Heating houses with 'nerd power' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32816775

<comment><USER2> So I looked into doing this on a personal level a while back and did some back of the envelope calculations and it was hard to square the economics of it.

Two factors made it really difficult:

1\. All computation is done in DC. Even if you assume all other prices fall to 0, the AC->DC conversion cost on a per watt basis makes it hard to compete with cheap heaters which can operate on pure AC. Just power supplies capable of powering 1000W of computation costs a lot more than a 1000W heater, even used. You need to get the economics exactly right to make this scheme profitable and the factors are so sensitive to shifts that it's hard to plan for the capex.

2\. There's a noise/convenience/space tradeoff that's hard to square. Ideally, you want the heat to be close to the users but the noise to be far away. It's hard to make electronics perform well above 100C as opposed to resistive elements that work fine up to 1000C. That means either moving air quickly (noise) or moving it over a large area (space). Neither of these are ideal.

It's possible for these two factors to be overcome but they're sizable and makes me uncertain whether it'll ever be possible to scale this as a viable business vs a cool idea that gets trotted out in trend blogs once every few months.

<comment><USER3> The whole trick about any kind of 'co-generation' is that you get something you need (computation) _and_ something that you can use that would otherwise go to waste (heat).

The only time that scheme does not work is if you don't need the heat.

<comment><USER2> Right, but the profit from co-generation from 100W of computation has to be at least greater than (cost of generating 100W of DC) - (cost of providing 100W of pure heat).

I was looking at it in the context of bitcoin mining at the time but it's remarkably hard to find computational tasks that both generate good $/FLOP returns and are stable and scalable which is what a scheme like this needs.

<comment><USER4> I'm a bit confused, don't the losses of an AC->DC converter go into heat as well? Why is that less efficient than a cheap AC heater? Is the energy lost in some other way or is the heat generated by the converter not usable?

<comment><USER3> You're not confused at all. The computational device is a 100% efficient space heater _and_ at the same time does something other than just heat space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd rather see this kind of thing heating water, which could then be used either for space heating or directly as hot water (in both cases, as input to a conventional boiler, rather than being expected to provide all the heat itself). In places with large seasonal temperature variations, one typically still wants hot water for washing, etc. even when space heating would be undesirable.

To combat seasonal demand, last-mile, and access control issues, I would actually want to see this set up either as a district heating scheme* (e.g. in the large buildings built for mechanical telephone exchanges); or to heat water for municipal or club swimming pools.

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

<comment><USER6> Some ex soviet countries have city central heating systems. I am from Vilnius, Lithuania, we had that in our old flat. Maybe it might be a good idea to create data centers around there?

The only unsolved (as in _I_ don't have an idea) problem is, what do we do with all the heated water in summer?

<comment><USER7> New York also has centeral heating for several buildings.

<comment><USER8> Toronto has Enwave which does district heating with steam. The same company also does cooling by piping in cold water from the bottom of Lake Ontario.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like an interesting, but inefficient solution. (What do you do during the summer when heat isn't needed? How much more do these units cost over a regular computer at a data center? Who is paying for the electricity and bandwidth for these machines?)

Is there some sort of complementary process that could use the heat generated by the data center at the site itself? (energy production, manufacturing, etc)

<comment><USER10> Yeah that's much more interesting. There's a limited need to do these things locally. Not just data centres btw, factories, too, actually mainly.

But that requires heat pipes throughout cities, basically next to your electricity, internet, water & sewage, you now want additional heat pipes running through every home. That requires huge infrastructure investments, which makes sense for new real estate, but is probably not worth it for existing homes.

Lower hanging fruit is actually other factories. The infrastructure to connect these two is much more trivial in scale, as well as in execution (laying a pipe in sandy industrial land isn't as big a deal as under paved residential areas). For non-factory buildings like swimming pools, this works great, too. So in the Netherlands for example there's one milk factory which heats and cleanses swimming pool water. (the pool was built with this in mind though, not retrofitted). And one large elderly home is heated by waste heat from a sewage cleaning facility. Another entire industrial area of factories is supplied with the heat from a waste burning facility. All of this is much easier than tackling homes, for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always found it interesting that electric radiators are 100% efficient but if you treat a computer as a radiator then you get the same 100% efficiency but extra computations done on top.

<comment><USER12> Was that a joke? Both points are wrong. Electric radiators aren't 100% efficient, can't be. e.g., some of the transformed energy will be light (the metal gets red when it starts to get hot).

And of course if you use a computer then X% will go into the computation. The reason why it might be cost efficient for you is because the server guy thinks he has the same costs for electricity no matter if the server is in the data center or in your home, and therefore pay your bills for the server heater.

<comment><USER13> Part of the energy can get transformed into light (mostly infrared) or sound, but unless it goes out by the window, all that energy will bounce until it's absorbed by a the walls and furniture. It's very easy to get 100% electricity to heat conversion if you have not windows.

You get also 100% conversion with a normal lamp or a sound system (unless they are very close to a window). You get all the heating, and the light or music for free.

<comment><USER12> I investigated further into that. The confusion arrised from unclear wording in my memory, I guess. You are right electricity to heat is 100%. The inefficiency of electric heat radiators is in the electricity production being inefficient compared to burning the same resources for heat directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Related : [http://www.qarnot-computing.com/](http://www.qarnot-computing.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Sounds like a good idea, although it appears to still use convection heating, which is the least sustainable form of heating. Low Tech magazine has some relevant articles related to the topic[0][1].

Anyway, back when I still used desktop computers I always made sure they were placed in such a way that they doubled as a heater for my feet. Now that I think of it, it probably would have combined quite nicely with a kotatsu-style set-up[2].

[0] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not- sp...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not-spaces.html)

[1] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03/local- heating.html](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/03/local-heating.html)

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

</comment><comment><USER16> There are a team of folks in NYC working on combined heat and computation as well – Project Exergy ([http://projectexergy.com/](http://projectexergy.com/))

Seems like the model is something that will become more familiar in the future.

</comment><comment><USER17> We do have some startups in Germany, that do that kind of thing already. So their story seems likely to be PR BS to me.

I was asking myself the question, if I would trust my data to be stored around the country in different private homes. And as a user of a heating solution, I would ask myself, how secure their business model is. If i switch from gas to server based heating, I would have to be sure, that 5 years from now, I would not have to shoulder the costs of switching back (one provider lets you have free heating for the costs of switching from gas/oil to server based).

So as interesting, as I find these ideas, as a homeowner, I would not want to have to switch heating during midwinter because the cloud provider goes down the drain.

<comment><USER12> Why would you replace your old heating system? I would think of that as an additional heat source that enables you to save some resources from your general heating system.

Think of it as the solar water heater on a house's roof. It doesn't always works but when it works it helps you save some money on other options.

<comment><USER17> Well the ones I found in Germany need you to change the system, as they do not provide heat directly in the rooms, as in the OP, but have a central system (server rack) that heats the whole house/flat and docks onto the existing piping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > To prevent the server stacks overheating, tech companies spend vast sums on > cooling technology - more than a third of a data centre's hefty energy bill > may go on air conditioning.

Data center cooling isn't necessary. I saw a presentation by Christian Belady, the general manager of Data Center Services for Microsoft's Global Foundation Services (GFS) group, where he spoke about how they don't cool their data centers anymore. He tested the theory by putting a bunch of racks outside in a tent to see that they wouldn't overheat.

<comment><USER19> You need to cool the bits where the humans are.

<comment><USER18> Agreed, and that's what he said, the cooling was for humans, not the servers. I think their current plans are open where they let air in from outside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be very interesting to compare this to Bitcoin mining, on a dollars per watt chart.

At first, I thought it would be simple, but soon realized there are many, many factors involved

</comment><comment><USER21> It doesn't go in to detail about how it's free to use. Presumably as well as a fibre optic cable it needs to be plugged into the grid, so do you need to invoice them for power costs at the end of each month?

</comment><comment><USER22> "user needs heat but the internet is down and the radiator has nothing to work on, it starts performing dummy equations" \- even bitcoin mining is greener than this

<comment><USER23> Yes, that's an unlikely scenario. As you say, they can mine bitcoin.</comment></comment>


The Programming Language with the Happiest Users - <AUTHOR> http://blog.doloreslabs.com/2009/05/the-programming-language-with-the-happiest-users/

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised by the authors surprise at Perl programmers being the "happiest". It's a fun language that enables a lot of cool stuff with a very low barrier to entry. No reason folks shouldn't be happy. It's also a language with a very long history of playfulness being baked right in...Perl golf, obfuscated Perl, Perl poetry, etc. Larry's State of the Onion addresses are historically as funny as they are informative.

<comment><USER3> I was shocked by that too, but you are absolutely right. One of my favorite modules in that spirit was Damian Conway's Lingua::Romana::Perligata which made it possible to "write Perl programs in Latin." Just reading the documentation was like absorbing a burst of pure geek energy. I immediately spent a week playing with it.

