Who owns America? Hint: It's not China - <AUTHOR> http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/who-owns-america-hint-its-not-china/

<comment><USER2> Well, they're the largest non-US-govt owner, including $150B more than US households. I'm not sure the Treasury and Social Security Trust count as far as external influencers, so China is still at the top of the pile, despite only owning 8%.

<comment><USER3> Given the current debt ceiling situation, I think it's more likely this breakdown is being presented as an answer to the question "who suffers if we default?" rather than "how reliant are we on external influences?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a treemap visualization of U.S. debt holders, based on data from this article:

[http://coding.pressbin.com/110/Treemap-shows-who-holds-US- de...](http://coding.pressbin.com/110/Treemap-shows-who-holds-US-debt/)

<comment><USER5> Quibbles...

A good portion of titles are cut-off.

As has been pointed out, it's doubtful the US treasury itself counts as being in the same category as US house-holds (the US treasury prints the money it uses to buy US debt, that's hold money gets printed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's interesting how close Japan is to China too, given how people aren't fretting about Japan.

<comment><USER3> > _"given how people aren't fretting about Japan."_

They aren't fretting about Japan _anymore_. But in the 1980s there was an anti-japan screed equivalent for just about anything you read today about China.

With regards to economics anyway.

<comment><USER7> There is a fun Michael Crichton book (and a subsequent movie) that captures the "fretting" quite well IMHO. It's called Rising Sun.

<comment><USER8> Somewhere in the book boxes I have an autographed copy of that book which he sent me as lagniappe along with a check as payment for a little Mac shareware program I had then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)

How can the Treasury have US Debt?

<comment><USER10> Good question. The Treasury controls numerous trust and pension funds that are heavily invested in US Bonds.

See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holders_of_the_National_De...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holders_of_the_National_Debt_of_the_United_States.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I went to the "source" slideshow, and I still can't tell how much these categories overlap. Part of my 401K is invested in a strictly-U.S. Treasury Bonds mutual fund. Does that count as owned by a household or by a mutual fund or get counted twice?

[Edit: I didn't read far enough in the source: the linked article misstated "Federal Reserve" as "Treasury"] Also, how does the U.S. Treasury "own" the debt? I thought Treasury issued the debt, and the Federal reserve controlled (more exactly "influenced") the interest rate by deciding how much of those bonds to buy. So I expected the Federal Reserve should have shown up as a large debt holder.

</comment><comment><USER12> I found it amusing that Caribbean Banking Centres own so much of the debt. Didn't realise there was that much capital there.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is the "U.S. Treasury" here the Federal Government, or the Federal Reserve?

<comment><USER14> It is unclear by your comment whether you are aware that the Federal Reserve is a private organization, and is not part of the US government. Or, perhaps that is your point?

<comment><USER15> That is rather disingenuous. While the Fed can make decisions outside the purview of the government, its power is derived from Congress, and its governors are appointed by the President and confirmed by Congress. It's certainly not an entirely private organization.

<comment><USER14> Please excuse my ignorance. I thought I knew something, and I was apparently mistaken. Several aspects taken from the wikipedia entry[1] stuck out for me:

 _The Federal Reserve System's structure is composed of the presidentially appointed Board of Governors (or Federal Reserve Board), the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks located in major cities throughout the nation, numerous privately owned U.S. member banks and various advisory councils.[

The Federal Reserve System has both private and public components, and was designed to serve the interests of both the general public and private bankers.

It is also unusual in that an entity outside of the central bank, namely the United States Department of the Treasury, creates the currency used.

However, its authority is derived from the U.S. Congress and is subject to congressional oversight. Additionally, the members of the Board of Governors, including its chairman and vice-chairman, are chosen by the President and confirmed by Congress. The government also exercises some control over the Federal Reserve by appointing and setting the salaries of the system's highest-level employees. Thus the Federal Reserve has both private and public aspects.

Various statutory changes, including the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, have been proposed to broaden the scope of the audits. Bloomberg L.P. News brought a lawsuit against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to force the Board to reveal the identities of firms for which it has provided guarantees.[140] Bloomberg, L.P. won at the trial court level,[141] and as of early September 2010 the case is on appeal at the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit._

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm,

The two biggest treasury bond holder are agencies of the government. Which essentially is money that's been printed rather than debt.

The third largest holder of the debt is China. China plus Japan have more than US house holds.

The banks, mutual funds, etc. could themselves be owned by anyone, so I don't those figures saying much.

So, as far as I can, the figures seem to say foreigners own a huge amount of US debt. Of course, this "bonds in America", not "stock in America" so they don't have any option to remove the "board of directors". Still, given how the current management is doing, I almost they could.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wrong. Seniors owns America.

Social security liability: 15 Trillion

Prescription drug liability: 20 Trillion

Medicare liability: 79 Trillion

US unfunded liabilities: 114 Trillion

<http://www.usdebtclock.org/>

<comment><USER17> But again (as I said below and was completely unfairly downvoted) we have no way to raise that much money to pay the seniors. Because Tax revenue tends to stay consistent as a % of GDP(<http://tinyurl.com/3dgkupq>) even when the top tax rate is raised to 80 or 90% (which it was in the 50s).

So the person who really owns America is whoever is going to lend us the money to pay the seniors (and those becoming seniors) in the next 30 or so years.

(And yes I'm prepared to be Downvoted here too but I'd rather be downvoted while trying to get people to face an obvious truth than hide from a bully with a quick mouse finger)

<comment><USER18> Did you read your own chart? Between 1942 and today, it ranges from ~14% to ~21%. I don't know if you're aware of this, but 7% of GDP is a big deal. Incidentally, the same chart you point to shows how tax income is about as low of a share of GDP as its ever been since 1950.

<comment><USER19> I've seen the same point made elsewhere, and the point isn't really that tax revenue stays constant as a % of GDP, it's that there seems to be a ceiling around 20%. The implication being that attempts to raise tax revenue greater than 20% of GDP are likely to fail.

<comment><USER20> And the people implying this are usually anti-government nuts.

The fact is tax increases of any kind are currently hard to get. Maybe as benefits for seniors start disappearing we'll see that change since seniors vote. If we ever get back to 20% of GDP for Federal tax revenues there's no special reasoning that says getting to 21% is going to be any harder then going from 18% to 19%. The whole 20% thing is just silly.

<comment><USER21> Did you see the chart? That's what the empirical data shows. Tax avoidance behavior increases as tax rates increase, you have moving targets.

<comment><USER20> "Did you see the chart? That's what the empirical data shows."

It doesn't show any such thing. The whole truth is that from 1940 to 2000 average taxes paid including state and local went from 18% to 32%. Plenty of governments around the world and a number of US states are over 20% in federal taxes alone.

"Tax avoidance behavior increases as tax rates increase, you have moving targets."

This is obvious but, unfortunately, does not get you to "it's impossible to collect more then 20% federal taxes"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 8% might not "own" us, but its enough to "pwn" us.

Here's some nice commentary about the reality of the debt limit: [http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/06/22/602761/the- imposs...](http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2011/06/22/602761/the-impossible- debt-ceiling-rollover/)

Many point out that, even if the government "shuts down", we have enough to pay the interest on all our debt, so we don't have to worry about default. But that completely ignores maturing treasury bills. In order for us not to be up shit creek, we need China, Japan, Wall Street, HK to rollover these bonds (i.e use the money we owe on them to buy more).

