How Many Solar Panels To Power The World? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5350191/how-many-solar-panels-would-it-take-to-power-the-entire-world

<comment><USER2> Is covering 500,000 sq KM of desert (which has a relatively high albedo for a non-frozen surface) with dark solar panels really going to help with global warming? Especially considering that as our power needs expand, we will decrease the surface albedo even more. However my biggest concern is the effects on the local regions, it's been shown that when rainforest is cut down, the change in surface albedo and evaporation can increase temperatures by 3C.

Covering 1/18th of the Sahara with solar panels (a number that will drastically increase as African economies grow and as the large majority of Europe is still growing quickly) will not only raise the temperature in one of the hottest places on the planet, but it will cause significant changes to the climate of Eurasia and Africa. The weather in most of Europe is heavily influenced by Saharan winds, and I don't think it's especially wise to screw with the one thing that keeps the region temperate and capable of widespread food production.

Their predictions don't appear to include the fact that solar power isn't 100% guaranteed, you need extra production if you're planning on powering a region. Most wind and solar production has to be turned off after meeting a quota, because they have to supply customers with the same amount, you can't go producing 500MW one day and then produce only 50MW the next because it's cloudy.

Perhaps I'm just a doomsayer, but all the gung-ho environmentalism that gets proposed seriously disturbs me. Farmers get paid to have wind turbines on their land, not only does this cause demineralization of their fields, which increase fertilizer use, which no matter what causes nitrates to get into the water, but it also decreases bird and bat populations that act as natural pesticides. Now you have to increase pesticide usage too, which gets more into the food and more into the water. There's a solution to all this, whilst sticking with wind turbines, but I've yet to see a company deploying helical wind turbines (which significantly reduce demineralization and bird strikes).

I like good old green nuclear, it produces guaranteed amounts of power on a daily basis rain or shine, windy or calm. Modern reactors produce significantly less waste than old reactors, produce medical isotopes. Reactors also often cause a benefit to the environment as the majority of their land is a buffer zone, which goes untended and becomes a natural habitat.

I'm sorry but when nuclear frequently increases biodiversity and 'green' frequently reduces it, you've got some serious shit going wrong with your plans to save the planet.

<comment><USER3> Um... _how_ exactly do wind turbines cause demineralization?

How do modern reactors produce less waste? The underlying nuclear reactions can't really be influenced by technology.

Not to mention that your "green" reactors' fuel is

A) produced in strip mines that devastate entire landscapes

B) running out about as soon as oil is, unless you start using breeder reactors, which are a much less tested technology and pose a massive proliferation risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That shows you how powerfully a good visualization can deceive you.

Here's the same statistic, shown in another light:

[http://www.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/lying-with- numbe...](http://www.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/lying-with-numbers.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> "solar panels, distributed across deserts and areas with almost 24/7 sun"

Um... I don't think so...

<comment><USER5> I think (hope?) the implication is that the sun is always shining on some of this world-wide network of panels - so we don't need huge batteries to store power for nights/cloudy-days.

Kind of like the old saying that "the sun never sets on the British Empire."

<comment><USER3> The only thing that the phrase "with almost 24/7 sun" can logically apply to is the word "areas", because otherwise that word makes no sense.

But it's a silly oversight that is irrelevant to the practicability (or lack thereof) of this proposal.

In any case, you'd probably still need some sort of power storage, not because of night and cloudy days, but because of demand variation and peaks. The big problem would be around midnight GMT: lots of demand for power in Europe and North America, but most of the sunlight shines on the Pacific, with its distinct lack of desert areas (or dry land in general).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How much energy would it take to produce and ship that many solar panels?

</comment><comment><USER7> Now, supposing that our solar panel capacity increases by something reasonable every year, like 25%, how many decades would that take to cover square miles upon square miles upon square miles with collectors, and, given that power demands will rise in those decades, how much longer will it take to catch up to that again? How expensive will it be, in light of an effectively infinite demand during those periods where it hasn't been completed yet?

Some people see these charts and see possibility. I see the sheer scale of the operation and boggle; it's absurd.

<comment><USER3> Think about cost and scale the _already_ existing power infrastructure of oil fields, coal mines, pipelines, refineries, supertankers, gas stations and power plants.

That's mind-boggling too, you just don't think about it because it's already there.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's right. The project being proposed is _merely_ several orders of magnitude larger than all existing infrastructure created up to now.

That's exactly my point; I _do_ grasp how much that took, and then to propose that we could solve all our problems by just doing a thousand times more work (or more) is just silly.

<comment><USER3> Any numbers to back up that claim?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have seen far smaller estimates, 300x300 km area for entire world (current consumption) in Sahara, or 125x125 km area for Europe. Dunno about credibility, was in a newspaper article related to some German investors building large solar farm in Sahara.

I actually think that the 125x125km area should be doable. Its not like we don't have space in Sahara. US is more difficult as its probably not practical to transfer electricity as it from Africa. Maybe as hydrogen, dunno.

</comment><comment><USER9> And thus, we could also expect a boom and bust cycle for the solar tech industry. Boom: Let's see how fast we can make money selling solar panels. Bust: We sold so many solar panels that we have more energy than we need.

<comment><USER10> We'll always find a use for that excess electricity, especially if it's renewable.

<comment><USER9> It's not going to happen overnight. The value of nearly all commodities will become suspect the instant energy/electricity approaches the cost of zero. This means global market volatility will surge as countries/investors figure out a new means of evaluating worth. Free is good, but not if it causes a global panic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> onreact-com This has been on HN already yesterday and it's logic is flawed as I explained last time. You don't need to cover extra space with solar panels as they are situated on roofs etc.

See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=800264></comment>


Ask HN: Hacker News related sites? - <AUTHOR>

There have been a couple of peripheral sites intended to provide features that HN doesn't provide itself. What are they? <comment><USER2> For financial news:

<http://newmogul.com>

For everything else:

<http://nonhackernews.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Search YC

<http://searchyc.com/>

I use this, and a site-restricted Google search,

[http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+site%3Anews.ycombinato...](http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

when I want to check if a cool link has already been posted here.</comment>


NYT Crossword editor: "I was willing to endure a life of poverty to do this." - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/media/19askthetimes.html?adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1312384839-mLpflGqHfgDeFFI863nEgA

<comment><USER2> If you haven't seen the movie Wordplay, do yourself a favor and watch it. Will Shortz is a central figure in it and seems like a true word hacker.

Also a shameless plug, I run a crossword puzzle database that maps the relationships between answers and clues (I wanted to see what clues pointed to what answers and vice versa). It may be of interest here:

<http://crosswordtracker.com/>

<comment><USER3> Second the Wordplay recommendation. I believe that's where he stated that his favorite crossword clue ever was "It might turn into a different story" for the word SPIRALSTAIRCASE.

<comment><USER4> BEQ, an NYT crossword constructor, did a Reddit IAMA the other day. He mentioned a favorite clue and solution being {Take cash but not credit} for GHOSTWRITE. I'm always the most satisfied whenever I successfully fill in a solution for clues like these.

IAMA is here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/j5v6g/iama_new_york_ti...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/j5v6g/iama_new_york_times_crossword_puzzle_constructor/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was really hoping the list of questions would include more background on the 1996 Election puzzle. That one fascinates me to no end.

<http://i.imgur.com/CTYHM.gif>

<comment><USER2> That's covered a bit in the Wordplay movie, they had both Clinton and Dole comment about it (both saying they knew they won because it said so in the NYT crossword).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I'm a fan of any celebrity whose name is short and contains a convenient vowel-consonant pattern."

<comment><USER7> Lady Gaga?

<comment><USER8> i think he means pete rose

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've met Will in passing - he probably wouldn't remember me - but he's an incredibly cool and helpful guy.

And smart like it's hard to believe.

</comment><comment><USER10> One thing I found fascinating was the difference between US and UK crosswords, which I'd always assumed would be pretty similar: "Crosswords in England are completely different from ours ... their crossword clues started including anagrams, homophones, hidden words and other wordplay ... cryptics here have never achieved widespread popularity."

<comment><USER11> If you're interested, a clue in a cryptic crossword in the UK must give you the answer two different ways, one of the ways is a synonym/description, and no word may belong to both of the ways. Sometimes a setter will not meet these criteria, so they append a question mark to the clue to mark it as not quite proper.

For example, "reprimand son for being so unfeeling" is scold -- a synonym of reprimand, and then s for son and cold for unfeeling.

I enjoy doing the cryptic crossword in our local paper. Unfortunately, the ones in national papers are too hard for me. Often the trick is knowing something like that a sailor used to be called a "tar".

They are a lot of fun though; I prefer them to general knowledge since all you need to answer them is time, lateral thinking and a good vocabulary. They are also a great illustration of the workings of the subconscious -- coming back to a puzzle after a short time usually yields some answers instantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What interests me most about Will Shortz is the insight his his life and his spots on NPR have given me onto the natural human love of puzzles.

Although I personally do not get much of a kick from solving puzzles for their own sake, I definitely want to understand those who do. Seeing mathematician John H Conway give a lecture was also interesting because he was deriving immense pleasure from something while up on the stage -- and my best guess as to the nature of that something is puzzle-solving. Until that lecture, it had not occurred to me that puzzle-solving could be such an immense source of pleasure.