<comment><USER4> Conway scares me.

It feels like Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos when he starts a keynote, you expect to hear things programmers weren't supposed to understand and go insane.

I'd still pay good money for a DVD with Conway's collected talks. (You have to take some risks in life.)

<comment><USER2> My co-founder had Conway as a professor at Monash University many years ago. This fact might explain a few things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meaningless chart/data is meaningless.

<comment><USER6> To obtain a laugh from the following perl code: 1)run 2)obtain output 3)run output 4)repeat 2-4

<comment><USER6> #!/usr/bin/perl

$x = <<'LOL';

#Meaningless chart/data is meaningless

$x =~ s/\x67less/\x67ful/g;

$x =~ s/((7less)|(7ful))(.+?)((7ful)|(7less))/$5$4$1/g;

print "#!/usr/bin/perl\n\n\$x = <<'LOL';\n${x}LOL\n";

print $x;

LOL

#Meaningless chart/data is meaningless

$x =~ s/\x67less/\x67ful/g;

$x =~ s/((7less)|(7ful))(.+?)((7ful)|(7less))/$5$4$1/g;

print "#!/usr/bin/perl\n\n\$x = <<'LOL';\n${x}LOL\n";

print $x;

<comment><USER7> Quines are fun and all, but I'd love to see a polyglot quine in Cobol, C, Haskell, Prolog, and Brainfuck.

<comment><USER8> Well C is reasonably easy to decompile. If you simplified the syntax a bit, wrote a really simple decompiler with it, perhaps so simple it really only works on one binary, that binary being its own executable... it could work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _The "C" query combines C++, objective-C, C and C#. It would be nice to split this out in future work._

Indeed, despite the common ancestry, those languages (and the people who use them) are very very different from each other.

<comment><USER10> Not to mention that if you're going to talk about languages with syntax like C, Java should be in that list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems an odd oversight to leave out two of the most popular languages on the web, PHP and JavaScript.

<comment><USER12> Maybe they restricted the study to PG-rated comments :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting idea, but I personally do not trust Twitter data for analyzing sentiments, mostly because of the problem stated in the article: we often don't really know (or worse, misunderstand) the tweeter's true opinion. I prefer good old-fashioned random polling.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a fair criticism, but the nice thing about analyzing Twitter is that the data is already there. Polling has its own set of issues - how do you randomly and uniformly sample from the pool of programmers? It's probably not something you could do for a quick fun blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's unlikely the small percentage of programmers who use twitter are representative of programmers in general.

</comment><comment><USER15> I certainly mean no disrespect to the author (since ingenuity driven by nothing other than curiosity should never be frowned upon), but the data seem suspect.

There are numerous small factors: anecdotally speaking I write code but don't use Twitter to discuss code (nor do any of my coworkers); I spend most of my day in Python and Java but if I were to Tweet it would likely be in anger about JavaScript or CSS or any of a host of other languages I must deal with that weren't included in the sample.

But more importantly, languages that enjoy vast market penetration are going to differ significantly in terms of public acclaim from those with small, dedicated, passionate user bases. And so for example it comes as absolutely no surprise to me that Haskell would rate higher than Visual Basic.

<comment><USER16> If I did this study, I'd grab a few days' worth of conversation from the mailing lists and IRC channels of each language, and analyze the tones there (perhaps only each first on-topic line per person per login—further lines would be biased by the conversants' attitude toward each-other, more than their attitude toward the language.)

Alternately, if I wanted a truly controlled experiment, I would grab a bunch of high-schoolers or college freshmen, filter out any that either already knew how to program, or didn't already know how to use a computer well, and then divide them into groups and teach each group a separate language with a pre- planned lesson (which would teach the writing of the same algorithm in each different language), recording the students' responses in much the same way as one would record people's reactions to a UI for HCI analysis.

<comment><USER17> Controlling for the same algorithm seems unbiased but isn't. Since different languages are suited to different tasks, all you'd get was a measure of how easily an untrained teenager could implement that particular algorithm in a given language. You could control for that by using multiple algorithms, though.

<comment><USER16> Right, whoops—I noticed that but forgot to correct. There should be an array of programming tasks, with each language having one task that is considered the "easiest" to do in that language (thus N tasks for N languages.) Each student should either attempt all tasks in a random order, or only a single, randomly selected task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I find it interesting that there are Twitter users that actually code in Cobol. Also, PHP is not even on the list :) I would think that coding in PHP with a good framework like KohanaPHP or CodeIgniter, much more fun than writing in Cobol or Fortran.

<comment><USER19> I'm sure there are also plenty of people out there like myself who are generally aware that Cobol is a punchline for programming jokes despite never having written a line of it in my life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I doubt we can conclude much about programmers of a certain ilk as a result of the last 150 programming related updates on Twitter. Maybe if the data were more transparent I could understand better what Delores Labs' graph represents.

One problem I see in the methodology is that the sample size for each language would vary dramatically. So the results for e.g. Haskell is probably based on a relatively small number of tweets compared to e.g. Java where we would expect a lot more tweeting. The problem that introduces is that we base conclusions on maybe 1 or 2 individuals in the case of Haskell versus ~dozens who would have tweeted about Java.

In the end, what difference does it make what some random people judge the sentiment of a tweet to be? Is the aggregate written sentiment of a language a scalar that strongly correlates to another scalar called happiness?

<comment><USER21> there were 150 tweets per language, but you're right lukas didnt say what the number of unique different people was per language.

<comment><USER20> Ah 150 per language. My goof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How about the programming language with the fewest _un_ happy users?

<comment><USER23> How about unlambda? It does not have any users of whatever emotional state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Smug Haskell weenies: coming up strong on Smug Lisp Weenies!

</comment><comment><USER25> This is barely "good to know" information, without any other use, IMHO.

I think programming languages fanboyism is just like videogame console fanboyism - you could argue day and night why this or that one is better, but in the end I like my thing and you like your thing.

</comment><comment><USER26> A good programmer can't be happy with a language he/she uses (unless he's the creator of that language) by definition. If a programmer is happy though, it can possibly mean some kind of religious happiness, which this chart may be proving correct, I'm afraid.

</comment><comment><USER27> The one tweet about LISP he cites is straight from the recent "history of programming languages" blog article that was tweeted about a lot. So that might have distorted the results quite a bit.

Very surprising that there are COBOL users on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER28> whoa, COBOL programmers tweet?

<comment><USER29> I'm guessing the COBOL tweets are probably from people who primarily code in a different language, but still have that one legacy COBOL app that they still have to maintain.</comment></comment>


I quit my job. Today is Day #64 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nevertryneverfail.com/i-quit-my-job-today-is-day-64/

<comment><USER2> Especially enjoyed your thoughts on burnout. Sometimes I read articles like these about startups and startup founders and find it hard to relate, but burnout is something we all struggle with when we work on one thing for too long. I'm motivated to find my reasons for lack of enthusiasm and motivation of projects that used to thrill me. Look forward to future updates!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Same post on Medium... just in case. [https://medium.com/@keslertanner/i-quit- my-job-today-is-day-...](https://medium.com/@keslertanner/i-quit-my-job-today- is-day-64-e7ac9116be87)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great points. Especially about having a structured day. I'm sure that the biggest hurdle people have when working for themselves is they forget to treat themselves like an employee.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thought. The freedom of working for yourself can promote laziness and reduced productivity since you don't feel accountable to anyone but yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing, great to hear an update.</comment>


Beginning of the end for Microsoft and other proprietary efforts? - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/opinion-death-knell-heard-for-microsoft-and-really-all-proprietary-efforts-20090626/

<comment><USER2> It's a little hard to call it the end for Microsoft _and other proprietary efforts_ , when the lion's share of Microsoft's marketshare loss has been picked up by Apple.

<comment><USER3> I think a great deal of Apple's growth has been due to them being so cornered that they had to turn to open standards.

One of the big draws of the iPod originally was that it played mp3s. That seems ridiculous in hindsight but Sony was pushing Atrac and Microsoft was pushing WMA. (If you ripped your CD on Windows for a while, not only would it do it in WMA format but it would add DRM which meant your music stopped working when you re-installed).

I'm not saying Apple doesn't still try to pull proprietary moves when it thinks it can get away with it, but I do think "Apple=Proprietary" is some kind of zombie meme from the last century and overstates the case.

As an example Apple got called out for "proprietary" headphones on the first iPhone just because they recessed it for greater structural integrity, yet even now it is a "feature" on most phones if they have a standard headphone jack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The fun part is, if Linux grows then all the other open source platforms (Solaris, the BSDs etc.) also grow (open standards, open source drivers, etc).