Most of this debt is short term (less than two years). What happens to our economy if China decides not to rollover $1T over that time? Or starts selling it? If it doesn't end with everyone else throwing in the towel, it will at least end with huge interest rates. The only thing stopping the US becoming 1930's Germany is the Chinese. It's nice that we have all the other requirements in place: Father^H^H^H^Hhomeland Security, Christian Fundamentalists, huge military, secret police, massive jails.

</comment><comment><USER23> Nobody owns America. Dumb title.

</comment><comment><USER24> Who's America ?

</comment><comment><USER25> Why are Taiwan and HK in a different category than China?

<comment><USER26> The Republic of China is an entirely separate country from the People's Republic of China. Hong Kong, likewise, is economically and administratively separate from the rest of China.

<comment><USER27> You are correct that Taiwan is a separate country. Hong Kong 100% belongs to China and so any decision that comes from Hong Kong actually comes from Beijing.

<comment><USER28> That all depends where you are sitting. The Chinese certainly don't consider them a separate country.

<comment> brown9-2 But realistically speaking, Taiwan has it's own government, China has no say, and other governments of the world interact with Taiwan as a peer.

<comment><USER29> Although the US does not officially recognize them as a separate country.

<comment><USER30> ... for political reasons only. Taiwan self-governs, and is economically distinct from China, which is what matters here.

<comment><USER22> Unless we are talking about China using the debt for hostile purposes, in which case the independence of RoC and what it may be willing to do to _stay_ independent, might be exactly what matters. Ditto HK. I assume everyone involved has plans to move their money if PRC attempts nationalization, but if its delivers instructions to "keep your money, just dont roll it over" or "dont roll it over and we'll cover any loses as the dollar ceases to exist" then some people will have some hard choices to make.

<comment><USER30> I suppose there's also a question of what (if anything) the US would do to help Taiwan stay independent if China decided to re-unify via force. Definitely a potentially sticky situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The problem with this assessment is a large part of our debt is owed to a shell game.

Raising taxes has proven ineffective when it comes to generating large amounts of revenue. Look at history and tax revenue as a % of GDP remains remarkably steady despite the top tax rate falling almost 70%(<http://tinyurl.com/3dgkupq>). So the old saying that you can't raise taxes higher than the amount it would cost a rich guy to cheat the tax system holds pretty true.

Maybe we'll find some miraculous way to fix that problem but as of right now we can't expect huge gains by raising taxes.

That means the roughly 43% we owe ourselves either (a) can't be paid back or (b) will have to be borrowed from foreign countries. Because we can't raise the revenue in time to pay out the debt to pension funds, Social Security and private citizens saving for retirement.

So the People/Government who owns America is really whoever will be willing and able to loan us money when the U.S. citizens we owe come to collect their money.

<comment><USER31> Being able to produce additional revenues of 1 or 2% from an economy of _trillions_ is not my measure of ineffective tax increases.

<comment><USER17> It is when your debt is approaching 100% of your GDP and you owe 40% of it to yourself. Think about it. If GDP and our Debt are roughly equal how is 1 or 2% a year increase in revenue going to be able to pay 40% + interest of debt?

<comment><USER32> If you owe money to yourself why can you not write that debt off?

<comment><USER33> Self = same economic system/country. Or would you have America writing off loans from American citizens?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Toast.js - <AUTHOR> http://wrapp.github.com/toast.js

<comment><USER2> I see what you did there...</comment>


Self-Normalizing Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.02515 <comment><AUTHOR> \+ Problem: deep nets working fine if they are recurrent, but for forward nets, depth doesn't seem to do the job.

\+ Normalization is beneficial for learning (per unit zero means and unit variance). It can be batch normalization, layer normalization, or weight normalization (if trained layer for layer and previous layer normalized).

\+ Perturbations through stochastic gradient descent, stochastic regularization (dropout) does not destroy the normalized properties for CNNs, but it does so for forward nets.

\+ Self-normalizing net uses a mapping g: O -> O that maps mean and variance to the next layer for each observation. Iteratively applying this mapping leads to a fixed point.

\+ The activation function to do so is not a sigmoid, ReLU, etc. but a function that is linear for positive x and exponential in x for negative x; the scaled exponential linear unit.

\+ Intuitively: for negative net inputs the variance is decreased, for positive net inputs the variance is increased.

\+ For very negative values the variance decrease is stronger. For inputs close to zero the variance increase is stronger.

\+ For large invariance in one layer, the variance gets decreased more in the next layer, and vice versa.

\+ Theorem 2 states that the variance can be bounded from above and hence there are not exploding gradients.

\+ Theorem 3 states that the variance can be bounded from below and does not vanish.

\+ Stochasticity is introduced by a variant on dropout called alpha dropout. This is a type of dropout that leaves mean and variance invariant.

I think the paper gives a nice view on handling gradients in deep nets.

<comment><USER2> That's a great summary.

The promise of this work is that we can have fully connected nets 30 layers deep, or more. Up until now they didn't work for more than 2-3 layers in depth. The fully connected nets have been untamed and wild until now, but now they can be made to behave.

Now that it has been shown to be possible, in a few months we could see more solutions.

<comment><USER3> On principle you're right, but at least for computer vision the number of layers you mention are a bit off. VGG16 worked well with 16 layers without any special handling. ResNet went to >150 layers by using shortcuts, which kind of cracked the problem already. This paper gives us more insight and maybe a more elegant solution.

edit: Just realized you said 2/3 _fully connected layers_, which is right. But for convolutions we needed skip connections, too, to get them to work. Any reason you single out fully connected layers?

<comment><USER4> Regarding your edit, the authors of the paper in question focus on FNNs and note the reason in the paper:

> Both RNNs and CNNs can stabilize learning via weight sharing, therefore they > are less prone to these perturbations. In contrast, FNNs trained with > normalization techniques suffer from these perturbations and have high > variance in the training error (see Figure 1).

Essentially FNNs stand to benefit more from this work than CNNs or RNNs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reddit discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6g5tg1/r_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6g5tg1/r_selfnormalizing_neural_networks_improved_elu/)

</comment><comment><USER6> They already have a tensorflow implementation of SELU [https://github.com/bioinf-jku/SNNs](https://github.com/bioinf-jku/SNNs)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I see why tanh couldn't be used to the same effect. If you use 1.6*tanh(x) as your activation function, it pushes small variances higher and high variances lower and gets you to a variance of ~1 after many layers. Obviously not as rigorous, just an observation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Page 87 of the paper, Appendix A4.2 starts the comparison between problem sets.

Edits:

Looks impressive, best or near best on most, but I wish they had bolded best of set.

Still not sure how the regularization squares with the rapid precision fitting to the training set data in Figure 1.

</comment><comment><USER9> That Appendix!

Next time someone claims people don't have a theoretical understanding of how NNs work point them at that.

<comment><USER10> And tell them to explain it the rest of us too, since they're so cool and mathy.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Simple image resizing/optimization service - <AUTHOR> https://scaley.io/ <comment><USER3> My acid test for image scaling software:

[http://i.imgur.com/X9vKa2s.png](http://i.imgur.com/X9vKa2s.png)

[https://i.scaley.io/png-256x128/i.imgur.com/X9vKa2s.png](https://i.scaley.io/png-256x128/i.imgur.com/X9vKa2s.png)

This means that you don't use a linear color space for blending colors.

Sorry about the language, the image is not made by me [1].

