Universe May Have Been Around Forever, According to Rainbow Gravity - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/physics/universe-may-have-been-around-since-forever-according-to-rainbow-gravity-theory/ <comment><USER2> I don't see why the idea that "the universe might have been around forever" is so surprising since as far as I know, the prevalent theory is that time started at the big bang, which means that saying "before the big bang" makes as much sense as "going north while standing at the north pole".

<comment><USER3> But that still isn't the same thing as "forever." Time does not go back infinitely — according to current theory, the universe definitely has a beginning in time.

<comment><USER4> The whole dimension-tautology has always irked me. Time, as a unit, is simply the "time" it takes for light to travel a certain distance. Distance, OTOH, is the "distance" it takes for light to travel under a certain amount of time. AFAIK one of the authors of this theory is a proponent of a variable speed of light. So if at some point in time light didn't move, then time didn't move, then that would mean that our universe existed since forever...? Not a physicist, but sometimes I feel weird when I am reminded of the fact that the Big Bang had a definite starting point 13.8B years ago (as you have done so), and then think about how time is really... a function of length and length is just a function of time.

<comment><USER5> No, time is defined in terms of atomic properties. It is not a function of length. (Length is, however, a function of time). A second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

A meter is defined in terms of the speed of light and the definition of a second. A meter is exactly the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 seconds.

<comment><USER4> Ah, thanks for that. I look pretty stupid now...I have actually heard of that definition but somehow I was thinking of time being ultimately defined by Planck units (time required for light to travel a Planck length).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article doesn't even explain how they come to the conclusion that the universe has been there forever from the "rainbow gravity" concept.

<comment><USER7> Rewind the tape to 1900. Everyone who is non-religious assumes the universe has been around since forever: it is eternal. Then people like Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaître notice that distant galaxies are red-shifted, and they calculate the amount. From this they conclude that the universe is expanding. From this they conclude that the universe must have at one point been compressed to a single point, and then exploded: a Big Bang.

But if there is no red shift, then there is no Big Bang, and the Universe is not expanding. Therefore we go back to where we were in 1900, when everyone assumes that the universe is eternal.

<comment><USER8> Great! Just one detail is missing to complete the picture: explain eternity.

<comment><USER9> I know it is hard to accept that there might be things humans might not be able to explain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fundamentals seems to be provable by data-mining on gamma Ray bursts.

Funny coincidence, I just started "mining" some BOINC projects again since a week ago, including Einstein@home, because I couldn't stand all the CryptoCoin mining talk lately.

[https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Einstein@Home](https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Einstein@Home)

[http://www.aei.mpg.de/972495/einsteinathome_gammapsrs2013](http://www.aei.mpg.de/972495/einsteinathome_gammapsrs2013)

</comment><comment><USER11> How is this supposed to be reconciled with the second law of thermodynamics?

<comment><USER12> Perhaps the second law is only locally true.

<comment><USER11> We know it _isn 't_ locally true. That's how the inside of your refrigerator gets colder after you supply it with electricity.

<comment><USER13> Maybe he's speaking of a much bigger 'local' like 'our corner of the universe' or 'the distance over which our deep space probes have so far traveled'.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. The universe is a pretty big place.

Time dilation is another one. It's locally insignificant enough to be considered noise/error.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is the best title on HN today. Especially the "According to Rainbow Gravity" missing the theory bit.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't think the article explains how the rainbow theory explains the existence of Cosmic Background Radiation.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article doesn't seem to want to explain anything to me..

<comment><USER9> it's a nice reminder that big bang is one of theories and not an indisputable dogma

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's the (much better) SciAm article: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow- gra...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity- universe-beginning)

</comment><comment><USER17> Didn't Christiaan Huygens author a system of mechanics of light in rainbows[0]? — he developed an angle prediction system in algebra, if I recall.

[0]: [http://ww2.odu.edu/~jadam/docs/jadam_geometric_optics_and_ra...](http://ww2.odu.edu/~jadam/docs/jadam_geometric_optics_and_rainbows.pdf), [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14725/14725-h/14725-h.htm)

</comment><comment><USER18> What about according to Gravity's Rainbow?

</comment><comment><USER19> (somewhat) more informative Scientific American article on which this useless blog post is based: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow- gra...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rainbow-gravity- universe-beginning&modsrc=most_popular)

<comment><USER20> I didn't really discuss the Rainbow Gravity Theory. But I referred to the Scientific American article here
 [http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop- bang-...](http://hashsign.co.uk/contemporary/by/thoughts/pop-pop-bang- cosmology.html#scientific-american
) My statement is: The difference between singularity and the world is differentiation. Differentiation is a kind of 'stretching'. The methods of stretching are called time and dimensions in space.
 It's nothing else than a crutch for thinking. 'All at once' is for thinking equal to nothing (singularity).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> given that a sensical idea of time couldn't really exist before the universe, i believe it is sound to say that current understandings of the universe already state this.

just that "forever" is 13.8 billion years long and counting..

<comment><USER22> I've always wondered if in the entire universe we humans are the first creatures to have evolved and we will spread out populating the universe.

<comment><USER23> Seems statistically unlikely given the hypothesized number of life-supporting planets + our planet's age versus the age of the universe.

<comment><USER24> Unlikely but possible. Much like the creation of a universe, perhaps.

Given infinite time, you might flip heads a million times in a row.

<comment><USER25> Or might not, no matter how far you go, there are no even numbers in the infinite set of odd numbers, and you can tell that without counting very high.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any tip for getting hired as Employee #1? - <AUTHOR> Next week, I gonna get interviewed in a startup for a Employee #1 position (software development). Any tip? Any pattern in what is required to be successful as #1? What is their biggest concern?<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> Bring your A game and get a good nights sleep. It is a job interview, have fun and be yourself. Be honest and don't forget to interview the interviewer so you can get information about the company to help you insure it is a good fit for you in the short and long term.</comment>


The first dexterous and sentient hand prosthesis has been successfully implanted - <AUTHOR> http://www.detop-project.eu/news/the-first-dexterous-and-sentient-hand-prosthesis-has-been-successfully-implanted/ <comment><USER2> I'm a bit uneasy about the fact that they are punching through skin. This always bears a big risk of infections as the skin is the #1 protection from bacteria. Even prosthetics fully under the skin have this risk, and septic shock is a possibly lethal threat. And we humans love to put our hands to various sometimes more, sometimes less, dirty places.

<comment><USER3> For your awareness, this risk has largely been observed and researched in the field of dental implants. I'd suspect this research would be extended and applied here with this concept.

My _assumption_ is that the exposed components are not just made from titanium (biocompatibility) but are also textured in such a way that soft tissue can enforce a seal, but I'm speculating because I'm not finding the necessary documentation on it. Someone more informed may be able to chime in.

Edit: This is the closest starting point I've found for your continued reading.

[http://www.jdionline.org/article.asp?issn=0974-6781;year=201...](http://www.jdionline.org/article.asp?issn=0974-6781;year=2013;volume=3;issue=2;spage=148;epage=152;aulast=Alva)

<comment><USER4> A year or two ago I investigated what the state of the art was for metal grafted onto bone (for example to mount prosthetics) and the conclusion was "it often works or only gets a little infected. Sometimes it gets badly infected, not much we can do about that", but that was the actual practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How appropriate is the term "sentient" here, given that the hand is still controlled by the brain of the human it is attached to?

<comment><USER6> The technical meaning of "sentient" is "capable of feeling". It's opposed to "sapient", which means capable of thinking.

It's a reasonable adaptation of the term to have it mean "capable of transmitting touch signals to the wearers nervous system" in the context of prosthetics.

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't "sensate" be a better word?

<comment><USER6> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The video ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQiJPexEDM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WQiJPexEDM) ) provides a bit clearer explanation of what's going on. They're actually sending signals directly through the percutaneous bone anchors, which is pretty rad in my book. Looks like the hand just snaps on to the anchors and you're ready to go, albeit with years of retraining the nerve endings for the new signals.

<comment><USER9> Curious if you could speed up retraining for the prosthetic using biofeedback.

<comment><USER10> Could you explain what that means to a layperson?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On track to "Deus ex: human revolution" in 2027. Human prosthetics augmentation is a centerpiece of the story: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oTSX_csbQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oTSX_csbQY) .

<comment><USER12> Now all that's missing is a huge pharma company buying a tech startup for revolutionary prosthetics and selling both prosthetics and drugs like inkjet printers and cartridges.

<comment><USER11> [https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Neuropozyne](https://deusex.fandom.com/wiki/Neuropozyne)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "In a pioneering surgery, titanium implants were placed in the two forearm bones (radius and ulnar), from which electrodes to nerves and muscle were extended to extract signals to control a robotic hand and to provide tactile sensations."

This seems pretty significant. And, I hate to sound gross but doesn't that technically mean a prosthesis could be attached as an extra instead of a replacement?

<comment><USER14> This is one of the areas I think is fascinating about prosthesis - once we get to the point where they're essentially connected in to the brain, and can be used as though they were a natural limb, what would happen if say, you raised a child with the ability to control four arms as naturally as two? Or raised them with non-humanoid limbs?

<comment><USER2> Another really cool application would be the ability to control extremities that aren't part of your body. Using the internet, you could deliver whole- body experiences to robotic shells thousands of km away from your actual body or in virtual environments. The indian concept of avatars, also part of christian religion, would become scientific reality.

