Musk: Falcon lands on droneship, tips over post landing [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.instagram.com/p/BAqirNbwEc0/ <comment><USER2> I like how the entire thing explodes when it hits the deck. Finally, a machine that lives up to its movie/videogame version in terms of explodingness.

<comment><USER3> I'm imagining they detonated it so it wouldn't do something unexpected and potentially even more dangerous, but I came to this thread to ask because I wasn't sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone explain to me why they can't just put a huge net around/under the rocket so that even if it does tip over, it can be safely caught and recovered?

<comment><USER5> Rockets are heavy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Watching this as a maritime archaeology student, I was reminded of ancient seafarers, who built massive sailing platforms to support siege engines that frequently capsized in rough weather.

Does anyone have insight into the thinking (and/or mathematics) that motivated this approach to landing a rocket?

<comment><USER7> When the rocket stages, it has significant horizontal motion (which is what matters - after the rocket is high enough to get out of the atmosphere, it has to speed up horizontally to achieve a stable orbit). Returning to the launch site requires cancelling that velocity out (and applying more horizontal velocity to return), while stationing the ASDS downrange means you mostly don't.

<comment><USER8> That, plus the fact that landing far from inhabited regions is safer.

<comment><USER6> I guess my question wasn't as clear as I thought it was. I understand landing it vertically, and I also understand the safety value of landing the rocket on a floating platform.

What I don't understand is: Why it isn't obvious that a rocket of X height will fall over when landing on a boat of Y size in Z waves? Can you explain that element?

In general terms, tall things on boats that aren't fastened down are the most likely things to tip over. That's something any sailor can tell you. I'm interested in what considerations were at play leading up to this accident. I don't know anything about rocketry, so I kinda need that explained to me in simple terms.

<comment><USER9> Someone mentioned before (in a comment on another similar news item) that although the rocket is tall, after landing most of its mass is at the bottom: the engines are heavy, while the rest of the rocket is mostly empty fuel tanks. Hence it is feasible to keep it upright with the relatively small legs.

<comment><USER6> OK, that clears that up for me. Cheers!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: If you weren't coding for a living, what would you like to be doing? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If I had no further need for money (e.g. if I could provide for my family at a middle-class level permanently), I'd landscape full-time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Science fiction writer and/or working in biotech.

My degree was in biochemistry... that's what I thought I'd be doing, but there was no demand for more entry-level biotech workers when I graduated and lots of demand for programmers. That being said, I think I enjoy programming more than biotech.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would be coding for fun :-) Working in languages and toolchains of my choice (Clojure, f.ex.), helping organizations worth helping (NGOs,...). But that would be only a part-time activity, I would use the other part for stuff I like & never have enough time for - yoga, teaching, ... .

</comment><comment><USER5> Maybe it is still the kid in me but professional racecar driver. I use to tear cars down and build them up when I was younger. I never have the financial/family support or knowhow to race full time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Writing sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels with a lot more focus.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hmmm. Maybe I would try to gather some money for creating a music instrument shop/service. I like music and technology (behind music) as well - that would be fun!

</comment><comment><USER8> I wanted to be a architect when I was younger.

<comment><USER9> Now that I am older, I am wanting to be a programmer. Architecture is like being a chef, but with more liability and fewer happy customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always loved cooking, but the long hours, high stress, and low wages turned me off from becoming a chef.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have always wanted to study combinatorics or linear algebra at a graduate level.

</comment><comment><USER12> Novel/screenplay writer, or a journalist for technology or art related subjects.

</comment><comment><USER13> Live in countryside, take care of sheep and planting!

</comment><comment><USER14> Fishing guide.

</comment><comment><USER15> Become a survival guide.

</comment><comment><USER16> Flying a plane.

</comment><comment><USER17> a farmer.</comment>


"World's fastest camera" distinguishes and isolates rogue cancer cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.patexia.com/feed/-world-s-fastest-camera-distinguishes-and-isolates-rogue-cancer-cells-20120706

<comment><USER2> See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4217645></comment>


Verizon launching $80 5GB prepaid data plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/21/verizon-launching-80-5gb-prepaid-data-plan-next-month-fivespot/ <comment><USER2> Holy crap. US cell phone plans are starting to almost get as expensive as Canadian ones. I don't like this trend. I was hoping Canadian plans would move closer to US!!</comment>


Unity, Tegra Zone and Google freebies for devs: Gaming on Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/personal-tech/138703/unity-tegra-zone-and-google-freebies-devs-gaming-android <comment><USER2> I wonder what the percentage of money spent/made on the Apple app store is going to games? And what percentage of that is going to the usual suspects e.g. EA, rather than indie developers?

It strikes me that this market is the least defensible for Apple, due to its reliance on cross-platform tools rather than iOS specific languages or toolkits. And by courting this market, via Nvidia, Unity, Flash, the Playstation Suite and giving more prominence to NDK over Dalvik, Google could very easily steal a great deal of it in a surprisingly short time frame.

On Apple's side they have the first-mover advantage and a market of (pre-)teens with iPod Touches and a more homogenous hardware target. I wonder how long they can hold out?</comment>


An Overview of Robot Cameras in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://www.strangecompany.org/will-your-next-cameraperson-be-a-robot-maybe-yes/#

<comment><AUTHOR> Resubmitted following the HN discussion on the SoloShot -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9878275)

and in accordance with the discussion the other day that made it clear reposts were OK if the original post didn't generate discussion -

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9864254)</comment>


Why Does Facebook Want to Suck the Fun Out of Unfriending? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/dan-macsai/popwise/evolution-murder-facebook?partner=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+(Fast+Company+Headlines)&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> I see it as nothing more than an expression of the transitory and meaningless nature of most online relationships. Facebook is simply afraid of losing user base because the automated tools make it so easy to leave.

In Facebook's defense I must say that any web service or startup would probably complain if another service made it easy for users to destroy their account, especially if the content associated with the account was an indexable source of traffic, and destroying the account (unfriending) would possibly hurt other users.

<comment><USER3> How is that a defense? "Others would also suck" is not a good argument to make.

Any web service should give the user full control of their data. Leaving should be easy, not hard. (And it is hard. I seem to only ever use the help pages of web services when I want to leave.)

<comment> loup-vaillant The only reasonable way to have full control of your (personal) data is to have it a home, stored in hardware you own (or at least fully control). That means no Facebook and no Gmail, unless you trust them to not use you data for _anything_ you didn't expressly specified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like seppukoo does in fact spam all your friends. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to them if that weren't the case.

<comment><USER5> Yes, because "I quit being a database entry and started being a human again" is far more spammy than "please help me tend to my virtual farm."

/sarcasm

<comment><USER6> lol!

Hey in yovile you gota send messages to friends for cash. So... What everyone winds up doing is sending "asd" messages to everyone on their friend list every day.

Sure, thats not spam, its "asd".

<comment><USER7> one feature I just found out about & feel compelled to share with everyone I encounter is that you can ban entire applications from your feed. you just click the hide button and you have the opportunity to ban either a user or an app. ban the app & you still see that person's updates, but nothing about their silly farm.

after a couple days zapping spam, facebook becomes about 100x more compelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recall the grassroots "Delete your MySpace Day" from a few years ago. While it is likely that relatively few people actually deleted their accounts, the meme distributed the implicit message that MySpace might not be cool anymore. Since then, we've seen many articles about how it has become an online ghetto of sorts. Although Facebook is clearly more entrenched and better in so many ways than MySpace, it must be scared of such a backlash. Perhaps they are using C&D letters to quell such grassroots uprisings?

</comment><comment><USER9> it just doesn't want people giving their facebook logins out

<comment><USER10> Yet they'll ask for your email password to take a look at your contacts.

Doubtful, and hypocritical if true.

<comment><USER11> OP is exactly right. Facebook wants to be a one-way valve, much like Microsoft.

They also don't like the idea of people "polluting" the social graph, either by adding spurious contacts a la MySpace or by removing random nodes from the network.

<comment><USER12> But adding random friends just to add to your Mafia Wars gang is alright?

<comment><USER11> No. They hate it. In fact, they're making it against the TOS and adding a special "game friend" feature in Q1 2010.

[http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Policy_Example...](http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Policy_Examples_and_Explanations#Latest_Policy_News)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i feel a bit of unabashed satisfaction in unfriending, if only because of the addition by subtraction.

</comment><comment><USER14> Tasteless and a tiny bit offensive, but definitely not worthy of a C&D, in my opinion.

<comment><USER15> Facebook explicitly stated that they will never inform people if you unfriend someone, this app does an end-run around that, of course they're going to disallow it.</comment></comment>


Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/evolution-of-multicellularity/

<comment><USER3> Physics might be pure, but Biology is f __king amazing.

Makes me ponder my own place in the scheme of things - made up of many multicellular components, myself a component of a society, itself one of many that make up the Human species, one of many that form the ecology of this planet

<comment><USER4> One might say that it's a super computer. What's the question again?

