Computer Simulations Suggest War Drove the Rise of Civilisations (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ua-magazine.com/computer-simulations-reveal-war-drove-the-rise-of-civilisations/ <comment><USER2> Yes: geostrategy is a huge defining factor in the organization of the planet, the movement of people and the evolution of society. It is a primary factor, including resource extraction technologies, agricultural capability, and more.

I think rounding that up to "drove the rise of civilizations" is a crude way to put that. For example, the simulation pits "agriculture plus military" against "agriculture". Then they found that including both food security concerns and physical security concerns more closely predicted known outcomes.

Had they put "agriculture plus military" against "military" and found that including both was better than just simulating physical security we would have gotten the title "Computer Simulations Suggest Food Drove the Rise of Civilizations".

I think the takeaway (besides how not to model and report on models) is that geostrategy is an important factor in the development of human and international relations and that broadly laymen are completely ignorant of it.

A layman equipped with some of this knowledge, for example, will be much more able to understand current events in the South China Sea, the infrastructure projects across Eurasia, the proxy war in Syria, the importance of the Crimea to Russia, the crisis in America over its policies toward Cuba, and much more.

Unfortunately the layman instead is fed a steady diet of "good versus evil" narratives, informing him instead about how he should feel about each case to emotionally and financially support his military.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't the "military" only group be able to terrorize the agriculture only as well as the ag plus military ones? Something akin to the Danes at one point? They could just build it up so that they could go pillaging indefinitely, so long as they don't outright destroy their target civs.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure the Danes were ever military only, Denmark was also an agricultural society during the viking period. As I understand it, the viking raids were in fact organised around the agricultural calendar, with the two raiding seasons taking place after the harvest and after the sowing. And of course the Vikings were interested in acquiring farming land and often settled and farmed in their places of conquest.

A more apt comparison might be pastoralist raiders as mentioned in Turchin's War and Peace and War, whose nomadic lifestyle led naturally to the development of military skills that could be applied in raids on settled communities. Turchin wrote a lot about the Tatars and the Mongols could also be a good example.

<comment><USER3> I didn't mean for the imperfect example of the Danes to take it off tangent, it was only to illustrate a people I could think of for whom raiding was integral but your examples or any other is just as well. I think someone (civ) could have taken it further and been sociopathic and only relied on military force for survival. Obviously there are benefits in diversifying, but I think while not ideal, it's possible and could work, in some circumstances.

<comment><USER5> You mean like the Mongols? They didn't stop and farm. Their entire society was built around conquest and pillage.

<comment><USER2> Until they established city centers, trade routes, spread religious freedom to among their subjects, developed population centers and their agricultural output, standardized exchange rates and quality bars, created systems of news and material delivery, and all that other stuff.

Their empire was, of course, extremely short, as it collapsed with the death of their Great Kahn soon after it established itself and its following leaders abandoned the previous inroads in the West to focus on the prize of capturing China (that ultimately failed).

Our history tends to focus on the expansion of their empire rather than its subsequent administration, I think in part for that reason.

<comment><USER3> True, but I think it tentatively proves it's possible, if not effective, long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The older I get, the more it strikes me that _civilization_ is inherently unstable. It may be metastable, in the way that a predator-prey relationship is stable. A technological civilization like ours is not stable. It's a _conflagration_. It's subject to a number of exponential processes. Our economy is based on exponentiation. If progress is based on war, then that's just another nail in the coffin. This makes for a plausible "Great Filter" solution to the Fermi Paradox. Civilizations are so unstable, they can only progress through war, which makes them more likely to destroy themselves. Perhaps civilizations almost never stay organized at the point where they are capable of star travel.

<comment><USER7> This is why it's critical to become starfaring _as soon as possible_. Every year we delay carries tremendous risk.

<comment><USER8> Do you think we can get rid of this once we leave the planet and go multi- planetary? We will bring our gray matter with us. May a few generations grow up and they will repeat our mistakes.

Possibly the only solution is to get way smarter by gene editing and preserve as much data as we can from our age.

<comment><USER9> Over time, populations adapt to their circumstances. In a society in which Malthusian pressures operate, and the thrifty and peaceful out-reproduce the violent and improvident, society will become more thrifty and peaceful over time -- and will eventually become prosperous and organized enough to escape the Malthusian trap. (The opposite pressures can also operate, but you need external sources of chaos for selection in favor of chaos to occur. Order is normally self-establishing, self-reinforcing, and stronger than chaos over time.)

 _A Farewell to Alms_ discusses this in great detail; England began the Industrial Revolution (i.e. broke out of the Malthusian trap) in the late 18th century, but if not for them, the Continent would have done it in the 19th; if not the Continent, then Japan in the late 19th or China sometime in the 20th.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Turchin, like I suspected. _War and Peace and War_ is his first book on the subject, which is well worth reading. He's an ethnic Russian in the US, and focuses on US and Russian history; his model explains both countries very well, but he openly admits in the book that it doesn't explain Italy (or Aquitaine), so we know that there are other factors in life.

I'm not convinced that "Turchinian cohesion" is really a good thing, though; it seems to be a way to get people who hate each other to toe the line and work together nonetheless, and he kind of praises how all cohesive societies suppress dissenters...

Another book to read, for those interested in neo-Toynbean searches for underlying patterns: _The Fourth Turning_ , which deals with generational cycles of values. The authors, writing around 1990, expected a high risk of some sort of crisis -- possibly even a large terrorist attack -- somewhere around 2000, and a general atmosphere of crisis that would last about 20 years afterwards. Either their model's pretty good, or they just got lucky; if they followed their own investment advice, I imagine they came out pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER10> And then there is Caral, a civilization that seems to have evolved without any violence. Here is an excellent video about the discovery [1].

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral) 1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef0jSXv9Jyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef0jSXv9Jyk)

<comment><USER9> Norte Chico society was unusual in a lot of ways, including disinterest in violence (which was helped along by having no neighbors). I'd recommend _1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus_ for an in-depth look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A little bit of offtopic that might be interesting to HN crowd: Peter Turchin is a son of late Valentin Turchin [1] who has quite a following in Russian Computer Science community.

Probably due to our history, there is a large amount of interest among Russians about rise and fall of civilizations. Lev Gumilyov's [2] work is something else that comes to mind, although much less mathematical.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Turchin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Turchin) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Gumilyov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Gumilyov)

</comment><comment><USER12> The Old Testament of the Bible is a lot taken up with the rise of kings over judges, with prophets then warning people that the only reason to have kings is conquest, and that this is Hubris That Will Arouse The Ire of $DEITY.

Whether it's really on a timeline or adapted, it's kind of an interesting idea that much of that old book is about that. It's especially interesting when you consider the idea that in order to survive, a system like that has to become ephemeral; that Judaism survived the destruction of various temples because it became much more of an idea than a place or thing.

But we remember the conquerors because the stories are better :)

</comment><comment><USER13> War is the application of violence to achieve a political outcome.

It's important to differentiate between this type of war and simple conquest and commandeering of resources (human, natural, etc.)

In both cases, as the scale increases, the sophistication required to support the effort increases... One needs better social structures, better technology, supply chain management, etc.

So these "civilized" aspects are in fact prerequisites for victory in war, though war may offer an incentive to focus on improving those systems and their coordination at the expense of other aspects of society.

So just as eating food strengthens a person enough that he/she may grow, survive, and thus desire to eat larger meals in the future, eating is not the _cause_ of hunger.

What we must also realize (for history and for the present day) is that war utterly wipes out culture and the history of humans, and replaces it with some politicized narrative imagined by the victors. We know little about indigenous Americans, and the future will know little about the Afghanistan and Iraq of the early 21st century and earlier. There will be volumes of information, but it will be written by scholars beholden to the occupying hegemon.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interestingly, from a cursory glance at those images, it looks like the biggest gap between the model and the data is in Iran and central Asia. The model predicts a low incidence of civilization there, which makes sense due to the region's low agricultural potential, but in reality large civilizations have thrived in those areas. I wonder what factor explains this divergence? Trade along the Silk Road?

<comment><USER15> Long term climate change? Those areas were probably fertile when the ancient civilizations thrived there.

<comment><USER9> It was local climate change and poor resource management -- two problems which fed on each other. Desertification isn't new to the 20th century...

Iran was originally wooded, but the forests were marginal -- not very fertile, easy to lose, mostly valuable for keeping topsoil in place. These were cut at rates faster than they could regenerate, and the country desertified. The ancient Persians were superb engineers (their air-conditioning and water- transport methods, in particular, get a lot of attention in sustainability circles today), but poor foresters.

Of course, regenerative forestry was only invented in the 19th century. Persia isn't the only part of the world where marginal forests were over-harvested and lost; the forests that survived were those in very tree-friendly regions, or in uninhabited regions, or both. In Persia, the temperate-rainforest zone north of the Elburz Mountains (on the south shore of the Caspian Sea) was forested much longer, although these days it's more urbanized than anything else.