<comment><USER15> There's a startup, I believe it's in Japan, that is working on this. Basically you'd have generic looking prosthetic humans at popular tourist locations, and you could pay to rent them for a set amount of time, remotely controlling them with sensors attached to your body, and seeing through their eyes with a VR helmet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope I live to see the day I can read a news article about black market cybernetic chop shops.

</comment><comment><USER17> What if i dont need a prothesis replacement arm, but i ___want_ __and additional third or fourth arm wearable in the form of a "backpack with arms"

How can i get one, and how expensive (medically and financially) will my additional sets of arms be?

<comment><USER18> Try looking for "third thumb". A DIY project where a guy got input from a toe to control a motorized second "thumb" on a hand. AFAIK no one ever made a project of it ... but ones feet are a vastly under utilized resource and could be re purposed quite readily. Eg why not control a virtual twiddler? Or indeed a "hand prosthetic".

<comment><USER19> I think a foot interface would be awesome for bulk operations like scrolling/panning/zooming. Think of a trackball but like a medicine ball that is heavy and carries some momentum. Pedals too i guess, but i like the big heavy ball idea. Probably be great for your feet too.

<comment><USER20> [https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FootSwitches](https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/FootSwitches)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there no video of it use?

<comment><USER22> There are if you read farther down:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf3try5tu-0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf3try5tu-0)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EES8U5LwaUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EES8U5LwaUs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very ambitious use of the word "sentient".... hubris much?

<comment><USER24> Sentient means capable of feeling.</comment></comment>


Lessons learned from learning new programming languages - <AUTHOR> http://gertm.blogspot.com/2010/01/lessons-learned-from-learning-new.html <comment><USER2> I am not sure there are any lessons here.</comment>


Faces of Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.facesofopensource.com/ <comment><USER2> My thoughts going through this:

"That Weird Al-looking dude is Larry Wall, right?"

It was.

"Who's this guy? He looks like the Architect from _The Matrix_."

It was Vint Cerf. He _is_ the Architect of the Matrix.

<comment><USER3> Ohh, I actually believed Vint Cerf had played The Archited on The Matrix... It was actually Helmut Bakaitis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Strange to see that the authors of the LLVM project, Chris Lattner and Vikram Adve are not present given that LLVM has been used by many large companies (Google, NVIDIA, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, ARM, AMD, etc) and projects like Rust, Julia and Swift.

GNU, GCC, are also free, libre and open-source software (FLOSS) which its very surprising to see the creator and founder Richard Stallman to be missing in this website.

Without him, Linus might have chosen to have kept Linux closed-source.

<comment><USER5> Why does nobody here understand that the faces included aren't exhaustive? It's obviously not all faces, and it doesn't even claim to be just the top faces - it's 'notable and unsung'. More practically, it's probably who made themselves available to be photographed and who would he photographer could get in touch with.

<comment><USER6> > It's obviously not all faces, and it doesn't even claim to be just the top > faces - it's 'notable and unsung'.

It's a _documentation of the people behind the development and advancement of the open source revolution_. Sure, that doesn't claim that nobody else plays a role, but it has a hint of that.

> More practically, it's probably who made themselves available to be > photographed and who would he photographer could get in touch with.

Sounds plausible, yeah. The wording makes it sound like more though, but that's probably marketing, because "portraits of some people in the open source movement that I know/was able to meet" sounds less impressive and authoritative than Faces Of Open Source.

<comment><USER7> But it seems obvious that it can't be exhaustive. It's clearly a photo shoot. And it's on-going (you can subscribe to it).

I'd rather people learn to think critically instead of getting worked up that every exception wasn't enumerated in the tagline.

<comment><USER6> I don't believe that has anything to do with critical thinking. It's likely just marketing by the creators and they don't mean to claim to judge the value of contributions, but they are declaring that these are the faces behind the open source revolution. Wording matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is awesome! I love the photography style.

I've been working on something parallel to this myself - interviews with open source maintainers to celebrate their work and aggregate advice for others[1]. It's great to see another example of open source work being highlighted.

Some of the images load a little slowly for me - the images in the modals could be compressed as I notice that the file is often significantly larger than the size it is displayed at on the page.

[1] - [https://sourcesort.com](https://sourcesort.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> I like the stark, high-contrast style of the photos.

<comment><USER10> Reminiscent of Avedon's "In the American West". Those were shot on 11x14 large-format film, and the detail on the slightly larger than life print has to be seen up close and personal to be believed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised to see Eric Schmidt on there. I wonder what the criteria was for inclusion.

</comment><comment><USER12> How many people do you actually recognize?

Personally, only Limor Fried. It's weird, but also interesting, that tech is so faceless.

<comment><USER13> I recognized quite a few, since I met several of them at the old Usenix conferences I used to attend. Dennis Ritchie, Eric Allman, Kirk McCusick, Keith Bostic. A few others. I would like to have seen the late Evi Nemeth, but she was known more for System Administration than for open source, I suppose. I also recognized Guido van Rossum and Keith Packard, again from conferences. You really get to match a name to a face at events like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That so many people are asking "where is Stallman" on a site called Faces of _Open Source_ makes be wonder how many of RMS' fans actually really listen to him. He loathes the term Open Source and sees it as direct attack on him and his Free Software movement[1].

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point.en.html)

<comment><USER6> Reading their about page [1], I'm not convinced they're making a conscious decision to call it open source instead of free software. I don't think the general public (which this is aimed at, it seems) differentiates the two either.

[1] [http://www.facesofopensource.com/about/](http://www.facesofopensource.com/about/)

<comment><USER14> It's not the site's issue, it's Stallman. Even if they didn't intend for it to be a strict Open Source site, it has Open Source in the name which Stallman wouldn't participate in. The same way Stallman won't participate in (at least at the time of writing this comment) shows or conferences that only use Linux in the name and not GNU/Linux. For example he won't go to something like Ohio LinuxFest and the Linux Action Show had to rename itself the GNU/Linux Action Show to get him to come on. For some people the work of changing the name is worth it, for others it's not worth the hassle.

<comment><USER15> OSDEM conference even renamed itself on request of Stallman [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSDEM#cite_ref-3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSDEM#cite_ref-3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Someone should make a "Faces of Free Software" that subtly photoshops Stallman into every single image on that site. (Using Gimp of course.)

</comment><comment><USER17> Sara Chipps is on there. I only know her from her Stack Overflow drama. I am not sure about what she is doing on this website with Ken Thompson or Larry Wall. I guess I am not aware of her revolutionary side.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, some of the people they decided to include devalue the whole list ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> So many of these people I knew by name but had no idea what they looked like or at best hadn't seen a photo of them in 20+ years (which is effectively the same thing).

As a photographer, it's always nice to see black&white photos. They have a power and charm that is so different from color.

</comment><comment><USER20> Positives about this: A good mix of people in terms of gender and what they have contributed.

<comment><USER21> Why would the gender even be relevant?

<comment><USER10> So all potential future open-source contributors feel "I can be part of this" rather than excluded.

I just wish there were more women who were actual open-source programmers rather than journalists, executives or advocates. People like Margo Seltzer (BerkeleyDB) or Lynne Jolitz (386BSD).

<comment><USER22> Is there any evidence that showing pictures of women actually makes a difference with this?

<comment><USER23> I'd be very surprised to see evidence to the contrary, as it's just an obvious fact of life that people generally feel less confident about entering a community that lacks anyone else like them. Have you never felt intimidated/uneasy when entering a group situation in which every other person was a particular race/gender/age group to which you don't belong?

<comment><USER22> Not that I can think of, but then I don't really define myself by my gender or race or really give much time to identity politics in general.

<comment><USER24> May I posit this is because you are rarely in situations where you feel your gender is pronounced? If you were, say, a man applying for a job as a general hospital nurse, you would feel this, or as a heterosexual hairstylist applying for a salon job. There are stereotypes you would feel pressure to justify why you, who do not fit the stereotype, would be a beneficial person to hire, in such cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is it not missing Eric S. Raymond?

EDIT : Yes, he is there - just didn't recognise him.

<comment><USER26> [http://www.facesofopensource.com/eric- raymond/](http://www.facesofopensource.com/eric-raymond/)

<comment><USER25> There he is! I just didn't recognize him. Thanks for pointing him out. I was feeling quite aggrieved on his behalf there!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I know there's a ton of "where is X?" going on - but one that I would like to see on here is John Resig, jQuery is still practically _everywhere_.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's an interesting glimpse into the sphere, highlights different people and different achievements, shows that not all contributions have to be code to help OSS, and due to the stylised nature is obviously non-exhaustive for practical reasons.

It adds a touch of humanity to technology that is often lost.

Of course, as a large percentage of the comments here show, we must criticise and tear-down everything...

</comment><comment><USER29> This must be old. Guido hasn't been BDFL for a while now. And the achievement gap is very wide between people on the list. You have inventors of the internet and several dominant programming languages alongside some "advocates" nobody has ever heard of.

<comment><USER30> The point of this website is diversity.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure where you're getting that from — it isn't mentioned on the about page[1].

I suspect you've made that assumption _because_ they happen to be diverse, and the stereotype is that computing itself tends not to be. However, I think that is exaggerated, and projects such as this one aim to redress the balance.

But I don't think that's the primary aim at all — the _primary_ aim is to exhibit photographs of people involved in open source, in an attempt to raise their profile.

