New 31-km-long International Linear Collider ready for construction - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2013-06-international-linear-collider-ready.html <comment><USER2> Especially "note the soccer pitch for scale", which has not been drawn to scale, it's blown up by a considerable margin! That machine is HUGE!

UPDATE/EDIT: The "socker pitch for scale" might be the 2 pixel wide small dot, almost indistinguishable from the beginning of the curved arrow pointing towards the blown-up version of the soccker pitch. One can hardly see it in the zoomed version of the image, with a little bit of imagination.

(ILC overall length: 31km, 724 pixel. Socker pitch: 80 pixel, 31km / 724px * 80px = 3.42 km; a vector drawing corresponding to the screenshot can be found in the technical design report, Volume 1, §3.1.1, fig. 3.1)

<comment><USER3> You can tell the graphic's written by someone not from the US, since their layman's measurement is a soccer field, not a football field.

There'll probably soon be confused replies to this comment from Europeans: "But that _is_ a football field!"

As to why we have two games,

(a) A game where you occasionally kick the ball, but mostly you toss the ball and carry it around,

(b) A game where you occasionally hit the ball with your head, knee or chest, but mostly kick the ball around, and touching the ball with your hands is not allowed,

Why (a) is called "football," and (b) is not, I don't know. Historical accident, maybe?

Sports is definitely not my strong point. I would probably have been better at gym class if it'd been about things like the etymology of the word "football" and the history of the sport, but alas, these facts were lacking from my formal education and aren't important enough for me to Google.

<comment><USER4> Historically, football was closer to (a)

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

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

"By some accounts, any means could be used to move the ball to a goal, as long as it did not lead to manslaughter or murder."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lol an island per-disposed to earth quacks to host the most advanced particle collider built yet. There batter be are very good reason for this. That is worth the risk. Otherwise try Romania it's practically abandoned these days with all the citizens leaving to work in west europe.

<comment><USER6> The currently-largest linear accelerator (SLAC) is located right next to the San Andreas fault in earthquake-prone California.

<comment><USER5> So because it worked before and we didn't have any problems we should do it again without considering the risks?</comment></comment></comment>


Eric Schmidt to EU: Accept Uber-style Disruption or Face Unemployment - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/09/22/eric-schmidt-to-european-union-accept-uber-style-disruption-or-face-unemployment/

<comment><USER2> If technological disruption is going to cause mass unemployment regardless, or the shifting of the burden onto "contractors" as Uber likes to refer to them, why should the EU accept it? I'm not sure what leverage SF startups have against nation-states that would prefer the well-being of their citizens over the pure free market "winner takes all" these marketplace startups (Uber, Taskrabbit, Homejoy) are advocating for.

Internet-based disruption? Easy. Physical world disruption using public infrastructure and slave wage labor? Not so much.

<comment><USER3> I think part of the game plan of that physical world disruption is not actually giving states a choice in the matter.

It's an interesting sort of revolution action -- to merely will a free market into being and ignore the existence of the state until you become big and rich enough to break its back.

<comment><USER2> Is "Just take an Uber" going to be the new "Let them eat cake"?

If the NSA can siphon data between Google datacenters, who is Google going to complain to when a government severs their fiber? They don't appear to be doing so well in China, so clearly it can be done.

<comment><USER3> I remember when the thread about Uber's problems in Germany appeared, several German posters mentioned that they were perfectly satisfied with the existing, regulated system there.

Uber's argument that regulation = 'innovation stifling economic collapse' doesn't always track, not every market is New York or SF and not everyone is willing to accept at-will employment for slave wages with total personal liability.

Still, I think it will be interesting to see how far Uber is willing to push and how hard states are willing to push back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought Uber wasn't banned, only UberPOP, because that is really in direct violation of a number of rules.</comment>


The Disappearing Mass Housing of the Soviet Union - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/03/the-disappearing-mass-housing-of-the-soviet-union/518868/ <comment><USER2> I think that there is a lot of "the grass is always greener" type of feeling in Eastern Europe. The panel houses are not fundamentally bad places to live, but there is this default feeling, that it is somehow worse than the west. A lot of people in Prague have this feeling that the entire US looks like the New York that they know from the sitcoms.

Those panel houses which have been renovated and their elevators replaced are really nice. All of the buildings are painted different collors and the whole place looks prety idilic. Only real problem for the residents, is that it is hard to rase kids when you have one and a half bedrooms...

Now, Czech culture has become generational. For almost the majorty of my friends, the older generation lives in a panel house. Those are the grandmas and grandpas of my peers. The parents of my peers have bought a newer appartment somewhere else. And they have left the appartment in the panel house to their batchelor children, who like having cheep/free housing to live in till they get married.

However, there are also some massive developments at the edge of the city, where there are 20-30 panel houses, all huge, and no good public transport. The green areas have been replaced with parking lots and anyone who comes close wants to kill themselves.

It is shocking to me, how two buildings built from the same plans, 30 minutes appart, can give such a different impression. One seems like a dream and the other seems like dystopia.

<comment><USER3> Quick question: Is the New York of sitcoms supposed to present "good housing"? The two most famous New York sitcoms that come to mind (namely Seinfeld and Friends) present rather small and basic apartments, people using in-building shared washers and driers, doesn't look any better than the ridiculously small apartments we have in Paris.

<comment><USER4> Seinfelds apartment seems pretty huge to me, and i dont live anywhere near as expensive as New York

[http://img00.deviantart.net/15bd/i/2013/039/8/f/jerry_seinfe...](http://img00.deviantart.net/15bd/i/2013/039/8/f/jerry_seinfeld_apartment_floorplan_by_nikneuk-d5h2sse.jpg)

similarly the main apartment in friends seems pretty large

[http://pre14.deviantart.net/3e01/th/pre/i/2016/036/8/8/frien...](http://pre14.deviantart.net/3e01/th/pre/i/2016/036/8/8/friends_apartment_s_floorplans___version_2_by_nikneuk-d8flr3a.jpg) \- note that this diagram is for both the girls apartment and the guys apartment across the hall, so we are looking at two apartments here

quick credit to the artist of these diagrams, they have a ton of other shows on their deviantart page[1]

[1][http://nikneuk.deviantart.com/gallery/](http://nikneuk.deviantart.com/gallery/)

<comment><USER5> "friends" were indeed huge for such young people...however Seinfeld in-show was supposedly successful enough to buy his father a cadillac as a birthday present, so I can more readily accept that he could afford a relatively spacious 1 bedroom apartment in 80's/90's NYC (remember that the city used to be a lot more affordable back then).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having grown up in one of these myself in ex-Soviet country, I hate them with passion. The quality of utilities is awful: sewage pipes get clogged all the time and whole buildings smell like piss more often than not, thermal insulation was practically non-existent and tried to be compensated by extensive heating that had poor circulation and no way to be adjusted flat-by- flat basis, so if you live in bottom floors you would have to open windows in the middle of winter, and if you live in the upper floors, you have to sleep with your clothes on and few layers of blankets. Sound isolation was also so poor, you didn't even need to turn on TV or radio, because you could hear neighbor's clearly. The whole blocks of the same, bleak, monotonous houses are also very depressive place to live in. Currently most of the remaining _Khrushchyovkas_ are getting renovated (something like this: [http://www.manostatyba.info/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/mazei...](http://www.manostatyba.info/wp- content/uploads/2016/08/mazeikiai1-e1391010294723.jpg)), but I shudder even to the idea living in any of them again.

<comment><USER7> I told this above: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13837463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13837463)

maybe you will find this kind of renovation interesting.

<comment><USER6> Yes, there has been a long discussion on what to do with these buildings. Some experts wanted to raze them to the ground and build new ones, but the easier (temporary) solution of renovation was chosen, because it would require too much of government funds and there are also law issues as there isn't many legal means to move stubborn flat owners from their property if they don't do want to and as mostly elders live in these places now (many of them even since it was built), this is a big issue.

<comment><USER7> It's a natural reaction, avoid the hugh and costly efforts. But, at least in France, the impact of these buildings, in none wealthy [1] places, led to very deep social problems. Racism, poverty, insalubrity..

Destroying them seems the most effective solution as of now. It changes people living there mindset, it removes the memories of the issues attached to the architecture.

<comment><USER7> for the curious, that theory is quite possible, I don't have data on who was displaced by the "rework". That said the population didn't change much, still cosmopolitan, 3rd gen of immigrants from Africa (north or west).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the 90s I had a girlfriend from Moscow and very early on she played the film Irony of Fate[1] for me, to help explain Russian culture. It is a classic comedy based on how identical the housing blocks were at the time. A man gets drunk, gets on a plane, forgets which city he is in (Moscow or Leningrad/St. Petersburg), and goes to an identical street in the wrong city, opening an identical door with the same key. Hilarity ensues.

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

<comment><USER9> Tariverdiev's score of this film has recently been released, and it's really nice:

[https://tariverdiev.bandcamp.com/album/the-irony-of-fate- ori...](https://tariverdiev.bandcamp.com/album/the-irony-of-fate-original- score)

I think my favorite track is "Along My Street for Many Years."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My wife and I had an interesting observation about these apartment blocks.