<comment><USER5> > Is the universe actually a giant quantum computer? According to Seth > Lloyd—Professor of Quantum-Mechanical Engineering at MIT and originator of > the first technologically feasible design for a working quantum computer—the > answer is yes

[http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Universe-Quantum- Computer-...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Universe-Quantum-Computer- Scientist/dp/1400040922)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was this completely new, or was it some sort of latent ability that was brought out by environmental conditioning?

<comment><USER7> It was a latent ability. Some yeast already has the ability to make multi cellular colonies.

When this was first published (on June 23 - not sure why it's back in the news) there was a section of criticism saying they should have used an organism without that ability. But I don't see this section in the wired article.

For example:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/06/23/yeast-c...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/06/23/yeast- can-evolve-into-multicellular-organisms-in-a-few-short-months/)

[http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/331789/title/Mult...](http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/331789/title/Multicellular_life_arises_in_a_test_tube)

<comment><USER8> I didn't quite know how to interpret "latent ability". Reading the article, apparently yeast _used to_ be multicellular, which is a pretty valid criticism of this experiment having meaningful results in terms of how single-celled organisms evolved into multicelluar organisms.

<comment><USER9> This comment seems to assume that evolution can only go in one direction - from simple forms of life to more complex ones. If a complex form of life evolves to become simpler and then evolves again to become more complex, then there's just as much to be learned from following a line of evolution that increases complexity.

<comment><USER7> If you look at those "simpler" forms of life you find that the genes are not gone, but rather they are disabled.

An example is Neoteny - the genes for adult forms are still there, but are unused.

That's why I don't think much of this experiment - I bet the genes for multi cellular life were already there, and just needed reactivation - <USER2> happened randomly (perhaps due to environment, or perhaps they always activate, but just for short times, and this experiment selected for those with the longest or easiest to trigger activation), but no new genes were needed.

To do this experiment properly do a DNA sequencing of the original and final forms. And I'm actually quite surprised that they didn't do that - wouldn't it be very useful to know which genes create multi cellular life? But I bet the genetic diff between them is tiny - just enough to activate genes that are already there in the starting yeast.

<comment><USER10> DNA isn't quite exactly like a program that you compile into a living organism. The conditions for its reproduction and expression are partially determined by its environment- so a shift from single celled from multi-celled life might not be able to be pinned on any particular gene or set of genes as a direct cause. You might end up with what is essentially the same sequence, with different parts now triggered by a slightly different proportion of a particular protein present within the cellular membrane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it "muliticellular life" or "multicellular" life (i.e. group of independent yeasts actually)?

<comment><USER12> The article actually says that some cells forfeit the ability to procreate, and there is true division of labor among them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is wonderful. It is so simple, and takes a short enough amount of time, that it would make a fantastic lab experiment for high school students. Every day, remove the heaviest yeast and place it in a new environment and feed it. After 2 months, see that the yeast has formed into a larger organism.

If this is highly repeatable, it could have a great role for science education.

</comment><comment><USER14> An honest question: aren't there potentially dangerous repercussions in breeding multicelular organisms like that? Could an innofensive organism become dangerous for us if it suddenly became more efficient and specialized?

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't that have happened naturally already over the thousands of years we have used yeasts?

<comment><USER14> But I don't think they'll just stick with yeasts cultures after this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If it was so simple to do in 60 days I wonder why they don't question the several billion years.

<comment><USER17> What do you mean? Obviously, multicellular life forms _did_ evolve in those several billion years.

<comment><USER16> From the article: _"An evolutionary transition that took several billion years to occur in nature has happened in a laboratory, and it needed just 60 days."_

When these transitions only took 60 days, why not take another look at the 'several billion years'? Maybe life did form much faster under certain conditions.

<comment><USER17> Ah. Sorry, I didn't quite understand you the first time.

 _Maybe life did form much faster under certain conditions._

You mean multicellular life here, obviously. Yeah, as the experiment shows, it probably did form fast under the right conditions. It's all about genes. If being a part of a multicellular organism allows one cell's genes to spread more rapidly, than that cell is going to have an incentive to be in a group.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Tools - <AUTHOR> http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/

<comment><USER2> The fact that Quora is on there but Stackoverflow is not makes me question the veracity of the entire list.

<comment><USER3> added Quora to the list. anything else missing?

<comment><USER2> I think you read me backwards. What I meant was that stackoverflow (and all the other stacks) are missing, and I find Quora seriously lacking, so the fact that it is on there at all makes me question the quality bar for the entire list.

<comment><USER3> thx. Stackoverflow added.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mildly interesting list. I would much rather see a short review / recommended use of the tools that are listed here. A couple of tools I would recommend would be Dropbox (great file sharing tool). Google apps (great way to setup a corporate email server and various other things). I have use Balsamiq to prototype interfaces and it was a pleasant experience. Github is great for sharing code. Heroku was very easy to setup and use also.

<comment><USER3> google apps added. Github, Heroku, Balsmiq and Dropbox are already on the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about removing "startup" from the title and just call it "tools"?

</comment><comment><USER6> Thank you for the list! It shows not only the obvious and known choices but pretty interesting alternatives. I just found out which new analytics I gonna test in my website.

</comment><comment><USER7> This was working last night but now throws a 404, does anyone know if the post name changed and the link needs to be updated or if this was taken down on purpose?

</comment><comment><USER8> Steve,

Django: open source framework (under Web Development Tools)

Django is to Python what Rails is to Ruby

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER9> Any experience here with the 'lean startup group'? Worth your while?

</comment><comment><USER10> Hadn't heard of Scalr before. Anybody using it? Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER11> The link appears to be broken now.

</comment><comment><USER12> missing Omnigraffle from the wireframing tools list

</comment><comment><USER13> Another attempt at the same, not as complete in some regards but also includes billing [http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/18/startup-toolbox-a- re...](http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/02/18/startup-toolbox-a-resource-for- startups/)</comment>


Traveller's Tales - <AUTHOR> http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/travellers-tales/ <comment><USER2> I was hoping this was a story about the video game developer _Traveller 's Tales_ [0].

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller's_Tales](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller's_Tales)</comment>


Tim Sweeney on the twilight of the GPU - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/gpu-sweeney-interview.ars

<comment><USER3> I think he's right, but since his company sells engines he's also got a vested interest in the conversion to software rendering coming to pass.

It's a hell of a lot easier to build up a passable 3D engine from scratch using DirectX + Shaders etc than it will ever be starting from scratch and implementing those same algorithms in software. This will spread the field a lot - the best engine developers will be able to do amazing stuff with the complete control over rendering pipeline software 3D will provide, so the gap between the best engines and average in house ones will increase even further.

Which is a great thing if you develop and license out one of the top 3D engines on the market.

<comment><USER4> And for the general programmer using it - he won't notice much of a difference in what the libraries do under the cover.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Intel will be providing a reference DirectX driver for Larrabee, which I believe they're considering making open source, so for low end engines it'll be business as usual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A return to software rendering could present an interesting opportunity for Linux. A major barrier against using Linux is the lack of availability of A-list games. If a game no longer requires DirectX, then it would seem to be an easier task to port it to many operating systems. It would not be a magic fix, but it would be one more step toward the possibility of a mass market Linux on the desktop.

<comment><USER6> _If a game no longer requires DirectX, then it would seem to be an easier task to port it to many operating systems._

I don't think this is what is holding back Linux games. Many game companies already design their games to not rely on DirectX -- none of the games on the PS3, Wii, Mac, or various portables require DirectX.

But they will only port to platforms where they think they can make money. Linux's low gamer population doesn't help, nor does the "everything's free" user expectation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _...the 3D hardware revolution sparked by 3dfx in 1997 will prove to only be a 10-year hiatus from the natural evolution of CPU-driven rendering._

[http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/W/wheel-of- reincarnation.htm...](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/W/wheel-of- reincarnation.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> I think it will be interesting to see the variety of rendering paradigms that come from this, but on the other side, it seems like the transition will be a bit of a nightmare - having to produce games with a both DirectX engine and a software one to cope with two different sets of hardware. It would also be nice if game developers put more effort into the gameplay than the graphics, but I guess I'll be waiting a while longer for that...

As an aside, has anyone tried getting something like erlang to run on a GPU? I think it would be useful to be able to harness all the computing power of one (or more) PCs with a common (high level) language which is designed for that purpose.

<comment><USER3> Edit: Oops, 20 minutes typing that out and I realised I've misread your question - I read it as rendering with Erlang, not Erlang on GPU.

Actually, even with hand rolled C you'd have a hard time getting real time rendering performance out of a network of computers. 10-100 white boxes have fearsome throughput, but their latency will probably never be suitable for real time use.

The first painful problem is the processing power of a GPU versus a CPU. A general rule of thumb is that a GPU (or in general, a many core, stream processor) will have more than 10x the peak FLOPS per transistor. The QX9775 versus the 8800 Ultra according to Wikipedia is 51 gflops versus 576 - <USER2> note that the 8800 Ultra cost significantly less when released!

