1000x Faster Spelling Correction: Source Code released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.faroo.com/2012/06/24/1000x-faster-spelling-correction-source-code-released/ <comment><USER2> If you compare to Norvig's first corrector you should also compare to the much faster [http://norvig.com/ngrams](http://norvig.com/ngrams) (which follows an algorithm I sent him).

Added: I'd guess the newer Norvig corrector is still slower, though it is more accurate (taking into account probabilities of different typos). There's a curiosity not mentioned in his article, that the new algorithm computes a very slightly different set of candidates. I only noticed the difference when I got around to checking these sets against each other for all the words in a sample document -- I'd meant them to be the same. Might be fun to check the OP's code this way too.

</comment><comment><USER3> The more interesting blog post that actually describes the algorithm is here: [http://blog.faroo.com/2012/06/07/improved-edit-distance- base...](http://blog.faroo.com/2012/06/07/improved-edit-distance-based- spelling-correction/)

<comment><USER4> This is really cool! It reminds me of BiDirectional BFS for path finding. In this case searching from both directions cuts down the search space by three orders of magnitude. Genius.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I notice the authors don't actually talk about accuracy. It's 1,000x faster, but what is gained or lost in terms of accuracy?

We can build a spelling corrector which is accurate most of the time and much faster than the Faroo implementation:

        def corrections_for(word)
          return [word]
        end

P.S. I added a gist here with some reformatting because I found it hard to read the code on the author's site:

[https://gist.github.com/fj/8393399](https://gist.github.com/fj/8393399)

The raw source is here:

[https://gist.github.com/fj/8393399/raw/7d4acd14db21dd0c7d802...](https://gist.github.com/fj/8393399/raw/7d4acd14db21dd0c7d802c7aee3000d8bffeeff2/gistfile1.cs)

<comment><USER6> It looks like what they've done is more along the lines of finding a clever trick to improve the runtime performance of _one of the common building blocks_ of a spell correction system (the part that given an input computes a set of candidate words that are close to it in terms of edit distance). It doesn't even seem to say anything about how to pick the best candidate once you've generated this set, so you can't really evaluate its accuracy as if it were a complete spell correction system. Norvig originally just used the straightforward "pick the most common word that has the smallest edit distance", but I didn't see them mention anything about any kind of strategy on their blog post.

<comment><USER7> In essence it appears to be a pre-filtering step before you look at the actual edit distance.

I'm also not sure how they benchmarked the other solution, as that clearly isn't optimised for runtime but for readability (it's a nice bit of code).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This approach is far from been perfect. A simple recursive implementation of Levenshtein on a Trie representing the dictionary would produce better performance!

<comment><USER9> I think you mean a trie representing the dictionary _plus_ edit-distance-2 (like the OP's algorithm does). There's no easy way to "skip" characters in a trie.

<comment><USER10> You can skip characters in a trie, at least towards the right-hand-end of a word, by recursing down every path. I've done so to good (and performant) effect, before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm really intrigued. Working in the OCR field, this is something that we do a lot, using inhouse libraries or even dedicated 3rd party solutions. I'll definitely give this a spin in the next couple of days.

I do wonder what happened to normal C# style here though. Had a hard time reading this, because 'suggestItem' or 'editItem' etc. doesn't _look_ like a type/class. A single uppercase/lowercase change and I stumbled a couple of times.

<comment><USER12> This algorithm seems to be based on edit distance so should be a poor fit for the OCR field, since OCR rarely swaps letters.

<comment><USER11> I'm not quite sure what you're saying here. Swap letters as in transpositions? Yes, correct. Usually the errors are simple replaces or deletes/inserts (which arguable is might include 'swapping' an 1 for an l).

But the greater field I'm working in doesn't hand you random OCR and that's it. Most projects here contain a way for typists to correct recognition mistakes or complete the missing pieces of information on a document. For that (-> human typist, often you have a database with valid/expected values for fields) transpositions aren't rare at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is exactly the approach described in: [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-36973-5...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-36973-5_34)

This is not new or not previously known. Sensational title.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ugg, in the first comment block one line is 128 characters long. The whole thing is abhorrent to read in the nicely-columnized blog post; you have to scroll to the right constantly.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. Bring back line-wrap, it's just stupid web design otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Has anyone explored using a covering code for spelling correction? (e.g. [https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/731.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/731.pdf) )

</comment><comment> alok-g Not directly related, but does any algorithm takes into account the layout of the keyboard? E.g., alphabets closer together may be more likely candidates for replacement...

<comment><USER17> Mine has but only for Turkish so far:

[https://github.com/ahmetaa/leblebi/blob/master/src/main/java...](https://github.com/ahmetaa/leblebi/blob/master/src/main/java/leblebi/spelling/SingleWordSpellChecker.java)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there such a thing as 'typo checking'? I'd like something that is able to correct accidentally swapped adjacent letters. I'm imagining something that looks at the sequence and timing of keydown and keyup events to make a correction rather than just the finished word.

<comment><USER19> Every phone for the last 10 years has had this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's interesting from an academic point of view, but in my opinion spell checkers that don't take into account the context in the sentence (words before, syntax, context) are so 1990...

I'd prefer to see research in this direction rather than speed improvement on a method we all know doesn't really work. Because your typo is close to one entry (an existing word) in a list (the dictionary) that you maybe never heard of before doesn't mean you intended to type this.

</comment><comment><USER17> I have a toy project (In Java and Dart) doing spell checking. In a 10.000 word test dictionary, for 1 distance it finds around 11.000 corrections per second. For 2 distance 1000 check per second. It does not use Language models yet. And there are room for performance improvement.

This is the Dart version: [https://github.com/ahmetaa/dart- spell](https://github.com/ahmetaa/dart-spell)

</comment><comment><USER21> I can't help but wonder how this would fare in a fast language with some optimisation and against real world spell check implementations...

Would we see the same performance increase in practice?

</comment><comment><USER22> where is the bottle neck in such code? why is this faster than say Norvig spell checker? [http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html](http://norvig.com/spell- correct.html)</comment>


Show HN: A rap song about language flame wars - <AUTHOR> Song url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVQEbD3NyDw
Quick background on the project: I'm a full time programmer and I love making rap music. I see a lot of humor in the profession/industry, and thought it would be fun to combine the two.
I'm always open to feedback on audio quality/topic ideas/ways to get more exposure/etc! I am also open to collaboration with beat makers/videographers/producers! <comment><USER2> Great tune and very funny! I especially like the last line of the intro (and chorus):

 _" My language brings all the devs to the yard

And they're like, it's better than yours

Damn right, it's better than yours

I can teach you, but I have to charge."_

There exists a fair amount of ML-driven rap song analysis & generation:

[https://www.bing.com/search?q=machine+learning+rap+songs&for...](https://www.bing.com/search?q=machine+learning+rap+songs&form=OPRTSD&pc=OPER)

</comment><comment><USER3> Always love when stdout makes a new song. Love your music!</comment>


The Bear Essentials: Developing a Commodore 64 Game, Part 1 (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.retrogamescollector.com/the-bear-essentials-developing-a-commodore-64-game/ <comment><USER2> This blog series is great! :-) Now i have an urge to code a Jump 'n' Run too :D

</comment><comment><USER3> The music of the trailer reminds me of Goonies II on NES.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNyFRhRK9kE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNyFRhRK9kE)

</comment><comment><USER4> 'bare' essentials?

<comment><USER5> The game main character is a bear and that appears to be the "working title" at least.</comment></comment>


Web Apps Are the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/long-live-web-app/ <comment><USER2> It won't happen for 3 reasons: 1\. Performance: web apps run on top of at least two additional layers. 2\. Features: OS makers will never make device features fully available to web apps in order to protect its users from malicious code. Read about FFOS privileged API to understand why even an OS that was designed to use web apps exclusively restrains features. 3\. Market acquisition/retain: MS became MS b/c Office only run on Win. Same deal with (popular) apps that only run on a given platform. Think BB chat "back in the day".</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg and his wife to donate $120M to needy Bay Area schools - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_25862641/mark-zuckerberg-and-his-wife-donate-120-million <comment><USER2> In light of this announcement, it's worth reading the New Yorker's fantastic piece exploring how Zuckerberg's previous $100 million investment into the Newark public school fared.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/05/19/140519fa_fact_russakoff?currentPage=all)

<comment><USER3> I'd some 2nd hand experience of how inefficient US school system is. Lots of districts and school actually have _huge_ budgets. Some in fact have more budgets than entire state of a 3rd world country. The way this goes is, people in charge would cry about not having money. Then they would get chunk of money. And then those people would come up with ideas such as free distribution of iPads to everyone, go to conferences all over, hire speakers that charge $20K for speaking fees, build stupid websites that no one cares to use, fly over consultants to brainstorm education models, hire programmers to build useless school specific apps, and so on. Soon enough money would be all gone and then cycle repeats. Actual students hardly ever gets benefit from this drama and they may continue suffering bad cafeteria food or inadequate science lab.