They were built really quickly, often on the outskirts of cities, where there was plenty of undeveloped land. They were often placed in large groups. The landscape was bleak at the beginning. Huge gray apartment blocks spaced in a random fashion.

There was a lot of space between them. Large empty spaces. Sure, footpaths were set down, grass was sown, and small trees were planted. But in the beginning, they looked bleak.

Fast forward thirty or forty years. The trees have grown huge. The playgrounds are no longer depressing. On the outside, they are actually very nice. They were insulated and painted and are no longer drab. These developments have a park vibe to the, with the large trees, asymmetric building placement, and large open spaces.

This is not taking into account the conditions inside, as those varied from country to country, city to city, and development to development. Many have been modernized, but some still have the fundamental problems mentioned by others.

The moral of the story is that large trees and open spaces make for pleasant living.

<comment><USER7> In France the melody played backwards. Housing blocks, which I've read were also praised by communists there, started as little paradises. Not too disconnected, out of the box parks, daily shops (groceries, hair, ..), some tiny lakes, sport fields even some times.

Fast forward decades, many of them became ruins and barely liveable places (for tons of different factors).

Now they've been a thorn in France's shoe, some neighborhood have been recently deeply remodeled. A good 50% of blocks, towers and bars have been destroyed and replaced by smaller blocks. The difference in scale makes the place liveable. I couldn't believe the impact on the city.. Having smaller heights and tinier blocks instead of prison like huge and dense structures brings back life and peace.

Previously there were renovation plans but they just fixed breakage and applied a new layer of paint. These would quickly become dirty, with graffitis back soon too. But the new blocks are still clean after 2 years.

My feeling is now that housing projects were a necessary error of the post war era; but they're far from optimal for a sense of good life.

<comment><USER11> Could it be that as the capacity of the neighbourhoods decreased, prices soared?

<comment><USER7> Meaning the poorest just ran away from the place, and a new wealthier population is now living here, explaining why the new buildings are still "clean" ?

<comment><USER11> Well, something had to change, and I doubt it was the effect delta from high rise aesthetic. We all probably seen plenty of run down, broken glass and graffiti yet low-rise neighbourhoods.

What often happens with projects in Europe is as metropolitan areas expand, the then-outskirts where the blocks originally were become attractive located land. Not sure the mechanics of this in France though, but could be the same dynamics.

<comment><USER7> ha, I messed up.. I added a complementary comment but I answered the wrong post ..

Here's the added paragraph [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13841394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13841394)

<comment><USER11> > That said the population didn't change much, still cosmopolitan, 3rd gen of > immigrants from Africa (north or west).

I don't think ethnic composition matters as much as income bracket. Middle class people tend to have both means and priority to care after their property.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Grew up in one of those. Then moved "up" from a 5 story to a 9 story building but same idea.

Many downsides to those indeed, but that feeling of moving to an new apartment after waiting in line for years and years. I still remember it to this day. I even had my very own tiny room.

Interestingly even though those houses were old they were pretty solid, and isolated noise better than a few American apartment building I've lived in, with walls made from drywall and wood.

<comment><USER13> Some of them were designed with pretty external tile detailing. But it typically got trashed in transport. Overall, interior finishing was better than early Holiday Inns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are a lot of housing blocks just like this across the USSR. I've visited a number of them in former East Berlin ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau)). They aren't pretty on the outside, but some have been modernized into higher- end apartments on the inside.

As for the units that haven't been modernized, they're still better quality housing than what you find in lower income neighborhoods in the United States. I wouldn't be thrilled to live in one, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.

</comment><comment><USER15> The embedded street view of a five-story "Khrushchyovka" actually looks pretty nice. Very green, narrow streets, and car-free passages between buildings.

My mom lived in a similar style building in Poland. The quality wasn't great, but my cousins have renovated some of their units to really nice sleek modern apartments.

<comment><USER16> As a westerner that spent time in Poland and lived in one of these buildings (in a renovated unit), I can say there were things to like. The best part is like you say, the green spaces between the buildings, particularly when you had a view on them from one of the upper floors. Very peaceful on the balcony. Plus the stairs were good exercise :)

<comment><USER17> Yeah, this is pretty much where I grew up - loved walking between the buildings, lots of places to play and I never felt unsafe:

[https://www.google.pl/maps/place/Braszczok,+email@example.com...](https://www.google.pl/maps/place/Braszczok,+email@example.com,19.130759,3a,75y,85h,88.42t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3lPewmdRaYz_QXq- OZ3W-A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D3lPewmdRaYz_QXq- OZ3W-A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D68.61956%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x4716bded8531f8ed:0x3459f10b4264b1c4!8m2!3d49.9846378!4d19.1449642!6m1!1e1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> \- I don't think they're actually going to demolish those. Where are the money for that? They didn't even begin to explain how whis is going to work economy- wise.

\- Now is precisely the worst time for projects of that scale. The only mass housing the modern Russia can build is 25-story ugly buildings without parking, trees, roads, schools but with chilling winds between the apartment towers. Urban planning and landscape design are completely nonexistent.

\- Compared to US or Western Europe, people are cramped into tiny apartments. No suburbia. No gardens. No neigbours. No roads. No backyard, no place to play. Walkable tho, if you are lucky.

\- The quality of urban layout was actually dwindling all the time. Stalinist 5-storeys were okay (green, near to public transportation, with shops), 5-storey block khruschevki were worse (no more shops, worse apartments), 9- to 17- block brezhnevki were even worse (further from city centers and public transit, snow hurricanes between tall towers, no infrastructure, no trees), and what gets built today is abysmal.

\- So are they going to replace okay-ish 5-storeys with this:

[http://varlamov.ru/2210604.html](http://varlamov.ru/2210604.html)

\- For some reason, people still buy those apartments. Even given choice. It's a complete mystery to me. If you ask a Russian which car he wants, he'd probably go for a sport BMW. But ask the same about apartments, and he'll promptly point to concrete coffin on the outskirts.

Disclaimer: happy resident of an apartment in 1901 built house in SPb.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. Myself spend 25+ years in 12-storey brezhnevka. Done massive renovation inside. Outside of building even after 25 years, don't change much in better way, only previously empty place is now occupied by somewhat same ~12 brezhnevka.

It's like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infill) but without planning, just randomly.

People buy those apartments because there is no much chose. Myself I don't really know any alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Most of the Russian economy is based on exploiting (Gas, Oil, Steel etc.) and/or reliance (Metro, Railways, Housing, Water Treatment, Powerplants) on Soviet era infrastructure. The high levels of corruption in government and instability of investments has made the primary goal of owners and investors to gain as much profit as possible and get it out of the country - I don't expect any really positive developments for decades.

</comment><comment><USER21> I am biased as I lived in one of those for 20+ years, but I think they couldn't be replaced quickly enough.

Atrocious housing stock.

<comment><USER22> I haven't lived in one nearly as long, but I find them okay for the most part. I'm a US expat so it took me a bit to get used to the rather compact nature of the apartments in St. Petersburg, but while the outsides of these buildings look like they're begging to be torn down, most people have done some amazing modern renovations with the actual apartments themselves. My partner's mother has a very lovely multi-room apartment, and my only complaint with it is just that the shower room is far smaller than I'm used to.

In SPB at least, new construction is going up as fast as they can do it, and while a lot of it is done in more remote areas (end of Metro lines), there is plenty to support people who live in those areas. Dozens of full grocery stores within walking distance at the base of every complex, bus transit is plentiful and relatively frequent (compared to US bus schedules anyways), and the developers/city do seem to try to create good public places for families, such as playgrounds and parks. I have to echo what a lot of others have said, it's nice to be able to walk through the complexes and not have to worry too much about cars. The complexes closer to the city proper have some difficulty though with cleanliness just because a lot of the gardens and embankments aren't well tended to or the infrastructure built to contain the dirt has finally given out after 60 some years, and no one has bothered to fix it. The city tearing up roads and grass embankments to replace ancient plumbing doesn't help much either.

It's not perfect, obviously - the newer buildings are mostly small one or two room apartments, but they have modern amenities, are wired up with modern network and electrical, and overall look nice.

Don't think they'd ever fly in the US though...just not "personal" enough.

<comment><USER23> > Don't think they'd ever fly in the US though...just not "personal" enough.

I wonder if that's really true. Personally I hate paying rent ... absolutely hate it. Most of my day is spent either at office or at coffeeshops/bars for work and again in gym/bars/coffeeshops/traveling after work/on the weekends. A house is just a place to sleep and cook when I have some time. I absolutely hate paying ~10% of my paycheck for rent; so if we had such "impersonal" but functional residences, I would gladly live in them.

<comment><USER22> I think this has been tried a few times in multiple cities. Seattle had a thing where people lived in really tiny aparmtents (like one room with shared amenities in a public area), and there was some conflict over it but I can't recall what it was. The residents were happy, but for some reason the city and neighbors weren't.

And my personal experience is that people would in general dislike it, with a preference for a private space. I remember comments about the apartments I had when I lived in the US being "small"; I'm of the same opinion as you that a home is pretty much just a place to rest, cook, and clean up, and if I could find a smaller place with the few amenities I wanted, I would.