<comment><USER5> Not necessarily. The Open Source world is riddled with incompatible licenses, so it's probably not as straightforward as one would hope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> i hope so. i'm looking forwards to a livelier collaborative eco-system of open-source or at least open-api modules made by smaller teams rather than h4444ge corporate efforts. i'm not even sure that the economy of scale is true, but even if it does it only seems to benefit the tip of the iceberg.</comment>


Predictably, online media go nuts over 'Oumuamua and Harvard scientists - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/ignore-all-the-stories-about-oumuamua-the-harvard-paper-and-aliens/ <comment><USER2> The abstract and conclusion section have usually a few _slightly_ exaggerations, and the introduction section is usually full of crap, but most scientist are _not_ perfectly happy to publish something ridiculous like the asteroids trajectory is slightly weird, then it can possible be an alien ship. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. (Even as conjetures.)</comment>


Pokemon Go Has Reportedly Made More Than $440M - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamespot.com/articles/pokemon-go-has-reportedly-made-more-than-440-milli/1100-6443251/ <comment><USER2> Just goes to show how nostalgic IP will make tons of money on a newer revenue model.</comment>


Stop intimidating beginners - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bloc.io/theres-no-excuses-to-be-mean

<comment><USER2> Rule of thumb is to surround yourself with positive people who challenge you respectively. Learn how to ally with these people and ignore the useless noise.</comment>


Did Humans Evolve to See Things as They Really Are? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-humans-evolve-to-see-things-as-they-really-are/ <comment><USER2> I think the author of this article kind of missed the points being made by Hoffman. For instance, he asks:

"But how did the icon come to look like a snake in the first place?"

Sort of presupposes that it does look like a "real" snake. The icon doesn't necessarily have to look like anything ... we just have to evolve in a way that gets us to jump out of the way. It's the jumping out of the way that is adaptive, not the similarity to anything outside the system trying to survive.

To use Hoffman's analogy, it's like asking why do files on a desktop look like the files in the computer. They don't, they are useful interfaces however.

<comment><USER3> To revisit the 'file' idea: the 'save' icon is an idealized floppy disk. But generations(!) have passed who never saw one. So now its just an icon.

This seems to happen to all written symbols. They quickly lose representative form, and become symbols only. I don't think most Chinese characters look anything like a house or a sun any more; the question is moot.

<comment><USER4> The 'save' icon is fading away pretty quickly in common usage. Modern software is trending toward changes saved in realtime (driven by phones, also seen on OS X and web). When I write a note, I just make a new note, type in it, and close the app.

My favorite example of old-timey icons is 'phone'. [https://www.google.com/search?q=phone+icon&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=phone+icon&tbm=isch)

Still used everywhere, but phones just look like ▯ now.

<comment><USER5> The phone icon is from AIGA: [http://www.aiga.org/symbol- signs/](http://www.aiga.org/symbol-signs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know why a theory has to be labeled "new" to be worth discussing. (I'm know I'm hyperfocusing on Shermer's phrase "a new theory", sorry.)

Hoffman's argument is remarkably close to Plantinga's (1993) evolutionary argument against naturalism, and Plantinga himself asserted, rightly or wrongly, that "Darwin himself had worries" about the compatibility of natural selection with the ability to reach true conclusions. And of course, the notion of "percepts act[ing] as a species-specific user interface" was discussed in voluminous detail by Kant.

Just to be clear, I don't have any problems with Hoffman proposing this idea, and I don't have any problems with Shermer criticizing it. What I don't like is the suggestion that this is somehow an idea that hasn't already been discussed for centuries.

Edit: I guess I should always make sure I've eaten something before posting. This came out angrier than I intended.

<comment><USER7> Well, there's no escaping it. Either a debate solved, forgotten, or rediscovered by another field and clothed in new jargon. It just goes on like this until it transcends it's cycles of scholarship.

The particular expression "interface icon", for instance, might have been equivalent to the word "representation" to 18th century psychologists if they had GUIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If Hoffman's argument is _simply_ that humans don't see reality "as it is", it's clearly true but not very interesting - of course perception is flawed and a simple imperfection can be systematically corrected. Each moment, our visual system receives a distorted image of a given object and the system combines these to make a more "exact" image. We have created artificial aids to extend this process, again correcting immediate inaccuracies. The difference between humans and beetles that mate with brown bottles [1] is that humans can (sometimes) correct our sensory perceptions over time (plus Hoffman's use of "evolution's equations" in his video seems meaningless since in the abstract one can assign fitness to whatever quality one wants).

The serious problems come in with systematic errors - especially for philosophy which has often relied internal reflection. We know about optical illusions and mirages. If there are higher-order things that only do we "not know that we don't know" but ideas/approaches/beliefs that we tend to not be aware of even when they are called to our attention. And we in fact know about many bias humans make[1]. It would have been more interesting if Hoffman focused his attention on these. Then again, his own biases might have prevented this.

[1] [https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffman_do_we_see_reality_a...](https://www.ted.com/talks/donald_hoffman_do_we_see_reality_as_it_is?language=en#t-504084) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm reminded of the fly-bat-worm example from Anathem [0]. It seems to me that the way things appear to our consciousness reflect a computationally easy (relatively easy, for our nervous systems) way to integrate different sense perceptions; say, sight, sound, and touch.

[0] excerpts from an interview with Neal Stephenson, [http://www.edrants.com/segundo/neal-stephenson- bss-245/](http://www.edrants.com/segundo/neal-stephenson-bss-245/)

<comment><USER10> All of the philosophy in Anathem is just shuffling of names and descriptions of real work by real-world philosophers.

The "Sconic thought" of Anathem is mostly Kant (as is the discussion of beauty, which is almost a literal quotation of Kant on the sublime); the "fly- bat-worm", and wondering what it would be like to be a bat and experience the world through its senses is a nice allusion to Thomas Nagel.

Back when I first read Anathem I kept a running set of notes mapping the book's presentation of philosophy to the real-world thinkers and schools they corresponded to. Might have to dig it up again.

<comment><USER9> Stephenson says in the interview that the fly-bat-worm is from Husserl. I see the link to Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?"

[http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf](http://organizations.utep.edu/portals/1475/nagel_bat.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I didn't do enough Husserl, so Nagel was what I went to with "what's it like to be a bat".

I will say it's very clear that Stephenson read his Kant when prepping to write Anathem; as a basic layperson's introduction to Kant's critical philosophy, the book is quite good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, I think the author is missing the point. The distortions aren't so crude as a beer bottle, but they are there. Human beings see the world mostly in terms of tools, people, and most of all narrative arc. You think of your life as having a beginning, middle, and end, it all forms a cohesive story and events happen to push the story forward. But of course that's a lie we tell ourselves, in fact we're just survival machines. For other animals the central abstractions are different; watch cats closely enough and you'll see that they are blind to tools and narrative but mostly just see food, terrain and other cats. That's why they walk on your laptop- they have no way to encapsulate the concept of a "tool" in their mental world. It's just terrain.

<comment><USER12> This is the point I was hoping others would bring up. The base reality is that we're all atoms and energy, and there isn't a clear boundary between the water in your body and the water you're swimming in, and (to quote Dr Manhattan) a recently deceased body has as just many atoms as it had when the body was alive 10 minutes ago.

On top of this we've built all these abstractions... like how to socially interact, how to recognize membranes as a face, etc. (also interesting: those with severe autism seem to lack some of these abstractions)

When buddhists speak of seeing reality or things as they really are, they speak of discarding these abstractions and seeing raw experience.

I started learning how to draw because part of the process is discarding these abstractions (oh that's an eye, I know how eyes look) and instead drawing in terms of shapes and lines: moving down, closer to physical reality. This book has been very interesting for this: [http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side- Brain-Definitive/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain- Definitive/dp/1585429201)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > ITP is well worth serious consideration and testing, but I have my doubts. > First, how could a more accurate perception of reality not be adaptive?

It's like the author has never listened to anyone speak about politics. If you see distorted reality, you have access to some high-quality college-aged twits as mates. (Or at church, depending on your political preferences.)

There are too many absurd beliefs to list that, if you can talk yourself into them, open up large new social circles and the reproductive opportunities that go with that.

<comment><USER12> Hah politics is a fun one. There are so many different opinions, and everyone thinks they've got the right answer. I guess it's something similar to how every religion thinks they're the right one.

Psychology tells us that this happens because we tend to form opinions first and find facts to support our existing opinions while our brain ignores contrary evidence. But I wonder why that evolved in the first place... it doesn't seem like that helps survival. Maybe social cohesion?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > To test his theory, Hoffman ran thousands of evolutionary computer > simulations in which digital organisms whose perceptual systems are tuned > exclusively for truth are outcompeted by those tuned solely for fitness. > Because natural selection depends only on expected fitness, evolution shaped > our sensory systems toward fitter behavior, not truthful representation.

So, this simulation required defining a truthiness function to compare against a fitness function.

Where it doesn't make sense to me: what a "truthiness" function looks like?

If we _do_ know how to define such function (even in the context of a simulation), we gain no new insight from the simulation; if we _do not_ know, then it's not unexpected a fitness function performs better than a flawed truthiness function, and there's also no new insight from the simulation.

Sounds like circular reasoning to me (I guess that's expected when you're dealing with epistemology).

