Winning Hyperloop design revealed by MIT engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35481976 <comment> gene-h Here's a bit more on the specs of MIT's design: [http://hyperloop.mit.edu/](http://hyperloop.mit.edu/)

From the lift to drag ratio(14) and cruising speed provided(110 m/s), we can compare it's performance to other forms of transportation(neglecting air drag) using the Von Karmen Gabrielli diagram[0]. Using the inverse of the L/D ratio as the specific tractive power and using the updated Von Karmen Gabrielli diagram in [1], we find that performance is expected to be a bit better than that of a commercial plane.

This is pretty promising. Although power required for stabilization and overcoming air drag should be taken into account.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n%E2%80%93G...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n%E2%80%93Gabrielli_diagram) [1][http://www.ingenia.org.uk/Content/ingenia/issues/issue22/Imp...](http://www.ingenia.org.uk/Content/ingenia/issues/issue22/Imperial.pdf)

<comment><USER3> But 110 m/s - that's 396 km/h or 246 mph - about the speed of a high speed train in Asia or Europe, give or take. And that is when the pods are empty. Sure, without the friction of the rails and the air you save energy, and maybe you can build the whole thing cheaper, and that's lovely and all.

But wasn't the ambition to go much faster than a train? I thought this was about reaching speeds of airplanes...

If we are at speeds around or below 200 mph when the pods are full, SF - <USER2> would still take a couple of hours. A French wheeled TGV could have done that 35 years ago. A Japanese wheeled Shinkansen could have done that even before. A Japanese or Chinese maglev version of the last 1-2 decades could easily beat that. And that's without being stuck in a dumb tube. By the time the hyperloop becomes a reality, if ever, there will be tens of thousands of miles of high speed rails around the world.

The hyperloop is a sizeable amount of current hype and a future loop with pods that barely match yesterday's high speed trains. These high speed trains, engineering wonders that actually exist, don't receive any attention in press. I'd say that the hyperloop has been remarkably good at sucking the air out of the room.

<comment><USER4> > A French wheeled TGV could have done that 35 years ago. A Japanese wheeled > Shinkansen could have done that even before. A Japanese or Chinese maglev > version of the last 1-2 decades could easily beat that.

On very few select tracks – the Shinkansen _could_ drive 500 km/h, but is still limited to 320 because of a lack of suitable high-speed tracks. Same goes for the TGV, and the Germans don't even bother with trains faster than 250 km/h.

Speaking of which, Germany sold their maglev technology to Japan and China in the first place because there was nowhere to put it _at all_. With Germany's winding railroad network it's impossible to reach speeds high enough to justify maglev.

400 km/h _sustained_ , over tracks longer than 400km, would already be a massive improvement over the status quo.

Assuming, of course, the Hyperloop will be able to build a sufficient rail/tube network.

<comment><USER3> That's the thing: This pod could potentially go 396 km/h given that they are able to lease, buy or expropriate land in a straight enough line allowing them to construct mostly straight tubes miles after miles and given that there are no natural barriers like hills, mountains, rivers etc. that prevent this either. But those same conditions are the main obstacles for traditional trains reaching high speed. It's really hard to find land for straight rails nowadays. Railroads tend to go from city to city, not from one point in an empty desert to the other. So they have to bend and twist and turn or go through tunnels. Most of the efforts on getting higher speed in Europe is about straightening out the rails and laying down modern rails.

Maybe the hyperloop can do sharper turns at high speed, and probably next generation of the pods or the loop allows for higher speed in general. But that the winner of the first attempts promises 396 km/h and not the +1,000 km/h we heard about before, does deflate the whole idea.

<comment><USER5> You are forgetting that the hyperloop design naturally lends itself towards being placed on separate, comparatively cheap pylons, since the structural rigidity and relatively low weight of the tube sections allows them to be far more self-supporting than maglev tracks or even traditional rail tracks.

This essentially removes the requirement of flat land from the equation.

Also, remember that the hyperloop is really much more geared towards the American need: large cities are separated by much greater distances than Europe, meaning that a faster and cheaper per kilometer solution is needed than high speed rail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone else suspect Hyperloop is a transport technology destined for use off- planet where it wouldn't be plausible to pave roads everywhere, where there isn't sufficient atmosphere to support flight nor oceans to float boats?

Evacuating the tubes would be far easier on the moon or on Mars.

<comment><USER7> Something along the lines of a hyper loop is the kind of shower thought anyone would have while they're stuck in traffic. "What if we just made super fast tunnels to get us places so I don't have to sit here and deal with this shit right now." Only in this case it was Elon Musk having the thought.

<comment><USER8> I don't have a source on hand, but I've seen him say this was pretty much exactly it. Has to go back and forth between LA and the bay twice a week for SpaceX/Tesla, and had the thought for the Hyperloop while sitting in traffic.

<comment><USER9> I would be astounded if he drives that commute. I used to do the same commute two to three times a week and 35 minutes in the air beats 5 hours on the road hands down. If you're smart about it and flexible in your schedule you can shrink the airport time to around 20 minutes.

I could go door to door from my house in Santa Clara to my office in Burbank in about an hour.

<comment><USER10> Is that with a private jet or something? The commercial flights between even SFO and LAX seem to take over an hour of flight time alone. Which isn't surprising, since it's 300 miles to cover.

<comment><USER9> No, just Southwest. At the time they'd run a flight every hour between SJC -> BUR and after a while it became really easy to gauge exactly when I could show up and hop onto the next flight out. Cut it too close and miss a flight? They'll just put me on the next one. No big deal. The smaller airports help enormously in getting in and out fast -- I could walk into SJC and be on a flight in a matter of minutes. SFO and LAX are gigantic time sinks.

Though in Musk's case I imagine he can do the private jet thing and have the plane wait for him.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, SJC and BUR seem way better for airport time, I'm just surprised they run a 35-minute flight. I'd have assumed SFO and LAX get faster airplanes. Maybe half the time is lost to taxiing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Any hints about how a broken down hyperloop train would be evacuated? Or what happens if the tunnel suddenly pressured (e.g. aircraft/lorry hit a section dislodging it)? Also how resistant is the design to earthquakes given the high negative pressure (i.e. how will the flexible joints be built to both withstand the pressure and move enough during an earthquake without derailing the train)? How will maintenance be done on the system?

<comment><USER12> The guys from the team from Delft told me there would be a shockwave which the pods can easily resist and after about 30 seconds the tube is pressurized and the passengers can escape. The idea is that there will be hatches every [n] meters to allow an exit from the tube if needed.

The rest are all good questions

<comment><USER13> Hatches with ladders down to the ground? Great way to increase cost and diminish reliability exponentially. Let's put a failure point every [n] meters.

