I am writing an Elon Musk biography - <AUTHOR> http://leanpub.com/theengineer <comment><USER2> Scanning through the comments, I'm noticing a bit of skepticism over the "legitimacy" of this work. To a large extent, that's probably fair: people have every right to be skeptical of anything calling itself a biography. The rigor of scholarship, access, and sourcing involved in writing a competent biography is a high hurdle to clear.

That said, the idea of Leanpub is to let authors write lean. Writing lean isn't an excuse for half-baked scholarship, but it _is_ an opportunity to publish an "MVP" book and iterate from there. To me, that's what the author is trying to do here, and he should be applauded for that effort and gumption.

This is a huge undertaking, and for that reason alone, I'm intrigued. I wish the minimum price weren't as high as it is (probably another big blip on the skepticism radar), but I would love to check it out.

<comment><USER3> Going into a biography, most of us have a basic understanding of core life events. We read biographies because we are interested in unique insights that (hopefully) biographers can provide.

The only real way to do that is by interviewing people and drawing out interesting details that haven't been published yet (for a dead person, you might draw from a recently-discovered journal) In this case, the author did neither. Which is not to say this biography is bad, but the price should reflect that

<comment><USER4> Since when did the market price for books reflect the effort put in by the author?

<comment><USER5> He's not arguing that the value is reflected by the effort put in by the author, but the insight gained by the reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Did you have any access to Musk and/or family/friends or is it mainly compiled from already available sources? Either way, it looks like a good read.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I haven't. I have cleaned Internet and books on information, so it has 407 sources.

<comment><USER7> Did you attempt reaching them?

<comment><USER8> You should at least _ask_. Maybe you are destined to be a modern day Napoleon Hill?

<comment><AUTHOR> The only question I have unanswered is what the name of the game was that Elon Musk sold when he was 12. I had to include Blastar, Blast Star, and Blaster. I tried to ask that question on Twitter, but it got lost in the spam...

@alanctgardner2 I meant questions that will improve the material I have. You can always ask more questions, but I didn't want the book to be too long either. Well, I wrote it because he's an engineer and it's hard to find engineers that are role models, and I wrote it because he cares about peak oil and not so many others do.

<comment><USER9> There's a clip on YouTube ;) It has a title screen

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqrqU_wTPAw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqrqU_wTPAw)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's another game released in 1993 by Core Design. Elon's game was released in 1983. I've written in the biography that the two games shouldn't be confused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slightly meta - Just a recommendation on your "pitch". When you are trying to get someone to buy something using the word "try" makes you sound less serious. I understand you're trying to be humble, but confidence in your work will get you more book sales. Be confident and people will take you more seriously.

That being said...the book looks interesting! Grattis for shipping.

<comment><USER2> Good advice, though when sharing with the HN audience, humility is probably a decent strategy. In fact, I might have suggested "I am _writing_..." rather than the past-tense "I wrote" or "I tried to write." This would imply that the writing is an ongoing process, of which sharing on HN is the first major feedback stage.

<comment><USER11> no, when I read "try" I thought the book isn't finished. And of course Elon is what 40 years old. He's not really cooked well enough for a true bio yet. So I'm also not ready to buy the book yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing that sticks out to me is the price. Where did you choose $24.99 from? Recently I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (which is a more reputable book) for $13.60. I'm not saying that you're book isn't worth it but I don't see anything on this page to justify the cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the recommended price. But the Steve Jobs book is older, and when it was new, it was like $34,99.

<comment><USER3> It was also written by a noted biographer ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Isaacson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Isaacson)) and was based on many primary sources:

> The book was based on over forty interviews with Jobs over a two-year period > right up until shortly before his death. Isaacson also drew on conversations > with friends, family members, and business rivals of the entrepreneur whose > vision revolutionized computing, music, phones, animated films, and > publishing

It also was published shortly after his death (AFAICT Musk is still alive)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> " _Maybe the best comparable person is Christopher Columbus "_

Columbus was a religious extremist who thought the world was egg shaped and that he had landed in India rather than the Bahamas, even after it became increasingly clear that he hadn't, and who thought that his own travels were to do with the bringing about of the end times according to Christian prophecy. I am not sure he is necessarily the best person to use as a comparison.

<comment><USER14> All of that is eccentricity compared to Columbus' very real crimes against humanity that he committed during his voyages. He enslaved huge numbers of people and put them to work in forced labor under brutal conditions. It was so egregious that the Spanish had to remove him from his governorship. He should rightly be one of the most controversial figures in history. Comparing him to anyone in modern history (except maybe Stalin or Hitler) is at best an insult.

There are plenty of other people who are comparable to Musk, obviously not the same in every way, but similar in certain respects. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates come to mind, Jobs more than Gates. Henry Ford. Andrew Carnegie. In an odd way, Ray Jardine. Nikola Tesla.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. I didn't know that it was wrong to compare Elon with Columbus. Others have complained about it as well, so I will probably find a another explorer.

<comment><USER13> Not being funny, but if you are writing a book about someone and intend on comparing them to historical characters, you probably should go through history a bit more generally and find people who genuinely reflects the person you are describing, rather than go and decide that you just want an explorer and then seek one to wedge in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Typos on page 2: "At one interview, he had to _hung_ up the phone because the journalist couldn't understand the difficult topics involved … If he _don't_ get it, will he be sad about it?"

Regardless, awesome idea. I plan on reading it through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank You. I am Swedish, so I might have made some silly errors. That's why I released it through Leanpub, so don't be afraid of complaining. Or as Musk himself said: "Don't tell me what you like, tell me what you don't like."

<comment><USER8> Great job on this. I can vouch that a _lot_ of people are interested in Mr. Musk these days.

I _do_ wish the pdf contained a few more anecdotes about Mr. Musk himself, instead of so much about his ancestors.

I think the sample might actually do better if you snipped out the "Lost Cities" chapter, even if you didn't replace it with anything else.

Just my opinion - I'm certainly no expert in book writing or book selling. Again, congratulations on this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is what I have been asking for - the Elon Musk biography.

However, the one thing that I'm after, and the only thing I would be willing to buy it for, is answer to the question - "How did surmount his challenges?" He must have faced a thousand naysayers, both at the business level and at the technical level. People who he had to convince to make his successes happen. What is it that he has that enables him to overcome these challenges and succeed? It's probably not any one thing, but whatever it is, he has it in spades.

I would like to know if/how this book addresses that. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've for example included how he convinced experts to join a new rocket company. In the beginning, no one wanted to join SpaceX because so many other rocket companies had failed. So what he did was to pay the experts to participate in a series of meetings so they could convince themselves.

One paragraph from the book:

After the meetings ended, the conclusion was that it would be possible to build better rockets than had been made before. The experts were now convinced that SpaceX was different and wouldn't be yet another failed rocket company. "I essentially led them to a conclusion that they created," Elon said. "It was sort of a Socratic dialogue on a technical level. The essence of a Socratic dialogue is that people wind up convincing themselves. People are much more willing to change their opinion if you're not forcing it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Apologies from the get go for my negative-sounding questions, but the skeptic in me wonders:

 _1._ Is this biography in any way vetted by Elon Musk or anyone who has first-hand knowledge of events described here?

 _2._ If not, then how is this anything more than anec-data, wikipedia and googling thrown together in a fantasy narrative?

 _3._ If it is not vouchsafed by the principal, real, living person about whom this book claims to be about, then perhaps a disclaimer about it being a work of fiction should be on the cover itself...

<comment><USER18> People write unauthorized biographies all the time. There's no reason to assume that just because a biography isn't authorized by its subject that it's inherently less reliable. They can even be _more_ reliable; the subject may require the biographer to agree to respect certain no-go zones in their life in order to gain authorization, or the biographer may come to unduly identify with the subject after spending lots of time with them and write a book with a sympathetic slant. Another biographer writing from outside the subject's personal bubble can avoid these risks and restrictions.

Which is not to say that all unauthorized biographies are automatically great, just that you should evaluate them based on the quality of the author's research rather than just on whether or not they've been authorized by the subject.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> so you tried and did or did not succeed? is it a legit biography?

<comment><AUTHOR> It succeed if people like it after they've read it, but those who have read it said it was "good shit"

<comment><USER19> "good shit" sounds pretty good :)

<comment><USER9> Yes, just to clarify for non-native speakers, this is a positive (but very colloquial) expression in English. The person who said it was giving a complement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "The Engineer - unauthorized biography of Elon Musk" looks much better for the title of HN submission.

