Ask HN: Domain names you bought for a start-up that never happened - <AUTHOR> We all do it (I assume), buy a domain name for the latest and greatest idea you have but never quite deliver, the domain ends up sitting there doing nothing.
What are yours and what was it you were thinking of doing with them?
I will start below... <comment><USER6> I've got a ton, but hold hope that I'll polish them off and finish them some day. As for the domains I'd be happy to get rid of, here they are:

Whatdeliversto.me and whatdeliverstome.com -- both intended to compete with GrubHub, but never happened.

Typemotion.com -- was a blogging platform that was actually pretty good. Got acquired for a small sum of money, then the buyers folded and gave the domain back. It's an odd story, but I've always liked the domain.

Governaut.com -- was a blog for awhile when I was a federal contractor. Had a site set up to act as a social network for other federal contractors and discuss common IT situations, work constraints, etc. Never got around to doing more than just the blog though, and never got traction.

Vaginawear.com -- bought while I was drunk. I remember there was a really good idea behind it, but that idea was nowhere to be found after I sobered up.

AppDiem.com -- Groupon for mobile apps. We were partnering with mobile developers to release on-sale apps, a new one each day for each target platform. Shuttered a year a more ago.

babylum.com -- Was designed to be just like leandomainsearch, as a side project. Then leandomainsearch launched,a nd babylum was no longer needed.

Then, there's the 'porn' domains. This was another drunk idea that I realized I didn't have the gumption to actually do when I was sober, and since I couldn't be expected to be drunk through the entire development process, eventually just realized that I'd not do anything with it. These domains are gold though (in a porny sort of way.) \- getnakedgetmoney.com, getnakedgetpaid.com, getnakedwinmoney.com -- I think the domains explain the business models.

<comment><USER7> Curious - how come AppDiem didn't take off? Something like that around early 2011 really could've taken off and helped with the app discovery problem. I know now there's a ton of players in the space but still!

<comment><USER6> Bad timing, lack of persistence; We were working with a few app developers and had targeted releases scheduled for a month after launch day while we were trying to recruit new developers to keep the pipeline full for the next month. The day before we launched, Amazon released its Android market and started giving away one app for free a day.

Most of the developers we were scheduled to release ended up bailing to go to Amazon. I was the developer, and by launch day most of the heavy lifting was done (only took a couple weeks to build as I recall), but my partner was the marketing guy, and had all the relationships.

Right after we heard about Amazon's thing, he had some personal crises arise and ended up bailing. I don't fault him for it, as he had some decidedly real real-life family drama, but I wasn't even remotely equipped to handle the failure as I didn't know who had bailed or how to fix it.

<comment><USER7> Shoot, sorry to hear that; at the very least you have tackled a pretty challenging problem.

No doubt that discovery is something that really could've changed the app space dynamics. Something similar happened at the place I used to work - a lot of top devs were reached out to by Amazon and they initially disallowed in app advertising. The developers complied and it caused a slight panic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _swapsend.com:_

This was going to be a file sharing service for businesses like design consultancies, it would enable them to Swap files with their clients and Send files to others.

 _designdown.com:_

This has been planned for many things, a blog about design and UX, the over arching name of a group of other websites, a web design and development consultancy.

 _projectaur.com:_

This was going to be a project management tool for engineering and design firms, using the idea of issue trackers from software development and applying it to physical product development.

 _flutterbox.com:_

This is the project I have gotten furthest with, it was back in about 2007 I think, it was a social news aggregator along the same sort of lines a friendfeed.com. I actually launched this one but never attracted many users. I think I finally shut it down in about 2010.

 _cloudjs.co.uk (I thought I had the dot com but don't seem to any more):_

This was going to be what we now call a "platform as a service ", it never got further than me buying the domain name and researching SpiderMonkey (this was before V8).

If you are interested in any of them let me know, email is in my profile.

<comment><USER8> I actually remember coming across flutterbox & seeing it as a "track what your friends are up to" type service.

IIRC it was built in Django & supported about 10-11 services inc. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg etc

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, so few people ever used it im suppressed you remember it. You are correct, it was built with Django and did support about 10 services.

The mejor flaw with the service was that you needed to get all you friends signed up to it as well in order to get them to enter all their accounts.

It was fun to make and I lernt allot building it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> CivicAssociation.net -- Bought it a couple of years ago; I was stunned it wasn't already taken. I envisioned it as a site that would allow civic associations to offer a core set of useful features (collecting dues online, email announcement lists, etc.). Had to abandon the project because I lacked the time to do it right.

ConstantAds.com -- A high-concept online advertising platform. It sold ads that never expired, with no pay-per-click or pay-per-impression costs. You paid a single fee up front, and then the ad was rotated among other ads in its category, relative to the amount paid.

FEREM.org -- Domain name was an acronym for Fund Ethical Research and Experimental Medicine. It was intended to provide a list of research and advocacy organizations and describe their positions on certain ethical issues. Never did much with it.

ParishNetwork.org -- A social network for members of Catholic parishes.

Truyoo.com -- Identify verification service that allowed sites that publish user content to weed out the trolls. Unfortunately, I never worked out a payment model that appealed to both publishers and users ... and Facebook's platform served the same purpose without requiring any sort of payment.

SearchGetaways.org -- Sort of like a Kayak for vacation rental listings.

RungJump.com -- People could write detailed descriptions of their jobs, and then potential job seekers could purchase access to those descriptions to get an inside look at a particular workplace. Payment model never worked out, and I found that it was more difficult than I thought it would be to get people to dish about their jobs.

Swap4Web.com -- The intent was to allow small businesses to swap goods or services in exchange for web hosting and web design services. Upon further reflection, I realized that there was only a small segment of the market that had goods or services that I actually wanted, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of reselling them.

</comment><comment><USER10> * dejunk.co.uk - for getting rid of my crap (hated freecycle and still think there's a better way)

* badnewsbunny.com - delivering bad news for people through a hand-puppet. Still think this one would be a laugh, but a lot of bad things happened around the time I started it, so don't want to touch it.

<comment><USER11> >>* badnewsbunny.com - delivering bad news for people through a hand-puppet. Still think this one would be a laugh, but a lot of bad things happened around the time I started it, so don't want to touch it.

One of the most ironic things I think I've heard on this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Makepizzahappen.com - one click pizza ordering system. Set it up once with your CC info, topping preferences, optionally rank local pizza places by preference, then next time you're drunk, want pizza and don't know who's open, just click the giant make pizza happen button

Foodmyface.com - more generalized food ordering system, development payed for by the proceeds from makepizzahappen of course. Similar to how Jimmy Johns online ordering works, but for any restaurants that deliver.

Ohshitmyshit.com - not even sure. A place for posting awesome stuff? A place for posing about your broken stuff? A place for posting disturbing pictures of poop in the hopes that a medical professional will see them and tell you what is wrong with you?

</comment><comment><USER13> breastpump.com - Breast Pump and Nursing supplies for mothers. Medela is currently getting sued for anti-competitive pricing and supplier behavior. If they get forced to behave by the courts and I can get supplied, game on!

<comment><USER14> Wow this name alone is easily worth tens of thousands, probably more!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _digitalinfo.com_ \- reg'd in 1998 hoping to sell information products, still holding onto it!

 _brandvocates.com_ \- brand + advocates = brandvocates :) great for a social media agency, again didn't get past idea stage

 _productapi.com_ \- self-explanatory, was going to be somewhat of a amazon- style API of products, but with a "ship" function, grabbed this when I was working with drop-shippers and thought that there had to be a better way

 _affiliateapi.com_ \- wanted to make a skimlinks-style platform, ended up (recently) with a open-sourced JS-library for GoDaddy affiliate links

 _giftify.com_ \- send a virtual gift through FB, and the real one arrives at the recipient's door (launched shortly after the FB platform became available, shipped approx 20 orders)

 _dealreel.com_ \- curate your own list of daily deals from Groupon, etc. and publish it for your friends and followers, wanted to address the fact most deals are crap and there are a select few power users that do look at every deal, wanted to put them to work to find worthwhile deals for the masses, Yipit is doing something cool w.r.t this idea based on normalized sales data: [http://blog.yipit.com/2011/08/05/introducing-trending- daily-...](http://blog.yipit.com/2011/08/05/introducing-trending-daily-deals/)

 _dnsrecipes.com_ \- central wiki w/API listing all the cloud services out there and the DNS settings required to make them work, essentially helping non-techies tie their Google Apps, Tumblr, UServoice, etc. services to their domain in a consistent and visual way, still want to do this at some point as my buddies bug me all the time to do this shit work

 _logocaster.com_ \- auto-generates an infinite canvas of logo variations (much like the entries page on 99designs) and let's a user refine their logo design based on parameters like color, font-face, emotion, etc.

 _autowatermark.com_ \- automatically watermark images uploaded to social networks, sadly this is not possible via FB's API or others :(

I'm probably as guilty as any fellow HN'ers of being trigger happy on domain registration when struck by a moment of inspiration. I am happy to see some of the great & fun domains & ideas popping up in this post.

</comment><comment><USER15> * invoices.io - Simpler, cheaper Harvest.

* hippo.io - Reminders that actually worked with you instead of beating you over the head.

* fubar.io - An error tracking service that didn't suck.

* sharing.io - Sharing buttons as a service. We maintain them for you so you don't have to worry about having a MySpace button on your site in 2012.

* keys.io - Hosted software key authentication.

* tele.io - Hosted, simple phone trees for small businesses.

I actually have a lot of code for hippo, fubar, and tele. Sad I never pushed them through.

Willing to sell any of these domains, btw. Don't need them now. E-mail's in my profile.

<comment><USER16> Those must be expensive to hold on to. Usually .io goes for $99/year.