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20120904060524/http://www.4p8.co...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120904060524/http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html)

edit:

I see that your backend relies on libvips to do the resizing. I have no experience with it, but I could make libvips-tools' vipsthumbnail program work correctly:

      $ vipsthumbnail --linear -f tn_%s.png -s 256x128 gamma-1.0-or-2.2.png

Note the "\--linear" option, without it produces the same wrong image.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't think this would come up so quickly! This can actually be fixed with an undocumented option 'gamma'[1]

I didn't include it in the website, admittedly because I didn't fully understand it, and I wanted to keep the service as simple as possible.

Would it make sense for this to be the default?

[1] [https://i.scaley.io/png- gamma-256x128/i.imgur.com/X9vKa2s.pn...](https://i.scaley.io/png- gamma-256x128/i.imgur.com/X9vKa2s.png)

<comment><USER3> Nice! I think it should be the default. Some software might treats as a compromise between correctness and cost (doing the rescaling in linear space is usually more costly). In my view it should be correctness first.

The ImageWorsener's website as an excellent reading material on image resizing and other transformations. ImageWorsener is a "correctness first" image resizing software.

[http://entropymine.com/imageworsener/](http://entropymine.com/imageworsener/)

<comment><USER4> "Correctness" is not very useful in image processing, it's all about perception and performance.

<comment><USER5> Well "correct" in the case of linear vs non-linear luminance is pretty much exactly about perception (or at the very least, working to prevent perception differences further down the pipeline), even if it is a somewhat minor effect.

"The Importance of Being Linear"[1] which just came up on HN a few days ago, discusses some issues with non-linearity, specifically in the context of 3D rendering.

[1] - [http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch24.html](http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch24.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to echo the sentiment that offering 100% uptime and 3x, 5x, 10x refunds is a dangerous decision and actually will not increase paid signups. I've been doing operations/DevOps for over a decade (in fact I just launched a consulting startup ([https://elasticbyte.net](https://elasticbyte.net)) that helps companies manage their cloud infrastructure). 100% uptime is a red flag, ops professionals never guarantee 100%.

You instead should offer standard 99.9% (44 mins a month) or 99.99% (4 min 30 sec) with standard SLA language.

<comment><USER7> Theoretically, I could sign up then DoS the site myself for a nice payout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> CloudFlare doesn't allow this kind of use of their service. Once you start pushing enough bandwidth they will ask you to go away. And since you offer free unlimited CDN bandwidth, when that happens and you move to a different CDN provider your bill could increase 50 times over a day.

<comment><USER9> It's not bandwidth that is restricted by our terms of service it's...

SECTION 10: LIMITATION ON NON-HTML CACHING

 _You acknowledge that Cloudflare's Service is offered as a platform to cache and serve web pages and websites and is not offered for other purposes, such as remote storage._ Accordingly, you understand and agree to use the Service solely for the purpose of hosting and serving web pages as viewed through a web browser or other application and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) protocol or other equivalent technology. Cloudflare's Service is also a shared web caching service, which means a number of customers' websites are cached from the same server. To ensure that Cloudflare's Service is reliable and available for the greatest number of users, a customer's usage cannot adversely affect the performance of other customers' sites. Additionally, the purpose of Cloudflare's Service is to proxy web content, not store data. _Using an account primarily as an online storage space, including the storage or caching of a disproportionate percentage of pictures, movies, audio files, or other non-HTML content, is prohibited._ You further agree that if, at Cloudflare's sole discretion, you are deemed to have violated this section, or if Cloudflare, in its sole discretion, deems it necessary due to excessive burden or potential adverse impact on Cloudflare's systems, potential adverse impact on other users, server processing power, server memory, abuse controls, or other reasons, Cloudflare may suspend or terminate your account without notice to or liability to you.

<comment><USER10>
      You further agree that if [...] if Cloudflare, in its
      sole discretion, deems it necessary due to [...]
      other reasons, Cloudflare may suspend or terminate
      your account without notice to or liability to you.

I gotta say, that statement isn't very helpful in letting people know what to avoid doing.

<comment><USER11> these clauses are pretty common for this type of contract. it allows the service provider to not have to worry about whether or not their contract allows them to kick an abusive customer off their platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the tester/hacker in me talking, but have you checked for cases where one can loop your own images hundreds of times? (e.g. [https://i.scaley.io/jpg/i.scaley.io/png/i.imgur.com/DZjrx4E....](https://i.scaley.io/jpg/i.scaley.io/png/i.imgur.com/DZjrx4E.jpg) but more than 2 times)

A simple url DOS attack from my puny browser may cripple your entire server.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I made this mainly because I wanted a service to use for my own projects - <USER2> the existing solutions were either prohibitively expensive or didn't have uptime guarantees.

The backend for the processing service is nodejs and sharp[1], processed images are cached on CloudFlare. The processing servers are a custom instance type in an autoscaling group on Google Cloud.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

[1] [https://github.com/lovell/sharp](https://github.com/lovell/sharp)

<comment><USER13> Cloudflare does not permit storing just images in any of their plans. Their terms state that serving disproportionate amount of image or video via their service will be violation of their terms. You should check it before using it for longh term or providing cheaper cache options to users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, great info - thanks for the heads up. I'll dig into that and look into alternatives

<comment><USER9> Instead of looking for an alternative, why not get in contact with Cloudflare and talk to us about it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely will do that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Fun feature you should add: the ability to crop around faces. I.e say you have a long and tall image and you need it to be square, you could pick the center, top, or bottom to zoom in on, which do you choose? It would be nice to set a flag and say "find the subject(s) of this photo and crop around the subject(s)".

<comment><USER15> Yeah, that is a good idea. The Google Vision API actually makes it pretty easy to do. It is pretty amazing that this kind of thing is now possible. You can chain together a bunch of transformations into one like [find face] + [crop photo]. Here's one example of that implemented [https://www.filestack.com/docs/image- transformations/facial-...](https://www.filestack.com/docs/image- transformations/facial-detection)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now I'm kicking myself because I did something very similar for one of my clients based on AWS and shared it publicly ([https://github.com/pbudzon/aws- image-gateway](https://github.com/pbudzon/aws-image-gateway))! Not sure how it compares cost-wise, though. It's a combination of CloudFront, API Gateway, Lambda and S3. I'm quite sure CloudFront doesn't have limitations on what you can cache, like Cloudflare seems to have.

Like others who commented, I don't get the idea of image-resize-as-a-service, so I remember I laughed at my client when they asked me for this. For some reason I believe it's better for the world if we don't make people think it's ok to throw around gigantic images around the cables when it's completely unnecessary...

<comment><USER17> Not your fault. Developers tend to sometimes underestimate the power of releasing a command line utility as a web based/API tool that can help non techies do simple stuff. Image resizing is a recurring candidate but there are others like conversion tools (to pdf), checkers/monitors (ssl for example) etc. Yes, you could do these on your server with a simple cmd line but tons of folks are willing to pay to be able to use a browser/API to do the same.

<comment><USER18> It feels like a compelling property here is to have a "single point of continuously increasing quality"—that is, one changing chunk of code that is continuously improved and battle tested as more and more users report issues that require workarounds.

(But of course ever-changing externally hosted web services like these have their drawbacks.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Awesome work! I have a suggestion/question. Why did you chose the pattern

      /:options/:image

over

      /:image/:options

? Seems the latter would be more user friendly.

