Income Tax Receipt - <AUTHOR> http://www.incometaxreceipt.com/ <comment><USER2> I wouldn't include social security and medicare on an income tax receipt. That would be an income tax + payroll tax receipt.</comment>


Show HN: Dash – A Super-Convenient Custom Apple Watch Glance/App - <AUTHOR> http://dash.watch

<comment><AUTHOR> Released it yesterday. Lets you put whatever you want within easy reach on the Watch - phone battery, phone network, any text or any photo. Would love some feedback.</comment>


Web Player for Apple Music (using MusicKit JS) - <AUTHOR> https://music.zacharyseguin.ca <comment><USER2> I just get "Loading..."

No JS errors, no Ajax requests, disabled adblocker, tried both Safari & Chrome, tried Mobile Safari.

<comment><USER3> Someone on Reddit is also experiencing the same issue. I haven't had a chance to look into it more. It's likely that MusicKit JS isn't initializing for an unknown reason (my app initializes after MusicKit JS).

<comment><USER2> For some reason the HTTP request for music.js returns no content. I tried with curl and got the same response, so it doesn't seem to be browser related.

The curl request _does_ work when I do it on my VPS, so I'm guessing it's something to do with Apple's CDN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really well-done. Handy for someone whose phone lacks a headphone jack, but whose laptop has one. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Finally! Love new experience... literally anything would be better than iTunes (Windows)

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope it gains Beats One support. It was a long time since I listened because I can't stomach running a 200+ MB app to stream some AAC file, but I do recall I liked that radio station most at the time of announcement of Apple Music.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sorry to be skeptical here but I'm flagging the post. This is literally a random anonymous site asking for my iTunes login.

<comment><USER8> Did you miss popup window which connected to Apple with green status bar?

<comment><USER7> I didn't miss anything, it just feels like a phishing attempt. No offense if it's not but perhaps you should just put the source upfront rather than hosting a service. People have their whole lives connected to iTunes accounts.

<comment><USER9> It's a fair point though. Apple ( and Amazon, Facebook etc ) should really provide a way to manage sub-accounts with limited capabilities.

<comment><USER10> They are. And you see which capabilites are provided to the requster application on that account page</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programmable magnets - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POc32aioLFE

<comment><AUTHOR> I had the core idea of this in 2006 (binary coded patterns of small magnets for position and orientation sensitivity), but... didn't follow up. Looks like they are doing some interesting stuff with it (and piling on the patents).

The original application I imagined would be very simple arrays to be used in kids' tile puzzles where you could have square-peg-in-square-hole style thinking but without hole geometry (choosing something more semantic instead). Puzzle tiles would only have strong attraction to their correct location and all other locations would be relatively neutral.

</comment><comment><USER2> This has been an engineering holly grail for quite a while. If validated, the patents for such magnets should make a nice financial windfall for this company. Great news if validated.</comment>


Torrents.csv – a Git repo of torrents, consisting of one searchable CSV file - <AUTHOR> https://torrents-csv.ml/#/ <comment><USER2> Repo - [https://gitlab.com/dessalines/torrents.csv](https://gitlab.com/dessalines/torrents.csv)</comment>


Madness and the Muse - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/Madnessthe-Muse/148845/

<comment><USER2> Sometimes I wish articles like this had a tldr at the start. Skimmed to the bottom and it concluded that the link between creativity and mental illness is a bewildering puzzle for experts</comment>


Contrast between 2005 and 2013 may not be so high - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/google-says-these-two-images-show-how-radically-the-world-has-changed-since-2005-2013-5

<comment><USER2> Fuck you Business Insider! I will look at your content even if I have to disable the page style.</comment>


Julio Diaz remembers being robbed - <AUTHOR> http://storycorps.org/listen/stories/julio-diaz/

<comment><USER2> I really commend that type of behavior (I really respect someone that has the good heart to do such a thing) not because I think it's the right thing to do (though it is), but because my reaction would have been to immediately go into a "maim the fucker up" mode. I've lived in some extremely bad parts of town where you either make a stand or get robbed and injured everyday. My instant reaction is to put my life in risk to injure the assailant, which is wrong because you never know how that person ended up doing what he/she is doing.

Next time I'm in a situation as this I'll think first about the person doing the robbing before making a decision to let go or assault back. Great story.

<comment><USER3> I have never been robbed, but, living in the largest city in Canada, I know that eventually it will happen.

I've always felt that in such a situation, I would refuse to be a victim, and so in my mind, that always meant resisting, fighting back, and convincing them that it was a bad idea to rob me.

It wasn't until listening to this that I realized that you don't have to be the victim even if you do give them your wallet.

<comment><USER4> Living in Toronto you know you will eventually get robbed? I don't feel that way at all.

<http://www.toronto.ca/quality_of_life/safety.htm>

We seem to have a much higher comparative rate for break-ins. Hell we have half the robberies of Winnipeg per capita!

I still don't know how I would react in that type of robbery situation. I have been lucky and talked my way out of a few tight spots before.

<comment><USER3> I work in one of the bad areas of the city. It gets real shady after dark, so once I'm working some OT my chances will increase, I expect.

And still, a 1 in 1000 chance isn't actually all that low. Seems likely that it'll happen at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is the transcript from npr if you can't listen to the story:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=89164759)

</comment><comment><USER6> You should check out some of their other stuff -

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNfvuJr9164>

Storycorps also has an outstanding book/audiobook that I'd highly recommend if you're interested in hearing some of their best of stories called Listening is an Act of Love

</comment><comment><USER7> "By listening closely to one another, we can help illuminate the true character of this nation reminding us all just how precious each day can be and how truly great it is to be alive."

\- Dave Isay, Founder, StoryCorps

Thanks for sharing this. Listening to StoryCorps is always a pleasure :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of the classic story "Thank You, Ma'm" by Langston Hughes: [http://members.multimania.co.uk/shortstories/hughesthankyou....](http://members.multimania.co.uk/shortstories/hughesthankyou.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is a very nice story. I read a Sufi version of this a few years back. It would be pretty if this is real.</comment>


Will Ubuntu Drop Firefox For Google Chrome? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/14/the-new-browser-wars-will-ubuntu-drop-firefox-for-google-chrome/ <comment><USER2> I know I've dropped Firefox across the board. When Firefox 4 comes out, I'll give it a shot. It's slower to open, slower to load pages, slower to close, requires restarting on plugins and themes, flash crashes the whole browser, etc.

I don't know why anyone's using Firefox 3.x outside of some yet-unported extensions.</comment>


Eucoin – New European Bitcoin and Altcoin Exchange Comming Soon - <AUTHOR> http://eucoin.io/ <comment><USER2> Good news for European Traders. Most of current exchanges have high trading fees and have been hacked recently. We need something secure ,reliable and trustfull to manage our assets.

<comment><USER3> Collecting email addresses on http ([https://eucoin.io/](https://eucoin.io/) doesn't work) doesn't convey security or trustfulness. Emails are collected by /emails.js and send to the /emails URL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will you offer EUR pairs for every coin? Nice initiative btw

<comment><AUTHOR> we have big plans for the exchange but right now we are trying to find out what a common retailer trader is looking for. Our goal is to open with wide range of Bitcoin/Altcoin trading pairs but Altcoin/Euro trading pairs are an important feature that we would like to have on a near future.</comment></comment>


MongoDB Inc. Appoints Dev Ittycheria as President and CEO - <AUTHOR> http://www.mongodb.com/press/mongodb-appoints-dev-ittycheria-as-president-and-CEO

<comment><USER2> He seems to have a suitable name. :-)</comment>


YC-backed ReadyForZero: Lessons In Taking on Big-Time Finance - <AUTHOR> http://namesake.com/conversation/brian/y-combinator-backed-readyforzero-is-here-to-disrupt-the-profitable-yet-murky-world-of-big-consumer-finance--join-rod-and-i-to-discuss-the-company-he-co-founded-and-what-its-like-to-be-a-startup-in-finance-today

<comment><USER2> Cool company.</comment>


Nearly Divisionless Random Integer Generation on Various Systems - <AUTHOR> https://lemire.me/blog/2019/06/06/nearly-divisionless-random-integer-generation-on-various-systems/ <comment><USER2> The linked overview on _Efficiently Generating a Number in a Range_ by O'Neill (of PCG fame) is insightful. It gives some more background and compares several approaches (including this, Lemire's).