The problem in Iraq -- Mesopotania -- was a different one: the Babylonians put in irrigation canals, but, over time, irrigation canals render the soil salty and toxic to plants. This takes thousands of years; but by the time the Mongols arrived, parts of Iraq were already a salt marsh, and after Hugalu Khan destroyed the irrigation systems, no one could get much value from rebuilding them. The climate is still mild and pleasant; the soil, much less so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those interested in Peter Turchin's work, he just released a new book called "Ages of Discord". It's got a lot of mathematical notation, but if you're not put off by that it's a good read. [http://peterturchin.com/ages-of- discord/](http://peterturchin.com/ages-of-discord/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Everyone should listen to Dan Carlin's amazing Hardcore History series on Genghis Khan: [http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-43-wrath-o...](http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore- history-43-wrath-of-the-khans-i/)

He makes a case for not just Kahn and his descendants being a huge factor in history, but for every ruler who has gone in and shaken up the foundations of civilization through conquest. Khan, Alexander and Napoleon are prime examples given (and I'm avoiding another key example but you'll know who it is if you listen to the podcast). He speculates that at various times in history, civilization stalled out, but these rulers came in and got things moving again simply by clearing entire parts away and making room for new ideas and new forms of government. Its a fascinating theory and I think this data corroborates that.

<comment><USER12> You can point to examples of predator migrations causing rises in the populations of prey species for nearly the same reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It seems to me that "reveal" must be the wrong word here, basically by definition.

<comment><USER19> Indeed. The model is seeded with only two interesting bits of information: agricultural capacity and military technology. They then compared that model with one that only knew about agriculture. Because the first model was more predictive, they concluded war was the primary cause of civilization. That result seems suspect.

Looking at the little maps in the article, I might hesitate a guess that this model has been over-fit to a certain idea of "civilization". It predicts Egypt and Rome and Greece, things people know about. But it doesn't seem to predict the Byzantines, Sogdian and other Central Asian empires, peaks and troughs of Chinese dynasties, etc., which were just as long-lived and influential but are less well-known.

I wonder what would happen if they modeled resource availability, language overlap over time, political ideology (large empires tend to become inward- looking), etc. War is certainly an important factor, but not the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Turchin has made the point elsewhere that agriculture is important because food production is a fundamental constraint on population growth. But it's warfare that provided the impetus for scaling societies past the tribal level.

<comment><USER9> But tribes fight better than civilizations (less concern for social status, less internal dissention; read _War Before Civilization_ for an interesting discussion of this) -- so over-civilization is self-correcting in a way. Turchin sees his ideas as an elaboration on ibn Khaldun...

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> For an analysis of warfare, progression of technology and its influence on warfare, and war's influence on society, I recommend reading _A History of Warfare_ by John Keegan. It does explore war as an extension of politics and can lead to nice thought exercises about how war does influence the creation and destruction of civilization.

1\. Wiki About: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Warfare)

</comment><comment><USER22> Random internet comment: in my mind there are three cooperative/adversarial games that drove all of human civilization: trading/commerce, clanning/war, and prey/predator.

Each of these requires vastly different strategies in different circumstances. Each scales out in a way that becomes more nuanced and complex the bigger the system. Each one, and various ones in combinations drive out other complex, emergent behavior like religion or language.

Intelligence, at least on this planet, seems to thrive in a state of stress and moderate, creative chaos. There are a lot of idealists in the world who want to build something totally peaceful where all needs are taken care of and there's very little risk. If I'm correct, this would effectively kill the species over the long run.

</comment><comment><USER23> Proud that my brother and I playing about 3,000 games of Civ I contributed, I assume, to this study

<comment><USER24> Came for the Civ comment, was not disappointed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "It seems warfare created intense pressure that drove these societies."

This seems backwards. Wouldn't the intense pressure of societies bumping up against each other drive warfare, and not the other way around?

<comment><USER26> The pressure analogy seems reasonable to me. It suggests that this goes both ways:

Two societies pushing against each other lead to pressure. This pressure results in military conflict. Whoever wins the military conflict can exert increased pressure.

The necessity of winning wars put pressure on the society to develop better ways of winning wars. These better ways put more pressure on external societies, etc.

China was the most wealthy, educated civilization in the world in the 1400's. They stagnated basically becuase there was little to no fighting.

Meanwhile Europe was busy finding newer more elaborate ways to slaughter each other, and to avoid being slaughtered.

<comment><USER25> -> They stagnated basically because there was little to no fighting.

A fair assessment, but now I realize that another way to say this is -

They stagnated because there was little to drive innovation.

Stated this way, it at least makes us consider that there might be an alternative to constant warfare as a driver of progress. Maybe recognition of this is some kind of societal turning point as well?

<comment><USER27> War may drive innovation, but it may also have other purposes. Like resetting service and management economies that spend lots of effort keeping themselves running but not producing products. People think that the more efficient businesses always win are wrong. A bureaucratic sector can wedge itself into the legal system and enforce inefficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Computer Simulations also suggest reality is simulated in a computer.

</comment><comment><USER29> No shit Sherlock.

Just looking at recent history will show that outright war, or the imminent threat of same, has driven perhaps the biggest technological push in known history.

</comment><comment><USER30> Next: Computer Simulations Reveal Computers Will Drive the Demise of Civilisation

<comment><USER31> Computer Simulations Reveal Best Option for Civilization is to Cede Control to Computer Simulations, Trust Us You Guys

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This seems almost tautological to me. Civilization is violence. Civilization is cultural agreement, agreement generally requires control, control is violence.

How else are you going to centralize a way of life besides killing everyone who doesn't agree to it?

</comment><comment><USER33> Always knew this intuitively. When two tribes, cities, countries goto war; they push each side to get better or perish. Winner never takes all as any society created with war in center will have power struggle built in. Process repeats.

</comment><comment><USER34> Competition in general. War is just one form of it.

So-called Cold War and Arm-racing is the most recent examples.

Continuous competition for everything, not just survival and reproduction, is what makes evolution (biological or social) possible.

</comment><comment><USER35> Of which we had not the slightest inkling until a computer simulation told us so.

</comment><comment><USER36> Sorry, computer, I am not going to war, even if it will rise another civilization.

</comment><comment><USER37> what are the best open source tools for social simulations?

<comment><USER38> I'm part of an NSF funded research coordination network focused on supporting good practices for computational modeling (www.comses.net). We've been curating a comprehensive list of computational modeling platforms at [https://www.openabm.org/modeling-platforms](https://www.openabm.org/modeling- platforms) but for the most part the popular modeling platforms are NetLogo ([https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/](https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/)), Repast ([https://repast.github.io/](https://repast.github.io/)), and Mason ([https://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/mason/](https://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/mason/)).

Rob Allan wrote a survey of agent based modelling toolkits available at [http://www.grids.ac.uk/Complex/ABMS/](http://www.grids.ac.uk/Complex/ABMS/) (in 2011 though so some things are out-of-date).

It's important to strive towards models that are as simple as possible so you don't end up "simulating the world" and so you can better understand and analyze the processes that led to the interesting results. It's also important that you document and open your source code to review because as we all know, it's trivial to hardcode your assumptions into a program to tell you what you want to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Was anyone else half expecting this to be a dwarf fortress story?

</comment><comment><USER40> Sid Meier knows it better ehehe

</comment><comment><USER41> (2013)

</comment><comment><USER42> maybe. but, imagine where we'd be now had science driven the rise of civilization. imagine if all the money squandered on war were invested in science.

</comment><comment><USER43> Things liberals won't like to hear.

<comment><USER9> Turchin's pretty embarrassing for everyone, except ibn Khaldun of course. Even Hitler wouldn't want to hear it, since race is a rounding error in Turchin's model... (Think of the War Nerd on Eritrea; as he tells it, that's a classic Turchinian story.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I used to run a computer simulation that proved the same thing. It's called Dwarf Fortress world generation.</comment>


Erector: Views In Ruby For Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://erector.rubyforge.org/ Erector is a "builder pattern" view framework, inspired by Why's Markaby. In Erector all views are objects, not template files, which allows the full power of object-oriented programming (inheritance, modular decomposition, encapsulation) in views. <comment><AUTHOR> Erector is a "builder pattern" view framework, inspired by Why's Markaby. In Erector all views are objects, not template files, which allows the full power of object-oriented programming (inheritance, modular decomposition, encapsulation) in views.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you bet on the survival of my company? - <AUTHOR>

My company is like a row boat, a four man crew, trying to get to deeper waters. Except we are two miles from land and we can catch at most one or two fishes at a time. The crew is exhausted after fighting a rough sea and doesn't really know where they are or were to go.
We have Roger, a super sailor. He sails with us but actually he's on another boat, a faster boat. It's safest that way, well... it's complicated, but he's with us sometimes, so that's good.
Then there's François, a math genius. François took a spear to the knee while catching a whale. He never got over it. He's still a very capable sailor though, he just gets his kicks inland.
Jack is a quiet sailor. Jack can command every crew member by the sound of their feet on the deck, the job needs to be done, Jack ensures that it does, even if he has to do it himself. Together Jack and I are the muscle of our boat.
Roger, François and Jack used to work in bigger boats, it was easier back then, they didn't get to worry about where the fish was.
Leaving the analogy behind, we can't scale sales! The truth is, we never REALLY tried! There is almost no information about the company and there is no willingness to keep track of prospects and contact new ones. We are all developers and no one does sales with passion and belief, no one puts themselves out there.
Our team is soon to be split in half, doing work through a clients client, where we obviously won't get credit (or we could potentially steal the client) besides a slightly above average salary (not enough to run a company). These two members are required to be in the clients office for a period equivalent to the one of our own existence. During that period the boat is supposed to be managed by one person with the help of Roger. No growth prospects.
In an effort to burst our bubble I wrote this, what do you think is going to happen to my company? <comment><USER2> There is _no_ company right now. Just a group of developers writing code with no purpose. You have already failed at building a business.

