What if we could live for a million years? - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-if-we-could-live-for-a-million-years/ <comment><USER2> In the Arthur C. Clarke novel _City and the Stars_ , human civilization has survived a billion years and human lifespans could too, theoretically. There, most humans live as long as they can until boredom overtakes them. Then then they sort of clean up their memories -- keeping only the most valuable memories and deleting the rest -- and then go into hibernation for thousands of years. Society has reached a steady state so very little changes over time, but just enough for a person to rise from hibernation and start a new life.

I suspect that limits of human psychology will probably result in a society like this, if we were to ever stretch our lifespans into millions of years.

<comment><USER3> >until boredom overtakes them.

What's wrong with being bored? I only live 100 years and I spend the majority of my life being bored. I want to be immortal so I can spend eternity being bored.

The people who claim they don't want to be immortal because they don't want to be bored don't get human psychology... Humans generally prefer being bored over being dead, period.

<comment><USER4> I don't think anyone really knows what or how people's thoughts would change if they were to live to a thousand years (or a million, whatever).

Given that, I think there are probably different feelings which we all call bored. There is bored in the immediate term, bored in general, and ennui.

<comment><USER3> That notion goes both ways. How do you know we'll be so bored that we'd give up immortality? Extrapolating from information we already have I'd say we get plenty bored with about 80 years of life... I think we'd do well with another million.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not a serious article. There are many topics they could have discussed in depth but the biggest miss for me is that they did not talk about human psychology. Human brains are not evolved to handle a million years of noise and notifications. There would be an incalculable amount of damage to a person's personality from all the ups and downs and vagaries of life.

So many of our physiological systems and the way our consciousness works will have to change unrecognizably that the being that exists after these transformations can no longer be called human. If a thing thinks, it will be finite and want to be.

<comment><USER6> >Human brains are not evolved to handle a million years of noise and notifications.

Are you sure? I mean it could be argued we're not evolved to handle 50 years of noise and notifications given that we do not keep all that data but forget quite a bit of it. But then the response is that we handle it by forgetting it - what's the proof that the mechanisms that allow us to handle 50 years by forgetting will cease to work with significantly more data?

<comment><USER7> Right, I think human brain forgets most of the things anyways, so I don't see why it'd not continue forgetting old memories over time!

<comment><USER6> Well I can make a hypothesis that the human brain will not be able to easily forget centuries worth of memories given the thing that after a certain age people often report having clearer memories of longer ago events than newer ones and that these memories will come back to them periodically, will over time the long term memories be filled up?

my personal feeling would be no, you will keep getting that memory of the person you liked in high school when you're 600 but your probably won't remember anything particularly clearly past 20 years before and the stuff from your 70s-80s will be totally gone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Imagine trying to get ahead in the company when you're behind a 500 year old middle manager that isn't going to retire for another 999,500 years?

I'd think society would have a lot of trouble moving forward on issues when you don't have the great equalizer of the coffin to kill off old ideas.

<comment><USER3> Just quit. Who cares. You're stuck in this mindset of eternity under management. You're immortal. Do the vanlife for a month, Live on an island, start a business. Chill.

<comment><USER9> You're not immortal, you still need to eat and stay warm and get medical care. In fact if anything now the stakes are even higher to achieve a certain sustainable dollar amount so that you can 'retire' (i.e. live sustainably off passive income for a million years).

<comment><USER3> Stakes are lower. More time to achieve a certain net worth. Once I reach that threshold compounding growth takes over. Two centuries is more than enough to achieve this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You'd have a 50-50 chance of dying from an accident in 960 years in current US society. My guess is government would get more serious about safety if we live less than percent of our lifespan.

<comment><USER11> We'd be so cautious we'd never leave our homes in the first place. When there is that much at stake any risk is going to be too much. People will call each other daring for walking across the street or leaving a window open.

Also, the whole world would be owned by the few people that were there since the beginning, with them seeking rent on everybody else. You'd be hip deep in debt to the ruling class from day one. Forget about democracy in a setup like that.

<comment><USER12> I see it as more hopeful than that. With a long time to think about things, I think people would cooperate to organize society better. If their lack of organization for 100s of years leads to no improvement in quality of life, eventually they'd do something about it.

Also, with that much time, differences in education would smooth out, and even people who started with a small amount of resources would eventually be able to build up to financial independence, which gives labor more negotiating power.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > What would change if we could live for even just a million years? ... First, > tenure in academia would have to be capped. Universities would have to limit > faculty appointments to a century at most in order to refresh their talent > pool and mitigate old-fashioned education and research dogmas....

> An extended life experience could make us wiser and more risk-averse since > there is much more at stake....

> Increasing our fertility period in proportion to our life span will bring > the risk of overpopulating Earth. With the current birth rate per person, > the number of million-year-old people could increase to the untenable level > of a hundred trillion. Moderating that would require a public policy that > limits the birth rate to the desired level.

So basically, social ossification and stasis. You'll also have voters who made up their minds on all the political and social issues half-million years ago, and see no reason to change their minds (just like you have people who did the same a half-century ago).

I think any kind of extreme longevity scenario will result either ossification or a re-invention of death under another name (e.g. a memory reset). A finite thing can only go on forever by settling into some kind of repetitive cycle, otherwise it will quickly exhaust its memory.

</comment><comment><USER14> > Increasing our fertility period in proportion to our life span will bring > the risk of overpopulating Earth. With the current birth rate per person, > the number of million-year-old people could increase to the untenable level > of a hundred trillion. Moderating that would require a public policy that > limits the birth rate to the desired level. Alternatively, travel ports > could launch people into space to balance the birth rate and maintain a > terrestrial population suitable for the available supply of food and energy.

Wait, does it imply that the current population trajectory is sustainable?

<comment><USER15> It absolutely is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Look at the amount of comments from the cult of death in this thread.

Making so many arguments why they so desperately want to die. Oh how meaningless and boring it would be.

But given they could live 1000's of years not one would choose to end it at 80.

