Did Malaysian Airlines 370 disappear using SIA68/SQ68 (another 777)? - <AUTHOR> http://keithledgerwood.tumblr.com/post/79838944823/did-malaysian-airlines-370-disappear-using-sia68 <comment><USER2> I am not enthusiastic about jumping into speculation land, but I would be interested in knowing if the possibility of this being a accident followed by auto pilot is possible or totally disproven

My default assumption was they took off, an accident occurred that damaged cockpit and forced a turnaround, the damage was so great that the crew were unable to survive and turned on autopilot to stop an immediate crash, which then flew for seven hours till fuel ended, presumably with passengers pounding on the locked and hardened cockpit door.

So whilst I am in wild speculation territory I would like to know if there are some experts who might be able to say "bird strikes cannot disable radios" or "oxygen canisters do not leak" or "stewardesses can open the cockpit door" or some such.

I tend towards cockup not conspiracy myself.

(I recognise I may have missed discussions covering this and apologise if it is obvious)

<comment><USER3> I'm not familiar with the inner workings of planes, but from what I've gathered, the timing of disabling the two tracking systems, which are on either end of the plane, is just about the same time it takes to get from one end of the plane to the other, and disable the 2nd tracking system (blackbox).

Therefore, it would be a great coincidence that both of these tracking systems would be disabled at the same time. It seems therefore that the most logical explanation is foul play.

I thought/hoped the same as you, that some sort of failure resulted in the tracking systems failing as well, and then the plane crashed, but it sadly doesn't seem as likely given the timing of events.

<comment><USER4> So you say the pilot does not have switches in the cockpit to turn equipment on or off? They have to WALK through the whole plane to turn devices on or off?! Bollocks.

<comment><USER3> The black box is in the tail of the plane, it doesn't make any sense to wire it through the whole plane so the pilot can switch it off from the cockpit.

I have no problem with your questioning my logic and my response, as I'm not expert, but keep your bollocks to yourself.

<comment><USER5> It makes perfect sense when the top priority is being able to isolate electrical systems in case of an electrical fault or an in-flight fire: [http://www.askthepilot.com/malaysia-airlines- flight-370/](http://www.askthepilot.com/malaysia-airlines-flight-370/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The folks over at airliners.net have pointed out that the 777's collision avoidance system only works if both planes' transponders are turned on. That doesn't mean this scenario is impossible, but it does raise the level of sophistication required.

Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If that's the case, I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what happened to this plane...

<comment><USER7> > Sadly, I feel like whatever happened, the amount of sophistication involved > increasingly points toward the involvement of one or more state actors. If > that's the case, I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever find out what > happened to this plane...

Indeed. And not just the "what", but the "why" as well.

<comment><USER8> time to figure out who was on that flight, perhaps it was someone so important that taking a plane full of passengers was worth the cost.

<comment> Tuna-Fish A team of freescale chip engineers for one.

Also, the answer might well be "what" instead of who. Many people have pointed out that the cargo manifest hasn't been published, and that the airline declared 50 less seats as available for boarding than the plane had. This means it had several tons of cargo on board.

<comment><USER9> Gold? needs to be something worth stealing a plane for.

<comment><USER10> Reportedly some 50 seats were blocked off to save weight for extra cargo. Suppose each person plus their baggage weighs 80 kg, that's 4000 kg. Let's say 50% of that is taken up by containers, packing, and security devices, yielding 2000 kg of gold. It comes out to 90MM USD at today's prices. A lot of money, but probably not enough to go to so much trouble.

<comment><USER11> >50 seats were blocked off to save weight for extra cargo.

Combining this fact with the 20 Freescale engineers that were on board is it possible they were transporting some kind of important prototype chips?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is almost exactly how a plot device in Neal Stephenson's REAMDE plays out. In almost exactly the same part of the world. Bizarre.

<comment><USER13> Googled "Neal Stephenson README" expecting a thriller involving a government agency plot to inject malicious code into a open-source crypto-library, and the final commmit to the github project made by a hacker found murdered in front of the computer in his basement.

Was disappointed.

<comment><USER14> Reamde not readme

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is a realistic possibility that those piloting the plane used this and/or other stealth techniques and landed intact. There are lots of groups around the world that would love to have a working $250M aircraft. Maybe there is a massive airplane chop shop that this went to, or someone wants to load it up with explosives and fly it to some country they disagree with.

Unfortunately, whether it landed or not, the odds that the passengers are alive are very small. A ransom demand would have been made by now.

<comment><USER16> It doesn't make any sense to kill 240 people, including babies and kids. Especially if this is a terrorist act, they could not religiously justify that, especially since these are mainly Chinese people rather than American.

<comment><USER17> my guess is that if it was hijacked by terrorists, the act is yet to come. They are after the plane, not the people.

<comment><USER18> Anything is possible, but my guess is that if they were hijacked, they had a plan that went wrong. It's far more likely, and it's happened before: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961)

<comment><USER19> Add to that list:

\- A depressurization event, either as a result of an accident or a botched hijacking (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522))

\- Pilot suicide, with a somewhat unexpected signature (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990))

Pretty much anything is possible, indeed. However, I'd recommend this post on airliners.net for a comprehensive sanity check: [http://www.airliners.net/aviation- forums/general_aviation/re...](http://www.airliners.net/aviation- forums/general_aviation/read.main/6027829/1/#13)

<comment><USER18> Thanks! That's a good summary post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > _There are too many oddities in this whole story that don't make sense if > this theory isn't the answer in my opinion._

Confirmation bias?

Slow burn fire randomly taking out communications systems and electronics undetected over a long period of time. Pilots freak out and head West for the coast, program way points on autopilot. Fire then cracks the hull, leading to a slow depressurization, incapacitating crew. Plane heads into the Indian ocean with all onboard unconscious or dead, until it runs out of fuel, and crashes into the ocean.

<comment><USER21> 1\. Zig Zaging flight path between legitimate waypoints after transponders were turned off, plus some pronounced altitude changes suggest that Autopilot was not engaged.

2\. Pilots turned off transponders before their last communication.

<comment><USER20> 1\. Waypoints far west outside of primary are conjecture. Can be explained by autopilot shutdown due to onboard emergency.

2\. Not proven. ACARS can fail without pilot intervention. That's confirmation bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "Snuck" is a strange American word, the same as "dove" instead of "dived", eg. "he dove into the pool" instead of "he dived into the pool". I would read "snuck" as "sneaked". Another weird word is "gotten". And another strange and irritating phrase that is sneaking its way into English over here is "for free", but "free" is not a price so instead of "buy 3 eggs for £2.00", you get weird phrases "sign up now and get this egg for free", whereas it should be "sign up now and get this egg free" or "sign up now and get this egg for nothing".

Always interesting the difference between the languages over time.

With reference to the flight, I truly hope they find it somewhere safe.

<comment><USER23> "gotten" definitely sounds odd to me (I'm from England) but it's worth noting that we do keep that form in "forgotten".

Presumably both were acceptable over here at some stage. "I see no reason why gunpowder and treason should ever be forgot."

<comment><USER24> The word "forgot" was chosen to rhyme with "plot", so may not have been a normal use of the word/form.

[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes#Quotes_about_Fawkes](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes#Quotes_about_Fawkes)

(Now you've made me want to watch V for Vendetta again!)

<comment><USER25> Its worth noting that use of "forgot" instead of "forgotten" is also found in the first line of Auld Lang Syne, where it isn't rhymed with anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good theory. Yours is as good as anyone's at this point in time. Incredible, how we think that our tech is so advanced yet a commercial jet can go completely missing.

MH370 makes for an incredible setup to 'Lost'.

<comment><USER27> I think this whole thing could have been prevented if only the tracking systems could not have been turned off manually.

Why is that even possible? An oversight? If you think about just how many liberties we passengers had to give up after 9/11 worldwide, why was this still there? We can't take any liquids on board anymore but if the pilot wants, he can make the plane disappear at will? Yeah, the liquid thing was really the only security risk here...

Imho, tracking of planes should never be able to be turned off. Why should it? Could there ever be a situation were it would be vital to have these systems not running?

<comment><USER28> >>but if the pilot wants, he can make the plane disappear at will?

The pilot is the captain of the airship and can take any decision deemed necessary for the safety of the aircraft and its passengers and that decision is final(this is actually defined in the airspace law, would need to look for a quote). That means that the pilot has to have the ability to turn off any and all electrical parts of the aircraft if that would ensure its safety(in case of a fire). That power cannot and should not be taken away from the pilot - you don't want a plane crash due to a fire which couldn't have been put out because the burning thing was always-on due to some regulations.

<comment><USER29> I don't know about international aviation law, but in the U.S. the text is: 91.3 Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command. (a) The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft. (b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.

This does not mean pilots can break rules as long as they make sure to do so safely, but if a situation is unsafe they may break all rules necessary to make it safe again. Furthermore, pilots are required to inform ATC of any deviations they made from the regs or ATC instructions (of course this is one of the rules they're allowed to break if making such a radio call would be unsafe). Again, this is only for the U.S., but other countries do tend to look us for how to do aviation safety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> A theory is that the cargo area of the plane contained valuable goods: gold, silver, diamonds, etc and that's what the hijackers were after.

