AI can now emulate human behaviors – soon it will be dangerously good - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-can-now-emulate-human-behaviors-soon-it-will-be-dangerously-good-114136 <comment><USER2> The term AI seriously muddies the waters of this conversation. None of these technologies have the slightest whiff of independent agency, autonomy, or the ability to learn/adapt without the considerable talent and prodigious effort of people or teams of people. No one thinks that Photoshop's more sophisticated tools are AI, but effectively these tools are Photoshop for video and audio. These are sophisticated tools to be sure, but ultimately the problem has nothing to do with AI: They're fundamentally problems with malicious human actors exploiting the broken epistemology of the internet, which has been happening for decades. AI _is_ , however, a great way to get clicks/pageviews for non-insights.

<comment><USER3> Terms are ultimately defined by users of them, not some official or scientific body, for good or bad. I recommend people stop complaining about usage of the term.

If somebody comes up with a clear distinction between "strong" AI and "weak" AI, then we can complain about "correct" usage with some wind at our back. Until then, the vocabulary issue is not worth focusing on.

I suspect AI progress will be incremental such that there will be no definite distinction, only shades of whatever traits we use to define it. It will be more like a child slowly growing up rather than C3PO just walking out the lab door one of these days.

The current crop of well-known AI uses mostly statistical pattern matching, and thus lacks "common sense" as we typically think of it. But eventually the pattern matching will be integrated into things like the CYC database of common-sense facts and start to show more common sense. However, it will probably make silly mistakes for a good while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> People stopped trusting photos when Photoshop (and clones) became commonplace. They will likewise stop trusting videos when enough known fakes are floating around.

<comment><USER4> > People stopped trusting photos when Photoshop (and clones) became > commonplace.

People stopped trusting photos that challenge preconceived bias then, but they still trust them when they reinforce such biases.

<comment><USER3> That's going to happen regardless, and people have been doing that with written works since the first writing appeared.

However, the technique used to rely more on supernatural than "fake logic". It was more like, "Deity X says you are bad, and thus must be smitten." But replace Deity X with Hannity or Bill Maher and you get mostly the same thing.</comment></comment></comment>


David Cameron loses Syria vote in Commons - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23892783

<comment><USER2> But Obama says he'll go ahead solo: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/politics/obama- syria.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/politics/obama-syria.html)

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that it is also possible France would join in?

[http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/france- militar...](http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/france-military- ready-syria-needed-20103301)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting how only eleven hours ago they were in favor of a "political solution".

Source:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-syria-crisis- ho...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-syria-crisis-hollande- idUSBRE97S0CU20130829)

<comment><USER3> Cameron said only yesterday that he 'would not stand by [and watch chemical weapons be used in Syria]' [0]. Now he will 'respect will of the house [and not perform the air strike]' [1]. While it is a slightly different situation to what I understand of the french position, it is interesting to see how quickly these things change nonetheless. (Note: I am not saying Cameron should ignore the HoC vote!)

What is perhaps more interesting is the potential motivation for Miliband's dissent. If Miliband's had supported action in Syria it would undoubtedly have passed. Only ~10 days ago a number of well respected Labour shadow cabinet members were voicing very strong dissaproval of his leadership [2]. A Yougov poll yesterday showed that 50% of the public don't approve of any UK action in Syria [3]. Could it be that Miliband's duty to act morally in the House could be clouded by his urgent need for a short term popularity bump? Unclear, but a concerning and not-that-unlikely thought. Side note: the difficulty experienced finding any of the news relating the Miliband wobble shows just how well this has played for him! It will be interesting to see just quite how far he does jump in the polls...

[0] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23864016](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23864016)

[1] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk- politics-23893203](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23893203)

[2] [http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/04/16/while-heads-are- tu...](http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/04/16/while-heads-are-turned- miliband-faces-the-greatest-challenge)

[3] [http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/08/28/syria-and-shadow- iraq/](http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/08/28/syria-and-shadow-iraq/)

EDIT: Links all got formatted onto a single line.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Your syntax highlighter is wrong (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MrJamesFisher/your-syntax-highlighter-is-wrong-6f83add748c9 <comment><USER2> I liked his diff colour scheme. I don't know if it's because of the assertions he made or not but I found it easier to see the difference. I'm a little bit colour blind though. I'm pretty good with very green and very red things but lighter greens and reds get kind of murky for me. I don't really like looking at green and red together though. I find it hard to look at it kind of hurts my brain to stare at it for too long.</comment>


Becoming a 20-Something Family Man: with a PhD and a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.melonakos.com/2010/09/13/become_a_20_something_family_man/ <comment><USER2> That's insane,

I've spent 5 years on my PhD and still haven't finished it working on it mostly full time to such such a degree of dedication that my girlfriend of 6 or so years packed it all in and left.

PhD and Startup and marriage+kids on one income? (Yet, one of you is doing a PhD and one is doing the mothering - who is actually earning money?) And building a family on top of the shaky foundations that startup life provides?

How? Stranger that the tips included with dealing with such an insane choice of lifestyle seem to consist entirely of very thin dating/relationship suggestions. I mean - there is a world of potential insanity involved in doing just a PhD alone - but with kids/wife/startup? I'm gonna need a whole lot more than just palliative cliches to help me deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think there is a law of diminishing returns wrt working long hours. Is working 18 hr days really more productive that 14 hr days? That train of thought is what makes it not so insane.

<comment><USER2> Sorry - I only really mean insane from my own perspective... but obviously your life is almost be definition LESS insane than my own given that you've managed to eat 3 different cakes and have them as well - a more balanced and well rounded existence. It's just unimaginable to me - but glad to know someone at least has achieved the dream. Power to ya. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Back in the optimistic quarter century after WW II, this was probably quite common. A women with an expensive degree from a good school got to keep a household running, maybe typing theses for income, while a man, not necessarily better equipped for academic work, got a Ph.D. I suspect that it was part of what gave the emerging feminist movement such a fund of well- educated, articulate, and pissed-off women to draw on.

I guess the writer is fortunate, and I hope that his good fortune will continue. I seem to know an awful lot of folks who married at 21 and divorced before 30.

</comment><comment><USER4> The variation in people absolutely amazes me. I'm only able to arrive at an intelligible conception of how the author has pulled this off by concluding that his lifestyle expectations, workflow assumptions and cognitive habits are vastly different from my own. As someone who struggles with deep practical motivational problems working on things in which I am theoretically, conceptually very interested (call it burn-out on coding if you like) and sometimes go days or even weeks without moving the kind of mountains that the author consistently moves in an hour or two every day of his life, I am awed.

Of course, sometimes there's something you don't know. I don't mean to impugn the author's credibility or authenticity in any way (how would I know?), but some of the people I have encountered who claim Herculean feats like this turn out to have mixed up the variables differently than they say, even if their omissions are unconscious. That is, I've seen people who, in the author's shoes, are 1) getting a PhD in something fluffy and not particularly rigourous, or perhaps in an institution that fits that description, 2) have grandparents who take care of the kids most of the time, 3) are doing startup work that is also not overly intensive, or move at a glacial pace. Even then, it would still be an impressive accomplishment to consistently pull through on #1 and #2 whilst complicated slightly by #2 without losing motivation, interest or focus!

<comment><USER5> You should read a book or two by Barbara Sher. She talks about what to do when you're burnt out and disinterested in everything. That is not a normal state for a human. Ignore the apparent self-help taint -- the books are practical, no-nonsense, and very good.</comment></comment>


25 Ideas That Will Shape the 2020s - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/longform/ideas-shape-2020s-tech-economy-markets-ai-health-work-society/ <comment><USER2> The ideas:

\- Business and government will—gasp!—work together again.

\- The new age of economics is dawning.

\- A "gold standard" of digital currencies will emerge.

\- Capitalism will save the planet (seriously).

\- Business will embrace its responsibility to save capitalism.

\- Genomics will rewrite medicine—and prevention.

\- Cell-based meat will change the way you eat.

\- The 31st human right should be to own your medical data.

\- The future of work is skills—so stop worrying about degrees.

\- What will really lead to workplace equality? Men leaning out.

\- The 4-day workweek will make companies more productive.

\- Women will alter the workforce—dramatically.

\- Showing up will matter again.

\- Investing in girls' education pays huge dividends.

\- Thinking big will redesign the world.

\- Venture capital will transcend the valley.

\- Big tech won't reign—it will be reined in.

\- The line between human and bot will disappear—and we'll be fine with it.

