DIY puller RC flying wing airplane with Kline–Fogleman modified airfoil - <AUTHOR> http://ausleuchtung.ch/kfm2/kfm2-puller.php <comment><USER2> some people testing KFm on a large rc I found now while looking for info on the airfoil itself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H-s7yuJcwk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H-s7yuJcwk)

it's interesting. too bad I couldn't find any video in a wind gallery. (edit: did my own, not the best software but it's something [https://i.imgur.com/TudMHlX.png](https://i.imgur.com/TudMHlX.png) \- there's some lift in there to be had)

Ultimately I'm still unconvinced it works the way they tell it works.

<comment> semi-extrinsic There's been actual research (incl. by NASA) on the KFm foil (although scaled up for real airplanes or military drones) which has come up inconclusive.

Just FYI, your simulation looks really underresolved and the leading edge of the foil should be rounded off. Not intended as criticism, just in case you want to improve.

If you do proceed to work on this, which I think would be interesting as KFm in the RC wing size regime seems not so well studied: avoid vortex panel method and anything else based on inviscid/potential theory, you're interested in laminar flow for RC applications. I'd give it a try e.g. with SU2 starting from the laminar flow around cylinder tutorial, and making you own mesh file for the KFm with gmsh (pretty easy to use mesher with GUI):

[https://su2code.github.io/tutorials/Laminar_Cylinder/](https://su2code.github.io/tutorials/Laminar_Cylinder/)

[http://gmsh.info](http://gmsh.info)

<comment><USER2> thanks for the pointers! I'm way out of my element here and just thrown together something with the first software I found on internet.

about this:

> the leading edge of the foil should be rounded off

I agree, however, in the first round of simulations the leading and trailing edge where they themselves giving a lot of lift to the foil (especially the trailing tapering), so in my naivety I slabbed both edges to reduce those effects and see if the flow was deflected by the slab alone.

interestingly, even if the model itself is flawed and the simulation technicalities off for the intended purposes, having the slab slightly forward gave also interesting results, almost the same lift and a lot less drag

1) [https://i.imgur.com/TudMHlX.png](https://i.imgur.com/TudMHlX.png) 2) [https://i.imgur.com/GjiVL8s.png](https://i.imgur.com/GjiVL8s.png)

so I came up with an idea for a foil that's still easy to craft out of foam or balsa and does use the different effects do redirect the flow more effectively

3) [https://i.imgur.com/n9RUHs5.png](https://i.imgur.com/n9RUHs5.png)

of course all of this is purely based of a low resolution simulation, still, it was fun. I've no chance to test them in practice tho.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Interesting stuff! What you need to be careful about when comparing different foils is to ensure you compare at the same angle-of-attack (AoA). Especially the latter foil has a high "intrinsic" AoA.

The best way to do it is running simulations that span a range of AoA, calculating lift and drag for each one, and setting the reference for each foil at the zero lift AoA. Then you can do a fair comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I build and fly RC .. and I love the Kline-Fogleman device.

Its so simple, you can teach anyone to build one, and it will fly. Its so simple, one wonders if it could be the basis of a self-assembly/auto-assembly art project, whereby raw material is fed into the box, a crank is turned, and out flies a new airplane. This is a mind-experiment I've been toying with for a while .. automated assembly of KF-based airplanes.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any links? I have a quad and figured I'd build a plane out of the spare parts, and ordered a Pixhawk, but none of the connectors seem to actually fit anything else. Am I doing something wrong or are they actually not consistent? Is there some website that helps you connect the components and configure the Pixhawk?

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> It doesn't look like he is using a Pixhawk? It's hard to be sure but it appears to be a commodity quad FC, presumably with wing/plane firmware flashed. Not sure which flight control firmware varieties still support planes and wings since the ones I've used haven't had support for that in years.

<comment><USER6> That's not a flight controller, it's a simple power distribution board, most likely [1]. Flying wings generally don't need flight controllers, they just need two servos and an electronic speed controller for the motor. A flight controller is nice because it can stabilize the plane, and it can also provide autonomous flying it it has a gps. If you just want to fly around like that, no need.

[1] [https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/61k-Sva2oYL...](https://images-na.ssl-images- amazon.com/images/I/61k-Sva2oYL._SX569_.jpg)

<comment><USER4> True, he just uses a power board. I went full hog and got the ArduPilot board plus the telemetry transceiver so I can have the plane fly from the computer with waypoints. Now if only I knew how to connect everything!

<comment><USER3> You'd be far better off scaling things back a bit and just learning traditional RC electronics - how an ESC gets wired up to the motors, where the servo's get their signals, and all that. ArduPilot definitely has sex appeal - but learn the basics of RC electronics first, is my advice ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Related, also a DIY flying wing, but non-RC, _full size:_ [http://www.facetmobile.com/](http://www.facetmobile.com/)

<comment><USER8> This is "flying body", not flying wing - the idea is to "remove body" in one case and "remove wing" in the other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks like a fun project!

Imagine a version of this with forward-facing and bottom-facing cameras which transmit back in real-time.

Seems like it'd be a sort of holy grail for the vehicle class.

<comment><USER10> For basic FPV (first person view) the camera and transmitter to do this is super cheap now. At the low end they've become commodity items used in small quadcopter drone racing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool! I want to build this but I don't have any spare parts. What do I need to buy?

<comment><USER12> Flite Test [1] has a ton of good articles and videos, from beginner to advanced level. This is a good place for getting started with the hobby.

At least a couple of years ago, Hobbyking [2] was the most popular webshop for buying all the parts. It's a Chinese company, and shipping is a decent proportion of the total price, so keep that in mind when looking at prices.

[1] [https://www.flitetest.com/getting- started](https://www.flitetest.com/getting-started)

[2] [https://hobbyking.com/](https://hobbyking.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the Parrot Disco is a commercial drone modeled on the same concept. unlike other fixed wing drones, they appear to be very easy to fly.

<comment><USER14> A quick Google image search reveals that the airfoils on the Disco do not have rear-facing steps. These steps are the defining feature of the KF foil family.</comment></comment>


Epic Games Fortnite – Postmortem of Service Outage at 3.4M CCU - <AUTHOR> https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/postmortem-of-service-outage-at-3-4m-ccu <comment><USER2> Talk about moving parts; mongo, memcached and redis. 3 different "competing" datastores.

I can understand maybe nginx has better memcached integration, redis cluster better, and mongo... well it is js so any dev can use it.

Would be interesting to know how much it cost to get the experts on site. Sad to see that the design it fast; let it break; and market the hell out of if strategy making profit, to the point where you need experts on site.

<comment><USER3> > 3 different "competing" datastores.

These 3 have very different purposes. That's essentially a cache, a data structure server, and a document database. There are good reasons to have all 3.

<comment><USER2> Where the document database? There 3 cache implementation, and 2 of them with a data structure layer.

To be called a database you should actually have some acid compliance. Otherwise your just a datastore.

But this is a bit of bar banter on a public forum. which recently shown the ugly fact that senior software engineers does not read their reference documentation, but rather just use stackoverflow.

It is 2018 there is solid software(redis included) that can fulfill all 3 needs with one technology stack.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Air Force Requires Airmen to Praise Troubled F-35 Stealth Fighter - <AUTHOR> http://warisboring.com/articles/u-s-air-force-requires-airmen-to-praise-troubled-stealth-fighter/ <comment><USER2> Slight clarification: "Airmen" in the context here isn't necessary referring to pilots, but Air Force personnel in general. No one should be surprised that the Air Force is seeking to put this program in a positive light, but the headline makes it seem as though pilots are being forced to talk it up about it.

What they're describing is more of a policy statement. Public Affairs Office documents put in writing the message so that various components will speak with a single voice and avoid inconsistencies. Just like PR departments in companies do.

As to whether or not you think the message is valid, I leave to the reader. But I thought I'd give my two cents on what seemed like a slanted headline.