From this: [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing- malaysian-f...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-15/missing-malaysian- flight-mystery-deepens-pilot-investigated-foul-play-suspected)

the 777 can have up to 25 tons worth of cargo payload.

25 tons of gold is worth ~ $1B, that's quite a bit more than the value of the plane itself.

<comment><USER31> No one in their right mind would attempt to transport 25 tons of gold on a commercial passenger flight.

<comment><USER3> How do you transport 25 tons of gold across land and sea?

My guess is air freight is the safest method, does it matter if it goes on a DHL 777 or a Commercial 777? Either way, the plane could be hijacked.

But I suspect you'd have somebody with an insurance claim for $1 billion in gold, and an insurance company going bankrupt as a result.

<comment><USER31> Yes, but Malaysia PM said there's only mangosteens in the cargo.

<comment><USER32> Tomorrow's headline: no mangosteens in cargo.

<comment><USER31> And then we'll have conspiracy theories about what happened to the mangosteens en-route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good analysis, but I'm skeptical that this is not already accounted for in the military radars. Given that so many flights fly everyday in almost every route, it becomes really easy for any country to sneak an aircraft anywhere. Such a glaring loop hole should not exist. And we are talking about crossing the borders monitored by multiple countries here.

</comment><comment><USER34> I really wonder how much of this rampant speculation is just people desperately wanting 300 people not to have died, either at all or just for no reason at all. Secret terrorist masterminds secretly hijacking a plane is more comforting than "sometimes shit happens and people die and there's nothing anyone can do".

<comment><USER35> Great, except where are the dead people? And how did the plane keep flying for 7 hours after they were "dead"? Too many unanswered questions, me thinks.

<comment><USER36> Perhaps the plane didn't keep flying for 7 hours but it kept floating on the water for those 7 hours (at least that part/device).

<comment><USER37> My understanding is that it was the Rolls Royce jet engines that were reporting to satellites for several hours, and that they were reporting some basic maintenance data about themselves (such as whether they were on and functioning). So if the engine had sat in the ocean for five hours and still somehow reported home, it would not have reported that they were still on and functioning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Nice idea, however I'd hope that modern radar is able to detect two aircraft of that size flying close together.

Unless the perpetrators know the various limitations of each radar installation?

<comment><USER39> Maybe, but would the operators have the imagination to suspect it was something other than a glitch?

<comment><USER40> It's likely that this could be detected by looking at recorded radar-data as a above-average number of "glitches" at this particular track.

But then, I also assume that modern radar systems have some way to automatically filter displayed tracks for "glitches" or temporary loss of contact to a airplane signal to avoid distracting or tiring out airspace controllers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> An interesting theory and article, but I can't help but feel like this reads too much like one of the classic conspiracy theory articles about 9-11/lizards/aliens/Area 51, etc.

<comment><USER42> That's what _they_ want you to think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a problem google could solve by crowdsourcing the search on the google doodle

They could use an algorithm to generate different satellite images through the possible search images as the google doodle, they could put a toggle button, 'anything look like a plane or wreckage here?' Yes/no. For every yes, show it to more people, see if they agree

I'm sure google has better algorithm experts to figure out what the best images to show are than I can figure out,

but google can find that plane

I've already submitted this to google via email at firstname.lastname@example.com as suggested on [http://www.google.com/doodles/about](http://www.google.com/doodles/about)

I suspect there are people on HN who are fewer degrees of seperation from who figures out the google doodle than I am though

If you happen to be one of those people, who might be able to send a personal email, or send a text, or make a phone call to someone who could advocate for that being the google doodle, I would appreciate that

needless to say, if google was able to help solve this mystery, I would imagine that would be pretty good publicity for the company

Thanks for your consideration

(sorry for the spam) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414422)

<comment><USER32> Isn't Tomnod doing this already (although I don't think they've updated their images to the newest area)?

<comment><USER43> Think of the eyeballs Google could add to the project by making it the doodle though

<comment><USER32> If Tomnod updates to include the latest areas, couldn't Google just link to Tomnod on their home page? It doesn't make sense to duplicate the effort IMO.

Of course, they'd need to talk to Tomnod first to make sure they're ready for that kind of traffic, as it seems they've already had scaling issues, but hopefully this doesn't pose too many problems.

<comment><USER43> yeah, taking into consideration this objection [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414927](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7414927)

seems like that might be the neatest solution

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It may be seen as heartless for the victims, but I still find comforting that in this day and age of widespread surveillance technology, one of the most tracked thing on earth can still disappear and leave everybody clueless.

It gives me hope that there will be still a chance for a resistance movement when the time will come.

</comment><comment><USER45> I remember reading that when the Israelis mounted their daring rescue mission at Entebbe in Uganda their three aircraft flew in formation so that it would appear as a single airplane on radar.

</comment><comment><USER46> Just a quick question, but I'd have thought the number of airports where a plane the size of MH370 could land would be quite small.

Is it not possible to work out the number of airports within it's range, and examine those?

<comment><USER47> here you go: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/03/15/mh370_the_...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/03/15/mh370_the_634_runways_where_malaysian_airlines_flight_could_have_landed.html)

<comment><USER46> Someone already thought of it! Perfect, thank you.

<comment><USER46> And a friend just showed me this, which has an interactive map:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/where-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/where- malaysia-370-might-have-landed-an-interactive- map/284445/?google_editors_picks=true)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> If it was really hijacked then where are all of the calls from frantic passengers calling family members like on 9/11\. I am calling BS on the hijack landing scenario. Do we really live in a word where our first thoughts are always terrorism.

I guess the government propaganda machine is really working when our only conclusion to things is it must be terrorism. More funding for the spooks!

<comment><USER49> Not many cell towers in the middle of the ocean.

<comment><USER48> Who uses a cellphone on a plane anyway?

I am talking about satellite phones they put behind some seats in commercial airplanes.

[http://www.usairways.com/en- US/traveltools/intheair/business...](http://www.usairways.com/en- US/traveltools/intheair/businesstools/phones.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'd really like to hear another knowledgeable person's analysis of this theory. At least its different than the endless hijackers/bombing/suicide/aliens run around.

</comment><comment><USER51> Again, merely wild speculation.

I'd be ok with people not upvoting submissions that do nothing more than fear mongering.

<comment><USER52> It is a very interesting theory and plausible (more plausible than a cockpit fire IMHO).

<comment><USER51> I didn't say it wasn't either a) interesting; or b) plausible. "Interesting" also doesn't really do anybody any favours here; 'plausible' is the only really relevant qualifier at play here. In fact, I'm well aware there are many plausible (that are simultaneously interesting) theories. But they're just that: theories. Crowd-sourcing theories _may_ be helpful. Crowd-sourcing actual data is probably a lot _more_ helpful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> What surprises me the most: In today's world, doesn't someone have access to global, real-time satellite data that goes down to 1-3m resolution? I thought we already accepted this as fact. Wouldn't such data provide visuals?

<comment><USER53> Yes, but it's not like every patch of land is monitored at all times. A satellite can only point it's camera at one place at a time.

<comment><USER47> surely so, but in the odd case that even one single image might have a plane on it, on the path the OP currently discusses here, might be enough to confirm further travel. the full step-by-step transition of the plan wouldn't even be necessary. just one shot with that plane. from somewhere.

<comment><USER54> Global? Likely. Realtime? We're not _quite_ that far into the future. Just try and estimate the bandwidth for the biggest security camera of all times: at 1-3 meters resolution per pixel, _worldwide_ , that's a lot of pixels (about 510 072 000 000 000 per frame, give or take - that comes out at about half an exabyte per frame, if I'm not mistaken). Take ten of these, and you've generated as much data as the whole Internet does in a _day_. Oh, and you also need to store it somewhere, but this is a minor issue (in comparison to the above).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Interesting, but this would seem to chiefly expand the space of possible explanations for what went wrong by showing how the plain could have gotten into central Asia. It explains some of the bizarre behavior of the plane, but not all of it. So it's eliminated some of the burdensome details about the flight behavior at the cost of introducing burdensome details about complicated, secret, and successful planning. As a result, I'm even less sure about what happened to the plane now, but of course if that reflects my actual state of knowledge it's a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER56> Incredible theory. This entire situation is really a complete mystery.

<comment><USER7> If the plane has flown following most of that 777 trail, then it should at least narrow down a little where it went... but it's very unsure we even find out where it went. If this was planned from the very beginning, it would be well hidden by now.

I wonder what happened to the passengers - and if anyone realized what was happening after several hours.

<comment><USER57> Sadly, I find it hard to believe that passengers wouldn't have tried to use cellphones, and I'm inclined to think that the cabin became depressurized before the last report of contact (a ping off of an inmarsat sattelite) which is reported as 7.5 hours after takeoff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think Keith is on the right track (excuse the pun).