\- The 2020s will connect rural America—or lose it. \- A.I. "hygiene" will determine the success of A.I.</comment>


Ask HN: Hitting a wall with Twitter - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, I am desperate. I have been running a Twitter Analytics service for a few years now and it's gotten way too popular. I have companies like the NASA, Firefox, UFC, Disney, WWF, Subway, Playboy, UrbanOutfitters, Tate, Medium, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Tim Ferriss and even @ev and many many more using and/or paying for my service.
It's constantly breaking down due to Twitter's strict REST API limits (something everyone knows and has to work around with), but I receive e-mails from people daily willing to pay more, and more, and more if I can find a way to keep the service up and running.
As of now, it's all coming down to site-streams, which is only enabled to whitelisted accounts. They would solve all the problems, I could make the service real-time and make a lot of money before all those guys decide to go with Adobe or Sprinkler, the big terrible ugly things. This is my biggest shot taking off and I feel like the window is about to close very shortly.
I do not sit in San Francisco, I have been unable to meet Twitter folks in person outside of SF so far. It seems a lot of the partnerships are built locally, in SF, through networks, which makes a lot of sense, but completely shuts it down for us.
I've been trying to reach out through every possible venue, partner programs, beta programs, mailing lists, been an active and helping member on the API forums and have hit the wall now, not knowing what to do next.
I have the technology and technical intelligence, the infrastructure, I have lots of paying customers, I haven't even started marketing the software yet (word of mouth), and all I fail at is getting permission to proceed professionally from Twitter.
Anyone, please, any ideas? This is a last resort call. <comment><USER2> Naive/obvious questions:

Have you

a) done everything listed at [https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming- apis/streams/site#App...](https://dev.twitter.com/docs/streaming- apis/streams/site#Applying_for_access) ?

b) considered getting on a plane to SF, spending a few weeks there, and network like hell, in an attempt to meet face-to-face with someone at Twitter? You said you're desperate, so all options are on the table, though I suspect I'll get shot down for suggesting this.

<comment><AUTHOR> a) yes, everything b) this is on my list of 'if all else fails' but as you know, networking is a bit like dating. it's a whole lot easier if you're not desperate ;)

<comment><USER3> You should absolutely be on a plane to SF. As you said yourself, this is your shot. Don't blow it by sitting at home wishing people would fly out to meet you.

<comment><USER4> 100% agree. Fly to SF, knock down every door, connect with every twitter employee possible on Linkedin, and find out who you need to talk to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Take up your clients' offer, who want to pay more. Cull the ones who don't want to. You'll end up with less clients but be much more profitable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would, and prices will be going up soon anyways, but the problem is: I can't deliver a service for those large customers, they have millions of followers and events happening in their account, the data they require is there, just not through regular non-whitelisted means. I've met folks who got whitelisted years ago, for 'just asking', but this has all been heavily cut down now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I assume this is your product: [http://start.fruji.com/pricing.html](http://start.fruji.com/pricing.html)

One immediate thought: Your prices are ridicuously too low. By like a magnitude. Of like 10 times. $25/year? Heck, $25/month would be too cheap. Increase your prices, and your problem is solved because you'll have fewer accounts to get all the data you need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pricing is super low currently because I can't deliver much on a promise, sometimes, the service / servers go down for days and there is no dashboard available for the customer. I would feel terrible charging a lot of money for a service that has constant outages. But prices are going up considerably soon, I've got all the plans laid out, just need to catch up with the technology.

<comment><USER6> Is your service down because of you, or because Twitter's API goes down intermittently?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And, before someone suggests the obvious, yes, I've considered reaching out to some users of my service that are active investors, founders or business partners of Twitter. But I want to respect their privacy if at all possible and knowing the story behind Twitter, most of the original folks have moved on, it's a different business up there now (great background info in Biz's latest book, worth the read).

</comment><comment><USER7> Have you applied to become a Twitter product partner? I don't see you listed at: [https://business.twitter.com/partners/list/certified- product...](https://business.twitter.com/partners/list/certified-products)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, 5 times. There is no feedback mechanism, unfortunately, so I wasn't sure whether my application was missing certain minimium requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Happy to intro you to someone at Twitter. My email's in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you considered using services like Gnip or Datashift who resell Twitter's firehose?

It would mean rewriting your service but it would offer long term viability.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, have considered it, but from first enquiries it seems they are charging rates that are simply impossible to fund at this point, well in the tens of thousands of dollars. I might be able to bring the rates in line with incoming revenue, but this one's a very scary approach, not being vc funded.

<comment><AUTHOR> also, gnip doesn't seem to have actual real-time access to follow/unfollow events and only access to 1/10th of the public tweet stream, offering a 'sample' of all tweets (which is what the non-whitelisted accounts also have).

<comment><USER6> you do realize that sample 10% nonsense is simply untrue if you have a way to get the stream for the X,000,000 most popular accounts on a daily basis right (it has to be because getting streams for a specific account has to have all the tweets, not 10% of them)? Forget the bots, just focus on the active users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I'm not familiar enough with them, or your product (obv), to know, but would user streams help in place of site streams?

<comment><AUTHOR> partially yes - but this would bring us close to a policy violation and potential blocking. user streams should only be access from a twitter client app (mobile/desktop/web) but explicitely not in a server-to-server type of scenario (see docs). as soon as a lot of our major users are being hooked into the user stream mechanism, we may experience IP blocks or policy related shutdowns. it's a scary thing, they have all that power and we try really hard to stick to the rules here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Have you reached out to your customers yet? @ev has obvious ties and Tim Ferriss was an early investor.

<comment><AUTHOR> ev is pretty much out and focused on different things (not on the best terms with Twitter I believe) I would assume from what I've gather recently and through Biz Stone etc. He seems like a really nice and smart guy, but I feel this is not the right alley.

<comment><USER11> Sounds to me like you are looking for excuses not to solve your own problem...IF you have a means of reaching out to the guy, do so , whats the worst that can happen?</comment></comment></comment>


Trump Administration Suspends All EPA Enforcement Citing Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/27/trump-pollution-laws-epa-allows-companies-pollute-without-penalty-during-coronavirus <comment><USER2> Read what EPA actually said. It's not unreasonable.

[https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-03/documents...](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2020-03/documents/oecamemooncovid19implications.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> Could this administration look any more like a bunch of comic book villains?

</comment><comment><USER4> jfc</comment>


Albert Einstein's 'God letter' reflecting on religion auctioned for $3m - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/04/physicist-albert-einstein-god-letter-reflecting-on-religion-up-for-auction-christies <comment><USER2> >"Einstein offers scant consolation to either party in this debate. His cosmic religion and distant deistic God fits neither the agenda of religious believers or that of tribal atheists.

This is wrong. Spinoza's god is not deistic god, transcendent being. Spinoza's god is "a dynamic nature in action", or substance. Closer to pantheism than deism. The problem arises because Einstein renounced atheism because he never considered his denial of a personal God as a denial of God. Einstein also said that "Mere unbelief in a personal God is no philosophy at all." and it helps to clarify why he did reject atheist label.

>I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things.

G. S. Viereck, Glimpses of the Great (Macauley, New York, 1930), quoted by D. Brian, Einstein—A Life, p. 186.</comment>


ASK: How much input should a tech co-founder have on the business - <AUTHOR>

This is directed to tech co-founders. How much activity do you put into your business outside of coding? Do you actively recruit users? Do you take part in the pitch decks? Do you network to find employees? Do you conduct market research? Do you help with product roadmaps and business roadmaps? To me, a tech co-founder should be much more than a coder but I'd like to have some input on this. <comment><USER2> Shore answer, yes.

Are you a co-founder or an employee? Everyone's first job is to sell. So yes to recruiting, yes to pitching, yes to recruiting, yes to researching the market, yes to roadmaps. And in reverse, your biz co-founder should be helping you get the correct development tool licenses, supply you with photoshop designs, get hosting deals, etc. Think about deciding what cloud hosting you're going to use? This isn't about just technology because this decision shapes your COGS.

Quick Anecdote: When Google was hiring their first vp of marketing, the interviews were attended by their original vp of engineering. When the vp of marketing was hired the vp of engineering insisted that he split an office with marketing. This allowed for frequent communications between the two and gave them an advantage when creating products. Google's products were always a combo of engineering and marketing.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's two sides to this, from my point of view.

The first answer is: yes. Absolutely. Every "founder" really needs to be deep in the nitty gritty of the business. There's absolutely no point in investing a pile of time into technology that isn't going to be driving the business goals forward. A technical co-founder who has no interest in the direction that the business is going really is more of an employee than a co-founder.

The second answer is: yes, but with a balance. Here's a situation that's pretty easy to imagine: together, you have a fantastic idea for a product that will require a PILE of technical work. You're working away on getting an MVP ready to demo to investors or to beta users. In that case, how much effort should the tech co-founder be putting into the pitch deck, compared to effort that could be going into developing the product? That's a balance that you'll have to figure out together.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, nailed it. Its a tough trade-off and a really good reason why there should be 3 co-founders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of the things you listed, they are all reasonable for a tech founder to do.

The key difference is that a tech founder should timebox all of these activities to make sure the majority of their time early on is spent building the tech that powers the business.

</comment><comment><USER5> My role _as an employee_ is technical leadership and architecture. I also write code and deal with some low-level administration tasks, just by virtue of the fact that it's still a relatively small company.

But _as a board seat and shareholder_ , it is my responsibility to concern myself with the overall direction of the company. This means I work with the other founder and executives to formulate strategy and make decisions on matters that have nothing at all to do technology.

