Are We Taking Open Source for Granted? - <AUTHOR> https://changelog.com/are-we-taking-open-source-for-granted/ <comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps the better question is, how can we enable people to continue to contribute to open source in a sustainable way?

Gratipay and basic income come to mind. I'm interested in hearing what others here think.</comment>


Linear-Log Bucketing: Fast, Versatile, Simple - <AUTHOR> http://pvk.ca/Blog/2015/06/27/linear-log-bucketing-fast-versatile-simple/ <comment><USER2> I wish that I knew the name, but this reminds me of the banknote sequence 1 2 5 10 20 50 100 ...

<comment><USER3> Hyperinflation sequence for banknotes:

[http://oeis.org/A051109](http://oeis.org/A051109)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds like what the TLSF allocator does: [http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/main/docs](http://www.gii.upv.es/tlsf/main/docs)

</comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me, or are the bin sizes listed from jemalloc (assuming 150 should be 160, and 182 be 192) not dividing each power-of-2 range linearly?

16, 32, 48, 64, 80, 96, 128, 160, 192, 256, 320, 384, …

It looks like, from 64 and up, each power-of-2 range is divided into two quarter ranges and one half range.

<comment><USER6> That's just bad mental arithmetic on my part. Fixed!

<comment><USER7> I think you now subbed 102 for 192 "128, 160, 102, 224". Sorry to nitpick, but I stared at that for longer than I'd really like to admit before thinking it was a typo.

<comment><USER6> Fixed, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe memcached uses a similar algorithm for storing objects in its heap space. It's a nice way to strike a balance between waste and speed.</comment>


Sublime Text packages - <AUTHOR> http://sublimepackages.com/

<comment><USER2> Does this offer any real benefit over the official list on the sublime package control page?

[http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/community](http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/community)

One suggestion to bring it to at least feature parity: It is useful to display the operating systems that each package supports.

<comment><USER3> Just a heads up for anyone interested. I've been working on a very significant revamp of the Package Control site that coincides with all of my work on Package Control 2.0. I've been pushing hard the past couple of weeks, with a hopeful launch in the next couple of days.

<comment><USER4> that is so awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I middle-click on a link, I expect it to open in a new tab. When browsing lists of things I tend to scroll through the list and open a bunch of tabs, then peruse them at my leisure later on, and I can't do that on your site.

<comment><USER6> Middle click to open in a new tab seems ok for me (Chrome 28 Stable on Win7 x64).

<comment><USER7> Middle click doesn't seem to work on Chrome 28.0.1500.72 on Win8 x64... It does, however, work on 30.0.1582.0 canary.

<comment><USER8> Middle click does not work for Chromium 28.0.1500.71 :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mod, could you please fix the typo in the title from pacakges to packages!

</comment><comment><USER10> So glad more people than me frequently misspell pacakges...

</comment><comment><USER11> Couple of suggestions:

* Add categories (by language, software integration, accessibility, whatever) * Add links to the package website and/or Github url * Add screenshots for every package, especially themes. Nothing worse than clicking on "Uber Theme VIII" only to see that it says "Here's a new theme called Uber Theme VIII" but I'd have to install it to find out what it looks like. No thanks.

<comment><USER12> There's a small link to the repository in the meta line below each project description, next to the last modified date. It's hard to find. I was coming here to suggest that on package detail pages, the package name should link to the project repository, and not recursively to the detail page. That was my instinctual expectation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A bit off topic, but it's better to ask here than to create another thread.

I'm teaching myself HTML, and CSS and JS (jQuery). Are there any essential Sublime Text packages that I have to install? I searched it on DDG but it wasn't very helpful (most of the articles were outdated).

PS: I only have "Package Control" installed.

<comment><USER14> Have to, absolutely not - but you'll find that Emmet is extremely useful for HTML.

<comment><USER15> Some non language specific ones I use constantly: SublimeLinter, Sidebar Enhancements, Git, Quick File Creator, FileDiffs.

<comment><USER16> Thanks for the tip on Quick File Creator. I'm a pretty heavy Sublime Text user and that just solved a pain point for me.

Another one that's useful for me in web-related work and not specific to any particular language is the Web Encoders plugin: [https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-web- encoders](https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-web-encoders) \-- I often use it when I need to test URL encoding/decoding stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know what package is being used for the Blue folder icons and search bar icons?

[http://sublimepackages.com/#/details/theme- flatland](http://sublimepackages.com/#/details/theme-flatland)

<comment><USER18> I think that's flatland itself.

<comment><USER17> Oh neat. I didn't want to change the text theme since I like monokai.

Thanks for responding!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am I the only one that is annoyed that the MXML/AS highlighting package is called flex, and there is no flex lexer highlighting package?

</comment><comment><USER20> Error: EMFILE, open '/var/www/stpackages/static/index.html'

Node.js isn't happy :)

</comment><comment><USER21> Is it just painfully slow for me?

<comment><USER22> I got a "502 Bad Gateway | nginx" error, then it loaded (nice use of Bootstrap 3 RC1) and then it was slow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice works. Thanks. HN is a tough crowd, but means well. Great advice here.

</comment><comment><USER24> ReferenceError: angular is not defined

Maybe this still needs some love...

</comment><comment><USER25> Why voting on this?</comment>


US Military Classifies Wikileaks As 'Enemy Of The United States' - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120926/23522220526/us-military-classifies-wikileaks-as-enemy-united-states.shtml

<comment><USER2> Without commenting on this particular document, the military has an extremely valid reason for criminalizing contact between Wikileaks and active servicemembers; people in the armed services are stewards of all sorts of information that can't be leaked, and Wikileaks has a stated goal of extracting as much intelligence from the US military as they can.

This "declaration" (it's a Techdirt story; someone could do us all a favor by trying to verify what it actually means) comes in the wake of the most grievous opsec breach in US history. The only reason we're not outraged by the breach itself is that it got overshadowed by the subsequent disclosure to the press. If it had been Israel that extracted this information and _not_ ransomed it to The Guardian, we'd be calling for heads to roll over it.

<comment><USER3> Wikileaks is a journalistic organization. If someone in the US military emails the New York Times a classified secret, that does not make the Times an "enemy of the United States."

All this nonsense about "most grievous breach in opsec history" and "extracting information" completely obscures the issue by putting the blame on the wrong boot.

Hacking, spying, all these things can and should be declared illegal/wrong. But publishing data that was sent to you by a willing informant is much less clear-cut, and certainly doesn't warrant "enemy of the state" status from any country claiming to respect freedom of the press.

The goal of news organizations is to find out information and make it public. If you want to keep information private, fine, make it a criminal offense for _your people_ to disclose that information to news sources. Case closed.

<comment><USER4> The New York Times will parse and redact the information that they feel could endanger people from any classified information that they may publish or use in an article. They notably published the Pentagon Papers, which showed that the US had been misled regarding Vietnam. This information did not endanger anyone.