<comment><USER3> > "Airmen" in the context here isn't necessary referring to pilots, but Air > Force personnel in general.

That's what "airmen" always means: the generic name for service members in each service are, as follows: Army => soldiers, Navy => sailors, Marine Corps => marines, Air Force => airmen.

If one wants to talk about _pilots_ specifically, the word used is "pilots", not "airmen".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Related article [0]: The U.S. Air Force Has Always Loathed Close Air Support

Essentially the A-10 is being scrapped to keep the F-35 program afloat. But that article argues that the Air Force always had ideological issues with the CAS role and never wanted the A-10.

People argue in support of the A-10 largely because of its ability to travel at a slower speed for better ground engagement (and having great weapons for when it does).

So my question is: Aren't helicopters better yet still? An A-10 can travel slow and low supporting troops, but a helicopter (e.g. Apache) can literally hover above and lay down extremely precise fire.

So instead of arguing F-35 Vs. A-10, shouldn't we just accept that maybe jet aircraft aren't the ideal platform for CAS, and look at helicopters or maybe even prop aircraft?

[0] [http://warisboring.com/articles/the-u-s-air-force-has- loathe...](http://warisboring.com/articles/the-u-s-air-force-has-loathed- close-air-support-since-the-beginning/)

<comment><USER5> Attack helicopters can't fly as fast, as high, or carry as much weight. They also don't have weapons like the A-10 does, nothing else in the world short of warships does. That gun is absolutely berserk.

So if you're in a situation where you need constant cover, you want either an AC-130, which is usually limited to night missions since it's a gigantic slow moving target, or an A-10 which can get in and out while having a very clear sense of the battlefield by being in so close.

Helicopters are better suited to anti-tank warfare, they can sneak up on them and pick them off at crazy ranges, but the last time we've seen that at scale was 1991 Iraq.

The other problem with helicopters is how long they can stay airborne. Since any helicopter pilot always has one eye on the fuel gauge, where "time to bingo" is a constant concern as those things chew through gas like crazy, they're not as versatile. Some joke that the A-10's loiter time is only limited by how much food the pilot brought along, it's got massive fuel tanks and efficient engines.

Consider this commentary on ground support planes: [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and- slow](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/low-and-slow)

<comment><USER6> > They also don't have weapons like the A-10 does, nothing else in the world > short of warships does. That gun is absolutely berserk.

Actually the GAU-8's ammunition was derived from that of the ( non-Gatling ) Oerlikon KCA cannon, mounted by the SAAB JA-37 Viggen. Six times the energy of most other 30mm aircraft rounds. Hughes developed a podded KCA that was tested on a wide range of aircraft, down to little Broncos!

Later, a cut-down four-barrel but still full-power version of the GAU-8 was fitted in a pod as the GPU-5 and briefly carried by F-16s:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE1S95Cy7wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE1S95Cy7wg)

<comment><USER5> Interesting. That's a similar weapon, but it's also single barrel, so it's certainly comparable, but doesn't fire nearly as quickly, and carries far fewer rounds: 126 vs. 1100.

The weapon I was thinking of is the Phalanx ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS)), a naval weapon, though even that fires smaller shells at a slower rate.

The GAU-13 slower, smaller pod version of the GAU-8 is an interesting test, but it doesn't seem to have caught on.

That video you linked to had a related video on the A-10 reloading procedure. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnSpkL1InuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnSpkL1InuA) That is a _lot_ of bullets.

<comment><USER3> > The weapon I was thinking of is the Phalanx > ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS)), > a naval weapon, though even that fires smaller shells at a slower rate.

The Phalanx CIWS uses the a version of the M61 Vulcan 20mm gatling gun, as have lots of Air Force fighters (from the 1950s through current fighters like the F-22 and F-18.)

So, its not exactly a weapon that "nothing in the world short of warships" has.

<comment><USER5> Still not sure what you're saying here. Is there a 30mm gatling gun with over 1000 rounds of ammunition on anything other than a warship? Tanks have larger bore primary weapons, but given how the gun inside the A-10 is too huge to fit in any normal tank, I doubt they're ever equipped with one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


14 Year old Thiel Fellow creates his own nuclear fusion plant [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21134540/vp/52207962#52207962 <comment><USER3> Calling what the 19 year old Taylor Wilson built at age 14 a "fusion plant" is somewhat misleading. For me, a "fusion plant" is a device that generates power. His machine, a Farnsworth fusor, should more appropriately be called a "reactor", because it can only sustain a fusion reaction, but it cannot generate power. Building Farnsworth fusors is not too hard, given access to the right tools. Building fusion reactors that can be used as power plants, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. The design is a lot more complex, because plasmas don't scale well and tend to get unstable as they get bigger. For comparison: A Farnsworth fusor can be built for around 1000 Euros, but it's Q-value (=output_power/input_power) is so low that I have trouble even estimating it. Based on a quote of "multiple hundreds of thousands of neutrons per seconds" for describing a "dangerous design", the fusion power is somewhere between a nanowatt and a microwatt, which makes the Q-value something like 10^-10. For more complex fusion reactor designs based on magnetic confinement, the best Q-value that has been achieved so far was a value of 0.7 at the JET facility in the UK, 1997. A new reactor is currently being built in southern France. It is called "ITER", and it is hoped that it can reach a Q-value of around 10. This is the type of Q-value that you need for a fusion power plant. ITER is projected to cost around 16 billion euros.

<comment><USER4> I think there is a lot of sensationalization, because teens aren't really expected to do much while they are teens and you do something like this - <USER2> catch words like wizkid and wonder boy or whatever get thrown around - "he certainly has shown the stupid scientists spending billions of dollars building a fusion reactor!"

fact of the matter is - today there is just so much information available on the net that you can pretty much build a 3d-printer or a cat scanner or whatever else you fancy at your home.

the bar for being a genius has significantly lowered since the 90s.

<comment><USER5> If you watched the video, it's pretty clear that the kid is actually a genius. He's done a heck of a lot since what he did at 14.

<comment><USER6> Minor nitpick, but I don't like this characterization of genius. He has not accomplished a lot through just being a genius; he accomplished a lot through discipline and extreme effort. Genius probably made it all easier, but I feel that ascribing one's accomplishments to one's intelligence ignores the hours upon hours of hard work that goes into them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No doubt, this guy is brilliant. That said, hobbyists have been building IEC fusion reactors like the one in the video for decades. It's not unheard of for people to build them for high school science fairs. A site with a lot of information on the subject is [http://www.fusor.net/](http://www.fusor.net/)

<comment><USER8> And the current issue of Make has instructions for building one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's common to see parents push their children into doing things that they aren't ready for to create the illusion their child is gifted. I don't see any evidence of that in this case - the kid truly seems both smart and hard working which is a rare combination.

Truly speaks to the power of diversity within a large population. You will get all kinds of anomalies with 7 billion people on the planet. Some large, some small, some dim, some bright. Every once in a while appearing to generate a profoundly gifted person that does have the ability to change the world. In this instance we're fortunate he was born into the resources that allowed him to use it rather than, for example, dying from malaria at the age of 5.

<comment><USER10> I agree. He comes across as a great communicator, cheerful and outgoing, and is genuinely driven by his interest in science, as opposed to being forced by his parents (who seem nice/normal) to be "a genius" which can often lead to bad things later in life as an adult - burnout, depression, substance abuse etc.

It's a shame many HN'rs on this discussion thread can't see the bright side of things with this kid. Yes I agree he didn't build a full blown power generating fusion reactor, but what he did get to work on (and understand how it works) is far beyond what most kids get up to at age 14. Good luck to him and I look forward to seeing him contribute good things to humanity through his science and research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Finally a teen, who can talk in non-bias way and without fallacies :) I wish this world would be like he is..

</comment><comment><USER12> Someone fix the title? It's a video, and he's 19.

<comment><USER13> But he was 14 when he created the nuclear fusion plant! I enjoyed the video.