Where does it come from? Deeply rooted pessimism?

I for one couldn't be more happy to live long enough to see us take to the stars. So much happened in last 1000 years who is to say next 1000 will be boring.

</comment><comment><USER17> This thought experiment crosses my mind everytime I read the crazy ages of the characters in the book of genesis, the obvious consequence is that space travel and technology would be the dominant science since the earth and this solar system is way too small and boring for creatures who live that long.

</comment><comment><USER18> You'd have Mistborn-esque tyranny with God Kings that last virtually forever (unless assassinated).

</comment><comment><USER19> I've wondered what the relationship between long term interest rates and the human lifespan is.

Even if you lived only, say, a thousand years, just putting a little money into some reasonably safe investment would result in enormous wealth over time. Surely if everyone did this, the amount of wealth would tend to drive down rates.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Universities would have to limit faculty appointments to a century at most in order to refresh their talent pool and mitigate old-fashioned education and research dogmas." \- has the author realized that a century to a million years is the same as 3 days to 100 years?

<comment><USER4> Anything 'lifetime' would have to be re-thought. Warranties. Sentences. Appointments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I recommend watching "The man from earth". It's a film literally discussing this same idea.

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Imagine what the world would look like if our natural life span were a million years, but people could still be killed by accidents or homicide at the same rate as today. Our attitude towards risk would almost certainly change.

</comment><comment><USER23> Death is the only sure thing.

Even if we could live for billions of years, the Heat Death of the universe will eventually reap us.

So we must understand and embrace Death before we massively extend our lifespan. This is only one of the many things we must do.

<comment><USER12> We've only known about quantum mechanics for 100 years. Let's give us another couple hundred years of investigation before we decide there's no way out of the heat death mess.

<comment><USER23> But should we?

<comment><USER12> Should we what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If we could live a million years it would allow us to produce a better society by making ultra long investments.

Looking at a century's candlestick chart for a stock would be something like looking at a weekly chart today.

<comment><USER25> I think suicides would go way up. People would get bored with life after a couple hundred years. If everyone lived that long life would stagnate into a boring grayness.

<comment><USER26> How do you know they would? Greenland sharks live for 300-500 years and they seem to enjoy eating fish well into old age: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark)

<comment><USER11> They're not sentient at our level. That makes it doable, if you are aware of being bored it is a totally different thing than if you are not.

<comment><USER26> Thankfully, I'll never get bored of making cheeky comments. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe something like this [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/17776)

</comment><comment><USER28> Bad ideas die one generation at a time.

I'm all for a limited lifespan.

<comment><USER11> Not only, that death serves as a moment in time when there is some redivision of resources, and as a way of making room for the next generation(s).

A million years * the per-capita-per-annum-consumption and your best contribution to society and the environment would be to jump off a bridge. Nobody would have children for fear of further dividing that meager pie.

Earth's population would skyrocket.

<comment><USER12> Let's worry about pushing the average lifespan to 150 before we start talking about the end of civilization. Let's increase our lifespan a little bit and see what happens, rather than theorize about it.

<comment><USER11> 150 isn't 'a little bit'. That's disruptive if there ever was something disruptive. A little bit would be to raise the average lifespan by 5 years. Prediction: all of our pension systems would collapse immediately.

<comment><USER12> But that's solvable by people working longer if their health lasts longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I recommend people watch Ad Vitam (it's on Netflix). It shows a society where ageless/disease-free immortality has been achieved.

</comment><comment><USER30> Euthanasia would become compulsory, like a draft, so that people who build personal power would have leverage and patronage.

</comment><comment><USER31> sense of time would be very different if you was even a thousand year old. One day would feel like five minutes.</comment>


Waymo Applies to Put Autonomous Cars on CA Roads Without Safety Drivers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/13/waymo-reportedly-applies-to-put-autonomous-cars-on-california-roads-with-no-safety-drivers/ <comment><USER2> This is forward progress. Waymo has worked towards this point for years, reporting every disconnect and minor fender-bender. Now they're going to test, cautiously, in Mountain View.

As we've seen with Uber and Tesla, the "safety driver" doesn't add much safety. The "safety driver" is mostly there to drive manually in situations where the automation stops the vehicle and asks for help.

<comment><USER3> Why do they not need the safety driver? i'm sure google can afford them. i just don't see the benefit of no safety driver. especially living in mountain view and seeing the recent tesla crash.

<comment><USER4> Because it demonstrates to senior management and the public the progress the team has made.

It also lowers barriers to an eventual widespread uber-like service. That service wouldn't be financially viable with safety drivers in each car.

<comment><USER5> > Because it demonstrates to senior management and the public the progress the > team has made.

Public is not asking them anything. Public does not sign up being part of a beta/alpha or what ever test, for sake of "senior management"...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original article from the SF Chronicle has some more info. Specifically, it contains the following very strange paragraph

 _Sources said that Waymo does not plan on operating its cars remotely — even in difficult situations — but it will remotely monitor them during tests. If one of the cars encounters something it doesn't understand, such as complicated road construction, the car will contact Waymo for help recognizing the situation. After human testers give it feedback, the car will then decide how to navigate the situation._

[https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive- Waymo...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Exclusive-Waymo- appplies-for-no-driver-testing-12832425.php)

<comment><USER7> _If one of the cars encounters something it doesn't understand, such as complicated road construction, the car will contact Waymo for help recognizing the situation_

Hopefully well in advance of actually hitting anything, but therein lies the problem: what does it do if it's moving at speed and figures out that it doesn't know what to do? If it continues moving, it might hit something, and if it tries to stop suddenly, it might get hit and cause a multi-car chain collision. Imagine you're following a car on a highway, in a situation where no other cars are around, a situation in which a human driver would practically never stop, and suddenly it brakes to a stop _very_ rapidly because of some perturbation in the road that confuses it, but a human would have no trouble with. Drivers are taught to look beyond the car in front and try to anticipate what it might do; and something so contrary to expectations is going to lead to problems.