Wikileaks, at least with the initial major leak, does not redact or edit information to protect anyone. This has been one of the reasons major journalist outlets (such as NYT) didn't cooperate with them regarding the initial leak.

They simply serve as a clearinghouse for leaked info. The government would almost certainly be able to invoke prior restraint if they were able to take wikileaks to a US court. They were not able to show this in the Pentagon Papers case.

I'm not commenting on the "enemy of state" situation, but I did want to clarify that major difference between an organization such as the NYT and Wikileaks.

<comment><USER5> So you think NY Times or other media shouldn't have exposed that video of the army guys in helicopter gunning those unarmed men?

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure how you attribute that belief to me.

I simply said that the New York Times and Wikileaks have different procedures for dealing with information leaked to them.

I never said anything about what should or shouldn't have been exposed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While it's completely reasonable for the US to be concerned with preventing breaches of classified information, the problem with the US reaction to the horrors and gaffes revealed by Wikileaks is that there has been _absolutely zero_ outrage about them, only the attempt to shoot the messenger.

This asymmetry has been a real awakening for me about the level of corruption and moral bankruptcy of the US ruling class, and about the apathy and complicity of the press and the citizenry in general.

I think we are already past the inflection point that historians will one day view as similar to the turning points that led to Nazi Germany and other large scale moral failings of humanity. There is a culture of denial and intentional blindness to the consequences of US actions abroad and a terrible enthusiasm for the leaders who initiate these kinds of things.

<comment><USER7> I have one friend (a United States citizen) who has spent much of his life living abroad. He has been to dozens of different countries, including the Asian country where I met him. He has not been back to any part of the United States in the last five years, during which time he has been to multiple countries of varied cultural and political background. His reaction to the Wikileaks publication of United States diplomatic "cables" was that his respect for United States diplomats increased enormously. That is my reaction too. United States diplomats have to deal with other governments all over the world, many much more treacherous and duplicitous than the United States government has been even at its worst. Those of us who are Americans who have been abroad, and who thus are especially aware of the consequences of US actions abroad, certainly have our own criticisms of United States policy. We also criticize the actions of United States persons who violate some United States policies, to the harm of foreign persons. But if Wikileaks wanted to so something both constructive for world peace and likely to elicit even more surprised outrage, it should turn its attention to the classified documents of China, of Iran, of Russia, of North Korea, of Belarus, of Venezuela, and of various other dictatorial regimes around the world.

AFTER EDIT: The reply two levels down by pdonis correctly summarizes the single standard I apply to all governments: they all ought to act morally, they all fail to act morally from time to time, I oppose all of those failures, and I would especially like to know more about the activities of governments that don't subject themselves to the discipline of free and fair elections, even if it means an organization like Wikileaks has to reveal their secrets.

<comment><USER8> Given your eager defense of US I doubt you see how dangerous this kind of reasoning is.

You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who expose this behavior.

So exposing bad behavior of US government is bad and worthy prosecution but exposing bad behavior of other governments, those you deem to be worse than US, is good and worthy praise.

Please explain the rationale for that double-standard.

Please also tell me which which other country dropped two atomic bombs, fought a prolonged, unprovoked political war (Vietnam) and invaded another country based on evidence that is believed to be completely fabricated (Iraq) and destroyed the lives of many creative people during McCarthy's communist witch hunt.

This is not to say that other countries aren't worse but let's not blindly wave patriotic flag and pretend that US government is immune to immoral, corrupt behavior. This kind of blind patriotism is easily exploitable. One thing that the "bad" governments have in common is that blind patriotism is a main propaganda technique used by Nazi Party, North Korea, communist countries to build us vs. evil them (except to them it's the jews or US is the "evil") and explain away their bad behavior (because the other side is even worse).

<comment><USER9> > You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's > justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who > expose this behavior.

That's not what he said. He said the US is, on balance, _less_ immoral than the dictatorial regimes he named. Yet those other regimes don't get the scrutiny the US does.

<comment><USER10> _Yet those other regimes don't get the scrutiny the US does._

For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the world police. The most visible nation will, of course, be under more scrutiny, and rightfully so. The more power one has, the more safeguards need to be available to ensure that power is used for good.

Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

<comment><USER9> > For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the > world police.

To an extent, yes, this is a valid point. But I'm not sure "world police" is the right term. The United Nations is supposed to be playing the role of enforcing standards of civilized behavior on all nations, but it has failed miserably. The US is more like one of the more civilized citizens who is getting fed up with the stuff the less civilized citizens get away with without being called on it by either the "authorities" (the UN) or the other supposedly more civilized citizens. Which is not to say that the US always does the "right" thing when it gets fed up like this; but in many situations I'm not sure there _is_ a "right" thing to do. The sad fact is that there are a lot of nations and a lot of people in the world who simply do not care about upholding standards of civilized behavior.

> Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

Yes, this is true, and I didn't mean to imply that the US was the only country being "targeted". As far as I can tell, Wikileaks is an equal opportunity organization: they're willing to piss off anyone. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just out of curiosity: are the Russians classified as "Enemy of the US"? How about the Chinese? Or the DPRK?

The Chinese military and government, for example, is way more actively trying to get military secrets out of the US, and not for altruistic reasons either. What makes them saints compared to Wikileaks?

<comment><USER2> What do you think happens to a US servicemember who leaks military secrets to Russia or China?

<comment><USER12> That's not the point. Wikileaks isn't a servicemember, they're the recipient and conveyer of the leak. The point here is a double standard: if a SuperSpy steals info and gives it to China, it's an "incident" that doesn't meaningfully affect diplomacy. If JoeClerk emails the _same inforomation_ to SomeDude on the internet, suddenly SomeDude is a ... enemy of the United States?

Surely you see the problem here, right? It has nothing to do with security processes.

<comment><USER2> What does it matter who JoeClerk is mailing state secrets to? Clerks can't be mailing state secrets to random people on the Internet!

<comment><USER12> Right. So punish JoeClerk, not SomeDude.

<comment><USER13> That is what this is all about. The Air Force was dealing with an incident involving JoeClerk (actually JaneClerk). Providing information to Wikileaks was called _communicating with the enemy, 104-d_ (referring to the UCMJ) not to go after WL, but to go after Jane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What TechDirt and the title suggest is that people communicating with Wikileaks could be considered "talking with the enemy," the real restriction is on _military personnel_. Maybe that's still bad, but we generally accept that the military can place restrictions on people its soldiers are allowed to talk with.

They refer to a FOIA request releasing a document from the Air Force, but the link is to another news article, not the document. Anyone have the original so we can read for ourselves?

 _EDIT_ derrida provides primary document below: [http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF- FO...](http://wikileaks.org/IMG/pdf/Assange-WikiLeaks-Enemy-USAF-FOI.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> JFK made a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961. His discussion of the dangers of stifling transparency - often in the name of public safety - seems as important today:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces>

<comment><USER15> Obama himself gave a speech before the UN just _yesterday_ extolling the virtues of free speech:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president- obamas-2012...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president- obamas-2012-address-to-un-general-assembly-full- text/2012/09/25/70bc1fce-071d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_print.html)

<comment><USER16> The right to free speech does not imply the right to force people to speak.

