Jeff Bezos' Day One fund gives $97.5M to first 24 recipients - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/jeff-bezos-day-one-fund-gives-out-97-5-million-to-first-24-awardees/ <comment> a-dub I dunno. I think a $2bn endowment that hands out $200mm/yr to those who are most in need is pretty damned cool.

Hopefully it's the beginning of what's to come.

The thing to keep in mind is that the guy has $infinity and his company has infinity success. Neither have to continue as they have already won. What will define the legacy is what is done with the accumulated wealth, this seems to be a good first step.

... and yes, the PR is important. Maybe it will encourage more wealthy people to give back, in substantial ways even.

I don't see the value in sneering at philanthropy... ever.

<comment><USER2> > I think a $2bn endowment that hands out $200mm/yr to those who are most in > need is pretty damned cool.

Tax is a superior way of doing this. Tax and where to spend it is in principle decided by all the people, democratically, whereas this method is decided at the whims of one man who got lucky.

<comment><USER3> Where do you live? In the US this isn't true. In the US we've decided to democratically spend it on the military.

<comment><USER4> If by "military" you also mean Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, space exploration, K-12 education, and scientific research sure.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to see the budget for each of those services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's nice that rather than paying people sensible wages, we make people mega- billionaires and then they hand back a fraction of it.

<comment><USER7> I have been thinking about this. If a business pays their employees well they don't look good on the stock market and they don't get PR points for philanthropy. On the other hand if you squeeze out every bit of profit, you look good in the stock market and you get big PR points if you do a little philanthropy. The decision seems pretty clear.

<comment><USER2> Maybe. I would argue that long term it isn't. Businesses and the people who control them are only that wealthy because society lets them be that wealthy. Damaging society (e.g. via increasingly obscene wealth inequality making people more unhappy) means, long-term, risking massive societal upheaval, and thus your position.

<comment><USER7> "Damaging society (e.g. via increasingly obscene wealth inequality making people more unhappy) means, long-term, risking massive societal upheaval, and thus your position."

Do you think that current businesses think about this a lot?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does it hurt to put 24 organizations instead of 24 recipients. As clickbaity as it can get.

<comment><USER9> It sounds like a lotto

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Charity exists on a scale from very considered to not at all considered, same scale with not very effective/$ to very effective/$. There are meta-charities that try to evaluate the effectiveness of other charities. The point is that this is at the "not considered/effective" end of the scale. The really pressing problems of the world aren't American homelessness, and homelessness is not a cost effective problem to try and solve (compared to eg. people dying of water-borne diseases in the third world). So he either hasn't thought about it, or doesn't really care (and the two are connected one implies the other).

<comment><USER11> > So he either hasn't thought about it, or doesn't really care

Or he just has different subjective values than you do, since effectiveness is always (subjectively chosen value function)/$

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's like a normal person giving $100 to charity. Wouldn't it be cool if you could move the needle on vulnerable children with pocket change? (I'm not downplaying his charity, just putting it in perspective)

<comment><USER13> And if everybody donated 100 USD to charity that it would have huge impact :)

In related news: extreme poverty is likely disappearing over the next 10 years, if you want earn some karma points by saving people in need, now is the time to act.

</comment></comment><comment> irq-1 As a historical note: George Peabody was famous for helping the homeless in London and there is still a statue of him outside the Royal Exchange.

> George Peabody, an American financier and philanthropist, is widely regarded > as the father of modern philanthropy.

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

He also donated the money he had promised to his partner Junius Morgan.

</comment><comment><USER14> Or he could try paying his taxes.

</comment><comment><USER15> Amazon was given $2B in tax subsidies for HQ2 by New York and Virginia. We may as well be paying for this with our tax dollars.

<comment><USER16> read: [https://avc.com/2018/11/the-overpay- critique/](https://avc.com/2018/11/the-overpay-critique/)

<comment><USER15> That's a non sequitur; Amazon would still have built its HQ2s _somewhere_ if not NY and VA. My point is the tax subsidies are roughly equal to $2B, so they effectively cancel out the fund.

<comment><USER17> They could have built it in a state with little or no corporate tax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Reminder that the reason he is doing this is to trick you into thinking massive top-heavy wealth accumulation can be sustainable or in any way "good".

If you need any evidence that this is anything but a PR sham, read this: [https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/amazon-seattle- repea...](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/06/amazon-seattle-repeal-head- tax-homelessness)

<comment><USER19> Perhaps you could describe your interpretation of the article referenced and why you feel he is trying to trick people by giving away ~$100M.

<comment><USER20> My interpretation:

\- Paying this small tax would help the homeless, but Jeff/Amazon would see no direct benefit from this.

\- Donating money has the direct benefit of positive PR. The last wealthiest guy in the world did it too-- so arguably not doing it is in fact not a neutral stance but negative PR.

Hence it's in Jeff Bezos' interest to pay less taxes and donate the money it takes to make the headlines.

<comment><USER21> It's also important to remember that while $100M sounds like a lot of money (and it is) it is only 0.1% of Bezos's net worth. It's the equivalent of someone whose net worth is $1M giving away $1000.00. And actually, it's not even equivalent to that because if you have $1M and you give away $1000 you can no longer afford to buy something that costs $1M. But when your net worth is $100B and you give away $100M your net worth is still $99.9B. You are still the richest man in the world by a wide margin, and there is essentially nothing you can't buy.

<comment><USER19> Really excellent perspective on this. However, I don't think we should downplay anyone giving away that amount of money. I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance.

It seems odd that society feels entitled to decide what the richest person in the world should and shouldn't do with their money. I don't disagree with premise that he can hand away $5B and still not bat an eye but why is it out decision to make?

<comment><USER18> >I'd rather someone give away $100M compared to $0 even if its peanuts for them based on their personal finance.

Yes, it's good that he has given away some money, and this money will do real good, it's important not to let this blur the focus on the real issue:

There are desperate, homeless people in this country. There are people who are refusing necessary medical treatment because they cannot "afford" healthcare. There are people who will go into crippling debt for attending higher education. Most people I know say they will never be able to afford a home because the price of rent doesn't leave any room for savings.

All of these problems can be remedied by a society deciding collectively not to allow single people to accumulate exorbitant amounts of wealth, and instead, collectively spread that money among the population who need it, democratically. There is no social benefit in padding out a Mossack-Fonseca tax-free account of dubious offshore legality so one man can attain massive political and social power. There is value, however, in using those resources to employ people in the project of tackling real, fixable social problems that other countries have figured out already. Green energy, healthcare for all, free education, job guarantees, infrastructure upgrades. It's all within the fiscal budget so long as there aren't single people, or small groups of shareholders becoming unnecessarily rich just because we've stacked an economic system in their favor.

The idea that these are "his savings" just because he amassed them under our current system is missing the perspective that this system is not immutable. It can, and has, been changed before, and can change again. It is in the process of changing in other parts of the world right now, and with good results at that.

<comment><USER19> Where do you propose drawing the line on too much versus just enough fortune? Is $1M enough but $1B isn't? There will always be one person that is the most wealthy person in the world unless you want to go the opposite route and turn the free market into a socialist society. I don't disagree with the problems of the world and healthcare and basic human needs are hard to come by for a large group of people. That problem need not be conflated with the disagreement that there is a single person who has more wealth than anyone else.

How was the system stacked in Jeff's favor exactly? He started a company and grew it to become what it is today. I really don't understand how the system is stacked in his or any one persons favor. I agree the rich get more wealthy and the poor less but that problem isn't systemic of Jeff Bezos' personal wealth accumulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That was fast.</comment>


Talking to oneself is a sign of mental illness...except on twitter.  Why? - <AUTHOR> Most tweets go unanswered and are read by only a few (if any) random followers.  This means people are essentially just talking to themselves most of the time.<p>How is this any different from talking to oneself in public but believing that one is not mentally ill because a few random people nearby might hear what is said? <comment><USER2> I think your underlying assumption is incorrect. I have always felt that this old meme about talking to yourself being a sign of mental illness was completely ridiculous.

Perhaps taken to the extreme, where a person walks around all day spouting nonsensical gibberish to no one in particular may well be a sign of mental illness, but this is very different to what most people seem to be referring to when they think of talking to one's self, and obviously different to what you seem to be referring to, as your question revolves around the idea that people's use of Twitter is potentially just them talking to themselves and why this does not indicate mental illness.

I'm sure there are some out there who do just type nonsensical crap into Twitter all day. It certainly seems to me that a great deal of the content that appears on Twitter is inane in the extreme. But none of this supports the underlying assumption of the meme, which seems to be that talking to one's self in any capacity is straying into the realm of mental illness.

There is a large difference between the symptoms of mental disorder and having an introspective conversation with yourself, some or all of which may be spoken out in an audible manner.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are people saying "John thinks he's sad" or are people saying "I'm sad"?

Because the former is a bit nutso whereas the latter is a form of self expression and want of communication, regardless whether there's a recipient or not. The anonymity afforded by Twitter/blogs/websites/whatever to broadcast is what drives people to those products. It's not the same as a random person randomly dialing a single phone number to say the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry -- were you talking to us?