I guess inner city schools probably are in need of money and improving facilities but for many others more money is not a solution.

<comment><USER4> When I was a senior in High School in Toronto in 2009, our school had recently purchased a pallet of brand new $100+ calculus textbooks. The up-to-date textbooks were chock-full of politically correct pictures of minority students doing math in wheelchairs by typing equations into their latest-gen $200 Texas Instruments graphing calculators. On the other hand, they were missing topics such as integration entirely since they had been removed in recent versions of the Ontario math curriculum.

My math teacher, however, handed out the same tattered calculus books students had been using since the 1980's and forbid the use of calculators on all tests or exams. We learned math by proving theorems and solving word problems involving few, if any, numbers. I went on to study math in university and freshman honors calculus was a cakewalk compared to Mr. Sidhu's twelfth grade calculus and vectors class and his 30 year old textbooks.

I fail to see how any amount of money could improve education unless it's spent on hiring better teachers (which the unions would never allow). You really don't need much besides a chalkboard, a copier, and a high-quality, engaged teacher.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely. I went to high school in Bangladesh. Our school was barely equipped for internet and many students didn't have them at home. Textbook, teacher and homework. That was it. No calculators.

Started college in America with a better calculus background than most of my engineering peers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From a Scandinavian point of view this seems like such a detour. Why wait for billionaires to be so kind of fund schools when you could tax wealth and fund public and universal education? Why do the American people chose this way time after time?

<comment><USER6> Why such a huge accent put on taxing wealthy people?

Large portion of tax already goes into public education. Money is never enough, thus someone donating more money to education never hurts. But I fail to see connection between 'if we need more money, tax all those wealthy citizens'.

<comment><USER5> If you have a tax %, the wealthiest will automatically give more money but it will still be proportionally.

Also, not having too rich and too poor people is a goal in itself - to move wealth from rich to poor creates a society where everyone is equal. Equal people are more happy and peaceful, and that is what it's all about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I personally know teachers in the SJ school district who are truly passionate about helping their students succeed, but alas, the way in which these funds will be used I imagine will largely be determined by forces outside of the control the teachers of the frontlines.

While I, like many others here, do not expect these funds to make a noticeable difference in the under-served schools in the Bay Area, I do sincerely hope that our expectations are proven wrong.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem with public schooling in the US isn't funding, inflation adjusted per-student funding has more than doubled since the 1970s but educational outcomes haven't budged. Pouring more money into the top of the funnel is the same thing we've been doing for decades, and it hasn't worked. If you want to make a big impact in education you either have to spend money closer to the students or you have to build something disruptive.

</comment><comment><USER9> I always felt a donation to Newark with Oakland in your backyard was bizarre.

CMD-F for Oakland in this article... nothing.

<comment><USER10> He grew up closer to Newark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a lot of money when it's yours. Karma points to the Zuckerbergs.

In terms of running a school district, it would be nice. Sprinkled across a region...well it's rounding error. If the total cost (compensation, benefits, administration, facilities and transportation) per year of a teacher in the classroom is assumed to be $100,000/year [probably very very low for the Bay Area], then the total package represents 1200 teacher years - or 120 teachers for 10 years. And that's like one teacher per school district.

If it were used to bring new facilities online - it's about new high school with furnishings and equipment and no new staff. However, the money isn't going to fund new schools or keep teachers in classrooms (or get children to and from school, or provide Head Start, or after school programs for needy children whose parents and guardians work, or any of the really pressing needs of individual children and families in poverty). Nevermind, thinking about how the housing situation effects their lives - to get a sense of scale, maybe that's how to think about the numbers...moving a few hundred of the region's homeless families off the street and into owner occupied housing?

No. the money isn't going for anything that long term.

It's going to 'technology' \- a category where five years of use is a really long time = where staff salaries are a multiple of what teachers earn...and somebody has to select, install and maintain all those gadgets. It's a consultant gravy train.

The person who offers money in exchange for people doing what whatever they say is the served, not the serving. And with private individuals, unlike a government, the serving have no say whatsoever. This isn't a partnership. Zuckerberg isn't asking the districts what they need and seeing which of their needs he can meet. He's come up with a solution without the hard work of prioritizing the possibilities. That's unfortunate.

While I honestly admire the generosity, winning access to Exeter Academy and Harvard in the fast swimming semen sweepstakes doesn't make a person an expert in education at the scale of a school district, let alone a region. Even if one worked really really hard building a technology company.

</comment><comment><USER12> Throwing money at an already failing system isn't going to do anything. Look at how his donation to New Jersey played out. He's just putting money into a dying system. The entire educational system needs to be reworked completely. And the changes we need won't be made by politicians, we need hackers to do it.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is about as wateful as spending 3 billion on SnapChat! I haven't read the stipulations, if any, but feel most of it will be fretted away on administration. I never thought Mark was a brilliant person, and still believe he stole every original thought since he stole Facebook from the spoiled boys. Only in America? Yes--at a certain point--the rich do not know how to spend money. I'm for a government that taxes their money. If they don't like it move to Ireland. Yes--I know they moved, but when I'm president--when Ireland is attacked they would not be able to look to their home country for help. Sorry --but you wanted the divorce Deare.

</comment><comment><USER14> And now they have enough money? Until they run out and the next angel drops a wad of cash on them? That sounds like an absolutely stellar way to fund public education.

</comment><comment><USER15> That's one solution to Prop 13; I can't help but think that the $120M would be better spent trying to repeal that example of what's wrong with direct democracy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hopefully with better success than NJ, but I doubt it. #california

</comment><comment><USER17> I wasn't aware his wife was wealthy.

</comment><comment><USER18> Needy ... Bay Area ... _hahaha!_

<comment><USER19> The Bay Area is bigger than the HN bubble. There are some desperately poor school districts.

<comment><USER20> The federal government spent $683.7 billion in a year on defense alone. maybe they could spare a few million for the children. Relying on private finance to help schools simply will make matters worse from a big picture in a similar way to how Africa became addicted to overseas aid

<comment><USER21> Sigh.

Did you spend one nanosecond of time doing any research before firing off your oh so pious comment about sparing a few pennies to save the children?

A very quick google found me ed.gov, which is the US Department of Education. Here is an exact quote [1]:

       ED currently administers a budget of $67.3 billion
       in discretionary appropriations (including
       discretionary Pell Grant funding) and operates
       programs that touch on every area and level of
       education. The Department's elementary and
       secondary programs annually serve nearly 16,900
       school districts and approximately 50 million
       students attending more than 98,000 public
       schools and 28,000 private schools. Department
       programs also provide grant, loan, and work-study
       assistance to more than 13 million postsecondary
       students.

So it turns out that the federal government is _already_ spending more than "a few million for the children".

And in case you slept thru civics 101 class, the very next paragraph from the ed.gov website points out:

       That said, it is important to point out that
       education in America is primarily a State and
       local responsibility, and ED's budget is only
       a small part of both total national education
       spending ...

[1] [http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/index.html](http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/index.html)

<comment><USER22> Nobody actually thought that less than a penny was being spent on schools. What they were saying was that money that was currently being used for defense should be shifted to other things.

If you really wanted to attack the commenter, you could have compared rates of growth since 1980 in both defense and education, or compared defense/education spending ratios of other countries to our own, or anything other than what you did: posted the DoE's budget, a count of the number of students, schools, and school districts in the US, and a mention that most school financing is funded by local taxes as if it were something you didn't know was common knowledge.

<comment><USER21> So, someone is allowed to say "maybe they could spare a few million for the children".

But when I point out that the federal government is _already_ spending $67.3 billion, that's not enough of a counter-argument. That's "common knowledge", so I needed to provide extensive additional information to refute his statement?

I think we'll have to "agree to disagree" about this one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube Changes YouTube Heroes Video Stealthily - <AUTHOR> https://techraptor.net/content/youtube-changes-youtube-heroes-video-stealthily <comment><USER2> I, and I think most other folks, treated a youtube video as write-once, read- many resource.

