An Unexpected Ass Kicking - <AUTHOR> http://joelrunyon.com/two3/an-unexpected-ass-kicking <comment><USER2> My favorite story in a related genre: I was a scholarship student at university, funded by a wealthy couple. Also at university I had someone who, over three classes taken together, had graduated from "rubs me the wrong way" to "nemesis." It turns out that he was also there on the same scholarship.

The university organized a dinner every year to introduce scholarship students to their patrons. It was at the Ritz-Carlton and I remember feeling very, very underdressed. Anyhow, it turned out that our 90-something patron was simultaneously sponsoring about two-dozen scholarship students, so rather than doing much talking I sipped a coke and just listened to the dinner table conversation.

Nemesis, in his oh-so-charming way, began bragging about a civil engineering project that he had been on ("As a sophomore -- really not something many people do, you realize") remodeling an overpass near the school. He was going into lots of irrelevant detail -- specs, etc. Our patron made the requisite politely interested noises and, at one point, suggested that a particular implementation detail might be improved upon. I recall it being something like the amount of reinforced concrete required.

Nemesis: "I don't know how things were when you were still working, old-timer, but I'm absolutely positive that _blah blah blah_.

90-something guy: "Oh, I guess it is possible that they've improved the formula since..."

Nemesis: "Since when anyhow?

90-something guy: "Since I invented reinforced concrete."

The gentleman passed away a few years ago and, sure enough, that was quite prominent in his obituary.

<comment><USER3> Was the patron <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Monier> ?

<comment><USER4> My guess was that the invention is not an invention as such, but more along the lines of "he made it practical in a huge way and showed everyone else following him how to do it". There is often a very long lag between actual "first to invent" and "figured out how to make it practical without it being stupidly expensive", and oftentimes the latter is regrettably (IMHO) not recognized nearly as much as the inventor. A quick bit of Googling around led me to Tung-Yen_Lin [1], and prestressed concrete, a relatively (as these things go in civil engineering) modern technique.

Patio11's comment that this was roughly 10 years ago almost fits when this rather amazing gentleman passed away.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tung-Yen_Lin>

<comment><USER2> No, not him, and not interested in playing 20 questions.

Look, we all know HNers are smart enough to Google up the particulars. That would put me in the awkward position of having published a private conversation by a deceased gentleman who generously paid for several dozen poor students to go to college, including me. I'd appreciate if you just wrote this one off to "I trust Patrick not to have invented this story out of whole cloth" and let it lie.

<comment><USER5> _That would put me in the awkward position of having published a private conversation by a deceased gentleman who generously paid for several dozen poor students to go to college, including me._

It's not like you told us he secretly punched babies to steal their toys. It was a charming anecdote. It makes him look like a great person with a sense of humor. If anything, the story is entirely flattering. This is not the stuff secrets are made of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No discussion about this?

 _when people use iPads they end up just using technology to consume things instead of making things. With a computer you can make things. You can code, you can make things and create things that have never before existed and do things that have never been done before._

I think closed devices are really a step backwards. I learnt programming (and a whole lot more, like mathematics and logic), when I picked up a computer as a kid and discovered Python and started hacking around. I could look around for tutorials, download code or try out code from books and nobody stopped me.

On a somewhat similar vein, I am also sad that desktops are slowly going away. I learnt so much more about computers (and how it is not magic) by building my own.

I think something needs to be said about systems that allow you to explore and hack around for the fun of it.

<comment><USER7> _when people use iPads they end up just using technology to consume things instead of making things. With a computer you can make things._

Absolutely true. A lot of people like to mock the position that the iPad is a 'device for consumption' whenever a new story comes out about someone creating a song or painting on his iPad.

Well, there's a reason why it's worthy of a news story. You don't see articles written whenever someone creates a song on his Mac or PC.

I love my iPad. It's a great consumption device. But its terrible for tinkering and creativity (and this limitation is by _design_ ). Let me know when I can design flyers and brochures from it. Or write a program on it to do something useful that can be shared with others.

<comment><USER8> I think there's a missing area of creativity and tinkering in the iPad world, which gets seriously under-evaluated .. MUSIC MAKING.

The iPad is a _fantastic_ creativity/tinkering machine for making music. Its not consumption, but Performance.

<comment><USER9> I hear this a lot. Why is the iPad such a great device for making music compared to say...a laptop?

<comment><USER10> Because...magic. And fairy dust. And nobody who uses a laptop could possibly be cool.

It's not a great device for making music. It's an adequate device mostly used by hipsters (and I use that term offensively) to look cool, sort of like how "writers" hang out in coffee shops using Macbook Pros (or various other expensive laptops, like Vaios) to "write" the next American Novel.

<comment><USER11> as a musician, I disagree. The iPad makes for a great adaptable electronic instrument. The major feature of tablets is that they become the app you're running. This lets the designers of the various synths for the iPad experiment with interfaces like was never before possible. Check out some of the stuff that Jordan Rudess's Wizdom Music is putting out: <http://www.wizdommusic.com/>

Jordan Rudess isn't just anybody, he's one of the top keyboard players alive today. He's always experimented with alternative instrument interfaces and I think the fact that he's doing this on the iPad lends a lot to its credibility as a creative platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do._

That quote is from Genesis 11:6:

"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" ([http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+11%3A6&#...</a>).

<comment><USER13> Thanks for finding that reference. I was wondering where he was referencing when he said that, but I couldn't find it. Thanks!

<comment><USER14> And then God made everyone speak multiple languages so there was a lot of confusion.

<comment><USER15> Well, we _did_ get all cocky and built a tall tower. So I guess we had that coming ... Wait, that sends an odd message?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hate it when simple declarative statements are dissected by "lawyer-think." You entirely miss his point doing that. Did _he_ stop and qualify anything? Stop and think. He's in his _eighties_ , FFS. Do you think he's spouting gibberish or something he _deeply thought about_ and saw _actually happen_? "But this..." and "But that..." -- you're creating your own damn roadblocks. And then wonder why you can't move forward.

Edit to add: Yeah, I'm cranky. But this is something I've seen here over and over. Now for the downvotes to DEAD status.

Edited further to add: He said nothing is _withheld_ , not that you could either do anything or automagically succeed. You can have a revelation -- but _still_ eff it all up, because it's still ultimately up to _you_. Trust me, I've experienced that myself! Especially the effing it all up part. So don't do that.

<comment><USER17> What? I'm not downvoting you, I just have no idea what this is about.

<comment><USER16> Read down further for the dead comment and its replies and also complaints about the headline(!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wouldn't it be great if Russell Kirsch went from coffee shop to coffee shop having similar conversations? Kinda like the hacker version of that scene in the movie Soapdish where Sally Fields and Whoopi Goldberg go to the mall and Whoopi pretends to recognize Sally. In the movie, the result was a flock of women crowding around her. In Russell's version, each encounter would end with an inspirational blog post or tweet.

<comment><USER13> He's actually pretty low key. I emailed him about the post and he simply said thanks. Really nice and genuine man. Really glad to have 20-30 minutes to have been able to talk with him.

That said, it would be really cool if he just went around every week and picked someone new to randomly inspire :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Google cache [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4S2qmnR...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4S2qmnRrFxcJ:joelrunyon.com/two3/an- unexpected-ass-kicking+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER20> For those who don't know _(every time I mention this, I get like 10 upvotes. Apparently a lot of people even on HN don't know about it!)_ , if you want to get a (Google) cached version of a page, just type 'cache:[URL]' in Google search bar and press return.

'cache:<http://joelrunyon.com/two3/an-unexpected-ass-kicking> -> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&outpu...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fjoelrunyon.com%2Ftwo3%2Fan-unexpected-ass- kicking&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fjoelrunyon.com%2Ftwo3%2Fan-unexpected-ass- kicking&gs_l=hp.3..0l3j0i10.883.1862.0.19188.8.131.52.0.0.0.347.1009.3-3.4.0...0.2...1c.UZznL_O067M&pbx=1)

<comment><USER21> Thanks sir! And never underestimate the value of the little cantrips like that to somebody who isn't aware of them. I was astounded that most people didn't know CTRL+F, and I always ask people if they know about it.([http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-90-percent- of-people-dont-know-how-to-use-ctrl-f/243840/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If anyone is interested, here's a Wired article from 2010 detailing some of Kirsch's recent work: [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/smoothing- square-p...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/smoothing-square- pixels/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Your server just experienced an unexpected ass kicking

</comment><comment><USER24> It's on the top page of HN right now, and following the link gets me "Error establishing a database connection." So all I know about the article as I'm writing this is the title; it's pretty accurate :)

<comment><USER13> Sorry about this. Didn't expect it to hit on HN. Working on getting things under control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good job, both in getting him to talk and really listening to what he said.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's refreshing to see this at the top of HN. Rarely do I see such precise and apt criticism of the status quo making the rounds here.

Thanks for writing this up.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. I'm glad I got the chance to meet Russell and share this story and his wisdom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anybody knows more about how this

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_Eastern_Automatic_Com...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_Eastern_Automatic_Computer)

"SEAC was demonstrated in April 1950, and in May 1950 it went into full production, making it the first fully functional stored-program electronic computer in the US."

and this

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored-program_computer>

"On May 6, 1949 the EDSAC in Cambridge ran its first program, and due to this event, it is considered "the first complete and fully operational regular electronic digital stored-program computer"

fit together?