<comment><USER14> "Theil Fellow created his own nuclear fusion plant aged 14"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I came here to see the predictable comments of "f@?k him, I could do the same thing in an afternoon with wordpress and php." Sure enough, that was the gist of almost every comment.

<comment><USER16> Well he isn't 'disrupting' any web technology, and hasn't written a bouncing 'hello world' with only CSS ... pity.

Wait until he has a 'real' promising startup idea, like a site to post messages to his friends, then we'll be mildly impressed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just a "you need flash" page for me.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson) seems to be it.

</comment><comment><USER18> His conclusion? We are stuck in the fifties (unsafe power plant designs were created then)...

</comment><comment><USER19> The school he goes to, Davidson Academy for the profoundly gifted reminds me a ton of the 1980s movie Real Genius [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/)</comment>


An explanation of where the term closure comes from by Max Hailpern - <AUTHOR> http://mrevelle.blogspot.com/2006/10/closure-on-closures.html <comment><AUTHOR> Link to original source is dead [http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/mailarch/plt- scheme-2001/msg00226...](http://www.cs.utah.edu/plt/mailarch/plt- scheme-2001/msg00226.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, thanks for that. That was really interesting.</comment>


Should Rivers Have Rights? A Growing Movement Says It's Time - <AUTHOR> https://e360.yale.edu/features/should-rivers-have-rights-a-growing-movement-says-its-about-time <comment><USER2> The article is really out to lunch from a legal point of view.

> Western legal systems and governments traditionally viewed water and water > rights as property, leading to overuse and contamination

That's exactly the opposite of what is true. At least English law has never treated water as property. In England, and most of the east and midwest of the US, riperian doctrines apply to water. (I'm going to leave out the west coast, which has a nutso way of doing things.)

Common law riperian doctrine was strict: upstream property owners cannot impair the quality of water flowing through their land because downstream property owners have a right to unimpaired water quality. If we still did this, our rivers would be very clean! During the industrial revolution, the riperian doctrines were made looserc _weakening_ the rights of downstream property owners.

The problem is that we _don't_ treat water like property. We can pollute it freely because nobody can sue us for it. I live on a river, and we can't swim after a heavy rain because of all the crap washed into the river from upstream farms. If I had property rights in the water, I could sue those farmers, and the price of food would rise to reflect the externalities of farming. But we treat water as a commons, where no individual has enforceable property rights.

<comment><USER3> > I live on a river, and we can't swim after a heavy rain because of all the > crap washed into the river from upstream farms. If I had property rights in > the water, I could sue those farmers, and the price of food would rise to > reflect the externalities of farming.

This is a thought-provoking argument. But if you had property rights, could you not also restrict access to the river so that no one else could swim on it? And what if you don't care to swim in your river but are fine with accepting upstream pollution in exchange for payment from the polluters? What if a big agro-conglomerate simply buys the river?

It seems to me that key to the traditional riperian doctrine you cite is not property rights so much as the legal regulation:

> property owners cannot impair the quality of water flowing through their > land

If water quality must be maintained, what does it matter whether it is individual property owners or the EPA taking up the cause? If we can imagine a future where riperian doctrines could be retightened to strengthen the rights of downstream property owners, why not imagine one where a properly managed and funded state or federal agency takes responsibility?

<comment><USER4> > why not imagine one where a properly managed and funded state or federal > agency takes responsibility?

Why bother? Existing property law should be enough. If you poison water on my property, you pay me to make things right.

There's no need for any government involvement besides civil courts, and investigative bodies (FBI, local detectives, etc).

In practice these property owners don't really believe in private property. They think they can just dump contaminants onto other people's property because containment is inconvenient.

It's not a consistent moral position and their time is coming. There will be a reckoning and they will (financially) pay for their crimes. The arc of the law is long but bends towards justice.

Don't get me started on the upcoming resolution of Native American and chattel slave property rights, which are as yet largely unadjudicated. Most (not all) property in this country was illegally seized, and he courts have yet to rule on the true ownership of most of those plots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If a river becomes a legal person, the government can prosecute it for crossing some threshold. The sentence will be forced labor in a dam for 100 years. The duration may sound harsh, but rivers outlive humans by a long margin.

<comment><USER6> We managed to avoid silly things like this while making corporations "legal people." I see no reason that legal theorists should be selectively incompetent here.

Don't get caught up on the word "river," which is just a specific example. The general case is "ecosystem."

<comment><USER2> Corporations are legal entities composed of people, so it makes sense to treat that the aggregate would have similar rights as the individual. When we say a corporation has the right to free speech, we mean that you cannot restrict the right of people just because they're acting together through a corporation.

Rivers, of course, are not people nor are they composed of people. Nor are ecosystems. People might be affected by, for example, what happens to a river. All of this legal wrangling over river personhood is an attempt to avoid having to show that effect.

<comment><USER6> > Nor are ecosystems [composed of people].

Isn't that definition exactly the problem? An ecologist would disagree of course, but how curious that every other species is considered part of the ecosystem, but we are not! We're subject to all the same ecological laws.

The humanity vs. nature separateness is of course entirely invented. But it's built into our very language: consider the other-ing effect of the term "environment" for instance.

> All of this legal wrangling over river personhood is an attempt to avoid > having to show that effect.

You have it flipped around. The legal wrangling is almost entirely on the part of polluters seeking to avoid accountability (to great success, I might add). It helps that the 'environmental regulations' are written by the polluting industries themselves.

They use poorly characterized mass flows through the environment (there's that word again) and pollution etiologies (often "poorly characterized" because the company covered up its toxicity research, eg PCBs) like a cryptocurrency tumbler, laundering away their own liability for poisoning their neighbors. It's unconscionable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So this provides some legal framework to handle questions regarding environmental impacts of human activities? Is it really that difficult to implement laws that protect rivers without engaging in a debate whether a river can hold rights? Opponents will have a field trip ridiculing the argument distracting from the goal of protecting the environment.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Chile's Water Code was established during the Pinochet dictatorship, and > still treats water as a replenishable (rather than increasingly scarce) > natural resource. Under the code, companies may trade water rights to the > highest bidder

If there's a bidding process already in place, the Chilean government can charge companies the bid value annually as a public natural resource rent, and place the tax revenues in a permanent fund for conversation efforts. Instead of calling a river a legal person, a formal government charted corporation can be created for the river to distribute revenues from taxes on water right holders in a pro-social manner. This would be somewhat similar to 'Cap and Dividend' proposal for climate change.

</comment><comment><USER6> I never understood this concept (always stuck me as 'woo') until I watched this video by award-winning environmental lawyer Thomas Linzey. I won't try to paraphrase since it would leave so much out.

[https://www.linktv.org/shows/thomas-linzey-earth-at- risk-201...](https://www.linktv.org/shows/thomas-linzey-earth-at- risk-2014/episodes/earth-at-risk-thomas-linzey)

<comment><USER9> So what happened after 2014?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We worked on a concept based on this idea a couple of years ago, at the highest of DAOs and Smart Contracts hype.

There is already the possibility to create environmental protection non- profits for a specific area. In France, and other countries, it gives you the right to participate in lawsuit and even collect reparation for ecological prejudice ([https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate- environment/news/er...](https://www.euractiv.com/section/climate- environment/news/erika-oil-slick-trial-sets-ecological-prejudice-precedent/). You can't however sue on behalf of the river's endangered interests. Giving legal personnality doesn't necessarily change the law as the article implies but change the way the law works.

Our concept was to add 'economic personnality'. Natural resources such as a river would have a cryptoasset account collectively managed by donors. "Gardeners" are local people hired by this collective to execute maintenance tasks, or lawsuits, while this board of donors oversee the management of the founds. Compared to a local non-profit, you gain easy internationalisation of donors and more transparency on funds allocation, potentially avoiding corruption.