These are two separate roles, as far as corporate governance is concerned. There is the possibility for conflict, but this is unlikely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very well put. I needed this explanation.</comment></comment>


I don't belong in tech - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-grind/i-dont-belong-in-tech-3d73d8fd6f34#.yr8ad6mx8 <comment><USER2> Isn't this a dup from about 3 days ago?</comment>


Corona Fit Packs - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/336137535 <comment><USER2> They mention the design being open source, but it's being surprisingly hard to find anything other than just the claim that it is open source. :(</comment>


The NFL's plan to protect America from witches - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2018/apr/06/the-nfls-plan-to-protect-america-from-witches <comment><USER2> > _Grandpa's pompous Lord Tywin Lannister response encapsulates exactly what's > wrong with NFL management: They insist on being the self-appointed guardians > of America's mythological vision of itself. Malt shops on every corner, Pat > Boone crooning on the jukebox, and modestly dressed virgins sitting around > with knees clamped together waiting to be asked to prom. This 1950s, Father > Knows Best soundstage fantasy doesn't stop with paternalistic and > puritanical gender stereotypes, but also promotes simplistic notions about > race and patriotism. The NFL's anachronistic fancies aren't just a misguided > attempt to pander to what they think their traditionalist fans want, but > also projects the hard-core conservative values of the mostly rich, white > one-percenters who own the teams. We must live in their Disneyland – or > else._

Great writing by Kareem. I always found the NFL control of players in the offseason, especially when it relates to marijuana use, extremely repressive and controlling. Lots of players and former players are waking up to it [1]

Noone in the private industry, besides sports figures, would put up with the after hours and offseason controls the NFL puts on players. These are also young players that just got out of college and partying, they just came into lots of money, and they treat most like children or their own property. NFL and other sports owners, for one reason or another, really seem to believe they are OWNERS not just the boss.

[1] [http://thelab.bleacherreport.com/jake-plummer-s-pot- crusade/](http://thelab.bleacherreport.com/jake-plummer-s-pot-crusade/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the game, but the league is despicable so with every season I watch less and less. At some point, I may stop altogether. I don't buy gear and would lead a campaign if my city even thought about bringing in a team and wasting public money on a stadium. The states looking to ban tackle football for young kids are on the right track. This should be pushed nationally. It's the only way to start bringing down this awful organization. If this went national, I can see the nfl fading in a generation or two. Parents can, of course, do their parental duties and keep their kids out of this sport till they're 18. Really, at this point, CPS should be handling the cases where parents fail. CTE is a horrible "gift" to give to kids. But the dumb masses will take a lot longer to change without new regulations and in the meantime, a few will make millions and millions will get CTE playing for teams whose owners' ideals belong on a slave plantation, not in the modern world. I'll miss it a little, but not much, because these same owners' idiotic policies on broadcasting mean seeing the games of interest most Sundays is an outrageously expensive or impossible proposition.

</comment><comment><USER4> Always end up forgetting that Kareem is a great author in his own right with a multitude of inspirations and influences

</comment><comment><USER5> The paragraph at the top, with the Malleus Maleficarum, seems so disconnected from the rest of the article.

<comment><USER6> I think it dovetails nicely with the discussion of the rule requiring the cheerleaders to leave a restaurant when a player enters. It's a very old idea that puts the onus on women to avoid improper sexual advances.

<comment><USER7> Another way to look at it is the players are worth far more to the team than the cheerleaders. Given the choice between telling TO he has to leave a restaurant, and telling a cheerleader, which do you choose?

Similarly, given the choice between telling Gal Gadot she has to leave a restaurant, and telling a male extra from the set of Wonder Woman, which do you choose?

<comment><USER8> That makes no sense. Someone in the middle of the meal obviously gets to finish their meal no matter who walks in the door. That's besides the point of asking _anybody_ to leave which is ridiculous in the first place. People should be able to eat in the same restaurant without busybodies micro managing their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Non issue for me since I quit watching the NFL over their unpatriotic stance.

</comment><comment><USER7> I agree with KAJ on many of his points, but there are a couple I disagree with.

I just don't see how a cheerleader having to leave a restaurant that a Saints player walks into is equivalent to a black player having to leave if another white player came in to eat. Why bring race into it? It's not even an analogous situation, and it's obvious the rule - same with the one only allowing them to say "hello" and "great game" to players - is to prevent the bad optics that would undoubtedly arise from both situations. I can just see TMZ making a huge deal about seeing a player and a cheerleader in the same restaurant, and then it spreads all over Twitter, and then whenever we see player X or cheerleader Y on screen, everyone is thinking "yeah, he's doing cheerleader Y" or "ha, she's doing player X". Of course, lots of people already wonder, but having a little more situational evidence makes it a different story because there's at least some basis to it now.

Furthermore, I think it's totally stupid she got fired over the photo she got fired for - if that's truly the only reason - but on the other hand, rules are rules, and there are differences between that photo and the typical cheerleading outfit or photoshoot. It may show less skin, but it's also bedroom lingerie rather than a cheerleading outfit or bikini. And whereas every time I see an NFL cheerleader she's smiling, in this particular photo, she's not smiling at all, and has more of a "come hither" expression. [0]

I mean, looking at her other Instagram photos, I'm seeing dozens of "sexy" pictures where she shows lots of skin, so clearly it's not like she was being forced to be ultra-conservative and was being micromanaged by her team. It sounds like they just basically said "don't wear bedroom attire" and "if you're wearing something sexy, please just smile", and she violated that rule.

Finally, if these cheerleaders supposedly don't get paid enough, shouldn't it be a good thing she got fired anyway? Now she has the exposure from being a cheerleader of an NFL team - even prior to this situation - and is freed from the shackles and can pursue better career options.

But yeah, I'm all for just getting rid of cheerleaders altogether, or at least giving them better outfits.

[0] [https://www.instagram.com/p/BeZGvLuF5va/?hl=en&taken- by=jaca...](https://www.instagram.com/p/BeZGvLuF5va/?hl=en&taken- by=jacalynbailey)

<comment><USER10> The rules against mixing cheerleaders and players is to protect the cheerleaders from being exploited by the players.

<comment><USER8> At their expense?

If it is to protect them then why make them pay the price?</comment></comment></comment>


The connection between gender, gentrification, and household size - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90326448/the-surprising-connection-between-single-women-and-gentrification <comment><USER2> They say 70% of children is born to single mothers in Iceland. The stats they reference says 70% is born outside of a marriage. That's just because most couples in Nordic countries do not marry not because the mother is single. If they get that wrong what else did they get wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am probably missing something obvious, but how can the number of single women increase 50% but single men only raise 15%? Unless there is a large population of lesbian women who suddenly decided to stop dating, I would imagine the number of single men and single women would track each other (roughly, with differences being accounted for by same-sex couples, gender distribution changes, and death rates.)

Unless this is just a population boom among women?

<comment><USER4> Traditionally in many cultures, single adult men live alone but single adult women live with their families. Nowadays, women are moving out and living on their own as adults.

I wonder if there's also a change in the number of women seeking apartments entirely on their own instead of living with roommates - in the first half of the 20th C in the west, single adult women who moved out of their parents' homes would often take rooms in boarding houses run by matrons, rather than getting their own apartments. My understanding is that this would be considered both safer and more proper.

It may also have to do with what neighborhoods each gender chooses. Women tend to have a stronger preference for "safer" neighborhoods; men on average are both more risk tolerant and more confident in their ability to defend themselves against assaults. So women may choose neighborhoods that have already gentrified or begun to, while men may be more comfortable pursuing the lower rents in neighborhoods that haven't yet.

<comment><USER3> Ah, that makes sense... they mean 'single' as in living alone, not just their relationship status.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've in the past been downvoted for suggesting that counting the number of attractive women you see walking down the street would give you the best single metric for measuring the vibrancy of a neighbourhood. Now that I've got some data to back up the claim, I would probably still get downvoted for suggesting as much.

<comment><USER6> Please don't break the site guidelines, which ask you not to go on about downvoting. Especially please don't do downvote-baiting.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER5> Ok. FYI the site guidelines say nothing about downvotes. I had never heard the term 'downvote-baiting' before, and when I looked it up, the top result was you in some other thread on HN.

<comment><USER7> The guidelines might might specifically forbid talking about downvotes, but they do forbid talking about votes in general.

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spiders Have Exploded Over Greek Town, Coating Everything in a 1000 Foot Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/1-000-feet-of-spider-web-have-taken-over-a-town-in-greece-aitoliko-tetragnatha <comment><USER2> This is a great thing. You don't want mosquitos carrying diseases. I'd rather deal with my arachnophobia than get malaria.

</comment><comment><USER3> A "population explosion".

<comment><USER4> Following the population explosion of mosquitoes.

<comment><USER5> I'd take 1000 spiders over 100 mosquitos anytime. I consider spiders to be most useful insects you could have infesting your house, though on the other hand I wouldn't feel comfortable if I saw more than a couple in a room.

<comment><USER6> Imagine trained spiders. They stay out of sight, only spin webs in places we don't walk around, or build the web every night then tear it down before we wake up.