<comment><USER17> For people, yes. For government, it should be mandatory. The government's military? Sometimes.

<comment><USER16> I partially (mostly?) agree, but for Obama to promote free speech while at the same time claiming the government has the right to remain silent is not some grand hypocrisy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about. For example: whatever happened to the BoA emails they were going to reveal? Isn't it convenient that some "rogue" guy in Germany ran away with these emails? Given Assange's background and technical capabilities, isn't it surprising that he allowed it to happen?

<comment><USER16> They had backups in S3 but they were lost in the power outage caused by the storm caused by the orbital bad weather gun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It probably isn't the intention but that will serve as a validation of wikileaks in the eyes of quite a few people.

</comment><comment><USER19> Apparent Facts:

\- AF OSI (the Air Force's own little internal FBI-like agency) investigates military members contacting Wikileaks / Julian Assange

\- AF OSI is alleging that some service-members may be punished under UCMJ 104-D Communicating with the Enemy / Aiding the Enemy for communicating with Julian Assange

Unjustified Speculation:

\- The US Military or US AF considers Wikileaks an Enemy of the State.

\- The US Military is going to assassinate Julian Assange with a UAV drone.

Debatable, but likely (IANAL):

\- This particular investigation case (involving those service members) is closed and it is unknown/classified regarding whether official charges were filed.

\- UCMJ 104-D may also charge non-service-members for Aiding the Enemy (Google is embarrassingly unhelpful confirming or denying this for me)

\- TechDirt is flame-baiting and fear-mongering (obviously their raison d'être)

</comment><comment><USER20> I think it would behoove wikileaks to try and dump documents of countries that the US considers hostile to suspect, such as Iran, Russia and North Korea.

So far Wikileaks has been releasing files that are largely from the US, but it needs to be more neutral in releasing files from all countries.

Wikileaks' US focus it hurting it. Other countries like England, Russia, Israel, China, India, etc. all deserve some time in the spotlight.

Personally, I would love to see more exposure of corruption by politicians in countries like Brazil. Putting corrupt politicians in prison would do more to bolster its image and support for it than its current crusade.

</comment><comment><USER21> A major problem with this article is that it does not clearly define what "Enemy Of The United States" means in this context. Who made this decision? Is this a special status / designation with associated repercussions, or simply a description used by an anonymous writer in the Air Force?

NB that I would not defend the latter case, but this article does not really tell us exactly what the leaked paper implies about US policy towards Wikileaks.

</comment><comment><USER22> Primary source here <http://wikileaks.org/US-Military-Refers-to-Julian.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> More like an Enemy of the United States MILITARY. I personally like to be informed about what my tax dollars are funding around the world.

</comment><comment><USER11> It is interesting (in a sad sort of way) to see how this article is being flagged into oblivion. Even though it has 130 points in 3 hours, it has been relegated to page 3 of HN.

I would have assumed that this topic was of widespread interest, especially to the HN community. But some folks seem to confuse what the "flag" button means...

</comment><comment><USER24> Bombing the servers won't be a good idea now when GeoLocated has gained a lot of popularity.

</comment><comment><USER5> As an enemy of US, being in the same category as al-Alqaeda and the Taliban insurgents, does it mean that if the US military happens to see Assange anywhere in the world, they have to shoot him on sight or send killer drones after him? After all, according to them, he's just as dangerous as al-Qaeda.

<comment><USER2> No, it does not mean that. The federal authorization to kill Taliban and AlQ operatives arises from the 2003 Iraq AUMF; there isn't some doctrine that says "if the military designates you as an enemy of the state they can kill you with winged death robots".

<comment><USER25> "An enemy is dealt with under the laws of war, which could include killing, capturing, detaining without trial, etc," - Marc Ratner, Assange's attorney

"Any person who ... aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with ... money. Any person who ... without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct." Punitive Articles of the UCMJ: Article 104—Aiding the enemy

"Scope of Article 104. This article denounces offenses by _all persons whether or not otherwise subject to military law_. Offenders may be tried by court- martial or by military commission."

<comment><USER2> Oh, well if Marc Ratner says we're going to send the death robots after Assange, I'm sold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sigh. Next up, imprisoning US "Dissidents".

<comment><USER2> Please connect those dots for us.

<comment><USER27> Not saying the line is complete yet, but the NDAA looks like a connecting dot to me.

I'd love to be proven wrong, but is this not what a steady slide into military dictatorship would be expected to look like?

<comment><USER2> The NDAA authorizes the President to kill members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It can kill Americans only if they are providing material support to those two organizations and only if they are on foreign soil. Those (very limited) restrictions actually _narrow_ the powers granted to the executive under the 2003 AUMF. The NDAA actually made it _harder_ for the President to sic the death robots on people.

<comment><USER27> This isn't usually how I hear the NDAA characterized. I'd be interested if you had more I could read on this perspective.

Keep in mind that definitions of terms like "material support" give wide latitude to interpretation. Last I heard there were people in jail under such terms for donating money to what on the surface appeared to be an Islamic charity.

I never ran a mirror, but I configured DNS record for wikileaks when it was under DoS. Does this make me an "enemy of the state" too?

I think these are justified concerns and as an American it saddens me deeply that I would even think to have them.

<comment><USER2> Respectfully, Marsh (you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a tinfoil hat and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources.

Material support has a specific definition. Your donation must be made "knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for" an actual terrorist attack. You cannot be killed by the death robots for donating to Islamic charities.

What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating to Islamic charities?

<comment><USER27> _you know it's all respect with you & me, even though I think you wear a tinfoil hat_

Oh absolutely. I'm in touch with with my inner tinfoil-hat-ness and am secretly less off the deep end than my tweets would make it appear. (at least that's what I tell myself :-)

 _and you think I'm a tool of the status quo), you believe this stuff because you only read about the NDAA from advocacy sources._

No, I know you're too smart for that. This is why I'm interested in how you came to your conclusion.

 _What specific people do you believe have been unjustly imprisoned for donating to Islamic charities?_

This is probably what I was thinking of: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Foundation_for_Relie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Land_Foundation_for_Relief_and_Development) (note that I'm not saying this specific prosecution was just or unjust, only that it supports the theory that prosecutions are possible under a definition of "material support" which includes giving to what is ostensibly a charity).

<comment><USER2> The law requires foreknowledge of an actual terrorist action that the donation contributes to.

Moreover: I'm actually wrong here; the Obama Administration (which, recall, was _pushing back_ on a far broader standard requested by the GOP-controlled Congress) applied a stricter standard, of "substantial support", which I understand to mean that not only do you need to have foreknowledge that your contribution applied to an actual terrorist attack, but also that your contribution actually has to have significantly enabled the attack.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fewer Americans Choose to Move to New Pastures - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/business/economy/fewer-workers-choose-to-move-to-new-pastures.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how much of this is companies getting stingier with relocation expenses. Even in tech, companies which claim to be begging for more talent tend to offer either no relocation benefits or really kinda insulting benefits ("$5000 max reimbursable with receipts, and you have to pay it back if you are separated within a year" for instance).