Who made then the first real stored-program computer?

<comment><USER28> SEAC was the first real stored-program computer _"in the US"_. EDSAC was the first one in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Let's shift the debate a tad. Is the fact that the iPad is predominantly a consumption vs. creation device inherent in the tablet design or just a quirk of the iPad's implementation?

Personally, I think it's not an inherent limitation. I believe that tablets are fundamentally more usable for the vast majority of folks and I believe that they can and will be used for creating. More so, I think that putting computers into more people's hands will be a benefit to the human race, even merely in terms of creativity, that is almost impossible to estimate today.

<comment><USER30> What the iPad will probably end up doing is modify the way in which creativity is expressed. I would imagine that we will end up having another level of abstraction and creation will be done with tools like Pipes[1] or IFTTT[2]

[1] <http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/>

[2] <http://ifttt.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I love this. "Do things that have never been done before." Brilliant. Now, if only I could figure out a way that this advice could help me _eat_.

<comment><USER32> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth-share_matrix> bottom left keeps you fed, top left is doing whats never been done. Cash cow might be your day job and you work on your stars in the evening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Excuse my ignorance, but at which part of this otherwise nice story the guy's ass got kicked? It was an unexpected encounter with an important figure in computing that has been quite unknown to people, and it must've been fun, but at no point I got the impression that he got his ass kicked...

<comment><USER13> It was metaphorical ass kicking. You start to reevaluate how difficult your challenges are when you start talking to someone who invented the first internally programmable computer.

<comment><USER33> Actually, the common slang you wanted was "a kick in the ass" or less vulgarly "a kick in the seat of the pants", as in this book's title, <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060155280> . An "ass kicking" is slang for a beating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> You should have asked him what he was babbling about...

[https://www.google.com/search?q=Nothing+will+be+restrained++...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Nothing+will+be+restrained++from+them+which+they+have+imagined+to+do+restrained++from+them+which+they+have+imagined+to+do)

</comment><comment><USER35> I had a semi-similar experience. I sat next to the guy who invented the shower radio on a flight from SFO to ERW. He told me about his start as an entrepreneur by getting himself $500k in debt and at the last moment, he sold the design to Salton.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do." is a beautiful idea, but I think Theodore Herzl said it simpler: "If you will it, it is no dream."

Or paraphrased slightly better by Walter Sobchak, "If you will it, Dude, it is no dream."

<comment><USER37> "the principle that nothing is impossible and that where there's a will there's a way"

from Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I fail to see how this was an "ass kicking". Mr. Runyon met someone who's a pioneer in his field and had an enjoyable time listening to him rant about the iWhatever devices. Did Runyon also "get his shit pushed in" by Mr. Kirsch?

</comment><comment><USER39> Fantastic story! Brings to mind the following quote from Bach's "Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah":

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

</comment><comment><USER40> Reminds me of a quote I once saw:

"Attempt great things and great forces will come to your aid."

No idea who said it; I saw it on the side of a refrigerator at the dump while disposing of a deceased dishwasher.

</comment><comment><USER41> "Nothing is withheld from us what we have conceived to do." - I love the archaic language.

</comment><comment><USER42> What a crazy chance encounter. Thanks for sharing this story.

</comment><comment><USER43> Looks like his server has taken an unexpected ass kicking...

</comment><comment><USER44> That is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER45> You still in Portland? Which cafe is this?

</comment><comment><USER46> What happened to the post? It's gone.

</comment><comment><USER47> Great story! Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER48> I find it funny that our culture is so combatative that such a good encounter is characterised as an ass kicking.

<comment><USER13> Hey Ktizo - Joel Here :).

The main reason I titled it as such was to show that while I'm working on doing hard things, Russell challenged me to really step my game up (aka kicking my ass). I meant it the most complementary way possible. You start to reframe the way you look at challenges when you meet someone who's done something like build the world's first internally programmable computer.

<comment><USER49> "A kick in the ass" is the phrase for what you describe, because it propels the recipient forward. An asskicking, on the other hand, implies that the recipient will be out of commission for a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Awesome story!

</comment><comment><USER51>
      The first meaning: if you've conceived something in your
      mind, decide to do it, and are willing to put in the work
      – nothing can stop you.

Pfft. What if I conceive to build a perpetual motion machine, or conceive to disprove Special Relativity?

<comment><USER52> If you conceive to build a perpetual motion machine then you will have taken the first step. The second (more difficult) step will be to conceive how a perpetual motion machine might actually work, or to come up with a plausible way of re-writing the laws of thermodynamics.

The point of the quote is not some wishy-washy "you can if you believe you can". Rather, it might be phrased better as "If you have the vision to see how something might be achieved and the drive to actually achieve it, nothing can stop you from achieving it".

<comment><USER53> Lots of people conceive of ways in which a perpetual motion machine might work - it's why so many people have tried to patent them that the US Patent Office has a specific ban on perpetual motion patents. They don't work, of course, but it tends to require a deeper level of knowlege to figure out why exactly (for instance) any of the magnetic perpetual motion machines won't work than it does to conceive them in the first place.

<comment><USER52> I feel like we're arguing semantics at this point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"Leave" or "stay"? Brexit in Google search [map] - <AUTHOR> https://googledataorg.cartodb.com/u/googledata/viz/fefbeda2-2e5e-11e6-b291-42010a14800c/embed_map <comment><USER2> I would argue this is skewed, as the official campaign name for the stay camp is 'Remain' \- is there a map with this term as well ?</comment>


WP REST API: Merge Proposal - <AUTHOR> https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/09/21/wp-rest-api-merge-proposal/ <comment><USER2> How can people still use WP in 2015...</comment>


Israel spied on John Kerry during peace effort – report - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/03/israel-spied-kerry-peace-effort-report <comment><AUTHOR> I'm most likley going to be down-voted into oblivion and called "anti-semetic" even though i'm half semitc.

A really serious question, why is it our job to continue to support Israel? They continue to humiliate John Kerry and Obama. It seems like a one sided deal. We continue to give them whatever they want. And we get absolutely nothing back in return.

\---

Edit: Hmm, I wonder why this post was shot down so fast.

<comment><USER2> Because we are getting things back in return. Israel is a nuclear state with good relations with us. US has weapons contracts which help defend Israel... one of the very very few countries that the US exports to. Culturally and historically, the state of Israel was established by the Allies post WW2. So there is a moral obligation as well for the Allies (US, France, UK, etc. etc.) to watch out for what Israel does today.

Ultimately, Israel is a bastion for Western values in the middle east. They take a lot of flak (suicide bombs, etc. etc.) that would be otherwise aimed at Europeans or Americans. Its super-practical for the US to keep Israel strong.

Imagine if you will when ISIS establishes itself as a pseudo-country. Do you think ISIS will be more concerned with Israel (who have a military within marching distance), or with Europeans / Americans that they've sworn to destroy half-way around the world? Who will they attack first?

Besides, if Israel falls, their nuclear stockpile will cause some major issues.

<comment><USER3> > Israel is a nuclear state

They've never confirm this, only that it is believe that Israel possess nuclear weapons.

> Culturally and historically, the state of Israel was established by the > Allies post WW2. So there is a moral obligation as well for the Allies (US, > France, UK, etc. etc.) to watch out for what Israel does today.

There shouldn't be any morale obligation at all when they, the Jewish people chose the spot to become Israel. We, USA, didn't assign it for them. US, historically, didn't even care about Israel when they were attacked, the British were the only one that really back them up. US ties between Israel are more powerful later on, so this statement is false in term of morality.

> Ultimately, Israel is a bastion for Western values in the middle east.

And yet they are condemn by the majority in the UN except for USA veto.

> Do you think ISIS will be more concerned with Israel (who have a military > within marching distance), or with Europeans / Americans that they've sworn > to destroy half-way around the world? Who will they attack first?

Total fantasy. This fantasy is also fear mongering, in term of "what ifs". Even if this fantasy come true, you don't think Nato or those US carriers that are station nearby isn't going to bomb them like Korsovo?

And how smart are they to operate nuclear weapons? How long will it take them to learn how to use it?

> Besides, if Israel falls, their nuclear stockpile will cause some major > issues.

Once again fear mongering.

Let's look at it this way, they got nuclear weapon, so they got a free pass for their horrible behavior against USA? The President and John Kerry?

<comment><USER2> I appreciate your serious response.

        Let's look at it this way, they got nuclear weapon, so they got a free pass for their horrible behavior against USA? The President and John Kerry?

It isn't horrible behavior. It is standard behavior that has been going on since the dawn of Israel. We catch their spies all the time, and they catch our spies all the time.

US / Israel relations are funny like that. We don't really trust each other, but we both need each other.

<comment><USER4> You don't need each other. All what Israel does is alienate the US and protects Israel's horrific acts and occupation of the Palestinian people.

<comment><USER2> The way I see it, the US is currently using its influence to hold Israel back. If it weren't for the US, Israel would have long ago already performed a "first strike" against Iran.

Anyway, I think Israel's "occupation" of the Gaza strip technically ended in 2005. Gaza is the current location of conflict once again, because Hamas (not "Palestine", but Hamas specifically) is using Gaza as a spring board to launch rockets into Israel.

I understand Israel's point of view. Israel _gave up_ Gaza 9 years ago, and the current conflict is the thanks that they get for leaving. Mind you, it is Israel that supplies water, power, and utilities to the people in Gaza.