<comment><USER20> If the image url is in front there isn't exactly a sure fire way to tell where that url ends and where the options should begin. Of course there are work arounds, but the way it is now it seems that it would cover every case.

<comment><USER19> Good point. Didn't think of that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Looks really well done! Can someone compare/contrast with Imgix?

</comment><comment><USER22> As so often:

Please don't show a blank page when no javascript is available.

Maybe a message that you should enable javascript or better some basic information what your service does.

</comment><comment><USER23> Related: [https://transloadit.com/](https://transloadit.com/)

<comment><USER24> Transloadit is great. I'm using it right now with an open-source video project ([https://github.com/xiaofei- mo/mysteriousobjectsatnoon](https://github.com/xiaofei- mo/mysteriousobjectsatnoon)). The encoding process is just ffmpeg under the hood, but not having to write all of the glue code to get it running with AWS has saved me a ton of time.

<comment><USER25> Thanks! Transloadit founder here - just wanted to say if there's anything you feel we could do better we'd love to hear that too :+1:

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Looks nice. Is the service smart enough to figure out the file type, for example, image from facebook

[https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/11206479_82...](https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/11206479_820336851353851_664651990019563840_o.jpg?oh=a75345663d781526e8d8135c3a057e2c&oe=590FFF2F)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! And yes, it doesn't pay any attention to the original filename, image format is detected by the data stream. Here's that image resized to 600px wide:

[https://i.scaley.io/600-max- https/scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn...](https://i.scaley.io/600-max- https/scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/11206479_820336851353851_664651990019563840_o.jpg?oh=a75345663d781526e8d8135c3a057e2c&oe=590FFF2F)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have to admit that I don't quite understand "image scaling as a service". Scaling is almost certainly a case where shipping the image over a network is significantly more costly than just doing the scaling locally?

<comment><USER28> Here the only binary program you need installed to scale the image is curl. If you want to do it yourself, you need a whole bunch of image processing libraries installed. Because of that, you'll probably end up separating your image processing logic onto its own host on your internal network, anyway. Then you're back to where you started, making an http call to an external service. Unless latency is a critical factor, an image scaling API is attractive because you do not need to waste development time setting up (and scaling) your own image processing environment.

<comment><USER29> In this case you also don't have to store the images.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> As someone who has never hosted an image service like this, what actions do you have to take to stop "bad" people from using your service? For example, uploading inappropriate / illegal / violent images.

<comment><USER31> I developed a website for the university I attend that anyone can upload photographs of older exams for each course. In order to solve the image content problem the system checks every uploaded image with a 3rd party image recognition API[1] before saving it. Works pretty good so far!

[1][https://clarifai.com/](https://clarifai.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 100% Uptime Guarantee? I'd like to see a status page with some stats and maybe simple graphs akin to [https://status.github.com/](https://status.github.com/).

<comment><USER33> They uses Cloudflare for image caching so it's the Cloudflare uptime. Correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cloudflare actually doesn't have any uptime guarantees until you're on the enterprise plan, afaik. If Cloudflare were to have an outage which caused downtime of Scaley then the guarantee would cover that outage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Neat. what stack are you using ? Something similar for those on GCP : [https://goo.gl/dU0aKy](https://goo.gl/dU0aKy)

</comment><comment><USER35> How does this differ from Imgix?

</comment><comment><USER36> It can't be open like that "just use our URL" because it will bring many free- riders and shutdown your server.

But it also can't be a closed system with private keys and all that, because the hassle is too enormous -- the user will need a server to get the key for each image and so on.

I have the impression that all services of this kind suffer from the above dual-problem.

</comment><comment><USER37> <snark>For something called "scaley" your logo looks very blurry on my high- dpi display. Use SVG!</snark>

</comment><comment><USER38> My problem is usually making the cropping "smart". I need a content-aware cropping so that the resulting image looks good. It doesn't seem to come up too often as a known and requested feature in most of these services, I am wondering how come, this seems like a "must have" for me

</comment><comment><USER39> Have you considered implementing IIIF? That's an emerging standard for constructing image URLs which has a growing amount of existing client support:

[http://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/](http://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/)

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if any thought was put into waifu [1]. While in western countries there is not such a big usercase, I know in Asia a good upscaling algorithm for manga would be really popular.

[1] [http://waifu2x.udp.jp/](http://waifu2x.udp.jp/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Very cool! How is this different from some of the alternatives like Filestack [https://www.filestack.com/](https://www.filestack.com/). I'm not trolling, genuinely curious.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main thing I've tried to focus on is simplicity - you can just use it by changing some URLs.

There are definitely other services out there which address the same thing, the closest one is probably [https://rsz.io/](https://rsz.io/) which even includes some more processing features, but it doesn't have the CDN and I couldn't find any info about uptime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> [https://github.com/springernature/immagine](https://github.com/springernature/immagine)

If you want to host it yourself...

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks like a great service, but the 3x, 5x, and 10x refunds make me very very nervous for you. 100% uptime is practically impossible. Good luck!

<comment><USER44> Its based on the time being down, not rounded up to a month.

Downtime of an hour equals a dollar or something

<comment><USER43> Oh that makes me feel better. Makes sense too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Maybe you could implement Rotate from EXIF data.

</comment><comment><USER46> Nice features and presentation. Looks great.

But those aren't URLs. Do you document how images are retrieved, http or https?

</comment><comment><USER47> Related: [https://kraken.io](https://kraken.io)

<comment><USER48> I wonder how is scaley comparing to kraken? I have used neither. Would love to hear others' experiences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> btw I am interested in all kinds of web performance optimization services including image hosting. If anyone is interested to partner up email me at email@example.com

<comment><USER49> Could you clarify a little? What do you mean you're interested? You're founding a business and need a technical co-founder? You're a dev founding a business and need a technical partner? You're a dev looking for work in that area?

Might be my English (not a native speaker) but your message isn't clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Pretty slick.

Have any signups yet?

</comment><comment><USER51> sudo apt-get install imagemagick?</comment>


Show HN: C++ runtime/compile-time detection in constexpr functions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SaadAhmad/in_constexpr <comment><USER2> Just so I'm clear, what this appears to be doing is the moral equivalent of a function that asks if some constant equals what we know to be its value (true at compile time)? And then at program-init time (via __attribute__((constructor(101)))) changing the value of the constant in the text section so the test is now false?

If so, that's both quite clever and something I don't think I want in my codebase :P. The good news is I'm pretty sure Daveed's proposal that you mention ([http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2017/p059...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2017/p0595r0.html)) got support last time it came around EWG so I'm hoping we can just go that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that's exactly what's happening under the hood. I'm definitely looking forward to the constexpr operator being accepted!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I discuss the approach more in depth here:

[http://saadahmad.ca/detecting-evaluation-context-inside- cons...](http://saadahmad.ca/detecting-evaluation-context-inside-constexpr- functions/)

<comment><USER3> So would a valid tl;dr be, "modify the compiled program to catch any invocations not evaluated at compile time and make them return the correct value?"

<comment><AUTHOR> That is basically it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stuff like this shows that we need to introduce even more things into C++. I am not kidding. There are still many things to improve in C++.

<comment><USER5> Luckily, WG21 seems to agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In README: "[...] we can choose to implement a runtime specific algorithm while having a different algorithm for doing something at runtime." Typo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for catching that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As with most things in C++ that looks horribly convoluted for some very simple functionality. In D all we have to do is:

* `if ( __ctfe) { ... }` for compile time

* `if (!__ctfe) { ... }` for runtime

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's any secret D does CTFE better than any other language.