A lot of posts on HN go nowhere either. Same for blogs.

I guess we just like talking to ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER5> The fact that people are following you means you have an intended (but debatably attentive) audience.

</comment><comment><USER6> I talk to myself in real life almost all day long. An idea I can put into words I have a more concrete and memorable grip on than one I cannot, and working that out out-loud is often more natural than doing so in ones head.</comment>


Small teams are dramatically more efficient than large teams - <AUTHOR> http://spin.atomicobject.com/2012/01/11/small-teams-are-dramatically-more-efficient-than-large-teams/ <comment><USER2> Also, the larger the team, the bigger the incentive to be a free loader, because individual contributions become harder to assess.

Free loading includes plain slacking, doing things the fun way rather than the good-enough way, playing politics, keeping yourself busy with unnecessary management/coordination, etc.

<comment><USER3> Oh if only it was _just_ free loading at large companies!

The reality is much more complicated. I worked with some great people at a huge company, a lot of them had families, one had a child with very severe asthma, and one time only a helicopter could get to the hospital fast enough.

Others had perfectly healthy children... in college, and a huge mortgage on the family home.

They all engaged in counter productive job preservation strategies. The easiest of which is simply to not aggressively share knowledge. At very large companies you really have to actively push your knowledge onto people or a shared knowledge repo.

The next level is to put a very small bit of effort into actively avoiding the sharing of knowledge. Give less than the best answers you can give when asked for information. You don't have to lie or hide, just don't be quite as eloquent as you could be.

At yet another level are things like writing custom wrappers around things that didn't need wrappers, or that already were wrappers themselves.

People were doing this because if they lost their jobs they would lose their homes, the children's heath insurance which can pay for things like helicopters, etc.

Then there's personality conflicts. At very large companies you work with a lot of people and this increases the probability you'll meet your worst match. That is the personality that just happens to clash with your personality. The most common I've seen is very confrontational vs. very passive. The very passive then often becomes as passive aggressive as the other is openly aggressive. And boy can smart people like hackers be incredibly good at passive aggression. The point here is that either of those people would be good on their own. It's the combination that's toxic for them and anyone caught up with them.

And then there's anything other than stellar management. Organizing any large group of people so that communication is effective is not easy. If that large group is programmers and the information is highly complex... you don't have to be bad to mess it up, just not being a great manager is enough.

And there's even more, I could write a large book about this.

<comment><USER4> _The easiest of which is simply to not aggressively share knowledge._

When you're stack ranked against your peers, I wonder if people ask themselves, "why should I help _you_ , when all I'm doing is making it harder for myself to get a bonus next year"?. I don't indulge in such behaviour, but I've wondered if others have thought and acted upon it.

<comment><USER5> This probably depends on the local culture. When I was at Microsoft, in the groups I worked in, we were explicitly evaluated on criteria such as "makes others better". My reviews actually stated that actively mentoring and going out of my way to be genuinely helpful to others contributed to my score, and I ranked on top almost every year. When I think of other colleagues who I know ranked highly, the people who come to mind are the ones who had both the ability and willingness to help a lot of other people do their jobs better.

<comment><USER3> _This probably depends on the local culture._

Yep, and what I've heard (and only heard, never worked there myself) is that Microsoft has some of the most programmer friendly corporate culture around.

A lot (if not most) big companies are not like that. The reason Joel's writing on company culture is so popular is because such simple things are still quite rare in the world.

<comment><USER6> _Microsoft has some of the most programmer friendly corporate culture around_

I figure this is part of what has kept them around, and is fueling what seems to me to be a come-back in spite of everything going against them.

I don't have a great depth of knowledge on them, but I did interview with their Xbox team, and everyone was just really enthused to be there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So funny this comes up today as I have spent the last 3 days trying to get access to a machine in order to troubleshoot a bug. It's a machine that my team is supposed to control, yet no one wants to grant me access. The network group sent me to the DBAs and the DBAs have sent me back to the network group and back.

Large teams also allow people to hide out which I think kills morale for the rest of the team. I still don't understand how the entire team can realize a person is ineffective yet management somehow misses it and keeps them around. At a minimum if management wants to keep a person around they should explain they are not cutting it and need to improve.

I'm starting a new job soon and cannot wait to get back into a small company.

<comment><USER8> So long as a mediocre worker is contributing something to the bottom line, it often is significantly more cost effective for a large company to keep them than to go through the expenses entailed in the hiring and training processes.

If one's idea of how to deal with personnel issues is to just fire people, one may not have the temperament for management in a large organization.

<comment><USER7> _If one's idea of how to deal with personnel issues is to just fire people,_

I don't really think that's what I said. People who show time and again that they are ineffective at their jobs should not be there. I'm certainly not advocating firing someone for a single mistake or even for many mistakes as long as it's not the same one over and over again. Hell, making mistakes means the person is actually working and trying to get things done. That's not the kind of worker I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the worker who does little and consistently gets in the way of everyone else who is trying to push the boulder forward.

I also blame management because they need to be proactive in explaining to people that they are not cutting it and need to step up or will eventually be let go. I know if I was not meeting the needs of my job, I hope my manager would tell me.

 _it often is significantly more cost effective for a large company to keep them than to go through the expenses entailed in the hiring and training processes._

The cost effective you're thinking about is likely only in the short term. If you keep someone who is mediocre and consistently slows down other teams, and burdens other team members to make up their slack, then long term it is cost effective to let them go and get a quality person.

Rockstars may be 10x more productive individually, but anti-rockstars can be a huge minus on the productivity of the entire team. IMHO, it's much more important to _not_ hire (or keep around) mediocrity than it is to hire rockstarts.

<comment><USER8> With five people, you might be able to be more selective in hiring talent. With 30 people, unless you are Google, you will probably be less selective - half of all teams are below average.

On occasion a come to jesus talk might be appropriate with some types of employees, but once one starts threatening people with the loss of employment, bad things often follow - particularly in the US where such threats often mean loss of access to healthcare for the employee's family.

BTW, when the job is pushing the boulder forward, smart people recognize the sisyphean nature of the task and respond accordingly.

<comment><USER7> _half of all teams are below average_

If you only look at your organization then yes 1/2 of the teams in your org are below average for your _org_ , not necessarily below average for all software developers. I'm not talking about trying to hire only the best of the best like Google. I'm talking about avoiding the worst of the worst.

 _On occasion a come to jesus talk might be appropriate with some types of employees, but once one starts threatening people with the loss of employment, bad things often follow - particularly in the US where such threats often mean loss of access to healthcare for the employee's family._

So are you arguing to just fire them outright? I thought that's what you were against? And since when is a frank review of performance a threat? This must be where 'everyone gets a trophy' day has led us. Unless people are told their true performance and how it stacks up to what's expected they will not be able to improve. It may be that they are simply unaware how bad they are performing, or they simply need to be motivated.

 _BTW, when the job is pushing the boulder forward, smart people recognize the sisyphean nature of the task and respond accordingly._

Huh? Are you saying all work is useless? That's certainly not what I meant by the term. Pushing the boulder forward is what I consider advancing the business in a given direction, one that I certainly hope doesn't have to be backtracked.

In business there are people on the boulder deciding where it should go then there are people on the ground making it happen (I'm including all the support people here). Finally there are people standing on the boulder doing neither, and instead provide dead weight to be carried.

In small companies the people who decide the direction and make it happen are often the same. This is what makes small companies so nimble. Those deciding where to go also know directly of the challenges of getting there. Small companies also rarely have much dead weight just standing around.

In big companies there is often a huge divide between those who decide direction and those who make it happen. Big companies also tend to have lots of people just standing around on the boulder. Now, standing around isn't so bad until these people start getting in the way of the job of advancing the business. When they start actively trying to make things harder for those pushing because they feel some odd sense of job security by doing it that way.

<comment><USER8> > _"If you only look at your organization then yes 1/2 of the teams in your > org are below average for your org, not necessarily below average for all > software developers."_

If you look across the industry odds are most or all of your organization's teams are below average given that Google, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, etc. are able to retain a significant fraction of the top talent and entrepreneurship claims many as well.

In a large organization, smart people realize that those distant people who decide what to do with the boulder are often motivated to move the boulder because they must do something and moving the boulder is something.

Occasionally, moving the boulder improves things, often it doesn't. A good manager musters resources to the former and gives lip service to the latter. A good manager listens to the whining of those compelled to demonstrate needless nimbleness by pointing to the degree to which others are not participating in the fire drill of the quarter, while retaining adequate staff in a pleasant workplace to move the boulder when it actually needs moving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In case anyone is interested in a more in-depth analysis of this phenomenon, there is:

Mythical Man Month[1]

Peopleware[2]

Very highly recommend you read both. The MMM is amazing because it's held true for over 35 years now.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month>

[2][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware:_Productive_Projects_and_Teams))

<comment><USER10> I seem to remember reading somewhere that the "best" team size for maximizing productivity was three or four - enough so that you have some people to bounce ideas of off and have complementary approaches without introducing the communications overhead that you get with larger teams.

Can't remember where I read that - might have been the MMM.