That trust has taken a massive hit. You can no longer reply on the same video- id having the same content as before.

<comment><USER3> It's obvious that Google is able to change their own videos - and that it does it only to them and maybe premium partners (like Vevo, to upload higher quality versions of music videos). Nothing has changed to anybody until you show any proof that contradicts me.

<comment><USER4> You can make certain changes to any video and still keep the id. E.g. any arbitrary trimming or other edits allowed by YouTube's video editor, adding annotations to the video itself etc.

<comment><USER3> OP's fear and my reply were about changes done by Google, not edits done by channel owners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I imagine YouTube didn't feel like breaking a bunch of links by replacing the original video, but surely they should have gone with some sort of annotation directing people to a new video.

YouTube has the most confusing and maddening UXes of any service I've ever used, and it's stuff like this that keeps shortening my lifespan.

<comment><USER6> If only there were some sort of transport protocol, which could redirect requests for a resource to some other resource...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly they didn't address the "flag mass videos" which I thought was the more painful point

<comment><USER8> I think you mean "mass flag videos", and yes it still seems to be an easy avenue for abuse

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Vimeo has allowed source file replacements for years. Why is it always conspiracy theory with YouTube users?

<comment><USER10> Only corporate interests get to modify their files on YouTube. Everyone else has to delete and re-upload.

That sucks. And this shit's very close to the last straw.

<comment><USER11> I'm pretty sure anyone can edit and replace their videos on YouTube, it just resets the play count and comments.

<comment><USER12> No, not and keep the same video ID. The trick is to create a one-video playlist, and link to the playlist. Then you can update the contents of the playlist whenever you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams I think if a video was edited there should be some indication when it happened, only because if feels like the right thing to do.

But because the tools to edit aren't available to everyone, they probably don't want to make this become an issue so tried to do it stealthily.

At least they didn't remove a few of the dislikes in the process (although I have no evidence they didn't).

As for the Heroes scheme itself, I don't get it. I don't know what the motivation to put all that work in is, as there is no money in it and the rewards seem to only serve the tool, but not the individual putting the time in.

<comment><USER13> Because you can get achievements/levels/points. I think you underestimate the allure of something that has been well gamified. Especially as this is done somewhere the gamer already spends time, and may have a noticeable impact. It grants "power".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Appropriation of likes and comments: you liked or commented to a video of cute little puppies and after the edit you end up having liked a video of dissecting puppies. Replace with any other uncomfortable subject.

It happens on FB when somebody changes the name and goal of a group, hijacking the non active members.

<comment><USER15> > FB

Politicians also buy pages like those, in India.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This isn't news, of course they're able to change their own videos!

<comment><USER17> So various governments calling up Google to stealthily edit out video content they don't agree with or might be harmful to them, doesn't concern you?

Well that's fine, but please don't pretend this is a practice other people shouldn't be concerned about.

<comment><USER9> I would be more concerned about people trusting content uploaded to YouTube as something that has meaningful, long-term political value.

<comment><USER18> It's getting harder and harder to trust anything today. Downloaded files can be fabricated. So can be paper photographs. Or old newspapers.

Welcome to XXI century.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Possibly as important as subtly-revisionist history, it would be interesting to see thunderf00t and/or Gad Saad reaction videos to the subject matter of the Heroes program, because of the likely obvious empowerment of hyper- oversensitized, arbitrary, de facto censorship this program would enable. Sure YT needs to clean up spam, crap content and figure out how to deal with neo- Nazis, Alex Jones' and perpetual machine "inventors."</comment>


Last Day to Apply for a Free Hack-ation in NYC (via Grouper, Airbnb, Hipmunk) - <AUTHOR> http://joingrouper.com/hackation?ref=hn

<comment><USER2> I love this idea - I'll always do a bit of volunteer hacking in exchange for fun travel!</comment>


The Facebook Phone Isn't Dumb, You Just Don't Get It. - <AUTHOR> http://colinsidoti.com/2011/11/the-facebook-phone-isnt-dumb-you-just-dont-get-it/

<comment><USER2> Facebook was going to reinvent email, checking, local deals, etc. How many messages do get from facebook.com addresses? How often do you check into Facebook? What was the last coupon you bought from Facebook? Thought so. Until they re-invent something successfully (besides their original innovation), the Facebook phone remains a bad idea.</comment>


How two determined scientists built a world-class lab out of Radio Shack parts - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/how-two-determined-scientists-built-a-world-class-lab-out-of-radio-shack-parts/ <comment><USER2> Amen to this (it took me over a decade to realize I didn't actually want to be a professor, but an engineer): Hagopian, she says, is like a lot of people who work in the sciences, "geniuses with instrumentation in tech, [but who] don't want to be professors and give talks." She hopes that these "true heroes" can be celebrated in a more public way and their contributions recognized as being key to scientific progress. "I needed a whole book to explain the heroism of someone unusual," she said.</comment>


Ask HN: Who is looking for a technical cofounder? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the DFW area hacking on a cool project. <comment><USER2> What kind of skills do you have?

<comment><AUTHOR> Web, iOS, databases and currently dabbling in AR.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you think Silicon Valley (HBO) is funny or offensive? - <AUTHOR>

I just finished the third episode of Silicon Valley (HBO) and found it really funny, but wondered if those that "live it" also find it humorous or do they take offense? <comment><USER2> I don't take offense (nothing to be personal about, why should it) but I find the show pretty boring and awkwardly stupid if I was honest. I think it's extremely exaggerated but not in any way I personally find is good. It's not funny, acting seems awful, and it's nothing like Silicon Valley as I know it and I've lived here for almost a decade. To each his own I guess. I just stopped watching, it was too bland for my taste.

<comment><USER3> I tend to agree with you on this after having watched the first two episodes, but I'm keeping an open mind (I'm still keen to see what happens, so it hasn't lost me just yet).

The show just seems like this really weird combination where on the one hand it tries to be ultra-realistic (hey look here's a TED talk; here's something else mentioned in the netsphere! <insert other random SV/HN/tech cultural reference/buzzwords just because>) but then you have that stupid premise about the company inventing some kind of magically-impossible compression algorithm. Plus I think it was far too quick to show it's cards; BIG COMPANY vs LITTLE COMPANY?!?! REALLY WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT?!?!

Maybe I don't get the humor either but I can't decide whether the show is actually trying to be a comedy or a drama. It definitely seems much more like a drama to me. I remember genuinely laughing more at parts of 'Pirates of Silicon Valley'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've only watched an episode and I thought it was hilarious. I don't even think it's an exaggeration. I've worked for a company that went from a startup to a massive company complete with big name bands playing to 12 people. I think we've all seen bro-grammers. The roving packs of engineers was spot on. There really are tons of crazy vehicles... my main transportation is this thing: [http://www.larryvsharry.com/bike/bullittstraight.jpg](http://www.larryvsharry.com/bike/bullittstraight.jpg)

For the people who don't find it funny, you may in the future. I actually didn't think Office Space was funny the first time I saw it as it just cut too close to the bone. Now I see it as one of the funniest movies I've ever watched.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always liked the quote "Nobody has the right to not be offended." Certainly as members of a very privileged group few people have that right less than us.

</comment><comment><USER6> At this point... either. I am trying to like it but it hasn't happened yet. I am pressing on because I love Mike Judge, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm trying to understand what precisely there is that could be considered "offensive". Can you give us an idea of what inspired your post? I'm trying to grasp just what it is that would offend someone - is it the characters, the hooker, the drugs, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> IMHO it's important to be able to laugh at yourself, not take yourself too seriously, etc. I wondered how defensive folks from the Silicon Valley would be at a show that portrayed a segment of it in less than a favorable light. I've been pleasantly surprised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://youtu.be/fHMoDt3nSHs?t=3m32s](http://youtu.be/fHMoDt3nSHs?t=3m32s)

So what, be offended, nothing happens. You're an adult, grow up. Deal with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you live in Silicon Valley?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's funny, mainly because I feel like I recognize many of the archetypes among people I know or have met. It's only a slight exaggeration of what it's like here.

</comment><comment><USER10> FakeValley has a lighter flavor. But it is a long form read so its not the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's funny to me. I live in "SV".

</comment><comment><USER12> Obviously it's funny.</comment>


Code commenting? Try Business Commenting - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/avip/archive/2008/07/25/code-commenting-try-business-commenting.aspx

<comment><USER2> I tink it's dumb to remove the comments from code, although I agree with making symbol names more meaningful.