Notwithstanding, this is a distraction from the biggest problem, which is that a decompression of one vehicle will require recompression of the entire segment of the hyperloop, stopping all vehicles in the segment.

At the ambient near-vacuum pressure inside the hyperloop, humans cannot survive for more than a few seconds even with supplemental pressurized oxygen masks. There is absolutely no way to deal with the decompression of a single vehicle other than (a) recompress the loop or (b) plan for the occupants to be dead by the next stop.

The problem is not even decompression itself. Any failure of a sensor or failure of communication with the vehicle for more than about 1s must be interpreted as a decompression, with shutdown of the loop, because to do otherwise is to plan for the death of the occupants.

Commercial travel at very low ambient pressures has significant caveats. A plan to deal with these is going to be central to wide acceptance of the system. This is the greatest design challenge of the hyperloop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it is funny to hear the objections of all the armchair scientists and commentators. I'm sure glad we have people like you who can see straight to the problems with the Hyperloop that no one has ever thought of. You're right. Let's just give up on this whole idea :|

<comment><USER15> Solving problems is not ignoring them and wish they go away. One of the biggest problem with transportation infrastructures in the US is the cost of the right-of-way. This is barely touched by Hyperloop (the project doesn't account for these costs) because it focuses on the technical solution, that is actually the easiest part.

The PG motto is more relevant than ever: make something people want. In that case, make something that people will want in their backyard. Selling is the hard part.

<comment><USER16> A large part of the reason for how hyperloop is structured the way it is, is exactly because of right of way: The proposal calls for pylons and for the route to largely follow the highways in order to be able to take advantage of existing right of way to minimize those issues as much as possible.

It might very well be that they should have spent more effort on that aspect, but they didn't ignore it.

And the PG motto is great if you want to make money as fast as possible with as little risk as possible. It's not nearly so great if your goal is to make a major change to society.

<comment><USER15> NIMBYs on the San Francisco Peninsula (Palo Alto, Menlo Park...) got their pitchforks out for a High Speed Rail project that would use the existing right-of-way and they managed to downscale the project dramatically. HSR wouldn't disturb them in any way, it would even make things better compared to the existing diesel CalTrain operation. Do you think they will be happier with a series of concrete pylons? Rail viaducts exist, and people are not exactly thrilled to have one in their backyard.

Following the highway network is great (and Germany largely does it for HSR) but the highway system is designed with very different constraints. That might be possible in largely desert or rural places without a lot of topography, but highways have curves and slopes incompatible with high speed as soon as you hit a significant topography.

The cost of right-of-way skyrockets in urban and dense environments that are exactly the ones you want to serve with HSR/HyperLoop. Both systems are on par in the regard. The mile-long tunnel to bring HSR in the heart of San Francisco is expected to cost several billion dollars. The cost of the technical equipment of that infrastructure for conventional rail is marginal compared to the cost of digging the tunnel itself.

Sure we could solve that, with strong eminent domain powers for the state for instance. But I'm not sure anyone wants that, nor that the Supreme Court would let it happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Too much attention is being paid to the pods and not nearly enough to the elephant in the room: how to handle thermal expansion in the track. See:

[http://www.leancrew.com/all- this/2013/08/hyperloop/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/08/hyperloop/)

<comment><USER18> There have been some comments, but I'm not sure I've seen this excellent take on the issue.

From the linked document:

> So what's the value of getting the vibration mode shapes of this little > section of the Hyperloop? Simple: it makes pretty pictures you can put in > your proposal.

and

> Nothing in this section of the proposal has "demonstrated the capability of > the Hyperloop," nor was it intended to. This is not simply an error. This is > eyewash for the rubes, the surest sign you're dealing with a snake oil > salesman.

And now the winning design from MIT drops the air hockey suspension for conventional magnetic levitation.

The purpose of Hyperloop isn't to build a fast, new LA-SF link, it's to kill the California High-Speed Rail project. It's a classic case of FUD. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> where's the part that sucks air out the front and moves it to the back? You know, the whole damn point of the hyperloop.

Right now this is just a fancy maglev.

<comment><USER20> The test track is too short to get up to full speed so the compressors wouldn't provide any functionality at this scale.

<comment><USER19> Right but then what's the point. That you can run a maglev in a tunnel?

<comment><USER21> Evacuated tunnel. And actually it is a big deal considering the speed of travel which presents new problems. Also all designs are focused on scalability of system

<comment><USER22> But then stop calling it Hyperloop, and call it the VacTrain it is.

Nothing revolutionary, has existed for many decades as concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Virginia Tech, 4th place team, will soon release its full pod design at www.hyperloopvt.com. Several of the top 5 teams had similar designs to the MIT pod. The teams at the top were all very close in quality.

</comment><comment><USER23> Even if the Hyperloop is only ever used to move cargo, replacing cross- continental trains, it would still be a very big win.

<comment><USER24> Why? Cargo is what we do best in the US and it doesn't care how fast it gets to the destination. Further, the car shown is far too small to replace the 125 car unit trains we send around the US. We have a larger, harder to replace cargo infrastructure than any passenger system.

<comment><USER25> It _doesn 't care_ about speed? I think UPS, FedEx, Amazon Prime, yadda yadda, would all disagree with you strongly. Moving cargo quickly across the world is probably a multi-trillion dollar industry. And the car shown is just a proof of concept prototype.

<comment><USER24> Musk himself said this is inefficient over distance so talking about the world is wrong. Speed in the local we are talking is not that important and the current system is efficient. FedEx, etc. needs supersonic aircraft more than tubes. The car size is limited by the tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How can the winning design be one that carries neither passengers nor cargo?

<comment><USER27> I thought the contest posed by Musk was a request for a proof of concept. A test loop.

<comment><USER28> It's not a loop. Musk's test track is straight. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is talking about a 5-mile loop. That's more interesting, because cornering is hard.

The MIT system is maglev against a passive track. The Transrapid system, used in the Shanghai airport maglev, requires an active track, which is why it's so expensive. Maglev with a passive track means a simpler track but high power consumption on the vehicle. Power has to be supplied to the vehicle in some way. MIT is using batteries, which is fine for a 1 mile run, but doesn't scale.

The Incheon airport maglev just started service yesterday. It's not high speed rail, but it's much faster than most airport trams.

<comment><USER29> If only there was someone related to this project that had experience building a business based on using batteries for transportation where other people have previously thought wasn't possible ...

<comment><USER22> Tesla is based on not using expensive batteries, but instead the common "same as in every laptop" type.