It seems based on her testing that a very simple bit mask & rejection technique ("Apple's method", as Apple implemented it in their modification of arc4random_uniform) is the fastest among the unbiased techniques, particularly for large N, while for mixed N Lemire's technique seems competitive or better. She suggests a further optimisation, which now clearly "wins" except for large N.

Cool stuff - I find random number generation fascinating.

[http://www.pcg-random.org/posts/bounded-rands.html](http://www.pcg- random.org/posts/bounded-rands.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> If I'm reading this correctly, it is very close to what Python has been doing for over a decade, so I am not sure that using a "rejection method" counts as "new tech". Here are the relevant snippets.

Code for shuffle(x):

        for i in reversed(range(1, len(x))):
            j = randbelow(i+1)
            x[i], x[j] = x[j], x[i]

Code for randbelow(n):

        k = n.bit_length()
        r = getrandbits(k)
        while r >= n:
            r = getrandbits(k)
        return r

Code for getrandbits(k):

        bytes = ((k - 1) / 32 + 1) * 4;
        for (i=0 ; i<bytes ; i+=4, k-=32) {
            r = genrand_int32(self);
            if (k < 32)
                r >>= (32 - k);
            bytearray[i+0] = (unsigned char)r;
            bytearray[i+1] = (unsigned char)(r >> 8);
            bytearray[i+2] = (unsigned char)(r >> 16);
            bytearray[i+3] = (unsigned char)(r >> 24);
        }

<comment><USER4> Rejection isn't new - what's new is using a variation of his "use the high order bits of the 64x64 multiply by a range to get a random number efficiently" trick (which he published two or three years ago) to substantially improve the efficiency of a rejection sampling method.

The efficient random number in a range trick is really cool. I've used it in a couple of data structures that we've designed - it's substantially faster than using modulus, or even using pre-computed division by reciprocal multiplication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20120642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20120642)

<comment><USER6> There's no discussion there, so a repost is ok. This is in the FAQ: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you rely more on data or intuition when making product decisions? - <AUTHOR> I think most people understand the need for accurate data, but sometimes it's just not possible to collect enough data to make clear decisions (for example, in an early stage business).<p>Do you rely more on data or gut feel when making decisions about new product ideas, new features, etc? <comment><USER2> Both. But generally the scales tip (strongly) in favor of intuition, precisely because quite often the window of opportunity to do something really great or meaningful exists precisely _because_ the data is scarce or completely lacking. In fact it is exactly this very kind of (justified) cognitive leap -- they (almost) telepathic ability to know what the customer needs or wants, _despite_ the data, and sometimes even despite their own stated desires -- that arguably is what defines and characterizes many of the most revolutionary innovations you can think of.

In fairness though, many "brilliant innovations" have also essentially been happy accidents, so one shouldn't get too big-headed about the value of intuition -- especially one's own.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've proposed new product ideas on both data and intuition. Sometimes it worked, sometimes I had to right it off to experience.

This is relevant to both new product development and just new features. Sometimes a new product is a good idea to a couple of your beta users but you may not get enough traction off the larger user base.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious about what types of decisions you are talking about. I agree about the need for data, and I don't dismiss intuition, but I'd like to focus in on specifics.

Are you talking about whether or not to proceed with an idea broadly, or something like what database to use, or something more UX specific?</comment>


Capturing and Retaining Customers for Your Subscription Business - <AUTHOR> https://www.firmhouse.com/blog/capturing-and-retaining-customers-for-your-subscription-business <comment><USER2> 8 self-submits per article is a bit extreme.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=firmhouse.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=firmhouse.com)</comment>


Hacker News in real-time - <AUTHOR> http://hackerstream.com/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting... would be more useful if there were a way to filter it, however. And definitely lose the move-cursor if you can't actually drag the items to the watch list, I tried that a couple times before I saw the "click to add" text.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm not sure what the right affordance is to suggest that. I tried just a pointer cursor, but that's too noisy, especially in the presence of links.

I thought it would be better to risk some confusion if there's learning at the end, than to just have people be blissfully oblivious.. Do you think that's a poor tradeoff?

<comment><USER2> I think I'd do a mouse-over effect on the container as a whole. Darken it, or something, and add a transparent right-pointing arrow on the right edge - tweak slightly on mouse-down, and _remove it_ from the left column on mouse- up. There's no need to have duplicates. All of which will imply what it does without any text, leaving the columns and their titles to do the work, and the text to be explicit where needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm getting a "504 Gateway Time-out". You must be attracting a lot of HN'ers.

<comment><USER3> (Update 7 minutes later) Should be back now.

<comment><USER5> Sorry, but still not getting in.

<comment><USER3> Eep, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm going to stop messing with it today. Try it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for trying it out! You may be interested in the previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2301871>

</comment><comment><USER6> I like this a lot, thanks for posting this. However, I can't seem to access the actual articles by clicking on a post - is this just my browser or does this not happen? How does one go to the actual articles?

And it would be helpful if each post had the title of each parent article associated with them.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think I prefer the 502 to real-time HN. I am already 3x more productive than usual. Congratulations.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice. No up/down voting yet?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm surprised nobody's asked this yet. I wish I could, but I'd have to either ask you for your password, or ask you to install a browser plugin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> what framework did you use to make this? tornado?

<comment><USER3> No it's just doing simple polling. There was a thread about this last time: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2302367>. Since then I'm starting to see the use of a more efficient approach. If I poll more frequently there'll be fewer stories to update each time and people who're reading on the left column will be jarred less. So yes, I'm going to look into all the various polling approaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hello World!

..oh, it's not this part.</comment>


Puma 4: Hammering Out H13s–A Debugging Story - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/puma-4-hammering-out-h13s-a-debugging-story <comment><USER2> If you get excited about puma 4 (like we did) and run on non-Heroku just be careful of other lingering issues. [https://github.com/puma/puma/issues/1842](https://github.com/puma/puma/issues/1842) has the latest, make sure you're on 4.0.1 at least.

</comment><comment><USER3> I encounter this error all the time and it drives me crazy. This makes me so happy.

<comment><USER3> I upgraded to Puma 4 with no problems. Haven't seen an H13 since. :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How many of you are still going to Chirp? - <AUTHOR>

Given Twitter's latest dick move towards the ecosystem, I'm wondering how many developers / entrepreneurs will still be going to Chirp? <comment><USER2> A better question is whether anyone going is worth meeting. Or whether it'll just a be a bash-fest give the recent fiasco. Neither seems compelling enough to waste the time/money of attending...</comment>


What Kind of Lithography Will Be Used at 7nm? - <AUTHOR> http://semiengineering.com/7nm-lithography-choices/ <comment><USER2> At 7nm spacing you could draw 100,000 lines across the width of a human hair. About 70 silicon atoms lying next to each other would be 7nm wide. I know the end of Moore's law has been predicted before, but this time has to be different.

<comment><USER3> Keep in mind that most features at 7nm would be quite a bit larger than 7nm. For example, in the 22nm technology I have worked with, a standard wire on the lowest metal layer might be around 40nm wide (higher metal layers use even wider wires to benefit from their lower resistance to cross larger distances).

I do agree with your fundamental point that there will definitely be an end to Moore's law. It's just that the mere number of silicon atoms doesn't make <7nm infeasible.

<comment><USER4> Is it like how inkjet printers advertise huge resolutions like 5760dpi, and the positioning can achieve that resolution, but the actual nozzles can't produce lines thinner than e.g. 720dpi?

<comment><USER5> No. There are process nodes that have real technical meaning but, especially as sizes shrink, what that means exactly in terms of the dimensions of specific features varies considerably.

<comment><USER6> The "Minimum feature size" slide included in this article shows some feature sizes for existing technologies. I think names like "14 nm" and "7 nm" are mostly marketing at this point.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8367/intels-14nm-technology- in...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8367/intels-14nm-technology-in-detail)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting how many chip-makers have now the power (read it as financial and human resources) to keep the race at what it seems the same level. Of them all, Apple is the more impressive as they have keep the core count down. On my books been able to squeeze another 4 cores to 12 cores doesn't make that much sense on cellphones and laptop/desktops.