But that doesn't really seem to be what people are interested in, and the few smaller living spaces available are usually inflated in price due to them having been a fad at one point.

The idea of apartment ownership is also a bit different in the US versus abroad, as my partner's family owns their apartment - they can do the floors, drill into walls, remodel the bathroom, all without anyone else's approval. Such renovations are considered pretty standard and from what I'm told they're considered already as part of the cost of purchasing an apartment. The location and the space is more important than what it looks like.

Compared to apartments in the US that are pretty clear about what sort of decorating and remodeling is and isn't allowed, and the sense of home is much different.

<comment><USER24> That's true. I bought my first house (I'm in the US) because I wanted to be able to alter my living space - plant a garden, turn a bath into a shower, upgrade a circuit from 15 amps to 30. Even when there's no disputing the change is an improvement, landlords don't like it when you modify their property, and I don't really blame them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "What we find in Western societies is that even if you're the owner of your own apartment, there's still an understanding of community ownership. It wouldn't be possible just to demolish these buildings and replace them today."

Pretty frustrating sentiment. This is why we have a housing crisis in the bay area, NIMBYism.

<comment><USER12> > Pretty frustrating sentiment. This is why we have a housing crisis in the > bay area, NIMBYism.

It's very frustrating indeed when you lived all our life in that apartment, your pension is minimal just enough to scrape by, and some developer (probably corrupt, in bed with the city mayor) comes and kicks you out so they can build a fancy apartment building to sell it to some multi-millionaire.

I am sure it' s just like the bay area :-)

<comment><USER26> Say what you want about the soviet model, but with an ample, cheap supply of housing stock you could just buy a new flat from the house next door

<comment><USER11> No, you couldn't buy anything really. There was tremendous housing shortage throughout all USSR existence, and the apartments were distributed. There were some building "cooperatives", but they were massively subsidized too, with the spots rationed and queued for many years ahead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> These buildings were built with many intentional shortcuts (by design). The real tragedy however was to allow their construction in seismic zones. One of the reasons why so many people died in the Spitak earthquake is that many of these Khrushevkas collapsed like a house of cards.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Armenian_earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Armenian_earthquake)

</comment><comment><USER28> i think this should be the default welfare housing you get for nothing and a canteen that gives free slop.

<comment><USER29> You think children on welfare should be fed slop?

<comment><USER30> If by slop he basically means stew, that certainly beats food stamps used at typical american "fast food" and other diabetes-causing sodas, twinkies, etc.

<comment><USER29> I don't see why one would have only those two choices when trying to feed children whose parents are unable to provide for them.

<comment><USER28> what about 365 different vegan meals throughout the year, and those are free for the kids?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Asynchronous CPU, MIPS  - <AUTHOR> http://ca.olin.edu/2008/async/home.html <comment><USER2> This stuff is really cool. One of my college professors, Rajit Manohar, was one of the guys who did a lot of the major research into async VLSI in the 90s. He and a few of his colleagues founded a company in San Jose (Achronix) that designs and builds async FPGAs.

It's an amazingly different way of thinking about computing. Generally async designs take up more physical die space (because of things like dual-rail logic), but the power savings can be pretty significant since you're not running a clock... basically the logic runs as fast or as slow as it needs to, and doesn't do much of anything when idle.

I took a class where we designed and did a little layout for some CPU-subset blocks. It was fun, but often very challenging. At least at the time, there weren't many (any?) good test/validation tools. A friend of mine has been working on one for the past 8 years or so (<http://www.csl.cornell.edu/~fang/hackt/>), first as a part of his PhD thesis, later as a part of his job.

It's been years since I've touched this stuff... if I'd continued down the EE path (like many others, I switched to software post-college) I'd (ideally) be doing async stuff now.

<comment><AUTHOR> You may find that talent much in demand in the years to come.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This feels like a lot of my class projects: fascinating idea, some good work on it, and then "we ran out of time, here's a pretty web page and a report". Ah, memories. :-)

I've really enjoyed asynchronous design. Did you know that it's possible to make an async n-bit adder that works in O(lg lg n) average time? Or that you can make a low-power CPU that does all its operations one bit at a time, and just stops sending bits when it comes to the leading zeros? It's fun stuff.

(My only contribution to the world of async design was a smaller dual-rail completion detector. It was pretty sweet, and I'm eternally proud of it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I ran in to all this because of some talks with other HN'ers about computing fabrics, one of the big questions is 'clocked' or 'free running'.

That brought me to post my ideas on using 'life' as a very basic computing fabric, it's already proven to be Turing complete, so now to make it run without a global clock.

That would prove that a clock-free computing fabric of arbitrary size is a real life possibility.

I think it can be done, I'm not 100% sure yet.

That adder sounds like a bit of magic, do you have a link for that?

I can picture the cpu that 'sleeps on 0', basically the transitions are what clocks it forward so as long as you keep sending it 0's it simply never changes state right? (no state changes -> minimal power consumption).

<comment><USER3> Someone's already figured out a way to run Conway's Game of Life asynchronously. Check it out:

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/wrapper.jsp?arnumber=10298...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/wrapper.jsp?arnumber=1029886)

I didn't read the paper carefully enough to be sure how it works, but it looks like each cell (or region of cells) maintains a count of how many generations have passed, and it blocks until adjacent cells have caught up to it. So time propagates across the board like waves on a pond.

> That adder sounds like a bit of magic, do you have a link for that?

Sure! Here's the paper:

[http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/async/publications/cheng- unger-t...](http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/async/publications/cheng-unger- theobald-tc2000.pdf)

I'll summarize it briefly. You know about ripple carry adders, where the carry bits propagate across the adder and it takes O(n) time? Well, the adder for each bit can sometimes precompute its carry output. If both inputs are 1, it knows that its carry output will be 1. There are some other tricks like that. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that an asynchronous ripple carry adder can operate in O(lg n) average time, and an asynchronous carry-lookahead adder can work in O(lg lg n) average time. Or about twice as fast as a synchronous carry lookahead adder, according to transistor-level simulations.

> I can picture the cpu that 'sleeps on 0', basically the transitions are what > clocks it forward so as long as you keep sending it 0's it simply never > changes state right? (no state changes -> minimal power consumption).

Asynchronous design is like ideal clock gating: when part of a processor doesn't need to do anything, it just stays idle and doesn't dissipate dynamic power. In the example of a bit-serial length-adaptive datapath that I mentioned, the leading zero bits are simply ignored, and no processor work needs to be done to deal with them. Here's a paper on it:

<http://vlsi.cornell.edu/~rajit/ps/bitsnap.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> > it looks like each cell (or region of cells) maintains a count of how many > generations have passed,

Hah!

That's _exactly_ what I came up with :)

I finished it at 5 am this morning and it works.

The code is here: <http://ww.com/asynclife.php.txt>

Thanks for the other papers, I'll be reading.

edit:

I've written a blog post about all this:

<http://jacquesmattheij.com/asynchronous+life>

I can't read the IEEE paper without paying for it, so I think I'll forego the honour of doing so, pity because I would like to see what they came up with exactly.

Especially whether or not they clued in to the fact that if you have a 'generation' counter you only need the lower two bits of it to keep going forever.

<comment><USER3> Oh man, that's awesome! Have you considered modeling a more "real-world" computing fabric? Your cells would have randomly-distributed computation and communication delays, and you could make some sort of visualization of the time waves propagating, and it would just be really cool.

I initially didn't think this would be possible to implement in simple physical hardware, but your insight that you only need a two-bit time counter changes things.

Of course, ultimately, I think what you'd want to look at is amorphous computing. It's a fascinating new branch of computer science that looks at organizing a large number of unreliable small processors, sensors, and actuators, with only local communication, into a working system. Here's the big intro paper (Abelson and Sussman are among the authors, BTW):

[http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/amorphous/papers/ai...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/amorphous/papers/aim1665.pdf)

I think you'll really enjoy amorphous computing. It's already getting some use in wireless sensor networks, especially the stuff having to do with establishing reliable communication channels, or figuring out the spatial distribution of the sensors based on ping times, or keeping clocks more-or- less synchronized.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Oh man, that's awesome!

Thanks :) It was a lot of fun.

> Have you considered modeling a more "real-world" computing fabric?

That's what this is leading in to, the simplest unit is just a way for me to know that it is doable. If I can't do 'life' then there is no point in going any further with it.

One of the HN members here is very far in coming up with a higher level concept but I feel that it needs to be done from the 'gate level' up.

> Your cells would have randomly-distributed computation and communication > delays, and you could make some sort of visualization of the time waves > propagating, and it would just be really cool.

I did that for a bit, it is easy enough to show the generations as colours.

> I initially didn't think this would be possible to implement in simple > physical hardware, but your insight that you only need a two-bit time > counter changes things.

Yes, that's what made me really happy :) I realized that with a 'full' generation count you could make it work but that would always limit the maximum generation count to the number of bits in the counters. So why not turn it around and see how few bits you can use and handle the 'wrapping' properly. The number is 2, and that's low enough to use a simple 4-to-1 demultiplexer to select the right state line (current or previous generation).