<comment><USER8> What do you do if you're driving along and realize you don't know what to do? Do you slam on the brakes for an emergency stop? Probably not. A safer choice is to remove throttle input and consider gently applying the brakes while you figure out what's going on, and check to see if there's enough space behind you to brake harder or to pull off to the side of the road.

I would expect a fully autonomous vehicle to constantly be planning for emergency and graceful stops, and to slow down if it doesn't have a confident plan for both types of stopping and forward progress. It should also have plans for when critical equipment fails, such as sensors or actuators as well as normal car systems like brakes, tires, engine, steering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People will die if GM/Cruise takes the safety driver out of the car. Anyone familiar with Cruise Automation's software will agree to this statement. Hopefully Waymo has done a better job.

<comment><USER10> Interestingly not the first account I've seen on here bad mouthing Cruise: [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tmpnam1234567](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tmpnam1234567)

<comment><USER11> And:

[https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-cruises- bumpy...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-cruises-bumpy-ride- the-limits-of-self-driving-cars)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why in the world! are people allowing this without making the cars pass any sort of road worthiness test?

For example, make a robotic dummy walk in front of the car without notice. Does the car break and avoid a collision?

Such basic things can be formulated into a test and have the cars pass them before allowing them (even with a driver) on the roads..

It amazes me that people just stand by and allow these "tests" to happen within an unsuspecting population...

<comment><USER12> That's exactly what Waymo does...

>"We've staged people jumping out of canvas bags or porta-potties on the side of the road, skateboarders lying on their boards, and thrown stacks of paper in front of our sensors," Waymo said in its report.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/way...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/waymos- ceo-on-fatal-autonomous-uber-crash-our-car-would-have-been-able-to-handle- it/2018/03/25/4cc97550-3046-11e8-8abc-22a366b72f2d_story.html?utm_term=.42e52d4957bb)

>For media day, they put on three of them. In one, a Honda convertible abruptly cut off one of the Pacificas just past an intersection, and the Pacifica braked to avoid it. In another, a car obscured by two parked vehicles suddenly backed out of a driveway. Again, the Pacifica came to a halt. The third was a faux moving-day scene, with a couch in the street and boxes tumbling into the lane, just as another car approached from the opposite direction. The Pacifica knew better than to swerve into the car. It braked until the coast was clear.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/a-g...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/a-glimpse- inside-the-secret-site-where-driverless-cars- undergo-20000-tests/2017/11/04/874e083c-bf15-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.e3fbef88d5ee)

<comment><USER5> > That's exactly what Waymo does...

People should not care what Waymo does.

There should be an independent body to frame these tests (with enough random stuff thrown in), and have the cars pass them.

It is quite meaning less to make the cars pass tests created by the company itself.

And if you see the videos, none of the people were ever in real danger. Say, where is the test when someone crosses when the car is going to 45mph? I am not asking to put real people in real danger. But just make some robotic dummy (even something on wheels will do), and make it cross without notice infront of the car when it is doing 50+mph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great to see. Lets get the revolution going.</comment>


Pinterest's 25 edge cases - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlineaspect.com/2013/08/13/pinterest-edge-cases/ <comment><USER2> This hits pretty close to home. When I was helping with engineering over at 500px I was shocked to learn that one of our biggest API consumers was Pinterest. "How can this be?" I thought, "Do they write a custom API consumer for every major site?!" Turns out, yes, they do, if it will make the experience better.</comment>


When Your Boss Is Just Not That into You - <AUTHOR> https://auth0.com/blog/when-your-boss-is-just-not-that-into-you/ <comment><USER2> If your manager can't communicate these issues to you they're probably not a good manager in the first place. The manager ducking out of 1-1s, what other problems were they avoiding in the company.

<comment><USER3> good point. its always the managers fault 75% of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People remember how you made them feel.

If you're always whining and complaining and everything and everyone is a problem then that's how people remember you.</comment>


Ask HN: How many coffee do you need per day to get your work done? - <AUTHOR> I tried to get off coffee several times (1-2 months without coffee) but it seriously affects my day to day performance. At work, home, etc. I need at least 2 coffees per day to get through the entire day and be functional.<p>How about you, how many coffees do you drink per day? <comment><USER2> I stopped drinking coffee because it was making me feel too anxious. I also stopped caring about my total productivity per day for the same reason. Instead I make sure I just do _something_ per day.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that, though, coffee makes that "something" less painful. Which is why I decided to keep drinking coffee beside the anxious side effect that I get as well. The trade off was worth it.

<comment><USER3> ymmv, and this could be placebo for me, but NALT[0] eliminated my post-coffee anxiety.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/BulkSupplements-N-Acetyl-L- Tyrosine-P...](https://www.amazon.com/BulkSupplements-N-Acetyl-L-Tyrosine- Powder-grams/dp/B00ENQYI1E)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have two double shots of espresso and one tea all before midday as I found caffeine after midday was causing interrupted sleep with vivid dreams.

I was similar to you in that ive given up coffee but found I was unproductive without it.

I've found the before midday approach has worked well for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Same here. Any coffee after 3pm would impact my sleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Down to 0. I have a cup of decaf in the morning since I need to override my behavior of having something hot and bitter in the morning. In the afternoon, I'll have some hot barley tea. Over the weekend, I'll treat myself to one regular coffee that's more on the fancier side.

I decided to stop caffeine because I was getting random headaches in the evenings. Also, it would be very hard to forgo that afternoon caffeine when I started to get sleepy.

With this new routine, I feel much more in control of my mind and can escape the roller coaster of energy that caffeine puts me through.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had the same issue with soda. I felt like I had to have a 20 oz soda first thing in the AM to focus and get things done.

If I had a tight deadline I would drink them non-stop throughout the day.

I started setting up green tea at night in sealed cups in the fridge so they were cold in the morning when I would typically have soda. (if you're in to coffee try hot green tea).