Shoot me an email if you are interested on getting out of the hole you dug yourself into.

<comment><USER3> I got interested in that email, could I also get it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You aren't doomed, but you have to act. Scurvy is bound to overtake the crew and now is the time to act...and dropping the boat metaphor.

It's about finding a way to ring the bell. There are no shortage of business folks seeking talented dev teams and with a little networking I'm sure you can find someone worth taking a shot at selling the product and making it a business. The question is would a sale reinvigorate the team. If yes, reach out and let's chat. Lord knows I've gotten some great advice over the years and would love the opportunity to pay it forward.

Email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER5> >>>The truth is, we never REALLY tried!

Do you know that you can hire commission-only salespeople? They don't make money until they've _sold_ something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Whenever I meet someone with the right connections/profile I propose this, had no luck thus far. Hell depending the amount of work he could get us, I wouldn't even oppose to pay him a safe net!

<comment><USER5> There are lots of unemployed people out there. You are probably thinking someone has to have intricate knowledge upfront. No. He has to be able to sell. He can learn the intricacies later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You need to hire a sales person to take care of sales/marketing for the rest of you.

</comment><comment><USER7> Where are you located?</comment>


Tell HN: Can you figure out what type of attack it is? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tcs.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the link to HTML source -> <http://pastie.org/813615> The ping requests gives an IP of [126.96.36.199] IP Locator tells the IP Belongs to NY USA <http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm>

</comment><comment><USER2> [http://aruninte.blogspot.com/2010/02/tcscom-hacked- dnshijack...](http://aruninte.blogspot.com/2010/02/tcscom-hacked-dnshijacking- abeduk.html)

DNS hijack

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> oh for background [http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/07/indian-it-giant-tata- co...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/07/indian-it-giant-tata-consultancy- services-hacked/)

I thought it would be interesting to see if all security geeks could try figure out how much ever they can when the hack is still on!</comment>


Ask HN: "Save to pocket" for HN that saves both the article AND the comments? - <AUTHOR> I use Pocket to save for later everything interesting I find on Hacker News (which ends up being almost everything) but I'm kind of tired of having to save the article first, and then the comment threads, for every story. Ideally I'd like an extension that saves both the parent article AND the comments thread with a single click, but both the official extension and unofficial ones don't support this. Anyone else in the same boat? What would you recommend? <comment><USER2> I am in exactly the same boat. I use pocket for almost every article I come across, but the comments come across to pocket funny. To expand the question, has anyone found an extension/tool that makes the comments more readable?

<comment><USER3> [http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com) might offer a better interface (it's optimized for mobile / tablet display).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely in the same boat, but instead of pocket I use Pinboard ([https://pinboard.in](https://pinboard.in))

<comment><USER5> Same boat here too... I found they saved nicely to Evernote. I keep really useful threads in a separate notebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This would be awesome. The comments on HN are a formidable body of knowledge on their own, and I refer to them before deciding to read anything.

</comment><comment><USER7> Boat...</comment>


Pull Request Based Development Sucks - <AUTHOR> http://lisperator.net/blog/pull-request-based-development-sucks <comment><USER2> The process you outline isn't really for the benefit of developers, at least not entirely. It is for project managers and team leads. A PM isn't likely to check the commit history and certainly won't be inspecting code comments to find out why a ticket went over budget.

Similarly, the process enables many other things to occur such as the spec > approve > develop > test > QA > stage > deploy workflow. That's a lot of steps, where do you track who is responsible and when they worked on each step if not in a ticket?

I am on your side however, when working on home projects or in small enough teams, code flows much more quickly when you throw away those steps.

But if you don't see why the pull request based workflow makes sense then you probably just don't need the features it adds to a project and that's fine.

A recurring issue in the tech industry seems to be small teams or sole developers seeing tools and processes from enterprise level businesses and thinking they need them.

Microservices solve a problem a small company likely doesn't have, for example. Agile workflow for a sole developer can be streamlined significantly. Vagrant or Docker and containers for someone who runs a single instance blog, probably not worth the overhead.

Pick and choose what works for you and make sure you don't get yourself too snowed in by process and tooling to get any work done.</comment>


Thanks HN: SimpleInvoices.org finally implements HN donated design - <AUTHOR>

Hi Guys,
A little over a year ago Jason Stachan posted on HN offering a days design work for free to any project, ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1194567 ) luckily SimpleInvoices.org was chosen and Jason produced a great design ( http://jasonstrachan.com/clients/simpleinvoices/ )
Thanks to a number of our great community members Jasons design has been transformed into html/css reality and weve skinned dokuwiki and vanilla forum with his design - refer: simpleinvoices.org and simpleinvoices.org/forum
Also just noticed Jason has posted again offerring his services ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2655618 )- good luck to all those who apply - you'll get a great design
Thanks again HN, Jason, and the SimpleInvoices.org community
Cheers
Justin -- simpleinvoices.org -- http://blog.justin.kelly.org.au/thanks-hackernews-simpleinvoicesorg-finally-i <comment><USER2> At the risk of seeming rude, can I ask what the logic was on the changes?

Visually, the screenshot you link to exhibits much better typography, spacing and color choices. I'm curious as to what compelled you to change the things you did?

<comment><AUTHOR> re color \- just wanted it to be lighter - when we implemented the design with the dark header it just didnt look that good in the browser

when altered the logo as it didnt look great on the lighter backgroud

re type \- in the blue sections we need to work on the spacing and type to make it as good as Jasons design

cheers

justin</comment></comment>


What A Difference Six Years Makes... - <AUTHOR> http://parislemon.com/post/61777379694/what-a-difference-six-years-makes

<comment><USER2> Microsoft's direction under Ballmer has been underwhelming, especially the lack of innovation in the tablet and mobile spheres. I'm curious to see if his successor is someone future thinking and if he/she will be able to bring Microsoft back into the limelight.

<comment><USER3> They certainly have the money and the technical talent. Innovation is hard because you need a certain type of insight and creative perspective, which is very rare.</comment></comment>


FundersClub's Stance on General Solicitation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thefundersclub.com/post/62366327488/fundersclubs-stance-on-general-solicitation

<comment><USER2> And while I can appreciate their caution, changes in regulation are how new markets are made and the early movers become the winners. Fundersclub has the opportunity to be a first mover here, and instead they're ceding the opportunity. The hubris in the blog is amusing: You can only 'carry a big stick' when you're big. 7 digits is at least two orders of magnitude away from earning that level of cockiness.

</comment><comment><USER3> > For example, we have already observed many instances where opportunities > made available this week via general solicitation are being offered at > different terms compared to what institutional investors like FundersClub > are buying in at or seeing privately, with no disclosure made to the public > investors that they are receiving worse terms.

Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that the professionals aren't buying in to pre-revenue startup convertible note deals that offer $10 million valuation caps and 2% interest?!?

Who woulda thunk?

</comment><comment><USER4> _The reality is that as of today, top VCs, top incubators and accelerators, and the leading law firms advising investors and startups currently regard public fundraising as a question mark. Many are actively advising against it,..._

This is interesting.</comment>


Could Netflix figure out who torrented their content? Steganography in Python - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/mkVkiokmiAs <comment><USER2> Maybe. This solution is under the assumption that the user was able to get the decrypted original 'file' that was opened and then 'fingerprinted' to identify them which can determine who did torrent the file, given it wasn't edited or malformed.

Not only this can be bypassed via the classic 'Analogue hole'[0], but even screen-recording tools outside of the browser can bypass this.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Really liked this because I've always wondered how one could watermark content to track who distributed content they weren't supposed to. Could understand a fair amount in my first watch even though I don't code (although I have learnt basic programming over a decade ago).

How could you do this keeping in mind compression?</comment>


How Intel Virtualisation Works - <AUTHOR> https://binarydebt.wordpress.com/2018/10/14/intel-virtualisation-how-vt-x-kvm-and-qemu-work-together/ <comment><USER2> I haven't read this article yet, but this is more or less the best moment to showcase you guys what a friend of mine made. I think it's really cool.

He created a memory allocator in which it is impossible to create dangling pointers. He used it by becoming the kernel through Intel VT-x (i.e. he uses ring 0). He uses libdune for this, which in turn uses Intel VT-x.

Check it out at: [https://dangless.gaborkozar.me/](https://dangless.gaborkozar.me/)

I'm going to write an ascii diagram in the upcoming edit. For now: I'll just leave you with the legend that my friend made.

Note: my friend made a video and slides. So for people who are interested, his slides and videos are much nicer to look at than this diagram.

DIAGRAM (of all the physical and virtual memory)

|1|<-A->|2|<-B->|3|<-C->|4|

LEGEND

1 = host physical memory

2 = host virtual memory

3 = guest physical memory

4 = guest virtual memory

A: normal host pagetable

B: embedded page table (this is VT-X thingy)

C: guest page table (this is what I mess with)

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised that doesn't have a larger performance cost, since it's requiring a TLB entry for each memory allocation. I wonder if the benchmarks understate the cost due to being undersized for modern systems.