</comment><comment><USER15> "Google his scholarly papers and TED talk with more than 1.4 million views."

What happened to hyperlinks? :p

</comment><comment><USER16> I think he is quite right, but the real blind spots are way higher in the human thought than object representation. Perhaps that's how it has to be, at the very top level of cognition, there is no other mechanism for correcting errors, except perhaps somewhat following behavior of other people, which may also be completely foolish (or may be deliberately obscured).

I just commented here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10460022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10460022) Maybe, just like the beetle looks for a good bottle, we need a good narrative (or friend recommendation) to find the news or idea interesting.

Or another example, many believe in free markets, despite evidence (which can be interpreted as an argument both for and against free markets) that people (including the believers) don't want to participate in free markets.

The thing called "ego" often seems to act against the true reality. It would be my prime candidate for the blind spot in human thought.

<comment><USER12> > the real blind spots are way higher in the human thought than object > representation

Ah yea, the fun stuff like cognitive biases. One famous example is priming, which introduces time dependencies that most people do not pay attention to (when asked they believe that their decisions were not influenced by a past event): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_\(psychology\))

Kahneman discusses that and more in Thinking Fast & Slow

<comment><USER16> Not quite, I think even most cognitive biases can be corrected at higher level of thought. It's more like cognitive dissonances and the strategies you use to cope with them, but it's hard to tell without knowing the architecture of the brain.

<comment><USER12> Sure, I think you can attempt to correct for if you know about them, but that's still extra work, and it's still compensation that you can over or undershoot. And then of course they don't really teach this in public schools, so most people just aren't aware. I do think we're doing an okay job in some areas, like pilot training, the scientific method, etc. But we're doing a terrible job in other important fields, like politics

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This idea is hardly surprising for anyone familiar with neural networks. If you train a deep auto-encoder (optimized for a truthful representation) you get a different set of abstract feature detectors than when you train a deep net that maps the perceptual input to some behavioral code.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's no such thing as true reality since even the idea of reality is part of our survival mechanism.

<comment><USER19> > There's no such thing as true reality

Interesting. When you say "there's no such thing as X", aren't you imagining a sphere of existence in which, whether we want it to or not, "X" does not appear?

Would you not call that sphere of existence "reality"?

If you're saying we can't perceive reality, well, that's what's being argued about in the article. If you're saying reality doesn't exist, you're contradicting yourself.

To put it another way, "there's no such thing as truth" is a claim about what's true. Imagine that you say "there's no such thing as truth" and I say "yes there is". What can you say? "You're wrong"? I would reply, "if I can be wrong, it means there is a Real Truth for my statement to contradict."

<comment><USER20> Or he could be viewing the phrase "true reality" as a linguistic construct without a referent. This even makes sense since 'truth' is more of a property of represenations of reality rather than a property of reality itself.

> What can you say? "You're wrong"?

I could say "ok, show truth to me or explain why you think truth exists"

I could also say "What value (fitness) does believing that assertion provide me"?

Obviously, if you assume that truth is necessary to evaluate statements or beliefs, then stating that truth doesn't exist will lead you to contradictions. However, there are plenty of other methods of evaluation are frequently used.

I would in fact argue argue that 'truth' is very rarely directly among the properties of an idea that we commonly use when evaluate it. The reputation of the source, coherence with other beliefs, effects on social identity, and cognitive efficiency seem to be the most common properties.

<comment><USER19> > I could say "ok, show truth to me or explain why you think truth exists"

The idea that I can explain or argue anything presupposes that some things are true and other things can be shown to follow logically from them or be disproved by contradiction.

> I would in fact argue argue that 'truth' is very rarely directly among the > properties of an idea that we commonly use when evaluate it.

Whether people commonly seek truth is a separate question from whether truth exists. "Do people evaluate ideas based on whether they're true or whether they make them feel good?" is a valid question, and you may be right in your answer. But look - "you may be right" means "your description may conform to the actual truth." We just can't even form sentences without assuming that some things are true and others aren't.

<comment><USER20> > The idea that I can explain or argue anything presupposes that some things > are true and other things can be shown to follow logically from them or be > disproved by contradiction.

The idea that communication is dependent on pre-existing notions of truth and logic is flatly false. Now you might presuppose those notions when you communicate, but that doesn't make that presupposition necessary for communication.

> Whether people commonly seek truth is a separate question from whether truth > exists.

True :). I'm not trying to convince you that truth doesn't exist. I'm trying to convince you that you can evaluate the phrase "truth does not exist" without pre-supposing the existence of truth. This is because you can (and people commonly do) evaluate such a phrase on attributes other than their 'truth'.

The phrase "you may be right" can mean all KINDS of things from "I don't have a definitive counter argument" to "It is possible your statement is true" to "I don't want to argue about that anymore".

I think you are too focused on how you tend to perceive the world and communicate about it. People don't all think and talk the same way you do and assuming that they do is doing them and yourself a disservice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "First, how could a more accurate perception of reality not be adaptive?"

Reality is depressing.

<comment><USER22> Resources constrains. Unnecessary details are pruned.

(depression is probably adaptive).</comment></comment>


WebGL in Internet Explorer 11 - <AUTHOR> http://withinwindows.com/within-windows/2013/3/30/blues-clues-how-to-enable-webgl-in-internet-explorer-11

<comment><USER2> Would they support the same WebGL JS API? If so, then what is the point of using HLSL rather than GLSL?

Hopefully they just happen to have HLSL support now because it was easy and are still working on GLSL. Otherwise it's not WebGL.

</comment><comment><USER3> If history is any indication, it won't be WebGL but WebDX and we'll at least write both glsl and hlsl if not directx adapted to javascript outright.

They can alternatively just require at least opengl es 2.0 support installed through gfx driver, thus only working on desktop machines. Not that it will make their plans of phone+tablet+desktop unification easier but, hey, it might shut up whining hipster developers for at least a few years until the realization that MS intentionally underdelivers dawns on them.

</comment><comment><USER4> [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_WEBGL_HLSL_SHADERS] "iexplore.exe"=dword:00000001

Ack, I hope GLSL shaders are well supported. It would be terrible to have to write a whole second set of shaders in HLSL for IE.

<comment><USER5> I agree that GLSL shader support would be awesome, but if IE didn't support GLSL we wouldn't have to hand-write our HLSL. Chrome and Firefox for Windows already use ANGLE, which translates GLSL shaders to HLSL [1].

Unfortunately, complex renderings can produce some tough-to-debug problems when things get lost in translation. The good news is that ANGLE is still quite good, actively improving, and it allows automatic translation of GLSL to HLSL.

[1] <https://code.google.com/p/angleproject/></comment></comment>


Real-time blog comments in Go, backbone.js, socket.io, and redis - <AUTHOR> http://paulbellamy.com/2011/04/livecomments-go/ <comment><USER2> hmmm..this is quite old, a lot of things have changed in Go since. Most of that code won't compile but should with a few tweaks and "goinstall" is now "go get".</comment>


Shuttleworth: Ubuntu is heading to phones and tablets - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/10/shuttleworth-ubuntu-is-heading-to-phones-and-tablets.ars <comment><USER2> I feel that the Ubuntu project is really stretching it's resources trying to be on so many different type of devices. I get that focusing on the desktop is probably not a good long term strategy but I really don't feel the work their is anywhere near good enough to shift to mobile/touch development.

Also, I really don't get how they will penetrate this market considering Android is pretty well suited for this and I don't know of many good native Linux applications out there built for touch that can compete with what is in the Android realm (I guess they could try to have dalvik run and emulate the APIs for more low level stuff). How will us users get Ubuntu mobile? We can't really get a touch device today that is as easy as a desktop to switch to Ubuntu.

<comment><USER3> Why would focusing on the desktop not be a good long term strategy?

Contrary to what seems to be printed in the tech press, I think desktop/laptop computers will be around for quite some time as productivity platforms even if other formats become more popular for passive consumption.

With the other big players focusing on other areas, Linux desktop can fill a niche here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see several possible markets for this:

* Mobile device manufacturers who want an 'unbiased' alternative to Android and Google TV, so as to reduce their dependence on Google and transition away from a variety of marginal dead-end proprietary platforms that will be difficult to maintain and extend in the long run.

* Governments and corporations that have standardized on Ubuntu for desktops and laptops and would derive many benefits from using the same platform and administrative tools (e.g., Landscape) on tablets and mobile phones.

* Emerging vendors who want to bring to market new consumer devices and home-automation systems and would want an independent software platform that is easily extensible (e.g., Control4's products are built atop Ubuntu).

* Individuals and other entities who could take advantage of a full, unfettered, 100% Free GNU/Linux stack on their mobile devices. (If it works well, I, for one, would at least try it.)

</comment><comment><USER5> If Ubuntu had solved the hardware problem in the laptop space already I'd say more power to them. As it is, they really should be cherry picking a limited number of best-of-breed laptop make/models, ensuring support for those and then baking that into their LTS support cycle.