Then there's the suitability of the two processor types for rendering. Graphics cards have the benefit of specialised instructions (think SSE) to help with things like antialiasing, I believe Larrabbee will have quite a few of these not found on x86. Then there's the cache model - stream processors are designed for the data to stream through the processor (hence the name), not for random access. This is exactly what you want for rendering, and I think you'd probably find you'd get more cache misses on a modern Intel CPU because you can't precache from memory into cache. Let's call it a 3x penalty between these two problems. I have no idea what it really is.

So we're at requiring 30 QX9775s for each 8800 Ultra, which would probably be 30 skulltrail (2xQX9775) versus an 8800 SLI setup.

Now, rendering at 60 fps you've got to render in 16ms. This actually turns out to not be much time in a networked environment.

First, you've got to push out all of the data that you would have pushed onto the graphics card over PCI-X. 32x runs at 8gb/s, which is 8 times faster than Gig-E, but you have to distribute the information to 30 computers. The fastest way to do this is to stream the information to one other machine, which in turn starts streaming to another, and so on - so you're transfering at 500mbps (or 1gbps, I think, if in full duplex?). This is far less efficient than just using PCI-X, though! If you've got to send a lot of data, you're probably screwed. 16ms at 500mbps is 1 megabyte - that is enough to stream new rotation/positions for preloaded geometry, but it's not a lot of triangles (considering the processing power of your setup), and it's nothing in terms of textures. And that's if just the streaming out portion eats up your whole 16ms - you'll probably want to keep it down in the 1-2ms range, which means a few hundred kb, at the theoretical throughput of the network!

Now, each of the machines render their rectangle. Note that this doesn't scale linearly. Imagine rendering just one pixel - you've still got to process all of the geometry that can potentially modify that pixel. So each of your 30 machines are only going to be rendering 1/30 of the game, but they'll be far less than 30x faster. Amdahl's law sometimes pops up in graphics, too!

Now, you've got to send the already rendered frame buffer back to machine that's rendering. You'd probably do this as 32 bit frame (you want at least one bit for the alpha, because you've got to have some way to mask, and picking a colour for the mask means running through the whole image to find a colour you've not used - there will always be one in 24 bit for <4096x4096).

Now, depending on how you're splitting the rendering up, this is going to add up to 9 megabytes at 1920x1200 and... oops, I should have checked this before I even started, because _that's too big to send back_. You can only send those at 10fps on GigE uncompressed, and there's no way you'll be able to do anything except RLE in 16ms - which, in general 3D rendering, won't do much.

Note that PCI-X doesn't require this send - since the graphics card runs the display - but even on an SLI setup, they use a special interconnect for communication between the cards since PCI-X itself isn't fast enough.

Wow, that was fun to write, but I doubt anyone is going to read it! Readers digest version:

* 10x more FLOPS on a graphics card

* 3x the throughput per FLOP due to graphics specific optimisation (this is a wild guess)

* 30x the machine requirements, except that even 3D rendering does not scale linearly

* 60fps requires 16ms rendering, which allows for just 1mb of network traffic at GigE (or 2mb full duplex)

* You're sending back a 9mb frame buffer rendering a 1920x1200 image

* Fail.

Now, the picture would probably change if you used 10gbps ethernet, and put 4x larrabee cards in each of a smaller number of boxes...

<comment><USER9> _Now, rendering at 60 fps you've got to render in 16ms. This actually turns out to not be much time in a networked environment._

Not true. Human reaction times are 180 to 200 milliseconds for visual stimuli. That's the limit on your pipeline. You still need to render once every 16 ms, but it can take longer for each frame to get there than that.

<comment><USER3> Reaction times might be 180-200 milliseconds, but a delay in rendering (as in a pipeline delay, so 60fps rendering but 180ms delay) will add to the reaction time latency, it won't be masked by it. If you delay rendering by 180ms, then the screen will change 180ms after you hit a key, and you'll only notice the result after your reaction time for a total of 360ms.

I'd bet even 50ms will feel a bit sluggish subconsciously (people won't like your controls but they won't know why), but delaying by 180-200ms will make your character noticably lag input.

I could easily whip something up to simulate it if you'd like.

<comment><USER9> That's true, but my main point was you don't really have time to react to something being 'out of sync'. It might feel a little sluggish, but only just. (I suspect)

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I think you're probably underestimating the impact. I've made a little test program that you can play with yourself - if you've got a Windows machine around at all:

<http://www.rocksolidgames.com/latencytest.exe>

Source is at:

<http://www.rocksolidgames.com/latencytest.bmx> (written in BlitzMax)

I can't notice 1 frame of latency (16ms per frame), but 2 doesn't feel quite right, and by 4 frames (~64ms), the controls clearly feel lagged to me. Of course, considering my day job I play a lot of games and troubleshoot problems like this, so I'm probably more sensitive than average to something like this. My gut feeling is that anything over 40-50ms is unacceptable. So you could have a render pipeline three stages deep at 60fps, but there's no way I'd go deeper than that. Also, if you've got any external latency in a game (i.e. multiplayer net play), the budget is already blown and any kind of latency at all is unacceptable.

<comment><USER9> Wow, thanks for this demonstration. There are still a lot of surprises in sensation, it seems.

<comment><USER3> You're welcome! It was educational for me too, I had never tested render latency in isolation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is a bunch of bunk. Given the current speed advantage of the GPU over the CPU, the more likely scenario is that the GPU will become more generalized ie: NVIDIA CUDA.

The article is right we are returning to an earlier paradigm but it isn't the CPU. It's having to have a knowledge of your hardware's capabilities and how to program it for good performance.</comment>


5 Times That People Claimed to Be Real-Life Time Travelers - <AUTHOR> https://io9.gizmodo.com/5-times-that-people-claimed-to-be-real-life-time-travel-1822885932?rev=1518469500469&utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_twitter&utm_source=gizmodo_twitter&utm_medium=socialflow <comment><USER2> If you go back in time by six months, the earth is on the other side of the sun so you die without air - unless the flat earth is the center of the universe, then you would be OK.

<comment><USER3> Unless your time travel method is gravitationaly bound (then you probably just end up inside something or x distance in the air).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Generate regex from a set of string - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ibnuh/regex-generator <comment><USER2> Good job, I made something similar (generate all strings from a regex) for [https://namegrep.com](https://namegrep.com).

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://github.com/devongovett/regexgen](https://github.com/devongovett/regexgen)

</comment><comment><USER4> Would be easier to use if I could add a batch of strings at once.

<comment><AUTHOR> good idea, I will implement that</comment></comment>


Vacuum Tubes - <AUTHOR> https://www.jj-electronic.com/en/vacuum-tubes <comment><USER2> Is this an add? What is the point of this post please?</comment>


Ideas for Justin.tv RFS from JTV - <AUTHOR> http://blog.justin.tv/2009/10/y-combinator-wants-justintv-api-ideas.html

<comment><USER2> I worked as a director on (don't shoot me) Big Brother TV show. We had numerous live feeds (40+) with capability of recording only two channels which consisted of two cameras each at the time. It was of premium importance to me, as a director, to choose which streams we would record. When I delegated to my switchers which cameras and persons should be on streams I would bounce myself between other "stories" developing in the house.

How is this relevant to justin.tv? Live television/streaming would be impossible for me to do without a 'tool' I had, which was loggers. Loggers were basically two persons, one delegated to each stream that would vaguely transcribe what was happening on the stream via simple logging software.

Logger would watch two cameras (master plan and close ups that were chosen by me and operated by switcher and remote camera operator, or cameraman behind mirrors) from the stream and listen to it and then would hit Alt-m in a textarea sort of control to enter current SMTP timestamp and start writing what was going on or transcribing a dialog.

I think this kind of primitive, yet powerful feature for logging what is going on can be of use for justin.tv in more ways then one - lectures, spiders could crawl through text, one could skim through a transcription and have SMTP links into the prerecorded video.

Of course, not every video will have willing logger to do so - but premium content would most probably have. Look at avid pirates transcribing subtitles for pirated movies and stuff. I can only imagine someone transcribing a webcast lecture, or a company sponsored live event being transcribed.

just my 2c.

edit: Now that I think about it - justin.tv could be ideal platform for casting. Private one to one sessions with casting apprentices or even director should not be a problem with remote cam, since casting is usually one person with lame camera and one person in front of that camera acting out directions from the person behind camera or making poses, headshots and stuff like that. You could have an option to make it somewhat open, so people can vote who they like most and stuff like that. This is more of a product idea than API/tool. I have much more, I'll stop now since this was not a question. But, you smart guys here - someone should build something like this on top of justin.tv (or them themselves) and offer someone like shots.net a percentage for marketing.

<comment><USER2> SMPTE, not SMTP(!) - what is wrong with me :) sorry

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Real interactive gaming_

 _Customer service application_

 _Video dating_

The real problem here is always latency. Even if you're not doing Onlive-style stuff, videoconferencing is hard. I doubt the standard Flash toolchain (webcam + Flash + etc) can do it all with acceptable latency. Current Justin.TV only works IMO because you're communicating via chat in one direction and via video in the other; a real two-way communication link gets really awkward even at 500ms latency. When people do videoconferencing, they expect it to be like their cell phone, not like a call to the moon.