<comment><USER4> > I'm surprised that doesn't have a larger performance cost,

For what workload?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's weird to read a blog post about software that you know in and out. There are a few inaccuracies here and there but it's very clear and well done. Kudos!

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you that means a lot! please do add any information you think is relevant :)

<comment><USER5> The bit about TLBs is a bit confusing, it seems like you're taking about a software TLB but EPT is just a second layer of address translation.

Also, after moving a VMCS from a physical CPU to another you have to do VMLAUNCH the first time your start the guest on the new CPU, because you had VMCLEARed it on the old CPU. That's it. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> very good, thank you. i'll try to tidy it up

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Last I checked, every virtualization driver ignored Intel's overcomplicated design choice. They don't keep things going; if they did then they would clash with each other. Instead, they fully shut down virtualization when the VM isn't running code.

Intel seems to have accepted this state of affairs. On newer chips, it is much faster to enable and disable virtualization.

<comment><USER5> No, this is not true. KVM always keeps VMX on, Xen too even when running paravirtualized guests, Hyper-V does not even have a concept of "the VM not running code". Maybe VMware Workstation and VirtualBox?

<comment><USER6> Well, I'm part of a team that maintains a VMX driver, and we've looked at what the competition did. It's been a while since we did that, so change is possible. Hyper-V might be special.

We could be talking past each other. Here, to clarify, are 3 methods:

x. The driver never does VMXOFF.

y. The driver does VMXON when asked to run a guest. The driver may handle events from the guest (such as page faults or CPUID emulation) without doing VMXOFF, but the driver will do a VMXOFF prior to letting other host processes and drivers run.

z. The driver does VMXOFF every time the VM exits.

We found that choice x was not normally used. If it were, then VMX drivers would not be able to coexist with each other. I'm not saying that everybody uses choice z. Choice y is probably also popular.

<comment><USER7> _> If it were, then VMX drivers would not be able to coexist with each other._

Most VMX drivers are unable to coexist (in the sense that VirtualBox, HAXM, Hyper-V, and VMWare Player are mutually incompatible / can't be used in the same Windows boot session).

<comment><USER8> I just checked a proprietary VMX driver.

It fully disables VMX before turning interrupts back on.

If I remember right, it works fine with VMWare running on the same machine, so they must be doing likewise. I think I recall problems with Hyper-V, so you are probably right about that one. It looks like Hyper-V is the uncooperative VMX driver that refuses to play nice with others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing I find annoying about x86 virtualisation is that it already has a mode called V86, introduced in the 386, but instead of extending that with more functionality, they introduced yet another set of instructions, and of course AMD also has its own completely incompatible way to do virtualisation. The nice thing about V86 is it integrates well with the existing task-segment model.

<comment><USER10> > AMD also has its own completely incompatible way to do virtualisation.

You have this reversed: AMD developed x64-64 virt, and Intel decided to go their own way.

<comment><USER11> But VT-x was released November 2005 and AMD-V released May 2006?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since Intel chips are really RISC underneath the hood, I wonder what crazy x86 emulation hoops they have to jump through already.

<comment><AUTHOR> good point. may be the central idea of how it's implemented isn't too bad: i see hypervisor as a sort of OS kernel for VMs and the transitions from VM to hypervisor - VM exits - akin to syscalls. of course there is more but the above analogy is the basic idea and other things get added along the way</comment></comment>


Happy birthday, Ada Lovelace — the first computer programmer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vox.io/post/37645656884/happy-birthday-ada-lovelace-the-first-computer <comment><USER2> According to Wikipedia, it's probable that Lovelace's contributions are overrated; it would appear that Lady Ada has little claim to the title of "first computer programmer". [1] But if you're looking for a female computer hero, you're in luck: Grace Hopper developed the first compiler, popularized the term "debugging", and was an admiral in the Navy to boot. [2]

        In 1952 she had an operational compiler.
        "Nobody believed that," she said. "I had a
        running compiler and nobody would touch it.
        They told me computers could only do arithmetic."

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_lovelace#Controversy_over_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_lovelace#Controversy_over_extent_of_contributions)

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_hopper>

<comment><USER3> I don't understand this comment. Why are we looking for one single all-mighty "female computer hero"? Can't we recognize the different women in computer science and appreciate their contributions individually without trying to put one above all others?

<comment><USER2> The "if" in "if you're looking..." isn't merely rhetorical. As it happens, I'm not particularly looking for a female computer hero, but many others are, as evidenced by those well-intentioned but misguided people who have promoted Ada Lovelace well beyond her station. I'm merely pointing out that this is unnecessary, because there is a first-rate example in Grace Hopper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related discussion. Happened a while back here on HN:

Marie Curie day: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4658763>

P.S: Posted previously on another Lovelace thread, but thread discussion had stopped by then.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ada Lovelace was a legitimate child of Lord Byron and his wife Anne Isabella Byron. In fact, she was the only one. Just wanted to make that correction.

</comment><comment><USER6> ...I knew it, Dubstep and programming were meant to go together (referring to the last paragraph ;)</comment>


Google Loon to Cover Entire Country of Sri Lanka with Internet - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/29/not-so-loony-now-is-it/

<comment><USER2> What advantage does this provide over LTE ground stations?</comment>


Arrington uses Feedlounge's demise to disagree with 37 Signals about charging for software  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/37signals-drives-another-company-to-the-deadpool/ <comment><USER2> Well reading the article and the comments it looks as if Feedlounge is a subscription based online RSS reader. Hmmm with the number of free alternatives if looks as if they were going to have a hard time in the first place. I don't think it's fair to put the blame solely on 37 Signals for their demise.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty weak.

These guys were offering a paid for RSS reader. There are like 400 free ones out there already.

37Signals suggests people charge for software yes, but the don't say that you can simply sell anything your heart desires! If people aren't willing to pay for it, perhaps there isn't a market for it, and perhaps it's not a good idea for a business. (At least as a pay-per-use model)

</comment><comment><USER4> This post completely decontexualized the situation.

RSS Feed Readers barely qualify as a free-standing product--of course you can't charge for them and expect to be wildly successful.

There's a big, not so subtle difference b/w "charging for any and all software" and "charing for software that users want AND creates value."

Mike is being sensational--and it's working.

</comment><comment><USER5> When a company has millions of users among their other services, and they decide to cut one to focus on the others, I don't think that's failure at all.

</comment><comment><USER6> This ought to be good for a few rounds. I must admit a certain guilty pleasure in seeing someone take them on.</comment>


Space station pilots 'interplanetary internet' - <AUTHOR> http://www.itnews.com.au/News/149945,space-station-pilots-interplanetary-internet.aspx <comment><USER2> And thus begins the network of the Qeng Ho.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a shame I don't have this system to cope with the disruption of 45 second adverts.</comment>


Ask HN: Inspirational TED Talks? - <AUTHOR>

Any TED Talks that inspire you as Hacker/Designer/Developer ? <comment><AUTHOR> For starters I have curated a list of TED Talks [http://li3.in/powerful-ted- talks](http://li3.in/powerful-ted-talks)</comment>


Cloning Server Admin from Mac OS X Server - <AUTHOR> https://www.classicmacfinder.com/server-admin/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a start on cloning the late great Server Admin app from Mac OS X Server into a web application. It's incomplete functionality-wise, but you are able to click through all of the setting panels for each service.

Link to blog post with rationale behind why I cloned Server Admin: [https://www.bszyman.com/blog/administering-servers-used- to-b...](https://www.bszyman.com/blog/administering-servers-used-to-be-fun)</comment>


History of the board game Monopoly - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_board_game_Monopoly <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting quote:

 _In 1903, the Georgist Lizzie Magie applied for a patent on a game called The Landlord 's Game with the object of showing that rents enriched property owners and impoverished tenants. She knew that some people would find it hard to understand the logic behind the idea, and she thought that if the rent problem and the Georgist solution to it were put into the concrete form of a game, it might be easier to demonstrate._

What would a modernized version of the game look like? Would it include platform owners such as Google and Apple?

And how hard would it be to win if you enter the game late?</comment>


Funko Pop became a $686M business - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/8/13/20798910/funko-pop-vinyl-figurines-collectibles <comment><USER2> When I see the success of companies like Funko Pop I can't help but remember Simon (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Star Wars, etc) Pegg's excellent essay[1] on the infantilization of adults by modern culture, turning us all in to passive consumers who want a magical superhero to turn up and save the day instead of doing something ourselves.

" _We are made passionate about the things that occupied us as children as a means of drawing our attentions away from the things we really should be invested in, inequality, corruption, economic injustice etc. It makes sense that when faced with the awfulness of the world, the harsh realities that surround us, our instinct is to seek comfort, and where else were the majority of us most comfortable than our youth?_ "

The fact that actual grown ups want to spend money on plastic caricatures of their favourite movie characters is fine in itself, but only if we also take responsibility of the state of the society we live in.

[1] [http://simonpegg.net/2015/05/19/big-mouth-strikes- again/](http://simonpegg.net/2015/05/19/big-mouth-strikes-again/)

<comment><USER3> I think there's something to be said about our modern, ultra-connected existences, the omnipresence of entertainment and its influence on society.