<comment><USER15> Yeah they're like $80 from the registrar I use. :( Going to let some of them go after this year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still have quite a few but it's still my intention to build on them. I tend to let the ones that are hopeless expire, but the one I wonder about is wheresmyflight.com. When I was traveling a lot, I noticed that the flight status and plane locations were much more accurate on the airline's freight websites. If Twilio had been around I probably would have created the application, but sending SMS and voice messages wasn't really practical at the time.

</comment><comment><USER18> fluffcut.com - I was going to build a tool that would go through your twitter and facebook streams and pull out only posts with links or other content

fanatastic.com - A sports site, something like digg or reddit focused specifically on sports. I was going to allow users to pick their favorite teams and then have a feed of info about that. The social aspect would be interesting, ie: both Cowboys and Redskins fans would see the same story and comments which could create either interesting or volatile comments. Eventually I was going to offer interactive chat about games as they are happening.

mygdnews.com - first domain I picked up for the fanatastic.com idea myidid.com - a task management software, basically a done list with todo list features. I've actually got a better idea for a domain name for this that's available and may actually work on this during my vacation. It's a tool I have a personal need for.

twnote and choip.me - were to similar Twitter based tools. Basically commenting for tweets.

and some that I have worked on but are not startups (yet, if ever based on current life)

unscatter.com - It's seen several iterations. Currently it's a current information search. Basically brings up information from blekko, twitter, facebook and g+ for search terms with results ordered by date rather than relevance.

chatfor.us (and chtfr.us) - real time chat engine. Currently focused on Twitter ( it works ) but my goal is to eventually allow more authentication sources. For those times when you want to have that quick chat with someone but don't exactly want to establish that relationship by adding them to IM, following them on Twitter or Facebook, etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> pieinterest.com:

Pinterest for pies. (Just kidding. I don't remember why I bought it, but I did.)

<comment><USER20> hehe - you could branch out into offering different computations of π

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Futuretoob.com

I was going to build TV apps to get in on the coming disruption of television. Still waiting to see where TV goes.

Droplounge.com

A content aggregator for stuff in you Dropbox. Basically a way for digital creatives to share their work.

Algapi.com

An algorithm API marketplace. Programmers expose algorithms and other programmers pay per request to use them in their apps.

If any of these excite you, drop me a line.

</comment><comment><USER22> yukup.com - Aggregation of common thread-based sources (HN, reddit, google groups/mailing lists, etc) and have nice live updates in-browser w/ unread message support

umwut.com - A new kind of commenting site (not just link sharing) where rooms can be created. The great thing was the live system that was very intuitive to jump around many new comments in many threads very easily.

forsook.org (and forsook-lang.org/com) - A language/parser framework that transpiles to Java. The key is that you can easily add pieces basically allowing you to create your own language by checking checkboxes (still in the works).

sqlchop.com - Basically a free version of transaction-log-based CDC because I got tired of paying Attunity.

yocalist.com - A HTML5/Canvas based karaoke system that anyone can easily use and allows you to overlay your own lyrics onto embedded videos from other sites (e.g. youtube)

</comment><comment><USER23> panoptech.com - search tool that sat in your system tray watching keyboard input and doing background searches so that it would have results immediately ready for you anytime you wanted them. circa 1999, no one cared about privacy issues back then :)

feedcache.com/feedcache.net - QOS for RSS. Idea was to cache every RSS feed and their associated enclosures, etc. and make them available via API so that application developers had certainty that they could retrieve the content from the feed when they needed it. circa 2003/2004ish. Internet infrastructure sorta caught up to the idea pretty quickly and we also realized that it was too hard to compete by just providing QOS on content that a) didn't belong to us and b) was freely (usually) elsewhere.

I literally have hundreds of others, and these two are my favorites...

</comment><comment><USER24> * slated.to - bought this before the iPad came out, thinking that it could be an app site for tablets. For example: slated.to/ipad, slated.to/android, slated.to/windows8

* see.io - some kind of visual sharing site, maybe? Or a dating site for CIOs ;)

* join.as - no idea even when I bought it...

I'd sell any of these if someone's interested.

</comment><comment><USER25> Shutdownstartup.com - Was intended as a mini-social network. Intended to encourage developers temporarily out of a job during the last few almost-was US government shutdowns to create startups together. Then, to everyone's surprise, the government didn't actually shutdown...

</comment><comment><USER26> AskAllOf.us - a platform for you to share comments you made on other blogs that needed answers. Sort of a hybrid of Disqus and Quora. Never did anything with it, I'd sell it if anyone wants it.

1orZero.com - think Hot or Not, but a much simpler scale. Would you or wouldn't you...

</comment><comment><USER27> We built a website for this exact purpose - sharing the domain names you bought but ended up not using. Posted a Show HN the day before this thread appeared. Feel free to have a look!

Link: <http://friendsdomains.com>

</comment><comment><USER28> buddy-fund.com - A way for users to sell their Facebook wall to advertisers. We should have done a little more research into the idea, it's against the ToS surprise, surprise.

clanbo.com - (The name is awful, I didn't come up with it) It was a free game server hosting service which also provided premium accounts. It got quite a bit of traffic and made me a little money back when I was 16 but the effort to return ratio is pretty low and in such a competitive area it would be hard to make it into anything worthwhile.

These two domains and sites are available for sell if anyone is interested. Full source can be provided on both. Clanbo.com fully functional and ready to host both TS2 and TS3 servers.

</comment><comment><USER29> I did thingsdonelater.com for a while, but not long after i started it, had something going, and was planning a revamp to something far more usable, twello.com came out and kind of stole what i had been thinking of out from under me.

</comment><comment><USER30> Kapsl.com - This has been everything from a todo list, ticket tracker, and team planner down to an analytics package. I believe this domain name is cursed because I can't seem to finish any of the projects I start with it.

</comment><comment><USER31> FriendInMyBed.com - Adult social networking...

AnswerBeak.com - <USER2>

CherishSteveJobs.com - self explanatory

WhyDoYouLike.Me - he he

<comment><USER32> Integrate WhyDoYouLike.Me with Facebook, get rich, buy island.

<comment><USER31> Ah, you know me a little to well.......Working on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> whisperYELL.com The idea is similar to Klout but instead of measuring online influence it was to be geared toward online privacy. People would be able to measure how much of their information is out there and depending if they want to be noticed (Yell) or go primarily unnoticed (whisper) the site would track their rating on a scale and provide suggestions to move in either direction.

I stopped right before I began development because I decided to partner with a friend on another idea called felpme.com

</comment><comment><USER34> tinyact.com: an ad network where advertisers would pay for micro actions performed by users on their site (like downloding a pdf, staying on the site for a period of time, coming back a number of times, etc);

graffly.com: a Groupon for affiliate marketing offers;

crosscookie.com: a service where SaaS could exchange cookie information about their paying members and use that information to target display advertising on ad exchanges;

peeknpoke.com: a service where you could write an essay/blogpost and ask friends to review it;

Most of these are offline now.

</comment><comment><USER35> I have novemberwest.com, which I bought to do a webcomic. I currently blog there. I still want to do a webcomic. Time will tell. But I think I have already owned it for three years.

</comment><comment><USER36> \- poetwee.com - poetry, twitter style. All driven through Twitter and various hashtags for votes, comments.

\- uneducation.net - a network for learning things a more disorganised way.

<comment><USER37> As a Brit, poetwee reads as 'poet wee', where 'wee' is a colloquial term for urine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> MyShitIsOnFire.com -- A website explaining how to put out various kinds of fires. Also sells cheeky shirts/prints/etc, to match the associated comics.

</comment><comment><USER39> quickbite.in - for a restaurant search/recommendation system for Indian market. I don't see myself doing this anymore. I'm waiting for someone who can make good use of it and can pay me a decent amount.

guzloo.com - Didn't buy it for any particular use. I purchased it because I found the name short & funny. As of now, it is hosting a useless unmaintained php site that I made on a weekend.

</comment><comment><USER40> purplelynx.us: monitoring social streams and prioritizing the links that your network is sharing (purple = visited). Built a proof of concept and it is a neat feature, but not the experience I was hoping for.

howiuse.it: Was going to build a site for sharing tips on how to use software. i.e. how I use evernote for a paperless office, etc.

</comment><comment><USER41> notifybyphone.com - Phone alert system using Twilio storesapp.com - <USER3> platform, had launched in beta and customers, eventually closed. sitesapp.com - CMS sister service to storesapp.com fingerlakeswineregion.org - Free app listing wineries and attractions.

Willing to sell domains as well, I have finally found focus. :)

</comment><comment><USER42> * ga.am - URL shortener (easy typing in t9 phone keyboards)

* lectur.as - News aggregator

* visteme.com - <USER4>

* betterlater.com - read it later url bookmarking

</comment><comment><USER43> agha.st - no idea, just wanted to snap it up pleasedontcall.us - IT sob stories 55-0.org - eventually a simple site for gay rights awareness, after the Argentina 55 to 0 vote in favor of the Gender Identity Law (it's a progressive law; I know it sounds like it could be either).

</comment><comment><USER44> webtimetable.com simple timetable webapp in the cloud

postiquette.com simple social media updating webapp (similar to ping)

printive.com online pdf generator service

podsender.com podcast hosting and streaming service

substitweet.com for a twitter service (still on my todo list)

P.S. If you have some cool ideas for any of those, drop me a note, I could sell some.

</comment><comment><USER45> * intense.ly - for something intense, I guess?

* picscri.be - for some sort of picture-based app. also picscribe.com.

</comment><comment><USER46> SteamCorps.com - fancied a Steampunk based RPG for iOS. About 5years into reg fees now :)

</comment><comment><USER20> dronedelivery.com - a bit futuristic and never intended to be developed by myself.