We at x264 have been working on this for some time for... a certain company that wishes to stay anonymous. Right now you can get down to about 9 millisecond total end-to-end latency for 800x600 video (not counting client and network latency, just server-side), which works pretty damn well.

But dropping encoder latency isn't enough; you need to have a system built around it that has tolerable latency. VLC, for example, doesn't; it's not made for two-way communication, and so it has a 5-15 second internal buffer. It ends up requiring a lot of custom-rolled toolchains, even if the basic libraries already do what is necessary.

<comment><USER4> I think you slightly underestimate JTV's performance, as well as the level to which it can be customized...

EDIT: concede the point to DarkShikari, though I still think you could make very viable companies based on those ideas and JTV technology.

<comment><USER3> I think you underestimate the difficulty of getting low latency video connections.

For example, Flash by default buffers _at least 8 frames_ for decoding. This means you instantly have 1/3 of a second of latency for a 24fps stream.* Most live-streaming encoders use a VBV buffer size of about 1-2 seconds--very few are even designed to go below about half a second.

When you need to go low latency, every millisecond adds up, and it becomes painful fast.

*There is a (very ugly) hack to somewhat reduce this. I don't think I'm allowed to talk about it due to my current contractual obligations, but if you're experienced in video streaming, perhaps you can figure it out.

EDIT: I agree, it's possible, but JTV might have to modify their internals to make it possible.

<comment><USER5> First thought "Decouple sound from video."

Next thought "send video directly between computers."

But for a truly ugly hack, double each frame on the client side so flash thinks it's 48FPS video.

<comment><USER3> _But for a truly ugly hack, double each frame on the client side so flash thinks it's 48FPS video._

You're getting close ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here are some useful links for people thinking about building stuff with the justin.tv api:

<http://apiwiki.justin.tv>

<http://www.xbmc.org/trac/browser/trunk/xbmc/lib/libRTMP>

<http://ffmpeg.org>

<http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html>

<http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/>

<http://videolan.org>

I work at Justin.tv on the api, btw.

</comment><comment><USER7> These are from a list we made over the summer while getting ready to launch our API. Now that the RFS is official, it seemed like a good time to share them with everyone and solicit some more ideas.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see live gigs use this stuff.

</comment><comment><USER9> The one about "real video games" is extremely interesting (and enticing). However, most of the game ideas I have now are set in AUs or require supernatural abilities. I'm going to think about a good game idea for this kind of gameplay.

Perhaps something like Augmented Reality games using the video feed from your opponent??? Imagine your character having to parkour through your opponents living room...

</comment><comment><USER10> The hardware broadcaster was my suggestion. It should be dead-simple, with inputs for video, power, and ethernet - configurable through a web interface, just like a router.

If you can make it cheap enough (< $100 would be my guess), we have a lot of gamers who I believe would buy one. You wouldn't have to write much software - for example vlc can already stream to jtv.

<comment><USER11> _"vlc can already stream to jtv"_

Are you guys looking for hardware or software encoding? I thought you were talking about something like an FPGA or ASIC.

<comment><USER3> The real problem with ASIC solutions is that they generally have terrible compression; you usually don't get good results until you get up to the range of tens of thousands of dollars (for real broadcast encoders). Combined with the utter lack of upload bandwidth that most users have, this could become a serious problem.

The best option I could see in the near future is ARM's recently-announced 2Ghz quad-core CPU; it's low-power enough and hopefully cheap enough to stick in a small box but fast enough to run a good encoder at a good resolution. But even that would probably put the cost well above $100, at which point you might as well start selling capture cards and using peoples' CPUs instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Keep in mind as you brainstorm that there are additional API's coming out, including a pay-per-view API, subscriptions, etc. Also integrated ad networks if desired. Monetization shouldn't be a big problem moving forward. I'm sure there are some brilliant ideas waiting to be discovered involving PPV...</comment>


13% success rate on build big custom software programs for government - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/waldojaquith/status/1225144152641474560 <comment><USER2> I work for a state government and we've actually implemented exactly the solution outlined in this post. The business side of things still created that big document, but then we have a product owner who broke that down into things that the development team can consume. As a developer I can just look at what's next on the list and implement it how I want. There is still a lot of red tape, but it is definitely getting better.</comment>


My Job As A Pre-Launch Startup CEO Was To Buy Sandwiches - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/30/pre-launch-startup-ceo/ <comment><USER2> Co-founder (technical) of a 3 person pre-launch startup here.

Before I didn't believe in non-technical co-founders, but they're really useful. They're not just "idea guys" they're non-technical co-founders, and I like to call them hustlers, a person who does everything they can to make it happen.

I like them (my two co-founders) to do most of the market research, legal stuff, blog, buzz, and do some usability testing. One of my co-founders' dad owns an office, so it's better to work from there, the other one knows some design so he's hugely helpful in the technical side too. I sometimes even code with them and they give me ideas, since I like to teach they're learning some programming too!

Someday they're going to learn programming so I can avoid the shit I get all day at day job: "Hey, so it's just migrating the file - he means database with data from an external API - right? It's only a 2 minute job..." (a guy who has never coded professionally in his entire life).

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a million things a pre-launch startup CEO can do before launch... I've listed some of them on my blog: <http://swombat.com/2011/5/30/what-before- launch>

(note: the blog post is not on the index yet - it will auto-post in about 50 minutes)

<comment><USER4> blog post on hacker news here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2599755>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Heh, I used to do everything at our startup, from painting the walls to cleaning the toilet (and vacuuming our office and making sure the elevator wasn't in a ghastly state).

Now that we run for 3 years, I don't have to do these jobs anymore. But from time to time the need arises, due to unforeseen circumstances or something like that, and I don't find arranging lunch (or supplying the toilets with toilet paper) a menial job. It all adds up to the end result, which is what we all strive for: a good experience for our clients and visitors.

But usually I work on our in-house CRM app, and a few dozens of Python glue scripts to make the database flow happen.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to add to that our CEO presents himself as 'the janitor'. This is to avoid people trying to cling to him and asking all kinds of things he can't fulfill anyway. He dresses very casually, so you couldn't tell him apart of a true janitor. And anyway, he wouldn't be afraid to do real janitor jobs (just like I ain't afraid of doing 'em). In the end, our CEO tries to make himself as invisible and unnecessary as possible. I think this is a good strategy, since it leaves him with more time to spend with his family and young kids ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> $20K in legal fees to get incorporated?!

<comment><USER7> He was saying the law firm was willing to defer _up to_ $20K in fees until he raised a round.

That might include drafting/reviewing things like articles of incorporation, corporate bylaws, vesting agreements, NDAs, IP assignment, contractor and employee paperwork, etc. It's depressingly easy to run up $20K in legal fees at $500/hr.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I hope thats what he meant or else we definitely short-changed our law firm!

<comment><USER8> The actual corp setup should cost $1-3k assuming you use fairly standard docs to start. There are some overpriced firms which want $5k.

This is independent of deferral, although generally the more overpriced firms are more willing to defer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Spencer Fry from CarbonMade.com has provided a good list in the past:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=779378>

<http://spencerfry.com/whats-a-non-programmer-to-do>

</comment><comment><USER10> Seth hit the nail on the head with this one. I didn't buy sandwiches, I cooked chicken from the mexican meat market.

</comment><comment><USER11> My outlook on this comes from a quote attributed to Steve Jobs: "When you're the janitor, the reasons matter. But somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, the reasons stop mattering."

Your job as the CEO is to make sure work gets done, regardless of what happens. Doesn't matter if you're a $1B company or a 3 person startup. Get. It. Done.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would have thought that the job for a pre-launch startup CEO was to find customers.

<comment><USER13> Yep, me too. "Eyeball Collector."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really liked the sentiments portrayed by the CEO in this article. ~Came off a little humble, genuine and candid. (this CEO probably does well in the Waiter Rule/Test)

 _""..I began to wonder, "Should I even be here?" Frankly, it didn't feel very good to sit there and watch Elaine and Sandy working away while I did comparatively little. I could just as well have been playing Frisbee..."_

A lot of people feel this way. Especially, in the begining where the cadence and rhythm is inconsistent and unpredicatble. (for techie cofounders, business cofounders, and support staff) __very hard to coach someone and tell them that we need you.

Its very telling when this moment comes in the minds of the cofounders and/or staff; the way they deal with this is a good indicator how they'll deal with tougher and bigger things in the future. This moment of "Should I even be here?" is definitely one of the tough milestones that each individual must personally overcome. BTW, something they dont teach in an MBA program.

</comment><comment><USER15> sorry but what makes this person any more fit to lead after launch - as if the product itself becomes less important?