Super hero movies and Funko Pops though? That doesn't seem particularly new to me. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of "Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing the people of Uruk". Most of Greek mythology is about Gods behaving very much like modern super heroes. Actually many modern super heroes are molded more or less loosely on those. "Panem et circenses" is not a novel concept.

Let's not pretend that the average human being a century ago spent their days reading avant-guarde literature and complex political essays.

<comment><USER4> "Let's not pretend that the average human being a century ago spent their days reading avant-guarde literature and complex political essays."

Most of the reason it appears that way is that 100 years ago, only the most educated had access to the writing and publishing that is now our primary record of the time.

I am sympathetic to the idea that our intellectual culture has degraded, and even sometimes argued in favor of that proposition on HN, but I also acknowledge it's really hard to measure in light of the overwhelming democratization of access to such things and the resulting anti-selection effect, or removal of the previous selection effect, or however you like to phrase it. Maybe that's a bad thing, maybe it's a good thing, it's a non- trivial argument either way, but it certainly makes it hard to graph any of the relevant qualities of our society over time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >CEO Brian Mariotti called his company "recession proof."

Famous last words. When another major recession hits, one of the first costs to be cut is plastic junk. These are just beanie babies with more Disney branded characters. People will get sick of cluttering their house with dozens of the same item with mild variations at some point, until the next "gotta catch em all" toy comes out.

<comment><USER6> they have the last 100 or more "gotta catch em all" toys. essentially they are monopolising the whole genre

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I get why people like figurines, but I don't understand how much love funkopop specifically gets. Their model quality is just so poor. No detail. No character expression. No differentiation between characters. They feel like just the absolute lowest effort throwaways. There are so many great toy modelers out there, and yet somehow the cheapest least effort one is the one that people know about because it's the one that, for some terrible reason, gets brand licensing deals.

edit: Just to add more...I mean...someone else linked this figure [https://media.entertainmentearth.com/assets/images/e9792a6af...](https://media.entertainmentearth.com/assets/images/e9792a6afbaf4d7a857e3cb84a2f86c6lg.jpg) Every single funkopop figure looks exactly like that with only slightly more than a palette and hair swap. Compare that to the same series models from Banpresto: [http://www.banpresto.jp/prize/0008.html](http://www.banpresto.jp/prize/0008.html)

<comment><USER8> My Ron Swanson Funko is judging you for your lack of Funko Pop appreciation. [https://i.imgur.com/aTIeVKi.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/aTIeVKi.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Or maybe it's actually Tom Selleck or a young Sam Elliott or my dad. There's no way to know. Your visual indicators are white person with brown hair and a moustache who drinks liquids sometimes. It's not like there's only one of those. But, just so you know, it's a little weird that you bought a doll version of my dad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Based on how the prices have been falling recently this seems like a puff piece to try and prevent a full bubble pop. I wouldn't be sad to see them go. There are a lot of sketchy scams around "mystery box" sales that are essentially unlicensed unregulated lotteries. I suspect that some YouTube personalities are complicit in the scams. The language used on many pop sites is masterfully devious [https://popcollectorsalliance.com/resources/whats-a- grail-wh...](https://popcollectorsalliance.com/resources/whats-a-grail-where- do-i-find-one-learning-about-funko-grails/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Very impressive, but it's a shame to me that the vinyl figure company to lock down every IP imaginable has such horrible, dead eyes.

</comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a market that is inflated by collectors that are hoping it will be worth more in the future. Could end up being another trading cards fiasco.

<comment><USER12> Or Beanie Babies. Or Bitcoin. Human nature is a funny thing.

<comment><USER13> Or garbage pail kids, or cabbage patch dolls. This phenomenon has been going on forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "OUR BRAND IDENTITY IS TO BE ABLE TO SAY THAT WE HAVE SOMETHING FOR LITERALLY EVERYBODY"

Hmm, it's the thing everybody would advise against with a passion.

\- Who's your target customer?

\- Everybody.

\- Well good luck with that (snarky smily)

Good to see counter examples.

<comment><USER15> Disney springs to mind immediately. I suppose General Electric counts too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe for now, but everyone I know in my age group that was super into these (23-28) is currently trying to sell them because they have too many and the novelty wore off.

Feels basically like a Beanie Baby craze, except this time, the people who are into actual quality or give off the hobbyist vibe go to other products like Nendoroid.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> How strange. I posted this 2 days ago and it didn't make it to the front page, but not for some reason it says I only posted it 6 hours ago?

<comment><USER17> Likely due to a mod re-upping the post as described here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone know how plastic figurines like that are cast? I've been recently looking at some similar toys and they have many concave features and small details that seem impossible to make with simple injection moulding (as in, you wouldn't be able to remove them from the mould)

<comment><USER19> The remarkably simple answer is that they are pulled out of the mould while still hot and flexible. Here's an article about the process with a youtube video showing the casting process (in a very small-scale facility): [http://rampage-toys.blogspot.com/2011/09/making-sofubi- how-i...](http://rampage-toys.blogspot.com/2011/09/making-sofubi-how-it-all- works.html)

<comment><USER18> Interesting. Thank you for sharing this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here is an interesting video essay of the business of Funko Pop [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ513v8Pquw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ513v8Pquw) and looking the numbers, their future is very uncertain to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER21> Whoever came up with the idea of re-marketing children's toys to adults was a genius. It combines the passive consumerism of kids with the expendable income of adults in a way that simply wouldn't have been tolerated more than a few decades ago.

</comment><comment><USER6> the documentary on netflix is pretty interesting</comment>


Dotards in the Sky with Diamons - <AUTHOR> https://hackcabin.com/post/dotards-sky-dimons/ <comment><AUTHOR> Dotard Jamie Dimon is going to be in for a big surprise soon. And I'm not talking about the Assassination Market. I don't like to gamble with the future.</comment>


The US Government Interest Expense Was 93% of Military Spending in 2018 - <AUTHOR> https://thesoundingline.com/in-brief-the-us-government-interest-expense-was-93-of-military-spending-in-2018/ <comment><USER2> Moderate tax cuts to spur growth with a modicum of spending restraint will produce a surplus, as we witnessed with Bill Clinton coupled with a Republican congress (when Republicans still had some interest in spending restraint).

The problem, however, is many fold. Bill Clinton largely benefited from a "peace dividend" in that the US was ramping down military spending post-Cold War. We have since reversed course dramatically to support the "War on Terror."

Second, the debt is now so huge, that even if we managed to regularly run a modest surplus it would take many (perhaps hundreds) of years to to reduce the national debt back to manageable levels.

Massive tax hikes would slow the economy, and the chance that any of the tax revenue would actually go to debt reduction is highly dubious based on historic patterns.

So yeah, we need some new solutions, or just wait for the global finance system to collapse for good and pick up the pieces and start fresh (with likely horrific short term consequences for infrastructure, healthcare, etc.)

<comment><USER3> The dollar value of debt is meaningless without accounting for interest rates. When interest rates rise, the dollar value of debt can be reduced by trading low interest debt for high interest debt.

<comment><USER4> This sounds like economic witchcraft, can you explain a little further?

<comment><USER5> A bond paying 2% that matures in 10 years is worth less than a bond paying 4% that matures in 10 years. So you can buy back low interest long term bonds for cheaper.

<comment><USER6> So... What happens when you run out of people willing to hand you money until you actually pay them back?

What you describe assumes someone is always willing to take the gamble on will you make good.

That's one hell of an assumption.

<comment><USER3> Well, so far people continue to borrow from all major governments no matter how indebted. Also, your bond is legal tender guaranteed by the US Treasury (or some other sovereign treasury), so you can always sell it to someone else. No one is stuck waiting for their bond to mature.

Finally, and most critically, the Treasury pays back the bond in dollars when it matures. The treasury can also create dollars. Thus, the Treasury will never be unable to pay back a bond.

<comment><USER4> Ok, but when they print unlimited amounts of money I'm not exactly getting the return on value that I expected because of inflation.

<comment><USER3> Inflation is pretty low right now. Just printing money does not produce inflation - if it did we would have seen massive inflation during Quantitative Easing, when the Fed put trillions into the economy. In fact there was almost none. This is because inflation is governed by the equation of exchange, MV = PQ. M is the supply of money, V is its velocity (how fast it is being spent), P is prices and Q is aggregate demand. If M goes up, P only goes up if Q and V are constant. In an economy like ours where the productive capacity is much greater than demand, M can rise without much effect on P.

In general the government can continue printing money at the rate that productivity growth supports. Since this is related to the amount of borrowing, debt probably isn't going to cause inflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't find any reason to believe this is inherently problematic. The federal funds rate is ~2.5%, and inflation is ~2.0%, so the real interest rate is approximately 0.5%.

America's current debt-to-GDP ratio is not unprecedentedly high by any means. What is slightly concerning is that our debt-to-GDP ratio is increasing even though the economy is relatively strong.

<comment><USER8> This is only the case because investors are willing to buy treasury bonds and loan the money out at those levels. If things get worse(though no one knows where the line is) and they will, at some point those investors will wisen up and demand higher interest.