Furthermore, the "Palestinians" are hardly a group of unified people. They are a divided, complicated group that have been proven difficult to reason with. IE: Hamas does _not_ represent the typical Palestinians, and Israel seems to understand that.

At very least, the Israel Electric Corp who are sending their engineers to fix power lines to Gaza (while under rocket fire) are willing to work with the people living within the Gaza strip.

Don't boil this discussion into a silly "Red vs Blue" fight. The politics of this region are very complicated.

<comment><USER4> You are mistaken on too many dimensions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Spying and hacking is the bread and butter of foreign policy. This should come as no surprise to anyone.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm shocked--shocked--that the Mossad would dare to spy on a foreign official.

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of the little trichotomy I grabbed from Huizinga's Homo Ludens: good-faith, cheater, xor spoil-sport. I don't think that cheating exists in diplomacy. It's all part of the game. Counterintelligence what it is, I expect that the intelligence was received by the Israelis with some skepticism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ah, normal telephone lines. No news here, then.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this really relevant to Hacker News?

<comment><USER9> anything 'eavesdropping' is relevant here, I'd say</comment></comment>


What Happens at AngelPad - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/12/what-happens-at-angelpad/

<comment><USER2> Great article, very informative on what to expect if you're lucky enough to be accepted</comment>


A question for developers, what are your tips for checking function params? - <AUTHOR> When I am writing callbacks often there are quite a few levels of functions calling functions.  No problem there.
However I am often finding bugs because the arguments expected in the calling and called functions do not match i.e. I have forgotten to include an argument, or they in the incorrect order.
I'm spending alot of time manually eyeballing the calling and called function signatures to verify them.
This is time consuming and even then not super accurate.
What are your developer pro-tips for verifying function arguments match? <comment><USER2> [http://flowtype.org/](http://flowtype.org/) or TypeScript</comment>


Gary Neville has closed his hotels and he will hand them over to the NHS - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/BenJolly9/status/1240326059695972352 <comment><USER2> TL;DW: "closed" is not accurate, he's turning it to a place for healthcare workers to stay (so maybe if they need to quarantine, away from family), and staff will remain to run the place.

What a clever move. The alternatives would be to be empty and abandon the buildings for a few months; or to be open, maybe have some desperate people who needs rooms because they can't get home/many other reasons, but feel like a scumbag for charging them.

It also relieves staff from anxiety about their jobs..</comment>


Tcl Static Prime: experimental compiler for Tcl that produces C or Java code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tpoindex/tsp <comment><USER2> No one has mentioned the very Lisp-like nature of Tcl, and that includes the property of homoiconicity. This makes many programming patterns easy to implement in Tcl. Increasingly Scheme/Lispy features have been added, which makes it even more appealing.

Indeed the language is notable for great flexibility and adaptability, nearly every aspect can be modified to the point it resembles completely different programming languages.

Way back in the 90's I started using Tcl/Tk because it was easy to create GUI applications I needed for my business. Over the years I've employed it for many purposes, including client/server apps that today we might use Websockets to implement.

Tcl's stability is valuable. A couple of days ago, I was maintaining a "legacy" server which runs a key business app written in Tcl. The most recent timestamp of the Tcl source was >10 years old, and running glitch free for even longer. Sure doing it today I might do it differently, but I can't complain about "bang for the buck".

</comment><comment><USER3> I didn't believe I'd see the day when a larger Tcl project reaches HN front page. This looks really exciting and ambitious. John Ousterhout mentioned in one of the interviews that he regrets he didn't manage to produce the Tcl compiler while working in Sun.

While in my day to day work I don't feel the need for the compiler (starkits are good enough) it might attract more performance concerned people to this powerful but forgotten language.

For me returning to Tcl is always an immense pleasure. This is what it gives out of the box:

      - convenience of bash
      - power and elegance of Lisp
      - self-containing no-dependency nature of Go
      - clarity of Python
      - probably unique for the entire industry reliable cross-platform GUI toolkit
      - simplicity of Dodecalogue

What Tcl is missing:

\- good handle on concurrency in bigger projects (with scale, events lead to spaghetti or mega state machines). I tried to address this one myself by developing Golang/CSP style concurrency library [https://github.com/securitykiss-com/csp](https://github.com/securitykiss- com/csp)

\- large community

</comment><comment><USER4> This is completely awesome. Tcl has been around for quite a while and is very mature although it lacks the massive libs and support of Python it's still my language of choice when it comes to data science.

</comment><comment><USER5> To anyone who upvoted this, can you relate why one may consider using TCL today? What are it's strengths and weaknesses compared to other 'common' scripting languages ie python, lua, ruby, ... ? And why is translation and static compilation desireable?

<comment><USER6> I'm familiar with parts of TCL, but I still can't arrive at a good answer for those questions.

It has a unique (wild and strange) feature called upvar that I haven't seen in python or lua. You "use" it to reference a previous frame in your call stack.

<comment><USER7> You can use upvar and uplevel to write control structures (if, while, that kind of thing) in Tcl itself. For instance, Tcl itself does not have a do ... while loop, but you can write one that will look like it's part of the language.

Also: it's Tcl, by the way, not TCL.

<comment><USER8> Lua has something called an "upvalue" but it's a completely different thing.

Lobster[0] also lets you write do/while loops and new conditionals, but does that in a different way that does not require upvar/uplevel, and is IMHO cleaner. (It is less capable in general, but captures 99% of the use cases that I've seen for upvar/uplevel in Tcl)

It is indeed Tcl, but it IS an acronym for "Tool Command Language", or at least started out that way.

[0] [http://strlen.com/lobster](http://strlen.com/lobster)

<comment><USER9> The acronym is true but the community uses Tcl now and has for quite a while.

<comment><USER10> Stuff like this intrigues me, from a linguistic perspective.

I'm really curious what lead to the community settling on this. You'll occasionally see all-lowercase in some projects thanks to the fact that *nix commands are usually all-lowercase, but title-casing an acronym is weird.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because "Tcl" is typically pronounced as a word ("tickle"), so it got de-acronymized like "radar" or "scuba". Then again, nobody writes SCSI as Scsi. I'd love to study this some more...

<comment><USER7> My guess: it's kind of a fashion thing. FORTRAN and COBOL and FORTH and whatnot are a bit old fashioned looking.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#Naming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran#Naming)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am curious about this because different camps scream about its "everything is a stringish thing casted as needed" type of language. (I know that is an oversimplification, but hear me out.)

I wonder how that translates, at all or well, to compiling languages like Java.

Will have to read on. Sounds neat!</comment>


Show HN: Applications are open for TinySeed's 2020 batch - <AUTHOR> TinySeed is a remote, year-long accelerator for independent software businesses.
We just opened up our applications for our second batch: https://tinyseed.com
We focus on SaaS and "non-unicorns" (companies that don't aspire to grow at all costs to reach a $1B valuation). In addition to investment, we are a tight-knit community providing advice, support, a deep network of founders, and valuable connections to world-class mentors.
Applications will be open for the month of November and will close at midnight, November 29th. We'll be reviewing applications through December and making decisions in Winter 2020, with the next batch starting Spring 2020.
Let us know if you have any questions; either here or email firstname.lastname@example.com. Hope to see your application! <comment><USER2> Hey, I'm the program manager at TinySeed, I'll be hanging here through the day to answer questions as well. Ask us anything!</comment>


Scaling Static Analyses at Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://m-cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/8/238344-scaling-static-analyses-at-facebook/ <comment><USER2> I think one of the unstated problems with static analysis is just keeping track of the results. I know that when I started working with these tools, it was a huge PITA just dealing with the various output files.

That's why I created tools to convert the output from different tools into a common CSV format that can be databased and used to compare output from different tools, or from different versions of the code (e.g., after fixing errors reported by the tools).

These tools currently work with cppcheck, clang and PVS-Studio and can be found here: [http://btorpey.github.io/blog/categories/static- analysis/](http://btorpey.github.io/blog/categories/static-analysis/)

<comment><USER3> Interesting approach. Where I work, we use Jenkins for collecting results. That way, for each build of our application we have a history of results for static analysis. Jenkins has good tools for storing and displaying this information, as well as the ability to show trends over time.

<comment><USER2> If Jenkins works for you, great. It does seem to support both clang and cppcheck, although not PVS-Studio (which is one of the better tools out there in my experience).

Personally, I'm happier with plain old text files that can be manipulated with awk, grep, etc., can be databased if needed (since they're csv files) -- and can also be compared using my all-time favorite software, Beyond Compare. ([http://btorpey.github.io/blog/2013/01/29/beyond- compare/](http://btorpey.github.io/blog/2013/01/29/beyond-compare/)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the things I like about this article is that it gives another example showing how formal methods catches deep errors unlikely to be caught with human review or testing:

"Overall, the error trace found by Infer has _61 steps_ , and the source of null, the call to X509 _ gmtime _ adj () goes five procedures deep and it eventually encounters a return of null at call-depth 4. "

I think the example Amazon gave for TLA+ was thirty-something steps. Most people's minds simply can't track 61 steps into software. Tests always have a coverage issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Zoncolan catches more SEVs than either manual security reviews or bug bounty > reports. We measured that 43.3% of the severe security bugs are detected via > Zoncolan. At press time, Zoncolan's "action rate" is above 80% and we > observed about 11 "missed bugs."

