Ask HN: What should I learn first, Algorithms or ..? - <AUTHOR> Algorithms or Programming Languages Theory (Grammars, lexers, etc)?
Background: I just know the basics about programming (conditions, loops, classes, etc) And I almost got 30 years old, hopefully is not to late.
My goal is to help the advance the Computer Science field (No kidding).
P.S: Could you elaborate on your answer please, besides "Learn Algorithms first". Thank you. <comment><USER2> Given a choice between those two, I'd recommend algorithms, since you can probably apply that knowledge more readily to everyday programming projects. For example, it's useful to know roughly how long it takes to sort an array, add an element to a hash table (like a Python dictionary), etc.

Language theory probably won't be that useful unless you're planning to write a parser for a programming language or something similar. I occasionally need to deal with grammars (for the Bison parser generator) in the work that I do, but most people probably do that kind of thing very rarely, if at all.

Also, it's never too late to learn stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neither, because you'll either get burned out or full of trivia that is not useful.

Instead, pick some practical projects, and work on those. Maybe a music player, or a game. Games are good because they bring you through the whole spectrum of high-level abstraction (how should I build this system?) to the low-level drudgery (oh god why is this buffer getting corrupted how do I fix this aaaagh).

</comment><comment><USER4> You should start with what interests you. Passion is a strong motivator for learning.

</comment><comment><USER5> As a computer science graduate, and having worked as a s/w engineer, researcher and quant and currently writing code in strongly typed language, I can assure you that unless you're doing research and writing your own PL, you wouldn't need to understand PL theory, so much so that now I'm rusty in less than 6 years.

Also, just to clarify- PL itself has not much to do Grammars and lexers. PL theory mostly deals with programming paradigms, and type-safety. Lexers and grammars knowledge can help you write a compiler for a PL, but PL theory doesn't care about it- its the job of compiler writer.

I suspect you mean 'theory/models of computation' when you refer to Languages theory ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Automata_Theory...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Automata_Theory,_Languages,_and_Computation)) That's what covers "language"/grammars. While it's good information to have- a ground up understanding of "computation" science- you would need that pretty late into your foray if you really want to learn about "Computer Science"

CS is a big field- you'll have to choose what you want to learn.

So start with Algorithms first, when you come to the Big(O) notation, you'll get a brief and usually enough introduction to the Theory of Computation.</comment>


How to create an easy restful api for a simple model - <AUTHOR> http://www.restapibuilder.com/blog/how-to-create-an-easy-restful-api-for-a-simple-model/ <comment><USER2> So complicated compared to something like: [http://ramses.tech](http://ramses.tech)

Disclaimer: I'm a co-author and huge fan of Ramses</comment>


Moving Beyond Flash: The Yahoo HTML5 Video Player - <AUTHOR> http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Moving-Beyond-Flash-The-Yahoo-HTML5-Video-Player-113635.aspx <comment><USER2> > _the industry is moving toward HTML5 for video playback_

Welcome to the 2010s.

IOW, it's a pretty big miss Yahoo didn't invest here a long time ago.

With no Flash on mobile or desktop, taste-maker consumers have been unable to see swaths of their embedded video for a while now, making the Yahoo brand feel out of touch and dated. Much like that quoted phrase above.

The industry moved. OK, you can catch up. But can you lead again?</comment>


Defusing COBOL Bombs with Smart Automation - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@bellmar/defusing-cobol-bombs-with-smart-automation-9b24f81b5da4 <comment><USER2> I started out in the early 80's as a COBOL programmer, learned COBOL at college and JSP (Jackson Structured Programming) which entailed never using GOTO and how to code as such, even how to handle exceptions.

But no, real world my first program was ripped to bits, rewrote and I was shown the error of my ways and why I should use GOTO as it was how everything else was written and others will need to maintain and modify the program throughout it's life. Hence was the company standard. Even had a system engineer point out how much more efficient GOTO was for error handling and efficiency ruled the waves.

So the spaghetti code today may seem silly, but there will be so many historical reasons for the way it is. Alas companies are not keen to refactor old code a bit at a time for something more readable. They all live the dream that one day they will replace the whole system overnight and the angels will sing their praise. But that rarely goes to plan due to legacy factors and how intertwined so many aspects of the various systems are. This and it works, the hardware is fault tolerant. Then the horror stories of failures of others doing as such spread further than any success story.

So you end up at best in many cases seeing some aspects farmed out to a data warehouse running on some x86 server to plicate the increasing demands for marketing and sales statistics and provide them the tools to play away without impacting and stealing the pool of resources they have to keep the existing system just ticking along.

But the likes of CIC's and MQ interfacing make peeling of some layers much easier and was one of the sain approaches when I last was involved in such matters over a decade ago.

Be interested how people migrate such systems today as encountered many a software house who will promise all the tick box's management want to see and fail so very badly.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started writing in COBOL in 1976. I wrote a lot of code and even started teaching COBOL in the local community college. The language is pretty simple, although wordy. I think that COBOL code would be pretty obvious to a coder today. They might not be able to code in it, but they should be able to follow the flow. The advantage of COBOL was that it was closer to machine code. A statement in COBOL translates to one or a few instructions of machine language. COBOL was a sort of assembly language. This made it run fast and efficiently on the big iron IBM mainframes. Remember that a machine with a meg or less memory had to run hundreds of terminals serving users at the same time at a clock speed measured in in a few millions of CPS. My last job before I retired was translating COBOL to Java. The COBOL code always ran faster than the Java classes that replaced them.

<comment><USER4> My first job out of school was programming in COBOL. Never learned it in school. I knew C, Scheme, Pascal, BASIC, a little FORTRAN, and maybe a couple of others. COBOL was easy to pick up. Never did really get JCL.

The time sharing wasn't that great. Yes the there were hundreds of users but they could wait many seconds, even minutes for transactions to run. There was a little clock icon on the status line of the terminal, and I easily spent an hour or more per day just watching that clock, waiting on my terminal to update. Luckily the there was no www then, or I would have been surfing during that time and even less productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most banks suck at doing software and are being outcompeted by startups that have made building good software their core business.

E.g. N26 in Germany is rapidly growing marketshare in Europe (and soon the US apparently) with products that are modern, user friendly, and 100% guaranteed cobol free. There are a few similar examples of bank startups that invest primarily in R&D and UX to grab market share from old banks that are simply not competitive. Their marketshare is melting away rapidly.

N26 bootstrapped with way less funding than most of these dinosaurs spend on keeping their old crap on life support. Per year.

I had a fun incident at Commerzbank here in Germany a few years ago where a request for some older statements that I needed for our compmany taxes was first impossible and then turned into a "we have to send get somebody into an archive to make a copy of the microfilm; this may take a few weeks". This was this century. This decade even. No joke. A major German bank is storing customer records on microfilm. Incompetent banks like this deserve to go bankrupt. They are sitting ducks for any kind of competition willing to simply show up. We took our business elsewhere after that incident. I will never do business again with that bank.

The real problem is that zombie banks like this have no in-house competence left to do anything productive when it comes to R&D. They are running on automatic pilot run by incompetent idiots. They outsourced all their core competence to consultants that happily come in and pile on more crap as long as they get payed enough. Mostly they evolve simply by copying what other banks do via expensive consultancy projects.

They tend to not have CTOs or anything resembling a technical strategy. Kind of odd if you realize that modern banking is essentially a software driven industry.

<comment><USER6> I really hope banks get disrupted from the bottom (as you're mentioning with N26), and yes, I've worked for a Fortune 500 financial group that was a huge mess (they had entire buildings of software developers, but their software was god awful).

But your statement _" they're simply not competitive"_ is extremely misleading. Most of the big banks don't have users as customers, maybe something to be tolerated. They're not competing on user experience.

Industry and Corporate is where it's at, and I guarantee they're getting very good support, personalized attention, etc... (even if the financials are cobbled together in Excel for a multimillion dollar loan). You're probably small fish for them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting. I used to work on a huge Forte4GL program (think in the million lines of code range) and we thought about using traspilers (even had some quotes).

But it was the same old bad code, traspiled.

We looked for better solutions, my opinions and my boss's diverged, and last I heard, they're manually transpiling into Java at a multimillion dollar cost. It's a Java engineer employment program though.

</comment><comment><USER7> > There are some studies that indicate that different parts of the brain are > used when solving large and small problems. That small problems might > involve more activity in long term memory.

I've been aware of a similar problem for a while now. When you write a complex system you're always adding one more detail to something you already know. At some point when you've sailed far beyond all propriety, you built a system that can only be understood once it's been memorized. Every new hire seems more useless than the last but the real problem is _you_.

Breaking up the long convoluted flows into smaller, self contained ones gives the new people a way to go about memorizing the system.

Otherwise they'll just start crossing their fingers and hoping their changes work.

</comment><comment><USER8> Serious question: COBOL's just a language. How come no one has put together some kind of runtime interpreter, for COBOL, or thought to produce an emulator facade that keeps the business logic of legacy code, but ports it to another platform, architecture, infrastructure?

I look at some of the perfectly cromulent stuff people do with Emscripten [0], and it just blows my mind the things that a browser will run these days. So, why not that?