</comment><comment><USER47> SocialCinema.com. Collaborative video that did not see the light of day.

</comment><comment><USER48> faevor.com/net/org. A site for establishing and trading promises and favors between friends. (Inspired by the whole "favor trading" schtick the fae tend to have in mythology.)

</comment><comment><USER49> buzy.co A place that will have meny services for business (and buzy) people. Like a summary of books, of daily news, personal assistants, reservation and booking services.

</comment><comment><USER50> upgradr.com - greasemonkey for IE => silly idea

digestr.com - some crazy idea similar to Yahoo pipes

zedhub.com - don't even remember what it was supposed to be ;)

</comment><comment><USER51> myjerry.org - was supposed to be a web platform for building next gen apps but all contributors backed out with time.

</comment><comment><USER52> resu.me - Different approach to building resumes

caree.rs - Hiring platform for companies

talkto.me - <USER5>

I don't know if I should still hold on to these or sell.

</comment><comment><USER53> electronicsciences.com -- Either a social network of electronics hobbyists, or an online circuit simulator.

</comment><comment><USER54> brewmasterapp.com - A mobile/online homebrewing (beer) app. Lots of data, but never finished building it.

</comment><comment><USER55> thumbkissing.com for some silly touch app :)

medicaresetaside.us for medicare cms system

examinationundearoath.us cms to manage examinations

<comment><USER8> Re: thumbkissing.com - thats one of Pair's (YC Company) best features[1]

There are a few other's in this space as well you should contact Pair or one of them in this space, and see if they might want to acquire it :)

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/23/pair-is-a-path-for-the- two-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/23/pair-is-a-path-for-the-two-of-us/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> yrecruit.com - replacing recruitment consultants with one click candidate sourcing

betzap.com - crowdsourced betting tips

</comment><comment><USER57> thebulletlist.com - was supposed to be mind-mapping before mind-mapping software existed

</comment><comment><USER58> failchat.com / chatfail.com

yet another humor site.

</comment><comment><USER59> blurre.com: photo related site

vendorvote.com: angie's list for b2b

mansworstenemy.com: dictators & oil spills

</comment><comment><USER60> how-to-make-an-iphone-app.com receiptapp.org bettermindsaustralia.org

</comment><comment><USER61> howtoroot.com - detailed how to's on rooting android phones.

<comment><USER62> you should turn this into an app for how to coordinate fan chants at sporting events

at duke basketball games they pass out a paper detailing all the chants they're going to do

The How to Root app - eveyone chant (whatever) now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> placehub.com: local news platform/aggregator service.

</comment><comment><USER64> coho.me - "CoHome" Yammer for households/families.

</comment><comment><USER65> forfew.com -- social sharing/rewards program

</comment><comment><USER66> www.ekfolio.com

I have always wanted to build this where people can create interactive resumes and not just old style boring word document resume. Got some ideas but never formalized so far. I still own the domain though :)

</comment><comment><USER67> fatbattle.me

Weight loss contests using withings scales and their apis</comment>


Write (More) Effortlessly With Markdown - <AUTHOR> http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/markdown/ <comment><USER2> I think the coolest and maybe most misunderstood part of Markdown is that it is designed to make README files into reasonable HTML. In the process of designing something that made for human readable text files that can be easily translated into HTML it became one of the biggest text input standards on the internet.

Like JSON, on its own, Markdown is a nice little tool, but what people have picked up and done with Markdown is really inspiring.

<comment><USER3> This is wrong. Gruber designed Markdown for writing blog entries, so Wordpress is using it for the original purpose. README files are just one of these additional purposes you allude to in your last sentence.

Also, Markdown is not a standard (yet), and the ecosystem suffers greatly for it.

<comment><USER4> If we're chasing the canonical rabbit, Markdown wasn't designed for any specific purpose. It was designed upon a core principle: that Markdown's syntax should be as readable as possible. That is, Markdown should be readable _before_ it has been converted to any specific machine-readable format.

Straight from the author:

> The overriding design goal for Markdown's formatting syntax is to make it as > readable as possible. The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should > be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked > up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown's syntax has been > influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters, the single biggest > source of inspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format of plain text > email.

[http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ... or you could just use the WYSIWYG editor that's built into WordPress and is far more effortless to work with :)

<comment><USER6> Clicking a bunch of buttons definitely seems easier than just writing some simple Markdown.

<comment><USER5> You can use hotkeys in the WYSIWYG editor.

In this text, we can do CTRL-B bold CTRL-B and CTRL-I italic CTRL-I words.

as opposed to

In this text, we can do SHIFT-8 SHIFT-8 bold SHIFT-8 SHIFT-8 and SHIFT-8 italic SHIFT-8 words.

And, happily, there's a separate hotkey for bold and italic that makes sense (I and B) as opposed to having to remember that one asterisk is bold and two asterisks is italic. No, wait, it's the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uh. I write every document in Pandoc Markdown.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why isn't everyone adopting Jade instead?

<comment> mkr-hn What is it?

<comment><USER9> It's a templating language [1], but it seems a lot of developers (myself included) use it to DOM description language, just like HTML or XML. Better yet, people replace those languages with Jade!

[1] [https://github.com/visionmedia/jade](https://github.com/visionmedia/jade)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What AI subtopic are you excited about? - <AUTHOR> Personally, I've been studying ML for the past few months, especially neuroscience inspired architectures, and I stumbled across https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_neural_network, which seem to be really useful for complex reasoning, though I can't find too much literature on the subject. Do you think they could be useful?<p>Some relevant reading https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/27998/etd.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool:

[https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/curiosity-and- procrastinat...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/10/curiosity-and- procrastination-in.html)

<comment><USER3> Oh wow thank you for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Adversarial domain adaptation.</comment>


Any female engineers in San Diego interested in showing my daughter their work? - <AUTHOR> My daughter is 12 and has expressed for years that she wants to be an architect or engineer. She's also interested in medicine. She knows some Python and likes building things. She is also in need of some inspiration. I can show her medicine but I need some help on the engineering side. As it happens, her spring break is next week, so it would be good timing about now. PM me if you are interested. I would really appreciate it. We could probably work something out, maybe meet at lunch or something.  I'll buy.<p>Edit: SD = San Diego. And for those recommending FIRST: our challenge with FIRST is that she has 16 hours of gymnastics practice every week, which markedly improves the report from school and now she's in love with it so I can't talk her out of it. I've tried. So spring break would be ideal. <comment><USER3> I'm not in SD, but I'd highly recommend seeing if she's interested in FIRST and also definitely get her hooked on Sylvia's Super-Awesome Maker Show: [http://sylviashow.com/](http://sylviashow.com/)

She presented at the first RobotsConf and it was really compelling and could inspire other kids to start building things: [http://teamtreehouse.com/library/robotsconf-2013/super- aweso...](http://teamtreehouse.com/library/robotsconf-2013/super-awesome- maker-sylvia-show)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a computer science postdoc at the Salk Institute. We're having a big public event next Saturday (Walk for Salk) where we're also doing lab tours. Bring your daughter there and I'll give her an extra tour of the computational areas.

(find me at firstname.lastname@example.com)

<comment><USER5> Love Salk institute! very spiritual architecture too. I am not 12 year old but do you think i can get the tour ? :)

<comment><USER6> Indeed. In case you've never seen it, there is a great documentary on Louis Kahn, the architect, with beautiful footage of his works: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373175/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0373175/)

<comment><USER5> Yes I have, Thank you. I love Louis Kahn and his work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hi Niels! If you end up finding something interesting for your daughter, I think HN would love to hear about it. I know I would. Consider this an invitation for her to write something about it and post it here and/or for you to write something about it and post it here.

I have to say I envied you for a moment. My daughter once enjoyed an afternoon with me at the REPL, but then politely made it clear that we wouldn't need to do it again.

<comment><USER8> Did you show cool visual stuff like in SICP where you could make images and move them around? Or animate a story of some kind?

I'm asking because my younger cousin definitely enjoyed looking and playing with a Mario-like game where we would loop-back and have fun within the REPL. However, I don't think she would have enjoyed mathematical additions or learning about while loop for the fun of learning-about-while-looping.

<comment><USER7> No, I did a much shoddier job. I should have strategized it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Get in touch with your local FIRST robotics team.

[http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc](http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc)

I am a mentor for my local team. The program is absolutlely wonderful. It inspires and drives kids at many levels. Mentors run a huge range, from scientists amd engineers to welders, makers and really driven Mom's and Dad's. The common thread, among other things, is to inpire the kids to learn and apply technologyy to solve problems. Highhly recommended.

<comment><USER10> Along these lines, the Botball program is a pretty amazing way to teach hands on engineering.

Bummer the OP just missed the 2014 Greater San Diego Tournament by a few days

[http://www.botball.org/sca/2014/tournament](http://www.botball.org/sca/2014/tournament)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can you give a little more information about what you're really hoping your daughter will see and get out of the experience? What type of engineer are you looking for? I'm a software engineer in SD with a 12 year old daughter of my own.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think she's a little young to specify which branch of engineering (medicine and architecture are also on the list) but exposure to any and all would be good. She worked through a fair chunk of Python for Kids last summer. I feel a little bad that I'm not a great teacher, but she's proud of what she learned (as evidenced by the fact that they had an intro to python in school and she housed everybody).

Really, I just want her to come home with a new appreciation for the technical ability of women, and insight that learning math and science leads to something other than doing more long division by hand.

And to go and make a friend would be awesome!

<comment><USER12> damn, intro to python at 12? I wish my grade school taught me cs :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would like an update about this. Wondered how I would handle such a request. 12 year old would not have much inspiration watching me fix bugs and read hacker news

<comment><USER14> Don't forget alternating between standing a sitting a few times a day and going to planning meetings. "Okay, the next hour is when I say 'No' to marketing a bunch of times. Aren't you excited??"