<comment><USER9> Better than Common Lisp?

<comment><USER10> Does better AND doesn't require the language to be AST :)

<comment><USER11> The joke's on you, working with an AST is a treat :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In my libbug library, computation at Compile-Time uses the exact same language as the run-time

      {at-both-times
       {define fact
         [|n| (if (= n 0)
                  [1]
                  [(* n (fact (- n 1)))])]}}

      (pp {at-compile-time-expand   (fact 3)})
      (pp (fact 3))

[https://github.com/billsix/bug](https://github.com/billsix/bug)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why to mlock() the page? And since the code is already specific to linux/gcc/clang, why not to assign the flag to a read-write section (__attribute__((section(name))) -- should allow to get rid of mprotect()?

</comment><comment><USER14> Typo detected :)

"An approach for runtime dection inside a constexpr function"

[https://github.com/SaadAhmad/in_constexpr](https://github.com/SaadAhmad/in_constexpr)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another reason why we should not be using c++...</comment>


Please review my web application - <AUTHOR> http://phone.witamean.net/

<comment><USER2> This looked safe so I input some personal, easily-exploitable information.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please don't worry. I don't want to use your personal information. I just want to know your opinion about my application.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is not a web application, this is two forms that go nowhere and do nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should probably enable JavaScript in your browswer in or der to use application

<comment><USER3> I have JavaScript enabled

<comment><AUTHOR> As I understood, you could not register. But I really don't know what is your problem, because other users work with application without trouble. Please tell me what browser do you use if it is not difficult for you</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Font made from HTML form elements - <AUTHOR> http://1800joe.github.com/LoResForm/

<comment><AUTHOR> link to the code: <https://github.com/1800joe/LoResForm/>

<comment><USER2> Lines 4 and 5 are pretty ridiculous in the actual source: [https://github.com/1800joe/LoResForm/blob/master/loResForm.j...](https://github.com/1800joe/LoResForm/blob/master/loResForm.js)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah... they are output from the program that we wrote to generate the font maps by reading an image file. I'm thinking something like this next: <http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/pub/PDF/FarnesBAlph.pdf></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: how many of you want to be rich? - <AUTHOR> I know everyone says that to succeed as an entrepreneur you have to do it because it's what you love, not because you seek monetary wealth. I agree, to the extent that doing it because you love it has to be your primary motivator. but I also see nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, as long as you recognize it's a side effect of a very successful business. yet I feel like this sort of brazen aspiration is stigmatized. I know that a multi-million dollar payday or billion dollar valuation is a huge long shot, but to me shooting for it is part of the excitement of creating a business.<p>does anyone here consciously want to make millions? is some degree of megalomania an asset in the tech startup world? <comment><USER2> I think we'd be naive to assume money is not a strong motivator in entrepreneurship. It may even be a primary motivator for some, though few would admit it. That said, it can't be the _only_ motivator. Not because that's morally repugnant or anything (I don't make moral judgments here), but because it's not a realistic or sustainable source of motivation.

If all you want to do is make money, then you would be foolish to pursue entrepreneurship. Your expected return on starting a company is significantly less than your expected return on doing something like investment banking. Sure, you might strike it super-rich and become a billionaire through entrepreneurship. More likely than not, that ain't gonna happen. Conversely, you can almost guarantee yourself a fortune in the millions to tens of millions (and maybe even hundreds of millions) if you bust your ass in high finance and are great at it.

In summation: How many of us want to get rich? Probably most of us. How many are doing this _solely_ to get rich? Only the silly ones.

<comment><USER3> For me, I am not motivated by money but rather motivated by the things I can continue to create with larger sums of it. I am a creator, inventor by nature... I've done it all my life.

Having the money to sort out the pithy details of day-to-day life like food, shelter, etc. and simultaneously funding my insane garage projects I embark upon constantly is a nice-to-have but not an expectation.

Really, in the end, I just want to build a legion of robotic minions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want money to do 2 things:

      1. Travel, anytime, anywhere.

      2. Limitless ability to create new projects and businesses.

Fancy cars and houses? No thanks. I hate "stuff".

<comment><USER5> Amen to that

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _does anyone here consciously want to make millions?_

Count me in.

 _is some degree of megalomania an asset in the tech startup world?_

Muwahahahahaha. Damn right.

 _but I also see nothing wrong with wanting to be rich, as long as you recognize it's a side effect of a very successful business._

Exactly. Profit is just a way of keeping score... but the point of a business - IMO - is to achieve some end, which might or might not be as simple as "get rich." I just read Jim Collins' book "Built to Last" and he goes into a lot of depth about how important it is to build a company around a set of core values... to, as he puts it "build a clock, not just tell time." Good stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> As someone who has had a very variable income during her adult life (by a factor of 10x), I can't say I was much happier making a ton of money. In fact, I did it all wrong, and I was pretty miserable at times.

After a certain income level, I prefer to exchange money for free time. At this point in my life, I just sort of naturally live the Millionaire Next Door lifestyle, and there's only so many Chipotle meals and Threadless t-shirts I want to buy.

I learned the hard way (lots of dollars spent) that I prefer choosing my own projects, schedule, and interests to flying first class and buying designer clothes. It turns out that spending a lot of money is very stressful and empty for me. I was always worried about getting my money's worth and dismayed that nothing was as cool as I expected.

</comment><comment><USER8> Some might just be personality? I think many hackers have a cultural disconnect with the traditional aspirations of wealth, because many of their/our aspirations are hacking-related rather than wealth-related. What would I do if I could do whatever I want? I'm not personally very excited by the possibility of staying in 5-star hotels, drinking expensive wine, owning a yacht, having a big mansion, etc., so those aren't really goals. I _am_ excited by the possibility of being able to work for extended periods of time on my own projects without worrying about their profitability though. So that's getting-rich aspiration in a sense, in that I want enough money in the bank to bankroll 20+ years of carefree hackery, which is actually quite a bit of money.

I'm not sure if it counts for your question, though. In a sense you could say that I don't aim to "be rich" in a qualitative sense, but to "be middle class for a long time without working". And you may be asking why more people don't aspire to be rich in that qualitative sense? On the other hand, a person who can live a middle-class lifestyle for an extended time without working is objectively pretty rich...

<comment><USER9> I'm with you - I want to bank roll 20 years of doing whatever I want to do as well but I just can't find the motivation to do the day-to-day for the payoff that would come so late in life. I'm afraid the part of my life that matters (my prime years basically) most will be gone before I'm even ready to relax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm ambivalent about _wanting_ to make millions. I believe very firmly that money per se doesn't solve problems and can compound them. (I have heard that two thirds of folks who win the lottery are bankrupt within five years and some of them have bad things happen because they are suddenly rich.) But I and my oldest son have a medical condition that can cost millions over the course of one's life and we have basically gotten well at a fraction of the price it usually costs to keep people like us limping along. So I suspect that once all the fall out from that is fully resolved, I may have the potential to make millions.