<comment><USER8> Apple _have_ been squeezing more parallelism onto their SoCs—just in the form of more continuous on-die GPGPU silicon, rather than more discrete CPU cores. Most "apps" seem to break down into serial-bottleneck and embarrassingly- parallel subcomponents; this fits a "CPU for the serial part + GPGPU for the parallel part" design much better than it fits a 12-core CPU. With every release of iOS, more is run on the GPU and less on the CPU—things are being parallelized, just not the way we expected.

A tangent: really, the only place that multiple discrete CPU cores make any sense at all is on servers, because servers are frequently made to run multiple submitted workloads, each containing their own serial-bottleneck parts (vis. the old concept of a "time-sharing" computer.) And even then, these days, those cores may perhaps be useful only for the sake of serving as a more efficient substrate for virtualization; there's not much you can do with one four-core VM that you couldn't do _better_ by treating it as four one-core VMs.

<comment><USER9> Database servers do much better with 4 cores than 4 VMs. In fact they do even better without any VMs at all.

<comment><USER8> I knew someone would argue this point but I couldn't figure out how to correct the original post to be clearer.

"Virtual machine" has come to refer to a specific isolation and security model through, effectively, having a microkernel (the hypervisor) with hardware- accelerated microkernel RPC (hypercalls). But the abstract concept of a virtual machine doesn't require that isolation; it just requires partitioning of resources so that you can treat each partition as its own independent _virtual Von Neumann machine_.

A DB that pins each of its worker threads to a separate core, has a set amount of non-pageable memory reserved for each thread (and perhaps does SR-IOV to get network frames directly to the right thread) is effectively, _in resource allocation terms_ , four independent _virtual Von Neumann machines_. Each pinned thread sees no context switches, gets no cache incoherency, suffers no NUMA-based latencies, etc. You've got four little machines, each with their own uncontested memory-bus and network bandwidth, that just happen to share die space (and thus have a cheap IPC fabric between them.)

I mean, you get 90% of what having a modern hypervisor-managed VM gives you just by using processes in the first place (as opposed to the old "single shared address space" model of the Apple II and IBM PC, where things like TSRs made sense.) But in the decades since the invention of the "process" concept, we've gone past the original conception of a "process" as its own virtual machine, and optimized for multi-user, heavily-multiprocessing time-sharing workloads where context switches are frequent, memory bandwidth is shared, IO hardware is shared (and thus has its access linearized through the kernel), etc. We've realized that most people don't need to be allocated a circuit, so scheduling packets will do; that most people don't need memory reservations, so an OOM killer will do; that most people don't write hard real-time software, so context switching will do; etc. (And we've even given up on the address-space isolation, with threads and other shared-memory IPCisms.)

Most of what we use hypervisor-managed VM setups for today is simply to enforce the resource partitioning that Operating Systems gave up on, so that we can have "processes" that actually do give us resource guarantees. If you're an ops person and you don't know what workload you're going to be running but want that enforcement there anyway, hypervisor-based VM management makes perfect sense. On the other hand, if you as the developer get to design your entire "embedded system" or "appliance" or "service" of OS+app yourself, you can throw out the hypervisor and get your VM model from the OS itself, by teaching your app to tweak the OS in all sorts of places ala Snabb Switch.

Either way, the goal is to partition your machine into several smaller independent ones that never have to wait in a queue behind one-another. You can get that from an OS, or from a hypervisor; but what you get is _virtual Von Neumann machines_ either way.

<comment><USER10> Not all parallelisable jobs can be profitably statically partitioned in independent threads or processes. Many (i.e. anything that is not embarrassingly parallel) require dynamic scheduling and load balancing, which is easier and faster to do on a single address space.

<comment><USER8> I did hedge in the original comment with a "not much you can do that's faster" rather than a "nothing you can do faster." I write control-plane software in Erlang; I am well-aware of software that can take advantage of a 12- or 36- or 100-core CPU. :)

But, most software that people "parallelize" with pthreads is _not_ that type of software, and would be much better served being split into independently- partitioned shared-nothing worker processes, ala Redis. Not only for performance sake, but also because that frees you from the operational constraint of needing a single big machine to run it on. (You still _can_ run all your shared-nothing worker processes on the same piece of Big Iron, but you don't _have_ to, and that flexibility is important for designing a solution in the face of unknown usage profiles.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Machine elves, obviously.</comment>


Not a bug: phpversion('extension_name') returns false - johnx123-up http://bugs.php.net/40582

<comment> johnx123-up When phpinfo() can report correct version, this definitely looks like a big bug--open for 5 years

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I think it's not that easy. "phpinfo" does not gather the version information from the extension it just tells the extension to return some tabular data which is not "interpreted" by PHP. In contrast the "phpversion" function reads the version-field from the modules "zend_module_entry" struct.

Now if you look at, for example, the bz2 extension: <https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/ext/bz2/bz2.c> You see that NO_VERSION_YET (NULL) is set in the version field of the struct (line 122).

You can grep for "NO_VERSION_YET" in the "ext"-directory and you'll see some extensions without version information.

So the problem is in the extensions, and since the extensions deliberately have no version information the behaviour is no bug.</comment></comment>


Ask PG: Please allow us to report incorrectly dead accounts - <AUTHOR>

I come across accounts that are incorrectly dead all the time. For example there are two at the bottom here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3669688
Both are dead and should not be.
Please add a flag link to posts from dead accounts that would report the account to moderators to double check that it really should be dead.
I come across dead accounts in virtually every story and almost all of them should not be dead. Whatever moderation you have going on is far too strict.
I also think you should require at least one flagged post before killing an account for having too low of a karma. <comment><USER3> I 've had my 2 previous accounts hellbanned and i can only guess someone did not like my comments or something although they were by far not my worst comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ristretto> (karma 835)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ignifero> (karma 1761)

It's my understanding that it is a normal thing here. I mostly visit the community for the curated frontpage links. I also have showdead on, as i often find engaging but controversial opinions at the bottom. Typically the top spaces are occupied by either extremely long posts or some very politically correct opinions that offer nothing as debate fodder. Anyway, given that this is a corporate forum, i think i can live with that.

I would suggest at least letting us know when we are hellbanned, it is a pain to talk to a black hole.

</comment><comment><USER4> A friend of mine had his account marked dead for some reason. He had no idea and his comments and submissions were effectively blackholed for weeks. He eventually stopped participating much in HN because of the lack of interaction.

Once I noticed, I emailed PG and he fixed it some hours later. Not a terribly scalable solution, but it got the job done.

<comment><USER5> I agree 100% that you should receive a notification that your account is blackholed. After reading this and still being new to HN I am a tad terrified now that I might one day be blackholed and not even realize it.

<comment><USER6> The whole point of a hellban is that the person receiving it doesn't know. Telling a troll they're banned just feeds into their behavior; they'll do whatever's necessary to circumvent the ban just to fight the site administrator and other users. A hellban subtly encourages the troll to leave voluntarily by ensuring they're ignored.

[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban- or-h...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or- hellban.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For some reason, I'm unable to submit new content - has my account been incorrectly flagged in some way? Tried clearing browser cache, cookies, and trying across multiple browsers. I don't want to just sign up for a new account, seems like the wrong way to go about this?!

<comment><USER7> Hang on, it's just started working there again, after not for a few hours. How odd :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think you may be confused - what in your view constitutes a dead account?

<comment><AUTHOR> These for example:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=generators>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=donnawarellp>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zzz90210>

They have negative karma (which is why they were killed), but they are not spammers.

<comment><USER8> I am not sure I understand what your problem is here. If negative karma accounts that have not been active for months are downgraded in some way - <USER2> just strikes me as sensible housekeeping.

Perhaps you can explain the issue as you see it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not been active? Two of them posted today, and the other posted yesterday.

Housekeeping? Do you even know what killed accounts are?

> I am not sure I understand what your problem is here.

That's pretty obvious. But please try to understand it before assuming there is no problem.

PS. I just realized why you think they are not active! You don't have showdead turned on in your profile, so their dead posts are hidden to you.