</comment><comment><USER13> Another of their crosswords editors did an interview on reddit here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/j5v6g/iama_new_york_ti...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/j5v6g/iama_new_york_times_crossword_puzzle_constructor/)

<comment><USER14> Nitpick: BEQ, the guy who did that AMA, is _a_ crossword puzzle constructor who has had some puzzles published in the NYT. Will Shortz is _the_ NYT crossword editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seven people basically check each puzzle by hand, and yet it still isn't 100% foolproof? That seems hard to believe for the level of skill all these people have minus the freelancer.

<comment><USER16> Very little in our world is 100% foolproof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised to see a crossword editor use the phrase "crosswords in England". It's not what you'd expect from someone so concerned with trivia.

<comment><USER18> Why is that phrase surprising?

<comment><USER4> I think they are typically referred to as cryptics across the pond.

<comment><USER19> No, we call them crosswords. ("Cryptic crosswords" when it's necessary to distinguish them from the sort that's dominant in the US, and yes, that can be abbreviated to "cryptics", but that wouldn't be the norm.)

I'm guessing that the complaint was actually about "England" versus, say, "the United Kingdom".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I made up a word game in high school that became popular with my friends - tell me what you think. Basically, you solve for one word. The clues are words that have at least one letter from the word, in order, that have something to do with the word.

As an example, this:

\---

storm

weather

drip

falling

\---

would be "rain".

This one is considerably harder:

\---

fur

hibernate

claws

latin

brown

omnivores

\---

<comment><USER21> Interesting game. I admit, I wouldn't have gotten it without help from the internet, which I suppose is against the rules. But I know no latin, so it was my only hope. The answer is ursine, which I've attempted to bury somewhat in my response so that it doesn't pop out so obviously to those who read this later and want to solve the clues for themselves.

Here's a stab at one that's so vague that there's probably a better answer hidden in there than the intended "right" one:

Carbohydrates

Chickpea

Canned

Confectionary

<comment><USER16> Damn, I knew it had to start with urs, but I couldn't figure out the rest. Regardless, I like the game.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is spam a real problem? - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering developping an anti spam system. To check if there is a real need for it, I keep asking around me to conventional internet users if spam is a problem for them. I'm a bit surprized that nearly all people respond that it isn't because they don't see much of it.<p>Thus this idea seems to fail the "build something people want" test. What is your opinion about it ? <comment><USER2> Whether it is a problem or not depends on your usage of email.

If false positives are unacceptable then spam is a real problemm.

If you manage to come up with a 0 false positives spam detection algorithm though instead of doing you own (end user) marketing I'd go and talk to the 'big boys' instead.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Is the user of your service the person with the mailbox, or the people running the mail system? Spam is a massive problem for email administrators.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I made the same conclusion. I had the opportunity to talk about it to the mail adlinistrator of a big internet access provider here in France. There is indeed more than 95% spam but 4 servers is all it takes to manage 4 million users ! The mail network traffic % is also peanuts compared to youtube and others.

The only real nuisance for mail administrators is when they black list each others by automatic black listing systems. A human intervention is required to sort it out.

The cost is thus still too low to justify adoption of my system.

On the other side I had an interesting discussion with a big company manager. When I pitched him about my system, he immediatly calculated the cost of spam. With a few tens of seconds per day per employer to filter out the handful spam managing to get through the filters he came out with a cost around a million euros per year.

A system sold for a hundred tousand euros to this company could make it. But this doesn't solve my network effect problem. Access providers don't have such incentive. This confirms that B2B would be the way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You want to B2B this.

Developing an anti-spam system isn't something you can just hack up though, being any better than the rest requires post-doc grade research backing your algorithms and bayesian filters.

Unless you're some kind of latent super genius you're going to want to do a lot of reading of white papers on bayesian filters and how modern systems currently work before I think you really want to start hacking up code.

I don't mean to discourage you, and it's good that you're doing some preliminary market validation, but the market is B2B, and the task is far more difficult than most.

<comment><AUTHOR> The system doesn't use SMTP and is not another spam filter. The major difficulty is the network effect. It would help a lot if spam was perceived as a real problem. To my surprise it is apparently not.

My analysis is that if there is no perceived cost to spam there won't be any obvious incentive to adopt a new system.</comment></comment>


An entrepreneur has discovered the rarest pigment in nature - <AUTHOR> https://unreasonable.is/discovering-the-color-blue-qa-with-ecoflora/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=facebookpost <comment><USER2> Prior art here: [http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo01082a022](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jo01082a022)

With the sainted Carl Djerassi. There are citations that indicate that the plant and its properties were known in the West 100 years ago.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your experience with working remotely? - <AUTHOR>

I am a pretty social and interactive person. I love working with people, whether it's just saying hello and catching up at the beginning of the day or doing some pair programming from time to time. I am driven and capable of working outside of an office but I just don't know if it'll make me happy and if I'll get the satisfaction I get out of working in an office with other people. What are your experiences with working remotely vs working in an office? <comment><USER2> I'm on a fully remote team, though I happen to live two subway stops from our product's HQ. A few times a year I will go in to work alongside people from other teams, or when someone from my team is in town for one reason or another.

My experience working remotely has been overwhelmingly positive. A notable advantage is avoidance of certain office dogmas -- particularly, the expectation of 8 contiguous work hours.

When it comes to coding, I don't have the mental stamina to produce meaningful technical thoughts for longer than 4 or 5 straight hours. 8 hour shifts are inefficient for me personally, because I get drained and "waste" 25-35% of those working hours with lower quality output.

Working from home lets me work in multiple 2-4 hour spurts a day with time to mentally refresh inbetween. I'm still available to my team during the 9-5 block(computer nearby, phone always on if I'm out), but if I were in an office, I think coming in and out for 2-5 "micro shifts" a day would be frowned upon.

The major downside is that at times it is difficult to turn off. My manager's (tongue in cheek) claim is that WFH is a trick to make employees work longer. I'd say that's true. The lack of effort it takes to start working when you're at home makes it easy to justify "oh, I'm here; I'll just hit this now." At it's worst -- this August -- there was so much work that I'd work straight into the night, fall asleep, wake up, and pick up my laptop. If I was working from an office I imagine the 9-5 rhythm might have been easier.

One other thing worth mentioning is that I lucked out with a great team. They are great technologists from a wide variety of backgrounds and I'm humbled and impressed by my teammates frequently. Sometimes I think learning little things from them has been more valuable to me than the experience I've gained in our "hot" technologies..

<comment><USER3> "WFH is a trick to make employees work longer" \-- the term for this is "Living at Work" rather than "Working from Home". Some days work gets WAY more time than 8 hours, some days it gets WAY less time.

Programming is a lot like art work. I've watched my wife (an artist) spend hours mixing paint, stretching canvas, washing brushes ... and have not a stroke of paint on the canvas. Then the next day she spends 12 hours doing nothing but painting. Programmers also have to do "setup" time work which does not result in code and appears unproductive. When working from home it appears that you're not working because bad managers only count lines of code.

In the office environment setup work still looks like work because you are "at your desk". Learn to live with the fact that you appear to be slacking when working remote.

Also be aware that NOBODY does more that 70% of their total possible output on a continuous basis. NOBODY. Even bricklayers, where you can count the bricks laid, take time for lunch, use their cell phone, drive to the hardware store, mix cement, and everything but lay bricks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Working remote is great, most of the time. The biggest benefit is not having to commute . . . saving on gas, mileage and most importantly TIME. I would recommend at least trying it out.

The only lacking part is office banter . . . socializing . . . but that is good and bad to miss out on. With skype and conference calls it's easy to stay connected with team members.

<comment><AUTHOR> I worry that it might be a bit harder to feel like I'm part of the team or that I truly belong. Maybe that's an unfounded worry but without a little chit chat here and there, might it be more difficult to feel a sense of camaraderie?

<comment><USER5> If the whole team is remote that wouldn't be a problem. If all of them are in the office, and you are the odd man out, then you should worry about that.

I believe that working successfully remotely doesn't work for every company or team. They must be actively encouraging it, and they should be aware of engagement issues that arise from working remotely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been working remotely from home since 2004, as a contractor/freelancer developer. Before, I had worked in a big consulting company (that one). Since 2008, I've been living so far way from big cities that since then I haven't seen the face of my clients.

Working from home, at least for me, means to be more productive, even with kids at home. It also means eventually I work more hours to accomplish my daily goals, and that can become a problem some time (the oldest son already told me "you don't know anything else?")

Depending on the client, there may be some resistance from the in-office workers that have to stay there every day. The key is to do a good work and win confidence from management.

On socializing, in the last two years I started missing more. Probably less because of working and more because of staying too much time at home.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've worked remotely for the last 10 years. My largest coding effort lasted 6 years, generated 60k lines of code, and 6k pages of documentation. The same averages (10k loc, 1k docs, per year) seem to hold for all projects. In general I find I'm very productive working from home.

The hard part is that I discovered that I have a "natural" 27 hour day so I tend to be out of phase with the group. In order to communicate I end each "day" (aka bedtime) with a 1-3 line email stating progress (or at least effort).