>. For the server-side, we have over 100-million lines of Hack code, which Zoncolan can process in less than 30 minutes. Additionally, we have 10s of millions of both mobile (Android and Objective C) code and backend C++ code

> All codebases see thousands of code modifications each day and our tools run > on each code change. For Zoncolan, this can amount to analyzing one trillion > lines of code (LOC) per day.

11 "missed bugs" on the 100 mm server-side lines of code per run, or ever?

<comment><USER6> Also, the main issue with static analysis tools tends to be not false negatives, but false positives. That is, they churn out tons and tons of alerts that aren't actually bugs. Some such systems alert so much that they aren't worth using.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that's the main culprit with traditional static analysis. No one wants to review the results, because the amount of signal to noise is far too low. And also since it's an optional thing and not enforced by the compiler.

I think this is where languages with stronger inbuilt analysis (e.g. Rust) win: The results are better, and since the analysis is always running as part of a compiler pass there are no huge jumps in indicated bugs at once (like what would happen if one would run Coverity on a legacy C++ codebase).

<comment><USER8> From experience on large codebases, get to -Wall -Wextra "clean" in both the latest versions of GCC and Clang and then tools like Coverity will produce much more useful results. The signal it provides to me at that point is exactly what it is meant to provide: mostly improper error handling analysis and N-level deep branches that result in a poor result due to an error or bad decision in another file that a human would not associate with the current call chain or think to look at. To be fair, the tools work much better when you know you have complicated pieces that you spend a little time writing correct models for (e.g. custom assertion/error handling, runtime supplied vtables, custom allocators, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We should start to run Infer on all open source C and C++ code in existence.

<comment><USER10> Not only Infer, but other static analyzers would also be useful.

Hopefully Software Heritage ([https://www.softwareheritage.org](https://www.softwareheritage.org)) will help with that.

<comment><USER8> Coverity scans most open-source software you likely depend on: [https://scan.coverity.com/projects](https://scan.coverity.com/projects)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there something wrong with acm's load balancer or whatever? First managed to read to the end of the article, but to download the PDF showed "Oops! This website is under heavy load." Now article page is under heavy load too.

Edit: It worked again right after I posted this comment.

</comment><comment><USER12> Always cool to read about scale.</comment>


Open Source Games for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://osswin.sourceforge.net/games.html

<comment><USER2> [http://www.xonotic.org/](http://www.xonotic.org/)

[https://www.teeworlds.com/](https://www.teeworlds.com/)

[http://www.openlierox.net/](http://www.openlierox.net/)

are awesome but have all been left out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have to say, the claymation look of Dark Oberon looks pretty greate in the screenshots! Really innovative if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER4> With free adware/bloatware

</comment><comment><USER5> I spent so much time when I was younger playing Armegatron Advanced. I installed it on a networked drive in highschool so me and my friends could play it anytime we were on the computers.</comment>


Where did all the cod go? Fishing crisis in the North Sea - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/18/where-did-all-the-cod-go-fish-chips-north-sea-sustainable-stocks <comment><USER2> Reading _The unnatural history of the sea_ by Callum Roberts really blew my mind. It is almost impossible to imagine how rich the seas were – in fish and other life – before we started large scale fishing, centuries ago. This is a stunning example of the problem of shifting baselines: We tend think that the normal state of the world is what we grew up with, when we really should use the world as it looked to our great-great-great-grandfathers (at least) as the baseline.

<comment><USER3> There's a heritage minutes video ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds8G9sFOK5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds8G9sFOK5w) ~1 min long) about John Cabot who's ship got slowed down because there were so many cod in the water. It ends with him going back to england and saying that there's enough fish to feed people until the end of time.

We really fucked things up.

<comment><USER2> Correction: Our _forefathers_ really fucked things up. _We_ are merely continuing what they started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Makes me think of that documentary on netflix. Cod industry were jumping up and down screaming that limits would kill the industry and put people out of work. Saying the scientists were lying there were way more cod than they were accounting for.

</comment><comment><USER5> Soon it will be squid 'n' chips.

 _The traditional British fish supper could be replaced by the likes of squid as the waters around the UK 's shores grow warmer, say government scientists._

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-38265395](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38265395)

<comment><USER6> Takeaway fish suppers in England go back a long way. As the legend goes, fish- n-chips (sans-chips, since potatoes, still hadn't arrived) was established by Jewish migrants (around 1500) exiled from Spain. The UK was getting more nautical att, so I assume the trend dovetailed with increased commercial fishing.

This new, cosmopolitan fish n chips thing would hundreds of years before it was more popular than the more traditional jellied eel n peas. I think that was the most popular takeaway supper until eel numbers started to hurt from industrial pollution.

Industrial-scale cod fishing started producing as freshwater and shore fish stocks declined. I imagine the batter's job was to mask the "weird" texture and flavour.

These days, picky eaters in the UK will _only_ eat cod (or stuff dubiously labeled cod). No freshwater fish that isn't a trout is considered edible in the UK, even though Americans and Europeans eat pike, eel, perch, etc.

Anyway, preferences and availability always play on each other over time. Kalamari n' chips works for me. Make mine sweet potato please.

<comment><USER7> > I imagine the batter's job was to mask the "weird" texture and flavour.

I thought the batter was originally there as a crust in which the fish would steam in its own moisture, and some people claim it was originally discarded after cooking, until people started to eat it as well.

<comment><USER8> I recall hearing somewhere tempura was introduced into Japan by the Portuguese in the 1500s.

I wonder if they had an influence on British battered foods as well?

<comment><USER9> it's simple enough that it has probably been rediscovered independently many times throughout history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nothing much will change (unfortunately) until the fish population crashes, the fishing industry is decimated, and thus there is no-one left to complain when sustainable fishing laws are passed. I really wish it were otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cod should not be difficult to farm like any other animal. We have the technology.

I was a fisheries observer before I changed careers to programming.

Longline fishing is insanely unsustainable. Seeing and recording the bycatch is both heartbreaking and makes you incredibly angry.

<comment><USER12> I once heard trawling and dredging described as, "like cutting down the forest to kill a squirrel".

<comment><USER13> I've dived areas that have been dredged. There is is literally no life for miles. Whereas before it was teeming with life... that's what attracted the dredgers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "We ate them all."

Pretty terse answer, really.

<comment><USER15> "...and destroyed their breeding ground."

I'm not sure about the fishing industry but there's an odd phenomenon among loggers. Loggers hate tree-planters. It's as if it's a war on trees, and hippies are supporting the enemy. The notion that today's saplings are next- generation loggers' income never seems to take

<comment><USER16> That's sadly unsurprising. If you have a source talking about that, I'd like to share it with others.

<comment><USER15> Nope, personal experience in a logging town

<comment><USER17> Growing up a family friend owned a tree planting company and I got to know many of them before they headed north to start the season. My memory (in the early 80's) is definitely a large group of young, university-aged, smelly, bearded men (and a few non-bearded young women) camping in tents and showering in the open.

I can imagine the distaste for professional loggers was more for the foolish behaviour of transient young people compared to the "professional" loggers than the actual act of tree planting. But that's just a guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Atlantic cod was overfished years ago:

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

When will humans learn?

<comment><USER19> Though the movie "Matrix" is obviously fiction, these lines from Smith always hit home to me:

> Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium > with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to > another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural > resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another > area.

No areas left.

<comment><USER20> The first matrix was a good movie but this quote is not a good one.

All the mammals (and other animals) multiply as much as they can, only not having enough to eat, or another species eating them can stop that. In most cases populations fluctuate around some equilibrium, but that's caused by dying off in other cases, not by some instinctive virtue.

Humans multiply because they can increase the amount of available resource with technology, not by moving to new area.

<comment><USER21> It's interesting that Agent Smith (mis)conceptualizes nature as a sort of machine like the Matrix. Nature maintains a stable equilibrium (like the Matrix is designed to) and animals plug themselves into this machine and help maintain stability using feedback loops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Did anyone else read that first sentence as 'Where did all the codE go?" And then do a double-take? Maybe I need more coffee....</comment>


Do men or women have more brothers? - <AUTHOR> http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1794123/do-men-or-women-have-more-brothers <comment><USER2> The question was phrased ambiguously as "do men or women have more brothers." Here's three possible interpretations.

One interpretation is "if I am the last born (or some other gender-neutral specifier), do I have more brothers if I am a man or a woman?" As paulmd answers, the chances are even.

But we can also interpret it at the aggregate level. Say we have a family with M men and W women, and we decide to count brothers by polling each person for how many brothers they have, and totaling the result up. If we poll men, we get M(M-1) brothers, and if we poll women, we get MW brothers. The result depends on the distribution, but at the expectation value (M = W), women have more. Same conclusion if we average instead of sum.

The third, most natural interpretation is to "deduplicate:" ask each person to list his or her brothers, take the count of the union. This is the familiar sense: we would say there are three Brontë Sisters, even though none of them individually had three sisters. Here the number of brothers equals the number of men, except when then there's only one man; then each women has 1 brother and each man has 0.

