Dash-cams: Russia's Last Hope For Civility And Survival On The Road (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/russian-dashcam/ <comment><USER2> Here is a quick story about Russian police from a few years ago. This should give you an idea why a dashboard camera is not an option, but a necessity. My mother was in Russia visiting my uncle (her brother) in Krasnodar 3 years ago. He picked her up at the airport and they started their drive back -- about 2 hours away from the city. As soon as they got on the highway, they noticed a civilian sedan on the side of the road. The car started moving as they were approaching it and when they were within a few yards it veered right in front of them, causing them to chaotically cut into the adjacent lane. A few moments later a police car comes out of some corner and pulls them over. By this time the other car that cut into their lane is obviously gone. They cops out of the car and tell them that they've stopped them for reckless driving. My uncle explains the situation and tells them that he's meeting his sister for first time in years and would like to just safely get her home. The cops tell him that he can pay them an X amount of rubles now without worrying about making the drive back to the city to pay the ticket. When he agrees, they give him an outrageous bribe amount. He quickly gives them a number significantly lower. The cops tell him, literally - "let's flip a coin." Both picked a side of a coin and they ended up paying the smaller part of the bribe. This whole situation sounds more humorous than anything. They used pull better stunts back in early 90s. Now the situation with police is slightly more regulated, but it's still just as corrupt as it's been since the collapse of Soviet Union.

<comment><USER3> > but it's still just as corrupt as it's been since the collapse of Soviet > Union

In the Soviet Union you not only bribed police, but the grocer, the mail man, your child's principal, and the list goes on.

<comment><USER4> Why on earth would anyone bribe a mailman?

<comment><USER5> So you get your mail and your packages in one piece, unopened and on time?

<comment><USER6> -:) (Not to knock twice ?)

<comment><USER7> Psst, younglings. He's referring to this - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman_Always_Rings_Twice_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postman_Always_Rings_Twice_%281981_film%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Russia sounds like a pretty scary place, to be honest. Is it really as bad as this makes it sound? How does a whole country get to be so sociopathic?

<comment><USER9> This is a complex question.

1\. Article is mostly based on CHP community posts and comments. Their data is strongly skewed toward scary stuff (which is the only type of content that is posted there)

2\. There are several categories of horrible things that can happen to you, but mostly you can avoid them. However, sometimes you can't, and sometimes it's batshit crazy. For example, couple of months ago, some road crash with some heated argument happened in St. Petersburg. One of the participants of that argument died from five knife wounds to the chest. Investigative Committee alleged that (sic!) _the man committed suicide_ (google Grigory Kochnev). You can't make this shit up.

3\. Russians themselves are mostly fine, but corruption is on super-high levels and these people are not sent as alien agents from space. Saltykov- Shchedrin, great Russian satirist, wrote more than a hundred years ago: "If I were to doze off and re-awake in a hundred years and someone asked me what is happening in Russia, my answer would be unhesitating: people are drinking and stealing".

4\. If you are to visit Russia as a tourist, you are reasonably safe. But I'd never advice anyone to open business in or relocate to Russia. Unless you want to deal with truly kafkaesque things every single day.

<comment><USER8> So is the article just picking out a few isolated incidents and painting a completely unrealistic picture of driving in Russia?

<comment><USER10> I realize that I'm just throwing more anecdotes into the "NOT DATA" bucket here, but the last time I visited Russia I was driven around by my grandfather and uncle. It was probably one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced on the road, and I've had a tire blow-out in a Ford king- everything truck, as well as losing power-everything in the same truck, both times going 70+ mph on a highway.

<comment><USER8> What specifically made the driving in Russia so terrifying? Was it the kind of things the article was talking about, or something else?

<comment><USER10> I never saw anyone trying to pull a scam, but my impressions - and this was about a decade ago - were of a Road Warrior type environment. The distinction between road and sidewalk was a mere suggestion, traffic signals were the equivalent of someone shushing you in a library, and lanes - what lanes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was wondering why there was so much video footage of people riding in their vehicles' when the meteorite smacked Russia. Everyone had dash-cams in their cars because they were afraid of falling victim to a street brawl.

It makes so much sense now!

<comment><USER12> They've shown a few of these videos on Tosh.0. Guys pulling over hopping out of their vehicles, each sizing up the others weapons, and then backing down[1]. Amusing, but frightening at the same time.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s0XH5YA2mo>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems like a necessity in Russia but a useful thing to have elsewhere. I know I've been in situations in the USA where I've wished I'd had one.

Can anyone here recommend a brand/model?

<comment><USER14> A coworker uses a gopro. Seems like overkill to me, but they're small...

<comment><USER15> I've been eyeballing a GoPro for a dash cam since it also overlaps with my other hobbies (cycling and ATV riding). The big drawbacks seem to be the low- light filming and the fact that it doesn't automatically turn on or automatically rewrite when the disk gets full.

<comment><USER16> The GoPro 3 Black low light performance is quite good (much better than earlier versions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> On a related note, The New York Times just posted synced videos from a number of dash-cams showing the Siberian meteorite: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/15/world/europe/1...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/02/15/world/europe/16meteorite_videogrid.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Google should use all these dash-cam clips to train their self-driving cars how not to drive;)

One thing that escapes my understanding: people do not affraid to beat somebody to death, but they can't figure out how to break a dash-cam and destroy the evidence?

<comment><USER19> yeah. i totally get several uses for the cameras. but the opening argument on the article made it hard to keep reading... if someone can drag you out of the car to "smash your face" i hardly doubt the camera will help you there.

If anything, will leave you with a broken face and a $600 camera missing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dash-cams are seemingly becoming a more essential piece of equipment for cars nowdays. For anyone looking into learning more about dash cams I've found lots of great information and resources about dash cams here: <http://dashcamtalk.com/>

<comment><USER21> Despite seeming a bit spammy, this site is actually really useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The article briefly mentions a scam where a driver intentionally causes an accident to extort money. It's strangely satisfying to see this unfold: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWvG4KAYJfY>

</comment><comment><USER23> Do they have the video upload to an offsite server in realtime?

What are some of the feature people looking for in a dash-cam and/or a dash- cam service?

<comment><USER24> You have a free data upload link from your car?

<comment><USER25> Using cellular broadband, but only in case of an emergency, would still be useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think this might be a preview of what life will be like once google googles and other augmented reality headset cams get broadly distributed. I don't mean people will become as savage as they are on the Russian roads, just there'll be far more eyewitness videos of things and entertainment will arise via aggregation of these videos.

<comment><USER27> _"I don't mean people will become as savage as they are on the Russian roads..."_

The premise of TFA is not that "because of dashcams people on russian roads did become savage".

The premise of the article is that thanks to dashcams there's some hope that people become more civilized.

Your sentence make it sound like dashcams are the issue that turned russians sociopathic. It's not the case: now we have visual proofs but it has nearly always been like that...

<comment><USER15> I took his post to imply that the purpose of dash cams in Russia is in response to the savagery of the roads, not that cams turned people into savages. I'm not sure that anyone in their right mind would argue that in any situation.

<comment><USER26> You are correct. I never meant to imply that dashcams and savagery were correlated in any way. We have become separated from reality by the confined view into reality that mainstream media has provided. With google googles everywhere maybe we'll immerse back into reality through billions of hours of google glasses video passed through the hands of legions of expert editors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Um... I read this exact article on Jalopnik earlier today: [http://jalopnik.com/why-russians-are-obsessed-with-dash- cams...](http://jalopnik.com/why-russians-are-obsessed-with-dash-cams-5918159)

DO Jalopnik and anminal NY share the same owernship, and thus just recycle articles?

EDIT: Jalopnik has republished with permission at the bottom..

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I can tell, HN considers jalopnik links spam and auto-kills those submissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For those of you interested in purchasing one, DealExtreme has ~500 of them here:

<http://dx.com/c/735>

Features include GPS, SD card recording, auto loop recording, auto-record when powered, stop when unpowered, accelerometers, or compass. They tend to be about $100 shipped anywhere in the US.

<comment><USER30> Has the stuff you've bought off of them proven to be of good build quality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I thought they got that meteorite footage from taxis or police cars or something. This explains everything!

</comment><comment><USER32> I've wanted a dash cam for years but the technology just wasn't there.

In the late 90s I drove around with my JVC GR-DVM70U miniDV camcorder on a tripod lashed into my back seat.

No I can have 1080p video from my cellphone mounted on a windshield mount. I have lots of video but it's pretty limited due to storage limitations I choose the highest quality because my reasoning is if something goes wrong there's no point in have video that's so bad that everything is blurry. A video overlay of speed, brakes, compass, GPS would be nice too.