<comment><USER11> Would be interested in where you read that if you find it again - below is a link to an article that says the optimal team size is 5 to 8 based on a Dunbar analysis.

3 in unstable as too often 1 person feels left out, 4 is an even number so risk of split vote.

<http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html>

<comment><USER10> I read that a long long time ago - but I'll have a think and see if I can recall where it was.

I'd agree that a larger team effectively mitigates risks around individuals not fitting in or decision-making being stymied, but in my own personal experience I've definitely preferred, due to a perception of maximising by own personal productivity, that 3 or 4 was best. That is, of course, completely subjective!

<comment><USER10> I can't find where I originally read that (although I believe the original research was by IBM).

However, here is a more recent article that suggests that "best" team size is 5 plus or minus 2 - which fits into my preferred range:

[http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1674234&...](http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1674234&seqNum=7)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not panning this, but isn't this Mythical Man-Month's observation? That the communication overhead increase in adding team members grows -exponentially- quadratically with the number of developers?

(This does match my experience. 40+ teams simply accomplishing less and less than a very small, co-located or constantly in contact team).

</comment><comment><USER8> The author's measure of efficiency, cost per line of code, is the first clue that his claims require further research. From a business standpoint, the relevant metric would be the economic value of the code produced and assuming rational actors (as the author's argument must) then the value of the code produced by each team must on average be roughly proportional to its size - else, the allocation of resources be irrational.

Computational efficiency also tends to correlate with cost per line of code in a the man month model the author requires wherein all programmers are of the interchangeable 10k a month type.

Finally, large teams are likely to operate in environments where large teams are required due to bureaucratic overburden, the very environments where $1.8 million dollar coding expenses are both justified and common.

<comment><USER13> _assuming rational actors_

With great respect, I find this approach flawed in analyzing the behaviour of large companies. Assuming rational actors, the thinking goes, every company is providing value and acting efficiently.

For starters, actors may be "rational," but they suffer from information inefficiencies, so they are doing the best they can with what they know. Sometimes, they proceed "rationally" from flawed assumptions.

For example, they may believe that Waterfall is how to get a project done. Often this is not correct, so the "rational actors" produce waste.

Another problem is that rational actors in the small don't necessarily produce rational behaviour in the large. Rationally, it is often in an actor's best interests to do something that harms a team in exchange for providing a personal benefit.

This is how turf wars and silos competing with each other arise even with "rational" actors.

So in summary, I suggets it's very dangerous to advance an argument that since the actor are rational, the results must somehow lack waste.

I would argue the opposite: That the larger the team, the more likely that rational actors will face situations where being rational means producing waste.

<comment><USER8> I agree that assuming rational actors in regards to economics is utterly flawed.

However, economic rationality is one premise of the author's argument. Otherwise, there is no reason to care about efficiency.

Having worked in organizations both large and small, turf wars and petty behavior is hardly confined to large organizations and on the level of the production worker it is my experience that it creates far more drag in small organizations than large ones - in general, thirty person teams more easily replace a resigning worker than five person teams.

The term "waste" is as suspect as "dollars per line of code." A team of thirty is more likely to be dealing not only with an overburden of bureaucracy, but with an additional constraints such as systematic compatibility and legacy code bases - e.g. IE6 - while small teams of $10k per month programmers are probably more likely to produce code worthy of The Daily WTF e.g.

      "True" = true
      "true" = true
      "TRUE" = true
      "tRue" = true
      "TRue" = true
      "TrUe" = true
      ...[etc]

<comment><USER14> I would clame that per line of code (assuming the same language) a small team producess much more value. Communication is fast and common problems are identified fast. In a large team it can happen easly that two people need to parse XML and they take a diffrent parser (simple example), stuff like this will be a source of trouble in the project going forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had the fortune of spending a year studying in another country. I study aerospace engineering, and so there's a lot of teamwork. Last year (in Canada) we worked on a project with 20+ undergrads. We had 3 hours of meetings a week, made up of presentations, discussion etc. This year (in the UK) I'm working in a team of four people. I've achieved significantly more this year than I did last year.

Perhaps the biggest reason is that when you have a team of four, every hour you spend meeting involves approximately 15 minutes talking about the problems you're having, and discussing the solutions to your problems. In the team of 20, I'd go to a meeting, spend three hours there and 2 of them would be taken up by a particular aspect of the project. I wasn't working on it, and how they implemented that problem had absolutely no bearing on my work.

Meetings, or at least irrelevant unproductive meetings, are a huge time sink. At least half of the time spent in those meetings could have certainly been spent doing other, productive, tasks.

<comment><USER16> Less than 10% of your time being spent in meetings doesn't sound like it should slow you down that much.

<comment><USER15> When you're doing 4 other courses, you don't generally have more than 30 hours a week to spend on a project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Too many cooks spoil the broth."

It's getting tiresome going over the same point that we've known for decades, if not centuries.

Or should I say, it's getting tiresome having to explain and/or defend a position that's so obviously correct, you'd have to close your eyes, put your fingers in your ears and go "whaaa whaaaa whaaa" till you're blue in the face not to see it.

<comment><USER18> "Many hands make light work"

<comment><USER17> "light", but not "good".

<comment><USER19> I am not sure you should take proverbs so literally (or take it as canon for that matter).

By the original proverb fewer cooks only make the broth not-spoiled, not necessarily good either :P

<comment><USER17> I up-voted for the lolz. But deep down I hate you _and_ your reductive reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Survivorship bias and small-population variance can affect this result.

Small populations are more variant. Most of the best schools are small. But most of the worst schools are small too. Large schools tend to converge on a median. The most dramatic rates of cancer _and_ absence of cancer are found in rural areas because they have small populations. Cities converge on a median. And so on.

We don't hear about the small, unsuccessful businesses. They don't get on panels because they no longer exist. So the small firms that did well are over-represented.

That said, that smaller projects perform better is a consistent finding in classical software engineering research.

</comment><comment><USER21> A mentor of mine is apt to say that most large companies, those that need large teams, think that you can have a baby in one month if you have 9 women. I find this to be more true as I continue in the field.

The small team works as long as there is good group cohesion. Unfortunately, if there is a morale issue with one person, it can quickly spread to the remaining 3 or 4 people on the team. Such an effect is at least slower in larger groups. It might not occur at all if the organization is such that there are silos for protection.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting since I just had this exact conversation with a fellow developer yesterday. Last year he moved from a very small shop into a large corporate environment (largely due to a better pay-cheque and a growing family) but he was lamenting to me about how slow things move. He said he spends 8-10 hours a week in meetings or preparing for them. The project they are working on his old team could have knocked out in a month or two, yet 6 months in it's still crawling and falling behind schedule. Nice validation for our conversation to see that almost every item we discussed is in this article.

</comment><comment><USER23> One big difference I have noticed is how much more work seems to _matter_ at a small company. When I've worked for a small company it has always been that the company sells X or desperately needs X, so they hire me to write X.

At larger companies the goals have been more abstract. Work might be to satisfy an ideal created by management ("testing is good! 30% more testing!") which may or may not actually be useful. In the worst case it's entirely possible to do work that nobody actually cares about, which I find demoralizing. I don't think that happens as much at small companies because I don't think they can afford it. Big companies with old cash cow products and lots of inertia can.

</comment><comment><USER24> I initially opened this article thinking it wouldn't have much meat, but the author has provided some interesting statistics with this article.

Whilst I think there is more than just increased communication overhead involved, I know in my gut that I much prefer working with a team of 3-5 than a team of 20. Things just happen so much quicker!

</comment><comment><USER25> Having worked in both of these situations, I completely agree with this post. Even with the adoption of "Corporate Agile", our large teams were not able to get near the efficiency of a smaller 4-6 man team.

I think another point to look at would be the level of scrutiny that goes into hiring another member of a dev team of 5-20. A 100 dev team is usually hiring by resume via HR with less focus on culture fit and in-depth technical knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is exactly what The Mythical Man Month laid out 35 years ago. I doubt anything will come along that could ever really compensate for the network effect of large teams; nothing new under the sun...

<comment><USER27> Open source (decentralised Linux style) seems to have compensated for the network effect of large teams. Hence why Linux is 3.0 and HURD still hasn't shipped ;)

 _points at CatB_ <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/>

I think part of the poor performance of large teams is because as soon as the business is big enough to have large teams, it's big enough that it starts having middle managers and PHBs. Large teams are only bad because of the conventional commercial software development practices (waterfall, anyone?)

<comment><USER14> With a big team managers enforce something like waterfall and that why it dosn't work. Nice.

Large teams should be more decentralised like Linux, Order emerges out of chaos adding manager that enforce correct use of waterfall want be good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've seen discussion of this study before. While it's not surprising that the overheads with a larger team are somewhat greater, the discrepancy here is vast.

However, then you notice that the size of project being discussed here is only _100,000 equivalent source lines of code_. Assuming that an "equivalent source line of code" is something like a real source line of code, if you're building projects on that scale with teams containing an average of 32 people then I'd say you're doing it wrong. Such projects are almost certainly simple enough for a single small team to complete inside a year, as indeed the study also found, and an insane proportion of the time spent by the members of your larger team is going to go on management, communication and integration overheads.