How many Americans could really cover a cross country move out of their own savings in search of work? Especially when job switching is so risky these days. I know a woman who relocated herself to SV to work for a startup and then was terminated a few months later after the startup shifted priorities and eliminated her position.

<comment><USER3> >How many Americans could really cover a cross country move out of their own savings in search of work?

I've done this, twice. But only because I really needed a job. Now that we're settled, it won't happen again so easily. One time I did it with a job already locked-in. Second time for my wife with no job locked in but it did work out well.

Once we're settled in our locale, it will take a great deal to get us to move again. Someone would have to be offered a lot of money and the other person have some sort of opportunity available. Eg. my wife is a teacher, we'd need it to be a state where they had reciprocity.

The fact that we need to move like cattle and have such lax labor laws to be let go with no cause are not really conducive to each other. Like what happened to your friend. Hard to imagine they truly couldn't find her some other job to do within the company when they "shifted priorities".

I say this as someone who is never a victim of circumstance, we are those who within reason, move or do whatever it takes to get ahead. So we moved but we've both also given up all our friends, family and the comfort those bring. But it remains that American work culture and labor laws are completely upside down and they need to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two-earner households, and a society that makes a two-earner household a prerequisite for a middle-class lifestyle, makes relocation inherently more difficult.

<comment><USER5> Another problem that can be solved by putting women back in the kitchen? </sarcasm>

Is there a case for preferring one-earner households? The bar for a middle class lifestyle going up is a problem, but I'm not sure it's the same problem.

<comment><USER4> Yes, there is. Elizabeth Warren, when she was an academic, did a fair amount of work indicating most of the marginal gain from the second earner goes to positional goods (like real estate in "good school districts" (ie areas with good demographics)) to no net gain. It also, as I said above, makes coordination more difficult.

Two-earner households also result in delayed fertility, which has harmful demographic effects and dysgenic effects.

<comment><USER5> I'll ask without the sarcasm. What's the alternative? Do we discourage people from working? Discourage people from sending their kids to the best schools they can?

I lived that life. My parents payed more for property and commuted farther so I could go to the best schools around and I'm grateful. Yes, there are down sides, but these are the choices people make because it's worth it to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is what shoots down the biggest myth of the "pure capitalism" crowd.

They have a habit of presenting complicated economics in "Lemonade Stand" simplistic terms. "Labor will move to where they can make the most money, until equilibrium is achieved".

If your job moves to China, you can't move your family to China. The same restrictions apply at less restrictive levels for anywhere else.

The fact is, labor has never moved freely, and so any model built on that argument is inherently false.

<comment><USER7> Only if you assume that the free movement of labour is impossible; capitalists like myself argue that it's an entirely achievable goal. After all, we've achieved relatively free movement of capital.

The issue is that there are strongly entrenched powerful interests operating against free labour movement. Sadly, those people and organisations are themselves labelled as capitalists (sometimes, self-described).

<comment><USER8> Look at the EU: although there is complete freedom of movement of labour for EU citizens, cultural and language barriers prevent true movement to a far greater degree than within the US.

<comment><USER9> Moreover, movement of labour within the EU is mostly unidirectional. A German or a Brit is very unlikely to go to work in Poland or Bulgaria, whereas the other way around is almost always the case. This unidirectional movement sucks out young blood from the donor countries and leads them to an even direr future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If workers are terrified of changing, employer-linked healthcare is probably a big part of that.

<comment><USER11> I would love to see the dynamism that would spring from decoupling health insurance plans and employment.

<comment><USER12> They're tied together because then the premiums are paid for with before-tax dollars rather than after-tax dollars.

The original reason employers offered it was because in WW2 there was a government-imposed wage freeze, and companies got around that by offering benefits like health insurance.

<comment><USER13> So the solution is to stop taxing dollars spent on health care, period. Which, coincidentally, is a large part of Trump's health care plan (untaxed contributions to "Health Savings Accounts" that can accumulate without limit, can be shared with any family member, and are completely transferred on death as part of your estate).

<comment><USER14> Or, you know, socialize healthcare :).

<comment><USER7> ... which is just as problematic, ethically speaking, as socialised corporate losses (e.g. bank bailouts).

I don't see how anyone can be in favour of one, but not the other. In practice, though, _most_ people favour one or the other, but not neither of both.

<comment><USER15> You dont see why people believe society should help a gunshot victim but not a bank that sold questionable loans?

To most people, there is an extremely obvious distinction.

<comment><USER7> Sure, there is a massive difference. I think society should support the former, but not the latter.

But those arguing for socialised medicine aren't arguing that society should help the gunshot victim, they're arguing that the money to do so should be coerced from members of society. That coercion is morally wrong, regardless of how worthy the recipient is.

Also, if societal support were voluntary, people could choose between supporting the gunshot victim or the bank.

<comment><USER10> No, "coercing" money from people isn't morally wrong, it's part of the social contract. I'm a pacifist, but I still recognize that the sort of society left undefended doesn't last long so I pay the share of taxes that go to the military. Trade becomes difficult without roads, so every member of a vibrant economy pays for the infrastructure necessary to conduct that trade. I extend that to healthcare. A sick populous is less productive and less desirable.

<comment><USER7> Also, and this is a serious question: what is your definition of pacifism, that it allows for coercive funding? I assume here that you support the arrest and jailing of those who refuse to pay tax (and their probable death, should they refuse to be arrested either).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel that remote workers and telecomuting could account for some of the decrease. When jobs dried up in my town the tech savvy people got work 100km away in the nearest city but never changed addresses. You couldn't have done that 20 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER17> Related article that I found quite surprising:

The Typical American Lives Only 18 Miles From Mom: [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up- fa...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/24/upshot/24up-family.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> Or is this a good thing? I mean, I know it's de rigeur in journalistic circles to assume that any new trend must be a terrible one, but... if people are happy, and able to find jobs, without needing to move, this is a pretty good thing, right?

</comment><comment><USER19> OT: in the photo of a late 19th century wagon train heading west there are several people who are walking. Anyone happen to know why they would not be riding the wagons? Are the wagons so loaded at the start that the weight of passengers would be too much for the horses and so some walk until enough supplies are consumed to lighten the load?

<comment><USER5> Even riding in a vehicle with modern tires over terrain like that can become violently bumpy. I can't even imagine doing it with wooden wheels. If the wagon is going at a walking pace already, I'd have done that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe a higher portion of the population choosing to move is choosing somewhere outside of the US? Between cheap flights and better communication technology, moving from one coast to the other isn't so much more inconvenient than moving from the US to Europe, and it's definitely much more exciting.

<comment><USER21> I'm pretty sure the kind of people who used to move from Akron to, say, Philedelphia for more opportunities before middle america's mobility and income were severely reduced by the march of progress can't quite afford to move to London in hopes of finding a better life these days.