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Qualcomm is up in the Mira Mesa area and has a really cool museum of the history of CDMA and cell phones in their headquarters building (Building N). They've got big tubes of chips showing how they have decreased in size over time, a van that they used to demo CDMA to investors 20+ years ago, demo Android devices, a cool Mirasol display, some parts of their truck tracking system, and a bunch of stuff about the history of the company.

You do need to have an employee ID badge to get into the area that the museum is in, but I bet if you called them or know someone who currently works there they could show you around.

Source: I was an intern there last summer. [http://www.qualcomm.com/about/buildings/museum](http://www.qualcomm.com/about/buildings/museum)

</comment><comment><USER16> Hey. I'm in San Diego, Del Mar area. I mentor a FRC FIRST team that is going to be putting on a number of Robotics Camps over the summer. If you interested, send me a message email@example.com.

Totally get if gymanstics is taking a priority though :). Running and jumping and doing cool tricks is a ton of fun.

</comment><comment><USER17> You may also try showing her some Ted talks - lots of really inspiring things to watch there concerning tech, for sure.

It doesn't seem like there's a Girl Develop It chapter in San Diego yet, but a quick Google search shows a few meetup options nearby:

\- [http://www.meetup.com/Teach-Yourself-Programming-A-Womens- Co...](http://www.meetup.com/Teach-Yourself-Programming-A-Womens- Collaboration/) \- [http://www.meetup.com/IEEE-Women-in-Tech- Meetup/](http://www.meetup.com/IEEE-Women-in-Tech-Meetup/)

I bet you could reach out to the group members/founders and they would be more than happy to speak with you and your daughter about tech things! It's really wonderful you're encouraging her passion too, btw. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER18> Is SD a neighborhood, city, state, country?

South Dakota? Sudan? Santo Domingo? San Diego?

<comment><USER19> I assume it stands for San Diego unless otherwise specified.

<comment><USER20> Really? I would have guessed South Dakota.

<comment><USER21> Fun fact. There are more people in City of San Diego than the entire state of South Dakota.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good for you for helping her find her calling! Maybe you can meet someone through this! [http://www.meetup.com/Geek-Girl-San- Diego/](http://www.meetup.com/Geek-Girl-San-Diego/)

</comment><comment><USER23> maybe get in-touch with the SWE chapter at UCSD ([http://swe.ucsd.edu/home.html](http://swe.ucsd.edu/home.html)). I'll bet they will have some events or could arrange some informal tours of interesting facilities on campus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone sent me an email about SWE, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do you know about PythonSD? I'm sure they could get you in touch with a female engineer.

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

(I used to work at Cuker, and all the PythonSD guys are pretty great.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I do now! I'll see what I can do.

<comment><USER25> There is also a PyLadies meetup group in San Diego: [http://www.meetup.com/sd- pyladies/](http://www.meetup.com/sd-pyladies/) \- I know one of the organizers and she's great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Girl Scouts have various camps focused on STEM. You can search here: [http://www.sdgirlscouts.org/camp- descriptions](http://www.sdgirlscouts.org/camp-descriptions)

</comment><comment><USER27> Hey hey, fellow San Diegan here! I've been seeing the comments about FIRST and it seems like you're not interested due to your little one's scheduling - <USER2> if that changes, let me know; my friend teaches FIRST (also saw post from Tyler here)

In the meantime, let me know if you want to grab lunch in SD - it's on me. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER28> She wants to be an engineer, let her pick out something to tinker with. Anything really. It doesn't have to be code. Look through maker kits that you can buy online. Or if there is a physical store you can get to, that might be even better.

Personally, I learned how to do web programming because I had something in mind that I wanted to build. I learned while building that thing. If I had to go through a book, course or tutorial first, I would have never been interested. I also wouldn't ever be inspired by going to work with someone unless that person is Elon Musk.

Your daughter might be the same. Let her interest guide her. I remember all the things I said I wanted to be when I was a kid. It was all just kid talk. I don't think I really ever cared to be any of those things.

Or maybe just leave her be. 16 hours of gymnastics plus school is a lot. Maybe she simply doesn't have time for anything else. Don't force it.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm many timezones out from there and wrong gender etc., but I have some advice that may be of use.

Since (as I understand it) the idea of same-gender is to make the connection more straightforward, I would further suggest that you prefer a graduate student to an actual "worker".

At my university there is a grad-student scholarship that requires fieldwork to be done in a certain place (first nations community). The grad student has to involve a local high-school student in the fieldwork. When I first heard of this I thought it was wonky social engineering, but apparently it's a great success: fun and educational for both.

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe HS First requires a lot of programming, the regular FIRST for 9-14 does not require any programming to advance. It is mainly focussed on presentation skills rather than technical skills.

<comment><USER31> That's not specifically true, especially on a team level. Some of your team members might not have to program but you do have to get the robot to do stuff well in order to advance.

<comment><USER30> You can win the robot game and it has no bearing on advancement. The key is the 3 interviews. In the robot design interview, the number of points for quality of engineering is low. Most of the points are in the show your work category. A better presentation of a poor design will score better than a poor presentation of a quality result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You should reach out to Otherlab. [https://otherlab.com/](https://otherlab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER33> Check out iD Tech Camps. They're all over California, including at UC San Diego.

[http://www.idtech.com/locations/california-summer- camps/la-j...](http://www.idtech.com/locations/california-summer-camps/la- jolla/id-tech-uc-san-diego/)

</comment><comment><USER34>
      > she's in love with it
      > I can't talk her out of it. I've tried.

Why would you try and talk her out of something she's in love with?

If she "knows some python", is she in love with it? Is she actively learning more on the web?

<comment><USER35> Because 16 hours a week of gymnastics costs quite a bit of money, and if she does meets then it probably costs a fortune. So money, money would be why a parent might try to edge a daughter out of gymnastics.

Or the injuries. They suck too.

<comment><USER36> I did this level of gymnastics as a kid. It taught me many things in life.

How to work hard and improve at something through many small iterations.

Learning multiple events is tricky and useful.

Dealing with injuries is an important part of life. Nobody goes through their day to day at 100% all the time. Working through the challenges is part of life.

I think gymnastics is one of those 'learning to learn' activities like chess.

I would strongly recommend looking into BJJ when she wants to move on from gymnastics. It has very similar benefits and is substantially cheaper. It can also be done at a slower pace than gymnastics, you could take a few classes a week instead of 4 x 4 hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Buy her a 3d printer kit, something she will have to assemble herself. Its the bigest, most enjoyable engineering puzzle I have ever had to deal with. A printrbot simple is $299 in kit form. Once she gets it to work she will have a tool that will enable her to build almost anything in plastic. She will learn, engineering, 3d modeling, electronics and operating complex manufacturing processes, materials and thier strength, product design.

</comment><comment><USER38> Also check out Wintress Technical School in SD.

[http://wintrisstech.org/workshops.html](http://wintrisstech.org/workshops.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> San Diego or South Dakota?

<comment><AUTHOR> San Diego

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I live in San Diego and reading this brings me joy.

</comment><comment><USER41> There's a program here called "thought stem" which is aimed at children her age and run by some wonderful friends of mine.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's great that you see your daughter's interest in engineering and are encouraging her to pursue this passion.

</comment><comment><USER43> Why do you need a woman?

I don't understand why we all talk about the gender problem in engineering, then continue it by isolating female students from male teachers. There is no isolation between male students and female teachers, or same gender students and teachers.

If we want to move towards equality, why carefully structure inequality in?

<comment><USER44> Exactly what I was thinking. Its quite insulting to suggest that girls are so myopic they can't possibly be inspired unless they meet someone of the same gender.

For the record, I'm a female engineer who moved to the USA from Ghana when I was a smaller. I can't stand this ridiculous patronizing attitude there is towards female engineers, as if we need "extra help" or something. Even worse are the feminists creating us-vs-them politicization of the issue.

When I was learning to code, ride a bike, tie my shoes or something, I never thought "gosh I can't do that since none of the role models are female". In fact, if there are no role models of the same gender or race, its usually even more inspiring as you want to be the first one.

<comment><USER45> > I can't stand this ridiculous patronizing attitude there is towards female > engineers, as if we need "extra help" or something. Even worse are the > feminists creating us-vs-them politicization of the issue.

Nobody is saying women engineers need extra help. Wanting to meet someone who you identify with as a woman in STEM is not necessarily easy and it is totally legitimate to seek someone out. As for feminists and feminism, I don't know of anything that would suggest an us vs. them attitude, generally feminist leaning groups look to increase participation of women in STEM through a variety of ways.

> When I was learning to code, ride a bike, tie my shoes or something, I never > thought "gosh I can't do that since none of the role models are female". In > fact, if there are no role models of the same gender or race, its usually > even more inspiring as you want to be the first one.

This may be true for yourself and others, but we know that this is not true on a larger scale. People can and do internalize messages about the kind of people that exist in certain professions and this can be self limiting in both conscious and unconscious ways. I'm not speaking for any one person about that, but it is legitimate to find a role model that you identify with esp. when you are a minority status in a group.

You can read more about stereotype threat here: [http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html](http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/definition.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> > People can and do internalize messages

Thanks for this. That's why I said she could use some inspiration. And not all the messages come from men. Women and friends provide powerful messages as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If I had a daughter, I'd focus on supporting _her_ decisions rather than my own interest. But I might be wrong.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm sending this link to Lynn Langit

</comment><comment><USER48> You sound sexist. Are you sexist? Why female engineers? Are male engineers not up to the challenge of instructing your offspring?