1\. The weather. Check on that. On a clear night it is possible to sneak up behind and tail an aircraft. Night Fighters did it all the time in WW2. And they had to get close enough and hang on and to check "friend or foe"! 2\. Not sure where the FIR boundary was, but if it was close to their westward track (last radio call was a handover) more doubt on the ground. 3\. They could have listened in to the radio calls of SIA68 with their radio. That would have given them height and position info too. So long as they did not transmit, nobody could have picked up anything from that. 4\. If they had also switched off all the navigation lights nobody on the ground, or in SIA would be likely to have seen anything - rear view from a commercial aircraft is nil! Two aircraft at 35000 feet sound the same as one. 5\. Timing on one other score was perfect. Night flight when radar operators are dozy, landing just before dawn - time to camouflage the plane from satellites, and a diversion of a China sea crash to confuse everyone.

Good thinking, keep it up. Looking forward to more insights!

</comment><comment><USER59> If currently deployed military radars cannot distinguish between one and two 777s, we have a lot more to worry about than what happened to MH370.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is not an hijack terrorism. Terrorism is all about showing off, theatrics, fear. No one would make a plane disappear for the sake of terrorism. I have only two theories

1\. China or some other country shot it down by mistake and trying to cover up. 2\. Something of immense importance was present on that plane or may be a person.

In either cases substantial involvement of some state needs to be there.

<comment><USER61> That is not necessarily true. If it is terrorism, it's possible this isn't over, and that the plane will be used in a future high-profile attack. And if the target was passengers, cargo, or something else entirely I don't think that logically leads to it being state-sponsored.

<comment><USER60> If the plane is stolen for a future attack they have unnecessarily taken too much of trouble \- First plan a theft which is incredibly difficult that hijacking and then ramming it somewhere \- Then actually keep it hidden while half the world is searching for it. \- Get rid of those passengers \- Hiding a Boeing 777 is not same as hiding a cookie jar. The plane will need a runway, fuel etc. which needs to be provided for and can be easily tracked. \- Terrorism is all about surprise. There is no surprise involved here. All the countries will now be much more cautious with any object that appears on their radar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> After all the revelations of the last few days, is there anything it may not have done?

</comment><comment><USER63> All these theories... It's obviously at the bottom of the ocean. If not, it's here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlG28B-R8Y)

<comment><USER64> a part of me wants the plane to suddenly re-appear exactly where it went missing with everyone on the plane unaware that it was lost

<comment><USER65> Langoliers, it is there, just slightly behind time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Waiting for a crossover of this route with this [http://project.wnyc.org/runways/](http://project.wnyc.org/runways/)

<comment><USER67> This assumes 5000ft of stopping distance and a high density runway, which is far more than really needed. Especially considering that the operators of this flight are willing to take more risks than usual commercial flights.

There are probably thousands of additional landing strips, even more if the hijackers don't require keeping the plane in perfect flying condition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anybody else noticed that "Keith Ledgerwood" has exactly one post on his Tumbler blog? Conspiracy theorist looking for five seconds of Internet fame?

<comment><USER68> Found his Twitter here: [https://twitter.com/keithledgerwood](https://twitter.com/keithledgerwood)

he just need some space to write and tumblr was his choice

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I understand there will always be crackpot theories but why are they getting up-voted.

State sponsored? WTF. This would be an act of war. If you want to go to war why wouldn't you just attack the other countries. Why screw around stealing 300 international citizens first?

Pretty simple stuff, most likely an accident.

Or possibly a political/mental act by a very small group/one person that got lucky.

</comment><comment><USER70> This notion that mh370 was flying behind the Singapore jet to avoid radar is far fetched. Is the simple explanation much more likely that primary and secondary radar were both tracking the Singapore jet and the data wasn't matched properly? If the two jets were flying in tandem as you suggest, wouldn't you expect two hits on primary radar?

<comment><USER71> In theory if one plane ghosted the other by staying quite literally behind it (in relation to the radar, not behind it front to back) there would only be one blip.

Difficult to the point of high improbability? Methinks yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> If they shut off the transponder, which we know they did, how would they get the traffic information on their NDs? It goes away when you turn off the transponder. To the best of my knowledge that applies to both Mode-S interrogations and ADS/B ones.

<comment><USER52> The flights through that area are scheduled, it would be trivial to figure out which flights go in the direction you want to go and thus can hide behind. After that, you precalculate the intercept to a plane that works timing-wise before you take off. Non-trivial, but simple enough to do - on ground ahead of time you can get a computer to do all the work.

Once you go dark, you fly the traditional way with GPS and nav aides (GPS, VORs, etc, are broadcast, so you can use them passively) backed up by manual nav with time, speed, and bearings. Note that handheld (throw it on the dash) pilot grade GPSes are readily available and relatively cheap.

Intercepting the target aircraft is do-able via visual contact if your navigation is reasonably good and the target aircraft is on time.

If you have help on the ground, they could use FlightAware to update the hijacking crew via something like HF radio, again a passive receive on the hijacked aircraft. This would be very helpful for the hijacking crew to improve their intercept by adjusting their speed so that they sneak up under and behind the target aircraft.

Edit: As thekevan points out ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416153](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7416153)), the hijackers could use a ADS/B receiver (SDR and laptop or equivalent) to receive the position data from the target aircraft. This would make it pretty easy to form up on them. Again, this is passive (the target aircraft broadcasts its ADS/B information).

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> How secure is the 777s flight management system? Could you hijack the controls (remotely or with temporary physical access) and prevent manual overrides when the change is noticed?

</comment><comment><USER74> Isn't it possible that one passenger may have left his cell phone on?

Maybe if you get all of the passengers numbers and check if any of the phones connected to a tower you could locate it?

<comment><USER4> First of all, hijackers would have threatened passengers to give them their mobile phones.

If the plane indeed was landed on a remote airport with the passengers alive, the hijackers would have stripped the passengers of their clothes to ensure nobody could bring weapons or devices with them.

By now, most mobile phones (even the Nokia developing world ones) would have been out of battery.

<comment><USER75> I find it a little disturbing that the passengers would be so docile, especially after 9/11.

<comment><USER76> There is a theory that the rapid ascent to 45,000 feet was done to deprive the passengers of oxygen and incapacitate them.

<comment><USER77> From what I've read that theory is bullocks because 45k is still in the safety margins the plane was designed for.

<comment><USER78> Wikipedia puts the service ceiling at 43,100 ft (13,140 m).

I imagine it could surpass that though without depressurization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> FYI CNN just discussed this theory on-air, of course didn't discuss any technical details, just called it "outlandish" and didn't give any credit to OP.

</comment><comment><USER80> Doing this is sure cheaper and easier than building a bomber capable of deploying a nuclear weapon or another type of WMD. Definitely cheaper than building an ICBM.

</comment><comment><USER81> I've got some animations of flight 68's path here: [http://findmh370.tumblr.com/](http://findmh370.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> An aviation noob here. I have a question:

If the flight starts another journey from wherever it is, will it be possible to track it via radar ?

<comment><USER82> Apparently the rolls royce engines have a remote debugging ability that was not enabled on this flight, however it was still pinging home which is how they first noticed the course change. They had disabled all the other trackers, so if they were watching the news the chances are they have disabled these too.

[EDIT] ACARS - [http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/16/satcom-acars- explained/](http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/16/satcom-acars-explained/)

<comment><USER4> If the plane is parked in working condition somewhere on this planet, thanks to the media coverage the hijackers now know that the jet engines will phone home the moment they start them.

But then again, this is hypothetical nonsense. The plane most probably crashed into the ocean.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I seriously doubt the plane ever reached land. Sadly, we will most likely find the plane at the bottom of the ocean.

</comment><comment><USER83> If this happened in North America would NORAD have been able to keep track of the plane?

</comment><comment><USER84> Would hydrophones be able to pick up the sound of an aircraft crashing into the ocean?

</comment><comment><USER85> Doesn't the NSA have all of the GPS tracking data for all of the smart phones on the plane?

</comment><comment><USER86> Much conspiracy.

</comment><comment><USER87> who is is john galt

</comment><comment><USER88> Why are we still looking for this damn plane? Thirty countries involved? Thirty nation's worth of ships, planes and satellite analysts, flying and sailing around and for what, some debris and a box? To buy the families closure of some sort? Maybe a defect in the 777? To keep hope alive that the passengers might be alive and safe somewhere captured by reasonable terrorists with a lot of food?

Doesn't seem worth the fuel.

These black boxes from what I heard stop pinging after a month. Can we stop then, and just move on in life until one day some seat cushion washes up in California and have a moment if silence? Without it pinging, just how wide an area can a ship in substantial depth detect a wingtip?

I realize you didn't, but if you ask me, they should just frame that copilot, say they found on his flight simulator evidence that he intended to make that "deliberate" turn every night, disabling the transponder with the ctrl+shift+T combination and purposefully crashing hours later each time in a different location, with known Islamic terrorists on his WhatsApp and Skype, or a suicide note, then call off the hunt, pay the families off for failing to screen this guy effectively, bam, there's your closure, problem solved.

/insensitivity

<comment><USER89> Why?

I don't know, maybe to make aviation safer so it doesn't happen again, whatever "it" may be.