> The project is comprised of portraits of notable and unsung heroes who > dedicate themselves to the creation and advancement of our open source > technologies.

[1] [http://www.facesofopensource.com/about/](http://www.facesofopensource.com/about/)

<comment><USER30> >I'm not sure where you're getting that from — it isn't mentioned on the about page[1].

Obviously. They want to pretend the diversity portrayed in that website is normal.

>I suspect you've made that assumption because they happen to be diverse, and the stereotype is that computing itself tends not to be. However, I think that is exaggerated, and projects such as this one aim to redress the balance.

Let's agree to disagree then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was expecting to see Matz^ there but ...

^ Yukihiro Matsumoto - creator of the Ruby Language [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukihiro_Matsumoto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukihiro_Matsumoto)

<comment><USER33> As was pointed out in some other comment, this list seems to be heavily focused on north-america. I'd also love to see Roberto Ierusalimschy on the list, but he's not on it either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wish it was no-pictures as a rule

</comment><comment><USER35> Why is Richard Stallman's photo not present?

<comment><USER36> I think we all know why Hans Reiser isn't there.

<comment><USER37> His filesystem was revolutionary and open source and should be mentioned in there - in fact I'd still go to him if I needed a filesystem. I would not go soliciting marriage advice though :(

More seriously, I think it's wrong to sanitise technological and scientific history when afterwards it's decided that someone isn't a good person. Footnote to that effect; sure. Leaving them conspicuously absent, less so.

edit: though, as the photographer is seemingly taking the portraits himself, I can imagine some devs are easier to get to than others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> a bit sad to see that notoriously "free software" people like Bradley Kuhn and Karen Sadler have agreed to appear here.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps they are less doctrinaire than RMS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> No idea why there is duplicates of same people but with different photos

</comment><comment><USER40> Missing Lennart Poettering.

<comment><USER41> Missing Theo de Raadt as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Where is Ian Murdock?

<comment><USER14> Faces of Open Source seems to be a one person project (Peter Adams) who is a photographer and personally takes the picture of each subject. Since Ian has passed away I don't know how they would be able to be included. Also the site obviously isn't exhaustive since there there are thousands of people in Open Source and is always a work in progress being updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Why is it necessary to know what a person _looks_ like in order to value his/her/their contribution to open source? I think we should be beyond physical appearance.

<comment><USER44> I find seeing their picture helps thinking of them as real (living) _persons_ , instead of just some abstract named entity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> My thanks to all of them. And the ones who will follow.

</comment><comment><USER46> Two weeks ago on Saturday morning I was driving my son to his soccer game through Medford MA, when in one of the bus stops I saw Richard Stallman waiting for the bus.

I told my wife, that's Richard! and I stopped right in the middle of the street and jumped out of the car. I ran toward him and hugged him, and told him to take care of himself and be strong. He didn't say a word.

I feel bad for the man, he looked a bit frail, and mind absent.

I can't believe history is being rewritten right in front of my eyes, the man that started it all is being forgotten. Open Source is just a catchy marketing phrase for "free software"

<comment><USER47> "Open Source is just a catchy marketing phrase for "free software" "

Nope. Even RMS even insist it is not. Main difference is, free software usually enforces "copyleft".

And open source not.

<comment><USER14> If you read [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point.en.html) Stallman states that Free Software doesn't have to do with copyleft vs permissive:

"Another misunderstanding of "open source" is the idea that it means "not using the GNU GPL." This tends to accompany another misunderstanding that "free software" means "GPL-covered software." These are both mistaken, since the GNU GPL qualifies as an open source license and most of the open source licenses qualify as free software licenses. There are many free software licenses aside from the GNU GPL."

The Open Source Initiative sees the GPL as Open Source, and the Free Software Foundation sees the ISC (OpenBSD license) as Free Software. Neither group's definition depends on if it is copyleft of permissive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can anyone make sense of why some people have two versions of pictures, one close up of their bust, the other of most of their full body; while others only have a single image? It seems rather arbitrary if it's intentional at all.

</comment><comment><USER49> > Linus Torvalds invented the Linux operating system which is used to run the > vast majority of computer servers connected to the Internet

Uhm, no. It's the Linux _kernel_ , used by the _GNU /Linux_ operating system. I'm surprised that this website got something so simple wrong.

The Linux kernel is one part of what we know as the GNU/Linux OS

Apart from the kernel, virtually everything else in the core OS was written by volunteers of the GNU project, and they deserve recognition for the same

Furthermore, calling Linus Torvalds the "inventor" of the OS in question is factually incorrect. The GNU OS was in development long before they decided to incorporate the Linux kernel.

</comment><comment><USER50> > "Stormy Peters is an open source advocate and evangelist. Peters founded the > Open Source Program Office at Hewlett Packard and has since held senior > positions at several open source related organizations including the GNOME > Foundation, Mozilla, Cloud Foundry Foundation, and Red Hat."

And just like that, "advocating and evangelizing" is apparently all it takes. Can also call it what it often actually is - virtue signaling - but that's not very popular with the kids these days.

<comment><USER51> She's the Director of the Open Source Programs Office at Microsoft, used to be Executive Director of the Gnome Foundation, and used to be software engineer on the Hewlett-Packard Unix development team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> 1\. Broken on Firefox on Android, text unscrollable.

2\. Where the F is Stallman?</comment>


Finding a Lost Strain of Rice, and Clues to Slave Cooking - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/dining/hill-rice-slave-history.html <comment><USER2> This rice looks strikingly similar to an Indian Rice called as, Matta Rice or Kerala Red Rice.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting article. Thanks for sharing it. On a complete tangent I just decided I can no longer abide publishers who litter their content with inline advertisements. I couldn't finish and I am avoiding The NY Times going forward. It's just too distracting.

<comment><USER4> uBlock Origin.

What's annoying is that I've actually signed up to _pay_ for their basic digital access, and they still not only still try to serve me those ads, but because I block the ads, half the time they still put a little please-let-us- inflict-ads-on-you bug at the bottom of the page.</comment></comment>


Japan's koseki system: dull, uncaring but efficient - <AUTHOR> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/06/22/issues/japans-koseki-system-dull-uncaring-terribly-efficient/#.WAq-taOZNP0 <comment><USER2> Isn't this system similar to the one we have in France (and other parts of Europe: Livret de Famille.

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

<comment><USER3> Yes, I think most of the developed world has something like a citizen register/family register. I think it is the Anglo-American culture that is the interesting diversion from the norm. For some historical reason, they have aversion to id numbers and central registers.

<comment><USER4> And yet, they can't help it, hence NSA. I doubt that anywhere in continental Europe there is a full-scale surveillance program like administered by NSA or GCHQ (or maybe we are unusually good at keeping secrets -- really doubt it, though).

<comment><USER5> >And yet, they can't help it, hence NSA. I doubt that anywhere in continental Europe there is a full-scale surveillance program like administered by NSA or GCHQ

Just reminder that KGB is still a thing and they have SORM: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM)

<comment><USER4> Well, yes. As I argued elsewhere, we Russians are culturally closer to Americans than to Europeans, for some unknown reasons.

<comment><USER6> Isolationism and exceptionalism. See UK and Japan for other examples. Though after the beating received in WW2, Japan's is subdued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Official documents are marvelous.

Once you have lived in a country where you can get official documents for pretty much anything you care to prove, it feels like going back to the stone age when you move to a country where you can't.

Case in point: a Korean relative of mine was recently invited to join the board of an organization based in the UK. The UK org's bank wanted proof of address for the new board member, in the form of a notarized translation of a recent utility bill or credit card statement. In Korea, you can walk into any local government office and use a 24/7 self-serve kiosk to print out an official proof of your address. Not some random address like the Japanese koseki, but the actual address where you pay all your taxes and are registered to vote. You can even get it in English if you want. It comes with an official stamp and a cryptographic signature of its contents. But no, the UK bank won't take it. They want your fucking credit card statement.

Ditto for marriage certificates, death certificates, driving and other licenses, public education, land ownership, car and boat ownership, tax returns... pretty much anything a person might need to prove in the course of their lives. Lost the original? No big deal. You can get a new one whenever you want, wherever you want. You can even get the government to prove your employment history for you, if you're worried that your last employer might go bust and become unable to provide references.

And I don't think this makes us any more of a surveillance state than other countries, because the government is supposed to retain official records of all these things anyway. It's just a matter of letting citizens export their own information in a convenient and reliable format.

<comment><USER8> That does sound convenient. Are there safeguards in place for personal privacy? Can anyone look up information on anyone else?

<comment><USER9> Yes, privacy is a problem. Of course not just anybody can look up anybody else, but the workers in the town office (who have to issue these forms) or police officers can look up a lot of information.

(In theory, they are prohibited from looking up information unrelated to their duty. In practice, I'm not sure how well that is enforced.)

On the other hand, as kijin said, government is going to have that information anyway. Better put it to some use. So it's a tradeoff, and the system has problems, but for the most part it's a reasonable tradeoff, IMHO.

(For example, all the current debate about "voter suppression" (aka voter ID law) in the US strikes me as completely bizarre. In Korea, if you're in the voting age you _have_ a government-issued ID. You use that ID card to vote. End of story.)

<comment><USER7> Even if you're under the voting/driving age, any Korean citizen over 9 years old can ask to get an ID card for opening (non-credit) bank accounts, taking tests, getting discounts, and accessing various government services.