> Of course, ultimately, I think what you'd want to look at is amorphous > computing.

I had not heard the term before, more reading to do!

> I think you'll really enjoy amorphous computing.

Yes, that sounds like it is exactly the way to go.

I will write a fair sized article at the end of this month about where I feel computing is headed, this as a follow up on the new years day posting about what we think the future will bring.

I thought the question was an important one and I'm hitting two birds with one stone here, first the interest in cell computing and second the information I'm gathering to answer that question about the future.

Fascinating stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I worked at Achronix Semiconductor (San Jose startup) for over a year and a half designing Asynchronous Circuits. I can answer any questions about the specifics of designing these circuits.

Anyone interested in this topic should definitely look into the Cornell University research ( <http://vlsi.cornell.edu/> ). Unlike most researchers in asynchronous research, they still tape out chips.

<comment><USER3> Cool, there are a few things I've been wondering about for a while now.

Is it possible to make practical async logic on ordinary FPGAs? I've seen some very conservatively-designed async stuff that ran on an Altera FPGA, but I remember hearing that it was kind of flaky. (It was a Java-to-hardware synthesis program -- there's a remarkably direct mapping between the usual program structures like loops, if statements, etc., and hardware if you're willing to use a naive design.)

What are the prospects for putting asynchronous IP cores into a system-on-chip with mostly clocked parts?

What kind of async logic style do you usually use in practice? Dual-rail quasi-delay-insensitive, or bundled data with matched delays, or something so exotic that I've yet to hear of it?

I've heard some people speculating about how async circuits can be used to make fault-tolerant logic. For example, if you're using dual-rail coding, then a single bit flip is going to be detectable as a fault, and you can trigger some self-checking-and-repair logic without breaking your timing assumptions. How important/plausible would you say this is?

<comment><USER5> Years ago I tried to implement a simple CPU architecture in Xilinx Verilog on a Spartan3 where the aim was for it to be pedagogically simple inside and out, with extremely concise and expository HDL source.

I failed pretty miserably: It took me several rewrites before I got one to even synthesize, and dozens before I got it to place+route onto the physical chip (fucking traveling salesman problem!). I never got my CPU's JMP instruction to work correctly within my self-imposed ideological constraints, making it rather useless.

It took me a while to realize that the fundamental problem with my design was hidden asynchrony, despite having a clock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great stuff. I've been fascinated by the potential of async CPUs ever since I studied under Steve Furber, who was working on the clockless version of the ARM processor, Amulet: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMULET_microprocessor>

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, I posted that one earlier today.

Quite the inspiration all these designs doing the 'impossible' (according to some).

It's always nice to see people pursue presumed dead ends then turn up finding gold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The professor I TA'ed for last semester said he's had a student turn in a clockless CPU for the final project in the introductory architecture class.

</comment><comment><USER8> very cool

<comment><AUTHOR> You're the inspiration for the current crop of 'clock-free' articles, I really got interested in it that particular aspect of our conversation after M's visit here.

I think I can see at least one way to crack that 'nut' of doing without a global clock, which would scale to arbitrary large systems.

The downside is that it is a purely theoretical solution for the moment, I'll try to do some simulations to see if it is actually viable.

The tricky bit seems to be to not fall in to the 'pit' of thinking that you have it working without synchronization when actually the test system has some underwater property that makes the likelihood of a failure vanishingly small, but which when duplicated 'in real life' would lead to an error almost immediately.

The classical example is two circuits that are 'independently' clocked from some master clock that gets divided by different factors.

You'd need to test this with local clocks that are varying wildly comparing the output of the system with 'known good' output over many cycles to gain some confidence.

It's amazing how the devil really is in the details with this stuff.

<comment><USER9> Agreed. Especially when timings errors happen between different clocks in a deployed chip at different temperatures.</comment></comment></comment>


H-1B visa fraud: Sunnyvale man indicted for bringing in 600 workers illegally - <AUTHOR> https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/03/h-1b-visa-fraud-feds-indict-sunnyvale-man-for-bringing-in-600-workers-illegally/ <comment><USER2> The obvious solution (making h1b non-transferable across employers again, without even the 30 day window) probably causes more harm than benefit here.

I assume someone could abusively misuse h1b in the traditional Wipro/Infosys way anyway, by doing staffing companies. His fraud was just more capital efficient but not that fundamentally different.

It is probably unpopular, but I think h1b should be ended. Genuine short term needs should be covered through something like L1, and aside from specific categories of non-immigrant visa like medical or educational, we should just expand immigrant visas on a Canadian/NZ style merit/points system. This would be less discriminatory against people from big countries (China and India specifically), avoid some of the abuse possibilities, and be better for employees/immigrants and their families. The only losers would be body shops and large employers who benefit today from a limited form of indenture.

<comment><USER3> Any replacement visa needs to be like the diversity lottery (or the Olympics) by rewarding applicants from smaller countries. The migrant intake shouldn't be dominated completely by India and China - their sheer size gives them an advantage, as naturalized Indian and Chinese employers will then just go on to hire their own countrymen. For example, 76% of H1B visas went to Indians.

Having multiple, smaller groups of people inside the USA also assists integration - instead of being able to fall back on a parallel society, migrants will be forced to integrate and learn English.

Plus, just like the Olympics, diversity makes things interesting. Having (qualified) people from Belgium, Poland, Kenya, Thailand, Japan, Colombia, Mongolia (for example) is more interesting than just India, India, India, China, China, China.... A broader pool of migrants also helps US businesses expand worldwide.

Finally, the schemes should also include a minimum 55% quota of women, from each country. This ensures that any visa scheme does not become completely dominated by men, and addresses past imbalances.

<comment><USER4> > Any replacement visa needs to be like the diversity lottery (or the > Olympics) by rewarding applicants from smaller countries

Why? So you are okay with a guy who does not speak English, doesn't have moderate-high skills, will probably drive Uber or work in some restaurant over a moderately-skilled Indian/Chinese who understands and speaks relatively decent English, just because that guys is an Indian or Chinese? This is the definition of racism.

> Having multiple, smaller groups of people inside the USA also assists > integration

No. Knowing the local language, understanding the local culture, knowing some people from a similar culture living in the country (a.k.a having a fallback - so as to not depend on government aid) helps in integration.

> Plus, just like the Olympics, diversity makes things interesting.

Absolutely. But that should depend on the skills and not on the nationality. Skilled people from Belgium-Mongolia would still get in regardless of "diversity lottery visa". What US needs is a point based system which rewards quality over just diversity.

<comment><USER5> > Why? So you are okay with a guy who does not speak English, doesn't have > moderate-high skills, will probably drive Uber or work in some restaurant > over a moderately-skilled Indian/Chinese who understands and speaks > relatively decent English, just because that guys is an Indian or Chinese? > This is the definition of racism.

My landlord and the owner of the company I work for both came to the US from Iran in exactly this way and now they both own successful businesses built up from busting their asses driving cabs.

That has been The American Dream™ for generations and not the virtual indentured servitude I always hear about in these discussions.

<comment><USER4> > My landlord and the owner of the company I work for both came to the US from > Iran

For one example of success there are 100s if not 1000s of examples where they failed and relied on government handouts.

Also, how did "diversity visa" help in this case? Those guys succeeded because they were smart and hardworking. Clearly their country of origin did not make them successful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time discussion about H-1B comes up here, many people chime in on the potential abuses from large international outsourcers like Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, IBM, Accenture etc. But IME, the most egregious abuses come from small American staffing companies as those run by the accused here. The absolute number of H-1B applications they file and get are smaller, but they occupy the long tail of the distribution. Also, the same fraudulent operators run multiple such companies. The accused in this case - Kishore Kumar Kavuru - ran four such companies. In the other case mentioned in the article the accused - Pradyumna Kumar Samal - two such companies.

I hope these two cases don't go the way of the one against Raju Kosuri. Kosuri, a naturalized American citizen, plead guilty [1] to serious charges of immigration fraud. But due to some technicality in the prosecution's case, Kosuri was handed down a mere 28 months to serve, and is scheduled to be deported to India [2].

Off-topic question: India does not accept dual citizenship. So when the Kosuris became naturalized citizens, they must have given up their India citizenship. Given that, why should India accept them back after they were deemed criminals in their adopted country? What is the legality around revoking naturalized US citizenship?

[1]: [https://www.scribd.com/document/322254486/Kosuri- Plea](https://www.scribd.com/document/322254486/Kosuri-Plea)

[2]: [https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/12/24/indian- nationa...](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/12/24/indian-national-to- be-deported-after-profiting-20m-by-fraudulently-importing-h-1b-foreign- workers/)

<comment><USER3> And in all of the cases, they are Indians committing fraud to assist the immigration of other Indians.

Perhaps the simplest solution is to disallow Indian nationals from applying for H1B completely?

I think its generally problematic if one class of visa comes to be dominated by a single nationality. It does not result in diversity in the host country, for starters.