Why should Twitter bother debugging outages? Why should Facebook bother issuing post-mortems when bad things take their systems out? Just chalk it up to solar flares or blame some rogue developer and shrug your shoulders.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Thinking to learn about building Smart Contracts.Is der a need for it? - <AUTHOR> Blockchain is really interesting and see a huge potential in future. Planning to learn solidity and build some smart contracts. My friend and me are good at Python and java. What do you guys suggest? <comment><USER2> Fun : [https://cryptozombies.io/](https://cryptozombies.io/) (HN : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16113133](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16113133) )

perhaps : [https://www.udemy.com/ethereum- dapp/learn/v4/overview](https://www.udemy.com/ethereum-dapp/learn/v4/overview)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the links. Will go through</comment></comment>


Windows Defender Is Flagging CCleaner as a Potentially Unwanted Application - <AUTHOR> https://www.techspot.com/news/86216-windows-defender-flagging-ccleaner-potentially-unwanted-application.html <comment><USER2> CCleaner was at one time a suspected source of malware, so check your installed version:

CCleaner Malware Hack: What to Know and How to Protect Yourself (Sept 2017):

[https://time.com/4946576/ccleaner-malware- hack/](https://time.com/4946576/ccleaner-malware-hack/)</comment>


Show HN: Wisdom Curated – A curated directory of personal development resources - <AUTHOR> http://wisdomcurated.com/ <comment><USER2> It looks interesting. A place I could bookmark for later visits. However, there are no info whatsoever on who's curating it and what criteria are used on the curation.</comment>


Computing the optimal road trip across the U.S - <AUTHOR> http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/08/computing-the-optimal-road-trip-across-the-u-s/

<comment><USER2> Related and possibly the reason this was reposted today: [http://sciencefriday.com/segment/07/10/2015/the-ultimate- gee...](http://sciencefriday.com/segment/07/10/2015/the-ultimate-geek-road- trip.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been posted with the exact same title several times already: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=optimal+road+trip+randalolson....](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=optimal+road+trip+randalolson.com)

<comment><USER2> Note that one of those search results is actually a related article for Europe and that another is a followup post.

I noted in another comment that this was likely reposted today because both the author of the post and John were on the US NPR radio show Science Friday today regarding a related story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So LA is out of luck in both trips?

</comment><comment><USER5> Wonderful article!</comment>


GC Fun at Twitch - <AUTHOR> https://modularfinance.se/blog/2019/1113-gc-fun <comment><USER3> Allocating 10GB per the original twitch blog, to tune GC specifics, does feel like a bit of a hack around missing API knobs - but it's elegant enough. The fact that it relies on the specifics of the underlying GC, when trying to tune the specifics of GC behavior, isn't much of a drawback, so much as it's just sane performance tuning.

This proposed alternative of just toggling the GC on/off outright in a sleeping loop feels like a pretty big sledgehammer - _and_ just as much of a hack. The 500ms sleeps are enough to see 5 GC cycles, going off of the original twitch blog's 10 GCs/second numbers, which would also concern me - <USER2> a potentially unwanted latency spike. I'm also curious what happens when the GC is toggled back off mid-GC. It's more code, and feels brittle. That ReadMemStats sync point may be worse than the GC spam in the first place!

</comment><comment><USER4> We had internal discussions around the "hacky" nature of the solution. Both sides had proponents. The proof was in the numbers and some teams utilized it, others did not. In the end it was a few-line solution that solved the problem neatly and didn't rely on a (terrifying) dynamic solution such as is proposed in this blog post. It was expected the "hack" would be temporary as we expected the Go GC to quickly improve to the point it was not necessary.

<comment><USER5> Since you seemed to have analyzed this carefully, why couldn't object pools be used to reduce collectable garbage in the first place?

<comment><USER4> That was done too, of course. There's so much to get done in these big systems that it's often most efficient to take the quick win and move on, especially when, as I mentioned, the world is expected to fix the problem for you for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting to see how other GCs try to handle this. In particular the JVM's (awesome) new Shenandoah low-latency GC has a ShenandoahAllocSpikeFactor option precisely to deal with this kind of situation, where you can specify what percentage of the heap you're willing to sacrifice in a spike in allocation rates before the GC starts running wild trying to collect garbage.

The trade-off of the knob-less approach of Go's GC I suppose.

<comment><USER7> The JVM offers state of the art GCs, which allows for selecting the best tool for the job (throughput, latency, large heaps, etc.).

This is unlike the golang gc, which is tuned for latency at the expense of throughput, with no way of modifying its behavior without resorting to hacks like the article in the post.

<comment><USER6> To Go's credit, it predates Shenandoah and ZGC, before which your only real option for low-latency GC on the JVM was Zing, which I don't think had too many people using it (I certainly have no personal experience with it). I can't say whether they were inspired by Go, but I do think that Go is responsible for bringing the desirability of low-latency GC, even at potentially high cost to throughput, to the forefront of the greater programming community's attention.

<comment><USER8> Do you not consider G1 a low latency GC?

<comment><USER6> When considering latency, it's still not in the same league as Shenandoah and ZGC. We still had occasional GC times over a second with G1 on some production systems several years ago IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is not my area of expertise, but from a software engineering perspective, the proposal "Replace a constant in a configuration file with a new piece of procedural code" smells like a huge new liability when it comes to maintenance. Of course it could be truly necessary, but the author made it sound like the "ballast" method was working just fine and simply felt hacky. Personally, I'd rather document and maintain a single value change that's "hacky" than 22 extra lines of turing-complete code.

<comment><USER10> I think I can see both sides of this argument - the "ballast" method is hacky not just because of it being a sort of magic thing that might be tricky to remember later, but it is relying on undocumented behavior that is not part of the contract Go provides and could randomly break later.

The method presented in the article does seem better in that it is using well- known and documented parts of Go's runtime api, but I think it might be problematic for other reasons. Fiddling with GC behavior is always a little risky because it works fine until you hit some weird corner case and it blows up.

For example - What happens if that goroutine doesn't run for longer than you expect and you leave GC turned off while another goroutine is creating a ton of garbage? Might never be a problem, but it depends on allocation behavior and how much headroom you have.

So it feels more correct, but also seems like it requires a lot more tuning and testing to feel confident about it.

<comment><USER9> > it is relying on undocumented behavior that is not part of the contract Go > provides and could randomly break later

Sort of. A change in the undocumented behavior might cause you to lose your fine-tuning at some point in the future, but I wouldn't say it'll ever cause it to _break_. You're just telling Go how much memory you want to pre- allocate. It'll continue doing that; if that stops getting you the same GC benefits you wanted, then at worst you'll be back in the same boat you were originally.

Writing your own GC routine, on the other hand, gives you a ton of new opportunities for introducing very real breakage via your own code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is internal work on a SetMaxHeap API: [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/23044](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/23044) (there's a review of related code at [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang- codereviews/b...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang- codereviews/brkajcJ0mhI) ). It isn't perfect (notably, heap size and process size as seen by the OS are not identical) but seems like a step up from ballast or other workarounds.

In the issue thread Caleb Spare also proposed a minimum heap size so that you get GOGC-ish behavior once your app uses enough RAM, but don't have constant GCs with a tiny heap.

There's definitely a common issue where the GOGC heuristic doesn't take advantage of situations where it can collect less often but still remain in the "don't care" range of memory use. (CloudFlare talked about the same thing making benchmark results weird: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/go-dont-collect- my-garbage/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/go-dont-collect-my-garbage/) )

And there can definitely be situations where GC'ing a bit more would be worth it to keep a process under an important memory threshold to avoid swapping or OOM kills.

The designers famously don't want too many knobs, but some other ways to convey user priorities to the runtime could certainly save users from some awkward workarounds and fiddling w/the existing knobs.

</comment><comment><USER12> This has interesting parallels to the issues folks have with autoscaling in AWS. When people first start using autoscaling it can be frustrating finding the right heuristic to scale on, with the automated system over-shooting or under-shooting what the capacity needs are.

What works well is when you calculate your own capacity needs, then just set the autoscaler to change to that new capacity number. In other words, using your knowledge of how your system works, you'll make better decisions than just looking at secondary metrics like resource utilization.

I know I've done manually triggered GC in Ruby and Java but I don't know enough about Go to say if the article's suggestion is reasonable.

<comment><USER13> What does that mean to calculate capacity needs of the application? Are you saying base it on something like throughput your app can handle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of why I hate garbage collectors and think we shouldn't keep investing in them. Instead, we should double down on languages that allow you to express liveness constraints in a way the compiler can understand and manage statically. I'm not saying we have the perfect one yet, though continuing to add knobs to a gooey ball of complexity is at best a game of whack-a-mole. Do something you haven't planned for and your whole app or service takes a dirt-nap and you need to call in a crack squad of your most senior engineers. Then what? Uh, maybe allocate 11GB? There's no predictability -- or even causality -- to these optimizations.

There's enough rockets on the rocket-powered horse that is GC to make it to the moon and back.

<comment><USER15> What we should do is learn that many GC enabled languages also offer other means to manage resources, and increase adoption of such features, instead of throwing the baby with baby water, just because a couple of them use GC for everything.

<comment><USER14> GC is a means not an ends and we shouldn't be attached to it. We should focus on developing languages that allow the compiler to statically assess and infer lifetimes then we don't need a giant for loop over all of active memory. The value GC provides is it gives the developer an escape-rope from an insufficiently expressive language. If that solution involves some form of GC so be it, but the goal should not be to preserve GC but rather to improve the efficiency of the final product without substantially impacting developer ergonomics.