Given the unbelievably more complex hardware environment of handsets, the fact they haven't solved the laptop problem space yet makes me feel like they are biting off more then they can chew.

<comment><USER6> In some sense, phones are much simpler than PCs: if your phone ships with Ubuntu installed then Ubuntu will work on your phone. Otherwise it won't.

<comment><USER7> I want multi boot for phones. Why is it acceptable for phones that one can not install another operating system?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they are going into mobile they better have unique take on it and not just be doing it to say they can. If it looks and works like W8, iOS, or Android then they should not spend he resources.

<comment><USER9> At the very least, their unique take will be their commitment to openness, which iOS abhors and Android also makes difficult. Hopefully this means we can decide what software to install ourselves, and that we won't need to "root" our phones because they gladly give us root access.

<comment><USER8> Openness doesn't sell phones to non-geeks. If they cannot do something unique then they shouldn't spend the resources. Also, on a phone, how many of those drivers are going to be closed? Right now it is pretty much video, on a phone it will be interesting.

<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a stable project.

1\. Started as Desktop Linux... 2\. then went via a Ubuntu Server... 3\. to now become a smartphone Linux?

How about sticking to #1 and let those that are specialized in #2 and #3 do theirs? It's not like the desktop environment will disappear any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER11> This sounds great to me. Any additional competition in the phone/tablet space should reap benefits for users.

</comment><comment><USER12> The article linked to this posting provides more details; the arstechnica article is sadly lacking. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3175558>

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if they can do this without getting in trouble with smartphone patents.</comment>


Ask HN: What Is the Absolute Cheapest Car to Own and Drive? - <AUTHOR> Let's suppose I wanted to buy a car.  But I'm brand agnostic and mileage agnostic.  That is, I'm willing to buy any car regardless of its make and model or how old it is.  Now, I'd like to buy a car which is going to cost me the absolute least money of any car new or used, that I can buy, over its lifetime, including repairs.  How would I determine which car that would be?  Now, in thinking about this, I see quite a lot of problems, which include, but are not limited to: -Fluctuations in price of the used car market -How to calculate the cost of future repairs -What the cost of gas is and that related to how many miles will it be used in an average week -Tax deductions, if any -What the future cost of gas is projected to be -How much insurance would cost (sub-problem, what would the cost of the cheapest insurance be?) And of course, how to monitor all of the cars from all of the vendors/markets for a given area. Now, I don't have an answer.  It seems like a problem involving multiple domains, requiring huge amounts of statistical data, recurrence relations, data from multiple sources, etc. But... in thinking about it, I think this would shine as an interview question for my future company (assuming future applicants don't read Hacker News). But, what does the HN community think?  What additional things need to be accounted for if I wanted to find and buy the absolute cheapest car? <comment><USER3> Honda. New or "CPO" certified pre-owned. Spend the money up front for new or CPO, save the hassle later of buying used and the previous owner never changing the oil. All of my (3) Honda's have never required anything more than gas and maintenance, brake pads, tires, etc.

<comment><USER4> I agree. I was recently in the market for a car and I think the best bang for your buck would be a certified pre-owned Honda, 3-5 years old, less than 50k mileage, and last year of its body style. A CPO 2015 Honda Civic with ~35k miles could be had for $11-14k in California. 31/41MPG, cheap to repair, extremely reliable.

<comment><USER5> I think toyota beats honda in quality. If you go here:

[https://www.carcomplaints.com/Honda/Accord/](https://www.carcomplaints.com/Honda/Accord/) you can see that when you compare cars with similar sales volume like the accord and camry at least the last 5 or 6 years toyota has won.

We studied the Toyota quality system in my business classes. They put a lot of emphasis on quality. They use the teachings of Edward Demings ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Domestic, high volume production car with a timing chain, not timing belt. I've spent thousands of dollars at repair shops on timing belt replacements. A typical replacement will set you back $800-$1,000.

High volume production helps with finding parts when you need to repair, finding folks on Craigslist that are parting out cars etc.

In my county I have a huge tax advantage driving older cars (2002, 2009). I had to pay my annual personal property tax in Dec. and it was $140, I was able to check online what a friend of mine paid, and his tax was $1,400. He likes newer cars.

Stay away from digital dash do-dads. When electrical stuff goes bad, can be expensive to repair and difficult to trouble-shoot on your own.

The other cars to look at are the nerd-mobiles: older mini-vans, Crown Victoria, larger 4 door domestic cars that have a reputation for being uncool. You know the stereotype: older person with Crown Vic, one owner...

My opinion on Japanese cars: quality and reliability are probably 5% better, but sellers always over-reach and ask for a 50-80% higher price. So unless you find a smoking deal, steer clear.

<comment><USER7> Can you explain the benefits of a timing chain instead of a belt? Stumbled upon a Suzuki Liana while looking for cheap used cars and there was a large emphasis on the chain in the ad. Possibly related, a car rental business near my home has a Liana-only fleet.

<comment><USER6> Timing belts have to be changed around 100,000 miles, timing chains will usually last the lifetime of the car. That is an expensive repair, like $1,000.

<comment><USER8> To add a bit more info, most ICE engines are separated into "interference" and "non-interference", basically it's the shape of the piston heads and the valve clearance when the piston is in the top position and the valves are open.

If you have an "interference" engine and your timing belt/chain fails you smash your engine to pieces, if you have a non interference engine it just stops because the cylinders lose compression because the valves aren't being actuated.

Timing belts/chains can also damage ancillaries when they go, and as most timing belts tend to be external, they can fail and take alternator, water pump, fan, radiator, etc, with them when they catastrophically fail, a timing chain tends to be inside the engine block and when they fail one _tends_ to be more lucky, but they can also puncture the block and cause fatal damage to the engine.

AFAIK nearly all modern consumer cars are non-interference engines, barring maybe some higher-end performance engine options in otherwise pedestrian cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm assuming you're in the USA but geography is relevant to this question. For example, here in Ireland, older cars can be considerably more expensive to tax and insure. I'm trying to sell a 15 year old VW Golf at the moment which costs €700 per year in road tax. The same car with a post 2008 number plate would cost less than half that

</comment><comment><USER10> It depends on how many miles you want to drive per year. How much time you have. How mechanically inclined you are. If I had long commute every day, I would say something like cheapest new honda civic with a 5spd or Nissan Frontier with 4cyl and 5spd.

But as a retired person that drives couple times a month for groceries, actually mechanically simplest vehicle you can work on, gas mileage is immaterial since the basic liability insurance will cost you more in a year than fuel you put into it. So even something like a F150 with carbureted 300-6 and granny four speed be great. One old enough to be emissions exempt so you arent chasing around trying to find funny little pollution dodads that no longer are available anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER11> In my experience middle of the range second-hand cars have either been driven hard or were unreliable and thus for sale. Of course, it depends greatly how much driving you are planning on and the sorts of conditions.

I have had the best experiences buying new and keeping the car for 10+ years. Of course, I do a lot of research to discover the sorts of problems that are common for the models that I am interested in. I find Japanese mid-sized cars the best for my purposes, specifically Toyota. Buy the most basic model with the least amount of fancy electronics. And avoid CVT like the plague.

<comment><USER12> > _And avoid CVT like the plague._

why is that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a couple of points:

\- If you want the absolute cheapest car, the optimum strategy would be to learn to do as many repairs as possible on your own. Then, while selecting a vehicle, you would want to pick one that you can actually repair yourself. This introduces the first major snag. If you're looking to buy a car that you can repair yourself, you likely want to stick to American cars built before the mid-1980s or early-1990s. So then, let's say that you pick a car from that era and your country suddenly makes a technology like ABS (anti-lock brakes) mandatory for all vehicles that are licensed? That could force you to buy another car, simply to stay on the road. Or, more likely, what if you buy a vehicle then suddenly have to move to a place with stronger emissions regulations?

\- With fixing your own car, there is a huge gap between "I know how to do it" and "I'm confident enough to do it, knowing that my daughter will get in the car tomorrow." I'm an excellent example of this. When we bought our van, I resolved myself to do as many repairs as possible. I had great plans of being able to do all the consumables (oil changes, brakes, etc) by myself. Great idea, right? Then, my fucking brakes actuallu went. In the end, while I'm sure that I could have done the fix and it would have worked out, I was simply too nervous to do it with Lauren being my most regular passenger!

<comment><USER14> To be fair, fixing your brakes on an old car is an absolute nightmare IME. I did it on my early 2000's Mustang and even though there are very few steps every bolt was rusted together and I spent the better part of the day in the rain. And I only got the front done :). Oil changes are often the same price or more expensive to do on your own given the cost of oil. I guess if you want a specific brand of filter/oil it might make sense to do it yourself, but other than that, it always seemed like a waste of time to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've spent a lot of money on bad car decisions. The best TCO I ever had was for a new Hyundai Accent. Bought it new for $10k in 2004, and spent less than $2k on repairs over 13 years.