The key is in the governance rules. As pointed in the article, it is extremely difficult to represent fairly and combine populations' interests and environment protection at the local, national and worldwide levels.

A visual demo can be seen here [http://forest.lesusineslouise.com/](http://forest.lesusineslouise.com/)

<comment><USER6> You're solving the wrong problem.

That's just an inefficient, roundabout way to manage a environmental legal defense team (will lawyers accept crypto-Monopoly money?). But such legal defenses are actually quite ineffective (by design!) at preventing ecological harm, even when they win the lawsuit.[1]

[1] [https://www.linktv.org/shows/thomas-linzey-earth-at- risk-201...](https://www.linktv.org/shows/thomas-linzey-earth-at- risk-2014/episodes/earth-at-risk-thomas-linzey)

<comment><USER10> I beg to differ. Exactly as shown your video, environmental protection is currently mainly led as an element of public policy. Hence, when it conflicts with economic and individuals' interests there is not much weight to preserve regulations and budgets.

The approach taken in recent years consist in creating or empowering an entity to represent of those interests. The more legitimate and the more economically robust is this entity, the more difficult it will be to act against its interests.

It is imperfect, but I think that this approach should be explored when existing regulations consistently fail

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> this idea -the concept of treating nature as a legal entity and awarding them damages to protect the environment- isn't new. see: "should trees have standing"[1].

[1] [https://iseethics.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/stone- christop...](https://iseethics.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/stone-christopher- d-should-trees-have-standing.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> but a river is not an animal or human.....

</comment><comment><USER13> No. This is as silly as vegans saying animals deserve the same rights as humans because we are animals too. Does that mean we have to prosecute a lion that kills a wildebeest? Or what happens when my dog kills a rodent or a cat kills a bird? Should they be imprisoned?

If rivers have rights does it also has responsibility and culpability? What happens if a river overflows and few people drown? Do we punish the river?

A question in the title aside, I love the advocacy embedded in the title. "A growing movement"? From what to what? 2 to 3 people? The article is trying to grow the movement, it isn't reporting on a growing movement.

The only way to give rivers rights is to give it personhood rights in the same vein as corporations. But that means that rivers become privately owned entities. Do we want rivers to be owned by shareholders?

Rivers, like animals, are natural resources. Nations and states are stewards of it.

<comment><USER14> > Should they be imprisoned?

No, because other animals don't have mental capacity to truly understand the consequences of their action.

That said, I've never really seen a consistent argument against _protecting_ prey animals from lions (and letting lions die out).

<comment><USER15> >No, because other animals don't have mental capacity to truly understand the consequences of their action.

A lion knows full well that it survives another month when it kills a wildebeest and that it can feed it cubs. What more is there to "truly" understand?

<comment><USER16> When a mentally capable human kills another human, they do so with the understanding that killing that human will cause other humans to grieve the death of that human, and will remove that human's productivity from the world. They've made that connection and have decided to end that human's life anyway, so they are held responsible for the outcome of that. This is why people who are mentally incapable of understanding this are not punished the same way as people who _are_ mentally capable.

A lion is not, to the best of our understanding, capable of understanding that killing another animal will cause grief to that other animal's family. If that other animal's family is even capable of understanding and/or grieving their death. And then we'd have to prove the killing was done with malicious intent, because just merely being responsible for someone's death, even as a human, is not immediately a criminal offense.

But it's a silly argument anyway because humans are often not prosecuted for the death of non-human animals, especially when that non-human animal is killed for food. So the idea that we would prosecute a lion for killing and eating an antelope is laughable when we don't prosecute a farmer for killing a cow for food.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HTML5 Elements Quiz - <AUTHOR> http://thehtml5quiz.com/

<comment><USER2> I like it! One way you could improve it is to link to the relevant W3C docs for each tag that the user had missed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dislike that it auto submits without pressing return, initially caused some confusion,

e.g. typing "body" and it submits on "b", so then you're left typing "ody" which isn't a tag.

would be better to be like "b" <return> "body" <return>, etc.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree with you guys, but hey, i am not the creator of this website.

Just found this link and thought would share as it is pure fun.</comment>


Ask HN: Have you read any good "Cli-Fi" (climate fiction) books? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for climate science fiction books -- especially ones that combine realistic hard science/technology with a dystopian, climate-changed future.
My goal is to emotionally convince myself of the need to act urgently on climate change. I am only intellectually committed.
I would love your recommendations! <comment><USER2> I guess you already know [https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/36205.Cli_Fi_Climate_Cha...](https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/36205.Cli_Fi_Climate_Change_Fiction)

Of those books I can wholeheartedly recommend the books by Paolo Bacigalupi.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aye – the list is great. I always admire personal recommendations! Will take a look at Bacigalupi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Forty Signs of Rain, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Fifty Degrees Below

Sixty Days and Counting

<comment><AUTHOR> Fantastic, thank you. I didn't know Robinson had a (deliberate? unlike the Mars trilogy) cli-fi novel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fallen Angels by Niven et al. It's a bit light-hearted though.</comment>


NUMBER26 is now N26, receives a license from European Central Bank - <AUTHOR> https://n26.com/number26-is-n26 <comment><USER2> The title is misleading, as is the press release. The ECB does not issue banking licenses, nor is it involved in active regulation of individual banks.

If someone had issued NUMBER26 GmbH a banking license, then as a company situated in Germany, that someone would have been the BaFin, the German banking supervisory authority.

Neither N26 nor BaFin list such a license yet, but I guess it's still early.</comment>


The Magical Mathematics of Numb3rs - <AUTHOR> http://math-blog.com/2011/08/29/the-magical-mathematics-of-numb3rs/ <comment><USER2> "Also unrealistic is that one mathematician would be familiar with so wide a range of mathematical and scientific techniques as Charlie."

This is the only bit I disagree with. Math is his life.

Baseball fans know an amazing array of statistics about ALL major baseball teams. They can quote all kinds of crazy things.

Epps does the same thing, but with mathematical theories. It doesn't surprise me a bit for a single person to know about all those techniques.

Successfully implementing a given one within 24 consecutive hours is another story altogether. But that's already addressed.

<comment><USER3> Mathematics is the tool with which we pierce the veil that our minds place over reality. To compare it with memorizing baseball statistics is, is unjustifiable. I understand your sentiment but I must say I strongly disagree with you. The blog post was actually very accurate, not the fluff piece I was expecting.

Knowing of something is very different from properly understanding it to the extent of being able to contribute meaningfully with it. The difference between data and knowledge. The amount of information out there is growing exponentially. The amount that needs to be known before you can contribute keeps exploding with each generation. Such that the practitioner might know just as much if not more than their predecessors but the scope of their knowledge as a fraction of the full body is many orders of magnitude smaller.

It is not just a matter of will but of physics of time and the chemistry of the brain. Underutilized connections fade such that unless you spent time actively practising the wide skill sets to sufficient depth they will fade. But there is not enough time to be able to do that.

I do think that more must be done in enabling bridges as a counter to this. It is a shame category theorist must wrap their material in such obtuse language as it seems that it would be just the tool for the job.

<comment><USER4> I've studied mathematics at the graduate level, and I agree 100% with your assessment. I found all the criticisms in the article to be fair and accurate. I'd like to provide a little more perspective here.

I think people don't understand how broad a field mathematics itself is. In graduate school, one will gain a broad knowledge of one particular subfield (e.g. algebra, analysis, topology/geometry, or discrete math, for instance), a very deep knowledge of a particular subject within that subfield (e.g. sheaves of smooth functions on manifolds), and become the world's leading expert on a particular subject (the dissertation). Along the way, one will certainly pick up at least a couple of courses in perhaps 2 or 3 other major subfields sufficient to pass the comprehensive exams set by the department, but that's it.

So, a mathematician graduates knowing a lot about very little compared to the whole of mathematics. Over the course of an entire career, one will usually pick up bits and pieces that were neglected in grad school, and perhaps enough knowledge to contribute in _maybe_ one or two additional subfields.