Basically I transitioned over to green tea from soda. Now I don't even drink tea everyday. I've been drinking water with a few table spoons of lemon juice and ginger tea with apple cider vinegar when I feel like I need a pick me up and I have just as much energy as drinking soda except without the calories and the crash.

Also having a small snack when I would normally need a soda helps.

I will occasionally have a soda with pizza but I've tried to avoid that by having beer or a carbonated non-sugar drink instead. If I have one soda the next day I'll start craving one again.

Good luck. Give it a shot. You don't need caffeine like you think you do. Especially the strong/sugared variety.

</comment><comment><USER7> 0\. As long as I get 6-7 hours of sleep I can be pretty productive throughout the day. Have you tried going for a walk during your lunch hour?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was working for a company that had access to a nice trail where I used to walk for 30 minutes every day after lunch. It helped digesting but didn't change much in terms of productivity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I drink two cups of black tea in the morning, and sometimes also a soda if I really need to be productive. My sleep schedule is pretty abysmal: 5.5-6 hours on weekdays, 9 ish on weekends. Nonetheless, I seem to be able to focus for at least 10 hours per day of good work. The other two of my twelve daily hours at work tend to be pretty low quality.

It used to be that I'd be a useless blob when I got home. I seem to have mostly fixed that by standing for 5-8 hours each day at work. Only downside is I've become acutely aware of how uncomfortable some of my shoes are.

</comment><comment><USER9> 5 to 7 standard size cup/mugs per day. I drink it black, no sugar or creamer. I used to worry about the health effects. But studies like this [1] suggest that it their might increased health benefits up to about 5 cups a day. So I have decided to enjoy my coffee and just keep an eye on it to not interfere with sleep.

[1] [https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/182/12/1010/2195423/Ass...](https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/182/12/1010/2195423/Association- of-Coffee-Consumption-With-Overall-and)

</comment><comment><USER10> How's your sleep? Have you tried recording your sleep or using a sound activated recorder to see if you have sleep apnea? (Not sure what the recommended method of self detecting sleep apnea is)

When's the last time you had bloods taken? There might be a thyroid thing going on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually did these 2 exact tests not a while ago. Thyroid was negative but they recorded that I have short apnea under 10s. Which put me in the mild apnea group, where you don't necessarily need further investigations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> FYI. It took me eight months to truly quit and not miss it.

(Fast forward two years and I'm hooked again. Turns out adding a few drops of caffeinated coffee to your decaf cup will gradually snowball into full caff cups.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I love coffee, in past, I would drink 5-6 cups of black coffee everyday.

This year I am cutting back on coffee because I think it messes with my stomach. I am down to 2 cups in the morning to get going. This leaves me a bit foggy in afternoon. I try to take walk breaks when I feel a bit foggy.

My goal is to stop drinking coffee regularly. (I still love coffee too much to give it up completely. And I can never give up relaxing/reading/writing in coffee shops.)

<comment><USER13> Strong black tea can be a nice middle ground to get a bit of caffeine without going full bore, especially in the afternoon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 2-4 espressos per day

1 in the morning after my breakfast 2 during the work day (one usually around noon (sometimes I skip this one) and one after lunch) 1 after I come home from work before dinner (sometimes I skip this one)

</comment><comment><USER15> Zero. If you _need_ coffee you probably lack adequate sleep. That being said, coffee smells, and tastes delicious, so it can be nice to have one in the morning.

</comment><comment><USER16> I usually keep it at 3-4 cups. Any more and I get a little jittery and it becomes hard to focus, any less and I'm a monster. (Yes, I have a problem. My wife agrees.)

</comment><comment><USER17> n+1 where n is the number of kids I have. Currently, n=3.

</comment><comment><USER18> About a gallon of coke zero so that's roughly 4 classic cups in terms of caffeine content. Never tried actual coffee, though.

</comment><comment><USER19> I drink two cups of coffee and one cup of half decaf/half regular during the work week.

</comment><comment><USER20> About 4 cups. But I can admit that my sleep schedule is pretty awful too.

</comment><comment><USER21> One double espresso in the morning + 2 espresso shots throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER22> Three cups of coffee and maybe four diet cokes.

</comment><comment><USER23> 0 cups</comment>


Microsoft Research launches WorldWide Telescope, Scoble cries - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/8301-13515_1-9942537-26.html

<comment><USER2> I still don't understand what made Scoble cry... perhaps just a fanboy thing

<comment><USER3> [http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/14/microsoft-researchers- make-...](http://scobleizer.com/2008/02/14/microsoft-researchers-make-me-cry/)

This at least explains the reference. I certainly don't understand why he felt so overwhelmed by this of all things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK, now let's have someone make a cool screencast so we can easily skip to the "OMG it's full of stars" awe stuff and not have to waste time futzing with silly Microsoft user interfaces.

</comment><comment><USER5> I will stick to the Google version primarily because of its platform independence. I have no interest in Windows applications.

<comment><USER6> May be Wine can run it?

<comment><USER7> Windows within Parallels Desktop (OS X virtualization package) won't even run it. It needs hardware 3D acceleration apparently. I doubt Wine will work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's neat, but not _that_ much better than Google Sky. Perhaps slightly better imagery, but I don't see why this would make Scoble cry if he had previously seen Google Sky.

</comment><comment><USER7> Apparently if you have another installer called "setup.exe" on your desktop when you try installing WWT it actually tries to install that instead.

[sigh]Windows[/sigh]

</comment><comment><USER8> wow, it's breath taking

the tours are cool!</comment>


Xorg-free Wayland Live CD that starts directly to Wayland - <AUTHOR> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-May/009475.html <comment><USER2> I like how the free software community is very loose. Lots of jokes in the documentation. Python and Norwegian Blue parrots, for example. But naming your distro Rebecca Black Linux, might undermine credibility just a tiny bit. (But obviously you aren't hurting anyone, so: nice job on the wayland live cd!)

<comment><USER3> Isn't her name also copyrighted? I mean, isn't it illegal to call your distro "Rebecca Black"?