<comment><USER9> _That's pretty obvious. But please try to understand it before assuming there is no problem._

bdfh42 asked you to explain it as you see it. I think they are trying to understand it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Through the snow as if on rails - <AUTHOR> https://newsroom.porsche.com/en/2019/technology/porsche-engineering-e-suv-torque-control-software-18800.html <comment><USER4> Hah. I don't care how good your software and individual wheel control is - <USER2> even in the perfectly optimized situation you exceed the friction limits of all four wheels, you will slide. And if your software will not allow wheels to slide, then you will have reduced braking. Either way, you won't stop nearly as quickly as you want.

What people fail to realize, particularly in slippery conditions, is that it's often much easier to gain speed than to shed it. Modern traction control systems make it more (too) easy to gain speed without equally making it easy to shed speed.

<comment><USER5> I remember my dad ranting in our 88 oldsmobile about how stupid all of those 4WD SUVs were, running around so fast in the snow. He would always say that 4WD could help you accelerate, but not help you brake. But whenever he bought tires, he would always get all-seasons. He found out the hard way (by rear ending an SUV) that a lot of those 4WD vehicles that drive so confidently in the snow are doing so not because they rely on their 4WD, but because they can rely on their tires.

Tires matter. A lot. For the past 25 years, snow tires have gotten continuously better. I recently tried out a set of hakkapeliittas, and the difference in driving confidence was dramatic. I could actually count on my car to reasonably stop in a way that I've never felt before, even with chains.

<comment><USER6> I had a friend who used to like to say "4WD can help you accelerate but it can't help you stop". I took him out in my '80 Subaru in the snow one day. It had a lever to activate 4WD, and I demonstrated how it would slow significantly faster with 4WD engaged.

The reason is that there was no ABS, and the brake proportioning valve would send most of the stopping power to the front wheels, since most of your stopping power comes from them on the dry roads. But in snow, the fronts lock up before the rears are slowing you down much. With 4WD active, the front brakes were connected to the back as well as the front and would use their stopping power as well.

Today is a different world though, with ABS.

You're right, it's all about the tires. I used to drive an Audi S4 which I would put Blizzaks on in the winter. I would take people out in the snow and blast around, it was amazingly predictable and controllable.

<comment><USER7> In your case the engine braking made up for, what sounds to be, a poorly calibrated braking system. Yes, front brakes take the majority of braking load and they are designed that way from a braking distribution standpoint. But you have zero advantage with engine braking in a 4WD system vs properly calibrated brakes because on snow it doesn't matter - it simply comes down to the point where you lose tire tire friction greater than the inertia of the vehicle. ABS works to prevent a lockup of the wheel which reduces the opportunity to use friction even friction has been lost.

You are right that some 4WD systems (generally not AWD systems) can have an advantage of engine braking in wet or snowy conditions by not having to use brakes as much. Most drivers overcompensate on braking application in snow or a loss of control situation, which is why ABS works so well against the natural human response. But if you have a driver that is aware of the vehicle mass and the road conditions a proper braking system wouldn't lose out to control of a vehicle being stopped to engine braking in a 4WD system. Most people don't have the driving skill to know when engine braking would even be advantageous over wheel braking. And engine braking done too aggressively is hard to quickly disengage comparative to letting up on too much wheel brake application which can lead to longer periods of loss of control.

Ultimately what Porsche lays claim to is outlandish in extreme situations. They can't beat the laws of physics. And unless their car has active tire studding it wouldn't stand a chance against a quarter mile stretch of wet ice at 4 degree decline. Doesn't matter what vehicle, tires or software you've got. That vehicle is sliding to the bottom with no control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pretty tough to overcome momentum absent friction.

<comment><USER9> Easy. Just generate a small, but dense planet-sized mass opposite the direction of momentum, then terminate its existence once momentum has ceased. Don't break earth or the space-time continuum in the process though - <USER3> might agitate stockholders.

Seriously though, physics is physics. Software can do _a lot_ , but it can't do magic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the '70's, Porsche unabashedly made cars that earned the nickname "widowmaker."

Now it's bragging that in the near future a driver (user?) will be able to mash their car's throttle mid-corner with total impunity.

Off the top of my head I can't think of another car company that's had such a weird trajectory.

It's disappointing the new technology is unlikely to help Porsche users stop any faster, because the need for them to do so could be a side affect of their finally feeling secure when turning.

<comment><USER5> > Now it's bragging that in the near future a driver (user?) will be able to > mash their car's throttle mid-corner with total impunity.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what you're supposed to do in a Porsche (assuming it is a rear engine 911). Unlike most cars, 911s will understeer (or correct an oversteer) when you mash the throttle, and oversteer when you lift off the throttle. The reason they're called widowmakers is that the oversteer/understeer dynamics are the _exact opposite_ from what you would expect. Think you're going too fast into that turn? If you slow down, you're dead, but if you speed up, you'll survive.

It's also why crazy adrenaline junkies love them so much...in some senses, they're actually safer when you push them hard than they are when you try to be careful.

<comment><USER11> > Funnily enough, that's exactly what you're supposed to do in a Porsche > (assuming it is a rear engine 911). Unlike most cars, 911s will understeer > (or correct an oversteer) when you mash the throttle, and oversteer when you > lift off the throttle.

That is only true for pre-1994 911s. The 928 never showed that behaviour due to having a Weissach axle from the very beginning of production in 1977.

<comment><USER12> > The 928 never showed that behaviour due to having a Weissach axle from the > very beginning of production in 1977.

I used to drive a 928. Perfect 50/50 weight distribution, beautiful throaty engine, and the most god-awful gearbox ever made. I had to rev match to shift _up!_ in 2nd gear. They had a design flaw where the synchromesh just fundamentally would not work, and if you fixed it it would just break itself again.

I had to learn heel-toe shifting just to be able to drive that car at all. I fucking loved it, and it really got me into cars.

Also that car was great for whipping around a turn, just push on the throttle, slide around the back, then take off (I realize this is not the fastest way, but it is the most fun).

I apologize for the tangent, it's just not often people talk about 928s anymore.

<comment><USER5> Jeremy Clarkson also is an unabashed fan:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiLc7GvmS_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiLc7GvmS_A)

A 20 year old 944 was my first sports car. Simultaneously the best and worst decision I had ever made.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget its role in the movie Risky Business:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O8_FMhW9dY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O8_FMhW9dY)

"Porsche. There is no substitute."

I wonder what they paid for that line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's basically ABS, but with more "vroom".

</comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations!

Porsche has discovered the concept of putting an electronic motor into each wheel, and what that can do for them with regards to stability control.

<comment><USER15> It's more than that. They've implemented a system that's is capable of responding in real time.

<comment><USER16> And without any additional sensors.

This is a control theory problem: creating an observer, a model of the state of an unmeasurable quantity that you want to control, from limited data indirectly related to what you want, and using that to make control outputs, in a stable manner.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure that not adding additional sensors counts as impressive. Cars are already laden with all sorts of telemetry gathering sensors: ABS/speed at each individual wheel, steering angle sensor, accelerometers, temp and moisture sensors, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm curious which company hired Porsche Engineering for this. Porsche wouldn't hesitate adding more sensors for their own vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER19> C'mon! Video please, Porsche.

</comment><comment> ur-whale Pics or it didn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER20> >There was also an additional challenge: The driving characteristics had to be optimized exclusively through software. The Porsche engineers could not install any additional sensors and had to use the existing control devices. The task, in short, was essentially driving stability by app.

sounds almost like 737 MAX. Though of course it is just a common chewing sound of "software eating the world".

<comment><USER4> Not at all. The 737 Max added new, larger engines which had to be located more forward of the wing, leading to very different thrust balance characteristics compared to the previous models. The new software was made to try to prevent a pitch up change caused by too much thrust forward of the center of gravity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Congrats, Porsche has discovered the 3-phase AC VFD. The same technology that has been used for decades in diesel electric locomotives.

It's well known that it has fantastic anti-slip properties. I'll have to dig up the source but in the transition from DC->AC in rail engines there was a massive increase in traction. The inherent principal of a 3-phase motor means that it will naturally resist overspeed(in the same way EV regen works) unless the VFD drives it faster.