This, of course, is how it works for an average mathematician -- the average Joe or Jane who makes it through grad school. Superior mathematicians might contribute more broadly (Erdos comes to mind), but they're sufficiently rare that we can practically discount them. Charlie Epps goes beyond this because dramatic license allows (indeed, practically requires) him to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have mixed feelings about this post on what is by far my favorite TV show. On the one hand, I think he's spot on highlighting the aspects of Numb3rs that are unrealistic:

* Time frame for both gathering data and performing analysis

* The incredible depth and breadth of Charlie's knowledge

To enjoy the show, you simply have to think of Charlie as a superhero and suspend your disbelief as if you were watching Spiderman or Superman.

However, the author spends a good chunk of the post attempting to persuade readers that Numb3rs can be thought of as a propaganda vehicle for persuading the masses that a math-based surveillance society is good and necessary. I disagree.

First, there are several episodes featuring poor ethics at the FBI, NSA, prison officials, etc. which sometimes includes manipulating surveillance information (i.e. 216 Protest, 310 Brutus, 313 Finder's Keepers, 608 Ultimatum).

Second, one of the great appeals of the show in general is intense exploration of ethics, with the father and two sons of the Epps family frequently challenging each other and themselves.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, this show appeals to geeks (most people I know who love this show are math/engineer/computer enthusiasts or close to it). You don't get into the hearts and minds of the populace at large by doing virtuoso math demonstrations tied with intense discussions of ethics.

Though I disagree with the propaganda angle (and the off-hand comments about how Numb3rs-type thinking is partly responsible for the house boom and bust), I think it was a great, thought-provoking post, which did a good job of listing out the elements of numbers which stretch the bounds of credulity.

EDIT: typos, inserted specific show names</comment>


On Designing Hacker Monthly - <AUTHOR> http://hackermonthly.posterous.com/on-designing-hacker-monthly <comment><USER2> _So countless hours of tutorials and books later, I ended up using InDesign. It's the best tool you can use._

Out of curiosity, have you checked out Quark XPress at all? I very much prefer Quark to InDesign, given the choice. Its UI feels better laid out and was easier for me to get started in. However, Quark is worse than Adobe when it comes to pricing products, so a single license of XPress will run a large chunk of change. So its not normally an option, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whenever I see the word "monthly" on the web, I bookmark it and realize I'll probably never see it again.</comment>


Securing satellites: The new space race - <AUTHOR> https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/05/09/securing-satellites/ <comment><USER2> BOOGA BOOGA h4x0000rs in SPAAAACE!!!

> "If one of these CubeSats is attacked and potentially knocked out of orbit,"

and I stopped reading. I will probably continue mocking for a while tho.</comment>


P3: Pandemic Prevention Platform (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.darpa.mil/program/pandemic-prevention-platform <comment><USER3> Another story about this, sounds remarkable: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/the- human-os/biomedical/bionics/da...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human- os/biomedical/bionics/darpas-firebreak-treatment-for-the-coronavirus)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> More detail:

[https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/03/us-military- sc...](https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/03/us-military-scientists- hope-have-coronavirus-therapeutic-summer/163659/)

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a31405691...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a31405691/darpa- covid-19-coronavirus/)

<comment><USER4> Thank you. Since the publication isn't even dated, it could have been written 30 years ago because it's only buzzword soup.

Example:

> A principal benefit of the nucleic-acid-based approach to limiting the > spread of infection is that genetic constructs introduced into the body > would process quickly and not integrate into an individual's genome. > Similarly, the antibodies produced in response to treatment would only be > present in the body for weeks to months. This is consistent with DARPA's > intent to safely deliver transient immunity, halting the spread of disease > by creating a firewall, and buying time for longer-term medical responses to > be developed and deployed.

<comment><USER5> [https://web.archive.org/web/20170411172941/https://www.darpa...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170411172941/https://www.darpa.mil/program/pandemic- prevention-platform) exists, so we can go back at least to 2017 above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Actual request for proposals: [1] This was much more than a study. The winners had to be able to construct antibodies for five viruses. Trying to find more info. Hard; "fbo.gov" has been moved to "sam.gov", for no obvious reason, and the older documents lost.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20170710035550/https://www.fbo.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170710035550/https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=2235783b6b12551d4847c321b5c1307b)

</comment><comment><USER7> So this has already been tested in humans: [https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news- release-d...](https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release- details/moderna-announces-positive-phase-1-results-first-systemic)

"Antibody level predicted to protect against chikungunya infection achieved within hours; projected to be maintained for at least 16 weeks at the middle and high doses"

</comment><comment><USER8> Can someone translate this from tactical to English?

<comment><USER9> "We've got bupkis".

<comment><USER10> We had decades of smart thinking about this, and forsaw the need 3 years ago based on Ebola. Things are now in trial, so if it's 2020 and you're reading this, sorry, the funding is already committed. Better luck next time. Keep your ear to ground and move faster.

<comment><USER9> I wish I could share your optimism, but after watching the congressional testimony I think we're pretty fucked. I think we should just shut down the CDC and FDA (when this is over), and start from scratch with an agency focused on addressing epidemics and pandemics, as well as quick drug approvals.

The incompetence is pretty obvious and staggering, and as per Fauci's testimony, the CDC is not designed for the crisis we are now experiencing. That is, to unpack this, the Center for Disease Control is not designed for disease control. He's clearly a formidable scientist, but it's also clear that mismanagement at the agencies is pretty rampant.

They were asked point blank several times why we still can't test even the frontline medical staff, and they did not have an answer. This is 100% thoroughly fucked up beyond repair.

<comment><USER11> Isn't a significant part of why we're fucked the gutting of ... everything, by this administration?

e.g. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/us- coronavirus...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/us-coronavirus- budget-cuts-trump-underprepared)

<comment><USER9> Not really. The proposed CDC funding cuts have been overruled by Congress. In fact the CDC gets more funding now than at any point under Obama (who BTW, also tried to cut the budget several times; e.g. 2015 CDC budget is $243M less than 2014), and this year's budget is larger than last year. It's not the lack of funds. It's total mismanagement.

$7B+/yr and we get 70 people tested per day as thousands are being infected, and hundreds are about to die.

IMO their funding should be cut to zero for this, and reallocated to people who know how to do this kind of thing. You can find such people at WHO.

[https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104](https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104)

<comment><USER11> There's a complete lack of leadership in handling this pandemic in large part because this incompetent administration disbanded the national security team global health security and biodefense directorate.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2018/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response- exits-abruptly/)

<comment><USER9> Care to explain why there was lack of leadership in 2009 when 57 million Americans got infected with H1N1? Or why Ebola response was also botched? There seems to be a long history of incompetence here. You can't fix incompetence by giving the incompetent more money or keeping them around.

<comment><USER12> Neither of those responses were botched, sorry.

And yes, you can in fact fix incompetence by giving the incompetent organization more money. Organizations are made up of people, and those people have varying levels of competence, and the set of people isn't fixed, either. Sometimes you have competent ICs begging for funding and incompetent managers who can't present the case for it. Sometimes you have competent managers who don't have enough budget to hire competent ICs at salaries competitive with industry. Sometimes everyone is competent but too afraid of risking their job to speak out against structures or processes that prevent them from doing their best work. If you think there's _corruption_ , that's a different matter, but if it's just incompetence, throwing more money at the problem sounds like a fantastic plan.

<comment><USER9> Ah, but you see, the CDC took it upon itself to fight Ebola in Africa. And that part went as well as you'd expect after seeing their current performance: they're still dealing with it, years later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Essentially you go from recovering patient to 20,000 therapeutic doses in 60-90 days.

Note it is _not_ a vaccine - a vaccine is something like part of a virus that then drives an immune response ( body evolves antibodies against it ) - <USER2> you are taking an antibody sequence you know works and directly putting that in the body and genetically programming the body to make it.