I'd love to have a small camera always on with the option to dump the video to a safe storage area such as Dropbox or several places.

<comment><USER33> A better option might using a service like UStream. Download their app, set your channel to private, and when you drive places, start your broadcast. I believe they automatically archive anything you livestream, so if something happens and the phone is destroyed, there's still a record of what happened. And it wouldn't fill up local storage.

With an Android phone, this might even be scriptable using something like Tasker. Set it up to automatically start the streaming application as soon as the GPS records you travelling a speed over a certain limit, say 10 mph/20 kph.

<comment><USER32> I did use an app called iOnRoad they even sent me a free windshield mount for my phone. It doesn't record video but will take a picture when it's senses some danger such as a sudden stop i.e. trying to avoid the car in front of you stopping.

I thought about UStream but I am lucky to get a signal even here in the capital city; GPS or cell.

Maybe a RaspberryPi, a small webcam and solar panel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wow, sounds like a foolproof idea! Wait, maybe the bad guy who's broke my window and is repeatedly punching me in the face will just grab the dash cam.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, you're right. Because it can fail in one type of situation, it must be useless. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Interesting timing with the release of "A Good Day to Die Hard" yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER37> Russia will be first country where Bigfoot will be caught on dashboard camera, regularly.

</comment><comment><USER38> Which shows how usefull is the dash-cam. I will mount one for sure.</comment>


Compiler Bomb in C: 1 line of code produces 16GB executable - <AUTHOR> http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/69193/4588 <comment><USER2> The Python3 compiler bomb is even more impressive, if that's possible.

        (1<<19**8,)*4**7

The above produces a *.pyc in the terabytes.

Without Python warning. That's a little... Scary.</comment>


Show HN: CS43 – Functional Programming Paradigms - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/stanfordhaskell/cs43 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone. My name is Adi, and I'm a co-instructor for Stanford's CS43, Functional Programming Paradigms. We are designing our curriculum for the Winter 2020 quarter, so I would be very interested in feedback if people have any.

-AG</comment>


To build an easy to use web site, build the iphone app first. - <AUTHOR>

Building an iphone app forces you to focus on the fundamental aspects of your service.  And so it seems that building it before the web site would likely result in an easier to use web site. <comment><USER2> Nice idea, I'll try it out for some new features of our site. Constraint are your friend even artificial ones.</comment>


What if people were paid for their data? - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2018/07/07/what-if-people-were-paid-for-their-data <comment><USER2> Data gathering is valuable only because it's a concentration of a huge number of very low value things.

Think of it like a dam and reservoir at the drainage of a major watershed. You can position things to collect all the rain and snow melt over a large area. But it's not like you are going to pay everyone for each rain drop.

</comment><comment><USER3> How much is an individual's data worth? Is it enough to pay for an ongoing Google / Facebook account?

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm really fascinated to see how the next 5-10 years play out for the news industry.

They seem really focused on google and facebook, who have a great deal of control over the flow of traffic to the news sites. The EU in 2014, has even tried to get google to pay for headlines and snippets [1]. And they just decided not to go ahead with a similar plan [2].

Yet the news seem to ignore the isps, despite their willingness to actually alter content in traffic to display ads. [3][4][5] I feel that they are stepping over dollars to pick up dimes? Perhaps I am biased, but one of those seems like more of a threat to me.(Yes, I know about https) Where is the constant barrage of net neutrality opinion pieces? Are they not worried?

Now they want to talk about paying users for data. From the heading on the article: "Our site uses cookies to deliver relevant messages during your visit, such as presenting our latest offers". Obviously they know which articles I am interested in(which products might i buy), but I have heard they keep track of how long it takes me to read it(are speed readers more affluent?), and where people stop reading(short attention span correlated to increases spending impulsiveness?).

Am I going to get paid to read the news? This is a very valuable service I provide. Yet the economist charges(which I am in favor of), and complains about the free services(which I find really convenient and cheap). Are news/data collection companies going to be exempt? Are they in favor of paying users?

I guess seeing how the GDPR unfolds will be interesting wrt the news.

1\. [http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/12/the-fight-to-get-google- to-...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2014/12/the-fight-to-get-google-to-pay-for- news-continues-in-europe/)

2\. [https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44712475](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44712475)

3\. [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/08/atts-...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2015/08/atts-free-wi-fi-hotspot-injects-extra-ads-on-non-att- websites/)

4\. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x- uidh](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh)

5\. [https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/12/comcast-s...](https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/12/comcast- still-uses-mitm-javascript-injection-serve-unwanted-ads-messages/)</comment>


The first cancer vaccine that works - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5813493/the-first-cancer-vaccine-that-works

<comment><USER2> "The big question now is whether this therapy could work in humans. Clinical trials that would lead to using this therapy on humans could begin in two years."

I really should stop getting overly optimistic about these articles.

Also, I realize HN terms loosely say that anything that can be termed as items of interest to hackers is acceptable, but as a community can we please keep off miracle cures for AIDS, Cancer, Incredibly efficient batteries and Super cheap solar cells and <Insert prototype of cure-all renewable energy source here> until something real materializes?

If not, I'd honestly like to know if anyone really derives value from these articles and remembers them for more than 10 seconds.

<comment><USER3> I wish these articles were more useful. However, I will beat my usual drum and point out that a major reason we cannot tell one such article from another is that _the original articles are behind a thirty-two-dollar-per-article paywall_.

I worked as a cancer researcher for a few years, and I assure you that the details can be quite interesting if you can _see_ them. But from this writeup I can't see a thing. They delivered DNA to a mouse with cancer. Did the mouse have mouse cancer or transplanted human cancer? If the mouse had mouse cancer, how did it get that cancer? Did they administer carcinogens, or use mutant mice with cancer-prone prostates? If the mouse had human prostate cancer transplants (a typical technique) and those were cured by mouse anti-human antibodies formed in response to virus-borne human prostate DNA... does this have any relevance to human treatment at all, given that humans don't routinely come down with cancers that were transplanted from other mammals? And, crucially, what happened to the prostates of the mice? Did they get attacked by the antibodies that attacked the cancer? If not, why not? If so, are we really prepared to attack, say, stomach cancer by inducing an autoimmune response that might also attack the stomach itself? That doesn't sound so great!

These aren't even very sophisticated questions. (I was never a very _good_ cancer researcher.) Anyone with a freshman education in bio could ask these basic but enlightening questions. And maybe someone with a _Nature Medicine_ subscription would be kind enough to answer them. Because this popular-press rehash of a press release sure doesn't help much. As you say, such rehashes all sound the same. The devil is in the details, and the details are always missing.

EDIT: in my eagerness to give examples of basic questions I realize that I'm being a little too cartoonishly obtuse. In fact, we can deduce from the fact that the mice apparently _can_ form antibodies that they are immunocompetent, which implies that they probably do have mouse cancer, because it's hard to transplant human cancer into a mouse with a functioning immune system. They reject it. But I shouldn't have to guess this stuff. It's all right there in _Nature Medicine_. Somewhere. Pity that the karma I'd earn for this comment isn't worth thirty-two dollars to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are both vaccines for HPV (cause of cervical cancer) and HBV (cause of liver cancer).

<comment><USER5> That's a bit like saying sunscreen is a vaccine for skin cancer.

<comment><USER3> No, actually, it is like saying there is a vaccine that prevents many cervical cancers. And there is:

[http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cervical-cancer- vaccine/WO0...](http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cervical-cancer- vaccine/WO00120)

If you're a woman under age 26 you should get this at once.

The cited article totally skips over these existing vaccines, of course. Probably someone along the line deleted one too many words from a more factually accurate sentence in the original press release.

<comment><USER6> And it's increasingly showing value for boys as well - <http://www.slate.com/id/2296748/pagenum/all>

Saddens me that the take up has not been much, much higher, but I have other forums for expressing my views on anti-vaccination liars.

<comment><USER7> Sad to say it but the reason the HPV vaccines haven't been more popular has little to do with anti-vaccination propaganda, and much more to do with anti- sexual-promiscuity propaganda. Lots of people -- including many, many, many women -- think that vaccinating their daughters against HPV will encourage them to be promiscuous and that it is somehow preferable to risk their lives.

<comment><USER6> True, and from what I understand that's more the case in the US where the 'Abstinence Only' type model is more common (compared to Australia). Given the choice between sex and cancer, I know which one I'd prefer my child to be hiding from me - I'd also much prefer they understood safe sex, as opposed to an all or nothing approach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given my father was just diagnosed with prostate cancer, my grandfather died of it, and two of my uncles have been treated for it, I REALLY hope this works out.