[edit] I remembered right, the improvement is on the order of 100% over DC[1]

[1] [https://www.republiclocomotive.com/ac-traction-vs-dc- tractio...](https://www.republiclocomotive.com/ac-traction-vs-dc- traction.html)</comment>


Show HN: My heart rate monitor app - <AUTHOR> Hi all, I am here to promote my new Heart Rate Monitor app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.supersimpleapps.heart_rate_monitor_newui Feature List: []Read your heart rate using the camera of your phone accurate and instantly []suggest your fitness level based on your heart rate []If you are in exercising, it suggest your workout intensity level by your heart rate []record and display your heart rate history nicely with list and graphs. It is based on my previous heart rate monitor application which has now 10K - 50k of downloads. Thanks to the comment and helps from redditors, I made a new application with the user interface redesigned. This heart rate monitor are suitable for people who are care a lot of their health condition or in need to monitor their heart rate regularly. It can suggests you fitness level information. Recent studies shows a higher heart beat rate in rest mode may be link to a higher risk of heart diseases e.g heart attack. And the better shape you are, the slower your heart beat rate (but not extremely low) will be in rest mode. It is also very suitable for people would like to measure their workout intensity. It is perfect for High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HR Monitor shows your exercise intensity level calculated based on your personalized maximum heart rate zone. And shows you which heart rate zone you are in - "Recovery Zone", "Fat-Burning Zone", "Target Heart Rate Zone" and the "High Intensity Zone". This application out - performs other application for it's capability to provide accurate reading throughout the highly diversified or fragmented android phones. Please try. Here is the video to the comparison of the application vs actual pulse meter. You can see that the heart beat rate taken of both device is almost the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE9bNTd3ImE <comment><USER2> The interface seems great</comment>


Ask HN: What Chrome extensions do you use? - <AUTHOR> Extensions/addons makes working on browser easier and efficient. What chrome extensions you use to stay productive? <comment><AUTHOR> Chrome Extensions I use -

Onetab - to manage multiple tabs

Wappalyzer, Whatruns - to find technologies used on website.

Alexa, Similarweb - to find popularity of a website.

Pocket - for bookmarking

</comment><comment><USER2> -uBlock Origin

-dollchan

That's it, for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> send to kindle

OneTab

AdBlock

Google Dictionary

Wappalyzer

Adobe HDS / HLS video saver

LastPass</comment>


The New York Times Sues FCC for Net Neutrality Records - <AUTHOR> https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/09/20/1944251/the-new-york-times-sues-fcc-for-net-neutrality-records <comment><USER2> Here's the link to the actual article with more details... [https://www.bna.com/new-york-times-n73014482696/](https://www.bna.com/new- york-times-n73014482696/)

Perhaps a mod can update it?</comment>


The lottocracy: It's time to start choosing representatives by lottery (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/forget-voting-it-s-time-to-start-choosing-our-leaders-by-lottery <comment><USER2> Almost anyone who wants the job is by definition unqualified. A random choice will perform better than what we have now.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's that, but far more.

Another _Aeon_ article -- the best article I've read in the past decade -- explores the notion of random choice also: " How to choose? When your reasons are worse than useless, sometimes the most rational choice is a random stab in the dark " [https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose- ran...](https://aeon.co/essays/if-you-can-t-choose-wisely-choose-randomly)

(I'd also submitted that, I think it's much the better essay.)

A key element is that if you elect by _lot_ , as the Greeks did, _voting is not a deterministic process_. That is, the candidate(s) with more votes are more _likely_ to win, but only on a probabalistic basis. Athens didn't count votes, it _drew lots_ (or _ballotta_ \-- small clay balls with a candidate's name written on it). The candidate pool itself was qualified (and exclusionary, patriarchal, and discriminatory, yes), but given that 10-20% of the population were potential candidates, and the ruling cohort might be entirely different in the near future, getting along with whomever was, or was not, in power was good career- (and life-) extending move.

This in addition to bias, manipulation, and other problem elimination.

I've got issues with some of the suggestions here. The idea, for example of electing domain-specific single-issue legislatures, might tend to create other forms of ossified structures (think of domain specialisation, academic specialisation, and the like). Having _generalist_ legislatures can be a very good thing.

But that's a detail. The notion of sortition should get more play.</comment></comment>


Why has Italian cinema lost its appeal abroad? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/11/21/lost-in-translation/ <comment><USER2> Not just abroad. In the latest decades the cultural production of Italy has been, on average, rather embarrassing. As an Italian, I have developed an easy heuristic: if it is an Italian title (either book, song or movie, whatever) it is likely to be bad. Exceptions exist, but they are rare. It is true that what gets exported from a country is usually the best, so one probably encounters the local bad and the foreign best, but cultural production of Italy certainly was better once. It is as if my country has suffered some kind of creative collapse.

<comment><USER3> Not at all. The creative collapse which caused this decline only happened in the 80ies as everywhere else but lasted until 2000, longer than everywhere else. It happened to kill the major italian studios and producers de Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti. Cinecittà went almost bankrupt 1997. Scorcese almost killing off again Cinecittà with his fatal Gangs of New York epic didn't help, Passion of Christ and the fire in a big Cinecittà hall 2007 neither.

But since 2000 Italian cinema is the most exciting in Europe again. They are the only ones who successfully experiment in new visual aesthetic with the new available camera technology. It's not only Paolo Sorrentini (Camera: Luca Bigazzi) * L'uomo in più (2001) * Le conseguenze dell'amore (2004) * L'amico di famiglia (2006) * Il Divo (2008) and then his famous ones, but also Zapruder Filmmakersgroup (Nadia Ranocchi, David Zamagni, Camera: Monaldo Moretti) with "All Inclusive 3D" (2010), Luca Guadagnino, Salvatore Maira, Michelangelo Frammartino and in the last years many more. Compare it e.g. to the current decline of the french movies.

The directors with which the decline of the Italian cinema started were Gianno Amelio, Guiseppe Tornatore, Roberto Benigni, Gabriele Salvatores, Franco Zeffirelli and Silvio Soldini. They should rest in piece.

<comment><USER4> How do you explain Benigni's Oscar for "Life is beautiful"? Although I would partially agree with you on your opinion about Benigni nonetheless.

<comment> once-in-a-while Benigni is a class on its own. I think many folks don't really get what he is really trying to say; you can view his movies with a quarter of a brain, but you need all of your heart!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd suggest access in general is a problem. In the past, this can be simply written off as the difficulty in moving and translating the works, but this hasn't been an issue for a very long time.

I'm a bit of a fair-weather fan of Italian cinema insomuch that I usually enjoy what I am able to find online that gets translated. My partner is close to fluency in Italian and loves watching Italian film to test her understanding, but we find ourselves constantly struggling to locate any reliable source for Italian film, legally or otherwise acquired. The most famous pieces of Italian cinema are certainly obtainable, but exploring the rest just seems to be a fools errand.

I'm not sure whether the Italian studios don't want to take the time, if Publishers world-wide don't see the return on investment for spreading Italian film, or what is stopping access, but there can be no interest if there's no chance in getting at the film.

</comment><comment><USER6> I suggest the films of Nanni Moretti and Paolo Sorrentino (mentioned in the article).

[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604335/](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604335/) [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0815204/](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0815204/)

Io Sono Li is also a good, rather recent film. For documentaries, try Videocracy and Women Bodies (aka Il Corpo Delle Donne), the latter of which is on Youtube. BBC did a series called Italy Unpacked where two guys travel around Italy experiencing its cuisine. Italy, Love it or Leave it is on my list of documentaries to see but I have yet to find it available somewhere. As for TV, try Gomorra La Serie and/or Inspector Montalbano.

<comment> guard-of-terra The latest loud Sorrentino movie is quite awful.

I don't know, maybe hardcore movie fans find something in it, but this demographic is thin these days. For me as a common viewer, every single Italian movie I've seen in the last years was much better. And I'm talking random stuff from festivals.

<comment><USER7> True that, "La Grande Bellezza" was awful, yet it managed to win an oscar for what is worth.

<comment><USER8> I loved "La Grande Bellezza", but I am italian...

<comment> guard-of-terra What for? I'm genuinely curious.

The only thing that kept me wondering thru the film is - where do those people get that kind of money to make their life style possible? Now, if he made a film explaining THAT, I would be first to watch. Otherwise, characters are ageing impostors, but first of all boring.