</comment><comment><USER21> Original picture: [http://unsplash.s3.amazonaws.com/batch%204/jet- sky.jpg](http://unsplash.s3.amazonaws.com/batch%204/jet-sky.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Downloaded from here: [http://unsplash.com/](http://unsplash.com/) as in "Free (do whatever you want) hi-resolution photos." :)

<comment><USER21> Yes, that was for the people that would be interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reading the sample and it is interesting so far. Elon is awesome!

Can you disclose how many people bought the book or what price they picked(median price)?

</comment><comment><USER23> If you are big musk fan, you should read the book like I did. Its good shit!

</comment><comment><USER24> I can't wait to watch the inevitable biopic about Elon Musk.

</comment><comment><USER25> Very interesting. I have been following Musk/Spacex closely since the 2007. Even wrote a small inspirational coverage on him back then (Searching though, to post it here!). At the time they were going through challenging times as third and rather _defining_ flight of Falcon was round the corner.

Will definitely read this biography.

</comment><comment><USER26> Anything about his divorce in here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes in chapter "Trouble in Paradise" It's actually divorces since he divorced both Justine Musk and Talulah Riley

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like a shit on a plate

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't judge a book by its cover :)</comment></comment>


.xyz Launch Policies (2014) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://nic.xyz/xyzLaunchPolicies_v1.03.pdf <comment><USER2> [QUOTE, page 22] Abusive use of a domain is described as an illegal, disruptive, malicious, or fraudulent action and includes, without limitation, the following:

● distribution of malware;

● dissemination of software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner's' informed consent, including, without limitation, computer viruses, worms, keyloggers, trojans, and fake antivirus products;

● illegal, malicious and fraudulent defamation of Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Negari, or Justin Bieber; [/QUOTE]

[edit: formatting]

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that Daniel Negari is the CEO of XYZ LLC which is the owner of the registry. As for the other two...

[https://ceo.xyz/](https://ceo.xyz/)

<comment><USER4> He probably just loves both of them to death. Either that or perhaps they are investors.

<comment><USER5> Or "illegal, malicious and fraudulent defamation of Daniel Negari" would just sound that he's too self absorbed, and this way doesn't look as bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> page 22 & 23 if you're looking for it.

"Abusive use of a domain is described as an illegal, disruptive, malicious, or fraudulent action and includes, without limitation, the following: .... illegal, malicious and fraudulent defamation of Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Negari, or Justin Bieber"

</comment><comment><USER7> I think that's included as an example, the actual line reads:

> Abusive use of a domain is described as an illegal, disruptive, malicious, > or fraudulent action and includes, without limitation, the following

So the real rule is not to defame anyone of sufficient public standing (ie. someone like Justin Beiber or Oprah Winfrey. Daniel Negari is the CEO of the company, so of course him too)

<comment><USER8> I disagree, this states 'the following' then list bullets so it should be

> Abusive use of a domain is described as an illegal, disruptive, malicious, > or fraudulent action and includes, without limitation, illegal, malicious > and fraudulent defamation of Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Negari, or Justin Bieber.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a strange find.

</comment><comment><USER10> OP, how/why did you stumble across this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm about to buy a .xyz domain, and - out of curiosity - looked up the TLD on Wikipedia, and found the defamation line from the original submitted title on Wikipedia, with the linked PDF as a source. (For those who missed the original title, it was something like "On .xyz domains, it's forbidden to defame: Justin Bieber, Oprah Winfrey, and Daniel Negari".) Mostly I found it a curiosity, but I was hoping it might spur some conversation about issues with centralized control in DNS.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> >illegal, malicious and fraudulent defamation of Oprah Winfrey, Daniel Negari, or Justin Bieber;

Why not just "illegal, malicious and fraudulent defamation". Publicity stunt?

<comment><USER12> What is 'fraudulent defamation'? If the defamation is fraudulent, does that mean it is true?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> that's oddly specific

</comment><comment><USER14> Any specific lawsuits that caused this to be a thing?

</comment><comment><USER15> why not celebrities in general?

</comment><comment><USER16> The HN practice of renaming submissions made this super confusing. What's the best practice here - write a blog post with a one-line comment and link to the source? (Although I guess that could fall victim to updating the link to point to the original source.)</comment>


Auto makers are figuring out how to monetize drivers' data - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-your-car-knows-about-you-1534564861 <comment><USER2> > Later this year, GM also plans to introduce a new feature that can detect > when a vehicle's fuel tank is low and then offer a coupon on the car's > display for a discount at a nearby gas station, said Brian Hoglund, a > business development director for GCCX, GM's connectivity unit. Retailers > then pay GM a fee for steering customers their way.

And every time someone says "but how does it harm me for advertisers to know everything about me?", THIS is the answer. It's not just "finding things you might like to buy". It's "auctioning you off to vendors based on how badly you need the thing." The market is an information game and if one side knows more than the other, then they have an advantage.

Really think it'll stop at helpfully suggesting a nearby gas station, when Station A can just pay $1/customer extra for GM to send people their way instead of to Station B who are charging $1/gallon less but haven't paid extra to GM?

Really think it'll stop _there_ , when GM can get an extra $1/customer by telling Station A that you're critically low on gas and can't make it to another gas station, so they can gouge you $5/gallon and you have no choice to pay it?

Allowing your personal information to be indiscriminately mined and sold is bad for you and this is why.

<comment> T-hawk > so they can gouge you $5/gallon and you have no choice to pay it

You can, of course, buy only the minimum you need to make it to another station instead.

Fundamentally, what's happening here is a temporary very localized monopoly, that you created by letting your fuel supply get so low. If you put yourself in a situation where you can reach only one fuel supplier, the economic consequences are your own fault.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h If you can only reach one supplier, then why would they bother to pay to advertise to you? They're the only option.

EDIT to clarify: I'm not trying to argue here, I sincerely don't understand how this is supposed to work.

<comment> T-hawk The supplier would pay the intermediary (the operator of the tracking system) for the information that you can only reach one supplier. They pay to learn that the temporary localized monopoly exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How much I enjoy my over 10 years old non drive-by-wire, no in-dash navigation (just buy a 300 EUR navigation with free lifetime map updates), no hybrid, no engine-downsized car. I'll not let it go until the wheels will start to fall off.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't agree more. I dread the day when my government decides to force my older car off the road because of something about environmental standards and efficiency not being up to modern standards.

It's true that modern standards for the mechanics and driving controls in cars are a significant improvement on what I have. Sadly, modern standards for _everything else_ they bundle in these days seem to be a huge step backwards. I want them about as much as I want a "smart" home and a "smart" phone.

It's sad, because I enjoy playing with new technologies and would love to have the benefits of recent advances and devices, but for me the risks and costs in terms of security, privacy and safety are often too high to use a lot of these things. I'm starting to feel like the older relative we all seem to have who doesn't know how to use a computer...

(Edit: Fortunately, as you demonstrated with the separate navigation box you mentioned, there are often good alternatives right now that have to compete on merit because they're not built-in, which aren't necessarily as owner-hostile. I just fear the day when the number of us willing to pay a little extra and give up a little convenience to maintain that independence will be too small to sustain the market.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a tiny glimpse of the circus that will be self-driving cars with proprietary software running the in-cabin telescreens in cooperation with the autonomous systems.

If you're working on building the stuff to enable this future, please stop.

<comment><USER3> but it pays so well.. and in many regions of Europe (...ehem... Germany) it's the only innovation happening

<comment><USER6> Douglas Adams, in HHGttG:

> The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus > designed to do the work of a man.

> The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot > as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With".

> The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the > Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the > first against the wall when the revolution comes"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Daughter drives car for a while...

I get in:

There is a TCBY just off your route, want a dollar off?

LOL

I will just watch this mess, content with my easy to service, older, dumb car.

The interesting dynamic here will be the features that really help people vs advertizers looking to direct business.

Driving newer cars is a lot more busy experience. Looks like it may just get worse. Bummer. I drive older vehicles for the quiet. At night especially.

Wonder what people will do when the car makes one offer, the phone another, and the other phone in back, yet another one?

I won't be buying any cars new enough, until such time as they are hacked to not do it.

<comment><USER8> Self driving version: There is TCBY off your route, you have been diverted to see it.

<comment><USER7> Right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When are we going to elect people who stand up for us?

When "voting with your dollar" is impossible, we need to be able to vote with our, y'know, votes. If we can do neither, we need to consider less palatable alternatives.

<comment><USER10> An extreme resolution but there are governments out there that proudly stand up for their consumers' rights.

The EU has already made this business model a non-starter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what happens if you cut the lead to the cell antenna, but not the gps antenna.

I'd pay for a cell data kill switch in my new car.

More practically, though, doesn't this mean they have to push opt-out updates to any car being driven in California?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h If they're using assisted GPS, I would actually expect this to deteriorate the ability to actually locate yourself. Unfortunately.