[0] [https://emscripten.org/](https://emscripten.org/)

<comment><USER9> COBOL work doesn't actually pay well compared to other languages, and it isn't that bigger market. Why? If your business logic and requirements haven't changed, why change a running system? Even if you could transpile with 100% accuracy, then you'd lose speed. Maybe you've gained an operational advantage, but there are other ways to do that. On the other extreme, you need to modernize badly, and so a rewrite is actually feasible because you can take advantage of new technologies, especially web and mobile. Between those use- cases, middleware exists which does allow you to bolt on even more awfulness. Finally, businesses die or get acquired. Sometimes good stuff is lost, but equally bad or old stuff is purged.

Maybe ironically, that Emscripten URL won't load for me.

<comment><USER8> Oh, lol! It just redirects to a github page, and I guess they don't listen on port 443.

[http://emscripten.org](http://emscripten.org)

So much for https everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Rewriting COBOL software in Java also looks like repeating the same mistake. Java as a language is already becoming obsolete for many things, including JVM itself, so languages like Kotlin, Scala taking off. On the other part, the same languages also work very hard on being native [1] [2]. So for the long- term strategy, it makes more sense to use the platforms that already made this leap - OCaml, F#, Haskell. Those languages are already popular to some extent in the fintech/govtech. Elixir might be a good choice too, but less mature and not statically typed, which can be a problem for mission-critical software.

[1] [http://www.scala-native.org/](http://www.scala-native.org/)

[2] [https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/native- overview.html](https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/native-overview.html)

<comment><USER11> Java isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It's a safe choice for projects that are expected to have lifespans in the decades.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely. I've heard it referred as 21th century COBOL :) ... it'll have the same problems in 30 years :)</comment></comment></comment>


Coronavirus: Prof Neil Ferguson quits government role for 'undermining' lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-52553229 <comment><AUTHOR> (title shortened to meet limit: s/for/after/)

The only thing about this that surprises me is that he's British. I thought we Americans had the lock on "the rules don't apply to me".

And as for HN relevance, in my experience, "the rules don't apply to me" is endemic in our industry as well. Fortunately, in our case, that usually only results in drama within near-pointless corporations.

(The ZeroHedge headline is much snappier: _Scientist Whose Doomsday Models Sparked Global Lockdown Resigns After Breaking Quarantine To Bang Married Lover_ )</comment>


Hamstrung by Delays, Fitbit Explains and Tries to Deliver - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/technology/start-ups/11fitbit.html

<comment><USER2> I hope Wakemate can avoid these issues. I'm really looking forward to trying it.</comment>


Book review: How pleasure works by Paul Bloom - <AUTHOR> http://kilianvalkhof.com/2010/css-xhtml/book-review-how-pleasure-works/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for the shout out Kilian. The blurb was awesome! Still one of the highest re open rates so far. :)</comment>


Tomb venerated as burial place of Christ exposed for first time in centuries - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/10/jesus-tomb-opened-church-holy-sepulchre/ <comment><USER2> I had the privilege of visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after attending an astronomy conference in Israel a year ago. My wife and I got there for a mass just a little before 6am so it wasn't very crowded. It was really an extraordinary experience. The Edicule had something of a steampunk feel to it, which I was not expecting. As the article mentions, it was built in the 1800s, but due to the Status Quo agreement, it has not been maintained at all and it looked like it could collapse at any moment.

The whole mass felt very surreal. As it was being celebrated there was simultaneously an Armenian liturgy and Greek Orthodox liturgy being celebrated on other sides of the Edicule. If you've ever been to one of those liturgies, you know that there's an almost constant drone of chant throughout. At times it was hard to hear the priest in front of us! I'm still not sure whether to interpret the experience as being a wonderful illustration of the unity or the disunity of the Christian Church.

<comment><USER3> Spent the winter in Israel a couple of years ago. The old city in Jerusalem is awe inspiring.

As for the Holy Sepulchre, as a non-Christian I found it pretty surreal. Clearly for the faithful it's a big deal, saw people outright crying coming out of the Sepulchre.

The church itself is beautiful, powerful artwork from all of the sects (Ethiopian included). Particularly the fresco at the entrance, Christ being laid to rest, the disciples in tears, pretty moving piece.

Unfortunately my experience was darkened by a group of troublemaker teenagers; saw them shove an old woman deep in prayer, just appalling. On leaving they followed me and one of them spit in my hair. When I turned around the kid said, "only water, only water".

Needless to say Jerusalem's a complex mix of cultures, history, and religions.

<comment><USER4> > saw people outright crying coming out of the Sepulchre

This sort of reaction is deeply troubling to me because I see it as evidence of the overwhelming grip that religions have on (some of) their followers. It reminds me of videos of teenagers crying at the sight of Michael Jackson or the Beatles at live performances. It is unnecessary.

My mother, for example, is unable to laugh at even the most trivial of jokes about her religion, things that aren't even attacking her religion but simply having fun with a play on words. I am constantly seeking to remind her that it is a lack of lightheartedness that is at the rock of extremism. I encourage her involvement at her church for social reasons while attempting to remind her that anything that can't be laughed about is being taken too seriously (this is the foundation for many unnecessary wars and acts of violence or discrimination).

I know the likelihood that I'll ever succeed is small, but it's important to me to wake people from what I consider to be a way of thinking that impairs sound judgement (say, when voting or choosing how to react to world politics). I'm not against religion or the right to practice religion, just its ability to cause hysteria.

<comment><USER5> Not just religion. People cried when Princess Diana died. They cried on the anniversary of 9/11\. And on 9/11 itself. People develop personal feelings towards popular people/events/concepts. That's just how we are, automatically forming emotional relationships, even when they're one-directional like in all these cases.

<comment><USER6> I wonder if people cried during Apple keynotes / events. Can't deny that people get an emotional response from that.

People aren't robots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always find stories like this fascinating. We're talking about a place where a mythical event was supposed to occur. It's like analyzing the place where Promethius first brought fire, or the spot where Osiris was resurrected. Maybe interesting for anthropology, but by no means the 'hard science' implied by the tone and presentation of the article.

Of course they're OUR myths, so it's important that we describe them with serious sounding words, and pretend that they're a valid spur for hard scientific research.

There isn't any evidence, outside of mythology, that this place or slab of marble has anything special to reveal about our universe. Just because you're looking through a scientific tool, does not change the fact that what you're looking at is mythology. You're just looking at a communion wafer through a microscope.

Still, it's fascinating to me that we present it in the same tone and context that we present LHC results.

<comment><USER8> > _You 're just looking at a communion wafer through a microscope._

Well, I hope people are actually doing that. I think people believing in some phenomenon should aways encourage scientific inquiry into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been to the tomb, once, when I was 13 ish. I remember an Orthodox priest inside the chamber, who was taking donations in exchange for candlesticks and talismans etc. I also remember him telling my father to leave the money on the tomb, next to his goods. My father, who is no more a Christian than I am was absolutely disgusted at that.

<comment><USER10> Par for the course. Quote George Carlin:

'Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible ... all- perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise being that somehow just can't handle money!, Always needs a little more.'

<comment><USER11> George's "Religion is Bullshit" bit was his absolute best, and my personal favorite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I saw the title, I thought maybe they'd found actual evidence about where Jesus was buried. No, it's the traditional birthplace, identified as such in AD 329, apparently.

Edit: find->found

<comment><USER13> Can you clarify? The article is pretty clear about it being the known tomb. They exposed the marble surface.

<comment><USER14> The article may be clear, but the title is not.

<comment><USER15> Haven't you guys been to Sunday School? [insert Indiana Jones meme here]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's surprising that they've done this, given the Immovable Ladder's example of just how difficult it is to alter anything in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

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

<comment><USER10> Nothing some termites or woodworms can't fix, and it will at least lay to rest one more religious conflict.

From your link:

"The primary conflicts, however, surrounding the ladder and its immovability have been disputed by a lasting conflict between the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church."

Surely such insect activity could be interpreted as 'an act of God' and then all parties could get on with their lives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Article is misleading. _" Restorers working in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Israel uncover stone slab venerated as the resting place of Jesus Christ"_

But it looks like the church is actually in the Palestinian lands [1]. Is there political motivation here?

[1] [https://email@example.com,35.2362521,15z](https://email@example.com,35.2362521,15z)

<comment><USER18> The old city is technically part of the area taken in the 67 war, which is the areas which are usually talked about when refereing to palastine.

But unlike the west bank, it was formally annexed by israel, it contains jewish holy sites such as the west wall, it is not currently part of the PA and I doubt anyone is seriously expecting it to be part of a future palastinian state (in a two state solution at least).

<comment><USER17> Thanks for clarifying

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A lot of the National Geographic societys work these days seems to have a strong appeal to religous people. They are owned by the FOX corporation and I wonder if this religious market is something that FOX is pushing them to focus on.

<comment><USER15> One story about archaeology, including the science thereof, in an ancient church isn't going to be a deal-breaker even for people who are fair-minded atheists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> They should have really mentioned the real most likely burial place of the historical Jesus, which was found some decades ago by the archeaologist James Tabor, the Talpiot Tomb. The same guy also found the tomb of Jesus' family before. This tomb was opened in 2005 for some short time, but there's a new jewish apartment building on top of it, so they rather go with the Church of Holy Sepulcher fairy tale.

Not many scientists but many Christians believe that Jesus actually lay in this Church of Holy Sepulcher for 3 days.

</comment><comment><USER21> Something about that picture reminds me of VGER from Star Trek.

But seriously, it should be an interesting read once they've fully studied it.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's Angels and Demons feels right there. Almost expecting Tom Hanks to show up.

</comment><comment><USER23> It will be really inconvenient if they find a body in there...