<comment><USER16> That _greatly_ depends on your conception of the word "lead." [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstractio...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstraction.html)

<comment><USER15> joel isn't describing managers here but enablers. programmers are dolly parton in his analogy (which is damn weird) and "managers" are basically roadies and the like. again i'm simply asking how there is any point in time when (to return to dollywood) someone performing the mic check is optimal for leading the band.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "My Job As A Pre-Lunch Startup CEO Was To Buy Sandwiches"

FTFY</comment>


Ask HN: How to change lifestyle to reduce negative environmental footprint? - <AUTHOR> I'm a student and would like to work towards more environment-friendly lifestyle. There are currently two problems with this:
1. There's a whole market built around overpriced "vegan" goods, bamboo toothbrushes, etc., everybody saying their product is _the_ one that will save the world.
2. There's a lot of contradictory info; e.g. somebody saying that paper bags in markets are a great move, while others are pointing out that the production of said bags is x times worse than that of plastic bags when it comes to carbon footprint.
I don't know who to believe, and there's nobody I know who is well informed on these issues. But maybe somebody here could help me build a list of things/actions (or share his/her own) that help to reduce one's carbon footprint or to preserve the environment in other way. I'm sure many people here care about these issues and try to fight them, and thus are better informed than my peers.
(e.g. 1. Don't use car for <5km rides 2. Don't use plastic bags when buying fruit, use reusable linen ones instead 3. ... ) <comment><USER2> Some of the big ones go against the grain of the American suburban ethos:

Live somewhere where you don't have to drive at all.

Don't fly on airplanes.

Choose multi-family housing with central heating and air, the larger the building the better (both because larger heating/AC systems are more efficient and because the lower surface area to volume ratio helps reduce loss). Minimize your use of heat/AC and hot water.

Purchase only produce grown locally (shipping produce is very carbon- inefficient).

Buy less stuff overall.</comment>


The first article about Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/2/18/harvard-bonds-on-facebook-website-harvard/

<comment><USER2> Zuckerberg's hair hasn't even changed since way back then... how many years ago was that? 6 years! Fuck, the world moves fast now. From college student to CEO of one of the most used websites AND a movie made about you, that will probably win a few Oscars.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Best part ;) "Director of Residential Computing Kevin S. Davis '98 said that the popularity of thefacebook.com will not ruin the College's plans to create an official Internet facebook by the end of the spring semester."

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny timing: I just got around to downloading my facebook data last night _, and was looking back nostalgically at the first comments on my wall.

_ \- Facebook doesn't actually export data going all the way back.</comment>


Ask HN: Best resources for learning to code from scratch - <AUTHOR> I'm helping my partner and a close friend kick off learning to code in their spare time from scratch (know how to use a computer but never even opened terminal). Their goal is to be proficient at front end programming. I attempted to get them started myself, but let's just say that I'm not the most proficient teacher and it's likely better for my relationship that I don't.<p>There's a ton of great content out there, and I'm a little overwhelmed with options so I'm hoping folks can point me in the right direction for recourses that can get them started <comment><USER2> I don't know about resources, but I have an advice for your friends: be patient. If the end goal is to be proficient at front end programming, and they're learning in their spare time, it is going to take quite a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, thanks for the reminder

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Based on my research I'm leaning towards [https://www.freecodecamp.org/](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) but am completely open to other options</comment>


Noob stories on HN - <AUTHOR> https://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories

<comment><USER2> A word of warning to others: if you visit that page and actively flag, you may lose your flagging privileges. It happened to lots of us here when the Snowden story first broke - a lot of folks who regularly visited /newest to upvote/flag incoming stories lost their flagging privileges due to legitimately flagging the duplicates/blog spam/crap about the Snowden leaks. I can remember going to page 2 and 3 on /newest and 25 of the 30 stories shown would be dupes or crap about Snowden that was unworthy of HN. We got "punished" for doing what we thought was the right thing. And FYI - there is no timeout for lost flagging privileges that I know of.

I suspect that > 50% of the stories on /noobstories are flag-worthy but do yourself a favor and just flag 1/10th of the stories you think are bad/unworthy. It's an unfortunate side effect of the flagging/downvoting policy here at HN.

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth, I lost flagging privileges around that time, and appear to have got them back. There may be a timeout based on magnitude of "illegitimate" flagging or something like that.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I've since had mine restored. However, for mine at least, it happened the day after I posted a comment much like the one above. I suspect it was manual in my case. It could be that they reviewed/changed a whole bunch of people who lost the flagging privilege around that time as well, or it could be a timeout - I don't really know. I just know that, given how quickly my flagging privileges were restored after I made a similar comment in a popular thread, it appeared to be related to my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)

<comment><USER5> There's also the "over" one which allows you to set a points threshold.

Example: [https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=50](https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=50)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Idea for pg: Consider preventing accounts under a certain age (and/or karma) submitting stories. The limit could be _really_ low (say, 24 hours and/or 5 karma) and I'm guessing it'd knock off 90% of the spam/trash problem..?

<comment><USER7> I would personally feel that that wouldn't help as much, as many of the new accounts are just people wishing to express their (perhaps unpopular) opinion without putting their main account and thus themselves in negative light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there somewhere that describes all of the hidden features of HN? I hadn't seen these lists before and didn't know about the >250 karma colour changing. I assume there must be more features hidden somewhere too.

<comment> mkr-hn You get a reliable, safe, and fuel efficient jetpack at 4000.

<comment><USER9> The best is getting pg to follow you on Twitter after 10k

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How are so many of these dead? If they are from new accounts, how have the accounts been banned so quickly?

<comment><USER11> Some sites are autokilled. For example, because they create new accounts to send spam. A few years ago pg posted a list and it was longest than I expected.

Most of the URL shorteners are autokilled, because someone can hide a banned site using it.

And I guess that Youtube has some kind of penalty, because there are a lot of off-topic submissions and many of them are dead, but not all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What is this? I don't quite get it. Looks like a page of stories that simply didn't make it to the front page...

<comment><USER13> It appears to be a page of stories with new users.

Possibly intended as a quasi-response to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a response to that story but I accidentally discovered /noobstories while searching for a link to the feature suggestion thread for a comment in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7445761). I then discovered [https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists) while skimming the feature suggestion thread.

Funny how I missed those two for years despite finding four out the six things on /lists individually. Is /lists linked to from a static page on HN?

<comment><USER14> It's the leftmost link in the footer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now _that 's_ embarrassing. Apparently I never bothered clicking that link. Maybe "User/comment lists" would have been more encouraging, if a bit clumsy- looking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Man has seizue while skydiving (survives) - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/adventure/activities/man-has-seizure-while-skydiving-survives-150304.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Something I want to know from someone who's knowledgeable about skydiving is what would have happened if the guy hadn't regained consciousness and been able to "safely land his parachute"?

i.e. parachute is open and the diver is still unconscious as he lands.</comment>


How to make Google index AJAX content (with Django) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pornark.com/ajax-indexing-with-django

<comment><USER2> I'd love to read this, but unfortunately my work firewall blocks your domain as a 'sex' site!

Yet another aspect to bear in mind when choosing domain names, I suppose. Between IE6 and the 'domain filtering for your safety' corporate IT has an amazing capacity to make life harder for the rest of us.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really ? this is the technical blog from the developers of a porn website (no porn in that page anyhow of course).. so actually your firewall is doing a good job.

We may chose another name for the technical blog. I think if you try <http://pornark.posterous.com/ajax-indexing-with-django> posterous should redirect you to the same address so.. can't solve it right now :( sorry

<comment><USER2> Ha! Given the context I just assumed a false positive. It's not like it doesn't throw enough of those.

No worries, I'll just read it from my home machine at some point. Most stuff at work is .net anyway, but I've used a little Python at times and like to stay in touch.</comment></comment></comment>


Beware the 'Buyback Economy' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/beware-the-mother-of-all-credit-bubbles/2018/06/08/940f467c-69af-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html <comment><USER2> Apple - and much of the hugely profitable tech sector - is probably a bad example to pick on. It's worth noting, though, that the corporate leverage the author is concerned about is widespread among all business sectors.

Personally I worry a bit that we've run into a sort of soft ceiling on the economy where the biggest moneymakers are causing creative destruction via software (Intuit to Accountants, Uber to Cab Drivers, etc) but that we aren't seeing the kind of widespread real economic growth (ie productivity gains) with these shifts that historically accompanied waves of industrialization. The pie isn't growing as much as certain players are finding ways to expand their slices of it at the expense of others.

Perhaps the above is true, perhaps not, I don't know. But it seems to me that the entire system we have is predicated on steady macroeconomic "growth" to function. In one way or another we all depend on the stock market to climb about 10% a year so we can retire some day and have savings to live off of, etc. And when that growth isn't happening via the old mechanism of expanding industry with solid jobs and wage growth, then Wall Street and the White House resort to tricks (new financing mechanisms, tax cuts, spending, etc) to keep the machine running.

The sense I get is that since about 2000 we've just been playing different games to try and get the old mojo back, and that the nature of such games is to work for a bit and then collapse due to unsustainability. Maybe that's just my tinfoil hat coming out, I hope I'm wrong.