<comment><USER9> I'm an American, and I very much enjoyed _La Grande Bellezza_. I thought it was a fascinating glimpse of a world I otherwise know nothing about. It was also a visually engaging movie with some gorgeous scenery and nice camera work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Try watching "The Best of Youth" (La meglio gioventù), it is fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's funny, I see this anti- self-consciousness stance more and more. Objections to hipsters. Objections to political correctness.

We're at a funny time where we sort of remember the time when we weren't all splayed out on the internet in front of each other, and we can still pine for a return to that... We have given up some important things that are worth trying to get back.

But unfortunately for these people, I think we're only seeing the beginning. And we'll be horrified at what the next generation will share publicly and demand space for in the public discourse. The Internet wants to see everything and it is only getting stronger. It's "eye" will grow 1000x every thirty years for the next century.

The swaggering unselfconscious architype she misses is going to increasingly read as tone-deaf until we reach the next civil rights plateau. Minimally we'll need free basic medical care and housing for all humans.

At that point I think he swagger could come back in full blast--nothing wrong with a little self-aggrandizement if everyone is fed and people are enjoying watching.

</comment><comment><USER12> La grande bellezza / The Great Beauty was quite good.

</comment><comment><USER13> Also: in the US foreign (or at least European) movies seem to attract an aging demographic.</comment>


Using Mapper to Parse JSON in Swift - <AUTHOR> https://eng.lyft.com/using-mapper-to-parse-json-in-swift-7788d5c57d74#.l6ikwcwaz <comment><USER2> Why would someone use mapper over SwiftyJSON?

<comment><AUTHOR> One really nice benefit is that you don't have to duplicate any type information. Once you define your model with the data types you expect, mapper infers those types and converts the JSON values accordingly. It seems like with SwiftyJSON (which I haven't used) you have to duplicate this by calling things like `.stringValue` etc.

<comment><USER2> Interesting, i'll have to give it a shot to see how it works. Any plans to provide integrations for something like alamofire? If I could abstract all of the work to a special response handler i'd definitely switch over

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> really nice!!!</comment>


Jump Start Credit Card Processing ebook - <AUTHOR> http://jumpstartcc.com/

<comment><USER2> (... why is the PDF inside a zip file?)</comment>


Facebook can't decide how much VR should cost - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/oculus-rift-and-touch-receive-yet-another-price-cut-now-just-499 <comment><USER2> This is pointless, people are not buying VR because there is nothing there they really want to use it for, not because it costs too much. A gaming rig to run it will cost you more.

<comment><USER3> I think live sports and being able to switch between players/drone/sideline 360 views would be a killer app.

<comment><USER4> That's a popular opinion. And it's something that people have a demonstrated willingness to pay for.

It does make it into a solitary experience. And I think there's also the question of whether people would really want to be _that_ immersed for a 2+ hour game.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the solitary experience thing seems like the biggest hurdle. maybe a twitch like experience where one person directs the camera location and narrates with a bunch of follower who can control their own 360 view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it safe to say that VR still has another decade (at least) before it gets any kind of wide spread adoption? I was hyped a couple years ago for VR but it feels like its fizzled out.

<comment><USER6> Yes. I was a hardcore fanboy, bought the DK2, had both Rift and Vive preorders on day one. Spent months making my own games and VR experiments in Unity. However I just sold all of my headsets last month.

Theres been a lot of amazing stuff to come out of this generation of VR. But as hard as the software devs try, you simply can't get past the fact that the hardware isn't ready for primetime yet.

The clunky controllers, the wires, the sensors. We need full wireless, full FOV, and at least double the pixel density/resolution with a control scheme that uses finger tracking lightweight gloves.

Th current gen of tech is really mindblowing at first, and it certainly has incredible potential. But until then VR will unfortunately remain a niche toy like HOTAS controllers.

<comment><USER7> Have you seen the TPCast? That makes the vive wireless, and can already by shipped from China, coming to the US later this year. Intel is also releasing something similar for the vive next year. So that is wireless. LG is bringing out a SteamVR headset later this year with a higher pixel density. And valve just sent out the Kunckles controller to devs, which has full on finger tracking. So we are not very far away from solving most of those problems.

<comment><USER6> TPCast is a huge step forward. No one saw that coming within a year of the major headsets launching. I've definitely got my eye on that stuff. But it's still huge and clunky at the end of the day. It won't be until the major manufacturers integrate this stuff that mainstream adoption hits.

I got into VR development with the mindset that the hardware will be ready in 5 years, and when it is the people who stuck with it through the times of disillusionment beyond the hype phase will be in prime position to start doing amazing things at scale. I'm personally waiting for the next gen of headsets now to do more full scale VR work. The current top level hardware is pushed to it's bounds in terms of adoption and it just doesn't make financial sense for developers yet. Until then, mobile is where it's at IMO. The integrated solutions from Samsung and Oculus on the horizon are really exciting.

The SteamVR Knuckles I think are a terrible idea. I wish Valve would get past the idea of controllers entirely. Any kind of physical game controller becomes extremely clunky and restrictive in VR. We need perfect finger tracking in the form of a lightweight pair of cloth gloves that you simply slip on like normal. VR allows such a complete paradigm shift in your ability to manipulate the environment that creating a traditional controller mapping inherently limits the way people will think about designing interactions. Rather than moving towards more intuitive actions, developers will be allowed to just fall back on old gameplay cliches of the console era.

<comment><USER8> Have you ever tried gloves or hand tracking? Without the haptic feedback that you get from a controller they're also extremely clunky and unintuitive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thats still a lot of money for something you're only going to use for ~6 hours

</comment><comment><USER10> They ran out of the old bundle that had two boxes (one with headset, sensor ,Xbox controller and remote. other one with touch controllers and sensor). And announced earlier than expected the new cheaper bundle: one smaller box with headset, touch controllers and two sensors. The new box has no Xbox controller and no touch remote.

</comment><comment><USER11> VR is not going to happen for general productivity purposes, but it will be handy for some specialties. Then they can invest in better, more expensive equipment.

VR is such a closed off experience right now, I would schedule it under Dreaming. Sweaty too, with today's gear.

It asks a lot for what it can deliver for now.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is still way too expensive. I like VR and enjoy gaming but not enough to replace a PC that comfortably plays everything else I want to play.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think anyone can really gauge VR's day-to-day casual consumer value. It's genuine applications are rare, and it's primary value is in deflecting hazardous situations onto remote operated robotic vehicles with telepresence.

But humans prefer actual experiences above all, every single time, unless real dangers are presented, so VR always feels like an undesirable compromise.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure humans prefer "actual experiences" every single time; the business models of Facebook, Amazon, and Google depend on that not being the case.

Back when the internet was still low-res and slow people said the same thing about it: chatting, buying, and researching with a computer is an undesirable compromise. That's where we are with VR.

Anecdote: I fondly remember the days spent hacking AOL with people online, being ostracized and punished by people around me for not having "actual" experiences like going out and playing sports. These people now spend countless hours on Facebook and Instagram. Now apparently I need to be more social with actual people (on Facebook) instead of hacking with fake people in fake virtual reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Saw a headline yesterday that Oculus is coming out with a $299 headset next year.

<comment><USER8> According to that rumour that headset is a competitor to Daydream or Gear VR, not the Rift or Vive. (IOW it doesn't have 6DOF positioning). So it'd be good for passive consumption but not so great for games or content creation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> PS VR effect.

<comment><USER17> And the "Vive is winning" effect...

Is there anyone who prefers Oculus' IR over Vive's LIDAR?

<comment><USER18> Neither Vive nor Rift have been selling very well recently if the Steam Survey is any indication. PSVR numbers are better but I don't think they're that impressive either.

<comment><USER19> The amazing thing to me is that my 10 and 8 year old nephews have a PSVR, and Xbox, and an iPad, and all they want to do is play the iPad. They use the Xbox sometimes, and the PSVR collects dust. It seems nowadays low friction is the killer feature.