</comment><comment><USER3> Like tempestn noted in another comment, enumeration is straightforward for small families, and makes it crystal clear that for any family size N, boys and girls have the same average number of brothers:

      Gender:     B  G
      # brothers: 0  0
      B avg # brothers: 0
      G avg # brothers: 0

      Gender:     B,B  B,G  G,B  G,G
      # brothers: 1,1  0,1  1,0  0,0
      B avg # brothers:     (2 + 0 + 0) / (2 + 2) = .5
      G avg # brothers: (0 + 2 + 0) / (2 + 2) = .5

      Gender:     B,B,B  B,B,G  B,G,B  G,B,B  B,G,G  G,B,G  G,G,B  G,G,G
      # brothers: 2,2,2  1,1,2  1,2,1  2,1,1  0,1,1  1,0,1  1,1,0  0,0,0
      B avg # brothers:     (6 + 6 + 0 + 0) / (3 + 6 + 3) = 1
      G avg # brothers: (0 + 6 + 6 + 0) / (3 + 6 + 3) = 1

      Gender:     B,B,B,B  B,B,B,G (x4)  B,B,G,G (x6)  B,G,G,G (x4) G,G,G,G (I collapsed the different permutations here)
      # brothers: 3,3,3,3  2,2,2,3       1,1,2,2       0,1,1,1      0,0,0,0
      B avg # brothers:     (12 + 24 + 12 + 0 + 0) / (4 + 12 + 12 + 4) = 48/32
      G avg # brothers: (0 + 12 + 24 + 12 + 0) / (4 + 12 + 12 + 4) = 48/32

In a family of N children, both boys and girls will have, on average, (N-1)/2 brothers.

Arguments for unequal results are slipping in assumptions that make the observed distribution different from the enumerated one.

It's an exercise for the reader to prove that this equality holds for higher N, it's quite easy (the way I formatted the arithmetic shows how to match up terms).

<comment><USER4> You are assuming that for a family of N kids, each permutation is equally likely. As others have pointed out, that is not the case.

<comment><USER3> This is a late reply because I missed this until now, but if you accept the typical parameters of a statistical thought experiment, you should assume that the permutations are equally likely. The real world nastiness of biology and society fouls that up, but thought experiments like this are never intended to be about not picky real world details, boy/girl is always assumed to be a coin flip. (Not to say that real world results are not interesting as well)

And there are a half dozen arguments in this thread that claim to disprove this result even if they accept the coinflip hypothesis - it's really those that I take issue with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The real answer is men. By a small amount.

First of all as many sources will afirm, for example [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/24/the-odds- tha...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/24/the-odds-that-you- will-give-birth-to-a-boy-or-girl-depend-on-where-in-the-world-you-live/), the ratio of boys to girls at birth is not 50-50 and is not the same across ethnic groups, cultures, etc. With some surprising interaction effects.

As soon as you have a mix of families with _different_ sex ratios, the odds of siblings being brothers is now positively correlated (even if ever so little) with your own gender. And the result of that is that the average man has more brothers than the average woman does.

However the theoretical effect is very small, and you would need a large random sample to reliably detect its existence.

</comment><comment><USER6> I chose to answer the question empirically. [http://pastebin.com/1g1bAEPt](http://pastebin.com/1g1bAEPt) Turns out it's equal.

<comment><USER7> While that's a nice way to approach a mathematical problem, it does not take into account the social aspects of the problem. For example, it used to be (and perhaps still is?) quite common for families to aspire to have a boy and therefore have another child when they have a girl, but not when they have a boy.

Interestingly, these sort of things are much easier to model empirically the way you did (all you would need is a small tweak to the "haveAKid" condition in the while loop around line 35), whereas the math gets pretty complicated fast.

<comment><USER8> Well, it _was_ posted in _probability_ and not is some social science board. So I thought it was safe to assume a purely mathematical question. Not that I can answer it...

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I wrote that after staring at it for a few minutes, and giving up any pretense that I could model it with confidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With the assumptions that 1) boy/girl is always random but 50/50, and 2) people are choosing to have 1-10 kids ahead of time and going for it (that's how people plan their families, right?), girls do have very slightly more brothers than boys.

The notebook below shows a simulation of 50k towns of 100 families. It also holds for different max numbers of children and more families.

[https://gist.github.com/rcarneva/7baac666bd65f487df73378a90c...](https://gist.github.com/rcarneva/7baac666bd65f487df73378a90c0d0b3)

<comment><USER10> Nice, it took me a while to find the fallacy. (I really hope you did that deliberately, it's masterly.) What you have done is a variant of the observation that _within any family_ the sisters have more brothers than the boys, except that you averaged over 100 families to make the effect more subtle.

But if you make the towns larger, the discrepancy will disappear (for example at 100 towns of 50k families I would expect it to be lost in the noise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seems like a straightforward Gambler's Fallacy situation. Assuming the chances of each sex are independent and equally probable, then each subsequent child has a 50% chance of each sex. Your previous streak is irrelevant (it doesn't matter whether you're male or female), the chance of having a brother is equal. As the number of families approaches infinity the number of brothers will even out.

Or to rephrase the question - after flipping a coin and getting 50 heads in a row, what's the chance of the 51st coin coming up heads? (answer: 50%)

Now in reality the chances of each sex may not be equal - some people have a genetic predisposition to have more sons than daughters or vice versa. And of course there's family planning and so on that may artificially alter the number of brothers/sisters (eg to carry on the fmaily name).

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081211121835.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081211121835.htm)

<comment><USER12> Many people really want either a son or a daughter. So they'll keep trying until it works. An acquaintance of mine had four sons before the fifth one finally was a daughter.

I'm pretty sure that effect is a lot stronger than any genetic predispositions.

<comment><USER13> Actually, if everyone has babies of sex A until you have a baby of sex B, you get a 50/50 mix.

      - Half the parents will have an only child of sex B.
      - One quarter will have one A, one B.
      - One eighth will have A, A, B.
      - One sixteenth A,A,A,B.

This converges on 50/50!

<comment><USER14> Well if you assume some sort of practical limit to the number of children a couple can have, then you end up with more B.

<comment><USER13> Actually, no. If you have a hard limit, then some people will end up A,A, ... A with no B. That evens it up again.

<comment><USER14> True

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My understanding is women have a higher death rate than men when young due to when there are limited funds they get worst heath care in families.

So brother and sister goes to boy. Brother brother stays brother brother.

Not sure on percents though. It might not override the issue of correlated data and selective breeding.

(Edit - actually now I try think about it this is wrong since now there's also one less women in the world, the mens average also changes)

</comment><comment><USER16> Classic stack overflow, top answer is a giant mass of "look how awesome I am!"

sensible answer is 3 down with half as many upvotes.

<comment><USER17> That's one of my productivity secrets. Always read the top 4 answers before deciding on a course.

Answer #3 is right far too often for my liking. And sometimes answer #4 brings up corner cases the others missed.

<comment><USER18> I think the above structure is eerily reflected in large corporations and in government. The actual work/know-how resides in tier 3 and 4, with the top two tiers actually just being better at politics and self promotion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If every family only has one child, nobody has any brothers; the results are equal at 0 average brothers.

If we take some distribution over size _n_ of the families, say a distribution where family size is either 1 or 2, then the 1-size families don't contribute (they add a zero to the fraction, dragging the probability down in a systematic way equal for both sexes), and the 2-size families have four equally probable outcomes.

those four outcomes (bb bg gb gg) yield:

two females with no brothers. two females with one brother. two males with no brothers. two males with one brother.

i.e. the average numbers of brothers are equal (1/2 for males, and the same for females.)

The next layer, where _n_ = 3, there are (ggg ggb gbg bgg gbb bgb bbg bbb) 8 combinations, yielding:

three females with no brothers. six females with one brother. three females with two brothers. three males with no brothers. six males with one brother. three males with two brothers.

Average number of brothers for females is (3 _0 + 6_ 1 + 3 _2) / 12 = 1. Average number of brothers for males is (3_2 + 6 _1 + 3_ 0) / 12 = 1.

for _n_ = 4, (gggg gggb ggbg gbgg bggg ggbb gbgb gbbg bggb bgbg bbgg gbbb bgbb bbgb bbbg bbbb), there are 16 combinations (yes, these map to binary integers quite nicely):

four females with no brothers. twelve females with one brother. twelve females with two brothers. four females with three brothers. four males with no brothers. twelve males with one brother. twelve males with two brothers. four males with three brothers.

Again, this comes out at an even probability - 48 / 32 = 2 brothers, on average.

By induction, we can say that for any _n_ , the probabilities are equal (if the probability of male and female children is equal).

Thus, for any distribution of family sizes, the probabilities are equal.

\---

Real world criticisms:

* males are more likely (~51% of births naturally, higher thanks to sex-selective terminations in China and India.) Thus, outcomes with more males are more likely, which skews towards male-heavy families. While this means both males and females have more brothers, there are more males to count with higher numbers of brothers, so their average goes higher.

* males die more frequently at younger ages, so older people will have fewer brothers than younger people.

<comment><USER20> > * males are more likely (~51% of births naturally, higher thanks to sex- > selective terminations in China and India.)

In China, there may be more sons, but they're not likely to have brothers.

> * males die more frequently at younger ages, so older people will have fewer > brothers than younger people.

Most people still consider dead siblings to be siblings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > I think women have more as no man can be his own brother

The obvious rebuttal: no woman can be her own brother either.

</comment><comment><USER22> I've often wondered if a certain restaurants is has more groups or individuals dining - this seems pretty similar.

</comment><comment><USER23> my favorite... "it's unclear whether the question even makes sense"

</comment><comment><USER12> What a great example of a seemingly simple question that can't be answered.