I live in a low-income area where lots of kids are on their own because their parents are alcoholic, disabled, always away, etc. The underage ID card helps them navigate the world.

It baffles my mind that anyone in the developed world in 2016 should be unable to prove such basic things as who they are and what country they belong to. If we're going to have pervasive surveillance, at least we should get some benefits out of it!

<comment><USER10> _It baffles my mind that anyone in the developed world in 2016 should be unable to prove such basic things as who they are and what country they belong to._

In the U.S. the problem is not proving basic things, but preventing the government from building up a huge profile of everything about you, from what you ate and where you've been to the size and color of your underpants. Even that wouldn't be such a big deal if the government wasn't ultra paranoid and just constantly spied indiscriminately on everyone, actively trying to use that information against you, under the auspices of "protecting" you.

Bureaucracy in the U.S. is actually pretty simple and straightforward, and it works. For example, every time I compare how easy it is to buy, insure, register a vehicle, and renew its registration in the States, and then compare with a certain country in central Europe, I just want to scream and tear my hair out. In the States, it's a straightforward, practical, uncomplicated matter: after all, owning and driving a vehicle isn't a big deal, and shouldn't be one. The European country in question? WOE TO YOU: prepare for a protracted ping-pong between the local police station, the central police authority (ministry of internal affairs), the insurance company, back to the local police authority, then the technical inspection station, then the local police authority, and let's not forget at least two trips to a notary public. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to mention at least one trip to the tax authorities. Payment to authorities? Not before you've been sent several times to a local _newspaper kiosk_ , after waiting for up to _two and a half hours_ in a line, to buy special government stamps, which then only the bureaucrat is allowed to affix and annul with a seal on the actual documents. And the entire time they all arrogantly stare at you wide-eyed, "but sir, what are you getting upset over?!?" Oh yeah, and your documents, like a birth certificate, aren't allowed to be older than six months. I mean that's "completely logical", because we all know that the place and time of one's birth is an ever changing variable, right? And yet, my driver's license which I've had since well into the last century isn't up for renewal until 2069... but get this, if you're tech savvy enough and get a login and a password(!!!) in a special governmental database (only in person at a physical teller, of course!), _you can print some of these documents at home_ , SHA-1 check summed with a crypto key from the ministry of internal affairs, gratis... super consistent and fair to all citizens, huh?

In some things, U.S. is light years ahead. And when I see how easy it is to do things like that in the U.S. I feel I'm completely justified to question why the process cannot be as simple and as uncomplicated as it is in some other countries. In Singapore for example, it's enough to fill out one paper and get a company registered in up to 15 minutes; if it works there, it can work everywhere.

<comment><USER7> The obsession with cars is part of the reason why the U.S. doesn't bother to come up with a better way to identify its citizens. Nearly everyone has a driver's license, so why use any other form of photo ID?

A good American just gets a license and buys a car.

<comment><USER10> As far as I know, all states in the United States union have a photographic identification card which is almost identical to the driver's license, except that it is not one.

Some examples:

[http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idget.aspx](http://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/DMV/pages/driverid/idget.aspx)

[http://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/idinfo/idcard](http://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/idinfo/idcard)

[https://dmv.ny.gov/id-card/sample-photo-documents](https://dmv.ny.gov/id- card/sample-photo-documents)

the really slick thing about the States is that a driver's license doubles as an identity card. I can show my driver's license anywhere in the 50 states and immediately authenticate myself, but if I show any of my other driver's licenses in the countries of their issuance, not one will accept it for proving my identity; they all require me to show them their respective identity cards. Such bureaucractic nonsense!

This is what I referred to in one of my earlier posts when I wrote that if it can be less bureaucratic and streamlined somewhere else (I used Singapore as an example then, in this case, the States), then it can work elsewhere too. Instead, people just come up with nonsensical excuses why it _cannot_ work, for example _that 's just the way it is here, accept it!_ Such nonsensical arguments infuriate me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is really nothing special at all. Latin American countries based on Spanish Civil Law have the same system (registro civil). As do countries of French origin and even the province of Quebec.

</comment><comment><USER12> From reading the article, I see three aspects:

* Koseki as a data structure: It seems to be an event-log from which you can get an official certificate (extract) relfecting the current state. This is better than a systems where you work with loose records of the events themselves. Other countries should do the same thing.

* Koseki as a rigid record of official categories: Soft cultural issues are important here. Koseki happens to force people to change their name upon marriage, but makes official gender-change easy. The Japanese shrug at both aspects.

But English-speaking polities would not shrug, because they have an expectation that legal categories reflect these personal preferences [1]. This is a cultural thing that no data structure will fix.

* Koseki as an alternative to the courts: As long as people will get upset about the categories, and as long as people are allowed to have their legal say, these things will end up in court.

[1] For example, in the UK a "civil partnership" was a marriage-by-another- name arrangment for gay couples (before full marriage was extended to them in 2013). This resulted in complaints from heterosexual couples who wanted to get civil partnerships too.

<comment><USER5> > Other countries should do the same thing.

Where other countries means "US", where everybody is paranoid and doesn't want government to have any kind of database on people.

In Ukraine we have this level of crazy people who refuse to obtain personal tax number citing religious beliefs (something-something chipization, devil numbers) that for some reason are promoted by Moscow Church, but not by local one.

<comment><USER13> > and doesn't want government to have any kind of database on people.

Yet you have to register to vote, and this registration allows you to optionally declare which political party your affiliated with.

...which is the _complete_ _opposite_ to Sweden. We have a system similar to the Koseki in the article, but it is expressly _illegal_ for any part of government to make a registry of people's political opinions or sexual orientation, or a bunch of other sensitive characteristics. I even think race is one such category.

<comment><USER14> That last part is madness. You better believe as a citizen i'd care about the ethnic religious and racial makeup statistics of my country.

<comment><USER4> Why it is madness?

The color of skin is no more relevant to anything than color of hair. You can know the percentage of, say, red-haired people in your country, but what for? The only thing where that could be needed is to fight e.g. some Dark Ages prejudices against red-haired people, and this is expected to be a marginal issue, not some all-encompassing national program.

The same goes for religion. In Europe, religion is inherently private endeavour.

<comment><USER15> The colour of skin is relevant in the case of racially motivated crimes. Not recording this just leads to a society which pushes racism under the rug.

<comment><USER4> There are, of course, race-motivated crimes, as well as, say, anti-Semitism. However, if some newspaper suddenly started publishing something along the lines of "in northern Paris, there are now more than 4.8% Jewish residents, an increase of 0.3% compared to the last year", the Jews would be offended, and rightfully so (perhaps not so much in the US, but definitely in Europe).

There is no need for public knowledge for racial or "country of origin" statistics. There is no need to specifically hide or distort this information, of course, but it is of interest only for law enforcers. Anybody else who asks for it usually have questionable motivations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Italy has the same, called "anagrafe", you need to update the registry every time you move to another city or even if you change street, since the registry not only tracks the relationships between individuals but the historical movements of single persons, and is also used in order to make you pay taxes about producing trash. Similarly when a child is born, the first thing to do for the parents is to go to the office and register the newborn, with the ability to recognize it, or not, for _both_ the father and mother, as your child. That is, the mother can pretend that the child she just gave birth is not her, legally, if she is not ready to have a family, and this is considered by Italians a fundamental right of women, even if it is rarely used. It's a bit annoying to deal with this registry normally but it's an useful thing.

<comment><USER17> Interesting case: Poland has an address register that is slowly being deprecated -- it is no longer necessary to ever update it and in increasingly fewer situations a record from that registry is required (and it would be very unpopular if people actually had to report to the government that they've moved).

I wonder what are trends related to such registers in other countries.

<comment><USER16> It is unlikely that it gets deprecated here. It's used for too many things. For instance one part of the free healthcare you get is a local doctor usually a few blocks from where you live where you can go for basic needs. This is also assigned based on your current address.

<comment><USER17> This also used to be the case in Poland. Now you can choose the GP you go to and change that decision IIRC twice a year. Choosing a doctor that's far away makes no sense, so there's no or little reason to restrict that choice to close doctors.

<comment><USER16> Makes sense indeed. GP means generic physician? Thanks.

<comment><USER18> General practitioner. Same difference though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. This in particular stood out to me:

      [T]he koseki ... is an integral part of Japanese family
      law that doesn't actually care about families beyond
      ensuring that the legally significant aspects of them
      are identifiable to the Rest of the World. Thus, a
      koseki extract today will show a marriage, but not
      whether the spouses are living together. The system
      also doesn't care (i.e., show) if the registered
      father is not the biological father. It doesn't care
      whom the kids live with after a divorce or if a
      divorced parent is paying maintenance or how often
      (or if) he sees his children.

<comment><USER19> Using the code tag for blockquoting puts mobile viewers in side scrolling hell. This is what I see: [http://i.imgur.com/sQhfLlR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/sQhfLlR.jpg).

<comment><USER8> Thanks for letting me know! Too late to update the original, so here's the text again:

> [T]he koseki ... is an integral part of Japanese family law that doesn't > actually care about families beyond ensuring that the legally significant > aspects of them are identifiable to the Rest of the World. Thus, a koseki > extract today will show a marriage, but not whether the spouses are living > together. The system also doesn't care (i.e., show) if the registered father > is not the biological father. It doesn't care whom the kids live with after > a divorce or if a divorced parent is paying maintenance or how often (or if) > he sees his children.