<comment><USER20> Kids aren't the only ones. Most of us in the wealthy West now have so many entertainment options that we ignore even many of the ones we've already paid for, or are continuing to pay for. Half the time I forget I have Prime Video at all, and I've temporarily got Showtime for Twin Peaks but despite knowing there are probably tons of other shows and movies on it (and not on Netflix/Prime) that I'd enjoy I've not even looked at the rest of their catalog aside from ~5min scanning through it when I first signed up.

I have a total of probably 60+ _entirely unplayed_ games for the PS2, PS3, Xbox360, Gamecube, and Wii, picked up cheap used or in digital PS+ freebies or sales but not touched since. Hundreds of hours of entertainment which I'd probably enjoy and many of which have at least some artistic merit but they sit unused. We recently picked up a PS4, so now games are accumulating for that too. Don't get me started on Steam/GoG. My to-read list of _just books I own_ is solidly in the 3 digits. We've still got a couple DVDs kicking around that we bought over a decade ago for next to nothing used, never watched.

I've never found time to catch up on all the music I pirated 10+ years ago, sometimes in large dumps of material from friends who were more into tracking down The Good Stuff than I was (keeping up with all that meta-reading to learn what's worth your time itself takes tons of time) let alone listen to much new music aside from a handful of CDs purchased and listened-to after live shows over the years. Spotify and such can go to hell, I don't got time and the _last_ thing I need is another way to find things I like but won't have time to pursue.

I end up seeing a more-or-less random 25-50% of the movies that are probably excellent and I'd likely really enjoy that come out every year. There are _hundreds_ of culturally and artistically important movies from the last 100+ years still on my to-watch list, but the ones I miss each year keep making the list longer rather than shorter. Most are easily available. Some of them I could go watch right now (Netflix, et c.)

I'm still meaning to read Sandman and a dozen other acclaimed, important comics, to say nothing of all the ones I'd probably enjoy as pure bubble-gum entertainment. I've barely scratched the surface on that entire _format_.

Plus I've got all that stuff in life that's not just "consuming" media.

I've truly got more _excellent_ art/entertainment readily available than I have time for, by a large margin. We live in strange times.

[EDIT] Oh, and let's not forget the ~a billion hours of free entertainment on Youtube, podcasts, archive.org, and so on, much of it good. I'm not much into that stuff because _wow_ do I ever not have time to sort wheat from chaff let alone enjoy said wheat, but it's all right there and I _could_ seek it out any time I please.

<comment><USER4> In that vein, I read a piece recently. The gist was that, if you launch a TV show today that takes a season or so to get its footing and figure out how to tell its story, you're increasingly not going to make it. Of course, lots of shows have always been canceled early on. But, at least speaking for myself, today there are so many good to great shows that I don't have time to watch that if you don't grab me in an episode or two I'm tuning out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is not Facebook's right to decide how much VR should cost. That's what a free market is for. They __do __believe in the free market, right? Right??

<comment><USER22> Ordinarily technical companies are well-differentiated which means they are not commodities that you can interchange precisely - unlike rice or wheat. So while it is not sensible to state "(biggest wheat importer) can't decide how much wheat should cost" since their options are probably within a very narrow limit where asking for just 15% more would cause their sales to drop to 0 and asking for 15% less would let them capture 50%+ of the market - but at a loss for them - the same is rarely true in the technical industry, which has high margins and high differentiation.

So for these reasons, Facebook's pricing choices are complicated and the free market does not clearly prescribe their pricing strategy in the way you suggest.</comment></comment>


The first space selfie, during the Gemini 12 mission in 1966 - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/therealbuzz/status/490293546851635201

<comment><USER2> This brief clip interviewing Buzz Aldrin about the picture is well worth watching: [http://www.cnn.com/videos/tech/2014/07/15/orig-buzz- aldrin-s...](http://www.cnn.com/videos/tech/2014/07/15/orig-buzz-aldrin-space- selfie.cnn)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome selfie! But what is a "cock camera"? Lol.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always thought that Hacker News !== Reddit

edit: at some point, I agree with commenters. And I personally love to make photos (not selfies). But talking about space selfies -- imho, it would be interesting to know a little bit more, than just looking at a tweet.

At least, something like that:

[wikipedia] The first known space selfie was taken by Buzz Aldrin during the Gemini 12 mission.[9]

The extra-vehicular activity (EVA) equipment used by astronauts during spacewalks contains a specially designed camera for photography in outer space. The main purpose of the EVA camera is to take pictures of the subjects related to the missions.[10]

There have been many space selfies, some of which use the visor of another astronaut's helmet as the mirror. Early space selfies after the word "selfie" was first used in 2002[2] without assistance from another astronaut included Donald Pettit and Stephen Robinson. Pettit took one during the Expedition 6 in January 2003.[11] Robinson took his during the repair of the Space Shuttle Discovery[12] on August 3, 2005, as part of the STS-114 mission.[13]

Another notable space selfie was taken by Aki Hoshide during the six-hour, 28-minute spacewalk on September 5, 2012.[14][15] Hoshide's photo became a viral phenomenon after Commander Chris Hadfield uploaded the photo to his Twitter account on September 30, 2013.[16] Coincidentally, Oxford University Press, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, announced in November 2013 that "selfie" was the word of the year for 2013.[17] The picture topped many selfie lists of the year.[18][19] Another space selfie of Hoshide also showed up on Instagram and appeared on a list of top selfies of 2013.[20] [/wikipedia]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_selfie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_selfie)

<comment><AUTHOR> From HN Submission Guidelines: 'Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.' [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Checklist for starting a new Rails application? - <AUTHOR>

It's easy to create a new Rails application using "rails new myapp" (or using an application template). But after that, what do you do? What gems do you always add? What decisions do you make before beginning development? What important items are often overlooked before deploying an app? I'd like to put together a reference checklist to share. Any suggestions?
For example:
- Create a new RVM gemset
 - Modify the .gitignore file
 - Switch from TestUnit to RSpec
 - Set up Guard to run tests in the background during development
 - Add the viewport metatag to the default application layout
 - Don't forget to create a sitemap.xml file
 - Add a Google Analytics snippet
What else? <comment><USER2> Some from my stack (vary based on project):

        Devise, CanCan, sentient_user, CarrierWave
        rails_config, rails-settings
        ActiveScaffold
        Rspec, Capybara, Spork, Guard, factory_girl, faker
        capistrano

</comment><comment><USER3> I always add Cucumber, Machinist, Omniauth + devise, formtastic, show_for, foreman, and (lately) the twitter-bootstrap-rails gem

<comment><USER4> If you love Cucumber, you definitely should take a look at Spinach: <http://codegram.github.com/spinach/></comment></comment>


How would you recognize a Coca-Cola can in a noisy image? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/q/10168686/1332690

<comment><USER2> There are more comments discussing the legitimacy of the question than those addressing the question itself. I'm not surprised. It's hard to ask a question on SO these days without getting hit with a request to close.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure you couldn't solve this as an optical character recognition problem, with something like Isomap, which is invariant under orientation and scale changes. Break your image up into patches, reduce dimensionality on all of them, and find the location that way. I would predict that this is faster, at some cost in accuracy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yes it's a shame that just because of a few zealous high-voted people, all the interesting questions lose their legitimacy.</comment>


Indonesian scientists embrace preprint server - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08838-6 <comment><USER2> What is a preprint server?

<comment><USER3> From Wikipedia[1]

"In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset version available free, before and/or after a paper is published in a journal."

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint)</comment></comment>


Von Neumann and Turing's Universal Machine - <AUTHOR> https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2020/1/241712-von-neumann-thought-turings-universal-machine-was-simple-and-neat/fulltext <comment><USER2> This is a paper largely about academic influences. Given the 1943 BRUSA Agreement [1] during the war, I wonder how much transfer of practical knowledge there was, eg about Tommy Flowers' Colossus machines at Bletchley Park, which were undoubtedly 'universal', and 10 of which were built with increasing sophistication by 1945.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_BRUSA_Agreement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_BRUSA_Agreement)</comment>


Alan Turing's 'Morphogenesis' Theory Confirmed 60 Years After His Death - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/alan-turing-morphogenesis-confirmed_n_4986583.html <comment><USER2> An important discovery, but equally important to keep it in proper context:

"If you want to get a rough grasp of how the leopard might get its spots, then building a CA model (or something similar) can be very illuminating. It will not tell you whether that's actually how it works. This is an important example, because there is a classic theory of biological pattern formation, or morphogenesis, first formulated by Turing in the 1950s, which lends itself very easily to modeling in CAs, and with a little fine-tuning produces things which look like animal coats, butterfly wings, etc., etc. The problem is that there is absolutely no reason to think that's how those patterns actually form; no one has identified even a single pair of Turing morphogens, despite decades of searching.