"Work" is also a 7 day per week activity as there are no natural boundaries. It helps that I really love to write programs. Calling saturday morning is fine but I might be asleep on tuesday at 3pm.

Also, I write "literate programs" so the work product is a book containing the explanation and the source code. That way the boss can read everything up to the lastest overnight checkin. The book contains all work done to date so there is never a question about "the state of the work" or whether there is "progress".

On the other hand, if you don't like weeks of dead silence, a lack of extra eyes to find bugs, a river of badly brewed homemade coffee, and hotdogs for breakfast ... get an office job. Working from home is not for everyone.

<comment><USER7> Literate programs sound fascinating. Is there somewhere I can read more?

I've always thought self-documenting code was the way to go.

<comment><USER3> Buy a copy of Physically Based Rendering (Pharr and Humphreys). It is a literate program that won an academy award. Make that your "gold standard" for good programming.

Literate programs explain "why", not "what". Think of a literate program like a physics textbook. Your code is the equations but your explanations (not comments!) give the reader the reason WHY you wrote the code.

See [http://axiom-developer.org/axiom-website/litprog.html](http://axiom- developer.org/axiom-website/litprog.html) for an example of a trivial literate HTML program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I dislike people, specifically, stupid people. I loved my last year working remotely. No dealing with stupid people is an amazing plus.

If you are a talker, you might it harder seeing only a handful of people each week. (Family, friends, service industry workers.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I work from home. I have to convince my wife all the time that I'm actually working and can't just run to the store and get groceries. I like working from home, but from time to time it's good to go see people in the office. If you are keen on making a career you have to show up and socialize a bit. You will not be promoted if you always work from home.

</comment><comment><USER10> I work from home in the afternoons during the school year, and then full time during the summers. It's real nice to be able to have the option to work from home whenever I'm sick or there's a blizzard, etc... But for the most part by the end of the summer I'm really ready to get back into the office.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I worked remotely I'd get my work done and with the additional spare time I had, since I didn't have to commute waste time in meetings, I went to as many meetups as I could to make up for the lack of social interaction at work. Working out of a coffee shop or co-working space can also alleviate some loneliness.

</comment><comment><USER12> I like people, but not particularly stressed out adults at the office. I work half a day from home on engineering projects and the rest of the day I tutor kids at a high school which allows me to have some human interaction in my day. It's been a good balance for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Where do you live?

My suggestion would be to find a company with a local contingency in your city. Like 3-4 developers that are local to you and can meet up to cowork occasionally or a few times per week.

It works best if you have some nice coworking spots locally within a reasonable commute.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone share how/if Health Insurance benefits are provided?</comment>


World's Fastest Desktop Hard Drive - <AUTHOR> http://thefutureofthings.com/news/8423/worlds-fastest-desktop-hard-drive.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tfot+%28TFOT+-+The+Future+Of+Things%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> For the majority of users, seek time is more important than how fast you can get sequential data off the disc.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, Beansight.com - <AUTHOR>

Hi Everyone,
One of my friend told me that I can get great feedbacks with Ask HN to improve my startups. So let's ask you.
I'am working working on a new website where people can share predictions and be rewarded for good ones.
On Beansight you can share and record your predictions about what it's going to happen. You can also read other members predictions and agree or disagree with them. Most important, you can also write comments to argue your position.
If members make good predictions, they will earn credibility points and if they earn a lot of them, they will become an expert on Beansight. So they will be able to use their Beansight profile to prove their expertise.
We're planning on launching a lot of new features in the coming months, but we've gotten to a point where we'd really appreciate some feedback for improving effect. We are particularly looking for feedback about the UI.
Thank you
Cyril
Link: http://www.beansight.com/ <comment><USER2> Just a thought: Whether a prediction is objectively good or not is different to whether the prediction is seen as good or not. If you can think of a mechanism to figure out whether a prediction was good or not after the event has happened, the system could then make a second order prediction about whether that user's a good predictor or not. Keep me up to date if you manage to solve any of these problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> We worked on an algorithm that will check every prediction to know if they happened or not.

If members record a prediction on Beansight and that it happens, they will be rewarded. If they record predictions that will not happen, they will lose credibility points.

<comment><USER2> How do you check if it has happened or not? Is this based on peoples votes after the predicted time of the event? What if someone wants to make a prediction that involves when something occurs?

<comment><USER3> Hello Derrida,

The algorithm to check whether the prediction occurred is based on each single vote. It weights more people with a great expertise score and weights more votes close to the deadline or votes that passed the deadline.

If the prediction comes to an end before the deadline, then the algorithm will wait to reach the deadline to validate it. But we will soon let the community close a prediction if they decide it's over.

Guillaume

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should check out the Iowa Electronics Markets. <http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/index.cfm>

They do something similar but in more of a traditional market format.

</comment><comment><USER5> Add it to <http://startupli.st> There the early adopters will be able to follow, provide feedback, sign up for your service, and even recommend it to their friends. Have fun!

</comment><comment><USER6> Frankly speaking the idea is pretty funny and yes, I am wondering how to you check if sth happend or not. Btw, the UI looks pretty standard.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have an algorithm <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2467043>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Lovely design and good effort on the coding. I just don't like that having to log in to vote bit. It's unnecessary in my honest opinion.

<comment><USER8> I agree. Let non-users vote, but make people sign in to add comments or post their own predictions. You can include some kind of measures to make sure someone doesn't vote more than once or twice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know that making people sign in to vote is a lot of work for them.

But, we need to track what people vote on Beansight to calculate their expertise on prediction.

But maybe the possibility to vote on a prediction without sign-in could be a first step to make them connected to Beansight.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you could have them vote and then give them the opportunity to sign up. Store a cookie or something so they can only get one vote as an unregistered user. Of course, this could be hacked, but you could put in provisions to check for multiple votes from the same unregistered user's IP, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> easy to click: <http://www.beansight.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds pretty useful. Has nostradam.us been registered?

<comment><AUTHOR> not yet!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Typo: "Prouve your expertise" should be "Prove".

<comment><USER12> Also, "Read Experts" doesn't really make sense. You need another word at the end. Perhaps "Read Expert Predictions" or "Learn from Experts."

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right. We are working on a new page and we need to improve the wording.</comment></comment></comment>


Datasheets.com - new parts search engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.datasheets.com/

<comment><USER2> This site just keeps linking datasheet links to ads for me.

I use Octopart. They're an awesome startup and have a great collection of datasheets already.

<comment><USER3> Octopart seems like a useful improvement if I'm asking "what part should I get" rather than "what do I do with this part."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They seem to be disabling the back button, on purpose or by accident, which is very irritating.

<comment><USER5> Hi Ajju, Many thanks for your feedback. Can you please let us know the page (or steps) where this is happening for you? This is probably by accident and we will try our utmost best to fix it.

Best Regards, The Datasheets.com Team

<comment><USER4> It's happening on the home page, when I click through from the link posted here, if I try to click back to get back to the discussion, it doesn't work. Do you have a redirect script on the home page that could be causing it by accident?

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the feedback Ajju. We'll have this fixed shortly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> a clone of the old IC Master site? when i want a datasheet i get it from alldatasheet.com or datasheetarchive.com - no login and more info. Better still directly from the manufacturer.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone tried this out yet?

<comment><USER3> I was able to stump it multiple times without trying very hard.

My usual route is:

1\. Search Digikey 2\. Search Google

Compared to Digikey, the results aren't as informative, the likelihood of a valid match is apparently significantly lower, and it's ad-supported.

Compared to Google, the likelihood of a valid match is much, much lower.

I have a hard time seeing a need for this site.

<comment><USER6> Hi, Product Manager for Datasheets.com from SiliconExpert here. Good to hear your perspective.

Datasheets.com has direct relationships with hundreds of electronic manufacturers and dozens of distributors. As such, the likelihood of finding a part number on datasheets.com is greater than any single distributor/manufacturer website by itself. I would encourage you to try a search. Let us know how it goes.

Also, Google searches for part numbers can at times provide non-electronic industry related results. Simple example: search for "DMV" on Google and you will most likely receive results for the Department of Motor Vehicles. Search for "DMV" on datasheets.com and you'll see results for Diode families from electronic manufacturers.

The difference really is between horizontal vs vertical search engines.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Intel Kernel Vulnerability fix: why software not microcode - <AUTHOR> Could someone please explain why the mitigations for the Intel CPU bug are having to be implemented in the OS rather than Microcode?
As it only seems to effect Intel and not AMD processors, and as the issue seems to be with the CPU not invalidating cache after a failed OP, this seems like something that would be best fixed actually on the CPU itself.
I assume there's good reasons why not; if anyone could explain it would be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Microcode is very slow. The flaw lies in operations that you want to be as fast as possible (caching, prefetching) so those operations are implemented as hardcoded logic. Hardcoded logic is very fast, but impossible to change after the CPU is created.

It is best fixed on the CPU, but it will require the CPU to be physically changed (just a new mask if Intel is lucky) to fix it at the CPU level.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the info.

I have noticed that there is actually a microcode update published today (through centos/rhel at least) so it looks like there's some firmware mitigation on the go.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I think I was right and wrong. Right in that the microcode cannot fix the problem but wrong in that the microcode can disable the problematic features (speculative execution, ???) to foil the attack. Unfortunately, that will be a significant and forever performance hit for existing processors.