I won't be skipping my prostate exam when the time comes while waiting for it.

<comment><USER9> I just saw on the news that a low carb diet can prevent cancer but of course the experiment was performed on mice.

[http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2011/06/10/0...](http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2011/06/10/0008-5472.CAN-10-3973.abstract)

Take care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How is this the "first cancer vaccine that works" by any stretch of the imagination? There are vaccines that have completed testing and are on the market, and have been for years.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone recalls the movie "I'm a legend" ? Just saying..... :P

On topic: If this is true, this is great news. I know they are supposed to test it and that takes time, but I find that a lot of these "found cure for xxx" news kind of fade away after awhile to never be heard. It's not the first time I read a cure for cancer or HIV, but never comes out.

</comment><comment><USER12> This cancer vaccine is already on the market and it already works: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipuleucel-T>

The study mentioned in the i09.com article is just public relations -- in particular, b/c mouse cancer models are often not predictive of human results.

</comment><comment><USER13> s/theory/hypothesis/g

</comment><comment><USER14> Read somewhere that Steve Jobs was under alternate medication. Anybody knows any details about that alternate medicine?</comment>


Cancer death rate posts biggest one-year drop ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/01/08/cancer-death-rate-posts-biggest-one-year-drop-ever/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how much e-cigarettes and vaping helped with the drop in smoking and lung cancer in recent years. While still not great for you it's much better than smoking.

<comment><USER3> True. Also, along the same lines, I wonder how much the reduction in dairy and meat consumption has played into it as well.</comment></comment>


HN is getting too big - <AUTHOR>

Sorry for the link bait title ;) HN is maintaining its quality very nicely for a site that's growing so quickly.
Just wondering if it might be time for HN to get sub HNs (like sub reddits).
Stories are getting buried v.quickly. I was trying to find a link I saw at work yesterday and ended up having to dig through 6 or 7 pages worth of posts. <comment><USER3> <http://searchyc.com> is the solution to your particular problem, not sharded communities.

It's unfortunate that pg petulantly refuses to acknowledge its existence. Even talking about in person, he'd only engage with me on the subject when I referred to the useless HNSearch Firefox extension that's linked in the footer because it's from WebMynd (YC W08).

Confounding things is the fact that HNSearch actually redirects to searchyc SERPs on some user actions!

<comment><USER4> I wonder what the deal is there.

He has to be aware of the fact that we all understand that he's rooting for the companies that YC has funded, but clearly webmynd is dysfunctional when it comes to effectively searching HN, and the HN audience deserves the best it can get.

If he would just so much as place a link to searchyc or a form that submits there that would make life a bit easier and save endless newcomer questions.

In any other community such a feature would have been implemented long ago, the searchyc guys seem to do it for free so why not recognize their efforts and make it official? Or is there bad blood between searchyc and PG?

<comment><USER5> I'm a founder of WebMynd, and I feel a need to clarify what we do since comments like this have been raised several times. For the record, I think searchyc is great and we've never tried to pretend that we have created an HN- specific search engine as they have.

We have created a custom version of our product for HN which, like several other YC-funded companies who's products PG thought relevant, are linked to in the HN footer. Perhaps the fact our icon says 'HNSearch' is a problem - <USER2> we need to change this to 'HNSidebar'?

To clarify - we make browser addons that allow you to personalize the right- hand side of the Google search results page with sources that you value. When you search on Google (and others) we open up a sidebar on the right of the page where you can see more results from sources that you can select, some of which Google cannot, or does not, show you - e.g. searches across your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles, or Gmail, or your own Delicious bookmarks.

Hacker News is one of the sources that you can select in our sidebar and we've created a specific version of our addon that shows results from HN, by default, in a larger widget than normal. That's powered by Bing site search and if you click on the title of the widget, it'll take you to searchyc to try your search there. Some other sources are also powered by Bing site search where we think that's the best way of showing the results. For many other sources we use their own search APIs, like Digg or OneRiot which put a big emphasis on recency and explicit user inputs.

Our product lets you tell Google: "A lot of the time I want to see New York Times and Hacker News search results when I search, so show me what they've got on the right-hand side."

I hope that helps and we'd love comments on our actual product and how we can make it work for you.

<comment><USER4> > Perhaps the fact our icon says 'HNSearch' is a problem - maybe we need to > change this to 'HNSidebar'?

It would at least be more descriptive, and it would also reduce 'bounce' from people that install it and then are totally confused and remove it again.

Thanks for the explanation, I've actually installed webmynd in the past and we had some email exchange long ago (September last year or so), it's neat to see you're sticking around and explaining so clearly what webmynd is and what it is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> eli_s, not an answer, but if you upvote that article, it's in your _saved stories_ : <http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=eli_s>

(from your homepage, 3rd link from the bottom)

<comment><AUTHOR> nice - thanks for the heads up :)

now why is news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=eli_s a magic link that can't be found on the main nav?

oops... just found it in my profile page. not the best spot to put it :S

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's already happening, since a few weeks HN now has an 'ask' section, which is effectively a first split.

</comment><comment><USER7> I too have noticed a large increase in volume recently, but I'm not sure that's the problem. Rather, I'd say the site needs less churn - top articles should stay on the front page for at least a day. That just means a different ranking, maybe something like log(votes)*weight, where weight decays over time but gets bumped at each upvote.

If that's not enough churn for some people, I'd prefer a filter that lets them temporarily hide some stories. And ten there's /newest

I know there's also the /best section, but it's not linked to and I don't know how it's ranked.

A reddit-like url filter would help a little in catching reposts, but I'm not sure this is a big problem yet.

<comment><USER4> it's linked:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/lists>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't use the 'ask' section link, but regularly click on them from the 'new' or main view.

What categories would you suggest? Business, technology, environment, programming, apple, facebook? Ok, probably not apple and facebook though those do get an inordinate amount of links.

Personally I wouldn't use them, and my concern would be that people who come only to read articles tagged in that column wouldn't cross-polinate their expertise into cross-over areas.

Just a thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> My personal favourite would be to have 10 or so official sub HNs and not to allow people to create their own.

My list would include Entrepreneurship, Tech Web, Tech Other

<comment><USER9> I'd be happy with a minimalist two-way split: one category for mainly technical articles (new languages, language tutorials, code releases, review- my-app requests, in-depth articles on the state of some technology, etc.), and a second category for mainly business, startup, political, or meta-type news (X got bought, tips on productivity, VC term sheets, management styles, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with sub HNs is for those of us who use feed readers to read HN and other news sites. I REALLY don't want to have to add ten extra feeds to my feed list, as the idea of sub-HNs implies. I, for one, am fond of the way this is currently set up, it works well with how I have my feed reader set up, and my desire for knowledge at all hours.

</comment><comment><USER11> Noticed this, too.

The way I keep up with it is using google reader to star (mark) stories over the day and reading them when i get the chance.

I'm not sure sub HNs are the answer just now since I'd need to subscribe to pretty much all of them to not miss good content.

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree. My RSS feed has 100s of articles every day. And I can't keep up :(

</comment><comment><USER13> I miss Nick B.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's what she said.

<comment><USER15> I wonder how many people laugh at inappropriate comments here and then vote them down.

<comment><USER16> How does one downvote something? Is there a karma level a user should be at to be able to downvote?

<comment><USER17> Yes, the minimum is at 200pts currently</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Got Virgin ISP? Cancel it. - <AUTHOR> http://www.getmiro.com/blog/2008/04/got-virgin-isp-cancel-it/ <comment><USER3> I can't name an ISP you SHOULDN'T cancel. It's like that old qoute about democracy from Churchill (I think it was him) "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" I've heard so many horror stories about ISP's that I kind of think they all stink like dirty socks. Might be some really nice smaller ones though, dunno.

<comment><USER4> Re: UK ISPs - I've yet to hear anything negative about Be Internet (aka O2 Internet) - it's cheap, fast and unlimited. Of course, how long this will last is another question entirely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sigh - I am with Virgin and have been generally happy for years now. I don't like the sounds of this one bit.

Its getting bad enough in the evenings, as if you download more than a few 100MB they throttle your connection down to 1MB from 10MB for 4 hours.

And then there is the business with Phorm. Its just downright sleezey - <USER2> tech types will be sure to opt out, but the 99% will have no idea what is happening.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I love my 10Mbit Virgin cable connection, but if they're going to start limiting iPlayer I'd rather move to a slower dsl line elsewhere

</comment><comment><USER6> Virgin ISP? Not with all the porn _I've_ downloaded it isn't.