My concern isn't so much how much wealth I have (after achieving a certain level of security), but making sure it doesn't screw up my life. I think at times about the American fantasy of winning the lottery and I suspect that would wreak havoc with my life whereas earning it shouldn't have the same kind of impact. One problem with winning it is that it suddenly and irrevocably cuts a lot of your social ties -- for example, people typically leave their jobs promptly and often don't have any real plans other than to party hardy with their newfound wealth. But earning it usually involves building solid social ties: Relationships to the business community, to your customers, to your employees/coworkers/cofounders, and so on. I think when people have too much aimless time on their hands and too little in the way of healthy social ties, it tends to lead to bad things. A lot of people seem to desperately want to win money because they have unhealthy/unhappy social ties they wish they could escape (like their job) but the reality is that money by itself doesn't usually resolve personal problems. So being able to show up at work one day and tell your boss "Fuck you" to his/her face doesn't necessarily lead to the freedom and peacefulness that such people likely are envisioning.

</comment><comment><USER11> As contrived as it sounds, I've found that my desire to make more money has been as a score keeper. Something that drives my competitive edge.

The same reason I like looking at traffic stats, and income stats. More traffic, more money -> winning more. It's just a form or manifestation of internal motivation.

I make plenty of money now, but I still have a desperate need to grow/expand.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think I am in the minority in that I don't really care about being rich in the 'have millions of dollars' sense.

I am lazy and hate to do have to do things to maintain my life.

People don't build social apps because they love chatrooms and twitter feeds, they build them because they like the thrill of being successful and getting paid.

If I had a steady income stream of 50k a year (adjusted for inflation over time) I would probably never try and make money.. I'd spend my time surfing and disc golfing and writing fibonnaci generators in the shakespeare programming language.

However, that's not the case. Instead I am happy with the compromise of trading my time for rates that I would have considered absurdly high just a couple years ago while making low effort hail mary's at passive income streams.

<comment><USER9> "I am lazy and hate to do have to do things to maintain my life." Haha! I thought I was the only one... I agreed with you til your last sentence. I'm a fan of minimalist living and so I've made it work for me. I haven't really had to make that same compromise you're talking about just yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For me, it's become a -- perhaps counter-productive -- defense mechanism.

Expensive things don't bring me much pleasure. But, once you've had a significant illness or other setback, you learn that money can be the difference between quality of life and being screwed over. (Though it's no guarantee -- there are vampires who are good at taking advantage of the well- endowed.)

Secondly, I'd prefer to live where I can ensure I don't have to listen to my neighbors at all hours, depending on the luck of the draw.

P.S. I like _delirium's response, as well. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2423741>

</comment><comment><USER14> My goals are long term. Right now, I know how to do things related to the web very well. My long term goal is to parlay that into a fortune to pursue my second ambition: space.

Namely, the first space elevator.

</comment><comment><USER15> PG has said repeatedly and publicly that he did Viaweb to get rich.

It's bad PR to talk about getting rich, that's why people rarely do it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Of Course people want to be rich. On the contrary,for the people that use that entity as the primary motivator for entrepreneurship, they will get burnt out. Doing something for the love and the passion is the greatest thing. Having said that, being passionate about your work and becoming rich from it is not a bad option.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just want to be happy, man. If I wake up in the morning and hate what I'm about to do then I'll feel miserable. I don't think money can really undo that feeling. I may be unhappy for not having money to do the things I want to do but at least I won't be miserable.

</comment><comment><USER18> I want enough money to follow the advice that Warren Buffet gave: "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing."

I don't think that requires a million dollar payday.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm not in YC, but I like enough money that I don't have to worry about money (bills, mortgage, simple pleasures). I don't desire a Ferrari and whatnot (but I see nothing wrong, if you do).

</comment><comment><USER20> Would I accept if someone offered to pay me that kind of money? Sure. Would I take up a line of work I hate to earn it? No, thanks. I work to live, not the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER21> I do, I don't see anything wrong with it. I like stuff. I like not having to ask permission to do audacious things.

I think $100M is the low bar for me.

</comment><comment><USER22> Already rich, I have a wonderful family, and an enjoyable life.</comment>


Genomics: ENCODE explained - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7414/full/489052a.html

<comment><USER2> I am an indirect member of modENCODE project -- I am paid by the project but work on computational and data analysis and therefore not wed to it. I feel I should clear up a few things.

First, that 80% figure is a guesstimate, far from definitive.

Second, those "new" discoveries are "associated" by statistical tests. All popular reporting has sidestepped the issue by not explaining the quote around word associated. Basically it means they occur together above a certain statistical threshold. For vast majority of noncoding regions we know nothing about their functions, and this situation will remain for the foreseeable future. I don't have to tell people here that correlation is not causation. Recall all the reported health benefits of wine drinking; it is same degree of certainty.

Third, new technologies inevitably have teething problems, which have not been fully worked out. This means all reported conclusions comply with accepted notions within respective scientific communities. The data are not accurate and reliable enough to overturn any received wisdom.

Forth, yes, this means the main reported scientific results are not new nor that surprising to people in the field. But this is the way popular science and specialists interact.

By and large these papers represents a lot of hard work, but in terms of amount of data and research topics they are already being overtaken, as they should be.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great work. read the NYT article on the train home and then picked up a couple of the papers. The cool thing for me was the realization that when DNA is coiled, parts of the strand that are linearly very far apart end up adjacent in the coil. And further, that adjacency affects how the gene expresses proteins. That means that you not only need a decoded genome, you need to understand the relationship of the segments in 3D. For me at least it feels a lot more reasonable than the original numbers of genes. At least in terms of describing humans, as diverse and complex as we are.

Someone of course will do the same for chimps and bonobos, and then we'll know which of the switches are important as well as the genes. Very cool result and I am confident that several Nobel prizes will come out of it.

<comment><USER4> A lot more information is needed to understand the genome than just the linear sequence or 3D structure. There is phosphorylation and histone tags and RNA splicing and more (and that's just what has been discovered). All this information is needed to understand how the genome works. It is basic genetics.

<comment><USER3> _"It is basic genetics."_

According to the NYT [1] it's 'new' basic genetics. Basically all the 'junk' DNA isn't junk, and the reason the function of that DNA was not appreciated before the ENCODE effort is that these bits appeared 'far away' from the genes which it turns out they affect.

[1] "There is another sort of hairball as well: the complex three-dimensional structure of DNA. Human DNA is such a long strand — about 10 feet of DNA stuffed into a microscopic nucleus of a cell — that it fits only because it is tightly wound and coiled around itself. When they looked at the three- dimensional structure — the hairball — Encode researchers discovered that small segments of dark-matter DNA are often quite close to genes they control. In the past, when they analyzed only the uncoiled length of DNA, those controlling regions appeared to be far from the genes they affect." [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk- dna-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk-dna-dark- matter-proves-crucial-to-health.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER2> If you knew how they found the elements together, you would be far less sanguine about the significance. They started with random sampling of close proximity of genomic positions, plus some basic structural info on how chromatins (coiled DNA molecular) are organized. Then it is a nonlinear optimization with 1e-2 convergence criteria.

Several things lay people are never told: 1\. Even for fixed data, the results are variable, i.e., you will get a different answer every time you run the nonlinear programming code. 2\. There are different ways of getting to 3D positions of genomes and none is ever verified. 3\. Tuning parameters greatly impact results. Yet one set of tuning parameters are just as valid as another.