The question sounds like an elegant and abstract question straight out of a mathematical textbook, but to answer it you need to start making assumptions about the the distribution of family sizes, which leads you to family planning and cultural differences. There is no way to solve this problem on a napkin.

Why does everyone try to solve this problem from first principles? The best way to solve this problem would be to look at actual statistics!

So now I wonder: Is there any publicly available census data that's detailed enough to answer this question? Or are there any public genealogical databases that might be helpful in answering this?

<comment><USER24> > Why does everyone try to solve this problem from first principles?

Trying to solve the problem from first principles is probably how a lot of the posters came to the conclusion that it wasn't possible. If the problem _were_ possible to solve from first principles, it would have been a waste of time to find/create data, so trying to solve it from first principles is the correct approach given no prior knowledge of the answer.</comment></comment>


BYTE, the most beloved computer-magazine brand of all, is coming back. - <AUTHOR> http://technologizer.com/2010/12/22/good-grief-byte-is-coming-back/

<comment><USER2> The back story of Byte (if anyone cares) is that Carl Helmers, who was working at Intermetrics at Fresh Pond in Cambridge, MA at the time (1973? 74?--forget details at this late date), was publishing a little samizdat Intel 4004/8008 hobbyist newsletter on the side (mimeographed, etc.).

I was working at Intermetrics (mostly a government compiler house at the time) as a consultant on a competitor language to ADA, as a sophomore in college. Dan Fylstra, a friend from San Diego high school days, and the future founder of VisiCorp (publisher of VisiCalc), was also working there, and we were both interested in what Carl was doing.

Somehow, he dragged us both into talking to Wayne Green, then the somewhat eccentric publisher of the most popular ham radio magazine, up in Peterborough, NH, and we three got Byte off the group with Wayne's help. (Carl was the main editor, and I was just a part-time editor/writer.)

As much as I enjoyed the work, I was still in school full-time, and also working more than full-time at Intermetrics (hey, it was fun work and paid well), so I had to drop out later that fall. Not sure what happened to Dan's involvement, but I think he also was then at Harvard Business School after undergrad at MIT (and soon thereafter starting VisiCorp), and thus pretty short on time.

The very early Bytes were completely "golly, gee whiz, look what you can do with this thing!" and more like Carl's newsletter--very amateur. I guess it eventually got a lot more professional, but I never really kept up with it.

(Edit: Hunh, looking at some of these scans, I managed to stay on the masthead as an associate for quite some time after I dropped off the map.)

</comment><comment><USER3> All Byte fans (and 20-somethings that have never heard of Byte) - some guy is scanning issues to pdf here:

<http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/167235-byte-magazine/>

Get them. Read them. You're welcome :)

<comment><USER4> Isn't it sad how this is absolutely not legal? I wish copyrights would expire as quickly as their original intent would justify. Maybe 5-10 years.

<comment><USER5> The original copyright holders would probably just state that their intent has always been for them to last forever.

What BYTE would need is a "OK. You sat on this copyrighted material for very long. It's now time for this knowledge to be available again" mechanism that would prevent abandoned works from remaining abandoned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am french. At the time reading Byte was basically like having the Internet today, suddenly amazing things were "available". The magazine was not easy to find in France in the early 80's. I read all the back issues I could find.

Nothing is perfect. I blame the (in)famous 1990 article "Is Unix dead?" for keeping me away from Unix for years.

</comment><comment><USER7> The article includes a picture of the December 1975 cover issue:

[http://technologizer.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/bytecover.j...](http://technologizer.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/bytecover.jpg)

The first listed article is "What is a Character"; it amuses me that thirty- five years later, with the invention of Unicode, you could still fill a few pages with an article under that headline.

<comment><USER8> Case in point: <http://diveintopython3.org/strings.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The story of what happened to BYTE in 1998, from Jerry Pournelle's point of view:

<http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/fiasco.html>

And from the perspective of Tom R. Halfhill, BYTE Magazine senior editor:

<http://www.halfhill.com/bytefaq.html>

</comment><comment><USER10> I loved BYTE, but I could lose the hyperbole: _What's the most-loved computer magazine of all time? There's really only one contender: BYTE,_

Creative Computing, Kilobaud, and Dr Dobb's Journal are all strong contenders, in my book.

<comment><USER11> Amiga World? It's the only one I've ever actually had a subscription to.

<comment><USER12> Antic was the Atari camp's equivalent. It amazes me how many programs I typed from magazine listings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I loved BYTE, back in the day. At one point, I lugged around ten years' worth of back issues, before giving them to the local library.

I'm not very hopeful for the new edition. From the press release: the new BYTE "will serve as the professional's guide to consumer technology, providing news, analysis, reviews, and insight across the media gamut."

Not reaching very high, are they? This doesn't sound like the publication that gave us in-depth articles on every bus type from S-100 on, languages such as Forth and Smalltalk, and Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar ...

</comment><comment><USER14> When I was twelve years old, I read these magazines cover to cover at my local library (even the really old ones), and ESPECIALLY loved Jerry Pournelle's "Chaos Manor" columns in the back. To see its name being mentioned again warms my heart, even if Pournelle isn't involved.

<comment><USER15> When I was 12, I was a regular reader of _bit_ magazine.

No, not a joke. It was a Japanese magazine similar to BYTE in spirit, but more of CS taste. I remember articles about concurrent Prolog, machine translation using pivot representations, distributed systems etc.

I stopped reading it when I got to the university, where I was able to be up- to-date with such kind of information without it.

And then, its publishing ceased in 2001.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I loved Byte.

As a kid growing up in South Africa, Byte was my connection to the outside world. International sanctions made computers incredibly expensive. Byte gave me hope that if I could just get abroad...

I would sit for hours in the local library and read 6 month old issues and live in hope that I would one day be able to play with the machines mentioned in there.

</comment><comment><USER17> It won't be the same without Chaos Manor. :(

<comment><USER3> Here's a silly send-up of his writing style: <http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/95q1/jpreviews.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Still won't be good unless they bring back _Ciarcia's Circuit Celler_ as a regular feature.

<comment><USER19> You know that he's been doing his own magazine, Circuit Cellar Ink, right? (I think it recently hooked up with Elektor, at least in the US market.) Worth checking into.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, actually. He has a website too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a CS student in Guatemala in the 80s, Byte was like news from the cutting edge of technology. We used to get like 5-10 copies for the only store that sold them, and they went fast. I had to literally keep up with their shipping schedule in order to get my copy.

I've missed the deep technical articles, and fighting with my PC Magazine- reading friends about the superiority of our magazine.

Just recently, I was wrestling with the idea of discarding my old Byte magazines, but I really couldn't throw them away, some of the articles are still very good to read. I still have the Byte CD-ROM, wonder if it would still work?

<comment><USER20> Oh yeah, and I have a Tinney signed print of the robot coming out of the eggshell. I also have the magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I hope this is not the usual resurrected brand disappointment, Amiga-like.

<comment><USER22> Or Atari. Or Commodore. :/

<comment><USER5> Be fair - that new C-64-named PC looks like a C64.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Two words, young folk: "Cover painting" <http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/169>

</comment><comment><USER24> Crash magazine will always be my most beloved.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_%28magazine%29>

</comment><comment><USER25> The announcement makes it sound as if the magazine isn't coming back - just a relaunched website. Anyone know if this is the case? I'm one of those people who likes to have a physical magazine to flick through.

I paid for a three year Byte subscription with my first pay cheque and got two issues before the magazine folded, so am keen to get back to it!

</comment><comment><USER26> I think I still have the 1st two years' edition packed up in a box in the shed...moved from home, to college, thru 3 apartments, then 3 houses, and now in my shed. Never opened the boxes, but they survived many, many cleanouts. Don't really know why.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't want to break anyone's hopes but this doesn't really sounds good to me :

"[BYTE] will serve as the professional's guide to consumer technology, providing news, analysis, reviews, and insight across the media gamut"

</comment><comment><USER28> Loved Byte. What a dense collection of enjoyable articles every month. I'd subscribe and I don't get any paper magazines any more.

I don't understand the business case for gutting this fine publication.

</comment><comment><USER29> I hope they are able to bring back their archive of stories back to the beginning of the magazine. That is a tremendous amount of information documenting the beginning of the personal computer era.

</comment><comment><USER30> Never heard of it.

<comment><USER31> Its from the mid '70's and stopped publishing in the late 90's. I suppose that you'd have to either be slightly old (late 20's) or a computer history geek to know about it. I'm the latter -- they stopped publishing when I was 9 (!) years old

<comment><USER32> Heh, it's always funny to hear youngsters talk about what's "old" to them. And even funnier, is that pretty much every group has an older group looking back and going "you kids don't know what old is yet, now get the hell off my lawn."

Late 20's is young as shit to me.... now you 60+ year old fossils who might be hanging around can go write some COBOL or whatever it is you do... <tongue_firmly_in_cheek />

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Yay!!!</comment>


O #UberTREE, O #UberTREE - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/UberTREE

<comment><USER2> I assume that Home Depot will be delivering as well as furnishing the trees. Otherwise it might be worth it just to see a towncar pull up with the tree strapped to the top.</comment>


New DNA construct can set off a "mutagenic chain reaction" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/03/new-dna-construct-can-set-off-a-mutagenic-chain-reaction/

<comment><USER2> The idea and implementation of gene drives have been around for a while since the development of zinc finger nucleases ~20 years ago. The issue has been they were hard to do. Now with CRISPR's it has been remarkably easier. Interestingly in drosophila, there is precedence for engineering other forms of selfish genetic elements such as P elements (transposons). We will see where the technology goes, but we sure do live in interesting times when it comes to the engineering of biology.