Err now as for myself...

</comment><comment><USER7> Cory Doctorow, seriously? C'mon ...

<comment><USER8> If George Clooney denounced DRM/a patent troll/baby killing, would the denouncement be any less valid? Celebrities may not be experts, many of them may even be idiots, but if they use their celebrity to promote a worthy cause rather than themselves, that's a good thing. When they lead action for that cause, that's even better.

<comment><USER7> It is valid even when they have some financial interest in the cause?</comment></comment></comment>


Performance of quantum computer no better than ordinary PC, say analysts - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0619/Performance-of-quantum-computer-no-better-than-ordinary-PC-say-analysts <comment><USER2> The title of the article "Performance of quantum computer no better than ordinary PC" is just flat out wrong. The real issue that physicists are concerned about is whether the D-wave machine is a quantum computer or not. The issue is not whether quantum computers are "better" than classical ones.

Assuming the correctness of quantum mechanics, a quantum computer WILL be faster than classical computers for specific classes of problems, exponentially faster in some cases. This has been mathematically proven. (EDIT: No it hasn't apparently. See Michael Nielsen's response below.)

<comment><USER3> Your first paragraph is quite right. But the second paragraph is wrong: for (non-oracle) problems quantum computers are merely suspected to be faster in principle than conventional classical computers. It's never been proven.

<comment><USER2> I guess I'm confused then. I thought that quantum algorithms had been proven to be faster than the best known classical algorithms (for instance, Shor's factorization), assuming the correctness and completeness of the postulates of QM. In other words, the order of the algorithm is derivable from the postulates. Is that not the case?

I think there's a few people (t'Hooft if I remember correctly?) that believe a quantum computer will never be able to _experimentally_ demonstrate this speed-up because some aspect of quantum mechanics is incomplete/incorrect.

Edit: Here's the thread I was thinking of where t'Hooft and Shor discuss this [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/34217/why-do- peop...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/34217/why-do-people- categorically-dismiss-some-simple-quantum-models)

<comment><USER3> Shor's algorithm is exponentially faster than the best existing classical algorithm for factoring. But that doesn't mean there's not an exponentially faster classical algorithm which would be comparable in speed to Shor's algorithm. Some noted experts believe this is possible, and even likely. Richard Lipton believes it, and claims that Peter Sarnak does too:

[http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/sex-lies-and- quantu...](http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/sex-lies-and-quantum- computers/)

Yes, 't Hooft and others, including Leonid Levin and Oded Goldreich, believe that quantum computers won't function because of quantum mechanics breaking down. See, e.g.:

[http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/on- qc.html](http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~oded/on-qc.html)

[http://www.cs.bu.edu/fac/lnd/expo/qc.htm](http://www.cs.bu.edu/fac/lnd/expo/qc.htm)

<comment><USER4> Aren't algorithms like Shor's essentially faster than others in their respected categories due to parallelization?

I.e. isn't quantum superposition just a form of parallelization? if the quantum step in Shor's algorithm is replaced with a classical step executed in parallel in many cpus, then the speed up would be of the same order of magnitude as when using a quantum step.

<comment><USER5> Not really, if that was the case, quantum computers really would be faster than classical computers. A qubit is basically a normal bit, with probability a that it's in the 0 state, and b that it's in the 1 state, with a^2 + b^2 = 1. If you do some clever maths, you can get these probabilities to cancel out, and give you something that will collapse to the proper state when read.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm#Finding_the_pe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor's_algorithm#Finding_the_period)

Shor's algorithm is still very theoretical though, we need to actually build a quantum computer to run it first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is another article today bashing the D-Wave Two computers: [http://www.wired.com/2013/06/d-wave-quantum-computer- usc/](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/d-wave-quantum-computer-usc/)

These machines are testing a completely new computing concept. We're trying to learn how they work so that we can apply that to building machines that can actually outperform traditional computers, and once that's achieved then the potential benefit will be enormous.

According to [http://www.dwavesys.com/d-wave-two- system](http://www.dwavesys.com/d-wave-two-system) as you scale up qubits the power demands do not increase. That alone has huge potential.

Maybe new materials need to be developed to see the full potential of these computers, lots of research needs to be done. Why are all of these articles so pessimistic?

NASA, Lockheed, and Google purchasing these multi-million dollar machines should indicate that there is at-least some potential and value in the D-Wave computers, even if in the end they just learn what D-Wave did wrong.

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

"We don't know the best questions to ask the quantum computers, that's what we're trying to find out now."

<comment><USER7> So negative because there's still a non-zero probability that its not going to work at all, ever. That there's something about quantum computing we've figured out wrong, and no benefit is possible.

<comment><USER8> They're also negative because no one has actually proved that the D-Wave is, in fact, doing any actual quantum computing. That's been the issue all along with D-Wave: no one can prove that it's really doing anything with those qbits.

<comment><USER6> It depends on your definition of quantum computing, the D-Wave does [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing) and has been faster in some applications.

[https://plus.google.com/+QuantumAILab/posts](https://plus.google.com/+QuantumAILab/posts)

They're just getting started, this field is very new, very difficult, and there are a lot of very smart people trying to answer the what/how/why/where/when of "quantum" computers.

The hardware outperforms off-the-shelf solvers by a large margin

"In an early test we dialed up random instances and pitted the machine against popular of-the-shelf solvers -- Tabu Search, Akmaxsat and CPLEX. At 509 qubits, the machine is about 35,500 times (!) faster than the best of these solvers. (You may have heard about a 3,600-fold speedup earlier, but that was on an older chip with only 439 qubits." [1]

[1] [https://plus.google.com/+QuantumAILab/posts/DymNo8DzAYi](https://plus.google.com/+QuantumAILab/posts/DymNo8DzAYi)

<comment><USER9> > The hardware outperforms off-the-shelf solvers by a large margin

But it doesn't outperform classical algorithms specifically written to solve the types of problems that the D-Wave machine accepts.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, and I've never seen anyone outside D-Wave show these types of speedups. Last article I read, in fact, was struggling really hard to even show that D-Wave was the same speed as traditional algos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the paper in question: [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/06/18/science.1...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/06/18/science.1252319)

Which appears (I can't tell, paywalled) to be an update or this one: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.2910](http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.2910)

I don't have to time to read the article properly right now, but doesn't look like they did anything ridiculous in their choice of testing algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER11> Firstly, this is the first of a new class of computers, so I am not surprised it may be slow at first. Secondly, this machine uses a relatively small number of bits, compared to a classical computer. Lastly, they're throwing classical problems at a quantum processor and wondering why it's not magically faster. I would like to see how an optimized quantum algorithm performs.

</comment><comment><USER12> A few other comments have pointed it out already, but how does this comparison actually mean anything? For example, multiplication with the first hole-punch computers was no faster than multiplying by hand and paper (probably slower), but look where we are now!

</comment><comment><USER13> The title is slightly misleading. This article is only talking about the performance of one specific quantum computer. (The D-Wave Two).

<comment><USER8> Are there others that you can buy? As far as I know, D-Wave is the only one out of the lab. I'm totally a D-Wave skeptic, but I do have to state that the scientists who tested this thing sound like idiots, unless they really did try quantum annealing. If the D-Wave guys say they tried the wrong set of equations for the device, I'm inclined to believe them.

Even though I don't even believe this thing is really a quantum computer, there are much more specific and defined ways to poke holes in D-Wave than just by running some tests and comparing speed. D-Wave has, very specifically, targeted this machine at one function: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_annealing)

Unless you're doing quantum annealing on the D-Wave, it might as well be a toaster, an Android phone, or a Windows PC. It's made to do only quantum annealing.

Did D-Wave 2 somehow expand its capabilities? I'm basing this on D-Wave 1 knowledge, but I cannot imagine anything really changed except the number of Qbits inside the thing.

All this having been said, the D-Wave has yet to prove that it is even doing Quantum Annealing, let alone that it's faster than a traditional computer at this problem set. No one has shown it to be faster than traditional outside of D-Wave.

<comment><USER14> Yes, of course they did what D-wave calls quantum annealing. As you say, that's all the D-Wave machines can do.

The D-Wave executive's claim that the problems used in the study are "not at all the right choice for probing a quantum speedup" is in reference to the specific subtypes of quantum annealing problems that this study looked at, not whether they were doing quantum annealing at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the definition of "ordinary PC" being used? Not finding an answer to that in the article, which makes it difficult to get an idea of what the researchers are comparing this thing to.