Here's how:

\- find and clone the patients own antibody that allowed them to recover.

\- deliver that antibody in nucleic acid form to new patients so they can make the antibody themselves.

The idea is to be able to produce enough doses quickly enough to protect front line staff in the containment phase.

As the antibody has already been discovered by the recovering patient, you can use single cell screening and cloning to retrieve the particular antibody gene.

The second step avoids many many months of building and scaling a protein manufacturing process ( though manufacturing steps still exist ).

It's a new technology and so carries some unknowns - but in the case of pandemic then you could argue these are justified.

There has already been a proof of principal run through and a number of companies were able to deliver proof of concepts within the timescale. The next question is how well these work in people.

<comment><USER7> It works well in humans: [https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news- release-d...](https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release- details/moderna-announces-positive-phase-1-results-first-systemic)

Main finding was at the high dose, there were some adverse events but no serious adverse events, and they all self-resolved without intervention. At the lower doses (0.3 and 0.1mpk), it still provided months of protection against infection assuming the "protective level" is accurate.

<comment><USER13> Yep - it can work.

However, normally there is a long and potentially winding road between a phase 1, through phases II & III to a successful market launch.

<comment><USER7> Yes, of course, but when one signs up for the military they can inject you with whatever they want. The FDA does not get involved. Combine that with an EUA, and all of a sudden you are injecting them and the nat sec apparatus 6 months from now if things get bad.

[https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/01/31/Military-allowed- to-...](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/01/31/Military-allowed-to- administer-unapproved-drugs/8455665298000/)

[https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic- resources/pdf/2018-Influenz...](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic- resources/pdf/2018-Influenza-Guidance.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't remember hearing anything about the US military being involved in the recent Ebola outbreak, so is this an existing program or a proposal?

<comment><USER15> Read "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston. Great book about the origins of Ebola that culminates in an outbreak in Reston, VA that was primarily handled by the military. (The only reason you haven't heard more about his particular outbreak is that it turned out to be a strain that only affected monkeys (450 at a scientific research holding facility in this case).

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385479565](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385479565)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Disease prevention has been in DARPAs wheelhouse for a while now. While in grad school, a couple groups at my school worked on a project to predict the future evolution of influenza, so the vaccine order in March will be relevant to the strains dominate in November. [https://www.darpa.mil/news- events/2016-06-13a](https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2016-06-13a) The last time I heard an update, it was that prediction was very difficult as unpredictable random mutation was dominating strain evolution.

<comment><USER13> As the military often go to 'exotic' places, they are have long been at the forefront of wanting to treat 'tropical' diseases.

Also with the military setup - lots of people living together in barracks - infectious diseases have a high risk of spreading rapidly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This explains it better: [https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a31405691...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a31405691/darpa- covid-19-coronavirus/)

</comment><comment><USER18> It all sounds good but I'm not sure if they could do all that in 60 days with human trials needed to test actual efficiency, toxicity, etc. If you are talking about just a candidate drug yeah, that is possible with today's tech.

<comment><USER19> They are 2 for 2 already:

>The teams have proven they can meet this ambitious timeline in previous trials using the influenza and Zika viruses.

<comment><USER18> What happened to 3? This virus

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> These briefs don't mention it by name, but this technology seems like "DNA Vaccination" that has been in research for some years.

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

<comment><USER21> This isn't vaccination, it's coding and expression of the antibody(s) your body would take weeks/months to make from a vaccination that neutralize the pathogenic target from dosing. It's a stop-gap to prevent infection, but does not offer memory response from resident B-cells/plasma cells.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's working well

</comment><comment><USER23> yeah, this is crazy... starting to get out of hand

</comment><comment><USER24> Militarized gene therapy.

</comment><comment><USER25> With all due respect - does anyone believe the US army can deal with a pandemic? I mean you cant just shoot a huge number of weapons and kill it. That army hasn't even been able to win wars against tribes, how can it win against a virus? I get it, there is a lot of PR surrounding it, but a pandemic is a real issue that requires science not dumb muscle. Somehow I believe the US and its army are the opposite of a solution to such an issue.

<comment><USER26> For many years it has been a worry of any competent military that the enemy is going to release a bio-weapon. As such every army is be preparing for something. They won't know what exactly is coming, but they have processes in place to deal with it as best they can. That means supplies in place, and people training in using them - it might mean a generic gas mask instead of a N95 filter, but it will get the job done.

The army is also well trained in securing an area. Need to enforce no travel, the army learns that in basic training.

Again, this isn't about the US army, it is about any competent military in the current world. Limited of course by their budget.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Everyone stay calm now; we have a Coronavirus Shield!

<comment><USER28> Note that neither the article nor the headline mention a "Coronavirus shield". That's just the HN headline. In fact, the article never even mentions the Coronavirus at all.

The article headline is "Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3)"

Mods, maybe change it to that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. Changed it. Got the DARPA press release title confused with the popular mechanics article. :) Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bueller?... Bueller?...

<comment><USER30> I LOLed hard at this one.

<comment><USER30> Wow... Four down votes for laughing at a funny comment... Jeez....</comment></comment></comment>


Does 10,000 hours of practice enable you to become an expert at something? - <AUTHOR> http://zidilife.com/far-go/

<comment><USER2> The thing required to be a professional at something--the _only_ thing required--is to convince somebody to pay you for your product or work. Whether you're actually any good at it is a different matter entirely, and somewhat only tangentially related getting paid.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with your point. Shall I edit the title to "expert" \- maybe that's a more fitting word for this experiment?

Edit: I've changed the title - you're right, professional is too broad and he's talking more about becoming the very best.

<comment><USER2> No worries. Honestly, usually it's best just to use the article's original title, whatever it was.</comment></comment></comment>


Java devs love OpenJDK, Jenkins, IntelliJ Oracle, not so much - <AUTHOR> https://devclass.com/2020/02/06/java-devs-love-openjdk-jenkins-intellij-oracle-not-so-much/ <comment><USER2> > Likewise, while a quarter of developers are now using Java 11 in production, > just under two thirds are still on Java 8. Over half said the main reason > they hadn't moved was their "current setup works just fine".

No real surprises there other than the fact that most people are still using Oracle JDK but not many are paying for support. How does that work out? Are people still using older JDK versions that could still be legally used freely? Far as I know newer builds require paid Oracle support.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's not how commas are used.</comment>


Fish on Wheels - <AUTHOR> http://prostheticknowledge.tumblr.com/post/76263478166/fish-on-wheels-a-small-fishtank-that-is-driven-by

<comment><USER2> so it ends up a fish actually _does_ need a bicycle!

-bowerbird</comment>


Why Are Cities Filled with Metal Men on Horseback? - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/why-are-cities-filled-with-metal-men-on-horseback/ <comment><USER2> See here[0] at p 622 for an image where his right arm is visible.

0) [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3050477?mag=why-are-cities- fill...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3050477?mag=why-are-cities-filled-with- metal-men-on-horseback&seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents)</comment>


Where are the how tos on how to create fake faces to spoof FaceID? - <AUTHOR> When TouchID came out I saw Hacker News Links on how to create fake fingers, iPhoneX FaceID is out, where are the how tos on fake faces? <comment><USER2> I think right now your only option is to get a sample of their DNA and clone them</comment>


My Band Has 1M Spotify Streams. Want to See Our Royalties? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/05/26/band-1-million-spotify-streams-royalties/ <comment><USER2> I feel like it's a false analogy to compare Spotify Streams to CD sales. For a fairer comparison, you should measure against something more ephemeral.

The biggest radio channels in the US have a few million listeners each. Let's say your record does ok, and gets airtime on a few second-tier radio stations. For easy math, let's do 20 plays * 50,000 listeners per play. This also gives you a total of one million listens.

I would be _extremely_ surprised if they would net much more than $5000 from these radio listens.

<comment><USER3> > I would be _extremely_ surprised if they would net much more than $5000 from > these radio listens.