<comment><USER7> The one living in the side mirror of my car all summer seems to have learned not to build where my window will break it. Oh and the one on the side of my garage where I take garbage 3 times a day stopped building to the fence after just a few breaks, so early in the summer ive forgotten how annoying it was to get a face full of web every morning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well that's distinctly terrifying, until you realize what's more terrifying is catching malaria. Especially considering that plasmodium is becoming drug- resistant.

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of the Wastewater Treatment Plant incident[1], which I learned about from Randal Munroe's What If? blog[2].

[1] (pdf) 'An Immense Concentration of Orb-Weaving Spiders With Communal Webbing in a Man-Made Structural Habitat" [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V3jDXZNk5Tta_3Imj5xnir053bB...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V3jDXZNk5Tta_3Imj5xnir053bBZ5gUp)

[2] Spiders vs. the Sun [https://what-if.xkcd.com/136/](https://what- if.xkcd.com/136/)

</comment><comment><USER10> If the right conditions are heat and humidity, and mosquitoes are recently seen in this area more than usual, global warming could make this more common.

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh cool we found nope town</comment>


Shopify grows Q3 revenue 93% - <AUTHOR> https://www.internetretailer.com/2015/11/09/e-commerce-platform-vendor-shopify-grows-q3-revenue-93 <comment><USER2> Developers that always wanted to have their own side business, take note. This is the kind of opportunity you should always be looking for: a rapidly growing platform, full of small businesses with money to spend if you can help them, and a developer-friendly interface for you to do so. Shopify has a highly trafficked app store that makes your additions to stores plug-and-play, and they'll even take care of billing for you.

<comment><USER3> Asides from the general warning against building a (long-term) business on someone else's platform, I'd caution against developing for Shopify in particular.

Vague, inconsistent and non-obvious guidelines with regards to themes and apps and sudden (and unannounced) changes in policy have bitten my company in the past. I wouldn't go as far as to say that Shopify are hostile to developers, and some are clearly very successful, but I now approach the Shopify platform by being constantly ready to write off any time invested in building for it.

To be fair, you can say precisely the same about building for Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store, and others. But Shopify is certainly equally capricious.

(Throwaway, because I still have apps and themes in the ecosystem.)

<comment><USER4> I'm curious to know as I'm not knowledgable about how Shopify has messed with developers in the past. What kind of tactics or things have Shopify done that has been developer unfriendly?

<comment><USER5> I personally had shopify sit on the 'approval' process for my app for a month.

The day before they rejected it, they added similar functionality to my own.

I think they were waiting for their own update to drop. I don't believe they 'stole my idea' but its still kinda shitty.

<comment><USER4> If you don't mind my asking (and for the benefit for other developers here), what kind of functionality was it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shopify is a great Canadian success story.

However their stock is currently taking a beating. It has lost 21% on the TSX over the past month.

<comment><USER7> They aren't making any profits (loss of $4.7 million last quarter). Revenue does not equal profit.

<comment><USER8> Do you know, were they ever profitable?

<comment><USER9> I don't understand how can they not be. I mean, compared to stuff like Snapchat or whatever which has dubious monetization schemes, Shopify is solidly built and offers a service that so many are willing to actually pay for. Maybe it's the costs of building things in the beginning? I really think they'll be fine... until at least Amazon or some other big player gets in their turf.

<comment><USER10> I think they're simply ploughing all their revenue back into growth through sales/marketing. If they wanted to they could turn down the customer acquisition spend and ride their recurring revenue to a tidy profit.

<comment><USER11> That depends. In the case of shopify probably yes, but you'd have to look very closely at the life-time value of those customers. There is a small possibility that if they turned down the rate of acquisition that the retention would be just poor enough that they would not make it to profitability, or alternatively that they would be profitable only for a short while.

This can be quite hard to establish, especially for companies that have raised significant capital (Shopify raised $120M+), they can keep that from happening for a long long time.

For companies that have not raised significant capital, if they're able to finance their growth out of their income stream then yes, they can convert to profitable overnight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The financial statement is way more interesting of the article...

They are spending ~10M for developing the platform and ~18M for sales and marketing.

If they had completely shut down the the marketing side they would have bring around ~14M of profit this quarter.

They have around ~150M in the bank, so they can keep growing like this for other 3 years.

<comment><USER13> So you are saying the marketing resulted in no revenue?

<comment><USER12> Hummm... No...

I am just exposing fact that weren't so obvious at first sight...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You don't "grow" revenue. You don't exist a new service. You don't die germs.

You use transitive verbs when you want to direct them at an object.

<comment><USER15> "Grow" is both transitive and intransitive.</comment></comment>


Eureqa - detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in data - <AUTHOR> http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/eureqa <comment><USER2> Looks neat, but I'm not sure how useful this will be in practice. If your problem domain seems to be linear, Eureqa won't offer any advantages over linear regression. If your problem domain is non-linear, Eureqa won't be able to answer the question of where the heck the sine and cosine terms are coming from, and might induce people to make up fudgy theories to explain their origin. I'm reminded of Arthur Eddington, who explained why the fine structure "must" be 136, then when better measurements were taken explained why it "must" be 137:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._S._Eddington#Fundamental_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._S._Eddington#Fundamental_theory)

I could see Eureqa being useful 100 years ago, when everyone was scratching their heads over the blackbody radiation data and nobody realized there was a big fat e^nu term in the denominator keeping us all from giving off infinite quantities of gamma rays. (Thanks Planck.)

Anyway, not to be a hater, but in disciplines where statistical significance is valued, Eureqa is useless, because by cherry-picking models it completely invalidates significance tests.

<comment><USER3> Who's to say what humans do is significantly different from what Eureqa does? We constantly attack our models with new data, but effectively are using data to generate and test new models in the same way Eureqa is. It's certainly a simplified process of equation generation, and model comparison is a significantly open field of statistics, but the rudimentary procedure isn't especially strange.

<comment><USER4> Eureqa doesn't help in this regard. As the OP said, you will eventually find a giant model that is a brilliant fit for the data. What you need is some notion of regularization. To answer your comment, it doesn't deal with overfitting.

<comment><USER5> Except that it does. I'm not too familiar with the application itself, however I know the original research worked by finding pareto optimums based on the predictive power and the simplicity of the equation.

So for double pendulum it came back with like 8 equations, one of which was conservation of momentum (not actually accurate, but as close as you can get with that number of terms), and one of which was conservation of energy (actually accurate, but a bit more complicated).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I played around with this about a year or so ago. It's a neat little program, but I'm not sure how practical it really is for fitting models in most cases. It could be useful for some very light exploratory work, but one would have to follow up with some more rigorous analysis.

That said, Andrew Gelman posted his thoughts on it awhile back.

[http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/12/equation_search.html) [http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/12/equation_search_1.html)

<comment><USER7> I remember reading about this some time back and being amazed. I forgot about it in the meantime. Now I see it and I am like wait that is "just" genetic programming. A month or so ago I spent about a day playing with genetic programming with F# so I decided to test it against Gelman's broken dataset in link1 with same restriction - dont use pow or sqrt. Now what I have is not as impressive or polished as theirs but for the time I spent on it (not very much) I am happy with its result.

After 5 mins it got stuck at MSE 0.1 with: x2 _x2/(x1 + x2) + (x - sin(2300)). To test it properly I've built another 40 points with the correct equation data and am going to leave it over night since I'm too tired to wait its full cycle which will be more than an hour.

currently (17mins in) its at MSE 0.07 with (x2 + 0.7325/x2) - 0.6839 + x _ (x/(x+x2)) another equivalent interesting expression it arrived at was: ((x2 + 0.7325/x2) - cos(cos(sin(x2))) + x * (x/(x+x2)). I told it to stop at 0.025, now I think it will hit it and I set the bar too low. mayb

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like a gui version of Bacon.

<http://www.isle.org/~langley/discovery.html> contains some cites and discussion.

</comment><comment><USER9> A critique: <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5934/1515.3.full>

<comment><USER7> Mere mortals like myself cannot access that paper. Its behind a paywall. could not find on google either

<comment><USER10> I'll make a guess that it says something along the lines of: "This tool is powerful and easy to use making it dangerous in the hands of mere mortals. It must be stopped."

<comment><USER11> Close. More like 'when a machine does it it's less useful than when a human does it because blablabla', basically because it doesn't have the "feeling".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The claim that the fit gets to the "physics" of a pendulum is not well supported: The physics involves the law of gravity, Newton's second law, and aerodynamic drag as a function of velocity, and their work is very far from these three basic inputs from physics.

Indeed, a good intermediate step would be just to get the ordinary differential equation initial value problem for a pendulum, that really is from the physics, that their fit solves; they didn't do that.

Or if not a pendulum, then oscillations in basic A/C circuit theory with resistors, capacitors, and inductors; they didn't do that either.

Uh, data such as they started with ain't necessarily from a pendulum, and to assume that it is is a serious mistake. In particular there is no way that a computer program, or anything else, starting with just the data, can conclude a pendulum instead of an A/C circuit or something else. Sorry guys.

The role of 'complexity' in the expressions very much needs to be made clear. This is especially the case since otherwise can fit such data with just Lagrange interpolation (a polynomial) or splines.