</comment><comment><USER24> I call complete bullshit. From having watched shows like NCS, we know the amount of direct evidence it takes to establish something like who was buried somewhere.

Like the shroud of Turin this is just another example of wishful thinking. They found some random tomb that has survived and announced that it was the tomb of this fictional character Christ. No chain of custody for evidence, just the wishful thinking of somebody who wants it to be true, just like the entire resurrection theory. Complete and total hogwash.

If we were to say this is the burial site of Joseph the plumber, the proponents of this idea would have no evidence to argue otherwise.

<comment><USER25> I'm an atheist, but I don't think Jesus was a fictional character.

<comment><USER26> Why? What evidence is there?

<comment><USER6> I wonder if it actually matters if he was real or not, or whether he did what the major religions claim he did. What matters is that billions of people believe it, and he's an example to billions of people, giving them a moral example to strive towards.

You know, like superheroes in the US. They don't exist (which is factually verifiable still), but people are fans of them. What if in 2000 years people forget or lose the origins but the story of e.g. Star Wars is passed on through the ages? It's not proven to be real, but it provides a moral example, a distinction of good vs evil, and a code to live by.

<comment><USER27> Now repeat the history of religious wars except now you know everyone's killing each other over movie preferences.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why are FOSS projects beginner unfriendly? - <AUTHOR> I have been in the FOSS community since a few years now and projects either lack documentation or they don't actually support new comers to the projects. I faced an issue recently about docs too, it seems like big projects do not care about total newcomers, why is it so? <comment><USER2> As it is for even closed source project, documentation and support are a major pain, and are not as rewarding as aligning correct lines of codes.

I will try to use a gross misrepresentation of a new-comer, but chances are they will ask trivial question that do not concern the project ( or are already answered ), some resources ( developer time ) will be used in favor of answering/guiding the newcomer ( who probably did not have search the usual sources before asking the question ).

Documentation is quite a pain to maintain, as it requires a good grasp of the English language ( mostly ), and quite a lot of empathy to figure out who the documentation is for. Additionally you have to make sure the documentation is accurate as the software change.

Returning the question: do you accurately comment the code you write for fun ?

<comment><AUTHOR> >do you accurately comment the code you write for fun

Mostly, yes. But not when I am learning stuff, for eg, [http://github.com/thewhitetulip/Tasks](http://github.com/thewhitetulip/Tasks) is a small app I built, there are next to no comments there because I was learning the language and thus didn't write much comments there.

I understand docs are pain to maintain, but a good FOSS project which is coding related (like a code library) is an amalgamation of the code AND the docs. The first preference goes to the lib with a great documentation.

>not as rewarding as aligning correct lines of codes

Yes, but when we look at the reward incorrectly! Yes, nobody will hail your contribution, but the fact that the project will be hailed because of the docs is not thought about mostly.

>but chances are they will ask trivial question that do not concern the project

This might not be a gross misrepresentation, but yes, sometimes there will be audience who doesn't fit in your project's audience, but what about the audience who fits?

I recently started learning a front end framework, I am totally new to a front end framework, I do not like frameworks, I learned and wrote a book on Go without using framework ([https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang- anti-textboo...](https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti- textbook/)).

The docs are awesome of the project, I mean it. They teach the basics of the framework but _not_ how to use it in an actual project. Yes, if I know how to bind a variable via the docs it is great, but I do not know how to build a single page app just by reading how to bind a variable. It is a pre-requisite though.

For a framework which wants to be the top framework, I feel that there needs to be docs not just about the APIs but also about how to use it in a real project.

P.S: In the past, while commenting partially negatively about something, a person had taken huge efforts to crawl back on my HN/reddit comment history and calling out the names, I am intentionally leaving the name out of the comment; This is a general thing across all projects, not just the one I am complaining about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some do - see [https://openhatch.org/](https://openhatch.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> How would I make this project more friendly to newcomers? [http://github.com/meric/l2l](http://github.com/meric/l2l) Is it a matter of documentation?

<comment><AUTHOR> One should be able to read the docs and understand things rather than have to google every other thing.

The contributors need to be actively helpful on the chat list etc</comment></comment>


Prey - <AUTHOR> http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/prey

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is beautifully written but perhaps it deserves a trigger warning and NSFW warning. The subject matter is a woman's rape and, basically, how she psychologically prepared herself to face her assailant in court -- not once, but twice (the first trial resulted in a hung jury). I apologize for not thinking to do that yesterday when I posted it. I am still figuring out how to do this posting-articles-on-HN thing.</comment>


Ask HN: Has any overated social site generated enough profit? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Your question can't be answered like that.

"Overrated" and "enough" are opinions based on points of view of people you don't mention.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think any socialsite(from the one i mentioned and the ones you think are social sites) has generated enough revenue(in your eyes) compared to the growth/hype/stock-price/valuations/investments/whatever?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I tried to understand your question but I'm sorry - I don't think I understand what you are asking. Can you be more explicit?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think every social site has underdelivered on revenue/profit. Basically from a business perspective (not get rich from being sold to another company/ipo) they all suck.

Am i right?

<comment><USER3> That's such a broad question. In order to answer it, I'd need to discuss each and every "social site". Hell, I don't _know_ every social site. And my definition of what is and what is not a "social site" might differ from yours. Is LinkedIn a social site? What about Constant Contact?

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook,twitter,myspace,reddit,digg,tumblr,linkded-in...

Why would ConstantContact be a social site???

<comment><USER3> I guarantee you that CC wants you to think of them as a social site! Whenever you try to pin down a buzzword, you'll find people on all sides saying they are/aren't part of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> If YOU think they are fine. But they can say whatever. Back to the original quesiton?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Choose a Laptop for ML and Deep Learning? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
I'm currently looking forward to join a master's program after my current career (in the lines of software engineering). I want to be ready to work with machine learning and deep learning libraries and be able to develop state of the art programs.
My problem is that I don't know what requirements should I be looking for in a laptop. What do you use? Do you have any laptop recommendation?
Everything is useful :)
Thanks! <comment> T-A If it has to be a laptop, one along these lines: [https://www.nvidia.com/en- us/geforce/products/10series/lapto...](https://www.nvidia.com/en- us/geforce/products/10series/laptops)

You'll want a good GPU to train deep neural nets, and most libraries require one with CUDA support, i.e. an NVIDIA card.

The GTX 10 series essentially dropped the distinction between desktop and mobile cards, so you won't be giving up as much _peak_ performance as in the past by getting a laptop. I still prefer to do such things on a desktop system with plenty of power and cooling headroom, where running at full tilts for hours or days on end is not a problem. Doing the same on a laptop feels like asking for trouble.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply! Do you know if CUDNN support makes a difference in this case?

<comment> T-A The list of CUDNN-supported frameworks,

[https://developer.nvidia.com/deep-learning- frameworks](https://developer.nvidia.com/deep-learning-frameworks)

is pretty much a Who's Who of all the most popular ones. In that sense, CUDNN support does not make much of a difference - any framework you're likely to choose has it, and any recent NVIDIA card will run it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> A machine learning laptop doesn't make a lot of sense - you won't find a laptop with a comparable GPU. Really, the answer is whatever you are comfortable working on - you'll be connecting to a server or AWS GPU instance to actually train any large net and generally writing and testing on a laptop. That being said, get anything with an NVIDIA card (for the time being everything runs on CUDA) or that testing will be done on the CPU, though perhaps there will be libraries supporting OpenCL down the road.

<comment> T-A > you won't find a laptop with a comparable GPU

Sure you will:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/nvidia-pascal- laptop...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/nvidia-pascal-laptop-specs- gtx-1080/)

The real problem is sustained performance within a laptop form factor, as the article says:

 _How well the GTX 1080 maintains that speed within the confines of a laptop is largely going to depend on the design chops of laptop makers_

It gets hot in those tight little boxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> So if I want to use something like this I should be looking for a desktop pc?

<comment> T-A I would definitely prefer a desktop for this kind of thing, yes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CeramicSpeed's Driven Concept Might Become the Most Efficient Bicycle Drivetrain - <AUTHOR> https://www.bicycling.com/bikes-gear/a22092182/ceramicspeeds-driven-concept-might-become-the-worlds-most-efficient-drivetrain/ <comment><USER2> As mentioned (and slightly buried) by the article, the really fascinating part is that we _already_ have consumer bicycle gears that deliver 97% efficiency: a Dura Ace groupset is expensive compared to the stuff you'll get at Wall- Mart, but they're sold at pretty much every cycling store. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ultegra and 105 (Shimano's next two groupsets by price) were nearly as efficient as well.

2% is nothing to sniff at in cycling (people pay thousands of dollars for that kind of advantage), but there are other factors as well: resistance to stress (sprints), ease of maintenance and service, and weight all factor into the utter dominance of the current groupset design. It'll be interesting to see if CeramicSpeed can advance their design on those fronts.

<comment><USER3> >2% is nothing to sniff at in cycling (people pay thousands of dollars for that kind of advantage)

2% is nothing to sniff at only if you're hampered by the arbitrary UCI rules. By far the biggest factor in cycling performance is air resistance, and the obvious solution (fairings) is banned. The UCI has been disastrous for bicycle technology. Most high-end buyers like to pretend they could compete professionally one day, so they abide by the same rules, which means there's no incentive to develop truly fast bikes.

The UCI rules should allow any safe design, and avoid giving an advantage to richer teams by setting a price limit (bicycles are already required to be commercially available).