It makes sense that the features can be enabled and disabled via microcode.</comment></comment></comment>


Best Linux Laptop in 2020? - <AUTHOR> I need to choose a new laptop for my personal use. Currently using Macbook pro, I'd like to switch back to Linux.<p>What do you folks suggest? <comment><USER2> My choice is Panasonic Toughbooks - the "business rugged" models, not full-on military/law-enforcement tanks.

They're as thick as a Tolkien book and weigh several pounds. They don't have 4K screens. If those tradeoffs are acceptable to you, they excel on pretty much every other metric. They use high-quality standard parts; Linux drivers available for all devices. The design has a high degree of modularity/repairabiity; they're even more field-repairable than Thinkpads. And of course they really are fairly rugged; I can vouch for their being toddler-proof.

It's easy to get these configured for craft personnel; the one I'm using now has RS-232 and MM fiber interfaces... not to mention VGA and SmartCard. No dongles here!

Not to mention all kinds of standard security features... hardware kill switch for the radio; Fn hotkey to immediately blank the screen; quick-release HD cage so you can take your disk with you when you go to the restroom.

They're great machines.

<comment><USER3> Are they repairable easily? Can I add RAM, hard disk etc by myself, or are they closed like Apple computers?

<comment><USER4> "The design has a high degree of modularity/repairabiity; they're even more field-repairable than Thinkpads."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My Dell XPS 13 has Linux support. Dell even sells the laptops with Ubuntu on it. The new 2020 edition called Dell xps 13 9300has a larger screen, better hinge and a webcam that doesn't look up into your nostrils. The only thing not working is the fingerprint sensor.

<comment><USER6> Battery life kind of sucks however

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> System 76 laptops are worth a look... full Linux support and reasonable pricing [https://system76.com/laptops](https://system76.com/laptops). I have only used their desktop and it has been awesome.

In the past I have used Dell Inspiron and HP Pavilions and they were excellent Linux laptops and _almost_ everything worked out of the box. Dells, Thinkpads and most HPs in general have pretty good linux compatibility. You can also install Linux on your Macbook pro if you are okay with the hardware.

<comment><USER8> I've had a number of S76 laptops... and at the time I had them, they were the best bang for your buck on guts, however the cases for their older models were a bit chintzy. Out of (4) of the exact same laptops from S76, (3) of them had screws internally fall out and rattle around the case. Also, they changed the interface between the mobo and the screen between purchases, so one machine that had a bad mobo, and one machine that had a cracked screen couldnt be harvested for parts between them :-(

Their support ___was_ __superb, but I havent tried that out in a long while...

However - I would still use them in the future...

But, My next purchase for a linux/windows dual boot machine is going to be the Lenovo Y545 -- It has all the guts I would need on both platforms and the price is fantastic. I checked out the case at Costco the other day and it feels solid. ($999 at costco)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You must be more specific with your needs.

How much battery life do you need as minimum?

Do you need a discrete gpu? Nvidia or amd?

Screen's inches? Fullhd is enough or do you need 4k?

Is it important for you that hw parts are easily replaceable?

Budget?

<comment><AUTHOR> \- I don't have any budget limits

\- The screen can be full hd or 4k is fine.

\- With regards to the GPU intel integrated is totally fine.

\- Min 5 hours battery life

<comment><USER10> It's your software needs that are really important.

What distro?

Do you need virtualization?

Are you looking to just have access to bash and unix-like tools?

Windows and Chromebooks fill most of my software needs for Linux... I push whatever else to a cloud, or switch to a more dedicated tower/rig for horsepower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone tried a high end Chromebook for this? As far as I understand, they let you run Linux inside a container alongside the regular Chrome OS UI. Any major downsides?

<comment><USER10> I jumped off a cliff for a cheap Black Friday HP-based Chromebook (i3 with 16GB of RAM)

For my day-to-day Linux needs it has been great. I get all my apps/streaming through the play store, and all major SW for Linux works for my coding (VS Code, GIMP, Android Studio).

The current downside: I can run vms on the box (but I likely could run Docker...maybe?), But there's SSH for that.

Mainly it's a drag that the mouse-lock feature hasn't been implemented. So I can't play Minecraft. XD

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you can wait a couple of months, I'd wait to see what releases with the new Ryzen APUs. If not, I'd probably go with the XPS 13.

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess _it depends_ on where you're located and your budget.

I've had a very good experience with Thinkpads. T480 with Ubuntu was a pleasure to use and you can get it almost anywhere in the world.

 _Always_ get a pro-grade laptop, not a consumer one. Consumer laptops have hughe price competition, are difficult/cannot be upgrader.

</comment><comment><USER14> Currently using a x1 carbon 6th gen.

It took a lot of thermal modifications to get it working as a professional machine.

If I could choose again, I'd trade the x1's battery life for x1 extreme size and performance.

<comment><USER15> That's a great laptop. Just curious, what sort of thermal modifications did you perform, and why were they necessary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm really happy with my Thinkpad X260. Bought it for $350 used on eBay. It's fast, nice FHD screen, integrated WWAN LTE and a great keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER17> To add to the question, is there an easy way to get a laptop without a Windows installation that you have to remove/ignore?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is really an interesting question. Why do we need to pay for Windows when you are going to format it and install Linux?

<comment><USER18> Because antitrust legislation in US is a rusting tool on the shelf.

<comment><USER17> I'm in the EU, who can I blame for this?

<comment><USER18> US hegemony, Microsoft's anticompetitive/subsidized practices, and our peers for not demanding better - if you're really looking!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm currently using Thinkpad X1C6 with Fedora for development. Works like a charm, no issues so far.

</comment><comment><USER20> XPS 13 2020 just released

</comment><comment><USER21> You can always install Linux on a Macbook pro.

<comment><USER22> I mean, you can, but it won't work well unless you're speaking of the 2012 MBP.</comment></comment>


Gimp is working on its own version of "smart objects" - <AUTHOR> https://daviesmediadesign.com/gimp-is-quietly-working-on-its-own-version-of-smart-objects-and-its-just-as-good-as-photoshops/ <comment><USER2> Great to hear! That is about it, I respect developers of free software and understand it is big enough undertaking even without constant snarky remarks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would not call that smart objects, just "live links".

Smart objects would be parametric blocks, where you can stack various transformations of any kind. As in Houdini, Blender or any parametric CAD programm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Glad to hear the team is making progress. Slightly OT, might anyone here know what is up with the super-slow release of 2.10.20 installer for OS X? It's been several weeks since the latest release, and there's only the 2.10.14 installer available. I've done some poking around in the bug-tracker, but wasn't able to find an Issue for whatever might be holding up the OS X installer.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great to hear! Now if only it was easier to be taken seriously when evangelizing a piece of software named "GIMP"...

<comment> phoe-krk This is exactly why it has been forked under a less-passive-aggressive name, Glimpse[0]. If GIMP implements these, Glimpse eventualy will get them, too.

[0] [https://glimpse-editor.github.io/](https://glimpse-editor.github.io/)

<comment><USER6> I don't think passive aggressive is the right description for the name... It's just plain bad. Who wants to think of related sexual fetishists when performing image manipulation? Glimpse is much better. Is there any chance the name will get officially changed?

<comment><USER7> Nobody thinks of sexual fetishism when editing something with GIMP.

Nobody thinks of the word "chrome" when using Chrome, or of a literal window when using Windows, or of a literal docker ship when using Docker.

<comment><USER8> Nope, but when someone asks me IRL, at work say, "you're into FOSS what are your most used graphics tools" then I'm not mentioning The GIMP (which I've used for, what, 15 years).

Glimpse is a good name, though I never got why they couldn't just call it GNU Imp - Wilber might as well be an Imp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great to hear! Now if only it was easier to wrap text around a circle...

<comment><USER10> I promise this is a serious suggestion and not snark, but I respect projects that resist adding poor implementations of other applications' core functionality. Type rendering is _hard_! Let GIMP be an excellent RGB-pixel- pushing program, and maybe give a real page layout application a shot instead. The output will be worlds prettier than anything you'd be able to do in GIMP. Scribus is nice: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribus)

<comment><USER8> Scribus is great for layout, I'd use Inkscape for text around a curve and then import it.

I've always wished for a common canvas so one could attach a program to a canvas - eg in a new layer - and add parts, rather than passing files around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So how many developers are working on this feature?

</comment><comment><USER12> Great to hear! Now if only it was easier to understand what most of the buttons with strange icons do...

<comment><USER13> Expert software is not for everyone.

<comment><USER5> By far, most experts use Photoshop.

<comment><USER13> Most experts use commercial software like Autocad 3ds max over Blender for example, too. But what is your point? It's still expert software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OT: what's up with those "Great to hear! Now if only it was easier to..." comments? Some kind of meme I'm unfamiliar with?

<comment><USER15> My favorite is "how to draw a circle in gimp" \- every time I need to do that, I search on Google for that. Now if only it was easier to...

Instead of adding more and more features, they should really get some UX experts involved, it's a horrible mess.