The whole idea of the program encounters one of the biggest old problems in science: Starting with the observational data on the motions of the planets, Ptolemy had some complicated mechanical contraptions that fit the data fairly well (we will set aside some of the accusations that he, uh, 'smoothed' his data, that is, had an early use of Kelly's variable constant and Finkel's fudge factor).

The big problem in Ptolemy's work was his complicated contraptions didn't seem to be from any 'physical laws'. Of course, he didn't know that any suitable physical laws existed.

Big, huge steps later were from Copernicus, Kepler, etc. by which time it was clear that, looked at in the right coordinate system, the planets were moving in ellipses with the sun at one focus of each ellipse.

Then Newton assumed his second law and law of gravity, invented calculus, and used the three to derive the ellipses. That's why we think that Newton was one of the greatest of all scientists. The computer program is suggesting that it is hoping to automate such work; ROFL.

The claim that the program can find function f so that x = f(t, x) is not so amazing: Just set f(t,x) = x. Then perfectly x = x. Semi-amazing.

The example was for only one independent variable. More important cases are for several independent variables and several dependent variables. That is, for the real numbers R and positive integers m and n, find function f: R^m --> R^n so that for independent variables x in R^m and dependent variables y in R^n we get f(x) close to y. Pull this off with any generality, execution efficiency, and usefulness, and I'll start to be impressed.

To be more impressive than now, they might just look for linear f: R^m --> R and show why their work is better than old step-wise regression. There they need to address the conclusions now over 40 years old that step-wise regression didn't work very well, and doing all possible regressions took too long and gave a mess.

Generally they have the cart before the horse: The researcher is supposed to bring some understanding or at least some conjectures to the work and let the numerical work just fill in the details. Doing the numerical work first is bass ackwards.

The idea of a 'complexity measure' to select among different formulas is close to some old moon worship, black magic, or superstition about the magical properties of selected frogs and mushrooms.

Setting aside all the hype and nonsense, where could such work be used? Well, the answer is the same as has been the case for decades: It's a curve fitting program and, thus, could be used where curve fitting programs have been useful:

First, it can do the fitting arithmetic when the researcher brings to the computer some 'form' of the formula and is just looking for some constants and NOT the formula.

Second, if there is some data and want a simple expression that 'compresses' the data. That can be useful, say, in parts of stochastic dynamic programming; see, e.g., D. Bertsekas at MIT where he used neural nets for such 'compression'. That is, just storing the data might be 10^n bytes for n = 20, 30, 40, ..., but a few formulas might do just as well for big savings. Generally splines and multivariate splines have been among the leading approaches, but I didn't see splines mentioned in their video.

The scary, upsetting, objectionable parts are the claims that they are "detecting equations and hidden mathematical relationships in data" and, as in the video, getting at the "physics". No they are not. Here their hype reeks of the usual in 'artificial intelligence' and 'machine learning' that their software can 'learn' and be 'intelligent', and that's so far, and likely for a long time, nonsense.

Another objectionable part is their theme of setting aside all the assumptions, definitions, theorems, and proofs of statistical estimation of parameters in statistical models, hypothesis tests on the parameters, confidence intervals on the parameters and the predicted values from the fits, etc. How do they do that? They just leave it all out!

They have an option of 'smoothing' the data: That's a big subject. So, the implication is that researchers might just click on the button that says "Smooth" and report that in their work. Then to 'smooth' becomes some unlabeled bottle of snake oil.

The theme here is to omit all the rational and deductive framework of applied math and replace it with GUIs: This is a future of irrationality with no hope.

This work is a special case of the more general situation that 'computer science' is getting a C- in applied math and is out'a gas.

The work fills a much needed gap in the literature and would be illuminating if ignited.

<comment><USER13> I used to love data mining. Then I formally learned statistics, causal inference, mcmc and other similar methods. I was amazed at how poor the computer science was for anything outside of computer science problems (i.e. search, collaborative filtering etc). Looking back I now realise that my amazement was misplaced - tools are good for what they are designed for. How many computer scientists who write the tools run experiments or do _real_ exploratory data analysis with data they have collected?

Agree completely with their model selection criteria; model selection is useful when used to compare evidence for k physically plausible models, but should be treated with extreme caution where exploring an infinite model space.

Personally I hold very little hope for automated tools anymore. Considering how complex a seemingly simple study is to analyse correctly, or how hard it is to model physically realistic processes, I think the future does not bode well for tools like eureka as they are currently aimed. At best eureka may present some general hypothesis, but it seems unlikely to be able to search the model space for models that are physically plausible, except in the most simple of all cases.

Besides, try eureka on some of your real data and prepare to be deflated :)</comment></comment>


Kim Kardashian's Private Firefighters Expose the Fault Lines of America - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/11/kim-kardashian-kanye-west-history-private-firefighting/575887 <comment><USER2> Article fails to explore the apparent conflicts of interest, which remain even if you happen to think it's fair for private parties to hire their own firefighters.

For a start, are Kim's team allowed to tap public hydrants? This will reduce pressure available to any public firefighters nearby.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand the issue here. Couple buys very expensive item that few others purchase; item is very expensive to insure; for hire firefighters are cheaper than replacing the item (and any dependencies) at a loss; insurers dispatch said firefighters to avoid total loss.

Doing this for everyone wouldn't scale, which is why towns have firefighting units.

Also, people have a weird aversion to insurance for expensive items. So many people (at least on Reddit) advocate against purchasing AppleCare and additional insurance for $1000+ items but balk at the high cost of replacing a broken screen... that's much cheaper to fix with insurance.

<comment><USER4> I think the reason many are both emotionally and logically concerned about this is that see it in the broader context of the growing wealth inequality and life inequality in America.

In principle, having the wealthy rely on their own firefighters, water supply, police force, education system, or medical system should not reduce the quality of said service to the rest of the people, but in practice, it always seems to.

Whenever there is a widespread social problem, its best to solve it for everyone. If the 0.01% are drinking from the same water supply and relying on the same firefighters that we are, it is in their best interest to maintain a high quality of service. Once they have a way to solve that problem for themselves, they are less likely to support using their taxes to improve and maintain these services.

<comment><USER3> In what ways are these private equivalents better than their public counterparts, especially in the US?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Private firefighters for the wealthy and slave labor fighting the fires for the rest of us. Truly disgusting.

<comment><USER6> > slave labor

Source? If you are referring to inmates who _volunteer_ to fight fires, then you are just plain wrong.

<comment><USER5> I didn't say it was illegal slave labor. But it's absolutely slave labor. Under Federal law its defined as "the services of a person... by means of force, threats of force, physical restraint, or threats of physical restraint to that person or another person."[1] Imprisonment is a physical restraint. If you pull the entire statute you'll notice that consent isn't a defense. That's because consent and coercion are mutually exclusive.

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude _except as a punishment for crime._

Make no mistake, those "volunteers" are modern day slaves. They may have the blessing of the Constitution, but they're slaves nonetheless. Colorado actually just officially outlawed it last week.[2] A few other sources:

\- [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/opinion/national- prison-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/opinion/national-prison- strike-slavery-.html)

\- [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prison-strike-modern- da...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/prison-strike-modern-day- slavery_us_5b857777e4b0511db3d21da8)

\- [https://eji.org/history-racial-injustice-prison- labor](https://eji.org/history-racial-injustice-prison-labor)

[1] 18 U.S. Code § 1589

[2] [https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/11/6/18056408/c...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2018/11/6/18056408/colorado-election-results-amendment-a-slavery- forced-prison-labor-passes)

<comment><USER6> Federal, sure, but not all inmate firefighters are in federal prison, and some (most?) states have voted to remove the 'except as punishment for crime' bit.

<comment><USER5> Removing the language doesn't suddenly not make it slavery. When the states remove that language it means prison labor programs (such as the one in California) are unconstitutional. Why? Because those programs are slavery and when that language is removed those programs no longer have the exemption that made it constitutional.

<comment><USER6> Wat? Are you arguing that all imprisonment is 'slavery' since it entails physically constraining prisoners? With that definition any institution that 'physically constrains' people is slavery, including public schools which prohibit students from leaving during school hours. Those students are physically constrained from leaving the premises, for example. In many cases there's even a cop to enforce it.

You mentioned Colorado, and I implied Colorado and others that have followed suit, in my earlier comment which I assumed that you read before you wrote this reply.

Your #1 source does not mention the text you attributed to it. And it's an opinion piece. It mentions that the inmates who _volunteer_ to work do so for low wages. Well, they could also choose not to work on those programs. What proof do you have that they were coerced (I'm actually not arguing against it, but looking to correct my opinion if necessary).

In any case, states do things that the federal government does not agree with _all the time_ (legal weed, for one). It's a crucial feature of our system of government.

<comment><USER5> That's not at all what I'm saying. The important distinction you're missing is any _labor_ that is performed without fair compensation (in the U.S., that would be minimum wage) while physically constrained. Mandatory schooling as well as the draft have been adjudicated under the Thirteenth Amendment and are not within the definition of slavery. Those cases helped shape the definition I provided you.