<comment><USER7> Thanks to the fair-minded users of Hacker News for downvoting this bullshit. When I encounter a comment like this, it's a relief to discover that the community immune system already rejected it.

When you see a comment that is truly toxic for HN, flag it by clicking "link" to go to the item page and then "flag" at the top.

Edit: Since I know some people have concerns about unpopular opinions being suppressed, perhaps I should add that it's not an unpopular opinion which is the problem here. It's the trollish content and vicious tone.

<comment><USER49> He's not just trolling and vicious, but he's wrong too. The other day, I brought up the fact that Michael Bay had gotten the design of the ninja turtles totally wrong in the new movie. And she said: "I always kinda liked TMNT, but it was a 'boy' thing so I never really got into it a kid. I mean, I guess they had April."

So yes, gender matters. Kids want to be able to relate to their heroes, and gender is a deep part of identity. And admitting that gender matters isn't sexist.

<comment><USER7> Being wrong is not a crime on Hacker News; trolling and viciousness are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> "she has 16 hours of gymnastics practice every week, which markedly improves the report from school and now she's in love with it so I can't talk her out of it. I've tried. So spring break would be ideal."

This is going to sound harsh. So, essentially even though you have an available resource (FIRST) since your daughter would rather take gymnastics you are then going to push off this responsibility to a complete stranger and buy them lunch as a thank you? (Recognizing that that person of course will gain some karma by helping you out..) Why not just have your daughter learn a lesson early on about priorities in life?

Gymnastics, nice, leads to ? Inspiration to be an engineer that gives a child career direction leads to...

<comment><USER51> Teaching your kid that work and obligations of life are more important than pursuing the things that make you happy leads to...

<comment><USER52> Not being broke makes me pretty fucking happy. "Do what makes you happy and don't worry about money" is a platitude for the privileged and not actually life advice. "Do what you enjoy well enough to spend 40 hours a week on if someone is paying you for it" is a better goal.

<comment><USER51> I agree, but the world is not absolutes. You can be a programmer that makes a fine living _and_ do gymnastics 16 hours per week.

Do what you enjoy enough that you don't mind doing it 30 hours per week, and do what you love the rest of the time is pretty solid as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Node.js Forked Again Over Complaints of Unresponsive Leadership – The New Stack - <AUTHOR> https://thenewstack.io/node-js-forked-complaints-repeated-harassment/ <comment><USER2> This is really misleading and shoddy reporting. It's one disgruntled developer forking over Code of Conduct issues (not even technical). The chances that this will win over any significant traction from the node community is nearly zero.

> The Node.js Foundation did not immediately offer a response in time for this > story.

They also didn't put out a press release when I clicked the "fork" button on Github yesterday.

<comment><USER3> 4 members of the TSC have resigned and the foundation board made their scheduled meeting private and are dedicating it entirely to this issue.

<comment><USER2> node's strength is its community -- how do any of the things you cited indicate that the community is going to fork, especially over a non-technical issue? The reason io.js took off with the community is because it addressed a core _technical_ issue in node, namely the outdated version of V8 that 0.x was using.

It's a bit like the Bitcoin fork -- the only thing that matters is adoption, not resignations over personal issues and private meetings.

If Ayo.js suddenly offered 2x the performance of node, then we'd have a real story. Right now, this is the type of internal bickering that happens in any organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Again"? Node has 7,660 forks and counting:

[https://github.com/nodejs/node](https://github.com/nodejs/node)

It's only notable if any substantial portion of the _community_ forks.

The "previous" fork, Io.js, was key moment for Node. Because that was about fundamental technical questions of choosing between stability versus innovation.

This appears to be yet another tweet-fight about CoC's. I can't imagine the community actually fracturing over this, but if it did then I would be fine with that. Let there be one set of conferences for the Douglas Crockford's of the world to discuss code, and another set of conferences for people to discuss Douglas Crockford.

<comment><USER5> > This appears to be a tweet-fight about CoC's. If the community fractures > over this, then I'd welcome it.

If this turns into one version that focuses on features and the other that focuses on CoCs, I know which one I'll be using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What the actual fuck. I was expecting a technical rationale. This is all about a witch hunt against a single board member?

io.js was a hugely effective fork in moving node forward. This is trying to split a technical project for social reasons. Who is this going to benefit?

After looking at the "evidence" below, I'm not really sure how to feel. Nothing Rod did was particularly noble, but I don't think it's all that bad. It'd register a few hundred millieichs at best. He seems to be a relatively combative guy who might feel slighted by the community - I don't know enough about what goes on politically in the node space to judge.

This makes me sad. Open source projects are supposed to be about people coming together, about creating something that the entire world can use, leverage, and take value from.

Completely unrelated, but somewhere in the linked twitter thread there's a great recipe for deviled eggs for no reason I can identify.

Edit: This reddit comment is fantastic - [https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6vhbit/here_we_go_aga...](https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6vhbit/here_we_go_again_nodejs_forked_to_ayojs_iojs/dm0lhfh/)

</comment><comment><USER7> > Williams charged that Vagg's presence on the board indicated that the > organization is not serious about fostering inclusivity within the > community, a frustration she has expressed for well over a year.

Good, software isn't about being inclusive, it's about delivering software. I can't imagine how awful it was to work with these women.

</comment><comment><USER8> It looks like 4 people left the TSC after the vote failed but only 2 people actually voted to eject Rod [6 against, 2 for and 2 abstains?]. Was there something that prevented people who weren't comfortable with Rod being around from voting for him to leave? Though, too be fair I think some of the people who have left have said it wasn't because of someone in particular but rather because of how the TSC was working (or not working).

<comment><USER3> 10 TSC members voted. It seems there were 13.

<comment><USER8> This is my concern. If you were willing to resign over a failed vote then it seems like you should make an effort to make the vote. If people were unable to make it to the meeting for such an important vote then there seems to be a problem in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "In that Tweet, Vagg commented "If you've never considered the potential > downsides of codes of conduct, here's a good place to start.""

Well clearly we should burn this heathen.

<comment><USER10> The wording seems to have been unfortunate. He later clarified he wasn't "anti-CoC", he just thinks the CoC is open to discussion like any other document and that it can be improved.

Which of course is totally irresponsible hate speech and should rightfully be treated as grounds for kicking him out of an organisation he massively contributed to for the better part of its lifetime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I do understand the 2015 fork and the technical reasons behind it. But this is non sense.

<comment><USER12> I remember there was similar noise with Ben a while back about a similar "outcry", but this time (along with the general IRL environment) it seems stronger.

There has to be a general attitude of focusing on what matters and not implicate irrelevant things to technical matters. Same thing happened with Brendan Eich (Mozilla) and in part on Palmer Lucky (Oculus).

This is getting ridiculous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://github.com/nodejs/board/issues/67](https://github.com/nodejs/board/issues/67) here is the statement from the nodejs side.

what exactly is this? what is the "behavior problem" actually? anything to do with 'political correctness"?

</comment><comment><USER14> While I'm not the first to start screaming about free speech when these kinds of issues arise, it seems like a stupid reason to fork the codebase _again_ and split the community. Its a technical solution to a social problem, splitting the community because the guy is an asshole seems immature to say the least.

<comment><USER15> Not splitting the community because the guy is an asshole is still splitting the community between "people who will put up with the asshole" and "people who leave the community because of the asshole". This gives the people who left a place to go. And possibly ends up creating a bigger community where being an asshole isn't tolerated.

Or maybe not. But it's hard to know without trying.

<comment><USER16> Linking in a non-triggering way to a mostly-thoughtful article by a professor of psychology about the challenges faced by those with autism and other neural diversities is not "being an asshole". If that's "asshole" to you, I'd like to trade entire families and sets of acquaintances and business associates with you...

<comment><USER17> _Linking in a non-triggering way_

Is this a thing? How can I avoid linking in a triggering way? What does it mean?

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure I completely understand it myself. I just know there are more and less courteous ways to discuss particular topics. When the topic of discussion is "harassment", one wouldn't refer to it in such a way that a reader or listener would be reminded of particular situations of harassment that they have experienced themselves. The link in question was about the experience of the neurodiverse with the speech police rather than about harassment _per se_ , but it's possible that some readers might have leaped to that topic, had the tweet been something like, "Let's end speech codes so harassing harassers can harass harassment victims without getting hassled by the man!"

Whoops I probably just triggered someone...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was a previous discussion of this a day ago on HN (got the link via reddit) but it's showing up as flagged. I'm not sure why it was flagged as I haven't read the full comments myself yet.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078995](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078995)

and here's the reddit discussion I pulled it from

[https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6vhbit/here_we_go_aga...](https://www.reddit.com/r/node/comments/6vhbit/here_we_go_again_nodejs_forked_to_ayojs_iojs/)

</comment><comment><USER16> This whole episode may be pretty silly, but flagging TFA is even worse. We have to know these people are around trying to ruin all our nice stuff... why not read about their shenanigans?

</comment><comment><USER16> Please edit the title!

      s/ – The New Stack//

The "fork" is not called that; that's just some random online media brand.

</comment><comment><USER19> rvagg endorsed this article: [http://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity- case-free-spe...](http://quillette.com/2017/07/18/neurodiversity-case-free- speech/)?

What an inane article—WOW!

If Isaac Newton showed up in 2017 and bestowed upon humanity the heretofore undiscovered Newtonian Mechanics, humanity would definitely publish those results! He would get by without the 20k Twitter followers. And hey, if he was anti PC and inflammatory he might even get elected POTUS!

<comment><USER6> Douglas Crockford has said some of the most stupid shit I've ever read. He's still contributed massively to JavaScript.

<comment><USER10> And there has been a witch hunt against him too. People tried to get him kicked off a conference he was being invited to because of "safety" concerns.