<comment><USER13> To add to this, in the past it may have been worthwhile to uproot your family and move across the world to "the land of opportunity." That doesn't imply in any way that today it is worthwhile to uproot your family and move across the world to "the land of less job opportunities but lower rent" on a whim.

The only people that can really exploit this are tech workers that can telecommute and pocket the difference between western salaries and expat cost of living, and that's not really "finding a new life" so much as it is maximizing an already disproportionally good life situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you can't even 2x your income by moving somewhere, then there isn't much point. For example, moving from Africa to the US could be much more beneficial than moving from one part of the US to another.

<comment><USER23> Interestingly, I think a lot of people would benefit from moving to places where they'd earn _less_. The high cost of housing in places like California far outpaces the increase in wages when compared to the Midwest. If you can find a job in a place like St. Louis or Cincinnati, you could take a meaningful pay cut -- say 30% or so, at least -- and _come out ahead_ in lifestyle.

Do you want to spend the next 20 years complaining about the high costs of real estate or would you rather move somewhere that you can own _today_?

How important to you is that sunny weather?

<comment><USER24> > If you can find a job in a place like St. Louis or Cincinnati, you could > take a meaningful pay cut -- say 30% or so, at least -- and come out ahead > in lifestyle.

 _IF_

The problem is that most people in tech understand that your job in gone in 5 years, 10 years at the outside. Given that I need 4 jobs over my lifetime (at least), I'm going to stay where I can get my next job even if that area is expensive.

If I find a good job in St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh, what happens when that job goes away? Now I have to move to San Jose, Austin, Boston anyway _AND_ I'm going to have a difficult time because my family is used to that big house and yard in the suburbs, but I didn't put enough money away fast enough to make the jump to the more expensive area because my salary was 30% less.

<comment><USER23> 1) You're absolutely right that there are more tech opportunities in the Bay Area than anywhere else on Earth.

2) Nonetheless, your all-caps _IF_ was a tad dramatic :) I'm a programmer in St. Louis. Jobs are plentiful. I've been working for about 10 years without issue (both at big companies and small).

3) None of this even applies to me because I have no family and no interest in owning a home right now. (So I'm not coming from a position of trying to defend my own choices.) But if I _were_ interested in buying a home, I wouldn't hesitate to do it here. Concerns about the Midwest job market are mostly bunk, especially when you factor in the cost of housing. You know all that stuff about software eating the world? Yeah, it's eating the _world_ , not just SV. There are jobs everywhere.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Stay with Java or learn something new for Web Applications? - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for a web application which I wanted to code as a side-project for some time. I already have experience with Java and C# because I learned them mostly during University and Internships.
What would you recommend? Stay with Java and try to get better with it? Or learn something new? There are too much possible choices and I have a hard time deciding what too use.
I was quite excited when I found dropwizard though. <comment><USER2> You should definitely focus on one technology, until you feel safe to call yourself an experienced Java developer. Of course you can and should look at other technologies but try not to get distracted until you know the fundamentals of professional (web) development. Once you're confident in a certain technology, picking up a similar technology will be relatively quick and easy. Another reason is that web frameworks are quickly outdated, and learning them to have them in your portfolio doesn't make sens in my opinion.

To paraphrase a common saying: Someone who works 10 years and every year with a different technology has 10x 1 year experience, not 10 years experience.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scala and Clojure are worth investigating, and retain most of your expertise with the Java stack.

Javascript expertise is also worthwhile, though there's a interesting Scala -> Javascript framework as well...

</comment><comment><USER4> while javascript is not my most favorite language, I think the opportunity to keep pretty much your whole stack in one language is worth alot. node / io.js let you do this; at the end of the day you can't "really" get around JS on the browser anyway.</comment>


We've Adapted Our Reading Habits to Fit Our Screens, but at a Cost - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3048297/evidence/everything-science-knows-about-reading-on-screens <comment><USER2> "In digital, we can link in different media, images, sound, and other text, and people can get overwhelmed," explains Andrew Dillon, a professor at the School of Information at the University of Texas, Austin, "These are disruptive activities that can carry a cost in terms of attention."

The way the article is presented gives an unintentional (?) perfect example. Using big gifs dividing the text and serving no other purpose then stop me from reading the whole article... And there are moving ads as well.

Point well made ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ironically, I skimmed through this, looking for a key sentence in every paragraph. Didn't find much of value.

People need to learn to condense their point, ideally down to one small paragraph or sentence. For instance,

"Without any data to back it up, I have a suspicion that people's reading skills are suffering because they are used to being flooded with writing in the digital world, and so they don't read everything from top to bottom."

I have another opinion, which is this:

People are now reading more than ever (and writing). Thirty years ago, the same types of people wouldn't be reading anything at all, and spend several hours a day in front of a TV. And they wouldn't be writing text messages, but rather using the telephone.

The reason people are non-linearly scanning text is not because they are managing their time poorly. They are managing their time well in the face of poorly organized, information-sparse rambling.

Most writing out there competing for your attention doesn't deserve it, and in writing that does deserve your attention, there are actually only small "hot spots" which do, not everything.

Non-linear reading isn't a _degradation_ in reading skill; it is a valuable skill in it own right. Schools even teach this to kids: how to skim through text to get the gist of the content so that you can focus on what is relevant. (And they taught this before the "digital age".) You need this skill to get through university. When you're doing research, there are just too many books and papers to sit there going word by word.

So, skim on, friends! And raise a big TL;DR middle finger to ramblers (like what I'm becoming here with this comment).

<comment><USER4> You need one more skill: You need to know when skimming didn't give you enough.

I see this with my kids. One of them skimmed the chapter in the math book, then asked me for help with the exercises. My "help" was: "Go back and actually _read_ the chapter. Don't skim it." And that worked.

It can be hard to tell the difference between "there's nothing there worth my time" and "there's something there, and I have to read it more thoroughly to find out what it is." You don't get 100% accuracy at this, but you can (I think) get somewhat good at it.

<comment><USER3> You can still trim how much you read when doing chapter exercises. Just start with the exercises and then search backwards for clues when you're stuck on something. Some books have a "chapter summary" which serves as a kind of directory to the details. That is conveniently located between the exercises and the bulk of the chapter: it practically begs to be traversed in that direction. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A couple of anecdotes, for what they're worth.

\- I find that if I only consume digital media, over time my ability to deep- dive into complex works of fiction or non-fiction diminishes. My attention span gets very short. I want to "pop off" and go consume something else. It takes a dedicated bit of effort to switch back into real reading mode

\- From looking at my server logs, the average web consumer doesn't get 99% of whatever you put on the page. People used to say you should design your page so that somebody driving by in a car could read and understand it. I would go so far as to design it so that a drunken one-eyed near-sighted person who is in an argument with their SO could read and understand it while going by at 100 mph. The numbers are not pretty.