<comment><USER16> One which doesn't exploit quantum-mechanical principles of computation.

<comment><USER15> So is that a brand-new Dell XPS machine? Is that my aging-not-too-well Compaq Presario 1210 with a Pentium? Is that a Macbook Air? Is that one of Oracle's $200,000 M-series servers? Is that some beige-box piece of junk that the researchers found in their neighbor's backyard? The category "personal computers which do not exploit quantum-mechanical principles of computation" is so mind-bogglingly vast that such a description alone is hardly useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917482)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917749)

</comment><comment><USER18> Original article: [http://www.livescience.com/46414-first-quantum-computer- no-f...](http://www.livescience.com/46414-first-quantum-computer-no- faster.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7917749)

</comment><comment><USER20> Weird title. If someone built a quantum computer that performed remotely as well as a 2014-era classical machine, that would be huge news. Quantum computers are _really_ hard to build.</comment>


A Look at Overnight Stays at US National Parks - <AUTHOR> http://jordan-vincent.com/night-under-the-stars <comment><USER3> See that yellow bump in the winter for Yellowstone? You can access a fair bit of Yellowstone in the winter and I highly recommend it!

If you've ever been there in the summer the experience is much different. Instead of lines of cars and crowds of tourists you almost have the place to yourself. Drive to the base and they will take you on a snow cat up to the lodge. From there, you can cross country ski, take snow cat tours or just walk around and experience amazing things surrounded by quiet nature - snow-caked bison, wolves, foxes hunting mice in snow.

My wife and I were by ourselves waiting for Ol' Faithful to blow when a coyote walked by us heading toward the hills, passing no more than 20 feet away. It's not for everyone, but if you want to do something awesome and skip the crowds, it's a great experience!

<comment><USER4> I would add the caveat that you stay off any slope greater than 25-degrees or below the runout of any slope greater than 25-degrees or below slopes where the ridgeline has cornices unless you've got at least AIARE 1 training.

If you don't know how to measure slope angle, you probably shouldn't be on anything other than the gentlest of slopes.

Avalanches kill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It took me a bit to understand the graphs, but I appreciate them.

That huge drop in tent-camping at Big Bend during the summer is a solid warning. If you do, I highly recommend doing so in the mountains, where it can be 20-40F cooler than the lower altitudes.

I camped at Chisos Basin in July a couple years ago. We were hoping to canoe and camp along the river for a night, but that section of the Rio Grande was mostly dried up at the time. The days were in the 90s and the nights were mid-80s. At lower altitudes, the temps were around 115F during the day.

Regardless, I highly recommend the park overall. It's absolutely breathtaking. We did the Lost Mine trail, which is about 5 miles round trip. The view at the top is just outstanding.

<comment><USER6> I've just finished a three month trip driving twice across the US, hitting 21 states and camping in most of those (wife and three young kids). In summer. It's been very hot and Big Bend was particularly brutal. We were up in the Chisos Basin the first night where it was cooler and then down near the Mexican border the second night where a storm made it bearable.

We camped in a mixed of national parks/monuments, state parks, water authority areas, BLM, etc.

<comment><USER7> How do you find BLM spots?

I've often had to resort to google satellite photos and referenced flat dirt patches with BLM territory maps to make sure I wasn't on private land. Wish there was an easier way.

<comment><USER6> Campendium (site and app) has been quite reliable. I set my search to Public and Free. Or if that reveals nothing, I untick free.

We bought a shuttle bus in California, ripped out most of the seats, put in beds, then drove it over to Florida and back again. Literally hours away from flying back to Australia tonight. I'll go through and review each site on Campendium when I have a minute.

@isaacforman on IG for anyone interested. Lots of action in the stories.

<comment><USER7> Campendium misses a lot of actual spots. It might have one camping spot listed for a 25 mile radius but there are actually tons of spots in that area. It's not precise enough imo and only guides me where to start looking on satellite photos and BLM maps again.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, obviously it only shows an area by name and then it's up to you to read reviews or use intuition to find specific spots. Often it's a free for all once you're in there. App is faster than using various sites IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be great to see the longitudinal trend at the national parks. There was a recent report that "camping" (including in tents, RVs, and cabins) is way down in the Adirondacks, a state park system in northern New York. According to survey data, just 11% chose to camp in 2018, compared to 33% in 2013. Hotel, motel, resort, and rentals are up. Regardless of accommodation, average length of stay has dropped from 5.1 days to 2.8 days.

This apparently follows national trends:

 _More and more, Americans are showing a preference for short getaways of three nights or less, he said, spurring the industry term "micro-cation."

Millennial and Gen Z travelers, who make up a significant portion of the region's visitors, typically book accommodations at the last minute and stay two to three days max, McKenna said.

"They take a weekend trip, leave Thursday and come back Sunday," he said. "That's a trend we think is going to continue. We're also seeing people take multiple trips spread out over the course of a year. (Young travelers) are less seasonal. They take trips in the summer, the fall and the winter."

Fewer people chose to stay outdoors last year than in prior years, and more opted for hotels or short-term vacation rentals, according to the study. Hotels remain the preferred accommodation for visitors._

Source: [https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local- news/20...](https://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/local- news/2019/07/study-shows-adirondack-tourists-staying-fewer-days-spending-more- money-camping-less/)

<comment><USER4> I wonder if that has more to do with the nature of work in recent years than actual preferences. I would love to take longer trips but usually can only ever fit in 2-3 day trips because of work.

<comment><USER9> For me, I figure 2-3 day trips made over a weekend cost me only 1 vacation day, so annually I get 2-3x as many days on trips for the same number of vacation days.

Of course, then you exclusively contend with weekend crowds. I dream one day the work week is culturally decoupled from M-F, and people's "weekend" is any two days of the week. It would mean less crowds for everyone and more regular business for tourist towns. K-12 school schedule is probably the chief impediment.

<comment><USER10> The issue there is the same with any flexible work option and that's coordination. If people are actually taking advantage of it it becomes increasingly harder to have meetings with multiple people involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sometimes, it's really hard to find information that confirms a negative. (i.e., confirming that a scenario is not supported)

A while ago I was trying to plan a trip to Death Valley and I was exploring backcountry camping as a possibility. Backcountry camping _is_ possible in Death Valley, but looking at this chart I can see that no one really does it, and it might be best to reconsider my plans.

This is valuable information for individuals planning an overnight stay at any park.

(Of course, it's possible that the data is missing, but I think my point is still valid)

<comment><USER12> Beta is nice but if you're confident in your ability to know when to turn back, it's ok to go find out for yourself. Some of my favorite hiking trips are in the dead of winter where I don't see another soul and the snow has clearly been untouched for weeks/months. I spent more time camping last winter than I did this summer.

I also doubt those kinds of outlier trips are reported in this data set. I'm not sure how they assembled this data specifically, but most national parks around me have self issue permits or trailhead ledgers. But they're often either missing or water damaged during the winter months. If there's no infrastructure to record the outlier data, then it doesn't get recorded at all.

<comment><USER13> Which national parks have self issue permits?

<comment><USER12> I don't know the national parks specifically, but just about every trailhead in the mid WA cascades, with the exception of a few that you need additional permits for (wonderland, enchantments, etc)

<comment><USER13> Most of those are on national forest land, which is different than a national park. The wonderland is at Mt. Rainier National park, which requires permits for all overnight backpacking. Same with Olympic and North Cascades National Park.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I live just outside North Cascades NP. It's only backcountry accessible but is absolutely stunning and you likely won't see a single other person while out there.

<comment><USER15> I remember car camping there once around 20 years ago, am I mis-remembering the park? The nps site, at least, provides some evidence that I'm not imagining that. [https://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/camping.htm](https://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/camping.htm)

<comment><USER16> The Ross Lake National Recreation Area is a corridor along Washington Highway 20. It bisects North Cascades National Park and the Park has two sections separated by it. The Recreation Area has car camping, Like the Park, it is under the National Park Service but has different rules.

Technically, there is only backcountry camping in the park. But the car campgrounds are essentially surrounded by the it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Denali graph is interesting. You can see how the climbing season for Denali (May-June) skews the bulk of backcountry camping much earlier in the season than the weather would predict

</comment><comment><USER18> The, "Gates of the Arctic" graph is somewhat funny: devoid of RV camping 365 days of the year! Got back from that place last month after a 2 week stay. No RVs to be seen, either.

Well, there's no ROADS into the Park, either! We took float planes.