They can't magically increase battery lifetime, and that's why Hyperloop will either end up as Transrapid in vacuum (VacTrain, concept for many decades) or not at all.

<comment><USER30> But given that trains stop periodically, and we know how to build rapid- recharge energy storage devices, that might not be a problem

<comment><USER22> This is HSR done on even larger scale. It will travel nonstop for 600km+. Recharging is an issue there.

(I don't know if you have ever used High Speed Rail, but usually it's a direct city-city transport, only connecting the largest cities in the region, and often going for a long time uninterrupted. Many countries, like Germany and Japan, even decided to put HSR onto completely separate rails)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I was thinking that while this will never work for people, at least Americans (just watch a group of us on a bus or plane) that this could work for same-day delivery for Amazon and others and it would only have to be a fraction of the size tube.

You'd still need a last-mile delivery but you could do warehouse to warehouse transfers in an hour instead of days.

</comment><comment><USER32> Very naive question: if the tube is a vacuum with no drag from atmosphere, why should a pod design be aerodynamic?

<comment><USER33> It is a partial vacuum, there is less air but the remaining air still needs to be pushed out of the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> More about the winning teams: [http://hyperloop.tamu.edu/news-release- january-30-2016/](http://hyperloop.tamu.edu/news-release-january-30-2016/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Maglev, huh. Does that imply the track has to have embedded coils / permanent magnets? If so, seems like that pretty much explodes the cost, no?

<comment><USER25> It's not maglev.

For fuck's sake, can people at least read the wikipedia entry on the topic before commenting on it?

It uses an air cushion to reduce friction, it uses linear induction motors to accelerate trains along a route, most of the time it will cost. That means the fixed costs of the whole thing are low. The cars are pretty simple and low cost. The accelerators are also simple and make up a tiny fraction of the length of a track. Most of the track is just a partially evacuated tunnel, which is cheaper to build than a maglev track.

<comment><USER35> > It's not maglev

Oh wow, this is too much.

From the article:

> "The MIT pod has _magnet skis_ that lift it during high-speed cruising"

So, in your own words, "For fuck's sake, can people at least read the article before commenting on it?"

The was the whole reason I brought it up. The original design called for air bearings; the MIT team did something apparently far more expensive. This is concerning.

<comment><USER36> Air bearings require a fairly tight tolerance as to the design of the tube for the entire run no? So I don't think it's a given magnets could be more costly if it means you use more expensive track materials but not a high precision construction.

Any with air bearings or magnets both being a passive track on-going costs might favor the one geological events disrupt less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> When will the final competition happen?</comment>


Show HN: Web Page Archiver - <AUTHOR> http://hn2017.ddns.net:7080/web-archiver <comment><AUTHOR> I made this prototype in response to a post I saw at:

[https://www.demandrush.com/problems/api-save-files- url](https://www.demandrush.com/problems/api-save-files-url)

but never heard a peep back from demandrush. Before I shut this web-service down, does anyone here think anything of it?

It's trivial to modify it to send you your web page snapshots via email or whatever. As it happens, the MHTML format is especially suited to email.

<comment><USER2> Nice work, but if a site uses @import or use javascript to render elements, you will miss out on these elements. I would imagine you would need to use headless chrome or something like phantomjs to be able to download all css/images/etc. as mentioned.

I could be wrong, but that was what I was thinking when I read it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out. You're right. I do exactly what you describe in order to handle such cases.</comment></comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs Now Has Its Own Font - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/business/goldman-sachs-font.html <comment><USER2> That you can't use to talk shit about them.</comment>


Why Britain Left - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/06/brexit-eu/488597/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> It seems many on the remain side are concerned about being able to seek opportunity in other countries, and to have immigrants in their own country. Yet this article reveals that the two most popular destinations for UK families leaving are the USA and Australia - both countries with strict visa requirements and no automatic freedom of movement. So the fears are overblown by the lived experience. The Spanish are not going to kick the English out of the costa deal sol anymore than the English are going to kick out doctors from France.

If anything the property market in London will probably go higher if it is seen as a desirable but firewalled from EU location. There is every chance the UK will become a Switzerland - a place to do business in Europe, but relatively safe from the poorly run economies of Europe now that seem to have been on the brink of bankruptcy for a decade or more.

The decision has been made - the next decisions have to be around creating a USP for the UK as an ideal place of investment. It's an ideal time to introduce things that benefit the startup sector, including Fintech startups by making it easier to avoid the red tape of Europe while tapping into one of the worlds biggest financial sectors.

<comment><USER3> Switzerland is a good place to do business in Europe in part because it has access to the internal market.

Access to that common market has, to this point, required a commitment to the Four Freedoms, free movement of goods, services, people, and capital.

Are you suggesting the UK will be able to negotiate access to the common market without acceding to those four freedoms - something which has never happened before and considering the current EU stance of "hurry up and gtfo" seems quite unlikely.

Or are you suggesting the UK will leave Europe, but still allow free movement of people in order to retain access to the common market? Immigration control was given as the second most important factor by those who voted leave, that would be quite some turn-around.

Or, finally, I guess you could be suggesting that Britain will be a good place to do business in Europe without being a part of the common market.

<comment><USER2> My point is immigration is not an on/off scenario.

The U.K. could easily negotiate a visa for Shenghen area countries with reciprocal rights, at different levels for work or travel or retirement.

And yes, where I think he UK could thrive is by positioning themselves as the place to do business without having to deal with the EU red tape directly. If London based financial services are in the right Timezone etc but are firewalled from EU banks and the ECB, then it can easily grow even more. I was there when the Euro started and it was seen as the beginning of the end, but it has grown a lot since then. I think having an independent central bank and currency has been a boon.

And the international language of business is going to be English for a long time yet.

Essentially, my argument is that any country which lowers the regulatory barriers to business will do better. The U.K. Has a chance to do that and undercut other European countries who will remain bound by the countless EU regs.

<comment><USER3> The options are pretty clear, but I'm not sure what exactly you are suggesting, is it:

"The UK will be able to negotiate access to the common market without acceding to those four freedoms"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is poorly named and rambly. It does not answer "Why Britain left." If you want to write an article explaining "Why Britain Left," then please provide some form of objective evidence, i.e. a survey of the voters who voted to leave.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a European, I love the project of building peacefully a political entity aggregating countries that have been at war for centuries.

This is Europe, and migrants issue is only a very small part of the equation. And, actually, Britain has never been in this Europe I long for. Just like an annoying neighbor who wants to share the commons but not pay for it.

Britain left, for whatever bad reasons: Good news, let her go, Europe will be stronger and will build faster without her.

In ten years, after having realized that none of UKs problems were caused by Europe, after realizing that she's become a small old lady no-one cares about, she'll come and beg us to take her back. And we'll take her back, but this time she'll sign to all the rules, including Euro.