<comment><USER11> True, but raw GPS works well enough in cell dead spots on my car, so I probably wouldn't notice the difference.

The other problem is that they'd likely log the GPS track, and upload it all at once if anyone ever re-enabled cell data, which kind of defeats the whole thing.

Maybe the switch would have to be for all the radios (even FM, Bluetooth, etc, if yo want to be extra tin foil hatty).

Even with that, commercial license plate cameras still would track the car.

I'm beginning to think the only solution is legislative (probably via direct democracy, because Silicon Valley corporate lobbyists are too powerful these days...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://outline.com/sv6cJt](https://outline.com/sv6cJt)

</comment><comment><USER13> Good luck monetizing when that transmit antenna wire accidentally jiggles lose. But, like uBlock or PiHole, so few folks will be bothered to go to the effort that it will be generally worth the effort on GM's part.

</comment><comment><USER14> > But many car makers have bigger plans, including using the data to craft > targeted in-car advertisements

Lo and behold, you're _always_ the product, no matter how many thousands of dollars you're paying.

</comment><comment><USER15> How do we bypass the WSJ paywall again?

<comment><USER16> [http://archive.is/qaMgc](http://archive.is/qaMgc)</comment></comment>


GraphQL-enabled event sourcing engine - <AUTHOR> http://eventsourcing.com <comment><USER2> I didn't know what event sourcing was, but Martin Fowler's article did a pretty good job explaining it:

[http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html](http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html)

<comment><USER3> If you want a more modern and concrete example, the "Turning your database inside out" talk by Martin Kleppmann is pretty good too: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU9hR3kiOK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU9hR3kiOK0)

<comment><USER4> That talk (which is in written form at [http://martin.kleppmann.com/2015/03/04/turning-the- database-...](http://martin.kleppmann.com/2015/03/04/turning-the-database- inside-out.html) for those who can't watch video) is one of the best I've seen on the subject, and it can really change your way of thinking. Our company has embraced event sourcing wholeheartedly, and it's been gamechanging for us.

One of the key benefits of always being able to re-derive the queryable form of your models from the raw event data, and one that doesn't always come across in tutorials like the OP, is that you aren't just restricted to events that map nicely to "change this specific property in my domain model" or "add a new specific object with these properties." For instance, say you're ingesting emails in a CRM, and you want to say something like "detect the company address from the email signatures, but always make sure that any manually-inputted address overrides that." But then you later change the address-detection algorithm, but want to maintain the manual-override invariant. If that code had been run at email _ingestion_ time in a non-event- sourced paradigm, you'd need to have three-way conflict resolution between old-extraction-algorithm, new-extraction-algorithm, and manual inputs. But with event sourcing, you update the setOfAllEvents -> domainObject function and just push the code, and your data migrates gradually and naturally. And the sky is the limit with how you can combine different types of events.

Everyone loves to talk about source control and continuous integration, and we'd never dream of making the build from code version Y dependent on the build from code version X. But in data management, it's far too easy to use a non-event-sourced approach, and then you introduce those dependencies. And it doesn't have to be that way at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recently I created a small example of a GraphQL server (built with [http://sangria-graphql.org](http://sangria-graphql.org)) which is based on event-sourcing and CQRS:

[https://github.com/OlegIlyenko/sangria-subscriptions- example](https://github.com/OlegIlyenko/sangria-subscriptions-example)

It does not use any event-sourcing library or anything like this, so it may be more approachable for people who are learning even-sourcing and GraphQL.

Interesting aspect of this project is that it uses GraphQL subscriptions to expose and stream the events (with Server-sent Events).

</comment><comment><USER6>

Web pages work better when they contain more than an empty
.</comment>


Do People Really Want to Be Monitored? Swiss Vote for More Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/surveillance-switzerland <comment><USER2> "The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement same functionality with data-mining algorithms."

-Morpheus, _Deus Ex._</comment>


Little Rock's dangerous and illegal drug war - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/10/14/little-rocks-dangerous-and-illegal-drug-war/ <comment><USER2> LRPD is exactly like Information Retrieval: saw a hole in the ceiling, blast a door down and shatter some random person's life to make statistics.

[https://youtu.be/I24K8BfV840](https://youtu.be/I24K8BfV840)</comment>


Year 2038 problem - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem <comment><USER2> Just wanted to point out that this has affected software revolving around finance for some time now. Historical data goes back into the 1800s and there are bonds with very, very long horizons (100-year or approaching it). The last time I checked on Bloomberg I believe the latest maturity date I could find in the system was sometime in 2089. I think the industries that have had to deal with this already will not be very affected by 2038.

edit: Link to C++ N3344 paper we wrote, describing how we represent dates (times/datetimes are similar): [http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2012/n334...](http://www.open- std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2012/n3344.pdf)

edit2: Anyone interested in examples -- on the early side:

        ISIN GB0000436070, UK Gilt, issued 1853, perpetual annuity

On the future side, things have changed since I last looked. Example bonds with the latest dates I can find are:

        ISIN XS0560190901, Dong Energy A/S, callable 06/01/3010
        ISIN US786581AA66, HSBC Holdings Luxembourg SA, callable 10/15/2997

<comment><USER3> Right, but just because you have a data type that can handle a date that far in the future does not imply that you have fixed your OS and supporting software to be able to handle the day when the system time rolls over.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it really just depends how much your software stack depends on the OS and higher level OS-related services. If your software is not coupled with other points of failure in OS user-land, then you really only need a single entry point to get network-sync'd 64-bit time_t and then everything else in the stack can be built around vocabulary data types such as these. These are the types that are transmitted in protocols, serialized to files, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually, a friend of mine has written a fix for it (<https://github.com/schwern/y2038>) in C. Just use the new functions and you're probably good. It's under an MIT license, so have fun with it.

Me? I'm waiting for the idiots who claim it's a worldwide geek conspiracy _à la_ Y2K. Here's a haiku (senryu) I wrote for that:

        Is Y2K real?
        The problem's being solved by
        Men who can't find dates.

<comment><USER5> This won't help you if you need to interface with existing files or protocols...

<comment><USER6> Change all unsigned ints that store time to signed.

In another 68 years or so, change them all back to unsigned.

:-)

<comment><USER7> While I agree this works, It's also a bit unnerving to me that 68 years later we're still using a protocol that's using a representation of time that rolls over every 126 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The system I'm working on counts time as an unsigned 32-bit int starting in 1900 (don't ask). I think we fail in 2036 and that's a mere 23 years time.

It does really annoy me when idiots talk about the Y2K problem as being nothing at all and just a hyped-up non-event.

I for one, worked on fixes for Y2K and it all went seamlessly because we (collectivly) worked hard and got it right and no reactors/missles blew up and the banks did not fail.

<comment><USER9> Same thing whenever those "useless" organizations like the World Health Organization monitor/quarantine people and animals showing new strains of the flu. Afterward, I inevitably hear a "well, that sure was a dud... all that expense and trouble over a flu that didn't turn out to be a big deal. They're just trying to scare us to justify their jobs." Infuriating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Other automotive safety systems include anti-lock braking system (ABS), electronic stability control (ESC/ESP), traction control (TCS) and automatic four-wheel drive."

So anti-lock brakes are going to stop working after the wraparound? Seems to me that either (a) they're relying on code that they shouldn't--why should ABS depend on date and time? or (b) the article is just giving examples of embedded systems that _could_ fail.

If case (a) is true, I imagine (or would like to think) that they're just using the timestamp to perform some simple physics computations of how to control the brakes. If this is the case, they could just use the uptime of the processor instead. Then they would only bump into this issue if the car ran nonstop for 60+ years, which is a reasonable thing to assume will not happen.

If case (b) is true, then the article needs a bit more research into examples of systems that actually rely on datetime.

<comment><USER11> Seen the same thing back with Y2K -- all kinds of scare mongering using countless embedded systems as examples -- but not one of those examples has an interface where you can set the current date/time. As long as it isn't blinking "12:00" (or more precisely "Jan 1, 1970 00:00 UTC") when you first turn it on, you don't have to worry about it.

Sure you have to set the time on your microwave, but none of the ones I've had displayed a calendar date.

<comment><USER12> True. There are also some ingenious "solutions" out there - like my DECT phone for example. The interface takes time and date (with NO year field) in one menu, and day-of-week in a different menu on the base station... (if it's got a look-up table somewhere and is calculating epoch-second timestamps from this I will ritually burn it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You can use `libfaketime` to test your software:

* <https://github.com/wolfcw/libfaketime>

Shameless plug: my project `fluxcapacitor` may also be useful for testing:

* <https://github.com/majek/fluxcapacitor>

<comment><USER14> I can only recommend libfaketime. It great to test all kind of software, which either depends on some time of day or, alternatively ( but not recommended! ) to circumvent some other software with a built in license expire time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like to make sure future programmers have work to get paid for so I always make sure my databases use 32-bit integers for time :-)

Seriously though, in 20-25 years I think we cannot even fathom how fast and parallel databases will be, an ALTER will probably take a few seconds on a billion row table.