My idea of what a, "desolate backcountry area" is, has been recently redefined.

</comment><comment> evil-olive Interesting spike in backcountry camping in the Great Smoky Mountains relatively early in the season (starting in March). Probably thru-hikers on the Applachian Trail, hiking northbound?

<comment><USER19> It's also the nicest time to hike in that area, i.m.o. Thru hikers probably do contribute to the spike, but I'd bet a lot of it is just that April and May are the best weather.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. The heat/humidity starting in June are nigh unbearable.

<comment><USER6> Camped in Deep Creek and Cades Cove a few weeks ago and it was very warm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://github.com/JordanVincent/jordan- vincent.com](https://github.com/JordanVincent/jordan-vincent.com)

</comment><comment><USER22> What's the difference between backcountry and tent? I feel like they overlap - I often camp with a tent in the backcountry..

<comment><USER23> Usually backcountry camping requires hiking in to a site, whereas "tent" camping would refer to stays in frontcountry campgrounds that are usually accessible via a car. With exceptions, tent camping would require a reservation, whereas backcountry camping sites often are occupied on a first- come first-served basis.

<comment><USER24> Tent camping: a flat spot, maybe a picnic table, one parking space, an elevated grill, a water spigot, on-site trash facilities, and a common toilet/shower building. The extent of your assigned site may be lined with old railroad ties, and clearly labeled with a numeric sign.

Backcountry camping: a flat spot, a firepit ring, a covered latrine pit with a park service logo on it, and a cable on a pulley for your bear bag. The extent of your site might be represented by a dot at a place on your topo map that slightly differs from reality.

Some tent campgrounds also offer wi-fi and limited electrical power distribution.

<comment><USER6> Most of the backcountry camping I've done in the US has been "find somewhere 1-2 miles from any formal trail" and you're on your own. No signage, no toilet, no nothing. Usually only fuel fires and no fire rings (especially in the west).

<comment><USER25> This is a subset usually referred to as dispersed camping. IME, this is usually the case in US national forests (in fact, I think the rule is that it is allowed by default).

There are a number of parks (including most US national parks) that only allow backcountry camping at designated sites (which may or may not have the amenities described by the GP).

<comment><USER6> OK. I've only formally backcountry camped in Arches (mile from any trail - <USER2> amenities or sign of previous camping where we were), Yosemite (we quietly camped on top of Clouds Rest so obviously no amenities), Joshua Tree (off trail, random spot with amenities), Canyonlands (Needles in a designated spot but no facilities just a marker, and Maze in a random spot with no indication of previous camping), and a few monuments/areas (Coyote and Buckskin Gulch, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've camped in (or free-camped near) 15 of these this summer in the US during a roadtrip. Almost everywhere has been hot and while that has meant some places are less busy than peak, I can definitely recommend favouring those at elevation. Or to avoid crowds, look for accommodation in state parks or national monuments that don't have that top-shelf brand.

Bryce is currently walk-ups only so you can grab a site before midday, be close to the rim and not get cooked.

</comment><comment><USER26> Many of these parks are in or near quite remote areas. If you can't get a site reservation there's often some great farms or ranches around that you can stay at. For example, we stayed in a tiny, but full service cabin on a ranch in Southwest Utah very close to quite a few State and National Parks. It was awesome, there was literally nobody else for a couple miles around and the stars...my god the stars.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is there a link to the raw data anywhere? Wasn't able to find it via the NPS website or data.gov

<comment><USER28> I believe it's [https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/Reports/Park](https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/Reports/Park) \- drill into an individual park like Yellowstone and you'll see the "Overnight Stays" data

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> These are pretty cool! However, as a person with red/green colorblindness, I can't really reliable tell which line is "tent" and which is "backcountry".

Also, does the line thickness mean anything, or is it just correlated with the radius?

</comment><comment><USER30> If you are planning to backpack to official Backcountry camp sites at any of the popular parks, you will need a permit. Expect to book roughly 6 months in advance, to the day, within minutes that your site is available to reserve. Not all parks offer 6 months in advance. Some are less.

Backpacking the national parks is a lot harder than tent camping at a campground but so rewarding. My shoulders can't take the weight for too long, though, and it's hard to convince family to tough it out to see parts of the park that few others venture into. Yet, doing so exposes you to incredible sights and animals that stay far away from people.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel the circular plots make the data harder to read. I suspect some boring line plots with time of year on the X axis would be much more visually efficient

<comment><USER31> Second this, my mental calendar is a circle, but running counter-clockwise with January 1 at the 12, Feb at 11, etc. I have no problem looking at linear timelines, but viewing these clockwise representations of the year, with January at the 8 position, was surprisingly difficult.

That said, the data is really interesting.

<comment><USER32> It is so interesting to me that your mental calendar goes counter-clockwise. What is the intuition that picks that handedness?

<comment><USER33> I've always been curious about this -- mine is also counter-clockwise, but with January 1 down around the 7 o'clock position. I've always assumed I imported that from a calendar with aligned seasons (like with the peak of summer at July/August being at the top of the circle), but no real idea of where it originated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is a variable missing on the axis somewhere: why doesnt the "average temperature" coloring extend all the way to the edge? It should be shaped like a pie slice as I understand it.

<comment><USER35> I'm not sure if I totally understand your point. But from what I'm seeing on the graph, the temperature coloring is only present when the average temperature is above 70 (in red) or below 50 (in white). So there is no coloring around the edges in spring/fall for many graphs because the average temperature is likely between 50-70.

<comment><USER34> Yes but why doesn't it look like a pie slice - outlined by "clock hands." The circle graph treats the year like a clock. There is no reason that if Aug 5 is above 70 on average, that the coloring only goes halfway on that day. It's a binary yes/no.

<comment><USER36> I presumed that represents the number of days in that month where the temperature was above (or below) that certain threshold.

This is rather common in weather sites.

<comment><USER34> Ok so that's what I mean by missing variable - the "number of days in that month" is not represented on the graph.

It also makes more sense that this is plotting 12 points and smoothing the curve, in my mind me I had assumed it was a daily plot of the data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Late October, when the crowds have thinned but before the heavy snows arrive, is my favorite time to go backpacking in the mountains. It's a completely different experience than visiting in the summer months. It does tend to get cold at night (below freezing, even) and can snow on occasion, so you need to plan accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER38> For several of the sites elevation is everything. Mt Rainier? Good place to die.

</comment><comment><USER39> The graph look amazing but they're a bit hard to read. I was hoping for some toggles to switch labels on/off! Maybe I'm just bad at reading graphs...

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm amused that they featured Acadia as the first park in the "continental" section after summarizing by saying those parks were in the midwest.

<comment><USER17> Also amusing that they include Voyagers park in Minnesota in the "Tundra" category after saying these parks are all in remote parts of Alaska

<comment><USER24> Should have included a lakes and rivers category, probably. You're not going far in Voyageurs/BWCA/Quetico without a float-plane, canoe, or kayak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wish there was a version better suited for colorblinds!

</comment><comment><USER42> This is why I like winter camping, no people!

<comment><USER43> More importantly, no bugs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> most of them are very similar... they basically say don't travel during school summer break?

</comment><comment><USER45> I love the design of these graphs -- can I ask what you used? Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER46> Voyeurs is NOT tundra and NOT part of Alaska.

</comment><comment><USER47> that is probably the most beautiful way of displaying data I have ever seen. hands off to the author.</comment>


Inside Twitter's Spam Lawsuit: Fighting Five Defendants Cost More Than $700,000 - <AUTHOR> http://marketingland.com/inside-twitters-spam-lawsuit-9530

<comment><AUTHOR> PG: There might be a bug. I was able to upvote my own submission (on my submissions' page). Points were increased, I think I didn't get any kharma from it tho.</comment>


Entrepreneurs, coders and activists we need you to help reboot banking - <AUTHOR> http://stakeventures.com/articles/2009/07/03/entrepreneurs-coders-and-activists-we-need-you-to-help-reboot-banking

<comment><USER2> As I'm reading I can't help but think about security. We have a lot of fraud because of the system we use now, and he's proposing that we open it up and make things like transfers super easy. I don't think the security is up to snuff yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. His talk was 226 slides.

This muddles so many different things. Banking != Finance != Investing != Monetary Policy != Currency... and so on.

It's the dangerous combination of businesses that are the challenge. There are plenty of credit unions that aren't in trouble because they didn't try to profit in dangerous ways.

There's so much wrong here it makes me tired to even think about speaking to it.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Open web standards are the way to do this._

Hell no. I'll take a specialized client with security from end-to-end, thanks very much.