Me too. Unless they've recently changed the rules, the artist gets nothing when a song is played on the radio.

<comment><USER4> They haven't recently changed the rules. The average for terrestrial radio in the US is around 12c/play.

In the UK it can be up to £15/minute plus £35/play on a top radio station like Radio 1. Less mainstream stations pay less.

The artist may see half of that depending on their publishing deal.

So... Spotify's microcents per stream are a joke.

Around 80% of Spotify revenue goes to rights holders - i.e. a handful of big record companies.

Around 10% of that 80% goes to artists. [1]

The record labels keep the rest.

[1] The exact accounting details are byzantine, especially in their creative use of expenses which diminish apparent revenue. They also vary from artist to artist. Top artists get a much bigger cut than newly signed artists. But no one gets much from Spotify plays when compared to radio payments.

<comment><USER5> You need to divide that £15/minute+£35 per play by the number of listeners for them to be comparable. Radio 1 breakfast show has about 9 million weekly listeners. I've no idea how many people are listening at any particular time, but you'd still be talking micropennies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I somehow keep being fascinated by people think they're ripped off. I mean sure, Spotify is making a decent buck out of it, but it's not like the artists are doing it for free.

There's much more to the whole process. Firs to earn something per play there need to be ads that finance it. Then imagine the technical hurdle and cost to host such a platform (ie Spotify cut) and then you actually being worth a damn as an artist.

1M views might seem like a lot, but actually its quite a limited resource for serving ads. The other thing here is that most artists wouldn't have a single view if it wasn't for one or the other distributor. Basically, the barrier is so low to entry and the risk is dispersed across a million other artists so you all get a very diluted value per view. But at least you get value per view. Otherwise, it would have been an all or nothing business, like it used to be. It's the same effect the app stores had for software devs.

In essence, you get low fees because those funds pay for the distribution and risk that is dispersed. The general pay scale is a hockey stick with the last couple % making the majority of the money.

Since you even got the opportunity to get in front of an audience, use it wisely as you need to pump those numbers up. It's a numbers game and your numbers are too low. You need double-digit millions to make a good living off of it. And that's just what it takes. It's not easy, not everyone will make it above the fold, for whatever reason life, luck, marketing...

<comment><USER7> They are getting ripped off.

Many record companies, in their own financial interest, reduced the royalty cost for streams with Spotify in exchange for revenue shares.

I would feel pretty ripped off if I made a big, delicious cake, and as a reward I get one tiny slice while I had to watch everyone else eat the rest. Maybe not if making cakes is just a small hobby for me, but definitely so if it's my _career_.

<comment><USER8> Citation please

<comment><USER7> It's common knowledge. I don't need to provide a citation every time I bring it up.

But here, since you're too lazy to look it up or write more than two words:

[https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/heres-exactly-how- man...](https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/heres-exactly-how-many-shares- the-major-labels-and-merlin-bought-in-spotify-and-what-we-think-those-stakes- are-worth-now/)

Interestingly, earlier this year several record companies either mostly or fully divested in Spotify, with some companies like Warner getting over half a billion dollars. Reasons are unclear even though they have made vague public statements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Arguably $5000 isn't much for three years and 1 million plays, but I'm also not sure what they where expecting. I believe the issue is that Spotify charges customers per month, while artists are paid by play, so the more Spotifys customers use the service, the less they can afford to pay for each play.

Assuming that a consumer spent the money from a Spotify subscription on CDs instead that would, in Denmark, be around 24 CDs in a three year period. When you look at it that way, I can't really see how artists expect to make any real profit of Spotify, the money simply isn't there.

Streaming services allow consumers to listen to vastly more music that they ever did before, and from a larger number of artists, but at a lower price, so I can't see why people are surprised that Spotify isn't making them money.

What would be interesting to see is: How many time would a fan need to play songs from one artist to make the artist the same amount of money as the sale of a CD. I believe that an artist only makes around $0.5 from the sale of a CD, the rest goes to the label, promotion and so on. So I would assume that as long as each user plays a song around 100 times, the net result would be the same.

<comment><USER10> I'd rather my monthly fee go to only the artists I play. Say, for some percentage of my fee minus operating costs. That would reward artists according to their draw.

<comment><USER11> This is the crux of the fairness debate here. The numbers don't seem absurdly bad, but if I was buying CD's - none of my dollars would go towards Rihanna and a good portion would go to obscure bands. Currently, this is the opposite of how my subscription dollars are divided.

<comment><USER12> Aren't your $10 divided amongst the songs you listen to?

<comment><USER11> No, my $10 is divided across all plays. So big name artists with lots of streams get my money. Particularly badly in the months when I only listen to a few songs because I listen to podcasts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People still seem to be stuck quantifying the value of music (sales, streams, etc) against a time when there was less saturation and the actual cost of producing, marketing and distributing music was much higher.

<comment><USER14> Well yes, because that was a time when musicians could earn a living. It's legitimate to question the current situation.

<comment><USER15> When was that? Since at least the 1960s, music has been a winner-take-all hit driven industry. You're either The Rolling Stones, Motley Crue, Madonna, or at best a one-hit-wonder. The vast majority of bands are (and always have been) local groups who play their town bars, occasionally go on tour, and have day jobs.

I'm not saying this is good, but it's the way things have always been. There was never some "good, honest living" to be made for anyone who isn't a household name.

<comment> barry-cotter This is bullshit. It used to be possible to make a living off of selling recorded music, whether records or cds, and people cared about, and bought albums, in large numbers. Now the only way to make money if you're not nationally famous is gigging. Gigging used to be something you did to get people to buy your singles and albums. That was where the money was and that was how mid-list artists made a living. Now that's gone. The midlist are people trying to make it, on the way out or being supported by daddy's money.

Things are different now. Records and cds lead to more people being able to make a living making music.

<comment><USER13> > This is bullshit. It used to be possible to make a living off of selling > recorded music, whether records or cds, and people cared about, and bought > albums, in large numbers.

It still is. But let's break down the "bullshit." It used to be possible to make a living driving a horse drawn buggy. Then things changed. Fewer people wanted or needed this, the value went down accordingly.

A different mechanism but the same principle. The cost to produce and distribute recorded music is plummeted. There is a saturated markets for artists and recorded music. Is it a surprise that the value of a play has dropped accordingly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In case anyone is interested in alternatives, I think we live in an amazing time for non-streaming music consumption.

I run the VLC app on my mobile devices, which allows me to spawn a web server served off the mobile device that I can connect to in the browser on my laptop or desktop PCs.

I can upload raw music files (mp3, ogg, etc etc) onto the mobile devices seamlessly, and it categorizes them by album.

I only ever buy full album or track digital downloads from bandcamp or Amazon music. Zero DRM, just straight archive files of mp3s usually (bandcamp lets you select which audio file type for a long list of options).

For unknown music, you usually pay what you want or pay a small price like $1 on bandcamp, which is almost always worth it even when just testing out some music I'm not sure if I'll return to yet or not, especially compared with the negative externalities of subscriptions with Spotify.

I consume probably 5 different $10 albums per year and maybe another few hundred or so LPs or individual tracks at about $1 each. My music budget is probably about $250 / year, which is roughly twice the price with Spotify premium.

I could go on another rant about how Spotify's content discovery / collaborative filtering offerings are extraordinarily poor and provide genuinely negative value for me when I previously used the product, but regardless I feel very happy to avoid Spotify's negative externalities. That is well worth an extra $10/month of Spotify-avoidance-fee to do it with non- streaming options.

</comment><comment><USER17> As an artist with 250k streams myself, I don't really think that you should directly compare it to CD sales etc.

If you compare it like this: a single play on a popular radio show can get you 250k listeners and you get payed well below 50$ per play.