For a good account of the actual mechanisms of biological pattern formation, as they are being revealed by molecular developmental biology, see John Gerhart and Marc Kirschner, Cells, Embryos and Evolution: Toward a Cellular and Developmental Understanding of Phenotypic Variation and Evolutionary Adaptability (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific, 1997). This book provides an excellent discussion of the interactions between genetic control, self- organization, evolutionary forces and functional adpatations in development. (There is a nice review by Danny Yee.) — The failure of experiment to turn up any biological system working according to Turing's principles was remarked by the late, great John Maynard Smith in his review of Depew and Weber's Darwinism Evolving (in the New York Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 4, 2 March 1995); my search of the subsequent literature doesn't indicate that the situation has changed.

Update, 4 March 2012: There is now a fairly convincing example of a pair of Turing morphogens in actual biology:

Andrew D. Economou, Atsushi Ohazama, Thantrira Porntaveetus, Paul T Sharpe, Shigeru Kondo, M. Albert Basson, Amel Gritli-Linde, Martyn T. Cobourne and Jeremy B. A. Green, "Periodic stripe formation by a Turing mechanism operating at growth zones in the mammalian palate", Nature Genetics 44 (2012): 348--351

Thanks to a reader for letting me know about this."

[http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfra...](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/wolfram/)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, the reporting is a bit strange, though the Turing paper covers a wide range of subjects, so that's not too surprising. Turing's theory is so broad it would be difficult to "confirm" it with any single study, because he proposed a mechanism that he hypothesized could account for an extremely wide range of phenomena. It's not really a theory of one particular mechanism, so much as a meta-theory that many patterns in nature are produced by various physical instantiations of a more general mathematical mechanism. It would be difficult to confirm that in the strong sense with anything short of a wide- ranging survey covering thousands of experiments, showing that an enormous range of physical mechanisms and patterns in nature really are the result of this abstract meta-mechanism. This paper has not done that, so it hasn't really confirmed Turing's hypothesis in the strong sense.

On the other hand, one might be looking for a weaker sort of confirmation: not that Turing-style morphogenesis accounts for everything, but that it accounts for _at least something_ , i.e. there is at least one demonstrable instance where a Turing-style explanation can be shown to account for a process as it actually works physically & historically in nature, vs. just being a clever way of mathematically approximating a pattern. In that case, the paper you link above is at least one prior example, and this article adds another domain-specific investigation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting to note that Turing, Von Nueman, and Konrad Zuse all moved into studying cellular automata in their later years. Conway is famous for his game of life, but but Turings work consisted of this morphogensis thing, and Von Nueman created a self replicating automata. I don't recall what Zuse's work consisted of. Also interesting, Wolfram mentions none of their work in his book, "A New Kind of Science".

<comment><USER5> > Also interesting, Wolfram mentions none of their work in his book, "A New > Kind of Science".

There's one of the most blatant and ridiculous lies I've seen today, with such an obvious agenda. It's disgusting.

Turing and biological pigmentation patterns: [https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-1003g-text](https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-1003g-text)

Detailed summary of von Neumann's work in self-replication: [https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-876b-text](https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-876b-text)

An index entry on Zuse and modelling the Universe as a cellular automaton, although the text itself is not freely available: [https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/index/z.html?Search...](https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/index/z.html?SearchIndex=zuse#searchword1)

Please don't use bald-faced lies to propagate hatred of anyone.

<comment><USER6> His wasn't an informed comment but it's best responded to with just the links you posted.

Turing seems to be sort of a personal hero to Wolfram, so I'm sure that he'd have some interest in the results in the post.

And for anyone interested in modeling nature with computers more generally, _A New Kind of Science_ is wonderful reading and gives a great conceptual framework on how to go about it. It's sad that the Shalizi review is the first thing people refer to (it's sort of the Huffington Post of reviews).

<comment><USER3> _It 's sad that the Shalizi review is the first thing people refer to (it's sort of the Huffington Post of reviews)._

Do you base this on just this one review, or more generally? I've mostly found his reviews informative and much better researched than most online reviews. They have opinions, but the opinions are more informative to me than "I like this" or "I don't like this". I usually feel that I learn something from the reviews, including finding new books and articles to read because they're cited in the review. That's not exactly something that happens at HuffPo.

<comment><USER6> I meant to refer to that particular review, not his reviews in general. It's been a long time since I've poked through those, and they seem reasonable, which makes the review of Wolfram's work that much stranger.

Anyway, the history of cellular automata is sort of interesting, and the notion of using computation to explain biological markings is also interesting. Thought after skimming Turing's paper it looks like while Turing makes many simplifying assumptions, did some basic computer modeling, and is literally about biological cells, his model is not as abstract as the cellular automata von Neumann, Conway, or Wolfram studied--unlike the others Turing's model uses linear equations to transmit "state" from cell to cell instead of rules. In fact Wolfram's contribution was to remove as many details as possible from cellular automata, enumerate all the possibilities, and observe what happens.

The bummer about referring to that review in other threads or in this case mischaracterizing Wolfram's work is that it distracts from creating more interesting discussions about this stuff. There are currently about 16 comments effectively discussing attribution, and precious few about what sort of model Turing proposed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Turing's paper [PDF]: [http://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/cs191/paperscs191/turing....](http://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/cs191/paperscs191/turing.pdf)

<comment><USER6> And here is the paper covered in the original post: [http://fraden.brandeis.edu/publications/papers/PNAS(2014).pd...](http://fraden.brandeis.edu/publications/papers/PNAS\(2014\).pdf) with notes at [http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2014/03/06/1322005111.DCSu...](http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2014/03/06/1322005111.DCSupplemental/pnas.201322005SI.pdf#nameddest=STXT) It's dense but not impossibly so.

One modification they made to Turing's idea was that each cell has the same composition. They found that, to produce the results they expected, they needed to alternate the composition of neighboring cells.

(It would be nice if your post was at the top of the thread, since it's the most relevant and useful so far, but it is not very controversial. Next time consider adding something like "Biology professors hate him! Read this man's 1 weird trick for explaining morphogenesis!")

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is an interesting semi-technical read relating to how Turing's work helps to explain drug-induced hallucinations: [http://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and- hal...](http://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and- hallucinations)

</comment><comment><USER9> A great book on the general context of what counts as an explanation in biology -- and, by extension, why the mathematical biological approach advanced by Turing never really caught on -- is presented in Evelyn Fox Keller's _Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines_ (Harvard U.P., 2003). A short version of the argument is presented in this article from _Project Syndicate_ : [http://www.project- syndicate.org/commentary/biology-s-clash-...](http://www.project- syndicate.org/commentary/biology-s-clash-of-civilizations)

</comment><comment><USER10> "60 years after his suicide..."

appreciated they didn't say "death". Would have preferred "apparent suicide", but it's a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER11> I'm surprised by the '60 years' part - if not killed, he could be living today! What a stupid loss.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. Maybe he could have made more discoveries. Maybe he could have trained an entire, new generation of mathematicians. Maybe he could have just gotten to live a happy life, as should be the right of all human beings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious as to how this explains geometric drug induced hallucinations. That has always puzzled me.

<comment><USER13> There's a good paper about how some geometric hallucinations are formed: [http://people.mbi.ohio- state.edu/golubitsky.4/reprintweb-0.5...](http://people.mbi.ohio- state.edu/golubitsky.4/reprintweb-0.5/output/papers/6120261.pdf)

<comment><USER14> Interesting, I see geometric patterns when I rub my eyes real hard, always wondered what caused it.

<comment><USER15> I think there is a wiki article explaining this by pressure and heat both activating cells on the retina.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went to a talk on this paper up at Bletchley Park a few years back. Very cool, not quite what I expected (ie, not compsci theory) but really interesting nonetheless.

As I understand it this was his last paper too, before the authorities basically hounded him to death.</comment>