<comment><USER3> > We will see where the technology goes, but we sure do live in interesting > times when it comes to the engineering of biology.

Perhaps I'm just too optimistic for the times, but I believe immortality is within our grasp.

<comment><USER4> Could be done with head transplant: [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530103.700-first- hum...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530103.700-first-human-head- transplant-could-happen-in-two-years.html)

Imagine in a distant future, Mark Zuckerberg's 3000 year old head sits atop a healthy young body. Every 20 years he demands a new body donor from the populace as a tribute.

<comment><USER5> The movie 'In Time' (2011) has a nice view on this subject. Only the rich will be able to live forever but some of them discover they get tired of living.

I'm not sure living forever in this world will be that much fun.

<comment><USER6> The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1] is a fascinating take on immortality (for everyone in this case) as a curse.

[1] [http://localroger.com/prime-intellect/](http://localroger.com/prime- intellect/)

<comment><USER7> Content warning: TMoPI is hideously graphic at times, and the ending contains an explicit description of father/daughter incest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to the Moore's Law of Mad Science, every 18 months the required IQ to destroy the world drops by one point.

This research represents more than a decade of advancement in this direction.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a practical implementation of gene drive, which to me is as amazing as a practical implementation of warp drive.

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

We should be careful, but this is an extremely exciting development. We really are living in the 21st century.

What this enables is a way to let evolutionarily unfavorable gene to win by cheating evolution. Sometimes being evolutionarily good clashes with benefits to humanity, but we had no recourse. Now we do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well, I guess we'll start seeing the importance of backups. Get a set made at birth, along with whatever fetal/cord-blood stem cell reserves the individual could use later...

<comment><USER11> To clarify with respect to the linked article and technique, this is about a genetically modified individual passing on the modification to their children. There's no 'chain reaction' through existing fully grown cells and they can't propagate a modification through _your_ cells (yet, at least!).

<comment><USER12> That was not at all clear from the article. So the (fruit fly) intervention happens one cell at a time? And only if by luck it's a gamete that is affected?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Geez. I feel like I need to start writing some science fiction novels now before someone in People Magazine is writing them as fact.

<comment><USER14> Yep, seems like fiction is having a harder and harder time keeping ahead of fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, incredible. How can we mere humans wield such awesome power without destroying ourselves? It is even possible to manage? A person will do anything for money. Perhaps this terrible trait could be deselected using this technology and we could finally focus on living together.

<comment><USER16> Without the traits you describe terrible humanity wouldn't be here

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If George Church is saying its a bad idea, then people should listen.

<comment><USER18> On the other hand, that which frightens elders which may hold the most promise for the youth.

Your comment is a bit closer to home. I've spent the last decade aiming my life at exactly those things which frighten George.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> are we wise enough as a species to understand how to wield a self-propagating genetic regex?

</comment><comment><USER20> At least for local usage, the 'trash' command-line utility is worth considering [1]. I use it on my Mac/Linux box. As described by NPM, trash is a:

"Cross-platform command-line app for moving files and directories to the trash - A safer alternative to rm"

[1] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/trash](https://www.npmjs.com/package/trash)

</comment><comment><USER21> Paging Peter Watts to the red courtesy phone, Peter Watts to the red courtesy phone, please.

<comment> guard-of-terra Frankly I don't understand why everybody is so hot about Peter Watts. He's kind of like Stanislaw Lem on antidepressants IMO.

<comment><USER22> Hmmm, _anti_ depressants? Lem always seemed cheerier, sometimes even more optimistic, than the stuff I've read from Watts recently.

One reason lots of HN folks like Watts may be that he has posted so much of his work online, for free.</comment></comment></comment>


Functioning 'mechanical gears' seen in nature for the first time (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2013-09-functioning-mechanical-gears-nature.html <comment><USER2> You wonder how this near ideal shape could evolve.

Maybe a pair of opposing plates preceded this to better sync the legs, and the plates became wheels to allow longer hops. Then adding bumps to each wheel is imaginable since it would sync a bit better.

But a long series of identical deep evenly spaced detents along one wheel and a perfectly matched series of gear nubs on the opposing wheel is quite a bit more complex and a phylogeny that's not at all intuitive, to me anyway.

<comment><USER3> Evolution can be nigh-impossible to understand sometimes, but this one seems straightforward- as you mentioned, it was originally two discs, which gained bumps- bugs that had better bumps were more likely to survive, and thus the bumps probably became more defined and streamlined, forming ridges, and later "gears"\- and if there's one thing the body likes to do, it's symmetry.

<comment><USER4> at the end of your last sentence, I'd generalize that to "if there's one thing the universe likes, it's symmetry."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > the legs always move within 30 'microseconds' of each other

> This is critical for the powerful jumps that are this insect's primary mode > of transport

> even miniscule discrepancies in synchronisation between the velocities of > its legs at the point of propulsion would result in "yaw rotation" \- > causing the Issus to spin hopelessly out of control.

> "This precise synchronisation would be impossible to achieve through a > nervous system, as neural impulses would take far too long for the > extraordinarily tight coordination required,"

> Interestingly, the mechanistic gears are only found in the insect's juvenile > – or 'nymph' – stages, and are lost in the final transition to adulthood

So, how do the adults or other grasshoppers synchronize their jumps if the nervous system can't do it and cog-wheels aren't involved?

</comment><comment><USER6> From September 12, 2013

<comment><USER7> Also discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8212984](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8212984).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One must, absolutely must, wonder how many marvels of life we have destroyed having never witnessed their splendor.

</comment><comment><USER9> But what about ATP synthase?</comment>


Yehuda Yudkowsky, 1985-2004 - <AUTHOR> http://yudkowsky.net/other/yehuda <comment><USER2> This doesn't do anything to dissuade me of the notion that the singularity movement is a religious movement. The comfort of hope in an afterlife and hope in scientific immortality seem quite similar. While research into singularity and anti-aging could be better funded, I'm not sure why we need to 'believe' in these things or make sure we join the correct denominations (transhumanist vs non-transhumanist).

Besides, unless the universe is infinite we're just arguing about timeframes. I prefer not to think about death as annihilation because death doesn't mean that we never existed, we each have our unique portion of space-time.

<comment><USER3> You can boil any human aspiration evocative of hope, happiness, and progress to this defintion of "religious". Does this invalidate the drive?

<comment><USER4> To me, it _validates_ the drive. Just as language is universal, so is the effort to make meaning. Those two qualities bind us as humans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lately I have read a lot about the singularity, and I am very confused why people are for this concept. Extending life through brain simulation, nanomachines support, and personality uploads does not sound like you will be still "alive". Does that make me a vitalist? A luddite I am not.

It is easy to debate for hours about the feasibility of singularity. I understand the accelerated returns and all, but I think that much of these stuff and very-near milestones stem very much from wishful thinking by proponents. "Rapture" within lifetime, immortality. I think these are still too far-fetched, and I cannot understand how proponents of singularity swear by this timeline with utmost faith.

BTW, does cryonics work now?? \--- Since Yehuda's body was not identified for three days after he died, there was no possible way he could have been cryonically suspended. Others may be luckier. If you've been putting off that talk with your loved ones, do it. Maybe they won't understand, but at least you won't spend forever wondering why you didn't even try.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I similarly don't get the fascination with brain simulation. Say someone told me they had an exact simulation of by brain running, and I was convinced beyond a doubt they were right, would I be fine with dying at that point? No.

To paraphrase Samuel Clemens:

"I don't want to gain immortality through brain simulation. I want to gain immortality by not dying."

<comment><USER7> And what if somebody was slowly replacing your real neurons with artificial ones?

Start with one chip-neuron, finish with the whole artificial brain. In all steps of the process your "self" being preserved.

 _Credit goes to Stanislaw Lem "Do you exist Mr Jones?"_

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's a bit more convincing. I'm mainly skeptical about the idea of consciousness replication. My statement was meant to show that even if the brain simulation created a consciousness, it wasn't the same as my consciousness, which would still disappear if I were to die.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Granted, it's painful to lose a dear one.

But there are so many wrong things with this article, it's difficult to know where to start.

Angry at the "way-things-are"? Does that even make sense? It feels like he's saying "everyone is dying, and what is the government doing?!"

"When Michael Wilson heard the news, he said: 'We shall have to work faster.' "

I mean, can one really say that _seriously_ , outside of a poor SF story? So this is a rational, skeptical person, and not a cult member? Although I'm not religious, I think his religious relatives seem to have a much wiser attitude to life.

<comment><USER9> It makes sense to (at least) the extent that you have grounds for thinking that the-way-things-are can be changed, which Eliezer does. In any case, he's describing how he feels, and it's not obviously wrong to feel "angry enough to do X" just because X is impossible.

What _exactly_ is your objection? That EY et al think death can be more or less completely abolished, and that's obviously wrong, so they're probably being irrational? (If so: why is it obviously wrong?)

<comment><USER10> "Angry at the way things are" is like saying things are not as they should be because someone fucked up. But who is responsible for how the world is? The creator?