In the original post, the comment

// square root of n with Newton-Raphson approximation

Is removed and replaced with the improved function name of SquareRootApproximation(). A good improvement to the code, to be sure, but you lose the information about the code implementing a "Newton-Raphson approximation." The author just glosses over that.... Of course somepne will come back 3 years later and ask themselves, "which algorithm is this?"

So, to tie it back to the topic about business comments, yes, business comments should be there in the code as well. It always helps, and it helps locate customizations that, at first reading do not make sense.

So, comments or better-written code? Both. Redundancy is really good when it contributes to making code more clear.

<comment><USER3> It's good until you rewrite the function to use a different algorithm, but forget to update the comment. After that, it's a confusing contradiction that will slow down anyone who tries to read the code.

If the code is genuinely hard to follow without it, it's probably still worth leaving a comment, but recognize that there are real costs to balance out the benefits of commenting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't agree with this enough.

There are many reasons why code can be obtuse, from first pass un-refactored code, to performance constraints. Comments are totally essential and explaining why code was written in a particular way is helpful.

However Ari's point I think is even more critical. The code was written to solve some business problem, whatever it looks like it needs to continue to deal with that problem. I particularly like the pointer to a requirement ticketing system (Y! use bugzilla for this). That way you can see all the previous discussion around the business requirement without sullying the codebase.

I can't +1 this post enough.</comment>


Atmospheric carbon dioxide passes 400ppm - <AUTHOR> http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently-20738 <comment><USER2> Whenever I see this figure reported on a numerically literate site like HN, I always wonder how many readers know whether the thermal forcing due to CO2 is (a) exponential, (b) logarithmic, or (c) linear as a function of the ppm.

Upvote if you didn't know the answer and had to Google it? Downvote if everybody knows the answer and it's a stupid question?

<comment><USER3> In addition to that please raise your hand if you know why the answer to the above question is irrelevant for understanding climate change. Choose the best answer: A) CO2 is by far not the most important greenhouse gas B) the climate change is driven by complex interactions among (mainly) CO2, water vapors, clouds, precipitations, sea surface evaporation, air currents C) the thermal forcing mentioned above is determined assuming none of the interactions in point B) D) all of the above

<comment><USER4> By elimination, only (B) is true.

(A) is false - while water vapour has high radiative forcing, it is not "an important greenhouse gas" in the big picture, unlike what the coal industry reps say. This [1] should explain why. Methane and CFCs are far less important in aggregate (about 1/3 and 1/4 of the effect of CO2 respectively), although they are far more dangerous per unit of volume.

(C) is obviously false - even in the low level layman explanation in [1] you can see that they include a table with the forcings of various combinations (like H2O vapour+CO2); you can also see that the table is from 1978, so scientists have done that since way before you were born.

(D) false

[1] [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water- vapour-feedback-or-forcing/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your thoughtful reply and your link. I think that article is quite informative, and also well written. I guess it was not authored by the coal industry, but still it states literally "water vapor is indeed the most important greenhouse gas".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wanted to make more sense of some of these CO2 headlines, so I put together a scraper that generates live D3 charts of the most recent CO2 measurements from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and keeps them up to date.

Here's weekly: [https://www.numer.al/scripps_data/figures/atmospheric-c02-co...](https://www.numer.al/scripps_data/figures/atmospheric-c02-concentration- weekly)

Monthly: [https://www.numer.al/scripps_data/figures/atmospheric-c02-co...](https://www.numer.al/scripps_data/figures/atmospheric-c02-concentration- monthly)

And yearly (avg): [https://www.numer.al/scripps_data/figures/atmospheric- co2-co...](https://www.numer.al/scripps_data/figures/atmospheric- co2-concentration-running-12-month-average)

And the really scary one, similar to the recent XKCD, is the ice core data from the NOAA: [https://www.numer.al/noaa_data/figures/antarctic-ice- cores-r...](https://www.numer.al/noaa_data/figures/antarctic-ice-cores- revised-800kyr-co2-data)

(Fun fact, Postgres date fields underflow after 4713 BC, but the data actually goes back another 700,000 years!)

<comment><USER6> OT: All numer.al graphs are empty in my browser (I can see both axes but there is no line inside the graph). Using Firefox with Adblock Plus and HTTPS Everywhere. PS Temporarily disabling the aforementioned plugins did not help.

<comment><USER5> @mastazi Thanks for the heads up! I was testing in Chrome and Safari and missed that one completely -- apparently they allow for a circle radius ("r") to be defined in a stylesheet, but Firefox doesn't. It's cross-compatible now -- cheers!

<comment><USER6> Cool! Is numer.al a personal project of yours? Do you have a quick description of the features? By the way it looks good, congrats!

<comment><USER5> Thank you! Yes, I've been working on it as a way both to visualize and to stay current with some of the things I've been seeing in the news that are of interest to me, related to the environment, the energy sector, economy, etc. With the election coming up, I've been looking a lot at the types of indicators being mentioned in debates (crime, deficit, etc.).

At the moment you can "follow" figures and view a feed of the ones you follow in reverse-chronological order by the time of the latest update (I'm working on an "email me when this changes" option too), and you can drag the thumbnail graphs over one another and drop them to see two numbers compared. The comparison view also gives the option to make your own charts derived from existing ones: e.g., you can make a "per capita" chart by dragging anything over the Census figures and clicking "Proportion." The "downstream" chart will automatically update when its "upstream" charts do.

It's very much a work in progress, and if it proves useful, I'd love to hear more from you about the kinds of things that would be of interest to add to it!

<comment><USER6> Awesome! I've created an account so I can play with it. I believe that fact- checking is increasingly becoming crucial in the political discourse, especially given that many politicians are taking a "relaxed" stance towards it [1]. Luckily, at the same time, there are a number of electors who demand that candidates back their claims with sources [2].

One small and nit-picky suggestion: make sure that the non-www version of numer.al redirects to the www one (currently the former just doesn't seem to work for me).

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21706525-politicians-h...](http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21706525-politicians- have-always-lied-does-it-matter-if-they-leave-truth-behind-entirely-art)

[2] [https://xkcd.com/285/](https://xkcd.com/285/)

<comment><USER5> I would love to hear any feedback you might have! I completely agree with you about fact-checking. One mini-feature that's implemented right now is the ability to select a range in a graph and then copy/paste the URL, and when someone opens it in a new window they'll see exactly the highlight you made with the same % change displayed. It makes it really easy to back up particular assertions across a time series.

And yes, I was having some issues with the DNS because of the way Heroku interacts with root domains, but that should be sorted as of today and the apex numer.al domain should work just as well as www. Thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Missing from the article is any explanation of why 400 ppm is more significant than 350 or 500 or 600. Is this something educated people are already supposed to know?

<comment><USER8> My first idea was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change) , but that cites a 550 ppm threshold.

<comment><USER9> Based on the graph in op's article, my napkin math says if we maintain ppm increases we'd reach 550ppm around 2055.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What I don't get is why policy makers doesn't see this as an opportunity for economic growth. Just start taxing emission and invest heavily in green technology and we could be on our way to start a new industrial revolution!

<comment><USER11> The US government's investments in both solar power and clean coal have been either failures or ended up costs wayyy more and taking twice as long. Typical of modern government projects but still bad enough where just saying "throw tax dollars at green tech" isn't as straight-forward solution as it seems.

Why not reduce taxes for corporations building green tech? And provide R&D credit to pay the salaries of engineers working on the problem? Reduce capital gains taxes on investments in green tech? Make it easier for really smart immigrants to come to the US to work on the problem? Create a commission who's job is to review and simplify/eliminate/modernize regulations to reduce barriers to entry in the marketplace? etc.

There are lots of ways to incentivize industry to solve this problem instead of _adding_ more taxes and hoping the government works as a good VC.

The Canadian government tried (and is trying) the angel investor/VC thing here and it hasn't worked at all well. They do stuff like matching investments of other angels or giving loans to entrepreneurs. I'd much rather they made it easier for me to start and run a company by reducing the stuff they are already doing instead of doing more things... like pretending they are private investors. For example, they recently announced a Startup Founder Visa which I think is a great idea and a step in the right direction: [http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start- up/](http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start-up/)

<comment><USER12> Not really sure about that. The cost of solar has come down _dramatically_ and the technology has made huge strides in efficiency, largely because of the government subsidies. Sure, it's a financial failure for the government, but usually government subsidies are not intended to run a profit (lest the government be accused of profiteering or crowding out private investment).

