this was taken. I'm pretty sure it was 2006. It was a small plane, and we were told ahead of time that it was coming, although this is cropped too small to see the fun stuff people did to prepare, like build a huge model of a cylon raider in a nearby field.

<comment><USER7> yeah, it's funny, because you only see the people who didn't go out of their way to make funny things for the flyover.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this a new image of this weekend FooCamp or of the previously photographed one?

<comment><USER9> That is my understanding. I've seen the previous summers one and it looked different, if I remember correctly.

<comment><USER5> It's been a little bit cropped, but it is the same photo.</comment></comment></comment>