Allegedly he vented backstage after someone's talk once in a way that made another person feel "unsafe". Plus he's a well-off old straight white man.

<comment><USER6> I guess my point was that people having bad ideas doesn't mean they can't contribute.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Article: America's First Pizza ATM Has Officially Arrived - <AUTHOR> http://flip.it/icBNG <comment><USER2> I once had the idea of a "subscription to pizza" wherein a pizza would arrive at your door every friday night without prompt. Though to some degree I maintain it is a good idea, Pizza ATM may trump it.</comment>


Colorado Senate Majority Leader Beards Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXT7Fey8RiY&feature=player_embedded

<comment><USER2> There's an amazing amount of heat, but little light on this, particularly regarding exactly what impact the legislation threatened to have on costs, labor, etc. for Amz, affiliates (exactly what is that? someone selling via Amz Marketplace?), and customers.

Huffington offers:

"The bill, which was part of a package of tax measures aimed at increasing revenue, originally sought to create a nexus between the state and on-line retailers based on their ties to local affiliate websites, which link to products. The bill was ultimately altered due largely to fears that retailers like Amazon would simply cut ties to Colorado companies that make money by referring buyers."

"The final bill, which was signed into law in February, instead required large online retailers to start collecting sales taxes or provide a summary of people's web purchases in the state, leaving affiliates out of the equation. This created an economic nexus without making local affiliates a scapegoat for paying local sales taxes." --[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/amazon- reacts-to-co...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/amazon-reacts-to- colorado_n_490028.html)

...but Huff doesn't cite sources. Anyone find a better analysis by a dispassionate legal/financial source?

<comment><USER3> Well, RRW says ([http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/03/new-state-law- bump...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/03/new-state-law-bumps- colorado-off-amazons-affiliate-map.php)):

"Online retailer Amazon has ended all Colorado-based affiliate accounts after a new law passed by the state's legislature would have forced them to collect and pay state sales taxes. The law, HB 10-1193, states that any affiliate marketer making more than $10,000 for a retailer is declared a legal agent, and a state presence, of that company. Rather than be forced to pay the state taxes, Amazon has instead side-stepped the law by closing its doors to all affiliates based in Colorado."

...though I think they're sloppy, too, speaking of Amazon being "forced to pay the state taxes" - when they seemingly would have to begin to _collect_ sales taxes from customers, which could mean: • Figuring out the tax rate (which varies by city, county, etc) for each customer. • Charge a differential price to customers depending on the state/co/city of residence. • Either increase the charge to customer's CC or cut Amazon (or it's affiliate's) net on a sale. • Send on the $ to state gov.

Sounds to me like they just don't want hassle and cost of programming, processing etc.

Note another effect: When I buy a $2500 laptop from Apple online, I have consider the cost of where I want it shipped. If it goes to my office in town, I pay ~3% more sales tax than if I they ship to my out-in-county home.

If Apple can handle all that, so can Amazon, but if this is what the CO law will impose on national online retailers it will mean lots more issues for both customer and seller to weigh and start handling _immediately_.

Maybe it's equitable, but I sure wouldn't like to have to have all _my_ business's billing software rewritten overnight.

<comment><USER4> From what RWW says further down, Amazon must already have the software in place - and be collecting it in NY state:

"The Colorado legislature should have foreseen this outcome - it's not the first time Amazon has been forced to shut down affiliate programs. In July of 2009, Amazon closed off their programs in Rhode Island and North Carolina, and has previously sued over a law passed in New York in 2008. The suit, however, was eventually thrown out and Amazon has since been paying taxes for New York affiliates they feel are too valuable to give up."

So I still don't see why Amazon is choosing to fight this battle with Colorado :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Before watching this, I hadn't realized that

1) Others, such as B&N Apple have been complying with the burdensome regulations

2) The law in question has no actual connection to Amazon Associates, and canceling the Associate program doesn't actually save Amazon anything on sales taxes.

<comment><USER5> Not to be cynical, but does any of that change the fact that Amazon chose not to do business in Colorado with affiliates? Or that hundreds of Colorado affiliates are now out of a sales channel?

Must be some logical reason in there somewhere for Amazon. And I doubt this guy is going to explain it.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're as big as Amazon, retaliation might be a logical reason. Doing this _does_ cause political problems for Democrats in CO, and it also lowers the income of CO affiliates, thus directly decreasing state income taxes and indirectly decreasing sales taxes, property taxes and anything else Coloradan affiliates might spend on.

This sort of retaliation will definitely be on the minds of the legislature of the next mid-sized state to consider doing something Amazon doesn't like.

<comment><USER5> Retaliation for _what_? According to this guy, it doesn't affect Amazon.

<comment><USER6> As I understand it, Amazon and others are required to collect purchase summaries and send that to Colorado, so that Colorado can collect (or enforce?) sales tax for online purchases.

So, it looks to me like Amazon is objecting to collecting the information and sending it to Colorado. My opinion is their public objection is to the administrative cost of doing this, but their real objection is erosion of their cost advantage, since the collection of information will lead to more tax collection by Colorado, resulting in a real cost increase to customers for Amazon products in Colorado.

Affiliates, which apparently have nothing to do with it, are merely a convenient, minuscule and vocal group for Amazon to throw under the bus.

As a vocal former Colorado Amazon affiliate, may I just mention that Tattered Cover, <http://tatteredcover.com/> , is an excellent, large, Colorado (that ships nationally), independent book seller. They also have an affiliate program: <http://tatteredcover.com/affiliate>

I'm just sayin'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have trouble taking that state senator too seriously.

He's clearly outraged about "being bullied" by Amazon...

but it's less clear that he has done an cool-headed analysis of the impact of the legislation on all parties (Amazon, affliates, customers, state treasury).</comment>


Online marketing - What to do the first week of your startup. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/d7d524aa272c

<comment><USER2> At this stage, add to the list hounding friends and family on Facebook and in person. They're more forgiving of bugs and can drive some of the very early activity an app needs to get traction.</comment>


Hangover Cure Successfully Tested on Drunk Subjects in Finland - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-19/hangover-cure-successfully-tested-on-drunk-subjects-in-finland <comment><USER2> Best part of the whole story:

"The study ran into certain difficulties. Some participants weren't able to consume all the alcohol required and had to be excluded, some had such high tolerance levels that they experienced no hangover symptoms; and some were sidelined because they insisted on topping up the dose by heading for the bar, researcher Markus Metsala told local media."

</comment><comment><USER3> There already is a cure: Alka-Seltzer</comment>


Can Your Static Type System Handle Linear Algebra? (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/can-your-static-type-system-handle-linear-algebra.html <comment><USER2> People keep talking about "you don't want to add meters to feet", but that's exactly the opposite of what you want to do. You _want_ to add inches to yards or furlongs or flea wings, and you want to get it _right_.

What you don't want to do is add length to weight. The true type of your value is not inches, it's length, and expressing it in inches is a formatting issue.

<comment><USER3> Also, ideally, you don't want to add length to width, or Hertz to Becquerel (both have [1/sec] unit). This was my humble attempt to address this with a Scala Units library: [https://github.com/adrianfr/scalau](https://github.com/adrianfr/scalau)

<comment><USER4> If you want to find the periphery of something you DO want to add length to width...

<comment><USER5> No, you add the lengths of the sides. That's type-safe and generalizes from rectangles with edges parallel to the x and y axes to general polygons:

      perimeter = poly.edges.map(length).sum()

Height and width have (implicit) direction; length doesn't.

But yes, this will get hairy. For convenience, you want the ability to add heights, but that only makes sense in some cases. Two 100m high skyscrapers only make a 200m high skyscraper if you place one on top of the other.

<comment><USER6> Or maybe you want to find the height of an average skyscraper so you want to add and then divide. This is going too far maybe. At some point, one has to accept that not all logic bugs are type errors, and not all type errors are common enough in practice to worry about. I have no idea where that point is, but I'm sure it exists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't skip the comments. I think there is more there than in the article, honestly.

<comment><USER8> Of course there is. What there isn't, as far as I can see, is a working solution.

<comment><USER6> There is, more or less. Mine, in fact. But it's ugly. It's repetitive. If someone gave me that solution, I would think "this is way too unreadable to ever verify its correctness". My mistake was using C++98. I think C++11 would handle this better, but I never got around to trying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's no reason type(X' _X) should be fixed. If you allow yourself to consider the case where each entry in the matrix has different type everything is fine. You just end up with matrix product rules like:

[type(a) type(b)][type(c); type(d)] = type(a)type(c) + type(b)type(d)

Which puts constraints on the types of the various entries in the product, but doesn't restrict them to being the same in each matrix or vector. This is totally reasonable - in Ax + b = y I'm restricted to type(A)_type(x) = type(b) = type(y) for scalars. Why wouldn't we have a similar generalization of constraints in the matrix case? The model that arrays of objects must all be the the same type simply doesn't fit with the analysis in this case. The author suggests this:

> But I just can't imagine the monstrous types of products of the various > elements ever eventually cancelling out as nicely as they apparently should > – not in a real flesh-and-blood programming language.

Well that's how it should work. You just have to imagine it :)

</comment><comment><USER10> _Perhaps the sanest approach is we type every column of X and Y separately..._

Typing every column of a matrix is not sufficiently general. Each element of the matrix can have its own type.

Suppose you're solving a linear algebra problem in two unknowns. Say it's an electromechanical system, and we want to find a voltage and a pressure that gives us some desired flow rates. So let x [=] (V, Pa), for example, and let y [=] (mA, kg/s).