</comment><comment><USER5> banking is an industry. it's pretencious to ask for help as if they were a charity fund. this way our governments have gave money to them from our pockets. a nice hypothesis of the recession (it's in spanish): <http://tinyurl.com/krqu7g>

<comment><USER6> Your tinyurl is broken.

ps: Please, don't use url shortening services, just paste the full url.

<comment><USER5> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX8MQ9TlpmI>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Harry Markowitz developed the modern portfolio theory, the core of mathematical finance. However, when he invested his own money, he invested 50% in bonds, and the other 50% in blue chip stocks. Moral of the story: people tend to be very conservative when it comes to their money.

I also do think that the banking system is living in the dark ages. It's more than obsolete, it's pre-historic. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear that some banks still used perforated cards ;-) Well, they still use COBOL...

It's easy to think of ways of innovating the current banking system. But what makes one think that anyone wants to innovate it? Banking is a pillar of society. One can't move the pillars because the edifice standing on them is too heavy.

<comment><USER8> _Well, they still use COBOL..._

Guess what, we still build houses out of bricks! Haha, that's so _obsolete_. Instead we should be building houses out of... Java?

<comment><USER7> Well, I still program in C, and I still learn 19th century math & physics. Not all things are destined to get stale. Your comments are usually insightful. This one conveyed zero bits of information. Seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has anyone heard of paypal? Ever applied for their Identity Protection? Banking has been solved, security has been solved. Nobody cares; that's the real problem.</comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on startup website - <AUTHOR>

I am curious if I could get some feedback on the website http://www.confusinghomework.com<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> It's extremely well designed (in my opinion). The app design is not as nice. I had to scan for a sec to figure out exactly the pitch but even then details are scarce so I would try to emphasize the quick overview easier like "Free Tutoring" or something and expand from there.

I thought the subjects below were clickable to expand into each but weren't. Would be nice to know what is covered since its there. Also who is the target, high school, college, or both?

Some questions off the top of my head is why is it free, what's the catch. FAQ for this would be nice. The current FAW doesn't address this. If I had to guess, some book sale/rental referral or maybe a freemium service, but that's blindly guessing.

Overall, pretty nice. The hard part is whether or not students will engage.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! I will looking into explaining more in-depth and see what I can add. With the tutoring it is free because we pay for it with adds. We don't currently have ads up right now but later in the future they will appear. However for the students they will never need to pay to use any of our services!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's very orange. But overall it's very nicely designed and looks very professional. Maybe make the links in the footer a little darker? But I'm pretty sure that's not the best use of your time. :)</comment>


Understand the Fundamentals of the K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://heartbeat.fritz.ai/understand-the-fundamentals-of-the-k-nearest-neighbors-knn-algorithm-533dc0c2f45a <comment><USER2> There are some pretty egregious errors here. Decreasing K increases the variance and is more prone to overfitting. Increasing K increases the bias and is not necessarily more accurate. It all depends on the underlying distribution of the data.

What is the time complexity of knn? Why should I use it? When do you not want to use it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do agree that increasing K does not mean it will increase the accuracy, distribution and nature of the data will be key to understand the effect of the K in the accuracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the author has mixed up underfitting and overfitting.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for your interest, can you please elaborate.</comment></comment>


An Ode To Anyone Who Has Ever Had Their App Or Game Copied - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/ajaYt

<comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing this. Definitely good point on the SimTower comparison.</comment>


The process of letting someone go is punishment for doing a poor job hiring - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/business-letting-go-ryan-smallegan <comment> amar-singh This is totally unethical..no one should b punished but yes yes we can aware them what mistakes they have done so that it will not repeat again...</comment>


Best Practices for ML Engineering from Google [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://martin.zinkevich.org/rules_of_ml/rules_of_ml.pdf <comment><USER2> Another good resource from Google is [1] which focuses more on operational impacts after you deploy a system that relies on ML (I'm a coauthor). [2], which was written by my boss, is also great.

[1] [https://sites.google.com/site/wildml2016nips/SculleyPaper1.p...](https://sites.google.com/site/wildml2016nips/SculleyPaper1.pdf?attredirects=0)

[2] [https://research.google.com/pubs/pub43146.html](https://research.google.com/pubs/pub43146.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is Martin Zinkevich's invited talk on Reliable Machine Learning in the Wild - NIPS 2016 Workshop: [https://sites.google.com/site/wildml2016nips/schedule](https://sites.google.com/site/wildml2016nips/schedule)

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha! I love this line:

"To make great products: Do machine learning like the great engineer you are, not like the great machine learning expert you aren't."

<comment><USER5> Beautiful. I see so many software engineers that make design mistakes because they are over-confident in their understanding of ML, Statistics, and Economics. This is a welcome inclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great share! There has been always a lack of engineering ingredient from machine learning literature. This is a must read.

</comment><comment><USER7> In Rule 15, pg 10: "You should not discount the quality ranking learner for ranking spam highly"".

Not sure if they are saying quality is an input to the spam classifier?

<comment><USER5> My guess (I haven't had a chance to fully digest the paper) would be that they are saying spam is designed to emulate high quality signals so discounting it in the quality ranking could mute actual organic quality signals.

Instead the approach they suggest (from my quick read) is to not include any information in the quality ranking system about spam but rather allow the spam classifier/filter to deal with it on it's own terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "Machine Learning Crash Course" link pointing to [https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash- course](https://developers.google.com/machine-learning/crash-course) in Related Work is broken. If anyone has a working link Id love to see that.

<comment><USER8> I think it's one of these: [https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning-- ud730](https://www.udacity.com/course/deep-learning--ud730) [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbF0BXX_6CPJ4TgDuCDIN...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbF0BXX_6CPJ4TgDuCDINRu8hOMw31gRj)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great resource. I have a chrome extension [http://compakt.nhatqbui.com](http://compakt.nhatqbui.com) where I naively added ML features but it was too inconsistent. I now understand the cautioned approach the guide advises on adding ML to a product.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know what is RASTA? It's referenced in Rule #5. Looks like an ML algorithm.

<comment><USER11> It's Google's A/B experiment framework that runs on production traffic and allows you to slice by various attributes and apply experimental models to the slice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Rule #10: Watch for silent failures

This is almost an oxymoron :)

<comment><USER13> Yeah, that rule isn't very well described, but if you read between the lines:

      Play once had a table that was stale for 6 months,
      and refreshing the table alone gave a boost of 2%
      in install rate

Your best engineers will tell you that your fancy new ML system needs to have a silent, behind-the-scenes _heuristic_ system backing it up. The heuristic system in this example is reading from the same tables and running some heuristics to produce output that "makes sense."

If the ML system and the heuristic system are disagreeing in a lot of cases, you have a problem. (Or, for this example, the heuristic system just flags that the table hasn't been updated.)

These flagged items are the things you check _before_ exporting your model to production.

So between developing the heuristic system and chasing down regressions in unit testing, it turns out ML isn't going to save you 90% of your engineering time.

<comment><USER12> > Your best engineers will tell you that your fancy new ML system needs to > have a silent, behind-the-scenes _heuristic_ system backing it up.

This should have been in guide somewhere. Makes a lot more sense than the "data not updated" example, which is a bit too narrow.

> So between developing the heuristic system and chasing down regressions in > unit testing, it turns out ML isn't going to save you 90% of your > engineering time.

There are 2 rules about whether to use ML. First, there has to be some underlying rules for the machine to learn. Second, you only want ML if it's harder to figure out the rules themselves.

Of course you can bend the second rule a bit if you are a ML expert (and maybe even have the heuristic system lying around already).</comment></comment></comment>


Birds saved centuries old documents in their nests - <AUTHOR> http://en.metkere.com/2015/11/birdsnests.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how many people were falsely accused of a theft committed by a bird?</comment>


Amazon's Jeff Bezos Debuts Spacecraft in First Flight Test - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/space-flight/amazons-jeff-bezos-debuts-spacecraft-in-first-flight-test <comment><USER2> I'll repeat here an earlier comment[0] I made about this. In particular, I'm trying to gauge the precise achievement of this test flight. It seems to have gone up about 60 miles, about 100 kms, and then parachuted the empty crew capsule back to Earth. That's about 1/4 of the altitude needed to get to LEO.

Then we recall that the kinetic energy it needs to be in orbit is about 10 times the gravitational potential energy[1]. That means this is about 1/40 of the energy needed to get to LEO.

Does that sound about right?