If you started looking at projects large enough that a single small team could not complete them within a useful timescale, perhaps an order of magnitude bigger or more, and you still found that teams averaging 32 members took almost as long to complete the work as teams averaging 4 members, that would be interesting. But that's not what this study seems to have considered.

<comment><USER29> If you start looking at projects significantly larger than that I'd argue that you should be leveraging service-oriented architecture and breaking the complexity up into manageable chunks that can be completed by smaller teams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Good to see an article with some justifications and data instead of random assertions. Usually articles like this are filled with platitudes in lieu of real research, and the whole 'preaching to the choir' thing can get tiresome even if you're part of the choir.

Though I'm not sure the QSM article is strong proof of much anything, really. They don't seem to test for e.g. language or problem domain, and while SLOC has a relationship to the defect rate I'm not entirely sure I agree it's a good comparison metric, nor does it say anything about the success rate of the projects.

That said, one obvious reason for having a 30 man team to develop something is because it's composed of a multitude of disciplines. A software/hardware project might require people with deep skills in digital electronics, analog electronics, software development not to mention domain experts for what they're interfacing. Assuming the thing has an interface you might want a UI guy, then there's the supply chain and manufacturing to take in to account.

It's not hard to see that it could swell to thirty people quite quickly.

</comment><comment><USER31> I worked as part of a three person tech team. The three of us supported offices in several different counties doing everything from running cables to some programming. The chances to change things up every now and then and be part of such a tight team made it easily my favorite job.

</comment><comment><USER32> " large teams took 8.92 months, and the small teams took 9.12 months. In other words, the large teams just barely (by a week or so) beat the small teams in finishing the project! Given that the large teams averaged 32 people and the small teams averaged 4 people, the cost of completing the project a week sooner with the large team is extraordinary: at $10,000 per person-month (fully loaded employee cost), the large teams would have spent $1.8M while the small teams only spent $245k. "

9 x 32 x $10k != $1.8m, = ~$2.9m; 9 x 4 x $10k != $245k, = ~$360k.

<comment><USER33> Did you read the entire article? It says that the numbers were made with the actual number of man-months worked, but not everyone was on the project the entire time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It would be interesting to see some other metrics with regard to this data.

Cost and schedule are the first things that managers look at, but as a client I would also be looking at stuff like SQA, code quality, completeness of my specification. There's also the 'bus factor' (if one of these guys gets hit by a bus, is there someone else who can work on and understand my code?) What additional documentation am I getting with the code? How is the customer service, is there someone there who I can call and talk to?

We also don't know how this 32 person team was comprised. If it was 4 programmers being supported by 28 other people who worked on the project off and on (management, sqa, marketing, documentation, requirements) these results are not surprising.

As a programmer I want to know things like: how many 16 hour days did the devs work, how maintainable is the code, did the programmer salaries increase commensurate with the additional effort that they seem to have put in? Am I confident in the reliability of this code, or has it been simply thrown over the wall with the promise of support.

I know we all want evidence for 'just Me, Steve and our Emacs buffers, is most efficient. Going it alone like Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a buddy comedy about programmers.' But studies in the social sciences like this one are incredibly difficult to get right and should be taken with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER35> In our industry million or sometimes even billion dollar projects eventually get cancelled for cost overruns while getting nowhere and people worry about soneone getting hit by a bus. The probability of staff suddenly dying is vastly over rated in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Devil's advocate:

If small teams _always_ and _unconditionally_ are so much more efficient, why do we still have the likes of, say, IBM, Hyundai, Microsoft, or ant colonies?

I think that it partly is because large teams do a lot of things that small teams deem unnecessary, such as documenting design choices, pre-estimating demand/bandwidth requirements etc, making sure one complies with legislation, etc. Not all of that is necessarily waste.

Another large part of the difference, I think, is due to the difference between programming and engineering. Many small teams, especially at smaller companies, program, while almost all larger teams engineer. Programming produces way more functionality per man month than engineering does (for an example, read GNU's well-engineered hello world source code).

So, I think the main rule should be "only start engineering if you have to". Large team size is, for a large part, just a side effect of the decision to engineer.

<comment><USER37> Lots of reasons. Small efficient companies can be much more easily killed by variance / randomness than huge bloated monsters. Successful small companies tend to become large companies, laying the seeds of doom. Successful small companies may just be bought out by the large companies - you can't buy a large company until you _are_ a large company, but the same is not true of small companies. And so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "Small, highly focussed, dedicated and independent team are more efficient than large, mis-managed, teams."

</comment><comment><USER39> The whole article hinges on the lines of code metric being an accurate metric for how productive a team is. But how many programmers would be happy if their bosses paid them per line of code?

I would be inclined to agree with the premise of the article, but the evidence given is flawed at best.

<comment><USER40> No kidding. Sure feels like bending the statistic to fit your argument. I will concede that larger teams are less cost effective and the cost goes up exponentially compared to productivity as the team gets larger (per Steve McConnell: "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art"). BTW the "Software Estimation" book is really awesome and in my opinion a must read for anyone in a tech company with a leadership role. It's true smaller teams are more efficient. But I feel like it trivializes the complexity, comparison, especially when a lot of good detailed works on the subject already exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Interesting article, but coming from a personal experience of having worked for a large CPG corporation, it's shown me that once a company is scaled to a certain size, employing small working groups outside the usual corporate hierarchy becomes an utter nightmare. Internally, the small working groups I've encountered start weighing the making of small and big decisions equally since they began to believe that any decision they made carried a reputational risk for them within the co context, and in the end any efficiency we had hoped to be gained, was ultimately lost.

</comment><comment><USER42> Another contributing factor for the efficiency of smaller teams is that effective role assignment is much easier with small teams than large teams, unless the project is naturally highly modular.

</comment><comment><USER43> Larger companies have other groups you have to work with, processes that must be followed, edge cases that need to be solved _before_ release, massive amounts of coordination.

Cost of change becomes excruciating when dealing with large established systems. New systems must be evaluated, understood, the under-average performers trained on it, functionality exported correctly, etc.

Simply put, there's more to do to release "big-co" number of features, as well as more people to talk to about releasing them.

</comment><comment><USER44> corollary: large teams have access to markets that small teams don't.

things are the way they are for a reason.</comment>


iOS 8.1 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/new-things-ios-8-1/

<comment><USER2> Ah the magic of apple... Just bend the universe to your will...

I promise it will take years before Android apps are all made 64 bit.</comment>


Ex-Googler Invents A Better Way To Buy Bras - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3028267/ex-googler-invents-a-better-way-to-buy-bras?utm_source=facebook

<comment><USER2> nice features would be social sharing and cloud syncing.</comment>


Ask HN: Conversation Sparkler App - <AUTHOR> There are plenty of times when you want to talk to someone sitting next to you when traveling, someone you just met or a some random stranger but you can't figure out how to get over small talk and have a productive discussion.
How about an app where you can quickly specify basic details about person (gender, age etc) and your purpose of communication (learn from them, have fun, become friends etc) and then app can become guiding start by giving you questions to ask.
You can upvote / downvote questions based on situation and app can learn from that and get better and provide improved suggestions overtime.
Do you ever feel yourself in similar situation? If there was such an app, would you use it?
Thank you for your time. <comment><USER2> I can't remember where I read it, but this week I read an interesting profile of a FB Messenger bot that would act like a 'wingman' on dates. You'd keep giving it info about things your date had mentioned and it'd give you news or trivia related to those things to help you out.

Your idea sounds a bit more fleshed out and not specifically for dating, so it seems worth experimenting worth for sure if people enjoyed a similar thing for dating.

<comment><USER3>
      >> give you news or trivia related to those things to help you out.

Should the app be named CliffClavin?</comment></comment>


Show HN: StoryGrill – Your personalized newspaper - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone, we are a startup with a new concept for delivering the best news to you. The site is called StoryGrill, and it keeps you updated with the most recent news from your favorite newspapers.
You need to choose your favorite newspapers/magazine/sites, and then relax: the site will update in real-time whenever there are updated news from your favourite newspapers.
We have many ideas how to improve this(personalization, notification, etc..) but we prefer to stay lean and get feedback from actual users. We would love to hear what you think about that. Be brutally honest, we can handle it ;)
Our MVP can be found at http://www.storygrill.com
We are also inviting users to try our mobile version of the app. If you like to try it, get an invitation here: bit.ly/1LcGf3c
Looking forward to hear all your feedback!
The StoryGrill Team <comment><USER2> Clickable - [http://www.storygrill.com/](http://www.storygrill.com/)

For your next Show HN, remember to link directly to your website. You can then enter the text as a new comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I will remember it!

Clickable for the mobile app: [https://bit.ly/1LcGf3c](https://bit.ly/1LcGf3c)</comment></comment>


Ubuntu Touch Safety Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-blog-1/post/ubuntu-touch-safety-architecture-208 <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, they confuse security and safety. What should "safety of personal information" even mean?

Remember: Security means that the system is not harmed by its environment. Safety means that the system does not harm its environment.