I had the misfortune of helping someone to extend the code for this stuff that made into a Science paper, and I can tell you right now it is the worst C++ program I have ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When the first human genome was sequenced many people thought that all the hard work had been done. Most people thought that the genetic code, perhaps like computer code, was well organized and well laid out. But organization arises in complex systems that are designed by intelligent beings, namely ourselves. The genetic code, shaped by the slow process of evolution, is not organized. It is like a tangled mess of spaghetti code. When scientist announced that there were only 25 000 genes in the human genome, they had identified only the most organized parts of the genome, comprising a mere 1% of our DNA. Determining what the remaining 99% of the genome does will be challenging because there appear to be few organizing principles to the DNA's layout to make research easier.

<comment><USER5> "Most people thought that the genetic code, perhaps like computer code, was well organized and well laid out. "

Oh my god! We've sequenced and decoded the entire human genome and… we're written in _Perl!_

(And, given my gag and the backend of this site, of course I have to post: <http://xkcd.com/224/> )

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is the quest for immortality the only thing that drives research like this? The PI's interviewed in the promo video for ENCODE ( <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsV_sEDSE2o> ) can only point to biomedical implications to justify their continued funding.

<comment><USER2> This is the reality of biomedical research today. With NIH funding level flatlining in recent years and congress leery of more spending in anything other than military, medical utility is the mantra now within NIH. The irony is that most of ENCODE people are not medical researchers and are less qualified and less experienced than human genetics researchers. This is all about money. Scientists need to eat too. And reputation, and power. It is a very high-stakes game.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. While I think what ENCODE is doing is important, I feel that they oversold the value of their work. In my opinion, they obviously wanted to ensure continued funding.

It is not a bad thing that every once in a recession less fruitful areas of research are trimmed from funding to make room for more important work. To often scientist lose sight of why their research is important, and forget about trying to solve real problems. That said, too much money is poured into military research and not enough into basic science, which is what pays off in the long run.

<comment><USER7> This is the basic science that pays off in the long run. You can't just turn biomedical science projects on and off. It takes time and investment to develop the techniques and technologies to do this work, to gather the samples, and ensure data quality across the project labs. During the time that the ENCODE project was funded, the technology for doing the types of experiments to get this kind of data advanced many times. We are now talking realistically about personal genomics and the $1000 genome; at the project start we were still celebrating the 3-billion-dollar genome sequence.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone read Tibetan Book of Living and Dying? - <AUTHOR>

Just curious. I've met a lot of interesting people through this discussions about this book. <comment><USER2> This book is actually a tibetan manual for a dying person on how to proceed with his mind during the process. It's not a poem nor mystical metaphore about anything not related to dying.

One of the translations of the original sub-title is: "the precious way of liberation through listening", meaning that the purpose was to read it to the dying person in order to liberate his mind from the subconscious baggage which resurfaces and takes over during dying.

The images, scenes and dramatis personae (including gods, demons and stuff) occuring in the text are all projections of the subconscious impressions in mind, accumulated during a life and resurfacing when dying. The fact that this is not explained in the book is because every tibetan buddhist knows / takes for granted that mind works this way, so there's no need to explain it additionally.

The other funny thing and a source of misconception is the translation: while tibetan culture was perceived inferior, mystical and over-religious by westerners, it was actually discovering lots of stuff about consciousness and subconsciousness since centuries, same as the whole buddhism. But the western discoverers couldn't believe that tibetans, being technologically inferior, were able to make a progress in different areas, so when translating they didn't used then-new terminology like counsciousness and stuff, but used church-like terminology like if they were translating european middle-ages material. This trend, though diminishing, continues to this day.

My advice is to remember this book was written for different people and then translated using language and metaphors the translators could bear. Yet since 70s some people made a huge advance of making a connection between asian and western way of thinking in order to bring the buddhist methods to the west, cutting off the misconceptions and cultural baggages. Such teachers, whether would they be Zen or Diamond Way representatives, can teach practical stuff on what to do during dying or how to help dying people in our modern world. If anyone's interested I'd reach such teachers instead of taking such books too seriously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nothing is permanent and we are all dying people, if you really think about it.

The book is about shedding all the layers of delusion that separate man from the universe.

Einstein believed Buddhism would be an ideal candidate for a universal religion for lifeforms outside of Earth too.

What I got from the book is a simple way to focus on the immaterial instead of the material. To see the entire universe with consciousness and compassion instead of an expanse to be colonized and conquered.

I think the world is just reaching a point where the Eastern and Western perspectives are starting to become one. The 21st century is the dawn of the universal age where we all start to realize we are made of equal atoms and cells striving for survival and transcendence.

This book seems to be in tune with modern science journals too.

<comment><USER2> I'm happy this book inspired you into some thinking. The question is, how is it going to practically change your life in a long term?

I'm making this point just to strike a common misconception, not that you're certainly in it, but for anyone reading this thread. People often have an impression that buddhism is mystical, it says about all things being one and that if they got into it seriously they would be given next levels of beautiful thoughts and ideas up to the final nirvana.

It's not like that at all. Buddhism is practical. Deadly practical. Meaning one has to fight his own limitations first. You get some meditations and instructions from a teacher, usually tied specifically to you, and you do meditate. It changes you. Ego fights back. But if you continue the practice you loose some previous obstacles and in general you see a new value in your relations with people, your view, in everyday things. Then another obstacles come, and so on.

The crucial are meditations from a teacher - it all makes sense only when you trust him. The trust must be earned somehow, it's not measurable. One of the meditations is a conscious dying meditation which I for example relearn every year. Others work best if you repeat them every day. It changes you inevitably. There's no warranty it will change you for the good, but you observe yourself. You observe the mind. It's a constant work, meant to finally relax you not tire you, though.

All this sweat is for understanding that everything we feel and see, including material world, is only a projection of the mind, so it's best to focus on mind itself instead of images which it mirrors. And keep this view possibly all the time.

Of course this view is kinda related to recent discoveries of science, esp. quantum physics and so on. But what does it mean in an everyday life? Did Einstein had a hunch buddhism is related to physics and is probably very useful? Yes. Did he follow that path? No. Did he remember in every minute of his life that things are impermanent and world is a dream? Probably not. Was he impervious to anger because of that understanding? Probably not. Some people say he was terrible person, others say he was excellent and nice. Whatever. Einstein's words may be a trampoline for someone to become interested in buddhism but he's no expert on the topic.

So, to really judge if it works it'd best to actually find the people who do it, or even know such people and compare how they behaved in the past and how they behave now. I know it's not easy. But Einstein, well, is dead... We're not, yet.

edit: Thank you HNers if you read this, these are important things and it seemed urgent to share my few cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 20 and I have been interested in science, technology, and spirituality for as long as I can remember. I've seen a lot of life and a lot of death in my years of wandering in the West. I guess that's why this book resonated with me.

To me, Buddhist thought just makes logical and intuitive sense with everything I have studied about astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry. It just feels natural and has no arrogance about it, just a gentle affirmation of life and love. It also shows the darkness inside us and how to conquer it with mental force, not physical force.

Buddhanature, from my experience, is about fully embracing life and transforming your suffering into potential. And the most practical way to achieve this goal is to have a clear vision of reality, live in accordance with natural principles, and keep developing your mental capabilities.

I fully agree that Buddhism is not about anything mystical and that people overthink and project a lot of madness into it. The only thing people can do is keep striving, there is no higher goal than enlightenment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just a warning who anybody thinks the book is ancient and "gutenbergable" (as the name kind of implies). Don't bother, it is only 10 years old.