I think people would be more welcoming of the H1B visa (and expanding it, or offering more rights for those on it) if it wasn't completely dominated by Indian men. Perhaps rules limiting any one country to a maximum of 10% of the visa quota, and ensuring the intake is at least 60% female would assist public perceptions?

<comment><USER7> How would that be fair to Indian nationals that play by the rules?

There is a similar rule to what you propose in the Olympic Games. Max of 3 athletes from a given country in each track and field event. I always found that rule stupid and artificial. Potentially several of the top 10 athletes in the World can't compete just because of their country of origin.

<comment><USER8> Do you really want a race track full of Africans and Afro-Americans and throw field full of Scandinavians?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is good. I have seen a lot of workers/friends who applied legitimately get fucked because of this kind of abuse of the system.

I still think expansion of the h1b program is necessary since there is a lot of demand. But curbing the abuse will definitely help the current set of people opting to use the legal way.

<comment><USER10> Nothing about this is good. The entire system is one of arbitrary inefficiency. Punishing someone for trying to work around it and labeling it "fraud" when the only fraud going on is pushing a protectionist agenda as a free market isn't a benefit for anyone.

<comment><USER11> You clearly didn't read the article because this guy did absolutely all the things that constitute a fraud, regardless if it has to do with a visa or not.

Creating fake jobs, falsifying documents, charging money to the people that were applying for visas, "parking" those visas with no paid wages and using those unpaid visa beneficiaries to undercut other firms...

I don't think there's a circumstance in any country in which those actions wouldn't be labeled as "fraud".

<comment><USER12> I think he believes the law is unjust.

<comment><USER13> Even if the law is unjust, breaking it is not necessarily just. It still depends on the circumstances. In this case he charged fees and almost certainly lied to the immigrant about their chances of getting a job.

<comment><USER14> So.. the same as the USCIS itself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> H1b needs to end - it's modern version of serfdom.

If country has shortage of critical skilled workers - bring them in permanently, based on a system similar to what Canada has.

<comment><USER16> My only experience with H1b was when I worked at Amazon.

Lots of pressure to come in on the weekend. I certainly wasn't going to sacrifice my weekends. I'd just tell them no. I could work somewhere else.

But the H1b guys I worked with from India constantly caved to the guilt. If they were to lose the job, they'd have to pack up their entire life and go back to India to try again.

Easy high-skill exploitation.

<comment><USER17> It affects you too though, as the industry norm is noticeably skewing toward the expected overtime model even more so than before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This man is a symptom of a wider problem.

Once when I visited Hyderabad, I was surprised by the staggering number of IT institutes in the city (around Ameerpet). There's just no way so many people can find a job, but somehow they do! Fraudulent claims in resumes and job applications are very common - and HR folks often advise interviewers to verify claims in depth. IT jobs fraud is an industry.

Here's a picture from Ameerpet which shows the sheer scale of the IT training market there: [https://imgur.com/a/AUogLtu](https://imgur.com/a/AUogLtu)

<comment><USER19> That image your linked is unbelievable, never seen anything like it. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> H1B visas are a hot topic here, and always lead to heated voting.

I will just point out one thing:

1\. How many immigrants come (total number per year)

2\. How they are selected (merit or family)

3\. Where they come from (the wisdom of country caps)

Are three separate issues that need not be conflated. People tend to give a mixed solution based on their personal experience.

</comment><comment><USER21> The economic incentives here are a tough nut to crack. Here they are:

1\. Most first time H1B Visas are taken up by an employee that are paid(typically) less that the college educated US worker. Pay _amortized over the lifetime_ of this employee is even lower because part of it was in places like India where the PPP is much higher and labor is cheap.

2\. You can make a lot of money by staying on the edges of the law. For example body shops/consultants.

3\. Try stopping such body shops and IT CoS will cause jobs to disappear forever into India. This is the part that most policy makers gloss over. Sure FAANG could hire US side that but they are minority of H1B applications filed.

Possible Changes:

0\. Separate all categories from the Quota based Green Card residency filing. This will end the perverse incentive for certain H1B and L1 workers to come to the US for the sole purpose of citizenship. Especially the under the stupid EB1 manager cap.

1\. Make it easier for people on H1B categories to study, change jobs and providing for gaps between employment that are reasonable. This will make people less beholden and less exploitable by body shops.

2\. Introduce a points based system for Permanent Residence that will award citizenship fairly to everyone based on real effort put in by people to get here. Things like education, language, diversity, age all should count. This will chip away at incentives attached to certain visa types.

3\. Completely separate the H1B Visa processing for US college educated from the other pool of H1B workers. Make more granular categories for work visa.

</comment><comment><USER22> It should be made more complicated for companies to easily "import" skills that are not so hard to learn. Companies should train their employees for the coming new skills required. This is what Swiss companies were doing when it was impossible to immigrate in Switzerland. And the employee-employer relationship was a lot healthier than today.

<comment><USER23> Can you elaborate on "Swiss companies were training their employees when it was impossible to immigrate in Switzerland"?

<comment><USER22> Before entering Schengen, Switzerland was a very closed country for the job market. It was very difficult to get a permit. Switzerland had (has) a major issue: salaries were high compared internationally and there could not import skilled employees. So all the companies/factories had trainings to keep their employees and "transition" them when the technology or business was changing and making their CV obsolete. The companies with the best training/programs were attracting talents. So all companies had to do it. Otherwise they would not attract talents. It already starts with apprenticeship. Did you know that you could start a top career in a top Swiss bank with an apprenticeship at 16 yo? Some companies are still like this. But most of campanies prefer now to simply fire and hire an already baked employee; but they keep training programms made by HR more for marketing/communication purposes than a real culture.

<comment><USER23> Schengen is solely about movement of tourists; it has nothing to do with work authorization.

Germany, Switzerland and other places share the development that 40yrs ago a top career in a top company with was possible with an apprenticeship and without a uni degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> H-1B visas aren't even given out to people with specialized knowledge, new grads are able to get them.

<comment><USER25> New grads can use F1 visas with OPT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> isnt this simply a problem with the application process? Simple verification that the job/employer exist would close this "loop hole", no?

</comment><comment><USER27> Just one there are hundreds across the country. They all play the same game identify hot techs and hire people and bring them here and then bench them till work shows up. Trump has accomplished nothing so far.

</comment><comment><USER28> For a "human trafficking" operation 600 people over a decade seems like a fairly small scale operation..

In terms of harm, these workers are clearly in demand, so apart from being unfair to other staffing agencies and H1B applicants, this really doesn't do much harm..

H1B is a pretty broken concept to begin with.. I was H1B for 4 years before I decided Trump-land wasn't a good place to set roots.

If you have demand for tech workers and tech workers willing to move. I think most countries and cities would move heaven and Earth to make things work out. Everybody wants to be silicon valley :)

(I don't see why SV has to have the problems it has, they seem fixable)

<comment><USER29> > In terms of harm, these workers are clearly in demand

Yes, foreign workers who are willing to work for less than local market rates are in big demand.

Foreign workers are also very likely to move a big chunk of their wages back to their families every month.

So in terms of harm, there are these at least:

      - artificially pushing down local market rates
      - money paid doesn't stay in the local economy

<comment><USER28> > money paid doesn't stay in the local economy

If the money was all invested in the local real estate marked you'd also complain :)

> artificially pushing down local market rates

In a market where the median salary is 130k, maybe it's good for the economy -- more than it hurts people.

<comment><USER29> My comment wasn't with reference to the Bay area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This program needs to end. H1B a bandaid over our complete failure to provide a modern education and bring young people into STEM, while dually deflating middle class wages for the tech oligarchs across the industry for several decades. And, ironically, the Democrats, who should supposedly be protecting the middle class, have a blood pact with the SV elite.

<comment><USER26> Somehow I question that you are 100% Native American (the only people who are really allowed to complain about this whole immigration "issue").

From the historic perspective- With very high probability you are just another immigrant who came here a bit earlier than the guy unboarding jfk flight this second.

Study history. USA was/is built by immigrants. Good immigration policies attract talent that moves the planet forward. Where would USA be today if it wasn't for many talented people who came to this country to pursue their dreams?

Don't blame issues caused by corruption and private interests in the upper echelons of power on others.

<comment><USER31> I don't think your account of the country goes back far enough. My recollection was that the USA was built by slaves. The irony of this conversation is the assumption our country, represented by Government feels any differently now about the exploitation of labor today.

<comment><USER32> This is a common misconception that cannot be backed up by the simplest mathematics.

At no time was the total number of blacks both free and slave, in the US over 25%, yet without any social welfare programs everyone was working.

Further it was precisely the areas which were built up by slavery that were destroyed during the Civil War. Thus negating any advantage gained from slavery.

So no, the country was not built by slavery.

<comment><USER31> "This is a common misconception that cannot be backed up by the simplest mathematics."

Then you say...

"Further it was precisely the areas which were built up by slavery that were destroyed during the Civil War. Thus negating any advantage gained from slavery."

Sounds like you have a problem with the truth of any advantage provided to whites by the federal government. Typically folks like you say, "get over it next," but never is job interviews, just on message boards.