These rates are abnormal rather, go back 30-40 years and if the rates got anywhere above 5% (which are still incredibly low) it would crush the servicing of debt and cause runs on the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S)

In other words it is at a historic low. Also debt service comes in the form of maturing bonds. It is literally created from nothing and requires no tax revenue.</comment>


Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP' - the-dude http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/new-ttip-scandal-car-industry-buried-report-revealing-us-car-safety-flaws-10514716.html <comment><AUTHOR> At the risk of sounding cynical and jaded, is anyone remotely surprised by this? The EU has been pushing car encouraging manufacturers to work harder at car safety for longer, and more effectively than the US has.

Seat belts? Volvo. Air bags? First made standard in Mercs and Porsches, at a time when Ford and GM were lobbying against being made to include them. They became optional and then standard between the mid to late 90's, while legislation in the US made them a requirement in 98.

Shaped airbags? Citroen. Side impact airbags? Volvo. Curtain airbags? BMW.

The big difference though is the Euro NCAP ratings. It's near impossible to get a good score on them with just airbags, so the car manufacturers are forced to do more to score well, and it's become a solid marketing tool.

On the other hand, FMVSS 208 (the American testing standard) are designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, so fire far too hard, causing a lot of issues. Whilst they'll stop you dying, they'll cause huge trauma and other issues in doing so.

EU car safety technology regulation and manufacturer incentivisation is just a long way ahead, and has been for nearly two decades. So it's not surprising when something like this comes out.

[edit to include important side note]

Never wear anything flammable with sleeves while driving. Airbags are small explosions and can set flammable clothing on fire, causing severe burns &| death. If you need to be warmer, turn on the heater.

Also, never put your thumbs near the centre of the steering wheel. You don't want to be trying to get out of a car after an accident with broken thumbs, which is what you get when the airbag deploys.

<comment><USER2> > designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a > seatbelt,

What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!

<comment><USER3> I'd rather have racing-style belts and no air bag. Racing style go over both shoulders, are wider, and are fixed length.

There are some horrific crashes in auto racing and the drivers walk away. That convinces me.

<comment><USER4> The same racing drivers who have to wear top-line racing helmets connected to HANS devices, wear fire-resistant overalls, have medical teams on immediate standby, and who are often strapped in by their mechanics before heading off?

I think you may be overlooking an awful lot of what makes modern motor racing safer than it was in the past.

(and that's ignoring the number of serious injuries and driver deaths that still occur thanks to freak accidents)

<comment><USER3> I'm looking at the kind of accidents where an airbag is supposed to be effective. An airbag will do nothing for you if the car is burning.

The first and foremost safety device in a race car is the racing belt. The belt means you slow down with the car, which is much less deceleration than if your body hits the dashboard. (The point of crumple zones in the car is to reduced peak deceleration. In order for that to work, you gotta be strapped in.)

<comment><USER5> An airbag allows the driver's head to experience even lower deceleration than the car, because it gives the head an extra 1-2 feet in which to decelerate-- the distance between the upright position and smashed into the deployed airbag.

When wearing a 5-point harness without a helmet and head restraint, the deceleration delta between the car and the head will be entirely borne by the structure of the neck, which is how Dale Earnhardt died.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't be surprised if we see lots of things like this come out over the next months.

VW has got seriously burned, but I highly doubt that they are the only ones fiddling the playing field.

More than likely, different manufacturer's (especially the big ones with lots of money) can afford to take their competitor's cars to pieces and look for areas where their competitors are cheating. They take them apart to gather engineering knowledge from competitors already.

Then they leak that information. Why?

Because if you are the only one to step in your own dog shit, then you stink and look stupid. If you make everyone step in their own dog shit, then everyone collectively stinks. If you can't avoid the smell, you learn to accept it. Somewhat like living in London in the 1600's.

</comment><comment><USER7> So the report was published normally, and this "burying" consists of lobyists not talking about it much? And therefore the press not writing about it much?

Press and politics seem to be depending on lobyists to determine the agenda, and even do their work sometimes, which I think is a problem that has gotten out of hand, and not only in the car industry.

<comment><USER8> It is also a lack of civic society. There are not enough mainstream organisations fighting these issues.

<comment><USER9> At this address you will find _six pages_ of links to such organizations: [https://www.aaafoundation.org/useful- links](https://www.aaafoundation.org/useful-links)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The worrying part here isn't that the cars are not safe, or that TTIP will allow certified cars from the US be sold in EU, but that the industry tries to hide it.

And that there is apparently a gap between certification in the US and certification in the EU.

<comment> the-dude I think the timing is very interesting with regard to dieselgate.

<comment><USER11> Yes it's really fun all around, with EU manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent US emission regulations and US manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent EU safety regulations.

<comment><USER12> I'd take more stringent safety standards over ridiculous emissions standards any day. Though, you could argue stricter safety standards fly in the face of emissions standards. More weight in the car, plus if the occupant survives, their carbon footprint is still there.

<comment><USER13> The cheating EU cars are emitting 40x the pollution which is why air quality in Europe sucks.

<comment><USER14> At least in some places it certainly does:

[http://www.france24.com/en/20150320-paris-city-smog- pollutio...](http://www.france24.com/en/20150320-paris-city-smog-pollution- plume-labs-hidalgo-public-transport-diesel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The Independent have been running this story all week, few others have made it a story like they have in their papers (they do a tabloid version of the Independent too, not that anyone reads papers these days).

American safety standards have worked well for the U.S. over the years, many European (and other) marques simply don't bother to put their cars through the tests or to spoil their designs with 'Duplo lego style' headlamps/bumpers and other odd U.S. requirements for what Americans consider 'safety'. It has been like this too with emissions over the years, why bother exporting to the U.S. when it is so much hassle to get a car good for the E.U. market dumbed down for the U.S. market?

There is also the Chicken Tax (25% on light trucks), so there is a lot of protectionism under various guises of safety/pollution that has gone on over the years. No idea why things are going to be 'harmonised' now, however the status quo has left American motors retarded as far as engineering is concerned. This makes all American cars uncompetitive as far as the rest of the developed world is concerned. Tesla is probably the only exception. Other than the desirable Tesla, American cars have at best novelty value in Europe, only bought by people who have some other motive - stretched limos, that sort of thing.

Safety itself is a complete joke regardless of what regulations you have. On a recent visit to Silverstone I could not help but notice how every car had a roll cage, harness seating and a driver accessible fire extinguisher amongst other modifications. And Silverstone does not have trees to hit at the side of the road, there is zero on-coming traffic and it is not exactly as if there are side-roads, or even unexpected twists in the track. Admittedly speeds are a tad higher than what you can expect on the school run, however, go at 40mph or higher in any consumer automobile and you are going to be heading for the hospital if you hit something hard like another car doing the same speed the other way. In fact I don't think the NCAP tests are ever above 40 mph for this very reason.

</comment><comment><USER16> The actual report (pdf) which is much better than this wordy article that only lists one data-point:

[http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297...](http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/112977/103199.pdf)

This study examined the hypotheses that vehicles meeting EU safety standards perform similarly to US regulated vehicles in the US driving environment, and vice versa. The analyses used three statistical approaches to "triangulate" evidence regarding differences in crash and injury risk. Separate analyses assessed crash avoidance technologies, including headlamps and mirrors. The results suggest that when controlling for differences in environment and exposure, vehicles meeting EU standards offer reduced risk of serious injury in frontal/side crashes and have driver-side mirrors that reduce risk in lane- change crashes better, while vehicles meeting US standards provide a lower risk of injury in rollovers and have headlamps that make pedestrians more conspicuous.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is outrageous but not surprising at all. In my opinion, more than a car safety issue, this is a money-making issue. EU pushes car manufacturers to build safer cars but this has a high cost. European customers respond well to marketing campaigns promoting safety. Therefore, those extra safety costs have a good return on investment. In the US, car safety is not considered as important as in EU because companies don't think there will be a good ROI. Because car manufacturers don't believe is viable enough, they tried to hide this report.

</comment><comment><USER18> The most interesting part of this for me is that there is a difference at all. The difference is not explained in the article.

I've never lived in the US; what is the difference between EU and US cars in this respect?

Edit for clarity: What I meant, is /why/ is there such a difference in safety? What physical differences between the cars cause that?

<comment><USER19> Please read the article again:

"passengers in a typical EU model are 33 per cent safer in front-side collisions, an accident that often results in serious injury, than those in a typical US model."

Less deaths and injuries if cars meet EU standards

<comment><USER18> I read that, I saw the difference. Sorry I wasn't clear in my original post.

I meant: what causes the difference? Why is there such a big difference?

<comment><USER19> Sorry. That's a way harder question :-)

I guess it's all a trade off of material/weight vs performance. If you make a more rigid passenger compartment then it might weigh more and your car might be slower. Or maybe you have to spend more on a stronger type of steel that is more expensive. Or you have to make something more complicated to be safer.

So on average maybe the US cars come down on the lighter/cheaper/faster side of the curve. Obviously the trade offs are incredibly complicated.

<comment><USER20> The US fleet tends to be heavier on average, surely? More SUVs/light trucks, larger vehicles in general.