<comment><USER3> >we all depend on the stock market to climb about 10% a year

Can anyone point me to any scientific reasoning behind this? As I'm not an economist, I was always baffled by an expectation that the market will always grow. That instantly brings to my mind the comparison to cancer.

<comment><USER4> It's a byproduct of having more people and more productivity every year, you don't need large amounts of either for it to compound.

(And you don't need 10%, a lot more money is in bonds than equities and at much lower rates.)

<comment><USER5> Surely there has to be a ceiling to "more people" though, right?

<comment><USER4> Yes and that will bring all sorts of troubles, look at Japan for a modern example. One of many reasons we should be welcoming immigrants instead of shutting them out.

<comment><USER6> Yes it'd be a shame if, in the long run, Japan stabilized its population growth or even shrank down to what was sustainable for several thousand years.

Japan is the size of California, and its population is 127 million or more than 3x that of CA. The average size of a single family dwelling is less than half that of the US. Japan cannot feed itself, nor power itself, and depends on open trade and foreign countries for almost all its natural resources.

This was not always the case, though. Their growth outgrew their borders in the early 21st century - they were forced to _expand_ into their neighbors' yards for space and resources, and we all know how well that turned out.

Maybe the idea of endless exponential population growth isn't the best idea, and if Japan would prefer to keep their culture instead of bowing down to the globalist elites who want open borders, never-ending GDP growth and markets, I give them credit.

What we are doing in the West with unlimited immigration and forced diversity will not end well, IMO.

<comment><USER4> > Yes it'd be a shame if, in the long run, Japan stabilized, or even > decreased, its population growth.

Japan's population is currently declining...

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/26...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/26/its- official-japans-population-is-drastically-shrinking/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this is much ado about nothing. Companies get killed for cutting dividends, so doing buybacks are a good way to create value for shareholders in a manner than can be ramped up and down. It's also more tax efficient (I pay taxes on dividends, but don't pay taxes on owning an ever so slightly larger piece of the company).

The author picks on Apple, but doesn't mention that Apple has dramatically increased its headcount and R&D spending all the while buying back stock. The truth is Apple is a mature company that is an _incredible_ money making machine, they literally don't have ways to use the profits to make more successful tech products. What else should they do other than reward shareholders?

Anyway, if it turns out when I sell my shares they were bought by the company, guess what I'll do with the proceeds? Either spend it (stimulating the economy) or plow it back into other investments. Buyback money doesn't magically disappear, it just cycles what the capital is being used for.

<comment><USER7> Buybacks often don't creat value for shareholders though. When a stock is trading for more than its intrinsic value, buybacks destroy value.

Buffett/Berkshire is literally the only example I can think of where they only buyback shares when prices drop below a certain threshold. Most companies do it regardless of whether it is creating or destroying value, based only on whether they have cash authorized to spend.

<comment><USER4> Who's to say what the intrinsic value is though? If you have an opinion on that you should be trading on it until the value comes in line and at that point buybacks are fine.

Buybacks tend to happen at the worst times (boom years) and cut out in recessions which is counter to what you'd want as an investor. Though if you think of it more as an alternative to special dividends it makes more sense.

<comment><USER8> They aren't saying there's a clearly readable intrinsic value for any given company, only that there is _some_ intrinsic value, and that prices can float both below _and above_ it. When they do, buybacks destroy value. Obviously, management will always have some argument to support the higher value implied by a buyback (it could hardly be otherwise, unless you think management could with a straight face argue that they should overpay for their own stock). When they guess wrong --- and they're clearly incentivized to guess high --- they cause problems.

<comment><USER9> The thing is, if management is wrong about the price, aren't the shareholders wrong too?

It doesn't make sense for shareholders to own stock that they think will go down. If they really think that, they should sell. So shareholders should think the stock is either fairly valued or undervalued, almost by definition.

Any shareholders who don't sell during a buyback are compensated by owning a larger share of the company at what should be considered a fair or generous price from their point of view.

The place where this breaks down is when you believe a company would have a higher intrinsic value, _provided_ that it has sufficient financing. But this isn't based on the stock price; it's based on your theory of how much money you think the company will need.

Also, from a non-shareholder's point of view (say, bondholders), a buyback means the company's ownership changed, it has less cash, and they didn't get anything for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My thoughts on the content of the article:

(1) According to Ray Dalio's theory of long-term credit cycles, we should be healthiest in the decade after a credit crunch.

(2) When the article says that Apple could use its $210B to buy the bottom 480 companies of the S&P 500, it means any _one_ of the bottom 480 companies. As worded, that sentence is ambiguous at best and deceptive at worst.

(3) I don't understand the author's point that companies with the most buybacks saw their value go down the most. Like, isn't that exactly what you would expect? If Apples gives $210B to shareholders, now Apple is worth $210B less.

(4) No evidence is given for the claim that all of these companies intended to use their buybacks to prop up their stock price. I doubt any evidence exists. Quite possibly, crummy companies like Sears are buying back stock because returning money to shareholders is better than building new Sears stores.

(5) Does it really matter that much if claims on companies' future profits are shifting from risky equity to risky bonds? I honestly don't know.

(6) The article argues that the rise of bond ETFs over the past decade ($15B to $300B, 20x) shows the rise of bonds. But, honestly, most of that comes from the rise of ETFs, not the rise of bonds. Over the same time period, the total ETF market, which is mostly equities, grew from $700B in 2008 to $4,600B in 2017.

(7) A lot these 'one decade ago' statistics are hard to interpret, since one of the endpoints was in the middle of a terrible financial crisis.

(8) The numbers on household credit card debt seem very tragic. I wish I understood more how people use credit cards.

<comment><USER11> > I wish I understood more how people use credit cards.

I'll give you the low-down: many Americans don't make enough money to save up money for medical emergencies, and other emergencies, so when one of those happens, they reach for their credit card. Yes, it's a bad idea, but when they're a few months out of the hospital, possibly still sick, then it's easy to panic when getting repeated calls from debt collectors and pull out their credit cards.

Same thing happens with auto repairs and house repairs. And many such incidental expenses. As a software developer making over $100,000/year, the instinct of many people here on HN is to say, "why the hell don't they save more?". But when you're making $30,000/year and raising a couple of kids, it's really not possible to save money in most cities and their suburbs. Sure, they could save up more money with that income in a cheap rural area or small town, but then there's no jobs.

Saving up enough money for medical and other emergencies is much harder to do for the average lower- to lower-middle class American that many people on HN might realize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > least a third of the shares are being repurchased with borrowed money

What?!

That is insane. Right? Like I know I'm just a lowly programmer who doesn't know jack all about finance, but I thought the whole point of a buy back was that your public company was flush with cash and instead of spending it on capital expenses (am I using that word right? I mean things that grow the business, like say, Facebook buying Instagram) you spent it on buying stock from shareholders.

What the heck is the point of a buy back purchase with debt?! I really don't understand.

If the article explains it and I missed it, it would be awesome to have it pointed out.

<comment><USER13> Businesses use debt as a tool. It doesn't mean they don't also have revenue and cash reserves -- it just means they have calculated they will be better off leveraging debt than spending cash for certain things.

Think about it this way -- if you wanted to buy a car, and you had enough money in the stock market, you could sell your stocks and pay cash for the car. Or, you could get a car loan at a pretty low interest rate. Why would you take the loan? You might take the loan because the money you would make by leaving your cash in the stock market (and avoiding capital gains taxes triggered by selling shares) would almost certainly be larger than the interest you would pay on a car loan. So it might make sense to take the loan and leave your investments alone.

There are not a lot of personal decisions that turn out like that, but a lot of business decisions turn out like that.

<comment><USER14> Businesses != Managers != Private equity sharks. Time horizons vary, debts and buybacks are "in the game"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mods, title should reflect the actual title of the piece: "Beware the 'mother of all credit bubbles.'"

</comment><comment><USER16> Crazy to think that just $210 billion can buy you 480 companies in the S&P 500. China could easily do that.

<comment><USER10> It can't. $210 billion can buy you any _one_ of 480 companies in the S&P 500.

Buying all of the S&P 500 would take roughly $24 trillion.

The article's wording on that point was very ambiguous and misleading. I had the same reaction! :)

<comment><USER16> Ah ok. Makes more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Household debt is not at record highs... Auto Loans and Student Loans are getting more problematic, but no reason to go all chicken little.

Tend to agree generally that we are approaching the apex of the cycle, and that share buybacks may be creating a sort of short term thermal.

<comment><USER18> > Household debt is not at record highs

Ummm, yes it is: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/total-us-household-debt- soar...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/total-us-household-debt-soars-to- record-above-13-trillion.html)

<comment><USER17> Meh... You have your facts and I have mine... [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP) and [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N)

<comment><USER18> Your facts are measuring something different. The first measures the service payments. The second measures debt to gdp. Talk about moving the goal post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When companies cease to have productive things to do with money, it's time to return it to shareholders who can invest it elsewhere. In principle this is the natural way of the word.

This is complicated by tax laws which allow companies to write off debt. This helps create lower risk debt capital but increases the risk of the remaining equity. Not the end of the world. Just invest in both.