</comment><comment><USER16> The correct answer to this question depends quite strongly on how much you're planning to drive.

Assuming you plan to drive a lot the answer is that the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is the Toyota Prius. Yes it costs more upfront but if you own it for 10 years and you drive 600k miles then it's the cheapest especially if your driving includes substantial freeway miles.

First it can get close to 70mpg (mine often does) with a mix of careful city/hwy driving. It's rated at 60mpg highway.

Maintenance on this car is very low. Oil changes are about every 10k miles and brakes are about every 150k miles (regenerative brakes do not eat much brake pad). The engine is almost always running at its favorite RPM which reduces engine wear a lot.

A Tesla 3 might have an even lower TCO but that's not proven yet and it definitely won't have a 750 mile range with the convenience of filling up at the nearest pump.

Definitely worth breaking out Excel and running the numbers on.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think this depends heavily on the driver too..

\- Location and conditions in which car is driven. In a city? or bumpy roads? Near the sea?

\- Driving style. Heavy footed? Drives slowly? Could make them more prone to certain types of accidents that have different costs associated with them.

\- Mileage. Does this person only drive 10km a week? Or is it a lot further?

\- Weight even. How much of the vehicles capacity or weight load do they use? How often?

</comment><comment><USER18> I've had two cars that were excellent buys. One was a 2000 Camry. That car went to 275k miles before I sold it. It cost me very little maintenance - <USER2> timing belts and two sets of tires, plus oil changes etc. Camry has a non- interference engine so if the timing belt breaks, you won't damage the engine (Hondas mostly have interference engines and if the timing belt blows, you're screwed). Now I have a Miata, 1997. This car has a non-interference engine, decent on gas, resale values are good, and the thing is bulletproof. I've used and abused this car and it takes it like a champ. The Mazda 323/protege used the same engine but is FWD, those things are bombproof as well. They don't get sexed up like Civics so you can find them dirt cheap as well.

</comment><comment><USER19> Buy a used electric smart car. Approximately $6000 to drive home. Maintenance will be near zero. Amount per mile will be less than any non-electric car. If your commute is less than 50 miles daily it's the way to go.

<comment><USER9> Until you have to replace the battery

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cheapest to pay upfront or cheapest to end up after you get rid of it?

Is quality of experience matters?

IMHO, get new car that comes with 10 yr warranty, like Hyundai.

You'll enjoy it right off the bat, feel safe about any future repairs and be able to resell it at (check the price for 10 yo same model now).

We spend in car hours per day - and quality of experience matters a lot (well, to me at least).

Hence cheapest junker in town won't cut it for me.

Sorry, not much statistics here :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nissan Leafs to be had for $6,500

[https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=niss...](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=nissan+leaf&_sop=2)

</comment><comment><USER21> I always go for the basic model in the range, in particular I try and avoid too many electrical gadgets. I even skipped air conditioning in my last car although I think that would be harder to do now.

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160947#16162079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160947#16162079)

> _CA was basically paying you $1000 to take the car_

</comment><comment><USER23> A car with a broken odometer that's >25 years old to qualify for your state's Collector Vehicle Registration + vintage car insurance at around $200/year.

</comment><comment><USER24> TSLA. Lower insurance. No maintenance. Save time filling gas. No oil changes. Nothing beats it.

</comment><comment><USER18> Miata Is Always The Answer

</comment><comment><USER25> from personal experience: the "company car" is the cheapest to own and run...</comment>


Android Wars 2016: Google Surrenders to Oracle - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/android-wars-2016-google-surrenders-to-oracle-as-microsoft-allies-with-cyanogen/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Google is trying to change engines mid-flight" Well, good luck with that !</comment>


Looks like github is down - <AUTHOR>

It looks like github just went down for emergency maintenance. <comment><USER2> To quote John Graham-Cumming (@jgrahamc[0])

        Every time github goes down I think,
        "If only there was some way to use git
        locally without a network connection".

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> They just tweeted the down time and appear to have been experiencing issues all morning.

</comment><comment><USER3> 2 days in a row! Anyone else looking for other options?

<comment><USER4> Please report back with your findings.

<comment><USER5> There's no great reason for a small shop to use Github rather than hosting the repositories themselves.

<comment><USER6> There is no great reason for a large shop to use Github other than for PR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it necessary to post on HN about every website down?

</comment><comment><USER8> Yup... <https://status.github.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> They must be a partner with GoDaddy.. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Look another github is down thread. And people still argue about the quality of hacker news submissions.</comment>


Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality - <AUTHOR> http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality/UPDATE <comment><USER2> Also, if you don't know, the author of Methods is Eliezer Yudkowsky, (<http://yudkowsky.net/>) research fellow of Singularity Institute (<http://www.singinst.org>) and a founder of Less Wrong (<http://lesswrong.com>), a community advancing applied rationalism. If you live in the Bay Area, the SingInst community is excellent.

<comment><USER3> Also a HN poster -- <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Eliezer>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was very spectical about this. It sounded like a typical "atheist misantropic know-it-all" thing. I gave it a try reading on my mobile phone on train rides. As it turns out this is a very well written (!), entertaining, witty different take on the whole Harry Potter universe. Harry Potter actually is the "atheist misantropic know-it-all" (yes, I am using wrong words, sue me) but the story is not. It actually evolves around his struggles with himself because of those character traits. It is very exciting, funny and as I said, professionally written. Highly recommended!

The epub is missing some formatting and paragraphs (as in empty space) though, I read it in fbreader. Nothing too bad but you might stumble on them.

<comment><USER5> That's the reason I didn't give it an honest chance. Nice to hear that was a misconception!

The other problem I have with it is the length. It seems as if its ideas could've been expressed a lot more succinctly. Is this another misconception? Or perhaps one isn't supposed to read it for the ideas themselves, but rather for the lit-wrapping? If so, is it of any interest for a non-HP reader?

<comment><USER6> I believe the idea was to package the ideas in an approachable (and perhaps potentially more viral) format. The ideas are more succinctly expressed at <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>, but I can't see your average Harry Potter fan stumbling into those and sticking around.

<comment><USER7> The early chapters were much more ham fisted about the ideas from Less Wrong, almost Ayn Randian in their clunkiness. Eliezer has raised his game a lot over the course of the story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This seems to crop up on HN every 6 months or so.

<comment><USER9> Earlier Discussions:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1385932>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1898783>

<comment><USER10> And <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1319971>

It's interesting how the karma/post changes over time... it goes up quickly, peaks somewhere, and then goes back down. Someone should write a script to analyze these duplicates and how they curve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is one of the few things that occasionally made me happy when I was depressed a few months back. I wish there was some way for this to see wider circulation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some new chapters have come out since the last time this hit the front page. So it could be argued that this is new content.

<comment><USER13> i've hit the point where i'll read it when he finishes it.

<comment><USER14> how do you know when he'll be done?

<comment><USER15> <http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2269863/Less_Wrong> has links to rss feeds, I'll use that as a bookmark/reminder and maybe one day a "Ok all done" entry will show up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a way to download the whole book? Train journey coming up...

<comment><USER17> <http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2269863/Less_Wrong>

The PDF is even nicely typeset in, if not the Official Harry Potter font, a close facsimile.

<comment><USER18> Wow, there are ePub and mobi versions too. I'm sticking that on my iPad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In some countries I am pretty sure it is illegal to laugh at work as much I did while I was reading it. Was it just me or did anybody else hear the voice of the nerdy kid from Inbetweeners while reading this?

But really really well thought out and well written.

</comment><comment><USER20> Harry Potter played by Sheldon Cooper

</comment><comment><USER21> This makes me sad. I feel like the author is a smart guy who should probably be finding something better to do with his time than to write Harry Potter fan fiction.

<comment><USER18> Producing something other people can freely enjoy is hardly a waste of time. Would you considered Steve Yegge's blog a waste of his time? I don't. I have had a great many hours of enjoyment reading his words. I only wish I had such talent (and drive) for writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality was recommended to me at Ephemerisle (<http://ephemerisle.org>) by a Singularitarian (<http://singinst.org>) because I was relating a curious fact about my own childhood. I grew up in a cupboard under the stairs in a school of witchcraft and wizardry and have a funny birthmark scar on my face, but I studied science in my cupboard to become a rationalist who uses games to re-enchant people with science, making me a sort of reverse Harry Potter rationalist and making me the precise target audience of this particular fanfic.

I have been recruiting Singularity Institute people ever since, including one of my cofounders.</comment>


Microsoft to Open Source: You Win - <AUTHOR> http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/02/21/microsoft-to-open-source-you-win/

<comment><USER2> First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. - Mahatma Gandhi</comment>


Startup School 2008 - <AUTHOR> http://www.foundersatwork.com/1/post/2008/02/startup-school-2008.html <comment><USER2> If you don't already have a alpha/beta/gamma of your web application live, I think a prototype of an interesting web project would help raise your application's chances. That being said, interesting ideas are cheap - my goal is to put the time/effort/energe to mold one of my ideas into a live proof-of- concept/prototype by the application deadline... in basically one month's time.. in Ruby on Rails (which I've just started learning).