Then the matrix-vector product A _x = y requires the units:

        [ mA/V   , mA/Pa   ] * ( V  ) = ( mA   )
        [ kg/V/s , kg/Pa/s ]   ( Pa )   ( kg/s )

Of course those units in A have nicer reductions, but it doesn't teach us anything to figure them out. The point is that the matrix A represents the system design, so the units don't have to have familiar names, let alone be consistent within a column. If the system involves Johnny reading a value off a meter, and then phoning somebody up to tell them to pedal a stationary bike a little faster, that process has some kind of units associated with it, and the matrix A must include those units in order to represent the system.

<comment><USER11> Each element of your matrix doesn't really have its own type, each column and row has a type:

                                1
                              +---
                           V  | V
                          Pa  | Pa

              V^-1    Pa^-1
             +</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--- +-----
        mA   | mA/V   mA/Pa   | mA
        kg/s | kg/V/s kg/Pa/s | kg/s

I can imagine a system that types this quite well.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this is the strongest argument for dynamic typing I have ever read.

<comment><USER13> Wow, if that is so, then I am completely sold on static typing. I do not get how dynamic typing gets into the picture.

Having a type system that can catch some errors at compile time but not all is better than having a type system that doesn't catch any.

Having a static type system doesn't mean that you can't use dynamic typing as much as you want (e.g. in Scala you can make all variables of type `Any` and use type refinements whenever you want to call a method).

<comment><USER12> You seem to be under the impression that I'm a proponent of using dynamic typing to the exclusion of static typing. That's not the case (I'm an ObjC fan). I just hadn't seen a situation before where the argument for one vs the other in a particular situation hinged on something so fundamental rather than on a design artifact.

EDIT: Removed comment about scala because I was confusing it with clojure. My bad.

<comment><USER13> That's the thing. There is no _argument for one vs the other_.

There is a statement of the following fact: "It is hard to express heterogeneous array type in most statically typed programming languages and verify operations at compile time." Well, duh. AFAIK this would require dependent types* (not something that you get for granted in mainstream languages).

But can we check types in runtime? Yes. Does it mean that it can only be done in a dynamic language? No. It can be easily done in any language that has integers and arrays. Even x86 assembly is enough.

* Scala's type system should be enough, if we use shapeless.HList's for column and row types and then a ton of implicits to resolve the resulting type and check that everything is sound.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's striking about this is that this constraint _is essentially a type constraint_. To the degree that existing type systems (and the checkers therefore) make this ugly, difficult, or impossible to express that surely points to an opportunity for improvement.

Note that, contrary to some on this page, I read this as speaking entirely about computation whose structure is known at compile time. Obviously, if the structure is based on run-time information then you probably need dependent types to guarantee statically that nothing can go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER15> Are there dynamically-typed systems that actually do this? That check the units of matrix and vector elements at runtime without checking every single time you want to multiply two numbers together?

<comment><USER16> I imagine most languages with a matrix library uses opaque types implemented in C or similarly fast language. So just one typecheck would need to be done.

<comment><USER15> I'm sure they check that the matrix doesn't contain a string, or that you're not mixing 32-bit and 64-bit floats, but checking user-defined units as in the article, where each row or column may have a different one seems almost as hard in a dynamically-typed language, unless you do the check at the very bottom level. And that would be unimaginably slow.

<comment><USER16> Oh ok, yeah I refered to 32/64bit floats / ints. I didn't like the notation in the article, so I didn't bother understanding what he was talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a statistician by training, though these days I do a variety of work as an engineer.

I'm a huge proponent of static typing, but I have to say that there's a reason that the predominant languages used by statisticians and scientists are generally dynamically-typed (Python, R, MATLAB, etc.) - and it's _not_ that these people simply "don't know how to deal with static types"[0].

I haven't used Haskell in a few years, so it's a bit rusty, but I'll use it as an example, since it's the most widely-known strict static type system. Hindley-Milner type systems like Haskell often don't allow dependent types[1], which means that a 2D vector and 3D vector are the same type _unless_ their dimensions are known at compile-time (which is oftentimes not the case). This is a _big problem_ , because I may want to run a regression on an unknown number of variables, but also constrain the number of variables in alternative regressions to use the same number of variables.

In Haskell, you might solve this problem with a tuple, except then (1) your vector elements may be of the wrong type (bad!), and (2) You can only have vectors of length 63 or less.[2]

By contrast, in MATLAB, it's trivial to declare a number that may also be a vector, but act like a scalar for certain operations, but also be correctly "incompatible" with vectors of incorrect dimensions[3].

Yeah, you can do this in Haskell/Scala/Go/<insert-language-here>. But it's really, really annoying.

There is one assignment that I had in school which was done in MATLAB, and just for fun, I tried reimplementing it in a few other languages (Haskell, Python, Go, and a few others). I ended up giving up in frustration with _all_ three of these, whereas the original MATLAB assignment only took a few hours (most of which was figuring out the math behind it, not writing the code). My Python attempt was the one which came the closest, but even then it was just so hideous that I couldn't bear to work on it any longer[4].

[0] I haven't used Julia, so I can't say whether the optional typing there solves this problem or not.

[1] At least, Haskell didn't as of a couple of years ago, which was the last time I checked. Though it seems this is still an open problem: [https://wiki.haskell.org/Dependent_type#Dependent_types_in_H...](https://wiki.haskell.org/Dependent_type#Dependent_types_in_Haskell_programming)

[2] [https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.0.4/docs/html/libraries...](https://downloads.haskell.org/~ghc/7.0.4/docs/html/libraries/ghc- prim-0.2.0.0/src/GHC-Tuple.html#%28%2C%29)

[3] If you think that this sounds easy in your language, try generalizing this where `v` can be an element in _any_ vector space, not just the sorts of vector spaces that we're used to dealing with as computer scientists.

[4] Yes, I am aware of the irony in saying saying that this Python code was more hideous than the equivalent MATLAB code. MATLAB is awful in so many ways, but at the end of the day, it's a domain-specific language, and it tackles its use case in a way that no general-purpose programming language I've seen has.

<comment><USER18> > I'll use Haskell as an example, since it's the most widely-known strict > static type system. Hindley-Milner type systems like Haskell often don't > allow dependent types, which means that a 2D vector and 3D vector are the > same type unless their dimensions are known at compile-time (which is > oftentimes not the case).

Implementation of dependent types in Haskell, with the specific example of dimension-parameterized vectors, is addressed in [0].

[0] [https://www.fpcomplete.com/user/konn/prove-your-haskell- for-...](https://www.fpcomplete.com/user/konn/prove-your-haskell-for-great- safety/dependent-types-in-haskell)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This isn't really a problem with the type system. Basically, the author figured out that the normal equations with Vandermonde matrices ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandermonde_matrix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandermonde_matrix)) are horribly ill-conditioned and a terrible tool for interpolation. Though, I actually like the authors example because it's a nice way to give physical units to what sometimes causes ill-conditioning. But, in short, I don't think there's anything wrong or complicated about a type system tracking units in this case. Vandermonde matrices will absolutely have radically different units in their elements, which is a huge disincentive to use them.

Now, what's a better way to interpolate a series of points? Basically, use a better polynomial basis. In the authors example, we use the polynomial basis [x 1]. Or, in the higher order case, [x^4 x^3 x^2 x 1], etc. A better way to do this is to use a polynomial basis that's more stable, such as Legendre, Chebyshev, or Bernstein polynomials. They all have different properties, but if we look at something like the second order Bernstein polynomials, we have [(1-x)^2 2x(1-x) x^2], we notice that each polynomial has the same units. Then, if we do form the normal equations, we don't have such a huge disparity in the units of the elements.

In addition, forming the normal equations are a terrible way to solve these problems. Basically, if we want to find a least squares solution, we're much better off using something like a QR factorization because things like Givens rotations are much more numerically stable. Alternatively, we can use iterative methods like LSQR or LSMR, which also compute the least squares solution without explicitly forming the normal equations and thus avoiding the condition number problems.

Finally, even if someone wants to be neurotic about units, which is generally good practice, but a pain to do every time, we're almost always better off doing dimension analysis at the operator level and not the element level. For example, if I was solving the heat equation, I might form a matrix with the finite different operator or a stiffness matrix. However, I would know that the stiffness matrix, in this context, would have units of L(m^2/s,K/s) where L means that we have a linear operator from something with units of m^2/s to K/s. Technically, we can work backwards from these two to see that our elements have elements of K/m^2, but that's not as useful as the operator formulation. And, I claim this because if we write things out in the operator form, it makes it easier for us to figure out the units of the adjoint. In the simple case with the L^2 norm, we know that the adjoint has units of L(K/s,m^2/s). However, if the inner product we use has units, this answer will absolutely be different. Personally, I find that easier to track when I write things out like this.

Anyway, I do think dimension/unit analysis is important, but static type systems are sufficient to track it and it's really not too bad to do so.

</comment><comment><USER20> F# units of measure to the rescue:

[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd233243.aspx](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/dd233243.aspx)

let convertCtoF ( temp : float<degC> ) = 9.0<degF> / 5.0<degC> * temp + 32.0<degF>

<comment><USER21> F# units can certainly handle the problem given a fixed matrix size, but for a general method handling arbitrary dimensions you'd need variadic measure arguments, which aren't supported (and would probably require quite a bit of bookkeeping for this particular problem, in any language).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Look at the "Eigen" [1] library for C++. It's totally possible to do linear algebra in a staticly typed environment. You just need to use generic types. However it isn't as pleasant as doing it in a dynamicly typed environment like MATLAB.

[1] [http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/group__TutorialLinearAlgebra....](http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/group__TutorialLinearAlgebra.html)

<comment><USER23> as far as I know, Eigen is type-safe only with regards to dimensions of vector spaces. It can check at compile time that a dot product is taken over two compatibly-sized vectors, or that a matrix-matrix multiply makes sense dimensionally.