<comment><USER13> Manufacture of PV panels is being further subsidized in China, something that generally isn't acknowledged in the West. If the CPC wasn't as paranoid of political change borne of discontent over smoggy cities, it's hard to say where PV prices would be.

Also bear in mind that assessing the 'cost of solar' is a toy problem as long as solar can't supply baseload power requirements.

<comment><USER14> Solar + battery storage can provide base load. It already does so in parts of Hawaii.

The cost of solar will continue to crater; it is not a matter of "if" we will run entirely on solar, but only "when" at this point.

<comment><USER15> entirely on solar? never. solar + wind + geothermal + hydro + nuclear? sure, someday.

<comment><USER16> 100% nuclear would work too but is politically unviable. Waste and the risk of accidents are a big problem, but at this point I believe they would be preferable to breathing in fossil fuel emissions all day.

<comment><USER13> Every existing light water reactor in the world could melt down like Fukushima and it won't come close the human disaster that will happen if much of the world's climate exceeds a wet bulb temperature of 35C for any part of the year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If only people weren't so scared of nuclear.

<comment><USER18> Nuclear at the moment isn't scaleable.

We already have more nuclear waste than is currently able to be stored.. and we're talking about stuff that is going to remain deadly for tens of thousands of years.

There's nowhere to put the stuff unless we start blasting it out into outer space or develop ways to use it for more energy.

<comment><USER19> Where are we putting waste from all the coal firing plants? Directly into the air!

<comment><USER20> Does not make it an excuse for nuclear either.

<comment><USER19> When you have to choose one of two options, then yes it does offset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to sound like a broken record, but for the average American, $15/person/year will plant enough trees to offset all the CO2 released into the atmosphere by that person: [http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/141034501197/climate- chang...](http://shindyapin.tumblr.com/post/141034501197/climate-change- solution-simplified)

Why aren't we doing it? Because nobody is forcing us, and very few are doing it voluntarily.

<comment><USER22> To extrapolate, then, we can solve this for $15 * 300,000,000 = $4.5 billion for the US? And if we are 25% of the world's carbon production (I'm pulling this out of the air) then we can do this for $18 billion? This is on the order of a 10th of a percent of GDP per year. Can it really be that low?

<comment><USER23> I don't see how this could work. You need a place to plant all of those trees and let them grow and then store them so that they don't decompose and release CO2 back into the atmosphere. That's a lot of land and it seems like if you continually harvest trees without letting them decompose you'll need to fertilize the land to keep the trees growing well.

<comment><USER21> My calculations assume a tree will sequester the carbon for 10 years. I'm sure we can do a lot better than that, but even with these assumptions, it's pretty cheap to sequester the CO2 on an ongoing basis.

<comment><USER24> Timber buildings.

<comment><USER21> Yes, and also food (fruits, leaves, etc), medicine, wooden furniture, clothes ([http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/will-your- next-t-...](http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/will-your-next-t-shirt- be-made-from-trees.html)), and many other items.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I recently started reading "Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air"[1], which is available as a free book, and it's been a wonderful introduction to reasoning about alternative energy. The author also gave a talk a few years ago that is very approachable[2].

[1] [https://www.withouthotair.com/](https://www.withouthotair.com/) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFosQtEqzSE)

<comment><USER26> It's interesting, but his solar PV assumptions are pretty outdated in the book. He talks about utility scale solar being 10% efficient, where as it is around 17% now. Even at 10% efficiency, he says it's feasible, but too expensive. We are now at 2.42 cents per kWh unsubsidized for utility scale solar, in the best case. He says solar PV is 4x as expensive as conventional electricity production, which is clearly not true anymore. And the trend says PV will be 4x cheaper than coal within a couple of decades.

<comment> sid-kap It would be cool to maintain a fork of the book with updated figures. Is the tex source available anywhere?

EDIT: What seems to be the latest version of the source files is hosted at [http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/](http://www.inference.eng.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Yikes! At least it's good for the plants.

I feel optimistic, however. We are on the cusp of really efficient solar panels and excellent batteries that will finally make it practical to power homes and offices from sunlight most of the time.

Electric vehicles are ramping up and it's very likely that in 20 years, the average passenger car on the road will be electric, or at least plug-in hybrid with 100 mpg or better.

Ultimately, we'll stop burning so much stuff. Will it be too late, or will the relatively sudden dropoff in CO2 production affect the PPM? Should be interesting to watch, for those of us who live long enough.

<comment><USER28> > At least it's good for the plants.

There are plants (for example hop and wheat [1]) that cannot grow well at high CO2 concentrations.

[1] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/328/5980/899.abstract](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/328/5980/899.abstract)

<comment><USER29> That may be the key. Save the hops.

<comment><USER30> SAVE THE BEER

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We are in deep shit.

We can change, or we can die. Continued emissions at our current rate _will_ kill us. We're already teetering at the precipice of feedback loops and may be committed to some.

At this point, we need a Manhattan-Project-level effort to end carbon emissions as we know them. Else we just have to hope that colonies on Mars and the Moon will be able to sustain the species while we nuke ourselves over resource wars here on Earth.

The problem is worse than most people know. It doesn't help that we have a segment of the population here in the US that is willing to ignore all evidence on the issue.

<comment><USER32> An earth even 10 degrees warmer than now will be much more habitable than the Moon or Mars ever will be.

<comment><USER33> Why is that? I imagine a lot of species would have to move too, but basically, if we all move north (or south, depending on where you are relative to the equator)... why doesn't that work?

<comment><USER32> The temperature range. The atmosphere held in by the natural magnetic field. The liquid water.

<comment><USER34> _The atmosphere held in by the natural magnetic field._

Please explain. I always thought it was gravity.

<comment><USER35> Mars has nearly no atmosphere because the solar wind blew it away. The magnetic field acts as a shield that prevents the atmosphere from leaking out into space, basically [1].

[1] [http://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cluster/Earth_...](http://m.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cluster/Earth_s_magnetic_field_provides_vital_protection)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like to imagine the Earth fighting back in some crazy Jumanji way. Plants start growing super fast and breaking apart buildings... stretching out into the sky to suck up the carbon.

<comment><USER37> Silliness. We're not hurting the earth. We're just making it a bit less hospitable for us. It's bad, but it's not the apocalypse that some will have you believe.

<comment><USER38> > It's bad, but it's not the apocalypse that some will have you believe.

Maybe. Your statement masks the deeply serious potential consequences.

Yes, it's not going to look like fire-and-brimstone hell on earth; volcanoes spewing ash into the darkened, lightning-filled sky, mile-high tidal waves drowning major population centers, the ground splitting open and swallowing cities whole...

But what happens if another migrant wave washes over Europe consisting of starving people whose land is inhospitable due to drought-induced crop failure? One large wave from Syria has provoked considerable social unrest and has contributed to the rise of multiple nationalist, far-right parties. How much more instability can that region take before a war occurs? What would a world war in the age of nuclear weapons look like?

Or, what if we hit the scientifically-plausible scenario of runaway climate change resulting from multiple positive feedback loops triggering melting of methane ice on the seafloor, and arctic thaw allowing decomposition of large amounts of organic matter? If the average global temperature rises by 6 degrees C, the hottest days will be so hot that they will have the potential to outright kill many staple crops. In addition to the sea-level rise, large areas of land will be uninhabitable due to heat. As with the above scenario, what happens when large groups of people are starving and can no longer survive where they are currently located? How much instability can human civilization tolerate?

...and that's not even the worst case scenario. What if the temperature _really_ takes off and we experience an anoxic event[0], where the oxygen level in the ocean depletes and they begin emitting highly poisonous hydrogen- sulfide gas? Such an event is linked to high temperatures, high oceanic acidity and high levels of atmospheric CO2. This event would kill the majority of life in the ocean, and due to the combination of the hydrogen-sulfide gas' effect on land animals plus the damage it would cause to the ozone layer resulting in increased UV exposure, this would kill the majority of life on land, too.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Australia's short-lived carbon tax reduced emissions. Despite the overblown media claims at the time, it didn't impose a massive cost on consumers, nor hugely impact GDP.

[https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publica...](https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publication/ccep_crawford_anu_edu_au/2014-07/ccep1411.pdf)

<comment><USER40> What happened then? Right-wing came back to the affairs?