So getting a couple grand for 1mio plays vs. ~250$ for some airtime on the radio seems like a decent deal to me.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've written over 20 blog articles about software development over the past couple of years; each article is typically thousands of words. My blog has had hundreds of thousands of views in total (targeted at developers; a valuable demographic) and I've made $0 from it. I find that writing blog articles is easy and I like doing it. If you want to make money from anything, unfortunately, you've got to compete with people like me who are willing to do the work for free.

</comment><comment><USER19> I assume "Specific time period accounted: 10/15/2013 – 2/15/2013" is a typo, right? The spreadsheet isn't sorted but it looks like the most recent date is 2/15/ _2016_ , so that's $5000 for 28 months, or about $178 per month.

That's not much. That could cover gas money for one or two band members. An average software engineer earns 2-3x that much every day.

</comment><comment><USER20> How much revenue does Spotify generate for the 1M streams?

<comment><USER21> I think this question is part of the problem. Every stream is actually negative revenue for Spotify. It costs them money to have a song in catalog that is amortized per stream, and it costs them money to stream that song each time. And some listeners are paying a subscription, which means fixed revenue but variable streams and therefore costs. While others are ad-based model, so hopefully variable revenue but guaranteed positive per stream...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm going to guess what they are before looking:

People that would have bought an album probably would have listened to each track ~5 times, say an album has 10 tracks, this is equivalent to 20k album sales. Apparently typical royalty on an album is ~$0.50 so I'm going to say $10k.

...checks...

$5k. Ok fairly low but I think that was a pretty good guess!

</comment><comment><USER23> So 1M Streams gave them $5000 dollars, Over 4 months.

Still not entirely sure how this business will work out.

<comment><USER13> Which business? Spotify or music careers? Do we consider 1M streams worthy of a "living?" Why?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> So about half a cent per stream in payout? I have no experience in the music industry but as a consumer somewhere around a cent per song is what I would imagine would be reasonable to charge.

So this is in the ballpark of my expectations - as a consumer.

</comment><comment><USER25> How does this ($4990) compare to youtube's 1M views? Perhaps $500?

<comment><USER26> But YouTube, at least the popular video platform, is not meant for publishing songs and is doesn't claim that either. Spotify's sole business is dependent on music and claims to be benefit artists.

<comment> bjelkeman-again But many people use YouTube as their music jukebox. Why is it that Google should pay significantly less for this?

<comment><USER27> For one, an average YouTube video is more expensive to stream than just audio

<comment> bjelkeman-again But even if I put up a static image with the audit the artist get way less from YouTube than from Spotify. I don't see why that should be the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Compare that to radio royalties.

In the UK BBC Radio 2 pays £100/minute in combined songwriter-performer royalties. For 10 million listeners.

£300 a song. £0.003 per "stream".

Spotify is already paying above radio rates.

</comment><comment> n-a How does Tidal compare in terms of paying artists

<comment><USER29> [https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/streaming- music-...](https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/01/16/streaming-music- services-pay-2018/) {tidal}"Last year, the service reportedly paid $0.0110 per play. This year, The Trichordist found that the platform paid $0.01284 per stream. "

{spotify} "Last year, the service paid out $0.0038 per play. Not much has changed this year. With a reported 51.51% market share in the US, Spotify pays $0.00397 per stream."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can't they sum their earnings? After reading the article, it's unclear if they are complaining of msking too much ot too little.

<comment><USER31> They do sum it up. $5k for 1M streams. Which is reasonable or not compared to CDs depending on your assumptions. Let's say a CD has ten tracks and the average buyer plays a CD five times. That's fifty streams per buyer. One million streams yields twenty thousand CD buyers under this assumption. CDs are $10 (or were the last time I bought them ages ago). That means $200k gross, but the band would probably not see more than 20% of that at the most optimistic. Still, $5k is a lot less than $40k.

But if you double the number of plays a typical CD buyer would listen, and halve the band's cut, you're suddenly in the same neighborhood. You also have to factor in that many Spotify streams are not full track listens.

<comment><USER32> Last time I heard a number, bands got a single digit percentage of the sale of a CD.

Edit:

Quick web search shows I'm right.

[https://bandzoogle.com/blog/record-sales-where-does-the- mone...](https://bandzoogle.com/blog/record-sales-where-does-the-money-go)

<comment><USER31> Thanks. So if the artist is both the performer and the writer, they get about ten percent. So that's one power of two accounted for. I think my assumption about the typical number of CD listens is also quite conservative.

<comment><USER32> I agree, I think it was conservative. So your root point appears valid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> That's really greedy.

"Spotify charges around $0.015-$0.025 per ad served" [https://blog.adstage.io/2018/04/03/spotify- advertising](https://blog.adstage.io/2018/04/03/spotify-advertising)

while "Average per-stream payout: $0.004891"

<comment><USER34> I don't remember the free version running one ad per song, so I don't know why those numbers should compare directly?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What % of equity should a CTO get? - <AUTHOR>

Hi all, I'm a HN regular posting anonymously because this contains sensitive information.
Short version: I've been managing everything technical for my friend's startup, and was asked to join as a CTO, in exchange for equity. What % should I ask for?
Long version: this startup is run by my very good friend. He is an amateur coder, and developed the code base himself part time over a few years. When he was ready to invest $ to make the site grow, he brought me on board on a consulting basis. I found, hired & currently manage a small team to work on the site, and he pays for the budget. Before I came on board, the code base was pretty terrible: all the development was being done in real-time on production server, never any testing, full of bugs, etc. When I came in, I did stuff like introduce version control, create a staging server, code/schema refactoring, automated testing suite, automated builds, bug/issue tracking, etc. I also manage the team itself, and we regularly have informal meetings where we talk about high-level stuff for the site's direction - you get the idea.
Right now, I put in about 10-15 hours of work a week, out of which I bill for about 5, using a heavily discounted rate (about 1/3 of what I bill others), because it's my very good friend. Before I came on board, the site was developing slowly, but since then it's been growing at a very good organic pace. It is making some money already - not much, about $200 per month, and it has about 1000 daily users. It's not profitable by a long shot (obviously a dev team of 4-5 people costs a lot more), but I believe it has the potential to be in the future.
I want to offer that I don't take any $ myself, contribute about 15 hours a week and take a %. My friend (who is the only owner with 100% equity, btw) have a great relationship, and he actually brought up bringing me in as a CTO himself, but all talks about money are uncomfortable (for me), especially with friends, so I wanted to ask here - in this situation, what's a fair % to ask? Some examples with references would be ideal. Or some kind of a formula that makes sense to calculate it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!! <comment><USER2> Honestly, ask him to make you an offer. If he says 15% and you think "yes, that feels right" then go for it. If not at least you will know what ball park he is thinking of.

If I was your CEO I would probably calculate it like this... If you are doing 15 hours of a 40 hour a week job, that would be about 6%. If you were to consider a CEO is the "top" position at 10 and a CTO is next a 7 then (as a friendly gesture based on work so far) I would weigh that 6% by the difference and come in at about 18% relative to the importance of what you are doing against how much time you do it for.

But that is just me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I am definitely going to get him to make me an offer, but I want to know what to expect.

<comment><USER2> Good Luck

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Risk = reward. You're not taking much. A CTO that works part-time at only 15 hours a week? That's hardly a commitment worthy of a significant percentage.

Be prepared for the possibility that his offer will be 0%.

</comment><comment><USER4> What's the upside of equity? Is he going to raise cash? ie. Are you going to be diluted?

Read the equity equation by pg and the founder's pie (google it). You need to ask yourself not only how much you think is fair based on work you've done (and compensation received) but also what will keep you motivated till an exit, and how much dilution you can live with.</comment>


The HP-35 - <AUTHOR> http://www.codex99.com/design/126.html

<comment><USER2> That "solving for y" ad is rather bizarre. It's not like the 9100A could do symbolic math, and the equation is _already_ solved for y.

Furthermore, "raising your productivity to the nth power" is only beneficial if n > 1.

</comment><comment><USER3> UX-first top-down-development :)</comment>