<comment><USER16> Gimp is actually addressing the problem by developping smart objects. According to the article, thanks to the smart objects you will be able to do your vector-drawing operations (including circle, polygon drawings etc) using Inkscape, and the changes will be automatically reflected in the linked layers in Gimp.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure there are some people who think "when I want to draw a circle in gimp, I start by installing Inkscape", but I'm surely not one of them.

<comment><USER17> "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


India's 'Pickle Queen' Preserves Everything, Including the Past - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/dining/indian-pickle-queen-usha-prabakaran.html <comment><USER2> Indian pickles are different from those here in the states. In the south we don't use vinegar almost never...

I couldn't sell pickles Indian style made with my farm produce here and in the authentic way because it doesn't satisfy food safety laws. It's ridiculous. I guess it makes sense..but my South Indian cook sensibilities make me want to roll my eyes.

The rasam recipes should be interesting. It's almost on a tamarind broth base.</comment>


How I lost my 25-year battle against corporate claptrap - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/lucycolumn <comment><USER2> Reading business talk is just mind fuck.</comment>


A Holiday in Honor of the Korean Writing System - <AUTHOR> http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53091/today-holiday-honor-world%E2%80%99s-greatest-alphabet <comment><USER2> Orthographic reforms are usually associated with a revolution of some kind, some recent examples are the introduction of Simplified Chinese ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters)), the change in Russian orthography ([http://russiasgreatwar.org/media/culture/orthography.shtml](http://russiasgreatwar.org/media/culture/orthography.shtml), although this started earlier than the Bolshevik Revolution) and the Turkish Spelling Reform. In these cases the new regime sees the change as a way to cut ties with old one. The ones that don't have the hard-core backing of an autocratic government generally don't succeed, e.g. the very recent one that was attempted in Germany in 1996.

It is interesting to compare Japanese and Korean writing systems: Both of these started with borrowing Chinese characters, due to the immense cultural prestige of the Chinese Empire. These languages show striking similarities to each other (and Turkic languages of Central Asia; although they are usually considered language isolates this may stem more from a cultural bias). Although the Chinese logographic writing system seems hopeless to an outsider, it is uniquely suited to the to tonal Chinese language. The problem is that Korean and Japanese are very different from Chinese (i.e. Mandarin and its "dialects" spoken in China which are part of the Sino-Tibetan family). Koreans have solved this problem cleanly in the 15th century by inventing Hangul while the Japanese approach was to create an extremely complicated writing system with different characters, including many Chinese ones.

Maybe Japanese writing was more culturally ingrained by the Middle ages in Japan compared to Korea to make such a sweeping reform unthinkable or perhaps its feudal structure (i.e. the regional daimyo) and a weak emperor did not have the clout of a ruler like King Sejong in Korea.

Maybe someone with knowledge of Southeast Asian history care to comment on this.

<comment><USER3> The way I've heard it explained is that Japanese has too many homonyms and simply writing things by sound would be too ambiguous.

On the other hand, a friend who spent a year in Japan remarked that, e.g. policemen carry dictionaries with them. When you need to carry around a book on how to write your own language because it has way too many complicated glyphs for everyday people to learn to 100%, maybe it's time for an orthographic reform.

<comment><USER4> > a friend who spent a year in Japan remarked that, e.g. policemen carry > dictionaries with them

I am not at all surprised to hear that. I have family in Japan and have observed many times an inability to remember how to write a certain kanji eg. when filling in a form. Typically people will then type the word phonetically on a cell phone or computer, which prompts them with matching kanji, jogging their memory. There is a strong reliance on these technologies or, I suppose, dictionaries, which are also organised phonetically.

It is of course the case that English speakers occasionally forget words - I've looked up "diarrhoea" more than once in my life! But it's not an everyday thing like I've seen with my japanese relatives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of this comic:

(Learn to read Korean in 15 minutes)

[http://9gag.com/gag/3968335](http://9gag.com/gag/3968335)

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW! This is actually a very useful comic :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I remember first reading about it on a Zed Shaw's article:

"Ever seen the Korean alphabet? It's called Hangul and it is probably the most advanced alphabet humans have right now while also being simpler than most of them at the same time. It can be stacked like Chinese characters, but it's also built more like ours with an ability to construct unusual vowel sounds. Get this, it was invented in about 1443 AD and even mimicks the way the mouth is constructed. That's right, the characters actually look like how the mouth, jaw, and glottis form to make the sound. It's brilliant and a gorgeous piece of work that demonstrates how something simple can also have incredible complexity lurking under the surface.

Did you know that Hangul is so good at mimicking other language constructs that some anthropologists want to use it to record near-extinct languages? It takes an average person about 3 days to learn it, whether they speak Korean or not, and they can use it to write down their own language even if it's completely different from Korean. It's that universal. Imagine being able to get native speakers of dying languages to actually write down how their language is pronounced. Now that's power.

I'll give you a great example. I was walking around Seoul one day and drinking this soda call "Pocari Sweat" (said so in English on the side). Yeah, it says it's got sweat in it but damn it was good. I turn to a Korean woman, point at the Hangul on the side of the can, and ask in bad Korean, "Can you say this?" She reads each character of Hangul as:

"poh car ee sw et"

That's right, the English on the can was mimicked nearly exactly by the Hangul and it made no sense to her either. But, she could read it and we both said the same exact verbal noises even though we read different alphabets. She thought it was funny too."

[http://zedshaw.com/essays/fortune_favors_big_turds.html](http://zedshaw.com/essays/fortune_favors_big_turds.html)

<comment><USER7> Hangul is great, but don't try to use it for English. Try writing "Larry really loves the zoo very much". You get "Raeri ri-a-ri reo-beu-seu da joo bae-ri meo-chi".

In other words, you lose the L/R and V/B differences, and words like "much" can't end on consonants, so you get "Muchi".

Hangul has no sounds corresponding to "V, F, R-L, Th, and 'woo'".

<comment><USER8> Following Korean spelling rules, yes, but when I was a kid I had a slightly adapted Hangul that I used for English all the time. It was a brilliant secret code and only took a couple of days to master it. All I did was add a couple of characters borrowed from Hiragana and put a floating bar above T and S to make TH and SH. I can still more or less remember it and read it 30 odd years later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sinhalese, spoken only in Sri Lanka, naturally has some of these features: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinhala_alphabet)

1\. Fully phonetic

2\. Syllables are formed by a logical and consistent system of vowel signs that can be attached to consonant characters

3\. Uses pure vowels and largely un-accentuated except for some minor stress on the first syllable of words

4\. Alphabet order is logical -- a grid arranged by tongue position and nasalization

The biggest bad thing about the language: the formal grammar is very much latin-like, and equally difficult to master. Fortunately, the spoken version is largely grammar-less.

Source: I speak it.

<comment> guard-of-terra There is a word for it: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abugida)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is what I commented on the blog post:

Really nice article. But the claim of "World's greatest alphabet" is a bit misleading. Please read about the alphabet system of Sanskrit and various modern languages that derives from Sanskrit like Hindi, Nepali etc. You'll find that all the things you've mentioned in the article are already used in Sanskrit and that too from the ancient times that predates the creation of Hanguel. In addition to that, sanskrit alphabets encompasses almost every possible consonant and vowel sounds that a human can generate. You'll also find how interestingly the consonants are grouped according to the place of the origin of the sound, starting from the throat and ending to lip sounds.So the real "Greatest alphabet system" is Sanskrit.

Sanskrit grammar is again another beautiful and well thought creation that is considered the best grammar to be used for scientific work. That's entirely different topic though. Hope I've made you interested in Sanskrit now. Thanks

<comment><USER11> > Please read about the alphabet system of Sanskrit and various modern > languages that derives from Sanskrit

The Sanskrit alphabet is very elegant indeed, but _Sanskrit doesn 't have a writing system._ None of the various scripts used to encode Sanskrit (Siddham, Lantsa, Devanagari, Kharoshti etc.) are, in my opinion, anywhere near as well- structured as the Sanskrit alphabet.

>In addition to that, sanskrit alphabets encompasses almost every possible consonant and vowel sounds that a human can generate.

That's nowhere near true; listen to some languages like Xhosa, or even a tonal language like Chinese, and try to transliterate them using Sanskrit.

>Sanskrit grammar is again another beautiful and well thought creation that is considered the best grammar to be used for scientific work.

Sanskrit grammar is highly regular, which is why it is used in some AI applications, but there's no reason to think it is "the best grammar to be used for scientific work." And, as structured as Sanskrit grammar is, it still opens itself up to ambiguities-- it is nowhere near as clean as an artificial language would be.

Sanskrit is a great language, but there's no need to oversell it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Add to that the 15th Arabic letter ض [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B6](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%B6)] cannot be pronounced in any other language to the point that Arabic is sometimes referred to as the language of ض.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A rare example of a useful Wikipedia article, "Hangul,"

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

fills in many of the details about the elegant alphabetic writing system used in Korea since about the same year that moveable-type printing began in Europe. The development of this writing system was a great advance over the former use of Chinese characters to write Korean (which is NOT a language cognate with Chinese). The simplicity and consistency (even with five centuries of subsequent sound change) of hangul spelling for learning to read Korean helps school pupils in Korea learn more in fewer total hours of schooling than is possible in Chinese-speaking countries.

<comment><USER13> I've had people tell me that Korean is much easier to learn than Japanese and Mandarin. Perhaps this is why.