\- Multi-purpose devices have but one goal: to get you to consume more material. The vendors that make them do not care whether you read that new downloaded book for 5 minutes or 5 hours. They only care that you downloaded it. Books on the other hand? People who make those want you to consume one particular work and then share/talk about it. With a book, you and the author are in this thing together. With a multi-media reader, you're just a demographic

</comment><comment><USER6> Those graphic animations make it absolutely impossible for me to read the article. Must have been done by effing greenhorns. Professionals should know better.

<comment><USER7> I found it somewhat ironic, trying to read the article, "But this style of reading may come at a cost—Liu noted in his study that sustained attention seems to decline when people read onscreen rather than on paper" while motion in my peripheral vision worked to pull my attention away.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps it's done intentionally? You're reading an article that's telling you that digital screen reading leaves the user prone to distractions. If they litter their page with distractions, the user can say, "Yeah, I felt distracted while reading this very article! Maybe there is something to this!"

Probably not, but you never know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's much easier to skim a newspaper than even the best feed reader, IMO, so it's not like that style of reading is new. I suppose the big difference now is the proportion of time spent on skimming media like newspapers vs long form media.

<comment><USER10> I agree that the biggest difference is that the web simply has people spending more time reading skim-worthy content. News/blog articles, forums, and comment threads make up a significant part of online reading and are naturally much more skim-able than most books. That's not a bad thing.

The important question is whether, as our deeper reading also goes digital, our habits of skimming while online will extend to them or not. Habits can be hard to break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I find font size and environment a big thing. Everything I read on a website is from a desk based environment, from home or at work.

Every book I currently read is on the same laptop, but I sit at the back of a bus, with the PDF font size blown up to 10 words per line, where I can lose myself without other distractions. I convert every ePub and the like to a PDF with the formatting I like.

From the article:

>Liu noted in his study that sustained attention seems to decline when people read onscreen rather than on paper, and that people also spend less time on in-depth reading.

Sit at the back of bus. No attention towards anywhere else.

> The researchers found that when people read short nonfiction onscreen, their > understanding of the text suffered because people managed their time poorly > compared with when they used paper (although paper's advantage disappeared > when people were given a fixed amount of time to read the text).

Manage time. Sit at the back of a bus to read, instead of standing on the subway despite some time saving.

> Other studies have also found costs when people multi-task online

Again, sit at the back of a bus. No online.

Perhaps the public busses where I live are really nice. Actually, they are, albeit overcrowded at intermediate stops. I intentionally take a slower route home to have time sitting on the back of the bus to read.

Pumped up font sizes, a touchscreen laptop, and a seat at the back of a bus are great reading environments. Far better than sitting at home with all the distractions that makes.

An anecdote: I much prefer pumped up font sizes on an 11" screen than typical typeset in a handily carried book. And cannot concentrate when trying to read on a 6" or 7" phone/small tablet screen.

</comment><comment><USER12> I found the article largely unreadable due to all the movement from the animations. Did the author want to show how bad he can design the screen reading experience?

</comment><comment><USER13> Seems like this article makes quite a leap from the study results to their suggestion that everyone reads paper books. Study results:

1\. People reading on a screen are more likely to skim

2\. Skimming reduces comprehension of the material

3\. Reading on paper correlates with better reconstruction of plot

It seems like 1 and 2 taken together are as good an explanation as any for 3. Given that, I feel like it would be at least worth an experiment to see if making a conscious effort to avoid skimming would be just as effective as switching to reading on paper. If so, I think that would be a cheaper and easier solution to the issue.

<comment><USER14> When I was younger and reading on the web, (the days of 28k modems) I didn't skim as much as a do now. I would put this to my inexperience of reading then (thinking that everything needed to be read). And that now there is a lot of crap on the internet. Its hard to sort out the good stuff that deserves attention. So i skim a lot.

But paper books are king. I tend to move slower through the text and have a more enjoyable time of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I agree that we consume more information, probably way too much, but in my experience, attention to detail and deep comprehension of the material depends more on how interested in the topic you are.

If I am actually trying to learn something or if I like a story, I'll become extremely focused on it no matter the medium (even the small smartphone screens that I usually hate are fine).

But if I'm reading for the sake of reading or to update my knowledge of a topic or stay up to date with the news, then I'll skim like crazy...

</comment><comment><USER16> The conclusions of this article closely mirror my own experience. I generally prefer reading a physical book because I am much more likely to remember the contents afterward. Things I read on a screen somehow feel slippery and less valuable.

But, how do we reconcile this with the transforming publishing industry? Will they only publish text books and prose that requires "deep reading" and leave everything else to be digitized?

</comment><comment><USER17> While the difference between skimming and thorough reading is obvious, I think the finding at the bottom has some merit. Thinking back on books I've read on print vs ones I've only read on screens, I can certainly remember the chronology of paper books better. Perhaps that is due to the physicality of pages gradually accumulating on the left side.

I feel like this has some definite implications for UI design - is blankness with text really the best way to convey an ebook?

</comment><comment><USER18> Reader View mode on FF, or any other addon/bookmarklet, works great when I really want to focus on an article.</comment>


Ask HN: Not taking maths(MPC) in college, what do you think? - <AUTHOR>

I've completed high school studies and interested to learn programming, web developing/designing.
Now instead MPC(maths,phy,che), I'm thinking of taking some easy subject in college. Because we get less free time when we take MPC.
So, I wanna take easy subjects and spend more time for learning computer things.
What do you think? Am I doing correct? Is it helpful for my future? <comment><USER2> Study difficult things in college. Practice working on things that are too hard for you. If what you want is "free time to learn computer things", why are you spending time and money to go to college?

Try to keep in mind that, as a high school student, there's a good chance that you don't really have any idea what real-world math, physics, or chemistry are all about. [1] College is like a new world. Stretch a little. Explore. Don't be like my friend who got an entire bachelor's degree in English after being discouraged from studying science. Turns out she didn't really enjoy English that much. After graduation she moped around for several years. Then she decided she might go back to school to try pre-med. And an amazing thing happened: She took some physics classes and turned out to _love_ them and to be really _good_ at them. The chem and biology went smoothly as well, and off she went to become (last I heard) an aspiring neurologist.

Try challenging yourself. You might like it more than you think. Take at least the introductory courses in a bunch of fields. I think it's malpractice to leave college without at least _trying_ to get through: A couple of biology courses (a general course and a molecular course), math through calculus, first-year chem (aka "basic applied quantum mechanics"), and at least enough physics to understand basic electronics. (An actual course in electronics would not hurt, if you can find a good one.)

If your school has even _one_ linguistics course with a half-decent lecturer, take that; if not, at least read Pinker's _The Language Instinct_. An anthropology course is a good idea. Studying foreign languages can be fun. I kind of wish I'd found time for that music theory course. I never studied economics and that was probably a mistake.

\---

[1] I mean, sometimes you get lucky in high school and get to take classes from amazing, inspired teachers with a great grasp of the state of the art. But often you don't.

</comment><comment><USER3> The easier you work in school, the harder you will work in the real world, if at all.