You also don't appear to understand the consequences of Colorado's Constitutional Amendment. By removing those words from the Colorado Constitution the "volunteer" prison labor programs are _no longer permitted_. These programs are, legally, slavery. They just so happen to be a _legal_ form of slavery under the Federal Constitution because of those important words "except as punishment for a crime." When those words are removed from the Colorado Constitution that exception no longer exists for Colorado prison operators (because a State Constitution cannot contradict or limit an individual's rights under the Federal Constitution but it can provide individuals with additional rights). Because these "volunteer" programs are slavery, and because Colorado's Constitution now prohibits all slavery, no exceptions, these "volunteer" programs cannot operate.

Prisoners can't freely volunteer because their liberty is at stake. They get to choose between their life being in danger in prison or endangering their lives fighting forest fires and perhaps getting out of prison a bit earlier. This is evidenced by the very low wages. Would you go fight these forest fires in California for $1/hour? I highly doubt it. Why do they "volunteer" then? Because they want their freedom. Think about the lengths you would go to in order to regain your freedom and then think about how much autonomy you would have in arriving at your decision. It's Sophie's Choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fuck Malibu residents and their blocking of beach access, fake signs and generally-selfish chicanery.</comment>


Using GitHub Issue Comments for Your Website - <AUTHOR> http://s.goessner.net/articles/GitHubHostedComments.html <comment><USER2> ...since you have been interested in the matrix form of sqrt(-1), I thought you might also be interested in the book I recently came across as well, "The Naked Spinor: A Rewrite of Clifford Algebra".

[https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Spinor-Rewrite-Clifford- Algebra...](https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Spinor-Rewrite-Clifford- Algebra/dp/1507817991/)

...I can't recommend it, since I haven't read it yet. But from the introduction it sounds pretty interesting:

"Some ten years ago, your author stubled upon a change in the notation we use to write complex numbers. Instead of writing a complex number as a+ib, your author began to write a complex number as a 2x2 matrix. From nothing more than this change of notation, your author discovered the higher dimensional complex numbers. The higher dimensional complex numbers include the whole of Cliffor algebra and, with that, the whole of spinor theory. The change of notation simplifies and generalizes Clifford algebra and spinor theory."

Sorry for derailing your GitHub thread with an off-topic comment.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for code-search now that Google code-search is defunct? - <AUTHOR>

I haven't found a suitable replacement.  It would be nice to find something that indexed github projects as well. <comment><USER2> You Can still use Code Search to search Google Code repos, Chromium and Android. <http://code.google.com/codesearch>

</comment><comment><USER3> Koders, but it's not great.</comment>


A super-thin slice of wood can be used to turn saltwater drinkable - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2212346-a-super-thin-slice-of-wood-can-be-used-to-turn-saltwater-drinkable/ <comment><USER2> Fta

> This method filters about 20 kilograms of water per square metre of membrane > per hour, which is not quite as quick as polymer membranes.

</comment><comment><USER3> How much energy does this use compared to RO?</comment>


DDoS script kiddies are also actual kiddies, Europol arrests reveal - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12/12/europol_arrests_34_ddos_kiddies/ <comment><USER2> This is not a shock, given their behavior and methods, and that is after all where the name came from.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there TUI for curl? - <AUTHOR> similar to postman but from command line. like we have tig, lazygit for git. htop for ps command. <comment><USER2> try `ssh brow.sh`

or you can download brow.sh binary from their website.

There are other alternatives as well: \- elinks \- lynx</comment>


My adventures with testing in Go - <AUTHOR> http://georgemac.com/blog/golang/2014/10/30/testing-in-go.html

<comment><USER2> Good article, but you mean 'closures,' not 'clojures.'

<comment><AUTHOR> I have updated now. Thank you for the spotting that!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any alternatives to the usual friends/follow/join my network? - <AUTHOR>

I've been wondering, have any of you come across a niche social network or even had ideas yourself about an alternate association between user accounts? I think "friends" and "follow" systems are highly oversaturated---would like to see a rise in more original paradigms. <comment><USER2> My thought is this.

Most social networks are about the past. On Facebook, in particular, I'm connected with a lot of people I knew in college or high school, but other than family, not with people that I do much with today.

This is also the case with LinkedIn. Your profile on LinkedIn is a resume, which is about your past.

As an employer I care about what you can do in the future. The past is relevant to that, but I really want to know if you've got it in you to step up your game or if you're burned out and just trying to coast.

So I want to see an aspirational social network that helps people to become what they want to be become.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't that look like Pinterest? I personally use Trello for small group and individual dream boarding.</comment></comment>


'Did I Miss Anything?': A Man Emerges from a 75-Day Silent Retreat - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/us/coronavirus-meditation.html <comment><USER2> Previous discussion from a different article on the same subject:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442087)

Correction: at a glance, this does appear to be the same story in a different publication.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was in a severe traffic collision in October 2019 spent most of the time in the hospital until about Apri After one of my right hand surgerys I woke up and I was in quarantine. Which was completely different than every other procedure that I had up until then. everyone was talking about some new virus and new rules to follow. the hospital emptied out the next few weeks nobody was allowed to congregate I saw maybe three nurses the entire time. My previous surgery was a manipulation and I was supposed to start physical therapy immediately after but it shut down the hospital and most services including PT OT so I had surgery pretty much for no reason I'll have to have it again.

<comment><USER4> This story sounds like beginning of Walking Dead just with different type of zombies out on streets.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would make your development 10 times or 100 times more productive? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Not a language, not a framework, not a design pattern; we have more than enough of these already, and they cover all of the use cases -- they've become fashions and a means for coralling developers and creating markets rather than actually delivering value.

What _would_ genuinely enhance productivity would be some means to co- operatively share and discuss architecture, design and implementation decisions and trade-offs in realtime while maintaining creative control over code.

For example; I'm considering where to place the code for a new feature within my application stack - should I implement it as part of the frontend application, or do I handle it in a backend service?

Multiple tradeoffs and implications fork off from this type of seemingly simple question, and they'll have performance, deployment, security, operational and organizational impacts over the course of the lifetime of the application.

Those types of questions generally bounce around in a developer's own mind -- and potentially with their team over the course of a few meetings or chats.

To be able to share questions like these with a public audience -- perhaps similar to the way that coding session interview candidates are encouraged to explain their thinking throughout -- and then to gather and debate feedback on the merits of each decision, and develop trust with each participant (based on their overall contributions, or for specific areas-of-experience) could make for a valuable platform.

As hinted previously, this could apply at architecture and design (whiteboard, conversation) levels, and at implementation-level (shared IDE screen, conversation).

Delivered correctly this could also be a useful training and educational tool; observers could learn about the tradeoffs that are made for real applications, and participants should gain a sense of achievement (and attribution; ideally in writing although also through evidence of discussion) from helping steer the course of software.

Open-minded participants would learn from the situations in which their suggestions were declined, and ineffective actors on the platform (whether asking questions or attempting to mislead discussion) would become apparent over time.

Conversely though -- it could be time-consuming and potentially incredibly distracting for architects and developers to visit and share their problem statement in this kind of environment -- letalone interact with it subsequently -- so it would likely fail unless the signal-to-noise ratio was very high and clearly added value to their project.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this. My partner is a dev and I am not, he needs some people like this to have those conversations with but feels the standard communities/slacks etc have too much noise. I don't know what the answer is, but you're not alone.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. StackOverflow has aspects of a solution (asking questions and tracking reputation), GitHub has aspects of it (pull requests and in-context discussion), but they just don't quite seem to fit somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I struggle with is, like jka says, to communicate trade-offs and to gather requirements. In other words, solving the underlying problem; not the symptom without causing bigger problems in the future.

The main thing I miss is to be able to, as Fred Brooks says, "throw one away". It happens too often that, contrary to the second part of Brooks saying (i.e., that "you will anyhow"), something that should be a prototype ends up as the "finished" product, causing headaches down the road due to shortcuts that were made or because whatever was learned in developing the prototype is not taken into account due to time pressure. On the other hand, I work in a small company and the customers are happy enough, just too few so it might be the case that these headaches are a reasonable price to pay.

</comment><comment><USER5> Better test environments with "replay" of production traffic that I can easily hack on locally. Right now, we have some very robust tests. But getting all the containers into the right state can sometimes be a pain. Every now and then, you nuke the entire setup from orbit and re-spin everything back up. But this is still all artificial data in the tests. We spend too much time making a robust test environment when, if we could just say "make this like prod but with my binary in place of this other one and let me replay traffic to simulate a bug or load or whatnot" and to allow this to have a very, very tight loop. In the order of seconds between saving a change (maybe an added log line) and hitting the change with simulated traffic.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get a consensus from Engineers if they need another person (any role - Engineer, PM, Architect, Mgr) added to the team. Do not open the position until all Engineers vote a Yes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clear instructions from above.