<comment><USER6> But if things get that bad, why on earth would the EU want us back? Especially as part of the currency union?

<comment><USER7> If things get bad in the UK the EU wouldn't really want the UK back as such. They may however eventually permit the UK to rejoin. Once the UK has jumped through all of the hoops that new EU applicants have to jump through of course. The EU may even come up with a few new hoops just for the UK, to hold it to a higher standard than a genuine new applicant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'Britain Left' may be the eventual outcome, but we aren't there yet by a long shot. There was an advisory referendum, and the government promised to follow up on its outcome, but all that happened on that front so far is that the prime minister effectively said "yes, I promised that, but I'll resign instead. Let's find somebody else to do what I promised to do".

<comment><USER9> I'm a little unclear on UK government. Does the resignation of the prime minister require another election?

(If so, it could be spun as an "Are you sure?" remain/leave referendum and thus save face for a remain decision (making the assumption that _that_ is the decision), although even in that case I doubt the EU will be all that welcoming.)

<comment><USER3> No, Britain (and any other Westminster style parliament) are party political systems, not presidential. You vote for a party, the party selects its leader.

Of course your average voting citizen has not even a bare understanding of civics 101 and quite often in these circumstances various elements of the press demand a new election in order to make certain the PM has a mandate, if it suits their purposes.

Personally I think it's quite likely to turn out as you suggest, Boris is going to fail to negotiate even the slightest terms from Europe and will call a snap election at some point where the parties themselves will campaign on in or out, where both Labour and Conservatives will be in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is very interesting story that deals with facts of immigration both in US as well as in Britain and how it affects the existing population.

<comment><USER10> It's 3 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for lunch. If they had a referendum that only allowed landowners to vote, guess whether they'd choose policies that increased or decreased property values? Same if you ask citizens if they should allow non-citizens to live among them. Why not ask the non-citizens too and get a more fair perspective?

<comment><USER11> Because they are not citizens - are you asking seriously or was that a tongue- in-cheek question?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author is comparing the more than 5 million undocumented families already living in the United States and participating in the social fabric for decades while having their humans rights denied (the right to work) with syrian refugees going to Germany, they're nothing alike. Making these comparisons only strengthens the discourse of the likes of Trump.

</comment><comment><USER13> The UK move is interesting. On London, of course the do-well Londoners want to be a part of the EU system. They're doing well under it all. But what's done is done.

From what I can see, the real focus should have been, long ago, making sure ALL of Britain was doing well. Not just London. That ship has sailed and now the UK will have to come together and ensure mutual prosperity or risk further divide.

On Scotland, it seems to me that Scotland already got their vote. I can't see the UK allowing another one. There may be a SNP staged vote, but it won't have any teeth without it coming from Downing St. So I'm dismissive of the Scottish indie idea at this point. It just didn't pan out. Anyone who wants that, needs to at minimum, wait until oil prices rise again. But I don't see any of it happening.

Scotland's chance may have already been spent but Northern Ireland is in the best position of anyone. They're in the best position of all the UK 'principalities' to barter the best economic deal between either the UK or Ireland/EU. They can basically become the New Scotland and do what Scotland was doing, pre-Scottish independence vote. The SNP made a big mistake pushing for their vote before the EU-UK referendum.

I expect Wales and England (outside of London) are pretty content with the outcome of the vote. They had the most to gain. Though I don't think NI and Scotland are going to lose economic power with an independent UK, if they don't start revolting.

Interesting how it all turned out, because this time London was in agreement with the UK states on the periphery. It was Wales and England who wanted out, and I think this was rational and the right move from a working man's standpoint. The EU from what I've seen (I've lived and worked in the EU) is mostly beneficial the elites and people doing well. Most of my friends in France and other EU countries curse the EU a bit. It's not just the Brits who are upset with the undemocratic system the EU put into place or the policies.

I watched all the Scottish independence debates with Alex Salmond vs Alistair Darling and was letdown by Salmond's general performance. Also recently watched the Brexit 'documentary' and was not impressed with the arguments put in place there. Especially the comparison to Switzerland which is the wrong example, for many reasons that I won't go into here. The UK may become a Norway of sorts but not a Switzerland. Honestly, not sure I'd want to become a Switzerland given how they make a lot of their money.</comment>


Ars discussion: "Is MySQL really this bad?" - <AUTHOR> http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6330927813/m/377006385931/p/1

<comment><USER2> MySQL has an awful lot of mindshare because sites like Slashdot run on it. If your application does very simple queries and very many more reads than write, perhaps MySQL is suitable. The problem comes when people who don't know much about databases extrapolate from there into inappropriate problem domains. Which in this case is, anything that isn't like Slashdot. Which is a lot of things.

It's unfair to criticize SQLite, tho'. It does exactly what it claims to do (unlike MySQL which has "Enterprise" stickered all over it now). Incidentally MySQL's claims to be the worlds most popular open source database are lies, SQLite has orders of magnitude more installations (hint: you probably have a copy of it running in your pocket or your bag _right now_ ).

</comment><comment><USER3> I debated this MySQL vs. Postgre issue for a little while before deciding it was just better to go with MySQL and get started rather than nitpick over a solution.

It's one thing I've realized pretty quickly in a startup -- don't try solving or predicting architecture problems that don't even exist yet. MySQL does just fine for almost all new startups.

</comment><comment><USER4> My understanding (1yr old) is that MySQL is frequently preferred to Postgres in startup-land because the replication story is much better. I'd love to hear if this is no longer true.

<comment><USER5> replication story?

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that this is a very well-chosen phrase. If you check out this page:

<http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/MySQL_vs_PostgreSQL#Partitioning>

... you'll see that the MySQL section on replication has a short, consistent, confident story:

 _MySQL ships with replication support._

... while the PostgreSQL section offers an excuse, a list of choices, an explanation, a caveat, and a promise:

 _PostgreSQL is modular by design, and replication is not in the core. There are several packages that allow replication in PostgreSQL:_

 _[List of packages here]_

 _It is a common misconception that these "third-party packages" are somehow less well integrated. Slony, for example, was designed and built by Jan Weick, a PostgreSQL core team member..._

 _...However, Slony is considerably slower and uses more resources than MySQL's built-in replication, as it uses SQL and triggers rather than binary log shipping to replicate the data across servers. That may make it less suitable for larger cluster deployments with high performance demands..._

 _Recently, the PostgreSQL core team has announced that basic replication is planned as part of the 8.4 release._

The moral of this story is: Both databases support replication! But their _marketing_ (their "replication story") is different. MySQL has superior FUD- proof marketing while PostgreSQL offers you choices up front -- which is often a marketing mistake, because it's easy for your opponents to cherry-pick one choice and then FUD it to death (see above), and because people who aren't experts generally get paralyzed by an excess of choices (the pros! the cons! Who understands all that stuff?!) and will often leap at the chance to escape paralysis if you offer them a batteries-included option. See Schwartz, Barry: _The Paradox of Choice_.