<comment><USER14> The writing system is easier to learn. But the pronunciation is a lot harder to learn than Japanese, and the grammar harder to learn than Mandarin.

There's also the fact that Mandarin has a lot of non-native speakers who are Chinese. I believe 400 million in the PRC, or 1/3rd of the population, only have a basic grasp of the language. Even a lot of the fluent speakers have thick accents. So the Chinese are used to speaking in Mandarin with non-native speakers, something that the Japanese and Koreans aren't as accustomed to.

<comment><USER15> I agree 100%. This is, I think, and underappreciated aspect of language study. Chinese people speak Mandarin with accents, so they're not irritated to hear my accent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > For example ㄱ g and ㅋ k are basically the same sound, a consonant formed by > a closure at the back of the mouth, except that there is a stronger burst of > air with the k.

't' and 'd' are the unvoiced and voiced alveolar stop, 'k' and 'g' are the unvoiced and voiced velar stop.

It just so happens that in English (and I guess Korean) that 't' and 'k' are somewhat heavily aspirated, but consider the sound 't' in French: much less aspiration (and IIRC the onset of the aspiration is earlier in French).

<comment><USER17> Voice distinctions are allophonic in Korean; the phonemic difference between ㄱ and ㅋ is purely aspiration.

<comment><USER18> Are you saying the "g" is unvoiced? That's surprising. I don't speak Korean, but I've heard quite a bit of it, and I'd never picked up on that.

<comment><USER19> g is "by default" unvoiced, but it becomes voiced between other voiced sounds (vowels or nasals). So in gagu "가구" (furniture), the first g is unvoiced but the second is voiced.

What complicates matter is that, in English, word-first g (as in "game") can become partially unvoiced, so g in English "game" is actually fairly close to the first g of "gagu"!

<comment><USER18> Wonderful explanation. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think that it's really neat that the Korean alphabet has a near-equal number of distinct characters compared to the Latin/Greek/English alphabet because this allows it to have a very compatible key layout in a standard keyboard :D

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm an American who learned to read Hangul. I had also tried learning to read Japanese and Chinese, but those were difficult for me. With Hangul, I just picked it up almost accidentally.

[EDIT] It was really kind of weird/awesome that one day while riding through Koreatown in L.A., I looked over at a sign and blurted out "I can read Korean!". I was completely surprised.

<comment><USER22> Fun fact, you can already read it backwards. Try reading Hangul that's painted on a piece of glass from the wrong side. It's almost as easy as reading it written correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is almost exactly like Sanskrit and the derivative Indian langauges. Convergent Evolution I guess?

<comment><USER24> I don't see it. Devanagari characters are not assembled by combining smaller blocks of sound.

<comment><USER23> Why not?

Vowels are a, aa, e, ee and so on

Consonants are kk, gg, rr and so on.

kk + a is pronounced ka kk + e is pronounced ke

kk with a subscript of rr becomes kr. Kr + a is again kra, kr+e is Kre and so on.

Korean seems exactly the same from: [http://9gag.com/gag/3968335](http://9gag.com/gag/3968335) atleast.

<comment><USER24> Yes, the overall organization of the alphabet is similarly logical. But for the physically written letters, you don't get from "ch" to "chh" by adding a line or other small graphical element.

<comment><USER25> Er, maybe not in Devanagari, but you sure as hell do in Nastaliq.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Almost as interesting is Hangul keyboard layout:

[http://www.ke5ter.com/archives/2008/02/26/hangul-keyboard- la...](http://www.ke5ter.com/archives/2008/02/26/hangul-keyboard-layout)

It is logical yet efficient. If you know Korean, you should be able to learn to touch type Hangul with just a few hours of practice as I had to about a decade ago. Even on iPhone, I found the layout easier to peck on.

</comment><comment><USER27> I learned to read and write in korean letter in a lazy afternoon - it really is miles ahead of roman alphabet. Extremely simple!</comment>


3taps Wants to Democratize the Exchange of Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/3taps_wants_to_democratize_the_exchange_of_data.php

<comment><USER2> I think this is a great idea. Good luck with it!

I'd also like to see it combined in some way with that other startup that makes "writable apis" for the whole internet

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I work for 3taps. If anybody needs help getting started with our APIs/data, feel free to contact me directly.</comment>


Prior Knowledge To Be Acquired By salesforce.com - <AUTHOR> http://blog.priorknowledge.com/blog/pk-acquired-by-salesforce/

<comment><USER2> It looks like Salesforce is pursuing an aggressive strategy to take a significant share of the enterprise DB market away from Oracle.

This acquisition seems to be more evidence of that. I don't see it working though. For one, I don't see any significant use cases for Prior Knowledge. Is it just a database married with bayesian logic? Couldn't you derive better analytics by doing such work manually?

In any case, Oracle DB's have been developed over decades. Their products provide the reliability and accountability that salesforce will not be able to achieve in a short amount of time (which salesforce is attempting to do).

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like P(K) are closing their public API on December 5th. We at TappingStone are more than happy to help any users looking for alternative prediction APIs - <https://www.tappingstone.com> \- or e-mail firstname.lastname@example.com with any questions.</comment>


Import your CSV data to Parse - <AUTHOR> http://blog.parse.com/2012/05/22/import-your-csv-data-to-parse/ <comment><USER2> More Parse spam nobodt cares about. Give it up.

<comment><USER3> Why is this spam? Seems to be a legitimate service. What's wrong?

<comment> shane-armstrong I agree, I checked it out and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with it.

Edit: I also like that it supports different formats for every field, I feel less pushed in to perfection this way. Varchar is the way forward ^^</comment></comment></comment>


BC votes in favour of retaining first past the post - munk-a https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/electoral-reform-referendum-results-expected-1.4954538 <comment><AUTHOR> Why are they being asked to decide between an election method and a representation system? The two are orthogonal.

You can have proportional representation with first past the post voting and you can have single member representation with various voting methods, usually STV.</comment>


Show HN: I made a site and repo for sharing algorithm implementations - <AUTHOR> http://dry-sea-7022.herokuapp.com/algorithms

<comment><AUTHOR> New domain! [http://algorithm.zone](http://algorithm.zone)

</comment><comment><USER2> Thats a good source for any computer science student ;) Now get a proper domain and some custom CSS!

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course. I had registered algorithm.zone and was waiting for the DNS to propagate. It works now.

[http://algorithm.zone](http://algorithm.zone)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool, now you need a proper domain :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://algorithm.zone](http://algorithm.zone)</comment></comment>


Why Uber must be stopped - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2014/08/31/why_uber_must_be_stopped/

<comment><USER2> i wonder if the author of the post has ever _talked_ to an UBER driver... that's the first thing i would recommend to anybody who wants to understand the actual economics of these companies. talk to a former cabbie who now gets to drive a nice car all day (instead of renting an old crown victoria), and pick his or her kids up from school every day. then ask yourself if "unrestrained" markets are good, or bad.

<comment><USER3> Does that invalidate the entire argument presented? ... there are certainly advantages for both cabbie and client (otherwise it wouldn't catch on). The problem is 'new stuff' being run like the 'old stuff'. It's half the revolution - the old half will eventually cause the problems (monopolies, ruthless biz practices).</comment></comment>


The Goddam Particule - <AUTHOR> https://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/the-goddam-particule/

<comment><USER2> > _I truly understand why HFts have expressed interest in neutrinos: the > fastest technology available to link different exchanges is microwave, but > microwave need towers /dishes above the ground, and the world is a sphere, > so you have to deal with the curve of the Earth, and because of the curve > HFTs are losing time. Too bad. Mother Nature is not helping._

Well, then they should go and build themselves a vacuum tube; their microwaves will fly faster :).

<comment><USER3> Physics researchers already have to field reams of emails and calls from perpetual motion cranks, add greedy traders in search of FTL comms to the list. I hope one of them sells them a box of quantum chromo-entangled magnets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yeah right, 'HFT' are so capable of immediately grasping a (potential) fundamental physics change and immediately wishing the results into useful networking hardware.

Then it turns out it could have been an oscillator or optical fiber problem, so this line drawn of interest is timid at best and totally unfounded.

Terrible article.

<comment><USER5> i think you misread. it just said they were interested in not having to go around the earth when you can go through it i think... this is expected and nothing to do with opera, and i'm sure plenty of people outside of HFT have thought about it too.

<comment> j-pb Except that neutrinos are so inert that it would take light years of water and photo detectors, to convert them into reliable signals.

<comment><USER5> ...or so many of them that we turn that chunk of earth into a radioactive mess. XD

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> j-pb What is this incoherent rambling about the LCH and stock trading?

Measuring particle accelerators by length doesn't make sense, and I highly doubt that particles in the LHC travel faster than microwaves in air.

<comment><USER2> > _I highly doubt that particles in the LHC travel faster than microwaves in > air_

Particle beams in an accelerator travel in (near)vacuum. Speed of light in a medium is lower than in vacuum. In particular, the speed of light (and hence microwaves) in air is around 0.999723 c (per [0]), which is less than 0.999999 the article says about speeds in LHC.