<comment><USER4> As someone who had some fun (er, not) during the Y2K debacle, I can promise you it's a lot more than just altering databases or patching a few bits of code. Sometimes the code is impossible to understand. For example, one program named all the variables after types of alcohol and had lines like:

        compute martini equals gin plus vermouth.

(Yeah, I used to hack COBOL, too).

Other times there would be absolutely critical systems which were developed, but were tucked away on an unknown server and we'd find out about them at the last minute and panic trying to figure out if they would work correctly.

And if you get into languages who have severe bondage and discipline on datatypes, finding out that the subtly altered data that works in one system is blowing up another one just isn't fun.

What's worse: sometimes the logic just _assumes_ that dates can't be past a certain time. Ooh, let's set the date to maxint of this data type and use that as the cutoff in our code. This code won't exist then, right? Naturally, the tests hard-code a datetime in them and it won't show up even when clocks are deliberately set forward to test the code. Of course, I've hacked on code that was written before I was born, so the whole "this code won't exist then" actually means "I won't be working here then".

<comment><USER16> _compute martini equals gin plus vermouth_

That's the most terrible code I've ever read. There's no units, it doesn't specify the ratio of gin to vermouth. That's not a martini, that's a mess.

<comment><USER4> I just kept recompiling it until it tasted right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Most 64-bit systems have a 64-bit time_t, so this won't affect them. Some 32-bit systems have also shifted to a 64-bit time_t. But it will be an issue that'll require a lot of recompiling and patching of ancient legacy stuff.

<comment><USER18> Even on 64 bit platforms with 64 bit time_t you are assuming that time is always stored in time_t, and never stored in or exchanged with systems that still use 32 bit time values. That's by no means a safe assumption.

<comment><USER19> So there's the rub.

It's all the integration/glue code that's the problem.

The dark matter of the programming world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think a much bigger problem than old software on 32 bit machines is the fact that some (binary) protocols use 32 bit integers to encode dates. That means that even when hardware and OSes get updated and even if servers or clients are maintained, stuff will still go wrong when the protocols are wrong.

So keeping up to date software might not be enough. We'll also have to pressure our peers to update and to adapt new protocol versions (that might have other changes in addition to just the widening of the timestamps)

<comment><USER21> <http://xkcd.com/607/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You leave that bug alone, that's my retirement policy that is.

<comment><USER22> Your "pull me out of retirement to fix mission critical bugs" policy, rather.

<comment><USER23> That's funny, where I'm from the policy is called "jQuery".

<comment><USER12> Every generation of coders has its retirement policy. Just think where we'd be if every large company was agile, responsive, and kept their code up to date. We cannot afford to let the big banks, governments and healthcare companies keep up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For PHP developers - date(), mktime() and strtotime() (as well as other functions) use 32bit signed integers for storing the date representation (except in some instances of a 64bit version of PHP on a 64bit OS), which is not y2k38 safe. It is preferred to use the DateTime class available in 5.2 and above which stores the date in a 64bit signed integer. There are other reasons to use the DateTime class as well - and it should generally be best practice to move away from date(), mktime(), strtotime() and other similiar functionality.

</comment><comment><USER25> I own 2038K.com, if anyone has interesting ideas on what to do with it besides making money from ADS, let me know. I bought it as a retirement hedge with the evil plan to drum up doomsday scenarios to drive traffic. Wait, I am sure the media will take care of that for me when the date approaches.

<comment><USER26> Countdown Timer. Should underflow at the last second, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> No need to worry about this. John Titor will fix this problem.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor>

<comment><USER28> Three options:

1) Someone gone insane from too much exposure to IBM mainframes (seems quite likely)

2) A great performance artist - making us all think

3) A real time traveller

<comment><USER27> According to Titor though what ever he did in our time would not directly affect his time. He traveled through time to a parallel universe(our universe) where things are pretty similar to his time with some differences.

According to him the farther back or forward in time he goes the more things change.

So, with that said, we might still be screwed. But maybe we can find an IBM 5100 and solve this problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I tried to register a Year 2038 related domain in the late 90's. Anything good was taken.

I assume the more interesting aspect of Y2038 will be the societal... Will we all be stocking our bunkers with 5 gallon pails of dried pinto beans and arming our personal attack drones?

I'd like to think we'll be a bit wiser, but somehow doubt it. Software is full of date related bugs and fails all the time. The world didn't end before, during, or after Y2K. I don't think it's ending in 2038.

<comment><USER30> I dont think you looked hard enough. :) The late 90s to about 2004 most good domains were being registered. Now we have to settle for foreign TLDs.

<comment><USER31> I wouldn't worry too much. Soon we'll have .horse and .melbourne, all our TLD problems will be behind us.

<comment><USER29> I'll be snapping up 2038.horse for sure. Once all our computer controlled hybrid vehicles stop functioning, I predict a booming market for horses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "REPENT FOR THE END OF THE UNIX EPOCH IS NIGH" [0]

... was a very entertaining and interesting talk from linux.conf.au 2013. The first ten or so minutes is amazing theater and quite hilarious (at least it was when I saw it live), and the remaining talk is also very informative.

It deals with quite a clever way to re-use the existing timezone databases that are designed to work with 32bit dates, such that they are usable with 64bit dates. This is important, because it is already an extremely difficult task to keep the original 32bit timezone databases up to date (what with all of the political decisions to change daylight savings - at a few months notice).

The talk is from the perspective of a perl developer, but the discussion is for anyone who is interested in solving the Year 2038 Problem in their language of choice.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQFZ_MPTVpc>

or 91mb mp4 download:

[http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/mp4/REPENT_FOR...](http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/mp4/REPENT_FOR_THE_END_OF_THE_UNIX_EPOCH_IS_NIGH.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER33> Unsigned integers will get you going till the year 2106, that could be an easy hotfix if you don't have to store datetimes before 1970.

Using 64-bit integers is overkill, they will work till the year 584bln[1] and it's twice as much data for every timestamp. Adding one byte (5-byte integers) is uncommon, but that supports the year 36000 already, so it would be more than enough.

[1] In full, till the year 584 942 419 325.

<comment><USER34> I don't mind doubling the size that much, but why not have milliseconds instead of seconds? 500+ billion years is just silly.. 500 million years ought to be enough for any civilization.

<comment><USER35> Windows uses 100-ns intervals since 1601 (start of the current 400-year cycle of the Gregorian calendar at the point where NT was designed) which offers good accuracy and should last for the foreseeable future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I hope humans are still around to deal with the eventual Y10K problem.

</comment><comment><USER37> We should take the time to appreciate the people who choose to design text based protocols like SMTP and HTTP. They may be a little inefficient, but at least they don't suffer from arbitrary numerical limits like this.

<comment><USER38> Using text was largely a way to make implementation easier, more human readable, and also conveniently avoid endian issues.

The arbitrary numerical limits are usually in the implementation, as many a buffer overflow bug as demonstrated.

<comment><USER39> But the point is that the implementations can be fixed, one by one, without breaking the protocol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This bug is my retirement fund :) Just like those COBOL guys back in 2000.

</comment><comment><USER41> There's also another Year 20XX problem lurking out there.

A lot of mainframe code that was fixed for Year 2000 had two-digit years in the data, that was converted to a four-digit year by adding 1900. The "fix" for a lot of that was to say if it was less than 70 (or whatever cutoff handled all the dates for the application), add 2000, otherwise add 1900. 72 => 1972, 00 => 2000, 13 => 2013\. This fails in 2070, with 2070 being reported as 1970 again.

That same software is untouched 13 years later... I don't have hopes for it being updated soon.

</comment><comment><USER42> I remember times of y2k and thinking both how 2038 is far away and that none of the system we use will be there :) 13 years later (1/3 of the time) I'm not longer that sure...

</comment><comment><USER43> When Y2K happened, I was just entering the workforce. I missed the opportunity to capitalize on the madness. This time, this time I will profit

</comment><comment><USER44> I ran into this issue recently.

You can't create an authenticated S3 URL without an expiration date, and it doesn't accept an expiration date after 2038.

</comment><comment><USER45> watch out for the Year 292,277,026,596 problem

<comment><USER46> I put a (semi tongue-in-cheek) comment in some billing system code I wrote 8 years or so ago, pointing out a date overflow problem, something like Y292277026596 (can't remember the exact year now, but the comment was accurate). Comment went on to say that if the system was still in use at that time, then I would fix the problem.