Challenge yourself; you don't have to be a math wiz, look into other subjects and try everything until you find that one field that you want to study so passionately that you couldn't wait for someone else to teach you.

With respect to the "industry", you can get a lot done with little to no math and make a decent living, specially if your social skills are good and end up in sales, marketing or project management.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is MPC a major, or the classes you take in your first year as a prerequisite for computer science? My advice is to major in computer science. If you don't need to take chemistry or physics to major in computer science, more power to you.

</comment><comment><USER5> My advice is to do the subjects that you will enjoy the most, rather than those which you think will be easiest or better for a career.</comment>


First 1,000-processor chip: Thought to be the fastest chip designed in a uni lab - <AUTHOR> http://sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/06/160617215802.htm <comment><AUTHOR> Is this related to this CPU from ~2006: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilocore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilocore) ? (at least the name is the same and IBM is involved again). After searching a little bit it seems they only use the same name because of the 1000 cores (kilo). The previous chip seems to be related to carnegie mellon.

EDIT: the original source from uc davis: [https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/worlds- first-1000-processor-chi...](https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/worlds- first-1000-processor-chip)</comment>


Gamedev Tutorial: Trigonometry Basics – Sine and Cosine - <AUTHOR> http://allenchou.net/2019/08/trigonometry-basics-sine-cosine/ <comment><USER2> I can remember that I was introduced to sine and cosine through game programming before it was discussed in school.

Particularly I was trying to make games with Pascal and Assembly on an 80386. Asphyxia tutorials. No Stack Overflow, no Khan Academy, Wikipedia, in fact no Internet or even BBS at all. I feel nostalgic towards this time, but I guess that those feelings are more attached to the curiosity of an analog child being introduced to the digital magic.

<comment><USER3> I remember playing around with these weird sin and cos functions whose return values seemed to lack any readily discernible pattern. After some experimenting I ended up plotting something like

      x=a*sin(t)
      y=a*cos(t)

and was delighted to realize that the coordinates traced the arc of a circle! Not a long time earlier I had wondered how to write a program that displays an analog clock… The connection to right-angled triangles was revealed to me only later, although in retrospect they are obviously two sides of the same coin.

<comment><USER4> I made a whiteboard robot to teach/experiment those equations. It's fun to fill a whiteboard with patterns and let people wonder how they were made: [https://sites.google.com/view/wbr](https://sites.google.com/view/wbr)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks we need more game development in schools, as it's the most math heavy thing close to modern kids' lives.

<comment><USER2> Definitively, but it's hard to bring teachers up to speed. For one thing they often lack the particular curiosity, which may be associated to choosing the teaching path (unfortunately).

And I suspect it's also dangerous to teach coding to teachers: It's a skill that can land them much more lucrative and less stressful jobs.

<comment><USER6> What's an example of a non-stressful programmer role? Asking for a friend.

<comment><USER7> The tricky part about teaching is that it's unbounded.

I've never taught, but I remember transitioning from school to a job and it was a huge thing for me that I could keep work at work and I could start focusing on things outside without distraction. For friends that teach there's a lot of work that's expected that's not scheduled work hours (grading, lesson planning, etc). Dealing with parents is one of the largest stressors and that's almost exclusively outside of classroom time.

<comment><USER2> Depending on the particular school system, teachers can often shut out or minimize out-of-class work, but it takes a tougher attitude than many teachers have.

Also, many teachers don't think "no parent engagement" is more desirable than high parent engagement. Differences in the parents ability to engage the school (available time, money, language skills etc) contributes to social and ethnic disadvantages in many nations' school systems.

<comment><USER7> I was mostly pointing to the out-of-class work as something people who work other jobs wouldn't expect. I don't think there's a scenario where it doesn't exist and I'm a bit surprised I don't see better guidelines from either school districts or teacher's unions. It's something teacher's need to figure out for themselves. Trying to minimize that time was obvious to me as a student when I had poor teachers. Planning periods and planning days are nowhere near adequate to cover their responsibilities.

> Also, many teachers don't think "no parent engagement" is more desirable > than high parent engagement.

I've never heard a teacher argue for no engagement. My point was that parent engagement is inevitable and always outside of scheduled class time. It's also one of the top complaints (along with administration and mandatory testing), so it's doubly unfortunate its unbounded.

<comment><USER2> My teachers would have shut down any parent without an extremely urgent issue trying to contact them after hours.

And I highly doubt that they got above a 40 hour work week including their lesson preparation.

But I guess expectations and regulations vary and it takes a personal strength that shouldn't be required of teachers. It's doubly sad that school systems are increasingly relying on teachers giving in and carrying more than their contractual burden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yikes! I use vector math (dot and cross products) to do all my game physics. Far fewer operations (two multiplies, and add, sometimes a divide). All the singularity issues were in one place, and meant something special each time, so could be dealt with in an orderly way. And could be all fixed-point or integer, no need for floating point at all.

<comment><USER9> Yes, trigonometry should be avoided whenever possible (which is much more than people often expect) in favor of vector methods in pretty much every context.

If someone wants a single number for representing a rotation, consider using the stereographic projection (instead of angle measure), which takes only 1 division to go back and forth to cartesian coordinates.

Floating point is fine for modern hardware though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I enjoyed the Coding Math series a lot: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm9bqSSiIdo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm9bqSSiIdo)

Here's the trigonometry playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAHl_kpqr-k&list=PL7wAPgl1JV...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAHl_kpqr-k&list=PL7wAPgl1JVvWixFXjWgbulBg9_7Loc13h)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great. I always had bad math teachers, so my math is like my French: Tre mal. This here is the first time I actually understood sin/cos. Thank you.

<comment><USER12> It's "Très mauvais" :) But I agree and would love to see more work done to take advantage of animations to teach math concept (e.g 2blue1brown) game is also cool especially with unity (cf on YouTube : codeadventure)

<comment><USER11> Thanks.

My french is bad... Which is made even worst as I'm a French national...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Up next: Arithmetic for game developers.

<comment><USER14> Vector arithmetic would certainly be useful.

<comment><USER15> 2007 has you covered: [http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for- game-deve...](http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/07/linear-algebra-for-game- developers-part-1/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can use sin/cos to drive leg animations procedurally. This works particularly well with things like arachnids.

Use one value to drive the forward/backwards motion of the leg. Use the other to drive the up/ down motion of the leg, although you want to clamp the range from 0.0 to 1.0 so the foot doesn't clip under the floor (although you could use realtime inverse kinematics to prevent that as well, in a game engine with reasonable IK support such as UE4).

You'll also need to negate the values for the leg on the opposing side of the body, and keep flipping those values for each pair from front to back (ie. the third pair matches the first pair, the fourth pair matches the second pair).

See [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtHzpX0FCFY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtHzpX0FCFY) for an example of a (hand) animated spider gait.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r18Gi8lSkfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r18Gi8lSkfM)

<comment><USER18> beautiful graphics ... thx for link .... helped my understanding of Fourier Transforms

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Very nice visualizations. I used to build lots of little game-type simulations like this and I remember working my way through a very similar progression as I figured out how to draw circles and position things based on angles.