Probably fake news to you, but how were the advantages of free labor destroyed by the Civil War. Perhaps you take "built this country" literally and are a recent immigrant.

[https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern- eco...](https://www.history.com/news/slavery-profitable-southern-economy)

Crap, just clicked on your previsions submissions and comments... Dude, I think you're a racist.

<comment><USER32> If there were buildings, roads, etc that were built, many of them were destroyed.

<comment><USER31> I hope you share your opinion in person, loudly and unapologetic with all who will listen. Do not keep your beliefs and perspectives a secret. You deserve to be heard.

In fact, I would love to learn more about history from your perspective. Perhaps you can elaborate or share some literature that I can read at my leisure. Also, I'm curious to hear any opinions you may have on #metoo, or women in technology should you be willing to indulge me.

For your convenience, I quote you below:

"Further it was precisely the areas which were built up by slavery that were destroyed during the Civil War. Thus negating any advantage gained from slavery."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Before I clicked on the link, I suspected it would be an Indian. I've dealt with a few such "recruiters" in London as well. Slimy individuals preying on those trying to secure a better future.

<comment><USER34> So you assume all such frauds are committed by Indians.

Do you also assume all bank and atm robberies are done by Romanians?

And all credit card skeaming by Russians.

All money laundering by Brits and all brothels by Dutch.

I don't see any point of making such broad generalisation about a particular ethinicity.

<comment><USER33> It's not that I assume, it's just that it's becoming a common, observable pattern across a variety of industries, from IT staff, to general helpers round the house.

I'm Indian too, by the way, so it pains me to say it, but the stereotype of an Indian committing immigration fraud overseas is establishing itself rather well.

<comment><USER35> Well there's more than a billion indians, so the bad apples do tend to stand out more, even though statistically there might be just as many slimy <insert other nationality here>.

<comment><USER33> I think you're missing the point. The sheer volume of people, our cutthroat, materialistic culture, poverty and intrinsic desire of hopefuls to "escape" to a rosier place makes the Indian population perfect for this kind of fraud. And of course, there are plenty of well-off NRI Indians willing to sell them the dream of moving to the west.

Even our pop stars were at it: [https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world- as...](https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-asia- india-43428622)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Even before clicking the link I thought it would be an Indian guy. Cause the headline sounded odd! I don't know why only Indians are doing this shit predominantly. This will lead to other Indians getting abused given how negative and fake news spreads today!

<comment><USER37> >I don't know why only Indians are doing this shit predominantly.

Because of a huge number of Indian students, especially from one particular state. US is marketed as an utopia to them, so they all line up to study in US thinking they will get a job as soon as they complete their studies. Reality is surviving on h1b in US is hard. The students have less than 18 months to get an h1b or packup and leave. The Indians who do these scams know how desperate the students are. This is the only chance they have to recoup their educational expenses and show that US experience in their resume and work in US for couple of years at least. The scammers exploit this situation of students.

I think it will soon come to an end with the current administration finally taking action to end this practice. That means students will have less visas and the number of students will come down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I don't see why this is particularly newsworthy. "Man accused of small amount of fraud" is barely a headline in other areas, why is this instance such a major deal?

<comment><USER39> Is fraudulently allowing 600 people to enter the United States a "small amount of fraud"?

<comment><USER37> I didn't see it mentioned anywhere that he brought people from India. Usually, these kind of scams involve students who came to US to study. So they were already in the country. They will be forced to leave in 18 months unless they get an h1b, so they have to resort to such practices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The laws criminalizing immigration need to repealed. Then there wouldn't be such a market incentivizing people to engage in fraud simply to bring people together.

<comment><USER41> This is a ridiculous argument. Every law prohibiting or encouraging a behavior has the potential to create an illicit market. the fact that such a black market could exist is a pretty poor excuse to disregard it.

<comment><USER40> * "simply to bring people together"

<comment><USER41> What are you trying to say exactly?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An Inside Look at the Backblaze Storage Pod Museum - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-storage-pod-museum/ <comment><USER2> I'm always amazed by how open they are. Its great to see people like this succeed.

My one BB question is how many data centers do they have? I know they have great sharing tech to keep data online if a pod or two goes down, but how many physical locations do they run?

<comment><USER3> I work at Backblaze.

> how many physical locations to they run?

Two separate datacenters in the Sacramento (California) region, and one in Phoenix (Arizona). We are trying to open a European (Netherlands) datacenter this month or next month.

However, unless you take explicit action to copy your data to two datacenters, any one file (or piece of file) is in exactly one datacenter. We believe the data to be extremely DURABLE (survive), but if your strategy is to "host content" in a highly available fashion where people will die if your content is offline for an hour, we recommend you use two different providers with some sort of fail over. Another alternative is to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) in conjunction with Backblaze. You can find out more info here: [https://www.backblaze.com/b2/solutions/content- delivery.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/solutions/content-delivery.html)

For backups, Backblaze advocates for a 3-2-1 backup strategy. [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup- strategy/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/) This is where you keep 3 copies of your data, 2 on site, and 1 in the cloud.

The exact system for how we achieve high durability is described in this blog past: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage- architect...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/vault-cloud-storage- architecture/) where any one file is striped across 20 separate computers in 20 separate locations in the one datacenter, where we can entirely lose any 3 computers and the data is completely fine and available.

We are COMPLETELY transparent on how we calculate the durability, we do the math (including the assumptions) in this blog post: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-storage- durability/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-storage-durability/)

<comment><USER4> _We believe the data to be extremely DURABLE (survive), but if your strategy is to "host content" in a highly available fashion where people will die if your content is offline for an hour, we recommend you use two different providers with some sort of fail over_

Do your durability metrics take datacenter failure or human error into account?

Datacenter failures are rare, but they do happen and can cause data loss if all of your data is in that data center.

Likewise, human error can cause cascading failures across a datacenter (or beyond) if there are no firewalls between zones that prevent a single person/command/software update from affecting all copies of the data.

<comment><USER5> That depends on what you mean by failure. Are you talking about a data center failing because every single machine inside blew up? Otherwise the common failures like DC power outage or network drops are about availability rather than durability. The data is stills safe on multiple drives.

<comment><USER4> I'm talking about the kind of failure that hit a Microsoft Azure data center:

[https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/microsoft/azure- outage-p...](https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/microsoft/azure-outage- proves-hard-way-availability-zones-are-good-idea)

 _" but in this instance, temperatures increased so quickly in parts of the data center that some hardware was damaged before it could shut down " ... "A significant number of storage servers were damaged, as well as a small number of network devices and power units."_

<comment><USER5> Yea if that damaged all the storage servers containing your data then there would be data loss.

<comment><USER4> That's why I asked if that 99.999999999% durability number includes datacenter loss. It's an unlikely failure mode but is it .00000000001% unlikely? I don't know.

Given the fact that Azure lost a datacenter with this failure mode, I don't think it's in the "likelihood of an asteroid destroying Earth within a million years" ballpark.

Their durability page doesn't really clear it up, they say "Because at these probability levels, it's far more likely that ... Earthquakes / floods / pests / or other events" known as "Acts of God" destroy multiple data centers". But from the post above: "any one file (or piece of file) is in exactly one datacenter."

So it doesn't take multiple datacenter failures to lose data, just one unless you explicitly copy your data to multiple datacenters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's crazy to see how fast storage prices have fallen. Just a couple days ago I saw that you could get a WD White (Shucked easystore, pretty much a relabeled WD Red) 10TB for just $169. 1.69 cents/GB. And you can get 8TBs for $129 (1.61c/GB)

</comment><comment><USER7> I hope it has a pile of the dead 3gb seagates. Perhaps in an interactive exhibit where there are some implements of destruction.

<comment><USER8> Yev from Backblaze -> We do have a drive crusher in the office, but mostly use that for small externals. It's quite satisfying!

<comment><USER9> Do you have to treat the output of the drive crusher as hazardous waste?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always enjoy reading about Backblaze updates. New Pod designs, drive statistics, operations, etc... One thing I am particularly excited about is the future Pod designs with 2.5 inch drives. There may be enough miniaturization with magnetic drives to make this feasible, but I expect that the real transition will come with a Pod full of SSD. Any idea when that might happen? What is the expectation for that timeline? Do you have additional products or price/performance improvements planned in that transition? The SSD endurance experiment from 4 years ago indicates that, reliability wise, they are more than ready. I guess the only limitation now is price and maybe processing?

[https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance- experi...](https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment- theyre-all-dead)

</comment><comment><USER11> The only thing missing from the museum are the people behind Storage Pod. Other than that it's always really cool to see the evolution and history of the product

</comment><comment><USER12> It's always fun to read stuff from the backblaze guys. The stuff they do is just neat.

</comment><comment><USER13> I love this kind of stuff.

I like the domain I program in but some of the problems in areas like this are straight up nerd sniping[1].

[https://xkcd.com/356/](https://xkcd.com/356/)</comment>


R vs. Python for Data Science: Summary of Modern Advances - <AUTHOR> https://elitedatascience.com/r-vs-python-for-data-science <comment><USER2> Both R and Python have gained libraries for SQL syntax queries on their datasets. These are powered by sqllite. As much of the data that gets into R or Python is obtained from a SQL query (or SparkQL etc.) it's awesome to be able to query, aggregate and even join internal datasets in the same way! [https://github.com/ggrothendieck/sqldf](https://github.com/ggrothendieck/sqldf) is game changing.