I expected to be called out for this comment some day, but never have -- makes me wonder how often people read through code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This finally made me get around to posting my 2038 countdown clock.

<http://diskclock.com/2013/05/unix-disk/>

</comment><comment><USER48> The Y2K issue was at least explainable to non-techs. Storing two digits is ambiguous. Simple enough. This one, though, no one is going to understand.

</comment><comment><USER49> 3:14 - Pi time in Jan. 2038.

Get a Pi(e) and enjoy eating it as the world collapses...or when the world is just fine you will have just enjoyed a delicious pie.

</comment><comment><USER50> does anyone have a start-up dedicated to solving this issue? something like an Initech for the 2038 bug? If not someone should.

</comment><comment><USER51> I was there when Y2k happened! Alas, nothing happened except I was suffering from a huge hangover the very next morning.

<comment> mark-r I ended up with a gas station receipt that said "1/1/100". That was the extent of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> This has been fixed couple of years ago in mortgage systems.

</comment><comment><USER53> Just curious, was anyone talking about Y2K back in 1975?

</comment><comment> guard-of-terra Java won't be affected because it sees timestamp as a 64-bit signed number of milliseconds since epoch.

It's precise enough for logging now and also timeproof.

This is fortunate because there are huge legacy java codebases. However, problems may still arise where java talks to other things (databases, input/output).

</comment><comment><USER54> Rerun of Y2K...</comment>


Banks Sites Remain Woefully Vulnerable  - <AUTHOR> http://securitywatch.eweek.com/vulnerability_research/banks_sites_remain_woefully_vulnerable.html <comment><USER2> The actual report is here: <http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2008/proceedings/p117Falk.pdf>

I wonder what sort of attack they had in mind to exploit the fact that contact information and security advice was on an insecure page? A man in the middle attack is what came to my mind, but it is early, and I may be missing something obvious. I skimmed the paper, but didn't see any specifics.

I'd think BofA were a lot cooler if they gave me the option to upload a PGP key, and then used it to encrypt any emails that they send my way. It'd solve the snooping email server admin problem, and, assuming that they signed their messages and kept their private key safe, would make it a lot easier to spot phishing. I guess there's not enough demand for that, though.</comment>


Show HN: Format/Edit/Minify multiple JSON at the same time - <AUTHOR> https://jsontoolbox.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi All,

I have been working with large JSON objects quite a lot in recent past. One of the main problems I see with every online JSON formatter out there is that if I need to work with multiple JSON then I have to open multiple tabs and there was no way to keep track of where what is. I created jsontoolbox to scratch my own itch and may be help others who might have similar problems.

Here are some features -> 1\. Format/Minify multiple JSON on the same page. 2\. Copy a sub object/value in a single click. 3\. Copy minified string in a single click on formatter. 4\. Name every JSON and quickly download with same file name.

Hope this is useful for some one else as well. Looking for feedback.

-Sourabh</comment>


Show HN: Generate piano songs and sheet music with Music Transformer - <AUTHOR> https://www.deepsoundsai.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was having some fun playing around with Google's Music Transformer so I built this site to make it more accessible and to generate sheet music so people could play along or use it to spark creativity. The songs can be hit or miss, but some turn out surprisingly well with noticeable long-term structure. I'm curious to see how others use it and am open to any feedback on what features to add next.

<comment><USER2> Really nice. I have a particular curiosity on this topic because I am studying data science with machine learning and until the covid19 pandemics started, I had a small business where I made music to free big chains/retail shops from paying music copyrights. I wonder where all this AI/Machine Learning thing will take music (and the business) to.</comment></comment>


Why prolog is by far the best, most productive, easiest programming language - <AUTHOR> http://eliminatingwork.blogspot.com/2010/02/why-prolog-is-by-far-best-most.html <comment><USER2> Why is this getting upvotes? Are some people voting before actually reading the content? The formatting of the text and the content are very poor and the points are not justified at all.

"Prolog is cool because you can write stuff is a spreadsheet, then export it to CSV and then use some regexp to convert that to actual prolog code." Seriously? Who would do that?

"Forget data structures and algorithms you don't need that." This paragraph starts with "You don't need to know recursion". Prolog. No need to know recursion. Prolog. Okay dude, sure.

Last but not least, I don't think someone saying that Prolog code is naturaly concise and elegant _because it's like writing SQL queries_ knows what he's talking about at all.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is a very... strange article. I like Prolog, but not because it's "almost exactly the same as relational database sql" with better syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think what Prolog, SQL, Lisp, or even J really offer is cheap exploratory development.

I am tremendously productive sitting in front of a REPL with access to data. Even with my Ruby hacking, I tend to be playing with 1 to 4 lines of code in irb while building my scripts and tools.

I have not had the opportunity to build a big production system with any of these languages though. I wonder if some of the reason the OO enterprise languages work and hang on is that they facilitate understanding and communication between developers.

I hate the amount of boilerplate code that seems to wrap around code examples I see in Java and C# sometimes. I was looking at a tutorial just yesterday that boiled down to declare an array of values, use a matrix of these other values, and apply these functions to the matrix until convergence occurs.

The amount of jumping I was doing between different Java class files and static functions was completely an impediment to the point of the tutorial, which was to demonstrate the logic of the process. OTOH, I was able to jump around and follow the points. But I really think it could have been more aptly demonstrated in a few lines of code in another language.

Thinking of this interview with Arthur Whitney and this topic:

"BC To ask a slightly broader question, what is the con- nection between computer language and thought? To what degree does our choice of how we express software change the way we think about the problem?

AW I think it does a lot. That was the point of Ken Iverson's Turing Award paper, "Notation as a Tool of Thought." I did pure mathematics in school, but later I was a teaching assistant for a graduate course in computer algorithms. I could see that the professor was getting killed by the notation. He was trying to express the idea of different kinds of matrix inner products, saying if you have a directed graph and you're looking at connections, then you write this triple nested loop in Fortran or Algol. It took him an hour to express it. What he really wanted to show was that for a connected graph it was an or- dot- and. If it's a graph of pipe capacities, then maybe it's a plus-dot-min. If he'd had APL or K as a notation, he could have covered that in a few seconds or maybe a minute, but because of the notation he couldn't do it."

<http://mags.acm.org/queue/20090203?pg=12#pg16>

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't fathom how a networking stack or GUI framework would be written _in_ Prolog itself (assuming some basic primitive access to the machine were available to the interpreter). Everything besides logical inference and deduction would have to be written as foreign bindings. Whichever implementation of Prolog I've used had basic arithmetic in it.

This begs the question: why not go the other way and use Prolog as an embedded DSL in another language? Racklog and Datalog[1] demonstrate this is possible and rather useful. Then you have the benefits of Prolog inside another language which can do ... stuff.

And if I ever succeed, perhaps you could have Answer Set Prolog embedded in your code too and solve NP-complete search problems declaratively. But this isn't a plug.

[1]: <http://docs.racket-lang.org/racklog/>

</comment><comment><USER6> That seemed to be mostly a rant about what you _don't_ do with Prolog, not about what you actually can do. The example of exporting a spreadsheet to CSV doesn't sound too convincing of the language's miraculous powers.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Why prolog is by far the best, most productive, easiest programming language?" Because you want to believe it. You can change 'prolog' to any other language and easily find people agreeing with you.

</comment><comment><USER8> seriously?

</comment><comment><USER9> Flame bait? ;)</comment>


Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL - <AUTHOR> https://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html <comment><USER2> This 1982 piece is a riff on "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", which came out that same year. Quoting Wikipedia at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Men_Don%27t_Eat_Quiche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Men_Don%27t_Eat_Quiche) ,

> Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, by American Bruce Feirstein, is a bestselling > tongue-in-cheek book satirizing stereotypes of masculinity, published in > 1982 (ISBN 0-671-44831-5).

> It popularized the term quiche-eater, referring to a man who is a > dilettante, a trend-chaser, an over-anxious conformist to fashionable forms > of lifestyle, and socially correct behaviors and opinions, one who eschews > (or merely lacks) the traditional masculine virtue of tough self-assurance.

In this case, quiche-eaters use Pascal, and Real Programmers use FORTRAN 66.

</comment><comment><USER3> I do :-)</comment>


Just looking for feedback on a weekend project (a list of unsaturated niches) - <AUTHOR> https://www.sympose.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment>


Google created an oligopoly of top ranking sites - <AUTHOR> http://antjanus.com/blog/seo/google-created-oligopoly-top-ranking-sites/

<comment><USER2> 1\. RSS still exists and is used. It does not drive traffic like the 'social' sites do, however.

2\. >There is no way to get backlinks, no way to get ranking, no way to rank without an enormous team of experts guiding your efforts.