<comment><USER41> The Liberal party (the conservatives) got in power denying climate change, and one of their major policies was scrapping the carbon tax ("It's costing you money!!"). They also defunded CSIRO.

Another policy they successfully passed was a law that makes it illegal to report on abuse, including sexual abuse, of children if that child happens to be a refugee.

We also were in the middle of building a taxpayer-owned, nationwide fibre-to- the-home network. It wasn't just a theoretical plan, it was in progress, and 17% of homes already have it. They cancelled that, too, instead opting to spend the same amount of time and more money on DSL, and have actually been installing _slower_ internet in some people's homes than they already had.

Most electorates were very happy with these policies. In July this year they were voted in for a second term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Permanently*

*Until we act to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere through various carbon capture methods

<comment><USER43> is carbon capture actually viable? a completely carbon-free capturing method sounds like perpetual motion or free energy.

<comment><USER44> Like trees?

<comment><USER45> The terrestrial biosphere makes a terrible place to store carbon, as you really can't store that much of it, and eventually it has a tendency to burn and release it all back. If you wanted to grow a bunch of forests/crops, and then bury them and grow new stuff I guess that might work. But not as well as pumping new CO₂ underground or into the deep ocean (below the carbon compensation depth, where it will dissolve existing carbonates and buffer the ocean).

Also forests make the Earth's surface darker, thus decreasing albedo and potentially increasing global warming.

<comment><USER46> Or just use the wood to build things! Has the added benefit of reducing the use of carbon intensive materials like concrete and steel.

<comment><USER45> Good idea. Now tell me how you plan to offset the carbon emissions from land use change... You weren't planning on building dense housing with wood, were you?

<comment><USER30> There's a group doing that.

They can make some pretty impressive engineered beams these days. The fire intensity required to destroy them, they claim, also structurally damages concrete, so it's not the issue most of us take it to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This makes me so unbelievably sad.

<comment><USER47> No do not be sad, fortunately we have a robust, state of the art, highly refined and efficient device for removing cO2 from the atmosphere, they're called trees.

<comment><USER48> Too bad they're only good for about 30 years or so before falling over and leaking it all back out again, and nobody is going to be seeing it as good RoI to bury them in the ground unfortunately.

<comment><USER47> Right, well I don't know what you mean, leaking it back out. Surely not atmospheric carbon dioxide. At any rate, bamboo also.

<comment><USER48> When the tree is decomposed by bacteria and fungus, most of the sequestered carbon is released back in to the atmosphere. Sorry for the vague wording :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> In the post-apocalyptic science fiction novel _The Death of Grass_ (and the movie _No Blade of Grass_ ), a virus threatens all the world's grass crops. Some governments begin plotting to nuke (their own!) cities to reduce food demand.

There is a worrying analogy to global warming, where governments might consider nuclear war to reduce carbon emissions (from other countries). Though at the point global warming is really bad, it would probably be too late to make much difference.

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

<comment><USER50> And as a bonus you would get a Nuclear winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Just because we're a proto-Arrakis doesn't mean we need to panic. But we should really start investing in spice.

<comment><USER52> No, switch to Heinlein. We should be investing in boost, and becoming belters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Worth reposting: What can a technologist do about climate change? [http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/) (2015)

</comment><comment><USER54> The Newsroom s03e03 climate change interview:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0uZ9mfOUI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM0uZ9mfOUI)

</comment><comment><USER55> Migrating to emissions-free or at least CO2-neutral power sources is slow and expensive, but it must be done, of course.

What I wonder though, is why we can't capture our CO2 output and prevent it reaching the atmosphere in the first place. Is it simply prohibitively expensive or difficult?

<comment><USER31> There are no market forces which would bring CO2 capturing technologies to the forefront. i.e. it's cheaper just to dump it in the atmosphere.

Something like a carbon tax would very quickly make CO2 capture relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What a common people can do to help to fix that?

<comment><USER57> Some ideas for positive action:

"What can a technologist do about climate change?" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10622615)

(Spoiler: Be engaged, be influential, use your high-leverage superpowers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> And it's not only climate change but there's also a negative effect on human cognition: [https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels- dire...](https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-directly- affect-human-cognition-new-harvard-study-shows-2748e7378941#.eefaybx2e)

</comment><comment><USER59> I haven't researched this enough to know how stupid it is, but, just throwing it out there:

Why don't we make giant phytoplankton farms? [1]

[1] [http://nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankton- bre...](http://nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankton-breathe- freely/)

</comment><comment><USER60> North America, Europe and China are slowly wiping out everyone and their own future generation.

</comment><comment><USER61> Scare tactics/propaganda. Whether the article is rightly or wrongly indicating something significant, I can't tell.

1\. Chart shows carbon dioxide going from light red to dark red. The color scale is wildly different from the measurements (388ppm -> 404ppm -- 4%; assuredly higher, but not their drastically darkening RGB depiction (247,211,211) -> (134,3,8)

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me the percentage change is irrelevant. I'm a fairly ignorant outside observer of climate science with an interest in the presentation of this material. I saw [http://xkcd.com/1732/](http://xkcd.com/1732/) but many people will assume heuristic from [http://xkcd.com/605/](http://xkcd.com/605/) I don't think fossil fuel is going away until prices are adjusted to the externalities. Thanks for the downvote, made me think a little harder about the importance of--(jeez, it is hard to say "politically correct" with sounding sarcastic).

2\. Cherry picked a solitary data source: "At Mauna Loa Observatory, the world's marquee site for monitoring carbon dioxide" \-- Is there only one? Couldn't the article have provided a global average?

3\. Animated image (with unhelpful caption) provides a little movie that looks like the northern hemisphere was on fire for the month of March 10 years ago.

This is terrible stuff. Not for passing the "symbolic threshold", but for the beautifully crafted subtexts in presentation.

HN, I welcome these threads.

<comment><USER62> For comparison, when Boston got record snow and everybody froze to death in early 2015, the temperature was:

> ... the average temperature [of Boston] in February [2015] was 19.0 °F (−7.2 > °C), which was 12.7 °F (7.1 °C) below the 1981–2010 normal, making it the > second-coldest month of any month all-time, behind February 1934.

So the average temperature in Feb 2015 was 266K, only 2.6% below the normal value of 273K. Sheesh.

Measuring change in absolute percentage _is_ misleading, when your chance of survival strongly depends on it being in a narrow prescribed range.

(You die if your body temperature increases by 2%.)

<comment><USER63> _(You die if your body temperature increases by 2%.)_

98.6 * 1.02 = 100.57, not life threatening.

<comment><USER64> 98.6 F = 558.3 R; 1.02 * 558.3 R = 569.5 R; 569.5 R = 109.8 F</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why CLisp is under GPL - an email thread between Richard Stallman and Bruno Haible - <AUTHOR> http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL <comment><USER2> stallman is a good lawyer</comment>


15 Jobs, What I've Learned – I Don't Want To Do "This" - <AUTHOR> http://www.cameronkeng.com/2012/07/17/15-jobs-what-ive-learned-i-dont-want-to-do-this/

<comment><AUTHOR> Curious to see if anyone else had any tidbits or advice from their experiences in a variety of jobs.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you debug yourself? - <AUTHOR> I start feeling lazy, tired, and cannot concentrate recently, and that has a huge negative impact on my performance. I have tried to get myself more sleeping, but that doesn't help.<p>How do you debug yourself? <comment><USER2> Diet is bigger than people realize. Do adjustments to the foods you eat and see how it plays out the next day or two (takes a while for digestion to process) also if you are somewhere where the climate varies throughout the year, you may need to adjust what foods you take in based on the weather.

Be wary of foods changing their ingredients too, i.e. aspertaime doesn't do good with me so I avoid diet sodas, now some generic brand non-diet ones contain it - check the ingredients. Also when you feel lousy think back to what you consumed the last day or two to find a pattern.

I didn't see mention of exercise, that's important oo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tons of potential causes, some quicker, easier, or lower risk than others to rule out.

Easy candidates: dehydration; low blood sugar; junk food diet; nervous energy; boredom; need socialization; need a change of scenery

Moderate difficulty: insufficient sleep; need more sunlight or fresh air or nature; lack of intellectual challenges; lack of creative outlet; need for exercise; diet that isn't just junk food but isn't well balanced or healthy either

Difficult: depression, anxiety, or burnout; longer term or more subtle nutritional deficiencies; loneliness

</comment><comment><USER4> It's either nutrition or environmental. Get out of your current environment - go on holiday. Stop work. Re-evaluate everything. Most people never do and their life is over before they know it.