<comment><USER15> So far that sufficiently expressive language, usable by mainstream developers is yet to be invented, and no Rust isn't yet it, too many hurdles to overcome in common programming patterns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> off topic: It's annoying how the Twitch blog linked in the article doesn't have an RSS feed. How do people read these blogs without one?

[https://blog.twitch.tv/en/tags/engineering](https://blog.twitch.tv/en/tags/engineering)

<comment><USER17> The blog post is also available on Medium: [https://medium.com/twitch-news/go- memory-ballast-how-i-learn...](https://medium.com/twitch-news/go-memory- ballast-how-i-learnt-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-heap-26c2462549a2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I presume this is why Java has quite specific initial/min/max heap parameters, definable either as a set amount of RAM, or a percentage of available.

</comment><comment><USER19> If the ballast works and they can "afford" it within whatever parameters they are using to define "afford", I'm all for that method.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting approach to the application defining a custom GC strategy. (I wonder why the author gave it this strange title, since the article is really about something that Twitch is _not_ doing.)

I'll save this for the next time someone posts something along the lines of "you can't program X in a GC'd language because the GC is so unpredictable".

</comment><comment><USER21> > _the ballast concept seems like a quite hacky solution to me._

"Quite a hacky solution" describes every single detail of every scrap of code connected in any way to GC. It is the _whole point_ of the enterprise. If hacky solutions make you unhappy, your only route to happiness is to run very far away.

A lot gets done with very hacky solutions, and you will never need to throw a rock very far to hit somebody who swears by them. Those of us who don't haven't time to get that work done, so for most of the world's work, it's hacks or nothing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why are people using GC in this day and age for _anything_ other than processing on fully-general graphs (where the tracing and auto collecting is genuinely helpful)? Literally _everything_ else can be dealt with by using more flexible memory management strategies, that do not need a pre-allocated 10GB heap, and will not hog cpu in wasteful and unpredictable ways when memory utilization rises above a set percentage.

<comment><USER23> GC is an inherent part of many higher level languages/runtimes. Including Go, which is the main reference here, but also in .Net and Java runtimes. Yes, you could use a lower level language like C/C++, D, Rust etc to work around the issue in other ways, but that leaves a lot of productivity benefit higher level languages bring to the table.

I can't read the referenced twitch article from work so cannot comment. I'm also not sure of the practical loads and implementation details and am surprised that the Go GC was generally an issue to begin with.

I know I've purposely called GC for languages that use it for ETL jobs that run on shared servers to minimize memory usage before.

<comment><USER21> They are "obligate-GC" languages. You don't get a choice whether to rely on it.

It is fundamentally misleading to call C++ or Rust "lower-level" languages than Go or Java. (As it is, also, to say "C/C++".) Both Rust and C++ support much more powerful abstractions than either, making them markedly higher- level. That they also enable actually coding abstractions to manage resources (incidentally including memory resources) reduces neither their expressiveness nor the productivity of skilled programmers.

The point of Java and Go is that less-skilled programmers can use them to solve simpler problems more cheaply. Since most problems are simple, those languages have a secure place.

<comment><USER24> High-level and low-level are ill-defined and I prefer to stick to more precise language. Additionally, calling Rust high-level is inaccurate. It has high- level features, but the linear typing used by the borrowing system ultimately imposes cognitive overhead that does not exist in, say, OCaml. I think it's also interesting to note that garbage collectors for Rust that function reasonably are still pretty experimental, with the most promising approach I've seen so far being withoutboats's Shifgrethor ([https://github.com/withoutboats/shifgrethor](https://github.com/withoutboats/shifgrethor)).

Haskell and Idris and the like (other languages with a type system in the calculus of constructions) inarguably support a higher level of abstraction than Rust does, and are also "GC-obligate" languages. So your example is something of a red herring. I could say the same about Kotlin and Swift and Scala, none of which really have a strong story for static memory safety like Rust has, though it's being considered for Swift. The only language that is reasonably complete that I could think to compare it to is ATS, which is far more complex as a result.

<comment><USER22> > garbage collectors for Rust that function reasonably are still pretty > experimental

You can also use something like [https://github.com/artichoke/cactusref](https://github.com/artichoke/cactusref) \- which provides an equivalent of Rc<T> with nearly-seamless, timely detection and collection of deallocation cycles. This gives you the equivalent of full GC, but using a "zero-overhead" approach that integrates more cleanly with how Rust idiomatically works.

<comment><USER15> Does it prevent stack overflows and stop-the-world delays in complex data structures?

Two common problems in most reference counting implementations.

<comment><USER25> IIUC Rust stack overflows are actually checked, hit a guard page, and unwind the stack [https://github.com/rust-lang/compiler- builtins/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/rust-lang/compiler- builtins/blob/master/src/probestack.rs)

A cactusref is owned by a single thread so there's no STW issue, but you also can't share them mutably between threads like structures available in some GCed languages.

<comment><USER15> Thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It is distracting to read this article and see Go code not ran through gofmt.</comment>


How to fix peer review  - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/12/scientific-publishing <comment><USER3> The current state of things is that one has to collect many papers about certain hypothesis and analyse them on his own to get any idea of the what the truth may be -- neither the IF nor good names guarantees anything, on the other hand you can find real marvels in some obscure conference proceedings.

This way I doubt we should give even more complex decision-making and responsibility to the editors; I would rather go for forcing better reproducibility of papers and more open reviewing -- publishing reviews, opening up for more, yet shallow reviews (like lab protocol goes to a biologist, result evaluation goes to a statistician, possible impact goes to some recognised figure in the field) and making publication of comments and rebuttals easier.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder about the efficacy of paying non-trivial bounties for errors spotted in papers. I mean if you're not paying people for spotting errors in something then what difference does it make if they're good at it or not?

Asides from giving people an incentive to actually spend some time and expertise on them, it'd also provide a rough guide to how important you expected a paper to be to the field. If you weren't willing to pay a lot for the discovery of errors, then you'd expect that for one reason or another errors in the piece wouldn't make much difference; either because its claims are unimportant or because you didn't think they'd be hard to find.

Problems?

I could see people trying to contact someone who was reviewing their paper to counter-bribe them, or someone who was reviewing trying to contact the author to elicit such a bribe. Double blinding might take care of some of that but in some areas you can guess fairly easily who someone is.

Perhaps a combination of double-blinding and multiple reviewers - <USER2> with some from a number of related disciplines - with flagged errors that are already reported, so that the bribes that would be required of the author don't scale well.

<comment><USER5> What counts as an error? A typo? A grammar error? A mistake in a citation? A transposition of two column headers? Omitting a ')' in an equation?

How much is each error worth? Is it a sliding scale based on the presumed severity of the error?

Who pays?

What if the person paying disagrees with the person making the claim? Who settles the disagreement? How do they get paid?

<comment><USER4> > What counts as an error?

I feel like, 'let the market decide.' is probably a reasonable answer here.

Science is always an interest-directed endeavour, and we have these problems in conventional review anyway, they're just harder to provide a consistent definition of. I would be inclined to say that typos and grammar errors probably aren't worth paying for - but that's just me. If journals turn out to really care about those things, why not let them pay for them?

Heck, if they know ahead of time that that's what they're interested in paying for, let them forward the paper to a grammar expert and get even more utility for the money.

How much is each error worth, related to who pays. Well, make bounty funds and let each fund make its own choices. If a bunch of Christians really want to disprove evolution, let them put a massive bounty out on errors in biology papers. I imagine that such Christians wouldn't care much about typos or grammar mistakes, they might care more for citation errors, and a lot more for errors in maths or evidence.

You pay for the truth that's important to you.

And if the person paying disagrees with the person making the claim, then the person making the claim presumably doesn't get paid. But if you keep doing that, then you damage your ability to buy truths that are important to you. Which is ultimately self-destructive. Bug bounties spring to mind as an example there. If the Christian fund never pays out, people will just stop working with the Christian fund.

And that's a decent signalling mechanism it seems to me. If people claim to value the truth in some area, but they never pay out and no-one wants to work with them... then it's probably a decent bet that they don't really. After all, they won't pay for it.

One potential problem there, I suppose, is ignorant people putting out a bounty on something and ending up paying out a lot of money for errors that aren't actually errors. Because they don't know enough to judge for themselves. But in so far as you have a motivation to avoid paying for lies, you'd then have a motivation to hire people who knew more about the subject than you to vet them - which isn't a bad thing. I mean if you didn't know enough to assess the thing in the first place, all this does is provide a reason for you to be cautious about pretending to know things you don't.

<comment><USER5> My feeling is that your proposal makes no economic sense. What's the market? How big is that market compared to the external market? People pay to have their articles published. The price ranges between $100 and $1,500. As a reward, people get prestige and career advancement.

Others journals a free to publish, but the readers pay an access fee.

In any case, in most cases the publication fee is much smaller than the time and effort needed to write a paper.

So a pittance fee - even $100 for all error corrections per paper - isn't enough to change that overall market. You need to have serious money to make a difference.

If someone has evidence which, say, shows rabbits and velociraptors co- existed, then it's more cost effective to publish that paper in its own right. I can't figure out why another publication/error correction system would be more effective.