<comment><USER3> I suppose it means the system keeps the PI safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Site is down. Archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190314154630/https://ubports.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190314154630/https://ubports.com/blog/ubports- blog-1/post/ubuntu-touch-safety-architecture-208)

<comment><USER5> It isn't down for me, it's just loading more slowly than usual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought Ubuntu Touch like Sailfish is dead. What is the state of non- iOS/Android OS in 2019?

<comment><USER7> Ubuntu Touch is entirely a community effort at this point, I believe. Sailfish still has a company behind it, they're trying to license the OS to governments and manufacturers that don't want to rely on the US for their OSs ([https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/the-other-smartphone- busin...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/09/the-other-smartphone-business/))

Besides those there is Purism's PureOS for the librem5 which you can find a lit of past HN discussion on in the search

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://archive.is/Fmw2O](http://archive.is/Fmw2O)</comment>


Ask HN: In what areas is Go better than Python? - <AUTHOR> I know Python quite well and I plan to learn Go. But before that, I want to know whether is it worth or not. I believe everything that Go does can be done in Python. Are there any areas where Go is significantly better ? Please enlighten me. <comment><USER2> I don't think looking for _better_ is the right way to go about this. There are many things that are different in Go which you might find a nice fit for a specific use case. Also, nothing wrong with learning another language to increase the number of tools in your toolbox.

I'll list a few use-cases where I found Go to be a great fit for me.

Building command line tools:

Both Go and Python are great for building command line tools. One place where Go is different is that it's super easy to produce statically linked, self- contained, binaries. The result is less dependancies to manage at install time. Many users find tools distributed in a self-contained binary easier to get started with -- no need to have the right runtime (python 2.x) installed.

Example: [https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/confd)

Building web services:

I'm always building small services to solve a problem and this is one area where Go really shines for me. Out of the box Go ships with a "high performance" web server. Just import the "net/http" package and off you go. While the built-in web server is not a full replacement for something like Nginx (rate limiting, rewrite rules, etc), it does allow you to go really far without the need of an external web server for performance.

Example: [https://github.com/kelseyhightower/coreos-ipxe- server](https://github.com/kelseyhightower/coreos-ipxe-server)

There are other benefits to Go like performance gains if you are willing to trade in the flexibility you get from a dynamic language like Python and migrate to a strongly typed language that must be compiled before running your code. While Go is strongly typed it does not get in the way of getting things done. The Go compiler is fast and stays out of the way.

I'm not sure what your background is, but I did a talk a few years ago at GopherCon 2014, "Go for Sysadmins" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRbHhHFZh8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRbHhHFZh8)), that provides a nice introduction into why I like Go and some live demos to drive key points home. Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your input. Two points that really shines out for me are the "compiled binary" and the "performance" factor. I will give Go a go.</comment></comment>


Show HN: GitBack – Use Git as a Back End - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bobby-brennan/gitback <comment><USER2> I love experiments like these, that push the limits of what I thought possible with existing technologies. Using Git to version-control the database makes sense, and although the implementation might not be practical/scalable in its current form, it points to an interesting direction.</comment>


How You Type Your Password Could Be Its Own Security Measure - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/your-password-might-not-just-be-your-password-how-you-type-it-180952387/

<comment><USER2> It's more than a little amazing how so many little things can uniquely identify an individual. Typing behavior, the way a person walks, small aspects of body language -- all of which our brains can analyze in a fraction of a second.</comment>


A robot with human-like grace and precision - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-robot-with-human-like-grace-and-precision <comment><USER2> Trevor used pneumatics at Anybots ~10 years ago:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gJA230jprc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gJA230jprc)</comment>


The Scopes Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://scopes.rocks <comment><USER2> Tutorial and examples: [http://scopes.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorial.html](http://scopes.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorial.html)

<comment><USER3> The "unconst" business is... original, but it seems backwards to me. If I understand correctly, applying the Fibonacci function to a constant will compile a new version of the function, with the loop fully unrolled. And to avoid this, you have to mark some variable that is _not_ the function argument but _is_ initialized to a constant as "unconst". That just seems like a bizzarre source of confusion.

I'm all for aggressive user-controlled loop unrolling and partial evaluation, but it should be user- _controlled_ , not "I'll just always do it behind your back and sometimes surprise you with an obscure error message that requires a non-obvious fix _and_ will make your function non-optimizable even in cases where you _would_ want to request it".

Also, yay for named loops, but the syntax is weird. To me,

        let foo ... = ...
        if (bar)
            ...

Doesn't look like one loop but two unrelated statements. I understand that it's the underlying label/goto abstraction leaking through, but that looks like a backwards jump (haha) in time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Regarding "unconst", we need to have a discussion. There are ways to make it implicit, namely by tying the return continuation of `if` to the constness of the conditional, but then one loses the ability to specialize the return continuation for constant results.

Named `let` is the most primitive form of loop, suitable for use in runtime and compile time (constexpr-style) context. There are more convenient, less versatile and compiler-friendly versions like `for ... in` and `while`. It is possible to design your own loop structures, and even build an auto-unconsting `if`, so I was hoping that the community would innovate here within the language.

Partial evaluation is user-controlled. The rules are deterministic: the system guarantees that constant expressions are always folded. The error message would not exist if we could solve the halting problem. There is no way to tell in every instance if a loop or recursion ever terminates, so I went for the simplest rule, which is that if a label is reentered the 32th time, we abort compilation. It's a cautious limit because constant folding is interpretation (slow), and I don't think that programmers want big loops to unroll. This can and should be discussed. I certainly don't have all the answers.

> I understand that it's the underlying label/goto abstraction leaking through

Scopes' abstractions aren't leaking, they are offering their innards to you. You can generate and inspect IL from within the language. Everything has been made so that you can build your own abstractions on top of them, which is only possible when the internals aren't hidden. The philosophy is that a compiler is a servant, not a framework.

<comment><USER3> > I don't think that programmers want big loops to unroll.

Right, well, it depends. That's why I think unconst should be the default and unrolling should be requested explicitly by using something like

        let fib_2000 = specialize (fib 2000)

where specialize is a language built-in that triggers the unrolling. And then, if the user really does want you to specialize fib 2147483647, it would honor that too, without your arbitrary unrolling cutoff. And if it takes too long, well, the user wanted it that way. _That_ is user control. Arbitrary hidden cutoffs are not.

<comment><AUTHOR> unconst can't be the default because there is no way to re-const a value once it's been turned into an unknown. The most "automagic" behavior is to tie branch conditionals to their exit values (there's a helper function called tie-const that does this for the manual case). If the conditional is unknown at compile time, then the continuations that exit the branch will mark their arguments as unknown. That also stops loops from unrolling (they'd typically unroll for i=0, but then stop). But, as I mentioned before, that completely kills constant folding at the exit points, something that is at times desirable.

Another reason loops are unrolling by default is that there are many situations where constexprs have to completely fold at compile time, and you need a guarantee that they do. A common example is handling keyed varargs. You need to be able to iterate through the keys and build local variables from that without any code being generated.

If a compile time unroll takes forever, there's practically no clean way to debug that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the intro: [http://scopes.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about.html](http://scopes.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about.html)

> the compiler is designed to remain on-line at runtime so that functions can > be recompiled when the need arises, and generated machine code can adapt to > the instruction set present on the target machine. This also diminishes the > need for a build system

Diminishing the need for a build system is nice! Any other language with such philosophy in mind?

<comment><USER5> > The Scopes compiler fundamentally differs from C++ and other traditional AOT > (ahead of time) compilers, in that the compiler is designed to remain on- > line at runtime so that functions can be recompiled when the need arises, > and generated machine code can adapt to the instruction set present on the > target machine. This also diminishes the need for a build system. Still, > Scopes is not a JIT compiler. Compilation is always explicitly initiated by > the user.

Many Lisp systems also have their native code compiler on-line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The copy says that it has the "expressivity of Scheme," but the documentation has no mention of macros :(

<comment><USER7> They do seem to exist, based on the notes in the release history. I'll link when I'm off my phone, forgive me.

<comment><USER7> Long story short I found a commit [1] which mentioned macros. Looking at the diff suggests macros are defined using "syntax-extend" so I looked for that syntax in the current version of the code. Lo and behold [2]

[1] [https://bitbucket.org/duangle/scopes/commits/ca7126d88bbd](https://bitbucket.org/duangle/scopes/commits/ca7126d88bbd) [2] [https://bitbucket.org/duangle/scopes/src/1bf171c25f4047bc049...](https://bitbucket.org/duangle/scopes/src/1bf171c25f4047bc0492f02041d6aec267cbcfe9/lib/scopes/core.sc?at=default&fileviewer=file- view-default#core.sc-224)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey paniq, based on your username I'm guessing that you are the same paniq mentioned on the duangle website and thus the creator of this intriguing little language! Scopes has certainly caught my interest in the short time I've looked at it this evening, but the documentation seems a bit sparse at the moment. I do have your screencasts queued up on YouTube and the repository cloned and ready to build, but if you have any thoughts you want to share about how you've used the language, what it's good for, the direction you want to take it, if you want community contributions I would love to hear them!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, glad to hear you like it. I'm using Scopes to build a game engine called Tukan, which is for an ambitious game called Nowhere that is in development hell for four years. :-) I don't really know what I want from the community to be honest. I guess I just want to collect first impressions, see what people like, what they struggle with, what things they need and what ideas they come up with.