<comment><USER4> Fairings aren't as useful as you might think in most circumstances. On an upright bike, they need to be enormous to offer an appreciable benefit, which makes them heavy and difficult to control in crosswinds.

The optimum solution is a recumbent bike - by going feet-first, you can reduce your frontal area by more than 50%. With a much smaller frontal area and a much lower center of gravity, a tail fairing becomes a practical proposition.

Fully enclosed recumbents can achieve phenomenal results in the right conditions (Sam Whittingham's 91km hour record, Andy Wilkinson's 41 hour LEJoG), but they immediately become a handicap with any sort of gradient because of the ~20kg weight penalty and they're unbearably hot.

<comment><USER5> > The optimum solution is a recumbent bike

Recumbents are cool and much faster in some situations but pro cycling exists mainly to sell stuff and upright bikes look cooler.

<comment><USER4> Recumbents have been banned by the UCI since 1934, so that ship has sailed. If we had seen recumbents on the Tour de France for the last eighty years, they'd probably look cool and upright bicycles would look weirdly old-fashioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use a single speed bike at the moment. Not because I hate gears but because I've never had a geared bike that didn't constantly click on the outside gears. It drove me crazy trying to tune them perfectly and never succeeding. Forget increased efficiency. If a new design emerges that accommodates gears and is simple to tune properly, then sign me up. No idea if the design being discussed could offer this.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried out a bicycle with an internal hub gear? I don't know how loud they are, but you shouldn't have any chain binding issues (and you could probably run a belt if you wanted).

<comment><USER8> I use a Gates belt drive with a Shimano hub gear and it's nearly silent compared to a chain.

<comment><USER9> Oh man, I had a Ghost bike with a Continental drive belt that was a constant pain in my ass until the belt snapped at 1500 miles and practically chucked me in front of traffic.

REI really stepped up and Ghost warrantied the entire drive system as the Continental system was NLA; they replaced the whole thing with a Gates Drive system which is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If this drivetrain achieves its claims I will be very impressed. Shaft drive designs have been around for as long as chain drives; and they have never been as efficient. So mush is lost in the torsion of the shaft. A 2% increase in efficiency is an absolutely massive gain. The cycling industry is littered with flashy looking innovations that don't live up to the hype. The basic design of a diamond frame and chain drive has not been improved upon for over 100 years.

But every now and then there are innovations that acually take hold. For example, the slant parallelogram derailleur, hydraulic disk brakes, suspension (for mountain bikes), and recently narrow-wide front chain rings. We shall see how well this drivetrain goes.

<comment><USER11> Shaft torsion does not lose you much energy, it mostly acts as a torsion spring: whatever you put in you will get back. The shaft will only warm up a tiny little bit from the amount of energy that it will lose during a single cycle.

Suspension _does_ lose you a lot of energy, which is why you'll never see it on road bikes.

<comment><USER12> Springs are terrible when driven by biological "pistons". Applying a certain amount of force is much harder in some phases of the pedal stroke cycle than in others and springs would make it impossible to go easy when you want/need to.

<comment><USER11> It is a _very_ hard spring, not something squishy like front fork suspension.

The biggest downside would be eventual wear of the driveshaft, the losses will be very low.

Note that almost every part of your bike acts as a spring in that sense, the frame flexes a bit when you pedal, as do the cranks and the shaft. Even the spokes in the rear wheel act as springs transmitting the force from the hub to the rim (which is one reason why they are oriented the way they are, that way they pull the rim along rather than that the spoke gets bent, the spoke is stronger in that direction).

<comment><USER12> Everything acts as a spring, and performance bicycle engineering goes to great lengths to make them as as hard as possible. Frame flex under pedaling load is measured, optimized against and a driver of buying decisions. Replacing the chain with something more springy? Good luck in that market.

<comment><USER11> > Everything acts as a spring, and performance bicycle engineering goes to > great lengths to make them as as hard as possible.

Indeed. So if you use a shaft to drive the rear wheel that would definitely be part of the equation, I note they are using a hollow carbon fibre tube, which in that particular dimension is likely not ideal for the application unless it is given some more cross section. Even so, it is an interesting development.

> Replacing the chain with something more springy?

Chains stretch quite a bit, you'd be surprised.

<comment><USER3> "Chain stretch" is usually slang for chain wear. The chain gets longer as the rolling elements wear down so people call it "stretch" even though the metal isn't stretching. The actual stretch under load is very small.

<comment><USER11> I'm aware of the difference, but thank you anyway.

You can see the effect for yourself if you lock your rear hub and proceed to push down on the pedal (you can see it because the pedal is a nice long indicator effectively multiplying the distance the chain stretches).

A bit nicer setup is a micrometer at the end of a fixed section of chain with a weight attached.

Chain _does_ stretch. About 1.5 mm under full load.

That's why you want chains with solid pins and solid plates.

What you are talking about is chain elongation as a result of wear, essentially the accumulation of slop in the bushings the pins go through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Check these out: [https://pinion.eu/en](https://pinion.eu/en) a german startup which created a gearbox for bikes which works like the one in a car. Early Investment came from an engineer at Porsche.

Disclaimer: not affiliated

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, Pinion systems haven't really gained any significant market share due to a) really high cost b) inability to downshift under load, c) a 1.5lb weight penalty and d) the frame must be built specifically for the Pinion system[1]. Still, always great to see new approaches like this as bike maintenance is a huge barrier to adoption.

[1] [https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/the-pinion- gearbo...](https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/the-pinion-gearbox- solves-common-problems-but-creates-new-ones-a-test-ride-review/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice concept, I really like the fact that the casette is gone because it occupies a lot of space leading to substantial weakening of the rear wheel (the width of the hub where the spokes attach is a very larger factor in rear wheel strength).

That gear does look like something that would do well in a meatgrinder, and given the fall-out over just having disc brakes on racing bikes I don't think that would pass inspection for road bike racing.

10 points for out of the box thinking though, a cardan driven racing bike is very clever.

<comment><USER15> I _cardan shaft_ just another name for a _drive shaft_?

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

<comment><USER11> Sorry, probably a dutchism...

We use the same term for the rear end of a car and for the drive train on BMW motorcycles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yeah, that's going to skip under load and won't stay aligned.

Might be usable as an electric assist drivetrain and it was sealed up.

<comment><USER17> Yes. Based on that photo, I can't imaging that the set of ring gears could be rigid enough. Unless it was inside a strong casing. As in standard differentials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is cool and really fascinating, technically, but ultimately a solution to a question nobody asked and I don't see many benefits outside of a claimed efficiency benefit while there are quite a bit of drawbacks. Also I'm failing to see how this is different from shaft driven bikes [0] we already have had for 'some time' now

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaft- driven_bicycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaft-driven_bicycle)

</comment><comment><USER19> _The system would have to be pretty intelligent to know how fast the system is moving. It'd have to be pretty smart to know how fast it's moving, which tooth track to select to make the shift happen. Would you have to back off to shift under high load?_

This reminds me of some newer automatic transmissions that use dog clutches, like a manual one, relying on sensors and electronics to do the synchronisation --- there is a very noticeable (and unpleasant) jerk in the shifts, since it has to match the speeds precisely, and automatically reduces throttle to do so.

Of course, with a human providing the power directly, that's not really possible. I suppose you could add a "shift light", but IMHO that's just overcomplicating things...

</comment><comment><USER20> Other options include CVT which offer continuous non-integer gear ratio steps, but a lower efficiency of about 79%.

[http://www.enviolo.com/nuvincicycling/nfinity](http://www.enviolo.com/nuvincicycling/nfinity)

</comment><comment><USER21> They mention something about an electronically assisted shifter. Doesn't that defeat the whole point of a (non electric) bicycle?

<comment><USER4> Not really. All three of the major manufacturers offer electronically- controlled derailleur gear systems. It offers minor aerodynamic benefits and more reliable shifting performance with no real weight penalty. The battery adds about 60 grams and the derailleurs are slightly heavier, but the shift levers and cables are significantly lighter. That battery lasts for about 1000 miles of typical riding, which is more than enough for the target market of racing cyclists.

The inconvenience and cost of electronic shifting isn't a good fit for leisure and utility cycling, but it makes sense in racing where every marginal gain in performance is valuable.

<comment><USER21> Ah well, when I think cycling I don't think racing, I think out-of-town rides where it helps if you're able to fix your bike using just some wrenches...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My grandfather told me about a bicycle he designed that uses a CVT. Curious if that's a better direction for the future of bicycles.

<comment><USER11> You can buy these today, and many e-bikes use them. About 15% power loss means that for an un-assisted bike they are not an option.

(Dutch link: [https://www.fietsenwinkel.nl/expert-e- bikes/nuvinci](https://www.fietsenwinkel.nl/expert-e-bikes/nuvinci) with nice cut-out picture of how it works)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Unproven, can't yet change gears, based on an old design used over 100 years ago that was given up on.

<comment><USER24> > based on an old design used over 100 years

Sounds interesting, can you point to some documentation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > A stock Dura Ace drivetrain returned about 97-percent efficiency.

Does anybody know the numbers of efficiency in fixie and single speed bicycles? I reckon they should be better given the absence of a derailler? I tried to search for it, but couldn't find numbers.

<comment><USER26> Another article on this technology stated that the efficiency gain comes from there being only 4 points under load versus 8 points in a chain with derailleur system.

A fixie also has only 4 points, since the derailleur is gone, so it's presumably more efficient.