This is undoubtedly a stage any company needs to go through, but it would be nice to have some confirmation of where they are in the progress time-line.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9467587](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9467587)

[1] Very roughly, orbital velocity is around 8000 m/s, or 1/2 (8000)^2 m^2/s^2/kg, which is 32 x 10^6 m^2/s^2/kg. GPE is about 10 m/s^2 x 320 km = 32 x 10^5 m^2/s^2/kg.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel we are getting ready for a new age like when every millionaire was investing in railroads. but the rail investment came after there were routes for the companies to service. what are the people investing on space flight today aiming for?

<comment><USER4> Some claims about asteroid mining:

1997 book, _Mining the Sky_ , [http://www.nss.org/resources/books/non_fiction/NF_011_mining...](http://www.nss.org/resources/books/non_fiction/NF_011_miningthesky.html)

Sales pitch, [http://www.asterank.com](http://www.asterank.com)</comment></comment>


I do not use semicolons in JavaScript any longer. I just compose - <AUTHOR> https://jsfiddle.net/69k98x17/40/ <comment> ix-hispana I am unworthy: [https://jsfiddle.net/0a3dmjqt/](https://jsfiddle.net/0a3dmjqt/)

Sorry but I'm not willing to make 40 edits to write a function that adds numbers.

Edit: Variation using the "fp" version of the library: [https://jsfiddle.net/0a3dmjqt/2/](https://jsfiddle.net/0a3dmjqt/2/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I can't tell if this is satire or not. So unreadable but so in line with much of the hype.</comment>


AI – The paradox - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ankur_dhama/6f31799e9056

<comment><USER2> Good point expliciting the "paradox". But I don't think we need to change the definition of AI, or to add a definite purpose. Currently, "successful" AI systems are indded systems with a purpose: cheating some human judges into beliveing your a boy in a chat, wining a Jeopardy game, detecting cats in video. Well done. But lame. With a purpose you get working systems, but you don't get what we expect when we say we want an AI.

If you defined the purpose to be to execute any order given. by a human, it would be very nice, but it still wouldn't be enough.

Perhaps the purpose would be to find out why we built them? In a way, it's a paradoxical question, like whether God exists, or why we are here? I guess it would do, as a purpose, to obtain the wanted AI. I'm not sure it would help the engineers to build it, having such a purpose.

</comment><comment><USER3> The purpose is whatever the AI is designed to do. E.g. pass a Turing test, design things, whatever.</comment>


Anyone using about.me? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious whether -- and how -- people are using this new(ish) service. I had heard about it once a while back, then forgot about it, then just rediscovered it again yesterday. If I understand it correctly, the premise seems pretty good actually. Thoughts? <comment><USER2> Hmmm...well, whatever it does when it loads generated enough CPU to kill my web browser. I saw only a black gradient background and a beachball. I'm not likely to go back.

<comment><AUTHOR> that actually made me LOL :)

<comment><USER3> Me, too. so LOL

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand the appeal as opposed to having your own personal domain with a very simple landing page.

<comment><USER5> I use flavors.me (which for all intents and purposes appears to be the same thing), and here at least was my rationale.

I'm trying to reduce and simplify my online presence stuff (basically the least amount of work I can put into it, and also what'll cost me the least.)

What I've settled on (and so far seems to be working for me, although I'm in the early stages of it):

Got rid of a VPS running my own web server, migrated email for both of my domains to Google apps for domain.

Got rid of Squarespace account and set up a Posterous blog and the flavors.me page (so I have a landing page at flavors.me and a separate blog).

My old website was basically a landing page and a blog, which was sort of a waste of an apache instance.

So now I've basically replaced paying $20/month and the hassle of administrating an email and web server for free services. If I get to the point where this solution doesn't do what I want it to, maybe I'll go back to doing it myself; but I'd rather not deal with it.

<comment><USER4> Hm. Interesting. I can certainly identify with not wanting to deal with the hassle. But I don't understand reducing and simplifying by using two separate services owned by two separate companies that aren't you to do the same thing that you were doing.

What happens when/if posterous/flavors.me dies (as a company)? At least with Squarespace in that instance you could transparently migrate everything somewhere else, right?

Identity just seems like a weird thing to outsource, especially when it's really not _that_ hard. I'm a proficient, but basically technically lay person, and my setup is to have a static html file on a web host and a blog page that points at a tumblr blog, which I'm thinking about switching to wordpress.

But I'm not and never have been on Facebook, so I'm probably an outlier.

<comment><USER5> I was a little hesitant at first, so I don't know if long-term I'll regret doing it.

If flavors.me dies (which is absolutely a possibility, as I have no idea what their long-term plans are), then I lose the static about page that I've set up.

If I was already going to be hosting my email and/or blog myself then I agree, setting up one additional static landing page wouldn't be a lot of overhead.

But once I decided to get rid of my email, it started to get harder to justify paying for a VPS just to run a blog and a main page. It's sort of a cascading effect of outsourcing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've started using it. I've got multiple projects across multiple companies, so wanted to list them out. Not big on having a giant photo of myself though.

<http://about.me/jaredcosulich>

</comment><comment><USER7> It seems good, I have not used it despite registering a username there.

Not to post-jack but I would be interested what people think about it compared to flavors.me as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't try it, but looked at the site: Is it just an alternative to weebly.com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Didn't they already sell to AOL?

<comment><USER9> Yes: [http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/aol-acquires-personal- profi...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/aol-acquires-personal-profile- startup-about-me/)</comment></comment>


The Ultimate (SaaS) Churn Rate Cheat Sheet - <AUTHOR> https://chartmogul.com/blog/2015/02/the-ultimate-saas-churn-rate-cheat-sheet/

<comment><USER2> Looks good - although is this also missing declined transactions ? We see a very high percentage of failed transactions each month, however this could be because 80% of our customers are in my he US but our merchant account is in the UK ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn! You're absolutely right, this would come under the 'Passive churn' classification I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thank you for not requiring email to download the cheat sheet. Almost all companies/websites say they put customer first, but when they require your information to let you read something for "free", it's obvious they are bullshitting. So, good job there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We prefer to just put stuff out there and have faith that if people are interested in trying ChartMogul they'll come back and signup.

We have started using the little 'Sniply' powered signup at the bottom of the PDF just to do a bit of unobtrusive prompting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was actually reading this and thinking, "man, I wish baremetrics broke churn out like this"

Didn't realize you guys were a competitor. Maybe I'll give it a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure, ChartMogul does not (yet) auto-classify churn in all the ways mentioned on the cheat sheet, however this is something we'll be working hard on over the coming months.

You can currently segment your churn in a bunch of different ways (e.g. by plan, geography, cohort, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Want a professionally printed copy – for FREE?"

Bold strategy, attempting to motivate tech entrepreneurs with paper copies. Let's see if it pays off.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been mailing them to our customers, I think people like them. Something to pin up next to the monitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The site's not loading for me in Germany :( Google Cache also didn't do anything, besides load the bare HTML page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very strange, that's the 2nd time today. We're in Berlin and aren't having issues, I'll talk to our host.

<comment><USER6> my traceroute from Munich dies at

traceroute to chartmogul.com (126.96.36.199), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets

1 192.168.178.1 (192.168.178.1) 1.609 ms 1.425 ms 1.127 ms

2 ppp-default.m-online.net (22.214.171.124) 44.162 ms 34.761 ms 32.867 ms

3 ae2.rt-decix-2.m-online.net (126.96.36.199) 36.361 ms 57.201 ms 51.925 ms

4 ibrsa0203-01.edg.mgmt.ams1.gdg (220.127.116.11) 54.584 ms 80.488 ms 52.594 ms

5 * * *

6 * *

Hope it helps. I used a VPN and got the file :D

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks - sending this to MediaTemple now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't load for me on my home connection, works on my server. Route broken somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> Strange, we host our website with MediaTemple and are yet to start using a CDN, this will probably help with issues like this</comment></comment>


Six Silly Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Web Controls - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.telerik.com/jefffritz/posts/13-03-25/six-silly-reasons

<comment><USER2> This should have been titled "Six excuses no one ever used when deciding not to use commercial web controls"</comment>


If you stare at this code long enough, you might see something. - <AUTHOR> http://macournoyer.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/you-see-the-invisible-block/ <comment><USER2> What am I supposed to be seeing?</comment>


CloudRepo – A Cloud Based Maven Artifact Repository - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudrepo.io/launch.html <comment><USER2> This is nice! I have seen issues related to Nexus repository management and they haven't been fun. I am glad to see services like this offered to avoid operational overhead and have devOps focus on bigger issues.</comment>