Consider also that many research fields are very small. The next person to understand the paper well enough to correct it might not come around for 10 years. Market-based solutions don't work well on long timescales like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Each began with a scientist who had reached an initial opinion as to which of two opposing hypotheses is more likely to be true."

Herein lies (at least) one problem. Scientific publishing is about presenting experiments + data and then interpreting the results in the context of hypotheses. Interpretation ought to be about evidence in favour of or against various hypotheses ... and not about forming an opinion about a particular hypothesis (and then designing experiments to validate that opinion)

One can't though ignore the current culture especially in academic science. No Assistant Professor is going to get a paper into Nature or Science by carefully presenting a balanced assessment of evidence for and against a hypothesis. It's a crying shame, because the current culture is implicitly training our young scientists to behave in an unscientific way.

</comment><comment><USER7> This model provides a way to ensure that hypotheses that most scientists disagree with continue to be published. Is that really what we want, though? When a hypothesis turns out to be false, it's good that a consensus forms on this fact.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem is, is that the hypothesis is not always wrong. There are many examples in history where new hypotheses came along which go against the generally accepted dogma of the relevant field which scientists try to squash.

Think about it this way: if a hypothesis comes along which is counter to the work you've been doing for god knows how many years, are you really going to agree with it (publicly). This new idea threatens your career, so you do everything possible to get rid of it. The new system tries to keep around these new ideas so that they can be evaluated multiple times, as the people doing the evaluation change.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that's true. I'm a researcher and at least among the younger generation of researchers, the anonymous peer review system often results in "oh shit" moments where you get a paper to review that you have to begrudgingly admit is good and recommend for publication, even though it makes some of your work invalid.

That's just one persons experience though, I have come across proud professors (and reviewers of my own papers) who seem to let pride come before professionalism.

Peer review should also be blind. Too often a famous name can get papers published that would not be published otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's awesome that you stick to the moral high road despite the consequences for your own work. I think that the problem may become more pronounced as the length of a researcher's career grows.

 _Peer review should also be blind. Too often a famous name can get papers published that would not be published otherwise._

Fully agree, although that only solves the problem of pushing through papers based on researcher merit (not the topic of rejecting papers on the basis of conflict with your own agenda)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Google Builds Its Maps–and What It Means for the Future of Everything (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/how-google-builds-its-maps-and-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-everything/261913/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This article is somewhat misleading about the exceptional nature of Google Map's road network data, particularly the claim that "I came away convinced that the geographic data Google has assembled is not likely to be matched by any other company."

In reality, though it seems the journalist didn't bother to try and find out, all the leading electronic mapping companies(the ones that have been building electronic maps for decades, long before Google got interested) have this level of data too.

<comment><USER3> Google StreetView is unparalleled by any other map-maker that I know of. Yandex is doing something very similar for Russia and some other parts of the world (like Istanbul), I think Microsoft has been doing (is it still doing it?) the same for the Unites States, and probably some Chinese company has been doing the same for China.

But Google's effort is the only one that is truly at a global scale. I'm biased because I really do love everything about maps and what they represent, but I think in retrospect Google StreetView will be seen as having the same cultural significance as the Library of Alexandria had back in the day. It has literally made almost the whole physical world accessible from the devices that we carry in our pockets.

<comment><USER4> Mapillary is global and they keep pushing the boundaries of applications of street-level imagery - including building a semantic model of the world for applications such as robotic cars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google should poach some engineers from Bing (and others) to teach them how to write maps that run _fast_.

<comment><USER6> Making this little website [1] was so eye opening. It's not just the fact that the 3 libraries that I used were different because they came from 3 different companies. You could actually feel the difference in philosophy while using them.

[1] comparemaps.drona.ro

<comment><USER5> VERY COOL!

Questions/comments:

"Make Firefox get along with Google Maps (check this if you experience lag while dragging Google Map or OSM)" \- what does this do?

Running this, Google maps seems reasonably comparable to the others, yet when I just load Google maps on its own to look something up, it can easily take 5+ seconds to load.....any idea what might cause this discrepancy?

Overlaying a more prominent brand label on each would be an improvement.

Well done, I really like it!

<comment><USER6> This is how Chrome pushes out other browsers: first you make a browser that is fast in some aspect. Then you build an app that takes advantage of that aspect.

In this case Chrome can handle a lot of events and Google Maps generate a lot of events. So in Chrome it is smooth. In other browsers (I use Firefox) the browser will choke on events and the map will lag. Maybe is just a matter of compiling Firefox with better defaults (more memory allocated, smaller tick rate for events, I don't know, I'm just making suppositions, I have no clue how a browser works) but it feels slower.

To prevent this I throttle the events (checkbox checked): I kill the event if it arrived too fast or the change in mouse position is too small. This will make the map more responsive.

Please note that I don't say that Chrome does this intentionally. But it happens.

I've put more information here at the time: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16645766/google-maps- api...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16645766/google-maps-api-v3-no- smooth-dragging/22030838#22030838)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Or as my friend and sci-fi novelist Robin Sloan put it to me, "I maintain that this is Google's core asset. In 50 years, Google will be the self-driving car company (powered by this deep map of the world) and, oh, P.S. they still have a search engine somewhere."_

</comment><comment><USER8> The Atlantics appears to be blocking Firefox private browsing mode.

This is a new level of anti-user website. Blocking all JS appears to make it work though.

<comment><USER9> I just opened the link in a new private window using Firefox and did not experience an issue reading the content.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I customize code coloring in emacs? - <AUTHOR>

I program Django/Python in emacs, and I would like things like {% comment %} FOO {% endcomment %} to turn orange.
How can I set up some colors for important Django template tags?
If you can give me a bit of example code, that would be great. A link to an example of this would be great too. <comment><USER2> Download color-theme. <http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki?ColorTheme>

Choose one of the included themes that you like the most, and start customizing.

Personally, I like zenburn. <http://www.brockman.se/software/zenburn/zenburn.el> But that might be a bit heavy to start off with.

Or, the shortcut way, define some stuff in custom-set-faces. e.g.:

        (custom-set-faces
          ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
          ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
          ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
          ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
         '(paren-face-match-light ((t (:background "#5f5f5f" :foreground "#e37170" :weight ultra-bold))))
         '(paren-face-match ((t (:background "#5f5f5f" :foreground "#e37170" :weight ultra-bold))))
         '(paren-face-mismatch ((((class color)) (:background "#332323" :foreground "#e37170"))))
         '(paren-face-no-match ((((class color)) (:background "#332323" :foreground "#e37170"))))
         '(linum ((t (:foreground "#5f5f5f")))))

Of course, this all requires that your Django/Python mode has a face for the {% ... %} stuff. I've never done any Django work, so I'm not sure if it does. If it doesn't, you'll have to hack at the Django/Python mode some to define that face so you can color it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note. I use nice faces for my JS, Python, HTML, and CSS. I just wasn't sure how to go about customizing.

I got this snippet, and I think I can take it from here:

      (defun django-highlight-comments ()
        (interactive "p")
        (highlight-regexp "{%.*?%}" 'hi-orange))
      (add-hook 'html-mode-hook 'django-highlight-comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Emacs Django mode <http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/Emacs>

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=django+emacs>

To change the color of a specific face in emacs, go to the face and do M-x set-face-foreground Return and put the color you want.

<comment><USER5> downvoted because he probably expected suggestions about which mode is best, etc. rather than snark

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> instead of using a hack like highlight-regexp, perhaps it'd be better to place a bug or hack the mode itself :)</comment>


Forget Newsweek. Mathematically objective quality of life index rates USA #2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25685/

<comment><USER2> How do you mathematically (and) objectively rate something subjective?</comment>


The fundamental problem with Silicon Valley's favorite growth strategy - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1540608/the-problem-with-silicon-valleys-obsession-with-blitzscaling-growth/ <comment><USER2> _" blitzscaling isn't really a recipe for success but rather survivorship bias masquerading as a strategy."_

That says it all. Really, that's how YC works - fail fast and cheap, profit from the survivors. Great for VCs, not so much for the cannon fodder.

 _" We have reserves."_

<comment><USER3> That's better than a tech landscape with no access to venture capital at all, and startups taking 10x longer to reach critical mass, if they even do.

There's a reason why the US tech industry is orders of magnitude larger than the rest of the world, access to capital. Go try to grow a startup in Europe with its risk averse investors, and see how far you get.

You'll start to see this effect even more in the biotech space, where up front access to capital is crucial in developing and testing products/medicines that must go through expensive FDA approval.

<comment><USER4> I'm not convinced that access to capital is the sole, or even primary, reason the US tech industry is much stronger than elsewhere. There are many factors like entrepreneurial culture, low corruption, and established/concentrated support infrastructure that seem a lot more important.

<comment><USER5> It's one of the two or three biggest reasons, and definitely not the sole reason. The modern system of industrial-scale venture capital available in the US - going back widely four plus decades - is rivaled only by China in the last decade. More broadly that culture of risk capital spans every tier, from the smallest angels to the biggest VC firms. The comprehensive nature of it is exceedingly rare among nations. It's also now a very old phenomenon in the US, going back to the earliest days of the industrial revolution (everyone from Tesla to Edison to Ford were financed by what was essentially venture capital).