The wealth of statistical packages available for R is astounding. Packages like GLMNet are made available by the top researchers in the field. In comparison, Python libraries tend to be relatively unsophisticated and less robust.

<comment><USER3> Sqldf is very tempting, but at least in the past it was so much, much slower than dplyr that the time to learn dplyr's syntax could pay off in a single project, or possibly even a single large operation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It covers many of the libraries discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110230)</comment>


Apple Poaching Enterprise Sales Staff From Research in Motion - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/23/apple-poaching-enterprise-sales-staff-from-research-in-motion/ <comment><USER2> Unless and until there's a fundamental philosophy change at Apple, I don't see them being successful in the enterprise market. I'm in education, and we're a fairly flexible-yet-enterprise-y place, and we've constantly been burnt by Apple's lack of exposed forward planning (even when we spend literally millions of dollars with them annually).

I'll believe Apple is seriously interested in the enterprise market when there's a docking port on the MacBook. Either that, or they'll hoodwink everyone into doing what we were told before: buy a laptop and a desktop for people, and sync between the two.

<comment><USER3> You can buy a docking port for your Macbook.

[http://www.bookendzdocks.com/Docking_Stations- Docking_Statio...](http://www.bookendzdocks.com/Docking_Stations- Docking_Station_for_13_MacBook_White.html)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing the link. I'm familiar with all the major 3rd party options. That's not the same as plopping an HP into a docking brick, and no one I know that's used both thinks it's remotely comparable. Just getting the ports lined up correctly each time led one of our techs to abandon the whole effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not surprising, as iOS is their major growth industry and Blackberry is the entrenched (and soon to be former courtesy of Android/iOS) player in that market.

On the Mac side of things, they're cutting back on enterprise sales (witness the death of the Xserve) and pushing most of the contact information for smaller customers to the retail business people.

<comment><USER5> I have only seen + heard the opposite about Apple cutting back on enterprise sales of any kind. (Up until two-ish years ago, they made very little outreach to enterprise at all, just because they don't do roadmaps, don't have special support for "enterprise," etc.) Your retail-business theory is what I thought of as Apple's _old_ strategy.

They just engaged Unisys to support and infiltrate the enterprise ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-25/apple-enlists- unisy...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-25/apple-enlists-unisys-to- crack-nut-with-pc-based-corporate-u-s-agencies.html))

I'm not saying your interpretation of the Xserve discontinuation is wrong, just that i hadn't seen anybody with that interpretation before, and i'd love to hear more.

<comment><USER4> My sources are in Apple Retail, and from what I can piece together, Apple's enterprise sales is truly becoming that - going after Fortune 500 companies, when previously if you had more than 50-100 people and/or computers you were fair game for the enterprise department. Thus, their enterprise department is shrinking, but becoming more focused.

In the past, there was a lot of poaching of deals between departments within Apple - retail would make a deal for >30 machines with an organization, only to have Enterprise call the customer up (they share CRM) and offer the exact same deal with a price below what Retail was allowed to discount.

It's an internal org chart change, as far as I can tell. Why have dedicated enterprise reps in a phone center somewhere that can't have a face-to-face interaction with the customer, when in a lot of areas there's a retail store that can provide that, and get halo sales to employees, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apple can't succeed in the Enterprise market the way RIM does unless they do two things:

\- Make a cheap iPhone. Something companys can hand out to their employees for $200 a piece.

\- Make a iPhone with a physical keyboard.

I can't really see them doing any of that, but who knows for sure.

<comment><USER2> I agree broadly with your point, but I fail to see why a physical keyboard is important except to a very small subset of users. Swype handles all the text input I need, and does so about 20%-30% faster than my physical keyboard.

Now, this is on a first generation Motorola Droid. I _have_ seen some students that are pretty wicked fast on their Blackberry. We haven't 'raced' yet. Maybe it's just a bad keyboard design on the Droid?

<comment><USER7> Do you post HN comments using your touchscreen? If not, why not?

I've done the keyboard smartphone thing, and the touchscreen smartphone thing (incl. swype with the latter). I prefer a real keyboard _overwhelmingly_ \-- even a miserable keyboard like on the HTC Dream -- and I know I'm far from alone.

When someone sends me an email or a text requiring a response, honestly it is a sad, defeated feeling when I have to respond on the touchscreen keyboard.

I know I'm hardly alone with this: iPhone toting friends and peers tend not to author any content on their device beyond the occasional "lol" or "brb" type response (you know instantly that they're hacking it on the screen), whereas others with Blackberry devices or physical keyboards...I often can't tell from their response whether they are at their desk or remote because they don't artificially abbreviate their comments.

I'm sure there are non-typists or those of few words who are completely satisfied without a keyboard. Most others simply accept it.

<comment><USER8> Except that I do 50% of my emails and know many others who do exactly the same or more (and these are not short emails) from their iPhones. People who lived on their blackberries live on their iPhones or Android touchscreen phones. While it might be a problem for some for most it hasn't been one.

<comment><USER7> _While it might be a problem for some for most it hasn't been one._

iPhone users live on with a touchscreen keyboard because they have no choice. Most Blackberry users never migrated to the iPhone for that reason. Android users were caught in a temporary world where every Android maker tried to be like the iPhone, with the terrible choice of the onscreen keyboard, but thankfully that period is quickly passing, with great devices like the G2 / Desire Z and the Galaxy S Pro.

<comment><USER9> I've talked to a lot of people who use iPhones, and none of them would switch to a hardware keyboard if given the chance.

Touchscreen keyboards work better than physical ones (the keys are larger), they're better for anyone typing more than one language (accents are easy, different keyboard layouts are possible at all). The touch keyboard isn't there when you don't need it, leading either to an increase in screen space (vs. RIM's offerings) or a more practical physical design (without slider mechanisms that tend to be awkward, get damaged, or make the phone bulkier).

I had no problem typing on an iPhone the first day I ever encountered one. The first day I laid hands on a blackberry, it took me minutes to get a single sentence out, because the keys are so tiny and packed close together.

The key to effective touchscreen typing is to trust the autocorrect (and to have good autocorrect in the first place). My typing speed skyrocketed when I learned that if I just kept typing, the iPhone would be right 90% of the time, and the other 10% is easy to fix.

<comment><USER7> Look, I don't mean to go all John Gruber here, but a good portion of iPhone users wouldn't want anything changed...until it's actually changed at which point it's the most obvious, most important thing in the world.

If Apple came out with a slider version of the iPhone tomorrow, I suspect there would be a rapid, but remarkably quiet, appreciation of hardware keyboards among many iPhone faithful.

Mileage will definitely vary. I know people who absolutely love their onscreen keyboard. They do tend to be people who actually type very little though, so it's perfect for them.

It's interesting that you mentioned onscreen keyboards giving you a increase in screen space -- yeah, when you don't need to type anything. When you do, suddenly 80% of your screen is all keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IBM added iPhone support to Lotus Notes Traveller in the last release. It provides mobile access to Lotus Notes/Domino mail, calendar, and directory. That removed a barrier to adoption for many enterprises. Several of our executives are using it now with good results. [http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/notes/traveler...](http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/notes/traveler.html)</comment>


SXSW: Meet Clarence, The Homeless Hotspot - <AUTHOR> http://tech.li/2012/03/sxsw-meet-clarence-the-homeless-hotspot/

<comment><USER2> It looks like most of these people are making less than minimum wage. (feigned gasp!)

I'm glad they're making money somehow, but it does annoy me that laws are preventing them from pursuing a lot of other jobs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm 100% for helping homeless, especially in creative ways that empower them.

That said, you can get 5gb/mo of 3G/4G data access without contract at walmart for $30/mo (via a sim chip).

Then take your far more extensive savings and donate them directly to foodbanks, etc. instead of making homeless people beg.

<comment><USER4> How does one get 5gb/mo of 3G/4G data access without contract at walmart for $30/mo (via a sim chip)? Tethering a pay as you go?

<comment><USER5> Yes.

The Wal-Mart T-Mobile 5GB data / Unlimited Text pay-as-you-go plan (with a couple of voice minutes thrown in) is $30/mo. However, the contract does not technically allow tethering.

T-Mobile were the last major US carrier to institute a pay-extra-for-tethering policy (in late 2010), but it's definitely in effect now and they do use some cursory heuristics (data usage, basic traffic inspection) to detect tethering (and unauthorized "high-end" Android phones, as well).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reading this story, I am a bit amazed that there are still quite a few people homeless after Hurricane Katrina, which happened in 2005.

</comment><comment><USER7> A fellow staying in the same house as me ran across these guys and was highly skeptical of their operation. It's good to hear that it's actually a pretty cool story. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> This seems like a really great project for SXSW. I hope the test is enough for them to bring it into other cities.</comment>


[electron] Define TouchBar layout in your React components/routes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/patrikholcak/react-touchbar-electron <comment><AUTHOR> Since the TouchBar api was implemented in electron, I've always wondered if there's a way to define its layout using React components.