I'm somewhat concerned by companies borrowing too much and dying, but creative destruction helps new entrants.

</comment><comment><USER20> How do bond ETFs work?

I thought with stock ETFs they were convertible when you had a large number. This would keep the etf price in line with it's underlying assets.

The issue with bond ETFs is I don't think the underlying bond is exchange traded. How would the conversion work?

I ask because this article has reminded me that I should probably diversify away from bond ETFs into GICs

<comment><USER21> My understanding is that there are markets where bonds can be bought and sold. An ETF of bonds is just a large fund holding a set of bonds and trying to keep track of their current value.

Since you know what the return on the bond is, at what price, interest rate and time, you can very easily assess the current value of a bond, especially compared to what you might make if you just bought GICs at the current rate. An interest rate hike today lowers the sell price of bonds purchased at yesterday's rate.

<comment><USER20> I think the market is still brokers talking. There is no centralized exchange.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-isn't-there-a-bond-exchange- equiva...](https://www.quora.com/Why-isn't-there-a-bond-exchange-equivalent- to-the-NYSE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Weren't loans taken out as a way to avoid taxes pre-2018? You could have profits stored offshore tax-free and take a loan out in the US that generated money for your US operation without incurring taxes. These loans are very low interest rates and companies still don't have incentives to pay them off.

</comment><comment><USER23> When you know you are near the edge of another economic cycle, why not focus in short-term decisions? Large capital expenditures just before a recession doesn't really make much sense. Better to board up the windows than expand in this context.

</comment><comment><USER24> Since buybacks increase concentration of ownership, do they tend to combat the short-termism of uninvolved, absentee shareholders? Or is there no consistent pattern?

</comment><comment><USER25> Can someone give a concise ELI5 summary of this? I lack some of the context tomfukly understand this article

</comment><comment><USER26> Sound like this website make so much pornshit on your privacy that GRPD does not let you access to it. It should be a fucking communist stuff that spy american pure people.

</comment><comment><USER27> Stupid move - tax cut was a perfect moment to reduce your debts. These guys did the opposite

<comment><USER28> Debt can be a strategic tool for a company. They want to maintain a certain debt-to-equity ratio as eliminating debt would probably be more expensive in the long run than maintaining that ratio. The ratio is, of course, not set in stone and is rather industry specific. The short, sweet, and overly simplified version is that debt provides tax shields and liquidity now. $100 now can be worth more than $120 in five years, so most companies are okay with a certain amount of debt.

<comment><USER27> But not now. Find a major company that is not critically overleveraged thanks to near net negative interest rates few years ago. Now there is a chance that effective rates will go all the way to eighties era numbers next decade, and the next debt crisis may also be close.</comment></comment></comment>


How to get/make a Logo for Your Startup? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Use Inkscape[1] and do it yourself. It's amazing what even a newbie can do with it in an hour or two. You can always pay someone to make a slicker version later, which will be much easier if you have something to use as a base.

1\. <http://www.inkscape.org/>

<comment><USER3> I did the same, after two months of repeated failed attempts to hire someone to design a logo (one of the logo companies we hired sent us about a dozen horrible ideas plus the Verizon V-Cast logo, as though we wouldn't notice). I've since made two logos that I'm reasonably happy with, both using Inkscape. I'm not a designer, by any stretch, but the T-shirts we had printed up with this one look great:

<http://www.virtualmin.com/images/logo-185x38-background.png>

And I made a logo for our example website (our product manages webservers and websites, so in our demo video we build a website from scratch and launch a useful application in a couple of minutes): <http://doxfer.com/twiki/pub/Main/WebPreferences/logo.png>

This one was whipped up in literally five minutes (once you know how to make the Web 2.0 "shiny" text thing, it's numbingly simple to do).

Neither are going to win awards, but they've allowed me to get on with work, and I'm not ashamed of them. When we take funding, or when we're making more money, I'll hire someone famously good to re-imagine our logo. Until then, I've been burned enough by bad anonymous logo shops.

One thing to keep in mind, that most non-designers (and even some designers) do wrong: Keep it simple. Imagine it in black and white. Imagine it on a T-shirt (and imagine paying for all of the colors you put in it--twice the colors is twice the price for printing), coffee mug, letterhead, and your website. Look at successful companies for inspiration, not just Web 2.0 companies (even if you're building a Web 2.0 app). You'll almost never go wrong by simplifying a logo design, but you'll certainly go wrong by putting too much crap in it. Also, pick your colors using a color scheme generator-- not at random. Unless you've got the queer eye, you'll pick ugly colors. I guarantee it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://designoutpost.com> \- you pay a set fee, and a slew of designers make a logo based on your description. They then iterate till they get it right, and don't get paid till you choose one. Pretty good methodology, i've tried it twice and got what I wanted both times.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds interesting. How much did you pay?

<comment><USER5> We ended up paying $180, if you want to see the final result of that we got, we just made a post with it. If you look through the flickr pictures you can see some of the options we received.

<http://blog.pretheory.com/arch/000565.php>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My new startup needs a logo, and I'm not sure if I trust my artistic ability to make one. What would you folks recommend?

If it matters, I want the logo to be a Dutch windmill but futuristic looking (or a windmill/robot hybrid type of deal). I'll announce my startup on here soon, hopefully with a logo :-)

</comment><comment><USER6> Try <http://thelogocompany.net/> . Haven't used them, but there examples are cool. Or, post on elance and see if someone good bids.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://gfxcontests.com> \- offer a nominal reward to get several people to submit designs in a competition.

I found out about these guys through MashupCamp 3, which was run by Mass Event Labs. Mass Event Labs offered $100 for a logo design and got many entries actually, check out the discussion at <http://gfxcontests.com/showthread.html?t=713>

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't have my draw program with me, but if you want, give more details. I do some monochrome stuff if you're ok with that. And no, I'm not a pro so I don't charge, but I enjoy doing logo-like design.

Right now, I can't really see how a windmill and a robot will go together without looking kinda silly (think propeller hat) or sadistic (blades), if they are merged together.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested to see what you put together. Can I email you?

Yeah, maybe the robot part is out then :-)

Maybe just a traditional windmill like one of these below, but then having the building part of the windmill be made of shiny metal. Perhapss the blades could be shiny metal too. ? Can you make that "shiny" effect?

<http://www.angelfire.com/sc/soriluc/images/amstertraditional.jpg> <http://www.enweirdenment.org/pics/Europe2001/111-1147_IMG.JPG>

<comment><USER8> Whoa... you sure about the robot? If it fits into some grand vision I'm sure there are creative people who can integrate it somehow.

I have attempted a chrome effect before and I feel without further training I won't match the pros. My designs are plain, and I like to merge text into the picture. I don't have good samples with me but here are two.

<http://www.withmsg.com/1.gif> <http://www.withmsg.com/2.jpg>

rather obscure, but the text reads to "pktw." if you like this style, yes I have one or two sketches in mind. If you'd like to blend some text in, the first letter maybe, I need to know that. Finally, if you want a vector file I probably won't be working fast -- because sadly I don't have AI. And I'm very unfamiliar with inkscape. What I'll end up doing is roughly tracing a paper sketch. You'd need to get somebody to smooth out the edges after that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, the robot's not neccessary. I don't need any words or letters in the logo, just a picture. I'd probably want a vector a file though. Well, don't worry about it if it's too much work. I'll probably end up using one of the pay services suggested in this page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://dache.ch/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Try playing around on <http://logoyes.com/logocreator.php>

<comment><USER11> Kind of a neat tool, but I didn't see anything that caught my eye. Except the price. A hundred bucks for a logo I design myself online with no designer even telling me it's crap is just a little excessive.

My recommendation is to find a design student and offer 'em a hundred bucks for a logo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> if you decide to make your own, be sure to use illustrator or somesuch "vector" program. don't use photoshop else you'll have to redraw later when you need it at another size.

</comment><comment><USER13> We did a logo contest on SitePoint, and were really happy with the results.

<http://www.sitepoint.com/contests/></comment>


Facebook Wants To Own Idea Of Crowdsourced Translations - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/26/facebook-files-for-patent-on-crowdsourced-translations/ <comment><USER2> Cheering for the open source solutions instead:

<http://socialsourcecommons.org/toolbox/show/1107>

Live: <http://www.dermundo.com/reader>

</comment><comment><USER3> Missing from the title is that this is restricted for social networks only (or at least that's my read of it).

If it were for general cases, passing this patent would be highly disturbing.

<comment><USER4> Many web applications can be considered social networks. Restricting it to social networks wouldn't help me rest much easier.

</comment></comment><comment> onreact-com Owning ideas is just a wrong concept. I'm glad it did not exist back then when the first human had the idea to drink water.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good luck with this quest.

Hi5 has been pioneering this concept for ages.