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_par...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a great list. It had my blood boiling all over again from MySQL's "quirks".

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow. Somehow I missed all this vitriol against MySQL when I was figuring out whether to use MySQL vs Postgres a year ago. Then again I am not a DB expert and MySQL was good enough for what I was doing.</comment>


Apple's ad network gets 'preferential access to users' data' vs Facebook, Google - blinding-streak https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-ad-network-gets-special-privileges-that-facebook-google-wont-on-ios14/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Essentially, Apple is forcing advertisers to use a per-app permission pop-up > with scary language, telling users the app wants permission to track them > across other apps and websites.

> But notice the significantly scarier language: "'Pal About' would like > permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies."

> This is language that is likely designed to minimize opt-in.

Love how honest language is framed as "scary" language. This is an admission that what they do is fundamentally creepy and if they were honest with their users, much fewer would be ok with it.

I wish advertisers were forced to ask permission using similar language on all platforms.

<comment><USER2> You've left out a critical part, which explains the "minimize opt-in" comment:

> In contrast, Apple's own advertising service looks to enable personalization > by default, giving it a platform-level advantage over competitors.

And the language in Apple's settings is quite different as well, they claim that their "advertising platform is designed to protect your privacy". That doesn't sound invasive, quite the opposite, that sounds like they shield you from harm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's baffling to me that Apple doesn't get get more attention from regulators. They're very blatant in behavior which is explicitly illegal in current antitrust law. They 1) formed a cartel with book publishers to increase ebook prices, 2) formed a cartel with multiple other tech companies to suppress software engineer wages, and now they're 3) using a dominant position in one market to enter into another.

The other tech companies do things which one could argue should be illegal... Apple does things which already are illegal.

<comment><USER4> What are you talking about?

They _were_ subjected to regulatory action over both of your first two concerns and forced to desist from the behavior.

As to #3, this applies just as much to Amazon, Google and Facebook and frankly Microsoft too...

...and it turns out that all except Microsoft in fact _are_ under regulatory scrutiny and antitrust action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has been Apple's iPhone playbook for a decade. Force other companies to use their frameworks, so they can make money out of it.

Privacy is just an amazing excuse to take it even further. And in Apple's case privacy means available and controlled by Apple.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had a very brief stint working on mobile ads in 2011, so I have some vague familiarity with the sausage factory and its implications for user privacy on mobile devices, and this is par for the course for Apple. A big part of their marketing strategy is duping people into thinking they're pro-user, when they're one of the most aggressively anti-user companies I can think of. What's really impressive is how successful the reality distortion field has been in nominally technical fora (HN included, though it's gotten much better in the last few years).

<comment><USER7> Apple may be certainly far from perfect when it comes to favoring their own software, but to say the company as a whole is aggressively "anti-user" is just hogwash.

Updates they have made to Safari, the App Store, and iOS generally have made millions of people more conscious of how applications they use every day consume and interact with their personal information. They've inspired other companies like Google to follow suit, and are having a huge impact on the targeted advertising industry.

Give credit where it is due.

<comment><USER8> This is evidence of the reality distortion field.

It's like when they made the argument why Netflix/Spotify should pay them 30% of the proceeds of all sales because it's good for consumers and people actually bought it.

<comment><USER9> Except that isn't how it works. Both Netflix and Spotify had app versions which support in-app purchase and only the sign-ups in-app resulted in Apple getting a cut.

The problem both of these companies had was that the option to sign up in-app and have Apple manage the subscription was more popular than they hoped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >It's possible that this is a temporary situation. One source in the mobile marketing industry who requested anonymity said that Apple is using an "archaic" attribution engine they built years ago, and they are currently upgrading their code to comply with the new rules. The thinking is that Apple Advertising will eventually be compatible with SKAdNetwork, a framework Apple built for advertisers. SKAdNetwork enables completely privacy-safe advertising attribution, meaning that brands can know which ad campaigns worked, but they won't have specific, granular data on which people viewed an ad, clicked an ad, or took action.

If they're going to use SKAdNetwork then they're tying their own hands as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Apple exempts all their iOS software from their own privacy scaremongering. iOS never pops up a scary dialog warning you that Camera has accessed your location twice in the last week, even though Camera accesses your location every time you start it. There is a completely separate iOS privacy regime for Apple's own apps.

<comment><USER12> Scaremongering isn't the right way to describe a real, well-documented ongoing concern. We have a long history of app developers trying to monetize their user's privacy, and that also explains why your comparison is inaccurate: if you buy an iOS device you are already trusting Apple. If you don't trust Camera to do nothing more than geotag your photos, you can't use iOS at all because every mechanism which would protect your privacy is built by the same company.

What the privacy measures are doing is giving the user the ability to review requests for access to your personal data by parties you aren't already trusting by virtue of owning the device.

<comment><USER13> Don't you think it's at least a little hypocritical that they don't extend the same privacy configuration options to their apps that they mandate for 3rd party apps? Sure, I generally trust Apple more than a random 3rd party developer, but the fact that Apple doesn't trust me to set my own privacy configuration for the camera makes me trust them less.

<comment><USER14> You have the same options to disable location data for the built-in Camera app that you have with any other app.

<comment><USER11> Yes, but iOS does not proactively beg you to disable location access for Apple Maps, the way it does for Google Maps even if you've been using Google Maps daily since 2007.

<comment><USER15> If you set Google Maps to While Using the App you will stop seeing the prompts you're thinking of. Those "downgrade" prompts only apply to apps with Always. Apple Maps doesn't support Always and so it cannot get a downgrade prompt.

<comment><USER11> This is only because Apple draws a boundary around their stuff that says "Maps" only uses location when it's running, but "Significant Locations" and "Routing & Traffic" and "Improve Maps" are system services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Figures that advertisers are scared of brutally honest language. The popular lie "We value your privacy" just sounds so much better! "Our internal tests have found that lying to our users and making it confusing for them to do what they really want via dark patterns increases our revenue!"

</comment><comment><USER17> > Other advertisers and ad networks on iOS, however, need to ask permission > every single time.

Is this something new? I have been using iOS for years until recently, and I don't remember any ad network ever asking me permission for anything.

…Ah, it says that the prompts are new in iOS 14. I see.