Having this kind of anger is like believing in God.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank you for posting this. We do need to work faster. In the day to day actions of waking, working, and sleeping until the next day we tend to lose sight of the longterm goal. At least I do. I am somewhat reassured my younger sister will live long enough, though I am not sure about my mom. I've had to accept my grandmother won't, as my grandad died in March. This is a good reminder to all of us who think there is an answer.

</comment><comment><USER12> _But then most atheists also succumb to comforting lies_

"Succumbing to comforting lies" is like being a tourist: only other people do it.

On another note, the Singularity is an amazing social example of what Freud called the return of the repressed.

</comment><comment><USER13> So, I agree (strongly) with the statements and feelings in this discussion. I am a transhumanist in the sense that I do also have this burning hope that we will defeat this inhuman universe and repeal death.

How can I get involved in helping with this? Where are the communities? How can I assist (other than donating money)?

Any pointers would be much appreciated.

<comment><USER14> > Any pointers

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence <http://singinst.org> is Yudkowsky's organization.

> How can I assist (other than donating money)?

Donating is good. Here is some writing on 'activism.' [http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/writings.htm#techs...](http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/writings.htm#techsing)

There is also the OpenCog <http://opencog.org> open-source project sponsored by SIAI.

> Where are the communities?

See these email lists: <http://www.singinst.org/discussion/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Fight the moonlight, drama queen. Death is not the problem, ego is. His sense of entitlement is baffling. Why does he want to be some sort of immortal god if he's an atheist?

I'm all for the progress of science toward a much, much longer life but demanding immortality _right now_... is quite over the top.

<comment><USER16> Fight the moonlight, drama queen. Falling is not the problem, ego is. His sense of entitlement is baffling. Why does he want to be some sort of flying god if he's a human?

I'm all for the progress of science toward winged machines but demanding flight right now... is quite over the top.

(Edit: I do understand how someone could be surprised by his sense of entitlement. I don't see, however, how it follows that we should not at least try just because the problems sounds really, really hard. Humans had never flown, but that doesn't mean humans will never fly. Same goes for many things, including death.)

<comment><USER8> Your parody (?) doesn't work. For one, as far I as know there was never a group of "flightists" crying over the fate of non-flying humanity, blaming God or Mother Nature, talking about foolish non-flightists...

There's a big difference. Avoiding death is not merely a hard technical problem. It's a moral and existential issue. If some people became immortal, imagine the whole lot of new ethical, existential problems we would have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised how easily people equate "duplication of the mind" with "immortality". I'm agnostic when it comes to god, and I'm agnostic about that piece of the singularity. Maybe someday we'll have enough knowledge of the mind and reality to know for sure that "the self" really is just a bunch of organic bits in the ol' noggin, but anyone claiming to know that answer right now is too presumptuous.

</comment><comment><USER18> At the bottom update, he proposes that standard procedure should be to cryogenically freeze unknown corpses. I as a taxpayer do not want to shoulder this burden. As time goes on, the expense of keeping unknown corpses frozen continually increases as they pile up.

<comment><USER19> The per capita expense of keeping a thousand frozen heads in a pool of liquid nitrogen is essentially negligible. You wouldn't notice it as a budget item. If it really bugs you, fund it yourself through private philanthropy. But out of all the things that government was ever proposed to do, this would be the most cost-effective in the history of time - even I, a libertarian, draw the line at not doing _this_. Cryonics is _cheap_ , people are crazy.

<comment><USER18> It depends how far away our ability to reanimate them is. I don't know how many thousands or tens of thousands of unidentified people (or ones otherwise taken care of by the state) die every year. In a stable population the per capita cost of keeping them all would keep increasing.

Moreover, what would we do with them? Copy their consciousness into a computer some day? Who pays for that? And does it really soften the blow of losing a loved one? I don't think having a copy of my dead mother would make me feel any better about the real one having passed on.

Would we grow them new bodies? What does that cost and who pays for that? Would they even want that? Do we have the right to make that decision for them? If we reanimate everyone who dies, how quickly can our country no longer sustain such a rapidly increasing population?

All of this just seems like an illogical reaction to the death of a loved one. I don't mean that to be rude (I've had my own illogical reactions) but it's just not feasible, especially for a technology that we're not sure will ever amount to anything.

<comment><USER19> We're operating on different technological assumptions here. Cryonics reanimation takes nanotech and quite possibly machine superintelligence, both of which are self-replicating technologies. The software might be expensive, as 'twere, but that's a one-time cost.

Regarding the thing with "copies", that's a complex issue and I can only refer you to the entire sequence on personal identity on Overcoming Bias:

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/qm-and-identity.html>

<comment><USER18> If you had to make an educated guess, how long would it be until we can reanimate cryogenically frozen people? And what would the cost of freezing everyone who passes away until then be?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If people stop dying, won't other people have to stop getting born?

I'm just reading something by Schopenhauer on death, and he thinks it doesn't make sense to fear it. Here is a better summary than I could write: <http://darwiniana.com/2006/04/23/schopenhauer-on-death/>

<comment><USER10> I read that again and I'm not sure that summary helps a lot. I'll just write about what I've read turned into in my mind, where it merged with my own experience and other things I've read.

Schopenhauer's main point is that death doesn't exist because time is not real. This is not very comforting unless you can imagine what it means that time is not real. I can't.

He does point out that there is no rational reason to fear death. The fear of death is an instinct, like aggressivity for example, which you can repress and even overcome. It's useful in some situations, when it makes you go to the doctor because you're sick, and it's useless in other situations, like when you're terminally ill. People who know they will die can overcome the fear of death and learn to accept it. ( see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler- Ross_model> )

So fear of death is not a reason for avoiding death. Is there a rational reason to consider death as something to avoid? Death is as natural as birth. The process of evolution even requires the cycle of birth and death.

What bothers Eliezer Yudkovski is not death, it's the suffering caused by the loss of someone dear. Making people immortal however will never rid life of suffering.

<comment><USER9> Of course there's a rational reason to avoid death (and hence, to consider death as something to avoid -- which, yes, is not at all the same thing as fearing it). Aren't there a whole lot of things you want to do? Well, if you die now then you won't get to do any of them. If you've achieved everything you want to in life, _then_ perhaps you no longer have any reason to avoid death. Most people haven't.

But, actually, I think you'd have reason even then to avoid death, if like most people you instinctively hate or fear it. It's rational to pursue things you like and avoid things you dislike, if anything's rational at all.

<comment><USER10> I couldn't help thinking some more about what you wrote.

The things I want to do, like reading a specific book, only make sense if I am alive. If I die, my desire to read the book disappears. I would not say I want to live in order to read this book. I would say I want to read this book if I am alive.

But I agree with you that people can sometimes have a sense of purpose, of things that should be accomplished in their life. I remember I had this a long time ago. I'm still working on what I then thought I should do. In the meantime I have lost the feeling I must absolutely live so that my work can be accomplished. But the fact this feeling exists does make me think there is something wrong with my argument.

You are right it is rational to pursue things you like or avoid things you dislike and following your instincts. At the same time your different instincts are often in contradiction, and you rationally chose which one to repress. So the fact you have an instinct doesn't mean you should never repress it, and having an instinct of survival doesn't necessarily mean it would be good to live forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm glad this is posted again.

</comment><comment><USER21> Am I one of the few people who looks forward to death? To know that there WILL be an end to things is something of a comfort to me.

I'd like to live for a time, sure, but even five hundred years might be too long. I'd either get driven insane by the constant bow-shocks of ever advancing culture, or I'd lapse into some kind of boredom-induced stupor.

I have my little slice of spacetime, to do with as I wish. I could live a great and noble life, or a horrific and cruel one. I could live another five decades, or if I wanted to, end it all tomorrow.

No matter what I may do, or not do, in the end.. there are no regrets, no looking back. Just.. the steady decay of my body, the essential atoms of my makeup being reused by other organisms, processes, chemical reactions.

And I like it that way.

<comment><USER22> _I'd like to live for a time, sure, but even five hundred years might be too long. I'd either get driven insane by the constant bow-shocks of ever advancing culture, or I'd lapse into some kind of boredom-induced stupor._

It's not wrong either for the rest of us to be curious.

<comment><USER23> I'm both curious about living for 1000+ years, since no human has ever lived so long before, and about what happens after death. Given the chance for a 1000-year lifespan, I'd readily take it knowing that I _will_ die, Singularity or no, given the very long but finite lifespan of the universe, and taking the long lifespan would allow me to experience both.

Although a "healthy fear" is certainly in order, I don't understand the reflexive hatred of death. I think it's more likely that consciousness is nonphysical and that there is some form of spiritual survival. Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research is pretty solid. (If I'm wrong, I'll never know.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _But then most atheists also succumb to comforting lies, and make excuses for death even less defensible than the outright lies of religion. They flinch away, refuse to confront the horror of a hundred and fifty thousand sentient beings annihilated every day._

I would like to think that I, as an atheist, don't have to rationalize the unknown and accept that we just don't have the answers to the "why" of death. I realize he is in pain, but I don't think I'm lying to myself about death just because I don't have some over-arching dogma to believe in.

<comment><USER24> Modded down because I'm an atheist, or because I imply that religion is dogma? Just curious.

<comment><USER24> I was asking a sincere question. Why was THAT modded down?</comment></comment></comment>