<comment><USER20> That interested me as well. Is there another system to record biological ancestry (potentially important for medical reasons), child custody (and who decides which gets custody in case of a conflict), and child support?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like another article where Americans finding out how the rest of the world doesn't use the same retarded systems as they do. What's next, an article about this marvelous invention called 'the metric system' that is used in Bolivia ?

<comment><USER22> Exactly my thought. Every European country I've lived in works in pretty much the same way. Of course saying it comes from Japan makes it look more sophisticated ;)

<comment><USER23> Actually no, the koseki system or similar can be found in other Asian countries like South Korea but not in Europe.

In France you can get a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, and you have a "livret de famille" that regroups all these information but that's a document that you own, not the administration. There is no registry that regroups all the information about a given family.

Also note that in Japan, a women getting married will be transferred from her parents' koseki to her husband's koseki. There is no such thing in Europe.

<comment><USER24> European countries don't have a family-centered system like the Koseki (or Chinese Hukou; Wikipedia says South Korea abolished their system a decade ago) where a document represents a family.

But several of them do have a population register (which is individual- centered, but with references up and down in the family tree). In Sweden you don't get birth or marriage certificates. If you want to prove your birth or marriage, you get your population registry extract which shows that you are registered as existing (proves birth) or married.

So they're the same in that they are based on current state rather than collecting event documents. But they're different in that one represents families, whereas the other represents individuals.

Japan also has a separate residency register. While the koseki shows who is in a family (birth/parents, marriage/children), the residency register shows where you live now/before (and is used for taxation). European countries with a population register simply use the same registry for both purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are two ways handling registration processes. One way is to develop a registration system as little as possible, but then hoping not to deal with the papers later, because of the mess made in the process. Or, you develop a system thoroughly in the first place so that you don't have to deal much with the papers later, because the system was developed to avoid mess. Why patch fundamentally broken systems anyway? Why develop an interdependent system for _personal_ data? There are different questions which reflect exactly the philosophy of eastern and western bureaucracy.

</comment><comment><USER26> _It is still impossible for couples to register a marriage without one legally assuming the other's surname, an antediluvian restriction that was nonetheless found constitutional by the Supreme Court last year._

Interestingly, a workaround for this is to marry a foreigner. Japanese who marry non-japanese citizens don't need to switch their surnames.

As a data format, koseki are interesting because they are tied up with citizenship in a weird way. [1] The _spouse_ variable only holds values of type _citizen_ so people who marry foreigners have their spouse listed in the free-form _description_ section. :-)

This has some drawbacks but in the case of having different surnames it gets you around the restriction.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koseki#Koseki_and_citizenship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koseki#Koseki_and_citizenship)

</comment><comment><USER27> The real weirdness in the US vs the rest of the world is not that you have to get a court to issue a divorce or that there isn't a central registry, but rather there are literally fifty separate systems, all with slight variations, and you're not locked into a particular one. Divorces used to easier to obtain in Nevada, so people would go there. Certain states adopted same sex marriage before others, so you'd go there.

</comment><comment><USER28> As a developer, the word that comes to mind for an analogy is "changelog".

</comment><comment><USER20> One question: who keeps the records?

In the US, there is a certain history of suspiciously convenient courthouse fires destroying property records. And then there are accidental fires---my mother late in life could not attend college classes because her high school had burned in the '50s and she had no way of providing she graduated. (I suppose there would be ways around the issue, but she didn't want to bother and thought it was funny.)

Anyway, seems like a good way to completely erase someone's existence.

<comment><USER29> I'm sure it's far less true than it used to be but historically, yes, a lot of US records existed only in paper form in some school or courthouse or town hall where they were subject to being lost in a fire, natural disaster, or just carelessness. Certainly it's been a plot point in many a book or movie where someone assumes an identity chosen because records concerning a person had been lost in some manner.

Based on stories I've head over the years, it can actually be quite challenging to get a passport if you can't lay your hands on your birth certificate or if that birth certificate doesn't match up with you because of some mistake or whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's pretty much same in ex-USSR countries. Even if you get divorce papers in court, you would still need to go with them to registry office and that's where divorce would really happen.

The downside is, that sometimes you would need to go to that exact registry office where your marriage was registered, name changed or your child born and it can be thousands of kilometers away from where you live now.

</comment><comment><USER30> Austria has the same basically. The interior ministry runs a few central registries for these things. You have a unique number hat follows you around and your records are linked through it. It's very convenient.

Not only does it simolify tings, it also has some other advantages. For instance becayse your car license olate is through that system linked to your home adress that automatically updates people with Austrian licdnse placea typically do not get clamped.

</comment><comment><USER31> Nice as this all seems, the process for accessing the information in one's koseki is amazingly primitive. Most times that you need to do something official in Japan as a Japanese citizen, a copy of your koseki is required. Open a bank account and you'll need one. Apply for a passport and you'll need one etc. You'll not only need an original hard copy transcript of your koseki (tōhon/short-form or shōhon/long-form), but it will need to be dated within the last 3 months.

How do you get one? Online? No. Got to visit your city/village/ward office. Any local city/village/ward office? No, it's got to be within the district where your koseki is held. OK, let's take a trip back to our hometown in the evening - surely there's a 24 hour kiosk in the lobby where I can print one out? No. Come during business hours, fill out a paper form requesting a transcript, take a number, wait in line to submit the request form. Go over what you wrote in the request form with an extremely nice and polite bureaucrat. Take another number to wait in line to pay about US$1.50 for the hard copy. Then a final number to pick up the hard copy. Wow.

Why's this so hard? Well, although the contents of the koseki are of course computerized, these records are held at the ward/village/city office level and not nationally. Sure, the police, immigration authorities and others likely have a way to access each ward office's system, but as a citizen you have to physically trudge down to the office in the region where your koseki is held and request a copy. Not so bad if you're living near your family (since your koseki is typically kept at the ancestral home of your family, not necessarily where you live day-to-day), but if you've moved across Japan or internationally, you're screwed. Hope you have a family member you can deputise to go get one for you or that you have a good number of frequent flyer points to burn.

The article seems to say it's pretty straight forward from overseas at any Japanese consulate. Well, not so much. Strangely enough, write access from overseas is pretty easy. Read access from overseas doesn't exist.

Case in point - my wife and I recently had a baby born in the Bay Area who is eligible for Japanese citizenship. No problems, we head to the consulate and fill out the paperwork, provide all the birth proof documents and pay a small fee. The consulate sends the birth details to the city/village/ward office where our koseki is held and that ward office adds our baby to it a week or two later. Now, we need a passport. Can we just ask the consulate to authenticate our baby since they just added him to our koseki? Nope. We have to fly to Japan to visit the city/ward office where our koseki is held, or deputize a family member in Japan to do so for us, obtain a hard-copy of the updated koseki, have it posted to us in California and we then bring it into the consulate to prove our baby's citizenship - citizenship that they themselves just authenticated a few weeks ago. Wow. On top of that, there's no way of knowing when our baby has been added, so we just need to ask our family members to go down once a week for the next few weeks, request and pay for a copy and when our son appears, claim success.

So yes, it's a great system, but it's so very paper and physical presence based that it hurts.

Surprisingly enough, especially for Japan, foreigners have it easier. Since foreign residents are not on a koseki (well, they are in the case that they're married to a Japanese citizen but only in the "comments" section of the koseki, not the actual core of it and that's a whole 'nother story), none of this paperwork is required when foreigners want to deal with the Japanese bureaucracy. Instead, foreigners are required to carry a plastic ID card (called a "Zairyu card" in its latest permutation) and this has all the necessary information. No 3 month expiry, no ward office visit. So, there's at least one area that non-Japanese have it easier in Japan that citizens!

<comment><USER32> As someone who carries a Zairyu card, I can attest to the weirdness of Japanese bureaucracies. The silver lining is that, in my experience, most (all?) ward offices are staffed with helpful people who generally are good about chasing down answers and maintaining a can-do attitude about bureaucratic matters. The waits aren't usually _too_ long either. You can definitely get caught in some Kafkaesque loops though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> There are a lot of examples here, here's one more;

In Turkey, there has been a sort of central family-record keeping thingy for ages. It's centrally held, you don't need to go to your hometown to get one, but you had to go to a government office in your district of residence(you still need to, if you want an official hard-copy) (some records are, like place of residence, are kept locally though(. There was a project to computerize all of the process, mernis, it started in the early 90s and finished sometime around 2007. Since then, for most official businesses, you don't need the official document, just your ID card will do (or for emergencies, just the ID number printed on your ID card).

The real odd thing about this system is, for non-usual stuff, you actually need to go to court and sue the government agency for the change. Filing for a divorce? You need to sue NVI for that. Changing your official name? Sue them. Sex change? Not sure about that, but probably yes.

Disadvantage to that is having all the state records kept centrally, and knowing how Turkey works, probably under very lax security. In fact, the entire database(at least a copy of it made for the 2009 elections) got leaked earlier this year.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is analogous to the Torrens system of land registration (called a "land registry" in the article), pioneered in South Australia in the mid 1800s. It has almost totally replaced Common Law title everywhere that the Common Law operates.