<comment><USER18> It is a new feature in iOS 14.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This piece is complete bullshit.

IOS14 is unreleased, and features continue to change.

We have no idea whether Apple's ad network will require permissions or not by the time the software is released.

Usually these permissions are requested during set up, but the set up flow is not usually finalized until shortly before the release.

You _do_ get asked if you will allow Apple's apps to have access to Location data and other personal data. There is no reason to suppose the set up flow won't ask you about this preference too.

The idea that 3rd parties have to ask 'every single time' is misleading. They mean on every single installation.

Yes, if they release software with this preferential treatment, by all means call it out.

But this piece is just dishonest innuendo.</comment>


MIT Challenge: 4 year MIT CS curriculum in 1 year (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myprojects/mit-challenge-2/ <comment><USER2> This guy comes up quite often and can we just say that this is very impressive and not everybody could do this.

I've seen tons of articles on HN and reddit about "how he did it and you can too" with different study techniques, such as skim, then re-read thoroughly and write a synopsis line for each paragraph and then at the end of a chapter write an explanation of the stuff. If you can't write a simple explanation (without referring to notes), then redo the reading. Or something along those lines and I don't see how this makes you get through the curriculum faster, or makes it easier to push yourself to study alone for hours everyday.

There are literally 1.000s of students completing this or similar curriculum every year, and basically none of them do it in less than 4 years.

Maybe it is this guy who is just really good at studying.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't see the swim test anywhere on that list.</comment>


Donald Knuth never told Steve Jobs that he was full of shit - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/don-knuth-steve-jobs/ <comment><USER2> On a related note, I received a (regular, handwritten) mail from Donald Knuth today, in reply to an email in which I reported some (what I thought were) small errors in TAOCP (which turned out not to be errors afterall - so no reward check for me :).

I found one of his comments on my email funny. I started by saying "I am reading your book with great interest, at the same time hunting for small errors." He wrote next to it: "so why don't you start hunting for the big ones?". Inspiring on many levels :)

</comment><comment><USER3> In the video that is found at the cited link, Knuth doesn't clearly say there that the incident didn't happen.

He says that he gets asked about this story and he met both Jobs and Gates only a few times and that in each case he was more impressed by them than they were of him.

The story is definitely false because Knuth is a very polite and modest person who has never been the sort of person that says "you're full of shit" to anyone.

More conclusively, another person in this thread pointed to the letter from Knuth in his own handwriting in which he says the Jobs story is untrue:

[http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/knuth- page2-enla...](http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/knuth- page2-enlarged.jpg)

<comment><USER4> I think great scientists and thinkers wouldn't tell another person that they're "full of shit", just in case they themselves are wrong. Scientists tend to be tolerant, sometimes to a fault, of differing views. Their training demands of it. And that's why we have that evolution vs pseudo-science thing today.

<comment><USER5> I think this might be overly optimistic. Really smart people can also have really large egos and no patience for common courtesy. When they're sure of something, they have no problem calling someone out on it.

<comment><USER6> Talented people tend to get misjudged a lot. Lots of scientists have big egos, but that can go a few was. A big ego can make you humble and accepting of others (if you reserve your harshest criticism for yourself) or a real prick.

Some people want to be liked, some people want to be respected, and some people just want to be left alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A story from meeting Donald Knuth. During the dotcom days, our startup team was sent to meet Donald Knuth for due diligence by some VC. Our startup was doing Location based stuff before it was cool. Our CTO went on and on about all the potential applications of location based services. Prof. Knuth cut him off in the middle and said, 'You would use all these services because you are part of the lunatic fringe'. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> On a related note, I read somewhere that Godel was the only person Russell believed had read and understood "Principia Mathematica" besides the author themselves.

<comment><USER9> There's Whitehead, who co-authored "Principia Mathematica", and then there's Wittgenstein and Wiener, who offered a fairly thorough critique. Doubtful that they didn't understand it. I can't hunt down the exact quote right now, but AFAIK, when asked how many people have read and fully appreciated Principia, Russell's answer was "perhaps a dozen".

<comment><USER10> Are there any good examples of the critiques of Wittgenstein and Wiener of Principia Mathematica?

The Wikipedia article for PM only mentions Wittgenstein and separately a 'shortcut' from Wiener. I would like to know if there are longer writings somewhere.

<comment><USER9> I don't remember reading anything specific by Wiener, so that might have been from one of his talks or /Cybernetics/ or something, as for Wittgenstein, I'd look in the blue book. If it's important I can try and track down the references later. The point was, inscrutability of Principia is largely a myth. Sure, it is both nigh-unreadable _and_ nobody actually uses the logical language developed therein, but it can be understood, it's simply not useful enough to compensate for verbosity. For a modern-day example, look at Coq. It is painfully verbose even after many iterations of refactoring.

<comment><USER10> I'm an armchair mathematician currently but I have _high_ aspirations for my math career so it's not really important but if you have free time for definite references it would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the references so far. I'll look into Cybernetics. I already know of Coq but haven't looked that close, I'll make a note to investigate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not even sure I get it. Is the joke supposed to be that Jobs isn't a real programmer, or that no one can get through Kunth's books?

<comment><USER12> The joke was that no one actually reads TAOCP. It was rumored that Knuth once described them as the "most purchased, least read" computer science books.

That rumor was also thoroughly debunked, here: <http://markharrison.net/stackoverflow/knuth/>

<comment><USER13> >The joke was that no one actually reads TAOCP.

While true, what surprised me is that Knuth's books are much more readable than you might expect from their reputation. TAOCP is a far cry from dry terse impenetrable tomes like Rudin.

<comment><USER14> One further than this: every time --- _every time_ \--- I sit down with TAOCP, even on stuff I assume is going to be basic, I learn something awesome. It is one of the densest amounts of awesome per page of any book I've ever seen.

And I am very not crazy math guy, too.

<comment><USER15> Check out Volume 4.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I never believed it anyway, it didn't feel plausible at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> ever the gentleman, he ducked the question.

</comment><comment><USER18> Another one that people repeat is that Bill Gates said 640kb out to be enough for anybody. He says he never said it, but even if he did, at the time he supposedly made the statement, it was an accurate one given the technology available.

</comment><comment><USER19> Steve Jobs don't know how to program probably. Once I've watched a video of Steve Woz on youtube saying he(Jobs) didn't knew a shit about making computers(hardware), but he is very talent at being the CEO or something like that. So it's very unlikely that he knows how to program.

I know that microsoft employees, including Bill Gates have read some Knuth, I've read that in a book of Bill Gates.