<comment><USER9> Crash survival depends on the dissipation of kinetic energy into the structures of the vehicle rather than the structures of the human body. Even in well-designed vehicles, more kinetic energy means more danger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I don't understand the issue here, cars sold in Europe already include many US cars obviously, and cars that sell in Europe are usually safety tested, for example by Euro NCAP. Here is a US car available in Europe, that has an excellent five star safety score in NCAP [http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871](http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871)

Now if "research actually established that American models are much less safe when it comes to front-side collisions" then those differences presumably apply to US models that aren't currently sold in Europe, and thus have never been tested here. If a model eventually will be sold in Europe (in any numbers) it will presumably be tested in Europe too, and those safety differences would show up in the tests?

It doesn't worry me that some new car is approved for sale while not being safe, I wouldn't buy it until I see five Euro NCAP stars, and that I think goes for most European consumers. Relaxing the approval wouldn't change the testing! If US manufacturers want to sell cars in Europe they will have to not meet regulations but satisfy NCAP.

(That said: cars like the new mustang might never be tested in NCAP, nor will it have to to compete with European performance cars which often aren't tested either, or score poorly. Performance car buyers don't seem very safety concerned so crashing expensive cars that sell in small numbers doesn't seem worthwhile).

<comment><USER15> What you have to remember is that those European Chrysler efforts like the Jeep are not made in America. They are made by Magna Steyr in Austria alongside plenty of other SUV's - the BMW ones and the Mercedes ones have been made in the same OEM/contract facility over the years.

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

<comment><USER2> Yes. But it's probably not because they are _manufactured_ here that it gets 5 stars in NCAP. Surely it's because they know that if they want to actually _sell_ any Jeeps, they better have 5 stars?

The same would be true for an american 2016 SUV that isn't available in Europe today, if they want to launch it in Europe.

I believe the US manufacturer would either change it to achieve 5 stars, or make an EU model that gets 5 stars, or just not sell it in the EU. And that is regardless of whether the _regulations_ are relaxed so that it could be sold as-is in Europe!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Another reason why Tesla is so far ahead of the game. Elon Musk had the engineers design the vehicle to be as safe as possible, period.

They didn't design the safety of the car with the crash tests in mind. They passed all the crash tests with flying colors as a side-effect of actually designing for safety.

<comment><USER3> A lot of people think that airliner safety comes from the FAA hammering on Boeing. That's not true at all. It's the attitude of Boeing and Boeing engineers that make it safe. (I used to be a Boeing engineer on flight critical systems.) The worst nightmare of a Boeing engineer is an accident resulting from his design mistake.

The worst for me was when the Alaska 717 went down because the stabilizer jackscrew failed. I worked on the 757 jackscrew. It was a while before I found out it wasn't the 757 design.

Safety came from the engineers who knew what they were doing and would refuse to put their name on anything that they weren't sure about.

I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer.

I know of cases where Boeing designs were much safer than that required by the FAA, and the FAA later adopted the Boeing designs as a requirement.

I've actually felt a lot safer flying after my time at Boeing and knowing the nuts and bolts of how they were made and the dedication and competence of the engineers in charge.

<comment><USER22> > I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to > lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines > on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically > safer.

Interesting. Why do you think it is that twin engines are statistically safer? I thought redundancy was a normal part of the safety toolkit for planes.

<comment><USER12> I think it's even true for single vs. twin engine planes. A lot of it has to do with - are the systems redundant, or are they both needed to properly fly the plane. Also whether the probability adds up in a serial or parallel fashion. I know a friend that pilots a single engine Cessna. Obviously one engine, but it also has no electronic ignition and four magnetos. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_magneto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_magneto) The engine operates without the use of a battery because of this. I think the Cessna has a battery for auxiliary systems, but by removing the battery, spark module, and electronic timing/distributor from the critical path of engine operation, the chances of failure are lower. The four magnetos are for the four cylinders in the engine, but any one magneto can run the entire engine. In this case, the four items are redundant.

I think the first twin engine commercial airliner to be certified for over- water flights was the 777. It can take off, fly 6000 miles, and land safely with one engine and a full load.

<comment><USER23> I'm interested in how these redundancies have accumulated over the life of building aircraft. They're obviously for good reason. However the recent news pieces comparing electric aircraft, I wonder if there's a lot of efficiencies on the table for conventional aircraft if they could just drop in a modern engine like you might find in a race car.

<comment><USER12> That's a good point. Gasoline engines have come a long way since the days of magneto operation, with variable timing, ignition, and direct injection (of which some piston driven aircraft may already use). Turboprops and turbofans (jets) are already very efficient compared to automotive piston engine aircraft. A 747 for instance gets around 91 mpg/person while buses average around 200 mpg/person - but, the drag forces on an aircraft are I think at least an order of magnitude greater.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Where can I read the actual report?

<comment><USER16> Here you go (pdf): [http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/11297...](http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/112977/103199.pdf)</comment></comment>


Roda – A new Ruby web framework - <AUTHOR> http://roda.jeremyevans.net/index.html <comment><USER2> The problem with this approach is readability. If you look at the code vs Sinatra every time you want to figure out which route to edit, you have to traverse the tree as opposed to just scanning for the route you want. As an example, editing the route /artist/:id/album/:number requires you to first find the /artist/:id then scan down and look for /album/:number making sure you watch for the closing end because what if the route isn't defined? In Sinatra, you look for /artist/:id/album/:number. The solution to this is to put a comment on every route to denote where it is. I agree the tree methodology can be faster O(log N) (for GET and POST) vs O(N) but readability suffers with no comments.

<comment><USER3> Why couldn't Sinatra create some sort of underlying tree structure that could perform in O(log N) as opposed to O(N). That way you get the readability with the perf.

<comment><USER4> It couldn't create a tree in all instances because it allows full regexes in the routes. It could create a hybrid (split into trees for anything with a known static prefix), or go the full hog to a finite automata, though. But at least the latter is suddenly a big complexity increase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad Roda is finally getting some publicity. I submitted it here when it was released.

I've converted about 15 apps from Sinatra to Roda, and a couple of Rails apps to Roda (working on converting my final Rails app). Personally, I've found that the biggest advantages come when the URL structure mirrors your application structure, and you have redundant code in many routes, as that type of code becomes simpler, faster, and DRYer with Roda.

Yes, you can use a before block with wildcard routes with Sinatra, but Sinatra will still traverse the routing list sequentially and recheck the full route for every entry in the list. Unfortunately, while I love Sinatra, have contributed patches to it, and have used it since 0.1.0, the approach doesn't scale well for sites with a lot of routes.

The code non-locality issue shouldn't be ignored, and is probably the largest issue with Roda, but the issue is probably going to happen with any approach that DRYs up the code to the same degree. It's true if you use a before block in Sinatra, or a before_filter in Rails.

The use of a routing tree really isn't an innovative approach (at least not innovated by me). It's been around in Ruby since Rum was released in 2008 (and maybe earlier elsewhere). However, it's not well known, and I hope that Roda brings it into the mainstream.

One of the best things about Roda that I don't think has been mentioned in the comments yet is the plugin system, which I borrowed from Sequel. This makes it easy to extend Roda beyond its very small core. For example, the multi_route plugin makes it easy to scale Roda to larger sites by splitting up routing subtrees into specific files. There are currently about 15 plugins, and I have ideas for quite a few more that I will implement after finishing up my current Rails->Roda conversion.

I apologize that the code on the website isn't syntax highlighted. If anyone can offer their design skills, I would greatly appreciate it.

If you have any questions about Roda, please ask.

<comment><USER6> First: This is pretty sweet, Jeremy. Glad to see this.

Second: How well does it scale for developing large sites (for whatever value of "large" seems useful for discussion).

One of the things I really like about Ramaze is that I can start with basically a Rack app, spin it off to a simple Ramaze app, and keep expanding and refactoring it as requirements call for.

Is there some app size or level of app complexity beyond which Roda would not be a sensible choice? You say it has a plugin system; is it really battle- ready? (I'm going to guess Yes because of who wrote it, but I'd like to hear any additional thoughts on it.)

I get the impression that Roda lends itself to building large sites that are a collection of sub-sites or services; you're never really building a single big monolithic app.

Side note: For fast syntax highlighting you could use embedded gists.

[https://github.com/blairvanderhoof/gist- embed](https://github.com/blairvanderhoof/gist-embed)

<comment><USER5> I don't work on truly huge sites, my largest is only about 10kloc. But it scales very well for the all of the sites I've tried, and I think based on the architecture it would scale to much larger sites.

Your workflow with Rack->Ramaze should work similarly when using Roda. Roda scales down well:

      # config.ru
      require 'roda'
      Roda.route{'Hello world'}
      run Roda

There is probably some level of complexity where Roda may not be a good choice. I'm not sure what that level is, but I don't expect to hit it on sites I work on. In any case it's probably best to split up such an app into multiple apps/services before that level is reached.

In terms of battle readiness, it's new and currently I think I'm the only person using it in production. I hesitate to call something battle ready until there are more people using it, but I'm very committed to it and you can expect the same level of support for Roda that Sequel receives.