I do think that Scopes is uniquely suited for monolithic multimedia applications like games and media authoring and that would be the direction I'd like to see it go. But there's technically no reason why it couldn't go another way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there support for effects or is there something like a concurrency monad ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know what those are, but Scopes is designed to make it easy for users to implement their own meta-programming abstractions. It might be possible to build such mechanisms from within the language. I certainly want to hear of the instances where it is not.

<comment><USER8> [https://github.com/yallop/effects- bibliography](https://github.com/yallop/effects-bibliography)

Anyway, the type of the print "hello world" expression would explain a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So this is a Scheme with pythonic syntax?

<comment><USER10> It doesn't seem to be very close to scheme. It's statically typed, AOT compiled, not garbage collected, and has C-ish semantics.

<comment><USER11> It has a REPL, supports S-expressions as a special case of the syntax, has garbage collection[1] and doesn't appear to have more C-ish semantics than Scheme already has.

[1] [https://github.com/duangle/scopes/commit/13255e0ae7ab76e070c...](https://github.com/duangle/scopes/commit/13255e0ae7ab76e070cc05f3dadd5c7a2676d341)

<comment><USER3> That code does indeed automatically delete some entries from some collection, and it does use garbage collection terminology, but it doesn't appear to be full garbage collection for the whole language. Hard to tell in the complete absence of comments and a commit message.

But [http://scopes.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about.html](http://scopes.readthedocs.io/en/latest/about.html) says "The memory model is compatible to C/C++ and utilizes simple unmanaged stack and heap memory." And I do recall paniq tweeting about wanting to implement a Rust-like system for memory management, because how hard can it be? (Fortunately, it doesn't look like he ever tried it.)

In addition, [https://bitbucket.org/duangle/scopes/wiki/Home](https://bitbucket.org/duangle/scopes/wiki/Home) contrasts "expressivity of Scheme" and "the performance and runtime model of C" as if the developer did think of these as opposites.

<comment><AUTHOR> > That code does indeed automatically delete some entries from some > collection, and it does use garbage collection terminology, but it doesn't > appear to be full garbage collection for the whole language. Hard to tell in > the complete absence of comments and a commit message.

It's very old code from two years ago, when the language was still being prototyped. I did have a form of GC for a while that I threw away again because I couldn't make it work right.

I recommend not taking any commits before the first tagged release seriously.

> Fortunately, it doesn't look like he ever tried it.

I tried, but I'm completely paralyzed here. As long as I can't see a straightforward way to integrate support into the typechecker, I won't write a single line.

Also, why "fortunately"?

> as if the developer did think of these as opposites

Not opposites, just not aligned with each other. The demands of Scheme's runtime model inherently conflict with realtime performance. There's nothing wrong with that, but that sets it apart from C.

With this sentence, I hoped to address Scheme users who wish they could generate faster, tightly-constrained assembly while not having to give up on hygienic macros and nested evaluation contexts. No insult was intended.

<comment><USER3> > Also, why "fortunately"?

Because I think it's a lot harder (both for you and for your users) than you thought at the time, and I hoped you wouldn't waste your time (and your users' time) on it. Personally, I think GC is the way to go to keep your (programmers') sanity. If you worry about GC pauses in time-critical sections, provide for a way to turn off the GC temporarily for such sections.

You might want to mark such non-GC sections/functions specifically and enforce statically that no dynamic allocation may be triggered from within them. Kind of like a monad. No allocations, no GCs, no headaches. Simpler and more flexible than the Rust model.

> No insult was intended.

I didn't read that as such!

<comment><AUTHOR> > Because I think it's a lot harder (both for you and for your users) than you > thought at the time, and I hoped you wouldn't waste your time (and your > users' time) on it.

I believe it is possible to offer such a feature without declarative baggage. If it's not, then I don't want it ;-)

> Personally, I think GC is the way to go to keep your (programmers') sanity. > If you worry about GC pauses in time-critical sections, provide for a way to > turn off the GC temporarily for such sections.

It might be even possible to leverage Scopes' support for compile-time introspection to write contextual GC's from within the language. I haven't explored that yet. In games development we usually prefer to allocate in frames, stages or on custom stacks, so that's also a way to do it.

Installing a GC at the lowest level is a brutal choice that precludes many other possible ways this could go, so I'm cautious.

<comment><USER10> FWIW, I'm in the camp of people who find this to be extremely interesting, but only given that there's no GC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> interesting: supports a LLVM as well as a SPIR-V backend

</comment><comment><USER13> "Snopes". Read this as "Snopes."

<comment><USER9> dyslexia won't give you any scopes!</comment></comment>


Show HN: LiveRover, Visual Event Discovery (Weekend Project) - <AUTHOR> http://liverover.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this about a week ago while experimenting with the new SeatGeek Dev Platform, which we announced today. Would love any thoughts/feedback.

Github repo is here: <https://github.com/jack7890/LiveRover>

<comment><USER2> nice!

would be nice to jump to location (auto-geo-ip @ start / enter zip code?) & close popup details (they start covering each other up)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, good call, I need to add that. I'm not a big fan of HTML5 geolocation b/c it's so easy to miss, so I'll either do it via IP or add a zip code box.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> pretty awesome in such a short time. great job! I would like to have two controls at the top though: location and calendar. I would rather have a calendar control than a text input, but I do like having the next and previous buttons. It would also be nice to filter based on event type too. Again, nice job!

</comment><comment><USER4> The tooltips need to close when you click another one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I was surprised that was the Google Maps JS default behavior. I'll add that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is data recovery so expensive? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
My laptop recently suffered a hard drive failure. The boot-time diagnostics said "Short self test unsuccessful". It started as a file transfer slowing to 0 mb/s, then explorer.exe wouldn't display anything when I attempted to open "My Computer", then it wouldn't restart then it wouldn't boot.
The local "Geek Squad" said recovery would likely be between $1k-$10k, depending on the severity of the failure. Other 'data recovery' services online quote similar amounts- always in the thousands of dollars.
I understand it could require swapping the platters into a working drive, but I don't imagine that being such a costly procedure. Quite possibly I'm wrong on this assumption.
I can't help but wonder if these businesses are capitalizing on the hostage-like nature of data recovery & are price-gouging based on that.
Does anyone here have experience with this sort of thing & could enlighten me on it?
Thanks,
-c <comment><USER2> I had a disk that failed that had personal pictures that were valuable enough to spend the required 350$ to recover the disk.

While I was looking for someone to do the job, I have had the chance to talk with people that do this and ask them about the pricetag.

There are 2 kinds of people that recover data from hard drives:

\- Companies that build and maintain a "white-room" or clean-room that respects a certain ISO standard about the size of the dust so that it won't harm the hardware. They employ highly qualified technicians, and most of their work is for other businesses not individuals. Their prices are high because the cost to maintain all that is high.

The second category are freelancers (like the guy I ended-up using), they only have store fronts, they take disks from clients and when they have enough disks, they rent a "white-room" by the hour from one of the companies I talked about before. Their prices are a bit lower than the first ones, but they're still high because renting the white-room still costs a bit of money.

</comment><comment><USER3> What really gets me is how often a clean room is not required and yet they still recommend & charge clean room prices.

IE: The MacBook Pro/Seagate failures were all(predominately) controller failures, yet the "geniuses" parroted clean room, clean room, clean room for every instance I am familiar with(admittedly, a small sample size). Slap a new external controller on & cha-ching!

</comment><comment><USER4> > I understand it could require swapping the platters into a working drive, > but I don't imagine that being such a costly procedure.

It may need to be performed in a clean room, which is likely expensive to set up and maintain. Perhaps it's the required equipment that drives up the cost?

I've wondered if data recovery shops distribute the cost of the intensive recoveries (e.g. swapping plates) across the smaller gigs (corrupt file systems and other stuff).

</comment><comment><USER5> _I can 't help but wonder if these businesses are capitalizing on the hostage- like nature of data recovery & are price-gouging based on that._

You answered your own question. They don't charge based on the labor involved, they charge based on the value of the data to you. See also emergency plumbing service.

</comment><comment><USER6> Consider supply and demand as well. It's not every day you need a data recovery service.</comment>


Kaa: An open-source platform for the IoT - <AUTHOR> http://www.kaaproject.org/

<comment><USER2> Url changed from [http://iotevent.eu/platform/kaa-open-source-platform- interne...](http://iotevent.eu/platform/kaa-open-source-platform-internet- everything/), which points to this.</comment>


Tesla Roadster is going to be able to hover over the ground, says Elon Musk - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2019/01/09/tesla-roadster-hover-off-the-ground-elon-musk/ <comment><USER2> With compressed air? No. I don't care how "not joking" he is, the power density is just not enough to lift a car for more than a few seconds even if the entire car were filled with tanks. It's just common sense. Have you _ever_ seen compressed air VTOL on _anything_?