<comment><USER20> When Steve Jobs was 13, he called up Bob Hewlitt to ask for some spare parts for a frequency counter he was working on. He worked at HP, was a technician at Atari, and attended the Homebrew Computer Club. He does know about electronics, and it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to me that he might actually know a thing or two about programming as well.

<comment><USER21> He actually called Bill Hewlett [1], one of the founders of Hewlett and Packard [2].

1\. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gtuz5OmOh_M#at=118) 2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Reddington_Hewlett>

<comment><USER20> You're right. Bill, not Bob. Thank you for the correction :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Flow-Based Deep Generative Models - <AUTHOR> https://lilianweng.github.io/lil-log/2018/10/13/flow-based-deep-generative-models.html <comment><USER2> what can i use this for?

<comment><USER3> From the article:

> A good estimation of p(x) makes it possible to efficiently complete many > downstream tasks: sample unobserved but realistic new data points (data > generation), predict the rareness of future events (density estimation), > infer latent variables, fill in incomplete data samples, etc.

To give an example, we use generative models for model-based reinforcement learning. Basically, RL algorithms have relatively poor sample efficiency. They require a lot more data than supervised learning for a number of reasons. Rather than train an agent against real data, which is limited, we train a generative model using supervised learning and use the model to simulate real data—either using the generated outputs or the latent representations. This covers several of the author's described use cases.</comment></comment>


Build cloud-native apps faster for Kubernetes with Kabanero - <AUTHOR> https://developer.ibm.com/blogs/cloud-native-apps-kubernetes-kabanero/ <comment><USER2> At yazz.com we have a similar goal to some of this. Keep at it!</comment>


Talkray API for voice, chat and file messaging on iOS and Android (YC W12) - <AUTHOR> http://developer.talkray.com/

<comment><USER2> this looks like it'll be fun to play with!</comment>


LocalStack: fully functional local AWS cloud stack - <AUTHOR> https://localstack.cloud/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/localstack/localstack](https://github.com/localstack/localstack)</comment>


Signs a Claimed Mathematical Breakthrough is Wrong (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304

<comment><USER2> I reread this list every now and then, it never loses its power. I've never reviewed papers in math or hardcore CS like on topic mentioned here, but here's a similar informal list that I mentally use when I review articles for IEEE:

* Bad English: I'm not talking about a few typos here and there (although too many typos is a problem), mostly it is gross grammatical mistakes that makes sentences unparseable. The thought here is that sloppiness in language correlates with sloppiness in research.

* Omitting important references or too many self-references: This is a sure sign that the authors have not really done a good study of the area.

* Sloppy LaTex equation formatting: Similar to language sloppiness, this also shows that either the authors have not read enough technical articles to see how it's done, or that they don't care (or worse, they cannot learn).

* Glossing over outliers in results: Usually results tables would contain outcomes that don't fit into the model/approach the authors are proposing. I look to see if this is discussed.

<comment><USER3> > * Bad English:

Don't know about this one. There is probably a correlation there, but we should stop at that. I think the temptation to explain it can lead into all kinds of nasty stereotypes.

<comment><USER4> There are two types of bad English. There's English from non-native speakers, which can be hard to read at times, but it's not a red flag. Then there's the other type of bad English. It's really hard to describe, but after you've seen it a few times, it's easy to pick up on it after a page or so. It's... a certain type of incoherence and lack of logical thinking, that superficially resembles logical thinking. The difference manifests in the structure of how they communicate, from low-level grammar all the way up to top-level organization of the paper.

Since I can't really describe what I'm talking about, I'll given the most blatant and obvious example I know of: Time Cube[1]. Even if you ignore the content, and just focus on the sentence structure, it's incoherent, often failing to parse as valid English, with a variety of ambiguous or defined referents, and freely introducing new undefined concepts. If Time Cube is 100, most papers you would see in this category are never higher than 3 or 4. But, even at that level, the lack of clarity at the structural level usually implies a similar lack of coherence at the content level.

[1] <http://www.timecube.com/>

<comment><USER5> You can find some writing at a level much higher than 4 but much lower than 100 at <http://kamouna.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/p-np-iff-p-np/>

<comment><USER6> That was seriously hurtful to my brain.

There is certain aloofness to most cranks that oozes out of their writing.

The things have not changed much since Gardner's "Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I struggled with this idea very much a month or so ago when HN had the post about the guys that claimed to have invented an electric/human powered flapping wing ultralight aircraft.[http://techland.time.com/2012/03/21/man- flaps-android-powere...](http://techland.time.com/2012/03/21/man-flaps- android-powered-bird-wings-flies-with-wii-remote/)

Even before reading the paper I was 99% sure it was a hoax. Something about the video clinched it and I was sure. But many others (even here on Hacker News) were not sure. They (like me) found the idea fascinating and did not want to dismiss it out of hand. Many people weighed in on the extreme physics and engineering challenges that would have to be overcome to make it possible. But the video's defenders pointed out again and again that the nay-sayers should read and directly address the explanatory technical documents that the "pilots" had posted on their web site.

I didn't even look at the pilots' web site, and I expect most other skeptics didn't either. But should we have?

Because later the video makers admitted it was a hoax. So should we, who were so skeptical really have spent time reading that paper and picking it apart point for point? Or was it enough to let time prove us right?

</comment><comment><USER8> His argument against computer checked proofs is wrong, because doing a computer checked proof for your claim is NOT NEARLY as common as wearing your seat belt is. If it were, then all the big proofs would come with a computer checked proof, just as wearing a seat belt is normal when seeing the police nearby.

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's an argument against computer checked proofs. He even seems to acknowledge that automatic verification is a good idea. Unfortunately the world we live in is filled with proofs that cannot be checked by a computer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _At some point, there might be nothing left to do except to roll up your sleeves, brew some coffee, and tell your graduate student to read the paper and report back to you._

You can also delegate initial paper evaluation to your colleagues - allow them to let you know if the paper is plausible.</comment>


Theory of the Portuguese discovery of Australia - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_Portuguese_discovery_of_Australia <comment><USER2> Anyone even casually interested in Australian history should seriously read "Girt: The unauthorised history of Australia" by David Hunt.

It's absolutely hilarious, and seriously eye opening to read all the interesting stories and facts that we aren't taught about in school. It's very much entertainment, over serious history, but (apparently) it's all quite accurate and has taught me a lot that I never knew about my own country's history.

</comment><comment><USER3> A fun fact about the name of Australia is that it's kind of a mistake, and the name should have been applied to Antarctica.