The fact that GMail started out from humble beginnings ("I wrote the first version of Gmail in one day. It was not very impressive. All I did was stuff my own email into the Google Groups (Usenet) indexing engine." - <http://tinyurl.com/2zs4pe>) is inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER3> Its gotta be super difficult to get in. I wonder what criteria they use to pick people who can attend.

<comment><USER4> Well, intelligent programmers who happen to be poor!

<comment><USER5> That's us!</comment></comment></comment>


Yahoo! Mail Partners With Dropbox To Add File Attachments - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/02/yahoos-resurging-mail-product-gets-a-boost-from-dropbox-partnership-to-make-managing-attachments-easier/

<comment><USER2> > This is good news for both companies, specifically Dropbox. This brings an > all new audience to the service, which has become a mainstay in the > workplace. The company has yet to crack the consumer area

That's completely backwards. Dropbox started as a consumer tool and is now creeping into the workplace.

<comment><USER3> Says who?

I don't know a single person who uses dropbox for personal stuff, but I know tons of businesses in the furniture industry that use it all the time. For them it's only second to ftp. So it's my anecdote against yours, showing opposite things.

<comment><USER4> I think it's pretty widely accepted that Dropbox is used for personal stuff a lot. I know at least a dozen people who use it, including people who don't work anywhere near tech.

In fact, remote storing of business data is a huge red flag for a lot of people, so many businesses do not use the service.

<comment><USER5> Indie filmmaking lives on Dropbox. It's hard to remember getting along without it.

<comment><USER6> Do you have any more detail on this statement? I can completely see it, but I am really intrigued on how it might be used in practice.

<comment><USER5> Filmmaking, and particularly indie filmmaking, is a very distributed operation, in terms of assigning work and often in geographical terms as well.

You may or may not have an office for the project, you may or may not have a base of operations. You'll have dozens of people who need to coordinate frequently (constantly, really), though. And Dropbox is a major help.

Scripts, schedules, budgets, art, paperwork (reams and reams of paperwork), call sheets, gear lists, location scout photos, maps, breakdowns of 100 different sorts, VFX tests, various collections of footage (though production footage tends to be large enough to warrant sneakernet), etc etc.

I sometimes do coodinator work of various sorts on low-budget movies, music videos, etc. Dropbox made very quick inroads into that world. Even if the production doesn't have one for the whole project (and they should), departments will often set up their own. Particularly art departments, with their 50-bajillion details to track.

I've got a couple of film projects I'm developing with partners, and we use Dropbox from very early in the process. Scripts, storyboards, concept art, etc. One of our partners is in Portland, and another in New Zealand, but Dropbox keeps us all on the same page (along with Skype and Gmail, of course).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Yahoo! Mail is still the #3 most used mail service in the world with Hotmail > and Gmail in front of it.

I'd love to see numbers of how many people ACTIVELY use these services and not just total email addresses. Many, many people I know of use Yahoo and Hotmail for spam traps, or set an email address there up long ago and then long ago abandoned it.

Claiming "most used mail service" is either very misleading, or sloppy writing.

<comment><USER4> I think this is one of those tech bubble things- everyone we know uses Gmail. But outside of tech circles a great many people still use Hotmail and Yahoo mail. Like my parents.

At least they're not using AOL.

<comment><USER8> So true! People should stop treating their own little circle as representative of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool. Dropbox seems to be pushing hard to become the goto for email attachments. If Mailbox doesn't win, they'll still have market share with Yahoo.

Mostly surprised Yahoo would do this - I can't imagine we'll be seeing a similar deal with Gmail/Outlook.

<comment><USER10> Gmail already integrates with Google Drive. This is a cheap way for Yahoo to replicate that functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> They are playing catchup to competitors, and they are diluting their own profits / sharing them with others - which is fine, though I hope they realize this. And I hope they have a very solid agreement with Dropbox.

Google so far will still win in the overall big ecosystem. You just can't compete with the synergy and safety of one organization fully controlling / having full management capabilities over all of the pieces.

<comment><USER12> _You just can't compete with the synergy and safety of one organization fully controlling / having full management capabilities over all of the pieces._

You mean the single-point-of-failure of having all of your eggs in one basket, and one company completely in control of every piece of your life. You're right, how could anybody compete against that? :-)

<comment><USER13> You don't have to be locked into the ecosystem though. It's just more convenient to have everything in one place.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, that's the rub, isn't it? We (humans) are always so quick to make trade- offs that might not be in our best long-term interest, in order to gain some near-term convenience.

I'm certainly guilty of this myself: I use most of Google's services, for both personal use and I use a paid Google Apps account for my startup's email / etc. And I use an Android phone. Maybe it's time to start re-evaluating some of this stuff... Hmm...

<comment><USER13> How is it a trade-off? Is Google giving me cancer?

<comment><USER12> _How is it a trade-off?_

Because it's a single-point-of-failure, and because you're giving one company a disproportionate degree of control over your data.

<comment><USER13> Is the implication that allowing them to collect my data will adversely affect me? Why would I continue to use their services if that were to happen?

<comment><USER12> There are a lot of ways that it could be bad/dangerous, but the most obvious is: What if Google's (in)famous automated algorithms some-day flag your account as spam or malicious in some regard, and they lock you out of everything? This has happened to people before, and some of them only got the situation corrected because they thought to post here on HN, where their story caught the eye of a helpful GOOG employee who happens to post here. But what about the non-HN crowd? After all, Google are notorious for having essentially zero customer service if you aren't a paying user of one of their various paid offerings. And even then I'm not sure how good their service is (I pay for Google Apps, but have never had to engage with their support in any way).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there really any need for this?

Maybe I'm a little traditional but last time I checked Microsoft handled this just fine on their own, is Yahoo Mail really in such a bad place that they need to outsource their file attachment hosting?

When I'm using outlook, I click on a file once and it downloads, simple as that, I don't want to have to screw around signing up for yet another service just to use it.

I don't really care how amazing Dropbox may be, if I have to screw around accessing another service instead of just clicking "download attachment" then the user experience is already ruined for me.

<comment><USER15>
      | is Yahoo Mail really in such a bad place that
      | they need to outsource their file attachment
      | hosting?

I imagine that Yahoo! Mail is similar to Gmail in that there are size limits on the emails that you can send. Your email _with attachments_ can't be over 20 ~ 25Mb on Gmail. I think that Hotmail's limit is around 10MB. Partnering with Dropbox would allow one to use their Dropbox space for much larger files.

      | When I'm using outlook, I click on a file once
      | and it downloads, simple as that, I don't want
      | to have to screw around signing up for yet another
      | service just to use it.

Dropbox allows you to share files publicly, IIRC. They could take this a couple of ways:

\- When attaching, the user could be presented with a dialog that allows them to select files already in their Dropbox account. Therefore if you wanted to upload a file, you could drop it into your Dropbox folder, then compose an email.

\- When attaching, the user uploads the file to their Dropbox account via the Yahoo! Mail web interface.

Both of these ways will probably create a URL to the file on Dropbox (publicly accessible, private with password, obfuscated single-use URL, etc).

[ Also, we're talking about webmail clients like Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail. It really seems like you're comparing them to Outlook+Exchange, which is something completely different. ]

<comment><USER16> There are three integration points:

\- Share from Dropbox: when composing an email, insert a link to a file already in your Dropbox.

\- Save to Dropbox: when reading email, save a received attachment to your Dropbox.

\- Upload to Dropbox: if you try to attach file over the 25MB attachment size limit, you're given the option to upload it to your Dropbox and link to the file on Dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yahoo mail is amazing, and I am referring to the classic version. It looks like they are working hard to get some attention. Now this is much better news than their latest acquisition

</comment><comment><USER18> Yahoo already had an attachment service through another company. I can't even recall the name of it now.

<comment><USER19> yousendit

<comment><USER18> No I'm sure it was something else.

<comment><USER19> just checked and it's yousendit: <http://imgur.com/n4drDdv>

<comment><USER18> Hmm...interesting. I recall an application listed in the side bar of Yahoo mail (in one of their older interfaces) which I recall downloading and using as a drive through windows explorer. Somehow I am quite sure it was not yousendit because I do know yousendit through the time when they first started. Anyways, I think this Dropbox/Yahoo integration is more of a PR hype than a substantive item in itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If anyone is curious, this is the first step to monetizing email beyond ads. Fast forward a few years and the store as much content as you want (Gmail model) will be an exception not the rule.

<comment><USER21> I very much doubt they'd go a step backwards. Yahoo had a "pay for more storage" option, and it never made much money even with the ludicrously small free storage quota (25MB?).

When Gmail launched and Yahoo panicked and increased limits, they quickly realized that users actual e-mail storage use didn't grow very quickly - it's probably far outpaced by growth in storage densities.