People spend a crazy amount of time thinking something is wrong with them but it's a reaction to the environment you're in.

</comment><comment><USER5> You press F5?</comment>


Ask PG: Thoughts about "Free To Learn" - <AUTHOR>

I am reading Peter Gray's Free to Learn. It's a refreshing look at schooling. You have expressed thoughts about "how to fix schools" in H&P. What do you think of Peter Gray's book? <comment><USER2> Unschooling - I believe that's the philosophy that a successful YC startup (Hacker School) has imbibed in helping programmers get better at their craft.

Although I haven't read the book (yet - sample on Kindle), I have tried to apply principles of unschooling to my own learning process.

Background: I'm 25 with a bachelor's degree in CS and currently leading the platforms & analytics efforts of a tech startup. Stellar academic and co- curricular record till high school.

The degree took 6years (I withdrew two years in the middle) instead of the usual 4, and I think one of the reasons (although not primary) that contributed to that was sheer boredom. I am undoubtedly opinionateed here, and what I speak of is a personal experience, but I just couldn't get the point of what they were quizzing us on. The books were great, the content amazing, the lecturers okay, but sitting in a class of 60 only to be asked in the exam: "List the five things about..."; "How does this work, explain with a diagram"; etc.

Although one can argue this is probably more reflective of the university I attended, I would argue back saying that I've attended 3 of them to get the degree, each time looking for a challenge and failing miserably to deal with the mundane teaching and exams.

The books became my lectures and the authors my gurus of their domain. I found the right peer group to discuss problems and developments in the field but more often than not this was done over a drink or 5. That's how things worked out for _me_, my lecturers from 2 of my alma maters (so to say) now invite me for guest lectures (1.5 years out of a degree).

I didn't do anything special. I just skipped classes to watch videos from MIT OCW (pre-Coursera/Udacity/edX) on anything at all that interested me (while of course retaining an emphasis on the semester subjects) and read the books they recommended.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I hope the online education is going to be a big contributor here. This book, however, puts several things in perspective -- one of which is making children of almost any capacity increasingly responsible for themselves without having to go to schools. Peter compares schools to prisons. This may seem extreme, but the (copious) evidence he provides is eye-opening.

<comment><USER2> It may seem extreme to some, but I'm actually willing to hear what he backs it up with, especially after your comment.

"making children of almost any capacity increasingly responsible for themselves without having to go to schools" \--> this is _pure gold_. It took me years of boredom to finally push me to control my knowledge path and not have to rely on other institutions.

I feel the best thing to teach someone is "how to learn". MIT even had a course on this, the concept of which I really appreciated (Disclaimer: I didn't actually get through the course, I was enrolled in too many Coursera courses at the time ;)

And if you're helping children understand the concept early on, I can't help but wear rose tinted glasses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is the first I've heard of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> The message in the book, based on my understanding from online reviews and summaries, resonates with me. I usually have a hard time with school and I've found that if I study on my own, under my own control, and that I get an opportunity to figure things out when I need or want to, I will usually do well when the material is formally taught. University doesn't really offer this for me because there's always a necessity to progress.

<comment><USER2> As mentioned in my other comments, I am quite similar in this approach. I've never done 'academically well' after high school but this is the exact approach I use to gain whatever knowledge I need for mental stimulation/curiosity/to get the job done.

Where I live, however there's a strong emphasis on degrees - the brand value of your institution defines you unless you prove otherwise, a chance which is rarely given and even more rarely chosen (due to personal reasons I guess - family, finances, general need for stability etc).

Degrees do work well for some people however, and I really respect the students who manage to make the most out of university education and the experience.

I guess the issue just comes down to scalability again, and people like you and I are not the masses (in this context).

I'm actually interested to know more about how exactly you go about learning something - would love to share ideas! [Email and Twitter in my profile]

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just ordered it off Amazon. From reading the description it seems like I already agree with the premise of the book so it might just reinforce my existing beliefs, but it seems interesting nonetheless.</comment>


"Wish there was an app" Twitter bot for lulz - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/#!/WishThereWasApp

<comment><USER2> awesome</comment>


Show HN: Publish an RSS feed of your life - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone,
I've been building a less bad way to share photos and videos out to friends and family: https://vzg.me
The motivation is personal for me since...
1. I'm not comfortable using Facebook properties
2. Group SMS/email gets out of control with more than a few recipients
3. I don't want to convince my friends and family to download a new app or figure out shared albums
So I created a system that lets my network subscribe to individual people in my family and get updates via email, SMS, or RSS at the frequency of their choosing (immediate, daily, or weekly). Subscribers just opt in like a newsletter; they don't have to download or sign up for anything.
Here's an example of a public feed https://vzg.me/t/abe-lincoln
And its corresponding RSS https://vzg.me/api/t/abe-lincoln/rss
A few features I think are cool:
1. If your subscribers opt for SMS, they can push photos and comments to your feed by just texting them to the vzg phone number. Basically grandma texts a photo of Timmy and it automatically gets sent out to all of his subscribers (after your approval).
2. You can link up your Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube accounts to have anything you publish there get added to your vzg feed and notified out to subscribers
3. You can manage multiple feeds with your account and have different sets of subscribers for each. I set up separate ones for my kids to have a nice visual timeline for each of them and hopefully someday pass along ownership of their feeds.
I hope some of you find it useful. <comment><USER2> Since this post was heavily upvoted by a known spam service, we've banned this account and related accounts.

If you want to promise never to do this again and to tell your friends that it will get them banned on HN if they do, email email@example.com and we'll consider unbanning you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting! It might be nice to add the ability to include regular text too, like blog posts that broadcast out.</comment>


The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (Just Between You and Me) - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me <comment> java-man I wish everyone were able to express their thoughts that clear!

(crawls in the corner and sobs)

</comment><comment><USER2> (2006)</comment>


My programming apps with one button on my Mac - <AUTHOR>

First of all, I don't like having allot of apps on my Dock, so every morning before I start working I open each app from Spotlight. So this morning I thought...mmm, let me make this easier...<p>I just made an Automator Utility to open my apps with one click, opening TextMate, Terminal, Itunes, Tweety and iChat all at once. I started Automator > new Application, added Launch Application for each app, saved it, gave my new "app" a name, and added it to my dock and boom! So this is my simple "app" to keep my dock clean, and open all my apps at once. Im so proud :-) <comment><USER2> Is there any difference from using System Preferences-> Accounts-> Login Items?

</comment><comment><USER3> You know, that is a pretty good idea. I just might have to do the same thing. Thanks!</comment>


Programming language should be simple - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dhananjaynene.com/2010/08/my-ideal-programming-language/

<comment><USER2> In 40 years there has not been very much improvement. The same concepts of decade old languages are implemented in newer languages.

OP: > Programming should be simple. And it should be accessible. And when I mean accessible I mean people with IQ of approximately 100 should be able to write programs.

He's looking for the wrong tool for the job. We'd need great IDE's for this to hide all the stuff making the app complex.

</comment><comment><USER3> Similarly, open heart surgery should be simple and easy to learn.

I don't mind if theres a learning curve, so long as it is approachable (ie, a language geared for web development shouldnt require a degree in type theory) and, much more importantly, consistent. I don't mind complex tools for a complex job, though.

Having said that, I agree with what he is saying in general. Simple languages lead to cheaper maintenance (and fewer bugs), which is often more important than more powerful (but more complex) features. Of course, if we can have the features without sacrificing simplicity, then all the better. Consistency helps here.

<comment><USER4> Apples and Oranges. Open heart surgery is not most--notice I say most-- programming jobs. Nor do most software bugs carry the same sorts of penalties as screw-ups in major surgery.

This is why programmers aren't sued and surgeons are.

There is a huge niche in programming languages for non-professional/semi- professional programmers without computer science degrees. This niche is currently unfilled. Basic used to do the job. Python used to, and still wants to, but it keeps moving up the ladder in complexity.

Lua looks most competitive in this regard, I think. One main data structure, fast execution, room to grow without feature creep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These requirements are too stringent. Something better give, or what he wants is a Java that is both more featured, simpler, and better documented.

1\. Must run on a very specific instruction set (JVM).

2\. Must have (require?) lots of documentation

3\. Be both Object Oriented, and Functional.

4\. Must be able to automagically do multicore.

5\. Must also contain a full type inferencing system.