The internet is maturing as a business space. It's going to just get more capital intensive from here. Pitch people to get backlinks. Schmooze. Make pals.

3\. Be more creative and willing to spend money for effective traffic.

The old days were not some magical time of freedom. People passed packets of $500+ for each link to bloggers and journalists. They still do. People just don't talk about it in public. Now that the marginal value of a backlink is a lot lower than it used to be people have to turn to other techniques to build traffic and integrate it into a more complex marketing mix.

I do think that it's a shame that publishing on the web is becoming just as professionalized as print / TV / etc. used to be. You do need a big staff of techno-priests to interpret the word of Cutts and implement it.

To burnish my priestly credentials, I notice that you're not using authorship markup on your posts.

I disagree that the big sites are un-topplable. Identify niches in their business that you can break off profitably. The big dogs can't own everything, especially given the relevance of personalized search.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input!

Microniche is the way to go but honestly, it really limits one to the number of topics.

<comment><USER2> Glad to be of use.

It does. I like this book on how to do it: [http://www.amazon.com/Crackerjack- Positioning-Marketing-Stra...](http://www.amazon.com/Crackerjack-Positioning- Marketing-Strategy-Entrepreneur/dp/0963411047)</comment></comment></comment>


003 RR Templating Languages for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://rubyrogues.com/003-rr-templating-languages-for-html-css-and-javascript/ <comment><USER2> Just because the title doesn't make it clear, this is an episode of a Ruby- themed, discussion-oriented podcast (which I'm on) where we discuss templating languages like Haml, ERB, Sass, etc.</comment>


Apple's iWatch Is Cleared For Takeoff - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iwatch-cleared-for-takeoff-2014-6?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=BI%20Select%20%28Tuesday%20Thursday%29%202014-06-26&utm_content=emailshare

<comment><USER2> Just to be clear for everyone, the 'clear for takeoff' didn't come from Apple execs/devs. It's the author suggesting that now is a good time for the iWatch</comment>


Schmidt On Google TV Network Backlash: We're Taking Dumb TV And Making It Smart - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/15/schmidt-google-tv/ <comment><USER3> _He said that the networks seem to be concerned that the enormous revenue streams targeted at these dumb televisions will go away if they change the model. Schmidt disagrees. He thinks people will watch even more television if it's augmented with the Internet._

I can't imagine why they'd be worried. It's not like other advertising driven revenue models that came online earlier have been getting ground down into pulp or anything.

The networks are in the business of selling advertising (and buying or producing content as advertising delivery vehicles). What's more, they get the lions share of the money spend on TV advertising - there aren't substantial amounts being bled off to intermediaries.

Google is in the business of selling advertising, but not content. And they are in the business of standing between the advertiser and the content producer and taking a hefty percentage of the dollars spent on advertising. And they've proven to be very adept at business.

A large amount of advantage major networks hold over even cable channels is their ability to deliver large audiences to ad buyers. Because everything is pretty manual and there is no big auction network or the like, an ad buyer can't easily purchase the same reach of say 5M households that the network provides by placing their ads on 1000 programs each with 5000 viewers.

Once it's just as easy or easier to reach your audience through many small programs, the money will start to flow away from big TV and into smaller productions. That money will allow the upstarts to increase production value, competing more effectively. And whatever money is still going to the major networks will be getting a substantial slice taken out by the intermediaries and their "value add".

But Eric Schmidt says it won't be a problem. I mean, they can trust google, right?

</comment><comment><USER4> > _He thinks people will watch even more television_

In 2008, the average American 12 or older watched 1,704 hours of television: 4.7 hours per day. Schmidt thinks people will watch _more_ than that much Google TV? I weep for humanity.

</comment><comment><USER5> Google's philosophy with Google TV and network television stations amounts to "why buy the cow when we can get the milk for free?"

In so many words, the issue is that Google wants to profit from network television without paying for the content or infrastructure. The networks have a legitimate right to be angry when they pay for the content and distribution and Google wants to profit off of that for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> How is this any different to Google News? Google is just letting users discover through a better unified interface the TV content that is ALREADY available on the web for free. They are providing a service for both users and the TV networks. The TV networks, like newspapers and other old-world publishers before them with google search and news, just don't understand it.

<comment><USER5> Google's had issues with those people, too. And book authors and publishers because of Google Books.

The issue is that Google TV is layering their ads and content on top of the television that the networks pay lots of money to acquire. So the networks pay all the costs and Google piggy-backs on it for free.

<comment><USER6> I haven't used Google TV, but I'm pretty sure your post is verifiable bullshit.

If you go to a network's site on your computer and view their content, you also view their ads. If you go to a network's site using Google TV, you view their content and their ads. Where do Google ads come into this?

No, this is all about networks being obsessed with distribution control - <USER2> can watch a show on your computer, on your HTPC, but not on a user-friendly HTPC. You can watch hulu on your laptop on your lap, but not on your tablet on your lap, etc etc.

<comment><USER5> Google didn't create Google TV out of the kindness of their heart. Google created Google TV to make a profit. Just like you see ads on top of Youtube videos, you see ads on top of and around television using Google TV.

So the more popular a television show, the more ads Google gets to show around it, and the more money Google makes. How much of that money gets shared with the networks that actually paid for television show and the costs of distribution? None. And that's the problem. The networks are putting up all the money and Google collects when it pays off.

<comment><USER7> > you see ads on top of and around television using Google TV

No you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having had the experience of developing for the Google TV (Logitech Revue unit), all I can say is: They're taking something simple and making it complicated.

Look at DVR's. That's an excellent example of taking something simple and making it _smart_. Tivo didn't make it harder to watch tv, it made it easier, aka watch what you want when you want.

The reason I'm such a fan of the Apple TV is that it made TV even easier. Not only can I watch what I want when I want, I can do it less expensively. By canceling my outrageously priced monthly cable service, I have a relatively low-cost internet connection and spend 2/3 less each month on tv that I ever have before. There's only a handful of shows that I really care to watch, and I get them how I want.

Google TV is more akin to Web TV than anything else. You took away my remote and gave me a keyboard. And you made finding content even more difficult than it was before.

</comment><comment><USER9> "we're taking dumb tv and making it smart"

so does that mean they're shutting down youtube?</comment>


A todo software written using Django. Source available as GPL. - <AUTHOR> http://day1.7days7apps.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Source is available at <http://7days7apps.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/todolist/>

<comment><USER2> You'd be best off setting Subversion to ignore various files - anything ending in .pyc shouldn't be in the repo' and you really don't want everything in settings.py out in the wild.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your home page would be better without performance misspelled as performace, and people misspelled as poeple.

Otherwise, it looks pretty good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I am in a hurry as I am trying to make 7 apps in & days( www.7apps7days.com, see the subtle name ;) ). I will go back and change the name when I have the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, I mean I will change the spelling ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mine (uses Rails) is free too, for that matter:

<http://stufftodo.dedasys.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Cool, time to teach myself a little about Django and recreate good ol' RemindMe (one of the many things I miss about ars digita)</comment>


Adventures in Sourcing and Building an ErgoDox - <AUTHOR> http://edwardsh.in/ergodox/2014/12/29/adventures-in-sourcing-and-building-an-ergodox/

<comment><USER2> Interesting that you went it alone. I bought mine on mass drop and it cost me around $275 when all was said and done. I did get the full hand with metal tops though.

I think you saved a good deal of money by having access to a laser cuter, which makes me think that the mass drop price is actually not terrible given the extra convenience of everything arriving as a kit.

The blue acrylic top is awesome!

Have you considered tents to tilt the edges? They made a huge comfort difference for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

The Massdrop price seems pretty fair, especially considering that I was able to get a discount on a few things and had free access to a laser cutter.

I haven't looked into tents, but they seem interesting. Getting used to reaching the far thumb keys takes a bit of work. Seems like it might make gaming awkward, though. What design did you use to make the tent?</comment></comment>


Show HN: 'Scrobble' your Google Reader Account - <AUTHOR> http://getfireplug.com/google-reader

<comment><AUTHOR> Travis here, I'm the OP and also a co-founder of Fireplug, the service offering retroactive "credit" for your article history on Google Reader.

Our service isn't necessarily a replacement for Google Reader but a way to track what you read and more importantly what you learn online. It's kind of like last.fm's scrobbler except we can go a little more in-depth because it's relatively easier to analyze text over music. Our goal is to help users establish and build their online reputation and what better way to do that then leverage the dozens if not hundreds of articles they read every day.