[0] - [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+light+in+air](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=speed+of+light+in+air)

<comment> j-pb The refractive index is inversely proportional to the wavelength though. And according to the linked papers that happens to be ~25mm (11ghz) to ~50mm (6ghz). Wolfram alpha doesn't even have valid answers in that range. Only between 400 and 1200nm.

<comment><USER2> Good point, I didn't knew that. Given how much trouble I'm having finding a relevant index for microwave range, I'm going to assume equal probabilities to the following statements: "microwaves in air indeed move slower than particles in LHC" and "the author just used n=1.0003 for microwaves in air".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> am i missing a joke? the use of the word particule everywhere instead of particle?

its quite jarring... otherwise the article is quite interesting.

<comment><USER6> I think the author might be French, or francophone. Most of the interface of the blog appears in French on my machine.</comment></comment>


The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures - <AUTHOR> http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/01/20/the-4-big-myths-of-profile-pictures/ <comment><USER2> If you're single, you could reverse engineer this to have a higher chance of getting a date. Look for attractive girls who have pictures with all the attributes that get poor responses, and it should lead to less competition and better odds for you.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I read too much Roissy, but my first reaction to this idea was that competition-avoidance is more of a beta trait than an alpha one, so while your suggestion may be useful, it might be a good idea to bring some game along anyway. But if you had game to bring, then why would you have to pick off stragglers around the herd's periphery in the first place?

<comment><USER4> Increased competition =/= increased quality. Increased quality = increased quality.

I had a life changing experience at age 22. A manic crazy group of Peruvian girls brought me home from a nightclub to their party. Okay, we had a nice night, but in the morning - seeing the girls without their hair, makeup, looking hungover - it's like, wow, highly sexualized doesn't mean beautiful. It just means highly sexualized, which comes from a lot of work on her part. But as you saw in the Okcupid article, highly sexualized draws men's attention - "flirty face", the Myspace pose, etc.

But getting one of those flirty, sexualized girls doesn't mean higher quality! It just means you got a girl who put work into appearing highly sexualized, which if anything, is the sign of maybe a fun fling but not a quality girlfriend.

Me, I stopped looking for that, and started looking more for just decent quality skin, a walk with some energy in it, awareness in her eyes, and so on. You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes, which I did for my last serious girlfriend who was getting her PhD in physics. Too much jeans and sneakers when I met her, lots of skirts and dresses and leather boots and heels when I moved out of the USA.

But I like a lot of other things that most men don't - I prefer taller women, and I prefer women who are built strong with good musculature, athletes, and girls with wider hips and shoulders. It always amazes me when I meet a girl who is an athlete and she's getting so much less attention from men than a girl who is on the alcohol + cigarettes + no food diet.

But I digress, quality is quality, and if you can find quality with less competition, that's absolutely worth going and getting. Going for a girl who is equal or lower quality but more highly chased doesn't make your life better, it's headache for (at best) ego-gratification, at worst a waste of time.

<comment><USER5> >You can always teach a girl how to dress and make herself up to your tastes,

Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.

I honestly find discussion about dating on HN a bit disturbing. I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading this post? Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.

<comment><USER4> > Well, you know, just as long as she doesn't have a mind of her own.

You read into it too much mate - girlfriends have dressed me to their taste too, encouraging more casual, or more formal, or more scarves, or whatever. It's normal for a romantic partner to encourage and refine their partner's style of dress and aesthetics, and it's usually done willingly by flexible people.

Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.

> I mean, would you be comfortable with a girl that you wanted to date reading > this post?

Yes.

> Speculating on her "quality" as if she was a horse.

No. It's okay to have standards. This isn't kindergarten where everyone is special.

<comment><USER6> > It's normal for a romantic partner to encourage and refine their partner's > style of dress and aesthetics, and it's usually done willingly by flexible > people.

Yes, that's why you stated it as basically "you can always change the girl to fit your tastes." Nothing about your statement implied (or stated, for that matter) any kind of mutual understanding or flexibility - just your ability to change a girl to your liking.

> Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other > women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress > better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.

Yes, and I bet most here would. Most independent people (which I believe many entrepreneurs are) dislike being told what to do. Even the tone of your statement shows a bit of bitterness at your belief that it's ok for a woman to "change" her man and not the other way around.

<comment><USER7> > Now, if a girl wrote, "I prefer to find a guy who is quality that other > women might overlook, I reckon you can always teach a man how to dress > better" would you have batted an eyelid? I doubt it.

I dunno whether my girl friend thought that before/after meeting me but she has definitely influenced my dressing habits over time and plays a big role when I am buying new clothes or deciding what to wear to a party/occasion. And I don't really mind that and the same is true for her, I do get a say on what she wears.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, this post is lots of fun, and I want to encourage folks to do more blogging where they take a bunch of data, graph it up, and test hypotheses with it. Science is great!

On the other hand, though I rarely cite Zed Shaw, I have a special fondness for the theme of his classic article "Programmers Need to Learn Statistics or I Will Kill Them All":

<http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html>

... and I used to review journal articles, so I can't resist nitpicking by pointing out that some of these conclusions are a lot more dubious than others. For example, this sentence:

 _For women, a smile isn't strictly better: she actually gets the most messages by flirting directly into the camera..._

Appears to be based on the difference between 9.1 new monthly contacts and 9.3 new monthly contacts in each category. Is that statistically significant? I rather doubt it. The correct conclusion here is almost certainly "making a flirty face is not significantly more effective than smiling, _and_ you have to be sure to do it into the camera or the result will be a disaster, so smiling might be the more reliable tactic."

Of course, if you _really_ want to start picking nits you can bring up the need for some kind of multifactor analysis to correct for the fact that certain kinds of pictures are probably correlated with certain kinds of personalities. But that would go beyond what _I_ understand. And it's not actually necessary to try for a Ph.D. every time you throw up a graph or two.

Good fun! Publish more raw data and we can turn this into an great statistics problem set.

<comment><USER9> It's worth noting in this context that the poster, Christian, is probably OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder, who has a math degree from Harvard. So I'd guess the results are pretty solid, though I agree it would be nice to see the raw data as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So I need to get ripped like Jesus, then take a shirtless self-picture while petting my cat, playing the guitar and not-smiling at something off-camera.

See you soon, ladies!

<comment><USER11> Don't forget to hide the beer bottles

<comment><USER12> Normal people just throw them out.

<comment><USER13> You should be recycling, you're wasting valuable nickels.

<comment><USER12> Recycling is not reasonable where I live ( even if I want local trash pickup I have to pay a company that isn't the city), but throwing out and recycling should be synonomous where recycling is popular or common.

<comment><USER14> should be ?

they connote which bin to place the item in..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Intrigued that the 'MySpace pose' is both the most widely known and most effective strategy for women, even though it's often ridiculed.

Did the population of MySpace naturally _evolve_ the optimal strategy for socializing, without anyone consciously realizing it? In an established social network, do the best strategy and the most common strategy gradually coincide?

<comment><USER16> I was also quite surprised by this, and also that the article didn't mention the other advantage of the myspace pose: it greatly masks weight.

<comment><USER17> A Myspace pose is also a good indicator that a girl is fun (meaning interested in sex) and doesn't demand much taste or sophistication. I've been on way too many dates with women who turned out to be wine snobs, music snobs, fashion snobs, literature snobs, or even TV snobs, who lost interest as soon as they realized I didn't meet their particular snob standards. People who are committed to being "better than" in any way would never post something as cliché and tasteless as a Myspace pose. Honestly, for the long term I'm looking for someone whose snob standards are sufficiently aligned with mine, but sometimes it's nice to go out with someone with no standards. (Actually, they have standards, but they're the kind of standards that can be applied before agreeing to a date.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Rather than spending 2 years in the gym, one could just borrow the neighbours dog and get even more responses.

<comment><USER19> I fired off an email to my dog-owning friend the moment I hit that graph.

<comment><USER20> To borrow, or to inform?

<comment><USER19> To borrow. He's married (Hence the dog. Dogs are like training wheels for people planning to have kids.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Maybe women want a little mystery. What is he looking at? Slashdot? Or Engadget?"

That made me chuckle. Yes, that's _exactly_ what she is wondering!

<comment><USER22> ah yes when it's probably just run of the mill porn. mystery over ladies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For those interested in more information derived from data mining online dating data sets, you'll find Andrew Fiore's work at Berkeley and MIT interesting - see the Papers section on this site:

<http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~atf/dating/>

</comment><comment><USER24> ISTM there's a strong risk here of mixing different people with different agendas. If some people are trolling for casual relationships, it's likely they're evaluating profiles in a different way than those who are looking for something more. Also, those looking for casual hookups are likely to be more active users, so over-represented in the "success" metrics.

<comment><USER25> in general, okcupid is known more for casual hookups and flings than finding a serious marriage partner, so i think the results are pretty insightful for their target demographic

<comment><USER26> I don't think that's really true - most of my friends who have used it were looking for potentially long-term relationships. Most of them have also complained about how hard it is to find long-term partners on OKCupid. So I think it's more likely that OKCupid is _used_ to find long-term relationships, but it's _successful_ at casual flings. (Which makes perfect sense, since long term relationships take a long time and a lot of effort, so naturally you'll see fewer of them.)

<comment><USER27> That is a lot like most systems where once there is a successful matchup, the partners are removed from the system.