6\. While prioritizing human readability over consistent syntax.

7\. And constrain itself to a very specific call stack layout.</comment>


One Company Dared to Compete with IBM and Macintosh Computers in 1984 (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://singularityhub.com/2012/10/11/one-company-dared-to-compete-with-ibm-and-macintosh-computers-in-1984-check-these-awesome-retro-commercials/ <comment><USER2> Compaq was nothing more than a PC clone, back in 84 there were other companies that really did make a different computer and tried to compete. Atari and Commodore come to mind.</comment>


What happened to our site today (Balsamiq) - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/V3jwaL1Q <comment><USER2> Context: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3075405>

Balsamiq's comment there to the effect, "It's fixed." (It does not link the parent pastbin item, wherein they describe their course of action going forward.):

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3076281>

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, the link you posted is the context, not a duplicate submission. If you post just a link, people will assume my submission is a dupe and flag it.

<comment><USER2> Attempted to clarify with an edit.</comment></comment></comment>


Unborn Baby Gets Facebook Profile - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/08/unborn-baby-gets-facebook-profile.html <comment><USER2> Babies born today will have an interesting timeline. Their entire personal history will have been online from the time they were born, if their parents are at all tech savvy.</comment>


The future of programming is visual - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/inside-the-bubble/what-the-fuck-is-bubble-a919ef59a2f1 <comment><USER2> 35 years ago I was getting into coding for the first time on Commodore Pets and ZX81. I read about The Last One [1] in the computing press in 1981 and thought that maybe the world won't need programmers. Well, the world needs programmers more than ever, since demand for software is only increasing. It's nice to hear that the dream of user generated systems is still alive. We've had many iterations, from the The Last One, through Hypercard, Fabrik, Scratch. It's a powerful vision, which is why people keep chasing it. But it can only address well defined niches. Of course we have had a very powerful end user software authoring system for some time. It uses a visual, grid based, functional programming system and has powerful database and charting features. It's called Excel.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1293278/what-became-of- th...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1293278/what-became-of-the-last-one)

</comment><comment><USER3> Saying that visual programming is the future is like saying that comic books will eventually replace all that boring 'tl;dr' walls of text.

The truth is - people _think in text_. Visual abstractions are only suitable for a tiny subset of things we're thinking about, and the rest is just too complex to be expressed in anything but a natural, complex language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we think in text or, more accurately, a language. But only a small percentage of us can think in code, yet software businesses will continue to come online at exponential momentum. Having visual, drag and drop components is more universally accessible. If computers actually began to understand how we think (and by "we" I mean including those of us who aren't engineers), then the future of innovation is open to everyone and that's ultimately the vision of Bubble.

<comment><USER3> > But only a small percentage of us can think in code

We always think in code. A plan for a day is a _code_ (and nobody ever use graphical diagrams for it). A cooking recipe is a code (plain text, never a diagram). A legal document is a code (I wish some of them were diagrams, but a plain and unobfuscated English would have been even better). Pretty much any form of communication is code. A one-dimensional sequence of words.

Yes, the existing coding languages are crap, they are simply not abstract enough and not flexible enough. And this is what must be fixed. Representing the same broken abstractions, but this time in 2D diagrams, won't fix anything, or even make things worse. Been there already, with flow charts and all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is terrible. No, a "Bubble" programmer couldn't have made Facebook back in the day. The vast majority of the difficulty in programming doesn't lie in the _representation_ of code, but in the actual underlying problems you're trying to solve -- and in knowing whether computers can solve them at all, and how. Textual code is not the problem here.

Bubble is either too limited (meaning no, you cannot build the next Facebook with it) or simply a visual skin over the fundamental problem that is software development. If Bubble is powerful enough, then not anyone will be able to use it to build complex systems, no matter how fancy the colorful UI you slap over it.

It's as if the author of the article thought the complexity of Facebook lies in choosing which color to use for the "like" button...

</comment><comment><USER5> The future of programming could be more visual, but still very textual. It's not a binary decision to make.

</comment><comment><USER6> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10233410)</comment>


Top Emerging Technologies of 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2019/ <comment><USER2> Here's a quick summary list. Each topic is written by a different author and gives an overview of the current state and possible future directions. Well worth reading the full article.

\- Biodegradable plastics

\- Social robots with artificial intelligence

\- Nano-scale lenses for miniature optical devices

\- "Intrinsically disordered proteins" (IDPs) to produce drugs against cancer, Alzheimer's

\- "Smart" controlled-release fertilizers for more sustainable agriculture

\- Collaborative telepresence, virtual gatherings

\- Food tracking and packaging with sensors and blockchain, to improve safety/quality control and reduce waste

\- Innovations in nuclear reactors and fuels

\- DNA data storage

\- Innovations for utility-scale energy storage (flow batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, "gravity storage")</comment>


White House Announces $1B Plan to Create AI, Quantum Institutes - ajay-d https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-announces-1-billion-plan-to-create-ai-quantum-institutes-11598432400 <comment><AUTHOR> Did you hear? All the sudden Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and Halliburton are at the forefront of AI and Quantum computing!

<comment><USER2> The plan is pretty specific. $140 million to USDA. AI in Agtech is a highly underrated idea and deserves more exploration. $625 million to the work at "Energy Department's Argonne, Brookhaven, Fermilab, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley". NSF direct funding towards universities, per quote "The institutes will be hosted by universities across the country: the University of Oklahoma, the University of Texas at Austin, University of Colorado, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of California, Davis, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

Private funding in AI is flourishing - we absolutely needed this for our public and federal government institutions.

Like anyone else, I hope this White House leaves by November, but this is a unicorn effort they deserve praise for.

<comment><AUTHOR> More funding is good. Although of the 625m at the nat labs contractors like Battelle will take ~300m or more.

This type of feast/famine short term topical funding is usually a disaster. Investigators will pursue the money, trying to shoehorn whatever they're previous pet project was, then the funding will dry up and the main net effect will be some shallow projects. Renewable grants are the blood of science.

A single center openly funding as many investigators as possible for 10 years would be much more effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is the state of the art of quantum computing these days? How effective is it compared to classical computing? How many qbits can you get in a production machine these days? Are people using it for serious work, or is it all (or almost all) still research?

I'm not trying to passively prove a point. I'm genuinely asking. I figure HN, collectively, will know the answers about as well as anyone...

<comment><USER4> There are annealers that have thousands of qubits (DWave), but they are low coherence and very different from the gate model qubits in use by Rigetti, Google, IBM, which are themselves lower coherence than the ions being used by IonQ and Honeywell.

It's all very much in the research phase so far. AFAIK there's no reason to pay for time on any of the available systems (all <100 qubits unless you're using a DWave annealer) unless you're doing basic quantum computing research or benchmarking. Folks are working hard to make the small, noisy systems we have now do something useful, but the real moneymaker will be error-corrected and fault tolerant qubits. Those may be available perhaps between 5 and 50 years from now, depending on who you ask.

The Serious Work right now is to build scalable quantum architectures and continue to pursue error correction and fault tolerance. There's also a shitload of work on optimizing control, devising classical architectures that will mate to the QPU, and so on.

Unfortunately, this announcement is mostly just moving around some of the 1.2 billion earmarked for the National Quantum Initiative back in 2018 or so. Unclear to me if any new money is being added to the pot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Meanwhile, China is investing so much that no one can even keep count.

<comment><USER6> Last amount disclosed was in the area of $25B

<comment><USER7> I think it's just a contrast of approaches.

If you look at the portion of funding which is public vs private, I would assume in the US the public funding is the minority, whereas in China the public funding is the majority.

Total public and private investment would probably be a better metric for comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Need 100X that budget

<comment><USER9> If it were up to me, I would save money by bringing most of our troups home and keep them safe, and also use the money saved from closing many of the military bases in 180 countries to double down on tech investments.

What makes this almost an impossible situation is that we really need to do two things at the same time:

1\. strong laws to stop the surveillance capitalists dead in in their tracks (read Surviving Surveillance Capitalism - a must read book, and basically a work of art in the sense that it is so beautifully written)

2\. develop tech in a way that maximizes the benefits to society while mitigating the risks

<comment><USER10> After ww1 we went home. Then ww2 happened. We now have bases everywhere to encourage others to play nice.

Attacking a country is one thing. Attacking a US base is another.

Agree or disagree this a good portion of why we have so many bases.

Lots of other reasons, good and bad I'm sure. But keeping the peace is the driving force.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very good plan.</comment>