<comment><AUTHOR> the ideas are ancient and they still resonate today. the author never claims they are all original either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't read the book, but I've seen the new movie _Enter the Void_ by Gaspar Noé, which pretends to be a kind of dramatization of the Tibetan post- death myth. One of the most unique films I've ever seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> sounds interesting. ill look that up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just wanted to note that some people are confusing the recent _Tibetan Book of Living and Dying_ [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tibetan_Book_of_Living_and_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tibetan_Book_of_Living_and_Dying) with the ancient _Tibetan Book of the Dead_ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_book_of_the_dead>

<comment><AUTHOR> The latter is the source of the material covered in the first. Dalai Lama introduces the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> After reading it I began to research Sogyal Rinpoche and came across the allegation that he had abused his position and assaulted a woman.

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6638586.ece)

Definitely tainted the advice presented in the book: "Do as I say, not as I do", etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> the message, not the messenger.

you didn't gain anything positive from the book?

<comment><USER6> Tricky question. The sections that describe the process of dying were fascinating, especially those sections that describe the grand luminosity. I found the message behind the ideas and processes he describes very positive.

However, Sogyal Rinpoche's message about compassion seems a little thin to me in light of the allegation. He is accused of abusing his position to coerce followers into a sexual relationship. Doesn't seem compassionate to me.

I'll admit that I've judged the man based solely on accusations and intimations. But the accusations are strong and are repeated. I encourage you to read the article I linked in my original response.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't doubt it if he did fall to his primal urges. It's the human thing to do. The predator and prey games play out everywhere in society and in most instances, no one is really thinking about it.

<comment><USER6> Thats an interesting argument. Let me apply it to a different situation: A priest coerces an altar boy into a sexual act. The priest will certainly argue that he succumbed to a primal urge, that he is only human, etc. Can you attend his Sunday mass and digest the message that he is sending strictly in context, completely ignoring what the man has done?

I'm not trying to provoke with the above, I'm just pointing out that the argument doesn't hold water if you look at it in its strictest terms and apply it universally.

This is what turned me off the book and its also what turned me off the writings of Jiddhu Krishnamurti (accused of committing adultery with his best friend's wife).

I'd be glad to continue discussing this with you outside of HN. Feel free to email me at jrhunter at hotmail dot com

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not an excuse to do whatever you want, I just meant it as people get into odd situations and strange things happen.

I just think about the message and let people be people. human nature is a wild elephant.

<comment><USER6> "Human nature is a wild elephant."

Agreed.

I also like, ""Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

<comment><USER7> Hello -- I am the journalist who wrote the feature in The Guardian newspaper in 1995, following the Janice Doe lawsuit against Sogyal Lakar aka Rinpoche . Since then I have been assembling evidence of Sogyal's promiscuous, sadistic sexual depravity and now have an extensive dossier of corroborated testimonies. There is not a scintilla of doubt that the allegations you see on the internet are truthful and accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Once a long time ago. I recall some of being quite striking, but these days I'm (overly?) cynical about things that have the scent of mysticism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too. I avoid New Age-y books altogether. This is one gem in a pile of rhinestones. This wisdom in this book seems to be in universal in nature and applies to all atoms, cells, being, and stars.

<comment><USER9> I also think that the Tao Te Ching (and Chuang Tzu in the same vein, and Alan Watts for a modern take) is amazingly applicable to life today and is surprisingly not that New Age-y.

<comment><AUTHOR> Read this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels- Myst...](http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels- Mysticism/dp/1590308352/ref=pd_sim_b_16)

<comment><USER9> I got very excited a while a go when I found out that this book existed, and that it was Capra who wrote it (the Web of Life was great), but the top amazon reviews at the time were pretty disparaging. Looks like the top reviews have shifted since last time I was there though, I'll probably give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not yet. I bought a copy over a year ago, but it's still in my queue. My only real exposure to Eastern thought, Buddhism, etc. have been the books "Introduction to Zen Buddhism" and "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind."

</comment><comment><USER11> Yes I did. Fantastic book.

edit: Has been some time though.

</comment><comment><USER12> I read it years ago in college and took it as a metaphor for a psychedelic experience. No surprise I was having a lot of psychedelic experiences at that point in my life.

To be clear, I don't think that it was literally meant for tripping folk, but I also think kunley (top rated comment at the moment) may have missed something fundamental maybe due perhaps to not grasping a fundamental part of tibetan and buddhist culture.

To the Buddhist, the whole of existence is a struggle between experiencing the perfection of the cosmos as your bona fide identity and your mundane ego. Liberation is not something for those on their death bed, liberation is _the thing to strive for._

\-- well I was writing about 'The tibetan book of the dead' I have never heard of this particular book, I just realized. I figure I will just leave this here in case anyone is interested rather than just delete it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think Steve Jobs, Jason Fried and many other design geeks can relate to this experience in their developing years.

It is what it is. Psychedelic means mind-manifesting so the two should go hand in hand anyways. I think people just overthink enlightenment and miss how simple the universe really is. Ancient wisdom and modern science are coming together and revealing the same truths.

Read this book: [http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels- Myst...](http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Physics-Exploration-Parallels- Mysticism/dp/1590308352/ref=pd_sim_b_16)

<comment><USER12> I'll try and get a copy of that locally and add it to my list in any case.

I have read a number of books trying to tie the link between ancient mysticicsm and modern physics. I am not a physicist and have only the most basic understanding of the maths involved in quantum systems.

However, without fail, these ideas seem pretty much universally dismissed by the graduate level math and physics students I have had the opportunity to talk with these things about.

No one wants to let go of determinism it seems.</comment></comment></comment>


The Brown One, the Honey Eater, the Shaggy Coat, the Destroyer (1998) - <AUTHOR> http://www.charlierussellbears.com/LinguisticArchaeology.html <comment><USER2> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16623359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16623359)</comment>


Google founders' exit signals end of era at search giant - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/75f59660-1669-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385 <comment><USER2> Shouldn't the title of this be "Subscribe to FT"? Because that's the page I see when I click the link.

<comment><USER3> I just realized outline.com also doesn't handle ft.com :-(

<comment><USER4> [https://outline.com/bLuTpK](https://outline.com/bLuTpK)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> the-nightmare There certainly was an era, but it ended a long time ago, around 2010 when products like Google Plus and Google Glass emerged as a painfully stupid ideas, and it became obvious that Google was implementing true surveillance state agenda mandates, like always-on wearable, internet-enabled cameras and real name policies.

That was the end, and what we see now is that while those overt efforts may have failed, some of the more subtle B2B plays have been wildly succesful in achieving comparable goals.

<comment><USER5> Google Plus also looks like a major milestone to me. I was initially a fanboy and dearly wanted to love it, but ultimately the UI design was too awful even for me. It must have been quite frustrating for the legion of developers involved to realize they were working on a doomed project.

The other major milestone in my mind was the leak of internal communications immediately after the Damore fiasco. I'm indifferent to his firing, which I consider to be uncontroversial by corporate standards. But reading Googlers (some in management) blocking and threatening each other, sometimes with firing or even industry blacklisting was shocking. I've never seen anything as unprofessional in any work context whatsoever, and it completely changed my view of Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I were them I would quit now in case the whole "regulate big tech" goes south, that way they don't get the blame and can make a come back to rally the troops. Also, if it goes south the play is blame and fire the CEO.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://archive.is/YVy2C](https://archive.is/YVy2C)

</comment><comment><USER8> You have to give it to Bezos and Hastings for sticking in there for so long.</comment>