So, most likely there are fewer suitable long term partners left in the dating pool on any successful site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They act like the photo is all that decides if someone will make contact or not. Is it possible that people that don't look into the camera also haven't put much time into the rest of their profiles, thus lower contact rate?

I do love that they publish this info so openly and in such a readable format.

<comment><USER29> They do talk about controlling for profile quality.

This isn't the first stats post from OkCupid, they do this every few months approaching a different aspect of the profile. There are previous entries about race, religion, contents of the first message, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why are all of the x-axises drawn at different points on the y-axis? The x-axis for "The Effect of a Woman's Facial Attitude" is just below 8.7, but for "The Effect of a Man's Facial Attitude" it's at just below 0.6. And in both diagrams which are supposedly comparing the same thing the y-axis represents different information (i.e. "women met per contact" vs "new contacts monthly")

I also find the style of graph misleading. It makes it look like the the numbers that go below the drawn x-axis are negative y-values, but they're not. They are just positive values that are less than where they chose to draw the axis.

It's the same with "Popular Female Photo Contexts." The x-axis is drawn at just below 9 contacts made monthly and all graph values that are less than that are drawn in grey (instead of color) which further misleads to the viewer/reader into thinking, at glance, that the values are negative. Which doesn't necessarily make sense (you can't have negative contacts per month), but why not just start the x-axis at y=0 and be done with it? The relative sizes of the numbers would be the same.

<comment><USER31> At the very beginning of the article the author writes: _All my bar charts are zeroed on the average picture._

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > For women, a smile isn't strictly better

That's because some people make forced smiles. The Asian lady on the left might look a lot better with a more subtle smile.

<comment><USER33> Repeat the study for Duchenne vs. Pan-American smiles?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> None of the male photo contexts are mutually exclusive. You could satisfy all of them, even the bad ones at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER35> The most interesting things I found in the article had to be the "doing something interesting". To get a date you need to have a conversation and having something interesting makes that easier. This makes a lot of sense after the fact, but not something I had thought about before.

For example a photo of yourself with a NES controller in your hand playing Mario 3. While I would have thought this would be a very 'bad' photo it might actually be very good because it is an easy fun (happy childhood memory for both sexes of a certain age) topic to start with.

</comment><comment><USER36> I thought the "having animals" numbers were pretty interesting too; it looks like having a pet in the picture may lead to a fairly sizable increase in contact rates.

<comment><USER28> For men.. for females it is the worst possible context they graphed.

Having an animal tells a female the male is responsible and cares for others??

<comment><USER24> And on the other hand, it seems more likely to lead to a real conversation.

<comment><USER37> yeah. Same for the guitar. It is a good conversation starter.

<comment><USER38> Precisely. This is nothing new. Go to a park with a dog or a guitar (that you can play, of course). See what happens versus going there to just take a walk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if blog posts like this noticeably affect the trends on the site. (e.g. will okcupid see a higher proportion of photos w/pets in the near future?)

Also, the idea of applying results like these seems suboptimal. If you didn't post a shirtless photo or your cropped Rover out of your shot, then that is a hint about your personality and your priorities. Perhaps tweaking your photos will get a higher conversion rate but a lower quality of conversions.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't like the way these people restrict the axes on their charts to make their data look more significant than it is (e.g. <http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/four_myths/women_smiling.png>). I seem to recall that they did this in earlier posts too.

<comment><USER25> good point, but if they are trying to show a relative (percentage) difference, then their restricted axes make sense, right? perhaps they should be labeled with percentage differences as well as absolute diffs

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> _Correlation does not imply Causation_

For example, people who are more interesting, approachable and extroverted just happen to make more eye contact, not the other way around. Or girls who are more outgoing, open and easy-going are willing to expose a bit more and simply go with the 'myspace cleavage shot'

Either way, a fascinating data analysis!

<comment><USER42> Yeah but on a dating site you don't see how interesting/approachable/extroverted somebody is, you just see if they make eye contact in their picture or not. Even if you are very introverted, you could still create a photograph looking into the camera or showing cleavage (if you are a girl).

<comment><USER43> You could, but would it have any effect? I'd like to see okcupid doing some controlled experiments and see if stuff like changing the photo to look into the camera works or if people don't look into the camera for another reason that correlates negatively with attraction.

The aspect of "signalling" how biological animals act a certain way to show abilities (i.e. stick out chest for masculinity) is interesting because there is so much room for cheating. I wonder if we are hard wired in a sense to only signal the truth or if there is a arms race going on between the cheaters and the evaluaters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As usual, I would love to see the same-sex data. I'm willing to bet that gay men are MUCH more interested in good abs.

</comment><comment><USER44> Not too much mystery when somebody is looking off-camera while taking a webcam shot... he's looking at the screen to click "take picture"! But don't tell the ladies or they'll stop emailing me.

</comment><comment><USER45> I hadn't noticed some of the other blog posts until they were pointed out to me, but they're worth looking at.

"Your Race Affects Whether People Write You Back", "Rape Fantasies and Hygiene By State" etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> You guys don't get it. The whole point is to convey yourself and not some pretend version that will get the most dates.

<comment><USER47> Yes--thankfully, my identity doesn't hinge on whether or not I'm looking at the camera or smiling, so there's nothing "pretend" about me composing my self-portraits one way or the other in respect to those.</comment></comment>


Sudoku solver in 1-line of CoffeeScript (with explanation) - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/3863614 suggestions to make it shorter/cleaner welcome <comment><USER2> Can we stop calling things like these 1-liners? Most languages can have arbitrary programs reduced to one line. That doesn't mean it's legible or a good idea. It's a _concise_ , possibly even elegant (although that's an opinion) Sudoku solver in Coffeescript. Isn't that good enough?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is not an one-liner by any means. By this definition the entire linux kernel can probably be compressed into one very long line too.

<comment><USER4> The only sortof unique thing about coffee-script is the lack of semi-colons. They just abused the comma operator though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> From a quick glance it looks to only check conflicts at the box level, not row and column. This is the first CoffeeScript I've seen, it's nice and concise.

<comment><AUTHOR> `g in [s[x][i], s[i][y], box i]` - the first 2 arguments check in row and column level and third in box level

<comment><USER5> Thanks for clarifying. If you've the time, could you tell me how I should read: non_conflicting = (g) -> ![0...9].some (i) -> g in [s[x][i], s[i][y], box i]

<comment><AUTHOR> [0...9].some (i) -> g in [s[x][i], s[i][y], box i] returns true iff it finds some i in [0,9) such that given a guess g, g equals either s[x][i] or s[i][y] or box i or in other words it finds a conflict in either a row or column or box for g assuming it g is at s[x][y] The ! at the start negates it - so the whole method non_conflicting returns true iff g does not conflict with any i.

If Arrays in JavaScript had an "all" reducer it could be written like this:

non_conflicting = (g) -> [0...9].all (i) -> g not in [s[x][i], s[i][y], box i]</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Making an iPad HTML5 App & making it really fast - <AUTHOR> http://mir.aculo.us/2010/06/04/making-an-ipad-html5-app-making-it-really-fast/

<comment><USER2> In other words: "Don't use any of the cool CSS 3 features that would make you want to code an app in HTML in the first place". If the only way to make it snappy is to draw it on a canvas and implement your own 'dirty regions only' drawing mechanism its feeling a bit like trying to make something look nice in Java!

</comment><comment><USER3> I was thinking for a long time this was possible. Everyone always complained about performance.

But for these work arounds for performance, it is totally worth the extra 30% of your revenue you get back by distrubuting through the app store. Instant upgrades, works offline just like an app. This is the future.

Although, some have said, watch Apple closely with how fast they innovate mobile Safari as this type of application would bring developers away from primary apps - apps that Apple makes money from.

<comment><USER4> I think Apple thinks of HTML5 the way they think of DRM-free music. The more content there is, the more devices they will sell.

Making money from apps is all very well and good, but there more HTML5 apps there are, the better their devices look. And right now, there's way more money in selling iPads than there is in selling iPad apps.

<comment><USER3> OK - I buy that.

Why would it be then that they push the "apps" part of it? Your comment suggests that for consumers and developers alike it is a PR stunt (a stunt that still generates revenue). But do you think Job intuitively knows that the future is not in apps as they exist today? But probably some locally-run hybrid?

The question isn't "what technology" because that always changes. I think the question is "how will we distribute it?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The funny thing is that the app doesn't really work that great when you use the iPad in landscape mode. There is a big black space on the right and the bars cut off arbitrarily. Plus you can only see about half of the cities, and because the nearly all of the screen is a touch target, trying to scroll down to see the rest doesn't do anything. Illustrates the difficulties of coding an app even directly for the iPad.

OTOH, it's nice in portrait, although the last line of text is getting cut- off, probably because I have the bookmarks bar turned on.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's nice to see someone build something cool without all the frameworks.

<comment><USER7> To be fair, I imagine this is in part from the fact that it's only targeted for the iPad which means that one of the major benefits of using a framework, getting easy cross browser functionality, is kind of a moot point.</comment></comment>


Lan Scanner (Chrome) tested on OS X - <AUTHOR> http://algorithm.dk/lanscan

<comment><USER2> This seems to bypass the default ABE ruleset of noscript, which is worrying

unless I've broken noscript some point down the line</comment>