But the big problem is that there is also an efficient human cadence (I think around 100 RPM), and a fixie has a massive problem here. So overall, a fixie is massively more inefficient. Which I guess is no surprise, cycling competitions are run with geared bikes, not with fixies.

<comment><USER27> This doesn't sound correct to me - the derailleur is on the "slack" side of the chain so is never under significant load.

The only load is that required to pull the chain back from the crankset under enough tension to stop it from drooping, which is provided by the spring in the derailleur cage.

All the load in the chain system is between the cassette and the chainrings on the top.

Perhaps a link to the article will reveal more? There's a lot of BS in bike technology, so I'm automatically sceptical!

<comment><USER26> Maybe load was not the appropriate word to use.

Smith explains that that friction in a chain-based drivetrain is created largely at the eights points of articulation, where the chain bends around the chain ring, cassette and pulleys.

"Any time a chain articulates, friction is created. And any time it disengages, friction is created," Smith said. "When you think about pedaling 95rpm, you are looking at 40,000 stiction points a minute."

In the DrivEn system, those eight points are replaced by four points, each of which rotate on ceramic bearings. The chain ring's teeth and cassette's cog engage with the bearings on the shaft, which itself spins on bearings.

[https://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/ceramicspeed- dri...](https://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/ceramicspeed-driven-drive- shaft-52587/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't think the big cog will be stiff enough to not bend under the pressure.

</comment><comment><USER29> "while the 13-speed rear cog looks like the unholy union of a compact disc and the Sarlacc pit from Return of the Jedi"

After looking at the thing, it is a remarkably apt analogy, too. I wonder how long it takes to machine.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone know if this would this be UCI legal?

<comment><USER11> Not a chance. That gear will rip your leg to shreds in an accident.

<comment><USER4> I have a large scar on my calf from a conventional chainring. If your chain is on the inner ring, your crankset is basically a blunt circular saw.

<comment><USER11> Ouch. I very narrowly escaped that (but did break my leg :( ). On intermediary 'sports' bikes and mountain there typically is a guard ring mounted on the outer gear ring to mitigate some of that risk. Most road bikes don't have them though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Would this design not be... less of a chipper shredder if they switched the cylinders and the teeth?

<comment> King-Aaron Yeah, I could imagine that getting the end of your jeans or a shoelace caught in that, you're in for a bad time.

<comment><USER31> I suppose you could do a number on your hems, but I'm more worried about feet and calves. I'm thinking about a crash situation specifically. That thing is more of a meat grinder than cogs. Granted, the front chainring is more of a meat cleaver on a traditional bike. I knew a guy who got a nice free tattoo on his right calf. Still gives me the heebies...</comment></comment></comment>


Life as a Remote Employee - <AUTHOR> http://www.ecommercefuel.com/remote-employee/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've worked on my own remotely / out of an office environment for years, and definitely miss the banter and the camaraderie, but would never trade it back for the typical 9-to-5 I use to have.

I find it insanely easier to get things done when I'm in a closed, quiet room with no co-workers around to bother me. At the office, I'd often be bombarded by drop-ins, people chatting or other distractions. A focused 4 hour day working on my own is equivalent in productivity I've found to a full working around other people who aren't completely involved in their work.

Call me a robot, but I love to get my work done alone and then shift into social mode. I'm not good at doing both at once.</comment>


Hub: Use GitHub from the Command Line - <AUTHOR> https://hub.github.com/ <comment><USER2> While it is pretty cool, using such tool increases general lock-in to GitHub, in terms of both habits and potential use of it for automation of processes.

I wish there was an open standard for operations that hub allows to do and all major Git forges [1], including open source ones, such as Gogs/Gitea and GitLab, supported it. In that case having a command-line tool that, like Git itself, is not tied to a particular vendor, but allows to do what hub does, could have been indispensable.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forge_\(software\))

<comment><USER3> Git remotes _is_ the standard.

Hub is pretty much a glorified ref transformer.

You can do a lot of what it does with plain old aliases and really should if you work with multiple forges.

You're also only talking about a single git use case which not everyone follows, even within a single forge.

Something tackling the problem from the other end is phabricator which integrates each VCS into the same forge platform. Well, mostly (badly), it's kind of a total mess with specific things you need to work around for each.

I can see the same thing happening to anything trying it from the forge end.

Just because gitlab has pull requests does not mean that GitHub born idea is the best or will even stay.

How would you marry up Gerrit to GitHub (you can't).

What you're asking for only really works for something following gitflow, which would be kind of stupid to base a standard on because it's broken by design and doesn't scale. But you would have to because otherwise GitHub won't use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hub is essential for anyone who works with GitHub repositories, IMO.

It gives you, if nothing else, an important shortcut: `hub checkout github.com/repo/pulls/1234` automatically adds a remote, fetches, and checks out the branch of a given pull request. Great for local testing/validation, when needed.

<comment><USER5> I might be missing something, but can't you just `git checkout -b <feature- branch-name>`?

<comment><USER4> Not if the branch is on a fork.

<comment><USER5> Ah gotcha, then that is a pretty handy shortcut.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly tangential: I keep seeing Linuxbrew references on various tool installation instructions. Is Linuxbrew really gaining popularity? Why would you use it instead of your distro package management?

<comment><USER7> Admittedly a Mac-to-Linux convert here, but what I like about linux/homebrew is the ability to build the very latest version of the requested package on the day of the release. Distro package managers make living on the bleeding edge more difficult.

<comment><USER8> I use Arch Linux, whose motto could be "living on the bleeding edge" (maybe combined with "annoying install process"). This even with the included package manager. But with Debian derivatives, you can add Debian testing to your apt configuration to get newer packages.

Aside: I think "old" packages (~1year) actually protect you from a few bugs and make some sense on servers, but I wouldn't hesitate to use Debian testing on a desktop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> shocked-pikachu I wrote something like this called git-admin[1] for remotely managing repositories and the like.

[1] [https://github.com/ninetynine/git- admin](https://github.com/ninetynine/git-admin)

</comment><comment><USER9> I use Hub every day! The only command I use is "hub pull-request" though.

<comment><USER10> Me too, plus `hub merge $PR_URL` in order to merge PRs locally with the same commit message as if I had pressed the "Merge Pull Request" button on GitHub.

I do this in order for the merge commit to be signed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hub is pretty cool. I've used it to automate the release process on github by writing a simple bash script.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know if it is possible, using hub, to sync a personal fork, with its upstream?

</comment><comment><USER13> I use hub, but almost exclusively to clone a repo, or more frequently, create a pull request (being able to specify a base branch to)

<comment><USER14> Uhm... Why not just use git for that?

<comment><USER13> Less typing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anything existing that does similar for gitlab?

<comment><USER16> [https://github.com/zaquestion/lab](https://github.com/zaquestion/lab)

<comment><USER14> Anyone see the irony that its for gitlab, but posted on github?

So what does it do that git doesn't? Without answering that, it feels awkward to put forward a CLI frontend to a CLI tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Awesome. I've needed something like this since the beginning of github.com itself. I can now, with glee and joy, chuck all the lame curl scripts I was using/maintaining to try to perform the same function, and use something better.

The only thing is, I don't like the name. The use of the term 'hub' is a bit dangerous - I know other tools out there named such. For me, it'd have been better to have named it something more specific/unique to the intended purpose, like 'ghub' or even better, 'github-client', and then leave the alias-to-simpler-word up to the end user.

<comment><USER18> > The only thing is, I don't like the name.

That ship has sailed. This tool has existed (and been popular) for years.

<comment><USER17> Fair enough, didn't know that, thanks for the info ..</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Senate Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/09/14/senate-handbook-secret-rules/15500339/?siteID=je6NUbpObpQ-0tUL4YwcKDxuRj8ogVTV3g

<comment><AUTHOR> Related in that it concerns the Senate, I thought this 2010 New Yorker piece[1](which I found via the currently-open archives) was extremely interesting, but also troubling. If you have even a passing interest in the ongoing legislative dysfunction, this article should provide you with plenty to think about.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/09/the-empty- chamb...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/09/the-empty- chamber?currentPage=all)

EDIT: I also seem to have trouble getting titles right on submission to HN. In this case, the reason it's even news that this was released is because it had been a secret document in the past. I feel like the edited title removes a crucial piece of information about this story. Even if the content itself is not particularly revelatory, it speaks to a bigger picture (perhaps even more effectively due to its mundane nature) about the almost comical lack of transparency in certain aspects of the governing process.

EDIT2: In trying to think of other words to replace secret, I kind of hit nothing much because most of those words (such as: mysterious, covert, classified, etc.) evoke the same linkbait-y feeling. Not sure if there is really a good replacement choice.

</comment><comment><USER2> Since they lead with its secrecy, I'm guessing there's nothing particularly interesting or scandalous in it?

<comment><USER3> What should be scandalous is that the Senate's rules have been secret – in the absence of public rules, how do we know who is following them?

<comment><USER4> If you read the documents even a little, you'll see that they're not even as salacious as an employee handbook. Most employee handbooks aren't 90% rules about office supply requisition procedures.

What does it matter who's following these rules? Do you really care whether a senator has properly installed a [Chair (Overstuffed)] in their personal office rather than their front office?

I'd be more worried about the opposite phenomenon. The handbook is apparently used by the Senate Ethics Committee. I'd be worried that a giant book of rules about how exactly to obtain your parking pass or requisition an easel or how to arrange chairs in the rules committee room (note: actual examples) could easily be used as a weapon against individual senators by accusing them of "ethics violations".