Love to hear any comments/concerns/feedback you might have, feel free to comment here or email me directly at travis [at] getfireplug [dot] com and I'll be happy to help.</comment>


My Lawn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html <comment><USER2> He talks about wanting 1 senior for 5 juniors, with most firms having a 1 to 16 ratio. Is it really that bad? Or is the OP's definition of senior someone with 20 years experience?

My experience is that mentorship is 1 to 1. (Just like the Sith!) If you're doing a wide pyramid project, perhaps 1 good engineering manager with tech skills can oversee the work of 2 senior programmers and 2 juniors.

Or has my experience been the exception?

<comment><USER3> Most good professors have more than one PhD student at a time, although I doubt many have 16. 5 is probably a reasonable number.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough, and that's a good example. The 16 to 1 seems like a stretch too.</comment></comment></comment>


Guess my gender - <AUTHOR> http://18.104.22.168/guessmygender/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is how he does it:

<http://www.ihas1337code.com/2011/01/guess-my-gender.html></comment>


Encryption App 'Signal' Fights Censorship with a Clever Workaround - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/2016/12/encryption-app-signal-fights-censorship-clever-workaround/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's a detailed overview of so called 'domain fronting' [https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/](https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/)

Some VPNs use a module called _obfsproxy_ which uses the fronting technique. One VPN service I recall using it is called Tunnelbear. You can read more about this feature here: [https://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2435...](https://help.tunnelbear.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2435665-ghostbear- fight-censorship-and-restrictive-networks)

This is not an endorsement of Tunnelbear, I just thought it would be noteworthy mentioning that VPN services offer this now to thwart censorship.

<comment><USER2> OpenVPN goes over TCP port 443, making it look like bog-standard HTTPS traffic. Unless the country you're in blacklists entire VPN IP blocks (not particularly useful, they rotate all the time), it's already unblockable, unless they want to block ALL https traffic.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea behind obfsproxy is that you don't want it looking like port 443 on the wire. You can infact mask the traffic using the domain fronting technique providing you setup obfsproxy correctly. I haven't tried it myself, but I have analyzed Tunnelbear's 'ghostbear' feature with wireshark and the traffic looks fairly innocuous which is what we're aiming for.

[https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/TrafficObfuscatio...](https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/TrafficObfuscation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I asked my aunt in Dubai to update Signal on her iPhone and managed to place a call sans VPN.

Completely stable, clear audio.

<comment><USER4> The quality has never been stellar for me. It's similar to speaking on a landline, but not nearly as good as VoLTE or some online systems (Hangouts excepted, because their quality is poor every time I've used it).

I've tried it between the US and US/Europe, for what it's worth, over mobile internet connections.

<comment><USER3> To put it into perspective, audio call quality is much better on WhatsApp by comparison. However due to my family member connecting to a VPN the additional latency would cause audio jitters. Calls would also drop after 10-15 minutes.

With this technique the jitters have all but gone, and no disconnections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great workaround for the UAE and Saudi, which are "oppression lite." This would never work in a more oppressive country; the rulers there would simply fail to whitelist traffic going to Google Cloud / App Engine traffic. This is already evident on the other side of the Great Firewall.

Still, pretty cool.

<comment><USER6> If they block Google.com sure, it won't work, but in that case Signal could just use a CDN they won't block, like Alicloud in China, or AWS or similar.

<comment><USER7> Signal can use Cloudflare as well (the article I read first spoke of Cloudflare, not Google, but it wasn't in English). Blocking Cloudflare is going to break half the internet.

<comment><USER8> In Russia, Roskomnadzor does not care. The number of blocked CloudFlare IPs in Russia keeps growing and about one third of blocked IPs belong to CloudFlare: [https://rublacklist.net/13108/](https://rublacklist.net/13108/) It is still a small percentage of CloudFlare IPs, but if you use free CloudFlare service for your website you are extremely likely to get IP that is already blocked.

Actually, Roskomnadzor officially asked not to use CloudFlare sites: [http://rkn.gov.ru/news/rsoc/news24880.htm](http://rkn.gov.ru/news/rsoc/news24880.htm) The message is don't hide behind CloudFlare or your sites will get blocked by IP without reason.

China blocks Google fonts, it breaks half the internet by making all fonts requests timeout, but still the government does not care.

When government starts blocking CDNs, most commercial websites aiming at users within the government will rapidly move off the CDN instead of freedom fighting, sadly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's a link to the blog post announcing the update.

[https://whispersystems.org/blog/doodles-stickers- censorship/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/doodles-stickers-censorship/)

I find it amusing the stark difference; going from light hearted doodles and stickers on images to a censoring workaround

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain to me why Tor does not use "domain fronting" to hide that it is Tor traffic?

<comment><USER11> This is exactly what the meek [1] pluggable transport does. It was developed by David Fifield, of the original authors of the domain fronting paper [2].

1\. [https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/meek](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/meek)

2\. [https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/](https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/fronting/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks a lot for the links. So am I correct in understanding that the reason this isn't a default Tor capability is the setup around the domains used to do the fronting (looks like meek uses mostly CDNs?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This "domain fronting" trick could make Google suffer collateral damages if the regime is determined to block such encryption apps.

<comment><USER13> It's OK, Google would survive just fine... The real worry is the people who need secure communications and their survival.

<comment><USER12> Collateral damages not in ways of Internet traffic but getting "blocked" in those regions.

<comment><USER13> Yes, we know... And?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So could the AppEngine subdomain that Signal is using be DDoSed to make it timeout (or run up their bill fantastically high) when the domain fronted message is forwarded?</comment>


Sublime Text Development Status  - <AUTHOR> http://sublimetext.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16517 <comment><USER2> There have always been three text editors: Vim, Emacs, and the closed source Mac editor de jour. I used to think that if only that closed source editor would go open source, it could enter that timeless transcendance of Emacs and Vim.

But now Textmate _is_ open source, and now there is Atom, I am not so sure any more. Neither Textmate nor Sublime Text, nor Atom seem to be able to stand up to the two old ones in term of development community and community involvement.

Maybe it is a question of novelty. Vim still has unmatched key bindings. Emacs atill has unmatched total flexibility. Textmate had snippets (which now everyone has), Sublime Text has multiple cursors (which is maybe not a big enough improvements over macros to matter). Light Table seemed interesting, but probably too narrow in scope. My hope is that Atom's openness will finally allow it to transcend its brethren. But I don't see a compelling reason for that yet.

<comment><USER3> The true killer feature of Sublime Text is the fact that it runs _flawlessly_ on the 3 major platforms (Windows, OS X, Linux).

I know people will scream that Emacs (and vim) have windows ports, but they are utter crap compared to running them under a Unix. I can tell that from experience. Emacs on Windows is unbearably slow: it took 10 times as much to start as on the same host, same SSD, when it is run under a Linux VM! It also relies heavily on standard Unix tools (wget, grep, ...), whose ports for Windows are extremely outdated to the point that they are unusable (Emacs 24's find in file relies on features not provided by the standard non-CYGWIN grep). There only solution is to use CYGWIN, which is a mess: it's extremely slow, behaves weirdly (wrt path names, notably), and it doesn't play well if you already have a standard MSYSGit installation for your git needs. (I have tried using Emacs at least 4 times already, and I have never managed to stick to it, for these kind of reasons.)

I love ST. It boots fast, is gorgeous, modern (unlike Emacs, you can have your cursor outside the region you are viewing!), trivial to configure (with auto- reload of config files), has sane defaults and great support for most languages out of the box, it has a great community, and a nice language choice for moddability. It might have been born has an OS X _éditeur du jour_ , but I'd say it's more of a blessing for Windows developers where good, modern editors are rare.

<comment><USER4> This is one of the many things I love about ST. I create in both Linux & OS X and ST just works wonderfully. I've never worked with a cross platform program that works as well as ST; everything from the keyboard shortcuts, to the look and feel of the GUI is a thing of beauty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Better title: Sublime Text is still alive.

The synopsis seems to be that development is continuing, there are long term plans, but that development is slow and will probably continue that way at least until 3 is released (which there is no date given for).

So basically nothing has changed :)

[Edit: Title fixed to be less link-baity. Thanks!]

</comment><comment><USER6> "in the works" is a bit premature. Isn't 3 still a beta?

The race for 2020 President of the US is in the works too, if your bar is "someone is thinking about it what it might be like."

[original title was "Sublime Text 4 In The Works"]

<comment><USER7> To be fair, ST3 is pretty stable for everyday use.

<comment><USER8> It is, I've used it since release on a permanent basis with no problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a paying customer of ST2, "meh". ST3 was not a compelling upgrade, and, IMHO it's about time Jon open-sources this editor. A significant amount of its value is in the extensibility system and package discovery is basically owned by Package Control.

This is a community project, stop being a bottleneck.