Thanks for the tip on embedded gists, I'll look into that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't really buy the "big win" over Sinatra ("much DRYer", no need to set ivars for each action) because you can just use a `before` block with wildcard routes.

        before '/artist/:id*' do
          @artist = Artist[params[:id]]
        end

        before '/artist/:id/album/:number*' do
          @album = @artist.album_with_number(params[:number])
        end

</comment><comment><USER8> Welcome Roda and congrats for this new innovative routing idea. As much as I see some value in a tree-like routing definition in this nice comparison with Sinatra, [http://roda.jeremyevans.net/why.html](http://roda.jeremyevans.net/why.html), Sinatra's routing approach still appears to be more readable and manageable. Maybe Sinatra could optimize the storage of the routing entries internally in a tree to make it as fast as Roda (if it doesn't already do).

<comment><USER9> > new

It's not all that new. Subdispatch with anonymous functions has been done before:

[https://metacpan.org/pod/Web::Simple#DISPATCH- STRATEGY](https://metacpan.org/pod/Web::Simple#DISPATCH-STRATEGY)

As for readability, Roda kinda shoots itself in the code by not having any highlighting on that snippet, but generally yes, you want to keep dispatch trees to small apps. On the other hand, using P/WSGI apps you can stack apps inside one another, scaling trees without getting a moloch. Not clear on whether Roda supports that.

<comment><USER5> Roda supports stacking apps via r.run to dispatch to any other rack app. You can also use the multi-route plugin, which allows you to split up the routing into subtrees, but keeps the current state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love it. I think the concerns about the code being unmaintainable from the example are a bit unfair. There is nothing preventing a developer from moving the blocks out into separate files/classes for a more coder-friendly organization. How deep do you guys nest your javascript callbacks?

This also lead me to check out sequel, which I can't believe that I'm just now finding out about.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm very fond of his sequel gem. The source is really great just to browse through and learn from.

<comment><USER12> I agree. Everything Jeremy makes is absolutely brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using a web "framework" I wrote for a few years now. It now powers various projects, from the Chartboost Store backend, to the entire the entire backend codebase for my new startup, FreshPay.

[https://github.com/kballenegger/kenji](https://github.com/kballenegger/kenji)

One of the big things that makes Kenji awesome is that, like Roda, it uses a routing tree.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think this looks great. However, even in his simple example comparing Roda and Sinatra the code ends with 7 'end's. I can imagine how deeply nested a non-simple app can be. In my experience, the deeper you get in your nesting - the more complicated the code is to read.

</comment><comment><USER15> Oh boy another web framework to benchmark... :-)

[http://www.madebymarket.com/blog/dev/ruby-web-benchmark- repo...](http://www.madebymarket.com/blog/dev/ruby-web-benchmark-report.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> It might be just me, but that is insanely hard to read. I MUCH prefer the Sinatra approach for that reason alone. Looking at the examples side-by-side I couldn't tell what was going on in Roda...at all.

</comment><comment> james-skemp My apologies if this is off-topic, but since I see mention of various frameworks ... it seems relevant.

I'm a .NET dev finally looking at Ruby again. I have a Rails book from a long while ago that I'm working through (well, planning on - Rails 4 in Action, still in MEAP) but looking at this data I'm wondering if that's the best idea.

Any recommendations on a framework for someone getting started?

If it helps, I've been using ASP.NET MVC since 1.0 if not slightly earlier.

<comment><USER17> It depends on your goals, but if they include simplicity I would strongly advise _against_ rails. Coming from .NET, you may be looking for the breath of fresh air feeling ruby can provide, that I can now do things in 1 line that took 5 before and understand every part of my system -- if that is the case, Sinatra or another microframework might be the thing for you. It's also nice to be able to learn and start using something in a matter of hours rather than "working through a book"

<comment> james-skemp Belatedly, thank you for the suggestion.

It sounds like you may have come into Ruby from a similar background; any suggestions on a good way to start learning the language? There seems to be an interesting post on creating a very basic blog engine via Sinatra, but everything else I've found is ... lacking.

As far as my own goals, I actually like .NET (C#) as a language, and generally don't feel as though ASP.NET MVC is too complex. It has definitely gotten a bit more bloated in particular areas, but ... Shrug.

Thanks again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wish that routes weren't stuck within strings like `/artist/:id`, but instead used some kind of pattern matching like `['artist' :id]`. It's better to use Ruby syntax instead of a quoted string of characters that can't be manipulated or verified as easily.

<comment><USER5> You can do r.on('artist', :id) instead of r.on('artist/:id') if that is your style preference, both work in Roda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone know where the name came from? It happens to be my last name and it's really amusing me reading the docs and these comments.

<comment><USER5> The name Roda comes from the Ys video game series, in which the Roda trees play a small role. I'm a huge Ys fan.

<comment><USER19> Cool, I may have to check them out. At the least this gives me a reason to stop putting off learning ruby :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Definitely feels like an improvement on Cuba! I'm not a huge fan of the `is` method here, though. I feel like you could get the same thing from a terser DSL if you treated HTTP methods as terminators and only allowed `on` to filter the path.

</comment><comment><USER21> Jeremy Evans ain't nothing to fsck with.</comment>


Scaling Software Development - <AUTHOR> https://alexgaynor.net/2020/feb/18/scaling-software-development/ <comment><USER2> There is quite a bit of the good having to suffer for the bad going on here. Which, frankly, is just immoral. It actually is not very important that coding styles vary somewhat between one part of an application versus another but it does preclude good developers from formatting things nicer than what the automatic formatter would do. And the automatic formatters are actually not that great.

Also, regarding enforcing coverage numbers, in a very large application deteriorating coverage numbers tend to go from x to x - epsilon in every commit which the boundary is not going to catch. So, if one believes the premise of this article it is one of these properties which is automatically going to decrease. These coverage tools are in a way quite similar to automated formatters. They tend to be stupid unless they are configured very well, and what are the chances of that? They tend to provide useful information like that in the test files the coverage is 100% but in the one file that contains a test that is to be run manually it is 0%, which is obviously bad. Since you have such a bad file, you will get a bad rating no matter what else you do.

Rumor has it that if you hire enough monkeys they will type the collected works of Shakespeare at some point. Articles like this makes me think that in fact 'software engineering' is in fact not 'programming intergrated over time' but instead an attempt to validate the hypothesis involving the monkeys in practice. However, for practical purposes, the hypothesis involving the monkeys is actually false and nothing good can come from having lots of developers running around who cannot be trusted with responsibility. Not everybody has to be great but there have to be enough adults around.</comment>


U.S. Air Quality Was Improving. Now It's Getting Worse - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-22/u-s-air-quality-was-improving-now-it-s-getting-worse <comment><USER2> > Muller and co-author Karen Clay looked at the substances hanging over U.S. > cities and found evidence for three potential sources of the pollution > rebound: increased economic activity, virulent wildfires and a smaller > number of EPA enforcement actions. It is important to note that the pair > have not made any causal links between the three suspects and the increase > of air pollution.

>The U.S. economy has picked up steam overall since 2017. More economic activity means more vehicles on the roads, driving more miles and emitting more pollutants. It also means more factories producing emissions along with consumer goods.

>Soot is another contributor to the pollution jump. The economists traced a rise in airborne carbon particles in part to wildfire activity in the West since 2016. (Wildfire activity didn't play a role in the pollution decline through 2016, they said.)

>Finally, they also looked at pollution and enforcement trends. If polluters for some reason fail to follow Clean Air Act rules, PM2.5 can pick up. Clay and Muller found that EPA enforcement activity has trended down since at least 2009.</comment>


Show HN: Zeno, cursor binary search with Vim-like bindings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kevin-li-195/zeno <comment><AUTHOR> I made this because my crappy little laptop's trackpad is awful to use. Maybe some other people can make good use of this/can help fix some issues/think it's interesting?

After finals are over I'll probably fix up some of the minor issues.</comment>


Outlaw programming languages that threaten safety - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/outlaw-programming-languages-threaten-safety-american-people-and-work-counter-our-way-life <comment><USER2> I did not know these were such dangerous languages. Hey, while we are at it, we should outlaw the pen. I hear it is far more dangerous than a sword.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was not sure how can somebody that bored to submit a petition like this, but I found it hilarious.

<comment><USER2> I mean... Out of all the languages to pick, why not b * * * * fuck?</comment></comment></comment>


Poor Design Can Be Bad for Your Health - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/12/12/poor-design-can-be-bad-for-your-health/ <comment><USER2> Is that a class action lawsuit I smell or just a steaming cup of delicious ramen noodles?</comment>


Database Concurrency Control – Scheduling Problems - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dancrisan.com/intro-to-database-systems-concurrency-control-scheduling-problems

<comment><USER2> It would be useful to understand these transactions. I myself would like to be able to find data sources to test this information off of. With the different schedule hierarchies apply to an unstructure dataset and an RDBMS systems like Hadoop. I don't believe that memcache can solve this Load Balancing issue when it comes to querying transactions in a serial manner?</comment>


Database of Old Book Illustrations - <AUTHOR> https://www.oldbookillustrations.com/ <comment><USER2> Is this legal? Site says:

 _We don't limit the use of the illustrations available on our site, but we accept no responsibility regarding any problem, legal or otherwise, which might result from such use. More specifically, we leave it up to users to make sure that their project complies with the copyright laws of their country of residence._

<comment><USER3> If it matters, hire a lawyer. If that sounds like a waste of money, then the answer doesn't really matter.</comment></comment>