Most of developed Europe, except for a few nations, scores well on having low corruption, comparable to or better than the US. Western Europe also widely has a strong social safety net that should be encouraging to entrepreneurs from a life-risk perspective (which may actually result in the exact opposite outcome: a culture of lower risk taking; the culture that will install the world's most elaborate social safety systems, is more likely to be one that aggressively dislikes risk-taking). While only a few small nations in Europe are as wealthy as the US, several more are close enough that the difference shouldn't matter. The problem is that capital is overwhelmingly unwilling to participate in venture investing.

The US not-so-secret sauce is: easy access to risk capital + a culture that has historically strongly encouraged entrepreneurial activity + a massive single market with one core language (that is also conveniently the global language of business, media and culture) + reasonable taxation and regulation policies + strong protection of property rights + ease of market access (low tariffs, low trade barriers, a foreigner can easily start/own a US business from almost anywhere) + very welcoming to foreign capital (few capital controls) + an enormous lead coming out of WW2 (which helped the US be the first to the tech epoch, which has buffered its lead ever since) + the global reserve currency + a massive traditional financial system (great for IPOs, stocks, acquisitions, leverage, etc. - it's why Alibaba is on the NYSE) + 19 of the top 20 universities on earth, and four or five dozen more that are world-class + a very successful university meets business development system (which has helped incubate countless new leading companies and technologies) + inexpensive energy + half a century of built-up knowledge, experience, specialization in every tech segment + a long history of immigration policies that allow people to come to the US and pursue their dreams (Japan and China, the #2 and #3 economies, have overwhelmingly shunned foreigners becoming citizens by comparison; the US tech industry wouldn't be anything remotely close to what it is today without the Andy Groves, Nadellas, Elon Musks, Jensen Huangs or Collisons).

That's the short list. It can't be replicated.

<comment><USER6> Nice list, I agree with it, but I don't think it can be the full story.

Why? None of the above are specific to software, if the above was the full story, why would the US not also dominate the world in e.g. Autos, Chemistry, Electronics, Batteries etc? There must be other factors. Maybe first-mover advantage, maybe software benefits more from centralisation, from economies of scale than other industries? Other suggestions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've read and listened to quite a bit of stuff from Reid Hoffman (Masters of Scale, LinkedIn's pitch deck etc) and have never found him or any of his advice particularly convincing.

Maybe I'm speculating wildly here but it feels like the main thing that made LinkedIn successful was that it was a first mover in the business social network space that used every dark pattern and email notification they could conceive of at a time when users were less cautious about their privacy. Now they have their moat and defend it with every trick they have. Their social auth API provides watermarked profile pics and they drop attributes without any notice.

If that's the way you want to do it, I guess that's your choice. But the professional social networking space could seriously use a breath of fresh air.

<comment><USER8> If everything was "just timing and luck", then we would be using friendster, myspace, ICQ, AOL Chat, and bebo today, instead of facebook/twitter/instagram/snapchat/linkedin

There is something more than that, and good execution is crucial, and it is good to know on what worked well, and what didn't work out for both the current winners and past losers.

I think Reid has good things to say about what worked for them back than, and take it like that.

There is no rulebook on startups, as all of them have different patterns, but reading on what worked 2003-2010 (pre-mobile times), is not going to hurt anyone.

Dismissing the success as just being merely 'dark patterns' \+ timing, seems a bit short sighted.

<comment><USER9> you proved that not everything is just timing and luck but you didn't prove that nothing is. The difference between it and myspace is something so much better than it came out that is surpassed the network effect. while there isn't really anything compelling to replace linkedin in its base feature set that it started with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who's lived and worked in the Bay Area for 16+ years, this is a fantastic article. It's just spot on in its characterization of the old and new Microsoft, the old and new Google, Lyft/Uber, and many other companies.

I worry that many won't read it because it's so long.

Now I need to go look up everything else Tim O'Reilly has written. He is a wise man. I of course know who he is -- mainly through books and conferences I suppose -- but I didn't know about his other experience in business.

It's interesting that in the early days of the web he started a Yahoo-like company before Yahoo and sold it to AOL, and a Windows web server company that competed with Netscape.

</comment><comment><USER11> On Monopoly: It has been a though I have for some time. I wonder how could they not form monopolies. Who has 4-5 taxi apps on their phone? Who has 2-3 social profiles? Who has the habits of jumping from a searching engine to another? A minority. Their product are _almost_ natural monopolies.

They are very difficult to fight against monopolies because when they have user commitment, the need for the product is filled entirely by one company. In addition, it is very difficult to make the user change, it's part of a habbit.

I might be wrong there. Just a though I had, but interesting to discuss. Is it really possible to avoid monopoly with these products?

<comment><USER12> There are a number of options, and not all of them are splitting the company into a bunch of fully co-equal units, which is a process that works better when things cover an area.

In telecom, it was typical, due to regulation, that you'd have different parts of the business that couldn't interact at all. I wasn't permitted to talk to people with certain badges because of their business unit. You could easily do this with the advertising business for each of these large companies, or split it off entirely, and force that ad exchange to work with their competitors, for instance. You could regulate the news feed so that the pipe was a lot dumber and configurable, so that the company would no longer be allowed to experiment on human psyches.

There are tons of options that don't result in breaking facebook into 12 facebooks. Pulling the advertising out, and regulating advertising in general, is the best solution I've been able to spitball though.

<comment><USER11> Interesting points

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > what is happening today is that the market has almost entirely turned into a > betting machine. Not only that, it's a machine for betting on a horse race > in which it's possible to cash your winning ticket long before the race has > actually finished. In the past, entrepreneurs got rich when their companies > succeeded and were able to sell shares to the public markets. Increasingly, > though, investors are allowing insiders to sell their stock much earlier > than that. And even when companies do reach the point of a public offering, > these days, many of them still have no profits. According to University of > Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, 76% of all IPOs in 2017 were for > companies with no profits. By October 2018, the percentage was 83%, > exceeding even the 81% seen right before the dotcom bust in 2000.

I thought the end of the article had some of the most interesting content. Amazing how many companies IPO without being profitable!

</comment><comment><USER14> This is an absolutely incredible article. Possibly the best I've seen on HN in 6mo to a year.

Normally I wouldn't post a comment just to say that but the amount of true insight ORiley provides is impressive.

Understating of the web, of SV of business, of growth of IPOs and well reasoned analysis and predictions of what's coming next in funding.

It is long and absolutely worth the read.

</comment><comment><USER15> I know a few people who became very wealthy by starting companies or businesses but entrepreneurship is not the only path to success.

IMO, the world is better off with a good mix of long shot bets to build large scale businesses and also many people being very happy to run solo or small businesses providing services or selling products on a small scale.

I am sometimes critical of Google, FB, Microsoft, and Amazon - sometimes they deserve criticism - but except for FB all of these companies also enrich my life and I am happy they are in business.

I am also happy personally to have been a consultant, very well paid wage slave for large companies, and have a small business as an author and sometimes selling niche AI software products. I never got very rich, but I have usually just worked 25 to 32 hours a week, with several times in my life taking many years of mostly leisure time.

There are many ways to be successful in life - choose wisely!

<comment><USER16> What kind of niche ai products do you work with? Curious to know if your ok to share

<comment><USER15> A natural language processing toolkit that I wrote in Common Lisp about 15 years ago and converted to Ruby about 10 years ago. A simplified version in Haskell is in my Haskell book and a simpler version is also in my Common Lisp book - all the book code is on github [https://github.com/mark- watson?tab=repositories](https://github.com/mark-watson?tab=repositories)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The fundamental problem with capitalism (not just in silicon valley) is that access to capital is what defines winners and losers. Of course I'm being simplistic and there will always be underdog stories, but the reason any company becomes as big as it is, is capital, plain and simple.

The immediate effect of gaining massive capital is tremendous. Outcompeting for both workers as well as getting to market sooner is an obvious benefit. The ability to lobby in government against potential roadblocks of whatever it is that you're doing is another. Just from the word itself, capitalism is rigged for those with capital.

Further down the line though, you are now beholden to this immediate level of investment, and as this article shows, this is where problems arise.

<comment><USER18> > The fundamental problem with capitalism (not just in silicon valley) is that > access to capital is what defines winners and losers.

Well yeah, it's fundamental because that's the definition! So it's not a _problem_. Capitalism works as designed.

<comment><USER19> Working as designed is not the same as working as intended or working well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >Would incumbent transportation companies have had more time to catch up, leading to a more competitive market?

i'm not sure that in general incumbents catching up leads to increased competition, i think it leads instead to the incumbents protecting their position and using it to stop the innovation and the resulting threat of disruption.

In case of Uber it wasn't about incumbents per.se., it was about regulators. The blitzkrieg allowed to crush regulators and thus increase competition by adding "ridesharing" into the mix.

Similar thing of using your huge weight to crush a chokehold on the industry happened when Jobs took control over phone apps away from the telecom companies.

</comment><comment><USER21> The craziness of recent Uber and WeWork and other unicorn valuations (with SoftBank just doubling their bets to show valuation growth) looks like a peak in the investment euphoria and what we should expect next is a swing back ala [https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default- source/memos/200...](https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default- source/memos/2004-07-21-the-happy-medium.pdf?sfvrsn=2)

This article adds to that notion.