Shifting attachments to Dropbox gives sufficient space for most users on the free tier "forever", but of course Dropbox gives users other benefits which they might very well want to pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cute, but I'm still not using Yahoo! Mail for anything except spam.

<comment><USER23> Forget Yahoo for Spam. I'm pretty well sold on Mailinator for disposable email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder what the implications are for legal document retention?

</comment><comment><USER25> Congrats Yahoo! and Dropbox! Looks like a great integration. Very similar to what Attachments.me has done for gmail to Dropbox, Box, Skydrive and Google Drive.

</comment><comment><USER26> Gmail->Mailbox->Dropbox->Yahoo Mail

</comment><comment><USER27> expect Yahoo! toolbar in the Dropbox installer soon ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> Unless I get some free DropBox space by using Yahoo, I don't care.</comment>


At 8AM Central 3/1/2007 Reddit is still down.  I'm switching to Newsy! - <AUTHOR> http://reddit.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> What's newsy!?

"news.y"combinator.com

</comment><comment><USER2> it's back now. 9:43 EDT

</comment><comment><USER3>

<comment><AUTHOR> I wish there was some kind of hotline :(

Maybe someone should set up a Freebridge conference room where we can all figure out how to cope.</comment></comment>


It's Time to Call Out the BadApple - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/its-time-to-bringappletojustice-cf12ce860932 <comment><USER2> This post is so false it might actually might be in the realm of legally actionable by Apple.

I'm sure they won't consider it worthwhile, but claiming that they were proven to be degrading performance in order to force upgrades when no such thing has been proven may well fall under the scope of a defamation tort.

Apple can of course be reasonably criticized for many things, but falsely asserting that their malicious intent has been proven is not a reasonable critique.</comment>


Lex Fridman Interviews Scott Aaronson on Quantum Computing - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX5t8EivCaM <comment><USER2> Lex Fridman has consistently shown himself to be an outstanding interviewer. With excellent questions and brilliant insights. It appears to me that he is genuinely interested in his guests and the topics he is discussing. This shows in a courageous willingness to pause and consider before continuing the conversation. My favorite interviews that I've seen in the last few months have all been Lex's. I hope he continues to do these.</comment>


Microsoft breaks into leaker employee's Hotmail without warrant - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/arrest-of-secret-leaking-ex-microsoftie-raises-hotmail-privacy-concerns/

<comment><USER2> "breaks into"? Errm, they have the keys to the door. They own the house. No one broke in. Hotmail users give MS permission to look in their email when they agree to the T&Cs. So using an account hosted by them to conspire against them was pretty boneheaded to say the least.

<comment><USER3> Yeah this was a pretty sad attempt to hide. So much so that I almost wonder if it was actually intentional theft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed. So even when we believe we have probable cause, it's not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves. However, even we should not conduct a search of our own e-mail and other customer services unless the circumstances would justify a court order, if one were available."</comment>


Pomidor Timer: Open source timer for The Pomodoro Technique - <AUTHOR> http://mikbe.github.com/pomidor_timer/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's currently in beta. Help me make it better with your suggestions.</comment>


Show HN: I've built a 'game' using WebRTCs DataChannel (Chrome only) - <AUTHOR> http://demo.tiemenwaterreus.com:8080 As a school assignment for the past two weeks (like a big hackathon) i've been busy building a 'game' (it is more a demonstration) using WebRTC's DataChannel.<p>I've pushed to code to GitHub so everybody could learn from it:)<p>@tiemenwaterreus <comment><AUTHOR> Pick a username and select another player (if there are any). You might need to wait a few seconds before anything pops up. :)</comment>


Clojure on the Mac App Store - <AUTHOR> https://nightweb.net/blog/clojure-on-mac-app-store.html <comment><USER2> Mostly unrelated, but: I can't believe Apple still uses the misnomer _itunes_ to describe their entire app market. Google was able to rebrand their Android Market to Google Play (which was worse imho) without too much trouble.

<comment><USER3> Technically, they don't us it for their entire app market. They use it for the iOS app market when using desktop computers. On iOS devices, it is separate from the iTunes app; on Macs, it is only in the Mac App Store app. Also, ebooks are separate from iTunes on both Mac and iOS; iTunes is only used for syncing ebooks to iOS devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does it mean that other Java apps (including Clojure apps we create) cannot use shared .m2 folder? (i.e. will be duplicate .m2, one in $HOME and the other one exclusively for Nightcode)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, if you use Leiningen separately, you'll have two separate .m2 folders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's an informative little blog post. I hope it inspires porting more IDEs & language runtimes to mobile.

<comment><USER6> Mobile? Wouldn't that be even harder?

<comment><USER7> On iOS front, there are a few native code compilers available for Java, like RoboVM and Codename One.

On Android, there is the issue Clojure is still a bit fat and uses too much reflection during startup. ART might make it harder as it is a AOT native compiler.

On WP, there are currently no efforts for Java support, other than maybe via ikvm.net. Or Clojure-CLR.

<comment><USER8> Tried compiling Clojure->Scheme->C?

<comment><USER7> Not yet, but the Clojure->Scheme and Clojure->native(LLVM) do look appealing.

However I tend not to like having layers between language and final execution target, as it increases debugging headaches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You should buy it just so you can support with play-clj, a library for making games from the same author consisting bindings to libgdx.

<comment><USER10> I'm not a game dev, but that makes me extra glad that I bought a copy. There's a lot to like: slogging through a set of thorny problems, documenting them clearly to help others find their way, and taking donations through a system that many of us are already hooked into (despite its issues and extra hurdles, as demonstrated here). Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The pure Java, on the other hand, doesn't have to deal with any of this mess (hopefully).

Here's how to package your app for Mac App Store:

[http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/p...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/packagingAppsForMac.html)

... combine with Maven shade plugin (something that creates Uber Jar), it should be smooth.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually linked to that in the post. I don't think a pure Java app would necessarily be easier; you would still need to use native dialogs and a Java- Cocoa bridge to deal with sandboxing.

<comment><USER11> Hm, I might've missed that. Carry on!

By the way, thank you very much for writing the article. I've been tempted to try Clojure to build something desktop related :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They don't make it easy, do they? Thanks for the information...

</comment><comment><USER13> I have only just now heard of Nightcode. I've been using Light Table and am pretty fond of it but I'll definitely have a look at Nightcode. Thanks man.

</comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, what if one turned Nightcode into a "batteries included" Cocoa app development/packaging/Mac App Store deployment tool?

<comment><USER15> I don't know why this got downvoted.

Right now, I see no reason to use Nightcode, Lighttable or any other clojure IDE over raw command line tools. Publishing to the Mac App Store is (as this shows) a difficult but potentially automatable process, and would be a concrete use-case to point to.

...of course, this is from the perspective of someone who doesn't use Clojure IDEs. I just didn't think that the parent deserved to be downvoted.

<comment><USER14> _I just didn 't think that the parent deserved to be downvoted._

I have a penchant for asking questions that the shallow knee-jerk HN contingent downvotes, which is then followed by the majority of reasonable thinkers up-voting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How many man hours would it take to move Clojure from the JVM to native code/C back-end? Folks go on and on about the good things about running on top of the JVM, but I just see it as Clojure's Achille's Heel.

If I ever hit is super big, I'd def look to fund moving/forking Clojure away from JVM.

As an aside, would it have been easier for this fellow to have written and distributed his code in Clojurescript, and have node.js as the back-end?

<comment><USER17> Clojure only makes sense in the presence of a "host" environment providing the backing libraries. A "native" Clojure is a contradiction.

You probably just want Haskell. Nicer language anyway :)

<comment><USER18> No, I think he/she wants Racket. Only Racket has the capability of being a "JVM-less Clojure". It's really all about the ecosystems, though, and Clojure is winning in that regard no less due to the JVM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> These app stores are stifling. They're injecting arbitrary non-functional nonsense and technical hurdles that just hold developers back.

I'm not saying HTML/CSS/JS development is a panacea, it's all painful awkwardness with occasional sublime moments. But at least I am my own master when I deploy my apps to the Web.

<comment><USER20> > _They 're injecting arbitrary non-functional nonsense and technical hurdles > that just hold developers back._

Arbitrary nonsense like a sandbox? Didn't we learn anything from when viruses were rampant in earlier OSs?

> _I 'm not saying HTML/CSS/JS development is a panacea, it's all painful > awkwardness with occasional sublime moments. But at least I am my own master > when I deploy my apps to the Web._

So the solution to the "arbitrary non-functional nonsense and technical hurdles" of the native App Stores is web development? As if that doesn't have tons of arbitrary non-functional nonsense and technical hurdles itself compared to native development...

<comment><USER21> Sandboxes are a good idea.

The bizarre hoops that Apple makes you jump through to actually _use_ your app's sandbox if you're not an Objective C programmer are not.

<comment><USER20> Well, it's not like they can have a sandbox for any arbitrary language, right? Doesn't it have to correspond to some ABI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Awesome</comment>