Prior to Torrens, land ownership was under Common Law. You owned land by buying a title or deed from the previous owner, who had bought from someone else, and so on.

If the chain was broken, you ran the risk that some day, someone would show up with an unbroken chain that ran back further than yours.

Naturally this created an ocean of bitter legislation, often populated by jaunty fleets of fraudulent documents.

The Torrens system essentially says: unless it's in the government register, no land ownership or change of ownership is valid. You can sign anything you like, say anything you like, join pinkies and make a pinky promise. Until you update the register, it doesn't matter.

It's a simple and effective system. Given that enforcing the law of property is one of the fundamental purposes of governments, it makes sense that they would simplify enforcement for themselves and their citizens.

Of course, IANAL, TINLA.

</comment><comment><USER29> I gather that it may vary by state, but in some places in the US it's apparently not even required to register births--which can cause problems for the children involved later on:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/invisible- girl/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/invisible-girl/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone have the link to the second part?

<comment><USER36> [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/07/10/issues/japa...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2016/07/10/issues/japans- discriminatory-koseki-registry-system-looks-ever-outdated/)

via the author's RSS feed [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/colin-pa- jones/feed/](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/author/colin-pa-jones/feed/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Basically then, event sourced rather than OO CRUD. Not surprisingly, it makes things easier when distributed, just like in micro-service architectures.

I like this a lot. England's Common Law system was created as a means for the powerful to remain powerful, not because it made any sense.

<comment><USER34> > _England 's Common Law system was created as a means for the powerful to > remain powerful, not because it made any sense._

The history of the Common Law and Equity is substantially more complex than you are making out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Swiss here. We have a small red booklet called «Familienbüchlein».

</comment><comment><USER39> Koseki is the root of Burakumin [http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2009/09/farewell_to...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2009/09/farewell_to_feer.cfm)

</comment><comment><USER40> Stupid question.

Do Japanese believe using the courts is a cultural nono?

In the USA there are definitely two types. Those that sue and those that feel it is sleazy or wrong.

<comment><USER41> I haven't been to Asia (yet), but I can say that in the "Western World" courts are overloaded with cases that should probably not go further than your local ombudsman which in itself is a very old concept found in millenia old civilizations, predating the court system as we know it. This is probably why courts in the US have quick processing of a group of independent, alleged criminal offenders. It's unfair to those accused of breaking the law as it is to the lawyers and maybe even the judge who has to decide in two minutes whether the accused should go to jail/prison while the case is progressing. I'm afraid to suggest fixing the latter, because law enforcement organizations would likely push for legislation to make it quicker and easier to put people in real prison without a hearing or trial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Great idea. It is similar to the system we have in the U.S. for property records, but for people.

</comment><comment><USER43> Also very useful to discriminate against undesirable strata of society. [1]

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

Isn't Big Government great?</comment>


Swarm Technologies settles illegal launch for $900k - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1503575/swarm-technologies-settles-illegal-launch-for-9000000/ <comment><USER2> What would the cost of regulatory compliance and licenses have been? $900k was probably cheaper and/or less hassle!

<comment><USER3> Their entire design premise was rejected - so quite expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Founded by aerospace engineers Sara Spangelo and Benjamin Longmier in 2017, > and backed by funding from NASA, the US Navy, and the National Science > Foundation

Whenever you break the law, it helps to have powerful friends.</comment>


Not a protocol fault: MtGox and transaction malleability - <AUTHOR> http://blog.oleganza.com/post/76213549017/mtgox-and-malleable-transactions <comment><USER2> "It's a protocol bug!" "It's not a protocol bug!" is sort of a moot point.

Bitcoin is a protocol in the sense that the IE6 rendering engine is a protocol: yes, rigorously examining what the client monoculture does and does not emit does allow you to describe some set-of-rules. Trying to create another Bitcoin client which attempts to agree with that set of rules is, ahem, _fraught_. You have to be bug-for-bug compatible with the Satoshi client implementation, not with the Satoshi client's declared behavior, design intent, or whatever constellation of PDFs and Wiki posts that the Bitcoin community anoints as "the protocol."

<comment><AUTHOR> Satoshi never had any "whitepaper spec" which proclaims "intended" behaviour. The protocol is whatever 100% of users agree with. It started with one implementation, today we have many of them. And we already had the protocol changed in a hard way ("hardfork") at least 4 times:

1\. In 2009 when they fixed OP_RETURN and OP_CODESEPARATOR bug allowing to spend anyone's coins.

2\. In 2010 when integer overflow created billions of BTC in one tx.

3\. In 2012 when "OP_HASH160 <hash> OP_EQUAL" script was redefined to be interpreted as a hash of a script (see BIP16, Pay-to-Script-Hash aka "P2SH").

4\. In 2013 when v0.8/v0.7 difference in database engines caused half of the network mine parallel blockchain due to obscure limit on number of file handles. The fix which was gradually introduced after reverting "incompatible" (although, longer) chain, was changing the protocol in a hard way.

The takeway from this: there's no parallel universe where a clearly defined spec in English is how all software operates to produce _exactly_ the same blockchain. The most precise description would be a computer code itself running on the same hardware everyone uses. Anyone coming up with a "spec" of Bitcoin will only have a "description", not a "prescription".

<comment><USER2> _In 2013 when v0.8 /v0.7 difference in database engines caused half of the network mine parallel blockchain due to obscure limit on number of file handles._

Can I just highlight, for generic web developers who might not parse this sentence, that this is like saying "One of the ways we make sure all clients agree on HTTP is by making sure that all clients and servers stay on the same point release of Oracle DB because when they didn't for a few minutes the entire Internet died in fire. We put the fire out by reverting the Oracle DB version on a few big sites, telling everyone else to downgrade as well, and posting on an out of band channel that if you were doing anything important with the Internet you might want to stop for a few hours because there were going to be two separate and very mutually incompatible Internets and one of them was going to suddenly vanish a couple hours later and it sure would suck if your mail/web browsing/Dropbox/etc went into that one."

Seriously. That actually happened.

<comment><USER3> That's not really what happened. The majority of Bitcoin clients need to agree whether or not to accept a block. In 0.7, a limitation of the database library was causing a very large block to be rejected, whereas in 0.8 the block was correctly accepted. This caused a blockchain split, with the 0.7 clients going one way, and the 0.8 clients going the other.

This sort of problem doesn't really occur on the web, so trying to draw an analogy to HTTP isn't going to help people understand the issue.

<comment><USER2> The point of the post is to make web developers say "But wait, Patrick, if HTTP actually worked like that that would be _batshit insane_. I mean, separation of concerns. Having to coordinate patch schedules worldwide across billions of clients. Being to-death-do-us-part committed to every library choice made by the first HTTP client. Wait, there could never be a second HTTP client, because you'd never be sure it worked warts-and-all like the first one. You'd probably have to do something like extract the One True HTTP Client into a wrapper program and, I don't know, call out to it from your web browser, so that changes in web browser chrome weren't tightly coupled to the One True HTTP client. Developers on the One True HTTP Client would probably refuse to help people who made competing HTTP clients, because they'd be building _potential existential threats to the Internet_ , and they'd probably gloat when those other developers suffered misfortune.

Please tell me, Patrick, that you're exaggerating and that Bitcoin doesn't work like this."

Guess what?

<comment><USER3> HTTP isn't trying to maintain a consistent, decentralised database. Bitcoin is. HTTP doesn't have a problem maintaining data consistency because that's outside the scope of the protocol.

You're suggesting the Bitcoin protocol is badly designed because it's had problems that HTTP hasn't had. But this is like saying aeroplanes are poorly designed compared to cars because the latter don't fall out of the sky when their engines die. Planes have to deal with problems cars don't, not because of poor design, but because of the nature of what they're made to do.

Bitcoin concerns itself with providing data integrity across a distributed system. The only way of doing this, without a centralised server, is to ensure that all the clients are performing the same calculations. If it turns out a significant proportion of clients are performing the _wrong_ calculation, then you have a problem. This isn't a problem inherent to Bitcoin; it's a problem with _any_ distributed system trying to maintain a consistent database.

<comment><USER4> Patrick is a very smart guy, which is part of the reason I (like you) am so confused as to why he thinks HTTP makes for a good analogy.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure that by HTTP client he meant rendering engines. And in this analogy the data integrity is "whatever crap I have to send to the client to get the expected output on all client machines". So it's somewhat fair to say that if you have wildly divergent interpretations of HTML rendering then you have a data integrity problem, since you can't guarantee that the same data will be interpreted the same way by all clients. None of that has to do with HTTP the protocol though... so I'm confused as to why HTTP the protocol was mentioned instead of HTML and rendering engines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Utter nonsense:

> If you need a quick answer: there's no bug in the Bitcoin itself.

> Is it a design issue in Bitcoin to allow slight changes in the transactions? > Yes, probably is.

<comment><USER7> A design issue is not a bug is it? This design issue seems to have lead to the bug in Mt Gox implementation though.

<comment><USER6> That's like saying "it's only illegal if you get caught".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting comment from the lead dev of Ethereum (a new cryptocurrency):

> aside from cryptocurrencies, there really is no other situation where the > fact that you can take a valid signature and turn it into another valid > signature with a different hash is a significant problem, and yet here it's > fatal.