<comment><USER4> Not copyright, but possibly trademarked. Even in that case, it only applies to use in areas in which the mark is already being used. So while it would be trademark infringement to sell albums under that name, releasing an OS would be fine unless someone else is also planning on doing the same thing and applied for a trademark in that area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to see how Canonical's announcement of Mir seemed to spur new interest around Wayland and an acceleration of its development, generating a new wave of announcements (i.e.: Gnome deciding to go "all wayland" by 3.12, etc).

<comment><USER6> That sure seems to have been a kick in the pants. More specifically, it spurred interest in using the Android HAL in the underpinnings of a Weston compositor.

Having gotten that kick in the pants, I hope they can all just get along and resolve resource and schedule issues between two projects that look functionally identical now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > I wrote a new login manager with Bash and Zenity and Expect (and Script) > that fully runs on a Wayland server (weston).

(!)

</comment><comment><USER8> Downloading 1.7GB from sourceforge is hard. Any chance of torrent?

<comment><USER9> I'm curious why it's 1.7 GB in the first place.

It initially sounded like a convenient way to quickly try out Wayland, but there must be a lot of unnecessary software included with it, thus making it quite inconvenient to try out.

<comment><USER10> I do have lots of dev packages and lots of Wayland related software is installed, like the Wayland version of mplayer and gstreamer, and GTK, and Qt and SDL.

Lots of people are asking about the 1.7GB, so I brought back my smaller ISO in my buildscript for the next version, which attempts to remove all dev packages and some other stuff:

[http://rebeccablackos.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/rebeccablac...](http://rebeccablackos.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/rebeccablackos?view=revision&revision=1266)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What is waylands security like cf xorg?

</comment><comment><USER12> So, what exactly is Wayland?

<comment><USER13> _Wayland is intended as a simpler replacement for X, easier to develop and maintain._ \- <http://wayland.freedesktop.org/>

Currently it's

Display <\- Compositor <\- X11 Client <\- X11 Server <\- App

Wayland:

Display <\- Compositor (Wayland) <\- App

<comment><USER14> So no more X11 apps over the internet (or network?)

<comment><USER15> > No, that is outside the scope of Wayland. To support remote rendering you > need to define a rendering API, which is something I've been very careful to > avoid doing. The reason Wayland is so simple and feasible at all is that I'm > sidestepping this big task and pushing it to the clients. It's an > interesting challenge, a very big task and it's hard to get right, but > essentially orthogonal to what Wayland tries to achieve.

Source: <http://wayland.freedesktop.org/faq.html#heading_toc_j_8>

<comment><USER16> _To support remote rendering you need to define a rendering API_

See, this makes no sense to me. The truth of this statement holds if I substitute s/remote/local/.

The fact is, Wayland manages a shared resource via a well-known API. This is the very definition of client/server architecture. There's no additional technical hurdle to be crossed to support network transparency.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the resources it passes around are handles to buffers in memory (as little copying as possible). Not so trivial to pass around the network (well, most networks). I suspect a VNC-like approach would work easiest and most generally, but performance would suffer (though I've found situations where VNC beats remote X11, even over very low latency connections).

<comment><USER16> My understanding of OpenGL (which could be wrong) is that buffers are only transferred when loading textures onto the graphics card, which generally only happens at startup, and is time-consuming anyway (since they must find their way from disk to graphics memory).

So memory buffer handles can _still_ be passed around, since clients rarely touch the raw data. (Indeed, this is exactly how X11 works.)

<comment><USER17> You can send OpenGL over the network, but I suspect sending the rendered window contents will use less bandwidth. So that's what Wayland is going to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Works pretty well in VMware Fusion, Kudos!</comment>


InfiniSQL - <AUTHOR> http://www.infinisql.org/ <comment><USER2> A few things (I'm the author of InfiniSQL)

1) I include keystore-like stored procedures in the source. They do get/set with integer key and string val. I haven't done thorough benchmarking, but I expect them to outperform the other benchmark I've published, which is quite a bit more complex workload

2) (camus2) agreed, nothing ever dies in IT. _But_ roll back the clock a few years. How much noSQL would come into exisence if there was a free xzySQL that scaled across nodes, was fast, etc. I believe the answer is that there'd be very few network-based noSQL for operational workloads if that had been the case.

3) jwatte: Yeah! Jagged edges too!

4) stephen24: Also, I intend to change the license from AGPL to GPL next time I push out some code. No excuse not to try it out.

5) siliconc0w: There's an architectural write-up at High Scalability: [http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/11/25/how-to-make-an- in...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/11/25/how-to-make-an-infinitely- scalable-relational-database-manag.html) \-- I believe that the actor model architecture is distinct in InfiniSQL.

6) diwu1989: Yes and no. Yes, MemSQL is more mature. No,

(a) I'm not sure how MemSQL scales horizontally (especially since that was a feature added after v1 of their code was released), and,

(b) MemSQL isn't free software

7) itsbits: for now InfiniSQL is mainly for hackers and early adopters--the dependencies are pretty clearly documented but it requires some effort to work with in its current state

<comment><USER3> Please consider the Apache License or some other license instead of the GPL. There are many organizations that cannot use any flavor of GPL, including LGPL, for legal reasons. You can debate the wisdom of that amongst yourselves, but alas, that's how it is in some places.

(And I really want to try this...)

<comment><USER4> "There are many organizations that cannot use any flavor of GPL, including LGPL, for legal reasons"

To be clear, there are no legal reasons I can think of that would ever prevent internal use of LGPL/GPL software.

You mean these companies (Apple, for example) have policies.

Policies like this often change because someone decides the cost vs risk tradeoff is worth it.

Changing a license because of bad policies of certain companies is not a great reason to change a license (in fact, it's, IMHO, an actively bad one).

You really should only change licenses if you find the license you chose does not suit the _needs_ of your users (and policies are not really needs).

<comment><USER5> I find that to be a strangely ideological response. Your prospective users' requirements are up to them to decide, not up to you. They're the ones who are going to decide whether or not to use your software.