 _Terra Australis (Latin for South Land) is a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. The existence of Terra Australis was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south. This theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps._

 _In the early 1800s, British explorer Matthew Flinders popularized the naming of Australia after Terra Australis, giving his rationale that there was "no probability" of finding any significant land mass anywhere more south than Australia. The continent that would come to be named Antarctica would be explored decades after Flinders' 1814 book on Australia, which he had titled A Voyage to Terra Australis, and after his naming switch had gained popularity._

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

</comment><comment><USER4> As the article notes, hard evidence is unlikely to turn up. The Portuguese would have kept any such discovery secret as a matter of policy and the Great Lisbon Earthquake would have destroyed any maps that had been developed.</comment>


Must startup ideas be revolutionary or just solving a simple problem? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I think they can be both. If you think about it, there are a lot of very good and valuable startups that are not necessarily new ideas.

Stripe is one of my favorite startups with a valuable solution and we use them for our client sites and our own products. To me though they didn't do something that hadn't been done before, what they did do was take a pain in the ass problem and made it stupid easy to solve. I am sure they have some amazing technology especially on the fraud side, likely something that could be called revolutionary, but in the end they started by solving a problem that wasn't new, just painful for everyone.

BTW -- not trying to take anything away from Stripe, but other players were already in the market with payment API's before they started. So in that since they aren't revolutionary in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats true, the startup that I'm working on is Jellybean and I am considering on applying for YC W15. When I rethink Jellybean's idea and comparing with some of the YC startup batch it feels pretty intimidating especially when you have awesome ideas and technology and people.

Thanks a lot for replying, really helped me to think further on the meaning of idea itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I find I think on two levels in my startup: the big picture "billion dollar" vision that I sell to VCs and others looking 10 years out, and the "where we are now" shorter term product vision that I discuss with my team. I try to use the "solving a simple problem" portion to validate that the big picture problem does exist and is valuable, and that my company has the capability to solve it.

In the end its all about creating value for other people, and then convincing them to pay you a part of that value for your product or services. So problem solving is what pays the bills. But big vision is what gets people excited.

<comment><AUTHOR> At the very end, it all comes down to whether the product we create will bring value to consumers or users, whether should they even exist. Imagine a world where there isn't a single problem at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's no such thing as a revolutionary startup idea.

Ideas become revolutionary only in retrospect, when the product or service becomes so good that it becomes obvious that this is how it should have been done. You may be associating the term "revolutionary" with solving a difficult problem, like nuclear fission or biotech. Obviously the more difficult the problem, the bigger the payout. Scale seems to matter, because we wouldn't call marginal products revolutionary.

A successful startup is one that solves a problem, and (eventually) makes money.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure the word "revolutionary" is overrated. As I observe today's world; most ideas are either copied or slight improvement then scale to make money. The idea of revolutionary itself has become a blur and I totally agree with you that there isn't a revolutionary idea anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Revolutionary meaning a competitive technology edge that is very hard to copy. However, I believe it has first to solve a business problem that hurts people - who will want to use your product/service as they will find value in it, so much value that they are willing to pay and become your customers. All the best with your YC application.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've always been a social technology person; anything that allows people to communicate better or find information faster; hopefully the startup i'm creating is able to create such value for users and thanks!! though I think chances for entering YC is slim but its worth a shot :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Solve a problem simply, and it could be revolutionary.

Solve a simple problem, and it will not be.</comment>


Isaac Asimov's Throwback Vision of the Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/01/isaac-asimovs-throwback-literary-legacy/605815/ <comment><USER2> Quite rubbish comment I think.

The reason any novel is successful is the imagination it provoke. And even the author seemed not getting it. A small place to restart the civilisation, a prediction not working by nature (and hence you have foundation 2), not just mule you cannot predict (and that thing also miss the danger of the girl) ...

The robotic series is great as well to explore the law 0.

Whilst the attempt to handle the merge is not as good it is not bad.

Many comments in the article just randomly throw in some facts like he grope woman, died of AIDS etc. How these related to the key books like foundation ... even if one may not subscribe to author is dead, random facts not count.

Bad article.</comment>


The (not so) hidden cost of sharing code between iOS and Android - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2019/08/the-not-so-hidden-cost-of-sharing-code-between-ios-and-android/?__twitter_impression=true <comment><USER2> People say things like "Why do you want to build and maintain two codebases when you can maintain one?" but it's interesting that we're so bad at predicting or even understanding overhead. This applies to other domains — we don't know how much overhead our cars have.

From a project management point of view, native is the least risky. Yes, it takes more people, more salary cost but you know it will work. The last thing I want to find out after six months or an year that our strategy isn't working and we need to rewrite things. Risk is worse than financial cost or time. That is, I'd rather spend a quarter longer or X rupees more if I know I'll get something working at the end of it.</comment>


The Man Who Invented Pi (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/man-who-invented-pi <comment><USER2> If you're interested in the mathematical development of Pi the book _A History of Pi_ is a must read: [https://www.amazon.com/History-Pi-Petr- Beckmann/dp/031238185...](https://www.amazon.com/History-Pi-Petr- Beckmann/dp/0312381859)

</comment><comment><USER3> Pi in ancient india [https://souravroy.com/2011/01/07/pi-in-indian- mathematics/](https://souravroy.com/2011/01/07/pi-in-indian-mathematics/)

<comment><USER4> > They didn't call it Pi though.

Which goes against the whole article anyway, since Jones didn't invent, or claim to invent, the _concept_ of Pi either, that'd be a 3-way shootout between ancient indians, chinese or egyptians, Jones just assigned it the name Pi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He was the father of the philologist William Jones [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jones_(philologist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jones_\(philologist\))

<comment><USER6> ...who invented PIE [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo- European_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also found by ancient Chinese Zu Chongzhi [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu_Chongzhi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zu_Chongzhi)

<comment><USER8> If your post is intended to combat the tendency for westerners to constantly repeat stories about western contributions to science and culture and to minimize or ignore the contributions of other cultures then I'd agree but I think your post doesn't really get that across.

The article seems to be making the assertion that William Jones was the first person to use the Greek Letter "Pi" to represent Pi the transcendental number and the first to suggest Pi was unable to be "expressed in numbers."

So in that sense the claim is that Jones invented the association of "Pi" to Pi...the association of the Greek letter to the number itself.

The article really isn't talking about finding approximations for pi so neither Zu Chongzhi nor Archimedes or any other older mathematicians finding approximations are really relevant here. [0]

Frankly its not even a particularly interesting piece of history in my opinion. A curiosity but nothing more.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Antiquity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi#Antiquity)

<comment><USER7> Fair enough, thanks for the references. My previous comment was merely intended to be anecdotal, not trying to invoke arguments :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm still partial to tau.

[https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto](https://tauday.com/tau-manifesto)

<comment><USER10> Half of me thinks that too</comment></comment>