[http://blog.ethereum.org/2014/02/09/why-not-just-use-x-an- in...](http://blog.ethereum.org/2014/02/09/why-not-just-use-x-an-instructive- example-from-bitcoin/)

</comment><comment><USER9> "Or, MtGox themselves see that they've been watching for transaction for too long and could automatically re-send another transaction"

There is no amount of time to wait until a bitcoin transaction is considered dead. Once its been communicated over the network, one has to assume it can be redeemed (incorporated into the blockchain) anywhere from never to a thousand years from now. Checking for txid even without malleable transactions is not helpful.

If a bitcoin payment has been issued, and a customer wishes it to be re- issued, the (only?) safe approach is to move the entire address contents to a new address, wait for that to hit the blockchain, and reissue the payment from the new address.

When different customer's balances are mixed in the same address, things get more difficult, and seeing as how its customary to pull balances from multiple addresses to satisfy the inputs a single transaction, I think mtgox has a claim to complexity beyond their ability to fix without help from the protocol itself.

As far as being affected by malleable transactions, an exchange should have a value on their 'books' for each customer and a value in the 'bank'/wallet for each customer. By keeping track of each set of addresses for each customer, like bitcoind does in its wallet, the two can be audited with each new block on the chain.

</comment><comment><USER10> How on earth can this 'fix' scale?

Let's imagine a future world where all monetary transactions go through Bitcoin. So the only way for me to find out if my transaction took place is to search the list of _every_ worldly transaction to spot mine?

<comment><USER11> Don't you already have to do that? You have to download the entire blockchain to see if a transaction happened. The fix is just to look for a different attribute on the data you're already looking at.

<comment><USER12> Precisely. If you're offering any type of merchant services (and Gox does), then you _already_ have to monitor all incoming transactions. All this means is that you have to keep a small list of the addresses of people with pending withdrawals, along with the corresponding Gox outputs, and then remove those addresses from the list as each block rolls in (at however many confirmations they determine they need).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "MtGox remembers a hash of that transaction (unique fingerprint of its contents)"

Technically, there might be collisions with hashes, they're in no way unique... Though the probability is rather low.

Anyways, this is a nice explanation of the real issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> For all practical purposes it's unique. Otherwise, Bitcoin is broken and useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > they instead should watch if the address X (specified by user) got amount N > (specified by user) from outputs Y, Z and W (used by MtGox).

This doesn't seem ideal.

<comment><USER12> Why? In order to be running an exchange like Gox, you have to be monitoring arbitrary addresses anyway.

It's a simple solution to a simple problem, and it's pretty telling that Gox had this problem to begin with (but doesn't surprise me at all).

<comment><USER15> Because if this mode of transfer ever becomes more than a toy, then there will be massive overloading of those values.

Can you come up with circumstances in which someone might choose to make successive transactions of the same value? Especially if that might confuse the issue?

You want to be able to tell if _this_ transaction completed, not if, say "A transaction that really looks like this one" completed.

<comment><USER16> No. "successive transactions of the same value [between the same people]" will not have the same transaction inputs. A 'transaction input' in bitcoin isn't the originator's pubkey, it's the output of a previous transaction. A second transaction which literally had the same inputs as a first would be a doublespend attempt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been through the other thread of another article declaring mt.gox is wrong, but I still don't see the solution.

What is the recommended solution by bitcoin implementers to verify a transaction succeeded, with transaction malleability existing ?

<comment><USER18> I am not bitcoin implementer, but I believe you need to maintain the list of pending withdrawal addresses, and monitor that the transactions with mtgox outputs sent to those addresses received at least 6 confirmations.

<comment><USER17> Where would those 6 confirmations come from ?

<comment><USER18> From the network. Or, at least as I understand it, Transaction Malleability basically means, that the "final" transaction can have different txid, so you shouldn't rely on it. But you can check if the transaction went through the same way as the bitcoin-qt does it, which is what BTC developer Gregory Maxwell recommends here:

[http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=319565...](http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=31956576)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> On a side note, if you believe in BTC, I cannot remember the last time you could buy it for less than $600 like today.

<comment><USER20> You mean like 2 months ago?

<comment><USER19> Had to look at the exchange charts - I guess there was a two day dip around December 18th but it quickly corrected.

<comment><USER21> "corrected"

I love this teleological market-speak.

<comment><USER19> Ha, yeah I watch NBR before the PBS Newshour some days so unfortunately I've picked up on some of the terminology. I jokingly refer to NBR as PBS's dark little corner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That explanation is so simple it just can't be right. :) Usually if two objects are equal their hashes should be identical too. That's the whole point of hashing since otherwise O(1) lookups aren't possible. Apparently the bitcoin protocol breaks that expectation since two semantically equal transactions can have different hashes.

<comment><USER23> The main and most important use of transaction hashes in Bitcoin is to ensure that, when blocks are mined, the transactions contained within those blocks are locked in and any modification of those transactions can be detected and rejected. Transaction malleability is meant to change the hash of the transaction, because that ensures no-one can mutate transactions after they're in a block. If you really need to track transactions in the way MtGox is doing, you should construct your own transaction ID that hashes everything _except_ the scriptSigs (which are malleable).

<comment><USER22> > Transaction malleability is meant to change the hash of the transaction, > because that ensures no-one can mutate transactions after they're in a > block.

Huh?

> If you really need to track transactions in the way MtGox is doing, you > should construct your own transaction ID that hashes everything except the > scriptSigs (which are malleable).

Yeah. Except the Bitcoin network also apparently produces its own hashes of transactions and those hashes include mutable data leading to undesirable situations like hash(txn1) != hash(txn2) even though txn1 == txn2. It's like hashing people by their name and age instead of name and date of birth. Next year you won't find them in your table because their age is different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone link to a better explanation? I'm not really satisfied by this blog post.

<comment><USER25> This is a good start: [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What Mount?

<comment><USER9> Mount Gox is a malapropism of the acronym MTGOX (which is expanded in other comments on this thread)</comment></comment>


iHeartRadio owner files for bankruptcy - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/15/iheartradio-owner-iheartmedia-bankruptcy/ <comment><USER2> So in case you're wondering how a bunch of radio stations got $20B in debt (yes, that's twenty billion US dollars) - the answer as always is a leveraged buyout.

From [https://www.forbes.com/2008/05/14/clear-channel-buyout- marke...](https://www.forbes.com/2008/05/14/clear-channel-buyout-markets- equity-cx_md_0514markets14.html):

"Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, agreed to a lower sale price of $17.9 billion or $36.00 per share of the radio company"

Wait, maybe the name "Bain Capital" rings a bell? That's because their leveraged buyout of Toys R Us saddled the company with so much debt they went completely out of business.

[https://nypost.com/2017/09/21/bain-capital-has-now- plunged-t...](https://nypost.com/2017/09/21/bain-capital-has-now-plunged-two- toy-retailers-into-bankruptcy/)

Also see [https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/sorting-through- the-...](https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/sorting-through-the- aftermath-of-private-equity-deals/)

There's really no reason for iHeartMedia to have all this debt other than Bain Capital did their thing.

<comment><USER3> I'm a bit confused...are you implying Bain Capital wanted these companies to go out of business? And if so, why? What's the point of investing into something that you want to force go under?

<comment><USER2> No, Bain Capital wanted their fees and after the buyout servicing the deb wasn't their problem. I'm not the best person to explain LBOs really.

<comment><USER4> Here's how an LBO generally works:

1\. PE company secures a loan in the company's name (usually contingent on a turnaround plan executed by the PE with a history of turning companies around)

2\. Company turns around and loans the money for purchase to PE firm

3\. PE firm buys the company

4\. PE firm runs the company, normally collecting management fees (paid out of the pool of cash used to buy the company)

5\. PE firm cashes out by IPOing the company (usually at the same or higher price paid during LBO process).

6\. PE firm uses the proceeds from the IPO (which the PE keeps because they are the sole shareholders; NOT the company itself) to pay back the loan.

The PE usually breaks even on the transaction itself once transaction fees are taken into account; but they make a killing on the management fees (which can be hundreds of millions a year). Normally, the company is left in roughly the same situation as before the buyout, just with a lot more debt on the balance sheet.

<comment><USER5> So the part I've never understood is why companies accept these offer. Are we talking about hostile takeovers? Or just already-failing companies that accept the turnaround plan because they're short on options?

It looks like investors and the PE firm have obvious ways to profit here, but I can't work out what the company gets out of this.

<comment><USER4> Usually this happens because the company has gotten into cash flow trouble. When that happens, the company's creditors lose faith in its ability to invest capitol in productive ways. But an LBO is usually the option of last resort. If you don't have cash to make payroll next month and you have 2500 employees, you take the LBO.

An LBO allows the company to raise cash to fund a turnaround; but the incentives of PEs are set up such that the PEs don't need to actually turn it around to make money — aggressively cutting costs is often enough. The creditors don't care because they get paid back on IPO and get to collect interest in the meantime.

The alternative is usually going to be a buyout by a competitor, chapter 7 reorganization or simply ceasing operations like Toys-R-Us is doing once their debt rating is so far past junk they can never qualify for an LBO. Then the company dies. This is the "service" PEs provide to the economy — they help wind down failing businesses in a somewhat orderly way while extracting maximum value into the economy from a company that is headed for the scrap heap. You can argue as to whether or not that's valuable.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, this makes sense.