<comment><USER4> ?? Of course they are up to the users to decide, but policies and needs are different. I'm curious, how do you think policies like this change?

Most of the developers i've seen will happily sell you a commercial license if you don't like the software. After paying for it enough, most companies start to ask "well, actually, how risky is this, really?", and this is how policies change.

In any case, my other point stands - there are no actual _legal_ reasons to not use LGPL/GPL software internally. It would have _zero_ legal impact.

<comment><USER5> If InfiniSQL was an established incumbent where the choice was between living with GPL and buying a commercial license I would agree with you, but it's a newcomer where the main choice is whether to use it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm supposed to use the perl api for user and schema management? Perl holds a special place in my heart, but I'm not too excited about managing my database with it. How about an interactive console?

I'm currently using MySQL, how similar is the SQL syntax?

<comment><USER2> On backlog to fix. But InfiniSQL is for hackers and early adopters at this stage.

The SQL support is documented ([http://www.infinisql.org/docs/index/](http://www.infinisql.org/docs/index/))

<comment><USER7> Hackers and early adopters are using Perl in 2013? Sure you aren't off by 12-15 years?

<comment><USER2> This you? [http://favstar.fm/users/hipsterhacker](http://favstar.fm/users/hipsterhacker)

Also, the main application is in C++. A python script launches the C++ daemons. Perl scripts are quick and dirty tests and deployment scripts. The main hacking I'm looking for is with C++, and I don't care so much if the other stuff gets re-implemented in some other language.

<comment><USER7> Nope, just a guy that fucks with databases.

No API, got it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe the original subtitle is "Extreme Scale Transaction Processing" . "The NoSQL killer" is kind of childish, nothing is going to kill anything.

<comment><USER9> Same thought and it being at an early stage, ugh. And there goes at least a dozen of competitors out there trying to be different than MongoDB. I am just sort of happy that in the SQL world we usually either look at MySQL or PostgreSQL (well, Oracle and SQL servers are probably more relevant to corporate web service)... but I think people are trying to migrate too.

<comment><USER10> I think that even in a NoSQL driven domain, that a classic SQL based RDBMS has a place. It's that certain types of load have acceptable levels of relaxed constraints.. that can increase when your data is searched/read over 1000 times for every write. That joins are expensive and even mirroring data to a nosql store has benefits over purely rdbms.

I like document stores like MongoDB and RethinkDB and feel they are a great fit for most scenarios. I also feel that caching layers with Redis or Memcached can help...

Cassandra is interesting in the primary storage space as well, and imho has resolved a lot of issues, while others remain. I'm interested to see if this database can get there faster than Cassandra/CQL can get to more parity with traditional SQL systems.

While I appreciate the options, there is no one solution for everything... If you never break 100 simultaneous users, memory-mapped flat files and map/reduce could be sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So...uh...how does it work? Anyone know if there is an architecture overview somewhere? And why there isn't a link to it on the damn front page?

<comment><USER12> From their documentation:

> InfiniSQL currently is an in memory database. This means that all records > are stored in system memory, and not written to disk. This provides very > high performance--but it also means that InfiniSQL currently lacks the > property of Durability. If the power goes out, all data is gone. This > limitation is temporary.

They do mention that they'll implement persistence, but that's likely to lower performance, as you're limited to how fast the write ahead log can be written, even if updates to on-disk structures are batched.

They also mention:

> No sharding is necessary with InfiniSQL: it partitions data automatically > across available hardware. Connect to any node, and all of the data is > accessible.

I haven't looked at how joins are done across large tables that span over multiple nodes (or if it's even supported), but that's not likely to be fast either, for obvious reasons.

<comment><USER2> 1) persistence: battery-backed UPS and synchronous replication. No WAL anywhere. I'm thinking about ways to do disk-based storage without synchronous IO, to provide decent performance with higher storage capacity

2) no joins supported yet. However, the benchmark that I performed (on the blog) involves 3 updates across random nodes. I designed InfiniSQL specifically to perform multi-node transactions very well, because that's the Achilles' heel of every other distributed OLTP system. I plan to implement joins, but expect them to perform decently for the workload you describe.

<comment><USER12> Gotcha, it's for OLTP, don't know how I missed that.

Should be quite easy to do equijoins especially if you're joining a couple thousand rows at most at a time; it only gets hairier when you're joining all records of very large tables that don't necessarily fit in memory, which is not very OLTP-y.

With regards to persistence, I'm really curious to hear how you're planning to have durability without writing something to disk on every transaction. It could work if you're relaxing the definition of durable to mean written to memory on at least $n$ nodes, though that's likely to be surprising to someone with a stricter definition of durable.

Edit: By the way, it's really cool that you have a C++ implementation of actors, I'll have to look into it. Have you thought about turning that into a library?

<comment><USER2> For durability, check out [http://www.infinisql.org/docs/overview/#idp37053600](http://www.infinisql.org/docs/overview/#idp37053600)

I've thought about having an actor library, or minimally, to have the actor basis of InfiniSQL independent of specific workload, but haven't thought it through entirely. I'd be supportive of any efforts to that effect if you want to work on it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Last week's discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795263](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6795263)

</comment><comment><USER14> Can you compare InfiniSQL to existing in-memory clustered relational database solutions like Galera?

</comment><comment><USER15> I see this as fairly similar to memSQL, but less mature.

</comment><comment><USER16> I actually thought this was another joke at first...

</comment><comment><USER17> "Not just a teaser version". Nice!

</comment><comment><USER18> It uses 2pc so it won't really scale.

<comment><USER2> I think you mean 2PL.

It does really scale, check out the benchmark report on the blog. [http://www.infinisql.org/blog/2013/1112/benchmarking- infinis...](http://www.infinisql.org/blog/2013/1112/benchmarking-infinisql)

For deadlock-prone workloads, it will likely not be as good, admittedly.