He also claims it will allow the car to accelerate "at the limit of human endurance" which would imply thrust vectoring also.

Perhaps he's testing the limits of human credibility...

<comment><USER3> Even if it would work... what would hovering even do that is beneficial? Without tires touching the pavement, you won't turn or stop well at all. You will bottom out over every speed bump and driveway and parking lot entrance, unless you're hovering like a foot off the ground. The efficiency gains from the decreased rolling resistance will certainly not overcome the juice that these things will suck down...

<comment><USER2> Parallel parking?

(There are no "efficiency gains from decreased rolling resistance" if the tires aren't even touching the ground. Your wheels will spin without moving the car, an efficiency of 0%)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think we need to have a conversation about Elon Musk and gas-lighting.

I think we can all agree that some people are demonstrably taking what Musk has said to be a genuine statement about a feature in a new product. You can observe this from the people discussing in detail how it will work. Now, I'm not going to argue about that. Let's assume it turns out that this feature is not in the next Roadster. Can someone convince me that this isn't market manipulation? He's lying about features in his future products in a way that will clearly effect the market if they were true. And when it turns out to be untrue he'll throw his hands up and say it was a joke - despite literally saying he's not joking and going into details of the implementation.

Tell me, how does this differ from when Elon Musk called someone a pedofile, repeatedly, then claimed that his accusations must be true because the guy didn't sue him, and then filed court documents claiming that it was clearly all a joke to defend himself from libel claims.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable handing ANY money or control to this person? I personally feel like Elon Musk seems to have started to cross a line into actively attacking some of the fundamental norms in our society in some sort of effort to avoid ever having to have any responsibility. This is genuinely starting to feel dangerous to me, maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but we've let this stuff slide in the past and it has been catastrophic.

</comment><comment><USER5> I saw this tweet and immediately became concerned that the SEC would consider this a problem with disclosure, as there's a world in which people take this seriously (given his history with successful rockets) and thus would take action financially because of it.

In my mind it was a silly offhand joke - aka there is no world in which he's not joking about this. HOWEVER there may exist people who took it seriously and then went out and bought TSLA.

<comment><USER6> I think it's safe to announce features for your product

<comment><USER5> It is if they are reasonable and not total fabrications that are deceptive. That's not to say that musk was being deceptive, I don't think he was.

I think even this thread shows that people take Musk's jokes or snide comments as truth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's the tweet that the article makes reference to:

> SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket > thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically > improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. _Maybe_ they will even > allow a Tesla to fly...

[Emphasis mine.]

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289?s=12](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289?s=12)

</comment><comment> King-Aaron Ok, some thoughts of mine:

1\. Reactive thrusters for aiding turning - Bosch is playing with this concept already for motorcycles, and is an interesting idea. Effectively firing a thruster against the direction of turning. Would be interesting to see implemented, RIP to whoever was riding a bike next to the car that does a hard turn all of a sudden.

2\. Braking - having a reverse-thrust system in emergencies would be interesting, but I'd imagine you'd need an awful lot of thrust... Again, RIP to the small child who's crossed the street and required you to emergency brake.

3\. Acceleration. We have rocket powered drag cars already. Do it. Please.

4\. Sustained flight of a car. I think that reefer over at Joe's office may have affected him deeper than we'd like to have thought.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a consumer, at this point (unless they can make it fly), I'd rather have them add reliability and reduce the total cost of ownership.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anything that would replace the back seat of the car that generates thrust downward I would expect would cut into area that would be allocated for battery. So less area for battery but a major demand for the battery being added? Sounds like wishful thinking to me unless it's just a few USB fans with spaceX written on the side of them facing down.

<comment><USER10> Maybe they reduce the >600miles range to 60?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some time ago, Eaton invented a hydraulic hybrid system that stored hydraulic fluid under compressed air tanks from braking. It was incredibly efficient because of minimal conversion losses in a simple system. It didn't take off, sounds like what's mentioned

</comment><comment><USER12> Reading only the headline, I thought this was going to be a claim that it'd accelerate so fast it would lift its front wheels off the ground--like this... [https://youtu.be/_59wxPsC9NU?t=142](https://youtu.be/_59wxPsC9NU?t=142)

But what he actually said... that's just crazy.

</comment><comment><USER13> Musk is technically very clever (have you seen SpaceX rockets landing in tandem?)s o it's likely he has something that comes close to what he's saying.

If so, I expect the real problem with this system will be safety. Sure you might be able to squirt a high density gas or liquid at high enough speed to move this car but then what is that high speed fluid going to hit? Probably it would tear up roads, cut down trees, decapitate passersby and create all kinds of mayhem.

Stick handling this through a government approvals process looks like a non- starter.

<comment><USER14> > Musk is technically very clever (have you seen SpaceX rockets landing in > tandem?)s o it's likely he has something that comes close to what he's > saying.

This was done in the 90s, there's nothing special about landing rockets upright. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-X)

Also, being technically clever includes being able to navigate the problems that you brought up, such as the need to meet government standards, meet safety requirements and actually be useful.</comment></comment>


Please can we stop with the stories about Uber being banned in New Delhi? - <AUTHOR>

There are lots of them - please can we have some respite?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715541
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715557
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715566
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715639
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715739
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715777
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715789
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715862
Edit: And more keep coming:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715938
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715996
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8716015 <comment><USER2> Are all of these being flagged?

Because if people don't see the flag-killed stories (and don't know to check showdead) it seems reasonable that they submit a story that they think is on- topic for HN.

(I tend to think that most Uber articles are OT for HN.)

<comment><AUTHOR> No idea - I don't have "Show dead", so they are visible. It's a common theme, though:

        People don't check
        before submitting.

Why should they? It takes time and effort, and it's usually unnecessary.

That means this plea will probably be useless and pointless, but I thought I'd try anyway. The mods are usually pretty good about penalizing all but one version of a story. but even so, I wish the community as a whole would take more responsibility.

I guess I'm just an old fart who's out of touch with today's internet reality.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In case you're interested - clickables:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715541) (5 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715557)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715566)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715639)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715739)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715777](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715777)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715789)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715862](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715862)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715938)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8715996)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8716015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8716015)</comment>


ActionStreetMap – build real city environment using Unity3D and OpenStreetMap - <AUTHOR> http://actionstreetmap.github.io/demo/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if Pokemon Go is using this, supposedly it is built using Unity.</comment>


Ruby on Rails: Opportunity in a Financial Downturn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fiveruns.com/2008/10/8/ruby-on-rails-opportunity-in-a-financial-downturn

<comment><USER2> I agree that Rails developers will probably still have plenty of work in the downturn. But, then again, Django & PHP developers may also.

However, I'm not sure I buy the argument that the work will come from corporate IT projects.

FTA: "First of all, while we fully expect some CIOs to delay or cancel some internal IT projects."

I agree–you'll see a lot of canceled and delayed projects. But, I think it takes quite a bit more to convince a corporate CIO to outsource the development AND hosting of an internal project.

Maybe I've been out of the corporate world for too long (it's been 8 years), but in my experience, a CIO would rather put a project on hold than a) get up to speed on Rails, b) put a project out to bid, and/or c) worry about the perceived risks of having corporate data on external servers (especially in the case of financial, healthcare, or edu entities).

<comment><USER3> Yeah I think the posts about Rails developers doing fine during the downturn applies to any of the fast growing scripting languages. Certainly Python, I am less sure about the current growth of PHP.

People are really working to find and hire Ruby/Rails devs in SF and Boulder

<comment><USER4> What's the best way to learn about these openings?

I am looking to relocate in the next month and I want to get into Rails development (as in, for money as opposed to a hobby).

If you or anyone can give advice (particularly about these two attractive locales), shoot me a note at email@example.com

<comment><USER3> The Ruby meetup in SF is huge. There are also smaller more elite Ruby groups in SF if you can find them. Out there it seems there is a large need for good Ruby talent, so if your good you just need to get the word out in the Ruby community.

Boulder has the Bouler.me ( <http://boulder.me> ) going on but I think it just ended. Otherwise there is a Boulder Ruby meetup and the Boulder New TechMeetup both of which would be great places to look. I will keep an ear open for Rails specific work in Boulder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We can simply look at the last downturn, which took place only seven years ago or so. Having worked for an open source company back then, it was most definitely _not_ a time of opportunity. The company managed to survive, but salaries were cut for everyone, very few people were hired and investments were nearly impossible to get.

Maybe it was even worse for people working in Java or .Net, maybe not (many of them do government work etc which is less affected by the market) but it was certainly not a boom time for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a Rails fanboy, but that doesn't fool me into thinking that's what will make or break my success in this market. This is a time to be a good programmer in any language.</comment>


Diabetes drug 'significantly reverses memory loss' in mice with Alzheimer's - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-12/lu-dd122017.php <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2017/diabetes- drug-...](http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/articles/2017/diabetes-drug- significantly-reverses-memory-loss-in-mice-with-alzheimers-/)</comment>


Ask HN: Starting my own customer analytics consultancy? - <AUTHOR> I'm starting my own customer analytics consultancy and am wondering if anyone has any advice on landing your first client?<p>My experience has spanned from financial services, CPG, manufacturing and insurance. I was a software engineer on a business intelligence team and have built data warehouses, data models, ETL pipes and reporting. I've since become more involved with the analytical side of things where I work with Tableau, Python and Excel to identify new strategic opportunities. <comment><USER2> You might have to embed yourselves in the company(/Customer) as a contractor and show them the value-prop, build confidence and then take over complete projects. The first customer is primarily though word-of-mouth!