I could never understand why a company takes an LBO instead of just taking out a massive loan against their assets directly, but this explains it. A combination of "the existing team isn't trusted to use that money" and "the creditors can collect without a full recovery" explain it nicely; PEs might theoretically be more objective at deciding when to restructure and when to strip assets.

<comment><USER6> I've invested in private equity funds across the entire spectrum. I mainly focused on the small to medium end of the market...

The bankruptcies of the large LBO deals skew the public's perception of the industry. Sure it has faults but the reality is much more nuanced than some of the views outlined above.

Yes there are large private equity firms that will acquire companies and overload them with debt, cut costs and sell prize assets. Yes there are many other firms who operate very differently. In the smaller end of the market, debt loads are much more conservative and returns are generated through moving into new geographies (i.e. opening a new store in MA), moving into adjacent markets (i.e. we sell tables. Let's move into the chair market), let's hire more sales people, acquire complimentary products to cross-sell etc. The list goes on. There are many positive qualities to private equity but the industry is tarred because of the large amounts of money. People on the whole don't like large amounts of wealth.

So why does a company sell to an LBO? Could be any number of reasons. The founder might want to retire. Maybe the kids inherited the business and no longer want to run it. Maybe the business is in dire straits and the current owner lacks the skill or the patience to turn it around. Maybe a company wants to sell a non-core division. Maybe a parent company is financial trouble and will sell assets. Maybe the price is right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> iHeartMedia does more than radio they also previously owned a bunch of television stations and do billboard advertising. You may recognize their former name "ClearChannel" a little bit better. I would say this not only signals how difficult it is to make money from radio broadcast but how difficult it is to make money from any type of broadcast. They make use of a bunch of towers and satellites which I think is probably where the returns are failing in comparison to the internet. That whole industry needs to change anyways they are all living in a different age. This is what happens when the leadership of such a big corporation becomes so exclusive they fail to adapt and promote people with fresh ideas. They live an extremely narrow vision of reality- so now this vision is paying them all back the dividends that they earned.

<comment><USER2> iHeartRadio makes billions of dollars in revenue every year, they just can't keep up with their debt payments from the leveraged buyout. Radio ads make plenty of money and stations aren't really that expensive to run.

edit: to be more specific, in 2016 they had $1.5B of operating income which is great. Too bad they had $1.8B of debt payments.

<comment><USER8> Also, outdoor advertising is quite profitable as well.

<comment><USER2> I think the outdoor advertising arm has been sold off from iHeartRadio.

[https://www.iheartmedia.com/press/clear-channel-outdoor- hold...](https://www.iheartmedia.com/press/clear-channel-outdoor-holdings-inc- sells-interest-adshel-joint-venture-partner-apn-news-media)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think these are good examples of the limits on economies of scale. Certain things work well when you consolidate them (One corporate headquarters, lower margin). But a large corporate office somewhere in corporate land does an awful job determining local taste and selling ad space.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is this the end game of consolidation of an industry? Where are the supposed advantages and efficiencies of all that merging and streamlining?

<comment><USER11> I mean, I think it's the end game of any capitalist, extract the maximum value from whatever resources are available. That generally requires acquiring and ultimately consolidating resources either drive the value of what is produced or dictate production costs. They are able to manufacture popularity through choosing what music is most widely available on their stations and streaming services. Then, they use that ability, along with the data they acquire, to decide what artists to book for what festivals and where. It's similar to Netflix using its streaming data to decide what original content to produce, down to the second, no less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Muzak, 2009. iHeart, 2018. One more heart, one more stake.

<comment><USER13> But where will people go to listen to 21 Pilots!?!? Won't someone think of the children for once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If only it was possible to do a LBO of Bain Capital...

</comment><comment><USER15> excuse me, what? they owe 20 billion dollars? That is way more than Spotify! Am I missing something here, what have they done with that money?

<comment><USER16> Bain capital, the same ones who killed Toys R US, bought them out with a loan. Extracted the loan money and turned it into debt saddled onto the victim company. Bain made a bunch of money and iHeart now magically has a bunch of debt. Free money for Bain and iHeart dies. Same story as Toys R US.

<comment><USER17> Bain lost money with Toys'R'Us (although they made money while killing KB Toys).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like iHeartRadio. Non-intrusive app on my phone and computer, it's free with very few ads. It's simple and I can just fire it up when I want some music. No libraries, no discovering music or sharing playlists with friends, it's simple and works.

</comment><comment><USER19> I do love radio, which is why I celebrate the continued demise of clear channel and their affilliates. You ruined what was left of radio. I 'heart' radio indeed.

</comment><comment><USER20> iHeartRadio is the company that nobody asked for, who attempts to shove their music down your throat with moderate success. The sooner it's gone, the better off the music industry will be.

<comment><USER21> You don't have to listen to the radio if you don't like what's on.

<comment><USER22> I don't _get_ to listen to what I want on the radio if they keep closing stations I liked.</comment></comment></comment>


Can Amazon's SimpleDB substitute for MySQL database? - <AUTHOR>

I'm developing a web app with only a couple people with small amounts of spare time and it would be great to "outsource" DB management to SimpleDB. I have heard SimpleDB can be slower than MySQL but it seems pretty fast so far w/o a large table. Does anyone have experience with it? <comment><USER2> Short Answer: No.

Long Answer:

SimpleDB is based off what every application developer wants to hear. Put your data here and it will just be available. No worries, no cares. For (relatively) small amounts of data, SimpleDB will definitely cut it. However, SimpleDB also limits your usage of that data. No nice normalized schema and joins for you. That makes development time much longer.

Of course, if you only have a small amount of data, it's pretty easy to manage MySQL or PostgreSQL. Database administration becomes hard when you have lots of data. But this is where SimpleDB just falls flat. In a single domain (roughly equivalent to a database), you can only have 250,000,000 attributes (cells). That sounds like a huge number at first, but if you have a table with 10 columns, you're down to 25M rows. Still, a lot, but not exactly no-worries. Considering that you'll probably want multiple tables with maybe 100 or more columns, you can see that it just doesn't support large web applications.

Amazon has set up an "infinitely scalable" database that has hard limits that aren't particularly high. Open source relational databases are easy and reliable when you aren't dealing with the scale of a Digg or Flickr. The only reason to go with something less useful (no joins, limited querying) would be to scale better. Amazon's hard limits on SimpleDB mean that it just doesn't scale. So, why use something less easy when the benefit isn't there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice and everybody else's too... I still feel like I may at least give SimpleDB a try by making a new domain for each table and distributing the large tables over multiple domains (my data is amenable to splitting up). I may make two copies of some domains that are split up in different ways so I don't have to query all of the domains associated with a table.

Are JOINs used that often? My thought was that I could export the data to a mysql database for analysis if I needed to do any very demanding crunching.

<comment><USER2> JOINs are awesome. They're expensive operations, no doubt, but they make creating a web application a TON easier. If you're going to limit yourself to the way that Google or Amazon has to develop web applications, you're getting rid of your primary advantage.

Let's say you have a site with logins and comments. Comments are by one of the logins with a nice foreign key in a relational database or you have to add part of that person's info to each comment with something like SimpleDB (if you want to display the name next to the comment, you place the name there). So, then someone changes their name in the logins table - it happens. With the foreign key and a join, all the comments appropriately show the correct name. With SimpleDB, you have to go through and update every single comment that person has made to reflect the changes.

Take something like Facebook. Every single mail message, every single wall post, every single friend, every single Event, every single group, etc. would have to be updated to reflect your new name if it wasn't referential. Now, Facebook probably isn't referential. They're big. They probably spend a ton of time/money keeping that stuff in sync. In fact, they probably run those types of updates as low-priority background jobs (so while your new name shows up in your profile now, it is a while before it gets propagated). That's all guessing, btw, but you can see how much more difficult it is to keep non- relational data in sync.

Places like Facebook have to operate differently because JOINs do have cost. It's amazingly unlikely that a relational database won't suit your site due to scalability. If you're looking to make a cool site, do it the easy way first, then scale. Otherwise, someone else will build it faster than you.

Non-relational data seems easy and it is for simple things. It might be that your site fits very nicely in a non-relational model. Do be aware of the differences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are fundamental differences that are more significant than speed or administration.

SimpleDB is "eventually consistent" - that is, when you write, a subsequent read might not immediately reflect the change. There's also no such thing as a join, although you can approximate it.

I think of SimpleDB as searchable metadata storage. It's useful, but not a drop-in replacement for a traditional database.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have heard of inconsistencies with slow-down, but also quite a few successes. I hear Amazon is improving it consistently though.

I would look at it this way: If you do not have time to manage it, then either the DB or other aspects will suffer - It is likely that SimpleDB will better this.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a hunch that you may be worried about scaling problems since you are looking at SimpleDB instead of MySQL. For an app in its infancy you shouldn't be too worried about scaling problems. Just use a MySQL database for now. Thousands of webapps can't be wrong!

</comment><comment><USER6> Getting SimpleDB working well isn't going to be less work than getting MySQL working well. SQLite might be a better alternative.</comment>


Giant arthropods, then and now - <AUTHOR> http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/giant-arthropods-then-and-now/

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised that the blog post just submitted here traced the history of the square-cube law only as far back as Haldane, when it was actually Galileo who introduced that fundamental idea to Western thought.

<http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=16793>

<http://dinosaurtheory.com/scaling.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square-cube_law>

[http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi///notebooks/physic...](http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi///notebooks/physical- biology.html)</comment>