It doesn't have a notion of vector spaces with units. It can't keep track (not Eigen, at least) that a vector [m, kg] cannot be inner-product'd with itself unless its through a norm that produces the correct dimension, otherwise the units are m^2 + kg^2.

<comment><USER22> Isn't that the default behaviour for most linear algebra systems? (e.g. MATLAB). Maybe I'm missing something but I don't really care about compile time checking and it seems an impossible task anyway with variable/dynamic sized inputs.

<comment><USER23> Yes, it is impossible for a compiler to know the size of a matrix whose size is determined at runtime. But a lot of times you do know the size of matrices and not only is it more type-safe to have the type of a matrix be parametrized by its size, it also allows for more efficient code generation. If you don't know the size of a matrix and vector, you necessarily need a loop. If you know your matrix is 3 by 2, you may just, at compile time, unroll the loop completely.

I don't know which default behavior you mean.

<comment><USER14> It's impossible for a compiler to know the size of a matrix whose size is determined at runtime, but it's not impossible for a compiler to prove that whatever the size your logic is still correct (or at least doesn't break any of the invariants you've established). Depending on the nature of those invariants and the complexity of your logic, you may need dependent types.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't answer the question directly, because as a web engineer I haven't once in my career actually had to do linear algebra in my code. That said, the entire mindset behind this article strikes me as fundamentally wrong-headed. The mindset is "either you have static types, or you don't." From that perspective, if you can think of any situation in which you can't encode the problem into static types, then you might as well throw the whole idea out the window and just hope things work at run-time. In the real world, this isn't at all how it works.

The last couple of decades have been a story of type systems slowly but surely expanding the class of problems for which type-safety is practical and worthwhile. There are still problems for which this _isn 't_ the case, and there will likely still be problems like this for a long time. Proponents of static typing aren't arguing against this fact; they're arguing that for all the myriad cases where static types _can_ help, we should use them. For the cases we can't figure out, fine, just use ints. But for those functions, write a lot of tests, and be sure to rewrap those ints in semantic types as soon as possible.

In short, whether or not my static type system can handle linear algebra is completely irrelevant to me. To be worth using, my type system doesn't have to solve _every_ problem. It only has to solve enough problems to provide more benefit than cost. In my experience, it does that by multiple orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER25> The problem is that linear algebra is probably one of the most basic things you can do with a computer. If static typing isn't capable of offering useful help or even just has a few weird wrinkles, then something is _very odd_.

For what it's worth, I've seen LA done in C++ with various templates and libraries, and so it's certainly possible in various ways.

<comment><USER24> It wouldn't surprise me at all if static typing was capable of offering useful help. If it can't today, I wouldn't be surprised to see us make progress over the next few years. I think interesting conversations could be had about why this problem is harder to model using type systems than other problems are. Where I get confused is when this is used as an argument against using static typing _in general_. By analogy:

"Hammering nails is probably one of the most basic things you can do as a carpenter. If lathes aren't capable of offering useful help, then something is _very odd_."

I don't mean to mock, but it doesn't seem odd to me at all that not all tools are good for all purposes. What seems odd to me is trying to argue against the use of a tool that has proven itself in many different situations by pointing out that there exist situations it isn't useful in. Sure, that's true, but so what?

<comment><USER26> but a programming language isn't a hammer or a lathe. its a workshop that is used to produce hammers and lathes and every other tool you will need.

the criteria for judging the workshop is rather different than the criteria for judging the lathe.

<comment><USER27> PL's as tools is a half-accurate analogy. If you're going to stretch it that far, shouldn't you use something more accurate? Or better, not use an analogy for something that detailed?

Say, PL's are materials. They are something that useful things "tools" are fashioned out of. The properties of a material affect the entire thing built out of it, in modest but pervasive ways. Some programs are built in more than one language, this could be seen as an object built with different materials for different parts. Now, whether mainstream languages are analogous to different iron alloys, wood, concrete or plastic is a different discussion. (And maybe another exercise in taking an analogy too far...)

Not sure where I saw this analogy first, since I can't find it on LtU...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inspiration: Startup Video Awards - <AUTHOR> http://startupvideoawards.com/

<comment><USER2> Super inspiring. It is awesome we can see who created the videos and rank em.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, I started this project a few days ago with the intention of being an inspiration to designers, hackers and all those who have disruptive ideas of technological innovation.</comment></comment>


Risks of Predictive Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://datacommunitydc.org/blog/2013/02/risks-of-predictive-analytics/

<comment><USER2> If the predictive analytics said all your friends were going to jump off a cliff next week, would you jump off the same cliff?

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone know any models using stochastic control to model this effect?</comment>


Ask HN: Should I get the new Macbook? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently in the market for a new device. I'm interested in the i9 15" Macbook but I've heard nothing but bad things lately. However I'm not sure how much of that is genuine or just being unhappy with change.
I had the 2017 Macbook with the touchbar, the large touchpad and the butterfly switches and didn't find it as horrible as some people are making it it out to be. Has it gotten worse since then? Have heating issues become more pronounced?
What should I do here, HN? <comment><USER2> I've got the 2018 model, 15" with most specs maxed out. It's been a wonderful daily driver for my development work. If you liked your 2017 then it's the same machine, just with better internals, so you'll probably feel exactly the same about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the i9 used to run into some throttling and performance issues. I'm not sure if that's been fixed yet - in general an i7 might be better bang for your buck in a laptop anyway since you're going to struggle no matter what with a laptop to take advantage of an i9

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For what it's worth, my day job just involves writing code. I'm not doing anything too fancy on it at all.

If I do get the MacBook, should I go for the i7 or the i9? Assume that the cost difference in making the leap is half (I can get about a 40% reimbursement on the total cost).

<comment><USER4> I consider it bad capitalism. A kid if possible. But I understand if you need to hit compile on an iOS app

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow up: I got the 2019 i7.

Thanks for the feedback.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. Get a Dell.

<comment><AUTHOR> If I get a Dell I'd have to opt for a Hackintosh. There are just too many little things in MacOS that I find are important to me and they're really difficult to replicate across in GNU/nix.

<comment><USER6> I find this is a fair point. No need to do another rant about Apple.

The one thing to consider (I am sure you do) is just what kind of non-Apple- hardware you could get for the same amount of money you are willing to spend. The difference is the entrance fee for Mac software. I am not a Mac user, but both Linux desktop and Linux-on-Windows got quite mature in the last years</comment></comment></comment>


Scalable, Robust and Standard Java Web Services with Fibers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2014/05/29/cascading-failures/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty cool. I'd love to see some benchmarks comparing it to Akka and other async Java libraries.

Also, just thinking out loud here, it's cool that this increases capacity by ~10X but since it doesn't actually improve latency, it's sort of like a call center putting you on hold instead of a busy signal. Is that a fair characterization?

As such my first focus would probably be on fault tolerance and auto-scaling, i.e. spin up more servers in response to increased latencies. And if I do that, then I'd have to ask myself whether it's really worth it to stitch this library deep into my app just to optimize for a situation (busy signals) that I've now architected to avoid in the first place.

Haven't thought that through very much but consider it a straw man argument.. any thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would assume that other async libraries would give similar results, but only Comsat/Quasar let you keep writing simple, blocking code, using the same, standard APIs.

As to scaling, in the case of a simple web service like this, Comsat would increase your capacity by a lot, in a manner similar to buying more hardware (though I would rater use a free library than buy a lot more servers). But once things get more complex, and your system more distributed, utilizing your machine's resources better gives you a much bigger boost than additional hardware. Just a simple example: if you're using a distributed write-through cache, packing more work into fewer machines will have a very big impact on your latencies.

<comment><USER2> I see, so in your example service B is modeling a cache miss.

My initial reaction was like, service B is "failing" so wouldn't the fault tolerance and autoscaling you ought to have in place be good enough to deal? But a write-through cache is a good example where there can be a relatively massive disparity in latencies depending on whether it's a hit or miss, and thus a swarm of misses could tie up the server's connections. So getting an extra ~10X connections to work with makes a big difference.

I guess my next thought would be, how broadly applicable are those service characteristics? And is it worth the "risk" of stitching in a library that does bytecode manipulation and whatnot as a general practice, or should I use it in a more targeted fashion?

Again just thinking out loud.. I'm very impressed with the work. Kudos for a library that minimizes the complexity of async programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, service B _is_ modeling a failure. What I meant in my previous comment was that adding more machines for scaling is not only more expensive, but can add significant latencies if those machines are using a distributed cache (as each would invalidate the other's caches, creating more misses). It's always preferable to utilize fewer machines better.

I would say that the risk Quasar brings is no different from any 1 year old library. It's young, so test it well and introduce it carefully gradually to production. The bytecode manipulation Quasar performs is vastly simpler than, say, JRebel. Quasar does not change object layouts or any such thing. It simply injects code into suspendable methods to copy local variables into an array and back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm highly interested in all of this, but I can't understand a damn thing from the article.

How does Quasar implement fibers? How is code transformed to CSP (is it at all?) Where are the yielding points, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a lot of information on the blog[1] and in the documentation.

While fibers support CSP just like in Go (and can run Erlang-like fibers), in the code here they don't. They simply use fiber-blocking (rather than thread- blocking) IO. So the servlet container assigns a fiber per request, and the call to the microservices (via Apache HTTP client) blocks the fiber but not the thread.

[1]: In particular: [http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2014/02/06/fibers- threads-st...](http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2014/02/06/fibers-threads- strands/)</comment></comment>


An incident response blog post containing 0day vuln - <AUTHOR> https://security.infoteam.ch/en/blog/posts/narrative-of-an-incident-response-from-compromise-to-the-publication-of-the-weakness.html <comment><AUTHOR> It's a good case for training the attention to spot obvious vulnerabilities in the code.</comment>