(Sorry, but this is pretty much the standard advise for any consulting gigs)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's a great tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I work for an analytics company, and I think the easiest way to get your first customer would be to focus on a specific tool that customers struggle with, and position yourself as an expert in that tool. For example, target Tableau shops and show how you can bring extra value to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your thought. Would you mean focus on shops who've implemented Tableau already or shops who implement Tableau for their clients?

<comment><USER3> That's deeper than I thought. Target both? You probably will have more luck with shops they implement tableau, but why not find out which is better :)</comment></comment></comment>


A New Wave of Bad Ads Is Hijacking Even Top-Tier Websites - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40516897/a-new-wave-of-bad-ads-is-hijacking-even-top-tier-websites <comment><USER2> I've seen these ads hitting tvguide.com multiple times a day on mobile.</comment>


One Day, a Machine Will Smell Whether You're Sick - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/health/artificial-nose-scent-disease.html <comment><USER2> How expensive would it be to make a machine that can smell if you or your clothes stink?

I would pay at least $150 for that as a hard-of-smelling person. I would have far paid more back when I was single and lonely.

<comment><USER3> I would like that too. After a surgery a few years I sometimes have post nasal drip which causes bad breath. I have no way to tell when this happens. I would love a sensor that could detect it.

<comment><USER2> According to your sibling, there are already off-the-shelf sensors that detect some malodors. Maybe we just need to source already-existing components and convince an EE/manufacturing engineer to do a kickstarter?

<comment><USER3> The problem is that you need to know what chemical you are looking for that's causing the smell. Are there any sensors that can detect a wide range of smells?

<comment><USER4> A quick google search reveals a number of label free odor sensors, everything is early stage though.

Label free may not be the best phrase for what you meant though. Label free means you are looking at all biomarkers present in a sample, the primary challenge with label free is that we don't know every biomarker to look for or what every biomarker we see means.

<comment><USER3> Seems once you have enough datapoints you should be able to do something with machine learning to distinguish good from bad smells.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> BBC had a great story about a woman who was able to smell Parkinson's in people YEARS before they were even diagnosed: [http://www.bbc.com/news/uk- scotland-34583642](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-34583642).

<comment><USER6> Not years, just eight months, but it's still incredible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work for Owlstone Medical as a software engineer, so ask me any questions and I'll try to answer as best I can.

Also, we're hiring! [https://www.owlstonemedical.com/about/careers/](https://www.owlstonemedical.com/about/careers/)

<comment><USER8> I dream of a future where a sensor can detect from your urine/blood/bowel movement wether you have cancer or some disease.

Imagine a push notification to your phone that says you have a 82% chance of having hepatitis or something.

Do you think that could ever be a reality?

<comment><USER9> That would be great and totally possible. Disease changes your body and your kidneys, among other organs, will know it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What kind of sensor technology can "smell"?

I mean the CMOS was a break through for image sensors.

There are air quality sensors and various kind of gas sensors.

But what sensor tech can be used to smell odor?

There are dogs that smell drugs, cancer, and what not - so "just" a sensor is needed to get the data in difital format.

[btw NYT article page crashes my mobile browser mid article, what are they doing? Their site used to be lean, now it's dog slow and something is wrong with scrolling]

<comment><USER7> Odours are just molecules that are detected by the cells in our noses, and it's possible to identify them with various techniques. You've probably heard of mass spectrometry, which tells you the mass to charge ratio of the molecules that are present in a sample. You can figure out which molecules they are by looking up the m/z value in a database -- but mass spectrometers are pretty bulky.

There's also a technique called field-asymmetric ion mobility spectrometry, which gives you a less direct indication of the molecules you're looking at, but FAIMS can be miniaturized into a silicon chip, and that is what Owlstone has done. Here's a bit more info about FAIMS: [https://www.owlstonemedical.com/science-technology/faims- tec...](https://www.owlstonemedical.com/science-technology/faims-technology/)

edit: odours are not necessarily organic molecules

<comment><USER11> "Odours are just organic molecules"

Yeah. Right. This is why Yeah. Right. This is why H2S has no smell. (in fact, some claim is has not and we smell something else).

"that are detected by the cells in our noses, and it's possible to identify them with various techniques."

Well, I think this was not the question. Yes, the mentioned start-up in this thread (owlstonemedical) uses a "Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometer", might work, but I am not too impressed by the approach. Also, would not call this a detection of "scent".

Would be more impressed if they really build an artificial nose that can smell. They eye has not receptors to detect dogs, chairs, cars but detects a spectrum. Same with the ear and actually, the same with the nose. The literature is out there.

<comment><USER12> >jdiez17 2 hours ago [-]

>I work for Owlstone Medical as a software engineer, so ask me any questions and I'll try to answer as best I can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One day, a machine will smell whether you're hireable :-(

<comment><USER14> Perhaps one day a machine will smell if you are irreparable. Perhaps even smell if any spare parts remain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> tangential, but in HK airport you're passively screened for a high temperature at all entrances to combat the spread of flu.

[http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/28/content_1127068...](http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/28/content_11270685.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Not that anyone has suggested this but it doesn't seem so far fetched given that dogs can supposedly smell cancer. Also, if bees really can smell fear...

</comment><comment><USER17> There is also a lady who is able to smell alzheimers.

</comment><comment><USER18> With all the talk about healthcare these days I wonder as an experiment what a "machine" could detect if you gave it saliva,urine,stool,hair sample.

Privacy concerns aside I would assume many basic medical issues could be diagnosed through those without the need for a "doctor".

</comment><comment><USER19> Smell, or perhaps taste, is one of the first senses that evolved. Maybe it will be one of the first we get right in machines.

</comment><comment><USER20> What if you don't want others to know about your health, or whatever else a machine can smell?

</comment><comment><USER21> One day, you'll have to insert your ATM card into this machine and it may let you into the hospital if you can afford your illness or it can secure you on demand financing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Really? I wonder how it will smell like..

</comment><comment><USER23> Dogs

</comment><comment><USER24> One day, a machine will smell your weakness. Then it will come for the kill.

<comment><USER25> I'm already a Windows 10 user, so it will have to do its very worst.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did the colour of the header bar change? - w-ll

-_- <comment><AUTHOR> It does every year at this time. It's a seasonal change that will be rolled back soon. Oddly, I had just set a user-configured topcolor for the first time just as the site topcolor was changed. Now I get to observe which HN pages don't display the user-configured topcolor.

</comment><comment><USER2> On my mac, it looks like black on dark red. I have difficulty reading this, and recall old games with code numbers with this color scheme so they couldn't be xeroxed!

<comment><USER3> Mac's render color differently than non-Mac's. That is a positive thing that a lot of people like about the Mac when using applications, but if you have a MAC, the _coded page display_ you see inside your browser is not always what was intended by the developer.

I believe it has to do with the gamma settings on the Mac monitor which I believe can be adjusted.

It can be corrected for on the developers end also (with effort-time), but I wonder how many non-mega sites are taking this into consideration. As you found out 90% or so of the world sees red and green as intended, yet you saw black on dark red.

If the Mac's Gamma is altered across the board for all applications I would assume you will lose a lot of the slickness that attracted you to the Mac in the first place.

I'm surprised no-one has written a plug-in for the Mac browsers that will ensure that just _coded page content_ , flash, and pics render in the browser on the Mac Screen like a non-Mac. I assume this could be marketed as a browser enhancement for $$$. Call it something cool like _Leopard Fangs_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Yes. And the numbers next to submissions are alternating green and red. Merry Christmas!</comment>


Why In-Game Ads Won't Kill Video Games… They Already Exist - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2008/06/07/why-in-game-ads-wont-kill-video-games-they-already-exist/

<comment><USER2> Article is right on all points except prominent in-game ads have been around much longer. Go play Wipeout XL (1996) for the PSOne. It was literally plastered with Red Bull ads.</comment>


Devuan jessie beta released - <AUTHOR> https://beta.devuan.org/ <comment><USER2> I'm looking forward to Devuan going stable in 2020.

But seriously, Devuan had some success with its core mission (drawing away the trolls and conspiracy theorists from Debian). They are now well integrated and discover most fascinating things (like that the vfat filesystem can be mounted in a way that non-root can write there! Wow! How did you discover this without reading the documentation?)

[https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20160426.180427.4d4815...](https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20160426.180427.4d4815e1.en.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> In case anyone (with a healthy dislike for things like systemd) is wondering: it seems it is possible (and pretty easy) to switch from Debian to Devuan as documented here: [https://talk.devuan.org/t/migrating-from-debian-to-a- minimal...](https://talk.devuan.org/t/migrating-from-debian-to-a-minimalist- devuan/181)</comment>