Rule violations by senators are a tricky thing. Senators do not in fact serve at the pleasure of the Senate Ethics Committee. They're elected by the people of their state. The Constitution requires the Senate to make its own rules, but those rules are primarily for the orderly conduct of business in the Senate.

<comment><USER5> I think there is credence to the argument that the damn thing shouldn't have been secret in the first place. The practice of over-classifying stuff just reduces the transparency of the government in general. If it's not secret, don't classify it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Longevity Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/06/live-longer-dan-buettner-text From National Geographic, Dan Buettner's search for the fountain of youth among the longest-lifespan cultures of the world. <comment><USER3> >It's very clear that the more meat you eat, the earlier you die. Cut out as much meat as you can.

Absolute nonsense. The only thing that has a clear relationship with extending lifespan is calorie restriction. The rest is very very unclear.

This guy finds a population, finds one thing they do that supports his preconceived notions of what makes you live longer, and then says that this population's behavior in this respect proves that this action makes you live longer.

So he finds a vegetarian culture that lives long and says OK vegetarianism makes you live longer. He finds a culture that drinks a lot of alcohol and says OK, alcohol doesn't limit longevity.

He finds a culture that eats a balanced diet, a culture that exercises a lot, etc. etc.

None if this is really any type of proof, and if you examine many different cultures, you will find his evidence is contradicted by other cultures (meat eating cultures that live longer and have fewer health problems than nearby vegetarian cultures, for instance).

Our knowledge of what helps humans to live the longest possible life is, sadly, very limited still.

<comment><USER4> And what do we mean by meat? I'm sure toxin filled fish effects you differently from fresh. Or grass-fed (natural diet) chicken is different nutritionally than industrial chicken.

zngtk4 is basically saying that nutrition science is sampling at too low at resolution to make definitive claims, I buy that.

How many times can you flip-flop on eggs until we stop listening? Obviously they're something else going on. The argument that they're generally "bad" is too low rez. Not to mention how we were told to eat margarine over butter for 50+ years, and it turned out to be one of the worse things to consume.

<comment><USER5> And what do we mean by vegetarian? There's got to be a massive difference between living on bread, potato, cake and nut-roast and living on salad, fruit and steamed greens. "Not eating meat" really doesn't say much about what you _do_ eat.

Raw foodists claim there's a lot of denaturing and damage done to proteins, enzymes and more when food is cooked. There are differences in composition between food that is cooked until done and food that is cooked until blackened (e.g. on a barbecue). Some claim there is measurable damage done when food is blended compared to chopped or juiced 'gently'. There is lots of skepticism about microwave cooking versus traditional ovens. As well as eggs, popular advice zig-zags on soy and types of fats. So...

>> zngtk4 is basically saying that nutrition science is sampling at too low at resolution to make definitive claims, I buy that.

I buy it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _OK, educate: I don't want to die at 50. What do I do?

The first step is to think about who you hang out with. There's no silver bullet for longevity. I'm not gonna tell you to take a pill. If your three best friends are obese, there's a good chance you will be. Surrounding yourself with people who don't smoke or drink too much and who have a spiritual component in their lives has a profound impact over time. Cut out the toxic people in your life and spend time and effort augmenting your social circle with people who have the right values and a healthy lifestyle._

I don't know why, but this snippet brought Robert Greene's The 48 Rules of Power to mind: "Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky" (Rule 10). Of course, Greene's approach can be interpreted as a tad Machiavellian. But the message is still the same: watch who you're hanging out with. I've noticed that many of one's peculiar behavioral habits can be directly attributed to friends and acquaintances. It's interesting to see longevity talked about in the context of the people you spend time with.

<comment><USER7> My father boiled this down into an aphorism I still use and share.

"You are who you hang with."

I know sometimes when I'm feeling crap I look at which groups of friends I've been spending time with lately. Always scary stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could you please warn if you're going to link to a page that will launch a print dialog?

I appreciate not having to click through pages, etc. a little warning would just be nice.

<comment><USER9> It's mostly accepted here that a print dialog pop up is better than having to click through an article divided into five pages.

<comment><USER10> Autopager beats either option. <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/4925>

What's really needed is an autopager/readability mashup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Until there's a controlled, replicable method, all these studies, approaches, genius ideas are just blah-blah-blah exercises in pretty correlations.

<comment><USER12> By your reasoning, all this stuff about climate change is just blah blah blah. Correlations seen numerous times in independent efforts are meaningful.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "controlled". For example, in the china study the group that ate more meat was compared to a similar group in the same country with the same lifestyle. Isn't this the definition of a control group?

<comment><USER13> > I'm also not sure what you mean by "controlled".

Obviously not. You just offered the definition of uncontrolled.

> climate change is just blah

Well he makes a pretty good point that data dredging for correlations is bad science. But the real reason climate change is "blah" is that the world isn't actually warming. Clearly shown for over ten years now by satellite and ground station data. There was only warming after a long cooling trend that lasted into the 70s.

[http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us- temperat...](http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/06/how-the-us-temperature- record-is-adjusted/)

<comment><USER12> please explain what you mean by "controlled" then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Re: all the deficiencies of this article: It's journalism(-ish). Not even science journalism. The NG heading says it all: "Adventure Travel - <USER2> Geographic Adventure Magazine" ...not even the _main_ NG site, but the "adventure" subdomain.

More suitable for pondering than analyzing, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER15> I highly recommend The China Study for a more detailed, epidemiological study of nutrition.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, as I explain above, epidemiological studies are essentially useless for anything other than formulating hypotheses (see the debacle with hormone replacement therapy).

It baffles me that anyone would entirely change their diet and lifestyle based on an epidemiological study.

<comment><USER15> The evidence is not just from the epidemiological study, there have been lots of follow-up studies to examine the processes in detail.

I would argue that a broad, epidemiological study is the _most persuasive_ sort of evidence to use when considering whether to make drastic changes. Otherwise you're dealing with information like "omega 3s prevent x, y, and z" so you end up taking an Omega 3 supplement along with the dozen other supplements while eating Wendy's for lunch every day.

Thinking that health can be understood on the basis of "taking supplement x is good" is the root of the current supplement gold rush (people sell tons of snake oil substances that contain "omega 3's" etc.) and a highly irrational way to behave.

<comment><USER3> >follow-up studies to examine the processes in detail.

Examining the processes isn't sufficient to provide proof unless it's a completely thorough examination. Biological science isn't at that point yet, and so what this usually means is that group A performs an observational study, group B finds a process that would explain group A's results, assuming group A's results are true. That's different from showing that group A's results were true.

Human, and animal, physiology is very complicated, and it's just plain wrong to assert that we know that eating meat decreases longevity. We don't. There is some evidence to believe it, and some evidence to not believe it at this point (both epidemiological studies and at the molecular understanding of the processes involved).

Epidemiological may be persuasive, but it's misleading because you take a single variable out of hundreds that may not even be known. So you may get Texans who become vegetarians based on longevity studies in some region of China, but then live an even shorter life because their lifestyles and the particular vegetarian foods that they eat aren't as conducive to longevity. This history of epidemiological studies are full of cases like this.

<comment><USER15> I don't dispute your logical points, but I think there is still a rather strong case for eating a plant-based diet.

Clearly, humans can eat meat (during most of human evolution calories were scarce and eating meat conferred a selection advantage)...

But why would you reason that all foods are equally beneficial and harmful? To me, broad epidemiological studies can offer clues on classes of foods and some of the costs/benefits that they confer.

<comment><USER3> I'm not reasoning that all foods are equally beneficial and harmful, and I accept that it may very well be that a plant-based diet is superior to a meat- based diet. I reject the idea, however, that we know enough to say that this is true, and I absolutely reject the idea of significantly changing behavior based solely on epidemiological studies -- the epidemiological studies should be the starting point for much further study. To date, most large-scale controlled studies on diet have unfortunately been shelved. It should entirely be possible to separate multiple groups on multiple different diets and see what happens over a period of, say, ten years -- one diet as vegetarian, one diet as meat/fruit/nut but no grains, a fish+vegetarian diet, while holding other variables constant (such as calories). This is what we need to do to know, and this is what has consistently been proposed, but not done.

<comment><USER15> You are correct.

However the study that you call for has been done in laboratory animals -- TCC found that (controlling for calories, etc.) the animal proteins he studied led to the growth of cancer cells, while plant based foods did not cause cancer to develop, even in an environment of radiation, etc., that would typically be thought to be the _cause_ of the cancer.

I fully agree that the study you mention would be hugely beneficial, but by your logic one ought to smoke cigarettes if one chooses, or at least ought to have done so in the 1980s before more conclusive evidence began to emerge... even though most doctors/scientists had held a strong belief that smoking was a bad idea for decades.

If one were to base all of his health decisions on studies that were conclusively done in humans (without regard for any animal studies, etc.) one would be limited to a 1950s understanding. Humans are not mice, and the studies don't all correlate perfectly, but many do. And they contain valuable (though not necessarily conclusive) information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> correlation != causation.

<comment><USER17> Isn't this article about correlation? Isn't the point of the article that something about eating less meat (whether it's lifestyle, actual dietary effects, or something innocuous) correlates, whether or not there is a causal relationship*, to significantly increased longevity?

<comment><USER16> If there is no direct causal link then all correlation does is suggest such a link. You have to _FIND_ the link and prove its real in order to make this about something.