</comment><comment><USER8> Speed or meth probablly

</comment><comment><USER9> if i wasn't dumb as a rock.</comment>


Company offers 1,600 euros to be voluntarily infected with coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://fr.sputniknews.com/international/202003101043227772-cette-societe-propose-1600-euros-pour-se-faire-infecter-volontairement-au-coronavirus/ <comment><USER2> I thought this was just some crazy fake news but they are planning on studying coronavirus strains. Not the Wuhan Fever strain but other less serious strains.

Heres a link to the company's trail web site if your interested.

[https://flucamp.com/](https://flucamp.com/)</comment>


Tinhattery: New Class of Laws Would Make Lobbyists Irrelevant - <AUTHOR> http://1annualsuperlaw.neocities.org/index.html

<comment><USER2> I like the idea. I'm also wondering about the notion of deprecating laws that no longer function as they did when introduced or don't address the issue it was intended for.</comment>


Nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics used on livestock annually in USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-update-farm-animals-get-80-of-antibiotics-sold-in-us <comment><USER2> Normalize by biomass and we're probably neglecting the poor critters.

<comment><USER3> According to wikipedia there are about 96,669,000 cattle in the US, and 1,970,000,000 chickens. Compared to about 300,000,000 humans.

Food animals aren't kept alive long, but they do live at least around a year, so lets ignore births/deaths within the year.

Lets see, a chicken is about 5lb, cattle about 1600, and humans say 150.

So about 45,000,000,000 lb of humans, and 164,520,400,000 lb of food animals.

Based on that I would expect 27% of antibiotics for humans, and 73% for animals - and that matches pretty well with reality, especially considering the crude estimates I used, and completely ignoring pets.

<comment><USER4> Amazing what happens when you ignore sensationalism and do a little math. Most 'chickens', technically roosters, don't live long, only about 1 day.

<http://scienceray.com/biology/the-lifespan-of-farm-animals/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Title and article design fail. They fail to convey any information anyone can actually understand. Nobody grasps how much '30 million pounds' is, except for 'sounds like, and is obviously intended to mean, a lot'. To understand this number, we require at least:

\- the average number of grams each piece of livestock gets

\- the average number of grams _humans_ get

Saying it's "80% of all antibiotics produced" doesn't add one iota of understanding, because then you need to know the ratio of livestock to humans in addition to the numbers above.

As these aren't explained in the article, the entire article is mere FUD.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's put it this way, how many pounds of antibiotics do you think livestock were getting 50 years ago?

(the answer is zero)

The number of drug-resistant organisms found in these situations is starting to become alarming and the EU has banned several livestock drugs years ago which are still used in the USA. But of course most countries in the EU don't use hospitals and medical treatment as a profit-center either.

<comment><USER5> I'm not arguing that the amount of antibiotics isn't a problem. My father has worked in the industry for over 30 years and has been telling me the same since 1990. That doesn't make a lick of difference, because my point is that _this article_ isn't going to convince anyone. People will read it and may be alarmed by it, but anyone can dispel the alarm, because the people reading it haven't received any real information. That's the weakness of using FUD in your favor.

BTW, your argument isn't very convincing. How many pounds of antibiotics do you think humans were getting 100 years ago? I don't doubt you think we became healthier since then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Be sure to read the original article too

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-break-fda- est...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/news-break-fda-estimate-us- livestock-get-29-million-pounds-of-antibiotics-per-year/)

Oh and vegitarians can't escape this either, even in food from "organic" farms.

Liquid manure from the livestock is used on the crops and the antibiotics gets into other food that way.</comment>


Egyptian Military Ousts Morsi, Suspends Constitution - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/07/03/Egypt-military-ousts-Morsi

<comment><USER2> Well that was quick</comment>


How Vienna produced ideas that shaped the West - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21712044-city-century-how-vienna-produced-ideas-shaped-west <comment><USER2> "Vienna was the heart of an Austro-Hungarian empire of about 53m people that stretched from Innsbruck in the west almost as far as the Black Sea in the east. After 1867 the empire was divided into two: a Magyar-dominated Hungary, ruled from Budapest, and a heterogeneous, multi-ethnic, multilingual other half, ruled from Vienna."

In all fairness the Magyar-dominated Hungary could be attributed the same attributes, it was multi-ethnic and multilingual, especially in the suburban areas of the kingdom.

Ethnic map from 1910 [1] shows it pretty well (Croatia and Slavonia were left out from the picture).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Hungary#/media/File...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Hungary#/media/File:Ethnographic_map_of_hungary_1910_by_teleki_carte_rouge.jpg)

<comment><USER3> The major difference was that the Hungarians implemented a politics of Magyarization which was one of the main reasons for what happened for them at Trianon. From the wiki ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization#Magyarization_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyarization#Magyarization_in_the_Kingdom_of_Hungary)):

> The policies of Magyarization aimed to have a Hungarian language surname as > a requirement for access to basic government services such as local > administration, education, and justice. (...) Between 1850 and 1910 the > ethnic Hungarian population increased by 106.7%, while the increase of other > ethnic groups was far slower: Serbians and Croatians 38.2%, Romanians 31.4% > and Slovaks 10.7%.[38]

<comment><USER4> This is an oversimplification. Trianon set the borders with neither the interest on ethnicity, nor the wishes of their inhabitants. Cities were cut in half (e.g Komarom and Komarno), families became separated, there are people who had 5 different citizenship without leaving their villages. After the WW1, there were only two census (Balassagyarmat and Sopron, both had to fight for this right, with weapons), both voted to stay in Hungary.

For the diversity of the key positions, you can check the list of barons and counts:

[https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_b%C3%A1r%C3%B3i_csal%C3...](https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_b%C3%A1r%C3%B3i_csal%C3%A1dok_list%C3%A1ja) [https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_gr%C3%B3fi_csal%C3%A1do...](https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_gr%C3%B3fi_csal%C3%A1dok_list%C3%A1ja) List of Jewish nobles: [http://mek.oszk.hu/04000/04093/html/szocikk/13568.htm](http://mek.oszk.hu/04000/04093/html/szocikk/13568.htm)

One of the most powerful family was the (possibily Croatian) Grassalkovich which once had the duke title as well.

I don't deny there was an ethnic tension which hadn't been resolved. But this was a 100 years after the Ottomans were defeated after 300 years of permanent war that drastically changed the ethnic demographic. Check the Balkans and see how big the issue was.

<comment><USER5> There was also an underlying religious divide that was barely solved in the last decades before their downfall: Orthodox, especially Romanians, were almost completely excluded from political life. You list actually serves as a counter argument to your own point from this regard since I could barely find any Romanian names on that list (no "escu" as in Popescu or Ionescu for example).

And that was for 3 million out of 20 million in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Trianon was a simple solution to a complex issue but the fact that the borders have been kept despite more wars kind of points to the fact that they were a decent compromise (and also kind of emphasizes the amplitude of the harm done by the previous "historical" borders).

<comment><USER4> True, there was not much Wallachian (Romanian, that time) names, but Wallachian was one of the many ethnicities. The old word oláh ("vlach") was used not just for Wallachians, but Cumans as well. In the wikimedia list you might find "Radó" (Radu in Romanian), which was one of the oldest noble family in the Hungarian Transylvania.

You are right, the religion, common values and culture mattered more than ethnicity. This is quite a standard among the nations, Wallachia and Moldavia was no exception. There were not much tatar, cuman, bolgar or pecheneg among the boiars.

<comment><USER5> You're moving the goal posts.

There were 3 million Wallachians in Hungary (15-20% of the total population) at the time and barely a handful of Wallachian nobles in Hungary. Meanwhile in Wallachia and Moldova Tatars, Bulgarians were just a handful, most likely less than 1%. Cumans and Pechenegs were long assimilated in 1800-1900.

My point is that the previous poster was right: magyarization was the downfall of the multiethnic Hungarian state. Hungarian nationalism couldn't accept that >50% of the population in the Kingdom of Hungary wasn't actually Hungarian, they tried to forcefully assimilate groups which had no problems with Hungarian rule as long as they were left alone. The assimilation attempt backfired.

Trianon was a political action with a solid social backing.

<comment><USER4> The Hungarian nationalism did accept the multi-ethnic Hungary. You possibly know in the 1848 uprising against the Habsburgs was led by 13 generals ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13_Martyrs_of_Arad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13_Martyrs_of_Arad)) you can barely see Hungarian names. The poet's, who wrote and read the proclamation and started the uprising had the family name Petrovich (Petőfi in Hungarian). One of the general was called Josef Bem, Polish. The finance minister was Ferenc Duschek (sounds a Czech to me) and justice minister Sava Vuković (sounds Serbian) in the new government. Yes, there was no Romanian, but neither Cumans, Jassic, Rusins, Saxon, Schwab or Armenian either. In the uprising, prime minister Lajos Batthyány was initiated a negotiation about reforms with Brătianu ([https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VtKypkRfLtUC&pg=PA102&lp...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VtKypkRfLtUC&pg=PA102&lpg=PA102&dq=batthi%C3%A1ny+romania+negotiations&source=bl&ots=lUkgDjG7j0&sig=Gfoh0GRcM9Rqr0uN0VK6_qzbic8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwit7uv5mJ3RAhUKfxoKHaQ1BWgQ6AEILjAD#v=onepage&q=batthi%C3%A1ny%20romania%20negotiations&f=false)). In fact, Hungarians in the state capital (Budapest) was in minority that time.