This summary was a nice refresher for me but if I were just learning it (i.e. looking for a tutorial) I would probably want more in-depth explanation along the way.

</comment><comment><USER20> Even though I'm not really in the target audience for this, pretty good grasp on trigonometry and not really into making games, it was an excellent read!

If the author is reading this: Try removing the controls attribute on the videos and see if you like it better that way, I think I would (since they are so short and looping they are just distracting from the great animations)

<comment><USER21> No controls means if autoplay is blocked they will never start though

<comment><USER20> Aah, my bad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Oh hey my username is relevant.

I've always thought Trigonometry is taught poorly in our high schools. I've frequently seen people see the animation showing the dot going around the circle while graphing the X and Y values and suddenly having everything "click" for them, and question why that animation wasn't shown to them in high school.

</comment><comment><USER23> There's a typo in your post where some HTML has snuck into a code block:

> &lt;

I'd recommend searching for more of them :)</comment>


Ask HN: What was the comics-related startup I saw here in the last month or two? - <AUTHOR>

It was an iPad-based combination comics reader/store. "I should maybe sell my comic on this," I thought, "and point some of my comic-making friends at this".<p>And then I got distracted and was an idiot and didn't bookmark it and forgot the name entirely. Who were you? <comment><USER2> Comixology or graphicly are two that come to mind. Hope that helps!

<comment><AUTHOR> It was Graphicly, thank you very much! <3</comment></comment>


On the shoulders of the giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.lpalmieri.com/posts/2020-03-08-on-the-shoulders-of-the-giants/ <comment><USER2> I'll second designing data intensive applications as one of the most interesting, readable, and relevant technical books I've ever read.

Working Effectively with Legacy Code was also impressive, I think I just read it too early before I was good enough to really understand and use it.

TDD is also worth reading (and it's short) to get a sense of tests if like me, it's something you'd never really done before when learning.

If you like soul of a new machine, you'd probably like Halt and Catch Fire on Netflix. I'd also recommend the Phoenix project and the dev ops handbook.

Code by Charles Petzold is one of my favorites to recommend, something every CS student should read.

I'll have to check out the others on this list too.

<comment><USER3> Halt and Catch Fire is SO underated! It's fun. I try and describe it as if the team that made Mad Men created Silicon Valley.

It's fun, nostalgic, and shows a fairly accurate few of the devil-may-care and slightly-charlatan approach to early (and some current) startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sigh, moving house soon, the kids are gone so it's smaller, we're not going to have a dedicated library, choosing which textbooks to keep and which to toss today has been brutal ... half haven't aged well and are going

<comment><USER5> Culling collections intelligently promotes an archive to a library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the vein of working effectively with legacy code, "Reading Code" by Spinelli taught me a lot when I was a younger engineer [https://www.amazon.com/Code-Reading-Open-Source- Perspective/...](https://www.amazon.com/Code-Reading-Open-Source- Perspective/dp/0201799405)

(Amazon says I bought it 14 years ago!)

</comment><comment><USER7> 15 years ago, one of the "soft questions" I liked to ask in phone interviews was "If I were to look at your bookshelf right now, what books would I see there?"

Nowadays, I keep nearly all my books electronically; I still have a sizable bookshelf, but the books are gathering dust.

<comment><USER8> I don't like electronic technical books. I find it too hard to find what I'm looking for in them. I find it's hard to beat being able to quickly flip through a physical book.

<comment><USER9> On the other hand, I enjoy having electronic versions of technical books because I can search for things in them.

<comment><USER10> Yes, plus you often get updates nowadays, which, depending on the domain of the book, can be pretty important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The DDD books are such a godsend when approaching complex business domains and how to build software for them. I wish they taught that stuff back at college rather than all the curriculum stuffers.

<comment><USER12> It was so alien when I was not in this kind of business though, that I thought it was a bunch of completely outdated ideas from the 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The greatest technical book I've ever read is PBRT. It's a computer graphics book, but is a phenomenal achievement.

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome list. Thank you for sharing!

<comment><USER15> I agree!

I've only read one of the books on the list (Accelerate), and it was such a delight to have claims referencing sources in publically available empirical data/studies to corroborate said claims! Not to mention that their observations and inferences (based on the empirical data) make a lot of sense when you ponder a little while!

(As opposed to the many "this-is-how-we-feel-the-truth-should-be-represented- after-our-experiences" presently available in countless blog posts and conference videos on the same subjects/themes as the Accelerate book touches upon).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> No TAOCP or even _The Mythical Man-Month_?

<comment><USER7> TAOCP is a wonderful coffee table book, but I don't think I've ever seen somebody use it on a day to day basis.

<comment><USER17> It isn't really the kind of book you use on a day-to-day basis; you consume it in small doses (after crossing the initial cliff of notation, et cetera), like vitamin supplements. That doesn't make it any less useful, however.

<comment><USER18> My personal experience is that anything in TAOCP can be found elsewhere in a more accessible format.

<comment><USER19> That's interesting; my personal experience is the opposite: for most things in TAOCP, it is written more clearly than its source material, especially as it gets to the more advanced topics within each section (often only published in papers, not yet in books). For example, Section 7.1.4 on Binary Decision Diagrams, aka BDDs and ZDDs (pages 202–280 of Volume 4A, draft online: [http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/knuth/fasc1b.pdf](http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~wagner/knuth/fasc1b.pdf)) is not something I've seen explained to that level of clarity and detail anywhere else. Plus there are a lot of Knuth's original ideas in the books; his innovation is not restricted to summarizing and teaching.

<comment><USER20> TAOCP = The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E. Knuth

<comment><USER19> Sorry, I don't understand: could you clarify why you're telling me this? Was there anything in my comment that seemed like it was talking about something else?

<comment><USER21> I think the parent comment was trying to be helpful for other readers who might not know what TAOCP stood for, since it wasn't defined from the beginning of the comment branch.

For what it's worth, I appreciated your defense of the book, that there's genuine value in reading it, rather than as a "coffee table book" (I guess social signalling); that Knuth explains things clearly and in detail, with unique approach and insights.

<comment><USER19> Ah that makes sense, thank you. Always good to explain acronyms; it just didn't occur to me that it was a reply to the whole subtree of comments, so I was confused how to respond.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "In computing, we mostly stand on each other's feet."

-Richard Hamming

<comment><USER23> This reminds me of a Neil deGrasse Tyson quote to the effect of:

"Walk into a bookstore and look at the number of books on a topic. The more books on a topic you see, the less we understand about the topic."

There's a lot of clashing perspectives on computing and modern software architectures so I'd say Hamming is on the dot.

<comment><USER24> Hamming is the compression guy right? I feel theres some extra connection seen here in being able to compress down the redundant info in that section of the bookstore</comment></comment></comment>


American Life Expectancy Rises for First Time in Four Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/us/us-life-expectancy.html <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/jVFjru](https://outline.com/jVFjru)</comment>