</comment><comment><USER22> I read the headline and thought "Step 1 collect users, step 3 profit," and yep, that's it.

> _their enormous valuations are based on the premise that if a company grows > big enough and fast enough, profits will eventually follow._

</comment><comment><USER23> There's a broader historical perspective that's missing in this article.

The Second Industrial Revolution (1870-1914) was much like today. You had extremely rapid growth of new industries fueled by widespread availability of capital; a pervasive bubble economy punctuated by massive stock market panics & depressions; rapid development of new technologies; widespread fraud & corruption; a feeling that the common man was missing out on these developments (hence the term "The Gilded Age", a reference to it being shiny on the surface but dull & black inside); a widespread populist movement; political discontent; and globalization. And these technologies proceeded in overlapping waves: ironclads were replaced by steel ships; steel made steam engines possible; steam paddleboats replaced sailing clipper ships; propellers replaced paddles; steam turbines replaced triple-expansion engines; oil replaced coal in boilers. It was not uncommon for a ship to become obsolete before she entered service in the early 1900s.

The effect of the mass availability of capital during this time period (other than in destabilizing society) was to dramatically increase the rate of adoption of these new technologies. Without the massive capital influx into railroads, it's doubtful that there'd be enough of a market to drive widespread adoption of the Bessemer process, which made steel cheap enough to use in ships & skyscrapers. Without the mass capital investment in shipping, it's doubtful that there'd be an impetus to develop & perfect the steam turbine or switch from coal to oil as a fuel. Without demand first from the kerosene lighting industry and then from the shipping industry, it's doubtful that there would be gasoline (then a waste byproduct of petroleum refining) to fuel the automobile industry.

Similarly, O'Reilly's looking at Uber and Lyft at this snapshot in time and lamenting that their market power is preventing new ridesharing companies from entering. But the point is not to perfect ridesharing; it's to replace it. Uber and Lyft are arguably already obsolete, with Waymo in active testing in Arizona and California, and will be replaced shortly by self-driving cars. It's doubtful that self-driving cars are the endgame either; I suspect that we'll see intermodal transportation pods that move people & cargo through and between cities automatically.

The point of massive capital investment is to get us to the future faster. It'll be wrenching and cause massive societal dislocation - the first industrial revolution gave us wars of nationalism for the US/Italy/Germany, and the second gave us 2 world wars, the fall of centuries-old dynasties, Communist revolutions, and eventually the Holocaust. But we don't really have a choice.

<comment><USER24> I agree with you on the effect of massive capital investment : bringing us the future faster ; at the cost of social turmoils. However the necessity of going through those turmoils is false : why don't we really have a choice ?

<comment><USER23> Because somebody else is will get there first and then _inflict_ those turmoils first, on their terms.

This looks different at different scales. On an individual level, it's being passed over for promotion because the blowhard in the next cube has this great idea for how to apply deep learning, or losing out on a job to the college kid who's up-to-date in Solidity and React while you still work in VB.NET and SQL Server. On a company level, it's going bankrupt because some new startup offers critical new features at 1/10th the price. On a societal level, it's being conquered by other societies that have adopted the new technologies at the cost of the social turmoil and then choose to inflict it upon you. Each attempt to stop the turmoil by fiat just escalates it up a level: if you declare you're never laying people off, your company goes bankrupt, while if you declare that nobody is allowed to innovate your society collapses. (Either from within, where your people look at the technologies other societies enjoy and say "We want that", or from outside, where an invading army lands on your shores and kills you all.)

Americans are particularly blind to this dynamic on the societal level because we're usually the ones inflicting it upon others. "Manifest destiny" was all about inflicting progress upon the Native Americans who didn't want it, while the Cold War & fight against Communism was about a richer, more powerful empire inflicting the way of life that made us richer & more powerful at the expense of social stability on stagnant, poorer, but in-theory more egalitarian and stable societies.

<comment><USER25> Some of that is happening in the US right now. Dense (mostly coastal) cities; built on clustering effects, immigration, and highly skilled workers; are thriving. That model is working, but it brings with it high pay disparities and disruption of outdated social structures and values. Whereas the older model of geographically disbursed industrialism, which peaked in the 60's or 70's, is faltering.

How does that manifest politically? Look no further than Trump:

[https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get- about-t...](https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u- s-working-class)

His entire candidacy was about "owning the libs" and their globalist, diverse, cosmopolitan world. A backlash against socioeconomic change, with very real consequences.

<comment><USER23> Yup. The "two economies; two moneys" divide between urban coastal America & the Rust Belt / Deep South is probably one of the greatest silent threats to American security. Historically nation-states do not survive divides in regional inequality that are this big or this entrenched; the temptation grows for the rich region to secede and engage more with the global economy, while the resentment from the poor region builds and can lead to outright violence. And America's biggest defensive weapon, historically, has been two oceans: this doesn't apply when the potential enemies share a continent.

<comment><USER26> Happening in other developed countries as well. Mega-cities and urban coastal corridors are globalizing faster than the nation-states to which they are legally subsumed under. Cities are beginning to test the boundaries of their prescribed sovereignty in trade and other matters.

<comment><USER25> London and Brexit immediately come to mind!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department

<comment><USER2> In the case that anyone is wondering, this is a joke.

[http://hotmeme.net/media/i/4/f/d1Z-thats-not-how-it-works- th...](http://hotmeme.net/media/i/4/f/d1Z-thats-not-how-it-works-thats-not- how-any-of-this-works.jpg)

<comment><USER3> Is it making fun of people who make fun of Libertarians?

<comment><USER2> I don't know but it's BuzzFeed dumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _I get it. It ain 't making me laugh but I get it_ \- Meatwad</comment>


PureScript - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/paf31/purescript <comment><USER2> A relevant comparison would be to TypeScript, which has already picked up a fair bit of steam: [http://www.typescriptlang.org/](http://www.typescriptlang.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I write an app in TypeScript at work. I generally like it a lot, but part of the reason I created this was out of some frustration with its type system.

<comment><USER3> TypeScript was obviously on your mind. The readme states 'Functions in TypeScript can have zero or more arguments in general, just like in Javascript.' You might want to change that to 'PureScript'

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it isn't incorrect ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a bit like Fay, is it not? I'm not skilled enough in either languages to cite the differences, though pureScript does not seem like it's strictly adhering to haskell syntax.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some similarities, yes. There's a good discussion of the differences here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1pkzd0/show_reddit_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/1pkzd0/show_reddit_my_weekend_project_purescript/)

Basically, I wrote this partly just for fun, but also because each of the current options (Fay, Elm, Roy, TypeScript, etc.) all had some small feature I wanted to change. The biggest factor for me was the generation of compact, readable, debuggable Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was anyone else a little disappointed to find that it was yet another Haskell inspired language (like Fay, Roy, Elm, Lambdascript, ghcjs, &c)? I was really hoping to find a version of Pure [http://purelang.bitbucket.org](http://purelang.bitbucket.org) adapted for the browser. It seems like a custom language that compiles to JavaScript is the new standard Haskell pet project. For those wondering on what other JS powered languages there are, check out [http://altjs.org](http://altjs.org).

</comment><comment><USER6> You could make the examples more understandable by using non-minified variable names. I'm not sure what 'itoa' ing something does, or what an 'o' is.

<comment><USER7> itoa would be familiar to any C programmer (Integer TO Ascii)

<comment><USER8> I am familiar with atoi but I have never seen itoa, one of the printf family is usually used. However looking it up, a few websites list the function but clearly say that it isn't ANSI C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In pattern matching, how do you discriminate between literal patterns and variables patterns? I'm especially curious about how `true' and `false' vs `result' are handled.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is handled in the parser. There are two productions, identifier and reserved and the two don't intersect. Reserved identifiers like true and false match more eagerly than regular identifiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great work, and I will star it and follow progress, but I'd rather put more efforts into learning new ECMAScript 6 stuff. I will definitely look more into it after that though.

</comment><comment><USER11> That first example is going to scare a lot of people away. What's with the indentation and that semi-colon at the beginning of the line?

<comment><AUTHOR> That style of indentation is more common in Haskell libraries, and I'm not sure what you don't like about the whitespace.</comment></comment>


Open Source Shooter Nexuiz 2.5 Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/ Nexuiz is a free open-source first person shooter that runs on Windows, Linux and OSX. <comment><AUTHOR> I'm on OS X and downloading it now, looks awesome. Can't believe I hadn't heard about it before considering the first version was released May 31st 2005.

<comment><USER2> I can't believe I hadn't heard about it, either. Just tried it on OS X, and it's fantastic.

Have any other games been developed on top of this engine?

<comment><USER3> Yeah- Quake :) (Its actually based on an improved version of the Quake engine.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just downloaded it and played it for a short while. Looks really great and I also feel, that the sound improved a lot.

Definitively worth the download for the casual shooter-dose once in a while...

</comment><comment><USER5> If you watch their video on the linked page you see clear similarities to Quake III Arena. Neat!

<comment><USER6> Um. Nexuiz is based on quake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This may be the best game EVER, but games on HN? What's next?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I mean games are so technically uninteresting. They also involve no programming skill, compared to serving web pages.</comment></comment>