<comment><USER10> What's in it for him? Likely loss of his primary revenue stream and control over the project's destiny? It doesn't seem like a compelling move.

<comment><USER11> I'd like to see a Kickstarter for it to be released to open source.

<comment><USER12> Trading a continual long term revenue source for a single one off payment, probably isn't very compelling.

<comment><USER13> The risk being that a slow development pace will allow Atom to eat ST's lunch. Then any future revenue falls off a cliff.

Use Kickstarter to open source it and you both cash in and do the community a favour.

<comment><USER12> Last I tried Atom it's quite a long way from offering any significant advantage over ST and has it's own risks due to not having a clear revenue model. If the ST devs believe that they can sell 100K licenses over say 5-10 years at $60 each then that sets the kickstarter goal in the region of $6M without offering any rewards for backers which seems like a pretty unrealistic target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hang on, they have a single developer who is also the director? Yet they sell the IDE for a hefty sum with a healthy amount of "known" users [https://sublime.wbond.net/stats](https://sublime.wbond.net/stats) \- if they even have 10% of these are paying customers they should be able to afford more staff.

Sublime must be the most mismanaged profitable company.

<comment><USER5> They don't enforce paying for the editor. Those users may or may not be actually paying. You're right that it does seem like they could afford more staff. But its also pretty clear the guy who created it wants to write code and not deal with the other parts of being a "company" (see lack of public responses/updates). He created it, so he can market it/develop it as he sees fit.

I admire what he's done, and respect his choice if he's really not expanding because he likes to code and doesn't want to deal with running a business. But I also now use Vim because I didn't trust Sublime's future.

<comment><USER15> I tried it and there was a pop up box every few minutes.

It is unusable without a license.

<comment><USER16> I use it full-time without a license and only get it twice or thrice a day at best (and the esc key is quickly hit); 'unusable' is a bit harsh.

<comment><USER15> Well I saw it pop up twice within a matter of minutes.

Popups cause a huge break in my concentration especially when I am coding so it is unusable to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dj-wonk Is it just me, or did the title cause anyone else to wonder if this was real or a parody of TextMate 2?

<comment><USER17> Just you.

<comment> dj-wonk The previous title was changed, mercifully.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think the biggest problem with information from the Sublime office is that it's "just words". My take on this situation is that perceived activity were driven by software updates and presence in the forums. Both stopped a fair while ago (well, one release the last 6 months: [http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev](http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev)).

The forums unfortunately also deteriorated to bickering between the "you're paying for future promises" and "you payed for a working editor up to date". Why people bicker at all is beyond me, but I guess both camps has enough opinion to engage.

All in all, Sublime Text is excellent software – just as TextMate was (is, if you prefer) – before the business of "one man bands" most likely removed fun from the equation.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sublime Text's support is horrible and so is the developer's policy regarding updates.

They're not going to get any more money from me.

<comment><USER8> It baffles me why the ST company don't communicate better. I'm a huge supporter of Sublime Text because it enables me to be hugely more productive. Everyone I know who uses it can never go back.

BUT! It's run as if it was a hobby project coded in mom's basement. He surely must be earning enough money to get more people on board.

<comment><USER19> They haven't responded to emails sent more than one year ago.

I don't think it will survive after Atom becomes popular and stable.

He had a lot of customers at some point. That's when he should have brought in more people to do things right. He chose to do it all on his own, get himself burnt out and completely stop communicating.

I don't see a future for this project if it doesn't get open sourced. The main problem is there's absolutely no support once he releases a stable ST version. You never have anything stable they support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I use to mock textmate users over the very same thing. Yet I never felt Sublime is as closed and distant as TM. So I like it and use it, paid for it, totally worth it, however it seems it is going the way of TextMate.

Which makes me worry I will have to continue to use Vim for next decade. Vim is great, but we need to find something better.

I think, if I were author, I would try to find a way to incorporate what makes editors like Vim awesome, what makes Emacs awesome is already implemented several times. This other part is still elusive and could benefit innovation.

</comment><comment><USER21> Honestly, at this point the only things actually keeping me using ST over Atom are (1) the SFTP plugin, (2) per-project settings, and (3) click-and-drag multiple cursors... and Atom plugins have already started making headway on 1 and 2.

<comment><USER8> Atom is too slow to be useable in real world projects. It's fine for hobby coding a few files. But try opening anything larger: it's painfully horribly slow. This is not something that can be fixed; it's because they are using a browser to render the code. Therefore Atom has no chance of replacing Sublime Text. Sorry.

<comment><USER22> Are you not trolling? I dont think so is allowed in HN

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its release, then. Dead project after people paid to make it released.

Really, how many version does he need to reimplement the same features again and again?

I'm all for him getting my money more than once for Sublime Text. But is it really that hard to at least evolve the Same editor instead of rewriting it over and over just so he can get another round of money?

<comment><USER16> > Already planned for Sublime text 4? Probably another rewrite? I assumed the > same faith of Sublime Text 2 is happening with Sublime Text 3 after its > release, then.

Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I paid for ST 2, but shortly after it got out of beta it was pretty much abandoned in favor of another years-long beta period for ST 3. I'm not falling for that one again.

Likewise I fell into the 'early access' trap for Steam games, where a developer gets rich without any obligation to deliver. It worked (and was successful) for Minecraft, but other games have yet to deliver.

<comment><USER23> > Which is exactly why I'm still running the evaluation license of ST 3; I > paid for ST 2

I do the exact same thing. I might pay for ST3 if the developer can convince me that he is going to put some update in ST3 after it is released.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Isn't Sublime text 3 still in beta?

<comment><USER25> [http://www.sublimetext.com/3](http://www.sublimetext.com/3)

> Sublime Text 3 is currently in beta. The latest build is 3059.

Yep. Which makes this announcement extremely odd.

<comment><USER26> Coincidentally, 3059 is also the projected release date year for Sublime Text 3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm confident in Jon's ability here. They previously hired another developer, but it seems that didn't work out.

ST4 hasn't been announced yet, just that it's something they want to do - which is great! I look forward to the August releases.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh, Sublime Text 4 announced. How nice. I'm glad I didn't waste money on Sublime Text 3 (given how little it changes over 2).

Don't see much of a reason to buy 4 either - 6-8 seems like the sweet spot. /s

<comment><USER23> After paying for Sublime Text 2 and saw how it is abandon almost right after the released, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm just going to keep using Sublime Text 3,4,5,...N in trial version mode. I love it, but I'm not going to pay for beta App. And if I paid for promised of released app, you'd better makes me feel like you are abandoning me right away.

I'll gladly pay when I see that they updates some minor version for a while after release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The finesse of Sublime Text is admirable (considering it's mostly 1 guy's work). However the ratio of open/closed bugs on Github isn't too comforting. I hope they expand the team soon.

</comment><comment> clark-kent It's worth saying, I admire how they run the company.

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't companies usually need to pay ycombinator to place ads on HN? Please stop suggesting anyone is interested in closed source software.

<comment><USER31> Plenty of HN users are: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sublimetext#!/all/sort_by_date/0/sublimetext)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> stick to eclipse for hassle free development

<comment><USER8> Are you trolling? I didn't think that was allowed on HN.

<comment><USER22> No, if you cant pay for worthfull feature provide by sublime text then use any open source, that was my personal opinion

</comment></comment></comment><comment> darrenf15e</comment>


Taking a Harder Look at Harassment - <AUTHOR> https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/taking-harder-look-at-harassment.html <comment><AUTHOR> > To be clear, using racial, homophobic, or sexist epithets on their own would > not necessarily violate either of these policies. For example, as noted > above, lewd or offensive language is often used in songs and comedic > routines. It's when the primary purpose of the video is hate or harassment. > And when videos violate these policies, we remove them.

I don't see how Google/Youtube can view Crowders videos as non-harassment, non-hate speech and still keep a straight face with their pride month campaign. You can't support homophobic creators and claim to be supportive to LGBTI issues at the same time.</comment>


Non Von-Neumann Architectures [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a207268.pdf <comment><USER2> The document is a late 1980's document, but as such, in trying to say what a NVN structure might look like, they do much to describe existing VN architecture. And it is very telling that not much has changed since then for hardware or software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. I got interested in this topic recently when watching a video[1] from the MIT AGI class[2] and the presenter (Josh Tenenbaum[3]) made the point that real advances in AGI may require new hardware architectures. I wanted to see what was "out there" in terms of research on non von-neumann architectures, and this was one of the best documents I could find at first blush, even though it is older.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ROelYvo8f0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ROelYvo8f0)

[2]: [https://agi.mit.edu](https://agi.mit.edu)

[3]: [http://web.mit.edu/cocosci/josh.html](http://web.mit.edu/cocosci/josh.html)</comment></comment>