X is observed in people doing Y is not a scientific breakthrough, it is an observation. If not all people that do Y have X there is no story, just more work to get to the bottom of what is going on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > the more meat you eat, the earlier you die

Then why have lifespans gone up and heart disease declined all around the world in lockstep with animal protein consumption? Why do the two longest lived groups in the US (Mormons and upper upper Midwest whites) have high meat consumption?

<comment><USER12> heart disease has increased with meat consumption.

<comment><USER3> Heart disease has also increased with sugar consumption. Older cultures that ate primarily meat, but not a western diet also showed almost no heart disease.

<comment><USER18> Older cultures also didn't live to their 70s like we do now so I'm not convinced that this is a good counter-example.

<comment><USER3> I agree, this is one of the biggest flaws with this line of reasoning. However, it does say something (although it's unclear what it means for us) that some of those cultures had less incidence of the diseases commonly associated with old age compared with nearby similar cultures that ate less or no meat.

<comment><USER12> can you produce a controlled study backing up your assertion ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It only took 36 hours for these students to solve Facebook's fake news problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/students-solve-facebooks-fake-news-problem-in-36-hours-2016-11 <comment><USER2> This article itself felt like fake news being that it states they didn't solve the fake news problem: "A Chrome plug-in that labels fake news obviously isn't the total solution for Facebook to police itself."

<comment><USER3> It's a pretty cool plugin, really. But I'm guessing that the people interested in using it already belong to a demographic that is highly skeptical and good at spotting fake news.

<comment><USER4> It's a cool hackathon project to play with classification. Presenting it as even a partial solution, as the article did, is irresponsible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gee, the real problem here is that none of the people reading the "fake news" consider said fictitiousness as a bug.

Indeed, fake aspect of such so-called-news is the feature for them.

Wrap your head around that.

It's news for the world they wished they lived in.

<comment><USER6> Post fact world. It's all about feelings and baseless opinion now.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, Newt Gingrich said during the campaign:

> GINGRICH: The current view is that liberals have a whole set of statistics > that theoretically may be right, but it's not where human beings are.

> CAMEROTA: But what you're saying is, but hold on Mr. Speaker because you're > saying liberals use these numbers, they use this sort of magic math. These > are the FBI statistics. They're not a liberal organization. They're a crime- > fighting organization.

> GINGRICH: As a political candidate, I'll go with how people feel and I'll > let you go with the theoriticians.

Could not be clearer, I suppose.

[http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/07/25/john-oliver- theme-r...](http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/07/25/john-oliver-theme- republican-convention-was-emphasizing-feelings-over-facts/211865)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The binary classifying could be an issue there, additionally I love the current trend of using artificial intelligence as a black box no one need to explain.

Nevertheless, "Facebook" and "Fake news" seems very trendy this week.

<comment><USER9> Yeah that trend is great. AI officially has zero meaning at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "But the students show that algorithms can be built to determine within reasonable certainty which news is true and which isn't" I know this is a puff piece and not real news (ugh ironic) but this is so overstated...

</comment><comment><USER10> So it gives us the opinion of these students about some websites. Just having heuristics that essentially appeal to the authority of source prestige was a big problem of the election and not invented by Facebook although the invisible isolation it allows can exacerbate it a bit.

</comment><comment><USER11> Great solution for the end user, but the problem from Facebook's end is far more constrained than 'stop showing fake news.' They also have to find a way to do it without affecting sponsored articles and engagement.

</comment><comment><USER3> Technical solutions to the problem are relatively cheap, but the root of the problem is much deeper, involving social media's tendency to function as a non-fact-checked echo chamber. Facebook is just the most notable platform plagued by the issue.

In the past, Facebook had a partial solution-- human editors who would curate news stories and try to eliminate fake news from trending. I recently met one of these editors while traveling, and we had some long discussions about the issue. Facebook fired the team of human editors and replaced them with an automated solution. That decision was motivated based on a combination of factors related to expenses and liability which is obscured by Facebook's opaque internal hierarchy.

Really addressing the problem will take significant investment by platforms like Facebook to research the problem and implement robust technical solutions. But these platforms have rigid internal hierarchies and internal feedback loops that prevent that from happening. For platforms to invest in solving this problem, continued, strategic pressure needs to come from the outside.

(As it is, there is already pressure from the outside, but Facebook has responded by basically trying to cover their own ass: [http://gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was- und...](http://gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was-undercut-by- fear-1788808204))

The ex-Facebook curator I spoke with attempted to change Facebook's culture from the inside and found it impossible. Her recommendation is that credible journalism organizations from varying ideological backgrounds (everything from CNN, to Fox News to the New York Times) need to demand that Facebook invest in a solution, by refusing to syndicate their content through Facebook's platform unless Facebook does something to prevent credible, fact-checked content from getting shouted over by sensational fake news.

Journalism organizations are already working on this, but readers can help by writing letters to the lead editors of these organizations urging them to put this kind of pressure on Facebook. People with technical skills can help by investing time and energy improving competing news-syndication platforms (Twitter, Reddit, RSS, Steemit, etc).

I've got my own elaborate technical solution to Facebook's fact-void-echo- chamber problem that involves a combination of labels, like these students created, and algorithms that recommend related stories from sources across ideological divides. But unless leading social media platforms are ready to invest in these kinds of solutions, their impact on the problem will be negligible.

Anyway, these are all just my thoughts after listening to many people talk about the issue. If anyone reading this is a part of the team that's investing energy into getting this problem solved, I'd love to help. I'm currently a JS/React dev and also willing to shift my career to marketing, UI/UX, etc. Please reach out to me: [http://josiahsprague.com](http://josiahsprague.com)

<comment><USER4> > robust technical solutions.

Why do you believe technical solutions are possible? This is not a technical problem.

<comment><USER3> Technical solutions alone are not enough, but any solution to the problem will require changes to the technology that is creating the problem in the first place.

<comment><USER4> Ad-supported social media are driven by engagement, and critical thinking skills are unevenly distributed. Those two problems aren't likely going anywhere.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do I give performance review? - <AUTHOR> Am a developer, this is the first time i have been asked to give a performance review for employees working with me. So, in this process I don't want to lose the relationship with the employees (with a honest feedback) and at the same time I shouldn't demotivate them with a lesser bonus. On what all aspects can I be evaluating an employee ? And what should i not even 'touch' ? PS: I am nervous because the review I give is going to impact (both positive and negative) his job, in turn his career. I just don't want to make a blunder and excuse myself saying this was just a first time. <comment><USER2> I think framing things in a positive manner is very important. With enough thought and care it's usually possible to talk positively about ways someone could improve instead of highlighting flaws.

Think at a higher level what you are trying to accomplish with a performance review: you want this to be a chance for people to improve and grow. Keep focused on this goal and don't worry as much about pointing out things people have done wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you use M4 in production? - <AUTHOR> I've been trying out M4 a bit lately for code generation. I find it concise and expressive, but also challenging when the macros become a little more complex. Do you use it in production, and for what purposes? <comment><USER2> I used M4 15 years ago to configure multiple systems (PHP, MySQL, Apache.) that were delivered in a bundle.

Since then, I haven't.</comment>


OK to submit links to WSJ.com? - <AUTHOR>

I was going to submit a link to a Wall Street Journal article on startup CEOs. However, WSJ.com is a paid site. Is it considered acceptable here to submit pay site links? I didn't see anything about it in the guidelines.
For the record, here is the link to the article "The Other Tech CEOs Find It's Not Easy To Keep the Faith":
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119741476977621971.html?mod=... <comment><USER2> That link worked for me and I am not logged into the WSJ. Generally I would say if you want to submit a pay site, go ahead and submit it, and paste the content here as a comment. Or copy the content to Scribd and submit the Scribd link here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahem, surely you're not suggesting that people violate copyright by posting copies of complete articles here?

<comment><USER2> I'm not afraid of the Copyright Police.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Worked for me too, without the need to register/login.</comment>


Google Is Deleting Your Favorite YouTube Channels, and They Won't Say Why - <AUTHOR> https://www.maxlaumeister.com/blog/google-is-deleting-your-favorite-youtube-videos/ <comment><USER2> Bold going away from YouTube.. best of success</comment>


Show HN: A minesweeper clone in the terminal, written in Elixir - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kevlar1818/mines <comment><USER2> Cool! Inspiring, I've been looking for something to build in rust and it looks like I found what's next! I've already made a TI-BASIC minesweeper on a graphing calculator, so logic won't be that big of an issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Board manipulation was a difficult yet fun exercise, given Elixir's immutable state and lack of imperative control structures (notably for-loops). Changing the value of a single cell in a list of lists was tricky and undoubtedly much less efficient than in a language with even one of the two aforementioned mechanisms.

</comment></comment><comment> piotr-yuxuan Nice, keep going :-)</comment>


CNN/Fox Projection: Obama wins presidential election. - <AUTHOR> :) <comment><USER2> Now that that's finally over, back to code! :)

<comment><USER3> All the better when coding and knowing the guy you voted for understands what network neutrality means.

<comment><USER4> and intends to appoint a national CIO

<comment><USER5> And overall supports intellectualism.

<comment><USER6> And unionism, protectionism, and high taxes.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I stumble into the wrong party?

Where's the party for people that support an open country with strong privacy rights and a dynamic business environment?

<comment><USER7> The Libertarian party: we'll be waiting over there with the whack-jobs in the Green party until America's ready.

<comment><USER8> When America's ready for your policies, the major parties will steal them piecemeal.

<comment><USER9> That would be lovely, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I disagree with Obama on many issues. I did not support McCain. It is difficult to express how satisfied I am knowing that an intelligent human being will once again occupy the White House.