I do understand your emotions and as I stated, the matter of ethnic discontent was not handled properly. But try to put this into the context with the rest of the world politics. In such context, the 19th century Hungary seems pretty open-minded to me. Just read the text of the proclamation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_points_of_the_Hungarian_Rev...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_points_of_the_Hungarian_Revolutionaries_of_1848) . It claims equal rights regardless the religion, end of serfdom and general taxation. Too bad the revolution has fallen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions "Red Vienna" in only one sentence. But the last 80 years of progressive politics in Vienna was a huge success. Social housing, public transport, social welfare, security, education etc. and therefore the quality of live are exceptional in that city because of progressive politics. [https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable- city](https://www.wien.info/en/lifestyle-scene/most-livable-city)

<comment><USER7> Successful at making them irrelevant in a global economy perhaps. What major innovations and technology are coming out of Vienna now? The best case seems to be that tourism stays busy enough to keep the taxes flowing in to sustain the entitlement programs.

<comment><USER8> is there any other country with less than 10M people and no natural resources which is more relevant than Austria in the global economy?

Possibly Switzerland, but not by much.

<comment><USER9> There are so many obvious counterexamples to your claim as others have pointed out. Mongolia was and is a tiny nation but had one of the largest empires the world has ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For those of you that enjoy pre-1800 European History, I highly suggest picking up a copy of Europa Universalis 4 on Steam. Wonderful strategy game that ends up teaching you an awful lot about history from 1444-1821

<comment><USER11> This may reveal my age/lack thereof, but Europa Universalis 3 is what originally sparked my interest in history and also programming. It's a game that allows you to explore 'what if' scenarios in a fairly historically accurate context. It's by no means a simulator, but it does a great job of making the era _feel_ right.

It got me into coding due to my curiosity with exactly those 'what if's. The vast majority of the game data is easily editable, and the dev console is great. Some of my first coding projects were just mods for EU3, which revealed to me that there's really nothing _special_ that goes into making software if 13-year old me could do it.

Highly recommended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related: [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21859771)

1913: When Hitler, Trotsky, Tito, Freud and Stalin all lived in the same place

</comment><comment><USER13> Not mentioned, bust also:

\- Ludwig Boltzmann, the father of statistical mechanics.

\- Richard Reti, the author of hypermodern "Reti Opening" in chess.

<comment><USER14> Nor Kurt Gödel

<comment><USER15> This. Most other figures from the article will be remembered in history books. But Gödel's results will be remembered and learned for as long as people do mathematics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux The BBC recently broadcast a three-part series on Vienna for those interested. Unfortunately, it's only available to watch for those in the UK:

 _Vienna: Empire, Dynasty and Dream_

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046dkrd](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p046dkrd)

</comment><comment><USER16> Obligatory Karl Kraus describing Vienna as an "experimental station for world destruction".

</comment><comment><USER17> Let humanity fester and "sperm is in the air" (Zweig). I'd move to the next one in a heart-beat.

</comment><comment><USER18> Where is the modern Vienna?

<comment><USER19> Online Start-Up wise quite good. There is VC money, grants, tech talent, meetups and the will to try new things.

But los of overall creativity still stifled by bureaucracy, mediocracy and latent rassism.

Also we have something called SVA and "Sozialpartnerschaft" which hurts a lot. The one takes most of young founders money, the other makes sure the curtent old-white-male elite stays in place.

<comment><USER20> I'm on of those "young founders" here and have zero issues with the SVA. They take at most 20k/y from you for health care and pension, and I'm fine with that. And just because you don't want to pay your potential employees a living wage (which are low in the IT collective bargaining contracts) doesn't mean the Sozialpartnerschaft is bad. On the contrary, it keeps those stary eyed "young founders" from fucking over the people that help build their potential future fortune.

<comment><USER9> This sort of sentiment explains why socialist Europe will never be able to build successful companies like Google/FB.

<comment><USER21> Or maybe they're building smaller, useful, and profitable companies and don't need to be the next Google or Facebook?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Vienna ideas didn't shape anything in particular. They were just standing on the shoulders of the giants. The west was shaped by the thousands years of European's history and wars.

<comment><USER23> And not only Christian Europe, but also the centuries of work by Muslim scholars all over the Middle East and Asia.

<comment><USER24> I don't think that statement is true.

<comment><USER23> Muslim scientists contributed to many fields, including philosophy[1], astronomy[2], medicine[3], mathematics[4], and chemistry[5]. It was very common for scholars to make contributions in multiple fields, so you'll see a lot of repetition.

One of the key contributions that in my opinion influenced the Renaissance greatly was the work by numerous Muslim translators on the translation of Greek works to Arabic. In the process, many of the works of the great Greek thinkers and philosophers were preserved for future scholars. Also, Muslim scholars were responsible for bringing works from the East (China, India, etc.) back to Baghdad, making them more accessible to the West.

Arabic was so widely used that it was the lingua franca for most of science for a period of time (~12th century). European scholars who wanted to learn more about the latest discoveries and inventions had to learn Arabic at one of the large learning centers (Baghdad, Damascus, Granada, among others). Sicily[6] was another place where East and West combined for the sake of learning.

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

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

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_doctors?wprov=s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Muslim_doctors?wprov=sfla1)

[4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam?...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_in_medieval_Islam?wprov=sfla1)

[5]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy_and_chemistry_in_medieval_Islam?wprov=sfla1)

[6]: [http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197806/muslim.sicily.ht...](http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/197806/muslim.sicily.htm)

<comment><USER24> I don't mean to lessen the output of muslim scholars, but if their contribution was so significant, then why did the renaissance blossom in Florence, instead of a ME center, e.g. Baghdad? I don't think that preserving existing knowledge is a huge contribution, given there would be no need of preserving without the muslim conquest. And what happened to muslim science since their golden age?

<comment><USER23> Please see my other comment in this thread. And who said that Muslims scientists only preserved knowledge? I just listed a number of fields that Muslims significantly contributed by the way.

The Islamic world peaked in the 15th century, then began to slowly decline. The current lack of output from Muslim scientists is in my opinion primarily due to petty internal religious conflict, poor unity due to conflicting interests, the colonisation of most of the larger Muslim countries which led to them skipping the more critical periods of scientific development and education, the lack of interest in innovation, and the lack of freedom to innovate because of perceived religious contradictions.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Comparing Rust and Java (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://llogiq.github.io/2016/02/28/java-rust.html <comment><AUTHOR> I realise this article's getting a bit long in the tooth, but I thought it was well written and it was an interesting read for me as a Java developer who barely dabbles in Rust.

Does anyone have pointers to similar articles of a more recent vintage, or observations on the state of play in 2019.

<comment><USER2> The article makes a few valid points about Java. It's worth pointing out that there are some changes happening to Java, the JVM, and the wider ecosystem of languages running on it.

One big disadvantage of Java has been the lack of value types and the reliance on heap memory vs. stack memory, which is what languages like Rust would use. This is changing and they are in the process of supporting value types in Java. Currently it's unclear with which release this will land but work here is progressing. This will improve performance for a number of use-cases where the advantage is currently for languages like rust. Of course Rust has many other advantages that give it an edge but this is a fairly big deal and it's likely to narrow the gap a little.

Another big change is the introduction of the graal vm and ahead of time compilation that supports. This does not work for all programs as some things like e.g. using reflection prevent using this. However, frameworks are evolving that enable using this. This means faster startup times and lower memory foot prints; which is useful for e.g. server-less type environments. Of course the flip-side is that you miss out on run-time optimizations that hotspot would do as well as some of the more advanced garbage collectors.

Finally, Kotlin as a language is addressing a lot of the concerns people have about the Java language. It's similar to Swift and like Swift and Rust, there's also a llvm native compiler for it. A lot of the cross platform Kotlin libraries are written such that they work in both native and jvm environment. Additionally those same properties also make them usable with the Graal vm. So, it's no longer true that Java (and Kotlin) code is limited to the JVM.

IMHO graal and kotlin native are going to be interesting. Kotlin native is currently in beta and the graal vm is still relatively young. As this stuff matures, there is inevitably going to be a some movement of people to those runtime environments. Also popular frameworks like Spring (which is increasingly Kotlin centric) are also focusing on facilitating using the Graal vm.

Finally, they've been working on improving interacting with native code. This currently requires writing a lot of stub code and they are working on automatically generating that. This will facilitate easier interoperability with Rust and other native languages on the JVM and on Graal and is probably going to be a big deal for e.g. Jruby and other scripting languages on the jvm.

<comment><USER3> As addendum, since around 2000 many commercial implementations of Java did support AOT compilation, or some form of JIT caching, Hotspot was the exception here.

In fact, the OpenJDK CDS feature was originally part of BEA J/Rockit JVM, later acquired by Oracle and made a commercial feature in Oracle JDK, until it finally landed on OpenJDK.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11192952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11192952)</comment>