I'm considering a variation on MVCC that gets around the single transactionid bottleneck, but the currently implementation is based on 2PL. [http://www.infinisql.org/docs/overview/#ftn.idp37098256](http://www.infinisql.org/docs/overview/#ftn.idp37098256)

For concurrency management algorithms, there are no good ones. Only those that are less bad than others in some cases.

<comment><USER19> Have you given any more thought to ... not multithreading it? Since you're scaling across servers, apply the same concept across cores. Presto, no more bottleneck on atomically incrementing an ID.

<comment><USER2> Good thinking, but I think that shifts the issue--namely, that each inter- thread message uses atomic compare and swap to create the message. I assume there'd be a similar bottleneck on the actor that generates the transactionid limited by the number of messages it can send & receive.

Instead, a friend and I have been thinking about how to perhaps modify MVCC to work with distinct transactionid's per partition. Namely, I'm already generating what I call "subtransactionid"'s for each partition involved in a transaction. And those must be ordered for synchronous replication, so I think the way to implement a variation on MVCC may already be mostly there.

I know I still owe you an architectural doc...fixin' ta, ya know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> so many dependencies to install...

</comment><comment><USER21> Oooh! Shiny!</comment>


China as the next big innovator? - <AUTHOR> http://thomsonreuters.com/content/legal/white_papers/China_IP

<comment><USER2> It seems to me that the incentive to innovate is rather low without IP protection...

<comment><USER3> True, but innovation may occur based on necessity rather than incentives (Most of the population is still ridiculously poor). Different constraints and resources may also yield other solutions.</comment></comment>


Ask : Competitor comparison checklist - is it helpful for consumer? - <AUTHOR> https://www.wireframes.org/ui/mt.php?pa=home_4ec59b5540da3

<comment><USER2> When placed on the same site as your product, you're already at a disadvantage because everyone that goes there will believe it to be biased (with good reason). One of the things that bothers me the most w/ these is when someone points out their own product with all green checks, and the competitors with obvious missing points (red x's). It's typically easy to find a skewed perspective that gives you a 100% on features, and the others lesser so -- these are difficult to "believe".

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right but I think the checklist could be used as a starting point. It can be updated so users can make informed decision.

Users can also send features that they think are important and missing in other or our products. So I hope this becomes a good resource</comment></comment>


Unopinionated framework faster than everything (0kb raw and gzipped) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/undefinedbuddy/vanilla <comment><USER2> "Unopinionated"? This is nothing _but_ the expression of an opinion.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a terrible framework, but it works and many successful projects have been built on top of it.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a really bad shitpost

</comment><comment><USER5> The algebraic effects link made my head spin.. So webdevs go from synchronous, to callback hell, to async await, to callfrom?

I start to understand more and more why I see so many frontend devs learn about Rust as an alternative for the near future.

<comment><USER6> I write vanilla JS for a majority of projects. If you adhere to a certain code structure it is quite productive and maintainable, while avoiding dependencies.

But that is _only_ when I don't have a choice over the template engine.

In reality it is: a template engine + vanilla JS vs. React. And as soon as you also need to do client side routing and manage state across page transitions you are in a world of hurt with the former (exaggerating, in comparison).

This is why I prefer React and frameworks like Nextjs.

With Nextjs you get a full-blown solution that is feasible and performant for both simple and complex sites, a convenient top level structure, complete control over when you render (SSG/SSR/CSR) and a _uniform_ way to build your UI (JS + React).

And in some cases a React SPA is just right, especially if your website is mostly a structured "CRUD" UI, since these are (hopefully) designed in a very consistent way, so you end up updating small pieces of your DOM with every transition/action.

The alternative is not "Just use Vanilla-JS", it is a hodgepodge of languages, code/logic duplication and choices/trade-offs that you need to make such as "where is the right place for this thing" etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's great to hear you use plain JS for most of your projects when there are so many frameworks out in the world. In these times, developers are often fooled into thinking their applications won't 'scale' if they don't use frameworks or opinionated UI patterns.

This is why even the most basic of web applications will be using a framework (I'm not referring to Web Components consumers).

Sometimes, said frameworks and patterns become convoluted and make things cumbersome. On top of that, many will be using bundlers, transpilers for syntax and polyfills, etc. Of course, some of these frameworks are not so tied to build tools and will have ESM support, but the __convention __is what will strictly differ.

Nevertheless, with some abstractions, frameworks make building web applications fun. However, those abstractions should not be a cause for users paying a hefty price when performance kicks in. Most of the time, these frameworks won't give you a choice. "You pay for what you use" sorta thing.

I really like your conclusion and I totally agree frameworks fit somewhere (large, actually). I just don't get why shipping bulk JavaScript is a price we have to pay. That is why Preact and Svelte have an upper hand in this case.

My take: I'd rather use Vanilla for building my projects instead of a combination of:

1\. React with ReactDOM, ReactRouter, React-X, React-Y, React-Z

2\. Angular and RxJS

3\. Ember with GlimmerVM</comment></comment></comment>


Using automated screenshots to test Canvas and user interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://www.holovaty.com/writing/automated-screenshot-tests/

<comment><USER2> This type of testing is not new. I used something like this 8 years ago.

There are pros and cons to screenshot testing... the biggest downside is that it catches EVERYTHING. Most websites have a header, sidebar, and other shared modules used throughout the entire site. If the developers change anything in these modules, all of your screenshots will break... and if the developers do this constantly, your tests are basically useless.

</comment><comment><USER3> This app is amazing! What a great way to learn guitar or a specific song on guitar!