I experimented with [https://github.com/patrikholcak/react- ionize](https://github.com/patrikholcak/react-ionize), but the TouchBar still felt somehow decoupled from the main logic of my app and the events still needed to be sent manually to the renderer process. What I wanted was to use it as normal front-end components and map event handlers which update the state/dispatch actions.

Next step is to rewrite this using React's fiber renderer, which should hopefully enable fully dynamic TouchBar layout</comment>


Designers are more valuable than programmers - <AUTHOR> http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/01/24/designers-are-more-valuable-than-programmer/

<comment><USER3> Depends on the project I guess.

I can't really see how a designer is going to be much help developing distributed hash tables, compilers, scalable push messaging frameworks, drivers, network analyzers, packet routing systems, load balancers, linear solvers, file systems, natural language processors, machine learning systems, and a whole host of other software that makes the world tick.

<comment><USER4> eventually, at the top of the stack, there's some one who asked the question: "how are people going to interact with this?"

my hash table is useless if the users can't tickle the UI in such a way as to use the hash table.

<comment><USER5> Your assuming a lot about what's being built. If you start designing a UI for a USB stick you have already failed. _how are people going to interact with this?_ UC1, you plug it in and it works. UC2, you unplug it and it keeps your files. End of use cases.

That's not to say design is unimportant, just that plenty of teams are better off adding there 30th coder before their first designer. Others may be better off adding there 10th designer before there 2nd coder, but I have never heard of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very funny. Reminds me of when I worked in consulting. Let's say there were 3 months to do a project. For the first 11.5 weeks, the designers would be arguing about "mood boards" and whether icons should be round or square. Then in the middle of the last week, they would hand over to the programmers a directory full of Photoshop files and say "build this" (usually the first time the programmers had even heard about the project was now).

Then the programmers would be blamed for the project overrunning. Designers need to be kept on a very short leash. Designers who can't program what they design are worse than useless.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Ultimately, design is what drives business rules and software requirements."

Completely disagree: Business Rules drive design, not the other way around. The article muddles together product development and design and calls it the same thing. Product development incorporates BOTH design and coding - <USER2> cannot separate the two and claim one half is more important then the other.

And has already been pointed out, there are far less developers out there then designers. Guess which commodity is worth more to the average company given this fact?

<comment><USER8> From experience, I would say that a very good designer is worth considerably more to a company than a very good developer.

This comes largely from the fact that the beneficial cap in skill for designers is much higher than for developers.

With a developer, so long as they finish everything on time and it works as intended, other concerns are largely irrelevant.

With a designer, there is always room to improve, so the difference between the best designer and the next-best designer still provides some important benefits, while this is not necessarily true for developers.

<comment><USER7> Until it comes to maintenance time and you discover that your cadre of less then stellar developers has created a "works as indented" pile of excrement that is largely unmaintainable. Then the difference between the best developer and the next-best is no longer irrelevant.

In my experience, design is undervalued in most software projects, but the sentiment expressed in this article is beyond over-correction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating - this is a terrific description of what a good product manager does, without using the term 'product manager' once.

I know designers with product skills, and I know designers without product skills. Both are still designers.

Of course, claiming any one of these skill sets is more valuable than the other is just linkbait. It's like trying to choose between your tibia and your fibula - without either, you're not going far.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't agree. I _do_ think that designers are undervalued by a lot of people, but I don't think that they are more important than programmers. Especially when you factor in supply and demand- it's my perception (though I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence to back it up) that there are more designers looking for work than programmers, thus, the programmers you have are more valuable to you.

It was interesting to see the section on "programmers as designers", though. I was recently making an HTML5 app and web site to accompany it (<http://www.taxono.my>), and had to make up the design as I went along. I have no idea if it really looks good from a design perspective, but I couldn't justify bringing a designer in, so I suppose I am just as guilty of undervaluing designers as others are.

<comment><USER11> I think you are misunderstanding the point of Shawn's post. He is specifying that a 'programmer' is just a 'coder'. A 'developer' or 'maker' is a programmer that keeps the 'product' in scope by incorporating design as well as code. A programmer-only is being trumped by developers that always keep design and the customer in mind.

<comment><USER10> I think that trying to draw a distinction between "programmer" and "developer" isn't really a great idea, because a lot of people (myself included) would consider the terms equivalent.

In that context, it makes the title seem a little "clickbait-y". "Programmers are less valuable, except that I'm talking about a specific subset of programmers" is less catchy though, I will grant you that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In my opinion, most developers can produce a good, or even great, design in acceptable time if they just wish so, while the reverse doesn't apply.

For a developer to come up with a good design, it takes: (a) common-sense, (b) compatible-to-mainstream perception of what is ugly, and (c) willingness to look around for ideas and play with things they might consider boring.

I have yet to encounter a decent developer that manages to do without (a) -hm, ok maybe I know one java developer, but he's a special case!- (b) seems about equally common and (c) is only a matter of motivation.

On the other hand, most designers I have met appear unable to try grasping and utilizing the simplest of programming concepts. I don't know if their brain is wired differently or if they despise or fear that stuff so much that their subconscious blocks anything related, but, in any way, they seem much less capable in producing any code in any amount of time, than most developers in producing a pretty and usable design in a reasonable amount of time.

That's just my simple observation, based on the 15-20 people of both professions that I know well enough.

So, for projects that want just a good design (i.e. at the level of twitter's) and not an WOW-super-original design, I think that the work is fundamentally simpler than coding, doesn't need much expertise and most developers can do it pretty well _if_ they want. For those projects at least, which is the majority, I don't see how designers are, or should be, more valuable than coders.

For more specialized projects, like a desktop environment, usability experts and designers might be a requirement, but still, I wouldn't go as far as to consider them more valuable.

</comment><comment><USER13> ...and yet.

I like good design as much as the next person. But I'm not sure what a good design even is anymore and this article isn't helping. It's throwing a lot of concepts in that "design" bucket. Are we in the midst of a "design bubble"? Are we - as in anyone who can look at a screen and make some kind of cogent value judgment - all designers now? I'm pretty sure I've never chosen to use something (keeping in the realm of software/technology) based on what it looks like over the actual content/functionality it provided. Or is content and functionality in the realm of the designer now?

And I think this statement is highly debatable: "Programmers who prefer to be given detailed requirements and push syntax into a terminal or prefer to isolate themselves from the broader product team will have decreasing value in the world of innovation and product development."

That may or may not be true, time will tell. Too many cooks spoil the soup, you know. And in time, when we are all designers, we just might want someone to competently and efficiently push that syntax into that terminal.

Now I'm off to see if I can find any old issues of Raygun in my basement.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Programmers who prefer to be given detailed requirements and push syntax into a terminal or prefer to isolate themselves from the broader product team will have decreasing value in the world of innovation and product development."

I don't agree with the title but I agree with this sentence. There is some software development that requires people with skills so advanced that they can really do whatever they like. But most programming is tying systems together and worrying about maintenance, error resilience and cost. While those things are certainly not easy, I think they are becoming more manageable by a broader set of people. You now can't really be a specialist (and disregard everything else and without being in the top factions of a percent of ability) in a field increasingly (successfully) filled by generalists.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am working on my design skills by prototyping and wireframing with Photoshop. I'm not an artist or illustrator by any means, but I can design things fairly well from a high level.

</comment><comment><USER16> The line between design and implementation is a blurry one in all fields. In some cultures, the art _is_ the craft.

</comment><comment><USER17> Oh boy, not another one of these. Designers and programmers need to call a truce already. One will always believe they are more important than the other because they each think in totally different terms and have totally unique perspectives on the same project.

The designer often thinks in terms of what _could_ be. They imagine new ways of presenting information. Programmers think more in terms of what is realistic, what the rules are, and how to play by the rules while still being able to make the design a reality.

I fall into the "developer" category the article talks about. It's strange though. I don't know what others think but I always thought that designers weren't the guys who just drew designs on paper and in photoshop. I think a lot of people think of designers as "point and click" guys and programmers as "keyboard jockeys". I always perceived designers as the ones who did do the point and click stuff but also got their hands dirty in CSS, JavaScript, HTML, etc. I always thought of designers as programmers who mainly use markup, presentation, and visual effects code while programmers were the guys doing the back end work. Apparently that's now how others think.

I think both are equally important. The only one I think is less important is the designer that stays strictly in the realm of point and click, photoshop, pad and pencil work. These days as long as you can code in either the markup/style realm or the backend server side realm then you're just as valuable as anyone.

One is not better than any other. They're just different! These debates only serve to create prejudices and make it harder for the person doing the HTML/CSS to work with the guy doing the Rails/Python/PHP as one will look down their nose at the other like he's somehow inferior when they really need each other. We also need to keep in mind that when you're working on the web there's no way that you can know all there is to know to create something by yourself. We need each other. I mean, you could launch a product yourself having done both design and dev work but to grow and sustain the app you're going to need specialized people that can fill in your blind spots.</comment>