<comment><USER5> Citations (podcasts and posts from '08 where I talked about it / talked with devs from Hi5 on their translation efforts): <http://mashable.com/2008/04/24/hi5-podcast/> <http://mashable.com/2008/05/21/hi5-crowdsourced-translation/> <http://mashable.com/2008/04/29/hi5-growth/> <http://mashable.com/2008/02/29/podcast-opensocial/></comment></comment>


160 Years of Riemann Hypothesis - Iwan-Zotow Riemann communicated his paper to the Monatsberichte der Berliner Akademie on October 19, 1859, and Kummer read the paper at the meeting of the academy on November 3. <comment><AUTHOR> It would be interesting to see an estimation of how many humans/human hours have worked on this problem.</comment>


How to pair socks from a pile efficiently? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/14415881/1107398

<comment><USER2> I can't believe this isn't off topic at SO.</comment>


Open-sourcing PinLater: An asynchronous job execution system - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.pinterest.com/blog/open-sourcing-pinlater-asynchronous-job-execution-system <comment><USER2> Implementation details: _The PinLater Thrift server is written in Java and leverages Twitter's Finagle RPC framework. We currently provide two storage backends: MySQL and Redis._</comment>


Is Google PageRank no more? - <AUTHOR>

This year, lot of efforts seems to have been put on connecting websites with Google Plus profiles and no updates to the Google PageRank toolbar in months.<p>Does this mean PR won't be updated any longer and maybe something new like Author Rank is introduced? <comment><USER2> I think Google is steering away from algorithmic determination of page rank due to spammers gaming the system with backlinks strategies.

Google started to add too many manual overrides to make this whole PR thing essentially worthless.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't make the mistake of thinking toolbar PR has much to do with the actual PR of a page</comment>


Google's guide for securing your WiFi network - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2013/06/securing-your-wifi-network.html <comment><USER2> Do you have _nomap in your SSID?

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that was light on details.

<comment><USER4> TLDR; RTFM!</comment></comment>


Hacking your OSX Address Book with C, Racket and LaTeX  - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/address-book-hacking/

<comment><USER2> A very easy way to get to the address book (and anything that supports Applescript/Apple events) from a higher level language is via <http://appscript.sourceforge.net/>

I previously wrote something in Python to sync between LDAP and the OS X address book using appscript. It was fairly straightforward. Edited to add: <https://github.com/jaysoffian/absync/blob/master/absync>

<comment><USER3> Appscript is pretty cool! Is there anyway to produce a bundle and distribute to other machines without Appscript installed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Export via Applescript into CSV, for those without Xcode installed.

[http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2004110421223917...](http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20041104212239178)

Or, use this and Word: [http://www.techtalkpoint.com/articles/how-to-mail- merge-appl...](http://www.techtalkpoint.com/articles/how-to-mail-merge-apple- address-book-with-microsoft-word/)

I'm all about the geek credentials, and this is awesome. However, it's fairly impractical, and a lot of dev's who use a mac don't know Cocoa.

<comment><USER5> To be slightly pedantic, neither CoreFoundation or AddressBook are part of the Cocoa framework.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> okay, i see some problems here ...

why use the MacRoman character set? UTF8 is a much better default.

also, the code uses CFStringGetCStringPtr() as if it can't ever fail. from the docs: "This function either returns the requested pointer immediately, with no memory allocations and no copying, in constant time, or returns NULL. If the latter is the result, call an alternative function such as the CFStringGetCString() function to extract the characters"

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the tip.

Fortunately, little Bobby Tables isn't one of my relatives.

I'll update it to use UTF8 when I get a free moment.

<comment><USER8> Context: <http://xkcd.com/327/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Speaking of the Address Book and Lisp, here are two pages on how to access its contents from Emacs:

<http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MacOSTweaks#toc3>

[http://slashusr.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/importing- contacts-...](http://slashusr.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/importing-contacts- from-osx-addressbook-to-emacs-bbdb/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone care to explain why use S-Expression as opposed to plain CSV or json?

<comment><USER7> Good question.

Why not CSV? S-Expressions are tree-structured, and that makes it easier to handle things like whether or not someone has a spouse (or multiple spouses) or a partner, or whether they have a title.

To parse S-Expressions, you just use (read) in Racket (or any Scheme for that matter). CSV isn't hard to parse, but it's not a 6-character expression.

Why not JSON? JSON is tree-structured, so it accounts for the issues above. But, most languages that slurp JSON don't have pattern-matching facilities as powerful as Racket.

If you look at the patterns I wrote to chew up entries and spit out labels, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Finally, the outputted S-Expressions are very human-readable.

/article author

<comment><USER10> Thank you. I am trying to learn Lisp(Emacs Lisp and Clojure) and was curious on your format choice. Great article btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google Contacts -> Export -> Mail Merge

<comment><USER12> What is Mail Merge?

<comment><USER13> Check out Duck Duck Go; it pulls snippets from Wikipedia and other data sources right to the top of search results, which makes it easy to get the gist of what something is, without much digging: <http://duckduckgo.com/?q=mail+merge>

Plus, it's by our very own epi0Bauqu (<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=epi0Bauqu>)

<comment><USER12> Hm, somehow the first hits look like ads - perhaps a change of fonts would be helpful? In any case, none provides the quick answer I was looking for (I already guessed it is about mergin mails). But thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What the bees know and what they do not know (1964) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://projecteuclid.org/download/pdf_1/euclid.bams/1183526078 <comment><USER2> One has to guess, that the bees produce the hex structures they do because its an evolved, stable behavior. A more complex innate behavior might be fragile (change abruptly with a small change in genetics) and produce disastrously non-adaptive honeycomb. Any foray into genes toward producing rhomboid (or whatever) structures may have intervening steps that produce leaky, inefficient or structurally unsound layers and doom the hive (and thus the modified genes) before it got 'all the way' to a new, arguably more-efficient hive.

In other words, they are in a genetic 'relative maximum' and any change would be to a less-stable and less-efficient place evolution-wise.

</comment><comment><USER3> The mathematician, however, makes no honey.

<comment><USER4> I would argue that we, humans, as mathematicians, carpenters and apiarists have worked together with the bees resulting in a net gain in honey over time.</comment></comment>


An HIV Genome from Two Decades Before Its Discovery - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/hiv-genome-two-decades-before-its-discovery/596272/ <comment><USER2> In the book "The Origin of Aids", Dr. Jacques Pépin analyzes the literature on the disease and comes up with a stunning timeline for how the disease spread. Quoting from a nytimes review article[1]

>Dr. Pépin calculates that, in the early 1920s, a maximum of 1,350 hunters might have had blood-to-blood contact with troglodytes chimps. Only 6 percent of the chimps — about 80 — would have been infected, and fewer than 4 percent of the scratched hunters probably could have caught it. That would suggest only three infected hunters at most.

> Given how inefficient most sexual spread is — in some cases, a husband and > wife can have sex for months without passing H.I.V. — sex alone would not > have let three hunters, or even a dozen, pass on their virus to today's > millions, he argues. There must have been an amplifier.

> In the 1920s, machine-made glass syringes replaced expensive hand-blown > ones, and the Belgians and French attacked many diseases in their colonies, > both out of paternalism and to create herd immunity to protect whites. > Patients might get up to 300 shots in a lifetime. Other diseases have spread > this way; an Egyptian campaign against schistosomiasis ended in 1980 after > giving more than half its "beneficiaries" hepatitis C.

> And, in one of his own studies of elderly Africans, Dr. Pépin was told that > many of those injected against sleeping sickness in the 1940s had died in > the 1950s. Since many of the survivors were infected with HTLV, another > chimp virus, he surmised that their long-dead friends might have been among > the first victims of AIDS.

> Haiti's epidemic, like that of North America and Western Europe, is nearly > all subgroup B. But subgroup B is so rare in central Africa that it causes > less than 1 percent of cases.

> That suggests AIDS crossed the Atlantic in just one Haitian. Molecular clock > dating indicates it reached Haiti roughly in 1966.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/health/18aids.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/18/health/18aids.html)</comment>


Lightning deployment for your ~/Sites folders - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fulldecent/Sites <comment><AUTHOR> Basically it is like Fastlane for websites. I don't really know how to advertise this, but if you run a bunch of websites you may want to check this out. It works out of the box and helps you deploy and manage your sites.</comment>


Coinbase cancelled my order and doesn't refund - <AUTHOR> I have ordered $2000 worth of LTC and $1000 worth of BTC on coinbase. Money was transferrwd to coinbase the nezt day from my bank and after 8 business days, on the day the coins are supposed to be deposited into my account(Dec 28, 2017), I have received mails saying those orders are cancelled and I would receive a refund. Can someone tell me how to reachout to coinbase for quick refund, support questions takes forever it seems. Can someone from Coinbase help me with this if you are reading this. <comment><USER2> If you are in Oceania it might be your bank that is responsible. Supposedly the big4 banks are not allowing transfers into exchanges. Good luck

<comment><USER3> Yes this is happening in Australia with POLI payments into BTCMarkets

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CoinBase/)

You are not the only one receiving poor service from Coinbase. Be happy if you ever see your money again and learn to stay away from them, and other terrible cryptocurrency brokers, in the future.</comment>