</comment><comment><USER4> The title needs fixed, the <canvas> got filtered out.</comment>


Voynich Manuscript has been deciphered? - <AUTHOR> https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737 <comment><USER2> There is sober discussion of the purported deciphering at these two links:

[https://www.voynich.ninja/archive/index.php/thread-2175.html](https://www.voynich.ninja/archive/index.php/thread-2175.html)

[https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire- vulga...](https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-vulgar-latin- siren-call-polyglot)

Headline is lacking a [2017], and also appears to be entirely untrue.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was in an email to the Society of American Archivists today (I can't find a publicly linkable version):

Some of you may be interested to know that Manuscript MS408 (Voynich) has been deciphered. A peer-reviewed article will be formally published in 2019. In the meantime, three pre-print papers are available to freely download from the linguistics website LingBuzz:

The first paper explains the writing system and language: [http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737](http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737)

The second paper translates a pictorial map from the manuscript: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003808

The thirds paper focuses on volcanic details from the map: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004381

Please disseminate this information to other scholars who may find it interesting and useful. Regards, Dr. Gerard Cheshire. University of Bristol.

<comment><USER3> Having done some cursory reading, I'm not understanding a couple of things. Particularly, I'm curious why anyone would've considered it necessary or desirable to encrypt the information this manuscript appears to contain?

<comment><USER4> to troll people for generations? which is basically what they've done.

<comment><USER3> So now that we've deciphered it, the content demonstrates that our efforts to do so were an entire waste of time? Did we learn anything of value during this process? Or was it totally pointless?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't get your hopes up too much.

This blog post from 2017 looks at a draft of the document: [https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire- vulga...](https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/11/10/gerard-cheshire-vulgar-latin- siren-call-polyglot)

It's not really a favorable review.

<comment><USER6> Another post from the same blog trashes another hypothesis: [https://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/08/voynichese- abjad](https://ciphermysteries.com/2014/02/08/voynichese-abjad)

In it, way down at the bottom, the author drops a fairly concise argument for what I think is the most compelling hypothesis of all: That it's a covertext for a cipher. The idea that it's a message written in the clear is hard to reconcile with how the text doesn't behave at all like a natural language. The idea that it was a prank or an art project is hard to reconcile with just how much time and money was clearly spent in producing it. The idea that it's a legitimate book, but one where only a relatively small fraction of the text contains any semantic content, is relatively easy to reconcile with both.

<comment><USER7> > _The idea that it was a prank or an art project is hard to reconcile with > just how much time and money was clearly spent in producing it._

Why is it hard to imagine someone pouring a lot of work into art?

<comment><USER6> Largely for historical reasons: The materials that went into it would have been immensely expensive at the time it was written, and people generally had less free time back then. Meaning that the cost to do something like the Voynich Manuscript, in terms of both time and money, would have been _much_ higher back then than they are now.

That's not to say that it's impossible, per se, just that, if that's the conclusion we are to draw, then it would perhaps cast the Voynich as being even more singular than it already is.

<comment> village-idiot Most people had less time back then, but a few people had a _lot_ of free time. "Bored noble" explains a fairly decent amount of artistic and scientific output before the industrial revolution.

<comment><USER6> There's also the angle that, in the same way that the text doesn't statistically resemble real languages, it also doesn't seem to be a great match for known examples of asemic text (e.g., _Codex Seraphinianus_ ), either.

<comment> village-idiot That's really beyond my linguistic knowledge to comment on.

All I'm saying is that a bored noble would have the time and resources to create an expensive work purely for their own entertainment. Humans have done far weirder things over the centuries than that.

<comment><USER6> One would have, but there are also cultural barriers to consider. I'm no expert on late medieval or early renaissance Italian culture, but what amateur reading I've done paints a picture of a culture where the nobility may have been literate and able to write letters, but serious writing such as creating vellum books was still considered dull, dirty, grueling work that was beneath their station.

Henry Darger (who was, IIRC, a janitor) was mentioned elsewhere in the thread. I think that you might get a more culturally comparable example out of the idea of Sarah Winchester whiling her time away in a manner more akin to how Edward Leedskalnin did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't the first time someone has claimed to have deciphered it. What's different this time?

<comment><USER9> My thoughts exactly. I've been on the internet for 25 years and this claim was one of the very early things I remember seeing and has popped up every 5 or 6 years since. I won't hold my breath.

In fact the entirety of my knowledge of this document is as a result of reading the claims of people online who've claimed to have deciphered it.

Edit just to add: Personally I think it was created as a work of art and has no hidden meaning.

<comment><USER10> You are not alone in that thought. I think it is interesting that someone at the NSA was interested in the Voynich manuscript came to about the same conclusion as you.

[https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=5301815-National- Sec...](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=5301815-National-Security- Agency-Cryptolog-Vol-2-No-8-9)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The New Yorker published, prior to the "deciphering", a short and interesting overview of the history and cultural relevance of the Voynich Manuscript [0].

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the- unsolvable-m...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-unsolvable- mysteries-of-the-voynich-manuscript)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's an interesting paper although the contents of the Voynich Manuscript itself, partial excerpts of which are contained in the paper and include planting instructions and bathing preparation instructions, will probably underwhelm the legion of conspiracists that have emerged over the years.

Is a full translation of the manuscript available yet?

<comment><USER12> Were there conspiracy theories about this too? Just by looking at the images I always felt like the general idea of the manuscript wasn't so mysterious.

<comment><USER13> Not quite a conspiracy theory about the Voynich Manuscript, but its a fun twist, [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-30a0-9a0a-3ff76e8bfe58)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I remember someone saying it might have been related to the Syriac alphabet, I wonder what came out of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'd still wager a great sum on the possibility that the book is an elaborate hoax designed to coax some cash out of some stupid aristocrat.

There were a lot of charlatans at the court of that particular period and the Czechs just love to make fun out of Rudolf II. I highly suggest this (socialist-era) movie -- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Golem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_and_the_Golem) \-- to join in on the joke.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm rather fond of Randall Munroe's theory: [https://www.xkcd.com/593/](https://www.xkcd.com/593/)</comment>


Show HN: How do you plan trips? Vjago - <AUTHOR> https://vjago-app.web.app <comment><USER2> Very useful to organize the trip, specially to keep track of the budget and expenses. No more excel sheets needed! With one single tool you have access to all activities and its costs, pretty amazing!

</comment><comment><USER3> it proved very useful! thanks</comment>