</comment><comment><USER2> Anyone else just hear the Cathedral and Bazaar reference on CNN? Amazing! A Republican analyst comparing Obama's campaign to open source software and on a major network.

<comment><USER11> It's on YouTube: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-4afdMalVA>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As I commented on another story, it was over (statistically) the minute Ohio was projected. They just had to wait till polls closed on the west coast, so they could use their exit polls from CA/OR/WA, which everybody on the planet knew were Democrat.

</comment><comment><USER12> Yet another outcome correctly predicted by pg's "It's Charisma, Stupid" essay. Although the need to nominate only charismatic candidates hasn't sunk in.

<comment><USER13> Something keeps bothering me about charismatic leaders with revolutionary views and overwhelming mandates in times of severe economic trouble.

<comment><USER14> I'm encouraged by the humility he showed in his victory speech. His mood seems entirely different than, say, Bush's "Mission Accomplished" Iraq stunt.

<comment><USER15> I didn't see his victory speech this time, but I did see his victory speech in the primaries:

"...I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal..."

which at the very least suggests "humility" isn't necessarily deeply ingrained.

<comment><USER16> He was still trying to get elected at that point in time and it's hard to drum up support when you say "aww shucks" (?sp) when your given the spot light.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think there was really any doubt that Obama was going to win. Over this election season we witnessed the best and most technologically advanced campaign ever. Not only on the ground game level, but on all levels. Cheers to President Obama for running an excellent campaign.

<comment><USER18> President _Elect_ Obama. He's been _elected_ president, but he won't _be_ president until January.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wait... did the System just... _work_?

Can it _do_ that?

<comment><USER9> It just needed a good smack. But, remember, as with computers and women, one smack is maintenance, two is abuse.

<comment><USER20> I think smacking women once is pretty dodgy, let alone twice.

<comment><USER21> The rule is simple: only on the ass and never in anger.

<comment><USER20> Well there's an obvious exception for "If they like that sort of thing". But otherwise...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ok great - we've all had our fix. No more politricks on HN for 4 more years. :)

<comment><USER23> Actually the campaign for re-election begins around 18 months after inauguration. Hopefully the mods keep HN relatively politics free for the next 4 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Since the tendency of the kids on the internet is to criticize the establishment, do you think digg and reddit and sites like that are going to start leaning the other way?

For the first time in weeks I saw a story critical of obama on digg.

<comment><USER25> I doubt it -- the kids on the internet criticize things that deserve criticism. Unless Obama does something worth criticizing, I doubt we'll see much change from what it looks like today.

<comment><USER6> Did you just seriously make a comment that implicitly states that Obama has done no wrong?

(FISA, PATRIOT II, Bailout, war funding, VP wrote the PATRIOT Act and invented the "Drug Czar", etc.)

<comment><USER25> Lol no, I just meant he hasn't done any wrong as president yet. (And the bailout...I don't know, I didn't see it as a bad move from my limited knowledge, but a lot of economists are angsty about it, I know so I don't have a real position on it.)

I voted for McCain. There's plenty that I don't agree with Obama about, but seeing as the media hasn't touched Barack Obama very much (including the internet which is currently in exuberant joy) regarding any..."mistakes", it doesn't look likely that it will change until he does anything substantial.

How do you criticize a guy who isn't even in the office yet? Lets hope he does a good job.

Congratulations, Barack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Obama wins... FCC opens up white spaces... Business methods patents curbed... Man! Too much good stuff!

<comment><USER6> I wonder if an Obama FCC would have taken this deregulatory step.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> From someone who didn't vote for you, congrats Obama!

A couple of sources called it (really) once Ohio flipped.

Now it gets interesting. I would beg Obama voters to follow along and read multiple sources as things go forward.

I love politics.

<comment><USER28> I would beg all of you to read a non-US news website regularly. You could do worse than the economist and the BBC.

Watching the way the rest of the world sees the US makes it a little easier to see the inanity of so much US political news coverage. (And likewise that of any other country's local political news, as covered by outside sources).

<comment><USER29> I was watching the live feed on the BBC News website. It wasn't great, but I don't think I could've survived watching CNN instead.

<comment><USER28> Indeed, I tuned into CNN's live feed around when Ohio was getting called, and I was welcomed by first a few minutes of nonstop ads (for CNN no less), then a room full of people having "deep thoughts" about nothing in particular. This is the station I watched, riveted, during the first iraq war?! Sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think it's going to be a huge inspiration for the world.

Seeing recent female and minority leaders being elected across the world shows we finally are moving towards reducing discrimination.

</comment><comment><USER31> Fox News is calling it. That means it's safely over.

</comment><comment><USER32> I really doubted that this would happen. But it actually did, and I think it will really make a difference. This is America sort of saying to the world - hey, those war mongering guys were never us. This is the real us - the guy who thinks, the guy who does not fit the mould, the guy who never wanted a war.

In so many ways, the U.S has shown how agile it is, and why it's number 1.

<comment><USER9> Why did you doubt it?

About a month ago, it became apparent to me that it was going to be a blowout. I've been confident Obama would win for several months...but it wasn't until the desperation in the McCain campaign began to show through so clearly (Palin, in particular), that I realized how badly he was going to lose. As of a few days ago, I was expecting a Reagan-style landslide, and I wasn't disappointed.

And, I question the "America is number 1" assertion. Number 1 in what competition? We're behind in several areas I consider vitally important: economic freedom, freedom of speech, per-capita income, education, and the list goes on...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It may be just a speech, but that acceptance address was one heck of a way to start things off. Despite a strong (though very much appreciated) message of hope, he was very clear on the magnitude of the problem and the effort it was going to take to solve it. He seemed to touch on a lot of issues that I felt were critical to the future of the country. Energy and environmental challenges, getting the economy back to stable ground, healing political divides and tempering extremism; these are all issues that need to be tackled, and I am happy that he addressed them here.

Hopefully his policies will live up to the talk, but if nothing else I believe that his message alone will go a long way towards helping improve things. It seems all too rare these days for a politician to say that yes, things will be difficult and dirty, and there are going to need to be sacrifices from everyone, but despite all the hardships we really can work to build a better future.

<comment><USER15> _Hopefully his policies will live up to the talk, but if nothing else I believe that his message alone will go a long way towards helping improve things._

Never forget: the unintended consequences of any government policy almost always wind up being far more significant than the intended consequences.

This is what I fear most.

<comment><USER34> You've got citations to back up your fears, don' you? I've love to see the horrible, horrible unintended consequence of seatbelt laws.

<comment><USER35> Or the GI bill. If only we had known! :)

<comment><USER15> Y'know, I did say "almost always".

Seatbelt laws? Yeah, I can't think of much there, though I'm sure there's somebody out there who'll argue that seatbelt laws promote worse driving, and there have probably been some particular crashes in which seatbelts have led to rather than prevented injuries.

The GI Bill? Actually in my limited understanding that probably wound up having consequences well beyond what was originally intended, and it's likely that most of those consequences were on balance good rather than bad. But it doesn't make them any less unintended. It wrought major changes in higher education and in the demographics of cities vs suburbs, which were probably not on the minds of those who originally proposed the bill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Let the disappointment begin!

<comment><USER5> I'm so disappointed not to be in the US tonight :-(.

<comment><USER37> Yeah man, it was great to be here! I, like, went to bed and stuff. Totally wild.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he's right on this. The United States of America is the greatest nation in the world, the nation where all things are possible, the nation that, for every time we've fallen short, keeps saying "Yes we can!" Yes -- we can do justice, yes -- we can be better, yes -- we can fulfill the promise that all men are created equal.

Govern it well, Barack Obama.

<comment><USER39> Looking at the results of Prop 8, California seems to disagree on "all men are created equal".

<comment><USER40> Aye, the saddest news in a long while. I wonder what can be done now to work against such a large setback...

<comment><USER41> Wait a few years for the demographics to change some more and repeal it by referendum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> AP calls Florida for Obama, if he didn't win before when CNN called it, Florida will guarantee it.

</comment><comment><USER8> What a relief. I'm sure he won't turn out to be perfect, but won't it be nice to have a president we can actually take seriously?

</comment><comment><USER43> I wish I could celebrate more but I have to get up early and do homework all tomorrow.

We did have a few celebratory beers however.

</comment><comment><USER44> You heard it here first!

Please, let's keep it to computing and startups and other infrequent topics.

</comment><comment><USER45> Congrats!

America is defineately not nr 1 anymore but maybe now you can get back to being so!

</comment><comment><USER46> Well done America! The rest of the world was holding their breath!

<comment><USER47> Apparently not Russia, who took the opportunity to spout more crap about Georgia and blah blah blah

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> YES WE DID!

<comment><USER49> There is no place for your enthusiasm here. This is not reddit ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Anyone concerned what this will do for innovation? How could an entrepreneur vote for Obama? He has clearly stated that he wants to "redistribute" the wealth. In my eyes, that's the essence of socialism.

<comment><USER34> You've been paying taxes all your life, and that, in essence, is not socialism. Its called Progressive taxation. Many states in the US have their state income tax set up this way (the more you make, they more they take. In state that do not tax that way, they often tax you based off property ownership.) and they are not socialist.

I'm also not concerned what it will do for innovation (whatever that means) because historically the economy and stock market do better under Democrats than under Republicans. George W. Bush has yet to create one single net job, and he has a mere 75 days to do.</comment></comment>